A Wanderer in Paris

Room VII. is remarkable for Rodin's "Bellona" and Tissot's curious exercises in the genre of W. P. Frith—the story of the Prodigal Son. But the picture which I remember most clearly and with most pleasure is Victor Mottez's "Portrait of Madame M.," which has a deep quiet beauty that is very rare in this gallery. In the same room, placed opposite each other, although probably not with any conscious ironical intention, are a large scene in the Franco-Prussian War by De Neuville, and Carrière's "Christ on the Cross". In Room VIII. are a number of meretricious Moreaus, Caro-Delvalle's light and, to me, oddly attractive, group, "Ma Femme et ses Sœurs," and the portrait of Mlle. Moréno of the Comédie Française by Granié, which is reproduced opposite page 308, a picture with fascination rather than genius.

In the doorway between Room VIII. and Room IX. hangs a small water-colour by Harpignies, but in Room IX. itself is nothing that I can recollect. Room X. has Picard's charming "Femme qui passe," Harpignies' Coliseum, very like a Moreau Corot, and a Flandrin; and in Room XI. are Bastien Lepage's "Portrait of M. Franck," Le Sidaner's "Dessert," Vollon's "Port of Antwerp," very beautiful, and Carolus-Duran's famous portrait of "Madame G. F. and her children".

On leaving the Musée it is worth while to take a few steps more to the left, for they bring us to another sinister souvenir of the Reign of Terror—to St. Joseph des Carmes, the Chapel of the Carmelite monastery in which, in September, 1792, the Abbé Sicard and other priests who had refused to take the oath of the Constitution were imprisoned and massacred, as described by Carlyle in Book I., Chapters IV. and V. of "The Guillotine," with the assistance of the narrative of one of the survivors, Mon Agonie de Trente-Huit Heures, by Jourgniac Saint-Méard. In the crypt one is shown not only the tombs but traces of the massacre.

A walk in the Luxembourg gardens would, if one had been nowhere else, quickly satisfy the stranger as to the interest of the French in the more remarkable children of their country. In these gardens alone are statues, among many others, in honour of Chopin, Watteau, Delacroix, Sainte-Beuve, Le Play the economist, Fabre the poet, George Sand, Henri Murger, the novelist of the adjacent Latin Quarter, and Théodore de Banville, the modern maker of ballades and prime instigator of some of the most charming work in French form by Mr. Lang and Mr. Dobson and W. E. Henley. There are countless other statues of mythological and allegorical figures, some of them very striking. One of the most interesting of all is the "Marchand de Masques" by Astruc, among the masks offered for sale being those of Corot, Dumas, Berlioz and Balzac.

The Luxembourg gardens lead to the Avenue de l'Observatoire, a broad and verdant pleasaunce with a noble fountain at the head, in the midst of which an armillary sphere is held up by four undraped female figures representing the four quarters of the globe, at whom a circle of tortoises spout water from the surface of the basin. Beneath the upholders of the sphere are eight spirited sea horses by Frémiet, the sculptor who designed "Pan and the Bear Cubs" in the Luxembourg.

A few yards to the west of this fountain is one of the simplest and most satisfying of Parisian sculptured memorials, at the corner of the Rue d'Assas and the Boulevard de l'Observatoire—the bas-relief on the Tarnier maternity hospital, representing the benevolent Tarnier in his merciful work.

Let us now descend the Boulevard St. Michel to the Sorbonne, which is the heart of the Latin Quarter (or perhaps the brain would be the better word), disregarding for the moment the Panthéon, and turning our backs on the Observatoire and the Lion de Belfort, in the streets around which, every September, the noisiest of the Parisian fairs rages, and on the Bal Bullier, where the shop assistants of this neighbourhood grasp each other in the dance every Thursday and Sunday night. Not that this high southern district of Paris is not interesting; but it is far less interesting than certain parts nearer the Seine, and this book may not be too long.

The Sorbonne is not exciting, but it is not unamusing to watch young France gaining knowledge. I have called it the heart of the Latin Quarter, although when one thinks of the necessitous, irresponsible youthful populace of these slopes, it is rather in a studio than in a lecture centre that one would fix its cardiac energy. That, however, is the fault of Du Maurier and Murger; for I suppose that for every artist that the Latin Quarter fosters it has scores of other students. But here I am in unknown territory. This book, which describes (as I warned you) Paris wholly from without, is never so external as among the young bloods who are to be met at night in the Café Harcourt, or who dance at the annual ball of the Quatz'-Arts, or plunge themselves into congenial riots when unpopular professors mount the platform. I know them not; I merely rejoice in their existence, admire their long hair and high spirits and happy indigence, and wish I could join them among Jullien's models, or in the disreputable cabaret of Le Père Lunette, or at a solemn disputation, such as that famous one in which the sophist Buridan, after being thrown into the Seine in a sack and rescued, "maintained for a whole day the thesis that it was lawful to slay a Queen of France".

