The Stones of Paris in History and Letters Volume Ii Part 8

THE WOMEN OF THE MARAIS

"_Dans cet hotel est nee, le 6 Fevrier, 1626, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne_:" so reads the tablet set in that wall, which fronts on the square, of the house numbered 1 Place des Vosges, having its entrance at No. 11 Rue de Birague. There is no name more closely linked with the Marais than that of this ill.u.s.trious woman. Born in this house, baptized in its parish church of Saint-Paul-et-Saint-Louis, she here grew up to girlhood; she was married in Saint-Gervais, her daughter was married in Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs; and the greater portion of her life was pa.s.sed within this quarter. Her father was killed in a duel a few months after her birth, at the age of seven she lost her mother, and when only twenty-five years old, she found herself a widow. After a short sojourn in the provinces with her son and daughter, she came back, in 1655, to Paris and to the Marais. She had casual and unsettled domiciles, for many years, in Rues de Thorigny, Barbette, des Francs-Bourgeois, des Lions-Saint-Paul, des Tournelles--all within our chosen district--before she settled in her home of twenty years, the Carnavalet.

It is but a step away from this tablet above us, to the corner of Rues des Francs-Bourgeois and Sevigne; the latter street, at that time, bearing its original name of Culture-Sainte-Catherine, having been opened through that portion under cultivation of the grounds of the great monastery of Sainte-Catherine du Val-des-ecoliers. On the corner of this new street and that of Francs-Bourgeois--then Rue Neuve-Sainte-Catherine--a piece of the convent garden was bought by Jacques de Ligneris, and thereon a house for his residence was erected. Its plans were drawn by Pierre Lescot, it was built by Jean Bullant, was decorated by Androuet du Cerceau, and its sculptures were carved by Jean Goujon. And thus these walls, on which we are looking, speak in mute laudation of four famous men. One more notable name may be added to this list--that of Francois Mansart. He was called in, a century or so after the completion of this mansion, for its renovation and enlargement; and, to his lasting honor, he contented himself with doing only what seemed to him to be imperatively demanded, and with attempting no "improvements" nor "restoration" of the work of his great predecessors. He knew what we have learned, that those words too often mean desecration and ruin to all historic monuments in all lands. During this interval, the building had come into the hands of Francoise de la Baume, Dame de Kernevalec, whose Breton name, corrupted to Carnavalet, has clung to it ever since. That name suggested the pun of the _carnaval_ masks, carved in stone over the arches of the wings in the court. They were done by a later hand than that of Goujon, whose last work is to be seen about that window of the Louvre, on which he was busy, when a bullet picked him off, a day or two after the night of Saint Bartholomew. The tranquil elegance of his chisel has adorned this almost perfect gateway with the graceful winged figure in its keystone. It lifts and lightens the severe dignity of the facade. And, in the court--its centre not unworthily held by the bronze statue of Louis XIV., remarkable in its exquisite details, found in the old Hotel de Ville--we linger in joy before the graceful flowing curves and the daylight directness of the Seasons of this French Phidias. The figures on the wings are from a feebler chisel than his. Of all the crowding memories of this spot, those of the Marquise de Sevigne and of Jean Goujon are the most vivid and the most captivating. The busts of these two, one on either side, greet us at the head of the staircase leading to her apartments; she is alert and winsome, he is sedate and thoughtful and a trifle too stern for the most amiable of sculptors, as he shows himself here, rather than the staunch Huguenot, killed for his convictions.

She was fifty-one years of age by the records when she came to live here, in 1677, and half that age at heart, which she kept always young. She had been so long camping about in the Marais, that she was impatient to settle down in the ideal dwelling she had found, at last.

She writes to her daughter: "_Dieu merci, nous avons l'hotel Carnavalet. C'est une affaire admirable; nous y tiendrons tous, et nous aurons le bel air. Comme on ne peut pas tout avoir, il faut se pa.s.ser des parquets, et des pet.i.tes cheminees a la mode.... Pour moi, je vais vous ranger la Carnavalette, car, enfin, nous l'avons, et j'en suis fort aise._"

So she moved in, with her son and daughter, both dear to her. It was to the daughter, however, that the mother's affluence of affection flowed out, all through her life; and it may well be that this veritable pa.s.sion saved her from all other pa.s.sions, during the years of her long widowhood, when many a _grand parti_ fell at her feet. She looked on them all alike, with pity for their seizure, and each of them got up and walked away, unappeased. Yet hers was a rich nature, wholesome and womanly withal, and there are potentialities of emotion in the pouting lips and inviting eyes of the pretty pagan of this bust. Nor was she a prude, and her way of quoting Rabelais and listening to La Fontaine's verses would horrify us moderns of queasy stomachs. She had ready pardon for the infidelities of her husband, and later for the misdeeds of her scampish cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, "the most dangerous tongue in France."

