The Stones of Paris in History and Letters.
by Benjamin Ellis Martin and Charlotte M. Martin.
VOL. I
INTRODUCTORY
This book has been written for those who seek in Paris something more than a city of shows or a huge bazaar, something better than the _cabaret_ wherein Francois I. found entertainment, and yet not quite--still in Hugo"s phrase--the library that Charles V. esteemed it. There are many lovers of this beautiful capital of a great people, who, knowing well her unconcealed attractions, would search out her records and traditions in stone, hidden and hard to find. This legitimate curiosity grows more eager with the increasing difficulties of gratifying it in that ancient Paris that is vanishing day by day; and, in its bewilderment, it may be glad to find congenial guidance in these pages. In them, no attempt is made to destroy that which is new in order to reconstruct what was old. In telling the stories of those monuments of past ages that are visible and tangible, reference is made only to so much of their perished approaches and neighbors as shall suffice for full realization of the significance of all that we are to see. This significance is given mainly by the former dwellers within these walls. We shall concern ourselves with the human doc.u.ment, ill.u.s.trated by its surroundings. The student of history can find no more suggestive relics of mediaeval Paris than the still existing towers and fragments of the wall of Philippe-Auguste, which shall be shown to him; for us, these stones must be made to speak, not so essentially of their mighty builder as of the common people, who moved about within that enclosure and gave it character. In like manner, the walls, which have sheltered soldiers, statesmen, preachers, teachers, workers in art and letters, ill.u.s.trious men and women of all sorts and conditions, will take on the personality of these impressive presences. When we stand beneath the roof of that favorite personage in history, that spoiled child of romance, who happens to be dear to each one of us, we are brought into touch with him as with a living fellow-creature. The streets of Paris are alive with these sympathetic companions, who become abiding friends, as we stroll with them; and allow none of the ache, confessed to be felt in such scenes, despite her reasoning, by Madame de Sevigne. Nor do they invite, here, any critical review of their work in life, but consent to scrutiny of their lineaments alone, and to an appreciation of their personal impress on their contemporaries and on us. So that essays on themes, historic, literary, artistic, can find no place in this record. Indeed, labor and time have been expended "in hindering it from being ... swollen out of shape by superfluous details, defaced with dilettanti antiquarianisms, nugatory tag-rags, and, in short, turned away from its real uses, instead of furthered toward them." In this sense, at least, the authors can say in Montaigne"s words, "_ceci est un livre de bonne foy_."
In this presentation of people and places it has been difficult, sometimes impossible, to keep due sequence both of chronology and topography. Just as Mr. Theodore Andrea Cook found in the various _chateaux_ of his admirable "Old Touraine," so each spot we shall visit in Paris "has some particular event, some especial visitor, whose importance overshadows every other memory connected with the place." With that event or that visitor we must needs busy ourselves, without immediate regard to other dates or other personages. Again, to keep in sight some conspicuous figure, as he goes, we must leave on one side certain memorable scenes, to which we shall come back. Each plan has been pursued in turn, as has seemed desirable, for the sake of the clearness and accuracy, which have been considered above all else. The whole value of such records as are here presented depends on the preliminary researches. In the doing of this, thousands of books and pamphlets and articles have been read, hundreds of people have been questioned, scores of miles have been tramped. Oldest archives and maps have been consulted, newest newspaper clippings have not been disregarded. Nothing has been thought too heavy or too light that would help to give a characteristic line or a touch of native color. A third volume would be needed to enumerate the authorities called on and compared. Nor has any statement of any one of these authorities been accepted without ample investigation; and every a.s.sertion has been subjected to all the proof that it was possible to procure. Those countless errors have been run to earth which have been started so often by the carelessness of an early writer, and ever since kept alive by lazy copiers and random compilers. These processes of sifting are necessarily omitted for lack of s.p.a.ce, and the wrought-out results alone are shown. If the authors dare not hope that they have avoided errors on their own part, they may hope for indulgent correction of such as may have crept in, for all their vigilance.
It is easier, to-day, to put one"s hand on the Paris of the sixteenth century than on that of the eighteenth century. In those remoter days changes were slow to come, and those older stones have been left often untouched. A curious instance of that aforetime leisureliness is seen in the working of the _ordonnance_ issued on May 14, 1554, by Henri II. for the clearing away of certain encroachments made on the streets by buildings and by business, notably on Rue de la Ferronerie; that street being one of those used "for our way from our royal _chateau_ of the Louvre to our _chateau_ of the Tournelles." It was fifty-six years later, to the very day, that the stabbing of Henri IV. was made easy to Ravaillac, by the stoppage of the king"s carriage in the blockade of that narrow street, its obstructions not yet swept out, in absolute disregard of the edict. From the death of the royal mason, Charles V., who gave a new face and a new figure to his Paris, to the coming of Henri IV., who had in him the makings of a kingly constructor, but who was hindered by the necessary destruction of his wars, there were two centuries of steady growth of the town outward, on all sides, with only slight alterations of its interior quarters.
