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

The Deaf and Dumb School was reconstructed in 1823 by the architect, M. Peyre, who left it as it now stands. It is looked upon as the perfect model of institutions of the kind. It contains, besides the class-rooms, refectories, dormitories, and workshops, not to mention the rooms in which the sittings of the “Central Society of Education and Assistance for the Deaf and Dumb” are held.

Almost opposite the entrance to the Deaf and Dumb Institute is the Rue des Ursulines, and just beyond, the Rue des Feuillantines, where Victor Hugo passed the happiest years of his childhood, to which reference is made in some of the finest verses of the Orientales. The Rue Saint-Jacques now joins the Rue d’Enfer, which separates it from the Boulevard Saint-Michel. The Rue d’Enfer owes its ominous name to a belief entertained in the eighteenth century that it was haunted by the fiend. Various plans for driving away the common enemy of man were suggested, until at last the bright idea occurred to someone of making over the entire street to an order of monks, who, it was thought, would be able, if anyone could, to deal with the invader from below. Either by some exorcising process, or by the natural dread which Satan or his emissary could not fail to experience at being brought beneath the observation of so many pious brethren, the Rue d’Enfer, from the time of its passing into the hands of the religious order, became one of the quietest thoroughfares in Paris. It still, however, in memory of the old legend, preserves its ancient name. No. 269 in the Rue d’Enfer, which runs out of Paris by the side of the Luxembourg Gardens, and takes us almost to suburban parts, is the house, formerly a Benedictine monastery, where, until the Revolution, was preserved the body of James II. of England, who had died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the 16th September, 1701, and of Louise Marie Stewart, his daughter, who died at the same place in 1727.

We now approach the Val de Grâce, that superb monument which Anne of Austria founded in 1641 as a thank-offering for the birth of the dauphin, afterwards Louis XIV., who came into the world when his mother had been twenty-two years without giving birth to a child. The young king, now in his eighth year, laid the first stone of the Val de Grâce on the 1st of April, 1645. Mansard, the royal architect, had drawn up the plan and begun the work, when serious difficulties presented themselves; for the site of the church was just above the catacombs. To reach a foundation, it was necessary to make a number of deep piercings, besides supporting the new edifice with blocks of solid masonry. One of Molière’s few serious poems is in honour of the Val de Grâce and of its architect, who was numbered amongst his most intimate and most cherished friends. After a very short time, however, the direction of the works was taken from Mansard, and given to Jacques le Mercier. Finally, Pierre de Muet was entrusted with the difficult but honourable task; nor did he finish the work without the assistance of two other architects, Gabriel le Duc and Duval.

The façade of the Val de Grâce, like that of the Sorbonne, is composed of two Corinthian orders, placed one above the other. Around the cupola Pierre Mignard has painted a large fresco representing the abode of the blest, divided into many mansions. This admirable work is certainly (as Molière pointed out in the poem previously referred to) Mignard’s masterpiece; and it may well be regarded as the most important wall-painting in Paris. The mosaic of the marble pavement, in spite of its dilapidated condition, is another attraction connected with this fine building. The principal altar, reproduced from that of St. Peter’s at Rome, had been destroyed in the revolutionary days of 1793. But the architect, Ruprich Robert, reconstructed it by order of the Emperor Napoleon III.; and it was consecrated after the fall of the Second Empire, on the 28th of July, 1870. The paintings which adorn the chapel are by Philippe of Champagne and his nephew, Jean Baptiste. The dome, which seemed to be in an insecure condition, was reconstructed and strengthened by means of iron supports in 1864 and 1865.

Closed in 1790, the Church of Val de Grâce was used as a magazine for stores during the Republic and the Empire; and it was not restored to public worship until 1826. The hearts of the princes and princesses of the royal family were successively deposited in the different chapels of the church, the first being that of Ann Elizabeth, daughter of Louis XIV., who died in tender years; the last that of Louis, Duke of Burgundy, who died March 27, 1761. These hearts were thrown to the winds in 1793, but not the reliquaries of gilded enamel in which they were enclosed. One alone was saved: the heart of the dauphin, son of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, which was restored to the royal family and afterwards deposited at Saint-Denis in 1817. Two hearts are still deposited in the ancient vaults: that of an English woman named Mary Danby, of whom no record has been preserved, and that of Larrey, the illustrious surgeon-in-chief to the Grand Army, whose statue in bronze, by David of Angers, adorns the courtyard of the Val de Grâce.

