Old and New Paris Part 31

But these very judges, bound by inflexible laws, could not refuse the expression of their pity and esteem to the unhappy old man. While condemning him to death they rendered homage to his honesty and his courage. "Why," exclaimed the public accuser, "after a virtuous life of seventy-two years, must you now be declared guilty? Because it is not sufficient to be a good husband and a good father; because one must also be a good citizen." The President of the Court, in p.r.o.nouncing sentence, said with gravity and emotion: "Old man, regard the approach of death without fear. It has no power to alarm you. It can have no terrors for such a man as you."

Cazotte ascended with fort.i.tude the steps of the scaffold, and exclaimed, before lowering his head: "I die as I have lived, faithful to my G.o.d and to my king." The last victim of the 2,472 was Coffinhal, vice-president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and member of the Council-General of the Paris Commune.

No show of equity, no imitation even of judicial forms, gave colour to these b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices. Most of the victims, condemned beforehand, were brought to the prison of the Conciergerie at eight in the morning, led before the tribunal at two, and executed at four. A printing office established in a room adjoining the court was connected with the latter by an opening in the wall, through which notes and doc.u.ments relating to the case before the tribunal were pa.s.sed; and often the sentence was composed, printed, and hawked for sale in the streets before being read to the victims.

"You disgrace the guillotine!" said Robespierre one day to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.

Of this historic hall nothing now remains but the four walls. Still, however, may be seen the little door of the staircase which Marie Antoinette ascended to appear before the revolutionary jury, and which she afterwards descended on the way to her dungeon.

The Galerie Saint-Louis is the name given to the ancient gallery connected with the Galerie Marchande, its name being justified by the various forms in which incidents from the life of Saint Louis are represented on its walls. Here, in sculptured and coloured wood, is the effigy of Saint Louis, close to the open s.p.a.ce where, when centuries ago it was a garden, the pious king was wont to imitate, and sometimes to render, justice beneath the spreading trees. One of the bureaux in the Palais de Justice contains an alphabetical list of all the sentences pa.s.sed, by no matter what court, against any person born in one of the districts of Paris or of the department of the Seine. This record, contemplated by Napoleon I., was established in 1851 by M. Rouher, at that time Minister of Justice. The list is kept strictly secret; nor is any extract permitted except on the requisition of a magistrate, or on the application of one of the persons sentenced, requiring it in his own interest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FAcADE OF THE OLD PALAIS DE JUSTICE.]

The Bureau of "Judicial a.s.sistance," dating from 1851, enables any indigent person to plead _in forma pauperis_, whether as plaintiff or defendant. Nor is he obliged to plead in person. Not only stamped paper, but solicitors, barristers, and every legal luxury are supplied to him gratuitously. It is at the expense of the lawyers that the pauper litigant is relieved.

Two curious bureaux connected with the Palais de Justice are those in which are kept, sealed up and divided into series indicated by different colours, objects of special value taken from persons brought before the court, or voluntarily deposited by them; together with sums of money which, in like manner, have pa.s.sed into the hands of legal authorities. Still more curious is the collection of articles of all kinds stored in a sort of museum, which presents the aspect at once of a bazaar and of a p.a.w.nbroker's shop. Here, in striking confusion, are seen boots and shoes, clothes, wigs, rags, and a variety of things seized and condemned as fraudulent imitations; likewise instruments of fraud, such as false scales. Here, too, in abundance are murderous arms--knives, daggers, and revolvers. Singularly interesting is the collection of burglarious instruments of the most different patterns, from the enormous lump of iron, which might be used as a battering ram, to the most delicately-made skeleton key, feeble enough in appearance, but sufficiently strong to force the lock of an iron safe. There is now scarcely room for the constantly increasing collection of objects at the service of fraud and crime.

Beneath this strange exhibition, rendered still more sinister by the method and order with which it is arranged, are disposed in two storeys the four chambers which together const.i.tute the civil tribunal.

