Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 2

In 1802, the first attempt to seriously increase the volume of water supplied the city was made by drawing on the little river Ourcq. This canal brings a supply to the Bassin de la Villette, which serves as a reservoir to distribute it through Paris by means of the aqueduct of the Ceinture and large mains. The necessity of securing a larger supply, and a much purer one, was strongly felt by Baron Haussmann, who did so much for the embellishment of the city during the Second Empire, and in conjunction with the Engineer-in-chief of the navigation of the Seine, M. Belgrand, the present system was inaugurated. The latter found means of solving the problem after a careful study, in 1854, of the basin of the Seine. The bed of gypsum on which Paris is built furnishes neither water of a good drinking quality nor sources high enough to bring it into the city at the requisite altitude; it was therefore necessary to go outside this basin, extending from Meulan to Château-Thierry. At present, Paris is furnished with potable water by three aqueducts,—that of the Dhuis, a hundred and thirty-one kilomètres in length, constructed from 1862 to 1865, running from a source nearly due east of the city; that of the Vanne, a hundred and eighty-three kilomètres, 1866-1874, from the southeast, and that of the Avre, a hundred and eight kilomètres, 1890-1893, from the west. A fourth is to be built, of a length of seventy-two kilomètres, which will draw its supply from the valley of the Loing and the Lunain, a little west of Vanne.

When the city was enlarged by the annexation of the surrounding communes, in 1860, the municipal administration signed a contract with the Compagnie générale des eaux, which then held similar contracts with several of the communes both within and without the walls. By this, the city obtained the control, not only of its own water-supply and distribution, but also of that previously established by the company. The general management of the distribution is in the hands of the Compagnie, which collects the subscriptions, constructs branch pipes from the public conduits to the façade of the dwelling to be served, and turns the gross receipts into the municipal treasury, less its commission. To it, or to the bureaux d'inspection, all complaints are to be addressed. The purer eaux de source, brought by the aqueducts, are reserved for domestic use; the eaux de rivière, from the Seine and the Marne, are elevated to the altitude requisite to serve the higher quarters of the city by eleven usines, within and without the walls. The river-water is served by means of gauges and meters; the eau de source by meters only, which are officially examined and verified by the Municipal Laboratory, established in the Palais du Bardo, in the Pare Montsouris. This laboratory also analyzes this water, that of the drains, the sewers, and the wells, and reports to the municipal administration. With a view to the diffusion among the people of correct hygienic ideas, the Préfet of the Seine appointed, March 21, 1898, a commission of savants, architects, and hygienists to draw up a series of measures the most practical available for rendering dwelling-houses healthful.

The general distribution is effected from the eighteen reservoirs fed by these various sources; the eau de source is furnished on the public streets by six hundred and seventy-three fountains established against walls, etc., and by ninety-seven of the "Wallace fountains;" the water of the Ourcq and of the rivers is furnished by thousands of bouches d'eau, on the sidewalks, in the streets, etc., for service in case of fire, watering the streets, the innumerable lavoirs, etc. The monumental fountains, such as those of the Place de la Concorde and du Châtelet, which play every day from ten in the morning to six in the afternoon, are furnished by the canal de l'Ourcq, whilst that of the Trocadéro and its cascade, that of the Place d'Italie, and the luminous fountain of the Champ de Mars, which function only on fête-days and Sundays, are supplied by the Seine water. The fountains of the Luxembourg are fed by the Arcueil aqueduct. The water-pipes throughout the city are generally carried in the upper part of the égouts,—on curved shelves in the smaller ones, and on upright stems carrying a curved holder in the larger ones. In the grand galerie du Boulevard Sebastopol, for example, the water of the Ourcq is carried on one side in an eighty-centimètre main, and that of the Seine on the other in a main one mètre, ten, in diameter.

