Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

To-day the redoubtable citadel in which so many kings have sojourned is a military establishment, which includes an artillery arsenal, barracks, hospitals, a cannon foundry, a factory of arms, a château, a church, and a great number of store-rooms. Its precincts are immense. Other fortresses are hidden in the immediate vicinity, and guard the approaches. Artillerymen incessantly go and come between the fortress and the village and the village and the practice-ground.

Penetrating the sombre vault which leads from the door of entrance to the interior court, the visitor finds before him the ancient royal residence, whose façade preserves something of the majesty of antiquity. To the left stands the chapel built by Charles V. in imitation of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, and which he dedicated to the Trinity and the Virgin, the fencing-room, and the tower of the reservoir; to the right the formidable dungeon rears its head towards heaven.

In the space enclosed by these various constructions are stacked up, in faultless order, parallelograms of cannons and pyramids of bullets. Long rows of howitzers, their mouths directed skywards, are to be seen side by side with masses of enormous bombs. In the large neighbouring buildings are halls which contain, suspended from the walls, hooked up round the pillars, and symmetrically arranged in corners, a prodigious stock of guns, bayonets, and sabres. Everything shines and glitters: there is not a particle of dust anywhere. An army could here find sufficient weapons to invade a country. The church is close at hand. It recalls a peaceful and merciful divinity in a place consecrated to war. Prayers are uttered at a spot where men are incessantly trying to find how to kill the greatest number of their fellows in the shortest possible space of time.

The Gothic church, with its fine exterior masonry, is void of all ornamentation within. It gives one the impression of having been sacked at some stage in its history. In a lateral chapel there is a monument raised to the memory of the Duc d’Enghien.

What the Parisians, however, come particularly to see, what they love, what they visit with the greatest eagerness, is the dungeon. This old monument in stone is to them an object of worship. They envelop it with a fond curiosity, and, despite the horror they feel at the terrible scenes it has witnessed during so many centuries, they will not see it disappear without regret. In their imagination it is a legendary, monument, and, in all probability, if the Bastille had not been torn up from the soil by the Great Revolution, that prison-fortress would now have been preserved with the utmost care for the gratification of public curiosity.

No one finding himself at Vincennes after a country stroll fails to ascend to the summit of the dungeon. The visitor pants a little, perhaps, on reaching the platform which crowns it, but he is recompensed for his fatigue by the immense panorama which opens around him. There below, in that transparent vapour which the sun’s rays never more than half penetrate, those myriads of roofs, those monstrous domes, those belfries, that stubble of chimneys whence clouds of smoke are escaping, that distant and ceaseless din which reminds one of the waves breaking on some shore, proclaim the gayest city in the world. At the foot of the edifice the forest stretches away, and behind the screen of trees lies a limitless country, in which cultivated fields extend to the horizon. Everywhere orchards, hamlets, villages meet the eye. The Seine is not far off, and at no great distance, like a band of silver, the Marne meanders capriciously through an immense plain studded with clumps of trees.

On one side a view is obtained of Montreuil, famed for its peaches; on the other, by the river bank, a congregation of villas and cottages in picturesque disorder shows the site of Port-Creuil, where Frederic Soulié sought literary repose. At a little distance lies Saint-Maur, where verdure-loving Parisian business-men like to spend Sunday with their families. Some of them, indeed, reside there permanently; and year by year bricks and mortar may be seen to encroach further and further upon the surrounding country. Hard by is Saint-Mandé, where Armand Carrel died of the wound received in his duel with Emile de Girardin. His tomb is in the cemetery, where stands a statue in his honour.

If the gaze is now turned sharply towards Paris, it encounters, beyond Alfort and its schools, Charenton, celebrated for that mansion of which Sébastien Leblanc conceived the first idea in 1741, and, at the confluence of the Seine and the Marne, the château of Conflans, so long the residence of the Archbishop of Paris. In that immense space which lies beneath the eye there is scarcely a stone or a tree which does not recall some memory. All those roads, all those footpaths, have been trodden by men who were destined to leave a deep mark on the history of France. There is not a corner in this sylvan expanse where some civil or religious combat has not taken place. The Normans, the English, even the Cossacks have made incursions here. There is, according to the expression of one French writer, not a tuft of grass which has not been stained with human blood. Through the villages in sight princes and kings have passed. Torch-lit cortèges, conducting prisoners to the dungeon and to death, have alternated with triumphal processions, escorting sovereigns to their capital to the flourish of trumpets. On that hill yonder Charles VII. raised a castle – the Castle of Beauty – which preserves the memory of Agnes Sorel. In another part of the wood, near Créteil, a little house was once the residence of Odette, who consoled Charles VI. Saint-Mandé once possessed a little park in which Louis XIV., before he was the Louis XIV. of Versailles and of Madame de Maintenon, felt the beat of his own heart; for it was there that he met the fascinating de la Vallière. Under the shade of those old oaks many other beautiful phantoms may by the imaginative mind be seen gracefully gliding: Gabrielle d’Estrées, for instance, Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Longueville, and Madame de Pompadour.

The wood of Vincennes is to-day, of course, very different from what it was at the period when Philip Augustus, enamoured of the chase, had it surrounded by solid walls, in order to preserve the fallow deer and roebucks which he had imported from England. But if it has lost a great deal of its ancient character, together with some of its noblest old trees, it has gained in lakes, lawns, and avenues, where the laborious population of Paris love to lounge or stroll in a clear and recreative air.

