TOMB OF ABÉLARD AND HÉLOÏSE, CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LACHAISE.TOMB OF ABÉLARD AND HÉLOÏSE, CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LACHAISE.
For the poor, the three great Parisian cemeteries have long been closed,—space within their walls is reserved by the law for the fortunate owners of the ninety thousandconcessions perpétuelles. The indigent and the working population are relegated to the two enormous enclosures situated, the one at Ivry and the other at Saint-Ouen, which have received from the people the picturesque appellations ofChamp de NavetsandCayenne. Champ de Navets means a turnip-field, and Cayenne is a penal colony. Even in this exile, the dead are allowed to rest undisturbed only five years; at the end of that period, the earth is reclaimed, turned over again, and prepared to receive new tenants for the same length of time. The surroundings of these two suburban cemeteries are, moreover, of the most barren and forlorn character; the plain around Saint-Ouen is occupied by various factories and manufacturing establishments which fill all the air with evil odors. TheFosse communeis simply a long trench in which the cheap coffins are placed all together, and the earth heaped over them indiscriminately. But even the tombs of malefactors who have perished under the axe of Justice are not forgotten in these dreary receptacles; although it is illegal to designate with a name the grave of one of these, "there are still to be found pious hands to mark these accursed tombs with a cross and to surround them with a modest railing. In the Champ de Navets there may be seen the grave of the assassin Géomey ornamented with wreaths bearing his initials, and the tomb of the infamous Vodable surmounted by a cross with this word:Ami.—friend." In Père-Lachaise, that of the socialist, Blanqui, is still the object of annual pilgrimages and "demonstrations," which frequently culminate, as on the very last anniversary, in a free fight among the pilgrims, and the intervention of the police; and the "wall of the Federals," against which the Communists were stood up to be shot, is almost covered with memorial wreaths. "How many years longer," says M. Havard, "will there still resound these instigations to hatred and these appeals to vengeance?"
The only private cemetery in Paris is that of Picpus, the entrance to which is in the street of the same name. When the guillotine was transported from the Place de la Revolution to the former barrière de Trône, it became necessary to find in the quarter a place of burial for the victims, and the Commune of Paris selected, on the 26th Prairial, year II, a "piece of ground that had belonged to the so-called canons of Picpus." Here these victims of "the law" were interred, to the number of thirteen hundred and six, all executed between the 14th of June and the 27th of July, 1794; and thiscimetière des guillotinéshas been preserved as the property of the relatives and friends. It includes the tombs of a number of the most ancient and illustrious families of France, that of General Lafayette, of General de Beauharnais, of the poet André Chénier, of Talleyrand, Montalembert, etc. It was acquired, under the First Empire, by the Prince de Salm-Kirbourg, one of whose ancestors had been buried in the Revolutionary fosse commune; and is open to visitors on payment of a fee of fifty centimes. The victims of the guillotine of the Place de la Concorde were buried in two provisional cemeteries which have disappeared,—one which had served as a kitchen-garden for the Bénédictines in the Rue de la Ville-l'Évêque, and the other near the Folie-Chartres, in the neighborhood of the present Parc Monceau and the Boulevard de Courcelles.
That lugubrious institution, the Morgue, dates from 1714, at least; it was then a low room in the basement of the Châtelet, near the vestibule of the principal stairway, and in the court adjoining was a well, the water of which served to wash the corpses. It was under the care of thefilles hospitalières de Sainte-Catherine, and was, as may be supposed, a noxious cell in which the bodies, thrown one upon the other, waited to be inspected by the light of lanterns by those searching for missing relatives or friends. In March, 1734, it was thronged with visitors attracted by the unusual presence of some fifteen or sixteen infantile corpses, none of them more than three years of age; it appeared that a celebrated anatomist, Joseph Hunault, had collected these subjects for his investigations, in the house of a surgeon, the affrighted neighbors had complained to the police, who had caused them all to be transported to the Morgue. A police ordinance of August 17, 1804, directed that this establishment be suppressed, and that all bodies drawn from the river or found elsewhere should be taken to the new Morgue on the Marché-Neuf, in the quartier de la Cité. The object of the municipal administration was to secure the recognition of the greatest number possible of these remnants of humanity, and for this purpose they were exposed, for three days at least, behind a glass screen protected by a rail, on inclined tables of black marble, the heads reposing upon a raised piece covered with leather. There was provided a room for the autopsies, containing two dissecting-tables; another for the washing of the garments found on the dead, and a third for those bodies recognized or in which decomposition had proceeded too far to permit of their public exposure. Two attendants were always on duty to receive any bodies that might be brought, at any hour of the day or night.
ENTRANCE TO THE CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LACHAISE.ENTRANCE TO THE CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LACHAISE.
