The Boulevards of Paris
Paris, August 18.
The boulevards of Paris are one of the wonders of the world. Strictly speaking there are a number of broad avenues which are called boulevards, but usually “the boulevards” is a phrase which means the one long wide boulevard extending for several miles, from near the Place de la Concorde to the Place de la Bastille, built in a semi-circle on the north of the old city and on the fortifications which defended the city in the Middle Ages. Of course later walls and fortifications were built farther out, and the “grand boulevards” are through the heart of the present Paris. The boulevard—for it is one continuous highway—changes its name every few blocks, a fact that is characteristically French and somewhat confusing to the stranger. The beginning is a short distance from the Place de la Concorde at the church of the Madeleine, the fashionable church of Paris. The building is in the style of a Roman temple, and has animposing colonnade of Corinthian columns. The interior decorations are very good, and include a large fresco above the altar in which Christ, Napoleon and Pope Pius the Seventh are classified more or less together. The boulevard is called The Madeleine for about 200 yards, when the name changes to the Capucines and sticks for a couple of blocks until the grand opera house is reached. Along this short stretch are some of the wildest music halls and the greatest cafés of the world. The greatest is the Café de la Paix, where everybody who visits Paris goes for at least one drink of ginger ale or cold coffee.
The Opera is the largest theatre in the world, covering about three acres. The site alone cost $2,000,000 and the building over $7,000,000. The materials are marble and costly stone, and there are statues of Poetry, Music, Drama, Dance, with other figures, medallions and allegorical statuary until your head swims. The front of the roof is sculptured with gilded masks and with collossal groups representing Music and Poetry attended by the Muses and Goddesses of Fame. Apollo with a golden lyre and two Pegasusesoccupy the dome. The interior has a grand staircase of marble with a rail of onyx, and the rest of the interior is be-columned and be-frescoed to match. It is the most beautiful building in Paris, and could hardly be surpassed if the attempt were made regardless of expense. I would not try a detailed description, for it would not convey the real effect, best described by the word gorgeous.
From the Opera a street runs southerly called the Avenue de l’Opera, the great shopping street of Paris, and at another angle goes the Street de la Paix, where the most expensive jewelry stores and millinery establishments are located. The name of this street is properly pronounced de la Pay.
But the Boulevard continues, no longer the Capucines, but the Italiens. Some years ago this was the great shopping-place, and it is not bad now. As the ladies promenade past the Opera and into the Italiens, the skirts unconsciously go a little higher. The boulevard proceeds, the next section being called the Montmartre. This part interested me a great deal. On the rue Montmartre, a side street to the right, is the Y. M. C. A., and onMt. Montmartre, a little to the left, is the Moulin Rouge.
The Y. M. C. A. in Paris is one of the best things in the city, but it does not get much newspaper notoriety. It is an English-speaking organization, with convenient quarters, parlor, reception, billiard, smoking-and dining-rooms. It is one place in Paris where there is no café or bar, and it is a great help to young men from America who are in this city by reason of their business or to study or to visit the historic places. A great many use the Y. M. C. A. facilities, and a membership card from Hutchinson or any other association in the world is good for these privileges in the heart of Paris. I would recommend to every American that when he goes to Paris he make his headquarters at the Y. M. C. A., but I am not going to count on many of them doing it. The Paris atmosphere has the same effect on a Y. M. C. A. that a nice, warm August sun has on a cake of ice left on the sidewalk in Hutchinson. I am not telling what I would like to, but I setting down the facts as they appear to me. The man who goes to Paris and sticks to the Y. M. C. A. as hisloafing-place should have his halo ordered at once. He has a cinch.
In the other direction, on Mt. Montmartre, is the Moulin Rouge. I do not recommend it to nervous men, but it is one of the sights of this city. When I was a boy I read somewhere about a “gilded palace of sin,” and now I know what that means. The cowboys out west used to have what they called “free-and-easies,” but the Moulin Rouge is not free. I shut my eyes as the dancers loped by until a friend said the next dance would be a quadrille. I once danced quadrilles myself, and I thought there would be a breathing-place. The young people arranged themselves as if they were going to dance a Virginia Reel, and I could feel consciousness returning. The music struck up and the quadrille began. At first it went as smooth as if it were at the Country Club. Then each young lady passed the toe of her right foot over the head of her partner. Then she turned and pointed the toe of her left foot at the chandelier which hung from the ceiling. And then came the most wonderful display of things that are put in the storewindows at home and marked “white goods sale,” or “lingerie.”
