Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 1

At the death of Clotaire, the monarchy was again divided into four kingdoms, those of Paris, Soissons, Metz, and Burgundy,—soon reduced to three by the death of Charibert, King of Paris. The Burgondes were under the sway of Gontran, the Austrasien and Eastern Franks under Sigebert, and the mingled population of Franks and Gallo-Romans which were called Neustriens, or the Westerners, under Chilpéric. Aquitaine was divided between the three, and Paris was already of so much importance that none of them was willing to yield her to the others, and it was agreed that no one should enter the city without the consent of the other two. The royal authority was weaker in Austrasie, now Belgium and Lorraine, the petty chiefs stronger, and the manners and customs more Germanic and barbaric; in Neustrie, now Ile-de-France, Normandy, etc., there were more ancient cities, mere remnants of the Roman civilization and vestiges of imperial administration. To the political rivalry to which this disparity gave rise was added the personal animosity of the two queens, Frédégonde and Brunehaut.

While Sigebert was fighting the Avars, barbarians from Asia, on the eastern frontier, his two brothers amused themselves by pillaging his western provinces. Chilpéric had taken, for a most unwilling bride, a younger sister of Brunehaut, Galswinthe, daughter of a king of the Visigoths, notwithstanding the fierce jealousy of his mistress, or his first wife, Frédégonde; her empire was, however, soon regained, and Galswinthe was strangled in her sleep. Brunehaut incited her husband, Sigebert, to a war of vengeance; Paris was taken, and Chilpéric only saved from ruin by his wife, who despatched two assassins against the King of the Neustriens. The rights of inheritance of her son, Clotaire, were impaired by the existence of two sons of Chilpéric by a former marriage. One of them, Mérovée, imprudently married the widowed Brunehaut, and his step-mother sent him to rejoin Sigebert. The Bishop of Rouen, Prétextat, who had already narrowly escaped with his life, in Paris, from the terrible queen, had blessed this marriage; he was killed on the steps of the altar while celebrating mass. Clovis, the brother of Mérovée, followed; then one of his sisters, and Audovère, the mother. The king left Paris for Chelles one afternoon, for the chase; he had previously entered his wife's apartment while she was occupied with her toilette and struck her playfully on the shoulder with a light wand,—the queen mistook him for another, and answered, without turning round: "Tout beau! Landry," and other words of great familiarity. Then she perceived her error, and the king went out without a word; as he dismounted, on his return, some one slipped a knife into his heart, "and no one thought it worth while to run after the murderer."

Charibert, the short-lived king of Paris, had in his royal palace a serf named Leudaste, who, when a fellow-servant, Markowefe, attracted the monarch's favor and was made queen, contrived to ingratiate himself with her to such an extent that he was made grand equerry and, later, Comte de Tours. In his administration he proved himself capable of every outrage; but the death of Charibert compelled him to seek refuge with Chilpéric, and he endeavored to win Frédégonde's favor as he had Markowefe's. When Tours fell into the hands of Chilpéric, in 574, Leudaste was re-established in his office and resumed his old practices; two years later, upon a petition addressed to the king by the bishop, Saint Grégoire de Tours, he was dismissed. Thereupon he hatched a plot against the bishop and against the queen who had not interposed to save him; he declared to the king that the former had conspired to deliver Tours to the King of Austrasie, and that the queen had done him an even greater wrong, and he offered to produce witnesses. But his case fell to the ground; the king, threatened with excommunication by the clergy for bringing false charges against the revered prelate, threw all the responsibility upon Leudaste, and that individual, diligently sought for, had prudently disappeared.

He was accordingly solemnly excommunicated and declared anathema "from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet." After some two years passed in pillage and debauchery at the head of an organized band of brigands in the domains of Gontran, he obtained permission to return to Tours, and had the audacity to come and seek his pardon at the court of Neustrie. Chilpéric tolerated his presence, but advised him to avoid the queen. As the sovereigns were one day attending mass in the basilica of Paris, Leudaste entered boldly, traversed the crowd, and knelt at the feet of Frédégonde, imploring her forgiveness. The king had him expelled from the church, but, instead of taking warning, he lingered in the shops around the market-place in the Cité, selecting jewels and rich stuffs with which to propitiate the queen; when she issued from the church and saw him, she despatched her guards to arrest him; one of them was wounded, and another gave him a sword-cut over the head; as he fled across the Petit-Pont, he fell and broke his leg. The manner and quality of a torture that should be appropriate for him were carefully discussed by the royal pair; he was tended by eminent physicians that he might be duly strengthened for it; but when Frédégonde learned that gangrene had appeared in his wounds, she had him dragged from his bed, stretched on the pavement with his neck on a great iron bar, and his head crushed by another heavy bar in the hands of the executioner.

