Some idea of the extreme corruption of the French clergy in the thirteenth century may be formed from a letter written by Pope Innocent III. in 1203 to the Abbé of Saint-Denis, close to Paris. “There are,” he said, “in your town priests who, abusing the clerical privilege, go through the streets at night and visit the most disreputable houses, breaking in the doors and taking the same liberties with the daughters of respectable citizens. The provost and the officers of justice, from respect for the liberties of the{62} clerical order, do not dare to lay hands on them; and if you, my son, wish to stop these disorders, the culprits at once appeal to us, invoke our authority, ignore your jurisdiction, escape the canonical punishment, and continue with audacity their lawless habits.” The Pope then authorises the Abbé of Saint-Denis to exercise against these “priestly libertines” all ecclesiastical powers, without attending to their appeals.
The period of religious and warlike fanaticism was also a period of licentiousness and persecution.
The Jews, at the chivalrous time of the Crusades, were particularly unhappy. Their faith, their wealth, their usurious practices, exposed them at all times to persecution, and the Crusaders, before starting for the Holy Land, habitually massacred them. Kings drove them from the country, and then, on payment of large sums, allowed them to return. Dulaure (“Singularités Historiques”) attributes simply to avarice the accusations, always justified by the fanaticism of the people, which rulers brought against them, and which were withdrawn on payment of money.
In 1290 a woman living at Paris had pawned some clothes for thirty sous to a Jew named Jonathan, and wishing to take them out for the Easter holidays without repaying the money advanced, was told, according to her sworn testimony, that she might do so if she would bring to the Jew a piece of the Holy Sacrament, which she did. Then the Jew thrust his penknife into the Host, from which blood flowed in abundance without in any way terrifying him. Then he took a nail and hammered it into the Host; threw it into the fire, when it hovered above the flames; plunged it into a kettle of boiling water, which it reddened with its blood, receiving meanwhile no injury. These miracles did not frighten Jonathan. The son of this Jew, seeing Christians go to church, said to them, “It is useless for you to pray to your God, my father has killed him.” Then a woman who lived next door to Jonathan entered his house under pretext of getting a light, and took away the Host in the skirt of her dress; after which she placed it in a wooden vessel and carried it to the curé of Saint-Jean-en-Grève, to whom she narrated what she had seen. The Bishop of Paris had Jonathan arrested, tried to convert him, and as the Jew refused, burnt him alive.
“Jonathan,” says Dulaure, in commenting on this strange story, the authenticity of which he regards as undeniable, “possessed a large fortune. Was he convicted in any legal manner? Why was not the woman brought to justice who gave the Host to Jonathan? She was more criminal than the Jew. Everything in this process makes one suspect that an odious plot had been woven against the Israelite in order to get hold of his fortune.”
It was not the Jews alone, however, who were maltreated in these cruel times. How severely Marguerite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis X., and Blanche and Jeanne de Bourgogne, her sisters-in-law, were punished for their undeniably licentious lives. The Abbey of Maubuisson, near Pontoise, was the theatre of their misdeeds. Their principal accomplices were Philippe and Gauthier d’Aunay, and they were both of them maltreated, skinned alive, and then decapitated and hung by the arms to the gallows. A beadle who had been mixed up with the princesses’ intrigues was condemned to the gibbet, and a monk who had played a still more active part in connection with them was tortured to death. Queen Marguerite, after being imprisoned in the Château Gaillard with her sister-in-law Blanche, was strangled there in 1315; Jeanne was detained in captivity at the Château of Dourdan—that same Jeanne de Bourgogne who, according to the tradition, threw from the Tour de Nesle into the Seine the students of whose discretion she wished to make sure.
