Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

The occasion chosen for the outbreak was the funeral of General Lamarque—equally popular with Bonapartists and Republicans. A number of enthusiastic young men drew the funeral car, which was followed by exiles from all parts of Europe. Among the pall-bearers were General Lafayette, Marshal Clausel, and M. Laffitte. Of the insurgents, some took part in the procession, while others looked on in expectation of events that were inevitable. The crowd broke into several gunsmiths’ shops, and finally into the arsenal. Many, too, had brought arms with them; and after a few hours’ fighting the insurgents had gained several important positions, and determined to attack the bank, the post-office, and some neighbouring barracks. Their chief object at this moment was to render inaccessible the Rue Saint-Martin and the surrounding streets. Here they intended to establish the head-quarters of their insurrection, without having the slightest notion that at that very instant M.M. Thiers, Miguet, and other members of the Government were dining together at the Rocher de Cancale, fifty yards only from the camp wherein the Republicans were fortifying themselves with the firm resolution of proclaiming a Republic or dying in the attempt. A remarkable example was given towards the evening of this day of what M. Louis Blanc calls the sympathy of the Paris National Guard for heroism, though most persons would regard it as a proof of incapacity and cowardice.

Eight insurgents, returning from the Place Maubert, presented themselves towards the decline of day at one of the bridges of the city which was occupied by a battalion of the National Guard. They authoritatively claimed their right to go over and join their friends who were fighting on the other side of the river, and as the guards hesitated to let them pass, they advanced resolutely towards the bridge at half charge, with fixed bayonets. The soldiers instantly ranged themselves on either side, and gave unimpeded passage to these eight men, whose infatuated heroism they at once admired and, reflecting upon its inevitable result, deplored.

The enthusiasm of the insurgents at this period is shown by many a curious incident, such as that of their moulding bullets from lead stripped off the roofs of houses; whilst boys, too young to bear weapons, loaded the guns, using for wadding the police notices they had torn off the walls, or, when that resource failed, taking the shirts off their own backs to tear to shreds for the purpose. It was all, however, a forlorn hope; and the rising was destined to be crushed by superior force.

More than one reference to the defence of the Cloître St.-Méry will be found in the novels of Balzac, and a dramatic description of it occurs in the memoirs of Alexandre Dumas.

The Porte St.-Martin—Porte St.-Denis—The Burial Place of the French Kings—Funeral of Louis XV.—Funeral of the Count de Chambord—Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle—Boulevard Poissonnière—Boulevard Montmartre—Frascati.

JUST beyond the Porte Saint-Martin the Boulevard Saint-Denis crosses the great thoroughfare, which is called on one side Boulevard de Sébastopol, on the other, Boulevard de Strasbourg. The Boulevard de Strasbourg was so designated (long before the Franco-German war, which suggests quite another origin for the name) in honour of the city where Prince Louis Napoleon made his first attempt to restore the Empire in France. The circumstances of the rash enterprise, represented at the time by the Government newspapers as merely ridiculous, were sufficiently romantic to deserve a few words of mention. Quitting his mother, with whom he had been living at the Castle of Arenberg, in Switzerland, he went as if to take the waters at Baden-Baden, a place he found suitable to his purpose from its vicinity to Alsace, and from the opportunity it afforded him of covering his ambitious views under the mask of pleasure. It was there that the prince gained the co-operation of Colonel Vaudrey, who commanded the 4th regiment of artillery at Strasburg, in which frontier city the prince had resolved to proclaim the restoration of the Empire before marching towards the capital. The Alsacian democrats were to be gained over by holding out to them a prospect of a fair representation of the people, while the garrison of Strasburg was to be captivated by the cry of “Vive l’Empereur!” The citizens were to be summoned to liberty, and the young men of the schools to arms. The ramparts were then to be entrusted to the keeping of the national guards, and the prince was to march to Paris at the head of the troops. “And then,” says Louis Blanc, in his sketch of the project, “the pictures that naturally presented themselves to the mind of Louis Napoleon were towns surprised, garrisons carried away by the movement, young men eagerly enlisting among his adventurous followers, old soldiers quitting the plough from all quarters to salute the eagle borne aloft, amidst acclamations, caught up by echo after echo along the roads; bitter recollections of the invasion, proud memories of the great wars, reviving, meanwhile, in every part of the Vosges, Lorraine, and Champagne.” The ardour of the conspirators steadily increased, and had they not possessed resolution and daring of their own, there was a woman in their midst who would have set them a bold example. Madame Gordon, the daughter of a captain of the Imperial Guard, had been initiated at Lille into the projects of Louis Napoleon without the knowledge of the prince himself, and entering impetuously into the conspiracy, she hastened to Strasburg, or rather to Baden-Baden in the immediate neighbourhood, and, appearing there as a professional singer, gave a series of concerts. Prince Louis was charmed with the lady’s talents, and, on expressing his admiration, was astonished to find that she had come to Baden-Baden with no object but to help him in the attempt he was about to make on the other side of the Rhine.

