Chapter 23

Behind the Chastelet stood the _Grande Boucherie_--the Leadenhall market of Paris an hundred years ago; and near it, up a dirty street or two, was one of the finest churches of the capital, dedicated to St Jacques. The lofty tower of this latter edifice (its body perished when the Boucherie and the Chastelet disappeared) still rises in gloomy majesty above all the surrounding buildings. It is as high as those of Notre Dame; and from its upper corners, enormous _gargouilles_--those fantastic water-spouts of the middle ages--gape with wide-stretched jaws, but no longer send down the washings of the roof on the innocent passengers. Hereabouts lived Nicholas Flamel, the old usurer, who made money so fast that it was said he used to sup nightly with his Satanic majesty, and who thereupon built part of the church to save his bacon. He was of opinion that it was well to have the "_mens sana in corpore sano_"--that it was no joke to be burnt; and so he stuck close to the church, taking care that himself and his wife, Pernelle, should have a comfortable resting-place for their bones within the walls of St Jacques. When this was a fashionable quarter of Paris, the court doctor and accoucheur did not disdain to reside in it; for Jean Fernel, the medical attendant of Catharine de Medicis, lived and died within the shade of this old tower. He was a fortunate fellow, a sort of Astley Cooper or Clarke in his way, and Catharine used to give him 10,000 crowns, or something like L.6000, every time she favoured France with an addition to the royal family. He and numerous other worthies mouldered into dust within the precincts of St Jacques; but their remains have long since been scattered to the winds; and where the church once stood is now an ignoble market for old clothes; the abode of Jews and thieves.

After passing round the Grand Chastelet, and crossing the market-place, you might enter the Rue St Denis, the great street of Paris in the time of the good King Henry, and you might walk along under shelter of its houses, projecting story above story, till they nearly met at top, for more than a mile. Before it was paved, the roadway was an intolerable quagmire, winter and summer; and, after stones had been put down, there murmured along the middle a black gurgling stream, charged with all the outpourings and filth of unnumbered houses. Over, or through this, according as the fluid was low or high, you had to make your way, if you wanted to cross the street and greet a friend; if you lived in the street and wished to converse with your opposite neighbour, you had only to mount to the garret story, open the lattice window, and literally shake hands with him, so near did the gables approach. The fronts of the houses were ornamented with every device which the skilful carpenters of former times could invent: the beam-ends were sculptured into queer little crouching figures of monkeys or angels, and all sorts of _diableries_ decorated the cornices that ran beneath the windows; there were no panes of glass, such as we boast of in these degenerate times, but narrow latticed lights to let in the day, and the wind, and the cold; while the roofs were covered commonly with shingles, or, in the houses of the wealthy, with sheets of lead. Between each gable came forth a long water-spout, and poured down a deluge into the gutter beneath; each gable-top was peaked into a fantastic spiry point or flower, and the chimneys congregated into goodly companies amidst the roofs, removed from the vulgar gaze or fastidious jests of the people below. So large were the fireplaces in those rooms that could own them, and so ample were the chimney flues, that smoky houses were unheard of: the staircases, it is true, enjoyed only a dubious ray, that served to prevent you from breaking your neck in a rapid descent; but the apartments were generally of commodious dimensions, and the tenements possessed many substantial comforts.

Once out of doors, you might proceed in all weather fearless of rain; the projecting upper stories sheltered completely the sides of the street, and a stout cloth cloak was all that was needed to save either sex from the inclemency of the seasons. At frequent intervals there opened into the main street, side streets, and _ruelles_ or alleys, which showed in comparison like Gulliver in Brobdignag: up some of these ways a single horseman might be able to go; but along others--and some of them remain to the present day--two stout citizens could never have walked arm-in-arm. They looked like enormous cracks between a couple of buildings, rather than as ways made for the convenience of locomotion: they were pervious, perhaps, to donkeys, but not to the loaded packhorse--the great street was intended for that animal--coaches did not exist, and the long narrow carts of the French peasantry, whenever they came into the city, did not occupy much more space than the bags or packs of the universal carrier. To many of these streets the most eccentric appellations were given; there was the _Rue des Mauvaises Paroles_--people of ears polite had no business to go near it; the _Rue Tire Chappe_--a spot where those who objected to be plucked by the vests, or to have their clothes pulled off their backs by importunate accosters, need not present themselves; another in this quarter was called the _Rue Tire-boudin_. Marie Stuart, when Queen of France, was riding, it is said, through it one day, and struck, perhaps, by the looks of its inhabitants, asked what the street was called. The original appellation was so indecent that an officer of her guards, with courtly presence of mind, veiled it under its present title. One was known as the _Rue Brise-miche_, and the cleanliness of its inhabitants might instantly be judged of: a fifth was the _Rue Trousse-vache_, and one of the shops in it was adorned with an enormous sign of a red cow, with her tail sticking up in the air and her head reared in rampant sauciness. A notorious gambler, Thibault-au-dé, well known for his skill in loading dice, gave his name to one of these narrow veins of the town: Aubry, a wealthy butcher, is still immortalized in another: and the _Rue du Petit Hurleur_ probably commemorated some wicked youngster, whose shouts were a greater nuisance to the neighbours than those of any of his companions.

