(From the portrait by Charles Lebrun.)]
And in what light he was looked upon by the lazy pensioned lackeys of the court, who hardly knew his face, and not at all his worth, is shown by this extract from one of their ma.n.u.script chronicles: "_Jeudi, le 15 Octobre, 1684. On apprit a Chambord la mort du bonhomme Corneille._"
JEAN RACINE came to Paris, from his native La Ferte-Milon in the old duchy of Valois--by way of a school at Beauvais, and another near Port-Royal--in 1658, a youth of nineteen, to study in the College d"Harcourt. That famous school was in the midst of the Scholars"
Quarter, in that part of narrow, winding Rue de la Harpe which is now widened into Boulevard Saint-Michel. On the site of the ancient college, direct heir of its functions and its fame, stands the Lycee Saint-Louis. The buildings that give on the playground behind, seem to belong to the original college, and to have been refaced.
Like Boileau-Despreaux, three years his senior here, the new student preferred poetry to the studies commonly styled serious, and his course in theology led neither to preaching nor to practising. He was a wide and eager reader in all directions, and developed an early and ardent enthusiasm for the Greeks and the Latins.
As early as 1660 he had made himself known by his ode in celebration of the marriage of Louis XIV.; while he remained unknown as the author of an unaccepted and unplayed drama in verse, sent to the Theatre du Marais.
Racine"s Paris homes were all in or near the "_Pays Latin_," for he preserves its ancient appellation in his letters. On leaving college, in 1660-61, he took up quarters with his uncle Nicolas Vitart, steward and intendant of the d.u.c.h.esse de Chevreuse, and secretary of her son the Duc de Luynes. Vitart lived in the Hotel de Luynes, a grand mansion that faced Quai des Grands-Augustins, and stretched far back along Rue Git-le-Coeur. It was torn down in 1671. La Fontaine had lodgings, during his frequent visits to Paris at this period, a little farther west on Quai des Grands-Augustins, and he and Racine, despite the eighteen years" difference of age, became close companions. La Fontaine made his young friend acquainted with the _cabarets_ of the quarter, and Racine studied them not unwillingly. Just then, too, Racine doubtless met Moliere, recently come into the management of the theatre of the Palais-Royal. An original edition of "Les Precieuses Ridicules," played a while before this time at the Hotel du Pet.i.t-Bourbon, bears on its t.i.tle-page "_Privilege au Sr. de Luyne_."
This was Guillaume de Luyne, bookseller and publisher in the Salle des Merciers of the Palais de Justice; and at his place, a resort for book-loving loungers, we may well believe that the actor-manager made acquaintance with the young poet, coming from his home with the Duc de Luynes, within sight across the narrow arm of the river.
Not as a poet was he known in this ducal house, but as a.s.sistant to his uncle, and the probable successor of that uncle, who tried to train him to his future duties. Among these duties, just then, was the construction of the new Hotel de Luynes for the d.u.c.h.esse de Chevreuse.
This is the lady who plays so prominent a role in Dumas"s authentic history of "The Three Musketeers." The _hotel_ that was then built for her stands, somewhat shorn of its original grandeur, at No. 201 Boulevard Saint-Germain, and you may look to-day on the walls constructed under the eye of Jean Racine, acting as his uncle"s overseer. This uncle was none too rigid of rule, nor was the household, from the d.u.c.h.ess down, unduly ascetic of habit; and young Racine, "nothing loath," spent his days and eke his nights in somewhat festive fashion. His anxious country relatives at length induced him to leave the wicked town, and in November, 1661, he went to live at Uzes, near Nimes, in Languedoc. Here he was housed with another uncle, of another kidney; a canon of the local cathedral, able to offer church work and to promise church preferment to the coy young cleric.
Racine was bored by it all, and mitigated his boredom, during the two years he remained, only by flirting and by stringing rhymes. The ladies were left behind, and the verses were carried to the capital, on his return in November, 1663. He showed some of them, first to Colbert and then to Moliere, who received the verse with scant praise, but accepted, paid for, and played "La Thebade"--a work of promise, but of no more than promise, of the future master hand. It was at this period, about 1664, that Racine, of his own wish, first met Boileau, who had criticised in a kindly fashion some of the younger poet"s verses. Thus was begun that friendship which was to last unmarred so many years, and to be broken only by Racine"s death.
