Nothing is spared to provide the patients with salutary occupations, agreeable pastimes, and innocent amusements. They are encouraged to study music, singing, and drawing, and for those who have no artistic tastes, cards, draughts, dominoes, billiards, and bowls are provided. Among the outdoor recreations walks in the most beautiful parts of the wood of Vincennes, carriage excursions and picnics may be mentioned. The Thursday and Sunday concerts form, however, the great delight of the place. These are not given by the director simply as entertainments. They are prescribed by the regulations, and have formed part of the institutions of the House since 1811. In the spacious hall, which serves at once as ball-room and concert-room, assemble upwards of a hundred convalescents of both sexes. In the dress and demeanour of those present there is nothing remarkable, except that they are more quietly attired, and generally better behaved than in fashionable society. The billiard-room is much frequented, and the general aspect of the card-room reminds Dr. Linas of one of the aristocratic Paris clubs.

It should have been mentioned that at the periodical concerts the music is contributed by the patients, some of whom are singers, others violinists or pianists. The officials of the establishment join the inmates either as performers or among the audience. In like manner the patients and attendants act together in the comedies and dramas which are sometimes represented.

Charenton, though placed under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior, has its own particular administration, in which a clerk may in due time, after successive promotions, rise to be a functionary of almost the first rank. No one voluntarily quits the establishment; and the servants, like the officials, remain there until they are compelled by old age to resign. Charenton, like other madhouses, has had celebrities among its inmates, including the Marquis de Sade, who, after sending one of his infamous books to Napoleon, was at once ordered to be arrested and placed in a lunatic asylum; the same punishment which, at a later date, was inflicted by the Emperor Nicholas on a writer, blameless in his morality, who had attacked the existing order of things in Russia.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE RIVER BIÈVRE AND THE MANUFACTORY OF THE GOBELINS.

The water of the Bièvre, while helping the development of Gobelin dyes, is injured by them. Like all the streams which flow past dye works, the Bièvre is perpetually stained; and in the present day there are many scientific men who venture to affirm that the brilliant colours of the Gobelin tapestry are in no way due to water of any kind, but to artistic secrets belonging to the Gobelin brothers, and handed down by them to their descendants or successors.{226}

Under the reign of Louis XIV. the Gobelins was a sort of school of furniture, in which not only tapestry but cabinet work of every kind was cultivated. “Here,” writes a chronicler of the time, “two hundred and fifty master weavers produced the richest tapestries, after the works of our best painters. The school was extended in order to include sculptors in metal and goldsmiths.”

A passion for ornamentation now took possession at once of the Court and of Paris society generally; and the candelabra and the lamps produced at the Gobelins were worthy of any palace. Most of the works produced at the Gobelins, to whatever category they belonged, were intended as presents to members of royal families and other persons of the very first distinction. Among the painters attached to the Gobelins manufactory may, in the first place, be mentioned the celebrated Lebrun in the reign of Louis XIV., and under the government of Colbert. “And as a matter of fact,” says an historian, “Lebrun gave to the Gobelins a splendour which was steadily maintained.”

He painted for the manufactory, simply that they might be reproduced in wool, some of his greatest pictures, including “The Battles of Alexander,” “The History of Louis XIV.,” “The Twelve Months of the Year,” “The Story of Moses,” etc. etc. Van der Meulen, Yvart, Boëls, and others may be mentioned among the painters attached permanently to the establishment.

When, on the death of Lebrun, Mignard succeeded him as Director of the Gobelins, an architect, La Chapelle-Bessé, was appointed architect and builder. Under the joint direction of painter and architect a school of drawing was created at the Gobelins with Toby, Coysevox, and Sebastien Leclerc as professors.

Unfortunately the reverses sustained by Louis XIV. during the last year of his reign led to the discharge of the best workmen at the Gobelins, whom it was thought impossible any longer to pay; and from this time the establishment has occupied itself only with the production of tapestry, to the neglect of medals, cameos, cabinet work, and artistic furniture generally.