When the canal de l'Ourcq was first opened, the work was carried out by a company to which was granted the right of navigation on the new channel, connected with the Seine by the canals Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis, but in 1876 the city of Paris repurchased this concession from the canal company. A supply is also drawn from several important artesian wells in different localities,—that of Grenelle, in the Place de Breteuil, driven between 1833 and 1852, draws the water from a depth of five hundred and forty-nine mètres and elevates it to a height of seventy-five. This supply is turned into that of the Ourcq. The artesian well of the Butte aux Cailles, begun in 1863, was resumed in 1892 and is just being terminated; the depth attained is some six hundred mètres. That of Passy, 1855-1860, somewhat less deep, supplies the lakes of the Bois de Boulogne; that of the Place Hébert, 1863-1893, seven hundred and eighteen mètres in depth, furnishes some large ponds in the neighborhood.

Among the great reservoirs, the most noticeable is that of Montmartre, rising high by the side of the church of the Sacré-Cœur, and containing within its gray walls no less than three lakes, one above another. The largest of all these storage basins in the city is that of the Vanne, at the side of the principal entrance to the Parc Montsouris; in its vast, vaulted enclosure, covered with turf, may be stored two hundred and fifty thousand cubic mètres of water. Visitors are admitted to the under vault, where, by the light of torches, the enormous walls and the innumerable columns that sustain this weight are dimly visible. The water of the Avre, drawn from the two sources of the Vigne and Verneuil, is to be stored in the still larger reservoir on the heights of Saint-Cloud, similar in construction and now nearly completed. Each of the three sections in which it is built will contain a hundred thousand cubic mètres.

The ancient mediæval methods have all been put away, the inevitable little open gutter running down the middle of the street—celebrated by Boileau and Mme. de Staël, and many others—has long since disappeared, but the water-supply is not yet entirely adequate, and the citizens may still suffer for the lack of a pure liquid to drink,—as they did through so many centuries. It not infrequently happens, as it did in the early autumn of 1898, that several quarters of the city are simultaneously deprived of eau de source, and compelled to use the river-water alone. Every effort is made to avert this—as it is rightly considered—calamity, the streets are placarded with official notices warning the inhabitants of the approaching curtailment of their supply, and they are notified in a similar manner when the scarcity is over. Two solutions have been proposed for this insufficiency, both of them involving such heavy expense that the municipality shrinks from adopting either;—the first, to supply every dwelling with a double set of pipes, one carrying the pure water of the aqueducts, and the other the river-water, forced up into the upper stories; the second is to go as far as the lakes Neuchâtel, or Geneva, for an uncontaminated supply. The complete application of the tout à l'égout system has been delayed by the want of the greatly-increased volume of water necessary for its application, and strong petitions have been presented demanding the postponement of the application of the law of 1894. The present supply is about a hundred and twenty-four litres of eau de source and ninety-six of eau de rivière daily for each inhabitant, but in summer this amount may become greatly diminished. Paris thus stands second in the amount of daily water-supply in the European capitals,—the figures ranging from Rome with four hundred and fourteen litres per capita, daily, to Constantinople with fifteen. London has only a hundred and seventy-three for each inhabitant daily; and Berlin, seventy-three, next to the Turkish capital. The figures for American cities are very much higher,—New York, three hundred and fifty-nine; Boston, three hundred and sixty-three; Philadelphia, six hundred; Chicago, six hundred and thirty-six, and Buffalo, eight hundred and forty-five (September, 1898).

ANOTHER grave evil produced by an insufficient water-supply is the lack of pressure in the pipes in case of fire, and the possible lack of water itself. The number of bouches d'incendie, or fire-plugs, which it is proposed to raise to eight thousand, placed a hundred mètres apart, in all the streets of the city, is as yet far from attaining that figure. The infrequency of serious fires in the capital is, however, very noticeable when compared with the losses of American cities. Various causes contribute to this result: the solid character of the dwelling-houses generally, especially in the older quarters of the city—the handsome, new apartment-houses that have been put up in such numbers of recent years in the neighborhood of the Arc de l'Étoile are, very many of them, much less well built; the general absence of furnaces and of those overwrought fires to which the severity of his climate incites the American citizen; the total absence of buildings of an inordinate height, and, in modern times, the much more restricted use of electricity and the consequent diminution of that too frequent danger of the present day, "defective insulation." The fire service is, also, very efficient; the brass helmets of the pompiers are as inseparable from any public performance, theatrical or musical, as the uniforms of the Garde Républicaine; these faithful sentinels are on duty behind the scenes as well as before them, and even up in the "flies," where, before the introduction of electricity, they were obliged to pass several hours in a temperature of, frequently, thirty-five degrees Centigrade, ninety-six Fahrenheit. At present, the fire department of Paris has adopted most of the modern improvements common to other civilized capitals, and the details of its service differ from those with which we are familiar principally in the military character given it.