But to return to the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, which, though by its site one of the very oldest in Paris, dates, by its structure, only from the eighteenth century. In 1754 Louis XV., finding himself seriously ill, vowed “that if, through the intercession of Sainte-Geneviève, he recovered, he would raise to her honour a new and sumptuous temple.” Restored to health he showed himself ready to keep his word. The architect employed to plan the structure was Soufflot, a man imbued with memories of Rome, where he had passed several years of his life. On the 6th of September, 1764, the first stone of the new church was laid by Louis XV. The construction had advanced far, and the dome had already been commenced, when Soufflot perceived with horror that the massive edifice threatened collapse, ugly cracks showing themselves here and there in the masonry. In despair, full of self-distrust, and harassed by the raillery of his critics, Soufflot died in 1720, without seeing the completion of his work. Rondelet, who took his place, substituted for the graceful but fragile pilasters and columns of his predecessor, heavy masonry{63} supports devoid of beauty, but at least capable of keeping the roof aloft. For the pursuance of his undertaking, however, he required money, and the want of it more than once suspended or retarded his operations. Until 1789 the building went on with exasperating slowness. Then, however, it received an unexpected impetus. Mirabeau had just died. The Constituent Assembly wished to give the great orator a tomb worthy of him, and at the same time to create a monument in which might be brought together the tombs of all those great citizens who had deserved well of their country: to create a Westminster Abbey. This monument already existed; for it was precisely a sort of Panthéon that Soufflot, never suspecting to what purpose his edifice would be turned, had constructed. “In a civic transport,” says M. E. Quinet, “the Constituent Assembly baptised with the name of Panthéon a monument which now for the first time seemed to receive a soul. The church soon became a temple of Renown—a place where the People gather to pronounce their judgment on the dead. This is why that colonnade bears its splendours so high aloft; why the cupola lifts itself up as though it were a crown on the head of Paris. Here occurs the apotheosis, not of a shepherdess—Sainte-Geneviève, that is to say—but of France, of the country, in the form of illustrious men who have gone to breathe the air of another shore. What had been blamed as superfluous luxury for the prophetess of Nanterre was assuredly necessary for the glorification of glorious men. How could the columns be high enough, the capitals proud enough, the wreaths rich enough to celebrate those to whom their terrestrial country owed terrestrial honours? The defects which had been found in the church became so many beauties in the Panthéon.”
The assembly voted the following decree: “Art. I. The new edifice of Sainte-Geneviève shall be used for the reception of the ashes of the great men belonging to the period of French liberty. Art. II. The legislative body shall alone decide to whom this honour is to be awarded. Art. III. Honoré Riquetti Mirabeau is judged worthy to receive such honour. Art. IV. The legislature shall not, in the future, have power to decree this honour to any of its members who may die; that is a question which shall be decided by the succeeding magistracy. Art. V. Any exceptions which may be made in favour of great men who died before the Revolution, shall be decided only by the legislative body. Art. VI. The directory of the department of the Seine shall with promptitude put the edifice of Sainte-Geneviève into a condition to fulfil its new functions, and shall cause to be engraved over the pediment these words, ‘To the great men of a grateful country.’ Art. VII. Until the new church of Sainte-Geneviève is finished the body of Riquetti Mirabeau shall repose beside the ashes of Descartes, in the vault of the old church.”
The remains of Voltaire were transported to the Panthéon soon after those of Mirabeau, and with a pomp no less magnificent. On the 30th of May, 1791, Gossin, deputy for Bar-le-Duc, addressed the Tribune in an enthusiastic outburst thus: “It was on the 30th of May that the honours of sepulture were refused to Voltaire, and it is on the same day that the national gratitude must acquit itself of its duty of reverence towards one who has prepared men for toleration and liberty.” The procession which accompanied the relics of Voltaire on their conveyance to the Panthéon was imposing in the extreme. Representatives of numerous corporations and professions attended to do homage to his memory, and at one point in the cortège eight women dressed in white, and carrying a statue of Liberty which appeared to be pointing to a complete edition of Voltaire’s works, were borne along in a gilded car. Finally came the sarcophagus, drawn by twelve white horses. After halts innumerable the solemn procession drew up before the Panthéon to the flare of torches.
The name of Panthéon, sufficiently heathen in character, had not hitherto been applied to the church of Sainte-Geneviève; but it appeared a few days later in a petition demanding the same honours for Rousseau, and signed by poets, artists, and scholars. The Assembly would willingly have acceded, but such was the resistance of the inhabitants of Montmorency, who eagerly requested that the ashes of this great writer might be left in their midst, that it deferred its decision.