Connected with the criminal tribunal, their duty is to try offences punishable by a scale of sentences, with five years' imprisonment as the maximum. According to one of the last legislative enactments of the Second Empire, persons brought before a police-court remained provisionally at liberty except under grave circ.u.mstances. Cases, moreover, in which the offender has been taken _in flagrante delicto_ are decided in three days. "This is a sign of progress," says M. Vitu; "but Paris still needs an inst.i.tution of which London is justly proud, that of district magistrates, something like our _juges de paix_, deciding police cases forthwith. The princ.i.p.al merit of this inst.i.tution is that it prevents arbitrary detention and serious mistakes such as unfortunately are only too frequent with us. Instances have occurred, and will occur again, in which an inoffensive man, arrested by mistake, in virtue of a regular warrant intended for another of the same name, is sent straight to the criminal prison of Mazas. It will then take him a week to get set at liberty. In London he would have been taken at once to the magistrate of the district, who would have proceeded without delay to the verification of his ident.i.ty. It would have been the affair of two hours at most, thanks to the service of constables at the disposal, day and night, of the English magistrate."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SALLE DES PAS PERDUS.]

The police-courts have sometimes to deal with remarkable cases, but as a rule their duties are of a somewhat trivial character. Adventurers of a low order, swindlers on a petty scale, and street thieves who have been caught with their hands in the pocket of a gentleman or the m.u.f.f of a lady, are the sort of persons they usually deal with. To these may be added vendors of pretended theatrical admissions, hawkers of forbidden books, and a few drunkards. From morning till night the police are constantly bringing in poor wretches of both s.e.xes; the men for the most part in blouses, the women in rags. They arrive in "cellular"

carriages, vulgarly called "salad baskets"; and leaving the vehicle they are kept together by a long cord attached to the wrist of each prisoner. The place of confinement where they remain pending the trial is called the "mouse-trap": two rows, placed one above the other, each of twenty-five cells, containing one prisoner apiece. Every cell is closed in front by an iron grating, in the centre of which is a small aperture--a little square window looking into the corridor. Through this window, which can be opened and shut, but which is almost invariably kept open, the prisoner sees all that takes place in the pa.s.sage, and the occasional arrival of privileged visitors helps to break the monotony of his day. The wire cages in which the prisoners are detained suggest those of the Zoological Gardens; and the character of the wild beast is too often imprinted on the vicious criminal features of the incarcerated ones.

Disputes with cab-drivers and hackney coachmen generally are, as a rule, settled by the commissary of the district or the _quartier_. But serious complaints have now and then to be brought before the Tribunal of Police. In former times the hackney coaches of Paris were at once the disgrace and the terror of the town. "Nothing," writes Mercier, "can more offend the eye of a stranger than the shabby appearance of these vehicles, especially if he has ever seen the hackney coaches of London and Brussels. Yet the aspect of the drivers is still more shocking than that of the carriages, or of the skinny hacks that drag those frightful machines. Some have but half a coat on, others none at all; they are uniform in one point only, that is extreme wretchedness and insolence. You may observe the following gradation in the conduct of these brutes in human shape. Before breakfast they are pretty tractable, they grow restive towards noon, but in the evening they are not to be borne. The commissaries or justices of the peace are the only umpires between the driver and the drivee; and, right or wrong, their award is in favour of the former, who are generally taken from the honourable body of police greyhounds, and are of course allied to the formidable phalanx of justices of the peace. However, if you would roll on at a reasonable pace, be sure you take a hackney coachman half-seas-over.

Nothing is more common than to see the traces giving way, or the wheels flying off at a tangent. You find yourself with a broken s.h.i.+n or a b.l.o.o.d.y nose; but then, for your comfort, you have nothing to pay for the fare. Some years ago a report prevailed that some alterations were to take place in the regulation of hackney coaches; the Parisian phaetons took the alarm and drove to Choisy, where the King was at that time. The least appearance of a commotion strikes terror to the heart of a despot. The sight of 1,800 empty coaches frightened the monarch; but his apprehensions were soon removed by the vigilance of his guard and courtiers. Four representatives of the phaetonic body were clapped into prison and the speaker sent to Bicetre, to deliver his harangue before the motley inhabitants of that dreary mansion. The safety of the inhabitants doubtless requires the attention of the Government, in providing carriages hung on better springs and generally more cleanly; but the scarcity of hay and straw, not to mention the heavy impost of twenty sols per day for the privilege of rattling over the pavement of Paris, when for the value of an English s.h.i.+lling you may go from one end of the town to the other, prevents the introduction of so desirable a reformation."

