Let us not forget that it was the Jacobin minority who in the heat and glow of their convictions saved the people of France. Led astray by their old guides, abandoned in a dark and trackless waste, their heads girt with horror, menaced by destruction on every side, the people groped, wandering hither and thither seeking an outlet in vain. At length a voice was heard, confidant, thrilling as a trumpet call; "Lo this is the way! follow, and ye shall emerge and conquer!" It may not have been the best way, but it was a way and they followed.
It is easy enough to pour scorn on the Contrat Social as a political philosophy, but an ideal, a faith, a dogma are necessary to evoke enthusiasm, the contempt of material things and of death itself. These the Contrat Social gave. It defined with absolute precision the principles latent in the movement of reform that broke up mediævalism. Does power descend from God, its primeval source; or does it ascend, delegated from the people? Once stated, the French mind with its intense lucidity and logicality saw the line of cleavage between old and new—divine right: or sovereignty of the people—and bade all men choose where they would stand. The Contrat Social with its consuming passion for social justice, its ideal of a state founded on the sovereignty of the people, became the gospel of the time. Men and women conned its pages by heart and slept with the book under their pillows. Napoleon himself in his early Jacobin days was saturated with its doctrines, and in later times astutely used its phrases as shibboleths to cloak his acts of despotism. But in that terrible revolutionary decade the Jacobins had spent their lives and their energies. A profound weariness of the long and severe tension, and a yearning for a return to orderly civil life came over men's minds. The masses were still sincerely attached to the Catholic faith: the middle-classes hailed with relief the advent of the strong man who proved himself able to crush faction; the peasants were won by a champion of the Revolution who made impossible the return of the aides, the tailles, the gabelles, and all the iniquitous oppressions of the ancien régime and guaranteed them the possession of the confiscated émigré and ecclesiastical lands; the army idolised the great captain who promised them glory and profit; the Church rallied to an autocrat who restored the hierarchy. Moreover, the brilliancy of Napoleon's military genius was balanced by an all-embracing political sagacity. The chief administrative decrees of the Convention, especially those relating to education and the civil and penal codes, were welded into form by ceaseless energy. Everything he touched was indeed degraded from the Republican ideal, but he drove things through, imposed his own superhuman activity into his subordinates, and became one of the chief builders of modern France. "The gigantic entered into our very habits of thought," said one of his ministers. But his efforts to maintain the stupendous twenty years' duel with the combined forces of England and the continental monarchies, and his own overweening ambition, broke him at length, and he fell, to fret away his life caged in a lonely island in mid-Atlantic.
The new ideas were none the less revolutionary of social life. The salon, that eminently French institution, soon felt their power. The charming irresponsible gaiety and frivolity of the old régime gave place to more serious preoccupation with political movements. The fusing power of Rousseau's genius had melted all hearts; the solvent wit of Voltaire and the precise science of the Encyclopedists were a potent force even among the courtiers themselves. The centre of social life shifted from Versailles to Paris and the salons gained what the court lost. Fine ladies had the latest pamphlet of Siéyès read to them at their toilette, and maids caught up the new phrases from their mistresses' lips. Did a young gallant enter a salon excusing himself for being late by saying, "I have just been proposing a motion at the club," every fair eye sparkled with interest. A deputy was a social lion, and a box for the National Assembly exchanged for one at the opera at a premium of six livres. Speeches were rehearsed at the salons and action determined. Chief of the hostesses was Madame[173] Necker: at her crowded receptions might be seen Abbé Siéyès, the architect of Constitutions; Condorcet, the philosopher; Talleyrand, the patriotic bishop; Madame de Staël, with her strong, coarse face and masculine voice and gestures. More intimate were the Tuesday suppers at which a dozen chosen guests held earnest communion. Madame de Beauharnais was noted for her excellent table, and her Tuesday and Thursday dinners: at her rooms the masters of literature and music had been wont to meet. Now came Buffon the naturalist; Bailly of Tennis Court oath fame; Clootz, the friend of humanity. The widow of Helvetius, with her many memories of Franklin, welcomed Volney, author of the Ruins of Empires, and Chamfort, the candid critic of Academicians. At the salon of Madame Pancroute, Barrère, the glib orator of the Revolution, was the chief figure.
Julie Talma was famed for her literary and artistic circle. Here Marie Joseph Chenier, the revolutionary dramatic poet of the Comédie Française, declaimed his couplets. Here came Vergniaud, the eloquent chief of the ill-fated Gironde; Greuze, the painter; Roland, the stern and minatory minister, who spoke bitter words, composed by his wife, to the king; Lavoisier, the chemist, who is said to have begged that the axe might be stayed while he completed some experiments, and was told that the Republic had no lack of chemists. Madame du Deffand, whose hôtel in the Rue des Quatre Fils still exists, welcomed Voltaire, D'Alembert, Montesquieu and the Encyclopedists.
