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

That the exhibition of machines, as superintended during the last days of the monarchy by M. Vandermond, was a sight worth seeing is shown by Arthur Young having gone to see it when he was making, throughout France, that tour of inquiry which was destined to become famous. “I visited,” he writes in 1789, just one month before the taking of the Bastille, “the repository of royal machines, which M. Vandermond showed and explained to me with great readiness and politeness. What struck me most was M. Vaucanson’s machine for making a chain which, I was told, Mr. Watt, of Birmingham, admired very much, at which my attendants seemed not displeased. Another for making the cogs intended in iron wheels. There is a chaff-cutter from an English original; and a model of the nonsensical plough to go without horses. These are the only ones in agriculture. Many ingenious contrivances for winding silk, etc.”

The Convention took steps for keeping the Vaucanson machines when so many treasures of one kind and another were being dispersed, and it seized the earliest opportunity of enlarging the collection, to which, from 1785 to 1792, 500 new machines were added. In 1792 a commission had been appointed to “catalogue and collect in suitable places books, instruments, and other objects of science and art in view of public instruction”; and a few months later in the same year the Convention published a new decree constituting the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers on a solid basis, and assigned to it the buildings of the former “abbey of Saint-Martin.”

At present this Conservatoire is under the authority of the Minister of Commerce. Fifteen courses of lectures, public and gratuitous, are delivered within its walls on subjects connected with the application of art to manufactures; and for these, three amphitheatres, the largest of which can accommodate an audience of 750, have been provided. The ancient abbey of Saint-Martin is still represented by two edifices connected with the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, and containing the library of the institution. One of these buildings was formerly the chapel, the other the refectory of the abbey.

At the corner of the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue de Vertbois is an ancient tower in pepper-caster form, which once marked the junction of the fortified part of the abbey and its prison. This tower, bearing the name of Vertbois, was given, in 1712, to the City of Paris on condition that a public fountain should be constructed there; and the fountain, adorned with the arms of Paris, still exists, bearing a somewhat enigmatic inscription, thus: “This tower, which formerly constituted part of the fortified enclosure of the abbey of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, constructed about the year 1150, and the fountain erected in 1712, have been preserved and restored by the town and the State on the demand of the Parisian archæologists, 1880.” There was, in fact, a question of destroying both tower and fountain in 1877 in view of certain architectural improvements, or at least changes, then projected. The lovers of antiquity protested, and Victor Hugo is said to have exclaimed, in the very words likewise attributed to him in connection with the proposed destruction of the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, “Demolish the tower? No! Demolish the architect? Yes!” The architect in the case of the tower of Vertbois was the poet’s own nephew. Like the tower, however, he was not demolished.

In front of the principal entrance to the Conservatoire a large square was made in 1860; its sides being formed by the Rue Saint-Martin, the Boulevard Sebastopol, the Rue Solomon de Caus, and the Rue du Caire. On the south side of the square, in the Rue du Caire, is seen the façade of the Théâtre de la Gaieté, which less deserves its title than our own Gaiety Theatre in London. Originally known by the name of Nicolet, its founder, and afterwards called, during the influence of Mme. du Barry, the Theatre of the King’s Dancers, it at length received, towards the end of the last century, the inappropriate title which still belongs to it. There was a time, it must be presumed, when at the Gaieté gay pieces were performed. But since the beginning of the century this house has been chiefly associated with spectacular and melodramatic productions. Here the famous fairy piece, Le Pied de Mouton, was produced with striking success in 1806. Some twenty years ago it was revived at the Porte Saint-Martin, where it ran nearly a year.

Reconstructed in 1808, the Gaieté was burnt to the ground in 1835. No sooner had it been built up again than it was pulled down to make way for the Boulevard du Prince Eugène. The Gaieté, which now, as already mentioned, stands on the southern side of the square of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, is one of the four theatres belonging to the Town of Paris. Here were produced some of the best pieces of Auguste Maquet, the most renowned of Alexandre Dumas’ numerous collaborateurs, and one of the very few who have shown themselves able, unaided, to produce first-rate work.

