Chapter I: Part 1

NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD PARIS

NOOKS & CORNERS OF OLD PARIS

_by_ GEORGES CAIN

CURATOR OF THE CARNAVALET MUSEUM AND OF THE HISTORIC COLLECTIONS OF THE CITY OF PARIS

_With a Preface by_ VICTORIEN SARDOU

WITH OVER A HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON E. GRANT RICHARDS 1907

_The Translation has been made by_ FREDERICK LAWTON, M.A.

DEDICATED TO A. G. LENÔTRE IN TOKEN OF MOST SINCERE AFFECTION

G. C.
_December_ 1905.

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS

1. The Rue du Chaume in 1866 (to-day, the Rue des
Archives) _Frontispiece_
2. The Place de la Bastille and the Elephant xvii
3. Demolition of the Rue Sainte-Hyacinthe-Saint-Michel,
opposite to the Rue Soufflot xxiii
4. The Town Hall in 1838 xxvii
5. The Pont-Neuf about 1850 xxxi
6. The Louvre about 1785 xxxv
7. The Courtyard of the Carrousel and the Museums about 1848 xxxix
8. The Garden of the Palais Royal in 1791 xliii
9. The Place de la Concorde xlvii
10. Patrol Road leading from the Barrier of the Etoile in 1854
(to-day the Avenue de Wagram) liii
11. The Carnavalet Museum lix
12. The Pont-Royal, the Tuileries, and the Louvre (eighteenth
century) lxiii
13. View of the Pont-Neuf, taken from an oval window in the
Colonnade of the Louvre 67
14. Workshops and Foundations of the City Barracks in 1864-1865 71
15. View of Notre-Dame 75
16. The "Petit-Pont" 79
17. The Old Prefecture of Police (formerly Jerusalem Street) 81
18. The Sainte-Chapelle in 1875 83
19. Opening up of the space in front of the Palais de Justice 85
20. The Cour des Filles in the Conciergerie 89
21. The Triumph of Marat 93
22. The Dauphine Square in 1780 97
23. The Pont Marie in 1886 103
24. The Isle of Saint-Louis 107
25. The College of Louis-le-Grand 111
26. The Inner Courtyard of the École Polytechnique 113
27. The Rue Clovis in 1867 115
28. The Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève in 1866 119
29. The Panthéon, in building 121
30. Procession in front of Sainte-Geneviève 123
31. The Apotheosis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 127
32. The Luxembourg, about 1790 131
33. Fraternal Suppers in the Sections of Paris 135
34. Fête given at the Luxembourg on the 20th of Frimaire,
Anno VII. 139
35. The Rue de l'École de Médecine in 1866 (house where Marat
was assassinated) 143
36. The Gallery of the Odéon (Rue Rotrou) 146
37. The Rohan Courtyard in 1901 147
38. The Rohan Courtyard in 1901 (second view) 151
39. The Rue Visconti 155
40. Alfred de Musset at 23 years of age 157
41. The Façade of the Institute 160
42. View from the Louvre Quay 161
43. Paris from the Pointe de la Cité 165
44. The Rue des Prêtres-Saint-Séverin in 1866 169
45. The Passage des Patriarches 173
46. The Rue Mouffetard 176
47. The Rue Galande 177
48. The Place Maubert 179
49. The Old Amphitheatre of Surgery at the corner of the
Colbert Mansion 181
50. The Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonneret and the Rue
Saint-Victor 183
51. The Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre 186
52. The Jardin des Plantes--The Cedar of Lebanon and the
Labyrinth 187
53. The Jardin des Plantes in the eighteenth century 191
54. The Jardin des Plantes--Cuvier's House 195
55. The Rue de Bièvre 199
56. The Bièvre Tanneries 203
57. The Bièvre about 1900--The Valence Mill-race 207
58. The Constantine Bridge and Stockade 211
59. The Pont-Royal in 1800 213
60. The Lesdiguières Mansion 215
61. Commemorative Ball on the Ruins of the Bastille 217
62. The Sens Mansion about 1835 221
63. The Provost Hugues Aubryot's Mansion--Charlemagne's
Courtyard and Passage in 1867 227
64. The Place Royale about 1651 (now the Vosges Square) 231
65. The Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau in 1866 235
66. The Saint-Paul Port 237
67. The Barbett Mansion 238
68. The Rue de Venise 243
69. The Rue du Renard-Saint-Merry 247
70. The Rue des Prouvaires and the Rue Saint-Eustache about 1850 250
71. The Central Market foot-pavement, near the Church of
Saint-Eustache, in 1867 252
72. The Central Market in 1828 254
73. The Central Market in 1822 255
74. Molière's House in the Rue de la Tonnellerie 257
75. The Tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie about 1848 259
76. Alexander's Grand Cafè Royal on the Temple Boulevard 263
77. Fanchon, the Hurdy-Gurdy player 267
78. View of the Ambigu-Comique on the Temple Boulevard 271
79. The Funambules Theatre on the Temple Boulevard 273
80. The Ambigu Theatre and Boulevard about 1830 277
81. The Porte Saint-Martin 281
82. The Rue Saint-Martin in 1866--The Green-Wood Tower 284
83. The Rue de Cléry 285
84. The Poissonnière Boulevard in 1834 289
85. The Gymnase Theatre 292
86. The Variety Theatre about 1810 293
87. The Boulevards, the Hôtel de Salm, and Windmills of
Montmartre 297
88. The Rue de la Barre at Montmartre 299
89. A Street in Montmartre 301
90. The Rue des Rosiers 303
91. The Place de la Concorde in 1829 305
92. Ingenuous Benevolence 307
93. The Place de la Concorde (second view) 309
94. The Entrance to the Tuileries, over the Swing Bridge, in 1788 311
95. Corner Pavilion of the Louis XV. Square about 1850 313
96. View in the Tuileries Gardens in 1808 315
97. The Rue Greuze in 1855 318
98. The Madrid Château 319
99. The Bagatelle Pavilion 322
100. A Performance at the Hippodrome under the Second Empire 323
101. The Arc de Triomphe about 1850 325