With Corneille, too, Racine made acquaintance, in 1665, and submitted to him his "Alexandre." He was greatly pleased by the praise of the author of the "Cid"; praise freely given to the poetry of the play, but along with it came the set-off that no talent for tragedy was shown in the piece. It was not long before the elder poet had to own his error, and it is a sorrow to record his growing discontent with the younger man"s triumphs. Racine believed then and always, that Corneille was easily his master as a tragic dramatist; a belief shared with him by us of to-day, who find Corneille"s tragedies as impressive, his comedies as spirited, as ever, on the boards of the Comedie Francaise; while Racine"s tragic Muse seems to have outlived her day on those boards, and to have grown aged and out of date, along with the social surroundings amid which she queened it.
Racine"s reverence for his elder and his better never wore away, and on Corneille"s death--when, to his place in the Academy, his lesser brother Thomas was admitted--it fell to Racine, elected in 1673, to give the customary welcome to the new Academician, and to pay the customary tribute to his great forerunner. He paid it in words and in spirit of loyal admiration, and no n.o.bler eulogy of a corrival has been spoken by any man.
On his return to town, in 1663, Racine had found his uncle-crony Vitart living in the new Hotel de Luynes, and in order to be near him he took lodging in Rue de Grenelle. It was doubtless at the eastern end of that street, not far from the Croix-Rouge--a step from Boileau in Rue du Vieux-Colombier, and not far from La Fontaine on Quai Malaquais. Here he stayed for four years, and in 1667 he removed to the Hotel des Ursins. This name had belonged to a grand old mansion on the north bank of ile de la Cite, presented by the City of Paris to Jean Juvenal des Ursins, _Prevot des Marchands_ under Charles VI. In the old prints, we see its two towers rising sheer from the river, and behind them its vast buildings and s.p.a.cious grounds extending far away south on the island. According to Edouard Fournier, a painstaking topographer, all this structure was demolished toward the end of the eighteenth century, and over its site and through its grounds were cut the three streets bearing its name of des Ursins--Haute, Milieu, Ba.s.se. Other authorities claim that portions of the hotel still stand there, among them that portion in which Racine lived; his rooms having remained unaltered up to 1848. The street is narrow and dark, all its buildings are of ancient aspect, and on its south side is a row of antiquated houses that plainly date back to Racine"s day and even earlier. It is in one of these that we may establish his lodgings.
The house at No. 5, commonly and erroneously pointed out as his residence, is of huge bulk, extending through to Rue Chanoinesse on the south. No. 7 would seem to be still more ancient. No. 9 is simply one wing of the dark stone structure, of which No. 11 forms the other wing and the central body, ma.s.sive and gloomy, set back from the street behind a shallow court, between these wings. In the low wall of this court, under a great arch, a small forbidding door shuts on the pavement, and behind, in a recess, is an open stairway leading to the floor above. No. 13 was undoubtedly once a portion of the same fabric.
All these street windows are heavily barred and sightless. These three houses evidently formed one entire structure at first, and this was either an outlying portion of the Hotel des Ursins, or a separate building, erected after the demolition of that _hotel_, and taking the old name. In either case, there can be no doubt that these are the walls that harbored Racine. The tenants of his day were mostly men of the law who had their offices and residential chambers here, by reason of their proximity to the Palais de Justice. With these inmates Racine was certainly acquainted--the magistrates, the advocates, the clerks, of whom he makes knowing sport in his delightful little comedy, "Les Plaideurs." It was played at Versailles, "by royal command," before King and court in 1668. This was not its original production, however; it had had its first night for the Paris public a month earlier, and had failed; possibly because it had not yet received royal approval.
