CHAPTER XX

THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE--THE OPÉRA--SOME FAMOUS CAFÉS--CONCLUSION

As early as 1341 the Rue des Jongleurs was inhabited by minstrels, mimes and players. They were men of tender heart, for in 1331 two jongleurs, Giacomo of Pistoia and Hugues of Lorraine, were touched by beholding a paralysed woman forsaken by the way, and determined to found a refuge for the sick poor: they hired a room and furnished it with some beds, but being unable to provide funds for maintenance, their warden collected alms from the charitable. In 1332, at a meeting of the Jongleurs of Paris, Giacomo and Hugues were present, and urged the claims of the poor upon their fellows. The players decided to found a guild with a hospital and church dedicated to St. Julian of the Minstrels,[177] but the Bishop of Paris, doubting their financial powers, required a certain sum to be paid within four years, in order to endow a chaplaincy and to compensate the _curé_ of St. Merri. The players more than fulfilled their promise; their capitulary was confirmed by pope and king, and in 1343 they elected William the Flute Player and Henry of Mondidier as administrators; the servants of the Muses were therefore of no small importance in the fourteenth century. As early as 1398 the Confraternity of the Passion is known to have existed, and so charmed the people of Paris by its Passion Plays that the hour of vespers was advanced to allow the faithful time to attend the representations, which lasted from 1.30 to 5 o'clock without any interval. In 1548 the Confraternity was performing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, the old mansion of Jean Sans Peur, for it was then forbidden to play the mystery of the Passion any more, and limited to profane, decent and lawful pieces, which were not to begin before 3 o'clock. From 1566 to 1676 the Comedians of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as they were then called, continued their performances, and many ordinances were needed to purify the stage, to prevent licentious pieces and the use of words of _double entente_. Competitive companies performed at the Hôtel de Cluny, and in the Rue Michel le Comte, in those days a narrow street which became so blocked by carriages and horses during the performances that the inhabitants complained of being unable to reach their houses, and of suffering much from thieves and footpads. It was at the Hôtel de Bourgogne that the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine--_Le Cid_, _Andromaque_ and _Phèdre_--were first performed.

At No. 12 Rue Mazarine an inscription marks the site of the Tennis Court of the Métayers near the fosses of the old Porte de Nesle, where in 1643 a cultured young fellow, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière, son of a prosperous tradesman of Paris, having associated himself with the Béjart family of comedians, opened the _Illustre Théâtre_. The venture met with small success, for soon Molière crossed the Seine and migrated to the Port St. Paul. Thence he returned to the Faubourg St. Germain and rented the Tennis Court of the Croix Blanche. Ill fortune still followed him, for in 1645, unable to pay his candlemaker, the illustrious player saw the inside of the debtors' prison at the Petit Châtelet, and the company must needs borrow money to release their director. In 1646 the players left for the Provinces and were not seen again in Paris for twelve years.

The theatre of those days was innocent of stage upholstery, the exiguous decorations being confined to some hangings of faded tapestry on the stage and a few tallow candles with tin reflectors. A chandelier holding four candles hung from the roof and was periodically lowered and drawn up again during the performance; any spectator near by snuffed the candles with his fingers. The orchestra consisted of a flute and a drum, or two violins. The play began at two o'clock; the charges for entrance were twopence half-penny for a standing place in the pit, fivepence for a seat. On 24th October 1658 Molière, having won distinguished patronage, was honoured by a royal command to play Corneille's _Nicodème_ before the court at the Louvre. After the play was ended Molière prayed to be allowed to perform a little piece of his own--_Le Docteur Amoureux_--and so much amused Louis XIV. that the players were commanded to settle at Paris and permitted to use the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourbon three days a week in alternation with the comedians of the opera. Here it was that the first essentially French comedy, _Les Précieuses Ridicules_, was performed with such success that after the second performance the prices were doubled. During the first performance an old playgoer is said to have risen and exclaimed, "_Courage! Molière, voilà de la bonne comédie!_"

After the demolition of the Hôtel de Bourbon, the players were settled in Richelieu's theatre at the Palais Royal, where they performed for the first time on 20th January 1661. During this period of transition Molière was again invited to play before the king in the Salle des Gardes (Caryatides) at the Louvre, and so keen was the interest in the new _bonne comédie_ that the almost dying Mazarin had his chair dragged into the hall that he might be present.

In 1665 the king appointed Molière _valet du roi_ at a salary of a thousand livres, subsidised the company to the amount of seven thousand livres a year, and they were thenceforth known as the "Troupe du Roi." Free from pecuniary anxiety, the great dramatist wrote his masterpieces, _Le Misanthrope_, _Tartuffe_, _L'Avare_, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and _Les Femmes Savantes_.

In 1673, after Molière's death, the Troupe du Roi joined the players of the Marais and rented the famous Théâtre Guénégaud in the old Tennis Court of La Bouteille which had been fitted up for the first performances of French opera in 1671-1672. The united companies played there until 1680, when the long-standing jealousy which had existed between the Troupe du Roi and the players of the Hôtel de Bourgogne was finally dissipated by the fusion of the two companies to form the Comédie Française. For nine years the famous Comédie used the Théâtre Guénégaud, whose site may be seen marked with an inscription at 42 Rue Mazarine. In 1689 the players were evicted from the Théâtre Guénégaud, owing to the machinations of the Jansenists at the Collége Mazarin, and rented the Tennis Court de l'Etoile near the Boulevard St. Germain, now No. 14 Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, which they opened on 18th April 1689 by a performance of _Phèdre_ and _Le Médecin malgré lui_. Here the Comédie Française remained until 1770. In 1781 they were playing at the Théâtre de la Nation (now Odéon.)[178] In 1787 a theatre was built in the Rue Richelieu for the _Variétés Amusantes_, or the _Palais Variétés_, where the new Théâtre Français[179] now stands, a little to the west of Richelieu's theatre of the Palais Cardinal, whose site is indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. Honoré.

Soon the passions evoked by the Revolutionary movement were felt on the boards, and the staid old Comédie Française was rent by rival factions. The performance of Chenier's patriotic tragedy, _Charles IX._, on 4th November 1789, was made a political demonstration, and the pit acclaimed Talma with frantic applause as he created the _rôle_ of Charles IX., and the days of St. Bartholomew were acted on the stage. The bishops tried to stop the performances, and priests refused absolution to those of their penitents who went to see them. The Royalists among the Comedians replied by playing a loyalist repertory, _Cinna_ and _Athalie_, amid shouts from the pit for _William Tell_ and the _Death of Cæsar_, and Molière's famous house became an arena where political factions strove for mastery. Men went to the theatre armed as to a battle. Every couplet fired the passions of the audience, the boxes crying, "_Vive le roi!_" to be answered by the hoarse voices of the pit, "_Vive la nation!_" Shouts were raised for the busts of Voltaire and of Brutus: they were brought from the foyer and placed on the stage. The very kings of shreds and patches on the boards came to blows and the Roman toga concealed a poignard. For a time "idolatry" triumphed at the Nation, but Talma and the patriots at length won. A reconciliation was effected, and at a performance of the _Taking of the Bastille_, on 8th January 1791, Talma addressed the audience saying that they had composed their differences. Naudet, the Royalist champion, was recalcitrant, and amid furious shouts from the pit, "On your knees, citizen!" at length gave way, embraced Talma with ill-grace, and on the ensuing nights the Revolutionary repertory, _The Conquest of Liberty_, _Rome Saved_, and _Brutus_ held the boards. The court took their revenge at the opera where the boxes called for the airs, "O Richard, O mon roi," and "Règne sur un peuple fidèle," while the king, queen and dauphin appeared in the box amid shouts of "_Vive le roi!_" On 13th January of the same year the restrictions on the opening of playhouses were revoked, and by November no less than seventy-eight theatres were registered on the books of the Hôtel de Ville. The Théâtre Français became the Théâtre de la Republique, and during the early months of '93, when the fate of the monarchy hung in the balance, the most popular piece was _Catherine_, or _The Farmer's Fair Wife_ (_La belle Fermière_). _Fénelon_, a new tragedy, was often played, and on 6th February citizen Talma acted Othello for his benefit performance.

