Nooks and Corners of Old Paris Part 2

_Etching by Meryon_]

Along the Rue de la Colombe pa.s.sed the Gallo-Roman belt of the City, near the house inhabited by Fulbert, the uncle who employed such cruel arguments with the unfortunate Helose, Abelard's friend. In the Rue des Ursins, at No. 19, may still be perceived the remains of a chapel of the twelfth century, by name Saint-Aignan; St. Bernard is said to have preached in it. It was one of the numerous sanctuaries in which, during the Terror, refractory priests, under the most singular disguises--water-carriers, national guards, waggoners, masons--came, as they pa.s.sed through the town, to say ma.s.s almost regularly to the faithful, who were frightened neither by the guillotine, nor Fouquier's trackers, nor the Revolutionary Committees' order-bearers. It is an astonis.h.i.+ng thing that not for a single day or hour was religious ministration wanting to those who called for it, not even in the Terror's most terrible period. At this time, the Bishop of Agde, disguised as a costermonger, with a long beard, and carrying the sacrament under his carmagnole, scoured Paris, officiating, and confessing people in lofts, outhouses, and back-shops. In the Rue Neuve-des-Capucins, ma.s.s was said in a chamber above the very dwelling occupied by the terrible Conventional Baboeuf.

Did not the Abbe Emery, the Superior of Saint-Sulpice, from the depths of his dungeon, where he strengthened the courage of the prisoners ("he prevents them from crying out," said Fouquier-Tinville), organise throughout the Paris prisons a ministry of monks that visited all the sinister gaols, disguised as porters, old clothes-dealers, laundrymen, wine-sellers? Even on the way to the scaffold, the unfortunates that were being led to execution received the aid of religion: as the death-carts pa.s.sed by, from certain windows indicated beforehand, priests, placed there, wafted to the condemned the absolution p.r.o.nounced over the dying.

Let us go to the other side of the close of Notre-Dame, where the Hotel-Dieu and its dependencies used to stand. There, once was the Tower of the Foundlings, and the Cagnards, that old den of debauch of which Meryon has left us such powerful etchings, and before which, as a child, we were accustomed to stop with dread, while we watched the huge rats that hid and roamed there, appearing in broad daylight and eating the heaps of offal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLD PREFECTURE OF POLICE (Formerly Jerusalem Street) _Drawn by A. Maignan_]

Between Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice, there once existed a network of small streets round the Sainte-Chapelle and the Prefecture of Police, with gardens that ran nearly down to the water's edge. At the Pont Saint-Michel, some old houses still remain which witnessed the riots of 1793, 1830, and 1848; another is to be found on the Quai des Orfevres, where the celebrated Sabra worked; he was a popular dentist who modestly called himself the "people's tooth-drawer." To-day it is one of the spots dear to lovers of old books, with its open-air book-stalls, and also to anglers, who, in the sun and out of the way of the river pa.s.senger-boats, can practise their tranquil sport.

Before describing the Conciergerie, let us cross the Cour du Mai; there it was, in front of the steps leading to the Palais de Justice, on the right, that every day the death-carts came during the Terror, and took, at 4 o'clock, their dismal batch of those doomed to death, while, from his office-window, Fouquier-Tinville coldly counted, as he picked his teeth, the number of the victims who were going over there.

From this courtyard of blood, on a foggy day of November 1793, poor Madame Roland, with hair cut and hands tied, started for the scaffold.

Her joyous childhood had been spent in a red-and-white brick house which stood at the angle of the Quai de l'Horloge and the platform of the Pont-Neuf, a few yards from the Conciergerie!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE IN 1875 _Etching by Toussaint_]

The charming landscape in which she had dreamed so fondly of glory and liberty, she saw once more as she was being led to the guillotine amid the shouts of infuriated men and women. Sanson had taken his ghastly procession along the usual road--the Pont-au-Change, the Quai de la Megisserie, the Trois-Marie Square; and so, turning her eyes to the further bank of the Seine, the poor woman, before she died, was able to give a last look at the scenery she had been familiar with in happier years, scenery over which rose the ma.s.sive walls of the French Pantheon--it was the new name of Sainte-Genevieve's Church which the Convention had just re-baptized and devoted to the wors.h.i.+p of our national glories.

The Conciergerie was entered by a large arched door, containing a triple wicket as protection, at the further side of a gloomy, narrow courtyard, with mouldy paving-stones, which now is found on the right of the large staircase of the Palais de Justice.

The nine steps that put it on a level with the Cour du Mai were mounted by all the condemned victims of the Revolution. The Queen and Charlotte Corday, Madame Elizabeth and Hubert's widow, the virtuous Bailly and Madame du Bailly, Fouquier-Tinville and Monsieur de Malesherbes, Danton, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, the Abbess of Montmartre, Madame de Monaco and Anacharsis Clootz: princesses and Conventional, dukes and Hebertists, generals of the Republic and "Fouquiers sheep," the n.o.blest, purest, bravest, the maddest and most miserable crossed this fateful threshold.