Above all, this real woman showed a masculine strength and loyalty of friends.h.i.+p for men; showed it most markedly in her sympathy for those who had fallen in the world. There is no finer example in the annals of constancy than her devotion to the broken Fouquet, howbeit he may have merited breaking. The spirit of her letters, at the time of his disgrace and imprisonment, cannot be twisted into anything ign.o.ble, as Napoleon tried to do, on reading them in the State archives. He sneeringly suggested that her sympathy with Fouquet was "_bien chaud, bien vif, bien tendre, pour de la simple amitie_." So it was, indeed; for her friends.h.i.+ps were attachments, and warmth and tenderness pulsate in all her letters; and these qualities will, along with their unpremeditated spontaneity, keep them alive as long as letters live.

What else was in her letters has been told by Nodier, when he says that they regulated and purified the language for ordinary use; and by Jules Janin, who rightly claims that, from this Carnavalet, came the purest and most perfect French hitherto heard in France.

In forming and housing the great collection of the History of Paris, to which the Musee Carnavalet is devoted, new buildings about a trim garden in the rear have been added to the original mansion, whose own rooms have been subjected to as little change as possible. Madame de Sevigne's apartment, on the first floor, is hardly altered, and her bedroom and _salon_ have been especially kept inviolate. The admirable mouldings, the curious mirrors, the old-fas.h.i.+oned l.u.s.tre, remain as she left them, when she went to her daughter at Grignan to die. In this _salon_, and in the wide corridor leading to it, both now so silent and pensive, she received all the men of her day worth receiving; and it is here alone that we breathe the very atmosphere of this incomparable creature.

We may join the early-goers among these men, who make their way to another house, not far distant. There are temptations to stop before, and explore within, the seventeenth-century mansions all along Rues Sevigne and du Parc-Royal, but we pa.s.s on into Rue Turenne--once Rue Saint-Louis, the longest and widest and foremost in fas.h.i.+on of Marais streets, now merely big and bustling, with little left of its ancient glory--until we come to its No. 58, on the corner of old Rue des Douze-Portes, now named Ville-Hardouin, after the contemporary chronicler of the Fifth Crusade. This modest house at the corner has been luckily overlooked by the modern rebuilder of this quarter, who has not touched its two stories and low attic above a ground floor, its un.o.btrusive portal, its narrow hall, and its staircase; small and quaint, in keeping with the cripple who was carried up and down for many years. Paul Scarron lived here, in the apartment _au deuzieme a droite_, dubbed the "_Hotel de l'Impecuniosite_" by his young wife, who was the granddaughter of the Calvinist leader, Agrippa d'Aubigne, and who was to be the second wife of Louis XIV. Sitting at her scantily supplied supper-table here, the maid would whisper that a course was lacking, and that an anecdote from the hostess must fill the bill of fare instead. Goldsmith tells us, at the beginning of his "Retaliation:"

"Of old when Scarron his companions invited, Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united."

And, just here, it is curious to recall the fact that Goldsmith was busied, during the last months of his life, on a translation of Scarron's "Roman Comique," and his bethumbed copy was found on his desk, after his death.

Scarron was always poor and always importunate, and yet he was "a pleasant prodigy never before seen," he says of himself; rightfully claiming that he was able "to sport with misery and jest in pain."

Paralyzed and still a prey to incurable torments, immovable in his armchair except for his nimble fingers, he drove his pen merrily to the making of comedies, tales, pamphlets, and the verse that, like him, was impishly awry with mockery, as if chattered by "a wilderness of monkeys." Letters, too, he wrote in this house, that give us striking glimpses of the man and of his time. In them we discover that "most terribly" was the sanctified slang then for the modern abomination "awfully." Appeals for money make up much of his correspondence, but there is never a hint of a loan in the charming letters to the "_belle ange en deuil_," Madame de Sevigne; in which he always a.s.sures her that she is a dangerous person, and that those who look on her without due care, grow sick upon it immediately, and are not long-lived. Mlle. de Lenclos was a favorite of his, too, and that "_charmant objet, belle Ninon_," came to sit for hours beside his invalid-chair. She made friends with the young wife, too, but complained that she was "_trop gauche_" to learn gallantry, and was "_vertueuse par faiblesse_." The large-minded lady frankly owns: "_J'aurais voulu l'en guerir, mais elle craignait trop Dieu._" For all that, the friends.h.i.+p then formed between the two women was never broken, and when the widow Scarron came to position and power she offered a place at court to her elder friend; an offer that was refused, for the old lady never grew old enough to change her mode of life. And there is little doubt that the younger woman often looked back with longing to those wretched days that were so happy. She said once, seeing the carp dying of surfeit in the Versailles pond: "_Elles regrettent leur bourbe_," suggesting that, like them, she suffered from satiety.

