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

On the 21st of January, 1793, the Convention decreed that the body of Lepelletier, deputy of Saint-Fargeau, who had been assassinated for having voted the death of the king, should be translated to the Panthéon. Then Marat, to whom, after the stab of Charlotte Corday, the Convention had already erected a mausoleum on the Place du Carrousel, was judged worthy of the Panthéon. On the 25th of November, 1793, Marie Joseph Chénier, speaking before the Tribune, and armed with documents, proved the transactions which Mirabeau had had with the Court, contrasting therewith the disinterestedness of Marat, whose remains, as he eloquently maintained, should displace at the Panthéon those of Mirabeau, unworthy of such a resting-place. The Convention adopted his propositions in a decree which was not executed until after the fall of Robespierre, on the 22nd of September, 1794. The official programme of the ceremonies, still extant, is interesting enough. After having fixed the order and the route of the cortège the authors of the programme added: “The procession will stop when it arrives on the Place of the Panthéon; a tipstaff of the Convention will advance towards the door of entrance, and there will be read the decree which excludes from the Panthéon the relics of Mirabeau. Thereupon the body of Mirabeau shall be conveyed out of the precincts of the Panthéon, and handed over to the commissary of police for that section. Then the body of Marat shall be placed in triumph on a platform elevated in the Panthéon… All citizens assisting at this ceremony shall be unarmed.” From the last injunction it is evident that the authorities feared the possibility of a riot. Everything, however, passed off quietly. The body of Mirabeau was laid in a corner of the cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

At length, on the 19th of October, 1794, the turn of Rousseau came. His body, borne by a deputation of the inhabitants of Ermonville, where he had breathed his last, was received at the Tuileries, where the future arch-chancellor pronounced over it an impressive speech. The remains of the philosopher, enclosed in an urn, were then conveyed to the Panthéon, escorted by the crowd and preceded by an orchestra playing various airs from his own “Devin du Village.”

But the political tide was already on the turn. On the 1st of February, 1795, the bust of Marat, placed in several of the theatres and cafés, was hooted and overthrown. His remains, according to the Abbé de Montgaillard in his history of the Revolution, were snatched from the Panthéon, dragged through the streets by young men, and cast amongst the refuse of the Rue Montmartre – “a tabernacle,” says the abbé, “worthy of such a god.” This account, however, is inaccurate; it was only Marat’s effigy which was thrown into the sewer, his relics were transported to Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

In the meantime the Panthéon, as a structure, was in a state of neglect. These installations of illustrious men within its walls had taken place more or less hastily, and the works were far indeed from completion. Mercier, in his “Picture of Paris,” thus describes a visit which he paid to the Panthéon in 1795: “I ventured on the staircases of the edifice, across ladders, heaps of cement, hammers, long saws and moving scaffoldings. The least sound reverberated, the least movement seemed to announce the approaching fall of the dome, and for the moment I imagined myself interred in the Panthéon without any pleading or contest. When I quitted the edifice I experienced the pleasure which is felt by sailors and warriors at the end of tempests and combats: that of discovering that I was alive.” By the time the Panthéon had been put into a satisfactory condition the Empire had come into existence, and Napoleon, who had just re-established public worship, wished to present the Republican temple to the clergy, whilst maintaining the purpose for which the Constituent Assembly had designed it. A decree, dated 20th of February, 1806, dedicated the Panthéon to public worship under the name of Church of Sainte-Geneviève, and consecrated it as a sepulchre for citizens who, in the career of arms or in that of the administration or of letters, had rendered eminent services to their country. The remains of thirty-nine persons, not all of them truly illustrious, were deposited in the Panthéon under the Empire; but the fall of the Empire brought about another change. Louis XVIII. suppressed the necropolis, and removed from the pediment the famous legend, “Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante.”

The last illustrious men admitted to the honours of the temple supposed to have been erected to them by a “grateful country” were Victor Hugo, the great Carnot, the deputy Baudin, killed on a barricade during the coup d’état of 1851, General Marceau, and La Tour d’Auvergne, “the first grenadier of France,” whose name, by order of Napoleon, used to be pronounced at every roll-call of his regiment, when this answer was solemnly given: “Mort sur le champ de bataille.”

