Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

To conclude the list of musical performances which have derived a gloomy celebrity from their connection with the last days of Louis XVI., we may reproduce the programme issued by the directors of the Opéra National on the first anniversary of his execution, 1724. It ran thus: – “On behalf of and for the people gratis. In joyful commemoration of the death of the tyrant, the National Opera will give to-day, 6 Pluviose, year 2 of the Republic, ‘Miltiades at Marathon,’ ‘The Siege of Thionville,’ ‘The Offering to Liberty.’”

The Opera under the Republic was directed until 1792 by four distinguished sans-culottes– Henriot, Chaumette, Le Roux, and Hébert, the last named of whom had once been check-taker of the Académie. The others knew nothing whatever of operatic affairs. The management at the theatre was afterwards transferred to Francœur, one of the former directors associated with Cellérier, an architect; but the dethroned impresarios, accompanied by Danton and other Republican amateurs, constantly made their appearance behind the scenes, and very frequently did the chief members of the company the honour of supping with them. In these cases the invitations, as under the ancient régime, proceeded, not from the artists, but from the artists’ patrons; with this difference, however, that under the Republic the latter never paid the bill.

“The chiefs of the Republic,” says M. Castil Blaze, “were very fond of moistening their throats. Henriot, Danton, Hébert, Le Roux, Chaumette, had hardly taken a turn in the coulisses or in the foyer before they said to such an actor or actress, ‘We are going to your room. See that we are properly received.’ A superb collation was brought in. When the repast was finished and the bottles were empty, the National Convention, the Commune of Paris, beat a retreat without troubling itself about the expense. You think, perhaps, that the dancer or the singer paid for the representatives of the people? Not at all; honest Maugin, who kept the refreshment room of the theatre, knew perfectly well that the actors of the Opera were not paid, that they had no sort of money, not even a rag of an assignat; he made a sacrifice: from delicacy he did not ask from the artists what he would not have dared to claim from the sans-culottes, for fear of the guillotine.”

Sometimes the executioner, who, as a public official, was entitled to certain entrées, made his appearance behind the scenes, and it is said that, in a facetious mood, he would sometimes express his opinion about the “execution” of the music.

Operatic kings and queens were suppressed by the Republic. Not only were they forbidden to appear on the stage, 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. But although, at first, all pieces in which kings and queens figured were prohibited, the dramas of sans-culotte origin were so stupid and disgusting that the Republic was absolutely obliged to return to the old monarchical repertory. The 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. In a new Republican version of “Le Déserteur,” as represented at the Opera Comique, le roi, in one well-known line, was replaced by la loi, and the vocalist had to declaim “La loi passait, et le tambour battait aux champs!” A certain voluble executant, however, is said to have preferred the following emendation: “Le pouvoir exécutif passait, et le tambour battait aux champs!” The scenes of most of the new operas were laid in Italy, Prussia, Portugal – anywhere but in 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, citoyenne. On the 19th of June, 1793, the directors of the Opera having objected to give a gratuitous performance of the “Siege of Thionville,” the Commune of Paris issued the following edict: – “Considering that for a long time past the aristocracy has taken refuge in the administration of various theatres; considering that these gentlemen corrupt the public mind by the pieces they represent; considering that they exercise a fatal influence on the revolution: it is decreed that the ‘Siege of Thionville’ shall be represented gratis, and solely for the amusement of the sans-culottes, who, to this moment, have been the true defenders of liberty and supporters of democracy.” Soon afterwards it was proposed to shut up the Opera, but Hébert – the ferocious Hébert, better known as Le père Duchesne – undertook its defence, on the ground that it procured subsistence for a number of families, and “caused the agreeable arts to flourish.”

Whatever the Opera may have been under the Reign of Terror, it was conducted infinitely better in one important respect than under the ancient régime.