Years before his marriage, Scarron had lived with his sister in this same little street of "Twelve Doors," and had grown very fond of the "_beau quartier des Marests_." He asks: "Who can stay long from the Place Royale?" When he returned to Paris in 1654--having married in 1652, and having made a long stay in Touraine--he came back to his beloved Marais, and took a three-years' lease of this apartment. At its termination the lease was probably renewed, for it is a time-honored tradition that makes this old house the place of his death, on October 14, 1660.

Between fifty and one hundred years later--the exact date is not to be got at--the garret above was crowded with the pet dogs and cats and birds of Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, who lived in filth among them, seldom eating, never was.h.i.+ng, always smoking. The big blond dramatist had fallen a victim to poverty and melancholy, after a short career of success on those boards which he stained with the blood of many violent deaths. He had said that, since Corneille had taken heaven for his own and Racine had seized upon earth, he could place his scenes only in h.e.l.l. He was rescued, and taken from this garret, by the pension obtained through La Pompadour. That great lady was not prompted by any comprehension of the sombre power of his tragedy, but by a desire to wreak her spite against Voltaire by the exaltation of a rival.

Scarron's widow was left in poor case, with only her husband's small pension for support, and this was stopped by Colbert on the death of Anne of Austria, in 1666. That Queen-Mother had endowed an inst.i.tution for poor girls and sick women, and with these "_Hospitalieres de la Place Royale_," Madame Scarron found shelter, having sold all that she owned. In 1669 she was put in charge of the first child of the King and Madame de Montespan, and we know all the rest, to the secret marriage in 1685. Such of the buildings of the "_Hospitalieres_" as are left now form part of the Hopital Andral, and their old roofs and dormers and chimneys take our eye above the low wall as we turn into Rue des Tournelles. In this street is the hospital's main entrance, and through its gate we look across the garden, that stretches back to the former entrance in Impa.s.se de Bearn; now opened only to carry out for burial the bodies of those dying in the hospital.

The line of walls along Rue des Tournelles was broken by only a few isolated houses, when Francois Mansart selected a site here, and put thereon his own dwelling, unpretending as the man himself, in contrast with the grand mansions he had planned for his n.o.ble and wealthy clients. This is his modest entrance-court, at No. 28 Rue des Tournelles, and behind it is the simple facade of his _hotel_. This building probably formed his entire frontage, or it may have been the _corps-de-logis_ of a more extensive structure, whose two wings reached out toward the street at Nos. 26 and 30. This number 28, whether the central or the entire body of the building, remains in perfect preservation. At Mansart's death, in 1666, it came, along with most of his property, to his sister's son, whom he had adopted, and trained to be the architect known as Jules Hardouin Mansart. He gained position and pay in the royal employ, more by this adoptive name than by his abilities. As Superintendent of Buildings under Louis XIV. he is responsible for most of the horrors of the palace of Versailles, yet the dome of the Invalides proves him to have been capable of less meretricious work.

On taking possession of his uncle's mansion, he had, as sole tenant of his s.p.a.cious and inviting first floor, Mlle. Anne Lenclos, popularly christened Ninon de Lenclos, then fifty years of age. Her dwelling is the end and object of this short walk, and together with the house from which we started, and the one at which we stopped, it gives us a complete picture of the social doings of the Marais at that period. We are allowed to enter among the men with whom we have come, and we will go in, let us say, with young de Sevigne, who finds his way here frequently, from his _pied-a-terre_ in his mother's house, as his father and his grandfather had found their way to Ninon's abode. Under the stone balcony on the court-front we step up into a goodly hall, from which rises a stone staircase, its outer end finely carved, its steps well worn by many visitors through the years. An admirable medallion looks down from the wall as we mount, and in the rooms above we find carved panels and decorated ceilings, many of them done by Lebrun and Mignard, probably for the fair tenant. They are so carefully kept that canvas covers such of them as are feared to be "_trop lestes_" for modern eyes, in the modest words of the ancient _concierge_. Mansart put an excellent facade on his garden-front, and its coupled Ionic columns, and balconies of wrought-iron railings, are all there unmutilated. But the garden, then stretching to Boulevard Beaumarchais, is now hidden under the shops that front on that boulevard.