On the 21st of January, 1793, the Convention decreed that the body of Lepelletier, deputy of Saint-Fargeau, who had been assassinated for having voted the death of the king, should be translated to the Panthéon. Then Marat, to whom, after the stab of Charlotte Corday, the Convention had already erected a mausoleum on the Place du Carrousel, was judged worthy of the Panthéon. On the 25th of November, 1793, Marie Joseph Chénier, speaking before the Tribune, and armed with documents, proved the transactions which Mirabeau had had with{64} the Court, contrasting therewith the disinterestedness of Marat, whose remains, as he eloquently maintained, should displace at the Panthéon those of Mirabeau, unworthy of such a resting-place. The Convention adopted his propositions in a decree which was not executed until after the fall of Robespierre, on the 22nd of September, 1794. The official programme of the ceremonies, still extant, is interesting enough. After having fixed the order and the route of the cortège the authors of the programme added: “The procession will stop when it arrives on the Place of the Panthéon; a tipstaff of the Convention will advance towards the door of entrance, and there will be read the decree which excludes from the Panthéon the relics of Mirabeau. Thereupon the body of Mirabeau shall be conveyed out of the precincts of the Panthéon, and handed over to the commissary of police for that section. Then the body of Marat shall be placed in triumph on a platform elevated in the Panthéon.... All citizens assisting at this ceremony shall be unarmed.” From the last injunction it is evident that the authorities feared the possibility of a riot. Everything, however, passed off quietly. The body of Mirabeau was laid in a corner of the cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
At length, on the 19th of October, 1794, the turn of Rousseau came. His body, borne by a deputation of the inhabitants of Ermonville, where he had breathed his last, was received at the Tuileries, where the future arch-chancellor pronounced over it an impressive speech. The remains of the philosopher, enclosed in an urn, were then conveyed to the Panthéon, escorted by the crowd and preceded by an orchestra playing various airs from his own “Devin du Village.”
But the political tide was already on the turn. On the 1st of February, 1795, the bust of Marat, placed in several of the theatres and cafés, was hooted and overthrown. His remains, according to the Abbé de Montgaillard in his history of the Revolution, were snatched from the Panthéon, dragged through the streets by young men, and cast amongst the refuse of the Rue Montmartre—“a tabernacle,” says the abbé, “worthy of such a god.” This account, however, is inaccurate; it was only Marat’s effigy which was thrown into the sewer, his relics were transported to Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
In the meantime the Panthéon, as a structure, was in a state of neglect. These installations of illustrious men within its walls had taken place more or less hastily, and the works were far indeed from completion. Mercier, in his “Picture of Paris,” thus describes a visit which he paid to the Panthéon in 1795: “I ventured on the staircases of the edifice, across ladders, heaps of cement, hammers, long saws and moving scaffoldings. The least sound reverberated, the least movement seemed to announce the approaching fall of the dome, and for the moment I imagined myself interred in the Panthéon without any pleading or contest. When I quitted the edifice I experienced the pleasure which is felt by sailors and warriors at the end of tempests and combats: that of discovering that I was alive.” By the time the Panthéon had been put into a satisfactory condition the Empire had come into existence, and Napoleon, who had just re-established public worship, wished to present the Republican temple to the clergy, whilst maintaining the purpose for which the Constituent Assembly had designed it. A decree, dated 20th of February, 1806, dedicated the Panthéon to public worship under the name of Church of Sainte-Geneviève, and consecrated it as a sepulchre for citizens who, in the career of arms or in that of the administration or of letters, had rendered eminent services to their country. The remains of thirty-nine persons, not all of them truly illustrious, were deposited in the Panthéon under the Empire; but the fall of the Empire brought about another change. Louis XVIII. suppressed the necropolis, and removed from the pediment the famous legend, “Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante.”
The last illustrious men admitted to the honours of the temple supposed to have been erected to them by a “grateful country” were Victor Hugo, the great Carnot, the deputy Baudin, killed on a barricade during the coup d’état of 1851, General Marceau, and La Tour d’Auvergne, “the first grenadier of France,” whose name, by order of Napoleon, used to be pronounced at every roll-call of his regiment, when this answer was solemnly given: “Mort sur le champ de bataille.”
The large open space to which the Panthéon gives its name—Place du Panthéon—was the scene of terrible conflicts between the troops and the insurgents during the Revolution of February, 1848, and again during the unsuccessful insurrection of June in the same year, when troops and national guards all took part against the workmen set free to starve or fight by the closing of the national workshops which, for financial reasons, could no longer be carried{65} on, and against the social democrats who placed themselves at their head. On the northern side of the Place stands the Sainte-Geneviève Library, which, like all the Paris libraries, is open to all comers.