The Sorbonne takes its name from Robert de Sorbon, the confessor of St. Louis, who had suffered much as a theological student and wished others to suffer less; for students in his day existed absolutely on charity. St. Louis threw himself into his confessor's scheme, and the Sorbonne, richly endowed, was opened in 1253, in its original form occupying a site in a street with the depressing name of Coupe-Gueule. From a hostel it soon became the Church's intellect, and for five and a half centuries it thus existed, almost continually, I regret to say, pursuing what Gibbon calls "the exquisite rancour of theological hatred". Its hostility to Joan of Arc and the Reformation were alike intense. Richelieu built the second Sorbonne, on the site of the present one. The Revolution in its short sharp way put an end to it as a defender of the faith, and in 1808, under Napoleon, it sprang to life again with a broader and humaner programme as the Université de France.

And now let us descend the hill and cheer and enrich our eyes in one of the most remarkable museums in the world—the Cluny. Paris is too fortunate. To have the Louvre were enough for any city, but Paris also has the Carnavalet. To have the Carnavalet were enough, but Paris also has the Cluny. The Musée de Cluny is devoted chiefly to applied art, and is a treasury of mediæval taste. It is an ancient building, standing on the site of a Roman palace, the ruins of whose baths still remain. The present mansion was built by a Benedictine abbot in the fifteenth century: it became a storehouse of beautiful and rare objects in 1833, when the collector Alphonse du Sommerard bought it; and on his death the nation acquired both the house and its treasures, which have been steadily increasing ever since. Without, the Cluny is a romantic blend of late Gothic and Renaissance architecture: within, it is like the heaven of a good arts-and-craftsman; or, to put it another way, like an old curiosity shop carried out to the highest power. I do not say that we have not as good collections at South Kensington; but it is beyond doubt that the Cluny has a more attractive setting for them.

To particularise would merely be to convert these pages into an incomplete catalogue (and what is duller than that?), but I may say that one passes among sculpture and painting, altar-pieces and knockers, pottery and tapestry, Spanish leather and lace, gold work and glass, enamel and musical instruments, furniture (the state bed of Francis I.) and ivories (note those by Van Opstal), ironwork and jewels, fireplaces and exquisite slippers. The old keys alone are worth hours: some of them might almost be called jewels; be sure to look at Nos. 6001 and 6022. Everything is remarkable. Writing in London, in a thick fog, at some distance of time since I saw the Cluny last, I remember most vividly those keys and a banc d'orfèvre near them; a chimney-piece, beautiful and vast, from an old house at Châlons-sur-Marne; certain carvings in wood in the great room next the Thermes: the "Quatre Pleurants" of Claus de Worde; a dainty Marie Madeleine by a Fleming, about 1500 (there is another Marie Madeleine, in stone, in an adjacent room, kneeling with her alabaster box of ointment, but by no means penitent); and the Jesus on the Mount of Olives with the sleeping disciples. I remember also, in one of the faience galleries, two delightful groups by Clodion—a "Satyre mâle" with two baby goat-feet playing by him, and a "Satyre femelle," very charming, also with two little shaggy mites at her knees. The "Fils de Rubens," in his little chair, is also a pleasant memory; and there is one of those remarkable Neapolitan reconstructions of the Nativity, of which the museum at Munich has such an amazing collection—perhaps the prettiest toys ever made.

But as I have said, the Cluny is wonderful throughout, and it is almost ridiculous to particularise. It is also too small for every taste. For the lover of the hues that burn in Rhodian ware it is most memorable for its pottery; while of the many Parisians who visit it in holiday mood a large percentage make first for the glass case that contains its two famous ceintures.

The Curator of the Carnavalet, as we have seen, is a topographer and antiquary of distinction; the Director of the Cluny, M. Haraucourt, is a poet, one of whose ballads will be found in English form in a later chapter. He is in a happy environment, although his Muse does not look back quite as, say, Mr. Dobson's loves to do. The singer of the "Pompadour's Fan" and the "Old Sedan Chair" would be continually inspired at the Cluny.