Specimens of the Gobelin tapestry were often given away as presents either to crowned heads or to celebrities of less eminence whom the king wished to honour with some mark of distinction. Thus there may still be seen at Windsor Castle the tapestries of “Esther” and of “Jason and Medea,” given to the King of England by Louis XIV. The King of Siam, the Emperor of Russia, the Duke of Lorraine, and the King of Prussia{227} received similar presents. Occasionally, too, the Gobelins executed orders for men of wealth and of high position; and in every country in Europe so rare a work of art as a Gobelin tapestry gave a character to the furniture of a room, indeed of a whole house.

The Revolution was but little favourable to the Gobelin manufactory. Writing on the subject in 1790, Marat said: “No one has any idea abroad of establishments maintained at the expense of the State in connection with fine arts or rather manufactures: the honour of this invention was reserved for France. Such are, among others, the manufactories of Sèvres and of the Gobelins. The latter costs annually 100,000 francs; it is difficult to say why, unless it be to enrich intriguers and rogues.”

In spite of Marat’s report the Gobelin manufactory was not interfered with; not at least in theory. The Government subvention was not formally withdrawn, but it ceased to be paid. The Consulate, seeing how entirely the place was neglected, appointed a director at a fixed salary, and took the place generally under its charge. The Empire regarded the Gobelins as a state institution, and paid largely towards its support. It enjoyed also the full patronage of the Bourbons after the Restoration. The{228} government of Louis Philippe ordered, at great cost, a whole series of tapestries representing the royal palaces and residences of France, which were intended for the decoration of these very mansions. At the same time, continuing ancient traditions, the king ordered a number of tapestries for presentation to foreign potentates. “Peter the Great in the Tempest,” after Steuben’s picture, admirably rendered in wool, was presented to the Tsar; the “Massacre of the Mamelukes,” after Horace Vernet, to the Queen of England.

The different revolutions which have taken place in France have never for any length of time affected the position of the Gobelins, which successive governments have learnt to regard as one of the glories of France. For the beautiful, brilliant colours in use during the present century the establishment has been indebted to the famous chemist and centenarian, M. Chevreuil.

Among the masterpieces executed at the Gobelins may be mentioned the portrait of Louis XIV., after Rigaud, of which the original may be seen in the Louvre; “The Assumption” of Titian, an immense composition, some thirty feet high; and the reproduction in wool of a number of delicate, graceful pictures by Boucher, etc. etc. Since 1848 a school has been established at the Gobelins, where the art of tapestry is systematically studied by pupils and apprentices.

Although not connected in any direct manner with the Gobelins, the manufactory of Sèvres is associated with it as an establishment for art work. It enjoys a similar reputation for the excellence of its products, and is supported, like the Gobelins, by grants from the State, and by state patronage of every kind. At St. Cloud in 1695 a manufactory of pottery was started by the brothers Chicanneau, who took for their trade-mark a sun, doubtless by way of flattery to Louis XIV., the Sun King—“Le Roi Soleil.” The factory was visited in 1700 by the Duchess of Burgundy, on whose recommendation it obtained special privileges in 1702. Twenty years later Henri Trou, Chicanneau’s son-in-law, and his brother Gabriel, took the direction of the establishment, which at this time prided itself on its imitations of China porcelain. In 1735 the brothers Dubois, one a painter, the other a{229} sculptor, quitted the establishment of St. Cloud, where they had hitherto been employed, and founded a rival establishment at Chantilly, under the patronage of the Prince de Condé. The Dubois brothers afterwards moved to Vincennes; and it was not until 1756 that general headquarters for the porcelain work of Paris were fixed at Sèvres. The establishment belonged to a body of shareholders. But four years after the company was started the king bought up all the shares, thus becoming not only the patron but the proprietor of the Sèvres manufactory. At once managing director and monarch, Louis XIV. was able to forbid competition of every kind, and under the severest penalties. To attempt to make porcelain elsewhere than at Sèvres{230} was not only a criminal offence, but almost an offence of State.