Since its removal to the square of the Arts et Métiers, the Théâtre de la Gaieté has confined itself to no particular style. Here were represented Sardou’s drama La Haine; Jules Barbier’s Jeanne d’Arc, with music by Gounod; Offenbach’s operettas revived on a large scale, with Orphée aux Enfers prominent among them; Victor Massé’s Paul et Virginie, Saint Saën’s Timbre d’Argent, and the Dmitri of Joncières. The last strikingly successful piece produced at this theatre was a dramatic version of Alphonse Daudet’s Tartarin sur les Alpes.

The first street parallel to the Rue Saint-Martin is the Rue du Temple, which, much increased in length by the demolition and reconstruction of 1851, is now one of the longest streets in Paris. It owes its name to the ancient habitation of the Order of Templars. After the violent suppression of this fraternity, the property passed to the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, who fixed upon it for their Paris headquarters. The Grand Prior of this Order had, by rule, to be a prince of the blood; and the last to hold the office was the Duke of Angoulême, eldest son of the Count of Artois, afterwards Charles X. Particulars of the captivity of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the Dauphin in the Temple have already been given. It may here be added, however, that after being used for some years as a State prison, the old building was demolished in 1811. Finally the Palace of the Grand Prior, with its majestic colonnade, which had been allowed to remain untouched until 1854, was pulled down, and the land made over to the Town of Paris on condition of its planting trees on the site and erecting a monument to the memory of Louis XVI. This latter condition was never fulfilled.

Nothing now remains of the fortress which Louis XVI. quitted, on the 21st of January, to be taken to the scaffold, but an old willow, dating from four or five centuries back, beneath whose shadow the king, during his confinement, loved to walk. The monument in the centre of the square is a statue of Béranger; “the divine Béranger,” as Heine calls him, and of whom Benjamin-Constant said one day, when the poet was yet unknown: “He writes magnificent odes and calls them songs.” Close to the spot marked to-day by his statue, in the Rue Vendôme, now re-named Rue Béranger, died this most poetical of popular song-writers, this most popular of poets. He was honoured by a public funeral at the expense of the State.

The Temple Market dates from a remote period; not, however, in its present form, which was given to it by the First Consul in 1802. It was made to include the Rotunda, built in 1788 for the accommodation of debtors without means or without intention to pay, who came to the Temple to enjoy the privileged security of all who there sought refuge. Men’s clothes and women’s dresses are the articles chiefly in demand at the Temple Market. To the ancient dealers in second-hand garments belonged a reputation for strong language, which has now faded away. Under the conditions of modern life, character perishes, and even the representatives of Mme. Angot and her celebrated daughter are well-behaved and even polite.

Close at hand is the Synagogue of the Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth. The neighbouring Rue des Archives contains the Église des Carmes, consecrated since 1812 to the Lutheran rite, but formerly a Dominican church erected on the ground previously occupied by a chapel dating from the year 1295. On this site had previously stood the house of Jonathan, the Jew, convicted (or at least accused and declared guilty) of having profaned the sacred host, miraculously preserved from his fury. Of this strange legend, one of many similar ones invented in hatred of the unhappy Jews, an account may be found in Dulaure’s “Singularités Historiques.”

The whole of the right side of the Rue des Archives is taken up by the imposing edifice in which the national archives are preserved. It was formerly the Hôtel de Soubise. On the western portion of the ancient property of the Guises was erected the Palais Cardinal, built by Armand Gaston de Rohan, Prince Archbishop of Strasburg, which has long been occupied by the National Printing Office. Up to the time of the Revolution the archives were preserved by the particular establishment, political, judicial, civil or ecclesiastical, to which they belonged; so that in 1782 there were upwards of a thousand different places where documents of national importance were preserved. In the midst of the general uprising, when convents were being pillaged and manor-houses burnt, an immense number of valuable papers were either torn up or given to the flames. At last special commissions were organised for the collection and preservation of all State papers; which in the first instance were deposited at the Tuileries with the official reports of the Assembly which there held its sittings. In 1808 Napoleon ordered that all archives of whatever kind should be kept in one place provided specially for them. He at the same time bought for State purposes, and for the sum of 690,000 francs, the Hôtel de Soubise and the Hôtel de Rohan; the first for the archives, the second for the Imperial printing office.

