:

-Y^LIE'^JMir^JEI^SIIirY-

Gift of
MISS SARAH S. LANE
193 1

This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in
cooperation with Yale University Library, 2008. You
may not reproduce this digitized copy ofthe book for
any purpose other than for scholarship, research,
educational, or, in limited quantity, personal use. You
may not distribute or provide access to this digitized copy
(or modified or partial versions of it) for commercial purposes.

13

ON THE CHAMPS ^LYSEES.

OLD AND NEW PARIS

Its History, its People, and its Places

BY
H. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS
AUTHOR OF "IDOLS OF THE FRENCH STAGE" " THE GERMANS IN FRANCE" "THE RUSSIANS
AT HOME" ETC. ETC.

Vol. II

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS

CASSELL and COMPANY Limited
LONDON PARIS & MELBOURNE
1894
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

bo34-.04-0 2.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
STREET CHARACTERS.
The " Cocher " — The Bus-driver — The Private Coachman — The' Hackney' Coachman — The Public Writer — The
Flower-girl — The Oyster-woman . . i
CHAPTER II.
THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS IN PARIS.
The Englishman Abroad — M. Lemoinne's Analysis — The Englishwoman — Sunday in London and in Paris —
Americans in Paris — The American Girl 9
CHAPTER III
MORE PARISIAN TYPES.
The Spy— Under Sartines and Berryer — Fouche — Delavau — The Present System — The I£cuyere — The Circus
in Paris . .17
CHAPTER IV.
THE DOMESTIC.
The French Servant, as described by Leon Gozlan and by Mercier — The Cook and the Cordon Bleu — The
Valet ... ..._.. ,20
CHAPTER V.
PARISIAN CHARACTERISTICS.
Parisian Characteristics — Gaiety, Flippancy Wit — A String of Favourite Anecdotes ... . . 24
CHAPTER VI.
THE STREETS.
The Arrangement of the Streets — System of Numbering the Houses — Street Nomenclature — Street Lamps —
The Various Kinds of Vehicles in Use . . ... .28
CHAPTER VII.:
THE SEINE AND ITS BRIDGES.— THE MORGUE.
The Various Bridges over the Seine — Their Histories — The Morgue — Some Statistics . -33
CHAPTER VIII.
THE REFORMATION IN PARIS.
D'Hitaples, the Pioneer of the Reformation — Nicolas Cop and Calvin — Progress of the Reformation — Persecutions '
— Catharine de Medicis — St. Bartholomew's — The Edict pf Nantes. , 36
CHAPTER IX.
THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE.
The French Educational System — Lycees and Colleges — The University of Paris — The College of France 44
CHAPTER X.
THE SORBONNE.
Robert de Sorbonne — The Sorbonne, its Origin and History — Richelieu — The Revolution — The New Sorbonne
— Mercier's Views . . 49
CHAPTER XI.
THE INSTITUTE.
The Institute — Its Unique Character — The Objects of its Projectors — Its Constitution 53
CHAPTER XII.
THE ACADEMIE FRANCAISE.
The Academie Francaise — Its Foundation by Richelieu — Its Constitution — The "Forty-first Chair." . ¦ , 55

iv CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE PANTHEON. page
The Church of Clovis — The Church of Sainte-Genevieve — France in the Thirteenth Century — The Building
of the New Church under Louis XV. — Mirabeau and the, Constituent Assembly — The Church of Sainte-
Genevieve becomes the Pantheon. 59
CHAPTER XIV.
THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.
The "Central School of Public Works" — Bonaparte and the Polytechnic — The College of Navarre — Formal
Inauguration in 1805 — 1816 — 1830 67
CHAPTER XV.
THE HOTEL CLUNY.
The Rue des Carmes— Comte de Mun and the Catholic Workmen's Club — The Place Maubert — The Palais
des Thermes— The Hotel Cluny— Its History— Its Art Treasures 71
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MUSfiE D'ARTILLERIE.
The Museum of Artillery — Its Origin and History — The Growth -of its Collection of Armour and Weapons
of all Kinds 83
CHAPTER XVII.
THE VAL DE GRACE— RELICS OF THE GREAT.
The Deaf and Dumb Institution — The Val de Grace — Hearts as Relics — Royal Funerals— The Church of
Saint-Denis . 89
CHAPTER XVHI.
THE CATACOMBS: THE OBSERVATORY.
Origin of the Catacombs — The Quarries of Mont Souris — The Observatory — Marshal Ney— The School of
Medicine - 99
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ODEON : THE LUXEMBURG PALACE.
The Odeon — Its History — Erection of the Present Building in 1799 — Marie de Medicis and the Luxemburg
Palace — The Judicial Annals of the Luxemburg — Trials of Fieschi and Louvel— Trial of Louis Napoleon —
Trial of the Due de Praslin - : ...._'. 109
CHAPTER XX.
THE PRISONS OF PARIS.
La Sante— La Roquette — The Conciergerie— The Mazas — Sainte-Pelagie — Saint-Lazare — Prison -Regulations . 131
CHAPTER XXI.
THE PARIS ZOO
The Jardin des Plantes — Its Origin and History — Under Buffon — The Museum of Natural History — The
Tobacco Factory 147
CHAPTER XXII.
SOME HISTORICAL BUILDINGS.
Abailard and Heloise — Fulbert's House in the Rue des Chantres — The Philip Augustus Towers— The Hotel
Barbette— The Hotel de Sens . . . 156
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE MONT-DE-PIETE.
"Uncle" and "Aunt" — Organisation of the Mont-de-Piete— Its Various Branches — Its Warehouses and
Sale-rooms . 160
CHAPTER XXIV.
PARIS MARKETS.
The Halles-Centrales — The Cattle Markets — Agriculture in France — The French Peasant .... 166

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXV.
SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRES. page
Its Origin and History — Its Library—Its Organ — Saint-Sulpice 170
CHAPTER XXVI.
PRINTING IN PARIS— THE CENSORSHIP.
Rue Visconti— Historical Buildings— The National School of Roads and Bridges— The Introduction of Printing
into Paris — The First Printing Establishments— The Censorship ...... 174
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE HOTEL DES INVALIDES.
A Glance at its History— Louis XIV. and Mme. de Maintenon— The Pensioners— Their Characteristics and
Mode of Life. ... . . .... 185
CHAPTER XXVIII.
SOME MORE PARIS HOSPITALS.
The French Hospital System — The Laennec Hospital — The Houses of Assistance — The Quinze- Vingts — Deaf
and Dumb Institutions — The Abbe de l'Epee — La Charite 193,
¦..;..: CHAPTER XXIX.
LUNATIC ASYLUMS AND. MIXED INSTITUTIONS.
The Treatment of Lunacy in the Past — La Salpetriere — Bicetre— The Story of Latude — The Four Sergeants
of La Rochelle — Pinel's Reforms— Charenton , .... 207
CHAPTER XXX. :
THE RIVER BIEVRE AND THE MANUFACTORY OF THE GOBELINS.
The Brothers Gobelin — Lebrun— The Gobelins under Louis XIV. — At the Time of the Revolution— The
Manufactory of Sevres . . . . . . ... . 225
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE PALAIS BOURBON.
The Palais Bourbon — Its History — The National Convention — Philippe Egalite . . . 231
CHAPTER XXXII.
SOME HISTORICAL RESIDENCES.
The Palace of the Legion of Honour — The Ministry of War — The Rue de Grenelle — Talleyrand . 236
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE RUE TARANNE AND DIDEROT.
Diderot's Early Life in Paris — His Love Affairs — Imprisonment in the Chateau de Vincennes— Diderot and
" Catherine II. of Russia — His Death . • . • . 242
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MONSEIGNEUR AFFRE AND THE INSURRECTION OF JUNE.
The Courtyard of the Dragon — The National Workshops — The Insurrection of June — Monseigneur Affre Shot
g.t the Barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine . . . ,, 247
CHAPTER XXXV
SOME OCCUPANTS OF MONTPARNASSE.
The Boulevard Montparnasse — The Cemetery — Father Loriquet — Heg^sippe Moreau — Sainte-Beuve . 250
CHAPTER XXXVI.
SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS.
Le "Sport" — Longchamps — Versailles Races — Fontainebleau — The Seine — Swimming Baths — The Art of Book-
collecting .... • 254

vi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
FENCING SCHOOLS. PAGE
Fencing in France — A National Art — Some Extracts from the Writings of M. Legouve, One of its Chief
Exponents— The Old Style of Fencing and the New . . 257
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PETTY TRADES.
Petty Trades— Their Origins— The Day-Banker— The Guardian Angel— The Old-Clothesman— The Claque^-
Its First Beginning and Development . 259
CHAPTER XXXIX.
OBSOLETE PARIS SHOPS.
The Old Wooden Stalls of Forty Years Ago— The " Lucky Fork "—The Cobblers' Shops— The Old Cafes 265
CHAPTER XL.
THE PARIS PRESS.
French Governments and the Press — The Press under Napoleon — Some Account of the Leading Paris Papers
—The Figaro . ... . . . 268
CHAPTER XLI.
FROM THE QUAI VOLTAIRE TO THE PANTHEON.
The Quai Voltaire — Its Changes of Name — Voltaire — His Life in Paris and Elsewhere — His Remains laid in
the Pantheon — Mirabeau — Rousseau — Vincennes . . .... . 273
CHAPTER XLII.
THE PALAIS MAZARIN AND THE RUE MAZARINE.
The Institute or Palais Mazarin — The Rue Mazarine — L'lllustre Theatre — Moliere — The Theatre Francais —
The Odeon — Heine — The Faubourg Saint-Germain — Historical Associations . . 288
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE PARIS RIVER AND PARIS COMMERCE.
The Society of the Water-Merchants of Paris — The Navigation of the Seine — The Paris Slaughter-Houses —
Records of Famine in France — The Lot of the French Peasant in the Last Century — The Paris Food Supply . 307
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE BARRIERS— PARISIAN CRIME.
The Approaches to Paris — The French Railway System — The St. Germain Railway — The Erection of the
Barriers — Some of the most famous Barriers — Parisian Crime — Its Special Characteristics . 317
CHAPTER XLV.
PARISIAN MENDICANCY— THE PARIS POOR.
Parisian Mendicancy in the Sixteenth Century — The General Hospital — Louis XV. and the Beggars — The
Revolution — Mendicancy as a Regular Profession — The Organ-grinders and the Trade in Italian
Children — The French Treatment of the Poor — Asylums, Almshouses, and Retreats — The Droit des Pauvres —
The Cost of the Poor   3^4
CHAPTER XLVI.
VERSAILLES.
Derivation of the Name — Saint-Simon's Description — Louis XIV. — The Grand Fete of July, 1668 — Peter the
Great and the Regent — Louis XV. — Marie Antoinette and the "Affair of tbe Necklace" — The Events of
October, 1789 ....  . . . 338
CHAPTER XL VII.
VERSAILLES AND THE SIEGE OF PARIS.
The Advance on Paris— Preparations for the Siege— General Trochu— The Francs-Tireurs— The Siege . . .348
CHAPTER XLVIII.
VERSAILLES AND THE COMMUNE.
The Communists or Communards — The "Internationale" — Bismarck and the National Guard— The Municipal
Elections — The Insurrection — Thiers— Paris during the Commune— Concluding Remarks .... 355

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
Frontispiece i
3
4 4
5
568
9
131617
2124
¦ 25293132
333536 37
40

facing

On the Champs Elysees .
Outside a Railway Station in Paris .
Waiting for a Fare
Omnibus Coachman
Private Coachman
Hackney Coachman
Hearse Coachman ....
An Invitation to a " Petit Verre "
Street Scene ....
In the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne at Night
In the Flower Market
After the Theatre . . .
At the Salon . ,
A Fair ...
A Cafe Chantant
Parisian Types — In the Barracks
Parisian Types — In Search of Cigar-ends .
A Paris Omnibus
Street Scene
Eastern End of lie de la Cite
Austerlitz Bridge . .
On the Saint-Martin Canal . -
The Solferino Bridge, from the Quai d'Orsay
The National Bridge ...
The Right Arm of the Seine from Boulevard
Henri IV  41
The College of France 44
The Lycee Voltaire -45
The Lycee Charlemagne 47
The Lycee Condorcet. 48
The Court of the Sorbonne 49
Facade of the New Sorbonne 51
The Church of the Sorbonne . . 52
The Dome of the Pantheon, Spire of St. Etienne du
Mont, and Tour de Clovis . . 57
The Pantheon, from the Luxemburg Gardens 60
Place du Pantheon .... 61
Well in the Courtyard, Cluny Museum . facing 65
Interior of the Pantheon °5
Library of Sainte-Genevieve .68
St. Stephen-of-the-Mount ... .69
Interior of Church of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount 70
The Chapel of the Ancient College of the Lombards 72
Place Maubert, with the Statue of Etienne Dolet . 73
Patrons of the Chateau Rouge . - 75
Rue de Bi&vre - 75
Ruins of the Palais des Thermes . -76
Entrance to the Cluny Museum, Rue du Sammerard 77
Staircase, Cluny Museum . 80
Dormer Windows at the Cluny Museum : 81
Group of Shafted Weapons in the Artillery Museum 84
Decorated Spanish Cannon in the Artillery Museum 85
Decorated Muskets in the Artillery Museum . 85
The Deaf and Dumb Institution 89
Elm Tree in the Court of Honour at the Deaf and
Dumb Institution 92
Statue Of the Abbe de l'Epee at the Deaf and Dumb
Institution , ... 93

The Val de Grace from the Rue de la Sante 96
View from the Pont de la Concorde facing 97
Entrance to the Observatory 100
The Gardens of the Observatory, Boulevard Arago 10 1
Place de l'Observatoire . ... 104
School of Drawing, Rue l'Ecole de Medecine 105
Statue of Marshal Ney  105
School of Medicine ., . 107
New Wing of the School of Medicine 107
Hotel du Cheval Blanc . : 108
Rue de l'Odeon . . , 109
Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie 109
Odeon Theatre . in
The Luxemburg Palace : the Garden Facade 112
The Luxemburg Palace from the Terrace . 112
The Senate Chamber . '. 113
Entrance Court, Luxemburg Palace . . ¦ TI5
Grand Avenue, Luxemburg Gardens 115
Sculpture Gallery, Luxemburg Palace 116
Salle des Fetes, Luxemburg Palace 117
The Central Fountain, Luxemburg Gardens . 119
Facade of the Ancient Chapel of the Daughters of
Calvary, Luxemburg .... 120
Listening to the Band in the Luxemburg Gardens 121
The Marie de Medicis Grotto and Fountain " 124
Back of the Marie de Medicis Fountain . . 125
Fremiel-Carpeaux Fountain, Luxemburg Gardens 126
The Luxemburg Museum . . 128
The Hotel de Sens facing 129
The Mineralogical Museum 129
Prison of La Sante . 132
Inside the Walls of La Sante . . 132
The Common Quarter, La Sante — " The Parlour " 133
Interior of La Sante . 135
Gaolers' Mess-room, La Sante 136
Entrance to La Grande Roquette 137
Warders' Room and adjoining Courtyard, La
Grande Roquette . 140
Chapel, La Grande Roquette 141
The Chapel-school, La Petite Roquette 143
The Political Quarter, Sainte-Pelagie 144
The Courtyard, Saint-Lazare  145
Buffon ......... 148
The Carnivora Section, Jardirl des Plantes 149
Entrance to Hothouses, Jardift des Plantes . 149
Marabout Storks in the Jardin des Plantes 151
The Polar Bear in the Jardin des Plantes . 151
The Bear-pit, Jardin des Plantes 152
Dromedary in the Jardin des Plantes . 153
Llama in the Jardin des Plantes . . 155
Rue des Chantres, looking towards Notre-Dame 156
Site of the House of Abailard and Heloise, Rue des
Chantres . 157
Rue des Chantres, looking towards the Quai 158
Portion of the Facade, Musee Carnavalet . . 159
The Opera House . . facing 161
Entrance to the Mont-de-Piete, Chaussee d'Antin 161
The Jewellery Stores, Rue des Blancs Manteaux 163

Vlll

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

In the Rue de Capron Branch of the Mont-de-Piete 164
The Sale-room of the Mont-de-Piete, Rue des Blancs
Manteaux ... . . 165
Rue de Tournon, with the Facade of the Senate
House . 168
The Saint-Germain Market 169
The Tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres 171
Saint-Germain-des-Pres . . 172
The Side Entrance to Saint-Germain-des-Pres . 173
The Rue de l'Abbaye . . 174
Saint-Sulpice and Apsis of Saint-Sulpice 176
Fountain, Place Saint-Sulpice 177
The Garden, School of Fine Arts . 180
The Arc de Gaillon, School of Fine Arts 181
Courtyard, School of Fine Arts . 181
A Facade on the Quai Malaquais 182
Street Scene . 184
Hotel des Invalides . 185
Dome of the Hotel des Invalides 186
Dormer Window on the Facade, Hotel des Invalides 187
The Court of Honour, Hotel des Invalides 187
Invalides . 188
Tomb of Napoleon 189
Entrance to the Tomb of Napoleon 191
Street Scene . 192
Latude recognises D'Aligre facing 193
The Laennec Hospital, Rue de Sevres 193
The Children's Hospital, Rue de Sevres 195
The Blind School : in the Work-room , 196
Attendants' Room in a Paris Hospital . 197
La Charite ... ... 198
Hospital on the Boulevard du Pont Royal 199
Entrance to the St. Louis Hospital 200
Courtyard of the St. Louis Hospital . 200
A Ward in the St. Louis Hospital . 201
The Repairing Room, St. Louis Hospital . . 201
The Tenon Hospital . 203
Nurse Pupils at the Maternity Hospital . 204
The Maternity Hospital . . 205
Font at the Maternity Hospital . 205
Hospital de la Pitie . 206
Facade of the Main Buildings, Salpetriere 208
The Mazarin Ward, Salpetriere . . 209
Place de Conseil, Salpetriere . 212
The Park, Salpetriere. . 213
The Village, Salpetriere . . 216
The Lunatics' Quarter, Salpetriere . .217
The Chapel, Salpetriere . . 220
The Bicetre, 1710 (After Gueroult) 221
Dinner-Time at Bicetre . . 224
Entrance to Bicetre 224
The Bievre . facing 225
Avenue des Gobelins . . . 226
The Bievre in the Gardens of the Gobelins 227
The Old Buildings of the Gobelins . . 228
In the Gardens of the Gobelins . . .228
Interior of the Gobelins 229
A Street in the Neighbourhood of the Gobelins 230
Facade of the Chamber of Deputies on Place du
Palais Bourbon . 232

Chamber of Deputies from the Quai d'Orsay . 233
Ruins of the Palace of the Council of State, Quai
d'Orsay . 237
Palace of the Legion of Honour 238
The Ministry of War 240
Fountain in the Rue de Grenelle 241
Grimm and Diderot . 244
Statue of Diderot, Boulevard St. -Germain, facing
the Rue St .-Benoit 245
Entrance to the Courtyard of the Dragon . 248
Courtyard of the Dragon . 249
The Montparnasse Station - 253
Second-hand Bookstalls . . 256
The Bureau de Bienfaisance Asylum at Vincennes :
(1) The Facade. (2) The Bowling Green facing 257
Old-Clothes Dealer . . . 260
Le Debarcadere des Bateaux-Omnibus : Vendors of
Refreshments . 261
Snow Scene . 267
Bookstalls on the Quai Voltaire 268
Edmond About 272
The late Albert Wolff, of the Figaro . 273
Statue of Voltaire 277
The Pont du Carrousel and the Louvre, from the
Quai Malaquais . 280
The Seine, between the City and the Quai des
Augustines 281
Jean Jacques Rousseau 284
Madame D'Epinay . 285
A Night Refuge in the Vaugirard Quarter facing 289
Cardinal Mazarin 289
Entrance to the Hotel de Chateaubriand, in the
Faubourg St. Germain 293
The Bridge, Place, and Boulevard St. Michel 296
The St. Michel Fountain 297
The Castle of Chambord . , 301
Porte aux Pommes : Fruit-boats on the Seine . 304
Porte aux Pommes . 305
The Villette A bbatoirs 309
A Seine Steamboat 312
The Seine at Grenelle . 313
The Chapelle Saint Denis Barrier . 317
The Octroi Barriers of Petit-Chateau and Grand-
Bercy 320
Versailles : the Facade and the Great Fountain facing 321

335

Tram at the Barrier . ...
Street Scene ...
Asylum for Women, Rue Fess'art : The Refectory
A " Bureau de Bienfaisance " . .
A Night Refuge 
Pensioners of " L' Assistance Publique "
Versailles' (from an old print)
The Colonnade of Versailles ....
The Gallery of Battles, Versailles
General Trochu 
Map of the Fortifications at the Siege of Paris .
The Prussians Entering Paris . . . .facin,
Prince Bismarck ... ...
M. Thiers 
Marshal MacMahon . ...

321 32432933233333634i344345 349352353355357 360

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

CHAPTER I.
STREET CHARACTERS.
The Cocher — The Bus-driver— The Private Coachman— The Hackney Coachman — The Public Writer— The Flower-girl-
The Oyster-woman.

A PARISIAN who is not rich enough to
keep a distinguished chef of his own will
occasionally order a dainty dinner to be for
warded to him from some hotel or restaurant ;
and in these cases the repast, as soon as it is
ready, is sometimes put into a hackney cab and
driven to the house of the consignee by the
cocher, who is not unaccustomed to find this
'"fare" more remunerative than the fare he
habitually conveys.
A glance at the cocher, as another of the Parisian
types of character, may here be not inopportune.
As- a matter of fact, however, the cocher is
not one type but several. The name applies to
the driver of the omnibus, of the fiacre, and
¦of the private carriage. As to the omnibus
driver, he is more amiable, more easy-going,
less sarcastic than his counterpart in London.
Nobody would ever hear an omnibus driver in
Paris say, as one has been heard to say in
London, when a lady passenger requested to
25

be put down at 339^-  Street, " Certainly,
madam, and would you like me to drive up
stairs ? " Nor is the Paris cabman so extor
tionate as his London brother ; for the fare-
regulations, by which there is one fixed charge
for the conveyance of a passenger any distance
within a certain radius, precludes the inevitable
dispute which awaits the lady or gentleman who
in our metropolis dares to take a four-wheeler
or a hansom.
Already in the sixteenth century hackney
carriages were driven in the streets of Paris ;
and any differences arising between the
cocher and his passenger were at this period
referred to the lieutenant of the police. The
private coachmen, attached to the service of the
nobility, found their position a somewhat perilous
one in an age when quarrels were so frequent on
the question of social precedence. If two aristo
cratic carriages met in some narrow street,
barring each other's way, the footmen would get

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Street Characters.

down and fight for a passage. Serious wounds
were sometimes inflicted, and even the master
would now and then step out of his vehicle and, with
drawn sword, join in the affray. The coachman,
meanwhile, prouder in livery than his master
in braided coat, remained motionless on his
box in spite of the blows which were being dealt
around. It is related that when on one occasion
a party of highwaymen attacked the carriage
of Benserade, poet, wit, and dramatic author,
his coachman sat calmly at his post, and amused
himself with whistling whilst his master was
being stripped of everything. From time to
time he turned towards the robbers and said,
"Gentlemen, shall you soon have finished, and
can I continue my journey ? "
The private coachman varied in those days,
as he has always done, according to the position
of the master or mistress whom he served ; and
Mercier, writing at a later period, indicates a
sufficient variety of cochers of this class. "You
can clearly distinguish the coachman of a
courtesan," he says, "from that of a president ;
the coachman of a duke from that of a financier ;
but, at the exit from the theatre, would you like to
know where such and such a vehicle is going ?
Listen to the order which the master gives to
the lackey, or rather which the latter transmits
to the coachman. In the Marais they say ' Au
logis ' ; in the Isle of St Louis ' A la maison ' ; in
the Faubourg Saint-Germain 'A l'hotel' ; and in
the Faubourg Saint-Honore ' Allez ! ' With the
grandeur of this last word no one can fail to be
impressed. At the theatre door stands a thun
dering personage with a voice like Stentor, who
cries : ' The carriage of Monsieur le Marquis ! '
' The carriage of Madame la Comtesse ! ' ' The
carriage of M. le President ! ' His terrible voice
resounds to the very interior of the taverns
where the lackeys are drinking, and of the
billiard rooms where the coachmen are quarrel
ling and disputing. This voice quite drowns the
confused sounds of men and horses. Lackeys
and coachmen at this re-echoing signal abandon
their pint-pots and their cues, and rush out to
resume the reins and open the doors."
The profession of the hackney coachman has
always been and still is subjected to a special
legislation. In Paris anyone exercising it must be
at least eighteen years of age ; carry upon him the
official documents in virtue of which he wields
his whip ; present to his fare the card which
indicates the number and tariff of the vehicle,
and which the passenger must retain in view of
possible disputes ; show politeness to the public ;

receive his fare in advance when he is driving to
theatres, balls, or fetes where there is likely to
be a crush of vehicles ; never carry more than
his legal number of passengers, and not smoke
on duty. When travelling he must take the
right side of the road, avoid intercepting funeral
processions and bodies of troops, go at walking
pace through the markets and in certain other
specified places ; and, from nightfall, light up his
vehicle with a couple of lamps. The lamps'
used for the cabs of the Imperial Company are
blue, yellow, red, or green. These different
colours are intended to induce passengers leav
ing the theatre at night to take, by preference,
those vehicles which belong to the quarter in
which they live ; blue indicating the regions of
Popincourt and Belleville ; yellow those of
Poissoniere - Montmartre ; red those of the
Champs Elysees, Passy, and Batignolles • and
green those of the Invalides and the Observatory.
Besides the penalties pronounced by the penal
code for causing death or personal injury
through careless driving, minor infractions ofthe
regulations are punished, by the prefect of police,
with suspension of licence or, in certain cases,
final withdrawal. The proprietors and masters
are responsible for any offences committed by
the coachmen, and for any loss or injury to
luggage or other goods confided to their vehicles
for transport.
The law which prescribes to Paris cabmen one
uniform fare for journeys of no matter what length
within a certain radius would at first appear to
be very much to the advantage of the public,
who are thus protected from extortion. It has a
great drawback, all the same. In London a cab
man is always delighted to see a gentleman step
into his vehicle, even though the welcome he
evinces be rather that of the spider to the fly.
He unhesitatingly drives him to his destination,
and the gentleman, even though he is fleeced at
the end of the journey, at least gets where he
wished to go. But the Paris cabman is fastidious.
If the destination mentioned by the intending
passenger does not exactly suit him, he is prone
to shake his head, ply his whip, and drive away
with an empty vehicle.
The alacrity and enthusiasm of the London
cabman are due to the fact that when he has his
passenger safely inside the hansom or " growler "
his soul is animated by the hope of obtaining a
fare indefinitely in excess of the legal tariff. The
uniformity of fares in Paris deprives the cabman
of any enthusiastic interest in his work, as it
likewise strips him of some of the curious and

Street Characters.]

THE PARIS CABMAN.

amusing characteristics which he might other
wise exhibit. %
In our own metropolis a famous millionaire,
having ridden one day in a cab for the distance
of a mile and a half, tendered the driver a shilling
in payment of his fare. The driver stared at the

daily paper, but an unhappy scribe whose task it
was to put into epistolary form such matter as
was entrusted to him for the purpose by illiterate
cabmen, workmen, and servant girls. The little
booths with desks in front where he exercised his
strange profession have disappeared as Paris has

WAITING FOR A FARE.

coin in the palm of his hand and then proceeded
to remonstrate. " Both your sons, sir," he said,
" whenever they ride in my hansom, pay me
at least half-a-crown." " I dare say they do,"
replied the millionaire, "for they have an old
fool of a father to back them up." In Paris,
where this millionaire had a brother as rich as
himself, such an incident would have been
impossible. Another figure of the Paris streets is, or rather
until some twenty-five years ago was, the Public
Writer ; not the contributor to an important

been demolished and rebuilt. The spread of
education among the lower classes was really his
death-blow. The public writer was usually an old man,
sometimes one of erudition, who had been
reduced by severe reverses or persistent misery
to a very low position. He wrote a beautiful
hand, and could on occasion compose a poem.
He could execute a piece of penmanship in so
many different handwritings (seventeen or
eighteen), and his flourishes and ornamentations
were so magnificent, that he would never have
prostituted his pen to the service of shopgirls

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Street Characters.

and domestics had not starvation stared him in
the face. Moreover, the cultivation of an
acquaintanceship with the Muses solaced him,
and caused him to forget the day of his greatness
when, holding the diploma of a "master-writer/'

OMNIBUS COACHMAN.
he inscribed the Ten Commandments or executed
a dedication to the king on a bit of vellum
smaller than a crown piece. He could dash off
verses at a moment's notice, and had always in
reserve a varied assortment of festive songs,
wedding - lines, epitaphs, and simple and double
acrostics, to serve whatever occasion might arise.
Above the Public Writer's door, which he threw
open every morning to his clients, this legend
was inscribed : — " The Tomb of Secrets." The
passer-by thus learned that there — in the words
of a French chronicler — " behind those four
coarsely-whitened windows of the entrance door,
was an ear and a hand which held the key of
human infirmities ; that there, smiling and
serviceable, Discretion resided in flesh and blood.
Curious to see everything, you approached ; a
few specimens of petitions to the Chief of the
State, drawn up on official paper and sealed with
wafers, gave you a foretaste of the master's dex
terity. Moreover you could read, in a position

well exposed to view, some piece of poetic inscrip
tion, deficient in neither rhyme nor even reason,
and cleverly calculated to allure you forthwith.
The running hand, the round hand, the English
hand, and the Gothic hand alternated freely in
the ingenious composition, not to mention the
flourishings with which the lines ended, the
page encased in ornamented spirals, the capitals
complicated with arabesques, and so forth. One
day we read one of the writings peculiar to this
profession, and copied it with a haste which we
do not regret to-day when the booth where we
saw it has been removed. This booth, a mere
plank box, three feet square, whence issued during
forty years an incalculable number of letters,
petitions, and other documents, was situated in
the quarter of Saint -Victor, at the foot of the
Rue des Fosses, Saint-Bernard. Its occupant
was a man named Etienne Larroque, an old
bailiff whom misfortune had reduced to this poor

PRIVATE COACHMAN.

trade. Nearly eighty years of age, this Nestor
of public writers was known to everybody."
To the pedestrian his signboard proclaimed
the particulars of his profession in a piece of
poetry which might at all events have been

Street Characters,]

THE PUBLIC WRITER.

much worse, and of which the metre was marred
only by one fault — a certain line with a foot
too much. Dressed in a frock coat maltreated
•by years, the writer, continues the before-men
tioned chronicler, sat in his office, with his
spectacles on his nose, and all his pens cut
before him. He placed himself eagerly at the
service of anyone who crossed the threshold.
Sometimes the strangest revelations were confided
to him. Installed in his cane arm-chair, furnished
with a cushion which he had sat upon till it was
crushed to a pancake, he lent a grave ear to the
pretty little rosy mouths that came to tell him
everything, as though he were a confessor or a
physician, and took up his pen to write for them
their letters of love or complaint. More than
one unhappy girl came to him to sigh and weep
and to accuse the monster who had sworn to wed
her ; more than one fireman came to confess to
him the flame which was burning in his breast ;

HACKNEY COACHMAN.
»more than one soldier to request him to pen a
challenge. As the depository of secrets innumerable, the
Public Writer was a most important personage ;
or would have been had he been able to take full

literary advantage ofthe confidences entrusted to
him. Richardson's knowledge ofthe female heart
is said to have been due to the good faith with which
he inspired a number of young ladies, who there
upon gave him, unconsciously, material for such

HEARSE COACHMAN

characters as Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe. They
consulted him now and then about their love
letters. But the Public Writer had love letters,
letters of reproach, letters of explanation, letters
of farewell, to write every day, and by the
dozen. It is not recorded, however, that an}'
Public Writer was sufficiently inspired, or suffi
ciently interested in his habitual work to turn the
dramatic materials which must often have come
beneath him into novels or plays.
The personage known as the Public Writer was
at least a more useful institution than the book
entitled " The Complete Letter-Writer," the func
tion of which is to supply correspondence in
regard to every possible incident in life. The
Public Writer was, if up to his work, capable of
suiting his language to peculiar cases, whereas
the Complete Letter -Writer was an oracle whose
utterances came forth hard and fast, in such a
way that the ignorant devotees could not change

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Street Characters.

them. Thus the illiterate persons who could not
read at all had a clear advantage over those
whose education enabled them to read the Com
plete Letter- Writer, but not to apply it. In an
excellent farce by M. Varin, one of the best
comic dramatists of the French stage, an amusing

admiration for locks of gold such as belong in
profusion, not to the girl, but to her buxom
mother. When the husband's jealousy is ex
cited and a variety of comic incidents have
resulted therefrom, it appears that the unlettered
and moreover foolish young clerk has copied

^•n-V.j*,,.,-,.

AN INVITATION TO A.-" PETIT VERRE.'

equivoque — or quiproquo as the French say — is
caused by an ignorant young man in some house
of business addressing a love letter to the dark-
haired daughter of his employer, which expresses

his epistle out of a letter-book, and, thinking
apparently that one love letter would do as well
as another, has addressed to a girl with dark
hair a declaration intended by the author of the

Street Characters.]

THE OYSTER-WOMAN.

Complete Letter-Writer for a woman who is
beautifully blonde. No such mistake as this
could have occurred had the amorous young
clerk told his case to a Public Writer, and ordered
an appropriate letter for the occasion.
Another interesting type of street character in
Paris is the bouquetiere or flower-girl. She is
more enterprising and engaging than her counter
part in London. She will approach a gentleman
who happens to be walking past and stick a
flower in his button-hole, leaving it to his own
sense of chivalry whether he pays her anything
or not. Nor does the device infrequently pro
duce a piece of silver. There is generally one
flower-girl in Paris who poses as a celebrity —
either on account of her beauty or of other quali
ties of a more indefinable character. Fashionable
Parisians resort to her stall and pay fantastic
prices for whatever bloom she pins to their
breast. The flower-girl of the Jockey Club, who
used to attend the races and ply her trade in the
enclosure of the grand stand, expected a louis as
her ordinary fee.
The oyster -woman, too, is a highly im
portant personage. Paris consumes three hun
dred million oysters a year, and the dis
pensing of these bivalves keeps the lady in
question sufficiently active whilst the season
lasts. At breakfast-time or dinner-time, with a
white napkin thrust in her girdle, a knife in her
hand, and a smile on her lips, she is to be seen
stationed at the entrance to restaurants in antici
pation of the waiter rushing out and shouting :
" One dozen," " Two dozen," or " Ten dozen —
open ! " A police ordinance of September 25th,
177 1, forbade oyster -women to exercise their
trade between the last day of April and the 10th
of September, under penalty of a fine of 200 francs
and the confiscation of their stock. This ordin
ance was destined to fall into disuse ; but inas
much as the prohibited months are those in which
oysters are at their worst, the ecailPeres of Paris
do in fact to-day suspend their trade during May,
June, July, and August — months which they
devote to the sale of sugared barley-water and
other cooling beverages.
In Paris a sempstress is supposed to be " gen-
tille," a lingere, or getter-up of linen, " aimable"
a flower-girl "pretty." The oyster-woman,
although not characterised by any one particu
lar quality, is credited with a combination of
qualities in a more or less modified degree.
Without being in her first youth, she is young ;
without being in the bloom of beauty, she does
not lack personal charm ; and frequently she

invests even the opening of oysters with a grace
which may well excite admiration. La belle
ecaillere is indeed the name traditionally applied
to her. With the origin of this name a tragic
story is associated.
There was once a charmingly pretty oyster-girl
named Louise Leroux, known us La belle ecaillere.
She had a lover named Montreuil, a fireman, who,
in a moment of frantic jealousy, plunged his sword
into her breast. This horrible crime at once
rendered " the beautiful oyster-girl " famous, not
only in Paris, but throughout Europe ; and in
due time the legend of her life and love took
dramatic form, and found its way to the stage.
The interest excited in her unhappy end was all
the greater inasmuch as her murderer had eluded
justice by flying to England, where, in London,
he set up as a fencing master. The Gaiete
Theatre achieved, in 1837, one of its greatest
successes by putting on the boards, under the
title of La Belle Ecaillere, the tragic history of
Louise Leroux.
Since then the name has been familiarly applied
without discrimination to the female oyster-sellers
of Paris, many of whom have well deserved it.
Ejut, while bearing the name, they have aban
doned the traditional fireman, as rather too dan
gerous a commodity. In lieu of firemen they
have captivated notaries, financiers, and others
in superior stations of life ; whilst one is known
to have turned the head of a state minister, who,
even if he did not marry her, confessed the passion
with which she inspired him by devouring
thirty-two dozen of her oysters every morning
before breakfast. The flame within him had
first been excited by the siren's ready wit. As
he was entering a restaurant one day, a friend
who accompanied him remarked: "To-day, my
dear sir, more than ever, France dances on a
volcano." " What nonsense ! " cried the ecaillere ;
" she dances on a heap of oysters ! " Next day
the exclamation was reported in a Paris journal,
which easily turned it to political account.
There was another oyster-girl who solved a
question of lexicographic definition which had
hopelessly baffled the Academicians. A new^
edition of the Dictionnaire de I'Academie was
being prepared, and it became necessary to estab
lish the distinction of meaning between the two
expressions de suite and tout de suite. The forty
Academicians were all at variance about it, and
were about to tear their hair, when one of them,
Nepomucene Lemercier, exclaimed : " Let us go
and dine at Ramponneau's. That's better than
disputing. We can discuss the matter during

s

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Street Characters.

dessert." "Agreed," replied another member —
Xodier. The Academicians forthwith set out,
and when they had arrived at their destination
one of them, Parseval-Grandmaison, who ordered
the dinner, said to the ecaillere : " Open forty
dozen oysters for us de suite, and serve them tout

de suite.'' " But, sir," replied the oyster-woman,
" if I open them de suite, I cannot serve them tout
de suite." The Academicians looked at each other
in astonishment. The problem had been solved.
They had now discovered that of the two expres
sions tout de suite indicated the greater celerity.

".; ^^-

THE AVENUE DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE, AT NIGHT.

CHAPTER II.
THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS IN PARIS.
The Englishman Abroad — M. Lemoinne's Analysis — The English
woman-Sunday in London and in Paris-Americans in Pans-
The American Girl.
HITHERTO the types of character which
we have noticed have been native. Let
us vary them by a glance at the typical foreigner
or rather foreigners residing or sojourning in Paris.

To begin with the Englishman. In Paris,
. although there are a great number of Eng
lishmen, it can hardly be said that an English
Society exists. Samuel Johnson once com
plained that Englishmen did not fraternise
with one another ; that if two visitors called
upon a lady about the same time and were
' shown into her drawing-room, they would,
until the lady made her appearance — say for
five minutes— simply glare at one other in
silence, whereas a couple of foreigners would,
although they had never met before, have
entered into a conversation.
Without, perhaps, being aware of John
son's stricture on the social frigidity of his
own countrymen, an excellent French writer,
John Lemoinne, has noticed the same insular
peculiarity in English visitors to Paris.
"The English," he says, "do not seek one
another's acquaintance ; they do not come
into other lands to find themselves. If they
easily form acquaintanceship with foreigners,
they are more fastidious in approaching each
other. An Englishman will make friends with
a Frenchman without the ceremony of presenta
tion, I mean of introduction, but never with
another Englishman. A couple of Englishmen
stare at each other very hard before saying, ' How
do you do?'"
Punch many years ago noticed this national
characteristic in a picture which represented two
English visitors to Paris breakfasting at the same
table in the Hotel Meurice, and, although the

IO

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The English and

only guests in the room, solemnly ignoring each
other's existence.
But M. Lemoinne goes further than Punch.
"If the English leave their native land,"
he says, " it is not to find their own compatriots ;
it is to see' new men and new things. Even
when you understand their language, they prefer
to talk to you in their bad French. The thing
is intelligible enough : they wish to learn, and
have no desire to teach. You are regarded
simply as a boojc and a grammar. The foreigner
must be turned to some account."
So far excellent. But let us return to Samuel
Johnson. When he visited Paris did he air his
" bad ' French " ? No, he absolutely refused to
speak a word of anything .but English. This by
no means confirms M. Lemoinne's proposition.
Yet in fairness, let it be said, Johnson's chief
objection to talking French in Paris was a fear
lest he should " put his foot in it," and, lexico
grapher as he was, excite by some grammatical
blunder the ridicule of irreverent Parisians.
Let us see, however, to what lengths M.
Lemoinne is prepared to go. " If there was ever
a people who have the sentiment of nationality,
it is," he says, " the English. They are impreg
nated, petrified with it ; the thing is fatiguing and
offensive. But in order to affirm and manifest this
sentiment the English have no need to group them
selves, to form themselves into a society. An
Englishman is to himself England alone ; he carries
his nation in him, with him, on him ; he does not
require to be several. Everywhere he is at home :
the atmosphere is his kingdom and the ambient
air his property. Religion enters largely into
this temperament. The Englishman carries not
only his nation, but his religion with him ; he
scours the whole earth with his Bible for com
panion : the Frenchman, habitually catholic,
requires a bell and a priest — he does not know
how to converse directly with Heaven. From a
social point of view, moreover, the English find
France freer, more liberal, more open than their
own country. English society, at home, is regu
lated like music-paper ; it has a severe hierarchy,
in which the most idiotic little lord stands
before a man of genius without a title. Geo
graphically, it is a very narrow space which separ
ates England from France ; but this space is a gulf.
The two countries are in constant relationship ;
but they never arrive at any resemblance to each
other. We have not the political liberty of the
English, and they have not our social equality.
An Englishman could not live with laws like
those which, in France, regulate the right of

speaking, the right of writing, the right of
petitioning, the right of assembling, the right of
going and coming ; but a Frenchman would be
stifled amidst those thousand conventional bonds
which form English society. The influence of
convention in England is such that it equals and
even surpasses the tyranny of the political and
administrative laws of the Continent,, That is
why the Englishman, after a stay of some time,
and when the ice of his nature is a little melted,
moves amongst foreigners as freely as he moves
at home. No possible comparison can be made
between the Frenchman in London and the
Englishman in Paris ; or at all events the com
parison can only be an antithesis. The French
man who pays a visit to England will, so soon
as presented, be welcomed with a boundless
hospitality, provided his visit is only a flying one;
but if he apparently wishes to take root, the soil
refuses, and society shuts itself up and retires as
though a descent were being made upon its
territory. It must be confessed, moreover, that
France is not usually represented in England by
the cream or flower of her population ; and for a
simple reason, namely, that a Frenchman does
not go to England for pleasure or from choice,
and that he has no idea but that of returning as
quickly as possible. But apart, even, from these
particular circumstances, the mere pressure of
the English social atmosphere suffices to asphyx
iate a Frenchman. It is a world, an order of
ideas, an assemblage of laws and customs entirely
different from all others.
"A Parisian may for years walk round English
society as he would walk round the wall of
China, without being able to find either a door
or a window. He understands absolutely nothing
about it.
" In France, on the contrary, Englishmen find
a greater social liberty. French society is an
open society ; French manners are cosmopolitan
manners. The most diverse peoples can in France
find their place without losing their national
character. In our country everyone is at home,
and the Englishman gets on comfortably enough.
In the Englishman, however, it is necessary to
distinguish between the citizen and the indi
vidual ; for he is both. When the national
interests or passions are in question he does not
scruple to intrigue and conspire ; when he is
unconcerned with the politics of the country
where he happens to find himself, he practises
the greatest reserve and mixes in nothing. See
the English at Paris. They assist at all our
revolutions as mere spectators ; their sole care is

Americans in Payis

M. LEMOINNE'S ANALYSIS.

ii

to get a good seat. They always come to
their ambassador to request a presentation at the
Tuileries and tickets for the court ball."
So far we have presented the observations of
M. Lemoinne for what they may be worth.
That his skilful pen, however, penetrates some
times into the regions of truth is shown by the
fact that his remarks not infrequently recall
those of foreign writers so famous as to be
regarded more or less as oracular. Heine, after
visiting London, complained that at an English
dinner party the gentlemen, after the ladies
had retired from the dining-room, remained at
table for an hour or two to saturate themselves
with port. Heine, it must be remembered,
took a perverse delight in satirising everything
English. But that we, in England, do leave the
ladies to drink their after-dinner coffee in the
desolation of the drawing-room must be hand
somely admitted. M. Lemoinne notices this
peculiarity. " The time has passed," he says — with burlesque
drollery — ¦" when the true Englishman remained
at table for several hours after dinner and ended
by slumbering beneath it. Now, when the
ladies have quitted the dining-room, the gentle
men content themselves with circulating the
Bordeaux for twenty minutes. In France we
are beginning to divest ourselves of certain
prejudices concerning the English. For a long
time we regarded the English character as
synonymous with ' spleen.' It was an old French
author who said of the English : ' They amuse
themselves sadly, after the custom of their
country.' " The fact is the English are gay in their own
fashion, and sometimes even expansive and noisy ;
but they are not gay with everybody, nor on
a first acquaintance. They must unfreeze ; they
are like the wine of Bordeaux, which, to give
forth its fragrance, has to be warmed."
After this, however, a very dubious compli
ment is paid to our. compatriots. " It is certain
that this race is robuster than others, the women
as well as the men. It spends more, consumes
more, and absorbs more. . See how well these
pretty white and red-complexioned Englishwomen
can take their sherry and their champagne !
Observe them in the middle ofthe day going to ex
ercise their palate at the pastry-cook's with coffee,
chocolate, ices, all kinds of cakes and sandwiches ;
you are staggered at the quantity of these delicacies
they can put out of sight. See them at the
buffets of all those official fetes of which they

form the finest ornament. It is a pleasure to see
them, especially when you know that their appe
tite is not destructive of sentiment.^' Now, how
ever, for a. compliment which is absolutely
sincere. " We venture to say that English society
in Paris has exercised a salutary influence on
French society, and that it has introduced cor
diality into intimate relationships. The hand
shake of the English lady, for instance, has long
shocked, and still shocks our purists. Their fault
is that they believe an amiable woman must be
too accessible, and that a certain liberty of manners
implies an equal liberty of conduct. With such
ideas as these they bring up daughters who,
having given the tips of their fingers, imagine
that they have given everything and have no
longer anything to protect ; whereas a pretty
little English, girl who gives her hand gives
nothing else, and knows how to defend the
rest." Another trait of the English character is, we
are assured, an " interest in religious questions."
English ladies are "all more or less theologians —
veritable doctors in petticoats. English girls will
hold forth to you on the subject of grace and free
will. You will meet them at church, listening
to sermons and going through services, and even
taking notes. But what does that matter, since
it does not prevent them from serving out the tea
admirably, from rearing their children later on, and
from being model housewives and model mothers ?
If our Frenchwomen cry ' Fie ' upon the blue
stocking, that is perhaps because it is too green ;
a little theology would not hurt them. It is at
church that you get the most comprehensive view
of English society in Paris. On Sunday you have
only to visit the Faubourg St. -Honore towards
two o'clock ; you will encounter quite a procession
of English men and women coming from the
Rue d'Agnesseau, with their prayer-books and
their Sunday demeanour. I say the church, but
I ought to say the churches ; for the English
have nowadays in Paris almost as many chapels
as religions. There is the Embassy chapel for
Anglicans of the established religion, an English
episcopal chapel in the Rue Bayard, another
English chapel in the Rue Royale, a Scotch
Presbyterian chapel and two English Methodist
places of worship in the Rue Roquepine, inde
pendently of American chapels. This is not to
say that the English observe Sunday in Paris
as strictly as they are obliged to do in their own
country. Respect for the Sabbath is an observ
ance which they know very well how to dis
pense with amongst foreigners. On Sunday,

12

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The English and

from time to time, you see some individual in
black attire, and invariably adorned with an
umbrella, who, seated on one of the seats in a
public garden, pretends to ignore a little pamphlet
which is intended to be picked up by the first
pedestrian who passes, and which turns out to
be a dissertation on the observance ofthe Sabbath.
There are still, perhaps, a few hotels specially
designed for English people, where the Bible
Society causes to be placed in every bedroom a
copy of the Scriptures bearing its own stamp.
This ardour of propagandism has begun, how
ever, to abate, and the English in general are
by no means the last to take advantage of the
Paris Sunday. Anyone who has seen the Sabbath
of London must feel the difference. Every
Frenchman who has just missed dying, not only
of ennui, but of hunger and thirst, during the
hours of service in England — hearing his footsteps
resound in the desolate streets — will understand
the solace experienced by an Englishman on
finding that the coast is clear for him at Paris
and Versailles. There are, it is true, a certain
number of English families who do not receive
on Saturday evening because the festivity or the
dancing might encroach upon the Sabbath ; but
what is a sin on English territory is not so on
French territory, and the English do not scruple
to pass midnight in a Parisian drawing-room."
This drolly severe but, from a literary point of
view, admirable writer seems to think that an
Englishman is a sort of fox-terrier, or mastiff,
which having been chained up for a length of
time becomes, when you let him loose, extremely
rampant and ill-conducted. "There are so many
things the English would not do at home, that
they do without scruple amongst foreigners.
Once abroad they indemnify themselves for their
national reserve ; it is on the foreigner that they
revenge themselves for the shackles of their own
etiquette and social laws. In crossing the Channel
they pitch their solemn vestments into the sea.
In London they will not go to the opera dressed
in anything but black ; here they go in a tweed
coat and a slouch hat." After this Monsieur
Lemoinne seems very much upset by the mous
taches which Englishmen display as they pro
menade in the Boulevards. There was a time,
he assures us, when a Frenchman crossing the
Channel and wishing to have a fashionable air
was obliged to sacrifice his moustache— a time
when English caricaturists never represented a
Frenchman without a pair of long, ill-combed
moustaches. To-day the thing is reversed. Itisthe
Englishman who wears this grotesque appendage

which proclaims his nationality from afar. Thus
moustached, the Englishman goes to Paris — so
M. Lemoinne evidently thinks — to have his full
fling. " Amongst us," he says, " a grave man
may occasionally dress up to go to a ball, wear
fancy costume, or take part in a quadrille, and
next morning resume his function as state coun
cillor or referendary. So the Englishman precipi
tates himself into the French world as into a great
masked ball, puts on a false nose, dances at Paris
extravagant steps which he calls French dances,
cuts capers, sups and gets maudlin, and when he
has finished his French tour, tranquilly resumes
his duties as member of parliament or no matter
what." To English ladies M. Lemoinne is a good deal
more gallant. He is obliged to point out that
they over-dress and stride along the Boule
vards like dismounted dragoons. "Yet, make
no mistake," he adds. " In that still crude block
there are all the elements of a superb work of
art. What fine construction, what solid layers,
what grand architecture ! Wait till arthas put
her hand to these materials ; wait till the English
woman has learned how to walk, carry herself,
and dress, and until, to her native beauty, she has
added acquired grace — then you will have the
finest type of creation and of civilisation. The
native Englishwoman who has become a natural
ised Parisian is perfection."
In spite of the modified tribute which this
writer pays to Englishwomen, it may be said that
he has handled our nation very roughly. In the
present day England and France would no longer,
in a European war, fight side by side as they did
in the Crimea ; and a little unconscious Anglo
phobia tinctures the writings even of such a
skilful and impartial essayist as M. Lemoinne.
The Americans in Paris are regarded, by French
writers generally, from a much more favourable
point of view. Let us, in the first place, hear
what M. Andre Leo has to say on this subject.
" If you walk through the Champs Elysees, from
the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de l'Etoile,
or through the avenues which converge there,
from the direction of the Madeleine, in the
Quartier St. -Honore towards the Pare Monceaux,
you will frequently meet women richly adorned,
men with light-coloured beards, tranquil and
placid ; young women of lively and decided mien,
pretty children with curly hair, whose physiog
nomy is at once full of candour and of assurance.
All these individuals, isolated or grouped, offer
you pretty nearly the same type ; a countenance
which is strong in comparison with the small,

:

Americans in Paris.]

AMERICAN ARTISTS.

13

piercing grey eyes, and flexible features, often
agreeable, and sometimes beautiful. ... All
nationalities, indeed, meet and knock against
each other in this new quarter with its fine
avenues and its sylvan groves. But there is an
evident predominance of English and American
language and customs, as appears from the
signs over the chemists' shops, the stores, the
boarding-houses, and the special pastry-cooks,

protests that "such a criticism passed upon a new
people, who have been obliged to occupy them
selves before everything with work and industry,
is too hasty. American artists already exist ; and
already their efforts and their ambitions foretell
the development of that noble and precious
human faculty the germ of which exists in every
people and every man, but which necessitates a
certain leisure and a certain mental education."

IN THE FLOWER MARKET.

where cakes, pies, and puddings are displayed in
the window. Yet although in this region a unity
of language and conformity of habits unite the
English and the Americans, the two societies
intermix very little. Anglophobia, as a national
and popular sentiment, is perhaps more ardent
in the United States than amongst us."
In a general way the resident American popu
lation of Paris consists of the Diplomatic body,
bankers, families who have come for the education
of their children, and artists eager to study the
masterpieces of the Parisian galleries. The
American nation is accused of being devoid of
artistic sentiment ; but M. Andre" Leo stoutly

Apart from the American residing in Paris, and
the American who, binding himself to the nation
by more than lengthened residence, has married
into some French family — an occurrence by no
means rare — there is the flying American visitor
to Paris, whose headquarters are the Grand Hotel
on the Boulevard des Italiens. This establish
ment, by its central position, its interior arrange
ments, its luxury and its comfort, enjoys an
enormous reputation on the other side of the
Atlantic. The Yankee leaves New York for the
Grand Hotel. It is not till he passes its threshold
that he feels himself on terra firma again ; it is
here that he finds out where he is and gets his

14

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The English and

information. If his means or his projects permit
it, he installs himself at this hotel for three or
four months ; if not, he goes on to some other
hotel or boarding-house, or else rents an apart
ment to live by himself. If you enter the court
yard of the Grand Hotel, ascend the portico steps,
and, making your way into the stately reading-
room, look out of the window for five minutes,
you will see that the innumerable vehicles which
every few seconds stop at the hotel deposit ten
Americans to one Englishman.
From this centre the tourist easily gets to all
those points of the city to which necessity or
curiosity impels him. The first visit he pays is
probably to his banker — to Bowles and Devritt,
perhaps, in the Rue de ia Paix, or to Norton's in
the Rue Auber. Once he banked with the firm
of Rothschild, but now no longer. During the
American war M. de Rothschild's attitude in
reference to the planters was by no means neutral,
and this political indiscretion has cost him his
American clients.
When the New York party has cashed its
cheque at the American bank — which is quite
a rendezvous for trans- Atlantics and at which all
the American newspapers can be seen — the
feminine element hastens to visit all the
most fashionable shops. The ladies are eager to
purchase, at comparatively low prices, those
Parisian costumes which their own native
custom - house raises to prices so exorbitant.
Dressed ere long in the richest and newest
fashions, they step with their male companions
into a carriage and drive to the Bois de Boulogne ;
then they go to the opera, to spectacles of every
kind, and to the Legation. If there happens to
be a sovereign on the throne, they put their
names down for presentation at the Tuileries
and order a court costume. For it must be
confessed that the Americans are fond of the
pomps of this world, and that, Republicans as
they profess to be, they have no prejudice
against kings and princes outside their own
country. The monarchs of other nations neither
shock nor terrify them. And the American
tourist, apart from the question of political
sentiment, likes to see everything and do every
thing before he recrosses the Atlantic. If an
American family visits a land where it is the
fashion to be presented at court, they will
feel humiliated and ashamed should they have
to confess afterwards to their compatriots that
they missed the presentation.
Under the last Empire the American visitors
to Paris showed an eagerness for court-presenta

tions which would have entitled them to a place
in Thackeray's Book of Snobs — which, neverthe
less, directly or indirectly, embraces pretty
nearly the whole human species. But there
were a certain number of Americans then in
France who got acclimatised to the splendours
of the court and became habitual guests at
imperial residences. The drawing-room of the
United States minister is naturally the centre of
meeting for American society in Paris. " The
aspect and tone of these assemblies," says a
French writer, "is at once less solemn and
colder than our French social gatherings. The
necessity of being previously presented exists in
this democratic society just as it does in England,
though on the other hand American conversation
and behaviour bear a natural impress of indiffer
ence and freedom, not even to the exclusion,
perhaps, of a little coarseness."
Curiously enough, the Americans, although
they despise or affect to despise social and genea
logical distinctions in their own country, turn to
some extent into aristocrats during the voyage
across the Atlantic to Europe. Frenchmen have
noticed that if you wish to be presented to their
minister or at one of their drawing-rooms in
Paris, you must never forget your ancestry, "A
certain author of my acquaintance," says Andre
Leo, " a man of genuine fame, was sufficiently
astonished, on reading his American letter of
introduction, to find that it recommended him
much less on his own account than on that of
his grandfather. This is not an isolated case ;
it results from a law much more human than
national, which consists in particularly prizing
what one does not possess. The Americans,
a people without ancestors, naturally hold race
distinctions in high esteem. They boast, one
against the other, of belonging to the first
founders of the colonies, and even in their own
country these pretensions sometimes provoke
laughter. . . . As to nobilary titles, if you possess
any, be particularly careful to let them be known,
and rest assured that when once they have been
declared the Americans will not fail to apply
them to you. These titles will win for you
sweet glances, and should you be contemplating
marriage will turn the scale in your favour with
those blonde beauties who, for the most part,
have Californian dowries ; for these Republican
young women think that a ducal coronet .sits
marvellously well on blonde hair, and that the
title of Countess is the finishing ornament
required by an elegant lady. Hence it is that
at Paris numerous alliances are contracted

Americans in Paris.]

THE AMERICAN WOMAN.

'5

between the France of other days and the
America of to-day."
In the United States, so soon as a merchant
has done some great stroke of business, or has
pierced a big vein of ore in his mine, or has seen
the petroleum spouting up on his land too fast for
an adequate supply of barrels, his daughters are
consumed with a desire to visit Europe. They
sail thither, accompanied by the father, who
pretends to despise the Continent, but who,
inwardly, is scarcely less curious to explore
it than his fair-haired children. And as a
matter of fact the Americans may well be
desirous to see that region of the world
whence they derive everything but their liberty
and their wealth. For their religion, their
language, their literature, their arts and sciences,
their memories, and the very blood which
courses in their veins, they are indebted to
Europe. In America, although an enormous
number of books and newspapers are published,
the English and French classics, not to mention
the best English and French modern authors,
form the foundation of every good library, and
even the native writers fashion themselves after
European models.
As regards the American families residing in
Paris for the education of their children, it is
music and the French language which they have
chiefly in view. Some years ago M. Andre Leo'
observed that young American girls in Paris
received a much severer education than their
brothers. The instruction of the daughters " is,
or appears, very complex ; that of the sons much
less so, for as a rule, having their own fortune to
make, they early precipitate themselves into
commercial life. But the young girl; whether
intended for an instructress or working merely
for the development and adornment of her
person, devotes herself to studies which amongst
us would pass for pedantic. Some of them learn
Latin, algebra, geometry, and even attack without
alarm more special sciences. Yet look at them
and be reassured. The care of their toilette has
not suffered from all this, and the accusations
of ungracefulness cast against learned women
fall before the display of their luxurious
frivolity, See if the waves of silk, of
muslin, of lace, which surround them are
less abundant on that account ; if the details of
their exterior show a lesser degree of feminine
art, if the whole has a lesser freshness." This
writer proceeds to insist on the superiority of the
American woman over her male compatriot.
The explanation is, according to him, that at

fourteen years of age the A.merican boy shuts up
his books to enter the office of his father or some
other merchant, and consecrates his whole intelli
gence to commercial speculations ; whereas the
young girl pursues her studies, strengthens them
sometimes by teaching, and, spinster or wife, has
always abundant leisure for mental exercise.
The one point on which, in M. Andre's view, the
studious American woman exposes herself to
reproach, is that hitherto she has not used her
intellectual superiority for the furtherance of her
own dignity and independence.
That she is nevertheless a powerful social
factor, M. Andre himself admits, though he
attributes this less to her activity than to her
fascinations as a beauty in repose. " The first
duty and the first pride of an American husband
is," he says, " to ensure the idleness of his wife
and provide for the expenses of her toilette.
There are in the United States many women-
workers, whether as preceptresses or clerks in
the postal, telegraphic, or even ministerial
offices. These are nearly all spinsters — the
single state being frequent in New England,
which vies with the Mother Country for the
supremacy of the feminine population — and they
give in their resignation when they get married.
" I will not let my wife work," such is the
husband's proud determination. Here, however,
one imperative reason why women must resign
their employment on marriage is overlooked.
In London the numberless women engaged in
the post and telegraph offices are required by
the authorities to abdicate their posts on becoming
wives, simply because they would obviously be
unable to work their nine hours a day at a desk
or counter if they had absorbing domestic duties
to attend to and children to rear.
To Englishmen, who are already acquainted
with their Transatlantic brethren, a French
view of the American in Paris would be more
instructive than an English one. What particu
larly strikes Parisians is the freedom of American
girls as contrasted with the restraint of unmarried
young women in France, whose training is noto
riously very much that of a convent. " American
manners," the French observe, "grant to girls
entire liberty. They are the guardians of their
own virtue and their own interests, and they pre
serve these things right well. Instructed in , the
dangers of life, they are capable of braving them ;
though it must be owned that their task is easy
on account of the respect which, throughout
their country, is shown to them by men. A
girl can travel the length and breadth of the

i6

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The English and Americans in Paris.

territory of the Union without having to fear
dishonourable pursuits or the slightest unpleasant -

AFTER THE THEATRE.

ness. Therefore the American girl utterly differs
from ours by her aspect alone." Her costume is
more unstudied, and the mouse-like timidity of

the young Frenchwoman is replaced in her by
a graceful carelessness. To Americans, as M. Andre justly
says, Paris must seem " a world upside
down. American mothers complain
greatly of the little security and re
spect shown to women in this capital,
of the gallantry of the French and the
indulgence of public opinion in flag
rant cases. They are right ; " and he
thinks that it is because French girls
are too severely disciplined, too much
caged up, that there is less reverence
between the two sexes in France
than in America. " True chastity,"
he maintains, " has liberty for . her
sister." American girls staying, in Paris are
astonished and indignant at the
close surveillance to which unmarried
young Frenchwomen are subjected,
although they themselves frequently
sacrifice to opinion in the matter of not
appearing out of doors unaccompanied
by a maid. M. Andre regrets this on
account of the countenance it gives to
a prudish system, which he is the last
to admire in his own countrywomen.
" O young ladies," he exclaims, " born
on a soil where monarchical influences
have never flourished, why do you
submit to this shameful spy system ?
Would it not be better if you openly
showed your disdain for it, and taught
our women the manners of liberty ?
Paris, after all, is not a forest, and a
mere glance, a shrug of the shoulders,
or silence itself, will suffice to shame
away a leering lounger or an im
pertinent snob. Is it true, then,
that in default of other forms - of
tyranny, respect for opinion, what
ever that opinion be, is a yoke in ¦
America? "
Let us hope, in conclusion, that
the American girl does not " let her
self go," on her return from strait-
laced Paris to the freedom of New
York, at all events to such an extent
as suggested by this writer, who assures us that,
having once set foot again on native soil, she
flirts furiously.

AT THE SALON.
CHAPTER III.
MORE PARISIAN TYPES.
The Spy — Under Sartines and Berryer — Fouche— Delavau — The Present System— The £cuyere— The Circus in Paris.

TO return, however, to native Parisian types.
Mention has already been made of the
French spy, but he is such an important and
historical character that it is impossible to dismiss
him in a few words.
The police, already strongly organised under
Louis XIV., resorted largely to espionage ; but
in Louis XV. 's reign the famous Lieutenant of
Police, de Sartines, fashioned the spy system into
a civil institution, and gave it a prodigious de
velopment. Spies were now employed to follow
the Court or to watch the doings of distinguished
foreigners who had recently arrived in the capital.
Then there were domestic spies, the most terrible
of all, to judge by the following observations
extracted from a report attributed to Louis XV. 's
lieutenant. " The ' family,' amongst us, lives
26

under the protection of a reputation for virtue
which cannot impose on the magistracy ; the
family is a repertory of crimes, an arsenal of
infamies. The hypocrisy of the false caresses
which are lavished in it must be apparent to all
but fools. In a family of twenty persons the
police ought to place forty spies." After Sartines,
Lieutenant Berryer by no means allowed the
spy service to deteriorate. He employed convicts
as spies, one of the conditions of their employ
ment being that on the slightest failure in the
vile duties they had to perform, they should be
restored to prison. The services, too, of coach
men, landladies, lodgers, were called into requisi
tion. Even domestic servants were sometimes
Berryer's agents, and many a mysterious lettre-
de-cachet was issued on the strength of some

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[More Parisian Types.

word uttered carelessly within the hearing of a
lady's-maid or valet -de-chambre.
Stories are even told of men so innocent that
they acted as spies without being aware of it.
Such a one was Michel-Perrin, of Mme. de Bawr's
tale, which, in its dramatic form, gave Bouffe
one of his best parts. The simple-minded man
had in his youth, when he was a student of
theology, known Fouche, afterwards to become
Napoleon's Minister of Police. In due time
Michel-Perrin took orders, and was doing duty in
a little village when, under the Revolution,
public worship was abolished. Calling upon
Fouche to ask his old friend for some suitable
employment, he can obtain nothing until, moved
by the urgency of his solicitations, the Police
Minister suggests to him, with so much delicacy
that his true meaning remains unperceived, that
he shall walk about the public places, go into
cafes and restaurants, and frequent all kinds of
resorts where people congregate, and that he
shall then return to Fouche with an account of
anything remarkable he may have seen or heard.
This seems to the delighted Michel-Perrin mere
child's play, and he regards it as little more than
a pretext on the part of the generous minister for
handing him every evening a gold piece. When,
however, the unconscious spy -finds one day that
he has revealed a political conspiracy, and
jeopardised the lives of many, perhaps innocent
men, he suddenly awakens to a sense of what he
has been doing, and in horror throws up his em
ployment. Fouche, it seems, was pained to have
humiliated the unoffending priest, and, public
worship being just at that time restored, he used
his influence with Napoleon to obtain the in
genuous man's re-appointment as village cure.
Under the Revolution the spy was replaced by
the official denunciator, an agent no less formid
able. At length came the Empire, and then
Fouche" invested espionage with the importance
of a science. In 1812 the "brigade of safety"
appeared, which was first composed of four agents,
but which, in 1823 and 1824, always under the
direction of the famous Vidocq, numbered close
upon thirty. Delavau, the prefect of police, had
permitted him to establish, on the public road, a
game known as " troll-madam " ; and this game,
an excellent trap for boobies and passers-by whose
slightest words and actions were keenly watched
by Vidocq's hounds, produced, from the 20th of
July to the 4th of August, 1823, a net profit of
4,364 francs. This sum was added to the sub
vention already granted to the spy department.
The Prefect Delavau returned to the method

of Lieutenant Berryer in employing as spies con
victs, whom he threw back into prison for the
slightest fault. One of his predecessors, Baron
Pasquier, had endeavoured, like Berryer, to
enlist domestic servants into the secret police
force ; and, with this object, Delavau renewed
an old ordinance, calling upon them to get their
names noted in the books of the prefecture every
time they entered a situation or left one. The
domestics, however, perceived the motive of
Delavau's measure, and were so unanimous in
withholding their names from the books in
question, that all idea of family espionage, on
which much value had been set, was soon to be
abandoned. Delavau drew even more largely
upon the criminal class for his myrmidons than
Pasquier had done, and in his day no public
gathering took place at which some felon, re
leased for the purpose from gaol, was not lurking
about for an ill-sounding word or a suspicious
gesture. Such agents as these worked with the
industry of bloodhounds. " Between the popu
lace and the subalterns of the police," says the
historian Peuchet, " there is a continual war ';
the latter are ill-bred dogs who seize every
opportunity for applying their fangs. The
police will never inspire respect for order so long
as part of its force consists of released gaol-birds
who owe a grudge to the whole of the people.
When these two elements are in contact there is
inevitably a fermentation." The justice of
these remarks was recognised by M. Delavau's
successor, M. de Belleyme, whose first care was
to dismiss and even restore to their respective
prisons this army of felon -spies. To-day,
although he has not risen much in public
estimation, the spy of the police-force is a
citizen in every sense of the word, enjoying all
the rights of a Frenchman, and not obtaining
his commission from the prefecture until after
his past life and his moral character have stood
the test of a keen investigation. Thus espionage
has been purified as far as that is possible ; but
whether the system is not in itself essentially im
moral, is a question which has exercised the minds
even of such writers as Montesquieu. " Espionage,"
he says, " is never tolerable ; if it were so it would
be practised by honest men ; but the necessary
infamy of the person indicates the infamy of the
thing." This is in effect another version of the
famous utterance of Argenson, who, reproached
with employing as spies none but rogues and
villains, exclaimed : '' Find me honest men who
will do this work." The present prefecture of
police believes it has found such men, and the

More Parisian Types,]

THE ECUYERE.

T9

discovery, if it has really been made, is a fortu
nate one indeed.
Another variety of police spy to be met with
in Paris is the officious volunteer spy. He may
belong to the lower or to the higher ranks of
society. He takes upon himself to observe and
to denounce, without instructions, and solely in
the hope of a pecuniary recompense. This
variety is probably the most contemptible and
the vilest. It should be mentioned, too, that
the French capital swarms with invisible and un
recognisable spies, disguised, as they some
times are, beneath an appearance of luxury or
magnificence. This or that personage passes for a
member( of the diplomatic service. He is an ad
mired figure in fashionable drawing-rooms, and
while affecting to converse on the European
situation, exercises the ear of a fox terrier and the
eye of a hawk. Then, of course, there is the
military spy, who is superior to the civil variety
inasmuch as whilst the latter, in case of recogni
tion, only incurs a more or less disagreeable
misadventure, the former is liable to be shot.
The military spy, therefore, may have all the
heroism of the professed soldier.
The civil spy system was naturally developed
to an extraordinary degree by the subtle Riche
lieu. His secret agent took as many shapes as
Proteus. Now it was a brave old seigneur, infirm
and professedly deaf, in whose presence people
would not hesitate to speak out and say every
thing, but who recovered his vigour and his legs
in order to go and report to the cardinal a
conversation of which he had not missed one
detail. Now it was a woman, who, having
insinuated herself into the intimate friendship of
some young and brilliant courtier, wrested from
him a dangerous and terrible secret. But it was
not only throughout the length and breadth of
France that Richelieu had spies ; numbers of
them were in his pay abroad, all over the Conti
nent indeed, regularly reporting political in
trigues, and furnishing clandestine copies of
secret treaties.
Enough, however, of the spy ; let it simply be
added that he has been introduced into two
novels by Balzac, into one by Hugo, and into
two by Alexandre Dumas, who has likewise
made him figure in a couple of plays.
Let us pass from the most slinking and
distasteful Paris character to the most open and,
as many consider, the most charming one — from
the " espion," that is to say, to the " ecuyere."
At Paris the circus-woman is the object of

a much higher admiration than in London.
Theophile Gautier, in his dramatic feuilletons,
has frequently shown that he preferred the
equestrian fairy of the circus to the sylph who
dances at the opera. He goes into ecstasies over
her agility, vigour, and courage, and is displeased
with nothing but the drapery in which her lower
limbs are enveloped, holding that, just as the
most virtuous fashionable woman or actress takes
care to exhibit her bare arms if they are beautiful,
so the " ecuyere " of the circus should be allowed
to display the full symmetry and grace of her
legs. The " ecuyere " whom Balzac brings on
the scene in his Fausse Maitresse, Malaga by
name, is an excellent type of the French circus-
woman, who is nearly always without relatives,
sometimes a foundling, sometimes a stolen child,
and who, coming one knows not whence, goes,
the idol of a day, one knows not where. " At
the fair," says the greatest of French novelists —
or rather, one of his characters — " this delicious
Columbine used to carry chairs on the tip of her
nose — the prettiest little Greek nose I ever saw.
Malaga, madame, is skill personified. Of
Herculean strength, she only requires her tiny
fist or diminutive foot to rid herself of three
or four men. She is, in fact, the goddess of
gymnastics. Careless as a gipsy, she says every
thing that enters her head ; she thinks as much
of the future as you do of the halfpence you
throw to beggars, and sometimes sublime things
escape from her. No one could ever persuade
her that an old diplomatist is a beautiful youth ;
a million could not change her opinion. Her
love is, for whoever inspires it, a perpetual flat
tery. Endowed as she is with really insolent
health, her teeth .are thirty-two exquisite pearls
encased in coral."
The performances ofthe Paris circus-woman too
closely resemble those of her sister in London to
need description. The characters, however, of
the two equestrians are not identical, and that of
the ecuyere can scarcely be represented better
than in the words of a vivacious French writer,
who says : " You can easily imagine what must
be, not the future (alas ! has she one ?), but the
present of this poor, intrepid, careless creature.
After being exposed twenty times a day to the
risk of breaking her jaw, she has hardly earned
her food ; and every morning she has to wash,
stretch, and otherwise renovate the costume in
which she is to dazzle her spectators at night . i
. . Some of these circus-women marry a Hercules
or a professional fool ; at the third or fourth
child Mme. Hercules or Mme. Fool takes her

20

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Domestic.

mare by the head, kisses her on the nose, and
bids a weeping adieu to the brave, affectionate
beast, the only friend who has never beaten her.
It is done : the whole family — husband, wife and
children, go forth to try their luck as strolling
players. Their theatre is the fair in summer
and the street in winter. Hercules will lift, at
arm's length, enormous weights, and the children
will form the living column, or dance on the
rope, while the mother, as short -skirted as ever,
but now plump enough to burst her vestments,
will contribute some kind of music or exhort the
outside public to enter the show." She frequently
fills up her intervals with fortune-telling ; informs

young women whether they will be married the
same year, and whether the visionary swain is
fair or dark ; lets married men know if their
wives are faithful, and wives if their husbands
are engaged in amours. Nurse-maids learn from
her that in the mounted gendarmerie or the
cuirassiers there is a hero of six-feet -six, only
awaiting an opportunity of declaring his passion.
This, however, is a sketch of the more fortunate
of the strolling circus artists. Occasionally the
husband breaks a limb, or kills himself in at
tempting some daring feat ; in that case his
family is often reduced to beggary or something
worse.

CHAPTER IV.
THE DOMESTIC.
The French Servant, as described by Leon Gozlan and by Mercier — The Ccok and the Cordon Bleu — The Valet.

IT has already been seen that domestics have at
different periods been employed in Paris as
spies. — According to Leon Gozlan, writing of his
own period, " the police of Paris is almost entirely
occupied with the misdeeds of domestics. Nearly
all domestics are thieves or spies, and they get
more so as they grow older. The most honest
amongst them steals at least ten sous a day from
his master." It is to be hoped that if they steal
in this amusingly regular fashion, they at least
observe the kind of morality which has been
noticed in some of the inferior state officials of
Russia. One of these complained that a col
league of his was dishonest and helped himself to
things which belonged to the State. "But you
do the same thing yourself," suggested a friend.
"True," was the reply; "but this fellow steals
too much for his place."
Let us, however, turning from drollery and
from Leon Gozlan — who can hardly have been
quite serious — glance at the household servant
of Paris as a factor in the Parisian community.
The French domestic, whether valet, lackey, or
lady's-maid, is more important and influential
than the domestic of England. It is true that
occasionally in an English house some servant
practically rules the family, and that the relation
ship between employer and employed becomes
so reversed that the mistress is afraid to ring her
drawing-room bell. As a rule, however, in

England the domestic is a nonentity. The
man-servant or maid-servant who waits at an
English table is absolutely ignored, and is not
even supposed to understand the conversation
which accompanies dinner, nor to laugh at jokes
indulged in by the host or his guests. An
English servant nowadays who shook with
laughter at what he overheard in the dining-
room, like black Sambo at Mr. Sedley's, would
be cautioned if not cashiered. The French
domestic is a personage and a power. The
" trade of lackey," according to Fabrice, in " Gil
Bias," requires a man of superior intellect. The
true lackey " does not go through his duties
like a ninny ; he enters a house to command
rather than to serve. He begins by studying
his master : he notes his defects, gains his
confidence, and ultimately leads him by the
nose  If a master has vices, the superior
genius who waits upon him flatters them, and
often indeed turns them to his own advantage."
Awaiting the day when he shall himself be great,
the liveried aspirant takes the name of his master
when he is with other lackeys, adopts his
manners and apes his gestures ; he carries a
gold watch and wears lace ; he is impertinent
and foppish. " Bon chien se forme sur maitre,"
says the French proverb, and the Parisian
domestic religiously takes after his master,
even though, as far as intrinsic resemblance

•MX-'

^:

1

22

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Domestic.

goes, he might simply be an ape in his master's
clothes. That vanity characterises French servants is
undeniable. Against the charge of cupidity,
however, which is brought against them, even
by French writers, must be set off one or two
famous instances in which valets have supported
their ruined masters for ten or twenty years out
of their own savings. Mercier, all the same, repre
sents the Paris domestic as hardly less a rogue
than does Leon Gozlan. " Out of ten servants,"
he assures us, " four are thieves." Another
native writer, while not undertaking to combat
this proposition, finds a defence for the accused
domestics. " If they are thus, who," he asks, " has
perverted them ? Who, either by example or
complicity, has made them thieves and
spies ? Every year is committed, to the pre
judice of the country and of agriculture, an
abominable crime, namely, the stealing of
individuals, strong and useful, snatched at once
from the sunlight and from simplicity of manners,
to be degraded, and sullied with a livery ; to
have imposed upon them their master's vices and
follies, and to be turned into idlers and good-
for-nothings, flatterers and procurers."
Paul Louis Courier looked forward to the time
when domestic servitude would be replaced by
household service rendered freely, as if in virtue
of a contract between man and man ; and in
Paris, as in other capitals, this state of things
seems to be fast approaching, not as the result of
any benignant feeling on the part of the rich
towards the poor, but because, with the spread
of education and of democratic ideas, a disin
clination to remain constantly at the orders of
another person is gradually extending. Already
servants demand a greater number of holidays
than in ancient times ; and there are many who,
like the London charwoman and the "laundress"
of the Inns of Court, are ready to give their
services during the day-time, and even until a
late hour in the evening, while reserving to
themselves the right of returning, after their
labours, to their own domicile.
There is much to be said, no doubt, on the
other side. If there are masters and mistresses
without consideration for their servants, there are
servants who, having kind masters and mistresses,
show themselves without gratitude. But we are
dealing specially with French servants, who,
apart from all question of good conduct or bad,
enjoy certain privileges not formally recognised,
as lawfully belonging to servants in England.
The bonne, for instance, or the cook, who goes

to market to purchase provisions considers herself
entitled to " make the handle of the basket
dance" — "fair danser l'anse du panier " — to
appropriate, that is to say, a portion of the things
she has bought, or of the money she has nomin
ally spent, to her own uses. In like manner the
house-porter, or " concierge," takes for himself,
as a matter of course, so many logs out of every
basket of wood ordered by the different tenants,
of whom there are often some half-dozen in the
same house. In France, as in other countries, a
valet will sometimes wear his master's clothes,
and the Parisian lady's-maid asserts and enforces,
more perhaps than in any other capital, her
claims to her mistress's cast-off apparel.
The cook — both the " cuisinier " and the
" cuisiniere " — has already been dealt with in a
special chapter. It may here, however, be
remarked, that though the best cooks, and
certainly the most expensive ones, are in France,
as in other countries, men, the female cook is
far indeed from being held in disesteem. The
" cordon bleu," or blue ribbon, was a distinction
conferred upon the female, not upon the male
cook ; and a woman who cooks particularly well
is called to this day a " cordon bleu." Such a
woman was in the service for many years of the
well-known " bourgeois de Paris," as Dr. Ve'ron
loved to describe himself.
If every French servant looks for some
particular perquisite, they all expect a gratuity
at the New Year. One of the greatest curses and
greatest blessings which rest upon Paris is the
custom of presenting New Year's gifts. The
word " etrenne " is at once a- terror and a joy to
Parisians, according as they belong to the class
who give or the class who receive. In London
no gentleman would venture to omit at Christ
mas-time to "tip " any one of the underlings who
had ever cleaned his boots, lifted his portmanteau,
or twisted the ends of his moustache. But in Paris,
if a gentleman failed at the new year to present
'' etrennes " to his boot -black, his messenger, or
his valet, derision and infamy would, according
to a French writer, pursue him, not merely
throughout this life, but even beyond the tomb.
Cardinal Dubois, who had a reputation for
niggardliness, used to give his servants their
"etrennes" in a manner which they could hardly
have relished. His major-domo came to him
one New Year's Day to demand the annual
gratuity. " Etrennes ! " exclaimed the cardinal ;
" yes, I will give you your etrennes. You may
keep everything you have stolen from me during
the last twelvemonth."

The Domestic]

THE PARIS VALET.

23

Let us, before quitting the subject of the
Parisian domestic, relate an anecdote or two.
"When I come home," said a master to his
servant, " I often find you asleep." " That, sir,"
replied the man, " is because I don't like to
remain doing nothing."
A nobleman paid a visit to Fontenelle one
day, and found him in a very bad humour.
" What is the matter with you ? " he asked.
¦"The matter?" replied Fontenelle; "I have
a valet who serves me as badly as if I had
twenty." t
The Abbe de Voisenon preserved his gay
humour to his very last gasp. Just before his
death he caused the leaden coffin which he had
ordered beforehand to be brought to his bedside.
"There," said he, " is my last overcoat." Then,
turning towards one of his servants of whom he
had had reason to complain, he added, " I hope
you will not wish to steal that too."
A certain high official of Paris lived in the
country, and, thanks to railway facilities, went
home every evening to dine. On one occasion
he arrived earlier than usual, and going into his
kitchen found the cook in a decidedly unequivo
cal position, with a bottle in his hand, three-
fourths of whose contents had already found
their way into his stomach. " Ah, my fine
fellow," exclaimed the master, " I have caught
you drinking my wine." "It is your own fault,
sir," was the reply. " You were not due till four
o'clock, and it is now hardly three."
Our gallery of Paris types would scarcely be
complete without a sketch of a very familiar
personage who, though not peculiar to Paris,
abounds there more than in other capitals. This
is the "rentier," the man of "small, independent
means." According to the etymology of the
¦word, anyone should be called a rentier who lives
on his " rentes " — the income, that is to say,
derived from the letting of houses or farms ;
or the interest of money invested in the
Funds. In practice, however, the name is

given exclusively to the man who lives on the
interest of money which he has invested in
government securities. He has been described
as the corresponding type, in English society,
to the man retired from business. He lives
modestly in the quarter of the Marais or of the
Batignolles, as in England he might live at
Clapham or Brixton, at Holloway, or Camden
Town ; and he passes a considerable portion of
his time in some favourite cafe, reading a news
paper of moderate-liberal politics, or playing
at dominoes. Condemned to economy, some
times of the most parsimonious kind, he counts
every lump of sugar brought to him by the
waiter, and shows a great predilection for
halfpenny rolls. In politics, without being an
aristocrat, he is something of a conservative ;
and, while stickling for his rights, hates revolu
tions as sure to cause perturbations in the
securities of the state.
It was doubtless a rentier from whose pocket
the thief in Lord Lytton's "Pelham " extracted,
in a Paris cafe, a tiny packet which he had seen
the owner put carefully away in his coat-tail
pocket, and which, on being adroitly stolen and
curiously examined, was found to contain, not a
precious stone, but a lump of sugar. In the rentier's
defence it may be mentioned that during the
great Napoleonic war, when a universal blockade
had been declared against English exports, and
when colonial produce was everywhere excluded
from the ports of France, the price of sugar rose
to such a height as to render this luxury difficult
for persons of straitened means to indulge in.
The existence of such a number of rentiers in
Paris goes far to demonstrate the prudence of
the ordinary Frenchman. An Englishman with
a few thousand pounds in his possession would,
as a rule, speculate with it, instead of burying it
in the Funds. The speculation would furnish
him with active employment, whereas the
permanent investment preferred by the average
Frenchman involves an idle and somewhat
ignoble life.

CHAPTER V.
PARISIAN CHARACTERISTICS.
Parisian Characteristics— Gaiety, Flippancy, Wit— A Siring of Favourite Anecdotes.

IN our last few chapters we have been glancing
about Paris for different types of character.
These are sufficiently varied even where they are
not absolutely dissimilar from each other. But
there is one characteristic which runs through
the whole of them ; the Parisian, be he great or
small, rich or poor, never loses his national
gaiety. He laughs through his tears and some
times jests with his last breath.
This gaiety finds expression in manifold ways,
and shows itself above all in innumerable anec
dotes. If, as Dr. Johnson maintained, the dullest
book is worth wading through if only it contains
a couple of good anecdotes, no apology need be
made for presenting in this chapter a few of those
" bonnes histoires " in which Parisians delight,
and which so often illustrate their character.
Let us begin with one which is very French
and particularly Parisian. A poverty-stricken
author, awaking suddenly at midnight, discerned
in his garret a burglar feeling in his empty cash-
box. The author burst into a laugh. The
burglar, annoyed to find himself an object of
ridicule, inquired what the author could find so
particularly amusing. " A thousand pardons,"
was the polite reply, " but I could not help
smiling to see you searching in the dark for what
I shall be unable to find in the daylight."
A Parisian had been accustomed for twenty
years to pass his evenings at the house of a

certain Mme. R  . He lost his wife, and
everyone expected he would marry the lady
whom he had so assiduously visited. When,
however, his friends urged him to do so, he
refused, saying, " I should no longer know
where to pass my evenings."
A general who had been beaten in Germany
and in Italy perceived one day, hanging oyer his
door, a drum inscribed with this device : " I am
beaten on both sides."
The Regent of Orleans wished to go to a
masked ball without being recognised. " I know
how to manage it," said the Abbe Dubois.
During the ball he set the Regent on his guard
against disclosing his identity, by dint of sundry
admonitory kicks. The victim, finding the
clerical foot by no means a light one, whispered,
" My dear Abbe, you disguise me too much."
A French soldier, not knowing how otherwise
to pass his time, entered the fashionable church
of Saint-Roch. When the woman who receives
money for the use of chairs approached him
and asked for five sous, " Five sous ? " he ex
claimed. "If I had five sous I should not be
here." A lady had a spoilt child, whose praises she
was never tired of sounding. " Your child is.
delightful," said a visitor. "At what time does.
he go to bed ? "
Someone, in presence of the Abbe Trublet,

Parisian Characteristics.]

A STRING OF ANECDOTES.

was praising one day the soft seductive manners
of Mme. de-Tencin, who was fascinating but with
out principle. "Yes," said the abbe, "if she
wished to poison you she would use the sweetest
poison she could find."
A Paris cabdriver, much vexed by the success
of the omnibus, then just introduced, determined

fought fourteen duels by way of maintaining his
opinion that Dante was a greater poet than
Petrarch. When dying from the effects of a
wound received in his last encounter, he admitted
to a friend that he had never read a line of either
poet. A Parisian candidate for the degree of bachelor

PARISIAN TYPES — IN THE BARRACKS.

to start an opposition. He proposed to take
passengers at four sous a head, and put this in
scription outside his vehicle : " Fiacribus at four
sous." . A Parisian boy was receiving a long lecture
from his father on the subject of his inattention,
no matter what good advice might be given to
him. The boy lowered his head and seemed to
be earnestly engaged in listening to his parent's
observations. Suddenly, however, he exclaimed,
" Ninety-nine — one hundred ! That is the hun
dredth ant, father, that has gone into that little
hole since you have been talking to me."
A Parisian, who could not brook contradiction,

in letters was being examined in history. He
gave satisfactory answers to every question
until at last he was asked when Charle
magne lived. "Eight centuries before Christ,"
he replied. "You mean after Christ?" said
the questioner with a smile. "I am sorry to
disagree with the board of examiners," answered
the young man with some modesty, " but I
maintain my opinion that Charlemagne must
have lived eight centuries before Christ." This
determined student had, as a matter of course,
to be plucked.
Two daughters of Paris, at the bedside of their
dying father, who had gained millions by usury,

26

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Parisian Characteristics.

were shocked to hear the priest, who had just
received his confession, enjoin restitution as the
only condition on which he could possibly be
saved. " For pity's sake, father," said the girls,
when the priest had left the room, " do nothing
of the kind. You will suffer for a short time, but
after the first quarter of an hour you will be like
a fish in water."
An impressionable Paris banker, the owner of
immense riches, died of grief on hearing that he
had lost everything in the world except 100,000
francs. His pauper brother, on inheriting the
sum, died of joy.
A Parisian husband, to whom his wife rendered
but scant obedience, asked her one day, when
she was leaving the house, where she was going.
" Wherever I like," she answered. " And when
do you propose to come back ? " " Whenever
I think fit," she replied. "If you return one
moment later," said the husband, with an air of
menace, " I shall have a word with you."
A Parisian schoolboy, meeting a little beggar
in the street who declared himself to be the most
miserable boy alive, said to him, with an accent
of deep sympathy, " What ! are you learning
the Latin grammar ? "
The Prince de Conde was one of the wittiest of
Parisians. He had been criticising severely a
tedious tragedy called Zenobia, the work of the
Abbe" d'Aubignac. "It is written strictly in
accordance," said one of the Abbe's defenders,
"with the rules of Aristotle." "I don't blame
the abbe," replied Conde, "for having followed
Aristotle, but I shall never forgive Aristotle for
having caused him to write so tedious a piece."
A Parisian grande dame, before whom a gen
tleman had just taken out a cigar, was asked
whether she disliked the smell of tobacco. " I
cannot say," she replied. " No one has ever
smoked in my presence."
The French are perhaps less celebrated than
of old for their politeness. It- was a French
preacher, however, who, in a sermon delivered
before Louis XIV., observed deferentially "we
are nearly all mortal " ; and it was a French
professor who, when Louis XVIII. had requested
from him some lessons in chemistry, began his
explanations by saying, "These two bodies, of
opposite properties, will now have the honour of
combining in presence of your Majesty."
A Parisian, in the midst of a dissipated life,
was prevailed upon to enter a monastery. Ere
long he confessed to the Superior that in his
moments of solitude he was constantly assailed
by a desire to return to his former mode of

existence. The Superior recommended him on
these occasions to ring the great bell of the
monastery, which would at once give him bodily
exercise, distract him from evil thoughts, and be
a signal to the other monks to pray for him.
He rang, however, so frequently that the bell
went on tolling all night, until at last representa
tions on the subject were made from the entire
neighbourhood. A cuirassier, who had seen and admired
Horace Vernet's military pictures, called upon
the great painter and asked how much he would
charge him for his portrait. " How much are'
you prepared to pay ? " asked Vernet. " I could
go as high — as high as a franc and a half," replied
the soldier. " Done," said Vernet, and in a few
minutes he had made a rapid sketch of the
warrior. As the cuirassier left the room he said1
to a comrade who had been waiting for him at
the door, " I got it done for a franc and a half.
But I am sorry, now, I did not bargain. He
might have taken a franc."
Sophie Arnould's dog having fallen ill, the
celebrated actress sent him for treatment to her
friend Mesmer, inventor of the pretended science
which bears his name. In a few days the German
physician returned the dog with a letter certifying
that it was quite well. The dog, however, died
on the way home. " What a comfort it is," said
Sophie, on seeing the letter and the dead body,
" to know that the poor animal died in good
health." On seeing the dancer, Madeleine Guimard,
who was thin even to scragginess, perform in a
"pas de trois" with a robust male dancer leaping
about on each side of her, Sophie Arnould said
that it was like two dogs fighting for a bone.
A Parisian lady observed one day, in the pres
ence of a man six feet high who greatly admired
her, that she did not like tall men. He redoubled
his attentions until, seeing her one day in rather
a dreamy condition, he asked her what she was
thinking about. " I am wondering how it is,"
she replied, " that you seem to get smaller and
smaller every day."
The Abb^ Fouquet was Mazarin's spy, and he
threw numberless Parisians into the Bastille.
One man, whom he sent there one day, saw a
large dog in the court-yard of the fortress-prison.
" What has that dog done ? " he asked, " to get
in a place like this ? " " He has probably bitten
the Abbe Fouquet's dog," replied a veteran
prisoner. An amorous youth wished to send to the
object of his affections a passionate, but at the

Parisian Characteristics.]

A STRING OF ANECDOTES.

27

same time witty, epistle. After cudgelling his
brains for some hours to no purpose he went to a
bookseller's, bought a " complete letter-writer,"
and copied out what seemed to him the most
suitable missive, which he duly despatched. The
young lady replied to him next day as follows :
" Turn to the next page and you will find my
answer." A Parisian publisher, extremely annoyed at
having printed a big book of which he could
only sell four copies, bitterly reproached the
author, telling him that his works would not
even give him bread. A vigorous blow with the
fist, which knocked out several of the publisher's
teeth, was the only reply made by the haughty
writer. Arrested by. the police, the latter, called
upon to explain his conduct, extricated himself
by the following ingenious defence, at which the
judge, the audience, and even the plaintiff could
not restrain their laughter. " Gentlemen," he
said, " I confess that I acted with rather too
much warmth. I knocked out his teeth ; but
after all, what mischief is done ? He told me my
works would not give him bread, and teeth are
useless when there is nothing to eat."
The Marquis de Favieres, a great borrower and
notorious for never returning his loans, went
one day to the financier Samuel Bernard, and
said to him : " I am going to astonish you, sir.
I am the Marquis de Favieres. I do not know
you, and I have come to borrow five hundred
louis." " Sir," said Bernard, " I shall astonish
you still more. I know you, and I am going to
lend you the money."
The Parisian " badaud, " an intensification of

the London Cockney, has a reputation, more
over, for making blunders and bulls of the Irish
kind. One of them, hazarding some speculations
on the subject of astronomy, is said to have
observed that the moon was a much more
important orb than the sun, because the sun
" comes out only in the day-time, when every
one can see perfectly well. The moon, on the
other hand, shines in the darkness, when a light
to guide us is really wanted."
Another Parisian of the dull species once wrote
to a friend as follows : "A man has just called
me a villain, and threatened, if I ever speak to
him again, to kick me. What do you usually
do in such a case ? "
A Parisian who, without knowing much about
horse-flesh, had just bought a horse, was asked
whether the animal was timid. " Not at all," he
replied. " He has slept three nights running in the
stable by himself." Another Parisian "sportsman "
was reproached by a connoisseur with having
clipped his horse's ears. He explained that the
animal was in the habit, whenever alarmed, of
pricking up his ears, and that he had cut them
in order to cure him of his timidity.
A literary specimen of the Parisian Cockney is
said to have written, in an historical novel, the
following remarkable sentence. " Before the
year 1667 Paris at night was plunged in total
darkness, which was made darker than ever by
the absence of gas-lights, not yet invented.
In a Russian history of Poland, the Poles were
seriously reminded that it was not until after the
partition of Poland that the streets of Warsaw
were lighted with gas.

28

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Streets!

CHAPTER VI.

THE STREETS.

The Arrangement of the Streets— System of Numbering the Houses - Street Nomenclature— Street Lamps— The Various Kinds of Vehicles in Use.

WE have already searched the streets of
Paris for types of character. Let us pro
ceed to look at one or two characteristic street
objects, after first taking a general view of the
streets themselves.
The streets of Paris divide themselves into two
categories : those parallel to the Seine and those
at right angles to it. In the first the numbers
follow the course of the stream, in the second
they begin from that end of the street which is
nearest to the river. The traveller, however,
finding himself in any particular street, cannot
in the present day tell at once to which category
it belongs, inasmuch as the old distinction of
colour is no longer preserved, by which the
parallel streets used to be numbered in red, and
those at right angles in black.
All the Paris streets are lit up throughout the
night. Early in the morning, before daylight,
companies of scavengers collect the city refuse in
heaps which, some hours afterwards, are carted
away into the neighbouring country to fertilise
the soil. During the day other scavengers clear
the highways of whatever dust or mud they may
have accumulated.
Every day in summer water-carts sprinkle the
principal thoroughfares. These carts carry behind
them an apparatus which flings the water over
the whole width of the street. In streets which
are rather narrow, or when the cart cannot keep
exactly to the middle, the pedestrians come in
for a part of the municipal spray, as also do
vehicles which are low or open. It is prudent,
therefore, to keep one's eye on the water-cart,
unless a gratuitous shower-bath is absolutely
desired. Every public way bears a distinctive name.
Extended thoroughfares are not infrequently
divided up into portions, each named separately ;
this is due sometimes to local circumstances,
sometimes to the fact that in the olden days it
was a caprice of the citizens frequently to change
the title of the street in which they resided. It
was not until the seventeenth century that the
municipal administration officially intervened in
this matter. Then, however, the titles were less
often derived from local circumstances, adulation
lavishing on the highways and byways the names

of princes and other personages of wealth or
power. Under Louis XIV. a certain proportion
of street names were also drawn from royal
victories or from those officers who had achieved
them. The Revolution inscribed with the names
of its heroes, its martyrs, its triumphs, its prin
ciples, not only the new streets which it opened,
but even the old ones from which it wished to
efface monarchical titles. The Empire followed
the same system. The Restoration returned to
the Royalist traditions ; and the monarchy of
July united those of the Revolution and the
Empire, mingling the ancient glories of France
with the modern, and illustrious foreigners with
natives of renown.
To pass, however, from streets to street-
illumination. Parisians of to-day, accustomed to
the brilliancy of gas, which turns night almost
into day, can scarcely believe that two centuries
ago their town knew no other light than that of
the moon and stars. It was the case, neverthe
less ; previously to 1667 not a public lamp existed.
The necessity of street illumination had already,
however, been recognised by a civic regulation
which required householders, in those localities
where garrotting had become too frequent, to
place beneath their first-floor window, at 9 p.m.,
a lantern which might cast its beams into the
street. It was M. de la Reynie, lieutenant of
police for Paris, who first, in 1667, instituted
public lamps. At the outset a lamp was placed
at the end of each street, with a third in the
middle. Then, after a time, the number of
lamps was increased in streets of exceptional
length. Each containing a candle, these " lan-
ternes" were suspended by a rope from a crooked
iron bar in the form of the gallows.
The lamps introduced by La Reynie marked a
certain progress in civilisation. They at least
diminished in a remarkable manner the number
of night attacks. La Reynie's lanterns lasted
until 1776, when they were replaced by so-called
reverberes, or reflecting lamps. In a few months
more than half the streets in Paris were illumin
ated by the new lamps, which, with some modi
fications, remained in use until the introduction
of gas.
The most celebrated of all the lamps in Paris

The Streets.^

PARIS STREET LAMPS.

29

was the lamp or "lanterne" of the Place de la
Greve, which on the outbreak of the Revolution

of aristocrats were dragged to the fatal lamp, but
saved at the last moment by the intervention of

PARISIAN TYPES— IN SEARCH OF CIGAR-ENDS.

was made the instrument of several summary
executions, the first victims being two retired
soldiers and Major de Losme, accused of firing
on the people at the capture of the Bastille. The
cry of " A la lanterne ! " was now constantly
raised ; and when the emigration began a number

Bailly and La Fayette. ¦ The notorious Foulon,
detested by everyone, was really hanged from the
fatal lamp. His son-in-law, Bertier, was also
dragged beneath the lamp, but he defended him
self, snatched a musket from one of his guards,
and fought until he was shot down. On the 5th

30

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Streets.

of October the brave Abbe Lefevre d'Ormesson,
a member of the Commune, was half hanged by
a number of wild women. Fortunately for him,
the rope was cut before it had done its work.
About the same time the mob, perishing from
hunger, hung to the lamp a baker named
Frangois, accused of hoarding up his bread.
Francois is said to have been the " last man tied
up to the illuminated gallows " of the Place de
la Greve. Camille Desmoulins published, some
eighty years before Henri Rochefort made use of
the title, a pamphlet called " La Lanterne," or,
to quote the title in full, " Discours de la Lan
terne aux Parisiens." It bore this epigraph :
" Qui male agit odit lucem," which he translated
thus : " Only rogues fear the light."
If, however, the public lamps of Paris are the
most conspicuous street objects by night, those
which first strike the eye by day are unquestion
ably the vehicles.
In France, as in other countries, carriages are
comparatively of modern invention ; and when
they were first introduced they were generally
condemned as calculated to do away with a taste
for equitation and to produce habits of effeminacy.
The condition of the streets and public thorough
fares would, in ancient times, have rendered the
employment of vehicles, impossible, and thus
persons who did not go on foot went on horse
back until the sixteenth century, when the use
of the so-called " Sedan-chairs " became general.
Wheeled carriages were not absolutely unknown,
but in Francis l.'s reign there were but two, one
belonging to the king, the other to the queen.
The privilege of constructing and letting out
Sedan-chairs, or " chaises a bras," was granted by
Louis XIII. at the beginning of the seventeenth
century to one of the officers of his body-guard ;
and towards the end of the reign, after many
other inventions in the way of vehicles had been
tried, two- wheeled chaises, called " brouettes," or
" wheelbarrows," were introduced by a Monsieur
Dupin, who received the king's support in the
shape of a formal authorisation. There was now
a great dispute between the privileged makers of
Sedan-chairs and the privileged makers of
"wheelbarrows," which ended in this com
promise — that the new wheelbarrows were not
to be allowed unless drawn exclusively by men.
In the reign of Henry IV. the carriage, or
"carrosse," was introduced : a heavy, lumbering
vehicle, whose windows were hung with leather
curtains. The use of glass in carriage windows
had not yet been adopted. Henry IV. was him
self driving in one of these carriages when

Ravaillac thrust his hand through the window
and struck the fatal blow.
The first coach with glass windows — " glass-
coach," as the new vehicle was called when,
many years later, it was introduced into England
— was seen in Paris in 1630, brought there from
Brussels by the Prince de Conde. Up to the
middle of the seventeenth century no wheeled
vehicles were seen in the streets of Paris except
those belonging to private persons. In 1650,
however, it occurred to a man named Sauvage,
living in an hotel in the Rue Saint-Martin,
which bore the sign of " Saint-Fiacre," to let out
horses and carriages to anyone who wanted
them ; and in time the name of fiacre was given
to all hired carriages. Soon afterwards, about
the middle of the seventeenth century, so-called
" diligences " were established for conveying "with
diligence " passengers in common from one part
of France to another ; and from the idea of con
veying a number of passengers in the same
vehicle from town to town was derived that of
the omnibus, doing a like service within the
walls of the capital. The invention of the omni
bus is attributed to Pascal, the author of so many
" Pensees " of a finer type. The original Parisian
omnibus was called the "five sous carriage" —
" carrosse au cinq sous " — five sous being required
from each passenger. It held six persons, and
carried as a distinctive sign a lantern at the end
of an iron pole, which was fixed on the top, to
the left of the driver.
Until the time of the Revolution the right of
letting out carriages was always made the subject
of a privilege or concession, accorded to some
court favourite, male or female. After the Revo
lution, however, when all privileges were
abolished, those connected with the letting out
of public vehicles came to an end. A few years
afterwards, in 1 800, a tariff regulating the prices
payable to the drivers of hackney carriages was
drawn up, when, as now, the cost of a drive, or
" course," inside Paris, was fixed at something
above a franc, two francs being chargeable per
hour if the vehicle were hired by time. Origin
ally private carriages had now become public, so
that at last a demand arose for carriages which
might be taken by the month, the week, the day,
or the half-day.
Hitherto all the hackney vehicles of Paris had
been of one pattern and furnished with four
wheels. They seated either two or four passen
gers, and were drawn by one or two horses. In
the year 1800 the two-wheeled " cabriolet " was
introduced, containing seats for two, one of which

the Streets.]

PARIS VEHICLES.

3i

was occupied by the driver, to whose intimate
society the unfortunate passenger was thus con
demned. From this period until 1830 the public
vehicles of Paris were, according to a French
writer, "a disgrace to the capital." They were
drawn by ruined beasts which looked unlikely to
reach any given destination, and they were many
of them good' for nothing but firewood.
The Paris hackney vehicle largely
excited at this time the ridicule of wits
and song-writers, although, irrespectively
of its condition, it has always figured
almost exclusively in literature. In a
great city like Paris the cab is the wit
ness, the auxiliary, or the accomplice in
nearly every event which takes place —
it is a mute confidant in most of the
scenes of human life. The song-writer,
Desaugiers, has left in verse a curious
history of a cab, supposed to be written
by itself, and in which it relates how one
day it conveyed a widow to the altar,
another day a husband to Chantilly with
out his wife, and a third day the wife
to Gros-Bois without her husband.
Coming to modern times, we find the
driver of the fiacre as interesting a per
sonage as he must frequently find his fare
to be. The - question whether, as is
asserted, ruined aristocrats are at present
earning their bread as cab-drivers has
already been discussed. But it is un
questionable that many members of what
are called the " better " classes turn to
the cab as their last resource, even as
Dr. Johnson's "scoundrel" was said to
turn to politics. Priests, devoid in two
senses of a living, bachelors of arts and
sciences, old professors and worn-out
notaries, may be seen plying the whip
of the " cocher " in the Paris streets.
That the London cab — of which the
name, as probably everyone knows, is
simply a contraction of " cabriolet " — surpasses
the cab of Paris is admitted even by patriotic
Frenchmen. One able writer on the subject of
the French capital says that " the London cabs,
which we have vainly tried to acclimatise in
Paris, are, if not comfortable, at least rapid and
well-managed. Our neighbours can boast two
jelements of incontestable superiority. These
are the drivers and the horses. Despite these
causes, it is probable that the English ' cab '
would be found less attractive if, instead of
being paid by the mile, it were taken by the

journey or by the hour." This writer, it
should be explained, complains bitterly that
the Parisian cabman, engaged by the hour,
proceeds at a crawl, knowing that he will be
paid just as much as if he drove with the
celerity of his London brother, who simply
wants to get to his journey's end and receive

A PARIS OMNIBUS.

his fare — or as much beyond it as he possibly

can.

As regards the omnibuses of Paris, they re
semble in many respects those of London. For
instance, they are painted different colours ac
cording to their particular route. When the
vehicle is quite full a board or card announcing
the fact is fixed up over the door ; and each
vehicle is numbered so that in case of complaint
it can be identified by the passenger.
The private carriages let out on hire — those
which can be taken by the month or for the

32

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Streets.

season — are not permitted to ply in the streets
of Paris like the fiacre. They take up their
passenger at his own door, and can be hired by
the year, month, day, or half-day. The form of
these vehicles varies, according to the caprices or
the fortune ofthe hirer, from plain to magnificent.
In France, as in England, rich families accustomed
to winter in the capital leave their own carriages
in the country and hire others by the month.
Even wealthy Frenchmen, who reside altogether
in the capital, have of late years shown them
selves more and more disposed to escape in this

way the trouble and annoyance connected with
the maintenance pf personal equipages. Nor do
those Englishmen who have tried both methods
feel a less marked preference for that of hire,
which relieves them from the numerous anxieties
associated with the stable. It will be remembered
how Henry J. Byron's coachman came to that
comedy-writer one day and said that the mare
was ill. "What's to be done?" asked Byron.
"I shall have to give her a ball, sir," was the
reply. "Very well," said Byron with a sigh of
resignation, "but don't ask too many people."

CHAPTER VII.
THE SEINE AND ITS BRIDGES. — THE MORGUE.
The Various Bridges over the Seine — Their Histories — The Morgue — Some Statistics.

OF all the Paris thoroughfares the most im
portant, in a commercial sense, is the Seine,
"¦ which enters the city from the east to flow out in
the direction ofthe south-west. The Seine,ho wever,
>. does not play in connection with Paris the part of
the Thames in connection with London. On the
, Seine no large ships are to be seen above or below
bridge ; and until a few years ago the attempts
periodically made to establish a service of pas
senger steamers, such as we have on the Thames
at London, were usually discontinued after
a brief experimental season. Wine, wood,
stone, and other merchandise is sent down
the Seine towards Havre at the mouth. But
the Parisians, as a body, make little use of
the Seine, except for bathing purposes, and
then only during the warm weather, when the
numerous swimming baths established on the
river are largely frequented.
The Seine enters Paris after receiving at Con-
i flans the waters of the Marne. The first bridge
beneath which it passes, beyond Bercy, is' con
tinued on either side as a viaduct, and is connected
4»with the external or girdle railway known as
the Chemin de Fer de Ceinture. Constructed
in 1858, when the Second Empire was at the
height of its popularity it received the name
• of " Napoleon III."
27

The next bridge, the Pont de Bercy, wnich dates
from 1835, was originally a suspension bridge.
In 1863 it was replaced by the present bridge,
constructed in stone, with five elliptical and very
graceful arches. To the bridge of Bercy succeeds
the bridge of Austerlitz, whose name connects it
with one of the greatest battles of the First
Empire. Begun in 1802, it was finished in 1807,
and was called the bridge of Austerlitz in memory
of the important victory gained on the 2nd of
December, 1805, by Napoleon, over the arms of
Austria and Russia. When in 18 14 the allied
armies were in possession of Paris, some observa
tion was made to the Emperor Alexander of
Russia by a time-serving French official as
to the name ofthe bridge, which, it was suggested,
might be changed. " I do not mind the name,"
replied Alexander, " now that I have crossed
the bridge at the head of my troops." More
sensitive, or at least more irritable than the
Russian emperor, Blucher took umbrage at
another of the Paris bridges being called, in
commemoration of the great Prussian defeat,
bridge of Jena, and really wished to blow it up.
He was dissuaded from this project by the Russian
emperor, who, according to an anecdote more or
less veracious, said that if the Prussian marshal
thought seriously of carrying his project

34

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Seine

into execution, the emperor would take up his
position on the bridge and perish with it.
Under the Restoration the name of the bridge
of Austerlitz was really changed. It was hence
officially designated Bridge of the King's Garden,
but continued in general parlance to be called by
its original name. A little below the bridge of
Austerlitz the Saint-Martin canal pours its waters
into the river ; and not many yards lower down
the Seine met formerly the island of Louviers,
on which there were no habitations, but only
warehouses for wood. The narrow channel which
separated this island from the right bank of the
river was filled up in 1847, when, in a geograph
ical sense, the island ceased to exist.
At a short distance from what was formerly the
lie Louviers, the Seine throws out on the right an
arm, which, before rejoining the main stream,
forms the island of Saint-Louis. In the seven
teenth century this island was augmented by
being joined to two smaller ones ; the island of
Cows on the east, and the island of Notre Dame
(the property of the cathedral) on the west ;
and the triple island received the name of lie
Saint-Louis in honour of the great king. The
island of Saint-Louis communicates with the left
bank, from which the main stream separates it,
by the foot bridge of Constantine and the bridge
of Latournelle. The bridge of Constantine owes
its name to the town taken by the French in
1836. It is only available for pedestrians. The
ancient bridge of Latournelle, constructed in
1 6 14 on the site of a still older one, was in wood.
After being several times destroyed in this form,
it was in 1656 reconstructed in stone. In 1831
a band of thieves who had robbed the royal
library of many valuable medals, threw their
booty from the Pont de Latournelle into the
Seine, whence the greater part of it was recovered
by divers.
Close to the Pont de Latournelle is the Pont
Marie, of which the first stone was laid in 1614
by Louis XIII. and Marie de Medicis. The
bridge, however, is said, according to a somewhat
improbable statement, generally accepted by the
historians of Paris, to owe its name, not to the
queen, but to Marie, a well-known builder of the
time. The next bridge, as we continue to descend
the stream, is the Pont Louis Philippe, the date of
which is indicated approximately by the reign
under which it was built. Begun in 1833, it was
finished in 1834, but since then has undergone
many restorations and modifications. The bridge
of Saint-Louis, which joins the two islands, re
places the second section of the original Louis

Philippe bridge, at one time known from its
colour as the Red Bridge.
We now reach the celebrated Pont Neuf, which
with its two arms connects the island of the city,
otherwise island of Notre Dame, with both banks
of the Seine. The island in question is the
ancient Lutetia, the germ of modern Paris. The
number of habitations on this kernel, this core
of the French metropolis, becomes smaller every
year. Before long it will be occupied only by its
ancient historical edifices, with a cafe-chantant at
one end ofthe island and the Morgue at the other .-
Some who begin life at the former will finish it
perhaps at the latter establishment. As to the
other bridges, it may be sufficient to mention
some of their names ; which possess for the most
part historical significance, and for that reason
have, in many cases, to suit historical circum
stances, been changed. The bridge of the Arts
owes its name to the institute on the left bank,
which it connects with the Louvre on the right ;
and this bridge has retained its original name
since the date of its construction. But the
National Bridge, as it was called when it was first
built under the Republic of 1789, became, after
the proclamation of the First Empire, the bridge of
the Tuileries ; and at the time ofthe Restoration,
Pont Royal. The Solferino bridge, dating only
from i860, the year after the great battle of the
French against the Austrians, has retained its
name without intermission.
The Pont de la Cour has, like the Place of the
same name, been called successively Pont Louis
XV., Pont de la Revolution, Pont Louis XVI.,
and finally (since the Revolution which in 1830
placed Louis Philippe on the throne) Pont de la
Cour. The bridge of the Alma dates from 1855,
the second year of the Crimean war.
Having now disposed, somewhat summarily, of
the Paris bridges, let us say a few words about
that mournful establishment, the Morgue, to
which a desperate leap from one of the bridges
has so often led. The Paris Morgue is situated
at the back of Notre Dame, close to the bridge
of Saint-Louis. Reconstructed in 1864, it re
places the original one in the form of a Greek
tomb, which was built in virtue of a police edict
under the First Republic. Something of the kind,
however, was known long before, and in ancient
chronicles a morgue, where dead bodies were ex
posed, is spoken of as far back as the early days
of the seventeenth century. In its existing form
the Morgue is a one-storied building, with two
wings, and with slabs of black marble in two
lines, for the reception of twelve bodies. The

and its Bridges.]

THE MORGUE.

35

keeper of the Morgue is supposed, by the writer
of a novel choke-full of horrors, to have dwelling
rooms in this dismal abode ; and the perverted
imagination of the author represents him as
giving an evening party to his friends in close
proximity to the sepulchral chamber where the

feed the
1745 cases
Morgue,
-, 114 by
forty-six through
remains of so many unhappy victims are waiting falls from heights, sixteen through sharp weapons,

What are the kinds of death which
Morgue? From 1826 to 1846, out of 1)
of apparent suicide represented at the
there were 1,414 deaths by drowning,
hanging, ninety-eight by fire-arms,
through the fumes of charcoal, fifty-six

AUSTERLITZ BRIDGE.

to be recognised by their relatives or friends.
The number of men who find their way to this
place of ill omen is, according to the statistical
tables on the subject, far greater than that of the
women. Thus, up to the age of twenty-five, the
number of male occupants of the Morgue was
found, during a period of years, to be 515 as
against 115 female occupants. Between the ages
of twenty-five and forty -five, among 1,242 occu
pants, 1,050 were men, and 192 women. From
forty-five to fifty-five, there were 599 men, and
fifty-eight women.

eleven by poison, seven by crushing beneath
vehicles, and 4 by alcohol. About two-thirds of
the bodies exposed at the Morgue are never
recognised. There is so much that is beautiful and elevating,
so much that is curious and interesting, to be seen
in Paris, that a visit to the Morgue — by many
persons thought indispensable — should surely, by
persons of ordinary taste and feeling, be regarded
as time ill-spent. It ought to be sufficient to
read of it in Jules Janin's strange novel already
referred to.

3"

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Reformation in Paris.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE REFORMATION IN PARIS.
D'Etaples, the Pioneer of the Reformation— Nicolas Cop and Calvin— Progress of the Reformation— Persecutions — Catharine de Medicis— St.
Bartholomew's — The Edict of Nantes.

PERMANENT head-quarters of science and
study, the left bank of the Seine was also
in the fifteenth century the home of a great
religious movement, by which, for some time,
the right bank was scarcely touched.

and, under his auspices, assembled in Paris a
first group of ardent propagators of the new ideas.
During forty-three years the Reformation spread
gradually to the University, to the town and to
the court, though it maintained its head-quarters

ON THE SAINT-MARTIN CANAL.

" Few persons," says M. Athanase Coquerel
Fife, " know that the Reformation of the six
teenth century, before it flamed forth in Germany
and elsewhere, had already been kindled in the
capital of France. It had for its cradle that left
bank of the Seine which was then separated from
the town and its suburbs, and divided into two
quarters subjected to special jurisdictions : the
University and the vast territory of the Abbey of
Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Was it not natural,
despite the jealous vigilance of the Sorbonne,
that the Paris schools where Abailard had boldly
attacked school-divinity should be the first to
awake to the new spiritual life ? "
A professor of the college of Cardinal Lemoine
Lefevre, d'fitaples by name, produced in 1512,
within the precincts of the Abbey, his "Commen
tary on St. Paul," in whose epistles he indicated,
five years before Luther, the essential doctrines
ofthe Reformation. This book was dedicated to
the powerful abbot of Saint-Germain, Brigonnet,

in the suburb of Saint-Germain, which people
became accustomed to call " the little Geneva,"
and which is to-day the most Catholic quarter of
Paris. The first Protestant put to death for his
religion was one of the pupils of Lefevre, by name
Pauvent, burned on the Place de Greve in 1524. ;
His martyrdom was followed ere long by that of
many a Huguenot.
Calvin at this period was studying at Paris,
but he could not stay there. The rector of the
University, Nicolas Cop, a secret propagator of
the Reformation, had commissioned young Calvin
to write a discourse which, on a formal occasion,
he had to deliver in the church of the Mathurins.
Several monks denounced in Parliament the
heresies contained in this discourse. The rector
fled to Bale, where he became a pastor. Calvin,
it is said, had to escape by a window of one of
the colleges. >
It was in the Louvre that the Reformation
was first publicly preached at Paris. Queen

THE SOLFERINO BRIDGE, FROM THE QUAI D1

ORSAY.

38

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Reformation in Paris.

Marguerite of Navarre, sister of Francis I. and
the friend of Briconnet, caused her chaplain and
other disciples of Lefevre to preach before her in
that palace. Thereupon the Franciscan friar,
Lemaud, declared from his pulpit that she
ought to be thrown into the Seine in a sack.
The priestly rage which had now been excited
soon spread to the people, and the streets
began to resound with cries of " Death to the
Heretics." " To be thrown into the river,"
says Beze, writing of this period, "it was
only necessary to be called a Huguenot in
public, no matter what one's religion might be."
A series of religious murders were now perpe
trated ; and Francis I., a bigot like his people,
headed one day in 1535 a procession in which he
was followed by his three sons, the court, the
parliaments, the trade corporations, and the
brotherhoods, and of which the object was to
burn at the stake six Protestants at six different
halting-places. Henri II. took after his father.
On one occasion he assisted, from a window
of the Hotel de la Rochepot, Rue Saint- Antoine,
at the execution of a Protestant tailor who
was burned alive. It is said, however, that
the martyr's eyes, fixed as they were upon
him, inspired him with terror, and that this
was the last heretic whose dying pangs he ever
witnessed. As yet the Protestants of Paris had neither
temple nor pastor. But already they had schools,
" hedge schools," as they were termed, becausei
prohibited within the city walls, the teachers took
refuge in the country.
The secret meetings of the Protestants of Paris
were often surprised. In 1557 services were held
and the Communion was administered in one of
the houses of the Rue Saint-Jacques, beside the
building where is now established the Lyceum of
Louis the Great. Excited by the seminarists of
the College Duplessis, the populace besieged
the assembly for six hours, stoning many per
sons as they came out. Several were killed,
and 135 prisoners were taken to the Chatelet.
Among those who were executed may be men
tioned the young and beautiful widow of a
member of the Consistory, "who," says a
chronicler of the times, " seated on the tumbril,
showed a face of rosy complexion and of excel
lent beauty." The poor woman's tongue had been
cut out, which was often done at that time in
order to prevent the martyrs from addressing the
crowds. As a special mark of favour, the
beautiful widow was only scorched in the face
and on the feet ; and she was then strangled

before the body was finally consigned to the
flames. The Protestant poet, Clement Marot, to whom
Francis I. had given a house, called the " House of
the Bronze Horse," translated at this epoch some
of the Psalms into French verse, and his work
obtained extraordinary vogue even at the court.
The students, who used to amuse themselves
in the evening in the Pre -aux Clercs, opposite
the Louvre, replaced their customary songs by
the Psalms of Marot ; and it became the fashion
for a time among the lords and ladies of the court
to cross the Seine in order to hear the chants of
the students. Often they joined in ; and the
Huguenot king of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon,
was seen walking round the Louvre and singing
a psalm at the head of a long procession of
courtiers and scholars.
The persecution, which for a time had slack
ened, was soon revived in all its fury. Marot
took flight. Paris had grown too hot for him ;
"Paris," he says, in an epigram dated 1537,
" Paris, thou hast given me many a fright,
even to the point of chasing me to death " : — <
" Paris, tu m'as fait maints d'allarmes
Jusqu'a me poursuyvre a la mort."
In spite of everything the deputies of the
reformed church continued to meet at Paris in
the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where they held
secretly their first national synod in 1 559. This
assembly, of which not one member would have
escaped the block had they been discovered,
bound into one corporation the reformed
churches of France, until then without cohesion.
Francis II., husband of Mary Queen of Scots,
and through her nephew of the Guises, allowed
this persecuting family to carry on the cruel work
of his father. The illustrious chancellor, Du
Bourg, was hanged and burned in the Place de
Greve, as to which Voltaire wrote : " This murder
was of more service to Protestantism than all the
most eloquent works written by its defenders."
Cardinal de Lorraine captured many other
victims by surrounding a Protestant hotel in
the Rue des Marais Saint-Germain. This street
was the head-quarters of the reformed church,
and many of its houses communicated with one
another by means of mysterious apertures through
which the inhabitants passed when threatened
with arrest. The street in question, one of the
most historic in all Paris, was lately rechristened
by the name of Visconti in place of the one which
it had borne for more than three centuries, and
by which it was known, not only to the first
Protestants of Paris, the d'Aubignes and the

The Reformation in Paris.]

CATHERINE DE MEDICIS.

39

Du Moulins, but later on to the Duke de la
Rochefoucauld and Mme. de Sevigne, to Racine
and Voltaire, to Mile. Clairon and Adrienne
Lecouvreur, who all for a considerable time
inhabited it, or were accustomed to visit its
inhabitants. Meanwhile the reform continued
to spread. Coligny and his. two brothers, one of
whom was a cardinal, joined it openly. These
three Chatillons were now violently attacked in
the Paris churches, and Jean de Han, a monk,
took one day for his text, " Ite in Castellum
quod contra vos est," which he thus trans
lated : "March upon Chatillon, who is against
you." On assuming the regency, Catherine de
Medicis, indifferent to both religions, hesitated
between the Chatillons and the Guises. She
summoned a conference at Poissy in the hope of
bringing about a reconciliation. Theodore de
Beze represented Calvin on the occasion, and for
several months he was allowed to fulfil all the
duties of pastor at Paris. The reformed religion
was now celebrated openly, but in general beyond
the walls. Four pastors, without counting Beze,
preached regularly in the different places of
worship. One of them, Malot, had been vicar at
Saint-Andre-des-Arcs, and the chronicles of the
times speak of assemblies of from two to three
thousand Protestants. Catherine de Medicis
placed herself one day at a window in the Rue
Saint-Antoine to see the Huguenots go by to their
place of worship, and many of them, knowing the
intention of the queen, wore on that occasion
the insignia of their rank or profession. In 1562
the Consistory of Paris adopted, for the relief of
the indigent, a regulation which was read from
all the Protestant pulpits, with the names of
those who were to distribute the alms, notwith
standing the danger thus brought upon them.
Soon afterwards, indeed, a riot provoked by the
clergy of Saint-Medard disturbed the service
that was being celebrated by Malot. in the
adjoining temple of .the Patriarch. Temple and
church were invaded and sacked, and the officer
of the watch, Gabaston by name, was afterwards
hanged for having arrested indiscriminately the
rioters of both religions. The temple was now
shut up, while Saint-Medard was restored and
inaugurated anew with great pomp, numbers of
Protestants being sacrificed on the occasion. The
constable of Montmorency gained the sobriquet
of Captain Burn-bench (Brule-banc) from having
set fire to the interior of the reformed church of
Popincourt. Subsequently he burned this same
building from roof to' basement and sacked

another Protestant temple in the Rue aux
Fosses Saint- Jacques.
The edict of January having granted to the
Protestants a certain tolerance, Guise, who
boasted that he would cut this edict in half with
his sword, proved his word by the massacre of
Vassy. The Protestants of Paris were terrified
at this tragedy, but would not be discouraged.
The very day the duke returned to Paris, his
sword reeking with innocent blood, Beze went to
preach at the temple of Jerusalem, whither he
was escorted by the Prince de Cond6, a faithful
Huguenot, and by a large company of mounted
arquebusiers. During the second civil war, in January, 1568,
the citizens of Paris were, by an official pro
clamation, called upon to warn the Protestants
of the capital to absent themselves from it,
" until those who had taken arms against His
Majesty should have laid them low." In
December, after the "lame" peace, as it was
called, Parliament ordered the Protestants to
shut themselves up in their houses " to avoid
the murders which might follow." It is asserted
that ten thousand of them were assassinated dur
ing the six months which succeeded the peace,
though this figure is doubtless exaggerated.
The extermination of the heretics had for a
considerable time past been recommended to
Catherine de Medicis by Philippe II., by the
Duke of Alva, and by Pope Pius V. The queen,
long irresolute, decided suddenly, just when the
Guises had aggravated the situation by causing
Coligny to be assassinated. Catherine, as we
have seen in a previous chapter, obtained, at the
last moment, the consent of the king ; but it
was Charles's brother and successor, Henry III.,
who took the direction of the massacre and
posted himself in the middle of the bridge of
Notre Dame in order to have both banks beneath
his eye. We know how the signal for the
tragedy was given by the bell of Saint-Germain-
l'Auxerrois, and how Coligny was the first to
feel the Catholic steel. The assassins who now
plunged into their ghastly work carried a white
cross in their hat and a kerchief tied in a knot
on their arm.
At the court of the Louvre the officer of the
guard, with a list in his hand, called out the
Huguenot gentlemen who were staying in the
palace, and the king, from one of the windows,
saw the throats of his guests cut, to the number
of two hundred. It is an error, all the same, to
suppose that the massacre scarcely touched any
but the aristocratic classes ; a large portion of

40

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Reformation in Paris.

the Parisian population, merchants, workmen,
belonged to the Reformation and perished.
Towards seven in the morning Charles IX.,
armed with a blunderbuss, fired upon some of the
fugitives, wh om he failed to hit because his fowling-

now turned renegade. Conde abjured at Saint-
Germain-des-Pres and Henry of Navarre and his
sister at the Louvre. But the infant church
was fondly nursed by such devotees as Berenger
and Portal, who endowed it with a sum sufficient

THE NATIONAL BRIDGE.

piece did not carry far enough. This incident has
been denied ; but it has been gravely recorded
by Brantome, D'Aubigny, and Goulard. It was
attested moreover to Voltaire by Marshal de
Jesse. The Marshal had known the page, then
almost a centenarian, who loaded and re-loaded
the royal blunderbuss.
After the massacre the king went to the
Parliament and declared that he assumed the
whole responsibility for what had happened.
The audience of senators loudly applauded the
murderer, and the chief president overwhelmed
him with the vilest eulogies. On the 27th
August the chapter of Notre Dame formed a
special procession to thank the Almighty for the
" extirpation of the heretics now happily com
menced " ; and at the same juncture Panigarole,
bishop of Asti, preaching before the queen-
mother, Charles IX., and Henry, King of Poland,
praised the king for having "in one morning
purged France of heresy." Nor did the munici
pality of Paris omit to have medals struck " in
memory of Saint Bartholomew's Day."
More than one professor of the reformed faith

to maintain its pastors in their functions and to
educate candidates for the future ministry.
The edict of July authorised the exercise
of the reformed religion at two leagues, from
Paris. Noisy-le-Sec was chosen as the place of
worship. But in September, 1576, the congre
gation found itself assailed by the populace, and
the faithful had to abandon all public service.
The League, prepared long beforehand by the
Cardinal of Lorraine, was organised in 1576 by
two cures of Paris, a number of citizens, and
several fanatical magistrates. From this
moment Protestantism was more completely
crushed in the capital than it had been even by
the Saint Bartholomew butchery. The Spanish
ambassador reigned at Paris. Hatred of the
Reformation stifled in the breasts of the leaguers
all love of their country ; and they went to the
almost incredible length of offering, on the 20th
September, 159 1, by a formal resolution passed in
the municipal council, the city of Paris and the
crown of France to Philip II., King of Spain.
After the accession of Henry IV., in the
interval which elapsed before the issuing of the

The Reformation in Paris.]

THE EDICT OF NANTES.

4i

Edict of Nantes, which permitted Protestant
worship except within five leagues of Paris,
the sister of the new king, Catherine de
Bourbon, made use of the privilege which be
longed to the nobility of performing religious
worship in their own houses, with the doors

testants lost a large part of their advantages ; but,
become Duchess of Bar, she returned every year
to Paris and gathered the faithful around her.
This continued, despite the frequent complaints
of the clergy, until the Duchess's death in 1604.
The Edict of Nantes formally countenanced

THE RIGHT ARM OF THE SEINE FROM BOULEVARD HENRI IV.

open. The reformed church found an asylum
within her walls ; there the faithful adored
their Maker in peace. On all occasions Catherine
protected her co-religionists, and her brother,
le Bearnais, when they came to him with some
petition, used to send them on to her, saying :—
" You must apply to my sister ; your kingdom
is now under feminine rule." By the marriage
and departure of Catherine in 1599 the Pro-

the reformed religion even whilst forbidding its
adherents to assemble for worship within five
leagues of Paris. The meeting-place chosen in
1599 by the Protestants was the Chateau de
Grigny, residence of the seigneur Josias Mercier
des Bordes, a distinguished scholar as well as a
councillor of state. Several times, on returning
from Grigny, the Protestants were assailed by
the populace, acting at the instigation of such

42

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Reformation in Paris.

fanatics as the aristocratic capuchin, Ange de
Joyeuse. It was found necessary to erect extra
gibbets for those who attacked worshippers re
turning from Grigny.
This place of assembly, however, was too remote,
and at the end of six months the king trans
ferred it to Ablon - sur - Seine. Even Ablon
proved inconveniently distant, although it was
nearer the capital than the edict permitted.
The difficulties and dangers of thejourney to this
spot were great. The Protestants often went
by water, and several were accidentally drowned.
A petition presented to the king set forth that
forty infants had died through having been
carried in winter to baptism at Ablon. At
length the king found that his own Protestant
ministers could not render their duties to God
and to himself on the same day ; and Henry IV.,
yielding to the influence of Sully and of Calignon,
assigned to the Protestants of the capital, as
their place of meeting, Charenton, two leagues
distant. From that time the street and the faubourg of
Saint-Antoine were traversed on Sunday by
crowds of Huguenots, in carriages, on horseback,
or on foot ; and for their protection two fresh
gibbets had to be erected, one in the name of the
Lieutenant of the Town, the other in that of the
Chief of the Watch. Many of the Huguenots
now went to Charenton by water. On Sundays
and holidays the river was covered with boats of
all kinds, conveying, in the words of a Catholic
poet of the time,
" La flotte des brebis galeuses
Qui vont au presche a Charenton."
The lord of the manor, notwithstanding the
increased value given to his property by the
arrival of the Huguenots, many of whom estab
lished themselves in the neighbourhood of their
one recognised place of worship, protested
constantly against the toleration accorded to
them. Often the Huguenots returning from Charen
ton, where on Sunday they would pass the
entire day, were attacked ; on which an appeal
was made to the king, who took the part of his
former co-religionists. The death of Henry IV.
was a terrible blow to the French Protestants,
who were now at the mercy of the Jesuits, of
Catherine de Medicis, and of her Florentine
advisers, such as the Concinis. The principal
Protestant pastors deplored aloud from the
Charenton pulpit the death of the king, who
had endeavoured to bring about an under
standing, if not perfect harmony, between his

subjects of both religions, and whose wise tolerance.
had been the cause of his death. Ravaillac was
a fanatic who, in striking his murderous
blow, had been prompted only by his hatred of
Protestantism and of the king's concessions to
the Protestants. The temple constructed at
Charenton was pillaged and burnt in 1 62 1. In
1624 it was rebuilt on a larger scale ; and the
Protestant historians note that it was approached
through an avenue of shops, where books of all
kinds were sold, without any objection on the
part of the consistory, which, although very
strict in its rules for the conduct of the
Protestants, did not enforce the Judaic observ
ance of the Sabbath, "as practised," says a
writer of the time, by the Protestants of Scotland
and England.
Many illustrious persons still belonged to the
reformed religion. But gradually the aristocratic
families were bought over to the other side ; and
the Jesuit Garasse declared that the chufch of the
Protestants would soon be a church of beggars.
The unhappy Protestants did not in any case
neglect their poor ; and as it was found impos
sible to keep priests and monks out of the
hospitals, which were constantly invaded by
them, the chiefs of the reformed religion
established hospitals in secret places, which,
however, were closed as soon as Catholic clergy
or the public discovered them. In 1600 the
Parliament of Paris interdicted these charitable
establishments by a formal decree.
The first decisive step towards the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes was the suppression of all
representation of the Protestants in the Parlia
ments of Paris and of Normandy. In connection
with this step Louis XIV. received, though only
as a matter of form, Ruvigny, deputy general of
the reformed church, and the eloquent pastor du
Bose, of whom, after listening to the exposition
of his claims, the king said to the queen :
" He is the best speaker in my kingdom." He
suppressed, all the same, the only guarantee of
justice remaining to the French Protestants.
The Protestant consistories were now required
to admit into their assemblies representatives of
the Catholic clergy, whose mission it was to read
to them a so-called pastoral warning. Already
the minister Louvois had attempted to enforce
conversion to the Roman Catholic religion by
quartering upon the unfortunate Protestants
dragoons, whom, if they remained faithful to
their religion, they had for an indefinite time
to support. The so-called " dragonnades " were
for the most part confined to the provinces.

The Reformation in Paris.]

PROTESTANTISM IN FRANCE.

43

Paris was exempted from them, lest the king
himself should be scandalised by the scenes they
well might lead to. Louvois had sworn to
extirpate the " dangerous heresy," and he
assured the king that he was doing so by peace
ful means.
Four days after the signing of the edict,
and on the very day of its formal registration,
the Protestant temples were demolished by
the mob, who could not wait for official
measures to be taken against the buildings
already condemned. The cemetery adjoining
the temple of Charenton was profaned, and
the tombs of the Protestants violated, as, a
century later, were to be violated the tombs of
the Catholic kings. Notices were served on the
chiefs of the Protestant families, commanding
them, in the name of the king, to change their
religion. Of the recalcitrants large numbers were
sent to the Bastille, while the members of the
consistory were exiled by " lettres de cachet.'
Protestants who had been domiciled in Paris
for less than a year were ordered to quit the
capital, and the pastors in general had a fort
night given to them in which to leave France ;
while Claude, the most renowned amongst them,
was ordered to quit French territory within
twenty-four hours, being meantime watched by
one of the king's servants. In the months of
October, November, and December, 1685, no
less than 1,087 members ofthe reformed church
emigrated from Paris, 1,098 abjured their religion,
while. 3,823, after refusing to abjure, still remained
in the city. The emigration had been arranged
beforehand by Claude and his colleagues. A
constant service of guides was kept up between
Paris and the frontiers, though it was death for
those who had once quitted Paris to return.
The exiles took flight at midnight on market
days, when it was easier to pass the barriers.
Notwithstanding the menace of capital punish

ment, some half-dozen Protestant ministers
returned to Paris a year after the revocation
in order to do secret duty among their co-
religionaries remaining in the capital. Some were
sentenced to imprisonment for life in the isles of
Sainte-Marguerite, others were shut up in the
Bastille, and one of them, the celebrated
Claude (Claude Brousson, by his full name), was
hanged. Meanwhile some of the Protestants
who still ventured to stay at Paris continued
services at the English Embassy, or at the lega
tion of the United Provinces. Instead of one
chaplain the legation of the Dutch Republic
maintained two. But an edict was soon
passed forbidding French Protestants to attend
worship in the chapels of any of the foreign
ministers. Protestantism was not again to be tolerated in
France until 1787, two years before the Revolu
tion, many of whose reforms (including the
abolition of torture) had been anticipated by
the Monarchy, already condemned.
It must be added that Under the Reign of
Terror Protestantism was persecuted from a new
point of view. Under the ancient regime, the
complaint against it had been that it rejected
much which ought to be believed. The
Terrorists, when public worship had been
abolished in France, hated it for its persistent
adherence to doctrines which the enemies of
religion had proscribed.
Paris at present possesses numerous Protestant
churches representing various Protestant sects.
The Independents have six different places of
worship, and the Wesleyans two, at one
of which the service is performed in French,
English, and German. There is a Baptist chapel,
established some thirty years ago by Americans
resident in Paris, a Scotch Presbyterian church,
an American Episcopal church, an English
Wesleyan church, and three Anglican churches.

THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE.

CHAPTER IX.
THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE.
The French Educational System— Lycees and Colleges-The University of Paris- The College of France.

THE three principal establishments in France
connected with "superior instruction " are
the College of France, an independent institution
where lectures free to everyone are delivered by
the first literary and scientific men ofthe country ;
the University of France, whose chief function is
to confer degrees ; and the Sorbonne, which, when
it does not mean the building of that name, is used
to denote collectively the three faculties of which
the Sorbonne may be considered the head
quarters. As regards secondary instruction, the
lyceums {lycees) are public schools maintained by
the state ; the colleges (colleges), public schools
supported by the municipalities throughout
France. In the innumerable colleges, of which
every provincial town of the least importance
possesses one, the studies are absolutely ident
ical ; a source of infinite satisfaction to a certain

Minister of Public Instruction, who is reported
one day to have exclaimed, " It is gratifying to
reflect that at this moment in every college of
France the opening lines of the second book of
the ^Eneid are being construed."
The future masters for the different lyceums
and colleges are all educated in a special school
known as the Ecole Normal e, founded under
the First Republic, and where, according to the
government order calling it into existence, the
students have not only to receive instruction, but
to be taught the art of imparting it.
It should be noted that all the lyceums or govern
ment schools are in Paris, with the exception
only of the Lyceum of Versailles. As regards
the localisation of schools and academies of all
kinds, it will be observed that the French system
is entirely opposed to the English. Our public

The University of Paris.]

THE FRENCH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.

45

schools, like our universities, are in provincial
towns ; those of France are all concentrated in
the capital. Up to the time of the Revolution,
France had universities, many of them celebrated,
at Toulouse, Montpelier, Orleans, Cahors, Angers,
Orange, Perpignan, Aix,. Poi
tiers, Caen, Valence, Nantes,
Basancon, Bourges, Bordeaux,
Angouleme, Reims, Douai,
Pont-a-Mousson,Rennes, Pau,
Strasbourg, and Nancy. In
the year 1794 a decree of the
convention suppressed at

English university. But in the year just men
tioned all certificates of study were abolished,
and candidates for a degree had now simply to
prove themselves capable of passing the re
quired examination. The effect of this reform,

://'"''/r"mi"imm
»  "11 mi n* >i *

THE LYCEE VOLTAIRE.
one blow the whole of the provincial universities.
The idea of one university directing all public in
struction in France, and taking its orders from
one central authority, the Minister of Public In
struction, suited admirably the views of the first
Napoleon, who maintained, with improvements
of his own, the educational system introduced by
the Revolution.
There is now nothing in France corresponding
to an English university, with its different col
leges. Until the year 1850 a candidate for the
degree of bachelor of arts, or bachelor of letters,
was obliged to show that he had studied for at
least one year in each of the two upper classes of
a lyceum. ' The government lyceums thus corre
spond in a certain measure to the colleges of an

certainly favourable to students
of limited means, was at the
same time to call into existence
a host of private establish
ments corresponding to those
of our crammers.
The College of France, as
already mentioned, is in no
way connected with the modern University of
Paris. It was toward 1530 that Francis I., at
the solicitation of Guillaume Bude and Jean du
Bellay, instituted, apart from the ancient uni
versity, two free chairs, one for Greek, and the
other for Hebrew. According to a national
tradition, the university dates from Charlemagne,
who in any case occupied himself with educa
tional improvements and created at Paris some
important schools. But the formal privileges
granted to the university by the Crown can be
traced only to the reign of Philippe Augustus at
the very beginning of the thirteenth century.
Up to that time the schools in France were
dependent on the churches and monasteries ;
in Paris on the metropolitan cathedral. But

4<>

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The University of Paris

towards the end of the twelfth century the
cathedral schools had become too small for the
number of students. Thus the most celebrated
masters delivered free lectures on the hill of
Saint-Genevieve, where now stands the Pan
theon. The students, in spite of complaints
raised by the Bishop of Paris, attended the open-
air lectures in crowds, and in order to regularise
this relative liberation of the schools from the
authority of the Church, Philippe Augustus
founded, under the name of Universitas parisien-
sis magistrormn et scholarum, a teaching institu
tion which was independent alike of the Church
and of the ordinary civil and criminal jurisdic
tion. The left bank of the Seine, formerly known,
and with reason, as the University bank, became
more and more numerously inhabited, and was
soon covered with dwelling-houses, schools, and
churches. The teaching- of the Paris University
was in a measure international, as is sufficiently
indicated by its official division into four nations :
nation of France, nation of Picardy, nation of
Normandy, and nation of England, which be
came nation of Germany in 1437, when Paris was
at length delivered from the English domination
by Charles VII.
The liberal spirit in which the schools of the
University of Paris were thrown open to foreigners
could not fail to bear fruit. The students of all
countries, hastening in those distant days to
Paris, made it the intellectual capital, and at the
same time the most popular city of continental
Europe. In the course of less than a century
were seen on the benches, or, to be literal, stand
ing on the straw, of the schools of Paris, Albertus
Magnus from Germany, Duns Scotus from Scot
land, Raymond Lulli from Spain, Roger Bacon
from England, Brunetto Latini and his pupil,
Dante Alighieri, from Italy. " Eldest daughter
of our Kings," was the name given to the Uni
versity of Paris throughout France.
The history of the Paris University, with its
exclusive privileges and its special government
by its own authorities, abounds in stories of dissen
sions and open combats between the students and
the townspeople. These town-and-gown fights
were often attended by fatal results. Occasion
ally too the universities had to struggle against
the Church, and especially against the Order of
Jesuits, the object of the Jesuits being to get
everywhere into their hands the instruction of
the rising generation, so that they might eradicate,
at least in the future, all germs of Protestantism.
The order founded by Ignatius Loyola made

every endeavour to subjugate the university,
which, however, refused to admit the Jesuits, even
as students. But they were allowed to esta
blish a college of their own; and in 1564 the
rector of the university, Julien de Saint-Germain,
who was well-disposed towards the Jesuits, with
out consulting the different nations, admitted
them to "letters of scholarity," the equivalent
apparently of degrees. The University of Paris
protested, and brought the question before the
Parliament of Paris, which, however, came to no
decision ; and thenceforward war between the
university and the Jesuits was carried on with
scarcely any intermission.
Some idea of the life led by the professors and
students of the university may be gathered from
the edicts of restriction from time to time issued
in connection with the institution. Under Henry
IIL, when the discipline of the university had
somewhat declined, the use of any language for
teaching purposes except Latin was forbidden.
The members of colleges were no longer to have
women in their service, and from all colleges
fencing-masters were to be excluded. The uni
versity, with some hesitation, took part against the
Reformation ; but after the victory of Henry IV.,
it sent a deputation to wait upon him, and while
expressing its regret for any annoyance it might
have caused him, joined with him in declaring
war against the Jesuits, whom he hated, regarding
them as the promoters of more than one of the
attempts made against his life. The Jesuits were
now banished from France, but at the same time
new statutes were given to the university, by
one of which it was forbidden to receive any
student who did not belong to the Catholic
religion. Other statutes proscribed dancing,
fencing, and acting.
In 1603 the king permitted the return ofthe
Jesuits on certain conditions which they were
not likely to observe. Under the reign of Louis
XIV. the struggle between the university and
the Jesuits was particularly severe ; and to an
" apologia" issued by a friend of the Order the
theological faculty of the university replied in
these terms : —
" The whole Church looks upon you as usurpers
of the power of its pastors ; all your actions are
attempts against the sanctity of their character.
You disparage them in the pulpit, you defame
them in your books, you attack them in general,
and slander them in particular. The years of
your society can be counted by your con
tinual rebellions against the successors of the
apostles ; you rise up against them in conspiracy

and the College of France,]

THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE.

47

and with arrogance." Nevertheless the Jesuits,
when one of them became confessor to the king,
regained credit and favour, and gave to their
college the name of Louis the Great.
Under Louis XIV. an edict regulated the
teaching of law in the university, and ordered
that Roman law and French law should be taught
the history
to a close

du Plessis, founded by Geoffroi du Plessis, secre
tary to King Philippe the Long in 1517,
enlarged in the seventeenth century by Richelieu,

however, drawing

concurrently. Already,
of this institution was
the " Eldest
daughter of
the Kings "
was destined
not to survive
the fall of the
monarchy. A
decree of the
Convention dated March
20, 1794, sup
pressed the
University of
Paris, together
with the nu
merous pro
vincial uni
versities which had existed up to this time.
Of France's three great teaching institutions,
the College de France is the youngest. To return
for a moment to this establishment. Its professors,
to the number of twenty-eight, teach the language
and literature of mediaeval France, the Greek
language and literature, Latin prose and Latin
verse, the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic,
Persian, and Turkish literatures, the Sanscrit
and Chinese languages and literatures, the lan
guage and literature ofthe Slavonians, the modern
languages and literature of Western Europe ;
history, morality, and the law of nations ; com
parative legislation and political economy, archae
ology, mathematics, astronomy, general and ex
perimental physics, medicine, chemistry, the
natural history of organic and inorganic bodies,
.and comparative embryogeny. Among the cele
brated lecturers of the College of France may be
mentioned, in modern times, Michelet, Quinet,
Mickiewicz, the Polish poet (who here delivered
an admirable, if at times somewhat mystical,'
series of lectures on the Slavonians), and finally
Renan. Just opposite the College of France is the Col
lege du Plessis. " From my window at the
College of France," says M. Renan, in the preface
to his " Abbesse de Jouarre," " I witness daily the
fall, stone by stone, of the last walls of the College

and in the eighteenth
one of the centres of
the best philosoph
ical culture. There Turgot, the greatest man
in our history, received his education from the
Abbe Sigorgne, the first in France to grasp
perfectly the ideas of Newton. The College du
Plessis was closed in 1790. In 1793 and 1794 it
became the saddest of the Paris prisons. There
the " suspects '' were confined, condemned in a
sense beforehand ; whence they only issued in
order to go to the revolutionary tribunal or to
death. I often try to imagine the language these
walls, now torn open by the builders engaged in

48

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The University of Paris.

reconstruction, must have heard ; those grass-
plots whose last trees have just been cut down.
I think of the conversations which must have
been held in those large halls of the ground
floor during the hours immediately preceding
the summons ; and I have conceived a series
of dialogues which, if I wrote them, I should
call ' Dialogues of the Last Night.' The
hour of death is essentially philosophical ;
at that hour everybody speaks well, every

one is in the presence of the Infinite, and
is not tempted to make phrases. The con
dition of good dialogue is the sincerity of
the personages. Now, the hour of death is the
most sincere — when one approaches death in
happy circumstances, entirely oneself, that is to
say ; sound in mind and body, without previous
debilitation. The work I now offer the public
is probably the only one of this series that I
shall execute."

.__<M^

THE LYCEE CONDORCET.

THE COURT OF THE SORBONNE.

CHAPTER X.

THE SORBONNE.
Robert de Sorbonne — The Sorbonne, its Origin and History — Richelieu — The Revolution— The New Sorbonne— Mercier's Views.

THE Sorbonne owes its origin and its name to
Robert de Sorbonne, chaplain and con
fessor to Louis IX. Like so many other scholars
of the same period, this priest had been com
pelled to rely on alms to defray the expenses of his
education. Touched by miseries which he himself
had shared, he established a society of secular
ecclesiastics, whose function it was to give
gratuitous instruction ; and he petitioned the
king to endow the charitable enterprise with a
dwelling for those pupils who could not pay for
their lodging. Nor was his request unheeded.
Thanks to royal patronage he was able, in
1253, to open his college. Indigent scholars
were taught for nothing ; those not quite
destitute of means paid five sous and a half
weekly. The institution was directed by the
associates, who had neither superiors nor prin
cipals. The Sorbonne, as the new college was
28

soon to be called, was attached, like all other
establishments of the kind, to the University of
Paris, and the connection, throughout its long
and brilliant history, never ceased. But the ties
which bound it to this central institution became
looser and looser as the Sorbonne increased in
importance. The provisor, who after a time
made the appointments in the Sorbonne, was
himself elected by a jury composed of the local
archdeacon, the great chancellor, the masters and
the faculty of theology, the deans of law and
medicine, the rector of the university, and the
procurators of the "four nations" into which
the university was divided. The election took
place in this manner until 1524, after which the
provisor was elected by the members of the
college, the former jury of election being now
¦only called upon to confirm the choice.
If the Sorbonne was the great school of theology

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Sorbonne.

in the middle ages, it was not its cradle ;
theology was born with scholasticism in the
ninth century. It had already flourished with
Longfranc, Saint- Anselme, Abailard, and Pierre
Lombard before bearing riper fruits with Albertus
Magnus and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Already
the court of Rome submitted questions of pure
dogma to the theologians of the University of
Paris, while reserving to itself all questions of
canonical law. But the college founded in so
humble a manner by Robert de Sorbonne was
soon to become the official organ of scholastic
theology ; and in its bosom were discussed
questions which embarrassed the Church of
France and even the court of Rome. From its
walls went forth the sentences, decrees, and
censures which were to have force of law
throughout the Catholic world.
The Sorbonne was not only a teaching estab
lishment, it conferred degrees. The theses of
the Sorbonne acquired particular celebrity, the
" Sorbonic thesis " being regarded as the ideal of
the theological essay. During the middle ages
and even to the end of the seventeenth century
the Sorbonne was the great theological authority ;
but it had politics of its own which, viewed in
the present day, do not seem to have been always
in accord with its religious teaching. It took
part with Etienne Marcel in the parliamentary
and almost revolutionary movement which he
directed in opposition to the party ofthe dauphin
and of the aristocracy. It was a doctor of the
Sorbonne, the Franciscan friar, Jean Petit, who
wrote the " apologia " for the assassination of
Louis of Orleans ; and another doctor of the
same institution, Jean Larcher, who, with the
deputies of the university, publicly accused the
dauphin of the murder on the bridge of
Montereau, where, on the ioth of May, 1410,
the Duke of Burgundy, Jean Sans-Peur, was
assassinated by men belonging to the dauphin's
suite. To avenge this crime Philippe the Good,
Jean's son, seconded by the King of England,
took possession on the 20th of June, 1420, of
Montereau, which remained in the power of the
English until 1428.
The Sorbonne, representing the Church, con
demned Joan of Arc as a sorceress, com
municated its judgment to the Duke of Bedford,
and, in a petition addressed to the King of
England, demanded her extradition. When
the religious war was at its height this body
fulminated decrees in favour of the League, the
Guises, and Spain against Henry IIL and Henry IV.
It was to the Sorbonne that the Guises addressed

themselves in order to obtain theological support
for their projected usurpation. The learned
assembly did not go so far as to recommend the
assassination of Henry IIL, but it pronounced in
favour of revolt, and consigned the partisans,
first of Henry IIL and afterwards of Henry IV.,
to eternal damnation, finally offering the crown
of 'France to Philip II. of Spain. After the
triumph of Henry IV. the Sorbonne continued
for a time its seditious manifestations ; when
Cardinal de Bourbon, its "apostolic conservator,"
was arrested on the denunciation of the Pro
curator-general, it at the same time received
a reprimand from the Parliament of Paris.
Forced to submit to the new government, it
retracted its doctrine as to the lawfulness of
" tyrannicide," supported in this not very startling
retractation by the authority of the court of
Rome. Finally, under Marie de Medicis, Louis
XIII., Richelieu, and Louis XIV., the Sorbonne
was a firm supporter of the Bourbon dynasty,
together with the Church of France and the
University of Paris. Richelieu was its constant
patron'. Under Louis XIV. it took part with the
Gallican Church against the pretensions of the
court of Rome. As to the evil done or at
tempted to be done by the Sorbonne, it will be
sufficient to say that besides helping to bring
Joan of Arc to the block, it condemned Vanini,
whom the Parliament of Toulouse ordered to be
burned alive. It pronounced also against Ramus
and Descartes, the adversaries of the Aristotelian
philosophy ; Montesquieu for his " Esprit des
Lois " and Buffon for his " Natural History '' ;
besides Rousseau, Marmontel, Helvetius, Diderot,
Mably, and the whole of the Encyclopaedists.
Defenders of the Sorbonne point out with justice
that it also condemned the absurdities of many
visionaries, charlatans, and impostors, and that if
it was an obstacle in the way of science, it also
showed itself at times a barrier against supersti
tion. It opposed the Jesuits ; but what, after
all, can this count for against its condemnation
of Jeanne d'Arc, John Hus, and Vanini, to say
nothing of its encouragement and justification of
the Saint-Bartholomew massacre ? It condemned
no one to death, not having power to do so ; but,
like the Inquisition, it handed over to the civil
power the alleged infidels, apostates, and sorcerers,
whom it deemed worthy of the severest punish
ment. The boldest decree it ever issued was the
one already referred to, which was circulated
throughout France during the wars between
Protestants and Catholics. After exhorting the
Parisians to defend against King Henry ILL the

The Sorbonne.]

RICHELIEU AND THE SORBONNE.

5i

Catholic religion as menaced by him, it declared
that sovereign " degraded from his royal power,"
and, after his assassination, consigned to eternal
death everyone who dared to recognise Henry of

who represented politics without pity, as the
Sorbonne represented theology without mercy.
The tomb of the great man found its place
naturally in the church of the Sorbonne, which

'^.f:%SM:

FACADE OF THE NEW SORBONNE.

Navarre as his successor. In this denunciation
were specially included all those who treated
with him or paid taxes to him. No true Catholic,
declared the Sorbonne, could recognise as king,
"without offending God, a prince who had
lapsed into fatal heresies, even though he might
afterwards, have abjured them." This decree,
as issued by the Sorbonne, was signed by the
clergy of Paris and put into circulation through
out France.
Of all the famous men connected with the
Sorbonne, the most famous was the one known
throughout the world as Cardinal de Richelieu,

he had himself erected. The head stolen from
the coffin during the Revolution was carried
back there not many years ago ; his heart will
follow, should it ever be discovered.
The ancient Sorbonne came to an end, as a
matter of course, at the epoch of the Revolution.
It was suppressed as soon as the Revolutionists
had time to attend to it, in 1790. If the
Sorbonne was greatly indebted to the minister of
Louis XIII., it had again to thank a Richelieu
for new life and new fame when, in 1821, the
minister of Louis XVIII. made it the head and
centre of teaching throughout France. At the

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Sorbonne.

same time a body of electors was appointed who
represented, not the scholasticism and theology
of the middle ages, but modern literature and

bonne in the present day than it enjoyed of old.
The Sorbonne, however, of history, the Sorbonne
associated with severe theology and with still

•"-J.-.-'

THE CHURCH OF THE SORBONNE.

modern science. Among those named in 1821,
the year of the Sorbonne's resuscitation, may be
mentioned Biot, Poisson, Gay-Lussac, Thenard,
Haiiy, Brogniart, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
who were to be followed by such men as Dumas
(the celebrated chemist), Bulart, Dulong, Pouillet,
Milne-Edwards, and Leverrier. Nor must the
names of Guizot, Victor Cousin, Saint-Marc
Girardin, Jules Simon, and Nisard be omitted
from the list of those writers and professors who
have given even greater reputation to the Sor-

severer theological persecution, perished beneath
the first blows of the Revolution ; thus verifying
a prophecy put forth when Richelieu, while re
constructing its walls, seemed disposed to
modernise its spirit —
Instaurata ruet jamjam Sorbona. Caduca
Dum fuit, inconcussa stetit, renovata peribit.
" If," wrote Mercier at the end of the
eighteenth century, "the Academie Frangaise
is the seat of literary despotism, the Sorbonne

The Institute.)

THE INSTITUTE.

S3

may be called the throne of ignorance, super
stition, and folly. This foundation is the work
of an obscure priest, whose name it retained,
though it was afterwards enlarged, beautified,
and amply endowed by Cardinal Richelieu, who,
as we have had occasion to mention in the
foregoing description, never formed an esta
blishment which did not tend in some measure

to support his favourite plan of carrying arbi
trary power beyond all bounds. Whilst his
politics made slaves of the subjects, he sup
ported this kind of spiritual inquisition in order
to enthral their very minds. The Sorbonne was
consulted on all occasions, and the decree of a
few ignorant divines respected as the oracle of
the Deity himself."

CHAPTER XI.
THE INSTITUTE.
The Institute — Its Unique Character — The Objects of its Projectors — Its Constitution.

