XL. THE PARIS PRESS…

XL. THE PARIS PRESS

French Governments and the Press--The Press under Napoleon--Some Account of the Leading Paris Papers--The Figaro.

Under the ancient Monarchy journalism could scarcely be said to exist in France, and the censorship exercised over books was so severe that all political works of a critical character written by Frenchmen had to be published in Holland or in England. Arthur Young saw in the absence of newspapers one of the causes of the panic which seized whole classes and entire neighbourhoods on the outbreak of the Revolution. Absurd rumours were put into circulation, and there were no journals by which to test their accuracy; for if the press is sometimes a purveyor of gossip, it is above all a corrector of false intelligence. A decree of the year 1728, to go back no further, punished by branding, the pillory and the gallows, those who printed, composed, or distributed “works considered criminal.” Some years afterwards the parliament of Paris, which at this time was exposed to many attacks, adopted a declaration which condemned to hanging anyone who penned or printed writings which tended to assail religion, to disturb men’s minds, to undermine the authority of the king, or to trouble the order and tranquillity of his dominions. No great use was made of this law, for the Bastille sufficed to silence those who spoke too loudly; but it was always agreeable to know that, if necessary, objectionable writers could have their pens snatched from them for ever.

The Revolution overthrew that majestic edifice in which France had so long slumbered in peace. The Constitution of 1791 set forth that, “the free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious of men’s rights.” It provided that every citizen should be free to “speak, write, print, without his writings being liable to inspection or censorship before publication.”

This uncurbed liberty, however, was necessarily of short duration. In the famous Constitution of 1793, which was never put in force, the Convention guaranteed to every Frenchman “liberty of the press,” a maxim which always looks well as a decoration on the frontispiece of the Constitutional Temple; but the decree of the 29th of March, 1793, modified this excessive licence by a little article couched in these terms:--“Anyone who shall have composed or printed writings which aim at the dissolution of the national representation, and the re-establishment of royalty or any other power which arrogates the sovereignty of the people, shall be arraigned before the tribunal extraordinary and punished with death.” The Convention did not reconstruct the Bastille; but it sent a number of journalists to the guillotine by way of warning to their fellows. The warning, however, was lost on Frenchmen, who, with their natural characteristics, preferred to forfeit their head rather than their tongue, and died jesting at the executioner.

The Directory followed the example of the Convention. The Constitution of the year III. declares, in article 353, that “no one can be prevented from saying, writing, printing, or publishing his thoughts,” but a law of the 27th Germinal, in year IV., added the following clause: “All those shall be punished with death who by their speeches, or their printed writings, whether circulated or placarded, provoke the dissolution of the National Assembly or that of the Executive Directory ... or the re-establishment of royalty, that of the Constitution of 1793, that of the Constitution of 1791, or of any other government, save the one established by the Constitution of 1791, accepted by the French people, etc.” With this important exception the law is clement enough; nor, indeed, were the authorities anxious to enforce the death clause where a milder punishment would serve the turn. The Directory, after the 18th Fructidor, instead of shooting ill-behaved journalists, contented itself with sending out forty-five of them to colonise Sinnamary, at the same time placing the journals under the supervision of the police, who could summarily suppress them. The Directory, moreover, acting perhaps on the principle of equality before the law, imposed a stamp-duty on all journals, so that Thought, like other commodities, began to contribute its share to the State by which it was protected.

With the Consulate, France, as regarded press matters, went straight back to the time of Louis XIV. The first article of a consular decree, issued January 17th, 1800, disposed of journalism once and, if not for ever, at least for a considerable time. It sets forth that the minister of justice shall, so long as the war lasts, allow no more than thirteen political journals, each of which is specified by name, to be published at Paris. The fifth article of this decree provided for the instant suppression of all newspapers inserting articles which might be wanting in “the respect due to the social compact and the sovereignty of the people, or to the glory of the French armies,” or which might print “invectives against the governments and the nations allied to or in friendly relations with the Republic, even though these articles were extracted from foreign periodicals.” Nor did Napoleon’s vigilance cease with this. He despised newspapers, but was afraid of books. Accordingly, while the censorship was re-established for journals, printing and publishing offices were made monopolies, and placed under surveillance as in the best days of the old Monarchy. It was for the master to think, to will, to act for all his subjects; he wished France and all Europe to be occupied with him alone. The police took care that there should be silence around him, and human thought was represented by the voice of the cannon. On the fall of Napoleon a charter was given to France by the restored Monarchy, in which the French were declared to possess the right of publishing and printing their opinions conformably to the laws intended to repress the abuse of this liberty. But the very first bill introduced into the new assembly subjected pamphlets to the censorship, and newspapers to the authorisation of the crown, while printers were required to take out licences, which would only be continued on good behaviour.

In 1815, during the Hundred Days, the emperor established the liberty of the press, and the second Restoration maintained this concession. Only for a time, however; on the assassination of the Duc de Berry, someone discovered that “the real dagger which had stabbed the duke” was a liberal idea; and a law was passed by which a Government authorisation was required before starting a newspaper. The censorship was at the same time re-established, while police courts were empowered to suspend and suppress newspapers on the ground of evil tendencies. Finally, the notorious “ordonnances” of 1830 suppressed liberty of the press altogether. This led to the Revolution of July, and the charter accepted by Louis Philippe on his accession to the throne declared that the censorship was not only abolished but could never be re-established. But the newspaper stamp was maintained, and no one could start a journal without previously depositing a large sum as caution-money, with which to pay damages in case of libel.

After the Revolution of 1848 liberty of the press was once more proclaimed, and it seemed as though France might at last accustom itself to free newspapers, even as Mithridates accustomed himself to poison. Then, however, in 1851, came the Coup d’état, and once more the press was fettered. A system of “warnings” and of “communiqués” was now adopted. The communiqué was a notice addressed to the journal by the Government, which the editor of the journal was obliged to insert. The warnings were of two kinds--first and second; a first warning, administered at will by the authorities, had no immediate effect; but after a second warning, the journal receiving it could be at once suppressed. “This ingenious system was so much admired that it was forthwith adopted,” says M. Laboulaye in an article on the subject, “by the four great states which march at the head of modern civilisation: Spain, Turkey, Austria and Russia.” It was necessary, moreover, under the Second Empire to obtain, before publishing a new journal, an authorisation from the Government. The first newspaper established in France was the Gazette de France, founded by the physician of Louis XIII. in 1631; the most widely known and the most highly esteemed being the Journal des Débats, founded by the Bertin brothers in 1789, the great revolutionary year in which also the official organ under all systems of government, Le Moniteur Universel, was started.

Among the contributors to the Journal des Débats may be mentioned: Michel Chevalier, Saint-Marc Girardin, John Lemoinne, Prévost Paradol, Renan, and Taine; the dramatic criticisms of the journal were for many years written by Jules Janin, and the musical criticisms by Berlioz.

The Constitutionnel was founded at the time of the Restoration in 1815. The most celebrated of its editors was Dr. Véron, for some years manager of the Opera, in which character he produced Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable. The most famous of the contributors to this journal was Sainte-Beuve, who for a long succession of years published in it every Monday one of those literary articles which, in their collected form, are known throughout the civilised world as “Causeries du Lundi.” Before contributing the “Causeries” to the Constitutionnel (they were continued and concluded in the Moniteur), Sainte-Beuve had published, under the title of “Portraits,” a long series of biographical and critical articles in the Revue de Paris, which, after the cessation of that periodical, he went on with in the Revue des deux Mondes. M. Nestor Roqueplan, who, like Dr. Véron, was for some time manager of the Opera, contributed dramatic criticisms for many years to the Constitutionnel, and no more brilliant articles of the kind were ever penned. The musical critic was at this time the notorious P. A. Fiorentino, who afterwards joined the staff of the Moniteur.

La Presse was founded in 1836 by Émile de Girardin, and it must always be remembered as the first cheap journal started in France, and indeed in all Europe. Paris has now newspapers at two sous and even one sou; but in 1836 a journal at three sous, the price at which La Presse was issued, seemed a marvel; and M. de Girardin’s enemies of the established journals hinted in no doubtful terms that his journal at three sous could only exist through the aid of a Government subvention. It has been related elsewhere how an innuendo to this effect from Armand Carrel led to a duel in which Carrel, while inflicting a serious wound on M. de Girardin, was himself shot dead. Many years later than 1836, when La Presse was started, the invariable price of a London morning newspaper was fivepence; there was a penny stamp on each number issued, and an impost of eighteenpence on each advertisement. The cheap press has only been rendered possible in England by the removal of the newspaper-stamp, the advertisement-stamp, and finally the duty on paper.

From 1836 to 1856 La Presse was edited by M. de Girardin; his successor was M. Nefftzer, who afterwards founded that excellent paper Le Temps. La Presse then passed beneath the direction of M. Guéroult, who left it to found L’Opinion Nationale; and afterwards of M. Peyrat and others. The dramatic, and musical, and artistic feuilleton of La Presse was originally in the hands of the incomparable Théophile Gautier, whose collected articles are as remarkable for searching and subtle criticism as for brilliant description. He was succeeded by Paul de Saint-Victor, whose contributions were scarcely inferior to those of his distinguished predecessor. Paul de Saint-Victor is far less generally known in England than Théophile Gautier. A good idea of his remarkable talent may be formed from his volume on tragedy and comedy, “Les deux Masques.”

When in 1852 it was determined to improve as much as possible the official organ of the newly established Empire, as of previous Governments in France, a number of the most popular writers were tempted to the Moniteur by offers of increased pay. Théophile Gautier quitted the Presse for the official journal, and P. A. Fiorentino, without quitting the Constitutionnel, wrote musical criticisms for it under a nom de plume which concealed his identity from no one interested in journalism. This last-named journalist, Italian by nationality, was by no means an honour to the French press; he was more than suspected of taking bribes, and when the Society of Men of Letters instituted an inquiry into his conduct, he attacked the secretary of the society so violently in the paper called Le Corsaire, that a challenge and a duel ensued. Amédée Achard was run through the body, and Fiorentino passed some weeks in prison. Achard did not die, nor did Fiorentino lose his position on the press. The accusation made against him by the Society of Men of Letters was that he acted at once as musical critic and musical agent; and it might fairly be presumed that singers on whose salaries he received a commission were more carefully looked after and more warmly praised than those who did not employ his services. He is said to have attempted to justify himself to some of his friends by representing himself as the “Artists’ advocate”--“L’avocat des artistes;” though his true function, the one which he was understood by the editor of his newspaper and by his readers to have undertaken, was that of critic or judge. To the accusations brought against him by the Society of Men of Letters he replied, however, by a simple denial; and the object of the duel he had sought with Amédée Achard was evidently to prevent such accusations from being brought against him in the future.

Another journal, started under the Empire with imperial support, and with M. Granier de Cassagnac, father of the well-known writer, deputy and duellist of the same name, as editor, called Le Pays, was well and daringly written, but found no favour with the public. Neither, as a matter of fact, did the Moniteur, notwithstanding the brilliancy of the writers attracted to its columns from other journals.

L’Opinion Nationale first appeared in 1859, at the time of the war for the liberation of Italy. The unity of Italy and the independence of Poland were for many years its watchwords; and during the Polish insurrection of 1863, as also during the long agitation that preceded it, this journal was the recognised organ of oppressed nationalities. By English readers interested in theatrical matters, L’Opinion Nationale will be remembered as the journal in which M. Sarcey, the well-known critic, made his literary début. M. Sarcey possesses, as a writer, neither the ingenuity and charm of Jules Janin, nor the dazzling style of Théophile Gautier, or of Paul de Saint-Victor, nor the delicate observation of Nestor Roqueplan; but he is inspired, more perhaps than any other critic, by taste, love, passion for the stage.

Le Monde was started under that name in 1860 as a substitute for L’Univers, which, placing the Pope before the Emperor and preferring Rome to Paris, had got itself into trouble with the Government. It was edited for many years by M. Louis Veuillot, most vigorous of Ultramontane journalists, and author of several remarkable books, including “Les Odeurs de Paris,” “Les Parfums de Rome,” and a curious study of feudal rights and privileges, as, according to M. Veuillot, they really existed in France before the Revolution.

Le Temps, one of the best of the Paris papers, after having been discontinued for some years, was revived in 1861 by M. Nefftzer, previously editor of La Presse. Le Temps soon took rank as what the French call a serious journal. For many years one of the most interesting features of Le Temps was the letter on English affairs contributed from London by M. Louis Blanc. Among the other distinguished contributors to Le Temps may be mentioned M. Scherer, the literary critic, and M. Louis Ulbach, chiefly known as a novelist, but who for many years wrote for this journal its theatrical feuilleton. There are plenty of papers published in Paris besides those we have mentioned, some of them in the enjoyment of large circulations, but distinguished by no marked features, or by none that possess special interest for English readers. The best-known, however, of all the Paris journals is the Figaro, published originally under the Restoration, and edited for some time by Nestor Roqueplan. After numerous prosecutions, it ceased to exist; suppressed practically if not formally by the Government.

But in 1854 the Figaro (which, it need scarcely be said, derived its name from the celebrated barber invented by Beaumarchais) was revived by Mme. Villemessant, and it played an important part, though by no means a consistent one, under the Second Empire. This it still continues to do; and whatever its political views may be, it is the most amusing, the most interesting, and one may almost say, the most literary journal in Europe. Among the celebrated writers who have from time to time contributed to its columns may be mentioned Edmond About, Théodore de Banville, Henri Rochefort, B. Jouvin, Albert Wolff, and Henri de Pène, who, for criticising the manners of French subalterns, found himself exposed to the necessity of fighting all the lieutenants and sub-lieutenants of the French army, a task from which he was saved by being almost mortally wounded by the first of his antagonists. The cause of M. de Pène’s encounter with the junior officers of the French army, as represented by the clever swordsman who ran him through the lungs, was an article, written by the contributor to the Figaro, on a ball given at the École Militaire. The youthful officers were, he declared, too constant and too eager in their attendance at the buffet; and he added that when one of them had a plate of cakes offered to him by a waiter, he said he was not sure that he could eat them all, but that he would accept them nevertheless. The jest was an ancient one, but it angered the young bloods of the Military School, and their indignation demanded a victim, who at once offered himself in the person of the author of the injurious statement.

The case of Henri de Pène and of so many other fighting journalists, with the redoubtable Henri Rochefort and Paul de Cassagnac among them, suggests that in France a newspaper-writer should be as much a master of the sword as of the pen. This does not interfere with the fact that one of the most gentle and amiable of modern French writers, M. Ernest Legouvé, possessed the reputation of being the first fencer of his day.

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XLI. FROM THE QUAI VOLTAIRE TO THE PANTHEON

The Quai Voltaire--Its Changes of Name--Voltaire--His Life in Paris and Elsewhere--His Remains laid in the Pantheon--Mirabeau--Rousseau--Vincennes.

What a number of names had the Quai Voltaire borne before receiving the illustrious one by which it has now been known for about a century! First Quai Malaquais; then Quai du Pont Rouge, when the red bridge had just been constructed to replace the old ferry opposite the Rue de Beaune; in 1648 Quai des Théatins, after the religious order of that name established by Mazarin; finally on the 4th of May, 1791, by decision of the Commune of Paris, Quai Voltaire. During forty years Voltaire had almost uninterruptedly been absent from France, when, on the 10th of February, 1778, he returned, and the mansion he had purchased in the Rue Richelieu for himself and his niece Denise not being ready for his reception, accepted the hospitality of the Marquis de Villette, in whose house, on the quay now known as that of Voltaire, he died May 30th, 1778. The fact is recorded in an inscription placed on the façade of the former Hôtel de Villette.

Before conferring upon the quay the name borne by one of the most witty and most powerful writers that France ever produced, the Commune received a report and pronounced through one of its members a eulogium in his honour. Until the time of the Revolution it was the custom in France, as in other countries at a much later period, to name streets and other thoroughfares after some aristocratic family. Since the Revolution, however, it has become usual to substitute, in connection with the thoroughfares and public places of Paris, the names of national celebrities and national benefactors. In this latter character Voltaire will not be universally accepted, though his aim was certainly to do good; and that he had “done some good,” was, he once declared, the only epitaph he aspired to. According to an observation attributed to M. de Tocqueville, Voltaire possessed in greater abundance than anyone else the wit that everyone possesses; and D. F. Strauss, in the six lectures on Voltaire which he wrote for and dedicated to the Princess Louise of Hesse, says much the same thing when he admiringly declares that every quality of the French mind belonged to Voltaire in a more marked degree than to any other Frenchman. Goethe seems to have thought still more highly of him. “Voltaire,” he said, “will always be looked upon as the greatest man in the literature of modern times, and perhaps even of all times; as the most astonishing creation of Nature, a creation in which it has pleased her to collect for once in a single frail organisation every variety of talent, all the glories of genius, all the powers of thought.”

Very different, indeed, was the opinion entertained by the great supporter of absolute monarchy and of the Roman Catholic Church. “Paris,” wrote Count Joseph de Maistre, “crowned him; Sodom would have banished him.... How am I to picture to you what he makes me feel? When I think of what he might have done and what he did, his inimitable talents inspire me with a sort of holy rage for which there is no name. Midway between admiration and horror, I sometimes wish to see a statue erected to him--by the hand of the executioner.”

It must be remembered, however, that in Voltaire’s time there was no such thing in France as either political or religious liberty, and that he took the part of the persecuted whenever he had an opportunity of doing so. “His life,” says M. Arsène Houssaye, “is a comedy in five acts, in which, through French genius, shines human reason. The first act takes place in Paris, among distinguished noblemen and popular actresses; beginning with the entertainments of the Prince de Conti and ending with the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, whose hurried secret burial by torch-light inspired Voltaire with so much indignation. This was the period of the Bastille and of banishment. The second act takes place at the castle of Cirey and at the court of King Stanislas; this second act might be called the love of science and the science of love. The third act takes place at the court of Frederick II., at Berlin, Potsdam, and Sans-Souci. The fourth act is that of Ferney, where he builds a church (with ‘Deo erexit Voltaire’ inscribed over the portal), gives a dowry to Corneille’s niece, defends the family of the persecuted Calas, pleads for Admiral Byng, for Montbailly, for La Barre, for all who are in need of an advocate. The fifth act takes place at Paris, like the first; but the man who at the beginning of the drama was a prisoner and a proscript has come back as a conqueror. All Paris rises to salute him. The Academy believes that Homer, Socrates, and Aristophanes are to be found again in Voltaire; the Théâtre Français crowns him with immortal laurels. But the poet has reached the last point of greatness; Paris smothers in its embraces this ruler of opinions, who with his last breath proclaims the rights of man.”

Born in 1694, this powerful writer was so weak as a child that it was not thought safe to baptise him until he was nine months old. His father was treasurer in the Exchequer Chamber, and he had for godfather the Abbé de Château-Neuf, one of those sceptical abbés who help to give a character of its own to the eighteenth century. As a youth he was in the good graces of Ninon de L’Enclos, the celebrated beauty, who, living to a prodigious age, is said to have preserved her charms to the last. She recognised Voltaire’s precocious talents as he, on his side, was delighted by her personal fascinations. She left him by will 2,000 francs for the purchase of books. The Abbé de Château-Neuf introduced him meanwhile into the most brilliant society of Paris. This did not suit the views of his father, who wished his son to enter the magistracy. He accordingly separated him from the Abbé de Château-Neuf to attach him as page to the Marquis of the same name, who took the young Voltaire or Arouet, to call him by his proper name, in his suite to Holland. Returning to Paris, the youthful Arouet began to write, when he adopted, for literary purposes, the name of Voltaire, which will be recognised as an anagram of Arouet l. j. (le jeune). According to most historians the name of Voltaire was borrowed by the youthful Arouet from an estate belonging to his mother; but there seems to be no authority for this supposition, and the anagrammatic or quasi-anagrammatic explanation is probably the true one.

Voltaire had not long exercised his pen when he was thrown into the Bastille as the author of a satire which he had not written. Here he sketched out the plan of his “Henriade” and of his “Siècle de Louis XIV.,” both suggested to him, it is said, by the Marquis de Château-Neuf. The true author of the satire having been discovered, Voltaire was set at liberty, and, according to the custom of the time, received a money indemnity from the Regent, whom he thanked for providing him with food, while expressing a hope that he would not in future furnish him with a lodging. Besides making notes for his historical work and for his epic poem, Voltaire had written in the Bastille a tragedy on the subject of Œdipus, which in 1718, when the author had just attained his twenty-fourth year, was produced at the Théâtre Français with a success which no other tragedy had obtained since the days of Corneille and Racine.

Voltaire’s literary life in Paris was cut short by a painful incident. In an animated discussion he had taken the liberty of contradicting the Chevalier de Rohan, who was cowardly enough to lay a trap for his antagonist; and getting him to leave the room, subjected him to violent maltreatment at the hands of his servants. Voltaire challenged the Chevalier, who, however, not only refused him satisfaction, but had him shut up in the Bastille for six months and then banished from France. Taking refuge in England, he studied the language, literature, and especially the philosophy of the country. After a residence of three years he was able to make known to his countrymen, through a volume entitled “Lettres sur les Anglais,” the philosophy of Bolingbroke and of Locke, the scientific theories of Newton, the poetry of Shakespeare, and the prose of Addison. It was during his residence in England that he wrote the tragedies of Brutus, The Death of Cæsar, Zaïre, &c., which, however un-Shakespearian, were evidently the outcome of a study of Shakespeare’s plays. Voltaire’s position in regard to Shakespeare has been somewhat misunderstood. He did not fully appreciate Shakespeare, he even undervalued the great dramatist. But he saw that genius was in him; which is more than can be said of some of our own writers of the eighteenth century, not excluding Addison, who, in The Spectator, points to “Shakespeare and Lee” for examples of the “false sublime.”