THE PLAIN QUADRILLE AT THE MOULIN ROUGE
THE PLAIN QUADRILLE AT THE MOULIN ROUGE
It was dreadfully embarrassing to me, as it must have been to any other Kansas man present, but I braced myself, for I knew the worst was yet to come. I felt like getting right up on my chair and saying, “Ladies, there are gentlemen present.” But I didn’t, and I have been glad ever since, for they might not have understood English and thought I wanted a partner for the next quadrille.
Afterwards the proceedings became almost immodest.
So I do not recommend the Moulin Rouge, though I fear that this failure on my part will not detract from the rush of strangers who are visiting in Paris and who might go to the Y. M. C. A. But I will say in passing that it is no place for a man unless his wife is with him, and it is somewhat distracting even then.
Returning to the boulevard. It changes its name to the Poissoniere, and on this part is the office of theMatin, the great newspaper, which has 750,000 circulation, prints only sixpages, and pretends not to care for advertising. TheMatindiffers from most Parisian newspapers in really printing news. The general run of papers here are purely political, and put their editorials on the front page. They are very abusive, and the editor has to fight frequent duels. The fighting is done with pistols at a safe distance, and after an exchange of shots with nobody hurt, the principals rush together and clinch, but it is to kiss each other on both cheeks and rejoice that Honor has been Satisfied. I wouldn’t mind the dueling, but I positively would not kiss these Frenchmen, and so far as I can learn the society editresses do not duel.
TheMatinis the paper that cleared Dreyfus after his trial and conviction a few years ago. The story is interesting. Dreyfus was made the victim of a conspiracy, and a document showing details of the French army was attributed to him as a German spy. Everybody remembers the trial and the fuss at the time. It became a contest between the Honor of the French Army and Dreyfus. TheMatintook little part, but, like most of the French, sidedwith the army. One evening at a dinner an officer of the court exhibited the original of the document which Dreyfus had been convicted of writing. Mr. Bueno-Varilla, editor of theMatin, was present, and as the paper was passed around he looked at it carelessly. That night when he reached home he remembered that a few years before this same Dreyfus had written him a letter about some engineering, and he dug up the letter. The handwriting was not at all what he had seen that evening. He rushed to the telephone and got the official who had shown the document, who promised to bring it to him in the morning. They compared the spy information and the Dreyfus letter which Bueno-Varilla had, and they were utterly unlike. Next day theMatinprinted a photograph copy of the document, and appealed to anyone who knew the handwriting to advise theMatin. In a day or two a gentleman wrote and said it was the writing of a drunken bankrupt army officer, named Esterhazey, inclosing letters from the latter which proved it. Dreyfus was brought back from prison and pardoned, Esterhazey skipped the country, and the honor of theFrench army was flyspecked. All of this because Bueno-Varilla happened to keep an old letter, and because he owned theMatin.
The boulevard next becomes the Bonne-Nouvelle, and then St. Denis and then St. Martin, and has several other names before it reaches its end in the Place de la Bastille.
This place is even more important in French history than Independence Hall in ours. The 14th of July is celebrated every year, just as we do the 4th of July as Independence Day, because on that date in 1789 the Bastille prison was destroyed by an uprising of the people which became the French Revolution. The Bastille was especially odious because political prisoners were confined there, and it only took an order from the police to send a man or woman to its dungeons. Its use for this purpose was so flagrant and so despotic that the first fury of the revolution was directed against its walls, and it was entirely destroyed, and the jailers and soldiers defending it were killed. The place is now a large square surrounded by business houses and ornamented by a statue of Liberty on a column 150 feet high. From the beginning tothe end of this great boulevard with the many names, are places made historic by great men and hard fights. Now it is a peaceful, broad avenue, with shops and cafés and handsome buildings, the promenade-ground for the Parisian and of tourists from all countries.