The national archives, whose importance is yearly increasing, and which form an historical collection unrivalled elsewhere, are under the care of a Director-General who belongs to the Ministry of Public Instruction. The Director-General is assisted by three chiefs of section, who overlook the reception, classification, and preservation of State documents in the following order: 1. Historical section. 2. Administrative section. 3. Legislative and judicial section. Many very interesting documents relating to the history of France are exhibited in glass cases. The most ancient of these is dated 625, under the reign of Clotaire II. The most modern are of the year 1821. In connection with the national archives a reading-room is kept open every day from 10 to 5 for persons who have sought and obtained permission to consult documents in view of their studies. Attached to the National Archives is the School of Maps, under the direction of a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and of Belles Lettres, assisted by a council. The French, too, have invented a profession unknown in England – that of archivist. To become an archivist it is necessary to follow for three years a course of lectures, each of which is followed by an examination. To pass finally the student writes an essay on some appropriate subject, and, if successful, receives the name of archivist or palæographer, which entitles him to employment in connection with the archives, or with one of the libraries under the direction of the Ministry of Public Instruction. By reason of the exceptional importance of their duties, the archivists are liberated from military service, like the pupils of the superior normal schools and of the School of Oriental Languages. The School of Maps was, together with so many other institutions of which France is justly proud, founded by Napoleon I.; who wished, at the time, to establish a lay Order of Benedictines devoted to the study of French history. Without constituting themselves into an order, the students of the School of Maps have, by their conscientious and disinterested labours, done much to throw light on the history and literature of ancient France.

On the south side of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, opposite the School of Maps, stand the buildings of the Mont-de-Piété, established by Louis XVI. in 1771. After the revolution in 1796, the profits of the Mont-de-Piété were assigned to the hospitals, and the institution is now under the direction of the Assistance Publique, or Charity Board, presided over by the Prefect of the Seine. Besides the principal establishment, at No. 55, Rue des Francs Bourgeois, there are two district establishments and twenty-one auxiliary ones dispersed through the different quarters of the capital. The Mont-de-Piété of Paris lends no less than six million francs a year; and it obtains whatever working capital it requires by the issue of bonds bearing interest at five per cent., which are much in favour with investors. The capital of the Comédie Française is all permanently invested in bonds of the Mont-de-Piété. It was not without serious opposition that the first projectors of the Mont-de-Piété succeeded in getting it authorised; though Mercier, writing only a few years after the publication of the King’s edict on the subject, regards this institution as of the greatest benefit to the poor.

“The establishment of the Mont-de-Piété or pawn-warehouse,” he says, “was long wished for in vain, but is at last perfected, notwithstanding the opposition it met with from several interested beings who live by the distress of their fellow creatures. At this place the poor may be supplied with money, upon any pawn whatever that they can leave for security, at a very trifling interest; for it is not here in the hands of private individuals, as I am told is the case in London, where a pawnbroker charges no less than 30 per cent. for the loan. I hear they are authorised to do so by law. So much the worse. In Paris the Mont-de-Piété is under the immediate inspection of the Government, and has hitherto proved of the greatest service by giving the mortal wound to usury and its infamous votaries. The greatest proof that can be given of the usefulness of this institution, and how needful it was in Paris, is the great concourse of people who daily resort there to raise temporary sums. It is said, but I will not vouch for the truth of the assertion, that in the space of a few months there were forty tuns filled with gold watches; this I rather take to be an exaggeration, meant only to give an idea of the very great number that were then in the warehouse. Certain it is that I have seen at one time four score people assembled; who, waiting for their turn, came there for the purpose of raising loans not exceeding six livres a head. The one carries his shirts, another a piece of furniture, this an old picture, that his shoe-buckles or a threadbare coat. These visits, which are renewed every day, are the most forcible proofs of the extreme want and poverty to which the greatest number of the inhabitants is reduced. Opulence itself is often obliged to have recourse to the public pawn-warehouse, and the contrast between extreme misery and indigent richness is nowhere better exemplified. In one corner a lady, wrapped up in her cloak, her face half covered, and just stepped out of her coach, deposits her diamonds to a large amount, to venture it in the evening at a card-table; whilst in the other a poor woman, who has trudged it on foot through the muddy streets, pawns her lower garment to purchase a bit of bread. The best regulation prevails in this place; a sworn appraiser stands there to estimate upon oath the real value of the pledge offered. Yet, as the best institution is liable to much abuse, it is said that the poorer sort of people are not always treated with that humanity which they are more justly entitled to than their betters; this evil, with a little attention from the magistrate who presides over this undertaking, may easily be remedied. I make no doubt but the Mont-de-Piété will prove as advantageous an establishment as it is useful and commendable.”