Moliere, one of the audience on that first night, was a more competent critic of its quality, and his finding was that "those who mocked merited to be mocked in turn, for they did not know good comedy when they saw it." This verdict gives striking proof of his innate loyalty to a comrade in trade, for he and the author were estranged just then, not by any fault of Moliere, and he had the right to feel wronged, and by this unasked praise he proved himself to be the more manly of the two.
The piece was an immediate success at Versailles. The _Roi Soleil_ beamed, the courtiers smiled, the crowd laughed. The players, unexpectedly exultant, climbed into their coaches as soon as they were free, and drove into town and to Racine, with their good news. This whole quiet street was awakened by their shouts of congratulation, windows were thrown open by the alarmed burghers, and when they learned what it meant, they all joined in the jubilation.
Racine lived here from 1667 to 1677, and these ten years were years of unceasing output and of unbroken success. Beginning with his production of "Andromaque" in the first-named year, he went, through successive stage triumphs, to "Phedre," his greatest and his last play for the public stage, produced on New Year"s Day of 1677, at the Hotel de Bourgogne. It was on these boards that almost all his plays were first given.
Then, at the age of thirty-seven, at the top of his fame, in the plenitude of his powers, he suddenly ceased to write for the stage.
This dis-service to dramatic literature was brought about by his forthcoming marriage, by his disgust with the malice of his rivals, by his weariness of the a.s.saults of his enemies, by his somewhat sudden and showy submission to the Church--that sleepless a.s.sailant of player and playwright. He hints at the att.i.tude of the G.o.dly in his preface to "Phedre," a.s.suring them that they will have to own--however, in other respects, they may or may not esteem this tragedy--that it castigates Vice and punishes Badness as had no previous play of his.
Doubtless he was hardened in this decision, already made, by the hurt he had from the reception of this play in contrast with the reception of a poorer play for which his own t.i.tle was stolen, which was produced within three nights of his piece, and was acclaimed by the cabal that d.a.m.ned the original. Nor was it only his rivals and enemies who decried him. "_Racine et le cafe pa.s.seront_," was La Harpe"s contemptuous coupling of the playwright with the new and dubious drink, just then on its trial in Paris. His _mot_ has been mothered on Madame de Sevigne, for she, too, took neither to Racine nor to coffee. And a century later it pleased Madame de Stael to prove, to her own gratification, that his tragedies had already gone into the limbo of out-worn things.
Racine"s whole life--never notably sedate hitherto, with its frequent escapades and its one grand pa.s.sion--was turned into a new current by his love match with Catherine de Romenet. On his marriage in June, 1677--among the _temoins_ present were Boileau-Despreaux and Uncle Vitart, this latter then living in the same house with his nephew--Racine ranged himself on the side of order and of domestic days and nights. He gave proof of a genuine devotedness to his wife; a good wife, if you will, yet hardly a companion for him in his work at home and in the world outside. It is told of her, that she never saw one of his pieces played, nor heard one read; and Louis, their youngest son, says that his mother did not know what a verse was.
The earliest home of the new couple was on ile Saint-Louis. Neither the house nor its street is to be identified to-day, but both may surely be seen, so slight are the changes even now since that provincial village, in the heart of Paris, was built up from an island wash-house and wood-yard under the impulse of the plans prepared for Henri IV., by his right hand, Sully. And in this parish church, Saint-Louis-en-l"ile--a provincial church quite at home here--we find Racine holding at the font his first child, Jean-Baptiste, in 1678.
Two years later he moved again, and from early in 1680 to the end of 1684 we find him at No. 2 Rue de l"Eperon, on the corner of Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. Here his family grew in number, and the names of three of his daughters, Marie-Catherine, Anne, and elisabeth--all born in this house--appeared on the baptismal register of his parish church, Saint-Andre-des-Arts. This was the church of the christening of Francois-Marie Arouet, a few years later. The Place Saint-Andre-des-Arts, laid out in 1809, now covers the site of that very ancient church, sold as National Domain in 1797, and demolished soon after.
This residence of Racine was left intact until within a few years, when it was replaced by the Lycee Fenelon, a government school for girls. There they read their "Racine," or such portions as are permitted to the Young Person, not knowing nor caring that on that spot the author once lived.