In another part of his always interesting "Picture of Paris," Mercier becomes quite tragic on the subject of Paris coaches and Paris coachmen.

"Look to the right," he says, "and see the end of all public rejoicings in Paris; see that score of unfortunate men, some of them with broken legs and arms, some already dead or expiring. Most of them are parents of families, who by this catastrophe must be reduced to the most horrible misery. I had foretold this accident as the consequence of that file of coaches which pa.s.sed us before. The police take so little notice of these chance medleys that it is simply a wonder such accidents, already too frequent, are not still more numerous. The threatening wheel which runs along with such rapidity carries an obdurate man in power, who has not leisure, or indeed cares not, to observe that the blood of his fellow-subjects is yet fresh on the stones over which his magnificent chariot rattles so swiftly. They talk of a reformation, but when is it to take place? All those who have any share in the administration keep carriages, and what care they for the pedestrian traveller? Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the year 1776, on the road to Mesnil-Montant, was knocked down by a large Lapland dog and remained on the spot, whilst the master, secure in his berline, pa.s.sed him by with that stoic indifference which amounts to savage barbarity. Rousseau, lame and bruised, was taken up and conducted to his house by some charitable peasants. The gentleman, or rather savage, learning the ident.i.ty of the person whom the dog had knocked down, sent a servant to know what he could do for him. 'Tell him,' said Rousseau, 'to keep his dog chained,' and dismissed the messenger. When a coachman has crushed or crippled a pa.s.senger, he may be carried before a commissaire, who gravely inquires whether the accident was occasioned by the fore wheels or the hind wheels. If one should die under the latter, no pecuniary damage can be recovered by the heirs-at-law, because the coachman is answerable only for the former; and even in this case there is a police standard by which he is merely judged at so much an arm and so much a leg! After this we boast of being a civilised nation!"

In addition to the place of detention already described, the Palais de Justice contains a permanent prison known historically as the Conciergerie, and, by its official name, as the House of Justice. Here are received, on the one hand, prisoners about to be tried before the a.s.size Court or the Appeal Court of Police; on the other, certain prisoners who are the object of special favour and who consider themselves fortunate to be confined in this rather than any other prison. The list of celebrated persons who have been detained in the Conciergerie would be a long one, from the Constable of Armagnac (1440) to Prince Napoleon (1883). Here may still be seen the dungeons of Damiens, of Ravaillac, of Lacenaire the murderer, of Andre Chenier the poet, of Mme. Roland, and of Robespierre. The name whose memory, in connection with this fatal place, extinguishes all others is that of the unhappy Marie Antoinette. After a captivity of nearly a year in the Temple the queen was conducted on the 5th of August, 1792, to the Conciergerie, and there shut up in a dark narrow cell called the Council Hall, lighted from the courtyard by a little window crossed with iron bars. This Council Hall was previously divided into two by a part.i.tion, which had now been removed; and in place of it a screen was fixed which, during her sleep, shut the queen off from the two gendarmes ordered to watch her day and night. The daughter of the Caesars left her dungeon on the 15th of October, 1793, dressed in black, to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the next day, dressed in white, to step into the cart which conveyed her to the guillotine erected on the Place Louis XV.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POLICE CARRIAGES.]

This historical dungeon, which, says M. Vitu, could not contain the tears which it has caused to be shed, and ought to have been walled up in order to bury the memory of a crime unworthy of the French nation, was transformed into a chapel by order of Louis XVIII. in 1816. The altar bears a Latin inscription which, like others previously referred to, was composed by the king himself.

Close to the queen's dungeon is the so-called Hall of the Girondists (formerly a chapel), in which the most enlightened and the most heroic of the Revolutionists are said, by a not too trustworthy legend, to have pa.s.sed their last night.