Once arrived in the Bois de Boulogne, the visitor has not to travel far in order to see the Marne, that most capricious of French rivers. There is scarcely a Parisian who has not taken an exploring stroll along the banks of this stream, which conducts the oarsman to the very point whence he started. Artists and dreamers in search of leafy shade, of trees overhanging a limpid stream, of mills beating the clear water with their black wheels, know the Marne well. On summer days many a peal of laughter may be heard to proceed from behind some shrubbery. Tourists come to the place in quest of breakfast: they are not in want of appetite, and they have for companions youth and gaiety. Frocks which the wearers are not afraid of rumpling alternate with woollen blouses: the visitors row and sing, seeking, later on, some rustic restaurant where, beneath a green arbour, they can enjoy a bottle of white wine and a snack of fish, with an omelette, or some other light accessory.

On hot Sundays, beneath a cloudless sky, numberless picnics are held in the Bois de Vincennes – a thing unfashionable in the Bois de Boulogne, where visitors would consider it beneath their dignity to eat from a cloth spread on the green turf. At Vincennes excursionists do not stand on ceremony, and if the weather is sultry men may be seen lounging in their shirt sleeves, and taking, in other respects, an ease which the inhabitants of the Boulevards, who resort to the Bois de Boulogne, would contemplate with horror. If the families, however, who divert themselves at Vincennes do not rent a box at the opera, their unpretentious music probably affords them a pleasure none the less. It is a distinctly popular place to which they resort. You do not see there on Sunday new toilettes which evoke cries of astonishment: unpublished dresses dare not show themselves there, eccentric fashions do not bewilder the spectator’s eye. People walk about there without pretension, usually on foot, in family groups, arriving by omnibus or rail.

Sometimes, however, at the time of the races you see those coaches and calèches which four high-spirited horses draw at a gallop. Beautiful ladies and fine gentlemen are hastening to share in the pleasures of the course. This is the hour of lace and silk.

The Bois de Boulogne is associated with steeple-chasing, instead of the flat-racing of the Bois de Vincennes. The public, says the before-mentioned writer, “who are not conversant with the science of the turf, and scarcely wish to be so, better understand the courage and skill which the jockeys must display when they find themselves in presence of a stream or hurdle. Curiosity and emotion are both excited in connection with these exhibitions. People go as near as they can to the obstacle and measure its height or width with their eye. Some take up their stand at a fixed barrier; others wait at a bridge which precedes a ditch. The horses having started, a universal gaze follows them. Will they get over or not? All the spectators hold their breath, their hearts beating rapidly. Meanwhile the jockeys are dressed in purple, gold, and silver: they arrive like so many flying sparks. Their horses clear the obstacles. Hurrah! they are on the flat again. But if by accident both horse and rider get rolled on the grass, it must be confessed that the pleasure of the curious is, in this event, no less.”

Vincennes is celebrated for its charitable as well as its military establishments. Its Benevolent Institution, or “Bureau de Bienfaisance,” and its Orphan Home are both admirably organised. The fortress itself may, moreover, be regarded as in some measure an asylum. Its garrison includes a good number of aged, wounded and crippled soldiers; and it was commanded in the time of the first Napoleon by a daring old pensioner who had lost one of his legs on some former battle-field, and, in virtue of his wooden stump, was familiarly known as “Jambe de Bois.” Called upon to capitulate in 1814, he threatened to blow up the fortress unless the allied forces at once retired. They did so, and he ultimately capitulated on his own terms.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE PALAIS MAZARIN AND THE RUE MAZARINE

The Institute or Palais Mazarin – The Rue Mazarine – L’Illustre Théâtre – Molière – The Théâtre Français – The Odéon – Heine – The Faubourg Saint-Germain – Historical Associations

DURING the middle ages the Palace of the Institute was one of the landmarks and limits of Paris. The rest of the left bank belonged to the agglomeration formed around the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and which was called, during the different periods of its successive developments, the bourg, or borough, the town, and the faubourg of Saint-Germain.

Of the Institute as a central body, with the five academies composing it, sufficient mention has already, perhaps, been made. Some words, however, may be added on the subject of the building – the “Palace” in which the Institute is lodged. Close to the Institute, which owes its chief renown to the most important of its component academies, the Académie Française, representing literature, is the Mint, or Hôtel des Monnaies, with whose products literature is too often but slightly connected. Nor can we leave the immediate neighbourhood of the Institute without speaking of the famous Tour de Nesle, which figures so dramatically in a well-known play written by Alexandre Dumas and Frédéric Gaillardet. One wing of the Institute occupies the very site of the old tower, which was situated on a tongue of earth projecting into the Seine. It stood seventy-five feet high, with a diameter of ten feet; and the crenelated platform at the summit was reached by a winding staircase. According to the legend, as turned to literary account by Roger de Beauvoir in a novel, and by Alexandre Dumas and his collaborator (who claimed to have done all, or nearly all the work in the before-mentioned play), Marguerite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis X., and her two sisters, or sisters-in-law, were accused and convicted of unbecoming conduct in the Tower of Nesle; when two of their accomplices, Philippe and Gaultier d’Aunay, were skinned alive, while Marguerite herself was strangled by order of her royal husband, the lives of the two other princesses being spared. According to the ancient tradition, the queen and her sisters used to receive their lovers in the apartments of the tower, and then, to prevent any compromising revelations, throw them from the window into the Seine.

