The LouvreThe Louvre
Henri II often dwelt over Lescot's plans and devices, and, on one occasion, when the poet Ronsard was present, demanded of the architect the meaning of the decorations surrounding a greatœil-de-bœufwindow, two kneeling figures, one blowing a trumpet, and the other extending a palm branch. "Victory and Fame," replied Lescot. And, in honour of the architect and his sentiment, Ronsard composed his "Franciade." The detail was actually by Goujon, whose design it was, under the oversight of the master architect. One may see thischef d'œuvreto-day just above the courtyard portal to the west.
At the death of Henri II, Catherine de Médici came here to live alone, and built the great extension, which stands to-day and joins the Old Louvre with that portion along the banks of the Seine by the double arch, through which swing the autobusses coming from the Rive Gauche with such a Juggernaut grind that fears for the foundation of the palace are ever uppermost in the minds of those responsible for its preservation.
It is in this Catherine de Médici portion of the Louvre (1578) that the present Galerie desAntiques is installed, and which is usually thronged, in season and out, with globe-trotting sight-seers who give seldom a thought to its constructive elegance and its association with the Médici.
With the first years of the reign of Charles IX, there is to be remarked a notable slowness of procedure with regard to the construction of the New Louvre. This was brought about chiefly by the conception of the Tuileries and the work which was actually begun thereon. Soon a gigantic idea radiated from the ambitious mind of Catherine de Médici. In this connection it must be remembered, however, that Catherine, so commonly reviled as "the Italian," was not all Italian; French blood flowed through her veins through that of her mother, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. She came first to France, landing at Marseilles, whence she arrived from Leghorn, and forthwith commenced her journey Parisward, arriving finally at the Louvre as the bride of Prince Henri in the guise of a simple, clever girl, though indeed she was twenty years the elder.
Now she dreamed of uniting her chateau of the Tuileries with that of the king by a long, connecting gallery. She put action to the thought and under Pierre (II) Chambiges, a relative of the Chambiges of Fontainebleau and Saint Germain, the Petite Galerie, a mere means of communication between the two chateaux, and not the least to be likened to a defensive structure, was begun and work thereon carried out between 1564 and 1571, though it remained for Thibaut Metezeau, in 1595-1596, to carry it on a stage further under Henri IV.
This architect introduced the notorious mezzanine, which has so intrigued historians of the Louvre because of the unequal elevations of the various floors, a procedure which was unavoidable save by recourse to a substitution less to be objected to than the existing fault. Actually the connection with the Tuileries was made by the prolongation of this gallery by the Ducerceau brothers in 1595. The work existing to-day, but only in its reconstructed form, is the same as that completed by Napoleon III (1863-1868).
Charles IX and Henri III, though making the Louvre their residence, practically had no hand in its embellishment. The former gave his energies and ideals full play in the Saint Bartholomew massacres and shot at poor unfortunates who fled beneath the windows of his apartments on the quay-side of the Louvre. This, if not the chief incident of his association with the fabric, is at least the best rememberedone. Henri III, too, led a scandalous life within the walls of the Louvre and fled on horseback, smuggled out a back door, as it were, on a certain May evening in 1588, never more to return, for the Dominican monk Jacques Clément killed him with a knife-thrust before he had got beyond Saint Cloud.
The accepted tale of the part played by the famous window of the Louvre in the drama of Saint Bartholomew's night is as follows: As the signal tolled from the belfry of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois it was answered by another peal from the great bell of the Palais de Justice, where, within a small apartment over the watergate of the Louvre, the queen and her two sons were huddled together not knowing what might happen next. The multitude streamed by on the quay before the palace, and, finally, amid all the horror of Coligny's murder, and the throwing of his body from a window of the Louvre to the street below, Charles IX stood at his window regarding the fleeing Huguenots as so much small game, shooting away at them with an arquebuse as they went by, and with an unholy glee, even boasting that he had killed a score of heretics in a quarter of an hour.
Historians of those exciting times were perhaps none too faithful chroniclers and Charles's"excellent shots" in his "royal hunt," and hideous oaths and threats such as: "We'll have them all, even the women and children," are not details as well authenticated as we would like to have them. Like Rizzio's blood stains they lack conviction.
The ambitious white-plumed Henri de Navarre, when he became Henri IV of France, set about to connect the tentacle which stretched southward from the Old Louvre with the Tuileries (a continuation of the project of Catherine de Médici), and, by the end of the sixteenth century, had built a long façade under the advice of the brothers Ducerceau. This work was added to on the courtyard side under the Second Empire, when a reconstruction, more likely a strengthening of underpinning and walls because of their proximity to the swift-flowing waters of the Seine, of the work of Henri IV was undertaken.
Joining the Tuileries and this work of Ducerceau was the celebrated Pavilion de Flore, a work of the Henri IV period rather than that of Catherine de Médici.
From the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Lesdiguières ran this long gallery of the Ducerceau and numerous interstices and unfinished vaults and arches leading towards the Old Louvre were, at this epoch, completed by Metezeau andDupaira. The chief apartment of this structure became known as theGalerie Henri IV, and was completed in 1608.
At the death of Henri IV, Richelieu, who at times builded so well, and who at others was a base destroyer of monuments, demolished that portion which remained of the edifice of Charles V. The work of Pierre Lescot was preserved, however, and to give symmetry and an additional extent of available space the rectangle facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois to-day was completed, thus enclosing in one corner of its ample courtyard the foundations of the earlier work whose outlines are plainly traced in the pavement that those who view may build anew—if they can—the old structure of Philippe Auguste. In mere magnitude the present quadrangle is something more than four times the extent of the Louvre of the time of Charles V.
This courtyard of the Louvre is perhaps that spot in all Paris which presents the greatest array of Renaissance art treasures. From ground to sky-line the façades are embroidered by the works from the magic hand of theSiècle Italien. Jean Goujon himself has left his brilliant souvenirs on all sides, caryatides, festoons, bas-reliefs, statues and colonnades.
Enthusiasm and devotion knew no boundsamong those old craftsmen, but all is well-ordered, regular and correct. "He who mentions the Louvre to a Frenchman gives a greater pleasure than that of Méhémet-Ali when one praises the pyramids." In a way the Louvre is the most magnificent edifice in the universe; "four palaces one piled up on another,une ville entière." And when the Louvre was linked with the Tuileries in the real, what a splendour it must have been for former generations to marvel at! "La plus belle et la plus grande chose sous le soleil."
This work of aggrandizement of the quadrangle was carried out by the architect Lemercier on the basis of a project adopted in 1642, and, to a great extent, completed before the arrival of Anne d'Autriche, twenty years later.
This queenly personage had ideas of her own as to what sort of a residence she would have in Paris, and beyond her personal needs little was done for the moment towards actually linking up the various loose ends, each more or less complete in itself, which now composed the Paris palace of the French monarchs.