Locally and even architecturally connected with the Palace of Justice is the Holy Chapel, one of the most perfect sacred buildings that Paris possesses. The courtyard of the Holy Chapel, mentioned more than once in connection with the Palace of Justice, stands at the south-east corner of the princ.i.p.al building, and is shut in by the Tribunal of Police and a portion of the Court of Appeal. It can be entered from five different points: from the Boulevard of the Palace of Justice; by two different openings from the Police Tribunal; from the so-called depot of the Prefecture of Police; and from the Cour du Mai on the north-east.

No more admirable specimen of the religious architecture of the middle ages is to be found; nor is any church or chapel more venerable by its origin and its antiquity. Founded by Robert I. in 921, the year of his accession to the throne, it replaced, in the royal palace of which it had formed part, a chapel dedicated to Saint Bartholomew, which dated from the kings of the first dynasty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CONCIERGERIE, PALAIS DE JUSTICE.]

The royal palace contained, moreover, several private oratories, including in particular one dedicated to the Holy Virgin. In 1237 Baudouin II., Emperor of Constantinople, exhausted by the wars he had been sustaining against the Greeks, came to France to beg a.s.sistance from King Saint Louis. Baudouin was of the House of Flanders, and in consideration of a large sum of money, he pledged to the French king his county of Namur, and allowed him to redeem certain holy relics--the crown of thorns, the sponge which had wiped away the blood and sweat of the Saviour, and the lance with which his side had been pierced--on which the Venetians, the Genoese, the Abbess of Perceul, Pietro Cornaro, and Peter Zauni had lent 13,000 gold pieces. The relics arrived in France the year afterwards, and crossed the country in the midst of pious demonstrations from the whole population. The king himself, and the Count of Artois, went to receive them at Sens and bore on their shoulders the case containing the crown of thorns. Thus, in formal procession, they pa.s.sed through the streets of Sens and of Paris; and the holy king deposited the relics in the oratory of the Virgin until a building should be erected specially for their reception. This was the Holy Chapel, of which the first stone was laid in 1245. The work had been entrusted to the architect Pierre de Montreuil or de Montereau. In three years it was finished, the chapel being inaugurated on the 25th of April, 1248. "Only three years for the construction of such an edifice,"

exclaims a French writer, "when the nineteenth century cannot manage to restore it in thirty years!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.]

The Holy Chapel is composed of two chapels one above the other, having a single nave without transept, each chapel possessing a separate entrance. The upper chapel, approached through the Galerie Merciere, was reserved for the king and his family, who, from the royal palace, entered it on foot. The lower chapel, intended for the inferior officers attached to the court, became later on, in virtue of a papal bull, the parish church of all who lives in the immediate neighbourhood of the palace. If the Holy Chapel is admirable by its design and proportions, it is a marvel of construction from a technical point of view. It rests on slender columns, which seem incapable of supporting it. The roof, in pointed vaulting, is very lofty; and for the last six centuries it has resisted every cause of destruction, including the fire which, in 1630, threatened the entire building.

No more beautiful specimens of stained gla.s.s are to be seen than in the Holy Chapel, with its immense windows resplendent in rich and varied colours. A remarkable statue of the Virgin bowing her head as if in token of a.s.sent, now at the Hotel Cluny, belonged originally to the Holy Chapel. According to a pious legend, the figure bent forward to show approval of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as formulated by Duns Scotus, who was teaching theology at Paris in 1304, and from the time of the miracle until now maintains the same gesture of inclination.

