THE LYCÉE CHARLEMAGNE.THE LYCÉE CHARLEMAGNE.enlarge-image
THE LYCÉE CHARLEMAGNE.
Of France’s three great teaching institutions, the Collège de France is the youngest. To return for a moment to this establishment. Its professors, to the number of twenty-eight, teach the language and literature of mediæval France, the Greek language and literature, Latin prose and Latin verse, the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literatures, the Sanscrit and Chinese languages and literatures, the language and literature of the Slavonians, the modern languages and literature of Western Europe; history, morality, and the law of nations; comparative legislation and political economy, archæology, mathematics, astronomy, general and experimental physics, medicine, chemistry, the natural history of organic and inorganic bodies, and comparative embryogeny. Among the celebrated lecturers of the College of France may be mentioned, in modern times, Michelet, Quinet, Mickiewicz, the Polish poet (who here delivered an admirable, if at times somewhat mystical, series of lectures on the Slavonians), and finally Renan.
Just opposite the College of France is the Collège du Plessis. “From my window at the College of France,” says M. Renan, in the preface to his “Abbesse de Jouarre,” “I witness daily the fall, stone by stone, of the last walls of the Collège du Plessis, founded by Geoffroi du Plessis, secretary to King Philippe the Long in 1517, enlarged in the seventeenth century by Richelieu, and in the eighteenth one of the centres of the best philosophical culture. There Turgot, the greatest man in our history, received his education from the Abbé Sigorgne, the first in France to grasp perfectly the ideas of Newton. The Collège du Plessis was closed in 1790. In 1793 and 1794 it became the saddest of the Paris prisons. There the “suspects” were confined, condemned in a sense beforehand; whence they only issued in order to go to the revolutionary tribunal or to death. I often try to imagine the language these walls, now torn open by the builders engaged in{48}reconstruction, must have heard; those grassplots whose last trees have just been cut down. I think of the conversations which must have been held in those large halls of the ground floor during the hours immediately preceding the summons; and I have conceived a series of dialogues which, if I wrote them, I should call ‘Dialogues of the Last Night.’ The hour of death is essentially philosophical; at that hour everybody speaks well, everyone is in the presence of the Infinite, and is not tempted to make phrases. The condition of good dialogue is the sincerity of the personages. Now, the hour of death is the most sincere—when one approaches death in happy circumstances, entirely oneself, that is to say; sound in mind and body, without previous debilitation. The work I now offer the public is probably the only one of this series that I shall execute.”
THE LYCÉE CONDORCET.THE LYCÉE CONDORCET.enlarge-image
THE LYCÉE CONDORCET.
{49}
THE COURT OF THE SORBONNE.THE COURT OF THE SORBONNE.enlarge-image
THE COURT OF THE SORBONNE.
Robert de Sorbonne—The Sorbonne, its Origin and History—Richelieu—The Revolution—The New Sorbonne—Mercier’s Views.
THE Sorbonne owes its origin and its name to Robert de Sorbonne, chaplain and confessor to Louis IX. Like so many other scholars of the same period, this priest had been compelled to rely on alms to defray the expenses of his education. Touched by miseries which he himself had shared, he established a society of secular ecclesiastics, whose function it was to give gratuitous instruction; and he petitioned the king to endow the charitable enterprise with a dwelling for those pupils who could not pay for their lodging. Nor was his request unheeded. Thanks to royal patronage he was able, in 1253, to open his college. Indigent scholars were taught for nothing; those not quite destitute of means paid five sous and a half weekly. The institution was directed by the associates, who had neither superiors nor principals. The Sorbonne, as the new College was soon to be called, was attached, like all other establishments of the kind, to the University of Paris, and the connection, throughout its long and brilliant history, never ceased. But the ties which bound it to this central institution became looser and looser as the Sorbonne increased in importance. The provisor, who after a time made the appointments in the Sorbonne, was himself elected by a jury composed of the local archdeacon, the great chancellor, the masters and the faculty of theology, the deans of law and medicine, the rector of the university, and the procurators of the “four nations” into which the university was divided. The election took place in this manner until 1524, after which the provisor was elected by the members of the college, the former jury of election being now only called upon to confirm the choice.
If the Sorbonne was the great school of theology{50}in the middle ages, it was not its cradle; theology was born with scholasticism in the ninth century. It had already nourished with Longfranc, Saint-Anselme, Abailard, and Pierre Lombard before bearing riper fruits with Albertus Magnus and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Already the court of Rome submitted questions of pure dogma to the theologians of the University of Paris, while reserving to itself all questions of canonical law. But the college founded in so humble a manner by Robert de Sorbonne was soon to become the official organ of scholastic theology; and in its bosom were discussed questions which embarrassed the Church of France and even the court of Rome. From its walls went forth the sentences, decrees, and censures which were to have force of law throughout the Catholic world.