In the street, the great open-air salon of the people, was a feverish going to and fro. Here were the tub-thumpers of the Revolution holding forth at every public place; the strident voices of ballad-singers at the street corners; hawkers of the latest pamphlets hot from the Quai des Augustins; the sellers of journals crying the Père Duchesne, L'Ami du Peuple, the Jean Bart, the Vieux Cordelier. Crowds gathered round Bassett's famous shop for caricature at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue des Mathurins. The walls of Paris were a mass of variegated placards and proclamations. The charming signs of the old régime, the Pomme rouge, the Rose Blanche, the Ami du Cœur, the Gracieuse, the Trois Fleurs-de-lys Couronnées gave place to the "Necker," the "National Assembly," the "Tiers," the "Constitution"—these, too, soon to be effaced by more Republican appellations. For on the abolition of the monarchy and the inauguration of the Religion of Nature, the words "royal" and "saint" disappear from the revolutionary vocabulary. A new calendar is promulgated: streets and squares are renamed: Rues des Droits de l'Homme, de la Révolution, des Piques, de la Loi, efface the old landmarks. We must now say Rue Honoré, not St. Honoré, and Mont Marat for Montmartre. Naturalists had written of the queen bee: away with the hated word! She is now named of all good patriots the abeille pondeuse, the egg-laying bee. In the Punch and Judy shows the gallows gives place to the guillotine. No more emblems on playing cards of king, queen, and knave: allegorical figures of Genius, Liberty and Equality take their places, and since Law alone is above them all, Patriotism, as it flings down its biggest card, shall cry no longer, "Ace of trumps," but "Law of trumps," and "Genius of trumps." Chess terms too were republicanised. Furniture becomes of Spartan simplicity. The people lie down on patriotic beds and eat and drink from patriotic mugs and platters. Lotteries are abolished, regulations launched against the sale of indecent literature, drawings or paintings; the open following of the profession of Rahab prohibited; bull fights suppressed. Silver buckles are needed by the national war chest: shoes shall now be clasped by patriotic buckles of copper. The monarchial "vous" (you) shall give place to "toi" (thou); and "monsieur" and "madame" to "citoyen" and "citoyenne." The formal subscriptions to letters, "Your humble servant," "Your obedient servant," shall no more recall the old days of class subjection; we write now "Your fellow citizen," "Your friend," "Your equal." Every house bears an inscription, giving the names and ages of the occupants, decorated with patriotic colours of red, white and blue, with figures of the Gallic cock and the bonnet rouge. Over every public building runs the legend, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death"[174]—it is even seen over the cages of the wild beasts at the Jardin des Plantes.
Nowhere did the revolutionary ploughshare cut deeper than among the clergy and the religious orders. Nearly forty monasteries and convents were suppressed in Paris, and strange scenes were those when the troops of monks and friars issued forth to secular life, some crying "Vive Jésus le Roi, et la Révolution," for the new ideas had penetrated even the cloister. The barbers' shops were invaded, and strange figures were seen smoking their pipes along the Boulevards. Some went to the wars; others, especially the Benedictines, appealed for teaching appointments; many faithful to their vows, went forth to poverty, misery, and death.
The nuns and sisters gave more trouble, and the scenes that attended their expulsion and that of the non-juring clergy burned into the memories of the pious. "What do they take from me?" cried the curé of St. Marguerite in his farewell sermon. "My cure? All that I have is yours, and it is you they despoil. My life? I am eighty-four years of age, and what of life remains to me is not worth the sacrifice of my principles." Descending the pulpit the venerable priest passed through a sobbing congregation to a garret in one of the Faubourgs. There were but few, however, who imitated the dignified protest of the curé of St. Marguerite. Many a pulpit rang with fiery denunciations, which recalled the savage fanaticism of the League. Some of the younger clergy and a few of the bishops were on the side of the early Revolutionists. The Abbé Fouchet was the Peter the Hermit of the crusade for Liberty, and so popular were his sermons in Notre Dame that a seat there fetched twenty-four sous. But the corruption and apostasy of the hierarchy as a whole, and their betrayal of the people, had borne its acrid fruit of popular contempt and hostility, and the fanaticism of the worship of Reason answered the fanaticism of the Cross. In Notre Dame and other churches, which became Temples of Reason, statues of Liberty replaced those of the ci-devant Holy Virgin and every Décadi services were held in honour of Liberty or of the Supreme Being. The Rights of Man, the Constitution, despatches from the armies and new laws were read. Prayers were made to the Supreme Being and Liberty was invoked. Patriotic hymns were sung, virtuous acts in the sections recited and addresses on morality, the domestic virtues and other ethical subjects were given. In some, an orator of morality was appointed. Births, marriages and deaths were announced and—an essential detail—collections were made in aid of suffering Humanity. A Décadi Ritual[175] was printed with a selection of hymns and prayers to be used in the Temples of Reason. The services were crowded, famous preachers often evoked tears, tracts were published and saints of Liberty were in course of evolution. But less than eight years after Robespierre's solemn Festival of the Être Suprème all the hierarchy of the old religion returned, sixty archbishops and bishops, and an army of priests, and a gorgeous Easter Mass in Notre Dame celebrated the reestablishment of the Catholic faith by Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution.
