A Wanderer in Paris

But the best description of the book-hunter of the quais is that given to Dumas by Charles Nodier. "This animal," he said, "has two legs and is featherless, wanders usually up and down the quais and the boulevards, stopping at all the old bookstalls, turning over every book on them; he is habitually clad in a coat that is too long for him and trousers that are too short; he always wears on his feet shoes that are down at the heel, a dirty hat on his head, and, under his coat and over his trousers, a waistcoat fastened together with string. One of the signs by which he can be recognised is that he never washes his hands."

Henri IV.'s statue faces the Place Dauphine and the west façade of the Palais de Justice. At No. 28 in the Place Dauphine Madame Roland was born, little thinking she was destined one day to be imprisoned in the neighbouring Conciergerie, which, to those who can face the difficulties of obtaining a ticket of admission, is one of the most interesting of the Island's many interesting buildings. But the process is not easy, and there is only one day in the week on which the prison is shown.

The tickets are issued at the Préfecture of Police—the Scotland Yard of Paris—which is the large building opposite Sainte Chapelle. One may either write or call. I advise writing; for calling is not as simple as it sounds: simplicity and sightseeing in Paris being indeed not on the best terms. It was not until I had asked five several officials that I found even the right door of the vast structure, and then having passed a room full of agents (or policemen) smoking and jesting, and having climbed to a third storey, I was in danger of losing for ever the privilege of seeing what I had fixed my mind upon, wholly because, although I knew the name and street of my hotel, I did not know its number. Who ever dreamed that hotels have numbers? Has the Savoy a number in the Strand? Is the Ritz numbered in Piccadilly? Not that I was living in any such splendour, but still, on the face of it, a hotel has a name because it has no number. "C'est égal," the gentleman said at last, after a pantomime of impossibility and reproach, and I took my ticket, bowed to the ground, replaced my hat and was free to visit the Conciergerie on the morrow. Such are the amenities of the tourist's life.

Let me here say that the agents of Paris are by far its politest citizens, and in appearance the healthiest. I have never met an uncivil agent, and I once met one who refused a tip after he had been of considerable service to me. Never did I attempt to tip another. They have their defects, no doubt: they have not the authority that we give our police: their management of traffic is pathetically incompetent; but they are street gentlemen and the foreigner has no better friend.

The Conciergerie is the building on the Quai de l'Horloge with the circular towers beneath extinguishers—an impressive sight from the bridges and the other bank of the river. Most of its cells are now used as rooms for soldiers (André Chénier's dungeon is one of their kitchens); but a few rooms of the deepest historical interest have been left as they were. These are displayed by a listless guide who rises to animation only when the time comes to receive his bénéfice and offer for sale a history of his preserves.

One sees first the vaulted Salle Saint Louis, called the Salle des Pas Perdus because it was through it that the victims of the Revolution walked on their way to the Cour de Mai and execution. The terribly significant name has since passed to the great lobby of the Palais de Justice immediately above it, where it has less appropriateness. It is of course the cell of Marie Antoinette that is the most poignant spot in this grievous place. When the Queen was here the present room was only about half its size, having a partition across it, behind which two soldiers were continually on guard, day and night. The Queen was kept here, suffering every kind of indignity and petty tyranny, from early September, 1793, until October 16th. Her chair, in which she sat most of the time, faced the window of the courtyard.

A few acts of kindness reached her in spite of the vigilance of the authorities; but very few. I quote the account of two from the official guide, a poor thing, which I was weak enough to buy: "The Queen had no complaint to make against the concierges Richard nor their successors the Baults. It is told that one day Richard asked a fruitseller in the neighbourhood to select him the best of her melons, whatever it might cost. 'It is for a very important personage, then?' said the seller disdainfully, looking at the concierge's threadbare clothes. 'Yes,' said he, 'it is for some one who was once very important; she is so no longer; it is for the Queen.' 'The Queen,' exclaimed the tradeswoman, turning over all her melons, 'the Queen! Oh, poor woman! Here, make her eat that, and I won't have you pay for it....'

"One of the gendarmes on duty having smoked during the night, learnt the following day that the Queen, whom he noticed was very pale, had suffered from the smell of the tobacco; he smashed his pipe, swearing not to smoke any more. It was he also who said to those who came in contact with Marie Antoinette: 'Whatever you do, don't say anything to her about her children'."