Admirable as were the results obtained, the pieces of porcelain turned out at Sèvres were seldom, if ever, quite perfect; and it was only the cups, vases, plates and dishes in which there was some perhaps almost imperceptible flaw that were offered for sale to the general public. When perfection had been attained the fortunate work was reserved for the royal palaces or for presentation to some foreign potentate. In 1761 a native of Strasburg, which for about a century had belonged to France, sold to the Sèvres manufactory the secret of a so-called “hard paste” porcelain which he had obtained from a relative, director of some porcelain works in the neighbouring Palatinate.

Like the Gobelins, the manufactory of Sèvres was not interfered with by the Revolution. From 1800 to 1847 it remained continuously under the direction of Brongniart, who introduced many improvements in the manufacture of porcelain, though he is thought to have paid more attention scientifically to the matter than artistically to the form of his products. Perfectly-made paste, but bad designs.

The Sèvres porcelain of the period of the First Empire was remarkable for the stiffness and sham-academical style of the figures. From this epoch dates the custom of reproducing on cups and saucers, vases and plates, copies of great historical pictures and other unsuitable works. The landscapes, the pastoral pieces of Watteau and of Boucher, were far more appropriate.

Under the Second Empire the Sèvres manufactory cost the State 480,000 francs a year, and sold porcelain to the general public to the amount of 80,000 francs. There was a clear loss, then, to the establishment of 400,000 francs, or £16,000 a year. After the fall of the Empire an attempt was made by M. Charles Garnier, the architect of the new opera, and M. Jules Simon, at that time Minister of Public Instruction, to place the Sèvres manufactory on a more satisfactory footing. A commission was appointed with well-known artists, art-critics, and manufacturers among its members, to consider what was to be done; and in the first place M. Duc, the celebrated architect, was requested to draw up a report on the subject.

M. Duc set forth that the fabrication of the material left nothing to be desired, and that the artists who furnished designs for the porcelain were unequalled. But there were not enough of them, and M. Duc’s main proposal was that a school should be established in connection with the Sèvres manufactory, precisely what had been proposed and adopted under Louis Philippe’s reign in connection with the Gobelins. The school of Sèvres was established in conformity with M. Duc’s recommendation, and at the same time a “Sèvres prize” of the value of 2,000 francs was instituted as an annual recompense to the author of the most artistic design for pottery work.{231}

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE PALAIS BOURBON.

The constitution of the year 3 of the Republic (1792) divided the legislative power into two assemblies, the Council of the Five Hundred and the Council of the Elders. To the former belonged the initiative, to the latter the final decision.{232}

Dissatisfied with the working of these two bodies, Bonaparte introduced a parliamentary reform of the most remarkable kind. According to his constitution of the year 1797, the Legislative Body was to be divided into two assemblies, one of which was to discuss the laws submitted to it by the Government, the other to accept the decisions in the upper chamber without debate and simply by way of registration. After the fall of Napoleon the restored monarchy, obliged by the circumstances of the time to tolerate the existence of a parliament, formed the Chamber of Representatives, which, under the government of Louis Philippe, was succeeded by the Chamber of Deputies, destined to play an important part in the political history of the country. Under the Second Empire the governmental forms of the First Empire were as much as possible introduced. The Legislative Body and the Senate came now once more into existence, the former being empowered to discuss the laws proposed by the Government, the latter to prevent their promulgation should they, under the influence of the debates, have taken a form which the Government might consider objectionable. Under the Third Republic the French chambers have resumed something of the importance they possessed under Louis Philippe. Their powers, indeed, have been increased, though they contain no such distinguished men as those which gave character and brilliancy to the Chamber of Deputies between the years 1830 and 1848.

The assembly of the States-General held at Versailles in May, 1789, preceded by three months the taking of the Bastille; and it was in this assembly that the task-work of the peasants—their serfdom, that is to say—was abolished; that obnoxious feudal rights of various kinds were suppressed; and that religious liberty, individual liberty, liberty of the press, and general equality before the law were proclaimed.

The Bastille was taken while the assembly was in full deliberation, and this event gave to its discussions and decisions a more liberal, more revolutionary turn than ever.