Her son, the king in person if not in power, was not likely to be endowed with instincts which would put him in the rank of the traditional castle or palace builders of his race; it was literature, music and painting which more particularly flourished during his reign, and so the Austrian contented herself at first with merely putting the former apartments of Catherine de Médici into condition for her personal use and building a Salle-de-Spectacle, and—happy thought—a Salle-des-Bains.
Louis XIV, as he found time, after the war of the Fronde, actually did bethink himself of completing, in a way, the work of his elders, and charged the architect Levau to finish off the north wing, which was done in 1660. A year later the Galerie Henri IV was practically destroyed by fire and rebuilt by Levau, who gave the commission for its interior decoration to Lebrun.
Soon the south wing was completed, leaving only the gap for the eastern façade which was intended to be the chief entrance to the mass of buildings, which still bore the comprehensive name of "The Louvre."
For the accomplishment of this façade, the demolition of certain dwellings of the nobility which had clustered around the royal fabric was necessary, and the Hotels du Petit Bourbon, de Villequier, de Chaumont, La Force, De Créquy, de Longueville, and de Choisy fell before the picks of the house-breakers. Levau commencedwork on the façade at once, and made rapid progress until 1664, when an abrupt order came for him to stop all work. Political conspiracy, graft, if you like, was at work, and Colbert, little favourable towards Levau, made a proposition to the king to open a competition for the design and execution of the façade. Willingly enough, his mind doubtless more occupied with other things, Louis XIV agreed, and a general call was sent out to all French architects to enter the lists. Confusion reigned, and Levau was about to be recalled when Colbert spied an unrolled parchment in the corner and pounced upon it eagerly as the means of saving him from the dubious efforts of the former incumbent.
It was the "non-professional" plan submitted by a doctor in medicine, one Charles Perrault. Jealous competitors made all sorts of criticisms and objections, the chief contention being that if by any chance an architectural design by a "pill-roller" proved pleasing to the eye it was bound to be impracticable from an economic or constructive point of view, or both. This is often enough true, and it proved to be so in this case, for in spite of a certain amount of advice from an expert Italian builder, who had come to Paris to help the good doctor with his difficult task (for he actually received a commission forthe work and completed it in 1674), the façade did not fit the rest of the fabric with which it was intended to join up, and to-day it may be observed by the curious as being several feet out of line with the structure which faces on the Rue de Rivoli.
Louis XIV practically had no regard for the Louvre and its architectural traditions; his palatial garden-city idea, worked out at Versailles, shows what an innovator he was. He allowed the Louvre to be filled up with all sorts of riffraff, who were often given a lodging there in place of a money payment for some service rendered. The Louvre thus became a sort of genteel poor-house, while king and court spent their time in the more ample country-house behind the Meudon hills.
By 1750 the Louvre had become little more than an immense ruin, humbled and desecrated; a veritable orphan. The Marquis de Marigny, Surintendant des Batiments Royaux, obtained the authorization to chase out the parasites and clean up the Augean stable and put things in order as best pleased his esthetic fancy, but only with the early years of the nineteenth century did the Louvre become a real palace again and worthy of its traditions.
From 1803 to 1813 the architects Fontaineand Percier were constantly engaged in the work of repairs and additions, and built (for Napoleon I) the gallery which extends from what is now the Place Jeanne d'Arc to the Pavillon de Rohan, along the Rue de Rivoli. This detached portion (bound only to the Tuileries) was finally joined to the seventeenth century work of Lemercier under Louis Napoleon in 1852. This gallery, the work of "moderns," is no mean example of palace-building, either. It was the work of Visconti and Lefuel, and with the adoption of this plan was finally accomplished the interpolation of that range of pavilions which gives the architecture of the Louvre one of its principal distinctions. Named after the principal ministers of former administrations—Donon, Mollien, Daru, Richelieu, Colbert, Turgot, etc., these pavilions break up what would otherwise be monotonous, elongated façades.
The inauguration of this last built portion of the palace was held on August 14, 1857, the occasion being celebrated by a banquet given by Napoleon III to all the architects, artists and labourers who had been engaged upon the work. In the same Salle, two years later, which took the name of Salle des États, the emperor gave adiner de galato the generals returning from the Italian campaign.
Still further résumé of fact with regard to the main body of the Louvre, as well as with respect to its individual components, will open never-ending vistas and pageants. It is not possible in a chapter, a book or a five-foot shelf to limn all that is even of cursory interest. The well-known, the little-known and the comparatively unknown mingle in varying proportions, according to the individual mood or attitude. To some the appeal will lie in the vastness of the fabric, to others in the varied casts of characters which have played upon its stage, still others will be impressed with the dramatic incidents, and many more will retain only present-day memories of what they have themselves seen. The Louvre is a study of a lifetime.
To resume a none too complete chronology, it is easy to recall the following important events which have taken place in the Louvre since the days of Henri III, the period at which only the barest beginnings of the present structure had been projected.
In 1591 a ghastly procedure took place when four members of the Conseil des Seize were hung in the Salle des Caryatides by orders of the Duc de Mayenne.
Like the horoscope which foretold the death of Henri III, another royal prophecy was castin 1610 that reminds one of that which perhaps had not a little to do with the making away with the last of the Valois princes.
The Duc de Vendome, the son of Henri IV by Gabrielle d'Estrées, handed the king a documentary horoscope signed by an astrologer calling himself La Brosse, which warned the king that he would run a great danger on May 14 in case he went abroad.
"La Brosse is an ass," cried the king, and crumpled the paper beneath his feet.
On the day in question the king started out to visit his minister, Sully, at the Arsenal. It was then in turning from the Rue Saint Honoré into the Rue de la Ferronière that the royal coach, frequently blocked by crowds, offered the opportunity to the assassin Ravaillac, who, jumping upon the footboard, stabbed the king twice in the breast.
After having been wounded the king was brought dying to the Louvre. His royal coach drew up beneath the vault through which throngs all Paris to-day searching for a "short cut" from the river to Saint Honoré. It was but a short, brief journey to the royal apartments above in the Pavilion de l'Horloge, but it must have been an interminable calvary to the gallant Henri de Navarre. The body was received byMarie de Médici in tears, and the Ducs de Guise and d'Epernon clattered out the courtyard on horseback to spread the false news that the king had suffered no harm. Fearing the results of too precipitate publishing of the disaster no other course was open.
A gruesome memory is that the Swiss Guard at the Louvre surreptitiously acquired a "quartier" of the dismembered body of the regicide and roasted it in a fire set alight beneath the balcony of Marie de Médici as an indication of their faithfulness and loyalty.
It was Sully, the king's minister, who ran first up the stairs to acquaint the queen of the tragedy—faithful ever to the interests of his royal master. In spite of this, one of the first acts of Marie de Médici as regent was to drive the Baron de Rosny and Duc de Sully away. Such is virtue's reward—sometimes.