THE Institute — immediately facing the way
farer who crosses by the Bridge of Arts from
the right bank to the left — is, says M. Renan,
who was himself a member of it, " one of the most
glorious creations of the Revolution, and a thing
quite peculiar to France. Many countries have
academies which may rival our own by the distinc
tion of the persons composing them, and by the
importance of their labours ; France alone pos •
sesses an Institute in which all the efforts of the
human mind are bound together as in a sheaf ;
where the philosopher, the historian, the philo-
loger, the critic, the mathematician, the physicist,
the astronomer, the analyst, the economist, the
jurisconsult, the sculptor, the painter, the musi
cian, may call one another colleagues." The
simple and great men who conceived the design of
this absolutely new establishment were preoccu
pied by two thoughts : the first, admirably true,
that all the productions of the human mind have
something in common and are interdependent ;
the second, more open to criticism, but connected
in any case with all that is deepest in the French
mind, that science, literature, and art are state
affairs, recognisable in corporate form, which
the country is bound to protect, encourage, and
reward. On the last day but one of the Conven
tion, October 25th, 1795, appeared the law
destined to realise this idea, so prolific of great
things. The object of the Institute was the pro
gress of science ; the general utility and glory of
the Republic. Every year it renders an account
to the legislative body of the progress accom
plished. It has its budget, its collections, its
prizes. It sends out scientific missions at its own

expense. To form the nucleus of the institution
forty-eight persons were named, a third of the
whole number of members, the remaining two-
thirds to be nominated by the original members.
The three men to whom, in particular, this pro
ject was due, were Lakanal, Dainon, and Carnot.
Unhappily France was at that time in the
condition of a patient who is just recovering from
an attack of fever. Entire branches of human
culture seemed to have disappeared ; the moral,
political, and philosophical sciences were at the
lowest level. Literature scarcely existed. The
historical and philological sciences counted
scarcely more than one man of eminence, Sil-
vestre de Sacy. On the other hand the
physical and mathematical sciences were at one
of their highest states of development. The
division of the institute into classes and sections
was affected by this condition of things. There
were originally three classes ; one answered pre
cisely to the Academy of Sciences as it now
exists, and contained nearly the same, sections ;
the second was called the class of moral and
political science ; the third represented Litera
ture and the Fine Arts. It embraced what
is now known as the French Academy, the
Academy of Fine Arts, and the greater part of
the Academy of Inscriptions. The principal error
of this division was that it took no count of his
torical science. To tell the truth, the mistake
was excusable, since the science in question had
then scarcely come into existence in France.
Historical science presupposes long traditions,
together with a refined and, up to a certain
point, aristocratic society. Philosophy, on the

54

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Institute.

other hand, cannot be made to order, and defies
classification. Something rather scholastic,
savouring of the pedagogue, presided over this
primitive distribution. The second class had a
section called " Analysis of sensations and ideas."
Six persons were constantly occupied with this
difficult labour. The third class comprised eight
sections, which were entitled : Grammar,
Ancient Languages, Poetry, Antiquities and
Monuments, Painting and Sculpture, Architec
ture, Music, and Declamation."
This organisation lasted six years ; to be subse
quently modified by various regulations. In 1816,
immediately after the Restoration, a serious blow
was struck at the Institute, whose revolutionary
origin was not forgotten. The First Consul had
suppressed the class of moral and political
sciences, without depriving of their titles those
who had belonged to these classes. The case
was not the same in 18 16, when twenty- two
persons, with the painter David, the Bishop
Gregoire, Monge, Carnot, Lakanel, and Sieyes,
were deprived of a title on which they themselves
conferred honour. On the other hand seventeen
persons received, by royal edict, a title which has
no value except when it is conferred on a man of
letters or of science by the free suffrage of his
peers. Under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. science
was held as of no account, and the academy
which represented historical studies was invaded
by gentlemen of the chamber, who had neither
literary nor scientific claims. The Duke of
Berry, the Duke of Angouleme, everyone con
nected with the royal family or with the court
could be admitted to the honours of the Institute.
M. Renan declares that there were candidates so
degraded as to wish to become members of the
Institute simply that they might wear an em
broidered uniform and carry a sword.
The Revolution of 1830 brought better days,
though the Legitimist party, defeated in the
public street, had still the majority in all the
academies. Gradually the slightly-educated
men of modern fashion and ancient birth —
" bene nati, bene vestiti, moderate docti," as used
to be said at All Saints, were eliminated, or
rather were allowed to disappear in the ordinary
course of nature without being replaced.
Such as it now exists, "the Institute," says M.
Renan, " is one of the essential elements of in
tellectual labour in France, controlled as it
is by three powers, neither of which can be
allowed to reign absolutely — the government,
the academies, and the public. These three

great patrons are not always of one mind, and
the divisions between them afford the necessary
guarantee of liberty for thinkers, writers, and in
ventors. Constituted into irresponsible senates,
the academies would often show themselves
narrow, egotistical, and self-willed. The gov
ernment, possessing means of action superior to
any the academies can possess, corrects at need
their unjust exclusiveness ; while the public,
with the crown of glory it holds in its hand, can
always console those who, in spite of everything,
are kept out. Alone privileged to decide in in
tellectual questions, the government would often
be too much influenced by personal considera
tions. But the academies bring it back to a
healthy appreciation of the men themselves,
while the control exercised by the public pre
vents it from yielding everything to court favour
or party interests. The public is often a bad
judge ; it is incapable of appreciating certain
scientific merits. The government and the
academies can enable scientific men to dispense
with public encouragement in order to pursue
those special studies which fifty persons in
Europe follow and understand, while they at the
same time do justice on the intriguers and
charlatans who contrive so often to enlist the
suffrages of the public and the favours of
journalists. Nowhere is the unity of power more
dangerous than in intellectual matters. Intel
lectual liberty results from contrary forces,
unable to absorb one another, and helping by
their very rivalry the cause of progress."
The Institute is composed of five academies.
I. The French Academy, founded in 1635 by
Richelieu, with forty members, of which mention
will afterwards be made in a special article.
II. The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-
lettres, founded in 1663 by Colbert, with forty
titular members, ten free members, eight foreign
associates, and fifty correspondents. III. The
Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666 by Colbert,
with sixty-five titular members, ten free members,
eight foreign associates, and ninety-two corre
spondents. IV. The Academy of Fine Arts,
formed between the years 1648 and 1671 by the
union of the three academies of sculpture and
painting, of music, and of architecture ; with
forty titular members, ten free members, ten
foreign associates, and forty correspondents. V.
The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences,
with forty titular members, six free members, six
foreign associates, and from thirty to forty cor
respondents. The Institute is administered by a commission

The Academie FranQaise.]

THE ACADEMIE FRANQAISE.

55

composed of a president, a secretary, and a
treasurer, all of them members. Each of the
academies has a president and a perpetual
secretary. The Academy of Sciences has two
perpetual secretaries. The French Academy has
a director, a chancellor, and a perpetual secretary.
Members of the academies are elected by the
members of each of them. Under the Monarchy
the election had to be confirmed by the decree
of the sovereign ; and on two occasions under the
Restoration King Louis XVIII. refused to approve
the elections of the Academy of Sciences. The
French Academy is the only one of the five
which enjoys liberty of election. The new
member is presented to the chief of the state by
the perpetual secretary. In 1852, under the
Second Empire, M. Berryer, asp a Legitimist,
refused to be presented, which was not allowed to
invalidate his election.
Every two years the whole body of the Insti
tute is summoned to decree a prize of 20,000

francs, founded by the Emperor Napoleon,
for "the work or the discovery most fitted to
honour or to serve the country." On
these occasions each of the academies puts
forward a candidate, in support of whose claims
all the members of the Institute give their
suffrages. Every year, on the 14th of August, the Institute
holds a public meeting at which the members of
all the academies are invited to attend. The
Palace of the Institute, also known as the Palais
Mazarin, is the ancient college founded in con
formity with one of the clauses of Cardinal
Mazarin's will, and constructed in 1663 on the
site of various mansions, including the Hotel de
Nesle, with its famous tower. The Institute
possesses a choice, and at the same time copious,
library, which is not absolutely free to the public,
but to which admission can be obtained by pre
senting the card of one of the members of the
Institute.

CHAPTER XII.
THE ACADEMIE FRANCAISE.
The Academie FranQaise — Its Foundation by Richelieu — Its Constitution — The " Forty-first Chair."

THE French Academy, the most celebrated of
the five academies included in the Institute,
owes its origin to Cardinal de Richelieu, who had
conceived the idea of basing the glory of France
not only on the power of her arms, but also on the
influence of her language and literature. Men
of letters had been accustomed in France, since
the time of Ronsard, to assemble periodically for
the discussion of literary subjects ; and the great
minister determined to give to this species of
association a regular and legal form. Accord
ingly, on the 2nd of January, 1635, the newly
founded French Academy received letters patent
signed by Louis XIII. ; when the Parliament,
jealous of this new power, refused for two years
to register what it looked upon as a parliament
of writers. The first task undertaken by the
French Academy was to purify and fix the
language. This has occupied it more or less
fully throughout its existence, though at this
moment the best dictionary of the French
language is not the one issued by the French

Academy, but the dictionary of M. Littre, whom,
on the recommendation — one might almost
say denunciation — of Monseigneur Dupanloup,
Bishop of Orleans, the Academy rejected. Apart
from its ordinary dictionary, of which six editions
have appeared, the first in 1694, the sixth and last
in 1835, the Academy has long been at work on a
special etymological dictionary, with which, how
ever, it has made but little progress ; nor can it
be said to have succeeded at any period of its
existence in making itself the representative of
contemporary literature.
It consisted, from the beginning, of forty
members, to each of whom was assigned a
particular seat, designated as a " fauteuil " or
arm-chair, though, as a matter of fact, the
academicians have always sat on benches. On
the death of an academician his particular "chair"
becomes vacant, and his successor is named by
the thirty-nine survivors. Among the first
French Academicians appointed in 1634 and
1635 only four names are to be found with which

56

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Academie Francaise.

the ordinary student of French literature could
be supposed to be well acquainted : those of
Voiture (twelfth chair), Vaugelas (fourteenth
chair), Balzac (nineteenth chair), and Chapelain
(thirty-seventh chair). The modern Balzac, the
greatest novelist of France, if not the greatest
novelist the world has seen, was never a mem
ber of the Academy ; and M. Arsene Houssaye
(who will scarcely be invited to become one
of the forty " Immortals ") has written a book
called "The Forty -first Chair," in which he
shows that throughout the history of the
Academy there has always been some writer
of the first eminence for whom, if no other
could have been offered to him, a forty -first chair
should have been found. Voltaire (who in 1747
was elected to the twelfth chair) may be said to
have anticipated Arsene Houssaye's view when
he observed that the Academy was an assembly
to which noblemen, prelates, eminent lawyers,
men of the world, "and even writers" were
admitted. As a rule, men of learning have more
chance of being elected than men of talent.
Birth, moreover, social position, and conduct,
count for much. Alexandre Dumas the elder
was never asked to join the Academy ; and
it was understood that if he proposed himself he
would not be accepted. For this reason
Alexandre Dumas the younger refused for
many years, and until his father's death, to
join the Immortals, though he could have been
elected long before had he chosen to put himself
forward. Originally the French Academy
would, on rare occasions, invite a distinguished
writer to join its body, but in consequence
of some refusals (one of which came from
Beranger in the form of a song) it now elects
no one who has not first of all asked to be
received. The style of man peculiarly acceptable as a
member of the Academy was well described by
M. Guizot when one day the merits of a candidate
were being discussed in his presence. " I shall
vote for him," said Guizot ; " for whatever may
be said on the subject, he has the qualities of a
true academician ; he has a good demeanour, he
is very polite, he is decorated, and he has no
opinions. I know that he has written a few
books, but what of that ? A man cannot be
perfect." To return to M. Arsene Houssaye and his
forty-first chair, here are a few of the names by
which that absent article of furniture might have
been adorned.
1. Descartes, from whom dates, in France at

least, true liberty of thought. Great writer as
well as profound thinker, the author of the
" Discours sur la Methode," possessed every quali
fication for election to the Academy. " Qui bene
latuit bene vixit," however, was his motto, and
he was allowed to remain in the obscurity he
loved. 11. Pascal, author ofthe " Lettres Provinciales,"
and of the admirable "thoughts" which he did
not even think it worth while to put together,
troubled himself as little about the Academy as
did the Academy about him.
hi. Moliere, the great comedy-writer, was also
an actor, and for that reason, considering the
prejudices of the time, could not be admitted
to the Academy.
After Moliere's death his bust was placed in
the Hall of Meeting, and Saurin wrote this verse
in his honour :
" Rien ne manque a sa gloire ; il manquait a la notre."*
iv. La Rochefoucauld, the famous author of
the "Maxims," would not think of entering the
Academy because, as he said, it was impossible
for him to make a speech of even a few lines ;
and an address on being elected, containing a
eulogium in honour of the member replaced, is
expected from each new academician.
v. The author of the Historical and Critical
Dictionary was an academy in himself. Every
thing, said someone who knew the work, is to
be found in Bayle ; but. you must know where
to look for it. He worked fourteen hours a day,
and died without having time to think of the
French Academy, whence, in any case, his free
unorthodox opinions would certainly have ex
cluded him.
vi. Regnard, the best French comedy writer
after Moliere, was too much occupied with his
own work and with amusing himself to dream
of joining the French Academy, where, moreover,
by reason of his loose life, he had but little chance
of being elected.
vn. J. B. Rousseau, who in the days before
Andre Chenier, Beranger, Victor Hugo, and
Alfred de Musset was justly regarded as the first
lyric poet of France, did not belong to the
Academy. He left Paris, it is true, for some
scandalous verses attributed to him, but which
he was never proved to have written ; and he
died in exile.
viii. Vauvenargues — always to be remembered
by the finest of his many fine thoughts, "des
grandes pensees viennent du cceur " — died young,
* Nothing was wanting to his glory ; he was wanting to ours.

The Academie Francaise.]

THE "FORTY -FIRST CHAIR.'

so that the Academy may be said not to have
had time to elect him.
ix. Lesage, author of "Gil Bias" and of several
comedies, married the daughter of a car
penter, which might well have told against his

francs annually, he assigned to Piron a pension
for that amount.
xii. Jean Jacques Rousseau was never asked
to join the Academy, nor did he ever show any
wish to belong to it.
xiii. Diderot was naturally not an
academician. xiv. Mably,the learned and vigorous
publicist, who, before socialism had
been formulated into a creed, put
forth socialistic views, replied to many
persons who urged him to
become a candidate for aca
demical honours : " If I were
a member of the Academy

THE DOME OF THE PANTHEON, SPIRE OF ST. STIENNE DU MONT, AND TOUR DE CLOVIS.

election. But his exclusion from the Academy is
generally attributed to his having failed to write
a tragedy. x. The Abbe Prevost, author of " Manon
Lescaut," was not a member of the Academy ;
and it is quite possible that the fact of his
having written " Manon Lescaut " may have kept
him out.
xi. Piron, already mentioned as the author of
a famous epigram against the Academy, was
really elected to it. But to be valid, the election
had to be confirmed by the sovereign, and Louis
XV. would not ratify the Academy's choice.
" What are the emoluments of the place ? " asked
the king ; and being told that an academician
received, by way of honorarium, one thousand

people would perhaps say, ' Why does he belong
to it ? ' I would rather hear them say, ' Why
does he not belong to it ? ' "
xv. The poet, Andre Chenier, one of the
victims of the Revolution, was never a member
of the French Academy ; nor was Mirabeau
(xvi.), nor Camille Desmoulins (xvii.).
xviii. Beaumarchais not only wrote brilliant
comedies, but took part in all kinds of specula
tions, some of them hazardous ; and it may be
for this reason, but possibly also because he was
looked upon as only a playwright, that he was
never asked to join the Academy. Neither
Chamfort (xix.) nor Rivarol (xx.) were Acade
micians. Lamennais, who, from the infallibility
of the Pope passed to the infallibility of

;S

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Academie Francaise.

the people, was never a member of the
Academy. Women are not admitted to the Academy, or
Mme. de Lefayette, Mme. Dacier, Mme. Cotin,
Mme. de Stael, perhaps even the most illustrious
of them all, George Sand, might have been
academicians. Scarcely, however, George Sand.
In ancient days a dramatist seems to have had
no chance of being elected to the Academy unless
he had produced tragedies. Corneille, Racine,
Voltaire, were all academicians, whereas Moliere,
Regnard, and Lesage were all excluded. The
modern Academy has shown itself less prejudiced.
Scribe was a member of the Academy, and so
is Labiche, who, in a smaller way, may be re
garded as the Moliere of our time.
Suppressed, as too aristocratic, under the
Revolution, the Academy came to life again as
a literary branch of the Institute, and under the
First Empire resumed a more independent exist
ence in something like its old historic form.
Since its revival it has traversed the Empire, the
Restoration, the reign of Louis Philippe, the
Republic of 1 848, and the Second Empire. Finding
itself sufficiently in accord with the three first
governments, and tolerating the Republic of
1848, the Academy objected, it would seem, to
the Second Empire ; in proof of which it need
only be mentioned that not one of Napoleon III.'s
political men was ever admitted to the Academy.
This literary society has now had time enough to

get accustomed to the Third Republic, which has
lasted in France longer than any governmental
system since the downfall of the ancient
Monarchy. The Academy has plenty of funds at its dis
posal, arising from donations made to it at one
time or another, and it receives annually from
the state a sum of 85,000 francs. It awards prizes
for eloquence and prizes for poetry ; prizes for
virtue (the celebrated "priz Monthyon ") and
prizes for the best work of fiction, regarded from
a literary, artistic, and moral point of view. This
prize was adjudged to M. Alphonse Daudet for
his "Fromont jeune et Risler aine," of which the
moral tendency would not, perhaps, be obvious
to everyone, though as a rule the works crowned
by the Academy are such as a careful girl might
safely allow her own mother to read. A prize of
20,000 francs was voted to M. Thiers for his
"History ofthe Consulate and ofthe Empire," but
the money was returned by the grateful historian
on the understanding that the interest it pro
duced should be given annually as a prize for the
best essay on some historical subject. A prize of
4,800 francs, founded by Dr. Toirac, is given
annually for the best comedy in verse or prose
played during the previous year at the Theatre
Francais ; and M. Louis Langlois, a famous
writer of Latin elegiacs, has founded an annual
prize of 1,500 francs for the best translation in
verse or prose of a Greek, Latin, or other foreign
work.

The Pantheon.]

THE PANTHfiON.

59

CHAPTER XIII.
THE PANTHEON. i
The Church of Clovis— The Church of Sainte Genevieve— France in the Thirteenth Century— The Building of the New Church under
Louis XV. — Mirabeau and the Constituent Assembly — The Church of Sainte-Genevieve becomes the Pantheon.

THE College of France and the Sorbonne stand
close together at the corner of the Rue Saint-
Jacques and the Rue des Ecoles ; and between
the College of France and the new Sorbonne, on
the right, stands the Lyceum of Louis the Great
(Lycee Louis le Grand), formerly a Jesuit college,
fo"unded by the order in 1550 in the Hotel de
Clermont ; the property of Cardinal de Praat
in virtue of letters patent which the Parliament
of Paris declined to register until some dozen
years, after they had been issued. Expelled from
Paris after the attempt made by Jean Chatel on
the person of Henry IV., the Jesuits did not
again obtain permission to teach until 16 18.
Amongst their celebrated pupils were some who
might well be suspected of having been educated
elsewhere — Moliere, for instance, and Voltaire.
Originally known as the College of Clermont,
this institution became, in virtue of letters patent,
a royal foundation in 1662, when it received the
name of Louis the Great. It was afterwards, in
1753, connected with the university. Here,
indeed, until the time of the Revolution, the
assemblies of the university were held, as well
as those of the "four nations" included in it.
The Revolution brought the Lyceum, with its
monarchical name, to an end; but it was revived
at the time of the Revolution, when it was once
more called " College Louis le Grand." Public
institutions, however, like streets, ships, and
theatres, change their names in France with
each new form of government. The Lycee
Louis le Grand was called, under the Re
public, the Consulate, and the Empire, the
College de l'Egalite ; and under the Republic
of 1848, when M. Carnot was Minister of Public
Instruction, College Descartes.
A few more steps, and from the point where
the Rue Saint- Jacques is intersected by the Rue
Soufflet, may be perceived the Pantheon, the
name given to the imposing edifice which under
monarchical governments has always been known
as the Church of Sainte-Genevieve.
On the site of the Pantheon stood originally
a church dedicated by Clovis to the Holy Apostles.
It was destroyed by the Normans in one of their
incursions, and replaced soon afterwards by

the Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve. The bell which
tolled in this once-celebrated edifice hangs to-day
in the Lycee Corneille.
For a number of centuries the Church of Sainte-
Genevieve seems to have had an uneventful history.
Dulaure, however, in that strange book, " Les
Singularites Historiques," gives some remarkable
details in regard to the life led and the actions
performed by the clergy attached to Saint-
Genevieve, and indeed by the French clergy
generally. Under the reign of Louis VIL, styled the
Young, Pope Eugene IIL, says this writer, driven
out of Rome, came in 1145 to Paris, and a few
days after his arrival wished to celebrate mass at
the Church of Sainte-Genevieve. The canons to
do him honour brought before the altar a large
silk carpet, on which the Pope knelt to pray.
After the mass the sovereign pontiff retired to
the vestry, when his servants, lay and ecclesiastic,
took possession of the carpet, claiming that it
belonged to them simply because the Pope had
made use of it. The servants of the canons being
of a different opinion snatched the carpet from
the hands of the Pope's servants. The carpet,
dragged on one side and the other, gave way
and was soon in pieces ; the accident caused
insults on both sides followed by blows. The
king, who had witnessed the tumult, went
forward to stop it ; his authority, however, was
powerless against the fury of the combatants,
and in the confusion he himself was struck.
Victory remained with the holders of the place
—the attendants in the Church of Sainte-Gene
vieve. The Pope's followers, with torn clothes and
bleeding faces, went before their master, who
complained to the king and begged him to
punish the insult. Thereupon the Pope and the
king resolved to change the constitution of the
Sainte-Genevieve Monastery.
It was first resolved to send away the canons
and replace them by monks from Cluny, but this
idea was abandoned. A new abbe was named
and twelve new canons were introduced from
the Abbey of Saint-Victor, who were formally
installed in the Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve, to
the great displeasure of the former canons, who

6o

PARIS, OLD AND- NEW.

[Tho Pantheon.

did all in their power to get rid of these
strangers. They employed against them calumnious
threats and even violence. In the excesses of
their animosity they ordered their servants to
go in the night and break in the doors of the
church, take possession of the building, and
prevent the new canons from singing the matins,
uttering shrieks which prevented them from
being heard.
In spite of the precautions taken by the Abbe
Suger, in charge of the church, they took

THE PANTHEON, FROM THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS

possession of a great portion of the treasure,
detaching from the shrine of Sainte-Genevieve
gold ornaments which weighed fourteen marks,
their object being to get together a sum suffi
ciently large to send to the Pope in order to
prevail upon him to change his resolution in
regard to the monastery. The conduct of the
canons caused all kinds of reports to be circulated ;
among others one to the effect that the head of
Sainte-Genevieve had been cut off and removed
from her shrine, whereupon the shrine was
solemnly opened and the body of the saint
displayed, with its head, while at the same time
the Te Deum was sung.
Those indeed were lawless times ; nor had
matters improved in Paris in the next century,
when Jacques de Vitry, Archbishop Cardinal
and Legate of the Pope in France, wrote such
an account of life in Paris as Pope Eugene III.
would doubtless have approved.
" Although the Lord has said," wrote Jacques

de Vitry in his "Western History," "that it is
more blessed to give than to receive, the men of
our time, above all those who are in a position
to command others, do not confine themselves
to extorting money from their subjects by
requiring from them unlawful presents, or by
filling their greedy hands with the product of
the taxes and exactions with which they so
unjustly oppress them ; they do far worse. The
thefts, the rapines, and the acts of violence which
they exercise, now openly, now in secret on the
wretches under their dependence, render their
cruel tyranny insupportable. These
lords, notwithstanding the pompous
titles of which they are so proud,
do not omit to go out robbing and
to perform the trade of mere
thieves ; also that of brigands, for
they ravage whole tracts of country
with their incendiarism. They
respect nothing, not even the pro
perty of the monasteries, nor of the
churches. They profane even the
sanctuary, from which they carry
away the objects consecrated to
the celebration of the mass. When
ever, for the slightest causes, dis
putes arise between the poor and
their lords and masters, the latter
succeed through their satellites in
selling the property of these un
happy beings. On the highways
you see them, covered with iron,
attack the passers-by without sparing
either the pilgrims or the monks. If they wish
to exercise personal vengeance against simple,
innocent men, they attack them through their
bandits, scoundrels who follow the streets of the
towns and boroughs, or who, concealed in secret
places, lay traps for these poor wretches in order
to catch them and shed their blood. On the sea
they are pirates, and without fearing the anger
of God, they plunder passengers and merchants,
in many cases burning the ships and drowning
in the waves those whom they have despoiled.
Princes and nobles without faith are the asso
ciates of these robbers. Far from protecting
their subjects and maintaining them in peace,
they oppress them ; far from repressing the
rascals and keeping them down through the fear
of punishment, they favour them, become their
patrons, and for the money they receive from
them help them in their scandalous actions. The
French nobles are like unclean dogs, who, always
famishing, dispute with greedy crows the flesh of

The Pantheon.]

FRANCE IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

6 1

carcases. The nobles, by the agency of their
provosts and their satellites, persecute the poor,
rob the widow and the orphan, lay snares for
them, pick quarrels with them, and attribute to
them imaginary crimes in order to extort money.
It is a common practice with them to put in
prison and load with chains men who have com
mitted no offence, and to make these innocent
persons support cruel tortures in order to extract
sums of money from them. This is all done in
order to obtain supplies for their prodigality,
their luxuries, their superfluities, their mad
expenditure on the vanities of the cen-

modern stage, is constantly disproved by history.
These men, to whom so many glorious exploits,
so many generous actions are attributed, were

tury,

usurers, to support

mimes, singers, actors, jugglers, parasites
and flatterers, veritable dogs of their
courtyards." This sketch," says Dulaure, "traced
by a man of serious character
how great was the evil, how excessive
Was the disorder, how entirely all
principles were subverted. Such were

PLACE DU PANTHEON.

the knights of the twelfth and thirteenth cen
turies, whose loyalty, so much exalted in
novels, in poetical compositions, and on our

;f™~ merciless brigands, wretches who
-7~f_.. would now figure at the hulks
or in the dungeons of Bicetre."
Some idea of the extreme corruption of the
French clergy in the thirteenth century may be
formed from a letter written by Pope Innocent
III. in 1203 to the Abbe of Saint-Denis, close to
" There are," he said, " in your town
priests who, abusing the clerical privilege, go
through the streets at night and visit the most
disreputable houses, breaking in the doors and
taking the same liberties with the daughters of
respectable citizens. The provost and the officers
of justice, from respect for the liberties of the

62

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Pantheon.

clerical order, do not dare to lay hands on them ;
and if you, my son, wish to stop these disorders,
the culprits at once appeal to us, invoke our
authority, ignore your jurisdiction, escape the
canonical punishment, and continue with audacity
their lawless habits." The Pope then authorises
the Abbe of Saint-Denis to exercise against these
" priestly libertines " all ecclesiastical powers,
without attending to their appeals.
The period of religious and warlike fanaticism
was also a period of licentiousness and perse
cution. The Jews, at the chivalrous time of the
Crusades, were particularly unhappy. Their
faith, their wealth, their usurious practices, ex
posed them at all times to persecution, and the
Crusaders, before starting for the Holy Land,
habitually massacred them. Kings drove them
from the country, and then, on payment of
large sums, allowed them to return. Dulaure
(" Singularity Historiques ") attributes simply
to avarice the accusations, always justified by
the fanaticism of the people, which rulers brought
against them, and which were withdrawn on
payment of money.
In 1290 a woman living at Paris had pawned
some clothes for thirty sous to a Jew named
Jonathan, and wishing to take them out for the
Easter holidays without repaying the money ad
vanced, was told, according to her sworn testi
mony, that she might do so if she would bring to
the Jew a piece of the Holy Sacrament, which she
did. Then the Jew thrust his penknife into the
Host, from which blood flowed in abundance
without in any way terrifying him. Then he
took a nail and hammered it into the Host ;
threw it into the fire, when it hovered above the
flames ; plunged it into a kettle of boiling water,
which it reddened with its blood, receiving mean
while no injury. These miracles did not frighten
Jonathan. The son of this Jew, seeing Christians
go to church, said to them, " It is useless for you
to pray to your God, my father has killed him."
Then a woman who lived next door to Jonathan
entered his house under pretext of getting a light,
and took away the Host in the skirt of her dress ;
after which she placed it in a wooden vessel and
carried it to the cure of Saint- Jean-en-Greve, to
whom she narrated what she had seen. The
Bishop of Paris had Jonathan arrested, tried to
convert him, and as the Jew refused, burnt him
alive. "Jonathan," says Dulaure, in commenting on
this strange story, the authenticity of which he
regards as undeniable, " possessed a large fortune.

Was he convicted in any legal manner ? Why
was not the woman brought to justice who gave
the Host to Jonathan ? She was more criminal
than the Jew. Everything in this process makes
one suspect that an odious plot had been woven
against the Israelite in order to get hold of his
fortune." It was not the Jews alone, however, who were
maltreated in these cruel times. How severely
Marguerite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis X., and
Blanche and Jeanne de Bourgogne, her sisters-in-
law, were punished for their undeniably licentious
lives. The Abbey of Maubuisson, near Pontoise,
was the theatre of their misdeeds. Their princi
pal accomplices were Philippe and Gauthier
d'Aunay, and they were both of them maltreated,
skinned alive, and then decapitated and hung by
the arms to the gallows. A beadle who had
been mixed up with the princesses' intrigues was
condemned to the gibbet, and a monk who had
played a still more active part in connection with
them was tortured to death. Queen Marguerite,
after being imprisoned in the Chateau Gaillard
with her sister-in-law Blanche, was strangled
there in 131 5 ; Jeanne was detained in captivity
at the Chateau of Dourdan — that same Jeanne
de Bourgogne who, according to the tradition,
threw from the Tour de Nesle into the Seine the
students of whose discretion she wished to
make sure.
But to return to the Church of Sainte-Genevieve,
which, though by its site one of the very oldest
in Paris, dates, by its structure, only from the
eighteenth century. In 1754 Louis XV, finding
himself seriously ill, vowed " that if, through the
intercession of Sainte-Genevieve, he recovered, he
would raise to her honour a new and sumptuous
temple." Restored to health he showed himself
ready to keep his word. The architect employed
to plan the structure was Soufflot, a man imbued
with memories of Rome, where he had passed
several years of his life. On the 6th of Septem
ber, 1764, the first stone of the new church was
laid by Louis XV. The construction had ad
vanced far, and the dome had already been com
menced, when Soufflot perceived with horror
that the massive edifice threatened collapse, ugly
cracks showing themselves here and there in the
masonry. In despair, full of self- distrust, and
harassed by the raillery of his critics, Soufflot
died in 1720, without seeing the completion of
his work. Rondelet, who took his place, substi
tuted for the graceful but fragile pilasters and
columns of his predecessor, heavy masonry

The Pantheon.]

THE CHURCH OF STE -GENEVIEVE.

63

supports devoid of beauty, but at least capable of
keeping the roof aloft. For the pursuance of his
undertaking, however, he required money, and
the want of it more than once suspended or re
tarded his operations. Until 1789 the building
went on with exasperating slowness. Then,
however, it received an unexpected impetus.
Mirabeau had just died. The Constituent
Assembly wished to give the great orator a tomb
worthy of him, and at the same time to create a
monument in which might be brought together
the tombs of all those great citizens who had
deserved well of their country : to create a
Westminster Abbey. This monument already
existed ; for it was precisely a sort of Pantheon
that Soufflot, never suspecting to what purpose
his edifice would be turned, had constructed.
" In a civic transport," says M. E. Quinet, " the
Constituent Assembly baptised with the name of
Pantheon a monument which now for the first
time seemed to receive a soul. The church soon
became a temple of Renown — a place where the
People gather to pronounce their judgment on
the dead. This is why that colonnade bears its
splendours so high aloft ; why the cupola lifts
itself up as though it were a crown on the head
of Paris. Here occurs the apotheosis, not of a
shepherdess — Sainte-Genevieve, that is to say —
but of France, of the country, in the form of
illustrious men who have gone to breathe the air
of another shore. What had been blamed as
superfluous luxury for the prophetess of Nan-
terre was assuredly necessary for the glorification
of glorious men. How could the columns be
high enough, the capitals proud enough, the
wreaths rich enough to celebrate those to whom
their terrestrial country owed terrestrial honours ?
The defects which had been found in the church
became so many beauties in the Pantheon."
The assembly voted the following decree :
" Art. I. The new edifice of Sainte-Genevieve shall
be used for the reception of the ashes of the great
men belonging to the period of French liberty.
Art. II. The legislative body shall alone decide
to whom this honour is to be awarded. Art.
III. Honore Riquetti Mirabeau is judged worthy
to receive such honour. Art. IV. The legislature
shall not, in the future, have power to decree this
honour to any of its members who may die ;
that is a question which shall be decided by the
succeeding magistracy. Art. V. Any exceptions
which may be made in favour of great men who
died before the Revolution, shall be decided only
by the legislative body. Art. VI. The directory
of the department of the Seine shall with

promptitude put the edifice of Sainte-Genevieve
into a condition to fulfil its new functions, and shall
cause to be engraved over the pediment these
words, ' To the great men of a grateful country.'
Art. VII. Until the new church of Sainte-
Genevieve is finished the body of Riquetti
Mirabeau shall repose beside the ashes of
Descartes, in the vault ofthe old church."
The remains of Voltaire were transported to
the Panthe'on soon after those of Mirabeau, and
with a pomp no less magnificent. On the 30th
of May, 1791, Gossin, deputy for Bar-le-Duc,
addressed the Tribune in an enthusiastic out
burst thus : " It was on the 30th of May that
the honours of sepulture were refused to Voltaire,
and it is on the same day that the national
gratitude must acquit itself of its duty of
reverence towards one who has prepared men
for toleration and liberty." The procession
which accompanied the relics of Voltaire on
their conveyance to the Pantheon was imposing
in the extreme. Representatives of numerous
corporations and professions attended to do
homage to his memory, and at one point in the
cortege eight women dressed in white, and
carrying a statue of Liberty which appeared to
be pointing to a complete edition of Voltaire's
works, were borne along in a gilded car. Finally
came the sarcophagus, drawn by twelve white
horses. After halts innumerable the solemn
procession drew up before the Pantheon to the
flare of torches.
The name of Pantheon, sufficiently heathen in
character, had not hitherto been applied to the
church of Sainte-Genevieve ; but it appeared a
few days later in a petition demanding the same
honours for Rousseau, and signed by poets,
artists, and scholars. The Assembly would
willingly have acceded, but such was the resist
ance of the inhabitants of Montmorency, who
eagerly requested that the ashes of this great
writer might be left in their midst, that it deferred
its decision.
On the 2 ist of January, 1793, the Convention
decreed that the body of Lepelletier, deputy of
Saint-Fargeau, who had been assassinated for
having voted the death of the king, should be
translated to the Pantheon. Then Marat, to
whom, after the stab of Charlotte Corday, the
Convention had already erected a mausoleum on
the Place du Carrousel, was judged worthy of
the Pantheon. On the 25th of November, 1793,
Marie Joseph Chenier, speaking before the
Tribune, and armed with documents, proved
the transactions which Mirabeau had had with

64

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Pantheon.

the Court, contrasting therewith the disinterest
edness of Marat, whose remains, as he eloquently
maintained, should displace at the Pantheon
those of Mirabeau, unworthy of such a resting-
place. The Convention adopted his propos
itions in a decree which was not executed
until after the fall of Robespierre, on the 22nd of
September, 1794. The official programme of
the ceremonies, still extant, is interesting enough.
After having fixed the order and the route of
the cortege the authors of the programme added :
" The procession will stop when it arrives on the
Place of the Pantheon ; a tipstaff of the Conven
tion will advance towards the door of entrance,
and there will be read the decree which excludes
from the Pantheon the relics of Mirabeau.
Thereupon the body of Mirabeau shall be con
veyed out of the precincts of the Pantheon, and
handed over to the commissary of police for that
section. Then the body of Marat shall be placed
in triumph on a platform elevated in the
Pantheon . . All citizens assisting at this
ceremony shall be unarmed." From the last
injunction it is evident that the authorities feared
the possibility of a riot. Everything, however,
passed off quietly. The body of Mirabeau was
laid in a corner of the cemetery of Saint-Etienne-
du-Mont. At length, on the 19th of October, 1794, the
turn of Rousseau came. His body, borne by a
deputation of the inhabitants of Ermonville,
where he had breathed his last, was received at
the Tuileries, where the future arch-chancellor
pronounced over it an impressive speech. The
remains of the philosopher, enclosed in an urn,
were then conveyed to the Pantheon, escorted
by the crowd and preceded by an orchestra
playing various airs from his own " Devin du
Village." But the political tide was already on the turn.
On the ist of February, 1795, the bust of Marat,
placed in several of the theatres and cafes, was
hooted and overthrown. His remains, according
to the Abbe de Montgaillard in his history of the
Revolution, were snatched from the Pantheon,
dragged through the streets by young men, and
cast amongst the refuse of the Rue Montmartre
— "a tabernacle," says the abbe, "worthy of such
a god." This account, "however, is inaccurate ;
it was only Marat's effigy which was thrown into
the sewer, his relics were transported to Saint-
Etienne-du-Mont. In the meantime the Pantheon, as a structure,
was in a state of neglect. These installations of
illustrious men within its walls had taken place

more or less hastily, and the works were far
indeed from completion. Mercier, in his " Picture
of Paris," thus describes a visit which he paid to
the Pantheon in 1795 : "I ventured on the
staircases of the edifice, across ladders, heaps of
cement, hammers, long saws and moving scaffold
ings. The least sound reverberated, the least
movement seemed to announce the approaching
fall of the dome, and for the moment I imagined
myself interred in the Pantheon without any
pleading or contest. When I quitted the edifice
I experienced the pleasure which is felt by sailors
and warriors at the end of tempests and combats :
that of discovering that I was alive." By the
time the Pantheon had been put into a satis
factory condition the Empire had come into
existence, and Napoleon, who had just re-estab
lished public worship, wished to present the
Republican temple to the clergy, whilst main
taining the purpose for which the Constituent
Assembly had designed it. A decree, dated 20th
of February, 1806, dedicated the Pantheon to
public worship under the name of Church of
Sainte-Genevieve, and consecrated it as a sepulchre
for citizens who, in the career of arms or in that
of the administration or of letters, had rendered
eminent services to their country. The remains
of thirty -nine persons, not all of them truly
illustrious, were deposited in the Pantheon
under the Empire ; but the fall of the Empire
brought about another change. Louis XVIII.
suppressed the necropolis, and removed from the
pediment the famous legend, " Aux grands
hommes, la patrie reconnaissante."
The last illustrious men admitted to the
honours of the temple supposed to have been
erected to them by a "grateful country" were
Victor Hugo, the great Carnot, the deputy
Baudin, killed on a barricade during the coup
d'etat of 1 85 1, General Marceau, and La Tour
d' Auvergne, " the first grenadier of France,"
whose name, by order of Napoleon, used to be
pronounced at every roll-call of his regiment,
when this answer was solemnly given : " Mort
sur le champ de bataille."
The large open space to which the Pantheon
gives its name — Place du Pantheon — was the
scene of terrible conflicts between the troops
and the insurgents during the Revolution
of February, 1848, and again during the un
successful insurrection of June in the same year,
when troops and national guards'all took part
against the workmen set free to starve or fight
by the closing of the national workshops which,
for financial reasons, could no longer be carried

WELL IN THE COURTYARD, CLUNY MUSEUM.

15

The Pantheon.]

THE SAINTE-GENEVIEVE LIBRARY.

6K

on, and against the social democrats who
placed themselves at their head. On the
northern side of the Place stands the Sainte-
Genevieve Library, which, like all the Paris
libraries, is open to all comers.

in the day a visitor to the Rue Saint-Jacques
might have seen them waiting impatiently for
the classes to begin at the College of France ;
might have seen them issue thence, full of
enthusiasm for the great thinkers of their time,

INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON.

A foreigner who happened to visit the Quar-
tier Latin, and observed the students strolling,
lounging, or driving off to the theatre or a
' ball, might fancy that they led an easy and idle
life, but he would be mistaken. These youths,
ardent pleasure-seekers as they are, give three-
fourths of their time to severe study. Earlier
29

and wend their way to this or that public
institution affording facilities for private study.
A proportion of them would be found to resort
to the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, where a
noble collection of books ranged on shelves
adorned with delicate sculptures may well con
duce to the tranquil exercise of the mind.

66

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Pantheon.

The first library of Sainte-Genevieve, which
Was founded as a private institution in 1624, and
became national property in 1790, occupied in
the buildings of the old abbey of the same name
a habitation which had to be abandoned some
forty years ago, because the building began
everywhere to crumble and threaten collapse.
The new library was finished and inaugurated in
1850 ; and although the external architecture is
somewhat plain and heavy, the interior is highly
artistic, with many a mural painting by master
hands. Formerly this library possessed a very
curious collection of crayon sketches, portraits of
personages of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, which were transferred by an imperial
decree to the library of the Rue de Richelieu.
It can support this loss, however, rich as it is
in quaint and valuable specimens of art. For its
manuscripts, with certain exceptions, the Biblio
theque Sainte-Genevieve is not remarkable ;
though it boasts a particularly fine collection of
old printed books, with bindings sumptuous and
fantastic enough to turn the head of a bibliophile.
Dependent on the church of Sainte-Genevieve,
which it was destined to survive, is the church.

of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount. Among the
wonders of Saint - Etienne - du - Mont is the
tomb of Sainte Genevieve, whose relics, patroness
saint of Paris as she was, were burnt in 1793 by
the Paris Commune in the Place de Greve.
During the fete of Sainte Genevieve, from the
3rd to the 1 ith of January, the church is crowded
with pilgrims from the Paris suburbs to the
number, it is calculated, of more than one
hundred thousand. In the chapel immediately
facing the altar stands a monument which
contains the heart of Monseigneur Sibour,
Archbishop of Paris, assassinated on the 3rd
of January, 1857, in this very church, when he
was opening the nine days' service in honour of
Sainte Genevieve, by a priest whom he had
interdicted. The predecessor of Monseigneur
Sibour, Monseigneur Affre, was shot dead by the
insurgents of June, 1848, when exhorting them
from a barricade to cease fighting. His successor,
Monseigneur Darboy, was put to death with the
other hostages whom the Paris Commune in
1 87 1 had taken with the view of securing for
the Communards made prisoners by the troops
the character of prisoners of war.

The Polytechnic School.]

THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.

67

CHAPTER XIV.
THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.
The "Central School of Public Works" — Bonaparte and the Polytechnic — The College of Navarre-
Formal Inauguration in 1805 — i8[6 — 183?.

BEHIND the church of St. Stephen-of-the-
Mount, from which it is separated by the
Rue Descartes, stands the Polytechnic School,
founded by a decree of the National Convention
on the 14th of March, 1794.
The Convention had made a clean sweep of
all the schools established in the days of the
Monarchy. Ere long, however, it began to revive
the scholastic institutions on a new plan. The
Committee of Public Safety began by decreeing
the formation of a " Central School of Public
Works." Fourcroy was commissioned to present a
detailed report on the new scheme ; and the
propositions contained in it were unanimously
adopted. The Palais Bourbon was chosen as
the domicile of erudition ; and here a three years'
course of study, involving nine hours' work a day,
was offered to aspirants. The youth of Paris
and of the provinces hastened in crowds to a
school where every subject was taught by an
eminent specialist. Enthusiasm characterised
the labours both of students and professors, and
rapid successes were achieved, despite the constant
struggle which had to be maintained with the
Committee of Public Safety, whether on account
of the privilege which the school enjoyed of
filling all vacancies in certain departments of the
public service, or because the committee, at
times when war had drained the national
exchequer, could not furnish the funds indis
pensable to the educational scheme. The school,
however, fought bravely through its difficulties,
and presently received that denomination of
]£cole Polytechnique which became and has re
mained so popular. In the legislative tribunals,
in the political and scientific journals, the
Polytechnic School was never mentioned without
• being coupled with some formula expressing
the high opinion entertained of its utility and
¦of what it might achieve. "The first school in
the world," " the institution which Europe
envies us," "the establishment without a rival
and without a model " — in such phrases was it
described. Already the Polytechnic had been
appointed to furnish officers for the artillery ;
and by a state decree it was enacted that no
pupils should be received into the military and

naval schools who had not first gone through
their course in the Polytechnic. In 1803, when
the peace of Amiens was broken and war burst
out afresh between France and England, the
pupils of the Polytechnic School evinced their
patriotism by paying into the state coffers a sum
of 4,000 francs which they had collected amongst
themselves. Bonaparte, on his return from Italy, en
deavoured to conciliate the affection of men of
learning and of letters. At that period nothing
but the lustre of power or the superiority of the
mind could command admiration. Having had
himself admitted to the Institute, the First
Consul loved to join his academic title to the
indication of his rank in the army. He often
visited the Polytechnic School, and even assisted
occasionally at some of the lessons. He enriched
its library with a number of costly works,
and furnished' its laboratories with all that they
needed. During the four years (1801 to 1804) which
preceded the turning of this school into a barrack
the people of Paris had returned to a state of
tranquillity. At the theatre, however, disturb
ances frequently occurred in which Polytechnic
students played a part. The reiterated com
plaints of the Minister ofthe Interior and the
arrest of several of the disorderly students
caused great vexation to the school authorities,
who remonstrated with the delinquents and
imposed severe disciplinary punishments upon
them, but to little purpose. The classes began
to suffer, for the agitation of the pit penetrated
into the school, and the time which should have
been devoted to work was frequently taken up
with eager conversations on this or that exciting
topic. Bonaparte, who had just taken the title of
emperor, was apprised of these unfortunate
occurrences, and immediately decreed, on the 16th
of July, 1 804, a new organisation by which the
pupils would be formed into a military body and
put in barracks. General Lacue"e, councillor of
state, was appointed governor, and Gay de
Vernon took second command. The new
organisation included the union of the barrack
and the school on one spot, and an obligation on

68

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Polytechnic School.

the part of the pupils to pay fees. General
Lacuee formed from his body of councillors a
commission which repaired to Fontainebleau,
where the Ecole Militaire was then established,
in order to obtain all particulars as to the
working of the Paris institution ; and an active
search was made for a building in which the
school might be adequately installed. At length

now used as a tracing-room, is all that remains
of the original structure. Suppressed in 1790,
the College of Navarre had been a seminary for
princes and other pupils either distinguished
already by their birth or destined to conquer
fame : both Richelieu and Bossuet had sat on its
benches. The pupils of the Polytechnic School showed

LIBRARY OF SAINTE-GENEVIEVE.

the College of Navarre was fixed upon as the
fittest habitation. Napoleon in determining the
funds necessary for his new organisation showed
himself sufficiently lavish. He felt grateful to
the students of the Polytechnic School for the
patriotic aid they had offered him during the
war with England ; which had indeed evoked from
him at the time some flattering words to the effect
that he " expected nothing less from ayouth thirst
ing for glory, to whom national honour was a
patrimony." The school was inaugurated on the nth of
November, 1805, at the College of Navarre,
which it has not quitted since. This college
had been founded in 1304 by Jeanne of Navarre
and her husband Philippe le Bel. The chapel,

in 1 8 14 the same patriotic feeling which had
delighted Napoleon on a previous occasion.
They offered for the artillery eight horses-
fully equipped ; and immediately afterwards
they petitioned to be admitted as combatants.
into the ranks of the French army. Napoleon
made a reply which has become famous — that he
was not reduced to such straits as to find it.
necessary to " kill his fowl with the golden eggs."
He formed, however, out of the Paris National'
Guard twelve batteries of artillery, three of
which consisted of pupils of the Polytechnic
School. On the 28th of March the pupils were-
entrusted with the service of twenty-eight pieces
of reserve artillery, and on the 30th, during the-
battle of Paris, this reserve, placed across th&

The Polytechnic School]

THE POLYTECHNIC IN 1830.

69

avenue of Vincennes, held in check the enemy's
troops, who were endeavouring to enter Paris on
this side in order to turn the position of the
diminutive French army, fighting at Belleville
and at Pantin.

On the return
from Elba the Poly
technic School was
again formed into a
body of artillery ;
and it then received
the Only visit Napo
leon paid to it
throughout the Em
pire. With all his
admiration for it,
he regarded it as
infected with the
spirit of republic
anism. Monge de
fended the pupils
against the bad
opinion entertained
by the emperor,
saying that, ardent

Republicans, when the school was first formed,
they had not yet had time to become zealous
Imperialists ; at which Napoleon is said to have
smiled. Broken up in 18 16 in consequence of Some act
of insubordination and reorganised towards the
end of 1817 under a civilian administration, the
Polytechnic School was now placed under the
Ministry of the Interior. Five years later,
however, in 1822, it was once more organised
on a military system. Like all the students of
those days, the pupils of the Polytechnic School
were enthusiastic Liberals, and when the Revolu
tion of July, 1830, broke out they joined the
people and acted for the most part as officers-

One of them, Vanneau

name, was killed

in the attack made on the barracks of the
Swiss guards in the Rue de Babylone ; and
afterwards, by universal desire, the name of the
young man was given to a neighbouring street,
which still bears it.
Since then the Polytechnic has
been mixed up with every important
political movement that has taken
place in France. On the 7th of June,

ST. STEPHEN-OF-THE-MOUNT.

70

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Polytechnic School.

1832, many students, in spite of orders to the
contrary, went out to assist at the funeral of

government, which invited it, together with the
Normal School and the School of Saint-Cyr, to

INTERIOR OF CHURCH OF ST. STEPHEN-OF-THE-MOUNT.

General Lamarque, and took part in the out
break to which it led. In 1848 the school was
called out in a body to support the provisional

take part in all the celebrations of the new
Republic. Amongst the distinguished men produced by

The H6tal Cluny.;]

THE RUE DES CARMES.

7i

the Polytechnic School since its creation under
the First Republic may be mentioned Arago,
Gay-Lussac, Biot, Poisson, and Carnot. Foreign

governments have often asked permission to send
young men of promise to this school ; at once an
effect and a cause of its European reputation.

CHAPTER XV.
THE H6TEL CLUNY.
The Rue des Cannes — Comte de Mun and the Catholic Workmen's Club — The Place Maubert — The Palais des Thermes-
The Hotel Cluny— Its History— Its Art Treasures.

THE street in which the Polytechnic School
is situated bears its name, and descending
the northern slope of the so-called " mountain of
Sainte-Genevieve," the "Street of the Seven
Ways" takes, at the point where the Rue de
l'Ecole Poly technique crosses the Rue Saint-
Hilaire, the name of Rue des, Carmes. In ancient
times it contained, besides the grand Couvent
des Carmes founded in 131 8, the College of Dace,
established for Danish students, the College of
Soissons, where Peter Ramus fell in the St.
Bartholomew massacre, and finally the College of
the Lombards, At the end of a large courtyard,
surrounded with gardens, is seen the portico of
a church with Ionic columns, whose pediment,
frightfully mutilated, has quite a tragic aspect.
This is the chapel of the ancient College of
the Lombards, founded in 1334 by A. Chini of
Florence, bishop of Tournai. The college was
then the " House of the poor Italians " by the
charity of the beneficent Marie. Three centuries
later it was falling into ruins when two Irish
priests undertook to build it up for the benefit of
the priests and poor students of their country,
who for two centuries possessed this corner of
the earth, when, on its becoming too small, they
abandoned it in 1776 and moved to the Rue
Cheval-Vert. The chapel was then for many
years taken possession of by industrial speculators,
who turned it into shops and even into a stable.
It was restored to public worship through the
activity of Comte de Mun. In one part of the
building is established the Catholic Workmen's
Club of Sainte-Genevieve, which has existed since
May, 1 87 5j an(I which offers to workmen and
also clerks of all professions and trades a centre
of instruction and even of amusement. To this
institution are due the popular lectures ( Confer
ences Populaires ) delivered by M. Leon Gautier
ofthe Institute, Albert de Mun, Father Montsabre,
M. d'Hulst, etc. Without neglecting religious

studies, the lecturers occupy themselves with
the most varied subjects, such as literature,
political and social economy, art and music.
Here a certain number of workmen assemble
every evening and, above all, on Sunday, when,
after hearing mass, they can finish their day in
an interesting and improving manner, reading-
books and newspapers and taking part in various
games. The Workmen's Club of Sainte-Genevieve is
not the only one of the kind in Paris ; there are
at least ten formed on the same plan and which
reach directly and surely, without any attempt at
noisy propagandism, their essential aim : that of
depriving the dram shop and the tavern of their
prey. The lower part of the Rue des Carmes leads to
the market of the same name and to the Place
Maubert, which occupies the site of the ancient
convent. The cloister of the Couvent des
Carmes was remarkable as a masterpiece of
architecture. The Place Maubert was in the middle ages the
true forum of the University Quarter, the meet
ing place of the students, the boatmen of the
Seine, and market people from all parts of the
country, as well as the central academy of the
language spoken by the populace. Thus it was
said of a man who was coarse in his talk that he
had "learned his compliments in the Place
Maubert." The " Compliments of the Place
Maubert " was indeed the title of a dictionary
of plebeianisms. The name of the place or square
is corrupted from that of Jean Aubert, second
Abbe of Sainte-Genevieve. Receiving from all
sides the outpourings of six popular streets, the
Place Maubert has witnessed many tumultuous
scenes. Here in 141 8 assembled the partisans of
Bourgogne who set out to massacre the partisans
of Armagnac in their prisons. Here were burnt
as heretics Alexandre d'Evreux and Jean Pointer

72

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The HStel Cluny.

in 1533 ; the mason Poille in 1535, the goldsmith
Claude Lepeintre in 1540, and finally, in 1546,
the printer Etienne Dolet, who, by his religious
and political opinions as well as by the bitterness
of his polemical writings, had made for himself
implacable enemies. Across the Place Maubert

world of letters and of the stage. One was
Crebillon ; the other Voltaire.
All kinds of famous houses existed on or in the
immediate neighbourhood of the Place Maubert :
that, for instance, of Grandjean, the celebrated
surgeon and oculist to Louis XVI., and that of

THE CHAPEL OF THE ANCIENT COLLEGE OF THE LOMBARDS.

was dragged the body of Ramus, assassinated in
1572 at the College of Presles in the Rue des
Carmes. On one side of it were raised in
1588 the first barracks of the partisans of the
House of Guise against King Henri IIL,
and sixty years later the barricades of the
Fronde. At a few steps from the Place Maubert stood,
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in
the Rue de Bievre and the Rue des Grands
Degres,two attorneys' offices, where were engaged
two young clerks destined one day to dazzle the

Marie Antoinette. Local tradition assigns one of
the houses to Gabrielle d'Estrees — " la belle
Gabrielle" of Henri IV., and here she may
really have lived, though the hostile critics of
the tradition point out that the architecture of
the house does not take us further back than
the reign of Louis XV. Part of the house in
question is now let out in artisans' lodgings. On
the ground floor, painted red, is the Chateau
Rouge, called also — it must be feared with more
than external significance — the Guillotine. A
special chapter is devoted to the Chateau Rouge

The Hotel Cluny.]

THE PLACE MAUBERT.

73

by M. Mace, in his volume on the police of Paris.
It is composed of two large rooms, which are filled
from morning till night with the disreputable and
dangerous classes ; close by is a lodging-house,
constructed in the garden of the ancient mansion,
and let out entirely to Swiss workmen, who live

Lutetia of the Romans, and the Hotel Cluny,
which recalls mediaeval Paris. The Palace of the
Hot Baths is in ruins, but these ruins of a building
which dates from the third century contain
monuments more ancient than themselves.
The Bath-house of the Romans was at the

II HE

fllCS

PLACE MAUBERT, WITH THE STATUE OF ETIENNE DOLET.

together in the most economical manner, and
pass the gaping mouth of the Chateau Rouge ten
times a day without ever going in. It was at
the tavern of the Chateau Rouge that, in 1887,
three men proposed, accepted, and carried out
among themselves a bet to throw a woman into
the Seine simply for amusement. The victim
was a drunken rag-picker, and the stake was two
sous : the price of a small glass of brandy.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the
University and the Sorbonne, in the very heart
of the district of the schools, are two of the most
ancient and interesting buildings in Paris : the
Palais des Thermes, which carries us back to the

same time a citadel ; it is said to have been built
in the reign of the Emperor Constantine Chlorus,
who inhabited Lutetia from 287 to 292. In the
year 360 Julian the Apostate was proclaimed
emperor in this palace by the army and the
people, and the palace is still generally known as
the Thermse of Julian. This honour was due to
him by reason of his special predilection for his
" dear Lutetia." After him, the Emperors Valen
tinian and Gratian passed at this palace the
winter of 365.
Independently of the interest presented by the
Palais des Thermes as a survival of Roman Paris,
and of the Hotel Cluny, as a type of French

74

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Hotel Cluny.

architecture, these two monuments shelter a
museum in which have been brought together
numerous specimens of curiosities and wonders
of all kinds — some only of antiquarian, others
both of antiquarian and of artistic interest. In
the time when Paris was a Gallo-Roman city there
existed on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the
island which was to be known as that of the
City, a palace surrounded with immense gardens,
whose green lawns sloped down even to the edge
ofthe river. The Norman invaders laid a portion
of it in ruins, and the edifice was by no means in
good condition as a whole when, in 1218, Philip
Augustus gave it to his chamberlain, Henri.
Soon afterwards the old buildings and the
gardens connected with them were broken up
and apportioned, and towards the end of the
eighteenth century the Bishop of Bayeux sold
the remains of the Palace des Thermes to Pierre
de Chalus, the Abbe of Cluny. The monks of
this abbey had plenty of means ; and as they did
not buy to sell again, they remained proprietors
of the Palace of Julian up to the time o' the
Revolution. The ruins were then made over to
private persons, who, without regard to the
majesty of history, introduced houses and shops
in the midst of the Roman remains. Louis, as a
lettered monarch, endeavoured to save the ruins
from these profanations of the infidels, and he
seems even to have entertained the thought of
turning the remains of the ancient edifice into a
sort of museum, but he did not carry out his idea ;
it was not until the reign of Louis Philippe that
the town of Paris regained possession of the
Palais des Thermes. It ceded the relic to the
State in 1843.
After the lapse of so many centuries the
astonishing thing is that one stone of the ancient
Roman edifice should now remain. The part of
the original edifice which Time has spared is that
which enclosed the Hot Baths. The large hall,
with its highly-imposing vaulted roof, was the
Hall of the Cold Baths: the so-called Frigidarium.
The place occupied by the fish-tank can still be
recognised, and the remains may be seen of the
canals which brought the water into the baths.
Bricks and stones have been alternately employed
in the walls, whose surface has been blackened
by "sluttish Time," and impaired in all sorts of
ways. This hall has had the most varied
fortunes, and for a long time it served as depot
to a cooper, who here stowed away his casks and
barrels. The other portions of the edifice present a
purely archaeological interest. Going out of the

large hall just mentioned and crossing the narrow
vestibule, one enters the Tepidarium ; but here
the vaulted roof has disappeared, and the spectator
has nothing around him but crumbling walls. A
few steps further on he will come to sub-structures
which are evidently the remains of the reservoirs.
The ancient ruin has become a dependence
of the more modern Hotel Cluny. It is a
marvellous relic of the fourteenth century ;
fragments of statues, bas-reliefs, mutilated in
scriptions, art relics dug up from under the earth
have been collected in the great hall of the "Frigid
arium." These remains of Gallo-Roman art show
the very foundations of French history. Here is
the famous inscription which sets forth that the
'¦ " Parisian boatmen " raised under the reign of
Tiberius a statue in honour of Jupiter. Close by
are enormous blocks of stone, borrowed from the
pavement of primitive Lutetia. In the midst of
these fragments of columns, of these empty
tombs, one figure remains untouched : it is the
statue of Julian the Apostate. This sculpture
recalls to those who might have forgotten it the
carriage and character, the origin and type, of this
strange emperor. Is not his hierarchic attitude
that of an Asiatic satrap ? Is not the calm
countenance that of an Oriental prince ?
By the side of the ancient palace of the Roman
emperors the Hotel Cluny seems quite young,
and we shall doubtless be more at our ease in an
edifice which is not yet four hundred years old.
When, in the fourteenth century, Pierre de Chalus
bought the Palais des Thermes and the land
surrounding it, he intended to construct, near
the college of his order, a residence which might
afford lodging to abbes of Cluny when they were
making their frequent visits to Paris. This
project does not seem to have been carried into
execution ; and it was under Charles VIII. that
one of the successors of Pierre de Chalus, Jean
de Bourbon, founded the building so much
admired in the present day. He was not,
however, destined to complete it ; the Hotel
Cluny, after many delays, was terminated towards
the end of the reign of Charles VIII. by Jacques
d'Amboise, Abbe of Jumieges, and Bishop of
Clermont, one of whose brothers was the famous
minister of Louis XII., while the other was
grand-master of the order of Saint John of
Jerusalem. All the members of this family
seem to get animated by the spirit of the time.
Jacques d'Amboise — man of letters, collector, and,
in his way, an artist— was one ofthe moving spirits
of the French Renascence. The Hotel Cluny
belongs, indeed, to that ancient time when art

The Hotel Cluny.l

THE H6TEL CLUNY.

75

becomes softer and more graceful without losing
altogether the severity of the past.
The former residence of Jacques d'Amboise is
enclosed on the side of the Rue des Mathurins
by a high crenelated wall. In the interior the

of art. The Hotel Cluny has been inhabited by
Marie of England, widow of Louis XII., by
James V., King of Scotland, by Cardinal de
Lorraine, and the Duke of Guise ; here, under
Henry IIL, the Italian actors represented their
pastoral love
scenes. Towards
the end of the
eighteenth cen
tury Moutard the
printer occupied
the principal
apartments ; and
a member of
the Academy of
Sciences, Messier,
had installed
above the chapel
a sort of observa
tory. After the
Revolution the
hotel passed from
hand to hand,
and it would

different apartments have lost very
little of their original character,
but modifications have of necessity
been made ; and as the museum
needs light the number of the
windows has been increased. The
chapel retains in all respects its
primitive style. The picture of
the two Marys weeping over the
dead Christ dates from the end of
the reign of Louis XII. Of the
glass windows which at the time
of Jacques d'Amboise adorned the
chapel, one alone has remained
intact — that in which the Bearing
of the Cross is represented. Little
enough, then, survives of the past
in this building, which has sheltered,
one after the other, so many dif
ferent inmates, some of them
sufficiently careless about matters

RUE DE BIEVRE.

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The H8tel Cluny.

perhaps have disappeared, to give place to a
modern house, when a member of the Court of
Accounts, M. Alexandre du Sammerard, bought,
in 1833, the former residence of the Abbes de
Cluny, in order to place within its walls archaeo
logical curiosities, precious furniture, and medi
aeval objects of art which he had made it his
pleasure to collect. At his death, nine years later,
the Chamber of Deputies passed, on the report of
Francois Arrago, a resolution authorising the

represented the Passion of Christ and the
legendary adventures of the holy patron of the
Church. The heads of all the personages have
been broken ; the colour and the gilding which
covered their vestments have partly disappeared ;
but in what remains of the altar-piece one sees
attitudes which are full of character, and is
impressed by a certain simplicity which ap
proaches grandeur. There is more emotion in
the statuettes detached from the tomb of the

RUINS OF THE PALAIS DES THERMES.

Government to buy in the name of the State
M. de Sammerard's collections and the edifice
which held them. A credit of five hundred
thousand francs having been voted for this
double acquisition, the Musee des Thermes et
de l'Hotel Cluny was founded in virtue of the
law of 24th July, 1843.
Since then the collection has been considerably
increased, partly through liberal donations from
private persons, partly through excavations
undertaken by the State. The catalogue of the
museum registers nearly four thousand objects
of art. One of the most interesting of these is
the altar-piece of the Chapel of Saint-Germer —
unhappily much mutilated— in which the chisel
of a master of the thirteenth century has

Duke of Burgundy at the Chartreuse of Dijon.
These figures of marble date from the last days
of the fourteenth century, and represent the
servants of the duke, with writers and chaplains
attached to his household. Monks are seen
weeping beneath the hood which covers their
face. The uncovered faces, full of life and
expression, are evidently portraits. Close by,
the spirit and grace of the Renascence may be
seen in several admirable specimens : such as the
Venus, partly broken, which is attributed, with
more or less reason, to Jean Cousin, and the
sleeping statuette of a naked woman whose head
seems lost in a dream. The delicate style of the
sculpture seems to reveal an Italian hand. Less
perfect in execution, but equally interesting, is

The Hotel Cluny.]

ART TREASURES OF THE HOTEL CLUNY.

77

that Ariadne which, by a strange coincidence,
was found in the Loire opposite that Chateau of
Chaumont where another woman in despair,
Diana of Poitiers, had been shut up by Catherine
de Medicis after the death of Henry II. It is the

strange figure holds a sceptre bursting into
blossom ; in the other an oval vase. The style
recalls at once classical art and the art of Byzan
tium. By the side of the ancient statuette is a
less ancient bas-relief, representing the marriage

ENTRANCE TO THE CLUNY MUSEUM, RUE DU SAMMERARD.

same Diana, this time accompanied by her two
daughters, which tradition recognises in the
statue attributed to Germain Pilon.
The ivories of the Hotel Cluny are among its
greatest treasures. In this collection ivory work
of every period and in every style may be found.
The mysterious statuette of a woman crowned
by two genii dates from the fourth century. It
was discovered in a tomb on the borders of the
Rhine. This statuette is surrounded by a
number of marbles representing divinities of
various kinds, and is classed, therefore, with the
works styled Pantheistic. In one hand this

of the Princess Theophania with Otho II., who
was Emperor of the West from 973 to 983.
Here we see the art of the lower Empire:
an art of stiff symmetrical forms, but full of
barbaric richness. Of the same period, or nearly
so; is "The Virgin holding the Infant Jesus
on her knees " : a solemn hieratic group.
To the eleventh century belongs the cross
of Saint Anthony, found in the tomb of
Morard, Abbe of Saint - Germain - des - Pres.
Another work of the highest value is the shrine
of Saint Yved (twelfth century), from the Abbey
of Braisne. This reliquary, in the form of a

7*

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Hd.el Cluny.

rectangular casket, is decorated on all sides with
figures in relief of elaborate workmanship. Ofthe
same epoch, or still earlier, are the sheets of ivory
used for the binding of the Gospels, on which
are painted admirable pictures in illustration of
the Divine books. The ivory looking-glass
frame, representing two figures, which are
supposed to be those of Saint Louis and of
Blanche de Castille, comes from the treasure of
Saint Denis. The pastoral staff which, twice
ennobled, belonged, first to the famous Debruges-
Dumesnil collection, and afterwards to the
collection of Prince Soltykoff, dates from the
thirteenth century. The rod of ivory is crowned
with a lion in boxwood, enriched with precious
stones. The little monument known as the "oratory
of the Duchess of Burgundy" is an ivory on
which are related, by means of numerous figures,
here the history of Jesus Christ, there that of
John the Baptist. It comes from the Chartreuse
of Dijon ; and by the memoirs of Philippe le
Hardi, it would seem that the author was a certain
Berthelot. Eight crowns of massive gold, enriched with
pearls and precious stones, were one day dug from
the earth at Guarazzar in the neighbourhood of
Toledo. They were followed soon afterwards by
another crown, belonging evidently to the same
hidden treasure. Until then it was scarcely
suspected that the Visigoth kings knew what
gold-work meant. One of the crowns, however,
purchased for the Cluny Museum, bears the
words : " Reccesvinthus rex offeret." Recces-
vinthus reigned in Spain from 653 to 672. On
a second crown may be read, in characters
struck with the hammer, the name, not yet
explained, ofSonnica. The other crowns bear no
inscription. Archaeologists are unable to decide
whether the largest of these crowns was ever
worn. But the one inscribed with the name of
Reccesvinthus was used, it is held, at the
coronation of that king by the Bishop of Toledo.
They were, however, offered to the Virgin, and
suspended in one of the chapels consecrated to
her. The supposition is entertained that at the
time of the Arab invasion these precious offer
ings of the Visigoth king were buried by the
Christians. They came to light centuries after
wards, to tell of the magnificence of these almost
legendary sovereigns, and of the skill possessed
by their artificers for moulding and cutting
gold in every style, besides enriching it with in
crustations of sapphires and pearls. The gold
altar given by the Emperor Henry III. to the

Cathedral of Bale at the beginning ofthe eleventh
century is another rare and remarkable work.
The character of the design, and what is known
as to the origin of the monument, have caused it
to be attributed to Lombard artists. From the
treasury of the same church comes the Golden
Rose, given to the Bishop of Bale by Pope Clement
V. at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
But in this part of the museum the glass cases
contain innumerable specimens of the religious
work of the Middle Ages. Among the curios of
the thirteenth century may be cited a large cross
adorned with filigree work and precious stones
in relief. This was one of the treasures of the
Soltykoff collection. Nuremberg is represented
by the shrine of Saint Anne, executed in 1472
by Hans Grieff. The flesh of the figure is
painted. From the same epoch may be dated
the " Crossbow Prize," an admirable piece of
smith's work in wrought silver, chased and gilt.
As the works of the sixteenth century, we find a
large mechanical piece, more singular than
beautiful, in the form of a vessel on which, among
the personages in enamelled gold, grouped
around the steering apparatus, may be recognised
Charles V. in the midst of a crowd of high
dignitaries ofthe Imperial Court. A mechanism
concealed within the ship makes the figure move,
musical instruments play, and cannons roar. The
museum possesses also, in a mixed style, belong
ing at once to art and science, clocks and watches
of the Renascence and of the seventeenth century.
Nor must the visitor pass by the famous basin
of Francois Briot, made in pewter with an
artistic taste which would not be thrown away
on the finest gold. The iron-work consists
chiefly of Gothic locks and bolts, once attached
to the doors and gates of feudal mansions.
Here, too, are the keys, finely worked, of the
Chateau Anest, which Diana of Poitiers may
well have touched with her delicate hand. The
Hotel Cluny is famous, moreover, for its collection
of ancient arms : Toledo blades of tragic aspect,
bearing the names of the great burnishers of the
time ; armour of war or of parade, carved and
damasked by the artificers of Milan ; helmets,
pikes, muskets, shields ; all the formidable
instruments of attack with all the ingenious
instruments of defence. In the armoury of the
Hotel Cluny may likewise be seen some fine
specimens of Oriental work ; though the finest
creations of this special art are preserved, not
at the Hotel Cluny, but at the Museum of
Artillery. The masterpieces in wax-work will next demand

The Hotel Cluny.]

ART TREASURES OF THE H6TEL CLUNY.

79

our attention ; and here Italy, which in almost
every other art has the right to pass first, may per
haps be asked to give precedence to Spain. The
Spanish-Moorish specimens are above all admir
able. As for the Italian works, they are very
numerous, and for the most part well chosen.
Apart from the medallions of Lucca della Robbia,
which belong to sculpture as much as to wax
work, the plates suspended on the walls, the
cups enclosed beneath the glass, are all inter
esting, and are nearly all of Italian make. A
product from the workshops of Faenza, which,
in France, gives its name to crockery in general
{faience), adorned with the monogram of Christ
in Gothic characters, bears the date of 1475.
The work is quite archaic ; but Faenza can also
show plates and cups which tell of the progress
and also of the decadence of this centre of a
special art, so active in the sixteenth century.
Urbino, the birthplace of Raphael, and Pesaro,
the birthplace of Rossini, are also represented,
together with Rimini, Caffagiolo, Castel-Durante,
and, above all, Gubbio, with the masterpieces of
its illustrious potter, Giorgio Andreoli. The
word seems appropriate when one contemplates
the fine plate representing Daedalus, dated 1533,
and the two cups relieved with gold, on which'
smile, from a rainbow-tinted background, two
charming women: "Angela Bella," " Dianara
Bella." These cups, which now form the
admiration of artists, served formerly to
receive the presents made by the lover to his
mistress. Superb types of the Gubbio work in
the sixteenth century are as bright and pure as if
they had come yesterday from the hands of the
potter. French pottery is also conspicuous at the
Hotel Cluny, both in its ancient and in its
modern glory. Specimens of enamelled terra
cotta, dating from the thirteenth century, are
first to be seen. Then one remarks a cup
decorated with arabesques encrusted in brown
on a whitish ground. These famous styles of
pottery used to be vaguely connected with the
name and period of Henry II. ; but they are at
present known to have been made at Oiron, in
Poitou, by Frangois Cherpentier, the humble
workman of Madame de Boisy.
The Hotel Cluny contains many of the best
works of Bernard Palissy, the famous artist whose
life was a long martyrdom and, for his wife, it must
be feared, a long torture ; for if it was noble on
the part of the husband to sacrifice the household
furniture to the perfection of an art to which he
was devoted, it must have been painful for the
perhaps less enthusiastic wife to hear it crackling

within his furnaces. In seeking to determine
which of the numerous alleged specimens of this
artist's work really belong to him, connoisseurs
have been aided by Time, which, destroying the
imitations, seems to have preserved the genuine
ones alone. Even the charming little figure of
the Nurse, for a long time attributed to Palissy,
is now said to be from another and later hand.
Nevers, Rouen, Moustiers, and the various centres
of French pottery, are worthily represented at
the Hotel Cluny, either by isolated pieces or by
groups, and even entire collections.
The stained glass at the Hotel Cluny is for
the most part of Swiss or of German origin.
The enamels are of every country and every age.
Nine enamelled plates of exceptionally large di
mensions were painted by Pierre Courtoys in
1559 for the Chateau de Madrid, in the Bois de
Boulogne. The figures — the largest, perhaps, that
were ever executed in enamel— represent Justice,
Charity, Prudence, and six other mythological
divinities, more astonishing than attractive. A
remarkable triptych, or picture with shutters,
whose painter is unknown, but which belonged to
Catherine de Medicis, represents on the central
panel the queen on her knees, in widow's dress,
'before a crucifix. Her initials, with those of
Henry IL, adorn this curious relic. Close by
are enamelled cups and plates by Pierre Remond,
Nardon Penicaud, and Jean Courtoys, with many
works, justly esteemed, by the great enameller
Leonard Limousin, remarkable among these being
a fine portrait of Eleonora of Austria, sister of
.Charles V. and Francis I.
^ The piece of Florentine mosaic in the first hall
ofthe museum ought not to pass unnoticed. It
has been described by Vasari ; and the Virgin
and Child which it represents are the genuine
work of Ghirlandaio. Executed at Florence in
1496, it was brought to France by Jean de Ganay,
President of the Parliament of Paris. The works
of this famous mosaist are now very rare. The
one preserved at the Hotel Cluny is relatively in
sound condition, and gives a good idea of the
great mosaics which adorned the churches of
Tuscany. The Cluny Museum has no claim to be con
sidered a picture-gallery. It contains, however,
a certain number of canvases, illustrating the
manners, the costumes, or the furniture of par
ticular periods. The best critics deny that the
Jesus in the Garden of Olives is the work of
Gentile di Fabriano, to whom the catalogue
attributes it. Nor, according to competent judges,
is the hand of Primaticcio to be recognised in that

8o

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Hotel Cluny

Venus who, standing by the side of Love, faces
the spectator smiling, and with an arrow in her
hand. The painting is marked by delicacy
and refinement ; but the style is not that of

STAIRCASE, CLUNY MUSEUM.

Primaticcio, nor does the face of Venus reproduce
the features of Diana of Poitiers, who, according
to some keen-sighted observers, is everywhere to
be seen. A more genuine interest is inspired by
a few pictures of the fifteenth century, some of
Flemish, others of French origin. Very curious

is the Mary Magdalen attributed to King Rene.
The repentant sinner is grieving in the midst of
a landscape whose background represents the city
of Marseilles. Another picture well worthy of
notice is one which represents
two pictures in the same
frame ; on the one is re
presented the coronation of
David, on the other the coro
nation of Louis XII. The
author of this work is un
known, but the period is
marked by the date of Louis
XIL's coronation (1498) ;
and it is presumable that the
painter was some artist of
distinction attached to the
Court. He was in any case
a man of ability, with a
certain feeling for colour.
French painting of the
sixteenth century is repre
sented by the school of
Janet and his successors, but
the true house decoration in
those luxurious days, when
art was mixed up with every
detail of life, was tapestry.
It was scarcely possible to
feel dull in those vast halls,
whose walls were covered,
and, so to say, animated by
a number of life-sized figures,
now chasing the stag in
picturesque woods, now sit
ting down to sumptuous
feasts, now breaking lances .
in tournaments and jousts.
Many of these ancient
tapestries have become worn
out, less through the action
of Time — for they were
admirably woven — than
through the carelessness of
their possessors. The Hotel
Cluny preserves some of the
best that were ever pro
duced. Take, for example,
the Deliverance of St. Peter,
executed at Beauvais in the fifteenth century,
or the ten embroidered pictures which tell
the history of David and Bathsheba, done in
Flanders under Louis XII. The biblical person
ages who figure in this illustrated story are
dressed, of course, in the latest fashion of the year

30

DORMER WINDOWS AT THE CLUNY MUSEUM.

82

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The H6tel Cluny.

1500 ; and the costumes are more interesting in
asmuch as the artist who furnished the cartoons
for these pictures was undeniably, with all his
naivete, an excellent draughtsman. Of another
epoch, when art was already on the decline, are
the tapestries taken from the arsenal, in which
Henry IV. is represented as Apollo, Jeanne d' Al
bert as Venus, and Marie de Medicis as Juno.
The painter, in his passion for allegory, has
transformed into Saturn the king's father, Antoine
de Bourbon. Many other tapestries, in various
states of preservation, and of which the colours
have, in many cases, faded beneath the effect of
sunlight, possess both artistic and historic interest.
The vestments once worn by the Bishop of
Bayonne were found in a tomb, and belong to the
twelfth century. All kinds of strange contrivances
worn by women in past ages (often, it must be
supposed, against their will) are to be seen in
the Hotel Cluny : collars, collarettes, baskets,
farthingales, girdles, and even high-heeled pat
tens, all made of iron.
The furniture preserved in the Hotel Cluny
is particularly fine, and is as historical as it is
artistically beautiful. Remarkable among the ex
amples of church furniture is the great sideboard
of the Cathedral of St. Paul, carved by a Cellini
of the fifteenth century. He must have spent

his whole life at the work. Nor is the house
furniture less magnificent. Witness the delicate
sculpture of the benches, the high chairs with
emblazoned backs, the chests for marriage gifts,
the bed which is said to have belonged to Francis
I., the cabinets of all times and of every shape,
the harpsichords, the spinets, the gala carriages,
covered with gildings, the sledges, the sedan
chairs, and a hundred other objects of luxury :
reminiscences of a time when between the work
man and the artist there was scarcely any dis
tinction, and when objects destined for the most
common use were fashioned and adorned with an
elegance and grace which told of true artistic
feeling. In the ancient mansion of Jacques d'Amboise,
innumerable other objects might be pointed out
either marvellous as works of art or deeply inter
esting, as illustrating the daily life of past ages,
which they reproduce more vividly, perhaps, than
any books could do.
Strange as it will appear to Englishmen, the
Hotel Cluny is not only open to the public on
Sundays, but is open to the public on Sundays
only. On other days permission to visit the
museum must be obtained from the Minister of
Fine Arts. Exceptions are made in favour of
foreigners exhibiting their passports.

\

The Musee dArtillerie.]

THE MUSEE D'ARTILLERIE.

83

v CHAPTER XVI.
THE MUSEE D'ARTILLERIE.
The Museum of Artillery— Its Origin and History— The Growth of its Collection of Armour and Weapons of all Kinds.

THE Museum of Artillery, with its varied and
admirably classified collection of arms, takes
us back to prehistoric times, and after exhibiting
rude martial implements of dim antiquity, brings
us forward through successive ages of arms until
it at length produces the very piece which is to
day in the hands of the French soldier.
The origin of, the Musee d'Artillerie may be
traced to the reign of Louis XIV. The Due
d'Humieres, Grand Master of Artillery, obtained
of the great monarch permission to place, in one
of the halls of the royal magazine at the Bastille,
a collection of small models of artillery then
in use. This collection, intended to serve for
the instruction of young artillery officers, was
exhibited in glass cases.
The Due de Maine and the Comte d'Eu, who
succeeded d'Humieres, did nothing towards
the development of this happy idea, which was
only resumed on the abolition of the post of Grand
Master in 1755 by Lieutenant-General de Val-
lieres, who succeeded the count as First Inspector-
General. A certain number of ancient arms and
of new models were transported to the Academy,
and an inventory of the collections, which is still
extant, was prepared. In 1788 the celebrated
General de Gribeauval, regarded by French
writers as the creator of modern artillery,
succeeded de Vallieres as Inspector-General.
It was by means of little models constructed
beneath his eyes that Gribeauval had prosecuted
his studies, and it was his familiarity with models
which enabled him to determine the precise form
of the arms to be employed in his new system.
The idea of these little models extended itself
to all the machines used in the artillery, as like
wise to those ancient arms of which specimens
had been preserved. Generalising his idea,
Gribeauval determined to apply it to the creation
of a complete establishment, and his project was
in due time realised. The Minister of War,
Comte de Brienne, at the reiterated recommend
ation of the general, granted to Rolland, Com
missary of War and chief in the office of General
Inspection of Artillery, a commission which
named him director of the new museum. The
programme proposed by Gribeauval embraced

every description of war implements, whether
past or present ; nor did it exclude a collection
of all the projects which had hitherto been pro
posed to the State by inventors.
This comprehensive scheme, executed with in
telligence and activity, almost immediately gave
the happy results which had been anticipated.
Objects of all kinds, manufactured with great
care in provincial establishments of artillery,
arrived in shoals at Paris, and were united with
the assemblage of ancient arms and armour which
already existed in the royal magazine. This was
a moment of growth and prosperity for the new
institution. Very soon, however, its progress
was to be checked, and its existence threatened
by the grave events of 1789. On the 14th of
July the arsenal of the artillery was devastated,
and its collections almost entirely destroyed.
Gribeauval was spared the pain of witnessing the
destruction of the work to which he had wished
to attach his name. He died on the 7th of
May, 1789, two months before the taking of the
Bastille. Curiously enough, however, that same revolu
tion which seemed to have finally wrecked the
new museum gave it suddenly a second life, and
afforded it an opportunity of wide and rapid
development. From 1 79 1 to 1794 the national factories were
inadequate to supply the wants of the army. The
system of requisitions which was vigorously en
forced brought into the arsenals considerable
quantities of arms of all kinds, as well as armour.
A commission named by the Ministry had to select
therefrom what was serviceable, and to reject what
was useless. Regnier, attached to the commission
as " Controller of Arms," conceived the happy
notion of putting aside every object which seemed
to him to possess particular interest, and which at
the same time was of no practical use. The as
sortment he thus made was placed temporarily
in the Convent of the Feuillants. Here it was
inspected by Petier, Minister of War, who, perceiv
ing the future utility of such a collection, caused it
to be transferred to the Convent ofthe Dominicans
of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Here it was enhanced
by the addition of those models which the before-

84

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Musee dArtillerie.

mentioned Rolland had managed to save from
the destruction of the Bastille. The whole was
placed under the charge of the newly-formed
" Committee of Artillery " ; and thus in 1796 the
museum obtained its re-organisation.
The Committee at once applied its energies to

GROUP OF SHAFTED WEAPONS IN THE ARTILLERY MUSEUM.

the development of the enterprise. They obtained
from the Ministry permission to inspect those
collections of arms which were contained in an
cient royal residences, or in the mansions of great
families who had become dispersed or had taken
to flight. From these collections they were em
powered to select whatever objects seemed eligible
for exhibition in their museum. Such, however,
was the resistance offered in many instances to
this system of scientific plunder, that the booty
carried off was not so extensive as had been
anticipated.

In a more direct manner, however, the Ministry
enlarged the treasures of the museum. For this
purpose the First Consul, passing through Sedan
in 1804, ordered that the arms he saw at the
Town Hall should be transported to Paris ; and
this time it was necessary to obey, though the
carriage of the trophies was entrusted, un
fortunately, to rascals, who filched and
sold part of them.
The peace of 18 14 brought back to Paris
the generals of artillery. The Central
Committee resumed its sittings, and one
of the first of these was devoted to the re
organisation of the museum, the importance
of whose contents had just been revealed
by a hastily-prepared inventory. The
Committee appointed a commission, com
posed of three colonels, three chiefs of
squadrons, and three captains, presided
over by a general. This body had to draw
up an inventory descriptive of each object,
classifying the whole collection and reducing
it to chronological order. The peace of
1 8 14, however, was broken by Napoleon's
return from Elba, and the members of
the commission were called away to active
duty. In 181 5 the Museum of Artillery suf
fered nothing from the invasion : in con
sequence, it may be, of special measures
taken beforehand for its protection. Be
tween 181 5 and 1830 the building was
enlarged and a new classification was in
troduced. All was going well when the
Artillery Museum was threatened with
complete ruin. Qn the 28th of July, 1830,
the insurgents came to tht- museum in
search of arms ; after a short but violent
struggle, the doors were broken in and the
place sacked. For one entire day, July
29th, the museum was almost empty, but
on the morrow many of the arms seized
the day before were given back, and
little by little the contents of the museum, to
the honour of the Parisian population, were
restored. A certain number of the arms,
about a hundred in all, had disappeared for
ever ; the loss was soon afterwards made
good through the purchase of the Duke of
Reggio's collection. During the Revolution of
February 7, 1848, the museum suffered no injury ;
a few insurgents approached the place, but were
easily induced to retire.
The museum, as now constituted, fulfils the
condition of its original programme, as laid down

The Musee dArtillerie.]

ARMS IN THE STONE AGE.

85

by General de Gribeauval. It contains specimens
of every arm known, from the primitive flint
hatchet to the weapons actually in use. It offers
many gaps, entire centuries are unrepresented ;

period they were polished. Among the earliest
specimens of metal-work, the helmets of the
ancient Etruscans may be cited, and afterwards
those of the Greeks for infantry and for cavalry.

DECORATED SPANISH CANNON IN THE ARTILLERY MUSEUM.

hut these gaps are unavoidable : they exist every
where ; and the historical character of the
collection is as complete as the present condition
of archaeological research permits.
The most distant period to which the history
of arms can.be traced is the one described by
modern archaeology as the Age of Stone. The
-use of metals was at that time unknown to man,
who constructed his arms and implements out of

In the satirical comedies of Aristophanes the
price is mentioned (in the one entitled "Peace")
of the cuirasses and helmets of his time. Thus
a cuirass cost ten minae (about ^~35), a helmet
one mina (£3 ios.). This series is continued by
two Roman helmets in bronze, found at Lyons
on the site of the ancient, city. Among the
Roman swords, some bear the mark of the
place of manufacture — "Sabini." In one ofthe

DECORATED MUSKETS IN THE ARTILLERY MUSEUM.

the hardest stones he could find, the bones of
animals in this primitive industry being also
employed. The researches made in different parts of
France have yielded a good supply of hatchets,
arrow and javelin points, made generally of flint.
In the earliest period of the Stone Age the flints
of the weapons were rough splints, in the second

principal cases may be seen the bronze portion of
an ancient Roman standard found in Asia Minor,
and given to the museum by the Emperor
Napoleon III. The object is probably unique,
and possesses in any case much archaeological
value ; it is adorned with the medallions of
the two emperors reigning at the time to which
it belongs, and the effigies of the greater gods.

86

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Musee dArtillerie.

After Caesar's conquest, the Gauls adopted
rapidly enough the manners and the arms of
the Romans. At length, however, towards the
end of the fifth century, the Franks appeared,
and the Frankish invader brought with him his
own sword and his own shield. The soldier
among the Franks was buried sometimes in a
sitting posture, more often stretched on his back.
On the right of the sleeping warrior was his
lance, with the point turned towards his head,
and measuring about his own height ; turned
towards his feet was his battle-axe ; on the left
his sword — but this by exception, and only in the
case of a chief. The Franks also carried small
daggers with a single edge, knives, and scissors in
their waist-bands. The smaller objects of equip
ment have been found in the graves of Frankish
warriors. The Frank was armed chiefly for
attack ; his weapons of offence were numerous
and formidable, while for the defensive he had
nothing but his little shield, so small in com
parison with the huge target-like arm of the four
teenth and fifteenth centuries. The chiefs alone
among the Franks wore helmets.
The period of Charlemagne has been much
studied, but it is difficult even now to form any
idea as to the arms the emperor and his soldiers
carried. The sword of Charlemagne in theMuseum
of Sovereigns and his spear are all, in the way of
armoury, that has been preserved. If, however,
we compare the sword with that of Childeric, we see
many points of difference ; the sword of Childeric,
almost without a guard, and with a pommel of
small dimensions, is very like a Roman sword.
The large hemispheric pommel and the broad
blade of the Emperor take us back to the
mediaeval types of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. As regards the successors of Charle
magne, the guards of Charles the Bald wore a
uniform which closely resembled that of the
Romans, with helmets of barbaric form, of which
the base was very nearly square.
Now for a century and a half there is a break
in the history of French weapons until we come
to the Bayeux Tapestry, some time after the
conquest of England by William the Norman.
This celebrated piece of embroidery enlightens
us as to the arms, the costume, and the equipment
of armies towards the end ofthe eleventh century:
so different from everything of the kind under
Charles the Bald. In the space of about two
hundred years the arms and the equipment of
the soldier had undergone a complete change.
A single sword is the only weapon of this epoch
that the museum can offer ; it is exactly like

those of the Bayeux Tapestry, the point being
formed not by the gradual tapering of the blade,
but suddenly, by a sharpened end.
The twelfth century is represented by two
helmets placed beneath glass at the end of one of
the galleries ; they were both found in the Somme.
In the thirteenth century the man of war was
usually armed with a coat of mail, but he wore
a sort of hood in mail which he could throw
back on his shoulders, of which an interesting
specimen is to be seen at the museum.
The fourteenth century saw a transformation
of the coat of mail into a suit of armour of
polished steel, which, with some variations,
caused by the introduction of portable fire-arms,
remained the ordinary armour of the man of war
until the time of its final disappearance. Towards
1325 the transformation was complete,"as is proved
by a great number of monuments of the time,
including sculptured figures on tombs, paintings,
manuscripts, sepulchral figures engraved on
plates of copper, &c. These monuments and
documents show that the military costume and
equipment of the fourteenth century varied more
than is generally imagined. Every man of war
armed himself as he thought fit ; but there are
enough records to give an idea of the type that
prevailed and even to guide the archaeologist as
to the dates of particular changes. What caused
the ancient coat of mail to be given up was its
weight, and at the same time its incompleteness
for defensive purposes. It could stop the thrust
of a sword and even of a lance, but in collision
the effect of the shock was felt ; and in adopting
leather jerkins, and afterwards steel plates, the
object was to spread the effect of the shock over
a greater surface.
The coat of mail was not abandoned, but it
was worn shorter and of lighter make, without
its former accessories, and thus greater lightness
and greater facilities of movement were gained.
The warrior towards the end of the thirteenth
century was oppressed by his equipment, and
did not get off his horse. After the transforma
tion he was able to fight on foot, as he did in all
the celebrated battles of the fourteenth century,
beginning from Crecy (1346).
After the adoption of steel armour the coat
of mail was still for a time worn underneath ;
but as the steel armour became more solid the
coat of mail was gradually abandoned. The
museum contains the complete armour of a man
and horse, which dates from the middle of the
fifteenth century.
Towards the end of that century the armour

The Musee d'Artillerie.]

EARLY SPECIMENS OF ARTILLERY.

«7

of the man of war had reached perfection. Every
kind of shield had now been given up as useless ;
plate armour furnished every necessary defencej
for it was only when the armour was weak that
any additional protection was necessary. Thus
the Norman coat of mail, as worn by William's
invading army, presented in its species of trellis-
work enormous gaps, and for his complete defence
the horseman protected himself with a long shield
in the form of a heart, which in action covered
the whole of his left side — the side he presented
to the foe. As the armour becomes more effective
the necessity for a shield diminishes, and, after
getting smaller and smaller, it at last disappears.
The Artillery Museum contains a suit of armour
worn by Turenne, which shows what plate armour
had become at the end of the seventeenth century.
It was abandoned altogether at the beginning of
Louis XIV.'s reign ; the last helmets worn in
France and England belonging to the time when
this head-gear formed part of the armour of
Cromwell's Ironsides.
Among the innumerable specimens of arms
preserved in the Museum of Artillery, portable
arms are classed apart from those which strike at
a distance, the latter including spears, javelins,
bows and arrows, cannon, and every kind of
fire-arm. The bow was the arm of the English,
the crossbow that of the French. With the
former the archer could fire more quickly, and
it was easier to preserve the string from getting
wet ; of which the advantage was experienced
on the English side during the battle of Crecy.
The English retained the use of the bow
long after the French had abandoned that of
the crossbow ; and, according to the director of
the Musee d'Artillerie, English bowmen were
seen in action as late as 1627, at the siege of
Rochelle. Companies of archers disappeared
from the French army under Louis XII., about
the year 1 5 14. The last time, however, that
bows and arrows were seen in European warfare
was at the battles of Eylau and Friedland, in 1806,
when, according to M. Thiers (" History of the
Consulate and Empire "), some of the Tartar
troops in the Russian army appeared armed with
these antique, and for the most part obsolete,
engines of war.
1 Musketry of every kind is represented in the
Museum of Artillery, from the earliest to the
latest patterns, including, in particular, the flint
locks used in the wars of the Empire, percussion
locks, by which they were replaced, the rifles
adopted just before the Crimean war, and the
quick-firing muskets of the most recent models,

including the chassepot, associated with the war
of 1870 and 1871, and the " fusil Gras," which
replaced it. The word artillery was formerly
applied to every implement of war, though since
the introduction of musketry it has been used
only to designate guns of large calibre drawn by
horses, as distinguished from portable fire-arms.
Nevertheless, the first specimens of artillery, in
something like the modern sense of the word,
were of small bore, and the projectiles were the
balls used in connection with the crossbow. The
French employed artillery of this kind as far back
as the battle of Crecy (1346). Gradually the
bolts of the crossbow were replaced, for artillery
fire, by leaden balls, called plummets (" plom-
mees "), of about three pounds' weight ; these
were used in cannons of modern shape, and by
degrees the size of the balls was increased until
soon the artillery of an army was divided into
light and heavy.
The discoveries ofthe monk Berthold Schwartz
belong to the middle of the fourteenth century ;
and though this learned, but not perhaps bene
ficent, inventor revolutionised the art of war, he
cannot be accused, in pursuing his studies, of
having had any deadly purpose in view.
The earliest fire-arms were loaded at the breech
by means of a box, which was received in a
strong stirrup and fastened with a key ; and
with the use of breech - loading pieces the
history of artillery begins, and up to the present
time ends. Soon after the introduction of
artillery a rapid augmentation took place in
the size of the guns employed, and cannon-balls
of stone were used. These were replaced by
smaller balls made of cast iron, but even to the
present day the weight -carrying power of a gun
is estimated on the supposition that the ball is
of stone. Stone cannon-balls were used by the
Turks long after they had been abandoned in
European armies ; so also were pieces of immense
calibre. In Western Europe cast-iron balls were
found to be more effective than the larger balls
of stone.
The Artillery Museum contains specimens of
every kind of cannon used, from the original
breech-loader to the breech-loader of the present
day. No. 1 of the catalogue is a small cannon
of the earliest period, made of forged iron and
furnished with a breech - loading apparatus ;
14 and the numbers following are siege-pieces
of various kinds abandoned by the English
at Meaux, after the bombardment of 1422. The
projectiles for these pieces were of stone. No. 7
comes from the ancient residence, near Verdun,

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

' [The Musee dArtillerie.

of the Knights of Malta ; and next to it is a fine
cannon in bronze given to the Knights of Rhodes
by the Emperor Sigismund in 1434. No. 19,
also in bronze, belongs to the reign of Louis XL ;
and, like No. 18, comes from Rhodes. It bears
this inscription : — " At the command of Loys
[Louis], by the grace of God King of France,
eleventh of this name, I was cast at Chartres by
Jean Chollet, knight, artillery master to this
sovereign." Next but one in the series is a large
mortar of bronze, cast at the command of the
Grand Master of the Order of the Hospitallers
of Jerusalem, Pierre d'Aubusson, 1480.
The construction of the various pieces, as we
follow them in chronological order, becomes
simplified, then complicated, then simplified
again. Gun - carriages and ammunition-chests
vary in form, until we find at last the field artil
lery, under Napoleon IIL, of one pattern ; though
two kinds of guns, light and heavy, are still used in
the reserve artillery. The rifled cannon intro
duced by the Emperor Napoleon, which did such
effective service during the Italian war of 1859,
was looked upon by the French as the best pos
sible field-gun ; and, possibly from exaggerated
loyalty taking the form of servility, the com
mission of officers to whom the breech loading
rifled guns of Krupp were submitted a few years
before the war of 1870 rejected them as in no
way superior to the gun of Napoleonic invention

actually in use. Since the last war the French
have adopted breech-loading rifled pieces more
or less on the model of the Krupp guns, treated
with such disdain by the military advisers of
Napoleon III.
Next to the pieces arranged in chronological
order have been placed a number of foreign guns
taken at various epochs from the enemy, in
cluding, among the latest acquisitions of this
kind, a number of curious highly ornamented
Chinese guns. Apart from the interesting
exhibition of musketry and artillery in the military
museum, a few words may here be said on the
history of fire-arms generally. The use of fire
arms preceded by some centuries the famous
invention of the German monk, Berthold
Schwartz ; which, in Europe, is known to have
been anticipated a century earlier by the
English monk, Roger Bacon. The art of
making gunpowder was known in the second
half of the thirteenth century to the Arabs
of the north of Africa and the Moors of Spain.
The Italians, too, are said to have employed
artillery in the thirteenth century, but there is
no positive proof of its having been used until
the middle of the fourteenth, when, so far as
Europe is concerned, Roger Bacon's invention,
and all previous inventions of the same kind, had
borne no fruit, whereas the discovery made by
Berthold Schwartz received instant application.

The Val de GrSce.]

THE DEAF AND DUMB INSTITUTION.

89

CHAPTER XVII.
THE VAL DE GRACE — RELICS OF THE GREAT.
The Deaf and Dumb Institution— The Val de Grdce— Hearls as Relics— Royal Funerals— The Church of Saint-Denis.

RETURNING from the Museum of Artillery
to the Museum of the Hdtel Cluny, we
see, from the Cluny garden, the portico of the
ancient church of Saint - Benoit,
first transformed into the Theatre 
du Pantheon, and then de
molished. Enclosed by the church
and cloister of Saint-Benoit was an
open space, in which, on the 5th
of June, the day of the Fete-Dieu,
1455, Frangois Villon, the wild
vagabond poet, assassinated the
priest Philippe Chermoye, his rival
in love. Closed at the time of
the Revolution, and then sold as
national property, it was after
wards, in 1813, converted into a
flour depot. In 1832, on the site
of the ruined church, was built
the Theatre du Pantheon, where
Alexandre Dumas brought out his
drama of Paul Jones. The Theatre
du Pantheon, after remaining
closed for some years, was pulled
down in 1854. Near it, however,
on the other side of the Hotel
Cluny, looking towards the
Boulevard .Saint - Germain, was
built the Theatre des Folies
Saint -Germain, where were pro
duced Les Inutiles of Edouard
Cadol, Les Sceptiques of Felicien
Mallefille, and a number of other
amusing pieces.
In the neighbourhood of the
Hotel Cluny and of the Theatre
Cluny is a very interesting es
tablishment : the Deaf and Dumb
Institution of the benevolent Abbe
de l'Epe'e, to whom the deaf
and dumb are indebted not only
for the language of signs, which
for them replaces speech, but also for the
establishment in which the deaf and dumb
children receive the education and instruc
tion necessary for them to make their way

in the world. But those inmates intended
by their parents for a liberal profession are
charged one thousand francs Qf4o) a year.

THE DEAF AND DUMB INSTITUTION.

The departments, communes, and charitable
institutions of the country maintain purses of
about 6,000 francs. The State has the disposal of
140 purses, from which it makes to the institution

90

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Val de GrSce.

an annual allowance of 70,000 francs. There are
higher classes for children who desire to follow
them, with workshops for children who will
have to subsist by manual labour. In 1785 the
Deaf and Dumb School, carried on until that
time in the Rue des Moulins at the Butte Saint-
Roch, received an annual subvention of 34,000
francs. The Abbe de l'Epee died on the 23rd of
December, 1789, at the age of seventy - seven.
His funeral oration was pronounced on the 23rd
of January, 1790, by the Abbe Fauchet, preacher-
in-ordinary to the king. On the 21st of July in
the following year the National Assembly voted
an annual sum of 12,700 livres (i.e., francs) for
the Deaf and Dumb School, which now, from the
Convent of the Celestins, where Queen Marie
Antoinette had established it, was transferred to
the ancient seminary of Saint-Magloire, Rue du
Faubourg Saint- Jacques.
The Deaf and Dumb School was reconstructed
in 1823 by the architect, M. Peyre, who left it
as it now stands. It is looked upon as the perfect
model of institutions of the kind. It contains,
besides the class-rooms, refectories, dormitories,
and workshops, not to mention the rooms in
which the sittings of the " Central Society of
Education and Assistance for the Deaf and
Dumb " are held.
Almost opposite the entrance to the Deaf and
Dumb Institute is the Rue des Ursulines, and
just beyond, the Rue des Feuillantines, where
Victor Hugo passed the happiest years of his
childhood, to which reference is made in some of
the finest verses of the Orientales. The Rue
Saint- Jacques now joins the Rue d'Enfer, which
separates it from the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
The Rue d'Enfer owes its ominous name to a
belief entertained in the eighteenth century that
it was haunted by the fiend. Various plans for
driving away the common enemy of man were
suggested, until at last the bright idea occurred to
someone of making over the entire street to an
order of monks, who, it was thought, would be
able, if anyone could, to deal with the invader
from below. Either by some exorcising process,
or by the natural dread which Satan or his
emissary could not fail to experience at being
brought beneath the observation of so many
pious brethren, the Rue d'Enfer, from the time
of its passing into the hands of the religious
order, became one of the quietest thoroughfares
in Paris. It still, however, in memory of the
old legend, preserves its ancient name. No. 269
in the Rue d'Enfer, which runs out of Paris by
the side of the Luxembourg Gardens, and takes us

almost to suburban parts, is the house, formerly
a Benedictine monastery, where, until the
Revolution, was preserved the body of James II.
of England, who had died at Saint-Germain-en-
Laye on the 16th September, 1701, and of Louise
Marie Stewart, , his daughter, who died at the
same place in 1727.
We now approach the Val de Grace, that
superb monument which Anne of Austria
founded in 1 641 as a thank-offering for the
birth of the dauphin, afterwards Louis XIV.t
who came into the world when his mother had
been twenty-two years without giving birth to a
child. The young king, now in his eighth year,
laid the first stone of the Val de Grace on the
1st of April, 1645. Mansard, the royal architect,
had drawn up the plan and begun the work,
when serious difficulties presented themselves ;
for the site of the church was just above the
catacombs. To reach a foundation, it was
necessary to make a number of deep piercings,
besides supporting the new edifice with blocks of
solid masonry. One of Moliere's few serious
poems is in honour of the Val de Grace and of
its architect, who was numbered amongst his most
intimate and most cherished friends. After a
very short time, however, the direction of the
works was taken from Mansard, and given to
Jacques le Mercier. Finally, Pierre de Muet was
entrusted with the difficult but honourable task ;
nor did he finish the work without the assistance
of two other architects, Gabriel le Due and
Duval. The facade of the Val de Grace, like that of
the Sorbonne, is composed of two Corinthian
orders, placed one above the other. Around the
cupola Pierre Mignard has painted a large fresco
representing the abode of the blest, divided into
many mansions. This admirable work is certainly
(as Moliere pointed out in the poem previously
referred to) Mignard's masterpiece ; and it may
well be regarded as the most important wall-
painting in Paris. The mosaic of the marble
pavement, in spite of its dilapidated condition, is
another attraction connected with this fine
building. The principal altar, reproduced from
that of St. Peter's at Rome, had been destroyed
in the revolutionary days of 1793. But the archi
tect, Ruprich Robert, reconstructed it by order of
the Emperor Napoleon III. ; and it was con
secrated after the fall of the Second Empire, on
the 28th of July, 1870. The paintings which
adorn the chapel are by Philippe of Champagne
and his nephew, Jean Baptiste. The dome, which
seemed to be in an insecure condition, was

Relics ofthe Great,]

HEARTS AS RELICS.

9i

reconstructed and strengthened by means of iron
supports in 1864 and 1865.
Closed in 1790, the Church of Val de Grace
was used as a magazine for stores during the
Republic and the Empire ; and it was not
restored to public worship until 1826. The
hearts of the princes and princesses of the royal
family were successively deposited in the different
chapels of the church, the first being that of Ann
Elizabeth, daughter of Louis XIV., who died in
tender years ; the last that of Louis, Duke of
Burgundy, who died March 27, 1761. These
hearts were thrown to the winds in 1793, but
not the reliquaries of gilded enamel in which
they were enclosed. One alone was saved : the
heart of the dauphin, son of Louis XVI. and of
Marie Antoinette, which was restored to the
royal family and afterwards deposited at Saint-
Denis in 1817. Two hearts are still deposited in
the ancient vaults : that of an English woman
named Mary Danby, of whom no record has
been preserved, and that of Larrey, the illustrious
surgeon - in - chief to the Grand Army, whose
statue in bronze, by David of Angers, adorns the
courtyard of the Val de Grace.
The last king of France and of Navarre died
on the 6th of July, 1836, and it was not until
nine days afterwards, on the 15th of July, that
the fact was made known to the French public
through the columns of the Gazette de France.
The heart, too, of Charles X. was, according to
royal custom, separated from the body ; though
instead of being preserved apart, as in the case of
former French kings, it was, after being en
closed in a heart-shaped box of lead, again en
closed in a box of enamel fastened with screws
to the top of the coffin. The Comte de Cham-
bord, on the other hand, was buried in the
ordinary manner, and not, like Charles X., with
his heart on the coffin lid ; nor like Louis XVIII.,
with his heart in one place and his body in
another. The dead, according to the German
ballad, "ride fast." But the living move still
faster ; and in France, almost as much as in
England, the separation of a heart from the
body to be kept permanently as a relic is in the
present day a process which seems to savour of
ancient times ; though, as a matter of fact, it
was common enough, at least among the French,
at the end of the last century. In our own
# country the discontinuance of what was at one
time as much a custom in England as in France,
or any other Continental land, is probably due
to the influence of the Reformation, which,
condemning absolutely the adoration of the

relics of saints, did not favour the respectful
preservation of relics of any kind. Great was
the astonishment caused in England when, in
the last generation, it was found that Daniel
O'Connell had by will ordered his heart to be
sent to Rome. The injunction was made at
the time the subject of an epigram which
was intended to be offensive, but which would
probably have been regarded by O'Connell him
self as the reverse, setting forth, as it did, that the
heart which was to be forwarded to Rome had
never, in fact, been anywhere else. The reasons
for which, in the Middle Ages, hearts were en
closed in precious urns may have been very
practical ones. Sometimes the owner of the
heart had died far from home ; and, in accord
ance with his last wishes, the organ associated
with all his noblest emotions was sent across the
seas to his living friends. Such may well have
been the case when, after the death of St. Louis
at Tunis, the heart of the pious king was trans
mitted to France, where it was preserved for
centuries, perhaps even until our own time, in
the Sainte-Chapelle. In the year 1798, while
some masons were engaged in repairing the
building, which had been converted into a depdt
for state archives, they came across a heart-
shaped casket in lead, containing what was
described as " the remains of a human heart."
The custodians of the archives drew up a formal
report on the discovery, and, enclosing it in the
casket with the remains, replaced the whole
beneath the flagstones under which they had
been found. In 1843, when the chapel was
restored, the leaden heart-shaped casket was found
anew, and a commission was> appointed to decide
as to the genuineness of the remains believed to
be those of St. Louis. An adverse decision was
pronounced, the reasons for discrediting the
legend on the subject being fully set forth by
M. Letrenne, the secretary of the commission.
More authentic are the remains cherished at
Rouen as representing the heart of Richard the
Lion-hearted ; though in this case again all
similitude to a heart, whether in shape or in
substance, has entirely disappeared. The de
scendants of St. Louis have in most cases had
their hearts preserved, though for different
reasons from those which seemed to have actu
ated the pious Crusader in his distant exile.
Louis XIV., whose body, like that of his pre
decessors and successors even to the eighteenth
of the same name, was to be buried at Saint-
Denis, gave his heart to the Jesuits : " that
heart," says the Due de Saint-Simon, "which

92

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Val de Grace.

loved none and which few loved." The heart of
Louis XVIII. was in like manner entrusted to
the keeping of a religious house ; and the same
custom would doubtless have been followed
when Louis XV. died of small-pox, had the
dangerous condition of the body allowed of its
being done.
From Louis XV. to Louis XVIII. no king of

France died on the throne. But when the post
mortem examination was made of the child who
perished in the Temple, Dr. Pelletan, one of the
surgeons who took part in the operation, placed
aside the heart of the so-called Louis XVII., and,
some twenty years afterwards, offered it to Louis
XVIII., who, however, declined the gift. Whether
the king disbelieved Dr. Pelletan's story, or
whether, as a certain set of writers
maintain, he regarded as two different
beings the child who died in the Temple
and Louis XVII. (believed by many to
have been smuggled out of prison and
replaced by a substitute) has never been
made known. The reputed heart of
Louis XVII. did not in any case possess
for Louis XVII.'s successor the value
that Dr. Pelletan had hoped. Such
relics cannot indeed be prized if any
uncertainty exists as to their identity.
About the same time that Dr. Pelletan,
by his own account, was appropriating to
himself the heart of Louis XVII., the
heart of the great Buffon somehow be
came lost. Buffon had bequeathed his
heart to a friend for whom he entertained
the deepest affection. But the son, who
had a great affection for his father, re
fused to part with it, and offered in its
place . his father's brain. The heart
was somehow lost in the midst of the

ELM TREE IN THE COURT OF HONOUR AT THE DEAF AND DUMB INSTITUTION.

Relics of the Great.]

BUFFON— THE HEART OF BRUCE.

93

revolutionary troubles, but the brain has been
preserved even until now. The illustrious Cuvier
wished at one time to purchase it, in order to
place it at the foot of Buffon's statue. At
another time the Russian
Government wished to buy
it ; and a high bid was once
made for it by the proprietor
of a museum of curiosities ;
until at last it became the
property of the State.
The heart of Buffon may
probably, like many others,
have been stolen for the
sake of its. casket. Hearts
intended to be preserved
were usually enclosed in
cases not of lead — as by ex
ception the heart of St.
Louis seems to have been
• — but of silver, and even
gold. The precious metal
was often, moreover, adorned
with jewels of great value.
Every precaution, in fact,
was taken to render as dif
ficult as possible the per
manent preservation of the
object which it was desired
to keep for ever ; and, as a
natural result, the number
of hearts which have come
down to the present day is
exceedingly small. Nearly
all the hearts in cases now
to be met with are those of
modern celebrities. That of
Voltaire — which after being
reverently kept until his
death by his friend and ad
mirer, the Marquis de Villette,
was at the Marquis's death
given by his heirs to the
state — can be seen at the
National Library of Paris. But the Hotel
des Invalides is, more than any other French
establishment, rich in hearts of the great. There
the hearts are religiously preserved of Turenne,
of La Tour d'Auvergne, of Kleber, and of
Napoleon. In England the encased heart best
known to us is pr»hably that " Heart of Bruce "
celebrated in Aytoun's "Lay" on the subject.
Boece, in the story on which Aytoun's poem is
partly founded, relates that when Sir James
Douglas was chosen as most worthy of all

Scotland to pass with King Robert's heart to
the Holy Land, he put it in a case of gold, with
aromatic and precious ointments, and took with
him Sir William Sinclair and Sir Robert Logan,

STATUE OF THE ABBE DE L'EPEE AT THE DEAF AND DUMB INSTITUTION,

with many other noblemen, to the holy grave,
" where he buried the said heart with the most
reverence and solemnity that could be devised.'1
According to Froissart, however, and other
authorities, Bruce's heart was brought back to
Scotland. Douglas, the keeper of the heart,
encountering the infidels, endeavoured to cut
his way through, and might have done so had he
not turned to rescue a companion whom he saw
in jeopardy. In attempting this he became
inextricably mixed up with the enemy. Then

94

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Val de GrSce.

taking from his neck the casket which contained
the heart of Bruce, he cast it before him, and
exclaimed with a loud voice, " Now pass onward as
thou wert wont, and I will follow thee." These
were the last words and deeds of an heroic life.
Douglas, quite overpowered, was slain ; and it
was not until the following day that the heart of
Bruce and the body of Douglas were both
recovered. Brought back to Scotland, the heart
was deposited at Melrose, and the Douglas family
have ever since carried on their armorial bearings
a bloody heart. This is one of the few hearts
which have been preserved to a good purpose,
and its preservation in the present day is largely
due to its having been embalmed in verse.
The obsequies of the French kings have from
the earliest times been attended with as much
pomp and show as their coronations. It was
not enough to embalm the body, place it in
several coffins and finally carry it to the tomb ;
it was necessary, before transporting it to the
royal burial-place of Saint-Denis, to observe a
ceremonial which the court functionaries and
the officials of state made a point of following
in the most literal manner. In the first place,
the effigy of the dead king was exposed for forty
days in the palace, stretched out on a state bed,
clothed in royal garments — the crown on the
head, the sceptre in the right hand, and the
brand of Justice in the left, with a crucifix, a
vessel of holy water, and two golden censers at
the foot of the bed. The officers of the palace
continued their duties as usual, and even went
so far as to serve the king's meals as though he
were still living. The body was afterwards
transported to the abbey of Saint-Denis, with
the innumerable formalities laid down before
hand ; while, at the moment of interment, so
many honours were paid to it, that to enumer
ate them would be to fill a small volume. So
precisely was the ceremony regulated that
battles of etiquette constantly took place among
the exalted persons figuring in the ceremony.
At the burial of Philip Augustus the Papal
Legate and the Archbishop of Rheims disputed
for precedence, and, as neither would give way,
they performed service at the same time, in the
same church, but at different altars. A like
scandal occurred at the funeral of St. Louis.
When his successor, Philip IIL, wished to enter
the abbey of Saint-Denis at the head of the pro
cession, the doors were closed in his face. The
abbot objected to the presence, not of the king,
his master, but of the Bishop of Paris and the
Archhishop of Sens, whom he had observed

among the officiating clergy, and who, according
to his view, had no right to perform service in
the abbey of Saint-Denis, where he alone was
chief. The difference was arranged by the
archbishop and bishop taking off their pontifical
garments and acknowledging the supremacy of
the abbot in his own abbe}'.
At the death of Charles VI. it was found
necessary to consult the Duke of Bedford as to
the conduct of the funeral ceremony, and, under
the direction of the foreigner, it was performed
with great magnificence. The duke observed as
nearly as possible the ancient ceremonial, the
only important variation being that (possibly in
his character of Englishman) he ordered the
interment to be followed by a grand dinner.
Several disputes on the favourite subject of
etiquette had already taken place, when at the
dinner-table the presence of the Registrars of
the Parliament was objected to by the king's
sergeants-at-arms. The point, when referred to
the Master of the House, was decided in favour
of the registrars.
These royal funerals cost naturally enormous
sums of money, which were charged partly to
the crown, partly to the city of Paris. The
obsequies of Francis I. cost his successor five
hundred thousand livres, without counting the
contribution — which was probably of equal
amount — from the town. The effigies of his
two sons who had died before him were carried
with him to Saint-Denis. Thus there were
three coffins in the procession. By the ob
servance of a similar custom, there were in
the funeral procession of St. Louis no fewer
than five.
At the funerals of the old kings genuine grief
was often exhibited by the people. Such, however,
was not the case at the obsequies of Louis XIV.
The Due de Saint-Simon, in his "Memoirs,"
speaks of this funeral as a very poor affair, remark
able only for the confused style in which it was
conducted. The king had left no directions in
regard to his burial ; and, partly for the sake of
economy, partly to save trouble, it was decided
to regulate the ceremonies by those observed at
the interment of Louis XIII., who, in his will,
had ordered that they should be as simple as
possible. " His modesty and humility, as well as
other Christian and heroic qualities, had not,"
says Saint-Simon, " descended to his son. But
the funeral of Louis XIII. was accepted as a pre
cedent, and no one saw any harm in that, or in
any other way objected to it, attachment and
gratitude being virtues no longer to be found."

Relics of the Great.]

ROYAL FUNERALS.

95

This was again shown by the absence of the
Duke of Orleans, just appointed regent, on the
occasion of the heart being carried to the Grand
Jesuits. When, a month later, the solemn obse
quies of the king were celebrated at Saint-Denis,
everything took place with such confusion, "and
so differently from what was observed at the
funerals of , Henry IV. and Louis XIII.," that
Saint-Simon declines to narrate the scene. He
cannot, however, help recording a quarrel on a
point of etiquette, which took place between
three dukes of the realm and Dreux, the Master
of the Ceremonies. Possibly the question raised
affected his own personal dignity as a duke.
" The Dukes of Uzes, of Luynes, and of Brissac,"
writes Saint-Simon, " were appointed to carry the
crown, the sceptre, and the brand of Justice,
being the seniors of those competent for the
duties. . . . When the ceremony had just begun
Dreux approached the stall occupied by the
Duke of Orleans to receive some order. Then
M. d'Uzes went forward before the other princes
and chief mourners, and said to Dreux that he
begged him to remember that the three dukes
must be saluted before the Parliament. Dreux
replied that he should do nothing of the kind.
He was son of the Councillor of the Great
Chamber, who had sent the king's testamentary
disposition as regards the regency to the
assembled Parliament. His son, then, was careful
'not to take part against the Parliament when
the office held by his father was, prior to his
own, the first cleanser of his low origin. M.
d'Uzes was content to ask him his reasons. ' Be
cause it would be against rule,' " said Dreux.
" This liar replied insolently and falsely," adds
Saint-Simon, " for his own registers, which are in
my possession, show that the dukes were with
out difficulty saluted before the Parliament at the
obsequies of Louis XIII., Henry IV, etc.
Their dignity requires it ; the symbols of
royalty carried by them require it ; their seats,
raised higher than those of the Parliament, prove
it in the most evident manner. M. d'Uzes
insisted, but Dreux continued to be offensive,
and insisted on his side, appealing to his registers.
As they could not then be referred to he was
believed', on his more than frivolous word, by
the Duke of Orleans, who had intervened, but
who took a very feeble part in the laconic con
versation. He cared neither for riches nor
dignities. He wished to humour the Parlia
ment, above all, at the beginning, but he was
not sorry to see a new quarrel arise."
In addition to the usual distribution of alrmj,

the Regent of Orleans associated the funeral of
Louis XIV. with an exceptional act of mercy.
A number of persons had been arbitrarily im
prisoned on lettres de cachet and otherwise,
some for Jansenism and various religious and
political offences ; others for reasons known
only to the king ; others, again, for reasons
known to former ministers of the king, but to no
one else. The regent ordered all the captives
to be set at liberty, with the exception of a few
whom he knew to be guilty of serious political
or criminal misdeeds. Among the prisoners
liberated from the Bastille was an Italian, who
had been confined for thirty-five years, and who
had been arrested the day of his arrival at Paris,
which he had come to see simply as a traveller.
" No one ever knew why," says Saint-Simon,
" nor, like most of the others, had he ever been
interrogated. It was thought to be a mistake.
When his liberty was announced to him, he
asked sadly of what use it was to him. He said
that he had not a sou, that he knew no one at
Paris, not even the name of a street nor a single
person in any part of France, that his relations
in Italy were probably dead, and that hie
property must have been divided among his
heirs, considering how long he had been away
from the country and that no one knew what
had become of him. He asked to be allowed to
remain at the Bastille for the rest of his life
with board and lodging. This was granted to
him, with liberty to go out when he pleased.
As for the prisoners taken out of the dungeons,
into which the hatred of the ministers and that
of the Jesuits had thrown them, the horrible
condition in which they appeared inspired dread,
and rendered credible all the cruelties they
related when they were in full liberty." The
story of the prisoner who declined to leave the
Bastille is additionally interesting from its
having been reported of another prisoner — ¦
possibly real, probably imaginary — on the
occasion of the Bastille being taken by the
Revolutionists in 1789.
The funeral of Louis XV. was a very
hurried affair. The king died on the 10th of
May at twenty minutes past three. The whole
court instantly took flight, and there only
remained with the body the persons necessary to
take care of it. The utmost precipitation was
used in removing it from Versailles. None ofthe
usual formalities were observed. Everyone was
afraid to go near the body. Undertakers, like
the rest, feared the small-pox of which the king
had died, and the corpse was carried to Saint-

96

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Val de GrS.ce.

Denis in an ordinary travelling-carriage, under
the care of forty members of the body-guard and
a few pages. The escort hurried on the dead
man in the most indecent manner ; and all
along the road the greatest levity was shown

The last of the Bourbons buried at Saint-
Denis was Louis XVIII., whose obsequies were
conducted as nearly as possible on the ancient
regal pattern. The exhibition of the king's
effigy in wax had in Louis XVIII.'s time

'"'¦. i :'¦¦''¦

[¦¦$¦¦¦
11

bv the spectators. The taverns were filled
with uproarious guests, and it is said that
when the landlord of one of them tried to
silence a troublesome customer by reminding
him that the king was about to pass, the man
replied, " The rogue starved us in his lifetime ;
does he want us to perish of thirst now that
he is dead?" A jest different in style, but
showing equally in what esteem Louis XV.
was held by his subjects, is attributed to the
Abbe of Saint-Genevieve. Being taunted with
the powerlessness of his saint, and the little
effect which the opening of his shrine, formerly
so efficacious, had produced, he replied : "What,
gentlemen, have you to complain of ? Is he not
dead?"

been out of fashion for more than a century.
But the customs observed in connection with
the lying-in -state of Louis XIV. were for the
most part revived. The king, who died on the
16th of September, 1824, was embalmed, and on
the 1 8th was exposed on a state bed in the Hall
of the Throne. His bowels and heart had been
enclosed in caskets of enamel. The exhibition
of the body lasted six days, during which it was
constantly surrounded by the officers of the
crown and the superior clergy. The translation
of the remains to Saint-Denis took place on the.

wpKOO ZO
o <w pH2;oPuW B
H so« w

Relics ofthe Great. J

ROYAL FUNERALS.

07

23rd, in the midst of an imposing civil and
military procession. The princes of the blood
and grand officers of state occupied fourteen
mourning coaches, each with eight horses, and
the tail of the procession was formed by four
hundred poor men and women bearing torches.
Received at the entrance to the church by the
Dean of the Royal Chapter and the Grand
Almoner of France, the body was placed on
trestles in the chancel while prayers were recited
by the clergy. It was afterwards removed to an
illuminated chapel, where it remained exposed
for a whole month, the chapter performing
services night and day. The interment took
place on the 25th of October. The Grand
Almoner said a solemn mass ; and after the
Gospel a funeral oration was pronounced by
the Bishop of Hermopolis. Then four bishops
blessed the body, and absolution having been
pronounced, twelve of the body-guard carried
down the coffin to the royal vault, and the
Grand Almoner cast a shovelful of earth On the
coffin, blessing it, and saying, " Requiescat in
pace." The king-at-arms approached the open
vault, and threw into it his wand, his helmet,
and his coat of arms, ordered the other heralds to
imitate hkn, and calling up the grand officers of
the crown, told them to bring the insignia of
authority held from the defunct king. Each
came in succession with the object entrusted to
his care — such as the banner of the royal guard,
the flags of the companies of the body-guard, the
spurs, .the gauntlets, the shield, the coat of arms,
the helm, the pennon, the brand of justice, the
sceptre, and the crown. The royal sword and
banner were only presented at the mouth of the
vault. The Grand Master of France inclined
at the same time towards the coffin the end
of his staff, and cried in a loud voice : " The
king is dead ! " The king-at-arms, taking three
steps backwards, repeated in the same tone " The
king is dead ! The king is dead ! The king is
dead ! ' ' Then turning towards the persons assem
bled, he added : " Let us all pray to God for the
repose of his soul." The clergy and all present
fell on their knees, prayed, and then stood up.
The Grand Master then drew back his staff
from above the vault, raised it in the air, and
cried : " Long live the king ! " The king-at-
arms repeated : " Long live the king ! Long
live the king ! Long live King Charles, the
tenth of the name, by the grace of God King
of France and of Navarre ; very Christian, very
august, very powerful ; our honoured lord and
master, to whom may God give a very long
31

and very happy life. Cry all : ' Long live the
king ! ' " Music then sounded, and all present
responded with cries of " Long live the king !
Long live Charles X. ! " The tomb was
closed, and the ceremony was at an end.
At the funeral of the Comte de Chambord
the hearse was surmounted by a dome, on which
rested four crowns. It was not explained what
kingdoms these crowns were intended to re
present. As the head of the house of France,
the right of the Count — heraldically speaking —
to wear the French crown would scarcely be
disputed. The four symbolical crowns on the
Comte de Chambord's hearse were possibly,
then, meant to be simple reminders that the
Bourbons claimed sovereign rights over four
different countries ; and, in the days of Louis
Philippe, they in fact reigned in France, Spain,
Naples, and Parma. But the revolution of
1848 in France, and the war of 1859 m Italy,
cleared three thrones of their Bourbon occu
pants, and the last of the reigning Bourbons
disappeared when, in 1868, Isabella of Spain
fled from Madrid. Thus in the course of twenty
years the four Bourbon crowns lost all real
significance, and the Bourbon sovereigns in
creased the number of those " kings in exile,"
so much more plentiful during the period of
M. Alphonse Daudet than in that of Voltaire,
who first observed them (in " Candide ") as a
separate species.
Now that the Comte de Chambord reposes by
the side of his grandfather,CharlesX., there are as
many of the Bourbons buried at Goritz as at St.
Denis, where, in the burial-place of the French
kings, the only really authentic bodies are those
of the Due de Berry, the Comte de Chambord's
father, and of Louis XVIII., his great-uncle.
In regard to the latter occupants of the French
throne, one knows at least where they are in
terred — Napoleon I. at the Invalides, Louis
Philippe at Claremont, Napoleon III. at Chiseh
hurst, and the .last two representatives of the
Bourbons at Goritz. The first of the Bourbons,
Henry IV., together with his successors, Louis
XIII., Louis XIV., and Louis XV., were all
buried at St. Denis, in the vault known as that
of the Bourbons ; and to the coffins still sup
posed to contain their remains were added after
the Restoration two more, which are reputed,
without adequate foundation for the belief, to
hold the bodies of Louis XVI. and of the child
who died in the Temple — the so-called Louis
XVII. The body of the .Due de Berry was laid
in the vault of the Bourbons a few days after his

98

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Relics of the Great.

assassination in 1820 ; and that of Louis XVIII.
was consigned to the same resting-place in 1824.
But in 1793 the tombs of the French kings had
been dismantled and their contents reinterred
promiscuously in two large graves hastily dug
for their reception ; and the identity of the bones
asserted to be those of Louis XVI. and Louis
XVII., which were not placed in the Bourbon
vault of the St. Denis church until 181 5, could
scarcely be demonstrated. " To celebrate the
1 oth of August, which marks the downfall of the
French throne, we must on its anniversary,"
said Barere in his report on the subject, ad
dressed to the French Convention, " destroy the
splendid mausoleums at St. Denis. Under the
Monarchy the very tombs had learned to flatter
the kings. Their haughtiness, their love of
display, could not become softened even on the
theatre of death ; and the sceptre-bearers who have
done so much harm to France and to humanity,
seem even in the grave to be proud of their
vanished greatness. The powerful hand of the
Republic must efface without pity these arrogant
epitaphs, and demolish these mausoleums which
would bring back the frightful recollections of
the kings."
The proposition of Barere was adopted, and
the National Assembly decreed " that the tombs
and mausoleums of the former kings in the
church of St. Denis should be destroyed." The
execution of the decree was undertaken on the
6th of August, and three days afterwards fifty-
one tombs had been demolished. One of the
most remarkable of these tombs was the earliest
— the tomb erected by St. Louis in memory of
" Le Roi Dagobert," of facetious memory, famed
in song for having put on his breeches " a
l'envers." It is one of the most curious monu
ments of the thirteenth century, and at least as
interesting by its subject as by its architecture.
In three zones superposed, the first above the
second, the second above the third, is represented
the legend of Dagobert's death. In the lowest
of the three zones we see St. Denis revealing
to a sleeping anchorite named Jean that King
Dagobert is suffering torments ; and close by the
soul of Dagobert, represented by a naked child
bearing a crown, is being maltreated by demons
frightfully ugly, who are holding their prey in a
boat. In the middle zone the same demons are
running precipitately from the boat in the most
grotesque attitudes at the approach of the three
saints — Denis, Martin, and Maurice — who have
come to rescue the soul of King Dagobert. In
the highest of the bas reliefs the soul of King

Dagobert is free. The naked child is now stand
ing in a winding-sheet, of which the two ends
are held by St. Denis and St. Martin, and angels
are awaiting him in Heaven, whither he is about
to ascend. The commission appointed by the
Convention did not destroy this tomb. They
had it transported, with many other objects of
artistic or of intrinsic value, to Paris ; and on
presenting to the National Assembly what had
been saved from the general wreck, the repre
sentative of the commission spoke as follows : —
" Citoyens representatives — " Les pretres ne sont
pas ce qu'un vain peuple pense ; Notre credulite
fait toute leur science.* Such was the language for
merly held by an author whose writings prepared
our revolution ; the inhabitants of Franciade
(the new Republican name given to the religious
and royal St. Denis) have just proved to you
that it is not foreign either to their mind or
their heart. It is said that a miracle caused the
head of the saint which we now offer you to
travel from Montmartre to St. Denis. Another
miracle, greater and more authentic, the miracle
of the regeneration of opinions, brings this head
to Paris. The new translation is marked, how
ever, by this difference. The saint, according to
the legend, kissed his hand respectfully at each
step ; and we have not once been tempted to
kiss the offensive relic. His journey will not
this time be chronicled in the martyrologies, but
in the annals of reason ; and it will be doubly
useful to the human species. This skull and the
holy rags which accompany it will cease at last
to be the ridiculous object of popular veneration
and the aliment of superstition, fanaticism, and
lies. The gold and silver which surround them
will help to strengthen the empire of liberty and
reason. The treasures amassed in the course of
centuries by the pride of kings, the stupid
credulity of the devout, and the charlatanism of
deceitful priests, seem to have been reserved by
Providence for this glorious epoch. It will soon
be said of kings, of priests, and of saints, They
have been. Reason is now the order of the day ;
or, to speak the language of mysticism, the last
judgment has arrived with the separation of the
bad from the good. You, formerly the instru
ments of despotism, saints of both sexes, blessed
of all kinds, be at least patriots : rise in a body,
march to the help of our native land, be off to
the mint — and may be by your help obtain in
this life the happiness you promised us in
another. We bring to you, citizen legislators',
* The priests are not what a shallow people thinks them :
our credulity is all their learning.

The Catacombs.!

THE CATACOMBS.

99

all the rottenness that existed at Franciade. But
as in the midst of it there are objects designated
by the Commission of Monuments as precious
for the arts, we have filled with them six
chariots ; you will say where they can provision
ally be placed, that the Commission may make a
selection." When Louis XVIII. returned to the throne of
his ancestors, he made it almost his first care to
re-establish their tombs, and he entrusted the
work to the well-known architect, M. Viollet-Le-
Duc. The task of disinterring and sorting the
bones of the ancient kings would have been too

difficult ; but coffins presumed to be those of
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were dis
covered in the cemetery of the Madeleine, and
another coffin, which might have been that of
Louis XVII., was also found. These three
'coffins were in 1815 placed with great solemnity
in the vault of the Bourbons ; to which, as
before mentioned, were added in 1820 and 1824
the coffins (with bodies enclosed) of the Due de
Berry and of Louis XVIII. The one king
whose remains can be said beyond doubt to be
in the ancient burial-places of the French kings
is Louis XVIII.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CATACOMBS : THE OBSERVATORY.
Origin ofthe Catacombs— The Quarries of Mont Souris— The Observatory— Marshal Ney— The School of Medicine.

BETWEEN the church where the hearts of
royal princes were once deposited, and the
catacombs where nameless human remains are
still preserved, there is but little connection.
It has already, however, been mentioned that a
portion of the catacombs separates the Val de
Grace from its foundations ; and a word may here
not inappropriately be said of underground Paris.
The catacombs are certainly miscalled. The
name carries us back to antiquity ; and those
who have no positive information on the subject
may be excused for thinking that here were
buried the inhabitants of Lutetia in the time of
Caesar and of Julian the Apostate. As a matter
of fact, however, the so-called catacombs are
simply quarries to which have been removed
from time to time since the closing years of the
last century the skeletons and bones of those
interred in the Paris cemeteries and graveyards,
which, as they became too full, had to be relieved
of their mouldering contents. In 1780 the in
habitants of some houses in the Rue de la
Lingerie, alarmed by certain deplorable acci
dents which happened through the propinquity
of their cellars to a large common graveyard
formed to hold 2,000 bodies, addressed a petition
to the lieutenant-general of police, pointing out
the dangers by which the health of Paris was
threatened. The lieutenant recommended the
suppression of the Church of the Innocents, and
the exhumation of the bodies deposited in the
ancient cemetery attached to it, which it was

proposed should be turned into a public thorough
fare. The suggestions of the lieutenant, M.
Lenoir, having been accepted, his successor,
M. Crosne, appointed a commission through tho
members of the Royal Society of Medicine.
which was entrusted with the duty of emptying
the cemetery of the Innocents of its dangerous
contents. The decision arrived at was that the
human remains should be removed from the
cemetery and placed in the quarries of Mont-
Souris. During the year 1786 the quarries were
prepared for receiving the bones of whole gen
erations of the Paris population. In some
places pillars were built up in order to support
the quarries where there seemed to be a proba
bility of their giving way from above ; in others,
where the quarries were open, they were covered
over, so that the new catacombs might be every
where underground. Excavations, too, had to
be made ; and, finally, an upper storey was con
structed, so that the bones now repose in two
different layers, one above the other. On the
7th of April, 1787, the catacombs intended to
serve as general ossuary to all the cemeteries of
Paris were solemnly blessed and consecrated ;
and the same day began the translation of the
contents of the cemetery of the Innocents to
the catacombs. Dr. Theuriet, who superintended
the removal, came to the conclusion, together
with other medical men, his assistants, that, from
the position of the limbs, a number of persons
must have been buried in a state of lethargy,

100

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Catacombs.

so hastily and carelessly were people interred in
those days. After the cemetery of the Innocents
had been cleared of its remains other burial-
places were proceeded with ; and though the
work of transfer had not been finished when the
Revolution broke out, which had the natural
effect of interrupting it, some of the first victims

Je meurs, et sur la tombe ou lentement j 'arrive
Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs ! *
At other points the walls of the catacombs have,
by some peculiarity of construction or of natural
form, suggested legendary ideas. One pillar is
called that of the "Imitation" ; and elsewhere
the pedestal of Saint-Laurent may be seen.

ENTRANCE TO THE OBSERVATORY.

of the great struggle were carried to the cata
combs. The bones deposited in these subter
ranean vaults are arranged in an orderly and
methodical style. There are no tombs in the
catacombs, where the dead are absolutely on an
equality. Here and there, however, the name
of tomb has been fancifully given to some pillar
or portion of a pillar which presented a monu
mental aspect. Thus the tomb of Gilbert, the
unhappy poet, is pointed out, because, on the
wall of the supposed sepulchre, someone has
inscribed the well-known opening lines of his
most celebrated poem,
Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive,
J'apparus un jour et je meurs ;

Some forty or fifty years ago the catacombs
were the object of daily visits, and the sight was
one which every visitor to Paris felt called upon
to see. Accidents, however, frequently took
place ; and at present no one enters the cata
combs except at certain periods of the year, when
the engineers have to make a formal report as to
their condition. The ventilation is effected by
means of numerous holes communicating with
the upper air. The catacombs may be entered
from various points. At the period of the daily
* A literal prose translation reads somewhat baldly: —
An unfortunate guest at life's banquet I appeared for a day
and now die ; I die, and on the tomb to which I am slowlj
travelling none will come to shed a tear.

The Observatory.]

THE CHILDREN'S ASYLUM.

IOT

visits, which were too often accompanied by ac
cidents, the descent was made from the south, near
the Luxemburg Gardens. The names of visitors
are called over before they go down and again
when they come up. The general aspect of the
place is not so solemn as might be imagined. It
suggests rather a vast wine-cellar in which the
cases enclose bones instead of bottles. The relics
of four million persons now repose there. This
subterranean city contains streets and passages
like the city above, and each thoroughfare, num
bered as though it consisted of houses, corre
sponds closely enough to the street, with its
numbers, of the metropolis overhead. The object
of this carefully-planned correspondence is to
be able, in case of accident, to furnish assistance
as soon as possible at the spot indicated.

Visitation on the one hand, and on the other
the Convent of the Good Shepherd ; behind
which may be seen, at the end of the Luxemburg
Gardens, the tower and cupola ofthe Observatory.
The Children's Asylum is really a foundling
hospital, established in an ancient building given
by Gaston, Duke of Orleans, to the priests of the
Oratory in 1655. For a long time the duty 01
gathering up and educating deserted children,
and in particular new-born babes exposed, de
fenceless, to the inclemency of the weather,
belonged, as a special Christian prerogative, to
the bishop of Paris ; and in the cathedral stood
a bedstead, fastened into the pavement, on which,
on fete days, children were exposed in order to
awaken the charity of the public. Close to the
bed were two or three nurses and a basin for the

THE GARDENS OF THE OBSERVATORY, BOULEVARD ARAGO.

The favourite point of descent for visitors to
the catacombs is in the ominously-named Rue
d'Enfer (the origin of the name has been already
given) ; and here the visitor finds himself with
the Children's Asylum and the Convent of the

receipt of alms. This charity, of somewhat
primitive type, gave rise to abuses. The nurses
of the unknown children would now and then
become tired of them, and got rid of them by
simply selling them. It is said that at the Port

102

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Catacombs.

Saint - Landry children fetched twenty sous
apiece. Those of the foundlings who did not
die helped to swell the number of the vaga
bonds, beggars, and thieves.
Such was the scandalous state of things which
St. Vincent de Paul undertook to reform when
he founded in 1638, near the gate of Saint-
Victor, an asylum for foundlings directed by
ladies of charity. In 1641 Louis XIII. ensured
to it an annuity of four thousand livres (francs),
which in 1644 was raised to twelve thousand.
After being moved from place to place, the in
stitution was located at a house in the Fau
bourg Saint-Antoine, of which the first stone
was laid in 1676 by Queen Marie-Therese, with
a subsidiary establishment in connection with
Notre Dame.
At present foundlings and poor orphans are
received at the asylum of Les Enfants Assistes
from the first day of their birth until their
twelfth year. Immediately after their admission
the children are sent into the country, where the
newly-born are entrusted to nurses, while the
elder ones are placed with artisans or farmers.
The asylum receives, moreover, for a time, the
children of hospital patients and of persons
arrested or condemned for criminal offences.
The number of children belonging to the latter
category averages some four thousand a year, for
whom 542 beds have been provided. The
general expenses of the asylum exceed annually
two millions and a half of francs (^"100,000).
Opposite the Children's Asylum are the lofty
walls of the convent of the Good Shepherd,
administered by the lady hospitallers of Saint-
Thomas de Villeneuve, for the benefit of penitent
women. Enclosed by the Rue d'Enfer, the Rue du
Faubourg Saint- Jacques, and the Boulevard
Arago stands the Observatory, one of the most
celebrated scientific establishments of Paris and
of the world. It was founded by order of Louis
XIV. Colbert took the work in hand, Claude
Perrault designed it, and Cassini inaugurated
it in the name of Science. The building,
begun in 1667 and finished in 1672, still
preserves its original design. With its square
tower in front, on the side of the avenue,
and its side wings in the form of octagonal
pavilions, the Observatory would resemble
some country house if its cupolas and the
other appendages which surmount the ter
races on its Italian roof did not indicate its
scientific object. The four sides of this rect
angular construction correspond exactly to the

four cardinal points. The principal facade, to
which, from the Luxemburg Gardens, leads
the broad avenue, looks directly to the north.
The posterior facade, on the Boulevard side, has
a southern aspect. The left side, dominating
the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, receives the rising
sun, while the setting sun casts its rays on the
right side, which runs in a line with the Rue
d'Enfer. The latitude of the southern facade is
taken, in the official geography and cosmography
of France, for the latitude of Paris, so that the
Paris meridian cuts the building into two equal
parts. Neither wood nor iron has been employed
in the construction, which is entirely of stone.
The Observatory, a state establishment under
the control of the Ministry of Public Instruction,
is governed by a director, who has attached to
him titular astronomers, eight adjunct astrono
mers, and five assistant astronomers. The
administration is in the hands of the director,
aided by a council, who, moreover, superintends
the scientific surveys, and is charged with the
correspondence and the publication of reports.
The meridian of Paris, traced in a great hall
on the second storey, divides the edifice into two
parts by a line which, prolonged north and
south, would reach, in one direction, Dunkirk
on the North Sea, in the other Callioure on the
Mediterranean. These two lines, which inter
sect one another at the central point of the
facade, served as basis for the numerous triangles
upon which were drawn up, in the last century,
the map of France, known as the map of Cassini,
and in the middle of the present century the
map known as the "staff map," begun under
the direction of General Pelet. The east wing
contains the chambers of observation and the
instruments belonging to them ; the west wing
an amphitheatre capable of holding 8,000 per
sons. It was here that the illustrious Arago
delivered his lectures.
In 1815 was constructed, on the octagonal
tower of the east, the great copper cupola fur
nished with apertures for telescopes, the floor of
which moves round, so that the astronomer in
observation can follow the revolutions of the
stars throughout the night. This revolving
dome, the largest known in the scientific world,
has a diameter of about thirteen metres. In its
centre is the immense parallactic telescope of
Bruner. It is nine metres long and thirty-
eight centimetres in diameter. Mention must
be made, in other parts of the edifice, beneath
smaller cupolas, of hydrometers for measuring
the rain, the equatorial telescope of Secretan

The Observatory.]

MARSHAL NEY.

103

and Eychens, together with thermometers, regu
lators, telegraphic and registering apparatus,
Gamby's mural circle, micrometers, the great
meridian circle, and the immense telescope,
one of the four largest telescopes in the world,
furnished with a mirror silvered by the Foucourt
process and having a diameter of 1 20 centimetres.
The Observatory avenue was the scene of a
tragic event on the 7th of December, 1815, when,
at daybreak, in front of the wall of a public
dancing-place, known as the Closerie des Lilas,
Marshal Ney, condemned to death by sentence
of the Court of Peers, was shot. Marshal Ney,
Duke of Elchingen and Prince of Moscow (or of
"Moskowa," the Moscow river), after gaining dis
tinction in all Napoleon's campaigns, found him
self, under the Restoration, in 18 14, charged
with the duty of seizing his former chief, who
had just disembarked from Elba, and bringing
him as a prisoner to Paris. Though far from
being an enthusiastic supporter of the Bourbons,
Ney considered that after the arrangements of
Vienna and the pacification of Europe, Napoleon
had committed a serious offence in coming back to
France. Marshal Soult, then Minister of War,
sent him to the south of France, where he was
to take measures against Napoleon from head
quarters at Besancon. Before proceeding on his
mission Ney had an audience of Louis XVIII.,
in the course of which, speaking of Napoleon, he
promised to bring him back " in an iron cage."
Arriving at Besancon, Ney learned that the
Count of Artois, brother of the king, had gone
to Lyons, where he at once wrote to the count
saying that as the small number of troops at
Besancon did not require his presence in that
town, he begged his royal highness to employ
him near his person, and, if possible, as com
mander of the vanguard ; desiring, as in all
other circumstances, to give proofs of his zeal
and fidelity. On the day following, M de Maille,
the count's first gentleman of the chamber, went
to inform the marshal of the prince's departure
from Lyons and of Bonaparte's arrival at Grenoble.
Ney thereupon decided to move his headquarters
to Lons-le-Saunier, " resolved," as he wrote to
the Minister of War, " to attack the enemy on
the first favourable occasion." On reaching
Lons-le-Saunier, he heard that Napoleon had
¦entered Lyons, on which he concentrated his
forces without delay, and gave instructions to
his generals. His orderly officer having told him
that the soldiers in their excitement were on
the point of breaking out into mutiny, and
were shouting " Vive l'Empereur," he replied,

"They must fight. I will myself take a gun
from the hands of a grenadier. I will begin the
action, and will shoot the first man who refuses
to follow me." The next day, on the 13th of
March, Ney was informed that Bonaparte was
being everywhere received with acclamation, and
that everywhere the troops sent against him
were joining his standard. At Bourg, Macon,
and Dijon the re-establishment of the Empire
had been proclaimed ; and the artillery, which
had been ordered to join the Royalist army, had
gone over to Napoleon's forces. In presence of
this irresistible movement, the marshal fell into
a state of the utmost perplexity. On the night
of the 13th emissaries from Bonaparte came to
see him. They declared that the return of
Napoleon met with the approval of England and
Austria ; told him that his soldiers would cer
tainly abandon him, and explained to him, by
narrating the triumphal progress of his former
chief, how impossible he would find it to act
against the current of public opinion. All this
had a great effect upon Ney. Uncertain, shaken
in his resolution, he consulted the two principal
generals, Lecourbe and Bourmont, serving under
his orders, and, on the ground that the public
current was irresistible, determined to abandon
the Royalist cause. Forgetting all his promises,
all his emphatic protestations of loyalty, he joined
the side that was now triumphant. He assembled
his troops in the public square of Lons-le-Saunier
on the morning of the 14th, and appeared in the
midst of them surrounded by his staff. Drawing
his, sword, and in a loud impressive voice, he
read the following proclamation, which had been
handed to him by Napoleon's envoys : — " Officers,
under -officers, and soldiers. The cause of the
Bourbons is lost for ever. The dynasty adopted
by the French nation is about to reascend the
throne. To the Emperor Napoleon, our sove
reign, alone belongs the right of reigning for
our dear country. Let the Bourbon nobility
make up its mind to leave the country once
more, or consent to live in the midst of us.
What, in either case, does it matter ? The
sacred cause of liberty and independence will
suffer no more from their fatal hands. They
wished to tarnish our military glory ; but they
made a mistake. This glory is the fruit of
actions too noble ever to be forgotten. Soldiers,
these are no longer the times in which nations
can be governed by stifling their rights. Liberty
triumphs at last, and Napoleon, our august
emperor, will establish it on durable foundations.
Henceforth this cause shall be ours and that of

104

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Catacombs

France. • Let the brave men I have the honour
to command take this truth to their hearts.
" Soldiers, I have often led you to victory. I
will now conduct you to that immortal phalanx
which the Emperor Napoleon is leading towards
Paris, and which will arrive there within a few
days, when our hopes and our happiness will be
for ever realised. Long live the Emperor !

for they were strangers to the sudden change that
had been brought about. " We knew," cried the
soldiers, " that you and the marshal-would not
leave us in the hands of the emigres." The
inhabitants showed themselves not less enthu
siastic than the troops ; and Ney returned to
his quarters under the escort of an excited
crowd, frantic with joy. When, however, he

4 '

PLACE DE L'OBSERVATOIRE.

Lons-le-Saunier, March 13, 181 5, Marshal of the
Empire, Prince de la Moskowa."
From the very first words of this proclamation
the soldiers, who hated the Bourbons, raised
frantic acclamations. A furious joy, says M.
Thiers, broke out like thunder in the ranks.
Placing their shakos at the end of their muskets,
they raised them in the air and cried out with
significant violence, " Vive l'Empereur ! Vive
le Marechal Ney ! " Then they broke the ranks,
rushed headlong towards the marshal, and kiss
ing, some his hands, others the skirts of . his
coat, thanked him after their manner for having
accomplished the desire of their hearts. Those
who could not get near him surrounded his
aides-de-camp ; rather embarrassed at receiving
homages which they certainly did not deserve,

found himself at home, he read in the counten
ances of his aides-de-camp uneasiness and even
disapproval. One of them, a former emigre,
broke his sword, saying at the same time :
"You should have told us beforehand, M. le
Marechal. You should not have made us
witnesses of such a sight."
" And what would you have had me do ? "
replied Ney. " Could I stop the advancing sea
with my hands ? "
Others, while admitting that it was impossible
to make the soldiers fight against Napoleon,
expressed their regret at his having undertaken,.
at such a short interval, two such contrary
parts. " You are children," replied the marshal. " It
is necessary to do one thing or another. Can I

The Observatory.]

MARSHAL NEY

'°5

go and hide myself like a coward to avoid the
responsibility of events beyond me. Marshal
Ney cannot take refuge in the dark. Besides,
there is only one way to diminish the
evil : by taking a decided part at once
so as to avert civil war ; - to get into
our hands the man who has returned
and prevent him from committing
follies. For," he added, "I am not
giving myself over to a man but to
my country ; and if this man wished
to lead us back once more to the
Vistula, I would not follow him."
Having treated in this manner those
who blamed him, Marshal Ney received
at dinner, besides the generals, all the
regimental chiefs with the exception

of one who refused to come. After the defeat
of Waterloo, in which he is represented by
French historians as everywhere seeking

STATUE OF MARSHAL NEY.

death, Ney was brought before the
Chamber of Peers, and for his dis
loyalty condemned to death.
Out of 161 members present,
128 voted death, 17 transportation,
while 5 members abstained from
voting. Amongst the peers who
pronounced for capital punishment
may be mentioned Chateaubriand,
the Due de Valmy, the Due de
Bellune, Lauriston, General Mon-
nier, and the Comtes Dupont, de
Beauharnais, de Tascher, de Seze,
Seguier, Lamoignon, and d'Ag-
uesseau. From the prison of the Luxem
burg, his place of confinement,
the marshal was taken at an

io6

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Catacombs.

early hour of the morning to the avenue of the
Observatory, and was, as before mentioned,
placed against the wall. Protesting his innocence,
and appealing to God and to posterity, he died,
pierced to the heart by half-a-dozen bullets.
The Duke of Wellington was accused at the time
of not lifting a finger to save Ney from the
consequences of his treason. It has since been
shown by the evidence of the duke's own
words that he approached the king on the
subject. But he met with such a reception that
it was impossible for him to persist.
On the critical day, when Napoleon's envoys ap
pealed to him, and when his troops were longing,
to a man, to swell the numbers of Napoleon's
forces, the marshal, it is argued, could scarcely
have acted otherwise than as he did. Of the
128 peers who voted for the marshal's execu
tion, a considerable number were of Napoleonic
creation. After the Revolution of 1848 a tablet was
affixed to the fatal wall in memory of Ney,
and a sum of money voted for the erection
of a statue. It was reserved, however, for
Napoleon III. to commemorate, on the spot
where he had fallen by the bullets of his own
countrymen, the heroism of the marshal. The
monument was inaugurated on the 7th of
December, 1853, the anniversary of the marshal's
death, the ceremony being presided over by
Comte de Persigny, Minister of the Interior, and
Key's grandson by marriage. The monument
consists of a pedestal in white marble, resting on
a foundation of red granite, and supporting the
statue of the marshal, modelled by Rude. Sabre
in hand, Ney appears to he leading his troops to
a charge or to an assault.
We have seen that the Rue d'Enfer, thanks
to the power of the monks over the fiend who
once made night hideous by his unearthly
screams, has long had the reputation of being
the quietest street in Paris. Here numbers of
artists have made their abode, sure, in the
midst of monasteries and asylums, of the tran
quillity so necessary to their labours.
Among the remarkable institutions in this
neighbourhood may be mentioned the free
school of drawing in the Rue de l'Ecole de
Medecine. A special school for girls, founded in
1803 in the Petit Rue de Touraine (now Rue
Dupuytren), was afterwards transferred to No. 7
Rue de Seine.
The Church of the Cordeliers, pulled down
at the beginning of the century, stood on the
site now occupied by the School of Medicine.

Behind the church a garden, laid out by the
famous Le Notre, was the scene of the funeral
ceremony and interment of Marat, stabbed by
Charlotte Corday in the house just opposite, num
bered 20 at the time. After the body had been
publicly exhibited and made the subject of a
picture by David, it was interred in the garden
beneath an arbour which bore this inscription,
among others equally singular : " Sacred heart
of Marat, pray for us ! " Exhumed some years
later, the remains of Marat were carried to the
Pantheon, whence they were taken out, to be
cast into the gutter of the Rue Montmartre,
their last resting-place.
Of the agglomeration of buildings which con
stituted the convent of the Cordeliers, the only
one that remains is that which formerly con
tained the dormitories and the refectory. Within
its walls is now established the Dupuytren Mu
seum, with its specimens of pathological anatomy,
not open to the public. The Practical School
of Medicine, on the Place de l'Ecole de Mede
cine, stands on the site formerly occupied by the
rest of the cloister and its dependencies. The
collective name of Ecole Pratique is given
to the dissection-rooms of the Faculty of Medi
cine and to the amphitheatres where free
lectures are given, and where some six hundred
students practise dissection and experimental
chemistry. Immediately opposite the Practical School is
the School of Medicine, built in 1769 by the
architect Gondouin. The edifice, as completed
under Louis XVI., is composed of four blocks of
buildings, leaving between them a large court
yard. The facade, looking on to the square, con
sists of a gallery of Ionic columns. Above the
colonnade is an attic storey with twelve win
dows, broken, above the principal entrance, by a
bas-relief representing Minerva and Generosity
granting privileges to Surgery, followed by
Vigilance and Prudence. The Genius of Art
is seen presenting to the king the plan of the
building. This handsome edifice is the seat of the Paris
Faculty of Medicine, whose mission it is to teach
medicine and surgery in all their branches, and
to examine the students and assign to them those
diplomas, without which it is forbidden in France
to practise medicine, surgery, or pharmacy. The
title of professor at the Faculty of Medicine is
the highest that a physician or surgeon can
obtain. The number of titular professors
amounts to twenty-six.
The Faculty possesses a library, two museums,

The Observatory.]

THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.

107

and thirty laboratories ; besides the botanical
garden at No. 13 Rue Cuvier, close to the
Garden of Plants. The front rooms and left
wing of the school are occupied by the Orfila
Museum, named after the famous chemist.
The Faculty of Medicine has, year by year,
attracted so many additional students that at

1797, soon afterwards to be demolished. It
was in the church of Saint-Andre' des Arts
that Frangois Marie Arouet was baptised on
the 22nd of November, 1694. The late M.
Auguste Vitu, in his large illustrated work
on Paris, claims, in recording this event, to
have discovered the true interpretation of the

IHE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.

last the building, which dated from
1769, was found far too small ; and
it was decided some fifteen years
ago to construct new wings, which
now occupy all the space comprised
between the Rue de l'Fxole de
Medecine, the. Boulevard Saint-
Germain, and the Rue Hautefeuille.
The first stone of the new building
was laid in 1878. To the right of
the School of Medicine, the Rue
Hautefeuille attracts the attention
of the archaeologist. The turrets
of the middle ages and of the
Renaissance have become rare in
Paris ; but the street in question
possesses no less than six. The
Rue Hautefeuille runs into the Place Saint-
Andre des Arts, formed in 1809 on the site
of the church of Saint-Andre des Arts, which
was built in the thirteenth century on the
foundations of an ancient chapel dedicated to
Saint-Andeol and sold as national property in

NEW WING OF SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, BETWEEN THE BOULEVARD
SAINT-GERMAIN AND RUE DE L'ECOLE DE MEDECINE.

anagrammatic process by which the bearer of
the name of Arouet is supposed to have changed
it into Voltaire. " Fs Voltaire" is, as M. Vitu
points out, the exact anagram of " Arouet fils."
But why trouble about the matter ? Who, after
all, can tell us by what process the name of

io8

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Observatory.

Poquelin, said to be derived from a Scotch
village named Pawkelin (whence came the
grandfather of the great comic dramatist) got
converted into Moliere ?
The Rue Saint-Andre
des Arts leads to the
meeting-point of the Rue
de l'Ancienne Comedie, the
Rue Dauphine, and the
Rue Mazarine. In connec
tion with the Rue Dauphine
must be mentioned a little
street that runs out of it,
the Rue Contrescarpe, where
still exists the Restaurant
Magny, famous for its
literary frequenters, in
cluding George Sand and

HOTEL DU CHEVAL BLANC.

Saint-Beuve, who, with some others, founded
the celebrated "Friday dinner," at which no
one abstained from meat. No. 5 in this street

is occupied by the Hotel du Cheval Blanc, the
celebrated inn which figures in the "Roman
Comique" of Scarron and the "Trois Mous-
quetaires" of Dumas.
Under the reign of
Louis XIII. it seems
to have been nothing
more than the stables,
coachhouse, and ser
vants' hostelry attached
to the mansion of the
Archbishop of Lyons.
The Rue Saint-
Andre des Arts com
municates with the
Rue de l'Ecole de
Medecine by a short
passage known as the
Cour du Commerce,
which is associated, on
more than one point,
with the French Re
volution. In one of
the old houses (now
pulled down) on the
side of the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine lived
Danton. At the present No. 8 .still existed,
until two years ago, a reading-room which
was established under the Reign of Terror
by the widow of the Girondist Brissot, who,
having inherited a large library from her
husband, wished to turn it to profitable
account. In the same house was the print
ing office of the Ami du Peuple, edited by
Marat. The printing office was directed by
Brune, who afterwards became a marshal of
France, and died, like the atrocious journalist,
by assassination.
Another souvenir, again of a sanguinary
kind, belongs to the Cour du Commerce. One
of the appendages to the stunted houses in the
middle of the passage is a shed, where the first
experiments were made with the guillotine.
" Sic vos non vobis" might, in Virgilian
phrase, be said of the first victims. These were
sheep, which were subjected to an almost pain
less death in the interest, not of themselves,
while condemned to perish by the butcher's
knife, but of men and women. Some day, let
us hope, animals also will be killed with the
least possible accompaniment of suffering.

The Odeon.]

THE ODEON.

109

CHAPTER XIX
THE OD^ON : THE LUXEMBURG PALACE.
The Odeon-Its History-Erection of the Present Building in I7o9-Marie de Medicis and the Luxemburg Palace-The Judicial Annals
of the Luxemburg— Trials of Fie^hi and Louvel— Trial of Louis Napoleon— Trial ofthe Due de Praslin.

FROM the so-called Mountain of Sainte
Genevieve, where stands the Pantheon
all the streets lead down to the Seine ;
and before following the left bank of
the river in its course through Paris,
we have still many places and points
of interest to deal with in the neigh
bourhood of the Pantheon and of the
Luxemburg, including, indeed, the Lux
emburg itself. This side of the river,
though both the Louvre and the
Tuileries stand on the right bank, is
particularly rich in historical associa
tions ; and here, until a comparatively
recent period — during which successful
writers have become millionaires and
men of fashion — was to be found the
literary centre of Paris. This the
names of the streets and thoroughfares

proclaim. On the river bank is the Quai
Voltaire, close to the Luxemburg the Rue

HUE DE L'ANCIENNE COM^.niE.