The large open space to which the Panthéon gives its name – Place du Panthéon – was the scene of terrible conflicts between the troops and the insurgents during the Revolution of February, 1848, and again during the unsuccessful insurrection of June in the same year, when troops and national guards all took part against the workmen set free to starve or fight by the closing of the national workshops which, for financial reasons, could no longer be carried on, and against the social democrats who placed themselves at their head. On the northern side of the Place stands the Sainte-Geneviève Library, which, like all the Paris libraries, is open to all comers.

A foreigner who happened to visit the Quartier Latin, and observed the students strolling, lounging, or driving off to the theatre or a ball, might fancy that they led an easy and idle life, but he would be mistaken. These youths, ardent pleasure-seekers as they are, give three-fourths of their time to severe study. Earlier in the day a visitor to the Rue Saint-Jacques might have seen them waiting impatiently for the classes to begin at the College of France; might have seen them issue thence, full of enthusiasm for the great thinkers of their time, and wend their way to this or that public institution affording facilities for private study. A proportion of them would be found to resort to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, where a noble collection of books ranged on shelves adorned with delicate sculptures may well conduce to the tranquil exercise of the mind.

The first library of Sainte-Geneviève, which was founded as a private institution in 1624, and became national property in 1790, occupied in the buildings of the old abbey of the same name a habitation which had to be abandoned some forty years ago, because the building began everywhere to crumble and threaten collapse. The new library was finished and inaugurated in 1850; and although the external architecture is somewhat plain and heavy, the interior is highly artistic, with many a mural painting by master hands. Formerly this library possessed a very curious collection of crayon sketches, portraits of personages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were transferred by an imperial decree to the library of the Rue de Richelieu. It can support this loss, however, rich as it is in quaint and valuable specimens of art. For its manuscripts, with certain exceptions, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève is not remarkable; though it boasts a particularly fine collection of old printed books, with bindings sumptuous and fantastic enough to turn the head of a bibliophile.

Dependent on the church of Sainte-Geneviève, which it was destined to survive, is the church of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount. Among the wonders of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont is the tomb of Sainte Geneviève, whose relics, patroness saint of Paris as she was, were burnt in 1793 by the Paris Commune in the Place de Grève. During the fête of Sainte Geneviève, from the 3rd to the 11th of January, the church is crowded with pilgrims from the Paris suburbs to the number, it is calculated, of more than one hundred thousand. In the chapel immediately facing the altar stands a monument which contains the heart of Monseigneur Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, assassinated on the 3rd of January, 1857, in this very church, when he was opening the nine days’ service in honour of Sainte Geneviève, by a priest whom he had interdicted. The predecessor of Monseigneur Sibour, Monseigneur Affre, was shot dead by the insurgents of June, 1848, when exhorting them from a barricade to cease fighting. His successor, Monseigneur Darboy, was put to death with the other hostages whom the Paris Commune in 1871 had taken with the view of securing for the Communards made prisoners by the troops the character of prisoners of war.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL

The “Central School of Public Works” – Bonaparte and the Polytechnic – The College of Navarre – Formal Inauguration in 1805 – 1816 – 1832

BEHIND the church of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount, from which it is separated by the Rue Descartes, stands the Polytechnic School, founded by a decree of the National Convention on the 14th of March, 1794.