"Lying on his bed, his face uncovered, clad in white satin and a bonnet of red velvet embroidered with gold, was all that remained of Henri IV of France and Navarre. Around the bed were nuns and monks from all the monasteries of Paris to keep vigil of his soul."
So ends the chronicle closing the chapter of the relations of Henri IV with his Paris palace.
No particularly tragic event took place here for some years. Henriette de France, widow of Charles I of England, taking refuge in France from the troublous revolt at home, lived in the Louvre in 1644. She had at first been graciously received by Mazarin, but was finally accorded only the most strict necessities of life, a mere lodging in the Louvre, a modest budget and a restricted entourage.
In 1662, under Louis XIV, Molière and his troup, in a theatre installed in the Salle des Caryatides, gave the first "command" performance on record. The plays produced were, "Nicodeme" and "Le Docteur Amoureux."
An "art note" of interest is that Sylvain Bailly, the first curator of the Musée du Louvre, was born within its precincts in 1736.
In the dark days of July, 1830, the populace attempted to pillage and sack the palace, but after a bloody reprisal retired, leaving hundreds of dead on the field. Theparterrebeneath the famous colonnade was their burial place, though a decade later the bodies were exhumed and again interred under the Colonne de Juillet in the Place de la Bastille.
Le Notre, the gardener of kings, laid out the first horticultural embellishments of the palace surroundings under Louis XIV, and with littlechange his scheme of decoration lasted until the time of Louis Philippe, who made away with much that was distinctive and excellent.
Napoleon III came to the front with an improved decorative scheme, but the hard flags of to-day, the dusty gravel and the too sparse architectural embellishments do not mark the gardens of the Louvre as being anything remarkable save as a desirable breathing spot for Paris nursemaids and their charges.
The iron gates of the north, south and east sides were put into place only in 1855, and at the Commune served their purpose fairly well in holding the rabble at bay, a rabble to whose credit is the fact that it respected the artistic inheritance enclosed by the Louvre's walls. No work of art in the museums was stolen or destroyed, though the library disappeared.
No more sentimental interest ever attached itself to a royal French palace than that which surrounded the Tuileries from its inception by Charles IX in the mid-sixteenth century to its extinction by the Commune in 1871.
The Palace of the Tuileries is no more, the Commune did for it as it did for the Hotel de Ville and many another noble monument of the capital, and all that remains are the gardens setabout with a few marble columns and gilt balls—themselves fragments of former decorative elements of the palace—to suggest what once was the heritage bequeathed the French by the Médici who was the queen of Saint Bartholomew's night.
It was a palace of giddy gayety that drew its devotees to it only to destroy them. "Crowned fools who wished to be called kings, and others." Even its stones were chiselled as if with a certain malignancy and fatalism, for they have all disappeared, and their history, even, has not been written as large as that of those of many contemporary structures.
Of the last five kings to which the Tuileries gave shelter—not counting the Second Emperor—only one went straightway to the tomb; one went to the scaffold and three others to exile. A sorry dowry, this, for an inheritor of a palace at once so noble and admirable in spite of its unluckiness.
With the court followers and the nobility of the last days of the monarchy it was the same thing; the Tuileries was but a temporary shelter. The scaffold accounted for many and banishment engulfed others to forgetfulness.
It was a commonplace at the time to repeat the warning: "O! Tuileries! O! Tuileries!Mad indeed are those who enter thy walls, for like Louis XVI, Napoleon, Charles X and Louis Philippe you shall make your exit by another door."
The origin of the name Tuileries is somewhat ignominiously traced from that of a tile factory which existed here in the heart of Paris, on the banks of the Seine, in the sixteenth century. The property, which comprised a manor-house as well as the tile fields, was known by the name of La Sablonnière, and came to the Marquis Neuville de Villeroy, Superintendent of Finances, who built on the spot a sort of fortified chateau, which, if not of palatial dimensions, was of a palatial prodigality of luxury.
Louise de Savoie, mother of Francis I, acquired the property in 1518 and nine years later gave it to Jean Tiercelin, the Maitre d'Hotel of the dauphin, who later was to become Henri II.
The lodge, or manor-house, had, by 1564, fallen into so ruinous a state that Catherine de Médici, the widow of Henri II, set about to lay the foundations of a new royal palace.
Catherine never resided in her projected palace, and in 1566 Charles IX, her son, gave the commission to Philibert Delorme to build a palace, "neighbouring upon the Louvre, but not to be connected therewith, on the site of the Tuileries."
On July 11, work was begun, and the central pavilion and the two extremes were carried up two stories within a year. The central structure was a great circular-domed edifice, enclosing a marvellous Escalier d'Honneur. The façade, preceded by two terraced porticos, was on the courtyard, or garden, between the edifice and the Louvre. It sat back to the present Rue des Tuileries.
The Tuileries did not become a royal residence for some time after its completion, for Charles IX clung tenaciously to his well-guarded apartments in the Louvre; for the central structure of the Tuileries, because of its lack of comparative height, was hardly as much of a stronghold as he would have liked.
A contemporary note in connection with Charles IX and the Tuileries is found in Ronsard's "Épitre à Charles IX."
"J'ay veu trop de maçonsBastir les Tuileries,Et en trop de façonsFaire les momeries."
Work on the edifice so auspiciously planned by Delorme was practically discontinued during the reign of Henri III, owing to lack of funds.
The Renaissance of Delorme, Bullant, Lescot,each of whom had a hand in the building of the Tuileries, expressed certain characteristic phases of architectural art in the reigns of Francis I and Henri II. The reign of Charles IX was only another phase of that long reign of Catherine de Médici, and architectural influences continued to follow along the same reminiscent Italian lines, particularly with reference to such edifices as the Médici herself caused to be built. In the dedication of Philibert Delorme's "Traite d'Architecture" he expressed himself thus with regard to the Tuileries:
"Madame, I see from day to day with an increasing pleasure the interest that your Majesty takes in architecture. The palace which you have built at Paris near the Pont Neuf and the Louvre is, according to its disposition, excellent and admirable to the extent that it pleases me beyond measure."
After Delorme considerable changes were made and successfully carried out under the architects Ducerceau, Duperac, Levau and Dorbay.
A distinct feature of the work of Delorme was his use of the column ornamented throughout its length, which, as he says in his written works, he first employed in the "Palais de la Majesté de la Royne-Mere à Paris."
Of the ability of Delorme there is no diversityof opinion to-day, nor was there in his time. Besides the Tuileries he has to his credit the Chateau d'Anet, the Chateau de Saint Maur, that of Meudon—built for the Cardinal de Lorraine,—and his important additions to the Chateau de la Muette and the Chateaux of Saint Germain, Madrid and Fontainebleau.
