Part 7

Notwithstanding its warlike name, the Arsenal quarter is one of the most peaceful parts of the Capital. Centuries ago, the palaces disappeared that brought it its wealth, life and movement. On their ruins and their huge gardens, humble, tranquil streets have been made: the Rue de la Cerisaie, where Marshal Villeroy received Peter the Great in the sumptuous Zamet mansion; the Rue Charles V., where once was the elegant home of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, now at No. 12, premises in which a white-capped sister-of-charity distributes cod-liver oil and woollen socks to poor, suffering children; the Rue des Lions-Saint-Paul; the Rue Beautreillis, where Victorien Sardou was born; near there the great Balzac dwelt. "I was then living," he says in his admirable _Facino Cane_, "in a small street you probably don't know, the Rue de Lesdiguières. It commences at the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite a fountain near the Place de la Bastille, and issues in the Rue de la Cerisaie. Love of knowledge had driven me into a garret, where I worked during the night, and spent the day in a neighbouring library, that of _Monsieur_. When it was fine, I took rare walks on the Bourdon Boulevard." This modest Rue de Lesdiguières still exists in part; on the site occupied by Nos. 8 and 10, could be seen, a few years ago, one of the containing walls of the Bastille; narrow houses have been stuck against it; and, at No. 10, it is the very wall of the old Parisian fortress which constitutes the back of the porter's lodge! What a destiny for a prison wall!

Of what was once the Arsenal only the mansion of the Grand Master is left; it is, at present, the Arsenal Library--formerly called, as Balzac says, the Library of _Monsieur_. It used to be a fine dwelling, the home of Sully, and possesses priceless books and autographs, and most valuable writings. In a coffer, covered with flower-de-luces, may be admired Saint Louis's book of hours, side by side with a fragment of his royal mantle, the blue silk of it, worn with time, being strewn with golden flower-de-luces; the old book bears this venerable inscription: "It is the psalter of Monseigneur Loys, once his mother's;" and was taken from the scattered treasures of the Sainte-Chapelle. Then there is Charles the Fifth's Bible with the King's writing on it: "This book (belongs) to me, the King of France;" and a missal, each leaf of which is framed with an incomparable garland due to the brush of the "master of flowers," a great artist whose name is unknown to us. Besides, there are rare manuscripts, marvellous bindings, unique editions, romances of chivalry, classics, poets of every age, complete in this fine palace; together with Latude's letters, the box that served for his ridiculous attempt against Madame de Pompadour; and, near them, the cross-examination of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, and the death-certificate of the Man in the Iron Mask; Henri IV.'s love-letters too, with his kisses sent to the Marchioness de Verneuil, and the documents relating to the affair of the Necklace. How many more things in addition...!

Let us add that the curators--Henri Martin, so learned and obliging, Funck-Brentano, the exquisite historian of the Bastille, the picturesque relater of all its dramas. Sheffer and Eugène Muller are not only scholars needing no praise but most courteous and genial men--and you will quite understand why the Arsenal is one of the few corners in Paris where it is delightful to go and work or to saunter about. Indeed, it is a tradition of the house. Nodier, good old Nodier, who was one of Monsieur de Bornier's predecessors and a predecessor also of J. M. de Heredia, the master who has so recently gone from us, Nodier, the admirable author of the _Trophées_, had succeeded in making the Arsenal the centre of literary and artistic Paris. Hugo, Lamartine, de Musset, Balzac, Méry, de Vigny, and Fr. Soulié used to meet there; and fine verses were said while regarding the sun glow with red flame behind the towers of Notre Dame.

"The towers of Notre Dame his name's great H composed!"

wrote Vacquerie.

Of the Bastille nothing remains except a few stones which formed the substructure of one of the old towers; and these have been carefully removed to the Célestins Quay, along the Seine, where they are visible to-day. In vain, therefore, would any one now seek for a vestige of the sombre fortress over which so many legends hovered. Latude's great shade itself would hardly locate the spot; and yet how full Paris history is of this traditional Bastille, which the people, amazed with their easy victory, could not tire of visiting after the 15th of July 1789. Such was their curiosity and such their eagerness that Soulès, the governor appointed by the Parisian municipality, was compelled to stop the visits, on the curious ground "that such damage had already been done to the fortress by visitors that more than 200,000 livres would be required to repair it." Repair the Bastille! The souvenir manuscripts of Paré tell us the fury excited by this strange pretension in Danton, sergeant of a section of the National Guard, who, with his company, was turned back by the order.

Danton had himself admitted into the presence of the unfortunate Soulès, seized him by the collar and dragged him to the Town Hall; the prohibition was removed; and Citizen Palloy was thenceforth allowed to exploit the celebrated State prison. The stones were "hewn and cut into images of the fortress and dedicated to the various departments and assemblies," or into "commemorative slabs intended to rouse people's courage." Palloy cut up the leads into medals, and made rings with the iron chains; out of the marble he manufactured games of dominoes, and had the delicate thought to offer one of these games to the young Dauphin to inspire him with "the horror of tyranny."

