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

The art of Gutenberg, however, resisted all these measures, and apparently the king did not persevere in his hostile projects, for in 1543 he exempted the printers from service in the City Guard. Two years later, nevertheless, Robert Étienne, having published an edition of the Bible which excited the wrath of the Sorbonne, found himself so persecuted that he had to retire to Lyons, whence he could not venture to return to Paris till he had obtained the protection of Henri II. A worse fate befell a Lyons printer, named Étienne Dolet, who had taken refuge in Paris. He was arrested, imprisoned in the Conciergerie, and at the end of eighteen months strangled and burned in the Place Maubert on the 3rd of August, 1546.

In 1551 Robert Étienne, seriously menaced, was forced to seek refuge at Geneva, leaving at Paris his wife and children, who might have starved had not Henri II., on the prayer of Charles Étienne, Robert’s brother, restored to them the goods of the proscribed printer. This same monarch gave a further proof of his goodwill in exempting printers, by an edict of the 23rd of September, 1553, from the taxes to which books were then liable.

In 1556 Henri decreed that a copy, printed on vellum, of every book whose publication was authorised, should be contributed to the Royal Library; and that every such copy should be magnificently bound. It is supposed to have been to Diana of Poitiers, a great bibliophile, that this decree was due.

Charles IX. showed no little favour to printing. By letters patent, dated March, 1560, he confirmed and continued to the printers all those favours, rights, privileges, liberties, exemptions, and so forth, which had been ceded by his royal predecessors. One printer, however, Martin Lhomme by name, derived small benefit from these letters patent, for in the same year, on a decree of the Parliament, he was hanged.

This printer, a native of Rouen, living at Paris in the Rue du Mûrier, was accused of having sold a book entitled “The Royal Tiger,” which was a satire directed against the Guises. He was condemned, according to the Parliamentary decree, “to be hanged and strangled on a scaffold erected in the Place Maubert, a suitable and convenient spot.” The goods of the prisoner were to be confiscated to the king, and the objectionable book was to be burned in the printer’s presence previously to his execution.

Not long afterwards, in September, 1563, an ordinance appeared which proclaimed that all printers, binders, and sellers of libellous placards and other publications should be punished, for the first offence with the whip, for the second with death. A further ordinance, issued the same month, forbade printers to put any unauthorised volume in type “under pain of being hanged and strangled.”

In spite of all these fetters the art of printing lived on and even prospered. Henri Étienne, having returned into possession of the paternal establishment, published in 1572 the four first volumes, in folio, of the Thesaurus linguæ Græcæ, a work which his father had planned, and which it took Henri eleven years to execute. This monument of literary learning was published under the auspices of several sovereigns, with Charles IX. amongst them.

In July, 1575, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine complained, in the general assembly, that the books of Ambroise Paré, first surgeon to the king, were being printed, although they contained a doctrine pernicious to the public welfare and to good morals. The dean, therefore, prayed the University to lay a petition before Parliament to the effect that the writings of this author might be examined by medical professors. Attempts were at the same time made to subject the printers of these works to a fine.

The sixteenth century had been a time of conflict for the art of printing, just as it had been for the Reformation. The subsidence of the civil wars benefited both. Hardly established on the throne, Henri IV., by letters patent, dated 20th February, 1595, confirmed to the printers their privileges, and liberated them from the taxes which, the year before, had been newly imposed upon them. At the moment of his accession he had exempted them from the duties payable for the confirmation of their ancient rights.

In 1624 a regular censorship was started by Louis XIII., who by an edict appointed four censors, chosen from the Faculty of Theology, to each of whom was accorded a salary of 500 livres, with honours, immunities, etc. The University protested against this edict, which encroached upon its secular rights. The dispute lasted long, and the four theologians resigned their office. But in 1626 the king entrusted the Guard of the Seals with the choice of censors, and the University lost this part of its privileges. Three years later Louis XIII. issued an ordinance which forbade the printing or selling of any book not inscribed with the names of the author and the printer.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were lands of refuge in which writers who feared the political laws and the despotism of their own country could always find free presses: Holland, that is to say, and Switzerland. It was in Holland that Bayle published his famous Dictionary.