PREFACE

_Grandson and son of two rare and justly-renowned artists, P. J. Mène and Auguste Cain, my excellent friend, Georges Cain, has abundantly shown that he is the worthy inheritor of their talent. To-day, he wishes to prove that he knows how "to handle the pen as well as the pencil" as our Ancients used to say, and that the Carnavalet Museum has in him, not only the active and enthusiastic Curator that we constantly see at his task, but also the most enlightened guide possible in matters of Parisian lore; and so he has written this bewitching book which conjures up before me the Paris of my childhood and youth--the Paris of times gone by, which, in the course of centuries, has undergone many transformations, but not one so rapid and so complete as that which I have witnessed. The change, indeed, is such that, in certain quarters, I have difficulty in recognising, in the city of Napoleon III., that of Louis-Philippe. The latter would have been uninhabitable now, owing to the requirements of modern life, but it answered to the needs and customs of its time. People put up then with difficulties and defects that were judged unavoidable, no Capital being without them. And, in fact, in spite of its drawbacks and blemishes, the Paris of that period had its own charms._

_Most of its streets were very narrow and had no sidewalks. Pedestrians were obliged to take refuge, from passing carriages, on shop thresholds, under entrance gates, or else beside posts erected here and there for that purpose. Still, even in the densest traffic, one ran fewer risks walking along the road than one runs at present crossing the boulevards.... On these boulevards, where a single omnibus plied between the Madeleine and the Bastille every quarter of an hour, and where there was practically no danger of being knocked down by a horse, I have seen a crowd watching a fencing-bout on the spot to-day occupied by a refuge-pavement; and, on the Bastille Square, I used to play quietly, trundling my hoop round the Elephant and the July Pillar. There was little else to dread, throughout Paris, save splashes from the gutters, whose waters flowed in the middle of the streets ... when they flowed at all; for, during the hot summer days, there was nothing but stagnant household slops, which lay in the gutters until the next storm of rain. In winter, as the snow was never swept away, and the employment of salt for melting it was unknown, the thaws were something terrible! Every corner--and the houses being hardly ever in line, there were many--was used as a rubbish-heap, or for the committing of nuisances excusable only through lack of modern conveniences. Moreover, the streets, by very reason of their narrowness, were more noisy than ours. The rolling of heavy waggons over big, round paving-stones badly set, with jolts that shook both windows and houses; the constant cries of men and women selling fruit, vegetables, fish and flowers, &c. ... and pushing their handcarts, not to speak of dealers in clothes, umbrellas, and hand-brushes, of glaziers and of chimney-sweeps; the din of watermen blowing into their taps; the calls of water-bearers as they loudly clinked their bucket-handles; the clarionets and tambourines of strolling singers that went from one courtyard to another; all this composed the gaiety of the street. What was less tolerable was the incessant noise of barrel-organs beneath your windows from morning till evenings and inflicting on you a torture that it makes me angry to think of even now._

_To crown all, the lighting of the streets was wretched. In most, it was the ancient lamp whose illumination was an affair that stopped traffic while the operation lasted. On the other hand, however, the city was better guarded at night than it is at present, owing to the rounds of the "grey patrols" which, with their Indian files of cloak-muffled, slow-walking figures, crept along the walls and crossed one another's beats so as to be within helping distance, at the least alarm. Happy time, when, at one o'clock in the morning, in my lonely quarter, I was sure to come across one of them, and when one could stay out late without a revolver in one's pocket. This, it will be said, was because Paris was smaller, less populus, and the task of the police easier. But it is the duty of the police to proportion the protection to the danger, and the numbers of its officers to those of the evil-doers that infest our streets, for whom, formerly, little of the regard was felt that is lavished on them to-day._

_As a set-off to its narrow, badly-paved, badly-kept, and badly-lighted streets, Paris then had an attraction which it no longer possesses--its gardens._

_The idea formed of the old city is, generally, that of a heap of ancient houses with neither light, fresh air, nor verdure. In reality, the houses of the time, whether recent or old, existed only as a border to the street. Behind them, in the whole of the space that extended from one road to another, there were vast enclosures affording the sun, silence and verdure that did not exist in front. Many dwellings had fashioned, out of the grounds of mansions and convents parcelled up during the last century or two, large courtyards and private gardens which, separated merely by low fences, mingled their foliage and shade. This was so everywhere throughout the city, except in the part of it properly so called, and in the central portion near the Town Hall and the markets. A glance at the old plans of Paris will suffice to show that these unbuilt-on spaces comprised, under Louis XVI., the half, and, under Louis-Philippe, a third of the city's present area. In the Marais and Arsenal quarters, in the Saint-Antoine, Temple, and Popincourt faubourgs, in the Courtille, the Chaussée d'Antin, the Porcherons, the Roule quarters, in the Saint-Honoré faubourg, and along all the left bank of the river, which last was privileged in this respect, there were only scattered dwellings amidst orchards, kitchen-gardens, trellis-vineyards, farmyards, groves, and parks planted with century-old trees. The little that remains of this past is being rapidly destroyed; and, from the health and pleasure point of view, it is a great pity._

_From my window in the Rue d'Enfer, Estrapade Square, close to the blind alley of the Feuillantines, I used to cast my eyes, as far as I could see in every direction, over a wealth of foliage. In the Rue Neuve-Saint-Étienne, from the place where Bernardin de Saint-Pierre once lived, I beheld the towers of Notre Dame, beyond avenues of trimmed trees; and I could say, like the good Monsieur Rollin, in the distich engraved on his door a few yards away:_ Ruris et urbis incola, _that I was "an inhabitant both of the town and of the country." Through these gardens, through these silent streets so propitious to quiet labour, and scenting of lilacs and blossoming with pink and white chestnuts, new roads have been cut; the Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel Boulevards, the Rues de Rennes and Gay-Lussac, the Rue Monge which caused the demolition of the rustic cottage where Pascal died in the Rue Saint-Étienne itself; and the Rue Claude-Bernard which did away with the Feuillantines, where Victor Hugo, as a child, used to chase butterflies. Soon, the last of the monastic enclosures of the Saint-Jacques quarter, that of the Ursulines, will disappear to make room for three new streets!_