The Sorbonne was not only a teaching establishment, it conferred degrees. The theses of the Sorbonne acquired particular celebrity, the “Sorbonic thesis” being regarded as the ideal of the theological essay. During the middle ages and even to the end of the seventeenth century the Sorbonne was the great theological authority; but it had politics of its own which, viewed in the present day, do not seem to have been always in accord with its religious teaching. It took part with Étienne Marcel in the parliamentary and almost revolutionary movement which he directed in opposition to the party of the dauphin and of the aristocracy. It was a doctor of the Sorbonne, the Franciscan friar, Jean Petit, who wrote the “apologia” for the assassination of Louis of Orleans; and another doctor of the same institution, Jean Larcher, who, with the deputies of the university, publicly accused the dauphin of the murder on the bridge of Montereau, where, on the 10th of May, 1410, the Duke of Burgundy, Jean Sans-Peur, was assassinated by men belonging to the dauphin’s suite. To avenge this crime Philippe the Good, Jean’s son, seconded by the King of England, took possession on the 20th of June, 1420, of Montereau, which remained in the power of the English until 1428.
The Sorbonne, representing the Church, condemned Joan of Arc as a sorceress, communicated its judgment to the Duke of Bedford, and, in a petition addressed to the King of England, demanded her extradition. When the religious war was at its height this body fulminated decrees in favour of the League, the Guises, and Spain against Henry III. and Henry IV. It was to the Sorbonne that the Guises addressed themselves in order to obtain theological support for their projected usurpation. The learned assembly did not go so far as to recommend the assassination of Henry III., but it pronounced in favour of revolt, and consigned the partisans, first of Henry III. and afterwards of Henry IV., to eternal damnation, finally offering the crown of France to Philip II. of Spain. After the triumph of Henry IV. the Sorbonne continued for a time its seditious manifestations; when Cardinal de Bourbon, its “apostolic conservator,” was arrested on the denunciation of the Procurator-general, it at the same time received a reprimand from the Parliament of Paris.
Forced to submit to the new government, it retracted its doctrine as to the lawfulness of “tyrannicide,” supported in this not very startling retractation by the authority of the court of Rome. Finally, under Marie de Médicis, Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Louis XIV., the Sorbonne was a firm supporter of the Bourbon dynasty, together with the Church of France and the University of Paris. Richelieu was its constant patron. Under Louis XIV. it took part with the Gallican Church against the pretensions of the court of Rome. As to the evil done or attempted to be done by the Sorbonne, it will be sufficient to say that besides helping to bring Joan of Arc to the block, it condemned Vanini, whom the Parliament of Toulouse ordered to be burned alive. It pronounced also against Ramus and Descartes, the adversaries of the Aristotelian philosophy; Montesquieu for his “Esprit des Lois” and Buffon for his “Natural History”; besides Rousseau, Marmontel, Helvetius, Diderot, Mably, and the whole of the Encyclopædists. Defenders of the Sorbonne point out with justice that it also condemned the absurdities of many visionaries, charlatans, and impostors, and that if it was an obstacle in the way of science, it also showed itself at times a barrier against superstition. It opposed the Jesuits; but what, after all, can this count for against its condemnation of Jeanne d’Arc, John Hus, and Vanini, to say nothing of its encouragement and justification of the Saint-Bartholomew massacre? It condemned no one to death, not having power to do so; but, like the Inquisition, it handed over to the civil power the alleged infidels, apostates, and sorcerers, whom it deemed worthy of the severest punishment. The boldest decree it ever issued was the one already referred to, which was circulated throughout France during the wars between Protestants and Catholics. After exhorting the Parisians to defend against King Henry III. the{51}Catholic religion as menaced by him, it declared that sovereign “degraded from his royal power,” and, after his assassination, consigned to eternal death everyone who dared to recognise Henry of Navarre as his successor. In this denunciation were specially included all those who treated with him or paid taxes to him. No true Catholic, declared the Sorbonne, could recognise as king, “without offending God, a prince who had lapsed into fatal heresies, even though he might afterwards have abjured them.” This decree, as issued by the Sorbonne, was signed by the clergy of Paris and put into circulation throughout France.
FAÇADE OF THE NEW SORBONNE.FAÇADE OF THE NEW SORBONNE.enlarge-image
FAÇADE OF THE NEW SORBONNE.
Of all the famous men connected with the Sorbonne, the most famous was the one known throughout the world as Cardinal de Richelieu, who represented politics without pity, as the Sorbonne represented theology without mercy. The tomb of the great man found its place naturally in the church of the Sorbonne, which he had himself erected. The head stolen from the coffin during the Revolution was carried back there not many years ago; his heart will follow, should it ever be discovered.