The assembly of the States-General followed{233} the king to Paris, and soon afterwards installed itself in the riding-school of the Tuileries. After the flight of Louis XVI. (June 21, 1791) it took possession of the executive power, and held it with a firm hand until the acceptance of the constitution by the king on the 14th of September. On the 30th of the same month it dispersed, to be replaced by the Legislative Assembly, to which, in virtue of a resolution proposed by Robespierre, no member of the previous assembly could belong. The number of laws, acts, and decrees passed by the assembly afterwards to be known as the Constituent amounted to not less than 3,250.

The Legislative Assembly of 1791, in which, as just mentioned, no member of the famous Constituent Assembly could sit, began by swearing allegiance to the constitution just proclaimed. A number of émigrés having assembled on the frontier, it confiscated their property, and took proceedings against the king’s brothers, the chiefs of the fugitive royalists now threatening return. It replied to the coalition against France by a declaration of war, called the country to arms, and decreed the formation of a camp of 20,000 men beneath the walls of Paris. The king making objection to these vigorous measures, the Assembly declared the monarchy at an end, and on the 10th of August it was abolished, or rather “suspended,” by law.

On the 10th of August, 1792, the Legislative Assembly, in presence of Louis XVI., decreed the “provisional suspension of the chief of the executive power,” and the convocation of a national convention—that is to say an extraordinary assembly invested by the people with full powers for reconstituting the government of the country. The members of the new legislative{234} body were to be chosen by double election. Every Frenchman who was of age, and possessed not a house but a “domicile,” had a right to vote for an elector; and the electors thus chosen elected in their turn the members of the new assembly. There was one elector to every hundred citizens; and at the primary elections the merits of the candidates for electoral honours were freely discussed.

The procedure of the Convention was almost identical with that of the Constituent and Legislative Assembly. Many readers will be surprised to hear that among the 749 deputies forming the National Convention there were sixteen bishops, eight episcopal grand vicars, eighteen priests, and seven Protestant ministers; besides one prince of the blood (the Duke of Orleans, nicknamed Philippe Égalité), and a number of barristers and lawyers, officers of the king’s army, now disbanded; former members of the Paris Parliament, nobles, landed proprietors, doctors, men of science, men of letters, several poets, painters, and actors; a few merchants and manufacturers, and only one workman, a wool-carder named Armonville. The Convention, though a Revolutionary assembly, can scarcely be said to have been a democratic one. On the 20th of September the new representatives of the people held a preparatory sitting in the Hall of the Hundred Swiss at the Tuileries. On the 21st the Convention reassembled at the Tuileries, and notified its official existence to the Legislative Assembly, which at once deposited its powers in the hands of the new representatives of the people, who thereupon established themselves in the Riding School. The Convention did not take possession of the Tuileries until eight months afterwards, May 10th, 1793, the unfortunate king having meanwhile, been sentenced to death and (Jan. 21) executed.

When the Convention began its sittings the enemy’s outposts were only seventy-five miles from Paris, and the German powers, who had invaded France, were preparing to take a terrible vengeance on the country which, if it had not actually dethroned, had formally “suspended” the power of its king.

“Kings” exclaimed the Bishop of Blois in an excited debate, “are in the moral order what monsters are in the physical”; and in the midst of general acclamation the Assembly adopted unanimously this declaration:

“Royalty is abolished in France.”

The Girondists, who for some time had the upper hand in the Convention, wished to spare the king, and some of them proposed to leave the decision of his fate to the people at large; confident, no doubt, that the verdict of the nation would be, if not altogether favourable, at least not fatal to the unhappy monarch. The Girondists, however, could not get their views adopted by the Assembly generally; and in the end many of them voted for the king’s death.

The king having been tried and found guilty by the Assembly, each member was called upon to declare in writing what sentence the convicted monarch deserved. Some were for keeping him in prison until peace was made with the invading powers, and then sending him into exile on condition of his never attempting to return. The greater number, however, of the deputies were in favour of death. One, more brutal than the others, is said to have recorded his view as to the sentence that should be passed in these cynical words: “La mort sans phrase.” M. Edouard Fournier has, however, well explained, in his admirable little volume, “Les Mots Historiques,” that whereas in most cases the deputy signing the register explained, in one or more phrases, why he was in favour of a particular sentence, the sentence in this particular case was given without one word of explanation, “sans phrase” in short, as the registrar put it.