In the days of the old monarchy, as we learn from Bachaumont, a girl once inscribed on the books of the Opera was released from all control on the part of her parents. She might present herself for engagement of her own accord, or her name might be entered on the list by anyone who had succeeded in leading her away from her parents. In neither case had her family any further power over her. Lettres de cachet were issued, commanding the person named in the order to join the Opera, and many young girls were thus victimised. It can scarcely be supposed that the privileges granted to the Opera were intended, in the first instance, to be turned to such evil account as they afterwards were. Indeed, young men equally with young women could be seized and committed to operatic control wherever they were found. “We wish, and it pleases us,” says King Louis XIV., in the letters-patent granted to the Abbé Perrin, first director of the Académie Royale de Musique (1669), “that gentlemen (gentilshommes) and ladies may sing in the said pieces and representations of our Royal Academy without being considered, for that reason, to derogate from their titles of nobility, or from their rights and immunities.” Many aristocrats of both sexes profited by this permission to appear either as singers or as dancers at the Opera. Young girls, amateurs, male and female, whose voices had been remarked, could be arrested and forced to perform at the Opera; and in the case of young girls it was evidently to the interest of the Académie Royale de Musique that it should be able to profit by their talents without interference on the part of parents, who might well object to see their children condemned to such service. Besides being liberated from all parental restraint, the pupils and associates of the Academy enjoyed the right of setting creditors at defiance. The salaries of singers, dancers, and musicians belonging to the Opera were explicitly liberated from all liability to seizure for debt. Of the freedom conferred by an engagement at the Opera, the young woman who enjoyed it would probably have been the last to complain; for, side by side with operatic conscription, a system of operatic privileges was in force. It was not the custom for young ladies in good society to visit the Opera before their marriage; but a brevet de dame could be obtained, and the fortunate holder of such a document could without infringing any law of etiquette, attend all operatic performances. “The number of these brevets,” says Bachaumont, in his Mémoires Secrets, “increased prodigiously under Louis XVI., and very young persons have been known to obtain them. Thus relieved from the modesty and retirement of the virginal state, they gave themselves up with impunity to all sorts of scandals. Such disorder has opened the eyes of the Government, and it is now only by the greatest favour that one of these brevets can be obtained.”

It has been seen that, according to Mercier and, after him, Castil Blaze, the extreme revolutionists among the Terrorist party desired that the Opera House in the Rue Richelieu might meet with the ordinary fate of theatres, in the hope that flames or flaming embers blown from the conflagration might reach the National Library, just opposite. This does not accord with the fact that the Convention did its utmost to encourage learning, literature, and art. The free system of the University, the College or Gymnasium at from eight to ten francs a month, and the Conservatoire de Musique, with its endowments, its scholarships, and its free tuition, all date from the first days of the Republic of 1789. As to the formal demolition of the Opera House, whose destiny was supposed to be fire, it happened in this way: —

On the 13th February, 1820, which was the last Sunday of the Carnival, an unusually brilliant audience had assembled at the Opera House, or Académie Royale, as it now once more was called. The Duke and Duchess of Berri were present; and before the performance had been brought to an end, the duke, struck by an assassin, was a dead man.

The circumstances of the murder were very dramatic, not only by their theatrical surroundings (for the performance still went on while the duke was expiring in the manager’s private apartments), but also by the remarkable way in which his whole life – with his double marriage and his two families – reproduced itself in the last few hours of his existence. The opera or operetta of the evening was at an end, and a portion of the ballet had been played, when the duke accompanied the duchess to her carriage, intending to return to his box to see the remainder of the performance. Then it was that the assassin grappled with him and pierced him to the heart. The duke was carried to the director’s room, and in accordance with the practice of the day, was at once bled in both arms. The internal hemorrhage was still so great, that it was thought necessary to widen the orifice.