As might be supposed Catherine de Médici professed a great admiration for Delorme and recompensed his talents with a royal generosity, even nominating him as Abbé of the Convent of Saint Eloi de Noyon, a fact which caused the poet Ronsard to evolve a political satire: "La Truelle Crossée."
At the same time that she was building the Tuileries Catherine de Médici caused additions to be made to the Louvre; at least she undertook the completion of the unfinished portion, which had been left for other hands to do.
The first historic souvenir which stands out prominently with regard to the Palais des Tuileries is the fête given four days before the fateful Saint Bartholomew's night. It was the marriage fête of the gallant Henri de Béarn, King of Navarre, and the wise and witty Marguerite de Valois.
Henri IV, coming to the throne a quarter of a century after the admirable first year's workon the Tuileries had been completed, found that little had been done towards making it a really habitable place. It had been hurriedly finished off to the second story, and had served well enough for a temporary residence, or as an overflow establishment where balls and fêtes might be given without crowding, but to the ambitious Henri IV nothing would do but that the pavilions should be bound together with a more imposing ligature, and that the Pavillon de Flore should in turn be linked up with the Louvre by a gallery.
Under Louis XIII this latter really came to a conclusion according to the plans of the architect Ducerceau, but the inspiration of making the Louvre and the Tuileries one was due to Henri IV.
Under Louis XIV and Louis XV the palace in its still attenuated form was scarcely more than a rambling lodging, utterly lacking any of the noble apartments with which it was afterwards endowed. The court at this time practically made Versailles its headquarters. Neither of the above-mentioned monarchs made aught but cursory visits to the Tuileries and left its occupancy to officers of the household and ministers of state.
It was in the reign of Louis XV that the Florentine artist, Servandoni, who was at the sametime an eminent architect, a remarkable painter and amaestroof a musician, organized in the Palais des Tuileries the Theatre des Machines, the first installed at Paris, and there came the Comédie Française, the Opera and the Bouffes (theComédie Italienne) and gave command performances before the court.
When the French resolved that Louis XVI should live in Paris, the Palais des Tuileries was actually offered him, but it was a rather shabby place of royal residence so far as its interior appointments were concerned, though in all ways appealing when viewed from without. Considerable repairs and embellishments were made, but warring factions did much to make difficult any real artistic progress.
With the advent of Louis XVI there came a contrast to gayety and freedom from care in royal hearts and heads. On October 5 Louis XVI and the royal family hid themselves behind barred doors, the convention taking up its sittings under the same roof and forthwith passing an act which allowed the completion of the palace according to the plans of Vignon at an expense of three hundred thousandlivres. An almost entire transformation took place, the money being seemingly well spent, and the structure now first took its proper place among the monumental art treasures of the capital.
A dramatic incident took place at the great gate of the Tuileries, which faced the courtyard, when, on May 28, 1795, the populace surged in waves against its sturdy barrier. The Deputy Féraud met them at the steps. "You may enter only over my dead body," he said. No reply was made but to crack his skull, behead the trunk and carry the head aloft on a pike to the very Tribune where Boissy d'Anglas was presiding.
The Salle de Spectacle of the Tuileries was, even at this period, the largest auditorium of its kind in Europe, having eight thousand stalls and boxes, which gave a seating capacity of considerably more than that number of persons.
In 1793 this playhouse, of which the parquet occupied the ground floor of the Pavillon de Marsan, underwent a strange metamorphosis when it became the legislative hall for the National Convention. All the names and emblems showing forth in its decorations and indicative of its ancient rule were changed into Republican devices and symbols. The Pavillon de Marsan was called the Pavillon de l'Egalité, the Pavillon du Centre became the Pavillon de l'Unité and the Pavillon de Flore the Pavillon de la Liberté, where was lodged the Committee of Public Safety.
The Hall of the Convention, according to reports of the time, was an appalling mixture of grandeur and effeminacy with respect to its architectural lines. Surrounding that portion where the legislators actually sat was the great amphitheatre which for three years was occupied by a curious, vociferous public, more demonstrative, even, than those that had attended the former theatrical representations in the same apartment.
From the opening of the National Convention to the reaction of "Thermidor" it is estimated that more than three million people assisted at what they rightly, or wrongly, considered as a "spectacle" staged only for their amusement.
By the time Napoleon had come into power the Tuileries was hardly habitable, and before taking up his residence he was obliged to make immediate and extensive transformations.
On February 19, 1800, Napoleon, still First Consul, left the Palais de Luxembourg and took up his residence in the Tuileries, the Third Consul, Lebrun, being lodged in the Pavillon de Flore, in the "Petite Appartement," which Marie Antoinette had fitted up for her temporary accommodation when in town. Lebrun, however, gave up his lodging to the Pope when the Pontiff came to Paris at Napoleon's orders. Consul Cambacères, however, refused to shelter himselfbeneath the roof of the Tuileries, and indicated a preference for the magnificent Hotel d'Elbœuf, which was accommodatingly put at his disposition.
Salle des Marechaux, TuileriesSalle des Marechaux, Tuileries
Napoleon entered the Tuileries in state, preceded and followed by an imposing cortège. At the gate of the Carrousel the consuls alighted from their carriages, and were received by the Consular Guard. On their arrival the consuls read the following inscription posted at the entrance: "On August 10th monarchy in France was forever abolished; it will never be restored." By the 20th of February the inscription had disappeared. Besides, orders were given to cut down the two liberty trees which had been planted in the courtyard. On August 10 a large quantity of cannon shot had been lodged in the façade of the Tuileries, and around the shot were written these words: "Tenth of August." The cannon balls disappeared, as well as the inscriptions, when the Arc de Triomphe was erected on the Place du Carrousel.
This alteration gave great satisfaction. It was important for the tranquillity of France that the new government should inherit rather the sword of Charlemagne than the guillotine of Marat.
The imperial court soon displayed its splendourand magnificence in the Palais des Tuileries, as a foregone conclusion anticipated.
In a gorgeous and imposing Salle du Trone one might have seen in the deep casement of the central window, standing up, their hats off, the group of the Corps Diplomatique, the members of which, loaded with decorations, ensigns, and diamonds, trembled in the presence of the Little Corporal of other days; on the other side, the host of the Princes of the Rhine Confederation—all the personages that Germany, Russia, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Spain, all Europe, in one word, England excepted, had sent to Paris.
It is needless to say that the wedding reception of Napoleon and Marie Louise at the Tuileries was celebrated with unusual magnificence. Another event, on account of its peculiar moment, strongly excited the enthusiasm of the French. On March 20, 1811, at seven o'clock in the morning, the first salute of cannon announced that the empress had given birth to a child, the future Aiglon, the King of Rome.