The day of the king’s sentence, one of the deputies, Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, who had voted for death, was assassinated just after he had left the Assembly, by a former member of the Body-guard named Pàris. The Convention ordered that he should receive the honours of the Pantheon, and assisted in a body at his funeral. This incident caused a deep sensation, deeper, it is said, even than the execution of the king, which took place on the 21st of January, 1793. The deepest indignation, too, was excited by the news that among those who had voted for the king’s death was his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, the so-called Philippe Égalité, whose son, Louis Philippe, was thirty-seven years afterwards to ascend the French throne. Writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes a few years after the latter event, Châteaubriand reproached the reigning king in plain terms with being the son of a regicide. Arguing that since the execution of Louis XVI., and as a punishment for that crime, it had become impossible to establish monarchy in France, he added:—

“Napoleon saw the diadem fall from his brow in spite of his victories; Charles X., in spite of{235} his piety. To discredit the Crown finally in the eyes of the nations, it has been permitted to the son of the regicide to lie for one moment in the bloodstained bed of the murdered man.” That Louis Philippe suffered this outburst to be published unchallenged has been regarded as a proof of his extreme tolerance in press matters. Probably, however, he thought it prudent not to invite general attention to words which, by a large portion of his subjects, would have been accepted as justifiable.

It has been said by the defenders of the “regicide” that Philippe Égalité did his best not to be present at the sitting of the Convention when sentence had to be passed on the unfortunate king; but that he was threatened by his friends of the Left with assassination unless he voted with them for the “death of the tyrant.” However that may be, he took his seat among the judges by whom the fate of his royal kinsman was to be decided, and, when it became his turn to deliver his opinion, did so in the following words: “Occupied solely with my duty, convinced that all those who have attacked, or might afterwards attack, the sovereignty of the people deserve death, I pronounce the death of Louis.”

Philippe Égalité had looked for general approval, and had voted in fear of death—which awaited him all the same, and came to him in the very form in which a few months before it had been inflicted on the unhappy Louis. When his vote was made known cries of indignation from all sides warned him that he had transgressed one of the great moral laws which are observed even by men who violate all others. Then it was that a former soldier of the King’s Body-guard, hearing of Philippe Égalité’s unnatural offence, resolved to kill him, but not being able to find him, killed another less guilty “regicide” in his place.

Very different was the feeling excited by the conduct of Philippe Égalité in the breast of the king himself. “I don’t know by what chance,” says the Abbé Edgeworth in his “Relation sur les Derniers Momens du Roi,” “the conversation fell upon Philippe. The king seemed to be well acquainted with his intrigues and with the horrid part he had taken at the Convention. But he spoke of him without any bitterness, and with pity rather than with anger. ‘What have I done to my cousin,’ he exclaimed, ‘that he should so persecute me? What object could he have? Oh, he is more to be pitied than I am. My lot is melancholy, no doubt, but his is much more so.’”

Meanwhile the faction of the Assembly which in the beginning of September, 1792, had, by its excited declamation and denunciation, brought about the massacre of the prisoners, was constantly attempting, in combination with other factions, to arrest some of the most influential members of the majority, accuse them of treason, and bring them before the Revolutionary Tribunal. On the 2nd of June, 1793, they struck their first blow; and on the 3rd of October in the same year they denounced forty-four deputies, ordered the arrest of seventy-one, and compelled many more to take to flight and seek safety in concealment. The majority was thus diminished by 150 members: the minority in fact became the majority.

Then one of the authors of these measures, Robespierre, hoping to monopolise whatever fruits they might bear, and finding no further obstacle to his ambition, became dictator in fact, bent everything beneath his will, and reigned by terror. During fourteen months he subjected the French to a ferocious tyranny. At Paris alone thirty, forty, sixty heads fell daily. At length, on the 27th of July, 1794, this monster, together with his chief accomplices, paid his reckoning, and France was delivered from an intolerable yoke. To the general desolation, grief, and alarm now succeeded the liveliest joy. The doors of many prisons were thrown open; the instrument of death ceased to ply its blade.