The Strasburg expedition having failed, it pleased the enemies of the prince to cast ridicule upon it; and he was accused of having exhibited himself in his uncle’s boots, just as some years afterwards, in connection with the Boulogne expedition, he was said to have carried with him a trained eagle which at a given moment was to fly to the top of the Boulogne Column in memory of the Great Army. Both at Boulogne, however, and at Strasburg the prince had considerable chances of success: a fact sufficiently proved (apart from any demonstration in detail) by the popularity he was seen to possess when, in 1848, he appeared as candidate for the Presidency of the French Republic. At Strasburg, as afterwards at Boulogne, he did not make his attack until after he had had the ground thoroughly reconnoitred, and had ascertained that the troops before whom he was about to present himself were largely composed of his partisans.

Formerly associated solely with the first attempt of Prince Louis Napoleon to place himself on the throne of France, the Boulevard of Strasburg now seems to mark the fact that the Alsatian city, so thoroughly French in feeling, has been made the capital of a province of the German Empire.

It has been said that the Boulevard Saint-Denis crosses the Boulevard de Strasbourg; and it terminates at the Porte Saint-Denis, erected two years earlier than the Porte Saint-Martin, to which it is superior both by the boldness of its architecture and by the magnificence of its ornamentation.

The Porte Saint-Denis was constructed in 1672 by the order and at the expense of the City of Paris, to celebrate the success of that astonishing campaign in which, during less than sixty days, forty strongholds and three provinces fell before the armies of the victorious monarch. The town side of the arch bears, on the left, a colossal figure of Holland, on the right, another of the Rhine: two masterpieces, due to the chisel of the Auguier Brothers. At the top of the arch is a frieze representing in low relief the famous passage of the Rhine under the orders of Louis XIV. On the Faubourg side the low relief at the top of the arch represents the taking of Maestricht. The Porte Saint-Denis bears this simple inscription: “Ludovico Magno”—“To Louis the Great.”

At the end of the Rue Faubourg Saint-Denis is the necropolis of Saint-Denis—the burial-place of the French kings.

The obsequies of 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 royal burial place at Saint-Denis—to observe an elaborate ceremonial, which the Court functionaries and the officials of State followed out to the minutest detail; the effigy of the dead king was exposed for forty days in the palace, stretched on a State bed, clothed in royal garments, the crown on the head, the sceptre in the right hand, and the brand of justice on the left, with a crucifix, a vessel of holy water, and two golden censers at the foot of the couch. The officers of the palace, meanwhile, continued their duties as usual, and even went so far as to serve the king’s meals as though he were still living. The embalmed body was afterwards transported to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, with the innumerable formalities laid down beforehand; while at the interment so many honours were paid to it that to enumerate them would be to fill a small volume. The details of the ceremony were so minute and fastidious that battles of etiquette constantly took place among the exalted persons figuring in the assembly.

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 III., wished to enter the Abbey of Saint-Denis at the head of the procession, 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 Archbishop 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 stripping themselves of their pontifical garments, and acknowledging the supremacy of the abbot in his own sanctuary.

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. Even at the dinner—where, at least, concord might have been expected—there were absurd wranglings on points of etiquette between the State officials.

These royal funerals naturally cost enormous sums of money, which were charged partly to the Crown, partly to the City of Paris. The obsequies of Francis I. took five hundred thousand livres from the purse of his successor, without counting the contribution, probably of equal amount, from the town. The effigies of his two sons who had died before him were carried with his own relics to Saint-Denis. Thus there were three coffins in the procession. By the observance of a similar custom, there were in the funeral procession of St. Louis no fewer than five.