The Constitution of 1791 “guaranteed” to every man “the liberty of writing, printing, and publishing his thoughts without his works being liable to any censure or inspection before their publication.” The Convention passed no law against the press. The pamphlets of the enemies of the Revolution still exist, and testify to the plenitude of the liberty enjoyed by writers at this period. Some of these, it is true, were accused of connivance with the foes of their country, and punished for that crime; but there was no question of process against the press.

The Consulate, with its strict régime, had less respect for the liberty of the pen. By a decree of 17th February, 1800, the consuls granted power to suppress those journals which published articles contrary to the welfare of society, the sovereignty of the people, or the glory of the national arms. Under the Empire new fetters were placed upon the press. In 1810 the number of printers in Paris was limited to sixty. In the following year another twenty were authorised; but, on the other hand, the censorship which had been suspended was re-established. The Restoration accorded to printers full liberty for producing works of more than twenty sheets, but maintained the censorship for smaller publications, and subjected the newspapers to royal authority.

The press had taken too great a part in the Revolution of July not to derive from it, at first, in any case, some advantage. The new Charter, in proclaiming the liberty of the press, within the limits of the law, declared that the censorship could never be re-established. Some years later, however, heavy fetters were once more placed upon the newspapers of France, though book-publishers retained their former measure of liberty.

At the period of 1835, under the monarchy of July, numerous prosecutions were instituted against the press; and the jury who tried these cases, though it often acquitted, sometimes condemned with rigour. The Republican journal, the Tribune, succumbed beneath the weight of the fines imposed on it.

The Republic of 1848 accorded to the press a liberty quite as unlimited as it now enjoys, though the free use it made of this liberty produced a reaction and new fetters in the following year.

The invention of printing was made the subject of a play by the unfortunate Gérard de Nerval, author of the Voyage en Orient, and of a translation of Faust which Goethe himself admired. In Gérard de Nerval’s drama figure a good angel and a demon; and when the good angel, always anxious to benefit humanity, invents printing, the demon comes forward and says: “I invent the censorship.” Of the censorship in connection with printed works some account has been given, and a few words may be added in reference to the censorship as bearing upon works written for the stage.

The dramatic censorship was established in France in the middle of the fifteenth century – that is to say, in the earliest days, of the French stage. The clerks and students classed together as “La Basoche” were forbidden to act any play or “satire” until after it had received the approval of the censor. It must be supposed that the corrections and commands of the censor were set at naught; for, thirty-four years later, an order was published forbidding the members of the Basoche to play at all, or even to ask permission to play. This was under the reign of Louis XI. Under Charles VIII. theatrical representations were again authorised, but only under rigid supervision. Louis XII. gave absolute liberty to the comedians. All kinds of personalities were permitted to dramatic writers, who, with impunity, could even attack the throne. On one point alone was Louis XII. fastidious, he objected to attacks on the honour of the queen; and for her protection in the midst of the general licence now exhibited on the stage, authors were required to “respect ladies under penalty of being hanged.” The threat was a severe one; and by reason, perhaps, of its very severity, it was never found necessary to carry it out. Under Francis I. the censorship was re-established in full force, and an order was published calling upon the players to be careful in their representations not to speak the passages which had been marked out. In 1548 the priests, who hated all theatrical performances, and looked upon stage-players as beyond the pale or the Church, procured the formal interdiction, by the Parliament, of the mediæval mysteries, into which much profanity had been introduced.

According to M. Poirson, one of the latest and best historians of Henri IV., the theatre, under his happy reign, enjoyed absolute liberty. Louis XIII., or rather his powerful minister, again introduced the censorship; and, later on, every reader of Molière knows what trouble the great comic dramatist met with at the hands of the censorship in connection with one of his masterpieces, Tartufe. Authorised by the king, the piece was interdicted by the Parliament, after its first representation, besides being condemned by a mandamus from the Archbishop of Paris; and it was not until three years after its original production that Molière obtained full permission to perform it. Louis XIV., despot as he was, hesitated, in the midst of the disputes between the Gallican Church and the Court of Rome, to interfere in a matter which his clergy had taken so deeply to heart. Molière had fresh difficulties to contend with in connection with Don Juan, which he was obliged to modify in many passages before he could obtain permission to perform it. The cynicism of the hero’s reflections was declared to be in opposition (as Molière intended it to be) to religious feeling; and the Parliament thought it impious that Sganarelle (afterwards the Leporello of Mozart) should, on seeing his master carried down to eternal torments, think of nothing but his wages and ask pathetically from whom he was to get them.