In 1809, it was proposed to transport the Morgue to a site between the Pont Saint-Michel and the Petit-Pont, but in 1830 it was enlarged and improved where it stood; in 1864, it was transferred to its present locality, behind Notre-Dame, between the Pont Saint-Louis and the Pont de l'Archevêché. The bodies were still exposed nude, with the exception of a leathern apron across the loins, on twelve black marble slabs, to the public gaze, with their garments hanging over them; to preserve them as long as possible, they were exposed to a constant sprinkling with fresh water. When recognized, or when they could no longer delay, they were carried into the adjoiningsalle du dépôt;adjoining was thesalle d'autopsie, and, on the ground-floor, thesalle des conférences, in which the accused were brought before and after being confronted with the bodies of their supposed victims. Some of these arrangements are still preserved in the present institution; but, since the establishment of theappareils frigorifiques, or freezing machines, in 1881, the length of time during which a corpse may be preserved has been greatly extended, from one month to years, according to various claims. In thesalle d'expositionthe temperature is maintained at about zero, Centigrade, freezing point, Fahrenheit; and in the cells in which the bodies are first placed, at fifteen degrees below zero, Centigrade. The bodies of criminals are not submitted to the public inspection. The garments are returned to the families, when the body has been recognized or burned; their sale has been forbidden since 1883.
All persons are formally invited to furnish any indications they possess that may lead to the recognition of the bodies, and are informed that they will be put to no expense. A photographic plant was installed here in 1877, and all bodies are photographed,—those which are not recognized before burial have these, their last portraits, affixed at the entrance. The number of corpses received annually is about nine hundred, including new-born babies, fœtuses, and the remnants from the dissecting-tables, and this number increases year by year. In it are included also those bodies which it is desired to submit to a medico-legal examination. About six-sevenths of the total number exposed are those of men, and about one-seventh are never recognized. The sanitary surveillance is under the charge of three medical inspectors; not only are the autopsies here frequent, but there are also held many conferences in legal medicine, and there is a laboratory of toxicology. All departments of the establishment are cramped for want of space, and it is proposed to establish a distinct medico-legal institution on a new site, at the angle of the Quai aux Fleurs and the Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame.
On the crest of the hill in Père-Lachaise, in a fine open space from which the tombs recede on all sides,—as if appalled at the presence of this horrible new-comer,—rises the tall Crematory furnace, with its quasi-classic columbarium behind it. Great improvements have been made in the material details of this method of disposing of the dead since its first revival in modern times, and even since the erection of this edifice,—but the overturning of immemorial prejudices proceeds but slowly. France claims the credit of introducing this excellent sanitary measure, and as far back as the end of the last century, in the year V of the Republic, a law was proposed by a commission of the Cinq-Cents granting to each family the privilege of choosing between inhumation and cremation for their dead. Later, "the administration centrale of the department of the Seine adopted a regulation prescribing the cremation of all those bodies destined for the fosse commune whose owners had not expressed, during their lifetime, a contrary desire. Under the Consulate, Madame Geneste, wife of the citizen Pierre-Francois Lachèze, chargé d'affaires of the French Republic at Venice, obtained from the préfet Frochot an authorization to cause the body of her deceased son to be burned. The préfet invoked, in support of his decision, this consideration, 'that the last cares to be rendered to mortal remains constitute a religious act of which public authority cannot prescribe the methods without violating the principle of liberty of opinions.' Madame Dupuis-Geneste, however, did not make use of this authorization."
In 1882, M. Casimir-Perier, then minister, proposed a law granting to every person who had attained his majority and to every minor who had been relieved from guardianship, the power to regulate all the details of his own funeral at his own discretion. TheSociété pour la Propagation de l'Incinération, which now includes six hundred members, had been founded two years before by M. Kœchlin-Schwartz and M. Georges-Salomon, and this society caused to be erected, in Père-Lachaise, in 1887, on the plans of the architect Formigé, a building destined for the cremation of dead bodies,—this process, it was declared by theConseil d'Hygiène et de Salubrité de la Seine, on the proposal of Doctor Bourneville, could be applied to the disposal of subjects from the dissecting-tables without any menace to the public health, provided that it was effected in suitable furnaces and without emitting any odor. M. Casimir-Perier's proposal was finally recognized by the Chamber and the Senate in 1886 and 1887, and this legal sanction decided the question practically in favor of the Cremation Society and of the Conseil Municipal of Paris, which had long been in favor of the optional incineration of the dead.
The first apparatus, a reverberatory furnace burning wood, was found to be entirely insufficient, and was replaced by a chamber of combustion filled with incandescent gas, much more elaborate in construction. A special apparatus, called aGazogène, evolves carbon protoxide, which, set on fire by peculiar burners, produces a temperature of eight hundred degrees Centigrade in the chamber of combustion. The entire arrangement at Père-Lachaise is some nine mètres in height by five and a half in width, the actual furnace is below the chamber of combustion and not directly under it, this space being occupied by long, perpendicular flues through which the air—fed through a large horizontal shaft passing under the furnace—rises. In the chamber of combustion, into which the body is introduced in its coffin, the destruction was formerly effected by the aid of the actual flames, and the result was not completely satisfactory,—the skull was left almost intact and some of the bones, with a few fatty acids and salts. The attendants gathered these remnants up with pinchers, brushed the black and greasy residue from the bones, and placed the whole in a little wooden casket, about the size of a child's coffin, for final deposit in the columbarium. Now, by the improved process, the total residue that issues from the furnace is a quantity of white ashes, varying from nine hundred to twelve hundred grammes in weight, although the flame is no longer permitted to reach the body and the combustion is effected by refraction alone. A curious detail in both operations is that the liver is the last of the organs to be destroyed, and remains an incandescent mass when all the rest of the body has disappeared.