Many of these were transformed, many new quarters were created, by Louis XIII., thus realizing his father"s frustrated plans. Richelieu was able to widen some streets, and Colbert tried to carry on the work, but Louis XIV. had no liking for his capital, and no money to waste for its bettering. His stage-subject"s civic pride was unduly swollen, when he said: "_a cette epoque, la grande ville du roi Henri n"etait pas ce qu"elle est aujourd"hui._"
At the beginning of the eighteenth century we find Paris divided into twenty quarters, in none of which was there any numbering of the houses. The streets then got their names from their mansions of the n.o.bility, from their vast monasteries and convents, from their special industries and shops. These latter names survive in our Paris as they survive in modern London. The high-swinging street lanterns, that came into use in 1745, served for directions to the neighboring houses, as did the private lanterns hung outside the better dwellings. Toward the middle of that century the city almanacs began a casual numbering of the houses in their lists, and soon this was found to be such a convenience that the householders painted numbers on or beside their doors. Not before 1789 was there any organized or official numbering, and this was speedily brought to naught during the Revolution, either because it was too simple or because it was already established. To this day, the first symptom of a local or national upheaval, and the latest sign of its ending, are the ladder and paint-pot in the streets of Paris. Names that recall to the popular eye recently discredited celebrities or humiliating events, are brushed out, and the newest favorites of the populace are painted in.
The forty-eight sections into which the Revolution divided the city changed many street names, of section, and renumbered all the houses.
Each lunatic section, quite sure of its sanity, made this new numbering of its own dwellings with a cheerful and aggressive disregard of the adjoining sections; beginning arbitrarily at a point within its boundary, going straight along through its streets, and ending at the farthest house on the edge of its limits. So, a house might be No. 1187 of its section, and its next-door neighbor might be No. 1 of the section alongside. In a street that ran through several sections there would be more than one house of the same number, each belonging to a different section. "Encore un Tableau de Paris" was published in 1800 by one Henrion, who complains that he pa.s.sed three numbers 42 in Rue Saint-Denis before he came to the 42 that he wanted.
The decree of February 7, 1805, gave back to the streets many of their former names, and ordered the numbering, admirably uniform and intelligible, still in use--even numbers on one side of the street, odd numbers on the other side, both beginning at the eastern end of the streets that run parallel with the Seine, and at the river end of the streets going north and south. For the topographer all these changes have brought incoherence to the records, have paralyzed research, and crippled accuracy. In addition, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, many old streets have been curtailed or lengthened, carried along into new streets, or entirely suppressed and built over. Indeed, it is substantially the nineteenth century that has given us the Paris that we best know; begun by the great Emperor, it was continued by the crown on top of the cotton night-cap of Louis-Philippe, and admirably elaborated, albeit to the tune of the cynical fiddling of the Second Empire. The Republic of our day still wields the pick-axe, and demolition and reconstruction have been going on ruthlessly. Such of these changes as are useful and guiltless are now intelligently watched; such of them as are needlessly destructive may be stopped in part by the admirable _Commission du Vieux Paris_.
The members of this significant body, which was organized in December, 1897, are picked men from the Munic.i.p.al Council, from the official committees of Parisian Inscriptions, and of Historic Works, from private a.s.sociations and private citizens, all earnest and enthusiastic for the preservation of their city"s monuments that are memorable for architectural worth or historic suggestion. Where they are unable to save to the sight what is ancient and picturesque, they save to the memory by records, drawings, and photographs. The "Proces Verbal" of this Commission, issued monthly, contains its ill.u.s.trated reports, discussions, and correspondence, and promises to become an historic doc.u.ment of inestimable value.
The words _rue_ and _place_, as well as their attendant names, have been retained in the French, as the only escape from the confusion of a double translation, first here, and then back to the original by the sight-seer. The definite article, that usually precedes these words, has been suppressed, in all cases, because it seems an awkward and needless reiteration. Nor are French men and French women disguised under translated t.i.tles. If Macaulay had been consistent in his misguided Briticism that turned Louis into Lewis, and had carried out that scheme to its logical end in every case, he would have given us a ludicrous nomenclature. "Bottin" is used in these pages as it is used in Paris, to designate the city directory: which was issued, first, in a tiny volume, in 1796, by the publisher Bottin, and has kept his name with its enormous growth through the century.
The word _hotel_ has here solely its original significance of a town house of the n.o.ble or the wealthy. In the sense of our modern usage of the word it had no place in old Paris. Already in the seventeenth century there were _auberges_ for common wayfarers, and here and there an _hotellerie_ for the traveller of better cla.s.s. During the absences of the owners of grand city mansions, their _maitres-d"hotel_ were allowed to let them to accredited visitors to the capital, who brought their own retinue and demanded only shelter. When they came with no train, so that service had to be supplied, it was "charged in the bill," and that objectionable item, thus inst.i.tuted, has been handed down to shock us in the _hotel-garni_ of our time. With the emigration of the n.o.bility, their stewards and _chefs_ lost place and pay, and found both once more in the public hotels they then started. No _hotels-garnis_ can be found in Paris of earlier date than the Revolution.