Corneille, and between the two the
Rue Racine and the Rue de La Harpe.
In the Rue Corneille, by the way, stands
the Hotel Corneille, beloved of students,
and in a street parallel to it, on the
other side of the Od6on Theatre, the
Hotel de l'Empereur Joseph, named
after Marie Antoinette's father, Joseph
II. , who, when he visited a foreign
capital, did not accept hospitality at
the palace, but put up at some con
venient hotel, that he might see the
points of interest in the city at his
leisure without having them exhibited
to him. Foreign sovereigns who visit
London have sometimes, in spite of
themselves, had to follow, so far as

110

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

residence is concerned, the example of the
Emperor Joseph.
The Odeon, now known as the Second French
Theatre, was at one time the First. The Theatre
Francais, or Comedie Francaise, by its more
historic title, has moved freely from one bank
of the river to another. At the accession of
Henry LV. Francis' sole company of comedians
("comedians" being at that time a general
name for actors of all kinds) established in the
Hotel Saint-Paul what was known as the
Theatre du Marais, where the works of Gamier,
Royer, and the very earliest of French dramatists
were produced. Some years later another
company of " comedians " established a new
theatre, which Corneille and Rotrou rendered
illustrious, at the Hotel de Bourgogne. Finally,
in 1658, the company formed by Moliere was
allowed to give representations at the Louvre,
in the hall of the Cariatides. The success
of the new company was so great that the Duke
of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV., gave them
hospitality in the Palais Royal, where were
represented all Moliere's masterpieces, and the
first piece written by Racine, " La Thebaide."
As long as Moliere lived his company struggled
victoriously against the Theatre du Marais and
the comedians of the Hotel de Bourgogne, who,
nevertheless, called themselves " the great
comedians." But in 1673 the death of the great
comic poet proved fatal to his theatre. Four of
his most celebrated actors, Baron, La Thorilliere,
and Monsieur and Madame Beauval, passed over
to the enemy, while, to complete the discomfiture,
the remainder of the company was expelled
from the theatre in the Palais Royal, which the
king now gave to Lulli the composer. The
exiles took refuge in the Rue Mazarin, on the
other side of the water, where they vegetated
obscurely, though taking with them all Moliere's
plays. Finally, in 1680, by order of Louis XIV.,
the two principal companies were united under
the name of Comedie Francaise. The combined
company established itself first in the theatre of
the Palais Royal, then in the Rue Mazarin,
where the Moliere company had previously
been playing ; then, in 1689, in the Rue des
Fosse's Saint-Germain des Pres, which took the
name, first of Rue de la Comedie and after
wards of Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, which it
still preserves. Here, opposite the Cafe Procope
— throughout the eighteenth century the first
literary cafe in Paris — -were produced the works
of Regnard and Dancourt, of Dufresny and
Destouches, of Crebillon, Lesage, Voltaire,

Marivaux, Gresset, Piron, Diderot, and Sedaine.
Here, too, Beaumarchais brought out his
"Barber of Seville."
In 1772 the comedians took possession of anew
theatre, built on the site of the Hotel de Conde,
and it was in this house, now known as the Odeon,
that they represented for the first time Beau-
marchais's "Marriage of Figaro." The Revolution
arrived, and in 1793 the Comedie Francaise, like
so many other suspicious institutions, was sup
pressed as of royal and aristocratic origin ; but onlv
to revive a few years afterwards, in 1799, under
the First Consul, who established it in the Rue
Richelieu, where it still remains. Beginning its
history with the production of a masterpiece,
which in one form or other has made the tour
of Europe, to remain permanently on the Euro
pean stage in the shape of an opera, the Odeon,
when the company of the Comedie Francaise
had established itself in the Rue Richelieu,
became a theatre of all work. Here were pro
duced pieces which at the Comedie Francaise
and elsewhere had been refused. The comedies
of Picard, the first dramas of Casimir, Delavigne,
Ponsard, Emile Augier, were brought out at
the Odeon, which also served for the first per
formances of " Frangois le Champi " and the
" Marquis de Villemer," of George Sand. During
the Revolution the Odeon was successively
called Theatre de l'Egalite and Theatre de la
Nation. It owes to the First Republic, with its
passion for everything Greek, Roman, and
quasi-Republican, its name of Odeon. Twice it
has been burnt down — the fate of all theatres ;
and once under very tragic circumstances.
An unfortunate dramatist had been for years
striving to get a piece produced. At last his work
was accepted by the management of the Odeon.
He had suffered, however, so much from dis
appointment that he could scarcely believe in
the good fortune which seemed now to have
come to him. In vain his wife endeavoured to
raise his spirits. He had fallen into a fit of
depression, and this on the very day fixed for
the representation of his piece. Something,
he remarked to his wife, always occurred at the
last moment to prevent his success. " But it is
assured now," she replied. " Nothing can stand
in your way at present — unless, indeed, between
now and this evening the theatre should be burnt
down." At that moment a cry of "fire" was
heard in the street — in the Rue Corneille where
the dramatist and his wife lived. They rushed
to the window and saw that the theatre was in
flames.

The Luxemburg Palace, J

THE LUXEMBURG PALACE.

1 1 1

The Odeon faces a large open square or "place "
of the same name, and its back is just opposite
the principal gate of the Luxemburg Gardens.
To the right of the entrance to the gardens
stands the palace ; one of the two, both mag
nificent, for which Paris is indebted to two
women, both members of the same family ;
Catherine de Medicis, who built the Tuileries,
and Marie de Medicis, who built the Luxemburg.
Catherine, however, only began the Tuileries,
whereas Marie de Medicis completed the
Luxemburg within a
¦ few years from its com
mencement, g
She in the first place
acquired the mansion , ajggii&jj
or '' hotel " of Pi ney -
Luxemburg, whose
last name was to re
main attached to the
new edifice. She then
purchased a quantity
of land, which was con
verted into gardens —
the Luxemburg Gar
dens, as they were natur
ally to be called. The
architect of the Queen's
palace was Jacques de
Brosse, otherwise " Sa
lomon " de Brosse, who
worked with so much
diligence at the task
confided to him that, beginning the building in
1615, he had finished it by 1620, when it was at
once inhabited. To the rapidity with which it
was constructed the palace owes, no doubt, its
rare homogeneity of style, so sadly wanting in
most public buildings, the construction of which
has sometimes occupied centuries. Its archi
tectural pre-eminence might have been disputed
upwards of twenty years ago ; but since the
burning of the Tuileries by the Communards
the Luxemburg must beyond question be con
sidered the finest palace in the French capital.
Jacques de Brosse has been suspected of repro
ducing in the Luxemburg Palace the character
istic features of some of the Florentine palaces,
and particularly that of the Pitti Palace, to
flatter Marie de Medicis. It is only necessary
to have visited Florence to be convinced that de
Brosse did nothing of the kind. Although
this architect, like others, had doubtless studied
classic and mediaeval architecture, it should be
admitted that to his greatest work he has given

a particularly French stamp. Marie de Medicis
left to her second son, Gaston, Duke of Orleans,
her magnificent palace with the grounds belonging
to it. The famous Mile. Montpensier next in
herited it, from whom it passed to her sister,
Elizabeth of Orleans. Then the whole property
went back to the crown, but only for a short
time. At the death of Louis XIV. the Orleans
family became once more possessors of the
Luxemburg. But as though this palace was
destined to remain in the hands of women, the

ODEON THEATRE.

regent made it over to his too notorious daughter,
the Duchess of Berry. At the time of the
Revolution the Luxemburg was seized by the
Republican Government, and under the Reign
of Terror was turned into a state prison. Here
Beauharnais and his wife (the future Empress
Josephine), Camille-Desmoulins, Danton, and
thousands of others lees celebrated, were confined
while waiting to be brought before the terrible
tribunal. The storm had scarcely passed when
the first regular Government which had been
established since the taking of the Bastille, the
Directory, took possession of it.
The Luxemburg was now once more a palace,
and seemed about to regain its former splendour.
To this period of its history belongs a memorable
event — the triumphal reception of the young
conqueror of Italy. The ceremony took place
in the courtyard of the palace, and is said to
have been of a most imposing character. But
the coup d'etat of the 1 8th Brumaire was ap
proaching, and that same Bonaparte was about to

ii;

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

upset the Government which had received him
with such enthusiastic acclamations. Now, in
place of the Directory, the Consulate installed
itself in the palace of Marie de Medicis. Finally,
in 1 86 1, the Luxemburg was made over to the
new Napoleonic Senate ; and under the name,
now of Senate, now of Chamber of Peers, it was

before his imprisonment at Ham. Among other
prosecutions under the reign of Louis Philippe
of which the Luxemburg was the scene may
be mentioned those of the Due de Praslin, and
of Fieschi and the seven or eight other regi
cides who attempted the life of the fearless
" citizen king." It was certainly no want of

THE LUXEMBURG PALACE FROM THE TERRACE.
destined to be occupied permanently by the
members of the upper house.
The judicial annals of the Luxemburg, in
connection with the numerous occasions on
which the Chamber of Peers performed the
functions of a court of justice, are full of
interest. Of the trial of Marshal Ney we have
already spoken. It was followed some years
afterwards by that of Louvel, the assassin of the
Duke of Berry. Then, immediately after the
revolution of 1830, came the impeachment of
Charles X.'s ministers, and, in the middle of Louis
Philippe's reign, the trial of Prince Louis
Napoleon, after his landing at Boulogne and

personal courage that made Louis
Philippe disappear in a hackney7
cab, when, by facing the insurrec
tion of 1848, he might according
to the best military authorities, so
easily have crushed it.
Giuseppe Fieschi, who heard his
doom pronounced at the Luxemburg,
was one of the most remarkable regi
cides of whom history has preserved
a record. His crime is distinguished
from that of other attempts on the
lives of kings by the fact that he
was actuated neither by personal revenge nor
conscientious motive. Most regicides obey
some deep political conviction or some sug
gestion of religious fanaticism. Viewe,d in this
light, they are the mere instruments of an
idea. Fieschi, however, was a unique exception
to the rule. Political conviction he had none.
He was neither a Legitimist nor a Republican.
He had been a spy, and would have become
once more a police-agent had the police required
his aid. To the philosophical and legal student
Fieschi must indeed remain a problem. A rapid.
glance thrown over his life and over the debates
which took place in the Chamber of Peers will

The Luxemburg Palace.]

TRIAL OF FIESCHI.

H3

show this man always to have been greedy for
notoriety ; and in this insane longing to draw
public attention to himself may perhaps, if
anywhere, be found the motive of his crime.
Nevertheless, he had several accomplices, who
cannot be supposed to have been actuated by a

passing along the lower boulevard, close to the
Jardin Turc, a battery, formed of twenty-four
musket -barrels— afterwards to be known as the
" infernal machine "—discharged upon the king
and his staff a hail of bullets. The Due de
Tre vise (Marshal Mortier), General de Verigny,

THE SENATE CHAMBER.

love of notoriety. In the midst of the general
horror caused by Fieschi's murderous, and in
the case of many members of the king's suite
fatal attempt, the Legitimist journals taunted the
Republicans with the crime, who, in their turn,
cast the responsibility upon the Legitimists.
Louis Philippe had been duly warned by the police
that some conspiracy was being prepared against
him. He was to proceed on the 28th of July,
1835, to a review, accompanied by a numerous
staff. Endeavours had been made, if he insisted
on going to the review, to induce him to take
another route. He refused, however, to make
any change in his arrangements, and as he was
32

and several other officers fell mortally wounded ;
and inside a house from whose window the
bullets had been fired was arrested Fieschi, the
chief of the assassins. It was found impossible to
connect the crime with the action of any political
party, though at the trial suspicion was in
directly cast upon the Revolutionists, whose
hopes had been so bitterly disappointed by the
proclamation of a constitutional king instead of
the establishment of a republic. That many of
the attempts made upon the life of Louis Philippe
were due to this party — who could not forget
that they had driven away Charles X. only to
replace him by Louis Philippe — is indisputable.

H4

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

But the trial of Fieschi (the details of whose crime
have been already related) brought to light in
connection with the case no political circumstances
of any kind. Against the theory generally ac
cepted by French historians, that Fieschi, in
preparing his diabolical outrage, was moved only
by love of notoriety, must be placed the fact that
he did not possess enough money to construct the
" infernal machine " without assistance, and that
he was supplied with funds by several workmen,
who cannot themselves be supposed to have been
burdened by any superfluity of cash, and who,
in their turn, must have been supplied from
some quarter destined to remain unknown. It
was not until a month afterwards that, through
his avowals, some of Fieschi's accomplices were
discovered ; and it was not till the February of
the following year that the trial before the
Chamber of Peers was brought to an end.
After eleven appearances before the court on
eleven different occasions, Fieschi and two of the
direct participators in his crime were condemned
to death.
In the course of the evidence abundant par
ticulars were furnished as to the life led by
Fieschi since his earliest days. He had served
in the Neapolitan army under Murat, whom,
after the general collapse of the Napoleonic
system, he seems to have betrayed to the
Austrians. He had been imprisoned for various
offences, and when at liberty had acted, in Italy
and in France, as informer and spy. He had at
last succeeded in obtaining a very small post
under the Administration as keeper of some kind
of mill ; and as he was dismissed from this
appointment only a few months before his
attempt on the life of the king (a warrant being
at the same time issued for his arrest), it is barely
possible that in preparing his crime he was
moved by some idea of personal vengeance act
ing upon a disordered brain.
Endeavours were made to obtain a commuta
tion ofthe capital sentence on behalf of Fieschi's
accomplices ; to which the Duke of Orleans,
Louis Philippe's eldest son, replied : " If I myself,
or any member of the king's family, had been
struck, it might have been possible to grant the
commutation demanded ; but no relation of any
of the victims has suggested it." Fieschi and
two of his accomplices were accordingly exe
cuted, without either of them saying the least
word as to the origin ofthe foul conspiracy. Nine
teen persons had been killed or mortally wounded
by the explosion of the infernal machine, and
twenty-three wounded seriously.

The prosecution of Louvel, another of the
political prisoners arraigned at the Luxemburg,
(to go back some years) began before his victim,
the Duke of Berry, was dead ; and in the very
opera-house at whose doors, just as he was
stepping into his carriage, the unfortunate man
had been stabbed. In the manager's private
apartments the unhappy prince lay stretched on
a bed, hastily arranged and already soaked with
blood, surrounded by his nearest relatives. The
poignant anguish of his wife was from time to
time relieved by some faint ray of hope, destined
soon to be dispelled. In a neighbouring room
the assassin was being interrogated by the
ministers Decazes and Pasquier, with the
bloody dagger on the table before them ; while
on the stage the ballet of "Don Quixote" was
being performed in presence of an enthusiastic
public. In the course of the night King Louis
XVIII. arrived ; and his nephew expired in his
arms at half-past six the next morning, begging
that his murderer might be forgiven. The same
day (Feb. 14th, 1820) the Chamber of Peers was,
by special order of the king, constituted as a
court of justice to try Louvel.
Meanwhile the assassin had, according to
custom, been confronted with the body of his
victim, and in the presence of the corpse was
subjected to a full interrogatory.
In the body you see before you, do you
recognise, he was asked, the wound made by
your hand ?
A. Yes.
Q. In the name of a prince who, until the
last moment, supplicated the king in favour of
his assassin, I call upon you to name your
accomplices, and those who suggested to you the
horrible project of assassination.
A. There are none to name.
Q. Who induced you to commit this crime ?
A. I wished to give an example to the great
personages of my country.
Q. Was the arm you employed poisoned ?
A. NO ; I neither poisoned it nor caused it
to be poisoned.
The next ceremony was the opening of the
body, which was performed by MM. Dupuytren,
Bourgon, and Roux. The doctors in a formal
report described the wound, and certified that the
lesions caused by it had "without doubt" pro
duced the prince's death. To leave nothing in
a state of uncertainty — not even what was
strikingly obvious — they examined the dagger
which had been " represented as having served
for the commission of the crime," and intro-

The Luxemburg Palace,]

TRIAL OF LOUVEL.

n5

duced it into the wound ; after which they
certified that the latter corresponded in dimen
sions and form with the former.

ENTRANCE COURT, LUXEMBURG PALACE.
The post-mortem examination and the report
on the condition of the body having been
finished, the clothes of the murdered prince
were at the request of his wife given up to her.
They consisted of a green tail-coat, a yellow
waistcoat, a pair of grey trousers, a shirt, and a
flannel vest ; the coat, waistcoat and trousers
composing a costume which was doubtless
fashionable at the time,
but which in the present
day would look somewhat
grotesque. ^s£
Louvel was kept 114 tJSPlI -
da3's in prison, while -.;¦¦¦:¦¦:¦,
minute inquiries were
being made in every
direction with the view
of discovering his sup
posed accomplices. But,
like Damiens and Ra-
, vaillac, he had acted alone,
and in pursuance of a
fixed idea which tor
mented him until he
struck the fatal blow.
He was kept in solitary
confinement, and during
the greater part of the
time in a sti ait-waistcoat.
During his imprisonment
he spoke much and with

all the agents who were put to guard him ;
and he was guarded day and night. He dis
played remarkable vanity, being quite proud
of sleeping at the Luxemburg
while the trial lasted, and of
being able to date his letters
from the Luxemburg Palace. He
was much preoccupied with the
effect that this would produce.
He continued to attribute his
crime to a fixed idea which had
never quitted him for six years,
and which at last destroyed him.
" I know I have committed a
crime," he said ; " but in fifty
years it will, perhaps, be regarded
as a virtuous action."
The trial of the prisoner was
begun on the 5 th of June and
concluded on the following day.
Towards the end ofthe proceedings
the president of the court, in the
name of God and of Heaven, ad
jured Louvel, since he was to suc
cumb to human just-ice, not to draw upon himself
" the eternal punishment to which execrable
men are condemned by refusing to declare the
instigators and accomplices of the crimes they
have committed." Louvel,
rising hurriedly from his seat,
exclaimed in a strong, steady
voice : " No ; I am alone."

GRAND AVENUE, LUXEMBURG GARDENS.

n6

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

anvthing

to
he

say why
spoke as

Asked if he had
sentence should not be passed,
follows : — -
" If I have this day to blush for a national
crime which I alone have committed, I have the
consolation of believing in my last moments

SCULPTURE GALLERY, LUXEMBURG PALACE.

that I have not dishonoured the nation. I
have not dishonoured, my family. You must see
in me nothing but a Frenchman resolved to
sacrifice himself in order tc destroy, according
to his mind, the greatest enemies of his
country. You accuse me of being guilty of
having attacked the life of a prince. Yes, I am
guilty of that crime ; but some of the men

There was not and could not be any sub
stantial defence to the charge of assassination ;
and after a long trial, in which every con
ceivable question, connected or unconnected with
the case, was put to the prisoner, and after an
imprisonment of some four months, he was at last
condemned to death.
He bore the announce
ment of the sentence
with equanimity, and on
the morning of the
execution seemed only
anxious to know whether
the crowd assembled to
witness his death would
be enough to give na
tional importance to the
incident. Twenty years later the
Chamber of Peers was
again to be convoked —
this time under Louis
Philippe — in order to
judge Prince Louis
Napoleon, who had in
vaded France to assert
Napoleonic principles
and his own personal
right to the French
throne. Only a few-
years previously Prince
Louis Napoleon had
made a like attempt at
Strasburg, when, though
a certain measure of
support had been se
cured beforehand from
the officers in the Stras
burg garrison, he was
arrested, and dismissed
with no further punish
ment than an engage
ment on his part never
again to set foot in France.
After the failure at Strasburg Prince Louis
Napoleon went for a time to Switzerland,
whence he made his way to England, where, as
princes usually are, he was well received. A
friend of Count d'Orsay, he was a frequent
visitor at Lady Blessington's. What was more
important, he maintained friendly relations with
Lord Palmerston, who, according to some good

who compose the Government are in their present
position because they also have mistaken crimes ' authorities, looked from the first with favour
for virtues." j upon Prince Napoleon's project of gaining

The Luxemburg Palace.]

LOUIS NAPOLEON.

117

supreme power in France. Louis Blanc, in his
"History of Ten Years" (from 1830 to 1840),
declares that before starting on his expedition to
Boulogne, the prince received a secret visit from
Lord Palmerston ; and in the Russian " Diploma
tic Study on the Crimean War " it is set forth that

No one makes an invasion without recon
noitring beforehand the country to be invaded ;
and Prince Louis Napoleon's emissaries had
already ascertained that at Boulogne, at Calais,
at Saint-Omer, and at the great military centre
of Lille, there were officers ready to cast in their

SALLE DES FJSTES, LUXEMBURG PALACE.

during Prince Louis Napoleon's stay in London
Lord Palmerston laid with him the basis of the
understanding by which some dozen years after
wards France and England formed a compact
against Russia. The tardy speculations of these
prophets of the past must be taken for what they
are worth. Prince Louis Napoleon formed, in
any case, a plan for invading France, and, fol
lowed by the troops who at every step were to
join him, marching towards Paris, there to be
received with acclamations by an enthusiastic
population, eager for the restoration of the
Napoleonic dynasty and the Napoleonic mode
of government. For Prince Napoleon appealed
to democrats as well as imperialists. He was to
give with the one hand universal suffrage and
with the other military government.

lot with his. According to Louis Blanc,
Prince Louis Napoleon's intention was, after
securing the adhesion of the Boulogne garrison,
to march upon Calais, whence he was to make
his way to Saint-Omer. But the better -informed
Count Orsi, who took part in the expedition,
and was one of the prince's most trusted friends,
tells us, in a valuable little volume devoted to
the subject, that the plan of campaign was to
march from Boulogne straight to Saint-Omer.
The point to be reached after Saint-Omer was
in any case Lille ; and if the garrison of Lille
had once been secured, the prince's enterprise
would have been far, indeed, from hopeless.
To return once more to Louis Blanc — that
brilliant, sensational, but by no means accurate
historian. Prince Louis Napoleon was, according

IlS

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

to his account, encouraged in his hazardous
project by Lord Palmerston ; not because that
statesman believed in its success, but because he
knew that it must inconvenience and possibly
injure Louis Philippe, whose policy he detested.
Louis Blanc also holds, in connection with the
Boulogne expedition, that the French embassy in
London was kept well informed as to the pro
gress of the enterprise, but did not interfere be
cause, anticipating with confidence a complete
failure, it looked upon this fiasco as destined to
have a strengthening effect on the existing
Government, certain at once to suppress it.
However all this may have been, Louis Napo
leon's friends engaged for him, in the month of
July, 1840, a steamer named the Edinburgh
Castle. On the 4th of August the arms, ammu
nition, and baggage were taken on board at
Gravesend, where the vessel remained for some
little time. Here it was that the famous eagle,
which has become the subject of a ridicu
lous legend, was brought on board. An officer
of the party who had gone on shore happened
to meet with a youth who was offering an
eagle for sale. Struck by the appropriateness of
the bird, he determined, more in a jocular than
in a superstitious spirit, to purchase it and place
the expedition under its auspices. It was after
wards pretended that the eagle had been trained
in London to fly round the head of Prince
Louis Napoleon ; this gyration, according to
Louis Blanc, being caused by the bird's know
ledge that a piece of bacon was secreted beneath
the rim of his master's hat.
Louis Blanc, in his " Histoire de Dix Ans,"
gives a long account of the Boulogne expedition,
which is in the main correct. Several in
accuracies, however, have crept into his narra
tive, so often one-sided ; and the only authentic
account of this invasion on a small scale that has
been written by a participator in the events is
the one published for the first time some
dozen years ago by Count Orsi. In asking the
count to join him in the expedition, Prince
Napoleon declared that if he ever succeeded
in placing himself on the throne of France,
which, sooner or later, he was convinced he
should do, one of his first cares would be to free
Italy from the domination of Austria, and
unite the different Italian states into one inde
pendent kingdom. Apart, however, from this
assurance, Count Orsi was quite prepared to
throw in his lot with that of the Prince. He it
was who secured the Edinburgh Castle for
the expedition, and who, before the da}' of

starting, obtained for the prince a loan of twenty
thousand pounds. The steamer left London with
about sixty of Napoleon's adherents on board,
and anxious inquiries were made as to its desti
nation before it had got farther than Gravesend.
" I want to know," said the custom-house
officer who came alongside in a boat, " what you
are doing here in the middle of the river."
" We are waiting for a party of friends, who
should have arrived by this time."
" Where are you going? "
"To Hamburg."
" Have you goods on board ? "
" None ; the steamer is chartered for a pleasure-
trip." " How many people have you on board ? "
" I have several private gentlemen, and I
expect two more from London. I have three
more to take up at Ramsgate."
Here it is that the incident of the tame eagle
comes in. Colonel Parquin had gone on shore to
buy some cigars, when, on his way back from the
tobacconist's; he saw a boy seated on a log of
wood feeding an eagle with shreds of meat. The
eagle had a chain fastened to one of its claws, with
which it was secured. The colonel asked
whether the bird was for sale, and it was ulti
mately purchased for a pound. Conveyed on
board, the eagle was fastened to the mainmast,
and from that moment was never taken notice of
until it was discovered and seized by the autho
rities at Boulogne. The eagle was for many
years afterwards on view at the Boulogne slaughter
house, where there were abundant opportunies of
supplying it with raw meat. The unhappy bird
was destined, however, from first to last, to be
made the subject of fables. Even Count Orsi's
account of its adventures at Boulogne is in some
particulars incorrect. He had been informed
that after the capture of Prince Napoleon and
his followers the eagle was taken to the
museum, whence, he says, it fled away next
morning, owing to some carelessness on the part
of the men who had it in charge. It was, as a
matter of fact, however, taken to the abattoir,
where the present writer remembers seeing it
some half-dozen years after Prince Napoleon's
landing. After vainly waiting at Gravesend for some
hours after the time at which the prince was
due, Count Orsi took a post-chaise and hastened
to Ramsgate, where General Montholon, Colonel
Voisin, and Colonel Laborde had been sent on by
the prince in anticipation of his arrival. Colonel
Voisin was the only one of the three who under-

The Luxemburg Palace.]

THE' BOULOGNE EXPEDITION.

119

stood the real purport of the expedition. The
count reached Ramsgate late on the night of
the 4th of August, and put up at the hotel
where the prince's friends were staying. With
Colonel Voisin, after General Montholon and
Colonel Laborde had gone to bed, Orsi had a
secret conference. Voisin was in the greatest
state of concern at the delay in the prince's
arrival, because the whole success of the expedi
tion depended on his reaching Boulogne early
next morning. " Colonel Voisin,"
we are assured, " was in utter de
spair at the non-appearance of the
steamer, and almost out of his
mind." He declared to Orsi that
the expedition would be a dis
astrous failure unless the Edin
burgh Castle were at Boulogne
by four o'clock the next morning.
The only man, he said, whom
the prince had to dread was
Lieutenant - Colonel Puygellier,
commanding the battalion at
Boulogne — a man unflinching in
the discharge of his duty and a
staunch Republican, whom nothing
could tempt to join an Imperial
pretender. Orsi replied to the
distracted Voisin that the hour
of the ship's arrival at Boulogne
could not make much difference,
since the hostility of Puygellier
must at one time or another be
faced. " You are mistaken," said
the colonel. " Puygellier will not
be at Boulogne all day to-morrow.
The prince has purposely fixed
the 5th for presenting himself before the
battalion, because he knows that Puygellier
has been invited to a shooting-party at some
distance from Boulogne, and in all probability
will not be back until late at night. If we miss
being there to-morrow we are doomed to perish."
It was one o'clock in the morning. Colonel
Voisin, in a state of feverish agitation, threw
the window open to get a breath of the sea-
breeze, and walked up and down the room. The
night was bright and calm. Leaning against the
window-sill, Orsi perceived to the left, at some
distance, a black column of smoke slowly elong
ating itself along the surface of the water, and
fancied he heard the regular beat of paddle-
wheels. For some little time he did not mention
the circumstance to the colonel, lest he should be
disappointed and the steamer' should prove to be

merely one of the many boats trading with Calais,
Hamburg, and various Continental seaports. Ere
long, however, the steamer reached the shore, and
presently there was a hurried ring at the bell of
the hotel. Thelin, one of the prince's party,
announced that Napoleon had arrived. Orsi was
ordered to go on board at once with Voisin, Mon
tholon, and Laborde. Thelin, hurrying to the
room of the two last-named, made them get out
of bed, dress, and follow him downstairs. As

/
THE CENTRAL FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBURG GARDENS.
they were going out General Montholon
drew Orsi aside and whispered : " I now under
stand ; the prince has planned a coup-de-tete."
In a few minutes^ the party were on board the
Edinburgh Castle. Not a soul was on deck.
The prince had assembled his followers in the
cabin, and was on the point of addressing them
when Orsi and his friends joined the company.
The address of the prince roused everyone to the
highest pitch of enthusiasm — though the ex
pression of this enthusiasm was restrained by
Napoleon himself, who feared that the attention
of the captain and crew might be attracted by
the noise.
On the conclusion of the address the cabin
was, at the prince's request, cleared of every
one but General Montholon, the colonels
Voisin, Montauban, Laborde, Count Persigny,

120

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

Forestier, Ornano, Viscount de Querelles, j The four hundred men of the 42nd line regi-
Galvani, D'Hunin, Faure, and Orsi himself, J ment, forming the garrison of Boulogne, were

FACADE OF THE ANCIENT CHAPEL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF CALVARY, LUXEMBURG.

who were summoned by their leader to de
liberate in council as to the programme
now to be followed.

ready to proclaim the prince, and all prepara
tions had been made in the town for a popular
rising to succeed the military demonstration.

The Luxemburg Palace.]

THE BOULOGNE EXPEDITION.

121

But, inasmuch as

it was now too late to reach
Boulogne on the appointed day, the expedition
was one of grave hazard and difficulty. There
was no use in landing at or near Boulogne until
the 6th, as nothing could be attempted in broad
daylight. The prince requested each member of his im
provised council to give his opinion as to what

with the arms, the uniforms, the printed proclama
tions and other revolutionary documents, which
the Custom-house officers would find when the
steamer got back to London Bridge ? , " We
steer between two great dangers," said Orsi to the
prince. " By returning to London we become
the laughing-stock of everybody ; and ridicule
kills. If we cross the Channel we run the

LISTENING TO THE BAND IN THE LUXEMBURG GARDENS.

course should be pursued in the emergency.
Out of twelve three of his advisers begged
him to go back to London. The rest were for
landing at Boulogne, and making a dash towards
the barracks in order to secure the adhesion of
the garrison at all hazards.
The prince asked Count Orsi what would
occur if they went back to London. " It is diffi
cult to say," was the reply ; " though if the
British Government took a bad view of the matter
we should most likely be arrested and tried for
misdemeanour." What, moreover, was to be done

risk of being shot or imprisoned for a longer or
shorter period. Of the two I prefer the latter.
As regards yourself, nothing would be more
disastrous to your future prospects than being
shown up to the public as a man who, at the
eleventh hour, had been acted upon by con
siderations of a purely personal character. Let
us save, at least, our honour, if we are doomed
to lose everything else."
Napoleon, who had been showing his approval
of these words by constantly nodding at the
count as he spoke, now rose and said : " Gentle-

12:

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

men, a show of hands from those who wish to be
left behind and to return to London." There was
a dead silence, and then the prince, eyeing each of
his auditors in succession as though he would read
their inmost souls, exclaimed : " Gentlemen, a
show of hands from those who are ready to
follow me and share my fate."
These words produced an indescribable out
burst of enthusiasm, mingled with expressions of
the most touching devotion. All sprang from
their seats. For a few moments the prince was
too much overpowered with emotion to vent his
gratitude in words. Then he said : " Friends, I
thank you for the alacrity and high spirit with
which you have responded to my call. I never
doubted your willingness to aid me in my pro
jects, but the devotion you have just displayed has
lent a new vigour to my mind and has bound my
heart to you with a sense of deep, of eternal grati
tude. Let us bear together the consequences of
this enterprise, whatever they may be, with the
calmness befitting men who act on conviction.
Our cause is that of the country at large.
Sooner or later success will be ours. I feel it.
I have faith in my destiny. I look forward to
the future as confidently as I expect the sun
to rise this morning to dispel the darkness. We
shall have obstacles to grapple with and obloquy
to face ; but the hour will come, and we shall
not have long to wait for it."
It was now nearly three o'clock on the morn
ing of the 5th. The moment had arrived for a
prompt decision as to the wisest method of pro
ceeding. It was arranged that Forestier, the
cousin of Count Persigny, should go at once to
Boulogne, for the purpose of informing Lieu
tenant Aladenize of what had happened, and to
prepare everything, as far as possible, for the
following day. A boat, manned by two men,
was with difficulty hired : Forestier stepped into
it, and, crossing the Channel, reached Boulogne
at eleven that same morning.
The next question was whether the prince's
party should remain at Ramsgate till night or
tack about at sea until the hour arrived for the
descent on Boulogne. The latter course was
decided on, as the French police had already
been dogging the prince's steps very closely in
London, and there was every chance of the
vessel anchored off Ramsgate being incon
veniently watched.
At 5.0 a.m. Count Orsi ordered the captain
to put to sea, and the Edinburgh Castle was
thenceforward kept well away from the land and
from observation. Throughout the 5th of

August she was steered hither and thither,
simply to pass the time unperceived. Towards
three o'clock on the morning of the 6th arms
and uniforms were distributed to the prince's
adherents. Then the lights were extinguished.
No light, even at the mast, was allowed, and
absolute silence was maintained. It was three
o'clock when the vessel stood off Wimereux,
a little village near Boulogne. The landing
began at once, but as there was only one
boat on board the process was slow. The first
boatful consisted of Viscount de Querelles and
eight men. As they approached the shore a
couple of coast-guardsmen shouted to them,
" Qui vive ? " Querelles replied : " A detach
ment of the 42nd from Dunkirk to join the
battalion at Boulogne. Through an acci
dent to the engine the steamer cannot get
further." As the invaders were clothed and
armed exactly like the French garrison, the
coast -guardsmen at once believed them. Next
time the boat brought Colonel Voisin and nine
men on shore. Then the Prince, General
Montholon, Count Persigny, and a few others
landed. At five o'clock the whole party were
within fifty yards of the barracks. At the sight
of this armed force the sentinel shouted, " Who
goes there ? " and " To arms ! " One of the
prince's men, who had been in the army, was
sent ahead with the watchword— which he well
knew. On his pronouncing it, the gate of the
barracks was thrown open, and the prince,
followed by his supporters, entered the yard.
The soldiers composing the garrison were just
getting out of bed. Those few who were already
downstairs soon learnt who the visitors were, and
rushed up to tell their comrades that the prince,
whose name was so familiar to them, waited at
their threshold. The soldiers were seized with
enthusiasm. Some of them, looking out of the
windows, cried " Vive le Prince ! " Others
hurried downstairs in their shirt -sleeves. With
in half an hour every soldier was under arms
and formed in battalion. The prince's men
stood facing it. Between the companies Napoleon
and his friends took up their position.
The address which the prince now delivered
to the garrison had an electrical effect, and the
men were wild with enthusiasm ; but just as the
whole battalion, under the Pretender'sorders, were
about to quit the barracks in order to excite the
inhabitants to rally round the Imperial standard, a
first check was experienced. A garrison officer,
not in the secret of the conspiracy, had rushed
to Lieutenant-Colonel Puygellier's house to

The Luxemburg Palace.]

TRIAL OF LOUIS NAPOLEON.

123

inform him of what was happening at the barracks.
Instantly the officer put on his uniform, and,
¦rushing to the spot, forced his way past one
of the prince's sentinels, and dashing through the
crowd at the barrack-gates, got within sight of
his battalion, and waved his sword to them.
Seeing the danger their chief was in — one of
the Imperial party had injudiciously pointed a
revolver at his head — the soldiers who, a few
minutes before, had shouted " Vive le Prince ! "
now cried, " Vive notre Colonel ! "
The tide of feeling, however, quickly turned
again in favour of the prince, and Colonel Puy
gellier, now absolutely powerless, would have
been shot had not one of his officers rushed
forward and shielded him with his own body.
Quitting the barrack-yard, the prince, at the
head of his friends and adherents, now
endeavoured to enter the old town. They found
the gate closed, nor did their united efforts
suffice to unhinge it.
The enterprise had failed. The chiefs of the
popular movement, who were to second the
military rising, having inferred from the non-
arrival of the prince on the morning of the 5th
that something had occurred, either in London
or at sea, to put the French authorities on
the scent, had decamped from the town.
Forestier, who reached Boulogne towards noon
on the 5th, with the news that the prince would
land next morning, had arrived too late.
Nothing now remained but to endeavour to
save the prince. He himself wished to die — to
be shot or cut down by his enemies ; but the
friends who were with him fairly dragged him
down to the sea-shore in the hope of getting
him safely on board the Edinburgh Castle.
This vessel lay some distance out at sea, and the
signals made to her to approach the land were
unanswered, as though she had already been
seized by the authorities.
On the sand, however, a small boat was found.
"The prince," says Orsi, "was still offering
the greatest resistance. Time was precious.
The ridges of the cliffs were already covered
with gendarmes, followed by the National
Guard. The soldiers of the 42nd regiment had
been shut up in barracks. The work of pursuing
us was left to the National Guard and to the
gendarmes. The former behaved like savages.
Firing soon began from the height of the hill,
and gradually increased. We could hear the
whistling of the bullets, but not one of us had
yet been hit."
• The prince at last got into the boat with

Colonel Voisin, Count Persigny, and Galvani,
whilst Orsi and another rushed into the
waves to push the little craft into deep water.
Then the National Guard opened a brisker fire.
Galvani and Voisin were wounded, the former
in the right hip, while the latter had the elbow
of his left arm entirely shattered. The boat had
now in the confusion got capsized, and the
prince and his friends disappeared under her.
As she lay keel upwards there was a terrible
discharge of musketry, which cut open the
bottom of the boat and fractured the keel into
matchwood. Had not the prince and his friends
been at that instant immersed, they must have
perished. For some time the prince and Count Persigny
remained under water, and Count Orsi began
to apprehend that they might be drowning,
when both appeared at a good distance from
the shore swimming towards the Edinburgh
Castle. The National Guard now pointed all
their muskets at the prince, but by some
miraculous accident failed to hit him. At last,
just as he was reaching the steamer — which was
already in the hands of the Boulogne authorities
— a boat, with several officials on board coming
out of the harbour, cut off his retreat, and both
he and his fellow-swimmer Persigny found them
selves prisoners. They were taken to the Vieux-
Chateau, where all the Imperialists were confined
who could anywhere be discovered.
The few days which followed the seizure of
the Edinburgh Castle and the arrest of the
prince's party were employed by the Boulogne
judicial authorities in examining the English
captain — by name Crow — and his crew as to
what they had seen, known, or imagined to be
the object of the expedition, and as to the par
ticular part played by each person on board.
One morning the prisoners were all, with the
exception of the prince, brought together in a
room, where Captain Crow and his first mate
were requested to look at every one of them,
and see if they could distinguish the man who
had given orders for the steamer to anchor off
Wimereux. Both pointed to Count Orsi.
As soon as the preliminary judicial formalities
had been gone through at Boulogne the prince
was conveyed to Paris, to be arraigned with his
associates before the Court of Peers on a
charge of having engaged in an expedition whose
object was to overthrow the existing Govern
ment. At length, two months later, the day of
the trial arrived.
The prince was defended by the eloquent

124

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

advocate M. Berryer, assisted by M. Marie.
On being called upon himself to speak he claimed
the whole responsibility of the enterprise, and
concluded with these magnanimous words : —
" I repeat that I had no accomplices. Alone
I formed my plan. Not a soul knew beforehand
what were my projects, my resources, or my
hopes. If I am guilty towards anyone it is

.The principle you have recognised ; the cause
you have served ; the defeat you wish to avenge.
Yes, you and myself are of one mind, and my
sole aspiration now is to bear the full penalty of
the defection of others.
" Representative as I am of a political cause, I
cannot accept as judge of my desires and my
actions a political tribunal. Your forms impose

THE MARIE DE MEDICIS GROTTO AND FOUNTAIN.

towards my friends alone. Yet let them not
accuse me of lightly abusing such courage and
devotion as theirs. They will understand the
motives of honour and of prudence which for
bade my revealing to them how wide and
powerful were the reasons on which my hope
of success was founded.
" One last word, gentlemen. I represent be
fore you a principle, a cause, and a defeat. The
principle is the sovereignty of the people ; the
cause is the empire ; the defeat is Waterloo.

on no one. You are the victorious party. I
have no justice to expect from you, and I wish
nothing from your generosity."
The sentence on Prince Louis Napoleon was
imprisonment for life, that on Count Orsi im
prisonment for five years ; while the other con
spirators were condemned to punishments which
varied according to the nature of the part they
had played in the disastrous expedition.
The case of the Due de Praslin — tried, like
that of Louis Napoleon, at the Luxemburg — was

'The Luxemburg Palace.]

THE CASE OF THE DUC DE PRASLIN.

125

very painful and very dramatic. The duke was a
member of the Choiseul family, whose name he
bore in addition to his own. Under Louis Philippe

happy one. Many children were born of the
union ; and it was not until 1 841 that any sign
of disagreement manifested itself between the

WV j£sr ,^

BACK OF THE MARIE DE MEDICIS FOUNTAIN.

he was attached to the household of the Duchess
of Orleans, and in 1845, having previously been a
deputy, was raised to the peerage. In 1824 he
had married the daughter of Marshal Sebastiani,
and that marriage, for seventeen years, seemed a

husband and the wife. The jealousy of the
latter was then roused ; not, it was afterwards
said, for the first time. A young lady named
Henriette Deluzy-Desportes had just been en
gaged as governess. She was lively, graceful,

126

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

and moderately pretty, and soon gained such an
ascendency over her pupils as well as over the
duke as to cause the duchess the greatest uneasi
ness. To make matters worse, the duchess was
advised by her husband not to trouble herself
any more about the education of her children,
which was now, he said, in excellent hands. At
last, after suffering the deepest vexation (of which
she gave a touching account in her private diary,
found after her death), she resolved. to apply for
a separation. Then, to avoid all scandal, the
old marshal made representations to his son-in-
law, while two other persons addressed remon
strances to Mile. Deluzy. An arrangement was
entered into by which the duchess agreed to
abandon the lawsuit while Mile. Deluzy was to
leave the house. The marshal agreed to pay her
an annuity of 1,500 francs, which was guaranteed
by the duchess. The arrangement was made in

left the Paris house the whole Praslin family
started for the duke's country place at Vaux-
Praslin. They were not to return to Paris until
the 17th of August. Meanwhile the duke made
three journeys to Paris, remaining there each
time for two or three days ; and he never failed
to pay a visit to Mile. Deluzy, who had gone to
live with a schoolmistress in the Rue Harlay.
The valet who accompanied the duke on all
these journeys remarked on one occasion that
the governess saw the duke back to the railway
station, and on wishing him good-bye burst into
tears. On the 17th of August the Praslin family
returned to Paris, intending to go on to Dieppe
for the sea-bathing. The duke at once drove to
the school where Mile. Deluzy was staying. She
wished, it seemed, to be engaged in this school
as teacher ; but before signing the engagement

THE FREMIEL-CARPEAUX FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBURG GARDENS.

the month of June, 1847 ; and on the 18th of
July following Mile. Deluzy left the Hotel Se-
bastiani in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore,
where the Praslin family had taken up their
residence. The duchess had gained the victory.
But she was by no means satisfied with the
position of things, and felt that she was still
menaced by an approaching danger. Her husband,
it appeared, had uttered some dark threats. " He
will never forgive me," she wrote in her diary.
"The future terrifies me. I cannot think of it
without trembling." The day the governess

the schoolmistress thought it necessary to have
from the Duchess de Praslin a letter recom
mending Mile. Deluzy, and at the same time
denying the truth of certain reports which had
got abroad respecting her conduct while governess
in the ducal family.
The duke promised to get the required letter
from his wife, and it was arranged that Mile.
Deluzy should call on the afternoon of the fol
lowing day at the Hotel Sebastiani, in order, in
the first place, to express her regret to the
duchess, and afterwards to ask for the letter,

[The Luxemburg Palace.

THE DUC DE PRASLIN.

127

which, according to the duke, Mme. de Praslin
would be sure, under the circumstances, to give.
It was already late in the evening, and when, at
eleven o'clock, the duke got home, the duchess
was in bed. After wishing his daughter good
night the duke went to his room, which, like
his wife's, was on the ground floor, the two
communicating with one another by a corridor.
The house was dark, except in the duchess's
room, where she was accustomed to keep a lamp
burning all night.
At half-past four in the morning shrieks were
heard ; and at the same time the duchess's bell
rang violently. The duke's valet and the
duchess's maid were awakened by the noise.
They got up, dressed hurriedly, and were soon
outside their mistress's room, which, contrary
to custom, they found bolted. Shrieks, groans,
and other sounds, as of blows, were still heard.
Then someone seemed to be rushing across the
bedroom, interrupted here and there, as if by
an obstacle. The two servants tried to get
through another door communicating with the
drawing-room, but this also was fastened.
They cried out " Madam ! " " Madam ! " but
received no answer. Nothing was to be heard
but gasps and groans. They hurried into the
garden ; but the windows, both of the duchess's
bedroom and of her boudoir, were closed, as they
generally were. At one point, however, they
found open the door of a staircase leading to the
antechamber which separated the duke's apart
ment from that of the duchess. The servants
entered. It was quite dark ; but on lighting a
lamp they found the duchess lying on the ground,
her head resting on a settee, with nothing on but
a chemise, and bathed in blood. In a few
moments the alarm was given throughout the
house. The duke came out of his room. He
wore a grey dressing-gown. There was a wild
expression in his eyes, and, striking his hands
against the wall and against his own head, he
kept repeating, " What is it ? " "What is it ? "
Then, casting his eyes upon his wife, he uttered
cries of despair. The duchess was still living ;
but soon breathed her last without being able
to utter one word. In a short time two com
missaries of police arrived, who proceeded to
a preliminary examination. The body was
examined by three doctors, when five wounds
were discovered at the back of the head and
neck, and eight on the forehead and breast. The
jugular vein and the carotid artery had both
been cut, and blood was still flowing from these
wounds. There were wounds, too, on both

hands, evidently caused by the edge of a sharp
instrument at which the unhappy victim had
clutched. The face was marked with scratches
round the mouth, indicating a struggle in which
the duke had attempted to stifle his wife's cries.
This struggle had evidently been of the most
violent kind. All the furniture had been upset.
Both the bed and the carpet were covered with
blood ; and the door leading to the drawing-
room was, all round the lock and the bolts,
marked by bloodstained fingers.
Who were the assassins ? Traces of blood
were found in the corridor leading from the
apartment of the duchess to that of the duke.
A loaded pistol, too, was picked up in the
duchess's room, with spots of blood on the
barrel, and with hairs, evidently those of the
victim, sticking to it. The duke, when questioned
on the subject, said that he had himself brought
the pistol into the bedroom on hearing the
duchess's first cries, and that the traces of blood
might have been produced by him after he had
raised the body of his wife and was going back
to his own room.
Towards eight o'clock the prefect of police, the
procureur-general, the procureur of the king, and
the examining judge of the district appeared.
General Sebastiani, brother of the marshal and
uncle of the murdered woman, also arrived, and
turned faint at the sight before him. The
duke's valet hurried to his master's bedroom for
a glass of water, and found the place in strange
disorder. The mantelpiece was covered with
fragments of papers just burned, and on a table
in the middle of the room was a bottle con
taining water. The valet was about to pour out
a glass when the duke stopped him, and going to
the window, poured the contents of the bottle
into the garden, saying that the water was dirty.
All the servants were called in, when the valet
observed that it would be well to make a search
in the duke's own room. In the pockets of his
dressing-gown were found various objects stained
with blood, the remains of papers, burnt, and of
a handkerchief, partly consumed. The dressing-
gown had in various places been recently washed.
It was only now that the law officers seemed to
suspect the duke. After interrogating M. de
Praslin, whose explanations were clumsy and
incomplete, they again visited his room, where
they found a knife with blood-stains on the
handle, a dagger, a yataghan, and a hunting-knife.
His hands were examined, and several scratches
found upon them. On his right arm was a recent
bruise, such as might be produced by the violent

128

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

impress of a finger ; on his right hand a wound,
which apparently had been produced by a bite ;
on the first finger of this hand another wound of
the same kind ; on the left hand several scratches,
apparently made by human nails ; on the left
leg a deep contusion. At the same time no sign
of robbery or of housebreaking could anywhere
be seen.
Doubt was no longer possible. The Due de
Praslin was the assassin of his wife. As regards

menaces of the wife exasperated the husband
to such a point that he at length lost all self-
control. In spite of her explanations, Mile.
Deluzy was placed in solitary confinement under
the accusation of being the duke's accomplice.
It was proved that she had kept up a
correspondence with him since leaving the
house, and that he had been to see her on the
evening before the night on which the crime
was committed.

THE LUXEMBURG MUSEUM.

the moral evidence, it appeared that for a long
time past there had been a grave misunder
standing between the duke and the duchess, and
that there had been intimate relations between
the duke and Mile. Deluzy. The governess was
arrested and interrogated, when she denied abso
lutely that there had been any relations of an
improper character between herself and the duke.
Her answers, however, threw light on the terrible
drama that had been enacted in the Praslin
family. M. de Praslin, she said, had entrusted
her exclusively with the education of his child
ren, and this confidence on his part wounded the
duchess both as a wife and as a mother. She
threatened to apply to the court for a separation,
and, according to Mile. Deluzy, the perpetual

As regarded the duke, the law officers held
that his privilege as a peer exempted him from
arrest, though he had been taken as nearly as
possible in flagrante delicto. It was thought
sufficient to have him watched in his own house,
under the surveillance -of police agents; and as
King Louis Philippe was at Eu, a special mes
senger was sent to him, begging him to convoke
the Chamber of Peers as a high court of justice.
But already a change had taken place in the
condition of the Due de Praslin, who was
suddenly attacked with fits of vomiting, followed
by an ardent thirst and complete prostration.
The doctors thought at first that he was suffering
from cholera, but they .afterwards believed that
he, had; taken poison. Meanwhile the order

17

THE HOTEL DE SENS.

The Luxemburg Palace.]

THE DUC DE PRASLIN.

129

convoking the Court of Peers reached Paris
on the 20th of August. The President, Duke
Pasquier, at once issued a warrant against M. de
Praslin ; but it was not thought advisable to
execute it forthwith.
The Due de Praslin's
house was now sur
rounded by angry
crowds ; and of so
deadly a character was
the rage manifested
against him that it
was not until three
days afterwards, at five
in the morning, that
the authorities con
sidered it safe to re
move him to the prison
attached to the Luxem
burg Palace.
Just as he was leaving
' his house the police
found upon him a. little
flask containing a mix
ture of laudanum and
arsenical acid, of which
he had drunk half.
Notwithstanding his
enfeebled condition,
President Pasquier, as
sisted by a commission
of six members of the
Court of Peers, sub
jected him to an inter
rogatory. Neither a
positive confession nor
a formal denial could
be obtained from him.
His physical condition,
meanwhile, became
worse and worse. On
the second day he was
delirious, and on the
third he expired. The
analysis made by Orfila
and Ambroise Tardieu
showed the presence
in the stomach of a great quantity of arsenic.
Afew days afterwards the Court of Peers met
in secret conclave, when it received from the
chancellor and president a report of the ex
amination through which the accused had passed.
The whole tendency of the report was to
establish the guilt of the accused. " This
presumption," concluded Duke Pasquier, "was,
33

unhappily, only too well founded. The prisoner
has pronounced judgment and condemnation on
himself. He succumbed seven days and a half
after the moment when, with atrocious barbarity,

THE MINERALOGICAL MUSEUM.
he immolated the most innocent, the most pure,
the most interesting of victims. This interval,
however, .was sufficient to enable the ordinary
judges, pursuing their inquiry on the part of the
Chamber of Peers, to bring completely to light
the guilt of the accused, and the horrible cir
cumstances which, from day to day, have made
it still more clear."

1 ;o

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Odeon.

The death of the criminal brought the labours
of the court to an end. " But yet," said the
president, as he concluded his communication
of the report, " it was to be desired that the
reparation should have been as complete as was
the crime itself. In such an affair as this the
principle of equality before the law should
have been proclaimed more forcibly than
ever." The body of the Due de Praslin was buried
secretly at night on the 26th of August, in the
southern cemetery, his grave not being marked
even by a cross.
Mile. Deluzy was taken before a police magis
trate, when, on a proof of alibi, the case was
dismissed, and she was set at liberty.
This terrible affair had beyond doubt a political
effect, from the conviction with which it inspired
the French people generally that there existed
in France one law for the poor and another for
the rich. The Court of Peers did its duty, and,
in its desire to show how fully it recognised the
principle of equality before the law, it com
municated every document connected with the
trial to the public press. But the duke, in spite
of the crushing evidence against him, had been
allowed to remain in his own house, when an
ordinary criminal would have been at once taken
to prison. No ordinary criminal, again, would
have been in a position to obtain poison. The
circumstances, moreover, under which the duke
had been buried were suspicious ; and many
believed that he did not die at all of the poison —
so slow in its action — but that he was enabled to
cross the Channel and reach England, where, at
the moment of his death being publicly an
nounced in the Chamber of Peers, he was quietly
living. So much for the remarkable trials of which
the Luxemburg has been the scene.

When, in 1848, the Republic was for the
second time established in France, the Chamber
of Peers was abolished ; and in the spring of the
great revolutionary year the members of the
commission for the organisation of labour, wear
ing their blouses, seated themselves on the softly-
cushioned benches of what had been formerly
known as la chambr e haute. It was on the
recommendation of this commission that "national
workshops " were opened, in order to satisfy the
claims of the unemployed, who loudly asserted
their " right to labour " ; and it was on the closing
of the national workshops, whose cost the
Government was at last unable to meet, that
the formidable insurrection of June, 1848,
broke out. With the re-establishment of the
Senate, under the Second Empire, the Luxem
burg Palace became once more its place of
meeting. Let us now take a glance at the gardens in
which the palace stands. With the parks and
gardens of London they will scarcely bear com
parison ; though a French descriptive writer
declares that they combine, with the ordinary
attractions of the garden, the beauty of the
park' and even, in certain solitary corners, the
wildness of the forest.
The Luxemburg Gardens are, in any case,
adorned by two beautiful fountains. They are
enlivened, too, every afternoon by the music of a
military band ; and they enclose at one end a
most interesting museum, the Musee de Minera-
logie, forming part of the National School of
Mines. The admirable picture gallery in the Luxem-
hurg Palace is occupied by the works of living
masters alone. It is not until an artist is dead
that his paintings are held worthy of being
transported to that national Walhalla of pictorial
heroes, the Louvre.

The Prisons of Paris.]

THE PRISONS OF PARIS.

131

CHAPTER XX.
THE PRISONS OF PARIS.
La Sante— La Roquette— The Conciergerie— The Mazas— Sainte- Pelagie— Saint-Lazare— Prison Regulations.

THE Luxemburg, though only from time to
time (and usually at intervals of several years)
transformed into a High Court of Justice, has a
prison permanently attached to it. The apartments
reserved for prisoners of state have, however,
nothing in common with the ordinary prisons
of Paris. These abound on both sides of the Seine.
Not far from the end of the Luxemburg Gardens,
and close to the Boulevard Saint -Jacques, is the
prison of La Sante — built in 1865 at a cost of six
millions of francs, for the reception of twelve
thousand prisoners : about a ninth part of the
. total population of the Paris prisons. But before
leaving the. Boulevard Saint- Jacques and the
Place Saint-Jacques, to which the Rue du
Faubourg Saint-Jacqu.es directly leads, a word
: must be said about the open space formerly
closed by the ancient Barriere Saint-Jacques.
During twenty years, from 1832 to 1851, the
Place Saint-Jacques was the scene of public
executions. Here, while the scaffold was being
erected, the innumerable taverns of the barrier
were crowded with revellers, who, after supping
all night, remained at the windows of the rooms
they had hired at great cost, in order early the
next morning to see the guillotine at work.
Similar scenes took place in our own capital when
murderers were publicly hanged outside New
gate ; scenes which have been described in
admirable prose and in perfect verse by
Thaqkeray and by Ingoldsby.
The prisons of Paris have played an important
part in history, though the most historical of
them no longer exist. With the exception ofo
Saint-Lazare and the Conciergerie, which still
preserve> some vestiges of the past, the prisons
that figure so largely in the annals of France
have vanished.
Paris has been described by a well-known
French writer as a "city of destruction."
Edifices fraught with the memories of ages
fall, he complains, under the hand of the
municipal destroyer like castles built of cards.
If there is a house which dates back even to the
seventeenth century it has to be looked for at
the end of some court or alley, which has
escaped the pickaxe and hammer by sheer

insignificance. Even as regards churches, there
are few which are more than three or four
generations old. When we have counted Notre
Dame, the two churches of Saint-Germain, the
Sainte-Chapelle, and one or two temples of lesser
importance, we have to leap to Saint-Eustache
and Saint-Sulpice,. and thence take a big bound
to the Madeleine. This eternal demolition by
architects who wish to outdo their predecessors
is a matter of keen lament to archaeologists and
to writers like M. Jules Simon, who declares
that the only pickaxe he can forgive is
the one that overthrew the Bastille, and that
he forgives it because it, at the same time,
" overthrew everything else."
Qf all the historical prisons of Paris one only
can be said to exist to-day — the Conciergerie. It
preserves an air of the past by virtue of a few
antiquities which still belong to it : such as the
two big towers on the quay, the large walls
inside, the large table in the courtyard, at which
Saint Louis is reported to have fed the poor, the
room in which Damiens was confined, and the
dungeon of Marie Antoinette.
In 1830 Paris could boast — or perhaps one
should say blush for — twenty civil prisons. Not
a few of these consisted of old convents or other
buildings converted into state gaols ; and it may
well be imagined that such places were neither
salubrious nor secure. The prisoners were not
even divided into categories. In the present
day eight or nine prisons suffice for a much
larger number of convicts, and admit of a regular
classification. First, there is a lock-up, or maison de depdt,
at the prefecture of police. Then there are
three "preventive" prisons — Mazas and La
Sante for men and the Conciergerie for both
sexes. One portion of Saint-Lazare is also set
apart for the accommodation of the fair sex.
Sainte-Pelagie and Saint-Lazare — the first for
men and the second for women — are houses of
correction for prisoners sentenced to one year or
less. It is at Sainte-Pelagie that political
prisoners are for the most part confined. In
La Roquette are lodged prisoners under sentence
of death and offenders condemned to more

132

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Prisons of Paris.

than one year. Clichy, once the debtors' prison,
has already in these pages been amply described.
Nor should we omit to mention the military
prison of the Rue du Cherche-Midi ; the prison

of cell confinement, children and youths guilty
for the most part, as M. Jules Simon well ex
presses it, of having had unnatural parents.
In taking a leisurely survey of the principal

INSIDE THE WALLS

of the National Guard ; the depot of Saint-
Denis, where mendicants are locked up ; and
La Petite Roquette, where, until 1865, were
imprisoned, and subjected to the rigorous regime

Paris prisons, we may begin with La Roquette
as the most formidable in character. Situated in
the street and place of the same name, it was
perfect plan
that there has hitherto been no example of any
prisoner's escape or even attempted escape from
it. This gaol, therefore, is to criminals one of
the most redoubtable. The gloomy impressions,
however, which it may well produce on a stranger
are somewhat relieved by the fact that the
courtyard by which it is approached is adorned
with a fountain, and that the prison boasts a
well composed library of some two thousand
volumes ; nor, since crime is so . often the
outcome of ignorance, could a wiser means
recreation for the convicts be devised. The
librarian is usually a convict who has received a
certain education, and who has earned this post
of confidence by repentance and good behaviour.
It has been found, indeed, that the inmates
prefer reading to any other diversion, and
statistics of the books lent out show that each
prisoner gets through nearly one volume a
week. The library is divided into various
sections ; and the books most eagerly read are
said to be works of science. . .

The Prisons of Paris,]

LA ROQUETTE.

133

The regime imposed at La Roquette is uni
form, and applies without distinction to all
classes of offenders. Everyone within the walls
rises at 5.0 a.m., does ten hours' work relieved
by intervals for food and recreation, and goes to
bed at half-past seven, passing the night in a
strongly bolted cell, of which the sole furniture

times be committed. The administration of La
Roquette consists of a governor, a chaplain, a
physician, two clerks (senior and junior), a
brigadier, an under-brigadier, fourteen warders,
a dispenser, a laundress, and a sutler. Nearly
two dozen prisoners, moreover, are employed
about the establishment as auxiliaries.

THE COMMON QUARTER, LA SANTE— "THE PARLOUR.'

is_an iron bedstead. An exception, however, as
regards sleeping, is made in the case of prisoners
liable to epileptic fits, or who have attempted to
commit suicide. These sleep in special dormi
tories under the careful inspection of warders.
One room, moreover, is set apart for fever
patients. Another is reserved for those prisoners
who have softened the rigour of their confine
ment by particularly good behaviour or — what
some will think less admirable — by informing
against their accomplices. It frequently happens
that the accomplices so betrayed find their way
to the same gaol, and if the informers were
not isolated deeds of vengeance might some-

At certain periods gangs of convicts are
transferred from La Roquette to provincial state
prisons or houses of correction. Before their
departure, however, they are most rigorously
searched lest they should have upon them any
sort of instrument which might assist them to
escape from their future residence. One tool in
particular, the invention of inveterate criminals,
is always an object of apprehension with the
authorities on such occasions. This consists of
a kind of diminutive fret-saw, which by a
miracle of patience can be made out of scraps of
metal, and with which thick iron bars can some
times be cut through. It was a saw of this

134

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Prisons of Paris.

family that Ainsworth's prison-hero employed
to sever the bar of his Newgate cell.
Since 1851 the Paris executioner has been
accustomed to perform his grim functions in front
of La Roquette. A number of massive stones
which, forming a square, are let into the pave
ment outside, serve as basis for the temporary
erection of the guillotine whenever a head is
to fall. The surface of these stones is level with
that of the pavement, and many a pedestrian
walks over them without dreaming of their
sinister utility. The guillotine is usually put up
during the night ; but despite the early hour at
which, thanks to this precaution, executions take
place, the spectacle of decapitation always
draws a crowd of curious persons, consisting, it is
sad to say, largely of women and youths, who
will brave all the rigours of a winter's night in
order to witness from the front rank the
death of some wretch, notorious or obscure.
It was on the Place de la Roquette that
Verger (assassin of the Archbishop of Paris),
Orsini (the would-be destroyer of Napoleon
IIL), La Pommerais (the poisoning doctor),
and many other criminal celebrities, were
executed. "Perhaps," says a fanciful French
writer, " during the fatal night which preceded
their last hour they heard the nailing-down
of the guillotine planks ; for La Roquette is
the gaol where those under death-sentence are
lodged in a special cell." This cell is cold and
gloomy : a bed and a table constitute its furni
ture. It is here that the condemned man gets
his last snatch of sleep, if indeed he can sleep at
all ; it is hence that, after a last "toilette," he
steps forth to make his exit by that prison
doorway which to him is the threshold of
eternity. The Conciergerie is the gaol of the depart
ment of the Seine. It gained a sinister celebrity
during some of the most sanguinary periods of
French history. This sombre prison abounds in
recollections of those strifes and miseries by
which royal epochs were too often characterised,
and of that vengeance and blind fury which dis
tinguished the Revolution. Every political
movement, every religious passion, has con
tributed to the horrors which mark the annals
of this institution.
The Conciergerie is an appendage to the Palais
de Justice ; and when this palace, which was
originally a fortress, became the residence of the
French kings, it served as prison. It would
appear to have been built about the same time

as the palace, though it has undergone sundry
alterations and enlargements during successive
ages. Reconstructed by Saint Louis, the Conciergerie,
as its name indicates, included the residence ofthe
prison-governor. The "concierge" of the
palace was no unimportant personage. He was
in a certain way the governor of the royal
mansion, and all royal prisoners were under his
charge. He could administer petty justice in the
palace and its surroundings, and he appointed a
bailiff to carry out the law in his name. His
privileges were extensive enough. It was he whom
merchants had to pay for the right of exposing
their wares for sale at the Palais Royal. In 1348
the concierge took the official title of bailiff. More
than one person of high distinction has held this
office : Philippe de Savoisi, friend of Charles VL,
for instance, and Juvenal des Ursins, the his
toriographer of that monarch's reign. Louis XL's
famous physician, Jacques Coictier, was the first
who united the functions of bailiff with those of
concierge. The concierge-bailiff of the Palais had on
many points a discretionary power over the
prisoners of the Conciergerie. He himself taxed
the food he supplied to them, and fixed the rate
of hire for the furniture they used ; and more
than one prisoner, released by order of justice,
found himself retained at the Conciergerie
until he could pay his bill for board and
lodging. The post of concierge-bailiff lasted
until the Revolution. The cases which came
beneath the jurisdiction of this functionary
were tried in a large hall of the palace. These
were cases of misdoing which had occurred
within the palace walls.
One of the most ghastly scenes ever enacted
within the walls of the Conciergerie was that in
which, during the quarrels between the Armagnacs
and the Bourguignons, those ruffian supporters
of the latter party, known as the " cabochiens,"
invaded the gaol and killed the crowd of
prisoners within it, irrespective of age or sex.
The court of the palace was inundated with
blood and strewn with corpses. The Count
d'Armagnac, Constable of France, six bishops,
and numerous members of the Paris Parliament
expired under the blades of the assassins.
The dungeons of the Conciergerie, built at the
level of the Seine, were dark and unhealthy :
the light of day could never penetrate to them.
During the Middle Ages several pestilences,
caused by the filthy condition of the prisoners
combined with insufficiency of food, broke out

The Prisons of Paris.]

THE CONCIERGERIE.

135

at the Conciergerie and awakened the atten
tion ofthe authorities. On the 31st June, 1543,
beds were for the first time, placed in the
apartment known as the infirmary ; and it was
about this period that the gaolers were instructed
not to ill-treat the wretches
beneath their charge. They
were to treat them " gently
and humanely, to provide
them with water and straw,
to procure them the services
of priests, etc." In spite
of these reforms, the Con
ciergerie long remained the
most unhealthy prison in
Paris. In 1776, during the fire
at the Palais de Justice,
a great part of the Con
ciergerie fell a prey to the
flames ; nor was the mis
chief repaired until some
years afterwards. The fire
had already reached one of
the towers occupied by
the prisoners, when the;
officials were for the
first time warned of their
danger by their cries for
help. During the revolutionary
period the number of
prisoners shut up in the
Conciergerie sometimes rose
to 1,200. At the time of
the September massacre
this prison was the scene
of a horrible slaughter.
According to documents of
indisputable exactness, close
on three hundred persons
fell, at the Conciergerie,
beneath the weapons of
the agents of popular
vengeance. The " Septem-
brisseurs," however,
spared all the women,
with one exception. A poor wretch, known
as the "pretty flower-girl" of the Palais
Royal, had, in a moment of furious jealousy,
mutilated a French guard, her lover ; and she
was now put to death with unheard-of cruelty.
According to Pelletier's account she was attached
to a stake, naked, her feet nailed to the
ground, her breasts were cut off with blows

from a sabre, and various other atrocious tortures
inflicted upon her before she expired.
Whilst the Revolutionary tribunal was accom
plishing its bloody work, the Conciergerie served,
so to say, as the antechamber to the scaffold.

INTERIOR OF LA SANTE.

Most of the proscribed were shut up in this
prison, whence they issued only to mount the
fatal cart which was to convey them to their
slaughter. At this period, the chambers being
too small, prisoners were huddled together, to
the number of fifty, in a space of twenty feet
square, without distinction of social position,
age, or sex. Big dogs, let loose at night in the

n6

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Prisons of Paris.

courtyards, completed the system of surveillance ;
these were the most dreaded gaolers of all. At
a time when famine threatened the capital, the
prisoners' rations were reduced. Soon a regu
lation was made that all meals should be taken
in common, at a cost of two francs a head, and
that the rich and aristocratic prisoners should
pay for the rest. " Drolly enough," says Mercier,

Camille Desmoulins, Queen Marie Antoinette,
Madame Elizabeth, her sister, and a host of
other less distinguished victims, passed from the
Conciergerie to the scaffold. In this same
prison, at a later date, Robespierre and his
partisans awaited the hour of their execution.
Under the Restoration the chamber in which
Marie Antoinette was confined was turned into a

t

m

THE GAOLERS' MESS-ROOM, LA SANT15.

"the estimation in which these gentlemen were
held depended on the number of ragged wretches
they fed, just as it formerly did in the world on
the number of their horses, their mistresses,
their dogs, and their lackeys." Despite the
horror of their situation, the prisoners of the
Conciergerie preserved the frivolous and licentious
habits of the epicurean society of the eighteenth
century. They threw away the last hours of
their lives on games of all kinds, or on amorous
intrigues ; they laughed at everything — even the
guillotine. Royalists, aristocrats, and popular
leaders were carried to the Conciergerie by the
flux or reflux of the Revolution, and they lived
together in a fatal state of indifference, disdaining
to dispute their head with the executioner. Few
took the trouble even to curse their judges ;
many died singing a song. It was in the midst of
this general intrepidity that Beauharnais, Danton,

chapel, the pavement alone remaining as it was
in 1794. Since the Reign of Terror the Con
ciergerie has received many prisoners who have
become historical, with Louvel among them,
the assassin of the Duke of Berri.
The torture which many of the wretched
prisoners underwent was inflicted for the most
part in the famous Bombec Tower, beneath
which existed what were called oubliettes, or
dungeons in which prisoners were subjected to
diabolical cruelty. These dungeons bristled
everywhere with sharp sword-blades ; they were
inhabited by rats and loathsome reptiles ; and
the wretch who was thrown into them found,
amidst other horrors, that the waters of the
Seine crept in upon him as the tide rose. One of
the cells of this tower, into which no light could
penetrate, had been occupied by Ravaillac.
In modern times the Conciergerie has been

The Prisons of Paris.]

THE MAZAS PRISON.

137

rendered habitable. The dark and humid cells
constructed at the foot of the towers have been
either filled up or suppressed. Already some
years ago it was boasted that, with one excep
tion, the Conciergerie contained no dungeon
into which the light of day could not steal.

Force, found themselves suddenly immured in the
cells of Mazas, were seized with fits of fury and
despair which soon took the proportions of a
panic and a riot. The whole building resounded
with incessant cries and shouts : the con
demned, isolated from one another, and exas-

The Mazas prison, situated on
the boulevard of the same name,
dates from 1850. The official
name is " The house of cellular
arrest." The administration ab
andoned in 1858 the original
designation of Mazas prison, on
the petition of the family of
Colonel Mazas, who was killed
at Austerlitz. But custom is
more powerful than any adminis
tration ; and to the . public this
gaol is to-day still known solely
by the name of Mazas.
Its construction, commenced
in 1845, was not terminated till
five years later. The cost of so
vast a prison was naturally enor
mous. It was intended in the
first instance to replace the
prison of La Force, then situ
ated in the Rue Pavee-aux-
Marais and the Rue du Roi-de-
Sicile. The ground on which
the first constructions were raised
had previously been occupied by
market-gardeners and by a mill,
which was demolished. The
works progressed rapidly under
the direction of the architects,
Gilbert and Lecointe. Inter
rupted by the Revolution of
1848, they were resumed shortly
afterwards, and on the 19th of
May, 185b, took place the in
auguration — if this word can be employed in so
sinister a sense — of the new prison ; the instal
lation, that is to say, of the prisoners. Less
than twelve hours sufficed to transfer eight
hundred and forty-one convicts in cellular vans,
to establish them in their new abode, and inscribe
their names, and other particulars concerning
them, in the books of the gaol.
At this period the grave inconveniences which
have by degrees asserted themselves in France
as the result of the cellular system were not yet
clearly recognised. Thus it was that the first
poor wretches who, after their transfer from La

ENTRANCE TO LA GRANDE ROQUETTE.

perated by their solitude, trying to converse by
shouts with their old acquaintances lodged in
distant cells. Some requested as a favour to
be taken back to La Force. At length the
administration felt it discreet to order an in
quiry into the state of things, and the Academy
of Medicine was consulted. M. de Pietra-Santa,
an eminent member of that body, wrote, in a
report which he laid before his colleagues :
" The cellular system employed in prisons plays
deadly havoc with the intellectual faculties. It
develops scrofulous diseases, and urges its victims
to suicide." Statistics were quoted to show

138

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Pricons of Paris.

what a formidable proportion of cell-confined
prisoners either took or attempted their own
lives. In the end the Academy of Medicine
denounced the prison-cell in uncompromised
terms ; and, in consequence, the system of
isolation ceased at the Mazas prison to be rigor
ously enforced. As, however, the edifice had
been constructed on a particular plan which did
not permit of its conversion into an ordinary
prison, its original purposes were modified by
the confinement within its walls only of prisoners
under short sentences. " In these circumstances,"
says a contemporary French writer, " solitary
confinement, far from being an inconvenience,
presents in general the advantage of not mixing
prisoners arrested from very diverse causes, and
the moral character of whose offences widely
differs. Moreover, the individual who may
perhaps be acquitted to-morrow has not to
endure a regrettable contact, which is often
dangerous." The Mazas prison is surrounded by a girdle
wall which conceals it from the public gaze ;
though the curious can easily defeat this diffi
culty by mounting the viaduct of the railway of
Vincennes, which traverses the Faubourg Saint-
Antoine. From this elevation a bird's-eye glance
of the whole of the buildings may be obtained.
The sanitation of this prison leaves little to be
desired. The cells are spacious, wholesome, and
well ventilated. Their furniture consists of a
hammock suspended from cramp-irons ; of a
wooden stool, a water-can, and one or two other
articles the reverse of luxurious. The ventilation
is managed on scientific principles by means of
orifices at different altitudes ; and so effectual is
it that in an experiment which was once made,
with three men smoking tobacco in them in
cessantly for three hours, it was found that the
fumes disappeared as fast as they were produced,
and that the atmosphere never once lost its
transparency. This circumstance is a great con
solation for the Mazas prisoners, who can beguile
the time with their pipes.
As to the interior regime of the prison, the
spacious courts which separate each gallery of
cells are divided into promenades, in which the
prisoners are free to exercise themselves for at
least one hour a day. A part of these promen
ades is provided with a shelter in view of wet
weather. The prisoners take exercise by turns,
and always alone, the warders being able from
certain points of observation to follow their
movements incessantly. An infirmary is attached
to the prison, as well as bath rooms, which are

no less commodious thati cleanly. Each prisoner
is known at Mazas by the number of his cell,
inscribed on a plate hung above the door, and
which is turned over to indicate that the prisoner
is away from his cell taking exercise or receiving
instruction. Among the special punishments
inflicted on the more serious offenders are :
exclusion from outdoor exercise, a diet of bread
and water, a bare plank bed, and a dark cell.
The administrative and subordinate staff of
the Mazas consists of a director, four registration
clerks, a brigadier, four sub-brigadiers, sixty-four
warders, a laundress, three chaplains, a doctor, a
chemist, a female searcher, two barbers, and four
commissioners, not to mention some three dozen
prisoners employed as assistants.
What chiefly strikes a visitor to the place is
the regular and geometrical plan on which the
whole prison is constructed. The arrangements
are of the most perfect description, though it
was complained some years since that the method
of arranging divine service — the door of each
cell being kept ajar, so that the prisoner can
see the altar and the officiating priest — provided
to a large part of the prisoners little more than
a curious spectacle.
The prison of Sainte-Pelagie, founded in 1665,
owes its name to a holy penitent of the fifth
century, who was a famous actress at Antioch,
when, after hearing a sermon from the bishop of
Heliopolis, she became a convert to Christianity,
received baptism, liberated her slaves, and made
over her property to the bishop that it might
be given to the poor. Then, clothing herself in
a rough garment, she made her way secretly to
Jerusalem, and there built herself a cell on the
Mount of Olives, where she led the most austere
life. In memory of Sainte Pelagie, Madame
Beauharnais de Miramion, who, according to the
memoirs of the eighteenth century, had for years
led a life of pleasure, built an immense house
of refuge for young girls. As the rule of life laid
down by the pious founder (though she herself
submitted to it) seemed too strict to the young
women of the establishment, as well as to their
families, they were one by one withdrawn,
until at last the mistress of the house found
herself alone. Then Madame de Miramion —
determined that someone should do penance —
addressed herself to women and girls of loose life,
when those who were really tired of their wild
existence, with others who had lost all personal
charms, accepted the hospitality offered to them
at Sainte-Pelagie. Gradually the number of

The Prisons of Paris.]

SAINTE-PELAGIE.

139

repentant Magdalens — thanks not only to good
will on their part but to the intervention of the
police— became so great that many of them had
to be moved to the convent of Les Filles de la
Mere-Dieu. When in 1789 the Revolution broke out, the
gates of Sainte-Pelagie were thrown open like
those of the convents ; and the repentant girls,
equally with the nuns, were at liberty to leave
their cells. Two years later the Commune of Paris
converted the building into a prison, where men
and women were confined for all sorts of offences,
political as well as criminal. From 1797 until
1834 Sainte-Pelagie was a debtors' prison, and it
was then changed into a house of correction for
juvenile offenders, vagabonds below the age of
sixteen, and children found hopeless by their
parents. Under the Second Empire, as for. a time under
the First and during a portion of the Restora
tion, Sainte-Pelagie was exclusively a state prison.
Here it was that the first Napoleon — in the
words of an anti-Bonapartist writer—" shut up
those citizens who displeased him and failed to
manifest for his policy all the enthusiasm he
desired." To this despot is due the introduction
at Sainte-Pelagie of special registers, called "regis
ters of persons brought beneath the notice of the
administration '' — in other words, beneath the
notice of the police. The Restoration continued
this work — the imprisonment, that is to say, of
suspected persons — as practised alike under the
Empire, the Republic, and the ancient Monarchy.
At the beginning of Louis XVIII.'s reign no less
than 135 persons were arrested by the king's
private police, simply as having served under
Napoleon in the Imperial Guard.
In the courtyard of Sainte-Pelagie stands a
chapel, built under the ¦ Restoration by the
Duchess of Berri, which among other curiosities
contains an altar-cloth worked by the Duchess
de Praslin, whose tragic death at the hands of
her husband has already been related, and a
Via Dolorosa, painted by a prisoner who had
been condemned for immoral pictures.. All the
Catholic prisoners, with the exception of those
sentenced for political and press offences, are
obliged to be present on Sundays and holidays at
mass and at vespers. A platoon of infantry also
assists at these ceremonies.
The prisoners are divided into three categories.
The first includes those who are exempted
from work without being obliged to pay for the
privilege ; these are the political offenders and
persons who have contravened the laws relating

to the press. The second comprises those who, for
a payment averaging from six or seven francs a
fortnight, purchase the right not to labour. To
the third belong all the prisoners who are
obliged to work in the shops directed by the
speculator who farms the prison. These last
receive but a third part of the wages paid by the
speculator. Of the two other thirds, one goes
to the administration, the other to the prisoner
the day he is set at liberty. A prison-workman
gains on the average two francs twenty-five
centimes a month, of which he receives, as his
own particular share, five centimes or one sou
per day, which he is allowed to spend in the
prison canteen.
In France, as in England, different views are
entertained on the- subject of prison - labour.
The prisoners must work ; and it is both waste
ful and cruel to employ them without advantage
to themselves or anyone else — as, for instance,
in drawing water and then throwing it away.
If, however, they are employed, like the occu
pants of Sainte-Pelagie and other French prisons,
with useful work they are brought into compe
tition with the honest workman outside. The
political prisoners, and the prisoners who are
allowed to liberate themselves from work by
small payments, are permitted to order from the
outside, by the intermediary of commissionaires
attached to the prison for that purpose, what
ever food and drink they may require. " Luxu
ries," it is true, are not permitted by the prison
regulations, but it rests with the officials to
determine what a " luxury " really means.
Prisoners at this, as at some of the other Paris
prisons, are allowed to send out letters, but
copies of them are made and kept in the
governor's office. By this system not only the
prisoner but France and the whole world has, '
in some cases, profited. It was through copies
being made of the eloquent and passionate, if
not too edifying, epistles addressed by Mirabeau,
during his confinement in the Bastille, to the
young woman he was so desperately in love with
that the now famous "Lettres a Sophie" were
preserved. The ordinary inhabitants of Sainte-Pelagie are,
in addition to the' political and newspaper
offenders, juvenile thieves, tradesmen whose
scales have not been found sufficiently impartial,
with fraudulent bankrupts and debtors to the
state — the only ones who, since the abolition of
imprisonment for debt in civil and commercial
matters, are still liable to confinement.
The official staff of Sainte-Pelagie consists of a

140

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Prisons of Paris.

governor, a physician in chief with two assistants,
a dispenser, a Roman Catholic priest, a registrar,
a clerk, a brigadier, twelve warders, three com
missionaires, a female searcher, a barber (who
recruits his auxiliaries from among the prisoners),
a sutler, and a sempstress. The prison is guarded

was quite empty, and no further political
prisoners found their way into it until the
Empire, when, although they were by no means
few, their numbers cannot be certainly ascer
tained, as the prison books were not faithfully
kept. In 181 1, at a time when the Emperor of

WARDERS' ROOM AND ADJOINING COURTYARD
LA GRANDE ROQUETTE.

by a company of infantry stationed at different
posts. A list of the celebrated prisoners who have
been confined at Sainte-Pelagie would be a
formidable one. Sainte-Pelagie ceased to be a
convent in 1790, and was transformed to a
prison by order of the Convention. During this
period many persons suspected of political in
trigue were lodged in this prison previously to
appearing before the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Some distinguished offenders quitted Sainte-
Pelagie for the scaffold : Madame Roland, for
instance, the Comte de Laval Montmorency, and
the Marquis de Pons. On the 3rd of August,
1793, in virtue of an edict for the arrest of the
actors of the Theatre de la Nation (afterwards
Theatre Francais), Fleury, Lange, Petit, Suin,
Joly, Devienne, Lachassaigne, Rancourt, and
Mezerai were all incarcerated at Sainte-Pelagie.
After the 9th Thermidor it received the victims
of the counter-revolution, but ere long the prison

Russia was in Paris, sixty-eight prisoners were
liberated at his request. The Restoration, from
the 15th of April, 1814, to the 29th of January,
1 81 5, incarcerated 135 prisoners, nearly all of
them old officers of the Imperial Guard. When
the allies entered Paris for the second time the
Russian Emperor, who the year before had pro
cured the liberation of political prisoners de
tained by Bonaparte, made use of Sainte-Pelagie
for the imprisonment of Russian deserters to
the number of 192. Among the latter were
several Poles guilty of having fought for their
country in the French armies. These so-called
deserters found themselves in the same gaol
with the victims of the royalist reaction. Under
Charles X. Sainte-Pelagie continued to be a
state prison, and began to afford accommodation
to journalists or authors who had been in
discreet with their pen. Between 1820 and
1830 many a celebrity lodged there, such as
Beranger, Paul Louis Courier, Eugene de

The Prisons of Paris.]

SAINTE-PELAGIE.

141

Pradel, Dubois and Barthelemy — to name no
others. From 1830 to 1838 the constitutional monarchy
made a sufficiently free use of Sainte-Pelagie. Then
the Republic came and
set the prisoners loose ;
though the insurrec
tion of June repeopled
Sainte-Pe'lagie, into
which no less than a
hundred offenders were
summarily thrown.
On the 17th of De
cember, 185 1, the man
who nineteen years
afterwards was to finish
his career at Sedan im
prisoned thirty - four
representatives of the
people at Sainte-Pelagie.
Nor did Napoleon IH.
stop here. In the space
of a few days he lodged
within the gaol some
five hundred citizens whom he
considered dangerous and capable
of interfering with his projects.
It would be impossible within
a limited space to adequately trace
the subsequent history of Sainte-
Pelagie. Before quitting this gaol,
however, mention may be made
of one or two of the most famous
escapes which have been effected
from it.
In July, 1835, a certain number
of notorious prisoners conspired
to dig, at the north-east angle of
the building, a subterranean pas
sage, which was at length carried
into the garden of a house in the
Rue Coupeau. This passage was
eighteen metres long. Twenty-
eight men thereby regained their
liberty, this being the most daring
escape which was ever planned
and executed at Sainte-Pelagie.
Two months afterwards the Comte
de Richmond, calling himself the
son of Louis XVI., contrived to get away
with two of his fellow-prisoners, Duclerc and
RossignoL The count had somehow procured
the key -of the gridiron gate separating the
ground floor of the east pavilion from a court
yard. Then with his hat on, with papers under

his arm, and followed by his two companions,
he was proceeding to one of the principal exits
when a sentinel challenged him. Richmond de
clared himself the governor, and presented his

THE CHAPEL, LA GRANDE ROQUETTE.

two friends, one as the registrar, the other as his
architect. The sentinel let them pass, and the
three prisoners quietly proceeded on their way,
ultimately escaping by a final gate, the key of
which was in the count's possession.
Of yet another - ingenious escape an English-

1 42

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Prisons of Paris.

man named Thomas Jackson, under a sentence
of five years, was the hero. He hoisted himself
up from the central pavilion by a false window and,
by means of a cord provided with a stout hook
at the end, gained the roofs, along which he
stole to the exterior wall, where, still with the
aid of his rope, he managed to let himself down
to the ground uninjured and without exciting
suspicion, favoured, as he had been, by a dark
night and a deluge of rain.
Saint-Lazare, a house of detention and cor
rection for women, is situated in the Rue du
Faubourg Saint-Denis. Before arriving at its
ultimate destination, this prison had to pass
through sundry historical phases, some of them
sufficiently curious. It was at first, as its name
indicates, a leper hospital ; and already at the
beginning of the twelfth century it existed on
the road from Paris to Saint-Denis, built, as it
had been, upon the ruins of an old basilica
dedicated to Saint-Lawrence. Louis le Gros
established for its benefit the fair of Saint-Ladre,
which was held annually in front of the hospital
and lasted eight days. This fair was, under
Philip Augustus, replaced by the fair of Saint-
Lawrence. Like most lazarettos, the hospital of Saint-
Lazare was composed of an assemblage of little
compartments, in which each leper lived isolated.
It is recorded by a monk of Saint-Denis, Odeon
de Deuil by name, that in 1147 Louis VIL,
carrying the royal standard to Saint-Denis pre
viously to his departure for the Crusades, visited
the lepers in their cells. The bakers of France,
who, it appears, were more exposed to leprosy
than any other body of men, owing to the action
of the fire upon their skin, made it their par
ticular concern to contribute towards the main
tenance of Saint-Lazare, and sent large gifts of
bread to it. In return, its doors were always
open to any baker attacked with the malady.
From 15 15 until the seventeenth century
Saint-Lazare was managed, or mismanaged, by
the canons of Saint-Victor, who established
themselves there as in a great abbey, and con
sumed the rich revenues of the institution. The
leprosy was turned out of doors, or at least the
canons would only receive certain ecclesiastics
afflicted with leprosy. In 1630 the reform of
this degenerate establishment was' confided to
Saint-Vincent de Paul, who installed there,
under the name of "congregation of Saint-
Lazare," a regular staff of priests to tend the
sick. It was in the convent of Saint-Lazare that

Vincent de Paul died. He was interred in the
choir at the foot of the high altar. His tomb,
bearing a commemorative inscription, was still
visible in 1789.
Ten years after the Revolution a portion of
Saint-Lazare was employed as a house of cor
rection for men, as well as a depository for per
sons suddenly and arbitrarily arrested. It was
there that, shortly after the famous first repre
sentation of the Marriage of Figaro, Beau-
marchais was shut up, after having been brutally
dragged from his home. This iniquitous arrest,
which nothing could excuse or extenuate, caused
such a stir in Paris that the brilliant dramatist
was set free within three days.
On the 13th of July, 1789, the eve of the tak
ing of the Bastille, the convent of Saint-Lazare
was pillaged. Paris was suffering from famine,
and the report got abroad that in the immense
buildings of the cloister large quantities of wheat
and flour were concealed. The popular sus
picions proved to be well founded. Enormous
supplies of cereals, wines, and victuals of every
description were discovered, and the inmates,
who had represented themselves as entirely
destitute, were ignominiously chased out of doors.
Unhappily the famished invaders, once in pos
session of the booty, abandoned themselves to
all kinds of excesses. The barns were set on
fire, and the flames for some time threatened
the whole quarter with destruction.
Converted into a prison, Saint-Lazare received
a great number of suspects. Some of its guests
were now sufficiently illustrious : the great poet,
Andre Chenier, for instance. Within its walls
Chenier wrote, for a female prisoner, one of his
most beautiful elegies, as well as some of his
famous iambics. After the Consulate Saint-
Lazare became at once a civil prison, an ad
ministrative prison, and a house of correction.
Amongst other classes of offenders detained
there were women sentenced to less than a year's
imprisonment, or in debt to the State, or con
victed of adultery, as well as girls under age
whose parents had shut them up for correction.
This vast and sombre prison, with its decrepit
walls and fts sinister aspect, consists of five great
blocks of buildings surrounding three courtyards
planted with trees. A road encircles and isolates
the whole. The buildings are four-storeyed,
sufficiently well ventilated, and capable of ac
commodating twelve hundred offenders. The
women immured at Saint-Lazare are divided
into three categories. The first consists of women
convicted of crimes or misdemeanours ; the

The Prisons of Paris. I

SAINT LAZARE.

' 43

second of girls under age condemned for in- j reproduce. The ward
discreet conduct to remain till their majority in J those fallen women who

a house of correction, as also of girls whose
parents have incarcerated them on a judge's
order, and girls below sixteen, detained for

a long course of vice
moralising influences are
the attempts to reform

of the young contains
are not yet hardened by
It is towards these that
chiefly directed ; though
them have not, on the

nnnnxii: i ¦ .„,„
iafflBBgfe

THE CHAPEL-SCHOOL, LA PETITE ROQUETTE.

vagabondage or prostitution. The third category
is composed of abandoned women administratively
detained. This last category, entirely isolated from the
two others, is itself divided into three classes :
the old, the mutinous, and the young. The old
culprits are naturally the most resigned to their
fate ; some even prefer it to liberty. In 1830 a
great many of them, forcibly ejected into a state
of freedom, returned the same evening to Saint-
Lazare. The mutinous ward is occupied by
loose women who are refractory to all discipline.
It is here that conspiracies are hatched against
the prison regulations, and that language is
used which no slang dictionary would dare to

whole, oeen highly successful. Against women
of recognised immorality the state laws are
notoriously severe. Slighter offences, such as
appearing in the street at prohibited hours,
venturing out of doors bareheaded, or with an
air of solicitation, and drinking to excess, are
punished with fifteen days' to three months'
imprisonment. For graver offences, such as
insulting the doctors attached to the adminis
tration, or making determined overtures to
pedestrians, the minimum term of imprisonment
is three months, the maximum close upon a year.
The female warders of the different sections
are sisters of the order of Saint- Joseph. All the
prisoners are employed at needlework, and

144

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Prisons of Paris.

receive weekly a slender remuneration for so
much as they have done. They labour together
in vast workshops. The women under correction
sleep isolated, in cells ; the others sleep, four by
four, in rooms or in large dormitories, where, a
few years since, it was complained that they were
strewn about pell-mell, and so crowded together
that their beds frequently touched.

they would not get corrupted. " Everv young
girl who enters under correction at Saint-Lazare,"
says M. Maxime Ducamp, " issues thence vicious
and polluted to the depths of her heart. I have
been turning over the leaves of two prayer-ccoks
found on a child of hardly sixteen, detained for
three months, on the application of her father,
in this accursed house, where the walls reek with

THE POLITICAL QUARTER, SAINTE-PELAGIE.

A very able writer, who has made a special
study of the regime of different prisons, M.
Maxime Ducamp, furnishes statistics, showing
that in one average year Saint-Lazare gave ac
commodation to 2,859 ordinary criminals ; 232
young girls, of less than sixteen, under correction ;
and 4,831 unfortunates "administratively" de
tained, not to mention some 200 women who
were infirm.
It is complained that notwithstanding all the
divisions and subdivisions which have been made
to prevent communication between the different
sections of prisoners, the greatest promiscuity
reigns at Saint-Lazare. Philanthropists and
journalists have constantly raised their voice in
the matter, and demanded that a special house
should be instituted for young girls in which

vice. On the margins the little prisoner has
written her thoughts ; frequently the dates are
indicated, and one can thus follow the progress
of her ideas. The study is appalling." The
moral atmosphere of the place, that is to say,
was one which the girl could scarcely breathe ;
though by degrees she became acclimatised, until
her last reflections were an outrage against not
only virtue, but nature itself.
We will conclude this chapter on the prisons
of Paris with a few general observations.
On the question of hygiene most of the
governors of Paris prisons state, in their reports,
that little on this head remains to be desired.
Certain exceptions, however, must be made, as
in the case of ancient convents whose age renders

The Prisons of Paris.]

PRISON REGULATIONS.

145

a perfect .adaptation impossible. Now it is the
dormitories which are defective, because the
cubic quantity of air required by the regulations
cannot be obtained ; now it is the courts, which,
as the sun can never penetrate to them, become
damp and unwholesome ; now it is the workshops,
which are ill-suited to the industries exercised
within them. On the whole, however, the
central prisons are healthy enough.
On the subject of food — one of the most im
portant of hygienic considerations — tire authori
ties have had this problem to solve :
to avoid imposing such rigorous de
privations as would border upon in
humanity, whilst equally avoiding such
a dietary system as would lend an
attraction to the prisons, and cause
destitute wretches to prefer confinement
to their ordinary life of liberty. The
regulation diet is at present as follows : —
a daily ration of bread weighing 750
grammes for men and 650 for women ;
in the morning, on ordinary days, a
bowl of vegetable soup with bread in
it, and on Sundays, Thursdays, and
fete days, a bowl of meat soup ; in
the evening similar soup, accompanied,
on ordinary days, by a small quantity of
dry vegetables, such as potatoes, peas,
and lentils, and on Sundays and fete
days by a portion of meat, without
bone, weighing at least 75 grammes, as
well as at least 3 decilitres of potatoes.
The ordinary beverage is pure water. During
the months of June, July, and August, however,
the administration requires that a refreshing
drink be supplied to the prisoners. This is
made from gentian, hops, leaves of the walnut-
tree, molasses, and lemon.
The regime of prisoners in the infirmaries is
chiefly determined by the medical officers, though
there are state regulations even on this subject.
The regime of the infirmary is very indulgent,
and invalids confined there are practically, for
the time being, not treated as prisoners at all.
As to the sleeping arrangements, the bedstead
now generally employed is of iron, with a base
of trellis work or wire gauze. It is furnished
with a mattress, a pair of sheets, one blanket in
summer and two in winter.
Of cleanliness a great point, of course, is made.
The prisoner, on his first introduction into
prison, is stripped and bathed, and has his hair
and beard cut off. The tresses of the women,
however, remain unshorn ; though formerly
34

female prisoners, to their own furious indignation,
were deprived of this their chief adornment.
According to one article of the prison regu
lations, a footbath must be furnished to each
prisoner at least once in two months, and a large
bath at least twice a year. It is to be hoped
that the officials of the different prisons do not
really limit those under their charge to such an
atrociously infrequent application of necessary
water. The infirmaries are very competently organised.

THE COURTYARD, SAINT-LAZARE.

To each metropolitan prison at least one doctor
is attached. The prisoners may have a medical
consultation whenever they apply for it ; though
they are not admitted to the infirmary without a
doctor's certificate, except in urgent cases. The
temperature of the infirmary is regulated ac
cording to -the season or, more precisely, the
weather. The rest of the prison is only heated
when the weather is very rigorous. The total
number of patients admitted to the infirmary
in 1869 was 12,982 men and 2,489 women.
These figures may at first appear somewhat for
midable ; but two facts must be borne in mind :
first, that a stay in the infirmary is much coveted
by prisoners, who get themselves entered on the
sick list under the slightest pretext ; secondly,
that the population of the Paris prisons is
generally an unhealthy one, already degenerated
through excesses or anterior maladies. On the
other hand, it cannot be denied that long iso
lation, insufficient exercise, and perhaps also
inadequate food, produce a grievous effect on the

146

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

rThe Prisons of Paris.

health of the inmates. It is found, indeed, that
prisoners who have been long confined are pe
culiarly liable to become invalided ; and this is in
particular the case with women. In 1869, out
of a given number of convicts, nearly three times
as many were in the infirmary during the fourth
year of confinement as during the first. That
most patients, however, enter the infirmary in
consequence of anterior conditions, is shown by
the statistics for 1869, considerably more than
half having been afflicted with previous maladies
or bad constitutions.
The hours of compulsory prison labour are
regulated by the State. The organisation of
the labour system leaves, on one point at least,
something to be desired. A double object ought
to be held in view by the authorities, namely, to
ensure for the prisoner sufficient resources to
exempt him, on his liberation, from tempta
tion to mendicancy or theft, and to develop in
him such habits of industry as will procure him
an honest livelihood out in the world. The
institution of the " peculium," or private fund,
is of the first necessity for this purpose. At

present each prisoner has a peculium, or at all
events it is within his power to create one. The
slender proceeds of his labour form an accumu
lation for this fund. The longer his imprison
ment and the greater the difficulty experienced
in obtaining work on his discharge, the larger
should be the stock of money intended to keep
his hands out of other people's pockets. As a
matter of fact, however, in the case of ill-regu
lated prisoners, nine-tenths of the fund is some
times deducted before they are liberated. In
voluntary thieves are thus let loose upon
society. The central prisons of Paris inspire the crim
inal classes with a wholesome dread, due, in a
very large measure, to the exasperating mon
otony of the life led within their walls. Many
medical authorities hold that more diversion
and variety should be afforded. Continued year
after year upon long - sentence prisoners, the
monotony is sure to prey, more or less, upon
the mind ; and the cases of atony and other
mental diseases attributable to this cause are
unfortunately by no means few.

The Paris Zoo.]

THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.

147

CHAPTER XXI.
THE PARIS ZOO.
The Jardin des Plantes— Its Origin and History — Under Buffon — The Museum of Natural History — The Tobacco Factory.

FROM caged men to caged beasts the trans
ition is easy and natural. The Jardin des
Plantes is probably the most popular institution
in Paris, and, according to certain French writers
whose eye by no means diminishes the magnitude
of native objects, the most popular in the world.
At all events, the names associated with this
Parisian equivalent of our Zoological Gardens
are glorious enough, including as they do those
of Buffon, Cuvier, and other writers whose lustre
is dimmed only by juxtaposition with those of
the two greatest naturalists who ever lived. It
is more to the names in question, whose re-.
putation cannot decline, than to the collections
which the establishment contains,, that the Jardin
des Plantes owes its fame.
The creation of this garden dates back to
Louis XIII. It was two of this monarch's
physicians, Herouard and Guy de la Brosse, who
conceived the first idea of it. Having submitted
their plans to the king, the two naturalists soon
obtained letters patent for the acquisition, in the
Faubourg Saint-Victor, of a suitable piece of
ground. At its origin, however, the institution
which was one day to earn a European fame
was of very limited extent, and its collections
were entirely botanical. Royal Garden of Me
dicinal Herbs it was called ; and the first design
of its founders had in fact been nothing more
than the cultivation of plants possessing curative
properties. In this character the garden was a
mere supplement to the Faculty of Medicine.
It served as a theatre of study for students in
pharmacy ; and the royal letters patent, signed
"Louis," provided that "no instruction in phar
macy shall be given at the School of Medicine."
" In the said garden," runs another clause, " a
specimen shall be preserved of every drug,
whether simple or compound."
Of the two founders of the Jardin des Plantes,
one can only be said to have taken part in the
work ; for Herouard died prematurely. It ,was
Guy de la Brosse who did the planning and the
classifying ; and to him the credit of establish
ing the garden almost exclusively belongs.
One of the first botanists of his time, Guy
de la Brosse himself furnished the garden with

nearly every species of plant which was to be
cultivated there. At the same time it must be
owned that Louis XIII. showed himself, for the
period, very munificent towards de la Brosse,
who received an annual allowance of 6,000 francs
for his professional services in connection with
the institution.
During the first years of its existence the
garden met with much opposition, and sometimes
fell into a state of neglect. The Faculty of
Medicine was jealous of this rival, and rebelled
against the royal edict because de la Brosse did
not seek to enlist the sympathies of its pro
fessors. For this exhibition of disrespect the
Faculty suffered no punishment but that of
having its remonstrances quite ignored ; and
Guy de la Brosse devoted all his energies to the
enrichment of the botanical collection. His
death, however, occurred three years after the
inauguration, and his successors, as indolent as
he had been indefatigable, let the garden run
almost to weed. At length one of the professors
of the Faculty imparted to it a new life. This
was Fagon, one of Louis XIV.'s physicians, who
seemed fitted for the task no less by his birth
than by his studies ; for he was a grandnephew
of Guy de la Brosse, and had first seen the light
within the precincts of the Jardin des Plantes.
Devoted to study, which he preferred to the
distractions of a court where he was nevertheless
an oracle, Fagon, already celebrated by the
ability with which he had supported the theory
of the circulation of the blood — at that time
rejected by the Faculty — proved himself, with
his natural passion for botany, an admirable
director for the Jardin. In 1693 Louis XIV.
conferred upon him the title of Superintendent.
Fagon's period of service was indeed a pro
sperous one for the royal garden. With a generous
nature, and gifted with that savoir-faire which is
only acquired by contact with men, he was happy
in the choice of his professors, and contrived, by
his influence and liberality, to give a great im
pulse to the whole establishment. Besides group
ing around him an illustrious body of specialists,
he despatched agents to various foreign countries
to discover specimens for his collection.

I4»

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris Zco.

After the reign of Louis XIII. the superin
tendence of the Jardin des Plantes had been
considered as essentiallv the business of one or
other of the royal physicians. In consequence a
succession of men filled the post who were total
strangers to natural science, and quite unfitted

Jardin was no suitable perquisite for a royal
physician ; and it was now that the illustrious
Buffon was appointed " intendant." From this
moment the aspect of everything changed ; and the
institution rapidly earned a world-wide renown.
Under Buffon it was completely transformed.

m

F^E. '~3fi

to manage such an institution. Afterwards
incompetent directors removed from the staff
of specialists all those who were worth retain
ing, and showed so little respect for the pur
poses of the garden that they cultivated part
of it as a vineyard for their own private use.
Colbert, when he visited the garden, was so
indignant at this outrageous abuse, that he called
for a pickaxe and himself commenced a work of
destruction which he took care to have carried
out forthwith.
Successive failures at length proved to the
authorities that the superintendence of the

From a simple apothecary's plantation it became
a depot for all the riches of creation. He erased
the inscription, "Jardin royal des herbes medi-
cinales," from over the door of entrance, and
substituted for it the plain title of " Jardin
du Roi." Endowed with immense energy, the
great naturalist employed all his influence to
wards enriching the establishment over which he
reigned with the superiority of genius. When
he first set foot in it the chief treasures of the
museum were displayed in two little rooms of
the edifice erected on the grounds, whilst in a
third room, carefully removed from the gaze of

The Paris Zoo.]

THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.

149

the curious, were collected a number of inferior
skeletons of men and animals. It was during
Buffon's administration that the great amphi
theatre was constructed, which remains one of
the most admired in Paris, as well as the chemical

magnificent presents to the museum. The King
of Poland sent him a splendid collection of
minerals, and the Empress of Russia, who had
failed to entice him to her court, nevertheless
presented him with some of the richest products
of her country. Nor was
this all. Pirates, who seized
every cargo which came
within their reach, are said
to have spared the cases
which they found addressed
to so great a naturalist.
More fortunate than the
human beings outside, the
animals in the royal gar
den were in no way affected
by the Revolution. The
hateful title of their abode,
however, was naturally
changed ; and the former
Garden of the King became

THE CARNIVORA SECTION, JARDIN DES PLANTES.
laboratories which surround it. The natural
history galleries were, as might have been ex
pected, by no means overlooked. He even ex
tended them at the expense of his own allowance
for lodging, which he reduced time after time,
and ended by abandoning altogether. Although
his main passion was for animals, Buffon gave
earnest attention to the cultivation of plants.
It was he who traced the plan of the garden very
nearly as it exists in the present day.
The intendant of the Jardin des Plantes, who
rendered such incalculable services to natural
science, has been reproached with having written
his immortal pages in foppish attire, with a sword
at his side and his hand adorned with ruffles.
This reproach, which has been so widely re
iterated, deserves refutation. When Comte de
Buffon appeared in society it, was with the ex
terior of a gay cavalier ; but in his study, when
he was at work, his costume was so plain that
it shocked a Franciscan friar of his acquaintance
who saw a great deal of him at his chateau. If
he was extravagant at all, it was in the exercise
of his natural benevolence, which assumed quite
a princely character. .
The name of Buffon attracted from all parts

.-;-" '¦¦¦. ^^

T.

vi--'-^-

ENTRANCE TO THE HOTHOUSES, JARDIN DES PLANTES.
the Museum of Natural History. In 1792
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the author of Paul
and Virginia, was made director of the estab
lishment ; and the Convention, which with all its
destructiveness showed constructive tendencies
in regard to all matters of science, literature, and
art, founded at the museum twelve chairs, which

KO

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris Zoo.

were filled by professors of human anatomy,
zoologv, animal anatomy, botany, mineralogy,
geology, general chemistry, chemistry in its
application to the arts, agriculture, and icon
ography. The number of some of the chairs has since
been increased, and a few new ones have been
established ; but, fundamentally, the organisation
of the establishment remains what it was at the
time of the radical transformation under the
Convention. The professors appointed by the
Convention went to work -with the greatest en
thusiasm, and all the invaders and explorers of
the time were begged to supply the museum with
whatever specimens of natural history they
could offer. The collection, moreover, was in
creased by the activity and success of the French
troops, with a view to the greater glory of
France, and especiallv of Paris. The com
manders of the French armies brought back with
them, in the form of booty, the most interesting
objects from the museums of the conquered cities.
Holland having been overrun in 1798, a number
of the curiosities belonging to the Stadtholder's
Museum were forwarded to Paris ; and the
celebrated naturalist, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
was sent to Lisbon, occupied at the time by a
French army, to choose from the local col
lections whatever he might find suitable for the
natural history museum at Paris. After a time
the collection became too rich for the professors
and officials who had to arrange it. Money and
space were alike wanting ; and at last the
established authorities formally complained that
the treasures forwarded to them by the victorious
troops were too abundant.
Among the most celebrated professors at
tached to the museum of natural history may
be mentioned Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, already
named, Lamarck, Lacepede, and Cuvier.
The garden of the museum forms a spacious
quadrilateral, bounded on the east by the Quai
Saint-Bernard, on the north by the Rue Cuvier,
on the south by the Rue Buffon, and on the
west by the Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
Entering by the principal gate, the visitor
finds himself opposite an immense flower-bed
enclosed between two long avenues which were
planted by Buffon himself. The avenue on the
left leads to the school of stone-fruit trees,
the collections of botany, mineralogy, and geo
logy, the library, and the house inhabited by 1
Buffon when he wTas superintendent of the place. 1
The avenue on the right is bounded by the ¦
school of botany and the hothouses. Behind |

the botanical school a long avenue of chestnut
trees leads by the side of the bears' den from
the hothouses to the quay. Between this avenue
and the Rue Cuvier are the menagerie, the
school of fruit trees, the galleries of anatomy
and anthropology, the amphitheatre, the Ad
ministration, and, at the top of the garden,
behind the hothouses, the labyrinth and the
Belvedere. A number of exotic trees have
been planted and cultivated in the Jardin
des Plantes, thence to be transplanted and
naturalised in France. One of the popular
celebrities of the garden is the Cedar of Lebanon,
which Bernard de Jussieu was bringing from the
East with other specimens, when, made prisoner
by the English, he was deprived of the whole of
his collection, with the exception only of the
young cedar tree, which he had sworn at all
hazards to preserve. Keeping it in a hat, planted
in suitable mould, he succeeded, after many
vicissitudes, in bringing it to the haven where it
has since so wonderfully thrived. The tree,
cultivated with only too much care, wears an
aspect which is not precisely that of its natural
freedom, but which is not wanting in grandeur.
" The old Titan," writes a French naturalist,
" several times decapitated by our icy climate,
spreads more and more every year."
Higher up, in an almost forgotten corner, in
the midst of foliage, stands a column supported
by a pedestal of minerals. This simple monu
ment is in memory of a simple man. Beneath
it rests the body of Daubenton, the friend and
collaborator of Buffon, the "learned shepherd"
to whom France owes its fine breeds of merino
sheep, and the author of the new plan of
organisation adopted by the Convention in 1793.
Narrow, winding paths, overshadowed by yew
trees, lead to the Belvedere, constructed during
the reign of Louis XV. The bronze cupola of
doubtful style, surmounted by a celestial globe,
with a sundial and a motto, tells plainly the
period to which this fantastic conceit belongs.
The motto, however, is ingenious and charming :
" Horas non numero nisi Serenas" ; in English,
"I note only the hours of sunshine." Buffon
had here placed an apparatus which has disap
peared. At twelve o'clock exactly the lens of
the dial burned a thread, causing a ball of metal
to fall with a sonorous clang.
Arrived at this point the visitor sees the
garden stretching out at his feet. It is in the
spring that the full beauty of flower and foliage
reveals itself. On Sundays and fete days, when
the weather is fine, the garden teems with people.

The Paris Zoo.]

THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.

iSi

Masses of promenaders come to find, beneath the hang their branches over the water, full of
shade of the avenues, verdure and fresh air ; for plants and sleepy fishes. All is shade, freshness,
not only is the Jardin des Plantes a great scientific and tranquillity in this nook, which is the most
school, it is the joy and the life of a populous picturesque and charming in the whole garden.
We have now returned to the principal en
trance, facing the bridge of Austerlitz. In the
immense flower-beds which ascend to the gal
leries, what chiefly strikes the eye is a square
devoted to the cultivation of gaily ornamental
flowers, where they seem to have more than
their accustomed splendour. This particular
effect is produced simply by means of skilful
arrangement, based on those laws relating to the
simultaneous contrast of colours which it was
reserved for M. Chevreuil to discover. Each
flower owes more to its neighbour than to itself.
Isolated, it would lose that brilliant beauty which
is lent to it by a clever juxtaposition.
Close at hand, in the great avenue to the left,
is a modest cafe. The tables are ranged around
the peeled trunk of an old tree, the first acacia
planted in France, some hundred years ago, by
Vespasian Robin, after whom it is named — even
as a certain beetle was named after another famous

MARABOUT STORKS IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.

quarter of the metropolis. It affords repose to
fatigued workmen, the families of local residences
resort to it, and generations of lighthearted
children grow up in the midst of its charms.
Descending the labyrinth, behind the hot
houses, the visitor finds in front of him the door
of the orangery, and to the left the entrance to
the grand amphitheatre, where so many illus
trious voices have instructed the world. Then,
following the avenue which passes before the
amphitheatre, he descends the length of the Rue
Cuvier, and making on this side the tour of the
menagerie, an enormous ^rampus,togetherwith its
skeleton, comes into view, guarding the entrance
to the galleries of anatomy and anthropology.
Farther on is the reptile menagerie, as well as a
school of fruit trees, which French writers
on the subject characteristically declare to be
" without a rival in the world."
At the angle formed by the Rue Cuvier and
the quay, and following the latter, one comes to
the aquarium of fresh-water plants. Willows

THE POLAR BEAR IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.

naturalist, on whom his admirers thought thus
to confer the highest conceivable degree of
honour. A little farther on, in front of the
building containing the collections of geology,
stand other venerable trees. Finally one reaches,
at the top of the garden and opposite the

152

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris Zoo.

entrance in the Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
a large square house built as the residence of
Buffon, who, lodged at first in the buildings of
the galleries, had given up his apartments to the

THE BEAR-PIT, JARDIN DES PLANTES.

growing collections. The name of Intendancy
is still borne by this edifice. It was here that
Buffon died.
Along the street which bears his name the
garden is to-day still enclosed by the spiked iron
railings which he himself caused to be erected.
They protected the garden on the side of the
country ; but the country since then has retreated
far away.
To come, however, to the menagerie, a noisy
concert of parrots and cockatoos forms a prelude
to the show, as one advances from the side of the

amphitheatre. The birds of prey are enclosed in
large cages with iron bars. The monkeys have
a " palace," where they disport themselves in the
"sunshine, to the great delight of sight-seeing
crowds. The Rotunda is devoted
to animals from hot latitudes —
the elephant, for instance ; the
rhinoceros, and the hippopota
mus. A striking peculiarity of
the female hippopotamus in the
Jardin des Plantes is that she
has given birth several times
to a tough-skinned baby, and
always or nearly always killed it
immediately with her terrible
teeth. The carnivorous animals are
confined in a series of dens. The
bear is the most beloved of all
these formidable creatures. His
pit is resorted to by masses of
people who regard him quite as
an old acquaintance, and call him
by the name of one of his cele
brated ancestors — " Martin."
The reptile menagerie is con
tained in a low chamber, damp
and narrow, where these cold,
creeping animals pass their lives
in comparative darkness. What to
many forms the most curious
spectacle in this menagerie is the
remains of a strange repast in
which, some years ago, one of the
pythons indulged. This enter
prising creature one fine night
swallowed the blanket which had
been placed over him to keep
him warm ; his digestion was
excellent, but was not equal
to blankets, and after a fort
night's indisposition he threw it
up in the condition in which
it is now preserved.
In the long building which runs parallel to the
Rue Cuvier are the galleries of anatomy and of
anthropology. They occupy two large rooms on
the ground floor, and the whole of the first
storey round the courtyard, known as the
Courtyard of the Whale. In its centre is a fine
skeleton of an ordinary whale, and in one of
the corners the skeleton of a spermaceti whale
— in French "cachalot," which, according
to a fantastic etymologist, is derived from
"cache a l'eau," the animal being accustomed

The Paris Zoo. J

THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

153

when threatened with attack to hide in the
water. The first room in the gallery of anatomy is
filled with skeletons of the largest sea-animals.
The adjoining room contains human
skeletons, among which will be remarked
that of Soliman-el-Halir, the assassin of
General Kleber, put to death with
frightful torture by the avenging French,
who .barbarously adopted the mode of
punishment of the barbarous country
they had invaded. Strange that the
French, nearly a century after this
offence against humanity, should still
preserve a monument to revive its
memory. To notice but one point, the
finger-bones of the right hand are
wanting. The hand was burnt off
before the final punishment was applied
— that of impalement, which the assassin
endured for six hours without uttering
a groan. A narrow staircase leads to the first
floor, in which the ante-chamber is full
of animals' heads. In the second room
we are in the midst of monsters, most
of which formed subjects of study to the
two Gepffroy Saint-Hilaires, intent on
finding immutable laws where science
had previously seen nothing but the
sport and caprices of chance. " Ritta
Christina Parodi"was the name given
to two heads on a single body born at
Sassari in Sardinia, March 12, 1827.
The two heads lived about eight
months, one of them dying on the 20th
of November, the other shortly after
wards, but not until there had been
time to make, in regard to this strange
being, some curious observations. Fur
ther on may be seen Philomele and
Helene, two bodies on one pair of legs. They
also lived. Finally, in the same order, are
Olympe and Therese, joined together by the
top of the head.
In the third room are the great anthropomor
phous or man-shaped apes, arranged in an atti
tude not natural to them, since in nature they
walk on hands and feet, but which brings
out more vividly their resemblance to hu
manity. The broken teeth, the fractured
limbs of these rangers of the forests — orang
outangs, chimpanzees, and gorillas— are evidence
of their fights, their struggles, their adven
turous life. The orang - outang is a war

trophy. It belonged formerly to the collec
tion of the Stadtholder of Holland, whence
it was sent to Paris by the victorious French
army, without being claimed and sent back

'm

DROMEDARY IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.

by the allies in 181 5, as undoubtedly would
have been its fate had its history and its actual
position been known.
In the waxwork collection (eighth room) many
of the anatomical reproductions come from the
chateau of the Duke of Orleans — known during
the Revolution as Philippe Isgalite — at Chantilly.
Others, executed with rare perfection, are from
Florence, always celebrated for this kind of work.
At the entrance to the ninth room are two figures,
considered marvels of ingenuity and of science in
the last century, but now looked upon as, for
purposes of study, next to useless : an " arterial "
man and a " venous " man. Very curious, too,

154

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris Zoo.

are the children's heads, in which skilful in
jections, even into the most delicate veins, have
given to the complexion the appearance of life.
They have been furnished, according to the taste
of the period, with enamel eyes, and to render
them presentable to the public, each little head
is enveloped in a lace cap. In the eleventh room
will be found the collection of Dr. Gall, includ
ing the very heads on whose developments he
formed his theory of localised faculties and
cerebral bumps. It may here be observed that
the followers of Gall have rendered his system
questionable by giving to it in detail a value
which he attached to it only in a general way.
The collection contains, moreover, the bust of Dr.
Gall himself, a cast of his head taken after death,
and his very cranium, on which may be sought the
special bump of phrenologism. Here, too, may
be seen the masks of Voltaire, Casimir Perier,
Frangois Arago, and Jean Jacques Rousseau.
This last was taken by the sculptor Houdon,
at Les Charmettes, July 4, 1778 — the day after
Rousseau's death. A bust of Cuvier is to be
seen on the ground floor, to which a staircase
leads directly from the Gall collection. It is the
work of David d'Angers, and stands in front of
five skeletons of elephants, which seem to form
for the great comparative anatomist a guard
of honour.
In the anthropological gallery, on the first
floor, the visitor finds himself on entering in
front of a pleasing collection of human heads, all
severed during lifetime from the bodies to which
they belonged : those of Arabs and Kabyles, de
capitated by the yataghan, and dried beneath the
African sun. This at least marks a progress since
the days when native malefactors were burnt and
impaled. " Their narrow puckered lips," says a
French writer, " exhibit their white teeth in a grin
which has been left significantly by a violent
death." Near these heads are the skulls of the
ancestors of the modern French, the Franks and
the Gauls, from whose tombs they have been
taken. In this room is to be seen a curious and
picturesque ethnographical collection : a number
of Russian dolls, attired in the European,
Asiatic, and American costumes of the various
nationalities included in the vast empire of the
Tsar. In the eighth room the ancient Peruvian
mummies are well worth a glance. So, too, are
the strange little human heads prepared by this
now extinct race. From the head that was to be
preserved the bones were first removed. Then
the skin was dried, which in contracting kept its
original shape. Thisv however much diminished,

was still preserved. The head, indeed, may
have shrunk to the size of one's fist : the pro
portions are still the same, except that the hair
is, by comparison, denser and in a greater mass.
In the next room is a cast of a once well-known
Hottentot woman who died in Paris, where she
went under the name of the " Hottentot
Venus." On the first floor to the left are two large
rooms full of reptiles and fish. In these historic
rooms Louis XV. placed the fine statue of
Buffon which is still there, and beneath which
may be read the famous inscription, which time
has not falsified : " Majcstati natures par
ingenium." The majesty of Buffon's genius shows
itself, it has been said, in his very style : an idea
which may have been suggested by his famous
saying: " Le style est I'komme meme1' — and not
" Le style c'est I'homme," as the phrase is gen
erally quoted. All that Buffon meant, and all
that Buffon said, was that a writer's facts, and
even his arguments and thoughts, are or may be
made common property, whereas his manner of
expressing himself is exclusively his own. The
idea that an author's personality necessarily
reveals itself in his writings is contrary to ex
perience, few authors, indeed, exhibiting the
same character on paper as in ordinary life.
To return for one moment to the garden, and
to those exotics which are cultivated with so
much success in the Parisian climate. The most
important of these— at least, in a commercial
sense — is the tobacco-plant, now naturalised over
nearly the whole of France.
The tobacco-factory of Paris, where so much
of the native as well as foreign tobacco-leaf is
prepared, consists of large buildings, five storeys
high, situated between the Quai d'Orsay, the Rue
de l'Universite, the Rue Saint- Jean, and the Rue
de la Boucherie des Invalides. The large gate
in the Rue Saint- Jean affords entrance to
tobaccos coming from all parts of the globe, of
which the qualities have been ascertained
beforehand by experts buying on samples which
are preserved for comparison with each consign
ment as it arrives. The great national factory
receives from the United States — Virginia, for
instance, Kentucky, and Maryland — large ship
ments of tobacco packed in casks ; from South
America vast quantities in bales composed of
skins. Java, too, and Manilla in the Pacific Ocean,
Macedonia, Egypt, Greece, Algeria, Hungary,
Holland, and finally France itself, contribute
their share.
The anti-smokers of France naturally look

The Paris Zoo.]

THE PARIS TOBACCO FACTORY.

iS5

with horror on the huge tobacco factory of
their metropolis ; and more than a century
ago Valmont Bomare wrote the following lament :
" I wish I had never known that in 1750 they
estimated that Maryland and Virginia consigned
each year more than a hundred million casks
of tobacco to the English, who only consumed
about half of it, exporting the rest to France, and
thereby enriching themselves annually to the
amount of nine million two hundred thousand
francs." At present nineteen departments of France
produce some fifty million pounds of tobacco,
worth twenty million francs. The native to
bacco growths are restricted by the often
beneficial interference of the administration,
which has to be consulted by growers in choos
ing the land for cultivation, and which even
prescribes the varieties of tobacco to be
grown.

The sale of tobacco is a monopoly in France,
the shop - keeping tobacconists being really
nothing more than Government agents for the
distribution of cigars, cigarettes, tobacco, and
snuff. The tenancy of a tobacconist's shop is a
privilege conferred by the Government sometimes
on widows and orphans whose husbands or fathers
have deserved well of the state, sometimes on
less meritorious persons who have rendered ser
vices at elections, or have in some other way
earned the goodwill of the Government or of
Government agents.
All tobacco manufactories are Government
property ; and it was as such that the tobacco
manufactory of Dieppe was seized in 1870 by
the Prussians when they occupied that town.
They declared their intention of burning it —
but only as a menace ; and they obligingly
allowed it to be ransomed on payment of 75,000
francs.

LLAMA IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.

"i;b

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some Historical Buildings.

CHAPTER XXII.
SOME HISTORICAL BUILDINGS.
Abailard and Heloise— Fulbert's House in the Rue des Chantres — The Philip Augustus Towers— The H6tel Barbette — The
Hotel de Sens.

TO look for history in the streets of Paris,"
said M. Edouard Fournier, some twenty-
five vears ago, "when so much of the city has
been destroyed, especially
during the last ten years,
is to arrive rather late
in the field ; it is like
harvesting after the glean
ers, picking up blades of
grass instead of ears of
corn." And this, from
the author of " L'Esprit
dans 1'Histoire" and of
" Le Vieux-Xeuf," con
cerning whom Jules Janin
once wrote: u Cet homme
sait tout j il ne sait que
cela; mais il le sait Men''
Where Edouard Fournier
despaired of finding any
thing it would be vain
to seek for much. Some
thing, however, may,
even by following in his
footsteps, yet be gleaned
in the very field which he
regards as bare. In the so-
called "city" — the germ
of that capital to which
the name of Paris is now
given — may still be seen
the house in the Rue des
Chantres which passes for
that of the odious Fulbert,
villain of the love story of
Abailard and Heloise.
That of Abailard, which
was on the other side of
the street, was pulled
down early in 1849. Its
final association was with
a law - suit, brought by
lodgers in the house
against the proprietor,
who, as they alleged, had
dispossessed them without
due notice. The former abode of Fulbert,
the terrible uncle of Heloise, must itself be

RUE DES CHANTRES, NOTRE

on the point of disappearing, even if it has not
been already demolished. The house of Abailard
was at one time connected by a narrow bridge
with the house where
the unnatural Fulbert
dwelt with his charming
niece. But after the
separation of the lovers
their respective houses
were no longer to remain
united, and the stone
bridge which joined them
together — like the Bridge
of Sighs of the Venetian
Palace and Prison — soon
fell into ruins. Two
medallions, in which their
features were said to be
reproduced, formed the
last record of their loves.
These have been repro
duced above the ground-
floor of the new house
on the Quai Napoleon,
with the famous distich :
'¦''Abailard, Heloise, ha-
biterent ces lieux," etc.
Those who love history
for its romance, those who
have been touched by the
tale ofthe lovers, will gaze
with interest on these two
faces ; and if they are not
satisfied they may go to
Pere Lachaise to continue
their devotions in presence
of the monument to their
memory. If, however,
they should have con
sulted M. Edouard Four
nier beforehand, they will
have been warned that the
medallions of the Quai
Napoleon and the statues
of the tomb are anything
but authentic. " The me
dallions," says this unerring critic, " in costumes
of the time of Henry IV. represent lovers of the

LOOKING TOWARDS
DAME.

Some Historical Buildings.]

THE OLD GIRDLE-WALL OF PARIS.

iS7

twelfth century. As to the statues, M. de Guil
hermy has already shown that the one of Heloise
was seen until the time of the Revolution on the
tomb of the Dorman family in the chapel of the
Beauvais College, Rue Jean de Beauvais. The
statue of Abailard is probably of equal authen
ticity." If, to pursue the subject historically, we were
to look for remains of the great wall with
innumerable towers which Philip Augustus
built before his departure for the Crusades, in
order not to leave his dear city of Paris without
defence, we should find it difficult
to discover even traces ; though the
most imposing of the towers were
destroyed not more than twenty or
thirty years ago. They were brought
to light by preceding demolitions,
themselves in turn to be laid in
ruins. At the foot of one of these
towers a treasure, dating from Gallo-
Roman times, was dug up. It was
. valued, according' to the weight of
the gold, at 30,000 francs, though its
artistic and historical worth was a
hundred times greater. Most of the
medals found their way to England. ' . ¦ . - ' :"
In the Cour de Rouen, close to the
Passage du Commerce, is, or was
until lately, to be seen a well-
} SITE OF
preserved fragment of a Philip
Augustus tower, standing, half-
smothered with ivy, on a piece of wall, broad
enough to serve as terrace to the adjoining house,
where a girls' school had been established. " It
is a joyful sight," says M. Edouard Fournier,
" to see children of the present day leaping and
bounding on this remnant of antiquity." Fur
ther on, in the Rue Clovis — which the reader
may remember as figuring in Eugene Sue's
'" Wandering Jew " — is another relic of this
same wall. In the Rue Dauphine, at the back
•of the house numbered 34, is a tower almost in
its original form ; and close by, in the Rue
Guenegaud, the body of another, which stood on
the edge of the wall that from this point went
on in a straight line to the celebrated Tour de
Nesle. The ruined tower of the Rue Guenegaud
served some years ago as background to a black
smith's forge, whose flames cast a lurid light on
this obscure reminder of a past age.
Passing to the other side of the water (where
•our subject inevitably leads us, though it is on
the left bank that Paris antiquities are chiefly to
besought), we find several houses ancient them

selves, or at least closely connected with ancient
associations. In the former Rue des Jardins
Saint-Paul — now Rue Charlemagne — where
Rabelais died, and where Moliere passed the first
years of his dramatic apprenticeship, may be seen,
in the courtyard of the neighbouring barracks, re
mains of one of the two towers which Charles X.
gave in 1485 to the nuns of the Ave Maria
convent, whose cloister the barracks have now
replaced. At No. 20 of the Rue Rambuteau
some twenty metres of the old wall, here in the
form of a terrace, are to be found ; and finally,

rrKSiMi

\\ l

1 ''r:rf

THE HOUSE OF ABAILARD AND HELOISE, RUE DES CHANTRES.
in the very heart of Paris, in the Rue Jean
Jacques Rousseau, where the General Post Office
is established, is preserved at the back of No. 12
a tower which has still two-thirds of its original
height. It stands twenty-four feet above the
soil. In its entirety it was, like all the other
towers, thirty-nine feet high.
These remains of the old girdle-wall, whose
existence by many persons is scarcely suspected,
are all that survives of the constructions of the
sixteenth century. The thirteenth is still more
imperfectly represented ; though some forty
years ago might be seen in the quarter of Saint-
Marcel, at some paces from the river Bievre,
substantial remains of one of the lodges of St.
Louis. In the Rue des Gobelins and the Rue des
Marmousets are still extant relics, in the shape 01
a facade and the fragment of a wall, of the
royal lodge where Queen Blanche listened be
neath the willows of the Bievre to the verses ot
Thibault de Champagne ; where Charles VI.
went mad one terrible night, which, beginning

1^

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some Historical Buildings.

m

with a masquerade, ended with a conflagration ;
where Francis I. had secret rendezvous, to
which playful reference is sometimes made in the
pages of Rabelais.
In the Rue Vieille du
Temple, at the corner of the
Rue des Francs Bourgeois,
stands a graceful turret —
bright relic of that sombre
Hotel Barbette which the
Duke of Orleans, brother of
Charles VI. , was just leaving
when he was killed at the
very door by the followers of
John the Fearless. A lamp,
whose light was never to be
extinguished, was placed there
by one of the assassins, in ex
piation of the crime. Tradition
says that " la belle Ferron-
niere " lived close by, and that
it was by the light of the
lamp, fixed beneath the turret,
that the husband saw Francis
I. escape one night from his
wife's house.
After adorning a feudal
mansion, subsequently to be
transformed into the rich
abode of a financier of the
time of Louis XIV., what has
this turret now become ?
Without losing anything of its
graceful exterior, not even the
grating, so finely worked, of
its little window, it marks the
corner of the bedroom oc
cupied by the grocer who has
his shop below !
John the Fearless was not
troubled by the remorse ex
perienced by his accomplice,
whose repentance was for ever
to be proclaimed by his votive
lamp. The blow having been
struck, his only thought was
to guard against the conse
quences. Withdrawing to the
Hotel d'Artois, which after
wards took from him the
name of the Hotel de Bour
gogne, he there constructed a
stone room, or what was then called a donjon —
not to be confounded with the English word
obviously derived from it. The little fortress of

RUE DES CHANTRES, LOOKING
TOWARDS THE QUAI.

John the Fearless was solidly built, for it exists
even to this day. The square tower, at least
eighty feet high, is indeed in perfect condition.
Its walls are still crenellated,
and it has lost nothing of its
original physiognomy, except
as regards the roof with which
it has been covered in.
An old building of very
different character is the house
of Nicholas Flamel, at No.
50, Rue Montmorency, near
the Rue Saint-Martin. Just
above the ground floor a
touching inscription in Gothic
characters may still be read,
from which it appears that
" poor labouring men and
women dwelling beneath the
porch of this house," said the
Paternoster and the Ave
Maria for the dead. This was
the sole condition of the
hospitality extended to them
by Flamel. He had ideas on
the subject of property which
can never have been widely
spread in any age, and which
are certainly not entertained
in the present day. He let
out his numerous houses in
such a way, that with the
money gained from lodgers on
the lower floors he supported
lodgers without means on the
upper ones. " Gens de mes-
tier," says Guillebert de Metz,
" demouroient en bas, et du
loyer qu'ils payoient estoient
soutenus povres laboureurs en
hault." Another historic house, in
the very centre of what may
still be looked upon as me
dieval Paris, the Hotel de
Sens, stands in an open space,
enclosed by the Rues Figuier,
de la Mortellerie, du Fau-
connier, and des Barres ; in an
admirable position, that is to
say, and at two paces from
the ancient Hotel Saint-Paul.
John the Good, after his imprisonment in London,
lived there for some time as the guest of the
Archbishop of Sens. Charles V. attached more

Some Historical Buildings.]

QUEEN MARGOT.

159

value to it,, for in 1369 he purchased it, and for
some time it was only an adjunct to the Hotel
Saint-Paul. Towards the middle of the fifteenth
century it reverted to the Archbishop of Sens,
Tristan de Salazar, who had it rebuilt in the
form it still preserves, with the exception of the
embellishments added by the famous Duprat,
one of his successors.
Under Henri IV. it was the abode of La

her pages, whose professions of love she had
accepted, finding another page preferred to him,
shot his rival almost beneath the queen's eyes.
Marguerite's cry for vengeance, her offer of her
own garter to anyone who would use it to
strangle the assassin, his arrest, and her vow
neither to eat nor drink until he had been
executed, have already been told. Two days
after (or, as some authorities have it, only one)

PORTION OF THE FAQADE, MUSEE CARNAVALET.

Reine Margot, as Marguerite de Valois, the
king's divorced wife, was popularly called.
" Queen Venus," as will afterwards be seen, was
another of her familiar names. This legendary
heroine of the Tour de Nesle had scarcely taken
possession of her new mansion, in August, 1605,
when a placard was affixed to her door, inscribed
with a quatrain in which her licentious life was
satirised. The evil reputation brought to the
house by Queen Margot remained attached to
it as long as she lived there. In a previous
sketch of the locality the story has already been
told of the tragic event which caused Queen
Margot to abandon the Hotel de Sens for ever.
She had been there scarcely a year when one of

the page Vermond, who had fled but was duly
captured, lost his head beneath the axe of the
executioner, when Queen Margot fainted away,
and, on recovering herself, left the place for
ever. She had scarcely quitted Paris when this
murder of her lover before her door and the
speedy gratification of her desire for vengeance
on the assassin were thus set forth in verses
sung freely in the public streets : — ¦
La Royne Venus demi-morte
De voir mourir devant sa porte
Son Adonis, soncher Amour,
Pour vengeance a devants a face
Fait defaire en la mesme place
V 'assassin presque au mesme jour.

i6o

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Mont-de-Pi4te.

The Hotel de Torpane, in the Rue de Ber-
nardins, was the mansion of the Bignon family,
which has produced so many illustrious men in
literature and in law. It was demolished in
1830, but remains of it still subsist. Some years
ago a stone, bearing the motto of the Bignon
family — " Multa renascentur " — was found (what
irony !) in the midst of the ruins. Nothing of a
fallen house lives again except, perhaps, certain
ornaments which, like the sculpture of the Hotel
de Tortonne, are carried elsewhere — in this par
ticular case, to a back room in the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts. The statues which once adorned
the Hotel de Torpane are said — but probably
without foundation — to be from the hand 01
Jean Goujon.

Mention has already been made of the Hotel
Carnavalet, where the genius of Jean Goujon
may really be studied. It owes its name to the
widow of M. Kernevenoy, whose Breton name
had become softened into that of Carnavalet,
and who in his lifetime had been the worthy
friend of Ronsard and. of Brantome. Madame
" Carnavalet " bought the house for herself and
her son. She maintained it in its original beauty,
which it was impossible to increase. She did,
however, add some ornaments, especially the
sculptured masks which figure here and there
on the fagade, and which, according to the in
genious idea of M. Fournier, may have been
intended to suggest, through the " Carnival,"
her husband's family name.

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE MONT-DE-PIETE.
1 Uncle " and " Aunt " — Organisation of the Mont-de-Piete — Its Various Branches — Its Warehouses and Sale-rooms.

FRENCH idioms, and particularly slang ones,
are seldom translatable into English. The
cant Parisian word, however, for a pawnbroker
bears quite a comic resemblance to the word em
ployed in London. The medical student of our
metropolis, when he is at low water, takes his
watch to his "uncle." The medical student of Paris
resorts, under like circumstances, to his " aunt."
Neither would think of employing the dignified
historical word used by the student of Brussels,
who, as if mindful of the pawnbroker's origin,
calls him " the Lombard."
The English student speaks of the unfortunate
watch in question as being " up the spout " ;
the Parisian declares that his is " on the nail "
— the idea apparently being that the chrono
meter is "hung up" until more prosperous
days. The great pawnbroking establishment, or
Mont-de-Pie'te, of Paris, is situated in the Rue
des Blancs Manteaux, with a principal branch
office in the Rue Bonaparte; but it may be inter
esting meanwhile to glance at those minor estab
lishments which are scattered over the whole of
the French capital. Like their counterparts in
London, they excite in the philosophic beholder
a melancholy curiosity, above all in the poorer
quarters, where dire necessity compels the levy
ing of those loans which, in more fashionable
parts, are the result of an extravagant life.

The Paris pawnshop has the aspect of quite
an ordinary house, and nothing would particu
larly attract to it the attention of an observer — not
even the incessant stream of its visitors in
and out — were it not that these wear a
suspiciously stealthy air as they enter or quit
the place ; a sort of shame on their arrival and
an uneasy haste at their departure.
It is not, as a rule, necessary for the student
of human life, who wishes to see what occurs with
in a Paris pawnshop, to pledge or redeem any
thing himself ; the crowd is so large that the
absence of his parcel will be unperceived, and
everyone is so intent on his or her own errand
that not a glance, probably, will be bestowed
upon him. " How much will you lend me on
this ? " — such is the absorbing thought, the sole
preoccupation, which deprives the visitors of all
curiosity concerning what is around them.
Entering one of these loan offices, a peculiar
odour — which a French writer with a delicate
nose has described as something between the
smell of a barrack and that of a hospital — gives
the visitor his first impression of the place.
Scrupulously clean as the depot is kept, the air
is to some extent affected by the malodorous
parcels brought in by the customers. Even the
frequent opening of the doors scarcely relieves
the atmosphere, which is characterised by that
most unbearable of all atmospheric qualities —

3
Oas <

The Mont-de-Piete.]

THE MONT-DE-PIETE.

161

stuffiness. But the heroic student of life, bent
on observation, fortifies his nose by the aid
of philosophy ; and, , instead of betaking . him
self to flight, sits down on one of the benches
ranged round the room and
affects fo await his turn.
This roomt' is divided into
two by a partition fitted
with doors,, one part ac
commodating the public,
the other being reserved
for the employes. The
public compartment . is
generally very sombre, with
no other light than that
which steals through chance
apertures : the shopmen's
compartment is thoroughly
illuminated. The sun has
been accused by a French
writer of flinging his beams
into these pawnshops in
order to reveal some of
the most lamentable scenes
and acts of human life.
But, on the other hand, the
assistants require a good
light to examine the mis- '
cellaneous articles submit
ted to their appraisement.'
One curious feature is
the silence which reigns
in these establishments.
The customers seem to
have no tongues, and the
money-lenders, by no means
prodigal of words, com
municate with their clients
chiefly by looks and ges
tures. After all, there is
little need for conversation,
the business of every visitor
being ostensible, and the
employes having simply to
say that they will lend such
and such a sum on the
article proposed, or — what
sickens the heart of some poor wretches who
wish to raise the price of a loaf of bread or a
bundle of firewood'— that they will lend nothing
on a worthless rag.
To some extent the pawnbroking assistant
may be said, to control1 the' destinies of the im
pecunious public. If he refuses to lend on this
article or that, -some merchant will be unable to
35

redeem his honour and his promissory note,
some lover will be unable to keep his appoint
ment with the girl of his heart, some comedian
will not make his ddbut, some lady of fashion

ENTRANCE TO THE MONT-DE-PIETE, CHAUSSEE D'ANTIN.

will not give her soiree, and some needy mother
will have to send her family supperless to bed.
Here behind this partition there is no distinction
of class. The highest and the lowest ranks of
Parisian society are brought together — a duchess
by the side of a flower-girl, an artist by the side
of an artisan. Pride and humility are here united.
Aristocrats, whose souls revolt at the thought of

l62

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Mont-de-PWte.

borrowing, are dragged to the place by necessity,
and have to wait, like the rest, till the assistant
is at leisure to inspect their rings and their
diamonds, their silks and their satins.
" For anyone who knows how to observe and
divine," says M. Alfred Delvau, " the public of a
loan office is very interesting. You enter
mentally into the existences of all those widely
different characters, dragged here by such oppo
site causes, and you leave the place smiling some
times, but sad nearly always. Misery — even
smiling misery — has nothing of gaiety; and it is
Misery, or her shame-faced sister Want, who
drives hither that crowd of people differing so
greatly from one another by their costume, age,
sex, and position.
" First of all, with his elbows resting on the
counter, facing the commissionaire — sworn ap
praiser of all those rubbish heaps which the
owners wish to turn into gold — lounges a fellow
who turns his back on us and lets us see,
beneath his frayed trouser-ends, a pair of naked
feet enclosed in down-at-heel shoes. He comes
to pledge his mattress — the last, the supreme
resource! — that mattress which seems to have
lost half its stuffing ; or some workman's tools,
which do not look sorry to rest a little. By
his side, and by way of contrast, stands, with
brazen air, a big red-faced woman, red-haired,
red-shawled, with a mauve silk dress and ruffles
of white lace, whom I sometimes meet on the
footway of the. Rue des Martyrs, and who
personifies a certain category of women — the
last category. What does she come to pledge ?
— her heart ? That has long since wandered
away. Her virtue ? That has followed her heart.
Her wit ? She never had any. What then ?
Some jewel, without doubt — the last witness of
a last liaison. Her ear is at this moment bereft
of the twenty-five francs' worth of gold which
hung in it just now.
" On the wooden bench let into the wall are
other persons : two women of the lower orders,
who are estimating beforehand the borrowing
value of the linen they are going to pledge,
while the little daughter of one of them is heed
lessly gnawing an apple ; a young girl in black,
her head bare, like that of the red woman who
has just gone, but more decently and poorly
clad ; an Arthur of the Reine Blanche — his hat
tilted over his ear, his hands in his pockets,
and looking at the small dog playing at his
feet, rather than look at nothing ; then men and
women of the inferior classes with their child
ren, talking about the hard times and the high

rents,; then placid citizens ; then careworn
flower-girls ; then other people more or less
interesting — but always interested. The man
who pledges his mattress, the woman who pledges
her linen, the sempstress who pledges her dress,
feel no doubt a sharp pang in taking leave of
objects so indispensable ; but that is as nothing
compared with the poignant anguish of the man
who, for food, or the woman who, to feed her
child, is obliged to part with love tokens or
family jewels, as sacred as the vases of a church :
the ancestral watch which has marked so many
hours of joy and pain ; the locket enclosing that
lock of hair ; the bracelet of that dead mistress
who will never die in the heart of him she has
left for ever ; the ring given by that lover who
still lives but who is for ever dead to the
woman he has deserted.
41 It is the physiognomy of the borrowers that I
have just been sketching, of those wretches of all
ranks, who are forced by some dire necessity,
whether accidental or normal, to come and
pledge their clothes or their jewels; to exhaust — ¦
in order not to die of hunger or to meet an over
due debt — the resources which are still at their
disposal. Yet, by the side of these careworn,
despairing faces, inscribed with poignant melan
choly, or, in some cases, resignation, are the
radiant faces of those who have come to redeem
their jewels and their clothes. These are not
silent like the rest. They do not glide in, like
furtive shadows amongst other shadows. You
hear them coming before you see them : they
ascend the steps with tremendous haste. It is a
question of arriving before the shop is closed,
for it is Saturday, the morrow is Sunday, and
they have come up panting like a pair of forge-
bellows. "There is a run of business on Saturday
night, and the assistants behind the counter,
although they, too, love Sunday with the repose
it brings, almost dread it as being preceded
by such a rush of work. And these people
who come to redeem are not so easy to manage
as the poor wretches who pledge, the latter
being mild and patient, full of anguish though
they are ; the former noisy, exacting, and some
times insolent. The relationship is changed, in
fact. One set come to demand something,
almost an act of charity— for that is the nature
of the request, although the pledge is worth
more than the loan granted. The other set
come to make what is almost a gift • for the
pledge they withdraw is not always worth the
price that has been estimated, and if they did not

The Mont-de-Piete.]

PAWNING AND REDEEMING.

163

withdraw it the commissionaire would perhaps
lose something on it, instead of gaining. You
see the difference. And then, again, it is
usually men who pledge and women who redeem.
In pledging, a signature is required ; a certificate
alone suffices for the redemption. I
leave you to imagine the behaviour of
those gossips, proud of "unhooking"
from the accursed "nail" the dress or
the jacket which has hung there six
months, and which is now as indis
pensable for going to the dance or the
promenade as it was useless six months
since, when it was a question of pro
curing a dinner or paying for a bed."
The Parisian pawnbroker, being
simply a Government official, differs
necessarily from the pawnbroker of
London. The latter is the most inde
pendent and insolent of all shopkeepers.
He makes very little distinction between
those who come to pledge and those
who come to redeem. If his Saturday-
night customers who come to take their
things out pf pawn were to give them
selves such airs as the Parisian pledge-
redeemers already described, he would
insult them to their face, and keep them
waiting till they had learnt better
manners. He feels indebted to no one.
He does not seek regular customers,
for he knows that the stream of the
impecunious will never cease to flow
into his shop, that if one does not
come another will, and that the people
who come to redeem are seriously in
want of their property, and must pay
him the amount of the loan and interest
no matter whether he is bearish or
polite. The branch establishments, with their
commissionaires, having been spoken of,
let us now glance at the great Mont-
de-Piete of Paris, situated in the Rue
des Blancs Manteaux. This central establish
ment dates from the reign of Louis XVI.,
who founded it by letters patent in 1777. The
work of money-lending was at once com
menced, but not in the buildings specially
constructed in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux,
beside the convent of the Benedictines of Saint-
Maur, since these buildings were not completed
until 1786. It is interesting to follow the
different phases through which this vast estab
lishment of public utility, designed to "put an

end to the abuses of usury," has passed, until now
it receives upwards of twenty-five million pledges
annually. That these pledges present an incon
ceivably great variety of objects may well be
supposed. On this subject M. Blaize, author of

THE JEWELLERY STORES, RUE DES BLANCS MANTEAUX.

the " Trait6 des Monts-de-Piete," has written
descriptively enough as follows : — " Let us stop
at the first floor. This is the quarter of the
aristocracy ; the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the
Chaussee d'Antin of our borrowers. Here are
the first and second divisions — those of the
" jewels " — where the most precious objects are
deposited. I open the ' four-figure cupboards ' —
such is the name we give to those cupboards of
iron which contain pledges on which a thousand
francs or more have been advanced. Great

164

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Mont-de-Piete.

Heaven ! what riches ! Sparkling sprays, strings
of diamonds, trinkets calculated to turn the heads
of duchesses ! Silver services fit to adorn the

Here are ranged, in admirable order, dresses,
coats, shirts, table-cloths, blankets, and indeed
every object of household use or of the toilet ;

IN THE RUE CAPRON BRANCH OF THE MONT-DE-PIETE.

table of a king ! In these regions of want —
opulent want and necessitous want — one's eyes
must not see everything nor one's ears listen to
everything : let us pass on. We take our way
through the passages which are bordered on
each side with wealth-laden shelves. Look at
those thousands of watches, chains, bracelets,
jewels of every kind ; that countless mass of
objects of art, of luxury, of utility, of vanity, or
of coquetry.
" We are now on the second floor. Here
commences the ordinary goods department.
The floor bends beneath the weight of the
million pledges which are taken in every year.

vestments of silks or of rags ; books ; tools. Let
us explore the next two storeys. The same
arrangements, the same symmetry : cases filled
with boxes, bandboxes, and parcels. The walls
of the staircases are covered with pictures,
mirrors, metronomes, which have not found a
place in the interior of the divisions. Let us
go higher still. We are now in the doleful
cit}-, in the region of sorrow and want. Look
at those piles of mattresses so highly packed.
They are the very last tribute of misery, which,
after being despoiled of its vestments, has given
us its last pledge, and which sleeps on a heap
of straw, where shiver, in a fetid attic, around

The Mont-de-Pi&e.]

PAWNING AND REDEEMING.

165

an emaciated mother, children blue with cold,
with wasted cheeks, hollow eyes, and a smile
,sad and sweet. Poor dear little creatures ! In
¦order to live, they ask for nothing but a little
air and bread ! Let us descend to the ground
floor. " The warehouses are used for new merchan-
mirrors of
copper articles,
•etc. Things which are too heavy to be carried
above, such as vices, anvils, and cauldrons,

dise, such as linen, cloth, muslins
large dimensions, bronze and

pledge they have left with us, and, with their
little bell in their hand, gaily betake themselves
once more to the Champs filysees and the
boulevards. " Each article bears a ticket, each ticket an even
number if it is a pledge, an uneven number
if it is a renewal. As often as an article is
renewed, a fresh ticket is sewn over that of
the preceding year (you can count ten on this
particular pledge — nine renewals, that is to say).
The loan is only six francs — six francs ! But

THE SALE-ROOM OF THE MONT-DE-PIETE, RUE DES BLANCS MANTEAUX.

occupy a considerable space below. Do not let
us forget the fountain warehouse. At the end
ofthe autumn the cocoa-hawkers bring us their
fountains and exchange them for a sum which,
small as it is, enables them to follow the little
industries by which they are able to live on
through the winter. ... At the first sun
shine of the spring they come to redeem the

it is a fortune to those whose work does not
even suffice for the wants of the day. Listen
to a simple and touching story. Some years
ago one of our predecessors noticed a little
packet which had upon it a whole series of
renewal-tickets, and on which but three francs
had been lent. He wrote to the borrower : a
woman presented herself in reply. ' Why,'

166

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Paris Markets.

said he, ' do you not redeem this pledge ? '
' I am too poor,' was the answer. ' You
attach a great value, then, to this article ? '
' Ah, sir, it is all that remains to me of my
mother.' The director gave her back the
packet, which contained an old-fashioned petti
coat. The poor woman bore away this treasure
of filial piety with tears of joy. Instances of
this kind are by no means rare, and they prove
that if indiscretion and misconduct bring some
borrowers to the Mont-de-Piete, the greater
number are impelled thither by causes which
are highly honourable. The history of many a
pledge is a lamentable page in the drama of
human life, so full of nameless miseries and

unknown misfortunes. The whole ofthe property
does not return to its owners ; at least six per
cent, does not. What efforts are made to pre
vent this or that article from falling into the
hands of the brokers, who will sell it for a
mere trifle at the sale-rooms ! On the 26th of
June, 1849, a gold watch was sold which had been
pledged on the 8th of January, 1817, for eighty
francs. It had been renewed for the last time on
the 8th of December, 1847. The borrower, who
had not been able to redeem it, had successively
paid 20 francs 50 centimes for the right of
renewal. We made inquiries for him. He was
dead. What a mystery of tenderness was im
plied in so long a constancy ! "

CHAPTER XXIV.*
PARIS MARKETS.
The Halles-Centrales — The Cattle Markets— Agriculture in France — The French Peasant.

THE Pantheon, standing on the summit of the
mountain of Sainte-Genevieve, and the Lux
emburg Palace, surrounded by the galleries and
the garden of the same name, dominate the
rest of the left bank, which has. still, however,
one salient point in the Hotel des Invalides.
To the left of the Luxemburg Garden, on the
Boulevard Saint-Michel, stands the National
School of Mines, established in the house
which formerly belonged to a religious order.
Here, as in so many other of the public estab
lishments of France, the instruction is gratui
tous, under the direction of an inspector-
general and thirteen professors. The museum
contains all kinds of interesting geological and
mineralogical specimens, together with a library
of 30,000 volumes, which, like the museum, is
open to the public.
The Rue de Tournon — to pass from the
garden to the front of the palace — has already
been mentioned in connection with that Hotel
de l'Empereur Joseph at which Joseph U.,
visiting his sister Marie Antoinette, elected to
stay in preference to putting up at one of the
royal palaces. The street owes its name to
Frangois de Tournon, cardinal-ambassador under
Francis I. At that time the land through
which the street was afterwards to run was
the site of a large horse market, a sort of

annex to the Marche Saint-Germain, and fam
iliarly known as the Muddy Meadow — " le Pre
crotte." Very different were the Paris markets
of those days from the system of markets now so
perfectly organised. At present, when Paris has
expanded so far beyond its ancient " barriers "
that it has become one of the greatest cities in
the world, the provisioning of its population is
a question of the first importance. For break
fast, as for subsequent meals, the French metro
polis requires a stupendous quantity of food,
which must arrive regularly at a fixed hour, and
be delivered promptly at the doors of the num
berless beings whose mouths are to be filled.
At some hours before dawn a large number
of market-gardeners and other cultivators from
the vicinity of Paris enter the city and converge
towards the same point. Enormous and noisy
drays at the same time bring in to this common
centre the consignments of edible produce which
arrive by rail daily from the provinces or abroad.
The great market which receives all these
goods, known as the Hailes Centrales, is situated
opposite the beautiful church of Saint-Eustache,
at the end of the Rues Coquilliere, Montmartre,
Montorgeuil, and Rambuteau. This immense
and elegant building, constructed entirely of
bricks and iron, consists of twelve pavilions,
which shelter the sale of the various descriptions

Paris Markets.]

AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE.

167

of goods. Each pavilion has its speciality. One
is a wholesale, another a retail meat-market, a
third is devoted to fish, a fourth to eggs and
butter, and so on.
Markets are held in various parts of the city ;
but most of them are fed by the Central Market.
Many of them recall the Central Market by the
light character of the architecture in brick and
iron. Two great cattle-markets are established
at Sceaux and at Poissy, and a smaller one at
La Chapelle Saint-Denis, connected with the
Marche de la Villette, built with the view of
absorbing all the smaller meat-markets.
Unlike England, France, in the matter of
agricultural products, is self-sufficing. Two-
thirds of the population are occupied, as pro
prietors, farmers, or labourers, with the cultiva
tion of the soil. In England the agricultural
classes represent only one-third of the population.
In France there are nine millions of small land
owners with a slight proportion of large ones ;
in England the land is in the possession of com
paratively few persons. ' Up to the time of the
Revolution the number of proprietors in France
did not go beyond 30,000, and the peasantry at
that period were in a state of utter poverty, the
actual cultivators receiving, according to Alison,
only a twelfth part of the produce for their
share. " The people's habitations," wrote Arthur
Young, " are miserable heaps of dirt — no glass,
no air ; the women and children are in rags — no
shoes, no stockings. The proprietors of these
badly cultivated lands, all absentees, were
worshipping the king at Versailles in the most
abject and servile manner, spending their scanty
income and getting into scandalous debt."
" The agricultural population," he says else
where, " are 76 per cent, worse fed and worse
clad than in England. Impossible to have an
idea of the animals who served us at table,
called women by courtesy. In reality they are
walking dunghills, without stockings, shoes, or
sabots." All this was changed .by the Revolution,
when immense numbers of tenants became
proprietors of the land they had previously
cultivated, as serfs, for their masters. The pro
gress from destitution to comfort was effected
in less than twenty years, and since then the
condition of the peasantry has been constantly
improving. Under the system of small owner
ships agriculture, as an art, may not be brought
to the highest possible pitch of perfection,
but, the agriculturists thrive and are happy.
France is not a corn-exporting country ; and it

is quite possible that under a system of large
estates the sum of her agricultural produce might
be greater than it really is. The peasants, how
ever, under the system of " la petite culture "
produce more butter and their fowls more eggs
than they need for their own consumption or
for sale in France. Accordingly great quantities
of eggs and butter are sent to England, France's
best customer for produce of this kind.
The small proprietors, too, keep rabbits and
pigeons, many of which find their way not only
to the Paris markets but to England. A century
ago, until the time of the Revolution, the land-
holding aristocracy had alone the right of shoot
ing rabbits and keeping pigeons. " The birds,"
says M. Nottelle, writing on this subject, " ate the
seed of the poor peasants in the neighbourhood
and the rabbits ate the corn when it was green.
These exclusive privileges were abolished on the
celebrated night of the 4th of August, 1789."
Yet it should always be remembered that the
noble proprietors gave up their exclusive privi
leges — doubtless under the influence of the Re
volution, but, nevertheless, as a matter of fact
— of their own accord. Now everyone can
keep pigeons; but the owners are ordered by
the mayor to keep them in the pigeon-house
during seed-time. If they are allowed to fly at this
period they are considered as game, and may be
shot. The owner, moreover, is fined. Occa
sionally in the French market frogs are to be
seen, and it is quite possible that in the days
before the Revolution the epithet " frog-eating "
could be more fitly applied to the generality
of Frenchmen than it can now, when the thighs
of frogs are only to be met with at certain
restaurants, where they are served, equally
with snails, as a rare delicacy.
It has been seen that before 1789 the French
peasants were poor and miserable. Arthur
Young's descriptions of them have been quoted
often enough. A century earlier than Arthur
Young, La Bruyere, author of " Les Caracteres,"
spoke of them as looking like ferocious animals.
" The men and women," he continued, " are
meagre, dark-looking objects, their dirty rags
scarcely covering them, and retiring at night
into filthy dens or hovels." It is possible,
then, as M. Nottelle, in his unpretentious but
interesting and instructive little book on the
French peasantry since the Revolution, declares,
that several millions of peasants were obliged to
live on roots. " No doubt," he adds, " they ate
frogs, though it took much time to get a decent
dish of them. But time was not a great object

i68

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Paris Markets.

to these poor famished slaves. From this, most
likely, Shakespeare called the French 'frog-eaters,'
and foreigners have come to the conclusion that
many of the French feed mostly on frogs. It is
not easy, however, to exist on frogs, which are

gundy, where it feeds on the leaves of the vine.
One of the few places in Paris where snails and
frogs used to be sold, cooked, no doubt in perfec
tion, is or was the famous restaurant in the
" New Street of the Little Fields " — otherwise

RUE DE TOURNON, WITH THE FACADE OF THE SENATE HOUSE.

too dear to be eaten by the generality of
people." It is said, too, that frogs are in favour with
the devout, for they may be eaten as fish on fast
days. Not only frogs but also snails are to be seen
exhibited for sale in some of the Paris markets. It
may be that in the days when the unhappy
French peasantry were on the verge of starva
tion they found themselves reduced to a disgust
ing diet of snails and even slugs. However that
may have been, the only snail eaten by the French
at the present day, and the only kind of snail to
be seen in the Paris markets, is the" escargot," in
its streaked whity-brown shell. The escargot is
found chiefly in the wine countries, especially Bur-

Rue Neuve des Petits Champs — which Thackeray
celebrated in his ballad on the subject of Bouilla
baisse. Many interesting anecdotes of the French
peasants are told by a writer from whom I
have recently quoted. Living in the midst of
their property, with their domestic animals
around them, they become very much attached
to their cattle, not sentimentally but by reason
of the beasts' market value. A story is told
of a farmer who sent to the cattle-show a fat
pig, that obtained a medal which he afterwards
wore with great pride as though he himself
had carried it off. The peasant's love of his
cow surpasses even his affection for his pig. A

Paris Markets,]

THE FRENCH PEASANT.

169

•peasant proprietor lamented the loss of one of his
cows to such an extent that a friend at last said
to him : " If you had lost your wife your grief
•could scarcely be greater." "Maybe," he re
plied ; "for many of the farmers about here
would gladly give me their daughter in marriage,
while none of them would give me a cow." In
one of Pierre Dupont's songs this preference on
the part of the peasant of the cow to the wife
finds full expression. The cow, it is true, becomes
in the poet's lines an ox ; but cows, like oxen,
are used in France for the plough. " I love
Jeanne, my wife," exclaims
the peasant of Pierre Du
pont's song; "well, I
would rather see her die
than see the death of
my oxen " ; or, in the
French —
Eh bien, j'aimcrais
mieux La voir mourir que
voir mourir mes bceufs.
So great is the cow-
passion by which the
French peasantry are ani
mated, that when one of
them had stolen the cow
•of his neighbour, the ex
hortations of the priest
were powerless to enforce
restitution. " You must return it
to the owner," said the
priest. " But, father, I have confessed my fault."
" Yes, yes ; but you must do as I tell you.
Send back the cow to its owner."
The man hesitated ; he did not wish to restore
the cow.
" Then no absolution ; no sacrament."
The peasant still demurred.
"Think," the priest then said, "of the
day of judgment, when all the village will be
assembled on the green, and you will be there
holding the cow by the tail, and everybody
will know you stole it. How ashamed you
will be ! "
"Really! but will the owner of the cow be
there too ? "
" Of course he will."
" Well, if I see him, I will then give him
hack his cow."
One more anecdote may be permitted in refer
ence not indeed to the Paris markets, but to

those by whom the Paris markets are supplied.
Not only is the French peasant prudent and
economical : he is also, as is shown by the story
just told, very cunning. Equally so is the
peasant woman. One day at a market in Nor
mandy people were much surprised at seeing a
woman offer an excellent horse for sale at the
price of five francs, and still more astonished at
her asking 500 francs for a dog she wished to
dispose of. The two animals were to be sold
together. They were ultimately got rid of on
the terms demanded. The explanation of the

THE SAINT-GERMAIN MARKET.
mystery was this. The peasant woman was the
widow of a man who in his will had directed that
the horse was to be sold for the benefit of his
own family and the dog for the benefit of his
wife. She had so arranged matters that out
of the joint sale 500 francs, the price of the
dog, came to her, while five francs went to
her husband's relations.
It seems strange and somewhat absurd to
English Conservatives that so many peasants in
France should have a vote ; but inasmuch as of
these peasants nine millions are proprietors, the
establishment of universal suffrage in France was
not a revolutionary but a Conservative measure.
The peasantry, moreover, are in some degree
trained to public affairs by the part they play
in the communal councils. There are about
40,000 communes in France, and each com
mune has its mayor and its municipal coun
cillors elected by universal suffrage for the

170

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

management of local affairs. Every peasant
may become a municipal councillor and, if duly
elected by the municipal council, a mayor. The
municipal council meets periodically for the dis
cussion of local affairs j so that its members

accustom themselves to public speaking and the
interchange of ideas. France has now about
10,000,000 electors, of whom two-thirds are
peasants, but, as before explained, peasants in the
possession of landed property.