From here he removed, at the beginning of the year 1685, to No. 16 Rue des Macons. That street is now named Champollion, and the present number of his house cannot be fixed. It still stands on the western side of the street, about half way up between Rue des ecoles and Place de la Sorbonne; for none of these houses have been rebuilt, and the street itself is as secluded and as quiet as when Racine walked through it. Here were born his daughters Jeanne and Madeleine, both baptized in the parish church of Saint-Severin--a venerable sanctuary, still in use and quite unaltered, except that it has lost its cloisters. And in this home in Rue des Macons he brought to life two plays finer than any of their forerunners, yet, unlike them, not intended for public performance. "Esther" was written in 1689 to please Madame de Maintenon, and was performed several times by the girls at her school of Saint-Cyr; first before King and court, later before friends of the court and those who had sufficient influence to obtain the eagerly sought invitation. "Athalie," written for similar semi-public production, two years later, failed to make any impression, when played at Versailles by the same girls of Saint-Cyr.
After two performances, without scenery or costumes, it was staged no more, and had no sale when published by the author. Yet Boileau told him that it was his best work, and Voltaire said that it was nearer perfection than any work of man. Indeed, "Athalie," in its grandeur and its simplicity, may easily outrank any production of the French pen during the seventeenth century. And, as literature, these two plays are almost perfect specimens of Racine"s almost perfect art and diction; of that art, wherein he was so exquisite a craftsman; of that diction, so rich, so daring, so pliable, so pa.s.sionate, yet restrained, refined, judicious.
In May, 1692, we learn by a letter to Boileau, Racine was still in Rue des Macons, but he must have left it shortly after, for in November of this year he brought to be christened, in Saint-Sulpice, his youngest child, Louis. This is the son who has left us an admirable biography of his father, and some mediocre poems--"La Religion" and "La Grace"
being those by which he is best known. So that Saint-Sulpice was, already in November, 1692, the church of his new parish; and the house to which he had removed in that parish, wherein the boy was born, stands, quite unchanged to-day, in Rue Visconti. That street was then named Rue des Marais-Saint-Germain, having begun life as a country lane cut through the low marshy lands along the southern sh.o.r.e. It extends only from Rue de Seine to Rue Bonaparte, then named Rue des Pet.i.ts-Augustins. Near its western end, at the present number 21, the Marquis de Ranes had erected a grand mansion; and this, on his death in 1678, was let out in apartments. It is a.s.serted that it is the house of whose second floor Racine became a tenant. Within the great concave archway that frames the wide entrance door is set a tablet, containing the names of Racine, of La Champmesle, of Lecouvreur, and of Clairon, all of whom are claimed to have been inhabitants of this house. That tablet has carried conviction during the half-century since it was cut and set, about 1855, but its word is to be doubted, and many of us believe that the more ancient mansion at No. 13 of the street was Racine"s home. Local tradition makes the only proof at present, and the matter cannot be absolutely decided until the lease shall be found in that Parisian notary"s office where it is now filed away and forgotten. We know that Mlle. Lecouvreur lived in the house formerly tenanted by Racine, and that she speaks of it as being nearly at the middle of the street, and this fact points rather to No.
13 than to No. 21. And we know that Mlle. Clairon had tried for a long time to secure an apartment in the house honored by memories of the great dramatist and the great actress; for whose sake she was willing to pay the then enormous rental of 200 francs. But the tablet"s claim to La Champmesle as a tenant is an undue and unpardonable excess of zeal. Whatever Racine may have done years before in his infatuation for that bewitching woman, he did not bring her into his own dwelling!
[Ill.u.s.tration: Rue Visconti.
On the right is the Hotel de Ranes, and in the distance is No. 13.]