In their explorations into the libraries, bureaus, museums, and streets of Paris, the authors have met with countless kindnesses. The unlettered _concierge_ who guards an historic house is proud of its traditions, or, if ignorant of them, as may chance, will listen to the tale with a courtesy that simulates sympathy. The exceptions to this general amenity have been few and ludicrous, and mostly the outcome of exasperation caused by the ceaseless questioning of foreigners. The _concierge_ of Chateaubriand"s last home, in Rue du Bac, considers a flourish of the wet broom, with which he is washing his court, a fitting rejoinder to the inquiring visitor. That visitor will find Balzac"s Pa.s.sy residence as impossible of entrance now as it was to his creditors. The unique inner court of the Hotel de Beauvais must be seen from the outer vestibule, admission being refused by a surly _concierge_ under orders from an ungenerous owner. The urbanity of the n.o.ble tenant of the mansion built over the grave of Adrienne Lecouvreur is unequal to the task of answering civil inquiries sent in stamped envelopes. All these are but shadows in the pervading sunshine of Parisian good-breeding. In making this acknowledgment to the many who must necessarily remain unnamed, the authors wish to record their recognition of the sympathetic counsel of Mlle. Blanche Taylor, of Paris, and of George H. Birch, Esq., Curator of the Soane Museum, London. Cordial thanks are especially given to the officials of the Hotel de Ville, in the bureau of the Conservation du Plan de Paris, to M. Charles Sellier of the Musee Carnavalet, to M. Monval, Librarian of the Comedie Francaise, to M. G. Lenotre, and to M. Victorien Sardou, for unmeasured aid of all sorts, prompted by a disinterestedness that welcomes the importunate fellow-worker, and makes him forget that he is a stranger and a foreigner.
THREE TIME-WORN STAIRCASES
THREE TIME-WORN STAIRCASES
We are to see a Paris unknown to the every-day dweller there, who is content to tread, in wearied idleness, his swarming yet empty boulevards; a Paris unseen by the hurried visitor, anxious to go his round of dutiful sight-seeing. This Paris is far away from the crowd, bustling in pursuit of pleasure, and hustling in pursuit of leisure; out of sound of the teasing clatter of cab-wheels, and the tormenting toot of tram-horns, and the petulant snapping of whips; out of sight of to-day"s pretentious structures and pompous monuments. To find this Paris we must explore remote quarters, lose ourselves in untrodden streets, coast along the alluring curves of the quays, cruise for sequestered islands behind the mult.i.tudinous streams of traffic. We shall not push ahead just to get somewhere, nor restlessly "rush in to peer and praise." We shall learn to _flaner_, not without object, but with art and conscience; to saunter, in the sense of that word, humorously derived by Th.o.r.eau from _Sainte-Terre_, and so transform ourselves into pilgrims to the spots sacred in history and legend, in art and literature. In a word, if you go with us, you are to become Sentimental Prowlers.
In this guise, we shall not know the taste of Parisine, a delectable poison, more subtle than nicotine or strychnine, in the belief of Nestor Roqueplan, that modern Voltaire of the boulevards. And we shall not share "the unwholesome pa.s.sion" for his Paris, to which Francois Coppee owns himself a victim. Nor, on the other hand, shall we find "an insipid pleasure" in this adventure, as did Voltaire. Yet even he confesses, elsewhere, that one would "rather have details about Racine and Despreaux, Bossuet and Descartes, than about the battle of Steinkerk. There is nothing left but the names of the men who led battalions and squadrons. There is no return to the human race for one hundred engagements, but the great men I have spoken of prepared pure and lasting pleasures for mortals still unborn." It is in this spirit that we start, sure of seeking an unworn sentiment, and of finding an undraggled delight, in the scenes which have inspired, and have been inspired by, famous men and women. Their days, their ways, they themselves as they moved and worked, are made alive for us once more by their surroundings. Where these have been disturbed by improvements, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea," we get curious suggestions from some forgotten name cut in the stone of a street corner, from a chance-saved sign, a neglected _tourelle_, or a bit of battered carving. And where the modern despoiler has wreaked himself at his worst--as with the Paris of Marot, Rabelais, Palissy--we may rub the magic ring of the archaeologist, which brings instant reconstruction. So that we shall seem to be walking in a vast gallery, where, in the words of Cicero, at each step we tread on a memory. "For, indeed," as it is well put by John Ruskin, "the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its _age_, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the pa.s.sing waves of humanity."