In the Gardens of the Musée we can feel ourselves in very early times; for the baths are the ruins of a Roman palace built in 306, the home for a while of Julian the Apostate; a temple of Mercury stood on the hill where the Panthéon now is; and a Roman road ran on the site of the Rue St. Jacques, just at the east of the Cluny, leading out of Paris southwards to Italy.

On leaving the Cluny let us take a few steps westward along the Rue de l'Ecole de Médicine, and stop at No. 15, where the Cordeliers' Club was held, whither Marat's body was brought to lie in state. His house, in which Charlotte Corday stabbed him, was close by, where the statue of Broca now stands. In the Boulevard St. Germain, at the end of the street, we come to Danton's statue and more memories of the Revolution. "What souvenirs of the past," says Sardou, "does the statue of Danton cast his shadow upon. At No. 87 Boulevard St. Germain—where the woman Simon keeps house! it was there 31st March, 1793—at six o'clock in the morning, the rattling of the butt ends of muskets was heard on the pavement in the midst of wild cries and protestations of the crowd, they had dared to arrest Danton, the Titan of the Revolution, the man of the 10th of August!—at the same time on the Place de l'Odéon, at the corner of the Rue Crébillon, Camille Desmoulins had been arrested. An hour later they were both in the Luxembourg prison, and it was there Camille heard of the death of his mother.

"The Passage du Commerce still exists. It is a most picturesque old quarter, rarely visited by Parisians. At No. 9 is Durel's library, where Guillotin in 1790 practised cutting off sheep's heads with 'his philanthropic beheading machine'. It is generally given out that he was guillotined himself, but 'Lemprière' says he died quietly in his bed, of grief at the infamous abuse his instrument was put to. In the shop close by was the printing office of the l'Ami du Peuple, and Marat in his dressing-gown (lined with imitation panther skin) used to come and correct the proofs of his bloody journal."

Between the Cluny and the river is a network of very old, squalid and interesting streets. Here the students of the middle ages found both their schools and their lodgings: among them Dante himself, who refers to the Rue de Fouarre (or straw, on which, following the instructions of Pope Urban V., the students sat) as the Vico degli Strami. It has now been demolished. The two churches here are worth a visit—St. Severin and St. Julien-le-Pauvre, but the reader is warned that the surroundings are not too agreeable. In the court adjoining St Julien's are traces of the wall of Philip Augustus, of which we saw something at the Mont de Piété.

All these streets, as I say, are picturesque and dirty, but I think the best is the Rue de Bièvre, which runs up the hill of St. Etienne from the Quai de Montebello, opposite the Morgue, and can be gained from St. Julien's by the dirty Rue de la Boucherie, of which this street and its westward continuation, the Rue de la Huchette, Huysmans, the French novelist and mystic, writes—as of all this curious district—in his book, La Bièvre et Saint Severin, one of the best examples of imaginative topography that I know. Let us see what he says of the Bièvre, the little river which gives the street its name and which once tumbled down into the Seine at this point, but is now buried underground like the New River at Islington.

"The Bièvre," he writes, "represents to-day one of the most perfect symbols of feminine misery exploited by a big city. Originating in the lake or pond of St. Quentin near Trappes, it runs quietly and slowly through the valley that bears its name. Like many young girls from the country, directly it arrives in Paris the Bièvre falls a victim to the cunning wide-awake industry of a catcher of men.... To follow all her windings, it is necessary to ascend the Rue du Moulin des Prés and enter the Rue de Gentilly, and then the most extraordinary and unsuspected journey begins."

Inspired by the passage of which these are the opening words, I set out one day to trace the Bièvre to daylight, but it was a cheerless enterprise, for the Rue Monge is a dreary street, and the new Boulevards hereabouts are even drearier because they are wider. I found her at last, by peeping through a hoarding in the Boulevard Arago, with tanneries on each side of her; and then I gave it up.

At the Cluny we saw the Thermes, a visible sign of Roman occupation; just off the Rue Monge is another, the amphitheatre, still in very good condition, with the grass growing between the crevices of the great stone seats. You will find it in the Place des Arènes, a vestige of Roman manners and pleasures now converted into an open space for children and bonnes and surrounded by flats. But save for the desertion that the ages have brought it, the arena is not so very different, and standing there, one may easily reconstruct the spectators and see again the wild beasts emerging from the underground passages, which still remain.

And now for the Panthéon, which rises above us.

