PORTRAIT OF HENRY IV.
The catacombs of Paris are purposely ignored here, as appealing to a special variety of morbiditywhich is as unpleasant to deal with and to contemplate as are snakes preserved in spirit, and as would be—were we allowed to see them—the sacred humanreliqueswhich are preserved, even to-day, at various pilgrims’ shrines throughout the Christian world. That vast royal sepulchre of the abbey church of St. Denis, which had been so outrageously despoiled by the decree of the Convention in 1793, was in a measure set to rights by Louis XVIII., when he caused to be returned from the Petits Augustins, now the Palais des Beaux Arts, and elsewhere, such of the monuments as had not been actually destroyed. The actual spoliation of these shrines belongs to an earlier day than that of which this book deals.
The history of it forms as lurid a chapter as any known to the records of riot and sacrilege in France; and the more the pity that the motion of Barrere (“La main puissante de la République doit effacer inpitoyablement ces epitaphes”) to destroy these royal tombs should have had official endorsement.
The details of these barbarous exhumations were curious, but not edifying; the corpse of Turenne was exhibited around the city; Henri IV.—“his features still being perfect”—was kicked and bunted about like a football; Louis XIV. wasfound in a perfect preservation, but entirely black; Louis VIII. had been sewed up in a leather sack; and François I. and his family “had become much decayed;” so, too, with many of the later Bourbons.
In general these bodies were deposited in a common pit, which had been dug near the north entrance to the abbey, and thus, for the first time in the many centuries covered by the period of their respected demises, their dust was to mingle in a common blend, and all factions were to become one.
Viollet-le-Duc, at the instruction of Napoleon III., set up again, following somewhat an approximation of the original plan, the various monuments which had been so thoroughly scattered, and which, since their return to the old abbey, had been herded together without a pretence at order in the crypt.
Paris had for centuries been wretchedly supplied withcimetières. For long one only had existed, that of the churchyard of St. Innocents’, originally a piece of the royal domain lying without the walls, and given by one of the French kings as a burial-place for the citizens, when interments within the city were forbidden.
It has been calculated that from the time of Philippe-Auguste over a million bodies had been interred in thesefosses communes.
In 1785 the Council of State decreed that the cemetery should be cleared of its dead and converted into a market-place. Cleared it was not, but it has since become a market-place, and the waters of the Fontaine des Innocents filter briskly through the dust of the dead of ages.
Sometime in the early part of the nineteenth century the funeral undertakings of Paris were conducted on a sliding scale of prices, ranging from four thousand francs in the first class, to as low as sixteen francs for the very poor; six classes in all.
This law-orderedtarifwould seem to have been a good thing for posterity to have perpetuated.
The artisan or craftsman who fashions the funeral monuments of Paris has a peculiar flight of fancy all his own; though, be it said, throughout the known world, funeral urns and monuments have seldom or never been beautiful, graceful, or even austere or dignified: they have, in fact, mostly been shocking travesties of the ideals and thoughts they should have represented.
It is remarkable that the French architect and builder, who knows so well how to design and construct the habitation of living man, should express himself so badly in his bizarre funeralmonuments and the tawdry tinsel wreaths and flowers of their decorations.
An English visitor to Paris in the thirties deplored the fact that her cemeteries should be made into mere show-places, and perhaps rightly enough. At that time they served as a fashionable and polite avenue for promenades, and there was (perhaps even is to-day) a guide-book published of them, and, since grief is paradoxically and proverbially dry, there was always a battery of taverns and drinking-places flanking their entrances.
It was observed by a writer in a Parisian journal of that day that “in the Cimetière du Montmartre—which was the deposit for the gay part of the city—nine tombs out of ten were to the memory of persons cut off in their youth; but that in Père la Chaise—which served principally for the sober citizens of Paris—nine out of ten recorded the ages of persons who had attained a good old age.”
Themeans of communication in and about Paris in former days was but a travesty on the methods of the “Metropolitain,” which in our time literally whisks one like the wings of the morning, from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Vincennes, and from the Place de la Nation to the Trocadero.
In 1850 there were officially enumerated over twenty-eight hundred boulevards, avenues,rues, and passages, the most lively being St. Honoré, Richelieu, Vivienne, Castiglione, de l’Université,—Dumas lived here at No. 25, in a house formerly occupied by Chateaubriand, now the Magazin St. Thomas,—de la Chaussée d’Antin, de la Paix, de Grenelle, de Bac, St. Denis, St. Martin, St. Antoine, and, above all, the Rue de Rivoli,—with a length of nearly three miles, distinguished at its westerly end by its great covered gallery, where the dwellingsabove are carried on a series of 287 arcades, flanked byboutiques, not very sumptuous to-day, to be sure, but even now a promenade of great popularity. At No. 22 Rue de Rivoli, near the Rue St. Roch, Dumas himself lived from 1838 to 1843.
There were in those days more than a score of passages, being for the most part a series of fine galleries, in some instances taking the form of a rotunda, glass-covered, and surrounded by shops withappartementsabove. The most notable were those known as the Panoramas Jouffroy, Vivienne, Colbert, de l’Opera, Delorme, du Saumon, etc.