After the murder of Chilpéric, the people began to murmur, and the gentle King Gontran, according to Saint Grégoire of Tours, "in order to put an end to the evil custom of killing kings, went one day to a church where all the people were assembled for the mass, commanded silence through a deacon, and said: 'I conjure you, men and women who are here present, keep for me an assured fidelity, and do not kill me as you have lately killed my brothers. Allow me to live at least two or three years, that I may educate my young nephews, for fear that, after my death, it should happen that you should perish with these children, since there will remain of all my family no man strong enough to defend you.'"

Nevertheless, he had the courage to raise doubts as to the legitimacy of Frédégonde's son, Clotaire, and to postpone his baptism till she produced three bishops and three hundred other witnesses in his favor. Brunehaut's son, Childebert, was threatening the queen with an armed force; he and Gontran agreed to be each the other's heir in case they died without children, and on Gontran's death Childebert endeavored to take possession of Clotaire's domains also. Frédégonde had him poisoned: the dreary series of civil war and family murders began again; Clotaire II became in the end sole king of the Franks, and his mother died in her bed, "full of years." Her rival, Brunehaut, less fortunate, betrayed by her own followers, was, by Clotaire's orders, tied naked to the tail of a wild horse and dragged to death.

Such were the manners and customs of the Mérovingians.

There are various accounts of the two patron saints of France and Paris. It is to Grégoire de Tours that we owe our first knowledge of Saint Denis, who, according to his statement, came to preach Christianity in Lutetia in the year 245, with the friar Rustique and the deacon Eleuthère. Dionysius, bishop of the Parisians, he says, full of zeal for the name of Christ, suffered many persecutions, and finally martyrdom. Other historians assign to Saint Martin, rather than to Saint Denis, the glory of having converted the Gauls to Christianity; some place his mission even before the year 100, and the Abbé Hilduin confounds him with Saint Denis the Areopagite. But, according to Grégoire, Denis, Rustique, and Eleuthère were beheaded in the year 272, by order of the préfet Percennius, on a mountain situated near Paris, which accordingly took the name of the Mont des Martyrs (Montmartre). The préfet had given orders to have the bodies thrown into the Seine, but a Roman lady, named Catulla, although not a Christian herself, caused them to be sought for in the night and piously buried in a locality known as Catolocus. Grain was sown over the graves, and when the fury of persecution was passed, they were disinterred and deposited in a tomb.

According to the popular legend (to which the municipal and national authority has given a sort of official sanction by M. Bonnat's very vigorous and realistic presentation on the walls of the Panthéon), after having had his head struck off, the saint arose on his feet, picked it up and walked away, carrying the severed organ in his hands, to the great surprise of the spectators. In this manner he traversed the space of a league, till he came to the spot where his church now stands, the angels meanwhile chanting around him Gloria tibi Domine, and others repeating three times the Alleluia. It was this unusual promenade that gave rise to the well-known proverb that it is only the first step that costs.

In 286 the weight of the Roman yoke and the persecutions of the Christians had become so cruel that there was a rebellion, headed by Salvianus Amandus and Lucius Pomponius Ælianus, who put themselves at the head of the slaves and the colons of Paris and Meaux, were elevated on bucklers, and proclaimed emperors near the site of the present Hôtel de la Ville. To them were speedily joined the bagaudes (insurgents) of the surrounding country, and it required a very serious effort on the part of the Roman troops, under the command of Maximien Hercule, associated with Diocletian in the government of the empire, to restore order.

Sainte-Geneviève, the patron saint of the Parisians, also perpetuated with her legend on the walls of the Panthéon, originally her church but now dedicated to the Grands Hommes of the nation, was born at Nanterre, near Paris, in 422, and guarded in the fields the flocks of her parents, Sévère and Gérontia. She is said to have known Saint Germain d'Auxerre, and to have promised him to devote herself to the service of God; her reputation for sanctity, confirmed by several miracles accomplished, was such that when the city was thrown into a panic by the approach of Attila and his terrible Huns (begotten, it was asserted, in the deserts of Scythia by the union of sorceresses and infernal spirits) her voice was listened to as that of one qualified from on high. Nevertheless, there were certain obstinate ones who doubted her assurances of safety; there was even question of stoning her for false counsel; but she, mounting a little eminence, assured her fellow-citizens that, though Attila was indeed advancing, he would not attack their city; this she stated in the name of God. That was convincing, and, indeed, the dreaded conqueror turned his march toward Orléans, and was preparing to pillage it when he was vanquished by Aëtius and Théodoric.

A second time she came to the rescue of the capital when it was suddenly attacked, in 476, by Childéric at the head of his Franks. His first efforts were directed toward cutting off all supplies by the river, and in this he was so successful that the Parisians speedily found themselves reduced to a diet of fish and roots, with no bread at all. Geneviève was touched by their sufferings, she embarked on a little flotilla of fishermen's boats, and succeeded in escaping through the enemy's lines in the most marvellous manner. Her return was anxiously awaited; for nine days there was no news of her, and the famine grew more cruel; finally, the lookouts on the towers perceived something in the distance on the bosom of the river; it approached; it was she, with eleven vessels filled with provisions of all kinds, of which she herself superintended the distribution. Each one of the nine days had been marked by some miracle, in the pursuance of her object. Monsieur Puvis de Chavannes has recently devoted a large mural painting to this pious legend. Nevertheless, Childéric took the city, in which he dwelt but very little.