CHAPTER XII
THE PANTHÉON AND ST. GENEVIÈVE

A Church's Vicissitudes—St. Geneviève—A Guardian of Paris—Illustrious Converts—The Golden Legend—A Sabbath-breaker—Geneviève's Sacred Body—Her Tomb—The Panthéon Frescoes—Joan of Arc—The Panthéon Tombs—Mirabeau and Marat—Voltaire's Funeral—The Thoughts of the Thinker—From the Dome—St. Etienne-du-Mont—The Fate of St. Geneviève—The Relic-hunters—The Mystery of the Wine-press.

The Panthéon, like the Madeleine, has had its vicissitudes. The new Madeleine, as we shall see, was begun by Napoleon as a splendid Temple of military glory and became a church; the new Panthéon was begun by Louis XV. as a splendid cathedral and became a Temple of Glory, not, however, military but civil. Louis XV., when he designed its erection on the site of the old church, intended it to be the church of St. Geneviève, whose tomb was its proudest possession; when the Revolution altered all that, it was made secular and dedicated "aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante," and the first grand homme to be buried there was Mirabeau (destined, however, not to remain a grand homme very long, as we shall see), and the next Voltaire. In 1806 Napoleon made it a church again; in 1830 the Revolutionaries again secularised it; in 1851 it was consecrated again, and in 1885 once more it became secular, to receive the body of Victor Hugo, and secular it has remained; and considering everything, secular it is likely to be, for whatever of change and surprise the future holds for France, an excess of ecclesiastical ecstasy is hardly probable.

So much of Louis XV.'s idea remains, in spite of the perversion of his purpose, that scenes from the life of St. Geneviève are painted on the Panthéon's walls and sculptured on its façade; while in its last sacred days the church was known again as St. Geneviève's. Possibly there are old people in the neighbourhood who still call it that. I hope so.

The life of St. Geneviève, as told in The Golden Legend, is rather a series of facile miracles than a human document, as we say. She was born in the fifth century at Nanterre, and early became a protégée of St. Germain, who vowed her to chastity and holiness, from which she never departed. Her calling, like that of her new companion on the canon, St. Joan, was that of shepherdess, and one of Puvis de Chavannes' most charming frescoes in the Panthéon represents her as a shadowy slip of a girl kneeling to a crucifix while her sheep graze about her. I reproduce it opposite the next page. Her mother, who had, like most mothers, a desire that her daughter should marry and have children, once so far lost her temper as to strike Geneviève on the cheek; for which offence she became blind. (A very comfortable corner of heaven is, one feels, the due of the mothers of saints.) She remained blind for a long time, until remembering that St. Germain had promised for her daughter miraculous gifts, she sent for Geneviève and was magnanimously cured. After the death of her parent, Geneviève moved to Paris, and there she lived with an old woman, dividing the neighbourhood into believers and unbelievers in her sanctity, as is ever the way with saints. Here the Devil persecuted and attacked her with much persistence and ingenuity, but wholly without effect.

During her long life she made Paris her principal home, and on more than one occasion saved it: hence her importance not only to the Parisians, who set her above St. Denis (whom she reverenced), but to this book. Her power of prayer was gigantic; she literally prayed Attila the Hun out of his siege of Paris, and later, when Childeric was the besieger and Paris was starving, she brought victuals into the city by boat in a miraculous way: another scene chosen by Puvis de Chavannes in his Panthéon series. Childeric, however, conquered, in spite of Geneviève, but he treated her with respect and made it easy for her to approach Clovis and Clotilde and convert them to Christianity—hence the convent of St. Geneviève, which Clovis founded, remains of which are still to be seen by the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont, in the two streets named after those early Christians—the Rue Clovis and the Rue Clotilde. Christianity had been introduced into Paris by Saint Denis, Geneviève's hero, in the third century; but then came a reaction and the new faith lost ground. It was St. Geneviève's conversion of Clovis that re-established it on a much firmer basis, for he made it the national religion.

Caxton also tells quaintly the story of one of the first miracles performed by Geneviève's tomb: "Another man came thither that gladly wrought on the Sunday, wherefor our Lord punished him, for his hands were so benumbed and lame that he might not work on other days. He repented him and confessed his sin, and came to the tomb of the said virgin, and there honoured and prayed devoutly, and on the morn he returned all whole, praising and thanking our Lord, that by the worthy merits and prayers of the holy virgin, grant and give us pardon, grace, and joy perdurable."