_The use of such small gardens, belonging mostly to private houses, was keenly appreciated by Parisians of the lower middle-classes who have always been of a stay-at-home disposition. This characteristic of theirs was satirised, during last century, in a well-known pamphlet: "A Journey from Paris to Saint-Cloud by Sea and by Land." Their curiosity with regard to far-off countries was not awakened as it is nowadays by stories of travel, and by engravings, photographs, or coloured advertisements. And getting from one place to another was very expensive. Railways had not yet made it easy for every one to go long distances by means of reduced fares and cheap circular tickets. An ordinary working man, in these modern times, will travel more easily to Biarritz, Switzerland, or Monte-Carlo, than an independent gentleman of the Marais could then have done. During the midsummer heat, Paris was as full as in winter's cold; and the theatres reaped their most abundant harvest, especially popular ones like the Ambigu, the Porte-Saint-Martin, the Gaieti, the Cirque, the Folies-Dramatiques, the Petit Lazary, Madame Saqui's, the Théâtre Historique, &c., which were situated near together about the Temple Boulevard. The fine weather allowed people living at long distances to come on foot to this dramatic fair, saving the price of a carriage both ways, and to make tail at the doors, without having to fear rain or cold; for the good-tempered public of those days, loving a play for its own sake, had no objection to be penned up so, between two barriers, while waiting for the opening of the ticket-offices, which then used to take place between five and six in the evening; it was one of the conditions, one of the stimulants of their pleasure, something to whet their appetite before the performance._

_Even the holidays did not empty Paris very perceptibly, except on the left bank of the Seine. From May to October, the majority of the middle-class--small shopkeepers, functionaries, retired people, as well as employees, clerks, and workers of every kind--contented themselves, like Paul de Kock's heroes, with excursions and picnics in the various Parisian suburbs--Vincennes, Montmorency, Saint-Cloud, Romainville, &c. In Paris, shopkeepers laid the cloth for a meal out in the open air, in the yard or garden, or, failing that, in the street. When I returned from my Sunday walk, at the dinner-hour, between four and five in the afternoon, I used to see, everywhere in the busiest streets, nothing but families at table before their doors, while boys and girls played about the road at shuttlecock, hot cockles, or blindman's buff. Occasionally, I was caught as I passed by some little girl with bandaged eyes, who, in order to recognise me, would feel my face, amid shouts of laughter from all the diners. And if, during the long summer evenings, I went with my companions to play at prisoners' base in the Rues de Vaugirard, or d'Enfer, or on the small Saint-Michel Square, the good folk, enjoying the fresh air on their doorsteps, paid no attention to us boys galloping all over the street._

_In a word, Paris was no different from the country-town!_

_These_ "bourgeois" _customs, which one might distinguish briefly by saying that they were "eighteen-hundred-and-thirty customs" survived till the 1848 Revolution, and persisted even into the Second Empire, when railway extension, the influx of strangers, great industrial and commercial enterprises, an increasing prosperity, the desire for comfort and luxury, a more active public life, keener competition, and the intenser struggle for life brought into existence our present customs and manners. It was a surprising transformation, one which was no little fostered by the creation of a new Paris on the ruins of the old. How often have I congratulated myself on having, from the time when I was fifteen years of age, devoted my holiday rambles to ferreting out, in the old quarters of the city now cut through, parcelled up and destroyed, the slightest vestiges of the past, as if I had foreseen that, within a brief delay, they would be reduced to dust by the demolisher's pick-axe._

_The Paris of Louis-Philippe was very nearly that of the Great Revolution and the First Empire. Each step in it awoke souvenirs that people thought but little of in my childhood, romanticism being more interested in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and more inquisitive about the massacre of Saint-Barthelemy than about those of September. It looked with tenderness at the old corner turret of the Grève Square, but gave no glance at the sign-post on the same Square, where the unfortunate Foulon was hanged. It deplored the disappearance of the Barbette Gate which marked the site where Charles d'Orléans was murdered, but did not suggest going to see, a few steps further, in the Rue des Ballets, the post where Madame de Lamballe's corpse was beheaded. Artists, novelists, poets, historians disdained these localities still warm from the Revolutionary drama, some episodes of which they claimed to relate. Ary Scheffer purports to show us the arrest of Charlotte Corday; but does not care to consult documents of the greatest exactitude that would have brought her before his eyes and ours with just her face, her attitude, and her dress. He does not even think to go to the Rue des Cordeliers and visit Marat's dwelling, still remaining as it was, including his bell rope. And he offers us a Charlotte of his own invention, cleverly painted, who looks like a chambermaid arrested by the porter, just as she is going off with her mistress's gown on her back!_

_In his_ "Stello," _Alfred de Vigny is quite as indifferent to local colouring as he is to facts. He places André Chénier's scaffold "on the Revolution Square" after taking him thither in a cart laden with more than "eighty victims, among them being some women with children sucking at the breast"!!!_

_It is the same with the rest!_

_Being more careful, I did not disdain the old stones that were humble witnesses of deeds so great; and, thanks to them, I was able to live through the Revolution again on the spot. They were fated to disappear. A new city cannot be built except on the remains of the old; and it is hard to reconcile the requirements of the present with the worship of the past. Indeed most of the old things, even those that might be saved, would have a sorry air amid the splendours of our modern City. What grieves me is to find that they have often been replaced in such a way as to cause one to regret their disappearance._