There were more than a hundred squares, orplaces—most of which remain to-day. The most famous on the right bank of the Seine are de la Concorde, Vendome, du Carrousel, du Palais Royal, des Victoires, du Châtelet, de l’Hôtel de Ville, Royale, des Vosges, and de la Bastille; on the left bank, du Panthéon, de St. Sulpice, du Palais Bourbon. Most of these radiating centres of life are found in Dumas’ pages, the most frequent mention being in the D’Artagnan and Valois romances.
Among the most beautiful and the most frequented thoroughfares were—and are—the tree-bordered quais, and, of course, the boulevards.
The interior boulevards were laid out at the endof the seventeenth century on the ancient ramparts of the city, and extended from the Madeleine to La Bastille, a distance of perhaps three miles. They are mostly of a width of thirty-two metres (105 feet).
This was the boulevard of the timepar excellence, and its tree-borderedallées—sidewalks and roadways—bore, throughout its comparatively short length, eleven different names, often changing meanwhile as it progressed its physiognomy as well.
On the left bank, the interior boulevard was extended from the Jardin des Plantes to the Hôtel des Invalides; while the “boulevards extérieurs” formed a second belt of tree-shaded thoroughfares of great extent.
Yet other boulevards of ranking greatness cut theruesand avenues tangently, now from one bank and then from the other; the most splendid of all being the Avenue de l’Opéra, which, however, did not come into being until well after the middle of the century. Among these are best recalled Sébastopol, St. Germain, St. Martin, Magenta, Malesherbes, and others. The Place Malesherbes, which intersects the avenue, now contains the celebrated Dumas memorial by Doré, and theneighbouring thoroughfare was the residence of Dumas from 1866 to 1870.
Yet another class of thoroughfares, while conceived previous to the chronological limits which the title puts upon this book, were the vast and splendid promenades and rendezvous, with their trees, flowers, and fountains; such as the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg, the Champs Elysées, the Esplanade des Invalides, and the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes.
Dibdin tells of hisentréeinto Paris in the early days of the nineteenth century, having journeyed by “malle-poste” from Havre, in the pages of his memorable bibliographical tour.
His observations somewhat antedate the Paris of Dumas and his fellows, but changes came but slowly, and therein may be found a wealth of archæological and topographical information concerning the French metropolis; though he does compare, detrimentally, the panorama of Paris which unrolls from the heights of Passy, to that of London from Highgate Woods.
On the contrary, his impressions change after passing the barriers. “Nothing in London,” says he, “can enter into comparison with the imposing spectacle which is presented by the magnificent Champs Elysées, with the Château of the Tuileriesen face, and to the right the superb dome of the Invalides glistening in the rays of the setting sun.”
Paris had at this time 2,948 “voitures de louage,” which could be hired for any journey to be made within reasonable distance; and eighty-three which were run only on predetermined routes, as were the later omnibuses and tram-cars. These 2,948 carriages were further classified as follows; 900fiacres; 765cabriolets, circulating in the twelve interiorarrondissements; 406cabrioletsfor the exterior; 489carrosses de remise(livery-coaches), and 388cabriolets de remise.
Thepréfet de police, Count Anglès, had received from one Godot, anentrepreneur,—a sort of early edition of what we know to-day as a company promoter,—a proposition to establish a line of omnibuses along the quais and boulevards. Authorization for the scheme was withheld for the somewhat doubtful reason that “the constant stoppage of the vehicles to set down and take up passengers would greatly embarrass other traffic;” and so a new idea was still-born into the world, to come to life only in 1828, when another received the much coveted authority to make the experiment.
Already such had been established in Bordeaux and Nantes, by an individual by the name of Baudry,and he it was who obtained the first concession in Paris.
The first line inaugurated was divided into two sections: Rue de Lancry—Madeleine, and Rue de Lancry—Bastille.
It is recorded that the young—but famous—Duchesse de Berry was the first to take passage in these “intramuraldiligences,” which she called “le carrosse des malheureux;” perhaps with some truth, if something of snobbishness.
There seems to have been a considerable difficulty in attracting aclientèleto this new means of communication. The public hesitated, though the prices of the places were decided in their favour, so much so that the enterprise came to an untimely end, or, at least, its founder did; for he committed suicide because of the non-instantaneous success of the scheme.
The concession thereupon passed into other hands, and there was created a new type of vehicle of sixteen places, drawn by two horses, and priced at six sous the place. The new service met with immediate, if but partial, success, and with the establishment of new routes, each served by carriages of a distinctive colour, its permanence was assured.
Then came the “Dames Blanches,”—the namebeing inspired by Boieldieu’s opera,—which made the journey between the Porte St. Martin and the Madeleine in a quarter of an hour. They were painted a cream white, and drawn by a pair of white horses, coiffed with white plumes.