During his stay in England Voltaire mixed freely in literary society, and made the acquaintance of some of our best writers. Johnson, it will be remembered, thinking only of his irreligion, would not shake hands with him; though afterwards, when he heard that Voltaire had praised his “Rasselas,” he said that there was “some good in the dog, after all.” When Voltaire was introduced to Congreve, the brilliant dramatist explained that he wished to be looked upon, not as a writer of comedies, but as an English gentleman; to which Voltaire replied that if the latter had been his only character, he should never have taken the trouble to seek his acquaintance. Voltaire for long enjoyed the credit of having acquired sufficient knowledge of the English language to be able to express himself gracefully and correctly in English verse, but it has been conclusively proved that the productions were corrected and revised by an English friend.

Returning to Paris, he lived there tranquilly for some time; but on the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, to whom he was much attached, and to whose remains Christian burial had been refused, he wrote some indignant verses, which, after they had been put in circulation, filled him with alarm as to the notice that would probably be taken of them by the authorities. He now escaped to Rouen, where he printed his “History of Charles X.” and “Philosophical Letters.” The latter work was burned by the hangman, a fate reserved for more than one of Voltaire’s subsequent works. His ingenious remark has elsewhere been cited, to the effect that the public executioner, were he presented with a copy of every book he had to burn, would soon possess one of the finest libraries in France. Another production of his, the “Epistle to Urania,” which expressed theological views of a most unorthodox kind, was soon to get him into fresh trouble, though by a well-known artifice of those tyrannical days he disavowed the work. He thought it prudent, all the same, to keep out of the way for a time, and he now accepted the hospitality offered to him by Mme. du Châtelet at Cirey. He here gave himself up for a time, in common with his hostess, to mathematical and scientific studies. He published one after the other, with astonishing rapidity, “Newtonian Elements,” “Mahomet,” Mérope, “The Discourse on Man,” and other works, besides going on with his “Century of Louis XIV.” and his essay on morals.

Voltaire’s reputation was now European; and the Prince Royal of Prussia, afterwards Frederick the Great, one of his most fervent admirers, wrote to him begging him to undertake the publication of his “Anti-Machiavel,” though as Miçkievicz the Polish poet says in reference to this work, it was Machiavellism itself that Frederick II. both practised and professed. In the midst of his success, Voltaire, as irritable as he was kind-hearted, suffered much from the attacks of pamphleteers, whose favourite accusation was that, writing on many different subjects, he was not master of one. To these attacks he replied in the most impetuous style, though he would have done better to preserve the silence of profound disdain. Voltaire, however, reminds one, in this respect, of that horseman who, riding through a forest, was so exasperated by the chirping of myriads of grasshoppers, that he leaped at last from his saddle, and, drawing his sword, set about the vain task of exterminating the offensive insects, although nightfall was at hand and they would shortly have grown silent of their own accord. The pamphleteer and poetaster, Jean Fréron, was a favourite object of Voltaire’s detestation; he it was for whom Voltaire took the trouble to make an adaptation of a quatrain originally belonging to the Greek Anthology. Here are Voltaire’s lines--

“Un jour loin du sacré vallon Un serpent mordit Jean Fréron: Songez ce qui en arriva: Ce fut le serpent qui creva.”

It was surety these lines which inspired Goldsmith with the idea of his “Elegy on a mad dog.”

“But soon a wonder came to light, Which showed the rogues they lied; The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died.”

In 1743, after the successful production of Mérope Voltaire regained some favour at the court, and obtained, through the patronage of Mme. de Pompadour, the title of historiographer of France, together with the post of gentleman of the king’s bed-chamber. At the same time the French Academy, after having twice rejected him, elected him as a member. His writings of this period bear the stamp of his somewhat frivolous life; among them are the operas, Temple of Glory, Samson, and Budkah, the ballet Princess of Navarre, &c. Soon, however, the part of court poet fatigued him, the more so as the king treated him coldly and Mme. de Pompadour thought him inferior to Crébillon. His friendship for Mme. du Châtelet still continued. But after her death he yielded to the pressing invitations of Frederick the Great (1750) and went to the court of Berlin, where a brilliant position, the post of chamberlain, and a considerable money allowance awaited him. The result of the celebrated intimacy between the philosopher and the king is well known; it lasted two or three years, but the monarch could not control his domineering habits nor the great writer the manifestation of his intellectual superiority. The jealousy of the literary men of France, a quarrel with Maupertius, whose part was taken by the king, some sharp utterances, and various other causes precipitated the inevitable rupture. Voltaire left Prussia in 1753, after undergoing more than one humiliation. The most important work he published during his stay at Berlin was that “Century of Louis XIV.” which remains his masterpiece in the historic line. Having ascertained that the French Government would not be pleased to see him at Paris, he travelled for several years in Germany, Switzerland and France, establishing himself finally at Ferney in 1758, where he built himself a magnificent house, in which he passed the last twenty years of his life. Here he received flattering letters from the sovereigns of Europe, and no less flattering visits from some of the first literary men of the time. Princes and philosophers made pilgrimages to Ferney, and “Patriarch of Ferney” became Voltaire’s recognised name. The fact of Switzerland’s being a republic did not, of course, prevent the Swiss landed proprietors from having serfs, and Voltaire did his best to procure their personal liberation. This is doubtless what he would have been glad to do in his own country, had it been possible in the days before the Revolution to propose an amelioration that would at once have been looked upon as revolutionary. “He pleaded,” says one of his biographers, “for the emancipation of the serfs of the canton of Jura; he endeavoured to remedy a number of abuses, to reform a number of unjust laws.”

To give an idea of the kind of life led by Voltaire at Ferney, we may reproduce in abridged form the account published by Moore, who, travelling in France at the time, extended his journey in order to pay a visit to Voltaire.

“The most piercing eyes I have ever seen in my life,” says Moore, “are those of Voltaire, now eighty years of age. One recognises instantly in his physiognomy genius, penetration, nobility of character.

“In the morning he seems restless and discontented, but this gradually passes away, and after dinner he is lively and agreeable. But there is always in his expression a tinge of irony, whether he smiles or frowns.

“When the weather is favourable he goes out in a carriage with his niece or with some of his guests. Sometimes he takes a walk in his garden, and if the weather does not allow him to go out he employs his time in playing chess with Father Adam, or in receiving strangers, or in dictating or reading his letters. But he passes the greater part of the day in his study, and whether he is reading or being read to he has always a pen in his hand to take notes or make observations; an author writing for his bread could not work more assiduously, nor could a young poet greedy of renown. He lives in the most hospitable manner, and his table is excellent; he has always with him two or three persons from Paris, who stay at his house a month or six weeks; when they go away they are replaced by others, and there is thus a considerable change of inmates. The visitors, together with the members of Voltaire’s family circle, make up a party of twelve or fifteen persons, who dine daily at his table whether he is present or not; for when he is occupied with the preparation of some new work he does not dine in company, and contents himself with appearing for a few minutes before or after dinner.

“The morning is not a favourable time for visiting Voltaire, who cannot bear any interference with his hours of study; such a thing puts him at once in a rage. He was often ready, moreover, to pick a quarrel, whether by reason of the infirmities inseparable from old age, or from some other cause. He is in any case less genial in the early part of the day than afterwards.

“Those who are invited to supper see him at his best. He takes an evident pleasure in conversing with his guests, and makes a point of being witty and agreeable. When, however, a vivacious remark or a good jest is made by another person, he is the first to applaud; he is amused and his gaiety increases. When he is surrounded by his friends, and animated by the presence of women, he seems to enjoy his life with the sensibility of a young man. His genius, disengaged from the burdens of age, shines in the brightest manner, and delicate observations, happy remarks, fall from his lips.

“His aversion for the clergy makes him often speak about them, to the scandal of people not sufficiently witty to make their raillery acceptable.

“He compares the English nation to a barrel of beer, of which the top is froth, the bottom scum, while the middle part is excellent.

“With his inferiors Voltaire appears in a most favourable light. He is affable, kind, and generous; he likes to see his tenants and all his dependents thoroughly prosperous, and he occupies himself with their individual interests in the spirit of a patriarch. He does his best, moreover, to maintain around him industrial works and all kinds of manufactures; through his care and patronage the miserable village of Ferney, whose inhabitants were previously grovelling in idleness, has become a prosperous and flourishing town.

“Voltaire had formerly in his house a little theatre at which pieces were represented by his friends and himself; some important part was generally assigned to him, but to judge by the accounts given of him he was not a great actor. The amateur performances at Ferney suggested to a company of regular players the idea of visiting the place. I have often attended this theatre, and seen the performances of this company, which were not first rate. The famous Lekain, who is now at Ferney, comes there at times for special performances. On these occasions I am chiefly attracted by the desire of seeing Voltaire, who is always present when one of his pieces is played, or when, in no matter what piece, Lekain appears.

“He takes his seat on the stage behind the scenery, but so as to be seen by the greater part of the audience; and he takes as much interest in the performance of the piece as if his reputation depended on it. If one of the actors makes a mistake, he seems grieved and shocked; if on the other hand the actor plays well, he gives him, by gestures and by word of mouth, the liveliest marks of approbation. He enters into the spirit of both situations with all the signs of genuine emotion, and even sheds tears with the effusiveness of a young girl assisting for the first time at the performance of a tragedy.”

Voltaire reconstructed at his own expense the church of Ferney, which he thereupon dedicated to the Supreme Being: “Deo erexit Voltaire.” He had often, however, sharp disputes with the curé of the parish, who more than once complained to the bishop. He is said on one occasion to have gone through the Easter ceremonies at the church of Ferney without having previously confessed; desiring, he said, to fulfil his duties as a Christian, an officer of the king’s household, and a village squire. Encroaching another time on the prerogative of the curé, he appeared in the pulpit and preached a sermon. Some of these stories, it must be added, rest on no more authentic basis than hearsay and the well-known changeableness of Voltaire’s disposition.

In 1778 Voltaire quitted Ferney to visit Paris, where he had not been seen for twenty years. He was received in triumph: the Academy and the Théâtre Français sent deputations to meet him, the most illustrious men by talent or birth, women of the highest rank, waited upon him to present their homage, and the people generally offered him ovations whenever he appeared in public. A performance of his tragedy of Irène was given at the Théâtre Français. His bust was crowned with laurels, and after the representation he was conducted home with acclamations from an enthusiastic crowd. “You are smothering me in roses!” cried the old poet, intoxicated with his glory. Such emotions, such fatigue had, indeed, the worst effect upon his health; he was nearly eighty-four years of age--the age at which Goethe died--and the excitement was too much for him. On his death-bed he was surrounded by priests who wished to obtain from him something in the way of concession if not retractation, but his only reply to the curé of Saint-Sulpice was, “Let me die in peace.” A written report from the hand of this ecclesiastic is said to exist in the archives of his church. Meanwhile that Voltaire did not die reconciled to the Church is sufficiently proved by the fact that Christian burial was denied him. His nephew, the Abbé Mignot, had the corpse hastily carried to his abbey at Cellières, where it remained until the days of the Revolution--when it was brought back in triumph to Paris and placed in the Pantheon, the former church of Saint-Geneviève. On the 30th of May, 1791, the National Assembly decreed that Voltaire was worthy of the honour which should be paid to great men, and that his ashes were to be transferred to the Pantheon. This translation was the occasion of a national celebration, which, under the direction of David the painter, took place on the 12th of July in the same year. Joseph Chénier wrote for the festival a poem which Gossec set to music. The three last lines of the last stanza are worth quoting:--

Chantez; de la raison célébrez le soutien; Ah! de tous les mortels qui ne sont point esclaves Voltaire est le concitoyen.[E]

[E] Literal Translation:--Sing; celebrate the upholder of Reason. Ah! of all men who are not slaves Voltaire is the fellow-citizen.

Mirabeau, who next to Voltaire was declared worthy of the honours of the Pantheon, was descended from an ancient and powerful family of Florentine origin. Riquetti, originally Arrigheti, was the name of the family, that of Mirabeau being derived from an estate which they acquired when, after being banished from Florence in the thirteenth century, they settled in Provence. The Mirabeaus were celebrated from father to son for their energy, independence, and daring. One of their boasts was that they were all of a piece, “without a joint.” Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, the greatest orator that the Revolution produced, was the son of the Marquis of Mirabeau, who is reputed to have introduced the study of political economy into France. Disfigured at the age of three by the small-pox, he preserved that remarkable ugliness which produced such a strong impression upon his contemporaries, together with that leonine countenance in which intelligence and expression triumphed over superficial hideousness. It was in allusion to his ugliness as well as to his violent passions and his indomitable character, that Mirabeau’s father, who never loved him, said of his son that he was a monster, physically and morally. Placed under different masters, he learnt with surprising facility ancient and modern languages. Lagrange taught him mathematics, and he also studied drawing and music, besides occupying himself with gymnastics. Having revealed at an early age his impetuous disposition, he was placed by his father at the École Militaire, as if with a view to his correction. Here he devoured all the works on the art of war, and at the age of seventeen came out of the school as officer. At this point begins the romance of his life. His debts and a love intrigue caused his father to shut him up in the island of Ré, in virtue of a lettre de cachet obtained for that purpose. Nor was this the only one that the severe parent procured in view of his son’s better behaviour. Sent to Corsica with his regiment, Mirabeau distinguished himself in various ways, among others by writing a history which his father destroyed because it contained philosophical ideas which, according to the parent’s view, were unorthodox. The youthful Mirabeau made a better impression on one of his uncles, who wrote about him: “Either he will be the cleverest satirist in the universe, or the greatest European general on land or sea, or minister, or chancellor, or Pope, or anything else that may please him.”

In 1772 he married at Aix, in Provence, a rich heiress, Émilie de Mirignane by name, whose dowry he was rapidly spending when the ever-watchful father came forward and procured against him a legal interdict, which cut him off from all credit and obliged him to reside within the limits of a particular town. Here, inspired, no doubt, by the situation, he composed in hot haste his “Essay on Despotism,” which deals, however, not merely with the arbitrary exercise of power, but with such concomitants of political despotism as immoderate taxation and standing armies. An insult having been offered to one of his sisters, Mirabeau broke through the rules imposed upon him, and, always at the suggestion of his father, was captured, this time to be imprisoned in the castle of If: familiar to the readers of Dumas’s “Monte Cristo.” Here he paid so much attention to the wife of the steward that it was found necessary to transfer him to another fortress. His new abode was close to Pontarlier; and he obtained permission to quit the fortress and take up his residence in this town. At Pontarlier he made the acquaintance of Sophie de Ruffey, the young wife of the Marquis de Monnier, to whom, under the name of “Sophie,” he was a few years afterwards, as a prisoner in the Bastille, to address the passionate letters generally known as “Lettres à Sophie.” His relations with Sophie, whom he induced to leave her husband in order to accompany him to Holland, brought upon him a criminal action and a tragic sentence. He was condemned to death, and not being present at the time and place fixed for his execution, was decapitated in effigy. He had fled with Sophie to Amsterdam, where, under the name of St. Matthew, he wrote largely for the booksellers who were accustomed to produce pamphlets and books which either had been or, as a matter of course, would have been forbidden in France. Besides original works, Mirabeau supplied the Dutch booksellers with translations from the English and the German. But the French Government would not leave him in peace, and in 1777, his extradition having been applied for, he was arrested at Amsterdam, carried back to France, and imprisoned at Vincennes. He was allowed to write freely to his adored Sophie; and freely enough he did write to her.

The passionate letters were all copied in the Secretary’s Office; and it is only from these copies, as printed and published in 1792 by Manuel, procureur of the Commune of Paris, that the epistles are now known. They were obviously not written for general reading. Jotted down from day to day, without thought of anything but the woman he loved and the passion by which he was inspired, they contain passages which even persons without prudery (a fault charged by Mirabeau against Sophie’s mother) might have desired to see omitted; but they are eloquent, impassioned, and, though affected by the senses, written from the heart. During his captivity at Vincennes, which lasted forty-two months, Mirabeau composed a number of works, many of which, as mentioned in the letters to Sophie, seem to have been lost. He made for Sophie’s own private reading some edifying translations from the tales of Boccaccio and from the Basia of Johannes Secundus; and he wrote a novel that every one would not care to read, called “Ma Conversion.” Liberated from prison in December, 1780, he went straight to Pontarlier, where he constituted himself a prisoner. He wished to obtain a divorce for Sophie from her husband and for himself from his wife; and it is related that in the former case the husband was only too happy to pay the expenses of the suit. He also wrote an eloquent, indignant attack against lettres de cachet, which, not daring to publish it in France, he brought out in Switzerland. From Switzerland he went to London. After a time he returned to France, and in 1786, anxious as ever to play an active part in life, got himself sent by the Government on a secret mission to Prussia; where he was to study the effect that would probably be produced in Germany by the death of Frederick the Great, then imminent, the character of the Prussian prince who was to succeed him, and the possibility, moreover, of raising in Prussia a loan for France. Such missions, of which the precise object was never clearly defined, belonged to the system of the ancient régime. Mirabeau was present at the death of Frederick and at the inauguration of his successor; when with marvellous confidence he gave the new sovereign some advice as to the art and method of governing a great country. Mirabeau, meanwhile, did his work conscientiously as agent of the French court; addressing to the minister Calonne seventy letters, which were published in 1789, the year of the Revolution, under the title of “Secret History of the Court of Berlin, Letters a French Traveller, from July, 1786, to January, 1787.” The book, full of satirical portraits and still more satirical observations, caused considerable scandal; and the parliament lost no time in ordering it to be burnt by the public executioner.

During his stay at Berlin Mirabeau collected materials for his “Prussian Monarchy,” published in 1788 (four volumes in quarto or eight volumes in octavo); a vast composition which at least bore witness to Mirabeau’s capacity in matters of politics, legislation, administration, and finance. In his address to the Batavians he set forth all the principles which were afterwards to serve as basis to the declaration of the rights of man. His “Observations on the Prison of Bicêtre,” and on the effects of the severity of punishments, may be looked upon as the complement of his “Lettres de Cachet.”

Writing in great haste, he astonished the reader by his energy and intellectual fecundity, in the midst of the constant embarrasments of a precarious and harassed life. “Mirabeau,” says M. Nisard, “learns as he writes and writes as he learns. To conceive and to produce are with him one and the same thing. The convocation of the States General opened to him a theatre worthy of his genius and of his immense ambition. He hurried to Provence and presented himself as a candidate before the Assembly of the Nobility, which, in spite of his persistent demands, put him aside as being neither owner nor occupier of land in Provence. He then turned to the people and was promptly elected a representative of the Tiers État.

His entry into political life was an event of the highest importance. Two days before the opening of the Assembly he began the publication of the Journal of the States General. At the first meeting of the Assembly the master of the ceremonies made known the king’s wish that the three orders should carry on their debates in three separate chambers. This involved the departure of the representatives of the Tiers État from their habitual rendezvous. “Tell your master,” exclaimed Mirabeau, in words which were to become historical, “that we are hereby the will of the people, and that nothing can move us but the force of bayonets.” Meanwhile Mirabeau, who had begun his political life with so much dignity, was actually ruining his position by his own personal extravagance. He entered into relations with the court, and before delivering his speeches submitted them to the king and queen. The king asked for a list of his debts, which amounted to 200,000 francs, and included a sum that had been owing seventeen years for his wedding suit. Besides paying his debts, Louis XVI. promised to furnish his new auxiliary with a pension of 6,000 francs per month. He placed, moreover, in the hands of the Count de La Marck, who had acted as intermediary, a sum of one million, which was to be given to Mirabeau at the end of the session if, as he had promised to do, he served with fidelity the cause of the king and queen.

After these facts, it has been gravely asked whether or not Mirabeau sold himself to the court. Saint-Beuve has answered the question in his own ingenious way, by saying that Mirabeau, without selling himself, allowed himself to be paid. The distinction scarcely amounts to a difference. Mirabeau now wrote frequently to the king and still more frequently to the queen, till at last nothing would satisfy him but to have an interview with Marie Antoinette, whose minister he would gladly have become, the king leaving everything to the queen, the queen everything to the would-be director of her policy. Before long the double position held by Mirabeau produced its inevitable effects. To maintain his influence with the Assembly and with his own constituents he had to play the part of a tribune, while, to gain his subsidies from the court, he was bound to show himself a firm supporter of the monarchy.

Inordinately ambitious, dissipated in the extreme, an aristocrat by taste and a democrat by conviction, he was perpetually in trouble of the most exasperating kind. In February, 1791, he was elected to the presidency of the Assembly, as candidate of the Moderate party, the Right. His vigorous opposition to the law proposed against the émigrés laid him open to grave suspicions. “Silence, those thirty voices!” he called out when Barnave, Lameth, and their friends among the orators of the Left tried to interrupt him. This debate was the last in which the dramatic side of Mirabeau’s oratorical talent was fully shown. Labours, excesses of every kind, had at last worn out his robust constitution. It was said that poison had been administered to him; but he was the author of his own destruction. The very day after his not-too-creditable understanding with the court he rushed into expenditure of every sort, so that one of his best friends could not help saying: “Mirabeau is badly advised in making such a display of his opulence. He must be afraid of passing for an honest man.” He knew that he was killing himself, and though his doctor, Cabanis, begged him to lead a more moderate life, the advice passed unheeded. He was taken ill on the 27th of March at Argenteuil, near Paris; which did not prevent him from participating next day in an important debate. He triumphed, but left the Assembly exhausted, depressed, and with death written on his face. On the morrow he was hopelessly ill, and at the end of April he expired.