_As for the City, so called, it may be granted that the pulling down of its old buildings, its dark alleys, could only give pain to those whose passion is the picturesque, or to the admirers of the_ Mysteries of Paris. _Yet one must confess that, framed in its old close, Notre-Dame looked nobler than now at the end of a vast, desert space, where it seems to be stupidly posing before a photographer's camera, between the emptiness of the river and the frightful Town Hall, that might be taken for a slaughter-house._

_Nor was it necessary, when displacing the flower-market, to forbid the sellers' continuing the habit of improvising those pretty bowers of foliage and flowers, and to impose on them those zinc roofs that should shelter only artificial blooms,--not at all necessary, simply to complete the charm of the present administrative arbour._

_It might have also been possible to avoid cutting through the Dauphine Square, which I have seen in my time as charming as the Place Royale, with its pink bricks, since all we have in return is the funereal-looking structure forming the entrance of the Palais de Justice and the horrible balustrade of its staircase._

_Since my chance stroll has brought me to the Pont-Neuf I may just as well pursue in this direction my retrospective way._

_The Pont-Neuf which is newer than ever, may be congratulated on the loss of its high foot-pavements, its shoeblacks, dog shearers, and cat doctors squatting among its pillars, and its haberdashers, stationers, perfumers, fried-potato men and matchsellers, whose stalls, set up in the semi-circular projections of the bridge, have been pulled down, together with the old sentry-boxes that sheltered them, to make room for the benches of the present day. But what vandalism--the whitewashing of the two brick houses that face Henry IV.'s statue! They were built for the site they occupy. They are an integral part of the bridge, and contribute greatly to its adornment. If the owners, who have already whitewashed them, take it into their heads to replace them by so-so sort of constructions, it will mean the spoiling of one of the prettiest sights of Old Paris._

_Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, too, might have been spared the proximity of the tower which pretends to be Gothic, and of the Mairie which believes itself Renaissance. In their company, the church loses all its grace, and the group is ridiculous._

_At least, when turning one's back, one has the satisfaction no longer to see in front of the Colonnade a waste ground surrounded with rotten palings. Only crosses were lacking to give the place the appearance of a cemetery._

_And, as a matter of fact, it was one!_

_In the Restoration period, where now the equestrian statue of Velasquez stands, Egyptian mummies had been buried--mummies that had become decomposed, through too long sojourning in the damp ground-floor rooms of the Louvre. In 1830, in the same spot, the corpses of the assailants killed in the attack on the Louvre were hastily cast into a common grave. Ten years later, when it was desired to give these brave fellows a nobler sepulture, patriots and mummies were dug up pell-mell; and now contemporaries of the Pharaohs lie piously buried beneath the column of the Bastille, side by side with the July heroes._

_I knew the courtyard of the Louvre when it had a statue of the Duke of Orléans, put away after 1848, one of Francis I. by Clésinger succeeding it. Some fool or other having nicknamed it the "Sire de Framboisy," the joke was too idiotic not to have the greatest success. And to the nickname is partly due the disappearance of a work of art that deserved a better fate._

_No description can give any idea of what the Carrousel Square was then, in the intermediate state to which it was condemned, after the First Empire, by the joining of the Louvre to the Tuileries, which joining was still unachieved, though always being planned and replanned. It was nothing but a medley of half-destroyed streets, isolated houses half pulled-down and shored up with beams. The unpaved, uneven, broken ground was a veritable bog in rainy weather. The great gallery of the Louvre was flanked with an ugly wooden corridor, for ever ready to flare up! For, as tradition has it, there is always some permanent risk of fire in the vicinity of the Museum! On the same side, the Civil Service had run up temporary buildings which, from the small courtyard of the Sphinx to the gate facing the Saints-Pères bridge, enclosed the ruins of the ancient church of Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre and its dependencies, such as the Priory where Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Nanteuil, Arsène Houssaye, and others, had established their "Bohème galante." These buildings, in favour of which extenuating circumstances might be pleaded, were hired out to colour, engraving, picture, and curiosity-dealers of all kinds. I still see a large shop of knick-knacks where, among a most amusing collection of ostriches' eggs, stuffed crocodiles, and Red-Skins' heads of hair, the amateur used to come across wonderful bargains. And what riches also in the cases exposed by engraving-dealers in front of their doors to the curiosity of those interested in such things! Besides the engravings, there were lots of drawings, sketches, red crayon designs, water-colours by Cochin, Moreau, Boucher, Lawrence, Fragonard, Saint-Aubin, Proudhon, Boilly, Isabey, &c. I have passed there delightful hours, looking through such cases, the contents of which, alas! I could only admire, being unable to afford to buy masterpieces which I felt would have a future value, and which were then sold for a mere song, the pedants of David's school despising the French art of the eighteenth century, it being too amiable and witty for their taste. "Sir," said one of these dealers later to me, "I have rolled up before now engravings of Poussin, for which I would not pay two francs to-day, in other engravings of Debucourt that I would not sell to-day for a thousand francs!"_

_All this was swept away by the amalgamation of the two Palaces and the prolonging of the Rue de Rivoli, which has, moreover, endowed us with a very fine Square in front of the Palais Royal, in lieu of the old one, so mean, with its fountain of water, decorative enough but all blackened with dirt and slime._

_As for the Palais Royal, which the Duke d'Orléans seemed to have had built, so that it might be the Forum of the Revolution, if it was no longer the rendezvous of politicians, clubmen, gazetteers, open-air orators, and stock-jobbers, the battlefield of 1793 Republicans and fops, of Royalists and half-pay soldiers, the official promenade for the Merveilleuses, and courtesans of all degrees, if it no longer had its wooden galleries, its Tartar camp, its Dutch grotto, its gambling hells, it was still the headquarters of the nymphs of the neighbourhood; and, thanks to its two theatres, its eating-houses, its renowned coffee-houses, its rich shops, especially those of the jewellers, it was still the central point of attraction in Paris for newcomers from the country and abroad. With the least shower, it was impossible to walk about beneath its porticoes; and, in all weathers, especially on Sunday--the day of meeting_ par excellence--_there were crowds in the glass-covered arcade where, quite recently, I found myself alone--absolutely alone!_