Some houses were being pulled down in 1878 for the enlargement of the Mont-de-Piété when a tower belonging to the wall of Philip Augustus was brought to light. This was one of the four towers which flanked the circumvallation of the king just named. The old tower was consolidated and repaired. Near this spot stood, in 1258, the Convent of the White Cloaks, founded by the serfs of the Virgin Mary; to be replaced, in the same century, by the hermits of Saint William, who, in 1816, joined the congregation of the reformed Benedictines. The name of Blancs Manteaux is still connected with a street and a market in the neighbourhood. The Benedictines constructed their church and their monastery in 1695; and it was here that these learned men composed many of their works, imperishable monuments of their erudition. “The Art of Verifying Dates” and “The Collection of the Historians of France” may in particular be mentioned. Sold as national property in 1797, the Benedictine Church was bought back by the Town in 1807 and made the second parochial church of Saint-Merry, under the name of Notre Dame des Blancs Manteaux.

At the south-east corner of the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, in the Rue Vieille du Temple, stands, under the title of Hôtel de Hollande, all that remains of the ancient Hôtel de Rieux, at one time occupied by the Dutch ambassadors.

The turret at the corner of the Rues Vieille du Temple and Francs Bourgeois is remarkably picturesque.

Just to the right of the Rue Barbette is the ancient Palais Cardinal, forming the rear part of the Hôtel de Soubise, and containing the National Printing Office, there established by a decree of 1808. In the centre of the great courtyard a statue of Guttenberg, by David d’Angers, may be seen. On the first storey of the principal building is the bedroom of the Cardinal who played so sad a part in the “Affaire du Collier” – the affair, that is to say, of Marie Antoinette’s necklace, which caused such scandal immediately before the Revolution. Here is now housed the library of the National Printing Office, called the Hall of the Monkeys, by reason of its being decorated with scenes from monkey life, attributed to Boucher.

The Royal Printing Office, destined also to be called National and Imperial, according to the Government in power, was founded by King Louis XIII., and dates from 1640. Until that time the King employed private printers; Conrad Naebor, printer in Greek, with an annual allowance of 100 gold crowns, and Robert Estienne, printer in Latin and Hebrew. Though they printed for the King, both Naebor and Estienne had their own private printing offices. The Royal Printing Office was established by Louis XIII. at the Louvre, where it remained until the time of the Revolution – directed from 1691 to 1789 by Jean Anisson and members of his family. Then all kinds of printing offices were established under national control: a national legislative printing office, a national printing office of laws, a national executive printing office, etc. The Directory brought them all together in 1795, under the title of Printing Office of the Republic, which was established in the Rue de la Vrillière, at the Hôtel de Toulouse, afterwards occupied by the Bank of France. Since 1808 the National Printing Office (“Imperial” as it was called at the time) has not moved from the Palais Cardinal. It is governed by a director belonging to the Ministry, placed beneath the authority of the Minister of Justice. It prints for the State Le Bulletin des Lois, and all the papers, formulas, registers, and cards required by the different Ministries. It also prints – and in this resides its special importance – either at the expense of the State or of the authors, scientific and artistic works for which particular signs or characters, especially Oriental characters, are needed.

The scientific and artistic publications of the National Library are counted among the masterpieces of typography. Pierre Corneille’s edition of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” printed expressly for the Exhibition of 1867, was universally admired. Indeed, from 1809, when, after considerable delay, “The Description of Egypt,” based on the observations made during Bonaparte’s famous campaign, was published, until the present day, the National Printing Office of France has produced a large number of perfectly printed editions. In war, as in peace, this office received important benefits at the hands of the first Napoleon, who, to enrich it, deprived the Italians of a fine collection of Arabic and Persian characters.

At the time of the Restoration, the National, now Royal Printing Office, was placed under the direction of a member of the Anisson family, lineally descended from the Anisson of 1690, who, while working for the Government, carried on a printing office as a private enterprise, and made immense profits. After the Revolution of 1830 it was taken over by the State; and the Government of Louis Philippe purchased for the Royal Printing Institution all kinds of Oriental characters. Now, too, were for the first time acquired fonts of Russian, Servian, and other Slavonian type. At the request of the Government, moreover, a complete set of Chinese characters was sent from Pekin. Under various changes of government the National Printing Office has, from Louis Philippe until now, remained a State establishment.