A wider kind of street was the _Rue de la Ferronerie_, opening into the Rue St Denis, below the Church of the Innocents: it was the abode of all the tinkers and smiths of Paris, and had not Henri IV. been in a particular hurry that day, when he was posting off to old Sully in the Rue St Antoine, he had never gone this way, and Ravaillac, probably, had never been able to lean into the carriage and stab the king. Just over the spot where the murder was committed, the placid bust of the king still gazes on the busy scene beneath. The _Rue de la Grande Truanderie_, which was above the Innocents, must have been the rendez-vous of all the thieves and beggars of Paris, if there be any thing in a name: the old chronicles of the city relate, indeed, that it took a long time to respectabilize its neighbourhood; and they add that the herds of rogues and impostors who once lived in it took refuge, after their ejection, in the famous _Cour des Miracles_, a little higher up the Rue St Denis. We must not venture into this, the choicest preserve of Victor Hugo, whose graphic description of its wonders in his _Notre Dame_ needs hardly to be alluded to; but we may add, that there were several abodes of the same kind, all communicating with the Rue St Denis, and all equally infamous in their day, though now tenanted only by quiet button-makers and furniture-dealers. The real _Puits d'Amour_ stood at the corner of the Rue de la Grande Truanderie, and took its name in sad truth from a crossing of true love. In the days of Philip Augustus, more than six hundred years ago, a beautiful young lady of the court, Agnes Hellebik, whose father held an important post under the king, was inveigled into the toils of love. The object of her affections, whether of noble birth or not, made her but a sorry return for her confidence: he loved her a while, and her dreams of happiness were realized; but by degrees his passion cooled, and at length he abandoned her. Stung with indignation, and broken-hearted at this thwarting of her soul's desire, the unfortunate young creature fled from her father's house, and betaking herself on a dark and stormy night to the brink of the well, commended her spirit to her Maker, and ended her troubles beneath its waters. The name of the _Puits d'Amour_ was then given to the well; and no young maiden ever dared to draw water from it after sunset, for fear of the spirit that dwelt unquietly within. The tradition was always current in people's mouths; and three centuries after, a young man of the neighbourhood, who had been jilted and mocked by an inconstant mistress, determined to bear his ills no longer, so he rushed to the _Puits_, and took the fatal leap. The result was not what he anticipated: he did not, it is true, jump into a courtly assembly of knights and gallants, but he could not find water enough in it to drown him; while his mistress, on hearing of the mishap, hastened to the well with a cord, and promising to compensate him for his former woes, drew him with her fair hands safely into the upper regions. An inscription, in Gothic letters, was then placed over the well:--

"L'amour m'a refaict En 1525 tout-à-faict."