After Napoleon's occupancy of the Tuileries it again served the monarch under the Empire, the Restoration, under Louis Philippe and under the Second Empire. The palace of unhappy memory saw successively the fall of Napoleon,the entry of Louis XVIII, the file-by of the Allies, the flight of Louis XVIII, of Charles X, Louis Philippe and Napoleon III.
Up to the time of the Second Empire the Tuileries preserved, more or less, its original interior arrangement, and, to a great extent, the decorations with which it had been embellished under Louis XIV, Louis XVI, and Napoleon I.
The Pavilion de Flore, at the juncture of the Tuileries and the Louvre of Henri IV, was practically rebuilt during the Second Empire, but it followed closely the contemporary designs of the adjoining building. Here are quartered executive offices of the Préfecture de la Seine. That portion facing the Pont Royal contains a series of fine sculptures by Carpeaux, the sole modern embellishments of this nature to be seen in or on a Paris palace.
As the Commune mob was fleeing before the army of Versailles a conflagration broke out in the Tuileries and soon the whole edifice was in flames. Within what may have been the briefest interval on record for a conflagration of its size the Tuileries was but a smoking pile of half-calcined stones.
The Tuileries had another brief day of glory when the Prince President, Louis Napoleon, entered its gates, coming straight from his inauguration at Notre Dame.
The cannon at the Hotel des Invalides blazed out a welcome and every patriot Republican shouted: "Vive Napoleon!" They little knew, little cared perhaps, that he would some day become the Second Emperor.
The throng poured forth from the cathedral after theDomine Salvumand the benediction, the clergy leading the way, followed by the president and his attendants. The orchestra played a lively march, and the great bell in the tower boomed forth a glorious peal.
The president's carriage drew up before the gates of the Tuileries and he entered the great apartment where a reception was given to various public and military bodies. Between seven and eight thousand naval and military officers paid their respects, and about half a battalion of the army saluted, among them two Mamelukes. While this ceremony was going on, the Place du Carrousel was occupied by several squadrons of cavalry and the inner courtyards were practically infantry camps. The government was taking no chances at the beginning of its career. The reception lasted until well on towards evening, when a banquet of four hundred covers was laid and partaken of by the invited guests.
The last days of the Tuileries may be said tohave commenced with that eventful September 3, 1870, at five o'clock in the afternoon, when the Empress Eugenie received a telegraphic despatch from Napoleon III announcing his captivity and the defeat of Sedan. It was the overthrow.
The evening and the night were calm; the masses, as yet, were unaware of the fatal news the journals would publish on the morrow. The following day was Sunday; the weather superb; the disaster was finally announced and the masses thronged from all parts to the Place de la Concorde, where a squadron of Cuirassiers barred the bridge leading to the Palais Bourbon where the deputies were in session.
On the arrival of the news the empress had called in General Trochu, the Military Governor of Paris, and asked him if he could guarantee order. He replied in the affirmative. Some hours later a group of deputies came to the empress and counselled her to sign, not an abdication, but a momentary renunciation of her powers as regent. Eugenie refused point-blank.
The throng, passing by the left bank, had arrived at the Chamber of Deputies, and the formal sitting became a revolutionary one. At three o'clock the imperial dynasty was proclaimed as at an end, and a provisionary government installed. Henri Rochefort, the presenteditor of the "Intransingeant," was delivered from the prison of Sainte Pélagie and made a member of the government.
By this time the mob which had invaded the Place de la Concorde became menacing. The cry, "Aux Tuileries," first launched by the street gamins, soon became the slogan of the crowd. To say it was to do it; the great iron gates were closed, but in default of a protecting force of arms it was an easy matter to scale them.
Behind the curtained windows of the palace the empress witnessed the assault and murmured to her ladies-in-waiting: "It is then finished." She turned towards the Prince de Metternich and the Chevalier Nigra, and, in the voice of a suppliant, demanded: "Que me consillez vous?"
"You must leave at once, Madame; in a moment the palace will be invaded."
The empress became resigned and accompanied by Madame Le Breton, Metternich and Nigra started for the Pavilion de Flore, passing through the Galerie de Musée and the Galerie d'Apollon, finally leaving by the gate of the Louvre, which is opposite Saint Germain l'Auxerrois.
The empress was at last out of the palace, but not yet out of danger. A band of manifestants, making for the Hotel de Ville and shouting; "Vive la Republique," recognized the empress, but she mounted an empty fiacre with Madame Le Breton, and giving the driver the first address that entered her mind thus escaped further indignities, and perhaps danger. Finally she found a refuge with Doctor Evans, the American dentist living in the Avenue Malakoff, from whose house she left for England on the following day.
This is the Frenchman's point of view of one of the picturesque incidents of history. It disposes of the legend that the empress left the Tuileries in the carriage of Doctor Evans, but this cannot be helped, with due regard for the consensus of French opinion. Doctor Evans was a family friend, besides being the dentist who cared for the imperial teeth, and it is not going beyond the truth to state that the fortunate American acquired not a little of his vogue and wealth by his association with Napoleon III and his family.
By this time the populace had invaded the palace and cursed with indignities unmentionable the marble halls, and the furnishings in general, and pillaged such portable property as pleased the individual fancies of the spoilsmen.
After the signing of the Peace Treaty by the Bordeaux Assembly, which now represented the governmental head, and Thiers had become president, that worthy would do away with the cannon of which the National Guard still held possession in their garrison on the Butte of Montmartre. The orders which he sent forth came to be the signal for another outbreak on the part of the populace. On March 18 the Commune was proclaimed and Citoyen Dardelle, an old African hunter, was appointed military governor of the Tuileries. Whatever this individual's military qualifications may have been, he delivered himself to the enjoyment of a high and dissolute life in his luxurious apartments in the palace; a fact which was speedily made note of by the still restless populace.
The Citoyen Rousselle, a member of the Communal Government, had the idea of organizing a series of popular concerts in the gardens of the Tuileries for the profit of the wounded in the late friction.
Hung on the walls, at the entrance of each apartment was a placard which read: "Fellow men, the gold with which these walls were built was earned by your sweat." "To-day you are coming to your own." "Remain faithful to your trust and see to it that the tyrants enter never more."
During one of these public concerts a poem of Hégésippe Moreau was read which terminated as follows, and set the populace aflame.
* * * * * *"Et moi j'applaudirai; ma jeuneusse engourdieSe réchauffera a ce grand incendie."
He referred to the burning of the former abode of emperors and kings as a sort of sacrifice to the common good. The public had held itself in hand very well up to this moment, but applauded the verses vociferously. The last of the concerts was held on May 21, the same day as the Army of Versailles entered Paris. Night came, and with it the raging, red flames springing skywards from the roof of the Tuileries.
In a few moments the flames had enveloped the entire building. All the forces that it was possible to gather had been ordered upon the scene, but they were unable to save the old palace, and by one o'clock in the morning it was but a mass of smoking ruins. The Communards had done their work well. Before leaving its precincts they had sprinkled coal oil over every square metre of carpet, window-hangings and tapestries, and the slow-match was not long in passing the fire to its inflammable timber. The library of the Louvre was destroyed, but the museums, galleries and their famous collections fortunately escaped.