The news of his death caused universal grief, and it was at once voted that his remains should be deposited in the former church of St. Geneviève, known since the Revolution as the Pantheon. Here the ashes of the greatest writer the Revolution had produced were allowed to repose until, in the Autumn of 1794, the Republicans of the Left having meanwhile been enlightened as to the part Mirabeau had played in connection with the court, they were removed to give place to the dust of Marat, whom Charlotte Corday had just assassinated. What honest man, asked someone at the time, could desire his remains to lie by the side of Mirabeau? The great orator was now worse treated by the republic than Molière, Voltaire, and Adrienne Lecouvreur had been by the clergy of the ancient monarchy. His relics were disturbed from what should have been their last resting-place, and conveyed at night without form or ceremony to Clamart, the graveyard of those who died at the hands of the executioner. There is nothing sadder in the modern history of France than the story of the entries and exits of its reputed great men into and out of the church or temple now once more known as the Pantheon.

* * * * *

A longer period of hospitality than Mirabeau was allowed to enjoy fell to the lot of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose remains, disinterred from his first place of burial in the middle of the Lake of Ermenonville, were carried to the Pantheon that same autumn which saw the relics of Mirabeau ejected from the grand national mausoleum. Rousseau was the third of the great men to whom, in the language of the well-known inscription, their native land was grateful. “Aux grands hommes: la patrie reconnaissante.” Rousseau was, no more than Napoleon, a Frenchman. His family, however, unlike that of Napoleon, is said to have been of French origin. He was descended from a Protestant bookseller, who was forced to quit France by the persecutions of the 16th century and afterwards settled at Geneva.

Rousseau’s birth cost his mother her life. “My mother died when I was born,” he says in the Confessions, “so that my birth was the first of my misfortunes.” His father, a watchmaker by trade and a man of some education, had the greatest affection for his son, but was unable to forget at what cost he had been brought into the world. Thus Rousseau’s first impressions were of the saddest kind.

The little boy was brought up by his father’s sister, and many were the novels or rather romances that he read under her guidance. Soon, however, he turned to more serious studies, his favourite authors being now the Greek and Roman historians, and particularly Plutarch. When the boy was old enough to adopt a trade he was apprenticed to an engraver. But such was the severity of his master that his sole thought was how to escape from the tyrant. One evening when he had gone out for a walk in the neighbourhood of Geneva, he found on his return the city gates closed. Fearing the anger of the engraver, he resolved not to go back to him at all. Chance took him to the house of M. de Pontverre, curé of Confignon, who, finding the boy was a Protestant, resolved to profit by the opportunity of making a convert. M. de Pontverre, instead of sending the little Rousseau back to his employer, conveyed him to a Madame de Varennes, who had herself just been converted to the Catholic religion. To Madame de Varennes young Rousseau became warmly attached, and he was in despair when suddenly she went away. The strange idea now occurred to him, possessing no musical knowledge or next to none, of passing as a musician. He commenced, in fact, to give lessons in music. From Lausanne, where he had begun his hazardous tuition, he took flight to Neufchâteau, where once more he insisted on teaching music.

At last, by giving lessons in music he taught himself, and he had no trouble in getting a certain number of pupils. After various adventures he turned up in Paris, where he was engaged as tutor by a young officer, who soon, however, discovered that the would-be preceptor had a great deal to learn. Finding that Madame de Varennes was at Chambéry, he determined to visit her, and, being well received, remained with her some considerable time. He now gave himself up to studying sentiment, until after the lapse of a few years Madame de Varennes became tired of his society, and the young man left Chambéry for Montpellier, where he proposed to get medical treatment for a fancied polypus of the heart. He had read, during the latter part of his stay at Chambéry, so many medical books that he ended by becoming an imaginary invalid. From Montpellier, where the doctors professed their utter inability to recognise the polypus complained of, he went to Lyons, where he got an engagement as tutor in a family. A year afterwards, in 1841, he left Lyons for Paris, now fired by literary ambition and excited by the news that constantly reached him of the triumphs of Voltaire. He took with him to the French capital a new system of musical notes, a five-act comedy, and fifteen louis d’or. His musical innovations, submitted to the Academy, were not understood; but perhaps for that reason they made some noise and facilitated his introduction into many good houses. For some little time he led a life of elegant leisure, during which he made the acquaintance of several of the first literary men of the day. But it was necessary for him to earn his living, and he was glad to accept an engagement with Madame Dupin, daughter of the famous financier, Samuel, who wanted a secretary; and soon afterwards Madame de Broglie got him sent to Venice as secretary to the French Ambassador, Count de Montaigne. Before long, however, Rousseau had a violent quarrel with his chief, who seems to have been a man of unbearable disposition.

Returning to Paris, he resolved once more to adopt a literary career. He wrote articles on musical subjects for the Encyclopédie, and made sketches of operas, ballets, and divertissements, until one day, going to see his friend Diderot, imprisoned at the time in the castle of Vincennes, he happened to read as he walked along, in the Mercure de France, an advertisement offering a prize to the author of the best essay on this subject: “Has the progress of science and art tended to corrupt or to purify manners?” According to Diderot and his friends, it was he, the imprisoned philosopher critic, tale writer, and dramatist, who suggested to Rousseau that, instead of taking the commonplace view of the matter, he would do well to maintain, as paradoxically as he pleased, that the development of art and science had exercised not a healthy but a baneful effect. Rousseau, however, maintained that the idea of treating the subject from the negative point of view originated with himself alone. “If ever anything,” he wrote long afterwards, “resembled a sudden inspiration, it was the movement that at once took place in my mind on reading the advertisement. Suddenly my intelligence was dazzled by a thousand lights. Crowds of ideas assailed me with a force and a confusion which caused me inexpressible trouble; my head was seized with a giddiness resembling intoxication.” Whoever suggested to Rousseau the idea of his essay, it was to him that the Academy of Dijon adjudged the prize. His paradoxes wounded many a writer, many a poet, many a would-be philosopher. But meanwhile all the literary and scientific society of Paris had been thrown by Rousseau’s arguments into a state of commotion.

Rousseau, however, instead of profiting by the striking success he had achieved, resolved in the first place to put in practice the principles of simplicity and even asceticism which he had expounded in his treatise. At the time of the essay’s being published he occupied the lucrative post of cashier to M. de Franceuil, one of the Farmers General. But he now refused to have anything to do with finance, preferring to gain his bread by copying music. This resolution did but increase his reputation and cause his writings to be in greater demand than ever. Soon afterwards, in 1762, his opera, The Village Seer (Le devin du village), was represented at Fontainebleau with immense success. The king wished the author of the graceful pastoral to be presented to him, and a pension awaited him. But he turned his back on the seductions of fortune and resumed his copying. There were not wanting detractors, who saw in this fine spirit of independence simply the pride of Antisthenes visible through the holes in his coat.

In 1753 Rousseau published his “Letters on French Music” and his “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.” Then he journeyed to Geneva, where he returned to Protestantism in order to recover the title of citizen, which in due time he lost once more, after the publication of “Emile.” Tired of the world, he now accepted an asylum which was offered to him by his friend, Madame d’Epinay, in the valley of Montmorency, where he wrote nearly the whole of his famous “Nouvelle Héloïse.” The work would doubtless have benefited by the omission of many a rhetorical phrase; but the passion for nature, the exalted delirium of the heart and the senses, the storms, the tears which it contained, were things so new that the whole generation allowed itself to be carried away with the transports of Rousseau. He had found inspiration for the book, it was said, in his unfortunate love for Madame d’Houdelot--a love which almost degenerated into a mental derangement and which commenced his series of misfortunes. Madame d’Epinay, who was then in relationship with Grimm, saw with no kindly eye the affection of Jean Jacques for another than she. Rousseau soon found his position so disagreeable that, breaking with Madame d’Epinay, he abruptly quitted her house although it was the depth of winter. Hospitality was offered to him at Montlouis, near Montmorency, and there he wrote his “Letter to d’Alembert on Stage Plays,” a pamphlet which caused a considerable stir. Voltaire was then the king of the theatre; and to attack one was to attack the other. Voltaire was enraged, and could not keep within bounds. He insulted his adversary, who, however, did not reply in the same tone. This quarrel, which ended to the advantage of Rousseau, had the effect of diverting his mind for a moment; but very soon he became once more a prey to that morbid melancholy and suspicion which were to accompany him to his grave, and which rendered the remainder of his life painful to contemplate. He died in 1788 at Ermenonville, whither he had been invited on a country visit by M. de Girardin, at a time when old age, infirmities, and misery had already driven him to distraction.

The eccentricities and weakness of his character, however, vanish in presence of his literary fame. Although his remains are not at Ermenonville, the place is often visited by strangers interested in Rousseau’s last days. M. Thiébaut de Berneaud, in his “Voyage à Ermenonville,” 1826, declares that when, eleven years earlier, in 1815, “the chief of one of the hostile armies arrived at Plessis-Belleville” and, examining his topographical map, found himself close to Ermenonville, he asked whether this was not the place where Jean Jacques Rousseau had breathed his last, and receiving an affirmative reply, declared that as long as there were Prussians in France Ermenonville should be exempt from war contributions. The unnamed warrior marched, says M. Thiébaut de Berneaud, towards the last abode of the sentimental philosopher, and, uncovering himself as he drew near, ordered his troops to treat Ermenonville, its inhabitants, and all that belonged to it, with respect--a command which was religiously observed.

Rousseau was one of the few distinguished men of letters in France who cared for country life, and he must be allowed to share with Bernardin de St. Pierre the credit of having introduced not only sentiment but landscape into the French novel. He could not have lived permanently in Paris, though he was a resident in the capital when he declared that if the officers of the crown insisted on his paying exorbitant taxes, he would go on to the boulevards, sit under a tree, and die of hunger. Even at that time he took constant rambles in the Bois de Vincennes, through which he had to pass to visit his friend Diderot, confined in the château.

Apart from the fine foliage and the exhilarating air which serve to attract visitors to Vincennes, the place is celebrated for its fortress, which neither centuries nor revolutions have swept away. The dungeon, which is now the only remnant of the citadel commenced by Philippe de Valois, and completed by Charles the Wise on the ruins of the castle to which Philippe Augustus used to resort in view of the pleasures of the chase, was formerly encircled by eight towers, grouped around its walls like vassals around their lord. These, however, have been demolished by revolutions and by time.

To-day the redoubtable citadel in which so many kings have sojourned is a military establishment, which includes an artillery arsenal, barracks, hospitals, a cannon foundry, a factory of arms, a château, a church, and a great number of store-rooms. Its precincts are immense. Other fortresses are hidden in the immediate vicinity, and guard the approaches. Artillerymen incessantly go and come between the fortress and the village and the village and the practice-ground.

Penetrating the sombre vault which leads from the door of entrance to the interior court, the visitor finds before him the ancient royal residence, whose façade preserves something of the majesty of antiquity. To the left stands the chapel built by Charles V. in imitation of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, and which he dedicated to the Trinity and the Virgin, the fencing-room, and the tower of the reservoir; to the right the formidable dungeon rears its head towards heaven.

In the space enclosed by these various constructions are stacked up, in faultless order, parallelograms of cannons and pyramids of bullets. Long rows of howitzers, their mouths directed skywards, are to be seen side by side with masses of enormous bombs. In the large neighbouring buildings are halls which contain, suspended from the walls, hooked up round the pillars, and symmetrically arranged in corners, a prodigious stock of guns, bayonets, and sabres. Everything shines and glitters: there is not a particle of dust anywhere. An army could here find sufficient weapons to invade a country. The church is close at hand. It recalls a peaceful and merciful divinity in a place consecrated to war. Prayers are uttered at a spot where men are incessantly trying to find how to kill the greatest number of their fellows in the shortest possible space of time.

The Gothic church, with its fine exterior masonry, is void of all ornamentation within. It gives one the impression of having been sacked at some stage in its history. In a lateral chapel there is a monument raised to the memory of the Duc d’Enghien.

What the Parisians, however, come particularly to see, what they love, what they visit with the greatest eagerness, is the dungeon. This old monument in stone is to them an object of worship. They envelop it with a fond curiosity, and, despite the horror they feel at the terrible scenes it has witnessed during so many centuries, they will not see it disappear without regret. In their imagination it is a legendary, monument, and, in all probability, if the Bastille had not been torn up from the soil by the Great Revolution, that prison-fortress would now have been preserved with the utmost care for the gratification of public curiosity.

No one finding himself at Vincennes after a country stroll fails to ascend to the summit of the dungeon. The visitor pants a little, perhaps, on reaching the platform which crowns it, but he is recompensed for his fatigue by the immense panorama which opens around him. There below, in that transparent vapour which the sun’s rays never more than half penetrate, those myriads of roofs, those monstrous domes, those belfries, that stubble of chimneys whence clouds of smoke are escaping, that distant and ceaseless din which reminds one of the waves breaking on some shore, proclaim the gayest city in the world. At the foot of the edifice the forest stretches away, and behind the screen of trees lies a limitless country, in which cultivated fields extend to the horizon. Everywhere orchards, hamlets, villages meet the eye. The Seine is not far off, and at no great distance, like a band of silver, the Marne meanders capriciously through an immense plain studded with clumps of trees.

On one side a view is obtained of Montreuil, famed for its peaches; on the other, by the river bank, a congregation of villas and cottages in picturesque disorder shows the site of Port-Creuil, where Frederic Soulié sought literary repose. At a little distance lies Saint-Maur, where verdure-loving Parisian business-men like to spend Sunday with their families. Some of them, indeed, reside there permanently; and year by year bricks and mortar may be seen to encroach further and further upon the surrounding country. Hard by is Saint-Mandé, where Armand Carrel died of the wound received in his duel with Emile de Girardin. His tomb is in the cemetery, where stands a statue in his honour.

If the gaze is now turned sharply towards Paris, it encounters, beyond Alfort and its schools, Charenton, celebrated for that mansion of which Sébastien Leblanc conceived the first idea in 1741, and, at the confluence of the Seine and the Marne, the château of Conflans, so long the residence of the Archbishop of Paris. In that immense space which lies beneath the eye there is scarcely a stone or a tree which does not recall some memory. All those roads, all those footpaths, have been trodden by men who were destined to leave a deep mark on the history of France. There is not a corner in this sylvan expanse where some civil or religious combat has not taken place. The Normans, the English, even the Cossacks have made incursions here. There is, according to the expression of one French writer, not a tuft of grass which has not been stained with human blood. Through the villages in sight princes and kings have passed. Torch-lit cortèges, conducting prisoners to the dungeon and to death, have alternated with triumphal processions, escorting sovereigns to their capital to the flourish of trumpets. On that hill yonder Charles VII. raised a castle--the Castle of Beauty--which preserves the memory of Agnes Sorel. In another part of the wood, near Créteil, a little house was once the residence of Odette, who consoled Charles VI. Saint-Mandé once possessed a little park in which Louis XIV., before he was the Louis XIV. of Versailles and of Madame de Maintenon, felt the beat of his own heart; for it was there that he met the fascinating de la Vallière. Under the shade of those old oaks many other beautiful phantoms may by the imaginative mind be seen gracefully gliding: Gabrielle d’Estrées, for instance, Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Longueville, and Madame de Pompadour.

The wood of Vincennes is to-day, of course, very different from what it was at the period when Philip Augustus, enamoured of the chase, had it surrounded by solid walls, in order to preserve the fallow deer and roebucks which he had imported from England. But if it has lost a great deal of its ancient character, together with some of its noblest old trees, it has gained in lakes, lawns, and avenues, where the laborious population of Paris love to lounge or stroll in a clear and recreative air.

Once arrived in the Bois de Boulogne, the visitor has not to travel far in order to see the Marne, that most capricious of French rivers. There is scarcely a Parisian who has not taken an exploring stroll along the banks of this stream, which conducts the oarsman to the very point whence he started. Artists and dreamers in search of leafy shade, of trees overhanging a limpid stream, of mills beating the clear water with their black wheels, know the Marne well. On summer days many a peal of laughter may be heard to proceed from behind some shrubbery. Tourists come to the place in quest of breakfast: they are not in want of appetite, and they have for companions youth and gaiety. Frocks which the wearers are not afraid of rumpling alternate with woollen blouses: the visitors row and sing, seeking, later on, some rustic restaurant where, beneath a green arbour, they can enjoy a bottle of white wine and a snack of fish, with an omelette, or some other light accessory.

On hot Sundays, beneath a cloudless sky, numberless picnics are held in the Bois de Vincennes--a thing unfashionable in the Bois de Boulogne, where visitors would consider it beneath their dignity to eat from a cloth spread on the green turf. At Vincennes excursionists do not stand on ceremony, and if the weather is sultry men may be seen lounging in their shirt sleeves, and taking, in other respects, an ease which the inhabitants of the Boulevards, who resort to the Bois de Boulogne, would contemplate with horror. If the families, however, who divert themselves at Vincennes do not rent a box at the opera, their unpretentious music probably affords them a pleasure none the less. It is a distinctly popular place to which they resort. You do not see there on Sunday new toilettes which evoke cries of astonishment: unpublished dresses dare not show themselves there, eccentric fashions do not bewilder the spectator’s eye. People walk about there without pretension, usually on foot, in family groups, arriving by omnibus or rail.

Sometimes, however, at the time of the races you see those coaches and calèches which four high-spirited horses draw at a gallop. Beautiful ladies and fine gentlemen are hastening to share in the pleasures of the course. This is the hour of lace and silk.

The Bois de Boulogne is associated with steeple-chasing, instead of the flat-racing of the Bois de Vincennes. The public, says the before-mentioned writer, “who are not conversant with the science of the turf, and scarcely wish to be so, better understand the courage and skill which the jockeys must display when they find themselves in presence of a stream or hurdle. Curiosity and emotion are both excited in connection with these exhibitions. People go as near as they can to the obstacle and measure its height or width with their eye. Some take up their stand at a fixed barrier; others wait at a bridge which precedes a ditch. The horses having started, a universal gaze follows them. Will they get over or not? All the spectators hold their breath, their hearts beating rapidly. Meanwhile the jockeys are dressed in purple, gold, and silver: they arrive like so many flying sparks. Their horses clear the obstacles. Hurrah! they are on the flat again. But if by accident both horse and rider get rolled on the grass, it must be confessed that the pleasure of the curious is, in this event, no less.”

Vincennes is celebrated for its charitable as well as its military establishments. Its Benevolent Institution, or “Bureau de Bienfaisance,” and its Orphan Home are both admirably organised. The fortress itself may, moreover, be regarded as in some measure an asylum. Its garrison includes a good number of aged, wounded and crippled soldiers; and it was commanded in the time of the first Napoleon by a daring old pensioner who had lost one of his legs on some former battle-field, and, in virtue of his wooden stump, was familiarly known as “Jambe de Bois.” Called upon to capitulate in 1814, he threatened to blow up the fortress unless the allied forces at once retired. They did so, and he ultimately capitulated on his own terms.

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XLII. THE PALAIS MAZARIN AND THE RUE MAZARINE

The Institute or Palais Mazarin--The Rue Mazarine--L’Illustre Théâtre--Molière--The Théâtre Français--The Odéon--Heine--The Faubourg Saint-Germain--Historical Associations.

During the middle ages the Palace of the Institute was one of the landmarks and limits of Paris. The rest of the left bank belonged to the agglomeration formed around the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and which was called, during the different periods of its successive developments, the bourg, or borough, the town, and the faubourg of Saint-Germain.

Of the Institute as a central body, with the five academies composing it, sufficient mention has already, perhaps, been made. Some words, however, may be added on the subject of the building--the “Palace” in which the Institute is lodged. Close to the Institute, which owes its chief renown to the most important of its component academies, the Académie Française, representing literature, is the Mint, or Hôtel des Monnaies, with whose products literature is too often but slightly connected. Nor can we leave the immediate neighbourhood of the Institute without speaking of the famous Tour de Nesle, which figures so dramatically in a well-known play written by Alexandre Dumas and Frédéric Gaillardet. One wing of the Institute occupies the very site of the old tower, which was situated on a tongue of earth projecting into the Seine. It stood seventy-five feet high, with a diameter of ten feet; and the crenelated platform at the summit was reached by a winding staircase. According to the legend, as turned to literary account by Roger de Beauvoir in a novel, and by Alexandre Dumas and his collaborator (who claimed to have done all, or nearly all the work in the before-mentioned play), Marguerite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis X., and her two sisters, or sisters-in-law, were accused and convicted of unbecoming conduct in the Tower of Nesle; when two of their accomplices, Philippe and Gaultier d’Aunay, were skinned alive, while Marguerite herself was strangled by order of her royal husband, the lives of the two other princesses being spared. According to the ancient tradition, the queen and her sisters used to receive their lovers in the apartments of the tower, and then, to prevent any compromising revelations, throw them from the window into the Seine.

Resting upon the tower was the Petit Nesle, given as a place of abode, in 1540, by Francis I. to Benvenuto Cellini. The king’s right to dispose of the house was questioned, indirectly, it is true, but in a very substantial manner, by the Provost of Paris, who, after giving the Florentine artist notice to quit, tried to turn him out by force; when Cellini, with his companions, apprentices, and servants, defended the place against the besiegers. It was in the Petit Nesle that this admirable sculptor executed, among masterpieces, his colossal statue of Jupiter in silver. In his Memoirs Benvenuto tells a story which paints, in glaring colours, the disorderly character of the time. He was returning to the Petit Nesle--his Château of Nesle, as he calls it--carrying beneath his cloak, in a basket, 1,000 crowns in ancient gold, which the royal treasurer had just delivered to him by order of Francis I., when he was attacked by thieves before the Augustins--a “very dangerous place.” He then tells how he kept his assailants at a respectful distance by sweeping blows from his sword, and then ran away in all haste to his château, where he called to the garrison, which rushed out fully armed, thus enabling him to re-enter safe and sound the Petit Nesle, where he and his friends had a lively supper. This simple anecdote shows what a cut-throat place Paris was under the reign of Francis I., in the year 1540.