These stone and brick vestiges of the people of old Paris are to be sought in its byways, narrow and winding; or hidden behind those broad boulevards, that have newly opened up its distant quarters, on the north or on the south. Sometimes these monuments have been brought into full view across the gra.s.sed or gravelled s.p.a.ces of recent creation, so showing their complete and unmarred glory for the first time in all the ages. Thus we may now look on Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, in dreamy surrender to their bedimmed beauty, that persuades us that Paris can hold nothing in reserve more reverend in comely old age. Yet, almost within touch of these two, stands a gray tower, another st.u.r.dy survivor of the centuries. Between the northern side of Notre-Dame and the river-bank, a happy chance has spared some few of the streets, though fewer of the structures, of this earliest Paris of ile de la Cite. This region recalls to us, by its street-names in part, and partly by its buildings, its former connection with the cathedral. In Rue des Chantres it lodged its choristers, and Rue du Cloitre-Notre-Dame records the site of the clerical settlement, beloved by Boileau, wherein dwelt its higher officials. Rue Chanoinesse has its significance, too, and we will stop before the wide frontage of differing ages, whose two entrances, Nos.
18 and 20, open into the large courts of two mansions, now thrown into one. This interior court was a garden until of late years, and while gra.s.s and flowers are gone forever, it keeps its ancient well in the centre and its stone steps that mounted to the _salons_. Those _salons_, and the large court, and the smaller courts beyond--all these courts now roofed over with gla.s.s--are piled high with every known shape of household furniture and utensil in metal; notably with the iron garden-chairs and tables, dear to the French. For this vast enclosure is the storage _depot_ of a famous house-furnishing firm, and is one more instance of the many in Paris of a grand old mansion and its dependencies given over to trade.
By the courtesy of those in charge, we may pa.s.s within the s.p.a.cious stone entrance arch of No. 18, and pick our way through the ordered confusion, past the admirable inner facade of the main fabric, with its stately steps and portal and its windows above, topped by tiny hoods, to a distant corner; where, in the gloom, we make out the base of a square tower and the foot of a corkscrew staircase. We mount it, spirally and slowly. The well-worn stone steps are narrow, and the turn of the spiral is sharp, for this tower was built when homes were fortresses, when s.p.a.ce was precious, and when hundreds huddled within walls that will hardly hold one thriving establishment of our day. In this steep ascent, we get scant a.s.sistance from our hold on the rude hand-rail, roughly grooved in the great central column--one solid tree-trunk, embedded in the ground, stretching to the top of the stairs. Experts a.s.sure us that this tree was fully five hundred years old, when it was cut down to be made the shaft of this stairway, nearly five hundred years ago. For this stone tower is evidently of late fifteenth-century construction. The mediaeval towers were round, whether built upon their own foundations or rebuilt from Roman towers; and they gave way to square towers when battering-rams gave way to guns, in the fifteenth century. Yet this pile of masonry is known as "_la tour de Dagobert_," and with no wish to discredit this legend, cherished by the dwellers in this quarter, we may quote Brantome concerning certain local traditions of the Tour de Nesle: "_Je ne puis dire si cela soit vrai, mais le vulgaire de Paris l"affirme._"
We can say, with certainty, that this tower was never seen by Dagobert, for, long before this tree had sprouted from the ground, he lived in the old Palace, the home of the early kings, at the other end of the island. There he flourished, for the ten years between 628 and 638, in coa.r.s.e splendor and coa.r.s.er conviviality, his palace packed with barbaric gold and silver, with crude wall paintings and curious hangings. For this monarch made much of the arts of his day, whenever he found leisure from his fighting and his drinking. Because of his love of luxury, a century of cyclopaedias has "curved a contumelious lip" at his "corrupt court." On the other hand, he has been styled "Saint Dagobert" by writers unduly moved to emotion by his gifts to the churches at Saint-Denis, Rheims, Tours; and by his friendship for certain bishops. But Rome, mindful of sundry other churches plundered and destroyed by him, has not a.s.sented to this saintship. We may accept his apt popular epithet, "_le bon_," which meant, in those bellicose days, only merry or jovial; an easy virtue not to be denied by priggish biographers to this genial ruffian. By turns, he devoted himself to the flowing bowl in his palace there, and to building religious edifices all over the face of France. And he has accentuated the supremacy of the Church over all the warriors and the rulers of his day, in the soaring majesty of the two towers that dominate the buried outlines of his favorite church of Saint-Martin at Tours, solid and lasting in their isolation. There the man is brought almost into touch with us, while here only his name is recalled by this tower, which he never saw.
The shadow-land of ancient French history, into which we have made this little journey, is not darker than this narrow staircase, as we creep dizzily upward, losing count of steps, stopping to take breath at the infrequent windows, round-topped at first, then square and small. It is with surprise that we realize, stepping out on the tower-roof, that our standing-place is only five floors from the ground; and yet from this modest height, overtopped by the ordinary apartment house of Paris, we find an outlook that is unequalled even by that from Notre-Dame"s towers. For, as we come out from the sheltering hood of our stair-way top, the great cathedral itself lies before us, like some beautiful living creature outstretched at rest.
Words are impertinent in face of the tranquil strength of its bulk and the exquisite delicacy of its lines, and we find refuge in the affectionate phrase of Mr. Henry James, "The dear old thing!"