She had come from Rouen, a young actress looking for work, along with her husband, a petty actor and patcher-up of plays; for whose sake she was admitted to the Theatre du Marais. How she made use of this chance is told by a line in a letter of Madame de Sevigne, who had seen her play Atalide in "Bajazet," and p.r.o.nounced "_ma belle fille_"--so she brevets her son"s lady-love--as "the most miraculously good _comedienne_ that I have ever seen." It was on the boards of the Hotel de Bourgogne that she showed herself to be also the finest _tragedienne_ of her time. She shone most in "Bajazet," and in others of Racine"s plays, creating her roles under his admiring eye and under his devoted training. He himself declaimed verse marvellously well, and had in him the making of a consummate comedian, or a preacher, as you please. La Champmesle was not beautiful or clever, but her stature was n.o.ble, her carriage glorious, her voice bewitching, her charm irresistible. And La Fontaine sang praises of her _esprit_, and this was indeed fitting at his age then. She lived somewhere in this quarter, when playing in the troupe of the widow Moliere at the Theatre Guenegaud. When she retired from those boards, she found a home with her self-effacing husband in Auteuil, and there died in 1698.
The first floor in the right wing of the court of both 13 and 21 is said to be the residence of Adrienne Lecouvreur. She had appeared in 1717 at the Comedie Francaise, in Rue de l"Ancienne-Comedie, and had won her place at once. The choice spirits of the court, of the great world, of the greater world of literature, were glad to meet in fellowship around her generous and joyous table. Among them she found excuse for an occasional caprice, but her deepest and most lasting pa.s.sion was given to the superb adventurer, Maurice de Saxe. His quarters, when home from the wars--for which her p.a.w.ned jewels furnished him forth--were only a step down Rue Bonaparte from her house, on Quai Malaquais. They were at No. 5, the most ancient mansion left on the quay, with the exception of No. 1, hid behind the wing of the Inst.i.tute. He died at Chambord on November 30, 1750, and at this house, May 17, 1751, there was an auction of his effects.
There came a time when the meetings of these two needed greater secrecy, and he removed to Rue de Colombier, now named Rue Jacob. The houses on the north side of this ancient street had--and some of them still have--gardens running back to the gardens of the houses on the south side of Rue Visconti. These little gardens had, in the dividing fence, gates easily opened by night, for others besides Adrienne and Maurice, as local legend whispers. Scribe has put their story on the stage, where it is a tradition that the actress was actually poisoned by a great lady, for the sake of the fascinating lover. He stood by her bedside, with Voltaire and the physician, when she was dying in 1730, at the early age of thirty-eight, in one of the rooms on this first floor over the court. Voltaire had had no sneers, but only praise for the actress, and smiles for the woman whose kind heart had brought her to his bedside, when he was ill, where she read to him the last book out, the translation of the "Arabian Nights." He was stirred to stinging invective of the churlish priest of Saint-Sulpice, who denied her church-burial. In the same verse he commends that good man, Monsieur de Laubiniere, who gave her body hasty and unhallowed interment. He came, by night, with two coaches and three men, and drove with the poor body along the river-bank, turning up Rue de Bourgogne to a spot behind the vast wood-yards that then lined the river-front. There, in a hole they dug, they hid her. The fine old mansion at No. 115 Rue de Grenelle, next to the southeast corner of Rue de Bourgogne, covers her grave. In its garret, thrown into one corner and almost forgotten, is a marble tablet, long and narrow, once set in a wall on this site, to mark the spot so long ignored--as its inscription says--where lies an actress of admirable _esprit_, of good heart, and of a talent sublime in its simplicity. And it recites the efforts of a true friendship, which got at last only this little bit of earth for her grave.
Yet a few years further on, the same wing on the court of this dingy old house sparkled with the splendid personality of Hippolyte Clairon, who outshines all other stars of the French stage, unless it be Rachel. Here she lived the life of one of those prodigal princesses, in whose roles she loved to dazzle on the boards of the Comedie Francaise, where she first appeared in 1743. It was her public and not her private performances that shocked the sensitive Church into a threat of future terrors for her. When, in the course of a theatrical quarrel, she refused to play, she was sent to prison, being one of "His Majesty"s Servants," disobedient and punishable. She preferred possible purgatory to present imprisonment, and went back to her duty.