In the stormy year of 1830, when the July Revolution made an end for ever of the Bourbon cause in France, the Comédie Française was again a scene of fierce and bitter strife. _Hernani_, a drama in verse, had been accepted from the pen of Victor Hugo, the brilliant and exuberant master of a new Romantic school of poets, who had determined to emancipate themselves from the traditions, which had long since hardened into literary dogmas, of the Classical school of the siècle de Louis Quatorze. On the night of the first performance each side, Romanticists and Classicists, had packed the theatre with their partisans, and the air was charged with feeling. The curtain rose, but less than two lines were uttered before the pent-up passions of the audience burst forth:--

"DONA JOSEFA--'Serait-ce déjà lui? C'est bien à l'escalier Dérobé----'"

The last word had not passed the actress's lips when a howl of execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of the verse. The Romanticists, led by Théophile Gautier, answered in withering blasphemies, and soon the pit became a pandemonium of warring factions. Night after night the literary sects renewed their contests, and the representations, as Victor Hugo said, became battles rather than performances. The year 1830 was the '93 of the Romantic school, but the passions it evoked have long since been calmed, and _Hernani_ and _Le Roi s'Amuse_, which latter was suppressed by the Government of Louis Philippe after the first performance, have taken their place in the classic repertory of the Théâtre Français beside the tragedies of Racine and Corneille.

A curious development of dramatic art runs parallel to the movement we have traced. One of the earliest Corporations of Paris was that of the famous Basoche,[180] or law-clerks and practitioners, at the Palais de Justice, who were organised in a little realm of their own, subject to the superior power of the Parlement. The Basoche had its own king (_roi de la Basoche_), chancellor, masters, almoners, secretaries, treasurers and a number of minor officials, made its own laws and punished offenders. It had its own money, seal, and arms composed of an escritoire on a field _fleur-de-lisé_, surmounted by a casque and morion. It had, moreover, jurisdiction over the _farces_, _sottises_ and _moralités_ played by its members before the public. The clerks of the Basoche organised processions and plays for public festivals, and were compensated for out-of-pocket expenses if for any reason the celebrations were cancelled by the Parlement. If the date, 6th January 1482, of one of these performances in the Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice, so vividly described by Victor Hugo in _Notre Dame_, be correct, the prohibition by the Parlement in 1477, renewed in 1478, of any performances of _farce_, _sottise_, or _moralité_ by the king of the Basoche in the Palais or the Châtelet, or elsewhere in public, under pain of a whipping with withies and banishment, must have been soon withdrawn. In 1538 the Basoche was ordered to deliver to the Parlement any plays they proposed to perform, that they might be examined and emended (_visités et reformés_) and to act in public, only such plays as had been approved by the court.

The clerks of the Basoche were clothed in yellow and blue taffety, and, on extraordinary occasions, in gorgeous costumes varying according to the company to which they belonged. Each captain had the form and style of his company's dress painted on vellum, and whoso desired to join signed his name beneath, and agreed to be subject to a fine of ten crowns if he made default. In 1528 a famous trial took place before the Parlement on the occasion of an appeal by one of the clerks against the chancellor of the Basoche, who had seized his cloak in payment of a fine and costs. After many pleadings by celebrated lawyers, the case was referred back to the king of the Basoche, with instructions that he was to treat his subjects amiably.

The treasurers of the Basoche were charged with the cost of the annual planting of the May tree in the Cour du Mai of the Palais. Towards the end of May the procession of the Basoche wended its way to the Forest of Bondy, where halt was made under the _Orme aux harangues_ (elm of the speeches). Here their procureur made an oration, and demanded from the officer of woods and forests two trees of his own choice in the king's name, which were carried to Paris amid much playing of drums and fifes and trumpets. On the last Saturday in May the ceremony of the planting took place in the court of the palace, the preceding year's tree, standing to the right of the entrance, was felled and removed, and the more flourishing of the two brought from the forest was planted in its stead.

Anne of Austria, to whom Molière dedicated one of his plays, was so devoted an admirer of the theatre that even during the period of court mourning for her royal husband she was unable to renounce her favourite pleasure and witnessed the plays at the Palais Royal concealed behind her ladies. Mazarin, courtier that he was, flattered her passion for the drama by introducing a company of Italian opera-singers, who in 1647 performed _La Finta Pazza_ at the Hôtel de Bourbon.

The new entertainment met with instant success, and the French were spurred to emulation by the music and voices of the foreign performers. Anne's music masters, Lambert and Cambert, set to music a piece written by the Abbé Perrin, who was attached to the court of the Duke of Orleans, and this musical comedy was performed with brilliant success before the young king at Vincennes. Encouraged by Mazarin, Perrin and Cambert joined the Marquis of Sourdeac, a clever mechanician, and obtained permission in 1669 to open an Academy of Music, for so the new venture was called, and works were performed which vied in attraction with those of the Italians. Perrin now obtained the sole privilege of producing operas in Paris and other French towns, and in 1671-1672 we find the _entrepreneurs_ giving performances of _Pomone_ among other "_Comédies Françaises en Musique_" in the theatre of the Hôtel de Guénégaud. Perrin having disagreed with his partners, the privilege of performing opera was next transferred to a young Italian musician named Lulli, who had entered the service of Mademoiselle (daughter of the Duke of Orleans) as a kitchen boy, but having developed an extraordinary aptitude for the violin was put under a master, and became one of the greatest performers of the day. He entered the king's service, won the protection of Madame de Montespan, and so charmed Louis by his talents that his fortune was assured. Lulli's works were first given at the Tennis Court of Bel-air, in the Rue Vaugirard, and a clause having been inserted in the charter permitting the nobles of the court to take part in the representations without derogation, a performance of _Love and Bacchus_ was given before the king in which the Duke of Monmouth was associated with seven French nobles.

When Molière's company of comedians left the theatre of the Palais Royal in 1673, Lulli's "Academy" was established in their place, and the Palais Royal Theatre became the Royal Opera House until 1787, with an interval caused by the rebuilding after the fire of 1763. In 1697 the Italians were forbidden to perform any more in Paris, and French opera enjoyed a monopoly of royal favour, until the Regent recalled the Italians in 1716.

The Académie de Musique, or French Opera, subsequently migrated to the Salle d'Opéra, at the Hôtel Louvois, on the site of the present Square Louvois. It was in this house that the Duke of Berri was assassinated in 1820. The Government decreed the demolition of the building, and an opera house was hurriedly erected in the Rue Lepelletier. This inconvenient, stuffy Hall of the Muses, so familiar to the older generation of opera-goers, was at length superseded by the present luxurious temple in 1874.

The early French operas were of the nature of elaborate ballets, based invariably on mythological subjects, and, indeed, the ballet up to recent times, when the reforming influence of Wagner's music-dramas made itself felt, has always formed the more important part of every operatic performance. Only when the curtain rose on the _scènes de ballet_ did chatter cease, for as Taine remarked, "_Le public ne se trouve émoustillé que par le ballet_" ("The public only brightens up at the ballet"), and the traditional habit of Society was expressed in the formula, "_On n'écoute que le ballet_" ("One only listens to the ballet"). Molière wrote a tragédie-ballet, a pastorale heroique, a pastorale comique, and eight comédies-ballets, in one of which, _Le Sicilian_, the king himself, the Marquis of Villeroi and other courtiers performed with Molière and his daughter. In 1681 the permission already given to the princes and other nobles to take part in the ballets without derogation was extended to the ladies of the court, who in that year performed the _Triomphe de l'Amour_. The innovation proved most successful, and soon affected the public stage, where, as at the court, up to that period male performers alone were tolerated. Mdlle. de la Fontaine was the first of the famous _danseuses_ of the Paris opera, and her portrait, with those of some score of her successors, still adorn the _foyer de la danse_. The opera was a social rather than a musical function, and the old _foyer_, until the fall of the Second Empire, was the favourite meeting-place during the season of royal and distinguished personages, courtiers, ministers, ambassadors, and, indeed, of all French society of the male persuasion. Such was the passion for the opera during the reign of Louis XVI. that fashionable devotees would journey from Brussels to Paris in time to see the curtain rise and return to Brussels when the performance was over, travelling all night.