The ancient Sorbonne came to an end, as a matter of course, at the epoch of the Revolution. It was suppressed as soon as the Revolutionists had time to attend to it, in 1790. If the Sorbonne was greatly indebted to the minister of Louis XIII., it had again to thank a Richelieu for new life and new fame when, in 1821, the minister of Louis XVIII. made it the head and centre of teaching throughout France. At the{52}same time a body of electors was appointed who represented, not the scholasticism and theology of the middle ages, but modern literature and modern science. Among those named in 1821, the year of the Sorbonne’s resuscitation, may be mentioned Biot, Poisson, Gay-Lussac, Thénard, Haüy, Brogniart, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who were to be followed by such men as Dumas (the celebrated chemist), Bulart, Dulong, Pouillet, Milne-Edwards, and Leverrier. Nor must the names of Guizot, Victor Cousin, Saint-Marc Girardin, Jules Simon, and Nisard be omitted from the list of those writers and professors who have given even greater reputation to the Sorbonne in the present day than it enjoyed of old. The Sorbonne, however, of history, the Sorbonne associated with severe theology and with still severer theological persecution, perished beneath the first blows of the Revolution; thus verifying a prophecy put forth when Richelieu, while reconstructing its walls, seemed disposed to modernise its spirit—
Instaurata ruet jamjam Sorbona. CaducaDum fuit, inconcussa stetit, renovata peribit.
Instaurata ruet jamjam Sorbona. CaducaDum fuit, inconcussa stetit, renovata peribit.
THE CHURCH OF THE SORBONNE.THE CHURCH OF THE SORBONNE.enlarge-image
THE CHURCH OF THE SORBONNE.
“If,” wrote Mercier at the end of the eighteenth century, “the Académie Française is the seat of literary despotism, the Sorbonne{53}may be called the throne of ignorance, superstition, and folly. This foundation is the work of an obscure priest, whose name it retained, though it was afterwards enlarged, beautified, and amply endowed by Cardinal Richelieu, who, as we have had occasion to mention in the foregoing description, never formed an establishment which did not tend in some measure to support his favourite plan of carrying arbitrary power beyond all bounds. Whilst his politics made slaves of the subjects, he supported this kind of spiritual inquisition in order to enthral their very minds. The Sorbonne was consulted on all occasions, and the decree of a few ignorant divines respected as the oracle of the Deity himself.”
The Institute—Its Unique Character—The Objects of its Projectors—Its Constitution.
THE Institute—immediately facing the wayfarer who crosses by the Bridge of Arts from the right bank to the left—is, says M. Renan, who was himself a member of it, “one of the most glorious creations of the Revolution, and a thing quite peculiar to France. Many countries have academies which may rival our own by the distinction of the persons composing them, and by the importance of their labours; France alone possesses an Institute in which all the efforts of the human mind are bound together as in a sheaf; where the philosopher, the historian, the philologer, the critic, the mathematician, the physicist, the astronomer, the analyst, the economist, the jurisconsult, the sculptor, the painter, the musician, may call one another colleagues.” The simple and great men who conceived the design of this absolutely new establishment were preoccupied by two thoughts: the first, admirably true, that all the productions of the human mind have something in common and are interdependent; the second, more open to criticism, but connected in any case with all that is deepest in the French mind, that science, literature, and art are state affairs, recognisable in corporate form, which the country is bound to protect, encourage, and reward. On the last day but one of the Convention, October 25th, 1795, appeared the law destined to realise this idea, so prolific of great things. The object of the Institute was the progress of science; the general utility and glory of the Republic. Every year it renders an account to the legislative body of the progress accomplished. It has its budget, its collections, its prizes. It sends out scientific missions at its own expense. To form the nucleus of the institution forty-eight persons were named, a third of the whole number of members, the remaining two-thirds to be nominated by the original members. The three men to whom, in particular, this project was due, were Lakanal, Dainon, and Carnot. Unhappily France was at that time in the condition of a patient who is just recovering from an attack of fever. Entire branches of human culture seemed to have disappeared; the moral, political, and philosophical sciences were at the lowest level. Literature scarcely existed. The historical and philological sciences counted scarcely more than one man of eminence, Silvestre de Sacy. On the other hand the physical and mathematical sciences were at one of their highest states of development. The division of the institute into classes and sections was affected by this condition of things. There were originally three classes; one answered precisely to the Academy of Sciences as it now exists, and contained nearly the same sections; the second was called the class of moral and political science; the third represented Literature and the Fine Arts. It embraced what is now known as the French Academy, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the greater part of the Academy of Inscriptions. The principal error of this division was that it took no count of historical science. To tell the truth, the mistake was excusable, since the science in question had then scarcely come into existence in France. Historical science presupposes long traditions, together with a refined and, up to a certain point, aristocratic society. Philosophy, on the{54}other hand, cannot be made to order, and defies classification. Something rather scholastic, savouring of the pedagogue, presided over this primitive distribution. The second class had a section called “Analysis of sensations and ideas.” Six persons were constantly occupied with this difficult labour. The third class comprised eight sections, which were entitled: “Grammar, Ancient Languages, Poetry, Antiquities and Monuments, Painting and Sculpture, Architecture, Music, and Declamation.”