After the establishment of the omnibus came other series of vehicles for public service: the “Ecossaises,” with their gaudily variegated colours, the “Carolines,” the “Bearnaises,” and the “Tricycles,” which ran on three wheels in order to escape the wheel-tax which obtained at the time.
In spite of the rapid multiplication of omnibus lines under Louis-Philippe, their veritable success came only with the ingenious system of transfers, or “la correspondance;” a system and a convenience whereby one can travel throughout Paris for the price of one fare. From this reason alone, perhaps, the omnibus and tram system of Paris is unexcelled in all the world. This innovation dates, moreover, from 1836, and, accordingly, is no new thing, as many may suppose.
Finally, more recently,—though it was during the Second Empire,—the different lines were fused under the title of the “Compagnie Générale des Omnibus.”
“La malle-poste” was an institution of the greatest importance to Paris, though of course no moreidentified with it than with the other cities of France between which it ran. It dated actually from the period of the Revolution, and grew, and was modified, under the Restoration. It is said that its final development came during the reign of Louis XVIII., and grew out of his admiration for the “élégance et la rapidité des malles anglaises,” which had been duly impressed upon him during his sojourn in England.
This may be so, and doubtless with some justification.En passantit is curious to know, and, one may say, incredible to realize, that from the G. P. O. in London, in this year of enlightenment, there leaves each night various mail-coaches—for Dover, for Windsor, and perhaps elsewhere. They do not carry passengers, but they do give a very bad service in the delivery of certain classes of mail matter. The marvel is that such things are acknowledged as being fitting and proper to-day.
In 1836 the “malle-poste” was reckoned, in Paris, as beingélégante et rapide, having a speed of not less than sixteen kilometres an hour over give-and-take roads.
Each evening, from the courtyard of the Hôtel des Postes, the coaches left, with galloping horses and heavy loads, for the most extreme points of the frontier; eighty-six hours to Bordeaux at first,and finally only forty-four (in 1837); one hundred hours to Marseilles, later but sixty-eight.
GRAND BUREAU DE LA POSTE
Stendhal tells of his journey by “malle-poste” from Paris to Marseilles in three days, and Victor Hugo has said that two nights on the road gave one a high idea of thesoliditéof the human machine; and further says, of a journey down the Loire, that he recalled only a great tower at Orleans, a candlelitsalleof anauberge en route, and, at Blois, a bridge with a cross upon it. “In reality, during the journey, animation was suspended.”
What we knew, or our forefathers knew, as the “poste-chaise,” properly “chaise de poste,” came in under the Restoration. All the world knows, or should know, Edouard Thierry’s picturesque description of it. “Le rêve de nos vingt ans, la voiture où l’on n’est que deux ... devant vous le chemin libre, la plaine, la pente rapide, le pont.” “You traverse cities and hamlets without number, by thegrands rues, thegrande place, etc.”
In April, 1837, Stendhal quitted Paris under exactly these conditions for his tour of France. He bought “une bonne calèche,” and leftviaFontainebleau, Montargis, and Cosne. Two months after, however, he returned to the metropolisviaBourges, having refused to continue his journeyen calèche,preferring the “malle-poste” and thediligenceof his youth.
Publicdiligences, however, had but limited accommodation on grand occasions; Victor Hugo, who had been invited to the consecration of Charles X. at Reims, and his friend, Charles Nodier, the bibliophile,—also a friend of Dumas, it is recalled,—in company with two others, made the attempt amid much discomfort in a private carriage,—of a sort,—and Nodier wittily tells of how he and Hugo walked on foot up all the hills, each carrying his gripsack as well.
More than all others the “Coches d’Eau” are especially characteristic of Paris; those fly-boats, whose successors ply up and down the Seine, to the joy of Americans, the convenience of the Parisian public, and—it is surely allowable to say it—the disgust of Londoners, now that their aged and decrepit “Thames steamboats” are no more.
These early Parisian “Coches d’Eau” carried passengers up and down river for surprisingly low fares, and left the city at seven in the morning in summer, and eight in winter.
The following is a list of the most important routes:
All of these services catered for passengers and goods, and were, if not rapid, certainly a popular and comfortable means of communication.
An even more popular journey, and one which partook more particularly of a pleasure-trip, was that of thegaliote, which left each day from below the Pont-Royal for St. Cloud, giving a day’s outing by river which to-day, even, is the most fascinating of the manypetits voyagesto be undertaken around Paris.
The other recognized public means of communication between the metropolis and the provincial towns and cities were the “Messageries Royales,” and two other similar companies, “La Compagne Lafitte et Caillard” and “Les Françaises.”
These companies put also before the Parisian public two other classes of vehicular accommodation, the “pataches suspendues,” small carriages with but one horse, which ran between Paris and Strasburg, Metz, Nancy, and Lyons at the price of ten sous per hour.
Again there was another means of travel which originated in Paris; it was known as the “Messageries à Cheval.” Travellers rodeonhorses,which were furnished by the company, theirbagagesbeing transported in advance by a “chariot.” In fine weather this must certainly have been an agreeable and romantic mode of travel in those days; what would be thought of it to-day, when one, if he does not fly over the kilometres in a Sud—or Orient—Express, is as likely as not covering theRoute Nationaleat sixty or more kilometres the hour in an automobile, it is doubtful to say.