* * * * *

"In fair weather or foul," says Diderot in the opening lines of the _Neveu de Rameau_ "it is my custom, towards five in the evening, to stroll about the Palais Royal, where I muse silently on politics, love, taste or philosophy. If the weather be too cold or wet, I take refuge in the Café de la Régence, and there I amuse myself by watching the chess players; for Paris is the one place in the world, and the Café de la Régence the one place in Paris, where chess is played perfectly." The Café Procope and the Régence have been termed the Adam and Eve of the cafés of Paris. The former was the first coffee-house seen there, and was opened by one Gregory of Aleppo and a Sicilian, Procopio by name, shortly before the Comédie Française was transferred in 1689 to its new house in the present Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. The famous café, where, too, ices were first sold, was situated opposite the theatre, and at once became a kind of ante-chamber to the Comédie, crowded with actors and dramatic authors, among whom were seen Voltaire, Crébillon and Piron.

The Café de la Place du Palais Royal, the original apellation of the Régence, was founded shortly after the Procope, and became the favourite haunt of literary men, and especially of chess-players. Here the author of _Gil Blas_ beheld, in a vast salon brilliant with lustres and mirrors, a score of silent and grave personages, _pousseurs de bois_ (wood-shovers), playing at chess on marble tables, surrounded by others watching the games, amid a silence so profound that the movement of the pieces could alone be heard. If, however, we may credit a description of the famous hall of the chequer-board published in _Fraser's Magazine_, December 1840, the tempers of the players must have suffered a distressing deterioration since the times of Le Sage, for when the author of the article entered the café, in the winter of 1839, his ears were assailed by a "roar like that of the Regent's Park beast show at feeding-time." So great was the renown of the Parisian players that strangers from the four corners of the earth--Poles, Turks, Moors and Hindoos--made journeys to the Café de la Régence as to an arena where victory was esteemed final and complete. Not even on the Rialto of Venice, says the writer in _Fraser's_, in its most famous time, could so great a mixture of garbs and tongues be met. Here, among other literary monarchs who visited the café, came Voltaire and D'Alembert. Jean Jacques Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor was forced to appeal for police protection, and the eccentric philosopher, while absorbed in play, was furtively sketched by St. Aubin. Here came, _incogniti_, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, brother of Marie Antoinette, and Emperor Paul of Russia, the latter betraying his imperial quality by tossing to the waiter a golden louis he had won by betting on a game. The café was the favourite resort of Robespierre, a devoted chess-player, who lived close by in the Rue St. Honoré (No. 398), and of the young Napoleon Bonaparte when waiting on fortune in Paris. The latter is said to have been a rough, impatient player, and a bad loser. Hats were kept on to economise space, and on a winter Sunday afternoon a chair was worth a monarch's ransom: when a champion player entered, hats were raised, and fifty challengers leapt from their seats to offer a game. So proud was the proprietor of the distinction conferred on his café, that long after Rousseau's and Voltaire's deaths he would call to the waiter, "Serve Jean Jacques!" "Look to Voltaire!" if any customers sat down at the tables where the famous philosophers had been wont to sit. While the big game of political chess was being enacted in the streets of Paris during the three days of July 1830, the players of the café are said to have calmly pushed their wooden pieces undisturbed by the fighting outside, during which the front of the building was injured. The original café no longer exists, for in 1852 the Régence was removed from the Place du Palais Royal to the Rue St. Honoré. Last year the writer was startled by an amazing exuviation of the somewhat faded café, which had assumed a new decoration of most brilliant and approved modernity; it now vies in splendour with the cafes of the Boulevards. A few chess-players still linger on and are relegated to a recessed room.

Shortly after the foundation of the Régence another café was opened by Widow Marion on the old Carrefour de l'Opéra, where the Academicians gathered and discussed of matters affecting the French language. At Guadot's, on the Place de l'Ecole, was heard the clank of spur and sabre. Soon every phase of Parisian social life found its appropriate coffee-house, and by the end of the eighteenth century some nine hundred cafés were established in the city.

But this new development was regarded with small favour by the Government, always suspicious of any form of social and intellectual activity. Politics were forbidden, and spies haunted the precincts of the chief cafés. Ill fared the man, however distinguished, whose political feelings overmastered his prudence, for an invidious phrase was not infrequently the password to the Bastille. It was difficult even to discuss philosophy, and the lovers of wisdom who met at Procope's were reduced to inventing a jargon for its principal terms--Monsieur l'Etre for God, Javotte for Religion and Margot for the Soul--to put spies off the scent, not always with success. No newspapers were provided until the Revolutionary time, when the _Gazette_ or the _Journal_ became more important than the coffee: the cafés of the Palais Royal were then transformed into so many political clubs, where every table served as a rostrum of fiery declamation, for the agitated and eventful summer of 1789 was a rainy one, to the good fortune of the Palais Royal houses. No. 46 Rue Richelieu stands on the site of the Café de Foy, the senior and most famous of them, founded in 1700. It extended through to the gardens of the Palais Royal, and in early times its proprietor was the only one permitted to place chairs and tables on the terrace. There, in the afternoon, would sit the finely-apparelled sons of Mars, and other gay dogs of the period, with their scented perukes, amber vinaigrettes, silver-hilted swords and gold-headed canes, quizzing the passers-by. In summer evenings, after the conclusion of the opera at 8.30., the _bonne compagnie_ in full dress would stroll under the great overarching trees of the _grand allée_, or sit at the cafés listening to open-air performers, sometimes remaining on moonlight nights as late as 2 a.m. Between 1770 and 1780 the favourite promenade was the scene of violent conflicts between the partisans of Gluck and Piccini, and many a duel was recorded between the champions of the rival musical factions.

It was from one of the tables of the Café Foy that Camille Desmoulins sounded the war-cry of the Revolution. Every day a special courier from Versailles brought the bulletins of the National Assembly, which were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the fountains, and, when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent death. Later the Café Foy made a complete _volte-face_, raised its ices to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed with sword-sticks and loaded canes, raised their hats when the king's name was uttered, and one evil day planted a gallows outside the café, painted with the national colours. The excited patriots stormed the house, expelled the Royalists and disinfected the salon with gin. During the occupation of Paris by the allies many a fatal duel between the foreign officers and the Imperialists was initiated there. Later, Horace Vernet painted a swallow on the ceiling, which attracted many visitors; the dramatists and artists of the Théâtre Français freely patronised the house, and among them might be often seen the huge figure of the most prodigious master of modern romantic fiction, Alexandre Dumas.

The extremer section of the Revolutionists frequented the Café Corazza, still extant, which soon became a minor Jacobins, where, after the club was closed, the excited orators continued their discussions: Chabot, Collot d'Herbois and other terrorists met there. The Café Valois was patronised by the Feuillants, and so excited the ire of the Fédérés, who met at the Caveau, that one day they issued forth, assailed their opponents' stronghold and burned the copies of the _Journal de Paris_ found there. The old Café Procope in the south of Paris became the Café Zoppi, where the "zealous children of triumphant Liberty" assembled, and where the "Friends of the Revolution and of Humanity," on the news of Franklin's death, covered the lustres with crape and affixed his bust, crowned with oak leaves, outside the door. A legend told of the great American's death, and the words "_vir Deus_" were inscribed beneath the bust. Every day at five o'clock the _habitués_ formed themselves into a club in the salon decorated with statues of Mucius Scevola and Mirabeau, passed resolutions, sent protesting deputations to Royalist editors, and every evening made _autos da fé_ of their publications outside the café. When war was declared they subscribed to purchase a case of muskets as an offering to the Fatherland. Self-regarding citizens, the _Société des Amis de la Loi_, who desired to eat and drink in peace far from political storms, met in the Café de Flore, near the Porte St. Denis, until the Jacobins applied the scriptural maxim--He who is not for us is against us--and they were forced to take sides. Every partizan had his café; Hebertists, Fayettists, Maratists, Dantonists and Robespierrists, all gathered where their friends were known to meet.