To these rooms and this garden thronged the same men whom we have seen in the Sevigne and Scudery _salons_, and these reunions were as decorous as those, and perhaps somewhat more cheerful and more natural in tone. For, while Ninon had the honor of being enrolled in the "Grand Dictionnaire des Precieuses," published in 1661, and while she had been presented at the Hotel de Rambouillet at the early age of seventeen, she had none of the pretensions nor the ridiculosities of "Les Femmes Savantes." She was absolutely genuine, not ashamed to be natural, quite ready to laugh or to cry with her friends. These friends, drawn to her less by her beauty than by her charm, were held always by her sunny amiability, her quick sympathies, her frank _camaraderie_. She was the Clarisse of Mlle. de Scudery's "Clelie;" an _enjouee aimable_, who never denied herself the indulgence of any caprice of head or of heart. Yet, as she laughingly confessed, while she thanked G.o.d every night for the good wits given her, she prayed every morning for better protection against the follies of her heart.

It is a faithful portrait that is given in the verse of her day:

"_L'indulgente et sage Nature A forme l'ame de Ninon, De la volupte d'epicure, Et de la vertu de Caton._"

Beyond most women of that time, she was really cultivated, in the best meaning of that word; far different from the meaningless Culture with a capital, of our time. She was fond of philosophy, withal, and took turns with Plato and with Montaigne; and would speculate on the problems of life either with Church dignitaries or with the epicurean Saint-evremond. And she captivated them all, men of all sorts, beginning with her girlish years--when she dutifully obeyed her father, who preached pleasure to her, rather than her mother, who pushed her toward a convent--through all her long life of incredibly youthful heart and body, to her amazing conquests when over sixty. A portrait of her at about this age hangs in Knole House, Sevenoaks; her hair, parted down the middle and plainly drawn back in modest fas.h.i.+on, her alluring eyes and her ingenuous direct smile, give her the look of a girl. Richelieu was her first admirer, Voltaire was the latest.

When brought to this house, where he celebrated Ninon's ninetieth birthday in verse, young Arouet was only about twelve years old, as was told in a preceding chapter. She was charmed with the youthful genius, and, dying within a few weeks, in 1706, she left him two thousand crowns for buying his beloved books.

From five until nine in the evening, Ninon was "at home" here, up to her eighty-fourth year, in 1700. Before her visitors went away, they sat down to a simple supper, served with no parade and at small expense. Many of the guests, following the fas.h.i.+on of Scarron's friends and of the persistent diners-out of that day, brought their own _plats_. We get a glimpse of the simplicity of these suppers "_a tous les Despreaux et tous les Racines_," and of the homely, social ways of the _bourgeoisie_, in Voltaire's tiresome comedy "Le Depositaire."

We look about these rooms, in which we are standing, and wish we might have seen Boileau and Racine here; we seem to see Moliere, reading his unacted and still unnamed play, and consulting his hostess as to whether "Tartufe" will do for a t.i.tle; and old Corneille, forgetting to be shy and clumsy at her side; and Scarron, wheeled in his chair, quicker in his scoffing for her quick catching of the point; and La Rochefoucauld, less of a surly and egotistic _poseur_ in her presence, content to sparkle as a boudoir Machiavelli; and Huyghens, fresh from his discovery of the moons of Saturn, finding here a heavenly body of unwonted radiance, and setting to work to write erotic verse mixed with mathematics. The great Conde himself, proud, vain, hardest-hearted of men, melts when he meets her; broken and decrepit, he climbs out from his sedan-chair--"that wonderful fortification against bad weather and the insults of the mud," says delicious Mascarille--and approaches, hat in hand, the _caleche_ of that other aged warrior, Ninon de Lenclos.

Through No. 23 of Boulevard Beaumarchais, which occupies the site of her garden, we come out on that broad thoroughfare, pa.s.sing on our right the buildings covering the gardens that once countrified this east side of Rue des Tournelles. We cannot now search among the houses there for that one inhabited by the Abbe Prevost, some time between 1730 and 1740, while he was writing his enthralling story of "Manon Lescaut." Almost at the end of the boulevard, men are sitting about tin tables on the pavement, drinking good beer, on the very site of the gate of Saint-Antoine. Just there, outside the gate, stood Lady de Winter, pointing out to her two hired a.s.sa.s.sins her pet enemy, d'Artagnan, as he rode out on the Vincennes road, on his way to the siege of Roch.e.l.le. The gate ab.u.t.ted on the western side of the Bastille, and its figures, carved by Jean Goujon for decorations of a later day, may be seen in the Cluny Gardens.