The regiment of Sapeurs-Pompiers is, in fact, a regiment of infantry, lent to the city of Paris by the Minister of War. It is paid out of the municipal budget, with the exception of the pensions of the Legion of Honor, the military medal, and the retired list, which are the charge of the State. The regiment is composed of two battalions, of six companies each, with a total strength of seventeen hundred men. The pay of the men and their indemnities are the same as for the regiments of infantry in garrison in Paris, there are special privileges for the officers, and the quality of the recruits, especially with regard to their physique, is maintained at a very high standard. Their bravery, their efficiency, and their devotion are equal to those which are displayed so frequently by this well-organized service in other large cities, and are equally appreciated by the public; when, at the annual review at Longchamps on the day of the national fête, the regiment of sapeurs-pompiers defiles before the reviewing-stand, the great wave of applause and recognition which envelops it, drowning the other cheers in its roar, betokens the intimate appreciation of the Parisian, of high and low degree, of these unpretentious heroes.

By the new organization of this service, now in process of completion, the city is divided into twenty-four "zones," in the centre of each of which is a post of men and material, known as a centre de secours. The smaller posts, scattered through the city, in case of fire, notify by telephone these central stations and the état-major of the regiment, adjoining the Préfecture de Police; if the fire is of sufficient importance, the centre de secours sends a reinforcement and the steam fire-engine, the pompe à vapeur, but in very many cases the service of the latter is not needed. Its appearance in the streets is comparatively rare, and it is seldom driven at the mad gallop of the American machines. Moreover, its whistle is the curious thin treble so common in European motor engines, railroad and other. The old-fashioned hand-pumps have almost completely disappeared, with the exception of some localities like the Butte Montmartre, too steep to be approached by horses. In the central stations, the arrangements are those generally adopted nowadays to secure the quickest possible service,—even to the harness suspended from hooks in the ceilings to be dropped on the horses' backs, and the metal pole down which the men slide from their sleeping-rooms above.

For particular service, details for the theatres, balls, private clubs, etc., the number of men is fixed by the Préfet de Police, and there is extra pay in all these cases. The department is also called upon in case of street accidents, falling buildings, asphyxia in sewers, etc. The service material includes special apparatus for respiration in cellars, basements, etc., where the presence of gas or smoke is to be apprehended; and the great ladder, carried on a special truck, has a length of twenty mètres, greater than the average height of the Parisian houses. It is stated that the time allowed to elapse between the receipt of an alarm in the stations and the departure for the fire is often under a minute, and never exceeds two; in 1896, the time between the alarm and the attack of the fire was less than five minutes in ten hundred and seventy-nine fires out of a total of twelve hundred and four. In seven hundred and eighty-four cases, in the same year, the conflagration was completely extinguished in five minutes, and the very longest fire lasted six hours and a half.

At the entrance of each of the twelve casernes, or barracks, of the regiment, the names of the officers and soldiers who have been killed in the discharge of their duty are engraved on a slab of black marble, the Golden Book of the regiment. In the court of the état-major the names of the forty sapeurs-pompiers who have thus died since 1821, are engraved on a marble panel. In his order of the day, March 11, 1888, "the colonel informs the regiment, with profound grief, of the deaths of Corporal Toulon and former sergeant Sixdenier, who perished yesterday, at noon, victims of their devotion, in endeavoring to save an imprudent workman who had descended, without taking precautions, into an excavation of the Rue des Deux-Ponts." Three citizens were also asphyxiated in trying to save him, two of whom died; "and the deaths of Sixdenier and Toulon will be for all another and a grand example to add to the history of the regiment."