In the early nineteenth century on the displacement of the favourite promenade of Parisian _flaneurs_ from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, the proprietors of cafés and restaurants followed. A group of young fellows entered one evening a small _cabaret_ near the Comédie Italienne (now Opéra Comique), found the wine to their taste and the cuisine excellent. They praised host and fare to their friends, and the modest _cabaret_ developed into the Café Anglais, most famous of epicurean temples, frequented during the Second Empire by kings and princes, to whom alone the haughty proprietor would devote personal care.

The sumptuous cafés Tortoni founded in 1798 and de Paris opened 1822 have long since passed away. So has the Café Hardy, whose proprietor invented _dejeûners à la fourchette_, although its rival and neighbour, the Café Riche, still exists. "One must be very Hardy to dine at Riche's, and very Riche to dine at Hardy's," was the celebrated _mot_ of an old gourmand of the First Empire. During the early times of the Third Republic the Café Fronton was crowded almost daily by prominent politicians, Gambetta, Spuller, Naquet and others, while the Imperialists, under Cassagnac, met at the Café de la Paix in the Place de l'Opéra, which was dubbed the Boulevard de l'Isle d'Elbe. Many others of the celebrated cafés of the boulevards have disappeared or suffered a transformation into the more popular Brasseries or Tavernes of which so many, alternating with the theatres, restaurants and dazzling shops that line the most-frequented evening promenade of Paris, invite the thirsty or leisurely pleasure-seeker of to-day.

Nowhere may the traveller gain a better impression of the essential gaiety and sociability of the Parisian temperament than by sitting outside a café on the boulevards on a public festival and observing his neighbours and the passers-by--their imperturbable good humour; their easy manners; their simple enjoyments; their quick intelligence, alert gait and expressive gestures; the wonderful skill of the women in dress. The glittering halls of pleasure that appeal to so many travellers, the Bohemian cafés of the outer boulevards, the Folies Bergères, the Moulins Rouges, the Bals Bullier, with their meretricious and vulgar attractions, frequented by the more facile daughters of Lutetia, "whose havoc of virtue is measured by the length of their laundresses' bills," as a genial satirist of their sex has phrased it--all these manifestations of _la vie_, so unutterably dull and sordid, are of small concern to the cultured traveller. The intimate charm and spirit of Paris will be heard and felt by him not amid the whirlwind of these saturnalia largely maintained by the patronage of foreign visitors, but rather in the smaller voices that speak from the inmost Paris which we have essayed to describe. Nor can we bid more fitting adieu to our readers than by translating Goethe's words to Eckermann: "Think of the city of Paris where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded."

INDEX

A

Abbey Lands, their extent, 34

Abbeys, their need of reform, 56

Abbo, his story of the siege of Paris, 38-43

Abbots, their varied powers, 34

Abelard, comes to Paris, 87; his school at St. Denis, 88; death of, 89

Abelard and Heloise, their house, 282

Académie Française, origin of, 200

Adam du Petit Pont, 90

Aignan's, St., remains of, 283

Amboise, Cardinal d', employs Solario, 149

Amphitheatre, Roman, 288

Anagni, humiliation of Boniface VIII. at, 107

Angelico, Fra, painting by, at Louvre, 306

Angelo's, Michael, slaves, 305

_Année terrible_, the, 261

Anselm, St., his moral force, 54

Antheric, Bishop, his courage, 42

Antoinette, Marie, her courage, 249; her sinister influence, 253, 254

Arches, triumphal, 224, 277, 278

Aristotle, his works at Paris, 99

Armagnac and Burgundian factions, their origin, 127

Armagnacs, massacre of, 129

Assembly, National, the, its patriotism, 248, 256

Attila, 13, 15

Austrasia, kingdom of, 21

Austria, Anne of, her regency, 202

Averroists at Paris, 100

B

Ballet, importance of the, 330

Bal Mabille, site of, 319

Baptistry, the, 281

Barbarian invasions, 12

Barrère, 270

Barry, Mme. du, 232, 248, 302

Bartholomew, St., massacre of, 168-172

Basine and Childeric, story of, 19

Basoche, Corporation of, 327; players of, 327

Bastille, foundation of, 123; banquet at, 158; captured by the Parlement, 204; story of, 250-252

Bazoches, Guy of, his impression of Paris, 66

Bedford, Duke of, Regent at Paris, 130

Bernard, St., his commanding genius, 55; denounces Abelard, 89; draws up Rule of Knights-Templars, 108

Bernini, his design for the Louvre, 221

Billettes, monastery of, 299

Bishops and abbots, their administrative powers, 23, 24, 46

Boniface VIII., his contest with Philip the Fair, 106, 107; his grandeur of soul, 107, 109

Booksellers at Paris, 190

Bordone, Paris, 152

Botticelli, frescoes at Louvre, 307

Boucher, 313

Boulevards, the, 320

Bourbon, Hôtel de, 186, 192; plays at, 323

Bourg-la-Reine, 60; English at, 119

Bourgogne, Hôtel de, comedians of, 322

Bouvines, victory of, its consequences, 62

Bridges, approaches to, fortified, 36

British sentries at Louvre, 304

Brosse, Pierre de la, his death, 103

Broussel, arrested and set free, 203, 204

Brunehaut, her career and death, 21, 23, 24

Brunswick, Duke of, his proclamation, 257

Bullant, Jean, builds Tuileries, 186

Burgundians, the, 12

Burgundy, Dukes of, 125

Burke, his political nescience, 262

Bury, Richard de, at Paris, 101

Bussy, the island of, 6

C

Cafés at Paris, their introduction and growth, 331-333; their importance in revolutionary times, 334-336

Calvin, 94; at Collége de France, 156

Campan, Mme., her memoirs, 233, 245

Capet, Hugh, his coronation, 45; founds Capetian dynasty, 45

Capets, growth of Paris under, 47

Carlyle, his history of the Revolution, 246, 247

Carmelites, their establishment at Paris, 72

Carnarvalet, Hôtel de, 297

Carnot, 261

Carrousel, the, 211; arch of, 277

Carthusians, their establishment at Paris, 72

Caryatides, Salle des, 164

Castiglione, Rue de, 316

Castile, Blanche of, 67

Catacombs, the, 302

Catholic hierarchy re-established in Paris, 273

Cellini, Benvenuto, at Paris and Fontainebleau, 152-154

Cerceau, Baptiste du, continues Lescot's Louvre, 186

Champaigne, Phil. de, 312

Champeaux, William of, 87

Champs Elysées, 319

Chardin, 314

Charlemagne at Paris, 33; the Northmen, 35; his patronage of learning, 35

Charles of Burgundy, his defeat by Swiss, 142

Charles I., effect of his trial on the revolutionists, 257-259

Charles V., builds the Hôtel St. Paul, 121; his library, 121; his love of gardens, 121; his wise statesmanship, 121; wall of, 122

Charles VI., his minority, 123; his madness, 124; saved from fire, 125; his death and burial, 130

Charles VII., his acclamation as king at Melun, 131; his death, 138

Charles VIII., his Italian campaign, 148

Charles IX., 166, 167; his vacillation, 169; doubtful story of his firing on Huguenots, 173; his death, 174

Charonton, attribution of paintings to, 309

Chateauroux, Mme. de, her appeal to Louis XV., 230

Châtelet, the Grand, 147, 300

Châtelet, the Petit, 146, 300

Chavannes, Puvis de, 246, 288

Chénier, M. J., the revolutionary dramatist, 270

Chess players at Paris, 331-333

Chilperic, marriage with Galowinthe, 21; his murder, 22; his reformed alphabet, 25