Finally came the famousdiligence, which to-day, outside the “Rollo” books and the reprints of old-time travel literature, is seldom met with in print.
“These immense structures,” says an observant French writer, “which lost sometimes their centre of gravity, in spite of all precaution and care on the part of the driver and the guard, were, by anOrdonnance Royaleof the 16th of July, 1828, limited as to their dimensions, weight, and design.”
Eachdiligencecarried as many spare parts as does a modern automobile, and workshops and supply-depots were situated at equal distances along the routes. Hugo said that the complexity of it all represented to him “the perfect image of a nation; its constitution and its government. In thediligencewas to be found, as in the state, the aristocracy in the coupé, thebourgeoisiein the interior, the people inla rotonde, and, finally, ‘theartists, the thinkers, and the unclassed’ in the utmost height, theimpériale, beside theconducteur, who represented the law of the state.
“This greatdiligence, with its body painted in staring yellow, and its five horses, carries one in a diminutive space through all the sleeping villages and hamlets of the countryside.”
From Paris, in 1830, the journey bydiligenceto Toulouse—182 French leagues—took eight days; to Rouen, thirteen hours; to Lyons,parAuxerre, four days, and to Calais, two and a half days.
Thediligencewas certainly an energetic mode of travel, but not without its discomforts, particularly in bad weather. Prosper Merimée gave up his winter journey overland to Madrid in 1859, and took ship at Bordeaux for Alicante in Spain, because, as he says, “all the inside places had been taken for a month ahead.”
The coming of thechemin de fercan hardly be dealt with here. Its advent is comparatively modern history, and is familiar to all.
Paris, as might naturally be supposed, was the hub from which radiated the great spokes of iron which bound the uttermost frontiers intimately with the capital.
There were three short lines of rail laid downin the provinces before Paris itself took up with the innovation: at Roanne, St. Etienne-Andrézieux, Epinac, and Alais.
Byla loi du 9 Juillet, 1835, a line was built from Paris to St. Germain, seventeen kilometres, and its official opening for traffic, which took place two years later, was celebrated by adéjeuner de circonstanceat the Restaurant du Pavillon Henri Quatre at St. Germain.
Then came “Le Nord” to Lille, Boulogne, and Calais; “L’Ouest” to Havre, Rouen, Cherbourg, and Brest; “L’Est” to Toul and Nancy; “L’Orleans” to Orleans and the Loire Valley; and, finally, the “P. L. M.” (Paris-Lyon et Méditerranée) to the south of France. “Then it was that Paris really became the rich neighbour of all the provincial towns and cities. Before, she had been a sort of pompous and distant relative”—as a whimsical Frenchman has put it.
The mutability of time and the advent of mechanical traction is fast changing all things—in France and elsewhere. The Chevaux Blancs, Deux Pigeons, Cloches d’Or, and the Hôtels de la Poste, de la Croix, and du Grand Cerf are fast disappearing from the large towns, and the way of iron is, or will be, a source of inspiration to the poets of the future, as has thepostillon, thediligence,and thechaise de postein the past. Here is a quatrain written by a despairingaubergisteof the little town of Salons, which indicates how the innovation was received by the provincials—in spite of its undeniable serviceability:
“En l’an neuf cent, machine lourdeA tretous farfit damne et mal,Gens moult rioient d’icelle bourde,Au campas renovoient cheval.”
The railways which centre upon Paris are indeed the ties that bind Paris to the rest of France, and vice versa. Their termini—the greatgares—are at all times the very concentrated epitome of the life of the day.
The newgaresof the P. L. M. and the Orleans railways are truly splendid and palatial establishments, with—at first glance—little of the odour of the railway about them, and much of the ceremonial appointments of a great civic institution; with gorgeoussalles à manger, waiting-rooms, and—bearing the P. L. M. in mind in particular—not a little of the aspect of an art-gallery.
The otherembarcadèresare less up-to-date—that vague term which we twentieth-century folk are wont to make use of in describing the latest innovations. The Gare St. Lazare is an enormousestablishment, with a hotel appendage, which of itself is of great size; the Gare du Nord is equally imposing, but architecturally unbeautiful; while the Gare de l’Est still holds in its tympanum the melancholy symbolical figure of the late lamented Ville de Strasbourg, the companion in tears, one may say, of that other funereally decorated statue on the Place de la Concorde.
Paris, too, is well served by her tramways propelled by horses,—which have not yet wholly disappeared,—and by steam and electricity, applied in a most ingenious manner. By this means Paris has indeed been transformed from its interior thoroughfares to its uttermostbanlieu.
The last two words on the subject have reference to the advent and development of the bicycle and the automobile, as swift, safe, and economical means of transport.
The reign of the bicycle as a pure fad was comparatively short, whatever may have been its charm of infatuation. As a utile thing it is perhaps more worthy of consideration, for it cannot be denied that its development—and of its later gigantic offspring, the automobile—has had a great deal to do with the better construction and up-keep of modern roadways, whether urban or suburban.