The Convention had made a clean sweep of all the schools established in the days of the Monarchy. Ere long, however, it began to revive the scholastic institutions on a new plan. The Committee of Public Safety began by decreeing the formation of a “Central School of Public Works.” Fourcroy was commissioned to present a detailed report on the new scheme; and the propositions contained in it were unanimously adopted. The Palais Bourbon was chosen as the domicile of erudition; and here a three years’ course of study, involving nine hours’ work a day, was offered to aspirants. The youth of Paris and of the provinces hastened in crowds to a school where every subject was taught by an eminent specialist. Enthusiasm characterised the labours both of students and professors, and rapid successes were achieved, despite the constant struggle which had to be maintained with the Committee of Public Safety, whether on account of the privilege which the school enjoyed of filling all vacancies in certain departments of the public service, or because the committee, at times when war had drained the national exchequer, could not furnish the funds indispensable to the educational scheme. The school, however, fought bravely through its difficulties, and presently received that denomination of École Polytechnique which became and has remained so popular. In the legislative tribunals, in the political and scientific journals, the Polytechnic School was never mentioned without being coupled with some formula expressing the high opinion entertained of its utility and of what it might achieve. “The first school in the world,” “the institution which Europe envies us,” “the establishment without a rival and without a model” – in such phrases was it described. Already the Polytechnic had been appointed to furnish officers for the artillery; and by a state decree it was enacted that no pupils should be received into the military and naval schools who had not first gone through their course in the Polytechnic. In 1803, when the peace of Amiens was broken and war burst out afresh between France and England, the pupils of the Polytechnic School evinced their patriotism by paying into the state coffers a sum of 4,000 francs which they had collected amongst themselves.

Bonaparte, on his return from Italy, endeavoured to conciliate the affection of men of learning and of letters. At that period nothing but the lustre of power or the superiority of the mind could command admiration. Having had himself admitted to the Institute, the First Consul loved to join his academic title to the indication of his rank in the army. He often visited the Polytechnic School, and even assisted occasionally at some of the lessons. He enriched its library with a number of costly works, and furnished its laboratories with all that they needed.

During the four years (1801 to 1804) which preceded the turning of this school into a barrack the people of Paris had returned to a state of tranquillity. At the theatre, however, disturbances frequently occurred in which Polytechnic students played a part. The reiterated complaints of the Minister of the Interior and the arrest of several of the disorderly students caused great vexation to the school authorities, who remonstrated with the delinquents and imposed severe disciplinary punishments upon them, but to little purpose. The classes began to suffer, for the agitation of the pit penetrated into the school, and the time which should have been devoted to work was frequently taken up with eager conversations on this or that exciting topic. Bonaparte, who had just taken the title of emperor, was apprised of these unfortunate occurrences, and immediately decreed, on the 16th of July, 1804, a new organisation by which the pupils would be formed into a military body and put in barracks. General Lacuée, councillor of state, was appointed governor, and Gay de Vernon took second command. The new organisation included the union of the barrack and the school on one spot, and an obligation on the part of the pupils to pay fees. General Lacuée formed from his body of councillors a commission which repaired to Fontainebleau, where the École Militaire was then established, in order to obtain all particulars as to the working of the Paris institution; and an active search was made for a building in which the school might be adequately installed. At length the College of Navarre was fixed upon as the fittest habitation. Napoleon in determining the funds necessary for his new organisation showed himself sufficiently lavish. He felt grateful to the students of the Polytechnic School for the patriotic aid they had offered him during the war with England; which had indeed evoked from him at the time some flattering words to the effect that he “expected nothing less from a youth thirsting for glory, to whom national honour was a patrimony.”

The school was inaugurated on the 11th of November, 1805, at the College of Navarre, which it has not quitted since. This college had been founded in 1304 by Jeanne of Navarre and her husband Philippe le Bel. The chapel, now used as a tracing-room, is all that remains of the original structure. Suppressed in 1790, the College of Navarre had been a seminary for princes and other pupils either distinguished already by their birth or destined to conquer fame: both Richelieu and Bossuet had sat on its benches.

The pupils of the Polytechnic School showed in 1814 the same patriotic feeling which had delighted Napoleon on a previous occasion. They offered for the artillery eight horses fully equipped; and immediately afterwards they petitioned to be admitted as combatants into the ranks of the French army. Napoleon made a reply which has become famous – that he was not reduced to such straits as to find it necessary to “kill his fowl with the golden eggs.” He formed, however, out of the Paris National Guard twelve batteries of artillery, three of which consisted of pupils of the Polytechnic School. On the 28th of March the pupils were entrusted with the service of twenty-eight pieces of reserve artillery, and on the 30th, during the battle of Paris, this reserve, placed across the avenue of Vincennes, held in check the enemy’s troops, who were endeavouring to enter Paris on this side in order to turn the position of the diminutive French army, fighting at Belleville and at Pantin.