“There,” says a contemporary writer, “lay the unhappy prince on a bed hastily arranged, and already soaked with blood, surrounded by his father, brother, sister, and wife, whose poignant anguish was from time to time relieved by some faint ray of hope, destined soon to be dispelled. When Dupuytren, accompanied by four of his most eminent colleagues, arrived, it was thought for a moment that the duke might yet be saved. But it soon became evident that the case was hopeless. The duke’s daughter had now been brought to him, and after embracing her several times, he expressed a desire to see the king, Louis XVIII. Then arrived two other daughters, the children of the union he had contracted in England. The duchess, seeing them now for the first time, received them with the greatest kindness, and said to them: ‘Soon you will have no father, and I shall have three daughters.’ In a neighbouring room the assassin was being interrogated by the Ministers Decaze and Pasquier, with the bloody dagger on the table before them; while on the stage the ballet of ‘Don Quixote’ was being performed in presence of an enthusiastic public. In the course of the night the king arrived, and his nephew expired in his arms at half-past six the next morning, begging that his murderer might be forgiven, and entreating the duchess not to give way to despair.”

The theatre on whose steps the crime had been committed was now demolished. The other Paris theatres were not indeed pulled down, but they were shut up for ten days, and there was general mourning in France, not only because a prince of the blood had been murdered, but also because the direct line of succession had to all appearance been brought to an end. It was not until more than seven months after the tragic scene at the Opera that the prince who was to have saved France, the “Enfant du Miracle,” was born.

The arrival of the two daughters born and brought up in England has been differently regarded by writers of different political views. Alexandre Dumas, in his Memoirs, and Castil Blaze, in his Histoire de l’Académie de Musique, represent the incident as a purely domestic one. M. Mauroy, in his recently published works, Les Secrets des Bourbons and Les derniers Bourbons, lays stress on the fact that these children were treated with a consideration not shown to other children of the duke’s, who were certainly born out of wedlock, and thus derives an argument in support of his proposition that the Duke of Berri contracted in England with the mother of these girls a regular marriage, invalid only in so far as it had never been sanctioned by the head of his house. Chateaubriand, as a royalist, would not allow the character of legitimate children to the two girls brought to the bedside of their dying father, and entrusted by him to the care of his wife, the duchess.

“The Duke of Berri,” writes Chateaubriand, in the Mémoires d’outre-Tombe, “had had one of those liaisons which religion reproves, but which human frailty excuses. It may be said of him as the historian has said of Henri IV.: ‘He was often weak, but always faithful, and his passions never seemed to have enfeebled his religion.’ The Duke of Berri, seeking vainly in his conscience for something very guilty, and finding only a few weaknesses, wished, so to say, to collect them around his death-bed, to prove to the world the greatness of his contrition and the severity of his penance. He had a sufficiently just opinion of the virtue of his wife to confess to her his faults, and to fulfil, beneath her eyes, his desire to embrace those two innocent creatures, the daughters of his long exile. ‘Let them be sent for,’ cried the young princess; ‘they are my children also.’ When the Viscountess de Gontaut, who had not been told beforehand, seemed astonished, Madame (i. e. the Countess of Artois) noticed it, and said to her: ‘She knows everything; she has been sublime!’”

The rest of Chateaubriand’s narrative, especially as regards the Duke of Berri’s two daughters, corresponds closely enough with the one left by Dupuytren, whose style, somewhat expressive, somewhat emphatic for a man of science, is less copious, and also less magniloquent than that of the marvellous author of Le Gênie du Christianisme and of the Mémoires d’outre-Tombe.