To St. Geneviève's tomb we shall come on leaving the Panthéon, but here after so much about her adventures when alive I might say something about her adventures when dead. She was buried in 511 in the Abbey church of the Holy Apostles, on the site of which the Panthéon stands. Driven out by the Normans, the monks removed the saint's body and carried it away in a box; and thereafter her remains were destined to rove, for when the monks returned to the Abbey they did not again place them in the tomb but kept them in a casket for use in processions whenever Paris was in trouble and needed supernatural help. Meanwhile her tomb, although empty, continued to work miracles also.

Early in the seventeenth century her bones were restored to her tomb, which was made more splendid, and there they remained until the Revolution. The Revolutionists, having no use for saints, opened Geneviève's tomb, burned its contents on the Place de Grève, and melted the gold of the canopy into money. They also desecrated the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont (which we are about to visit) and made it a Temple of Theophilanthropy. A few years later the stone coffer was removed to St. Etienne-du-Mont, where it now is, gorgeously covered with Gothic splendours; but as to how minute are the fragments of the saint that it contains which must have been overlooked by the incendiary Revolutionaries, I cannot say. They are sufficient, however, still to cure the halt and the lame and enable them to leave their crutches behind.

The Panthéon is a vast and dreary building, sadly in need of a little music and incense to humanise it. The frescoes are interesting—those of Puvis de Chavannes in particular, although a trifle too wan—but one cannot shake off depression and chill. The Joan of Arc paintings by Lenepveu are the least satisfactory, the Maid of this artist carrying no conviction with her. But when it comes to that, it is difficult to say which of the Parisian Maids of art is satisfactory: certainly not the audacious golden Amazon of Frémiet in the Place de Rivoli. Dubois' figure opposite St. Augustin's is more earnest and spiritual, but it does not quite realise one's wishes. I think that I like best the Joan in the Boulevard Saint-Marcel, behind the Jardin des Plantes.

The vault of the Panthéon may be seen only in the company of a guide, and there is a charge. To be quite sure that Rousseau is in his grave is perhaps worth the money; but one resents the fee none the less. Great Frenchmen's graves—especially Victor Hugo's—should be free to all. There is no charge at the Invalides. You may stand beside Heine's tomb in the Cimetière de Montmartre without money and without a guide, but not by Voltaire's in the Panthéon; Balzac's grave in Père Lachaise is free, Zola's in the Panthéon costs seventy-five centimes.

The guide hurries his flock from one vault to another, at one point stopping for a while to exchange badinage with an echo. Rousseau, as I have said, is here; Voltaire is here; here are General Carnot, President Carnot with a mass of faded wreaths, Soufflot—who designed the Panthéon, thinking his work was for St. Geneviève, and who died of anxiety owing to a subsidence of the walls; Victor Hugo, and, lately moved hither, not without turmoil and even pistol shots, the historian of the Rougon-Macquart family and the author of a letter of accusation famous in history.

Not without turmoil! which reminds one that the Panthéon's funerals have been more than a little grotesque. I said, for example, that Mirabeau was the first prophet of reason to be buried here, amid a concourse of four hundred thousand mourners; yet you may look in vain for his tomb. And there is a record of the funeral of Marat, in a car designed by David; yet you may look in vain for Marat's sarcophagus also. The explanation (once more) is that we are in France, the land of the fickle mob. For within three years of the state burial of Mirabeau, with the National Guard on duty, the Convention directed that he should be exhumed and Marat laid in his place. Mirabeau's body therefore was removed at night and thrown into the earth in the cemetery of Clamart. Enter Marat. Marat, however, lay beneath this imposing dome only three poor months, and then off went he, a discredited corpse, to the graveyard of St. Etienne-du-Mont close by. Voltaire, however, and Rousseau held their own, and here they are still, as we have seen.

Voltaire came hither under circumstances at once tragic and comic. The cortège started from the site of the Bastille, led by the dead philosopher in a cart drawn by twelve horses, in which his figure was being crowned by a young girl. Opposite the Opera house of that day—by the Porte St. Martin—a pause was made for the singing of suitable hymns (from the Ferney Hymnal!) and on it came again. Surrounding the car were fifty girls dressed by David for the part; in the procession were other damsels in the costumes of Voltaire's characters. Children scattered roses before the horses. What could be prettier for Voltaire? But it needed fine weather, and instead came the most appalling storm, which frightened all the young women (including Fame, from the car) into doorways, and washed all the colour from the great man's effigy.