It is not within the scope of the present work to deal with the later annals of Paris. Superficial students of her modern history have freely charged her with political irresponsibility and fickleness; no charge could be less warranted by facts. For a thousand years her citizens were loyal and faithful subjects of a monarchy, and endured for a century and a half an infliction of misgovernment, oppression and grinding taxation such as probably no other European people would have tolerated. With touching fidelity and indomitable steadfastness they have cherished the principles of the Great Revolution, in whose name they swept the shams and wrongs of the ancien régime away. There is a profounder truth than perhaps Alphonse Karr imagined in his famous epigram, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Every political upheaval of the nineteenth century in Paris has been at bottom an effort to realise the revolutionary ideals of political freedom and social equality in the face of external violence or internal corruption and treachery. Twice the hated Bourbons were reimposed on the people of Paris by the bayonets of the foreigner: twice they rose and chased them away. A compromise followed—that of a citizen king, Louis Philippe of Orleans, once a Jacobin doorkeeper and a soldier of the Revolution, who had fought valiantly at Valmy and Jemappes—but he too identified himself with reactionary ministers, and became a fugitive to England, the bourne of deposed kings. The Second Republic which followed grew distrustful of the people and disfranchised at one stroke 3,000,000 citizens: one of the causes of the success of the coup d'état of Napoleon III. was an astute edict which restored universal suffrage.
During the negation of political rectitude and decency which characterised the period of the Second Empire, a little band of Republicans refused to bow the knee to the new pinchbeck Cæsar, "the man," says Freeman, "whose lips uttered the words je le jure and kept the oath by a December massacre." Inspired by Victor Hugo, their fiery poet and seer, whose Châtiments have the passionate intensity of an Isaiah, they braved exile, poverty, calumny and flattery; they "stooped into a dark, tremendous sea of doubt, pressed God's lamp to their breasts and emerged" to witness a sad and bitter day of reckoning, when the corruption and vice of the Second Empire were swallowed up in shame and disaster at Sedan.[176] The Third Republic, with admirable energy and patriotism, rose to save the self-respect of France. The first and Imperial war, up to Sedan, was over in a month; the second national and popular war endured for five months.
Dynastic and ecclesiastical ambition die hard, and the new Republic has had to weather many a storm in her career of a third of a century. Carducci in a fine poem has imagined Letizia, mother of the Bonapartes, a wandering shade haunting the desolate house at Ajaccio, recalling the tragic fate of her children, and, like a Corsican Niobe, standing on her threshold, fiercely stretching forth her arms to the savage Ocean, calling from America, from Britain, from burning Africa, some one of her hapless progeny to find a haven in her breast. But the assegais of South African savages laid low the last hope of the Imperialists, and it may reasonably be predicted that neither the shades nor the living descendants of Bonaparte or Bourbon will ever trouble again the internal peace of France nor her people be ruled by one "regnant by right divine and luck o' the pillow." Throughout the whole land a profound desire of peace possesses men's minds[177] and a firm determination to effect a material and moral recuperation from the disasters of the Empire.
The beneficent results of the Great Revolution have leavened the whole world. In no small degree may it be said of France that by her stripes we have been healed. With true insight the Revolutionists perceived that national liberty is the one essential element of national progress: —
"When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go,
Nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last."
But the great work is yet incomplete. Political liberty and equality have been won. A more tremendous task awaits the peoples of the old and new worlds alike—to achieve industrial emancipation and inaugurate a reign of social justice. And we know that Paris will have no small part in the solution of this problem.
It now remains to consider the impress which this stormy period left on the architecture of Paris. We have seen that the Convention assigned the royal Palace of the Louvre for the home of a national museum. The neglect of the fabric, however, continued. Already Marat had appropriated four of the royal presses and their accessories for the Ami du Peuple and the types founded for Louis XIV. were used to print the diatribes of the fiercest advocate of the Terror. All along the south façade, print and cook shops were seen, and small huckstering went on unheeded. In 1794 the ground floor of the Petite Galerie was used as a Bourse. On the Place du Carrousel, and the site of the Squares du Louvre were a mass of mean houses which remained even to comparatively recent times. In 1805 the masterful will and all-embracing activity of Napoleon were directed to the improvement of Paris, which he determined to make the most beautiful capital in the world. His architects, Percier and Fontaine, were set to work on the Louvre, and yet another vast plan was elaborated for completing the Palace. A northern wing, corresponding to Henry's IV.'s south wing, was to be built eastwards along the new Rue de Rivoli, from the Pavilion de Marsan at the north end of the Tuileries; the Carrousel was to be traversed by a building, separating the two palaces, designed to house the National Library, the learned Societies and other bodies. The work was begun in 1812, the Emperor commanding that the grand apartments were to be prepared for the sovereigns who would come, à lui faire cortège, after the success of the Russian campaign! Of this ambitious plan, however, all that was carried out was a portion of the Rue de Rivoli façade, from the Pavilion de Marsan to the Pavilion de Rohan, which latter was finished under the Restoration. Some external decorative work was done on the south façade. Perrault's Colonnade was restored, the four façades of the quadrangle were completed, and a new bridge to lead to the "Palace of the Arts" was built. Little or nothing was done to further Napoleon's plan until the Republic of 1848 decreed the completion of the north façade, which was actually achieved under the Second Empire by Visconti in 1857, who built other structures, each with three courts, inside the great space enclosed by the north and south wings to correct their want of parallelism. Later (1862-1868), Henry the Fourth's long gallery and the Pavilions de Flore and Lesdiguières were rebuilt, and smaller galleries were added to those giving on the Cour des Tuileries: after the disastrous fire which destroyed the Tuileries in 1871, the Third Republic restored the Pavilions de Flore and de Marsan.