To this house again came Voltaire, as her visitor this time, along with Diderot and Marmontel and many such men. Garrick came, too, when in Paris--came quietly, less eager to proclaim his ardent admiration for the woman than his public and professional acclamation of the actress in the theatre. Her parts all played, she left the stage when a little past forty, and, sinking slowly into age and poverty and misery, she died at the age of eighty in 1803.
All these flashing fireworks are dimmed and put to shame by the gentle glow and the steadfast flame of the wood-fire on Racine"s home hearthstone. It lights up the gloomy, mean street, even as we stand here. He was, in truth, an admirable husband and father, and it is this side of the man that we prefer to regard, rather than that side turned toward other men. Of them he was, through his over-much ambition, easily jealous, and, being sensitive and suspicious as well, and given to a biting raillery, he alienated his friends. Boileau alone was too big of soul to allow any estrangement. These two were friends for almost forty years, in which not one clouded day is known.
The letters between them--those from 1687 to 1698 are still preserved--show the depth of Racine"s manly and delicate feeling for his friend, then "in his great solitude at Auteuil." They had been appointed royal historiographers soon after Racine"s marriage in 1677, and, in that office, travelled together a good deal, in the Ghent campaign of 1678 and again with the army in other fields. They worked together on their notes later, and gathered great store of material; but the result amounted to nothing, and they were posthumously lucky in that their unfinished ma.n.u.script was finally burned by accident in 1726.
Whether with Boileau in camp, or alone in the Luxembourg campaign of 1683--Boileau being too ill to go--or at Namur in 1692, or with the King and court at Fontainebleau, Marly, Versailles, in these royal residences where he had his own rooms, wherever he was, Racine never seemed to cease thinking of his home, that home in Rue des Macons when he first went away, and for the last seven years of his life in Rue Visconti. When absent from home he wrote to his children frequently, and when here he corresponded constantly with his son, who was with the French Emba.s.sy at The Hague. To him he gave domestic details and "trivial fond records" of what his mother was doing, of the colds of the younger ones, and of the doings of the daughter in a convent at Melun. He sends to this son two new hats and eleven and a half _louis d"or_, and begs him to be careful of the hats and to spend the money slowly.
Yet he was fond of court life, and, an adroit courtier, he knew how to sing royal prowess in the field and royal splendor in the palace. He had a way of carrying himself that gave seeming height to his slight stature. His n.o.ble and open expression, his fine wit, his dexterous address, his notable gifts as a reader to the King at his bedside, made him a favorite in that resplendent circle. And he was all the more unduly dejected when the _Roi Soleil_ cooled and no longer smiled on him; he was killed when Madame de Maintenon--"Goody Scarron," "Old Piety," "the hag," "the hussy," "that old woman," are the usual pet epithets for her of delicious d.u.c.h.esse d"Orleans--who had liked and had befriended him, saw the policy of showing him her cold shoulder, as she had shown it to Fenelon. From this shock, Racine, being already broken physically by age and illness, seemed unable to rally. As he sank gradually to the grave he made sedulous provision for his family, dictating, toward the last, a letter begging for a continuance of his pension to his widow, which, it is gladly noted, was afterward done.
He urged, also, the claim of Boileau to royal favor: "We must not be separated," he said to his amanuensis; "begin your letter again, and let Boileau know that I have been his friend to my death."
His death came on April 21, 1699. His body lay one night in the choir of Saint-Sulpice, his parish church, and then it was carried for burial to the Abbey of Port-Royal. On the destruction of that inst.i.tution, his remains were brought back to Paris, in 1711, and placed near those of Pascal, at the entrance of the lady-chapel of Saint-etienne-du-Mont. Racine"s epitaph, in Latin, by Boileau, the friend of so many men who were not always friendly with one another, is cut in a stone set in the first pillar of the southern aisle of the choir.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE began to come to Paris, making occasional excursions from his native Chateau-Thierry, in Champagne, toward 1654, he being then over thirty years of age. A little later, when under the protection and in the pay of the great Fouquet, his visits to the capital were more frequent and more prolonged. He commonly found lodgings on Quai des Grands-Augustins, just around the corner from young Racine, and the two men were much together during the years 1660 and 1661. La Fontaine made his home permanently in the capital after 1664, when he arrived there in the train of the d.u.c.h.esse de Bouillon, born Anne Mancini, youngest and liveliest of Mazarin"s many dashing nieces. Her marriage with the Duc de Bouillon had made her the feudal lady of Chateau-Thierry, and if she were not compelled to claim, in this case, her privilege as _chatelaine_ over her appanage, it was because there was ampler mandate for the impressionable poet in the caprice of a wilful woman. Incidentally, in this flitting, he left behind his provincial wife. He had taken her to wife in 1647, mainly to please his father, and soon, to please her and himself, they had agreed on a separation. They met scarcely any more after his definite departure. There is a tradition that he chatted, once in a _salon_ somewhere, with a bright young man by whom he found himself attracted, and concerning whom he made inquiry of the bystanders, who informed him that it was his son. Tradition does not record any attempt on his part to improve his acquaintance with the young stranger, or to show further interest in his welfare.