Beyond the cathedral square, over the bronze Charlemagne on his bronze horse, glints the untravelled narrower arm of the Seine; we turn our heads and look at its broader surface, all astir with little fidgetty _bateaux-mouches_ and big, sedate barges. At both banks are anch.o.r.ed huge wash-houses and bathing establishments. From this island-centre all Paris spreads away to its low encircling slopes, to the brim of the shallow bowl in which it lies. In sharp contrast with all that newness, our old tower stands hemmed about by a medley of roofs of all shapes and all ages; their red tiles of past style, here and there, agreeably mellowing the dull dominant blue of the Paris slate. On these roofs below jut out dormers, armed with odd wheels and chains for lifting odd burdens; here on one side is an outer staircase that starts in vague shadow, and ends nowhere, it would seem; far down glimmers the opaque gray of the gla.s.s-covered courts at our feet. A little toward the north--where was an entrance to this court, in old days, from a gateway on the river-bank--is the roof that sheltered Racine, along with the legal gentry of the Hotel des Ursins. And all about us, below, lies the little that is left of _la Cite_, the swept and set-in-order leavings of that ancient network of narrow streets, winding pa.s.sages, blind alleys, all walled about by tall, scowling houses, leaning unwillingly against one another to save themselves from falling. This was the whole of Gallic Lutetia, the centre of Roman Lutetia, the heart of mediaeval Paris, the "Alsatia" of modern Paris; surviving almost to our time, when the Second Empire let light and air into its pestilent corners. Every foot of this ground has its history. Down there, Villon, sneaking from the University precincts, stole and starved and sang; there Quasimodo, climbing down from his tower, foraged for his scant supplies; there Sue"s impossibly dark villany and equally impossible virtue found fitting stage-setting; there, Francois, honest and engaging thief, slipped narrowly through the snares that encompa.s.sed even vagabonds, in the suspicious days and nights of the Terror.
The nineteenth century, cutting its clean way through this sinister quarter, cutting away with impartial spade the round dozen churches and the hundreds of houses that made their parishes, all cl.u.s.tered close about the cathedral and the palace, has happily left untouched this gray tower, built when or for what no one knows. It is a part of all that it has seen, in its sightless way, through the changing centuries of steady growth and of transient mutilation of its town. It has seen its own island and the lesser islands up-stream gradually alter their shapes; this island of the city lengthening itself, by reaching out for the two low-sh.o.r.ed gra.s.sy eyots down-stream, where now is Place Dauphine and where sits Henri IV. on his horse. The narrow channel between, that gave access to the water-gate of the old Palace, has been filled in, so making one island of the three, and Rue de Harlay-au-Palais covers the joining line. So the two islands on the east--ile Notre-Dame and ile aux Vaches--have united their sh.o.r.es to make ile Saint-Louis. The third island, most easterly of all--ile des Javiaux of earliest times, known later as ile Louvier--has been glued to the northern bank of the mainland, by the earthing-in of the thin arm of the river, along the line of present Boulevard Morland, and Quai Henri IV. And the two great islands as we know them--the permanent outcome of all these topographical transformations--have been chained to each other and to both banks, by numerous beautiful bridges.
Our tower raised its head in time to see the gradual wearing away of the mighty Roman aqueduct, that brought water to the Palais des Thermes of the Roman rulers--whose immense _frigidarium_ is safe and sound within the enclosure of the Cluny Museum--from the Bievre, away off on the southern outskirts. This aqueduct started at the point where later was built the village of Arceuil--named from the mediaeval, or late, Latin _Arculi_--where was quarried the best stone that builded old Paris; and curved with the valley of the Bievre like a huge railway viaduct, leaving that stream when it bent in its course to the Seine near the Salpetriere, and entering the town along the easterly line of Rue Saint-Jacques, and so straight away to the baths.
This tower well remembers the new aqueduct, constructed ma.s.sively on the ruins of the Roman, between 1613 and 1633, from Rungis, still farther south, to the Luxembourg Palace. Imperial and royal baths must have pure water, while wells and rivers must perforce content the townspeople. They had their aqueduct at last, however, laid, still along the top of these others, during the Second Empire. It is worth the little trip by rail to Arceuil to see the huge arches that climb along the valley carrying these piled-up conduits.
Our old tower has seen the baby town creep, from its cradle on the sh.o.r.e, up that southern slope to where on its summit it found the tomb of its patron, Sainte Genevieve--one tower of her abbey still shows gray above the garden-walls of Lycee Henri IV.--and thence, its strength so grown as to burst its girdle of restraining wall, it strode far afield. Roman and Christian settlements, with all their greenery--palace, abbey, and school, each set within its s.p.a.cious gardens--gradually gave place to these serried shining roofs we see, here and there pierced by church spires and punctuated by domes. And on the northern bank, our tower has seen the rising tide of the centuries swallow up the broad marshes along the sh.o.r.e and the wide woodlands behind; bearing down Roman villa and temple, Christian nunnery and monastery, washing away each successive breakwater of wall, until it surged over the crest of the encircling hills, now crowned by the imposing basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre.