Under Louis XIV. the political side of the censorship first shows itself. In a farce played at the Théâtre Italien under the title of La Fausse Prude, Mme. de Maintenon was recognised; and when Racine, at Mme. de Maintenon’s request, composed Esther for the pupils of St. Cyr, the piece seemed full of political allusions, and everyone at Court was so convinced that Esther was Mme. de Maintenon, and Vashti Mme. de Montespan, that the performance was at last forbidden. Haman, in the proscribed piece, was thought to be the minister, Louvois, and in the persecution of the Jews a reference was seen to the cruel edicts against the Protestants. The Athalie of the same dramatic poet shared the fate of Esther, and for like reasons.

On the death of Louis XIV. Esther and Athalie were freed from the interdict which had weighed upon them, and now the picture of Judæa under its tyrannical rulers was looked upon as that of France, while in the character of Joas was seen the young king Louis XV. The censorship now became, above all, political. No allusion was to be made to a minister or to any state official, these rules being applicable to all state functionaries, whether belonging to France or not. A phrase in a comedy of this time, “From his rotundity one might take him for a president,” was condemned by the Parliament of Paris, whose president at the time was somewhat stout.

Voltaire had to take infinite trouble in order to get permission to produce his Mahomet. The official censor, Crébillon, having objected to Mahomet– in a spirit of jealousy, as Voltaire maintained – its author obtained from the Duke de Richelieu permission to entrust the censorship of the work to his friend, d’Alembert; though Crébillon, from one point of view, seems to have been not far wrong, since Mahomet, on its production as authorised by d’Alembert, excited on the part of the religious world general disapprobation, so that Voltaire, after a time, had to withdraw the piece.

The ingenious and daring measures by which Beaumarchais at last succeeded in getting removed from his Marriage of Figaro the veto pronounced upon it by King Louis XVI. have been told in another place. This brings us to the time of the Revolution, when all restrictions on personal liberty were, for a time at least, abolished. Theatrical representations were now given inside Notre Dame. On the first anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI., January 21st, 1794, was performed at the National Opera, “on behalf of, and for the people, gratis, in joyful commemoration of the death of the tyrant,” Miltiades at Marathon, the Siege of Thionville, and the Offering to Liberty. The censorship, abolished for a moment, was soon re-established under the Republic; and now stage kings and stage queens were absolutely suppressed. “Not only were they forbidden to appear on the stage,” says a writer on this subject, “but even their names were not to be pronounced behind the scenes, and the expressions ‘côté du roi,’ ‘côté de la reine,’ were changed into ‘côté jardin,’ ‘côté cour,’ which, at the theatre of the Tuileries, indicated respectively the left and right of the stage from the stage point of view. At first all pieces in which kings and queens appeared were prohibited, but the dramas of sans culottes origin were so stupid that the Republic was absolutely obliged to return to the old monarchical repertory. Kings, however, were turned into chiefs; princes and dukes became representatives of the people; seigneurs subsided into mayors, and substitutes more or less synonymous were found for such offensive words as crown, throne, sceptre, etc. The scenes of most of the new operas were laid in Italy, Prussia, Portugal – everywhere except France, where it would have been indispensable from a political, and impossible from a poetical point of view, to make the lovers address one another as ‘citoyen, and ‘citoyenne.’”

One of the reasons put forward for reintroducing the censorship under the Republic was that for a long time past the aristocracy had “taken refuge in the administration of various theatres”; whereupon it was resolved that the opera “should be encouraged and defended against its enemies.” At the same time the managers were arrested as suspicious persons, and replaced by republicans whose republicanism was beyond question.

Napoleon, determined not to tolerate opposition or even criticism in any form, was very severe in regard to the theatrical censorship. In a letter on this subject to the Minister of the Interior, he says: “You must not depend on your officials to know what the theatrical pieces submitted to you for your examination are really like. You must read them yourself, and then decide whether it would be better to permit or to forbid their representation.” Under the Restoration the censorship was not less severe than under Napoleon. The performance of Arnault’s Germanicus in 1815 had results which almost seemed to justify the censorship’s existence. So excited did the audience become, that many of them rose from their seats and fought with walking-sticks. It is from this moment that the order dates by which no walking-sticks or umbrellas must be brought into the theatre.