This organisation lasted six years; to be subsequently modified by various regulations. In 1816, immediately after the Restoration, a serious blow was struck at the Institute, whose revolutionary origin was not forgotten. The First Consul had suppressed the class of moral and political sciences, without depriving of their titles those who had belonged to these classes. The case was not the same in 1816, when twenty-two persons, with the painter David, the Bishop Grégoire, Monge, Carnot, Lakanel, and Sieyès, were deprived of a title on which they themselves conferred honour. On the other hand seventeen persons received, by royal edict, a title which has no value except when it is conferred on a man of letters or of science by the free suffrage of his peers.
Under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. science was held as of no account, and the academy which represented historical studies was invaded by gentlemen of the chamber, who had neither literary nor scientific claims. The Duke of Berry, the Duke of Angoulême, everyone connected with the royal family or with the court could be admitted to the honours of the Institute. M. Renan declares that there were candidates so degraded as to wish to become members of the Institute simply that they might wear an embroidered uniform and carry a sword.
The Revolution of 1830 brought better days, though the Legitimist party, defeated in the public street, had still the majority in all the academies. Gradually the slightly-educated men of modern fashion and ancient birth—“benè nati, benè vestiti, moderatè docti,” as used to be said at All Saints, were eliminated, or rather were allowed to disappear in the ordinary course of nature without being replaced.
Such as it now exists, “the Institute,” says M. Renan, “is one of the essential elements of intellectual labour in France, controlled as it is by three powers, neither of which can be allowed to reign absolutely—the government, the academies, and the public. These three great patrons are not always of one mind, and the divisions between them afford the necessary guarantee of liberty for thinkers, writers, and inventors. Constituted into irresponsible senates, the academies would often show themselves narrow, egotistical, and self-willed. The government, possessing means of action superior to any the academies can possess, corrects at need their unjust exclusiveness; while the public, with the crown of glory it holds in its hand, can always console those who, in spite of everything, are kept out. Alone privileged to decide in intellectual questions, the government would often be too much influenced by personal considerations. But the academies bring it back to a healthy appreciation of the men themselves, while the control exercised by the public prevents it from yielding everything to court favour or party interests. The public is often a bad judge; it is incapable of appreciating certain scientific merits. The government and the academics can enable scientific men to dispense with public encouragement in order to pursue those special studies which fifty persons in Europe follow and understand, while they at the same time do justice on the intriguers and charlatans who contrive so often to enlist the suffrages of the public and the favours of journalists. Nowhere is the unity of power more dangerous than in intellectual matters. Intellectual liberty results from contrary forces, unable to absorb one another, and helping by their very rivalry the cause of progress.”
The Institute is composed of five academies. I. The French Academy, founded in 1635 by Richelieu, with forty members, of which mention will afterwards be made in a special article. II. The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres, founded in 1663 by Colbert, with forty titular members, ten free members, eight foreign associates, and fifty correspondents. III. The Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666 by Colbert, with sixty-five titular members, ten free members, eight foreign associates, and ninety-two correspondents. IV. The Academy of Fine Arts, formed between the years 1648 and 1671 by the union of the three academies of sculpture and painting, of music, and of architecture; with forty titular members, ten free members, ten foreign associates, and forty correspondents. V. The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, with forty titular members, six free members, six foreign associates, and from thirty to forty correspondents.
The Institute is administered by a commission{55}composed of a president, a secretary, and a treasurer, all of them members. Each of the academies has a president and a perpetual secretary. The Academy of Sciences has two perpetual secretaries. The French Academy has a director, a chancellor, and a perpetual secretary. Members of the academies are elected by the members of each of them. Under the Monarchy the election had to be confirmed by the decree of the sovereign; and on two occasions under the Restoration King Louis XVIII. refused to approve the elections of the Academy of Sciences. The French Academy is the only one of the five which enjoys liberty of election. The new member is presented to the chief of the state by the perpetual secretary. In 1852, under the Second Empire, M. Berryer, as a Legitimist, refused to be presented, which was not allowed to invalidate his election.