Remembering all these things, one realises that Rodin's Penseur, who was placed before the Panthéon in 1906, has something to brood over and break his mind upon.

I noticed also among the graves that of one Ignace Jacqueminot, and wondering if it were he who gave his name to the rose, I was so conscious of gloom and mortality that I hastened to the regions of light—to the sweet air of the Mont du Paris and the blue sky over all. And later I climbed to the lantern—a trifle of some four hundred steps—and looked down on Paris and its river and away to the hills, and realised how much better it was to be a live dog than a dead lion.

For the tomb of St. Geneviève we have only a few steps to take, since it stands, containing all of her that was not burned, in the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont. The first martyr, although he gives his name to the church and is seen suffering the stone-throwers in the relief over the door, is, however, as nothing. St. Geneviève is the true patron.

St. Etienne's is one of the most interesting churches in Paris, without and within. The façade is bizarre and attractive, with its jumble of styles, its lofty tower and Renaissance trimmings, and the sacristan's prophet's-house high up, on the northern side of the odd little extinguisher. You see this best, and his tiny watchdog trotting up and down his tiny garden, by descending the hill a little way and then turning. Within, the church is fascinating. The pillars of the very lofty nave and aisles are slender and sure, the vaulting is delicate and has a unique carved marble rood-loft to divide the nave from the choir, stretching right along the church, with a rampe of great beauty. The pulpit is held up by Samson seated upon his lion and grasping the jawbone of an ass.

The last time I saw this pulpit was during the Fête of St. Geneviève, which is held early in January, when it contained a fluent nasal preacher to whom a congregation that filled every seat was listening with rapt attention. At the same time a moving procession of other worshippers was steadily passing the tomb, which was a blaze of light and heat from some hundreds of candles of every size. The man in front of me in the queue, a stout bourgeois, with his wife and two small daughters, bought four candles at a franc each. He was all nervousness and anxiety before then, but having watched them lighted and placed in position, his face became tranquil and gay, and they passed quickly out, re-entered their motor-cab and returned to the normal life.

Outside the church was a row of stalls wholly given up to the sale of tokens of the saint—little biographies, medals, rosaries, and all the other pretty apparatus of the long-memoried Roman Catholic Church. I bought a silver pendant, a brief biography, and a tiny metal statue. I feel now that had I also bought a candle, as I was minded to, I should have escaped the cold that, developing two or three days later, kept me in bed for nearly a fortnight. One must be thorough.

The church not only has agreeable architectural features and the tomb of this good woman, it has also some admirable glass, not exactly beautiful but very quaint and interesting, including a famous window by the Pinaigriers, representing the mystery of the wine-press, as drawn from Isaiah: "I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with me". The colouring is very rich and satisfying, even if the design itself offends by its literalism and want of imagination—Christianity being figured by the blood of Christ as it gushes forth into barrels pressed from his body as relentlessly as ever was juice of the grape. All this is horrible, but one need not study it minutely. There are other windows less remarkable but not less rich and glowing.

Other illustrious dust that lies beneath this church is that of Racine and Pascal.

CHAPTER XIII
TWO ZOOS

The Tour d'Argent—Frédéric's Homage to America—A Marquis Poet—The Halle des Vins—A Free Zoo—Peacocks in Love—A Reminiscence—The Museums of the Jardin des Plantes—A Lifeless Zoo—Babies in Bottles—The Jardin d'Acclimatation—The Cheerful Gallas—A Pretty Stable—Dogs on Velvet—A Canine Père Lachaise—The Sunday Sportsmen—Panic at the Zoos—The Besieged Resident—The Humours of Famine.

On the day of one of my visits to the Jardin des Plantes I lunched at the Tour d'Argent, a restaurant on the Quai de la Tournelle, famous among many dishes for its delicious canard à la presse. No bird on this occasion passed through that luxurious mill for me: but the engines were at work all around distilling essential duck with which to enrich those slices from the breast that are all that the epicure eats. Over a simpler repast I studied a bewildering catalogue of the "Créations of Frédéric"—Frédéric being M. Frédéric Delair, a venerable chef with a head like that of a culinary Ibsen, stored with strange lore of sauces.