Towards the end of the Restoration, when the romantic school had just arisen in France, with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas as its principal champions on the stage, the censorship, without ceasing to be political and moral, gave itself literary airs, and, inspired by the calmness and moderation of the old classical school, forbade violent scenes and scenes in which ideas of death and, above all, suicide were presented. Thus, in a translation of Hamlet, the graveyard scene had to be considerably abridged.

Out of consideration for Victor Hugo, who in these early days was a royalist, and who, throughout his long life, was the foremost poet of France, the Minister of Fine Arts, M. de Martignac, consented to read all his pieces and decide upon them himself. He began with “Marion Delorme,” and authorised the representation of that fine work, when suddenly there was a change of Cabinet, and the new minister, M. de la Bourdonnaye, forbade it. Through the intervention, however, of M. Trouvé, Director of Fine Arts, permission was obtained to bring out Hernani, to which all kinds of objections had previously been made.

After the overthrow of Charles X.’s Government, in July, 1830, the censorship was absolutely abolished; but, as equally happened after the previous revolution of 1789 and the subsequent one of 1848, it was very soon re-established. In the month of August M. Guizot, Minister of the Interior, named a commission for the examination of questions connected with the liberty of the stage. “I proposed,” he says in his Memoirs, “to re-establish a serious dramatic censorship, which would defend public decency against the cynicism and greed of speculators in corruption.” It was objected to M. Guizot’s proposition that the proper course to pursue would be to allow managers full liberty of production, and to punish them by ordinary police measures if they produced anything contrary to public morals. This proposition was combated by the vain argument that to stop the representation of a piece by reason of its alleged immorality would involve managers in serious loss; as though the loss inflicted ought not to be regarded as a just penalty. Ultimately, as has already been said, the censorship was re-established, and there is no reason to suppose that for some time to come it will not still be maintained. It has been said that in France the censorship is done away with only to be introduced anew. The Belgians have shown themselves on this head more logical and more consistent. When at the time of the revolution which separated Belgium from Holland, the Chamber of Deputies of the new constitutional monarchy declared that the censorship was abolished, it added that it could “never be re-established”; and this is one of the fundamental laws of the Belgian Constitution. It cannot, that is to say, be repealed or modified unless the constitution be revised.

As always happens in France, the withdrawal of restrictions is at once followed by an abuse of the new liberty gained. All the arguments on both sides are now thoroughly known. The simplest way, however, of testing the necessity of a dramatic censorship is by examining the condition of the stage in those countries where nothing of the kind exists: Belgium, for instance, and the United States. Licentious pieces are no more represented in Brussels than in Paris; nor is any liking for them exhibited in America. Occasionally in Brussels a piece founded on some recent sensational case has been produced. Some years ago, for example, the incidents of what was known as the “Pecq murder” were represented in dramatic form. Here there was no question of morality but only of good taste; and the taste of the public being more delicate than that of the manager the performance came to an end after the second night.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HÔTEL DES INVALIDES

A Glance at its History – Louis XIV. and Mme. de Maintenon – The Pensioners – Their Characteristics and Mode of Life

ANOTHER of the most notable buildings on the left bank of the Seine is the Hôtel des Invalides. “There is no institution more worthy of respect,” said Montesquieu, “than the Hôtel des Invalides. If I were a prince I would rather have founded this establishment than have won three battles.”

Before its institution Paris was full of old soldiers, mutilated, miserable, and begging their bread. Nevertheless, they inspired a natural and just interest as long ago as the time of Charlemagne, who assigned them to the care of the priories and abbeys. “His successors,” says M. de Chamberet in his “Histoire des Invalides,” “continued the work of charity. When all the places in the religious houses were full, assistance was given to the old soldiers, and in some cases fixed pensions. But they were for the most part in deplorable circumstances. Philip Augustus, the first of our kings who maintained a standing army, conceived the idea of creating special establishments for his old soldiers, and his grandson Saint Louis, on his return from the Crusades, carried out to a certain degree the project formed by Philip Augustus. The institution he founded was intended, however, for the reception only of men of birth who had been blinded by the burning sands of Palestine. The asylum, named Les Quinze-Vingts, was intended in fact for the blind, and in connection with its original object the name has been preserved.”