A foreigner who happened to visit the Quartier Latin, and observed the students strolling, lounging, or driving off to the theatre or a ball, might fancy that they led an easy and idle life, but he would be mistaken. These youths, ardent pleasure-seekers as they are, give three-fourths of their time to severe study. Earlier in the day a visitor to the Rue Saint-Jacques might have seen them waiting impatiently for the classes to begin at the College of France; might have seen them issue thence, full of enthusiasm for the great thinkers of their time, and wend their way to this or that public institution affording facilities for private study. A proportion of them would be found to resort to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, where a noble collection of books ranged on shelves adorned with delicate sculptures may well conduce to the tranquil exercise of the mind.{66}
The first library of Sainte-Geneviève, which was founded as a private institution in 1624, and became national property in 1790, occupied in the buildings of the old abbey of the same name a habitation which had to be abandoned some forty years ago, because the building began everywhere to crumble and threaten collapse. The new library was finished and inaugurated in 1850; and although the external architecture is somewhat plain and heavy, the interior is highly artistic, with many a mural painting by master hands. Formerly this library possessed a very curious collection of crayon sketches, portraits of personages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were transferred by an imperial decree to the library of the Rue de Richelieu. It can support this loss, however, rich as it is in quaint and valuable specimens of art. For its manuscripts, with certain exceptions, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève is not remarkable; though it boasts a particularly fine collection of old printed books, with bindings sumptuous and fantastic enough to turn the head of a bibliophile.
Dependent on the church of Sainte-Geneviève, which it was destined to survive, is the church of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount. Among the wonders of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont is the tomb of Sainte Geneviève, whose relics, patroness saint of Paris as she was, were burnt in 1793 by the Paris Commune in the Place de Grève. During the fête of Sainte Geneviève, from the 3rd to the 11th of January, the church is crowded with pilgrims from the Paris suburbs to the number, it is calculated, of more than one hundred thousand. In the chapel immediately facing the altar stands a monument which contains the heart of Monseigneur Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, assassinated on the 3rd of January, 1857, in this very church, when he was opening the nine days’ service in honour of Sainte Geneviève, by a priest whom he had interdicted. The predecessor of Monseigneur Sibour, Monseigneur Affre, was shot dead by the insurgents of June, 1848, when exhorting them from a barricade to cease fighting. His successor, Monseigneur Darboy, was put to death with the other hostages whom the Paris Commune in 1871 had taken with the view of securing for the Communards made prisoners by the troops the character of prisoners of war.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.
The “Central School of Public Works”—Bonaparte and the Polytechnic—The College of Navarre—Formal Inauguration in 1805—1816—1832.
BEHIND the church of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount, from which it is separated by the Rue Descartes, stands the Polytechnic School, founded by a decree of the National Convention on the 14th of March, 1794.
The Convention had made a clean sweep of all the schools established in the days of the Monarchy. Ere long, however, it began to revive the scholastic institutions on a new plan. The Committee of Public Safety began by decreeing the formation of a “Central School of Public Works.” Fourcroy was commissioned to present a detailed report on the new scheme; and the propositions contained in it were unanimously adopted. The Palais Bourbon was chosen as the domicile of erudition; and here a three years’ course of study, involving nine hours’ work a day, was offered to aspirants. The youth of Paris and of the provinces hastened in crowds to a school where every subject was taught by an eminent specialist. Enthusiasm characterised the labours both of students and professors, and rapid successes were achieved, despite the constant struggle which had to be maintained with the Committee of Public Safety, whether on account of the privilege which the school enjoyed of filling all vacancies in certain departments of the public service, or because the committee, at times when war had drained the national exchequer, could not furnish the funds indispensable to the educational scheme. The school, however, fought bravely through its difficulties, and presently received that denomination of École Polytechnique which became and has remained so popular. In the legislative tribunals, in the political and scientific journals, the Polytechnic School was never mentioned without being coupled with some formula expressing the high opinion entertained of its utility and of what it might achieve. “The first school in the world,” “the institution which Europe envies us,” “the establishment without a rival and without a model”—in such phrases was it described. Already the Polytechnic had been appointed to furnish officers for the artillery; and by a state decree it was enacted that no pupils should be received into the military and naval schools who had not first gone through their course in the Polytechnic. In 1803, when the peace of Amiens was broken and war burst out afresh between France and England, the pupils of the Polytechnic School evinced their patriotism by paying into the state coffers a sum of 4,000 francs which they had collected amongst themselves.
Bonaparte, on his return from Italy, endeavoured to conciliate the affection of men of learning and of letters. At that period nothing but the lustre of power or the superiority of the mind could command admiration. Having had himself admitted to the Institute, the First Consul loved to join his academic title to the indication of his rank in the army. He often visited the Polytechnic School, and even assisted occasionally at some of the lessons. He enriched its library with a number of costly works, and furnished its laboratories with all that they needed.