Traced in the pavement of Place de la Bastille and across Rue Saint-Antoine, you may follow the outlines of such portions of the walls and towers of the great prison as are not hidden under the houses at the two corners. When you ask for your number in the omnibus office of the _place_, you are standing in the Bastille's inner court. Across its outer eastern ditch and connected with the wall of Charles V., was thrown a projecting bastion, the tower of which stood exactly where now rises the Column of July. At the corner of Rues Saint-Antoine and Jacques-Coeur, a tablet shows the site of the gateway that gave entrance to the outer court, which led southwardly along the line of the latter small street. By this gateway the armed mob entered on July 14, 1789. Lazy Louis XVI., hard at work on locks and other trifles at Versailles--having as yet no news from Paris--writes in his diary for that day: "_Rien_"! That mob had found the fortress as little capable of resistance as the throne that it overturned a while later; both proved to be but baseless fabrics of an unduly dreaded terror. Indeed, it was the power behind this prison that was stormed on that day. There were plenty of prisons in Paris, as fast and as secret as was the Bastille. This was more than a prison to these people; it gloomed over their lives as its towers gloomed over their street--a mysterious and menacing defiance, a dumb and docile doer of shady deeds, a symbol of an authority feared and hated.

And so these people first tore away the tool, and then disabled the hand that had held it. It was a stirring act in the drama, though a trifle melodramatic.

"_Palloy le Patriote_," as he styled himself, takes the centre of the stage just here, and, like all professional patriots, in all lands and all times, he makes a good thing of his patriotism. He was the contractor for demolis.h.i.+ng the walls and for clearing the ground of the wreckage, at a handsome price; and he doubled his wage by the sale of the materials. Some of the stones went, queerly enough, to the building of Pont de la Concorde; others of them may be seen in the walls of the house on the western corner of Boulevard Poissoniere and Rue Saint-Fiacre, and of other houses in the town. With the stones not fit for these uses, and with the mortar, he made numerous models of the Bastille, which were purchased by the committees and sent as souvenirs to the chief towns of the then newly created departments.

One of these models is in the Musee Carnavalet. So, too, the thrifty Palloy turned the ironwork dug out into hat and shoe buckles, and the woodwork into canes and fans and tobacco-boxes; all, at last, into coin for his patriotic pocket. The gate of one of the cells was removed, and rebuilt in the prison of Sainte-Pelagie; where it may be seen by the inmates, who care nothing for a door more or less, but never by the outsider, who would like to get in for a glimpse!

To "Palloy the Patriotic" and his gang of a thousand workingmen, rides up on his white horse, one day, the first commander of the just invented and organized National Guard--Lafayette, aptly named by Mirabeau the "Cromwell-Grandison" of his nation. He looks over the busy ground, and gives orders that the men shall receive a pint of wine and a half-franc daily; but they got neither money nor wine, both doubtless "conveyed, the wise it called," on the way, by Palloy or by other "patriots." Lafayette carried away the great key of the Bastille's great entrance-door, and sent it to George Was.h.i.+ngton by Thomas Paine, when, a few years later, Paine got out of the Luxembourg prison and out of France. It is one of the cherished relics at Mount Vernon, and not one is more impressive and more appropriate in that place, since it was the success of the American revolutionists that inspirited those who opened the Bastille.

We pa.s.s along Rue Saint-Antoine, so commonplace and sordid to-day, so crowded with history and tradition. It has seen, in its short length, pageants of royalty and n.o.bility, the hide-and-seek of romance, the blood-letting of sharp blades, the carnage of the common people, such as no other street of any other town has known. Its memories would fill a fat volume.

The little temple of Sainte-Marie on our left, as we go--a reduced imitation of Rome's Pantheon--is a design by Francois Mansart, and while it has his grace of line and his other qualities, it is not a notable work. Built on the site of the Hotel de Boissy, wherein Quelus died and his lover Henry wept, it was intended for the chapel of the "_Filles de la Visitation_," and their name clings to it, although it has been made over to the Protestant Church. To this convent fled Mlle. Louise de la Fayette from Louis XIII.; who, ardent in the only love and the only chase known in his platonic career, visited her here until his confessor, Vincent de Paul, showed him the scandal of a King going to a nunnery. So he had to leave her, secure under the veil and the vows of the cloister. She became Soeur, and later Mere, Angelique, of the Convent of Sainte-Madeleine, founded in 1651 by Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I., which stood on the far-away heights of Chaillot, where now is the museum of the Trocadero. There the sister and the sweetheart of Louis XIII. lived together for many years.