It may have been here in time to look down on the stately procession escorting the little ten-year-old Henry IV., the new King of England, from the Palace to the cathedral; wherein was celebrated the service by which one English cardinal and two French bishops tried to consecrate him King of France. It saw, when the ceremony was ended, the turbulent mob of common French folk crowding about the boy-king and his English escort as they returned, and ignominiously hustling them into the Palace. Not many years later, on April 13, 1436, it possibly saw the French soldiery march into Place de Greve, over the bridge and through the streets behind, from their captured gate of Saint-Jacques; and not many days thereafter, the English soldiery hurrying along behind the northern wall from the Bastille to the Louvre, and there taking boat for their sail to Rouen; the while the Parisian populace, mad with joy on that wall, welcomed the incoming friend and cursed the outgoing foe.
Our tower has watched, from its own excellent point of view, the three successive fires in and about the Palace, in 1618, 1736, and 1776.
Between them, these fires carried away the constructions of Louis XII., the vast Salle des Pas-Perdus, the ancient donjon, the spires and turrets and steep roofs that swarmed about the Sainte-Chapelle, whose slender height seems to spring more airily from earth to sky by that clearance. Only that chapel, the Salle-des-Gardes, the corner tower on the quay, the kitchens of Saint-Louis behind it, and the round-capped towers of the Conciergerie, are left of the original palace. The present outer casing of this Tour de l"Horloge is a restoration of that existing in 1585, but the thirteenth-century fabric remains, and the foundations are far earlier, in the view of the late Viollet-le-Duc. Its clock dates from 1370, having been twice restored, and its bell has sounded, as far as our tower, the pa.s.sing of many historic hours. It rang menacingly an hour later than that of Saint-Germain-l"Auxerrois, which had been advanced by the queen-mother"s eagerness, on Saint Bartholomew"s night. It was _en carillon_ all of Friday, June 12, 1598, for the peace procured by Henri IV. between Spain and Savoy; and the birth of his son was saluted by its joyous chimes, at two o"clock of the afternoon of Friday, September 28, 1601.
Nearly two years later--on Friday, June 20, 1603--our tower stared in consternation, out over the end of the island, at the gallant Henry treading jauntily and safely across the uncompleted arches of the Pont-Neuf, from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. The new bridge was a wonder, and in attempts to climb along its skeleton, many over-curious citizens had tumbled into the river; "but not one of them a king," laughed their king, after his successful stepping over. The bridge was built slowly, and was at last ready for traffic on February 6, 1607, and has stood so strong and stable ever since, that it has pa.s.sed into a proverb as the common comparison for a Frenchman"s robust health. It is the only bridge between the islands and either bank that has so stood, and this tower has seen each of the others wrecked by fire or flood. The tall wooden piles, on which the mediaeval bridgeways were built, slowly rotted, until they were carried away by the fierce current. And fire found its frequent quarry in the tall houses that lined either side of the roadway, shops on the lower floor, and tenants above.
Thus our tower doubtless heard, on Friday, October 25, 1499, the wrenching and groaning of the huge wooden piles of Pont Notre-Dame--its first pile driven down by temporarily sane Charles VI.--as they bent and broke and tumbled into the Seine, with their burden of roadway and of buildings; whereby so thick a cloud of dust rose up from the water, that rescue of the inmates was almost impossible. Among the few saved, on that calamitous holiday of Saint-Crespin and Saint-Crespinien, was a baby found floating down-stream in its cradle, unwet and unharmed. So, too, Pont aux Meuniers and all its houses and mills fell in fragments into the stream on December 22, 1596. It was a wooden bridge, connecting the island end of Pont au Change diagonally with the sh.o.r.e of the mainland. It is reported that the dwellers on the bridge were rich men, many of them slayers and plunderers of the Huguenots on the festival of Saint Bartholomew. So it was said that the weak hand of city supervision, neglecting the bridge, was aided by the finger of G.o.d, pushing it down!
The Pet.i.t-Pont dropped into the Seine no less than six times between the years 1206 and 1393. The earliest Roman bridge, it had carried more traffic than any later bridge, and had been ruined and reconstructed time and again, until stone took the place of wood for its arches and road-way and houses. But the wooden scaffoldings used for the new construction were left below, and were the means of sacrificing it to an old woman"s superst.i.tion. On April 27, 1718, she launched a _sebile_--a wooden bowl--carrying a bit of blessed bread and a lighted taper, in the belief that this holy raft would stop over, and point out, the spot where lay the body of her drowned son.
The taper failed in its sacred mission, and set fire to a barge loaded with hay, and this drifted against the timbers under the arches, and soon the entire bridge went up in flames. When again rebuilt, no houses were allowed upon it. With the falling of all those bridges and all that they held, the river-bed grew thick with every sort of object, common and costly. Coins from many mints found their way there, not only through fire and flood, but because the money-changers, warily established on the bridges, dropped many an illicit piece from their convenient windows into the river, rather than let themselves be caught in pa.s.sing counterfeits. This water museum has been dragged from time to time, and the treasures have gone to enrich various collections, notably that of M. Victorien Sardou.