For her trial the Queen was taken to the Tribunal sitting in what is now the First Circle Chamber of the Palais de Justice, and led back in the evening to her cell. She was condemned to death on the fifteenth, and that night wrote a letter to her sister-in-law Elizabeth which we shall see in the Archives Nationales: it is firmly written.

The Conciergerie had many other prisoners, but none so illustrious. Robespierre occupied for twenty-four hours the little cell adjoining that of the Queen, now the vestry of the chapel. Madame Du Barry and Madame Récamier had cells adjacent to that of Madame Roland. Later Maréchal Ney was imprisoned here. The oldest part of all—the kitchens of Saint Louis—are not shown.

The Pont au Change, the bridge which connects the Place du Châtelet with the Boulevard du Palais, the main street of the Ile de la Cité, was once (as the Ponte Vecchio at Florence still is) the headquarters of goldsmiths and small bankers. Not the least of the losses that civilisation and rebuilders have brought upon us is the disappearance of the shops and houses from the bridges. Old London Bridge—how one regrets that!

At the corner of the Conciergerie is the Horloge that gives the Quai its name—a floridly decorated clock which by no means conveys the impression that it has kept time for over five hundred years and is the oldest exposed time-piece in France. Paris, by the way, is very poor in public clocks, and those that she has are not too trustworthy. The one over the Gare St. Lazare has perhaps the best reputation; but time in Paris is not of any great importance. For most Parisians there is an inner clock which strikes with perfect regularity at about twelve and seven, and no other hours really matter. And yet a certain show of marking time is made in the hotels, where every room has an elaborate ormolu clock, usually under a glass case and rarely going. And in one hotel I remember a large clock on every landing, of which I passed three on my way upstairs; and their testimony was so various that it was two hours later by each, so that by the time I had reached my room it was nearly time to get up. On asking the waiter the reason he said it was because they were synchronised by electricity.

There has been a Tour de l'Horloge at this corner of the Conciergerie ever since it was ordained by Philippe le Bel in 1299; the present clock, or at least its scheme of decoration, dates, however, from Henri III.'s reign, about 1585. The last elaborate restoration was in 1852. In the tower above was a bell that was rung only on rare occasions. The usual accounts of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew say that the signal for that outrage was sounded by the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois; but others give it to the bell of the Tour de l'Horloge. As they are some distance from each other, perhaps both were concerned; but since St. Germain l'Auxerrois is close to the Louvre, where the King was waiting for the carnage to begin, it is probable that it rang the first notes.

One of Méryon's most impressive and powerful etchings represents the Tour de l'Horloge and the façade of the Conciergerie. It is a typical example of his strange and gloomy genius, for while it is nothing else in the world but what it purports to be, it is also quite unlike the Tour de l'Horloge and the façade of the Conciergerie as any ordinary eyes have seen them. They are made terrible and sinister: they have been passed through the dark crucible of Méryon's mind. To see Paris as Méryon saw it needs a great effort of imagination, so swiftly and instinctively do these people remove the traces of unhappiness or disaster. It is the nature of Paris to smile and to forget; from any lapse into woe she recovers with extraordinary rapidity.

Méryon's Paris glowers and shudders; there is blood on her hands and guilt in her heart. I will not say that his concept is untrue, because I believe that the concept formed by a man of genius is always true, although it may not contain all the truth, and indeed one has to recall very little history to fall easily into Méryon's mood; but for the visitor who has chosen Paris for his holiday—the typical reader, for example, of this book—Mr. Dexter's concept of Paris is a more natural one. (I wish, by the way, before it is too late, that Mr. Muirhead Bone would devote some time to the older parts of the city—particularly to the Marais. How it lies to his hand!)

Since we are at the gates of the Palais de Justice let us spend a little time among the advocates and their clients in the great hall—the Salle des Pas Perdus. (In an interesting work, by the way, on this building, with a preface by the younger Dumas, the amendment, "La Salle du temps perdu" is recommended.) The French law courts, as a whole, are little different from our own: they have the same stuffiness, they give the same impression of being divided between the initiated and the uninitiated, the little secret society of the Bar and the great innocent world. But the Salle des Pas Perdus is another thing altogether. There is nothing like that in the Strand. Our Strand counsel are a dignified, clean-shaven, be-wigged race, striving to appear old and inscrutable and important. They are careful of appearances; they receive instructions only through solicitors; they affect to weigh their words; sagacious reserve is their fetish. Hence our law courts, although there are many consultations and incessant passings to and fro, are yet subdued in tone and overawing to the talkative.