What the prince chiefly thought of in his last moments was his murderer, Louvel. “Twenty times in the course of the fatal night,” says Dupuytren, the famous physician, whose account of the scene was published not many years ago, “he cried out, ‘Have I not injured this man? had he not some personal vengeance to exercise against me?’ In vain did Monsieur repeat to him, with tears in his eyes: ‘No, my son, you never injured, you never saw this man; he had no personal animosity against you.’ The prince returned incessantly to this groundless idea, and, without being conscious of it, furnished by his public and repeated inquiries the best proof that he had not provoked the frightful calamity which had befallen him. With this first idea he constantly associated another – that of obtaining pardon for his assassin. During his long and painful agony the prince begged for it at least a hundred times, and did so more earnestly in proportion as he felt his end approaching. Thus, when the increasing gravity of the symptoms made him fear that he would not live long enough to see the king, he called out piteously, ‘Ah! the king will not arrive. I shall not be able to ask him to forgive the man.’ Soon afterwards he appealed turn by turn to Monsieur and to the Duke of Augoulême, saying to them, ‘Promise me, father, promise me, brother, that you will ask the king to spare the man’s life.’ But when at last the king arrived, he no sooner saw his Majesty than, summoning all his strength, he cried out, ‘Spare his life, sir! spare the man’s life!’ ‘My nephew,’ the king replied, ‘you are not so ill as you think, and we shall have time to think of your request when you have recovered.’ Yet the prince continued as before, the king being still on his guard not to grant a pardon which was equally repugnant to the laws of nature and to those of society. Then this generous prince exclaimed in a tone of deep regret: ‘Ah, sir! you do not say “yes,”’ adding shortly afterwards: ‘If the man’s life were spared, the bitterness of my last moments would be softened.’ As his end drew near, pursuing the same idea, he expressed in a low voice, broken by grief, and with long intervals between each word, the following thought: ‘Ah!.. if only … I could carry away … the idea … that the blood of a man … would not flow on my account … after my death…’ This noble prayer was the last he uttered. His constantly increasing and now atrocious pain absorbed from this moment all his faculties.”

The heroism of the Duke of Berri and his dying prayer for the pardon of his murderer may be contrasted with the cowardice of his grandfather, Louis XV., taking the last sacrament twice over when he had only been scratched; and the cruelty with which he caused his assailant, who, murderously disposed, no doubt, had nevertheless scarcely injured him, to be subjected to the most frightful tortures, and finally torn to pieces by four horses.

Let us now return to the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, which, abandoned by the Opera, remained deserted for eight years, from 1794 to 1802. On September 30th of this year it was re-opened under the direction of the author and actor Du Maniaut, who brought out operas, melodramas, comedies, and pantomimes until the publication, in 1806, of the decree which put an end to the liberty of the stage. He afterwards, however, obtained permission to represent pantomimes and prologues, or vaudevilles, on condition that in each of these little pieces not more than two actors were employed. In September, 1810, Du Maniaut produced “The Man of Destiny” – a title indicating the Emperor Napoleon, whose victories were represented in a series of historical and allegorical pictures in honour of his marriage with Marie Louise. The music was by the celebrated Piccini, attached to the private staff of his Majesty the Emperor. The Man of Destiny was impersonated by a dancer and mimic named Chevalier, and his career, begun in Egypt, was continued up to the triumphal entry of the French troops into Berlin. After remaining closed for several years, the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre was re-opened in 1814, and thenceforward played a very important part in connection with the dramatic literature of the country. Here Mlle. Georges, Mme. Dorval, Frédéric Lemaître, and many other famous artistes, appeared. Here, too, were produced with enormous success “Marion Delorme,” “Lucrèce Borgia,” and “Marie Tudor,” from Victor Hugo’s pen; all the dramas of Alexandre Dumas, including “Antoine,” “Angèle,” “Richard Darlington,” and “La Tour de Nesle”: “The Mysteries of Paris” and “Mathilde” of Eugène Sue, “The Two Locksmiths” of Félix Pyat, the “Dame de Saint-Tropez” and “Don César de Bazan” of Adolphe d’Ennery. Here, too, the “Vautrin” of Balzac was brought out – to be stopped, after sixteen representations, by Government order, on the ground that Frédéric Lemaître’s make-up in the part of the hero was intended to throw ridicule on the person of King Louis Philippe. The house built by Le Noir, which the Committee of Public Safety had looked upon as of doubtful solidity, enjoyed a life of ninety years, and might have been in existence still; but on the 24th of May, 1871, without any apparent motive for so useless and stupid an act, the Communists set fire to it. The old theatre was burnt to the ground, together with an adjoining building, which, in the days of the Republic of Vienna, had belonged to the Venetian Ambassador.

Rebuilt on the same site, but after a different plan, the Porte St. – Martin Theatre was re-opened in the autumn of 1873, when Victor Hugo’s “Marie Tudor” was revived. To this succeeded a couple of great successes – “The Two Orphans” and “Round the World,” the former written by that fertile inventor of new plots, M. Adolphe d’Ennery, and the latter adapted by him from Jules Verne’s famous novel.