The fate of Agnes Hellebik was far preferable to that of another young girl who lived in this quarter, indeed in the Rue Thibault-au-dé. Agnes du Rochier was the only daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants of Paris, and was admired by all the neighbourhood for her beauty and virtue. In 1403 her father died, leaving her the sole possessor of his wealth, and rumour immediately disposed of her hand to all the young gallants of the quarter; but whether it was that grief for the loss of her parent had turned her head, or that the gloomy fanaticism of that time had worked with too fatal effect on her pure and inexperienced imagination, she took not only marriage and the male sex into utter abomination, but resolved to quit the world for ever, and to make herself a perpetual prisoner for religion's sake. She determined, in short, to become what was then called a recluse, and as such to pass the remainder of her days in a narrow cell built within the wall of a church. On the 5th of October, accordingly, when the cell, only a few feet square, was finished in the wall of the church of St Opportune, Agnes entered her final abode, and the ceremony of her reclusion began. The walls and pillars of the sacred edifice had been hung with tapestry and costly cloths, tapers burned on every altar, the clergy of the capital and the several religious communities thronged the church. The Bishop of Paris, attended by his chaplains and the canons of Notre Dame, entered the choir, and celebrated a pontifical mass: he then approached the opening of the cell, sprinkled it with holy water, and after the poor young thing had bidden adieu to her friends and relations, ordered the masons to fill up the aperture. This was done as strongly as stone and mortar could make it; nor was any opening left, save only a small loophole through which Agnes might hear the offices of the church, and receive the aliments given her by the charitable. She was eighteen years old when she entered this living tomb, and she continued within it _eighty_ years, till death terminated her sufferings! Alas, for mistaken piety! Her wealth, which she gave to the church, and her own personal exertions during so long a life, might have made her a blessing to all that quarter of the city, instead of remaining an useless object of compassion to the few, and of idle wonder to the many.

Another entombment, almost as bad, occurred in the Rue St Denis, only five or six years ago. The cess-pools of modern Parisian houses are generally deep chambers, and sometimes wells, cut in the limestone rock on which the city stands: and in the absence of a good method of drainage, are cleaned out only once in every two or three years, according to their size. Meanwhile, they continue to receive all the filth of the building. One night, a large cess-pool had been emptied, and the aperture, which was in the common passage of the house on the ground floor, had been left open till the inspector appointed by the police should come round and see that the work had been properly executed. He came early in the morning, enquired carelessly of the porter if all was right, and ordered the stone covering to be fastened down. This was done amid the usual noise and talking of the workmen; and they went their way. That same afternoon, one of the lodgers in the house, a young man, was missed: days after days elapsed, and nothing was heard of him: his friends conjectured that he had drowned himself, but the tables of the Morgue never bore his body: and their despair was only equalled by their astonishment at the absence of every clue to his fate. On a particular evening, however, about three weeks after his disappearance, the porter was sitting at the door of his lodge, and the house as well as the street was unusually quiet, when he heard a faint groan somewhere beneath his feet. After a short interval he heard another; and being superstitious, got up, put his chair within the lodge, shut the door, and set about his work. At night he mentioned the circumstance to his wife, and going out with her into the passage, they had not stood there long before again a groan was heard. The good woman crossed herself and fell on her knees; but her husband, suspecting now that all was not right, and thinking that an attempt at infanticide had been made, by throwing a child's body down one of the passages leading to the cess-pool, (no uncommon occurrence in Paris,) resolved to call in the police. He did so without loss of time, the heavy stone covering was removed, and one of the attendants stooping down and lowering a lantern, as long as the stench would permit him, saw at the bottom, and at a considerable depth, something like a human form leaning against the side of the receptacle. Ropes and ladders were now immediately procured; two men went down, and in a few minutes brought up a body--it was that of the unfortunate young man who had been so long missing! Life was not quite extinct, for some motion of the limbs was perceptible, there was even one last low groan, but then all animation ceased for ever. The appearance of the body was most dreadful; the face was a livid green colour, the trunk looked like that of a man drowned, and kept long beneath the water, all brown and green--one of the feet had completely disappeared--the other was nearly half decomposed and gone; the hands were dreadfully lacerated, and told of a desperate struggle to escape: worms were crawling about; all was putrid and loathsome. How did this unfortunate young man come into so dreadful a position? was the question that immediately occurred; and the only answer that could be given was, that on the night of the cess-pool being emptied, the porter remembered this young man coming home very late, or rather early in the morning. He himself had forgotten to warn him of the aperture being uncovered, indeed he supposed that it would have been sufficiently seen by the lights left burning at its edge;--these had probably been blown out by the wind, and the young man had thus fallen in. That life should have been supported so long under such circumstances, seems almost incredible: but it is no less curious than true; for the porter was tried before the Correctional Tribunal for inadvertent homicide, the facts were adduced in evidence, and carelessness having been proved, he was sentenced to imprisonment for several weeks, and to a heavy fine.