During the four years (1801 to 1804) which preceded the turning of this school into a barrack the people of Paris had returned to a state of tranquillity. At the theatre, however, disturbances frequently occurred in which Polytechnic students played a part. The reiterated complaints of the Minister of the Interior and the arrest of several of the disorderly students caused great vexation to the school authorities, who remonstrated with the delinquents and imposed severe disciplinary punishments upon them, but to little purpose. The classes began to suffer, for the agitation of the pit penetrated into the school, and the time which should have been devoted to work was frequently taken up with eager conversations on this or that exciting topic. Bonaparte, who had just taken the title of emperor, was apprised of these unfortunate occurrences, and immediately decreed, on the 16th of July, 1804, a new organisation by which the pupils would be formed into a military body and put in barracks. General Lacuée, councillor of state, was appointed governor, and Gay de Vernon took second command. The new organisation included the union of the barrack and the school on one spot, and an obligation on{68} the part of the pupils to pay fees. General Lacuée formed from his body of councillors a commission which repaired to Fontainebleau, where the École Militaire was then established, in order to obtain all particulars as to the working of the Paris institution; and an active search was made for a building in which the school might be adequately installed. At length the College of Navarre was fixed upon as the fittest habitation. Napoleon in determining the funds necessary for his new organisation showed himself sufficiently lavish. He felt grateful to the students of the Polytechnic School for the patriotic aid they had offered him during the war with England; which had indeed evoked from him at the time some flattering words to the effect that he “expected nothing less from a youth thirsting for glory, to whom national honour was a patrimony.”
The school was inaugurated on the 11th of November, 1805, at the College of Navarre, which it has not quitted since. This college had been founded in 1304 by Jeanne of Navarre and her husband Philippe le Bel. The chapel, now used as a tracing-room, is all that remains of the original structure. Suppressed in 1790, the College of Navarre had been a seminary for princes and other pupils either distinguished already by their birth or destined to conquer fame: both Richelieu and Bossuet had sat on its benches.
The pupils of the Polytechnic School showed in 1814 the same patriotic feeling which had delighted Napoleon on a previous occasion. They offered for the artillery eight horses fully equipped; and immediately afterwards they petitioned to be admitted as combatants into the ranks of the French army. Napoleon made a reply which has become famous—that he was not reduced to such straits as to find it necessary to “kill his fowl with the golden eggs.” He formed, however, out of the Paris National Guard twelve batteries of artillery, three of which consisted of pupils of the Polytechnic School. On the 28th of March the pupils were entrusted with the service of twenty-eight pieces of reserve artillery, and on the 30th, during the battle of Paris, this reserve, placed across the{69} avenue of Vincennes, held in check the enemy’s troops, who were endeavouring to enter Paris on this side in order to turn the position of the diminutive French army, fighting at Belleville and at Pantin.
On the return from Elba the Polytechnic School was again formed into a body of artillery; and it then received the only visit Napoleon paid to it throughout the Empire. With all his admiration for it, he regarded it as infected with the spirit of republicanism. Monge defended the pupils against the bad opinion entertained by the emperor, saying that, ardent Republicans when the school was first formed, they had not yet had time to become zealous Imperialists; at which Napoleon is said to have smiled.
Broken up in 1816 in consequence of some act of insubordination, and reorganised towards the end of 1817 under a civilian administration, the Polytechnic School was now placed under the Ministry of the Interior. Five years later, however, in 1822, it was once more organised on a military system. Like all the students of those days, the pupils of the Polytechnic School were enthusiastic Liberals, and when the Revolution of July, 1830, broke out they joined the people and acted for the most part as officers. One of them, Vanneau by name, was killed in the attack made on the barracks of the Swiss guards in the Rue de Babylone; and afterwards, by universal desire, the name of the young man was given to a neighbouring street, which still bears it.
Since then the Polytechnic has been mixed up with every important political movement that has taken place in France. On the 7th of June,{70} 1832, many students, in spite of orders to the contrary, went out to assist at the funeral of General Lamarque, and took part in the outbreak to which it led. In 1848 the school was called out in a body to support the provisional government, which invited it, together with the Normal School and the School of Saint-Cyr, to take part in all the celebrations of the new Republic.
Amongst the distinguished men produced by{71} the Polytechnic School since its creation under the First Republic may be mentioned Arago, Gay-Lussac, Biot, Poisson, and Carnot. Foreign governments have often asked permission to send young men of promise to this school; at once an effect and a cause of its European reputation.
CHAPTER XV.
THE HÔTEL CLUNY.
The Rue des Carmes—Comte de Mun and the Catholic Workmen’s Club—The Place Maubert—The Palais des Thermes—The Hotel Cluny—Its History—Its Art Treasures.