Balls were held on the site of the Bastille. Wine flowed, fiddles were scraped, and printed calicoes of that period show us the ruins of the old Parisian citadel surmounted with this inscription: "Dancing here."

The huge space left vacant by the demolition had to be filled up. Napoleon I., whose artistic conceptions were sometimes disconcerting, had constructed there, in 1811, by Alavoine, a strange sort of fountain of bizarre appearance: it was a colossal elephant, twenty-four metres high, which spouted water from its trunk. Built temporarily in plaster and mud, the elephant quickly crumbled away under the action of weather and rain; and soon became a lamentable débris surrounded with disjointed planks. The urchins of the district made it the scene of Homeric struggles; but the real familiars were the rats that had made their home inside the structure, so that, when the demolition began, regular _battues_ had to be organised with men and dogs; and, for months, these dreaded rodents infested the terrorised quarter. In 1840, the present column was erected; since then, the genius of Liberty has poised over Paris his airy foot, and Barye's fine lion watches over the repose of the victims of 1830 that are interred within the crypt of the monument.

The Rue Saint-Antoine contains certain handsome mansions: the Cossé mansion, where Quélus died; the Mayenne and Ormesson mansion, built by du Cerceau on the remains of the Saint-Paul mansion and Germain Pilon's studio; the Sully mansion, whose noble front was not long ago mutilated. Hard by, at the corner of the Rue du Figuier and the picturesque Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, which latter used to be the Rue de la Mortellerie, stands what is left of the Sens mansion, the only specimen, together with the Cluny Museum, of what private architecture was in the fifteenth century. After being inhabited by Princes of the Church, Bishops, Cardinals, and also by Marguerite de Valois (Queen Margot), the Sens mansion fell on evil days. It became the "Diligence Office"; and from its courtyard is said to have started the famous courier whose murder was attributed to Lesurques, the unfortunate Lesurques popularised by the well-known drama performed at the Ambigu, which caused so many tears to flow.

In more recent times, the Hôtel de Sens derogated further still. It became a manufactory of sweets!

At No. 5 of the Rue du Figuier, we meet with a draw-well, the top of which is finely sculptured; the spot brings back the memory of Rabelais, the admirable Rabelais, who died quite near, in the Rue des Jardins. At No. 15, opened the sixteenth-century door through which the actors of the illustrious theatre established on the ancient site of the Jeu de Paume de la Croix-Noire, proceeded to their private stage-room. It was before this door that Molière was arrested and taken to the Châtelet, because he owed "142 livres to Antoine Fausseur, master-chandler, his purveyor of light."

Let us cross the Place de la Bastille and go down the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine. There, at No. 115, in front of an old eighteenth-century house, the Deputy Baudin was killed against a barricade, on the 3rd of December 1851. At No. 303, in the reign of Napoleon I., stood Dr. Dubuisson's private hospital, where General Malet was confined. There he hatched the prodigious plot the disconcerting history of which we intend shortly to relate. Farther on, near the Rue de Montreuil, we pass by the remains of Réveillon's wall-paper stores, pillaged on the 17th of April 1789; it was one of the preludes of the Revolution.

Last of all, at No. 70, in the Rue de Charonne, Dr. Belhomme's private hospital stood, which was used as a special prison under the Revolution. Only those were admitted who could pay and pay well. The irrefutable memoirs of Monsieur de Saint-Aulaine reveal to us a Belhomme familiar, cynical, exacting his fees and thouing Duchesses short of money who haggled with him on the question of their life. The most amiable of historians, my excellent friend G. Lenôtre, whom it is always necessary to quote when facts of the Revolutionary epoch are in question, has reconstituted the terrible and surprising story of the Belhomme institution where they laughed, danced, or even flirted under the dread eye of Fouquier-Tinville; and has related, with his habitual documentation, the bizarre liaison of the Duchess of Orléans, widow of Louis-Philippe Egalité, with Rouzet, the Conventional, buried later at Dreux under the name of the "Count de Folmon" in the Orléans family vault.

Pursuing our way and passing by the Church of Sainte Marguerite, in which Louis XVIII. was interred ... or his double, we reach the barrier of the Throne (the Throne overthrown, people said in 1793). The scaffold, which had temporarily quitted the Revolution Square, was put up here during the most terrible period of the Terror, and the "great batches" were executed upon it. In six weeks, 1300 victims perished, among them, André Chénier, the Baron de Trenck, the Abbess of Montmorency, Cécile Renaud, Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, the poet Roucher, and many others. The bodies of these unfortunate people, stripped of their clothing, were loaded each evening on covered waggons, with their severed heads between their legs; and the horrible vehicle, dripping with blood along the road, was tipped into some pit dug at the bottom of the Picpus Convent Gardens, where still exists the cemetery of those that were executed during the Revolution.