Every two years the whole body of the Institute is summoned to decree a prize of 20,000 francs, founded by the Emperor Napoleon, for “the work or the discovery most fitted to honour or to serve the country.” On these occasions each of the academies puts forward a candidate, in support of whose claims all the members of the Institute give their suffrages.
Every year, on the 14th of August, the Institute holds a public meeting at which the members of all the academies are invited to attend. The Palace of the Institute, also known as the Palais Mazarin, is the ancient college founded in conformity with one of the clauses of Cardinal Mazarin’s will, and constructed in 1663 on the site of various mansions, including the Hôtel de Nesle, with its famous tower. The Institute possesses a choice, and at the same time copious, library, which is not absolutely free to the public, but to which admission can be obtained by presenting the card of one of the members of the Institute.
The Académie Française—Its Foundation by Richelieu—Its Constitution—The “Forty-first Chair.”
THE French Academy, the most celebrated of the five academies included in the Institute, owes its origin to Cardinal de Richelieu, who had conceived the idea of basing the glory of France not only on the power of her arms, but also on the influence of her language and literature. Men of letters had been accustomed in France, since the time of Ronsard, to assemble periodically for the discussion of literary subjects; and the great minister determined to give to this species of association a regular and legal form. Accordingly, on the 2nd of January, 1635, the newly founded French Academy received letters patent signed by Louis XIII.; when the Parliament, jealous of this new power, refused for two years to register what it looked upon as a parliament of writers. The first task undertaken by the French Academy was to purify and fix the language. This has occupied it more or less fully throughout its existence, though at this moment the best dictionary of the French language is not the one issued by the French Academy, but the dictionary of M. Littré, whom, on the recommendation—one might almost say denunciation—of Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, the Academy rejected. Apart from its ordinary dictionary, of which six editions have appeared, the first in 1694, the sixth and last in 1835, the Academy has long been at work on a special etymological dictionary, with which, however, it has made but little progress; nor can it be said to have succeeded at any period of its existence in making itself the representative of contemporary literature.
It consisted, from the beginning, of forty members, to each of whom was assigned a particular seat, designated as a “fauteuil” or arm-chair, though, as a matter of fact, the academicians have always sat on benches. On the death of an academician his particular “chair” becomes vacant, and his successor is named by the thirty-nine survivors. Among the first French Academicians appointed in 1634 and 1635 only four names are to be found with which{56}the ordinary student of French literature could be supposed to be well acquainted: those of Voiture (twelfth chair), Vaugelas (fourteenth chair), Balzac (nineteenth chair), and Chapelain (thirty-seventh chair). The modern Balzac, the greatest novelist of France, if not the greatest novelist the world has seen, was never, a member of the Academy; and M. Arsène Houssaye (who will scarcely be invited to become one of the forty “Immortals”) has written a book called “The Forty-first Chair,” in which he shows that throughout the history of the Academy there has always been some writer of the first eminence for whom, if no other could have been offered to him, a forty-first chair should have been found. Voltaire (who in 1747 was elected to the twelfth chair) may be said to have anticipated Arsène Houssaye’s view when he observed that the Academy was an assembly to which noblemen, prelates, eminent lawyers, men of the world, “and even writers” were admitted. As a rule, men of learning have more chance of being elected than men of talent. Birth, moreover, social position, and conduct, count for much. Alexandre Dumas the elder was never asked to join the Academy; and it was understood that if he proposed himself he would not be accepted. For this reason Alexandre Dumas the younger refused for many years, and until his father’s death, to join the Immortals, though he could have been elected long before had he chosen to put himself forward. Originally the French Academy would, on rare occasions, invite a distinguished writer to join its body, but in consequence of some refusals (one of which came from Béranger in the form of a song) it now elects no one who has not first of all asked to be received.
The style of man peculiarly acceptable as a member of the Academy was well described by M. Guizot when one day the merits of a candidate were being discussed in his presence. “I shall vote for him,” said Guizot; “for whatever may be said on the subject, he has the qualities of a true academician; he has a good demeanour, he is very polite, he is decorated, and he has no opinions. I know that he has written a few books, but what of that? A man cannot be perfect.”
To return to M. Arsène Houssaye and his forty-first chair, here are a few of the names by which that absent article of furniture might have been adorned.
I.Descartes, from whom dates, in France at least, true liberty of thought. Great writer as well as profound thinker, the author of the “Discours sur la Méthode,” possessed every qualification for election to the Academy. “Qui benè latuit benè vixit,” however, was his motto, and he was allowed to remain in the obscurity he loved.