The Convention, free and tranquil, despite the difficulties it experienced from foreign factions, was now to pursue its way and to give France a constitution. On the 26th of October, 1795, it terminated its session.

The Conventional Assembly, at war with all the States of Europe, at war even with the French inhabitants of some of the western provinces, surrounded by distractions and dangers to which some of its own members fell victims, did not omit to encourage the arts and sciences, particularly those of practical utility, nor to found public institutions of the highest importance. The development it gave to the national schools and hospitals, to mention these alone, has already been touched upon in previous chapters. A report drawn up in the third year of the Republic by the savant Foucroy, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, on the “Arts which had served for the defence of the Republic,” contains some interesting details. Within nine months, it was boasted, 12,000,000 pounds of saltpetre had been manufactured and{236} stored in the magazines of the Republic, whereas, previously, the merest fraction of that quantity had been yearly produced.

A method had been introduced, moreover, for manufacturing gunpowder in a few hours with machines of the greatest simplicity. Hitherto France had been dependent on the neighbouring nations for the manufacture of steel. England and Germany had been accustomed to furnish her with this metal at a charge of about 4,000,000 francs a year. Now several factories rose in places where the production of steel had been hitherto unknown.

During the same period many improvements were introduced in the manufacture of muskets; the number of cannon foundries was greatly increased, a species of balloon was used as a war vehicle; and, to pass from war to peace, weights and measures were rendered uniform.

The system of national education with nominal charges (averaging ten francs a month), at the gymnasiums, with free lectures by the best professors at the Sorbonne and the College of France, is due to the Convention. So, too, is the famous Conservatoire de Musique, with its gratuitous teaching, which has had the effect of turning France from an unmusical into an eminently musical nation. For an interesting and valuable account of the constructive measures adopted by the French Republic, which is usually credited with measures of destruction alone, the reader is referred to Mr. Morse Stephens’s excellent “History of the French Revolution.”

Having been endowed by the Republic with a legislative body, France was never afterwards without one, though its importance varied according to the form and character of the Government. From the Riding School of the Tuileries the Assembly moved to the Tuileries itself, and governing the country as the Convention really did, it had the right, perhaps, to establish itself in the palace of the French kings. Napoleon, however, wanted the Tuileries for himself; and his Legislative Body now held its unimportant discussions in the Palais Bourbon; which remained the home of the French Parliament, under various names, until in 1871 the seat of government was changed from Paris to Versailles.

CHAPTER XXXII.

SOME HISTORICAL RESIDENCES.

The Palace of the Legion of Honour, one of the most beautiful buildings on the quay, was erected in 1786 by the architect Rousseau for Prince Frederic John Otho von Salm Kirburg, husband of Jeanne Françoise Fidèle Antoinette de Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The prince was well connected, for, husband of a Hohenzollern, he was brother-in-law of the Duc de Thouars and of the Prince de Croy. He sat as deputy for Lorraine in the Constituent Assembly, commanded a battalion of the National Guard of Paris, was condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and guillotined on the 23rd of July, 1794, four days before Robespierre, and in the same batch with the Prince de Montbazon-Rohan,{237} M. de Beauharnais, and M. Gouy d’Arcy. He was brought to the scaffold under the name, negligently given to him by the Moniteur, of “H. Desalm-Kirbourg, Prince of Germany.”

The former palace of the princes of Salm has had almost as eventful a history as its first owners. It was put into a lottery, and won by a hairdresser’s assistant, who sold it to a man named Liertaud, who used to call himself the Marquis de Boisregard, until he was arrested for forgery, and passed from the Hôtel de Salm to the galleys of Toulon. The house was inhabited for a time, under the Directory, by Mme. de Stael, who made it the scene of those political assemblies which were destined to get her into trouble, and which, under the Empire, made it necessary for her to leave Paris and live abroad.