_What shall I say of the Tuileries Palace, except that it once was and is no more? How I regret the magnificent shades of its grand avenue, unrivalled even at Versailles, and its clumps of chestnuts that braved the ardent sun rays! Nature alone is to blame for their disappearance, but they might have been replaced by trees less pitiable than the inevitable plane and acacia, which latter, without its flowers, is really the silliest and ugliest of trees. It promises a fine foliage for the future, if the future of this unfortunate garden is not to be totally suppressed, or at least to be broken up into lots!_

_Time was when I have seen the Place de la Concorde without its fountains and its statues, save the four horses of Marly--those of Coysevox at the gate of the Tuileries, those of Coustou at the entrance to the Champs-Elysées. When I was a boy, the socles of the future towns of France were being restored. Since the days of Louis XV., they had been decked with plaster caps, like saucepan lids, and were despised so much that the one bearing the town of Strasburg was flanked with a base stove-pipe. Anyway, it was the only one that shocked one's eyes. Count those at present that crown the monuments of Gabriel! Round the Square the ditches still remained, which on fête days had already made so many victims through the hindrance they offered to the crowd's getting away. One evenings when some fireworks were being let off on the Concorde bridge in honour of the King's birthday, I had only just time enough to take refuge on one of their balustrades, whence I was nearly thrown down into the moat by those that followed my example._

_The obelisk had just been erected in the centre of the Square, where its only justification was the fact of its having extricated the July Monarchy from an embarrassing position. The authorities did not know where to put it so as to conciliate everybody's opinion. The old stone monument, indifferent to all parties, was a fitting symbol of their Concord._

_The Champs-Elysées are unrecognisable now by any one who saw them under Louis-Philippe! The avenue was not then, like the Boulevard des Italiens, the meeting-place for what was called, in foolish Anglomania, "Fashion." Ices were not drunk there as on Tortoni's steps. Society dames and gentlemen passed along it only on horseback or in a carriage, contemptuously abandoning the side-ways to the more modest walkers, the small folk, who elbowed each other in the dust, to strollers, idlers, strangers, convalescents, scholars, nurses, soldiers, players at ball or prisoners' base on the Marigny Square, and to the innumerable urchins that disputed with each other the goat-carts and shouted for joy in front of the Punch-and-Judy shows!_

_In the way of coffee-houses, there were only three pavilions, all unworthy of the name, little ambulating drinking-stalls on trestles, with decanters of lemonade and barley-water, and the cocoanut-beverage sellers shaking their bell; the only eating-houses were two wretched wine-shops, and the places where Nanterre cakes, gingerbread, and wafers could be bought from dealers that stood and sold their wares while springing their rattle. For concerts, there were the fiddlers, guitarists, and harpists, the singers of popular songs and the man who was a band in himself; in the way of entertainments, before the opening of the Mabille Garden, there were Franconi's summer circus, Colonel Langlois' panorama, the swings, merry-go-rounds, and archery galleries, the Dutch top, and the game from Siam. As illumination, there were a few gas-lamps, the candles used by stall-keepers, and the red lanterns exhibited by orange-women. And with all this, not a bit of lawn, not a clump of trees, not a bed of flowers!--nothing, absolutely nothing, of what to-day constitutes this exquisite promenade._

_Paris ended at the Rond-Point!_

_Beyond, it was only a sort of faubourg, with a fine mansion here and there belonging to the previous century, a large garden, land unbuilt on to be sold, tenant houses, sorry-enough-looking, furniture repositories, coach-houses, riding-schools, and carriage-builders' premises--particularly carriage-builders'! Near the Rue Chaillot, the Avenue was bordered, on the left, with a broad turf embankment. I have seen, in the fine-weather season, diners cutting up their melon and leg-of-mutton on it, with the naïve joy of city folk enjoying the purer field air._

_In the vicinity of the Arc de Triomphe, the Avenue was lonelier and ill-inhabited, and, as soon as one crossed the barrier of the Etoile, it was no longer the faubourg but the suburbs. Instead of the fine avenues of the Bois and of Victor Hugo, only waste grounds were to be seen, market-gardeners' patches, quarries and uncanny-looking, tumble-down buildings. As for the Bois de Boulogne itself, it was so ugly by day and so dangerous by night that the less there is said about it the better._

_On the right, the Roule quarter was more civilised; but beyond, towards Mousseaux, such was not the case. One evening, out of curiosity, I went to see the house that Balzac had just had built in the street bearing his name. Afterwards, by chance, I strolled into this Ternes quarter, which was unknown to me. Night came on and I soon lost my way. On my left, I had a big, rascally wall which seemed endless, and, in the light of the pale gas-lamps, separated by long distances, I saw on my right nothing but stables, workyards, dairy outhouses, exhaling odours of poultry and dung, and red-curtained, low-character eating-houses which reminded me that, at the same hour, a professor whom I knew had been collared by a big blackguard that exclaimed to him: "Your money, you scamp!" My friend was smoking a cigar. Being sly, like the wise Ulysses, he pretended to comply by putting his left hand into his waistcoat pocket, while, with his right, he took the cigar from his mouth, knocked off the ashes with his little finger, and stuck it right in the eye of the footpad, who loosed him with a howl that Polyphemus might have uttered! This souvenir haunted me; and, after traversing a wretched hamlet, in which I was guided only by the slope of the ground, I at last breathed freely again in the neighbourhood of the Pépinière, promising myself that I would never again venture into such a cut-throat locality._

_And yet I live in it now!_

_This cut-throat locality is to-day the Monceau quarter, the Avenue Hoche, the Avenue de Messine, the Courcelles, Malesherbes and Haussmann Boulevards; what was once called "Poland" where General Lagrange used to tell me he had shot partridges in his youth._

_And the conclusion of this chat--for I must conclude--is that I regret the old Paris, but that I am fond of the new._

VICTORIEN SARDOU.