But the vicissitudes of this wonderful pile of architecture are not yet ended. The discovery of Perrault's base at the east and of Lemercier's at the north, will inevitably lead to their proximate disclosure. Ample space remains at the east for the excavation of a wide and deep fosse, which would expose the wing to view as Perrault intended it; but on the Rue de Rivoli side the problem is more difficult, and probably a narrow fosse, or saut de loup, will be all that space will allow there.
Napoleon I.'s new streets near the Tuileries and the Louvre soon became the fashionable quarter of Paris. The Italian arcades and every street name recalled a former victory of the Consulate in Italy and Egypt. The military glories of a revolutionary empire, which at one time transcended the limits of that of Charlemagne; which crashed through the shams of the old world and toppled in the dust their imposing but hollow state, were wrought in bronze on the Vendôme Column, cast from the cannon captured from every nation in Europe. The Triumphal Arch of the Carrousel, crowned by the bronze horses from St. Mark's at Venice; the majestic Triumphal Arch of the Etoile—a partially achieved project—all paraded the Emperor's fame. Of more practical utility were the quays built along the south bank of the Seine and the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, which latter Blücher would have blown up had Wellington permitted it.
The erection of the new church of the Madeleine, begun in 1764, had been interrupted by the Revolution, and in 1806, Napoleon ordered that it should be completed as a Temple of Glory. The Restoration transformed it to a Catholic church, which was finally completed under Louis Philippe in 1842, and it soon became the most fashionable place of worship in Paris. Napoleon drove sixty new streets through the city, cleared away the posts that marked off the footways, began the raised pavements and kerbs, and ordered the drainage to be diverted from the gutters in the centre of the roadway.
The Restoration erected two basilicas—Notre Dame de Lorette and St. Vincent de Paul. The Expiatory Chapel raised to the memory of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette on the site of the old cemetery of the Madeleine—where they lay, until transferred to St. Denis, in one red burial with the brave Swiss Guards who vainly spent their lives for them—is now threatened with demolition. Three new bridges—of the Invalides, the Archevêché and Arcole—were added, and fifty-five new streets.
Under the citizen king, Napoleon's Arch of Triumph of the Etoile was completed, and the Columns of Luxor, on the Place de la Concorde, and of July on the Place de la Bastille, were raised. It was the period of the admirable architectural restorations of Viollet le Duc. The great architect has described how his passion for Gothic was stirred when, taken as a boy to Notre Dame, the rose window of the south transept seized on his imagination. While gazing at it the organ began to play, and he thought that the music came from the window—the shrill, high notes from the light colours, the solemn, bass notes from the dark and more subdued hues. It was a reverent and admiring spirit such as this which inspired the famous architect's loving treatment of the Gothic restoration in Paris and all over France. To him more than to any other artist we owe the preservation of such masterpieces as Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle.
But the great changes which have made modern Paris were effected under the Second Empire. In 1854, when the Haussmannisation of the city began, the Paris of the First Empire and of the Restoration remained essentially unaltered. It was a city of a few grand streets and of many mean ones. Pavements were still rare, and drainage was imperfect. In a few years the whole aspect was changed. Twenty-two new boulevards and avenues were created. Streets of appalling uniformity and directness were ploughed through Paris in all directions. "Nothing is more brutal than a straight line," says Victor Hugo, and there is little of interest in the monotonous miles of dreary coincidence which constitute the architectural legacy of the Second Empire.
The sad task of the Third Republic has been to heal the wounds and cover up the destruction wrought by the Civil War of 1871. The chief architectural creations of the Third Republic are the Hôtel de Ville, the new Sorbonne, the Trocadero, and the completion of the magnificent and colossal temple, rich with precious marble and stone of every kind, which, at a cost of £10,000,000 sterling, has been raised to the Muses at the end of the Avenue de l'Opéra. The Church, too, has lavished her millions on the mighty basilica of the Sacré Cœur, which towers over Paris from the heights of Montmartre.
Hôtel de Ville from River.
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But some of the glory of past ages remains hidden away in corners of the city; some has been recovered from the vandalism of iconoclastic eighteenth-century architects, canons, revolutionists and nineteenth-century prefects. Let us now wander awhile about the great city and refresh our memories of her dramatic past by beholding somewhat of the interest and beauty which have been preserved to us; for "to be in Paris itself, amid the full, delightful fragrance of those dainty visible things which Huguenots despised—that, surely, were the sum of good fortune!"
"I see ... long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing.... I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long, long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time, of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out."—Dickens.