Resting upon the tower was the Petit Nesle, given as a place of abode, in 1540, by Francis I. to Benvenuto Cellini. The king’s right to dispose of the house was questioned, indirectly, it is true, but in a very substantial manner, by the Provost of Paris, who, after giving the Florentine artist notice to quit, tried to turn him out by force; when Cellini, with his companions, apprentices, and servants, defended the place against the besiegers. It was in the Petit Nesle that this admirable sculptor executed, among masterpieces, his colossal statue of Jupiter in silver. In his Memoirs Benvenuto tells a story which paints, in glaring colours, the disorderly character of the time. He was returning to the Petit Nesle – his Château of Nesle, as he calls it – carrying beneath his cloak, in a basket, 1,000 crowns in ancient gold, which the royal treasurer had just delivered to him by order of Francis I., when he was attacked by thieves before the Augustins – a “very dangerous place.” He then tells how he kept his assailants at a respectful distance by sweeping blows from his sword, and then ran away in all haste to his château, where he called to the garrison, which rushed out fully armed, thus enabling him to re-enter safe and sound the Petit Nesle, where he and his friends had a lively supper. This simple anecdote shows what a cut-throat place Paris was under the reign of Francis I., in the year 1540.

Tour de Nesle and Petit Nesle have both disappeared, and on their site stands (as already mentioned) the Palace of the Institute, originally known as the Palais Mazarin. Cardinal Mazarin, having been unable to carry out personally the project he had formed of establishing a college for the benefit of sixty young noblemen, or young men of the citizen class belonging to the lands newly conquered by the Crown of France, ordered by his will, on the 6th of March, 1661, that, should the king be so pleased, a college should be founded for sixty sons of gentlemen or of citizens belonging to the various territories – German, Flemish, and Provençal – lately annexed to France. Hence the name given to it of “College of the Four Nations”; the fourth nation being, of course, France. In like manner there were formerly “four nations” in the University of Paris. Mazarin had already drawn up the statute for the college, and he bequeathed to it the whole of his library, with an income of 45,000 francs secured on town property, the revenue of the Abbey of Saint-Michel, and two millions of livres (francs) in silver. The cardinal’s executors began by purchasing the Petit Nesle, the ditches and ramparts of the Rue des Fossés, which now became the Rue Mazarine; and a piece of land comprised between the Rue Mazarine, the Rue de Seine, and the Quay. The college was then erected and the library duly placed; and until the time of the Revolution the Institute, as it was in time to be called, formed an important centre for men devoted to the study of literature, science, or art.

At the time of the Revolution the college, being of suspicious origin, was confiscated, while, on the other hand, the library was enlarged by 50,000 volumes, themselves the result of confiscation.

In suppressing the Institute the Revolution did not spare any one of its five academies – not even the French academy, which, though it represented the literature of the country, had a taint of aristocracy about it. As soon, however, as France was delivered from the atrocities of the Revolution, the National Convention, in its last sitting but one, on the 25th October, 1795, reconstituted the Institute under the form of a society of 144 members, divided into three classes: (1) positive sciences, (2) political sciences, and (3) literature and art. The First Consul reorganised the society as four classes: (1) science, (2) literature, (3) ancient literature, (4) fine arts. Under this form the Restoration found nothing to change but the name; and the four classes of the Imperial Institute became once more “academies.” The fifth, that of moral and political sciences, created by the Convention, was re-established in 1832 on the proposition of M. Guizot, Minister of Public Instruction. Independently of their internal economy and their proprietorial rights, the five academies are bound together through the chief secretarial department, the library, and various collections belonging to the five academies in common. The unity of the academies is affirmed, moreover, every year through a formal sitting, of which the presidency falls in turn to each of the five academical presidents. “It is a commonplace,” says M. Auguste Vitu, in his work on Paris, “to run down academies. The five ancient, like the five modern academies, have rendered, all the same, the greatest services to science, and cast a brilliant light on literature and art. This is generally admitted in connection with the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Inscriptions. There is no foreign scientific man, however illustrious, who does not welcome the honour of becoming its associate or correspondent. The Academy of Sciences has taken part in every scientific advance; and to the Academy of Inscriptions, with its adventurous explorers, is due the immense development of Punic, Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian studies. It can be said to have created the science of epigraphy, that resurrection of history from stones. But the utility of the Academy of Fine Arts has been questioned often enough, and the French Academy is the recognised object not only of everyone’s ambition, but also, and above all, of everyone’s ridicule and satire; especially – if not exclusively – on the part of men of letters… Whoever be elected to the French Academy, the election is sure to meet with much literary disapproval. The scientific men are accused of ignoring literature, and the dukes of being unable to spell. If, on the other hand, the Academy chooses a dramatist, a novelist, a journalist, or a critic, journalism is sure to ask why so-and-so was elected – my associate, my friend, perhaps – and not myself. These condemnations have weakened neither the authority nor the glory of the French Academy; they have, perhaps, even preserved it, by diminishing in its secret councils the influence of coteries. The idea of Cardinal Richelieu in creating it was to maintain the unity of the French language, and consequently of France, while giving to talent equal distinction with rank, birth, and official service.”

To pass once more from the Institute to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, this important social and historical district is bounded on the east by the ancient ditch or moat of Paris, now represented by the Rue Mazarine (formerly Rue de Nesle), the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, and the Rue Monsieur le Prince.

The Rue Mazarine – one of the most interesting streets on the left hank of the Seine, and, indeed, in all Paris – occupies an important place in connection with the French stage. On the present site of Nos. 12 and 14, Rue Mazarine corresponds at the back with No. 13, Rue de Seine. Here Arnold Mestayer, citizen of Paris and captain of the hundred musketeers of the town, under Henry IV., had built a house and tennis-court, and here, on the 12th of September, 1643, a few days after the death of King Louis XIII., a company of young men of honourable birth, brought together by friendship and a passionate love of the dramatic art, rented from the heirs of Arnold Mestayer the house and the court attached to it.