CHAPTER XXV.
SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRES.
Its Origin and History — Its Library — Its Organ — Saint-Sulpice.

IF the Pantheon and the Luxemburg are by
their size, their appurtenances, and their
dominant position, the most important buildings
on the left bank of the Seine, the most interesting,
by its antiquity, is the church, with the monastery
attached to it, of Saint-Germain-des-Pres ;
which, like the cathedral-church of Notre Dame
in the city, and the church of Saint-Germain-
1'Auxerrois on the right bank, belong to the
most ancient period of the Merovingian mon
archy, to that, in other words, of Childebert I.
and Ultrogothe his wife, who reigned at Paris
from 511 to 538. Childebert, returning from
an expedition against the Visgoths, brought back
from Spain as trophies of his victory the tunic of
Saint Vincent, a gold cross and precious stones,
together with some vases which were said to
have belonged to King Solomon. By the advice
of Saint Germain, Bishop of Paris, he constructed
for the reception of the holy relics a church
and a monastery at the western end of the
gardens belonging to the Palace of the Hot
Baths, or Palais des Thermes. On the very
day of Childebert's death, in 558, Saint Ger
main consecrated the new church as " Church
of the Holy Cross and of St. Vincent" ; and
he was himself buried in it when he died in
596. After the death of the good bishop the
church which he had dedicated to the Holy
Cross and to St. Vincent got to be known under
no other name than that of Saint-Germain ; and
it now became the burial-place of the kings,
queens, and princes of the Merovingian dynasty.
The abbey remained for a long time an
isolated building, which the high walls, erected
around the church and convent in 1239 by
Simon, abbe of Saint-Germain, made into a
veritable fortress, which was strengthened in

1368 by Charles V., who, at war with the
English, feared a sudden attack on their part
against the suburbs of Paris. A narrow canal
was at the same time dug, which placed the
ditches of the fortified abbey in communication
with the Seine. This canal, called at the time
" the little Seine," was filled up towards the
middle of the sixteenth century, when the line
of land thus formed became the Rue des Petits
Augustins, now Rue Bonaparte.
Of this ancient church, three times burned by
the Normans and three times rebuilt, but little
now remains. Thirty years ago fragments of the
walls and two of the gates were still to be seen.
But the last traces of the old abbey disappeared
when through the Place Saint Germain-des-Pres
the Rue de Rennes was made to run. The,
church, however, was destined to survive, in a
sadly mutilated condition, the convent and the
walls. It suffered greatly, like so many other
sacred buildings, at the time of the Revolution,
when the tombs of the Merovingian kings were
broken into and their contents dispersed. These
or portions of them are now to be found in the
abbey of Saint-Denis.
Again and again the church of Saint-Germain-
des-Pres has been restored : as in 1644, in 1820, at
the time of the Restoration, and finally under
Napoleon III. The choir preserves intact the style
of the twelfth century. Among the tombs may be
seen the tomb of King Casimir of Poland, who,
after becoming a monk, was made abbe of Saint-
Germain, and died holding that office in 1672.
In a chapel on the opposite side of the church is
the tomb of Olivier and Louis de Castellan, who
fell in the service of Louis XIV., and a little
further on the chapel of the Douglases, many of
whom served in the Scottish Guard. Here too

Saint-Germain-des-Pres.]

SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRES.

171

are the remains of Boileau and Descartes. The
sacred pictures around the choir and the nave
are the work of Hippolyte Flandrin, the most
celebrated among the pupils of Ingres, who died
before completing his work, and to whom, in the
church he loved to decorate, a monument in
white marble has been erected, surmounted by
his bust.
It must not be forgotten that
during the greater part of its history
the ancient church of Saint-Germain-
des-Pres was outside Paris, which
gradually grew towards it and at last
surrounded it. On the 2nd of
November, 1589, Henry IV., be
sieging Paris, went up the convent
tower, accompanied by a single
monk, to examine the situation of
the town. He is said to have after
wards gone round the walls of the
cloister. But he did not enter the
church, and he withdrew without
uttering one single word.
Saint-Germain-des-Pres was at
one time known as the Church of
the Three Steeples. These were
destroyed in 1822 under Louis XVIII.
as a measure of economy, since it
would otherwise have been necessary
to restore them.
The monastery of Saint-Germain-
des-Pres used to contain a library,
which was at that time the largest
in Paris, and the only one that was
open to the public. Begun by Father
du Breul, author of the "Antiquities
of Paris," it was augmented through
legacies from the physician Noel
Vaillant, the Abbe" Baudran, the
Abbe , Jean d'Estrees, the Abbe
Renaudot, the Chancellor Siguier, the Cardinal
Gesvres, the Councillor of State De Harlay,
and others, who, dying, left their libraries to
Saint-Germain-des-Pres. The collection in
cluded 100,000' printed volumes, and 20,000
manuscripts, all of which found their way to
the National Library, where they are now
preserved. Close to Saint-Germain-des-Pres,
and between this church and that of Saint-
Sulpice, was held the famous market or
fair of Saint-Germain. In the fifteenth cen
tury the Saint-Germain fair used indeed to
be held in the garden of the presbytery
of Saint-Sulpice. Antiquaries are not quite
agreed as to the antiquity of Saint-Sulpice ;

not, that is to say, as to the precise date,
undoubtedly a remote one, of its origin. A
tombstone of the tenth century, found in
1724, when, during the restoration of the
church, the foundations had to be examined,
showed that the cemetery, attached to which
there would naturally be a chapel, had existed

THE TOWER OF SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRES.
from the earliest period. A new chapel or
church is supposed to have been built in place of
the more ancient one during the thirteenth or
fourteenth centuries. A nave" was added to it
under Francis I., and three chapels in 16 14.
In 1643 a council was held under the presidency
of the Prince de Conde, at which it was deter
mined to rebuild the church, which was too small
for the requirements of the neighbourhood and,
above all, was falling into ruins. The first stone
ofthe new church was laid by Anne of Austria
in 1646. The building operations were, how
ever, discontinued in 1678 ; and it was not
until 172 1 that — thanks to a lottery for which
permission was given by Louis XV. — enough

172

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Saint-Germain-des-Prfa.

money was found to enable the architect, Ser-
vandoni, to complete the work. The architec
ture of Saint-Sulpice has been severely criticised,
especially by Victor Hugo, who compared the
lofty towers (one, by the way, much loftier
than the other) to clarinets. The church of

The chapels of the nave and of the choir,
decorated by the most celebrated artists of this
century, present admirable specimens of religious
painting. Eugene Delacroix is represented in
the chapel of the Holy Angels by two mural
pictures and a painted ceiling, all instinct with

SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRES.

Saint-Sulpice is remarkable, among its various
treasures, for a magnificent balustrade enclosing
the choir, and the statues of the twelve apostles
by Bouchardon which surround it. The pulpit
given in 1788 by the Due de Richelieu is sur
mounted by an admirable group sculptured in
wood : " Charity surrounded by her children."
Very curious is the obelisk in white marble,
more than eight metres high, constructed in the
most scientific manner by Sully and Lemonnier,
in 1773, to determine the occurrence of the
spring equinox and of Easter Day. The two
enormous shells which hold at the entrance to
the church the holy water were gifts from the
Republic of Venice to Francis I.

his fiery genius. The Triumph of Saint
Michael, Heliodorus Beaten with Rods, and
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, are the subjects.
The artists who have painted the various chapels
are too numerous to mention. The organ-loft
rests on composite columns of a grandiose
character, the work of Servandoni, and the
organ is worthy of the loft built for its reception.
Reconstructed in 1861 by Cavaille-Coll, this
majestic instrument with its ten octaves possesses
5 complete key-boards, 118 registers, 20 pedals,
and about 7,000 pipes. The organ of Saint-
Sulpice is said to be the largest in Europe, and
on Sundays and holidays the congregation is
never without a certain number of dilettanti who

Saint- Germain-des-Pres.]

SAINT-SULPICE.

173

have come to hear the gigantic instrument speak
beneath the eloquent fingers of M. Widor, whose
duties as organist have not prevented him from
writing the music of a ballet, " La Korrigane," for
theOpgra, and of a lyric work, "Maitre Ambros,"
for the Opera Comique. Widor, the organist
of Saint-Sulpice, composing ballet-music
reminds one of the still more violent relief
sought by Herve", who passed from the
organ-loft to the stage of the Folies
Dramatiques with his burlesque operettas
of " L'CEil Creve- " and " Le Petit Faust."
The hero of M. Herve's operatic vaude
ville "Nitouche" is perhaps a typical
personage in the musical world of Paris.
He also is an organist by profession, a
composer of light opera by aspiration ; and
he gets into sad trouble by teaching
frivolous airs to the pupils of the convent
school where he is employed to play psalms
and hymns.
Strangely enough, by what hazard can
scarcely be said, in the organ-loft of Saint-
Sulpice is to be found the harpsichord
of Marie Antoinette. What a contrast
between the delicate sounds of this feeble
instrument and the thunder of its colossal
neighbour !
The church of Saint-Sulpice, renamed in
1793, at the height of the Revolution,
Temple of Victory, was the scene on the
9th of November, 1799, of a banquet, at
which General Bonaparte presided. In
1802 it was restored to public worship.
The existing church rests on an immense
crypt, Li which the architects have re
spected the pillars of the original church.
In this subterranean church, which is
adorned with statues of Saint Paul -and
Saint John the Evangelist by Pradier, the
catechism- is taught and conferences are
held. The plan of Servandoni comprised
a space in front of the church, en
closed by symmetrical facades, the model
which may be seen in the south-east corner of the
square, between the Rue des Canettes and the
Rue Saint-Sulpice. This part of the architect's
project was, however, abandoned.
Completed in virtue of a decree of the year
1 81 1, and planted with trees in 1838, the Place
Saint-Sulpice has been adorned since 1847 with a
monumental fountain constructed by Visconti in

place of an older one removed to the Marche
Saint-Germain. The four statues which form
part of the design, in the midst of three con
centric basins, represent Bossuet, Fenelon, Mas-
sillon, and Fle"chier. Beneath the eyes of the

of

THE SIDE ENTRANCE TO SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRES.

four preachers in bronze a flower-market is
held twice a week.
Quitting the Place Saint-Sulpice by the Rue
Bonaparte, passing before Saint-Germain-des-
Pres, and crossing the Rue Jacob, we reach the
section of the Rue Bonaparte which was
originally called Rue des Petits Augustins, and
which stands on what, until it was filled up, was
the bed of the Little Seine.

i?4

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Printing in Paris.

CHAPTER XXVI.

PRINTING IN PARIS — THE CENSORSHIP.
Rue Visconti — Historical Buildings — The National School of Roads and Bridges — The Introduction of Printing into Paris — The First Printing
Establishments — The Censorship.

STARTING once more from the Place Saint-
Sulpice, and proceeding by the Rue Bona
parte across the Rue Jacob to the Rue des

Visconti, and contains at least one house which
is worth a moment's attention — the Hotel de
Ranes, No. 21. Here Nicholas d'Argouges,

THE RUE DE L' ABBAYE.

Petits Augustins, we come to the ancient Rue
des Marais, a narrow street opened in 1540
between the Rue des Petits Augustins and
the Rue de Seine. It is now called the Rue

Marquis de Ranes, who built the house, was
killed in 1678. Jean Racine came to live in
the building as lodger in 1692; and here was
born in that same year the last of his children,

The Censorship. ]

RUE VISCONTI.

175

Louis Racine, author of that much-esteemed
poem, " La Religion." It was here, too, that
the immortal author of " Phedre " expired on
the 2 ist of April, 1699. Other theatrical
associations are connected with this house.
Here, moreover, Adrienne Lecouvreur, the
celebrated actress, died on the 20th of March,
1730, and, the last rites of the Church being
refused, was carried away the same night in
a hackney-coach by Voltaire and a friend of
Marshal Saxe who had always been devoted to
her. She was buried on the banks of the Seine
at a point beyond the Palais Bourbon, which
it is no longer possible to discover. The place
was marked at the time by a simple memorial,
which from malice or through neglect and the
natural ravages of time, was destined soon to
disappear. Later on this same house was inhabited by
Mdlle. Clairon, who only quitted it when she
resigned her engagement at the Comedie
Frangaise. At No. 17 in this interesting Rue Visconti
existed in 1825 the printing-office founded by
Honore de Balzac. But the greatest novelist of
France met with no greater success as a printer
than the greatest novelist of England obtained as
a publisher. Balzac, like Scott, contracted debts
in his business enterprise which weighed
heavily upon him and, compelling him to the
severest literary labour, shortened his existence.
It was to^pay his debts that Balzac condemned
himself to that perpetual work, those prolonged
night-watches, which developed in him, robust
as he was in his early days, the germs of that
hypertrophy of the heart from which he died.
In the street of Les Petits Augustins stood a
convent, founded in the midst of a garden to
fulfil a vow made by Queen Margaret at the
Chateau d'Usson.
The convent was turned by the Constituent As
sembly in 1790 into a depot for monuments and
ruins of monuments whose preservation was desir
able in the interest of history or of art. Alexandre
Lenoir, who had proposed the formation of this
museum, was appointed its superintendent. In
carrying out his seemingly peaceful work he
found himself on one occasion in danger of his
life, for some madman wounded him with a
bayonet as he was protecting by main force the
monument of Cardinal de Richelieu which a
rfumber of fanatics wished to destroy. The precious
collection brought together by Lenoir was
inaugurated in 1795 under the title of the
National Museum of French Monuments.

An imperial decree of the 24th of February,
181 1, ordered the creation of a School of Fine
Arts, which was to contain common rooms for the
lectures and separate studios for the different pro
fessors with their pupils. By order of the restored
Louis XVIII., in April, 1816, the School of Fine
Arts, with which no progress had been made
under Napoleon, was to be completed. Then,
however, it occurred to the king that it would be
unbecoming to turn out from what had been
considered their last resting-place so many
statues, busts, tombs, and other monuments.
Churches were now requested to claim the orna
ments of which, under the Revolution, they had
been despoiled, the different communes to take
back the arms and. other insignia which had been
torn by fanatical revolutionists from their walls,
while the great historic families were assured that
they were now at liberty to resume possession of
their ancestral sepulchres. But these permissions
and appeals were for the most part in vain.
Meanwhile the mausoleums of the kings and
princes of France were removed to Saint-Denis,
while many other monuments were placed in
the museums of Paris and Versailles.
It was now possible to proceed with the School
of Fine Arts, and the first stone of the building
was laid on the 3rd of May, 1820. The original
plan, drawn up by the architect Debret, was
much amplified, under the reign of Louis
Philippe, by M. Dauban, who finished it in 1838
— at least in its essential parts. New buildings
were added under the Second Empire between
the years i860 and 1862. The National
Special School of Fine Arts (such is its official
title) furnishes instruction in drawing, painting,
sculpture, architecture, and every kind of en
graving to French students aged not less than
fifteen nor more than thirty, and even to
foreigners who have obtained due authorisation
from the Ministry of Fine Arts.
The School of Fine Arts occupies a palace
worthy of the institution. Its general plan is
simple in the extreme. Through the gate of its
entrance, adorned with two colossal busts of
Puget and of Poussin, may be seen a square
courtyard whose walls are covered with admirable
monuments, for the most part from the above-
mentioned Musee des Monuments Francais. This
courtyard is separated from the principal one
into which it leads by a sort of triumphal arch,
dating from the year 1500. It was brought
from the Chateau de Gaillon and reconstructed
stone by stone. At the "end of the principal
courtyard is the grand facade, due to M. Dauban,

176

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Printing in Paris.

celebrated works, the hemi-
cycle, painted by Paul De-
laroche, representing the
principal masters of every
age and of every school,.
grouped around Ictinus and
Phidias, the painter and
sculptor of the Parthenon..
This masterpiece has been
popularised, in engraving,
by Henriquel Dupont, one
of the most regretted pro
fessors of the School of Fine
Arts. It is impossible to
leave the School of Fine
Arts without casting a
glance on the mansions
which either surround or
adjoin it, from the beginning
of the Quai Malaquais, at
the corner of the Rue de
Seine, to the Rue des Saint-
Peres, all of which enjoy
magnificent views of the
Seine, the Louvre, and the
Tuileries. They have all the

composed of two storeys of
arcades separated by Corin
thian pilasters. The vestibule
of the ground floor contains
fragments of ancient marbles,
casts from the temple of Egina
and of the Parthenon, clever,
curious copies of paintings dis
covered at Pompeii, etc. The
vestibule leads to a mag
nificent collection of plaster
casts from the most celebrated
ancient works of antiquity,
including two columns from
the temple of Jupiter Stator,
and one of the corner-pieces
of the Parthenon. In the
floor above are to be seen the fifty-two copies of
the Loggie of Raphael, executed in 1836 by the
brothers Baize, under the direction of the illustrious
Ingres, who had made Raphael the study of his
life. The same storey contains, among other

The censorship.] THE NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ROADS AND BRIDGES.

'77

same origin, having been built during the first
years of the seventeenth century on the property
of Queen Margaret. No. i on the Quai Malaquais,
with its two meagre wings on each side of a
feeble body, was the mansion of Aubespine ; and
it was there that the celebrated archaeologist,
Visconti, died in 1818. No. 5 was at one
time occupied by Marshal Saxe.
The noble house, with its facade of
red bricks and white stone — No. 9, at
the other corner of the Rue Bonaparte
— was the Hotel Lomenie de Brienne
et Lou tree. Nos. 11 and 13, now re
placed by the exhibition-rooms of the
School of Fine Arts, were built by Car
dinal Mazarin for his niece Marianne
Martinozzi, left a widow in 1666 by the
death of Prince de Conti, younger brother
of the great Conde". Originally Hotel
Conti, it passed from Conti's widow,
who received the Hotel Guenegaud in
exchange, into the hands successively of
the Crequis, the Tremvilles, the Lauzuns,
and three or four other aristocratic
families, to become subsequently the office
of the general police.
The right corner of the Rue des
Saints-Peres and of the Rue de Lille is
occupied by a new building with windows
few and far between, and gates which
might be those of a fortress. This is
the special school of living Oriental
languages founded by Louis XIV., re
organised in 1795 and again in 1869 and
1 87 1. For many years it was an annex
of the National Library, where it oc
cupied an old building in the New
Street of the Little Fields. For some
few years past it has been established at No. 2
in the Rue de Lille. The languages taught in
this institution comprise literary Arabic, the
Arabic of ordinary conversation, Armenian,
Persian, Turkish, Annamite, Chinese, modern
Greek, Japanese, Malay, Russian, Roumanian,
. Hindostahee, and the Tamul languages. At
tached to the professors are teachers born in the
different and distant lands whose languages are
studied in this school.
At the opposite corner (Rue de Lille, No. 1)
is a magnificent mansion which now belongs to
the publishing house of Gamier Brothers.
During the period immediately before the
French Revolution the stables of the Countess of
Artois were here established. Throughout the
First Empire it was occupied by Count Real,
36

entrusted with the first department ofthe Ministry
of General Police, in which there were altogether
fifty-one departments. From 1821 to 1849 it
was the office of the first military division.
On the right side of the Rue des Saints-
Peres, opposite the former entrance to the hos
pital of La Charite", is the National School of

FOUNTAIN, PLACE SAINT-SULPICE.
Roads and Bridges — until 1788 the Hotel
Fleury ; from 1824 to 1830 the Ministry of
Worship ; and throughout the reign of
Louis Philippe the Ministry of Public Works.
The National School of Roads and Bridges,
created by Louis XV. in 1741, and developed
by different decrees of the two empires, has for
its special object the education of young men
quitting the Polytechnic School after good ex
aminations as civil engineers. It is placed
beneath the authority of the Minister of Public
Works, and directed by an Inspector-General
of Roads and Bridges. It comprises twenty
chairs devoted to different branches of the engi
neer's art, without counting drawing — scientific
and artistic— and the English and German lan
guages. It contains a laboratory, a library, and

178

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Printing in Paris.

a gallery of models to which the public is not
admitted. Returning towards the east as far as the Rue
Saint-Benoit, we find, on the eastern side of the
street, the printing department of the firm of
Quantin, in a line with the publishing and ad
ministrative departments. At this printing and
publishing office, which has given to the world
so many fine editions, especially of illustrated
books, the Revue des Deux Mondes has been
printed ever since it first appeared.
The art of printing has had a chequered
history in Paris, being sometimes protected,
sometimes oppressed by the crown, and too fre
quently crippled by two bodies who, in par
ticular, should have nursed it — the University
and the Parliament. It was introduced into the
French capital by Allemand La Pierre, prior of
the Sorbonne, one of the greatest scholars of his
time, and Guillaume Fichet, doctor in theology)
who, in 1470, invited Ulrich Gering of Con
stance, Michel Friburger of Colmar, and Martin
Krantz, to come and establish a printing-office
within the Sorbonne walls.
The three associates acceded to the request,
and with the machines they fitted up printed a
succession of interesting volumes during their
stay at the Sorbonne, which lasted till 1473.
Then their establishment was transferred to
the Rue Saint- Jacques, under the sign of the
" Golden Sun," beside the church of Saint-
Benoit. Here a number of elegant works were
produced. In 1484 Friburger and Krantz retired
from the concern, in order probably to return
to Germany, the name of Gering alone being
appended to publications posterior to the month
of October in that year. Ultimately the
printing-offices were again moved to a house
belonging to the Sorbonne, though the sign of
the " Golden Sun " was still preserved.
Printers now began to multiply rapidly in
Paris. One of the most celebrated was Antoine
Verard, who from 1485 published a large number
of works, chiefly in French, and remarkable for
the beauty of their Gothic characters. Towards
the end of 1499, at the period when the Bridge
of Notre Dame, on which his house stood, gave
way, he removed to a spot near the crossway of
Saint-Severin, afterwards shifting twice more —
first to the Rue Saint- Jacques, and then to the
Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame, where he remained till
his death.
In 1 5 13 Louis XII. testified his sympathy
for the art of printing by liberating it from a
heavy tax and from certain tolls to which it

had previously been subject. Two years later
his successor, Francis I., exempted the printers
of Paris from all military service except in case
of imminent peril.
In 1521— when already Claude Garamond had
replaced the old Gothic and semi-Gothic charac
ters by Roman letters and italics— Francis I.,
hitherto favourable to printing, issued an edict
to the effect that no book should be printed or
sold unless it had previously been examined and
approved by the University and the Theological
Faculty. Every book, moreover, had now to
pass beneath the inspection of the Provost of
Paris. This edict sorely fettered the two dozen
printers who were then at work jn the capital.
In 1522 the famous Robert Etienne, whom we
call Stephens, published a beautiful edition of the
New Testament in Latin ; but the Sorbonne, dis
pleased at the production of an edition which
tended to popularise the Scriptures, attacked the
text of Etienne, though without any apparent
desire to engage in direct controversy on the point.
It does not appear that the work was suppressed ;
but ten years later the Sorbonne showed itself
much more potent in dealing with a new edition of
the Latin Bible published by Robert Ecienne, son
and successor ofthe before-mentioned, with annota
tions — borrowed from the most learned authorities
— on the original Hebrew. The younger Etienne
had published this edition by special privilege ob
tained from the king. To secure it against criti
cism he had not printed it till after a careful
comparison of the ancient manuscripts of Saint-
Germain-des-Pres and the abbey of Saint-Denis;
he had not even omitted to call in the most
famous theologians to assist him. Yet, despite
all his precautions, he could not avert the
wrath of the Sorbonne ; and he was obliged to
humiliate himself before that body and promise
to print nothing henceforth " nisi cum bona
eorum gratia." These submissions saved Etienne,
but could not obviate the danger which threat
ened the art of printing. The era of persecu
tion had begun. The Sorbonne, which had at
first patronised the art of Gutenberg, was so
terrified now at the rapid propagation of Luther's
doctrines that it addressed to Francis I. an
urgent request on the subject of heretical books,
representing strongly to the king that if he
wished to save religion, attacked and shaken on
all sides, he must, by a stern edict, permanently
abolish in France the art of printing, which
daily produced so many pernicious books. The
project of the Sorbonnfe was on the point of
being realised, when it was cleverly thwarted

The Censorship.]

PRINTING IN PARIS.

179

by Jean de Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who ex
plained to the zealous monarch that in preserving
so precious an art he could effectually remedy
the abuses of which such violent complaints
were made.
Meanwhile the University exercised its right
of supervision. In 1534 Christian Wechel was
censured and threatened with a fine for having
sold one of the works of Erasmus: The same
year, on the 13th of January, Francis I. issued
letters patent which prohibited all printing
and exposed printers to rigorous punishment.
These letters were not registered by the Parlia
ment, which remonstrated to the king con
cerning so arbitrary a proceeding. A month
afterwards the king's advocate, Jacques Cappel,
communicated to the Parliament new letters
patent, by which Francis I. annulled the previous
ones, but ordered that the Parliament should
elect twenty-four persons, well qualified and
cautioned, from whom he might select twelve
who alone should print at Paris, and not else
where, " books which were approved and essen
tial to the public welfare." The printing of any
other books was to be visited with formidable
punishments. The art of Gutenberg, however, resisted all
these measures, and apparently the king did not
persevere in his hostile projects, for in 1543
he exempted the printers from service in the
City Guard. Two years later, nevertheless,
Robert Etienne, having published an edition of
the Bible which excited the wrath or the
Sorbonne, found himself so persecuted that he
had to Tetire to Lyons, whence he could not
venture to return to Paris till he had obtained
the protection of Henri II. A worse fate befell a
Lyons printer, named Etienne Dolet, who had
taken refuge in Paris. He was arrested, im
prisoned in the Conciergerie, and at the end of
eighteen months strangled and burned in the
Place Maubert on the 3rd of August, 1546.
In 1 55 1 Robert Etienne, seriously menaced,
was forced to seek refuge at Geneva, leaving at
Paris his wife and children, who might have
starved had not Henri II. , on the prayer of
Charles Etienne, Robert's brother, restored to
them the goods of the proscribed printer. This
same monarch gave a further proof of his good
will in exempting printers, by an edict of the
23rd of September, 1553, from the taxes to which
books were then liable.
In 1556 Henri decreed that a copy, printed- on
vellum, of every book whose publication was
authorised, should be contributed to the Royal

Library ; and that every such copy should be
magnificently bound. It is supposed to have been
to Diana of Poitiers, a great bibliophile, that this
decree was due.
Charles IX. showed no little favour to printing.
By letters patent, dated March, 1560, he
confirmed and continued to the printers all those
favours, rights, privileges, liberties, exemptions,
and so forth, which had been ceded by his royal
predecessors. One printer, however, Martin
Lhomme by name, derived small benefit from
these letters patent, for in the same year, on
a decree of the Parliament, he was hanged.
This printer, a native of Rouen, living at Paris
in the Rue du Murier, was accused of having
sold a book entitled " The Ro}'al Tiger," which
was a satire directed against the Guises. He
was condemned, according to the Parliamentary
decree, "to be hanged and strangled on a scaffold
erected in the Place Maubert, a suitable and
convenient spot." The goods of the prisoner
were to be confiscated to the king, and the
objectionable book was to be burned in the
printer's presence previously to his execution.
Not long afterwards, in September, 1563, an
ordinance appeared which proclaimed that all
printers, binders, and sellers of libellous placards
and other publications should be punished, for
the first offence with the whip, for the second
with death. A further ordinance, issued the
same month, forbade printers to put any unau
thorised volume in type " under pain of being
hanged and strangled."
In spite of all these fetters the art of printing
lived on and even prospered. Henri Etienne,
having returned into possession of the paternal
establishment, published in 1572 the four first vol
umes, in folio, of the Thesaurus linguce Grteca, a
work which his father had planned, and which it
took Henri eleven years to execute. This monu
ment of literary learning was published under
the auspices of several sovereigns, with Charles
IX. amongst them.
In July, 1575, the Dean of the Faculty of
Medicine complained, in the general assembly,
that the books of Ambroise Pare, first surgeon
to the king, were being printed, although they
contained a doctrine pernicious to the public
welfare and to good morals. The dean, therefore,
prayed the University to lay. a petition before
Parliament to the effect that the writings of this
author might be examined by medical professors.
Attempts were at the same time made to
subject the printers of these works to a fine.
The sixteenth century had been a time of

i8o

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Printing in Paris.

conflict for the art of printing, just as it had been
for the Reformation. The subsidence of the
civil wars benefited both. Hardly established
on the throne, Henri IV., by letters patent, dated
20th February, 1595, confirmed to the printers
their privileges, and liberated them from the
taxes which, the year before, had been newly
imposed upon them. At the moment of his ac
cession he had exempted them from the duties

THE GARDEN, SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS.

payable for the confirmation ot their ancient
rights. In 1624 a regular censorship was started by
Louis XLLL, who by an edict appointed four
censors, chosen from the Faculty of Theology,
to each of whom was accorded a salary of
500 livres, with honours, immunities, etc. The
University protested against this edict, which
encroached upon its secular rights. The dispute
lasted long, and the four theologians resigned
their office. But in 1626 the king entrusted
the Guard of the Seals with the choice of
censors, and the University lost this part of its
privileges. Three years later Louis XLLL issued
an ordinance which forbade the printing or
selling of any book not inscribed with the names
of the author and the printer.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen
turies there were lands of refuge in which writers
who feared the political laws and the despotism

of their own country could always find free
presses : Holland, that is to say, and Switzerland.
It was in Holland that Bayle published his famous
Dictionary. The Constitution ot 1791 "guaranteed" to
every man " the liberty of writing, printing, and
publishing his thoughts without his works being
liable to any censure or inspection before their
pubhcation." The Convention passed no law
against the press.
The pamphlets of
the enemies of the
Revolution still
exist, and testify
to the plenitude of
the liberty enjoyed
by writers at this
period. Some of
these, it is true,
were accused of
connivance with the
foes of their country,
and punished for
that crime ; but
there was no ques
tion of process
against the press.
The Consulate,
with its strict re
gime, had less re
spect for the liberty
of the pen. By a
decree of 17th Feb
ruary, 1 800, the
consuls granted
power to suppress those journals which published
articles contrary to the welfare of society, the
sovereignty of the people, or the glory of
the national arms. Under the Empire new
fetters were placed upon the press. In 1810
the number of printers in Paris was limited
to sixty. In the following year another twenty-
were authorised ; but, on the other hand, the
censorship which had been suspended was re
established. The Restoration accorded to
printers full liberty for producing works of
more than twenty sheets, but maintained the
censorship for smaller publications, and subjected
the newspapers to royal authority.
The press had taken too great a part in the
Revolution of July not to derive from it, at first,
in any case, some advantage. The new Charter,
in proclaiming the liberty of the press, within
the limits of the law, declared that the censorship
could never be re-established. Some years later.

The Censorship.]

THE DRAMATIC CENSORSHIP.

181

however, heavy fetters were once more placed
upon the newspapers of France, though book-
publishers retained their former measure of
liberty. At the period of 1835, under the monarchy of
July, numerous prosecutions were instituted
against the press ; and the jury who tried these
cases, though it often acquitted, sometimes con
demned with rigour. The Republican journal, the
Tribune, succumbed beneath the weight of the
fines imposed on it.
The Republic of
1 848 accorded to
the press a liberty
quite as unlimited
as it now enjoys,
though the free use
it made of this liberty
produced a reaction
and new fetters in
the following year.
. The invention of
printing was made
the subject of a play
by the unfortunate
Gerard de Nerval,
author of the Voyage
en Orient, and of a
translation of Faust
which Goethe him
self admired. In
Gerard de Nerval's drama figure a good angel
and a demon ; and when the good angel,
always anxious to benefit humanity, invents
printing, the demon comes forward and says :
"I invent the censorship." Of the censorship in
connection with printed works some account has
.been given, and a few words may be added in
reference to the censorship as bearing upon
works written for the> stage.
The dramatic censorship was established in
France in the middle of the fifteenth century —
that is to say, in the earliest days of the French
stage. The clerks and students classed together
as " La Basoche " were forbidden to act any play
or " satire " until after it had received the approval
of the censor. It must be supposed that the
corrections and commands of the censor were
set -at( naught ; for, thirty-four years later, an
order was published forbidding the members
of the Basoche to play at all, or even to ask
permission to play. This was under the reign of
Louis XI. Under Charles VIII. theatrical repre
sentations were again authorised, but only under

rigid supervision. Louis XII. gave absolute
liberty to the comedians. All kinds of personali
ties were permitted to dramatic writers, who,
with impunity, could even attack the throne.
On one point alone was Louis XII. fastidious,
he objected to attacks on the honour of the
queen ; and for her protection in the midst of
the general licence now exhibited on the
stage, authors were required to " respect ladies
under penalty of being hanged." The threat

COURTYARD, SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS.

never found
necessary to
carry it out.
Under Fran
cis I. the
censorship was re-estab
lished in full
force, and an
order was published calling upon the players to be
careful in their representations not to speak the
passages which had been marked out. In 1 548 the
priests, who hated all theatrical performances, and
looked upon stage-players as beyond the pale 01
the Church, procured the formal interdiction, by
the Parliament, of the mediaeval mysteries, into
which much profanity had been introduced.

1 82

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Printing in Paris.

According to M. Poirson, one of the latest and
best historians of Henri IV., the theatre, under
his happy reign, enjoyed absolute liberty. Louis
XIII., or rather his powerful minister, again
introduced the censorship ; and, later on, every
reader of Moliere knows what trouble the
great comic dramatist met with at the hands
of the censorship in connection with one of his
masterpieces, Tartufc. Authorised by the king,
the piece was interdicted by the Parliament, after
its first representation,
besides being con
demned by a manda
mus from the Arch
bishop of Paris ; and
it was not until three
years after its origi
nal production that
Moliere obtained full
permission to perform
it. Louis XIV., des
pot as he was, hesi
tated, in the midst of
the disputes between
the Gallican Church
and the Court of
Rome, to interfere in
a matter which his
clergy had taken so
deeply to heart. Mo
liere had fresh diffi
culties to contend
with in connection
with Don fuan, which
he was obliged to
modify in many passages before he could obtain
permission to perform it. The cynicism of the
hero's reflections was declared to be in opposition
(as Moliere intended it to be) to religious
feeling ; and the Parliament thought it impious
that Sganarelle (afterwards the Leporello of
Mozart) should, on seeing his master carried
down to eternal torments, think of nothing but
his wages and ask pathetically from whom he was
to get them.
Under Louis XIV. the political side of the
censorship first shows itself. In a farce played at
the Theatre Italien under the title of La Fausse
Prude, Mme. de Maintenon was recognised ;
and when Racine, at Mme. de Maintenon's
request, composed Esther for the pupils of
St. Cyr, the piece seemed full of political allusions,
and everyone at Court was so convinced that
Esther was Mme. de Maintenon, and Vashti
Mme. de Montespan, that the performance was at

A FAgADE ON THE QUAI MALAQUAIS.

last forbidden. Haman, in the proscribed piece,
was thought to be the minister, Louvois, and
in the persecution of the Jews a reference was
seen to the cruel edicts against the Protestants.
The Athalie of the same dramatic poet shared
the fate of Esther, and for like reasons.
On the death of Louis XIV. Esther and
Athalie were freed from the interdict which had
weighed upon them, and now the picture of
Judaea under its tyrannical rulers was looked upon
as that of France,
while in the character
of Joas was seen the
young king Louis XV.
The censorship now
became, above all,
political. No allusion
was to be made to a
minister or to any
state official, these
rules being applicable
to all state function
aries, whether be
longing to France or
not. A phrase in a
comedy of this time,
" From his rotundity
one might take him
for a president," was
condemned by the
Parliament of Paris,
whose president at
the time was some
what stout.
Voltaire had to
take infinite trouble in order to get permission
to produce his Mahomet. The official censor,
Crebillon, having objected to Mahomet — in
a spirit of jealousy, as Voltaire maintained —
its author obtained from the Duke de Riche
lieu permission to entrust the censorship of
the work to his friend, d'Alembert ; though
Crebillon, from one point of view, seems to
have been not far wrong, since Mahomet, on its
production as authorised by d'Alembert, excited
on the part of the religious world general dis
approbation, so that Voltaire, after a time, had to
withdraw the piece.
The ingenious and daring measures by which
Beaumarchais at last succeeded in getting re
moved from his Marriage of Figaro the veto
pronounced upon it by King Louis XVI. have
been told in another place. This brings us
to the time of the Revolution, when all restric
tions on personal liberty were, for a time at

The Censorship.]

THE DRAMATIC CENSORSHIP.

183

least, abolished. Theatrical representations were
now given inside Notre Dame. On the first
anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI.,
January 21st, 1794, was performed at the
National Opera, " on behalf of, and for the
people, gratis, in joyful commemoration of the
death of the tyrant," Miltiades at Marathon, the
Siege of Thionville, and the Offering to Liberty.
The censorship, abolished for a moment, was
soon re-established under the Republic ; and now
stage kings and stage queens were absolutely
suppressed. "Not only were they forbidden
to appear on the stage," says a writer on this
subject, "but even their names were not to
be pronounced behind the scenes, and the expres
sions ' cote du roi,' ' cott; de la reine,' were
changed into ' cote jardin,' ' cote cour,' which,
at the theatre of the Tuileries, indicated respec
tively the left and right of the stage from the
stage point of view. At first all pieces in which
kings and queens appeared were prohibited,
but the dramas of sans culottes origin were
so stupid that the Republic was absolutely
obliged to return to the old monarchical
repertory. Kings, however, were turned into
chiefs ; princes and dukes became representatives
of the people ; seigneurs subsided into mayors,
and substitutes more or less synonymous were
found for such offensive words as crown, throne,
sceptre, etc. The scenes of most of the new
operas were laid in Italy, Prussia, Portugal —
everywhere except France, where it would have
been indispensable from a political, and im
possible from a poetical point of view, to make
the lovers address one another as 'citoyen,
and ' citoyenne.' "
One of the reasons put forward for reintro
ducing the censorship under the Republic was
that for a long time past the aristocracy had
" taken refuge in the administration of various
theatres " ; whereupon it was resolved that the
opera " should be encouraged and defended
against its enemies." At the same time the
managers were arrested as suspicious persons,
and replaced by republicans whose republicanism
was beyond question.
Napoleon, determined not to tolerate opposi
tion or even criticism in any form, was very
severe in regard to the theatrical censorship. In
a letter on this subject to the Minister of the
Interior, he says : " You must not depend on
your officials to know what the theatrical pieces
submitted to you for your examination are really
like. You must read them, yourself, and then
decide whether it would be better to permit

or to forbid their representation." Under the
Restoration the censorship was not less severe
than under Napoleon. The performance of
Arnault's Germanicus in 181 5 had results
which almost seemed to justify the censorship's
existence. So excited did the audience become,
that many of them rose from their seats and
fought with walking-sticks. It is from this
moment that the order dates by which no
walking-sticks or umbrellas must be brought
into the theatre.
Towards the end of the Restoration, when the
romantic school had just arisen in France, with
Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas as its prin
cipal champions on the stage, the censorship,
without ceasing to be political and moral, gave
itself literary airs, and, inspired by the calm
ness and moderation of the old classical school,
forbade violent scenes and scenes in which ideas
of death and, above all, suicide were presented.
Thus, in a translation of Hamlet, the grave
yard scene had to be considerably abridged.
Out of consideration for Victor Hugo, who
in these early days was a royalist, and who,
throughout his long life, was the foremost
poet of France, the Minister of Fine Arts,
M. de Martignac, consented to read all his
pieces and decide upon them himself. He
began with " Marion Delorme," and authorised
the representation of that fine work, when
suddenly there was a change of Cabinet, and
the new minister, M. de la Bourdonnaye, forbade
it. Through the intervention, however, of M.
Trouve, Director of Fine Arts, permission was
obtained to bring out Hernani, to which all
kinds of objections had previously been made.
After the overthrow of Charles X.'s Govern
ment, in July, 1830, the censorship was absolutely
abolished ; but, as equally happened after the
previous revolution of 1789 and the subsequent
one of 1848, it was very soon re-established. In
the month of August M. Guizot, Minister of the
Interior, named a commission for the examina
tion of questions connected with the liberty of
the stage. " I proposed," he says in his
Memoirs, " to re-establish a serious dramatic
censorship, which would defend public decency
against the cynicism and greed of speculators in
corruption." It was objected to M. Guizot's
proposition that the proper course to pursue
would be to allow managers full liberty of pro
duction, and to punish them by ordinary police
measures if they produced anything contrary
to public morals. This proposition was com
bated by the vain argument that to stop the

1 84

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Printing in Paris— The Censorship.

representation of a piece by reason of its alleged
immorality would involve managers in serious loss ;
as though the loss inflicted ought not to be re
garded as a just penalty. LTltimately, as has
already been said, the censorship was re-estab
lished, and there is no reason to suppose that for
some time to come it will not still be maintained.
It has been said that in France the censorship
is done away with only to be introduced anew.
The Belgians have shown themselves on this
head more logical and more consistent. When
at the time of the revolution which separated
Belgium from Holland, the Chamber of Deputies
of the new constitutional monarchy declared that
the censorship was abolished, it added that it
could "never be re-established"; and this is
one of the fundamental laws of the Belgian Con
stitution. It cannot, that is to say, be re
pealed or modified unless the constitution be
revised.

As always happens in France, the withdrawal
of restrictions is at once followed by an abuse
of the new liberty gained. All the arguments on
both sides are now thoroughly known. The
simplest way, however, of testing the necessity of
a dramatic censorship is by examining the con
dition of the stage in those countries where
nothing of the kind exists : Belgium, for instance,
and the United States. Licentious pieces are
no more represented in Brussels than in Paris ;
nor is any liking for them exhibited in America.
Occasionally in Brussels a piece founded on some
recent sensational case has been produced. Some
years ago, for example, the incidents of what
was known as the " Pecq murder " were repre
sented in dramatic form. Here there was no
question of morality but only of good taste ; and
the taste of the public being more delicate
than that of the manager the performance came
to an end after the second night.

The H8tel des Invalides.]

THE HOTEL DES INVALIDES.

18 =

HOTEL DES INVALIDES.

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE HOTEL DES INVALIDES.
A Glance at its History — Louis XIV. and Mme. de Maintenon — The Pensioners — Their Characteristics and Mode of Life.

A NOTHER of the most notable
i\_ buildings on the left bank of the
Seine is the Hotel des Invalides.
" There is no institution more
worthy of respect," said Montes
quieu, "than the Hotel des In
valides. If I were a prince I
would rather have founded this
establishment than have won three
battles." Before its institution Paris was
full of old soldiers, mutilated,
miserable, and begging their bread.
Nevertheless, they inspired a
natural and just interest as long
ago as the time of CharlemaLgne,
who assigned them to the care of the priories
and abbeys, " His successors," says M. . de
Chamberet in his "Histoire des Invalides,"
" continued the work of charity. When all the

STATUE OF
NAPOLEON.
[Formerly on the
, Vend6me Column,
no-w in the In-
valides.)

places in the religious houses were full, assistance
was given to the old soldiers, and in some cases
fixed pensions. But they were for the most
part in deplorable circumstances. Philip
Augustus, the first of our kings who maintained
a standing army, conceived the idea of creating
special establishments for his old soldiers, and
his grandson Saint Louis, on his return from the
Crusades, carried out to a certain degree the
project formed by Philip Augustus. The in
stitution 'he founded was intended, however, for
the reception only of men of birth who had been
blinded by the burning sands of Palestine. The
asylum, named Les Quinze-Vingts, was intended
in fact for the blind, and in connection with its
original object the name has been preserved."
Charles VI. did nothing ; nor, during the Eng
lish invasion and occupation, would it have been
possible to do much. Charles VII. did very little,
and Louis XI. followed the example of his

1 86

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The H6tel des Invalides.

predecessor. Louis XII., the " father of his
people," Francis I., the "father of letters," and
Henri IL, the noble husband of Catherine de
Medicis, occupied themselves more or less with
the fate of old and wounded soldiers. Finally, on
the 28th of October, 1568, Charles IX. published
a decree regulating the admission of wounded
veterans to the priories and abbeys. Under
various pretexts old soldiers, it would seem, had
been admitted into religious houses without suf
ficient authority. The ecclesiastical bodies com
plained of having these warriors quartered upon
them, and the warriors on .their side complained

DOME OF THE HOTEL DES INVALIDES.
that no provision was made for their declining
years. At length the matter received the serious
attention of Henri IV. Wishing to appease the
ecclesiastics, but at the same time not to neg
lect the old soldiers with whose aid he had con
quered his kingdom, he conceived the idea —
which had already occurred to more than one
of his predecessors — of creating a special asylum
for both officers and men. In confirmation of
his project, he issued an edict in April, 1600,
and letters patent in January, 1605, though his
death in 16 10 prevented the founding of the
establishment. Far from prosecuting his idea, Marie de
Medicis, now declared regent, suppressed, by an
order of the Council of State, the Military Houses

of Christian Charity and the House of Lourcine ;
and she afterwards commanded that the mutilated
officers and soldiers should go, as in the past, to
find shelter as recluses in the abbeys and priories
liable for their maintenance.
This unsatisfactory system led to all kinds of
abuses, and the complaints of the monastic
brotherhoods at length assumed an absolutely
violent character. Louis XHL, to put an end to
such a condition of things, established, by an
edict of November, 1633, under the title of
" Commanderie de St. Louis," a community in
which wounded military veterans could be
housed and fed for the rest of their
lives. The want of funds, however,
and preoccupations of one kind and
another, prevented the prosecution
of this scheme, which made no
progress until Richelieu took it in
hand and on the 7th of August,
1834, continued the work at his
own expense. Unfortunately, how
ever, just when the new institution
was on the point of being inaugu
rated (the public sheets had pomp
ously announced it, and a procession
of the Commanderie of Saint Louis,
with flag and banner, had proclaimed
it in the streets) the whole thing
was suddenly and unaccountably
abandoned. The old soldiers were still lament
ably unprovided for when this ancient
grievance forced itself upon the notice
of Louis XIV. Paris was just then
inundated with soldiers reduced to
the last extremity, although an ordi
nance of the 7th of January, 1644,
required them to be sent out of
the town as quickly as possible, and despatched
to the frontiers, where, it was said, a sub
sistence was assured to them. Another decree
strictly forbade them to solicit alms. Both
edicts, however, were in practice ignored. Some
of the invalids continued to stay in Paris ;
others went into the provinces to carry with
them disorder and scandal. In 1670 a royal
edict was issued ordering the immediate con
struction of the Hotel des Invalides ; and, pend
ing its completion, part of the funds set apart
for it were employed for renting in the Rue du
Cherche-Midi an immense house, which served
as refuge for the future pensioners. It is true
that the religious chapters, who had to bear
a share in the expense, showed a great

The Hotel des Invalides.]

THE PENSIONERS.

187

disinclination to pay ; but Louvois, who had the
matter in hand, would by no means allow them
to hang back, and in 1674 the veterans were
transferred to their new abode. One fine day in
October the king drove up to the institution
in a magnificent
carriage drawn by
eight white horses,
and followed by
numerous equi
pages. At two
o'clock a parade
of the veterans
began on the es-
planade,where they
marched three a-
breast. Two sol
diers, well - nigh
centenarians, who
had served at the
battles of Arques
and pf Ivry, headed
the procession. On
a subsequent occasion Louis XIV. paid a second
visit to the Invalides, accompanied by Madame de
Maintenon. As soon as his carriage entered the
gate, several of the veterans got in front of the
body-guard forming the escort and kept them
back, saying that from the moment His Majesty

DORMER WINDOW ON THE
FACADE, H6TEL DES INVALIDES.

altercation took place on this point, and attracted
the attention of the king, who, informed of
what had occurred, ordered the captain of his
guards to withdraw outside the building, adding
that in future whenever he visited the place he
would confide his
person to his dear
old disabled sol
diers. Just as the il
lustrious visitors
were going away,
one pensioner who
was minus a limb
or two approached
Madame de Main
tenon and pre
sented to her a
plate bearing a
piece of the regu
lation bread sur
rounded with flow
ers. " Permit me,
madam," he said,
bread we are fed

DORMER WINDOW ON THE
FACADE, H6TEL DES INVALIDES.

' to beg you to taste the
with." The court ladies
present took a bite at it and complained of it
to the king, who severely reprimanded the
chief official of the establishment, and ordered
him to supply bread of better quality.

THE COURT OF HONOUR, HOTEL DES INVALIDES.

entered the place he should have no other
guard than his old servants. Those who had
defended him on the battle-field could, they de
clared, look after him quite well' whenever he
was pleased to come and visit them. A livelv

The building, meanwhile, was not large enough
to accommodate all the pensioners who had found
refuge in the different religious retreats. The least
infirm, therefore, had to yield precedence to
their comrades, and Louvois ordered that forty

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The H6tel des Invalides.

companies should be despatched to Montreuil-
sur-Mer, others being sent to Havre, Abbeville,
and other fortified towns. Louvois died in 1691,
much lamented by the pensioners.
In 1 7 14 the king made a last and lengthy visit
to the Invalides. In his will he commended the
establishment to the particular care of his succes
sors. " The foundation of the Invalides," says M.
Monnier, "is perhaps the one act of Louis

under the special surveillance of the Legislative
Body and, in some particulars, ameliorated the
lot of the pensioners and their families. As for
Napoleon, whether as First Consul or as Emperor,
he took a great interest in the Invalides, whose
population he did not allow to diminish ; and
the same solicitude has been displayed by the
more pacific governments which have succeeded
him.

,. 'i ¦.-^.¦•2

INVALIDES.

XIV. which has remained popular." In 1716
Peter the Great visited the Hotel des Invalides,
made a detailed inspection of it, and tasted the
water drunk within its walls. On his return
to Russia he founded an Hotel des Invalides at
St. Petersburg.
To skip over a somewhat uneventful period
to the Revolution, the home of the pensioners
was on the 14th of July, 1789, seized, without re
sistance, by the mob, who took possession of
all the guns and carried them off.
The Constituent Assembly, despite the oppo
sition of its military committee, maintained the
Hotel des Invalides. The Convention placed it

Ever since the building was first inhabited, the
pensioners — old, indeed, but still gay of heart
— have from time to time amused themselves at
the expense of their sometimes too curious
visitors. Chief amongst the jokes played upon
such persons must be mentioned the popularly-
reported one of the " invalid with the wooden
head." This traditional joke dates from almost
the foundation of the institution, and a manu
script in the library ofthe arsenal speaks of it in
these terms : —
" As people of all kinds come to visit the house,
certain playful soldiers have invented a method
of mystification for those whom it is easy to take

TOMB OF NAPOLEON

190

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The HStel des Invalides,

in, and to whom they give information as to
whatever sights of curiosity or interest the place
contains. They recommend them above all not
to quit the place without having seen the in
valid with the wooden head. When the propo
sition is assented to, they indicate his corridor
and his room, and, as their comrades are in the
conspiracy, they make their victims perform
sundry journeys through different parts of the
establishment in quest of a wooden head, which
they might really behold if they looked at
themselves in the glass. They are sent from
floor to floor and from room to room by their
tormentors, who invent all kinds of explanations
for his absence, such as : — ' He was here a
moment ago ; he has gone no doubt to get
shaved, and will be back directly. Pray take a
seat.' "
Unprovided, however, as the pensioners are
with wooden heads, many of them, by their
various forms of mutilation, afford a sufficiently
curious spectacle to the crowd. Those veterans
who have lost the use of both hands are termed
"Manicros." They have to be specially waited
upon by their comrades, and as it is necessary
to remunerate the latter for their services, a
fund for the purpose has been established.
There is a ¦ special table for those who, having
been wounded in the jaw, cannot masticate
their food. Easily digestible hashes, soups, etc.,
are prepared for them by the "sisters" ; and
their table is furnished with no niggardly regard
for expense.
The death of Louis XIV. was keenly regretted
by the pensioners, who sent representatives to
his funeral clad in deepest mourning. The
death of Louis XV., who was more beloved by
his people generally, caused little sorrow at the
Invalides, the pensioners viewing the funeral
cortege, as it passed along, with frigid eye.
Coming to Napoleon, we find him conferring
honour upon the Invalides by celebrating there
the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille.
He wished, moreover, on this solemn occasion, to
consolidate the growing institution of the Legion
of Honour. A salute of several cannons from
within the precincts announced the emperor's
arrival. He took his seat upon a throne. Behind
him were ranged the colonels-general of the
guard, the governor, and the great officers of the
crown. Meanwhile the empress,- accompanied by
the princesses, her sisters, and her maids of
honour, had been received by the grand master
of the ceremonies, who had led her to his
tribune.

The cardinal legate, who was to officiate, took
up his position beneath a dais to the right of the
altar, the cardinal archbishop of Paris and his
clergy placing themselves on the left. Behind
the high altar, on an immense amphitheatre,
seven hundred invalids and two hundred pupils
of the Polytechnic School were already stationed,
while the nave contained the great officers and
the members of the Legion of Honour.
When the cardinal legate had celebrated divine
service the grand chancellor was conducted to
the foot of the throne, proclaimed the object
of the institution of the Legion of Honour, and
enumerated the duties which were incumbent
upon its members. This discourse at an end,
Napoleon received the oaths of each member.
The decorations were borne in basins of gold,
and the first one was conferred upon the emperor
himself, by the hand of his brother, Prince Louis,
future king of Holland.
The most remarkable member of the Legion of
Honour who ever dwelt in the Hotel des Invalides
was a widow named Brulon, who, in times past,
disguised in male uniform, had seen no end
of military service, fighting, sometimes by her
husband's side, with distinguished valour. She
had been through seven campaigns, and bore the
marks of three very decided wounds. Entering,
the ranks in 18 1 1, she became a corporal the
following year, a sub-lieutenant by royal mandate
in 1822, and a member of the Legion of Honour
in 1847. She died in 1848, deeply lamented
by all who knew her, none of whom had ever
seen her in feminine attire.
The Invalides pensioner, although, as we have
seen, he will sometimes have his joke, is, as a
rule, a morose old grumbler. His tendencies are
those of a recluse. Although by the rules of the
-hotel he has to live, eat, drink, and sleep
in common with his fellow pensioners, he keeps
himself aloof, seldom seeks society, and is the
reverse of communicative, " garrulous old age "
being a phrase hardly applicable to one who,
placed amongst men with the same experiences
as himself, does not find them such appreciative
and inspiring auditors as persons from the world
outside. His friendships, in fact, are nearly
always formed with civilians, though the decree
which forbade the excursion of pensioners beyond
the precincts of the hotel has reduced the
number and intimacy of these friendships very
considerably. A second decree, issued by the
Minister of War, prohibited pensioners from
performing any work - in public places. Pre
viously they had been employed to guard civic

The H6tel des Invalides.]

THE PENSIONERS.

191

monuments, and to assist at constructions and
demolitions ; but it was found that the money
they so earned was too often spent in a manner
which neither morality nor good taste could
sanction. The grounds in front of the hotel contain a
large flower-bed, beyond
which are a number of
small gardens belonging
to the pensioners, who
take a great pride in
them, and adorn them
with a beautiful display
of flowers. It is notice
able, however, that all
the gardens are alike,
a grotto of shells, among
other characteristic ob
jects, belonging to each.
These little plots of
ground, so gay with
bloom in the summer,
are the delight of the
children who come with
their parents to visit
some old grandfather who
has lost a limb or two
in the defence of his
country. The uncommunicative-
ness of the pensioner is
attributed by M. Monnier
to his having nothing to
communicate. " If you
ask him for his remin
iscences," says this ad
mirable writer, " you will
be astonished to find
that, much as he has
seen, he has learned
little and retained little."
If, for instance, he is
spoken to about Egypt,
he declares that he has
found Egypt just like any other country. "What
about the inhabitants ? " says the inquirer.
"The same as any other inhabitants," is the
reply. "But the costumes?" "What cos
tumes ? " " Their different Costumes. How are
they dressed ? " " Like us — they do not go
naked." "And the pyramids — those monu
ments of another age — which rise heaven
wards and lose themselves in the clouds ? "
" Same thing as occurs here — at Boulogne and
Calais, by the sea shore." The visitor gives this

gentleman up and passes to another, who has
been to China, and who declares that the habits
of the Chinese are identical with those of the
French. "But how about their temples, their
pagodas ? " suggests the visitor. " Do you mean
their houses?" "Yes, the places where they

ENTRANCE TO THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON.

live, and those where they pray." " Just like our
own, with doors and windows — everything the
same as here." It is fair' to suppose that M.
Monnier, who is nothing if not a humourist,
was so amused at the manner in which some few
of the old soldiers had gone through the world
with their eyes shut that he found the temptation
to generalise this individual characteristic a trifle
too strong for him.
The first stone of the Hotel des Invalides was
laid on the 30th November, 1670. Four years

192

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Hotel des Invalides.

afterwards the place was ready for the reception
both of officers and men. The plans of the whole
building, with the exception of the dome, were
drawn up by Liberal Bruant, who directed the
works until his death. His duties were then
taken up by Mansard, who made no change in
his predecessor's design, though he proposed the
addition of a dome for which he submitted plans,
and which was in due time constructed.
The Hotel des Invalides stands in view of the
Seine, at the extremity of a large esplanade
planted with trees. In the middle of this
esplanade there used to be a fountain which,
under the First Empire, surmounted the lion
of St. Mark, transported from Venice. Retaken
in 1 8 14 by the Austrians, the lion was replaced
by an enormous fleur-de-lis, for which the
Revolution of July substituted a bust of
La Fayette. Bust and fountain have both disap
peared. On the Esplanade side of the Invalides are
ranged a number of cannons, forming what
is called the "triumphal battery," which sends
forth a peal of thunder on the occasion of some
victory or state ceremony. The pieces are served
by the pensioned artillerymen. The " triumphal
battery " is particularly interesting from being
largely composed of all kinds of foreign guns —
Austrian, Prussian, Russian, Dutch, Venetian,
Algerian, arid Chinese, many of them taken in
action.

Behind the "triumphal battery," screened off
by a sort of stone bastion, are the little gardens
cultivated by the pensioners. Farther back is the
principal facade of the hotel, three storeys high,
and more than 200 metres wide, surmounted by
a row of attics, and pierced with 133 windows.
Projecting from the fagade is a forepart enclosing
a large arcade, of which the tympan represents
Louis XIV. on horseback, accompanied by
Justice and Prudence, two divinities to whom
he did not always lend an ear. This group, the
work of Couston, was maltreated by the Revolu
tion, but restored by Cartellier. On the two
sides of the entrance are the statues of Mars
and Minerva, likewise by Couston. At the
angles formed by the forepart and the fagade
are pedestals supporting four figures, in
bronze, of chained nations, humbling them
selves at the feet of the statue raised to
Louis XIV. by Marshal de la Feuillade on
the Place des Victoires and overthrown
in 1792. These figures are executed by
Desjardins. An adequate description of the interior of the
Invalides would fill a small volume. Remarkable
by its architecture, it is interesting by the
military relics and trophies preserved in it.
A subterranean crypt, beneath the celebrated
" dome," contains the tomb of Napoleon,
whose remains were conveyed thither from
St. Helena.

19

LATUDE RECOGNISES D'ALIGRE AT CHARENTON. (See p. 2i6.)

THE LAENNEC HOSPITAL, RUE DE SEVRES.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SOME MORE PARIS HOSPITALS.
The French Hospital System— The Laennec Hospital— The Houses of Assistance— The Quinze-Vingts— Deaf and Dumb Institutions—
The Abbe de l'Epde— La Charite.

THE Hotel des Invalides suggests the hos
pitals of Paris in general ; and to the
briefest possible glance at these — inasmuch as
we have already given much space to the famous
Hotel Dieu — the present chapter may be devoted-
"England" says Dr. Le Fort, "opens to the
poor wretch without an asylum and without
bread the doors of a workhouse ; France those of
a prison. To be without shelter is a misfortune
in England ; in France it is a crime. Unable to
suppress poverty, our law will tolerate no mani
festation of it. ' Mendicity,' as many a printed
notice proclaims, is forbidden in the department
of the Seine."
Dr. Le Fort maintains that the Paris poor are
treated with too little sympathy by the Legislature,
and seems to think that if their wants were more
readily relieved, many an indigent invalid, whose
health has gradually given way beneath hunger
37

and destitution, would not have found his way
into hospital.
The Paris hospitals differ from those of London
on one important point. In our metropolis all
such institutions are supported by private charity,
enjoying nothing, or next to nothing, in the way
of state subventions. They are open either to
the subscribers themselves or to those whom
they choose to recommend. The hospitals of
Paris, on the other hand, are practically state
property, entirely independent of the control
of the public. They are beneath the domination
of the Prefect of the Seine and the Minister of
the Interior ; both represented by a director fully
invested with their power. Side by side with
the director exists a council of superintendence,
which investigates and approves, or disapproves,
the acts of that director, without being legallv
able to prevent them ; for the whole of the

194

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some more Paris Hospitals.

executive is in the hands of the chief official,
who is alone responsible. The director, it should
be added, is seldom or never a physician, but a
member of the administrative body.
The council of superintendence consists,
amongst its other members, of the Prefect of
the Seine, the Prefect of Police, a Councillor
of State, a member of the Court of Appeal,
a Professor of the Faculty of Medicine, a member
of the Chamber of Commerce, and two members
of the Municipal Council, with a doctor and a
surgeon attached to the hospital.
The medical service of the hospitals is effected
by doctors and surgeons, aided by resident and
non-resident assistants, sisters of charity, etc.
The doctors and surgeons are appointed by
competition, and they can practise, in the case
of the former, till sixty-five, in that of the latter,
till sixty years of age.
As regards the conditions under which patients
are admitted to the hospitals, the first of these is
not, as one might suppose, that the applicant be
ill, but that he or she have been resident six
months in the department of the Seine. This
condition, which excluded poor patients coming
to Paris from the provinces for special treatment,
caused some years ago a good deal of lively
criticism. Complaints, too, have frequently been
made of the alleged extravagance of the adminis
tration and of the architectural embellishment
of Paris hospitals, to the detriment of the
patients upon whom in a direct manner the
funds should, it was held, have been spent.
Another defect which has been much commented
upon is the inability of the surgeons to assign
beds, on their own authority, to sick applicants
whom they have pronounced to be in need of
clinical treatment. Every morning, it should be
explained, gratuitous advice is given at each
hospital. Those applicants whose case is serious
cannot, without further preliminaries, have beds
assigned to them. The physician has first to
represent their condition to the administrative
director, • and , it is within _ the power of this
latter functionary to grant or to refuse the
admission. In practice, no doubt, the recom
mendation; of the physician is acceded to ; but
the formality might well become, in some in
stances, a mischievous one.
During the day urgent cases can be received at
the hospitals on the advice of the deputy medical
officers. There exists, moreover, on the Parvis
of Notre Dame, under the name of " central
bureau of admission," an establishment in which,
from ten a.m. to four p.m., advice may be

had from able physicians. Every morning the
directors of the different hospitals send to this
bureau a. list of their vacant beds ; and the
consulting physician assigns them to applicants
at his discretion.
Every invalid entering a hospital loses his or
her individuality to take a number. Monsieur
6 and Madame 8 are the kind of appellations by
which the patients are known. After having
given in his or her name, age, address, and
occupation at the registration office, the patient
is taken up into the ward and undressed, re
ceiving a grey cloak in exchange for the vestments
put off. It used to be complained that these
cloaks were passed from one patient to another
without being in any way purified, whatever
diseases they might be infected with. It may be
hoped that this is no longer the case.
Soon after the new patient's arrival he is
visited by the house-physician, who prescribes
for him a treatment which the physician-in-chief
will confirm or rectify on his daily round next
morning. At five a.m. the ward-servants come
on duty, and then a clatter begins, the brush and
the broom being freely plied. "So much the
worse," says Dr. Le Fort, a severe critic of the
Paris hospital system, "for the patient who,
having passed a sleepless night, is beginning to
get a little repose." In English hospitals, how
ever, the same turmoil reigns at the same hour,
and the sufferer from insomnia is as badly off as
his Parisian fellow.
From eight to nine a.m. the physician goes
his round of visits, accompanied by his assist
ants. He passes from bed to bed, feels pulses,
looks at tongues, prescribes medicines, and so
forth. At ten o'clock the breakfast-hour is
sounded. Large cans, containing soup and
vegetables, are brought into the ward. The
ward-servants, or infirmiers, present to the sister
a succession of tin basins, into which she serves
out the precise quantity of food ordered for the
patients by the doctor. The quality of the food
leaves nothing to be desired. The meat supplied
is the best procurable, the fish is fresh, the
vegetables irreproachable ; but the cooking is
the reverse of satisfactory. A mutton cutlet,
cooked half an hour before dinner, and put
in the oven to keep hot, comes sometimes
to the patient's bedside rather like a cinder ;
the joints are admirable, but as it is found
convenient to carve them up some time before
the meal, and keep them likewise in the oven,
a cut off the joint occasionally means a slice of
leather. Attempts have been made from time

Some more Paris Hospitals.]

THE PARIS HOSPITAL SYSTEM.

i9S

to time by the administration to reform this
style of cooking, but the reformation has not
yet, in practice, been effected.
After breakfast the patient reads or walks
about. From one till three o'clock on Sundays
and Thursdays he may receive visits from his

has now been transferred to Ivry in a large
building, where incurable men are also received.
The house in which the original hospital for
incurables was established is now occupied by
the Laennec Asylum, containing upwards of 300
beds, of which nearly fifty are for surgical cases.

THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL, RUE DE SEVRES.

family. At four o'clock the evening repast
is served, and at eight the night commences,
all conversation, as in English hospitals, abruptly
ceasing. Thenceforth the repose of the vast
wards is disturbed by nothing but the snoring
of sleepers, and the sighs or groans of those to
whose eyelids sleep will not come. The wards
would now be in total darkness but for the faint
glimmer of a little lamp suspended from the
ceiling. At No. 42 in the Rue de Sevres stood the
hospital1 or asylum (hospice) for incurable
women, founded by the charity of Marguerite
Roulie, assisted by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld,
Grand Almoner of France. But the institution

Then there are charitable houses for sick and
for convalescent children. In the Rue de Sevres
(Nos. 93 to 95) is the monastery of the priests
of the mission of St. Lazare, which, since
1816, has occupied the mansion of the Due de
l'Orges. The chapel dedicated to St. Vincent de Paul,
founder of the Lazarists, contains the relics of
the saint, which were transferred to their present
abode on the 29th of April, 1830. Seventeen
bishops, with all the clergy of Paris and of the
diocese, took part in the ceremony. The
brothers of the Christian schools, also the sisters
of Charity and of the Foundlings, assisted ; in all
upwards of 10,000 persons. This was for the

iq6

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some more Paris Hospitals.

Parisians the great event of the spring of the
year 1830, which, however, in the month of
July was to witness a manifestation of a very
different character : the Revolution that brought
Louis Philippe to the throne.
At the right corner of the Avenue of the
Invalides stood, up to the time of the Revolu
tion of 1789, a country house belonging to the

of two out of eleven, which is almost twice the
average mortality in the hospitals for adults.
" The idea of creating a special hospital for
children," said Professor Bouchardat, "excellent
at first sight, is fatal for the unhappy ones who
are admitted." Contagious diseases spread, as a
matter of fact, with particular rapidity among
children. To counteract this evil the Hospice

THE BLIND SCHOOL : IN THE WORK-ROOM.

sculptor Pigalle. The congregation of Notre
Dame des Chanoinesses Regulieres de Ste.
Augustine, founded there towards 1820 a house
of education, which has remained celebrated under
the name of the Convent of the Birds. Beyond
the Boulevard Montparnasse, which branches off
at this point towards the Boulevard des Invalides,
is the House of the Infant Jesus, founded in 175 1
by the zeal of the Abbe Languet, Cure of St.
Sulpice, by the liberality of the Marquise de
Lassay, and under the patronage of Queen Marie
Lesczinska, in favour of thirty poor and noble
young ladies ; to become in 1802 a hospital for
sick children. Here the mortality is at the rate

des Enfants Malades has been provided with a
garden, 31,000 square metres in extent, so as to
permit as much as possible the isolation of the
little patients.
Besides the inmates of the Paris hospitals a
great number of out-patients receive treatment
within their walls.
An important institution in Paris, to which
we have practically no counterpart in England,
is one for the nursing of the indigent poor at
their homes. It is admirably organised, and has
done a great deal of inestimable work ; and Dr-
Le Fort is as proud of it as he seems ashamed
of the Paris hospitals.

Stme more Paris Hospitals.]

HOUSES OF ASSISTANCE.

TQ7

On the 25th of May, 1791, the municipality of
Paris was charged by the administration with the
distribution amongst the different parishes of the
funds raised for the poor. On the 5th of August
a municipal " Commission of Benevolence " was
formed to consider the best method of adminis
tering aid to the indigent ; and it is to this

patients inscribed on the list of the indigent may
have gratuitous consultations, medicine, and so
forth. Fifty-three such houses are distributed
over the capital.
Any poor or necessitous person wishing to
be nursed at home through this organisation
applies in person or by deputy to the office in his

ATTENDANTS' ROOM IN A PARIS HOSPITAL.

commission that the creation of the " offices of
benevolence " is due. At the present time these
offices relieve some twenty Paris mayoralties,
besides freeing the hands of the hospital admin
istration. Each office consists of the mayor of
the arrondissement, as president ; two assistants,
twelve administrators, an unlimited number of
commissionaires and sisters of charity, and a
secretarial treasurer. Attached to each office
are physicians and surgeons, midwives, etc. The
scheme comprises, in each arrondissement, two or
three "houses of assistance" where the poor
come to seek aid for their sick friends, and where

particular arrondissement, and if his case proves
to be one requifing medical aid, the doctor
attached to his section is instructed to visit him.
Dr. Le Fort draws a very strong contrast in
deed between the Paris hospitals and the " houses
of assistance." The former institutions he declares
to be, as a whole, the "most defective and
murderous in Europe" ; the latter, a "title to
glory " for the city of Paris. He attributes the
difference to the fact that the medical element is
eliminated from the direct administration of the
hospitals, but allowed its proper sway in the
" benevolence " system. Certainly, one advantage

iqS

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some more Paris Hospitals.

of- this system is that it strengthens those family
ties which a long residence in hospital relaxes
and too often breaks.
In connection with the hospitals ;and. relief
institutions 'of Paris must be mentioned the
National Institution for Blind Children, founded
just after the Revolution by Louis XVI., before
the Republican form of government had been

The house of the strangely named Quinze
Vingts is designed for the reception of 300 blind
persons of both sexes, each with his own private
apartments for himself, or himself and family,
together with many other advantages as well
in money as in kind. Attached, moreover, to
this institution are 1,300 outside pensioners in
all parts of the country, receiving assistance in

LA CHARITE.

definitely adopted. Its initiator was Valentine
Hauy, the mineralogist, to whom a statue has
been erected in the principal courtyard. The
Institution for Blind Children is one of the ten
general establishments of benevolence conducted
under the immediate authority of the Minister
of the Interior by a responsible director, assisted
by a consultative commission. The instruction
given is (according to a writer on the subject who
evidently does not set too high a value on music)
" technological, musical, and intellectual." Em
ployment is found for the children on the com
pletion of their studies.

money according to the class to which they have
been assigned : 200 francs, 150 francs, and 100
francs.
. The origin of the Quinze-Vingts, or Fifteen-
Twenties, is lost in obscurity. Hence all sorts of
contradictory stories and conjectures without
foundation, substituted for positive documents.
According to some authors St. Louis, on his
return from Palestine, founded the establishment
of the Fifteen-Twenties for 300 knights — the
sad remains of his army.
But the writers of the time make no mention
of this alleged fact, and the ordinances of St.

Some more Paris Hospitals.]

THE QUINZE-VINGTS.

Louis contain no sort of reference to it. The
legend of the 300 knights must therefore be
regarded as a fable. It is certain meanwhile
that the blind asylum dates from an epoch
anterior to the reign of St. Louis, though it is
quite true that this pious monarch, by his pat
ronage and his liberality, became the real founder
of the house.
The Fifteen-Twenties forming a mendicant
corporation, subsisting by alms, and belonging
body and soul to their own Order, were first

was, until 1794, the seat of the minor seminary
of St. Magloire, belonging to the Archbishop of
Paris. In this year he ceded the house to the
deaf and dumb institution, which, founded in 1760
by the Abbe de l'Epee in his own domicile,
Rue des Moulins, was, just after the Revolution,
raised to the dignity of a national establish
ment and transferred to the ancient monastery
of the Celestins near the Arsenal. The national
institution of the Rue St. Jacques, which still
exists and which is under the direction of the

HOSPITAL ON THE BOULEVARD DU PONT ROYAL.

•established in the Rue St. Honore, not far from
the Tuileries. They remained there under the
-constant patronage of numerous and powerful
protectors until 1779, in which year Louis XVI.
transferred the asylum to the ancient residence of
the Black Musketeers in the Rue de Charenton.
Its revenues already amounted to more than
370,000 livres (i.e. francs). The constitution of
¦ the hospital was then modified, collections in the
churches .were forbidden, and mendicancy in
the streets likewise. , At the same time regular
pensions were introduced.
Towards the gate of a modest edifice situated
in the Rue St. Jacques, near the Luxemburg
Garden, may daily be seen visitors attracted to
this point from all quarters of France and even
¦of the globe. The building they wish to enter

Minister of the Interior, contains some 230
pupils of from seven to fourteen years. The
school comprised, until lately, two divisions
entirely separate and distinct, one for boys, the
other for girls, when suddenly the girls of the
Paris institution were sent to the institution of
Bordeaux, and the boys of the Bordeaux school
to that of Paris, so that at present, wherever
they may have been born, the deaf and dumb boys
are all at Paris, while the deaf and dumb girls are
all at Bordeaux. Professor Ferdinand Berthier,
of the Paris deaf and dumb school, himself deaf
and dumb, maintained, in an article published
some five-and-twenty years ago, that this pre
tended reform was no amelioration whatever ;
the deaf and dumb children studying perfectly
well when the boys and girls were educated to
gether under the same professors. At that time

200

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Somfr more Paris Hospitals.

recently, M. Claudius-
Forestier, a very dis
tinguished deaf-mute ; his
wife, a highly educated
person — the speech -en
dowed daughter of the
deaf - mute founder of
the school — acting as
directress. The number of deaf-
mutes in France has
been approximately esti
mated at 25,000 ; and
here, as in nearly all
countries where statis
tics are published, it is
found that the male
sufferers are decidedly
more numerous than the
female. To each establishment,
public or private, work
rooms are attached, con
ducted by competent
instructors, and in which
all the pupils, poor or
rich, serve an apprentice
ship to some profession,
art, or trade which will
one dav enable them to-

ENTRANCE TO THE ST. LOUIS
HOSPITAL.

the Paris institution was
administered by a director
with the use of speech,
assisted by an examiner
of studies, similarly gifted,
and a body of professors,
some of whom spoke,
while others were deaf and
dumb. One of the best private
deaf and dumb institu
tions in France is at
Lyons. It contains a
good number of pupils 01
both sexes, and its di
rector is, or was until

COURTYARD OF THE ST. LOUIS HOSPITAL

Some more Paris Hospitals.]

DEAF AND DUMB INSTITUTIONS.

201

earn a subsistence. No longer, therefore, is the
community encumbered by deaf and dumb idlers ;
the men and women thus afflicted leading active

paratus of the deaf-mute and that of a speaking
person are with rare exceptions equally well
organised. A prejudice still too widely spread

lives as shoemakers, dressmakers, tailors.
sempstresses, locksmiths, compositors
and even painters and sculptors.
It has been complained that the
deaf and dumb institutions of France
— about fifty in number — are in
sufficient for the instruction of 25,000
deaf-mutes, many of whom must con
sequently be deprived of instruction
in those employments for which they
are generally as apt as their neighbours
who can speak and hear.
The question of the hereditary nature
of muteness has been a good deal dis
cussed by French experts. "Dumbness," says
Ferdinand Berthier, " far from being a necessary
result of deafness, simply follows the latter by
reason of a natural sequence. Whether deaf-mute
ness dates from birth or from some accident, it has
been, proved in the present day that the vocal ap-

THE REPAIRING ROOM, ST. LOUIS HOSPITAL.
in the world, and worthy of every effort towards
its destruction, is that deaf-muteness is infallibly
transmitted from father or mother to child ; when
on all sides we see deaf-mutes, married between
themselves or to speaking spouses, constantly
producing children who both hear and speak, and

202

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some more Paris Hospitals.

in no way share the parental infirmity. Those
arts which have enabled the sublimest efforts of
genius to dazzle the world do not, in our opinion,
merit greater attention from scholars and philo
sophers than the method which shall open to
the deaf-mutes a road leading to intellectual
labour and to the full enjoyment of civil and
political rights."
Looking back to antiquity, this excellent writer
points out that the ancients regarded the educa
tion of deaf-mutes as an impossibility both
physical and moral.
It was the custom at Sparta to allow children
suffering from this double infirmity to die of
hunger and thirst in the desert, where-' they were
for that purpose exposed ; and the laws of Solon
were on this point no less severe. Aristotle, if
he did not precisely justify the rigour of such
laws, at least endorsed the moral prescription. In
the fourth book of his History of Animals he
unhesitatingly relegates deaf-mutes to the rank
of idiots, declaring them hopelessly beyond all
tuition. The Republic of Rome did not show
itself more humane. It was in vain that intel
ligence beamed in the face of these unhappy
victims : if their tongue could produce no sound
they were condemned to be flung into the Tiber.
One of the earliest agents in the removal of
this weight of infamy from the fraternity of
deaf-mutes was, curiously enough, the stage.
Lucian eulogises the pantomime of the dumb-
show actors of his epoch, and the admirable
influence they exercised in raising the deaf
and speechless above general contempt. The
Egyptians and Persians, more civilised and en
lightened in this respect than Sparta, Athens, or
Rome, showed for their deaf-mutes a solicitude
which approached devotion.
In centuries less remote many efforts have
from time to time been made by philosophers
and philanthropists to invent an effectual method
of instructing deaf-mutes. The sign method of
the Abbe de l'Epee was one of the first great steps
in this direction. The abbe held that the old-
fashioned dactylology was insufficient, and that
signs were essential to those who could neither
hear nor speak. Starting from the incontest
able principle that the bond existing between
ideas and sounds which strike the ear is not
more intimate, more natural, than the bond
between ideas and traced characters which strike
the eye, he found it by no means difficult to
demonstrate the possibility of fully replacing
speech, in the case of a deaf-mute, by mimicry.
As regards this mimicry, M. Berthier cautions

people against the common mistake of confound
ing it with dactylology, or the language of the
fingers. Dactylology is confined to the servile
reproduction of the letters of the alphabet of any
particular language, one by one, syllable by
syllable, word by word, or in no matter what
other conventional manner. Mimicry, a faithful
picture of human thought, paints ideas and sen
timents in a living language — the innate language
of all nations — the language of humanity. By
means of it thoughts are exchanged more quickly
than by speech or writing — not to mention
dactylology, which lags so far behind.
In the midst of his brilliant triumphs the
Abbe de l'Epee had frequently to engage in con
flict with two classes of powerful adversaries : the
philosophers and the theologians ; the former re
garding words as the only vehicle for imparting
metaphysical ideas, the latter regarding them as
the sole means of inculcating supernatural religious
truths. Louis XVI. had granted the abbe out of his
own privy purse an annual pension of 6,000
francs, in addition to his official appointment at
the Celestins. Hitherto the school had, for
twelve years, been maintained entirely at the
cost of the founder, aided by such occasional alms
as he received for the purpose. It was at the
Celestins in 1789 that he expired, amid the
weeping of his pupils and with the delightful
thought that his work would not perish with
him. Amongst the disciples of the Abbe de l'Epe'e
must be mentioned the Abbe Sicard, canon of
Bordeaux, whom the archbishop of that town
sent to Paris, where he had founded a deaf-mute
institution, in order that he might study under
de l'Epee that method of which there was so
much talk. The high talents of this young
priest soon enabled him to divine, comprehend,
and complete the thought of his master in excit
ing the warm sympathies of the public towards
those unfortunate persons whose tongue was tied
and whose ear was stopped.
On the death of de l'Epee, Sicard competed
for and was unanimously awarded the manage
ment of the abbe's institution. Having already
written not a little on the subject of deaf-mute
ness, he now published other works, " A Deaf-
mute's Course of Instruction," among others,
which only served to increase his renown ; though
in this treatise there was indeed one highly
objectionable assertion concerning the condition
of a deaf-mute which the author found it neces
sary to retract in his " Theory of Signs."

Some more Paris Hospitals.]

THE ABBfi DE L'ETEE.

203

During the Revolution of 1793 the Abbe
Sicard did not escape persecution. Flung into
prison after the eventful 10th of August, he was
lucky enough to keep his head on his shoulders
during the massacres of September. He had
scarcely been set at liberty when, as . editor of
the Catholic Annals, he was condemned to
transportation to Cayenne ; and he passed the
next two years of his life in flight far from his
beloved institution, of which he did not resume
the direction till after the Revolution of the
18th "Brumaire." He died in 1822.
Among the professors whom he formed must
be mentioned a speech-endowed one named
Bebian, who in his turn trained several deaf-mute
professors. His works are still consulted with
advantage both in France and abroad by those who wish
to devote themselves to this arduous method of instruction.
The object he kept before him in writing was, as he
himself expressed it at the commencement of one of his
books, " to simplify the method and render it so easy that
the mother of a family can teach her deaf-mute child to
read just as she teaches the others to speak."
Oblivion had already seemed too long to have overspread
the remains of the Abbe- de l'Epee when, in 1837, on the
initiative of M. Berthier, a numerous and distinguished
committee was formed for
the purpose of raising to
the clerical philanthropist
a monument worthy of
him in that chapel of the
church of St. Roch which
belonged to his family, and
'in which he was accus
tomed to celebrate mass,
assisted by deaf-mutes. It
was here indeed that his
ashes lay. An admirable
sculptor, M.August Preault,
was unanimously chosen
to interpret the homage
which so many famous
deaf - mutes and others
wished to pay to the
abbd's memory, and he
worthily carried out the
intentions both of com
mittee and subscribers.
Eight years afterwards, in
1845, a crown of laurels in
bronze was placed beside
the monument with this
simple inscription : "To
the Abbe de l'Epee, from
the Swedish deaf-mutes."

This crown, beautifully executed, was likewise
the work of Preault. The year previously the
same sculptor .had testified his own admiration
of the abbe by contributing to the Llotel
de Ville a fine statue of him. The town of
Versailles, which was proud of being the birth
place of the great founder of the deaf-mute in
stitution, could not do less than follow the example
set by Paris in voting to his memory a statue,
which was confided to the chisel of M. Michant.
The same artist was subsequently commissioned
by the Count de Montalivet, then intendant-
general of the civil list, to execute a bust of
the abbe for the historic gallery of Versailles. ,
The Paris hospitals are not, like ours, supported

THE TENON HOSPITAL.

204

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some more Paris Hospitals.

by voluntary contributions. Many of them
have from the beginning been richly endowed.
Others depend on grants from the State or
from the Municipality ; while a few are main
tained from mixed sources. None of them, how
ever, depend, as in England, on subscriptions
and donations received periodically from charit
able persons. Consequently, applicants for relief

and prescribed within their walls, are the two
hospitals named after those divine qualities
Charity and Pity.
The Hospital of La Charite is the principal one
on the left bank of the Seine ; nor is its position
likely to be forgotten by those who have heard of
the famous professor of surgery — Lisfranc — and
his attacks upon the illustrious Dupuytren, head

NURSE PUPILS AT THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.

or advice need neither letters of recommendation
nor introductions of any kind. Medical succour
is given at certain hours to all who choose to ask
for it. Patients seeking admission and regular
attendance have sometimes to wait for their
turn.- But there are, in proportion to the popu
lation, quite as many beds at the service of the
sick in Paris as in London.
Of the most ancient and most famous of all
the French hospitals — the Hotel Dieu — mention
has already been made. Scarcely less celebrated,
in view of the important services they have
rendered and of the many physicians and sur
geons of eminence who have lectured, operated,

of the Hotel Dieu, whom Lisfranc, in his highly
polemical lectures, used habitually to describe as
" ce brigand de l'autre cote de l'eau." Lisfranc
had doubtless differed with his eminent rival on
some slight theoretical point, for which reason
he accused him, with a vehemence which
Moliere's own doctors might have envied, 01
mental perturbations and moral offences in no
way attributable to him.
No less than three benevolent institutions
have been founded in Paris under the name. of
Charity— the Hopital de la Charite" Chretienne,
endowed and opened by Marguerite de Provence,
widow of Louis IX., but destined in the course of

Some more Paris Hospitals.]
ages to disappear ; the Maison
de la Charite, founded by the
town of Paris at the beginning
of the sixteenth century, with the
aid of Francis I., against epidemics,
afterwards to become known as
the Maison de la Sante ; and
finally, the Hopital de la Charite",
already referred to, which remains
one of the first medical and surgical
institutions in Paris.
The origin of La Charite" and its
history up to the time of the
Revolution are sufficiently curious.
A hospital was founded at Grenada
in 1 540 by St. John of God, who be
came the chief of a religious order
which occupied itself specially
with the care of the sick. This
congregation of hospitallers spread
rapidly throughout Europe, and
a certain number of its members
being, in 1602, at Paris, Marguerite
de Valois, the divorced wife 01
Henry the Fourth, who in her old

LA CHARITE.

205

FONT AT THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.

THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.

age, when her passions had somewhat
subsided, became religious, enabled them
to establish a hospital, to which the
name of La Charite was given. The
brothers of the Order of St. John of God
had already a place of their own, which
they gave up in order to take possession
of the larger premises placed at their
disposal by Queen Marguerite. A capa
cious house, surrounded by vast gardens,
was the first home of La Charite. Here
patients were received and treated by the
brethren, who, besides religion, had
studied medicine, surgery, and pharmacy.
Their vows did not allow them to admit
women, and their utility seems to have
been further limited by insufficient know
ledge of the art of healing ; and this
notwithstanding the fact that several of

2o6

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some more Paris Hospitals.

the brethren made themselves a great name as
surgeons and physicians. In the early part of
the eighteenth century they joined to their staff
medical men from the ranks of the laity ; com
pelled to this step by an edict from the Parlia
ment of Paris which ordered them to admit,
without salary, a surgeon-apprentice to help

was placed under the direction of the Munici
pality of Paris. The very title was abolished,
and instead of Hopital de la Charite — beautiful
and suggestive name ! — it was now called, with
out the least significance, Hopital de l'L'nite.
Under the Restoration, however, its old name
was given back to it ; and since then, under

HOPITAL DE LA PITl£.

them in dressing wounds, and a master-surgeon
to share their labours generally. Throughout
the eighteenth century they found themselves
constantly exposed to attacks from the members
of the various medical and surgical guilds, who
claimed the sole right of attending the sick and
wounded. In 1792, three years after the outbreak of the
Revolution, the different religious congregations
were broken up, and the Hospital of La Charite-

many changes of government, it has retained
its original appellation.
Among the other hospitals of Paris the
most important are those of La Pitie" and or
St. Louis, to which may be added L'Hopital
du Midi, and a number ot special hospitals,
such as the one known as La Maternite, founded
in 1795, which is at once a school for the in
struction of wet-nurses, and a maison d'accouche-
ment, or lying-in hospital.

Lunatic Asylums.]

THE TREATMENT OF LUNACY.

207

CHAPTER XXIX.
LUNATIC ASYLUMS AND MIXED INSTITUTIONS.
The Treatment of Lunacy in the Past— La Salpetriere— Bicetre— The Story of Latude— The Four Sergeants of La Rochelle-
Pinel's Reforms — Charenton.

OUR description of the hospitals and asylums
of Paris would be scarcely complete with
out some mention of the public madhouses. In
pre-revolutionary Paris no special establishment
for the treatment of the insane existed. Strange
as it may seem, there were no lunatic asylums in
France until the beginning of this century ; nor
until 1838 was any such institution formally
Vecognised by la%v. We have not far to go back
to find the demented treated as criminals, or
exorcised as demoniacs, or put to death as magi
cians and sorcerers. Mr. H. C. Burdett, who
has recently published a work on the hospitals
and asylums of the world, divides the history of
lunatics and their treatment into four periods.
I. An early period when, at the beginning of
the Christian era, the insane were brought to
gether and placed under intelligent control. —
In this connection Mr. Burdett cites the rules
given for the treatment of lunatics by Aretaeus
(a.d. 80) and Soranus (a.d. 95). The latter, in
particular, gave directions of great minuteness as
to the temperature and furniture of the rooms,
the arrangements of the bed, the physical and
mental exercises to which the patients afflicted
with dementia were to be subjected. The
superintendents, according to the rules of this
period, were to Jhave strict instructions to repress
the errors ofthe patients in such a way as not to
exasperate them by too much sharpness, and yet
not permit them, by too much weakness, to in
crease their unreasonable demands. Subsequent
writers deal with insanity in a like spirit of en
lightenment down to Paulus ^Egineta (a.d. 650).
II. The period of slaughter. — In the Middle
Ages the treatment of lunatics was worthy only
of the ages characterised as dark. A madman
was worse treated than a mad dog. For twelve
centuries lunatics were commonly put to death,
and in most cases by burning at the stake. In
France alone twenty thousand are said to
have been burnt in a hundred years ; and the
same thing went on in every other country.
Those who were not burnt wandered at large in
a wretched condition, to die at last from exposure ;
or they were confined in dungeons, starved and
cruelly maltreated. Ambrose Pare, the celebrated

French surgeon, medical attendant of Francis I.,
fully believed that lunatics were possessed by the
devil. " They may often be seen," he says, " to
change into goats, asses, dogs, wolves, crows, and
frogs ; they cause thunder and lightning, lift
castles into the air, and fascinate the eye." King
Louis XIV. has been much reproached since his
death as he was adulated during his lifetime.
To him, in any case, is due the first movement
against the cruel — the absolutely insane treatment
of the insane. In 1670 a trial took place in Nor
mandy which ended in the condemnation of
seventeen people to the stake, either as lunatics
or as sorcerers. A rat, it was sworn, had been
seen talking to a child ; and on the strength of
this evidence everyone who could be brought
into connection with the strange incident was
sentenced to death. The king was indignant, and
soon afterwards a decree was published forbidding
trials of the kind in future.
III. The period of torture. — Though no longer
subject to death punishment by fire, lunatics were
almost as badly off in the eighteenth and at the
beginning of the nineteenth century as at an
earlier time. Such asylums as existed in France
and other countries up to the present century
were entirely of a monastic kind ; and it was not,
as before mentioned, until the reign of Louis
Philippe that any regular secular institution for
the treatment of the insane was founded. The
unhappy lunatics were probably happiest in those
countries where least notice was taken of them ;
for not a century ago they were liable, when
" cared for," to copious bleeding, shower-baths,
sudden frights, and rigid coercion. In some
places they were chained and flogged at the
changes of the moon, or they were placed under
the charge of criminals, who set dogs on them
and tortured them to death. The doctors,
instead of checking these barbarities, encouraged
them ; and from time to time invented new ones.
They it was who introduced the " circular swing "
and " bath of surprise." One torture, diabolically
devised, was to lower the patient into a well,
chain him there, and allow the water to rise
gradually to his mouth in order to give a shock
to his nerves. An unhappy man named Norris

208

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Lunatic Asylums.

was in England, at the so-called Hospital of
Bethlem, fixed to the wall by the neck and waist
so that he could not move a foot or raise his arms ;
and, thus attached, he remained for twelve years.
" At an epoch not far distant from our own,"
says Dr. Linas in a paper on lunatic asylums
in France, " demented persons were, with the
exception of those who found an asylum in
the monasteries, treated as vagabonds and even
criminals." The first attempts to improve the condition of
the unhappy lunatic were made by Dr. Tenon,
and by a member of the Constituent Assembly,
M. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, in 1791. A year

It was not, however, until 1838 that Charenton
became a lunatic asylum and nothing else.
Bicetre and La Salpetriere remained hybrid
institutions, half hospitals, half asylums ; recep
tacles alike for madness and old age. The in
mates of Charenton are treated with the greatest
kindness. Cases of insubordination must of course
be dealt with ; and they are treated by the with
drawal of some favour or (less humanely, as it
would seem to the lay reader) by the shower-
bath. A strait-jacket, with long sewn-up sleeves,
is the only means of coercion employed with
violent and dangerous madmen, so as to preserve
them against the excesses of their own fury and

FACADE OF THE MAIN BUILDINGS, SALPETRIERE.

later Pinel, equally estimable for his philan
thropic and for his scientific spirit, introduced
at Bicetre the reforms which, in common with the
two excellent men before named, he had long been
meditating. For the First Revolution, then, with
all its mad excesses, must be claimed the honour
of having introduced in modern times the humane
treatment ofthe insane. The Revolution, indeed,
opened not only a " career to talent," but a path
to very useful reform. The mad patients were
now taken from the Hotel Dieu and other hos
pitals to be placed at Charenton, Bicetre, and La
Salpetriere (1802-1807). From that time these
asylums, placed under the direction of eminent
medical men, changed their character. The
employment of force or coercion with lunacy was
at an end ; and the new establishments, thanks
to the intelligence and zeal of Esquirol, Ferrus,
and their disciples, gained the highest reputa
tion throughout Europe. The study of mental
maladies was now for the first time followed.

to render it impossible for them to injure their
companions. The wards of the unruly patients —
broad and lofty, well lighted, well ventilated, with
waxed floors — present no resemblance whatever
to the cages of former days.
All patients without exception, peaceful or un
ruly, are in the enjoyment of fresh air, sunlight,
space, and as much liberty as can be prudently
allowed them. They correspond with their
relatives and receive visits from their family and
their friends. Once a month they are officially
visited by a magistrate, whose duty it is to
question them and listen to their complaints.
For the men there are workshops of all kinds,
for the women workrooms. The dormitories are
well kept, the dining rooms are exquisitely clean,
and for the recreation of the patients there are
billiard rooms, drawing rooms, and libraries.
Music, too, and drawing may be cultivated.
During the summer there are excursions to the
country, during the winter evening parties,

and Mixed Institutions.]

THE SALPETRIERE.

209

concerts, and dramatic representations. Among
the inmates persons of every age, every rank,
and every profession are to be found : some of
them monomaniacs, harmless dreamers after an
impossible chimera or vain hope ; or it may be
obstinately attached to some wild idea which they
cannot refer to without expressions of violence.
The liberal professions are largely represented at
Charenton, and, due numerical pro
portion being observed, furnish more
lunatics than any other class. " Paris,"
says Dr. Linas, " the great rendezvous
of every kind of ambition, every kind of
vanity, every presumption, every passion,
every pleasure, and every form of misery,
furnishes a larger contingent than any
other part of France." While the pro
portion of lunatics for the other de
partments is one to from 1,500 to 2,000
inhabitants, it is in the ratio of one
to 500 for the department of the Seine.
In 1 80 1 this department had 946 lunatics
to support, in 1845 2,595, in 1851 3,060,
and in 1865 4,388. Happily, however,
largely as the numbers will be seen to
have swelled, a great many cures are
yearly effected. In the year last-named
389 patients (154 men and 224 women)
were discharged sane from Bicetre and
the Salpetriere.
There are two modes of admission
to these asylums. The Prefect of the
Seine authorises the admission of harm
less patients on the demand of those
patients' friends ; but lunatics who are
considered dangerous to the community
— and these form by far the greater
proportion — are shut up by order of the
Prefect of Police.
Let us take a leisurely glance at the
two great French lunatic asylums. To
begin with La Salpetriere. It is situated
on the 13th arrondissement, almost at
the entrance to the Boulevard de l'Hopital,
and not far from the Jardin des Plantes and
the Bridge of Austerlitz. On the pediment
of its portal is this inscription : " Hospital for
old age — Women." Such has been the official
title of the institution since 1823, but the more
ancient and popular name, that of La Salpetriere,
has prevailed in common use.
At the spot which is occupied by this mad
house there stood in the reign of Louis XIII. a
little arsenal called La Salpetriere, on account of
the saltpetre which was made within its walls.
38

In 1656 appeared an edict of Louis XIV. ordering
the establishment at this point of a general
hospital for the " poor mendicants of the town
and suburbs of Paris." Thanks to the royal
munificence, to the liberality and generous co
operation of Cardinal Mazarin, of the Duchess
d'Aiguillon, and several notable citizens, to the
pious zeal of Vincent de Paul, and to the

¦%4-fe

^.--.f^fe^S^^g^^^g^-^^Sii-gj

THE MAZARIN WARD, SALPETRIERE.
active direction of the architects Levau, Bruant,
Duval, and Le Muet, the various buildings of
the arsenal were happily converted into a re
treat for the poor, two new blocks, those
of Mazarin and St. Claire, being added to the
original structures. From the 7th to the 13th of
May, 1657, the hospital opened its doors to 628
poor women, blind, mad, and imbecile, infirm,
invalid, deaf, or otherwise afflicted, as well as to
192 children of from two to seven years of age,
who, born in many cases out of wedlock, had
been exposed and abandoned.

2IO

PARIS, OLD AND NEW

[Lunatic A.yiums

In i66q the church was built bv the king's
orders. Towards 1684 was constructed in the
centre of the hospital the prison of La Force,
where women of irregular life were incarcerated.
In 1756 the Marchioness de Lassay caused to be
constructed at her own expense the superb
building which bears her name, and which forms
a pendant to that of Mazarin.
At the period last mentioned La Salpetriere
still contained, as at its origin, the most strangely
mixed population that could be conceived. At the
end of the last century, and more particularly at
the beginning of the present, efforts were made
to transform this " frightful sewer," as Camus
called it. From 1801 to 1804 La Force was
evacuated. Its feminine inhabitants transferred
to Lourcine, the children went to the Orphelins ;
the insane were separated from the infirm and
placed in a special quarter. From 1815 to 1823,
in virtue of a very strong report drawn up by
M. de Pastoret, the dungeons of La Salpetriere
were destroyed, the sanitation improved, the
dormitories enlarged and well ventilated, the
furniture renewed, and the diet improved.
Finally, as if to efface all memory of the past,
the asylum received the name of Hospital for
Old Age. Other subsequent ameliorations,
notably those effected in 1836, 1845, 1848, and
1 85 1, have contributed to render La Salpetriere
what it certainly is in the present day — the finest
institution of the kind in France.
The total population of the establishment is
no less than 5,000, comprising as it does some
800 employes, 1,500 lunatics, and nearly 3,600
patients, old or infirm. The annual expenses
amount to nearly two million francs. Within the
precincts of La Salpetriere the visitor might fancy
himself in a small town. There is a church, a
letter box, a tobacco shop, a butcher's shop, ware
houses, wash-houses, and a market, or rather
bazaar, where all sorts of goods are retailed, such
as fruit, vegetables, sweetmeats, and pastry ;
there are streets named after the establishments
to which they lead — Laundry Street, Kitchen
Street, Church Street, and so on ; there are large
promenades and pretty gardens, together with
courts, squares, and " places " bearing the illus
trious name of a founder, a benefactress, a
physician, or a saint immortalised by charity.
This vast community of indigence and mad
ness is under the control of the general
administration of Public Assistance. The local
management is in the hands of a director,
assisted by a steward and eleven clerks. The
medical officers are seven in number, five for the

insane and two for the infirm ; not to mention
a surgeon, a dispensing chemist, and other
medical assistants. The religious services are
conducted according both to the Catholic and the
Protestant ritual. The staff of female attendants
is divided up into superintendents, under-super-
intendents, household servants, etc. The super
intendents and under-superintendents wear a
black uniform, severe but in good taste. They
are women carefully chosen, able, devoted, of
tried zeal, benevolent character, and not in
frequently of mental culture.
Before the principal entrance to La Sal
petriere, looking towards the Boulevard de
l'Hopital, is a more or less triangular open space,
which, almost deserted during five days of the
week, is animated and noisy like a fair even-
Thursday and Sunday between the hours of
twelve and four ; for the public is then admitted
to see the inmates, and the wandering dealers
have assembled in order to sell presents for the
unfortunate patients. The two porters of the
establishment have on these days enough to do,
since the number 6f visitors averages from 1,200
to 3,000.
Before entering the hospital the church is
worthy of observation. Louis XIV. ordered it
to be built in December, i66q, and it was con
structed by the celebrated architect, Levau. It
is of octagonal form, and like the ancient basilicas,
of which the model is preserved by the Greek
Church in Russia and elsewhere, it is sur
mounted by five cupolas : a central one, beneath
which stands the high altar, and four lateral ones
covering an equal number of chapels.
Under the portico are two allegorical groups
by the famous sculptor, Etex. The interior of
the church is adorned with ancient organs,
statues of Christ and of the twelve apostles, and
a number of pictures belonging to the eighteenth
century, some of which should not hastily be
passed by. Every Sunday nearly three hundred
demented women assist with the greatest devo
tion at the celebration of mass. On the build
ings and wings to the right and left of the
church are engraved the names of the most
illustrious and most generous benefactors of the
Salpetriere : Mazarin, Bellievre, Fouquet, and
Lassay. Administratively and medically the Salpetriere
is divided into five compartments, which are sub
divided into quarters or sections. The old
people, the incurables, the infirm, form three
separate classes. The principal wards bear the
names of Mazarin, Lassay, St. Jacques, St. Leon,

and Mixed Institutions.

THE SALPETRIERE.

211

and Ste. Claire. There are smaller wards which
are dedicated to the Virgin, to St. Vincent de
Paul, the guardian angel, and St. Magdalen.
The patients are allowed three meals a day :
between seven and eight a breakfast of bread
and milk ; between eleven and twelve, soup and
boiled beef ; between four and five, a plate of
vegetables and then dessert. Those who are well
enough, to the number of 850, take their meals
in the refectory ; the others, upwards of 1,700,
are served in the dormitories. The annual
mortality among the indigent inmates averages
23 per cent. At the time Dr. Linas wrote his
paper on La Salpetriere there were several
examples of longevity in the institution, in
cluding a certain Madame Mercier, who was well
and lively at 104.
The department which occupies the southern
extremity of La Salpetriere is the one specially
devoted to lunatics. Placed at the head of the
establishment in 1795, Pinel introduced at this
hospital the same beneficent reforms with which
he had already endowed Bicetre. He at once
did away with the chains, fetters, and irons with
which, until his time, the patients were loaded,
and he filled up the subterranean dungeons in
which unhappy women, half naked, had often had
their feet gnawed by rats, or frozen by the cold
of winter. From 181 8 to 1836 Esquirol, pupil,
disciple, and friend of Pinel, introduced new
modifications to soften the lot of the deranged.
Connected with La Salpetriere are many in
teresting traditions. During its earliest days St.
Vincent de Paul ministered constantly to the
patients. Here Bossuet, on the 29th of June,
1657, pronounced his panegyric on St. Paul, one
of the masterpieces of Christian eloquence. Here
was confined in 1788 the mysterious personage
calling herself Madame de Donhault, whose
identity has never been established, and who is
known in judicial annals as the " woman with
out A NAME," Or "THE SHAM MARCHIONESS."
Here, too, was shut up the widow and accomplice
of the famous poisoner, Desrues, massacred with
thirty-five other prisoners on the 4th of Sept
ember, 1792. Two other women who played in
the world two very different parts died at La
Salpetriere : Theroigne de Mericourt, at the age
of fifty-seven, after eighteen years of wild illu
sions, and Mdlle. Quino.
The Salpetriere has been the cradle of import
ant physical and psychological studies in con
nection with brain diseases. These have some
times taken a slightly fantastic form, as when
Esquirol and his nephew, Dr. Miture, endeavoured

to cure madness by the most agreeable remedies —
the former prescribing music, the latter cham
pagne. Rostan and Georget in 1822 made at
La Salpetriere experiments in animal magnetism,
which attracted much attention in the scientific
world, especially as regards two subjects, now
well known in the history of somnabulism : the
young Petronilla, and the widow Brouillard,
nicknamed Braquette, whose clairvoyance was
some years later put to a delicate test by three
mischievous house surgeons, MM. Dechambre,
Diday, and Debrou. A number of interesting
and very important experiments in the new
science (or old science under a new name) of
hypnotism have been made by Charcot and his
pupils at this institution. Here, too, a close
examination and analysis of the cerebral manifest
ations of the insane led some subtle anatomist
to the conclusion that genius was but a form of
insanity. There was one physician of La Sal
petriere, M. Leiut, member of the Chamber of
Deputies, and of the Institute, who, in two
remarkable works, endeavoured to prove that in
the minds of Socrates and of Pascal there was, at
least, a touch of madness. Another learned
physician, attached during the Louis Philippe
period to the Salpetriere, M. Trelat — described
by Dr. Linas as " an excellent man, ex-minister,
and not a member of the Legion of Honour "
— wrote a book, which may be classed with
the one just named, on " Lucid Madness."
Bicetre, an asylum of the same character as
La Salpetriere, derives its name from the familiar
Winchester. On the site of Bicetre, in the
year of grace 1284, Jean de Pontoise, Bishop of
Winchester, built near Paris a manor house,
which, after the name of his see, he called
Winchester, soon corrupted into Wicester,
which, by a further process of corruption, became
successively Bicestre and Bicetre. After going
through various hands, and at last passing into
the king's possession, Bicetre was given in 1656
by Louis XLV. to be turned into a hospital for
old men above the age of seventy, lame and in
curable children, the blind, the paralytic, the
imbecile, and the epileptic, together with women
of dissolute life, who were to be received only on
condition of being corrected, whipped, and fed
on bread and water.
At the period of the Revolution Bicetre was
at once a hospital, an asylum, a prison, and a
house of correction, until, in 179 1, it became at
the same time a madhouse. The lunatics were
at first mixed up with the criminals, or con
fined in horrible dungeons, but at length the

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Lunatic Asylums

intelligent and benevolent Pinel broke their
chains. It was only in 1 812, however, that the
lunatics were placed in a special compartment,
separate at once from the criminals and from the
patients. Bicetre continued to be a prison until
1836, when it became simply a hospital. At

PLACE DE CONSEIL, SALPETRIERE.

present the dungeons ot former days are used
as store-rooms for provisions and drugs.
Bicetre is a Httle beyond the fortifications on
the road to Fontainebleau. An avenue, lined with
eating houses and taverns, so plentiful at all the
Barriers, leads to the principal entrance, which
is surmounted by a royal escutcheon with this
inscription, " Hospice de la Vieillesse — Hommes."
It is inhabited by some 3,000 persons, comprising
more than four hundred officials and servants,
upwards of 1,500 indigent persons, between fifty

and sixty convalescents, 1,830 adult lunatics, and
120 epileptic and idiotic children. The annual
cost of the establishment amounts to one million
and a half francs.
Bicetre, like the Salpetriere, is divided into
departments : the Hospice on the north, where
the aged and infirm of the
city of Paris are gratuitously
received ; and the Asile, on
the south, intended for the
lunatics of the Department of
the Seine. Like the Salpetriere,
it has more the character of a
town than of a single budding.
Without any pretension to
architecture, Bicetre is com
posed of wings, outgrowths,
and " annexes " of various
kinds, added and super-added
to the original and central
structure. The shops attached
to the establishment are now
limited to a grocer's and a
tobacconist's. There was for
merly a shop for the sale
of alcoholic drinks ; but the
intemperance of the cus
tomers caused the adminis
tration to banish for ever its
estimable proprietor. For
similar reasons the strictest
regulations have been affixed
to the door of the still-existing
canteen. The canteen occupies the
superb cellar of the ancient
manor house : an immense
crypt, admirably constructed
and supported by a double rank
of robust pilasters. It was
formerly the Eldorado of the
inhabitants of Bicetre. Officials,
servants, visitors, were in the
canteen from morning till
night, giving themselves up to libations of
Rabelaisian magnitude ; so much so that this,
pauper-tavern brought in, one year with another,
a clear profit of 50,000 francs. To put a stop to
these abuses, both in the interest of morality and
of health, the administration of La Salpetriere,
instead of letting out the canteen to enterprising
speculators, assumed the entire direction of it,
and introduced stringent regulations, by which
the canteen is only open for two hours in the
morning and two hours in the evening. No

ami Mixed Institutions,]

BICETRE.

213

one, moreover, must enter it more than once in
twenty-four hours, when the order must be
limited to thirty centilitres (about £ of a quart)
of wine, or five centilitres of brandy. Com
plaints, threats, and even partial revolt were the
consequences of this severe edict ; but it had to
be observed.
For the rest, the inhabitants of Bicetre, if they
are really thirsty, have excellent water within

water is discharged into an immense reservoir,
, which received the major part of its contents
from the well, and the remainder from the
Seine. Close to the great well are the workshops,
where, among other products, some seven
thousand pairs of boots and shoes are turned out
every year. All the able-bodied inmates must
do work of some kind, for which they are

THE PARK, SALPETRIERE.

reach. The great well, said to be the finest in
the world, is one of the curiosities of the. place.
The depth of the well is equal to the height of
the towers of Notre Dame. Its walls are faced
with masonry to a depth of some 150 feet, and
the bottom is reached by a staircase of 220
steps. The mouth is enclosed by an immense
cage, intended to preserve the beholder from the
vertiginous attractions of its depth. The three
pumps connected with the well used formerly
to be worked day and night by prisoners,
and, when they were tired out, by lunatics.
For the last thirty years, however, the pump
ing has been done by a steam engine. The

remunerated at the rate of from ten to seventy
centimes a day.
The library, founded in i860, contains 2,500
volumes, and is open twice a day.
The inmates of Bicetre come from all classes :
workmen, soldiers, servants, artists, writers,
professors, inventors, shopkeepers, government
clerks — whom imprudence, misconduct, or mis
fortune has reduced to poverty. This mixed
population is said to be difficult to rule, and in
former days it frequently showed insubordina
tion, and even rose in insurrection against the
officials of the place. The rising of 1837 was
caused by the limitations in connection with

2I4

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Lunatic Asylums

drink, already mentioned ; that of 1841 by the
suppressien of the right to dine alone ; that of
1848 by the abolition of liberty to go out every
day at any hour without permission. To prevent
the return of any such disturbances an adminis
trative order was issued in 1850, instituting the
following penalties against particular offences :
stoppage of wine, withdrawal of leave to go out,
imprisonment and expulsion from the asylum.
It may be seen from the above that it is not
alone in the mad division of the hospital that
lunatics are to be found.
The lunatic department at Bicetre is divided
into three sections ; the first and second being
assigned to adult lunatics, the third to epileptics
and idiots. The study in which peaceable
lunatics assemble to read, write, or draw is
interesting, if only for the objects of art which
adorn it : busts, statues, water-colours, engrav
ings, sepias, and pen-and-ink drawings, some by
unknown artists, others by artists of celebrity —
many of them inmates, for a while, at least, of
the asylum. In the time of Dr. Linas (some
twenty years ago) there was a painter in the
lunatic wards of Bicetre, a former priest, known
in the house as "Monsieur L'Abbe," who, if he
had not gone mad, would, in the opinion of Dr.
Linas, have earned renown. " Nothing," says
the doctor, " is more curious than his symbolical
picture of ' Life ' : a vast composition, in which
are represented, with wonderful harmony of
ensemble, and a prodigious fecundity of detail, all
the splendour and all the misery, all the heights
and all the depths, all the virtues and all the
vices, all the grandeurs and all the infamies, all
the beauty and all the turpitude, of human
existence from the cradle to the grave."
The ward for epileptic and idiotic children is
the saddest of all, by its arrangement and
general exterior, as well as by the condition of
the patients. These are well cared for. Un
happy creatures, who were formerly regarded as
the dregs of humanity, are now made the object
of the most devoted solicitude. Two physicians,
of heart as well as of talent, were the first to
show that idiocy has its degrees, and is not
absolutely refractory to intellectual culture. At
their suggestion a school for idiots was instituted
at Bicetre in 1842, and since then untiring
endeavour has been made to further their educa
tion. They are taught to speak, to read, to
sing. Their irregular attitudes and gestures are
corrected, and their muscular system is developed
by marching, running, dancing, fencing, digging,
and gymnastics of every kind. Their senses are

directed, their bad instincts reformed, and in
time, according to their aptitude, they are made
cobblers, carpenters, and so on. Many children
admitted as idiots leave the asylum every year
to exercise these trades, and live by their work.
Criminal lunatics, condemned by a verdict, or
dangerous ones, certified as such, are kept apart
in a building called La Surete. Within this
sinister rotunda the patients are kept in cells, and
subjected night and day to the strictest surveil
lance. The ordinary occupation of these
dangerous lunatics is the harmless one of cutting
out artificial flowers. Their occasional fits of
violence are dealt with only by the application
of the strait -jacket.
Many of the officials at Bicetre look upon the
place not only as a home, but as a native
land. Born at Bicetre of parents who were
preceded at the same institution by their own
parents, the functionaries form a sort of official
dynasty. Bicetre has had its celebrities, its
dramas, its memorable events. In legendary
times the hill-side of Gentilly was haunted by
Wehr-wolves, and the wizards of the neighbour
hood held sabbath there. Interesting anecdotes
have been told about the captivity of Salomon
de Caux in the dungeons of Bicetre, and the visit
of Marion Delorme to the inventor, supposed by
many of his countrymen to have constructed the
first steam engine. At the time, however, of
Salomon de Caux (15 80-1 630) Bicetre was a
magnificent country house, and neither a prison
nor an asylum. It is certain, on the other hand,
that this establishment has reckoned among its
prisoners or its patients Latude, the unhappy
victim of the hatred of Mme. de Pompadour, who,
after escaping three times from Vincennes and the
Bastille, was three times re-arrested, and finally
delivered, after thirty-five years of captivity, by
the courageous perseverance of Mme. Legros.
The pathetic story of Latude might be told in
connection with more than one of the Paris
prisons, mixed establishments, and lunatic
asylums ; for he was confined successively in the
Bastille, the Castle of Vincennes, at Charenton,
and, finally, at Bicetre. With a genius for
escaping from imprisonment, and an equal
aptitude for getting recaptured, this able,
energetic, yet light-minded, and, in sum, most
unhappy man, provoked his first incarceration
by a too ingenious device which he adopted with
the view of securing the favour of Mme. de
Pompadour, the all-powerful favourite of Louis
XV. He was a lieutenant in the army when the
idea occurred to him of obtaining promotion by

and Mixed Institutions.]

LATUDE'S ADVENTURES.

215

putting himself forward as saviour of Mme.
de Pompadour's life. Sending her a collection
of explosive toys, combined so as to form a sham
infernal machine, he at the same time warned
her not to open any parcel that might be ad
dressed to her, since it had come to his know
ledge that a case was being forwarded, which,
on removal of the lid, would violently explode.
" The gentleman knows too much," thought
Mme. de Pompadour ; and she communicated
her reflection to the Lieutenant of Police, who,
sending for Latude, questioned him, and after
convicting him out of his own mouth of the
imposition he had practised, sent him to the
Bastille. Transferred a few months later to the Castle
of Vincennes, he succeeded on the 25th of June,
1750, in making his escape, and in this very
original manner. Watching until he found one
of the prison gates open, he ran out and, breath
less as he was, asked every sentinel he passed
whether he had seen the Abbe de Saint Sauveur,
whose ministrations were needed for a dying
prisoner. Taking him for one of the officials of
the establishment, the sentinels allowed him to
hurry on — allowed him, that is to say, to make
his escape. Latude was unable to profit by his
liberty,, Convinced that Mme. de Pompadour
would pardon him his thoughtless act, he wrote
her a letter of regret and appeal, related to her
his escape, and confided to her his place of con
cealment. But the selfish marchioness could
not forget that he had caused her a moment's
fright. She sent his letter to the Lieutenant of
Police, and the poor man was once more thrown
into the Bastille, with orders that he was to be
strictly watched. One .day, however, the
governor took pity on him, and to render his
captivity less rigorous gave him a companion.
This companion was another young man who,
strangely enough, had himself given offence to
the all-powerful marchioness by an epigram of
which he had been proved to be the author. His
name was D'Aligre ; and the two prisoners, both
indebted for their captivity to the same tyrannical
woman, made common cause and became fast
friends. Their first thought was naturally to
escape from the Bastille ; and the project having
once been formed, it was easier for two persons to
carry it out than for only one. The preparations
for their escape occupied them not less than two
years. From time to time they cut off faggots
from the blocks of wood furnished to them as
fuel, and at the same time tore strips from their
shirts and their bed-linen. The linen was tied

and twisted into a knotted rope, more than a
hundred yards long. With the wood they made
a ladder to aid them, when they had descended
into the moat, in getting up the parapet on the
other side. All the preparations having been
finished, the two prisoners chose for their escape a
dark wintry night, when there was but little
chance of their movements being observed. They
began by climbing the chimney, one after the
other. Then having fastened the rope, they one
after the other slid down, till, excited, exhausted, •
and with bleeding hands, they reached the moat
in safety. The wooden ladder enabled them,
as their next step, to get over the parapet, which
brought them into the governor's garden. The
wall which surrounded it was too high to climb,
and they had no second ladder with which to
escalade it. Fortunately, in view of some diffi
culty of this kind, they had provided themselves
with a strong wooden stick, and this they made
use of for picking out the mortar, loosening the
bricks, and ultimately making a hole sufficiently
large for them to crawl through. During this
laborious and dangerous work, when the very
noise they were making might at any moment
cause their discovery, day broke, and they had
just time to force themselves through the
aperture they had made, when there were
already signs of movement within the fortress.
Latude and his companion had just taken refuge
in one of the narrow streets surrounding the
Bastille when the alarm-bell sounded. Their
flight had been discovered. D'Aligre, disguised
as a peasant, had no difficulty in passing the
frontier. He was arrested at Brussels. Latude,
informed of the capture of his friend, changed
his route, but was equally unfortunate. Just
when he was on the point of taking ship for
India the police seized him at Amsterdam. He
was brought back to the Bastille.
This time he was cast into a dungeon which
looked out on to the moat, whose fetid
vapours had a very injurious effect upon his
health. To occupy his time and divert his
thoughts, the unhappy prisoner undertook the
taming of rats, and having from the branch of
a bulrush made a primitive flute or flageolet, he
played tunes upon it, an attention to which the
little animals are said to have been by no means
insensible. With marvellous patience and in
genuity, Latude now made tablets with the
crumb of his bread, and wrote upon them with
his blood. He had conceived certain plans of
financial reform and of much-needed ameliora
tion in various departments of state, and these

2l6

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Lunatic Asylums.

he noted down as best he could by the difficult
and painful means just mentioned. Finding
how he was occupied, the governor was seized
with compassion, and in his sympathy supplied
the patient, intelligent prisoner with pen, ink,
and paper. Latude now wrote day and night
on all kinds of political and financial subjects.
His suggestions were transmitted to the different
ministers, less in the hope that they would be
adopted than that their exposure would draw
attention to the writer's wretched state. One

THE VILLAGE, SALPETRIERE.

day Latude succeeded in getting a letter into
the hands of Madame de Pompadour. It was
in these words : — " On the 25th of this month of
September, 1760, I shall have had 100,000
hours of suffering." He thought for a moment
that this pathetic utterance might restore him
to liberty. But he had still 200,000 hours to
count. Permission was now given to him to walk on
the terrace of the tower. He succeeded in
awakening the interest of two young laun
dresses whose garret-windows looked out upon
the walls of the Bastille ; and one fine day in
April, 1764, these girls, by means of large letters
traced on a strip of paper, informed him that
the woman who had persecuted him was dead.
In his usual impulsive way, Latude now wrote
to the Lieutenant of Police, telling him that he

had heard of Mme. de Pompadour's death, and
that he trusted there was now some chance,
after such prolonged tortures, of his being set at
liberty. By way of reply, the lieutenant wished to
know how he (Latude), of all the prisoners,was the
only one that the news had reached. Determined
not to compromise his kind-hearted informants,
Latude refused to explain, upon which the lieu
tenant ordered that he should be watched more
closely than ever. He was now put back in the
dungeon, but soon afterwards, without any reason
being assigned,was trans
ferred to Vincennes.
There a certain liberty
was allowed him. Among
other privileges he was
permitted to walk in
the garden, by which he
soon profited to make
his escape. The young
laundress gave him
asylum, and he now,
with his unvarying im
prudence, wrote to the
Lieutenant of Police to
request an audience.
M. de Sartines took no
notice of the application,
except to have his cor
respondent arrested and
taken back to Vincennes.
Latude now passed
ten continuous years in
prison. He had long
been utterly forgotten
when the minister Males-
herbes, making a scrupu
lous inspection of the state prisons, saw him,
heard the tale of his woes, and promised to
do him justice. Circumvented, however, by the
Lieutenant of Police, who represented Latude
as a dangerous lunatic, he, with the best inten
tions, ordered the poor wretch to be removed to
Charenton. This was still further to aggravate
the captive's condition, for Charenton was by
several degrees worse than Vincennes. Madmen
were then treated in the cruellest fashion, con
fined in narrow cells, and fed on a disgusting
diet. Allowed a little more freedom than the
other inmates, he was shocked to find, in a
fetid little dungeon, loaded with chains and
mercilessly beaten by the warders, his old com
panion D'Aligre, whose reason had not been able
to survive his misfortunes, who scarcely recognised
his friend, and who died shortly afterwards.

and Mixed Institutions.]

LATUDE'S ADVENTURES.

217

The adventures of Latude, however, had now
attracted the attention of the outside world.
He had been able so far to elude the vigilance
of the warders as to get a few letters delivered
to influential personages. An order for his
liberation, almost immediately revoked, was
signed in 1777. The victim had hardly started
out for Montagnac, his native place, when
he was re-arrested — though here again he
probably had his own folly to thank, for he

man whom nothing could tame, whose voice
shook the walls, and whose wit and audacity
were invincible. . . . His body was made of in
destructible iron ; for he could live in the
Bastille, at Vincennes, at Charenton, and even at
the horrible Bicetre, where anyone else would
have perished.
" I am unfortunately obliged to say that in
this effeminate and decayed society there were
not wanting philanthropists, ministers, magis-

THE LUNATICS' QUARTER, SALPETRIERE.

might have got clean away had he not obsti
nately determined to make a stay at Paris, and
delayed his departure with that object. This
time he was shut up at Bicetre with male
factors of the worst class.
The history of Latude is singularly touching
when one reflects that it was for a mere piece of
boyish stupidity that he suffered a weight of
frightful misery, which grew not lighter but
heavier as years dragged on. "Each year," says
Michelet, " his sad position was aggravated. At
length the crevices of his windows were stopped
up and additional bars fitted to his cell. In
Latude," continues this historian, " the imbecile
old tyranny had incarcerated the very man who
could best denounce it— an ardent and terrible

trates, and grand-seigneurs to weep over the
affair ; but none of them did anything. Males-
herbes wept, and Lamoignon and Rohan :
everyone wept hot tears.
" He was on his muck-heap at Bicetre, literally
eaten up with vermin, lodged underground, and
often howling with hunger. He had again
addressed a memoir to some philanthropist, en
trusting it to a turnkey : a woman picked it up.
" This woman was a little milliner, Mme.
Legros, whose name is now unalienably asso
ciated with that of Latude. A high official had
come to visit Bicetre by royal order. He heard
the victim's complaints, which moved his pity,
and requested Latude to draw up a statement of
his grievances. The document was promptly

218

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Lunatic Asylums

prepared, but a drunken messenger failed to
deliver it, and it was picked up by the young
woman in question, who, having read it with
deep compassion, saw what others could not
see, that Latude was no madman, but a victim
of the frightful necessities of a government
obliged to put out of the way a man who could
expose its vices. That was the obstacle which
had frustrated the benevolent desires of Males-
herbes, Lemoignon, and Rohan. Latude was
to remain in captivity simply because he had
already been in captivity too long."
Mme. Legros, however, courageously under
took the work of justice, and nobly persevered
with it in spite of all. During three years she
solicited everybody, notwithstanding the misery
in which she was herself living — for the police
tried to intimidate her, and threatened her with
transportation or imprisonment. She persisted
all the same ; and having lost her little business,
she sacrificed her last resources to the cause
which she had made her own. By dint of inter
viewing the valets of ministers and the femmes-
de-chambre of ladies of high rank, she at length
managed to interest Marie Antoinette herself in
the fate of Latude. Louis XVI. promised to
look into the matter, and had the police docu
ments brought to him — papers, that is to say, pre
pared by those who only desired that the prisoner
might die on their hands. The decision, there
fore, of the monarch was that Latude, as a
very dangerous man, must never be released.
Even this did not discourage Mme. Legros,
who, indeed, had public opinion on her side.
The popular wave was already mounting high ;
it submerged the inflexible Sartines, and, after
him, Lenoir. The Academy gave it a further
impulse by awarding to Mme. Legros, in 1783,
the prize of virtue as recompense for her
heroic perseverance in the cause she had
espoused. All that the minister Breteuil could
obtain from this independent body was that the
grounds on which the prize was awarded should
not be proclaimed. The blow directed against
the police and the court was a heavy one, and
early the next year Latude was finally set free.
He was then on the verge of his sixtieth year ;
he had passed thirty-five years in prison. As
sole indemnity after so much suffering, he
was granted a pension of 400 francs " in con
sideration of his lost patrimony," as the official
order phrased it ; and even this was conditional
upon his quitting Paris to live in his native
province. Mme. Legros, by dint of tact and
of petitions, got this sentence of exile re

voked, and Latude came to live in her house at
Paris. When the Revolution broke out he
ardently embraced its principles, and in 1793,
attacking the heirs of Mme. de Pompadour,
he obtained against them from the Commune a
condemnation to pay him an indemnity of
60,000 francs, though he never touched
more than a sixth of this sum. A public sub
scription had, moreover, placed him beyond the
danger of want. He died in obscurity in
1805. "Mme. Legros," says Michelet, "did not
see the destruction of the Bastille. She died a
little before. But it was she, none the less, who
had the glory of destroying it. It was she who
filled the popular mind with hatred and horror
of this arbitrary prison which had received so
many martyrs of Faith and Thought. The
weak hand of a poor woman pulled down, in
reality, that high fortress, threw to the ground
its massive stones, tore down its iron gratings,
and razed its towers."
So much, then, for the celebrated Latude
and his heroic deliverer. Among other notable
inmates of Bicetre may be mentioned the
accomplice and denouncer of Cartouche, who
lived forty-three years in a dungeon ; the author
of " Justine " — the Marquis de Sade — a perfect
example of erotic madness ; and the four
sergeants of La Rochelle, those heroic champions
of liberty whom the devotion of two of the
house-surgeons would have saved but for the
treachery of the chaplain.
The story of the four sergeants of La Rochelle,
so well known in France, and so often referred
to by contemporary French writers, is so little
known in England that it may here with pro
priety be told ; for it was at La Salpetriere that
the last act, or last but one, of this tragedy was
played. In the year 1821, under the Restoration, John
Francois Louis Leclerc Bories, sergeant-major in
the 45th regiment of the line, was in garrison at
Paris when he was initiated into the society of
the Charbonniers, corresponding to that of the
Carbonari in Italy. The association was a
formidable conspiracy of Liberals and Bonapart-
ists against the monarchy of the Bourbons, and
it was largely recruited from the ranks. Bories
undertook to gain adherents among his com
rades, and he initiated successively a number of
non-commissioned officers and soldiers. In
January, 1822, the 45th regiment was moved
from Paris to La Rochelle. Before quitting the
capital Bories was placed in relations with

and Mixed Institutions.] THE FOUR SERGEANTS OF' LA ROCHELLE.

219

La Fayette, and received from him the halves
of several cards, the missing portions to be
presented to him on the line of march by
members of the secret society, who would at the
same time communicate to him the orders of the
directing committee. Movements were being
prepared at Nantes and at Saumur, and the
chiefs of the Charbonniers wished, if necessary,
to utilise the passage of the regiment through
the departments which were ready to rise.
Bories had several interviews along the line of
march, and some imprudent words were spoken.
But no order to take up arms was transmitted,
and the 45th afrived at La Rochelle on the 14th
of February without any incident of importance
having taken place. By a strange fatality Bories
had been placed under escort at Orleans for
having replied to the provocations of the Swiss
soldiers stationed in this town ; and on reaching
La Rochelle he was confined in the guard-house,
and afterwards, in consequence of some suspicious
circumstances, transferred to the , prison of
Nantes. The post of Bories in connection with
the secret society was now filled by a less capable
man, Sergeant-Major Pomier ; and at this very
moment an unsuccessful attempt was made
against Saumur, under the direction of General
Berton. Pursued from all sides, Berton made
his way*" stealthily to La Rochelle, determined to
try his fortune once more from what he con
sidered a more favourable point. He placed
himself in communication with Pomier and
other chiefs. But nothing was decided, except
that they must all hold themselves in readiness
for action. A few days afterwards all the members
of the society serving in the 45th regiment were,
one after another, arrested. The authorities had
got wind of what was going on, and Goubin,
Pomier, Goupillon, and a few others, interro
gated and pressed by General Despinois, made
complete revelations, Bories meanwhile remain
ing firm and impenetrable.
Five months afterwards the accused were
brought before the tribunal of the Seine. There
were twenty -five of them, some in the civil, some
in the military service ; and they were charged
either with belonging to the conspiracy or with
not revealing what they knew about it. No
conspiracy, in the strict legal sense of the word,
existed ; though the undetermined aim of the
association was sooner or later to take up arms.
The only offence of which the prisoners could be
•justly accused was that of belonging to a secret
society. The Government prosecutor demanded,
however, sentence of death against twelve of the

accused. Among the advocates for the defence
were men, with Chaix-d'Est-Anges, Mocquart,
and others of the same mark, who afterwards
reached the highest positions, and who were all
at this time Carbonari and sworn enemies of
the Bourbons. At the end of a trial which had
lasted a fortnight the president of the court asked
each of the accused if he had anything to add
to his defence. Bories, whose self-possession had
never for one moment left him, rose and said
with much dignity :
" Gentlemen of the jury, the Advocate-
General, while declaring that the most eloquent
oratory in the world would be powerless to save
me from public vengeance, has pointed to me as
the chief criminal. Well, I accept this position,
and shall deem myself happy if by bringing my
head to the scaffold I can obtain the acquittal
of all my comrades."
He was condemned to death, together with
three other sergeants — Goubin, Raoulx, and
Pomier. Goupillon was let off as informer.
Seven others were condemned to imprisonment
for different periods, while thirteen more were
acquitted. There were groans and sobs in
court when the capital sentence was pronounced,
and public opinion pronounced itself in the
strongest manner in favour of the unfortunate
young men, against neither of whom any overt
act was charged. But the Government of Louis
XVIII. was implacable ; and on the 21st of Sep
tember, 1822, the scaffold was erected on the
Place de Greve. The four sergeants submitted
to their fate with heroic calmness, and bent their
heads beneath the knife of the guillotine amid
cries of " Vive la Liberte ! "
The same evening, to the disgust of everyone,
there was a grand party at the Tuileries.
Serious attempts had been made by the Car
bonari to save the unhappy victims. Through
the intermediary of two famous painters — Ary
Scheffer and Horace Vernet, assisted by Colonel
Fauvier and other leaders of the party, the
director of Bicetre had been gained over. He
consented to aid the escape of the four sergeants
who were confined in his establishment — at that
time half prison, half asylum — on consideration of
receiving 70,000 francs, estimated as the capital
ised value of his appointment. Unfortunately,
however, he confided the affair to the chaplain
of the prison, whom he wished, through friend
ship and affection, to take with his own family to
foreign parts. The priest rightly or wrongly
felt it to be his duty to give notice to the
Prefect of Police, and just as the projected

220

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Lunatic Asylums

escape was on the point of being effected a
number of police agents appeared. They
began by arresting M. Margue, one of the sur
geons at Bicetre, and they at the same time

Carbonari, with arms concealed beneath their
clothes, stationed themselves at different points,
ready to attack the prisoner's escort. Mean
while the central committee, doubting the

THE CHAPEL, SALPETRIERE.

seized 10,000 francs in gold. But an energetic
man, the house-surgeon, Guillie-Latouche,
managed to get away with the rest of the
sum — 60,000 francs — in bank notes, and entering
Paris at daybreak, placed the money in the
hands of the members of the committee.
Other attempts were not more successful, and
on the day fixed for the execution a number of

success of the enterprise so boldly conceived,
could not decide to order an attack on the forces
drawn up by the military authorities. Nothing
could be done. The execution was allowed to
take place in the midst of general indignation.
One of the members of the central committee,
Dr. Ulysse Tre'lat, afterwards minister and
representative of the people, has traced the

and Mixed Institutions.]

BORIES.

221

following portrait of Bories in his "Esquisse de
la Charbonnerie " : —
" Bories was a young man of twenty-six,
who, beneath an exterior full of softness and
grace, concealed the noblest and firmest heart.
He had nothing of the soldier but his frankness
and his courage, without any of the faults gen
erally produced by the idleness of barrack life.
His morals were pure, his tastes simple, and his
Ufe retired. He gave up the greater part of his
time to reading. Exempt from ambition, his
most ardent wish was to die at the moment of
the victory of the people ; and one day he was

for the loss of Bories, to whom in his youth she
was engaged to be married. From the cart in
which, with his three comrades, he was driven to
the scaffold, "he had sought to console the young-
girl in her despair by throwing her a bouquet,
which she kept for ever afterwards. She was
frequently seen at the tomb of the four sergeants
in the cemetery of Montparnasse ; and she was at
last buried near the grave of her lover towards
the end of 1864, when the legendary bouquet
was placed with her in the coffin.
It has been said that Bicetre has, during
the present century, been the scene of several

•;>»?i\ /¦»... » ,;»,-},iA mnja

THE BICETRE, 17IO. (After Gueroult.)

quite annoyed at someone's proposing to take
him to General La Fayette. It seemed to him that
this offer implied some doubt as to his sincerity,
as well as an intention to stimulate his ardour
by the authority of a great name."
At Villefranche, Bories's birthplace, there was
a general understanding among the inhabitants
to conceal his tragic end from his old parents.
On their expressing astonishment at not receiv
ing news from their son, they were informed
that his regiment had gone to the colonies.
Another touching story, which has all the
character of a legend, is told in connection with
the unfortunate Bories. Until the year 1864 a
broken-down old woman, supporting herself with
a stick and carrying a bunch of faded flowers,
was a familiar figure on the left bank of the
Seine. For forty years she had been grieving

disturbances. In the last century it witnessed
serious insurrections. In 1756 the prisoners
rose against the soldiers of the guard, when two
archers and fourteen insurgents were killed. In
1774 a spy found among the prisoners was cruci
fied. In September, 1792, Bicetre made a deter
mined resistance to the bands of slaughterers
who arrived to massacre the inmates. Officials,
prisoners, lunatics, all defended themselves with
wonderful courage. Each building was made
the object of a separate siege. Once masters of
the place the assassins spared no one. There
was for three nights and three days a frightful
carnage, which even the intervention of Pethion
could not stop.
The apologists — not merely of the Revolu
tion, which, as a whole, brought immeasurable
benefit to the French people, but even of the

222

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Lunatic Asylums

crimes which accompanied it — have tried to justify
the massacres committed in the prisons of Paris
by bands of fanatical ruffians, who had somehow
persuaded themselves that the persons confined
were all aristocrats or priests, and that in
slaughtering these enemies of society it mattered
but little if a few inoffensive persons were also
put to death. The allied German powers who
were marching upon Paris, and whose outposts
were gradually approaching the capital, had
already taken the fortress of Verdun, and were
prepared, if they continued their successful
campaign, to inflict terrible vengeance on the
Revolutionists and on the French nation gen
erally. A counter-revolutionary movement had
suddenly set in among the Royalist proprietors
and the loyal, if superstitious, peasants of
Brittany and La Vendee. With the exaggera
tion sure to manifest itself at moments of great
popular excitement, it was declared that the
enemy was at the gates of Paris ; and it was
proclaimed among the fanatics of the Revolu
tion that in a few hours the nobles and ecclesi
astics thrown into prison, in some cases with a
view to trial, in others only as a precautionary
measure, would soon be at liberty and ready to
take part in the slaughter of the Republicans.
The people had been summoned by Danton to
the Champ de Mars in order to be enrolled
for service against the enemy. Alarm-bells
were sounded, cannons were fired, and a general
war-cry resounded through Paris. " The tocsin,"
says a journal of the period, " was heard on all
sides. Everyone ran to take up arms. Every
one cried out, ' To the enemy ! ' But the enemy
is not in the field alone. The enemy is at Paris,
as well as around Verdun. Our foes are in the
Paris prisons. Shall we leave our women, our
children, our aged persons, to the mercy of these
wretches ? Let us hurry to the prisons. Let us
exterminate these monsters, who will profit by
our absence with the army to murder our wives
and our children, to liberate Louis XVI. from his
tower, and to rally the Royalist battalions." This
terrible cry was at once taken up in a unanimous,
universal manner throughout the streets and
public places, at all public meetings, and finally
in the National Assembly itself.
Apart from the purely spontaneous, impulsive
movement, meetings were held after formal
deliberations, and it was decided by a resolution
that the aristocrats and priests confined in the
prisons must be put to death.
To return, however, to Bicetre, which is
associated in more than one way with the

Revolution and with the Reign of Terror. In
a little courtyard adjoining the amphitheatre of
Bicetre, on the 15th of April, 1792, was tried for
the first time on a corpse (previous experiments
had been made with live animals) the " decapi
tating machine," whose invention, wrongly
attributed to Dr. Guillotin, belongs really to Dr.
Louis, perpetual secretary of the Royal Society
of Surgery : whence the name of " Louisette "
given in the first instance to the guillotine.
Some time afterwards, towards the end of
1792, Bicetre, which had just been the theatre of
such tragic scenes, had the glory of seeing
accomplished within its walls the reforms in the
treatment of lunacy introduced by Pinel. This
excellent man, chief physician at Bicetre, had
begged the Commune of Paris for authority to
unchain the violent lunatics. The next day the
fanatical Couthon went to Bicetre to make sure
that Pinel was " not concealing the enemies of
the people among his madmen." Astounded and
somewhat frightened by the confused shrieking
and howling ofthe maniacs, and by the rattling of
their chains, the surly Jacobin turned to Pinel
and said to him : " Why, you must be mad
yourself, citizen, to think of unchaining such
animals." " I am convinced," replied Pinel, " that these
lunatics are only so intractable because they are
deprived of air and liberty."
" Well, do what you like," cried Couthon, as
he went away ; " do what you like : I abandon
them to you."
Pinel at once entered the cage of the most
terrible of his madmen : an English captain who
had been shut up for forty years, and who, a few
days previously, had killed one of the keepers
with a blow from his fetters. Full of faith,
the physician unlocked his irons ; and the mad
man becoming at once gentle and calm, was,
during the two years he had still to live, Pinel's
most useful assistant. Pinel restored successively
to liberty an old officer who, in a moment of
frenzy, had stabbed one of his own children ; a
young poet mad from love, who, after leaving
Bicetre, perished on the scaffold ; a soldier
formerly in the Royal Guard ; Chevinge, an
athlete, the terror of his keepers, who soon
afterwards gave his liberator a striking proof of
gratitude by snatching him from a band of
fanatics at the very moment when they were
about to hang him ; and fifty others, of all
conditions and all countries, who, as soon as
they were treated with humanity, gave up their
habits of violence.

and Mixed Institutions.]

CHARENTON.

223

Finally, it may be mentioned that in the old
dungeons of Bicetre Victor Hugo lays the scene
of his " Dernier Jour d'un Condamne."
It has been seen that neither at Bicetre nor at
La Salpetriere are lunatics alone confined. The
one recognised madhouse in or near Paris, to
which those whose ideas or actions excite the
disapproval of their friends are told familiarly
to go — as, in England, they would be sent to
Hanwell — is Charenton. The Maison de Charen
ton, situated at about four miles south-east of
Paris, on the road to Lyons, close to the con
fluence of the Seine and the Marne, dates from
the year 1 64 1, when Sebastien Leblanc, coun
sellor of the king and minister of war, presented
it ready furnished to the brothers of La Charite,
or of St. Jean de Dieu. A few years after their
installation in the house presented to them, the
brothers of La Charite" arranged to receive mad
men and epileptic patients ; when, like all the
madhouses of the time, Charenton became a
house of detention, where were confined by
lettres de cachet prisoners of state, prodigals,
libertines, and others who were thought worthy
of a milder treatment than they would receive in
the Bastille or at Vincennes. In the eighteenth
century, and up to the time of the Revolution,
Charenton had accommodation for nearly 100
lunatics, each of whom had his separate room.
The attendance was in the hands of ten
religious persons and fifty-two servants. A few
years after the Revolution, both monastery and
hospital were suppressed, and the monks, to
gether with the lunatics under their charge,
dispersed. Soon afterwards, however, the
Directory issued a decree, which forms the legal
basis of the hospital of Charenton as it now
exists. "Refuge for the Mad" was the title
given to it ; and it was now placed under the
immediate direction of the Minister of the
Interior. Insane persons of both sexes were to
be admitted ; the indigent ones gratuitously,
and others at a fixed rate of payment. The
Abbe" de Coulmier, a former member of the
Constituent Assembly, was named director of
the establishment ; and, as if in compensation
for the injury done to the establishment by its
sudden dispersion, it had additional land assigned
to it. The building could now be enlarged, and
a special division was erected for the women.
M. de Coulmier conducted the house in the
most despotic manner ; and on the death of the
principal surgeon, M. Gastaldi, in 1805, he
assumed such powers in the medical department
that the School of Medicine wss, obliged to

intervene, when the medical direction was
placed in the hands of Dr. Royer-Collard, brother
of the celebrated orator of the same name.
With all his tyranny, M. de Coulmier had many
agreeable ways. Remembering the fury of Saul,
calmed by the harp of the youthful David,
and the quieting of savage animals by the lyre
of Orpheus, the director, carried away by his
artistic feeling, determined to apply a similar
treatment to the demented ones of Charenton.
To carry out his idea he introduced dancing,
dramatic performances, fireworks, and even
ballets, with the assistance of some of the
choregraphic celebrities of the epoch. The
imprisoned Marquis de Sade, known by books
that no decent person can read, was the organiser
of these entertainments, which were attended
by all Paris.
To the joyous reign of M. de Coulmier
succeeded, in 1814, the severe administration of
Roulhac du Maupas. No more singing and
dancing now ! Comedies and ballets gave place
to useful reforms, and the substitution of a
new medical organisation for the former
choregraphic system. Royer-Collard had sup
pressed the iron girdles, the fetters, the hand
cuffs, and the collars, by which the ungovernable
madmen used to be restrained, and the melan
choly ones driven to suicide. Esquirol did
away with the human figures in wicker-work, in
which violent maniacs used sometimes to be
enclosed. The new programme met with the
full approbation of the Government. A credit
of 2,720,000 francs was voted by the Chamber of
Deputies in July, 1838 ; and soon afterwards
M. de Montalivet, then Minister of the In
terior, laid with due solemnity the first stone
of the new edifice. The memory of this
important ceremony is consecrated by an in
scription placed beneath the vestibule of the
principal building.
At the back of the building is the wood of
Vincennes, from which it is separated only by a
wall, with a gate for the inmates of the asylum.
In front the landscape comprises the immense
and fertile plain of Maisons Alfort, Ivry, and
Choisy-le-Roi. The panorama is one of the
finest offered by the environs of Paris. The
capricious meanderings of the Marne, with its
green banks and its flower-clad islands, the
picturesque hill of Alfort, the interesting domain
of Charentonneau ; villages sparkling beneath
the sun in the midst of fields and meadows : on
the horizon the smiling slopes of Saint-Maur,
Creteil, Champigny, Chenevieres, and Boissy-

224

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Lunatic Asylums

Saint-Leger ; the forest of Senart, Villeneuve-St.-
Georges — which, deserted by its inhabitants,
was occupied, during the last war, in every
house and every room by German troops, who
left behind them sad proofs of their destruc-
tiveness ; and, finally, the majestic course of
the Seine, and its union with the Marne. The
new establishment has been so built that from

hydropathic establishment has been added to
the asylum, together with workshops for the
occupation and amusement of the convalescent.
On the 2nd of February, 1866, the Empress
paid a visit to Charenton, and took the institu
tion under her special patronage. She began by
proposing the construction of a department for
women on the same system and the same scale as
the well-organised department for
men; and, adopting the Empress's
idea, the legislative body voted an
important sum towards carrying
it out.Charenton receives about 600
patients, 300 men and 300

DINNER TIME AT BICETRE.

nearly every room the patients
can gladden their eyes and re
fresh their minds by contem
plating the enchanting scenery.
The patients are grouped together, not with
reference to their social rank, but according to
the medical peculiarities of each particular case.
In the first division are patients who have
reached the convalescent stage, and who are
quiet. In the second are the lunatics who
know how to behave themselves, but are still
subject to fits of insanity. The third class con
sists of incurable lunatics, who are nevertheless
capable of obeying orders. The fourth is re
served for incurable lunatics, difficult to govern ;
the fifth for paralytic lunatics; the sixth for
lunatics who have been attacked by some
ordinary malady ; the seventh for epileptic
patients ; and the eighth for violent uncontrol-
able maniacs.
During the last twenty or thirty years a

ENTRANCE TO BICETRE.

women ; but the number would be much larger
were there sufficient accommodation. The
terms for the paying patients are 1,500 francs
for the first class, 1,200 for the second, and
900 for the third, while for those who have a
separate room 900 francs extra, as the wages 01
a servant, are charged. Needless to add that
the patients, paying or non-paying, are all on an
equality as regards medical treatment. The
quality and variety of the cooking vary with the
different classes. The chief elements of the
population of Charenton are furnished by officials
and clerks, artists and men of letters, merchants,
dealers in wine and spirits, officers and soldiers.
Every type of madness may there be studied,
from dementia and melancholia to mania. Many
of the patients owe their malady to hereditary

20

THE BIEVRE.

The River Bievre.]

CHARENTON.

22 =

predisposition, alcoholic excesses, and other
abuses, domestic calamities, reverses of fortune,
and intellectual labour unduly prolonged.
Nothing is spared to provide the patients with
salutary occupations, agreeable pastimes, and
innocent amusements. They are encouraged to
study music, singing, and drawing, and for those
who have no artistic tastes, cards, draughts,
dominoes, billiards, and bowls are provided.
Among the outdoor recreations walks in the
most beautiful parts of the wood of Vincennes,
carriage excursions and picnics may be mentioned.
The Thursday and Sunday concerts form, how
ever, the great delight of the place. These are
not given by the director simply as entertain
ments. They are prescribed by the regulations,
and have formed part of the institutions of the
House since 1811. In the spacious hall, which
serves at once as ball-room and concert -room,
assemble upwards of a hundred convalescents of
both sexes. In the dress and demeanour of
those present there is nothing remarkable, except
that they are more quietly attired, and generally
better behaved than in fashionable society. The
billiard-room is much frequented, and the
general aspect of the card-room reminds Dr.
Linas of one of the aristocratic Paris clubs.

It should have been mentioned that at the
periodical concerts the music is contributed
by the patients, some of whom are singers, others
violinists or pianists. The officials of the estab
lishment join the inmates either as performers
or among the audience. In like manner the
patients and attendants act together in the
comedies and dramas which are sometimes
represented.' Charenton, though placed under the direction
of the Ministry of the Interior, has its own
particular administration, in which a clerk may
in due time, after successive promotions, rise to
be a functionary of almost the first rank. No
one voluntarily quits the establishment ; and
the servants, like the officials, remain there until
they are compelled by old age to resign.
Charenton, like other madhouses, has had
celebrities among its inmates, including
the' Marquis de Sade, who, after sending one
of his infamous books to Napoleon, was at
once ordered to be arrested and placed in a
lunatic asylum ; the same punishment which,
at a later date, was inflicted by the Emperor
Nicholas on a writer, blameless in his morality,
who had attacked the existing order of things in
Russia.

CHAPTER XXX
THE RIVER BIEVRE AND THE MANUFACTORY OF THE GOBELINS.
The Brothers Gobelin — Lebrun — The Gobelins under Louis XIV. — At the Time of the Revolution — The Manufactory of Sevres.

THE Bievre is a stream which, many years ago,
behaved so badly in the matter of inunda
tions that it was put under ground. Canalised
subterraneously, it runs beneath or by the side of
the Horse Market, passes near the Salpetriere, and
enters the Seine close to the Orleans Railway
terminus. It is between the Bievre and the Rue
Mouffetard that the buildings of the Gobelins
manufactory, so famed for its tapestry and dyes,
are situated.
The superiority of the products of this factory
is by some attributed to peculiar saline properties
in the stream. Of these Rabelais speaks in
thoroughly Rabelaisian style ; and it was doubt
less in consequence of the tinctorial qualities of
the river that the brothers Gobelin established
on its banks their famous manufactory.
39

It is to these brothers that the name of the
establishment is due. They were famous dyers in
Normandy, or, as is also said, at Rheims, in
Champagne ; and, whatever their origin, they
came to Paris in the middle of the fifteenth
century, and took up their position on the
banks of the river above mentioned.
The water of the Bievre, while helping the
development of Gobelin dyes, is injured by them.
Like all the streams which flow past dye works,
the Bievre is perpetually stained ; and in the
present day there are many scientific men who
venture to affirm that the brilliant colours of the
Gobelin tapestry are in no way due to water of
any kind, but to artistic secrets belonging to
the Gobelin brothers, and handed down by them
to their descendants or successors.

226

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The River Bievre and the

Under the reign of Louis XIV. the Gobelins
was a sort of school of furniture, in which not
only tapestry but cabinet work of every kind
was cultivated. " Here," writes a chronicler
of the time, "two hundred and fifty master
weavers produced the richest tapestries, after
the works of our best painters. The school was
extended in order to include sculptors in metal
and goldsmiths."
A passion for ornamentation now took posses
sion at once of the Court and of Paris society

"The Twelve Months of the Year," "The Story
of Moses," etc. etc. Van der Meulen, Yvart, Boels,
and others may be mentioned among the painters
attached permanently to the establishment.
When, on the death of Lebrun, Mignard suc
ceeded him as Director of the Gobelins, an
architect, La Chapelle-Besse, was appointed
architect and builder. Under the joint direc
tion of painter and architect a school of drawing
was created at the Gobelins with Toby, Coy-
sevox, and Sebastien Leclerc as professors.

L' A VENUE DES GOBELINS.

generally ; and the candelabra and the lamps
produced at the Gobelins were worthy of any
palace. Most of the works produced at the
Gobelins, to whatever category they belonged,
were intended as presents to members of
royal families and other persons of the very
first distinction. Among the painters attached
to the Gobelins manufactory may, in the first
place, be mentioned the celebrated Lebrun in
the reign of Louis XIV, and under the govern
ment of Colbert. "And as a matter of fact,"
says an historian, "Lebrun gave to the Gobelins
a splendour which was steadily maintained."
He painted for the manufactory, simply that
they might be reproduced in wool, some of his
greatest pictures, including "The Battles of
Alexander," "The History of Louis XIV,"

Unfortunately the reverses sustained by Louis
XIV. during the last year of his reign led to
the discharge of the best workmen at the
Gobelins, whom it was thought impossible any
longer to pay ; and from this time the establish
ment has occupied itself only with the produc
tion of tapestry, to the neglect of medals, cameos,
cabinet work, and artistic furniture generally.
Specimens of the Gobelin tapestry were often
given away as presents either to crowned heads
or to celebrities of less eminence whom the king
wished to honour with some mark of distinction.
Thus there may still be seen at Windsor Castle
the tapestries of " Esther " and of " Jason and
Medea," given to the King of England by Louis
XIV. The King of Siam, the Emperor of Russia
the Duke of Lorraine, and the King of Prussia

Manufactory of the Gobelins. MARAT'S REPORT ON THE GOBELINS.

227

received similar presents. Occasionally, too, the
Gobelins executed orders for men of wealth and
of high position ; and in every country in
Europe so rare a work of art as a Gobelin

of the Gobelins. The latter costs annually
100,000 francs ; it is difficult to say why, unless
it be to enrich intriguers and rogues."
In spite of Marat's report the Gobelin manu-

THE BIEVRE IN THE GARDENS OF THE GOBELINS.

tapestry gave a character to the furniture of a
room, indeed of a whole house.
The Revolution was but little favourable to
the Gobelin manufactory. Writing on the subject
in 1790, Marat said: "No one has any idea
abroad of establishments, maintained at the
expense of the State in connection with fine
arts or rather manufactures : the honour of this
invention was reserved for France. Such are,
among others, the manufactories of Sevres and

factory was not interfered with ; not at least
in theory. The Government subvention was not
formally withdrawn, but it ceased to be paid.
The Consulate, seeing how entirely the place
was neglected, appointed a director at a fixed
salary, and took the place generally under its
charge. The Empire regarded the Gobelins as
a state institution, and paid largely towards its
support. It enjoyed also the full patronage
of the Bourbons after the Restoration. The

228

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The River Bievre and the

government of Louis Philippe ordered, at great
cost, a whole series of tapestries representing the
royal palaces and residences of France, which

THE OLD BUILDINGS OF THE GOBELINS.
were intended for the decoration of these very
mansions. At the same time, continuing ancient
traditions, the king ordered a number of
tapestries for presentation to foreign potentates.
"Peter the Great in the Tempest," after
Steuben's picture, admirably rendered
in wool, was presented to the Tsar ; the
"Massacre of the Mamelukes," after
Horace Vernet, to the Queen of England.
The different revolutions which have
taken place in France have never for
any length of time affected the position
of the Gobelins, which successive govern
ments have learnt to regard as one of
the glories of France. For the beauti
ful, brilliant colours in use during the
present century the establishment has
been indebted to the famous chemist
and centenarian, M. Chevreuil.
Among the masterpieces executed
at the Gobelins may be mentioned
the portrait of Louis XIV., after Rigaud,
of which the original may be seen in
the Louvre; "The Assumption" of
Titian, an immense composition, some
thirty feet high ; and the reproduction
in wool of a number of delicate, grace
ful pictures by Boucher, etc. etc. Since
1848 a school has been established at
the Gobelins, where the art of tapestry
is systematically studied by pupils and
apprentices. Although not connected in any direct
manner with the Gobelins, the manu
factory of Sevres is associated' with it
as an establishment for art work. It

enjoys a similar reputation for the excellence
of its products, and is supported, like the
Gobelins, by grants from the State, and by state
patronage of every kind.
At St. Cloud in 1695 a
manufactory of pottery
was started by the brothers
Chicanneau, who took for
their trade-mark a sun,
doubtless by way of flat
tery to Louis XIV., the
Sun King—" Le Roi Sol-
eil." The factory was
visited in 1700 by the
Duchess of Burgundy, on
whose recommendation
it obtained special privi
leges in 1702. Twenty
years later Henri Trou, Chicanneau's son-in-law,
and his brother Gabriel, took the direction of the
establishment, which at this time prided itself
on its imitations of China porcelain. In 1735
the brothers Dubois, one a painter, the other a

IN THE GARDENS OF THE GOBELINS.

Manufactory of the Gobelins...

THE SEVRES MANUFACTORY.

229

establishment belonged
to a body of share
holders. But four years
after the company was
started the king bought
up all the shares, thus
becoming not only the
patron but the pro
prietor of the Sevres
manufactory. At once
managing director and
monarch, Louis XIV.
was able to forbid com
petition of every kind,
and under the severest
penalties. To attempt
to make porcelain else
where than at Sevres

sculptor, quitted the
establishment of St.
Cloud, where they had
hitherto been employed,
and founded a rival es
tablishment at Chan-
tilly, under the patron
age of the Prince de
Conde. The Dubois
brothers afterwards
moved to Vincennes ;
and it was not until
1756 that general head
quarters for the porce
lain work of Paris were
fixed at Sevres. The

INTERIOR OF THE GOBELINS.

.*!*¦•

230

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The River Bievre.

was not only a criminal offence, but almost
an offence of State.
Admirable as were the results obtained, the
pieces of porcelain turned out at Sevres were
seldom, if ever, quite perfect ; and it was only
the cups, vases, plates and dishes in which there
was some perhaps almost imperceptible flaw
that were offered for sale to the general public.
When perfection had been attained the fortunate
work was reserved for the royal palaces or for
presentation to some foreign potentate. In 1761
a native of Strasburg, which for about a century
had belonged to France, sold to the Sevres
manufactory the secret of a so-called "hard
paste " porcelain which he had obtained from a
relative, director of some porcelain works in
the neighbouring Palatinate.
Like the Gobelins, the manufactory of Sevres
was not interfered with by the Revolution. From
1800 to 1847 it remained continuously under
the direction of Brongniart, who introduced
many improvements in the manufacture of
porcelain, though he is thought to have paid
more attention scientifically to the matter than
artistically to the form of his products. Per
fectly-made paste, but bad designs.
The Sevres porcelain of the period of the
First Empire was remarkable for the stiffness
and sham-academical style of the figures. From
this epoch dates the custom of reproducing on
cups and saucers, vases and plates, copies of great
historical pictures and other unsuitable works.

The landscapes, the pastoral pieces of Watteau
and of Boucher, were far more appropriate.
Under the Second Empire the Sevres manu
factory cost the State 480,000 francs a year, and
sold porcelain to the general public to the
amount of 80,000 francs. There was a clear loss,
then, to the establishment of 400,000 francs, or
^"16,000 a year. After the fall of the Empire an
attempt was made by M. Charles Gamier, the
architect of the new opera, and M. Jules Simon,
at that time Minister of Public Instruction, to
place the Sevres manufactory on a more satisfac
tory footing. A commission was appointed with
well-known artists, art-critics, and manufacturers
among its members, to consider what was to be
done ; and in the first place M. Due, the cele
brated architect, was requested to draw up a
report on the subject.
M. Due set forth that the fabrication of the
material left nothing to be desired, and that the
artists who furnished designs for the porcelain
were unequalled. But there were not enough of
them, and M. Due's main proposal was that a
school should be established in connection with
the Sevres manufactory, precisely what had been
proposed and adopted under Louis Philippe's
reign in connection with the Gobelins. The
school of Sevres was established in conformity
with M. Due's recommendation, and at the same
time a " Sevres prize " of the value of 2,000 francs
was instituted as an annual recompense to the
author of the most artistic design for pottery work.

A STREET IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE GOBELINS.

The Palais Bourbon.]

THE PALAIS BOURBON.

231

CHAPTER XXXI.
THE PALAIS BOURBON.
The Palais Bourbon— Its History— The National Convention— Philippe figalite.