But the Palais de Justice!—Babel was inaudible beside it. In the Palais de Justice everyone talks at once; no one cares a sou for appearances or reticence; there are no wigs, no shorn lips, no affectation of a superhuman knowledge of the world. The French advocate comes into direct communication with his client—for the most part here. The movement as well as the vociferation is incessant, for out of this great hall open as many doors as there are in a French farce, and every door is continually swinging. Indeed that is the chief effect conveyed: that one is watching a farce, since there has never been a farce yet without a legal gentleman in his robes and black velvet cap. The chief difference is that here there are hundreds of them. As a final touch of humour, or lack of gravity, I may add that notices forbidding smoking are numerous, and every advocate and every client is puffing hard at his cigarette.

Victor Hugo's Notre Dame begins, it will be remembered, in the great Hall of the Palais de Justice, where Gringoire's neglected mystery play was performed and Quasimodo won the prize for ugliness. The Hall, as Hugo says, was burned in 1618: by a fire which, he tells us, was made necessary by the presence in the archives of the Palais of the documents in the case of the assassination of Henri IV. by Ravaillac. Certain of Ravaillac's accomplices and instigators wishing these papers to disappear, the fire followed as a matter of course, as naturally as in China a house had to be burned down before there could be roast pig.

Sainte Chapelle, which, with the kitchens of Saint Louis under the Conciergerie, is all that remains of the royal period of the Palais de Justice, is, except on Mondays, always open during the reasonable daylight hours and is wholly free from vexatious restrictions. Sanctity having passed from it, the French sightseers do not even remove their hats, although I have noticed that the English and Americans still find the habit too strong. The Chapelle may easily disappoint, for such is the dimness of its religious light that little is visible save the dark coloured windows. One is, however, conscious of perfect proportions and such ecclesiastical elegance as paint and gold can convey. It is in fact exquisite, yet not with an exquisiteness of simplicity but of design and elaboration. It is like a jewel—almost a trinket—which Notre Dame might have once worn on her breast and tired of. Its flêche is really beautiful; it darts into the sky with only less assurance and joy than that of Notre Dame, and I always look up with pleasure to the angel on the eastern point of the roof.

What one has the greatest difficulty in believing is that Sainte Chapelle is six hundred and fifty years old. It was built for the relics brought from the Crusades by Saint Louis, which are now in the Treasury of Notre Dame. The Chapel has, of course, known the restorer's hand, but it is virtually the original structure, and some of the original glass is still here preserved amid reconstructions. To me Sainte Chapelle's glass makes little appeal; but many of my friends talk of nothing else. Let us thank God for differences of taste. During the Commune (as recently as 1871) an attempt was made to burn Sainte Chapelle, together with the Palais de Justice, but it just failed. That was the third fire it has survived.

From Sainte Chapelle we pass through the Rue de Lutèce, which is opposite, across the Boulevard, because there is a statue here of some interest—that of Renaudot, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century at No. 8 Quai du Marché Neuf, close by, and founded in 1631 the first French newspaper, the Gazette de France. Little could he have foreseen the consequences of his rash act! It is amusing to stand here a while and meditate on the torrent that has proceeded from that small spring. Other cities have as busy a journalistic life as Paris, and in London the paper boys are more numerous and insistent, while in London we have also the contents' bills, which are unknown to France; and yet Paris seems to me to be more a city of newspapers than even London is. Perhaps it is the kiosques that convey the impression.

The London papers and the Paris papers could not well be more different. In the matter of size, Paris, I think, has all the advantage, for one may read everything in a few minutes; but in the matter of ingredients the advantage surely lies with us, for although English papers tell far too much, and by their own over-curiousness foster inquisitiveness and busy-bodydom, yet they have some sense of what is important, and one can always find the significant news. In Paris, if one excepts the best papers, the Temps in particular, the significant news is elusive. What one will find, however, is a short story or a literary essay written with distinction, an anecdote of the day by no means adapted for the young person, and a number of trumpery tragedies of passion or excess, minutely told; and in the Figaro once or twice a week an excellent humorous or satirical drawing. The signed articles are always good, and when critical usually fearless, but the unsigned notices of a new play or spectacle credit it with perfection in every detail; and here, at any rate, as in our best reviews of books, we are in a position to feel some of the satisfaction that proceeds from conscious superiority.