Retracing our steps, we arrive at No. 9 of the Rue de Reuilly; here was once the Hortensia Tavern, kept in 1789 by the famous Santerre, a major in the National Guard. The house has not much changed; at present, however, it is a girls' boarding-school which occupies the large rooms where the thundering General organised those terrible descents on Paris and launched those dreadful battalions of the faubourg that terrorised even the Convention itself.

On the other side of the Place de la Bastille, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, near Saint Paul's Church, is the Charlemagne Passage, most picturesque by reason of the old souvenirs it contains and the strange population it harbours: chair-menders, mattress-carders, milk-women, open-air flower-women gather round the ruin of the charming mansion which, under Charles V., was the sumptuous abode of the provost, Hugues Aubryot.

The front, which is still remarkable and fine-looking, is an astonishing contrast to the poor, low houses that huddle round it. Fowls peck at the foot of the fifteenth-century turrets, which enclose a handsome staircase; and patched linen dries on iron wire stretched between the caryatide windows of the seventeenth century, replacing those behind which once mused the Duke d'Orléans and the Duke de Berri, as also, in 1409, Jean de Montaigu, beheaded for sorcery! who were formerly illustrious guests in this elegant dwelling.

And now, let us stop at the Vosges Square on the other side of the Bastille. It is another rare nook of our old City, which, through the centuries, has preserved its ancient character very nearly intact. The houses there, in Louis XIII. style, have not changed. The scenery has remained the same. The _Précieuses_ could take their favourite walks there; and those punctilious in honour might draw their sword, as in the time of Richelieu and the Edict-malcontents; only the public of spectators would be quite different. The fine ladies of the country hight Tender, the Cydalises and Aramynthas, the lords once living in those noble dwellings, they who, on the 16th of March 1612, were present at the tournament given by the Queen Regent, Marie de Médici, in honour of the peace concluded with Spain, or they who proceeded in grand coaches to the fair Marion de Lorme's or to Madame de Sévigné's, are to-day replaced by petty annuitants, modest shopkeepers retired from business and pensioned-off officers. Humble charwomen work at their tasks in the spots where Mazarin's nieces paused in their sedan-chairs; and the numerous Jews that live in the quarter meet there on Saturdays. It is a curious spectacle to see these men and women of strongly marked type betaking themselves to the Synagogue, which is near a partially subsisting eighteenth-century mansion still bearing delicate decorations, but at present occupied by a butcher, in the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule. Not a few old men wear the long gaberdine, their hair in corkscrew curls, and earrings in their ears. Velvet-eyed girls coifed with bands, wonderfully handsome and peculiarly dressed, assemble there on certain religious feast-days. It is a strange evocation; 'twould seem that in these peaceful quarters biblical traditions have been preserved in some Jewish families.

The old-time animation, however, is an exception. The Vosges Square, once the Place Royale, where Richelieu lived and Fronsac, Chabannes, Marshal de Chaulnes, Rohan-Chabot, Rotrou, Dangeau, Canillac, the Prince de Talmont and Mademoiselle du Châtelet, where Madame de Sévigné was born, where the tragic actress Rachel dwelt, and Théophile Gautier and Victor Hugo, is to-day completely neglected; and this delightful Paris nook, where so much wit was spent, such fine ladies rivalled in grace and elegance and so many exquisites drew their swords, is now nothing but a large, lonely garden, provincial and melancholy, frequented almost exclusively by the pupils of neighbouring boarding-schools, who play there at prisoners' base, and leap-frog, beneath the debonair shadow of Louis XIII.'s statue, with its philosophic frame of a Punch-and-Judy show and a chair-woman's stall.

In the ancient Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine (at present called the Rue de Sévigné) on the site now occupied by No. 11, formerly stood the Marais theatre, built with money provided by Beaumarchais. In 1792, the _Guilty Mother_ was performed there, for the benefit, said the play-bill, "of the first soldier who shall send citizen Beaumarchais an Austrian's ear." The modern building is a modest private-bath establishment, with a small garden in front in which grow some spindle-trees--in boxes, and which is adorned with silvered balls. The huge wall, all grim and grey, backing the slightly-built bath establishment, is the old wall of the Force Prison, where, on a post at the corner of the Rue des Balais, Madame de Lamballe was executed, where also Madame de Tallien was transferred, and Princess de Tarente was confined, the latter, the grandmother of the kind, courteous and learned Duke de la Trémoïlle, who had only to dip into his incomparable family archives to give us the most precious documents of French history, and to whom we are indebted for those picturesque and exciting "Souvenirs of Madame de Tarente," one of the most valuable narrations by an eye-witness of the Revolutionary period.