UNDERGROUND PARIS: ARCH OF THE GREAT SEWER, UNDER THE RUE ROYALE, CORNER OF THE RUE DE RIVOLI. After a drawing by A. Montader.UNDERGROUND PARIS: ARCH OF THE GREAT SEWER, UNDER THE RUE ROYALE, CORNER OF THE RUE DE RIVOLI.After a drawing by A. Montader.
In the funerary chamber, in which the mourners assemble, in the second story, the coffin is received by the attendants, placed on a metallic chariot, running on rails, the long shafts or extensions of which carry it, with its contents, directly into the fiery heart of the furnace and there deposit it. The time required for the complete combustion is, at present, twenty-five minutes for a child, and fifty-five for an adult. An urn of a peculiar model is now provided for the reception of the ashes, and this can be either buried in the family vault or placed in one of the cells of the municipal columbarium, erected in 1895. Although this latter receptacle does not, as yet, meet with much favor, and has been irreverently compared by one of the apostles of cremation to a shed, it might be made a very neat and unobjectionable mausoleum. At present, it is a species of lofty white marble arcade, or porch, the wall side of which is filled up with cells about two feet square, the panels closing which bear the name and dates of the occupant. This panelled white marble wall is, however, defaced by the black wreaths, beadwork, and artificial flowers which the misguided mourners hang over the remains of their departed. In this municipal columbarium, families have a right to deposit their ashes for the space of five years, at the end of which period the urns are taken out and emptied in the fosse commune. A concession perpétuelle for the urns in a cemetery may, however, be purchased for the sum of three hundred and sixty-nine francs and eighty centimes. The columbarium provides for three hundred urns; less than half these receptacles are as yet filled, but the number of cremations increases slowly year by year. There is also a similar establishment in the cemetery at Clichy, and others are projected for other sites.
Statistics show that the annual mortality in Paris is about 22.6 per thousand inhabitants, which the Parisian publications erroneously claim is below the average for large cities. In London, for example, in the week ending January 14, 1899, it was 18 per thousand, and averaged 18.5 in thirty-two provincial towns. In some of them, as Brighton, Derby, Leicester, and Hull, it ranged from 11 to 12.9; and the highest rates were from 22.4 in Manchester to 24 in Sunderland. It is a constant source of wonder to the newly-arrived in Paris, however,—especially if he be inoculated with modern ideas concerning sanitary sewage in dwelling-houses,—that the city escapes an annual epidemic of typhoid fever. So very primitive are the methods of cesspools, and the official emptying of them, in very many quarters of the city, that it is an article of faith with the citizens to close all their windows tightly at night,—an article of faith that is adopted by many American and English residents with the usual wholesome Anglo-Saxon ideas concerning ventilation of sleeping-rooms. It may be stated, however, as the result of much experience, that—even for those who are able thus to sleep in tightly-closed rooms—the open windows at night arenotdeadly. The prejudice against night air, which is by no means confined to France, here takes on an acute form,—it is even asserted stoutly, and this, too, is believed sometimes by the otherwise intelligent foreigner, that the entrance of fresh air into the sleeping-room at night produces affections of the eyes. The quarters of Paris in which the mortality is the lowest—those which show quite white on the graded annual mortality plan of the city—are the arrondissements of the Élysée and the Opéra, 11.1 and 14.5 respectively; and those which are printed quite black on the same plan are those of the Observatoire and the Gobelins, 32.8 and 31.4 respectively.
Nevertheless, the sewerage system of Paris is conceived and carried out in its general plan with an appreciation of the requirements of modern sanitary science and an intelligent employment of the science of the engineer that are quite admirable. The methods of disposing of the city's refuse in use by many American municipalities, as those of New York and Chicago, are, by comparison, but dull and stupid perpetuation of antiquated traditions. The animated controversy over the great question ofTout à l'égout, "all refuse to the sewer," was not finally settled till 1894, and this method has as yet not been applied to all the quarters of the city, as stated above, but is being gradually extended, and nothing but time seems to be wanting to bring about in this capital a complete solution of one of the most difficult problems of material civilization. The object of the Parisian method is to avoid fouling the Seine in any way, and to utilize all the city's refuse, instead of throwing it away or allowing it to accumulate, a menace to health and a hideous nuisance. By an excellent system of underground conduits, well lighted and ventilated, the sewage and the rain-water are collected, carried by canals and pipes outside the city, and applied, after proper treatment, to the fertilization of certain arid tracts of land farther down the river. The principal agent in this "hygienic transformation of Paris" was the engineer Belgrand, who, at his death, in 1870, had increased the length of the municipal sewers from two hundred and twenty-eight kilomètres in 1860 to six hundred. It has now attained a total of fourteen hundred and twenty-one, representing a capital of a hundred and fifty millions of francs.
The first principle of Belgrand's system was to avoid any discharge from the sewers into the river during its course through Paris. The great main sewer, thecollecteur général, of the right bank, called the collecteur d'Asnières, follows the quais from the basin of the Arsenal to the Place de la Concorde, then burrows under the heights of the Batignolles to reach Clichy; the collecteur général of the left bank, which includes the poor little Bièvre, traverses the bed of the Seine by means of a siphon at the Pont de l'Alma and is prolonged by the collecteur Monceau, which passes under the hill of the Place de l'Étoile to join the collecteur d'Asnières. A third collecteur, known as thedépartemental, ordu Nord, at a higher level, receives the drainage of Belleville and Montmartre, and issues from the city by the Porte de La Chapelle to reach the Seine at Saint-Denis. A new siphon, constructed under the Seine in 1895 and 1896, unites the collecteur général of the left bank to the collecteur d'Asnières. The sewage of the Iles Saint-Louis and de la Cité is carried by two other siphons to the collecteurs of the quais of the right and left banks.