The last king of France and of Navarre died on the 6th of July, 1836, and it was not until nine days afterwards, on the 15th of July, that the fact was made known to the French public through the columns of the Gazette de France. The heart, too, of Charles X. was, according to royal custom, separated from the body; though instead of being preserved apart, as in the case of former French kings, it was, after being enclosed in a heart-shaped box of lead, again enclosed in a box of enamel fastened with screws to the top of the coffin. The Comte de Chambord, on the other hand, was buried in the ordinary manner, and not, like Charles X., with his heart on the coffin lid; nor like Louis XVIII., with his heart in one place and his body in another. The dead, according to the German ballad, “ride fast.” But the living move still faster; and in France, almost as much as in England, the separation of a heart from the body to be kept permanently as a relic is in the present day a process which seems to savour of ancient times; though, as a matter of fact, it was common enough, at least among the French, at the end of the last century. In our own country the discontinuance of what was at one time as much a custom in England as in France, or any other Continental land, is probably due to the influence of the Reformation, which, condemning absolutely the adoration of the relics of saints, did not favour the respectful preservation of relics of any kind. Great was the astonishment caused in England when, in the last generation, it was found that Daniel O’Connell had by will ordered his heart to be sent to Rome. The injunction was made at the time the subject of an epigram which was intended to be offensive, but which would probably have been regarded by O’Connell himself as the reverse, setting forth, as it did, that the heart which was to be forwarded to Rome had never, in fact, been anywhere else. The reasons for which, in the Middle Ages, hearts were enclosed in precious urns may have been very practical ones. Sometimes the owner of the heart had died far from home; and, in accordance with his last wishes, the organ associated with all his noblest emotions was sent across the seas to his living friends. Such may well have been the case when, after the death of St. Louis at Tunis, the heart of the pious king was transmitted to France, where it was preserved for centuries, perhaps even until our own time, in the Sainte-Chapelle. In the year 1798, while some masons were engaged in repairing the building, which had been converted into a depôt for state archives, they came across a heart-shaped casket in lead, containing what was described as “the remains of a human heart.” The custodians of the archives drew up a formal report on the discovery, and, enclosing it in the casket with the remains, replaced the whole beneath the flagstones under which they had been found. In 1843, when the chapel was restored, the leaden heart-shaped casket was found anew, and a commission was appointed to decide as to the genuineness of the remains believed to be those of St. Louis. An adverse decision was pronounced, the reasons for discrediting the legend on the subject being fully set forth by M. Letrenne, the secretary of the commission.

More authentic are the remains cherished at Rouen as representing the heart of Richard the Lion-hearted; though in this case again all similitude to a heart, whether in shape or in substance, has entirely disappeared. The descendants of St. Louis have in most cases had their hearts preserved, though for different reasons from those which seemed to have actuated the pious Crusader in his distant exile. Louis XIV., whose body, like that of his predecessors and successors even to the eighteenth of the same name, was to be buried at Saint-Denis, gave his heart to the Jesuits: “that heart,” says the Duc de Saint-Simon, “which loved none and which few loved.” The heart of Louis XVIII. was in like manner entrusted to the keeping of a religious house; and the same custom would doubtless have been followed when Louis XV. died of small-pox, had the dangerous condition of the body allowed of its being done.

From Louis XV. to Louis XVIII. no king of France died on the throne. But when the postmortem examination was made of the child who perished in the Temple, Dr. Pelletan, one of the surgeons who took part in the operation, placed aside the heart of the so-called Louis XVII., and, some twenty years afterwards, offered it to Louis XVIII., who, however, declined the gift. Whether the king disbelieved Dr. Pelletan’s story, or whether, as a certain set of writers maintain, he regarded as two different beings the child who died in the Temple and Louis XVII. (believed by many to have been smuggled out of prison and replaced by a substitute) has never been made known. The reputed heart of Louis XVII. did not in any case possess for Louis XVII.’s successor the value that Dr. Pelletan had hoped. Such relics cannot indeed be prized if any uncertainty exists as to their identity. About the same time that Dr. Pelletan, by his own account, was appropriating to himself the heart of Louis XVII., the heart of the great Buffon somehow became lost. Buffon had bequeathed his heart to a friend for whom he entertained the deepest affection. But the son, who had a great affection for his father, refused to part with it, and offered in its place his father’s brain. The heart was somehow lost in the midst of the revolutionary troubles, but the brain has been preserved even until now. The illustrious Cuvier wished at one time to purchase it, in order to place it at the foot of Buffon’s statue. At another time the Russian Government wished to buy it; and a high bid was once made for it by the proprietor of a museum of curiosities; until at last it became the property of the State.