THE Palais Bourbon, situated between the
Quai d'Orsay on the north and the Place de
Bourgogne on the south, bears a name which is
singularly inappropriate to the edifice in its
modern character; for neither under the ancient
monarchy nor under the restored Bourbons has
the great monarchical family of France shown
the least favour towards the parliamentary dis
cussions of which in modern times the Palais
Bourbon has been the scene. The building was
constructed in 1772 by the Italian architect,
Gardini, at the orders of the Dowager-Duchess
of Bourbon. After passing through various
hands, the Palais Bourbon was made national
property at the time of the Revolution, when
"Maison de la Revolution" was the name given
to it. In 1795 its principal reception-rooms were
transformed into a hall for the Council of the
Five Hundred, and it was at the same time en
larged. The present facade was added in 1804
under Napoleon I.
Among the other remarkable halls contained
in the Palais Bourbon as it at present exists, the
most important is the one in which, under the name
now of Chamber of Deputies, now of Legislative
Body, the French Parliament has held its sittings.
The hall arranged in 1795 for the Council
of the Five Hundred was afterwards occupied
by the Legislative Body of the Empire, and
again, under the Restoration, by the Chamber of
Deputies. In 18 14 the Palais Bourbon was, as
property, restored to the Prince de Conde, who
left the use of it to the State for the benefit of
the Chamber. The Government bought from
the prince in 1827 a portion of the palace, and
purchased the rest from the Duke of Aumale in
1830, the full price paid amounting to 10,500,000
francs. In 1829 the Hall of the Five Hundred
was replaced provisionally by a building of wood,
in lieu of which the hall as it now exists was soon
afterwards constructed. After the Revolution of
1848 a wooden hall was built in the courtyard of
the palace to receive the nine hundred deputies
of the Constituent Assembly. This hall was
invaded by the mob on the 15th of May, 1848,
and demolished after the coup d'etat of the 2nd
of December, 1851.

The Legislative Body of the Empire was now
installed in the former Chamber of Deputies until
the 4th of September, 1870, when the palace of
the Legislative Body was once more invaded by
the mob.
The most famous parliamentary debates, how
ever, of the French, and the most important
parliamentary trials, have taken place not in
the Palais Bourbon but at the Tuileries and at
the Luxemburg. Under the reign of Louis
Philippe, in the best days of Guizot and Thiers,
debates of the greatest interest took place at the
Palais Bourbon in the " Chamber of Deputies,"
as the French representative body was at that
time called ; for with each new government the
name of the assembly, as of almost every other
institution in France, is changed. All public
establishments are from time to time Royal,
National, or Imperial ; and the body which
corresponds in France to the House of Commons
in England is called, turn by turn, Chamber of
Representatives, Chamber of Deputies, or Legis
lative Body. No country, indeed, has had so
many legislative and governing assemblies as
France, which until the Revolution was as
nearly as possible an absolute monarchy. The
States-General, under the ancient regime, were
convoked from time to time by the king, but had
no real power. The most that can be said in
their favour is that they at least preserved
among the people the idea of popular representa
tion. In 1788, the year before the Revolution,
there was a general demand for a convocation of
the States-General, to which an unexpected reply
was made by the calling together of Con
stituent and Legislative Assemblies. These
bodies both admitted the royal veto as a bar
upon their decisions. But the Convention, the
Revolution having now been accomplished, re
cognised no counterbalancing power, no control
of any kind. It governed the country through
its commissaries and its committees.
The constitution of the year 3 of the Repub
lic (1792) divided the legislative power into two
assemblies, the Council of the Five Hundred and
the Council ofthe Elders. To the former belonged
the initiative, to the latter the final decision.

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Bourbon.

Dissatisfied with the working of these two
bodies, Bonaparte introduced a parliamentary
reform of the most remarkable kind. According
to his constitution ofthe year 1797, the Legislative
Body was to be divided into two assemblies, one of

influence ofthe debates, have taken a form which
the Government might consider objectionable.
Under the Third Republic the French chambers
have resumed something of the importance they
possessed under Louis Philippe. Their powers,

FACADE OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES ON PLACE DU PALAIS BOURBON.

which was to discuss the laws submitted to it by
the Government, the other to accept the decisions
in the upper chamber without debate and
simply by way of registration. After the fall
of Napoleon the restored monarchy, obliged by
the circumstances of the time to tolerate the
existence of a parliament, formed the Chamber
of Representatives, which, under the govern
ment of Louis Philippe, was succeeded by the
Chamber of Deputies, destined to play an import
ant part in the political history of the country.
Under the Second Empire the governmental
formsof the First Empire were as much as possible
introduced. The Legislative Body and the
Senate came now once more into existence, the
former being empowered to discuss the laws
proposed by the Government, the latter to pre
vent their promulgation should they, under the

indeed, have been increased, though they contain
no such distinguished men as those which gave
character and brilliancy to the Chamber of
Deputies between the years 1830 and 1848.
The assembly of the States-General held at
Versailles in May, 1789, preceded by three
months the taking of the Bastille ; and it was in
this assembly that the task-work of the peasants
— their serfdom, that is to say — was abolished ;
that obnoxious feudal rights of various kinds were
suppressed ; and that religious liberty, individual
liberty, liberty of the press, and general equality
before the law were proclaimed.
The Bastille was taken while the assembly
was in full deliberation, and this event gave to
its discussions and decisions a more liberal, more
revolutionary turn than ever.
The assembly of the States-General followed

The Palais Bourbon.]

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF 1791.

233

the king to Paris, and soon afterwards installed
itself in the riding-school of the Tuileries.
After the flight of Louis XVI. (June 21, 179 1) it
took possession of the executive power, and held
it with a firm hand until the acceptance of the
constitution by the king on the 14th of Septem
ber. On the 30th of the same month it dis
persed, to be replaced by the Legislative
Assembly, to which, in virtue of a resolution
proposed by Robespierre, no member of the
previous assembly could belong. The number
of laws, acts, and decrees passed by the assembly
afterwards to be known as the Constituent
amounted to not less than 3,250.

frontier, it confiscated their property, and took
proceedings against the king's brothers, the chiefs
of the fugitive royalists now threatening return.
It replied to the coalition against France by a
declaration of war, called the country to arms,
and decreed the formation of a camp of 20,000
men beneath the walls of Paris. The king
making objection to these vigorous measures,
the Assembly declared the monarchy at an end,
and on the 10th of August it was abolished, or
rather " suspended," by law.
On the 10th of August, 1792, the Legislative
Assembly, in presence of Louis XVI., decreed the
" provisional suspension of the chief of the execu-

.aas^SSi^M

CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES FROM THE QUAI D ORSAY.

The Legislative Assembly of 1791, in which,
as just mentioned, no member of the famous
Constituent Assembly could sit, began by swear
ing allegiance to the constitution just proclaimed.
A number of emigres having assembled on the

tive power," and the convocation of a national
convention — that is to say an extraordinary
assembly invested by the people with full powers
for reconstituting the government of the
country. The members of the new legislative

PARIS,' OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Bourbon.

body were to be chosen by double election.
Every Frenchman who was of age, and possessed
not a house but a " domicile," had a right to vote
for an elector ; and the electors thus chosen elected
in their turn the members of the new assembly.
There was one elector to every hundred citizens ;
and at the primary elections the merits ofthe can
didates for electoral honours were freely discussed.
The procedure of the Convention was almost
identical with that of the Constituent and
Legislative Assembly. Many readers will be
surprised to hear that among the 749 deputies
forming the National Convention there were
sixteen bishops, eight episcopal grand vicars,
eighteen priests, and seven Protestant ministers ;
besides one prince of the blood (the Duke of
Orleans, nicknamed Philippe Egalite), and a
number of barristers and lawyers, officers of
the king's army, now disbanded ; former mem
bers of the Paris Parliament, nobles, landed
proprietors, doctors, men of science, men of
letters, several poets, painters, and actors ; a
few merchants and manufacturers, and only one
workman, a wool-carder named Armonville.
The Convention, though a Revolutionary as
sembly, can scarcely be said to have been a
democratic one. On the 20th of September the
new representatives of the people held a prepara
tory sitting in the Hall of the Hundred Swiss at
the Tuileries. On the 21st the Convention re
assembled at the Tuileries, and notified its
official existence to the Legislative Assembly,
which at once deposited its powers in the hands
of the new representatives of the people, who
thereupon established themselves in the Riding-
School. The Convention did not take possession
of the Tuileries until eight months afterwards,
May 10th, 1793, the unfortunate king having
meanwhile, been sentenced to death and (Jan. 21)
executed. When the Convention began its sittings the
enemy's outposts were only seventy-five miles
from Paris, and the German powers, who had
invaded France, were preparing to take a terrible
vengeance on the country which, if it had not
actually dethroned, had formally " suspended "
the power of its king.
" Kings-" exclaimed the Bishop of Blois in an
excited debate, " are in the moral order what
monsters are in the physical " ; and in the midst
of general acclamation the Assembly adopted
unanimously this declaration :
"Royalty is abolished in France."
The Girondists, who for some time had the

upper hand in the Convention, wished to spare
the king, and some of them proposed to leave
the decision of his fate to the people at large ;
confident, no doubt, that the verdict of the
nation would be, if not altogether favourable, at
least not fatal to the unhappy monarch. The
Girondists, however, could not get their views
adopted by the Assembly generally ; and in the
end many of them voted for the king's death.
The king having been tried and found guilty
by the Assembly, each member was called upon
to declare in writing what sentence the convicted
monarch deserved. Some were for keeping him
in prison until peace was made with the invading
powers, and then sending him into exile on con
dition of his never attempting to return. The
greater number, however, of the deputies were in
favour of death. One, more brutal than the
others, is said to have recorded his view as to
the sentence that should be passed in these cynical
words : " La mort sans phrase." M. Edouard
Fournier has, however, well explained, in his
admirable little volume, " Les Mots Historiques,"
that whereas in most cases the deputy signing
the register explained, in one or more phrases,
why he was in favour of a particular sentence,
the sentence in this particular case was given
without one word of explanation, " sans phrase "
in short, as the registrar put it.
The day of the king's sentence, one of the
deputies, Lepelletier Saint-Fargeati, who had
voted for death, was assassinated just after he
had left the Assembly, by a former member of
the Body-guard named Paris. The Convention
ordered that he should receive the honours
of the Pantheon, and assisted in a body at his
funeral. This incident caused a deep sensation,
deeper, it is said, even than the execution of the
king, which took place on the 21st of January,
1793. The deepest indignation, too, was
excited by the news that among those who
had voted for the king's death was his cousin,
the Duke of Orleans, the so-called Philippe
Egalite, whose son, Louis Philippe, was thirty-
seven years afterwards to ascend the French
throne. Writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes
a few years after the latter event, Chateaubriand
reproached the reigning king in plain terms
with being the son of a regicide. Arguing that
since the execution of Louis XVI., and as a
punishment for that crime, it had become im
possible to establish monarchy in France, he
added : —
" Napoleon saw the diadem fall from his brow
in spite of his victories ; Charles X., in spite of

The Palais Bourbon.]

philippe Egalite.

235

his piety. To discredit the Crown finally in the
eyes of the nations, it has been permitted to the son
of the regicide to lie for one moment in the blood
stained bed of the murdered man." That Louis
Philippe suffered this outburst to be published
unchallenged has been regarded as a proof of
his extreme tolerance in press matters. Probably,
however, he thought it prudent not to invite
general attention to words which, by a large
portion of his subjects, would have been accepted
as justifiable.
It has been said by the defenders of the
"regicide" that Philippe Egalite did his best
not to be present at the sitting of the Conven
tion when sentence had to be passed on the
unfortunate king ; but that he was threatened by
his friends of the Left with assassination unless
he voted with them for the "death of the
tyrant." However that may be, he took his
seat among the judges by whom the fate of his
royal kinsman was to be decided, and, when it
became his turn to deliver his opinion, did so in
the following words : " Occupied solely with my
duty, convinced that all those who have attacked,
or might afterwards attack, the sovereignty of
the people deserve death, I pronounce the death
of Louis."
Philippe Egalite had looked for general ap
proval, and had voted in fear of death — which
awaited him all the same, and came to him
in the very form in which a few months
before it had been inflicted on the unhappy
Louis. When his vote was made known cries
of indignation from all sides warned him that he
had transgressed one of the great moral laws
which are observed even by men who violate all
others. Then it was that a former soldier of the
King's Body-guard, hearing of Philippe Egalite's
unnatural offence, resolved to kill him, but not
being able to find him, killed another less guilty
" regicide " in his place.
Very different was the feeling excited by the
conduct of Philippe Egalite in the breast of the
king himself. " I don't know by what chance,"
says the Abbe Edgeworth in his " Relation sur
les Derniers Momens du Roi," " the conversation
fell upon Philippe. The king seemed to be well
acquainted with his intrigues and with the horrid
part he had taken at the Convention. But he
spoke of him without any bitterness, and with
pity rather than with anger. 'What have I
done to my cousin,' he exclaimed, ' that he should
so persecute me ? What object could he have ?
Oh, he is more to be pitied than I am. My lot is
melancholy, no doubt, but his is much more so.' "

Meanwhile the faction of the Assembly which
in the beginning of September, 1792, had, by its
excited declamation and denunciation, brought
about the massacre of the prisoners, was
constantly attempting, in combination with
other factions, to arrest some of the most in
fluential members of the majority, accuse them
of treason, and bring them before the Revolu
tionary Tribunal. On the 2nd of June, 1793,
they struck their first blow ; and on the 3rd of
October in the same year they denounced forty-
four deputies, ordered the arrest of seventy-one,
and compelled many more to take to flight and
seek safety in concealment. The majority was
thus diminished by 1 50 members : the minority
in fact became the majority.
Then one of the authors of these measures,
Robespierre, hoping to monopolise whatever
fruits they might bear, and finding no further
obstacle to his ambition, became dictator in fact,
bent everything beneath his will, and reigned by
terror. During fourteen months he subjected
the French to a ferocious tyranny. At Paris
alone thirty, forty, sixty heads fell daily. At
length, on the 27th of July, 1794, this monster,
together with his chief accomplices, paid his
reckoning, and France was delivered from an
intolerable yoke. To the general desolation,
grief, and alarm now succeeded the liveliest
joy. The doors of many prisons were thrown
open ; the instrument of death ceased to ply
its blade.
The Convention, free and tranquil, despite the
difficulties it experienced from foreign factions,
was now to pursue its way and to give France
a constitution. On the 26th of October, 1795,
it terminated its session.
The Conventional Assembly, at war with all
the States of Europe, at war even with the
French inhabitants of some of the western
provinces, surrounded by distractions and
dangers to which some of its own members
fell victims, did not omit to encourage the arts
and sciences, particularly those of practical utility,
nor to found public institutions of the highest
importance. The development it gave to the
national schools and hospitals, to mention these
alone, has already been touched upon in previous
chapters. A report drawn up in the third year
of the Republic by the savant Foucroy, in the
name of the Committee of Public Safety, on the
"Arts which had served for the defence of the
Republic," contains some interesting details.
Within nine months, it was boasted, 12,000,000
pounds of saltpetre had been manufactured and

236

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some Historical Residences

stored in the magazines of the Republic, whereas,
previously, the merest fraction of that quantity
had been yearly produced.
A method had been introduced, moreover, for
manufacturing gunpowder in a few hours with
machines of the greatest simplicity. Hitherto
France had been dependent on the neighbouring
nations for the manufacture of steel. England and
Germany had been accustomed to furnish her with
this metal at a charge of about 4,000,000 francs a
year. Now several factories rose in places where
the production of steel had been hitherto un
known. During the same period many improvements
were introduced in the manufacture of muskets ;
the number of cannon foundries was greatly
increased, a species of balloon was used as a war
vehicle ; and, to pass from war to peace, weights
and measures were rendered uniform.
The system of national education with nominal
charges (averaging ten francs a month), at the
gymnasiums, with free lectures by the best
professors at the Sorbonne and the College
of France, is due to the Convention. So, too,
is the famous Conservatoire de Musique, with

its gratuitous teaching, which has had the effect
of turning France from an unmusical into an
eminently musical nation. For an interesting
and valuable account of the constructive measures
adopted by the French Republic, which is
usually credited with measures of destruction
alone, the reader is referred to Mr. Morse
Stephens's excellent "History of the French
Revolution." Having been endowed by the Republic with a
legislative body, France was never afterwards
without one, though its importance varied accord
ing to the form and character of the Government.
From the Riding School of the Tuileries the
Assembly moved to the Tuileries itself, and
governing the country as the Convention really
did, it had the right, perhaps, to establish
itself in the palace of the French kings. Napo
leon, however, wanted the Tuileries for himself ;
and his Legislative Body now held its unimportant
discussions in the Palais Bourbon ; which re
mained the home of the French Parliament,
under various names, until in 1 871 the seat
of government was changed from Paris to
Versailles.

CHAPTER XXXII.

SOME HISTORICAL RESIDENCES.
The Palace of the Legion of Honour — The Ministry of War — The Rue de Grenelle —Talleyrand.

AN interesting walk on the left bank of the
J~\. Seine is from the end of the Rue du Bac
along the quay to the Pont des Invalides. To many
persons the most remarkable house on the Quai
d'Orsay is the cafe of the same name, which,
by reason, no doubt, of its proximity to the
Ministry of War, is largely frequented by
superior officers. At No. 5 is a cavalry barrack
occupied under the Restoration by the King's
Body-guard. Here, up to the time ofthe Revolu
tion, was the office of the Court carriages which
conveyed the public of Paris to the different
royal residences, but went nowhere else. In
1788, the year before the Revolution, the prices
were three livres ten sols (three francs ten sous,
that is to say) for Versailles and St. -Germain,
nine livres ten sols for Fontainebleau, and
thirteen livres ten sols for Compiegne.

Close to the Cafe d'Orsay stood the Palace of
the Council of State, laid in ruins by the
Communists on the 24th of May, 187 1.
The Palace of the Legion of Honour, one of
the most beautiful buildings on the quay, was
erected in 1786 by the architect Rousseau for
Prince Frederic John Otho von Salm Kirburg,
husband of Jeanne Francoise Fidele Antoinette
de Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The prince was
well connected, for, husband of a Hohenzollern,
he was brother-in-law of the Due de Thouars
and of the Prince de Croy. He sat as deputy for
Lorraine in the Constituent Assembly, com
manded a battalion of the National Guard of
Paris, was condemned to death by the Revolu
tionary Tribunal, and guillotined on the 23rd of
July, 1794, four days before Robespierre, and in
the same batch with the Prince de Montbazon-

Some Historical Residences.] THE PALACE OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR.

237

Rohan, M. de Beauharnais, and M. Gouy d'Arcy.
He was brought to the scaffold under the name,
negligently given to him by the Moniteur, of
"H. Desalm-Kirbourg, Prince of Germany."
The former palace of the princes of Sahn has
had almost as eventful a history as its
first owners. It was put into a
lottery, and won by a hairdresser's
assistant, who sold it to a man
named Liertaud, who used to call
himself the Marquis de Boisregard,
until he was arrested for forgery,
and passed from the Hotel de Salm
to the galleys of Toulon. The house
was inhabited for a time, under the
Directory, by Mme. de Stael, who
made it the scene of those politica
assemblies which were destined to
get her into trouble, and which,
under the Empire, made it necessary
for her to leave Paris and live
abroad. At last the Government
bought the Hotel de Salm, in
1803, and caused it to be ar
ranged as the Palace of the
Legion of Honour. Burnt and
pillaged by the Commune, it
was rebuilt on the original plan
by a voluntary subscription,
tp which, on the invitation of
the Grand Chancellor, General
Vinoy, the members of the
Legion of Honour contributed.
At the corner of the Quai
d'Orsay, just where the
Boulevard St. -Germain ter
minates, is the Cercle Agricole,
or Agricultural Club, com
posed almost exclusively of
landed proprietors, and one of
the best clubs in every respect
that Paris possesses. The
"Potato Club" it is humor
ously called by those who
have no sympathy with agri
cultural pursuits, and who hold
with a certain writer that
"cultivators of wit have generally no land, and
cultivators of land generally no wit."
There are several Government offices in this
neighbourhood : the Ministries of Agriculture, of
Public Works, and of War.
The Ministry of War occupies a sort of island
comprised between the Rue St.-Dominic, the

Rue de Solferino, and the Rue de Bourgogne,
with its principal entrance on the Boulevard St.-
Germain, No. 231. The Dowager Princess of
Conti inhabited the mansion until 1775, the year
of her death. The next occupant was the Due

RUINS OF THE PALACE OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE, QUAI D'ORSAY.

de Richelieu, who was succeeded by Lomenic de
Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, and at the
same time Minister of War in the year 1786, and
by his brother, the Comte de Brienne, in 1789.
Without being designated " Ministry of War,"
the house seemed destined to be occupied by a
succession of War Ministers. At lastt however, it

-38

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some Historical Residences.

became national property, and from 1802 to
1804 it was inhabited by Lucien Bonaparte.
After the proclamation of the Empire, Napoleon
gave it to Mme. Laetitia Bonaparte ; and it was
not until the Restoration that the Hotel de
Brienne became finally the official residence of
the Minister of War.
Close by, on the Boulevard St. -Germain,
formerly Rue St. -Dominic, is installed the
Central Depot of Artillery. It occupies the
whole of the ancient cloister of the monastery
of the Reformed Dominicans, whose church is

adorned with paintings from the brush of
Blondel, Picot, Guillemot, Lemoyne, Lagrenee,
Michel Vanloo, and Ary Scheffer. The church
of St. -Thomas Aquinas is the most aristocratic
in Paris, and a wedding within its walls possesses
enormous fascination for the curious sightseer.
The Rue de Grenelle, which runs parallel to
the old Rue St. -Dominique, is remarkable for a
sculptural masterpiece — the fountain designed
by Edme Bouchardon, who himself executed the
whole of the figures and bas-reliefs. The cen
tral figure, representing the town of Paris, and

PALACE OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR.

dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas. To the right
of the church portal, the little Rue St. -Thomas
Aquinas conducts the visitor to a space sur
rounded by symmetrical buildings. He is now
in the heart of the ancient convent. The large
door to the right is that of the historical cloister,
where the Museum of Artillery found a home
until it was transferred to the Hotel des Invalides.
The religious establishment, of which nothing
but the church survives, was the convent of the
general noviciate of the reformed Dominicans or
Jacobins, founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1 631.
The construction of the church did not com
mence till 1638. The architect was Pierre
Bullet, and the foundation stone was laid by the
Duchess de Luynes. It was not until nearly the
middle of the next century — 1740 — that the
edifice was completed. The interior is richly

the two figures to right and left of it, symbolising
the Seine and the Marne, are exquisite. Between
the columns and beneath the pediment is a long
Latin inscription, addressed by the Provost of
the merchants of Paris to the glory of Louis
XV., " the father and delight of his people, who,
without shedding blood, has extended the
frontiers of France."
On the left, from No. 73 to No. 85, there is a
whole series of remarkable houses, each associated
with some person of distinction. At No. 73
died, in 1856, Viscount d'Arlincourt, once a
popular novelist, now absolutely forgotten. His
family was of ancient origin, and his father, a
Farmer General, was guillotined during the Reign
of Terror. Young D'Arlincourt became one of
Napoleon's chamberlains, and afterwards held
some post in connection with the Council of

Some Historical Residences.]

TALLEYRAND.

239

State. At the Restoration he wished to attach
himself to the service of the Court, but he
was not successful, and returning to his castle
in Normandy, gave himself up entirely to
literature, in which, under the Empire, he
gained some reputation. In the year 1825 he
gave an entertainment in honour of the Duchess
of Berry, which became celebrated, and was made
the subject of elaborate descriptions in the news
papers. Running through the viscount's estate
was a winding stream, on which a bark had been
prepared for the reception of the duchess, which
was attended by the ladies of the neighbour
hood costumed as shepherdesses. The young
people of the surrounding villages, in arcadian
attire, towed the boat with chains of flowers
towards a Greek temple, where ballads of a
chivalric kind were sung in praise of the
honoured guests. White flags embroidered with
fleurs de lys were waved in the air ; and in the
evening, after a sumptuous banquet, there were
illuminations, and a grand ballet. More than a
thousand persons took part in these operatic
scenes, which were marked by the same theatrical
taste that distinguishes the viscount's romances.
He had begun, under the Empire, an epic poem,
called "The Caroleid," on the subject of Charle
magne, in which, beneath the features of Carolus
Magnus, the physiognomy of Napoleon could be
recognised. These passages were, however, marked
out when, under the Restoration, the viscount
published the complete work. The most suc
cessful of all M. d'Arlincourt's books was " Le
Solitaire," which when it first appeared went
through a number of editions, and was translated
into many languages. It may be added that
Bellini's last opera, I Puritani, was based on a
novel by M. d'Arlincourt, called " Cavaliers and
Roundheads." At No. 75 Talleyrand resided as Minister of
Foreign Affairs under the Directory. Before
entering political life, Charles Maurice de Talley-
rand-Perigord studied theology and took holy
orders. His family would have placed him in
the army, but for an accident of rather a frightful
kind, which happened to him in his childhood.
His nurse had put him down in a field, while she
walked away in conversation with her lover, and
during her absence the child under her care was
attacked by a pig, which bit away part of one of
the calves and of one of the feet of the future
diplomatist. At the age of twenty-one young
Talleyrand was named Abbe" of St. -Denis in the
diocese of Rheims. He led the dissipated life
common among the young abbes of his day ; but

he cultivated the society of intellectual men, and
was on friendly terms with Mirabeau, Buffon,
and Voltaire. In 1780 he was appointed Agent-
General of the French clergy : a lucrative post
which placed him in relations with the Minister,
M. de Calonne, from whom he acquired ideas
on the subject of finance which enabled him to
repair his shattered fortune. Leading at the
same time a life of pleasure and of affairs, Talley
rand did not remain insensible to the changes
that were taking place around him ; and in a
letter addressed to his friend, Choiseul Gouffier,
ambassador at Constantinople, he showed himself
an intelligent advocate of political reform. A
separate administration for the provinces —
provincial self-government, in fact — was one of
the remedies he proposed. He declared war
against all privileges, and ended his letter by
observing that " at last the people must count
for something." In 1788, the year before the
Revolution, Talleyrand was made Bishop of
Autun, with an income of 80,000 francs. A
member of the Assembly of Notables in the
month of November in this year, he showed
himself one of the warmest advocates of the new
ideas, and became at this time the friend of
Necker. The clergy of his diocese sent Talleyrand
as deputy to the States-General of 1789. Here
he ranged himself on the popular side, and voted
for the union of the two privileged orders
(nobility and clergy) with the Tiers Etats. He
voted, too, for the suppression of tithes, and for
the constitution of an executive with responsible
ministers. At the great Federation Festival in the
Champs de Mars, it was Talleyrand who celebrated
mass on the altar of the country, and a few
months afterwards he gave up the bishopric of
Autun. For supporting the civil constitution of
the clergy he drew upon himself a decree of
excommunication. In 1791 Talleyrand under
took his first diplomatic mission, being sent to
London in order, if possible, to obtain a declara
tion of neutrality from England. In this he
was unsuccessful. The atmosphere of London,
however, suited him better than that of Paris,
and Talleyrand kept away from France until after
the Reign of Terror. From England he had
passed to the United States. But on the forma
tion of the Directory he thought the time had
come for him to go back to France ; and though
his name had been placed on the list of emigres,
he had no trouble in obtaining permission to
return. He now established friendly relations
with Barras, with Chenier, and with Mme. de

240

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some Historical Residences.

Stael, and, in spite of some opposition from the
austere Carnot, who disliked Talleyrand's levity,
he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs,
or " director of external relations." He at once
recognised the genius of the young chief who,



THE MINISTRY OF WAR.

as General Bonaparte, had already made himself
a great name ; and Talleyrand's appointment as
Foreign Minister was renewed when Napoleon
became First Consul. He foresaw the establish
ment of the Empire, and encouraged Napoleon
in that direction. He had a serious misunder
standing with the emperor in regard to the
execution of the Duke d'Enghien, which
Talleyrand strongly condemned, though,

according to Napoleon, it was he who first
suggested it.
oo Talleyrand had more than one difference of
opinion with Napoleon, and on a certain occasion
the emperor, half familiarly, half contemptu
ously, pulled him by the ear.
"What a pity," exclaimed
Talleyrand, " that so great a
man should be so ill-bred ! "
More than once Talleyrand
was dismissed from Napoleon's
service ; but in moments of
difficulty it was found neces
sary to recall him. Finally,
however, on Napoleon's fall,
he got the Emperor of
Russia to declare that he
would treat neither with
Napoleon nor with any mem
ber of his family. Talleyrand
used all his influence, more
over, with the Senate to
procure its acceptance of the
Bourbons, sure by this means
to secure the favour of Louis
XVIII. "II n'y a rien de
change : il n'y a qu'un Fran
cois de plus " — was the phrase
which Talleyrand at this time
put into the mouth of the
king's brother, Count d'Ar-
tois, who, after a time, be
lieved that he had really
uttered it. The restored
monarchy, however, gave the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
to the Due de Richelieu,
Talleyrand receiving an office
he had before held under
Napoleon, that of Grand
Chamberlain, with a salary of
100,000 francs.
When the Revolution of
1830 broke out, the Duke of
Orleans, afterwards Louis
Philippe, consulted Talley
rand as to whether, should he accept the
throne, the European powers would be likely
to recognise him. Talleyrand wrote to
the Duke of Wellington, at that time Prime
Minister, and, finding that England would make
no objection, took it for granted that there
would be no trouble with Russia, while it was
comparatively unimportant what views the other
governments might take. A month afterwards

Some Historical Residences.]

TALLEYRAND.

241

he started for London, where he had " been
appointed ambassador, and where he laid the
foundation of that entente cordiale (the expres
sion was Guizot's) which has secured to both
countries a long period of peace.
In 1834 Talleyrand, now in his eighty-first year,
resigned his embassy
and returned to Paris,
where, no longer taking
part in public affairs, heJ
died four years after
wards. "Talleyrand spoke
little," says Capefigue,
" but with exquisite
delicacy said all that it
was necessary to say with
precision and politeness.
He defined a situation
by a word ; terminated a
discussion by a phrase.
He had seen so many
events, so many men,
and so many passions,
that no small thing could
excite him. He could
meet anger, bursts of
temper, with the most
impassible countenance.
To a reproach he would
reply by some charming
mot. Thus, when Napo
leon said to him abruptly
one day : " They say you
are very rich, M. de
Talleyrand ; you have
made lucky speculations
on the stock exchange."
"Yes," was his answer,
" I bought into the funds
on the eve of the 18th
Brumaire " — the day on
which Napoleon made
his celebrated coup d'itat.
Many witticisms have
of course been attributed
to Talleyrand which he never uttered, and many
more, which he did utter, but which were
not absolutely original. According to M.
Edouard Fournier he was a constant student
of a collection of jests entitled, with curious
irony, " L'Improvisateur Francais." All neces
sary deductions, however, having been made,
the fact remains that this statesman was very
witty, and with a wit characteristically his
own. " Language was given to man in order
40

to conceal his thoughts " is, perhaps, the most
famous of his sallies. When someone said
in his presence that M. Thiers was a "par
venu," " not parvenu, but arrive," he re
marked. Besides being witty himself, he was according

FOUNTAIN IN THE RUE DE GRENELLE.

to M. Louis Blanc, the cause at least on one
occasion of wit in another. When Talleyrand
was dying, says the author of " The History of
Ten Years," King Louis Philippe went to see
him. "Je souffre les tourments d'enfer," com
plained Talleyrand. "Deja?" the king is
reported to have muttered. This story, how
ever, was at the time of M. Louis Blanc's
writing at least two or three centuries old, and
there is no reason for supposing that either

242

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Rue Taranne

Talleyrand or the king uttered the words attri
buted to them by this always interesting but
generally inaccurate historian.
As a rule Talleyrand's witticisms were marked
by politeness. But he could say severe things ;
and once when a lady, who suffered from
defective vision, seemed by her mode of inquiry

after his health to be hinting at his lameness,
he replied to her " Comment allez vous?"
" Comme vous voyez, Madame." His " Sur tout
pas de zele " is well known ; also his amusing if
cynical caution on the subject of spontaneity :
"Beware of first impulses: they are nearly
always generous."

CHAPTER XXXIH.
THE RUE TARANNE AND DIDEROT.
Diderot's Early Life in Paris — His Love Affairs— Imprisonment in the Chateau de Vincennes — Diderot and Catherine II. of Russia — His Death.

AN interesting book has been published, under
£\_ the title of " Paris Demoli," on the churches,
houses, and buildings of various kinds which
were pulled down during the work of reconstruc
tion pursued so vigorously during recent years,
and especially under the Second Empire. To
build the. Rue de Rennes, which joins the Place
Saint-Germain-des-Pres to the terminus of the
Left-Bank Western Railway on the Boulevard
Montparnasse, it was necessary to pull down the
two first houses in the Rue Taranne, numbered
i and 2. No. 2, whose side windows look out
upon the Rue Saint-Benoit, afforded for many
years an abode, on the fifth floor, just beneath the
roof, to Diderot, who, however, died, not here,
but in the Rue Richelieu immediately after his
return from a visit to the Empress Catherine.
Fitted neither by birth nor breeding for the
atmosphere of courts, Diderot received, never -
thelessk from the Russian empress the greatest
marks of favour. In Russia Catherine could
scarcely govern otherwise than despotically,
though she once summoned a parliament whose
members were entrusted with legislative func
tions ; and it was perhaps not altogether her
fault that nothing came of their labours. Per
sonally, however, she had not the despotic
manners by which the intercourse of Frederick
the Great with his inferiors was so often marked.
Of a more accommodating disposition than
Diderot, Voltaire was able for a considerable
time to live peacefully with the Prussian king,
though when at last the inevitable quarrel came,
he did not scruple to criticise and satirise the
sovereign whom, through a long course of
years, he had persistently flattered.

Son of a blacksmith and cutler at Langres,
Diderot entered at an early age the college of
Harcourt, directed by the Jesuits. But showing
no aptitude for the theological career, he
was placed with a lawyer, at whose office he
occupied himself exclusively with the study of
literature, philosophy, and mathematics. After
a time the chief of the office remonstrated with
him, and asked him how he expected to live.
" I am fond of study," he replied, " I can exist
on very little, I am perfectly happy ; why, then,
should I trouble myself about a regular profes
sion ? " On being informed of these views
Diderot's father began by stopping his son's
allowance. Then Diderot gave lessons, but not,
it would seem, on very remunerative principles ;
for if the pupil pleased him he was ready to go
on teaching him all day, whereas, in the contrary
case, he did not give a second lesson. He ac
cepted payment in the form of books, clothes,
or anything else which, in the absence of money,
the pupil could offer. After a time he was
engaged in a private family, where for three
months he taught incessantly, walking out with
his pupils, taking all his meals with them, and
not leaving them for a moment. He disliked,
however, living in another person's house, and
retired after three months to his own garret.
He was now in the direst poverty. He was
often without food, and one Shrove Tuesday, in
1 741 (he was then twenty-eight years of age),
he returned home in a fainting condition from
having eaten nothing all day. His landlady,
seeing his enfeebled state, gave him some toast
steeped in wine; "and I then swore" said
Diderot afterwards to his daughter " that if

and Diderot.]

DIDEROT'S EARLY LIFE.

243

ever I possessed anything, I would not, so long
as I lived, refuse help to a fellow creature who
might find himself in a similar position." On the
whole, however^ apart from occasional bad days,
Diderot led a lively existence. He could write
in any style, and was ready to execute any kind
of literary work. He even composed sermons.
He wrote six for a missionary, who paid him 300
crowns (about ^36) for the half-dozen. This
he afterwards declared to be one of the best
strokes of business he had ever done. From
time to time he wrote to his father, who did not
answer him. His mother, however, sent him,
from time to time, a portion of her savings by
a faithful servant who, without saying anything
about it, added to the amount some savings of
her own. On these occasions the poor woman
had to make a journey on foot of some 300
miles, 150 each way. In spite of this assistance
Diderot was often in distress. It may be, as
Heine somewhere suggests, that writers and
artists, like medlars, ripen best on straw. It is
certain, in any case, that the talent and courage
of Diderot developed in spite, if not in con
sequence, of his poverty. His energy grew
in proportion as he exercised his power of
resistance. Unable to be much poorer than he actually
was, Diderot now resolved to get married. He
heard one morning that two ladies had come
to live in the same house as himself. One was
Mme. Champion, widow of a man who had
ruined himself and his family by his mania for
speculation ; the other her daughter, Mile.
Annette Champion, a tall, handsome, well-man
nered girl. They had their own furniture, had
saved a little money, and were trying to support
themselves by needlework. Diderot wished to
be introduced to them. " They will decline to
make your acquaintance, "was his landlady's reply.
He determined to order some shirts ; by one means
or another he had resolved to make their acquaint
ance. On seeing the daughter he fell in love
with her, and soon afterwards proposed to marry
her. " You wish to get married ? " said Mme.
Champion ; " and upon what ? You have no
profession, no property, nothing whatever except
a tongue of gold, with which you have managed
to turn my daughter's head." The girl's mother,
however, gave her consent, and Diderot had next
to obtain the consent of his own father. Old
Diderot, however, treated his son as a madman,
and not only would not hear of the marriage, but
threatened to curse him if he persisted in his
intentions. Troubled on all sides, Diderot now

fell ill, and the illness sealed his fate. He was
waited upon and nursed by his two kind-
hearted neighbours. On his recovery he was
profuse in his expressions of gratitude towards
the mother ; nor did this prevent him from
marrying the daughter in secret.
The young woman whom he now made his
wife was more remarkable for good nature than
for intelligence. The strangest stories are told
about her want of brains. Thus, on one occasion,
when a publisher had in her presence purchased
a manuscript from Diderot for 100 crowns, she
expressed her astonishment at his taking so
much money for a few scraps of paper, and
urged him to return the sum. About a year
later Diderot, finding that injurious stories had
been told to his family concerning his wife, sent
her without invitation on a visit to his father,
who received her with kindness, and kept her in
his house for three months. Meanwhile Diderot
made the acquaintance of a Mme. de Pinsieux,
who, unlike the wife, was more remarkable for
intellectual than for moral qualities. She was ex
travagant in her tastes, and to gratify them
Diderot plied his pen with ceaseless activity.
To furnish her with money, literary spend
thrift that he was, he wrote books of the most
varied kinds, from " Pensees Philosophiques,"
one of his most admirable works, to " Les Bijoux
Indiscrets," one of the most objectionable. No
one complained of the licentious tale. But the
philosophical work, a pamphlet of some sixty
pages, full of profound truths, expressed with
vivacity and originality, was first attributed to
Voltaire, and next burnt by fhe common hang
man. In his " Letter on the Blind," Diderot gave
further offence, and this time he was imprisoned
in the castle of Vincennes. Everyone thought
that the materialism professed by Diderot in his
essay was the cause of his arrest ; which, how
ever, was due to something quite different. His
"Lettre sur les Aveugles" had been written on
the occasion of an operation for cataract per
formed by Reaumur on a patient who had been
blind from birth. Diderot had wished to study the
first sensations produced upon the blind man by
the effect of light ; but the famous operator
would admit no one except a lady of fashion,
Mme. Dupre de Saint -Maur ; and at the be
ginning of his letter Diderot complained of the
man of science who had preferred to have his
experiment witnessed by two beautiful eyes
rather than by men capable of appreciating it.
Mme. Dupre de Saint-Maur is said to have had
considerable influence with M. d'Argengon, the

244

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Rue Taranne

Minister of Police ; and without judgment or
accusation Diderot was arrested on the 24th of
July, 1749, and taken to the Chateau of
Vincennes. Thus religion was avenged, and
Mme. Dupre de Saint-Maur also.
That Diderot's arrest was due in a great

GRIMM AND DIDEROT.

measure to the general contents of his book,
and not merely to his by no means uncompli
mentary mention of Mme. Dupre de Saint-Maur,
seems proved by the fact that after imprisoning
him the police visited Diderot's house and made
a search for his manuscripts. The unhappy
author remained for twenty-eight days in secret
confinement. At the end of that time he wrote
to D'Argengon begging the minister to liberate
him from a captivity " in which he might make
him die but could not make him live." He was
now transferred from the castle-dungeon to the
castle itself, where his wife and several of his
friends were allowed to visit him, among others

Jean Jacques Rousseau, with whom for some
time past he had been on intimate terms.
In the eighth book of his " Confessions " Rous
seau relates how a visit he made to the prisoner of
Vincennes marked an epoch in his life. The Acad
emy of Dijon had just proposed the following sub
ject for a prize essay : — " Has the revival of Arts
and Letters contributed to the purification of man
ners ? " It was during his visits to Diderot in the
Chateau that Rousseau claims not only to have con
ceived the idea of treating the question proposed,
but also to have written the greatest part of the
essay which was to cause such a sensation in the
world. Diderot, however, gave a very different
account of the matter to his friend
Marmontel. "I was prisoner at
Vincennes," he said, " where Rous
seau came to see me. He had
made me his Aristarchus, as he
himself declared. One day, when
we were walking together, he told
me that the Academy of Dijon
had just proposed an interesting
question, and that he wished to
treat it. The question was ' Has
the revival of arts and letters
contributed to the perfection of
morals ? ' ' Which side shall you
take ? ' I said to him. ' The affirm
ative,' he replied. 'That is the
pons asinorum' I said. ' All the
mediocre people will take that
view, and you can only support
it by commonplace ideas ; whereas
the contrary side offers to philo
sophy and eloquence a new and
fertile field.' ' You are right,' he
answered, after a moment's re
flection. 'I will follow your ad
vice.' " Diderot himself wrote on
this very subject : " When the
programme of the Academy of Dijon appeared
he came to consult me as to which side he
should take. ' Take the side,' I said to him,
1 that no one else will take.' "
It was, in any case, Rousseau who wrote
the essay, author though Diderot may have
been of its paradoxical character. As an
example of the laxity, as well as the severity
of the period, it may be mentioned that when
Diderot had once been set free from the dungeon,
he was allowed, in his more commodious place
of residence, to receive not only his wife and
friends, but also Mme. de Pinsieux, to whom he
was still attached. One day, when she was

and, Diderot.]

THE « ENCYCLOPAEDIA.'

245

visiting him, he was struck by the brilliancy of
her attire. She accounted for the elaborateness
of her toilette by saying that she was going to
an entertainment at Champigny. "Was she
going alone ? " he asked. " Quite alone." " Your
word of honour?" "I
give it you." Diderot
did not quite believe in
the lady's assurances,
and soon after her de
parture he climbed over
the wall of the park,
hurried to Champigny,
and there saw Mme. de
Pinsieux with some ad
mirer. He went back,
scaled the wall a second
time, and became once
more a captive, but with
a heart set free. " He
broke for ever," says an
indignant moralist, " with
his unworthy mistress."
Diderot remained three
years at Vincennes. He
quitted his prison in 1734,
and now conceived the
plan of the " Encyclopae
dia," a magnificent liter
ary and scientific monu
ment, which alone would
justify the reputation
he enjoys. It occupied
him, without absorbing
the whole of his time, for
more than thirty years ;
and there was certainly
no other man who could
have brought to the work
such wide knowledge,
such energy of style, and
such prodigious applica
tion. He had under
taken the articles on his
torical, philosophical, and
scientific subjects, while he was, at • the same
time, in association with D'Alembert, to go over
the work of all the contributors. As regards many
of the subjects Diderot had to study them as
he went on ; which his marvellous intuition
enabled him to do with the best effect. " Diderot,"
said Grimm, " has naturally the most encyclo
paedic head that ever existed." " His genius, in
its sphere of activity, includes everything," said
Voltaire. " He passes from the heights of

metaphysics to the frame of a weaver, and
thence to the drama." " Centuries after the
time of his existence," wrote Rousseau, in his
"Confessions," when he had quarrelled with
him, "this universal head will be looked upon

'-gp-

.„r_ --¦ ¦

¦rr^iL'-r. \r. V- :" ¦¦--''- .- '--." 'i'''-.

STATUE OF DIDEROT, BOULEVARD ST. -GERMAIN, FACING THE RUE ST.-BEKOiT.

as we now look upon the head of Plato or
Aristotle." Apart from his legitimate work Diderot had
to cope with opposition and persecution of all
kinds. The Jesuits had proposed their co
operation for the theological articles of the
"Encyclopaedia," and Diderot had refused their
offer equally with a similar one made by the
Jansenists. The work was forthwith denounced
as irreligious ; and with such contributors as

:4o

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Rue Taranne and Diderot.

Diderot and Voltaire it could scarcely, indeed,
have been otherwise, though it was not the
direct object of the writers to make war upon
Faith. Among the many celebrated authors
who furnished articles to the " Encyclopaedia "
Rousseau may in particular be mentioned. But
like most of the contributors he wrote only for
a time, and chiefly on musical subjects. D'Alem
bert, Voltaire, Rousseau, all fell off ; Rousseau
because something had offended him, Voltaire to
write his own philosophical dictionary, D'Alem
bert because he had grown tired of the work.
" I am worn out with the vexations of all kinds
brought upon us by this work," wrote D'Alem
bert to Voltaire in 1758. At one time its
publication was forbidden, when Catherine II.
offered to continue it in Russia. The volumes
were, curiously enough, thrown into the
Bastille ; which, since they could be taken
out again, was at least better than burning
them at the hands of the common hang
man. Catherine II. granted Diderot a handsome
pension, and she at the same time purchased his
library for a large sum. The empress went so far,
indeed, as to send him the sum of 50,000 francs,
being the annual pension paid in advance for
fifty years. Touched by the bounty of Catherine,
Diderot wished to thank the empress in person,
and in the year 1773 he started for Russia. At
the Hague he was met by the High Chamberlain,
Narischkin, who, accompanying him to St.
Petersburg, put him up at his own house.
Diderot's friend Grimm was already at St.
Petersburg. He presented Diderot to the
Empress Catherine, who received him in the

most cordial manner. She would be glad to see
him, she said, in her own apartments every day
from three to five or six, and she took the
greatest pleasure in his conversation. "I see
him very often," she wrote to Voltaire. " Our
conversations are incessant. What an extra
ordinary head he has ! As for his heart, would
that all other men had one like it. I do not
know whether they (Grimm and Diderot)
are getting tired of St. Petersburg, but I
know that I could talk to them all my life
without fatigue."
Catherine did her best to keep Diderot at St.
Petersburg ; but he wished to return to Paris,
and though he had been invited to stay at
Berlin by Frederick the Great, he passed
through Prussia without visiting the capital.
It has been before said that he had no
sympathy for Frederick.
Soon after his return to Paris he was taken ill,
and after a short malady died. The cure of
Saint-Roch had come to see him, and Diderot
received him in a very friendly manner. They
talked on various moral and religious subjects,
and as they agreed on many theological points,
especially as to the efficacy of charity and good
works, the cure ventured to suggest that if
he would authorise the publication of these
opinions, together with a retractation of his
worksj the effect would be excellent. But
Diderot would do nothing of the kind. Neither
would he confess. Nevertheless there was but
little difficulty in connection with his funeral,
which took place at Saint-Roch, where he was
buried (July, 1784) in the Chapel of the Virgin.
There his remains still lie.

Montseigneur AfFre.]

THE NATIONAL WORKSHOPS.

247

CHAPTER XXXIV.
MONSEIGNEUR AFFRE AND THE INSURRECTION OF JUNE.
The Courtyard of the Dragon— The National Workshops — The Insurrection of June— Monseigneur Affre Shot at the Barricade
of the Faubourg St. -Antoine.

CLOSE to the Rue de Turenne is the Court
yard ofthe Dragon, inhabited for the last two
centuries, even until now, by dealers in every kind
of ironwork. It was here, in July, 1830, that the
first insurgents of this particular district armed
themselves more or less effectively for the fray.
The Courtyard of the Dragon owes its name to
the dragon in bronze placed at the entrance, just
opposite the Rue Sainte-Marguerite, in allusion
to the monster on which painters and sculptors
make Sainte Marguerite trample. Passing in
front of the Courtyard of the Dragon the Rue
de Rennes runs from north to south. The Rue
du Four, the Rue du Vieux-Colombier, and the
Rue d'Assas, are at the back of the Monastery of
the Carmes Dechausses — or Shoeless Carmelites —
which occupies the interior of the angle formed
by the Rue de Rennes and the Rue d'Assas. The
Shoeless Carmelites, as formed or reformed under
the auspices of St. Theresa, were authorised to
establish themselves in France by letters patent,
dated June, 16 10 ; and they soon enriched them
selves by the sale of two manufactured articles
which they alone were able to make : a kind of
stucco, known as Blanc des Carmes,-which took the
polish of marble, and treacle water ; both of which
became very popular in Paris. The Carmelite
Monastery is now the seat of the Catholic
University of Paris, founded by thirty French
archbishops or bishops, and comprising three
faculties: Law, Letters, and Sciences. In 1791
the priests, who had refused to swear fidelity to
the Constitution, were imprisoned in the Car
melite Monastery, and the massacring band of
Maillard, and the wretches under his orders,
slaughtered them on the 2nd and 3rd of Sept
ember, 1792, together with all the prisoners, irre
spectively of age or sex, who were confined with
them. Close to the altar of the left transept is a
monument enclosing the heart of Monseigneur
Affre, who fell during the terrible days of June,
in 1848, at the formidable barricade of the
Faubourg St.-Antoine, as he was making a last
effort to stop the further effusion of blood. In
the midst of his exhortations he was struck in
the loins by a stray bullet, and fell into the arms
of the insurgents, who were in despair at the

terrible incident, which was not the result of a
crime, as the direction of the shot, the evidence
of the vicars in attendance upon him, and the
grief of the revolutionists sufficiently testified.
The venerable prelate expired on the 27th, two
days after he had been struck. " May my blood
be the last shed " were his dying words.
The suqcessful insurrection of June, which, after
much slaughter, was suppressed, was partly the
consequence of the successful insurrection of
February, after which, Louis Philippe having
taken flight, the Second Republic was proclaimed.
In February the provisional Government had
guaranteed in a formal manner the " right to
labour." Accordingly, numbers of workmen
being without employment, and capitalists being
unwilling to embark in new enterprises, or even in
many cases to continue those which were already
on foot, national- workshops were opened, in
which upwards of 100,000 workmen found occu
pation and bread. Apart from the drain upon the
exchequer caused by the employment of these
hundred thousand men, the inevitable moment
at which it would be necessary to close the
workshops was regarded by everyone with
alarm. Each workman was employed one day out
of four in useless labour ; and the more prudent
hoped that the national workshops would be
closed gradually, and the men induced gradually
to seek service with private employers. Among
other measures it was proposed to colonise
Algeria with the men out of work ; and it was
calculated that two hundred millions of francs
would be necessary for this purpose. According
to the calculations of many wise economists and
politicians, an expenditure of two hundred
millions in order to get rid of a menacing army
of 100,000 men was not excessive. Others,
including, it may be, some secret enemies of the
Republic, who did not object to a violent
collision, in which the republican form of govern
ment might disappear, thought the workshops
ought to be closed, and the men left to shift for
themselves. The national workshops were at
the same time declared to be nests of idlers,
thieves, and incendiaries.
On the 17th of June, after long and passionate

248

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Montseigneur Affre

debates in the Assembly, the immediate dissolu
tion of the national workshops was proposed.
The next day the workmen, by way of reply,

ENTRANCE TO THE COURTYARD OF THE DRAGON

exhibited on all the walls of Paris placards in
these terms : " There is no unwillingness on our
part to work ; but useful and appropriate work
according to our trades is just what we cannot
obtain. We call for it, we ask for it with all our
force. The immediate suppression ofthe national

workshops is demanded ; but what is to become
of the 100,000 workmen who find in their
modest pay the sole means of existence for them
selves and their families ? Are
they to be delivered over to
the evil counsels of famine, to
the suggestions of despair ?
Are they to be placed at the
mercy of factions ? " A pro
clamation was at the same
time issued to the workmen,
calling upon them to be calm,
and warning them against the
emissaries of different political
parties. "Nothing is any
longer possible in France,"
concluded the proclamation,
" but the democratic and social
republic. We will have neither
emperor nor king ; nothing
except liberty, equality, and
fraternity." It was decided in the first
place to expel from the
national workshops, and, with
the consent of the expelled,
enroll in the army all work
men of from seventeen to
twenty-five years of age. Other detachments
were to be sent to the marshes of Sologne in
order to drain them, or to be employed on
earthworks in distant departments. Others,
again, could be sent to Algeria. The work
men, however, showed no disposition to adopt
any of the courses recommended ; and, ac
cording to the expression of one of them, they
were called upon to choose between famine,
expatriation, and military servitude. They were
threatened, indeed, by famine, but more than
one means of escape was offered to them. After
a stormy day an immense meeting was held in
the Place St.-Sulpice, at which, after many im
passioned speeches, it was decided to meet the
next morning at six o'clock in the Place du
Pantheon. The executive commission appointed
by the Government to watch over the peace of
Paris, and prevent, if possible, its being broken,
ordered General Cavaignac, Minister of War, to
occupy the Place du Pantheon the next morning,
June 23rd, at five. But at six not a soldier was
to be seen, and the square was taken possession
of by the people. The absence of troops at im
portant points was observed elsewhere. Two plans
had been discussed. The executive commissioners
wished the troops to be disseminated in such a

and the Insurrection of June.]

THE INSURRECTION OF JUNE.

249

manner that no barricade could be erected with
out being at once destroyed, so that the hostile
popular movement would be crushed from the
beginning. Cavaignac, however, wished
to be allowed to mass the entire army
beneath his orders, and then to send
columns of attack wherever necessary. It
was represented to him that by such a
system Paris would be covered with
barricades, and the final victory of the
troops cause torrents of blood. The
stern soldier cared nothing for that.
" As for the National Guard, let it take
care of its own shops," he haughtily
added ; "I do not wish to run the risk
of a single one of my companies being
disarmed." Cavaignac was afterwards
accused of having purposely allowed
the insurrection to grow, in order that
he might play the part of a saviour.
But the question being purely a military
one, the executive commission found
itself bound to give in.
The insurrection had neither chief
nor settled plan. Enjoying full liberty
of extension during the first few hours,
it had spread rapidly over half the
city, extending in a semicircle from the
Clos St. Lazare on the right bank
to the Pantheon on the left. Its centre
seemed to be the Place de la Bastille,
and its strategic object to converge upon
the Hotel de Ville. In spite of Ca-
vaignac's sarcasm about the shopkeepers
and their shops, the National Guard
played a very active part in the suppres
sion of the insurrection. Cavaignac
entrusted the command on the
right bank and the boulevards to
Lamoriciere, on the left bank to
Daumesuil, andaround
the Hotel de Ville to
Bedeau. He himself
took charge of a few
battalions in the Fau
bourg du Temple, not
far from the Place de
la Bastille.
It was on the
evening of the first
day that Monseigneur
Affre, accompanied by
his two Grand Vicars,
went to the Place de

la Bastille to address some conciliatory words to
the insurgents, in the hope of prevailing upon
them to abandon the contest ; and it was here,

COURTYARD OF THE DRAGON.

IgHINlPpCy as before set forth, that,
received with every mark
of sympathy by the insur-
r^f] gents, he fell while he was address
ing them. It was not till nine on
the day following that the formid
able insurrection of June was, after
terrible siaughter,brought to an end.

2 5o

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some Occupants

CHAPTER XXXV.
SOME OCCUPANTS OF MONTPARNASSE.
The Boulevard Montparnasse— The Cemetery— Father Loriquet— Hegesippe Moreau— Sainte-Beuve.

TO return to the Carmelite Monastery and the
Rue de Rennes, which continues its course
until it reaches the Boulevard Montparnasse. This
boulevard is a section of the road round Paris,
formed under Louis XV., together with all the
southern boulevards, in virtue of letters patent.
Until recently the Boulevard Montparnasse was
full of restaurants and dancing-places, among
the latter the most celebrated being La Grande
Chaumiere, much patronised by students in
the time of Louis Philippe and of Gavarni.
Since the construction of the great terminus of
the Western Railway the boulevard in question
has become transformed. It has been invaded by
industry and commerce. The hovels, booths,
and public gardens of former days have been
replaced by well-built houses, many of which,
with the studios attached to them, are occupied
by painters and sculptors.
The name of this boulevard has a genuine
literary origin. The land was given in the six
teenth century, with the high ground in the im
mediate neighbourhood, to the scholars of the
different Paris colleges, who assembled on its
slopes and summit to read poems, and to discuss
matters of literature and art. The height of the
so-called "mount" is on a level with that of
the roof of the railway station ; but the rail
way line is itself considerably above the level
of the boulevard. The region of Mount Par
nassus has its theatre and its cemetery. At
the former many a dramatic author, after
wards to become celebrated, has brought out
his first piece ; in the latter numbers of writers
and painters who, without perhaps failing in their
art, failed in life, have found repose, with the
poet Hegesippe Moreau among them. Here,
too, lie Henri Regnault, the young painter who
was killed in the sortie towards Buzenval on the
19th of January, 1871 ; the surgeon Lisfranc,
self-declared rival of the illustrious Dupuytren,
whom, in his lectures, he used freely to describe
as "This brigand from over the water" (Lisfranc
was attached to the Charite on the left bank,
Dupuytren to the Hotel Dieu on the island) ;
Father Loriquet, author ofthe celebrated " History
of France," in which Napoleon Bonaparte is repre
sented as one of the generals of Louis XVIII.,

in whose name he gains important victories ;
Sainte-Beuve, the famous critic ; Baron Gerard,
the painter ; Rude, the sculptor ; Orfila, the great
chemist, who discovered arsenic in the body of
M. Lafarge — whereupon Raspail, the chemist
retained for the defence, declared that he would
find as much arsenic in a pair of old window
curtains ; the four sergeants of Rochelle, whose
unhappy fate has been told in connection with
Bicetre, where for a time they were confined ;
the philosopher Jouffroy, and the famous writer
on political and religious subjects, Montalembert.
Hegesippe Moreau, just mentioned as one of
the most interesting tenants of the Montpar
nasse cemetery, was the author of a terrible
poem, " To Hunger," — with which he was only
too intimately acquainted. But his reputation
rests on a collection of poems gracefully entitled
" Le Myosotis."
Father Loriquet was one of the most remark
able historians of ancient or modern times.
Holding individually, perhaps, the doctrine
ascribed to Jesuits collectively by their enemies,
that the end justifies the means, and resolved in
his " History of France " to work according to the
motto of his Order, " Ad major -em Dei gloriam,"
he rearranged the historical facts so as to make
them accord, not with what did happen, but
with what in his opinion ought to have happened
— a mode of writing history not indeed peculiar to
himself. The work was published immediately
after the Restoration, and, according to the title-
page, was expressly designed " for the instruction
of youth." It is said to be still used in certain
ultra-religious boarding schools, where no
words are looked upon as so odious as those of
" Revolution " and " Republic."
Speaking of the American War of Independ
ence, this strange historian writes : " Louis XVI.
did not think it just or politic to take the part
of rebels, who claimed rights for subjects against
kings. But sacrificing inopportunely his own
intelligence to that which he thought, he recog
nised among his councillors, he acknowledged
the independence of the United States of
America" (vol. ii., p. 129).
Here are some more extracts from this curious
work : —

of Montparnasse.]

HEGESIPPE MOREAU.

2^1

" Louis XVI. committed the fault of tolerating
an illegal meeting of factious persons in the
Tennis Court. He should have known that a few
drops of impure blood shed in time are the
salvation of empires (page 130).
"In the midst of convulsive movements the
assembly, after a splendid repast, held the mid
night meeting so well known under the name of
the sitting of the 4th of August. There, without
discussion, without deliberation, inspired solely
by the vapours of wine, it decreed a number of
unjust things against landed proprietors and the
owners of feudal rights (page 144).
" It was the evening of the 5th of October. The
most alarming news was being circulated in
Versailles. The days of the royal family, above
all those of the queen, were seriously menaced.
The aim of the conspirators was, by intimidating
Louis XVI., to compel him to fly and quit the
throne, which the Duke of Orleans proposed to
seize. But the king having declared that he
would not take flight, the duke and his accomplices
resolved to get rid of him by assassination. It
was in a church dedicated to St. Louis that the
horrible plot was prepared. At daybreak the
signal was given. Thirty thousand assassins,
intoxicated with wine and debauchery, threw
themselves into the palace, calling out, ' Long
live our Orleans King ! ' (page 146).
" Bonaparte, having by his crimes reached the
summit of power, was proclaimed emperor." In
his narrative of the retreat from Moscow Father
Loriquet compares the French to Pharaoh's
Egyptians lost in the snow instead of being
drowned in the Red Sea. At Fontainebleau,
in 1 8 14, when the allies were approaching Paris,
Napoleon, according to the historian in question,
was suddenly informed by his generals that he
was no longer emperor, and that France had a
' king. " This information made him shed many
tears, and he only seemed to be consoled when
the allies ceded to him the little island of Elba
with an income of 6,000,000 francs."
The poet Hegesippe Moreau had but little in
common with the Jesuit father whose last resting-
place he shares. As a writer he is remem
bered solely by the volume of poems previously
referred to, called- " Le Myosotis." As a man,
little is known of him except that he was
miserably poor— obliged, during one period of his
life, to sleep in the trees of the Champs Elysees
and of the Bois de Boulogne. In a touching
letter of his, preserved by one of his biographers,
he tells his correspondent how, being invited to
a fashionable evening party, he found nothing

there to eat but a little fruit jelly, when he had
hoped to have the opportunity of dining. He
was, in fact, in the position of that unfortunate
young man in M. Ponsard's Honneur et Argent
who exclaims pathetically : " Je porte des gants
blancs, etje n'ai pas dine ! "—"I have white gloves
on and I've had no dinner ! " One terrible in
cident is related of Hegesippe Moreau. During
the cholera year of 1832 he was carried in a state
of exhaustion, caused solely by hunger, to the
hospital of La Charite, where, in the hope of
catching the epidemic and dying of it, he rolled
himself up in the sheets of a cholera patient
who had but lately expired. Contagion, how
ever, spared him, and wanting nothing but food
and rest he was soon restored to health. On
leaving the hospital he walked on foot to his
native town of Provins, where, such was the
unpractical character of his mind, he not only
started a journal, but a journal in verse. Diogenes
it was called, and his only reason for starting it
in the little town of Provins, where it could not
possibly find a sufficient number of readers,
seems to have been that he had influence and
credit at a local printing-office, where he had
at one time been employed as proof-reader.
Diogenes had doubtless been suggested by the
Nemesis of Barthelemy, which, however, was
published not in a little provincial town, but at
Paris. Only a few numbers of Diogenes ap
peared ; and in his rage at not being appreciated
the satirist filled his dying number with the
bitterest attacks on leading inhabitants of the
town. This led to a duel, and obliged him once
more to quit Provins for Paris.
It is related of Hegesippe Moreau that in the
revolutionary days of 1830, fighting at the
barricades, he wounded a Swiss soldier, and
then, taking pity on the man, ,gave him his
own coat, to enable him to get away in disguise.
Let us pass, however, to a writer enjoying far
more celebrity than either the graceful poet
Hegesippe Moreau or the grotesque historio
grapher, Father Loriquet. It was probably from
his English mother that Sainte-Beuve derived
that taste for certain English poets, with Cowper,
Wordsworth, and Shelley among them, whom
he attempted to imitate in his earliest flights.
His mother, having been left a widow, sent
him for preliminary study to the College of
Boulogne, his native town ; afterwards trans
ferring him, for the completion of his general
education, to Paris. At length he commenced
the study of medicine, urged by his mother,
who is said to have distrusted the literary

2?2

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Some Occupants

aspirations which her son had already manifested.
But after waiting for a year as assistant-physician
at the hospital of Saint-Louis, he felt that he had
missed his true vocation, and, without com
pletely abandoning medicine, wrote a series of
historical, philosophical, and critical articles for
the Globe, directed at that time by M. Dubois,
formerly one of his professors. Sainte-Beuve was
then living in the Rue de Vaugirard, a few doors
from the house inhabited by Victor Hugo ;
and when the latter changed his abode and
installed himself in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-
Champs, accident once more threw Sainte-Beuve
within easy distance of the poet. Community
of literary taste produced an intimate acquaint
ance between the neighbours, and Sainte-Beuve
took part in the new intellectual movement of
which Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas were
the originators and chiefs. The New School,
.breaking from classical traditions, turned back
its attention to the sixteenth century, and
to a group of writers greatly obscured by the
literary lustre of the two centuries which
followed. Sainte-Beuve set himself to study
Ronsard and Du Bellay ; and in due time he had
an opportunity of showing that he had not
studied them in vain. The Academy having, in
1827, proposed as the subject of its Prize for
Eloquence a " Picture of French Poetry in the
Sixteenth Century," Daunou persuaded the critic
of the Globe to compete, and placed at the young
man's disposition his own rich library. Sainte-
Beuve's essay did not gain the prize. But it
was published by its author, who printed with it
an edition of the " Selected Works " of Ronsard ;
and the work, which the Academy had rejected,
took rank ultimately as the first authority on the
period of French literature with which it deals.
Whilst throwing himself into romanticism
Sainte-Beuve was not blind to the defects of the
New School, though he could not himself, as
poet, avoid the very faults against which he had
warned others. In reference to Victor Hugo's
"Odes and Ballads" he wrote as follows: " M.
Hugo's first inspiration is invariably true and
profound ; the whole mischief arises from ex
travagant similes, frequent digressions, and over-
refinement of analysis. . . . There are forced
metaphors, moreover, improprieties of language,
ellipses in the series of ideas, and prosaic passages
in the midst of the most dazzling poetry."
Victor Hugo was naturally not delighted with
this criticism. But he encouraged the critic, and
persuaded him to publish his "Poesies de Joseph
Delorme," of which Sainte-Beuve had read him

some specimens. Having once taken up with
romanticism, Sainte-Beuve went at least as far
as his master, and committed precisely those faults
which he had censured ; for eccentric lines, prosaic
phrases, and outrageous metaphors abound in his
collection, although these eccentricities, far from
injuring the volume, seem to have caused its
success. People who liked everything that was
odd or audacious read the book, and praised it for
faults at which scholars would knit their brows.
The Revolution of 1830 opened a new sphere
of activity to Sainte-Beuve. Hitherto he had
occupied himself little with politics ; but now he
plied his pen freely in the Globe as a supporter
of those principles of humanitarianism so strongly
championed by Pierre Leroux, who had become
director of the journal in question. Subsequently
he undertook a political campaign in the National,
with Armand Carrel. In his various writings,
both in and out of the newspapers, he showed
himself inconstant to any fixed principles. His
whole life, in fact, was composed of intellectual
changes and variations. These, however, were
simply the outcome of a mind curious to fathom
all kinds of ideas, to penetrate within them, in
order to extract from them their sap or their
honey. Approaching the teachers in order to
appreciate them as well as their doctrines, he
made himself their pupil, sat at their feet, and
quitted them as soon as he had completed his
analysis. He himself was quite conscious of
this tendency, and confessed that even when he
entered Victor Hugo's school of romanticism he
only assumed as much of that enthusiasm as
might be expected to characterise a devotee.
If, however, he was on this, and on other similar
occasions, consciously insincere, his fault is largely
redeemed by the genuine ardour with which he
played the neophyte at each fresh initiation ; by
the respect which he always entertained for his
masters, even after he had changed them ; and by
the universality of the knowledge which he de
rived from these studies, pursued, as they were,
in a spirit of adventure or of intellectual specu
lation. He sketches his own character admirably
in some advice which he gave to a young man in
1 864 ; nor is it difficult to see that he was con
sciously proposing himself as an example : " Seek
the most noble friendships," he wrote, " and bring
to them the benevolence and sincerity of an open
soul, desirous, above all things, of admiring ;
pour into criticism — emulous sister of your
poetry — your ardour, sympathy, and all that is
purest in your nature ; eulogise, lay your elo
quence at the service of new talents, usually so

of Montparnasse. 1

SAINTE-BEUVE.

253

much contested and combated, and do not for
sake them until the day when they withdraw
themselves from the right path and falsify their
promises : after that treat them with reserve.
Incessantly vary your studies, cultivate your
mind in every direction ; do not narrow your
self to one party, one school, or one idea ; let it
see the dawn break on every horizon ; maintain
your independence and your dignity ; lend your-

Beuve adopted on one occasion a course which
many would have considered the reverse of
romantic. Challenged to a duel by M. Lecaze
for words which he had uttered in the Senate,
he replied that he would fight his adversary with
no other weapon than that with which they were
both familiar — the pen.
The death of Sainte-Beuve was preceded by
cruel bodily tortures, and, as he saw his end

(m^^p^

THE MONTPARNASSE STATION.

self for a time, if necessary, but do not give
yourself away. Remain judicious and clear-sighted
even in your weaker moments ; and even if you
do not say the whole truth, never utter what
is false. Never allow fatigue to lay a hold up
on you ; never feel that you have attained your
goal. At the age when others are reposing or
relaxing themselves, redouble your courage and
ardour ; recommence like a novice, run your
career a second time, renew yourself." Such was
precisely the course which Sainte-Beuve himself
followed. When he wrote the above lines he
was reviewing his own life.
Votary of romanticism as he had been, Sainte-

approaching, he took precautions to keep the
priests away from his bedside, and to divest his
interment of all solemnity. By his testamentary
wishes none of the associations to which he
belonged, neither the Academy nor the Senate,
was to be represented at his funeral ; and no
oration was to be pronounced over his tomb.
"Finally," he added, "I wish to be carried
straight from my home to the cemetery of
Montparnasse, and to be placed in the vault
where my mother lies, without passing through
the church, which I could not do without vio
lating my sentiments." His dying directions
were obeyed to the letter.

2 54

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Sports and Diversions.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS.
Le " Sport" — Longchamps — Versailles Races — Fontainebleau — The Seine — Swimming Baths — The Art of Book-collecting.

THE Seine at Paris is the scene not of much
boating, but of a good deal of swimming.
Baths on the Thames have never been successful :
they abound on the Seine, and the Parisians,
whatever they may be as boatmen — " canotiers,"
to use their own word — excel as swimmers.
The French are not naturally a sporting nation.
In the first place they have found it necessary to
borrow our English word for their pastimes ;
and their spelling of sportsman as "sport-
man " is somewhat indicative of their generally
unsuccessful imitation of English sports.
The French are themselves conscious of the
failure of this imitation. " Sport," says a French
writer, " is an English word which signifies
literally relaxation, distraction, and which the
English employ, by extension, to designate the
pleasures to which powerful aristocrats or
opulent citizens abandon themselves as a re
laxation from the serious labours of political
life or the absorbing occupations of commerce.
In "sport " they include large hunts and shooting
expeditions such as can be practised on vast
estates, together with betting, which involves
millions of pounds sterling, riding and driving,
fencing, boxing, swimming, skating ; everything
which calls into play the forces and energy of
the body, to the too frequent neglect of mental
activity. "We have adopted the word and attempted
the thing. But independently of the fact that
our French society lacks some of the fundamental
conditions which, in this respect, English society
possesses, we have done what imitators gener
ally do : we have diminished, sometimes even
travestied the model. Large aristocratic hunts
have become impossible on our democratic and
parcelled-out soil. Well-bred horses cost a
great deal of money, and the instability of
fortunes is an obstacle to fine stables. The most
reckless of our millionaires only hazard a few
thousand francs in the way of bets, and it
is now generally understood that when a "louis" is
spoken of on the turf, the ambitious word must
be translated into the more modest expression,
" twenty sous." . . Even fencing is aban
doned to fiction and the stage. Duellists who

are at all serious must go beyond the frontier
to find a ground which will place combatants
and seconds beyond the reach of the French
law. The police-court of the nineteenth century
is perhaps more dreaded than was the scaffold
of Richelieu."
Parisian summers, this same writer goes on to
observe, are on the whole too cold for bathing,
and Parisian winters too hot for skating.
Unquestionably horse-racing has taken a
certain hold on the French, though it is true that
the crowds who frequent the most popular races
do not confine their attention, or their con
versation, to the horses or the stakes, but regard
the event principally as a fete.
It is at the hippodrome ofthe Bois de Boulogne
(or Longchamps, as it is also called) that the
most largely attended races occur. A minimum
charge of a franc is made for admission, to stand
or walk about outside the ropes which mark
off the course. For the reserved places higher
prices are charged : five francs to the pavilions,
twenty francs to the weighing enclosure, fifteen
francs for a one-horse carriage, twenty francs
for a carriage with more than one horse, and so
on. The races of La Marche are in the form of
steeple-chases. The Chateau de La Marche
stands in a park at a short distance from Ville
d'Avray and Saint-Cloud ; and it is in the park
that the races take place.
The races of the Bois de Vincennes are less
fashionable than those of Longchamps and of
La Marche, perhaps because the approach to
Vincennes through crowded streets is less at
tractive than the drive through the Champs
Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne.
The races of Chantilly, founded in 1834
under the patronage of the Dukes of Orleans
and of Nemours, are run twice a year on
the spacious meadows which extend right
and left of the magnificent stables of the
chateau of the Condes. The first races are
fixed for the second fortnight of May. The
later series, those of the autumn meeting, are
held in September and October. The last race of
the season is for the grand prize of the Jockey
Club. The racecourse of Chantilly describes

Sports and Diversions.]

BOOK-COLLECTING.

25;

an ellipsis measuring some 2,000 metres. Several
stands have been erected opposite the stables :
prices of admission to the various places as at
Paris. At Chantilly are the principal training
establishments. The Versailles races are run on the plain of
Satory, where Napoleon III. held some of his
most brilliant reviews. They take place in May
and June.
At Fontainebleau the races are run on a course
cut through the part of the forest known as
the Valley of the Solle. From various woody
heights the spectator, well protected from the
sun, can obtain an excellent view of the running.
Shooting is practised at a club in the little town
of Argenteuil, close to Paris, where the society
of Parisian Riflemen is established. Candidates
duly proposed and seconded are put up for
election, and, if admitted, pay ten francs entrance
money and an annual subscription of fifty francs.
The organ of the society is the well-known sport
ing paper, ths Journal des Chasseurs.
The canotiers and canotieres of the Seine are
counted by thousands. They all seem to row
more for amusement than for exercise and
pace. The principal ports of the Parisian navy
are Charenton above, bridge, and Asnieres below.
Charenton may be reached by the Lyons Rail
way : the charming Asnieres (famous for its balls)
by the Saint-Germain and Versailles line. The
water-side restaurants are organised in view of
the canotiers, and appeal specially to this floating
population. If the Seine is remarkable for its swimming
baths and, at some little distance on each side
of Paris, for its innumerable boats with rowers
and rowed in gay fantastic costumes, one bank
of the Seine, the left, is celebrated for its stalls
of second-hand books. , It was at a curiosity shop
on one of the quays of the left bank that Balzac's
" Peau de Ch agrin' ' or " Chagreen Skin" was offered
for sale. It was at a neighbouring bookstall that
the poor student in the " Vie de Boheme " sold
his Greek books for little more than the price of
waste paper in order to buy medicine for the
dying mistress of his friend. It is not at the
bookstalls of the Quai d'Orsay that one would
look for the rarest editions, though rare editions
may here be found. There are connoisseurs who
seem to spend every day and all day long at
the bookstalls of the quay ; resembling the cele
brated English bibliophile, Lord Spencer, who
remained an entire year at Rome, visiting
neither St. Peter's, nor the Coliseum, nor the
Vatican, but only the old bookshops. When he

had once found the Martial of Sweynheym and
Pannartz dated 1473 he went straight back to
London. Such a passion looks like insanity ;
but it is at least a respectable, innocent kind of
madness. To have a genuine passion for books
is to care neither for cards, nor for good living,
nor for useless luxury, nor for racehorses, nor
for political intrigues, nor for ruinous love
affairs. The bibliophile is never troubled by the
storms of political life. Pixericourt, the author
of thirty amusing or terrible novels, would be
forgotten in France but for the rare editions
that he collected in his library, and which after
his death did more for his reputation, at the
sale of his books, than all his works of fiction
had done. Few writers of the day grudged him
his talent or his success ;.but many envied him
his "Imitation of Jesus Christ," given to the
monk Laurence " by his very humble servant,
Pierre Corneille." His Elzevirs and Basker-
villes, for which Holland and China had fur
nished their rarest paper, England and France
their best engravers, Russia and Morocco their
incomparable leather, filled amateurs with
enthusiasm. A great French book-collector,
Grolier, had adopted this motto, " For myself
and my friends." Charles Nodier wrote for
Pixericourt an epigraph to be inscribed inside
his books which, if somewhat selfish, was at
least true :
Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prete,
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate.*
The bookstall-keeper acquires gradually a
knowledge of the finest or, if not the finest,
the most curious editions ; and he would be
but a poor dealer were he unable to judge of
their value. At one time the Pont-Neuf was
full of bookshops ; and the second-hand dealers
in books had their stalls in the Cite, close to
Notre Dame and to the Palace of Justice, as
well as on the Place de Greves. But they are
now nearly all to be found on the parapets of
the left bank.
The picture-dealers, at one time numerous on
the quays of the left bank of the Seine, have for
years past been gradually disappearing. It was in
the curiosity shop already mentioned in connec
tion withBalzac's" Peau de Chagrin" that a certain
Christ, by Raphael, was supposed to be kept hidden
away like a treasure. That, however, was more
than sixty years ago ; and no masterpieces by
Raphael are now to be found in the curiosity shops
* This is the sad lot of every book that is lent : often it is lost, always
spoilt.

2;b

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Sports and Diversions.

of the left bank. The one place for buying
and selling pictures is the Hotel Drouot, on
the other side of the river. Here pictures
are sold by auction at the hands of official

pictures, when Murillo's " Conception " was pur
chased by the Government for the Square Room
of the Louvre, nearly 30,000 francs commission
had to be paid independently of the 580,000 francs,

SECOND-HAND BOOKSTALLS.

auctioneers and authorised brokers. In addition
to the purchase-money five per cent, must be paid
in the way of fees and for the cost of the sale.
This charge is thought exorbitant, and it has not
been forgotten that at the sale of Marshal Soult's

which was the adjudicated price. The sales
about to take place are announced on the walls
of the Hotel Drouot ; also in the columns of
certain journals, such as the Moniteur des Ventes
or the Chronique des Arts.

21

THE BUREAU DE BIENFAISANCE ASYLUM AT VINCENNES.
J. The Facade. ... The Bowling Green.

Fencing Schools.]

FENCING IN FRANCE.

257

CHAPTER XXXVII.

FENCING SCHOOLS.

Fencing in France— A National Art— Some Extracts from the Writings of M. tegouve, One of its Chief Exponents-
The Old Style of Fencing and the New.

FENCING is in England the pastime of a
few amateurs ; in France it is a national
art. An ingenious reason has been adduced by
M. Legouve why proficiency with the rapier
should be acquired by everyone. "The sword,"
he /writes, " possesses the finest of all advantages :
it is the only weapon with which you can
avenge yourself without an effusion of blood.
What is nobler for a man of chivalry and skill
when he finds himself confronting the man
who has offended him, and whom he is privileged
to kill, than at once to punish this adversary and
to spare his life — to disarm him, that is to say."
It is in his character of dramatic author,
however, that M. Legouve chiefly values duelling.
" What would become of us wretched playwrights
without the sword-duel ? " he asks. " The pistol
is a brutal contrivance, suitable only to dark
melodramas and to denouements. . . . What do
you think could be done in a comedy with a
man who haply had received a bullet wound ?
He is no longer good for anything. But if he has
been wounded with a sword, he returns two
minutes afterwards with his hand thrust in
the folds of his waistcoat and an attempted
smile on his face. The young woman says
to him, ' How pale you are ! ' 'I, made
moiselle ? ' Then the end of a bandage is
somehow perceived. ' Gracious heavens ! you
have been fighting a duel,' she exclaims." ,M.
Legouve must now 'be allowed to continue
in his own language :" Ah ! l'admirable verbe
que le verbe se battre ! Tous les temps en
sont bons. Vous vous battez ? battez-vous !
... Ne. voiis battez pas / . . . Et comme il va bien
avec les exclamations: ' Mon ami I par gr dee /
Monsieur, vous etes un lache / . . . Arthur !
Arthur! . . . Je me fette atespieds!' Speak
not to me of dramatic writing without those two
indispensable collaborators : love and the sword.
" Fencing interests me, moreover, simply as an
observer. A fencing-school is a theatre at which
as many amusing characters may be seen as
on any stage. First of all there is a class of
fencers who do not fence and never will. Then
there are the men who fence in order to reduce
41

their bulk ; who have been told by their doctor
or their wife that they are too fat, and who,
after sweatipg like oxen, blowing like seals,
steaming like boiled puddings, for a, couple of
hours, tell you in the calmest manner that
they have been fencing.
" Then there are the fencing-masters, or pro
fessors of fencing, as they prefer to be called.
They are generally gay, good-natured, well-
meaning fellows, devoted body and soul to their
pupils, especially to those pupils who have done
them the honour to kill someone in mortal
combat. Their weak point is said to be vera
city ; not on all occasions, but whenever they
have the foil in hand. "I have never," says
M. Legouve, "met a single fencer who would
not — say once every year — deny that he had
been touched when the hit was palpable. It is
so easy to say 'I did not feel it,' and a hit not
recognised does not count. Ah, if we dramatists
could only annul hisses by saying : ' I did not
hear them ! '
" My first professor," continues M. Legouve,
"was an old master known as Pere Dularviez.
He had a daughter of whom he was exceed
ingly proud. She was employed in a milliner's
shop, which caused her father some uneasiness
as to her possible conduct. There was nothing
to justify his uneasiness, but he was uneasy.
At last, unable to rest, he wrapped himself
up in a cloak and took up his position at
the corner of the Rue Traversiere, close to
the Rue Saint-Honore, where his daughter
worked. 'You may. imagine' he said to us,
' how my heart beat when I saw her appear.
I approached her,, and averting my face, whis
pered in her ear a graceful little compliment
which I had invented for the occasion. O joy. I
she turned round and administered to me with
all her might a box on the ear. I guarded
myself en tierce and said : ' My child, you are
truly virtuous.'
" Fencing has, moreover, its utilitarian value.
It teaches you to judge men. With the foil in
hand .no dissimulation is possible. After five
minutes of foil-play the false varnish of mundane

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Fencing Schools,

hypocrisy falls and trickles away with the perspira
tion : instead of the polished man of the world,
with yellow gloves and conventional phrases, you
have before you the actual man, a calculator or
a blunderer, wTeak or firm, wily or ingenuous,
sincere or treacherous. . . . One day I derived
a great advantage. I was crossing foils with
a large broker in brandies, rums, and cham
pagnes. Before the passage of arms he had
offered me his services in regard to a supply
of liquors, and I had almost accepted. . . .
The fencing at an end, I went to the proprietor
and said : ' I shall buy no champagne of that
man.' ' Why not ? ' ' His wine must be
adulterated — he denies every hit.'
" Apply my principle, and you will find it
profitable. Some of you are already married.
One day you will have daughters to marry.
Well, if a suitor presents himself, do not waste
time in collecting particulars which are too often
false. Say simply to your future son-in-law :
' Will you have a turn with the foils ? ' At
the end of a quarter of an hour you will know
more about his character than after six weeks
of investigations.
" Finally, I like fencing because you cannot
learn it. It does, indeed, demand practice, and
long practice ; but that is not sufficient, it must
be your vocation : you must be born a fencer,
just as you must be born an artist. And then,
when the apprenticeship has been served, what
pleasure is enjoyed ! I doubt whether there is
in external life a single act in which a man feels
himself to live more fully than in a vigorous
assault. " Look at the fencer in action. Each member,
each muscle is stretched, and each for a different
purpose. Whilst the hand glances rapidly and
lightly, always tending forwards, the body holds
itself back, and the legs, vigorously contracted
like a spring, await, for their extension, the
signal to be given by the arm as it prepares to
make its sudden thrust. The whole of the
members are like so many obedient soldiers to
whom the general says: ' March ' — ' Halt ' —
'Double.' The general is the head, that head
which, at once inspired and calculating as though
on a real field of battle, detects at a glance the
faults of the enemy, lays traps for him and
compels him to fall into them, simulates a
retreat in order to give him confidence, and
returns suddenly upon him with a frightful
assault. . . .
" And to think that this art, complex as it is, in
which the whole of the body is engaged, should

really be concentrated between the end of the
forefinger and the thumb. For there it all is :
there resides the delicate and masterly faculty
which alone constitutes the superior fencer —
tact. Is it not wonderful to see how much
sensibility and life flows between these two
digits ? They tremble, they palpitate beneath
the pressure of the foil in contact with their
own, as if an electric current communicated to
them all its movements. For them the aid of
sight is not necessary, for they do more than see
the hostile sword ; they feel it, they could follow
it with their eyes bandaged ; and if you add to
these magnificent delights of the sense of touch
the powerful circulation of the blood which runs
in great waves through the veins, the beating
heart, the boiling head, the throbbing arteries,
the heaving breast, the opening pores ; if you
join, moreover, to this the delight of feeling your
power and your suppleness increase tenfold ; if
you think, above all, of the ardent joy and bitter
grief of self-love, of the pleasure of beating and
the vexation of being beaten, and of the thousand
vicissitudes of a struggle which terminates and
begins again at each fresh thrust — you will
understand that there is in the exercise of this
art a veritable intoxication, of which the passion
for gambling can alone give an idea. It is play
without vice and with health superadded."
M. Legouve, who, besides being an admirable
writer, possesses no superficial knowledge of
fencing, next proceeds to a few detailed observa
tions on the art of the foil and its professors.
We can hardly do better than preserve his own
words. "Fencing," he says, "has undergone
during the last half-century the same revolution
as poetry, music, and painting. It has had its
romantic period and its contending schools.
"The distinguishing ¦ characteristics of the old
school were rigidity, grace, and a certain
academic elegance. The words themselves ex
press the thing. To practise fencing was to
'go to the Academy.' A fencer of the old
school could not run to the attack, nor sud
denly break off. He neither bent down nor
sprang forward, but under all circumstances
maintained, more or less, the same attitude.
Fencing was in those days, above all things, an
art ; which, like every art, had the beautiful for
aim. " Very different was the system of the new
school. To make hits was its one object. The
means were of no importance, provided the
result could be obtained. Fencing was now
more a combat than an art ; its programme

Petty Trades.]

PETTY TRADES.

259

included everything, even the ugly. Fencers
would now lie on the ground, would avoid a
thrust by ducking their head, aim below the
belt, and reduce all the qualities of the fencer
to one only : rapidity.
" Gomard and Charlemagne were the two last
representatives of the old school : Roussel and
Lozes the two first of the new one. I have had
the honour, in my youth, of fencing with all
four ; and I do not hesitate to say that, in my
opinion, while fully recognising the incomparable
quickness of Lozes, the superiority rested alto
gether with the representatives of the old school.
Fencing ran the risk not of being renewed, like
poetry, in another form, but of being lost alto
gether, at least as an art. Then came forward
a young man who combined in himself the op
posite qualities of the two schools. Every lover
of fencing will understand that I am referring to
Bertrand. As rapid as Lozes and as regular as
Gomard, he borrowed from romanticism its
audacity, its inspiration, its occasional rashness,
and preserved at the same time the elegance of
bearing, the severity of attitude, the caution and
the science of the classical school. He may
fairly be said, in company with Cordelois and

Pons the elder, to have saved the art of fencing.
He is an exceptional fencer among exceptional
fencers. If I may be allowed to use the ex
pression, there is genius in his art. The fencing-
masters who came next were the products, some
what mixed, of the three schools ; the four
professors who figure in the first rank being
MM. Robert the elder, Gatechair, Mimiague,
and Pons the younger. Robert has a quickness
of hand, an accuracy of attitude, and a rapidity
of reply which recalls Bertrand. Gatechair is
the most academic of the masters of the present
day. There is, however, something a little
theatrical in his elegance and in his imposing
carriage. " Mimiague is supple, insinuating, adroit, sure
to profit by every opportunity. There is a sort
of cajolery in his play. If you ask who is the
best of these four professors, I shall recommend
you to apply the test of Themistocles. Bring
together the principal fencing-masters of Paris,
and ask them to write on a slip of paper the
names of the two best fencers in Paris. Each of
them will give the first vote to himself ; but
Robert will have all the second votes : from
which I conclude that he deserves the first."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PETTY TRADES.

Petty Trades— Their Origins— The Day-Banker— The Guardian Angel— The Old-Clothesman— The Claque-
Its First Beginning and Development.

THE police of Paris are very strict in sup
pressing those trades bordering upon
mendicancy, which in London are somewhat'
freely allowed. Many of the former hawkers of
inexpensive trifles have been permanently swept
away from the streets of Paris.
The Galileo of the Place Vendome, however,
is still permitted to carry on his business. As
soon as the gas is alight, this personage, some
what fantastically dressed, levels his telescope,
after having traced in chalk on the pavement a
picture of the moon, with its mountains, ravines,
and so forth. In consideration of a slight recog
nition, varying from 25 to 50 centimes, he shows
his clients all the astronomical phenomena,
including some which have escaped the notice
of the Observatory.
" Nearly all the petty industries not classed in

the Dictionary of Commerce are," says a French
writer, " the product of an imagination over
excited by the gnawings of the stomach. The
first person who picked up, on the highway, a
cigar-end, and then another and another, and
who, after chopping them all up, sold the results
as smoking-tobacco, did not deliberately adopt
this profession in the same way that a person
becomes an administrator or a lawyer. It was
the necessity of eating that launched him into
this career. Presently he held this argument,
based upon statistics : — Every day in Paris at
least three hundred thousand cigars are smoked.
There must, therefore, be somewhere, and par
ticularly beneath the outdoor tables of the boule
vard cafes, three hundred thousand fag-ends.
Thus the horizon opens to him. He perceives
a magnificent commercial enterprise and takes

260

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Petty Trades.

partners. A new kind of manufacturer has now
come into being : a manufacturer of unlicensed
tobacco." Apparently the commodity sells well ; and in
the retort of a pipe the eclectic composition
is as agreeable to the taste as the privileged
product of the imperial factories. Some of the
contraband dealers in cigar-ends have made a
small fortune.
It was simply chance which created the " day-
banker " or " banquier a la
journee." Thirty or forty
years ago an individual
named Poildeloup, living in
the quarter of the markets,
lent five francs one day to
a woman dealing in old
clothes, on condition that
she should return him the
same evening five francs
ten centimes. She kept
her word, and again bor
rowed from him. Then
other tradeswomen, also
out of funds, applied to
Poildeloup, who at once
saw what a profit he might
derive from this daily lend
ing organised on a big
scale. The two sous brought
to him each evening in ex
cess of the five francs lent
in the morning looked less
than nothing at first sight ;
but in fifty days the banker
doubled his capital, and in
a few. years had amassed
wealth. Later on, rival
banks were established, which reduced the
interest by half, charging only five centimes
a day on a hundred sous borrowed in the
morning and returned at night. These day-
banks, content with half the interest charged by
the inventor of the business, still do an excellent
trade. One of the most interesting of the small pro
fessions is that of the "guardian angel." This
ethereal personage conducts drunkards home to
their dwellings. Attached to every large Paris
tavern is a guardian angel, whose duty it is to
escort any late-staying customer whose legs
decline their office, and who needs a guide.
He must not quit the person entrusted to his
charge until the latter is out of the reach of
thieves and safely installed in his own house.

OLD-CLOTHES DEALER

The chief quality requisite in this angel is
sobriety. We were speaking just now of the man who
collects cigar-ends. Another curious picker -up of
unconsidered trifles is the man who is always on
the look-out for crusts of bread. A crust of
bread is found in all sorts of places : in the street,
at the corners of lanes and alleys, on heaps of
rubbish. Do not imagine that this man, on the
hunt for hard, dirty, disgusting pieces of bread,
has fallen so low as to be
obliged to live on the fruits
of his discoveries. He is
the sort of person who
believes firmly that nothing
in this world is lost, and
that one morsel of dry
bread, added to another,
may be the beginning of
a sack of fragments which
he will be able to sell
for some twenty sous to
breeders of rabbits. The
rabbit, beloved by the
frequenters of barrier-
taverns, does not feed on
grain and cabbage alone.
It also eats a good quan
tity of bread. It is in
order to procure it this
article of diet that the
trade of crust-collector was
invented. Of the ragpicker mention
has been made elsewhere.
He is essentially eclectic in
his tastes : rags, paper,
gloves, glass, broken toys, the
necks of bottles, nothing comes amiss to him. He
puts into the basket he carries on his shoulder
whatever he can find. It is the trieur or sorter
whom the classification of the different objects
concerns. Another petty trade which should not be for
gotten is that of the old-clothesman, who is seen
everywhere early in the .morning uttering his
piercing and well-known cry. He is above all
to be met with in the districts where young men
abound : in the environs, that is to say, of the
School of Law and of the School of Medicine.
The old-clothesman is of all the gutter-merchants
the most cunning and the most merciless. He
wanders around the abodes of the students,
knowing well the time when they will probably
find it necessary to ease themselves of a portion

Petty. Trades.]

THE OLD-CLOTHESMAN.

261

of their wardrobe. It is, above all, when the
Carnival is going on that he does good business.
The allowance from home being insufficient for
the cost of the masked ball, with its concomitant
expenses, he realises money by the sale, now of
a light overcoat, now of some other summer
garment which can be dispensed with in the
depths of winter. If the old-clothesman is
waiting for the student, the student is on the

impecunious position, sold them back again to
Jules. In the Temple, which gives its name to one
of the lower boulevards, there was formerly a
market for all kinds of antiquities, including
old clothes ; while buying and selling of a like
character was carried on until a later period
in the Marche des Patriarches. Here, even now,
the lovers of the economical may provide them-

±A

LE DEBARCADERE DES BATEAUX-OMNIBUS
VENDORS OF REFRESHMENTS.

look-out for the old-clothesman. The latter
enters and the bargaining is at once begun.
Whatever the dealer may offer, it is sure, after
some haggling as if for form's sake, to be ac
cepted. Having made his purchase, the old-
clothesman hastens with the clothes he has
bought for a mere nothing from an improvident
student in order to sell them at a moderate rate
to a provident one. A story is told of two
students, of about the same height and figure,
who after a time found that their clothes passed
from one to the other, the middleman in the
shape of the old-clothesman taking on each
transaction his own particular profit. It struck
them that the middleman might as well be
suppressed ; and from that time forward Jules,
when he was hard up, sold his clothes to Anatole,
while Anatole, when he in his turn fell into an

selves with shoes at a franc, and boots at three
francs and a half.
There are other petty trades at Paris, such as
that of the bird-catcher and the pigeon-fancier.
Nor must, the sellers of violets at one sou the
bunch be forgotten ; though they are not to be
confounded with the bouquetiere in a far more
fashionable walk of life. The dealers in groundsel,
too, have a trade of their own.
There are many institutions, professions, and
classes which, after being originated on the left
bank, have crossed the water to flourish on the
right. Among these must be included the
claque ; though, from whatever quarter it may
have sprung, there is now no theatrical district
in Paris where it does not thrive.
It originated at the Comedie Francaise, when

26:

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Petty Trades.

that institution had its abode at the theatre
now known as the Odeon, where, among other
masterpieces, Beaumarchais's Marriage of
Figaro was produced in 1784. Mercier pointed
out, about this time, that the masterpiece in
question had no need of organised applause.
This preconcerted clapping of hands, varied by
the stamping of feet and by walking-sticks, had
a very bad effect on the taste and temper of
the public, and even, at times, on the fortune of
a piece. " They clap when the actor appears on
the stage ; they clap for the author at the end
of the play ; they clap for the composer, and
make more noise than all the instruments of
Gluck's orchestra, which can no longer be
heard. This perpetual noise, this artificial
excitement, degrades the public taste. An
author who was constantly hissed was once
advised to construct a machine which would
imitate the sound of three or four hundred
persons clapping their hands, and to place it
in a corner of the theatre under the guidance of
some intelligent and devoted friend."
Another writer on the same subject, M.
Prudhomme, tells us in his " Historical and
Critical Mirror of Old and New Paris" (1807)
that he had once been acquainted with a man
who had no means of living but by assisting
at first representations. Placed in the middle of
the pit, he called attention to the beauties of
the piece and led the applause. The name
of "Monsieur Claque" had been given to him,
and he had hands as hard as the piece of wood
with which washerwomen beat their linen. His
terms were thirty-six francs if the piece succeeded,
and twelve francs if it failed.
The claque, however, did not acquire its
greatest importance until the time of the
Restoration. At an earlier period Dorat, a
popular drawing-room poet, or writer of vers de
societe, was in the habit of sending persons to
the theatre with a free-admission on the under
standing that they were to applaud his piece.
By this stratagem he managed to secure a run
of several nights for more than one of his
works ; but at each success he might have
applied to himself the exclamation of Pyrrhus
after the Battle of Asculum : " One more such
victory and I am ruined."
Dorat did, indeed, ruin himself at the game he
is said to have invented ; but his invention was
not lost to posterity. The claque, however, did
not work, in these comparatively primitive days,
as an organised body. There was a certain
Chevalier de la Morliere, a retired musketeer,

who undertook the criticism of all new pieces,
and offered to dramatic authors his support or
his condemnation. His terms were moderate.
A few dinners, a few louis, lent without any
fixed term of repayment, a little commission
on the pit tickets that passed through his hands :
that was all he asked. He had volunteers and
paid agents equally at his disposal, the former
acting under his advice, the latter at his com
mand. The Chevalier de la Morliere placed
himself, moreover, at the service of debutants
and debutantes, or rather he imposed his services
upon them. One day he took it into his head
to become a dramatic author, arguing with
himself that after ensuring the success of so
many works by others he could do the same for a
work of his own. But though he now surpassed
himself in the ingenuity of his manoeuvres, the
work he produced did not succeed. Thereupon
he lost all credit. The authors and actors
resolved to do without him. His sceptre fell,
but only to be taken from time to time by others.
Up to this time the claque, as before said, was
the work of enterprising individuals who organ
ised it on certain occasions, but not continuously
as a permanent institution. Figaro, in Beaumar
chais's comedy, speaks of the play he had written,
and goes on to say : " I really cannot understand
how it was that I did not obtain the greatest
success ; for I had filled the pit with excellent
workmen, whose hands were like wood."
The organisation of the claque, as a permanent
institution, dates from the time of Napoleon L,
and seems to have had for its starting-point the
famous rivalry between Mile. Duchenois and
Mile. Georges. When the struggle between the
two tragic actresses came to an end, the forces
organised in their service declined to be dis
banded. They elected their chiefs, and the
leaders treated with managers and authors for
regular support. People were still found who
would applaud a favourite actor or actress from
enthusiasm, duly stimulated by a gratuitous
ticket. Thus at one time the whole atelier of
David served as claque to an actress much
admired by the painter and his pupils, who
without support and encouragement might have
been crushed, it was thought, by the growing
talent and popularity of Mile. Mars. The
claque of David's atelier was a formidable one,
for the great artist had from sixty to eighty
students attached to him. This was in 18 10,
a year or two after the publication of the
" Historical and Critical Mirror of Old and New
Paris" previously referred to.

Petty Trades.]

THE CLAOUE.

263

Under the Restoration the claque was a
regular institution. The quarrels of the Rom
anticists and Classicists lent it a considerable
importance. Impartial in its tastes, it served,
turn by turn, and with the same zeal, the
" Antony " of the modern drama and the Greek
heroines of ancient tragedy. Since 1830 its
authority has been universally accepted. Several
directors, after trying to dispense with it, have been
obliged to conciliate it and accept its conditions
— for when the directors have driven it from
their house, it has always been brought back by
the vanity of the comedians. One alone of the
Paris theatres preserved itself from the claque.
This was the now defunct Theatre Italien ;
though people say of this house that if it had
not a claque it had a clique.
With the exception of the last-named, all the
theatres of Paris have for years past had or
ganised claques, that of the Opera being the best
disciplined. The chiefs of the claques give them
selves the title of "undertakers of dramatic
successes." They do not receive a subvention
from the " directors," but a certain number of
places each night, which they sell for their own
benefit. It is not from the tickets, however,
that they derive the bulk of their gains. Some
of them make twenty or thirty thousand francs
a year ; but they derive this from the vanity of
the actors, who pay them proportionately to the
degree of applause required.
The claque consists of the chief and a number
of assistants, generally poor wretches with a
passion for the theatre, some of whom are ad
mitted free on condition of contributing as much
applause as necessary, while others are admitted
simply at a reduced price. The chief attends
the rehearsals, and notes the scenes, passages,
or phrases which seem most effective. Then
he revises his notes by watching the effect
of the first performance on the public. After
that he knows each precise point at which to
come in with his applause ; and if the piece is
played for a year, the laughter and tears occur at
the same given moments. He employs great
tact in choosing men, and even women, for his
purpose, the fair sex being the best counterfeiters
•of convulsive emotion. When, therefore, a drama
is produced at Paris, a number of lady weepers are
distributed amongst the audience, many of them
being the devoted wives of male members of
the claque. So soon as the old man of the piece
recovers his unfortunate daughter, and exclaims,
" My darling ! Saved ! " the lady weepers
plunge their faces into their handkerchiefs and

sob like children. The thing becomes con
tagious. The whole female portion of the
audience are now, perhaps, like Niobe, all tears,
and the newspapers next day declare that the
performance was a succcs de larmes.
Doubtless this charlatanism has its comic side.
But it is repulsive at the same time ; for false
hood is the foundation of the system, and,
as M. Eugene Despois says : "It is sad to see
men almost exclusively occupied in lying reci
procally. People say that it is only life, that you
must conform to it, and that it imposes on no
one. 'Who is deceived ? Everyone agrees to
the system,' they argue. That is true. No one
is duped ; but of what use is all this comedy?
After all, of the two parts, that played by the
claqueurs, often with spirit, to dupe the public,
and that played by the public who submit to
this impudent mystification and daily pretend to
be duped, the most shameful is that of the
public." Of recent years the claque has been made the
object of some very lively attacks by writers
who understand the dignity of their profession.
A certain number of dramatic authors, Emile
Augier and Dumas the younger amongst others,
have frequently endeavoured to dispense with
its mercenary plaudits ; but it must be owned
that the vanity of a large proportion of the actors,
and in particular of the actresses, has frustrated
the reform. In the meantime, ere the theatre
world has awakened to the dishonourable
character of the claque system, the claqueurs grow
fat, and in some cases possess their town and
country residences. It is true that not everyone
can be a chief of the claque ; to conquer, or
rather to purchase, that important post, a great
deal of money is required. Auguste, formerly
chief of the claque at the Opera, paid 80,000
francs for his position, but in a few years he had
made his fortune. " More than one well-estab
lished dancer paid him a pension," says Dr.
Veron. "The debut of each artist brought him
a gratuity proportionate to the artist's pretensions.
Towards the end of an engagement and the
moment of its renewal more than one singer or
actor, in order to deceive at once the public
and the director, goes to the Auguste of his
theatre and offers him a bag of gold to pro
duce such a paroxysm of applause as shall result
in a large increase of salary. Such are the traps
laid for the director ; and into these traps, shrewd
as he may be, he sometimes inevitably falls."
Dr. Veron, an experienced impresario, is far from
denouncing the claque, which, according to him,

264

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Petty Trades.

has a mission. " All who expose themselves to
be judged by the public, need," he says, " for the
animation of their courage, that fever of joy
which applause produces in them." That was
also the opinion of Talma, who found the public
too slow to take the initiative. " The claque,"
says Elleviou, " is as necessary in the centre of
the pit as the chandelier in the centre of a
drawing-room." The question has often been raised as to
whether not only the claque but even spontaneous
applause should not be suppressed. The spectator,
abandoned to the power of the illusion, is dis
pleased to find himself disturbed by. unexpected
noise, which, tearing him from Athens or from
Rome, reminds him that he is on the benches of
a Paris playhouse.
Several chiefs of claques have become cele
brities, or at least notorieties ; with two gentle
men named Santon and Porcher among the
number. One of these " knights of the
chandelier," as they are familiarly called, has
published his reminiscences, entitled, " Memoirs
of a Claqueur, containing the theory and prac
tice of the art of obtaining success, by Robert
(Castel), formerly chief of the Dramatic In
surance Company, Paris, 1829."
Different opinions are entertained in thea
trical circles as to the utility of the claque,
some contending that it is indispensable, while
others take a higher view, and hold that the
work represented and the actors representing it
may advantageously be allowed to stand upon
their own merits. Meanwhile, apart from the
claque maintained at all the Paris theatres by
the management, there are often special claques
which are paid by leading members of the
company, jealous of one another's reputation.
This is looked upon by the company generally as
unfair, and the practice is never avowed. Even
in London, especially (if not exclusively) at the
opera, a number of energetic men may sometimes
be seen — and, above all, heard — working together
with a view to the success of some particular
" artist." The claqueurs — at least, at the opera —
are usually Italians, from the shops of the
Italian wine merchants and dealers in macaroni,
vermicelli, truffles, and olives in the neighbour
hood of Soho. Wagner is known to have been
absolutely opposed not only to the claque but to

the most legitimate bursts of applause. The
frame of mind in which to enjoy beautiful
music should not, indeed, be broken in upon
by disturbances from the outside. Not only
in Germany, but wherever Wagner is played,
the claque is, for the occasion, dispensed with.
Even at the Grand Opera of Paris there was no
claque when Lohengrin was performed ; and
it may be that if a representation is witnessed
in absolute silence from the beginning to the
end of each act, the applause is more enthusiastic
when at last the moment for plaudits arrives.
In opposition to what takes place at Wagnerian
performances wherever given, it may be mentioned
that at the dramatic theatres of Paris, as at the
lyrical theatres of Italy (when Wagner is not
being played), the leading performers are not
only applauded, but walk forward and bow their
acknowledgment of the applause at the end of
any effective scene in which they may have
pleased the public, or perhaps only the claque.
This destroys all verisimilitude. The singer is
applauded as Violetta or as Adrienne Lecouvreur,
and acknowledges the applause in the character
of Mme. Adelina Patti or of Mme. Sarah Bern
hardt. But wliatever maybe said against it, the claque
is great and, in France at least, will prevail. Nor
can it be denied that in some instances and on
some individuals it imposes opinions which but
for its authority would not be accepted. There
is an old fable of a man who, standing in a
market-place, was approached by a man leading
a pig. " Do you want to buy this sheep ? " asked
the proprietor ofthe animal. "It is a pig," was
the reply. " Nothing of the kind ; I can assure
you your eyes deceive you," returned the sales
man. At that moment a third person came up,
and, looking at the quadruped, said to its owner,
" How much do you want for that sheep ? " The
man to whom it had first been offered stared
with surprise, and supposed that the third person
was out of his mind ; but when a fourth, fifth,
and sixth person had come up and likewise
demanded the price of that " sheep," he came to
the conclusion that his own eyes must be at fault,
and bought the animal as mutton.
The business of the claque is to pass off a
theatrical pig as a theatrical sheep — and it
sometimes succeeds.

Obsolete Paris Shops.]

THE "LUCKY FORK.'

265

CHAPTER XXXIX.
OBSOLETE PARIS SHOPS.
The Old Wooden Stalls of Forty Years Ago— The " Lucky Fork "—The Cobblers' Shops-The Old Cafes.

THE quays on the left bank of the Seine were
at one time remarkable for their shops ; and
the book-stalls of the Quai Voltaire are still cele
brated. It was on one of the quays of the left
bank that the old curiosity shop stood, so
picturesquely described by Balzac, in which the
hero of the "Peau de Chagrin," who had entered
the shop merely to pass the time until it should
be dark enough for him to throw himself from
the Pont Neuf without attracting too much
attention, purchased his fatal talisman.
Thirty or forty years ago Paris contained
thousands of antique little shops or covered
stalls, of which now very few specimens remain.
They were painted wooden structures, six feet
high by three feet broad, picturesquely situated
at the corners of squares or public monuments,
by the side of churches or city houses, with plank
roofs through which a stove-chimney protruded,
and with the street pavement for their floor.
The extermination of these quaint establish
ments necessarily accompanied the general im
provement of the city ; they were an eyesore
when the thoroughfares had become elegant.
By degrees the keepers of these huts, who were
once the gaiety and life of the streets, disappeared.
They took refuge for the most part in overcrowded
houses which had escaped the pickaxe of the
architectural improver, though this removal was
only a prelude to their final departure. These
petty shopkeepers were often intellectually su
perior to the proprietors of the finest shops on the
boulevard, for many a scholar who found that
the art or science to which he had sacrificed his
life proved ungrateful, would for the sake of his
daily bread set up in one of these street huts as
a "public writer," there, as set forth in a previous
chapter, writing love-letters for domestic servants
or grooms who could not express the sentiments
of their bosom with a pen. Schoolmasters
without pupils, students who had been plucked
at their examinations, and professors without
chairs, formed a large proportion of this hut-
inhabiting population.
Amongst these primitive establishments were
a number of fried-potato shops, which were
besieged by street urchins in quest of the

traditional halfpennyworth of fritters. In the
Rue de la Vieille-Estrapade flourished a shop
well known under the sign or title of the " Lucky
Fork." Here might be beheld an enormous
metal cauldron, in which constantly simmered a
dark-coloured broth of somewhat too odoriferous
a character. Floating in this gigantic vessel,
tossed hither and thither by the bubbling of
the hot liquid, were pieces of tripe, pork, and
other even less inviting viands, which the
customer had to make a stab at with a sharp fork
of huge dimensions. Yet although the aspect
of these establishments was not altogether ap
petising, cleanliness was by no means a quality
in which they were deficient. For a halfpenny
the consumers had the privilege of a stab with
the fork. The patrons of these shops were
numerous and varied : porters, workmen, stu
dents, tinkers, artists. The poet Berthauld,
author of the " Fille du Peuple," was famed for
his skill with the weapon in question ; Chartelet
the painter and Fourier the philosopher fre
quently tried their hand with it, not to mention
other votaries of the arts and sciences who,
unknown at that time, were destined to become
celebrated. It used to be a sOurce of great
amusement to watch the customers, whatever
their trade or profession might be, as, with keen
gaze, they awaited some unusually big morsel
which was floating towards them, and then
suddenly made a thrust at it like eel-spearers.
The piece of meat, incessantly dancing and
revolving as it was, frequently eluded the
prongs of the fork, whereupon cries of irony
would escape from the attentive crowd ; but
when, at the first stab — for a halfpenny, that is
to say — one of the combatants had secured a
bulky morsel, this victor paraded through the
ranks of the spectators, who, as they made way
for him, applauded vociferously. Many, however,
of the vanquished went to bed on nothing but
water and a crust of bread.
There were fruit-stalls, where apples, pears,
and even peaches, were sold at prices which have
quintupled since then ; and huts kept by knife-
grinders, who, at a later period, resumed their
daily pilgrimage through those quarters of Paris

20b

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Obsolete Paris Shops.

where blunt instruments were most likely to be
requiring a cheap edge. There was a bird-shop
on the island of Saint Louis where the feathered
stock was confided to the care of two enormous
white cats, besides other like establishments, un
provided with cats, which were numerous enough
in that space which is to-day occupied by the
square of the Louvre. Then there were cobblers
who, within their little pavement cabins, had no
bills to deliver, no rent to pay, no reproaches
to bear, no masters whose caprices must be
humoured, since their toil from one hour to an
other produced immediate payment. The spirit
of independence which was a characteristic of
these artists in leather dated back, indeed, to
ancient times. Simon of Athens, the friend of
Socrates and the author of the thirty-three dia
logues, in which a system of philosophy is set
forth with great lucidity, received from Pericles
an invitation to quit his shop and go to live with
that magnate. " I would not sell my liberty for
all the treasures in Greece," was the reply.
The street cobblers of Paris have frequently
given heroic instances of devotion and patriotism.
During the massacre of St. Bartholomew they
saved many Protestants from the edge of the
sword. Their little shops were divided into
two compartments, of which the upper one, ap
proached by a small ladder, served as lumber-
room for a mass of leather scraps and old shoes.
It was here that more than one of the companions
of Admiral Coligny found safety.
Some time afterwards, defying the terrible
edicts of Richelieu, a Paris cobbler transmitted
some vitally important correspondence to the
prisoners in the Bastille, by cleverly sewing the
letters between the soles of shoes. Later on his
shop became a sort of literary rendezvous. Politics
were indeed talked there ; but it was the latest
prose and the latest verse which chiefly occupied
the frequenters. The cobbler was at that period
accustomed to combine with his leathern functions
those of " public-writer."
French authors and poets have always had a
kindness for the cobbler. Francois Villon wrote
what is considered the best of his odes in honour
of the " Povres Housseurs," makers, that is to
say, of a species of boots worn in the fifteenth
century. It is known that the great Corneille
did not think it beneath his dignity to make
an intimate friend of the cobbler of the Rue
d'Argenteuil. The free atmosphere which surrounded his
wooden shop apparently inspired the artist in
leather with a passion for joyous rhymes and a

love of literary works, together with a certain
fund of satire which attracted men of letters
towards him.
The most celebrated Paris cobbler of the
eighteenth century was Henry Sellier, whose
shop stood in the Rue Quoquereau, to-day the
Rue Coq-Heron. This shop was a vile hut of
rotten planks, the roof of which, a piece of oil
cloth held up by a couple of broom-handles, was
riddled like a sieve. Nevertheless, the proprietor
wrote spirited verse, and the success of his poems
was such that Louis XIV. received a copy of
them, together with their author, in his chateau
at Fontainebleau. The effusions of Sellier, more
over, gained the approbation of Fontenelle, whose
good opinion brought them greatly into fashion,
and even excited the jealousy of contemporary
poetasters. One of Sellier's critics published a
couplet charging him with being assisted by
famous collaborators ; to which the cobbler, who,
whether poet or not, was always ready with a
repartee, penned in reply another couplet to the
effect that the absence of wit and every other
quality from the verses of his accuser sufficient!}-
proved that he, at least, wrote everything himself.
In 1789 the cobbler's shop promptly and
proudly bore aloft the tricolour cockade ; it
became a rendezvous for patriots, and a political
cabinet in which more than one great popular
resolution was passed. When the legislative
assembly had declared that the country was " in
danger," all the young shoemakers hastened to
enlist ; the paternal artists in leather offered
their children to France. In those battalions of
volunteers which were sometimes disdainfully
described as an army of " vagabonds, tailors and
cobblers," the last-named contingent, a numer
ous one, fought heroically enough.
Under the Restoration the hut of the cobbler
was a political and secret rendezvous for the
Bonapartists and the Republicans. Much whis
pering and much writing went on there ; many
a song, penned by a literary cobbler, issued thence
in manuscript, to travel rapidly from workshop
to workshop and inflame the political sentiments
of partisans. After 1830 the cobbler openly
showed his disapprobation of the citizen royalty.
The interior of his shop was completely papered
with political caricatures ; one manuscript satire
or cartoon, torn down by the police to-day, was
succeeded by another to-morrow. The police,
however, were so vigilant that the cobbler at
length found it advantageous not to meddle too
much with politics, and developed a tendency for
frequenting cheap taverns, in which his songs

Obsolete Paris Shops.]

THE OLD CAFES.

267

and conversation procured him a satisfactory
measure of admiration. He did not become a
drunkard, but he sought inspiration in moderate
potations. A celebrated advocate had lived for
sixteen years in the Rue Coq-Heron, and just
beneath the walls of his mansion a cobbler had
long been accustomed to hammer at the soles of
shoes. A provincial visitor one day asked this
cobbler whether he knew the advocate in question.
" No, sir," was the imperturbable reply. The
advocate overhead was told of it, and, mystified
at such an instance of ignorance, came down to
reproach his humble neighbour. " You do not
know me ? " he said, " and yet we haVe lived
sixteen years side by side ! " "Just so," answered
the cobbler, without the least embarrassment ;
" you have been next door to me for sixteen
years, and have not once asked me to drink
with you."
Among the shops and other establishments

that have disappeared from Paris may be men
tioned the ancient " cafe," properly so-called,
where coffee was served but smoking forbidden,
and the " cafe estaminet," where smoking was
permitted. Every cafe" is now a cafe estaminet ;
though it is the latter term, not the former,
which has gone out of use. The serving of beer
at cafes was of course an innovation ; but the
drinking of beer has become so general in Paris
that there are now numbers of so-called "brass
eries " (literally " breweries," which these places
are not), where beer is the principal if not the
only beverage served. In a history of cafes the
introduction of music and the development of
the cafe concert — the French music-hall — would
have to be noted. Of late years, too, music of a
certain kind — especially the music of the Hun
garian gipsies — executed by members of the gipsy
race more or less authentic, has been introduced
into restaurants.

7 /-

' b$%M& ¦¦¦'¦#

BOOKSTALLS ON THE QUAI VOLTAIRE.

CHAPTER XL.
THE PARIS PRESS.
French Governments and the Press — The Press under Napoleon— Some Account ofthe Leading Paris Papers — The Figaro.

UNDER the ancient Monarchy journalism
could scarcely be said to exist in France,
and the censorship exercised over books was so
severe that all political works of a critical char
acter written by Frenchmen had to be published
in Holland or in England. Arthur Young saw in
the absence of newspapers one of the causes of
the panic which seized whole classes and entire
neighbourhoods on the outbreak of the Revolu
tion. Absurd rumours were put into circulation,
and there were no journals by which to test their
accuracy ; for if the press is sometimes a purveyor
of gossip, it is above all a corrector of false in
telligence. A decree of the year 1728, to go
back no further, punished by - branding, the
pillory and the gallows, those who printed,
composed, or distributed "works considered
criminal." Some years afterwards the parlia
ment of Paris, which at this time was exposed
to many attacks, adopted a declaration which
condemned to hanging anyone who penned or

printed writings which tended to assail religion,
to disturb men's minds, to undermine the
authority of the king, or to trouble the order
and tranquillity of his dominions. No great use
was made of this law, for the Bastille sufficed to
silence those who spoke too loudly ; but it was
always agreeable to know that, if necessary,
objectionable writers could have their pens
snatched from them for ever.
The Revolution overthrew that majestic edifice
in which France had so long slumbered in peace.
The Constitution of 1791 set forth that, "the
free communication of thoughts and opinions is
one of the most precious of men's rights." It
provided that every citizen should be free to
" speak, write, print, without his writings being
liable to inspection or censorship before publica
tion." This uncurbed liberty, however, was necessarily
of short duration. In the famous Constitution
of 1793, which was never put in force, the

The Paris Press.]

THE PRESS UNDER NAPOLEON.

Convention guaranteed to every Frenchman
"liberty of the press," a maxim which always
looks well as a decoration on the frontispiece of
the Constitutional Temple ; but the decree of the
29th of March,i793, modified this excessive licence
by a little article couched in these terms : —
" Anyone who shall have composed or printed
writings which aim at the dissolution of the
national representation, and the re-establishment
of royalty or any other power which arrogates
the sovereignty of the people, shall be arraigned
before the tribunal extraordinary and punished
with death." The Convention did not recon
struct the Bastille ; but it sent a number of
journalists to the guillotine by way of warning
to their fellows. The warning, however, was
lost on Frenchmen, who, with their natural
characteristics, preferred to forfeit their head
rather than their tongue, and died jesting at
the executioner.
The Directory followed the example of the
Convention. The Constitution of the year III.
declares, in article 353, that " no one can be
prevented from saying, writing, printing, or
publishing his thoughts," but a law of the 27th
Germinal, in year IV., added the following
clause : " All those shall be punished with death
who by their speeches, or their printed writings,
whether circulated or placarded, provoke the
dissolution of the National Assembly or that of
the Executive Directory .... or the re-estab
lishment of royalty, that of the Constitution of
1793, that of the Constitution of 1791, or of any
other government, save the one established by
the Constitution of 1 79 1, accepted by the French
people, etc." With this important exception
the law is clement enough ; nor, indeed, were
the authorities anxious to enforce the death
clause where a milder punishment would serve
the turn. The Directory, after the 18th
Fructidor, instead of shooting ill-behaved jour
nalists, contented itself with sending out forty-
five of them to colonise Sinnamary, at the same
time placing the journals under the supervision
of the police, who could summarily suppress
them. The Directory, moreover, acting perhaps
on the principle of equality before the law,
imposed a stamp-duty on all journals, so that
Thought,' like other commodities, began to
contribute its share to the State by which it
was protected.
With the Consulate, France, as regarded press
matters, went straight back to the time of Louis
XIV. The first article of a consular decree,
issued January 17th, 1800, disposed of journalism

once and, if not for ever, at least for a considerable
time. It sets forth that the minister of justice
shall, so long as the war lasts, allow no more
than thirteen political journals, each of which
is specified by name, to be published at Paris.
The fifth article of this decree provided for
the instant suppression of all newspapers in
serting articles which might be wanting in
"the respect due to the social compact and
the sovereignty of the people, or to the glory
of the French armies," or which might print
"invectives against the governments and the
nations allied to or in friendly relations with
the Republic, even though these articles were
extracted from foreign periodicals." Nor did
Napoleon's vigilance cease with this. He despised
newspapers, but was afraid of books. Accord
ingly, while the censorship was re-established for
journals, printing and publishing offices were
made monopolies, and placed under surveillance
as in the best days of the old Monarchy. It was
for the master to think, to will, to act for all his
subjects ; he wished France and all Europe to be
occupied with him alone. The police took care
that there should be silence around him, and
human thought was represented by the voice of
the cannon. On the fall of Napoleon a charter
was given to France by the restored Monarchy,
in which the French were declared to possess
the right of publishing and printing their opinions
conformably to the laws intended to repress the
abuse of this liberty. But the very first bill
introduced into the new assembly subjected
pamphlets to the censorship, and newspapers
to the authorisation of the crown, while printers
were required to take out licences, which would
only be continued on good behaviour.
In 1 81 5, during the Hundred Days, the
emperor established the liberty of the press,
and the second Restoration maintained this
concession. Only for a time, however ; on
the assassination of the Due de Berry, some
one discovered that " the real dagger which had
stabbed the duke " was a liberal idea ; and a law
was passed by which a Government authorisation
was required before starting a newspaper. The
censorship was a$ the same time re-established,
while police courts were empowered to suspend
and suppress newspapers on the ground of evil
tendencies. Finally, the notorious " ordon-
nances " of 1830 suppressed liberty of the press
altogether. This led to the Revolution of July,
and the charter accepted by Louis Philippe on
his accession to the throne declared that the
censorship was not only abolished but could

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Pans Press

never be re-established. But the newspaper
stamp was maintained, and no one could start a
journal without previously depositing a large
sum as caution-money, with which to pay
damages in case of libel.
After the Revolution of 1848 liberty of the
press was once more proclaimed, and it seemed
as though France might at last accustom itself
to free newspapers, even as Mithridates accus
tomed himself to poison. Then, however, in
1 85 1, came the Coup d'etat, and once more the
press was fettered. A system of " warnings "
and of " communiques " was now adopted. The
communique" was a notice addressed to the
journal by the Government, which the editor
of the journal was obliged to insert. The warn
ings were of two kinds — first and second ; a first
warning, administered at will by the authorities,
had no immediate effect ; but after a second
warning, the journal receiving it could be at once
suppressed. " This ingenious system was so much
admired that it was forthwith adopted," says M.
Laboulaye in an article on the subject, " by the
four great states which march at the head of
modern civilisation : Spain, Turkey, Austria and
Russia. It was necessary, moreover, under the
Second Empire to obtain, before publishing a new
journal, an authorisation from the Government.
The first newspaper established in France was
the Gazette de France, founded by the physician
of Louis XIII. in 1631 ; the most widely known
and the most highly esteemed being the Journal
des Debats, founded by the Bertin brothers in
1789, the great revolutionary year in which also
the official organ under all systems of govern
ment, Le Moniteur Universel, was started.
Among the contributors to the Journal des
Debats may be mentioned : Michel Chevalier,
Saint-Marc Girardin, John Lemoinne, Prevost
Paradol, Renan, and Taine ; the dramatic
criticisms of the journal were for many years
written by Jules Janin/and the musical criticisms
by Berlioz.
The Constitutionnel was founded at the time of
the Restoration in 181 5. The most celebrated
of its editors was Dr. Veron, for some years
manager of the Opera, in which character he
produced Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable. The
most famous of the contributors to this journal
was Sainte-Beuve, who for a long succession of
years published in it every Monday one of those
literary articles which, in their collected form,
are known throughout the civilised world as
" Causeries du Lundi." Before contributing the
" Causeries " to the Constitutionnel (they were

continued and concluded in the Moniteur),
Sainte-Beuve had published, under the title of
" Portraits," a long series of biographical and
critical articles in the Revue de Paris, which,
after the cessation of that periodical, he went on
with in the Revue des deux Mondes. M. Nestor
Roqueplan, who, like Dr. Veron, was for some
time manager of the Opera, contributed dramatic
criticisms for many years to the Constitutionnel,
and no more brilliant articles of the kind were
ever penned. The musical critic was at this
time the notorious P. A. Fiorentino, who after
wards joined the staff of the Moniteur.
La Presse was founded in 1836 by fimile de
Girardin, and it must always be remembered as
the first cheap journal started in France, and in
deed in all Europe. Paris has now newspapers at
two sous and even one sou ; but in 1836 a journal
at three sous, the price at which La Presse was
issued, seemed a marvel ; and M. de Girardin's
enemies of the established journals hinted in no
doubtful terms that his journal at three sous
could only exist through the aid of a Government
subvention. It has been related elsewhere how
an innuendo to this effect from Armand Carrel
led to a duel in which Carrel, while inflicting a
serious wound on M. de Girardin, was himself
shot dead. Many years later than 1836, when
La Presse was started, the invariable price of
a London morning newspaper was fivepence ;
there was a penny stamp on each number issued,
and an impost of eighteenpence on each adver
tisement. The cheap press has only been
rendered possible in England by the removal of
the newspaper-stamp, the advertisement-stamp,
and finally the duty on paper.
From 1836 to 1856 La Presse was edited by
M. de Girardin ; his successor was M. Nefftzer,
who afterwards founded that excellent paper Le
Temps. La Presse then passed beneath the
direction of M. Gueroult, who left it to found
L Opinion Nationale; and afterwards of M. Peyrat
and others. The dramatic, and musical, and
artistic feuilleton of La Presse was originally in
the hands ofthe incomparable Theophile Gautier,
whose collected articles are as remarkable for
searching and subtle criticism as for brilliant
description. He was succeeded by Paul de
Saint- Victor, whose contributions were scarcely
inferior to those of his distinguished predecessor.
Paul de Saint-Victor is far less generally known
in England than Theophile Gautier. A good
idea of his remarkable talent may be formed from
his volume on tragedy and comedy, "Les deux
Masques."

The Paris Press.]

SOME LEADING PARIS PAPERS.

271

When in 1852 it was determined to improve
as much as possible the official organ of the
newly established Empire, as of previous Govern
ments in France, a number of the most popular
writers were terhpted to the Moniteur by offers
of increased pay. Theophile Gautier quitted the
Presse for the official journal, and P. A. Fiorentino,
without quitting the Constitutionnel, wrote
musical criticisms for it under a nom de plume
which concealed his identity from no one inter
ested in journalism. This last-named journalist,
Italian by nationality, was by no means an honour
to the French press ; he was more than suspected
of taking bribes, and when the Society of Men of
Letters instituted an inquiry into his conduct, he
attacked the secretary of the society so violently
in the paper called Le Corsaire, that a challenge
and a duel ensued. Amedee Achard was run
through the body, and Fiorentino passed some
weeks in prison. Achard did not die, nor did
Fiorentino lose his position on the press, The
accusation made against him by the Society of
Men of Letters was that he acted at once as
musical critic and musical agent ; and it might
fairly be presumed that singers on whose salaries
he received a commission were more carefully
looked after and more warmly praised than those
who did not employ his services. He is said to
have attempted to justify himself to some of his
friends by representing himself as the " Artists'
advocate " — " L'avocat des artistes ; " though his
true function, the one which he was understood
by the editor of his newspaper and by his readers
to have undertaken, was that of critic or judge.
To the accusations brought against him by the
Society of Men of Letters he replied, however,
by a simple denial ; and the object of the duel
he had sought with Amedee Achard was evidently
to prevent such accusations from being brought
against him in the future.
Another journal, started under the Empire
with imperial support, and with M. Granier de
Cassagnac, father of the well-known writer,
deputy and duellist of the same name, as editor,
called Le Pays, was well and daringly written,
but found no favour with the public. Neither,
as a matter of fact, did the Moniteur, notwith
standing the brilliancy of the writers attracted to
its columns from other journals.
L' Opinion Nationale first appeared in 1859, at
the time of the war for the liberation of Italy.
The unity of Italy and the independence of
Poland were for many years its watchwords ;
and during the Polish insurrection of 1863, as
also during the long agitation that preceded it,

this journal was the recognised organ of oppressed
nationalities. By English readers interested in
theatrical matters, L Opinion Nationale will be
remembered as the journal in which M. Sarcey
the well-known critic, made his literary debut.
M. Sarcey possesses, as a writer, neither the
ingenuity and charm of Jules Janin, nor the
dazzling style of Theophile Gautier, or of Paul
de Saint-Victor, nor the delicate observation of
Nestor Roqueplan ; but he is inspired, more
perhaps than any other critic, by taste, love,
passion for the stage.
Le Monde was started under that name
in i860 as a substitute for L Univers, which,
placing the Pope before the Emperor and prefer
ring Rome to Paris, had got itself into trouble
with the Government. It was edited for many
years by M. Louis Veuillot, most vigorous of
Ultramontane journalists, and author of several
remarkable books, including " Les Odeurs de
Paris," " Les Parfums de Rome," and a curious
study of feudal rights and privileges, as, accord
ing to M. Veuillot, they really existed in France
before the Revolution.
Le Temps, one of the best of the Paris papers,
after having been discontinued for some years,
was revived in 1861 by M. Nefftzer, previously
editor of La Presse. Le Temps soon took rank
as what the French call a serious journal. For
many years one of the most interesting features
of Le Temps was the letter on English affairs
contributed from London by M. Louis Blanc.
Among the other distinguished contributors to
Le Temps may be mentioned M. Scherer, the
literary critic, and M. Louis Ulbach, chiefly known
as a novelist, but who for many years wrote for this
journal its theatrical feuilleton. There are plenty
of papers published in Paris besides those we
have mentioned, some of them in the enjoyment
of large circulations, but distinguished by no
marked features, or by none that possess special
interest for English readers. The best-known,
however, of all the Paris journals is the Figaro,
published originally under the Restoration, and
edited for some time by Nestor Roqueplan.
After numerous prosecutions, it ceased to exist ;
suppressed practically if not formally by the
Government. But in 1854 ^'S, Figaro (which, it need scarcely
be said, derived its name from the celebrated barber
invented by Beaumarchais) was revived by Mme.
Villemessant, and it played an important part,
though by no means a consistent one, under the
Second Empire. This it still continues to do ;
and whatever its political views may be, it is the

-/-

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris Press.

most amusing, the most interesting, and one may
almost say, the most literary journal in Europe.
Among the celebrated writers who have from
time to time contributed to its columns may be

mortally wounded by the first of his antagonists.
The cause of M. de Pene's encounter with the
junior officers of the French army, as represented
by the clever swordsman who ran him through

EDMOND ABOUT.
(From the Portrait by Paul Baudry.)

mentioned Edmond About, Theodore de Ban-
ville, Henri Rochefort, B. Jouvin, Albert Wolff,
and Henri de Pene, who, for criticising the
manners of French subalterns, found himself
exposed to the necessity of fighting all the lieu
tenants and sub-lieutenants of the French army,
a task from which he was saved by being almost

the lungs, was an article, written by the con
tributor to the Figaro, on a ball given at the
Ecole Militaire. The youthful officers were, he
declared, too constant and too eager in their
attendance at the buffet ; and he added that
when one of them had a plate of cakes offered to
him by a waiter, he said he was not sure that he

The Quai Voltaire.]

THE QUAI VOLTAIRE.

273

could eat them all, but that he would accept them
nevertheless. The jest was an ancient one, but
it angered the young bloods of the Military
School, and their indignation demanded a
victim, who at once offered himself in the person
of the author of the injurious statement.
The case of Henri de Pene and of so many
other fighting journalists, with the redoubtable

Henri Rochefort and Paul de Cassagnac among
them, suggests that in France a newspaper-writer
should be as much a master of the sword as of
the pen. This does not interfere with the fact
that one of the most gentle and amiable of
modern French writers, M. Ernest Legouve',
possessed the reputation of being the first fencer
of his day.

CHAPTER XLI.
FROM THE QUAI VOLTAIRE TO THE PANTHEON.
The Qiiai Voltaire— Its Changes of Name— Voltaire— His Life in Paris and Elsewhere— His Remains laid in the Pantheon-
Mirabeau— Rousseau — Vincennes.

WHAT a number of names had the Quai
Voltaire borne before receiving the illus
trious one by which it has now been known for
about a century! First Quai Malaquais ; then Quai
du Pont Rouge, when the red bridge had just been
constructed to replace the old ferry opposite the
Rue de Beaune ; in 1648 Quai des Theatins,
after the religious order of that name established
by Mazarin ; finally on the 4th of May, 1 79 1,
by decision of the Commune of Paris, Quai
Voltaire. During forty years Voltaire had almost
uninterruptedly been absent from France, when,
on the 10th of February, 1778, he returned,
and the mansion he had purchased in the Rue
Richelieu for himself and his niece Denise not
being ready for his reception, accepted the
hospitality of the Marquis de Villette, in whose
house, on the quay now known as that of
Voltaire, he died May 30th, 1778. The fact
is recorded in an inscription placed on the facade
of the former Hotel de Villette.
Before conferring upon the quay the name
borne by one ofthe most witty and most powerful
writers that France ever produced, the Commune
received a report and pronounced through one
of its members a eulogium in his honour. Until
the time of. the Revolution it was the custom in
France, as in other countries at a much later
period, to name streets and other thoroughfares
after some aristocratic family. Since the Re
volution, however, it has become usual to sub
stitute, in connection with the thoroughfares
and public places of Paris, the names of national
celebrities and national benefactors. In this
latter character Voltaire will not be universally
accepted, though his aim was certainly to do
good ; and that he had " done some good,"
42

was, he once declared, the only epitaph he
aspired to. According to an observation attri
buted to M. de Tocqueville, Voltaire possessed
in greater abund
ance than any- .„.-¦ 
one else the wit
that everyone pos
sesses ; and D. F.
Strauss, in the six
lectures on Vol
taire which he
wrote for and dedi
cated to the Prin
cess Louise of
Hesse, says much
the same thing
when he admir
ingly declares that
every quality of
the French mind
belonged to Vol
taire in a more marked degree than to any other
Frenchman. Goethe seems to have thought still
more highly of him. "Voltaire," he said, "will
always be looked upon as the greatest man in
the literature of modern times, and perhaps even
of all times ; as the most astonishing creation of
Nature, a creation in which it has pleased her to
collect for once in a single frail organisation every
variety of talent, all the glories of genius, all the
powers of thought."
Very different, indeed, was the opinion enter
tained by the great supporter of absolute monarchy
and of the Roman Catholic Church. " Paris,"
wrote Count Joseph de Maistre, " crowned
him ; Sodom would have banished him ...
How am I to picture to you what he makes me

THE LATE ALBERT WOLFF.
OF THE FIGARO.
(From a Photograph by G. Camus,
Paris.')

274

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[ From the Quai Voltaire

feel ? When I think of what he might have done
and what he did, his inimitable talents inspire
me with a sort of holy rage for which there is
no name. Midway between admiration and
horror, I sometimes wish to see a statue erected
to him — by the hand ofthe executioner."
It must be remembered, however, that in
Voltaire's time there was no such thing in France
as either political or religious liberty, and that
he took the part of the persecuted whenever he
had an opportunity of doing so. " His life," says
M. Arsene Houssaye, '' is a comedy in five acts,
in which, through French genius, shines human
reason. The first act takes place in Paris, among
distinguished noblemen and popular actresses ;
beginning with the entertainments of the Prince
de Conti and ending with the death of Adrienne
Lecouvreur, whose hurried secret burial by
torch-light inspired Voltaire with so much
indignation. This was the period of the Bas
tille and of banishment. The second act takes
place at the castle of Cirey and at the court of
King Stanislas ; this second act might be called
the love of science and the science of love. The
third act takes place at the court of Frederick IL,
at Berlin, Potsdam, and Sans-Souci. The fourth
act is that of Ferney, where he builds a church (with
' Deo erexit Voltaire ' inscribed over the portal),
gives a dowry to Corneille's niece, defends the
family of the persecuted Calas, pleads for Admiral
Byng, for Montbailly, for La Barre, for all who
are in need of an advocate. The fifth act takes
place at Paris, like the first ; but the man who at
the beginning of the drama was a prisoner and
a proscript has come back as a conqueror. All
Paris rises to salute him. The Academy believes
that Homer, Socrates, and Aristophanes are to
be found again in Voltaire ; the Theatre Frangais
crowns him with immortal laurels. But the poet
has reached the last point of greatness ; Paris
smothers in its embraces this ruler of opinions,
who with his last breath proclaims the rights of
man." Born in 1694, this powerful writer was so weak
as a child that it was not thought safe to baptise
him until he was nine months old. His father
was treasurer in the Exchequer Chamber, and
he had for godfather the Abbe de Chateau-Neuf,
one of those sceptical abbes who help to give
a character of its own to the eighteenth century.
As a youth he was in the good graces of Ninon
de L'Enclos, the celebrated beauty, who, living
to a prodigious age, is said to have preserved her
charms to the last. She recognised Voltaire's
precocious talents as he, on his side, was delighted

by her personal fascinations. She left him by
will 2,000 francs for the purchase of books. The
Abbe de Chateau-Neuf introduced him meanwhile
into the most brilliant society of Paris. This did
not suit the views of his father, who wished his
son to enter the magistracy. He accordingly
separated him from the Abbe de Chateau-Neuf
to attach him as page to the Marquis of the' same
name, who took the young Voltaire or Arouet,
to call him by his proper name, in his suite to
Holland. Returning to Paris, the youthful
Arouet began to write, when he adopted, for
literary purposes, the name of Voltaire, which
will be recognised as an anagram of Arouet
1. j. (le feunej. According to most historians
the name of Voltaire was borrowed by the
youthful Arouet from an estate belonging to
his mother ; but there seems to be no authority
for this supposition, and the anagrammatic or
quasi-anagrammatic explanation is probably the
true one.
Voltaire had not long exercised his pen when
he was thrown into the Bastille as the author of
a satire which he had not written. Here he
sketched out the plan of his ' ' Henriade ' ' and of his
" Siecle de Louis XIV.," both suggested to him,
it is said, by the Marquis de Chateau-Neuf. The
true author of the satire having been discovered,
Voltaire was set at liberty, and, according to the
custom of the time, received a money indemnity
from the Regent, whom he thanked for providing
him with food, while expressing a hope that he
would not in future furnish him with a lodging.
Besides making notes for his historical work and
for his epic poem, Voltaire had written in the
Bastille a tragedy on the subject of CEdipus,
which in 17 18, when the author had just at
tained his twenty -fourth year, was produced at
the Theatre Frangais with a success which no
other tragedy had obtained since the days of
Corneille and Racine.
Voltaire's literary life in Paris was cut short
by a painful incident. In an animated discussion
he had taken the liberty of contradicting the
Chevalier de Rohan, who was cowardly enough
to lay a trap for his antagonist ; and getting him
to leave the room, subjected him to violent
maltreatment at the hands of his servants.
Voltaire challenged the Chevalier, who, however,
not only refused him satisfaction, but had him
shut up in the Bastille for six months and then
banished from France. Taking refuge in England,
he studied the language, literature, and especially
the philosophy of the country. After a residence
of three years he was able to make known to his

to, the Pantheon.]

VOLTAIRE.

275

countrymen, through a volume entitled "Lettres
sur les Anglais," the philosophy of Bolingbroke
arid of Locke, the scientific theories of Newton,
the poetry of Shakespeare, and the prose of
Addison.. It was during his residence in Eng
land that he wrote the tragedies of Brutus, The
Death of Ccesar, Zaire, &c, which, however
un-Shakespearian, were evidently the outcome of a
study of Shakespeare's plays. Voltaire's position
in regard to Shakespeare has been somewhat
misunderstood. He did not fully appreciate
Shakespeare, he even undervalued the great
dramatist. But he saw that genius was in him ;
which is more than can be said of some of
our own writers of the eighteenth century,
not excluding Addison, who, in The Spectator,
points to " Shakespeare and Lee " for examples
ofthe "false sublime."
During his stay in England Voltaire mixed
freely in literary society, and made the acquaint
ance of some of our best writers. Johnson, it
will be remembered, thinking only of his irre-
ligion, would not shake hands with him ; though
afterwards, when he heard that Voltaire had
praised his " Rasselas," he said that there was
" some good in the dog, after all." When
Voltaire was introduced to Congreve, the
brilliant dramatist explained that he wished
to be looked upon, not as a writer of comedies,
but as an English gentleman ; to which Voltaire
replied that if the latter had been his only
character, he should never have taken the trouble
to seek his acquaintance. Voltaire for long
enjoyed the credit of having acquired sufficient
knowledge of the English language to be able to
express himself gracefully and correctly in English
verse, but it has been conclusively proved that
the productions were corrected and revised by an
English friend.
Returning to Paris, he lived there tranquilly
for some time ; but on the death of Adrienne
Lecouvreur, to whom he was much attached,
and to whose remains Christian burial had been
refused, he wrote some indignant verses, which,
after they had been put in circulation, filled him
with alarm as to the notice that would prob
ably be taken of them by the authorities. He
now escaped to Rouen, where he printed his " His
tory of Charles X." and " Philosophical Letters."
The latter work was burned by the hangman, a
fate reserved for more than one of Voltaire's
subsequent works. His ingenious remark has
elsewhere been cited, to the effect that the
public executioner, were he presented with a
copy of every book he had to burn, would soon

possess one of the finest libraries in France.
Another production of his, the " Epistle to
Urania," which expressed theological views of a
most unorthodox kind, was soon to get him into
fresh trouble, though by a well-known artifice of
those tyrannical days he disavowed the work. He
thought it prudent, all the same, to keep out of
the way for a time, and he now accepted the
hospitality offered to him by Mme. du Chatelet
at Cirey. He here gave himself up for a time,
in common with his hostess, to mathematical
and scientific" studies. He published one after
the other, with astonishing rapidity, " Newtonian
Elements," "Mahomet," Me'rope, "The Discourse
on Man," and other works, besides going on
with his " Century of Louis XIV." and his essay
on morals.
Voltaire's reputation was now European ; and
the Prince Royal of Prussia, afterwards Frederick
the Great, one of his most fervent admirers,
wrote to him begging him to undertake the
publication of his " Anti-Machiavel," though
as Migkievicz the Polish poet says in reference
to this work, it was Machiavellism itself that
Frederick II. both practised and professed. In
the midst of his success, Voltaire, as irritable as
he was kind-hearted, suffered much from the
attacks of pamphleteers, whose favourite accusa
tion was that, writing on many different subjects,
he was not master of one. To these attacks he
replied in the most impetuous style, though he
would have done better to preserve the silence
of profound disdain. Voltaire, however, reminds
one, in this respect, of that horseman who, riding
through a forest, was so exasperated by the
chirping of myriads of grasshoppefs, that he
leaped at last from his saddle, and, drawing his
sword, set about the vain task of exterminating
the offensive insects, although nightfall was at
hand and they would shortly have grown silent
of their own accord. The pamphleteer and
poetaster, Jean Freron, was a favourite object of
Voltaire's detestation ; he it was for whom
Voltaire took the trouble to make an adaptation
of a quatrain originally belonging to the Greek
Anthology. Here are Voltaire's lines —
" Un jour loin du sacre vallon'
Un serpent mordit Jean Freron :
Songez ce qui en arriva :
Ce fut le serpent qui creva."
It was surely these lines which inspired Goldsmith
with the idea of his " Elegy on a mad dog."
" But soon a wonder came to light,
Which showed the rogues they lied ;
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died."

276

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Quai Voltaire.

In 1745, after the successful production of
Merope Voltaire regained some favour at the
court, and obtained, through the patronage of
Mme. de Pompadour, the title of historiographer
of France, together with the post of gentleman of
the king's bed-chamber. At the same time the
French Academy, after having twice rejected
him, elected him as a member. His writings of
this period bear the stamp of his somewhat frivo
lous life ; among them are the operas, Temple of
Glory, Samson, and Budkah, the ballet Princess
of Navarre, &c. Soon, however, the part of court
poet fatigued him, the more so as the king
treated him coldiy and Mme. de Pompadour
thought him inferior to Crebillon. His friendship
for Mme. du Chatelet still continued. But after
her death he yielded to the pressing invitations
of Frederick the Great (1750) and went to
the court of Berlin, where a brilliant position,
the post of chamberlain, and a considerable
monev allowance awaited him. The result of
the celebrated intimacy between the philosopher
and the king is well known ; it lasted two or
three years, but the monarch could not control
his domineering habits nor the great writer the
manifestation of his intellectual superiority. The
jealousy of the literary men of France, a quarrel
with Maupertius, whose part was taken by the
king, some sharp utterances, and various other
causes precipitated the inevitable rupture. Vol
taire left Prussia in 1753, after undergoing more
than one humiliation. The most important work
he published during his stay at Berlin was that
" Century of Louis XIV." which remains his mas
terpiece in the historic line. Having ascertained
that the French Government would not be pleased
to see him at Paris, he travelled for several years
in Germany, Switzerland and France, establishing
himself finally at Ferney in 1758, where he built
himself a magnificent house, in which he passed
the last twenty years of his life. Here he received
flattering letters from the sovereigns of Europe,
and no less flattering visits from some of the
first literary men of the time. Princes and
philosophers made pilgrimages to Ferney, and
" Patriarch of Ferney " became Voltaire's re
cognised name. The fact of Switzerland's being
a republic did not, of course, prevent the Swiss
landed proprietors from having serfs, and Voltaire
did his best to procure their personal liberation.
This is doubtless what he would have been glad
to do in his own country, had it been possible in
the days before the Revolution to propose
an amelioration that would at once have been
looked upon as revolutionary. " He pleaded,"

says one of his biographers, " for the emancipa
tion of the serfs of the canton of Jura ; he
endeavoured to remedy a number of abuses, to
reform a number of unjust laws."
To give an idea of the kind of hfe led by
Voltaire at Ferney, we may reproduce in
abridged form the account published by Moore,
who, travelling in France at the time, extended
his journey in order to pay a visit to Voltaire.
" The most piercing eyes I have ever seen in
my life," savs Moore, " are those of Voltaire, now
eighty years of age. One recognises instantly in
his phvsiognomy genius, penetration, nobility of
character. " In the morning he seems restless and discon
tented, but this gradually passes away, and after
dinner he is lively and agreeable. But there is
always in his expression a tinge of irony, whether
he smiles or frowns.
" When the weather is favourable he goes out
in a carriage with his niece or with some of his
guests. Sometimes he takes a walk in his garden,
and if the weather does not allow him to go out
he emplovs his time in playing chess with Father
Adam, or in receiving strangers, or in dictating
or reading his letters. But he passes the greater
part of the day in his study, and whether he is
reading or being read to he has always a pen in
his hand to take notes or make observations ; an
author writing for his bread could not work more
assiduously, nor could a young poet greedy of
renown. He lives in the most hospitable manner,
and his table is excellent ; he has always with
him two or three persons from Paris, who stay
at his house a month or six weeks ; when they
go away they are replaced by others, and there
is thus a considerable change of inmates. The
visitors, together with the members of Voltaire's
family circle, make up a party of twelve or fifteen
persons, who dine daily at his table whether he
is present or not ; for when he is occupied
with the preparation of some new work he does
not dine in company, and contents himself
with appearing for a few minutes before or after
dinner. " The morning is not a favourable time for
visiting Voltaire, who cannot bear any interference
with his hours of study ; such a thing puts him
at once in a rage. He was often ready, moreover,
to pick a quarrel, whether by reason of the
infirmities inseparable from old age, or from some
other cause. He is in any case less genial in
the early part of the day than afterwards.
" Those who are invited to supper see him
at his best. He takes an evident pleasure in

VOLTAIRE.
(From the statue by Hotidon in the Comidie Francaise.')

278

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[From the Quai Voltaire.

conversing with his guests, and makes a point of
being witty and agreeable. When, however,
a vivacious remark or a good jest is made by
another person, he is the first to applaud ; he is
amused and his gaiety increases. When he is
surrounded by his friends, and animated by the
presence of women, he seems to enjoy his life
with the sensibility of a young man. His genius,
disengaged from the burdens of age, shines in
the brightest manner, and delicate observa
tions, happy remarks, fall from his lips.
" His aversion for the clergy makes him often
speak about them, to the scandal of people not
sufficiently witty to make their raillery acceptable.
"He compares the English nation to a barrel of
beer, of which the top is froth, the bottom scum,
while the middle part is excellent.
" With his inferiors Voltaire appears in a most
favourable light. He is affable, kind, and gener
ous ; he likes to see his tenants and all his
dependents thoroughly prosperous, and he
occupies himself with their individual interests
in the spirit of a patriarch. He does his best,
moreover, to maintain around him industrial
works and all kinds of manufactures ; through
his care and patronage the miserable village of
Ferney, whose inhabitants were previously
grovelling in idleness, has become a prosperous
and flourishing town.
" Voltaire had formerly in his house a little
theatre at which pieces were represented by his
friends and himself ; some important part was
generally assigned to him, but to judge by the
accounts given of him he was not a great actor.
The amateur performances at Ferney suggested to
a company of regular players the idea of visiting
the place. I have often attended this theatre,
and seen the performances of this company,
which were not first rate. The famous Lekain,
who is now at Ferney, comes there at times for
special performances. On these occasions I am
chiefly attracted by the desire of seeing Voltaire,
who is always present when one of his pieces is
played, or when, in no matter what piece, Lekain
appears. " He takes his seat on the stage behind the
scenery, but so as to be seen by the greater part
of the audience ; and he takes as much interest
in the performance of the piece as if his reputation
depended on it. If one of the actors makes a
mistake, he seems grieved and shocked ; if on the
other hand the actor plays well, he gives him,
by gestures and by word of mouth, the liveliest
marks of approbation. He enters into the spirit
of both situations with all the signs of genuine

emotion, and even sheds tears with the effusive
ness of a young girl assisting for the first time
at the performance of a tragedy."
Voltaire reconstructed at his own expense the
church of Ferney, which he thereupon dedicated
to the Supreme Being : " Deo erexit Voltaire."
He had often, however, sharp disputes with the
cure of the parish, who more than once com
plained to the bishop. He is said on one occasion
to have gone through the Easter ceremonies at
the church of Ferney without having previously
confessed ; desiring, he said, to fulfil his duties as
a Christian, an officer of the king's household, and
a village squire. Encroaching another time on
the prerogative of the cure, he appeared in the
pulpit and preached a sermon. Some of these
stories, it must be added, rest on no more
authentic basis than hearsay and the well-known
changeableness of Voltaire's disposition.
In 1778 Voltaire quitted Ferney to visit Paris,
where he had not been seen for twenty years.
He was received in triumph : the Academy and
the Theatre Francais sent deputations to meet
him, the most illustrious men by talent or birth,
women of the highest rank, waited upon him to
present their homage, and the people generally
offered him ovations whenever he appeared in
public. A performance of his tragedy of Irene
was given at the Theatre Francais. His bust
was crowned with laurels, and after the represent
ation he was conducted home with acclamations
from an enthusiastic crowd. " You are smothering
me in roses ! " cried the old poet, intoxicated
with his glory. Such emotions, such fatigue had,
indeed, the worst effect upon his health ; he was
nearly eighty -four years of age — the age at which
Goethe died — and the excitement was too much
for him. On his death-bed he was surrounded
by priests who wished to obtain from him some
thing in the way of concession if not retractation,
but his only reply to the cure of Saint-Sulpice
was, " Let me die in peace." A written report
from the hand of this ecclesiastic is said to exist
in the archives of his church. Meanwhile that
Voltaire did not die reconciled to the Church is
sufficiently proved by the fact that Christian
burial was denied him. His nephew, the Abbe
Mignot, had the corpse hastily carried to his
abbey at Cellieres, where it remained until the
days of the Revolution — when it was brought
back in triumph to Paris and placed in the
Pantheon, the former church of Saint-Genevieve.
On the 30th of May, 1791, the National Assembly
decreed that Voltaire was worthy of the honour
which should be paid to great men, and that his

to the Pantheon.]

MIRABEAU.

279

ashes were to be transferred to the Pantheon.
This translation was the occasion of a national
celebration, which, under the direction of
David the painter, took place on the 12th of July
in the same year. Joseph Chenier wrote for the
festival a poem which Gossec set to music. The
three last lines of the last stanza are worth
quoting : — ¦
Chantez ; de la raison celebrez le soutien ;
Ah ! de tous les mortels qui ne sont point esclaves
Voltaire est le concitoyen*
Mirabeau, who next to Voltaire was declared
worthy of the honours of the Pantheon, was
descended from an ancient and powerful family
of Florentine origin. Riquetti, originally Ar-
righeti, was the name of the family, that of
Mirabeau being derived from an estate which
they acquired when, after being banished from
Florence in the thirteenth century, they settled
in Provence. The Mirabeaus were celebrated
from father to son for their energy, independence,
and daring. One of their boasts was that they
were all of a piece, " without a joint." Gabriel
Honore Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, the greatest
orator that the Revolution produced, was the son
of the Marquis of Mirabeau, who is reputed to
have introduced the study of political economy
into France. Disfigured at the age of three by
the small-pox, he preserved that remarkable
ugliness which produced such a strong impression
upon his contemporaries, together with that leo
nine countenance in which intelligence and ex
pression triumphed over superficial hideousness.
It was in allusion to his ugliness as well as to his
violent passions and his indomitable character,
that Mirabeau's father, who never loved him,
said of his son that he was a monster, physically
and morally. Placed under different masters, he
learnt with surprising facility ancient and modern
languages. Lagrange taught him mathematics,
and he also studied drawing and music, besides
occupying himself with, gymnastics. Having
revealed at an early age his impetuous dis
position, he was placed by his father at the Ecole
Militaire, as if with a view to his correction.
Here he devoured all the works on the art of war,
and at the age of seventeen came out of the school
as officer. At this point begins the romance of
his life. His debts and a love intrigue caused
his father to shut him up in the island of Re, in
virtue of a lettre de cachet obtained for that
purpose. Nor was this the only one that the

* Literal Translation:— Sing; celebrate the upholder of Reason.
Ah*! of all men who are not slives Voltaire is the fellow-citizen.

severe parent procured in view of his son's better
behaviour. Sent to Corsica with his regiment,
Mirabeau distinguished himself in various ways,
among others by writing a history which his
father destroyed because it contained philosophical
ideas which, according to the parent's view, were
unorthodox. The youthful Mirabeau made a
better impression on one of his uncles, who wrote
about him : " Either he will be the cleverest
satirist in the universe, or the greatest European
general on land or sea, or minister, or chancellor,
or Pope, or anything else that may please him."
In 1772 he married at Aix, in Provence, a rich
heiress, Emilie de Mirignane by name, whose
dowry he was rapidly spending when the ever-
watchful father came forward and procured
against him a legal interdict, which cut him off
from all credit and obliged him to reside within
the limits of a particular town. Here, inspired,
no doubt, by the situation, he composed in hot
haste his " Essay on Despotism," which deals,
however, not merely with the arbitrary exercise of
power, but with such concomitants of political
despotism as immoderate taxation and standing
armies. An insult having been offered to one
of his sisters, Mirabeau broke through the rules
imposed upon him, and, always at the suggestion
of his father, was captured, this time to be
imprisoned in the castle of If : familiar to the
readers of Dumas's " Monte Cristo." Here he
paid so much attention to the wife of the steward
that it was found necessary to transfer him to
another fortress. His new abode was close to
Pontarlier ; and he obtained permission to quit
the fortress and take up his residence in this
town. At Pontarlier he made the acquaintance
of Sophie de Ruffey, the young wife of the
Marquis de Monnier, to whom, under the name
of " Sophie," he was a few years afterwards, as a
prisoner in the Bastille, to address the passionate
letters generally known as " Lettres a Sophie." His
relations with Sophie, whom he induced to leave
her husband in order to accompany him to Holland,
brought upon him a criminal action and a tragic
sentence. He was condemned to death, and not
being present at the time and place fixed for his
execution, was decapitated in effigy. He had
fled with Sophie to Amsterdam, where, under the
name of St. Matthew, he wrote largely for the
booksellers who were accustomed to produce
pamphlets and books which either had been or,
as a matter of course, would have been forbidden
in France. Besides original works, Mirabeau
supplied the Dutch booksellers with translations
from the English and the German. But the French

:8o

PARIS. OLD AND NEW

[From the Quai Voltaire

Government would not leave him in peace, and
in 1777, his extradition having been applied for,
he was arrested at Amsterdam, carried back to
France, and imprisoned at Vincennes. He was
allowed to write freely to his adored Sophie ;
and freely enough he did write to her.

wished to obtain a divorce for Sophie from her
husband and for himself from his wife ; and it is
related that in the former case the husband was
only too happy to pay the expenses of the suit.
He also wrote an eloquent, indignant attack
against lettres de cachet, which, not daring to

i

THE PONT DO CARROUSEL AND THE LOUVRE, FROM THE QUAI MALAQUAIS.

The passionate letters were all copied in the
Secretary's Office ; and it is only from these copies,
as printed and published in 1792 by Manuel, pro-
cureur of the Commune of Paris, that the epistles
are now known. They were obviously not written
for general reading. Jotted down from day to day,
without thought of anything but the woman he
loved and the passion by which he was inspired,
they contain passages which even persons with
out prudery (a fault charged by Mirabeau against
Sophie's mother) might have desired to see
omitted ; but they are eloquent, impassioned, and,
though affected by the senses, written from the
heart. During his captivity at Vincennes, which
lasted forty-two months, Mirabeau composed a
number of works, many of which, as mentioned
in the letters to Sophie, seem to have been lost.
He made for Sophie's own private reading some
edifying translations from the tales of Boccaccio
and from the Basia of Johannes Secundus ; and he
wrote a novel that every one would not care to read,
called "Ma Conversion." Liberated from prison
in December, 1780, he went straight to Pontarlier,
where he constituted himself a prisoner. He

publish it in France, he brought out in Switzer
land. From Switzerland he went to London.
After a time he returned to France, and in 1786,
anxious as ever to play an active part in life, got
himself sent by the Government on a secret
mission to Prussia ; where he was to study the
effect that would probably be produced in
Germany by the death of Frederick the Great,
then imminent, the character of the Prussian
prince who was to succeed him, and the possibility,
moreover, of raising in Prussia a loan for
France. Such missions, of which the precise
object was never clearly defined, belonged to the
system of the ancient regime. Mirabeau was
present at the death of Frederick and at the
inauguration of his successor ; when with mar
vellous confidence he gave the new sovereign some
advice as to the art and method of governing a
great country. Mirabeau, meanwhile, did his
work conscientiously as agent of the French
court ; addressing to the minister Calonne
seventy letters, which were published in 1789,
the year of the Revolution, under the title of
" Secret History of the Court of Berlin, Letters

to the Pantheon.]