In addition to the usual distribution of alms, the Regent of Orleans associated the funeral of Louis XIV. with an exceptional act of mercy. A number of persons had been arbitrarily imprisoned on lettres de cachet and otherwise, some for Jansenism and various religious and political offences, others for reasons known only to the king or his former ministers. The regent ordered all the captives to be set at liberty, with the exception of a few who had been duly convicted of serious political or criminal misdeeds. Among the prisoners liberated from the Bastille was an Italian whose confinement had lasted thirty-five years, and who had been arrested the very 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 child, that he knew no one at Paris, nor even the name of a street, that his relations in Italy were probably dead, and that his property must have been divided among his heirs, on the supposition that he was dead. 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 released from 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 horror, and rendered credible all the cruelties they related when they were in full liberty.” The story of the Italian prisoner who declined to leave the Bastille is interesting from its having anticipated—perhaps it suggested—the one told by another prisoner 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 a few persons required for the care of it. The utmost precipitation was used in removing it from Versailles. None of the 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-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 by the spectators. The public-houses 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 Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève. 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?”

At the funeral of the Count 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 represent. 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 count’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 indeed reigned in France, Spain, Naples, and Parma. But the Revolution of 1848 in France and the war of 1859 in Italy cleared three thrones of their Bourbon occupants, 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 had simply increased the numbers of those “kings in exile,” so much more plentiful during the period of M. Alphonse Daudet than at that of Voltaire, who first observed them, in Candide, as a separate species.

The proposition of Barrère was adopted, and the National Assembly decreed “that the tombs and mausoleums of the former kings in the Church of Saint-Denis should be destroyed.” The execution of the decree was undertaken on the 6th of August, and three days afterwards thirty-one tombs had been swept away. Not the least remarkable of these tombs was the earliest, erected by St. Louis in honour of “Le Roi Dagobert,” of facetious memory, famed in song for having put on his breeches “à l’envers.” It is one of the most curious monuments of the thirteenth century, and at least as interesting for its subject as for its architecture. On three zones, superposed one upon the other, is represented the legend of Dagobert’s death. On the lowest zone 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 hold 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 standing 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 and intrinsic value, to Paris.

The Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, which comes next to the Boulevard Saint-Denis, is bounded on the right by the Faubourg Poissonnière, and on the left by the Butte aux Gravois, on which was built in the seventeenth century the quarter named, after its parochial church, Notre-Dame de Bonne Nouvelle. The Bonne Nouvelle Bazaar, constructed in the reign of Louis Philippe, contained, in the basement, a sort of theatre of considerable size, where, in 1848, several political clubs and other conventions were established. Here on one particular day, arriving together by opposite staircases, Victor Hugo and Frédéric Lemaître would present themselves at the speaker’s desk erected for political orators. Ultimately, but not without some hesitation, the interpreter of Ruy Blas gave way to the creator of the part. The object of the assembly was to constitute in a permanent way a club for Parisian writers and artists of the dramatic and other schools. Close by, at No. 26, is the Viennese beer-house, established on the site of the theatre opened in 1838, where the company of the old Vaudeville Theatre took refuge when, on the 18th of July in that year, they were burnt out.

There is now but one theatre on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle—that of the Gymnase, opened on the 20th of December, 1820, under the patronage of the Duchess of Berri, who four years afterwards allowed it to take the title of “Théâtre de Madame,” which it retained until the Revolution of 1830. It was then entitled the “Gymnase Théâtre Dramatique,” afterwards to be known simply as the Gymnase. For the last seventy years the Gymnase has been one of the very best theatres of the second order, ranking immediately after the theatres subventioned by the State. It was at the Gymnase that Scribe made his brilliant reputation with a long succession of little masterpieces, until at length he was followed by Alexandre Dumas the younger, who here produced “Le Demi-Monde,” “Diane de Lys,” and many other pieces less imposing, perhaps, but more thoughtful and more powerfully written than those of his predecessor. It was at the Gymnase, too, that Sardou brought out many of his best pieces, such as “Les Ganaches,” “La Perle noire,” “Nos bons Villageois,” and “Fernande.” This theatre, moreover, was the birthplace of Meilhac and Halévy’s “Frou-Frou.”

The first house on the Boulevard Poissonnière, at the corner of the street of that name, bears an inscription which fixes at this point the boundary of Paris in 1726, though by some authorities 1726 is said to have been substituted for the true year in which the boundaries of Paris were marked—namely, 1702.