For a dozen years the lamentable ruins of the old palace of the Tuileries reared their singed walls, a witness and a reproach to the tempestuosity of a people. Finally, in 1882, Monsieur Achille Picard undertook their removal for thirty-three thousand francs, and within a year not a vestige, not an unturned stone remained in its original place as a witness to this chapter of Paris history.
Two porticos of the Pavillon de l'Horloge, originally forming a part of the Tuileries, have been re-erected on the terrace of the Orangerie, facing the Place de la Concorde.
There remain but two survivors of the late imperial sway in France, the Empress Eugenie who lives in England, and Emile Olivier, "l'homme au cœur lèger," who lives at Saint Tropez in the Midi.
A Paris journalist a year or more ago, while sitting among a little coterie of literary and artistic folk at Lavenue's famous terrace-café, recounted the following incident clothed in most discreet language, and since it bears upon the Tuileries and its last occupants it is repeated here.
"Last night beneath the glamour of a September moon I saw a black shadow silently creep out from beneath the gloom of the arcades ofthe Rue de Rivoli just below the Hotel Continental. It crossed the pavement and passed within the railings of the gardens opposite, one of the gates to which, by chance or prearranged design, was still open. It moved slowly here and there upon the gravelled walks and seated itself upon a solitary bench as if it were meditating upon the splendid though sad hours that had passed. Was it a wraith; was it Eugenie, late empress of the French?"
To have remembered such a dream of fancy for forty long years one must have been endowed with superhuman courage, or an inexplicable conscience.
The Rue des Pyramides, which has been prolonged to the banks of the Seine, will give those of the present generation who have never seen the Tuileries an exact idea of its location. If it still existed the façade of the palace would front upon this street.
The most moving history of the detailed horrors of the Commune, particularly with reference to the part played by the Tuileries therein, is to be found in Maxime Ducamp's "Les Derniers Convulsions de Paris."
One relic of the Tuileries left unharmed found a purchaser in a Roumanian prince, at a public sale held as late as 1889. This was the ornatelybeautiful iron gate which separated the Cour du Carrousel from the Cour des Tuileries. Roumanian by birth, French at heart and Parisian by adoption, this wealthy amateur, for a trifle over eight thousand francs, became the owner of a royal souvenir which must have cost five hundred times that sum.
The eastern front of the Tuileries opened into a courtyard formed under the direction of the first Napoleon. It was separated from the Place du Carrousel by a handsome iron railing with gilt spear-heads extending the whole range of the palace. From this court there were three entrances into the Place du Carrousel, the central gate corresponding with the central pavilion of the palace, the other two having their piers surmounted by colossal figures of victory, peace, history and France. A gateway under each of the lateral galleries also communicated on the north with the Rue de Rivoli, and on the south with the Quai du Louvre. The Place du Carrousel was named in honour of a tournament held upon the spot by Louis XIV in 1662. It communicated on the north with the Rue Richelieu and the Rue de l'Echelle, and on the south with the Pont Royal and the Pont du Carrousel. To-day in the square stands the triumphal arch erected by Napoleon in 1806, after the designs of Percier and Fontaine.
The newly laid-out and furbished-up gardens make the Place du Carrousel even more attractive than it was when set about with flagged areas, gravelled walks and paved road ways, and, while the monumental and architectural accessories excel the horticultural embellishments in quantity, the general effect is incomparably finer at present than anything known before.
Plans for rebuilding the Place du Carrousel provide for a division into three distinct parts, three grandpelouses,à boulingrins à la Français, or lawns of a circumscribed area, according to the best traditions of Le Notre, a border of flowers and a few decoratively disposed clumps of flowering shrubs, the whole combined in such a way that the perspective and vista down the Champs Elysées will in no manner suffer. The architect-landscapist, M. Redon, who has been charged with the work, has drawn his inspiration from a series of unexecuted designs of Le Notre which have recently been brought to light from the innermost depths of the national archives. It was a safe way of avoiding an anachronism, and this time a government architect has chosen well his plan of execution.
In later years the question of the reëmbellishment of the Garden of the Tuileries has ever been before the public, but little has actuallybeen changed save the remaking of certain garden plots, the planting of a few shrubs or the placing of a few statues.
The Garden of the Tuileries has a superficial area of 232,632 square metres. It is the most popular of all open spaces in the capital to the Parisian who would take his walks abroad not too far from the centre of things. The chief curiosity of the garden is the celebrated chestnut tree which burst into flower on the day of Napoleon's arrival from Elba—March 20. The precocious tree has ever been revered by the Bonapartists since, though the tree has never performed the trick the second time.
Statues innumerable are scattered here and there through the garden and give a certain sense of liveliness to the area. Some are by famous names, others by those less renowned, but as a whole they make little impression on one, chiefly, perhaps, because one does not come to the Garden of the Tuileries to see statues.
To the left and right are the terraces, first laid out by the celebrated Le Notre. Like the hanging gardens of Babylon, they overlook a lower level ofparterres, gravelled walks and ornamental waters. Along the Rue de Rivoli is the Terrasse de l'Orangerie, and on the side of the river is the Terrasse de la Marine.
According to the original plans of Le Notre the garden was set down as five hundredtoisesin length, and one hundred and sixty-eighttoisesin width, the latter dimension corresponding to that of the façade of the palace.
Along the shady avenues of this admirable city garden of to-day an enterprisingconcessionairehas won a fortune by renting out rush-bottomed chairs to nursemaids, retired old gentlemen with red ribbons in their buttonholes, and trippers from across the channel. It is a perfectly legitimate enterprise and a profitable one it would seem, and has been in operation considerably more than half a century.
It was from the Gardens of the Tuileries in 1784 that took place Blanchard's celebrated ascension in Montgolfier's balloon and brought forth the encomium from the British Royal Society that the body was not in the least surprised that a Frenchman should have solved the problem of "volatability." The French monarch, more practical, was so mightily pleased with the success of the experiment that he bestowed upon the author the sum of four hundred thousand francs from his treasury to be used for the perfection of the art.
With the Louvre and the Tuileries the Palais Royal shares the popular interest of the traveller among all the monuments of Paris. No other edifice evokes more vivid souvenirs of its historic past than this hybrid palace of Richelieu. One dreams even to-day, of its sumptuousness, its legends, its amusing and extravagant incidents which cast a halo of romantic interest over so many illustrious personages. So thoroughly Parisian is the Palais Royal in all things that it has been called "the Capital of Paris."