Pagan though he was, he partook of the general veneration for the saintly virgin, and could refuse nothing to her earnest entreaties. It was during his reign that she conceived the idea of building a church to Saint Denis on the site of his tomb; by her prayers and entreaties she succeeded in inducing the clergy and the people of Paris to raise the necessary funds, and she commissioned a priest by the name of Genès to construct the edifice. Clovis, son and successor of Childéric, had no less consideration for her, but the basilica which he erected, in connection with his wife Clotilde, and in consequence of his vow made during the war with the Visigoths, was originally dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and did not take the name of Sainte-Geneviève until later. It was completed after his death by Clotilde, who caused to be interred in it the bodies of her spouse and the saint.

The famous châsse (shrine or casket) of Sainte-Geneviève, preserved in the abbey bearing her name which was completed in the reign of Philippe-Auguste, and enriched by successive gifts of various sovereigns, was constantly appealed to during many centuries, taken down, solemnly carried in procession through the streets escorted by barefooted clergy, whenever any of the innumerable evils from the hand of God or man afflicted her good city of Paris.

THE COURT AND THE

UPPER CLASSES

ANY one traversing the handsome, formal garden which now occupies the site of the ancient palace of the Tuileries, official residence of the rulers of France after the red days of the Revolution, may perceive in the midmost of the central alley, directly in the axis of the long vista between Napoleon's two arches of triumph, that of the Carrousel and that of the Place de l'Étoile, an important marble group by the sculptor Mercié, set up on a high pedestal. This monument represents a vanquished and wounded French infantry soldier, with bandaged feet, sinking and clutching for support at the skirts of a robust peasant woman wearing the typical head-dress of Alsace-Lorraine, who snatches the real Chassepot, whitened to imitate marble (furnished by the courtesy of the Minister of War), from his failing grasp. The whiting is wearing away from the real Chassepot, the grime of the Parisian weather is settling into corners of eyes, under noses, etc.; the pathos and sentiment of the work suffer accordingly, and it may be doubted whether any pathetic, or would-be pathetic, work of sculpture is ever really effective, even if wrought by a very clever contemporary French artist. But it is to be noticed that on this national and historic site, in what might be called the physical centre of the nation, the most prominent monument commemorates, not the national glories and triumphs, but a humiliating and overwhelming national disaster. Facing the square of the Carrousel, between the arch and the Louvre, is the much vaster monument of Gambetta in marble and bronze, with long extracts from his orations in the evil days of '71 engraved on the tall shaft which rises behind him,—a most ostentatious commemoration of defeat. Farther west, the great Place de la Concorde is surrounded by handsome pavilions and balustrades, with eight stately, seated female figures of heroic size typifying the principal cities of France. To one of these the traveller's attention is at once directed by the funerary contributions in which she is half smothered,—draped flags, great wreaths and disks of immortelles and black bead-work, similar to those seen on the tombs in the cemeteries, with commemorative inscriptions: "From the Societies of the Inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine;" "14th July, 1898" (the day of the national fête, commemorative of the fall of the Bastile); "France! Souviens toi!" on a huge yellow circle like a life-preserver, and, on a circular disk at the feet of the statue:

This curiously-garnished statue is that representing the city of Strasbourg, which is no longer a French city; and of all the others, which illustrate nothing particularly mortifying or mournful in the national history, no proclamation whatever is made. In the centre of the handsome court-yard of the new and imposing Hôtel de Ville, the statue selected as the central jewel of this écrin, as it were, is Mercié's Gloria Victis, the vanquished here being, again, France. (It should be stated, however, that if any work of contemporary sculpture is worthy of honor and of proud municipal recognition, it is this admirable bronze.)

Many of the great public places in the city of Paris, moreover, commemorate, more or less openly, what might be called the great stains on the history of the nation. The Place de la Concorde is that of the Guillotine, and the Luxor obelisk is the monument of the more than twenty-eight hundred victims beheaded by that axe. The Place de l'Hôtel de Ville was formerly the Place de Grève, famous in all hangmen's annals,—burnings alive, tearings asunder by horses, breakings on the wheel, decapitations, hangings,—from Catherine de Médicis' Huguenot chiefs and the unlucky Comte de Montgomery; Lally-Tollendal, Governor of the Indies; Foulon, contrôleur-général of the finances and his son-in-law, hanged to the street lanterns by the mob, down to the famous regicides and the obscure and ignoble multitude of criminals of all ages. The Place de la Bastile commemorates the fortress-jail of that name,—one of the worst of all jails and one to be discreetly forgotten; the column of July, in the centre of this place, was erected in memory of the victims of the Revolution of 1830. The statue of Henri IV on the Pont-Neuf marks the spot where the Grand Master of the Templars and one of his officers were burned at the stake; on the carrefour of the Observatory, that of Marshal Ney, the locality where that brave soldier was shot by order of the Chamber of Peers; from the little bell-tower at the side of the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, back of the Louvre, the signal was sounded for the Saint Bartholomew. The Châtelet and the Conciergerie were famous prisons; the ruins of the palace on the Quai d'Orsay have been but just removed, to make room for the new depot of the Orléans railway, after having stood since 1871 a most eloquent monument of the excesses of the Commune. It was even proposed to leave the shattered walls of the Tuileries as a permanent record of the follies of an unbridled democracy!