The Carnavalet mansion, Madame de Sévigné's "dear Carnavalette," is close by, as also the ancient Le Peletier-Saint-Fargeau mansion, to-day the City of Paris Library. It is a fine, large building of noble appearance, which contains wonderful books, maps, plans and manuscripts. The written history of Paris is there; and all workers know the pretty, sculpture-ornamented room of Monsieur le Vayer, the erudite, obliging Curator of these fine collections. Messieurs Poète, Beaurepaire, Jacob, Jarach and Wilhem, in the Library; Messieurs Pètre and Stirling in the History room are the wise and welcoming hosts of this admirable Parisian Library.

All this Marais quarter, indeed, contains sumptuous mansions, not one of which, alas! has been respected. All are given over to business and manufacturing. The Lamoignon mansion is occupied by glass-polishers and garden-seatmakers; the Albret mansion by a bronze lamp-dealer; those of Tallard, Maulevrier, Sauvigny, Brevannes, Epernon, &c., are still standing, but in what a state! The Rue des Nonnains-d'Hyères offers us its curious bass-relief, in painted stone, representing a knife-grinder in eighteenth-century costume. In 1748, a Madame de Pannelier kept a "wit-office" in this same street; Lalande, Sautereau, Guichard, Leclerc de Merry used to attend meetings there. They were held on Wednesdays, and were preceded by an excellent dinner. The tradition has happily been preserved in Paris.

In the Rue François-Miron, one sees a spacious, handsome mansion with circular pediment, escutcheons and garlands. It is the Beauvais mansion, built by Le Pautre in 1658.

To look at it now, old and in a dull street, one would hardly think that the coaches of Louis XIV.--King Sun--had passed under the dark vault of the entrance gate and that, from the top of the central pavilion balcony, Queen Anne of Austria, in company with the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin, Marshal de Turenne and other illustrious nobles, had watched her son Louis XIV. and her daughter-in-law, the new Queen Marie-Thérèse of Austria, go by as they made, through Saint-Antoine's Gate, their solemn entry into Paris on the 26th of August 1660![3]

On account of its picturesque aspect and the fine mansions it contains, the Rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier is one of the most curious in Paris. At No. 26 stands the Châlons-Luxembourg mansion, with its monumental door and wonderful knocker. At the bottom of the courtyard is an exceedingly elegant Louis XIII. pavilion in brick and stone, and of delicate proportions. The mansion was built for the second Constable of Montmorency, and though it is quite lost in this gloomy quarter, it maintains its proud bearing.

After the Revolution, this street, whence nearly all the owners of houses had emigrated, if they had not been guillotined, was completely stripped of its former splendour. Petty annuitants, small clerks, and poor people took up their abode in the abandoned buildings. Grass grew in the streets; many of the dwellings had been sold as national property; and the Rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier underwent the common fate; it became democratic.

Between this street and the neighbouring Rue des Barres, one is surprised to see a sort of fissure so narrow that two persons would find it difficult to walk abreast through it, a sort of corridor along which the wind sweeps past dilapidated, leaning houses on either side. It is the Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau, wretched and dirty enough, but quaint, with the glorious tower of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais in the background, rising and standing out against the sky.

The proper moment to take a look at the sinister little Rue des Barres is on a stormy night, behind the church of Saint-Gervais. It is then easy to imagine what this quiet quarter must have been like when, on the 9th of Thermidor, about eleven in the evening, 'mid torch-lights, calls to arms, the noise of the tocsin and shouts of the multitude, the dead body of Lebas was brought thither, and, on a chair, Augustin Robespierre, who had broken his thighs in leaping from one of the Town Hall windows. The dead man and the dying man were dragged to the Barres mansion transformed into a Sectional Committee Tribunal. On the morrow Lebas was buried, and Robespierre was carried before the Committee of Public Safety, who sent him to the scaffold.

The Rue des Barres descends to the Seine, near the old Town Hall Quay, where the big, flat boats laden with apples, stones, or sand take their moorings. Into it opens one of the exits of the charming Church of Saint-Gervais, whose fine painted windows, masterpieces of Pinaigrier and Jean Cousin, were almost totally destroyed twenty years ago by an explosion of dynamite. Against the church walls, in the laicised ruins of an ancient chapel, a sweet manufacturer has installed his alembics and copper pans; and it is a curious sight to see the lighted fires of this strange kitchen beneath these antique Gothic arches, between these blackened pillars still bearing traces of the candles that once burned in front of the holy images, on a ground formerly used for burying and even now concealing bones. The out-offices of the old church still remain, wonderfully picturesque, and open into the Rue François-Miron, No. 2, on the left of the entrance portal of the church, between a laundress's establishment and a furniture-remover's premises!