“La petite reine bicyclette” has been fêted inlight verse many times, but no one seems to have hit off its salient features as did Charles Monselet. Others have referred to riders of the “new means of locomotion” as “cads on casters,” and a writer inLe Gauloisstigmatized them as “imbéciles à roulettes,” which is much the same; while no less a personage than Francisque Sarcey demanded, in the journalLa France, that the police should suppress forthwith thiseccentricité.
Charles Monselet’s eight short lines are more appreciative:
“Instrument raideEn fer battuQui dépossèdeLe char torlu;VélocipèdeRail impromptu,Fils d’Archimède,D’où nous viens-tu?”
Though it is apart from the era of Dumas, this discursion into a phase of present-day Paris is, perhaps, allowable in drawing a comparison between the city of to-day and that even of the Second Empire, which was, at its height, contemporary with Dumas’ prime.
If Paris was blooming suddenly forth into beauty and grace in the period which extended from theRevolution to the Franco-Prussian War, she has certainly, since that time, not ceased to shed her radiance; indeed, she flowers more abundantly than ever, though, truth to tell, it is all due to the patronage which the state has ever given, in France, to the fostering of the arts as well as industries.
And so Paris has grown,—beautiful and great,—and the stranger within her gates, whether he come by road or rail, by automobile or railway-coach, is sure to be duly impressed with the fact that Paris is for one and all alike a city founded of and for the people.
Thecity of the ancient Parisii is the one particular spot throughout the length of the sea-green Seine—that “winding river” whose name, says Thierry, in his “Histoire des Gaulois,” is derived from a Celtic word having this signification—where is resuscitated the historical being of the entire French nation.
Here it circles around the Ile St. Louis, cutting it apart from the Ile de la Cité, and rushing up against the northern bank, periodically throws up a mass of gravelly sand, just in the precise spot where, in mediæval times, was an open market-place.
Here the inhabitants of the city met the country dealers, who landed produce from their boats, traded, purchased, and sold, and departed whence they came, into the regions of the upper Seine or the Marne, or downward to the lower river cities of Meulan, Mantes, and Vernon.
At this time Paris began rapidly to grow on each side of the stream, and became the great market or trading-place where the swains who lived up-river mingled with the hewers of wood from the forests of La Brie and the reapers of corn from the sunny plains of La Beauce.
These country folk, it would appear, preferred the northern part of Paris to the southern—it was less ceremonious, less ecclesiastical. If they approached the city from rearward of the Université, by the Orleans highroad, they paid exorbitant toll to the Abbot of St. Germain des Prés. Here they paid considerably less to the Prévôt of Paris. And thus from very early times the distinction was made, and grew with advancing years, between the town, or La Ville, which distinguished it from the Cité and the Université.
This sandy river-bank gradually evolved itself into the Quai and Place de la Grève,—its etymology will not be difficult to trace,—and endured in the full liberty of its olden functions as late as the day of Louis XV. Here might have been seen great stacks of firewood, charcoal, corn, wine, hay, and straw.
THE ODÉON IN 1818
Aside from its artistic and economic value, the Seine plays no great part in the story of Paris. It does not divide what is glorious from what is sordid,as does “London’s river.” When one crosses any one of its numerous bridges, one does not exchange thriftiness and sublimity for the commonplace. Les Invalides, L’Institut, the Luxembourg, the Panthéon, the Odéon, the Université,—whose buildings cluster around the ancient Sorbonne,—the Hôtel de Cluny, and the churches of St. Sulpice, St. Etienne du Mont, and St. Severin, and, last but not least, the Chamber of Deputies, all are on the south side of Paris, and do not shrink greatly in artistic or historical importance from Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Tour St. Jacques, the Place de la Bastille, the Palais Royal, or the Théâtre-Français.
The greatest function of the Seine, when one tries to focus the memory on its past, is to recall to us that old Paris was a trinity. Born of the river itself rose the Cité, the home of the Church and state, scarce finding room for her palaces and churches, while close to her side, on the south bank, the Université spread herself out, and on the right bank the Ville hummed with trade and became the home of the great municipal institutions.
Dumas shifts the scenes of his Parisian romances first from one side to the other, but always his mediæval Paris is the same grand, luxurious, and lively stage setting. Certainly no historian could hope to have done better.
Intrigue, riot, and bloodshed of course there were; and perhaps it may be thought in undue proportions. But did not the history of Paris itself furnish the romancer with these very essential details?
At all events, there is no great sordidness or squalor perpetuated in Dumas’ pages. Perhaps it is for this reason that they prove so readable, and their wearing qualities so great.
There is in the reminiscence of history and the present aspect of the Seine, throughout its length, the material for the constructing a volume of bulk which should not lack either variety, picturesqueness, or interest. It furthermore is a subject which seems to have been shamefully neglected by writers of all ranks.