With the last house on the Boulevard Poissonnière, at the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre, begins a whole series of celebrated restaurants. As the origin of this familiar word is not universally known, it may here be mentioned that it originated with an eating-house keeper, who inscribed above his establishment in large letters the following passage from the Gospel: “Venite ad me et ego ‘Restorabo’ vos.” This restaurateur, or restaurant-keeper, had imitators, and the name which his quotation had suggested was applied to all of them. Paul Brébant, known as the restaurateur des lettres, has fed more than one generation of authors and journalists, who have not neglected him on becoming senators or ministers. A great number of monthly entertainments are given at this restaurant. Here dine together the Society of Men of Letters, the Dramatic Critics’ Club, the Parisians, the Spartans, etc. Passing on, we next reach the ancient café of the Porte Montmartre, installed in the house which once belonged to the Marchioness de Genlis, sister-in-law of the authoress who superintended the education of the Orleans princes.

For many years the Théâtre des Variétés undertook to amuse the public with the lightest comedies, in which such actors as Brunet, Potier, Vernet, and Odry, such actresses as Flore and Jenny Vertpré appeared. After the Revolution of July, 1830, it made experiments in a more serious style, producing, for instance, the “Kean” of Dumas the elder, with Frédéric Lemaître in the principal character, and Bressant in the part of the Prince of Wales. Under the Second Empire the Variétés returned to its old trade, besides adopting an entirely new one—that of opera-bouffe, as cultivated by Offenbach. Here the earliest and best works of this master, such as “La belle Hélène” and the “Grand Duchess of Gerolstein,” were first performed, with Schneider and Dupuis in the principal parts. Here, too, some of the best comedies of Meilhac, Halévy, and Labiche were brought out.

The Boulevard Montmartre, in front of the Variétés, is the most animated part of the whole line of boulevards. The late Henri Dupin, the famous boulevardier, who died a centenarian, used to pretend that he had shot rabbits between the Rue Montmartre and the adjoining Rue Richelieu. This was doubtless an exaggeration. But a representation of this part of Paris, painted in the days of the First Empire, shows that at the point in question there were ditches intersecting a road lined with trees. The Boulevard Montmartre combines some of the features of the upper and of the lower boulevard, the shops which here abound offering for sale objects of use and of ornament, of interest and of luxury: clothes, bonnets, books, chocolate, bonbons, and music.

With the Frascati Gardens disappeared the charming villa built by Brongniart, with its Italian roof, its portico, and its statues. It was replaced by a house which was to enjoy a celebrity of its own. On the ground-floor it was occupied by Jannisset, the fashionable jeweller; on the first floor by Buisson the tailor, who had the honour of dressing Balzac, the greatest novelist that France, if not the world, has produced. Balzac had inspired the man with the same sort of admiration that a certain wine-merchant felt for the unfortunate Haydon. “Ought a man who can paint like that to be in want of a glass of sherry?” said Haydon to the art loving vintner who had come to ask for a settlement of his bill. “Indeed, no,” replied the wine-merchant, who not only went away without asking even for a trifle on account, but hastened to forward several dozen of sherry for Haydon’s encouragement and stimulation.

Buisson was treated by Balzac on the most friendly footing. Not only did the great novelist allow the fashionable tailor to dress him for nothing, but he also paid him long visits, and used a special set of apartments assigned to him in a lofty region of Buisson’s house, where in the midst of the workshops he was beyond the reach of troublesome creditors. Far from being ungrateful to his benefactor, Balzac has rendered him immortal by naming him again and again in his works. Buisson will, thanks to Honoré de Balzac, be always known as the fashionable tailor of Louis Philippe’s reign.

The name of Frascati at one time belonged to the present Boulevard Montmartre. It is still retained by the pastrycook who sells ices and tarts in his shop at the corner of the boulevard. It should be mentioned that this pastrycook’s shop was preceded by the Café Frascati, which owed its success entirely to the beauty of the lady who presided at the counter. When the dame du comptoir disappeared the café became deserted, and had to close its doors.

The Café Littéraire—Café Procope—Café Foy—Bohemian Cafés—Café Momus—The Death of Molière—New Year’s Gifts.

THE history of France is in a large degree the history of its cafés; and the French might well retort that the history of England is to be read in its tavern signs. On the connection between our tavern signs and our naval and military heroes it would be superfluous to insist. We have, it is true, our Dogs and Ducks, our Geese and Gridirons, our Bells and Horns, but we have also our Admiral Keppels, our Wellington Arms, our Napier’s Heads; and taking them altogether, the names of our hostelries indicate the various epochs of their origin in a remarkable manner. Another characteristic of the British tavern sign as compared with the French enseigne, whether of the café, the restaurant, or the tobacco-shop, is the permanency of the former. Who ever heard of the “Earl of Chatham” being converted into the “Sir Robert Peel,” or of “Lord Nelson” turning into “Sir Charles Napier”? Just the contrary takes place in France, where all the cafés, tobacco-shops, theatres, steamers, and even omnibuses that rejoice in what may be called representative titles, change their signs and their appellations with each successive dynasty.