This expansiveness, this frank parading of unseemly things, is supplemented by other public demonstrations of the passion of the hour. For some years after the fall of the Commune the national emotions found solace in stencilling in big letters on every possible wall or fronton or pediment, public or private,—Liberté.Egalité.Fraternité. The harassed citizen of the new republic looked up, or down, or sideways, at this official assurance of the sentiments breathed by all, high or low, and found comfort. Only, the wits of the agitated capital—who perceive some, but by no means all, of the opportunities which their fellow-citizens afford them—took occasion to read this text with the punctuation-mark—(.) point—after each noble word. Point is also the strongest of negations, so that the official declaration of faith was reduced to nullity,—"Liberty, none; Equality, none: Fraternity, not the slightest!"

All this seems to constitute a curious national trait, and in literature, in the daily journals, the observing traveller is again impressed with this unbosoming, which the Parisian himself would probably brand as naïveté if he could perceive it. It flourishes perfectly side by side with his vanity; in fact, it probably has its origin in his vanity. "The Causes of Our Defeat in 1870," under various titles, have furnished and are still furnishing matter for interminable publication. In municipal affairs, the unshakable conviction that Paris is, simply, the only capital in the world does not in the least interfere with frank admissions concerning its limitations, which the least public-spirited villager in other climes would neither believe nor admit. Here, the journalist, the romancer, the historian, find in the most simple human demonstration, if it take place in the capital, something peculiarly and most admirably Parisien. Balzac, e.g., in the Double Famille, if we remember aright, brings two of his characters together late at night in a dusky street; the younger man thinks he recognizes the elder, but is not certain; he therefore approaches him doubtfully "as a Parisian does when he is undecided." This endless and childish delight in everything appertaining to his town, and the accompanying frank indifference to everything, pretty much, outside of it, is, in fact, so well known abroad that it has even brought down upon the Parisian's unconscious head the epithet that he would consider the uttermost of insults—"provincial!" He provincial! he who has invented those two withering words, "the provinces" and "bourgeois."

Nevertheless, this capital of all possible civilizations does not hesitate to admit that it must by all means do all in its power to attract the wealthy tourist of other nations, on whom its prosperity is so largely dependent, especially since it has no longer the attractions of a royal or imperial court to offer. No presentation of the city of Paris at the present day would be complete without documents giving the opinions of its own cultured and intelligent classes on its general characteristics and its most urgent needs. With regard to this question of dependence upon strangers, endless quotations might be cited, and two or three may well be printed here as more valuable contributions to this contemporary history than any speculations by mere foreigners. The Revue Encyclopédique, published weekly by the great house of Larousse, has a column which it devotes to ideas of general interest, underscored, and in this column appeared, in the issue of January 23, 1897, the following communication: "For some time past the Avenue de L'Opéra, at Paris, has been lighted by electricity by means of incandescent lamps placed along the central axis of this great thoroughfare. This very handsome illumination serves only to accentuate more strongly the monotonous melancholy of the double row of commercial establishments the fronts of which are invariably closed at eight o'clock in the evening.... And sorrowful reflections are awakened of the brilliant evenings of thirty years ago, the movement of foreigners along the boulevards, the crowd of promenaders constantly changing before the dazzling show-windows of the end of the Second Empire. Why is not some effort made to revive this brilliant past by creating attractions capable of arousing the curiosity of the Parisians and, above all, of the foreigners? Could not some arrangement be made among all the shop-keepers of the grand boulevards and of the principal adjacent streets (Rue de la Paix, Rue Royale, Avenue de l'Opéra, etc.), that one evening a week be devoted to the exceptional adornment of their establishments?" And the writer goes on to suggest, with Parisian ingenuity, that a jury of artists might even be constituted to decide which display was the most brilliant and the most worthy, and to award suitable recompense. "By this means it is probable that the street and the boulevard would resume their former animation, to the great profit of the trade in articles of luxury, so profoundly affected by the desertion of the foreigners."