A few steps farther, and we come to Rue Beautreillis; its pavement and its houses on both sides, nearly as far as Rue Charles V., covering the Cemetery of old Saint-Paul; which extended westerly toward Pa.s.sage Saint-Pierre, wherein we may find the stone walls, now roofed in with wood, of the _charniers_. There had been a suburban cemetery outside the old wall, which was brought within city limits by the new wall, and served as the burial-ground of the prisoners who died in the Bastille. It did not so serve, as is commonly a.s.serted, for the skeletons found in chains in the cells, when the prison was opened by righteous violence, because no such skeletons were found. "The Man in the Iron Mask" was buried in this ground, close alongside the grave of Rabelais, dug exactly one hundred and fifty years earlier. Pa.s.s through the two courts that lie in the rear of No. 17 Rue Beautreillis, and you will find yourself in a large waste garden, in one corner of which the persuasive _concierge_ points out the grave of the "_Masque-de-Fer_." It may well be that she is not misled by topographical pride, for this ground was certainly a portion of the old burial-ground, and not impossibly that portion where Rabelais and "Marchioly" were laid near together. This is the prisoner's name on the Bastille's burial-register, and not far from his real name. For we know, as surely as we shall ever know, that this prisoner of State was the Count Ercolo Antonio Mattioli, Secretary of State of Charles IV., Duke of Mantua. The count had agreed to betray his trust and to sell his master's fortress of Casali to the French representative; with this in their possession, Pignerol belonging already to France, Louis XIV. and Louvois would dominate all upper Italy. Mattioli took his pay, and betrayed his paymaster; the scheme miscarried, and the schemer deserved another sort of reward. His open arrest, or execution, or any public punishment, meant exposure and scandal to the Crown and the Minister and the Amba.s.sador of France. So he was secretly kidnapped, and became "The Man in the Iron Mask." At his death, in 1703, his face was mutilated, lest there might be recognition, even then; the walls of his cell were sc.r.a.ped and painted, to obliterate any marks he might have put on them; his linen and clothing and furniture were burned. Had Voltaire suspected the results of modern research, he would not have put forth his theory, in the second edition of his "Questions sur l'Encyclopedie," that this prisoner was an elder brother of Louis XIV. Yet, but for Voltaire's error, we should have lost those delightful pages of Dumas, wherein Aramis carries off from the Bastille this elder brother and rightful heir to the crown, leaving Louis XIV. in the cell, and at last replaces his puppets in their original positions.

This Cemetery of Saint-Paul, dating back to Dagobert, when the burial-grounds on the Island had become overpeopled, had its own small chapel of the same name, which had fallen out of use and into ruin.

Charles V., bringing it within his enclosure of the Hotel Saint-Paul, rebuilt and enlarged it and made it the church of the royal parish.

All the daughters and the sons of France were thenceforth baptized here, and it became the favorite church of the n.o.bility. After Louis XI.'s time, and the desertion of this quarter by royalty, the little church lost its vogue. In 1794 it was appropriated and sold as National Domain, and torn down soon after. Its site is covered by the buildings on and behind the eastern side of Rue Saint-Paul, opposite the s.p.a.ce between Pa.s.sage Saint-Paul and Rue Eginhard. This is the small street selected by Alphonse Daudet for the shop of his _brocanteur_ Leemans, to which comes the fascinating Sephora, of "Les Rois en Exil." Daudet has overdone it in going so far for his local color; the street is a noisome alley, entered by an archway from Rue Saint-Paul, holding only two or three obscene junk-shops.