Chramm, his defeat and death, 20

Christian hierarchy, its efforts to purify the Church, 54

Church, the, its civilising genius, 24; its growing civil power, 34

Church building, expansion of, 47

Cinq-Mars, his execution, 195

Cité, the island of, 2; two islets joined to, 187; its associations, 281

Clement, Jacques, assassinates Henry III., 177

Clement V., Pope, and the Templars, 110

Clergy, attempted taxation of, 231; non-jurors, their expulsion, 272

Clisson, Hôtel de, 297

Clock tower, the, 283

Clodomir, murder of his sons by Childebert and Clothaire, 19, 20

Clothaire, his escape from assassination, 20; his death, 21

Cloud, St., foundation of monastery of, 20

Clouet, François, 310

Clouet, Jean, 310

Clouet de Navarre, 310

Clovis, 13, 15; conversion of, 17; baptism of, 18; his cruelty, 18; makes Paris his capital, 19; tower of, 288

Cluny, college of, 94

Cluny, Hôtel de, 151, 287, 322

_Code civil_, the, 264, 269

Colbert, his administrative genius, 209

Colbert, Hôtel, 316

Coligny, Admiral, his attempted assassination, 168; his murder, 170; site of his house, 303

Colleges, decadence of, 101

Collége de France, foundation of, 155

Colombe, Michel, 305

Comèdie Française, the old, 324; its origin, 324; political factions at, 325; literary factions at, 326

Commune, the, 293

Conciergerie, the, 106, 283

Concini, 192; his death, 193

Concorde, place de la, 317, 318

Condé the Great, his insolence, 205, 206

Condé, Prince of, his plot to destroy the Guises, 165; his death, 166

Condorcet, 269

Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, 52, 299

_Contrat Social_, the, its influence, 268

Convention, the, abolishes slavery, 264; its constructive measures, 263, 264

Cordeliers, refectory of, 288

Corot, 315

Coryat, his impressions of Paris, 189

Cosme, St., 290

Cosme, St., _curé_ of, his revolutionary zeal, 180, 181

Crown, the, its absolutism, 206

Cruce slays 400 Huguenots, 172

D

Dagobert the Great, 27, 28, 29

Damiens, his attack on Louis XV., 232; his horrible torture, 232

Danes, invasions of, 35

_Danseuses_, their introduction into opera, 331

Dante, his use of _artista_, 86; at Paris, 100

Danton, 261; his trial, 241

D'Artagnan, his dwelling, 303

Daubigny, 315

Dauphin, origin of title, 117, _note_

David, his genius, 314

Delacroix, paintings of, at St. Sulpice, 291; and Louvre, 314

Delaroche, 314

Denis, St., abbey of, 28

Denis, St., church of, 15; building of new church of, 79

Denis, St., de la Chartre, 31

Denis, St., du Pas, 281

Denis, St., story of, 7; body of exposed, 51

Denis, St., Rue, 293

Deputies, Chamber of, 318

Desmoulins, Camille, his revolutionary oration, 249

Diaz, 315

Diderot at Café de la Régence, 331

Dimier, his views on French School of Paintings, 307

Dionysius and his companions, their mission to Paris, 5

Discipline, collegiate, 93, 94

Dix-huit, College of, 92

Dolet, Etienne, his statue, 286

Domenico da Cortona, 148; designs Hôtel de Ville, 151

Dominicans, their establishment at Paris, 73

Dragon, Cour du, 291

Dubois, Abbé, his wealth and depravity, 227

Duke of Orleans, his murder, 126

E

Ebles, Abbot, his courage, 38, 41

Ecclesiastical architecture, development of, 47

Ecole des Beaux Arts, 291

Edict of Nantes, 182; revocation of, 214; approved by eminent Churchmen, 215; effect in Europe, 215

Education, state of, before Revolution, 264

Egalité, Philip, 199; his vote, 259

Eloy, St., abbey of, 31, 56, 57

Eloy, St., bishop and goldsmith, 28

Elysée, the, 319

_Émigrés_, the, 254, 256

Empire, the Second, streets of, 278

Encyclopedists, their aims, 267

English, the, at Paris, 120, 135, 136; evacuate Paris, 137; expelled from Calais, 162

Estampes, Madame d', 153, 154

Estiennes, the, 143, 144

Estrées, Gabrielle d', 181

Etienne du Mont, St., 17, 151, 288

Etoile, arch of, 277, 278

Eudes, Count, 38, 41, 42

Eugene III., Pope, at Paris, 57

Eustache, St., church of, 151, 303

Evelyn, witnesses torture of accused prisoners, 262

F

Ferronnerie, Rue de la, 185

Feudalism, origin of, 44

Flamboyant, not a debasement of Gothic, 145, _note_

Flandrin, frescoes by, at St. Germain des Prés, 291

Fleury, Cardinal, his honest administration, 229

Flore, Pavilion de, 186

Fontainebleau, school of, 152

Fontaine des Innocents, 164

Fouarre, Rue du, 100

Fouquet, 310

Foy, Café, 249

Fragonnard, 313

France, her greatness under Richelieu, 195

Francis I., his entry into Paris, 150; the Renaissance, 150; his magnificent hospitality, 157; life at Paris under, 157; his access of piety, 158, 159; his death, 160

Francis II. at Amboise, 165

Francis, St., his love of the French tongue, 99

Franciscans, their establishment at Paris, 73

Franklin, Benjamin, at Versailles, 254

Franks, the, 13

Fredegonde, her cruelty and death, 21-23

French language, its universality, 99

French people, their desire for peace, 274

Fromont, Nicholas, 309

Fronde, the, 204

Fronde, the second, 205; defeat of, 206

Fulbert, Canon, his house, 282

Fulrad, Abbot, completes Church of St. Denis, 33

G

Galilée, the island of, 6

Genevieve, St., her story, 14, 15; monastery of, 17; shrine of, 17; abbey of, 30; Templars at, 111

Geneviève, Ste., la Petite, 60

Gericault, his Raft of the Medusa, 314

Germain, St., of Auxerre, 14, 27

Germain, St., l'Auxerrois, 31, 303

Germain, St., of Autun, 24, 25

Germain, St., des Prés, 23; captured by Henry IV., 178; church of, 291

Germain, St., Faubourg, 293

Gervais, St., church of, 31, 295

Gibbon at Paris, 242

Giocondo, Fra, rebuilds Petit Pont and Pont Notre Dame, 148

Girondins, their condemnation, 241

Goethe, his speech at Valmy, 246; his description of the revolutionary army, 262

Goldoni assisted by the Convention, 264

Gothic art of the thirteenth century, 84

Goths, the, 12, 13

Goujon, Jean, his work at the Louvre, 164, 306; decorates the Fontaine des Innocents, 164; reliefs by, at the Carnavalet, 297

Gozlin, his patriotism and courage, 37, 38, 40, 41

Grande Galerie, the, 186, 191

Gregory, St., of Tours, 13, 22

Greuze, 314

Grève, Place de, 293

Guénégaud, Théâtre, 324

Guise, Duke Francis of, shot by a Huguenot, 165

Guise, Duke Henry of, his popularity at Paris, 176; his assassination, 177

Guises, rise of the, 161

H

Halles, les, 59, 148, 302

Halle aux Vins, 60, _note_

Hawkers, 259, 270

Heine and the Venus de Milo, 305

Héloïse and Abelard, loves of, 88; their grave at Paris, 89

Henry I., son of Robert the Pious, his accession, 51

Henry II., his death, 162

Henry III., his coronation, 175; his assassination, 177

Henry IV., his conversion, 181; his patriotism, 181, 184; his divorce, 182; his assassination, 185; his architectural achievements, 187; his statue, 197