But, it has to be remembered, in Paris people go to the theatre automatically, whereas we pick and choose and have our reasons, and even talk of one play being moral and another immoral, and therefore in Paris an honest criticism of a play is of little importance. The Paris Daily Mail seems to have fallen into line very naturally, for I find in it, on the morning on which I write these lines, a puff of the Capucines revue, saying that it kept the house in continuous laughter by its innocent fun, and will doubtless draw all Paris. As if (i) the laughter in any Paris theatre was ever continuous, and as if (ii) there was ever any innocent fun at the Capucines, and as if (iii) all Paris would go near that theatre if there were!

One reason, I imagine, for the diffuseness of the English paper and the brevity of the French, is that the English have so little natural conversation that they find it useful to acquire news on which to base more; while the French need no such assistance. The English again are interested in other nations, whereas the French care nothing for any land but France. There is no space in which to continue this not untempting analysis: it would require much room, for to understand thoroughly the difference between, say, the Daily Telegraph and the Journal is to understand the difference between England and France.

The French comic papers one sees everywhere—except in people's hands. I suppose they are bought, or they would not be published; but I have hardly ever observed a Frenchman reading one that was his own property. The fault of the French comic paper is monotony. Voltaire accused the English of having seventy religions and only one sauce; my quarrel with the French is that they have seventy sauces and only one joke. This joke you meet everywhere. Artists of diabolical cleverness illustrate it in colours every week; versifiers and musicians introduce it into songs; comic singers sing it; playwrights dramatise it; novelists and journalists weave it into prose. It is the oldest joke and it is ever new. Nothing can prevent a Parisian laughing at it as if it were as fresh as his roll, his journal or his petit Gervais. For a people with a world-wide reputation for wit, this is very strange; but in some directions the French are incorrigibly juvenile, almost infantine. Personally I envy them for it. I think it must be charming never to grow out of such an affection for indecency that even a nursery mishap can still be always funny.

One of the comic papers must, however, be exempted from these generalisations. Le Rire, Le Journal Amusant, La Vie Parisienne and the scores of cheaper imitations may depend for their living on the one joke; but L'Assiette au Beurre is more serious. L'Assiette au Beurre is first and foremost a satirist. It chastises continually, and its whip is often scorpions. Even its lighter numbers, chiefly given to ridicule, contain streaks of savagery.

At the end of the brief Rue de Lutèce is the great Hôtel Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris, having been founded in the seventh century; and to the left of it is one of the Paris flower markets, where much beautiful colour may be seen very formally and unintelligently arranged. Gardens are among those things that we order (or shall I say disorder?) better than the French do.

And now we will enter Notre Dame.

CHAPTER III
NOTRE DAME

Pagan Origins and Christian Predecessors—The Beginnings of Notre Dame—Victor Hugo—The Dangers of Renovation—Old Glass and New—A Wedding—The Cathedral's Great Moment—The Hundred Poor Girls and Louis XVI.—The Revolution—Mrs. Momoro, Goddess of Reason—The Legend of Our Lady of the Bird—Coronation of Napoleon—The Communards and the Students—The Treasures of the Sacristy—Three Hundred and Ninety-seven Steps—Quasimodo and Esmeralda—Paris at our Feet—The Eiffel Tower—The Devils of Notre Dame—The Precincts—Notre Dame from the Quai.

If the Ile de la Cité is the eye of Paris, then, to adapt one of Oliver Wendell Holmes' metaphors, Notre Dame is its pupil. It stands on ground that has been holy, or at least religious, for many centuries, for part of its site was once occupied by the original mother church of Paris, St. Etienne, built in the fourth century; and close by, in the Place du Parvis, have been discovered the foundations of another church, dating from the sixth century, dedicated to Sainte Marie; while beneath that are the remains of a Temple of Apollo or Jupiter, relics of which we shall see at the Cluny. The origin of Notre Dame, the fusion of these two churches, is wrapped in darkness; but Victor Hugo roundly states that the first stone of it was laid by Charlemagne (who reigned from 768 to 814, and whose noble equestrian statue stands just outside), and the last by Philip Augustus, who was a friend of our Richard Cœur de Lion. The more usual account of the older parts of the Notre Dame that one sees to-day is that the first stone of it was laid in 1163, in the reign of Louis VII., by Pope Alexander III., who chanced then to be in Paris engaged in the task of avoiding his enemies, the Ghibellines, and that in almost exactly a hundred years, in the reign of Saint Louis, it was completed. (I say completed, but as a matter of fact it is not completed even yet, for each of the square towers was designed to carry a spire, and I remember seeing at the Paris Exhibition of 1889 a number of drawings of the cathedral by young architects, with these spires added. It is, however, very unlikely that they will ever sprout, and I, for one, hope not.)