And now, pa.s.sing the flamboyant Italian facade--a meretricious imitation of the front of Saint-Gervais--of the Church of Saint-Paul-et-Saint-Louis, which has absorbed the name of old Saint-Paul, we reach at last the ample s.p.a.ce where the two streets of Rivoli and of Saint-Antoine meet and so make one broad, unbroken thoroughfare through the length of the town, from the place where the Bastille was to the place now named Concorde. This grand highway has existed only since the middle of the nineteenth century. The Consulate and the First Empire had cut Rue de Rivoli along the upper edge of the Tuileries Gardens as far easterly as Rue de Rohan; from there it was prolonged, taking the line of some of the old, narrow streets and piercing through solid ma.s.ses of ancient buildings, in the last years of Louis-Philippe; and was carried from the Hotel de Ville to this point by the Second Empire. All through earlier days, the route, common and royal, from the Louvre and the Tuileries to the Hotel Saint-Paul, the Tournelles, the Bastille, and the a.r.s.enal, was by way of narrow Rue Saint-Honore and its narrower continuation, Rue de la Ferronerie, thence around by Rue Saint-Denis into Rue des Lombards, and so along Rues de la Verrerie and Roi-de-Sicile to the old gate of Saint-Antoine, that stood just behind us here at the end of Rue Malher. Outside that gate was the country road leading to Vincennes, which was transformed into the city street, known to us as Rue Saint-Antoine, through the protection given by Charles V.'s new wall and by his Bastille. There had been, long before, a Rue Saint-Antoine, and it curves away here on our left, and is called Rue Francois-Miron, so named in honor of that _Prevot des Marchands_ in Henri IV.'s time, who merits remembrance as an honest, high-minded, capable administrator of his weighty office.

Thus this street of old Saint-Antoine was the thoroughfare--at first from the entrance into the town by the old gate of Saint-Antoine, and afterward from the new street of Saint-Antoine and its entrance gate farther east--to the open s.p.a.ce behind the Hotel de Ville, alongside Saint-Gervais, and so to the bridges and the Palace on the Island. It was a street "marvellously rich" in shops, having no rival except in Rue Saint-Denis. Its shopkeepers shouted, from their doors or from the pavement in front, the merits of their wares to the throng swarming always along. Their wares were worthy of the city that, with its fast-growing population, equalled Venice herself in wealth, display, and splendor, if we may trust the word of an exultant scribbling citizen of the Paris of Charles V.

So, too, it was the grand highway for royal entries, for troops, for amba.s.sadors with their trains, for any parade that demanded display and attracted spectators. Such an array came along here on August 26, 1660, when young Louis XIV. brought into his town his young bride, Maria Theresa of Spain, each of them being just twenty-two years old.

It was the showiest pageant and the longest procession yet seen in Paris, taking ten or twelve hours to pa.s.s. The bride--a slight, pretty, girlish figure, in white satin and pearls, and a violet mantle of velvet--leaned back on the crimson velvet of her huge gilded chariot; at her right on horseback was the King, in cloth-of-gold and black lace, his collars and ruffles of white point. In the resplendent retinue nothing so blazed as the superb empty coach of the Cardinal-Minister Mazarin, its panels painted by Lebrun, drawn by the famous mules and escorted by the Mousquetaires. Less than a year later Mazarin was carried through Paris in his hea.r.s.e, caring no more for mules or any tomfoolery.

The procession had entered the town under Claude Perrault's triumphal arch at the end of the Vincennes Avenue, and through Porte Saint-Antoine, cleaned up and sculptured afresh for this day, and so by new Rue Saint-Antoine, along this present Rue Francois-Miron. It was packed with spectators, among whom was La Fontaine, who sent a long rhymed description of the show to his patron, Fouquet, not omitting mention of the cardinal's mules. These, too, were spoken of with fitting praise in a letter written to a friend by young Madame Scarron--to be a widow, within a few weeks--who was also in the throng. Years after, she confessed to the credulous King that on that day she had first seen him and first loved him, and that she had never ceased to love him since! We may not consider the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans unduly prejudiced when she refers to Madame de Maintenon as "that hussy."

At No. 88 Rue Francois-Miron you may see an excellent balcony of that period, solidly and richly wrought in iron, supported by captivating stone dragons of fantastic design. There were similar balconies on the front of the great mansion at No. 68--which was then No. 62--but of these only a small one is still left over the portal. They were all crowded with a most select mob of the elect on the day of this procession. There was Anne of Austria, in her black mantle, looking down on her son, her thoughts turning back to her own bridal procession over the same route, and her own youthful blond beauty of forty-five years before. By her side sat Henrietta of France, widow of Charles I., and her daughter, Henrietta Anne of England. The girl may have gazed with curiosity on the over-dressed fop riding at the bride's left wheel. This was Philippe d'Orleans, who was to be her husband, and was, through his complacent creatures, to poison her within ten years from this day. In another balcony sat Mazarin, too ill to take part in the procession.