Tour de Nesle and Petit Nesle have both disappeared, and on their site stands (as already mentioned) the Palace of the Institute, originally known as the Palais Mazarin. Cardinal Mazarin, having been unable to carry out personally the project he had formed of establishing a college for the benefit of sixty young noblemen, or young men of the citizen class belonging to the lands newly conquered by the Crown of France, ordered by his will, on the 6th of March, 1661, that, should the king be so pleased, a college should be founded for sixty sons of gentlemen or of citizens belonging to the various territories--German, Flemish, and Provençal--lately annexed to France. Hence the name given to it of “College of the Four Nations”; the fourth nation being, of course, France. In like manner there were formerly “four nations” in the University of Paris. Mazarin had already drawn up the statute for the college, and he bequeathed to it the whole of his library, with an income of 45,000 francs secured on town property, the revenue of the Abbey of Saint-Michel, and two millions of livres (francs) in silver. The cardinal’s executors began by purchasing the Petit Nesle, the ditches and ramparts of the Rue des Fossés, which now became the Rue Mazarine; and a piece of land comprised between the Rue Mazarine, the Rue de Seine, and the Quay. The college was then erected and the library duly placed; and until the time of the Revolution the Institute, as it was in time to be called, formed an important centre for men devoted to the study of literature, science, or art.

At the time of the Revolution the college, being of suspicious origin, was confiscated, while, on the other hand, the library was enlarged by 50,000 volumes, themselves the result of confiscation.

In suppressing the Institute the Revolution did not spare any one of its five academies--not even the French academy, which, though it represented the literature of the country, had a taint of aristocracy about it. As soon, however, as France was delivered from the atrocities of the Revolution, the National Convention, in its last sitting but one, on the 25th October, 1795, reconstituted the Institute under the form of a society of 144 members, divided into three classes: (1) positive sciences, (2) political sciences, and (3) literature and art. The First Consul reorganised the society as four classes: (1) science, (2) literature, (3) ancient literature, (4) fine arts. Under this form the Restoration found nothing to change but the name; and the four classes of the Imperial Institute became once more “academies.” The fifth, that of moral and political sciences, created by the Convention, was re-established in 1832 on the proposition of M. Guizot, Minister of Public Instruction. Independently of their internal economy and their proprietorial rights, the five academies are bound together through the chief secretarial department, the library, and various collections belonging to the five academies in common. The unity of the academies is affirmed, moreover, every year through a formal sitting, of which the presidency falls in turn to each of the five academical presidents. “It is a commonplace,” says M. Auguste Vitu, in his work on Paris, “to run down academies. The five ancient, like the five modern academies, have rendered, all the same, the greatest services to science, and cast a brilliant light on literature and art. This is generally admitted in connection with the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Inscriptions. There is no foreign scientific man, however illustrious, who does not welcome the honour of becoming its associate or correspondent. The Academy of Sciences has taken part in every scientific advance; and to the Academy of Inscriptions, with its adventurous explorers, is due the immense development of Punic, Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian studies. It can be said to have created the science of epigraphy, that resurrection of history from stones. But the utility of the Academy of Fine Arts has been questioned often enough, and the French Academy is the recognised object not only of everyone’s ambition, but also, and above all, of everyone’s ridicule and satire; especially--if not exclusively--on the part of men of letters.... Whoever be elected to the French Academy, the election is sure to meet with much literary disapproval. The scientific men are accused of ignoring literature, and the dukes of being unable to spell. If, on the other hand, the Academy chooses a dramatist, a novelist, a journalist, or a critic, journalism is sure to ask why so-and-so was elected--my associate, my friend, perhaps--and not myself. These condemnations have weakened neither the authority nor the glory of the French Academy; they have, perhaps, even preserved it, by diminishing in its secret councils the influence of coteries. The idea of Cardinal Richelieu in creating it was to maintain the unity of the French language, and consequently of France, while giving to talent equal distinction with rank, birth, and official service.”

To pass once more from the Institute to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, this important social and historical district is bounded on the east by the ancient ditch or moat of Paris, now represented by the Rue Mazarine (formerly Rue de Nesle), the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, and the Rue Monsieur le Prince.

The Rue Mazarine--one of the most interesting streets on the left hank of the Seine, and, indeed, in all Paris--occupies an important place in connection with the French stage. On the present site of Nos. 12 and 14, Rue Mazarine corresponds at the back with No. 13, Rue de Seine. Here Arnold Mestayer, citizen of Paris and captain of the hundred musketeers of the town, under Henry IV., had built a house and tennis-court, and here, on the 12th of September, 1643, a few days after the death of King Louis XIII., a company of young men of honourable birth, brought together by friendship and a passionate love of the dramatic art, rented from the heirs of Arnold Mestayer the house and the court attached to it.

There, too, was opened, in the last days of the year, a new theatre for tragedy and comedy, in opposition to the royal players of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and under the title of L’illustre Théâtre. Among the members of this remarkable company may be mentioned the two Béjards, Madeleine and Geneviève, and Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who had not yet taken the surname of Molière. The tennis-court still existed in 1818; and it was not pulled down until about 1830, when space was wanted for the enlargement of the street. The old house where Molière and; his companions used to live is still in existence, numbered 10 in the Rue Mazarine and 11 in the Rue de Seine, by the side of a haberdasher’s shop, to the sign of The Tennis Court. A commemorative tablet marks the spot where once stood the Illustre Théâtre--a name it was one day really to deserve, from the fact that one of the least important members of its company, considered as an actor, was soon afterwards to show himself the greatest dramatist that France had produced. Another tablet in the same street--No. 42--marks the ground once occupied by another tennis-court, which, in 1669, was let to the Abbé Perrin and several associates, with Cambert, the composer, among them, who had obtained from the king the right or privilege of establishing at Paris an operatic theatre. The opening performance took place on the 19th of May, 1671. A lyric drama, called Pomone, written by Perrin, and set to music by Cambert, was produced. Cardinal Mazarin had introduced Italian opera into Paris in 1645, and the first French opera, entitled, Akbar, King of Mogul, words and music by the Abbé Mailly, was brought out the year following in the episcopal palace of Carpentras, under the direction of Cardinal Bichi, Urban VIII.’s legate in France. The second French opera was La Pastorale en Musique, words by Perrin, music by Cambert, which was privately represented at Issy; and the Pomone, given at Paris in 1671, was only the third work of the kind. Pomone was followed at the new Lyric Theatre by a so-called “tragedy-ballet,” which is remarkable as having been the joint product of Molière and Corneille, the two greatest dramatists of France. It may here be mentioned that a privilege for an academy of music had been ceded a hundred years before by Charles IX. to Antoine de Baif, the word academy being used as an equivalent for accademia, the Italian for concert. Perrin’s licence seems to have been a renewal, as to form, of de Baif’s; and thus originated the eminently absurd title which the chief operatic theatre of Paris has since retained.

After a time Molière’s company was, by order of the king, combined with two others--the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and that of the Marais; and this reduction of the three companies into one constituted the Comédie Française, which has now had a glorious existence of two centuries. Before settling down finally into its present abode at the Palais Royal end of the Rue Richelieu, the Comédie Française, or Théâtre Français--for the two names equally belong to it--had a varied history, and wandered about Paris from quarter to quarter and from street to street. Its first abodes seem to have been far less solidly constructed than our ancient national theatres of Drury Lane or Covent Garden; and in 1770 the famous company, finding itself in a building so dilapidated that its fall was daily imminent, the king granted it hospitality in one of the wings of the Tuileries Palace. He at the same time took steps to provide for it a permanent home; and with that view bought for 3,000,000 livres (francs) the ground occupied by the Hôtel de Condé, where a new theatre was to be constructed. Here the Théâtre Français gave its performances throughout the first phases of the Revolution, until, on the 3rd of September, 1793, after the performance of a play founded on Richardson’s Pamela, the Committee of Public Safety closed the house and arrested alike the author of the piece and the actors who had performed in it. The new playhouse was reopened under the successive titles of Theatre of Equality and Theatre of the People, with a portion of the company--which had been saved by the death of Robespierre. Classical names were now in fashion, and the theatre, on being reopened in 1797, was called, in memory of Athens, the Odéon. Its performances, however, were not successful, and after a wretched existence of a few months it closed in 1799. When it seemed to have taken a new lease of life it was destroyed by fire, the origin of which was never explained. Reconstructed in 1807, it was opened under the title of Théâtre de l’Impératrice, and was looked upon as a supplementary house to the Théâtre Français, with the right of playing comedy, but not tragedy. By way of compensation, it was permitted to give representations of opera-bouffe. The Odéon had once more been officially designated the second Théâtre Français, when a new fire destroyed it on the 20th of February, 1818. Louis XVIII. ordered the immediate reconstruction of the house, and, on its completion, put the second Théâtre Français on the same footing as the first, placing at its free disposal all the works of the classical repertory.

Since this time the Odéon has, in a literary and dramatic sense, undergone all kinds of metamorphoses. It became first a lyrical theatre, with such pieces as Robin des Bois--corresponding, no doubt, to our Robin of the Wood, or Robin Hood; this name having been given to a strange adaptation by Castil-Blaze, with interpolations by the adapter, of Weber’s Der Freischütz; and under Louis Philippe the Odéon was the headquarters of Italian opera.

At present the Odéon is definitely classed as the second Théâtre Français, in which character it pays no rent and enjoys an annual subvention of 100,000 francs. No theatre during the last seventy years has rendered greater services to dramatic art. Here have been represented pieces by Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny, Balzac, George Sand, Émile Augier, Octave Feuillet, Méry, Léon Gozlan, Theodore Barrière, Édmond Gondinet, Hippolyte Lucas, Michel Carré, Frédéric Soulié, François Ponsard, François Coppée, Alphonse Daudet, and a hundred others. The house, moreover, has formed a great number of superior artists, who were, one after the other, claimed by the Comédie Française. Of the many admirable pieces produced at the Odéon, full and interesting accounts may be found in the collected feuilletons of Jules Janin and of Théophile Gautier.

Nothing, however, more brilliant has been written on the artistic and literary period represented by the dramatic triumphs of the Odéon than the letters from Paris written from time to time between the years 1832 and 1848 by Heinrich Heine.

Heine is known to the English public chiefly through the French versions of his works; which, as they have been produced by the author himself, convey his thoughts quite as accurately, and his style almost as accurately, as the German originals. His “Pictures of Travel” (“Reisebilder”), a volume of poems, two volumes on Germany which have, of course, taken the place of the now defunct work of Mme. de Stael, some dramas or plans for dramas, which were published in the Revue des deux Mondes, the “Livre de Lazare,” which appeared in the same periodical, and “Lutèce,” are perhaps the most important of those of Heine’s writings which have been reproduced in French. The “Buch der Lieder,” too, has been done into French prose by Heine himself, with the aid of his friend Gerard de Nerval, who in his youth, under the name of Gerard, made a translation of “Faust” which satisfied, or at least pleased, even Goethe himself. These Lieder, together with the “Reisebilder,” were Heine’s favourite productions; and independently of the life that is in them, many of them are further assured of continued popularity by reason of Schubert’s having coupled them with some of his most beautiful music.

Heine was a poet and satirist by nature. Endowed with great analytical power, and educated in Germany, he of course took a pleasure in studying the operations of the human mind; but he was not a philosopher by temperament, which is sufficiently proved by the fact that he not only refrained from attaching himself to any particular system of philosophy in a country where he had so many to select from, but that he did not even take the trouble to invent a system for himself. He comprehended philosophy, liked painting, loved music, and spoke of all science and art in the spirit of a poet. He explained Victor Cousin and Pierre Leroux, grew pathetic over the fate of Léopold Robert, and became enthusiastic in his admirable descriptions of the performances of Ernst and Paganini, of Grisi and Mario.

Heine’s poetry is principally remarkable for its fantastic character and for its warmth of colour; accordingly, there are certain points of resemblance between the German poet and Théophile Gautier, only there is soul in the verse of Heine, whereas in that of Gautier we find nothing but a glorification of the senses and an absolute worship of form. Goethe, in his later years, is imagined by the enraptured Gautier sitting, passionless, on a marble throne, looking upon the whole of creation as the development of a superior form of art. Indeed, according to the Gautier school, life and death are nothing compared with the interests of art. Art is great, and life is unimportant; paganism is to be revered on account of its marble temples; poverty is to be admired for its beggar-boys by Murillo; the Millennium is objectionable because it will produce no subjects for dramatic literature. Heine, on the contrary, who, in addition to the skill of the artist, possessed the heart of a man, was willing to sacrifice all art and all poetry--his own, to begin with--if, in any scheme for alleviating the sufferings of the poorer classes, such a sacrifice should appear inevitable. This feeling is shown generally throughout his writings. “Unless,” he says, “I deny the premise, that all men have the right to eat, I am forced to admit it in all its consequences.... Let justice be done.... Let the old system be broken up, in which innocence has perished, in which egotism has prospered, in which man has been trafficked in by man.... And blessed be the grocer who will one day make my poetry into paper bags, and fill them with coffee and snuff for the poor good old women who, in our present world of injustice, have perhaps had to deprive themselves of all such comforts.”

To know the Paris of half a century ago it is only, indeed, necessary to study the “Lutèce” of Heinrich Heine, in which the Paris of the best part of Louis Philippe’s reign is portrayed in the most life-like, the most brilliant style. The sketches, the anecdotes, the criticism--all full of the Heinean verve and irony--form the best portion of the book, which is deficient, perhaps, in the description (if we except personal description) on which Heine, without adequate reason, was inclined to pride himself. His poems, his travels, and his miniature dramas are crowded with fantastic thoughts, which are of course presented in fantastic forms; but he will always be remembered by his ideas rather than by his images; and when he states, in his “Reisebilder,” that, owing to the prodigality of German writers in the matter of thoughts, he finds it more profitable to cultivate the production of pictures, one would think, were it not for the very title of the work, that he was indulging in irony at the expense of his readers.

As a satirist Heine is first of all remarkable for his irony, which is always masterly and which sometimes reaches the diabolical. He admits that even in his most amiable moments the “caresses of his Teutonic paws sometimes inflicted a wound”; and if he scratches like a cat in play, it is certain that he tears in earnest like a tiger. He seizes his victim by the neck, and either skins him with his delicate observation or scalps him with his unerring sarcasm. On great occasions he resorts to deliberate analysis, or rather anatomy; when, after a very few pages, the patient finds himself lying dissected at the end of a chapter, with the merciless satirist grinning at his remains.

In the last chapter of the Reisebilder, speaking of the misfortunes of the German emigrants, Heine gives an anecdote of an artist who, on being requested to paint a golden angel on a signboard, replied that he would rather paint a red lion; that he was accustomed to them, and that even if he painted a golden angel it would look like a red lion all the same. “The words of this painter,” said Heine, “reply beforehand to the objections which may be made to my book.... It was not any vain caprice which made me quit all that was dear to me, all that charmed me and smiled upon me in my native land. There more than one being loved me--my mother, for instance. And yet I left it without knowing why--I left it because I was obliged to do so. It is only in the winter that we become fully penetrated with the beauties of the spring; the love of liberty is a flower which grows in prison; and in the same way the love of the German fatherland commences at the German frontier--above all, at sight of German misery on a foreign soil.... I have now before me the letter of a friend who is dead, and in which the following passage occurs: ‘I never was aware that I loved my country so much. I was in the position of a man who had never been taught by physiology the value of his blood. The blood is taken from him, and the man falls. That was indeed the case. Germany is ours, and that is why I felt suddenly broken down and ill at the sight of those emigrants, of those great rivers of blood which flow from the wounds of our country and lose themselves in the deserts of Africa.’ ... The golden colours of the angel have since that time entirely dried up on my palette, and all that remains upon it in a liquid state is a raw red colour, which looks like blood, and with which nothing but red lions can be painted. Accordingly, my next book will be purely and simply a red lion; for which I beg the kind public to pardon me by reason of the confession now made.”

Heine, during his prolonged stay in Paris, where he was adopted and became naturalised, saw all the new operas and most of the new pictures; attended the meetings of the Institute; abused the polka, then just invented; discussed the Eastern Question, and tried to decide whether it was more probable that England and Russia would declare war against France, or that France and Russia would declare war against England; calculated Philippe’s chances of remaining on the throne, considered the rival merits of Thiers and Guizot, and generally criticised everyone and everything with which he was brought in contact. He was on friendly terms with George Sand, Meyerbeer, Rothschild, Balzac, Victor Cousin, Spontini, and Alfred de Musset; and he has given elaborate portraits of some of these celebrities, while he has written something characteristic of each. If he was at any time personally acquainted with Victor Hugo, all intimacy between the two must certainly have ceased after Heine’s murderous attack upon the great French poet:--“As all the French writers possess taste, the total absence of this quality in Victor Hugo struck his compatriots as a sign of originality and genius. He is essentially cold, as is the devil, according to the assertions of witches--cold and icy even in his most passionate effusions; his enthusiasm is only a phantasmagoria, a piece of calculation devoid of love; for he loves nothing but himself--he is an egoist, or, worse still, a Hugoist. In spite of his imagination and his wit, he has the awkwardness of a parvenu or a savage.” In another place we are told that Hugo’s studied passion and artificial warmth suggest “fried ice”--an edible antithesis prepared by the Chinese, which consists of little balls of ice dipped into a particular kind of batter, and forthwith fried and swallowed.

Rothschild is said to be the best possible political thermometer; and he is praised for the genial if slightly patronising manner in which he famillionairement addresses his friends. “Indeed, it might be affirmed,” says Heine, still full of the thermometrical idea, “that he possesses the talent of the frog for indicating fair and foul weather, were it not that this comparison might be considered somewhat disrespectful; and certainly he is a man who must be respected, if only on account of the respect he inspires in the greater number of those who approach him. I love to visit him at his bank, where I have the opportunity of observing men of all classes and all religions. Gentiles as well as Jews bow, incline, and prostrate themselves before him. They turn, and stoop, and bend their backs nearly double, in a manner which the most talented acrobat might envy. I have seen some persons tremble on approaching him as if they had touched a voltaic battery. Even when standing outside the door many of them are seized with a quivering veneration, such as Moses felt on Mount Horeb.... His private room is, indeed, a most remarkable place, and awakes sublime thoughts and feelings--like the aspect of the ocean, of the starry heavens, of mountains or of boundless forests. It teaches me the littleness of man and the greatness of God. For money is the god of our age, and Rothschild is his prophet.”

* * * * *

As the Louvre is associated with the monarchy and Notre Dame with the Episcopacy, so the Faubourg St. Germain is associated with the ancient French nobility. It is interesting to know that St. Germain, the holy man to whom the nobiliary quarter (there are “aristocratic” quarters elsewhere in Paris) owes its name, was himself of noble birth. Little is recorded of him except that he performed miracles, which the inhabitants of the district bearing his name have failed to do, and that, like the ancient nobility of France at the period of the Revolution, he visited England and stayed there some time. The church of St. Germain des Prés was one of the principal landmarks on the left bank of the Seine in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when the Institute and the church just named formed two important centres on the left bank of the Seine. The Faubourg St. Germain, or simply “the Faubourg,” as its exclusive inhabitants love to call it, was scarcely known, however, by any such name until the time of the Revolution or even later, when it emigrated in a mass to England, or in some cases to Russia. The German courts, too, offered for a time a favourite place of retirement until Germany was invaded by the Republican armies of France.

“The emigration” is usually attributed to the excesses of the Revolutionists, especially during the Reign of Terror; but as a matter of fact it began in 1789, the first examples being given by members of the royal family. The emigration of the French nobility may indeed be said not to have been caused by the Reign of Terror, but in a measure to have produced it. This now seems to be supported in a certain measure by dates. After the 14th of July the Count of Artois, the Condés, the Contis, the Polignacs, the Broglies, the Vaudreuils, the Lambescs, and others, hurried abroad in order to band together the enemies of France, and to prepare the invasion of the country. While the Count of Artois was intriguing on all sides, Condé, installed at Worms, surrounded himself with a body of fatuous noblemen, the nucleus of his future army, adopted a rebellious attitude, replied with contempt to the invitations of the National Assembly, and organised plots in the eastern provinces. In 1792 the king himself would have emigrated and thrown himself into the arms of foreigners, in the hope that they would subdue France and restore the ancient régime. He was, as everyone knows, arrested at Varennes. But his brother, the Count of Provence, succeeded in quitting France, and at Brussels prepared the celebrated declaration of Pilnitz. At the same time a crowd of nobles left France to furnish recruits to the Prince de Condé. Coblenz was full to overflowing with emigrants, whose manœuvres were in no way affected by the fact that the king had himself accepted the constitution. The army of the emigrating princes was being openly organised. It was to be composed of three army corps: one commanded by Condé, which was to operate in Alsace; another commanded by the princes of the blood, who were to enter France through Lorraine, in company with the Prussians, and march upon Paris; and a third commanded by the Prince de Bourbon, which was to act in the provinces of the north. Later on special regiments of émigrés were formed, to which the names of Rohan, Damas, Salm, “Loyal Emigrants,” etc., were given. The Viscount de Mirabeau, brother to the orator, formed a legion of his own, whose soldiers wore a black uniform adorned with death’s-heads, and whose disorderly conduct is said to have been such that the corps was not allowed to form part of the Austrian army, to which it had originally been attached.