Not far from the walled and turreted stronghold of the old Louvre rose the private palaces, only a little less royal, of the Rambouillets, the Mercœurs and other nobles of the courtly train. They lived, too, in almost regal state until Armand du Plessis de Richelieu came to humble their pride, by fair means or foul, by buying up or destroying their sumptuous dwellings, levelling off a vast area of land, and, in 1629, commencing work on that imposing pile which was first knownas the Palais Cardinal, later the Palais d'Orleans, then as the Palais de la Revolution and finally as the Palais Royal.
It was near, yet far enough away from the royal residence of the Louvre not to be overshadowed by it. The edifice enclosed a great square of ground laid out with symmetrically planted trees and adorned with fountains and statues.
From the great central square four smaller courts opened out to each of the principal points of the compass; there were also, besides the living rooms, a chapel, two theatres, ballrooms, boudoirs and picture galleries, all of a luxury never before dreamed of but by kings.
The main entrance was in the Rue Saint Honoré, and over its portal were the graven arms of Richelieu, surmounted by the cardinal's hat and the inscription: "Palais Cardinal." Like his English compeer, Wolsey, Richelieu's ardour for building knew no restraint. He added block upon block of buildings and yard upon yard to garden walls until all was a veritable labyrinth. Finally the usually subservient Louis saw the condition of things; he liked it not that his minister should dwell in marble halls more gorgeous than his own. As a matter of policy the Cardinal ceased to build more and at his death, as if to atone, willed the entire property to his king.
As the Palais Cardinal, the edifice was subjected to many impertinent railleries from the public which, as a whole, was ever antagonistic to the "Homme Rouge." They did not admit the right of an apostolic prelate of the church to lodge himself so luxuriously when the very precepts of his religion recommended modesty and humility. Richelieu's contemporaries did not hesitate to admire wonderingly all this luxury of life and its accessories, and Corneille, in the "Menteur" (1642), makes one of the principal characters say:
"Non, l'univers ne peut rien voir d'égalAux superbes dehors du Palais Cardinal;Toute une ville entière avec pompe bâtie,Semble d'un vieux fossé par miracle sortie,Et nous fais présumer à ses superbes toitsQue tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois."
The ground plan of the Palais Cardinal was something unique among city palaces. In the beginning ground values were not what they are to-day in Paris. There were acres upon acres of greensward set about and cut up with gravelled walks, great alleyed rows of trees, groves without number and galleries and colonnades innumerable. Without roared the traffic of a great city, a less noisy traffic than that of to-day, perhaps, but stilla contrasting maelstrom of bustle and furor as compared with the tranquillity within.
After the edifice was finished it actually fell into disuse, except for the periodical intervals when the Cardinal visited the capital. At other times it was as quiet as a cemetery. Moss grew on the flags, grass on the gravelled walks and tangled shrubbery killed off the budding flowers of the gardens.
Richelieu's last home-coming, after the execution of Cinq-Mars at Lyons, was a tragic one. The despot of France, once again under his own rooftree, threw himself upon his bed surrounded by his choicest pictures and tapestries, and paid the price of his merciless arrogance towards all men—and women—by folding his wan hands upon his breast and exclaiming, somewhat unconvincingly: "Thus do I give myself to God." As if recalling himself to the stern reality of things he added: "I have no enemies but those of State."
In a robe of purple silk, supported by pillows of the finest down and covered with the rarest of laces, he rigidly straightened himself out and expired without a shudder, with the feeling that he was well beyond the reach of invisible foes. But before he died Richelieu received a visit from his king in person. This was another token of his invincible power.
Thus the Palais Royal was evolved from the Palais Cardinal of Richelieu. Richelieu gave the orders for its construction to Jacques Lemercier immediately after he had dispossessed the Rambouillets and the Mercœurs, intending at first to erect only a comparatively modest town dwelling with an ample garden. Vanity, or some other passion, finally caused to grow up the magnificently proportioned edifice which was called the Palais Cardinal instead of that which was to be known more modestly as the Hotel de Richelieu.
Vast and imposing, but not without a certain graceful symmetry, the Palais Royal of to-day is a composition of many separate edifices divided by a series of courts and gardens and connected by arcaded galleries. The right wing enclosed an elaborate Salle de Spectacle while that to the left enclosed an equally imposing chamber with a ceiling by Philippe de Champaigne, known as the Galerie des Hommes Illustrés, and further ornamented with portraits of most of the court favourites of both sexes of the time. The architectural ornamentation of this gallery was of the Doric order, most daringly interspersed with moulded ships' prows, anchors, cables and what not of a marine significance.
In 1636, divining the attitude of envy of manyof the nobility who frequented his palace, Richelieu—great man of politics that he was—made a present of the entire lot of curios to Louis XIII, but undertaking to house them for him, which he did until his death in 1642.
At the death of Louis XIII the Palais Cardinal, which had been left to him in its entirety by the will of Richelieu, came to Anne d'Autriche, the regent, who, with the infant Louis XIV and the royal family, installed herself therein, and from now on (October 7, 1642), the edifice became known as the Palais Royal.
Now commenced the political rôle of this sumptuous palace which hitherto had been but the Cardinal's caprice. Mazarin had succeeded Richelieu, and to escape the anger of the Frondeurs, he, with the regent and the two princes, Louis XIV and the Duc d'Anjou, fled to the refuge of Saint Germain-en-Laye.
In company with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who had been rudely awakened from her slumbers in the Luxembourg, they took a coach in the dead of night for Saint Germain. It was a long and weary ride; thePavi du Roiwas then, as now, the most execrable suburban highroad in existence.
When calm was reëstablished Mazarin refused to allow the regent to take up her residenceagain in the old abode of Richelieu and turned it over to Henriette de France, the widow of Charles I, who had been banished from England by Cromwell.
Thirty odd years later Louis XIV, when he was dreaming of his Versailles project, made a gift of the property to his nephew, Philippe d'Orleans, Duc de Chartres. Important reconstructions and rearrangements had been carried on from time to time, but nothing so radical as to change the specious aspect of the palace of the Cardinal's time, though it had been considerably enlarged by extending it rearward and annexing the Hotel Danville in the present Rue Richelieu. Mansart on one occasion was called in and built a new gallery that Coypel decorated with fourteen compositions after the Ænid of Virgil.
Under the regency the Salon d'Entrée was redecorated by Oppenard, and a series of magnificent fêtes was organized by the pleasure-loving queen from the Austrian court. Richelieu's theatre was made into an opera-house, and masked balls of an unparalleled magnificence were frequently given, not forgetting to mention—without emphasis however—suppers of a Pantagruelian opulence and lavish orgies at which the chronicles only hint.
In 1661, Monsieur, brother of the king, took up his official residence in the palace, enlarged it in various directions and in many ways transformed and improved it. Having become the sole proprietor of the edifice and its gardens, by Letters Patent of February, 1692, the Duc d'Orleans left this superb property, in 1701, to his son the too famous regent, Philippe d'Orleans, whose orgies and extravagances rendered the Palais Royal notorious to the utmost corners of Europe.