Henry V. of England, 128; death and burial of, 130

Henry V. and Charles VI., entry into Paris, 131

Heretics, first execution of, 49

Hervé and his eleven companions, their heroism, 40, 41

Hierarchy, the, its unpopularity, 272

Holbein, 307

Homme Armé, Rue de l', 135, 297

Horloge, Pavilion de l', 198

Host, miracle of sacred, 299

Hôtel Dieu, foundation of, 31; rules of, 76; site of, 281

Hôtel St Paul, 121

Hôtel des Tournelles, 140, 146

Hôtel de Ville, 279, 293, 295

Hugh (Eudes), Count, his heroism, 38, 41, 42

Hugo, Victor, his exile and return, 274; his house, 297

Huguenots, hostility of Parisians to, 167

I

Infanta, Garden of, 229; betrothed to Louis XV., 229

Ingres, 314

Innocent II., Pope, at Paris, 59

Innocents, Cemetery of, 148

Innocents, Square des, 301

Institut, the, 207

Invalides, Hôpital des, 223

Irish College, 286

Italian College, 286

Ivry, battle of, 179

J

Jacobins, 197; their aims, 267; their supreme service to France, 268

Jacquerie, the, 118

Jacques de la Boucherie, St., 60, 300

Jacques, St., Rue, 5, 284

Jansenists and Jesuits, 218, 230

Jardin des Plantes, 200

Jean, St., Feu de, 295

Jean sans Peur, 125; tower of, 127; his assassination, 130; inscription, 297

Jeanne d'Arc, saviour of France, 131, 132; wounded at siege of Paris, 132; her capture, trial and execution, 132, 133; her rehabilitation at Notre Dame, 134

Jefferson and Marie Antoinette, 253

Jesuits, their suppression, 232

Jews at Paris, their treatment, 34, 49, 59

John the Good, 104, 117; at Paris, 119

Jongleurs, their charity, 321

Judicial penalties at Paris, 159

Juifs, les, the Island of, 6

Julian, the Emperor, his love of Paris, 10

Julian, St., of the minstrels, 321

Julien le Pauvre, St., 27; rebuilding of, 81; church of, 284

Jupiter, altar to, 9, 287; temple of, 7

K

Knights-Templars, their foundation, 108; their heroism, 109; their arrest and torture, 110, 111; their destruction, 112, 116; site of their fortress, 299

L

Lafayette, his loyalty, 256

Landry, St., fair of, 98; gifts by scholars, 98; port of, 282, 283

Latini Brunetto, 99

Laurens, J. P., paintings at Luxembourg and Panthéon, 48, _note_, 240

Law, John, his financial scheme, 227, 228

League, the, 175; its ecclesiastical army, 179

Leaguers, their triumph, 176; their violence, 181

Lebrun, 312

Leczynski, Marie, her marriage to Louis XV., 229; her death, 233

Legros, 290

Lemercier continues the Louvre, 198; designs Palais Cardinal, 199

Lemoine, Cardinal, college of, 93

Lescot, Pierre, designs new Louvre, 157; designs Fontaine des Innocents, 164

Lesueur, 311

Levau, his suspension, 221

Lorrain, Claude, 312

Lorraine, Cardinal of, 177

Louis VI. chastises rebellious vassals, 54; pioneer of the monarchy, 58

Louis VII., 60; birth of an heir, 61

Louis VIII. invades England, 62

Louis XI., his shabby dress, 138; his policy, 139; at Paris, 139, 140; meets Edward IV. of England, 140; institutes the Angelus, 140; his death, 142

Louis XII. invites Leonardo da Vinci to France, 149; his wise rule, 149, 150

Louis XIII., his accession, 192; his _coup d'état_, 193

Louis XIV., his accession, 209; his small attainments, 211; his hatred of Paris, 212; court of, 210, 211, 219; secret marriage with Mme. Scarron, 213; death of his heirs, 219; his death, 220; state of France and Paris at end of his reign, 226; his vandalism, 236

Louis XV., his majority, 228; his sickness and recovery, 231; his vicious life, 231; his disastrous reign, 233, 234; his death, 233

Louis XVI., his accession, 243; state of Paris under, 243; his vacillation, 253; intrigues with foreign courts, 254; his trial and sentence, 259, 260; execution of, 261

Louis Philippe, 273

Louis, St., his early youth, 67; his love of justice, 67, 77; redeems the crown of thorns, 68; his views on the treatment of Jews and infidels, 69; builds the Sainte Chapelle, 69; his hatred of blasphemy, 71; his death, 77

Louviers, the island of, 6

Louvois and Vauban, inventors of bayonet, 210

Louvre, building of, 62; its position, 65; demolition of keep, 156; west wing completed, 164; continued by Lemercier, 198; continued by Levau, 220; Perrault, base of, 222; neglect of, by Louis XIV., 223; and by Louis XV., 234; repair of, 235; during the Revolution, 275; under Napoleon I., 276; under Napoleon III., 276; paintings in, 304; sculpture in, 305, 306

Loyola, Ignatius, founds Society of Jesus at Paris, 156

Luini, 307

Lulli, his musical genius, 329

Lulli, Hôtel, 316

Lutetia, its origin, 3

Lutetius, hill of, 4

Lutherans, their violence and iconomachy, 158; persecution of, 159, 160

Luxembourg, palace and gardens of, 197, 290; museum of, 290

Luxor, Column of, 278

Luynes, his rise and fall, 193, 194

M

Madeleine, the, 277

Maillotins, the, 123

Maintenon, Mme. de, her ascendency over Louis XIV., 213, 214, 216, 217; the Protestants and, 214

Malouel, 309

Manége, Salle du, 259

Mansard, François, extends Palais Royal, 199

Marais, the, 7, 65, 295

Marat, his body at the Cordeliers, 288; site of his house, 289

Marcel, Etienne, buys the Maison aux Piliers, 117; his power at Paris, 118; accused of treachery, 119; his statue, 117; his death, 118, 119

Marcel, Etienne, Rue, 127

Marlborough, Duke of, his victories, 216

Marly, hermitage of, 213

Marmoutier, monastery of, 9

Mars, Champ de, 252

Martel, Charles, birth of, 29

Martin, St., des Champs, rebuilding of, 52

Martin, St., story of, 8

Martin, St., Rue, 293

Mary Stuart, at Amboise, 165

Massacres of September, 258

Maur, St., des Fossés, 34

May Tree, planting of, in Cour du Mai, 328

Mayenne, Hôtel de, 295

Mazarin, Cardinal, his cautious policy, 202; his unpopularity, 205; his triumph, 206; his death, 207

Mazzini, his teaching, 268

Medici, Catherine de', her rise to importance, 165; her plot against the Huguenots, 168, 169; her death and unpopularity, 178; remains of her hôtel, 302

Medici, Marie de', marriage with Henry IV., 182; her coronation, 184; her disgrace and death, 195

Médicine, Ecole de, 288

Merri, St., church of, 151

Meuniers, Pont des, collapse of, 188

Michel le Comte, Rue, plays in, 322

Mignard, 312

Millet, 313, 315

Miracles, Cour des, 302

Molay, Jacques de, 109-111

Molé, President, his courage, 204

Molière, imprisoned for debt, 323; opens _l'Illustre Théâtre_, 323; his success at court, 323

Monasteries, their increase, 24; suppression of, at Paris, 272

Monastic settlements, 34

Monks and nuns, their declining morals, 55, 56

Monks, their science and learning, 24

Montaigne, College of, 94

Montfaucon, 103; its "fair gallows," 189

Montgomery, Duke of, kills Henry II., 162

Montmartre, 7; nunnery of, 60

Montmorency, his execution, 195

Morris, Governor, his estimate of Louis XVI., 253

Moulins, Maître de, 309, 310

N

Nain, Le, the brothers, 311

Napoleon I., his policy, 265; his raids on Italy, 266; crowns himself at Notre Dame, 266; his genius, 267; secret of his power, 268; his plans for the Louvre, 276; his new streets, 277; his tomb, 293

Napoleon III., his _coup d'état_, 274

Nautæ, guild of the, 9

Navarre, college of, 93

Navarre, Henry of, affianced to Princess Marguerite, 167; his marriage festivities, 167