There, too, was opened, in the last days of the year, a new theatre for tragedy and comedy, in opposition to the royal players of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and under the title of L’illustre Théâtre. Among the members of this remarkable company may be mentioned the two Béjards, Madeleine and Geneviève, and Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who had not yet taken the surname of Molière. The tennis-court still existed in 1818; and it was not pulled down until about 1830, when space was wanted for the enlargement of the street. The old house where Molière and; his companions used to live is still in existence, numbered 10 in the Rue Mazarine and 11 in the Rue de Seine, by the side of a haberdasher’s shop, to the sign of The Tennis Court. A commemorative tablet marks the spot where once stood the Illustre Théâtre – a name it was one day really to deserve, from the fact that one of the least important members of its company, considered as an actor, was soon afterwards to show himself the greatest dramatist that France had produced. Another tablet in the same street – No. 42 – marks the ground once occupied by another tennis-court, which, in 1669, was let to the Abbé Perrin and several associates, with Cambert, the composer, among them, who had obtained from the king the right or privilege of establishing at Paris an operatic theatre. The opening performance took place on the 19th of May, 1671. A lyric drama, called Pomone, written by Perrin, and set to music by Cambert, was produced. Cardinal Mazarin had introduced Italian opera into Paris in 1645, and the first French opera, entitled, Akbar, King of Mogul, words and music by the Abbé Mailly, was brought out the year following in the episcopal palace of Carpentras, under the direction of Cardinal Bichi, Urban VIII.’s legate in France. The second French opera was La Pastorale en Musique, words by Perrin, music by Cambert, which was privately represented at Issy; and the Pomone, given at Paris in 1671, was only the third work of the kind. Pomone was followed at the new Lyric Theatre by a so-called “tragedy-ballet,” which is remarkable as having been the joint product of Molière and Corneille, the two greatest dramatists of France. It may here be mentioned that a privilege for an academy of music had been ceded a hundred years before by Charles IX. to Antoine de Baif, the word academy being used as an equivalent for accademia, the Italian for concert. Perrin’s licence seems to have been a renewal, as to form, of de Baif’s; and thus originated the eminently absurd title which the chief operatic theatre of Paris has since retained.

After a time Molière’s company was, by order of the king, combined with two others – the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and that of the Marais; and this reduction of the three companies into one constituted the Comédie Française, which has now had a glorious existence of two centuries. Before settling down finally into its present abode at the Palais Royal end of the Rue Richelieu, the Comédie Française, or Théâtre Français – for the two names equally belong to it – had a varied history, and wandered about Paris from quarter to quarter and from street to street. Its first abodes seem to have been far less solidly constructed than our ancient national theatres of Drury Lane or Covent Garden; and in 1770 the famous company, finding itself in a building so dilapidated that its fall was daily imminent, the king granted it hospitality in one of the wings of the Tuileries Palace. He at the same time took steps to provide for it a permanent home; and with that view bought for 3,000,000 livres (francs) the ground occupied by the Hôtel de Condé, where a new theatre was to be constructed. Here the Théâtre Français gave its performances throughout the first phases of the Revolution, until, on the 3rd of September, 1793, after the performance of a play founded on Richardson’s Pamela, the Committee of Public Safety closed the house and arrested alike the author of the piece and the actors who had performed in it. The new playhouse was reopened under the successive titles of Theatre of Equality and Theatre of the People, with a portion of the company – which had been saved by the death of Robespierre. Classical names were now in fashion, and the theatre, on being reopened in 1797, was called, in memory of Athens, the Odéon. Its performances, however, were not successful, and after a wretched existence of a few months it closed in 1799. When it seemed to have taken a new lease of life it was destroyed by fire, the origin of which was never explained. Reconstructed in 1807, it was opened under the title of Théâtre de l’Impératrice, and was looked upon as a supplementary house to the Théâtre Français, with the right of playing comedy, but not tragedy. By way of compensation, it was permitted to give representations of opera-bouffe. The Odéon had once more been officially designated the second Théâtre Français, when a new fire destroyed it on the 20th of February, 1818. Louis XVIII. ordered the immediate reconstruction of the house, and, on its completion, put the second Théâtre Français on the same footing as the first, placing at its free disposal all the works of the classical repertory.

Since this time the Odéon has, in a literary and dramatic sense, undergone all kinds of metamorphoses. It became first a lyrical theatre, with such pieces as Robin des Bois– corresponding, no doubt, to our Robin of the Wood, or Robin Hood; this name having been given to a strange adaptation by Castil-Blaze, with interpolations by the adapter, of Weber’s Der Freischütz; and under Louis Philippe the Odéon was the headquarters of Italian opera.

At present the Odéon is definitely classed as the second Théâtre Français, in which character it pays no rent and enjoys an annual subvention of 100,000 francs. No theatre during the last seventy years has rendered greater services to dramatic art. Here have been represented pieces by Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny, Balzac, George Sand, Émile Augier, Octave Feuillet, Méry, Léon Gozlan, Theodore Barrière, Édmond Gondinet, Hippolyte Lucas, Michel Carré, Frédéric Soulié, François Ponsard, François Coppée, Alphonse Daudet, and a hundred others. The house, moreover, has formed a great number of superior artists, who were, one after the other, claimed by the Comédie Française. Of the many admirable pieces produced at the Odéon, full and interesting accounts may be found in the collected feuilletons of Jules Janin and of Théophile Gautier.

Nothing, however, more brilliant has been written on the artistic and literary period represented by the dramatic triumphs of the Odéon than the letters from Paris written from time to time between the years 1832 and 1848 by Heinrich Heine.