He did not entirely desert his country home, for the d.u.c.h.ess carried him along on her autumnal visits to Chateau-Thierry. He took advantage of each chance thus given him to realize something upon his patrimony, that he might meet the always pressing claims on his always overspent income.
He writes to Racine during one of these visits, in 1686: "My affairs occupy me as much as they"re worth it, and that"s not at all; and the leisure I thus get is given to laziness." He almost antic.i.p.ated in regard to himself the racy saying of the Oxford don of our day of another professor: "Such time as he can save from the adornment of his person he devotes to the neglect of his duties." But La Fontaine neglected not only his duties all through life, but, more than all else, did he neglect the care of his dress. A portion of the income he was always antic.i.p.ating came from his salary at one time, as gentleman in the _suite_ of the dowager d.u.c.h.esse d"Orleans, that post giving him quarters in the Luxembourg. These quarters and his salary went from him with her death. For several years after coming to town with the d.u.c.h.esse de Bouillon he had a home in the duke"s town-house on Quai Malaquais.
This quay had been built upon the river-front soon after the death, in 1615, of Marguerite de Valois, Henri IV."s divorced wife. The streets leading from Quais Malaquais and Voltaire, and those behind, parallel with the quays, were cut through her grounds and through the fields farther west. This was the beginning of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. To save the long detour, to and from the new suburb, around by way of Pont-Neuf, a wooden bridge was built in 1632 along the line of the ferry, that had hitherto served for traffic between the sh.o.r.e in front of the Louvre and the southern sh.o.r.e, at the end of the road that is now Rue du Bac. The Pont Royal has replaced that wooden bridge. One of the buildings that began this river-front remains unmutilated at the corner of Quai Malaquais and Rue de Seine, and is characteristic of the architecture of that period in its walls and roofs and windows cl.u.s.tering about the court. It was the many years" dwelling of the elder Visconti, and his death-place in 1818. The house at No. 3 was erected early in the nineteenth century, on the site of Buzot"s residence, as shall be told in a later chapter. In it Humboldt lived from 1815 to 1818. The a.s.sociations of No. 5 have already been suggested. The largest builder on the quay was Cardinal Mazarin, whose college, to which he gave his own name, and to which the public gave the name College des Quatre-Nations, is now the Palais de l"Inst.i.tut.
He paid for it with money wrung from wretched France, as he so paid for the grand _hotel_ he erected for another niece, Anne Marie Martinozzi, widow of that Prince de Conti who was Moliere"s school friend. On the ground that it covered was built, in 1860-62, the wing of the Beaux-Arts at Nos. 11 and 13 Quai Malaquais. That school has also taken possession of the Hotel de Bouillon of the cardinal"s other niece, almost alongside. It had been the property of the rich and vulgar money-king Baziniere, whom we shall meet again, and he had sold it to the Duc de Bouillon. The pretty wife of this very near-sighted husband had the house re-decorated, and filled it with a marvellous collection of furniture, paintings, _bric-a-brac_. She filled it, also, by her open table twice a day, with thick-coming guests, some of whom were worth knowing. The _hotel_ came by inheritance in 1823 to M.