A new main sewer, called the collecteur général de Clichy, was commenced in 1896, to supplement those of Asnières and Monceau, become insufficient; this passes under the Avenue and the Rue de Clichy to terminate at the Place de la Trinité. The prolongation of the line of the Orléans railway to the Quai d'Orsay, by means of a tunnel, has necessitated a very important modification of the sewers of the left bank of the river, which has had much to do with the lengthening of the work of excavation which has so greatly annoyed the dwellers on this side of the river in 1898 and 1899. It was understood that this excavating was to be done entirely underground, whereas it has blockaded many of the narrower streets, and even when it tunnels it contrives to raise the street level about a mètre and substitute a wooden floor, as along the Quai Voltaire. It is stated that this work will cost the railway company not less than five million francs.
UNDERGROUND PARIS: LICENSED RAT-CATCHER IN A SEWER. After a design by G. Amato. Henri Dayre: Chasseur de rats de la Ville de Paris, fournisseur de toutes les Sociétés de France et de l'Étranger.UNDERGROUND PARIS: LICENSED RAT-CATCHER IN A SEWER. After a design by G. Amato.Henri Dayre: Chasseur de rats de la Ville de Paris, fournisseur de toutes les Sociétés de France et de l'Étranger.
The diameter of the vault of theégouts collecteursvaries between four and six mètres; that of theégouts secondairesfrom two mètres to three mètres, seventy centimètres; that of theégouts ordinaires, including ten varieties, from one mètre to one mètre, seventy-five. The size the most in use has a diameter of one mètre, forty. The problem of purifying and utilizing the contents of the sewers, which were provisionally discharged into the Seine at Saint-Denis and at Asnières, occupied the attention of the municipality from the period of the establishing of the collecteurs, but the vigorous local opposition which was encountered greatly delayed the carrying out of these projects. Consequently, the purification of the river is not yet complete. On the sandy and arid plain of Genevilliers, situated in the first loop of the Seine, beyond Clichy, the experiment of fertilizing with this drainage was commenced in 1869. At present, the ground thus under cultivation includes some seven hundred and ninety-fivehectares,—about two and a half acres each,—of which six belong to the city of Paris and constitute the model garden. The remainder is held by private individuals, who pay a rental of from four to six hundred francs the hectare. The distribution of the sewage is effected by agents of the administration in regular rotation, in three zones. In 1896, each hectare absorbed thirty-seven thousand and sixty-seven cubic mètres. All varieties of vegetables are grown, and this land, on which were raised formerly only meagre crops of rye and potatoes, is now a flourishing garden.
A second agricultural establishment at Achères, farther on, on both sides of the Seine, was inaugurated in 1895, the larger portion of which is held by individuals, but as each hectare of land can absorb not more than forty thousand cubic mètres annually, it has been found necessary to seek additionalchamps d'épuration. These have been secured by the municipality at Méry and les Gresillons and in their neighborhood, still farther westward, and the completion of these is promised for the summer of 1899. In the model garden of Asnières, all varieties of culture are practised, the sewage is carried in trenches into the cultivated land in such a manner as to bathe only the roots of the plants. The extremely winding course taken by the Seine west of Paris renders it necessary for the conduits conveying this drainage to cross the river three times before reaching Achères, as may be seen by reference to the map. From theusine elévatoireof Clichy it is carried under the Seine by a siphon, four hundred and sixty-three mètres in length; the aqueduct crosses the river again near the usine de Colombes, opposite Argenteuil, on a steel bridge, and again near Herblay, by another siphon. In 1897, on the total surface, a thousand hectares, under cultivation, there were spread seventy million cubic mètres of sewage.
After many and long debates, carried on both in the Conseil Municipal and the Chamber of Deputies, the much-discussed question ofTout à l'égoutwas disposed of by a law passed on the 10th of July, 1894, by which the proprietors of all houses situated in streets provided with a public sewer were required to make connections with this and drain into it all the refuse of theircabinets d'aisances. This connection was to be made within the space of three years, and a proportionate tax for this privilege was laid upon each dwelling. But the streets in which there are no public sewers,—including those private streets,impasses, andcitéswhich the municipality considers as the property of individuals, and for which it provides neither policemen nor street-cleaners,—and those buildings in which this connection has not been made, still furnish occupation for those nocturnal vehicles the mere thought of which drives the careful citizen to close his windows. In the seventeenth century, this nocturnal agent was known asMaître fy-fy et des basses-œuvres, and he fulfilled his task by carting his material to one of the public dumping grounds and there discharging it. Many of the now picturesque sites of the city owe their characteristics to these eminences of refuse,—the Buttes of the Rues Meslay and Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, Bonne-Nouvelle, des Moulins, the labyrinth of the Jardin des Plantes. "Thevoirieof Montfaucon," says M. Strauss, "with its infected basins, its pestilential reservoirs, its charnier and its gibbet, was a cause of shame and anxiety to several quarters of Paris; even after being transferred from the Faubourg Saint-Martin to the foot of the Buttes Chaumont, it was an object of horror and disgust. An army of rats garrisoned the charnier, whilst the basins overflowed with rottenness. This horrible establishment had its clientèle; in 1832, the Préfet de Police, M. Gisquet, found, according to the account of M. Mille, a hideous thing,—individuals who, in the midst of these lakes, fished up again the dead fish.