Thus, long before the war, there were masses of emigrants who adopted from their foreign posts of observation a menacing attitude towards France. Many noble families left France simply from fear; but most of the émigrés, when they had once reached foreign lands, did not scruple to take part in hostile enterprises against France. Invitations to return were addressed to the emigrants by various assemblies; without the least probability, it must be admitted, of their being accepted. Then laws were passed by which the property of the absentees was confiscated, and they themselves threatened with death should they reappear in France without due authorisation. As a matter of fact, the émigrés fought against France, in concert with the invading troops, for the most part as volunteers, though some are said to have received pay from the foreign foe. They had boasted of their ability and readiness to conquer revolutionary France with postillions’ whips, and they had fixed beforehand the day and hour of their entry into Paris. Driven back by the Republican armies, they were mad with humiliation and rage. The King of Prussia abruptly dismissed those who had entered his service, and gradually, as new victories were gained by the Republic, they found themselves expelled from Brussels, Florence, Turin, Berlin, Switzerland, and other asylums, retreating almost exclusively to England. When nearly all their legions had been dissolved, a certain number of them remained in the pay of foreign sovereigns. But many stayed without any resource. A strange sight was then seen: the whole order of nobility, and the most brilliant nobility in Europe, some thirty thousand persons, including the members of the priesthood, fallen to the condition of beggars or hangers-on. Sad expiation for the treason of those who had borne arms against their native land.

In the first days of the emigration the French nobility continued to lead a life of luxury and pleasure. When their last resources had been exhausted, they had to hold out their hands for such alms as the coalition would give them. The name of émigré became a synonym for “poor devil” and parasite. A few of the most fortunate of the refugees had preserved private resources, but the great majority were in a sad condition of poverty. Beaumarchais has described the misery of those who had sought asylum at Hamburg, where he helped them to the best of his power, though he himself was suffering from straitened means. It was no uncommon sight to see Knights of St. Louis, gentlemen who had ridden in the king’s carriages, asking for alms at the corner of the streets. Chateaubriand has drawn a striking picture of his own poverty and that of his companions at this trying time. “I was devoured by hunger,” he writes; “sucked pieces of linen which I had steeped in water; chewed grass and paper. When I passed before a baker’s shop I felt the greatest torture. On a cold winter’s evening I stood two hours in front of a shop of dried fruits and smoked meats, devouring with my eyes whatever I saw. I could have eaten not only the comestibles, but the boxes and baskets which held them.”

In 1793 the English Government thought of offering the emigrants settlements in Canada. The Empress Catherine of Russia, who had behaved generously to the small number rich enough to find their way to her distant dominions, proposed to establish six thousand of them on the shores of the Sea of Azof, under the command of Condé. In London a certain number of the émigrés received from the English Government one shilling a day as subsidy. It was very little, but many received nothing at all. Tired of having to choose between living on alms and dying of hunger, numerous émigrés determined at last to seek some regular occupation. Duchesses and marchionesses were now seen in charge of haberdashers’ and perfumers’ shops; of cafés and other establishments of the kind. The Count de Vieuville became a messenger, or “commissionaire” as he would now be called; the Chevalier de Lanty a servant; Madame de la Londe a shopwoman; Mlle. de St. Marceau a shop-girl; Madame de la Martinière a dealer in second-hand clothes; a well-known marquis an actor (not in those days considered a very gentlemanly profession); the Chevalier d’Anselme a waiter; the Marquis de Montbazet a lamplighter; while others turned themselves into hairdressers, barbers, and dancing-masters. One émigré, mentioned by Brillat-Savarin, used to dress salads, and, what was still more remarkable, obtained a guinea for every salad he dressed.

A few exercised more lucrative functions as secret political agents. Among these may be mentioned Count d’Antraigues, the husband of Madame de St. Huberty, the famous singer, who, with his wife, was assassinated at Barnes by an irritated domestic. The Count had rendered important services to the Coalition, and claimed to have revealed to the English Government the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit.

On the outbreak of the Revolution most of the great families who, collectively, may be said to compose the Faubourg St. Germain, had left France, when a special law against “emigrants” was passed, striking through their property those who, had they remained, would have suffered in person. Some members, however, of the ancient nobility stayed in Paris throughout the Reign of Terror, among whom may in particular be mentioned that Baron Lézardière who saved, or did his best to save, the heroic Abbé Edgeworth, when the last confessor of Louis XVI. was, or believed himself to be, in imminent danger of his life. “The friend,” wrote the abbé to his brother, “whose name must be for ever sacred to you, since to him your brother owes his life, was the Baron de Lézardière, a nobleman of high character, advanced in years, and then living in opulence, who not only received me with open arms, but, slighting all the dangers to which he exposed himself and family by giving hospitality to such a guest, insisted on my regarding his house as my own, seeking for no other place of refuge; so that I received during those months every attention that the most delicate friendship could invent, and though the family was large and the servants numerous, my existence was hardly perceived out-of-doors, so well was the secret kept. I had not been long in this charming solitude when I received information from Paris that at two or three different clubs, and especially at the Jacobins’, my head was mentioned as the only atonement equal to my guilt of having openly professed my attachment for the ‘tyrant.’ This was alarming news indeed. But a journalist (friend or foe) having announced some days afterwards that I had got safe over to England, and had there had frequent conferences not only with the principal emigrants, but with Mr. Pitt himself, this idle story was credited by all, and I was completely forgotten.

“However, the fiction, though favourable to me in one sense, distressed me much in other respects, as it obliged me to conceal myself more cautiously than ever, for had I been discovered in France after such a report, I must have been, in the eyes of Government, no less than an emissary from the court of England, an agent to the emigrants, and an emigrant myself--all titles that made my case the blacker by adding to my former guilt. Hence I was obliged to keep within doors more than ever; nor could I venture out to Paris but by night. Then I dared but to remain a day or two at a time, and though my house should have been open to all, since to all I owed myself, few people knew where it was or how to get admittance into it. It is true that from my solitude in the country I entertained a large correspondence with the town; but all kinds of business could not be transacted by letters, and I soon perceived that the diocese committed to my care, far from prospering in my hands, suffered materially from my absence.

“In this distressing situation, and really not knowing what part to take, I wrote a long letter to the archbishop, informing him of all and demanding his advice; but, unfortunately for me, my letter, though directed to one of the commanding officers upon the frontier (who favoured, underhand, my correspondence), was seized, opened, and sent back to the Comité de Salut Public. Soon after, the house of M. de Lézardière, where I lay concealed, was assaulted in mid-day, and the whole family, supposing the storm to be directed against me alone, fell at my knees, requesting I would provide for my own safety by a timely flight. I yielded, though indeed with some reluctance, to their entreaties, and casting into the fire all my papers, I escaped by a back road into the fields, where I remained until it was dark. But how bitter was my grief when, coming back at night, I was informed that my valuable friend had been carried off to prison with his youngest son and eldest daughter, and that upon the road to Paris, three different times, the bloodthirsty gang had held counsel whether it was not best to shorten the business by murdering them upon the spot. My mind was relieved a few days after (at least in some degree) by the positive assurances given me that amongst the questions put to the three prisoners, upon their arrival in Paris, not a word had been said about me, which clearly proved that I had not been the innocent cause of their misfortune; but my friend was not the less in danger (for prison and death now began to be synonymous terms in France), and my papers were lost for ever.” This accident did not prove fatal to M. de Lézardière, for after ten days’ confinement he was dismissed. “As to my papers, those I regret the most, and shall in all probability ever lament, were the letters written to me from the Temple by Madame Elizabeth. I have already hinted to you (but this to you and no other mortal, as the time for revealing is not yet come) that notwithstanding the unrelenting vigilance of her guardians, this unfortunate princess found a means to correspond with me from time to time, and to take my advice on many critical occurrences during her imprisonment. These letters were conveyed to me in a ball of silk, and all measures so prudently taken that the correspondence, though at last suspected, was never found out entirely. I had already destroyed, in one of my critical moments, all those she had written to me upon different subjects before her confinement, nor was I sensible of the loss, as she was still alive to repair it; but when I now reflect that she is no more, and that her last pages, bathed with her tears, and painting in so lively colours her resignation and her courage, are now lost for posterity, I cannot but lament it as a public misfortune.

“But to return to my subject: the poor officer who had favoured my correspondence with the Archbishop of Paris was soon called to an account for the anonymous letter that had been put into the post under his cover; and the affair being likely to take a very serious turn, not, indeed, for him, as he could plead ignorance of the contents, but for the author, whose existence in France could be no longer doubted, all my friends joined in requesting I would retire without delay to some remote province. I had only time to see my poor mother, whom I embraced for the last time, and to provide, as well as the circumstances would permit, for the government of the diocese. These two duties fulfilled, I got into a carriage, and under the name of Essex I got off to Montigny, where M. le Comte de Roche Chouart received me with the greatest kindness in his castle.

“Here my first business was to write to the faithful agent of Madame Elizabeth, giving her at full length my direction, in case she had any silk balls to send me. This letter was directed to her house, and signed ‘Essex’; but no sooner was it put into the post office than I was informed that the very person to whom I wrote had been arrested a few days ago, after I had left Paris, for favouring a clandestine correspondence of one of the royal prisoners; and also that a friend of mine, being cited before the Comité de Salut Public, and questioned about the letter I had written to the Archbishop, had inadvertently discovered the name under which I was endeavouring to conceal my existence. This was fatal indeed; for the letter I had just cast into the post office, being directed to a prisoner, must, of course, go to the Comité de Salut Public; and there the Comité found, without further inquiry, not only my handwriting to compare it with that of the anonymous letter written to the Archbishop, but my name full at length, and every means of discovering me, given by myself. I leave you to judge, my dear Ussher, into what perplexity I was cast by this accident. But Providence looked down upon my distress; and after a whole week spent in the most cruel anxiety, I at last had news from the person herself, informing me that the affair had been hushed up, and that my letter had got safe.

“I pass over in silence many incidents of less importance which I met with during the four months I spent with M. de Roche Chouart. I must now relate the circumstance which obliged me to fly, and to seek for safer concealment. The Comité de Salut Public having got hold of the name under which I concealed myself in France, caused an article, relative to I know not what correspondence, supposed to have existed between Louis XVI. and the King of Prussia, to be inserted in the public papers. The article was insignificant in itself; but the author, in order to obtain more credit for his story, took care to tell the public that he was indebted for the anecdote to Mr. Essex, the last friend to Louis XVI.--Mr. Essex, a person who must have been informed of all that had passed. This paper came to Montigny, where I was publicly known, and was there reputed to be an English gentleman of small fortune, travelling for his private business, or for his health; but this resemblance of names, and I know not what in my person, when nicely viewed, that betrayed a clergyman, soon gave rise to other thoughts. During the first days I paid but little attention to what was whispered about, hoping that the author and the anecdote would soon be forgotten; but as I was thus endeavouring to tranquillise myself, a man advanced in years, and of most noble appearance, came up to the castle, and inquired for Mr. Essex; he was introduced, and, all witnesses being removed, he said, ‘Sir, your existence in this house is no secret to the public, nor has it hitherto occasioned the least suspicion, as you had not been supposed to be a man of importance; but a paragraph inserted lately in the papers is now the subject of all conversation, and all eyes in the neighbourhood are fixed upon you. Be so good as to read the article, and if in it you behold your own features, oh! my dear sir, give leave to a man who was your friend before he had the honour of seeing you, to request of you to provide for your own safety by a timely flight, for here you will be infallibly arrested.’

“This unexpected visit gave me, as you may believe, much alarm. I thanked the gentleman in the warmest terms, and, after holding counsel with the few friends I had made in that part of France, it was unanimously resolved that I must fly with all speed, and seek for shelter in some other place. I pitched upon Fontainebleau as one of the quietest spots in France; there I had neither friends nor acquaintances, except a lady whom I had never seen but once. Apprised of my arrival, she flew to my assistance; her credit, her purse, her servants--all were at my disposal, and my own mother could not have done more for me than she did during my stay in that place; but, unfortunately, it was not long, for an order was issued to arrest all foreigners, and for me arrestation was certain death. I therefore was obliged once more to seek for safety in some other spot. The Baron Lézardière, who never lost sight of me amidst my distresses, had an old servant--a man of uncommon resolution and prudence. Him he despatched to protect me in my flight. We both fell into the hands of an armed troop appointed to examine all travellers, and to take up all those whom they might suspect; but the fierce and bold countenance of my companion got me off, and, thanks to his zeal, I arrived, without accident, at Bayeux, in Normandy, two hundred miles from Paris.

“There I had it in my power to get off to England, as the coasts were but ill-guarded. But Madame Elizabeth was still alive, and if she should be exposed to danger, I was resolved to keep my word, and to be her friend to the last, let the consequences be what they would for myself. Hence I stopped at Bayeux, and took up my lodging in a poor hut, where I lay unnoticed; nobody suspected that a man of any importance could be lodged in so dismal a place. Soon after, the Baron de Lézardière, hunted from town to town, came to join me in this hole, with his three daughters and his younger son, and there we remained eighteen months, almost forgotten. He was still in opulence when he arrived; but his castle being burned to the ground, all his lands seized, and most of his friends destroyed by the guillotine, he soon fell into poverty, so I became his only resource. My friends, who were numerous, and some of them still wealthy, seeing me in this situation, came on all sides to my assistance, and with the supplies I received from them (without my ever asking), and the little I received from you, I have had the happiness to maintain, not, indeed, in opulence, but still above want, one of the most respectable families in France.

“Our solitude, indeed, was daily bathed with our tears (though otherwise comfortable enough); for there my poor Baron, after the loss of all he possessed in this world, was apprised of the death of his two sons, young men of the greatest merit (a third had been murdered in the prisons of Paris, and the fourth is actually under trial for his life). Soon afterwards he received the shocking news of his four sisters being shot on the same day, as they were flying in the fields to avoid something worse. On my side, it was in the same solitude that I received the fatal news of my poor mother being arrested, and of her soon sinking under her grief; that my sister was torn from her, and conducted from prison to prison, partly on my account; and finally, that Madame Elizabeth, the glory of religion and the idol of France, had fallen a victim to the cruel policy of our tyrants, at a moment when I least expected it. I must confess that this last blow went to my very heart, almost as much as the loss of my dear mother, for she often called upon me; but she was no more when I first heard of her being taken from the Temple. Only sixteen hours elapsed between her being brought to judgment and her death, and my only consolation ever since has been to think that, had I been in Paris, I could have been of no service to her, as nobody even suspected on that day that she was in the fatal cart.

“No sooner had I been informed of her death than I resolved to leave France. It was now a duty to fly, as it had been one to remain as long as she was in existence; for a few days before her imprisonment she had entrusted me with her last will (by word of mouth), and requested I would execute it in person whenever I should hear of her death. It is to perform this duty that I am now in London, and as soon as I close this letter I set off for Edinburgh.”

The abbé started immediately for Edinburgh to carry out the commands of the Princess Elizabeth--in other words, to communicate to the legitimate King of France her last wishes, which she had entrusted to him “by word of mouth.” The Abbé Edgeworth stayed about a week at Edinburgh, returning to London in September, 1796. Soon after his return Mr. Pitt desired to see him, and had a long interview with him at Lord Liverpool’s office. When the interview was concluded, Mr. Pitt informed him that his Majesty intended to settle a pension upon him for life. The abbé expressed his gratitude for the intended honour. But next day he wrote to Lord Liverpool, and in the most polite and grateful terms begged to decline the pension so graciously offered to him. “He could not think of adding,” he said, “to the expenses which the Government had already incurred in providing for such a number of French emigrants.”

During the three months that the abbé spent in London he received marks of high respect and of kind attention from persons of the most distinguished character in England; and from all classes he had proofs of the generous feeling of the British public. The polished yet simple manners of the Abbé Edgeworth now attached to his person those who had begun by admiring his character. It became the fashion to invite him everywhere, and such, indeed, was the general eagerness to see and hear him that, had he complied with this desire, he must have lived in public. Had he felt within him any latent love of celebrity, or of popular applause, it would now have appeared, and been fully gratified. But he did not care for fame; he withdrew as much as possible from notice, and lived in retirement with a few private friends.

“His brother and his other relations in Ireland were most anxious to see him, and to welcome to their country one who had brought them so much honour. The abbé, in compliance with their entreaties, was actually preparing to set out on his journey to Ireland, when he was stopped and all his views were altered by the arrival of Mlle. de Lézardière from France, charged with despatches of importance for Louis XVIII. Mlle. de Lézardière had undertaken to deliver the papers to her brother, who was to carry them to the King of France. His Majesty was at this time at Blanckenberg. It happened that M. de Lézardière had left London and had gone on other business to his Majesty. Mlle. de Lézardière therefore applied to the Abbé Edgeworth as the only person whom she could venture to entrust with a confidential mission of so much importance. Had the abbé hesitated he would have been decided by a message delivered to him with the following letter from the king:--

“I have heard, sir, with extreme satisfaction, that you have at last escaped from all the dangers to which your devoted attachment to my brother has exposed you. I sincerely thank Providence for having preserved in you one of his most faithful ministers, and the trusty friend who received the last thoughts of a brother whose death I shall ever deplore--whose memory will ever be venerated by Frenchmen; of a martyr whose triumph you have been the first to proclaim, and whose virtues will, I trust, be at some future day consecrated by the Church. Your miraculous preservation makes me hope that God has not yet abandoned France. He has without doubt ordained that an unimpeachable witness should attest to all Frenchmen the love with which their king was ever animated towards them; so that, knowing the extent of their loss, their grief may not be confined to mere lamentations, but that they may throw themselves into the arms of their heavenly Father and receive from Him the only alleviation of which their sorrow is susceptible. I therefore exhort you, sir, or rather, I entreat, in the most earnest manner, that you will collect and publish all the particulars you can, consistently with your holy office.

“That will be the finest monument that I can erect to the best of kings and the most beloved of brothers.

“I should wish, sir, to give you solid proofs of my profound esteem, but I can only offer you my admiration and my gratitude. These are the sentiments most worthy of you.

“LOUIS.”

Soon after the establishment of the royal family of France at Mittau, the Emperor Paul wished to confer the order of St. Alexander upon Louis XVIII. He sent for the Abbé Edgeworth to receive the insignia from his hands and to convey them to his royal master, who, in return, presented the Order of the Holy Ghost to the emperor.

When the Abbé Edgeworth arrived at the Court of Russia, Paul was so much struck by his venerable appearance, that he prostrated himself before him and implored his blessing. He presented the abbé with his picture set in diamonds, and settled upon him a pension of 500 roubles a year. The picture the Abbé Edgeworth laid at the feet of his king; the pension he divided with the poor.

In the spring of the year 1807, Bonaparte directed the arms of France against the dominions of Russia. During the course of this year it happened that some French soldiers, who had been taken prisoners, were sent to Mittau. Though they had borne arms against the House of Bourbon, yet, in the true spirit of Christian forgiveness, their errors were forgotten by Louis XVIII. The Abbé Edgeworth went, with his Majesty’s permission, to attend them and give them all the comforts which humanity could procure, and all the consolation which religion could bestow. A contagious fever raged among the prisoners, and of this the venerable abbé was aware. But he persevered in his visits and would not abandon those who had no earthly hope but in him. Day and night he continued his attendance, assisted by his faithful servant Bousset, who emulated the virtues of his master. The Abbé Edgeworth caught the fever. His constitution had previously been weakened by ill-health and mental suffering. At length, submitting to the force of disease, he was obliged to desist from all further exercise of his charitable and pious functions. On the 17th of May, 1807, he was confined to the bed from which he never afterwards rose. When the daughter of Louis XVI. heard that the abbé was taken ill, she declared that she would go immediately and see this friend of her family. All her attendants represented to her the danger of infection, and used every argument and entreaty to prevail upon her not to run such a hazard, but in vain. “The less he knows of his own wants,” said the princess, “the more he stands in need of a friend; and if every human being were to fly from him in this contagion, I should never forsake one who is more than my friend: the unalterable, disinterested friend of my family, who has left kindred and country--all! all for us! Nothing shall withhold my personal attendance on the Abbé Edgeworth. I ask no one to accompany me.”

The princess attended the death-bed of the Abbé Edgeworth, administered medicine to him with her own hands, and received his dying breath. This is here recorded, not to do honour to the Abbé Edgeworth, but to do justice to human nature and the gratitude of princes--a virtue whose existence would not, perhaps, have so often been doubted if there had been more examples of attachment as disinterested, sincere, and steady as that which, beyond possibility of doubt, was manifested by him whose life was the best proof at once of his loyalty and his faith.

The abbé died on the 22nd of May, 1807, the fifth day after he had been taken ill. The court of Louis XVIII. went into mourning for him. The Duke and Duchess of Angoulême, the Archbishop of Rheims, and all the nobility of the court, attended his funeral. His epitaph was written by King Louis XVIII.

Many of the émigrés--who, without being banished, felt it necessary, like the Abbé Edgeworth, to fly for their own safety--applied for permission to return to France under the first Directory, and afterwards, in greater numbers, under the Consulate. Bonaparte, who had now conquered the Revolution, was only too anxious to obtain the support of the old French nobility, and did his best to make them accept him in the position he had conquered. But as the great majority of the ancient nobility, the former inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Germain, stayed abroad, Napoleon, on becoming emperor, created a new nobility, choosing its members among his most successful generals and high officials. In 1814, and again in 1815, the Faubourg St. Germain was once more inhabited, and until the downfall of Charles X. in 1830 the ancient nobility seemed to have resumed its position in France. It was not always possible to restore the estates which had been confiscated; but large pecuniary allowances had been made to those who had suffered by the confiscation. In 1830 a number of new peers were created by King Louis Philippe, who, unable to count on the Legitimists of the Faubourg St. Germain, felt it necessary to improvise a nobility of his own. There was now in France a Legitimist nobility, an Orleanist nobility, and a nobility which owed its origin to the creations of Napoleon I.