On the return from Elba the Polytechnic School was again formed into a body of artillery; and it then received the only visit Napoleon paid to it throughout the Empire. With all his admiration for it, he regarded it as infected with the spirit of republicanism. Monge defended the pupils against the bad opinion entertained by the emperor, saying that, ardent Republicans when the school was first formed, they had not yet had time to become zealous Imperialists; at which Napoleon is said to have smiled.

Broken up in 1816 in consequence of some act of insubordination, and reorganised towards the end of 1817 under a civilian administration, the Polytechnic School was now placed under the Ministry of the Interior. Five years later, however, in 1822, it was once more organised on a military system. Like all the students of those days, the pupils of the Polytechnic School were enthusiastic Liberals, and when the Revolution of July, 1830, broke out they joined the people and acted for the most part as officers. One of them, Vanneau by name, was killed in the attack made on the barracks of the Swiss guards in the Rue de Babylone; and afterwards, by universal desire, the name of the young man was given to a neighbouring street, which still bears it.

Since then the Polytechnic has been mixed up with every important political movement that has taken place in France. On the 7th of June, 1832, many students, in spite of orders to the contrary, went out to assist at the funeral of General Lamarque, and took part in the outbreak to which it led. In 1848 the school was called out in a body to support the provisional government, which invited it, together with the Normal School and the School of Saint-Cyr, to take part in all the celebrations of the new Republic.

Amongst the distinguished men produced by the Polytechnic School since its creation under the First Republic may be mentioned Arago, Gay-Lussac, Biot, Poisson, and Carnot. Foreign governments have often asked permission to send young men of promise to this school; at once an effect and a cause of its European reputation.

CHAPTER XV.

THE HÔTEL CLUNY

The Rue des Carmes – Comte de Mun and the Catholic Workmen’s Club – The Place Maubert – The Palais des Thermes – The Hotel Cluny – Its History – Its Art Treasures

THE street in which the Polytechnic School is situated bears its name, and descending the northern slope of the so-called “mountain of Sainte-Geneviève,” the “Street of the Seven Ways” takes, at the point where the Rue de l’École Polytechnique crosses the Rue Saint-Hilaire, the name of Rue des Carmes. In ancient times it contained, besides the grand Couvent des Carmes founded in 1318, the College of Dace, established for Danish students, the College of Soissons, where Peter Ramus fell in the St. Bartholomew massacre, and finally the College of the Lombards. At the end of a large courtyard, surrounded with gardens, is seen the portico of a church with Ionic columns, whose pediment, frightfully mutilated, has quite a tragic aspect. This is the chapel of the ancient College of the Lombards, founded in 1334 by A. Chini of Florence, bishop of Tournai. The college was then the “House of the poor Italians” by the charity of the beneficent Marie. Three centuries later it was falling into ruins when two Irish priests undertook to build it up for the benefit of the priests and poor students of their country, who for two centuries possessed this corner of the earth, when, on its becoming too small, they abandoned it in 1776 and moved to the Rue Cheval-Vert. The chapel was then for many years taken possession of by industrial speculators, who turned it into shops and even into a stable. It was restored to public worship through the activity of Comte de Mun. In one part of the building is established the Catholic Workmen’s Club of Sainte-Geneviève, which has existed since May, 1875, and which offers to workmen and also clerks of all professions and trades a centre of instruction and even of amusement. To this institution are due the popular lectures (Conférences Populaires) delivered by M. Léon Gautier of the Institute, Albert de Mun, Father Montsabre, M. d’Hulst, etc. Without neglecting religious studies, the lecturers occupy themselves with the most varied subjects, such as literature, political and social economy, art and music. Here a certain number of workmen assemble every evening and, above all, on Sunday, when, after hearing mass, they can finish their day in an interesting and improving manner, reading books and newspapers and taking part in various games.