INTRODUCTION

Paris! What visions this magic word calls up--historic Paris, with its palaces, churches, monuments, streets, and squares; the Paris of literature and its admirable procession of writers, poets, thinkers, dramatists, philosophers, and humourists; the Paris of society, its fêtes, receptions, fashions, elegancies, and snobbism; the Paris of politicians, the Paris of journalists, religious Paris, the Paris of the police, bohemian Paris, industrial Paris. And how many others still!

So many passions, events, and interests clash, mingle, and unravel again in it that a study on this admirable and complex city is no sooner finished than it is almost needful to write it over again, the truth of the day before being no longer that of the morrow, the accurate document of yesterday being found incorrect this morning.

Our ambition is more modest, and our title indicates a programme--"Nooks and Corners of Paris."

Deliberately neglecting that which is too well known, already too much described--having neither the desire nor the pretension to compose a "Guide-book for the Foreigner in Paris"; seeking only the rare, if not the never-yet-brought-to-light--we would simply give to those who, like us, adore our old City a little of the joy we have each day in "strolling" about this incomparable Town. Our object is to continue, by means of walks through what remains to us of the dear old Paris, the series of documents painted, pencilled, or engraved which are contained in the Carnavalet Museum.

The house that Madame de Sévigné loved so much has, in fact, become the museum of the historical collections of the French Capital.

It is a delightful nook in which still throbs a little of the old soul of the great City! Our predecessors and we ourselves have striven to gather together the documents of every kind that bear traces of Paris life. Charters, plans, engravings, pictures, autographs, faded placards, and commemorative stones; sign-boards in wrought-iron that guided drinkers of the sixteenth century to the various public-houses; shot-silk costumes worn by pretty Parisian women of the time of Louis XV.; red caps of the age of Terror; girdles that girls adorned themselves with around the funeral car of Voltaire; tricolour-bowed shoes that trod the soil of the Champ de Mars at the moment of the Federation Feast; the light, black tulle kerchief worn by Marie-Antoinette when going to sit for her portrait to Dumont the miniaturist; the woman-citizen's pike or sabre of honour; the commemorative stone of the Bastille; Grisettes' caps of the year 1830 or buskins worn by the Merveilleuses; the warrant for the appearance of "Widow Capet" before the Revolutionary Tribunal; a play-bill of the King's great dancers, and convocations to the sittings of the Convention; the great periods of the Kings, the glorious days of the Revolution, the tragedies of the Terror, the proclamations of the Empire; announcements of victories, requiem masses, joys, griefs, the life in fine of the most impressionable, most nervous, most enthusiastic people that has ever existed--all is found at Carnavalet; and the same case or folio, gathering together, with terrible eclecticism, the lightning succession of events that took place on the same spot, shows us, for a lapse of scarcely twenty years and in the same Tuileries, for instance, the arrival of Louis XVI., the capture of the castle on the 10th of August, the execution of the King, then of the Queen, the Feast of the Supreme Being, Thermidor, Prairial and the invasion of the Convention, the sections annihilated at Saint-Roch by Bonaparte, the Carrousel reviews, the apotheosis of the King of Rome, the departure of the Emperor, the arrival of Louis XVIII., his flight, the return of Napoleon, the coming back of Louis XVIII., &c.

That, I fancy, is a serious lesson of history--and of philosophy.

Our aim, I repeat, is therefore simply to continue in a few walks, which we will try to render as attractive as possible, the search for documents which, alas! are disappearing more and more every day.

We will divide Paris into three great sections--the old City and the Isle of St. Louis; the left bank of the Seine; the right bank of the same river.

After the document written or pencilled, the living document, or at least what remains of it.

This volume "Nooks and Corners of Paris" is, in great part, the re-edition of a work entitled, "Sketches of Old Paris," printed only in a very small number of copies and published in 1904 with equal elegance and taste by Conard.

Since then, the volume has been not only revised and added to, but new illustrations were chosen. An artist of great talent, Monsieur Tony Beltrand--too soon, alas! taken away from us by death--had adorned the "Sketches of Old Paris" with a number of admirable compositions, of which, moreover, he had been the clever engraver. We have been compelled to replace these illustrations by a series of reproductions of pictures, designs, etchings, and lithographs borrowed from private collections, museums, libraries--and our very pleasant duty is to remark on the exceeding good grace with which every one has helped us. May our gratitude be allowed to mention the names of Messieurs Sardou, Claretie, Detaille, Lavedan, Lenôtre, Bouchot, H. Martin, Funck-Brentano, A. Meignan, Massenet, Pigoreau, Ch. Drouet, de Rochegude, Beaurepaire, Ch. Sellier, J. Robiquet, our masters or our friends, not forgetting many, besides, who have lent us most precious aid. Indeed, when Paris is in question, all doors open and all hearts beat.

Our task was an easy one, and, if we have not been able to discharge it better, the fault is ours alone. A suitable termination, therefore, to this introduction will be the old formula--more than ever apropos--"Excuse the faults of the author."

THE OLD CITY

Paris was born in the Isle of the Seine, whose shape is that of a cradle, and of which Sauval speaks so picturesquely: "The isle of the City is fashioned like a great ship sunk in the slime and stranded at the surface of the water, in the middle of the Seine."

This particularity must certainly have struck the heraldists of every age, and from it comes the vessel that is blazoned on the old escutcheon of Paris.

So the City presents itself with its prow to the west and its poop to the east.