After the coup d’état of 1851, and the establishment of the Second Empire, Napoleon III., without in any way discountenancing the old nobility of pre-revolutionary France or the new nobility of Louis Philippe’s creation, could not but show favour to the nobility of Napoleonic origin, whose numbers he increased by creations of his own.

After the calamities of 1870 and 1871, the Faubourg looked forward to the restoration of the ancient monarchy, and ardently hoped to see the throne occupied by the Count of Chambord, though there were now two aspirants to the crown: the Count of Chambord on the part of the elder branch of the Bourbons, and the Count of Paris as representing the younger or Orleanist branch.

The Castle of Chambord, which gave its name to the representative of the elder branch of the Bourbons, was originally a family possession of the Duke of Orleans; and it was not until the close of the fifteenth century, when Louis, Duke of Orleans, became, under the name of Louis XII., King of France, that it passed to the Crown. As yet, however, it was merely an ordinary manor-house; and it received nothing like its present shape until the reign of Francis I., who turned it into a palace. The rebuilding is said to have occupied nearly two thousand workmen for the space of twelve years. During the latter part of his life Francis often lived in the newly built château, whose magnificent halls he embellished with the finest works of art. It was on one of the windows of the castle that, after patiently listening to an apology made by his sister Marguerite for the alleged weakness of her sex, he is said (on good authority) to have written with a diamond the famous distich:

“Toute femme varie Bien fol qui s’y fie.”

These lines are usually given, “Souvent femme varie,” etc. Such, indeed, is the version adopted by the author of Le Roi s’Amuse--in the situation where, in Verdi’s operatic arrangement of Victor Hugo’s play, the canzone “La donna è mobile” occurs. “Toute femme varie” seems too absolute. The calumnious verses were, in any case, according to the legend on the subject, scratched out by order of Louis XIV., who found that they annoyed Mlle. de la Vallière.

Henry II. inherited all the taste of Francis for the Castle of Chambord, to which he made several additions, including a stately staircase in the western court, where the armorial bearings of his mistress Diana, a crowned H and a crescent, are seen in company with his own device: “Donec totum impleat orbem.” It was at Chambord that this sovereign ratified, in 1552, the treaty which he had concluded the year before at Fontainebleau with the Protestant princes of Germany. Charles IX. repaired and adorned the castle, though to no very great extent, owing to the failure of his resources. The modest Louis XIII. was frequently at Chambord; and historians say that during one of his stays there Mlle. de Hautefort put a love-letter under his collar; when, afraid to touch it with his fingers, he removed it by means of the tongs. Louis XIV. cared little for the castle, which, magnificent as it was, fell far short of the splendour with which he loved to be surrounded. He gave, however, several grand fêtes at Chambord, and witnessed there the first performance of two of Molière’s plays--one of them Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

After the battle of Fontenoy, in 1745, Chambord was presented by Louis XV. to Maurice de Saxe; but it was not until three years later, on the conclusion of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, that the Marshal took up his abode at the castle. He constructed barracks there for two regiments of Uhlans, and established in the park a stud of Russian horses, which, though they roamed just where they liked, would at sound of trumpet come galloping up, as if of their own accord, for drill. Within the castle Maurice de Saxe lived amid almost regal pomp. When not occupied with military duties he gave himself up to pleasure. Mdme. Favart, for whom he had conceived a violent passion, often performed before him at Chambord.

When the Revolution broke out Chambord had long since gone back to the Crown. The Republican Government, not knowing what to do with such an edifice, thought of demolishing it, but happily abandoned the barbarous idea. The furniture, however, and the works of art were sold by auction; and the escutcheons and other ensigns of royalty on various parts of the building would have been effaced had not the architect called in to estimate the cost of the work asked too large a sum.

Napoleon thought several times of restoring the castle. After dethroning Charles V. of Spain, he wished to present it in a habitable state to the ex-King, but found that the expense of repairing and refurnishing it would be far more than he could afford. In 1809 Chambord was made into a principality, with the title of “Principality of Wagram,” and was given, with an endowment of 500,000 francs a year, to Marshal Berthier. The allowance was, in part at least, to be expended on furniture and on the more pressing repairs. In the reign of Louis XVIII., the endowment having ceased, the Princess of Wagram obtained the royal permission to alienate a possession which had become burdensome; and soon after, at the Count de Calonne’s suggestion, it was bought by public subscription and bestowed as a dependency on the posthumous son of the Duke of Berry--“Duke of Bordeaux,” as he was in the first instance called. This provoked the ire of many Liberals, and notably of Paul-Louis Courier, who wrote a very energetic pamphlet on the subject. He dwelt much on the bad effect which would probably be produced on the heir to the throne by living in the midst of so many memorials of the depravity of his forefathers. “At Chambord,” he asked, “what will the Duke learn? The place is full of his ancestors, and for that reason alone it would hardly be fit for him. I would rather he lived among us than among them. There, too, are the faces of a Diana and a Chateaubriand, whose names of ill-repute still sully the walls of the castle. Interpreters to explain the emblems will, doubtless, not be wanting to the Duke; and what instruction for a child destined one day to reign!” The pamphlet obtained for its author two months’ imprisonment.

In 1828 the Duchess of Berry took possession of the castle in her son’s name. It was her desire to restore it to its former state, but this has yet to be done. The Castle of Chambord has never since its first construction been adequately repaired, and it is now said to be on the point of falling into general ruin.

It might have been thought that after the death of the Count of Chambord, the Count of Paris, who now became the true heir to the French throne, would have been acknowledged not only by all his relatives, but by the Legitimist party, equally with the Orleanists. But the will by which the Count of Chambord left a large sum of money to two Italian representatives--Count Bardi and the Duke of Parma--without making any mention of the Count of Paris, was yet another indication of the little cordiality felt by the Bourbons of the elder branch for the grandson of Louis Philippe, the great-grandson of Philippe Égalité. The reasons which animated the Countess of Chambord in her opposition to the Count of Paris do not demand long consideration. Possibly she was vexed at the scanty assistance given by the Count of Paris to the head of the family in 1871, and again in 1873; and it is a fact, in any case, that the Count of Paris did not attend the Count of Chambord’s funeral. This abstention was due to the Countess of Chambord’s strange decision that her husband’s foreign relatives should be regarded as nearer to him than his French kinsman, who, moreover, by the Count of Chambord’s death would become the legitimate heir to the French throne. Don Carlos, as representative of the Spanish Bourbons, was, it is true, more nearly related to the Count of Chambord than the Count of Paris as representing the Orleans family, just as much, indeed, as sixth cousins are more nearly related than eighth cousins. But the Bourbon prince who, at the beginning of the last century, ascended the Spanish throne lost, in doing so, his character of Frenchman, just as the offshoots from the Spanish Bourbons, on becoming established in Naples and in Parma, lost their Spanish character. It is well, even in connection with such lofty subjects as the divine right to rule, not to lose sight of practical considerations; and one can imagine no possible combination of circumstances under which the French would consent to be ruled either by a Spaniard or by an Italian. To argue in the present day that a foreign prince who is descended from Louis XIV. has therefore a better title to reign in France than a French prince who can only boast of a collateral relationship with that sovereign, but who is himself the grandson of a French king, is to attach strange importance to a mere theory spun to suit the occasion. Such a theory may have harmonised with the Countess of Chambord’s private prejudices. But to state it is enough to show its weakness. If for one moment, and simply to conform to the arbitrary arrangements of a funeral pageant, the Count of Paris could have recognised it, he would by doing so have shown himself unworthy of all confidence. It is better for him to have broken altogether with the unrecognised claimants and dispossessed occupiers of foreign thrones than to remain their ally at the cost of such sacrifices as were demanded from him. King Louis Philippe, in his last instructions to his grandson, laid no stress upon the principle of descent, but called upon him to be above all “of his own time and of France.” The shadowy potentates to whom the Count of Paris was invited to submit himself at Frohsdorf are as far removed from France by their nationality as from the present time by their ideas.

The fault, however, charged against the Count of Paris by the late Count of Chambord is as nothing compared to the offence of which his grandfather, Louis Philippe, is held to have been guilty; which, again, cannot be likened for atrocity to the crime committed by Louis Philippe’s father, Philippe Égalité.

When, in 1873, there was a prospect of a Royalist restoration, the Count of Paris, according to the Countess of Chambord, speaking as with the voice of her late husband, did not give the Count the support which he had a right to expect; and the Count of Chambord seems, in particular, to have complained to the Countess that the Count of Paris had refused to accept the white flag--“the flag of Ivry,” as the Count of Chambord called it, unmindful, it would seem, of the fact that Ivry was a victory gained by one French army over another, and by Protestants over Catholics. The important point, however, in the eyes of the Count of Chambord, was that the grandson of Louis Philippe, the great-grandson of Philippe Égalité, stuck to the Revolutionary tricolour, and declined to return to the flag of the ancient monarchy. The grandson of a usurper and great-grandson of a regicide could have no claim, then, either in the past or in the present, to represent a line of kings towards which the grandfather had played the part of a betrayer and the great-grandfather that of a murderer.

If the Count of Chambord’s widow, remembering her husband’s last instructions, disavows Louis Philippe’s grandson, his mother, the Duchess of Berry, disavowed Louis Philippe, and even organised against him an armed rebellion. Thus, while Louis Philippe was hated as an enemy both by the grandfather and by the mother of the Count of Chambord, his father was worse than the enemy of the Count of Chambord’s great-uncle, Louis XVI. The Count of Chambord must naturally have inherited something of the horror and hatred with which the Orleans family, in one or other of its members, was regarded successively by Louis XVI., Charles X., and the Count’s own mother, the Duchess of Berry.

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XLIII. THE PARIS RIVER AND PARIS COMMERCE

The Society of the Water-Merchants of Paris--The Navigation of the Seine--The Paris Slaughter-Houses--Records of Famine in France--The Lot of the French Peasant in the Last Century--The Paris Food Supply.

The navigation of the Seine has had remarkable effects on the commerce, and even the municipal government, of the great city traversed by this stream. Turning to the annals of the middle ages, one finds that nearly all the powerful towns seated on rivers profited by their position to secure as much as possible exclusive rights of navigation. With this view, the citizens showed themselves as eager and as voracious as the nobility. Take, for instance, the towns of Cologne or of Mayence, which in mediæval times forced all the boats passing down the Rhine to stop for three days and allow the inhabitants to purchase from their cargo whatever merchandise seemed desirable.

At Paris, the inhabitants showed themselves equally resolved to profit by their position on the banks of the Seine. A society was formed at an early date, under the title of “Society of the Water-Merchants of Paris,” in which were included the principal merchants receiving and distributing their goods by means of the river flowing through the town. This association, mentioned for the first time in documents belonging to the reign of Louis VI., claimed the right of levying sixty sous on every boat which took a cargo of wine to Paris during the vintage.

It was easy enough for the owners of the vessels to come to terms with the proprietors of the castles on the river-banks, who desired only to derive a small profit from the passage of the boats; but it was not so easy to pass the tradesmen of the towns on the Seine, who, finding their interests injured by the detention of the Parisians, complained bitterly, and endeavoured, from time to time, to throw off the yoke of tyrannical Paris. Burgundy on one side and Normandy on the other protested against the pretended privileges of the Hanseatic League, but all in vain. The town of Auxerre made strenuous endeavours at one time to prevent the Parisian merchants from introducing into their town the cargoes of salt sent from Normandy. Rouen was far less accommodating than Auxerre had shown itself. People had forgotten how it was that the merchants of Paris enjoyed such exceptional privileges. But the Parisian burgesses were rich and powerful. Besides their river privileges, they were entitled to half of all the money received in fines; and the richer the citizens of Paris became, the better able they were to pay the various taxes levied in the name of the king. The king, moreover, received half the fines imposed upon smugglers; and anyone who ventured to land the least merchandise without formal permission from the water-merchants was exposed to penalties. The corporation of water-merchants showed no respect for persons in levying its dues. Thus, it seized on one occasion the wine purchased by the Abbé de St. Germain l’Auxerrois, because it had been landed without formal permission. The abbé appealed to the king, who submitted the matter to the Parliament, which, deciding that the abbé had acted within his rights, ordered the seizure to be annulled. The Hanseatic League was sufficiently powerful, however, to prevent the execution of the order, and the Abbé de St. Germain remained without his wine.

Commerce by land had in those days but little importance, partly by reason of the badness of the roads, partly on account of the dangers to which travellers were exposed. There was but one important road to Paris, that of Orleans; and on this road, at Mont Chéry, a post was maintained, where dues were levied on cloth, linen, grain, cattle, sheep, and even hedgehogs. According to the barbarous custom of the time, a Jew was stopped at this post and made to pay for the privilege of entering Paris. He was charged something extra if he carried with him his lamp--probably the lamp with seven branches, used for the celebration of the Sabbath. His Hebrew books were also taxed.

It was only, in fact, by means of the Seine that the Parisians were able with ease to receive goods of all kinds from the outside. Accordingly, the river trade was for a long time the most important branch of the Parisian commerce. The association of water-merchants was looked upon as an association of merchants generally, and, naturally enough, a ship was adopted as principal object in the arms of Paris.

The association of water-merchants prided itself on keeping up a constant supply of provisions, and boats were constantly reaching the capital from Burgundy at one end of the Seine or Normandy at the other. It was on Burgundy for many centuries that Paris depended for its wine, and it was not until a certain nobleman, dilapidated in constitution, sought refuge in the Governorship of Gascony, where the wine of the province restored him to health, that Bordeaux gained the good name it has since enjoyed among the Parisians.

Great fairs were held at various points along the course of the Seine, which were scenes at once of commerce and of amusement. Foreign merchants and tradesmen, students from the university, mountebanks, drink-sellers, adventurers, and thieves, were brought together by every fair. Buying and selling came to an end on the ringing of the Angélus, and the scenes which followed partook, more or less, of the nature of orgies. All trades were subjected in mediæval Paris to strict regulations, and for sixty days in the year the Parisians were deprived of fresh bread. There was a master-baker, or “grand panetier,” who was held responsible for the acts of the bakers, his subordinates, on whose behalf he had frequently to appear before the Grand Provost of the capital. The pastrycooks, like the bakers, formed a corporation of their own, with special duties and privileges.

The taverns in the middle ages, as now, were frequented by the lower classes, and they had such a bad reputation that Louis IX., by a special edict, forbade their frequentation. Nevertheless, the tavern-keepers formed a corporation, legally established with its own statutes, and with licences, imposed by the State on very onerous terms. The king’s proclamation, then, against the frequentation of taverns was without effect.

At the different landing-places and stations on the Seine, the goods brought up by boats were cried for sale, preference being always given to the wine imported from the royal vineyards in Burgundy and elsewhere. The Seine is a great thoroughfare costing nothing to keep up, and the chief line of communication between the capital and the Burgundy vineyards. Naturally, too, it was by the Seine that fish was sent to Paris from Normandy and Brittany. Ten kinds of fish are mentioned in the ancient octroi lists as habitually forwarded to Paris. Of these, herrings were, in particular, supplied very abundantly.

One of the most important trade corporations of medieval Paris was that of the butchers, who, throughout French history, have shown a constant tendency to coalesce. At present, however, there is no bond of union between them, except that which results from their being subjected to the same regulations in respect to the prices to be charged.

An entertaining account of the privileges and corporate character of the ancient Paris butchers is given by M. Ducamp, who writes so well in his bulky work on Paris that even the chapter it contains on the abattoir is not only devoid of horrors, but invested with interest.

“The animals bought in the market do not,” he says, “make a long stay there, but are promptly conducted to the slaughter-houses, which now extend from the other side of the Canal de l’Ourcq, over an area of 211,672 metres, opening on to the Rue de Flandres. The two establishments pronounced necessary by the decree of the 6th of August, 1859, were constructed simultaneously; the slaughter-house was thrown open on the 1st of January, 1867.

“The names of some of the old Paris streets indicate the site of the markets in which butchers displayed their stock. One is reminded of their existence in the city by the church of St. Pierre aux Bœufs, which was destroyed in 1857; then, near the Châtelet, by St. Jacques de la Boucherie, by the Rues de la Tuerie, de la Tonnerie, and de la Vieille-Place-aux-Veaux, surnamed the Place aux Saincts-Jons, after the name of a celebrated family of butchers; and by the Quai de la Mégisserie. Formerly, animals were killed everywhere: to each stall a slaughter-house was attached.” “Blood streams down the streets,” said Mercier; “it curdles under your feet and reddens your shoes.”

Despite various attempts made to banish beyond the walls these slaughter-houses, which from every point of view were so dangerous, the old spirit of routine long predominated, and in the early part of the present century animals still had their throats cut in front of the very doors where meat was sold. It required no fewer than three Imperial decrees (9th Feb. and 19th July, 1810, and 24th Feb., 1811) to put an end to this intolerable state of things. These decrees prescribed the immediate construction of five slaughter-houses adjacent to the Quartiers du Roule, de Montmartre, de Popincourt, d’Ivry, and de Vaugirard; but the work was not finished till the end of 1818. To-day, they have partly disappeared, swept away by new thoroughfares; and they ought to be entirely replaced by the great establishment of the Rue de Flandres. This latter is not beautiful, and has about it nothing ornamental; it is joined to the cattle market by a bridge thrown over the Canal de l’Ourcq.

As well as at the market, the animals are counted when they enter the slaughter-house, into which they are carefully introduced one by one through a half-open door. Opposite this door, and beyond a vast paved court, are thirty-two pavilions, separated into equal groups by three horizontal and three transversal streets, intersecting each other at right angles. These pavilions contain stalls, in which the beasts are kept whilst alive, and 125 tubs (échaudoirs) in which their flesh is divided up after the slaughtering has taken place within the interior court, situated in the centre of the buildings. These échaudoirs and courts are paved with care, and the ground, sloped for drainage, terminates in a gutter which carries all waste fluids down a sink. There are a great many fountains and an abundant supply of water.

The thousand workmen who daily attend the place commence their labours at six in the morning and continue till towards one in the afternoon. At two o’clock the butchers come to make their purchases from the “chevillards,” as those men are called whose business consists in procuring beasts at market in order to kill and sell them in portions to the retailers. As soon as it is dressed, every animal is hung up to a strong iron peg, or cheville, whence the name of the wholesale buyers is derived. One hundred and eighty numbered vehicles, each of an officially certified weight, ply between the slaughter-houses and the different quarters of the city. Before leaving, they have to pass before the pavilion of the octroi clerks, and stand on a weigh-bridge, so that the exact quantity of meat they carry may be formally attested. The dues, payable on the spot, are 2·0735 centimes per kilogramme, of which some two centimes are reserved especially for what are called the slaughter-house dues.

The work goes on every day; but Good Friday, as may well be imagined, causes a great rush of activity. The store-rooms are empty, the wants of the town must be supplied, and the men fall to work; wholesale slaughtering then takes place incessantly from the middle of the night until, perhaps, three o’clock the next afternoon. Notwithstanding the old slaughter-houses still subsisting, it is the one in the Rue Flandres which employs the greatest number of men and contributes most to the food of Paris. In 1868, in the general slaughter-house, and in the slaughter-houses of Villejuif, Grenelle, Belleville, de la Petite-Villette, and Batignolles, 1,725,365 animals were put to death, representing a weight of 107,577,968 kilogrammes of meat ready for retail sale. The average weight of the oxen was 350 kilogrammes, of cows 210, of calves 65, and of sheep 19. The average prices of meat bought at the slaughter-house were, in 1868, 1·34 francs for ox-beef, 1·25 francs for cow-beef, 1·65 francs for veal, and 1·35 francs for mutton.

After describing how the slaughterers perform their work, in language somewhat too graphic for our readers, M. Ducamp points out the difference between the Christian and the Jewish method of slaughtering animals. The Jewish butcher in every case cuts the animal’s throat. To strike with a pole-axe might have the effect of coagulating the victim’s blood, and the Levitical laws on the subject are strict and not to be trifled with. No animal, according to the Jewish custom, should be put to death except in piety, and the Jewish sacrificer, like his counterpart among the Mohammedans of India, utters solemn words as he makes the fatal cut.

The history of the alimentation of Paris might be made the subject of an entire volume. Under the ancient monarchy it was the story of fat years alternating with lean years; which latter were at times years of famine. Famine, indeed, was one of the plagues of France until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Instead of allowing, as in the present day, supply to follow demand, the Government of the country maintained laws and regulations for particular provinces and privileges for particular corporations. Wheat had to be sold at fixed places and nowhere else, and often it was left to rot in one district, while at another, not many miles distant, the peasants were dying of hunger. The peasants, moreover, were burdened with such heavy charges, such distressing dues, that they sometimes gave up in despair the task of cultivating their fields.

Desperate and indignant at the oppression practised upon them, they would from time to time rise against their agrarian tyrants. “Jacqueries” were organised in which all sorts of horrors were perpetrated. But in the end the insurgent peasants were reduced to order. It was found necessary to “hang them a little,” according to the expression of Mme. de Sévigné--so amiable, so charming, when writing of persons in her own position of life. Then the poor man went back to his hut and took up once more the shovel and the hoe. For he had plenty of work to do, and out of the little he earned he had to pay taxes to the king, tithes to the clergy, and dues of all kinds to his lord and master, the landed proprietor. The last-named alone could claim from him so many days of free labour; so much for every lamb that was born, so much for every sheep that for the first time gave milk; every tenth animal from all the animals possessed by the peasant on Christmas Eve; a certain stipulated piece of meat from the carcase of every animal slaughtered; and, finally, a share--sometimes a full quarter--of the harvest, with all sorts of minor dues, such as the feeding of the proprietor’s hounds.