Victor Hugo is, of course, if not the first authority on Notre Dame, its most sympathetic poet, lover and eulogist; and it seems ridiculous for me to attempt description when every book shop in Paris has a copy of his rich and fantastic romance, Book III. of which is an interlude in the story wholly given to the glory of the cathedral. You may read there not only of what Notre Dame is, but of what it is not and should be: the shortcomings of architects and the vandalism of mobs are alike reported. Mobs! Paris is seared with cicatrices from the hands of her matricidal children, and Notre Dame especially so. Attempts to set her on fire were made not only by the revolutionaries but by the Communards too. These she resisted, but much of her statuary went during the Revolution, the assailants sparing the Last Judgment on the façade, but accounting very swiftly for a series of kings of Israel and Judah (who, however, have since been replaced) under the impression that they were monarchs of native growth and therefore not to be endured.

The statue of the Virgin in the centre of the façade, with Adam and Eve on each side, is not, I may say, the true Notre Dame of Paris: She is within the church—much older and simpler, on a column to the right of the altar as we face it. She is a sweeter and more winning figure than that between our first parents on the façade.

When I first knew Notre Dame it was, to the visitor from the open air, all scented darkness. And then as one grew accustomed to the gloom the cathedral opened slowly like a great flower—not so beautifully as Chartres, but with its own grandeur and fascination. That was twenty years ago. It is not the same since it has been scraped and lightened within. That old clinging darkness has gone. There are times of day now, when the sun spatters on the wall, when it might be almost any church; but towards evening in the gloom it is Notre Dame de Paris again, mysterious and a little sinister. A bright light not only chases the shade from its aisles and recesses but also shows up the garishness of its glass. For the glass of France, usually bad, is here often almost at its worst. That glorious wheel window in the north transept—whose upper wall has indeed more glass than stone in it—could not well be more beautiful, and the rose window over the organ is beautiful too. But for the rest, the glass is either too pretty, as in the case of the window over the altar, so lovely in shape, or utterly trumpery.

The last time I was in Notre Dame I followed a wedding party through the main and usually locked door, but although I was the first after the bride and her father, I was not quick enough to set foot on the ceremonial carpet, which a prudent verger rolled up literally upon their heels. It was a fortunate moment on which to arrive, for it meant a vista of the nave from the open air right up the central aisle, and that, except in very hot weather, is rare, and probably very rare indeed when the altar is fully lighted.

The secret of Notre Dame, both within and without, is to be divined only by loitering in it with a mind at rest. To enter intent upon seeing it is useless. Outside, one can walk round it for ever and still be surprised by the splendid vagaries, humours and resource of its stone; while within, one can, by making oneself plastic, gradually but surely attain to some of the adoration that was felt for this sanctuary by Quasimodo himself. Let us sit down on one of these chairs in the gloom and meditate on some of the scenes which its stones have witnessed.

While it was yet building Raymond VII., Count of Toulouse, was scourged before the principal doorway for heresy, on a spot where the pillory long stood. That was in 1229. In 1248 St. Louis, on his way to the Holy Land, visited Notre Dame to receive his pilgrim's staff and scrip from the Bishop. In 1270 the body of St. Louis lay in state under this roof before it was carried to St. Denis for burial. Henry VI. of England was crowned here as King of France—the first and last English king to receive that honour. One Sunday in 1490, while Mass was being celebrated, a man called Jean l'Anglais (as we should now say, John Bull) snatched the Host from the priest's hand and profaned it: for which crime he was burnt. In 1572 Henri IV. (then Henri of Navarre) was married to Marguerite de Valois, but being a Protestant he was not allowed within the church, and the ceremony was therefore performed just outside. When, however, he entered Paris triumphantly as a conqueror and a Catholic in 1594, he heard Mass and assisted at the Te Deum in Notre Dame like a true Frenchman and ironist. In 1611 his funeral service was celebrated here.