THE street in which the Polytechnic School is situated bears its name, and descending the northern slope of the so-called “mountain of Sainte-Geneviève,” the “Street of the Seven Ways” takes, at the point where the Rue de l’École Polytechnique crosses the Rue Saint-Hilaire, the name of Rue des Carmes. In ancient times it contained, besides the grand Couvent des Carmes founded in 1318, the College of Dace, established for Danish students, the College of Soissons, where Peter Ramus fell in the St. Bartholomew massacre, and finally the College of the Lombards. At the end of a large courtyard, surrounded with gardens, is seen the portico of a church with Ionic columns, whose pediment, frightfully mutilated, has quite a tragic aspect. This is the chapel of the ancient College of the Lombards, founded in 1334 by A. Chini of Florence, bishop of Tournai. The college was then the “House of the poor Italians” by the charity of the beneficent Marie. Three centuries later it was falling into ruins when two Irish priests undertook to build it up for the benefit of the priests and poor students of their country, who for two centuries possessed this corner of the earth, when, on its becoming too small, they abandoned it in 1776 and moved to the Rue Cheval-Vert. The chapel was then for many years taken possession of by industrial speculators, who turned it into shops and even into a stable. It was restored to public worship through the activity of Comte de Mun. In one part of the building is established the Catholic Workmen’s Club of Sainte-Geneviève, which has existed since May, 1875, and which offers to workmen and also clerks of all professions and trades a centre of instruction and even of amusement. To this institution are due the popular lectures (Conférences Populaires) delivered by M. Léon Gautier of the Institute, Albert de Mun, Father Montsabre, M. d’Hulst, etc. Without neglecting religious studies, the lecturers occupy themselves with the most varied subjects, such as literature, political and social economy, art and music. Here a certain number of workmen assemble every evening and, above all, on Sunday, when, after hearing mass, they can finish their day in an interesting and improving manner, reading books and newspapers and taking part in various games.
The Workmen’s Club of Sainte-Geneviève is not the only one of the kind in Paris; there are at least ten formed on the same plan and which reach directly and surely, without any attempt at noisy propagandism, their essential aim: that of depriving the dram shop and the tavern of their prey.
The lower part of the Rue des Carmes leads to the market of the same name and to the Place Maubert, which occupies the site of the ancient convent. The cloister of the Couvent des Carmes was remarkable as a masterpiece of architecture.
The Place Maubert was in the middle ages the true forum of the University Quarter, the meeting place of the students, the boatmen of the Seine, and market people from all parts of the country, as well as the central academy of the language spoken by the populace. Thus it was said of a man who was coarse in his talk that he had “learned his compliments in the Place Maubert.” The “Compliments of the Place Maubert” was indeed the title of a dictionary of plebeianisms. The name of the place or square is corrupted from that of Jean Aubert, second Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève. Receiving from all sides the outpourings of six popular streets, the Place Maubert has witnessed many tumultuous scenes. Here in 1418 assembled the partisans of Bourgogne who set out to massacre the partisans of Armagnac in their prisons. Here were burnt as heretics Alexandre d’Evreux and Jean Pointer{72} in 1533; the mason Poille in 1535, the goldsmith Claude Lepeintre in 1540, and finally, in 1546, the printer Étienne Dolet, who, by his religious and political opinions as well as by the bitterness of his polemical writings, had made for himself implacable enemies. Across the Place Maubert was dragged the body of Ramus, assassinated in 1572 at the College of Presles in the Rue des Carmes. On one side of it were raised in 1588 the first barracks of the partisans of the House of Guise against King Henri III., and sixty years later the barricades of the Fronde.
At a few steps from the Place Maubert stood, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the Rue de Bièvre and the Rue des Grands Degrés, two attorneys’ offices, where were engaged two young clerks destined one day to dazzle the world of letters and of the stage. One was Crébillon; the other Voltaire.