The heart of Buffon may probably, like many others, have been stolen for the sake of its casket. Hearts intended to be preserved were usually enclosed in cases not of lead – as by exception the heart of St. Louis seems to have been – but of silver, and even gold. The precious metal was often, moreover, adorned with jewels of great value. Every precaution, in fact, was taken to render as difficult as possible the permanent preservation of the object which it was desired to keep for ever; and, as a natural result, the number of hearts which have come down to the present day is exceedingly small. Nearly all the hearts in cases now to be met with are those of modern celebrities. That of Voltaire – which after being reverently kept until his death by his friend and admirer, the Marquis de Villette, was at the Marquis’s death given by his heirs to the state – can be seen at the National Library of Paris. But the Hôtel des Invalides is, more than any other French establishment, rich in hearts of the great. There the hearts are religiously preserved of Turenne, of La Tour d’Auvergne, of Kléber, and of Napoleon. In England the encased heart best known to us is probably that “Heart of Bruce” celebrated in Aytoun’s “Lay” on the subject. Boece, in the story on which Aytoun’s poem is partly founded, relates that when Sir James Douglas was chosen as most worthy of all Scotland to pass with King Robert’s heart to the Holy Land, he put it in a case of gold, with aromatic and precious ointments, and took with him Sir William Sinclair and Sir Robert Logan, with many other noblemen, to the holy grave, “where he buried the said heart with the most reverence and solemnity that could be devised.” According to Froissart, however, and other authorities, Bruce’s heart was brought back to Scotland. Douglas, the keeper of the heart, encountering the infidels, endeavoured to cut his way through, and might have done so had he not turned to rescue a companion whom he saw in jeopardy. In attempting this he became inextricably mixed up with the enemy. Then taking from his neck the casket which contained the heart of Bruce, he cast it before him, and exclaimed with a loud voice, “Now pass onward as thou wert wont, and I will follow thee.” These were the last words and deeds of an heroic life. Douglas, quite overpowered, was slain; and it was not until the following day that the heart of Bruce and the body of Douglas were both recovered. Brought back to Scotland, the heart was deposited at Melrose, and the Douglas family have ever since carried on their armorial bearings a bloody heart. This is one of the few hearts which have been preserved to a good purpose, and its preservation in the present day is largely due to its having been embalmed in verse.

The obsequies of the French kings have from the earliest times been attended with as much pomp and show as their coronations. It was not enough to embalm the body, place it in several coffins and finally carry it to the tomb; it was necessary, before transporting it to the royal burial-place of Saint-Denis, to observe a ceremonial which the court functionaries and the officials of state made a point of following in the most literal manner. In the first place, the effigy of the dead king was exposed for forty days in the palace, stretched out on a state bed, clothed in royal garments – the crown on the head, the sceptre in the right hand, and the brand of Justice in the left, with a crucifix, a vessel of holy water, and two golden censers at the foot of the bed. The officers of the palace continued their duties as usual, and even went so far as to serve the king’s meals as though he were still living. The body was afterwards transported to the abbey of Saint-Denis, with the innumerable formalities laid down beforehand; while, at the moment of interment, so many honours were paid to it, that to enumerate them would be to fill a small volume. So precisely was the ceremony regulated that battles of etiquette constantly took place among the exalted persons figuring in the ceremony. At the burial of Philip Augustus the Papal Legate and the Archbishop of Rheims disputed for precedence, and, as neither would give way, they performed service at the same time, in the same church, but at different altars. A like scandal occurred at the funeral of St. Louis. When his successor, Philip III., wished to enter the abbey of Saint-Denis at the head of the procession, the doors were closed in his face. The abbot objected to the presence, not of the king, his master, but of the Bishop of Paris and the Archbishop of Sens, whom he had observed among the officiating clergy, and who, according to his view, had no right to perform service in the abbey of Saint-Denis, where he alone was chief. The difference was arranged by the archbishop and bishop taking off their pontifical garments and acknowledging the supremacy of the abbot in his own abbey.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

1

Nothing was wanting to his glory; he was wanting to ours.