Turner, of the brilliant palette, pictured many of its scenes, and his touring-companion wrote a more or less imaginative and wofully incorrect running commentary on the itinerary of the journey, as he did also of their descent of the Loire. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, accompanied by a series of charming pictures by Joseph Pennell (the first really artistic topographical illustrations ever put into the pages of a book), did the same for the Saône; and, of course, the Thames has been “done” by many writers of all shades of ability, but manifestly theSeine, along whose banks lie the scenes of some of the most historic and momentous events of mediæval times, has been sadly neglected.
Paris is divided into practically two equal parts by the swift-flowing current of the Seine, which winds its way in sundry convolutions from its source beyond Chatillon-sur-Seine to the sea at Honfleur.
The praises of the winding river which connects Havre, Rouen, Vernon, Mantes, and Paris has often been sung, but the brief, virile description of it in the eighty-seventh chapter of Dumas’ “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne” has scarcely been equalled. Apropos of the journey of Madame and Buckingham Paris-ward, after having taken leave of the English fleet at Havre, Dumas says of this greatest of French waterways:
“The weather was fine. Spring cast its flowers and its perfumed foliage upon the path. Normandy, with its vast variety of vegetation, its blue sky, and silver rivers, displayed itself in all its loveliness.”
Through Paris its direction is from the southeast to the northwest, a distance, within the fortifications, of perhaps twelve kilometres.
Two islands of size cut its currents: the Ile St. Louis and the Ile de la Cité. A description ofits banks, taken from a French work of the time, better defines its aspect immediately after the Revolution of 1848 than any amount of conjecture or present-day observation, so it is here given:
“In its course through the metropolis, the Seine is bordered by a series of magnificent quais, which in turn are bordered by rows of sturdy trees.
“The most attractive of these quais are those which flank the Louvre, the Tuileries, D’Orsay, Voltaire, and Conti.
“Below the quais are deposed nine ports, orgares, each devoted to a special class of merchandise, as coal, wine, produce, timber, etc.
“The north and south portions of the city are connected by twenty-sixponts(this was in 1852; others have since been erected, which are mentioned elsewhere in the book).
“Coming from the upper river, they were known as follows: the Ponts Napoléon, de Bercy, d’Austerlitz, the Passerelle de l’Estacade; then, on the right branch of the river, around the islands, the Ponts Maril, Louis-Philippe, d’Arcole, Notre Dame, and the Pont au Change; on the left branch, the Passerelle St. Louis or Constantine, the Ponts Tournelle, de la Cité, de l’Archevêche, le Pont aux Doubles, le Petit Pont, and the Pont St. Michel; here the two branches join again: le Pont Neuf, des Arts,du Carrousel, Royal, Solferino, de la Concorde, des Invalides, de l’Alma, de Jena, and Grenelle.
“Near the Pont d’Austerlitz the Seine receives the waters of the petite Rivière de Bièvre, or des Gobelins, which traverses the faubourgs.”
Of the bridges of Paris, Dumas in his romances has not a little to say. It were not possible for a romanticist—or a realist, for that matter—to write of Paris and not be continually confronting his characters with one or another of the many splendid bridges which cross the Seine between Conflans-Charenton and Asnières.
In the “Mousquetaires” series, in the Valois romances, and in his later works of lesser import, mention of these fine old bridges continually recurs; more than all others the Pont Neuf, perhaps, or the Pont au Change.
In “Pauline” there is a charming touch which we may take to smack somewhat of the author’s own predilections and experiences. He says, concerning his embarkation upon a craft which he had hired at a little Norman fishing-village, as one jobs a carriage in Paris: “I set up to be a sailor, and served apprenticeship on a craft between the Pont des Tuileries and the Pont de la Concorde.”
Of the Seine bridges none is more historic than the Pont Neuf, usually reckoned as one of thefinest in Europe; which recalls the fact that the French—ecclesiastic and laymen architects alike—were master bridge-builders. For proof of this one has only to recall the wonderful bridge of St. Bénezet d’Avignon, the fortified bridges of Orthos and Cahors, the bridge at Lyons, built by the Primate of Gaul himself, and many others throughout the length and breadth of France.
The Pont Neuf was commenced in the reign of Henri III. (1578), and finished in the reign of Henri IV. (1604), and is composed of two unequal parts, which come to their juncture at the extremity of the Ile de la Cité.
In the early years a great bronze horse, known familiarly as the “Cheval de Bronze,” but without a rider, was placed upon this bridge. During the Revolution, when cannon and ammunition were made out of any metal which could be obtained, this curious statue disappeared, though later its pedestal was replaced—under the Bourbons—by an equestrian statue of the Huguenot king.
The Pont des Arts, while not usually accredited as a beautiful structure,—and certainly not comparable with many other of its fellows,—is interesting by reason of the fact that its nine iron arches, which led from the Quai du Louvre to the Quai de la Monnai, formed the first example of an ironbridge ever constructed in France. Its nomenclature is derived from the Louvre, which was then called—before the title was applied to the Collège des Quatre Nations—the Palais des Arts. In Restoration times it was one of the fashionable promenades of Paris.