Part II: The City
SECTION I
The Cité—Notre Dame—The Sainte-Chapelle[178]—The Palais de Justice[179]
If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal, or on the Pont du Carrousel, and look towards the Cité when the tall buildings, the spire of the Sainte Chapelle and the massive grey towers of Notre Dame are ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not easily surpassed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the unlovely Pont des Arts, stride the arches of the Pont Neuf with their graceful curves; below is the little green patch of garden and the cascade of the weir; in the centre of the bridge the bronze horse with Henry IV., its royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing the site of the old garden of the Palais, where St. Louis sat on a carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediæval towers of the Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais. Around all are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light with their thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one sails down the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother church of Notre Dame, with the graceful buttresses of the apse like folded pinions, seems to brood over the whole Cité.
From the time when Julius Cæsar addressed his legions on the little island of Lutetia Civitas Parisiorum to the present day, two millenniums of history have been enacted there, and few spots are to be found in Europe where so many associations are crowded together. In Gallo-Roman times the island was, as we have seen, even smaller, five islets having been incorporated with it since the thirteenth century. Some notion of the changes that have swept over its soil may be conceived on scanning Félibien's 1725 map, where no less than eighteen churches are marked, scarce a wrack of which now remains on the island. We must imagine the old mediæval Cité as a labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets, with the present broad Parvis of Notre Dame of much smaller extent, at a higher level, enclosed by a low wall and approached by steps. Against the north tower leaned the Baptistery (St. Jean le Rond) and St. Denis of the Ferry against the apse. St. Pierre aux Bœufs, whose façade has been transferred to St. Sévérin's on the south bank, stood at the east corner, St. Christopher at the west corner of the present Hôtel Dieu which covers the site of eleven streets and three churches. The old twelfth-century hospital, demolished in 1878, occupied the whole space south of the Parvis between the present Petit Pont and the Pont au Double. It possessed its own bridge, the Pont St. Charles, over which the buildings stretched, and joined the annexe (1606), which, until 1909, existed on the opposite side of the river.
Notre Dame.
The traveller who stands on the Parvis before the Church of Our Lady at Paris beholds the embodiment and most perfect expression of early Gothic architecture, the central type and model of the new style created by the genius of the masters of the Isle de France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. On the west front the builders have lavished all their artistic powers in a synthetic exposition of their outlook on life and eternity. As the worshipper approaches the central portal his eye is arrested by a representation of the ultimate and most solemn fact of human destiny, the Last Judgment. On the lintel the dead are seen rising from their graves at the last trump; prelate, noble and serf in one equality of doom. Above, the fine figure of St. Michael is seen weighing souls in the balance. At his left the damned are hauled in chains by grinning demons to Hell: at his right the elect raise joyful eyes toward Heaven. Crowning the tympanum is Christ the Judge, flanked by angels, and by the Virgin and the Baptist kneeling in intercession while He shows His wounded hands. On the archivolts are, to the right of the spectator, demons and damned souls and quaint personifications of death: to his left the heavenly host, choirs of angels, seated prophets and doctors and the army of martyrs. On the jambs are the five wise and five foolish virgins; apostles and saints on the embrasures of the door; below them reliefs of the virtues, each symbolised above its opposite vice. On the central pillar stands Christ in act of blessing; below Him, bas-reliefs typifying the seven liberal arts.[180]
We turn to the lovely portal of the Virgin under the north tower. In the lower compartment of the tympanum is figured the ark of the Covenant attended by prophets and kings; above, is the burial of the Virgin, and crowning all, Our Lady in glory. On the archivolts are angels, patriarchs, prophets, and kings. The jambs and casements are decorated with thirty-seven marvellously vivid reliefs of the signs of the Zodiac, the seasons and labours of the year, a kind of almanac of stone of rare invention and execution. On the embrasures of the door are, among others, the favourite Parisian saints: Denis, Genevieve and Stephen. On the central pier, below the Virgin and Child, are the Creation, Temptation and Fall. The whole of this portal will repay careful inspection.
St. Anne's portal, under the south tower, is more archaic, and indeed some of its sculptures are believed to have come from an earlier Romanesque building. Along the lintel are seen episodes in the life of St. Anne and in the life of Mary: in the central band, to the left, are the Presentation, the Annunciation, the Visitation; in the middle the Nativity in various scenes; to the right Herod, and the Adoration of the Magi. The whole of these reliefs are twelfth-century work, with the exception of the Presentation, which is thirteenth century. In the hemicycle above are the Virgin and Child under a Byzantine canopy with angels and founders on either side. On the central pier stands St. Marcel, Bishop of Paris, banning the horrible serpent that made his lair in a tomb: the retreating serpent's tail is seen on the pier. Both on this and on the north portal traces of painting still remain.
Before leaving, we note the beautiful mediæval wrought hinges (restored) which came from the old church of St. Stephen and which have been copied for the central portal. The three portals were completed in 1208.