A Parisian merchant or manufacturer, Dumourrier-Duperrier, in 1699, furnished the first effective, organized system of combating fires in the city, and in 1717 he received, by letters-patent, the direction of the Compagnie de Garde-Pompes, the origin of the present organization. In 1792, the total effective of this force was two hundred and sixty-three men, officers included, with forty-four force-pumps, twelve suction-pumps, and forty-two casks. The men were provided with uniforms and, later, armed with sabres; in the year IX of the Republic, the corps, then four hundred strong, was placed under the direction of the Préfet de police, under the general administration of the Préfet de la Seine. The frightful conflagration which ended the fête given by the Austrian ambassador, Prince von Schwartzenberg, to the Emperor, in honor of his marriage with Marie-Louise, in 1810, awoke public attention to the insufficiency of the arrangements for extinguishing fires, and in the following year measures were taken to secure a larger authority and more energetic action. Napoleon decided that the gardes-pompes should be put on a strictly military footing; an imperial decree of September 18, 1811, created a battalion of sapeurs-pompiers consisting of four companies with thirteen officers and five hundred and sixty-three men. For the first time, they were armed with muskets, and as a military force were held as an auxiliary in the police service and in the maintenance of public order. One of the articles of this decree provided for the payment of this force by the city until the establishment of a company to insure against fire,—which was held to foreshadow an intention to place this expense, at least in part, upon these companies, and thereby relieve the municipal budget.

During the Revolution of 1848, the provisory government thought it prudent to deprive the pompiers of their muskets; and in April, 1850, the President of the Republic disbanded the battalion and reorganized it, retaining a small proportion of the former members. Down to this date, it had been recruited from the engineers and the artillery of the army, but since then, from the infantry only. In 1860, the annexation of the banlieue necessitated a new reorganization; the successive augmentations of the force brought its total effective, in 1866, up to a regiment of twelve hundred and ninety-eight men, divided into two battalions of six companies each. The efficiency of the organization was greatly augmented by the introduction of steam fire-engines in 1873.

BY the law of December 29, 1897, all the communes of France were authorized to suppress their octroi duties upon "hygienic beverages," wines, ciders, beers, perry, hydromel, and mineral waters, and replace them by others, after December 31, 1898. As the entrance duty upon these boissons hygiéniques constituted a very important fraction,—in Paris, in 1895, sixty-eight million five hundred thousand francs out of a grand total of a hundred and fifty-five million six hundred and one thousand,—the question of supplying this deficiency in the municipal budget is exciting discussion. In case the octroi is not suppressed altogether, the communes are obliged to diminish the tax in certain proportions, according to their population and their locality,—the cider-producing departments standing on a different footing from the wine-growing ones. To replace the octroi, they are given their choice of five other taxes—upon alcohol, or upon horses, dogs, billiards, clubs, and various other articles of luxury. It was generally predicted in Paris that the consumer of alcoholic beverages would not experience any benefit from the removal of this tax.

Under the ancient régime, the octroi, like most other imposts and duties, was in the charge of the fermiers généraux, who obtained the royal authorization to enclose Paris within a wall to facilitate its collection. Consequently, one of the first manifestations of the Revolution was the demolition of these barrières by the people, on the very day of the taking of the Bastille. On the 1st of May, 1791, at midnight, all the gates of Paris were thrown open to the hundreds of vehicles, boats, and barges which had been waiting for weeks for this moment of free entry; a triumphal mast was erected in honor of the Assemblée and to celebrate the abolition of "the most odious of tyrannies;" the National Guard, under Lafayette's orders, paraded around the demolished barriers in the midst of the universal rejoicing. But, seven years later, the necessities of the municipal finances constrained many of the thus emancipated cities, Paris included, to return to the system of levying a tax on articles entering their gates, and the masons continued the work of enclosing the capital again within walls.