At last the Government bought the Hôtel de Salm, in 1803, and caused it to be arranged as the Palace of the Legion of Honour. Burnt and pillaged by the Commune, it was rebuilt on the original plan by a voluntary subscription, to which, on the invitation of the Grand Chancellor, General Vinoy, the members of the Legion of Honour contributed.

At the corner of the Quai d’Orsay, just where the Boulevard St.-Germain terminates, is the Cercle Agricole, or Agricultural Club, composed almost exclusively of landed proprietors, and one of the best clubs in every respect that Paris possesses. The “Potato Club” it is humorously called by those who have no sympathy with agricultural pursuits, and who hold with a cert writer that “cultivators of wit have generally no land, and cultivators of land generally no wit.”

There are several Government offices in this neighbourhood: the Ministries of Agriculture, of Public Works, and of War.

The Ministry of War occupies a sort of island comprised between the Rue St.-Dominic, the Rue de Solferino, and the Rue de Bourgogne, with its principal entrance on the Boulevard St.-Germain, No. 231. The Dowager Princess of Conti inhabited the mansion until 1775, the year of her death. The next occupant was the Duc de Richelieu, who was succeeded by Loménic de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, and at the same time Minister of War in the year 1786, and by his brother, the Comte de Brienne, in 1789. Without being designated “Ministry of War,” the house seemed destined to be occupied by a succession of War Ministers. At last, however, it{238} became national property, and from 1802 to 1804 it was inhabited by Lucien Bonaparte. After the proclamation of the Empire, Napoleon gave it to Mme. Laetitia Bonaparte; and it was not until the Restoration that the Hôtel de Brienne became finally the official residence of the Minister of War.

Close by, on the Boulevard St.-Germain, formerly Rue St.-Dominic, is installed the Central Depôt of Artillery. It occupies the whole of the ancient cloister of the monastery of the Reformed Dominicans, whose church is dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas. To the right of the church portal, the little Rue St.-Thomas Aquinas conducts the visitor to a space surrounded by symmetrical buildings. He is now in the heart of the ancient convent. The large door to the right is that of the historical cloister, where the Museum of Artillery found a home until it was transferred to the Hotel des Invalides. The religious establishment, of which nothing but the church survives, was the convent of the general noviciate of the reformed Dominicans or Jacobins, founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1631. The construction of the church did not commence till 1638. The architect was Pierre Bullet, and the foundation stone was laid by the Duchess de Luynes. It was not until nearly the middle of the next century—1740—that the edifice was completed. The interior is richly adorned with paintings from the brush of Blondel, Picot, Guillemot, Lemoyne, Lagrenée, Michel Vanloo, and Ary Scheffer. The church of St.-Thomas Aquinas is the most aristocratic in Paris, and a wedding within its walls possesses enormous fascination for the curious sightseer.

The Rue de Grenelle, which runs parallel to the old Rue St.-Dominique, is remarkable for a sculptural masterpiece—the fountain designed by Edmé Bouchardon, who himself executed the whole of the figures and bas-reliefs. The central figure, representing the town of Paris, and the two figures to right and left of it, symbolising the Seine and the Marne, are exquisite. Between the columns and beneath the pediment is a long Latin inscription, addressed by the Provost of the merchants of Paris to the glory of Louis XV., “the father and delight of his people, who, without shedding blood, has extended the frontiers of France.”