Above them and across the whole façade runs a gallery of kings, twenty-eight in number—a perennial source of controversy. Authorities are divided between the kings of France and the kings of Israel and Judah, the royal ancestry of the Virgin. From the analogy of other cathedrals we incline to the latter view. The gallery dates not later than 1220, but the statues are modern reproductions. Yet higher, on the pierced balustrade, is a group of the Virgin between two angels and on either side, over the N. and S. portals, Adam and Eve. A gallery of graceful columns knits the towers together (which were intended to be crowned by spires) before they soar from the façade. Between the towers, in olden times, as we know from an illumination in a Froissart MS., stood a great statue of the Virgin. The whole of this glorious fretwork of stone, including the tracery of the rose window, was once refulgent with gold and azure and crimson, and the finished front in its mediæval glory has been compared to a colossal carved and painted triptych.
Notre Dame—Portal of St. Anne.
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On the central pier of the greater portal of the N. transept, called of the Cloister, we note a fine ancient statue of the Virgin, famed for its grace of expression. The smaller Porte Rouge, further eastward, is remarkable for some well-preserved antique sculpture: a Coronation of the Virgin in the tympanum and six scenes in the life of St. Marcel in the archivolt: some old gargoyles and reliefs may be seen on either side of the door.
We pursue our way by the east end of the cathedral, where in mediæval times was an open waste, the Motte aux Papelards, the playground of the cathedral servants, the graceful outlines of the apse and the bold sweep of the flying buttresses ever varying in beauty as we pace around. The south portal (ill seen through the iron railings) called of St. Stephen or of the Martyrs is decorated with statues of the saint and of other martyrs, with scenes of their martyrdom. The inscription (p. 88) may be seen at the base to the R.
We may now enter the noble and harmonious interior, unhappily bared of its rich old decorations, its tombs and statues cleared away, its fine Gothic altar destroyed by clerical and royal vandals to give place to renaissance and pseudo-classic pomposities (p. 252). We approach the choir from the right aisle, noting a fourteenth-century statue of the Virgin and Child on the left as we reach the entrance, perhaps the very statue before which povre Gilles did his penance (p. 142) and proceed to examine all that remains of the "histories" in stone on the choir wall round the ambulatory, twenty-three in number, begun in 1319 by Master Jean Ravy, mason of Notre Dame, and finished (parfaites) by Master Jean le Bouteiller in 1351, all dorez et bien peints . Those on the choir screen were destroyed by the Cardinal Archbishop de Noailles in 1725. On the north side are twelve reliefs drawn from earlier New Testament history: on the south are nine from later episodes in the life of Christ. These naïve mediæval sculptures of varying merit will repay careful examination. The gilding and colouring are modern. Of the jewelled splendour of the western rose and of the two great rose windows of the transepts the eye will never tire. With every changing light new beauties and new combinations of colour reveal themselves. Those who care to read the subjects will discern in the north transept rose, incidents depicted in the life of the Virgin, and eighteen founders and benefactors: in the south are apostles and bishops crowned by angels.
Interior of Notre Dame.
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We return to the Porte Rouge in the Rue du Cloître opposite which is the Rue Massillon, where at Nos. 4 and 6 we may note some remains of the cloisters and canons' dwellings, once a veritable city within a city, fifty-one houses with gardens sequestered within a wall having four gates. We continue to the Rue Chanoinesse, where, No. 10, is the site of Canon Fulbert's house: at No. 18, by the courtesy of Messieurs Allez Frères, we may visit the curious old fifteenth-century tower of Dagobert[181] which marks the site of the old port of St. Landry and affords a fine view of the north side of Notre Dame. We return to No. 10 and descend the Rue des Chantres to the Quai aux Fleurs: at No. 9, the site of the house of Abelard and Héloïse, an inscription recalls the names of the unhappy lovers,
"... for ever sad, for ever dear,
Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear."
We turn westward along the Quai and ascend on our L., the narrow Rue de la Colombe, across which a double line of stones traces the position of the Gallo-Roman wall, that enclosed the Cité. We continue to ascend, and on our L., No. 26 Rue Chanoinesse, we enter a small court where we find a portion of the old pavement of St. Aignan's church, with the almost effaced lineaments on the tombstones of those, now forgotten, who were doubtless famous churchmen in their time, and where St. Bernard wept a whole day, fearing that God had withdrawn from him the power of converting souls. This faint trace of the past wealth of churches remains, but where are the sanctuaries of Ste. Geneviève des Ardents, St. Pierre des Arces, St. Denis of the Prison, St. Germain le Vieux, Ste. Croix, St. Symphorien, St. Martial, St. Bartholomew, and the church of the Barnabites, which replaced that of St. Anne, which replaced the old Abbey church of St. Eloy, all clustering around their parent church of Our Lady like nuns under their patroness' mantle? Until comparatively recent times the church of St. Marine was used as a joiner's workshop, and one of the chapels of Ste. Madeleine, parish church of the water-sellers, served as a wine merchant's store! All that survives of the ancient splendour of the Cité are Notre Dame and some portions of the Palais, including the Ste. Chapelle.
We turn R. to the Rue d'Arcole that has swept away the old church of St. Landry, near which, until the reign of Louis XIII., a market was held for the sale of foundling children at thirty sous. The scandal was abolished by the efforts of the gentle St. Vincent de Paul, Anne of Austria's confessor. Turning L. along this street we emerge on the Parvis, which we skirt to the R. along the façade of the new Hôtel Dieu, and reach the Rue de la Cité. We turn R., cross to the L. and follow the broad Rue de Lutèce to the Palais de Justice.