By what means one commends oneself to Frédéric I cannot say, but certain it is that if he loves you he will immortalise you in a dish. Americans would seem to have a short cut to his heart, for I find the Canapé Clarence Mackay, the Filet de Sole Loië Fuller, the Filet de Sole Gibbs, the Fondu de Merlan Peploe, the Poulet de Madame J. W. Mackay, and the Poire Wanamaker. None of these joys tempted me, but I am sorry now that I did not partake of the Potage Georges Cain, because M. Georges Cain knows more about old Paris than any man living; and who knows but that a few spoonfuls of his Potage might not have immensely enriched this book! The Noisette de Pré-Salé Bodley again should have been nourishing, for Mr. Bodley is the author of one of the best of all the many studies of France. Instead, however, I ate very simply, of ordinary dishes—foundlings, so to speak, named after no one—and amused myself over my coffee in examining the Marquis Lauzières de Thémines' poésie sur les Créations de Frédéric (to the air of "la Corde Sensible"). Two stanzas and two choruses will illustrate the noble poet's range:—

Que de filets de sole on y consomme!
Sole Néron, Cardinal, Maruka.
Dosamentès, Edson ... d'autres qu'on nomme
Victor Renault, Saintgall, Hérédia.
La liste est longue! rognons, côtelettes,
Poulet Sigaud et Canard Mac-Arthur,
Filets de lièvre Arnold White et Noisettes
De Pré-salé, Langouste Wintherthur.

Ce que je fais n'est pas une réclame,
Je vous le dis pour être obligeant.
Je m'en voudrais d'encourir votre blâme
Pour avoir trop vanté La Tour D'Argent.

Les noms des Œufs de cent façons s'étalent,
Œufs Bûcheron, œufs Claude Lowther.
Œufs Tuck, Rathbone, œufs Mackay que n'égalent
Que les chaud-froids de volaille Henniker.
Que d'entremets ont nom de "la Tournelle"!
Et plus souvent, le vocable engageant
Du restaurant, car plus d'un plat s'appelle
(Gibier, beignets, salade) "Tour d'Argent".

Ami lecteur, pour faire bonne chère,
Ecoute-moi, ne sois pas négligent,
Va-t-en dîner, si ta santé t'est chère,
Au Restaurant nommé La Tour D'Argent.

(Odd work for Marquises!)

Even with the most elementary knowledge of French one would take the Jardin des Plantes to be the Parisian Kew, and so to some small extent it is; but ninety-nine per cent. of its visitors go not to see the flora but the fauna. It is in reality the Zoo of the Paris proletariat. Paris, unlike London, has two Zoos, both of which hide beneath names that easily conceal their zoological character from the foreigner—the Jardin des Plantes, where we now find ourselves, which is free to all, and the Jardin d'Acclimatation, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, near the Porte Maillot, which costs money—a franc to enter and a ridiculous supplément to your cabman for the privilege of passing the fortifications in his vehicle: one of Paris's little mistakes. To the Jardin d'Acclimatation we shall come anon: just now let us loiter among the wild animals of the Jardin des Plantes, which is as a matter of fact a far more thorough Zoo than that selecter other, where frivolity ranks before zoology. Our own Zoo contains a finer collection than either, and our animals are better housed and ordered, but this Parisian people's Zoo has a great advantage over ours in that it is free. All zoological gardens should of course be free.

The Jardin des Plantes has another and a dazzling superiority in the matter of peacocks. I never saw so many. They occur wonderfully in the most unexpected places, not only in the enclosures of all the other open-air animals, but in trees and on roofs and amid the bushes—burning with their deep and lustrous blue. But on the warm day of spring on which I saw them first they were not so quiescent. Regardless of the proprieties they were most of them engaged in recommending themselves to the notice of their ladies. On all sides were spreading tails bearing down upon the beloved with the steady determination of a three-masted schooner, and now and then caught like that vessel in a shattering breeze (of emotion) which stirred every sail. In England one might feel uncomfortable in the midst of so naked a display of the old Adam, but in Paris one becomes more reconciled to facts, and (like the new cat in the adage) ceases to allow "I am ashamed" to wait upon "I would". The peahens, however, behaved with a stolid circumspection that was beyond praise. These vestals never lifted their heads from the ground, but pecked on and on, mistresses of the scene and incidentally the best friends of the crowds of ouvriers and ouvrières ("V'là le paon! Vite! Vite!") at every railing. But the Parisian peacock is not easily daunted. In spite of these rebuffs the batteries of glorious eyes continued firing, and wider and wider the tails spread, with a corresponding increase of disreputable déshabillé behind; and so I left them, recalling as I walked away a comic occurrence at school too many years ago, when a travelling elocutionist, who had induced our headmaster to allow him to recite to the boys, was noticed to be discharging all his guns of tragedy and humour (some of which I remember distinctly at the moment) with a broadside effect that, while it assisted the ear, had a limiting influence on gesture and by-play, and completely eliminated many of the nuances of conversational give and take. Never throughout the evening did we lose sight of the full expanse of his shirt front; never did he turn round. Never, do I say? But I am wrong. Better for him had it been never: for the poor fellow, his task over and his badly needed guinea earned, forgot under our salvoes of applause the need of caution, and turning from one side of the platform to the other in stooping acknowledgment, disclosed a rent precisely where no man would have a rent to be.