But it is above all in the cafés proper that the history of France is to be read; and not the political history alone, for it can be shown that they also reflect every social, literary, and commercial change that takes place in the French metropolis. The demoiselle du comptoir in the more popular quarters of Paris is herself an important historical figure, appearing as she did during the African war as an Algérienne, in the days of the Second Republic as a priestess of Liberty, and during the siege of Sebastopol as a Tartar girl of the Crimea. But she is a political rather than a social index. Such also were the United Cooks, whose miserable gargotes flourished during the Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity period, with their bœuf à la République, their agneau à la Robespierre, their veau à la baïonnette, and their mouton à la sauce rouge. It would be difficult to say which of these was the most economical, or, above all, the most indigestible.

Far different were the restaurants and cafés whose titles and interior arrangements might be looked upon as indicative of the social and intellectual movement of the nation. Of these, the most remarkable have, at various periods, been the huge Literary Café on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, the Electric Cafés—of which there were at one time several—between the Porte Saint-Martin and the Théâtre Lyrique, and the Café Oriental, near the Boulevard du Temple. Most provincial Frenchmen and foreigners who have visited Paris in the character of sight-seers have been conducted to the dreary Café des Aveugles, and probably to the absurd Café des Singes; but it is only those who have wandered idly about the boulevards, careless how they might be devoured, that can have found their way to the Literary, the Electric, or the Oriental Café.

The establishment of the Café Littéraire was contemporaneous with the first issue, on a large scale, of three-franc volumes and four-sou livraisons, with liberty of the Press, open discussion, and the ascendency of literary men in connection with politics. As a natural consequence of this general intellectual activity, a taste for popular science arose, which the astronomer on the Pont-Neuf, with his long telescope and his interminable orations, was unable to satisfy.

The electric cafés instituted at this period were sufficiently curious establishments. A thirsty Parisian entering one of them for the first time in his life, found himself in a place which resembled a buffet more than a café, and in which the most remarkable object was an enormous metal counter. Having swallowed his beverage, he proceeded to place his piece of money on the counter, when, to his astonishment, he received a violent shock in the right arm, which probably caused him to drop the coin as if it were red-hot. “I have had an electric shock!” he would exclaim to some frequenter lounging near him. “Impossible!” would be the reply. “You must have knocked your funny-bone against the edge of the counter.” Protesting that he had received a galvanic shock, the victim was assured by the lounger, who had been lying in wait for his joke, that he had simply been electrified by the charms of the young lady behind the counter, just as a theatrical audience is said to be electrified by an actress or prima donna. Again, however, on receiving his change the new customer experienced a sharp shock, being the more astonished inasmuch as the habitués present put down and took up their money evidently without feeling the electric current. Then he went away mystified, to return, perhaps, later in the evening with an inexperienced friend, whom, partly from curiosity, partly in a spirit of mischief, he led up to the counter. His friend no sooner touched it than he started back electrified, but he himself found that he could this time touch it with impunity. He had now obviously been admitted amongst the initiated; and when he had gone on drinking and spending enough to entitle him to confidence, the beautiful demoiselle du comptoir condescended to explain to him the entire mystery. At the foot of the metal counter was a piece of strip iron connected with one of the wires of a galvanic battery, the other wire communicating with the counter itself. When any of the initiated touched the counter the presiding goddess stopped the current, which only novices were intended to feel. The whole device was simply employed to amuse customers. The electric counters became very popular, and had rapidly spread all over Paris, when the Government, thinking probably that such practical jokes might sometimes be carried too far, absolutely suppressed the cafés électriques.

The Café Procope was still at the height of its reputation when, in 1784, Beaumarchais’ Marriage of Figaro was produced; and it was the scene of a great literary gathering immediately before the representation of that famous comedy. After the Revolution, however, it gradually lost its character as a literary centre.

Close to the Café Foy stood the Café des Aveugles, with an orchestra of blind men as its distinctive feature. It seems at that period to have been thought strange that blind men should be able to perform on musical instruments. In the present day no virtuoso of any pretension plays with notes; though those, no doubt, are the least blind who do not pride themselves on disregarding what may well be a valuable, if not indispensable, aid to memory. A traditional figure associated with the orchestra of blind musicians was a so-called “savage”: some personage, that is to say, from one of the Paris faubourgs, disguised with feathers, paint, and tattooing.