The obligations of serving in the army, and of lodging and feeding the king’s troops, were onerous indeed; and what with the charges imposed and the dues levied by the crown, the landlord, and the church, the position of the peasant was lamentable indeed.

The laws for the preservation of game were not the least oppressive of those by which the unhappy serf was crushed. He was bound to cultivate certain kinds of vegetables and grain to the taste of the birds, to leave the crops in the ground, and to allow the privileged sportsman to invade his farm and perhaps destroy everything of value upon it. Nor was it prudent to make any complaint on the subject, and the Parliament of Paris, in an edict of the year 1779, punished as rebellious the inhabitants of a parish which had claimed from sportsmen an indemnity for damages. A curious characteristic incident took place in Paris itself on the very eve of the Revolution. In the month of April, 1787, the Duke of Orleans, in the ardour of pursuit, followed a stag into the heart of Paris, down the Faubourg Montmartre, across the Place Vendôme, and through the Rue St. Honoré to the Place Louis V., upsetting and wounding numbers of persons as he tore along.

The nobility and clergy paid no taxes. Everything fell upon the labourer, who was borne down by imposts. M. Maxime Ducamp speaks of a caricature he has seen, published the year before the Revolution, in which a peasant, old and ragged, is represented leaning forward upon his hoe, so that he has the appearance of a three-footed animal. On his bended back rests a sleek bishop and a haughty nobleman. The harvest is being devoured beneath the peasant’s eyes by rabbits, hares, and pigeons. Jacques Bonhomme, the typical peasant, is pensive; but his features, strongly accentuated, express anything but resignation, and he mutters, in his own provincial dialect, “We must hope that this game will soon be at an end.”

In Alsace, at the time of the German invasion of 1870, an ancient traditional caricature might have been seen, evidently the outcome of feudal times, in which the position of the peasant was still more forcibly painted. Seven typical figures are presented. The Emperor says, “I levy tribute.” The nobleman says, “I have a free estate.” The clergyman says, “I take tithes.” The Jew (mediæval type of the trader) says, “I live on my profits.” The soldier says, “I pay for nothing.” The beggar says, “I have nothing.” The peasant says, “God help me, for these six other men have all to be supported by me.”

In the glorious days of the ancient régime Paris itself suffered constantly from famine, and looked for its food-supplies to the provinces and to foreign parts, whence they often failed to arrive, from the effects of brigandage or of civil war. The bad state of the roads was another obstacle in the way of this most necessary commerce; and, worst of all, there were laws in force by which tolls and custom dues were levied at the entrance of each town through which the provisions had to pass.

In the “Journal du Bourgeois de Paris,” written in the reign of Charles VI., there are constant lamentations on the exorbitant prices charged for provisions. “Meat was so dear,” we read in one place, “that an ox, of which the ordinary price was eight francs, or at most ten, cost fifty francs. The laws adopted for remedying these evils were of the strangest kind. If wheat was worth eight francs the measure, it was forbidden to sell it for more than four francs; and the bakers were ordered to sell their bread at prices corresponding with the price fixed for the wheat. The result was immediate and inevitable. The corn-merchants ceased to sell, the millers to grind, the bakers to knead, and the whole city fell into a state of distress impossible to describe. In vain,” writes the chronicler just cited, “did people press round the bakers’ shops; there was no bread to be had. Towards evening might be heard through Paris piteous complaints, piteous cries, piteous lamentations, and little children calling out, ‘I am dying of hunger,’ while on the dunghills of the city, in the year 1420, might be found, here ten, here twenty or thirty children, boys and girls, who were starving and perishing with cold, so that no heart could remain unmoved. But it was impossible to help them, for there was no bread, nor corn, nor wood, nor coal.”

“This epoch,” says M. Maxime Ducamp, “was the very saddest of all our history; never was a nation so near its end. One might have thought that in this state of suffering, the nation, having reached the last point of prostration, must lie down and die. Nothing of the kind. Its morbid energy took possession of it. It gave itself to the devil--so, at least, say the ballads of the time. It turned into ridicule both famine and plague, became seized with a vertigo which pathology can explain, and danced that strange Danse Macabre--dance of death--which, for the starving, was a sort of consolation; for they were reminded that in presence of the eternal scythe we are all equal, and that tyrannical lords are mowed down equally with oppressed serfs.”

For France to issue from this period of darkness and torture alive, though wounded, a miracle was necessary: the miracle that produced Joan of Arc. Yet when the English troops had evacuated a good portion of the country in 1437, the year in which Charles VII. made his solemn entry into the capital he had reconquered, hunger and misery killed more than twenty thousand persons in Paris alone.

France was not alone in her suffering; all Europe was in the same plight. The fifteenth century was a century of misery. In his “Public Alimentation under the Ancient Monarchy,” M. Charles Louandre remarks, with reason, that the impossibility of living, of bringing up a family, of paying taxes and dues, inspired a passion for discovery. There was a general competition as to who should undertake the most distant journeys, the most perilous enterprises. Every unknown land seemed to be an El Dorado. People whispered to one another in the evening, beside the hearth without a fire, of countries beyond the seas where the mountains were of pure gold, where the rivers were of milk, where the animals answered to the voice of man. A search was instituted for these enchanted islands, where there was neither hunger, nor poverty, nor oppression. Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Cortez, Pizarro, opened new paths through which languorous, exhausted, worn-out Europe might be able to reach a happier state. Each province was at that time treated as a separate state, with its own particular frontiers; and each frontier had its custom-house, where duties were levied on all goods imported. Thus, supposing that wheat had been landed at Marseilles, in view of Paris, it would, before reaching the capital, have to pay for the right of passage at six different frontiers, without counting special levies on the way. As for Marseilles itself, however rich the harvest might be in the North of France, the great city on the Mediterranean never profited by it. Even in the last century, Marseilles received all its grain from the Barbary States. On the famous night of the 4th of August, 1789, when the abolition of all the privileges existing in France was decreed, 1,569 places of toll were done away with, 400 on the rivers, and 1,169 on roads. Of the total number 1,426 belonged to the nobility and clergy; the remainder to the towns or to the Government.

Henry IV. was the first king who, thanks to the enlightenment of his minister Sully, took steps for abolishing the impediments to circulation on road and river. By letters patent, dated 1595, corn was to be allowed everywhere to pass free.

Richelieu, whose theory of government, cynically avowed, was that the poorer the nation the easier it would be to govern, re-established, under penalty of death, the old prohibitory edicts. The consequences were what might have been expected, and they are well expressed in a complaint made public by the Parliament of Normandy in 1633:--

“We have seen peasants harnessed to the share like beasts of burden, ploughing the land, munching the grass, and living on roots.” A manifesto from the Duke of Orleans of about the same time set forth that scarcely one-third of the inhabitants of the kingdom ate ordinary bread; one-third lived on oat-bread, while the remainder was dying of hunger, devouring grass and acorns, like animals, or, worse still, bran steeped in blood from the gutters of the slaughter-houses.

To the horrors of famine must be added those of civil war. Such was the misery, that even the most servile courtiers could not remain blind to it. Take, for instance, the memoirs of P. de la Porte, valet de chambre to Louis XIV., which contained the following: “Besides the misery of the soldiers, that of the common people was frightful; and wherever the Court was staying the poor peasants rushed thither, thinking they would find security, because elsewhere the army was devastating the country. They brought their cattle with them, which at once died of hunger, because it was impossible to take them outside for pasture. When their cattle were dead, they themselves died incontinently; for they had nothing more to depend upon but the charity of the Court, which was of the most moderate kind, everyone thinking of himself before all others. The mothers being dead, the children died soon afterwards; and I saw, on the bridge of Melun, three children lying beside their helpless mother, one of whom was still at the breast.”

Louis XIV. was neither more intelligent nor more humane than Richelieu. By his order, free circulation was again punished with death (1693-98). If, during the seventeenth century, there were a few attempts in the way of commercial liberty, these essays were exceptional and limited to particular localities, severely circumscribed. The peasant was more sat upon than ever. It was ordered in 1660 that no labourer should pass from his parish to another without paying double dues during a period of two years; and in 1675 Lesdiguières wrote that the labourers of the Dauphiné had nothing to eat but the grass of the meadows or the bark of trees. Under the great monarch the misery of the nation was excessive; and St. Simon did not exaggerate when he wrote this terrible phrase: “Louis XIV. drew blood from his subjects without distinction: he squeezed it out to the last drop.”

“Two great and benevolent men,” says M. Ducamp, “without any previous understanding on the subject, each published, in the year 1701, a book which might well have opened the eyes of the king and converted his ministers. The “Détail de la France,” by Bois Guilbert, and the “Projet de Dime Royale,” by Vauban, the famous military engineer, are two slight volumes which showed how the safety of the monarchy might be ensured. Both authors had seen misery close at hand. Struck by the misfortunes they had contemplated, they sought a remedy for it, found it, placed it before everyone, but were not listened to.” “The common people,” said Bois Guilbert, “would consider themselves fortunate if they could have bread and water, which is about all they want, but which they scarcely ever get. The products of China and Japan, when delivered in France, cost only about three times their original price; but the liquids which pass from one province of France to another, even though they be adjacent, increase in price twenty-fold, and even more. The wines sold in Anjou and the Orleans country at one sou the measure are sold for twenty and twenty-four in Picardy and Normandy.” Vauban declared that in order to avoid the payment of exorbitant dues levied by the provincial authorities, peasants cut down their apples-trees and tore up their vines.

The people of Paris starved like those of the provinces; but not so quietly. On the 3rd of March, 1709, the market-women--the corporation of “Les dames de la Halle”--started for Versailles, in order to exhibit their perishing children and ask for bread. They were stopped at the bridge of Sèvres, and taken back to Paris. But the tradition of that day remained with them, as was only too plainly shown during the disturbances of October, 1789.

When the dauphin went to the opera, or to hunt the wolf at Marly, he was surrounded by starving bands, who cried out for food, and could only be quieted by having money thrown to them. The soldiers of the Versailles garrison went out armed, to beg and to pillage the country.

Sometimes famine was created, or, at least, developed, by artificial means. One ingenious speculator is said to have bought up all the corn he could afford to purchase in France, and to have exported it from the ports of Normandy and Brittany to Jersey and Guernsey, there to remain until famine had declared itself with some severity. Then the corn was re-introduced from the Channel Islands and sold at immense prices. In 1745, the Duke of Orleans walked into the Council Chamber, threw on to the table before the king a loaf made of all kinds of rubbish, and exclaimed: “That is what your subjects have to feed upon.” Louis XV. knew already to what a degree of misery his people were reduced. One day when he was out hunting, he saw a man carrying with evident difficulty a long box on his back. “What are you carrying there?” asked the king. “A dead man,” was the reply. “What did he die of?” “Hunger.” The king turned away, unwilling to continue the conversation. It was not until the reign of Louis XVI. that serious endeavours were made to improve the condition of the people. In 1774, fifteen years before the Revolution, Turgot set forth, in a decree adopted by the Council, the most just economical principles: “The more commerce is free, animated, extended, the more the people are promptly, efficaciously, and abundantly provided.” Eighteen months afterwards, in 1776, all dues formerly levied at Paris on wheat, flour, etc., were abolished. “There was in France,” says Michelet, “a miserable prisoner called Wheat, forced by the Government to die and rot where it was born. Each province kept its wheat captive.” Strangely enough, the common people were the first to oppose the new legislation. It seemed to them that the exportation of wheat must be ruinous for the inhabitants of the districts from which it was exported, and insurrections were raised in Brie, Normandy, and the Soissons country, in order to prevent the passage of wheat from one province to another.

Of the famine-promoters, three were especially notorious, Foulon, Bertier, and Pinet; and all three came to a bad end at the time of the Revolution. After the taking of the Bastille, Foulon caused a report of his death to be circulated, celebrated his own funeral, and concealed himself at Viry. He was recognised, however, and brought back to Paris, where, received by an indignant multitude at the Barriers, he was taken to the Place de Grève, and hanged to the famous lamp-post. Then his head, with a handful of hay in the mouth, was carried at the end of a pike. The horrible procession met Bertier, who was made to join it, maltreated, and put to death. This happened on the 22nd of July. On the 29th, Pinet was found in the Vésinet Forest, with his head shattered, but still living. He declared that he had been attacked by assassins, but the general opinion was that in his terror and despair he had attempted to blow his own brains out. Pinet died, and with the death of the three famous promoters the famine came, in a great measure, to an end. The Revolution, however, though it could give liberty, could not give bread; and the distribution of corn throughout the country was constantly impeded by the old provincial spirit. When corn was brought in from English ports (for in those days England produced so much corn that it was able to export largely to France), the cargoes had to run the gauntlet to different provinces as they passed up the Seine. On one occasion, a quantity of wheat bought at Havre for the supply of Paris, and embarked on Seine barges, was stopped by the militia of Louviers, and confiscated for the benefit of that town. Such scenes were renewed everywhere. Once within the limits of a particular province, the corn was seized and allowed to go no farther. In 1794, during a period of scarcity, Barrère proposed in the Assembly to institute a patriotic fast. “Formerly,” he said, “we fasted for some saint in the calendar. Let us now fast for liberty.”

Little by little, under successive Governments, the popular prejudices against free circulation and free trade died out. There are material difficulties, moreover, in the way of such interference as used to be practised with cargoes and convoys in the days before the Revolution, and what, perhaps, is equally important, in the days before steam. In former times it was very easy to stop a heavily-laden, lumbering waggon, creeping along on a bad road. It is more difficult to stay the course of a railway train. Exceptionally high prices are still to be feared, but not famine. If the corn supply is insufficient in France, wheat can be imported from Hungary, Russia, and America.

Nor is it for bread alone that France is indebted to foreign countries--which she, in her turn, supplies abundantly with luxuries, natural and artificial, of all kinds. France receives meat and game from Russia; vegetables, fruit, and even wine from Algeria; oranges from Spain; fresh-water fish from Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; and sea-fish from England.

It is a sound maxim that whatever enters the human body should be genuine; and in connection with the Paris food supply a number of special officials are appointed, whose duty it is to examine the products offered to the public. The functions of these agents are not confined to the markets; they extend to the whole of Paris, to every shop in which eatables are sold; to every cart, every barrow from which the Paris costermonger sells fruit, vegetables, or fish. Wine-shops may be entered by these agents, when, if the wine is found to be adulterated, the casks containing it are emptied of their contents into the public streets. Probably, in good neighbourhoods, food is as little adulterated in London as in Paris. The Paris authorities are, in any case, much more particular on the subject of adulteration. With these agents for the inspection, examination, and analysis of articles of diet may be classed the officials charged with the duty of verifying weights and measures. An excellent law, passed in 1839, under the reign of Louis Philippe, prescribes that every dealer on buying a pair of scales, new or second-hand, must at once take them to the office of verification in the district, in order that they may be marked with the stamp of the year.

Private shops, however, have of course played no such part in the provisioning of Paris as has fallen to the lot of the markets, which, in olden times, could only be opened and maintained by the lord of the manor. In distant times, the landed proprietor had the right of life and death over his subjects, and a few years before the Revolution, every market in Paris had its pillory, and even its gallows. It was in the king’s name, however, that justice was executed; and, in most cases, the pillory and the gibbet of the Paris market-place were mere emblems. The Prior of the Temple, the Abbé of St. Geneviève, the Abbé of St. Germain des Prés, had each a pillory in the markets established on their territory.

The royal pillory was situated at the place in the fish-market where sea-fish is now cried. It was an octagonal turret, crowned by a roof in the form of an extinguisher. At the top of the turret, beneath the roof, was a horizontal wheel pierced with holes and turning on a pivot. The holes were for the head and hands of the victim; the wheel was put in movement, and the poor wretch was subjected, circularly and methodically, to the gaze of the crowd. The pillory offered an attractive spectacle to the mob; and it was there that the bodies of criminals, who had been executed at the Place de Grève, were exposed before being hung up at the gallows of Montfaucon. Near the pillory stood the gibbet, here employed only under grave circumstances. On the gibbet of the fish-market was hanged Jean de Montaigu. Later on, in 1418, Capeluche, the executioner of Paris, was beheaded (he ranked, for certain purposes, with gentlemen) for having, it was said, taken too familiarly the hand of the Duke of Burgundy. The known facts of the case were these:--Capeluche had distinguished himself in the massacres which followed the triumph of the Burgundian faction in 1418. The Duke of Burgundy gave publicly his hand to this vile instrument of his vengeance, but had his head cut off soon afterwards. The executioner, with wonderful self-possession, showed his inexperienced assistant how he was to wield the axe so as not to miss his victim. Here also, on a lofty scaffold, constructed expressly for the purpose, and covered over with black, Jacques d’Armagnac perished by the sword. Before ascending the fatal ladder, he had said his last prayers in the fish-market, which had been washed and perfumed with vinegar and juniper, in order to get rid of the disagreeable smell.

Between the pillory and the gibbet, a large cross stretched out its arms of stone. Beneath its shadow insolvent debtors surrendered their property, and received the traditional cap of green wool which the executioner himself placed on their heads. The bankrupts’ cross and the pillory disappeared a few years before the Revolution, in 1786; though it is to the Revolution itself that the credit of the abolition is generally given.

A word must be said about the “market ladies,” the “dames de la halle,” and the privileges they enjoyed. It will be remembered that during a severe famine they went in a body, with their starving children, to beg relief from Louis XV. At happier moments they waited upon the sovereign on some festive occasion, to present him with congratulations and a huge bouquet. It was to their corporation that Mme. Angot and her celebrated daughter belonged. They were notorious for their freedom of speech, and little attention was paid to a police ordinance of the year 1738, which forbade them, under penalty of imprisonment and a fine of one hundred francs, to insult passers-by. But times have changed, and the manners of the “market ladies” with them.

After speaking of “les dames de la halle,” it would be invidious to pass over in silence “les forts de la halle,” the Strong Men of the market. The internal service of this market is entrusted to some five hundred strong men, who earn from sixty to a hundred and twenty pounds a year. These official porters form a syndicate, and offer all possible guarantees of probity, good conduct, and punctuality. Not only must they submit to a thorough examination of their private life, they are also tested physically and in the severest manner. But they go through the regulation exercises as through a game. To the strong men is confided the duty of unloading the carts and the waggons, and carrying their contents to the stalls and shops of the markets. The market regulations in view of fire are very strict, especially those adopted and promulgated in 1865, by which smoking and the use of lucifers and all unenclosed lights are forbidden. Lanterns are alone permitted. The right of selling in the public markets is a privilege sold by the municipality. A butcher’s stall is worth 3 francs a day; a stall for the sale of sea-fish 1·25, for the sale of fresh fish 1·50, for poultry 1 franc, for vegetables 75 centimes; oysters 20 centimes, and sundries 5 centimes a day for each square yard of space.

Some years ago a question was raised as to whether the markets ought to be covered over; and an answer was given in the negative by a high official of the Préfecture, who authoritatively declared that “bad weather was not appreciably injurious to vegetables exposed in the market-place.” It is quite possible that turnips, carrots, and cabbages may suffer little or nothing from hail and heavy rain. But human beings may be seriously affected by inclement weather; and in this belief it has been proposed, hitherto in vain, that covered stalls with glass windows should be constructed for use during stormy nights.

The butchers’ stalls are supplied by rail, and the greatest activity prevails among them after the arrival of the early morning trains. Towards five o’clock arrive a number of women who, like the wise virgins of the parable, are the bearers of lamps. They assemble at the corner of the Rue Rambuteau, and a portable desk is brought forward, at which a man takes his seat. The roll-call of the strong men is then read, and if one of them has not arrived he is released for the day, that is to say, he loses his day’s wages. Five o’clock strikes, and the women with the lanterns may go to work. The time for the sale of water-cress has begun.

Everyone is now at his post--the factor and his clerks, the public crier, the inspector of the market, or his agent, and the collector of municipal taxes.

At each fresh bell signal--and the bells in connection with the markets correspond to the drums of the barrack-yard--new departments of the markets are opened, and private purchasers begin to arrive: non-commissioned officers, accompanied by soldiers bearing large sacks; nuns purchasing for the religious houses; stewards of the gymnasiums, and other large schools, together with various wholesale buyers, who have come to lay in their daily supplies. The arrival of the fish from Dieppe or Havre is always an incident of importance; received with agitation, shouts, and bustle of every kind. Sometimes the wind has been unfavourable; the fishing-boats have not got to shore, and there has been nothing to send. There is then a general feeling of consternation among both dealers and purchasers; though, among the latter, no Vatel stabs himself at the thought of having to serve a dinner in which fish will not be a component part. It is to be feared that when, on one particular day, fish does not arrive, fish of the preceding day is cooked in place of it.

Much of the fish comes from England and Belgium. More than half of the mussels imported into France are of Belgian origin. The Ostend oysters, so much prized at Paris, came until lately from the shores of Essex. But such oysters as England can still afford to export go now to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna.

Eggs are received in hampers and boxes containing each one thousand eggs, which are so cleverly packed that not one in a thousand ever gets broken. These eggs are sold in mass by the box, though they are all subject to inspection, and at certain times of the year are carefully and individually examined by officials appointed for the purpose. If on being held up to the light an egg is found not to be in good condition, it is condemned, and is then used for industrial purposes, as in connection with the gilding of wood. Eggs that are simply bad are immediately destroyed.