All kinds of famous houses existed on or in the immediate neighbourhood of the Place Maubert: that, for instance, of Grandjean, the celebrated surgeon and oculist to Louis XVI., and that of Marie Antoinette. Local tradition assigns one of the houses to Gabrielle d’Estrées—“la belle Gabrielle” of Henri IV., and here she may really have lived, though the hostile critics of the tradition point out that the architecture of the house does not take us further back than the reign of Louis XV. Part of the house in question is now let out in artisans’ lodgings. On the ground floor, painted red, is the Château Rouge, called also—it must be feared with more than external significance—the Guillotine. A special chapter is devoted to the Château Rouge{73} by M. Macé, in his volume on the police of Paris. It is composed of two large rooms, which are filled from morning till night with the disreputable and dangerous classes; close by is a lodging-house, constructed in the garden of the ancient mansion, and let out entirely to Swiss workmen, who live together in the most economical manner, and pass the gaping mouth of the Château Rouge ten times a day without ever going in. It was at the tavern of the Château Rouge that, in 1887, three men proposed, accepted, and carried out among themselves a bet to throw a woman into the Seine simply for amusement. The victim was a drunken rag-picker, and the stake was two sous: the price of a small glass of brandy.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the University and the Sorbonne, in the very heart of the district of the schools, are two of the most ancient and interesting buildings in Paris: the Palais des Thermes, which carries us back to the Lutetia of the Romans, and the Hôtel Cluny, which recalls mediæval Paris. The Palace of the Hot Baths is in ruins, but these ruins of a building which dates from the third century contain monuments more ancient than themselves.
The Bath-house of the Romans was at the same time a citadel; it is said to have been built in the reign of the Emperor Constantine Chlorus, who inhabited Lutetia from 287 to 292. In the year 360 Julian the Apostate was proclaimed emperor in this palace by the army and the people, and the palace is still generally known as the Thermæ of Julian. This honour was due to him by reason of his special predilection for his “dear Lutetia.” After him, the Emperors Valentinian and Gratian passed at this palace the winter of 365.
Independently of the interest presented by the Palais des Thermes as a survival of Roman Paris, and of the Hôtel Cluny, as a type of French{74} architecture, these two monuments shelter a museum in which have been brought together numerous specimens of curiosities and wonders of all kinds—some only of antiquarian, others both of antiquarian and of artistic interest. In the time when Paris was a Gallo-Roman city there existed on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the island which was to be known as that of the City, a palace surrounded with immense gardens, whose green lawns sloped down even to the edge the river. The Norman invaders laid a portion of it in ruins, and the edifice was by no means in good condition as a whole when, in 1218, Philip Augustus gave it to his chamberlain, Henri. Soon afterwards the old buildings and the gardens connected with them were broken up and apportioned, and towards the end of the eighteenth century the Bishop of Bayeux sold the remains of the Palace des Thermes to Pierre de Chalus, the Abbé of Cluny. The monks of this abbey had plenty of means; and as they did not buy to sell again, they remained proprietors of the Palace of Julian up to the time of the Revolution. The ruins were then made over to private persons, who, without regard to the majesty of history, introduced houses and shops in the midst of the Roman remains. Louis, as a lettered monarch, endeavoured to save the ruins from these profanations of the infidels, and he seems even to have entertained the thought of turning the remains of the ancient edifice into a sort of museum, but he did not carry out his idea; it was not until the reign of Louis Philippe that the town of Paris regained possession of the Palais des Thermes. It ceded the relic to the State in 1843.
After the lapse of so many centuries the astonishing thing is that one stone of the ancient Roman edifice should now remain. The part of the original edifice which Time has spared is that which enclosed the Hot Baths. The large hall, with its highly-imposing vaulted roof, was the Hall of the Cold Baths: the so-called Frigidarium. The place occupied by the fish-tank can still be recognised, and the remains may be seen of the canals which brought the water into the baths. Bricks and stones have been alternately employed in the walls, whose surface has been blackened by “sluttish Time,” and impaired in all sorts of ways. This hall has had the most varied fortunes, and for a long time it served as depôt to a cooper, who here stowed away his casks and barrels.
The other portions of the edifice present a purely archæological interest. Going out of the large hall just mentioned and crossing the narrow vestibule, one enters the Tepidarium; but here the vaulted roof has disappeared, and the spectator has nothing around him but crumbling walls. A few steps further on he will come to sub-structures which are evidently the remains of the reservoirs.
The ancient ruin has become a dependence of the more modern Hôtel Cluny. It is a marvellous relic of the fourteenth century; fragments of statues, bas-reliefs, mutilated inscriptions, art relics dug up from under the earth have been collected in the great hall of the “Frigidarium.” These remains of Gallo-Roman art show the very foundations of French history. Here is the famous inscription which sets forth that the “Parisian boatmen” raised under the reign of Tiberius a statue in honour of Jupiter. Close by are enormous blocks of stone, borrowed from the pavement of primitive Lutetia. In the midst of these fragments of columns, of these empty tombs, one figure remains untouched: it is the statue of Julian the Apostate. This sculpture recalls to those who might have forgotten it the carriage and character, the origin and type, of this strange emperor. Is not his hierarchic attitude that of an Asiatic satrap? Is not the calm countenance that of an Oriental prince?