Some very ugly events are in store for us; let something pretty intervene. On February 9th, 1779 (in the narrative of Louise de Grandpré, to whom the study of Notre Dame has been a veritable passion), a large crowd pressed towards the cathedral; the ground was strewed with fresh grass and flowers and leaves; the pillars were decorated with many coloured banners. In the choir the vestments of the saints were displayed: the burning tapers lit up the interior with a dazzling brightness: the organ filled the church with joyful harmony, and the bells rang out with all their might. The whole court was present, the King himself assisting at the ceremony, and the galleries were full to overflowing of ladies of distinction in the gayest of dresses.

Then slowly, through the door of St. Anne, entered a hundred young girls dressed in white, covered with long veils and with orange blossom on their heads. These were the hundred poor girls whom Louis XVI. had dowered in memory of the birth of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France, afterwards Duchess of Angoulême, and it was his wish to assist personally at their wedding and to seal their marriage licences with his sword, which was ornamented on the handle or pommel with the "fleur de lys".

Through the door of the Virgin entered at the same time one hundred young men, having each a sprig of orange blossom in his button-hole. The two rows advanced together with measured steps, preceded by two Swiss, who struck the pavement heavily with their halberds. They advanced as far as the chancel rails, where each young man gave his hand to a young girl, his fiancée, and marched slowly before the King, bowing to him and receiving a bow in return. They were then married by the Archbishop in person.

A very charming incident, don't you think? Such a royal gift, adds Louise de Grandpré, would be very welcome to-day, when there are so many girls unmarried, for the want of a dot. Every rich young girl who is married ought to include in her corbeille de noces the dot of some poor girl. All women, remarks Louise de Grandpré, have a right to this element of love, which is sanctified by marriage, honoured by men and blessed by God. Christian marriage, says Louise de Grandpré, is a nursery not only of good Catholics but still more of good citizens. It is much to be wished, she concludes, that obstacles could be removed, because one deplores the depopulation of France.

"The French nation," Carlyle writes, "is of gregarious imitative nature; it needed but a fugle-motion in this matter; and Goose Gobel, driven by Municipality and force of circumstances, has given one. What Curé will be behind him of Boissise; what Bishop behind him of Paris? Bishop Grégoire, indeed, courageously declines; to the sound of 'We force no one; let Grégoire consult his conscience'; but Protestant and Romish by the hundred volunteer and assent. From far and near, all through November into December, till the work is accomplished, come letters of renegation, come Curates who 'are learning to be Carpenters,' Curates with their new-wedded Nuns: has not the day of Reason dawned, very swiftly, and become noon? From sequestered Townships come Addresses, stating plainly, though in Patois dialect, that 'they will have no more to do with the black animal called Curay, animal noir appelé Curay.'

"Above all things, there come Patriotic Gifts, of Church-furniture. The remnant of bells, except for tocsin, descend from their belfries, into the National melting-pot to make cannon. Censers and all sacred vessels are beaten broad; of silver, they are fit for the poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become bullets, to shoot the 'enemies du genre humain'. Dalmatics of plush make breeches for him who had none; linen albs will clip into shirts for the Defenders of the Country: old-clothesmen, Jew or Heathen, drive the briskest trade. Chalier's Ass-Procession, at Lyons, was but a type of what went on, in those same days, in all Towns. In all Towns and Townships as quick as the guillotine may go, so quick goes the axe and the wrench: sacristies, lutrins, altar-rails are pulled down; the Mass-Books torn into cartridge-papers: men dance the Carmagnole all night about the bonfire. All highways jingle with metallic Priest-tackle, beaten broad; sent to the Convention, to the poverty-stricken Mint. Good Sainte Geneviève's Chasse is let down: alas, to be burst open, this time, and burnt on the Place de Grève. Saint Louis's Shirt is burnt;—might not a Defender of the Country have had it?...

"For the same day, while this brave Carmagnole-dance has hardly jigged itself out, there arrive Procureur Chaumette and Municipals and Departmentals, and with them the strangest freightage: a New Religion! Demoiselle Candeille, of the Opera; a woman fair to look upon, when well rouged; she, borne on palanquin shoulder-high; with red woollen nightcap; in azure mantle; garlanded with oak; holding in her hand the Pike of the Jupiter-Peuple, sails in: heralded by white young women girt in tricolor. Let the world consider it! This, O National Convention wonder of the universe, is our New Divinity; Goddess of Reason, worthy, and alone worthy of revering. Her henceforth we adore. Nay were it too much to ask of an august National Representation that it also went with us to the ci-devant Cathedral called of Notre-Dame, and executed a few strophes in worship of her?