The Pont au Change took its name from thechangeurs, or money-brokers, who lived upon it during the reign of Louis le Jeune in 1141. It bridged the widest part of the Seine, and, after being destroyed by flood and fire in 1408, 1616, and 1621, was rebuilt in 1647. The houses which originally covered it were removed in 1788 by the order of Louis XVI. In “The Conspirators,” Dumas places the opening scene at that end of the Pont Neuf which abuts on the Quai de l’École, and is precise enough, but in “Marguerite de Valois” he evidently confounds the Pont Neuf with the Pont au Change, when he puts into the mouth of Coconnas, the Piedmontese: “They who rob on the Pont Neuf are, then, like you, in the service of the king.Mordi!I have been very unjust, sir; for until now I had taken them for thieves.”
The Pont Louis XV. was built in 1787 out of part of the material which was taken from the ruins of the Bastille.
Latterly there has sprung up the new PontAlexandre, commemorative of the Czar’s visit to Paris, which for magnificent proportions, beauty of design and arrangement, quite overtops any other of its kind, in Paris or elsewhere.
The quais which line the Seine as it runs through Paris are like no other quais in the known world. They are the very essence and epitome of certain phases of life which find no counterpart elsewhere.
The following description of a bibliomaniac from Dumas’ “Mémoires” is unique and apropos:
“Bibliomaniac, evolved frombookandmania, is a variety of the species man—species bipes et genus homo.
“This animal has two feet and is without features, and usually wanders about the quais and boulevards, stopping in front of every stall and fingering all the books. He is generally dressed in a coat which is too long and trousers which are too short, his shoes are always down at heel, and on his head is an ill-shapen hat. One of the signs by which he may be recognized is shown by the fact that he never washes his hands.”
The booksellers’ stalls of the quais of Paris are famous, though it is doubtful if genuine bargains exist there in great numbers. It is significant, however, that more volumes of Dumas’ romancesare offered for sale—so it seems to the passer-by—than of any other author.
The Seine opposite the Louvre, and, indeed, throughout the length of its flow through Paris, enters largely into the scheme of the romances, where scenes are laid in the metropolis.
Like the throng which stormed the walls of the Louvre on the night of the 18th of August, 1527, during that splendid royal fête, the account of which opens the pages of “Marguerite de Valois,” the Seine itself resembles Dumas’ description of the midnight crowd, which he likens to “a dark and rolling sea, each swell of which increases to a foaming wave; this sea, extending all along the quai, spent its waves at the base of the Louvre, on the one hand, and against the Hôtel de Bourbon, which was opposite, on the other.”
In the chapter entitled “What Happened on the Night of the Twelfth of July,” in “The Taking of the Bastille,” Dumas writes of the banks of the Seine in this wise:
“Once upon the quai, the two countrymen saw glittering on the bridge near the Tuileries the arms of another body of men, which, in all probability, was not a body of friends; they silently glided to the end of the quai, and descended the bank whichleads along the Seine. The clock of the Tuileries was just then striking eleven.
“When they had got beneath the trees which line the banks of the river, fine aspen-trees and poplars, which bathe their feet in its current, when they were lost to the sight of their pursuers, hid by their friendly foliage, the farmers and Pitou threw themselves on the grass and opened a council of war.”
Just previously the mob had battered down the gate of the Tuileries, as a means of escape from the pen in which the dragoons had crowded the populace.
“‘Tell me now, Father Billot,’ inquired Pitou, after having carried the timber some thirty yards, ‘are we going far in this way?’
“‘We are going as far as the gate of the Tuileries.’
“‘Ho, ho!’ cried the crowd, who at once divined his intention.
“And it made way for them more eagerly even than before.
“Pitou looked about him, and saw that the gate was not more than thirty paces distant from them.
“‘I can reach it,’ said he, with the brevity of a Pythagorean.
“The labour was so much the easier to Pitoufrom five or six of the strongest of the crowd taking their share of the burden.
“The result of this was a very notable acceleration in their progress.
“In five minutes they had reached the iron gates.
“‘Come, now,’ cried Billot, ‘clap your shoulders to it, and all push together.’
“‘Good!’ said Pitou. ‘I understand now. We have just made a warlike engine; the Romans used to call it a ram.’
“‘Now, my boys,’ cried Billot, ‘once, twice, thrice,’ and the joist, directed with a furious impetus, struck the lock of the gate with resounding violence.
“The soldiers who were on guard in the interior of the garden hastened to resist this invasion. But at the third stroke the gate gave way, turning violently on its hinges, and through that gaping and gloomy mouth the crowd rushed impetuously.
“From the movement that was then made, the Prince de Lambesq perceived at once that an opening had been effected which allowed the escape of those whom he had considered his prisoners. He was furious with disappointment.”