The poop is Notre-Dame, and the prow, joined to the two banks by two ropes of stone, is the old Pont-Neuf, raised on the extreme end of what was formerly the islet of the Cow-Ferryman, where, on the 11th of March 1314, were burnt Jacques de Molay, Grand-Master of the Templars, and Guy, Prior of Normandy,--the Pont-Neuf, the foundation of which was laid by Henri III. on the 31st of May 1578, and was decorated with the coats-of-arms of the King, the Queen-Mother, and the Town of Paris. When the first pile emerged from the water, on the side of the Quay of the Augustines, the King betook himself thither from the Louvre in a magnificent barque, accompanied by the Queen-Mother, Catherine de Medici, and by Queen Louise de Vaudemont, his wife. Henri III. looked melancholy; on the same morning, he had interred, in the Church of St. Paul Quélus, the dearest of his favourites, who had died from wounds received, some weeks before, in the famous duel of the Minions.

The irreverent Parisians did not hesitate to declare that, out of respect for the Royal sadness, the new bridge ought to be called "the Bridge of Tears." But this opinion did not last; and, as soon as Henri IV. had inaugurated it, in June 1603, "still unsafe" and unachieved, the Pont-Neuf became the gayest place in Paris. Mondor sold his balsam there, and Tabarin spouted his idle talk; there it was that the ape of Brioché amused the passers-by; there that the Mazarinades were hummed; there that duellists unsheathed their swords, and the bands of Cartouche and Mandrin gallantly relieved pedestrians of their purses. On the merry Pont-Neuf all Paris took their airings, enjoyed themselves, made appointments; Loret went there to gather information for the _Rhyming Gazette_:--

"If I this week had been the man
To visit the Samaritan,
From Jack and Tom I should have heard
Everything that has occurred...."

From the seventeenth century, it was asserted to be impossible to cross the twelve arches of the popular bridge without meeting a monk, a white horse, and two obliging women. It was the official route for Royal processions proceeding to the Parliament; and, at the Pont-Neuf, rioters assembled when going to burn in effigy, on the Dauphine Square, such Presidents as were suspected of rendering more services than judicial decisions. Here also, in 1789, the people compelled those who were in carriages to stop and bow low to the effigy of good King Henri, whose statue, supported at the four angles by the four figures of slaves that Richelieu had had placed there, stood in the middle of the raised space where, in 1792, were signed the voluntary enlistments, and where the cannon resounded, calling to arms, at tragical moments of the Revolution. The whole history of Paris has to do with the wonderful old Pont-Neuf, celebrated throughout the world, the masterpiece of Androuet du Cerceau and of Germain Pilon--the Pont-Neuf which was the main thoroughfare of ancient Paris.

It is therefore by the Old City that our walks should commence. We shall come across some rare vestiges of the primitive Lutecia. On several occasions, behind the apse of Notre-Dame, fragments of ramparts have been found, and some of the stones forming these antique defences are discovered to have been taken from the arenas constructed by the Romans. The benches of the circus had contributed to check the Norman invasion; does not the wall of Pericles on the Acropolis contain broken fragments of antique marble statues?...

But the glory of the City is Notre-Dame! Let us follow the winding, picturesque Rue Chanoinesse, where the great Balzac lodged Madame de la Chanterie, and, at No. 18, let us climb the tottering staircase of the Dagobert Tower, an old and precious débris of the canonical buildings that once enclosed the Cathedral of Paris. A few dozen worn-down steps will bring us to a narrow platform whence we shall behold an admirable sight.

Notre-Dame, radiantly beautiful, rises, like a large stone flower, from a mass of flat roofs, grey or blue, and the majestic outlines of its towers stand out in their immensity against the horizon. Beneath every caprice of the hour or light, whether the sun gilds this splendour or its carvings are mantled in snow, while a carpet of spotless flakes stretches below, whether the flaming sky frames its violet bulk in melting gold or the storm wraps it in its copper clouds, ever the noble Cathedral appears in its shining beauty and unsurpassed grandeur. The elegant spire that completes it shoots clearly and proudly into the air, and flights of crows whirl, with shrill cawings, round the blossoming roofs of the Paris Basilica. Over there, above a dazzling view of carvings, chimneys, gables, bridges, steeples, and streets, the far-off azures melt into soft tints, and finally mingle, on the horizon, in a vague colouring; the beasts of the Apocalypse, which the talented artists of times gone by poised on the tower balustrades, bend grimacingly and jeeringly over the vast Paris that feverishly lives and moves below! It is one of the noblest sights of the Tower that our enchanted eyes have just gazed upon.

On the other side, it is the Seine, a silver streak furrowed with boats and barges; then, further on, the noble outlines of the old Paris, and, marking its profiles on the low clouds, in the foreground, Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais, an antique and precious sanctuary of the sixteenth century, one of the few remaining that preserve the secret charm of those country churches in which the soul feels itself, within the demi-obscurity of their chapels, more devout, more touched, and closer to the infinite, beneath the painted windows darkened by the dust of centuries and the smoke of incense.

In the prolongation of Notre Dame and behind the Hôtel-Dieu, before reaching the Palais de Justice, one formerly came across a labyrinth of winding, narrow, evil-smelling streets--the Rue de la Juiverie, the Rue aux Fèves, the Rue de la Calandre, the Rue des Marmousets; for centuries this quarter had been the haunt of the lowest prostitution; there, too, dyers had established their many-coloured tubs; and blue, red, or green streams flowed down these streets with their old Parisian names. Humble chapels nestled under the eaves of Notre-Dame,--Sainte-Marine, Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, and Saint-Jean-le-Rond, in which last d'Alembert was buried. The Hôtel-Dieu opened on the right of the Cathedral, and formed, with the close of Notre-Dame, a really imposing setting for it. On this site, the Second Empire built the new Hôtel-Dieu and the Prefecture of Police; and these two ugly structures, without taste or originality, seem to be the natural foils of France's national glory, Notre-Dame-de-Paris.