de Chimay, who stipulated, in making it over to the Beaux-Arts, in 1885, that its seventeenth-century facade should be preserved, and by this agreement we have here, at No. 17 Quai Malaquais, an admirable specimen of the competence of the elder, the great Mansart. It is higher than he left it, by reason of the wide, sloping roof, with many skylights toward the north, placed there for the studios within, but its two well-proportioned wings remain unchanged, and between them the court, where La Fontaine was wont to sit or stroll, has been laid out as a garden. While living here he brought out the first collection of his "Contes" in 1665, and of his "Fables" in 1668. His "Les Amours de Psyche," written in 1669, begins with a charming description of the meetings in Boileau"s rooms of the famous group of comrades.
From this home he went to the home of Madame de la Sabliere, with whom, about 1672, he had formed a friendship which lasted unbroken until her death. This tender and steadfast companionship made the truest happiness of La Fontaine"s life. For twenty years an inmate of her household, a member of her family, he was petted and cared for as he craved. In her declining years she had to be away from home attending to her charitable work--for she followed the fashion of turning _devote_ as age advanced--and then he suffered in unaccustomed loneliness. His tongue spoke of her with the same constant admiration and grat.i.tude that is left on record by his pen, and at her death he was completely crushed.
When he was invited by Madame de la Sabliere and her poet-husband to share their home, they were living at their country-place, "_La Folie Rambouillet_," not to be mistaken for the Hotel de Rambouillet.
Sabliere"s _hotel_, built by his father, a wealthy banker, was in the suburb of Reuilly, on the Bercy road, north of the Seine, not far from Picpus. The Reuilly station and the freight-houses of the Vincennes railway now cover the site of this splendid mansion and its extensive grounds. Here Monsieur de la Sabliere died in 1680, and his widow, taking La Fontaine along, removed to her town-house. This stood on the ground now occupied by the buildings in Rue Saint-Honore, nearly opposite Rue de la Sourdiere. In the court of No. 203 are bits of carving that may have come down from the original mansion. Here they dwelt untroubled until death took her away in 1693. It is related that La Fontaine, leaving this house after the funeral, benumbed and bewildered by the blow, met Monsieur d"Hervart. "I was going," said that gentleman, "to offer you a home with me." "I was going to ask it," was the reply. And in this new abode he dwelt until his death, two years later.
Berthelemy d"Hervart, a man of great wealth, had purchased, in 1657, the Hotel de l"eperon, a mansion erected on the site of Burgundy"s Hotel de Flandre. M. d"Hervart had enlarged and decorated his new abode, employing for the interior frescoes the painter Mignard, Moliere"s friend. The actor and his troupe had played here, by invitation, nearly fifty years before La Fontaine"s coming. It stood in old Rue Platriere, now widened out, entirely rebuilt, and renamed Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau; and on the wall of the Central Post-office that faces that street, you will find a tablet stating that on this site died Jean de la Fontaine on April 13, 1695.
Madame d"Hervart was a young and lovely woman, and as devoted to the old poet as had been Madame de la Sabliere. She went so far as to try to regulate his dress, his expenditure, and his morals. Congratulated one day on the splendor of his coat, La Fontaine found to his surprise and delight that his hostess had subst.i.tuted it--when, he had not noticed--for the shabby old garment that he had been wearing for years. She and her husband held sacred, always, the room in which La Fontaine died, showing it to their friends as a place worthy of reverence.
He was buried in the Cemetery of Saints-Innocents, now all built over except its very centre, which is kept as a small park about the attractive fountain of Saints-Innocents. The Patriots of the Revolution, slaying so briskly their men of birth, paused awhile to bring from their graves what was left of their men of brains. Misled by inaccurate rumor, they left La Fontaine"s remains in their own burial-ground, and removed what they believed to be his bones from the graveyard of Saint-Joseph, where he had not been buried, along with the bones they believed to be those of Moliere, who _had_ been buried there. These casual and dubious remains were kept in safety in the convent of Pet.i.ts-Augustins in present Rue Bonaparte, until, in the early years of the nineteenth century, they were removed for final sepulture to Pere-Lachaise.