II.Pascal, author of the “Lettres Provinciales,” and of the admirable “thoughts” which he did not even think it worth while to put together, troubled himself as little about the Academy as did the Academy about him.
III.Molière, the great comedy-writer, was also an actor, and for that reason, considering the prejudices of the time, could not be admitted to the Academy.
After Molière’s death his bust was placed in the Hall of Meeting, and Saurin wrote this verse in his honour:
“Rien ne manque à sa gloire; il manquait à la nôtre.”[A]
[A]Nothing was wanting to his glory; he was wanting to ours.
[A]Nothing was wanting to his glory; he was wanting to ours.
IV.La Rochefoucauld, the famous author of the “Maxims,” would not think of entering the Academy because, as he said, it was impossible for him to make a speech of even a few lines; and an address on being elected, containing a eulogium in honour of the member replaced, is expected from each new academician.
V.The author of the Historical and Critical Dictionary was an academy in himself. Everything, said someone who knew the work, is to be found in Bayle; but you must know where to look for it. He worked fourteen hours a day, and died without having time to think of the French Academy, whence, in any case, his free unorthodox opinions would certainly have excluded him.
VI.Regnard, the best French comedy writer after Molière, was too much occupied with his own work and with amusing himself to dream of joining the French Academy, where, moreover, by reason of his loose life, he had but little chance of being elected.
VII.J. B. Rousseau, who in the days before André Chénier, Béranger, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset was justly regarded as the first lyric poet of France, did not belong to the Academy. He left Paris, it is true, for some scandalous verses attributed to him, but which he was never proved to have written; and he died in exile.
VIII.Vauvenargues—always to be remembered by the finest of his many fine thoughts, “les grandes pensées viennent du cœur”—died young,{57}so that the Academy may be said not to have had time to elect him.
IX.Lesage, author of “Gil Blas” and of several comedies, married the daughter of a carpenter, which might well have told against his election. But his exclusion from the Academy is generally attributed to his having failed to write a tragedy.
X.The Abbé Prévost, author of “Manon Lescaut,” was not a member of the Academy; and it is quite possible that the fact of his having written “Manon Lescaut” may have kept him out.
XI.Piron, already mentioned as the author of a famous epigram against the Academy, was really elected to it. But to be valid, the election had to be confirmed by the sovereign, and Louis XV. would not ratify the Academy’s choice. “What are the emoluments of the place?” asked the king; and being told that an academician received, by way of honorarium, one thousand francs annually, he assigned to Piron a pension for that amount.
THE DOME OF THE PANTHÉON, SPIRE OF ST. ÉTIENNE DU MONT, AND TOUR DE CLOVIS.enlarge-image
THE DOME OF THE PANTHÉON, SPIRE OF ST. ÉTIENNE DU MONT, AND TOUR DE CLOVIS.
THE DOME OF THE PANTHÉON, SPIRE OF ST. ÉTIENNE DU MONT, AND TOUR DE CLOVIS.
XII.Jean Jacques Rousseau was never asked to join the Academy, nor did he ever show any wish to belong to it.
XIII.Diderot was naturally not an academician.
XIV.Mably, the learned and vigorous publicist, who, before socialism had been formulated into a creed, put forth socialistic views, replied to many persons who urged him to become a candidate for academical honours: “If I were a member of the Academy people would perhaps say, ‘Why does he belong to it?’ I would rather hear them say, ‘Why does he not belong to it?’”
XV.The poet, André Chénier, one of the victims of the Revolution, was never a member of the French Academy; nor was Mirabeau (XVI.), nor Camille Desmoulins (XVII.).
XVIII.Beaumarchais not only wrote brilliant comedies, but took part in all kinds of speculations, some of them hazardous; and it may be for this reason, but possibly also because he was looked upon as only a playwright, that he was never asked to join the Academy. Neither Chamfort (XIX.) nor Rivarol (XX.) were Academicians. Lamennais, who, from the infallibility of the Pope passed to the infallibility of{58}the people, was never a member of the Academy.
Women are not admitted to the Academy, or Mme. de Lefayette, Mme. Dacier, Mme. Cotin, Mme. de Stael, perhaps even the most illustrious of them all, George Sand, might have been academicians. Scarcely, however, George Sand.
In ancient days a dramatist seems to have had no chance of being elected to the Academy unless he had produced tragedies. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, were all academicians, whereas Molière, Regnard, and Lesage were all excluded. The modern Academy has shown itself less prejudiced. Scribe was a member of the Academy, and so is Labiche, who, in a smaller way, may be regarded as the Molière of our time.