It was calculated twenty years ago that the National Printing Office, with its one hundred hand-presses and a good number of presses worked by steam, prints every year about 200,000 reams of paper in different forms, or altogether about 100,000,000 sheets. Reducing these sheets to octavo volumes, each of thirty sheets, the National Printing Office produces every year 3,330,000 volumes; and reckoning 300 working days in the year, 11,100 volumes per day.

Beneath the statue of Guttenberg, cast from the statue by David d’Angers which adorns Strasburg, Guttenberg’s birthplace, is buried an historical account of the National Printing Office, with two commemorative medals.

One of the most interesting buildings in this neighbourhood is the Hôtel Lamoignon, which, by its architecture, presents the aspect of a fortress, though its walls and windows are ornamented with crescents, hunting-horns, and the heads of stags and hounds, in allusion to its having been built by Diana of France, the legitimatised daughter of Henri II. Passing down the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, along the southern wall of the Hôtel Carnavalet, we reach, on the left, the entrance to the Musée Carnavalet, associated with the illustrious names of Jean Goujon the sculptor, François Mansard the architect, and Mme. de Sévigné the charming letter-writer. The Hôtel Carnavalet, which the Marquise de Sévigné inhabited from 1677 to 1698, was restored in 1867 and the years following, when Baron Haussmann resolved to create a municipal museum; of which, however, mention has already been made. It is impossible to quit the Marais, the ancient district in which we have lately been lingering, without calling attention to the beautiful façade of the Hôtel Carnavalet, with its graceful representations of the four seasons.

We are now once more in the Rue Saint-Antoine, within a few paces of the ancient Rue de Birague, at the end of which is a large arcade leading to the Place Royale, which Parisians have not yet learned to call the Place des Vosges, a name given to it as long ago as 1800 by Lucien Bonaparte, Minister of the Interior, to reward the department of the Vosges for being the first department to pay certain taxes which had fallen into arrear. After being styled for thirty-four years, from the time of the Restoration, Place Royale, the square was named in 1848 Place des Vosges.

In the previous description of this Place reference has been made to the statue of Louis XIII. which stands in its centre; and also to the beautiful garden which belongs to it.

CHAPTER XXVIII

CENTRAL PARIS (continued)

The Rue Saint-Denis – Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles – George Cadoudal – Saint-Eustache – The Central Markets – The General Post Office.

THE Rue Saint-Denis is by ancient tradition, and still in the present day, as a matter of fact, the favourite abode of the French bourgeois. Our aldermen have long ceased to live in the City, and a John Gilpin of our own time, wherever his place of business might be, would have his private residence at Clapham or Brixton, at Holloway or Highgate. The Paris tradesman, however, still lives, like the M. Jourdain in Molière’s “Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” above his shop; and his shop, in a good many typical cases, is, as it was two centuries ago, in the Rue Saint-Denis. “La Grande Rue Saint-Denis” the street was formerly called; and, as it is upwards of three-quarters of a mile long, it may be said to deserve its name. It is even now the most central and the most commercial street in Paris. According to Sanval, one of the many historians of the French capital, it is the street par excellence of all Paris. Voltaire, on the other hand, detested this street, and had good reasons for doing so. One day, when he was but seventeen years of age, he found himself by chance in the Rue Saint-Denis, with his purse well filled, at the very moment when an auctioneer was selling the goods of an unfortunate man who had not been able to pay his taxes. A carriage, with two horses, and the livery of the indispensable footmen, was put up, and in a sudden fit of wildness, the young philosopher, not yet philosophical, purchased the lot. The coachman, who was looking on, offered his services, which the youthful Voltaire at once accepted. “Put in the horses and get up on the box,” he said; and the schoolboy, who had just left the Jesuits’ College, was seen driving along the Rue Saint-Denis; not, however, for any length of time. The coachman he had engaged, an awkward fellow, managed, at the corner of the street, to upset the carriage. Voltaire’s ardour now subsided and he lost no time in getting rid of his newly-acquired equipage. The Rue Saint-Denis, in consequence, no doubt, of this accident, had made a bad impression on Voltaire; and in after days he never spoke of it without sarcasm.