Heine is known to the English public chiefly through the French versions of his works; which, as they have been produced by the author himself, convey his thoughts quite as accurately, and his style almost as accurately, as the German originals. His “Pictures of Travel” (“Reisebilder”), a volume of poems, two volumes on Germany which have, of course, taken the place of the now defunct work of Mme. de Stael, some dramas or plans for dramas, which were published in the Revue des deux Mondes, the “Livre de Lazare,” which appeared in the same periodical, and “Lutèce,” are perhaps the most important of those of Heine’s writings which have been reproduced in French. The “Buch der Lieder,” too, has been done into French prose by Heine himself, with the aid of his friend Gerard de Nerval, who in his youth, under the name of Gerard, made a translation of “Faust” which satisfied, or at least pleased, even Goethe himself. These Lieder, together with the “Reisebilder,” were Heine’s favourite productions; and independently of the life that is in them, many of them are further assured of continued popularity by reason of Schubert’s having coupled them with some of his most beautiful music.

Heine was a poet and satirist by nature. Endowed with great analytical power, and educated in Germany, he of course took a pleasure in studying the operations of the human mind; but he was not a philosopher by temperament, which is sufficiently proved by the fact that he not only refrained from attaching himself to any particular system of philosophy in a country where he had so many to select from, but that he did not even take the trouble to invent a system for himself. He comprehended philosophy, liked painting, loved music, and spoke of all science and art in the spirit of a poet. He explained Victor Cousin and Pierre Leroux, grew pathetic over the fate of Léopold Robert, and became enthusiastic in his admirable descriptions of the performances of Ernst and Paganini, of Grisi and Mario.

Heine’s poetry is principally remarkable for its fantastic character and for its warmth of colour; accordingly, there are certain points of resemblance between the German poet and Théophile Gautier, only there is soul in the verse of Heine, whereas in that of Gautier we find nothing but a glorification of the senses and an absolute worship of form. Goethe, in his later years, is imagined by the enraptured Gautier sitting, passionless, on a marble throne, looking upon the whole of creation as the development of a superior form of art. Indeed, according to the Gautier school, life and death are nothing compared with the interests of art. Art is great, and life is unimportant; paganism is to be revered on account of its marble temples; poverty is to be admired for its beggar-boys by Murillo; the Millennium is objectionable because it will produce no subjects for dramatic literature. Heine, on the contrary, who, in addition to the skill of the artist, possessed the heart of a man, was willing to sacrifice all art and all poetry – his own, to begin with – if, in any scheme for alleviating the sufferings of the poorer classes, such a sacrifice should appear inevitable. This feeling is shown generally throughout his writings. “Unless,” he says, “I deny the premise, that all men have the right to eat, I am forced to admit it in all its consequences… Let justice be done… Let the old system be broken up, in which innocence has perished, in which egotism has prospered, in which man has been trafficked in by man… And blessed be the grocer who will one day make my poetry into paper bags, and fill them with coffee and snuff for the poor good old women who, in our present world of injustice, have perhaps had to deprive themselves of all such comforts.”

To know the Paris of half a century ago it is only, indeed, necessary to study the “Lutèce” of Heinrich Heine, in which the Paris of the best part of Louis Philippe’s reign is portrayed in the most life-like, the most brilliant style. The sketches, the anecdotes, the criticism – all full of the Heinean verve and irony – form the best portion of the book, which is deficient, perhaps, in the description (if we except personal description) on which Heine, without adequate reason, was inclined to pride himself. His poems, his travels, and his miniature dramas are crowded with fantastic thoughts, which are of course presented in fantastic forms; but he will always be remembered by his ideas rather than by his images; and when he states, in his “Reisebilder,” that, owing to the prodigality of German writers in the matter of thoughts, he finds it more profitable to cultivate the production of pictures, one would think, were it not for the very title of the work, that he was indulging in irony at the expense of his readers.

As a satirist Heine is first of all remarkable for his irony, which is always masterly and which sometimes reaches the diabolical. He admits that even in his most amiable moments the “caresses of his Teutonic paws sometimes inflicted a wound”; and if he scratches like a cat in play, it is certain that he tears in earnest like a tiger. He seizes his victim by the neck, and either skins him with his delicate observation or scalps him with his unerring sarcasm. On great occasions he resorts to deliberate analysis, or rather anatomy; when, after a very few pages, the patient finds himself lying dissected at the end of a chapter, with the merciless satirist grinning at his remains.

In the last chapter of the Reisebilder, speaking of the misfortunes of the German emigrants, Heine gives an anecdote of an artist who, on being requested to paint a golden angel on a signboard, replied that he would rather paint a red lion; that he was accustomed to them, and that even if he painted a golden angel it would look like a red lion all the same. “The words of this painter,” said Heine, “reply beforehand to the objections which may be made to my book… It was not any vain caprice which made me quit all that was dear to me, all that charmed me and smiled upon me in my native land. There more than one being loved me – my mother, for instance. And yet I left it without knowing why – I left it because I was obliged to do so. It is only in the winter that we become fully penetrated with the beauties of the spring; the love of liberty is a flower which grows in prison; and in the same way the love of the German fatherland commences at the German frontier – above all, at sight of German misery on a foreign soil… I have now before me the letter of a friend who is dead, and in which the following passage occurs: ‘I never was aware that I loved my country so much. I was in the position of a man who had never been taught by physiology the value of his blood. The blood is taken from him, and the man falls. That was indeed the case. Germany is ours, and that is why I felt suddenly broken down and ill at the sight of those emigrants, of those great rivers of blood which flow from the wounds of our country and lose themselves in the deserts of Africa.’ … The golden colours of the angel have since that time entirely dried up on my palette, and all that remains upon it in a liquid state is a raw red colour, which looks like blood, and with which nothing but red lions can be painted. Accordingly, my next book will be purely and simply a red lion; for which I beg the kind public to pardon me by reason of the confession now made.”

