Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. William Walton

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.

       A MEROVINGIAN QUEEN. From water-color by F. Bac.

      THE COURT

       AND THE UPPER CLASSES

       Table of Contents

      FROM THE OPENING OF THE MIDDLE AGES

       TO THE PRESENT DAY

      THE COURT AND THE

       UPPER CLASSES

       Table of Contents

      NY 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!

       ARMED PARISIANS MEETING THE KING, 1383. From an illuminated manuscript in the National Library, Paris.

      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