MIRABEAU.

281

a French Traveller, from July, 1786, to
January, 1787." The book, full of satirical
portraits and still more satirical observations,
caused considerable scandal ; and the parliament
lost no time in ordering it to be burnt by the
public executioner.
During his stay at Berlin Mirabeau collected
materials for his " Prussian Monarchy," published
in 1788 (four volumes in quarto or eight volumes
in octavo) ; a vast composition which at least
bore witness to Mirabeau's capacity in matters
of politics, legislation, administration, and finance.
In his address to the Batavians he set forth all
the principles which were afterwards to serve as
basis to the declaration of the rights of man.

in the midst of the constant embarrassments of a
precarious and harassed life. " Mirabeau," says
M. Nisard, " learns as he writes and writes as he
learns. To conceive and to produce are with
him one and the same thing. The convocation of
the States General opened to him a theatre
worthy of his genius and of his immense ambition.
He hurried to Provence and presented himself
as a candidate before the Assembly of the Nobility,
which, in spite of his persistent demands, put
him aside as being neither owner nor occupier of
land in Provence. He then turned to the people
and was promptly elected a representative of the
Tiers Etat.
His entry into political life was an event of the

THE SEINE, BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE QUAI DES AUGUSTINS.

His "Observations on the Prison of Bicetre,"
and on the effects of the severity of punishments,
may be looked upon as the complement of his
" Lettres de Cachet."
Writing in great haste, he astonished the
reader by his energy and intellectual fecundity

highest importance. Two days before the open
ing of the Assembly he began the publication of
the Journal of the States General. At the first
meeting of the Assembly the master of the
ceremonies made known the king's wish that the
three orders should carry on their debates in

252

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[From the Quai Voltaire

three separate chambers. This involved the
departure of the representatives of the Tiers fitat
from their habitual rendezvous. "Tell your
master," exclaimed Mirabeau, in words which
were to become historical, " that we are here by the
will of the people, and that nothing can move us
but the force of bayonets." Meanwhile Mirabeau,
who had begun his political life with so much
dignity, was actually ruining his position by his
own personal extravagance. He entered into
relations with the court, and before delivering
his speeches submitted them to the king and
queen. The king asked for a list of his debts,
which amounted to 200,000 francs, and included
a sum that had been owing seventeen years for his
wedding suit. Besides paying his debts, Louis
XVI. promised to furnish his new auxiliary with
a pension of 6,000 francs per month. He placed,
moreover, in the hands of the Count de La Marck,
who had acted as intermediary, a sum of one
million, which was to be given to Mirabeau at
the end of the session if, as he had promised to
do, he served with fidelity the cause of the king
and queen.
After these facts, it has been gravely asked
whether or not Mirabeau sold himself to the
court. Saint-Beuve has answered the question
in his own ingenious way, by saying that
Mirabeau, without selling himself, allowed him
self to be paid. The distinction scarcely amounts
to a difference. Mirabeau now wrote frequently to
the king and still more frequently to the queen, till
at last nothing would satisfy him but to have an
interview with Marie Antoinette, whose minister
he would gladly have become, the king leaving
everything to the queen, the queen everything to
the would-be director of her policy. Before long
the double position held by Mirabeau produced
its inevitable effects. To maintain his influence
with the Assembly and with his own constituents
he had to play the part of a tribune, while, to gain
his subsidies from the court, he was bound to
show himself a firm supporter of the monarchy.
Inordinately ambitious, dissipated in the
extreme, an aristocrat by taste .and a democrat
by conviction, he was perpetually in trouble
of the most exasperating kind. In February,
1 79 1, he was elected to the presidency of the
Assembly, as candidate of the Moderate partv,
the Right. His vigorous opposition to the law
proposed against the emigres laid him open to
grave suspicions. "Silence, those thirtv voices!" he
called out when Barnave, Lameth, and their
friends among the orators of the Left tried to
interrupt him. This debate was the last in which

the dramatic side of Mirabeau's oratorical talent
was fully shown. Labours, excesses of every
kind, had at last worn out his robust constitu
tion. It was said that poison had been ad
ministered to him ; but he was the author of his
own destruction. The very day after his not-
too-creditable understanding with the court he
rushed into expenditure of every sort, so that
one of his best friends could not help saying :
" Mirabeau is badly advised in making such a
display of his opulence. He must be afraid of
passing for an honest man." He knew that he
was killing himself, and though his doctor,
Cabanis, begged him to lead a more moderate
life, the advice passed unheeded. He was taken
ill on the 27th of March at Argenteuil, near
Paris ; which did not prevent him from partici
pating next day in an important debate. He
triumphed, but left the Assembly exhausted, de
pressed, and with death written on his face. On
the morrow he was hopelessly ill, and at the end
of April he expired.
The news of his death caused universal grief,
and it was at once voted that his remains should
be deposited in the former church of St. Genevieve
known since the Revolution as the Pantheon. Here
the ashes of the greatest writer the Revolution
had produced were allowed to repose until, in the
Autumn of 1794, the Republicans of the Left
having meanwhile been enlightened as to the part
Mirabeau had played in connection with the
court, they were removed to give place to the
dust of Marat, whom Charlotte Corday had just
assassinated. What honest man, asked someone
at the time, could desire his remains to lie by the
side of Mirabeau ? The great orator was now
worse treated by the republic than Moliere, Vol
taire, and Adrienne Lecouvreur had been by the
clergy of the ancient monarchy. His relics
were disturbed from what should have been
their last resting-place, and conveyed at night
without form or ceremony to Clamart, the
graveyard of those who died at the hands of
the executioner. There is nothing sadder in
the modern history of France than the story of
the entries and exits of its reputed great men
into and out of the church or temple now once
more known as the Pantheon.
A longer period of hospitality than Mira
beau was allowed to enjoy fell to the lot of Jean
Jacques Rousseau, whose remains, disinterred
from his first place of burial in the middle of
the Lake of Ermenonville, were carried to the
Pantheon that same autumn which saw the

to the Pantheon. 1

ROUSSEAU.

283

relics of Mirabeau ejected from the grand
national mausoleum. Rousseau was the third
of the great men to whom, in the language of the
well-known inscription, their native land was
grateful. " Aux grands homines : la patrie recon-
naissante." Rousseau was, no more than Napoleon,
a Frenchman. His family, however, unlike that
of Napoleon, is said to have been of French origin.
He was descended from a Protestant bookseller,
who was forced to quit France by the persecu
tions of the 1 6th century and afterwards settled
at Geneva.
Rousseau's birth cost his mother her life. "My
mother died when I was born," he says in the
Confessions, " so that my birth was the first of my
misfortunes." His father, a watchmaker by trade
and a man of some education, had the greatest
affection for his son, but was unable to forget at
what cost he had been brought into the world.
Thus Rousseau's first impressions were of the
saddest kind.
The little boy was brought up by his father's
sister, and many were the novels or rather ro
mances that he read under her guidance. Soon,
however, he turned to more serious studies, his
favourite authors being now the Greek and
Roman historians, and particularly Plutarch.
When the boy was old enough to adopt a trade
he was apprenticed to an engraver. But such
was the severity of his master that his sole
thought was how to escape from the tyrant.
One evening when he had gone out for a walk
in the neighbourhood of Geneva, he found on his
return the city gates closed. Fearing the anger
of the engraver, he resolved not to go back to
him at all. Chance took him to the house of
M. de Pontverre, cure of Confignon, who, finding
the boy was a Protestant, resolved to profit by
the opportunity of making a convert. M. de
Pontverre, instead of sending the little Rousseau
back to his employer, conveyed him to a
Madame de Varennes, who had herself just
been converted to the Catholic religion. To
Madame de Varennes young Rousseau became
warmly attached, and he was in despair when
suddenly she went away. The strange idea now
occurred to him, possessing no musical knowledge
or next to none, of passing as a musician. He
commenced, in fact, to give lessons in music.
From Lausanne, where he had begun his hazard
ous tuition, he took flight to Neufchateau, where
once more he insisted on teaching music.
At last, by giving lessons in music he taught
himself, and he had no trouble in getting a certain
number of pupils. After various adventures he

turned up in Paris, where he was engaged as
tutor by a young officer, who soon, however,
discovered that the would-be preceptor had a great
deal to learn. Finding that Madame de Varennes
was at Chambery, he determined to visit her, and,
being well received, remained with her some
considerable time. He now gave himself up to
studying sentiment, until after the lapse of a few
years Madame de Varennes became tired of his
society, and the young man left Chambery
for Montpellier, where he proposed to get medical
treatment for a fancied polypus of the heart. He
had read, during the latter part of his stay at
Chambery, so many medical books that he ended
by becoming an imaginary invalid. From
Montpellier, where the doctors professed their
utter inability to recognise the polypus com
plained of, he went to Lyons, where he got an
engagement as tutor in a family. A year after
wards, in 1 841 , he left Lyons for Paris, now fired by
literary ambition and excited by the news that con
stantly reached him of the triumphs of Voltaire.
He took with him to the French capital a new
system of musical notes, a five-act comedy, and
fifteen louis d'or. His musical innovations, sub
mitted to the Academy, were not understood ;
but perhaps for that reason they made some
noise and facilitated his introduction into many
good houses. For some little time he led a
life of elegant leisure, during which he made the
acquaintance of several of the first literary men of
the day. But it was necessary for him to earn
his living, and he was glad to accept an engage
ment with Madame Dupin, daughter of the
famous financier, Samuel, who wanted a secretary;
and soon afterwards Madame de Broglie got
him sent to Venice as secretary to the French
Ambassador, Count de Montaigne. Before long,
however, Rousseau had a violent quarrel with his
chief, who seems to have been a man of unbear
able disposition.
Returning to Paris, he resolved once more to
adopt a literary career. He wrote articles on
musical subjects for the Encyclopedic, and made
sketches of operas, ballets, and divertissements,
until one day, going to see his friend Diderot,
imprisoned at the time in the castle of Vincennes,
he happened to read as he walked along, in the
Mercure de France, an advertisement offering a
prize to the author of the best essay on this subject :
" Has the progress of science and art tended to cor
rupt or to purify manners ? " According to Diderot
and his friends, it was he, the imprisoned philoso
pher-critic, tale writer,and dramatist, who suggested
to Rousseau that, instead of taking the common-

:*4

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[From the Quai Voltaire

place view of the matter, he would do well to
maintain, as paradoxically as he pleased, that the
development of art and science had exercised not
a healthy but a baneful effect. Rousseau, how
ever, maintained that the idea of treating the
subject from the negative point of view originated
with himself alone. " If ever anything," he wrote

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.
long afterwards, "resembled a sudden inspiration,
it was the movement that at once took place in my
mind on reading the advertisement. Suddenly
my intelligence was dazzled by a thousand lights.
Crowds of ideas assailed me with a force and a
confusion which caused me inexpressible trouble;
mv head was seized with a .giddiness resembling
intoxication." Whoever suggested to Rousseau the
idea of his essay, it was to him that the Academy of
Dijon adjudged the prize. His paradoxes wounded
many a writer, many a poet, many a would-be
philosopher. But meanwhile all the literary and
scientific society of Paris had been thrown by
Rousseau's arguments into a state of commotion.

Rousseau, however, instead of profiting by the
striking success he had achieved, resolved in the first
place to put in practice the principles of simplicity
and even asceticism which he had expounded in
his treatise. At the time of the essay's being
published he occupied the lucrative post of
cashier to M. de Franceuil, one of the Farmers
General. But he now refused to have
anything to do with finance, preferring
to gain his bread by copying music.
This resolution did but increase his re
putation and cause his writings to be in
greater demand than ever. Soon after
wards, in 1762, his opera, The Village
Seer ( Le devin du village), was re
presented at Fontainebleau with immense
success. The king wished the author
of the graceful pastoral to be presented
to him, and a pension awaited him.
But he turned his back on the seductions
of fortune and resumed his copying.
There were not wanting detractors, who
saw in this fine spirit of independence
simply the pride of Antisthenes visible
through the holes in his coat.
In 1753 Rousseau published his "Let
ters on French Music " and his " Dis
course on the Origin of Inequality."
Then he journeyed to Geneva, where
he returned to Protestantism in order
to recover the title of citizen, which in
due time he lost once more, after the
publication of " Emile." Tired of the
world, he now accepted an asylum which
was offered to him by his friend, Madame
d'Epina)-, in the valley of Montmorency,
where he wrote nearly the whole of his
famous " Nouvelle Heloise." The work
would doubtless have benefited by the
omission of many a rhetorical phrase ;
but the passion for nature, the exalted
delirium of the heart and the senses, the
storms, the tears which it contained, were things
so new that the whole generation allowed
itself to be carried away with the transports of
Rousseau. He had found inspiration for the
book, it was said, in his unfortunate love for
Madame d'Houdelot — a love which almost
degenerated into a mental derangement and
which commenced his series of misfortunes.
Madame d'Epinay, who was then in relationship
with Grimm, saw with no kindly eye the affec
tion of Jean Jacques for another than she.
Rousseau soon found his position so disagreeable
that, breaking with Madame d'Epina)-, he abruptiy

to the Pantheon.]

ROUSSEAU.

285

quitted her house although it was the depth of
winter. Hospitality was offered to him at Mont-
louis, near Montmorency, and there he wrote his
" Letter to d'Alembert on Stage Plays," a pamph
let which caused a considerable stir. Voltaire was
then the king of the theatre ; and to attack one
was to attack the other.
Voltaire was enraged,
and could not keep ^a
within bounds. He
insulted his adversary,
who, however, did not
reply in the same tone.
This quarrel, which
ended to the advantage
of Rousseau, had the
effect of diverting his
mind for a moment ;
but very soon he be
came once more a prey
to that morbid melan
choly and suspicion
which were to accom
pany him to his grave,
and which rendered
the remainder of his
life painful to contem
plate. He died in
1788 at Ermenonville,
whither he had been
invited on a country
visit by M. de Girardin,
at a time when old age,
infirmities, and misery
had already driven him
to distraction.
The eccentricities
and weakness of his
character, however,
vanish in presence of
his literary fame. Al
though his remains
are not at Ermen
onville, the place is often visited by strangers
interested in Rousseau's last days. M. Thiebaut
de Berneaud, in his " Voyage a Ermenonville,"
1826, declares that when, eleven years earlier,
in 1815, "the chief of one of the hostile armies
arrived at Plessis-Belleville " and, examining his
topographical map, found himself close to Er
menonville, he asked whether this was not the
place where Jean Jacques Rousseau had breathed
his last, and receiving an affirmative reply, de
clared that as long as there were Prussians in
France Ermenonville should be exempt from war

contributions. The unnamed warrior marched,
says M. Thiebaut de Berneaud, towards the
last abode of the sentimental philosopher,
and, uncovering himself as he drew near,
ordered his troops to treat Ermenonville, its
inhabitants, and all that belonged to it, with

MADAME DEPINAY.
respect — a command which was religiously
observed. Rousseau was one of the few distinguished
men of letters in France who cared for country
life, and he must be allowed to share with Ber-
nardin de St. Pierre the credit of having intro
duced not only sentiment but landscape into the
French novel. He could not have lived per
manently in Paris, though he was a resident in
the capital when he declared that if the officers
of the crown insisted on his paying exorbitant
taxes, he , would go on to the boulevards, sit

2 86

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[From the Quai Voltaire

under a tree, and die of hunger. Even at that
time he took constant rambles in the Bois de
Vincennes, through which he had to pass to
visit his friend Diderot, confined in the chateau.
Apart from the fine foliage and the exhilarating
air which serve to attract visitors to Vincennes,
the place is celebrated for its fortress, which
neither centuries nor revolutions have swept
away. The dungeon, which is now the only
remnant of the citadel commenced by Philippe
de Valois, and completed by Charles the Wise
on the ruins of the castle to which Philippe
Augustus used to resort in view of the pleasures
of the chase, was formerly encircled by eight
towers, grouped around its walls like vassals
around their lord. These, however, have been
demolished by revolutions and by time.
To-day the redoubtable citadel in which so
many kings have sojourned is a military estab
lishment, which includes an artillery arsenal,
barracks, hospitals, a cannon foundry, a factory
of arms, a chateau, a church, and a great num
ber of store-rooms. Its precincts are immense.
Other fortresses are hidden in the immediate
vicinity, and guard the approaches. Artillery
men incessantly go and come between the fortress
and the village and the village and the practice-
ground. Penetrating the sombre vault which leads from
the door of entrance to the interior court, the
visitor finds before him the ancient royal resi
dence, whose facade preserves something of the
majesty of antiquity. To the left stands the
chapel built by Charles V. in imitation of the
Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, and which he dedicated
to the Trinity and the Virgin, the fencing-room,
and the tower of the reservoir ; to the right
the formidable dungeon rears its head towards
heaven. In the space enclosed by these various con
structions are stacked up, in faultless order,
parallelograms of cannons and pyramids of
bullets. Long rows of howitzers, their mouths
directed skywards, are to be seen side by side
with masses of enormous bombs. In the large
neighbouring buildings are halls which contain,
suspended from the walls, hooked up round the
pillars, and symmetrically arranged in corners, a
prodigious stock of guns, bayonets, and sabres.
Everything shines and glitters : there is not a
particle of dust anywhere. An army could here
find sufficient weapons to invade a country. The
church is close at hand. It recalls a peaceful
and merciful divinity in a place consecrated to
war. Prayers are uttered at a spot where men

are incessantly trying to find how to kill the
greatest number of their fellows in the shortest
possible space of time.
The Gothic church, with its fine exterior
masonry, is void of all ornamentation within.
It gives one the impression of having been
sacked at some stage in its history. In a lateral
chapel there is a monument raised to the memory
of the Due d'Enghien.
What the Parisians, however, come par
ticularly to see, what they love, what they visit
with the greatest eagerness, is the dungeon.
This old monument in stone is to them an
object of worship. They envelop it with a fond
curiosity, and, despite the horror they feel at the
terrible scenes it has witnessed during so many
centuries, they will not see it disappear without
regret. In their imagination it is a legendary
monument, and, in all probability, if the Bastille
had not been torn up from the soil by the Great
Revolution, that prison -fortress would now have
been preserved with the utmost care for the
gratification of public curiosity.
No one finding himself at Vincennes after a
country stroll fails to ascend to the summit of
the dungeon. The visitor pants a little, perhaps,
on reaching the platform which crowns it, but he
is recompensed for his fatigue by the immense
panorama which opens around him. There
below, in that transparent vapour which the
sun's rays never more than half penetrate, those
myriads of roofs, those monstrous domes, those
belfries, that stubble of chimneys whence clouds
of smoke are escaping, that distant and ceaseless
din which reminds one of the waves breaking
on some shore, proclaim the gayest city in the
world. At the foot of the edifice the forest
stretches away, and behind the screen of trees
lies a limitless country, in which cultivated fields
extend to the horizon. Everywhere orchards,
hamlets, villages meet the eye. The Seine is
not far off, and at no great distance, like a band
of silver, the Marne meanders capriciously
through an immense plain studded with clumps
of trees.
On one side a view is obtained of Montreuil,
famed for its peaches ; on the other, by the river
bank, a congregation of villas and cottages in
picturesque disorder shows the site of Port-
Creuil, where Frederic Soulie sought literary
repose. At a little distance lies Saint-Maur,
where verdure-loving Parisian business-men like
to spend Sunday with their families. Some of
them, indeed, reside there permanently ; and
year by year bricks and mortar may be seen to

to the Pantheon.]

VINCENNES.

287

encroach further and further upon the surround
ing country. Hard by is Saint-Mande, where
Armand Carrel died of the wound received in
his duel with Emile de Girardin. His tomb is in
the cemetery, where stands a statue in his honour.
If the gaze is now turned sharply towards
Paris, it encounters, beyond Alfort and its
schools, Charenton, celebrated for that mansion
of which Sebastien Leblanc conceived the first
idea in 1 741, and, at the confluence of the Seine
and the Marne, the chateau of Conflans, so long
the residence of the Archbishop of Paris. In
that immense space which lies beneath the eye
there is scarcely a stone or a tree which does not
recall some memory. All those roads, all those
footpaths, have been trodden by men who were
destined to leave a deep mark on the history of
France. There is not a corner in this sylvan
expanse where some civil or religious combat has
not taken place. The Normans, the English, even
the Cossacks have made incursions here. There
is, according to the expression of one French
writer, not a tuft of grass which has not been
stained with human blood. Through the villages
in sight princes and kings have passed. Torch-lit
corteges, conducting prisoners to the dungeon
and to death, have alternated with triumphal
processions, escorting sovereigns to their capital
to the flourish of trumpets. On that hill yonder
Charles VII. raised a castle— the Castle of Beauty
— which preserves the memory of Agnes Sorel.
In another part of the wood, near Creteil, a little
house was once the residence of Odette, who
consoled Charles VI. Saint-Mande once pos
sessed a little park in which Louis XIV., before
he was the Louis XIV. of Versailles and of
Madame de Maintenon, felt the beat of his own
heart ; for it was there that he met the fascin
ating de la Valliere. Under the shade of those
old oaks many other beautiful phantoms may by
the imaginative mind be seen gracefully gliding :
Gabrielle d'Estrees, for instance, Marguerite de
Valois, Madame de Longueville, and Madame
de Pompadour.
The wood of Vincennes is to-day, of course,
very different from what it was at the period
when Philip Augustus, enamoured of, the
chase, had it surrounded by solid walls, in order
to preserve the fallow deer and roebucks which
he had imported from England. But if it has
lost a great deal of its ancient character, together
with some of its noblest old trees, it has gained
in lakes, lawns, and avenues, where the laborious
population of Paris love to lounge or stroll in a
clear and recreative air.

Once arrived in the Bois de Boulogne, the
visitor has not to travel far in order to see the
Marne, that most capricious of French rivers.
There is scarcely a Parisian who has not taken
an exploring stroll along the banks of this stream,
which conducts the oarsman to the very point
whence he started. Artists and dreamers in
search of leafy shade, of trees overhanging a
limpid stream, of mills beating the clear water
with their black wheels, know the Marne well.
On summer days many a peal of laughter may
be heard to proceed from behind some shrubbery.
Tourists come to the place in quest of break
fast : they are not in want of appetite, and
they have for companions youth and gaiety.
Frocks which the wearers are not afraid of
rumpling alternate with woollen blouses : the
visitors row and sing, seeking, later on, some
rustic restaurant where, beneath a green arbour,
they can enjoy a bottle of white wine and a
snack of fish, with an omelette, or some other
light accessory.
On hot Sundays, beneath a cloudless sky, num
berless picnics are held in the Bois de Vincennes
—a thing unfashionable in the Bois de Boulogne,
where visitors would consider it beneath their
dignity to eat from a cloth spread on the green
turf. At Vincennes excursionists do not stand
on ceremony, and if the weather is sultry men
may be seen lounging in their shirt sleeves, and
taking, in other respects, an ease which the in
habitants of the Boulevards, who resort to the
Bois de Boulogne, would contemplate with
horror. If the families, however, who' divert
themselves at Vincennes do not rent a box at
the opera, their unpretentious music probably
affords them a pleasure none the less. It is a
distinctly popular place to which they resort.
You do not see there on Sunday new toilettes
which evoke cries of astonishment : unpublished
dresses dare not show themselves there, eccentric
fashions do not bewilder the spectators eye. People
walk about there without pretension, usually on
foot, in family groups, arriving by omnibus or
rail. Sometimes, however, at the time of the races
you see those coaches and caleches which four
high-spirited horses draw at a gallop. Beautiful
ladies and fine gentlemen are hastening to share
in the pleasures of the course. This is the hour
of lace and silk.
The Bois de Boulogne is associated with
steeple-chasing, instead of the flat-racing of the
Bois de Vincennes. The public, says the before-
mentioned writer, " who are not conversant with

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Mazarin

the science of the turf, and scarcely wish to be
so, better understand the courage and skill which
the jockeys must display when they find them
selves in presence of a stream or hurdle. Curi
osity and emotion are both excited in connection
with these exhibitions. People go as near as
they can to the obstacle and measure its height
or width with their eye. Some take up their
stand at a fixed barrier ; others wait at a bridge
which precedes a ditch. The horses having
started, a universal gaze follows them. Will
they get over or not ? All the spectators hold
their breath, their hearts beating rapidly. Mean
while the jockeys are dressed in purple, gold,
and silver : they arrive like so many flying
sparks. Their horses clear the obstacles. Hurrah !
they are on the flat again. But if by accident
both horse and rider get rolled on the grass, it

must be confessed that the pleasure of the curious
is, in this event, no less."
Vincennes is celebrated for its charitable as
well as its military establishments. Its Bene
volent Institution, or " Bureau de Bienfaisance,"
and its Orphan Home are both admirably organ
ised. The fortress itself may, moreover, be
regarded as in some measure an asylum. Its
garrison includes a good number of aged,
wounded and crippled soldiers ; and it was
commanded in the time of the first Napoleon
by a daring old pensioner who had lost one of
his legs on some former battle-field, and, in virtue
of his wooden stump, was familiarly known as
" Jambede Bois." Called upon to capitulate in
1 8 14, he threatened to blow up the fortress unless
the allied forces at once retired. They did so,
and he ultimately capitulated on his own terms.

CHAPTER XLII.
THE PALAIS MAZARIN AND THE RUE MAZARINE.
The Institute or Palais Mazarin — The Rue Mazarine — L'lllustre Theatre — Moliere — The Theatre Francais — The Odeon — Heine — The
Faubourg Saint-Germain — Historical Associations.

DURING the middle ages the Palace of the
Institute was one of the landmarks and
limits of Paris. The rest of the left bank belonged
to the agglomeration formed around the abbey of
Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and which was called,
during the different periods of its successive de
velopments, the bourg, or borough, the town, and
the faubourg of Saint-Germain.
Of the Institute as a central body, with the
five academies composing it, sufficient mention
has already, perhaps, been made. Some words,
however, may be added on the subject of the
building — the "Palace" in which the Institute
is lodged. Close to the Institute, which owes
its chief renown to the most important of its
component academies, the Academie Franchise,
representing literature, is the Mint, or Hotel des
Monnaies, with whose products literature is too
often but slightly connected. Nor can we leave
the immediate neighbourhood of the Institute
without speaking of the famous Tour de Nesle,
which figures so dramatically in a well-known
play written by Alexandre Dumas and Frederic
Gaillardet. One wing of the Institute occupies
the very site of the old tower, which was situated
on a tongue of earth projecting into the Seine.
It stood seventy-five feet high, with a diameter
of ten feet ; and the crenelated platform at the
summit was reached by a winding staircase.

According to the legend, as turned to literary
account by Roger de Beauvoir in a novel, and
by Alexandre Dumas and his collaborator (who
claimed to have done all, or nearly all the work
in the before-mentioned play), Marguerite de
Bourgogne, wife of Louis X., and her two sisters,
or sisters-in-law, were accused and convicted of
unbecoming conduct in the Tower of Nesle ;
when two of their accomplices, Philippe and
Gaultier d'Aunay, were skinned alive, while
Marguerite herself was strangled by order
of her royal husband, the lives of the two
other princesses being spared. According to
the ancient tradition, the queen and her sisters
used to receive their lovers in the apartments of
the tower, and then, to prevent any com
promising revelations, throw them from the
window into the Seine.
Resting upon the tower was the Petit Nesle,
given as a place of abode, in 1 540, by Francis I.
to Benvenuto Cellini. The king's right to dis
pose of the house was questioned, indirectly,
it is true, but in a very substantial manner, by the
Provost of Paris, who, after giving the Florentine
artist notice to quit, tried to turn him out
by force ; when Cellini, with his companions,
apprentices, and servants, defended the place
against the besiegers. It was in the Petit Nesle
that this admirable sculptor executed, among

I -. ' -;-" .- .¦-..:¦

K^i

A NIGHT REFUGE IN THE VAUGIRARD QUARTER.

22

and the. Rue Mazarine]

TOUR DE NESLE.

289

masterpieces, his colossal statue of Jupiter in
silver. In his Memoirs Benvenuto tells a
story which paints, in glaring colours, the dis
orderly character of the time. He was returning
to the Petit Nesle— his Chateau of Nesle, as he
calls it — carrying beneath his cloak, in a basket,

anecdote shows what a cut-throat place Paris
was under the reign of Francis I,, in the year
1540. Tour de Nesle and Petit Nesle have both
disappeared, and on their site stands (as already
mentioned) the Palace of the Institute, originally

CARDINAL MAZARIN.
(From a Portrait in the Gallery 0/ Versailles.)

1,000 crowns in ancient gold, which the royal
treasurer had just delivered to him by order of
Francis I., when he was attacked by thieves
before the Augustins— a " very dangerous place."
He then tells how he kept his assailants at a
respectful distance by sweeping blows from his
sword, and then ran away in all haste to his
chateau, where he called to the garrison, which
rushed out fully armed, thus enabling him to
re-enter safe and sound the Petit Nesle, where he
and his friends had a lively supper. This simple
43

known as the Palais Mazarin. Cardinal Mazarin,
having been unable to carry out personally the
project he had formed of establishing a college for
the benefit of sixty young noblemen, or young
men of the citizen class belonging to the lands
newly conquered by the Crown of France, ordered
by his will, on the 6th of March, 1661, that,
should the king be so pleased, a college should
be founded for sixty sons of gentlemen or of
citizens belonging to the various territories —
German, Flemish, and Provencal — lately annexed

2QO

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Mazarin

to France. Hence the name given to it of
" College of the Four Nations " ; the fourth
nation being, of course, France. In hke manner
there were formerlv "four nations" in the
University of Paris. Mazarin had already drawn
up the statute for the college, and he be
queathed to it the whole of his library, with an
income of 45,000 francs secured on town property,
the revenue of the Abbey of Saint-Michel, and
two millions of livres (francs) in silver. The
cardinal's executors began by purchasing the
Petit Nesle, the ditches and ramparts of the Rue
des Fosses, which now became the Rue Mazarine;
and a piece of land comprised between the Rue
Mazarine, the Rue de Seine, and the Quay. The
college was then erected and the library duly
placed ; and until the time of the Revolution the ,
Institute, as it was in time to be called, formed
an important centre for men devoted to the study
of literature, science, or art.
At the time of the Revolution the college,
being of suspicious origin, was confiscated, while,
on the other hand, the library was enlarged by
50,000 volumes, themselves the result of con
fiscation. In suppressing the Institute the Revolution
did not spare any one of its five academies — not :
even the French academy, which, though it j
represented the literature of the country, had a j
taint of aristocracy about it. As soon, however, |
as France was delivered from the atrocities of the
Revolution, the National Convention, in its last
sitting but one, on the 25th October, 1795, re
constituted the Institute under the form of a
society of 144 members, divided into three
classes : (1) positive sciences, (2) pohtical sciences,
and (3) literature and art. The First Consul
reorganised the society as four classes : (1) science,
(2) literature, (3) ancient literature, (4) fine arts.
Under this form the Restoration found nothing
to change but the name ; and the four classes of
the Imperial Institute became once more " acad
emies." The fifth, that of moral and political
sciences, created by the Convention, was re-estab
lished in 1832 on the proposition of M. Guizot,
Minister of Public Instruction. Independently
of their internal economy and their proprietorial
rights, the five academies are bound together
through the chief secretarial department, the
library, and various collections belonging to
the five academies in common. The unity |
of the academies is affirmed, moreover, every j
year through a formal sitting, of which the I
presidency falls in turn to each of the five academ
ical presidents. "It is a commonplace," says

M. Auguste Vitu, in his work on Paris, " to run
down academies. The five ancient, like the five
modern academies, have rendered, all the same, the
greatest services to science, and cast a brilliant
light on literature and art. This is generally
admitted in connection with the Academy of
Sciences and the Academy of Inscriptions. There
is no foreign scientific man, however illustrious,
who does not welcome the honour of becoming its
associate or correspondent. The Academy of
Sciences has taken part in ever)- scientific ad
vance ; and to the Academy of Inscriptions, with
its adventurous explorers, is due the immense
development of Punic, Egyptian, Assyrian, and
Persian studies. It can be said to have created
the science of epigraphy, that resurrection of
history from stones. But the utility of the
Academy of Fine Arts has been questioned often
enough, and the French Academy is the re
cognised object not only of everyone's ambition,
but also, and above all, of everyone's ridicule
and satire ; especially — if not exclusively — on
the part of men of letters . . . Who
ever be elected to the French Academy, the
election is sure to meet with much literary dis
approval. The scientific men are accused of
ignoring literature, and the dukes of being unable
to spell. If, on the other hand, the Academy
chooses a dramatist, a novelist, a journalist, or a
critic, journalism is sure to ask why so-and-so
was elected — my associate, my friend, perhaps —
and not myself. These condemnations have
weakened neither the authority nor the glory of
the French Academy ; they have, perhaps, even
preserved it, by diminishing in its secret councils
the influence of coteries. The idea of Cardinal
Richelieu in creating it was to maintain the unity
of the French language, and consequently of
France, while giving to talent equal distinction
with rank, birth, and official service."
To pass once more from the Institute to the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, this important social
and historical district is bounded on the east by
the ancient ditch or moat of Paris, now repre
sented by the Rue Mazarine (formerly Rue de
Nesle), the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, and the
Rue Monsieur le Prince.
The Rue Mazarine— one of the most interest
ing streets on the left bank of the Seine, and,
indeed, in all Paris — occupies an important place
in connection with the French stage. On the
present site of Nos. 12 and 14, Rue Mazarine cor
responds at the back with No. 13, Rue de Seine.
Here Arnold Mestayer, citizen of Paris and
captain of the hundred musketeers of the town.

and the Rue Mazarine.]

THE ILLUSTRE THEATRE.

291

under Henry IV., had built a house and tennis-
court, and here, on the 12th of September, 1643,
a few days after the death of King Louis XIII.,
a company of young men of honourable birth,
brought together by friendship and a passionate
love of the dramatic art, rented from the heirs
of Arnold Mestayer the house and the court
attached to it.
There^ too, was opened, in the last days of the
year, a new theatre for tragedy and comedy, in
opposition to the royal players of the Hotel de
Bourgogne, and under the title of L'illustre
Theatre. Among the members of this remark
able company may be mentioned the two Bejards,
Madeleine and Genevieve, and Jean Baptiste
Poquelin, who had not yet taken the surname of
Moliere. The tennis-court still existed in 181 8 ;
and it was not pulled down until about 1830,
when space was wanted for the enlargement of
the street. The old house where Moliere and
his companions used to live is still in existence,
numbered 10 in the Rue Mazarine and 11 in
the Rue de Seine, by the side of a haberdasher's
shop, to the sign of The Tennis Court. A com
memorative tablet marks the spot where once stood
the Illustre Theatre — a name it was one day
really to deserve, from the fact that one of the
least important members of its company, con
sidered as an actor, was soon afterwards to show
himself the- greatest dramatist that France had
produced. Another tablet in the same street —
No. 42 — marks the ground once occupied by
another tennis-court, which, in 1669, was let to
the Abbe Perrin and several associates, with
Cambert, the composer, among them, who had
obtained from the king the right or privilege of
establishing at Paris an operatic theatre. The
opening performance took place on the 19th
of May, 1 67 1. A lyric drama, called Pomone,
written by Perrin, and set to music by Cambert,
was produced. Cardinal Mazarin had intro
duced Italian opera into Paris in 1645, and the
first French opera, entitled, Akbar, King of
Mogul, words and music by the Abbe Mailly,
was brought out the year following in the
episcopal palace of Carpentras, under the direc
tion of Cardinal Bichi, Urban VIII.'s legate in
France. The second French opera was La
Pastorale en Musique, words by Perrin, music
by Cambert, which was privately represented at
Issy ; and the Pomone, given at Paris in 167 1,
was only the third work of the kind. Pomone
was followed at the new Lyric Theatre by a so-
called " tragedy-ballet," which is remarkable as
having been the joint product of Moliere and

Corneille, the two greatest dramatists of France.
It may here be mentioned that a privilege for
an academy of music had been ceded a hundred
years before by Charles IX. to Antoine de Baif,
the word academy being used as an equivalent
for accademia, the Italian for concert. Perrin's
licence seems to have been a renewal, as to form,
of de Baif 's ; and thus originated the eminently
absurd title which the chief operatic theatre of
Paris has since retained.
After a time Moliere's company was, by order
of the king, combined with two others — the
company of the Hotel de Bourgogne and that of
the Marais ; and this reduction of the three
companies into one constituted the Comedie
Franchise, which has now had a glorious exist
ence of two centuries. Before settling down
finally into its present abode at the Palais Royal
end of the Rue Richelieu, the Comedie Francaise,.
or Theatre Frangais — for the two names equally
belong to it — had a varied history, and wandered
about Paris from quarter to quarter and from
street to street. Its first abodes seem to have
been far less solidly constructed than our ancient
national theatres of Drury Lane or Co vent
Garden ; and in 1770 the famous company,
finding itself in a building so dilapidated that
its fall was daily imminent, the king granted it
hospitality in one of the wings of the Tuileries
Palace. He at the same time took steps to pro
vide for it a permanent home ; and with that
view bought for 3,000,000 livres (francs) the
ground occupied by the Hotel de Conde, where a
new theatre was to be constructed. Here the
Theatre Franc,ais gave its performances through
out the first phases of the Revolution, until, on
the 3rd of September, 1793, after the perform
ance of a play founded on Richardson's Pamela,
the Committee of Public Safety closed the house
and arrested alike the author of the piece and
the actors who had performed in it. The new
playhouse was reopened under the successive
titles of Theatre of Equality and Theatre of the
People, with a portion of the company — which
had been saved by the death of Robespierre.
Classical names were now in fashion, and the
theatre, on being reopened in 1797, was called,
in memory of Athens, the Odeon. Its perform
ances, however, were not successful, and after a
wretched existence of a few months it closed in
1799. When it seemed to have taken a new
lease of life it was destroyed by fire, the origin
of which was never explained. Reconstructed
in 1807, it was opened under the title of Theatre
de rimperatrice, and was looked upon as a

2Q2

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Mazarin

supplementary house to the Theatre Frangais,
with the right of playing comedy, but not tragedy.
By way of compensation, it was permitted to
give representations of opera-bouffe. The Odeon
had once more been officially designated the
second Theatre Francais, when a new fire de
stroyed it on the 20th of February, 1818. Louis
XVTLL ordered the immediate reconstruction
of the house, and, on its completion, put the
second Theatre Francais on the same footing as
the first, placing at its free disposal all the works
of the classical repertory.
Since this time the Odeon has, in a literary
and dramatic sense, undergone all kinds of
metamorphoses. It became first a lyrical theatre,
with such pieces as Robin des Bois — correspond
ing, no doubt, to our Robin of the Wood, or
Robin Hood ; this name having been given to
a strange adaptation by Castil-Blaze, with in
terpolations by the adapter, of Weber's Der
Freischiitz ; and under Louis Philippe the Odeon
was the headquarters of Italian opera.
At present the Odeon is definitely classed as
the second Theatre Frangais, in which character
it pays no rent and enjoys an annual subvention
of 100,000 francs. No theatre during the last
seventy years has rendered greater services to
dramatic art. Here have been represented pieces
by Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Alfred de
Musset, Alfred de Vigny, Balzac, George Sand,
Emile Augier, Octave Feuillet, Mery, Leon
Gozlan, Theodore Barriere, Edmond Gondinet,
Hippolyte Lucas, Michel Carre, Frederic
Soulie, Frangois Ponsard, Frangois Coppee,
Alphonse Daudet, and a hundred others. The
house, moreover, has formed a great number of
superior artists, who were, one after the other,
claimed by the Comedie Frangaise. Of the many
admirable pieces produced at the Odeon, full and
interesting accounts may be found in the col
lected feuilletons of Jules Janin and of Theophile
Gautier. Nothing, however, more brilliant has been
written on the artistic and literary period repre
sented by the dramatic triumphs of the Odeon
than the letters from Paris written from time to
time between the years 1832 and 1848 by Hein
rich Heine.
Heine is known to the English public chiefly
through the French versions of his works ; which,
as they have been produced by the author him
self, convey his thoughts quite as accurately, and
his style almost as accurately, as the German orig
inals. His " Pictures of Travel " (" Reisebilder "),
a volume of poems, two volumes on Germany

which have, of course, taken the place of the
now defunct work of Mme. de Stael, some
dramas or plans for dramas, which were published
in the Revue des deux Mondes, the " Livre de
Lazare," which appeared in the same periodical,
and " Lutece," are perhaps the most important of
those of Heine's writings which have been repro
duced in French. The " Buch der Lieder," too,
has been done into French prose by Heine himself,
with the aid of his friend Gerard de Nerval, who
in his youth, under the name of Gerard, made a
translation of "Faust" which satisfied, or at least
pleased, even Goethe himself. These Lieder,
together with the " Reisebilder," were Heine's
favourite productions ; and independently of the
life that is in them, many of them are further
assured of continued popularity by reason of
Schubert's having coupled them with some of
his most beautiful music.
Heine was a poet and satirist by nature. En
dowed with great analytical power, and educated
in Germany, he of course took a pleasure in
studying the operations of the human mind ; but
he was not a philosopher by temperament, which
is sufficiently proved by the fact that he not only
refrained from attaching himself to any par
ticular system of philosophy in a country where
he had so many to select from, but that he did
not even take the trouble to invent a system for
himself. He comprehended philosophy, liked
painting, loved music, and spoke of all science and
art in the spirit of a poet. He explained Victor
Cousin and Pierre Leroux, grew pathetic over
the fate of Leopold Robert, and became enthu
siastic in his admirable descriptions of the per
formances of Ernst and Paganini, of Grisi and
Mario. Heine's poetry is principally remarkable for its
fantastic character and for its warmth of colour -
accordingly, there are certain points of re
semblance between the German poet and
Theophile Gautier, only there is soul in the
verse of Heine, whereas in that of Gautier we
find nothing but a glorification of the senses and
an absolute worship of form. Goethe, in his
later years, is imagined by the enraptured
Gautier sitting, passionless, on a marble throne,
looking upon the whole of creation as the de
velopment of a superior form of art. Indeed,
according to the Gautier school, life and death
are nothing compared with the interests of art.
Art is great, and Ufe is unimportant ; paganism
is to be revered on account of its marble
temples ; poverty is to be admired for its beggar-
boys by Murillo ; the Millennium is objectionable.

and the Rue Mazarine,]

HEINE'S "LUTECE.:

293

because it will produce no subjects for dramatic
literature. Heine, on the contrary, who, in
addition to the skill of the artist, possessed the
heart of a man, was willing to sacrifice all art
and all poetry — his own, to begin with — if, in
any scheme for alleviating the sufferings of the
poorer classes, such a
sacrifice should appear
inevitable. This feeling is
shown generally through
out his writings. " Un
less," he says, " I deny the
premise, that all men have
the right to eat, I am
forced to admit it in all
its consequences. . . . Let
justice be done . . . Let
the old system be broken
up, in which innocence
has perished, in which
egotism has prospered, in
which man has been
trafficked in by man . . .
And blessed be the grocer
who will one day make
my poetry into paper bags,
and fill them with coffee
and snuff for the poor
good old women who, in
our present world of in
justice, have perhaps had
to deprive themselves of
all such comforts."
To know the Paris of
half a century ago it is
only, indeed, necessary
to study the " Lutece " of
Heinrich Heine, in which
the Paris of the best part
of Louis Philippe's reign
is portrayed in the most
life-like, the most brilliant
style. The sketches, the
anecdotes, the criticism —
all full of the Heinean verve and irony — form the
best portion of the book, which is deficient, per
haps, in the description (if we except personal
description) on which Heine, without adequate
reason, was inclined to pride himself. His poems,
his travels, and his miniature dramas are crowded
with fantastic thoughts, which are of course
presented in fantastic forms ; but he will always
be remembered by his ideas rather than by his
images ; and when he states, in his " Reisebilder,"
that, owing to the prodigality of German writers

in the matter of thoughts, he finds it more
profitable to cultivate the production of pictures,
one would think, were it not for the very title of
the work, that he was indulging in irony at the
expense of his readers.
As a satirist Heine is first of all remarkable

ENTRANCE TO THE HOTEL DE CHATEAUBRIAND, IN THE
FAUBOURG ST. GERMAIN.

for his irony, which is always masterly and which
sometimes reaches the diabolical. He admits
that even in his most amiable moments the
" caresses of his Teutonic paws sometimes in
flicted a wound " ; and if he scratches like a cat
in play, it is certain that he tears in earnest like
a tiger. He seizes his victim by the neck, and
either skins him with his delicate observation or
scalps him with his unerring sarcasm. On great
occasions he resorts to deliberate analysis, or
rather anatomy ; when, after a very few pages,

294

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Mazarin

the patient finds himself lying dissected at the
end of a chapter, with the merciless satirist
grinning at his remains.
In the last chapter of the Reisebilder, speak
ing of the misfortunes of the German emigrants,
Heine gives an anecdote of an artist who, on
being requested to paint a golden angel on a
signboard, replied that he would rather paint a
red lion ; that he was accustomed to them, and
that even if he painted a golden angel it would
look like a red lion all the same. " The words
of this painter," said Heine, " reply beforehand
to the objections which may be made to my
book. It was not any vain caprice which
made me quit all that was dear to me,' all that
charmed me and smiled upon me in my native
land. There more than one being loved me —
my mother, for instance. And yet I left it with
out knowing why — I left it because I was obliged
to do so. It is only in the winter that we be
come fully penetrated with the beauties of the
spring ; the love of liberty is a flower which
grows in prison ; and in the same way the love
of the German fatherland commences at the
German frontier — above all, at sight of German
misery on a foreign soil. ... I have now be
fore me the letter of a friend who is dead, and
in which the following passage occurs : ' I never
was aware that I loved my country so much. I
was in the position of a man who had never
been taught by physiology the value of his blood.
The blood is taken from him, and the man falls.
That was indeed the case. Germany is ours,
and that is why I felt suddenly broken down and
ill at the sight of those emigrants, of those great
rivers of blood which flow from the wounds of
our country and lose themselves in the deserts
of Africa.' .... The golden colours of the
angel have since that time entirely dried up on
my palette, and all that remains upon it in a
liquid state is a raw red colour, which looks like
blood, and with which nothing but red lions can
be painted. Accordingly, my next book will be
purely and simply a red lion ; for which I beg
the kind public to pardon me by reason of the
confession now made."
Heine, during his prolonged stay in Paris,
where he was adopted and became naturalised,
saw all the new operas and most of the new
pictures ; attended the meetings of the Institute ;
abused the polka, then just invented ; discussed
the Eastern Question, and tried to decide whether
it was more probable that England and Russia
would declare war against France, or that France
and Russia would declare war against England ;

calculated Philippe's chances of remaining on
the throne, considered the rival merits of Thiers
and Guizot, and generally criticised everyone
and everything with which he was brought in
contact. He was on friendly terms with George
Sand, Meyerbeer, Rothschild, Balzac, Victor
Cousin, Spontini, and Alfred de Musset ; and he
has given elaborate portraits of some of these
celebrities, while he has written something
characteristic of each. If he was at any time
personally acquainted with Victor Hugo, all
intimacy between the two must certainly have
ceased after Heine's murderous attack upon the
great French poet : — " As all the French writers
possess taste, the total absence of this quality in
Victor Hugo struck his compatriots as a sign of
originality and genius. He is essentially cold, as
is the devil, according to the assertions of witches
— cold and icy even in his most passionate
effusions ; his enthusiasm is only a phantasma
goria, a piece of calculation devoid of love ; for
he loves nothing but himself — he is an egoist, or,
worse still, a Hugoist. In spite of his imagin
ation and his wit, he has the awkwardness of a
parvenu or a savage." In another place we are
told that Hugo's studied passion and artificial
warmth suggest " fried ice " — an edible anti
thesis prepared by the Chinese, which con
sists of little balls of ice dipped into a particular
kind of batter, and forthwith fried and swal
lowed. Rothschild is said to be the best possible
political thermometer ; and he is praised
for the genial if slightly patronising manner
in which he famillionairement addresses his
friends. "Indeed, it might be affirmed," says
Heine, still full of the thermometrical idea,
" that he possesses the talent of the frog for
indicating fair and foul weather, were it not
that this comparison might be considered some
what disrespectful ; and certainly he is a man
who must be respected, if only on account of
the respect he inspires in the greater number
of those who approach him. I love to visit
him at his bank, where I have the oppor
tunity of observing men of all classes and all
religions. Gentiles as well as Jews bow, incline,
and prostrate themselves before him. They
turn, and stoop, and bend their backs nearly
double, in a manner which the most talented
acrobat might envy. I have seen some persons
tremble on approaching him as if they had
touched a voltaic battery. Even when standing
outside the door many of them are seized with a
quivering veneration, such as Moses felt on

and the Rue Mazarine.]

THE EMIGRATION."

295

Mount Horeb  His private room is, indeed,
a most remarkable place, and awakes sublime
thoughts and feelings — -like the aspect of the
ocean, of the starry heavens, of mountains or of
boundless forests. It teaches me the littleness
of man and the greatness of God. For money
is the god of our age, and Rothschild is his
prophet." As the Louvre is associated with the mon
archy and Notre Dame with the Episcopacy, so
the Faubourg St. Germain is associated with
the ancient French nobility. It is interesting
to know that St. Germain, the holy man to
whom the nobiliary quarter (there are " aristo
cratic " quarters elsewhere in Paris) owes its
name, was himself of noble birth. Little is
recorded of him except that he performed
miracles, which the inhabitants of the district
bearing his name have failed to do, and
that, like the ancient nobility of France at the
period of the Revolution, he visited England
and stayed there some time. The church of
St. Germain des Pres was one of the principal
landmarks on the left bank of the Seine in
the latter part of the seventeenth century, when
the Institute and the church just named formed
two important centres on the left bank of
the Seine. The Faubourg St. Germain, or
simply " the Faubourg," as its exclusive in
habitants love to call it, was scarcely known, how
ever, by any such name until the time of the
Revolution or even later, when' it emigrated in
a mass to England, or in some cases to Russia.
The German courts, too, offered for a time a
favourite place of retirement until Germany was
invaded by the Republican armies of France.
" The emigration " is usually attributed to
the excesses of the Revolutionists, especially
during the Reign of Terror; but as a matter of
fact it began in 1789, the first examples being
given by members of the royal family. The
emigration of the French nobility may indeed
be said not to have been caused by the Reign
of Terror, but in a measure to have produced
it. This now seems to be supported in a
certain measure by dates. After the 14th of
July the Count of Artois, the Condes, the Contis,
the Polignacs, the Broglies, the Vaudreuils, the
Lambescs, and others, hurried abroad in order
to band together the enemies of France, and
to prepare the invasion of the country. While
the Count of Artois was intriguing on all sides,
Conde, installed at Worms, surrounded himself
with a body of fatuous noblemen, the nucleus

of his future army, adopted a rebellious atti
tude, replied with contempt to the invitations
of the National Assembly, and organised plots
in the eastern provinces. In 1792 the king
himself would have emigrated and thrown
himself into the arms of foreigners, in the hope
that they would subdue France and restore the
ancient regime. He was, as everyone knows,
arrested at Varennes. But his brother, the
Count of Provence, succeeded in quitting France,
and at Brussels prepared the celebrated declara
tion of Pilnitz. At. the same time a crowd of
nobles left France to furnish recruits to the
Prince de Conde". Coblenz was full to over
flowing with emigrants, whose manoeuvres were
in no way affected by the fact that the king had
himself accepted the constitution. The army of
the emigrating, princes was being openly organ
ised. It was to be composed of three army
corps : one commanded by Conde, which was to
operate in Alsace ; another commanded by the
princes of the blood, who were to enter France
through Lorraine, in company with the Prussians,
and march upon Paris ; and a third commanded
by the Prince de Bourbon, which was to act in
the provinces of the north. Later on special
regiments of emigres were formed, to which
the names of Rohan, Damas, Salm, " Loyal
Emigrants," etc., were given. The Viscount de
Mirabeau, brother to the orator, formed a
legion of his own, whose soldiers wore a black
uniform adorned with death's-heads, and whose
disorderly conduct is said to have been such
that the corps was not allowed to form part
of the Austrian army, to which it had originally
been attached.
Thus, long before the war, there were masses
of emigrants who adopted from their foreign
posts of observation a menacing attitude towards
France. Many noble families left France simply
from fear ; but most of the emigres, when they
had once reached foreign lands, did not scruple
to take part in hostile enterprises against France.
Invitations to return were addressed to the
emigrants by various assemblies ; without the
least probability, it must be admitted, of their
being accepted. Then laws were passed by
which the property of the absentees was con
fiscated, and they themselves threatened with
death should they reappear in France without
due authorisation. As a matter of fact, the
emigres fought against France, in concert with
the invading troops, for the most part as volun
teers, though some are said to have received
pay from the foreign foe. They had boasted

296

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Mazarin

of their abdity and readiness to conquer revolu
tionary France with postillions' whips, and they
had fixed beforehand the day and hour of their
entry into Paris. Driven back by the Republican
armies, they were mad with humdiation and
rage. The King of Prussia abruptly dismissed
those who had entered his service, and gradually,
as new victories were gained by the Republic,

In the first days of the emigration the French
nobility continued to lead a life of luxury
and pleasure. When their last resources had
1 been exhausted, they had to hold out their
1 hands for such alms as the coalition would
| give them. The name of emigre became a
synonym for "poor devd " and parasite. A
; few of the most fortunate of the refugees had

THE BRIDGE, PLACE, AND BOULEVARD ST. MICHEL.

they found themselves expelled from Brussels,
Florence, Turin, Berlin, Switzerland, and other
asylums, retreating almost exclusively to Eng
land. When nearly all their legions had been
dissolved, a certain number of them remained
in the pay of foreign sovereigns. But many
stayed without any resource. A strange sight
was then seen : the whole order of nobility,
and the most brilliant nobility in Europe, some
thirty- thousand persons, including the members
of the priesthood, fallen to the condition of
beggars or hangers-on. Sad expiation for the
treason of those who had borne arms against
their native land.

preserved private resources, but the great
majority were in a sad condition of poverty.
Beaumarchais has described the misery of those
who had sought asylum at Hamburg, where he
helped them to the best of his power, though
he himself was suffering from straitened means.
It was no uncommon sight to see Knights of
St. Louis, gentlemen who had ridden in the
king's carriages, asking for alms at the corner
of the streets. Chateaubriand has drawn a
striking picture of his own poverty and that
of his companions at this trying time. " I
was devoured by hunger," he writes ; " sucked
pieces of linen which I had steeped in water ;

and the Rue Mazarine.]

THE OLD NOBILITY.

297

chewed grass and paper. When I passed before
a baker's shop I felt the greatest torture. On
a cold winter's evening I stood two hours in
front of a shop of dried fruits and smoked
meats, devouring with my eyes whatever I saw.
I could have eaten not only the comestibles,
but the boxes and
baskets which held
them." In 1793 the English
Government thought
of offering the emi
grants settlements in
Canada. The Em
press Catherine of
Russia, who had be
haved generously to
the small number
rich enough to find
their way to her dis
tant dominions, pro
posed to establish six
thousand of them on
the shores of the Sea
of Azof, under the
command of Conde.
In London a certain
number of the emi
gres received from
the English Govern
ment one shilling
a day as subsidy.
It was very little,
but many received
nothing at all. Tired
of having to choose
between living on
alms and dying of
hunger, numerous
Emigres determined
at last to seek some
regular occupation. '
Duchesses and mar
chionesses were now-
seen in charge of haberdashers' and perfumers'
shops; of cafes and other establishments of
the kind. The Count de Vieuville became a
messenger, or " commissionaire " as he would
now be called ; the Chevalier de Lanty a servant ;
Madame de la Londe a shopwoman ; Mile, de
St. Marceau a shop-girl ; Madame de la Mar-
tiniere a dealer in second-hand clothes ; a
well-known marquis an actor (not in those days
considered a very gentlemanly profession) ; the
Chevalier d'Anselme a waiter ; the Marquis de

Montbazet a lamplighter ; while others turned
themselves into hairdressers, barbers, and dancing-
masters. One emigre, mentioned by Brillat-
Savarin, used to dress salads, and, what was
still more remarkable, obtained a guinea for
every salad he dressed.

THE ST. MICHEL FOUNTAIN.

*--??;.'

A few exercised more lucrative functions as
secret political agents. Among these may be
mentioned Count d'Antraigues, the husband of
Madame de St. Huberty, the famous singer,
who, with his wife, was assassinated at Barnes
by an irritated domestic. The Count had
rendered important services to the Coalition,
and claimed to have revealed to the English
Government the secret articles of the Treaty of
Tilsit. On the outbreak of the Revolution most of

298

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Mazarin

the great families who, collectively, may be said
to compose the Faubourg St. Germain, had left
France, when a special law against "emigrants"
was passed, striking through their property those
who, had they remained, would have suffered in
person. Some members, however, of the ancient
nobility stayed in Paris throughout the Reign
of Terror, among whom may in particular be
mentioned that Baron Lezardiere who saved, or
did his best to save, the heroic Abbe Edgeworth,
when the last confessor of Louis XVI. was, or
believed himself to be, in imminent danger of
his life. "The friend," wrote the abbe to his
brother, " whose name must be for ever sacred
to you, since to him your brother owes his life,
was the Baron de Lezardiere, a nobleman of
high character, advanced in years, and then
living in opulence, who not only received me
with open arms, but, slighting all the dangers
to which he exposed himself and family by
giving hospitality to such a guest, insisted on my
regarding his house as my own, seeking for no
other place of refuge ; so that I received during
those monthsevery attentionthatthemost delicate
friendship could invent, and though the family
was large and the servants numerous, my existence
was hardly perceived out-of-doors, so well was
the secret kept. I had not been long in this
charming solitude when I received information
from Paris that at two or three different clubs,
and especially at the Jacobins', my head was
mentioned as the only atonement equal to my
guilt of having openly professed my attachment
for the ' tyrant.' This was alarming news indeed.
But a journalist (friend or foe) having announced
some days afterwards that I had got safe over to
England, and had there had frequent conferences
not only with the principal emigrants, but with
Mr. Pitt himself, this idle story was credited by
all, and I was completely forgotten.
" However, the fiction, though favourable to me
in one sense, distressed me much in other respects,
as it obliged me to conceal myself more cautiously
than ever, for had I been discovered in France
after such a report, I must have been, in the
eyes of Government, no less than an emissary
from the court of England, an agent to the emi
grants, and an emigrant myself — all titles that
made my case the blacker by adding to my
former guilt. Hence I was obliged to keep
within doors more than ever ; nor could I ven
ture out to Paris but by night. Then I dared
but to remain a day or two at a time, and though
my house should have been open to all, since to
all I owed myself, few people knew where it was

or how to get admittance into it. It is true that
from my solitude in the country I entertained a
large correspondence with the town ; but all
kinds of business could not be transacted by
letters, and I soon perceived that the diocese
committed to my care, far from prospering in
my hands, suffered materially from my absence.
" In this distressing situation, and really not
knowing what part to take, I wrote a long letter
to the archbishop, informing him of all and de
manding his advice ; but, unfortunately for me,
my letter, though directed to one of the com
manding officers upon the frontier (who favoured,
underhand, my correspondence), was seized,
opened, and sent back to the Comite de Salut
Piblic. Soon after, the house of M. de Lezar
diere, where I lay concealed, was assaulted in
mid-day, and the whole family, supposing the
storm to be directed against me alone, fell at my
knees, requesting I would provide for my own
safety by a timely flight. I yielded, though in
deed with some reluctance, to their entreaties,
and casting into the fire all my papers, I escaped
by a back road into the fields, where I remained
until it was dark. But how bitter was my grief
when, coming back at night, I was informed that
my valuable friend had been carried off to prison
with his youngest son and eldest daughter, and
that upon the road to Paris, three different times,
the bloodthirsty gang had held counsel whether
it was not best to shorten the business by mur
dering them upon the spot. My mind was
relieved a few days after (at least in some degree)
by the positive assurances given me that amongst
the questions put to the three prisoners, upon
their arrival in Paris, not a word had been said
about me, which clearly proved that I had not
been the innocent cause of their misfortune ; but
my friend was not the less in danger (for prison
and death now began to be synonymous terms
in France), and my papers were lost for ever."
This accident did not prove fatal to M. de
Lezardiere, for after ten days' confinement he
was dismissed. " As to my papers, those I regret
the most, and shall in all probability ever lament,
were the letters written to me from the Temple
by Madame Elizabeth. I have already hinted
to you (but this to you and no other mortal, as
the time for revealing is not yet come) that not
withstanding the unrelenting vigilance of her
guardians, this unfortunate princess found a
means to correspond with me from time to time,
and to take my advice on many critical occur
rences during her imprisonment. These letters
were conveyed to me in a ball of silk, and all

and the Rue Mazarine.]

THE ABBE EDGEWORTH.

299

measures so prudently taken that the correspond
ence, though at last suspected, was never found
out entirely. I had already destroyed, in one of
my critical moments, all those she had written to
me upon different subjects before her confine
ment, nor was I sensible of the loss, as she was
still alive to repair it ; but when I now reflect
that she is no more, and that her last pages,
bathed with her tears, and painting in so lively
colours her resignation and her courage, are
now lost for posterity, I cannot but lament it as a
public misfortune.
" But to return to my subject : the poor officer
who had favoured my correspondence with the
Archbishop of Paris was soon called to an
account for the anonymous letter that had been
put into the post under his cover ; and the affair
being likely to take a very serious turn, not,
indeed, for him, as he could plead ignorance of
the contents, but for the author, whose existence
in France could be no longer doubted, all my
friends joined in requesting I would retire with
out delay t6 some remote province. I had only
time to see my poor mother, whom I embraced
for the' last time, and to provide, as well as the
circumstances would permit, for the government
of the diocese. These two duties fulfilled, I got
into a carriage, and under the name of Essex I
got off to Montigny, where M. le Comte de
Roche Chouart received me with the greatest
kindness in his castle.
"Here my first business was to write to the
faithful agent of Madame Elizabeth, giving her
at full length my direction, in case she had any
silk balls to send me. This letter was directed
to her house, and signed ' Essex ' ; but no sooner
' was it put into the post office than I was in
formed that the very person to whom I wrote
had been arrested a few days ago, after I had left
Paris, for favouring a clandestine correspondence
of one of the royal prisoners j and also that a
friend of mine, being cited before the Comite de
Salut Public, and questioned about the letter I
had written to the Archbishop, had inadvertently
discovered the name under which I was en
deavouring to conceal my existence. This was
fatal indeed ; for the letter I had just cast into
the post office, being directed to a prisoner,
must, of course, go to the Comite' de Salut
Public ; and there the Comite found, without
further inquiry, not only my handwriting to
compare it with that of the anonymous letter
written to the Archbishop, but my name full at
length, and every means of discovering me,
given by myself. I leave you to judge, my dear

Ussher, into what perplexity I was cast by this
accident. But Providence looked down upon
my distress ; and after a whole week spent in the
most cruel anxiety, 1\ at last had news from the
person herself, informing me that the affair had
been hushed up, and that my letter had got safe.
" I pass over in silence many incidents of less
importance which I met with during the four
months I spent with M. de Roche Chouart. I
must now relate the circumstance which obliged
me to fly, and to seek for safer concealment.
The Comite" de Salut Public having got hold of
the name under which I concealed myself in
France, caused an article, relative to I know not
what correspondence, supposed to have existed
between Louis XVI. and the King of Prussia, to
be inserted in the public ¦ papers. The article
was insignificant in itself; but the author, in
order to obtain more credit for his story, took
care to tell the public that he was indebted for
the anecdote to Mr. Essex, the last friend to
Louis XVI. — Mr. Essex, a person who must have
been informed of all that had passed. This paper
came to Montigny, where I was publicly known,
and was there reputed to be an English gentle
man of small fortune, travelling for his private
business, or for his health ; but this resemblance
of names, and I know not what in my person,
when nicely viewed, that betrayed a clergyman,
soon gave rise to other thoughts. During the
first days I paid but little attention to what was
whispered about, hoping that the author and the
anecdote would soon be forgotten ; but as I was
thus endeavouring to tranquillise myself, a man
advanced in years, and of most noble appearance,
came up to the castle, and inquired for Mr.
Essex ; he was introduced, and, all witnesses
being removed, he said, 'Sir, your existence in
this house is no secret to the public, nor has it
hitherto occasioned the least suspicion, as you had
not been supposed to be a man of importance ;
but a paragraph inserted lately in the papers is
now the subject of all conversation, and all eyes
in the neighbourhood are fixed upon you. Be
so good as to read the article, and if in it you
behold your own features, oh ! my dear sir, give
leave to a man who was your friend before he
had the honour of seeing you, to request of you
to provide for your own safety by a timely
flight, for here you will be infallibly arrested.'
" This unexpected visit gave me, as you may
believe, much alarm. I thanked the gentleman
in the warmest terms, and, after holding counsel
with the few friends I had made in that part of
France, it was unanimously resolved that I must

3°°

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Pa'ais Mazarin

fly with all speed, and seek for shelter in some
other place. I pitched upon Fontainebleau as one
of the quietest spots in France ; there I had
neither friends nor acquaintances, except a lady
whom I had never seen but once. Apprised of
my arrival, she flew to my assistance ; her credit,
her purse, her servants — all were at my disposal,
and my own mother could not have done more
for me than she did during my stay in that
place ; but, unfortunately, it was not long, for an
order was issued to arrest all foreigners, and for
me arrestation was certain death. I therefore
was obliged once more to seek for safety in some
other spot. The Baron Lezardiere, who never
lost sight of me amidst my distresses, had an old
servant — a man of uncommon resolution and
prudence. Him he despatched to protect me in
my flight. We both fell into the hands of an
armed troop appointed to examine all travellers,
and to take up all those whom they might
suspect ; but the fierce and bold countenance
of my companion got me off, and, thanks to his
zeal, I arrived, without accident, at Bayeux, in
Normandy,' two hundred miles from Paris.
"There I had it in my power to get off to
England, as the coasts were but ill -guarded.
But Madame Elizabeth was still alive, and if
she should be exposed to danger, I was resolved
to keep my word, and to be her friend to the
last, let the consequences be what they would
for myself. Hence I stopped at Bayeux, and
took up my lodging in a poor hut, where I lay
unnoticed ; nobody suspected that a man of any
importance could be lodged in so dismal a place.
Soon after, the Baron de Lezardiere, hunted from
town to town, came to join me in this hole, with
his three daughters and his younger son, and
there we remained eighteen months, almost
forgotten. He was still in opulence when he
arrived ; but his castle being burned to the
ground, all his lands seized, and most of his
friends destroyed by the guillotine, he soon fell
into poverty, so I became his only resource.
My friends, who were numerous, and some of
them still wealthy, seeing me in this situation,
came on all sides to my assistance, and with the
supplies I received from them (without my ever
asking), and the little I received from you, I
have had the happiness to maintain, not, indeed,
in opulence, but still above want, one of the most
respectable families in France.
"Our solitude, indeed, was daily bathed with
our tears (though otherwise comfortable enough) ;
for there my poor Baron, after the loss of all he
possessed in this worldt was apprised of the death

of his two sons, young men of the greatest merit
(a third had been murdered in the prisons of
Paris, and .the fourth is actually under trial for
his life). Soon afterwards he received the shock
ing news of his four sisters being shot on the
same day, as they were flying in the fields to
avoid something worse. On my side, it was in
the same solitude that I received the fatal news
of my poor mother being arrested, and of her
soon sinking under her grief ; that my sister was
torn from her, and conducted from prison to
prison, partly on my account ; and finally, that
Madame Elizabeth, the glory of religion and the
idol of France, had fallen a victim to the cruel
policy of our tyrants, at a moment when I least
expected it. I must confess that this last blow
went to my very heart, almost as much as the
loss of my dear mother, for she often called upon
me ; but she was no more when I first heard of
her being taken from the Temple. Only sixteen
hours elapsed between her being brought to
judgment and her death, and my only consola
tion ever since has been to think that, had I been
in Paris, I could have been of no service to her,
as nobody even suspected on that day that she
was in the fatal cart.
" No sooner had I been informed of her death
than I resolved to leave France. It was now a
duty to fly, as it had been one to remain as long
as she was in existence ; for a few days before her
imprisonment she had entrusted. me with her last
will (byword of mouth), and requested I would
execute it in person whenever I should hear of
her death. It is to perform this duty that I am
now in London, and as soon as I close this letter
I set off for Edinburgh."
The abbe started immediately for Edinburgh
to carry out the commands of the Princess
Elizabeth — in other words, to communicate to
the legitimate King of France her last wishes,
which she had entrusted to him " by word of
mouth." The Abbe Edgeworth stayed about a
week at Edinburgh, returning to London in
September, 1796. Soon after his return Mr.
Pitt desired to see him, and had a long inter
view with him at Lord Liverpool's office.
When the interview was concluded, Mr. Pitt
informed him that his Majesty intended to settle
a pension upon him for life. The abbe expressed
his gratitude for tlie intended honour. But next
day he wrote to Lord Liverpool, and in the most
polite and grateful terms begged to decline the
pension so graciously offered to him. " He
could not think of adding," he said, "to the
expenses which the Government had already

and the Rue Mazarine.]

THE ABBE EDGEWORTH.

301

incurred in providing for such a number of
French emigrants."
During the three months that the abbe" spent
in London he received marks of high respect
and of kind attention from persons of the most
distinguished character in England ; and from all
classes he had proofs of the generous feeling
of the British public. The polished yet "
simple manners of the Abbe" Edgeworth now
attached to his person those who had begun
by admiring his character. It became the
fashion to invite him everywhere, and such,
indeed, was the general eagerness to see

were most anxious to see him, and to welcome
to their country one who had brought them so
much honour. The abb£, in compliance with
their entreaties, was actually preparing to set out
on his journey to Ireland, when he was stopped
and all his views were altered by the arrival of

"r\J"?'

and hear him that, had he complied with this
desire, he must have lived in public. Had he
felt within him any latent love of celebrity, or
of popular applause, it would now have appeared,
and been fully gratified. But he did not care
for fame ; he withdrew as much as possible from
notice, and lived in retirement with a few private
friends. " His brother and his other relations in Ireland

. >- THE CASTLE OF CHAMBORD.
Mile, de Lezardiere from France, charged
with despatches of importance for Louis
XVIII. Mile, de Lezardiere had under
taken to deliver the papers to her brother,
who was to carry them to the King of France.
His Majesty was at this time at Blanckenberg.
It happened that M. de Lezardiere had left
London and had gone on other business to
his Majesty. Mile, de Lezardiere therefore
applied to the Abbe Edgeworth as the only
person whom she could venture to entrust with
a confidential mission of so much importance.
Had the abbe hesitated he would have been
decided by a message delivered to him with the
following letter from the king : —
" I have heard, sir, with extreme satisfaction,
that you have at last escaped from all the dangers
to which your devoted attachment to my brother

302

PARIS, OLD AND NEW

[The Palais Mazarin

has exposed you. I sincerely thank Providence
for having preserved in you one of his most
faithful ministers, and the trusty friend who
received the last thoughts of a brother whose
death I shall ever deplore — whose memory will
ever be venerated by Frenchmen ; of a martyr
whose triumph you have been the first to pro
claim, and whose virtues will, I trust, be at some
future day consecrated by the Church. Your
miraculous preservation makes me hope that God
has not yet abandoned France. He has without
doubt ordained that an unimpeachable witness
should attest to all Frenchmen the love with
which their king was ever animated towards
them ; so that, knowing the extent of their
loss, their grief may not be confined to mere
lamentations, but that they may throw themselves
into the arms of their heavenly Father and
receive from Him the only alleviation of which
their sorrow is susceptible. I therefore exhort
you, sir, or rather, I entreat, in the most earnest
manner, that you will collect and publish all the
particulars you can, consistently with your holy
office. " That will be the finest monument that I can
erect to the best of kings and the most beloved
of brothers.
" I should wish, sir, to give you solid proofs of
my profound esteem, but I can only offer you
my admiration and my gratitude. These are the
sentiments most worthy of you. "Louis."
Soon after the establishment of the royal
family of France at Mittau, the Emperor Paul
wished to confer the order of St. Alexander upon
Louis XVIH. He sent for the Abbe Edgeworth
to receive the insignia from his hands and to
convey them to his royal master, who, in return,
presented the Order of the Holy Ghost to the
emperor. When the Abbe Edgeworth arrived at the
Court of Russia, Paul was so much struck by his
venerable appearance, that he prostrated himself
before him and implored his blessing. He pre
sented the abbe with his picture set in diamonds,
and settled upon him a pension of 500 roubles a
year. The picture the Abbe Edgeworth laid at
the feet of his king ; the pension he divided
with the poor.
In the spring of the year 1807, Bonaparte
directed the arms of France against the dominions
of Russia. During the course of this year it
happened that some French soldiers, who had
been taken prisoners, were sent to Mittau.
Though they had borne arms against the House
of Bourbon, yet, in the true spirit of Christian

forgiveness, their errors were forgotten by Louis
XVIII. The Abbe Edgeworth went, with his
Majesty's permission, to attend them and give
them all the comforts which humanity could
procure, and all the consolation which religion
could bestow. A contagious fever raged among
the prisoners, and of this the venerable abbe was
aware. But he persevered in his visits and
would not abandon those who had no earthly
hope but in him. Day and night he continued
his attendance, assisted by his faithful servant
Bousset, who emulated the virtues of his master.
The Abbe Edgeworth caught the fever. His
constitution had previously been weakened by
ill-health and mental suffering. At length, sub
mitting to the force of disease, he was obliged to
desist from all further exercise of his charitable
and pious functions. On the 17th of May, 1807,
he was confined to the bed from which he never
afterwards rose. When the daughter of Louis
XVI. heard that the abbe was taken ill, she de
clared that she would go immediately and see
this friend of her family. All her attendants re
presented to her the danger of infection, and used
every argument and entreaty to prevail upon her
not to run such a hazard, but in vain. "The
less he knows of his own wants," said the princess,
" the more he stands in need of a friend ; and if
every human being were to fly from him in this
contagion, I should never forsake one who is
more than my friend : the unalterable, disinter
ested friend of my family, who has left kindred
and country — all ! all for us ! Nothing shall
withhold my personal attendance on the Abbe
Edgeworth. I ask no one to accompany me."
The princess attended the death-bed of the
Abbe Edgeworth, administered medicine to him
with her own hands, and received his dying
breath. This is here recorded, not to do honour
to the Abbe Edgeworth, but to do justice to
human nature and the gratitude of princes — a
virtue whose existence would not, perhaps, have
so often been doubted if there had been more
examples of attachment as disinterested, sincere,
and steady as that which, beyond possibility of
doubt, was manifested by him whose life was the
best proof at once of his loyalty and his faith.
The abbe died on the 22nd of May, 1807, the
fifth day after he had been taken ill. The court
of Louis XVIII. went into mourning for him.
The Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, the Arch
bishop of Rheims, and all the nobility of the
court, attended his funeral. His epitaph was
written by King Louis XVIII.
Many of the emigres — who, without being

and the Rue Mazarine.]

THE CASTLE OF CHAMBORD.

3°3

banished, felt it necessary, like the Abbe Edge-
worth, to fly for their own safety — applied for
permission to return to France under the first
Directory, and afterwards, in greater numbers,
under the Consulate. Bonaparte, who had now
conquered the Revolution, was only too anxious
to obtain the support of the old French nobility,
and did his best to make them accept him in the
position he had conquered. But as the great
majority of the ancient nobility, the former inhabit
ants of the Faubourg St. Germain, stayed abroad,
Napoleon, on becoming emperor, created a new
nobility, choosing its members among his most
successful generals and high officials. In 18 14,
and again in 181 5, the Faubourg St. Germain
was once more inhabited, and until the downfall
of Charles X. in 1830 the ancient nobility seemed
to have resumed its position in France. It was
not always possible to restore the estates which
had been confiscated ; but large pecuniary allow
ances had been made to those who had suffered
by the confiscation. In 1830 a number of new
peers were created by King Louis Philippe, who,
unable to count on the Legitimists ofthe Faubourg
St. Germain, felt it necessary to improvise a
nobility of his own. There was now in France a
Legitimist nobility, an Orleanist nobility, and a
nobility which owed its origin to the creations of
Napoleon I.
After the coup d'etat of 1851, and the estab
lishment of the Second Empire, Napoleon IIL,
without in any way discountenancing the old
nobility of pre-revolutionary France or the new
nobility of Louis Philippe's creation, could not
but show favour to the nobility of Napoleonic
origin, whose numbers he increased by creations
of his own.
After the calamities of 1870 and 1871, the
Faubo'urg looked forward to the restoration of
the ancient monarchy, and ardently hoped to see
the throne occupied by the Count of Chambord,
though there were now two aspirants to the
crown : the Count of Chambord on the part of
the elder branch of the Bourbons, and the Count
of Paris as representing the younger or Orleanist
branch. The Castle of Chambord, which gave its name
to the representative of the elder branch of the
Bourbons, was originally a family possession of
the Duke of Orleans ; and it was not until the
close of the fifteenth century, when Louis, Duke
of Orleans, became, under the name of Louis
XII., King of France, that it passed to the
Crown. As yet, however, it was merely an
ordinary manor-house ; and it received nothing

like its present shape until the reign of Francis I.,
who turned it into a palace. The rebuilding is
said to have occupied nearly two thousand work
men for the space of twelve years. During the
latter part of his life Francis often lived in the
newly built chateau, whose magnificent halls he
embellished with the finest works of art. It was
on one of the windows of the castle that, after
patiently listening to an apology made by his
sister Marguerite for the alleged weakness of her
sex, he is said (on good authority) to have
written with a diamond the famous distich :
' ' Toute femme varie
Bien fol qui s'y fie."
These lines are usually given, " Souvent femme
varie," etc. Such, indeed, is the version
adopted by the author of Le Roi s'Amuse
— in the situation where, in Verdi's operatic
arrangement of Victor Hugo's play, the canzone
"La donna e mobile" occurs. "Toute femme
varie" - seems too absolute. The calumnious
verses were, in any case, according to the legend
on the subject, scratched out by order of
Louis XIV., who found that they annoyed Mile.
de la Valliere.
Henry II. inherited all the taste of Francis for
the Castle of Chambord, to which he made
several additions, including a stately staircase in
the western court, where the armorial bearings
of his mistress Diana, a crowned H and a
crescent, are seen in company with his own
device : " Donee totum impleat orbem." It was
at Chambord that this sovereign ratified, in
1552, the treaty which he had concluded the
year before at Fontainebleau with the Protestant
princes of Germany. Charles IX. repaired and
adorned the castle, though to no very great
extent, owing to the failure of his resources.
The modest Louis XIII. was frequently at
Chambord ; and historians say that during
one of his stays there Mile, de Hautefort put a
love-letter under his collar ; when, afraid to
touch it with his fingers, he removed it by
means of the tongs. Louis XIV. cared little for
the castle, which, magnificent as it was, fell far
short of the splendour with which he loved to be
surrounded. He gave, however, several grand
fetes at Chambord, and witnessed there the first
performance of two of Moliere's plays — one of
them Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme .
After the battle of Fontenoy, in 1745, Cham
bord was presented by Louis XV. to Maurice de
Saxe ; but it was not until three years later, on
the conclusion of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,
that the Marshal took up his abode at the castle.

3°4

PARIS, OLD AND NEW

[The Palais Mazarin

He constructed barracks there for two regiments
of Uhlans, and established in the park a stud of
Russian horses, which, though they roamed just
where they liked, would at sound of trumpet
come galloping up, as if of their own accord, for
drill. Within the castle Maurice de Saxe lived
amid almost regal pomp. When not occupied
with military duties he gave himself up to
pleasure. Mdme. Favart, for whom he had

the castle. After dethroning Charles V. of Spain,
he wished to present it in a habitable state to the
ex-King, but found that the expense of repairing
and refurnishing it would be far more than he
could afford. In 1809 Chambord was made into
a principality, with the title of " Principality of
Wagram," and was given, with an endowment
of 500,000 francs a year, to Marshal Berthier.
The allowance was, in part at least, to be

conceived a violent passion, often performed
before him at Chambord.
When the Revolution broke out Chambord
had long since gone back to the Crown. The
Republican Government, not knowing what to
do with such an edifice, thought of demolishing
it, but happily abandoned the barbarous idea.
The furniture, however, and the works of art were
sold by auction ; and the escutcheons and other
ensigns of royalty on various parts of the
building would have been effaced had not the
architect called in to estimate the cost of the
work asked too large a sum.
Napoleon thought several times of restoring

PORTE AUX POMMES : FRUIT-BOATS ON THE SEINE.
expended on furniture and on the more pressing
repairs. In the reign of Louis XVIH, the en
dowment having ceased, the Princess of Wagram
obtained the royal permission to alienate a
possession which had become burdensome ; and
soon after, at the Count de Calonne's sugges
tion, it was bought by public subscription and
bestowed as a dependency on the posthumous
son of the Duke of Berry — " Duke of Bordeaux,"
as he was in the first instance called. This pro
voked the ire of many Liberals, and notably of
Paul-Louis Courier, who wrote a very energetic
pamphlet on the subject. He dwelt much on the
bad effect which would probably be produced on
the heir to the throne by living in the midst of
so many memorials of the depravity of his fore
fathers. " At Chambord," he asked, " what will
the Duke learn ? The place is full of his
ancestors, and for that reason alone it would
hardly be fit for him. I would rather he lived

and the Rue Mazarine.]

THE CASTLE OF CHAMBOED.

305

among us than among them. There, too, are
the faces of a Diana and a Chateaubriand, whose
names of ill-repute still sully the walls of the
castle. Interpreters to explain the emblems will,
doubtless, not be wanting to the Duke ; and
what instruction for a child destined one day to
reign ! " The pamphlet obtained for its author
two months' imprisonment.
In 1828 the Duchess of Berry took possession
of the castle in her son's name.
It was her desire to restore it to its
former state, but this has yet to be
done. The Castle of Chambord has
never since its first construction
been adequately repaired, and it
is now said to be on the point
of falling into general ruin.
It might have been thought
that after the death of the Count
of Chambord, the Count of Paris,
who now became the true heir
to ' the French throne, would
have been acknowledged not only
by all his relatives, but by the
Legitimist party, equally with the
Orleanists. But the will by which
the Count of Chambord left a
large sum of money to two Italian
representatives — Count Bardi and
the Duke of Parma — without
making any mention of the Count
of Paris, was yet another indication
of the little cordiality felt by the
Bourbons of the elder branch for
the grandson of Louis Philippe,
the great-grandson of Philippe
Egalite. The reasons which animated the
Countess of Chambord in her opposition to
the Count of Paris do not demand long con
sideration. Possibly she was vexed at the
scanty assistance given by the Count of Paris
to the head of the family in 1871, and again in
1873 ; and it is a fact, in any case, that the Count
of Paris did not attend the Count of Chambord's
funeral. This abstention was due to the Countess
of Chambord's strange decision that her husband's
foreign relatives should be regarded as nearer to
him than his French kinsman, who, moreover,
by the Count of Chambord's death would become
the legitimate heir to the French throne. Don
Carlos, as representative of the Spanish Bourbons,
was, it is true, more nearly related to the Count
of Chambord than the Count of Paris as repre
senting the Orleans family, just as much, indeed,
as sixth cousins are more nearly related than
44

eighth cousins. But the Bourbon prince who, at
the beginning of the last century, ascended the
Spanish throne lost, in doing so, his character
of Frenchman, just as the offshoots from the
Spanish Bourbons, on becoming established in
Naples and in Parma, lost their Spanish character.
It is well, even in connection with such lofty
subjects as the divine right to rule, not to lose
sight of practical considerations ; and one can

PORTE AUX POMMES.

imagine no possible combination of circumstances
under which the French would consent to be
ruled either by a Spaniard or by an Italian.
To argue in the present day that a foreign prince
who is descended from Louis XIV. has therefore
a better title to reign in France than a French
prince who can only boast of a collateral relation
ship with that sovereign, but who is himself the
grandson of a French king, is to attach strange
importance to a mere theory spun to suit the oc
casion. Such a theory may have harmonised with
the Countess of Chambord's private prejudices.
But to state it is enough to show its weakness.
If for one moment, and simply to conform to the
arbitrary arrangements of a funeral pageant, the
Count of Paris could have recognised it, he would
by doing so have shown himself unworthy of all
confidence. It is better for him to have broken
altogether with the unrecognised claimants and

306

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Palais Mazarin.

dispossessed occupiers of foreign thrones than to
remain their ally at the cost of such sacrifices as
were demanded from him. King Louis Philippe,
in his last instructions to his grandson, laid no
stress upon the principle of descent, but called
upon him to be above all "of his own time and
of France." The shadowy potentates to whom
the Count of Paris was invited to submit himself
at Frohsdorf are as far removed from France by
their nationality as from the present time by
their ideas.
The fault, however, charged against the Count
of Paris by the late Count of Chambord is as
nothing compared to the offence of which his
grandfather, Louis Philippe, is held to have
been guilty ; which, again, cannot be likened
for atrocity to the crime committed by Louis
Philippe's father, Philippe Egalite.
When, in 1873, there was a prospect of a
Royalist restoration, the Count of Paris, ac
cording to the Countess of Chambord, speaking
as with the voice of her late husband, did
not give the Count the support which he
had a right to expect ; and the Count of
Chambord seems, in particular, to have com
plained to the Countess that the Count of
Paris had refused to accept the white flag —
" the flag of Ivry," as the Count of Chambord
called it, unmindful, it would seem, of the
fact that Ivry was a victory gained by one

French army over another, and by Protestants
over Catholics. The important point, however,
in the eyes of the Count of Chambord, was
that the grandson of Louis Philippe, the
great-grandson of Philippe Egalite, stuck to
the Revolutionary tricolour, and declined to
return to the flag of the ancient monarchy.
The grandson of a usurper and great-grandson
of a regicide could have no claim, then, either
in the past or in the present, to represent
a line of kings towards which the grandfather
had played the part of a betrayer and the great
grandfather that of a murderer.
If the Count of Chambord's widow, remember
ing her husband's last instructions, disavow^,
Louis Philippe's grandson, his mother, the
Duchess of Berry, disavowed Louis Philippe,.
and even organised against him an armed
rebellion. Thus, while Louis Philippe was
hated as an enemy both by the grandfather
and by the mother of the Count of Chambord,
his father was worse than the enemy of the
Count of Chambord's great-uncle, Louis XVI.
The Count of Chambord must naturally
have inherited something of the horror and
hatred with which the Orleans family, in
one or other of its members, was regarded
successively by Louis XVI., Charles X., and
the Count's own mother, the Duchess of
Berry.

The Paris River.]

THE WATER-MERCHANTS OF PARIS.

307

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE PARIS RIVER AND PARIS COMMERCE.
The Society of the Water-Merchants of Paris — The Navigation of the Seine— The Paris Slaughter-Houses— Records of Famine ie
France — The Lot of the French Peasant in the Last Century — The Paris Food Supply.

THE navigation of the Seine has had remark
able effects on the commerce, and even the
municipal government, of the great city traversed
by this stream. Turning to the annals of the
middle ages, one finds that nearly all the powerful
towns seated on _ rivers profited by their posi
tion to secure as much as possible exclusive
rights of navigation. With this view, the citizens
showed themselves as eager and as voracious as
the nobility. Take, for instance, the towns of
Cologne or of Mayence, which in mediaeval
times forced all the boats passing down the
Rhine to stop for three days and allow the in
habitants to purchase from their cargo whatever
merchandise seemed desirable.
At Paris, the inhabitants showed themselves
equally resolved to profit by their position on
the banks of the Seine. A society was formed
at an early date, under the title of " Society of
the Water-Merchants of Paris," in which were
included the principal merchants receiving and
distributing their goods by means of the river
flowing through the town. This association,
mentioned for the first time in documents be
longing to the reign of Louis VI. , claimed the
right of levying sixty sous on every boat which
took a cargo of wine to Paris during the vintage.
It was easy enough for the owners of the
vessels to come to terms with the proprietors of
the castles on the river-banks, who desired only
to derive a small profit from the passage of the
boats ; but it was not so easy to pass the trades
men of the towns on the Seine, who, finding
their interests injured by the detention of the
Parisians, complained bitterly, and endeavoured,
from time to time, to throw off the yoke of
tyrannical Paris. Burgundy on one side and
Normandy on the other protested against the
pretended privileges of the Hanseatic League,
but all in vain. The town of Auxerre made
strenuous endeavours at one time to prevent
the Parisian merchants from introducing into
their town the cargoes of salt sent from Nor
mandy. Rouen was far less accommodating
than Auxerre had shown itself. People had
forgotten how it was that the merchants of

Paris enjoyed such exceptional privileges. But
the Parisian burgesses were rich and powerful.
Besides their river privileges, they were entitled
to half of all the money received in fines ; and
the richer the citizens of Paris became, the
better able they were to pay the various taxes
levied in the name of the king. The king,
moreover, received half the fines imposed upon
smugglers ; and anyone who ventured to land
the least merchandise without formal permission
from the water-merchants was exposed to penal
ties. The corporation of water-merchants showed
no respect for persons in levying its dues. Thus,
it seized on one occasion the wine purchased by
the Abbe de St. Germain l'Auxerrois, because
it had been landed without formal permission.
The abbe appealed to the king, who submitted
the matter to the Parliament, which, deciding
that the abbe had acted within his rights,
ordered the seizure to be annulled. The Han
seatic League was sufficiently powerful, however,
to prevent the execution of the order,, and the
Abbe de St. Germain remained without his wine.
Commerce by land had in those days but little
importance, partly by reason of the badness of
the roads, partly on account of the dangers to
which travellers were exposed. There was but
one important road to Paris, that of Orleans ;
and on this road, at Mont Chery, a post was
maintained, where dues were levied on cloth,
linen, grain, cattle, sheep, and even hedgehogs.
According to the barbarous custom of the time,
a Jew was stopped at this post and made to pay
for the privilege of entering Paris. He was
charged something extra if he carried with him
his lamp — probably the lamp with seven branches,
used for the celebration of the Sabbath. His
Hebrew books were also taxed.
It was only, in fact, by means of the Seine
that the Parisians were able with ease to receive
goods of all kinds from the outside. Accord
ingly, the river trade was for a long time the
most important branch of the Parisian com
merce. The association of water-merchants was
looked upon as an association of merchants
generally, and, naturally enough, a ship was

3o8

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris River

adopted as principal object in the arms of
Paris. The association of water-merchants prided
itself on keeping up a constant supply of pro
visions, and boats were constantly reaching the
capital from Burgundy at one end of the Seine
or Normandy at the other. It was on Bur
gundy for many centuries that Paris depended
for its wine, and it was not until a certain noble
man, dilapidated in constitution, sought refuge
in the Governorship of Gascony, where the wine
of the province restored him to health, that
Bordeaux gained the good name it has since
enjoyed among the Parisians.
Great fairs were held at various points along
the course of the Seine, which were scenes at
once of commerce and of amusement. Foreign
merchants and tradesmen, students from the
university, mountebanks, drink-sellers, adven
turers, and thieves, were brought together by
ev.ery fair. Buying and selling came to an end
on the ringing of the Angelus, and the scenes
which followed partook, more or less, of the
nature of orgies. All trades were subjected in
mediasval Paris to strict regulations, and for
sixty days in the year the Parisians were
deprived of fresh bread. There was a master-
baker, or " grand panetier," who was held
responsible for the acts of the bakers, his sub
ordinates, on whose behalf he had frequently
to appear before the Grand Provost of the
capital. The pastrycooks, like the bakers,
formed a corporation of their own, with special
duties and privileges.
The taverns in the middle ages, as now, were
frequented by the lower classes, and they had
such a bad reputation that Louis IX., by a
special edict, forbade their frequentation. Never
theless, the tavern-keepers formed a corporation,
legally established with its own statutes, and
with licences imposed by the State on very
onerous terms. The king's proclamation, then,
against the frequentation of taverns was without
effect. At the different landing-places and stations on
the Seine, the goods brought up by boats were
cried for sale, preference being always given to
the wine imported from the royal vineyards in
Burgundy and elsewhere. The Seine is a great
thoroughfare costing nothing ta keep up, and
the chief line of communication between the
capital and the Burgundy vineyards. Naturally,
too, it was by the Seine that fish was sent to
Paris from Normandy aud Brittany. Ten kinds
of fish are mentioned in the ancient octroi lists

as habituady forwarded to Paris. Of these,
herrings were, in particular, supplied very
abundantly. One of the most important trade corporations
of mediaeval Paris was that of the butchers,
who, throughout French history, have shown a
constant tendency to coalesce. At present, how
ever, there is no bond of union between them,
except that which results from their being sub
jected to the same regulations in respect to the
prices to be charged.
An entertaining account of the privileges and
corporate character of the ancient Paris butchers
is given by M. Ducamp, who writes so wed in
his bulky work on Paris that even the chapter
it contains on the abattoir is not only devoid of
horrors, but invested with interest.
" The animals bought in the market do not,"
he says, "make a long stay there, but are
promptly conducted to the slaughter-houses,
which now extend from the other side of the
Canal de l'Ourcq, over an area of 211,672 metres,
opening on to the Rue de Flandres. The two
establishments pronounced necessary by the
decree of the 6th of August, 1859, were con
structed simultaneously; the slaughter-house was
thrown open on the ist of January, 1867.
" The names of some of the old Paris streets in
dicate the site of the markets in which butchers
displayed their stock. One is reminded of their
existence in the city by the church of St. Pierre
aux Bceufs, which was destroyed in 1857 ; then,
near the Chatelet, by St. Jacques de la Boucherie,
by the Rues de la Tuerie, de la Tonnerie, and
de la Vieille-Place-aux-Veaux, surnamed the
Place aux Saincts-Jons, after the name of a
celebrated family of butchers ; and by the Quai
de la Megisserie. Formerly, animals were killed
everywhere : to each stall a slaughter-house was
attached." " Blood streams down the streets,"
said Mercier ; "it curdles under your feet and
reddens your shoes."
Despite various attempts made to banish be
yond the walls these slaughter-houses, which
from every point of view were so dangerous, the
old spirit of routine long predominated, and in
the early part of the present century animals
still had their throats cut in front of the very
doors where meat was sold. It required no
fewer than three Imperial decrees (9th Feb. and
19th July, 1810, and 24th Feb., 181 1) to put an
end to this intolerable state of things. These
decrees prescribed the immediate construction
of five slaughter-houses adjacent to the Quartiers
du Roule, de Montmartre, de Popincourt, d'lvry,

and Paris Commerce.]

THE PARIS SLAUGHTER-HOUSES.

309

and de Vaugirard ; but the work was not
finished till the end of 181 8. To-day, they
have partly disappeared, swept away by new
thoroughfares ; and they ought to be entirely
replaced by the great establishment of the Rue
de Flandres. This latter is not beautiful, and
has about it nothing ornamental ; it is joined to
the cattle market by a bridge thrown over the
Canal de l'Ourcq.
As well as at the market, the animals are
counted when they enter the slaughter-house,
into which they are carefully introduced one by
one through a half-
open door. Opposite
this door, and beyond
a vast paved court, are
thirty-two pavilions,
separated into equal
groups by three hori
zontal and three trans
versal streets, inter
secting each other at
right angles. These
pavilions contain stalls,
in which the beasts are
kept whilst alive, and
125 tubs (echaudoirs)
in which their flesh
is divided up after
the slaughtering has
taken place within the
interior court, situ
ated in the centre of
the buildings. These
echaudoirs and courts
are paved with care,
and the ground, sloped for drainage, terminates
in a gutter which carries all waste fluids down a
sink. There are a great many fountains and an
abundant supply of water.
The thousand workmen who daily attend the
place commence their labours at six in the
morning and continue till towards one in the
afternoon. At two o'clock the butchers come to
make their purchases from the " chevillards," as
those men are called whose business consists in
procuring beasts at market in order to kill and
sell them in portions to the retailers. As soon
as it is dressed, every animal is hung up to a
s'rong iron peg, or cheville, whence the name of
the wholesale buyers is derived. One hundred
and eighty ¦ numbered vehicles, each of an
officially certified weight, ply between the
slaughter-houses and the (different quarters of
the city. Before leaving, they have to pass

before the pavilion of the octroi clerks, and
stand on a weigh-bridge, so that the exact quan
tity of meat they carry may be formally attested.
The dues, payable on the spot, are 2-0735 cer>-
times per kilogramme, of which some two centimes
are reserved especially for what are called the
slaughter-house dues.
The work goes on every day ; but Good
Friday, as may well be imagined, causes a great
rush of activity. The store-rooms are empty,
the wants of the town must be supplied, and
the men fall to work ; wholesale slaughtering

^^-vf

THE VILLETTE ABATTOIRS.

then takes place incessantly from the middle of
the night until, perhaps, three o'clock the next
afternoon. Notwithstanding the old slaughter
houses still subsisting, it is the one in the Rue
Flandres which employs the greatest number of
men and contributes most to the food of Paris.
In 1868, in the general slaughter-house, and in
the slaughter-houses of Villejuif, Grenelle, Belle
ville, de la Petite-Villette, and Batignolles,
1,725,365 animals were put to death, representing
a weight of 107,577,968 kilogrammes of meat
ready for retail sale. The average weight of
the oxen was 350 kilogrammes, of cows 210.
of calves 65, and of sheep 19. The average
prices of meat bought at the slaughter-house
were, in 1868, 1-34 francs for ox-beef, 1-25
francs for cow-beef, 1-65 francs for veal, and
1 -3 5 francs for mutton.
After describing how the slaughterers perform

^IO

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris River

their work, in language somewhat too graphic for
our readers, M. Ducamp points out the difference
between the Christian and the Jewish method of
slaughtering animals. The Jewish butcher in
every case cuts the animal's throat. To strike
with a pole-axe might have the effect of coagu
lating the victim's blood, and the Levitical laws
on the subject are strict and not to be trifled
with. No animal, according to the Jewish
custom, should be put to death except in piety,
and the Jewish sacrificer, like his counterpart
among the Mohammedans of India, utters solemn
words as he makes the fatal cut.
The history of the alimentation of Paris
might be made the subject of an entire volume.
Under the ancient monarchy it was the story of
fat years alternating with lean years ; which
latter were at times years of famine. Famine,
indeed, was one of the plagues of France until
the beginning of the nineteenth century. In
stead of allowing, as in the present day, supply
to foUow demand, the Government of the
country maintained laws and regulations for
particular provinces and privileges for particular
corporations. Wheat had to be sold at fixed
places and nowhere else, and often it was left to
rot in one district, while at another, not many
mfles distant, the peasants were dying of hunger.
The peasants, moreover, were burdened with
such heavy charges, such distressing dues, that
they sometimes gave up in despair the task of
cultivating their fields.
Desperate and indignant at the oppression prac
tised upon them, they would from time to time
rise against their agrarian tyrants. " Jacqueries "
were organised in which all sorts of horrors were
perpetrated. But in the end the insurgent
peasants were reduced to order. It was found
necessary to "hang them a little," according to
the expression of Mme. de Sevigne" — so amiable,
so charming, when writing of persons in her
own position of life. Then the poor man went
back to his hut and took up once more the
shovel and the hoe. For he had plenty of work
to do, and out of the little he earned he had to
pay taxes to the king, tithes to the clergy, and
dues of all kinds to his lord and master, the
landed proprietor. The last-named alone could
claim from him so many days of free labour ; so
much for every lamb that was born, so much for
every sheep that for the first time gave milk ;
every tenth animal from all the animals possessed
by the peasant on Christmas Eve ; a certain
stipulated piece of meat from the carcase of
every animal slaughtered ; and, finally, a share —

sometimes a full quarter— of the harvest, with
all sorts of minor dues, such as the feeding of
the proprietor's hounds.
The obligations of serving in the army, and of
lodging and feeding the king's troops, were
onerous indeed ; and what with the charges
imposed and the dues levied by the crown, the
landlord, and the church, the position of the
peasant was lamentable indeed.
The laws for the preservation of game were
not the least oppressive of those by which the
unhappy serf was crushed. He was bound to
cultivate certain kinds of vegetables and grain to
the taste of the birds, to leave the crops in the
ground, and to allow the privileged sportsman
to invade his farm and perhaps destroy everything
of value upon it. Nor was it prudent to make
any complaint on the subject, and the Parlia
ment of Paris, in an edict of the year 1779,
punished as rebellious the inhabitants of a parish
which had claimed from sportsmen an indemnity
for damages. A curious characteristic incident
took place in Paris itself on the very eve of the
Revolution. In the month of April, 1787, the
Duke of Orleans, in the ardour of pursuit, fol
lowed a stag into the heart of Paris, down the
Faubourg Montmartre, across the Place Vendome,
and through the Rue St. Honore to the Place
Louis V., upsetting and wounding numbers of
persons as he tore along.
The nobility and clergy paid no taxes. Every
thing fell upon the labourer, who was borne
down by imposts. M. Maxime Ducamp speaks
of a caricature he has seen, published the
year before the Revolution, in which a peasant,
old and ragged, is represented leaning forward
upon his hoe, so that he has the appear
ance of a three-footed animal. On his bended
back rests a sleek bishop and a haughty
nobleman. The harvest is being devoured
beneath the peasant's eyes by rabbits, hares,
and pigeons. Jacques Bonhomme, the typical
peasant, is pensive ; but his features, strongly
accentuated, express anything but resignation,
and he mutters, in his own provincial dialect,
" We must hope that this game wiU soon be
at an end."
In Alsace, at the time of the German invasion
of 1870, an ancient traditional caricature might
have been seen, evidently the outcome of feudal
times, in which the position of the peasant was
still more forcibly painted. Seven typical figures
are presented. The Emperor says, " I levy
tribute." The nobleman says, " I have a free
estate." The clergyman says, "I take tithes."

and Paris Commerce.]

FAMINE IN' FRANCE.

3H

The Jew (mediaeval type of the trader) says, " I
live on my profits." The soldier says, " I pay
for nothing." The beggar says, "I have
nothing." The peasant says, " God help me, for
these six other men have all to be supported by
me." In the glorious days of the ancient regime
Paris itself suffered constantly from famine, and
looked for its food-supplies to the provinces and
to foreign parts, whence they often failed to
arrive, from the effects of brigandage or of civil
war. The bad state of the roads was another
obstacle in the way of this most necessary com
merce ; and, worst of all, there were laws in force
by which tolls and custom dues were levied at
the entrance of each town through which the
provisions had to pass.
In the " Journal du Bourgeois de Paris,"
written in the reign of Charles VL, there
are constant lamentations on the exorbitant
prices charged for provisions. " Meat was so
dear," we read in one place, "that an ox, of
which the ordinary price was eight francs, or at
most ten, cost fifty francs. The laws adopted
for remedying these evils were of the strangest
kind. If wheat was worth eight francs the
measure, it was forbidden to sell it for more than
four francs ; and the bakers were ordered to sell
their bread at prices corresponding with the
price fixed for the wheat. The result was im
mediate and inevitable. The corn-merchants
ceased to sell, the millers to grind, the bakers to
knead, and the whole city fell into a state of
distress impossible to describe. In vain," writes
the chronicler just cited, " did people press
round the bakers' shops ; there was no bread to
be had. Towards evening might be heard
through Paris piteous complaints, piteous cries,
piteous lamentations, and little children calling
out, ' I am dying of hunger,' while on the dung
hills of the city, in the year 1420, might be
found, here ten, here twenty or thirty children,
boys and girls, who were starving and perishing
with cold, so that no heart could remain un
moved. But it was impossible to help them, for
there was no bread, nor corn, nor wood, nor
coal." " This epoch," says M. Maxime Ducamp, " was
the very saddest of all our history ; never was a
nation so near its end. One might have thought
that in this state of suffering, the nation, having
reached the last point of prostration, must lie
down and die. Nothing of the kind. Its
morbid energy took possession of it. It gave
itself to the devil — so, at least, say the ballads of

the time. It turned into ridicule both famine
and plague, became seized with a vertigo which
pathology can explain, and danced that strange
Danse Macabre — dance of death — which, for the
starving, was a sort of consolation ; for they
were reminded that in presence of the eternal
scythe we are all equal, and that tyrannical lords
are mowed down equally with oppressed serfs."
For France to issue from this period of dark
ness and torture alive, though wounded, a miracle
was necessary : the miracle that produced Joan
of Arc. Yet when the English troops had evacu
ated a good portion of the country in 1437, the
year in which Charles VII. made his solemn
entry into the capital he had reconquered,
hunger and misery killed more than twenty
thousand persons in Paris alone.
France was. not alone in her suffering ; all
Europe was in the same plight. The fifteenth
century was a century of misery. In his " Public
Alimentation under the Ancient Monarchy,"
M. Charles Louandre remarks, with reason, that
the impossibility of living, of bringing up a
family, of paying taxes and dues, inspired a
passion for discovery. There was a general com
petition as to who should undertake the most
distant journeys, the most perilous enterprises.
Every unknown land seemed to be an El Dorado.
People whispered to one another in the evening,
beside the hearth without a fire, of countries
beyond the seas where the mountains were of
pure gold, where the rivers were of milk, where
the animals answered to the voice of man. A
search was instituted for these enchanted islands,
where there was neither hunger, nor poverty, nor
oppression. Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Christopher
Columbus, Cortez, Pizarro, opened new paths
through which languorous, exhausted, worn-out
Europe might be able to reach a happier state.
Each province was at that time treated as a
separate state, with its own particular frontiers ;
and each frontier had its custom-house, where
duties were levied on all goods imported. Thus,
supposing that wheat had been landed at
Marseilles, in view of Paris, it would, before
reaching the capital, have to pay for the right of
passage at six different frontiers, without counting
special levies on the way. As for Marseilles
itself, however rich the harvest might be in the
North of France, the great city on the Mediter
ranean never profited by it. Even in the last
century, Marseilles received all its grain from the
Barbary States. On the famous night of the
4th of August, 1789, when the abolition of all
the privileges existing in France was decreed.

312

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris River

1,569 places of toll were done away with, 400 on
the rivers, and 1,169 on roads. Of the total
number 1,426 belonged to the nobdity and
clergy ; the remainder to the towns or to the
Government. Henry IV. was the first king who, thanks to
the enlightenment of his minister Sully, took
steps for abolishing the impediments to circu
lation on road and river. By letters patent,
dated 1595, corn was to be allowed everywhere
to pass free.
Richelieu, whose theory of government, cynic-

A SEINE STEAMBOAT.

ally avowed, was that the poorer the nation
the easier it would be to govern, re-established,
under penalty of death, the old prohibitory
edicts. The consequences were what might
have been expected, and they are well expressed
in a complaint made public by the Parliament of
Normandy in 1633 : —
" We have seen peasants harnessed to the
share like beasts of burden, ploughing the
land, munching the grass, and living on roots."
A manifesto from the Duke of Orleans of about
the same time set forth that scarcely one-third of
the inhabitants of the kingdom ate ordinary
bread ; one-third lived on oat-bread, while the
remainder was dying of hunger, devouring grass
and acorns, like animals, or, worse still, bran
steeped in blood from the gutters of the
slaughter-houses. To the horrors of famine must be added those
of civil war. Such was the misery, that even

the most servde courtiers could not remain blind
to it. Take, for instance, the memoirs' of P. de
la Porte, valet de chambre to Louis XIV., which
contained the following : " Besides the misery of
the soldiers, that of the common people was
frightful ; and wherever the Court was staying
the poor peasants rushed thither, thinking they
would find security, because elsewhere the army
was devastating the country. They brought
their cattle with them, which at once died of
hunger, because it was impossible to take them
outside for pasture. When their cattle were
dead, they themselves
died incontinently ; for
they had nothing more
to depend upon but the
charity of the Court,
which was of the most
moderate kind, every
one thinking of him
self before ad others.
The mothers being dead)
the children died soon
afterwards ; and I saw,
on the bridge of Melun,
three children lying
beside their helpless
mother, one of whom
was still at the breast."
Louis XIV. was
neither more inteUigent
nor more humane than
Richelieu. By his order,
free circulation was
again punished with
death (1693-98). If, during the seventeenth cen
tury, there were a few attempts in the way of
commercial liberty, these essays were exceptional
and limited to particular localities, severely cir
cumscribed. The peasant was more sat upon
than ever. It was ordered in 1660 that no
labourer should pass from his parish to another
without paying double dues during a period of
two years ; and in 1675 Lesdiguieres wrote that
the labourers of the Dauphine had nothing to
eat but the grass of the meadows or the bark of
trees. Under the great monarch the misery of
the nation was excessive ; and St. Simon did
not exaggerate when he wrote this terrible
phrase : " Louis XIV. drew blood from his sub
jects without distinction : he squeezed it out to
the last drop."
"Two great and benevolent men," says M.
Ducamp, " without any previous understanding
on the subject, each published, in the year 1701,

and Paris Commerce.]

HARDSHIPS OF THE PEOPLE.

3*3

a book which might well have opened the eyes
of the king and converted his ministers. The
" Detail de la France," by Bois Guilbert, and
the " Projet de Dime Royale," by Vauban, the
famous military engineer, are two slight volumes
which showed how the safety of the monarchy
might be ensured. Both authors had seen
misery close at hand. Struck by the misfortunes
they had contemplated, they sought a remedy
for it, found it, placed it before everyone, but
were not listened to." "The common people,"
said Bois Guilbert, " would consider themselves

at the bridge of Sevres, and taken back to Paris.
But the tradition of that day remained with
them, as was only too plainly shown during the
disturbances of October, 1789.
When the dauphin went to the opera, or to
hunt the wolf at Marly, he was surrounded by
starving bands, who cried out for food, and
could only be quieted by having money thrown
to them. The soldiers of the Versailles garrison
went out armed, to beg and to pillage the
country. Sometimes famine was created, or, at least,

THE SEINE AT GRENELLE.

fortunate if they could have bread and water,
which is about all they want, but which they
scarcely ever get. The products of China and
Japan, when delivered in France, cost only
about three times their original price ; but the
liquids which pass from one province of France
to another, even though they be adjacent, in
crease in price twenty-fold, and even more. The
wines sold in Anjou and the Orleans country
at one sou the measure are sold for twenty
and twenty-four in Picardy ahd Normandy."
Vauban declared that in order to avoid the pay
ment of exorbitant dues levied by the provincial
authorities, peasants cut down their apples-trees
and tore up their vines.
The people of Paris starved like those of the
provinces ; but not so quietly. On the 3rd of
March, 1709, the market-women — the corpora
tion of "Les dames de la Halle "—started for
Versailles, in order to exhibit their perishing
children and ask for bread. They were stopped

developed, by artificial means. One ingenious
speculator is said to have bought up all the corn
he could afford to purchase in France, and to
have exported it from the ports of Normandy
and Brittany to Jersey and Guernsey, there to
remain until famine had declared itself with
some severity. Then the corn was re-introduced
from the Channel Islands and sold at immense
prices. In 1745, the Duke of Orleans walked
into the Council Chamber, threw on to the table
before the king a loaf made of all kinds of
rubbish, and exclaimed : " That is what your
subjects have to feed upon." Louis XV. knew
already to what a degree of misery his people
were reduced. One day when he was out hunt
ing, he saw a man carrying with evident diffi
culty a long box on his back. "What are you
carrying there ? " asked the king. " A dead
man," was the reply. "What did he die of? "
"Hunger." The king turned away, unwilling
to continue the conversation. It was not until

314

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris River

the reign of Louis XVI. that serious endeavours
were made to improve the condition of the
people. In 1774, fifteen years before the Revo
lution, Turgot set forth, in a decree adopted by
the Council, the most just economical prin
ciples : " The more commerce is free, animated,
extended, the more the people are promptiy, effi
caciously, and abundantly provided." Eighteen
months afterwards, in 1776, all dues formerly
levied at Paris on wheat, flour, etc., were
abolished. " There was in France," says Miche-
let, " a miserable prisoner called Wheat, forced
by the Government to die and rot where it was
born. Each province kept its wheat captive."
Strangely enough, the common people were the
first to oppose the new legislation. It seemed to
them that the exportation of wheat must be
ruinous for the inhabitants of the districts from
which it was exported, and insurrections were
raised in Brie, Normandy, and the Soissons
country, in order to prevent the passage of wheat
from one province to another.
Of the famine-promoters, three were especially
notorious, Foulon, Bertier, and Pinet ; and all
three came to a bad end at the time of the
Revolution. After the taking of the Bastille,
Foulon caused a report of his death to be circu
lated, celebrated his own funeral, and concealed
himself at Viry. He was recognised, however,
and brought back to Paris, where, received by an
indignant multitude at the Barriers, he was taken
to the Place de Greve, and hanged to the famous
lamp-post. Then his head, with a handful of hay
in the mouth, was carried at the end of a pike.
The horrible procession met Bertier, who was
made to join it, maltreated, and put to death.
This happened on the 22nd of July. On the
29th, Pinet was found in the Vesinet Forest, with
his head shattered, but still living. He declared
that he had been attacked by assassins, but the
general opinion was that in his terror and
despair he had attempted to blow his own brains
out. Pinet died, and with the death of the
three famous promoters the famine came, in a
great measure, to an end. The Revolution,
however, though it could give liberty, could not
give bread ; and the distribution of corn through
out the country was constantly impeded by the
old provincial spirit. When corn was brought
in from English ports (for in those days England
produced so much corn that it was able to export
largely to France), the cargoes had to run the
gauntlet to different provinces as they passed up
the Seine. On one occasion, a quantity of wheat
bought at Havre for the supply of Paris, and

embarked on Seine barges, was stopped by the
militia of Louviers, and confiscated for the benefit
of that town. Such scenes were renewed every
where. Once within the limits of a particular
province, the corn was seized and allowed to go
no farther. In 1794, during a period of scarcity,
Barrere proposed in the Assembly to institute a
patriotic fast. " Formerly," he said, " we fasted
for some saint in the calendar. Let us now
fast for liberty."
Little by little, under successive Governments,
the popular prejudices against free circulation
and free trade died out. There are material
difficulties, moreover, in the way of such inter
ference as used to be practised with cargoes and
convoys in the days before the Revolution, and
what, perhaps, is equally important, in the days
before steam. In former times it was very easy
to stop a heavily-laden, lumbering waggon, creep
ing along on a bad road. It is more difficult to
stay the course of a railway train. Exception
ally high prices are still to be feared, but not
famine. If the corn supply is insufficient in
France, wheat can be imported from Hungary,
Russia, and America.
Nor is it for bread alone that France is in
debted to foreign countries— which she, in her
turn, supplies abundantly with luxuries, natural
and artificial, of ad kinds. France receives meat
and game from Russia ; vegetables, fruit, and
even wine from Algeria ; oranges from Spain ;
fresh-water fish from Holland, Switzerland, and '
Italy ; and sea-fish from England.
It is a sound maxim that whatever enters
the human body should be genuine ; and in con
nection with the Paris food supply a number of
special officials are appointed, whose duty it is
to examine the products offered to the public.
The functions of these agents are not confined
to the markets ; they extend to the whole of
Paris, to every shop in which eatables are sold ;
to every cart, every barrow from which the
Paris costermonger sells fruit, vegetables, or
fish. Wine-shops may be entered by these
agents, when, if the wine is found to be adul
terated, the casks containing it are emptied of
their contents into the public streets. Probably,
in good neighbourhoods, food is as little adul
terated in London as in Paris. The Paris
authorities are, in any case, much more parti
cular on the subject of adulteration. With these
agents for the inspection, examination, and
analysis of articles of diet may be classed the
officials charged with the duty of verifying
weights and measures. An excellent law, passed

and Paris Commerce.]

THE "DAMES DE LA HALLE.';

3i5

in 1839, under the reign of Louis Philippe, pre
scribes that every dealer on buying a pair of
scales, new or second-hand, must at once take
them to the office of verification in the district,
in order that they may be marked with the
stamp of the year.
Private shops, however, have of course played
no such part in the provisioning of Paris as has
fallen to the lot of the markets, which, in olden
times, could only be opened and maintained by
the lord of the manor. In distant times, the
landed proprietor had the right of life and death
over his subjects, and a few years before the
Revolution, every market in Paris had its pillory,
and even its gallows. It was in the king's name,
however, that justice was executed ; and, in most
cases, the pillory' and the gibbet of the Paris
market-place were mere emblems. The Prior of
the Temple, the Abbe of St. Genevieve, the
Abbe of St. Germain des Pres, had each a pillory
in the'markets established on their territory.
The royal pillory was situated at the place in
the fish-market where sea-fish is now cried. It
was an octagonal turret, crowned by a roof in
the form of an extinguisher. At the top of the
turret, beneath the roof, was a horizontal wheel
pierced with holes and turning on a pivot. The
holes were for the head and hands of the victim ;
the wheel was put in movement, and the poor
wretch was subjected, circularly and methodic
ally, to the gaze of the crowd. The pillory
offered an attractive spectacle to the mob ; and
it was there that the bodies of criminals, who
had been executed at the Place de Greve, were
exposed before being hung up at the gallows of
Montfaucon. Near the pillory stood the gibbet,
here employed only under grave circumstances.
On the gibbet of the fish-market was hanged
Jean de Montaigu. Later on, in 141 8, Cape-
luche, the executioner of Paris, was beheaded
(he ranked, for certain purposes, with gentlemen)
for having, it was said, taken too familiarly the
hand of the Duke of Burgundy. The known
facts of the case were these : — Capeluche had
distinguished himself in the massacres which
followed the triumph of the Burgundian faction
in 1418. The Duke of Burgundy gave publicly
his hand to this vile instrument of his ven
geance* but had his head cut off soon afterwards.
The executioner, with wonderful self-possession,
? showed his inexperienced assistant how he was
to wield the axe so as not to miss his victim. Here
also, on a lofty scaffold, constructed expressly
for the purpose, and covered over with black,
Jacques d'Armagnac perished by the sword.

Before ascending the fatal ladder, he had said
his last prayers in the fish-market, which had
been washed and perfumed with vinegar and
juniper, in order to get rid of the disagreeable
smell. Between the pillory and the gibbet, a large
cross stretched out its arms of stone. Beneath
its shadow insolvent debtors surrendered their
property, and received the traditional cap of
green wool which the executioner himself placed
on their heads. The bankrupts' cross and the
pillory disappeared a few years before the Revo
lution, in 1786 ; though it is to the Revolution
itself that the credit of the abolition is generally
given. A word must be said about the " market
ladies," the " dames de la halle," and the privi
leges they enjoyed. It will be remembered
that during a severe famine they went in a
body, with their starving children, to beg relief
from Louis XV. At happier moments they
waited upon the sovereign on some festive occa
sion, to present him with congratulations and a
huge bouquet. It was to their corporation that
Mme. Angot and her celebrated daughter be
longed. They were notorious for their freedom
of speech, and little attention was paid to a
police ordinance of the year 1738, which forbade
them, under penalty of imprisonment and a fine
of one hundred francs, to insult passers-by. But
times have changed, and the manners of the
" market ladies " with them.
After speaking of "les dames de la halle," it
would be invidious to pass over in silence "les
forts de la halle," the Strong Men ofthe market.
The internal service of this market is entrusted
to some five hundred strong men, who earn from
sixty to a hundred and twenty pounds a year.
These official porters form a syndicate, and offer
all possible guarantees of probity, good conduct,
and punctuality. Not only must they submit to
a thorough examination of their private life,
they are also tested physically and in the severest
manner. But they go through the regulation
exercises as through a game. To the strong
men is confided the duty of unloading the carts
and the waggons, and carrying their contents to
the stalls and shops of the markets. The market
regulations in view of fire are very strict, espe
cially those adopted and promulgated in 1865,
by which smoking and the use of lucifers and
all unenclosed lights are forbidden. Lanterns
are alone permitted. The right of selling in the
public markets is a privilege sold by the muni
cipality. A butcher's stall is worth 3 francs

3i6

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Paris River.

a day ; a stall for the sale of sea-fish 1-25, for the
sale of fresh fish 1-50, for poultry 1 franc, for
vegetables 75 centimes ; oysters 20 centimes,
and sundries 5 centimes a day for each square
yard of space.
Some years ago a question was raised as to
whether the markets ought to be covered over ;
and an answer was given in the negative by a
high official of the Prefecture, who authorita
tively declared that " bad weather was not
appreciably injurious to vegetables exposed in
the market-place." It is quite possible that
turnips, carrots, and cabbages may suffer little
or nothing from hail and heavy rain. But
human beings may be seriously affected by in
clement weather ; and in this belief it has been
proposed, hitherto in vain, that covered stalls
with glass windows should be constructed for use
during stormy nights.
The butchers' stalls are supplied by rail, and
the greatest activity prevails among them after
the arrival of the early morning trains. Towards
five o'clock arrive a number of women who, like
the wise virgins of the parable, are the bearers
of lamps. They assemble at the corner of the
Rue Rambuteau, and a portable desk is brought
forward, at which a man takes his seat. The
roll-call of the strong men is then read, and if
one of them has not arrived he is released for the
day, that is to say, he loses his day's wages.
Five o'clock strikes, and the women with the
lanterns may go to work. The time for the sale
of water-cress has begun.
Everyone is now at his post — the factor and
his clerks, the public crier, the inspector of the
market, or his agent, and the collector of
municipal taxes.
At each fresh bell signal — and the bells in con
nection with the markets correspond to the j
drums of the barrack -yard — new departments of 1
the markets are opened, and private purchasers j
begin to arrive : non-commissioned officers, ac- !
companied by soldiers bearing large sacks ; nuns j
purchasing for the religious houses ; stewards of j
the gymnasiums, and other large schools, to- !
gether with various wholesale buyers, who have I
come to lay in their daily supplies.

The arrival of the fish from Dieppe or Havre
is always an incident of importance ; received
with agitation, shouts, and bustle of every kind.
Sometimes the wind has been unfavourable ; the
fishing-boats have not got to shore, and there
has been nothing to send. There is then a
general feeling of consternation among both
dealers and purchasers ; though, among the
latter, no Vatel stabs himself at the thought of
having to serve a dinner in which fish will not
be a component part. It is to be feared that
when, on one particular day, fish does not arrive,
fish of the preceding day is cooked in place
of it.
Much of the fish comes from England and
Belgium. More than half of the mussels im
ported into France are of Belgian origin. The
Ostend oysters, so much prized at Paris, came
until lately from the shores of Essex. But such
oysters as England can still afford to export go
now to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna.
Eggs are received in hampers and boxes con
taining each one thousand eggs, which are so
cleverly packed that not one in a thousand ever
gets broken. These eggs are sold in mass by
the box, though they are all subject to inspection,
and at certain times of the year are carefully and
individually examined by officials appointed for
the purpose. If on being held up to the light
an egg is found not to be in good condition, it
is condemned, and is then used for industrial
purposes, as in connection with the gilding
of wood. Eggs that are simply bad are im
mediately destroyed.
The price of eggs is higher than it otherwise
would be in the Paris markets by reason of the
competition of English purchasers. Numbers of
farmers send their eggs exclusively to London ;
which, according to statistics prepared some
years ago, receives annually from France eggs to
the number of 52,000,000.
A great quantity of game is sold in the Paris
markets, especially since the year 1867, when for
the first time foreign game was admitted. The
imports of game are chiefly from Russia, which
possesses in abundance partridges of various
kinds, ptarmigans, and black game.

THE CHAE'ELLE SAINT DENIS BARRIER.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE BARRIERS — PARISIAN CRIME.
The Approaches to Paris — The French Railway System — The St. Germain Railway — The Erection of the Barriers — Some of the most famous
Barriers — Parisian Crime — Its Special Characteristics.

PASSING along the left bank of the Seine, in
the direction of St. Germain, arrested at
every step by some historical association or some
interesting object of our own time, we at last
quit Paris and find ourselves on the highway to
the nearest important suburb.
From the aristocratic Faubourg St. Germain
to St. Germain itself was, in the days of Mme. de
Sevigne, an easy walk or a pleasant drive. After
1837 St. Germain and the faubourg of the same
name were separated only by a brief railway
journey. On the 24th of August in the year
just named, the railway from Paris to St.
Germain was first opened, at a time when the
miles of railways constructed in England
amounted to some two thousand. The year
previously a French statesman had visited the
railway from Manchester to Liverpool, and, on
his return, declared in the Chamber that railways
were only toys to amuse idle persons. " People
should see the reality," he added ; " for, even if
railways proved a genuine success, their develop
ment would not be anything like what has been
supposed. If I were to be assured that in France
five leagues of railway would be-made every year,
I should consider that a great deal." A French
scientist declared about the same time that the
diminution of temperature experienced on enter -
« ing the tunnels would be such that in the sudden
- passage from hot to cold, susceptible persons
would get inflammation of the lungs, pleurisy,
and catarrh.
When the railway to St. Germain was opened,

a military band occupied one of the carriages,
joyful airs were played, enthusiastic speeches
were delivered, the locomotive did not blow up,
the carriages did riot come off the rails, and,
though two tunnels had to be passed through,
no one caught cold. Seven principal railways
were now decided on, the privilege of construct
ing the lines being granted by the State on
certain conditions. In England railways were
being laid down by permission of the State, but
not in such a way as to secure to any one of the
companies a monopoly. The French legislation
on the subject of railways compels the companies
to extend their lines to the most remote and
least populous regions. Thus, in the public
interest, they have to maintain railway extensions
on which the losses not infrequently eat up a
serious proportion of the profits realised on the
more frequented sections of the system.
The great railway centre of France is, of
course, the capital. " Paris," says a French
writer on the subject, " being the heart, life is
carried to the extremities of France by main
lines, which are the arteries ; by secondary lines,
which are the veins ; and by routes communicat
ing with the iron road, which are the capillary
vessels ; in this fashion the circulation is com
plete. That is a boon which must be constantly
borne in mind, and which makes our railways an
absolutely democratic institution. It is due to
the intervention of the State. In England,
where private enterprise alone has been en
trusted with the construction of railways, the

3i8

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Barriers— Parisian Crime.

case is different. The companies have laid their
lines wherever they pleased ; guided solely by
their own interest, they have above all sought to
realise immense profits. They have built rail
ways between the great centres, rich or industrial,
while neglecting the secondary routes, which
only offered them slender gains ; they present an
organisation purely aristocratic. If in France,
as among our neighbours across the Channel,
private industry had been left, without control,
sovereign mistress of the land, only the great
lines would now be in existence, and the dili
gence would still be rolling along nearly all our
roads." Soon after the construction of the St. Germain
railway, an " iron road " was made from Paris to
Versailles, and it was on this line, close to Belle-
vue, that the first accident took place. On the
1 8th of May, 1 842, it had been announced that the
great fountains of Versailles would play, and a
train of eighteen carriages, drawn by two loco
motives, with a third in the rear, was returning
to Paris crowded with travellers. A little below
Bellevue, at a place where there is a slight curve,
the first locomotive broke its axle-tree. The
second engine, suddenly checked in its progress,
fed upon the first, and the third engine behind,
by continuing to push the train, doubled it up,
sending the middle portion of it into the air.
The carriages, thanks to the excessive prudence
of the guards, were ad locked, and some of them,
upset in the close vicinity of one of the engines,
caught fire from the glowing coals of the damaged
furnace. There was then a terrible scene. The
passengers endeavoured to force their way
through the narrow windows, and in doing so
fought, and in many cases were seized by the
flames. Seventy-three corpses were afterwards
picked up, and there were numbers of wounded.
This accident, terrible in itself, had a disastrous
effect upon the railway system of France. Rail
way travelling was looked upon as dangerous —
suicidal. The receipts from all the lines fell
heavily, and the railway to Versailles was abso
lutely abandoned. In the general fright, loco
motives got to be looked upon as so difficult to
guide, so sure, sooner or later, to explode, that it
was seriously proposed, on lines about to be
opened from Paris to Rouen and from Paris to
Orleans, to replace mechanical traction by horses.
The terror excited by the accident gradually
passed away. A sort of expiatory chapel was
erected by the railway company at the scene of
the disaster, under the designation of Notre
Dame des Flammes ; but after a time even the

existence of the chapel, surrounded and at last
concealed by trees, came to be forgotten.
Paris is now, like London, surrounded by rail
way stations, and to occupy the terminal points
of the lines leading to the capital would be for a
time to stop its supply of provisions even more
effectually than this was done during the siege
of 1870 by taking possession of the ordinary
roads. The railways have destroyed the import
ance of the ancient "Barriers," which marked,
and still mark, points in a line encircling the
capital. The geographical history of Paris con
sists in the constant pushing back of these
Barriers, surrounding as they did a city which
was steadily expanding. Gates which, when first
constructed, stood outside the city, were gradu
ally included within its circumference, new
Barriers being erected at a greater distance from
the centre. More than a century ago, in 1765, a
royal edict forbade the construction of any more
houses outside the limits of Paris as then fixed.
This order could not, of course, be obeyed. As
wed try to check the rising tide as to stop the
growth of Paris, and in 1784, five years before
the Revolution, we find Louis XVI. 's Minister,
Calonne, obtaining a royal authorisation to sur
round Paris with a new and enlarged girdle
Nineteen " Barriers " were now established
around Paris, at each of which a duty, known as
the "octroi," was levied on everything brought
into the city. The measure was a most unpopu
lar one, and the Farmers-General, who purchased
the right of levying the tax, became the objects
of popular detestation. A line which has become
historical, expressed, by an ingenious verbal
equivoque, the general feeling on the subject —
" Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant "
ran the verse, which was repeated from mouth
to mouth throughout Paris. Another epigram,
which, being longer, became less popular, was as
follows : — ' ' Pour augmenter son numeraire
Et raccourcir notre horizon,
La ferme a juge necessaire
De mettre Paris en prison."*
All this might be very witty, but the Minister
cared little about it. He doubtless said to himself,
like his famous predecessor, Mazarin, " They sing :
then they wid pay." He was right : they paid.
It occurred to the architect Ledoux, who had

* This may be literally translated : —
" To increase its revenue
And draw closer our horizon,
The farm has deemed it necessary
To put Paris in prison."

The Barriers— Parisian Crime.]

THE BARRIERS.

3T9

been instructed to erect offices for the reception
of the dues, that the buildings might as well be
fortified, and Paris thus became surrounded by a
line of not very effective defences. Petitions
were addressed to the king requesting the aboli
tion of the Barriers, and M. de Calonne's suc
cessor declared that he would have them knocked
down and the fragments sold as building-materials.
Things had arrived at this point when the Revo
lution of '89 broke out. The populace then set
fire to some of the Barriers and knocked holes
through the walls in several places, but did not
touch the buildings, concerning which the
National Convention subsequently issued the
following decree : —
" The national buildings designated under the
name of ' Barriers •' are erected in Paris as public
monuments. The various epochs of the Revolu
tion and the victories gained by the .revolutionary
armies over tyrants are engraved upon them in
characters of bronze. The Committee of Public
Safety is authorised to take every possible
measure for the prompt execution of the
present decree, while inviting men of letters
and artists to co-operate and to compose
inscriptions." At this . period, however, there were many
obstacles between the publication of a decree
and its execution, and it was not therefore
astonishing that the famous buildings were for
a time forgotten. The octroi had now been
suspended, and it was not till the fifth year of
the Republic that the Directory instituted a
"municipal octroi of beneficence," the product
of which was intended for the hospitals. The
Barriers were thereupon repaired, and the taxa
tion clerks re-established in their offices on the
city boundaries. "The architect Ledoux," says
Dulaure, in his History of Paris, " in his desire
to exhibit proofs of the fecundity of his genius,
has frequently shown nothing but aberration.
The luxury which he lavished upon all his
architectural productions outrage all artistic
propriety. People saw, with discontent and
murmuring, pompous edifices consecrated to a
taxation oppressive to all classes of society, and
very galling to commerce. This was to whiten
sepulchres, — to hold instruments of oppression up
to admiration."
At the end of the Empire no less than sixty
Barriers existed round Paris. Five of these were
suppressed under the Restoration, though only
to be reopened later on. Thenceforward, until
i860, when the barriers were demolished, few
changes occurred. It was at the end of 1859

that the Imperial Government, after having
appointed a commission of inquiry, formulated
a project, which was adopted by the legislative
body and the Senate, and which, incorporating
eleven communes of the department of the
Seine, ordered the demolition of the octroi wall,
and of the famous buildings with which Ledoux
had so elaborately decorated the Barriers of Paris.
The Barriers have not, however, completely dis
appeared. They are sufficiently numerous in
the present day, though they have been put
back as far as the fortifications and received the
name of gates.
Of the Barriers which figure most largely in
history, that of Clichy stands foremost. Here,
under the Revolution, the members of the Clichy
Club assembled, and here in 18 14 the last act of
the French military and political drama was
played. The Barriere de l'feoile is famous as the one
by which, on the 15th of December, 1840, the
Emperor Napoleon — dead, but living in the
memory of all — re-entered Paris to be re-interred
at the Invalides. It was a memorable day for
the Parisians, who never forgot the splendour of
the cortege or the frigid weather which prevailed
at the time, and which was so rigorous that the
companions of the great captain could have
fancied that they were once more on the
road to Moscow. Eighteen months later, a four-
wheeled cabriolet might have been seen rapidly
passing this same barrier. Having reached La
Porte Maillot, the equipage redoubled its pace,
moving in the direction of the Avenue de la
Revoke. The horses had bolted, and a man
sprang out of the carriage — he fell. It was the
Prince-Royal, the Duke of Orleans, who expired
in a grocer's shop on the 13th of July, 1842, at
half-past four in the afternoon.
It was at the Barriere de la Villette, on the
30th of March, 18 14, that the capitulation of Paris
was signed, the first article of which provided
that the French troops, under the orders of the
Dues de Trevise and de Raguse, should evacuate
the capital, while the last article recommended
the town of Paris to the generosity of the Allied
Powers. Scarcely more than a month later, on the 3rd
of May, it was by the Barriere de la Chapelle
that Louis XVIII. entered Paris, after having
put his signature to the famous declaration at
the Chateau of St. Ouen. On his arrival before
this barrier, the ediles presented him with the
keys of the city. In 181 5 he quitted Paris by
the Barriere de Clichy, to enter it once more

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Barriers— Parisian Crime.

the same year, without ceremonial, by the same
Barrier. More than one of the Barriers has been the
scene of executions and assassinations, and plays
a lugubrious part in the history of the capital.
The sombre pictures, however, which they con
jure up are relieved by many of a picturesque and
festive character. On Sundays, especially before
the establishment of railways, the Barriers of
Paris were invaded by a noisy troop of promen-
aders. The workman was an assiduous guest at

THE OCTROI BARRIERS OP PETIT-CHATEAU AND GRAND-EERCY.

the taverns and tea-gardens which swarmed on
the outskirts ; and even to-day a large propor
tion of toilers make their way on the Sabbath
towards Belleville or Menilmontant, singing this
refrain of a popular song :
" Pour rigoler montons,
Montons a la barriere."*
There used to be a good deal of deep drinking
at the Barriers, and violent quarrels not infre
quently marked the close of the festive day.
Sometimes a drunkard would roll down and lie
at full length along the octroi wall. In the
ordinary way he would have gone to sleep and
woke up comparatively sober. But one of a
class of pickpockets who haunted the Barriers
was sure to approach him, and, under pretext
of lifting him on to his feet, carefully relieve
the bewildered victim of the few sous which

' Let's go up and have a lark.
Let's go up to the Barrier ! "

remained to him. These thieves, who passed
their days and nights on the confines of the
city, and who, detesting work, lived at the
expense of their honest neighbours, were often
inveterate malefactors of the worst kind, and the
abolition of the Barriers had the highly desirable
effect of exterminating them as a class.
It may not be inopportune, at this point, to
take a view of the criminal population of Paris
in general. They afford a study which excites
no small degree of combined interest and regret.
The number is large in
Paris of those who, having
repudiated all restraint and
banished the last vestige of
self-respect, live aloof from
society and never touch it
except for purposes of in
jury. Despite the incessant
surveidance of which they
are the object, despite the
laws which hedge them
about, accuse and punish
them, they remain in the
great capital, like an un
subdued tribe, always in
revolt, bent upon evil, and
often accomplishing it with
audacity. They seem to
float over civilisation like
scum, or to lie at the
bottom of it like dregs of
a liquid. Idleness, or at least the
instinctive hatred of all regular occupation,
desperate want, and a passion for gross pleasures,
are among the causes of that vagabondage in
Paris which is characterised by defiance of the
law, theft, and sometimes murder. Stupidity
and irreflection may often have a good deal to do
with the matter; but as a rule the Parisian rascal,
subsisting by fraud and larceny, expends more
ingenuity and energy in the conception and
execution of his schemes than would be necessary
to make him prosper in some lucrative trade.
The existence of these wretches is sufficiently
unenjoyable. At once hunters and game, with
their ears bent to catch the slightest sound,
always on the alert, never sleeping without one
eye open, devouring their meals whenever they
can get any, tormented as much by their passions
as by their fears, they feel, whilst pursuing their
sinister projects, that the police are dogging
their steps, that hounds of terribly keen scent
are busy upon their track. This life of stratagem

The Barriers— Parisian Crime,]

PARISIAN CRIME.

321

and law-breaking is said to have its charms — and
justly, perhaps, since so many men voluntarily
choose it ; but if the excitement of the constant
hazard they run, combined with the chance of
spoil, exhilarates youthful malefactors, many an
old thief, on the other hand, disgusted, sickened
by incessantly playing the part of a stag at bay,

It would be difficult to fix, even approxima^
tively, the number of persons who in Paris give
themselves up to theft. The ticket-of-leave men,
notorious vagabonds and others, are well known
to the police. But there are numbers of persons,
in a town so populous as Paris, who become
thieves through circumstances : from finding

TRAM AT THE BARRIER.

has gone to the Prefecture of Police and said :
" I am the man. Arrest me. I can't stand this '
sort of life."
Semi-starvation is the fate of a large pro
portion of these criminals. Many of them for
years together have slept on rude couches lit
only by the stars — under bridges, in half-built
boats or houses, or squares : many of them do,
not know what daily bread is. " Do you like
being here ? " said an official to a little girl of
twelve who was temporarily lodged in the
" depot,'' her father and mother both having
been arrested for crime. "Oh, yes," was the reply,
" we have something to eat here every day."
45

themselves in a difficult position, or from a
sudden temptation.
In this connection M. Maxime Ducamp rr.ay
once more be cited. " There is an incontro
vertible fact," he says, " which natural history
explains. Criminals — those, I mean, who live
by crime — are always the same to whatever class
of society they may belong. They are actuated
by the same passions, the same wants, the same
appetites. Whatever certain philosophers may
have said on the subject, a man steals very
rarely to get bread. The three great tempting
causes are women, cards, and drink." There
are exceptions, however, which writers on the

322

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[The Barriers- Parisian Crime.

subject have duly noted. Rafinat, who was
mixed up with the robbery of medals from the
Bibliotheque Royale, used to send home to his
family the product of what he himself called
his " expeditions." For one, however, of this
kind there are ten thousand who steal only to
satisfy their brutal tastes. An old proverb says,
"'Generous as a thief," and the proverb is right.
The thief who saves the produce of his robberies
is an anomaly only to be met with among certain
" receivers '; of Jewish race.
As soon as the thief has made a good stroke,
he gives away money right and left, pays his
debts, lends to anyone who happens to' be in
need, and invites everyone to share his good
fortune. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and
can refuse nothing to anyone. Being constantly
watched, thieves denounce themselves by their
excessive expenditure, which seems to be one of
their invincible needs ; and they then fall
promptly into the hands of the police. They
know that they are pursued ; the theft com
mitted one day may cause their arrest the day
afterwards. They wish, therefore, to enjoy
themselves, and they spend in debauchery the
time still left at their disposal. So the pig in a
shipwreck will devour food at the very moment
when the vessel is sinking.
" Bad roads end in pitfalls," say the French
peasants. Criminals know this, and the road
they follow leads invariably to prison, the galleys,
the penal colonies, the scaffold. Those who by
cunning or good luck succeed in escaping the
police, which is on the watch for them, and
Justice, which claims them as her own, are
singularly rare, and amongst them may be cited
a man of a certain celebrity, who flourished
some forty or fifty years ago. His name was
Piednoir. He was not an assassin ; he knew
the Code, and never risked his head. He was
content to commit robbery by means of false
keys. But he was a past-master in his art, and
from 1834 until 1843 escaped from the conse
quences of twenty-one different warrants of
arrest. He had excellent manners, led an elegant
life, and bitterly regretted having had his ears
pierced in his childhood, which, he said, gave
him rather a common air. He employed ordin
ary thieves to prepare an affair, and when
everything was ready took charge of its execu
tion. He then divided the plunder into shares,
reserving the lion's part for himself. When his
accomplices were brought to trial they behaved
towards him with wonderful devotion. One of
them, however, admitted that he had been

twice in relations with Piednoir ; on one
occasion, when Piednoir met him in the disguise
of a rag-picker, a second time when, dressed as a
man of fashion and driving a tilbury, he pulled
up in front of the Cafe de Paris and threw the
witness a two-sous piece wrapped up in a scrap
of paper which contained written instructions
concerning a projected robbery. Piednoir was
condemned in his absence to twenty years' hard
lahour. He was living at the time luxuriously
in nHolland on the products of his industry as
a thief. Most of these melancholy personages
have, according to M. Maxime Ducamp, to
whom no side of Paris life, no class of the Paris
population, is unfamiliar, a common, contempt
ible appearance, though some few of them
have a certain distinction, natural or acquired,
which renders them more and more redoubtable.
Mitifiau, who took the title of Count de Belair,
and claimed to be the son of a general who died
under the first Empire, was a man of irreproach
able manners. He went into society — the very
best society, to which none but well-bred
persons are supposed to be admitted — and lived
by 1 swindling, by clever thefts, and by card-
sharping. He was arrested as he was committing
a robbery by means of false keys.
Some of these malefactors would seem to be
separated for ever from crime by the elevated
tastes they profess and the intellectual occupa
tions in which they are apparently absorbed.
But their evil instincts are too much for them.
Thus it once happened that a mathematician,
versed in the highest sciences, and dreaming
only of abstract speculation, was condemned to
seven years' imprisonment for stealing from a
shop. But for the extraordinary sagacity and
entire absence of illusions on the part of the
police, many a malefactor would succeed in
concealing his true character. Some years ago a
certain Toutpriant, living at No. 28, Rue Vert,
had eight horses in [his stables, besides carriages
from the best makers. He was a retired
clerk, who planned robberies on a large scale,
training and directing a number of young
brigands to that end, and himself living under a
false name either on his own estate, where he
had excellent shooting, or at fashionable water
ing-places. "There are some families," says
M. Ducamp, "which, by a wretched tradition,
seem given up to theft from generation to
generation. The grandfather was a thief; the
father stole, the son steals, the grandson will
steal. The child is taught his trade from the
earliest years. He learns to step without making

The Barriers — Parisian Crime.]

THE THIEVES.

323

a sound, to see without appearing to look, to
open a lock with a nail, to hide what he has
stolen, and to cry out ' Stop thief ! ' when he is
pursued. The families of Piednoir, Cceur-de-
Roy, and Nathan ' drove the police £0 despair
and tired out the tribunals. The periods of
imprisonment to which the ' Nathans, father,
mother, brothers, and sons-in-law, altogether
fourteen persons, were condemned, represent a
total of 209 years."
The thieves of Jewish race are, according to
M. Ducamp, those among whom handkerchief-
stealing descends from father to son. They are
formidable not for their audacity, for they
.scarcely ever commit murder, but by their per
sistence in a criminal career, by the inviolable
.secrecy maintained among them, their mar
vellous patience, and the facilities they possess
for concealing themselves in the houses of
their co-religionists. Jewish thieves are hardly
ever at open war with society. They maintain
a secret, subtle struggle. They seem to be
taking a silent revenge, and it might be said
that they have right on their side and that they
are only taking back — as the opportunity pre
sents itself — the property of which their an
cestors had been so often, so violently, and so
unjustly deprived by ours. Sometimes they form
associations and rob wholesale. They have their
•correspondents, their depots, their purchasers,
. their account-books. Everything that is brought
to them can be turned to account, from the lead of
the house-pipes to a lady's feather. The chief
•calls himself a commission agent and sends goods
to South America, Germany; and Russia. The
German- Jewish jargon which they speak among
themselves is incomprehensible to the rest of the
world and helps to save them from detection.
Concealing their secret actions behind an
-ostensibly honest trade, they are the first de
ceivers in the world. There are numbers of
•criminals, however, who, whatever instincts they
may have inherited, have not been trained to
crime. " A child," says the writer already cited
on this subject, which he has studied so thor
oughly, " stops away from school. He acquires

idle habits and, coming home late, is beaten by
his father. The effect of the lesson lasts a little
while ; but he has tasted the liberty he loves, he
has experienced the pleasure of keeping away
from books — the books he hates ; and fearing the
paternal correction, he takes care the next time
he plays truant not to return home. He sleeps
beneath an archway, and if he escapes the atten
tion of the police wakes up the next morning
to find himself on the pavement of the great
city without a sou in his pocket. Being very
hungry, he contrives to steal a sausage. The
first step has now been taken. Young as he is,
he has acquired a fatal knowledge. He has
learned how to live without working, and he is
now almost certainly lost. Vice has taken
possession of him ; crime awaits him. As he
gets older he is urged on by all the passions of
the young man. He steals some money from his
father, from his employer : wherever the chance
presents itself. If he is taken, he is condemned
by a compassionate judge to a brief term of im
prisonment, during which he lives among the
vilest. He hears nothing but the boasts of
criminals, who pride themselves on their atro
cious actions and inspire him with a desire to
imitate them. On leaving gaol he meets some
of his prison companions. His timid operations
of former days are turned into ridicule. The
talk is now of burglary, of affairs which involve
some risk but return handsome profits. The
crime is resolved upon. An imprudent person
happens to witness its commission, calls for the
police, and is killed. The little vagabond of
other days has become an assassin, and will end
his career on the scaffold. Physical energy and
moral weakness : such are the two principal
features in the character of nearly all criminals.
Some of them affect to be at war with
a society in which the poor man, according
to them, has no place. Mere nonsense. In a
society so profoundly democratic as ours, in
which waiters have become kings, the sons of
innkeepers prime ministers, and foundlings
illustrious men of science, there is a place
for everyone."

CHAPTER XLV.
PARISLA.N MENDICANCY : THE PARIS POOR.
Parisian Mendicancy in the Sixteenth Century — The General Hospital — Louis XV. and the Beggars— The Revolution — Mendicancy as a.
Regular Profession — The Organ-grinders and the Trade in Italian Children— The French Treatment of the Poor — Asylums, Alms
houses, and Retreats — The Droit des Paitvres— The Cost of the Poor.

IN Paris, formerly, mendicancy was so grave and
manifest a plague that it could escape the eyes
of no one, and there is not a single Paris historian
who has omitted to write upon the subject. The
documents which subsist in reference to it — Par
liamentary decrees, for instance, and royal edicts,
would supply material for a complete history of
mendicity, not only detailed but even anecdotal.
There was a time when the beggars of Paris
organised themselves into troops, which were
under the command of a chief. The members
of these troops understood their business. The
orphans and other little scamps, in groups of
three or four, would go out into the streets
shivering and half-naked, weeping and begging
for bread ; ostensible husbands and wives, with
their own or other people's children, exhibited
certificates to the effect that their property had
been destroyed by lightning ; the marchandiers
were merchants whom some conflagration had
reduced to misery ; the pietres excelled in tying
their calves up to their thighs and proceeding
legless on crutches ; while the saboulcux roded on
the ground, with leaps and contortions, foaming
— thanks to a piece of soap which they kept in
tbeir mouths — as though they were epileptic.

In this connection a droll anecdote may be
told. A veteran Parisian beggar had a very
beautiful daughter, and many a suitor petitioned
| the father for her hand. One day a retired
soldier, who had taken to mendicancy, came to-
him to implore the paternal consent. "What
are your qualifications ? " asked the old man.
" I have only one leg," replied the amorous-
warrior. " Bah ! " cried the father, " you have
no chance ; only yesterday I refused a man
without either legs or arms."
In the middle ages, however, the humours of
mendicancy were frequently lost in the gravity
of the perils to which a city infested by cunning
and desperate beggars was exposed. An edict
was issued in 1524 condemning mendicants to-
be whipped and banished. It apparently had
little effect, for in the following year they were
ordered to quit Paris under pain of being-
hanged. In 1532 the Parliament ordered that,
chained in pairs, they should be employed to-
clean out the sewers, which at this period were,
for the most part, open. In 156 1 an ordinance
of Charles IX. sentenced all beggars to the
galleys during the remainder of their life ; for
in those days, the offender who once found-

Parisian Mendicancy.]

TREATMENT OF BEGGARS.

325

Jnmself chained to the oar never went on shore
again. A Parliamentary decree of 1606 pro
claimed that all beggars should be whipped in
public by the assistants of the executioner ; a
particular mark, moreover, was to be placed on
their shoulder ; while, in virtue of an ordinance
of 1602, their heads were shaved — a punishment
which was at least beneficial to them from a
hygienic point of view.
And now we reach the moment when severely
punitive laws- against mendicancy were about to
.give way to preventive measures characterised
by humanity. The first person to occupy him
self with the fate of the mendicants seems to
have been a certain theoretical reformer named
Jean Douet de Romp Croissant. He published,
in pamphlet form, a series of memoirs addressed
to the Queen Regent. Many of the schemes he
put forward were wild in the extreme, but his
writings contain the germs of one or two excel
lent institutions. He proposed the organisation
of those State pawnshops which were ultimately
to be opened in France, though not until 1778.
In view of the filthy condition of the Paris
streets, the dangers to which pedestrians were
exposed from highwaymen, and the extraordinary
number of beggars then in the capital, he pro
posed to employ these beggars in cleaning the
town and protecting the citizens. His idea was
to place a beggar at every fifty yards along the
thoroughfares, armed with a brush and shovel,
so as to remove the refuse and to be able to call
.his next neighbour to the rescue should any
wayfarer fall into the hands of thieves. The
scheme had its practical and reasonable side, but
no attempt was ever made to execute it.
It is to Louis XIV., or more correctly, to M. de
Believre, first president of the Parliament, that
the honour is due of having first acted in this
matter with deliberation, method, and success.
An edict of the 4th of May, 1656, created the
General Hospital, chiefly composed of three estab
lishments : Notre Dame de la Pitie ; the Maison
de St. Denis or Petit Arsenal, familiarly known as
'Salpetriere ; and Bicetre. According to Sauval
the number of beggars in Paris then exceeded
ibrty thousand. They formed " an independent
peafsle, who knew neither law, nor religion, nor
superior, nor police ; impiety, sensuality, liber-
linage, were all that reigned amongst them."
De Believre's measure was already accepted in
principle, but grave doubts were entertained
respecting its application.
The authorities feared that so vast a crowd
•of- lawless people might be able to defy their

power. Everything, however, was effected in
an orderly manner, and with a facility by no
means anticipated. It was announced in all the
churches that, on the 7th of May, 1657, the
General Hospital would be open to as many of
the poor as deserved admission, and at the same
time criers went about the streets proclaiming a
warning to beggars against ever asking alms
again. On the 14th of May every beggar who
could be found in Paris was arrested and shut
up. The city now found itself delivered from
an ancient and formidable scourge.
How complete was the delivery may be seen
from the account left of their visit to Paris by
two young Dutchmen- — De Villers by name — -
who went to inspect the " Little Arsenal de
signed for the confinement of paupers accus
tomed to be in the streets," and who, expatiating
on the admirable plan and general arrangements
of the institution, declared it the finest one of the
kind imaginable, and that not one beggar was
then to be found in Paris.
In course of years, however, in spite of the
General Hospital and of the Hotel des Invalides,
opened in 1670 to indigent soldiers, mendicants
once more multiplied in the streets of Paris.
The French metropolis was indeed an irresist
ible centre of attraction to malefactors, vaga
bonds, and beggars. Misery flowed thither not
only from the provinces but from abroad. At
the close of the seventeenth century a curious
and ingenious ordinance was issued for prevent
ing mendicancy, by which any person giving alms
to a beggar was liable to a fine of fifty francs.
Under regency, the famous Law put forth an
emigration scheme for the clearance of vaga
bonds from Paris. Authority was obtained for
the transportation of indigent young men and
women from the various pauper institutions to
America, and numbers were shipped. The
result, however, was apparently unsatisfactory,
for in 1725 the Duke of Bourbon ordered that
every mendicant who had come from the pro
vinces to Paris should be seized, branded on the
arm, and deprived of his possessions.
In the middle of the eighteenth century,
recourse was again had to the scheme of Law,
and beggars, particularly young and strong ones, .
were kidnapped for transportation to the colonies
by gangs of men in the pay of the authori
ties. Blunders, however, occurred. Gentlemen's
servants who chanced to be out at night, as well
as the sons of artisans, were seized and carried off.
And now Paris, so credulous, so ready to believe
the most improbable tales, grew terrified. It

326

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Parisian Mendicancy:

was said — first in a whisper, then aloud — that
Louis XV., devoured by leprosy, could not
recover health except by taking each morning
a bath of human blood, and that the pauper
children who disappeared were bled to death
for the benefit of the royal invalid. The
rumour went so far as to produce riots, in which
a number of the king's archers were killed and
at least one of the kidnappers torn to pieces.
The Government now found it necessary to
relinquish the emigration project, and every
endeavour was made to provide mendicants
with employment at home. In 1766 a severe
law was passed by which every mendicant
caught begging was to be branded on the left
arm with the letter "M," and sent to the
galleys for nine years, or for life should the
offence be repeated.
Such heavy threats and penalties, however,
were useless. The king himself recognised the
fact, and, in a wise and beneficent letter, wrote
as follows : " I have felt keenly afflicted at the
great number of mendicants that fill the streets
of Paris and Versailles. . . . We must furnish
work for the strong, a hospital for the invalids,
and a house of detention for those who resist the
benefits of the law."
The Revolution, like every violent social or
political movement, had a disturbing effect on
the regular industries, and threw upon the
streets of Paris vast numbers of workmen whom
want of occupation plunged into a misery
rendered still deeper by the prevailing scarcity
of bread. 'The first decree on the subject of
mendicancy was issued May 20th, 1790. Needle
work in special workshops was to be provided
for the women and children, the healthy men
were to be put to manual labour ; the sick and
infirm were to be treated in the hospitals ;
foreign beggars were to be banished from the
country, and provincial beggars conducted back
to their native place with pecuniary assistance
along the road at the rate of three sous a league,
and with the obligation to follow a prescribed
route — a clause in the mendicancy law which
is to-day still in force.
It was easy, however, to decree the extinction
of mendicancy. Unfortunately, mendicants con
tinued to exist. A sharp law was passed whereby
every citizen convicted of having given any
description of alms to a beggar was condemned
to a fine " equivalent to the value of two
days' work " ; whilst every person convicted of
having solicited money or bread in the streets
or public ways was liable to arrest. Under the

Directory mendicants were for a time allowed
to beg as they chose. They abused their liberty,
however, and became importunate and even
menacing in their quest of alms. Then they
were arrested on all hands by soldiers, who-
drove them outside the city with blows from
the butt-end of their muskets. Once in the
country, some of them got into mischief, stopped
carriages and robbed pedestrians ; so that it was
found necessary to issue an edict whereby any
beggar bearing firearms or any kind of weapon,.
even though he had not made use of it, was
liable to imprisonment for a period varying
from two to five years, with police surveillance
to follow.
But rigour and leniency have proved alike
powerless in Paris to relieve the city of its
beggars. Mendicancy is a profession, and it is
not exercised only by extending the hand and
whining for alms. It tries to disguise itself
under various forms. It opens carriage-doors,
sells flowers and lucifers in the streets and on the
boulevards, picks up cigar-ends which it vends to-
illicit tobacco manufacturers at one franc a pound,
sings beneath the windows of the rich, turns
the handle of the barrel-organ, and lets out, at
so much a day, little children to be exhibited for
the excitement of public sympathy. That the
exhibition of articles for sale from the street
gutter is frequently but a pretence everyone
knows. The present writer once asked a woman,
who sold matches in Paris, whether a good many
pedestrians did not give her the sou without
requiring anything in return. "Yes, sir," she
replied, in a tone of lament, " but sometimes they
take the matches ! "
Mendicancy is a profession, and in the exercise
of it a good deal of ingenuity, and one might
almost say talent, is frequently shown. Not a
few Parisian beggars have become historical.
Years ago there was a female beggar in Paris,
without legs and with only one arm, who could,.
by a certain trick in her breathing, produce in
her interior a sound like the tick of a pendulum.
"Listen! ladies and gentlemen," she used to
exclaim, " I have a clock in my stomach ! " Her
gaping auditors used thereupon to apply their
ear to her back. It was true ! There was a
clock inside her ! They could hear the click of
the pendulum !
Formerly, in the gardens of the Hotel Gon-
taut was stationed an old blind man accom
panied by a poodle. Every day he arrived and
departed at the same hours. Seated on a camp-
stool, with a woollen cap on his head, and.

The Paris Poor.]