The hostess of these great ladies was one Catherine Bellier, wife of Pierre de Beauvais; and this house is the Hotel de Beauvais. The husband had been a pedlar or a shopkeeper, and had ama.s.sed sufficient wealth from ribbons to enable him to buy his t.i.tle. The wife had served as first _femme-de-chambre_ to Anne of Austria, and had so learned many secrets of that queer court, of its Queen-Mother, and of her Cardinal. In that court there was no more unscrupulous creature than this Catherine Bellier. The deliciously outspoken d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans--the second wife of that Philippe we have just seen--describes this woman as one-eyed and hideous, of profligate life, and apt in all intrigue. To the day of her death she loved to appear in flamboyant costumes at the court, where she was treated with distinction because of what she knew. Anne of Austria gave her the stone for the construction of this _hotel_, and she used to visit her waiting-woman and _confidente_ here. A popular verse of the day ran:

"_Mercredi notre auguste Reine, Cette charmante Souveraine, Fut chez Madame de Beauvais; Pour de son admirable palais Voir les merveilles etonnantes, Et les raretes surprenantes._"

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Hotel de Beauvais.]

The design of the Hotel de Beauvais, by Antoine Lepautre, is most daring and original in its great interior oval court, embellished with pilasters that are topped with finely carved stone masks. Despite the unhallowed devotion to cleanliness which, with its whitewash, has robbed it of its former lovely bloom of age, this court remains one of the most impressive specimens of seventeenth-century domestic architecture in all Paris. From the street we pa.s.s through an ample gateway, its curved top surmounted by a great sh.e.l.l. The vestibule is ornamented with escutcheons, alternating with the garlanded ox-skulls of Roman-Doric decoration--mistaken by many for rams' heads, so as to make a sculptor's pun on Bellier--all admirably carved in stone. The n.o.ble staircase has Corinthian columns, and a ma.s.sive stone bal.u.s.trade so perfectly pierced into fine lines of intertwisted tracery as to give delicacy to it, thick and broad as it is. Cut in stone escutcheons in the ceiling of this stairway are the intertwined initials of the brand-new n.o.bility that built it. The grand _salons_ of the first floor have been part.i.tioned off into small rooms for trade purposes. No character of any sort has been left to the interior.

The ground on which we tread here, while a portion of the Marais of old Paris, is not the Marais of modern Paris, as it is commonly designated. Yet this region toward the river, built on during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after the opening up of the grounds of the Hotel Saint-Paul and the cutting of streets through them, holds enticements in architecture and in story that tempt us to turn our backs for a while on our own Marais.

Many of the streets here remain unmodernized and unspoiled, and here are _hotels_ as perfectly preserved as this Hotel de Beauvais. At No.

26 Rue Geoffroy-Lasnier we stop in delight before an entrance-door superbly carved and heavy with a glorious knocker--a lion's head holding a great ring in its mouth. Above this door we read: "_Hotel de Chalons, 1625, et de Luxembourg, 1659._" The small court within, diminished by modern stables on one side, retains on its other side an ancient iron fountain. The facade of the miniature _hotel_ giving on this court is in well-balanced stone and brick; its shapely windows are surrounded by male and female masks, and by delicate foliage twining about the monograms of the aforetime exalted owners--all elaborately carved in stone. The roof rises gracefully to its ridge, and each gable end is surmounted by a well-wrought iron finial. There is a modest garden behind, shut in and hid by the buildings about, which hide, too, the simple and attractive stateliness of that rear face of the Hotel de Chalons. The enchanting isolation and the singular charm of this concealed corner give us the feeling that here is a bit of Bourges, gently dropped, tranquil and untroubled, into the midst of these turbulent streets.

A little farther along, at No. 32 in this street of Geoffroy-Lasnier, behind a commonplace house-front and a commonplace court, you shall find a staircase, with an iron rail below and a wooden rail above, that make a most uncommon and interesting picture.

Turning into Rue de Jouy, an altogether delightful old-time street, we pa.s.s through a monumental gateway at No. 7 into a symmetrical court.

Facing us is the Hotel d'Aumont, and it tells us more than is told by any structure hereabout of the merits of Francois Mansart. This front of two stories and of his own roof is faultless in proportion and dainty in adornment. He has given it the stamp of the stately days of the Grand Monarch by the four _oeils-de-boeuf_ above the perfect cornice of the second floor, two on either side of the central window.

In the two corners of the court, at each angle of the building, are round-fronted stone _perrons_, broad and low and inviting. That on our left gives entrance to a small hall, the staircase in which carries an exquisite wrought-iron rail that lifts and lightens the stone steps.

By them we mount to the chambers of the first floor, small as was the custom then, with one grand central reception-room, excellent in its proportions, its vaulted ceiling curiously carved in relief. All these rooms are, by the good taste and generous spirit of the owners of the property, kept in perfect condition, the furniture is of the period, and the painting--done by Lebrun a century later than the ceiling on which it is placed--is fresh and untarnished.