After the Revolution the cafés became more and more political. Under the Republic, as in a less degree under the Empire, there had been no opposition cafés. But with the Restoration some freedom of thought returned. Imperialism had its head-quarters at the Café Leinblin, where the officers of the Grande Armée exchanged ideas on the subject of the humiliations undergone by France now that the great Napoleon was an exile, and that power was vested in the hands, not of a military dictator, but of a mere Parliament, with a constitutional king as figure-head. At the Café Foy congregated the Liberals of the new régime; at the Café Valois came together the Royalists, who believed in nothing but the throne and the altar as maintained under the ancient monarchy.

The café, in spite of the number of new clubs established in Paris, continues to be one of the most popular and most flourishing institutions of the French capital. Numbers of Parisians are not rich enough to belong to clubs, but can well afford from day to day the expenditure of fivepence or sixpence on a cup of coffee and a petit verre.

Of Bohemian cafés—those frequented, that is to say, by the gipsies of literature and art—the most celebrated is, or was in the time of Henri Murger, the brilliant author of “La Vie de Bohême,” the Café Momus. Here it was that poets, painters, and musicians of the future, blessed for the present with more genius than halfpence, waited until some comparatively wealthy lover of art and literature came to their relief, or until, by their noisy and reckless talk, they forced the alarmed proprietor to beg them to retire, and come in some other day to pay for their refreshment. Champfleury, gleaning here and there after Murger’s abundant harvest, has told us how, armed with one cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy, half-a-dozen Bohemians would take absolute possession of the first floor of this establishment.

It must be supposed that it somehow suited the proprietor of the Café Momus to encourage, or at least tolerate, his Bohemian visitors; otherwise he would have taken steps to exclude them permanently. Occasionally, it is said, they would barricade themselves in their favourite room on the first floor, and refuse absolutely to give up possession. The probability is that when they were in funds they spent their money lavishly; and they undoubtedly gave a certain reputation to the Café Momus, which became known throughout Paris as the café of literary aspirants, and attracted on that ground a certain number of sympathisers and admirers.

The house formerly occupied by the Frascati establishment bears on the Rue Richelieu side a medallion with an inscription to the memory of Cardinal de Richelieu, put up by Antoine Elwart, professor of composition at the Conservatoire. The other side of the Boulevard Montmartre, whence springs the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, is no less animated than the theatre side. Here, too, cafés abound, each of which, in theatrical phrase, is “full to overflowing”; for numbers of customers sit out in the street at the little tables in front of the café. The arcade on this side of the boulevard is known as the Passage Jouffroi. It runs through what was once the ground-floor of the house which, under the Restoration, was inhabited by three distinguished composers: Rossini, Carafa, and Boieldieu. A little further on, always in the direction of the Madeleine, stands an important club, called officially Le Grand Cercle, familiarly, Le Cercle des Ganaches. It is composed chiefly of commercial men and civil servants. It is considered old-fashioned, and the dinner-hour there is six o’clock, as it was in most Paris houses fifty years ago.

At the right corner of the Rue Grange Batelière stands an immense house, on a site occupied, until a few years ago, by the mansion built in the eighteenth century, by two well-known farmers-general, the Brothers Lunge, which from 1836 to 1847 was the haunt of the Jockey Club, the best-known and most fashionable club in Paris, now installed further to the west, but still in the line of boulevards.

Ask any Parisian in the present day for “the house of Molière,” and he will tell you that La Maison de Molière is only another name for the Théâtre Français. The house, however, where Molière lived is situated at the corner of a little street off the Boulevard Montmartre; and here it was that he breathed his last.

The custom of making New Year’s gifts became at length so general that servants murmured if their masters neglected them in this respect; and an amusing story is told of the stingy Cardinal Dubois, who, on his major-domo asking for his étrennes, replied, “Well, you may keep what you have stolen from me during the last twelvemonth.” This, however, occurred a long time ago; and had the cardinal lived in the present century, he would scarcely have dared to make such an answer. The Frenchman who nowadays ventures to refuse to his servants, or to any other dependants, the expected annual gifts must be prepared to bear the bitterest sarcasm, which will possibly not cease to assail him even beyond the grave; for it may be his fate to have inscribed on his tomb some such epitaph as the following quite authentic one:—