In the year of grace, 1898, the Parisian world was greatly agitated by the fact that the Grand Prix de Paris was run at Longchamps on the 5th of June, and that, consequently, the Parisian season was brought to an ending most unreasonably early. These complaints were so insistent that they found voice in the Municipal Council and were brought before the Prefect of the Seine. It was contended that the treaty between the city and the Société d'encouragement of improvement of the equine breed, its lessee at Longchamps, had been violated, inasmuch as the great event had taken place before the middle of June. But the Société d'encouragement proved conclusively, by the terms of its lease from the city, that the date and the regulations of the race were left to its own judgment, and that, in point of fact, it had always taken place before the 15th of June. "But that which it is above all important to observe is, that the date of the Grand Prix is determined, not according to the whim of the Société d'encouragement, but indeed by that of the English Derby, which regulates also that of the French Derby. It is necessary, in fact, that the same horses should take part in the three trials. The English, having set the date of their Derby this year on the 26th of May, the French Derby, which precedes it, had to be run on the 22d of May, and the Grand Prix de Paris, which occurs regularly ten days after the English Derby, could only be run on Sunday, the 5th of June. It is impossible, moreover, in any way to postpone this date, for the reason that the horses cannot be maintained in racing condition for any longer period of time."

Notwithstanding this conclusive reasoning, Le Temps, one of the most eminent and dignified journals of the capital, devoted a long article in its largest type, two days afterward, to the duty of the Conseil municipal in the matter. "This date is not, in fact, a matter of indifference to the interests of the city. It is, or it is considered to be, the moment selected for a general exodus of foreigners and even of Parisians in comfortable circumstances toward the seaside and other rural resorts. The shop-keepers therefore consider that they have cause for complaint if this moment arrive too early. The municipal councillors who have constituted themselves the spokesmen of their griefs have demanded and obtained a vote on a resolution having for its object the designation of the third Sunday in June, at the earliest, as the date of this equine solemnity.

"Whether this date may or may not be adopted, it seems to us that the interest which it awakens is entitled to unqualified commendation. The Municipal Council in no way goes outside of its proper sphere; on the contrary, it is well within it, when it concerns itself with the general interests of the city of Paris, when it seeks for means of retaining in it and attracting to it the largest possible number of foreigners and of very wealthy individuals whose presence and whose habits have for result the circulation of a great deal of money and the constant vivifying of the Parisian industries, which are, for the greater part, the industries of luxury. The Municipal Council understands perfectly that this question of the sojourn of strangers amongst us is in the highest degree an economical question which concerns the labor and the wages of the Parisian workmen, as it does also the general prosperity of the finances of the city. Therefore, far from criticising it for deliberating upon this question and others of a similar nature, we should rather regret that it has not turned its attention upon them with more constancy and consecutiveness.

"It is not, in fact, a simple matter of detail like that which has occupied the Municipal Council, which can ameliorate or even guarantee the situation of Paris in so far as it is a rendezvous or a residence for foreigners. These will not continue to come here and to remain here unless their sojourn is made agreeable and peaceful for them. This is something which should be considered, and it is a question which is closely connected with the general functions of our ædiles. It is not to be imagined that with a few indirect measures this foreign colony, so essentially susceptible and flitting by nature, can be constrained to remain among us and expend its money against its own will. These are not birds that can be put in a cage, and, above all, retained there. Even those whose passion for the races is well developed will easily find a method of being present at the Grand Prix without domiciling themselves among us. They will only pass through; we shall see them no more. The essential point is, therefore, to watch with the utmost care, every day, that Paris shall never lose in their eyes its prestige and its attractions. From this will ensue, if we wish to deduce from it, practical regulations for the administration of the great city."

And the editor goes on to regret that the municipal authorities, so far from occupying themselves exclusively with these details of public hygiene, street lighting, facility of transport, etc., should so frequently expend themselves upon "violent discussions of politique pure." "Is it not true that in what concerns the general progress of urban life, whether it be the question of transportation, or that of gas, or that of electricity, we are behind, and very greatly behind, the condition which has been attained in London, in New York, in Berlin, and even in Geneva and in some of our cities of the provinces?" These reflections appeared to be especially opportune on the evening of the election which was to replace in the Municipal Council those members who were about to leave it for the Chamber of Deputies. "The electors who are interested in the aspect under which the city will present itself to foreigners in 1900, at the moment of the Exposition Universelle, will not allow to escape this opportunity of manifesting their sentiments upon this subject.... All those who labor to augment its prosperity accomplish much more—be it known—for the amelioration of the condition of the work-people than the dreamers of national confiscations and of obligatory collectivism, and their efforts, if they are in the majority, will be otherwise efficacious in retaining the foreigners than by the moving forward some fifteen days of the date of the Grand Prix. Although it is not to be despised, a season of fifteen days' duration is, taking it altogether, but a slight gain. The foreigners flock hither the whole year round, and it is the whole year round that it is necessary to make them find it safe and agreeable to visit here, visits to which they are inclined and from which the entire city derives such great benefits."