Suppressed, as too aristocratic, under the Revolution, the Academy came to life again as a literary branch of the Institute, and under the First Empire resumed a more independent existence in something like its old historic form. Since its revival it has traversed the Empire, the Restoration, the reign of Louis Philippe, the Republic of 1848, and the Second Empire. Finding itself sufficiently in accord with the three first governments, and tolerating the Republic of 1848, the Academy objected, it would seem, to the Second Empire; in proof of which it need only be mentioned that not one of Napoleon III.’s political men was ever admitted to the Academy. This literary society has now had time enough to get accustomed to the Third Republic, which has lasted in France longer than any governmental system since the downfall of the ancient Monarchy.
The Academy has plenty of funds at its disposal, arising from donations made to it at one time or another, and it receives annually from the state a sum of 85,000 francs. It awards prizes for eloquence and prizes for poetry; prizes for virtue (the celebrated “priz Monthyon”) and prizes for the best work of fiction, regarded from a literary, artistic, and moral point of view. This prize was adjudged to M. Alphonse Daudet for his “Fromont jeune et Risler ainé,” of which the moral tendency would not, perhaps, be obvious to everyone, though as a rule the works crowned by the Academy are such as a careful girl might safely allow her own mother to read. A prize of 20,000 francs was voted to M. Thiers for his “History of the Consulate and of the Empire,” but the money was returned by the grateful historian on the understanding that the interest it produced should be given annually as a prize for the best essay on some historical subject. A prize of 4,800 francs, founded by Dr. Toirac, is given annually for the best comedy in verse or prose played during the previous year at the Théâtre Français; and M. Louis Langlois, a famous writer of Latin elegiacs, has founded an annual prize of 1,500 francs for the best translation in verse or prose of a Greek, Latin, or other foreign work.
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The Church of Clovis—The Church of Sainte-Geneviève—France in the Thirteenth Century—The Building of the New Church under Louis XV.—Mirabeau and the Constituent Assembly—The Church of Sainte-Geneviève becomes the Panthéon.
THE College of France and the Sorbonne stand close together at the corner of the Rue Saint-Jacques and the Rue des Écoles; and between the College of France and the new Sorbonne, on the right, stands the Lyceum of Louis the Great (Lycée Louis le Grand), formerly a Jesuit college, founded by the order in 1550 in the Hôtel de Clermont; the property of Cardinal de Praat in virtue of letters patent which the Parliament of Paris declined to register until some dozen years after they had been issued. Expelled from Paris after the attempt made by Jean Châtel on the person of Henry IV., the Jesuits did not again obtain permission to teach until 1618. Amongst their celebrated pupils were some who might well be suspected of having been educated elsewhere—Molière, for instance, and Voltaire.
Originally known as the College of Clermont, this institution became, in virtue of letters patent, a royal foundation in 1662, when it received the name of Louis the Great. It was afterwards, in 1753, connected with the university. Here, indeed, until the time of the Revolution, the assemblies of the university were held, as well as those of the “four nations” included in it. The Revolution brought the Lyceum, with its monarchical name, to an end; but it was revived at the time of the Revolution, when it was once more called “Collège Louis le Grand.” Public institutions, however, like streets, ships, and theatres, change their names in France with each new form of government. The Lycée Louis le Grand was called, under the Republic, the Consulate, and the Empire, the Collège de l’Égalité; and under the Republic of 1848, when M. Carnot was Minister of Public Instruction, Collège Descartes.
A few more steps, and from the point where the Rue Saint-Jacques is intersected by the Rue Soufflet, may be perceived the Panthéon, the name given to the imposing edifice which under monarchical governments has always been known as the Church of Sainte-Geneviève.
On the site of the Panthéon stood originally a church dedicated by Clovis to the Holy Apostles. It was destroyed by the Normans in one of their incursions, and replaced soon afterwards by the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève. The bell which tolled in this once-celebrated edifice hangs to-day in the Lycée Corneille.
For a number of centuries the Church of Sainte-Geneviève seems to have had an uneventful history. Dulaure, however, in that strange book, “Les Singularités Historiques,” gives some remarkable details in regard to the life led and the actions performed by the clergy attached to Saint-Geneviève, and indeed by the French clergy generally.
Under the reign of Louis VII., styled the Young, Pope Eugène III., says this writer, driven out of Rome, came in 1145 to Paris, and a few days after his arrival wished to celebrate mass at the Church of Sainte-Geneviève. The canons to do him honour brought before the altar a large silk carpet, on which the Pope knelt to pray. After the mass the sovereign pontiff retired to the vestry, when his servants, lay and ecclesiastic, took possession of the carpet, claiming that it belonged to them simply because the Pope had made use of it. The servants of the canons being of a different opinion snatched the carpet from the hands of the Pope’s servants. The carpet, dragged on one side and the other, gave way and was soon in pieces; the accident caused insults on both sides followed by blows. The king, who had witnessed the tumult, went forward to stop it; his authority, however, was powerless against the fury of the combatants, and in the confusion he himself was struck. Victory remained with the holders of the place—the attendants in the Church of Sainte-Geneviève. The Pope’s followers, with torn clothes and bleeding faces, went before their master, who complained to the king and begged him to punish the insult. Thereupon the Pope and the king resolved to change the constitution of the Sainte-Geneviève Monastery.