THE MENDICANT PROFESSIONS,

327

enveloped in a large overcoat with seven plaits,
he did nothing all day but keep a pair of ex-
¦ pressionless eyes directed towards heaven, and
shake his tin money-box from time to time. It
was a tradition in Paris that he had given his
daughter a dowry of three hundred thousand
francs on the occasion of her marriage to a
notary, and that in the evening, after rattling
his money-box all day, the old man could often
be seen in a box at the opera, to which he had
driven in his carriage.
A blind beggar is always sure of a tolerable
income, and, although he may not frequent the
opera, he generally lives well. " One day," says
M. Ducamp in his work on Paris, " as I was
crossing the Pont des Arts, I saw a woman
taking one of the blind beggars his dinner. She
put into his hand a metal porringer, which he
rapidly uncovered. He smelt it and asked—
' What do you -call this ? ' 'It is stewed mutton
and peas," replied the woman with a certain
expression of fear. ' Devil take you and the
mutton too ! You know I only care for beef ! '
I retained my alms and kept them for a better
occasion." How profitable a misfortune the loss
of sight has long been to Paris beggars may be
seen from a report drawn up in 1853 on the
subject of mendicancy, which sets forth that
"a number of blind beggars come to Paris
just for the season, and return with enough
money to live comfortably at home through
the winter."
Jugglers at one time abounded in the city
of Paris, together with public exhibitors of
all kinds ; men, for instance, whose stock-in-
trade consisted of a dromedary and an ape —
which rode through the boulevards on the
dromedary's back. These adventurers so ob
structed the traffic that a series of restrictive
ordinances were passed on the subject. That
of February 28th, 1865, which was based on all
the preceding ordinances, provides that every
individual wishing to take up the profession of
juggler," organ-grinder, singer, or perambulating
musician, must be provided with an authoris
ation from the Prefecture of Police. To obtain
this, the applicant must be a Frenchman, must
have resided for a year past in the jurisdic
tion of the Prefecture, and must bear a fair
moral character. This authorisation has to be
renewed every three months, and the holder
must carry on him a numbered metal badge.
It ' is expressly forbidden to mendicants of this
class to take with them those of their children
who are under sixteen- years old, to lend their

badge, to divine, prophesy, or interpret dreams,
or to perform in public any operation which
infringes on the profession of the manicure or
the dentist.
The profession of organ-grinder has declined
in Paris. The street was his domain, and he
was often accompanied by assistants in queer
costumes, who grinned, gesticulated, and sang
as he played beneath the windows of the well-to-
do. Towards 1830 one of these wanderers was
well known to Parisians as " the Marquis," from
the costume he wore. Although upwards of
fifty years of age, he was extremely nimble,
and he excelled in throwing into an ' open
window, on the fourth or fifth floor, a two-sdu
piece wrapped up in a small book of songs. His
customer would thereupon throw him down
double the amount. It was asserted by some
that he belonged to the secret police, and he, in
any case, rendered it important services.
A new organ costs from four hundred to five
hundred francs, a second-hand one, with an
occasional flat note, one hundred or a hundred
and fifty. This is a great expense, and necess
itates beforehand a capital such as few of the
mendicant class possess. Most organ-grinders,
therefore, hire their instrument by the day,
paying for a small organ between fifty centimes
and a franc ; or for a big Cremona organ, which
imitates an entire orchestra, ten francs, ' with
another two francs for the hire of the assistant
in charge.
These better kind of organ-grinders generally
earn a good deal of money ;. it is no uncommon
thing for them to return to their squalid homes
with a profit of fifty francs.
Some of the humbler kind of organ-grinders
were at one time accustomed to supplement their
income in an ingenious fashion. They quitted
the city under pretext of playing in the suburban
pleasure-gardens, and when they passed the
barrier on their return they had replaced the
pointed cylinder of their instrument with another
cylinder similar in appearance and hollow, which
was filled with brandy. Many of them thus
evaded the octroi duty, though occasionally they
were seized by the authorities and severely
punished. Among the Parisian street-musicians we must
not forget the orchestra-man, with a cap of bells
on his head, a flute of reeds beneath his lips,
cymbals between his legs, a drum on his back,
and a triangle one hardly knows where. His
gymnastic musical exertions seem to keep him in
a state of perpetual drought, for as soon as he

328

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Parisian Mendicancy:

has received a little money he adjourns to the
nearest wine-shop.
In London we occasionally see disinherited
viscounts turning barrel-organs in the street, or
repudiated younger sons on the perch of the
hansom cab. This may result either from sheer
necessity or from a desire on the part of the dis
contented youth to make things a trifle awkward
for his sire ; and we distinctly remember an
earl's son who was a cab-driver taking a huge
delight in plying for hire just outside the paternal
mansion. In Paris there have been a good many in
stances of well or highly connected persons
becoming street-musicians either from want or
in virtue of an instinct. Quite recently there
was a lady vocalist, nearly related to an influen
tial Parisian, who took to the streets and could
not be persuaded by her friends to resume
the comforts of private life which were freely
offered to her. Two or three times she was in
duced to quit the streets for a day or two, but
each time she found existence intolerable till she
returned to the public pavement. For those in
distress there is always a living, no matter what
the age of the performer, to be got out of street-
-singing. A few years ago an old man of eighty
went about Paris singing with a voice which was
almost extinct and scarcely exceeded a whisper,
but which, nevertheless, brought him in regularly
forty-five francs a month. As to the rest, street-
singing is to many paupers not merely a trade,
but an hereditary tendency, handed down from
father to son.
The largest section of the Paris street-musi
cians consists, probably, of the little Italian boys
who overrun public places and who are to be
found at night asleep under the seats of the
boulevards, against the parapets of the quays, or
upon some doorstep. They are as difficult to
suppress and as persistent as ants : the very police
get tired of trying to clear the streets of them.
Whence do they chiefly come ? We will let
M. Ducamp reply : — " One result," he says, "of
the expedition led by Garibaldi in i860 was that
the kingdom of the two Sicilies entered into the
habits of civilised nations. Formerly, at the
time of the Bourbons, as it was held that any
individual demanding a passport for abroad could
only be a Jacobin, permission to travel was never
given. It is no longer so ; everyone can go
and come at pleasure. The inhabitants of the
southern provinces have quickly profited by this
new right in order to get rid of their children
and disperse them over the whole earth. It is

the Basilicate which to-day furnishes nine-tenths
of these unhappy little creatures.
" This is a sort of commerce of which those
who engage in it do not, in all probability, under
stand the immorality. Everything is arranged
in a regular manner, and generally before a
notary : it is white slavery. A speculator runs
through the villages, collects the children, whom
parents are quite willing to let him have, and
takes them on lease, generally for three years.
All that these chidren earn, no matter where,
during that lapse of time, belongs to him, and, in
exchange, he gives the family a lump sum or so
much annually. Formal agreements are signed,
which become invalid in case of non-execution
of the clauses.
" I have inspected several of these contracts.
There could not possibly be more naivete or good
faith than they exhibit. A father lets out his
son as he lets out a field. The child is a capital,
of which the produce belongs legitimately to the
father. That is the principle, and it is very
simple, as everyone can see. Highly immoral as
it is amongst us, and contrary as it is to all our
customs, there is nothing in it to shock the in
habitants of the Basilicate, for whom it becomes
frequently a profitable resource. The speculators
believe themselves so well within the law that
often abroad, and particularly at Paris, they have
recourse to their consuls in order to enforce the
terms of the contract against their victims when
these prove refractory.
" This industry has its agents and its traveders.
Some go to Italy in search of the children and,
bringing them to Paris, place them in the hands
of the patron, who is expecting them and pays
for them at so much a head. Others supply
information as to the villages where children
who are good musicians or who have agreeable
physiognomies are to be found ; while, again,
others — nor are these the least dangerous — when
they learn that a ' patron ' has been expelled by
some administrative measure, collect together
the poor little creatures belonging to his band
and work them on their own account.
" The trade is not a bad one. One patron was
recently living in London with a fortune of
200,000 francs, gained by this frightful traffic.
Formerly the patrons defended their pretended
rights to the bitter end, but to-day, rendered
more circumspect by adverse verdicts, they take
flight as soon as they feel uneasy, and aban
don the children to their fate. Some five-and-
twenty years ago the constantly increasing
number of little Italians caused the Government

The Paris Poor.]

THE ITALIAN CHILDREN.

329

to adopt severe measures, and the patroni were
.4all and separately informed that unless they
. abandoned their cruel trade they would, in virtue
of a law passed in 1849, be conducted to the
frontier. The effect of this notification was
-.somewhat droll. Instead of making a complaint,
either to their own Minister, to the Minister of
the Interior, or the Prefect of Police, they drew
up an address to the French nation, and, in a
document full of sound and rhetoric and com
monplace, took fare
well of ' that hospit
able land, Italy's own
sister.' "
The patroni in
charge of the children
are far from irre
proachable. Some of
them possess musical
talent ; and these not
only seek but know
how to turn the abili
ties of their little slaves
to the best account.
Others are retired
brigands, or loafers on
a large scale, who
wish to see the world
and to make money
during the process.
The courts have
sometimes had to
deal with great cruel
ties on the part of the
patroni. On one
occasion a man named Pellitieri was convicted
for having kept a child for four days and nights
fastened beneath his own bed with a harp-
string, which could be tightened by means of a
key. The culprit was sentenced, in default, to
four months' imprisonment. The life to which
the poor little Italian children are condemned is
of the most sordid, hateful, and demoralising
kind. They suffer in health, and it has been
calculated that out of a hundred children brought
from Italy into France, twenty return home,
thirty remain abroad, and fifty die of privation
and hunger.
The streets . in which they are Chiefly to be
found are the Rue Simon le Franc, the Rue de
la Clef, the Rue des Boulangers, and the Place
St. Victor. Here they live crowded together in
such a manner that there are often five, six, and
even seven beds in the same room, with three,
four, five, and it may be six children in each bed.

There is a bolster at each end of the bed, and the
curious visitor is surprised on entering the room
to see heads spring up in every direction.
Along the walls hang harps, which, in the
hands of the unfortunate children, are less instru
ments of music than of mendicancy. On the floor
lie the children's clothes — their rags, that is to
say — together with sacks of coarse cloth contain
ing the macaroni and vermicelli that they have
brought or had sent to them from Italy.

A L'ASlLE POUR FEMMES, RUE FESSART, LE REFECTOIRE.

The children earn from a franc and a half to
three francs a day, all of which goes into the
pocket of the patron, who has, on his side, to
feed, dress, and lodge the members of his band.
The little musicians pick up food wherever they
can get it : often from charitable persons, and in
the kitchens of restaurants or of private houses ;
and this fare is doubtless preferable to that pro
vided for them by their master, whose only in
variable contribution towards their support is a
basin of questionable soup, doled out to them in
the morning before the beginning of the day's
work. The children's rags have been tied or
stitched together, their harps have been tuned
and perhaps re-stringed, and at nine o'clock they
go out into the street to carry out the instruc
tions of the patron, who has told them to
bring back as much money as possible, and not
to allow themselves to be arrested. Some five or
six hundred of these children are, in fact, arrested

33°

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Parisian Mendicancy;

every year for begging. As a rule, they solicit
alms only in the way of business, but at times
they beg directly and exclusively for their own
account, as when the patron abandons them
and leaves them to shift for themselves. Then
the unhappy ones take refuge in some half-
built house, and, having nothing else to depend
on, continue to beg until at last they fall in
evitably into the hands of the police, who
imprison them and announce the fact to the
Italian consul. If the consul sends them back
to Italy, they return to France under the care of
some new patron, who, to keep out of difficulties,
thinks it prudent to describe himself as their
uncle or some other near relative. They may be
sent back fifty times, but for the 'fifty-first they
will return to Paris — a sign, it would seem,
that, however miserable their life may be, they
do not find it intolerable. It must be preferable,
one would think, to their life in Italy, or they
would remain at home. It is to be remembered,
on the other hand, that their parents sell them
or let them out at the rate of from a hundred to
a hundred and twenty francs a year to the slave-
drivers called patroni.
The beggar in Paris who falls into the hands
of the police is imprisoned — not, however, as an
offender, but as an unfortunate man. An article
in the penal code sets forth, in fact, that " the
beggar is sent to the station-house for mendicants
not as a punishment but as a measure of police,
to be exercised at the discretion of the adminis
trative authority." In the first place, the man
who begs is presumably without resources. Nor
is it in prison that he will be able to create new
ones for himself. To throw him into prison,
then, and afterwards set him free in the same
condition as before, would be to expose him once
more to the commission of the very act for which
he had been incarcerated. Instead of doing
this, the administration places the beggar, after a
brief period of confinement, in a house where he
is fed, clothed, and comfortably lodged, but is at
the same time required to do a measure of work
in proportion to his strength. For this work he
is paid ; not largely, but sufficiently to enable
him to amass a little sum for his immediate needs
on being liberated. He will now be able to seek
for work, and may perhaps manage to obtain
it. This system seems admirable, and would
be so as a matter of fact, were not beggars as
a rule so perverse as to prefer begging to all
other means of gaining a subsistence. When
a beggar is arrested in the streets of Paris,
he is taken to a department of the Prefecture,

where he is generally recognised as an old
acquaintance. Many of those who, at large, left to themselves,
are intolerably idle, become, as soon as they
are imprisoned, industrious, skilful, indefatigable
workmen. Some of them will earn in confine
ment a hundred or two hundred francs — even
more. They claim their liberty, and though
everyone knows what use they will make of it,
there would be no justification for keeping under
lock and key a man provided with enough
money to enable him to seek employment.
Three days afterwards the newly liberated one is
again taken up for begging ; he is reminded of
the sum of money he had about him when he
was set free — enough to have enabled him to live
quietly and respectably for at least a month
or two. "Yes," he replies, "but I have been
amusing myself with my friends." This sort of
thing reproduces itself again and again. It is more
easy to improve the moral tone of a thief than
of a professional beggar. The chief occupation
of the beggars kept in confinement is tearing up
linen to make charpie, the French equivalent for
lint. According to M. Maxime Ducamp, the
incarcerated beggars work as they like and when
they like. " They talk, read, and in the court
yards smoke. Once a week — every Tuesday for
the men, every Wednesday for the women — they
are taken out for a walk, and often come back
intoxicated. They dress as they please, and are
allowed to wear moustaches and beards. . . .
Among the crowds of poor wretches more than one
is in a desperate condition. I recognised a man of
sixty whose history was known to me. It so
happened that he wrote a five-act tragedy in
verse, which was neither better nor worse than
many others. The author presented his piece at
the Odeon, where it was refused. He had' it
printed, and this was the beginning of his mis
fortunes. He offered a copy to the French
Academy, which, according to custom, acknow
ledged its reception through the secretary. The
letter set forth that the piece would be placed in
the library of the Institute, and it was signed 'Ville-
main.' The unfortunate author thought, and
persisted in thinking, that his work had appeared
so remarkable that it had been found worthy of
being preserved in the archives of the Academy-
He now dreamed of other poetical works,
abandoned his ordinary occupation, and allowed
poverty to approach him without seeing that it
was at hand. ' How do you find yourself here ? r
I said to him, as he ate his bread with some pre
paration of haricot beans. ' Well,' he replied,

The Paris Poor.]

ESTABLISHMENTS FOR THE POOR.

33.i

1 1 have not to trouble myself about my material
existence, and can now go on writing.' "
It will be seen that France, though in a less
degree than England, suffers from the plague
of mendicancy. It has been proposed ' that
agricultural colonies be established (as they are
in Holland) where mendicants may be kept per
manently at work. France, it is said, possesses
5,147,-862 hectares of uncultivated land to which,
by the railways and canals, manure might easily
be brought. Artesian wells, too, may be sunk
everywhere, even beneath the most sterile soil.
In exchange for the labour required from the
mendicants employed in tilling the land, bread
would be given to them, a certain remuneration,
and, it might be, a portion of the field cultivated
by them. Such a system would be beneficial in
more than one way. The agricultural resources
ofthe country would be increased, and the towns
would be freed from a parasitic race which often
lends to crime its most redoubtable auxiliaries.
There is no poor-law in Paris. Yet the French,
like other nations, have the poor always with
them ; and means have had to be foupd for pre
venting the most unfortunate class of the popu-
' lation from dying of hunger. Now, as in the
time of Chamfort, society consists of two great
classes — those who have more appetite than
dinner, and those who have more dinner than
appetite ; and prudence, as well as charity, im
poses the necessity of preventing the unsatisfied
. appetites from becoming too acute. It is only
just to add that at Paris the most ancient of
the asylums for the indigent owe their establish
ment to charity alone. Take, for example, the
Hospice des Petits Menages, founded in 1557 on
the site of a leper hospital, closed for want of
funds in 1544. Certain conditions, however,
were required for admission into the almshouses,
known first as Les Petits Menages, and after
wards as Les Petites Maisons. Admission to the
establishment, by ah order from the Prefecture,
issued in 180 1, was limited exclusively to
widowers and widows of sixty whose married
life had extended over at least ten years : and to
married couples whose united ages amounted to
130, of which fifteen had been passed in common.
This asylum, however, is not, under present con
ditions, open to the indigent, but only to those
whose poverty is relative. Each inmate, besides
supplying furniture of a certain specified kind,
must pay 200 francs a year for a bedroom, or
300 for a bedroom and sitting-room. There
were in this asylum, according to the latest
' returns, some 1,300 persons, from sixty to ninety-

five years of age. Another asylum of the same
kind is the La Rochefoucauld Retreat, installed at
Montrouge, on the road to Orleans, founded by
the noble and generous woman whose name it
bears. Here, also, there is no admission to any
one beneath the age of sixty, except only in the
case of persons suffering from incurable illnesses
which are neither epilepsy, nor insanity, nor
cancer. The annual payment is fixed at 250
francs for old people in good health, and 312-50
francs for incurable, patients. A charge, more
over, is made in either case of 100 francs, as
representing the value of the furniture supplied.
The Hospice de la Reconnaissance, opened at
Garches in 1833, was founded, 1829, by Michael
Brezin, a blacksmith and mechanical engineer,
who had made his fortune under the Republic
and the Empire. Here there is nothing to pay.
Admission is given, by preference, to men of
sixty who have been employed in some kind of
metal-work. The establishment contains 300
beds. At another asylum, close to Auteuil, in
the Bois de Boulogne, there is a charge of 400
francs for single persons and 250 francs for married
couples. A moderate sum has to be paid for
the use of furniture, and no one is admitted
below the age of sixty.
At the Maison de Villas, founded some sixty
years ago in the Rue du Regard by a retired
merchant, old people of seventy, or indigent
invalids of any age, are received to the number
of fifty. In 1825, the house known as St.
Michel, close to the wood of Vincennes, was
founded by a retired carpet-maker named Boular,
who reserved its gratuitous privileges for twelve
old men of the age of at least seventy.
Among the various asylums there is one which
is almost celebrated, and which is luxurious com
pared with the others. It is more like a very
comfortable boarding-house than- an establish
ment reserved for the disinherited of this world.
Everything has been done to deprive it of the sad
aspect that belongs to most institutions of the
kind. It was founded by Chamousset, whose
name is associated with nearly all the charitable
works as with all the most useful inventions of
the 1 8th century, including, in the latter cate
gory, the Paris letter-post. The benevolent
establishment founded by Chamousset was called
neither hospice nor asile, but simply l'lnstitu-
tion Sainte-Perine. No advantage was at first
taken of it until the beginning of the present
century, when it was turned to a purpose little
dreamed of by its benevolent author. Two
speculators, Gloux and Duchaylar, discovered in

332

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Parisian Mendicancy:

a charitable enterprise a means of making their
fortune. They interested the Emperor and the
Empress Josephine in their project, and organised
the Institution Sainte-Perine (established in the
former convent of Sainte-Perine at Chaillot) as
a place of retreat for a number of unfortunate
persons who had been ruined by the Revolution

constructed at Auteuil in the midst of a large
and picturesque park. The privileges of the
establishment are reserved for state functionaries
or their widows, who are admissible from the age
of sixty. The charges are 850 francs for board
and lodging, and 100 for the use of furniture.
There is accommodation for 268 inmates.

A BUREAU DE BIENFAISANCE.

but had still preserved sufficient resources to be
able to pay an annual charge, out of which the
enterprising Gloux and Duchaylar contrived to
make a handsome profit. Such was the careless
ness of, or more probably the rapacity of, the
administrators, that in 1807 the Emperor found
it necessary to send the inmates provisions pre
pared specially for them in the kitchen of the
Tuileries. The direction of Sainte-Perine was
at the same time taken from the two shameless
speculators and entrusted to the Prefect of the
Seine. The old convent has since been pulled down ;
and it was replaced in 1862 by a spacious house

But the almshouses, asylums, and "retreats"
founded by a few benevolent persons could have
but little effect in mitigating the distress of the
Paris poor as a class. Up to the time of the
Revolution, poverty was relieved by the Church,
and especially by the religious houses. Private
charity, moreover, was largely practised — some
what on the principle of the benevolent St.
Vincent de Paul, whose maxim it was that
charity should " open its arms and shut its
eyes." In less than two years after the taking
of the Bastille, on the 25th of May, 1791, a law
was passed confiding the duty of relieving
the wants of the poor to the municipality of

The Paris Poor.]

ALMSHOUSES AND ASYLUMS.

333

Paris ; which, after long deliberations, appointed
••bureaux of beneficence" in each of the twenty
arrondissements into which Paris had been
divided. In each arrondissement a council of
twelve administrators was named ; and each of
the twelve administrators had entrusted to him
one of twelve "zones," into which each arron
dissement was divided. To each of the " zone "
bureaux, doctors and midwives, chosen by the
Prefect of the Seine, were attached.
Then, if an indigent person sought relief, he

receive 5 francs a month ; from seventy-nine to
eighty-two, 8 francs, from eighty-two to eighty-
four, 10 francs, and 12 francs from eighty -four
to the end of their lives. This small allowance
does not exclude orders from the bureau for
bread, meat, and clothes.
The " bureaux of beneficence " are not main
tained by the Government nor by local tax
ation ; they are supported by private gifts and
legacies, and by sums which the commissioners
and ladies of charity periodically collect on the

A NIGHT REFUGE.

was visited by the administrator, by a com
missary, or lady of charity, and by a doctor ;
and a detailed report as to his position was pre
sented at one of the sittings held by the Council
of Administration twice a month. Temporary
and immediate assistance is of course given ;
but only, as a rule, to the sick and wounded, to
wnmen in labour, to women who are nursing
and who have no means of subsistence, to de
serted children, to orphans who have not yet
reached the age of sixteen, to heads of families who
have at least three children below the age of four
teen under their care, and to widows and widowers
who have two children of tender years to support.
After a certain age the assistance given by the
bureaux is permanent, but not excessive. Thus,
from seventy to seventy-nine, indigent old men

pressing invitation of the mayor of the arron
dissement. The sum placed annually at the
disposal of the charitable offices scarcely exceeds
one million francs — ^"40,000, that is to say.
Under this system it necessarily follows that the
sums contributed in the richer districts or arron
dissements are proportionately larger than those
contributed in the smaller ones ; so that the
bureaux have plenty of money to distribute
where there is but little poverty, and scarcely
any where the pain of poverty is severely felt.
Thus, in the opulent quarters of the Louvre, the
Bourse, the Opera, and Faubourg Poissonniere,
the annual revenue of each charitable office
ranges from ninety to a hundred thousand francs,
whereas, in the arrondissements of Belleville,
Vaugirard, La Glaciere, and La Villette, the

334

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Parisian Mendicancy:

average sum collected varies from 16,000 to
18,000 francs. To remedy these inequalities, the
municipality draws upon its own resources ; so
that, although there is no poor-law in France,
the poor are relieved partially, at least, through
local taxation. It would .be impossible for the
charitable offices to do their work without assist
ance from the authorities, and the Administration
of Public Aid helps the offices with contributions
which may be put down at 500,000 francs in
money and 700,000 francs in bread, besides
another 500,000 francs, called the subvention ex
traordinaire, which enables the central adminis
tration to establish something like a balance
between the resources of the different bureaux.
Every year the average is fixed of the amount
of succour to be given to each indigent house
hold — generally something over fifty francs, and
to each charitable office a complementary sum
is given, so as to enable it to distribute the
minimum amount of relief fixed upon.
In spite of endeavours made by the central
administration to equalise the resources of the
different arrondissements, the position of the
indigent person is much better in a rich than in
a poor arrondissement. Instead of the regula
tion fifty francs fixed as the minimum of relief
to be granted to a family in distress, there are
quarters where the value of the relief granted
amounts to 130 francs per household.
An allowance at the rate of 130 francs a year is
little enough, it will be said, for a starving family.
But the object of the charitable offices is not to
grant annuities for the poor. They only pro
pose to help persons in temporary difficulties,
such as workmen thrown out of employment by
sickness, or some other external cause. As it is,
the kindly intentions of the administrators are
often abused. Orders for bread, begged for in
the most importunate manner, are in many cases
surrendered to the baker for a smaller value in
money, which is promptly spent in drink.
Each charitable office has under its immediate
direction several houses of relief, the number of
which varies according to the richness of each
particular quarter. There are altogether fifty-
seven of these houses in which immediate relief
may be obtained. Of such asylums, one of the
poorest arrondissements, the thirteenth, possesses
four, while the ninth, that of the Opera, has
only one. Each house of refuge is indicated by
a flag hanging out from one of the windows. As
first instituted, they were all directed by those
devoted sisters of charity who, by an unjust law
passed a few years ago, and which may, from one

year to another, be repealed, were excluded from
hospital services. The argument on the other
side must, in fairness, however, be stated. Some
of the doctors complained that their patients
were troubled, and at times thrown into great
excitement, by religious exhortations, when it
was necessary to keep them in a state of absolute
calm. The houses of refuge are amply supplied
with linen, bed-linen, as well as shirts, which are
lent to the necessitous, and returned for ex
change (unless, meanwhile, they happen to be
carried to the pawnbroker's) once a month in
the case of the bed-linen, once a week in that of
the shirts. Flannel waistcoats and drawers,
woollen stockings and warm under -clothes
generady, are kept in the houses of relief, where,
if absolutely necessary, the indigent are also
supplied with shoes. The principal room in the
house is furnished with benches, and in winter
warmed by a stove, which is protected by a
grating. Here the patients and the paupers
assemble two or three times a week, when the
divisional physician visits them and gives them
consultations. The doctors arrive very punctu
ally, making it a point of honour not to keep
waiting unhappy men and women who have
often quitted their work to seek relief. One by
one they exhibit their certificates of indigence, to
show that they are entitled to gratuitous drugs.
Even if they possess no such certificate, they
receive advice ; and as medical advice without
medicine would in most cases be useless, the
drugs follow, even without formal authorisation.
There are but few pathological cases. Wounds
(the result of accident), rheumatism and anasmia,
are what the unfortunate applicants generally
suffer from. Occasionally some old hand will
present himself whose complaint is easily
found by the experienced physician. He com
plains of a general feeling of lassitude, and by
reason of previous excesses, followed by the in
evitable reaction, is really, perhaps, in want of
a stimulant. All he can do is to suggest a
tonic, and, in case the doctor should make no i
sympathetic response, ask boldly for quinine.
Bitter as all preparations of quinine must be,
the drunkard below par prefers every one of
them to cold water. The quinine of the relief
houses is composed of some alcoholate of quinine
mixed with a strong southern wine, which gives
it strength without depriving it of its intolerable
bitterness. This preparation is so much in de
mand that in one particular year 4,000 litres of
it were distributed among the applicants for
relief.

The Paris Poor.]

THE DROIT, DES PAUVRES.

335

Camphorated, spirits of wine shares with
quinine its disastrous popularity. There are
men and women among the indigent poor
who give themselves bumps and contusions
simply that they may be able to obtain cam
phorated spirits of wine at the local, relief-house.
Having obtained the desired stimulant, they
dilute it with water, sweeten it with sugar, and
drink it as a liqueur. Of some 2,000 litres given
away in one particular year, not more than one
half is said to have been employed for external
use. Women, many of them accompanied by
children, are much more numerous in the
waiting-rooms of the relief-houses than the men.
They are for the most part, especially the aged
ones, insatiable in their demands. Something
they must have to make them sleep ; camomile
for their poor stomachs ; barley-water for their
poor throats ; but, above all, quinine to make
them strong.
The unfortunate applicants are treated with
much generosity. The doctors supply them
with spectacles, knee-caps, elastic stockings,
crutches : all kinds of things rendered necessary
for our working population by the difficult
labours they have to undertake. Often, alas !
the spectacles, the elastic stockings, the crutches,
are sold and the proceeds spent in drink.
In connection with the charitable offices, two
very ingenious and beneficial measures were
introduced at the time of the Restoration : one
to promote the bodily, the other the mental,
health of the Paris population. It was enacted
that no father or mother should be held entitled
to relief unless the children had been vaccinated
and sent to school. This legislation was in
every way beneficial to the, working classes ;
for the teaching was gratuitous, while the
vaccination was profitable. An indigent person
who causes his child to be efficaciously vaccin
ated' receives a present of three francs from the
authorities. Systematic inquiries into the matter have
proved beyond doubt that most applicants for
relief have brought poverty upon themselves
by intemperance and debauchery, and, more
over, that whatever be given to them will at the
earliest opportunity be converted into drink.
In one official report on the subject the follow
ing passage occurs : " However much may be
given, nothing will be remedied ; it will at once
be spent in dissipation."
The Public Aid Department, deriving nothing
from taxation, owes a portion of its revenue to

the payments made by well-to-do patients in
the different . hospitals ; to the public Burial
Office, to the Mont de Piete, or Government
pawnbroking office ; and to the theatres, which
contribute to the support of , the poor a certain
percentage on their' receipts. The poor-tax,
levied on the money received by the proprietors
of theatres, concert and public halls, yields nearly
two million francs a year.
The droit des pauvres, as the impost in

A PENSIONER OF " L'ASSISTANCE PUBLIQUE."
question is called, has often been protested
against by the Paris managers, though in taking
a theatre they know perfectly well what liabili
ties they incur. It is not the manager who
is taxed for the support of the poor, but the
people who go to his theatre, and who, paying
money for their own amusement, are pre
sumably able to spare a trifle towards the
maintenance of the starving poor. The droit
des pauvres dates from 1699, in which year
Louis XIV. declared that a sixth part of all
theatrical receipts should be made over to the
general hospitals. The managers did not fail
to protest ; on which it was explained to them
that the poor-tax was an impost levied on the
spectator, not on the manager. The manager

336

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Parisian Mendicancy :

might, of course, have replied that to increase
the price of theatre tickets was to diminish his
chances of having a fud house. The tax was,
all the same, maintained. At the time of the
Revolution, when, on the 14th of August, 1789,

ofthe year 1809, the proportion to be levied was
fixed permanently at one-tenth. This harmless,
beneficial tithe continued to be paid until the
year 1864, when the Paris theatres were, for
the first time, empowered to play whatever suited

A PENSIONER OF " L'ASSISTANCE PUBLIQUE.'

ad privileges were abolished, the right of the
poor to a portion of all theatrical receipts was
suppressed. It was re-established, however, the
year afterwards, when it was laid down by law
that one decime (two sous) in every franc should
for the benefit of the poor be charged on each
theatre ticket ; and this regulation was renewed
from year to year untd, by an imperial decree

them, without any of the ancient restrictions
which accorded to one theatre the exclusive
right of playing grand opera, to another that
of playing comic opera or opera with spoken
dialogue, to a third tragedy of the classical
pattern, and so on. In the vestibule of the
theatres there were formerly two pay-places —
one for seats in the theatre, the other for the

The Paris Poor.]

THE COST OF THE POOR.

337

poor-tax. In the early part of the century, the
tariff at the entrance to the Comedie Francaise
set forth the prices of admission in the follow
ing terms : " First boxes, 6 francs 60 centimes :
6 francs for the theatre, 60 centimes for the
poor ; pit, 2 francs 20 centimes : 2 francs for
the theatre, 20 centimes for the poor." No one
at that time thought of protesting against this
sumptuary impost. Then, to facilitate matters
and to save theatre-goers the trouble of making
payments first at one window, then at another,
the two payments were combined in one.
Before many years had passed, managers easily
persuaded themselves that it was they who, out
of their own pockets, paid the theatrical poor-
tax. Some of them demanded that the impost
should be levied not on receipts, but on profits ;

and one director, on becoming bankrupt, said
to his creditors as he submitted to them his
accounts of profit and loss : " I owe you 300,000
francs. If I had not been forced to give 400,000
francs to the poor, you would have been paid
in full, and I should have had 100,000 to the
good." Putting together the receipts from all sources
which come into the hands of the Public Aid
Department, the entire sum amounts to some
fourteen or fifteen million francs. This is far
from sufficient, since the expenditure in aiding
and relieving the indigent and the sick is
reckoned at some twenty-five millions of francs.
The deficit is made up by the city of Paris,
which contributes some eleven million or twelve
million francs a year from its own resources.

46

338

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles.

CHAPTER XLVI.
VERSAILLES.
Derivation of the Name— Saint-Simon's Description— Louis XIV— The Grand Fete of July, 1668— Peter the Great and the Regent-
Louis XV.— Marie Antoinette and the "Affair of tie Necklace "—The Events of October, 1789.

A DESCRIPTION of the suburbs of Paris
does not enter into the scope ofthe present
work. Versailles, however, imperatively claims
the attention of any writer on Paris, for Versailles
is more than a suburb ; it has, during the last
two centuries, played almost as important a part
in the annals of France as the capital itself.
The history of the town of Versailles is
practically inseparable from that of its palace.
Originally, indeed, the town was simply a de
pendency of the palace. In spite of its numerous
historical associations, Versaides is comparatively
modern. It sprang up suddenly, like the palace
itself, by the will of Louis XIV. Its streets
were opened and laid out so as to be in harmony
with the facades of the palace, while the style
and form of each building were regulated before
hand by police edicts. Hence the grand but
monotonous aspect of the town.
The name of Versailles is derived, by some
authorities, from that of an Italian nobleman,
Hugo de Bersaglio, who at the end of one of
the earliest of the Italian civil wars took refuge
in France. By a familiar etymological change,
the B became converted into V, and the name
was further transformed from Versaglio into
Versailis. Towards the year noo, the pro
prietor of the land, Philippe de Versailis,
retired to a monastery, and j. the district of
Versailles then passed beneath the authority of
the Abbey of Saint-Magloire at Paris.
A purely fantastic and not too ingenious
derivation traces the name to " Bles verses,"
the land at Versailles being, according to these
enterprising etymologists, so high that the wind
blew down the corn.
Henry IV. had a small hunting-box at Ver
saides, and Louis XTTL had another on a far
more magnificent scale, which Saint-Simon in
his " Memoirs " describes as a castle. It was a
square building with a courtyard in the middle,
and, according to the fashion of the time, was
built of brick. The king's horses and carriages
were kept at a neighbouring farm. It was at
Versailles, on the nth of November, 1630, that
the memorable day known in French history

as the " Day of Dupes " took place ; on which,
after a long struggle between Cardinal Richelieu
and the queen-mother, Louis XIH. took part
with his powerful minister. The "red Emin
ence," as the much -feared cardinal was called,
gave his name to one of the most ancient streets
in Versaides, the Rue du Plessis.
After the death of Louis XIH., Versailles and
the little castle of brick were abandoned by the
court, and it was not until some twenty years
afterwards that the Versailles of modern times
was to arise. Strictly speaking, Versailles may
be said to date from the reign of Louis Xni., but
it owed its first importance to Louis XIV. This
king, says an historian, " began by building a
palace for himself ; he then built a town for his
palace." To mark the distinction between the
king and his subjects, the Great Monarch, while
employing stone for his own royal residences,
ordered that the houses of Versadles should be
constructed exclusively of brick, or, if by ex
ception stone were used, that the wads should
be painted red, with dividing hnes of white, so
as to give them the appearance of bricks and
mortar. The roof of each house was to be of
slate, and the uniformity of the architecture,
relieved by the verdure of the old trees, gave
to the town a character and beauty of its own.
Land was ceded to the principal members of
the Court that they might build houses for
themselves, and the new town grew up, as if
by enchantment, on a general plan designed or
approved by the king himself.
To study the history of Versailles one should
turn to the pages of Saint-Simon, who, in
vigorous terms, condemns the reckless extrava
gance with which Louis XIV. wasted on a
pleasure-residence money urgently wanted for
the maintenance of his troops.
" When all had been finished," says the duke,
" it appeared that water was everywhere wanting;
and this in spite of the millions which had
been spent in establishing seas of reservoirs on
mud and moving sand. Who would have
thought it ? This lack of water proved the ruin
of the king's infantry. Madame de Maintenon

Versailles.]

SAINT-SIMON'S ACCOUNT OF VERSAILLES.

339

was in power. The minister) De Louvois, was
on the best terms with her, and we were
at peace. It occurred to him under these cir
cumstances to turn the course of the river Eure
between Chartres and Maintenon, and to con
duct it to Versailles. Who can say what gold and
what suffering this experiment cost us ? It was
forbidden under the severest penalties to speak,
among the troops employed to turn the stream,
about the sickness, the deaths caused by the
exhalations from the ancient bed of the river.
How many took years to recover from the
contagion ! How many never regained health
at all ! The officers, colonels, brigadiers, and
others employed were not allowed, whoever they
might be, to absent themselves for a quarter of
an hour, nOr to rest for a quarter of an hour
at their work.
"At length the king, tired of glitter and of
the crowd, persuaded himself that he wanted
occasional solitude : he accordingly set out for
the environs. People pressed him to stay at
Lucienne ; he replied that this happy situation
would ruin him, and that, as he wished for
absolute rest, he must seek a situation which
would permit him to do nothing.
" He found behind Lucieilne a deep and
narrow valley, with steep sides, inaccessible by
its marshes, commanding no view, shut in by
hills, and with a wretched village built on its
sides. It was called Marly. This enclosure had
its advantages ; its narrowness kept a resident
within bounds. It was an enormous task to
dry up the sewers into which the surrounding
parts poured their refuse ; but at length the
hermitage was prepared. Yet the king only
slept there for three nights, from Wednesday
to Saturday, two or three times a year, with a
dozen courtiers at the most. By degrees the
hermitage was enlarged. The hills were levelled
to afford space for building-sites, and a large
portion of the one, at the extremity carried away
to produce at least the glimpse of a landscape-
view. " Finally, what with buildings, gardens, lakes,
aqueducts, parks, forests, statues, etc., Marly
became what one sees it to-day, despoiled as it
has been since the death of the king. Its vast
woods and obscure avenues suddenly changed
into immense stretches of water on whose
surface people glided about in gondolas ; I am
speaking of what I have seen, within six weeks ;
basins changed a hundred times — cascades of
ever-varying form.
" It is little to say that Versailles has not cost

so much as Marly : and if one adds the expense
of continual journeys, particularly towards the
end of the king's life, Marly cost billions. Such
was the fortune of a repository of snakes and
carrion, spiders and frogs, only chosen because
the expense would be nothing !
" Such was the bad taste of the king in
everything and his keen passion for forcing
nature, which neither the most pressing war nor
his devotion could blunt !
" The establishment of the Court at Versailles
was another instance of the king's policy. We
all know how he derided, humiliated, confounded
the very first grandees, gave pre-eminence to
ministers, whom he promoted to equal authority
and power with princes of the blood and to an
importance exceeding that of the foremost noble
men in the land. It is necessary to show the
progress in every direction of such policy on the
part of the king. Several causes contributed to
draw the court out of Paris, and to keep it
incessantly in the country.
" The troubles of the minority, of which this
city was the great theatre, had inspired the king
with an aversion for it : and people had per
suaded him that his stay there was dangerous, and
that the residence of the court elsewhere would
render cabals at Paris less easy through sheer
distance, and more difficult to hide ¦ through the
ease with which absences could be remarked.
" The number of his mistresses, and the
danger of creating great scandals in the heart of
a capital so populous and full of such turbulent
spirits, now induced the king to remove farther
away. At Paris he found himself importuned by
the crowd every time he went out, came in, or
showed himself in the streets. ... A passion
for exercise and the chase, much more easy
to gratify in the country than at Paris, remote
as it was from forests and sterile in places of
promenade, and the love of buildings which
came next and constantly grew, forbade to him
the amusements of a town where he could not
avoid being continually on view. The idea,
moreover, of rendering himself more venerable
by abstracting himself from the eyes of the
multitude and from daily appearance in public,
was one of the considerations which decided the
king to fix upon Saint-Germain, soon after the
death of the queen, his mother.
" It was there that he began to attract the
world by his fetes and his gallantries, and to
make people feel that he wished to be often seen.
The flirtation with Mme. de Valliere, which
was at first a mystery, resulted in frequent walks

340

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[VersaiUe

to Versailles — a little cardboard castie at that
time, built by Louis XIH., himself disgusted,
and his suite still more so, at having had to sleep
in a vile inn frequented bv waggoners, or in a
windmill, after long, fatiguing hunts in the forest
of Saint-Leger, or even beyond that, and re
served for his son at a period far distant, when
roadways, the fleetness of trained dogs, and the
skid of a large staff of keepers and huntsmen
had rendered the chase easy and short. This
monarch never slept at Versailles, or at least, very
rarely, passing a night there only from necessity.
" The king, his son, in order to be more in
private with his mistress, was there more often.
Then its unknown pleasures, its little parties,
caused the immense edifices to spring up which
have been budt there, with their accommoda
tion for a numerous court, so different from
the residences at Saint-Germain. Finally he
transported his entire household to it, pre
viously to the death of the queen, and built
an infinitude of abodes there in compliance
with the petitions made to him on the subject ;
whereas at Saint-Germain almost everyone was
put to the inconvenience of staying in the town ;
those few who were lodged at the castle being
terribly cramped for room there.
" Frequent fetes, select promenades at Ver
sailles, and journeys were the means seized upon
by the king for distinguishing or mortifying,
according to the part he assigned to those par
ticipating in such ceremonies ; though he took
care that everyone without the slightest differ
ence should be assiduous and attentive to please
him." Marly was afterwards much used by him as
wed as Trianon, where absolutely everyone could
come and pay court to him, but where ladies
alone had the honour to eat at his table.
The wax candle which every evening he caused
to be held by some courtier whom he wished
to distinguish, and the brevet-doublet, were two
more of his inventions. This garment was
lined with red, and embroidered with a mas-
nificent and unique design in gold with a little
silver. Only a limited number could wear it,
including the king, his family, and the princes
of the blood ; and the latter, like the rest of the
courtiers, could only obtain possession of such
doublets as they were vacated by their previous
holders. The most distinguished members of
the court, either directly or by favour, de
manded them of the king, and it was a great
honour to receive one.
" Not only (says Saint-Simon) was the king

sensible of the continual presence of what
ever was distinguished — he was likewise so
of the inferior classes. He turned his gaze
to right and left on rising and going to rest,
at his meals, on passing through chambers,
in the gardens of Versailles, or where courtiers
alone were privileged to fodcw him. He saw
and noticed everybody : no one escaped him —
not even those who would never have hoped to
attract his eye. He carefully observed the
absence of those belonging to the court, and of
the visitors who came more or less frequently ;
noted the general or particular causes of such
absence, and, recording these in his memory,
never missed the slightest opportunity of acting
in consequence of them.
" It was a demerit in some, and in all whom
he had favoured, not to make the court their
ordinary residence ; in others a demerit to visit
it rarely ; and it was a sure disgrace never to
visit it at ad. When it became a question of
doing something for such persons, he would say,
of this last class, in a lofty tone, ' I do not know
them ; ' and of a rare visitor, ' He is a man I
never see.' These words were irrevocable. It
was another crime not to go to Fontainebleau,
which he regarded like Versaides. He could
not endure people who were fond of Paris. He
could easily put up with those who loved the
country places to which they belonged, though
they had to take care to moderate their ex
pressions of this local affection, and, moreover,
before going to stay in the country, to make a
longer sojourn at the court. This was not
confined to office-bearers or favourites, nor to
those whom their age or their capacity marked
out from others ; anyone frequenting the court
was liable to be called to account for his destina
tion. To such a point did the thing go that
during a journey I made to Rouen about a
law-suit, the king caused a letter to be written
to me, young as I was, by Pontchartrain, to
demand the reason."
Of the magnificence of Versailles under
Louis XIV many records remain. A vivid
description of one of the most gorgeous fetes-
ever held is contained in a letter which was
addressed at the time by an eye-witness to the
Marquis de la Fuente. Nothing grander than
this fete could have been devised even by
Louis XIV., who offered it to his courtiers and
subjects in 1668.
"The day appointed was the 18th of this
month," says the correspondent, who in July of
the year named was writing to the marquis by

Versailles.]

THE GRAND FETE OF JULY, 1668.

34i

orders of the queen, " and it is impossible to
conceive the vast concourse which flocked to the
place. The whole aristocratic world, Parisian
.and provincial, together with many persons who
had crossed the sea in the suite of the Duke of
Monmouth, had assembled there ; never was a
gathering so numerous, so select, so sumptuously
adorned. The king, wishing that on this

evening, when the sweetness of the air invited
people out of doors, they followed the queen into
the garden, where carriages were in waiting to
convey them towards one of the woods which lie
to the right as you enter, and which has about it
something more solitary and more mysterious
than the others. The beauty of the evening and
of the place compelled them to alight ; they had

VERSAILLES. (From an old Prints

occasion all the expense might be his, and that
others might have nothing but pleasure, had
severely forbidden anything in the nature of
tinsel or ornamentation. But what can laws do
against fashion ? . .
; "Of the numerous ladies present there were
only three hundred who were to have the
honour of eating at the royal tables. On their
arrival they found all the apartments of the
chateau open to them, perfumed and ready for
their reception. In order not to cause them
constraint, the royal family had retired into one
of the further pavilions. Leisure was allowed
these guests for refreshment, after which, towards

reached a kind of labyrinth intersected by several
avenues, many of which compose a circumference
round five others, these latter starting out in
different directions from one common centre and
forming a very agreeable star. A thousand
dwarf trees, laden with excellent fruits, fringed
these avenues, which were embellished in the
five angles with so many niches full of flowers,.
haunted by some rustic deity or other. In the
middle of the star played a fountain whose
basin was surrounded by five tables without
cloths or covers, and which were made so in
geniously to imitate the natural that, how
ever splendid the collation might be, it appeared

24^

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles.

to have been created on the spot rather than
served. " The first table was bounded, at that end of it
which rested against the basin, by a mossy bank
covered with truffles and mushrooms, six different
entrees garnishing the table, of which the re
mainder, like a fertile vadey, was strewn with
salads and green stuff.
" The second table had at one end of it, as
though in perspective, an architectural fabric of
pastry, the rest of the table being furnished with
pies and other produce from the oven.
" The third was terminated by pyramids of
dried preserves, the rest of the table looking like
a flower-bed through a skilful arrangement of
almond cakes and stewed fruits.
" The fourth seemed to spring out of a rock
where nature had commenced to form divers
crystals, the remainder of the table being laden
with crystal vases fud of ad sorts of iced waters.
" The fifth was bordered by a heap of
caramels similar to that shapeless mass of amber
which the sea sometimes throws up on shore,
and the table was covered with porcelain vessels
full of cream.
" All this was due more to the magic of fairies
than to human industry. As a. matter of fact,
no one could be seen in the place when the
company entered ; and even during the repast
you only got half a glimpse of the hands which
through the foliage presented, on handsome
salvers, beverages to all who wished to drink.
For some time the feast was simply contemplated
with wonder ; but at length temptation over
came scruple, and the assembly set themselves to
eat all these things as though they had never
believed them enchanted.
" The repast at an end, the company promptly
re-entered their carriages, which, after a few
turns here and there, stopped at an edifice of
rustic appearance, which, rising nearly to the
height of the trees and having for external de
coration nothing but what had come from the
forests or gardens, effaced the pomp of the palace j
and gave brdliancy to things simple and rustic. '
At the time of the Druids one would have taken
this structure for the palace where they de
livered their judgments, or for the temple of the
gods presiding over the forests. You could see,
on entering, that it was a temple designed for
spectacles : contained within it was a theatre,
superb no less by its dimensions than by its
ornaments. Two twisted columns dazzling with
gold and azure, between which marble statues
were ranged, supported on each side a very rich

ceiling, greatly elevated to facilitate the working
of the machines. . . . Who would have
thought, sir, that a work which displayed so
much order, industry, and invention could have
been completed in fifteen days for the purpose of
lasting only twenty-four hours ! Who would
have imagined that so much expense and pro
fusion had no other object than the glory of a
day and the representation of a comedy ! To a
vast audience the troop of Moliere played one in
his style, new and comic, and agreeably varied
with ballet music.
" Darkness had now crept upon us ; but
although night arrests the operations of nature,
she is no enemy to pleasure, and on this occasion
spoiled nothing by her arrival. People almost
wished she had come sooner ; the shadows were
blessed, partly for the freshness of the air which
they brought, partly for the obscurity which
enhanced the brilliancy of the jewels, partly
because they announced the hour of supper, to
which hunger had already looked forward.
Everyone began to think seriously of this meal,
though no one fancied that Her Majesty was
preoccupied with it when she invited the com
pany to go to the other side of the garden and
visit a kind of enchanted palace, so rare and so
singular that writers of fiction have imagined
nothing like it."
An elaborate description of this structure
follows, and then the supper is described. To
avoid confusion, the invited guests were divided
up into nine bands, and the respective tables at
which they sat were each presided over by some
lady of rank.
The first was graced by the presence of the
queen. To this table only the princesses of the
blood were admitted. Other tables were beneath
the charge of the Countess de Soissons, the
Princess of Baden, the Duchesse de Crequy,
and a number of other distinguished ladies.
Besides this accommodation, which was only
for invited lady guests, there were, continues;
the correspondent, "a great number of tables
laid in the different avenues where anyone who
wished could eat ; and in the grotto which, as
you know, is the most charming spot at Ver
saides, three tables of thirty covers each had
been laid for the ambassadors. It was noticed
that you, sir, were absent, and your absence was
to be regretted in view both of the king's glory
and of your own satisfaction. Friend of magnifi
cence as you are, you would have been more
affected by the scene than another. But
do not regard your absence from the scene as

Versailles,]

THE GRAND FETE OF JULY, 1668.

343

one of your misfortunes ; if you knew who it
was that wished you present, you would have
been amply consoled for the pleasure you lost ;
and the honour of being remembered by their
Majesties should more than recompense you
for all the fetes in the world.
" Good cheer does not usually inspire melan
choly thoughts ; gaiety shone upon all faces, and
still more of it was concealed in each heart.
The evening was cool, and the company were
longing for a dance. In this disposition the
king directed the company to a superb saloon
where everything was ordered so regularly,
where the ornaments were so natural and so
gorgeous, and the place so vast and new, that it
was easy to see that this must be the work of
the architect of the Louvre — of a man, that is to
say, accustomed to great designs and to the most
noble ideas."
After a description of the magnificent saloon
in question, the correspondent adds : "I will not
speak of the pomp of the ball, or the grace of
the Majesties, nor of the beauty and personal
ornament of those who danced ; I will leave
you to imagine the scene.
" You know, sir, that it is useless for pleasures
to be natural unless art is employed to conduct
them. Then instinct must not always be their
rule ; they would destroy themselves if one gave
them full liberty — in a word, their votaries
exhaust them far too rapidly. They should
be quitted with regret and not with satiety.
The king was aware of this when he closed
the ball sooner than the assembly would have
wished. People rose with His Majesty, and no
one now thought of anything but departure
and repose.
" But scarcely had the company emerged from
the thick of the wood and arrived at the first
flower-bed, where a moment before we had seen
nothing but fountains and flowers, when our
eyes were startled with the strangest and most
prodigious illumination that could possibly be
conceived. The order of nature seemed con
founded ; darkness seemed to have fallen from
the heavens and daylight to have sprung out
of the earth. A lurid, dazzling light illuminated
the whole of the surrounding country, though
there was not a trace of smoke in the air, and
not a sound of flickering flames or of crackling
sparks disturbed the silence of the night. Along
the principal avenue of the garden motionless
giants could be seen glowing internally with
fire: at all the windows of the chateau great
luminous phantoms appeared which, without

consuming themselves, seemed penetrated with a
fire more lively and more ardent than is the
element of fire itself. . . . This terrible and
surprising spectacle troubled and fascinated the
sightseers. There are horrors which please, and
the soul athirst for novelty feeds on what
astonishes it. Whilst people were eagerly re
velling in these visions, they were suddenly
aroused by claps of thunder, often redoubled,
accompanied by an infinitude of lightning flashes ,
and fires which, darting towards the heavens
like rockets or hovering in the air like stars,
burst to pieces or fell into some lake where
they rekindled themselves instead of being
extinguished, or, finally, creeping along the
ground like serpents, augmented the horrors
of darkness by dissipating it, and seemed to <
threaten the universe with its last conflagration.
Nevertheless, we soon recognised the ingenious
imposture of these phantoms of light which had
dazzled us, of this artificial thunder by which we
had been so astonished.
" All present continued to enjoy the spectacle
until the peep of dawn seemed to give the signal
for the assembly to retreat. Such, sir, was the
display that happily crowned the gallant and
magnificent fete with which His Majesty regaled
his subjects in order that they might have a
taste of the peace which he had just established
for them, and in order that they might see that
he limited his ambition thenceforth to ensuring
repose and spreading joy throughout the length
and breadth of the land."
The splendour of Versailles came to an end
with the Great Monarch, the Roi Soled as he
was also called.
The Regent cared only for Paris, and neither
lived at Versailles himself nor allowed the heir
to the throne to live there. Occasionally he
visited the place ; and Peter the Great, on
visiting Paris, was put up for a time at Trianon
in the Versailles park. The Tsar of Muscovy
arrived in Paris from Holland (he had not yet
been recognised by Europe as Emperor of
Russia) on the 8th of May, 1717, and remained
partly in the capital, partly at Versailles, for
upwards of six weeks.
Saint-Simon describes him as tall, well-made,
rather thin, his face somewhat round, with a
broad forehead, fine eyebrows, short nose, thick
lips, reddish-brown complexion, and fine black
eyes, large, bright, piercing, open. His look
was majestic and graceful when he was on his
guard ; but, at other times, severe and fierce,
with a nervous twitching which did not often

344

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles.

show itself, but at times quite changed the ex
pression of his eyes and his physiognomy. For
a moment his look was wild and terrible, but he
at once recovered his habitual expression. His
general air gave evidence of wit, reflection,
greatness of mind, all marked by grace. He

THE COLONNADE, VERSAILLES.
wore a round brown wig almost without
powder ; he was generally dressed in a brown
suit with gold buttons, and with stockings of
the same colour, without gloves or cuffs. When
this prince visited St. Cyr, he was received
like the king. He wished to see Madame de
Maintenon, who, suspecting that his chief desire
was to see how old she looked, determined to
receive him in bed. Her conjecture proved
correct. On entering the room, the Tsar drew
aside the window-curtains, and then the curtains
of the bed, which Madame de Maintenon had
closed, with the exception of one which remained
half-drawn, looked at her attentively without
saying a word or going through any form of
civility, and then went away just as he had come.
Peter, at Versailles, Marly, and St. Cyr, as
in Paris itself, visited everything which piqued
his curiosity and enabled him to satisfy his
passion for information. " This passion," says
Saint-Simon, " made him adopt all possible means
for getting away from the importunate crowd
which constantly surrounded him, and he fre
quently escaped the vigilance of the noblemen
whom the king had attached to his person to
accompany him wherever he went. The first
carriage he found at hand — any hackney carriage

was quite good enough for him — he got into it
with no matter what member of his suite, and
drove wherever he wanted to go. The king paid
the first visit to his royal guest, who went down
to receive him as he got out of his carriage,
and then accompanied the young monarch,
keeping on his left until
they reached the apart
ment, when the two
princes sat down side by
side and quite on an
equality. The Tsar, how
ever, insisted on giving
the place of honour to
the king. The same
ceremonial was followed
in the visit which Peter
afterwards returned. On
this occasion the Tsar,
after taking the young
king beneath the arms,
raised him to his own
height, kissed him several
times, flattered him and
caressed him in the most
tender and affectionate
way. Those present were
much surprised at the
way the young prince received these attentions,
without being in the least disconcerted and
without showing any emotion.
The Regent, having taken the Tsar to his
grand box, and Peter, in the middle of the piece,
having asked for some beer, the Duke of Orleans,
standing up, presented to him a glass on a saucer.
The Russian prince received it with a graceful
gesture, drinking the contents and putting back
the glass on the saucer, which the Duke of
Orleans, always standing, held in his hand,
afterwards offering the Tsar a napkin in the
same manner.
Louis XV. lived for a time at Versailles, and
it was there that his Parc-aux-Cerfs — with the
young girls dressed in virginal blue, whom,
with strange inappropriateness and shocking
irreverence, he had dedicated to Our Lady —
was established. But he formed an aversion
for the place after the attack made upon him
by Damiens, who struck at him and slightly
wounded him with a penknife in the marble
court just as he was. getting into his carriage.
The royal suburb which Louis XIV. had
created, which the Paris-loving Regent disdained,
and which Louis XV. feared as associated with
an attempt on his life, was destined to become

Versailles.]

THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE.

345

the favourite residence of the homely, kind-
hearted Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, his
charming wife ; and Versailles has since been as
closely associated with revolutions and with
the disasters of France as formerly with the
splendour and luxury of the monarchy at its
supreme point of development. Versailles was
the scene of the strange intrigues known collect
ively as " the affair of the necklace," and it was
at Versailles that the king and queen were
openly threatened by the revolutionary mob.
The affair of the diamond necklace was turned
to the disadvantage and grave injury of the
queen by all her enemies, though it is certain
that Marie Antoinette had nothing whatever
to do with the matter. A certain Countess de
Lamotte-Valois was the prime mover in the
affair, and she acted throughout with an in
genuity which surprised the good faith of many.
Born in a comparatively humble position, she
became the wife of a dissipated and ruined count ;
when, determined to turn
her newly acquired posi
tion to account, she
went to Paris, where
she succeeded in get
ting presented to Marie
Antoinette and also to
Cardinal de Rohan, the
king's grand almoner.
She persuaded the car
dinal, that to secure the
eternal gratitude of the
queen it was only neces
sary 'to obtain for her a
necklace worth a million
and a half francs which
was in the possession or
the court jewellers. De
Rohan, moreover, was
assured that the queen
entertained for him the
affection,
to carry
the car-
a Mile.
much

while, she pretended that she had delivered the
necklace to Marie Antoinette, and she succeeded
in concealing her robbery for several months by
producing fictitious notes in handwriting imitated
from that of Marie Antoinette. At last a direct
application was made by the jewellers to the
queen herself, which resulted in a public trial
before the Parliament of Paris. The affair
caused the greatest excitement throughout
France. There was no evidence which really
told against the queen, and all that could be
urged against the cardinal was that his folly and
fatuity had enabled the Countess de Lamotte to
make him an easy dupe. De Rohan, then, was
acquitted, while the countess was sentenced to be
whipped, branded on the shoulder, and imprisoned
for life. ¦ After two years confinement at the Sal
petriere, she escaped in June, 1787, and fled to
London, where she published scandalous libels
against the queen. In spite of her innocence,
Marie Antoinette was suspected by the common

re-

most tender
and, in order
conviction to
dinal's mind,
d'Olivia, who
sembled Marie Antoinette, was induced to
personate her at a midnight interview with His
Eminence in the gardens of Versailles. Armed
with the real signature of Cardinal de Rohan
and a forged signature of the queen, the
countess got possession of the necklace (Feb
ruary 2, 1786), which she forthwith carried to
London and there sold it in fragments. Mean-

THE GALLERY OF BATTLES, VERSAILLES.
(From a Photograph by X., Paris.)

people of having played the part attributed to
her by the infamous Lamotte, and even when,
five years later, she was being carried to the
guillotine, sarcasms in reference to the affair of
the necklace were hurled at the unfortunate
woman by the mob.
That a queen should, in her wanton extrava
gance, have ordered a necklace worth some

346

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles.

^"60,000, and afterwards have neglected to pay
for it, and thrown the odium of the transaction
upon other persons, seemed natural enough to
the embittered populace, driven wild by op
pression and hunger, and the feeling caused by
the Countess de Lamotte's shameful calumnies
against Marie Antoinette (the Revolution having
meanwhile begun) had doubtless much to do
with the menacing attitude of the crowd, who
soon afterwards threatened both king and queen
in their palace at Versailles.
The people of Paris entertained the gravest
distrust of the king and queen. As the crisis
was drawing near the queen entreated her hus
band to leave Versailles for Compiegne or Fon-
tainebleau. She counted, above all things, on
the Marquis de Bouille, who commanded the
troops on the eastern frontier, with headquarters
at Metz. The Comte d'Estaing, commanding
the National Guards at Versailles, was ready not
only to aid the escape of the royal family, but,
if necessary, to protect their flight ; and the
municipality of Versailles had empowered him to
act freely against any movement made from
Paris upon Versailles. It was essential to secure
the co-operation of the king's body-guard and
of the Versaides garrison ; and with this view
the king, queen, and royal family assisted at a
grand banquet given on the 1st of October by the
king's body-guard to the Regiment of Flanders
in the theatre of the Palace. The population of
Paris saw in these marks of goodwill towards
the troops proofs of treachery. The excitement
led to insurrection, and Versailles was invaded
by the Parisian mob. On the 1 5th of October, at
six in the morning, the tocsin was sounded in
Paris. The National Guards quickly assembled,
and a market-woman collected other market-
women around her by beating a big drum. The
women were animated less by political ideas
than by a determination, by all possible means,
to save their children from starvation. They
had been told that there would be bread enough
in Paris if the king and queen were there.
Several volunteers belonging to the band which
had played a leading part in taking the Bastille
placed themselves at the head of the infuriated
women and of the rabble who accompanied
them. In the rear marched the conquerors of
the Bastille in a body ; not, it was said, to co
operate with the women, but, if necessary, to
protect them. The municipality of Paris ordered
General Lafayette to take measures in view of
the threatened conflict ; and, calling out the force
distinctively known as the "paid battalion" —

the former Gardes Franchises — he at the same
time concentrated various volunteer battalions
at different points. He delayed, however, ordering
an advance until four o'clock in the afternoon.
He wished, as Mr. Morse Stephens puts it, " to
be the saviour of the king, and it would not be
sufficiently glorious to forestall the danger."
The news that a mob was marching on Ver
sailles reached the king while he was hunting.
Receiving the intelligence with his usual indiffer
ence, he nevertheless went back to the, palace,
where he found the body-guard, six hundred
strong, and the Regiment of Flanders drawn up
in order of battle. About two hundred of the
National Guards at Versailles had taken up their
position at some distance from the troops, but
with no intention of assisting them. The
women of Paris arrived between three and four
o'clock in the afternoon. Some went at once to
the palace and demanded food, which was readily
given to them. Versailles had been made the
meeting-place of the National Assembly, and
the first French Parliament (not, of course, to
be confounded with the judicial Parliament of
Paris) was engaged in a debate when Maillard,
representing the conquerors of the Bastille,
entered the hall and demanded, on behalf of
the women, that the price of bread should be
lowered by a formal decree. The Assembly
appointed a deputation of its own members to
accompany a deputation of the women to the
king. The deputations were most graciously
received. But this only increased the difficulty ;
and on returning to their sisters, the women
who had waited upon the king were furiously
attacked for having condescended to such a step.
Towards evening the royal travelling-carriages
were seen issuing from the stables ; and the cry
at once arose that the king must not be allowed
to escape. Several of the Versailles National
Guards rushed forward and insisted on the
carriages being driven back. An hour afterwards
the body-guard, which was to have accompanied
the king in his flight, retired to their barracks.
As they did so they were fired upon by the
National Guards of Versailles, and one of their
horses was killed. It was immediately roasted
and eaten by the Parisian mob.
At last, towards eleven o'clock, Lafayette
arrived with the greater part of the National
Guards of Paris, the paid battalion, and several
guns. He at once sought an interview with the
king, and after assuring him of his power and
willingness to protect him, called upon him to
accept the " Declaration of the Rights of Man.'*

Versailles.]

THE EVENTS OF OCTOBER, 1789.

347

The king complied, and Lafayette, thinking,
or pretending to think, that peace had been
secured at least for the night, retired to his hotel.
About five o'clock the next morning a portion of
the mob, after supping on horseflesh and wash
ing down the unaccustomed food with plentiful
libations, had got into the gardens of the palace,
and, finding a back-door unguarded, forced their
way towards the queen's apartments, killing, as
they did so, two of the body-guards who defended
the ante-chamber and staircase. Two other body
guards, however, defended her bed-chamber until
she had time to escape by a private staircase to
the king's own room. The noise of the fighting
brought up the paid battalion of the Paris
National Guard, who in a few minutes cleared
the palace of its invaders ; and at about seven
o'clock Lafayette came upon the scene. He
persuaded the king, queen, and royal family to
appear on the balcony, where they were greeted
with shouts, " Le roi a Paris ! " and after a brief
parley with the king, the popular general an
nounced that the king had accepted uncondition
ally the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and
that he would start that afternoon for the capital.
" Maillard," says Mr; Morse Stephens, " with a
body of followers, including men carrying the
heads of slaughtered body-guards, started off at
once to take the good news to Paris, where he
was warmly received by the municipality. At a
little past one the royal carriages left Versailles,
and late in the evening, escorted by Lafayette on
his white horse, the Parisian National Guards
and the mob, reached the capital. The royal
family first went to the Hotel de Ville, where
they had to listen to an harangue from Bailly,
and then went to the Tuileries, which had been
so long unoccupied that there were not even
sufficient beds to sleep in. Thus ended the
memorable days of October 5 and 6, 1789, to
the great glory of General Morpheus, as the
royalists called him, and to the real destruction
of monarchical power in France."

The Assembly had originally taken up its
quarters at Versailles in order to be free from all
pressure on the part of the Paris population. It
now debated under' the eyes of the Parisians,
who were able to influence its deliberations in
more ways than one. The hall set apart for it
at Versailles had presented some material incon
veniences. It was so large that the speeches of
members were sometimes inaudible-; and another
disadvantage (which surely might have been
prevented) is' said to have been that the im
mense size of the hall allowed strangers to enter,
interrupt the debates, and occasionally even
vote. It was only by express order of the king,
after he had taken up his residence at the
Tuileries, that the National Assembly forsook
Versailles for Paris ; and it now established
itself in the Manege1, or Riding School, an ob
long building some 240 feet in length by 60 feet
in width, situated on the north side of the
Tuileries Gardens, just where the Rue de Rivoli
now joins the Rue Castiglione. When the
necessary alterations had been completed, it was
found that the new building was much better
adapted for the debates than the immense hall
at Versailles. Even at the Manege there was
plenty of room ; and the Assembly having
magnanimously invited " the whole nation " to
be present at the debates, the galleries were
crowded all day by the people of Paris, and
especially by women of all classes, who took the
keenest delight in the proceedings, applauding
or hissing as they thought fit. Fruit-sellers and
newspaper-girls wandered about with discordant
cries, so that the galleries resembled in many
respects the gallery of a theatre.
The French deputies were not to assemble
again at Versailles until after the disasters of
1870 and 1871, when, as during the first months
of the Revolution, it was thought desirable to
avoid immediate contact with the too-excitable
Parisians.

348

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles and

CHAPTER XLVII.
VERSAILLES AND THE SIEGE OF PARIS.
The Advance on Paris — Preparations for the Siege — General Trochu — The Francs-Tireurs — The Siege.

VERSAILLES, originally a pleasure abode for
the most powerful of the French monarchs,
had at last become a place of entertainment and of
public displays for the French people when, in
1870, after the defeat of Sedan, it acquired new
importance from its occupation by the enemies
of France.
After Sedan, the enemy hastened to Paris,
well knowing that the occupation of this
town, at once the head and the heart of
France, would put an end to all resistance
throughout the country. From the moment
that intelligence was received of the German
advance upon the capital, the new Government
gave a fresh impulse to the works of defence
commenced under the Regency ; and gigantic
efforts were necessary to arm the fortifications at
such short notice. To defend the whole of the
works around Paris a hundred thousand men
were necessary.
But Paris could muster three or four hundred
thousand National Guards, animated by the
most ardent patriotism, invincible behind their
ramparts, and of which a select portion could
face the enemy's fire with the intrepidity of old
troops. It was they who went to guard the
ninety-four bastions forming a continuous girdle
round the city. Paris was in a bubbling ferment
of patriotism : everyone, young or old, rich or
poor, hastened to have his name inscribed and to
ask for a rifle. Agitation reigned everywhere, yet
without producing the least disorder. Already,
on the 19th of August, a committee of defence
for the fortifications had been formed, composed
of distinguished military officers and statesmen ;
and under the direction of this committee
between sixty and seventy thousand men were
employed to organise the resistance on the ram
parts, where everything was deficient. All the
gates of Paris were isolated from their approaches
by the prolongation of the moat, drawbridges
being now utilised. Beyond the moat, obstacles
of all kinds were heaped up to arrest the assail
ants — branches of trees, broken glass, planks
bristling with nails, and so forth : useless and
almost infantine precautions, considering the

formidable means employed by the Germans to
reduce Paris from a distance.
Within the city boundary all was movement,
animation, fever. Gun-carriages were passing to
and fro freighted with enormous cannon ; other
pieces of ordnance were lying in the interior ot
the bastions, awaiting their frames. On the
parapets guns already mounted were established
in hollows dug out for the purpose. Two
million bags of earth were piled up, from behind
which the defenders could fire in safety upon
the foe.
In the forts the same activity, the same
preparations might be observed. Six were occu
pied by the marines. As the French fleet could
play only a very insignificant part in this war,
these men, with their guns of long range, were
summoned from the sea-ports ; and they were
destined to render their country splendid ser
vices in the capital. With marvellous rapidity
they fitted their own forts with cannon and
earthworks. At the beginning of the war the artillery were
terribly short of arms. By the regulations each
bastion should have been provided with eleven
pieces. At that time there were only three to
reply to the Krupp guns of the foe. By way of
reserve, Paris was habitually furnished with two
parks of artillery, each consisting of 250 pieces :
but not one piece remained, the whole supply
having been sent eastward. The ammunition
for the cannon was terribly limited, being only
sufficient to afford the guns ten shots apiece.
The lack of artillerymen was even more lament
able ; in some forts the entire force consisted of
a man in charge of the battery. Towards the
middle of October, however, the numbers of the
artillery were rapidly raised to 13,000 officers,
under-officers, and soldiers, thanks to the patriot
ism of retired officers of the marines and of the
Gardes Mobiles of the Seine, the Seine-et-Oise,
the Drome, the Rhone, the Loire Inferieure, and
the Pas-de-Calais.
By this time, too, 2,140 cannon had been
mounted at the city boundaries, and the in-
adequate supply of powder had been increased

the Siege of Paris.]

THE ADVANCE OF THE PRUSSIANS.

349

six-fold. The director of all this prodigious
activity was the indefatigable Minister of Public
Works, M. Dorian, whose services, moreover,
in ensuring the water supply were altogether
invaluable. Whilst such enormous progress was being
made with the works of defence, the enemy was
the reverse of idle. Its columns, meeting no

stock of provisions as his resources would allow :
rice, vermicelli, macaroni, potatoes, hams, sugar,
coffee, vanished in a twinkling from the grocers'
shops. Yet the purchasers knew better than to
eat freely of their provisions. They could not
tell how long the siege would last.
Meanwhile the Prussians advanced, the more
rapidly from feeling confident that no force could

GENERAL TROCHU.

obstacle on their way, were rapidly marching
towards Paris, The news of their approach
redoubled the activity of the Parisians. Every
where in the capital warehouses were improvised
in which were heaped up waggon-loads of hay
and straw, sacks of corn, and provisions of all
kinds. The church of Notre Dame des Champs
was turned into a forage-depot : in front of the
Ecole Militaire a large supply of mill-stones was
placed, in view of grinding the corn. The streets
were constantly traversed by immense herds of
oxen and flocks of sheep, which were about to
be stalled and penned on the exterior boulevards,
in the open spaces, and even in the avenues of
the Luxemburg. Everyone laid in as large a

bar their passage and from being familiarly ac
quainted with the country. High-roads, country
lanes, the veriest footpaths, were known to them,,
for in their ranks, to quote the words of a French
historian, " was that crowd of Germans who had
so long eaten the bread of France, and who were
now guiding the invaders. We had thought
them our guests, when they were simply our
spies." On the nth of September the Prussians-
were reported to have arrived at La Ferte, on
their way to Meaux ; at Rebais, Coulommeres,
Crecy, and even beneath the walls of Soissons.
On the 1 2th they entered Nogent-sur-Seine and
Provins, where the railway-stations were aban
doned in all haste. On the 14th the telegraph

3=:o

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles and

wires were cut between Melun and Mormant ;
and Prussian lancers, the so-called Uhlans — the
name being borrowed from the lancers of Poland
— showed themselves in the last-named town.
On the 15 th a train fell into the hands of the
Prussians as it arrived at Sends ; and on that
same day the stationmaster at Joinville tele
graphed to the Minister of the Interior — " Enemy
to the number of about 10,000 marching upon
Joinville. Our troops are concentrating on the
forts. In an hour the enemy will be here."
Almost at the same time the Governor of Paris
received the following despatch from Vincennes :
" The Uhlans are between Creteil and Neuilly-
sur-Marne. At this last point what seems to
be the advanced-guard of the column reported
this morning. Are informing and summoning
everyone." Paris now clearly understood that the enemy
was marching upon it, and in proportion as the
Prussians narrowed the circle of iron with which
they were surrounding Paris, the inhabitants
hurried from all sides to the capital, accom
panied by carriages laden with furniture hastily
.got together, with such articles of value as they
had had time to bring away. " It was a
sad procession," says a writer who witnessed the
scene. " The unhappy fugitives were abandoning
their peaceful homes to an enemy who would
destroy them. In what condition will they find
on their return the house and the little garden,
the grass plot and the beds of flowers in which
they took so much delight ? " As a matter of
fact, the deserted houses were the very ones, and
probably the only ones, that were plundered and
devastated. Where a proprietor or his repre
sentative, even if it were only a servant, had
been left, so that the foreign visitors could be
accommodated and their needs attended to, things
went on in a sufficiently regular manner. But
where no responsible person had been left in
charge, the soldiers, all of them young men of
from twenty to twenty-seven years of age, used,
in their rough play, the legs of chairs as missiles,
and fragments of furniture of all kinds as fire
wood. In some suburban towns, Villeneuve,
Saint-Georges, for instance, the houses occupied
by successive detachments were before long a
terrible scene of destruction — chairs, tables, and
looking-glasses all smashed to pieces. In houses,
on the other hand, where the owner or his sub
stitute remained, no damage was done. In some
cases the work of demolition was due not to
recklessness and wantonness alone, but also to
anger, the German invaders feeling indignant,

they said, at being regarded in the light of
barbarians. Then, as if to prove that they were
not savages, they behaved with a certain savagery.
It was on the 17th of September that Villeneuve,
Saint-Georges, and Choisy-le-Roy were for the
first time occupied, the object of the occupation
being to get possession of the lines to Lyons and
Orleans and dominate the course of the Seine so
as to establish communications with Versailles,
which was to be the headquarters of the in
vading army. The Prussians advanced without
fear, knowing well that with the exception of a
strong division commanded by General Vinoy,
which had advanced from Mezieres to Paris the
day after the battle of Sedan, there were no
regular troops to oppose them. The line of
investment was, in the first instance, very thin,
and it is said that some observation on the
subject was made to Moltke by a member of his
staff. " General Trochu could break through it,
no doubt," Moltke replied, " but he wid not try."
On the 1 8th of September, it was reported
that the Germans were approaching the walls
of the capital in three large bodies, and the
public was informed, through the columns of
the official journal, that it must not be surprised
if no further telegraphic communications reached
it from outside. The same evening a number of
dull, distant detonations were heard. The
bridges of St. Cloud, Sevres, and Vallancourt
had been blown up. Paris was being gradually
cut off from the rest of France, from the rest of
the world. No more communications, no more
despatches, no more news of any kind. The
only means of correspondence left to the great
city was by way of the air.
General Trochu, Governor of Paris, had
plenty of troops, or at least of armed men,
under his command. The number of regulars,
scarcely more than thirteen thousand, which
General Vinoy had brought from Mezieres, was
small indeed ; but these, with National Guards,
Gardes Mobiles, and volunteers of various kinds,
made up an entire force of 400,000, nearly twice
the number of the besiegers.
It may not be generally known, but it is
nevertheless the fact, that just after the battle
of Sedan, when the Prussians were already
advancing upon Paris, the command of the
Paris forts was offered to General Ripley,
who had distinguished himself during the
American Civil War by his energetic defence
of Charlestown. The general visited Paris, was
perfectly satisfied with all the material prepara
tions, but had no confidence in the National

the Siege of Paris.]

THE FRANCS -TIREURS.

3Si

Guards, whose slovenly appearance, absence of
discipline, and, above all, want of respect for
their officers, impressed him very unfavourably.
It must be remembered, however, that Paris had
but few regular troops in its garrison, only, in
fact, the division which, the day after Sedan,
General Vinoy had conducted from Mezieres, in
the immediate neighbourhood of Sedan, to the
capital. Plenty of brave men, moreover, had
joined the army as volunteers at the beginning of
the campaign ; and Paris had furnished a large
proportion of the Francs-Tireurs who rendered
such questionable service to the national cause.
"What a villain," says a writer on this subject,
" was the Franc-Tireur in the eyes of the
Prussians, who regarded him as a poacher of
the worst kind, shooting men without a licence ;
and what a hero in the eyes of his own country
men, and, above all, countrywomen, who saw
in him the ideal of a patriot ! " " Who are these
Francs-Tireurs ? " a Frenchman was one day
asked by the present writer, at that period one
of the war correspondents of the Times. " Young
men of good education who wish to defend their
country," he' replied. "Who are the Francs-
Tireurs?" the same correspondent inquired of
a young French lady. " Charming young men,
and as brave as lions," she replied ; "I have
the portrait of one of them in my brooch."
Almost as much nonsense has b^en written
about the Francs-Tireurs in the German papers
as about the Uhlans in the French. They were
not necessarily savages nor assassins, nor any
thing of the kind. In the occupied provinces
they were simply insurgents, and they led every
where the life of insurgents, belonged to the
same class or classes of society from which in
surgents usually come, and, like insurgents, were
adored by their own people and shot as felons
if they fell into the hands ofthe enemy.
The few I came across were certainly not the
kind, of persons likely to commit the acts
of violence and rapine with which the Francs-
Tireurs were generally credited. The Francs-
Tireurs I met were loungers from the Parisian
boulevards, who had put on the semblance of
a uniform and gone out to see whether they
could be of any use in stopping the advance
of the Prussians, and they would no -more
have committed an act of highway robbery
than General Garibaldi would have picked a
pocket. But side by side with the Francs-
Tireurs of good education- — the Francs-Tireurs
whose photographs were found worthy of being
.enclosed in lockets — there were Francs-Tireurs

of a lower type : there were escaped prisoners,
deserters, and fugitives, the last remnants of the
great armies that had from time to time been
cut in pieces, and the amalgam formed by these
different elements was doubtless not a nice one.
Even the gentlemanly Franc-Tireur, if fallen
into bad circumstances, might be a dangerous
person to meet; he would be ashamed to show
himself in the character of a robber, and from
sheer self-respect might begin by killing his
victim. The Prussians, however, could not, like the
young ladies of France, distinguish between the
noble-minded Franc-Tireur and the Franc-
Tireur who was a mere cut-throat. What they
required was that he should carry papers showing
that he belonged to some regularly organised
corps, that he should wear a uniform re
cognisable at gun-shot distance, and that the
distinctive marks of the uniform should be
" inseparable from the person." Let him comply
with these conditions, and the Franc-Tireur, if
he fell into the hands of the enemy, instead of
being shot or condemned to ten years' imprison
ment, was treated as a prisoner of war.
It seems hard to insist that William Tell
shall put on a uniform " recognisable at gun
shot distance," and that the distinctive signs of
the uniform worn by Masaniello shall be " in
separable from the person " ; but if William Tell
dresses like a civilian he places his enemy at a
notable disadvantage, and the same may be said
of Masaniello, if Masaniello has nothing military
about him but his cap, which he can get rid of
at a moment's notice and replace by a wide
awake or a cotton nightcap.
There were, I believe, some bodies of Francs-
Tireurs regularly incorporated in the French
army, and they, to the Prussians, were of course
like any other French soldiers. Such were
" Les partisans de Gers," who had account-books
showing that they were in Government service,
whose officers carried commissions, and whose
military character was admitted, though their
only "distinctive marks " were a red sash worn
over a black coat and a Calabrian hat. Neither,
then, of the " distinctive marks " was inseparable
from the person. It was evident, all the same,
that the partisans of Gers were men who had
assumed the character of soldiers in good faith,
with the intention of supporting it to the end.
But the original, typical Franc-Tireur carried
no papers, wore no recognisable uniform ; nor
were the chiefs of bands responsible to any
superior officer.

352

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles and

As for the individual members of such bands,
how were the Prussians to distinguish between
them and men shooting at other men from un
political motives ? And, apart from the customs
of war, would not the common law, strictly
administered, condemn them everywhere as
brigands ?
Why, then, did not the Francs-Tireurs, for

Sedan, the King of Prussia, advancing towards
Versailles, had established his headquarters at
Ferrieres. It was here on the 18th and 19th 01
September, 1870, in the chateau belonging to
Baron Rothschild, that Jules Favre, Vice-Pre
sident of the Government of National Defence
and Minister of Foreign Affairs, conferred with
Count Bismarck ; when the latter declared his

MAP OF THE FORTIFICATIONS AT THE 'SIEGE OF PARIS.

-jje Thiii^k iSoa JZs^zszz.

their own sake, form themselves into regular
bodies and never show except in uniform ?
The reason was simple enough. They did not
wish to be always soldiers. They desired now
and then to retire into private life, and to
profit by the privileges of the civilian. As troops,
moreover, in the service of the Government they
would have had to drill, to do regular military
duty, to subject themselves, in short, to disci
pline, for which, as a rule, they had no taste.
Otherwise, why, instead of becoming Francs-
Tireurs, did they not join the Garde Mobile or
the regular army, from which they could, in the
most legitimate manner, have been detached for
partisan warfare ?
In less than a fortnight after the battle of

readiness to sign an armistice on condition that
three fortresses, Strasburg, Phalsburg, and Toul,
were placed in the hands of the Germans. To
the minister who (borrowing a phrase from the
oath of the Templars) had declared that "not
one inch of our territory, not one stone of our
fortresses should ever be ceded," these conditions
were for the moment obviously unacceptable.
On the 20th of September the Germans took
possession of Versailles, which was unable to
offer the least resistance, and soon afterwards
the town became the headquarters of the Great
General Staff, with General von Moltke at its
head ; also of the King of Prussia and Count
Bismarck. Versailles now became the headquarters of

THE PRUSSIANS ENTERING PARIS.

24

the Siege of Paris.]

M. DELEROT'S WORK.

353

correspondents from all parts of the world, and a
grave question — that of the maintenance of war-
vessels in the Black Sea — having arisen between
England and Russia, it was to Versailles that
Mr. Odo Russell was sent, on the part of the
English Foreign Office, t6 make representations
to Count Bismarck, who had undertaken, in his
own language, the part of " honest broker "
between the Powers at variance.
An interesting account of the occupation of
Versailles by the Germans was published three
years after the conclusion of peace. It would be
useful for the future historian, whose possible
wants have been so much studied of late years, if
the municipal authorities of other French towns
which during the war of 1870 fell into the power
of the Germans would put together and publish
the official documents relating tc the occupation,
as the authors of this volume have done in
regard to the occupation of Versailles. Strictly
speaking, the authors of the work in question
are the Prussians themselves. But the materials,
in the form of requisitions, summonses to appear,
•condemnations to pay, proclamations, menaces
and occasional remissions of punishment, were
codected by M. Rameau, Mayor of Versailles,
and by him entrusted for publication to
M. Delerot, who, considering the hatred he felt
and was bound to feel for the conquerors and
¦oppressors of his country, showed commendable
moderation in his manner of presenting the
papers. Invasion must always be intolerable to
the invaded. No Brussels conferences or Geneva
•conventions, however much they may alleviate
the miseries of the battle-fields, can soften the
hard lines of a foreign occupation in its general
features ; and M. Delerot would not be more —
he would be something less — than human were
he able to take a perfectly just view of the
•conduct of the Prussians in France. The truth
is that they behaved badly if we judge them by
a high ideal standard ; admirably if we judge
them by the standard of what has been done by
former invaders engaged in invasions on the same
vast scale and of the same momentous character
as that of 1870.
The book in question is too full of matter for
¦one to give an idea of its contents, either by
means of notes or by a connected series of
extracts. But some notion of its general char
acter may be conveyed by the reproduction of
a few stories from it.
The king, to begin with the most important
of all the personages assembled at Versailles, was
in the habit of receiving anonymous letters from
47

all parts of the occupied country, and it would
appear that he was quite ready to answer them.
Not, however, knowing the authors of the epistles,
he was obliged to content himself with writing
notes for replies on the margin of these curious
documents. To one correspondent, who charges
him (on the strength of an accusation originally
made by M. Jules Favre) with having declared,
on entering France, that he made war " not on
the French people, but on the Emperor Napo
leon," he justly answers, "Je n'ai jamais dit
cela." To a correspondent who insults and
curses him, and who signs himself " Un Francais
qui ne t'aime pas," he quiedy remarks, " II
me semble ! " One writer addresses him, in
allusion to the siege of Strasburg, as " Sire Bom-
bardeur ! " Another, after exhausting all the
terms of abuse he can think of in the French
language, calls him, in plain English, "old
rascal." Mention must not be omitted of the part
played, in connection with the invasion, by the
money-lender attached to the Prussian forces.
He was no miserable camp-fodower bent on
securing much plunder by small advances of
ready money, nor private bill-discounter prepared
to "oblige " officers with loans on notes of hand.
He was an officially recognised financial agent,
representing a syndicate of foreign bankers, who,
to enable the municipalities and the occupied
towns to execute the requisitions and pay the
contributions imposed on them, offered, with a
generosity rare in time of war, to lend the
necessary funds in return for promises to pay,
secured on the local taxes. The arrival of
Herr Betzold was announced in the Moniteur de
Versailles, the official journal published by the
Germans throughout the occupation ; and a
few days afterwards his benevolent project for
enabling destitute French municipalities to
satisfy the most exorbitant Prussian demands
was made known through the columns of the
little sheet, which thus found itself transformed
for a time into a financial newspaper. A second
time attention was called to the advantages to be
derived from the scheme ; but neither the elo
quent articles of the Moniteur de Versailles nor
the friendly personal representations of Herr
Betzold himself had any effect upon the munici
pality. The mayor refused to pledge the future
resources of the town, or rather, refused to pledge
them to the Prussians. A loan was found in
dispensable, but the bonds were offered to and
taken by the inhabitants. The interest was fixed
at five per cent., principal and interest both to

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

' Versailles and

be paid off within three months of signing the
peace. While on the subject of contributions and the
means taken to enable the conquered populations
to pay them, I may point out — what some
professors of international law are perhaps un
aware of — that the Prussians no longer recognise
the right of maritime Powers in time of war to
seize merchant vessels belonging to the enemy.
The contribution of 1,000,000 francs per occupied
department, to which M. Delerot devotes some
pages, was ordered by way of reprisal, and as an
indemnity for the losses inflicted upon German
commerce by French men-of-war.
The most serious charge brought by M.
Delerot against the Prussians is that at Bougival
they attacked and wounded a certain number of
the inhabitants, on the ground, and apparentiy
under the distinct impression, that they had
been fired at with an air-gun : an instrument
which, as M. Delerot assures us, is found only in
scientific laboratories. The Prussians to whom
the outrage in question is attributed were tem
porarily retreating in face of a sortie from Paris ;
and according to M. Delerot, they simply deluded
themselves into a belief that the inhabitants of
Bougival had assumed towards them an attitude
which, under the circumstances, inhabitants are
likely enough to adopt.
The fact that a formal trial was instituted, and
that it resulted in two of the inhabitants being
found guilty and shot, would seem to show that
there must have been some sort of evidence
against them, though M. Delerot will have it
that the Prussians were under a delusion on the
subject. It is clear, however, from the facts,
adduced as such by M. Delerot himself, that
the Prussians wished, not so much to act
with severity as to be thought severe. The
object, indeed, of most punishments in civilised
warfare is, not to punish offenders retributively
and in a spirit of vengeance for what they have
done, but to deter other possible offenders from
imitating their example. No one imagines that
there is anything morally wrong in a civilian's
wishing to defend his country. But if troops do
not molest the civil population, they consider
that they have a right to require in return that
civilians shall not molest them. One day,
then, when a number of peasants taken in
arms were brought to Versailles, the Prussians
announced loudly their intention to shoot them.
But M. Delerot and his friends observed that,
instead of being taken to the place of execution,
the peasants were imprisoned. On leaving

Versailles, the Prussian authorities gave up to
the mayor a list of the persons thrown into
gaol during their occupation ; and M. Delerot
republishes it, with the names of the prisoners,
the offences charged against them, and so on.
The list certainly shows that many persons were
incarcerated on trivial accusations : among others
a servant-girl for having returned a box on the ears
to an officer ; someone else for having been found
" in possession of a diary containing insulting ex
pressions addressed to the King of Prussia " ; a
third for having recognised a Prussian spy ; a
fourth for having " followed Count Bismarck."
M. Delerot would, perhaps, have preferred that
this last victim of precautionary measures should
have been allowed to pursue Count Bismarck,
who, walking out alone, was sometimes completely
mobbed ; so that on one occasion he reproached
his pursuers with their ignorance ofthe " usages
of war," adding that if some impetuous young
officer found himself surrounded in such a
manner, he would probably make use of his
sword. Thus, if Count Bismarck ended by
objecting altogether to followers, he did not
do so until they had become a , serious
nuisance. The arrest of a man who had "recognised " a
Prussian spy is interesting as an example of an
action perfectly innocent, and, indeed, praise
worthy in itself, but which of necessity entailed
upon its author a period of forced seclusion. A
spy recognised, even by one individual, is a spy
lost unless the individual who has recognised
him be at once removed from public life.
To a -large extent, M. Delerot's work, inde
pendently of the fact that it is well put together
and contains a mass of valuable and interesting
information, is impartial. " Impartiality ! " ex
claims Victor Hugo in his " Napoleon le Petit."
" Strange virtue for an historian, which Tacitus
never possessed ! " Thereupon Victor Hugo
proceeds to " dechirer " his victim " en style de
Juvenal." M. Delerot claims to have seen things,
and to state them precisely as they took place.
But, with the best intentions, such an attitude
would be impossible for a citizen and official
of Versaides writing the moment after the occu
pation had come to an end, with the wound
constantly and inevitably inflicted on his patriot
ism still fresh. He has nothing extenuated, and
he has set down much, if not in malice, at least
in anger. But he has striven, though not always
with success, to render justice to the Prussians,
especially to- the Crown Prince, Count Moltke,
and even Prince Bismarck.

Lhe Commune.]

THE COMMUNARD MOVEMENT.

355

CHAPTER XLVIII.
VERSAILLES AND THE COMMUNE.
The Communists or Communards — The "Internationale"' — Bismarck and the National Guard — The Municipal Elections — The Insurreclion-
Thiers — Paris During the Commune — Concluding Remarks.

N

PRINCE BISMARCK.
(From a Photograph by Loescher
and Petsch.)

O sooner had
peace been
signed between
France and Germany
than a desperate con
flict took place in
the streets of the
capital, which led to
a two months' war
between the regular
troops established at
Versailles and a mass
of federated bat
talions of the Na
tional Guard in
Paris itself. The
Communards are known in England as the
" Communists " ; and, having after a time
adopted certain theories on the subject of
labour and the division of property as part
of their programme, they are generally looked
upon as Communists in the socialistic sense
of the word. The Communard movement of
1871 was, above all, a revolutionary attempt to
establish absolute municipal self-government in
Paris. It recalled, then, from the first the
Commune of the great Revolution, when Petion
was Mayor of Paris, with Robespierre and
Danton among his councillors and officials. The
Paris Commune of the first Revolution declared
all other authorities suspended. It joined the
extreme party known as the Mountain (from
occupying the highest benches in the Assembly),
organised the movement which resulted in the
fall of the moderate, well-intentioned Girondists,
and remained faithful to Robespierre throughout
the Reign of Terror until the overthrow of the
revolutionary tyrant. The very name of Com
mune was then abolished, and in lieu of a central
municipal power, Paris was divided into twelve
distinct municipalities.
Count Bismarck at Versailles had recom
mended the disarming of the National Guard.
His well-meant advice was regarded with suspicion,
though, as he had foreseen, the revolutionary
spirit of the force in question soon asserted itself.
Already on the 18th of March the National

Guard had resisted the action of some Line
regiments. The Municipal Elections of the 26th
proved favourable to the projected Communal
Government, and, on the 29th, the Commune
was formally proclaimed. The Red Republicans,
leaders in every revolutionary movement, had,
since the dethronement of Napoleon III. and
the proclamation of the Republic in September,
1870, never ceased to attack what they con
sidered the conservative character ofthe Govern
ment of National Defence ; and in demanding
measures of a more democratic kind, they aimed
in particular at decentralisation, municipal in
dependence, and the introduction of a federated
system made up of self-governing communes.
These views were supported in good faith by
politicians of the extreme Republican side. But
they were adopted also, and spread abroad with
many pernicious additions, by political agitators,
revolutionists, and adventurers of the worst kind.
The members ofthe "Internationale " — a society
for the promotion of revolution everywhere, of
which but little has lately been heard — did
their best to fan the insurrectionary flame; and
soon every form of discontent had its represent
atives, and every impossible chimera its supporters
among the leaders of what was still called the
Commune. The vagabondism which gave to the Commune
so many adherents had been generated and
developed during the siege, and there were
numbers of men in Paris, composing the worst
portion of the National Guard, who saw in the
end of the war the end also of their living at
Government expense, and who looked forward
with dismay to the return of regular work, the
enforcement of creditors' claims, the collection
of rents and taxes, and a hundred other incon
veniences which they had evaded during the
war. On the triumphal entry of the German
army into Paris, March ist, 1871, detachments
of the National Guard had, by express stipula
tion, though contrary to Bismarck's advice, been
allowed to remain under arms for the preserva
tion of order in the streets, and a considerable
quantity of cannon having been entrusted to their
care (in order to prevent its falling into the hands

3-b

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles and

of the Germans, who by the terms of the armistice
had every right to it), they afterwards, when sum
moned to do so by General Aurelle de Paladines,
refused to give it up. It was on this occasion
that the National Guard came into collision
with the regular troops, who had been instructed
to receive the artillery from them. Their de
termination not to part with the field-pieces
placed beneath their protection was at first
attributed to an honourable patriotic feeling.
But the National Guard lost no time in seeking
ammunition for their artillery, and they took
possession of several magazines. They were
attacked by some bodies of regular troops, but
succeeded in giving a good account of their
opponents, some of whom were induced to join
them. A Central Committee of the National
Guard was now formed, and inflammatory pro
clamations were put forward demanding that
the National Guard should have the right to
elect its own officers ; that the daily war pay of
one franc and a half should be secured to each
National Guard until he could obtain work, and
that General Aurelle de Paladines should be dis
placed in order to make room for a commander
of their own choosing. In regard to general
politics, they demanded universal suffrage and
the formal subjection of all military power to
the civil authority of the Paris municipality :
Paris commune, that is to say.
The chief of the new National Government,
M. Thiers, saw that the time for suppressing the
movement in favour ofthe Commune had arrived.
The National Guard had carried their artillery
to the heights of Montmartre, and some ten
thousand of the regular troops now took up posi
tions of attack at the base of the hill. They then
pressed upwards to the summit, overcame the guard
placed outside the insurgents' camp, took the
cannon, and made several hundred prisoners.
Having once got possession of the cannon, the
regular troops do not seem to have known what
to do with their capture. News of the affair
spread rapidly through the workmen's quarters
of Montmartre and Belleville, and the alarm
having been beaten, several battalions of National
Guards mustered and marched to the hill on
whose crest the cannon still remained. One
of the regiments entrusted with the custody
of the guns fraternised with the assailants,
and the victory of the National Guards was
thus made easy. The insurgents remained in
possession of the guns, and the few troops who
remained loyal to their colours were allowed to
withdraw. Soon afterwards, ' on the same day,

a small body of regular troops was cut off from
the main column by a party of insurgents, and
General Clement Thomas, former commander
of the National Guard of Paris, was taken
prisoner and shot. By mid-day on the 1 8th,
the insurgents were in full possession of Mont
martre, and towards evening, the Government
troops having been driven from the field, they
penetrated into other quarters, and now for the
first time established themselves in the Place
Vendome. Soon after dark, they occupied the
Hotel de Ville without encountering any resist
ance. By midnight they had made it their head
quarters, the regular troops having meanwhile
returned to Versailles. On the morning of the
19th, the federated Guards held every point
within their power, and the Central Committee
were the rulers of the city. The Government
over which M. Thiers presided was already estab
lished at Versailles.
Nothing could be stranger than the way in
which the forts around Paris were now occupied.
Those on the eastern and north-eastern side were
stid in the hands of the Germans. The regular
Government held Mont-Valerien, the most im- .
portant of all the forts. The other forts had fallen
into the power of the federated battalions of the
National Guard, who now made preparations for
defending the city against a second siege.
Elections were at this iuncture made to a
municipal assembly ; the Commune was declared
to be the only true and legitimate Government
of the city ; and a Journal Officiel de la Com
mune de Paris was founded, in which a series of
decrees was immediately published. The old
revolutionary calendar was restored, March 29th
being announced as " the eighth of Germinal, year
79." Laws were issued requiring every able-bodied
citizen, from nineteen to forty, to serve in the
National Guard ; a partial remission of overdue
rents was granted ;. three years' time was given for
payment in full of overdue notes and bills, and the
daily pay of the National Guards was raised to
two and a half francs. All articles, moreover,
that had been pawned for a sum not exceeding
twenty francs were to be returned to their
owners ; pensions were to be paid to the widows
and orphans of those falling in the insurrection;
and all factories whose owners had left Paris were
to become the property of the workmen employed
in them.
The Commune now proceeded to organisation,
and, after many lively debates in the Assembly, an
executive committee was formed, when the conduct
of the Communal Government assumed a definite

the Commune.]

THE COMMUNAL GOVERNMENT.

357

shape. Ministers were appointed, and one of the
leading members of the Commune — he happened
to 'be the best-dressed man amongst them — was
named, at a time when Paris was cut off from all
communication with the outer world, " Director
of External Affairs"— " Directeur des Affaires

encourage the Communal Government to renewed
efforts ; and on the day following the first check
nearly 90,000 men, divided into three columns,
were sent towards Versailles. The centre column,
under Bergeret, an American, was to advance in the
direction of Meudon, covered by the southern forts

M. THIERS.
(From a Photograph by Appert, Paris.)

Exterieures." " Ce monsieur,"- said Rochefort,
when he heard of the appointment, " a plus
d'exterieur que d'affaires."
The general cry on the part of the Communal
leaders was now to march upon Versailles and
"crush the Assembly." The first encounter,
however, with regular troops undeceived the
National Guard as to the kind of reception
they would encounter. They had expected
fraternisation, but met only with defeat. Their
first repulse, however, had little effect but to

in possession of the Commune ; the left, under
Eudes, was to approach Versailles by way of
Vaugirard, Montrouge, and Chatillon, while the
right, under Duval, was to pass directly under the
guns of Mont-Valerien, which was believed to be
evacuated, and advance upon Nanterre and Rueil.
Neither column, however, had marched very far
before it encountered disaster. Bergeret was
met by a division of regulars at Meudon, and at
once driven back ; the left, under Eudes, was
stopped by a corps of sailors and marines and,

358

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles and

after a fierce encounter, compelled to retreat.
The worst fate of all was reserved for Duval's
column, which, on approaching Mont-Valerien,
was surprised at close quarters by a terrible dis
charge of artillery from the fort believed to be
abandoned. The middle part of the column was
annihilated, and the leading regiments, equally
with the rear, took to flight. Duval himself was
captured and shot.
Bergeret's place in the army was now taken
by a Pole, Ladislas Dombrowski, who was
also made Commandant of Paris. Another
reign of terror seemed at hand. Requisitions
were made upon public institutions of various
kinds, including churches ; and several rich
men, accused of disloyalty to the Commune, had
their property seized and confiscated. Numbers
of Communist prisoners taken in action had
been shot, and it was now declared that in
putting to death unarmed soldiers the Versailles
authorities had transgressed the rules of civilised
warfare. The Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur
Darboy, with other ecclesiastics and civilians of
eminence, were seized as hostages ; and it was
announced that for every Communist prisoner
put to death three hostages would be executed.
Monseigneur Darboy was one of the first victims
under this decree. Tragic, indeed, has been the
fate of three archbishops of Paris in succession :
Monseigneur Affre, who perished on the barri
cades in the days of June, 1848, as he was seeking
to pacify the insurgents ; Monseigneur Sibour,
assassinated by a fanatical priest ; Monseigneur
Darboy, shot in cold blood by the Communists.
M. Thiers, who had erected the forts of Paris
partly against foreign invasion, partly, it was
thought, against a possible insurrection in Paris
itself, enjoyed within a few months the opportunity
of testing their utility in both characters. As a
protection against assault from the outside they
had proved ineffective, though they need not
have done so had Paris been approached within
a reasonable time by a relieving army strong
enough to break through the lines of invest
ment. Against the forces of the Commune they
were found very serviceable ; and, when the final
advance was made from Versailles, the forts
played an important part in covering the attack.
The Versailles troops were under the command
of Marshal MacMahon, who retained his popu
larity with the French by reason of his being,
as a matter of fact, the only prominent French
leader who had not signed a capitulation or in
any way capitulated ; though, had he not been
severely wounded on the morning of the battle

of Sedan, he would have had no choice but to
surrender on the terms which his successor in com
mand, General de Wimpffen, was compelled to ac
cept. Nevertheless, while. General de Wimpffen,
Marshal Bazaine, and General Uhrich, Com
mandant of Strasburg, were stigmatised, with all
the commandants of the numerous fortified
towns which surrendered under severe bombard
ment, as unworthy of the trust reposed in them,
Marshal MacMahon, by the mere accident of his
having been incapacitated at the beginning of the
most critical battle of the whole war, was regarded
as a hero without fear and without reproach.
To return to Versailles — the regular troops
occupied point after point, until at last they were
prepared for a final advance. Rossel, an artillery
officer of considerable talent, had now replaced
Cluseret as " delegate for war." Dombrowski re
tained the chief command. But the Commune
was greatly in want of leaders, and numbers of
battalions were without chiefs. On the 10th of
May M. Thiers' private house was demolished,
and on May 16th the Vendome column was over
thrown. The insurgents, under the pressure of
the Versailles troops, became almost as frantic as
were the revolutionists of the Reign of Terror
when they feared the invasion of all Europe.
The most bitter hatred was expressed against the
Versailles Government by popular orators har
anguing crowds in the streets and in the great
republican clubs. Bands of women, as during
the revolution of 1789, marched through the
public thoroughfares, carrying arms and exciting
the people against the " assassins of Versailles."
On the 14th of May several forts were
captured from the Communists ; and on the
2 ist everything seemed ready for a general
attack. Proclamations were posted on the walls
of Paris calling upon citizens to fight to the
last ; and officers rode through the streets
inciting all they met to determined resistance.
These appeals proved ineffective in the richer
quarters of Paris, where the arrival of the Ver
sailles troops was looked forward to with joy.
But they met with the fullest response in the
workmen's districts, where even women and
children fought at the barricades. Begun on
Sunday, May 21st, the operations of the Ver
sailles army were continued on Monday and
Tuesday. The troops had been divided into
five columns, which were to form a cordon round
the city, and, attacking vigorously at certain
points in the circumference, were gradually to
concentrate so as to hem in the insurgents on all
sides — the plan, in short, of the battle of Sedan

the Commune.]

PARIS DURING THE COMMUNE.

359

applied by Frenchmen to other Frenchmen.
On Tuesday morning, May 23rd, the attack was
begun. The Versailles troops were successful at
all points ; but one of the columns met with a
desperate resistance on the plateau of Mont
martre, which was not taken until after severe
fighting. Close to Montmartre the Place Pigalle,
where Dombrowski had his headquarters, still
held out. -It was surrounded by a barricade,
which was defended with the utmost energy for
two hours, until the Communist leader fell
mortally wounded. Then the resistance did not
cease ; but before night the important stronghold
was in possession of the Versailles troops.
There was desperate fighting, too, in the Place
Vendome, which was at last taken by an over
whelming assault made at the same time from
the Rue de la Paix on the one side and the
Rue de Castiglione on the other. The Place
de l'Opera was also the scene of a sanguinary
struggle. It was not until Wednesday morning
that the Bourse was taken, and the only im
portant points left unoccupied were now the
Hotel de Ville and the Chateau d'Eau.
Meanwhile the insurgents, gradually falling
back, had, in their powerlessness, gratified their
rage by the most barbarous means. Organised
incendiarism had been resorted to, and fires^now
broke out in every part of Paris. Fires which might
possibly have been caused by shells had been
noticed on the Tuesday, and now, on Wednesday,
the Tuileries was in flames. Soon the Palais
Royal, a whole side of the Rue Royale, and then,
in an easterly direction, the Hotel de Ville, were
found to be burning. A panic spread through
the city, among the Versailles troops as well as
the people. It was repeated from mouth to
mouth that the Communists had sworn to burn
all Paris by fire kindled with petroleum ; and a
series of arrests and executions was now begun,
which soon amounted to the indiscriminate
slaughter of all who chanced to fall under
the slightest suspicion. " It was only neces
sary," says an American writer, Dr. Edward
L. Burlingame, "that a man or woman should
be pointed at as petroleur or petroleuse ; they
were shot down without inquiry or mercy.
Houses were searched, and those hidden in them
were brought into the streets and killed. Many
entirely innocent shared the fate of the leaders,
like Vermorel and Rigault, both of whom fell by
these summary executions. A court-martial was
established in the centre of the city, but even for
those brought before it there was in most cases
only a hurried form of trial. New fires were

continually lighted, either by concealed incen
diaries — of whom many were taken with the
implements for their work in their hands — or by
petroleum bombs from the barricades and the
districts still in possession of the Communists.
During this week of conflagrations there were
consumed or partially burned, besides a great
number of private houses, the Palais de Justice,
the Prefecture of Police, the Palace of the Legion
of Honour, the Porte St. Martin Theatre, the
Grenier d'Abondance, several churches, many
mercantile establishments and minor public build
ings : all this, besides the more formidable con
flagrations at the Hotel de Ville, the Tuileries
and the Louvre."
During the whole of Wednesday, in spite of the
distraction caused by the fires, the troops had
steadily continued the manoeuvres by which they
were gradually closing about the last insurgent
strongholds. Around the burning hotel the Conu
munists contested every step of advance with
desperate bravery. It was late on Wednesday
night before the building, then in flames in
four places, was at last abandoned. On the left
bank of the Seine the resistance was still more
obstinate, and it was only on Thursday after
noon that the Versailles troops succeeded in
driving the insurgents from their last strong
position on the Buttes-aux-Cailles, after the
bloodiest contest since their entry into the city.
Still fighting, the Communists fell back to the
manufactory of the Gobelins, which they set on
fire. Here was their last desperate defence on
this side of the river. Prisoners in their hands
were forced to man the barricades, and after
wards were shot down after freedom had been
scoffingly promised them. After a violent
struggle the Versailles troops gained possession
of the whole district, and with it of the last
contested spot on the left bank.
On the right bank the troops were operating
towards the Faubourg St. Antoine, and especially
the Place de la Bastille, which was taken on
Friday, when the insurgents retired to the
cemetery of Pere Lachaise. The quarter of
Belleville, inhabited almost exclusively by work
men, resisted with the greatest ferocity, and on
Friday night it was still unconquered by the
Versailles troops, who now formed a semicircle
around it. On Saturday, May 27th, there were
still barricades to take in the Faubourg du
Temple ; and the Communists had yet to be
dislodged from the cemetery of Pere Lachaise.
A fire, too, was kept up by a battery on the
Buttes Chaumont. On the evening of Saturday,

360

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

["Versailles and

May 27th, General Vinoy took the cemetery by
storm. The last defence of the Communists was
made at a barricade in the Faubourg du Temple,
which, in spite of constant attacks, held out until
Sunday at noon. At five o'clock on Sunday
afternoon the firing had ceased throughout

Versailles now lost its military importance as
headquarters for the army. But the Assembly
continued to sit there, and did not until some
time afterwards hold its deliberations within the
wads of Paris.
" In five or ten years, as soon as you are strong

MARSHAL MACMAHON.
(From a Photograph by Appert, Paris.)

the city, and a notice from Marshal MacMahon
was posted on the walls announcing that the
civil war was at an end. The dead were scat
tered through half the streets of Paris, the
hospitals were crowded with the wounded on both
sides, and nearly twenty thousand prisoners were
in the hands of the Government. The great
majority of the ordinary prisoners were set at
liberty ; but a considerable number were shot on
the plain of Satory, near Versailles. Many more
were transported to penal colonies.

enough," said Count Bismarck to General de
Wimpffen, during the negotiations which fol
lowed the battle and preceded the surrender of
Sedan, " you will attack us again, and we must
be prepared for you." This prediction, happily,
has not been fulfilled. The words " as soon as you
are strong enough " are somewhat oracular in
character ; but, as a matter of fact, France has
remained at peace far longer than was thought
probable either by her friends or by her
enemies. The peace of 181 5 lasted only fifteen

the Commune.]

PARIS DURING THE COMMUNE.

36i

years, and it was first broken by the French
themselves. The peace which followed the
Franco-German War has already endured for
twenty-three years.
Paris seemed to have escaped from the
murderous grip of its foe only to commit suicide.
But the deeds of the Commune, however shock
ing, were not altogether without precedent in the
history of France ; and, were it now worth while
to seek them, excuses might almost be found for
the desperation of those days.
The "pyromania" by which the fanatical
incendiaries of the Commune may well be said
to have been inspired had shown itself before in
French history ; so, too, had the panic by which
the pyromania of 1871 was naturally followed.
In the sixteenth century, on the 23rd of May,
1524, the town of Troyes was burnt down ; men
in disguise had, it was said, excited children to
kindle the flames. As soon as the news reached
Paris, people lost their heads. Some terrible plot
was supposed to have been formed, the object
of which was to destroy the whole of Paris.
Accordingly, just as happened three centuries
and a half later under the Commune, the citizens
came out to guard their own houses, and began
by stopping up the holes opening into their
cellars. Under the Commune it was said that
slowly burning sulphur matches were thrpwn
into all the cellars, and every woman who was
seen carrying a basket or a milk-can was called a
petroleuse. In 1524 it was forbidden by public
proclamation to light the customary bonfires on
the feast of St. John ; and during the Commune
it was imprudent for several days to light a
lucifer in the streets.
During the reign of Louis XIV., an English
traveller remarked that no people were more
industrious than the Parisians, nor gave less
money, because he said they hastened to spend
all they earned in food, drink and clothes. The
vanity of dress, the love of ornaments, and, above
all, of decorations in the official sense of the
word, has always tormented the Parisians. The
passion for equality still shows itself in France by
everyone wishing to wear a gold stripe on his
trousers or a- feather in his cap. No such
brilliant display of fantastic uniforms was ever
seen as during the Commune. The officers of
' Dombrowski's and Bergeret's staff, bumping
on their horses as they pranced along the
boulevards, did credit to the imagination of
the costumiers ; and after the suppression of the
Commune, one of the first orders issued by
Marshal MacMahon dealt with this strange abuse

— indulgence in unauthorised uniforms — which
were condemned collectively as fancy dresses,
costumes de fantaisie. At the beginning of the
First Revolution the same phenomenon had
been seen.
The women were no less ridiculous than the
men, as they preceded or followed the battalions in
military jackets laden with the most grotesque
ornaments. These viragoes were the' lineal de
scendants of the " tricoteuses " of the First
Revolution, and of The'roigne de Mericourt.
" The wife of a colonel walks about with a red
cap on her head," writes the author of a book on
the events ofthe Reign of Terror, entitled " Un
Temoin de la Revolution." "She carries pistols
in her belt, and boasts publicly of the number
of persons she killed during the massacres of
August and September." There was apparent
novelty in the permission given by the Com
mune to tenants not to pay their rent ; but this
eminently popular measure had been anticipated
by the Council of Union in the days of the
League. If there was nothing new in the excesses of
the Commune, neither is there in the accusa
tions, often groundless, made against the luxury
and immorality of the Parisians. Everything
that has been said about the demoralisation of
France under the Second Empire had been said
about the demoralisation of France under Louis
Philippe, not to speak of the 17th and 18th
centuries, whose morals and manners are only
too abundantly described in a whole series of
memoirs. "The industrial and commercial activity of
this epoch, the stimulus it gave to all material
appetites, brought about," says M. Lavallee in
his "History of Paris," " a competition without
limits, the most hideous speculation, a more
shameless, more barefaced love of money than
in the time of the Regency or of the Directory."
M. Lavallee, however, is here writing not of the
Paris of Napoleon IIL, but of the Paris of Louis
Philippe. "The more civilisation is developed," say?
M. Maxime Ducamp,* " the more reproaches
of this kind will be made, and apparently in
all sincerity. The discovery of the precious
metals, which have gradually become abund
ant, has given to the world excessive wealth ;
wealth has created wants, and some of these
wants have become habitual. Every effort is
made to satisfy them. To demand from a rich
nation a life of abnegation and poverty, is to
* " Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie."

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

[Versailles and the Commune.

demand from the human being more than his
nature permits. A man will without murmur
ing live on oatmeal and horseflesh when he is
constrained to do so by necessity, but in the
ordinary course of life he prefers wheaten bread
and beef-steak. People are said to have been
very virtuous at Sparta. But the Spartans
honoured theft : a proof of extreme poverty or
of inconceivable idleness."
This wealth and this luxury which moralists,
severe upon other people, condemn with violence,
have not been without influence in softening
manners, and they have brought about, to take
only a hygienic view, a notable prolongation of
human life. In lieu of rookeries in which whole
families used to rot, in hovels without sun or
air, Paris now possesses broad streets with
healthy houses which are flooded with light and
oxygen, to say nothing of an abundant water
supply. This wealth does not afford immoral
pleasures alone. It has trebled the productive
power of Parisian workmen by substituting for
their black bread of other days a substantial
reinvigorating diet. The consumption of meat,
unmistakable sign of general prosperity, in
creases every year. Charitable institutions pro
vide attendance for indigent persons at their
own homes, and vast hospitals, at which the
first physicians of the day think it an honour
to serve, receive the sick in numbers and
under conditions never dreamed of in the good
old time.
The general health of Paris cannot but profit

by the intelligent and beneficent care of the
indigent sick, and, were not Paris a wealthy city,
the ameliorations introduced into her hospitals
would have been impossible. Without the
riches produced by so much solicitude for material
interests, could the Prefecture of the Seine have
assigned 30,000,000 francs for primary education
in Paris ?
There have never been fewer assassinations or
fewer robberies in Paris than at present. The
crimes committed to-day, in the midst of a popu
lation of some two millions, are only one-tenth
as numerous as those which darkened the period
when France counted no more than 600,000
inhabitants. Whether the moral character of
the public has proportionately improved is
another question. Police vigilance and pre
ventives of all kinds serve doubtless as a check.
The brilliant gas which has been substituted
for flickering oil-lamps, the spacious thorough
fares which have replaced obscure lanes and
alleys, have contributed enormously to the
safety of the citizen. Each year in Paris the
police effect thirty or forty thousand arrests — a
fact which proves, not indeed that the metropolis
has grown eminently moral, but at least that it is
well protected. And it is in proportion as the
wealth of the nation increases, that the protective
organisation of the city can be maintained in
greater perfection. In this sense the luxurious
wealth which certain moralists so deeply lament,
is an inestimable boon even to the poorest
section of the community.

INDEX.

' Abailard, and his students, I., 355 ; his
house and his love story, II. , 156
Abailard and Heloise, Monument to, II.,
156
Abbey of Longcharap and its founder, I.,
219
Abbey of Saint-Magloire, I., 314
Abd-el-Kader and the scene with General
Bugeaud, I., 75, 76
Academicians, The, and the oyster-
woman, II., 7, 8
Academie Franchise : Mercier's opinion,
'1 37, 38; and composers of operas,
118; origin, II., 55; constitution, 55,
56; M. Arsene Houssaye's "The
Forty-first Chair," 56 ; celebrated men
who were not members, 56, 57 ; funds
and prizes, 58
Academie Royale de Musique, I., 87 ;
Assassination of the Duke of Berri at
the, 90
Achard, Amedee, fights a duel, with Paolo
Fiorentino, I., 61
Actors, Denial of the rites of burial to,
I., 58, 111-113 ; imprisoned, 176
Actresses, sent to prison, I., 56, 58, 176 ;
an excommunicated class, 58 ; Voltaire
on the public opinion of, 58 ; their cos
tumes, 322-324
Adrien de Valois, Burial-place of, I., 299
Adulteration of foods, II., 314
Affre, Monseigneur, his assassination, II.,
66, 247, 249
Agricultural produce, II., 167
Agricultural proprietors, II., 167
Alaux, M., and the Folies Dramatiques
Theatre, I., 85
Algeria as a training-ground for generals,
I., 75
Altar of Patriotism, I., 232, 233
. Alva, Duke of, and the massacre of
St. Bartholomew, I., 22
Amaury, and his followers, I., 251, 252
Ambigu-Comique Theatre, I., 86
Americans in Paris, II. , 13-16
Ancelot, librarian of the Arsenal Library,
I., 290
Andelot, and the attack on the Guises, I.,
22
Andre des Arts, St., Church of, II., 107
Anecdotes, of duellists, I., 353, 354 ; of
students, 359 ; of Bohemians, 367, 368 ;
of cookery and dining, 374-376 ; of
coachmen, II., 1-3 ; of oyster-women,
7 I of domestic servants, 22 ; of Parisian
gaiety and wit, 24-27 ; of peasants, 169 ;
of Talleyrand, 241, 242 ; of beggars,
324, 326, 327
Anglais, Cafe, I., 122, 123

Angouleme, Count of, I., 23 ; and the
Hotel Lamoignon, 68
Angouleme, Duchess of, and Mme. de
Lavalette, I., 318
Anisson family, The, and the Royal
Printing Office, I., 307, 308
Anjou, Duke of, and the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, I., 23
Anne of Austria and the Val de Gr&ce,
II., 90
Anti-Jacobin, The, I., 162
Antoine, St., Rue, I., 2, 46, 282-28
Apprenticeship, I., 301
Aquinas, St. Thomas, Church ot, II., 238
Archbishops of Paris, Tragic fates of three
successive, II., 66, 358
Architecture, Gothic style proscribed by
Louis XIV., I., 5
Archives, Palace of, I., 304
Archivists, I., 305
Armour in the Artillery Museum, II., 86,
87
Army, The, its uniformity, I., 65; Al
geria as the training-ground for generals,
75
Arnould, Sophie, birthplace, I., 3 ; her
description of herself, 29 ; receives offer
of marriage from Belanger, 127, 129 ;
poverty and death, 129 ; her wit, 354
Arsenal, The, and its library, I., 290
Artillery, Central depot of, II., 238
Artillery, Museum of: origin, history and
growth, II., 83-88 ; reorganisation, 83,
84 ; sacked in 1830 and replenished by
Duke of Reggio's collection, 84 ; speci
mens of the Stone Age, 85 ; Roman
and Medieval specimens, 86 ; fire-arms,
87,88
Artistic and Literary Club, I., 140
Artists in the Rue d'Enfer, II., 106
Arts and crafts corporations, I., 300, 301
Arts Bridge, II. , 34
Artus (or Arthur), King of Britain, and
his duel with the Tribune Flollo, I., 277
Assembly of the States-General (1789),
II. , 232
Assistance Publique, I., 305
Astleys, The: open a circus in Paris, I.,
73 ; the personal attractions of the son,
73, 74 ; their circus taken over by Fran-
con i, 74
Astrology, I., 16 ; patronised by Catherine
de Medicis, 42
Asylum : of Bicetre, I., 63 ; ,11., 211-214.
221, 222 ; Children's, II., IOI, 102 ;
Saint-Jacques aux Pelerins, I., 314 ;
Salpetriere, II., 209-211, 218
Auber, M., and the Conservatory of
Music, I., 335

Aubriot, founder ofthe Bastille, I., 47
Austerlitz Bridge, II. , 33, 34
Austerlitz, Column of, I., 155-158
Ave Maria Market, I., 290
Avenue Marigny, I., 223, 224
Aveugles, Cafe des, I., 110
Bac, Rue du, I,, 10
Balloons as war vehicles, II., 236
Balls at the opera, I., 139
Baltazarini and his Ballet Comique de
la Reine, I., 28
Balzac, and his tailor, I., 106; as a
printer, II. , 175
Bank of France, I., 322
Banquet d'Anacreon Restaurant, I., 85
Barnave and the Breton Club, I., 162
Barracks, Napoleon, I., 283
Barere, proposes the destruction of royal
tombs, I., IOT, 102 ; and the preservation
of the Louvre and the Tuileries for the
king, 207 ; and the Breton Club, 162
Barriers, The: and the octroi, II., 318;
designations and number, 319 ; Clichy
and De l'Ktoile, 319 ; scenes of execu
tions and assassinations, 320 ,
Barry, Mme. du, I., 302'
Bartholomew, St., Church of, I., 269
Bastille, The, its destruction and the
original intention of its builders, I., 46 ;
as a State prison, 46 ; dungeons and
internal regulations, 46 ; some notable
prisoners, 47 ; and lettres de cachet, 50 ;
its fall, 51, 52 ; release of prisoners, $1,
52; pulled down and meetings -held on
the site, 52 ; and the Encyclopaedia,
55 ; liberation of prisoners on the ac
cession of Louis XV., 55 ; II. , 95 ;
imprisonment of Mile. Clairon, I., 56-;
prisoners liberated by the Duke of Or
leans, 99 ; built by Etienne Marcel, 286
Bastille, Place de la, I., 43, 52, 59
Bath-house of the Romans, I., 73* 74
Batignolles, Les, I,, 344
Baudelaire, Charles, his residence, I., 291
Bavoux, Nicholas, prosecuted for his
lectures, I., 358
Bazaine, Marshal, II., 358
Beam, Prince of. (See Henry IV.)
Beaufort, Due de, his duel with the Due
de Nemours, I., 350
Beauharnais, Louise de, saves her hus
band from death, I., 318-320
Beaujolais Theatre, I. 183
Beaumarchais, and his Marriage of
Figaro, I., 44-46, 67 ; builds the
Theatre du Marais, 67 ; his Mere
Coupa4>le, 67; imprisoned at St. Lazare,
II., 142

3H

INDEX.

Beaumarchais, Boulevard, I., 43, 46,47,67
Beaumarchais Theatre, I., 43, 67
Beaupre, Mile., on dramatic literature, I.,
174
Beauvais, Hotel de, I., 28^
Beauvoir, Roger de, I., 291
Bedford, Duke of, and the funeral of
Charles VL, I., 98 ; II., 94
Beggars : on the Pont-Neuf, I., 38, 39 ;
organised into troops, II., 324 ; penal
ties in the Middle Ages, 324 ; and the
General Hospital, 325 ; and Louis XV.,
326; at the Revolution, 326; as pro
fessionals, 326 ; anecdotes, 327 ; em
ployment in prison, 330 ; Homes and
Retreats, 331 ; "bureaux," 333
Bejard, Armande, wife of Moliere, I., 173;
II., 291
Bejard, Madeleine, I., 173 ; IL, 291
Belanger, the architect, I., 84 ; builds the
Hotel deBrancas and proposes marriage
to Sophie Arnould, 127, 129 ; appeals to
the Government on Sophie Arnould's
behalf, 129
Belleville, I., 335
Belleyme, M. de, Prefect of Police, I.,
275 ; IL, 18
Beltard, the architect, I., 315
Benedictines, Church and Monastery of,
L, 306 ; IL, 90
Beranger, Statue of, I., 303 ; Benjamin
Constant's opinion of his songs, 303
Bercy, Bridge de, IL, 33
Bergeret, Communist leader, 1 1., 357
Bernhardt, Sarah, I., 182
Bernini, and his designs for the completion
of the Louvre, I., 198
Berri, Duke of, Assassination of, L, 70,
71, 76, 86, 90 ; his widow inaugurates
the Ambigu-Comique Theatre, 86 ; his
double marriage, 90 ; his children born
in England committed to the care of the
Duchess, 91 ; burial-place, IOO ; II. , 97,
98 ; alarmed at fireworks, I., 144, 145
Berry, Duchess of, IL, III
Berryer, lieutenant of police, I., 273, 275 ;
11., 17
Berryer, Statue of, in the Palais de Jus
tice, I., 258; defends Louis Napoleon,
II., 124
Berthe, Queen, I., 42
Bethisy, Rue de, I., 3
Beyle, Henri, Monument to, L, 324
Beze, Theodore de, IL, 39
Bicetre Asylum, I., 63 ; origin of name
and its history, IL, 211, 212 ; approach,
population, departments, and canteen,
212 ; great well, workshops, library, and
inmates, 213 ; disturbances, 213, 214 ;
" Monsieur l'Abbe " and his painting,
214 ; epileptics, idiots, and criminal
lunatics, 214 ; story of Latude, 214 ;
story of the four sergeants of La Ro
chelle, 2I8-22I ; insurrections, 221 ;
massacre at the Reign of Terror, 222 ;
reforms of Pinel, 222
Bievre, River, IL, 225
Birds, Convent ofthe, IL, 196
Biron, Due de, and the belief in magic,
L, 17 ; and the arrest of the Young
Pretender, 63

Biron, Marshal de, in the Bastille, L, 47
Bismarck, Count, and General de Wim
pffen, IL, 360
Blanc, Louis, and the death of Armand
Carrel, I., 62 ; his account of the
Boulogne expedition, II., 117, 118
Blanche, Queen, IL, 157
Blaze, M. Castil, on the proximity of the
Salle Montansier to the National Library,
L, 86
Blind Children, Institution for, IL, 198
Blind men, Orchestra of, I., 110
Bohemians : described by Beranger and
Balzac, I., 365 ; described by Montepin,
366 ; two generations, 366, 367 ; Henri
Merger's " Vie de Boheme," 367 ;
anecdote told by Grenville Murray,
368 ; at the Cafe Momus, 1 10
Boieldieu, his residence, L, III
Boiling of coiners, L, 3
Bois de Boulogne, L, 221-223 ! H-i 2§7
Boisgerard effects the escape of Sir Sidney
Smith from the Temple, L, 72, 73
Bologne, Jean de, and the statue of Henry
IV., I., 31
Bonaparte, Lucien, and the Place des
Vosges, I., 310
Bondi, Rue de, and its theatres, L, 85, 86
Bonne Nouvelle Bazaar, L, 103
Bonne Nouvelle Boulevard, I., 103
Bonvalet's restaurant, and his suppl}' of
food during the siege of Paris, L, 85
Bookstalls, IL, 255
Books, Burning, L, 40, 252 ; proscription
of, 40, 126, 187-189
Booksellers and the king's library, I., 190
Bookselling, L, 124, 125
Bordeaux, Duke of. (See Chambord, Count
of)
Bornier, Vicomte de, librarian at the
Arsenal, I., 290
Bose, Pastor du, II., 42
Bossuet preaching at La Salpetriere, IL,
211
Bouchardon, Edme, Fountain by, IL, 238
Bouffar, Mile. Zulma, I., 93
Bouille, M. de, and the flight of Louis
XVI., I., 211, 214
Bouillon, Chevalier de, and masked balls,
L. 139
Bouillon, Duchess of, and Adrienne Le-
couvreur, L, 3, 182, 183
Boulanger, General, and the Naval and
Military Club, L, 140
Boule and the inlaid furniture of the
Louvre, I., 198, 199
Boulevard : Beaumarchais, I., 43, 46, 47, 67 ;
Bonne-Nouvelle, 43, 103 ; Bourdon, 282,
290 ; Capucines, 43, 130, 132 ; St.
Denis, 43, 93 ; des Filles du Calvaire,
43 ; des Italiens, 11, 43, 115, 126, 127 ;
Madeleine, 43, 142 ; St. Martin, 43, 93 ;
Montmartre, 43, 104; du Palais, 264,
269; Poissonniere, 43, 103 ; du Prince
Eugene, 302 ; Sebastopol, 95, 292, 293 ;
Strasbourg, 95 ; du Temple, 43, 70, 85.
Et passim.
Boulevards. Formation of, L, 7 ; descrip
tion of, 43; reflecting the history of
Paris, 166; their restaurants and theatres,
43 i upper and lower, 43

Boulogne expedition, II. , 116-124
Boundaries of Paris, L, 103
Bourbon, Duchess of, and the Elysee
Palace, I., 218
Bourbons, Burial-places of, I., IOO ; II. ,
97
Bourdon, Boulevard, I., 2S2, 290
Bourdon, Colonel, I., 290
Bourg, Du, Execution of, I., 287 ; II., 38
Bourgeois, Nicholas, I., 139
Bourgogne, Marguerite, Blanche, and
Jeanne de punishments inflicted upon
them, IL, 62
Boursault-Malesherbes and the Theatre
des Sans-Culottes, L, 298
Bourse, The : architecture, L, 191 ; origin
of word, 191 ; its first location and
subsequent history, 192 ; taken from the
Communists, 359
Bourse, Petite, The, L, 192
Boute-Feu, Jean, and his fireworks, L, 146
Bouteviile, Count de, his duels and his
execution, L, 349
Bouvet, Father, his presentation of Chinese
books to the Royal Library, L, 190
Brandus, M., Outrage at residence of, I.,
H5
Bread collectors, IL, 260
Breton Club, afterwards Society of the
Friends of the Constitution, L, 162
Brevet de dame and the attendance of un
married ladies at the opera, I., 89, 90
Bridge: Arts, II. , 34 ; Austerlitz, 33, 34 ; de
Bercy, 33 ; Jena, 33 ; Latournelle, 34 ;
Louis Philippe, 34 ; Saint-Louis, 34 ;
Marie, 34 ; " Napoleon IIL," 33 ;
National, Solferino, De la Cour. Alma,
&c, 34; Neuf, 34
Brie, La, Sorcerers of, L, 42
Brissot and his library, IL, 108
Brosse, Guy de la, and the Jardin des
Plantes, II., 147
Brosse, Jacques de, and the Luxemburg
Palace, IL, III
Bruce, Heart of, 1 1., 93
Brun, Lesueur le, I., 291
Bruno, St., and the funeral of Raimond
Diocre, I., 13, 14
Buffon, preservation of his heart and brain,
II. , 92, 93 ; his administration of the
Jardin des Plantes, 148, 149
Bugeaud, General, and his interview with
Abd-el-Kader, I., 75, 76
Bull-fighting, L, 335
Bureau of Judicial Assistance, L, 260
" Bureaux of Beneficence," IL, ^33
Burgundy. Duke of, Assassination of, L, 2
Burial of Kings, L, 98-102, 314; IL, 94
99
Burning, Jews, I., 3 ; sorcerers, 3, 42 ;
magicians, 15, 42 ; books, 40, 252 ;
witches, 40 ; Waldenses, 42; Protestants,
286 ; IL, 71, 72 ; lunatics, 207
Butchers, IL, 308, 316
Butte Saint-Roch, The, and Joan of Arc
I., 2, 159
" Cabochiens," their attack on the Con
ciergerie, II., 134
Cadoudal, George, Vendean chief, his
career, I., 313, 314

INDEX.

365

Cadran Bleu Restaurant, I., 85
Cafe : Anglais, I., 123 ; des Aveugles,
I., no ; " Cannon of the Bastille," I.,
46; Cardinal, I., 115; Foy, I., 109,
HO; Frascati, I., 106 ; Leinblin, I., no,
167 ; Litteraire, I., 107, 108 ; des Milles
Colonnes, I., 115 ; Momus, I., no, III ;
d'Orsay, II., 236 ; de Paris, I., 127 ;
Porte Montmartre, I., 103 ; Procope,
I„ IO, 108, 109; de la Regence, I.,
109; Riche, I., 122; Tortoni, I., 126;
Turc, I., 80; Valois, I., no
Cafe concerts, I., 80
Cafes of Paris, I., 83 ; indicative of poli
tical and other changes in French
history, 107 ; literary, 108, 109 ; after
the Revolution, no ; in the days of the
Restoration, 122 ; disappearance of old
specimens, 122 ; originally wine-shops,
122
Calvin in Paris, I., 286; as a student,
357; II- 36
Canal of Saint-Martin, II., 34
Cannon, fired by the sun, I., 47; speci
mens in the Artillery Museum, II., 87,
88
" Cannon of the Bastille " Cafe, I., 46
Capet Dynasty, Advent of, I., 7
Capuchins, The, and Rue d'Enfer, or
Hell Street, I., 4
Capucines, Boulevard, I., 130, 132
Carafa, his residence, I., Ill
Cardinal, Cafe, I., 115
Carmelites, Shoeless, II., 247
Carmes, The Couvent des, II., 71
Carnavalet, Hotel, I., 310; II., 160
Carrel, Armand, killed in a duel with De
Girardin, I., 62, 352
Carriages, II., 30, 31
Castiglione, Rue, I., 158
Castle of Chambord, II., 303-305
Catacombs: formerly quarries, II., 99;
removal of remains from cemeteries,
99, IOO ; admission of visitors, IOO ;
number of human relics deposited, 101
Catherine II. and Diderot, II., 246
Catherine de Medicis, her credulity, I.,
16, 42 ; and Cosmo Ruggieri, 16 ; and
the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 22 ;
II., 39; her collection of books, I., 189;
and the Louvre, 195 ; and the Palace of
the Tuileries, 206 ; and the Huguenots,
IL, 39
Catherine de la Rochelle, I., 160
Cavaignac, General, II., 248, 249 ;
Cavaignac, Godefroi, his monument, I.,
342.
Cazotte, Jacques, his trial and execution,
\ I., 259
Cecilia, St., Festival of, I., 315
Cemeteries, I., 333"335. 342 ; II., 250
•Censorship of books, I., 126; II., 180 ;
and Francis I., I., 187; opinion of
Mercier, 188, 189
Censorship of the drama, II., 181-184 ;
under Louis XI., 181 ; under Louis
XIII. and Louis XIV., 182 ; and
Athalie, Esther, and the Marriage of
Figaro, ,182 ; under the Republic and
the Restoration, 183 ; its abolition, 183 ;
re-established, 183, 184

Central Dep&t of Artillery, II., 238
Central markets, I., 314-318; II., 166,
167
Central Paris, I., 281-326
" Cercle des Deux Mondes," I., 126
Chamber of Deputies, II., 231, 232
Chamber of Peers, II., 112, 130
Chambord, Count of, Funeral of, I., IOO ;
discussion on his legitimacy, 222, 223 ;
and the Count of Paris, II., 305
Chamousset and l'lnstitution Sainte- Perine,
II-. 331
Champ de Mars : its original use, I., 229 ;
historical events, 230, 231 ; national
celebration, 231, 232 ; Altar of Patriot
ism, 232, 233 ; massacre by troops and
execution of Bailly, 234 ; Festival of
the Supreme Being, 234, 235 ; mili
tary and other celebrations, 235 ; as <i
racecourse, 235 ; the annex of the
exhibition of 1867, 235
Champfleury, I., no
Champs Elysees, I., II ; and the triumphal
arch, 59, 218, 224, 225 ; as a pleasure
resort, 224; amusements, 226, 229;
exhibitions, 229
Chapelle, Ste., The Church of: its founder
and its historical associations, I., 264 ;
upper and lower chapels, 265 ; statue of
Virgin and the painted windows, 266 ;
Saint Louis and Blanche de Castille,
267
Chapelain, author of" La Pucelle," burial-
place, I., 294
Charbonniers, II., 218
Charenton Asylum, I., 63 : date of found
ation and history, II., 223, 224; as a
house of detention, and the administra
tions of M. de Coulmier and Roulhac
du Maupas, 223 ; rebuilt, 223 ; sur
roundings, 223, 224 ; internal system,
number of inmates, and the patronage
of Empress Eugenie, 224 ; amusements,
225
Charlemagne, Statue of, I., 278
Charles V., speech against Charles the
Mischievous, King of Navarre, I., 2 ;
and the Louvre, 194
Charles VI., Funeral of, I., 98; II., 94;
and the Louvre, I., 194 ; and the muni
cipality of Paris, 243 ; and the Palais
de Justice, 250; his madness, II., 157
Charles VII. and Joan of Arc's support,
I., 2 ; and Agnes Sorel, 64
Charles IX. firing upon the Huguenots,
I., 2, 26, 196 ; II., 40 ; his share in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, I., 22 ;
II., 40; misled by the queen, I., 23;
his avowal in Parliament after the
massacre of Protestants, 27 ; II., 40
Charles X. : suppression of newspapers,
I., 2 ; burial, 102 ; preservation of his
heart, II., 91
Charolais, Comte de, alarmed at fireworks,
I-, 145
Chartres, Duke of. (See figalite, Philippe)
Chasseurs, The, I., 59, 64, 75
Chateau : de Madrid, I., 222 ; de la
Muette, 223 ; Rouge, II., 72, 73
Chateau d'Eau, Theatre, I., 85 ; Place
du, 84

Chittelet Theatre, Du, I., 291, 292
Chatelet-Laumont, Marquis du, and the
H&tel Lambert, I., 291
Chateaubriand on the Duke of Berri's
English family, I., 91 ; on the Jacobins,
163
Chaumette, M., and Notre Dame, I., 14 ;
and the Opera under the Republic, 88 ;
his execution, 150
Chaussee d'Antin, The, at the end of the
eighteenth century, I., 2
Chenier, Andre, imprisoned at St. Lazarc,
II., 142
Chermoye, Philippe, Assassination of, II.,
89
Cherubini and the Conservatory of Music,
I-. 335
Chess-players at the Cafe de la Regence,
I., 109
Cheval Blanc, Hotel du, II., 108
Chevalier represents the Man of Destiny
at Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, I., 92
Chevalier, Michel, I., 119 ; his imprison
ment, 120
Chevreuil, M., and the flowers in the
Jardin des Plantes, II., 151 ; and the
Gobelins, 228
Children, Hospital for, II., 196; institu
tion for blind, 198 ; imported to Paris
from Italy, 328
Children's Asylum, II., IOI, 102
Chinese books in the Royal Library, I.,
190
Choiseul, Hotel, I., 126
Christmas, Saturnalia in churches at, I.,
226-228
Christmas cards, I., 113
Church of, St. Bartholomew, I., 269 ; the
Benedictines, I., 306; II., 90 ; St.
Denis, I., 7; II., 94 ; St. Eloi, I., 284;
St. £tienne-du-Mont, II., 66; St.
Eustace, I., 5, 314, 315 ; Ste. Gene
vieve, I., 10 ; II., 59, 62 ; St. Germain
l'Auxerrois, I., 2, 22, 26, 27; II., 29;
St. Germain-des-Pres, I., 7; II., 170,
171 ; St. Leu-Saint-Gilles, I., 312-314 ;
St. Louis, I., 291 ; St. Louis and St.
Paul, I., 284 ; Madeleine, I., II, 142,
143 ; St. Mery, I., 93, 293, 294 ; St.
Nicholas-in-the-Fields, I., 299 ; Notre-
Dame, I,, 3, 4-19; Notre- Dame-de-
Lorette, I., 340 ; St. Roch, I., 158, 159 ;
Sacred Heart, I., 340 ; St Sulpice, II.,
171-173 ; Val de Grace, II., 90, 91
Churches and chapels, English, II., II, 43
Cigar-ends, Collectors of, II., 259, 260
Circus, opened by the Astleys, I., 73 ; of
the F'aubourg du Temple, 74 ; in the
Boulevard des Filles de Calvaire, 76 ;
of the Prince Imperial, 85
Circus-women, II., 19, 20
Cirque d'Hiver opened under the title of
Cirque Napoleon, I., 73
Civic tribunal, The, I., 261
Clairon, Mile., imprisoned in the Bastille,
I., 56 ; her residence in the Marais, 67 ;
II., 175 ; passion of M. de S  for
her, I., 129, 130
Claque, The : origination, II., 261 ; at
the Restoration, and its organisation.
262 ; its utility, 264

366

INDEX.

Clausel, Marshal, I., 94
Clergy, their right to fight duels, I., 346 ;
their corruption in the thirteenth century,
II., 61
Clichy, Prison of, I., 342, 343
Clock in the Arsenal Library, I., 290
Club : Agricultural, II., 237 ; des Armees,
I., 140 ; Artistique et Litteraire, I., 140 ;
Breton, I., 162 ; des Deux Mondes, I.,
126 ; des Eclaireurs, I., 140 ; Dramatic
Critics', I., 103 ; Le Grand, I., Ill,
126, 139 ; Imperial, I., 140 ; Jacobin, I.,
162; Jockey, I., Ill, 139; Mirlitons,
I., 140 ; de la Presse, I., 139 ; Railway,
I. , 139 ; de la Rue Royale, I., 140 ;
Sporting, I., 14O; de Terre et de Mer,
I., 140 ; Union, I., 140 ; Washington,
I., 140 ; Workmen's, II., 71 ; Yacht,
I-. 139
Clubs, Management and facilities ot, I.,
141, 142
Cluny, Hotel, origin and history, II.,
74-82 ; collection of curiosities and ob
jects of art, 76-82
Cobblers, II., 266
Cocher, The, various types of, II., I, 2
Cockneys, Parisian, II., 27
Coffee, its introduction into Europe, I.,
82 ; the rage in Parisian society, 83
Coiners, Boiling of, I., 3
Colbert appointed to complete the Louvre,
I., 198 ; his tomb in the church of Saint-
Eustache, I., 315
Coligny, Admiral, place of death, I., 3 ;
plot for his assassination, 22 ; flattered
by the king and queen, and wounded by
Maurevel, 23 ; his murder, 24 ; daughter
married to the Prince of Orange, 27
Coligny and Guise, Quarrels between the
houses of, I., 349
College of France, II., 44, 45, 47; Du
Plessis, 47 ; of Clermont, 47 ; of Dace,
71 ; of Soissons, 71 ; of the Lombards,
71
* Colonne, M., I., 76
Column of Austerlitz, I., 155 ; removal of
the statue of Napoleon, 156 ; erection
of a new statue of Napoleon in 1833
and of another by Napoleon III., 156,
157 ; pulled down by the Commune,
157 ; re-established in 1875, J57, I58
Comedie Francaise, I., 103, 108, 109 ; and
the Richelieu Theatre, 167 ; its history,
172-186 ; II., no
Comedie Italienne, I., 175
Commercial Exchange, I., 318
Communards set fire to the Palais Royal,
I., 168; ofi87i, II., 355-361
Commune, The, and the fortifications of
Paris, I., 8
Concerts started by Pasdeloup, I., 76
Conciergerie, The : I., 263 ; II., 131 ; its
associations, 134 ; custodians, 134 ; at
tack of the " Cabochiens," 134 ; dun
geons, 134, 135 ; partly burned, 135 ;
massacre of September, 135 ; inmates at
the Revolution and tortures in the
Bombec Tower, 136
Concorde, Place de la, extent and bound
aries, I., 143 ; history, 143-154 ; Louis
XV. and his statue, 143, 146 ; accident

from fireworks in 1770, 146; formerly
the Place de la Revolution, 146 ; and
the execution of Louis XVI., 146-150 ;
executions of Marie Antoinette, Philippe
figalite, Charlotte Corday, Madame
Elizabeth, the Girondists, and others,
150 ; also formerly called Place Louis
XVI., 152; fountains, obelisk, otc, 154;
occupied by Russian and Prussian
troops, 154
Conde, Prince de, Death of, I., 22; his
abjuration, 290 ; fidelity to Protestant
ism, II., 39
Confessional, The, and the State, I., 33
Conge' de la Bataille, I., 346, 347
Conservatoire de Musique, I., 90, 135,
335
Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, I.,
293. 30O-3O2
Constant, Benjamin, Duel fought by, I.,
351 ; and the songs of Beranger, 303
Constitution, Signing of the, by Louis
XVI., I., 87
Contat, Mile., and Prince Henry of
Prussia, I., 35, 36 ; in the Marriage of
Figaro, 45 ; her love-affair with De
Lubsac and the loss of her jewels, 104,
105
Continental, Hotel, I., 158
Convent of the White Cloaks, I., 306 ; of
the Holy Sepulchre, 314; of Penitent
Girls, 318 ; Des Carmes, IL, 71 ; of
the Good Shepherd, 102 ; of the Cor
deliers, 106 ; of Les Filles de la Mere-
Dieu, 139; in the street of Les Petits
Augustins, 175 ; of the Birds, 196
Convention, Learning under the, I., 90 ;
its procedure, II., 234
Convulsionnaires, The, I., 47
Cooks and cooking, I., 123 ; in comedy,
-^72 ; opinion of Brillat-Savarin, 372 ;
in the 17th century, 374 ; schools, 374 ;
and a certain archbishop, 374 ; in the
reign of Louis XV., 374, 375 ; and
Mme. de Maintenon and Scarron,
375, 376 ; the " epigram " dish and
anecdote of Careme, 376 ; and the
u cordon bleu," II., 22
Coqueley, M., and the Marriage of
Figaro, I., 44
Corday, Charlotte, Execution of, I., 150
Cordeliers, I., 162; Convent of the, II.,
106
Corn supply, II., 313, 314
Corneille, Tomb of, I., 158 ; estrangement
with Moliere, 174 ; and the Comedie
Francaise, 172-175
Corneille, Hotel, II., 109
Council of Elders, II., 231
Council of the Five Hundred, II., 231
Cour des Miracles, I., 3
Courtyard of the Dragon, II., 247
Crebillon, II., 72
Crematorium in the Cemetery of Pere-
Lachaise, I., 335
Cremeries, I., 318
Criminal population, II., 320-323
Criminals, tortured. I., 4
Croissant, Jean Douet de Romp, his
scheme for the abolition of mendicancy,
II-, 325

Cultelli, Procopio, founder of the Cafe
Procope, I., 108
Cuvier and the Jardin des Plantes, II.,
150
Czartoryski, Prince, and the Hotel Lam
bert, I., 291

Dagobert, King, Tomb of, I.. 102 ; II., 98
Daily News, Office of, I., 140
Daily Telegraph, Office of, I., 140
D'Aligre and Latude, II., 215, 216
D'Amboise, Jacques, and the Hotel Clunyv
II-, 74
Dame aux Camelias, La, I., 131
Dames Augustines, The, I., 279
" Dames de la Halle," II., 315
Damien, Father, I., 80
Damiens, Penance, torture and execution,
of, I., 17, 18, 39, 79
D'Ancre, Marshal, mutilation of his body
before the statue of Henry IV., I., 31
D'Anglas, Boissy, and the Breton Club,.
I., 162
D'Anjou, Quai, I., 291
D'Antichamp, Marquis, and the Revoln.-. ,
tion of 1830, I., 170
Danton and the Opera under the Republic^
I., 88; his execution, 15O; place of
residence, II., 108
D'Antraigues, Count and Countess, theijr
assassination, I., 325, 326
Darboy, Monseigneur, Archbishop of
Paris, put to death by the Commune,,
II., 66, 358
D'Argenson, M., and the Arsenal Library,.
I., 290
D'Arlincourt, Viscount, his romances, IL»
238, 239
D'Armagnac, Jacques,, I., 47
D'Artois, Count, Tennis-ground of, I., 84.
Daubenton, Monument to, II., 150
Daudet, M. Alphonse, and the Academic-
Francaise, I., 38.
David, his picture of the coronation of
Napoleon, I., 21 ; and the Temple ofi
Terpsichore, 128, 129 ; and the Louvre*
Picture Gallery, 203
David, Felicien, composer, I., 119
Davison, Mr. J. W., I., Iii
Day-bankers, II., 260
Dazincourt in the Marriage of Figaro^
1-45
Deaf and Dumb Institutions, II., 89, gox
199-201
Deaf-mutes, number in France, II., 20Oj
ancient disregard for them and the
work of Abbe de l'Epee, 202
Debtors, Imprisonment of, I., 342, 343 ;
II-, 139
Dejazet, Mile., I., 84
Dejazet Theatre, I., 84
Delacroix, Eugene, his picture in the
church of St. Louis and St. Paul, 1.^
284
Delaroche, Paul, Burial-place of, I., 342
Delavau, Prefect of Police, and the spy
system, I., 274, 275 ; II., 18
Delille, Abbe, his lines on the Palais.
Royal, I., 167
D'Enfer, Rue, I., 4 ; IL, 90 ; and the:

INDEX.

367

entrance to the Catacombs, 101 ; and
the residences of artists, 106
D'Enghien, Due, Arrest and execution
of, I., 59, 60
Denis, St., Boulevard, I., 93
Denis, St., Church of, I., 7 ; II., 94
Denis, St., Martyrdom of, I., 7
Denis, St., Necropolis of, I., 98-102
Denis, St., Porte, I., 98
Denis, St., Rue, I., 311, 312
D'Ennery, M. Adolphe, I., 93
D'Epernon, M., I., 34
D'fipinay, Mme., and Rousseau, II., 285
Desaugiers, his lines on the Palais Royal,
I., 167
Desault, Dr., attends the " Dauphin " in the
Temple, I., 71
Desmoulins, Camille, plucking leaves in
the Palais Royal gardens, I., 2, 48 ; his
call to arms, 47 ; and the attack on the
Bastille, 51, 109 ; his execution, 150 ; as
a student, 357 ; his pamphlet, " La
Lanterne," II., 30
D'Etap^es, Lefevre, his Reformation doc
trines, I., 286 ; II., 36
Deux Mondes, Club des, I., 126
Diana of France and the Hotel La-
moignon, I., 68, 309
Diderot, burial-place, I., 159 ; II., 246 ;
early life in Paris, 242 ; love affairs, 243 ;
imprisonment in the Chateau de Vin
cennes, 244 ; and Rousseau, 244 ; and
the " Encyclopaedia," 245 ; and Catherine
II., 246
Diocre, Raimond, Funeral in Notre-Dame
of,, I., 13
Diplomatists as agents for operatic cele
brities, I., 74
Dog-fighting, I., 335
Doge of Genoa, visit to Paris, I., 3
Domes of Paris, The, I., 5
Domestic servants, II., 20-23
Dominicans, Convent of, II., 238
Donizetti's operas, I., 135
Dorval, Mme., at Porte Saint-Martin
Theatre, I., 92, 182
Dramas, place where first acted, I., 2 ; per
formed in Notre-Dame, 19 ; under the
Reign of Terror, 88
Dramatic censorship, II., 181-184
Dramatic Critics' Club, I., 103
Drawing, School of, II., 106
Dress in Paris, I., IO
Druot, Hotel, II., 256
Dubois, Cardinal, Anecdote of, I., 114 ; II.,
22
Ducamp, M. Maxime, his statistics of
prisons, II., 144
Duels : at Vincennes, I., 59, 61-63 ; in
the Place Royale, 69, 349 ; ancient
compared with modern, 345 ; ancient
regulations, 346; judicial, 346; in the
sixteenth ¦ century, 347, 348 ; between
, ladies, 349 ; causes, 349 ; notable cases,
350, 351; anecdotes, 353, 354 1 of
journalists, II., 272, 273
Dugazoninthe Marriage of Figaro, I., 45
Dumas, the elder, Alexandre, fights a duel
with Gaillardet, I., 63 ; his answers to a
judge, 63 ; performance of his Antony,
181, 182

Dumouriez and the conspiracy against
the life of the First Consul, I., 60
Dupin, M., farmer-general, and the H&tel
Lambert, I., 291
Duplessis, Marie, and the Dame aux
Catne'lias, I., 130 ; her death, 131
Dupuis, the actor, I., 84
Dupuytren, Dr., and the assassination of
the Duke of Berri, I., 90, 91 ; II., 250
Duval, Alexander, I., 177
Duveyrier, dramatist, I., 119; his im
prisonment, 120

Ecole Militaire, I., 230
Edgeworth, Abbe, his account of the last
moments and execution of Louis XVI.,
I., 146-150 ; his account of his flight
from Paris, &c, II., 298-300 ; letter
from Louis XVIII., 301, 302 ; fidelity
to the royal family and his death,
302
Edict of Nantes, its concessions, II., 41 ;
its revocation, I., 3 ; II., 42
Education, II., 44-53
Egalite, Philippe, his execution, I., 150 ;
voting for the death of Louis XVI.,
151 ; II., 234 ; and the Palais Royal, I.,
166 ; and the Breton Club, I., 162
Eiffel Tower, The, I., 238, 239
Electric cafes, I., 108
Eloi, St., Church of, I., 284
Elysee Palace, I., 218, 219
Emigration, The, II., 295-303
Empereur Joseph, Hotel, II., 109
" Encyclopaedia," The, consigned to the
Bastille by Louis XV., I., 55, 125 ; and
Diderot, II., 245
Enfantin, Le Pere, head of the Saint-
Simonians, I., 119 ; his prosecution and
imprisonment, 120 ; his memoirs, 290
English in Paris, The : a picture in Punch,
II., 9 ; contrasted with the French in
London, 10 ; traits drawn by M. Le
moinne, 10, II ; manners of ladies, n ;
interest in religious matters, 11 ; dress
of women, 12
English dining-places and hotels in Paris
I-, 123
Epileptics, Treatment of, II., 214
Escapes of prisoners, II., 141, 142
Etienne, Robert, his editions of the
Scriptures, II., 178, 179
Etienne-du-Mont, St., Church of, II., 66
Eugene III., Pope, and the dispute at the
church of Saint-Genevieve, II., 59
Eugene, du Prince, Boulevard, I., 302
Eustace, St., Church of, I., 5, 314, 315
Executioner of Lyons, The, and the
slaughter of Huguenots, I., 27
Executioner, Public : salary and dress, I.,
39, 331 ; at the theatre, 88 ; in early
times, 330 ; perquisites, 330, 331 ; " Mon
sieur de Paris," 331 ; beheading dum
mies, 331 ; sometimes physicians, 332 ;
incident of Victor of Nimes, 332
Executions outside La Roquette prison,
II., 134
Exhibitions, Universal, I., 224, 236-239
Eyck, Van, Picture at the Palais de
Justice by, I., 256

Fabroni, the magician, I., 17
Fagon, Dr., and his administration of the
Jardin des Plantes, II., 14.7
Fairs, II., 308
Famines in Paris, I., 3 ; II., 311, 313
F'argeau, Lepelletier St., his assassination,
H-- 234
Farmers-General, The, I., 7
Favart, Charles Simon, and his perform
ances before the army, I., 118
Favart, Mme., and the Salle F'avart, I.,
117 ; and Marshal Saxe, 118
Feast of Reason, I., 15
Fencing schools, II., 257-259
Ferier, Jean, a leader in the massacre of
the Huguenots, I., 27
Ferrieres, Chateau of Baron de Roth
schild at, I., 339
Fersen, Count de, and the flight of Louis
XVI., I., 211
Feuillants, I., 162
Fieschi, his attempt on the life of Louis
Philippe, I., 76-78; II., 112-114 ; guil
lotined, I., 79 ; his mistress exhibited at
a cafe, 83
Filles de la Mere-Dieu, Les, Convent of,.
II-, 139
Fine Arts, School of, II., 175, 176
Fiorentino, Paolo, his duel with Achard,
I., 61
Fire Brigade, its organisation, I., 270
Fire-arms in the Artillery Museum, II.,
87,88
Fireworks, Duke of Berri alarmed by, I.,
144, 145 ; accident at a display of, 146
Flamel, Nicholas, librarian to the Univer
sity of Paris, I., 283 ; his house, II., 158
Flesselles, De, Provost of Paris, I., 48,
243
F^lollo and his duel with King Arthur, I.,
277
Flower-girls, II., 7
Flower-market, in the Place de la Repub-
lique, I., 84 ; in the Place de la Made
leine, 142 ; in the Place Saint-Sulpice,
Folies Dramatiques Theatre, I., 85
Folies Saint-Germain Theatre, II., 89
Fontaine, La, and his mock duel, I., 354
Food, Supply of, II., 310-315
Footman, A speculative, I., 295
Force, Caumont de la, attempts to bribe
assassins on St. Bartholomew's Day, I.,
26 ; and the grocer's shop, 295
Force, La, prison, and recalcitrantactresses,
I., 56, 58 ; II., 210
Fort l'Eveque, I., 56
Fortifications of Paris, planned by M.
Thiers, I., 7, 8 ; their arming in 1870,.
II-, 348
Fortress of John the Fearless, I., 318
Fortunatus, Venantius, and the glass win
dows of Notre-Dame, I., 14
Fouche and his spy system, I., 274; II.,
18
Fould, M. Achille, I., 192
Foundlings, Home for, II., 102
Fountain, in the Place de la Republique,
I., 84 ; of the Innocents, 312
Fouquet, Superintendent of Finances, im
prisoned in the Bastille, I., 47

-,o8

IXDEX.