This exposition may be considered as an authentic, contemporary document, and, as has been premised, these opinions are coeval and coterminous with an admirable civic self-satisfaction. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to stipulate that in these general observations it is the frame of mind and the mode of speech of what are known everywhere as the upper classes, the more intelligent and refined, which are taken into account,—the Parisian workman, day-laborer, and semi-criminal, though they figure very largely in the results of the general elections (worse luck!), do not necessarily appear in the discussion of these questions of high importance. It may be remembered that, at the period of this much-discussed Grand Prix, there was much contradictory testimony as to the existence of a general feeling of hostility toward America and the Americans among the French because of the Spanish war. Many depositions were made on both sides, but there was a general consensus of opinion among the heads of the larger Parisian commercial and manufacturing establishments as to that of their work-people. "Their political views and manner of looking at things have no other horizon than that of the newspaper they are in the habit of reading," said one chief of an important house, "they take no notice of the effect which such crises may have upon their work." "We believe them to be absolutely indifferent," said another; "I can assure you that the workmen take not the slightest interest in this question, and they probably would not understand it if it were put to them," testified a third. "As to the working-class," said a merchant in the Rue de Rivoli, "they occupy themselves with their own affairs, and nothing beyond. Apart from the social question, all they want is to earn as much money as possible, and do the least work possible for it." One of these sons of toil corroborated these statements very frankly. "I can assure you," said he, "that neither my comrades nor myself side with one or the other. I assure you that it matters nothing to us. We have something better to do than to gossip about the war."

Much the same conditions have obtained in the formation and development of this superior intellectual and aristocratic Parisian society as in that of other civilized nations. We are all more or less familiar with the general demonstrations by which the historians demonstrate the development of the wealthy classes, by the aid and support of which alone the letters and the arts arise and flourish. In the earliest stages of society, the struggle for life absorbs all possible energy; a little comfort and security, and consequent leisure, bring in the arts. The half-starved hunting-dog follows the game steadily, stealthily, without a superfluous sign or motion; after the chase, and the subsequent feast and the subsequent luxurious slumber, he awakes to indulge in unpractical gambols and barkings around his master,—it is the dance; Art is invented! The three superior social classes, the king, the clergy, and the nobles, which were definitely established in France at the outbreak of the Revolution, were the legitimate development of the feudal system, and had, apparently, legitimately conquered their position. They had been the protectors of the people even before the Carlovingian epoch, and when the people finally arose and overturned them, it was only because they had completely forgotten their high mission through a long course of years.

To Stendhal's observation, that, in the tenth century, a man considered himself lucky if he were not killed, and had a good leathern jacket for winter, Taine adds, and a woman, if she were not violated by a whole band of ruffians. In those truly Dark Ages the peasant accepted quite willingly the hardest feudal obligations as a harbor of refuge from the ills that menaced him on every side. The sixth and seventh centuries of our era are considered to have been among the worst that the world has seen; it was declared that it was not with water, but with His tears, that God moistened the earth out of which He made man. After the fall of the Romans, it was the Church alone that saved human society from "a Mongol anarchy;" in the last years of the Empire, the cities, illy defended by their natural protectors, gave to their bishops, with the title of defensor civitatis, the principal municipal authority. The Church alone retained any influence over the conquering barbarian; before the shaven monk or the mitred abbot, the wolfish and ignorant chief, long-haired, filthy, and half-clad in furs, hesitated, listened to his words in the council, stooped before his altars,—"like Saint Lupicin before the Burgonde king Chilpéric, Saint Karileff before the king Childebert." In his moments of repose, after the chase, or the battle, or the feast, the menaces of the prelate began to stir in his guilty soul,—aided, perhaps, by the reproaches or the advice of his wife or his concubine; he hesitated to violate the sanctuary lest he should fall dead with a broken neck on the threshold; if he had been carried away by his passions, and committed murder or robbery, he repented and made reparation, sometimes a hundred-fold. The cloister offered a refuge to those who fled aghast from the world and sought meditation and solitude; the abbey was not only an asylum, but a haunt of learning and practical industry, a seat of instruction for the farmer, the workman, the student. "Thus the most evil centuries of the Middle Ages," says Duruy, "were acquainted with virtues of which the finest ages of paganism were ignorant; and thus, thanks to a few souls of the elect, animated by the pure spirit of Christianity, humanity was arrested on the edge of the abyss in which it seemed about to precipitate itself."

Nevertheless, this historian admits that Christianity, which had not modified the manners of Roman society, was itself an element in the dissolution of the Empire, and that the Church itself acquired some of the rudeness of the barbarians with which it came into such intimate contact. "Germans and Franks aspired to the honor of the episcopate, and carried into the basilicas customs and manners which were strange there. The great intellectual movement which had formerly animated religious society slackened, then ceased; the shadows descended upon the Church itself."