It was first resolved to send away the canons and replace them by monks from Cluny, but this idea was abandoned. A new abbé was named and twelve new canons were introduced from the Abbey of Saint-Victor, who were formally installed in the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, to the great displeasure of the former canons, who{60}did all in their power to get rid of these strangers.
They employed against them calumnious threats and even violence. In the excesses of their animosity they ordered their servants to go in the night and break in the doors of the church, take possession of the building, and prevent the new canons from singing the matins, uttering shrieks which prevented them from being heard.
THE PANTHÉON, FROM THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.enlarge-image
THE PANTHÉON, FROM THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.
THE PANTHÉON, FROM THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.
In spite of the precautions taken by the Abbé Suger, in charge of the church, they took possession of a great portion of the treasure, detaching from the shrine of Sainte-Geneviève gold ornaments which weighed fourteen marks, their object being to get together a sum sufficiently large to send to the Pope in order to prevail upon him to change his resolution in regard to the monastery. The conduct of the canons caused all kinds of reports to be circulated; among others one to the effect that the head of Sainte-Geneviève had been cut off and removed from her shrine, whereupon the shrine was solemnly opened and the body of the saint displayed, with its head, while at the same time the Te Deum was sung.
Those indeed were lawless times; nor had matters improved in Paris in the next century, when Jacques de Vitry, Archbishop Cardinal and Legate of the Pope in France, wrote such an account of life in Paris as Pope Eugène III. would doubtless have approved.
“Although the Lord has said,” wrote Jacques de Vitry in his “Western History,” “that it is more blessed to give than to receive, the men of our time, above all those who are in a position to command others, do not confine themselves to extorting money from their subjects by requiring from them unlawful presents, or by filling their greedy hands with the product of the taxes and exactions with which they so unjustly oppress them; they do far worse. The thefts, the rapines, and the acts of violence which they exercise, now openly, now in secret on the wretches under their dependence, render their cruel tyranny insupportable. These lords, notwithstanding the pompous titles of which they are so proud, do not omit to go out robbing and to perform the trade of mere thieves; also that of brigands, for they ravage whole tracts of country with their incendiarism. They respect nothing, not even the property of the monasteries, nor of the churches. They profane even the sanctuary, from which they carry away the objects consecrated to the celebration of the mass. Whenever, for the slightest causes, disputes arise between the poor and their lords and masters, the latter succeed through their satellites in selling the property of these unhappy beings. On the highways you see them, covered with iron, attack the passers-by without sparing either the pilgrims or the monks. If they wish to exercise personal vengeance against simple, innocent men, they attack them through their bandits, scoundrels who follow the streets of the towns and boroughs, or who, concealed in secret places, lay traps for these poor wretches in order to catch them and shed their blood. On the sea they are pirates, and without fearing the anger of God, they plunder passengers and merchants, in many cases burning the ships and drowning in the waves those whom they have despoiled. Princes and nobles without faith are the associates of these robbers. Far from protecting their subjects and maintaining them in peace, they oppress them; far from repressing the rascals and keeping them down through the fear of punishment, they favour them, become their patrons, and for the money they receive from them help them in their scandalous actions. The French nobles are like unclean dogs, who, always famishing, dispute with greedy crows the flesh of{61}carcases. The nobles, by the agency of their provosts and their satellites, persecute the poor, rob the widow and the orphan, lay snares for them, pick quarrels with them, and attribute to them imaginary crimes in order to extort money. It is a common practice with them to put in prison and load with chains men who have committed no offence, and to make these innocent persons support cruel tortures in order to extract sums of money from them. This is all done in order to obtain supplies for their prodigality, their luxuries, their superfluities, their mad expenditure on the vanities of the century, to pay their usurers, to support mimes, singers, actors, jugglers, parasites, and flatterers, veritable dogs of their courtyards.”
“This sketch,” says Dulaure, “traced by a man of serious character, proves how great was the evil, how excessive was the disorder, how entirely all principles were subverted. Such were the knights of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose loyalty, so much exalted in novels, in poetical compositions, and on our modern stage, is constantly disproved by history. These men, to whom so many glorious exploits, so many generous actions are attributed, were merciless brigands, wretches who would now figure at the hulks or in the dungeons of Bicêtre.”