Close to this famous playhouse is the new Renaissance Theatre, which first opened its doors on the 8th of March, 1873. The Porte Saint-Martin contains 1,800 seats, the Renaissance only 1,200. Started as a dramatic theatre, with Belot’s “Femme de Feu” and Zola’s “Thérèse Raquin” in the bill, it was destined to obtain its chief success as an operetta theatre with the charming works of Charles Lecoq, including ”La petite Mariée,” “Le petit Duc,” etc. In these works Mesdames Théo, Jeanne Granier, and Zulma Bouffar first appeared.

At the point where the Boulevards St. – Martin and St. – Denis meet stands the Triumphal Arch known as the Porte St. – Martin, which Louis XIV. erected in 1674 on the site of the previous Gate, which dated from the minority of Louis XIII. The Porte St. – Martin faces on the one side the Rue St. – Martin, and on the other the Faubourg St. – Martin: that is to say, south and north. The low reliefs decorating the arch on all sides represent the taking of Besançon, the taking of Limburg, and the defeat of the Germans, in the form of an eagle repulsed by Mars. The pedestal bears a Latin inscription, which in English would run thus: – “To Louis the Great, for having twice taken Besançon and Franche-Comté, and for having crushed the German, Spanish, and Dutch armies. The Provost of the Merchants and the Citizens of Paris, 1674.”

At the end of the Rue St. – Martin, leading out of the boulevard of that name, stands the Church of St. Méry, near which a most determined struggle took place in that insurrection of the 6th of June, 1832, which was one of the numerous Republican movements directed against Louis Philippe by the disappointed revolutionists of 1830, who, aiming at a Republic, had brought about the re-establishment of a Monarchy. The Republicans received powerful aid from the Bonapartists: these two parties being at this, as on so many other occasions, ready to unite against royalty, while reserving to themselves the ultimate decision of the question whether the Empire or the Republic should be re-established.

The occasion chosen for the outbreak was the funeral of General Lamarque – equally popular with Bonapartists and Republicans. A number of enthusiastic young men drew the funeral car, which was followed by exiles from all parts of Europe. Among the pall-bearers were General Lafayette, Marshal Clausel, and M. Laffitte. Of the insurgents, some took part in the procession, while others looked on in expectation of events that were inevitable. The crowd broke into several gunsmiths’ shops, and finally into the arsenal. Many, too, had brought arms with them; and after a few hours’ fighting the insurgents had gained several important positions, and determined to attack the bank, the post-office, and some neighbouring barracks. Their chief object at this moment was to render inaccessible the Rue Saint-Martin and the surrounding streets. Here they intended to establish the head-quarters of their insurrection, without having the slightest notion that at that very instant M.M. Thiers, Miguet, and other members of the Government were dining together at the Rocher de Cancale, fifty yards only from the camp wherein the Republicans were fortifying themselves with the firm resolution of proclaiming a Republic or dying in the attempt. A remarkable example was given towards the evening of this day of what M. Louis Blanc calls the sympathy of the Paris National Guard for heroism, though most persons would regard it as a proof of incapacity and cowardice.

Eight insurgents, returning from the Place Maubert, presented themselves towards the decline of day at one of the bridges of the city which was occupied by a battalion of the National Guard. They authoritatively claimed their right to go over and join their friends who were fighting on the other side of the river, and as the guards hesitated to let them pass, they advanced resolutely towards the bridge at half charge, with fixed bayonets. The soldiers instantly ranged themselves on either side, and gave unimpeded passage to these eight men, whose infatuated heroism they at once admired and, reflecting upon its inevitable result, deplored.

The enthusiasm of the insurgents at this period is shown by many a curious incident, such as that of their moulding bullets from lead stripped off the roofs of houses; whilst boys, too young to bear weapons, loaded the guns, using for wadding the police notices they had torn off the walls, or, when that resource failed, taking the shirts off their own backs to tear to shreds for the purpose. It was all, however, a forlorn hope; and the rising was destined to be crushed by superior force.