"In 1848, this notorious laystall was installed in the forest of Bondy, where it has undergone various transformations; for many years the basins were encumbered with a stock but very slightly appetizing; to reduce these mountains of refuse to industrial products was a very serious undertaking. After being, by slow desiccation by drying in the air and grinding, transformed into a fertilizer calledpoudrette, they are subjected to various chemical processes; there is extracted from them sulphate of ammonia, etc. The odors which are disengaged during these operations, while not injurious to the health of man, are not of those which leave public opinion indifferent; the girdle of insalubrious establishments which immediately surrounds Paris, individualdépotoirs, privatevoiries, manufactories of fertilizing materials, is no less menacing than disgraceful.
"A single establishment is an exception to this rule, it is the dépotoir of La Villette, in the neighborhood of theMarché aux bestiaux. It would never be thought, from its appearance, that it was the nightly rendezvous of the most infectious scavengers' carts that traverse Paris. A coquettish garden, of a surprising greenness, all flowery and perfumed, charms the eyes; the receiving cisterns conceal themselves under vaults that do not reveal their secret to the first comer. The basin of the water of the Ourcq has the most innocent air in the world, and the return-pumps reveal nothing.
"All night long, the dépotoir is visited by vehicles, two or three hundred in number, which arrive in single file, with a mysterious heaviness, to discharge themselves in the cisterns. What a discharge! a thousand to twelve hundred cubic mètres—of matter!
"The next morning, all this deposit is relegated to a distance of nine kilomètres, as far as Bondy, by elevating machines: the cisterns are washed out and cleansed by floods of water; the heavy matter which the pumps do not take up is put in casks and taken away to be employed directly in the manufacture of manure, by mixing it with other fertilizing materials. The transportal of the liquid matter to Bondy is effected by means of a machine of twenty-five horse-power, through a conduit thirty centimètres in diameter, which follows the right bank of the canal de l'Ourcq."
SERVICE MUNICIPAL FORESTIER: TRANSPLANTATION OF TREE ON THE BOULEVARDS. After a drawing by L. Vauzanges.SERVICE MUNICIPAL FORESTIER: TRANSPLANTATION OF TREE ON THE BOULEVARDS.After a drawing by L. Vauzanges.
The great collecteur d'Asnières, a sectional view of which under the Rue Royale, is shown on page 299, is five mètres, sixty centimètres, in width, and three mètres, forty, in height; the channel for the water in the centre is three mètres, fifty, in width, and one mètre, thirty-five, in depth. On each side is abanquette, or sidewalk, ninety centimètres wide. The collecteurs, as well as the smaller sewers of the streets and houses, are constructed of masonry laid in mortar, and they are lined with cement which insures their cleanliness and their sonorousness. The former quality is maintained by an incessant surveillance, an organized force of nine hundred and thirty-one men being constantly employed, and an arrangement of fans or wings, mounted either upon the fronts of the boats or attached to the bottoms of the little trucks which run on rails along the edges of the canal of the larger sewers. These fans descend into the canal and sweep all obstructions before them,—the sand from the street pavements overhead constituting a large portion of this obstructive material. The siphons are cleansed by an ingenious process invented by Belgrand and applied by him to that of the Alma,—a large wooden ball, eighty-five centimètres in diameter, traversing twice a week each of the two conduits, a mètre in diameter. So thorough is this policing of the sewers, that it is recorded that the number of heavy leathern thigh boots furnished theégoutiersis some twelve hundred or two thousand annually, representing a value of nearly a hundred thousand francs. One pair of these boots lasts about six months.
An analysis of the air of these sewers gives surprising results. The proportion of carbonic acid is somewhat greater than in the air of the streets overhead, that of ammoniacal azote is much more considerable, and that of bacteria only half as great. Consequently, not only does the personnel of this underground labyrinth traverse it constantly without danger, but visitors from the upper world find amusement in exploring it. Every fortnight, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month, the Préfet of the Seine, or the Chief Engineer of theService de l'Assainissement de Paris, grants permits for these visits to a certain number of applicants,—the visitors are transported through the collecteurs of the Châtelet to the Place de la Concorde, under the Boulevard Sebastopol and the Rue de Rivoli, in little vehicles forming two trains, drawn each by an electric engine; then from the Concorde to the Madeleine, under the Rue Royale, in boats drawn by an electric tug. The trip takes about an hour, and can be made in either direction; the sewers are open to this invasion from Easter to the end of October, excepting in case of storms, when the water in the canals is apt to rise rapidly over the banquettes and drive the workmen to theregardsor places of ascent provided every fifty or a hundred mètres apart. The danger of asphyxia, which was formerly very serious, is now practically abolished, the ventilation being assured by numerous openings in the street gutters under the curb-stones, which are kept free from floating materials and obstructions by a special corps of égoutiers.