Heine, during his prolonged stay in Paris, where he was adopted and became naturalised, saw all the new operas and most of the new pictures; attended the meetings of the Institute; abused the polka, then just invented; discussed the Eastern Question, and tried to decide whether it was more probable that England and Russia would declare war against France, or that France and Russia would declare war against England; calculated Philippe’s chances of remaining on the throne, considered the rival merits of Thiers and Guizot, and generally criticised everyone and everything with which he was brought in contact. He was on friendly terms with George Sand, Meyerbeer, Rothschild, Balzac, Victor Cousin, Spontini, and Alfred de Musset; and he has given elaborate portraits of some of these celebrities, while he has written something characteristic of each. If he was at any time personally acquainted with Victor Hugo, all intimacy between the two must certainly have ceased after Heine’s murderous attack upon the great French poet: – “As all the French writers possess taste, the total absence of this quality in Victor Hugo struck his compatriots as a sign of originality and genius. He is essentially cold, as is the devil, according to the assertions of witches – cold and icy even in his most passionate effusions; his enthusiasm is only a phantasmagoria, a piece of calculation devoid of love; for he loves nothing but himself – he is an egoist, or, worse still, a Hugoist. In spite of his imagination and his wit, he has the awkwardness of a parvenu or a savage.” In another place we are told that Hugo’s studied passion and artificial warmth suggest “fried ice” – an edible antithesis prepared by the Chinese, which consists of little balls of ice dipped into a particular kind of batter, and forthwith fried and swallowed.

Rothschild is said to be the best possible political thermometer; and he is praised for the genial if slightly patronising manner in which he famillionairement addresses his friends. “Indeed, it might be affirmed,” says Heine, still full of the thermometrical idea, “that he possesses the talent of the frog for indicating fair and foul weather, were it not that this comparison might be considered somewhat disrespectful; and certainly he is a man who must be respected, if only on account of the respect he inspires in the greater number of those who approach him. I love to visit him at his bank, where I have the opportunity of observing men of all classes and all religions. Gentiles as well as Jews bow, incline, and prostrate themselves before him. They turn, and stoop, and bend their backs nearly double, in a manner which the most talented acrobat might envy. I have seen some persons tremble on approaching him as if they had touched a voltaic battery. Even when standing outside the door many of them are seized with a quivering veneration, such as Moses felt on Mount Horeb… His private room is, indeed, a most remarkable place, and awakes sublime thoughts and feelings – like the aspect of the ocean, of the starry heavens, of mountains or of boundless forests. It teaches me the littleness of man and the greatness of God. For money is the god of our age, and Rothschild is his prophet.”

As the Louvre is associated with the monarchy and Notre Dame with the Episcopacy, so the Faubourg St. Germain is associated with the ancient French nobility. It is interesting to know that St. Germain, the holy man to whom the nobiliary quarter (there are “aristocratic” quarters elsewhere in Paris) owes its name, was himself of noble birth. Little is recorded of him except that he performed miracles, which the inhabitants of the district bearing his name have failed to do, and that, like the ancient nobility of France at the period of the Revolution, he visited England and stayed there some time. The church of St. Germain des Prés was one of the principal landmarks on the left bank of the Seine in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when the Institute and the church just named formed two important centres on the left bank of the Seine. The Faubourg St. Germain, or simply “the Faubourg,” as its exclusive inhabitants love to call it, was scarcely known, however, by any such name until the time of the Revolution or even later, when it emigrated in a mass to England, or in some cases to Russia. The German courts, too, offered for a time a favourite place of retirement until Germany was invaded by the Republican armies of France.

“The emigration” is usually attributed to the excesses of the Revolutionists, especially during the Reign of Terror; but as a matter of fact it began in 1789, the first examples being given by members of the royal family. The emigration of the French nobility may indeed be said not to have been caused by the Reign of Terror, but in a measure to have produced it. This now seems to be supported in a certain measure by dates. After the 14th of July the Count of Artois, the Condés, the Contis, the Polignacs, the Broglies, the Vaudreuils, the Lambescs, and others, hurried abroad in order to band together the enemies of France, and to prepare the invasion of the country. While the Count of Artois was intriguing on all sides, Condé, installed at Worms, surrounded himself with a body of fatuous noblemen, the nucleus of his future army, adopted a rebellious attitude, replied with contempt to the invitations of the National Assembly, and organised plots in the eastern provinces. In 1792 the king himself would have emigrated and thrown himself into the arms of foreigners, in the hope that they would subdue France and restore the ancient régime. He was, as everyone knows, arrested at Varennes. But his brother, the Count of Provence, succeeded in quitting France, and at Brussels prepared the celebrated declaration of Pilnitz. At the same time a crowd of nobles left France to furnish recruits to the Prince de Condé. Coblenz was full to overflowing with emigrants, whose manœuvres were in no way affected by the fact that the king had himself accepted the constitution. The army of the emigrating princes was being openly organised. It was to be composed of three army corps: one commanded by Condé, which was to operate in Alsace; another commanded by the princes of the blood, who were to enter France through Lorraine, in company with the Prussians, and march upon Paris; and a third commanded by the Prince de Bourbon, which was to act in the provinces of the north. Later on special regiments of émigrés were formed, to which the names of Rohan, Damas, Salm, “Loyal Emigrants,” etc., were given. The Viscount de Mirabeau, brother to the orator, formed a legion of his own, whose soldiers wore a black uniform adorned with death’s-heads, and whose disorderly conduct is said to have been such that the corps was not allowed to form part of the Austrian army, to which it had originally been attached.