The Sainte Chapelle and the Palais de Justice.
Entering the Cour du Mai by the great iron grille which has replaced the old stone portal, flanked by two towers, a passage on the left leads us to the Cour de la Ste. Chapelle (p. 86). We enter by the west porch of the lower chapel. On the central pier is a restored figure of the Virgin whose original is said to have bowed her head to the famous Scotch theologian Duns Scotus, in recognition of his championship of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1304: in the decoration of the base of the column and of the embrasures of the door, the Fleur-de-Lys of St. Louis is seen alternating with the Castilian Tower of his mother, Blanche of Castile, a decorative motive repeated in the painting of the chapel.
Beautiful as are the vaultings and proportions of the lower chapel, and the decoration, copied, as in the upper chapel, from traces of the original colouring found under the whitewash, the visitor will doubtless prefer to ascend, after a cursory inspection, the narrow, winding stairway to the resplendent upper sanctuary, whose dazzling brilliancy moved an ancient writer to declare that "in the contest between light and darkness in architecture, the creator of the Ste. Chapelle in the pride of his victory built with light itself." In the apse, flooded by streams of colour falling from the windows, is the platform or tribune where, in a rich reliquary of gold, glittering with precious stones, and under a baldachin, the holy relics from Constantinople were exposed in days of old. Part of the tribune is preserved and one of the staircases by which it is ascended, that to the N., is said to date from the founder's time, and may often have been trodden by the very feet of St. Louis himself. Little else of the interior furniture has escaped destruction. The beautiful high altar, the rood loft, the choir stalls, have long disappeared. Four only of the statues of the apostles bearing the crosses of consecration are said to be originals—the fourth and fifth on each side of the nave counting from the west door; the relics, or all that escaped the political storms of the année terrible, are now at Notre Dame, and the reliquary that contained them went to feed the hungry war-chest of the revolutionary armies. But the thirteenth-century jewelled windows, as left to us by the admirable restorers of 1855, are of paramount interest. The wealth of design and amplitude of the series are truly amazing. The panels, numbering about eleven hundred, are a compendium of sacred history and a revelation of the world to come: the whole scene from the Creation to the Apocalypse is unrolled before our eyes, pictured in a transparent symphony of colour. Seven windows of the nave and four of the apse deal with Old Testament history: three at the end of the apse with the New. The eighth window of the nave (the first to the R. of entrance), dealing with the story of the Translation of the relics from Constantinople, although the most restored—nineteen only of the sixty-seven subjects are original—is perhaps the most interesting, for among the nineteen may be seen St. Louis figured by the contemporary artist: receiving the relics at Sens; assisting to carry the relics, barefoot; taking part at the exposition of the relics with his queen and his mother; receiving an embassy from the Emperor Baldwin; carrying the Byzantine cross which holds a portion of the true cross. Another of the original panels contains a representation of the Cité with the enveloping arms of the Seine. The rose window at the west end is obviously later, and dates from the fifteenth century.
In olden times the lower part of the central window of the apse was made of white glass that the people massed in the courtyard below might behold the relics as St. Louis and his successors, after exhibiting them to the privileged congregation in the chapel, turned round to show them. Against the south wall of the nave is a little oratory with a squint through which it is said Louis XI. used to venerate the relics unobserved.
We step out from the west door of the upper chapel to examine the more richly decorated upper portal. The carvings are all modern and, except such as were suggested by traces of the old work, are copied from the west front of Notre Dame and other churches. Many a solemn and many a strange scene have been enacted in this royal oratory; the strangest of all perhaps when Charles V. of France, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV., and his son Wenceslaus, king of the Romans, in the rôle of the three Holy Kings, came to venerate the relics and laid oblations before the shrine.
Before we turn away from the building we should observe on the west façade above the rose window wherein the architect has literally sported with the difficulties of construction in stone a charming design of fleurs-de-lys framed by quatrefoils along the balustrade; the central design is an R. (rex), crowned by two angels. The present spire is a fourth erection. The second, which replaced the original spire in 1383, was one of the wonders of Paris, and fell a victim to fire in 1630. A third, erected by Louis XIII., was demolished in 1791, and in 1853 Lassus, Viollet le Duc's principal colleague in the restoration of the chapel, designed the graceful flèche we see to-day.
We return to the Cour du Mai: on the R., before we ascend the great stairway, we look down on the nine steps leading from the Vestibule (now a Café Restaurant) of the Conciergerie, up which those doomed to the guillotine ascended to the fatal tumbrils awaiting them in the courtyard. We ascend to the Galerie Marchande: the stairway, rebuilt after the fire of 1776, replaced the old flight of stairs at whose feet heralds proclaimed treaties of peace and tournaments, criminals were branded, and books condemned by the Parlement, burned. Here Pantagruel loved to stand and cut the stirrup-straps of the fat councillors' mules, and see the gros suflé de conseiller fall flat when he tried to mount; and here the clercs of the Basoche planted the annual May-tree, brought from the forest of Bondy, with much playing of drums and trumpets and elaborate ceremony.