For thewagonnets de servicein the larger sewers, an ingenious arrangement is used,—on the little four-wheeled truck which runs on rails along the edge of the central canal are laid two more sections of railroad at right angles, and on these are mounted two more four-wheeled trucks carrying each a rectangular little tank or receptacle, with a rounded bottom. The outside rail, at each end, is blocked, so as to keep these tanks in position while in transit,—when arrived at their destination, the blocks are removed and the two run off on other rails to be emptied. The Parisian sewers carry not only the drainage of the streets and houses, but also all those various underground means of communication which in other, and less well-ordered, municipalities have each their own burrowing to do,—at the cost of infinite expense and confusion. The water-pipes, the telegraphic cables, the telephone wires, the pneumatic tubes for the postal service, and the piping for the conveyance of motive power, are all sheltered in these underground thoroughfares. So complete and well organized, indeed, are these égouts, that that constant habitant of sewers, the rat, is being driven out of them,—neither the black rat nor his enemy, the great Norway animal, can find lodging and refuge in these cement-lined walls, as hard as steel. The task of the hunter of rodents is greatly facilitated by all these improved methods.
It is difficult nowadays to conceive the condition of the streets of a mediæval city, and Paris was no exception. Not only were they very crooked—each householder building where he chose, with very little consideration for the general alignment, badly paved or not at all, unsewered and dark, but they were the receptacles for absolutely all the refuse of the dwellings. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker threw everything out of the windows, and nobody carried it away. The first vaulted sewer was constructed in the reign of Charles VI, in the Rue Montmartre, by Hugues Aubriot,prévôtof the merchants; but the state of the public thoroughfares remained much as it had been in the preceding century. The houses were built on the level of the streets, and inundated at every violent shower, the choked-up gutters refusing to carry off the sudden flood. Even the kings of France struggled in vain against the universal infection,—"incommoded in their Hôtels Saint-Pol and des Tourelles, they were constantly protesting to the municipality of Paris; Louis XII, François I, and Henri II vainly attempted to secure the removal of the égout Sainte-Catherine; this unwholesome neighborhood even caused François I to change his property of Chanteloup for the locality of the Tuileries." In 1473, the Parlement ordered the Lieutenant Criminel to clear away the filth which obstructed the entrance to Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet and along the course formerly traversed by the Bièvre, and three years later a more general effort at reformation was made. The main streets, the surroundings of the Palais, were submitted to a sort of system of cleaning, the cost of which was defrayed by a tax laid upon the inhabitants thus favored. The aqueduct of Belleville had been constructed in 1244, to supply the fountain of the monastery of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, and afterward furnished water to most of the fountains of Paris; in 1457, it had been repaired by theprévôtof the merchants, and thus supplied a means of cleansing the streets. In 1265, there was existing a fountain in the upper part of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, known as the Fontaine Saint-Lazare, and fed by the aqueduct of Saint-Gervais—from Romainville, near Vincennes—constructed in the last years of the reign of Philippe-Auguste. The fountain of the Innocents, that of Maubuée, and that of the Halles were also watered by this aqueduct of the Pré-Saint-Gervais. The Cité and the quartier Saint-Jacques were for centuries the most pestilential quarters of the capital, and, despite the various measures taken to ameliorate them, it was not till the reign of Henri IV that the evil was effectively attacked by the widening of the streets so as to permit the noblesse and the bourgeoisie to traverse them in carriages.
To such a height had the deposits of refuse outside the city walls attained, that, in 1525, during the panic that prevailed in Paris at the news of the captivity of François I, Jean Briçonnet, President of the Chambre des Comptes, secured the passage of an ordinance directing their razing, as from their summits an enemy could command the city walls! During this reign, however, considerable progress was made in cleansing and embellishing the capital; the king particularly enjoined upon the municipality the importance of paving and sweeping the streets, and a royal edict of November, 1539, prescribed minute regulations for the conduct of the inhabitants and the measures to be taken that would be considered very satisfactory, if enforced, at the present day. The paving of the streets, which had been commenced under Philippe-Auguste, had proceeded so slowly that in 1545 the greater portion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was not yet paved, and the Cardinal de Tournon, Abbé of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, undertook the task. A decree of the court, March 30, 1545, ordered the commencement in the Rue de Seine; but when the cardinal desired to straighten the street lines also, he encountered a vigorous opposition on the part of the inhabitants. The Parlement was obliged to come to his assistance, and a decree of the 21st of the following October directed that all those who had valid reasons for opposing this measure should appear by means of a procureur, within the space of three days, to state them.
Five years later, another public-spirited citizen, Gilles de Froissez, an iron-master, proposed to bring the water of the Seine to aid in the great task of cleaning the city, and was instrumental in beginning this good work. In 1605, still another, François Miron, paid out of his own pocket for the facing with masonry of the égout de Ponceau from the Rue Saint-Denis to the Rue Saint-Martin. Various other open sewers were gradually transformed into covered ones, but under Louis XIV, while the total length of the first was only two thousand three hundred and fifty-three mètres, that of the latter, including the longégout de ceinture, or stream of Ménilmontant, was eight thousand and thirty-six.