The Workmen’s Club of Sainte-Geneviève is not the only one of the kind in Paris; there are at least ten formed on the same plan and which reach directly and surely, without any attempt at noisy propagandism, their essential aim: that of depriving the dram shop and the tavern of their prey.

The lower part of the Rue des Carmes leads to the market of the same name and to the Place Maubert, which occupies the site of the ancient convent. The cloister of the Couvent des Carmes was remarkable as a masterpiece of architecture.

The Place Maubert was in the middle ages the true forum of the University Quarter, the meeting place of the students, the boatmen of the Seine, and market people from all parts of the country, as well as the central academy of the language spoken by the populace. Thus it was said of a man who was coarse in his talk that he had “learned his compliments in the Place Maubert.” The “Compliments of the Place Maubert” was indeed the title of a dictionary of plebeianisms. The name of the place or square is corrupted from that of Jean Aubert, second Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève. Receiving from all sides the outpourings of six popular streets, the Place Maubert has witnessed many tumultuous scenes. Here in 1418 assembled the partisans of Bourgogne who set out to massacre the partisans of Armagnac in their prisons. Here were burnt as heretics Alexandre d’Evreux and Jean Pointer in 1533; the mason Poille in 1535, the goldsmith Claude Lepeintre in 1540, and finally, in 1546, the printer Étienne Dolet, who, by his religious and political opinions as well as by the bitterness of his polemical writings, had made for himself implacable enemies. Across the Place Maubert was dragged the body of Ramus, assassinated in 1572 at the College of Presles in the Rue des Carmes. On one side of it were raised in 1588 the first barracks of the partisans of the House of Guise against King Henri III., and sixty years later the barricades of the Fronde.

At a few steps from the Place Maubert stood, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the Rue de Bièvre and the Rue des Grands Degrés, two attorneys’ offices, where were engaged two young clerks destined one day to dazzle the world of letters and of the stage. One was Crébillon; the other Voltaire.

All kinds of famous houses existed on or in the immediate neighbourhood of the Place Maubert: that, for instance, of Grandjean, the celebrated surgeon and oculist to Louis XVI., and that of Marie Antoinette. Local tradition assigns one of the houses to Gabrielle d’Estrées – “la belle Gabrielle” of Henri IV., and here she may really have lived, though the hostile critics of the tradition point out that the architecture of the house does not take us further back than the reign of Louis XV. Part of the house in question is now let out in artisans’ lodgings. On the ground floor, painted red, is the Château Rouge, called also – it must be feared with more than external significance – the Guillotine. A special chapter is devoted to the Château Rouge by M. Macé, in his volume on the police of Paris. It is composed of two large rooms, which are filled from morning till night with the disreputable and dangerous classes; close by is a lodging-house, constructed in the garden of the ancient mansion, and let out entirely to Swiss workmen, who live together in the most economical manner, and pass the gaping mouth of the Château Rouge ten times a day without ever going in. It was at the tavern of the Château Rouge that, in 1887, three men proposed, accepted, and carried out among themselves a bet to throw a woman into the Seine simply for amusement. The victim was a drunken rag-picker, and the stake was two sous: the price of a small glass of brandy.

In the immediate neighbourhood of the University and the Sorbonne, in the very heart of the district of the schools, are two of the most ancient and interesting buildings in Paris: the Palais des Thermes, which carries us back to the Lutetia of the Romans, and the Hôtel Cluny, which recalls mediæval Paris. The Palace of the Hot Baths is in ruins, but these ruins of a building which dates from the third century contain monuments more ancient than themselves.

The Bath-house of the Romans was at the same time a citadel; it is said to have been built in the reign of the Emperor Constantine Chlorus, who inhabited Lutetia from 287 to 292. In the year 360 Julian the Apostate was proclaimed emperor in this palace by the army and the people, and the palace is still generally known as the Thermæ of Julian. This honour was due to him by reason of his special predilection for his “dear Lutetia.” After him, the Emperors Valentinian and Gratian passed at this palace the winter of 365.