The price of eggs is higher than it otherwise would be in the Paris markets by reason of the competition of English purchasers. Numbers of farmers send their eggs exclusively to London; which, according to statistics prepared some years ago, receives annually from France eggs to the number of 52,000,000.

A great quantity of game is sold in the Paris markets, especially since the year 1867, when for the first time foreign game was admitted. The imports of game are chiefly from Russia, which possesses in abundance partridges of various kinds, ptarmigans, and black game.

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XLIV. THE BARRIERS--PARISIAN CRIME

The Approaches to Paris--The French Railway System--The St. Germain Railway--The Erection of the Barriers--Some of the most famous Barriers--Parisian Crime--Its Special Characteristics.

Passing along the left bank of the Seine, in the direction of St. Germain, arrested at every step by some historical association or some interesting object of our own time, we at last quit Paris and find ourselves on the highway to the nearest important suburb.

From the aristocratic Faubourg St. Germain to St. Germain itself was, in the days of Mme. de Sévigné, an easy walk or a pleasant drive. After 1837 St. Germain and the faubourg of the same name were separated only by a brief railway journey. On the 24th of August in the year just named, the railway from Paris to St. Germain was first opened, at a time when the miles of railways constructed in England amounted to some two thousand. The year previously a French statesman had visited the railway from Manchester to Liverpool, and, on his return, declared in the Chamber that railways were only toys to amuse idle persons. “People should see the reality,” he added; “for, even if railways proved a genuine success, their development would not be anything like what has been supposed. If I were to be assured that in France five leagues of railway would be made every year, I should consider that a great deal.” A French scientist declared about the same time that the diminution of temperature experienced on entering the tunnels would be such that in the sudden passage from hot to cold, susceptible persons would get inflammation of the lungs, pleurisy, and catarrh.

When the railway to St. Germain was opened, a military band occupied one of the carriages, joyful airs were played, enthusiastic speeches were delivered, the locomotive did not blow up, the carriages did not come off the rails, and, though two tunnels had to be passed through, no one caught cold. Seven principal railways were now decided on, the privilege of constructing the lines being granted by the State on certain conditions. In England railways were being laid down by permission of the State, but not in such a way as to secure to any one of the companies a monopoly. The French legislation on the subject of railways compels the companies to extend their lines to the most remote and least populous regions. Thus, in the public interest, they have to maintain railway extensions on which the losses not infrequently eat up a serious proportion of the profits realised on the more frequented sections of the system.

The great railway centre of France is, of course, the capital. “Paris,” says a French writer on the subject, “being the heart, life is carried to the extremities of France by main lines, which are the arteries; by secondary lines, which are the veins; and by routes communicating with the iron road, which are the capillary vessels; in this fashion the circulation is complete. That is a boon which must be constantly borne in mind, and which makes our railways an absolutely democratic institution. It is due to the intervention of the State. In England, where private enterprise alone has been entrusted with the construction of railways, the case is different. The companies have laid their lines wherever they pleased; guided solely by their own interest, they have above all sought to realise immense profits. They have built railways between the great centres, rich or industrial, while neglecting the secondary routes, which only offered them slender gains; they present an organisation purely aristocratic. If in France, as among our neighbours across the Channel, private industry had been left, without control, sovereign mistress of the land, only the great lines would now be in existence, and the diligence would still be rolling along nearly all our roads.”

Soon after the construction of the St. Germain railway, an “iron road” was made from Paris to Versailles, and it was on this line, close to Bellevue, that the first accident took place. On the 18th of May, 1842, it had been announced that the great fountains of Versailles would play, and a train of eighteen carriages, drawn by two locomotives, with a third in the rear, was returning to Paris crowded with travellers. A little below Bellevue, at a place where there is a slight curve, the first locomotive broke its axle-tree. The second engine, suddenly checked in its progress, fell upon the first, and the third engine behind, by continuing to push the train, doubled it up, sending the middle portion of it into the air. The carriages, thanks to the excessive prudence of the guards, were all locked, and some of them, upset in the close vicinity of one of the engines, caught fire from the glowing coals of the damaged furnace. There was then a terrible scene. The passengers endeavoured to force their way through the narrow windows, and in doing so fought, and in many cases were seized by the flames. Seventy-three corpses were afterwards picked up, and there were numbers of wounded. This accident, terrible in itself, had a disastrous effect upon the railway system of France. Railway travelling was looked upon as dangerous--suicidal. The receipts from all the lines fell heavily, and the railway to Versailles was absolutely abandoned. In the general fright, locomotives got to be looked upon as so difficult to guide, so sure, sooner or later, to explode, that it was seriously proposed, on lines about to be opened from Paris to Rouen and from Paris to Orleans, to replace mechanical traction by horses. The terror excited by the accident gradually passed away. A sort of expiatory chapel was erected by the railway company at the scene of the disaster, under the designation of Notre Dame des Flammes; but after a time even the existence of the chapel, surrounded and at last concealed by trees, came to be forgotten.

Paris is now, like London, surrounded by railway stations, and to occupy the terminal points of the lines leading to the capital would be for a time to stop its supply of provisions even more effectually than this was done during the siege of 1870 by taking possession of the ordinary roads. The railways have destroyed the importance of the ancient “Barriers,” which marked, and still mark, points in a line encircling the capital. The geographical history of Paris consists in the constant pushing back of these Barriers, surrounding as they did a city which was steadily expanding. Gates which, when first constructed, stood outside the city, were gradually included within its circumference, new Barriers being erected at a greater distance from the centre. More than a century ago, in 1765, a royal edict forbade the construction of any more houses outside the limits of Paris as then fixed. This order could not, of course, be obeyed. As well try to check the rising tide as to stop the growth of Paris, and in 1784, five years before the Revolution, we find Louis XVI.’s Minister, Calonne, obtaining a royal authorisation to surround Paris with a new and enlarged girdle. Nineteen “Barriers” were now established around Paris, at each of which a duty, known as the “octroi,” was levied on everything brought into the city. The measure was a most unpopular one, and the Farmers-General, who purchased the right of levying the tax, became the objects of popular detestation. A line which has become historical, expressed, by an ingenious verbal equivoque, the general feeling on the subject--

“Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant”

ran the verse, which was repeated from mouth to mouth throughout Paris. Another epigram, which, being longer, became less popular, was as follows:--

“Pour augmenter son numéraire Et raccourcir notre horizon, La ferme a jugé nécessaire De mettre Paris en prison.”[F]

[F] This may be literally translated:--

“To increase its revenue And draw closer our horizon, The farm has deemed it necessary To put Paris in prison.”

All this might be very witty, but the Minister cared little about it. He doubtless said to himself, like his famous predecessor, Mazarin, “They sing: then they will pay.” He was right: they paid. It occurred to the architect Ledoux, who had been instructed to erect offices for the reception of the dues, that the buildings might as well be fortified, and Paris thus became surrounded by a line of not very effective defences. Petitions were addressed to the king requesting the abolition of the Barriers, and M. de Calonne’s successor declared that he would have them knocked down and the fragments sold as building-materials. Things had arrived at this point when the Revolution of ‘89 broke out. The populace then set fire to some of the Barriers and knocked holes through the walls in several places, but did not touch the buildings, concerning which the National Convention subsequently issued the following decree:--

“The national buildings designated under the name of ‘Barriers’ are erected in Paris as public monuments. The various epochs of the Revolution and the victories gained by the revolutionary armies over tyrants are engraved upon them in characters of bronze. The Committee of Public Safety is authorised to take every possible measure for the prompt execution of the present decree, while inviting men of letters and artists to co-operate and to compose inscriptions.”

At this period, however, there were many obstacles between the publication of a decree and its execution, and it was not therefore astonishing that the famous buildings were for a time forgotten. The octroi had now been suspended, and it was not till the fifth year of the Republic that the Directory instituted a “municipal octroi of beneficence,” the product of which was intended for the hospitals. The Barriers were thereupon repaired, and the taxation clerks re-established in their offices on the city boundaries. “The architect Ledoux,” says Dulaure, in his History of Paris, “in his desire to exhibit proofs of the fecundity of his genius, has frequently shown nothing but aberration. The luxury which he lavished upon all his architectural productions outrage all artistic propriety. People saw, with discontent and murmuring, pompous edifices consecrated to a taxation oppressive to all classes of society, and very galling to commerce. This was to whiten sepulchres,--to hold instruments of oppression up to admiration.”

At the end of the Empire no less than sixty Barriers existed round Paris. Five of these were suppressed under the Restoration, though only to be reopened later on. Thenceforward, until 1860, when the barriers were demolished, few changes occurred. It was at the end of 1859 that the Imperial Government, after having appointed a commission of inquiry, formulated a project, which was adopted by the legislative body and the Senate, and which, incorporating eleven communes of the department of the Seine, ordered the demolition of the octroi wall, and of the famous buildings with which Ledoux had so elaborately decorated the Barriers of Paris. The Barriers have not, however, completely disappeared. They are sufficiently numerous in the present day, though they have been put back as far as the fortifications and received the name of gates.

Of the Barriers which figure most largely in history, that of Clichy stands foremost. Here, under the Revolution, the members of the Clichy Club assembled, and here in 1814 the last act of the French military and political drama was played.

The Barrière de l’Étoile is famous as the one by which, on the 15th of December, 1840, the Emperor Napoleon--dead, but living in the memory of all--re-entered Paris to be re-interred at the Invalides. It was a memorable day for the Parisians, who never forgot the splendour of the cortège or the frigid weather which prevailed at the time, and which was so rigorous that the companions of the great captain could have fancied that they were once more on the road to Moscow. Eighteen months later, a four-wheeled cabriolet might have been seen rapidly passing this same barrier. Having reached La Porte Maillot, the equipage redoubled its pace, moving in the direction of the Avenue de la Révolte. The horses had bolted, and a man sprang out of the carriage--he fell. It was the Prince-Royal, the Duke of Orleans, who expired in a grocer’s shop on the 13th of July, 1842, at half-past four in the afternoon.

It was at the Barrière de la Villette, on the 30th of March, 1814, that the capitulation of Paris was signed, the first article of which provided that the French troops, under the orders of the Ducs de Trévise and de Raguse, should evacuate the capital, while the last article recommended the town of Paris to the generosity of the Allied Powers.

Scarcely more than a month later, on the 3rd of May, it was by the Barrière de la Chapelle that Louis XVIII. entered Paris, after having put his signature to the famous declaration at the Château of St. Ouen. On his arrival before this barrier, the édiles presented him with the keys of the city. In 1815 he quitted Paris by the Barrière de Clichy, to enter it once more the same year, without ceremonial, by the same Barrier.

More than one of the Barriers has been the scene of executions and assassinations, and plays a lugubrious part in the history of the capital. The sombre pictures, however, which they conjure up are relieved by many of a picturesque and festive character. On Sundays, especially before the establishment of railways, the Barriers of Paris were invaded by a noisy troop of promenaders. The workman was an assiduous guest at the taverns and tea-gardens which swarmed on the outskirts; and even to-day a large proportion of toilers make their way on the Sabbath towards Belleville or Ménilmontant, singing this refrain of a popular song:

“Pour rigoler montons, Montons à la barrière.”[G]

[G]

“Let’s go up and have a lark, Let’s go up to the Barrier!”

There used to be a good deal of deep drinking at the Barriers, and violent quarrels not infrequently marked the close of the festive day. Sometimes a drunkard would roll down and lie at full length along the octroi wall. In the ordinary way he would have gone to sleep and woke up comparatively sober. But one of a class of pickpockets who haunted the Barriers was sure to approach him, and, under pretext of lifting him on to his feet, carefully relieve the bewildered victim of the few sous which remained to him. These thieves, who passed their days and nights on the confines of the city, and who, detesting work, lived at the expense of their honest neighbours, were often inveterate malefactors of the worst kind, and the abolition of the Barriers had the highly desirable effect of exterminating them as a class.

It may not be inopportune, at this point, to take a view of the criminal population of Paris in general. They afford a study which excites no small degree of combined interest and regret. The number is large in Paris of those who, having repudiated all restraint and banished the last vestige of self-respect, live aloof from society and never touch it except for purposes of injury. Despite the incessant surveillance of which they are the object, despite the laws which hedge them about, accuse and punish them, they remain in the great capital, like an unsubdued tribe, always in revolt, bent upon evil, and often accomplishing it with audacity. They seem to float over civilisation like scum, or to lie at the bottom of it like dregs of a liquid.

Idleness, or at least the instinctive hatred of all regular occupation, desperate want, and a passion for gross pleasures, are among the causes of that vagabondage in Paris which is characterised by defiance of the law, theft, and sometimes murder. Stupidity and irreflection may often have a good deal to do with the matter; but as a rule the Parisian rascal, subsisting by fraud and larceny, expends more ingenuity and energy in the conception and execution of his schemes than would be necessary to make him prosper in some lucrative trade.

The existence of these wretches is sufficiently unenjoyable. At once hunters and game, with their ears bent to catch the slightest sound, always on the alert, never sleeping without one eye open, devouring their meals whenever they can get any, tormented as much by their passions as by their fears, they feel, whilst pursuing their sinister projects, that the police are dogging their steps, that hounds of terribly keen scent are busy upon their track. This life of stratagem and law-breaking is said to have its charms--and justly, perhaps, since so many men voluntarily choose it; but if the excitement of the constant hazard they run, combined with the chance of spoil, exhilarates youthful malefactors, many an old thief, on the other hand, disgusted, sickened by incessantly playing the part of a stag at bay, has gone to the Préfecture of Police and said: “I am the man. Arrest me. I can’t stand this sort of life.”

Semi-starvation is the fate of a large proportion of these criminals. Many of them for years together have slept on rude couches lit only by the stars--under bridges, in half-built boats or houses, or squares: many of them do not know what daily bread is. “Do you like being here?” said an official to a little girl of twelve who was temporarily lodged in the “depôt,” her father and mother both having been arrested for crime. “Oh, yes,” was the reply, “we have something to eat here every day.”

It would be difficult to fix, even approximatively, the number of persons who in Paris give themselves up to theft. The ticket-of-leave men, notorious vagabonds and others, are well known to the police. But there are numbers of persons, in a town so populous as Paris, who become thieves through circumstances: from finding themselves in a difficult position, or from a sudden temptation.

In this connection M. Maxime Ducamp may once more be cited. “There is an incontrovertible fact,” he says, “which natural history explains. Criminals--those, I mean, who live by crime--are always the same to whatever class of society they may belong. They are actuated by the same passions, the same wants, the same appetites. Whatever certain philosophers may have said on the subject, a man steals very rarely to get bread. The three great tempting causes are women, cards, and drink.” There are exceptions, however, which writers on the subject have duly noted. Rafinat, who was mixed up with the robbery of medals from the Bibliothèque Royale, used to send home to his family the product of what he himself called his “expeditions.” For one, however, of this kind there are ten thousand who steal only to satisfy their brutal tastes. An old proverb says, “Generous as a thief,” and the proverb is right. The thief who saves the produce of his robberies is an anomaly only to be met with among certain “receivers” of Jewish race.

As soon as the thief has made a good stroke, he gives away money right and left, pays his debts, lends to anyone who happens to be in need, and invites everyone to share his good fortune. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and can refuse nothing to anyone. Being constantly watched, thieves denounce themselves by their excessive expenditure, which seems to be one of their invincible needs; and they then fall promptly into the hands of the police. They know that they are pursued; the theft committed one day may cause their arrest the day afterwards. They wish, therefore, to enjoy themselves, and they spend in debauchery the time still left at their disposal. So the pig in a shipwreck will devour food at the very moment when the vessel is sinking.

“Bad roads end in pitfalls,” say the French peasants. Criminals know this, and the road they follow leads invariably to prison, the galleys, the penal colonies, the scaffold. Those who by cunning or good luck succeed in escaping the police, which is on the watch for them, and Justice, which claims them as her own, are singularly rare, and amongst them may be cited a man of a certain celebrity, who flourished some forty or fifty years ago. His name was Piednoir. He was not an assassin; he knew the Code, and never risked his head. He was content to commit robbery by means of false keys. But he was a past-master in his art, and from 1834 until 1843 escaped from the consequences of twenty-one different warrants of arrest. He had excellent manners, led an elegant life, and bitterly regretted having had his ears pierced in his childhood, which, he said, gave him rather a common air. He employed ordinary thieves to prepare an affair, and when everything was ready took charge of its execution. He then divided the plunder into shares, reserving the lion’s part for himself. When his accomplices were brought to trial they behaved towards him with wonderful devotion. One of them, however, admitted that he had been twice in relations with Piednoir; on one occasion, when Piednoir met him in the disguise of a rag-picker, a second time when, dressed as a man of fashion and driving a tilbury, he pulled up in front of the Café de Paris and threw the witness a two-sous piece wrapped up in a scrap of paper which contained written instructions concerning a projected robbery. Piednoir was condemned in his absence to twenty years’ hard labour. He was living at the time luxuriously in Holland on the products of his industry as a thief. Most of these melancholy personages have, according to M. Maxime Ducamp, to whom no side of Paris life, no class of the Paris population, is unfamiliar, a common, contemptible appearance, though some few of them have a certain distinction, natural or acquired, which renders them more and more redoubtable. Mitifiau, who took the title of Count de Belair, and claimed to be the son of a general who died under the first Empire, was a man of irreproachable manners. He went into society--the very best society, to which none but well-bred persons are supposed to be admitted--and lived by swindling, by clever thefts, and by card-sharping. He was arrested as he was committing a robbery by means of false keys.

Some of these malefactors would seem to be separated for ever from crime by the elevated tastes they profess and the intellectual occupations in which they are apparently absorbed. But their evil instincts are too much for them. Thus it once happened that a mathematician, versed in the highest sciences, and dreaming only of abstract speculation, was condemned to seven years’ imprisonment for stealing from a shop. But for the extraordinary sagacity and entire absence of illusions on the part of the police, many a malefactor would succeed in concealing his true character. Some years ago a certain Toutpriant, living at No. 28, Rue Vert, had eight horses in his stables, besides carriages from the best makers. He was a retired clerk, who planned robberies on a large scale, training and directing a number of young brigands to that end, and himself living under a false name either on his own estate, where he had excellent shooting, or at fashionable watering-places. “There are some families,” says M. Ducamp, “which, by a wretched tradition, seem given up to theft from generation to generation. The grandfather was a thief; the father stole, the son steals, the grandson will steal. The child is taught his trade from the earliest years. He learns to step without making a sound, to see without appearing to look, to open a lock with a nail, to hide what he has stolen, and to cry out ‘Stop thief!’ when he is pursued. The families of Piednoir, Cœur-de-Roy, and Nathan drove the police to despair and tired out the tribunals. The periods of imprisonment to which the Nathans, father, mother, brothers, and sons-in-law, altogether fourteen persons, were condemned, represent a total of 209 years.”

The thieves of Jewish race are, according to M. Ducamp, those among whom handkerchief-stealing descends from father to son. They are formidable not for their audacity, for they scarcely ever commit murder, but by their persistence in a criminal career, by the inviolable secrecy maintained among them, their marvellous patience, and the facilities they possess for concealing themselves in the houses of their co-religionists. Jewish thieves are hardly ever at open war with society. They maintain a secret, subtle struggle. They seem to be taking a silent revenge, and it might be said that they have right on their side and that they are only taking back--as the opportunity presents itself--the property of which their ancestors had been so often, so violently, and so unjustly deprived by ours. Sometimes they form associations and rob wholesale. They have their correspondents, their depots, their purchasers, their account-books. Everything that is brought to them can be turned to account, from the lead of the house-pipes to a lady’s feather. The chief calls himself a commission agent and sends goods to South America, Germany, and Russia. The German-Jewish jargon which they speak among themselves is incomprehensible to the rest of the world and helps to save them from detection. Concealing their secret actions behind an ostensibly honest trade, they are the first deceivers in the world. There are numbers of criminals, however, who, whatever instincts they may have inherited, have not been trained to crime. “A child,” says the writer already cited on this subject, which he has studied so thoroughly, “stops away from school. He acquires idle habits and, coming home late, is beaten by his father. The effect of the lesson lasts a little while; but he has tasted the liberty he loves, he has experienced the pleasure of keeping away from books--the books he hates; and fearing the paternal correction, he takes care the next time he plays truant not to return home. He sleeps beneath an archway, and if he escapes the attention of the police wakes up the next morning to find himself on the pavement of the great city without a sou in his pocket. Being very hungry, he contrives to steal a sausage. The first step has now been taken. Young as he is, he has acquired a fatal knowledge. He has learned how to live without working, and he is now almost certainly lost. Vice has taken possession of him; crime awaits him. As he gets older he is urged on by all the passions of the young man. He steals some money from his father, from his employer: wherever the chance presents itself. If he is taken, he is condemned by a compassionate judge to a brief term of imprisonment, during which he lives among the vilest. He hears nothing but the boasts of criminals, who pride themselves on their atrocious actions and inspire him with a desire to imitate them. On leaving gaol he meets some of his prison companions. His timid operations of former days are turned into ridicule. The talk is now of burglary, of affairs which involve some risk but return handsome profits. The crime is resolved upon. An imprudent person happens to witness its commission, calls for the police, and is killed. The little vagabond of other days has become an assassin, and will end his career on the scaffold. Physical energy and moral weakness: such are the two principal features in the character of nearly all criminals. Some of them affect to be at war with a society in which the poor man, according to them, has no place. Mere nonsense. In a society so profoundly democratic as ours, in which waiters have become kings, the sons of innkeepers prime ministers, and foundlings illustrious men of science, there is a place for everyone.”

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