Navarre, Jeanne de, 166; her death at Court, 167

Necker, Mme., her salon, 269

Nemours, Duke of, executed at Paris, 141

Neustria, kingdom of, 21

Nicholas, St., chapel of, 31, 33; scholars of, 92

Nobles, the, their rapacity, 192

_Noces Vermeilles_, the, 168

Nogaret, Guillaume de, 107

Normans, the, settle in France, 43

Notre Dame, church of, 9, 26, 281; rebuilding of, 81; English envoys at, 157; clerical iconoclasts of, 236; worship of Nature at, 272

Notre Dame, the island of, 6

O

Odéon, Théâtre de l', 325

OEil de Boeuf, the, 248

Oiseaux, Pont aux, consumed by fire, 189

Opera, French, rise of, 329

Opera house, the, 279, 330

Opera, Italian, introduced to Paris, 329

Orders, the reformed, 55

Oriflamme, the, its first use as royal standard, 58; its disappearance, 128

Orleans, Philip of, his regency, 227

Orme, Philibert de l', 186

P

Paine, Thomas, his votes for mercy, 259, 260

Paix, Rue de la, 316

Palais Cardinal, Théâtre du, its site, 325

Palais of the Cité rebuilt, 104; surrendered to Parlement, 121

Palais de Justice injured by fire, 240; booksellers at, 240, 241; Revolutionary tribunal at, 241

Palais Royal, 199, 200, 315; revolutionists at, 249; theatre of, 324

Palissy, Bernard, his grotto, 186

Panthéon, its vicissitudes, 238-240

Paraclete, the, 89

Paris, its geographical situation, 1, 2; its capture by the Romans, 4; the White City, 4; arms of, 9; Julian proclaimed emperor at, 10; siege of, by Childeric, 15; the market of the peoples, 34; siege of, by Normans, 37; a city of refuge, 46; under interdict, 57; growth of, under Louis VI., 59; under English rule, 135; in the fifteenth century, 145; crafts of, 146, 147; siege of, by Henry III. and Henry of Navarre, 177; siege of, by Henry IV., 179; under Richelieu, 196, 197; made an archbishopric, 202; Turenne and Condé fight for, 206; misery at, 217; under Louis XIV., 220; Louis XVI. and court returns to, 249; an armourer's shop, 261; life at, during the Revolution, 269; school of, at Louvre, 309

Parisian women at Versailles, 249

Parisians, their chastisement by Charles VI., 123, 124; their fidelity to the revolutionary ideals, 273

Parisii, the, 3

Parlement, the, 104, 106; councillors of, hanged by the sections, 180; councillors arrested, 203; its public spirit, 203; its humiliation by Louis XIV., 206; suppression of, 233

Pascal, his statue, 300

Passion, confraternity of, 321

Passion plays, their success, 322

Paul III., Pope, his humane protest against persecution of Lutherans, 160

Pavia, defeat of, 154

Pepin of Heristal, 29; of Landen, 29; the Short, becomes king of France, 30

Père la Chaise, 206

Peronne, peace of, 141

Perrault, Claude, his design for the Louvre accepted, 221; his east façade, 222, 276

Perréal, 310

Petite Galerie, the, 173, 187

Petit Pont, the, 6; Place du, 284

Philip Augustus, his birth and accession, 61; his conquests, 62; pavement of, 63; wall of, 63-65; his wisdom, 65

Philip I., his depravity and adultery, 52, 53; his excommunication and death, 53, 54

Philip III., 103

Philip VI., 117

Philip le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, sides with the English, 130

Philip the Fair, 104; conflict with Boniface VIII., 106-108; destroys Templars, 110-115; his death, 115

Picpus, village of, 189

Pierre aux Boeufs, St., 60, 281

Pierre, St., des Fossés, 34

Pilon, Germain, 305

Place Royale, 187, 296, 297

Playing cards, revolutionary, 271

Poitiers, Diane de, 144, 162

Pol, St., Count of, executed at Paris, 141

Pompadour, Mme. de, her power, 231, 232

Pont au Change rebuilt, 189

Pont Marie, 201

Pont Neuf, 197, 284

Pont Notre Dame, 7

Pont Royal, 224

Portes Cochères, corps of, 204

Port Royal, destruction of, 218

Poussin, 311

Prés aux Clercs, the, 97

Primaticcio, 152, 153, 311

Primitifs, at Louvre, 308

Printing, introduction of, at Paris, 143; at the Louvre, 200

Provost of Merchants, 9; last of, 293

Provost of Paris, his hotel, 295

Public good, league of, 139

Q

Quatre Nations, the, 95

Quinze-vingts, establishment of, at Paris, 74

R

Radegonde, St., her piety, 25; nuns of, at Cambridge, 25

Raphael, 306

Ravaillac, assassin of Henry IV., his cruel torture, 185

Rectors, their power, 95, 98

Reformation, the, 164

Rembrandt, 307

Rémi, St., 13

Republic, the second, 274

Republic, the third, its patriotism, 274; architecture of, 278

Restoration, the, architecture of, 277

Retz, Cardinal de, 203; joins the insurrection, 204, 205

Revolutionary, Committee of the League, 180

Revolution, the, its triumph, 262; its results, 275; Place de la, 317

Revolutionists, their attitude towards England, 265

Richelieu, his rise to fame, 193, 194; his firmness, 194; his death, 195; second founder of Sorbonne, 200; his tomb at the Sorbonne, 200

Rigaud, 313

Robert the Pious, his excommunication, 48; his charity, 48; repudiates his queen, 47, 48; marries Constance of Aquitaine, 48

Robert the Strong, 37

Robespierre and the Terror, 246, 247; his feast of the _Etre Suprème_, 273; at chess, 333

Rochelle, la, capture of, 194

Roland, 270

Roland, Mme., 283

Rollo, 37, 43

Roman amphitheatre, the, 5

Roman aqueduct, the, 5

Roman Empire, exhaustion of, 12

Rosso, 152, 311

Rousseau, his impressions of Paris, 226; his journey from Paris to Lyons, 244

Rousseau, Théodore, 315

Royalty, abolition of, 258

Royale, place, 187, 296, 297

Rubens, 307

Ryswick, peace of, 215

S

Sacre Coeur, church of, 240, 279

Sainte Chapelle, the, 69, 82, 83

Samaritaine, la, 198

Sarto, Andrea del, 152

Saxe, Marshall, his victories, 231

Scholars, their lack of discipline, 90; their festive meetings, 91; their depravity, 92; poor, at Paris, 92; defence of, by king, 97

Schoolman, the, 100

Sculpture, Greek, at Louvre, 305; mediæval and renaissance, at Louvre, 305

Sections, the, 176, 180; their defeat, 180

Sens, Archbishop of, and Templars, 112; his palace, 295

Serfdom, 49

Serfs, their condition, 49, 50

Séverin, St., church of, 284, 286

Sévigné, Mme. de, 297

Siegbert, marriage with Brunehaut, 21

Siéyès, Abbé, 269

Siger, at Paris, 100

Signs, old, at Paris, 303

Simon, St., Duke of, his memoirs, 210

Soissons, the vase of, 13

Sorbon, Robert of, founds the Sorbonne, 92

Sorbonne, introduction of painting at, 143; Greek lectureship at, 145; the new, 288

Soubise, Hôtel de, 297

Soufflot builds Panthéon, 238; mutilates west front of Notre Dame, 238

Staël, Mme. de, 270

States-General, establishment of, 104; convoked by Dauphin, 117; meet at the Louvre, 180; at the Hôtel de Bourbon, 192; at Versailles, 247

Stephen, St., church of, 31

Stephen III., Pope, at Paris, 30

Street names, revolutionary, 271

Streets, old, at Paris, 286, 299

Suger, Abbot, 58; builds new St. Denis, 79

Sully, Duke of, 182, 184; his enforced retirement, 192; Hôtel de, 295

Sully, Maurice de, builds cathedral of Notre Dame, 81

Sulpice, St., church of, 241, 242, 291

Surgery, school of, 290

Swiss Guards, their devotion and courage, 257

T

Talleyrand, Bishop, 270

Talma, Julie, 270

Talma, 326

Tax farmers, their brutality, 245

Tennis-court oath, 248

Terror, the white, 247, _note_

Terror, the, at Paris, 262

Theatre, the early, 323

Thermæ, the, 9, 10

Tiberius Cæsar, discovery of altar to, 9

Tiers Etat, at Notre Dame, 106; its humiliation, 192

Titian, 306

Trône, place du, 189

Troyes, treaty of, 130

Troyon, 315

Truce of God, 98

Tuileries, the, 186; secret flight of royal family from, 255; attack on, 257; palace and gardens of, 315, 316