Of churches and religious establishments, there were plenty in and about the Rue St Denis. Besides the great church of St Jacques, mentioned before, there were in the street itself the churches of the Holy Sepulchre, of St Leu, and St Gilles; of the Innocents; of the Saviour; and of St Jacques de l'Hôpital: while of conventual institutions, there were the Hospitals of St Catharine; of the Holy Trinity; of the Filles de St Magloire; of the Filles Dieu; of the Community of St Chaumont; of the S[oe]urs de Charité; and of the great monastery of St Lazare. The fronts, or other considerable portions of those buildings, were all visible in the street, and added greatly to its antiquated appearance. The long irregular lines of gable roofs on either side, converging from points high above the spectator's head, until they met or crossed in a dim perspective, near the horizon, were broken here and there by the pointed front, or the tapering spire of a church or convent. A solemn gateway protruded itself at intervals into the street, and, with its flanking turrets and buttresses, gave broad masses of shade in perpendicular lines, strongly contrasted with the horizontal or diagonal patches of dark colour caused by the houses. At early morn and eve, a shrill tinkling of bells warned the neighbours of the sacred duties of many a secluded penitent, or admonished them that it was time to send up their own orisons to God. Before mid-day had arrived, and soon after it had passed, the deeper tones of a _bourdon_, from some of the parochial churches, invited the citizens to the sacrifice of the mass or the canticles of vespers. Not seldom the throngs of busy wordlings were forced to separate and give room to some holy procession, which, with glittering cross at the head, with often tossed and sweetly smelling censers at the side, with white-robed chanting acolyths, and reverend priests, in long line behind, came forth to take its way to some holy edifice. The zealous citizens would suspend their avocations for a while, would repeat a reverential prayer as the holy men went by, and then return to the absorbing calls of business, not unbenefited by the recollections just awakened in their minds. On the eves and on the mornings of holy festivals, business was totally suspended; the bells, great and small, rang forth their silvery sounds; the churches were crowded, the chapels glittered with blazing lights; the prayers of the priests and people rose with the incense before the high altar; the solemn organ swelled its full tones responsive to the loud-voiced choir; the curates thundered from the pulpits, to the edification of charitable congregations; and after all had been prostrated in solemn adoration of the Divine presence, the citizens would pour out into the street, and repair, some to their homes, some to the Palace of the Tournelles, with its towers and gardens guarded by the Bastille; others to the Louvre or to the Pré-aux-clercs, and the fields by the river side; others would stroll up the hill of Montmartre; and some in boats would brave the dangers of the Seine! On other and sadder occasions, the inhabitants of the Rue St Denis would quit their houses in earnestly talking groups, and would adjourn to the open space in front of the Halles. Here, on the top of an octagonal tower, some twenty feet high, and covered with a conical spire, between the openings of pointed arches, might be seen criminals with their heads and hands protruding through the wooden collar of the pillory. The guard of the provost, or the lieutenant of police, would keep off the noisy throng below, and the goodwives would discuss among themselves the enormities of the coin-clipper, the cut-purse, the incendiary, or the unjust dealer, who were exposed on those occasions for their delinquencies; while the offenders themselves, would--a few of them--hang down their heads, and close their eyes in the unsufferable agony of shame; but by far the greater number would shout forth words of bold defiance or indecent ribaldry, would protrude the mocking tongue, or spit forth curses with dire volubility. Then would rise the shouts of _gamins_, then would come the thick volley of eggs, fish-heads, butcher's-offal, and all the garbage of the market, aimed unerringly by many a strenuous arm at the heads of the culprits; and then the soldiers with their pertuisanes would make quick work among the legs of the retreating crowd, and the jailers would apply the ready lash to the backs of the hardened criminals aloft; and thus, the hour's exhibition ended, and the "king's justice" satisfied, away would the criminals be led, some on a hurdle to Montfauçon, and there hung on its ample gibbet, amid the rattling bones of other wretches; some would be hurried back to the Chastelet, or other prisons; and others would be sent off to work, chained to the oars of the royal galleys.

This was a common amusement of the idlers of this quarter: but the passions of the mob, if they needed stronger excitement, had to find a scene of horrid gratification on the Place de Grève, opposite the Hotel de Ville, where at rare intervals a heretic would be burnt, a murderer hung, or a traitor quartered; but this spot of bloody memory lies far from the Rue St Denis, and we are not now called upon to reveal its terrible recollections: let us turn back to our good old street.