After Charlemagne's short-lived empire, the universal dissolution set in again. Against the bands of brigands, four or five hundred strong each, that traversed the country, any defender was welcome, and a second upholder of society arose,—the stout warrior, skilled in arms, who gathered retainers around him, secured a hold or a castle, and offered protection in return for service rendered. His title or his lineage mattered but little in the tenth century, his defence was much too welcome for any carping about his arms or his ancestry,—he was an ancestor himself. The original source of many noble houses is more than doubtful,—Tertulle, the founder of the Plantagenets; Rollo, Duke of Normandy; the ancestors of Robert le Fort; the Capétiens were said to have been descended from a butcher of Paris. "'In these times,'" says Taine, quoting the Spanish chronicle, "'the kings, counts, nobles, and all the knights, in order to be ready at any moment, kept their horses in the hall in which they slept with their wives.' The viscount in the tower which defends the entrance to the valley, or the passage of the ford, the marquis thrown as a forlorn hope on the devastated frontier, sleeps on his arms, like the American lieutenant in a blockhouse in the far West, among the Sioux. His house is only a camp and a refuge; some straw and a pile of leaves are thrown on the pavement of the great hall; it is there that he sleeps with his horsemen, unbuckling a spur when he has a chance for repose; the loopholes scarcely allow the day-light to enter,—it is important, above all, that the arrows do not. All inclinations, all sentiments, are subordinated to the service; there are posts on the European frontier where the boy of fourteen is called upon to march, and where the widow, up to sixty years of age, is compelled to marry again. Men in the ranks, to fill up the vacancies, men at the posts, to mount guard,—this is the cry that issues at this moment from all human institutions, like the call of a voice of bronze." Thanks to these stout defenders, some form of society is again made possible.

A later historian, M. Flach, in his Origines de l'ancienne France, finds the germ from which sprang the whole feudal system in this patronage, the system of defence of the serf and vassal by the landed proprietor. In the great disorganization of the Roman Empire, a portion of the public authority passed into the hands of individuals; when the Frankish kings invaded Gaul, they found there a system of patronage similar to their own. These great proprietors were maintained under the first Merovingian kings, who kept them in due subjection; but as this regulation gradually weakened under the growing power of the land-owner, the private individual found himself ground between these two millstones. A private patron then became his only defence, and thus was hastened the strictly feudal system. With regard to the royal function, which crowned this feudal system, the historian cites two quotations in support of his thesis: "Under Louis d'Outre-mer, the legate of the Pope, Marin, defined the royal authority,—he called it patronage [patrocinium]. Forty years later the decisive argument of the Archbishop of Reims, Adalbéron, in sustaining the claims of Hugues Capet to the throne, was: 'You will have in him a father. No one, up to the present time, has invoked in vain his patronage [patrocinium].'"

Quite apart from these valid, historical reasons, the British "love of a lord" is by no means confined to Great Britain. The Parisians, also, have a certain fondness for titles and distinctions of all sorts. For the English aristocracy they profess a genuine admiration, as affording the best example of the success of a certain élite in affecting the social conscience. They quote approvingly John Bright when he admits that his folk—trades-people and commoners—are quite willing to have their public affairs managed by a superior class, specially trained, enjoying an independent and commanding social station. Their titles and their pride of ancestry give them robes and plumes, and a troop follows its officers more readily when they are gorgeously uniformed. Only, it is required that this privilege shall not be abused; no favor to mediocrities, no nepotism. Victor Hugo was more proud of his title of vicomte Hugo than of his greatest work, and Balzac's obstinacy in clinging to his particle of de has lately been shown to have been completely unfounded. To Sainte-Beuve, who infuriated him by constantly speaking of him as M. Honoré Balzac, he wrote: "My name is on my register of birth, as M. Fitz-James's is on his." So it is, but without any de. In 1836, at the period of the legal process to which one of his works, Le Lys dans la vallée, gave rise, he wrote: "If my name is that of an old Gaulish family, it is not my fault; but my name, De Balzac, is my name patronymic, an advantage which is not enjoyed by many aristocratic families who called themselves Odet before they called themselves Châtillon, Riquet before Caraman, Duplessis before Richelieu, and which are none the less great families.... If my name resounds well in some ears, if it is envied by some who are not content with their own, I cannot therefore renounce it.... My father … found in the Trésor des Chartres the concession of land made in the fifth century by the De Balzacs to establish a monastery in the environs of the little town of Balzac (department of La Charente), a copy of which, he told me, was, by their action, enregistered by the Parliament of Paris." It appears that there are existing no Merovingian records of any kind dating earlier than the seventh century; and a keeper of archives, M. Ch. Portal, in the department of Tarn, in which the death of the great novelist's father, "Bernard-François Balzac, born at Nougaïris," is recorded, having looked the matter up, discovered that his ancestors were simple country-people, laborers, who had never dreamed of a de before their name, which, in fact, was really Balssa or Balsa!

The French have no word in their language which exactly translates "snob," so they adopt with enthusiasm the English syllable (mispronouncing it fearfully); and this curious weakness in so great a writer and so keen a student of humanity would be even more remarkable if it were not so very common among other civilized people. M. Jules Lemaître, a couple of years ago, read before the five Academies of the Institute a careful study of this particular social class; there were said to be a crowd of amateur playwrights besieging the managers with plays with this title, and the pretentious claimer of things that are not his in the great world, "the great nephew of Mascarille in the Précieuses ridicules," was honored with more analysis, comment, and reconstruction than he was probably entitled to.