My advice to the visitor to the Jardin des Plantes is to be satisfied with the living animals—with the seals and sea-lions, the bears and peacocks, the storks and tigers; and, in fair weather, with the flowers, although the conditions under which these are to be observed are not ideal, so formally arranged on the flat as they are, with traffic so visibly adjacent. But to the glutton for museums such advice is idle. Here, however, even he is like to have his fill.

Let him then ask at the Administration for a ticket, which will be handed to him with the most charming smile by an official who is probably of all the bureaucrats of Paris the least deserving of a tip, since zoological and botanical gardens exist for the people, and these tickets (the need for which is, by the way, non-existent) are free and are never withheld—but who is also of all the bureaucrats of Paris the most determined to get one, even, as I observed, from his own countrymen. Thus supplied you must walk some quarter of a mile to a huge building in which are collected all the creatures of the earth in their skins as God made them, but lifeless and staring from the hands of taxidermic man. It is as though the ark had been overwhelmed by some such fine dust as fell from Vesuvius, and was now exhumed. One does not get the same effect from the Natural History Museum in the Cromwell Road; it is, I suppose, the massing that does it here.

Having walked several furlongs amid this travesty of wild and dangerous life, one passes to the next museum, which is devoted to mineralogy and botany, and here again are endless avenues of joy for the muséephile and tedium for others. Lastly, after another quarter of a mile's walk, the palatial museum of anatomy is reached, the ingenious art of the late M. Frémiet once more providing a hors d'œuvre. At the Arts Décoratifs we find on the threshold a man dragging a bear cub into captivity; at the Petit Palais, St. George is killing the dragon just inside the turnstile; and here, near the umbrella-stand, is a man being strangled by an orang-outang. Thus cheered, we enter, and are at once amid a very grove of babies in bottles: babies unready for the world, babies with two heads, babies with no heads at all, babies, in short, without any merit save for the biologist, the distiller, and the sightseer with strong nerves. From the babies we pass to cases containing examples of every organ of the human form divine, and such approximations as have been accomplished by elephants and mice and monkeys—all either genuine, in spirits, or counterfeited with horrible minuteness in wax. Also there are skeletons of every known creature, from whales to frogs, and I noticed a case illustrating the daily progress of the chicken in the egg.

And now for the other Zoo, the Zoo of the classes. Perhaps the best description is to call it a playground with animals in it. For there are children everywhere, and everything is done for their amusement—as is only natural in a land where children persist through life and no one ever tires. In the centre of the gardens is an enclosure in which in the summer of 1908 were encamped a colony of Gallas, an intelligent and attractive black people from the border of Abyssinia, who flung spears at a target, and fought duels, and danced dances of joy and sorrow, and rounded up zebras, and in the intervals sold curiosities and photographs of themselves with ingratiating tenacity. It was a strange bizarre entertainment, with greedy ostriches darting their beaks among the spectators, and these shock-headed savages screaming through their diversions, and now and again a refined slip of a black girl imploring one mutely to give a franc for a five centimes picture postcard, or murmuring incoherent rhapsodies over the texture of a European dress.

All around the enclosure the Parisian children were playing, some riding elephants, others camels, some driving an ostrich cart, and all happy. But the gem of the Jardin is the Ecurie, on one side for ponies—scores of little ponies, all named—the other for horses; on one side a riding school for children, on the other side a riding school for grown-up pupils, perhaps the cavalry officers of the future. The ponies are charming: Bibiche, landaise, Volubilité, cheval landais, Céramon, cheval finlandais, Farceur, from the same country, Columbine, née de Ratibor, and so forth. There they wait, alert and patient too, in the manner of small ponies, and by-and-by one is led off to the Petit manège for a little Monsieur Paul or Etienne to bestride. The Ecurie is a model of its kind, with its central courtyard and offices for the various servants, sellier, piqueur and so forth.