Marie de Médicis, having begun, in 1613, to plant the trees for the park of her proposed palace on the site of the old Hôtel du Luxembourg, was desirous of securing a supply of water for her fountains, and arrangements were made to divide that which was to be brought from the source at Rungis by the Aqueduct of Arcueil. The old one built by the Romans in this locality—whence its name,Arculi—had fallen to ruins; one Hugues Cosnier had engaged, the preceding year, to construct a new one in three years, which should bring thirty inches of water to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, eighteen for the palace and twelve for the inhabitants. The work was carried out by Jacques Debrosse, between 1613 and 1624; and on his handsome, dressed-stone construction there was erected another in rough stone, less high but twice as long, between 1868 and 1872.
THE PUMPS OF PONT NOTRE-DAME, FROM THE QUAI DE GESVRES, AS THEY APPEARED IN 1861. THEY WERE DEMOLISHED IN 1866. From a drawing by H. Toussaint, after a contemporary engraving.THE PUMPS OF PONT NOTRE-DAME, FROM THE QUAI DE GESVRES, AS THEY APPEARED IN 1861. THEY WERE DEMOLISHED IN 1866.From a drawing by H. Toussaint, after a contemporary engraving.
A detailed report has been preserved, setting forth the condition of the streets of the capital, made by Anne de Beaulieu, Sieur de Saint-Germain, to the king, in April, 1636. Everywhere,ordures,immondices,bouès, andeaux croupies et arrestées, the latter proceeding from the broken sewers; in the quartier Saint-Eustache, the égouts were stopped up, as everywhere else, "which causes the aforesaid waters to stagnate and to rise nearly to the church of Saint-Eustache and to give forth such a stinking vapor, in consequence of the carriages, carts, and horses which pass through the aforesaid waters, which is capable of polluting the whole quarter, and the same rising and stagnating of water is caused in the Rue du Bout du Monde as far as the aforesaid Rue Montorgueil; and it is to be remarked that the stench of the aforesaid waters is much more stinking and infectious in this locality than in others, because of the butchers and pork-butchers who have their slaughter-houses on the aforesaidesgout(the égout of the Rue Montmartre), and that the blood and the garbage and other matters proceeding as much from the aforesaid slaughter-houses as from the sweepings of the houses."
In 1670, the city established the two pumps at the Pont Notre-Dame to raise the river-water, which, elevated "to the height of sixty feet and to the quantity of eighty inches, was conducted into different quarters of the city by pipes six inches in diameter." Two mills which were standing on this site were purchased by the city, which diminished considerably the expense and hastened the completion of the work. These pumps were enclosed in a building of the Ionic order of architecture, the door of which was decorated with a medallion of Louis XIV, and with two figures sculptured in bas-relief by Jean Goujon, one representing a naiad, and the other personifying a river. These had previously ornamented an edifice in the Marché Neuf which had been demolished. An inscription by the poet Santeuil completed the decoration of this building. These pumps were restored and reconstructed in 1708, and finally abandoned in 1854.
The most important reformation effected in the eighteenth century was the reconstruction, throughout its whole length, of the great main sewer and the construction of a reservoir for the water with which to flood it. This was decided upon in 1737, and completed in 1740. Sewers were constructed also in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple and Rue de Turenne, the open ditch Guénégaud was covered over, and the Invalides and the École militaire were supplied with water. A police ordinance of January 9, 1767, forbade the inhabitants to put out in the streets any broken bottles, crockery, or glassware, or to throw them out of the windows; all individuals were forbidden, also, by the eighth article, to throw out of the windows in the streets, "either by night or day, any water, urine, fecal matter, or other filth of any nature whatsoever, under penalty of a fine of three hundred livres." The Parisians objected strongly to this interference with their usual habits, and this question of sanitation remained long unsolved; in 1769, the Contrôleur Général, M. de Laverdy, proposed to establish at the street cornersbrouettes, or small, closed vehicles, in which could be foundlunettesfor the benefit of the public. "The contractors promised to turn in a certain sum to the royal treasury," says the author of theMémoirs secrets, "which transformed the affair into an impost worthy of being compared to that which Vespasian laid upon the urine of the Romans."
This idea, much derided at the time, was the germ of the moderncabinets inodores, those very useful institutions which do so much to disfigure the streets of Paris. In 1845, small cabinets of this species, mounted on wheels, could be seen on the Place de la Concorde, drawn about by a man, who stopped when signalled by the passer-by, but these soon disappeared. By a special law, passed February 4, 1851, the establishment oflavoirs publicswas authorized in several quarters of Paris, and these establishments have continued to multiply.
The problem of supplying Paris with good drinking water is not yet completely solved, though immense progress has been made within the last sixty years. The cholera epidemic of 1832 did much to arouse the municipal authorities to the necessity of radical reform both in the water-supply and in the system of sewage. At this date, the city was furnished by the pumps in the Seine, by the selenitic water drawn from Belleville, from the Pré-Saint-Gervais and from Arcueil, and from the canal de l'Ourcq,—inferior in quality and insufficient in quantity. The public fountains had long been the great resource of the inhabitants, and these were frequently architectural constructions worthy of their importance,—the Fontaine des Innocents, that of the Birague—now disappeared, that of the Arbre-Sec, of Gaillon and of Grenelle. Theporteurs d'eauwere robust young fellows, mostly from Auvergne, who carried about the Seine water in two metal buckets by means of a neck yoke, and delivered it in the loftiest houses. At night, the water-casks, always filled, were stationed at various points, so as to be available in case of fire;—the first water-carrier who reached the scene of conflagration received a reward of twelve francs. Theeau de Seine, filtered, was retailed at ten centimes thevoie, or two pailfuls, of ten or fifteen litres, twenty times the price it is to-day; the poor preferred to use the water just as it came from the river, polluted as it was by the sewage.