Sanson, with his death-lists in hand, waited at the top of the staircase, in front of the carts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OPENING UP OF THE s.p.a.cE IN FRONT OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE _Meunier, pinxit_]

The guillotine "tricoteuses" and criers thronged the top-steps of the Palace and leaned forward, with shouts and abuse, and often with hand that cast filth, over the unhappy prisoners. The melancholy toilet of the condemned had been effected in the rotunda where the concierge had his quarters, near the small whitewashed room in which the clerk registered the arrival of the newcomers, and to which Sanson came to give his receipt for the successive deliveries of those that he conveyed to execution.

The clerk's arm-chair, and his table laden with registers, took up about half of the narrow room. Sorts of desks placed along the wall sufficed to receive the things which prisoners left behind, their sad relics, the hair that had been cut off. A wooden railing separated the clerk's office, properly so called, from a back portion of it, where these prisoners spent the weary hours that intervened before the fatal summons, so that those entering could talk with them. Fierce dogs came smelling round to recognise a master, mistress, or acquaintance, and friends or relatives could try to obtain from the gaoler's pity bits of news concerning dear ones still shut up in the dark prison.

"On the day of my arrival," wrote Beugnot in his Memoirs, "two men were waiting for the coming of the headsman. They were stripped of their garments, and already had their hair thinned out and their neck prepared. Their features were not changed. Either by accident or with design, they held their hands in the position ready to be tied, and were essaying att.i.tudes of firmness and disdain. Mattresses down on the floor revealed that they had spent their night in the place, had already undergone this long punishment. By their side, were seen the remains of the meal they had eaten. Their clothes were flung here and there; and two candles that they had forgotten to extinguish cast back the daylight and seemed to be the sole funereal illumination of the scene."

In the hundreds of "Prison Souvenirs" which were published immediately after the fall of Robespierre, one may gain an idea of what sort of existence prisoners led, deprived of every necessity, devoured by vermin, brutally treated by drunken or cruel keepers; and one should see the gloomy courtyard where they came to get a breath of fresh air, a narrow triangular s.p.a.ce of ground between the walls of the prison and the women's yard. This arrangement had one compensation; a simple iron railing separated the two enclosures, so that friends could exchange looks and language, and even the last kiss and embrace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COUR DES FILLES IN THE CONCIERGERIE _Schaan, pinxit_]

This railing still exists, black, rusty, and ill-looking, creaking as of yore; and it is not difficult to conjure up the images of those that bent over it. Madame Elizabeth, Madame Roland, Cecile Renaud, Lucile Desmoulins, Madame de Montmorency, and Charlotte Corday touched it with their dresses; and Du Barry, one of the few women who trembled at the prospect of death--"A minute longer, headsman"--also clung to it!

This railing, the so-called chapel of the Girondins, the pa.s.sage called the "Rue de Paris," the small infirmary, and the Queen's dungeon are, together with the barred cell in which women awaited execution, the sole vestiges of the ancient prison. Farther on, a big wall, newly raised, shuts off the dismal route along which the condemned pa.s.sed, and closes up the former entrance to the registrar's office in the Conciergerie.

Let us take a hasty walk round the Prison, alas! modified and rearranged. Let us pause, however, before the door of the dungeon in which Marie Antoinette was confined during the last thirty-five days of her life.

The Restoration, which a.s.sumed the task of sweeping away many things, began with this melancholy place. Abominable coloured panes have been put in the more than half-blocked up and carefully barred window from behind which the Queen, whose eyes had suffered from the damp prison and want of care, tried to obtain a little air and light.

Only the flooring of this room, three yards by five, is intact. A low screen once divided it off from the chamber where two prison gendarmes were continually on guard. There, the unfortunate woman pined, in lack of everything, a prey to anxiety, without news of her family, reduced to borrow the linen she required from the kindness of Richard, the porter.

Her last tire-woman was the humble servant Rosalie Lamorliere, who, "not daring to make her a single curtsey for fear of compromising or afflicting her," threw over her shoulders a white linen handkerchief, an hour before her departure to the scaffold.

In striking contrast, this dungeon is separated only by a thin part.i.tion from the apothecary's room, whither Robespierre--with fractured, hanging jaw, his stockings down over his ankles on account of his varicose sores, still clad in the fine, blue suit that, a few weeks previously, at the Fete of the Supreme Being, had made so many jealous--was hustled, all over blood and mud, like a hideous bundle.

Sinister-looking, silent, showing no signs of life save by the twinges of pain he was suffering, impa.s.sible in presence of the insults of the cowards who had acclaimed him the day before, the "Incorruptible one"

waited for them to come and tie him, panting, to the top of the cart that should convey him, amid the cries of a whole population, to the foot of the guillotine.

Above these dungeons, and connected with them by a narrow, winding staircase, sat the terrible Revolutionary Tribunal in public audience.

Strangely enough, there is an almost total lack of doc.u.ments as to this most interesting corner of the Palace, where such great dramas were played.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRIUMPH OF MARAT _Fragment of a picture by Boilly_ (Lille Museum)]

A picture by Boilly--_The Triumph of Marat_--which figures in the Lille Museum, shows us, however, the entrance to the Revolutionary Tribunal.