The Galerie Marchande, formerly known as the Galerie Mercière, was once a busy and fashionable bazaar, where lines of shops displayed fans, shoes, slippers and other dainty articles of feminine artillery. The further galleries were also invaded by the traders, who were only finally evicted in 1842. We turn R. and enter the Grande Salle or, as it is now known, the Salle des Pas Perdus. It, too, was once a busy mart, booksellers especially predominating, most of whom had stations there, much as we see them to-day, round the Odéon Theatre. Vérard's address was—"At the image of St. John the Evangelist, before Notre Dame de Paris, and at the first pillar in the Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice, before the chapelle where they sing the mass for Messieurs of the Parlement." Gilles Couteau's address was at "The Two Archers in the Rue de la Juiverie and at the third pillar at the Palais." Every pillar had its bookseller's shop. In 1618 the great chamber, the finest of its kind in Europe, with its rich stained glass, its double vaultings resplendent with blue and gold, was gutted by fire, and its long line of statues of the kings of France, from Pharamond to Henry IV.—the rois fainéants with pendent arms and lowered eyes, the valiant warrior kings with heads and arms erect—disappeared for ever. This was the hall where the clercs of the Basoche performed their farces, sottises and moralités, and where Victor Hugo has placed the scene of the famous performance of the moralité, composed by Pierre Gringoire,[182] so vividly described in the opening chapters of Notre Dame.
Debrosse, who built the new Salle in 1622, left a noble and harmonious Renaissance chamber, which, again restored after the fire of 1776, endured until its destruction by fire during the Commune. The present rather frigid hall was completed in 1878 by J.L. Duc, who respected the traditional form and amplitude of the older structures. Nearly opposite the monument to Malesherbes (R.) was the position of the old Pilier des Consultations, where the lawyers were wont to give gratuitous legal help to the poor. The best time to visit the Hall is in the afternoon, when the courts are sitting and when the footsteps of the lawyers and their clients are indeed lost amid the buzz of conversation as they pace up and down.
The Première Chambre to the L., in the north-west corner of the Hall, is one of the most profoundly interesting in the agglomerated mass of buildings known as the Palais de Justice. This, now somewhat reduced in size, was the old Grande Chambre, rebuilt by Louis XII. on the occasion of his marriage with Princess Mary of England, which replaced the earlier bed-chamber of St. Louis.
Fra Gioconda's sumptuous decorations of 1502, which won for it the name of the Chambre dorée, the gold used being, it is said, equal in purity to the famous Dutch golden florin, have been partially restored. Here the kings of France held their Beds of Justice; here the Fronde held its sittings, and here on 15th April, 1654, the young king Louis XIV. strode in, booted and spurred, and is said to have uttered the famous words l'État c'est moi. Here too, renamed the Salle Égalité, the dread Revolutionary Tribunal held its sittings and condemned 2742 victims; here on 14th October 1793, at half-past four in the morning, appeared Marie Antoinette, "widow of Louis Capet," before her implacable judges and heard her doom; hence the twenty-one Girondins trooped forth to their common fate; here Robespierre, St. Just, and, at length, the unwearied minister of death, Fouquier-Tinville himself, the revolutionary public prosecutor, heard their condemnation. We leave by the Cour du Mai and note, to our L., the restored clock tower, replacing the most ancient and famous clock of Paris. It was renewed by Germain Pilon in 1588 and restored in 1685. Demolished during the Revolution, the face and decoration were again renewed in 1852. The silvery-toned bell that hung here, called the tocsin, cast in 1371 and known as the cloche d'argent, was accused, together with the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, before the Commune on 21st August 1792, of having given the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and its immediate destruction was ordered. We turn along the picturesque river façade, and between its two mediæval towers, de César and d'Argent, enter the Conciergerie.[183] The condemned cell of Marie Antoinette (transformed into a chapel) and the cell of Robespierre are shown, together with the chapel where the Girondins passed their last night and where their legendary banquet is famed to have taken place. The so-called Cuisine de St. Louis, a remain of the old Gothic palace of Philip le Bel, is no longer shown. The third tower on the river façade, which we pass on our way westward, has been wholly rebuilt. In the original tower was the judicial torture-chamber (an adjunct of every court of justice in olden times), used to wrest confessions from prisoners and evidence from unwilling witnesses, hence its name of Tour Bon Bec or Bavarde. The fine western façade and the Salle des Pas Perdus of the Cour d'Assises, looking on the Place Dauphine, were completed in 1868.
Few Law Courts in Europe have so venerable a history as the Palais de Justice. From the times when the Roman prætor set up his court, more than two thousand years ago, to the present day, a temple of Law and Justice has ever stood on this spot.
SECTION II
St. Julien le Pauvre—St. Sévérin—The Quartier Latin
As we fare S. from the W. end of the Parvis of Notre Dame and cross the Petit Pont, we behold the old Roman Road, now Rue St. Jacques, rising straight before us and on the annexe of the Hôtel Dieu,[184] to the L. of the Place du Petit Pont find inscribed their names (p. 46), who nearly twelve centuries ago dared: —
"For that sweet motherland which gave them birth,
Nobly to do, nobly to die."