As late as 1608, the only resource available outside the Seine water and that of wells was that furnished by the two little aqueducts of Belleville and the Pré-Saint-Gervais, constructed by Philippe-Auguste about the beginning of the thirteenth century. This supply was calledles Eaux du Roi, and was dispensed graciously by the monarch to the grand seigneurs and the rich monasteries. The aqueduct of Belleville, which was falling into ruin, was partly reconstructed by theprévôtof the merchants in 1457. Henri IV, in 1598, granted the first concession for a fixed price, which was the origin of the custom of paying for the municipal water-supply. At the end of the eighteenth century, the city was furnished by the "Eaux du Roi," which included that brought by the aqueduct of Arcueil and drawn from thepompe de la Samaritaine(1606-1608); and by the "Eaux de la Ville," from the aqueduct of Belleville and the pompes Notre-Dame. The Eaux du Roi were ceded outright to the city in 1807; their administration is confided to the Préfet of the Seine, under the authority of the Minister of the Interior.
In 1802, the first attempt to seriously increase the volume of water supplied the city was made by drawing on the little river Ourcq. This canal brings a supply to the Bassin de la Villette, which serves as a reservoir to distribute it through Paris by means of the aqueduct of the Ceinture and large mains. The necessity of securing a larger supply, and a much purer one, was strongly felt by Baron Haussmann, who did so much for the embellishment of the city during the Second Empire, and in conjunction with the Engineer-in-chief of the navigation of the Seine, M. Belgrand, the present system was inaugurated. The latter found means of solving the problem after a careful study, in 1854, of the basin of the Seine. The bed of gypsum on which Paris is built furnishes neither water of a good drinking quality nor sources high enough to bring it into the city at the requisite altitude; it was therefore necessary to go outside this basin, extending from Meulan to Château-Thierry. At present, Paris is furnished with potable water by three aqueducts,—that of the Dhuis, a hundred and thirty-one kilomètres in length, constructed from 1862 to 1865, running from a source nearly due east of the city; that of the Vanne, a hundred and eighty-three kilomètres, 1866-1874, from the southeast, and that of the Avre, a hundred and eight kilomètres, 1890-1893, from the west. A fourth is to be built, of a length of seventy-two kilomètres, which will draw its supply from the valley of the Loing and the Lunain, a little west of Vanne.
When the city was enlarged by the annexation of the surrounding communes, in 1860, the municipal administration signed a contract with theCompagnie générale des eaux, which then held similar contracts with several of the communes both within and without the walls. By this, the city obtained the control, not only of its own water-supply and distribution, but also of that previously established by the company. The general management of the distribution is in the hands of the Compagnie, which collects the subscriptions, constructs branch pipes from the public conduits to the façade of the dwelling to be served, and turns the gross receipts into the municipal treasury, less its commission. To it, or to thebureaux d'inspection, all complaints are to be addressed. The purereaux de source, brought by the aqueducts, are reserved for domestic use; theeaux de rivière, from the Seine and the Marne, are elevated to the altitude requisite to serve the higher quarters of the city by elevenusines, within and without the walls. The river-water is served by means of gauges and meters; the eau de source by meters only, which are officially examined and verified by the Municipal Laboratory, established in the Palais du Bardo, in the Pare Montsouris. This laboratory also analyzes this water, that of the drains, the sewers, and the wells, and reports to the municipal administration. With a view to the diffusion among the people of correct hygienic ideas, the Préfet of the Seine appointed, March 21, 1898, a commission of savants, architects, and hygienists to draw up a series of measures the most practical available for rendering dwelling-houses healthful.
The general distribution is effected from the eighteen reservoirs fed by these various sources; the eau de source is furnished on the public streets by six hundred and seventy-three fountains established against walls, etc., and by ninety-seven of the "Wallace fountains;" the water of the Ourcq and of the rivers is furnished by thousands ofbouches d'eau, on the sidewalks, in the streets, etc., for service in case of fire, watering the streets, the innumerable lavoirs, etc. The monumental fountains, such as those of the Place de la Concorde and du Châtelet, which play every day from ten in the morning to six in the afternoon, are furnished by the canal de l'Ourcq, whilst that of the Trocadéro and its cascade, that of the Place d'Italie, and the luminous fountain of the Champ de Mars, which function only on fête-days and Sundays, are supplied by the Seine water. The fountains of the Luxembourg are fed by the Arcueil aqueduct. The water-pipes throughout the city are generally carried in the upper part of the égouts,—on curved shelves in the smaller ones, and on upright stems carrying a curved holder in the larger ones. In the grandgalerie du Boulevard Sebastopol, for example, the water of the Ourcq is carried on one side in an eighty-centimètre main, and that of the Seine on the other in a main one mètre, ten, in diameter.