With all helpless Paris, our tower watched the old Hotel-Dieu--on the island"s southern bank, where now is the green open s.p.a.ce between Pet.i.t-Pont and Pont au Double--burning away for eleven days in 1772, and caught glimpses of the rescued patients, carried across Place du Parvis to hastily improvised wards in the nave of Notre-Dame.
Unscathed by fire, unmutilated by man, unwearied by watching, "Dagobert"s Tower" stands, penned in by the high old buildings that shoulder it all around. Hidden behind them, it is unseen and forgotten. The only glimpses to be got of its gray bulk are, one from the neighboring tower of the cathedral, and another from the deck of a river-boat as it glides under Pont d"Arcole; a glimpse to be caught quickly, amid the quick-changing views of the ever-varied perspective of the island"s towers and b.u.t.tresses, pinnacles and domes.
Far away from the island and its river, over the edge of the southern slope, behind the distant, dreary, outer boulevards, we find another ancient staircase. It is within the vast structure known as "_la maison dite de Saint Louis_," commonly called the "_Hotel de la Reine Blanche_." The modern boulevard, which gets its name from the astronomer, philosopher, and politician, Arago, has made a clean sweep through this historic quarter, but it has spared this mansion and the legend, which makes it the suburban dwelling of Blanche of Castile.
Hereabout was all country then, and a favorite summer resort of the wealthy citizens, whose modest cottages and showy villas cl.u.s.tered along the banks of the Bievre; a free and wilful stream in the early years of the thirteenth century, often in revolt and sometimes misleading the sedate Seine into escapades, to the disquiet of these _faubourgs_. From its gardens, portly meadows smiled townward to Mont-Sainte-Genevieve, crowded with its schools, and to the convent gardens, snuggling close under the shelter of the southern wall of Philippe-Auguste.
To-day, all this quarter is made malodorous by its many tanneries and dye-works; they have enslaved the tiny Bievre and stained it to a dirty reddish brown; so that it crawls, slimy and sluggish and ashamed, between their surly walls and beneath bedraggled bridges, glad to sink into the Seine, under the Orleans railway station. Its gardens and meadows are covered by square miles of stone, and the line of the old wall is hidden behind and under modern streets. And this so-called country home of Queen Blanche, become plain No. 17 Rue des Gobelins, yet refuses, in its mediaeval dignity, to regard itself as a mere number in a street, and withdraws behind its wall, its shoulder aslant, to express its royal unconcern for the straight lines of city surveyors. These have not yet stolen all its old-time character from the remaining section of the street, nor spoiled such of its old-time facades as are left. This one at No. 19 demands our especial scrutiny, by its significant portal and windows, and by the belief that it was originally joined in its rear to No. 17, the two forming one immense structure of the same style of architecture. When was its date, who was its builder, what was its use, are undisclosed, so far, and we may follow our own fancies, as we enter through the narrow gateway into the front court of "Queen Blanche"s house." Its main fabric on the ground floor, with its low arched window, insists that it is contemporary with the clever woman and capable queen, to whom legend, wider than merely local, brings home this building. Yet its upper windows, and the dormers of the wing, and the slope of the roof, suggest a late fifteenth or an early sixteenth century origin; and the cornice-moulding is so well worked out that it speaks plainly of a much later date than the mediaeval fortress-home. In a _tourelle_ at either end is a grand spiral staircase, as in Dagobert"s Tower, and, like that, these turn on huge central oak trunks. Here, however, the steps are less abrupt; the grooving of the hand-rail, while it testifies to the stroke of the axe, is less rude; and daylight is welcomed by wider windows. Each of the three floors, that lie between the two staircase turrets, is made up of one vast hall, with no traces of division walls. Whether or no a Gobelin once made usage of this building, as has been claimed, it has now come into a tanner"s service, and his workmen tread its stairs and halls, giving a living touch of our workaday world to these walls of dead feudalism.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The So-called Hotel de la Reine Blanche.
(From a photograph of the Commission du Vieux Paris.)]
It was in 1200 that Blanche of Castile was brought to France, a girl of twelve, for her marriage with little Louis, of the same ripe age.
His father, Philippe-Auguste, was a mighty builder, and Paris flourished under him, her "second founder." In the intervals between crusades against infidels and wars with Christians, he founded colleges and gave other aid to the university on this bank; he pushed on with his strong hand the building of Notre-Dame and of the old Hotel-Dieu on the island; he removed his residence from the ancient Palace, there, to the Louvre on the northern bank, constructed by him to that end--his huge foundation-walls, with some few capitals and mouldings, may be seen deep down in the substructures of the present Louvre--he shut in the unfenced cemetery of the Innocents from the merry-makers who profaned it; he roofed and walled-in the open markets in the fields hard by that burial-ground; and he paved the streets of the _Cite_. To meet this last outlay, he was lavish with the money of the citizens, notably of Gerard de Poissy, who was moved to donate one-half of his entire fortune by the sight of the King, "sparing neither pains nor expense in beautifying the town." Sparing himself no pains for the bettering of his beloved capital, Philippe-Auguste spared no expense to its worthy burghers, and in their purses he found the funds for his great wall. This he planned and began, toward the close of the twelfth century, when at home for awhile from the warfaring, during which he had captured the "saucy Chateau-Gaillard"
of his former fellow-crusader, Richard the Lion-Hearted.