"President and Secretaries give Goddess Candeille, borne at due height round their platform, successively the Fraternal kiss; whereupon she, by decree, sails to the right-hand of the President and there alights. And now, after due pause and flourishes of oratory, the Convention, gathering its limbs, does get under way in the required procession towards Notre-Dame;—Reason, again in her litter, sitting in the van of them, borne, as one judges, by men in the Roman costume; escorted by wind-music, red nightcaps, and the madness of the world....

"'The corresponding Festival in the Church of Saint-Eustache,' says Mercier, 'offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables overloaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pastries and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors: whosoever presented himself took part of the good things: children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft, in a serene manner; Cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors,' continues the exaggerative man, 'were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of Chapel-balustrades, of Priests' and Canons' stalls; and the dancers,—I exaggerate nothing,—the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and Destruction.' At Saint-Gervais Church, again, there was a terrible 'smell of herrings'; Section or Municipality having provided no food, no condiment, but left it to chance. Other mysteries, seemingly of a Cabiric or even Paphian character, we leave under the Veil, which appropriately stretches itself 'along the pillars of the aisles,'—not to be lifted aside by the hand of History.

"But there is one thing we should like almost better to understand than any other: what Reason herself thought of it, all the while. What articulate words poor Mrs. Momoro, for example, uttered; when she had become ungoddessed again, and the Bibliopolist and she sat quiet at home, at supper? For he was an earnest man, Bookseller Momoro; and had notions of Agrarian Law. Mrs. Momoro, it is admitted, made one of the best Goddesses of Reason; though her teeth were a little defective.—And now if the Reader will represent to himself that such visible Adoration of Reason went on 'all over the Republic,' through these November and December weeks, till the Church woodwork was burnt out, and the business otherwise completed, he will perhaps feel sufficiently what an adoring Republic it was, and without reluctance quit this part of the subject."

I quote in the following pages freely from Carlyle, because the Revolution is the most important event in the history of Paris and so horribly recent (you may still see the traces of Bonaparte's whiff of grape-shot on the façade of St. Roch), and also because when there is such an historian to borrow from direct, paraphrase becomes a crime. None the less, I feel it my duty to say that the attitude of this self-protective contemptuous superior Scotchman towards the excitable French and their hot-headed efforts for freedom often enrages me as much as his vivid narrative fascinates and moves.

In 1794, when the New Religion had died down, the Church became a store for wine confiscated from the Royalists. In the year following, after the whiff of grape-shot, the old religion was re-established. A strange interregnum! How long ago was this?—only one hundred and fifteen years—not four generations. Could it happen again? Will it?...

These revolutionaries, it may be remarked, were not the only licentious rioters that Notre Dame had known, for in its early days it was the scene every year of the Fête des Fous, an orgy of gluttony and conviviality, in which, however, one who was a true believer on all other days might partake.

After these lurid saturnalia it is pleasant again to dip into the gentle pages of Louise de Grandpré, where, among other legends of Notre Dame, is the pretty story of a statue of the Virgin—now known as the Virgin with the bird. In the Rue Chanoinesse there lived a young woman, very devout, who came every day to pray. She brought with her her son, a little fellow, very wide-awake and full of spirits: his mother had taught him to say his prayers. Cyril would close his little hands to say his "Ave Maria," and he would throw a kiss to the little Jesus, his dear friend, complaining sometimes to his mother that the little Jesus would not play with him. "You are not good enough yet," said his mother; "Jesus plays only with the little children in Paradise."

A very severe winter fell and the young mother fell ill and no longer came to church. Cyril never saw the little Jesus now, but he often thought of him as he played at the foot of his mother's bed. On one of those days when the sky was dull and leaden and the air heavy and depressing, and the poor woman was rather worse and more hopeless than usual, she became so weak they thought each moment would be her last.

Cyril could not understand why his mother no longer smiled at him or stroked his hair or called him to her. With his little heart almost bursting and his eyes full of tears, he said, "I will go and tell the little Jesus of my trouble."