More than one mediaeval tradition makes statues, and especially statues of the Virgin, perform similar actions. There is, for example, in the _Contes Devots_ a story of a statue of the Virgin to which a certain _bourgeois qui aimait une dame_ prayed that she would either make the lady return his love or cause that love to cease. Some time previously a Hebrew magician had offered to secure the lady's affections for the infatuated _bourgeois_ provided he would renounce G.o.d, the saints, and especially the Blessed Virgin; to which the despondent lover replied that though, in his grief and despair, he might abandon everything else, yet nothing could make him relinquish his allegiance and devotion to the Blessed Virgin. This fidelity, under all temptations, gave him some right, he hoped, to implore the influence of the merciful Virgin towards softening the heart of the woman he so pa.s.sionately loved; and the statue of the Virgin, before which he prostrated himself, showed by a gentle inclination of the head that his prayer was heard. Fortunately, the lady whose cold demeanour had so vexed the heart of her lover was in the church at the very moment of the miracle, and, seeing the Virgin bow her head to the unhappy _bourgeois_, felt convinced that he must be an excellent man. Thereupon she went up to him, asked him why he looked so sad, reproached him gently with not having visited her of late, and ended by a.s.suring him that if he still loved her she fully returned his affection. Somewhat a.n.a.logous to this legend, though in a different order of ideas, is that of the Commander whose statue Don Juan invited to supper, with consequences too familiar to be worth repeating.

The ancient statue of the Virgin, once in the Holy Chapel, venerated now in the Hotel Cluny, regarded simply as a curiosity, has been replaced by a modern statue. The sacred relics which the Holy Chapel at one time possessed are still preserved at Notre Dame. The gold case which enclosed them was, at the beginning of the Revolution, sent to the Mint to be converted into coin.

The spire which now surmounts the Holy Chapel is the fourth since the erection of the building. The first one, by Pierre de Montreuil, was crumbling away from age under the reign of Charles V., who thereupon had it restored by a master-carpenter, Robert Foucher. Burnt in the great fire of 1630, this second spire was re-constructed by order of Louis XIII., and destroyed during the Revolution. The fourth edition of it, which still exists, was built by M. La.s.sus in the florid style of the first years of the fifteenth century.

The one thing which strikes the visitor to the Holy Chapel above everything else, and which cannot but make a lasting impression on him, is the wonderful beauty of the stained gla.s.s windows already referred to. They date, for the most part, from the reign of Saint Louis, and were put in on the day the building was consecrated in 1248. In their present condition and form, however, they take us back only to the year 1837. During forty-six years (1791 to 1837) the Holy Chapel was given up to all kinds of uses. First it was a club-house, then a flour magazine, and finally a bureau for official doc.u.ments. This last was the least injurious of the purposes to which it was turned. Nevertheless the incomparable stained gla.s.s windows were interfered with by the construction of various boxes and cupboards along the sides of the building, no less than three metres of the lower part of each window being thus sacrificed. Certain glaziers, moreover, employed to take down the windows, clean them, and put them back, had made serious mistakes, restoring portions of windows to the wrong frames. The subjects of the stained art-work are all from the Holy Scriptures, and on a thousand gla.s.s panels figure a thousand different personages.

The restoration of the windows had been entrusted, after a public compet.i.tion, to M. Henri Gerante, a French artist who, more than any other, has contributed to the resurrection of the seemingly lost art of painting on gla.s.s. But, unhappily, M. Gerante died before beginning his work, which, thereupon, was divided between M. Steintheil, for the drawing and painting, and M. Lusson for the material preparation. Their labours were crowned with the most complete success. Entering the Holy Chapel one is literally dazzled by the bright rich colours from the windows on all sides, blending together in the most harmonious manner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LOWER CHAPEL OF THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.]

Right and left of the nave the place is shown where Saint Louis and Blanche de Castille were accustomed to sit opposite one another to hear ma.s.s and other religious services. A corner, moreover, is pointed out, with an iron network before it, where, according to a doubtful tradition, the suspicious Louis XI. used to retire in order to hear ma.s.s without being seen; perhaps also to watch the faithful at their prayers.

In many an old French church corners and pa.s.sages may be met with, protected by a network or simply by rails, which served, it is said, to shut off lepers from the general congregation.

Closely a.s.sociated with the Palais de Justice is the Tribunal of Commerce, which has its own code, its own judges and functionaries.