Around the early Lutetia on the island, with the river for its moat, there had been a Gallo-Roman wall, well known to us all; and there was a later wall, concerning which none of us know much. We may learn no more than that it was a work of Louis VI., "_le Gros_," early in the twelfth century, and that it enclosed the city"s small suburbs on both banks of the mainland. Where this wall ab.u.t.ted on the two bridge-heads that gave access to the island, Louis VI. converted the wooden towers--already placed there for the protection of these approaches by Charles II., "_le Chauve_," in the ninth century--into great gateways and small citadels, all of stone. They were ma.s.sive, grim, sinister structures, and when their service as fortresses was finished, they were used for prisons; both equally infamous in cruelty and horror. The Pet.i.t Chatelet was a donjon tower, and guarded the southern approach to the island by way of the ancient main-road of the Gaul and the Roman, known later as the Voie du Midi, and later again as the Route d"Orleans, and now as Rue Saint-Jacques. This _chatelet_ stood at the head of Pet.i.t-Pont, on the ground where Quais Saint-Michel and Montebello meet now, and was not demolished until late in the eighteenth century. The Grand Chatelet ended the northern wall where it met Pont au Change, and its gloomy walls, and conical towers flanking a frowning portal, were pick-axed away only in 1802.
It had held no prisoners since Necker induced Louis XVI. to inst.i.tute, in La Force and other jails, what were grotesquely ent.i.tled "model prisons." On the building that faces the northern side of Place du Chatelet you will find an elaborate tablet holding the plan of the dreary fortress and the appalling prison. When we stroll about the open s.p.a.ce that its destruction has left, and that bears the bad old name, we need not lament its loss.
Then came the wall of Philippe-Auguste, grandly planned to enclose the closely knit island _Cite_ and its straggling suburbs on either bank, with all their gardens, vineyards, and fields far out; and solidly constructed, with nearly thirty feet of squared-stone height, and nearly ten feet of cemented rubble between the strong side faces.
Its heavy parapet was battlemented, numerous round towers bulged from its outer side, the frequent gates had stern flanking towers, and the four ends on both river-banks were guarded by enormous towers, really small fortresses. The westernmost tower on this southern sh.o.r.e--with which section of the wall, built slowly from 1208 to 1220, we are now concerned--was the Tour de Nesle, and its site is shown by a tablet on the quay-front of the eastern wing of the Inst.i.tute. Alongside was the important Porte de Nesle. Thence the wall went southwesterly, behind the line made by the present Rues Mazarine and Monsieur-le-Prince; then, by its great curve just north of Rue des Fosses-Saint-Jacques, it safeguarded the tomb and the abbey of Sainte Genevieve, and so bent sharply around toward the northeast, within the line of present Rues Thouin, du Cardinal-Lemoine, and des Fosses-Saint-Bernard, to the easternmost tower on Quai de la Tournelle, and its river-gate, Porte Saint-Bernard. That gate, standing until the end of the eighteenth century, had been t.i.tillated into a triumphal arch for Louis XIV., in whose time this quay was a swell promenade and drive. It still retains one of its grand mansions, the Hotel Clermont-Tonnerre, at No. 27 on the quay, with a well-preserved portal.
Of the stately sweep of this wall we may get suggestive glimpses by the various tablets, that show the sites of the tennis courts made later on its outer side, and that mark the places of the gates; such as the tablet at No. 44 Rue Dauphine. The street and gate of that name date from 1607, when Henri IV. constructed them as the southern outlet from his Pont-Neuf, and named them in honor of the first _dauphin_ born to France since Catherine de" Medici"s puny sons. This Porte Dauphine took the place, and very nearly the site, of the original Porte de Buci, which stood over the western end of our Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, and was done away with in the cutting of Rue Dauphine. There was a gate, cut a few years after the completion of the wall, opening into the present triangular s.p.a.ce made by the meeting of Rue de l"ecole-de-Medecine and Boulevard Saint-Germain, and this gate bore this latter name. Of the original gates, that next beyond Porte de Buci was Porte Saint-Michel, a small postern that stood almost in the centre of the meeting-place of Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rues Monsieur-le-Prince and Soufflot. Next came the important Porte Saint-Jacques, mounting guard over the street now of that name, nearly where it crosses the southern side of new Rue Soufflot, named in honor of the architect of the Pantheon. On that southwest corner is a tablet with a plan of the gate. It was a gate well watched by friends within, and foes without, coming up by this easy road. Dunois gained it, more by seduction than force, and entered with his French troops, driving the English before him, on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1436; and Henry of Navarre failed to gain it by force from the League, on the night of September 10, 1590. Stand in front of Nos. 174 and 176 of widened Rue Saint-Jacques, and you are on the spot where he tried to scale that gate, again and again.