In the Rue Massillon, at the back of a stone porch which time has covered with moss, a tiny courtyard opens, at No. 6, over whose damp pavement occasionally passes a Sister of Charity in her white cap; an old, monumental, wooden staircase, dating back to Henri IV., leads there to some poor dwellings in a building up this courtyard. Within this humble, provincial-looking house, half monastic in appearance, who would believe himself in the heart of Paris, a few yards away from the Town Hall and the Prefecture of Police? Gone the "Cloister," whose gardens at the bottom were still in existence seven years ago. A huge, hideous structure, resembling a barracks, to-day hides all the apse of Notre-Dame, and the antique "Motte-aux-Papelards," the ordinary meeting-place for the staff of the Metropolis, is replaced by a square, a sort of open-roofed museum, where the bits of carving are arranged that time, or regrettable though necessary restorations, have detached from the Cathedral.

Along the Rue de la Colombe passed the Gallo-Roman belt of the City, near the house inhabited by Fulbert, the uncle who employed such cruel arguments with the unfortunate Héloïse, Abelard's friend. In the Rue des Ursins, at No. 19, may still be perceived the remains of a chapel of the twelfth century, by name Saint-Aignan; St. Bernard is said to have preached in it. It was one of the numerous sanctuaries in which, during the Terror, refractory priests, under the most singular disguises--water-carriers, national guards, waggoners, masons--came, as they passed through the town, to say mass almost regularly to the faithful, who were frightened neither by the guillotine, nor Fouquier's trackers, nor the Revolutionary Committees' order-bearers. It is an astonishing thing that not for a single day or hour was religious ministration wanting to those who called for it, not even in the Terror's most terrible period. At this time, the Bishop of Agde, disguised as a costermonger, with a long beard, and carrying the sacrament under his carmagnole, scoured Paris, officiating, and confessing people in lofts, outhouses, and back-shops. In the Rue Neuve-des-Capucins, mass was said in a chamber above the very dwelling occupied by the terrible Conventional Baboeuf.

Did not the Abbé Emery, the Superior of Saint-Sulpice, from the depths of his dungeon, where he strengthened the courage of the prisoners ("he prevents them from crying out," said Fouquier-Tinville), organise throughout the Paris prisons a ministry of monks that visited all the sinister gaols, disguised as porters, old clothes-dealers, laundrymen, wine-sellers? Even on the way to the scaffold, the unfortunates that were being led to execution received the aid of religion: as the death-carts passed by, from certain windows indicated beforehand, priests, placed there, wafted to the condemned the absolution pronounced over the dying.

Let us go to the other side of the close of Notre-Dame, where the Hôtel-Dieu and its dependencies used to stand. There, once was the Tower of the Foundlings, and the Cagnards, that old den of debauch of which Meryon has left us such powerful etchings, and before which, as a child, we were accustomed to stop with dread, while we watched the huge rats that hid and roamed there, appearing in broad daylight and eating the heaps of offal.

Between Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice, there once existed a network of small streets round the Sainte-Chapelle and the Prefecture of Police, with gardens that ran nearly down to the water's edge. At the Pont Saint-Michel, some old houses still remain which witnessed the riots of 1793, 1830, and 1848; another is to be found on the Quai des Orfèvres, where the celebrated Sabra worked; he was a popular dentist who modestly called himself the "people's tooth-drawer." To-day it is one of the spots dear to lovers of old books, with its open-air book-stalls, and also to anglers, who, in the sun and out of the way of the river passenger-boats, can practise their tranquil sport.

Before describing the Conciergerie, let us cross the Cour du Mai; there it was, in front of the steps leading to the Palais de Justice, on the right, that every day the death-carts came during the Terror, and took, at 4 o'clock, their dismal batch of those doomed to death, while, from his office-window, Fouquier-Tinville coldly counted, as he picked his teeth, the number of the victims who were going over there.

From this courtyard of blood, on a foggy day of November 1793, poor Madame Roland, with hair cut and hands tied, started for the scaffold. Her joyous childhood had been spent in a red-and-white brick house which stood at the angle of the Quai de l'Horloge and the platform of the Pont-Neuf, a few yards from the Conciergerie!

The charming landscape in which she had dreamed so fondly of glory and liberty, she saw once more as she was being led to the guillotine amid the shouts of infuriated men and women. Sanson had taken his ghastly procession along the usual road--the Pont-au-Change, the Quai de la Mégisserie, the Trois-Marie Square; and so, turning her eyes to the further bank of the Seine, the poor woman, before she died, was able to give a last look at the scenery she had been familiar with in happier years, scenery over which rose the massive walls of the French Panthéon--it was the new name of Sainte-Geneviève's Church which the Convention had just re-baptized and devoted to the worship of our national glories.

The Conciergerie was entered by a large arched door, containing a triple wicket as protection, at the further side of a gloomy, narrow courtyard, with mouldy paving-stones, which now is found on the right of the large staircase of the Palais de Justice.

The nine steps that put it on a level with the Cour du Mai were mounted by all the condemned victims of the Revolution. The Queen and Charlotte Corday, Madame Elizabeth and Hubért's widow, the virtuous Bailly and Madame du Bailly, Fouquier-Tinville and Monsieur de Malesherbes, Danton, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, the Abbess of Montmartre, Madame de Monaco and Anacharsis Clootz: princesses and Conventional, dukes and Hébertists, generals of the Republic and "Fouquiers sheep," the noblest, purest, bravest, the maddest and most miserable crossed this fateful threshold.

Sanson, with his death-lists in hand, waited at the top of the staircase, in front of the carts.

The guillotine "tricoteuses" and criers thronged the top-steps of the Palace and leaned forward, with shouts and abuse, and often with hand that cast filth, over the unhappy prisoners. The melancholy toilet of the condemned had been effected in the rotunda where the concierge had his quarters, near the small whitewashed room in which the clerk registered the arrival of the newcomers, and to which Sanson came to give his receipt for the successive deliveries of those that he conveyed to execution.