Three centuries ago the necessity was recognised in France of leaving commercial and industrial cases to the decision of men competent, from their occupation, to deal with such matters. Paris owes its Tribunal of Commerce to King Charles IX.; but the code under which issues are now decided dates only from September, 1807--from the First Empire, that is to say. The commercial judges are named for two years by the merchants and tradesmen domiciled in the department of the Seine. Formerly the Tribunal of Commerce, or Consular Tribunal, held its sittings at the back of the Church of Saint-Mery in the Hotel des Consuls, the gate of which used to support a statue of Louis XIV., by Simon Guilain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE UPPER CHAPEL OF THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.]

This mercantile court consists of five merchants, the first bearing the t.i.tle of judge, and the four others that of consuls. The Tribunal of Commerce was removed from the old house in the Rue Saint-Mery in 1826, to be installed on the first storey of the newly constructed Bourse. Soon, however, the place a.s.signed to it became inadequate for the constantly increasing number of cases brought before the court; and a special edifice was erected for the Tribunal of Commerce in the immediate vicinity of the Palais de Justice. This structure, quadrilateral in form, is bounded on the north by the Quai aux Fleurs, on the east by the Rue Aube, on the south by the Rue de Lutece, and on the west by the Boulevard du Palais. To build a new Palais de Justice it was necessary to destroy all that existed of the ancient Cite. One curious building, which, after undergoing every kind of modification, ultimately, in order to make room for the Court of Commerce, disappeared altogether, was the ancient Church of Saint Bartholomew. This sacred edifice during the early days of the Revolution, when churches had gone very much out of fas.h.i.+on, became the Theatre Henri IV., to be afterwards called Palais Variete, Theatre de la Cite, Cite Variete, and Theatre Mozart. Here was represented, in 1795, "The Interior of the Revolutionary Committees," the most cutting satire ever directed against the tyranny of the Jacobins; and, in another style, "The Perilous Forest, or the Brigands of Calabria," a true type of the ancient melodrama. Suppressed in 1807, this theatre underwent a number of transformations, to serve at last as a dancing saloon, known to everyone and beloved by students under the t.i.tle of The Prado.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRIBUNAL OF COMMERCE.]

The cupola of the Tribunal of Commerce is a reproduction, as to form, of the cupola of a little church which attracted the attention of Napoleon III. on the borders of the Lake of Garda while he was awaiting the result of the attack on the Solferino Tower. The Audience Chamber of the Tribunal is adorned with paintings by Robert Fleury, representing incidents in the commercial history of France from Charles IX. to Napoleon III.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FIRE BRIGADE AND THE POLICE.

The _Sapeurs-pompiers_--The Prefect of Police--The _Garde Republicaine_--The Spy System.

The Tribunal of Commerce, standing north of the Rue de Lutece, has for pendant on its south side (that is to say, between the Rue de Lutece and the quay) the barrack of the Republican Guard and two houses adjoining it, one of which is the private residence of the Prefect of Police: where, moreover, he has his private office; while the second contains the station of the firemen of the town of Paris.

The Fire Brigade, or corps of Sapeurs-pompiers, is partly under the direction of the Prefect of Police, partly under that of the Minister of War, who takes charge of its organisation, its recruitment, and its internal administration. Much was said at the time of the terrible fire at the Opera Comique in 1887 of the evils of this dual system; the chief of the corps, an officer appointed by the War Minister, being often an experienced soldier, but never before his appointment a skilled fireman.

There is a reason, however, for placing the Sapeurs-pompiers under the orders of the Minister of War. During the campaign of 1870 and 1871 the Germans refused to recognise the military character of corps not holding their commission from this minister. Thus the National Guards, as a purely civic body, were not looked upon as soldiers, and were threatened with the penalties inflicted on persons taking up arms without authority from the central military power. In the next war against Germany the French propose to call out the whole of their available forces; and to be recognised as regular troops the Sapeurs-pompiers must have a military organisation and act under military chiefs formally appointed and responsible to a superior officer. All this, however, could surely be accomplished without rendering the corps unfit for the special duties a.s.signed to it.

The Sapeurs-pompiers are organised in twelve companies, forming two battalions, and are distributed among the 150 barracks, stations, and watch-houses comprised in the twenty districts, or _arrondiss.e.m.e.nts_, of Paris.