Thus, long before the war, there were masses of emigrants who adopted from their foreign posts of observation a menacing attitude towards France. Many noble families left France simply from fear; but most of the émigrés, when they had once reached foreign lands, did not scruple to take part in hostile enterprises against France. Invitations to return were addressed to the emigrants by various assemblies; without the least probability, it must be admitted, of their being accepted. Then laws were passed by which the property of the absentees was confiscated, and they themselves threatened with death should they reappear in France without due authorisation. As a matter of fact, the émigrés fought against France, in concert with the invading troops, for the most part as volunteers, though some are said to have received pay from the foreign foe. They had boasted of their ability and readiness to conquer revolutionary France with postillions’ whips, and they had fixed beforehand the day and hour of their entry into Paris. Driven back by the Republican armies, they were mad with humiliation and rage. The King of Prussia abruptly dismissed those who had entered his service, and gradually, as new victories were gained by the Republic, they found themselves expelled from Brussels, Florence, Turin, Berlin, Switzerland, and other asylums, retreating almost exclusively to England. When nearly all their legions had been dissolved, a certain number of them remained in the pay of foreign sovereigns. But many stayed without any resource. A strange sight was then seen: the whole order of nobility, and the most brilliant nobility in Europe, some thirty thousand persons, including the members of the priesthood, fallen to the condition of beggars or hangers-on. Sad expiation for the treason of those who had borne arms against their native land.

In the first days of the emigration the French nobility continued to lead a life of luxury and pleasure. When their last resources had been exhausted, they had to hold out their hands for such alms as the coalition would give them. The name of émigré became a synonym for “poor devil” and parasite. A few of the most fortunate of the refugees had preserved private resources, but the great majority were in a sad condition of poverty. Beaumarchais has described the misery of those who had sought asylum at Hamburg, where he helped them to the best of his power, though he himself was suffering from straitened means. It was no uncommon sight to see Knights of St. Louis, gentlemen who had ridden in the king’s carriages, asking for alms at the corner of the streets. Chateaubriand has drawn a striking picture of his own poverty and that of his companions at this trying time. “I was devoured by hunger,” he writes; “sucked pieces of linen which I had steeped in water; chewed grass and paper. When I passed before a baker’s shop I felt the greatest torture. On a cold winter’s evening I stood two hours in front of a shop of dried fruits and smoked meats, devouring with my eyes whatever I saw. I could have eaten not only the comestibles, but the boxes and baskets which held them.”

In 1793 the English Government thought of offering the emigrants settlements in Canada. The Empress Catherine of Russia, who had behaved generously to the small number rich enough to find their way to her distant dominions, proposed to establish six thousand of them on the shores of the Sea of Azof, under the command of Condé. In London a certain number of the émigrés received from the English Government one shilling a day as subsidy. It was very little, but many received nothing at all. Tired of having to choose between living on alms and dying of hunger, numerous émigrés determined at last to seek some regular occupation. Duchesses and marchionesses were now seen in charge of haberdashers’ and perfumers’ shops; of cafés and other establishments of the kind. The Count de Vieuville became a messenger, or “commissionaire” as he would now be called; the Chevalier de Lanty a servant; Madame de la Londe a shopwoman; Mlle. de St. Marceau a shop-girl; Madame de la Martinière a dealer in second-hand clothes; a well-known marquis an actor (not in those days considered a very gentlemanly profession); the Chevalier d’Anselme a waiter; the Marquis de Montbazet a lamplighter; while others turned themselves into hairdressers, barbers, and dancing-masters. One émigré, mentioned by Brillat-Savarin, used to dress salads, and, what was still more remarkable, obtained a guinea for every salad he dressed.

A few exercised more lucrative functions as secret political agents. Among these may be mentioned Count d’Antraigues, the husband of Madame de St. Huberty, the famous singer, who, with his wife, was assassinated at Barnes by an irritated domestic. The Count had rendered important services to the Coalition, and claimed to have revealed to the English Government the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit.

On the outbreak of the Revolution most of the great families who, collectively, may be said to compose the Faubourg St. Germain, had left France, when a special law against “emigrants” was passed, striking through their property those who, had they remained, would have suffered in person. Some members, however, of the ancient nobility stayed in Paris throughout the Reign of Terror, among whom may in particular be mentioned that Baron Lézardière who saved, or did his best to save, the heroic Abbé Edgeworth, when the last confessor of Louis XVI. was, or believed himself to be, in imminent danger of his life. “The friend,” wrote the abbé to his brother, “whose name must be for ever sacred to you, since to him your brother owes his life, was the Baron de Lézardière, a nobleman of high character, advanced in years, and then living in opulence, who not only received me with open arms, but, slighting all the dangers to which he exposed himself and family by giving hospitality to such a guest, insisted on my regarding his house as my own, seeking for no other place of refuge; so that I received during those months every attention that the most delicate friendship could invent, and though the family was large and the servants numerous, my existence was hardly perceived out-of-doors, so well was the secret kept. I had not been long in this charming solitude when I received information from Paris that at two or three different clubs, and especially at the Jacobins’, my head was mentioned as the only atonement equal to my guilt of having openly professed my attachment for the ‘tyrant.’ This was alarming news indeed. But a journalist (friend or foe) having announced some days afterwards that I had got safe over to England, and had there had frequent conferences not only with the principal emigrants, but with Mr. Pitt himself, this idle story was credited by all, and I was completely forgotten.

“However, the fiction, though favourable to me in one sense, distressed me much in other respects, as it obliged me to conceal myself more cautiously than ever, for had I been discovered in France after such a report, I must have been, in the eyes of Government, no less than an emissary from the court of England, an agent to the emigrants, and an emigrant myself – all titles that made my case the blacker by adding to my former guilt. Hence I was obliged to keep within doors more than ever; nor could I venture out to Paris but by night. Then I dared but to remain a day or two at a time, and though my house should have been open to all, since to all I owed myself, few people knew where it was or how to get admittance into it. It is true that from my solitude in the country I entertained a large correspondence with the town; but all kinds of business could not be transacted by letters, and I soon perceived that the diocese committed to my care, far from prospering in my hands, suffered materially from my absence.