The first years of the eighteenth century were indeed notorious. It was then that Palais Royal became the head-centre for debauch and abandon. It is from this epoch, too, that date the actual structures which to-day form this vast square of buildings, at all events their general outline is little changed to-day from what it was at that time.
If the regent's policy was to carry the freedom and luxury of Richelieu's time to excess, replacing even the edifices of the Cardinal with more elaborate structures, his son Louis (1723-1752) sought in his turn to surround them with an atmosphere more austere.
A disastrous fire in 1763 caused the Palais Royal to be rebuilt by order of Louis Philippe d'Orleans, the future Philippe-Egalité, by the architect Moreau, who carried out the old traditions as to form and outline, and considerably increased the extent and number of the arcades from one hundred and eighty to two hundred and seven. These the astute duke immediately rented out to shopkeepers at an annual rental of more than ten millions. This section was known characteristically enough as the Palais Marchand, and thus the garden came to be surrounded by a monumental and classic arcade of shops which has ever remained a distinct feature of the palace.
A second fire burned out the National Opera, which now sought shelter in the Palais Royal, and in 1781 the Theatre des Varietés Amusantes was constructed, and which has since been made over into the home of the Comédie Française.
The transformations imposed by Philippe-Egalité were considerable, and the famous chestnut trees, which had been planted within the courtyard in the seventeenth century by Richelieu, were cut down. He built also the three transverse galleries which have cut the gardens of to-day into much smaller plots than they were in Richelieu's time. In spite of this there is still that pleasurable tranquillity to be had therein to-day, scarcely a stone's throw from the rush and turmoil of the whirlpool of wheeled traffic which centres around the junction of the Rue Richelieu with theAvenue de l'Opera. It is as an oasis in a turbulent sandstorm, a beneficent shelf of rock in a whirlpool of rapids. The only thing to be feared therein is that a toy aeroplane of some child will put an eye out, or that the more devilishdiabolowill crack one's skull.
Under the regency of the Duc Philippe d'Orleans the various apartments of the palace were the scenes of scandalous goings-on, which were related at great length in the chronicles of the time. It was a very mixed world which now frequented thepurlieusof the Palais Royal. Men and women about town jostled with men of affairs, financiers, speculators and agitators of all ranks and of questionable respectability. Milords, as strangers from across the Manche came first to be known here, delivered themselves to questionable society and still more questionable pleasures. It was at a little later period that the Duc de Chartres authorized the establishment of the cafés and restaurants which for a couple of generations became the most celebrated rendezvous in Paris—the Café de Foy, the Café de la Paix, the Café Carrazzo and various other places of reunion whose very names, to say nothing of the incidents connected therewith, have come down to history.
It was the establishment of these public rendezvous which contributed so largely to the events which unrolled themselves in the Palais Royal in 1789. This "Eden de l'Enfer," as it was known, has in late years been entirely reconstructed; the old haunts of the Empire have gone and nothing has come to take their place.
Then came another class of establishments which burned brilliantly in the second rank and were, in a way, political rendezvous also—the Café de Chartres and the Café de Valois. Of all these Palais Royal cafés of the early nineteenth century the most gorgeous and brilliant was the Café des Mille Colonnes, though its popularity was seemingly due to the charms of themaitresse de la maison, a Madame Romain, whose husband was a dried-up, dwarfed little man of no account whatever. Madame Romain, however, lived well up to her reputation as being "incontestablement la plus jolie femme de Paris." By 1824 the fame of the establishment had begun to wane and in 1826 it expired, though the "Almanach des Gourmands" of the latter year said that the proprietor was the Véry oflimonadiers, that his ices were superb, his salons magnificent—and his prices exorbitant. Perhaps it was the latter that did it!
Another establishment, founded in 1817, was domiciled here, the clients being served by "odalisques en costume oriental, très seduisantes." This is quoted from the advertisements of the day. The café was called the Café des Circassiennes, and there was asultane, who was the presiding genius of the place. It met with but an indifferent success and soon closed its doors despite its supposedly all-compelling attractions.
In the mid-nineteenth century a revolution came over the cafés of Paris. Tobacco had invaded their precincts; previously one smoked only in theestaminets. Three cafés of the Palais Royal resisted the innovation, the Café de la Galerie d'Orleans, the Café de Foy and the Café de la Rotonde. To-day, well, to-day things are different.
The Theatre du Palais Royal of to-day was the Theatre des Marionettes of the Comte de Beaujolais, which had for contemporaries the Fantoches Italiens, the Ombres Chinoises and the Musée Curtius, perhaps the first of the wax-works shows that in later generations became so popular. The Palais Royal had now become a vast amusement enterprise, with side-shows of all sorts, theatres, concerts, cafés, restaurants, clubs, gambling-houses and what not—all paying rents, and high ones, to the proprietor.
In the centre of the garden, where is now the fountain and its basin, was a circus, half underground and half above, and there were innumerable booths and kiosks for the sale of foolish trifles, all paying tribute to the ground landlord.
Gaming at the Palais Royal was not wholly confined to the public gambling houses. During the carnival season of 1777 the gambling which went on in the royal apartments became notorious for even that profligate time: in one night the Duc de Chartres lost eight thousandlivres. Louis XVI, honest man, took all due precautions to reduce this extravagance, but was impotent.
Between the courtyard fountain and the northern arcade of the inner palace was placed the famous Cannon du Palais Royal, which, by an ingenious disposition, was fired each day at midday by the action of the sun's rays. All the world stood around awaiting the moment when watches might be regulated for another twenty-four hours.
The celebrated Abbé Delille, to whom the beauties of the gardens were being shown, deplored the lack of good manners on the part of the habitués and delivered himself of the following appropriate quatrain:
"Dans ce jardin tout se rencontréeExceptê l'ombrage et les fleurs;Si l'on y dêregle ses mœursDu moins on y règle sa montre."
The Galerie de Bois was perhaps the mostdisreputable of all the palace confines. It was a long, double row of booths which only disappeared when Louis-Philippe built the glass-covered Galerie d'Orleans.
Up to the eve of the Revolution the Palais Royal enjoyed the same privileges as the Temple and the Luxembourg, and became a sort of refuge whereby those who sought to escape from the police might lose themselves in the throng. The monarch himself was obliged to ask permission of the Duc d'Orleans that his officials might pursue their police methods within the outer walls.
It was July 12, 1789. The evening before, Louis XVI had dismissed his minister, Neckar, but only on Sunday, the 12th, did the news get abroad. At the same time it was learned that the regiment known as the Royal Allemand, under the orders of the Prince de Lambesc, had charged the multitude gathered before the gates of the Tuileries. Cries of "A Mort!" "Aux Armes!" "Vengeance!" were hurled in air from all sides.