The popular tribune, after his acquittal, issues in triumph from the hall, frantically cheered by his habitual escort of criers and adherents!

At the back, between two pillars, and underneath a ba.s.s-relief representing the Law, a sort of forepart in boards opens, with an inscription on it, "Revolutionary Tribunal!" That is the place.

The hall in which the Queen, the Girondins, and Madame Roland were tried, was called _The Hall of Liberty_. In another, called _The Hall of Equality_, appeared Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Westermann, Hubert, and Charlotte Corday. The windows overlooked the Quai de l'Horloge; and tradition relates that the echoes of Danton's powerful voice, when he was on trial, penetrated through the open cas.e.m.e.nts to the anxious crowd ma.s.sed on the other side of the Seine.

The last alterations carried out in this part of the Palais de Justice have, alas! disturbed and changed everything; so that, of the registrar's office, occupied by Richard and de Bault, which ought to have remained sacred for ever, and of the unique exit from the Prison, where such heartrending adieux were witnessed, and of the antechamber of death, whose pavement was trodden by the condemned of all parties, nothing is left to-day!

Administrative vandals have turned it into the Palace restaurant; and cold meat, beer, and lemonade are sold in it. A telephone has been installed, and a "coffee filter"! Gaunt spindle-trees struggle in vain to thrive in the sombre, narrow courtyard ill.u.s.trious for its past scenes of agony! As Paul-Louis Courier used to repeat: _Immane nefas._

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DAUPHINE SQUARE IN 1780 _Drawing by d.u.c.h.e de Vancy (Exhibition of Painting, Carnavalet Museum)_]

At the rear of the Palais de Justice was formerly the delightful Dauphine Square, where the first "Public Exhibitions of Youth" were held, the exhibits being works of artists not belonging to the official Academies. The Carnavalet Museum possesses a most amusing pencil drawing, signed "d.u.c.h.e de Vancy," and dated May 1783, which bears this ma.n.u.script inscription: "Picturesque view of the Exhibition of paintings and drawings, on the Dauphine Square, the day of the lesser Corpus Christi feast." As a matter of fact, on the Sunday of the Corpus Christi, "when it did not rain," artists had the authorisation--in the morning--to submit their works to the public; if it did rain--and this was the case in 1783--the fete was adjourned to the following Thursday.

The pictures were exposed in the northern corner of the Square, on white hangings fixed by the shopkeepers in front of their shops; and the Exhibition extended on to the bridge as far as opposite the good Henri's statue. Oudry, Restout, de Troy, Grimoud, Boucher, Nattier, Louis Tocque, and, last of all, Chardin showed their works there. In an excellent study devoted to these Exhibitions of Youth, Monsieur Prosper Dorbec details the works that Chardin took to this ephemeral Salon of the Dauphine Square. In 1728, when he was twenty-nine, he presented there two masterpieces, _The Ray-fish_ and _The Side-board_, which to-day are two of the glories of the French School at the Louvre Museum.

Up to the time of the Revolution, this little artistic manifestation roused Parisian enthusiasm; and what a pretty sight must have been offered by the Dauphine Square, and the pink fronts of the two corner houses and the old Pont-Neuf--an exquisite, picturesque setting--with the throng of amateurs, saunterers, critics, fine ladies, artists, amiable models in light-coloured costume, full of mirth and busy talk, eagerly gazing, on a mild May morning, at the freshly-hung canvases of the Minor Exhibitors of the Dauphine Square.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE ISLE OF SAINT-LOUIS

The Isle of Saint-Louis is, in some sort, the continuation of the old City. It is a kind of provincial town in Paris. The streets are silent and deserted; there are no shops, no promenaders, no business; a few old aristocratic mansions, with their tall facades, their emblazoned pediments and their severe architecture, alone tell the glorious past of this n.o.ble quarter.

The finely carved spire of Saint-Louis' Church confers an elegance on the somewhat melancholy whole. The quays of Orleans and Bethune contain vast buildings of grand style. In the Rue Saint-Louis, is the admirable Lambert mansion, that masterpiece of the architect Le Vau, which was lost at the gaming-table in one night by Monsieur Dupin de Chenonceaux, the ungrateful pupil of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Le Brun painted the gallery of the Fetes in it, and Le Sueur the saloon of the Muses.

At that time, it was the rendezvous of all the wits. Madame du Chatelet throned there, Voltaire lived in it, and the Lambert mansion radiated over the length and breadth of dazzled Paris.

Then came darker days. The masterpieces of Le Sueur were sold--most of them found their way to the Louvre--and nothing survives of this great painter's work in the Lambert mansion except a grey camaeu placed under a staircase, and a few panels scattered here and there.

Last of all--as if to mark its definitive decadence;--the mansion was occupied by some military-bed purveyors. The fine carvings, sumptuous paintings and gilded arabesques disappeared beneath a thick white dust from cards of wool. In the great gallery, so magnificently decorated by Le Brun and Van Opstael, mattress-women set up their trestles and seamstresses began to sew sacking.

Later, Prince Czartorisky bought this n.o.ble dwelling and thus saved it from ruin.