In addition to the three great classes that have ruled over France, and which, with the commons or serfs, have been known to almost every European nation, a third class, the tiers état, still in process of formation elsewhere on the Continent, but which arose in Paris and other great cities in the thirteenth century, is claimed by the historians of this nation as peculiarly French.

Previous to Pepin and Charlemagne, Paris was generally recognized as the capital, though the wandering and barbaric Frankish kings much preferred as places of residence their great country-houses or villas, when they were neither hunting nor fighting. The court of Charlemagne, in the later years of his reign, was held at Aix-la-Chapelle, his favorite abode. In 775 he was present at the dedication of the new church of Saint-Denis, and the Parisians are said to have made a fête of the occasion. Louis le Débonnaire, his son, more monk than king, also neglected the city, excepting in the matter of founding churches and increasing the privileges of the clergy. But under the last of the Carlovingian emperors, Charles le Gros, the capital redeemed its right to that title by its gallant defence against the Northmen, or Normans, and its valiant count, Eudes, having brought the sluggish emperor to the heights of Montmartre only to see him conclude an unworthy peace with the invaders, founded himself the first national dynasty when his fat suzerain was deposed in the following year. "One of the greatest figures of the Carlovingian decadence," says M. Faure, in a recent monograph, "he continued the monarchy of Charlemagne without changing anything in the institutions, and he gave a precise form to a power that before him was still undecided, that of duke of the Franks."

The royal authority waxed and waned, the turbulent nobles exhausted themselves in war, in struggles amongst themselves and against the king, but the wealth and power of the Church steadily increased. Occasionally only, when its interference was too flagrantly unjust, its authority was defied. The first Capétiens, like the first Carlovingians, whether from motives of self-interest or sincere faith, were its faithful allies. Hugues Capet liked better to wear his cope as Abbot of Saint-Martin de Tours than his crown, and he restored to the Church several abbeys which he possessed. His son, Robert the Pious, was almost a saint, and the princes of this dynasty, on the whole, merited the title which Rome gave them, of "eldest sons of the Church." Their piety was not altogether without reward: the bishops of the Ile-de-France and the abbots, chiefs of the abbeys founded by royal grace, brought more than once not only earthly weapons but a spiritual one, that of excommunication, to the defence of the sovereign.

Robert's first care, after his accession to the throne in 996, was to rebuild the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois and the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Près, which had been destroyed by the Northmen. He also erected in his palace a chapel dedicated to Saint Nicolas, which, in 1154, entirely restored, became the Sainte-Chapelle. He washed the feet of the poor, he fed, it is said, sometimes a thousand of them a day; nothing was too sacred for them, neither the silver ornaments of his lance nor the gold fringe of his robe. He was constant in his attendance on the church services, he composed hymns, himself, which were long retained. Nevertheless, having espoused his cousin Berthe, he found himself excommunicated by the Pope, Gregory V. Among the earliest works of the painter Jean-Paul Laurens, long in the Luxembourg, is a graphic presentation of this unhappy couple, clinging to each other in the poor, bare splendor of the very early mediæval throne-room, the overturned great tapers of the excommunication service on the floor before them, the smoke rising like anathema, and the last of the implacable ministers of the Church departing through the open doorway. Every one deserted them, as though plague-stricken; only two poor domestics remained to serve them, and they purified by fire every vessel from which the unhappy monarch had taken food or drink. But Berthe was enceinte, and the king loved her, and so clung to her and would not obey. One morning as he went to pray, according to his custom, at the door of the church of Saint-Barthélemy, into which he was forbidden to enter, Abbon, Abbé de Fleury, followed by two women of the palace, carrying a great silver-gilt plate covered with a linen cloth, approached him, and announced that Berthe had been delivered. Then he uncovered the plate:

"See!" he exclaimed, "the effects of your disobedience to the decrees of the Church, and the seal of anathema on the fruit of your guilty love!"

And Robert recoiled in horror before a little monster with the head and neck of a duck! (Canard, it may be noted, in French, signifies both a duck and a highly improbable story.)

So the poor queen was repudiated, and Robert married Constance, daughter of the Comte de Toulouse, who made his life a burden to him. He hid himself from her to say his prayers, and feared her so much that he did not hesitate to deny his charities and good deeds to her,—though he had such a horror of falsehood, that he had made a casket of crystal, mounted with gold, but in which he was careful not to put any holy relic, so that those who took their oaths on it before him might not perjure themselves.

His son Henri I, who succeeded him, married a daughter of the Grand Duke of Russia, in order that he might be certain of not taking a wife within the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the Church. This princess, Anne, claimed to descend through her mother, daughter of the Emperor Romanus II, from Philip of Macedon.