“In this distressing situation, and really not knowing what part to take, I wrote a long letter to the archbishop, informing him of all and demanding his advice; but, unfortunately for me, my letter, though directed to one of the commanding officers upon the frontier (who favoured, underhand, my correspondence), was seized, opened, and sent back to the Comité de Salut Public. Soon after, the house of M. de Lézardière, where I lay concealed, was assaulted in mid-day, and the whole family, supposing the storm to be directed against me alone, fell at my knees, requesting I would provide for my own safety by a timely flight. I yielded, though indeed with some reluctance, to their entreaties, and casting into the fire all my papers, I escaped by a back road into the fields, where I remained until it was dark. But how bitter was my grief when, coming back at night, I was informed that my valuable friend had been carried off to prison with his youngest son and eldest daughter, and that upon the road to Paris, three different times, the bloodthirsty gang had held counsel whether it was not best to shorten the business by murdering them upon the spot. My mind was relieved a few days after (at least in some degree) by the positive assurances given me that amongst the questions put to the three prisoners, upon their arrival in Paris, not a word had been said about me, which clearly proved that I had not been the innocent cause of their misfortune; but my friend was not the less in danger (for prison and death now began to be synonymous terms in France), and my papers were lost for ever.” This accident did not prove fatal to M. de Lézardière, for after ten days’ confinement he was dismissed. “As to my papers, those I regret the most, and shall in all probability ever lament, were the letters written to me from the Temple by Madame Elizabeth. I have already hinted to you (but this to you and no other mortal, as the time for revealing is not yet come) that notwithstanding the unrelenting vigilance of her guardians, this unfortunate princess found a means to correspond with me from time to time, and to take my advice on many critical occurrences during her imprisonment. These letters were conveyed to me in a ball of silk, and all measures so prudently taken that the correspondence, though at last suspected, was never found out entirely. I had already destroyed, in one of my critical moments, all those she had written to me upon different subjects before her confinement, nor was I sensible of the loss, as she was still alive to repair it; but when I now reflect that she is no more, and that her last pages, bathed with her tears, and painting in so lively colours her resignation and her courage, are now lost for posterity, I cannot but lament it as a public misfortune.

“But to return to my subject: the poor officer who had favoured my correspondence with the Archbishop of Paris was soon called to an account for the anonymous letter that had been put into the post under his cover; and the affair being likely to take a very serious turn, not, indeed, for him, as he could plead ignorance of the contents, but for the author, whose existence in France could be no longer doubted, all my friends joined in requesting I would retire without delay to some remote province. I had only time to see my poor mother, whom I embraced for the last time, and to provide, as well as the circumstances would permit, for the government of the diocese. These two duties fulfilled, I got into a carriage, and under the name of Essex I got off to Montigny, where M. le Comte de Roche Chouart received me with the greatest kindness in his castle.

“Here my first business was to write to the faithful agent of Madame Elizabeth, giving her at full length my direction, in case she had any silk balls to send me. This letter was directed to her house, and signed ‘Essex’; but no sooner was it put into the post office than I was informed that the very person to whom I wrote had been arrested a few days ago, after I had left Paris, for favouring a clandestine correspondence of one of the royal prisoners; and also that a friend of mine, being cited before the Comité de Salut Public, and questioned about the letter I had written to the Archbishop, had inadvertently discovered the name under which I was endeavouring to conceal my existence. This was fatal indeed; for the letter I had just cast into the post office, being directed to a prisoner, must, of course, go to the Comité de Salut Public; and there the Comité found, without further inquiry, not only my handwriting to compare it with that of the anonymous letter written to the Archbishop, but my name full at length, and every means of discovering me, given by myself. I leave you to judge, my dear Ussher, into what perplexity I was cast by this accident. But Providence looked down upon my distress; and after a whole week spent in the most cruel anxiety, I at last had news from the person herself, informing me that the affair had been hushed up, and that my letter had got safe.

“I pass over in silence many incidents of less importance which I met with during the four months I spent with M. de Roche Chouart. I must now relate the circumstance which obliged me to fly, and to seek for safer concealment. The Comité de Salut Public having got hold of the name under which I concealed myself in France, caused an article, relative to I know not what correspondence, supposed to have existed between Louis XVI. and the King of Prussia, to be inserted in the public papers. The article was insignificant in itself; but the author, in order to obtain more credit for his story, took care to tell the public that he was indebted for the anecdote to Mr. Essex, the last friend to Louis XVI. – Mr. Essex, a person who must have been informed of all that had passed. This paper came to Montigny, where I was publicly known, and was there reputed to be an English gentleman of small fortune, travelling for his private business, or for his health; but this resemblance of names, and I know not what in my person, when nicely viewed, that betrayed a clergyman, soon gave rise to other thoughts. During the first days I paid but little attention to what was whispered about, hoping that the author and the anecdote would soon be forgotten; but as I was thus endeavouring to tranquillise myself, a man advanced in years, and of most noble appearance, came up to the castle, and inquired for Mr. Essex; he was introduced, and, all witnesses being removed, he said, ‘Sir, your existence in this house is no secret to the public, nor has it hitherto occasioned the least suspicion, as you had not been supposed to be a man of importance; but a paragraph inserted lately in the papers is now the subject of all conversation, and all eyes in the neighbourhood are fixed upon you. Be so good as to read the article, and if in it you behold your own features, oh! my dear sir, give leave to a man who was your friend before he had the honour of seeing you, to request of you to provide for your own safety by a timely flight, for here you will be infallibly arrested.’