On the left, from No. 73 to No. 85, there is a whole series of remarkable houses, each associated with some person of distinction. At No. 73 died, in 1856, Viscount d’Arlincourt, once a popular novelist, now absolutely forgotten. His family was of ancient origin, and his father, a Farmer General, was guillotined during the Reign of Terror. Young D’Arlincourt became one of Napoleon’s chamberlains, and afterwards held some post in connection with the Council of{239} State. At the Restoration he wished to attach himself to the service of the Court, but he was not successful, and returning to his castle in Normandy, gave himself up entirely to literature, in which, under the Empire, he gained some reputation. In the year 1825 he gave an entertainment in honour of the Duchess of Berry, which became celebrated, and was made the subject of elaborate descriptions in the newspapers. Running through the viscount’s estate was a winding stream, on which a bark had been prepared for the reception of the duchess, which was attended by the ladies of the neighbourhood costumed as shepherdesses. The young people of the surrounding villages, in arcadian attire, towed the boat with chains of flowers towards a Greek temple, where ballads of a chivalric kind were sung in praise of the honoured guests. White flags embroidered with fleurs de lys were waved in the air; and in the evening, after a sumptuous banquet, there were illuminations and a grand ballet. More than a thousand persons took part in these operatic scenes, which were marked by the same theatrical taste that distinguishes the viscount’s romances. He had begun, under the Empire, an epic poem, called “The Caroleid,” on the subject of Charlemagne, in which, beneath the features of Carolus Magnus, the physiognomy of Napoleon could be recognised. These passages were, however, marked out when, under the Restoration, the viscount published the complete work. The most successful of all M. d’Arlincourt’s books was “Le Solitaire,” which when it first appeared went through a number of editions, and was translated into many languages. It may be added that Bellini’s last opera, I Puritani, was based on a novel by M. d’Arlincourt, called “Cavaliers and Roundheads.”

At No. 75 Talleyrand resided as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Directory. Before entering political life, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord studied theology and took holy orders. His family would have placed him in the army, but for an accident of rather a frightful kind, which happened to him in his childhood. His nurse had put him down in a field, while she walked away in conversation with her lover, and during her absence the child under her care was attacked by a pig, which bit away part of one of the calves and of one of the feet of the future diplomatist. At the age of twenty-one young Talleyrand was named Abbé of St.-Denis in the diocese of Rheims. He led the dissipated life common among the young abbés of his day; but he cultivated the society of intellectual men, and was on friendly terms with Mirabeau, Buffon, and Voltaire. In 1780 he was appointed Agent-General of the French clergy: a lucrative post which placed him in relations with the Minister, M. de Calonne, from whom he acquired ideas on the subject of finance which enabled him to repair his shattered fortune. Leading at the same time a life of pleasure and of affairs, Talleyrand did not remain insensible to the changes that were taking place around him; and in a letter addressed to his friend, Choiseul Gouffier, ambassador at Constantinople, he showed himself an intelligent advocate of political reform. A separate administration for the provinces—provincial self-government, in fact—was one of the remedies he proposed. He declared war against all privileges, and ended his letter by observing that “at last the people must count for something.” In 1788, the year before the Revolution, Talleyrand was made Bishop of Autun, with an income of 80,000 francs. A member of the Assembly of Notables in the month of November in this year, he showed himself one of the warmest advocates of the new ideas, and became at this time the friend of Necker. The clergy of his diocese sent Talleyrand as deputy to the States-General of 1789. Here he ranged himself on the popular side, and voted for the union of the two privileged orders (nobility and clergy) with the Tiers États. He voted, too, for the suppression of tithes, and for the constitution of an executive with responsible ministers.

At the great Federation Festival in the Champs de Mars, it was Talleyrand who celebrated mass on the altar of the country, and a few months afterwards he gave up the bishopric of Autun. For supporting the civil constitution of the clergy he drew upon himself a decree of excommunication. In 1791 Talleyrand undertook his first diplomatic mission, being sent to London in order, if possible, to obtain a declaration of neutrality from England. In this he was unsuccessful. The atmosphere of London, however, suited him better than that of Paris, and Talleyrand kept away from France until after the Reign of Terror. From England he had passed to the United States. But on the formation of the Directory he thought the time had come for him to go back to France; and though his name had been placed on the list of émigrés, he had no trouble in obtaining permission to return. He now established friendly relations with Barras, with Chénier, and with Mme. de{240} Stael, and, in spite of some opposition from the austere Carnot, who disliked Talleyrand’s levity, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, or “director of external relations.” He at once recognised the genius of the young chief who, as General Bonaparte, had already made himself a great name; and Talleyrand’s appointment as Foreign Minister was renewed when Napoleon became First Consul. He foresaw the establishment of the Empire, and encouraged Napoleon in that direction. He had a serious misunderstanding with the emperor in regard to the execution of the Duke d’Enghien, which Talleyrand strongly condemned, though, according to Napoleon, it was he who first suggested it.