Charles VI. did nothing; nor, during the English invasion and occupation, would it have been possible to do much. Charles VII. did very little, and Louis XI. followed the example of his predecessor. Louis XII., the “father of his people,” Francis I., the “father of letters,” and Henri II., the noble husband of Catherine de Médicis, occupied themselves more or less with the fate of old and wounded soldiers. Finally, on the 28th of October, 1568, Charles IX. published a decree regulating the admission of wounded veterans to the priories and abbeys. Under various pretexts old soldiers, it would seem, had been admitted into religious houses without sufficient authority. The ecclesiastical bodies complained of having these warriors quartered upon them, and the warriors on their side complained that no provision was made for their declining years. At length the matter received the serious attention of Henri IV. Wishing to appease the ecclesiastics, but at the same time not to neglect the old soldiers with whose aid he had conquered his kingdom, he conceived the idea – which had already occurred to more than one of his predecessors – of creating a special asylum for both officers and men. In confirmation of his project, he issued an edict in April, 1600, and letters patent in January, 1605, though his death in 1610 prevented the founding of the establishment.

Far from prosecuting his idea, Marie de Médicis, now declared regent, suppressed, by an order of the Council of State, the Military Houses of Christian Charity and the House of Lourcine; and she afterwards commanded that the mutilated officers and soldiers should go, as in the past, to find shelter as recluses in the abbeys and priories liable for their maintenance.

This unsatisfactory system led to all kinds of abuses, and the complaints of the monastic brotherhoods at length assumed an absolutely violent character. Louis XIII., to put an end to such a condition of things, established, by an edict of November, 1633, under the title of “Commanderie de St. Louis,” a community in which wounded military veterans could be housed and fed for the rest of their lives. The want of funds, however, and preoccupations of one kind and another, prevented the prosecution of this scheme, which made no progress until Richelieu took it in hand and on the 7th of August, 1834, continued the work at his own expense. Unfortunately, however, just when the new institution was on the point of being inaugurated (the public sheets had pompously announced it, and a procession of the Commanderie of Saint Louis, with flag and banner, had proclaimed it in the streets) the whole thing was suddenly and unaccountably abandoned.

The old soldiers were still lamentably unprovided for when this ancient grievance forced itself upon the notice of Louis XIV. Paris was just then inundated with soldiers reduced to the last extremity, although an ordinance of the 7th of January, 1644, required them to be sent out of the town as quickly as possible, and despatched to the frontiers, where, it was said, a subsistence was assured to them. Another decree strictly forbade them to solicit alms. Both edicts, however, were in practice ignored. Some of the invalids continued to stay in Paris; others went into the provinces to carry with them disorder and scandal. In 1670 a royal edict was issued ordering the immediate construction of the Hôtel des Invalides; and, pending its completion, part of the funds set apart for it were employed for renting in the Rue du Cherche-Midi an immense house, which served as refuge for the future pensioners. It is true that the religious chapters, who had to bear a share in the expense, showed a great disinclination to pay; but Louvois, who had the matter in hand, would by no means allow them to hang back, and in 1674 the veterans were transferred to their new abode. One fine day in October the king drove up to the institution in a magnificent carriage drawn by eight white horses, and followed by numerous equipages. At two o’clock a parade of the veterans began on the esplanade, where they marched three abreast. Two soldiers, well-nigh centenarians, who had served at the battles of Arques and of Ivry, headed the procession. On a subsequent occasion Louis XIV. paid a second visit to the Invalides, accompanied by Madame de Maintenon. As soon as his carriage entered the gate, several of the veterans got in front of the body-guard forming the escort and kept them back, saying that from the moment His Majesty entered the place he should have no other guard than his old servants. Those who had defended him on the battle-field could, they declared, look after him quite well whenever he was pleased to come and visit them. A lively altercation took place on this point, and attracted the attention of the king, who, informed of what had occurred, ordered the captain of his guards to withdraw outside the building, adding that in future whenever he visited the place he would confide his person to his dear old disabled soldiers.