Foy. Cafe, I., 109, no
Fragonard, artist, decorates the Temple of
Terpsichore, I., u>
Francais, Theatre, I., n, -44-40. ill
Francis L. Cost of obsequies of, I.. 98;
his dislike of printed books, 187 ; his
collection of MSS., 189 ; and the Louvre,
195 ; and the Chateau de Madrid, 222 ;
lays first stone of the Hotel de Ville,
242 ; and the burning of Protestants,
287 ; secret rendezvous, II. , 1^8
Francis II. , and the Louvre, L, 195 ; and
the persecution of Protestants, II. , ^8
Franconi takes over Astley *s Circus in
Paris, L, 74
Francs-tireurs. L, 66 ; IL, 351, 2-32
Frascao's gambling-house, L, 104-106
Frederick the Great, and the importance
of Paris as a capital, L, 1 ; and his
knowledge of the French language, 36
French in London, The, 1 1., IO
Freron on the luxurious life of dramatic
authors, L, 175
Frescoes in the church of Saint-Eustache,
1 -315
Frogs, Eating, IL, 167, 108
Fulton, Robert, and his panoramas, I.,
103
Funerals, Royal, I,, 98-IO2, 314 ; II., 94-
99
Furniture in the Cluny Museum, IL, 82

Gabriel, architect for the completion of
the Louvre, I., 199
Gaillardet, M., fights a duel with Alexandre
Dutnas the elder, L, 03
Gaiete Theatre, L, 302, 303
Gaiety, National, IL, 24; anecdotes of,
24-27
Gambetta, his monument, I., 217
Gambling, at the gambling-house of Fras-
cati, L, 104-106 ; at the Palais Royal,i67
Garamond, Claude, IL, 178
Gardens, of Frascati's gambling-house, I.,
106 ; of the Luxemburg, IL, 130
Gamier, Charles, architect of the Xew
Opera, L, 138
Gassendi, his burial-place, L, 299
Gautier, Theophile, his residence, L, 291
Gavaudin, Mile., opera-singer, sent to
prison, I., 58
General Post Office, and Lavalette, I.,
318-321 ; adoption and circulation of
postcards, 322 ; organisation, 321, ^22
Genevieve, Ste., Church of, L, IO ; IL, 59,
62 ; Hill of, I., 3, 10 ; jest of the Abbe
of, L, 99
Genius and madness, IL, 211
Georges, Mile., at Porte Saint-Martin
Theatre, L. 92
Geoffroy Lasnier, Rue, I., 290
Gerard, the assassin of the Prince of
Orange, I., 79
Germain, St., Market of, II. , 171
Germain 1'Auxerrois, St., Church of; and
the massacre of St. Bartholomew, I., 2,
22, 26 ; and the marriage of the Due de
Joyeuse and Marguerite of Lorraine, 27 ;
and the excommunication ofthe Emperor
Frederick, II., 29

Germain-des-Pres, St., Church of, I., 7 ;
antiquity and origin. II., 170 ; history,
170, 171 ; monastery attached to it, 171
Gibbet The, IL, 315
Girardin, De, kills Armand Carrel in a
duel, I., 62; visits Carrels grave, 6^
Girls corrupted at St. Lazare, II., 144
Girondists, Hall ofthe, I., 263
Gluck, his arrival in Paris, I., 135
Gobelins, The : origin, IL, 225 ; articles
produced, and the directors, 226; tapestry,
226-228 ; and M. Chevreuil, 22S ; master
pieces, 22S
Good Shepherd, Convent ofthe, II., 102
Gordon, Mme., and Louis Napoleon's
Strasburg expedition, I., 95
Goritz, Bourbons buried at, L, IOO ; II. ,
97
Goujon, Jean, sculptor of the Louvre, I.,
195, 310, }I2
Gounod's operas, L, 138
Government offices, II., 237
Grand Cercle, The, I., in
Grand Chatelet, The, I., 291, 292
Grand Prix, I., 220
Grandjean, surgeon to Louis XVI., I., 72
Granier, Mile. Jeanne, I.. 93
Graveron, Mme. de, her execution, I., 287
Greasy pole, Climbing the. I., 226
Grenier-sur-1'eau, Rue, I., 291
Gribeauval, General de, creator of modern
artillery, 1 1., 83
Grimm on the first performances of the
Marriage of Figaro, I., 44; and Diderot,
II, 245, 246
Gros-Chenet, Rue du, place of burning for
sorcerers, I., 3
**¦ Guardian Angels," IL, 260
Guenegaud Theatre, I, 174
Guilds, I., 300, 301
Guillotine : its introduction, I., 4, 327 ; in
the Place de la Revolution, I46; its
victims during the Reign of Terror, 150 ;
its inventor, 327 ; subject of a song,
^2$ ; and Dr. Louis, 328, 329 ; its first
victims, 329 ; various sites, 329 ; as a
toy, 329 ; improvements, 330 ; the exe
cutioner, 330-^32 ; burial-place of vic
tims, ^33 ; shed where first experiments
were made, II, 108
Guimard, Madeleine, mass at Xotre-Dame
for her broken arip, I, 19 ; and the fire
at Porte Saint-Martin Opera House, 86;
her Temple of Terpsichore, 127
Guise, Duke of, and the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, L, 22, 26 ; and the mur
der of Coligny, 24
Guise and Coligny, Quarrels between the
houses of, I, 349
Guttenberg, Statue of, I., 307
Gymnase Theatre : opened under the
patronage of the Duchess of Berri, I.,
103 ; notable productions, 103

Hackney coaches, I., 262 ; II, I, 2, 30,
Hailes, The, site of, I, 2
Handel and the overtures of De Maurepas
for performances in Paris, I, 74

Hanging for felony, I, 327
Haussmann, Baron, restores the Musee
Carnavalet, I, 07, 310
Hawkers of books, I, 125
Have, M. de la, and the Hotel Lambert,
I"., 291
Heart of St. Louis. The, L. 102
Hearts of Kings, Preservation of, I, 102 ;
II, 91
Heaume, Hotel du, L, 315
Hebert, M, and the Opera under the Re
public, I, 8£
" Hedge Schools," I, 287
Heine, Heinrich, I, 1 ; his letters on
Paris and other works, 1 1., 292; his
satire, 293 ; on Victor Hugo and
Rothschild, 214
Henri, the historian, burial-place, L, 299
Henriot, M., and the Opera under the Re
public, I, 8£
Henry IL mortally wounded in the Rue
Saint- Antoine, I, 2, 68 ; and his library,
190 ; and the Louvre, 195 ; his Protestant
victims, 286; II, 2^'^ a°d duelling, I,
547
Henry IIL, name erased from the prayers
of the Church, I, 16 ; and the marriage
of Due de Joyeuse and Margaret of
Lorraine, 27, 28 ; lays first stone of
Pont-Neuf, 30 ; his murder by Jacques
Clement, 70
Henry IV, statue on the Pont-Xeuf, I,
3, 31 ; chief of the Protestant party when
Prince of Beam, 22 ; and the Pont-
Xeui, 31 ; character and assassination
°f» 31* 34 i n's monument destroyed and
afterwards re-erected, ^3 : n's burial-
place, IOO ; and duelling, 349
Henry VI. of England crowned King of
France in Xotre-Dame, I, 15
Henry of Prussia, Prince, and Mile.
Contat, I, 36
Heralds, their proclamations in ancient
times, I, 3
Hermits of Saint-William, I, 306
Hernani% its first production, I, 179- 181
Herouard, Dr,and the Jardin des Plantes,
II, 147
Hilaire, Geoffroy St, and the Jardin des
Plantes, II, 150
Holy Sepulchre, Convent ofthe, I, 314
Homes and Retreats for the indigent, II.,
331
Horn, Count, I., 298
Horse-market in the park of the Hotel des
Tournelles, I., 69
Hospice de la Reconnaissance, II., 331
Hospital: (Hotel) Dieu, L, 278-280 ;
for incurables, II., 195 ; for sick child
ren, 196 ; de la Charite, 204-206 ; La
Pitie, 206
Hospitals, their administration, I., 276:
system, IL, 193-195 ; funds, 204
Hotel : de Beauvais, L, 283 ; Carnavalet,
L, 310; II, 160 ; du Cheval Blanc, IL,
108; Choiseul, I, 126; Cluny, II, 73;
Continental, L, 158; CoraeiUe, II, 109;
Drouet, 256 ; l'Empereur Joseph, II,
109 ; du Heaume, I, 315 ; Lambert, L,
291 ; Lamoignon, I, 68, 309 ; St Lo-
menie de Brienne et Loutrec, II, 177.

INDEX.

3°9

237, 238; St. Paul, II., 158; de Ranes,
II., 174; du Rhin, I., 158; de Rohan,
I., 304; de Salm, II., 236, 237; de
Sens, I., 35; II., 158; de Soissons, I.,
318 ; de Soubise, I., 304 ; de Torpane,
II., 160
H&tel-Dieu : its founder, I., 278 ; its re
building, cost, accommodation, &c.,
278 ; and the Dames Augustines, 279 ;
as described by Mercier, 279, 280
H&tel des Invalides : arms seized by in
surgents, I., 50 ; opinion of Montes
quieu, II., 185 ; history, 185, 186 ; edict
of Henry IV., 186 ; the edict of 1870,
186 ; and Louis XIV. and Mme. de
Maintenon, 187 ; visit of Peter the
Great, 188 ; jokes of the inmates, 188,
189 ; Napoleon and the anniversary of
the taking of the Bastille, 190 ; charac
teristics of the pensioners, 190, 191 ;
triumphal battery and tomb of Napoleon,
192
Hotel de Ville : its history, I., 242-249 ;
destroyed by the Commune, 242 ; II.,
359 ; attack of 1830, I., 244 ; balls and
entertainments, 247 ; reconstructed, 247 ;
and the administration of municipal
aifairs, 248, 249 ; and the administration
of hospitals, 276
Houssaye, Arsene, and the Academie
Francaise, I., 38
Huberti, Mme. St., I., 135, 322-324; her
assassination, 325, 326
Hugo, Victor, and the tower of Saint-
Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, I., 5 ; and
Marion de Lorme, 69 ; first production
of his Hemani, 179-181 ; his dramatic
works, 181 ; recites his first poems at
the Arsenal Library, 290 ; and the
Tower of Vertbois, 302 ; his remains
deposited in the Pantheon, II., 64;
childhood, 90 ; and Lemaitre at the
Bonne Nouvelle Bazaar, I., 103
Huguenots : fired upon by Charles IX.,
I., 2 ; II., 40 ; number massacred
throughout France, I., 27 ; continued
persecution, II., 41, 42. (See also
Protestants)
Hulin takes charge of De Launay,
Governor of the Bastille, I., 51
"Hymen, Temple of," I., 299
Hypnotism and the cure of madness, II. ,
211

Idiots, Treatment of, II., 214
Immorality, Laws against, IL, 143
Imperial Club, I., 140
Imperial Theatre of the Chatelet, I., 76
Industrial Exhibitions, I., 236
Industrial system, I., 236
Infanta of Spain and her fiance', I., 197
. Inquisition, The, and the "Waldenses, I.,
42
/ Institute of Paris, I., 10 ; its academies,
37, 38; II., 288; opinion of Renan, 53,
54 ; unique character and objects of its
projectors, 53, 54 ; constitution, 54, 55 ;
library, 55, 290; reconstitution by the
National Convention, 290
Institution Ste. Perine, II., 331

Insurrection against Julius Caesar, I., 6 ;
of June, 1832, against Louis Philippe,
93. 94 i II- 247-249
"Internationale," The, II., 355
Isabelle, Princess, and the Abbey of
Longchamp, I., 219
Island of Saint-Louis, I., 291
Italian actors invited to Paris by Henri
III., and afterwards expelled, I., 115-117
Italian children, Trade in, II., 328-330
Italian prisoner declines to leave the
Bastille, I., 99
Italiens, Boulevard des, I., II, 43, 115-127
Italiens, Theatre des, I., 117
Ivan the Terrible, and torturing criminals,
I., 18
Ivories in the Hotel Cluny, II., 77

Jacobin Club, I., 162-165
Jacobins : monastery, I., 161 ; their prin
ciples, 162 ; Chateaubriand's opinion of
them, 163 ; and M. l'Abbe Maury, 163,
164 ; Michelet's opinion, 162
Jacques-la-Boucherie, St., Tower of, I.,
283
Jacques aux Pelerins, St., Asylum of, I.,
314
Janin, Jules, I., IO ; at the Cafe Riche,
122 ; his satirical novel, 335
Jansenists in the Bastille, I., 46
Jardin des Plantes : popularity, origin
ators, first design, and the administration
of Fagon, II., 147 ; under Buffon, 148,
149 ; at the Revolution, 149 ; exten
sions, 149, 150 ; enthusiasm of travellers
and professors, 150 ; general arrange
ment, 150-154 ; menagerie, 152 ; wax
work collection, 153 ; busts and masks
of famous men, 154
Jarnac, his duel with Chateigneraie, I., 347
Jarnac, Battle of, I., 22
Jena Bridge, II., 33
Jensac, De, his duel with two adversaries,
I-, 347, 348
Jerome, Prince, and the Palais Royal, I.,
168
Jesuits and prisoners in the Bastille, I.,
99 ; and the Church of St. Louis and
St. Paul, 284 ; and the University, II.,
46
Jews, roasted at la Maubuee, I., 3 ; during
the Crusades, II., 62
Joan of Arc, unpopularity with Parisians,
I., 2, 159 ; at the siege of Paris, and her
execution, 159 ; denounced by a monk,
159, 160 ; personated, 160 ; and the
Sorbonne, II., 50
Jockey Club, I., in, 139
John the Fearless, and the assassination of
the Duke of Orleans, II., 158
Jonathan, the Jew, Legend of, I., 304
Joseph, Father, and the spy system, I., 272
Josephine, Empress, her coronation at
Notre-Dame, I., 21
Jouffroi Passage, I., in
Journal of Henry III., and the talisman
of Catherine de Medicis, I., 16
Journalists, Leading, II., 270-273
Joyeuse, Due de, Marriage of, I., 27
Jugglers, II., 327

Julian, Emperor, and his enthusiasm for
Lutetia, I., 7
Julien, Saint, Assassination of, I., 35
Julius Caesar, Insurrection against, I., 6
Jullien at the Cate Turc, I., 80
Just, Saint, his execution, I., 151
Kaufmann, Angelica, I., 298
Kings, Hearts of, their preservation, I.,
102 ; II., 91
Kirburg, Prince Frederic John Otho von
Salm, his palace and his execution, II.,
236
Labienus, and the insurrection against
Julius Caesar, I., 6
Labour, Compulsory, in prisons, II., 146
Lacepede, and the Jardin des Plantes, II.,
150
Lackeys, II., 20, 22
Lacroix, Paul, librarian at the Arsenal, I.,
290
Ladies'-maids, II., 22
Lafayette, General, I., 94 ; and the flight
of Louis XVI., 211 ; at the national
celebration in the Champ de Mars,
232 ; place of burial, 333 ; and the mob
at Versailles, II., 346, 347 ; and the
Breton Club, I., 162
Laffitte, M., I., 94 ; and the story of the
pin, 336 ; and the story of his loan to a
gamester, 336, 337 ; Minister of Finance
and President of the Council, 337
Lallemand, the student, Death of, I., 358,
359
Lally-Tollendal, Execution of, I., 47, 282
Lamalle, Execution of, I., 17
Lamarck, and the Jardin des Plantes, II.,
ISO
Lamarque, General, Funeral of, and the
Republican insurrection, I., 94
Lamartine and the mob, I., 244
Lamballe, Princesse de, I., 313
Lambert, Hotel, I., 219
Lameth and the Breton Club, I., 162
Lamotte, Countess, and the " affair of the
diamond necklace," II., 345
Lamoignon Hotel, its former and present
occupants, I., 68
Lamoureux, M., I., 76
L'Arbre, Rue de, I., 4, 327
Larive, in the Marriage of Figaro, I., 45
Lasource condemned to death, I., 151
Lassay, Marchioness de, II., 210
Lassus, M., and Notre-Dame, I., 14
Latournelle Bridge, II. , 34
Latude, Story of, II., 214-218 ; his libera
tion from the Bastille, I., 50
Launay, M., and the statue of Napoleon
on the Vendome Column, I., 156
Launay, De, and his defence of the Bas
tille, I., 50, 51
Lavalette, M. de : early life and connec
tion with the post office, I., 318 ; arrested
for high treason, and saved from death
by his wife, 318-320
Law, John Lauriston, his financial specula
tions in Paris, I., 294, 295 ; his work for
France, and his pictorial advertisements,
296, 297 ; his emigration scheme, II., 325

48

INDEX.

Law, Changes in the, L, 253, 254
Lawlessness of Parisians in ancient times,
I, 3 ; II, 60
Lazare, St., Prison, I., 64; II, 131 ;
formerly a leper hospital, 142 ; under
the canons of St. Victor and St. Vin
cent de Paul, 142 ; becomes a house of
correction, and is sacked during famine,
142; and Andre Chenier, 142; vast-
ness, 142 ; inmates, 143
Learning under the Convention, I, 90
Lebrun, the painter, and the Louvre, I,
198
Lecouvreur, Adrienne, Supposed poisoning
of, I, 3, 182, 183 ; burial of, 58, 183 ;
II, i75~
Legion of Honour, Palace ofthe, II., 237
Legislative Assembly of 1 791, II, 233
Legouve, M, on the art of fencing, II,
^57, 2^S
Legris, Jacques, Case of, and judicial duels,
1-346
Legros, Mme, and her efforts on behalf of
Latude, II, 214, 217, 218
Lemaitre, Frederic, in JZobert Macaire,
I, 85 ; in the Auberge des Adrits,
86 ; at Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, 92 ;
at the Theatre des Varietes, 104 ; and
Victor Hugo at the Bonne Nouvelle
Bazaar, 103
Lemoinne, M, on the English in Paris,
II, 10-12
Lenclos, Ninon de, and her rooms in the
Boulevard Beaumarchais, L, 67
Lenglet-Dufresnoy, Abbe, employed as a
spy by Louis XIV. and Prince Eugene,
1- 275
Leo, M. Andre, on Americans in Paris,
II., 12-15
Leopold, M., and the Folies Dramatiques
Theatre, I., 85
L'£pee, Abbe de, founder of the Deaf and
Dumb Institution, II., 89, 90, 199, 202 ;
his monument in the church of St. Roch,
203
Lepers, Proclamation for extermination
of, I., 3 ; asylum for, 219 ; shut off
in churches, 267 ; at St. Lazare, II.,
142
Lescot, Pierre, architect of the Louvre, I.,
195 ; and the Fountain of the Innocents,
312
Lesueur, his picture of an incident in
Notre-Dame, I., 14
L'fitoile, Arc de, I., 58
Lettres de Cacliet, I., 50, 63 ; and opera-
singers, 89, 99 ; and the spy system,
273 i II- 17
Leu-Saint-Gilles, St., Church of, I., 312-
314
L'Eveque, Fort, State prison, I., 56
Lezardiere, Baron, and Abbe Edgeworth,
II., 298
L'Hopital, Marshal de, and his marriage,
I., 322
Liancourt, Due de, and Louis XVI. after
the fall of the Bastille, I., 52
Librairie Nouvelle, I., 123, 124
Libraries, Circulating, I., 123 ; public,
1 87-191
Library, National, I., 86, 87, 187, 189-191 ;

Arsenal, 290 ; in the Hotel de Pimodan,
291 ; of the Institute, IL, 55 ; Sainte-
Genevieve, 65, 66 ; in the School of
Mines, 167
Lighting of Paris, II., 28
L'lle de la Cite, I., 6, 249
L'illustre Theatre, II., 291
Litteraire, Cafe, I., 107, 108
Liszt, Abbe, I., 315
Locke interests himself in an opera-singer,
1-74
Lombards, College and chapel of the, II.,
71
Lomenie de Brienne et Loutrec, Hotel,
II., 177, 237, 238
London contrasted with Paris, I., 9
Longchamp, Abbey of, I., 219-221 ; pro
menade, 221
L'Opera, Place de, I., 133
Loriquet, Father, as an historian, II., 250,
251
Lorme, Marion de, and her residence in
the Place Royale, I., 69
L'Orme, Philibert de, and the church of
Saint Eustace, I., 5
Lorraine, Cardinal de, and the massacre of
St. Bartholomew, I., 22
Losme, De, major of the Bastille, I., 52
Louis VI. and the right of clergy to fight
duels, I., 346
Louis VII., his offence against the Chapter
of Notre Dame, I., 12, 13 ; and the
lepers, II., 142
Louis IX. and the Louvre, I., 194
Louis XI. borrowing a book from the
Faculty of Medicine, I., 13 ; his corona
tion, 314
Louis XII., his library, I., 187
Louis XIII., his statue erected by Riche
lieu, I., 69, 70 ; his funeral, 99 ; and the
Palais Royal, 166 ; and the Royal
Printing Office, 307 ; and the Jardin des
Plantes, II., 147 ; and Versailles, 338
Louis XIV., Statue of, I., 2 ; proscribes
Gothic architecture, 5 ; and the burial
of Moliere, 58, III ; and opera-singers,
89 ; his funeral, 99 ; II., 94 ; and the
Italian actors, I., 117 ; and the licence
for masked balls, 139 ; presents the
Palais Royal to Philip of Orleans, 166 ;
and the Louvre, 197-199 ; his collection
of pictures, 201, 202 ; and duelling,
350 ; and disabled soldiers, II., 187 ;
and Versailles, 338
Louis XV. consigns the Encyclopaedia to
the Bastille, I., 55 ; stabbed by Damiens,
76 ; his conduct compared with that of
the Duke of Berri, 91 ; his funeral, 99 ;
II., 95 ; and the Madeleine, I., 142 ; his
statue, 143, 144 ; and the Comedie
Francaise, 175 ; and the Royal Military
School, 229 ; founds the Church of
Sainte-Genevieve, II., 62 ; and the beg
gars, 326
Louis XVI. confined in the Rue du
Temple, I., 2, 70 ; after the capture of
the Bastille, 52 ; his mild government,
55 ; flight from Paris, 87, 211 ; reputed
burial-place, IOO ; his execution, 146,
147-150 ; brought back to the Tuileries,
214; and the celebration in the Champ

de Mars, 231, 232; his trial, II., 234;
and Versailles, 345
Louis XVII., his life in the Temple and
death, I., 70 ; the supposition that he
escaped from the Temple and lived till
1872, 70, 71 ; his reputed burial-place,
IOO
Louis XVIII. inaugurates the new statue
of Henry IV., I., 35 ; and the burial of
Mile. Raucourt, 58 ; and the murder of
the Duke of Berri, 90 ; obsequies of,
II., 96, 99 ; and the Madeleine, I., 142 ;
and the pictures in the Louvre, 204;
and the dungeon of Marie Antoinette,
263 ; and Lavalette, 318, 320 ; and the
Abbe Edgeworth, II., 302
Louis Napoleon, Prince, his two attempts
to secure the throne, I., 95-97 ; II.,
116-123 ; his trial at the Luxemburg,
123, 124. (See also Napoleon III.)
Louis-Philippe : abdication and flight, I.,
2, 3 ; fortifications constructed under, 7 ;
lays first stone of the monument in the
Place de la Bastille, 59 ; military glories
of his reign, 75 ; Fieschi's attempt upon
his life, 76-79; II., 112-114 ; his sang
froid, I., 78; insurrection of June, 1832,
against him, 93, 94 ; his burial-place,
IOO ; unveils the new statue of Napoleon
on the Vendome Column, 156 ; and the
Palais Royal, 167, 168 ; and the FJysee
Palace, 218 ; and the Arc de Triomphe,
225; and Talleyrand, II., 241
Louis-Philippe Bridge, II., 34
Louis, Dr., and the guillotine, I., 328, 329
Louis le Gros and the Palais de Justice,
I., 250
Louis, St. : funeral. I., 98 ; preservation
of his heart, 102 ; II., 91 ; effigy in the
Palais de Justice, I., 260 ; and Blanche
de Castille, I., 267
Louis, St., Bridge, I., 34
Louis, St., Island of, II., 34
Louis, St, and St. Paul, Church of, and a
picture by Eugene Delacroix, I., 284
Louvel, assassin of the Duke of Berri, I.,
90, 91 ; his trial, II., 114-116
Lovat, Lord, Decapitation of, and George
Selwyn, I., 18
Louviers, Island of, II., 34
Louvre, The : origin, I., 193 ; recon
structed by Philip Augustus, 194 ; the
Tower, 194 ; additions made by Louis
IX. and Charles X., 194; historical
events, 194, 195 ; its architect and alter
ations by Catherine de Medicis, 195 r
royal residents, 196, 197 ; extensions
under Louis XIV., 198 ; its picture-
gallery, 199, 201-206 ; completed by
Napoleon III., 200
Lucas, Hippolyte, librarian at the Arsenal,
I- 290
Lulli's operas, I., 127, 135
Lunatic asylums, II., 207-214, 223-225
Lunatics, Prison for, I., 63 ; their treat
ment at various periods, 207, 208;
number in France, 209 .
Lunge, The brothers, I., ill
Lutetia, the Paris of the Romans, I., 3 ;
its position and development, 6 ; rebuilt
and governed as a Roman town, 6 ; and

INDEX.

37i

the Emperor Julian, 7 ; governed by
bishops, besieged by Franks, and in
vaded by Normans, 7 ; an island, 7 ; its
church and palace, 249 ; and the hot
baths, II., 73
•Lutheran Church, I., 304
Luxemburg Palace : I., 10 ; its originator
and various owners, II., Ill ; becomes
the Senate or Chamber of Peers, 112 ;
celebrated trials, 112 ; trial of Fieschi,
112-114; trial of Louvel, 114-116; trial
Of Louis Napoleon, 116-124 ; and the
case of Praslin, 124, 129 ; the gardens
and picture-gallery, 130
Luxor, Obelisk of, I., 154
Lyceum of Louis the Great, II., 59
Lyons, Number of Huguenots killed at,
I., 27; incidents of the massacre of
Huguenots, 27
Machines, Exhibition of, I., 301, 302
MacMahon, Marshal, II., 358
Madeleine, The, its architecture, I., II,
142 ; its history, decorations, preachers,
&c, 142, 143
Madeleine, Boulevard, I., 43, 142
Magic, Burning for the crime of, I., 15
Magicians in Paris, I., 16, 17 ; patronised
by Catherine de Medicis, 42
Magloire, St., Abbey of, I., 314
Magny Restaurant, II., 108
Maintenon, Mme. de, satirised by Italian
actors, I., 116 ; and disabled soldiers,
II., 187 ; -and the Tsar, 344
Maison Doree, La, I., 122, 123
Maison de Villas, II., 331
Malesherbes, M. de, and the execution of
Louis XVI., I., 14.7 ; his monument in
the Palais de Justice, 258
Malle de Scudery, novelist, I., 299
Man in the iron mask, I., 284
Mandelot, Governor of Lyons, and the
massacre of Huguenots, I., 27
Maniaut, Du, and Porte Saint-Martin
Theatre, I., 92
Mansard, the architect, I., 67 ; and the
Place Vendome, 155 ; and the Val de
Grace, II., 90
Manteuffel, Baron Ernest von, and Les
deux Pages, I., 36
. Maps, School of, I., 305
Maquet, Auguste, I., 303
Mara, Mme., I., 135
Marais, The, its illustrious residents, I., 67
Marais, Rue des, I., 3, 67
Marais, Theatre du, I., 174 ; II., 110
Marat, I., 151 ; disposal of his remains,
II., 106 ; editor of Ami du Peuple, 109
Marble Table, Theatre of the, I., 250, 252
Marcel, Etienne, Mayor of Paris, I., 242 ;
builds the Bastille, 286
Marcellus, Bishop, I., 14
Marchaud, Guillaume, architect and
¦builder of Pont-Neuf, I., 31
Marche, Rue du> I., 161
Marche des Innocents, Rue du, Events
•associated with, I., 3
Margaret of Navarre, Queen, and the
preaching of Protestants, I., 287 ; II., 38
Marguerite of Lorraine, Marriage of, I.,
27

Marguerite de Valois and her lovers. I.,
35 i II- 159
Marie Antoinette confined in the Rue du
Temple, I., 2, 70 ; at a notable perform
ance at the Academie Royale de Mu-
sique, 87; insulted at the Opera Comique,
87 ; marriage, 144 ; her execution, 150 ;
carries her son into the Assembly, 207 ;
in the Conciergerie, 263 ; affair of the
necklace, 307 ; II., 345
Marie de Medicis and her belief in magic,
I., 17 ; and the Luxemburg Palace, II.,
Ill
Marie Bridge, II., 34
Marigny, Avenue, I., 223, 224
Market : in the Place de la Republique, I.,
84 ; in the Place de la Madeleine, 142 ;
Temple, 303, 304 ; Innocents, 312 ;
Corn, 314, 318; F'ish, 315; II., 316;
Ave Maria, I., 290 ; of St. Germain,
II- 171
Markets, Central, I., 314, 315-318; II.,
166, 167, 315, 316
Marly, II., 339, 340
Marne, River, II., 287
Marot, Clement, his translation of the
Psalms, I., 287 ; II., 38
Marriage of Due de Joyeuse and Mar
guerite of Lorraine at the Church of
St.-Germain-I'Auxerrois, I., 27
Marriage of Figaro, I., 44-46, 179 ; its
effect on the public mind, 67
Mars, MUe., I., 103 ; in Hemani, 181,
183 ; and Mile. Rachel, 298
Martin, St., Boulevard, I., 93
Martin, St., Porte, I., 93, 98
Masked balls, I., 139
Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the bell
of St.-Germain-1'Auxerrois, I., 2, 9,
289 ; its authors, 22, 289 ; preparations,
23 ; murder .of Coligny, 24, 289
Massenet's operas, I., 138
Maubuee, La, Jews roasted at, I., 3
Maurevel fires at Admiral Coligny, I.,
23
Maury, M. l'Abbe, his oration in defence
ofthe Parliament, I., 163, 164
Mazarin, and Count de Rochefort, I., 37 ;
and the introduction of opera into France,
74, 116 ; his project for establishing a
college, II., 289
Mazarin Library, I., 191
Mazarin Palais, II., 288
Mazas, Prison of, I., 261 ; II., 131 ; con
struction, and riots of first inmates,
137 ; and the cellular system, 137, 138 ;
sanitation, regime, and administration,
138
Medicine, School of, and practical school,
II., 106, 107
Mendicancy, II., 324-330
Menilmontant, I., 335
Mercier, his description of the Pont-Neuf,
I., 36, 37 ; on the Academie Francaise,
37- 38 ; description of public executioner,
39 ; on the political indifference of
Parisians, and the mild government of
Louis XVI., 54, 55 ; on hackney
coaches, 262 ; on the spy system, 271,
272 ; on the Hotel-Dieu, 279-281 ; on
the Mont-de-Piete, 306; views on the

Sorbonne, II., 52, 53 ; on the Pantheon,
64
Mery at the Cafe de la Regence, I., 109
Mery, St., Church of, I., 93, 293, 294
Meyerbeer, his Robert le Diable, I., 135
Michclet on the Jacobins, I., 162
Middle Ages : curiosities of the period in
the Cluny Museum, II., 78 ; arms and
armour in the Artillery Museum, 86, 87 ;
burning of lunatics, 207
Mignard, the painter, I., 159
Mignons, The, their contest with the
partisans of the Duke of Guise, I., 69
Mignot, Francois Marie, I., 322
Military School, Site of old, I., 127
Military spectacles in circuses and theatres,
1-75
Mille, Laurent de, and the assassination
of a banker in the Rue de Venise, I., 298
Mineralogy, Museum of, II., 130
Ministry of Justice, I., 158
Mirabeau : his motion in the Assembly on
July 8th, 1789, I., 47 ; his death, 163 ;
place of burial, II., 63 ; letters from
the Bastille to "Sophie," 139, 279;
early life, marriage, and imprisonment,
279 ; captivity at Vincennes, and visit
to Prussia, 280 ; his " Secret History,"
and " Prussian Monarchy," 281; political
life, relations with the Court, and his
death, 282 ; and the Breton Club, I., 162
Miraille, Dominique, burnt for the crime
of magic, I., 15
Miramion, Madame Beauharnais de, and
her house of refuge for girls, II., 138
Mirlitons Club, I., 140
Miron, Francois, his offering of a silver
lamp in Notre-Dame, I., 15
Molay, Jacques de, burned on the Pont-
Neuf, I., 3, 276
Mole, in the Marriage of Figaro, I., 45
Moliere, birthplace, I., 2, 322 ; death and
burial, 2, 58, ill, 112 ; residence, III ;
benevolent act of his widow, 112 ; his
borrowing from the Italians, 117 ; as
represented by Scarron, 173, 174 ;
estrangement from Racine, 174 ; joins a
troop of wandering players, 174 ; im
prisoned for debt, 290 ; his Scottish
descent, 315 ; and the Val de Grace, II.,
91
Moliere Theatre, I., 296
Momus, Cafe, I., 110, III
Monastery of the Jacobins, I., 161
Monceau, Pare, I., 344
Monks and duelling, I., 346
Montalivet, M. de, his interview with
Napoleon, I., 291
Montansier, Mile., I., 86, 183
Mont-de-Piete, I., 305, 306 ; external ap
pearance, II., 160 ; internal arrange
ments, 161 ; Alfred Delvau's description
of the borrowers, 162 ; its founder, 163 ;
description by M. Blaize, 163-166
Montesquieu shoots the Prince of Conde,
I., 22 ; his interest in opera-singers, 74
Montgomery kills Henri II. in a tourna
ment, I., 68
Montlhery, Battle of, I., 43, 144
Montmartre, Boulevard, in former times,
I., 2, 104, 113 ; Butte, 340, 342 ;

61-

INDEX.

Cemetery, 342 ; observatory, 342 ; and
the church of St. Peter, 342 ; and the
Frascati gaming-house, 104-106
Montmorency, Constable de, Hotel built
by, I., 290
Montparnasse, its associations and occu
pants, II., 250-253
Montparnasse Theatre, II., 250
Monument to the Republic, I., 84
Moralities, Performance of, at the Palais
de Justice, I., 250
Moreau, Hegesippe, II., 250, 251
Morgue, The, II., 34, 35
Moulins, Assembly at, I., 22
Mun, Comte de, II., 71
Municipality of Paris, I., 243
Murat and the Iilysee Palace, I., 218
Mflrger, Henri, I., no, 342 ; his " Vie de
Boheme," 367
Murillo, his " Conception of the Virgin,"
at the Louvre, I., 206
Museum, Artillery, II., 83-88 ; Carnavalet,
I., 67, 310 ; Cluny, II., 76-82 ; of French
monuments, II., 175 ; of mineralogy, II.,
130 ; des Thermes, I., 314
Musical Artists, Society of, I., 315
Musset, Alfred de, at the Cafe de la
Regence, I., 109
Mysteries, Performance of, I., 19, 226,
314

Napoleon I. and his coronation in Notre-
Dame, I., 12, 19-21 ; and The Man of
Destiny at Porte Saint-Martin Theatre,
92 ; his burial-place, IOO ; and opera-
singers, 135 ; and the Madeleine, 142 ;
and the Column of Austerlitz, 155 ; and
the Comedie F'rancaise, 178 ; at the
Elysee Palace, 218 ; and the Bois de
Boulogne, 222 ; and the Arc de Triomphe
de l'Etoile, 224 ; at the Royal Military
School, 230 ; and the Rue de Rivoli,
283 ; and the Legislative Body, II., 232 ;
his nobility, 303
Napoleon III.: his burial-place, I., IOO;
II., 97 ; completes the Louvre, I., 200 ;
and the Rue de Rivoli, 283 ; birthplace,
340 ; and the monument to Marshal
Ney, II., 106 ; sends 500 citizens to
Sainte-Pelagie, 141 ; creation of nobles,
303. (See also Louis Napoleon)
Napoleon III. Bridge, II., 33
Napoleon Barracks, I., 283
National Assembly : its heroic behaviour
during the revolution of 1789, I., 5° i
decrees the destruction of royal tombs,
102 ; II., 98 ; description of a debate, I.,
163-165
National Guard, their behaviour at the
insurrection of June, 1832, I., 94
National Library : the danger of fire from
the proximity of the Salle Montansier,
I., 86, 87 ; and Louis XL, 187 ; seques
tration of Scheffer and Hanequis' books,
187 ; its gradual growth, 189, 190 ; regu
lations, 191
National Museum of French Monuments,
II-, 175
National School of Mines, II., 166
National workshops, II., 130, 247

Naundorff, pretender to the French throne,
I., 70. 71
Naval and Military Club, I., 14O
Navarre, Queen of, Death of the, I., 23
Necker, Dismissal of, I., 47 ; bust, veiled
with crape, carried through Paris, 48
Necklace, diamond, Affair of the, II., 345
Necropolis of Saint-Denis, Burial of kings
at the, I., 98-102 ; destruction of tombs
and mausoleums by the National As
sembly, 102
Nemours, Due de, his duel with the Duke
de Beaufort, I., 350
Nesle, Mme. de, principal in a duel, I.,
35°
Nesle, Tower of, II., 288
Neuf Bridge, II., 34
Nevers, Duke of, I., 23
New Opera, The : dimensions, I., 133 ;
opening, cost, and number of persons
employed, 138 ; masked ball, 139
New Year's gifts, I., 113, 114 ; II., 22
Xew York Herald, Office of the, I., 140
Newspapers suppressed by Charles X.,
I., 2 ; after the Revolution, II., 180 ;
prosecutions of 1835, J8l ; the first
paper, 270 ; leading newspapers and
their writers, 270-273
Ney, Marshal, and the fencing-master, I.,
350 ; espousal of the cause of Napoleon,
II., 103, 104; trial and execution, 105,
106 ; monument to his memory, 106
Nicholas-in-the-Fields, St., Church of, I.,
299
Nobility, Emigration of the, II., 255-298
Nodier, Charles, custodian of the Arsenal
Library, I., 290
Normans, their burning of a part of Paris,
I., 3 ; invasion of Paris, 7
Notre-Dame, founding of, I., 3 ; Paris
seen from the towers of, 4 ; on the
site of a Temple to Jupiter, 6, 12, 14 ;
coronation of Napoleon in, 12, 19-21 ;
wand of Louis VII. deposited in, 12,
13 ; funeral of Raimond Diocre, 13, 14 ;
formerly consisting of two edifices, 14 ;
known as the " New Church " in the
twelfth century, 14 ; embellishments
under Louis XIII., 14; mutilations and
restoration, 14 ; absolution of Raymond
VIL, 14 ; put to various uses, 15 ;
coronation of Henry VI. of England
as King of France, 15 ; panic caused by
robbers, 15 ; celebration of the Feast of
Reason, 15 ; executions in front of, 15 ;
penance of Damiens in front of, 17 ;
mass for Madeleine Guimard's broken
arm, 19 ; dramatic performances, 19
Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, Church of, I., 340
Novels, Price of, I., 124
Nursing Institution, II., 196

Obelisk of Luxor, I., 154
Observatory, founding and design, II.,
102 ; copper cupola, 102 ; instruments,
102, 103 ; execution of Marshal Ney in
the Avenue, 103
Observatory of Montmartre, I., 342
O'Connell, his will that his heart should
be sent to Rome, I., 102 ; II., 91

Octroi, The, I., 7, 48 ; II., 318
Odeon Theatre, I., 10 ; II., no, 291, 292
Odo the Falconer, I., 293
Old-clothes dealers, II., 260, 261
Olivier, Mile., in the Marriage of Figaro,
1-45
Omnibuses, II., 31
Opera, The : described by Rousseau, I.,
134, 135 ; Dr. Burney's opinion, 134 ;
rehearsals, 136 ; first performances, 138
Opera Comique, The, Marie Antoinette
insulted at, I., 87 ; its establishment,
115, 117 ; its operas, 118 ; destroyed by
fire, 118 ; its history, 292
Opera, Grand, its dimensions and com-
modiousness, I., 133 ; its inauguration,
138 ; and masked balls, 139
Opera House in the Rue Le Pelletier,
destroyed by fire, I., 127; and William
Tell, 138
Opera - singers, engaged through the
agency of diplomatists, I., 74 ; com
pelled to perform by lettres de cachet,
89 ; their immunities, 89 ; salaries, 134 ;
training, 135 ; costumes, 322-324
Opera, National, formerly Academie
Royale de Musique, I., 87 ; its direction
under the Republic, 87, 88
Operas, Composers of, at the Opera
Comique and the Academie, I., 118
Orchestra of blind men, I., no
Organ-grinders, II., 327
Orleans, brother of Charles VI., Duke of,
assassinates the Duke of Burgundy,
1-2
Orleans, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of.
(See E"galite, Philippe)
Orleans, Philip II., Duke of, liberates
prisoners from the Bastille, I., 99 ; and
the Palais Royal, 167
Oriental Languages, School, II., 177
Orsi, Count, and Boulogne expedition of
Louis Napoleon, II., 117-124
Oyster-women, II., 7, 8

Paix, Rue de la, I., 158
Palace of Industry and the Exhibition of
1855. I- 223, 224
Palace of National Archives, I., 304
Palais : Bourbon, I., 231, 236 ; Cardinal,
306, 307 ; de Justice, 250-260 ; Maza
rin, 288, 289; Royal, 2, 166-170 ; des
Thermes, II., 73
Palais, du, Boulevard, I., 264, 269
Palais Bourbon : inappropriateness of
name, II., 231 ; construction, history,
and use, 231 ; and the Legislative Body,
231, 236
Palais de Justice : its Roman origin and
early history, I., 250, 251 ; fire of 1618,
252 ; fire of 1776, 253 ; reconstructed
and enlarged, 253 ; design, dimensions,
tower and courts, 254 ; stalls and
booths, grand staircase, &c, 255 ; pic
ture by Van Eyck, 256 ; Salle des
Pas Perdus, 258 ; monument to
Malesherbes, 258 ; the Golden Room,
258 ; trials in the " Hall of Equity " and
the case of Cazotte, 259 ; Galerie Saint-
Louis, 259, 260; Bureau of Judicial

INDEX.

373

Assistance, 260; collection of articles
taken from prisoners, 260
Palais Royal : revolutionary scenes en
acted there, I., 2, 169, 170 ; its original
name, 166 ; presented to Louis XIII.
by Richelieu, 166 ; residence of Hen
rietta of F'rance and of Philip of
Orleans, 166 ; burning and re-erection
of theatre, 166; galleries turned into
shops, 167 ; place of dissipation, 167 ;
various owners, 168 ; fired by Com
munards, 168; II., 359
Palais Royal Theatre, I., 184
Palissy, Bernard, specimens of his work
in the Cluny Museum, II., 79
Panoramas established by Robert Fulton,
I- 103
Panoramas, Passage de, I., 103
Pantheon, I., 3, IO ; the site, II., 59 ;
founded as the Church of Sainte-Gene
vieve, 63; decision of the Constituent
Assembly, 63 ; its illustrious dead, 63,64
Pantheon Theatre, II., 89
Pare, Mile, du, her lovers and her in
trigues, I., 174
Paris, Count of, and his claim to the
throne, II., 305, 306
"Parisians," The, I., 103
Parvis of Notre-Dame, its historical
associations, I., 276, 277
Pascal, Statue of, I., 283
Pasdeloup, Popular Concerts started by,
I., 76
Pasquier, Baron, and the spy system, II.,
18
Passage des Panoramas, I., 103
Paul, Hotel St., II., 158
Paul, St. Vincent de, and his asylum for
- foundlings, II., 102 ; and the lepers,
142 ; and the inmates of La Salpetriere,
211
Paulmy, M. de, and the sale of his books
to the Count of Artois, I., 290
Pauvent, first Protestant put to death in
France, I., 286
Pavilion of Hanover, I., 126
Peasants, II., 167-170, 310, 311
Pelagie, Ste., Prison: I., 170 ; II., 131 ;
origin and first uses, 138, 139; at the
Revolution and under the Second Em
pire, 139 ; Duchess of Berri's Chapel
and employment of prisoners, 139 ;
class of inmates and official staff, 139,
140 ; celebrated prisoners, 140 ; during
the Republic and under Napoleon III.,
141 ; famous escapes, I4r, 142
Pelletan, Dr., and the heart of Louis
XVII., II., 92
Pene, Henri de, fights a duel at Vincennes,
I., 61
Pere-Lachaise, Cemetery of: origin of
name, I., 333 ; site and characteristics,
334; monuments and graves of notable
people, 334 ; the slaughter of May,
I87i, 335 ; II., 359 ; the crematorium,
I- 335 > demonstration of students in
connection with the death of Lalle-
mand, 359
Perine, Institution Sainte-, II., 331
Perrault, Claude, and the completion of
the Louvre, I., 198 "

Peter the Great, his visit to Versailles,
II- 343- 344
Petion and the Breton Club, I., 162
Petty trades, II., 259-264, 265, 266
Philip II. of Spain and the massacre of
St. Bartholomew, I., 22
Philip Augustus : Burial at St. Denis of,
I., 98; reconstructs the Louvre, 194;
and the Palais de Justice, 250 ; founds
the Central Markets, 315; his towers,
II- 157
Philip the Fair and the Palais de Justice,
I- 250
Philip the Long, and the church of Notre
Dame de Boulogne, I., 221
Piccini's operas, I., 135
Pichon, Baron, his collection of books and
objects of art, I., 291
Picture-dealers, II., 255, 256
Picture-gallery at the Louvre, I., 201-206 ;
at the Cluny Museum, II., 79, 80; at
the Luxemburg Palace, 130
Pillory, II., 315
Pimodan, Lieut-General Count de, I., 291
Pinel, reformer of lunatic asylum system,
II., 211, 222
Piron, and the Academie F'rancaise, I.,
37, 38
Pius IV. and the massacre of St. Bartholo
mew, I., 22
Place, de la Bastille, I., 43, 52, 59; du
Chateau d'Eau, I., 84 ; du Chatelet, I.,
291, 292 ; de la Concorde, II. , 143-154 ;
de Greve, I., 2, 15, 39, 289 ; de l'Hotel-
de- Ville, I., 39, 281 ; St. Jacques, I.,
282; Maubert, II., 71, 72; de l'Opera,
I., 133 ; du Parvis, I., 276 ; de la Ro
quette, I., 282 ; Royale, I., 68, 69 ;
Vendome, I., 133, ISS"^; H- 359; des
Victoires, I., 2 ; des Vosges, I., 68
Poissonniere, Boulevard, I., 103
Pol, St., Execution of the Constable of, I.,
282
Police-courts, I., 261
Polignac, Mme. de, principal in a duel, I.,
350
Political indifference of Parisians, I., 54
Polytechnic School, I., 358
Pompadour, Mme. de, and her treatment
of Latude, II., 214-216
Pomponne, Marquis de, his burial-place,
I- 294
Pont-Neuf, the, Statue of Henry IV. on,
I., 3; events occurring on, 3; the oldest
bridge in Paris, 30 ; first stone laid by
Henry III., 30 ; restored, 35; incident
of Mile. Contat and Prince Henry of
Prussia, 35, 36; Mercier's account of,
36, 37 ; robberies committed by gentle
men on, 37 ; resort of beggars, 38, 39
Poor, The : their treatment, II., 193 ;
institute for their nursing, 196, 197;
homes, retreats, " bureaux," and Govern
ment aid, 331-337
Popular concerts started by Pasdeloup, I.,
76
Poquelins, House of the, I., 315
Porcelain, Sevres, II., 228-230
Portal, Berenger de, I., 290
Porte Saint-Denis, Coustruction and de
sign of, I., 98

Porte Saint-Martin, I., 93, 98
Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, I., 86 ; closed
at intervals and afterwards re-opened by
Du Maniaut, 92 ; burnt, and rebuilt, 93
Post-cards, Adoption and circulation of, I.
322
Potel and Chabot, Firm of, and the ban
quet to ten thousand mayors, I., 126
Poussin, Nicolas, and the Louvre, I., 198
Prado, The, I., 269
Praslin, Due de, Crime and suicide of, II.,
124-130
Press, The: in 1728, II., 268; under the
Convention, the Directory, and the Con
sulate, 269 ; at the second Restoration,
269; "ordonnances" of 1830, 269; aboli
tion of censorship by Louis Philippe,
269; after the revolution of 1848, 270 ;
leading newspapers and journalists, 270-
273
Press Club, I., 139
Prefect of Police, 1 , 270
Preville in the Marriage of Figaro, I., 45
Prevot, Rue de, I., 284
Printers, and the suppression of news
papers by Charles X., I., 2
Printing, its introduction, II., 178; work
of Garamond and Robert Etienne, 178 ;
restrictions and opposition, 179; privi
leges granted by Henry IV., and the
censorship of Louis XIII.,180 ; in 1791,
180 ; and the play of Gerard de Nerval,
181
Printing-office, Royal, I., 307- 309; of
Honore de Balsac, II., 175 ; of Quantin,
178
Prisoners, and their cells, I., 261, 262 ; II.,
137 ; famous escapes, 141, 142
Prisons, II., 131-146; hygiene, food, and
general internal arrangements, 145, 146
Private warfare in France, I., 3
Procope, Cafe, I., 108, 109
Protestant Temple of the Oratory, I., 314
Protestants: attempt to drive away the
Guises, I., 22 ; privileges granted to
them after the battle of Jarnac, 22;
preparations for their massacre, 23;
suspected of plots, 23 ; their massacre
on St. Bartholomew's Day, 26, 27 ; in
the Bastille, 47 ; their burning by Henry
II., 286 ; persecution at the Reformation,
287; II., 38; places of worship, I., 287;
II., 38, 43 ; under the Reign of Terror,
43 ; schools, I., 287
Prussians, charges against them tor con
duct during the Franco-Prussian War,
II- 353. 354
Public Aid Department, II., 335, 337
Public Writers, II., 3-7

Quai d'Anjou, I., 291
Quantin's printing-office, II., 178
Quartier Latin, The, I., 10
Quinze-Vingts, The, II., 198, 199
Quincampoix, Rue, I., 294

Rabelais, his place of burial, I., 284 ; place
of his death, II., 157; his allusions to
Francis I., 158

374

INDEX.

Rachel, MUe. : parentage and early life, I.,
208 ; her performances at the Theatre
Moliere, and admission into the Con
servatoire, 298 ; at the Gymnase, 298.
299 ; at the Theatre Francais, 299
Racine, and " Bajazet " and " Britanni-
cus," I., 3 ; estrangement with Moliere,
174
Racing, at Longchamps, I., 226; II., 254;
at Champ de Mars, I., 235 ; as a fete,
IL, 255 ; at Chantilly, 254 ; at Versailles
and Fontainebleau, 255
Racing Club, I., 140
Rag-pickers, their occupation described, I.,
360, 361 ; commissioned to kill dogs,
362 ; in literature and the drama, 362-
365 ; II., 260
Railway Club, I., 139
Railways, their introduction, IL, 317 ;
development checked by the accident of
1842, 318
Rameau's operas, I., 135
Ramus, Peter, II., 71, 72
Ranes, Hotel de, II., 174
Raphael, his pictures in the Louvre, I.,
206 ; copies of his Loggie in the School
of Fine Arts, II., 176
Raucourt, MUe., Burial of, I., 58, 112,
158 ; narrow escape from the guillotine,
178 ; opposition to the Directory, 178
Ravaillac, Francis, his occupation and
disposition, I., 31, 32 ; plans the murder
of Henry IV., 33; assassinates the
king, is tortured and dismembered, 34,
35; suspected of firing the Palais de
Justice, 253
Raymond VII. absolved in Notre-Dame
I-I4
Recruitment Bill of 1872, I., 65
Reformation said to have begun in Paris,
I., 2S6; II., 36; its progress, I., 288
Refreshments at the Exhibition of 1889, I.,
239, 240
Reggio, Duke of, and his coUection in the
Artillery Museum, II., 84
Regence, Cafe de la, I., 109
Regnard, Birthplace of, I., 315
Regnault, Henri, II., 250
Regnier, the astrologer, I., 16
Reign of Terror, The Opera and drama
under the, I., 88, 135, 176 ; its commence
ment, 150 ; number of its victims, 151 ;
causes, 151 ; and the mass for the Prin
cesse de Lamballe, 313 ; and massacre
of inmates of prisons, II., 222 ; and
Robespierre's rule, 235 ; and the emi
gration, 295
Relics, Worship of, II., 91
Renaissance, Churches of the, I., 5
Renaissance Theatre, I., 86, 93
Renee, Princess, saves Protestants during
the massacre of St Bartholomew, I.,
289
Rentier, The, II., 23
Reposoir, Le, place of meeting of the
Breton Club, afterwards u Protestant
Church, I., 162
Republic, Monument to the, I., 84; the
Opera under the, 88, 135
Republican Guard, I., 271
Restaurant : origin of the word, I., 103 ;

Banquet d'Anacreon, 85 ; Brebant's,
103 ; Cadran Bleu, 85 ; of the Porte
Montmartre, 103 ; Magny, II., 108 ;
La Maison Doree, I., 122, 123
Restaurants of the Boulevard du Temple,
I., 85 ; in the early days of the Re
storation, 122 ; and the brothers from
Provence, 122
Retz, Count de, I., 23
Revolution (1789) : the first blow and
Camille Desmoulins' call to arms, 47 ;
preparations for a rising, 49 ; behaviour
of the National Assembly, 50 ; seizure
of arms at the Hotel des Invalides, 50 ;
fall of the Bastille, 51, 52 ; revolutionary-
spirit in the provinces, 52, 54 ; the cry
"A la lanterne!" II., 29
Revolution (1830), outbreak and develop
ment, I., 169-171
Revolution, Place de la, I., 146, 151
Rey, M., and the fire at the Porte Saint-
Martin Opera House, I., 86
Rheims, Archbishop of, presentation of
books to the Royal Library, I., 190
Rhin, Hotel du, I., 158
Richard the Lion-hearted, Heart of, II.,
91
Riche, Cafe, I., 122
Richelieu, Cardinal, and the Academie
Francaise, I., 37 ; his attempt to put
down duelling, 69, 349; medallion to
his memory, III ; and the Pavilion of
Hanover, 126 ; presents the Palais
Royal to Louis XIII., 166 ; and the
spy system, 272 ; II., 19; and the Sor
bonne, II., 51
Richelieu, Due de, as a duellist, I., 350
Riding School of the Tuileries, I., 165
Ripley, General, offered the command of
the Paris forts, II., 350
Rivoli, Rue de, I., 282, 283
Roads and Bridges, National School of,
II., 177
Robbers in Notre-Dame, I., 15 ; on the
Pont-Neuf, 37
Robespierre at the Cafe de la Regence,
I., 109 ; his execution, 151 ; his Jacobin
ism, 163 ; at the Festival of the Supreme
Being, 234, 235 ; and his spy system,
274; ferocity of his rule, II., 235 ; and
the Breton Club, I., 162
Roch, St., Church of, I., 158, 159
Rochart, M., and the Ambigu-Comique
Theatre, I., 86
Rochefort, Count de, commits robberies
on the Pont-Neuf, I., 37
Rochefoucauld, La, and the attack on the
Guises, I., 22 • murdered, 26 ; and the
Breton Club, 162 •
Rochelle, La, Story of the Four Sergeants
of, II., 218-221
Rochepot, Hotel de la, I., 286
Rohan, Cardinal de, and the " affair of the
diamond necklace," II., 345
Rohan, Hotel de, I., 304
Rohan-Rochefort, Princess, wife of the
Due d'Enghien, I., 59, 60 ; sealed
packet found after her death, 61
Roman specimens in the Artillery Museum,
II., 86
Roquette, La, prison, II., 131 ; its library,

132; regulations and administration.
133 ; precautions, 133 ; condemned cell,
134
Rossini, I., 1 ; at the Theatre des Italiens,
117 ; his residence, III, 127
Rothschild and Rachel, Story of, I., 336
Rothschild, Baron James de, his career
and character, I., 338, 339
Rothschild, Mayer Anselm, early life and
first speculations, I., 337; principles,
death and successors, 338
Rothschilds, House of the, I., 337; its
growth, 338, 339 ; founder of the French
branch, 338
Rotunda, place of confinement for debtors,
I- 3°4
Rouge, Chateau, 1 1., 73
Rousseau on the opera, I., 134, 135 ;
knocked down by a dog, 262; removal
of his remains to the Pantheon, II., 64 ;
and Diderot, 244 ; early life and works,
283 ; " Letters on Music " and the
" Nouvelle Heloise," 284 ; and Madame
D'fipinay, 284 ; and Voltaire, 285 ;
death, eccentricities, and literary lame,
285
Roux, Le, and the Opera under the Re
public, I., 88
Rowing, II., 255
Royal funerals, I.. 98-102, 314; II., 94-99
Royal Military School of Louis XV., I.,
229, 230
Royale, Place, and the accident to Henry
II., I., 68 ; horse-market and duels, 69 ;
statue of Louis XIII., 69; favourite
quarter of the nobility, 69 ; and Riche
lieu's house, 69
Royale, Rue, I., 143
Roziere, Thuriot de la, demands the sur
render of the Bastille, I., 50
Rue Royale Club, I., 140
Ruggieri, pyrotechnist, I., 144
Ruggieri, Cosmo, the magician, I., 16, 318
Russian restaurants at the Exhibition of
1889, I- 239, 240

Sacred Heart, Church of the, I., 340
Sade, Marquis de, I., 40 ; IL, 218, 225
Sainte-Beuve, a principal in a duel, I.,
353; and the Magny Restaurant, II.,
108; early life, 251; literary labours
and humanitarian principles, 252 ; char
acter and death, 253 ; contributions to
the Constitutionnel, 270
Sainval, MUe., and the Marriage qf
Figaro, I., 44
Salle, MUe., I., 322
Salle Montansier, The, I., 86
Salles, Saint-Francois de. Portrait of, I.,
312
Salm, Hotel de, II., 236, 237
Salpetriere, La: origin of name, II., 209;
foundation and opening, 209; church,
population, improvements and adminis
tration, 210; improvements of Pinel,
some noted inmates and curative ex
periments, 211; and the-Four Sergeants
of La Rochelle, 218
Sammerard, M. Alexandre du, and his art
collection, II., 76

INDEX.

375

Sand, George, and the Restaurant Magny,
II., 108
Sante, La, prison, II., 131
Sanval, opinion of Rue St. Denis, I., 311
Sardou, Victorien, and his M. Garat,
I- 84
Sartine, De, and the spy system, I., 272 ;
II- 17
Sassave, Nina, I., 83
Saturnalia in churches at Christmas, I.,
226-228
Saxe, M. Adolphe, and the outrage on the
residence of M. Brandus, I., 115
Saxe, Marshal, and Adrienne Lecouvreur,
I., 58, 182 ; and Mme. Favart, 118
Scavengers, II., 28
Scheffer, Ary, I., 1 ; II., 219
Schneider, MUe., I., 84
School, of Drawing, II., 106 ; of Fine
Arts, I., IO ; II., 175, 176 ; of Maps,
I., 305 ; of Medicine, I., IO ; II., 106,
107 ; of Mines, II., 166 ; of Oriental
Languages, II., 177; of Roads and
Bridges, II., 177
Schools : headquarters, I., 355 ; as an
agent of civilisation, 356; widespread
reputation, 357
Scouts' Club, I., 140
Sevastopol, Boulevard, I., 95, 292, 293
Sedan-chairs, II., 30
Seine, The: its winding course, I., 4;
" ports," 5 ; its bridges, 5 ; II., 34, 35 ;
the right and left banks, I., IO, 30;
baths, II., 33, 255 ; rowing and swim
ming, 254, 255 ; rights of navigation,
307 ; and the corporation of water-
merchants, 307, 308 ; fairs on the banks,
308
Selwyn, George, visiting Paris to see
Damiens tortured, I., 18, 19
Senate, The, II., 112, 130, 232
Sens, Hotel de, I., 35 ; II., 158
Sergeants of La Rochelle, Story of the
Four, II., 218-221
Sevigne, Mme. de, Residence of, I., 67;
her condemnation of coffee, 83
Sevigne, Rue de, and the Musee Carna
valet, I., 67 ; and the HStel Lamoignon,
I., 68
Sevres manufactory : its origin, II., 228,
229 ; cost to the State, 230 ; character
istics of the porcelain 228, 230
Shops, Antique, II., 265-267 ; of the
Boulevards, I., 43
Siam, Embassy from, I., 3
Sibour, Monseigneur, his assassination,
II., 66
Siege of Paris, II., 348-354; arming the
fortifications, 348 ; advance of the Prus
sians, 349-350 ; occupation of Versailles,
352 ; second siege under the Commune,
358, 359
Siegfried, Defeat of, I., 7
Sieyes and the Breton Club, I., 163
Simon, the Temple gaoler, and the sup
posed escape of Louis XVII., I., 70, 71
Simon, Saint-, the association which he
founded, and the rules of his followers,
I., 119
Simon, Saint-, description of Versailles,
II., 338-340

Slaughter-houses, II., 308-310
Smith, Sir Sidney, his escape from the
Temple prison effected by Boisgerard,
I- 72, 73
Society of Men of Letters, I., 103
Society of Musical Artists, I., 315
Soissons, H&tel de, I., 318
Sorbonne, The : its founder, II., 49 ; its
teaching and influence, 50 ; its con
demnation of Joan of Arc, and various
decrees, 50, 51 ; and Cardinal de Riche
lieu, 51 ; at the Revolution, 51 ; re
suscitated, 52 ; famous professors, and
views of Mercier, 52, 53
Sorcerers, Burning, I., 3
Sorcery in Paris, I., 16, 42
Sorel, Agnes : her chateau in the wood of
Vincennes, and her treatment by the
Parisians, I., 64
Soubise, Hotel de, I., 304
Soult, Marshal, and the story of Murillo's
" Conception of the Virgin," I., 206 ;
and Marshal Ney, II., 103
Spain, Campaign in, represented on the
stage, I., 75
Spanish garrison, The, and Henry IV., I.,
314
"Spartans," The, I., 103
Speculators, Successful, I., 295
Spontini's operas, I., 135
Sporting Club, I., 140
Sports and diversions, II., 254-256
Spy system, I., 271-275; II., 17-19
Stage, The, denounced by the church, I.,
56
Stalls, Old wooden, IL, 265
States-General, II. , 232
Steel, Manufacture of, II. , 236
Steeple-chases, II., 287, 288
Stone Age, Specimens in the Artillery
Museum of the, II., 85
Strasburg, Boulevard, I., 95
Strasburg, The revolutionary spirit in, I.,
52,54
Street-musicians, II., 327, 328
Streets : nomenclature, and system of
numbering houses, II., 28 ; lighting, 28 ;
scavengers, 28 ; vehicles, 30-32
Strolling players, II., 20
Students : I., 250 ; in the Middle Ages,
355; characteristics, 345, 355; at the
Revolution and under the Directory,
357; in 1814, 357; in 1819, 358; and
the death of Lallemand, 358, 359; at
the Revolution of 1830, 359; and the
death of Papu, 359; their present in
difference to politics, 359; anecdote, 359;
in the Quartier Latin, II., 65 ; assembling
in the Place Maubert, 71
Sulpice, St., Church of : antiquity and
history, II., 171, 172 ; architecture,
sculpture, pictures 'and organ, 172 ;
harpsichord of Marie Antoinette, 173 ;
re-named at the Revolution, 173
Sunday in Paris and in London, II. , 12
Superstitions of past times, I., 4, 16
Swimming-baths, II., 255
Swiss Guard, their heroism, I., 170
Synagogue, of the Rue Notre Dame de
Nazareth, I., 304, 339 ; in the Rue de
la Victoire, 340

Talleyrand, at the national celebration in
the Champ de Mars, I., 232 ; his house
in the Rue de Grenelle, II., 239 ; his
career, 239-241 ; death-bed anecdote,
241 ; and the Breton Club, I., 62
Talma, I., 103, 176, 350
Talmont, Princesse de, and the arrest of
her lacquey, I., 63
Tapestries in the Cluny Museum, II., 80
Tavanne, Marshal de, I., 23
Taverns, II., 308
Tax on theatres, I., 175 ; II., 335
Teligni, Count, Assassination of I., 26
Templars, Arrest and execution of, I.,
276; sequestration of their property,
303
Temple, The, and the imprisonment of
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, I.,
70 ; the escape of Sir Sidney Smith, 72,
73
Temple, Boulevard du, L, 7°> 80, 85
"Temple of Hymen," I., 299 f
Temple Market, I., 303, 304
Temple of the Oratory, Protestant, I., 314
Temple, Rue du, and the Assassination of
the Duke of Burgundy, I., 2 ; and the
Templars, 303
Temple of Terpsichore, Madeleine
Guimard's, I., 127
Tennis-ground of the Count d'Artois, I.,
84 '"
Theatre, Beaujolais, I., 183 ; Beaumar
chais, I., 43, 67 ; du Chatelet, I., 291,
292 ; Chateau d'Eau, I., 85 ; Dejazet, .
I., 84; Folies Saint-Germain, II., 89;
Francais. I., 11, 44-46, in ; Gaiete, I.,
302, 303 ; Guenegaud, I., 174 ; des
Italiens, I., 117 ; L'illustre, II., 291 ;
du Marais, I., 174; II., 110; of the
Marble Table, I., 250, 252 ; Moliere, I.,
298; Montparnasse, II., 250; Odeon,
I., 175 ; II., no, 291, 292 ; Opera
Comique, I., 292 ; Palais Royal, I., 184;
Pantheon, II., 89; Renaissance, I., 86,
93 ; Varietes, I., 103, 104
Theatres : and military spectacles, I., 75 ;
in the Boulevard du Temple, 76 ; in the
Rue de Bondi, 85, 86 ; their discomforts,
131, 132 ; military guards, 132 ; taxation,
175; II., 335; the petite lege, I., 184
Theo, Mile., I., 93
Thermes, Palais des, II., 73, 74
Thierry, Edouard, librarian at the Arsenal,
I., 290
Thiers, M., and the fortifications of Paris,
I., 7, 8 ; his description of the corona
tion of Napoleon, 20 ; and the attempt
on the life of Louis Philippe, 77 ; fights
a duel, 351 ; and the Commune, II., 356
Thieving, Ancient punishment for, I., 3
Thomas, M. Ambroise, and the Conserv
atory of Music, I., 335
Tiberius erecting an altar on the future
site of Notre-Dame, I., 3
Tight-rope dancers, I., 226
Tobacco factory, II., 154, 155
Tobacconists, II., 155
Tomb of King Dagobert, I., 102
Torpane, Hotel de, II., 160
Torturing criminals, I., 4, 17, 18, 34, 35,
79, 80 ; II., 136

376

INDEX.

Tournon, Francois de, II, 166
Tower of Nesle. II, 288
Trades, Petty, II., 259-266
Tradesmen living above their shops, I.,
311
Trianon, II, 340
Tribunal of Commerce, I, 267. 269, 294
Tribunal of police, I, 262
Tricolour, Assumption of the, at the
Revolution of 1789, I, 48. 246
" Tricoteuses," II, 361
Triumphal Arch : Porte Saint-Martin, I ,
93 ; Champs Elysees, 59, 218, 224, 225
Trocadero, The, I, 241
Trochu, General, and the defence of Paris,
II, 350
Tuileries Palace : dome, I., 5 ; destroyed
by the Communists, 201, 216 ; II, 359 ;
new palace built by Catherine de Me
dicis, I, 206 ; its early royal residents,
207 ; occupied by the French Opera
Compan}-, 207 ; crowning of Voltaire,
207; and Louis XVI, 207, 208, 211-
214 ; the gardens, 215, 216 ; meetings
of the Convention, 215; Napoleon I.
and other royal residents, 215 ; the
famous chestnut-tree, 217 ; and the
Legislative Body, II, 236
Turc, Cafe, I, 80
Turgot, I, 301
Turks, The, at Vienna in 1683 anu< their
introduction of coffee, I, 82
Typography, Masterpieces of, I, 307, 308
Underground Paris and the Catacombs,
II, 99-101
Union Club, I, 140
University of Paris : date of origin, II,
45 ; international teaching, 46 ; famous
students, 46 ; privileges and govern
ment, 46 ; and the Jesuits, 46, 47 ; sus
pension, 47
Val de Grace, Church of, II, 90, 91
Vandermond, M, and the Exhibition of
Machines, I, 302
Varietes Theatre, I, 103, 104
Vaucanson machines, I, 302
Vaudeville Theatre, I, 130, 131 ; and the
performance of the Dame aux CamSlias,
131
Vaudrey, Colonel, and Louis Napoleon's
Strasburg Expedition, I, 95
Vedi, M, and Madame Rachel, I, 298
Vehicles, II, 30-32
Vendome Column : I, 133 ; its architect
and construction, 155 ; design and his
tory, iss-^s

Vendome, Place : its construction and its
architect, I, 155 ; statue of Louis XIV,
155 ; name changed to Place des
Piques, 155 ; Napoleon and the Co
lumn, 155 ; history of the Column,
155-15S ; Hotel Continental, 158 ;
Ministry of Justice and the Hotel du
Rhin, 158
Venise, Rue de, and the assassination of a
banker, I, 298
Verdi's operas, L, 135
Vermond, Execution of, I, 35
Vernet, Carle, and the Cafe Foy, I, 110
Veron, Dr, II, 270
Versailles, Palace of, and Louis XIV,
II, 338; description ot a. fete in 1668,
340-343 ; visit of the Tsar in I7i7, 343-
344 ; and Louis XV. and Louis XVI,
344, 345 ; invaded by the mob, 346
Versailles, Town of, origin of name and
Saint-Simon's description, II, 338-34O;
occupied by the Prussians, 232
Vertbois Tower, I, 302
Victor of Nimes and his cure for iorti-
colis, I, 332
Victor, St, Canons of, and the leper
asylum, II, 142
Victoria, Queen, her visit to Paris in 1855,
L, 291
Vidocq, Lieutenant of Police, I, 274; IL,
18
Villon, Francois, II, 89
Vincennes : resort of duellists, I, 59, 62 ;
place of confinement of the Young
Pretender, 63 ; Agnes Sorel's chateau
at, 64 ; as a military station, 64 ; citadel,
Gothic church and dungeon, II, 286 ;
surrounding views, 286, 287 ; " Bureau
de Bienfaisance," 288
Vinci, Leonardo da, his " La Joconde " in
the Louvre, L, 204-206
Viollet-Leduc, M, and Notre-Dame, I,
14 ; and the restoration of royal tombs,
a, 99
Virgin, Statues of the, legends connected
with them, I, 266 ; legend of her stabbed
image, 313
Visconti, place of his death, II, 177
Vitaux, Baron de, and his duels, I, 348
Volney and the Breton Club, I, 162
Voltaire: his epic "La Henriade *' and
the monument to Henry IV, I, 35 ;
defence of the stage, 58 ; and Adrienne
Lecouvreur, 58, 183; and Ninon de
Lenclos, 67 ; crowned at the Tuileries,
207; and his purchase in the Rue Saint-
Denis, 311, 312 ; challenges a duke, 347^
354; place of burial, II, 63; as at
torney's clerk, 72 ; preservation of his

heart, 92 ; and the name of " Arout,"
107; place of death, 273; mental quali
ties, 274 ; early life and imprisonment,
274 ; early works, visit to England, and
growth of his reputation, 275 ; post at
Court, operas and travels, 276; Moore's
opinion of him, 276, 278; church of
Ferney and ovations iu Paris, 278 ;
death and transference of remains to the
Pantheon, 278. 279
Vosges, Place de, I, 68
Vrilliere, De la, and his mansion in the
Place des Victoires, I, 322
Waiters, origin and antecedents, I, 369,
370 ; description of their habits and
occupation, 370 ; overcharges, 371 ; ex
ceptional traits, 371 ; their chief ambi
tion, 372
Waldenses, Burning, I, 42
War implements in the Museum of Artil
lery, II, 83-88
Washington Club, I, 14O
Wax-work in the Cluny Museum, II, 79
Waxen images and the priests of the
League, I, 16
Wechel, Christian, censured for selling
the works of Erasmus, II, 179
Weights and measures, II, 236, 315
Well at Bicetre, 11,213
Wellington, Duke of, and Marshal Ne}*,
II, 106
White Cloaks, Convent of the, I, 306
Winchester, Bishop of, and Bicetre
Asylum, II, 211
Wimpffen, General de, II, 358, 360
Witchcraft, Burning for, I, 40 ; popular
belief in, 42
Women : effect of the Revolution on them,
165, 166; at theatres, I, 184, 186;
American, II, 15
Work-girls, Caps of, I, IO
Workmen, Costume of, I, IO ; quarters
and dwellings of, 335 ; clubs for, II, 71
Workshops, National, II, 130, 247
Writers, Public, II, 3-7
Yacht Club, I, 139
Young, Arthur, Account given by, of
the revolutionary outbreak in Strasburg
I, 52, 54 ; and the censorship of books,
126; and the Jacobin Club, 163; on
Louis XVI. at the Tuileries, 208 ; his
adventure at the springs in the Puy de
Dome, 210, 211 ; his description of
Paris, 282, 283
Young Pretender, The, confined at Vin
cennes, I, 63

Printed by Casseix & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London^ E.C.

A Classified Catalogue
OF
CA88ELL & COMPANY'S PUBLICA

ld.

Cassell's Penny Illustrated Stories. Consisting: of a
Series of 52 New and Original Stories by Popular Authors. Fully
Illustrated. (List sent free on application,)
Historical Cartoons, Descriptive Account of.
Cassell's New Poetry Readers. Illustrated. 12 Books. Each.
(Sire also is. 6d.)
The Secret of Success and How to Attain it. By John
W. Klrton, LUD.

2d.

3d.

4d.

6d.

Cassell's New Standard Drawing Copies. 6 Books.
Each. {Also at 3d. and 4d.)
Cassell's School Board Arithmetics.
Cassell's Modern School Copy Books. 12 Books. Each.
Cassell's Graduated Copy Books, 18 Books. Each.
The Polytechnic Building Construction Plates. A
Series of 40 Drawings, ijd. each.
How should Railway Fares be Charged ? By R.
McEwen.

CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY. Paper covers, 3d.
each ; cloth, 6d. fA full List of the Volumes now ready sent post
free on application.)
Cassell's Readable Readers. Illustrated and strongly bound.
Two Infant Readers at 2i^d. and 3d., and Six Books for the Stan
dards, at 6d. to is. id. Also a superior edition at jd. to is. 3d. (List
on application.)
Cassell's Standard Drawing Copies. 6 Books. Each.
{See also 2d. and 4d. )
Cobden Club Pamphlets. {List on application.)

Cassell's Standard Drawing Copies. 2 Books. Each.
(See also 2d. and 3d.)
The Modern School Readers. Four Infant Readers at 3d.
to 5d., and Six Books for the Standards at ?d. to is. fid. (A List on
application .)
The Modern Reading Sheets. In Three Series, each con
taining Twelve Sheets,. 2s. each. {See also 5s.)
Readers for Infant Schools, Coloured. 3 Books. Each
containing 48 pages, including 8 pages in Colours. Each.
Shakespeare's Plays. 36 Farts. Each.
Sheridan and Goldsmith's Plays. Separate. Each.

EDUCATIONAL.
The Modern Geographical Readers.

Introductory Lessons. For
Standard 1  6d.
Introductory Lessons. For
Standard II  8d,
England and Wales. For Stan
dard III. . . *. iod.

Scotland, Ireland. British North
America, Australasia. For
Standard IV. . . is od.
Europ-. For Standard V. is. od.
The World. For Standards
VI. and VII. . . .is. 8d.

Shakespeare's Plays for School Use. Cloth. Each.
Richard. III. Henry V. Hamlet. Julius Caesar. Coriolanus.
Richard II. King John. Merchant of Venice. Henry VIII.
Euclid, Cassell's First Four Books of. Paper, 6d. (Cloth, od.)
Drawing Books for Young Artists. Each.

How to Draw Elementary
Forms, Models, &c.
How to Draw Floral and
Ornamental Forms.

How to Draw Landscapes,
Trees, Ships, &c.
How to Draw Animals, Birds,
and Dogs.

CASSELL'S PICTURE STORY BOOKS.
Each containing Sixty Pages of Pictures, Stories, Ac.

Little Talks.
Bright Stars.
Nursery Joys.
Pet's Posy.
Tiny Tales.

Arithmetics. The Modern School. By George Ricks, B.Sc.
In 7 Books. Stands. I. to IV., paper covers, 2d. each; cloth, 3d. each.
Books for Stands. V. to VII., paper covers, 3d. each ; cloth, 4d. each ;
Answers, 6d. Complete in One Vol., with Answers, 2s.
Cookery for Schools. By Lizzie Heritage.
Cassell's National Library. Vols., in cloth. (List of Vols.
post free on application.) MISCELLANEOUS.
Uniform, Imperial Postage. By Robert J. Beadon, M.A.
Shall we Know One Another in Heaven ? By the Rt
Rev. J. C. Ryle, M.A., Bishop of Liverpool
Cobden Club Pamphlets. {List on application.)
Local and Centralised Government in Ireland. By
W. F. Bailey.

Little Chimes.
Daisy's Story Book.
Dot's Story Book.
A Nest of Stories.
Good- Night Stories.

Chats for Small Co atterers.

Auntie's Stories.
Birdie's Story
Book.
A Sheaf of Tales.
Dewdrop Stories.

SIXPENNY STORY BOOKS.
The Smuggler's Cave. — Little, Lizzie. — Little Bird.

Luke
BarnicoEt.— Little Pickles.— The Elehester College Boys.—
—The Delft Jug.— My First Cruise.— Tno Little Peace
maker.— The Boat Club.

Cassell's ''High School" Readers.
strongly bound. Six books at yd. to is. 3d.

Illustrated and

Cassell's New Geographical Readers,
With Numerous Illustrations in each Book.
Book V. . . .16. 6d.
Book VI. . . '. Is. 6d.
Book VIL . . . Ib. 9d.
Things Neve and Old; or, Stories from English His
tory. By H. O. Arnold-l'orsrer, M.P. Fully Illustrated. Strongly
bound in Cloth. Standards I. and II., gd. each. Standard III., is.
Standard IV., is. 3d. Standards V., VI. and VIL, is. 6d. each.

Book X.

. . 9d,

Book II.

. . 10d.

Book III. .

. . Is.

Book IV. .

. . Is. 4d.

THE WORLD'S WORKERS.
New and Original Volumes by Popular Authors. With Portraits.
{See also 3s. J

John Cassell.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Dr Arnold of Bugby.
The Earl of Shaftesbury.
Sarah Bobinson, Agnes
Weston, & Mrs. Meredith.
Mary Carpenter and Mrs.
Somerville.
Thomas A. Edison & Samuel
F. B. Morse. By Dr. Denslow
and J. Marsh Parker.
Charles Dickens. IMoore.
Sir Titus Salt and George
Florence Nightingale, Ca
therine Marsh, Frances
Ridley Havergal. Mrs.
Ranyard t" L.N.R.").
SHILLING STORY BOOKS. AU Illustrated, cloth gilt
Bunty and the Boys. Diamonds in the Sand.
The Heir of Elmdale.
The Mystery at Shoncliff
School. '
Claimed at Last, and Boy's
Beward.
ThornB and Tangles.
The Cuckoo in the Bobin s
Nest.
John*B Mistake.
The History of Five Little
Pitchers who had very
Large Ears.

General Gordon.
Dr. Guthrie, Father Mathew,
Elihu Burritt, Joseph
Livesey.
Abraham Lincoln.
Sir Henry Havelock and
Colin Campbell, Lord
Clyde.
David Livingstone.
George Muller and Andrew
Beed.
Bichard Cobden.
Handel.Turner the Artist.
George and Bobert Stephen*
son.
Benjamin Franklin.

6d.
cont'd

7d. 9d.

Surly Bob.
The Giant's Cradle.
Shag and Doll, and other Stories,
Aunt Lucia's Locket.
Among the Bedskins.
The Ferryman of BrilL
Harry Maxwell.
The Magic' Mirror.
The Cost of Revenge.
Clever Frank.
A Banished Monarch.
Seventeen Cats.

"LITTLE FOLKS" PAINTING BOOKS.
Each containing Outline Illustrations for Painting on nearly every page.
"Little Folks" New Paint- I "Little Folks" Illuminating
ing Book ' Book.
A Book of Fruits and Blossoms for "Little Folks " to Paint.
ILLUSTRATED BOOKS FOR THE LITTLE ONES.
Containing interesting Stories, with Full-page Illustrations. In hand
some Picture Boards. {Also cloth gilt, is. 6d.)

Dumb Friends.
Tip and Down the Garden.
AU Sorts of AdventureB.
Some Farm Friends.
Those Golden Sands.
Our Sunday Stories.
Our Holiday Hours.
Indoors and Out.
Little Mothers and their
Children.
Our Schoolday Hours.
Creatures Tame.
Our Pretty Pets.
Creatures Wild.

Imperial Federation.
Appreciation of Gold.

Report of the Conference.
By William Fowler, LL.B.

1/-

Tales Told for Sunday.
Sunday Stories lor Small
People. [Sunday.
Stories and Pictures for
Bible Pictures for Boys
and Girls.
Firelight Stories.
Sunlight and Shade.
Bub-a-dub Tales.
Fine Feathers and Fluffy
Fur.
Scrambles and Scrapes.
Tittle Tattle Tales.
Wandering Ways. EDUCATIONAL.
Hand-and-Eye Training Cards for Class Use. By
George Ricks. In s Sets. Each.
Latin Primer, The First. By Prof. Postgate, M.A.
Science Applied to Work. By J. A. Bower. Illustrated.
Science off everyday Life. By J. A. Bower. Illustrated.
Howard's Art of Reckoning. By C Frusher-Howard.
(See also 2s. and gs.) . „ „ , ,
Cassell's " Modern School " Test Cards. Seven Sets of
40 Cards in Case. Each. „.,-¦..**
Cassell's "Combination" Test Cards. Six Sets of 36
Cards with Answers, in Packet. Each. .
Flowers, Studies in. In Thirteen Packets, each containing Six
Flowers. Each Packet. -
Complete Tot Boole for all Public Examinations.
Spelling. Morell's Complete Manual of. f
Euclid. Cassell's. First Six Books, with the nth and izth of Euclid.
Drawing Copies, Cassell's Modern School. First Grade
—Freehand. (Also Second Grade, freehand, 2s.) |

Cassell $ Company, Limited, Ludgate mil, London; Paris and Melbourne, 15 G-5.94

Cassell 8f Company9 s Classified Price List

For

Cassell's Historical Readers.
1 /_ The History of England for Elementary Schools.
' Upper Standards-
rnflfji Part I. From the Earliest Times to Elisabeth, rs.
Part U. From Elisabeth to Modern Times, es.
German Reading, First Lessons in. By A. Jagst.
Carpentry Workshop Practice, Forty Lessons in.
Polytechnic Technical Scales* Set of io in cloth case. {See
also ios. Gd.)
Cassell's Miniature Library of the Poets. In Two Vols.
Half doth. Each. (See also as. 6rJL>
MISCELLANEOUS.
The LloUandllaff Legends. By Louis LloDandHafi. (Also in
doth, ss-)
Colonist's Medical Handbook^ The. By F_ A. Barton.
M.R.C.S.
The Letters of " Vetus " on the Administration of
the War Office.
A ShiUing's- Worth of All Sorts. _
Chips by an Old Chum; or, Australia in the Fifties.
Souvenir of Ravenswood. At the Lyceum Theatre. Illustrated.
An Address in School Hygiene. By Clement Dukes, MJD.
A Handbook to London in rewigH*8** and French.
Souvenir of the Dead Heart. By Watts Philips. As
presented at the Lyceum Theatre by Henry Irving-. Illustrated.
Bits and Bearing-Rsins, and Horses and Harness*
By E. F. Flower.
Circulation or Stagnation. By Sir E. Chadwick, K.C.B.
The Old Fairy Tales. With Hmstrafions. (Also at is. 6d.)
Potato Culture and Disease Prevention. mustrated.
Lawful Wedlock ; or, How Shall I Malce Sure of a
Legal Marriage ? By Two Barristers.
Advice to Women on the Care of their Health,
before, during, and after Confinement. By Florence
Stacpbole.
Our Sick and How to Take Care of Them; or. Plain
Teaching- on Sick Nursing at Home. By Florence Stacpoole.
Born a King. By Frances and Mary Amold-Forster. Illustrated.
Life in our Villages. Letters ofthe Special Commissioner of the
Daily Naos. (Also in doth* as.)
All About the R. oyal N&vy. By W. Laird Clowes. Illustrated.
Our Home Army. By H. O. Amold-Forster, M.P.
Four Years in Parliament with Hard Labour. By
C. W. Radcliffe Cooke, M.P. Third Edition.
A Minimum Wage, By Alfred Morris. A new Novel dealing
witb. Present-Day Social Questions.
Local Option in Norway. By Thomas M. Wilson, CE.
The Dwellings Of the Poor. Report of the Mansion House
Council, 1693. Illustrated.
In a. Conning Tourer. Bv H. O. Amold-Forster. M.P. Illustrated.
A M««Trm1 of Political Questions of the Bay. By
Sydney Buxton. M.P. Paper covers. (Also in doth, is. 6d.l
Tule Tide s Cassell's Christmas Annual.
The Sugar Convention. By tiie Rt- Hon. Lord Fairer.
Free Trade in Sugar. A Reply to the Right Hon. Lord Farrer,
by George Martineau.
Pre-Raphaelites, The Italian, in the National
Gallery. By Cosmo Monkhouse. Illustrated.
Local Government in England and Germany. By the
Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Morier. G.C.B.. &c
Irish Parliament, The, from 1782 to 1800,
Irish Union, The 3 Before and After. By A. K. Conneil.
M.A. Cheap Edition. (Also in doth. ss. od.)
How to Select Spectacles. By Dr. c. Bell Taylor.
Practical Kennel Guide. By Dr. Gordon Stables.
Cookery, Cassell's Shilling.
Choice Dishes at Small Cost. By A. G. Payne.
Poor Relief in Foreign Countries.
Cremation and Urn Burial. Bv w. Robinson. Illustrated.
Colonies and TwHjm, Our. By Prof. Ransome, M.A. Oxon.
Etiquette Of Go od Society. New Edition. Edited and Re
vised by Lady Colin Campbell. {Also in doth, is. 6d.i
Photography for Amateurs. By T. C Hepworth. illustrated.
(Also in doth, is. 6d. i
u My Diary.'' With Coloured Plates and 366 Woodcuts.
CASSELL'S SUNSHINE SERIES. Monthly Volumes.
The Temptation of Dulee Carruthers. By C E. C Weigafl.
Lady L orrimer's Scheme and Tne Story of a Glamour. By
¦ Edith E. Cuthell.
Womanlike. By Florence M. King.
On Stronger Wings. By Edith Lister.
"You'll Love Ke Yet* By Frances HasweU ; and "That
Little 'Woman.'* By Ida Lemon.
A Man of the Name of John. By Florence M. King.
Stephen WraVs Wife; or. Not all in Vain. By Lambert Shefios.
For Erica's Sake. By M. E. Shepherd.
"Comrades Once" and "A Treacherous Calm." By
Thomas Key worth.
A Step in the Dark. By Kate Eyre.
Was it Wise to Change P By Hope Stanford.
Witness My Hand. E v E. NeaL
Molly's Maidens. By L. Crow.
Tbe Select Works of George Combe. Issued by Authority
of the Combe Trustees. Pooular Edition. Each. <NeL)
The Constitution of Man. 1 Science and Religion.
Moral Philosophy. I Discussions on Education.
American Notes.
ILLUSTRATED OFFICIAL RAILWAY GUIDES.
In Paper. (Also in doth, as. 1
London and North Western (Mem and Revised Edition).— Great
Western (New and Revised Edition). — Midland. — Great
Northern.— Great Eastern.— London and South Western.—
London, Brighton and South Coasts— South Eastern.
RELIGIOUS.
"HEART CHORDS." Bound in doth, red edges. Each.

My Work for God.
My Object in Life.
My Aspirations.
My Emotional Life,
My Body.
My Growth in Divine Life,

My Hereafter.
My Walk with God.
My Aids to the Divine Life.
My Sources of Strength.
My Father.
My Bible.

My SouL
HELPS TO BELIEF. Edited by the Rev. Canon Shore, M. A.
Creation. By Hwey Goodwin, D.D_ late Lord Bishop of Carlisle.
Prayer. By the Rev. Canon Shore, M.A.
The Divinity of Our Lord. By the Lord Bishop of Derry
Miracles. By the Rev. Brownlow Maitland, M.A.
The Atonement. By William Connor Magee, D.D., late Arch
bishop of York.
The Morality of the Old Testament. By the Rev. N. Smyth. D. D.
Shortened Church Services and Hymns. Compiled by
the Rev. T. Teignmouth Shore, M.A.. Canon of Worcester.
My Comfort in Sorrow. By Hugh MacmtDan, D.D.

CASSELL'S "JAPANESE" LIBRARY.
Consisting- of ra Popular Works bound in Japanese style. Each. (Net.)
Handy Andy.— Oliver Twist— Ivanhoe.— Ingoldsby Legends.
—The Last of the Mohicans.— The Last Days ofTonipeii.—
The Yellowplush Papers.— The Last Days of ^aligrF^—
Jack Hinton, the Guardsman. — Selections from ±±ooa s

1/3

Works.— American Humour.— Tower of London.

Cassell's H^f**^* Course for Schools.
The Simple Outline of English - ustory.
The Class History of Bnglana. 2s. 6d.

is. yi

British Museum, The B£ble Student in the. By the
Rev. J. G. Kitchin, ALA. iVira* and Revised Edition.
School Registers, Cassell's. x. Attendance Register, is. 4A
2. Admission Register, ics. 3. Summary Register, ios.

The London Health Laws. Prepared by the Mansion House
Council on the Dweuings of the Boor. Limp doth.
Won at the Last Hole. A Golfing Romance. By M. A.
Stobart. Illustrated. __
Lessons in Our Laws; or, Talks at Broadacre Farm.
By H. F. Lester, B.A. Illustrated. In Two Parts. Each.
Object Lessons from Nature, for the Use of Schools. ByProC
1 ,r Mian IQustrated. New and enlarged Edition- Two Vols. Each.
Vegetarian Cookery. By A. G. Payne.
Cassell's New Poetry Readers. Illustrated. 13 Books in
One- Vol., doth. (Seealso id.)
Guide to Employment for Boys on leaving School.
By W. S. Beard, F^.G.S.
Engineering Workshop Practice, Forty Lessons in.
Elementary Chemistry for Science Schools and
Classes. ^ _
Twilight of Life, The. Words of Counsel and Com
fort for the Aged. By John Eflerton, M.A.
laws of Every-Day Life. By E a Amold-Forster, M.P.
Cloth.
Citizen Reader. By H. O. Amold-Forster, M.P. Cloth. (Fresen-
tation Edition. 5s. 6d.) (Also a Scottish Edit*em,dbth, is. 6d.)
Round the Empire. By G. R. Parkin. With a Preface by tbe
Earl of Roseberv. K.G. FnDy Illustrated.
The Making of the Rome. By Mrs. S. A. Baraetr.
Temperance Reader, The. By Rev. J. Dennis Hird.
Little Folks* History of England. By Isa Craig-Knox.
With 30 Illustrations. Cloth.
French, Rey to Cassell's Lessons in. Cloth.
Khiva, Burnaby's Ride to. Cloth.
Experimental Geometry, First Elements of. By Paul
Bert, illustrated.
Principles of Perspective as Applied to Model
Drawing and Sketching from Nature, The. By
George Trohridge. (Cloth, ss. 6d.)
Nursing for the Home and for the Hospital, A
Handbook Of. By C J. Wood. (Also in doth, as.)
GIFT BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE-
By Popular Authors. With Blustrarions in each. Cloth gilt.
The Boy Hunters of Ken
tucky. By Edward S. Ellis.
BedFeather : a Tale of the
American Frontier. By
Edward S. Flli> [Symington.

1/4
1/6

Rhoda'a Beward;
Wishes were Horses."
Frank's Life-Battle; or. The
Three Friends.
Jack Marston's Anchor.
Fritters ; or,*4 It's a LongLane
that has no Turning.*
Major Monk's Motto; or,
" Look before you Leap."
Ursula's Stumbling Block;
or, "Pride comes before a
FalL"

•No

All Illustrated throughout,
Wee "Willie "Winkle.
Ups and Downs of a Bon-
key's Life.
Three Wee Ulster Lassies.
Up the Ladder.
Faith's Father.
By Land and Sea.
Tbe Young Berringtons-
Tom Morris's Error.
Worth More than Gold.
Jeff and Le ff- [Fire.
Through Flood — Through

Buth's Life "Work;
Pains, no Gains ."
Bags and Bainbows : a Story
ot Thanksgiving.
Uncle William's Charge ; or.
The Broken Trust.
Pretty Pink's Purpose; or,
The Little Street Mer
chants.
Trixy; or, "Those 'who Live
in Glass Houses shouldn't
Throw Stones."
The Two Hardeaatles; or,
"A Friend in Need is a
Friend Indeed."
Tun Thomson's Trial ; or,
"AU is not Gold that
Gutters.'*
STORY BOORS.
and bound in cloth gOt.
Girl with the Golden Looks.
Tbe Chip Boy; and other

Hoses from Thorns.
Baggies, Baggies, and the
Emperor.
Stories ofthe Olden Time-
Dick's Hero; and other
Stories.
The Old Fairy Tales. With
Original Illustrations. Cloth.
(Also in boards, rs. )

THE LIBRAR7 OF WONDERS.
Illustrated Gilt Books for Boys. Crown 8vo, clout.
Wonderful Adventures. — Wonders of Bodily Strength and
SkUL— Wonderful Escapes. — Wonders of Animal Instinct.
—Wonderful Balloon Ascents.

Physiology for Schools. By Alfred T. Schofield, M.D.,
M.R.C.S., &c Illustrated. Cloth. (Also in Three Parts, paper
¦ covers, 50! each ; or doth limp, 6d. each.)

EDUCATIONAL.
Historical Cartoons, Cassell's Coloured. (Size 45 m.
x 35111.) Six. Each. (See also itL and 5s.)
Higher Class Readers, Cassell's. Illustrated. Cloth. Each.
(Also doth gilt. 2S. 6d.)
Practical Solid Geometry, A Manual of. By waham
Gordon Ross, Maior R.E.
Applied Mechanics. By Sir R. Sta weU Ball, LL. D.
Linear Drawing. By E. A. Davidson.
Orthographic and Isometrical Projection.
Building Construction, The Elements of.
Systematic Drawing and Shading. By Charles-Ryan.
Jones's Book-keeping. By Theodore Jones. For Schools, 25. ;
for the Million, as. (Also in doth, 3s.) Ruled Books, 2s.
Reading Sheets, Modern. 3Series. Each (Also on linen, with
rollers, 5s. each .)

1/9 2/-

Cassell it Company, Limited, Ludgate MiU, London ; Paris and Melbourne.

»/¦
xonfd.

2/6

Cassell 8f Company's Classified Price List

THE "BELLE SAUVAGE
The Fortunes of Nigel.
Guy Mannering,
Shirley. Coningsby.
Mary Barton.
The Antiquary.
Nicholas Niokleby. (a Vols.)
Jane Eyre.
Wuthering Heights.
The Prairie.
Dombey and Son. (a Vols.)
Night and Morning.
Kenilworth.
Ingoldsby Legends,
Tower of London.
The Pioneera.
Charles O'Malloy.
Barnaby Budge.
Cakes and Ale.
The King's Own.
People I have Met.
The Pathfinder.
Evelina. Soott's Poems.
Last of the Barons.
Adventures of Mr. Ledbury,
Ivanhoe. Oliver Twist.
Selections from Thomas
Hood's Works.
Longfellow's Prose Works.
Sense and Sensibility.
Lord Lytton's Plays.
Bret Harte— Tales. Poems, &c,
Martin Chuzzlewit. (2 Vols.)
Sheridan's Plays.

" LIBRARV. Cloth. Each.
The Prince of the House of
David.
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
.Eugene Aram.
Jack Hinton. the Guards
man.
Borne and the Early Christ
ians.
Thackeray's Yellowplush
Papers.
DeerBlayer.
Washington Irving's Sketch
Book.
Last Days of Palmyra.
Tales ofthe Borders.
Pride and Prejudice.
Last ofthe Mohicans.
The Old Curiosity Shop.
Bienzi, The TaliHman.
Tne Heart of Midlothian.
The Last Days of Pompeii.
Sketches by Bos.
American Humour.
Macaulay's Lays and Se
lected Essays.
Harry Lorrequer. 
The Pickwick Papers (a Vols.)
Bcarlet Letter.
Hand v Andy.
The Hour and the Man.
Old Mortality.
Edgar Allan Poe. (Prose and
Poetry, Selections from.)
Margaret Lyndsay.

CASSELL'S RAILWAY LIBRARV. Crown Svo, paper.
The Phantom City. By W.
Westall.

Strange Doings in Strange
Places.
Metzerott, Shoemaker. By-
Katharine Woods.
David. Todd. By David Maclure.
Commodore Junk. ByG. Man-
ville Fenn.
8ft. Cuthbert's Tower. By
Florence Warden.
The Man with a Thumb. By
W. C. Hudson (Barclay North).
By Bight Not Law. By R.
Sherard.
Within Sound of the Weir.
By Thomas St. E. Hake.
The Coombs berrow Mystery.
By James Colwall.
Under a Strange Mask. By
Frank Barrett,
A Queer Bace. By W. Westall.
Captain Trafalgar. By Westall
and Laurie,

Jack Gordon, Knight Errant.
ByAV. C. Hudson.
A Tragic Mystery. By Julian
Hawthorne.
TheDiamondButton: Whose
was ItP By W. C. Hudson.
Another's Crime. By Julian
Hawthorne.
The Yoke of the Thorah,
By Henry Harland.
The Tragedy of Brinkwater.
By Martha L. Moodey.
Who is John NomanP By
Charles Henry Beckett.
An American Penman. By
Julian Hawthorne.
Section 558; or, The Fatal
Letter. By Julian Hawthorne.
The Brown Stone Boy. By
W. H. Bishop.

The Great Bank Bobbery. By Julian Hawthorne,
G. MANVILLE FENN'S NOVELS.
Cheap Edition. In paper boards.
The Parson o'Dumford. ) Iu PaPer I Mv Patients. Being the Notes
> boards .of a Navy Surgeon; also cloth
Poverty Corner. ) only. | boards, 2s. 6d
MISCELLANEOUS.
Commercial Botany of the Nineteenth Century. By
J. K. Jackson, A.L.S.
Gas, The Art Of Cooking by. By Marie Jenny Sugg. Illustrated,
Hiram Golf's Religion; or. The Shoemaker by the
Grace of God.
The Breech-loader, and How to Use It. By w. w.
Greener. Illustrated.
Cassell's Popular Cookery. With Coloured Plates.
The Voter's Handbook. By W. V. R. Fane (of the Inner
TempleJ and A. H. Graham (ofthe Middle Temple). Cloth limp.
How Dante Climbed the Mountain. By R.E.Selfe. Illustrated.
Morning and Evening Prayers for Workhouses and
other Institutions. Selected by Louisa Twining.
Cassell's Book of In-door Amusements, Card
Games, and Fireside Fun. Illustrated.
John Orlebar, Clk. By the Author of "Culnishire Folk."
The World's Lumber Room. By Selina Gaye.
" Little Folks " Proverb Fainting Book.
The "golden mottoes" series.
Each Book containing 208 pages, with Four full-page Original Illustra
tions. Crown Svo, cloth gilt.
Honour is my Guide." By
Jeanie Hering (Mrs. Adams-
Acton).
Aim at the Sure End." By

"Nil Desperandum." By the
Rev. F. Langbridge, M.A.
" Bear and Forbear." By
Sarah Pitt.
"He Conquers who Endures."
By the Author of "-May Cunning
ham's Trial," &c.

Emily Searchfield.
* Foremost if I Can."
Helen Atteridge.

By

two-shilling storv books.
AU Illustrated throughout, and containing Stories for Young People.
Crown Svo, handsomely bound hi cloth gilt.

The Top of the Ladder: How
to Beaeh it.
Stories of the Tower.
Mr. Burke's Nieces.
May Cunningham's Trial.
Peggy, and other Tales.
** Little Folks" Sunday Book.
The Children of the Court.
Four CatB ofthe Tippertons.

Marion's Two Homes.
Little Flotsam.
Madge and her Friends.
Through Peril to Fortune.
Aunt Tabitha's Waifs.
In Misenief Agam.
Two Fdurpenny Bits.
Poor Nelly.
Tom Heriot.

Maid Marjory.

CASSELL'S MINIATURE LIBRARV OF THE
POETS.
In Two Volumes, cloth, gilt edges, in Paper Box, per set. (See also is.)
Burns 2 Vols.
Byron -¦ - 2 Vols.

Milton - - zVols.
Wordsworth - 2 Vols,
Longfellow 2 Vols.
Scott - - - a Vols.
Hood - - - 2 Vols.
Shakespeare's Plays.
Lyceum, in paper box.

Byri. Sheridan and! .- .
Goldsmith; zVols'
The Seven Plays produced at the

"WANTED -A KING" SERIES.
Cheap Edition. Illustrated.
Fairy Tales In Other Lands. By Julia Goddard,
Hobin's Bide. By Ellinor Davenport Adams.
Great-Grandmamma. By Ceorgna M. Synge.
Wanted— a King; or, How Mei^e set the Nursery Bhymes
to Rights. By Maggie Browne.
BIBLE BIOGRAPHIES. Illustrated.
The Story of Joseph. By the Rev. George Sainton.
The Story of Moses ana Joshua. By the R=v. J. Telford
The Story of Judges. By the Rev. J. Wycliffe Gedge.
The Story of Samuel and Saul. Sy the Rev. D. C. Tovey.
The Story of David. By the Rev. J. Wild.
The Story of Jesus. In Verse. By J. R. Macduff, D.D.
THE "CROSS AND CROWN" SERIES.
With Four Illustrations in each Book, printed on a Tint.
By Fire and Sword: A Story
ofthe Huguenots.
Adam Hepburn's Vow.
No. XIII.: or, the Story of
the Lost vestal.

In Letters of Flame.
Through Trial to Triumph.
Heroes of the Indian em
pire.
Strong to Suffer.

BOOKS BV EDWARD S. ELLIS. Illustrated.

The Hunters of the Ozark.
The Camp in the Mountains.
The Last War Trail.
Ned in the Woods.
Ned on the River.
Ned in the Block House: A
Story of Pioneer Life In Kentucky,

The Lost Trail.
Camp-Fire and Wigwam.
Foot-prints in the Forest.
Down the Mississippi.
Lost in the Wilds.
TJp the Tapajos; or, Adven
tures in Brazil.

THE WORLD IN PICTURES.
Handsomely Illustrated, and elegantly bound.
Glimpses of South America.

A Ramble Bound France.
All the Bussias.
Chats about Germany.
Tne Eastern Wonderland.
Peeps into China.

Bound Africa.
The Land of Temples.
The Isles of the Pacific.

HALF-CROWN GIFT BOOKS.

Illustrated.
Pen's Perplexiti-68-
Margaret's Enemy.

Crown Svo, cloth gilt.
Notable Shipwrecks.
. At the South Pole.

POPULAR VOLUMES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
Maggie Steele's Diary. By E. A. Diliwyn.
The Peep Of Day. An Old Friend in a New Dress. Illustrated.
Schoolroom and Home Theatricals. By Arthur Waugh.
With Illustrations by H. J. A. Miles.
Wild Adventures in Wild Places. By Dr. Gordon Stables,
R.N. Illustrated.
Pictures of School Life and Boyhood. Selected from the
best Authors. Edited by Percy Fitzgerald, M.A.
Perils Afloat and Brigands Ashore. By Alfred Elwes.
Freedom's Sword a A Story of the Days of Wallace
and Bruce. By Annie S. Swan.
Modern Explorers. By T. Frost. Illustrated.
Decisive Events in History. By Thomas Archer. Illustrated.
The True Robinson Crusoes. Cloth gilt.
Early Explorers. By Thomas Frost. Illustrated.
Home Chat with our Young Folks. Illustrated throughout.
Jungle, Peak, and Plain, illustrated throughout.
Peeps Abroad for Folks at Home. Illustrated.
Heroes of Every-day Life. By Laura Lane. Illustrated.
Short Studies from Nature. Illustrated.
Rambles Round London. By C. L. Mateaux.
Around and About Old England. By C. L. Mateaux,
For Queen and King. By Henry Frith. Illustrated.
Esther West. By Isa Craig-Knox. Illustrated.
Three Homes. By F. L. T. Hope. Illustrated.
Working to Win. By Maggie Symington. Illustrated.
Paws and Claws. ' By one of the Authors of " Poems Written for
a Child."
In Quest of Gold a or, Under the Whanga Falls.
On Board the" Esmeralda"; or. Martin Leigh's Log.
The Romance of Invention a vignettes from the Annals of
Industry and Science. EDUCATIONAL.
Agriculture Text-Books, Cassell's. (The "Downton"
Series.) Edited by John Wrightson, M.R.A.C., F.C.S., Professor
of Agriculture. Fully Illustrated. Each.
Farm Crops, by Professor Wrightson.
Soils and Manures. ByJ. M. H. Munro, D.Sc. (Lond.),
F.I.C., F.C.S.
Live Stock. By Professor Wrightson.
Cassell's Popular Atlas. Containing 24 Coloured Maps.
Guide to Employment in the Civil Service. New and
Revised Edition. Cloth.
Sculpture, A Primer of. By E. R. Mullins. ,
Numerical Examples in Practical Mechanics and
Machine Design. By R. G. Blaine, M.E. New Edition,
Revised and Enlarged. With 79 Illustrations.
Latin Primer (The New). By Prof. J. P. Postgate.
Latin Prose for Lower Forms. By M. A. Bayfield, M.A.
Chemistry. The Public School. ByJ. H. Anderson, m. a.
Oil Painting. A Manual of. By the Hon. John Collier. Cloth.
French Reader, Cassell's Public School. By Guiiiaume
S. Conrad.
French Grammar, Marlborough. Arranged and Compiled
by Rev. J. F. Bright, M.A. (See " Exercises," 3s. 6d.)
Algebra, Manual Of. By Galbraith and Haughton, Part I.
Cloth. (Complete, ys. 6d.)
Optics. By Galbraith and Haughton.
Euclid. Books I., IL, III. By Galbraith and Haughton.
Books IV., V., VI. By Galbraith and Haughton.

Plane Trigonometry- By Galbraith and Haughton. Cloth.
French, Cassell's Lessons in. Parts I. and II. Cloth. Each.
(Complete, 4s. 6d.)
"Model Joint" "Wall Sheets, for Instruction in Manual
Training. By S. Barter. Eight Sheets. Each.
Natural History Wall Sheets (Cassell's). Ten Subjects.
Separate Sheets, 2s. od. each. Unmounted, 2s. each. (See also
20s. and 255. )

2/6
cont'd.

Cassell <Se Company, Limited, Ludgate HiU, London ; Paris and Melbourne.

Cassell 8f Company's Classified Price List.

2/6
confd.

MISCELLANEOUS.
Cottage Gardening, Poultry, Bees, Allotments,
Food, House, Window and Town Gardens. Edited
by W. ROBINSON, F.L.S.. Author of " The English Flower Garden."
Fully Illustrated. In Half-yearly Volumes. Each.
Liquor Legislation in the United States and
Canada. By E.L Fanshawe, ofthe Inner Temple, Barrister.
Field Naturalist's Handbook, The. By the Revs. J. G.
Wood and Theodore Wood. Cheap Edition.
The Art of Making and Using Sketches. From the
French of G. Fraipont. By Clara Bell. With Fifty Illustrations.
Geometrical Drawing for Army Candidates. By H. T.
Lilley, M. A. New and Enlarged Edition.
Elizabeth Gilbert and her Work for the Blind. By
Frances Martin.
Father Mathew : His Life and Times, By F. J. Mathew.
Free Public Libraries. By Thomas Greenwood, F.R.G.S.
New and Enlarged Edition. Illustrated.
Nursing of Sick Children, A Handbook for the. By
Catherine J. Wood.
Browning, An Introduction to the Study of. By
- Arthur Symons.
The England of Shakespeare. By E. Goadby. Illustrated.
Ships, Sailors, and the Sea. By R. J. CornewalUJones,
Illustrated. Cheap Edition.
Unicode. The Universal Telegraphic Phrase Book. Desk and Pocket
Editions. Each.
Bo-Peep. A Treasury for the Little Ones. Yearly
Volume. Boards. (See 3s. 6d.)
Sent Back by the Angels, and other Ballads. By the
Rev. F. Langbridge, M.A. Clcili.
New Testament, An Introduction to the.
Miniature Cyclopaedia, Cassell's. Containing 30,000 Subjects.
Cloth. (Also in half roxburgh, 4s.)

3/-

3/6

TECHNICAL MANUALS (Illustrated).

The Elements of Practical
Perspective.
Model Drawing.
Drawing for Stonemasons.

Gothic Stonework.

Drawing for Cabinetmakers.
Drawing for Bricklayers.
Drawing for Metal - Plate
Workers.

Cassell's New Coloured Natural History Wall
Sheets. Consisting of 18 Subjects. Size— 39 by 31 in. Mounted
on rollers and varnished. Each.
Hour to Shade from Models, Common Objects, and
Casts Of Ornament. A Practical Manual By W. E. Sparkes.
Practical Plane and Solid Geometry* including
Graphic Arithmetic. Vol. I., Elementary Stage.
Elementary Flower Painting., With Eight Coloured Plates
and Wood Engravings.
Sepia Painting, A Course of. Two Vols. Each. (In one Vol., 5s. )
Marlborough Arithmetic Examples.
Tides and Tidal Currents. By Galbraith and Haughton.
SCHOOL COMMENTARIES. Edited by Bishop EUicott

Genesis. (3s. 6d.)
Exodus. (3s.)
Leviticus, (js.)
Numbers. (2s. 6d.)
Deuteronomy. (2s. 6d.)
St. Matthew. (3s. 6d.)
St. Mark. (3s.)
St. Lute. (3-!. 6d.)
St. John. {3s. 6d.)
The Acts of the Apostles.
(3s. 6d.)

Romans. (2s. 6d. )
Corinthians I. and II. (3s.)
Galatians, Ephesians, and
Philippians. (3s.)
Colossians, Thebsaloniaos,
and Timothy. (3s.)
Titus, Philemon, Hebrews,
and James. (3s.)
Peter, Jude, and John. (3s.)
The Kevelation. (3s.)
An Introduction to the New
Testament. (2s. 6d.)

THE WORLD'S WORKERS.
New and Original Volumes by Popular Authors. With Portraits. In
Seven Vols., each containing 3 worics. Cloth, gilt edges. Each VoL
•#" Each work can also be had separately. (.Ste rs.)
Bible women and Nurses. Yearly Volume.

EDUCATIONAL.
Cassell's English Dictionary. Giving Definitions of more
than 100,000 Words and Phrases. l*heap Edition. (Also a Superior
Edition, 5s.)
Drawing for Carpenters and Joiners. By E. A.
Davidson. With 233 Engravings.
Natural Philosophy. By Prof. Haughton.
Practical Mechanics. By Prof. Perry, M.E.
Cutting Tools Worked by Hand and Machine. By
Prof. Smith.
Handrailing and Staircasing. By Frank 0. CresswelL
Hydrostatics. By Galbraith and Haughton. Cloth.
Steam Engine. By Galbraith and Haughton. Cloth.
Mathematical Tables. By Galbraith and Haughton.
Mechanics. By Galbraith and Haughton. Cloth.
Linear Drawing and Projection. Two Vols, in One.
German Dictionary, cassell's NEW. In Two Parts.
German-English and English-German. Cloth. (Also in half roan.
4s. 6d.>
This World of Ours. By H. 0. Amold-Forster, M.P. Being
Introductory Lessons to the Study of Geography.
Colour. By Prof. A. H. Church. New and Enlarged Edition.
English Literature, The Story of. By Anna Buckland.
Italian Lessons with Exercises, Cassell's,
German Grammar. The Marlborough. Compiled and
Arranged by the Rev. J. F. Bright, M.A. Cloth.
French Exercises, Marlborough. By tbe Rev. G. W. De
Lisle, M.A., French Master in Marlborough College.
French-English and English-French Dictionary. Re
vised Edition, with 3,000 new words. Cloth. (Also in superior
binding, wth leather backs, 4s. 6d.)
Cassell's New Latin Dictionary. (Latin - English and
English-^tin. ) Revised by J. R. V. Marchant, M.A., and J. F.
Charles. B.A. Also a Superior Edition, 5s.
Phrase and Fable, Dictionary of. By Rev. E. C. Brewer,
LL.D. Twentieth Edition. Enlarged. (See also 4s. 6d. )
Alphabet, Cassell's Pictorial, and Object Lesson
Sheet for Infant Schools.
THE FIGUIER SERIES.
Cheap Editions. Illustrated throughout
The Insect World.
Reptiles and Birds.
Tho Human Race.

The Vegetable World.

The Ocean World.
The World before the Deluge.
Mammalia.

The Little Squire. A Story of Three. By Mrs. Henry De La
Pasture.
The Man in Black. By Stanley Weyman. With 12 full-page
Illustrations.
Quickening Of Caliban, The. A Modern Story of Evolution.
ByJ. Compron Rickert.
The Life of the Rev. J. G. Wood. By his son, the Rev.
Theodore Wood. "W ith Portrait. Cheap Edition.
Zero, the Slaver. A Romance of Equatorial Africa. By Lawrence
Fletcher.
Into the Unknown s A Romance of South Africa. By Lawrence
Fletcher.
Locomotive Engine, The Biography of a. By Henry
Frith. Illustrated.
Father Stafford. A Novel. By Anthony Hope.
Mount Desolation. An Australian Romance. By W. Carlton
Dawe.
Magic at Home. By Prof. Hoffman. Fully Illustrated.
Some Legendary Landmarks of Africa. By Mrs.
Frank Evans.
New England Boyhood, A. By Edward E. Hale.
Scarabseus ; the story of an African Beetle. By the
Marquise Clara Lanza and James Clarence Harvey. Cheap Edition.
Fairway Island. By Horace Hutchinson. Illustrated. Cheap
Edition.
Old and New Testaments, Plain Introductions to
the Books of the. Keprinted from Bishop Ellicott's Bible
Commentary. In Two Volumes. Each.
Joy and Health. Poems by Martellius. Illustrated. (Also an
Edition de Luxe, ys. 6d.l
Story Poems for Young and Old. Edited by E. Davenport
Cheap Edition.
Shaftesbury, K.G., The Seventh Earl of, The Life
and Work of. By Edwin Hodder. Illustrated. Cheap Edition.
The Lady's Dressing-Room. Translated from the French by
Lady Colin CampbelL
Beetles, Butterflies, Moths, and other Insects. By
A. W. fcappel, F.L.S., F.E.S., and W. Egmont Kirby. With Twelve
Coloured nates.
Nature's Wonder Workers. By Kate R. LovelL Illustrated.
The Perfect Gentleman. By the Rev. A. Smythe-Palmer, D.D.
The Successful Life. A Book for Young Men commencing
Business, containing Counsel, Instruction, Comfort. By an Elder
Brother.
The Carnation Manual. Edited and Issued by the National
Carnation and Picotee Society (Southern Section).
Artistic Anatomy. By Prof. M. Duval. Cheap Edition.
The English School of Painting. Cheap Edition.
Buckinghamshire Sketches. By E. S. Roscoe. With Illus
trations by H. R. Bloomer. Cloth.
Verses Grave and Gay. By Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.
Italy from the Fall of Napoleon I. in 1815 to 1890.
By J. W. Probyn. New and Cheaper Edition.
Heroes of Britain in Peace and War. Cheap Edition.
Two Vols. With 300 Illustrations. Each. (See also ys. 6d.)
Disraeli, Benjamin, The Rt. Hon. Earl of Beacons
field, R.G., Personal Reminiscences of. By Henry
Lake. With Two Portraits, &c.
Life Of Nelson. By Robert Southey. Illustrated.
The Lair of Musical and Dramatic Copyright. New
Edition.
Aubrey de Vere's Poems. A Selection. Edited by John Dennis.
London. Three large Maps, viz. : London as it is, and as it was in
1720, and in the reign of Elizabeth. In case.
Marriage Ring, The. A Gift Book for the Newly Married and
for those Contemplating Marriage. By William Landels, D.D.
Lectures on Christianity and Socialism. By the Right
Rev. Alfred Barry, D.D.
Shakspere, The Leopold. With about 400 Illustrations.
Cloth. (Also at 5s. and 75. 6d. )
Culmshire Folk. By the Author of " John Orlebar,'1 &c.
Steam Engine, The Theory and Action of the. For
PRACTICAL MEN. By W. H. Northcott, CE.
A Year's Cookery. By Phyllis Browne. New and Enlarged Edition.
Sports and Pastimes, Cassell's Complete Book of.
Cheap Edition. With overooo Illustrations. Cloth.
Poultry -Keeper, The Practical. By Lewis Wright With
Numerous Woodcuts.
Pigeon Keeper, The Practical. By Lewis Wright
Rabbit Keeper, The Practical. By Cuniculus.
Banyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Cassell's. Illustrated.
Cloth. {Also cloth gilt, gilt edges, 5s.)
THE "TREASURE ISLAND" SERIES.
CHEAP ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS.
Treasure Island. By R. L. Stevenson.
The Master of Ballantrae. By R. L. Stevenson.
" Kidnapped." By R. L. Stevenson.
The Black Arrow. By R. L Stevenson.
King Solomon's Mines. By H. Rider Haggard.
YOUNG PEOPLE'S STORY BOOKS.
Cheap Edition. With Original Illustrations. Cloth gilt.
Under Bayard's Banner. By Henry Frith.
The Champion of Odin ; or, Viking Life in the Days
Of Old. By J. Frederick Hodgetts.
Bound by a Spell; or, The Hunted Witch of the
Forest. By the Hon. Mrs. Greene.
BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
"Come, ye Children." By Rev. Benjamin Waugh. Illustrated.
Cheap Edition.
A Sunday Story-Book. By Maggie Browne, Sam Browne, and
Aunt Ethel. Illustrated.
A Bundle of Tales. By Maggie Browne, Sam Browne, and
Aunt EtheL
The Sunday Scrap-Book. .Containing several hundred Scrip
ture Stories in Pictures. Boards. {Also in cloth, 5s.)
Little Mother Bunch. By Mrs. Molesworth. Illustrated.
JEsop's Fables. Cheap Edition. Cloth. (Also in cloth, bevelled
boards, gttt edges, 5S.I
Rhymes for the Young Folk. By William Allingham. Boards.
The Chit-Chat Album. Illustrated throughout
Picture Album of All Sorts. With Full-page Illustrations.
My Own Album or Animals.
Album for Home, Scnool, and Play. Containing numerous
Stories bypopular Authors.
Cassell's Pictorial Scrap Book. In Six Sectional Volumes,
paper boards, cloth back. Each VoL
Bo-Peep. A Treasury for the Little Ones. Illustrated
throughout Cloth gilt. Yearly Volume. (Sa also 2s. 6d.)

Cassell <k Company, Limited, Ludgate Hill, London; Paris and Melbourne.

3/6
cont'd.

4/'

4/6

Sh

Cassell 8f Company* s Classified Price List.

Robinson Crusoe, Cassell's. Profusely Illustrated. Cloth.
(Also in cloth, bevelled boards, gilt cages, 5s.)
Swiss Family Robinson, Cassell's. Illustrated. Cloth.
(Also in cloth, bevelled boards, gilt edxes, 5s.)
Vicar of Wakefield, The, and other Works by Goldsmith.
Illustrated. {Also in cloth, gift edges, 5s.)
Gulliver's Travels. Cheap Edition. With Eighty-eight Engrav
ings by Morten. Crown 4to, cloth, (Also in cloth, gilt, edges, 5s. )
Little Folks (ENLARGED SERIES). Half-Yearly Vols. With
Pictures on nearly every' page, together with two Full-page Plates
printed iu Colours, and Four Tinted Plates. ColourccT boards.
(See also 5s.)
POPULAR BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
Crown 8vo, with Eight Full-page Illustrations. Cloth gilt.
t Bashful Fifteen. By L. T. Meade. Illustrated.
t A Sweet Girl Graduate. By L. T. Meade, Illustrated.
t The White House at Inch Gow. By Sarah Pitt. Illustrated.
The King's Command a A Story for Girls. By Maggie
Symington. Illustrated. Cheap Edition.
Lost in Samoa. A Tale of Adventure in the Navigator Islands.
. By E. S. Ellis. With Eight Original Illustrations.
Tad s or, " Getting Even" with Him. By E. S. Ellis. With
¦ Eight Original Illustrations.
t Polly : A New-fashioned Girl. By L. T. Meade. Illustrated.
1 A World of Girls: A Story of a School. By L. T.Meade.
+ The Palace Beautiful. A Story for Girls. By L. T. Meade.
+ The Cost of a Mistake. By Sarah Pitt, Illustrated.
Lost among Wbite Africans : A Boy's Adventures
on the Upper Congo. By David Ker.
For Fortune and Glory, A Story of the Soudan War. By
Lewis Hough.
"Follow my Leader"; or, The Boys of Templeton.
By Talbot Baines Reed.
Books marked thus t can also be had in superior bindings, extrd
cloth gilt, gilt edges, ss. each.

National Railways. An Argument for State Purchase. By
James Hole. Net.
Work. The Illustrated Journal for Mechanics. New and Enlarged
Series. Vols. V. and VI. Hach.
A Daughter of the South, and Shorter Stories. By
Mrs. Burton Harrison.

Mechanics for Young Beginners, A First Book of.
With numerous Easy Examples and Answers. By the Rev. J. G.
Easton, M.A.
Watch and Clock Making. By D. Glasgow, Vice-President .of
the British Horological Institute.
Design in Textile Fabrics. By T. R. Ashenhurst. With
Coloured and numerous other Illustrations.
Spinning Woollen and Worsted. By W. S. B. McLaren, M.P,
Phrase and Fable, Dictionary of. New and Enlarged
Edition. By the Rev. Dr. Brewer. Superior binding. (See also 3s. 6d.)
French, Cassell's Lessons in. New and Revised Edition.
Complete in One Vol. (See also ss. 6d.)
Drawing for Machinists and Engineers. By Ellis
A. Davidson. With over 200 Illustrations.

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
Pleasant Work for Busy Fingers ; or, Kindergarten
at Home. By Maggie Browne. Illustrated.
Flora's Feast. A Masque of Flowers. By Walter Crane. With
40 pages in Colours.
Little Folks. Half- Yearly Vols. N"ew and Enlarged Series, With
Pictures on nearly every page, together with Two Full-page Plates
printed in Colours, and Four Tinted Plates. Cloth gilt, gilt edges.

(See also 3s. fid.)

EDUCATIONAL.

Storehouse of General Information, Cassell's. Fully
Illustrated. In Vols. Each.
Popular Educator, Cassell's NEW. With Revised Text,
New Maps, New Coloured Plates, New Type, &c. Complete
in Eight Vols. Each. (See also 50s.)
Technical Educator, Cassell's New, An entirely New
Cyclopaedia of Technical Education, with Coloured Plates and
Engravings. In Volumes.
Gaudeamus. Songs for Colleges and Schools. Edited by John
Farmer. (The words only, in paper covers, 6d. ; cloth, od.) Can also
be obtained in sheets containing two Songs iwords and music) in
quantities of one dozen and upwards, at id. per sheet.
Dulce Domum. Rhymes and Songs for Children. Edited by John
Farmer Old Notation and Words. 'N.B.—Thc Words ofthe Songs
in " Dulce Domum" (witn the' Airs both in Tonic Sol J-a a?id Old
Notation) can be had in two parts, 6d. each.
Historical Cartoons, Cassell's Coloured. Six. Mounted
on canvas and varnished, with rollers. Each. (See also id. andzs.i
Howard's Art Of Reckoning. By C. Frusher Howard. New
Edition, Enlarged. (See also is. and 25.)
Dyeing of Textile Fabrics, The. By Prof. Hummel.
Steel and Iron. By Prof. W. H. Greenwood, F.C.S., &c.
Marine Painting. By Walter W. May, R.I. With Sixteen
Coloured Plates.
Animal Painting In Water ¦ Colours. With Eighteen
¦Coloured Plates by Frederick Tayler.
Tree Painting in Water-Colours. By W. H. J. Boot. With
Eighteen Coloured Plates.
Water-Colour Painting Book. By R. P. Leitch. With
Coloured Plates.
Neutral Tint, A Course of Painting in. With Twenty-
four Plates by R- P. Leitch. ,
China Painting. ' By Florence Lewis. With Sixteen Original
Coloured Plates.
Flowers, and How to Paint them. By Maud NafteL With
' Ten Coloured Plates.

RELIGIOUS.
Slgna Christi. Evidences of Christianity set forth In the Person
and Work of Christ. By the Rev. James Aitchison.
St. George for England I and other 'Sermons preached to
Children. By the Rev. Canon Telgnmputh Shore, M.A,
Life of the World to Come, The, and other Subjects.
By the Rev. Canon Teignmouth Shore, M.A.
Bible, The Pow. Cloth, red edges. lAlso in French morocco,
6s. j French morocco, gilt edges, 7s. ; Persian calf, 7s. 6d, j Persian
" Yapp," 8s. ; morocco, 8s. 6d.)

5/-
cont'd*

Q's Works, Uniform Edition of,

Dead Man's Book.
The Splendid Spur.
The Astonishing History
of Troy Town.

The Blue Pavilions.
"I Saw Three Ships,*
other Winter's Tales.
Noughts and Crosses.

Diet and Cookery for Common Ailments. By a Fellow
of the Royal College of Physicians and Phyllis Browne.
Lost on Du Corrig, or, 'Twist Life and Death. By
Standish O'Grady. With 8 full-page illustrations.
Otto the Knight ; and other Stories. By Octave Thanet.
Eleven Possible Cases. By various Authors.
A Singer's Wife. By Fanny N. D. Murfree.
The Poet's Audience, and Delilah. By Clara Savile
Clarke. '
O'Driscoll's Weird, and other Stories. By A. Werner.
The Book of Pity and of Death. By Pierre Loti. Trans
lated by T. P. O'Connor, M.P.
The Reputation of George Saxon. By Morley Roberts.
Playthings and Parodies. Short Stories, Sketches, &c, by
Barry Pain.
Anthea. By Oldie Cassavetti (A Russian). A story of the time of
the Greek War of Independence. Cheap Edition. ,
Awkward Squads, The; and other Ulster Stories.
By Shan F. Bullock.
Beyond the Blue Mountains. Illustrated. By L. T. Meade.
Capture of the "Estrella," The. A Tale of the Slave
Trade. By Commander Claud Harding, R.N.
Iron Pirate, The. A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the
Sea. By Max Pemberton. Illustrated.
Tenting on the Plains ; or, General Custer In Kansas
and Texas. By Elizabetn B. Custer. With Numerous Illus
trations.
John Drummond Fraser. By Philalethes. A Story of Jesuit
Intrigue in the Church of England.
The Shadow of a Song. A Novel. By Cecil Harley.
The Rovlngs of a Restless Boy. By Katharine B. Foot.
Illustrated.
Bob Lovell's Career. A Story of American Railway Life. By
Edward S. Ellis.
Industrial Freedom : A Study in Politics. By B. R. Wise.
A Blot Of Ink. Translated by Q and Paul Francke.
The Doings of Rattles Haw. By A. Conan Doyle, Author
of " Sherlock Holmes," &c. New Edition.
"Hors de Combat"; or, Three Weeks in a Hospital.
Founded on Facts. By Gertrude and Ethel Southam. Illustrated ¦
Russia. By Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace. M.A. Popular Edition.
Loans Manual. A Compilation of Tables and Rules for the Use
of Local Authorities. By Charles P. Cotton, M.InsLC.E., M.R.I.A.
Birds' Nests, Eggs, and Egg-Collecting. ByR. Kearton.
With 16 Coloured Plates of Eggs.
Modern Shot Guns. By W. W. Greener. Illustrated.
English Writers. By Prof. H. Morley. Vols. I. to XI. Each.
Free Trade versus Fair Trade. By the Rt. Hon. LordFarrer.
Vaccination Vindicated. By John C. McVail, M.D.
Medical and Clinical Manuals, or Practitioners and Stu
dents of Medicine. A List post free on application. (.Also at
75. 6d., 8s. 6d., and 9s.)
Household, Cassell's Book of the. In Four Vols. Each.
[See also 25s.)
Gardening, Cassell's Popular. Illustrated. Complete in
Four Vols. Each.
Brahma Fowl, The. By Lewis Wright. With Chromo Plates.

NOVELS BY LEADING AUTHORS.
Extra crown 8vo, cloth. Each.
'Lisbeth. A Novel. By Leslie Keith. Cheap Edition, in One Vol.
The Admirable Lady Biddy Fane. By Frank Barrett.
New haition. With 12 full-page Illustrations.
Tiny Luttrell. By E. W. Hornung. Cloth. Popular Edition.
List, ye Landsmen ! A Romance of Incident.
By W. Clark RusselL
A Prison Princess. Bv Major Arthur Griffiths.
The Medicine Lady. By L. T. Meade.
Out of the Jaws of Death. By Frank Barrett,
A modern Diclc Whittington. By James Payn.
The Snare of the Fowler. By Mrs. Alexander.
The Squire. By Mrs. Parr.
The Little Minister. By J. M. Barrie. Illustrated Edition.
The Wrecker. By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd
Osbourne. Illustrated.
Catriona- A Sequel to " Kidnapped." By Robert Louis
Stevenson. „ „
Island Nights' Entertainments. By R. 1-. Stevenson.
Illustrated.
Leona. By Mrs. Molesworth.
The New Ohio. A Story of East and West. By Edward
Everett Hale. _ _ _
Sybil Knox, or Home Again 3 a Story of To-Day.
by Edward E. Hale, Author ot " East and West,' &c.
The Story of Francis Cludde. By Stanley J. Weyman,
Author 01 " The House of the Wolf," &c. &c
The Faith Doctor. By Dr. Edward Eggleston.
Dr. Dumany's Wife. By Maurus J okait Author of " Timar's
Two Worlds." Translated from the Hungarian by F. Steinitz,

6/-

Statesmen, Past and Future.
A King's Hussar. By Herbert Cornpton.
Delectable Duchy, The. Stories,' Studies, and Sketches. By Q,
"La Bella," and Others. Being Certain Stories Recollected
by Egerton Castle, Author of "Consequences."
A Foot-Note to History a Eight Years of Trouble in
Samoa. By R. L. Stevenson.

Cassell & Company ', Limited? Ludgate ¦..Bill, London; Paris and Melbourne.

6/-
cont'd.

6/6

7/6

Cassell fy Company's Classified Price List.

Henry Allon, D.D., Pastor and Teacher. The Story
of his Ministry, with Selected Sermons and Addresses. By the
Rev. W. Hardy Harwood.
Europe, Cassell's Pocket Guide to. Edition for 1893.
Leather.
The Nature and Elements of Poetry. By E. C. Stedman.
Star-Land. By Sir Robert Stawell Ball, LL.D. Illustrated.
Queen Summer ; or, The Tourney of the Lily and
the Rose. Containing 40 pages of Designs by Waller Crane,
printed in Colours.
Fourteen to One ; and other Stories. By Elizabeth Stuart
Phelps.
Teaching in Three Continents. Personal Notes an the
Educational Systems ofthe World. By W. C Grasby.
Gleanings after Harvest. By the Rev. John R. Vernon, M.A.
St. Paul, The Life and Work of. By the Ven. Archdeacon
Farrar, D.D., F.R.S. Popular Edition. Cloth. (See also 7s. od.,
ios. 6d., 15s., 21s., 24s., and 42s.}
Early Days of Christianity, The. By the Ven. Archdeacon
Farrar, D.D., F.R.S. Popular Edition. Cloth. (See also js. 6d.,
ios. 6d,, 15s., 34s., and 42s.)
Hand-and-Eye Training. By G. Ricks, RSc Two Vols., with
Sixteen Pages of Coloured Plates in each Vol Crown 4te. Each.
Bible Educator, The. Edited by the Very Rev. Dean Plumptre,
D.D. Illustrated. Complete in Four Vols. Cloth, each. (A'to in
Two Vols., 315. 07- 24s.}
Ladies' Physician, The. By a London Physician.

'Work. An Illustrated Journal of Practice and Theory for all Work
men, Professional and Amateur. Volume IV.

EDUCATIONAL
Modern Europe, A History of. ByC-A. Fyffe, M. A. late
Fellow of University College, Oxiord. Popular Illustrated Edition.
Complete in Three Vols. Each.
Practical Electricity. By Prof. W. E. Ayrton. Illustrated.
Figure Painting in Water- Colours. With Sixteen Coloured
Plates. With Instructions by the Artists.
English Literature, A First Sketch of. By Prof. Henry
Morley. Revised and Enlarged Edition.
Algebra, Manual of. By Galbraith and Haughton.
English Literature, Library of. By Professor Henry
Morley. With Illustrations taken from Original MSS. Popular
Edition. VoL I. : SHORTER ENGLISH POEUS. Vol *. : ILLUS
TRATIONS OF ENGLISH RELIGION. Vol. III. : ENGLISH PLAYS.
VoL IV. : SHORTER WORKS IN ENGLISH PROSE. VoL V. :
SKETCHES OF LONGER WORKS IN ENGLISH VERSE AND
PROSE. Each. (See also £$ 5s.)

Dore's Dante's Purgatory and Paradise. Illustrated by
Gustave Dore. Cheap Edition.
Dor6'3 Dante's Inferno. Illustrated by Gustave Dore. with
Introduction by A. J. Buder. Popular Eaition. Cloth gilt, or in
buckram.
Municipal Taxation at Home and Abroad. By J. J.
O'Meara.
Physiology for Students, Elementary. By Alfred T.
Schofield, M.D , M.R.C.S. With Two Coloured Plates and numerous
Illustrations.
Chums. The Illustrated Paper for Boys. First Yearly Volume.
The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks. Translated from
the German by Alice Zimmern. With Numerous Illustrations.
The Story of Africa and its Explorers. By Dr. Robert
Brown. F.L.S. Illustrated. Vols, I. and II. Each.
Football. The Rugby Union Game. Edited by Rev. F.
Marshall Illustrated.
Smuggling Days and Smuggling Ways; or, The
Story Of a Lost Art. By Commander the Hon. Henry N.
Shore, R.N. With numerous Plans and Drawings by the Author.
Life and Letters of the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Napier,
Bart,, LL.D., &c, Ex-Lord chancellor of Ireland. By Alex
Charles Ewald, F.S.A. New and Revised Edition.
Robinson Crusoe, Cassell's New Fine-Art Edition
Of. With upwards of 100 Original Illustrations by Walter Paget.
Cloth gilt, gflt edges, or in buckram.
Heroes of Britain in Peace and War. With 300 Illus
trations. Two Vols, in One. (See also 3s. 6d.)
Disraeli in Outline. By F. Carroll Brewster, LL.D.
The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff. Translated by Mathilde
Blind. With Two Portraits -and an Autograph Letter. Popular
Edition in One Vol.
Letters of Marie Bashkirtseff. Translated by Mary J.
Serrano, with Portrait, Autograph Letters, Sketches, &c
The History Scrap Book. With nearly 1,000 Engravings
Cloth gilt, gilt edges.
Hygiene and Public Health. By B. Arthur Whitelegge. M.D.
Illustrated. New and Revised Eaition.
The Chess Problem; Text-Book with Illustrations. Containing
400 Positions selected from the Works of C. Planck and others.
Medical Handbook of Life Assurance. By J. E. Pollock,
M.D., and J. Chisholm.
Domestic Dictionary, Cassell's. Illustrated. 1,280 pages.
Royal Svo, cloth. (Also in raxburgh, ios. 6d- )
Subjects of Social Welfare. By the Rt Hon. Lord Play
fair, K.C.B.
Saturday Journal, Cassell's. Yearly Volume. Illustrated.
Cities of the World. Illustrated throughout with fine Illustrations
and Portraits. Complete in Four Vols. Each.
Peoples Of the World, The. By Dr. Robert Brown. Illus
trated. Six Vols. Each.
Countries Of the World, The. By Robert Brown, M. A, Ph. D.,
F.L.S.. F.R.G.S. Complete in Six Vols., with 750 Illustrations.
Each. (Library binding, 37s. 6d.) .
Cassell's Concise Cyclopaedia. With 600 Illustrations. A
Cyclopaedia in One Volume. New and Cheap Edition.
Cassell's New Biographical Dictionary, containing Me
moirs of the most Eminent Men and Women of all Ages and Countries.

x*ear>Book of Treatment, The. A Critical Review for
Practitioners of Medicine. Tenth year of publication.
Our Own Country. Complete in Six Vols. With aoo Original
Illustrations in each VoL Each. (See also 37s. 6d.)
English Literature. Dictionary of. By W. Davenport
Adams. Cloth. (Also in roxburgh, ios. od.)
Sea, The: its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril.
and Heroism. By F. Whymper. Four Vols., with 400 Original
Illustrations.' Each,
Work. Yearly Vols. II. and III.
World of Wonders, The. Two Vols. Illustrated. Each.
World of Wit and Humour, The. With about 400 iUustjb-
tions.
Natural History, Cassell's Concise. By Prof. E. Perceval
Wright, M.A Illustrated. Cloth. (Also kept half bound.)
RELIGIOUS.
"Quiver" Volume, The. New and Enlarged Series. With
several hundred Contributions. About 600 Original Illustrations.
Cloth.
The Sunday School Teacher's Bible Manual. By the
Rev. Robert Hunter, LI_D., F.G.S. With Coloured Maps and other
Illustrations.
Farrar' s Life of Christ. Cheap Illustrated Edition. Large 4to,
Cloth. (See also 10s. 6d-. 1 Popular Edition, revised and enlargeO.
(See also ios. tkL. 24s., and 42s.
Farrar's Early Days of Christianity. Popular Edition.
Cloth, gilt edges. {See also 6s., ios. 6d., 15s,, 24s., and 42s.)
Farrar's Life and Work of St. Paul. Popular Edition.
Cloth, gilt edges. (See also 6s.. ios. 6d. , 15s., 21s., 24s.. and 42s. 1
"Sunday": its Origin, History* and Present Obli
gation (Bampton Lectures, i860). By the Ven. Archdeacon
Hessey. D.C.L. Fifth Edition.
Child's Life of Christ, The. With about aoo Original IQns-
trations. Cloth. (Also at ios. 6d., and Demy 48? Edition, ars.)
Child's Bible. Cheap Edition. Illustrated. Cloth. Also a superior
edition at 10s. 6d.)

Moses and Geology; or. The Harmony of the Bible
with Science. By the Rev. Samuel Kinns. PhD., F.R.A.S.
With no Illustrations. (New Edition on larger and superior paper.)

Franco German War, Cassell's History of the i Vol. I.,
containing about 250 Illustrations.
Old and New Paris. A Narrative of its History, its People, and
its Places. By H. Sutherland Edwards. Profusely Illustrated. VoL L
(Also ingilt edges, ios. 6d.)
The World of Romance. IQustrated. Cloth.
Conquests of the Cross. Edited by Edwin Hodder. Illustrated.
Complete in Three Vols. Each.
Adventure, The World of. Complete in Three Vols. Fully
Illustrated. Farh,
Queen Victoria, The Life and Times of. Complete in
Two Vols. Illustrated. Each.
Our Earth and its Story. By Dr. Robert Brown, F.L.S.
Complete in 3 Vols. With Coloured Plates and numerous Wood En
gravings. Each.
Gleanings from Popular Authors. Complete in Two Vols.
With Original Illustrations by the best artists. Each. (Also in One
VoL. 155.)

Natural History, Cassell's New. Edited by Prof. P.
Martin Duncan, M.D., F.R.S. Complete in Six Vols. Illustrated
throughout. Extra crown 4 to. Each.
Universal History. Cassell's Illustrated. VoL I.. Early
and Greek History. VoL II., The Roman Period. VoL III., The
Middle Ages. Vol IV.. Modern History. Witb Illustrations. Each.
England, Cassell's Illustrated History of. With about
2,000 Illustrations. Complete in Ten Vols. Each. New and Revised
Edition. Vols. I. to VIL Each. (See also £s.)
Protestantism, The History of. By the Rev. J. A. Wylie,
LL.D. Three Vols. With 600 Illustrations. Each. (See also 30s.)
United States, History of the (Cassell's). Complete in
Three Vols. About 600 Illustrations. Each. (Library Edition, 30s.)
"FamUy Magazine" Volume, Cassell's. With about
400 Original Illustrations.
British Battles on Land and Sea. Three Vols. With
about 600 Engravings. Each. {See also 30s.)
Battles, Recent British. Illustrated. (Also in imitation
roxburgh, ios.)
Russo. Turkish War, Cassell's History of. With about
500 Illustrations. Two Vols. Each. (See also 15s.)
India, Cassell's History of. By James Grant. Illustrated.
Two Vols. Each. (Also Library Edition. Two Vols, in One, 15s.)
London, Old and New. Complete in Six Vols. Containing
about 1.200 Illustrations. Each. < See also £3. )
Edinburgh. Cassell's Old and New, Complete in Three
Vols. With 600 Original Illustrations. Each. {See also 27s. atidgps.)
London, Greater. Complete in Two Vols. By Edward Walford.
With about 400 Original Illustrations. Each. (See also 20s.)
Science for AIL Revised Eaition. Complete in Five Vols. Each
containing about 350 Illustrations and Diagrams. F,arhL

Count Cavour and Mad -me de Circourt. Some Unpub
lished Correspondence. Eaited by Count Nigra. Translated by
A. J. Butler.
English Commons and Forests. By the Rt. Hon. G. Shaw-
Lefevre, M.P.
Agrarian Tenures. By the Rt. Hon. G. Shaw-Lefevre, M.P.
Old Dorset, Chapters in the History of the County.
ByH.J. Moule, M.A.
The Dore Don Quixote. With about 400 Illustrations by Gustave
Dore. Cheap Eaition,
With Tha cic era 7 in America. By Eyre Crowe, A R.A.
Withupw^rd. of One Hunured Illustrations.
The Highway of Letters, and Its Echoes of Famous
Footsteps. By Thomas Archer. Illustrated.
Historic Houses of the United Kingdom, illustrated.
Cloth gilt.
The Career of Columbus. By Charles Elton, F.S.A.
Modern Odyssey, The ; or, Ulysses up to Date. By
Wvndham F. I'ufnell. A nook of Travels. Illustrated.
Dictionary of Religion, The. By the Rer. William Benham,
B.D. Cheap Edition. Cloth.
Farrar's Life Of Christ. Cheap Illustrated Edition. iSee also
7s. 6d.) Popular Edition* Persian morocco. (See also 7s. fid., 24s.,-
and ifik.)

7/6
cont'd

8/69/-

10/6

Cassell $ Company, Limited, Ludgate Hill, London; Paris and Melbourne.

10/6
cont'd.

12/-
12/6

15/-

16/-

18A

21/-

Passell 8f Company's Classified Price List.

Electricity in the Service of Man. A Popular and Practical
Treatise. With upwards of 950 Illustrations. New and Revised
Edition.
Farrar's Life and Work of St. Paul. Popular Edition.
Persian morocco. (See also 6s., 7s. fid., 15s., 21s., 24s., and 42s.)
Farrar's Early Days of Christianity. Popular Edition.
Persian morocco, (See also 6s., 7s. 6&, 15s., 34s., and 42s.)
Building Construction Plates. A series of 40 drawings.
Cloth. (Or Copies of any plate may be obtained in quantities of not
less than one dozen, price is. 6d. per dozen.)
The Polytechnic Technical Scales. On celluloid (in case).
Per set. (See also is.)
Architectural Drawing. By R. Phong Spiers. Illustrated.
Encyclopaedic Dictionary, The. A New and Original Work
of Reference to the Words in the English Language. Complete
In Fourteen Divisional Vols. Each. (See also 21s. and 25s.)
English History, The Dictionary of. Cheap Edition. Cloth.
(Also in roxburgh, 15S.J
Arabian Nights' Entertainments, The. With Illustrations
by Gustave Dore, and other well-known Artists. New Edition.
Poultry, The Book Of. By Lewis Wright. Popular Edition.
With Illustrations on Wood. (See also 31s. 6d. and £1 2s.)
Gun and its Development, The. With Notes on Shooting.
By W. W. Greener. With Illustrations.

Henriette Ronner. The Painter of Cat-Life and Cat-Character,
By M. H. Spielniann. Containing a Series of Beautiful Illustrations.
Popular 4to Edition. (See also 50s. )

British Railways. Their Passenger Services, Rolling Stock,
Locomotives, Gradients, and Express Speeds. By J. Pearson
Pattison. With Numerous Plates.
American Life. By Paul de Rousiers. Translated from the French
by A. J. Herbertson.
" Graven in the Rock "; or, the Historical Accuracy of
the Bible Confirmed by references to the Assyrian and Egyptian
Sculptures in the British Museum and elsewhere. By Rev. Dr. Samuel
Kinns, F.R.A.S., &c. &c. With Numerous Illustrations.
Familiar Trees. Complete in Two Series. Forty Coloured Plates
in each. Cloth gilt, or morocco. Each.
Garden Flowers, Familiar. Complete in Five Series. Forty
. Coloured Plates in each. Cloth gilt, /or morocco. Each.
Wild Birds, Familiar. Complete in Four Series. By W.
Swaysland. With Forty Full-page exquisite C61oured Illustrations.
Cloth gilt, in cardboard box, or morocco, cloth sides. Each.
wild Flowers, Familiar. Complete in Five Series. By F. E.
Hulme, F.L.S.. F.S.A. With Forty Full-page Coloured Plates in
,. each, and Descriptive Text. Cloth gilt, or morocco. Each.
Heavens, The Story ofthe. By Sir R. Stawell Ball, LL.D.,
F.R.S., F.R.A.S., Royal Astronomer of Ireland; Lowndean
Professor of Astronomy and Geometry in the University of Cam
bridge. Popular Edition. Illustrated by Chromo Plates and Wood
Engravings. Also in half-morocco. (Price on application. )

The Cabinet Portrait Gallery. First, Second, Third, and
Fourth Series. Each Containing 36 Cabinet Photographs of Eminent
Men and Women. With Biographical Sketches. Each.
Horse, The Book Of the. By Samuel Sidney. Thoroughly
Revised and brought up to date by James Sinclair and W. C. A. Blew.
With 17 Full-Page Collotype Plates of Celebrated Horses qf the Day,
and numerous other Illustrations, Cloth.
Social England. A Record of the Progress of the People in
Religion, Laws, Learning, Arts, Science, Literature, and Manners,
from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By various writers.
Edited by H. D. Traill, D.C.L. Vols. I. and II. Each.
The Dore Bible. With 200 Full-page Illustrations by Gustave Dore.
(Also in leather binding, price on application.)
Farrar's Life ana Work of St. Paul. Popular Edition.
Tree-calf. {See also 6s., 7s. 6d., ios. fid. , 21s., 24s., and 42s.]
Farrar's Early Days of Christianity. Popular Edition.
Tree-calf. (See also 6s., 7s. 6d., zos, 6d., 24s., and 423.)
Shakspere, The Royal. Complete in Three Vols. With Steel
Plates and Wood Engravings. Each.
British Ballads. With Several Hundred Original Illustrations.
Complete in Two Vols. Cloth.
Russo-Turkish War, Cassell's History of the. Illus
trated. Library Binding in One VoL (See also 9s.)

Longfellow's Poetical Works. Illustrated throughout
Popular Edition. Extra crown 4to, cloth gilt.
Rivers of Great Britain. Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial.
The Royal River: The Thames from- Source to
Sea. With Several Hundred Original Illustrations. Popular
Edition. (See also 425.)
Rivers of the East Coast. With numerous highly finished
Engravings. Popular Edition. (See also 42s. )
Magazine of Art, The. Yearly Vol 1803. With 12 Etchings,
Photogravures, Sec, and Several Hundred Engravings.

Picturesque America. With Exquisite Steel Plates and
Original Wood Engravings. Popular Edition. Vol.1. (See also 42s.)
Picturesque Europe. Popular Edition. Complete in Five Vols.
With Thirteen exquisite Steel Plates, and numerous original Wood
Engravings. Each. (See also 31s. 6d., £21, £31 ios., and £32 ios.)
Family Prayer-BOOk, The. Edited by Rev. Canon Garbett,
M.A., and Rev. S. Martin. Morocco.
English Sanitary Institutions. By Sir John Simon, K.C.B.,
F.R.S., formerly the Medical Officer of Her Majesty's Privy Council.
Natural History WaU Sheets. Set of Ten Subjects. Un
mounted. (See also ss. 6d. and 25s.)

Things X have Seen and People I have Known.
By G. A. Sala. 2 vols.
Sun. The Story Of the. By Sir Robert Stawell Ball, LL.D.,
F.R.S., F.R.A.S. Illustrated with Eight Coloured Plates and other
Illustrations.
Astronomy, The Dawn Of* A Study of the Temple Worship
and Mythology of the Ancient Egyptians, By J. Norman Lockyer,
C,B., F.R.S., &c. Illustrated,
The Standishs of High Acre. By Gilbert Sheldon. Two Vols.
New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land. By B. T.
A. Evetts, M.A,- Illustrated.

Thackeray. Character Sketches from. Six New and
Original Drawings by F. Barnard reproduced in Photogravure.
Abbeys and Churches of England and Wales, The.
Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial. Tine Paper Edition. Series II.
A Vision Of Saints. By Lewis Morris. Edition de Luxe. With
ao Full-page Illustrations.
Encyclopaedic Dictionary, The. Seven Double Divisional
Vols., half-morocco. Each. (See also ios. fid. and 25s.)
Health, The Book Of. Cloth. (Also in roxburgh, 25s.)
Family Physician, The. A Modern Manual of Domestic
Medicine. New and Revised Edition. Cloth. (Alsoinrdxburgh.as^.)
Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated with Full-page Drawings
by Gustave Dore,
Shakespeare, The Flays Of. Edited by Prof. Henry Morley.
Thirteen Vols., in box, cloth. (Also hall-morocco, cloth sides, 42s.)
Mechanics, The Practical Dictionary of. Containing
20,000 Drawings of Machinery. Four Vols. Each. (See also 25s.)
RELIGIOUS WORKS.
Holy Land and the Bible, The. By the Rev. Cunningham
Geikie, D.D.. LL.D. Edin. Illustrated Edition. One Vol.
Farrar's Life and Work of St. Paul, illustrated
Edition. (See also 6s., 7s. fid., ios. fid., 15s., 24s., and 42s.!
Old Testament Commentary for English Readers,
The. Edited by the Rev. C. J. Ellicott, D.D., Lord Bishop of
Gloucester and Bristol. Five Vols. Each. (See also £7 17s. 6d.)
New Testament Commentary. Edited by C. J. Ellicott,
D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Three Vols. Each.
{See also £4 14s. fid.)

By the Rev. Cunningham
In Two VoU

Holy Land and the Bible. The.
Geikie, D.D., LL.D. Edin. With Map.
Early Days of Christianity, The. By the Ven. Archdeacon
Farrar, D.D., F.R.S. Library Edition. Two Vols., demy Svo.
(See also 6s., 7s. fid., ios. fid., 15s., and 42s.)
Life of Christ, The. By the Ven. Archdeacon Farrar, D.D.,
F.R.S. Library Edition. Two Vols., cloth. (See also 7s. 6d.,
ios. fid., and 42s.)
Farrar's Life and Work of St. Paul. Library Edition.
Two Vols., cloth, (See also 6s. , 7s. fid., ios. fid., 15s., 21s., and 42s!)
Our Railways. Their Origin, Development, Incident, and
Romance. By John Pendleton. Two Vols. Illustrated, demy 8vo,

British Empire Map of the World. New Map for Schools
and Institutes. By G. R. Parkin and J. G. Bartholomew, F.R.G.S,
Mounted on Cloth, varnished, and with Rollers, or folded.
Natural History Wall Sheets. Set of Ten Subjects.
Mounted on rollers and varnished. (See also 2s. fid. and 20s.)
Household, Cassell's Book of the With numerous Illustra
tions. Four Vols, in Two, half-morocco. (Seeaiso 5s.)
Cathedrals. Abbeys, and Churches of England and
Wales. Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial. Cloth gilt, gilt edges.
Popular Edition. Two Vols.
Encyclopaedic Dictionary, The. Seven Double Divisional
Vols., half-russia. Each. (See also ios. fid. and sis.)
Mechanics, The Practical Dictionary of. Half-morocco.
Four Vols. Each. (See also 21s.)
London, Greater. Library Edition. Two Vols. (See also 9s.)

Protestantism, The History of. By the Rev. J. A. Wylie,
LL.D. Containing upwards of 600 Original Illustrations. Three vols.
(See also os. and 30s.)
British Battles on Land and Sea. Three Vols. Cloth.
(See also 05. and 30s.)
Edinburgh, Old and New. Complete in Three Vols. (See also
9s. and 30s.)

Butterflies and Moths, European.
Sixty Plates Coloured by hand.

21/-
contd.

24/-

25/-

The Universal Atlas. A New and Complete General Atlas of
the World, with 117 Pages of Maps, handsomely produced in Colours,
and a Complete Index to about 123,000 Names. .Cloth. Net. Also
half-morocco, 355. net.
Edinburgh, Old and New, Complete in Three Vols., library
binding. (See also 9s. and 27s.)
Protestantism, The History of. Library Edition. (See
also 9s. and 27s.)
British Battles on Land and Sea. With about 600 Illustra
tions. Library Edition. Three Vols. (See also 9s. and 27s.)

Planet, The Story of Our. By T. G. Bonney, D.Sc, LL.D,,
F.R.S., F.S.A., F.G.S.' With Coloured Plates and Maps and
about 100 Illustrations.
The Lake Dwellings of Europe. By Robert Munro, M.D.,
M.A. Illustrated. Cloth. (Also in roxburgh, £2 2s.)
Music, Illustrated History of. By Emil Naumann. Edited
by the Rev. Sir F. A. Gore Ouseley, Bart. Illustrated. Two Vols.
Picturesque Europe. Popular Edition. Two Vols, in One,
forming the British Isles. (Seeaiso 18s., £v\, ,£31 ios., and £5s ios.)
Poultry, The Illustrated Book of. By Lewis Wright.
New and Revised -Edition, With Fifty Coloured Plates. Cloth gilt.
(See also ios. fid. and 42s.)
Pigeons, The Book of. By Robert Fulton. Edited and arranged
by Lewis Wright. With Fifty life-like Coloured Plates. (Also in
half-morocco, 42s.)

27/-

30/-

31/6

The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus
Loftus, P.C., G.C.B. First and Second Series, each in two
vols. Each.
The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard
Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton. By T.
Wemyss Reid. Two Vols., with Two Portraits.

By W. F. Kirby. With

32/- 35/-

Dog, Illustrated Book of the. By Vero Shaw, B.A. Cantab.
With Twenty-eight Fac-simile*Coloured Plates. Demy 4tp, cloth
gilt. (See also 45s. )
Canaries and Cage-Birds, The Illustrated Book of.
With Fifty-six Fac -simile Coloured Plates, and numerous Wood
Engravings. (Also in half-morocco, 45s.)

Cassell & Company ; Limited^ Ludgate Sill, London; Paris and Melbourne^

Cassell fy Compantfs Classified Price LisU

Our Own Country,
scription, see 75. 6d.)

Three Vols. Library Binding. (For de-

The Picturesque Mediterranean. Magnificently Illustrated.
Coloured Frontispiece by Birket Foster. Complete in Two Vols.
Each.
Rivers of Great Britain. Descriptive, Historical, PictoriaL
The Royal River: The Thames from Source to
Sea. With Several Hundred Original Illustrations. Original
Edition. (See also 16s.)
Rivers of the East Coast. With numerous highly-finished
Engravings. Royal 4to, with Etching as Frontispiece. (SeealsoiQs.)
Dore Gallery, The. Popular Edition. With 250 Illustrations by
Gustave Dore. Cloth gilt, bevelled boards.
Egypt : Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque.
Popular Edition. By Prof. G. Ebers. Translated by Clara Bell,
with Notes by Samuel Birch, LL.D., D.C.L., F.S.A. 2 Vols. With
about 800 Original Engravings.
Picturesque America. Complete in Four Vols., with Forty-
eight Exquisite Steel Plates and about 800 Original Wood Engravings.
Each. (See also 18s.)
The Life Of Christ. By the Ven. Archdeacon Farrar, D.D. Library
Edition, morocco. Two Vols. (See also 7s. 6d., ios. 6d., and 24s.)
St. Paul, The Life and Work Of. By the Ven. Archdeacon
£?"ar" library Edition, morocco. Illustrated Edition, morocco.
(See also 6s., 7s. fid., ios. 6d., 15s., 21s., and 24s.)
Farrar's Early Days of Christianity. Library Edition.
Two Vols. Morocco. (See also 6s., 7s. fid,, ios. 6d., 15s., and 24s.)
Poultry, The Book Of. By Lewis Wright With Fifty Coloured
Plates, half-morocco. (See also ios. fid. and 31s. fid.)

Horse, The Book Of the. By Samuel Sidney. With Twenty-
eight Fac-simile Coloured Plates. Half-morocco.
Dog, Illustrated Book Of the. By Vero Shaw, B.A. With
Twenty-eight Coloured Plates. Half-morocco. (See also 35s.)

Popular Educator, Cassell's New, With New Text, New
Illustrations, New Coloured Plates, New Maps in Colours, New Size,
New Type. Complete. Eight Vols, in Four, half-morocco. (See
also gs.)
Bible, Cassell's Illustrated Family. Toned Paper Edition.
Leather, gilt edges. (See also 705. and 75s.)
Henriette Ronner. The Painter of Cat-Life and Cat-Character.
By M. H. Spielmann. With Portrait and 12 full-page Illustrations
in Photogravure and 16 Typogravures. Quarto Edition, with
Photogravures on India paper. (See also jas.)

London, Old and New. Complete in Six Vols.
1,200 Illustrations. Library Edition. (See also gs.)

With about

Shakespeare, Royal Quarto. Edited by Charles and Mary
Cowden Clarke, and containing about 600 Illustrations dv «-
Selous. Three Vols., cloth gilt,  -

Bible, Cassell's Illustrated FamUy. Morocco antique.
(Also 50s. in leather, and 75s. best morocco.)
The International Shakspere. Edition de Luxe-
" King Henry VIII." Illustrated by Sir James Linton, r.B- •
(Limited Edition. Price on uppiication).
"Othello." Illustrated by Frank Dtcksee. R.A.
"King Henry IV." Illustrated by Herr Eduard Grutzner.
As Ton Lite It." Illustrated by the late Mons. Emile Bayard
Romeo and Juliet" advanced to £7 ios. iNow out of print.;

60/- 63/-
70/-

New Testament Commentary, The. Edited by Bishop
EUicott. Three Vols, in half-morocco. (See also 21s.) 

England, Cassell's History of. With 2,000 Illustrations.
Library Edition. Ten Vols. (See also 9s.)

English Literature, Library of. The Set of Five Vols.,
half-morocco. (See also ys. fid.) 

The Tidal Thames. By Grant Allen. With India Proof Impres
sions of 20 Magnificent Full-page Photogravure Plates, and many
other Illustrations, after original drawings by W. L. Wylhe, A.K.A.
Half-morocco, gilt, gilt edges. 
Picturesque Canada. A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of all
the Features of Interest in the Dominion of Canada, from its
Discovery to the Present Day. With about 600 Original Illustrations.
Complete in Two Volumes. The Set.

Old Testament Commentary, The. Edited by Bishop
EUicotL Five Vols, in half-morocco. {See also 21s.)

British Fossil Reptiles, A History of. By Sir Richard
Owen, K.C.B., F.R.S., &c With 268 Plates. Complete in Four
Volumes.

Holy Bible, The.
polished morocco.

Illustrated by Gustave Dore. Two Vols., best

Large Paper Edition. Complete in Five
Each containing Thirteen exquisite Steel Plates, from

Picturesque Europe.
Volumes. Each contain _
Original Drawings, and nearly 200 Original Illustrations, with
descriptive Letterpress. Royal 4to, cloth gilt, £si; half-morocco,
£31 ios. ; morocco gilt, £$s ios. (See also 18s. and 31s. 6d.)

£4/14/6 £5 £5/5 £5/15/6
£6/6
£7/17/6
£12/12£15£21

Monthly Serial Publications.

Art, Magazine of. Is. 4d.
Adventure, The World of. 74
Africa, The Story of. 7d.
Biblewomen and Nurses. 2d.
Birds, Familiar Wild. 6d.
Bunyan, Cassell's Illustrated. 3d.
Butterflies and Moths, European.
6d.
Cabinet Portrait Gallery, The. is.
Canaries and Cage-Birds. 6d.
Cassell's Magazine. 7d.
Cassell's Natural History. 7d.
Cathedrals, Abbeys, and Churches.
7d.
Child's Bible and Child's Life of
Christ. 3d.
Chums. The Illustrated Paper
for Boys. 6d.
Cottage Gardening. 4d.
Countries of the World. 6d.

Dore Bible, The. 3d.
Dore Dante Inferno. 7d.
Encyclopaedic Dictionary. Is.
England, History of. 7d.
Family Physician, The. 7d.
Family Prayer Book, Cassell's. 6d.
Football 6d.
Franco-German War. 7d.
Gardening, Cassell's Popular. 7d.
Gazetteer, Cassell's. 7d.
Health, Book of. 6d.
Household, Book of the. 7d.
Little Polks. 6d.
London, Greater. 7d.
Music, History of. 6d.
New Testament Commentary, The.
Edited by Bishop Ellicott. 7d.
Our Earth and its Story. 7d.
Our Own Country. 7d.
Picturesque America. Is.

6d.

Picturesque Europe. Is.
Pigeons, Fulton's Book of.
Quiver, The. 6d.
Saturday Journal, Cassell's.
6d.
Science for AH. 7d.
Shakspere, The Eoyal. 7d.
Storehouse of General Information,
Cassell's. 7d.
Sunshine Series, Cassell's. Is.
Surgery, Annals of. 2s.
Technical Educator, New. 6d.
Universal History. 7d.
Work. 6d.

Cassell's Railway Time Tables and
Through-Koute Glance-Guide.
Enlarged Series. Price 4d.

Weekly Publications.

Chums, ld.
Cottage Gardening, id.
Dore Bible, The. Jd.

National Library, Cassell's.
Paper, 3d. ; Cloth, 6d.

Saturday Journal, Cassell's. ld.
Work. ld.

Letts's Diaries and other Time-Saving Publications are published exclusively by
Cassell & Company, and particulars will be forwarded post free on application to the Publishers,
Cassell & Company, Limited, Ludgate Hill, London; Paris and Melbourne.