While they were attending to the poor mother the child disappeared. He ran as fast as his little legs would carry him and entered the cathedral by the cloister door, crossed the transept, and was soon at the foot of the statue of the Virgin Mary, where he was accustomed to say his prayers with his mother. "Little Jesus," said he, "Thou art very happy, Thou hast Thy Mother; mine, who was so good, is always asleep now and I am alone. Little Jesus, wake my mother up, and I will give you my best toys, morning and evening I will send you the sweetest kiss and say my best prayer. And look, to begin with, I have brought you my favourite bird: he is tame and will eat the golden crumbs of Paradise out of your hand." At the same time he stretched out his little closed hand towards Jesus.

The divine child stretched out His hand and Cyril let his beloved little bird escape. The bird, who had a lovely coloured plumage, flew straight to the hand of the Infant Christ and has remained there to this day. The Virgin smiled on the child, and her white stone robe at that moment became the same colour as the bird's plumage.

Cyril, with his heart very full, got up to go out, but before leaving the church turned round to have one more look at his little bird he loved so dearly: he was struck with delight and astonishment when he heard the favoured bird singing one of its sweetest songs in honour of the Virgin and her Child.

When Cyril returned to his home he went into his mother's room without making the least noise to see if she was still asleep. The young mother was sitting upright in her bed, her head, still very bad, resting on a pillow, but her wide-open eyes were looking for her little one.

"I was quite sure the little Jesus would wake you up," said Cyril, climbing on to her bed. "I took Him my bird this morning to take care of for me in the Garden of Paradise."

Life once more returned to the poor woman and she kissed her boy.

When you next go to Notre Dame, Louise de Grandpré adds, be sure to visit the Vierge à l'oiseau, who always hears the prayers of the little ones.

It was in 1804 that Notre Dame enjoyed one of its most magnificent moments—at the coronation of Napoleon and Josephine Beauharnais. The Duchess d'Abrantès wrote an account of the ceremony which, in French, is both picturesque and rapturous. "The pope was the first to arrive. At the moment of his entering the cathedral, the clergy intoned Tu es Petrus, and this solemn chant made a deep impression on all. Pius the VII. advanced to the end of the cathedral with a majestic yet humble grace.... The moment when all eyes were most drawn to the Altar steps was when Josephine received the crown from the Emperor and was solemnly consecrated by him Empress of the French. When it was time for her to take an active part in the great ceremony, the Empress descended from the throne and advanced towards the altar, where the Emperor awaited her....

"I saw," the Duchess continues, "all that I have just told you, with the eyes of Napoleon. He was radiant with joy as he watched the Empress advancing towards him; and when she knelt ... and the tears she could not restrain fell upon her clasped hands, raised more towards him than towards God: at this moment, when Napoleon, or rather Bonaparte, was for her her true providence, at this instant there was between these two beings one of those fleeting moments of life, unique, which fill up the void of years.

"The Emperor invested with perfect grace every action of the ceremony he had to perform: above all, at the moment of crowning the Empress. This was to be done by the Emperor himself, who after receiving the little closed crown surmounted by a cross, had to place it on his own head first, and then place it on the Empress's head. He did this in such a slow, gracious and courtly manner that it was noticed by all. But at the supreme moment of crowning her who was to him his lucky star, he was almost coquettish, if I may use the term. He placed the little crown, which surmounted the diadem of brilliants, on her head, first putting it on, then taking it off and putting it on again, as if assuring himself that it should rest lightly and softly on her.

"But Napoleon," the Duchess concludes, "when it came to his own crown, hastily took it from the Pope's hands and placed it haughtily on his own head—a proceeding which doubtless startled his Holiness."

Ten years pass and we find Louis XVIII. and his family attending Mass at the same altar. Twenty-six years later, in 1840, a service was held to commemorate the restoration of the ashes of the Emperor to French soil, and in 1853 Napoleon III. and Eugénie de Montijo were married here, under circumstances of extraordinary splendour. And then we come to plunder and lawlessness again. On Good Friday, 1871, while Père Olivier was preaching, a company of Communards entered and from thenceforward for a while the cathedral was occupied by the soldiers. For some labyrinthine reason the destruction of Notre Dame by fire was decided upon, and a huge pile of chairs and other material soaked in petrol was erected (this was only thirty-eight years ago), and no doubt the building would have been seriously injured, if not destroyed, had not the medical students from the Hôtel Dieu, close by, rushed in and saved it.