Many difficulties attended the levying of this impost; "as soon as night fell," says M. Maxime Du Camp, "the city was literally taken by assault; the tavern-keepers of all the villages of the suburbs set up their ladders against the city wall, and the casks of wine, the bottles of brandy, butcher's meat, pork and vinegar, were lowered by means of ropes to the confederates who were waiting for them inside, in the chemin de ronde. Should some ill-advised customs clerk undertake to interfere with these fraudulent practices, he was set upon, beaten, gagged, and the introduction of the prohibited commodities continued undisturbed. They did even better; they excavated tunnels, which, passing under the exterior boulevards, under the wall of fortification, under the chemin de ronde, opened communication between the inns of the banlieue and those of the city; it was a veritable pillage,—the octroi was sacked." These violent measures have been replaced in the present day by more suitable ones, and the musée des fraudeurs, in the administration centrale of the octroi, contains a very curious assemblage of objects used in this contraband service. Alcohol was the favorite object of smuggling, and it was carried into the city in rubber corsets, worn under the blouse, rubber petticoats which would contain as much as thirty litres of the liquid, and were known as mignonnettes, false backs, false calves, false stomachs, and false upper arms, mostly in zinc. The women would not hesitate to appear as plantureuses wet-nurses, or as in an interesting condition; the vehicles were mined and hollowed with concealed receptacles, and even the collars of the harness; the blocks of granite, the rolls of carpet,—all the arts of the smuggler were employed. That very general popular disposition to consider the evasion of a customs duty as a trivial offence is as common in France as elsewhere.

At all the gates of the city, in the railway stations, and at the river entrances of the capital, the posts of the octroi are established, and the formula of address of the green-uniformed officials is generally the same: "You have nothing to declare?" Foreign visitors are especially advised against the carrying in their baggage of tobacco and matches, the manufacture of these being a government monopoly; French allumettes are very bad, but it is better to throw away your cherished boxes of neat wax-matches before entering the barriers. With these exceptions, the officials are tolerant of the introduction of contraband articles in small quantities,—a half-bottle of ordinary wine, two pounds of fish caught by hook and line, a pound of salt, a bundle of hay or straw, etc. The agents act under the authority of the Préfet of the Seine; the objects submitted to this duty, intended for local consumption, are designated by the Conseil Municipal and approved by the government. The officials have the right of search; dutiable objects to be carried through the city are entitled to "escort" by the agents of the octroi, or they may pay the tax at the entrance with the privilege of having it refunded when leaving. All the communes of the Department of the Seine, considered as the banlieue of Paris, have the right of levying an entrance duty upon brandies, spirits, and liquors. The penalties provided for smuggling are the confiscation of the article and of the means used in its transportation; a fine of from a hundred to two hundred francs, and even imprisonment, if the attempt has been made by means of escalade or subterranean proceedings, or with prepared methods of concealment. All dutiable articles must be declared, no matter how small the quantity carried.

As both the city and the State are interested in the collection of this tax, the agents have a double mandate to execute their duties, and the contraventions of the law are pursued at one time in the name of the public Treasury and the octroi, and at another in the name of the Préfet of the Seine. Each gate of the city has its peculiar class of produce to tax, according to the locality to which it gives entrance; and the daily receipts vary to an astonishing degree. At the Orléans dépôt, the duties on merchandise have reached a hundred thousand francs a day and fallen to five hundred; the Porte de Saint-Denis ranges from fifty thousand francs to four!

To the establishment of the octroi municipal et de bienfaisance by the Directory is due that of the great dépôts or entrepôts of wine and alcohol on the quais of the Seine,—the importers finding it very inconvenient to pay the duties upon all their casks on their first arrival. They are, therefore, allowed to store them, under the supervision of the octroi, and pay as they are sold. When the ancient corporation of the crieurs jurés announced throughout the city the arrival of a shipment of wine, the purchasers would throng to the banks of the Seine; when Louis XIV granted the first authorization to establish a halle aux vins, on condition that the profits should be divided with the Hôpital Général, the site selected was the Quai Saint-Bernard, the entrepôt of Bercy being then a market outside the city walls. The latter, on the site of the ancient Halle des Hôpitaux of the seventeenth century, developed greatly after its incorporation within the city limits; it is at present divided into two sections, Le Grand Bercy and Le Petit Château. The city is the proprietor, and rents spaces to applicants, generally for a year at a time. The octroi is stationed at every gate of exit, and at numerous posts within the enclosure. Not only is the wine stored here, but it is blended and assorted in great tuns, and there is also storage for alcohol, liquors of all kinds, and oil. The huge enclosure is very carefully policed, not only for the detection of thieves, but also of fraudulent practices; at night there are four rounds, of which the second and third are made by guardians armed with revolvers (a recent innovation), and accompanied by eight shaggy watch-dogs.