TheRevolution of 1848 narrowed itself down to the issue of Bourbonism or Bonapartism. Nobody had a good word to say for the constitution, and all parties took liberties with it. It was inaugurated as the most democratic of all possible charters. It gave a vote to everybody, women and children excepted. It affirmed liberty with so wide a latitude of interpretation as to leave nothing to be desired by the reddest Republican that ever wore pistols in his belt at the heels of the redoubtable M. Marc Caussidière, or expressed faith in the social Utopia of the enthusiastic M. Proudhon. Freedom to speak, to write, to assemble, and to vote,—all were secured to all Frenchmen by this marvellous charter. When it became the law of the land, everybody began to nibble at and destroy it. The right of speaking was speedily reduced to the narrowestlimits, and the liberty of the press was pared down to the merest shred. The right of meeting was placed at the tender mercies of the prefect of police, and the right of voting was attacked with even more zeal and fervour. The Revolution proved more voracious than Saturn himself, in devouring its children, and it made short work of men and reputations. It reduced MM. de Lamartine, Armand Marrast, and General Cavaignac into nothingness; sent MM. Louis Blanc, Ledru Rollin, and Caussidière into the dreary exile of London, and consigned the fiery Barbés, the vindictive Blanqui, the impatient Raspail, and a host of other regenerators of the human race, to the fastnesses of Vincennes. Having done this, the Revolution left scarcely a vestige of the constitution,—nothing but a few crumbs, and those were not crumbs of comfort, which remained merely to prove to the incredulous that such a thing as the constitution once existed.
The former king and queen took hidden refuge in a small cottage at Honfleur, whence they were to depart a few days later for England—ever a refuge for exiled monarchists. Escape became very urgent, and the king, with an English passport in the name of William Smith, and the queen as Madame Lebrun, crossed over to Le Havre and ultimately to England. Lamartine evidentlymistakes even the time and place of this incident, but newspaper accounts of the time, both French and English, are very full as to the details. On landing at the quai at Le Havre, the ex-royal party was conducted to the “Express” steam-packet, which had been placed at their disposal for the cross-channel journey. Dumas takes the very incident as a detail for his story of “Pauline,” and his treatment thereof does not differ greatly from the facts as above set forth. Two years later (August 26, 1850), at Claremont, in Surrey, in the presence of the queen and several members of his family, Louis-Philippe died. He was the last of the Bourbons, with whom Dumas proudly claimed acquaintanceship, and as such, only a short time before, was one of the mightiest of the world’s monarchs, standing on one of the loftiest pinnacles of an ambition which, in the mind of a stronger or more wilful personality, might have accomplished with success much that with him resulted in defeat.
After the maelstrom of discontent—the Revolution of 1848—had settled down, there came a series of events well-nigh as disturbing. Events in Paris were rapidly ripening for a change. The known determination of Louis Napoleon to prolong his power, either as president for another term of four years, or for life, or as consul or emperor ofthe French, and the support which his pretensions received from large masses of the people and from the rank and file of the army, had brought him into collision with a rival—General Changarnier—almost as powerful as himself, and with an ambition quite as daring as his own.
What Louis Napoleon wanted was evident. There was no secret about his designs. The partisans of Henri V. looked to Changarnier for the restoration of peace and legitimacy, and the Orleanists considered that he was the most likely man in France to bring back the house of Orleans, and the comfortable days of bribery, corruption, and a thriving trade; while the fatbourgeoisievenerated him as the unflinching foe of the disturbers of order, and the great bulwark against Communism and the Red Republic.
Still, this was manifestly not to be, though no one seemed to care a straw about Louis Napoleon’s republic, or whether or no he dared to declare himself king or emperor, or whether they should be ruled by Bonapartist, Bourbon, or Orleanist.
These were truly perilous times for France; and, though they did not culminate in disaster until twenty years after, Louis Napoleon availed himself of every opportunity to efface from the Second Republic, of which he was at this time the head,every vestige of the democratic features which it ought to have borne.
At the same time he surrounded himself with imposing state and pomp, so regal in character that it was evidently intended to accustom the public to see in him the object of that homage which is usually reserved for crowned heads alone, and thus gradually and imperceptibly to prepare the nation to witness, without surprise, his assuming, when the favourable occasion offered, the purple and diadem of the empire.
For instance, he took up his residence in the ancient palace of the sovereigns of France, the Tuileries, and gave banquets and balls of regal magnificence; he ordered his effigy to be struck upon the coinage of the nation, surrounded by the words “Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,” without any title, whether as president or otherwise, being affixed. He restored the imperial eagles to the standards of the army; the official organ, theMoniteur, recommended the restoration of the titles and orders of hereditary nobility; the trees of liberty were uprooted everywhere; the Republican motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” was erased from the public edifices; the colossal statue of Liberty, surmounted by a Phrygian cap, which stood in the centre of the Place de Bourgogne,behind the Legislative Assembly, was demolished; and the old anti-Republican names of the streets were restored, so that the Palais National again became the Palais Royal; the Théâtre de la Nation, the Théâtre Français; the Rue de la Concorde, the Rue Royal, etc.; and, in short, to all appearances, Louis Napoleon began early in his tenure of office to assiduously pave the way to the throne of the empire as Napoleon III.