By the side of the ancient palace of the Roman emperors the Hôtel Cluny seems quite young, and we shall doubtless be more at our ease in an edifice which is not yet four hundred years old. When, in the fourteenth century, Pierre de Chalus bought the Palais des Thermes and the land surrounding it, he intended to construct, near the college of his order, a residence which might afford lodging to abbés of Cluny when they were making their frequent visits to Paris. This project does not seem to have been carried into execution; and it was under Charles VIII. that one of the successors of Pierre de Chalus, Jean de Bourbon, founded the building so much admired in the present day. He was not, however, destined to complete it; the Hôtel Cluny, after many delays, was terminated towards the end of the reign of Charles VIII. by Jacques d’Amboise, Abbé of Jumièges, and Bishop of Clermont, one of whose brothers was the famous minister of Louis XII., while the other was grand-master of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem. All the members of this family seem to get animated by the spirit of the time. Jacques d’Amboise—man of letters, collector, and, in his way, an artist—was one of the moving spirits of the French Renascence. The Hôtel Cluny belongs, indeed, to that ancient time when art{75} becomes softer and more graceful without losing altogether the severity of the past.
The former residence of Jacques d’Amboise is enclosed on the side of the Rue des Mathurins by a high crenelated wall. In the interior the different apartments have lost very little of their original character, but modifications have of necessity been made; and as the museum needs light the number of the windows has been increased. The chapel retains in all respects its primitive style. The picture of the two Marys weeping over the dead Christ dates from the end of the reign of Louis XII. Of the glass windows which at the time of Jacques d’Amboise adorned the chapel, one alone has remained intact—that in which the Bearing of the Cross is represented. Little enough, then, survives of the past in this building, which has sheltered, one after the other, so many different inmates, some of them sufficiently careless about matters of art. The Hôtel Cluny has been inhabited by Marie of England, widow of Louis XII., by James V., King of Scotland, by Cardinal de Lorraine, and the Duke of Guise; here, under Henry III., the Italian actors represented their pastoral love scenes. Towards the end of the eighteenth century Moutard the printer occupied the principal apartments; and a member of the Academy of Sciences, Messier, had installed above the chapel a sort of observatory. After the Revolution the hôtel passed from hand to hand, and it would{76} perhaps have disappeared, to give place to a modern house, when a member of the Court of Accounts, M. Alexandre du Sammerard, bought, in 1833, the former residence of the Abbés de Cluny, in order to place within its walls archæological curiosities, precious furniture, and mediæval objects of art which he had made it his pleasure to collect. At his death, nine years later, the Chamber of Deputies passed, on the report of François Arrago, a resolution authorising the Government to buy in the name of the State M. de Sammerard’s collections and the edifice which held them. A credit of five hundred thousand francs having been voted for this double acquisition, the Musée des Thermes et de l’Hôtel Cluny was founded in virtue of the law of 24th July, 1843.
Since then the collection has been considerably increased, partly through liberal donations from private persons, partly through excavations undertaken by the State. The catalogue of the museum registers nearly four thousand objects of art. One of the most interesting of these is the altar-piece of the Chapel of Saint-Germer—unhappily much mutilated—in which the chisel of a master of the thirteenth century has represented the Passion of Christ and the legendary adventures of the holy patron of the Church. The heads of all the personages have been broken; the colour and the gilding which covered their vestments have partly disappeared; but in what remains of the altar-piece one sees attitudes which are full of character, and is impressed by a certain simplicity which approaches grandeur. There is more emotion in the statuettes detached from the tomb of the Duke of Burgundy at the Chartreuse of Dijon. These figures of marble date from the last days of the fourteenth century, and represent the servants of the duke, with writers and chaplains attached to his household. Monks are seen weeping beneath the hood which covers their face. The uncovered faces, full of life and expression, are evidently portraits. Close by, the spirit and grace of the Renascence may be seen in several admirable specimens: such as the Venus, partly broken, which is attributed, with more or less reason, to Jean Cousin, and the sleeping statuette of a naked woman whose head seems lost in a dream. The delicate style of the sculpture seems to reveal an Italian hand. Less perfect in execution, but equally interesting, is{77} that Ariadne which, by a strange coincidence, was found in the Loire opposite that Château of Chaumont where another woman in despair, Diana of Poitiers, had been shut up by Catherine de Médicis after the death of Henry II. It is the same Diana, this time accompanied by her two daughters, which tradition recognises in the statue attributed to Germain Pilon.