Turenne, his defeat at Paris, 205, 206

U

University, first use of term, 95

Ursins, Mme. des, her power in Spain, 216

Utrecht, peace of, 219

V

Vaches, isle des, 6

Val de Grâce, church of, 223

Vallière, Mme. de la, 212

Van Dyck, 307

Vasari, his appreciation of Fra Angelico, 306

Vauban, his military science, 210; his estimate of the national resources, 215

Vendôme, Duke of, his depravity, 216

Vendôme, place and column of, 316

Venetian merchants at Paris, 34; their sympathy with Jeanne d'Arc, 133

Venise, Rue de, 299

Vergniaud, 260, 270

Veronese, 306

Versailles, château of, 212; cost of, 213, _note_; opera house, scene at, 248; the revolution at, 247

Victoires, Notre Dame des, 194, _note_

Victor, St., prior of, stabbed, 57; abbey of, 60

Ville, the, 146, 147

Vinci, da, his Monna Lisa at Louvre, 306

Viollet le Duc, his love of Gothic, 278

Voltaire, his solvent wit, 269, 270

Volterra, Daniele da, his statue of Louis XIII., 187

Vosges, Place des, 187

Vouet, 311

W

Wall, the Roman, 6

Watteau, his manner of painting, 313; works by, at Louvre, 313

Whistler, 290

THE END

_Colston & Coy., Limited, Printers, Edinburgh._

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "_Faudra recommencer_" ("We must begin again"), said, to the present writer in 1871, a Communist refugee bearing a great scar on his face from a wound received fighting at the barricades.

[2] _Inf._ XXIX. 121-123. A French commentator consoles himself by reflecting that the author of the _Divina Commedia_ is far more vituperative when dealing with certain Italian peoples, whom he designates as hogs, curs, wolves and foxes.

[3] Cobbett, comparing the relative intellectual culture of the British Isles and of France between the years 1600 and 1787, found that of the writers on the arts and sciences who were distinguished by a place in the _Universal, Historical, Critical and Bibliographical Dictionary_ one hundred and thirty belonged to England, Scotland and Ireland, and six hundred and seventy-six to France.

[4] "Nous cuisinons même l'amour."--TAINE.

[5] The Seine takes five hours to flow through the seven miles of modern Paris.

[6] "_Cesare armato con gli occhi grifani._"--_Inferno_, iv. 123.

[7] Of some 10,000 ancient inscriptions found in Gaul, only twenty are in Celtic, and less than thirty words of Celtic origin now remain in the French language.

[8] The water supply of Paris is even now partly derived from these sources, and flows along the old repaired Roman aqueduct.

[9] Traces of the Gallo-Roman wall have been discovered, and are marked across the roadway opposite No. 6 Rue de la Colombe.

[10] The Isle de Galilée was joined to the Cité during the thirteenth century.

[11] In 1848 some remains were found of the old halls of this building, and of its columns, worn by the ropes of the boatmen who used to moor their craft to them.

[12] The exact position of this bridge is much disputed by authorities, some of whom would locate it on the site of the present Pont au Change. The balance of probabilities seems to us in favour of the position given in the text.

[13] "_Jovem brutum atque hebetem._"

[14] Not to be confounded with the Royal Provost, a king's officer, who replaced the Carlovingian counts and Capetian viscounts.

[15] The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in Paris during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at Christmas time.

[16] By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence to sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had become persecutors. Boissier, _La Fin du Paganisme_.

[17] "He soon hugs himself in unconditioned ease."

[18] To protect home producers against the competition of the Gallic wine and olive growers, Roman statesmen could conceive nothing better than the stupid expedient of prohibiting the culture of the vine and olive in Gaul.

[19] The favourite arm of the Franks, a short battle-axe, used as a missile or at close quarters.

[20] Her figure was a favourite subject for the sculptors of Christian churches. She usually bears a taper in her hand and a devil is seen peering over her shoulder. This symbolises the miraculous relighting of the taper after the devil had extinguished it. The taper was long preserved at Notre Dame.

[21] If we may believe Gregory of Tours, her arguments were vituperative rather than convincing. "Your Jupiter," said she, "is _omnium stuprorum spurcissimus perpetrator_."

[22] Merovée, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was fabled to be the issue of Clodio's wife and a sea monster.

[23] The palace in the Cité, where now stands the Palais de Justice.

[24] Roads in the Arrondissement of Amiens and Mondidier in Picardy are still known as Chaussées Brunehautes.

[25] The works of art traditionally ascribed to St. Eloy are many. He is reported to have made a golden throne set with stones (or rather two thrones, for he used his material so honestly and economically). He was made master of the mint and thirteen pieces of money are known which bear his name. He decorated the tombs of St. Martin and St. Denis, and constructed reliquaries for St. Germain, Notre Dame, and other churches.

[26] Five of them died between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six.

[27] It was during this struggle that St. Leger, bishop of Autun, whose name is dear to English sportsmen, one of the most popular of saints in his time, was imprisoned, blinded and subsequently beheaded by Ebrion's orders in 678.

[28] The term Cité (_civitas_) was given to the old Roman part of many French towns.

[29] The Carlovingians had been careful to abolish the office of mayor of the palace.

[30] St. Pierre was subsequently enriched by the possession of the body of St. Maur, brought thither in the Norman troubles by fugitive monks from Anjou, and the monastery is better known to history under the name of St. Maur des Fossés. The entrails of our own Henry V. were buried there. Rabelais, before its secularisation, was one of its canons, and Catherine de Medicis once possessed a château on its site. Monastery and château no longer exist.

[31] The villa of those days was a vast domain, part dwelling, part farm, part game preserve.

[32] The remains of the great Viking's castle are still shown at Aalesund, in Norway.

[33] When Allan Barbetorte, after the recovery of Nantes, went to give thanks to God in the cathedral, he was compelled to cut his way, sword in hand, through thorns and briers.

[34] It must be admitted, however, that the poet's uncouth diction is anything but Virgilian.

[35] Abbo's favourite epithet. They were without a head, for they knew not Christ, the Head of Mankind.

[36] In the Middle Ages and down to 1761 Montfaucon had a sinister reputation. There stood the gallows of Paris, a great stone gibbet with its three rows of chains, near the old Barrière du Combat, where the present Rue de la Grange aux Belles abuts on the Boulevard de la Villette.

[37] William the Conqueror was also known as William the Builder.

[38] The surname Capet is said to have originated in the _capet_ or hood of the abbot's mantle which Hugh wore as lay abbot of St. Martin's, having laid aside the crown after his coronation.

[39] Carducci. _In una Chiesa gotica._

[40] A dramatic representation of the delivery of the papal bull, painted by Jean Paul Laurens, hangs in the museum of the Luxembourg.

[41] It must be remembered that heresy was the solvent anti-social force of the age, and was regarded with the same feelings of abhorrence as anarchist doctrines are regarded by modern statesmen.

[42] The Rue des Francs Bourgeois in Paris reminds us that there dwelt those who were free to move without the consent of their feudal superiors.

[43] It was the conduct of this campaign that won for Robert the title of Robert the Devil.

[44] The possession of an oven was a lucrative monopoly in mediæval times. The writer knows of a village in South Italy where this curious privilege is still possessed by the parish priest, who levies a small indemnity of a few loaves, made specially of larger size, for each use of the oven.

[45] He was said to be "kind even to Jews."

[46] The indignant scribe is most precise: they walked abroad _artatis clunibus et protensis natibus_.

[47] The reformers always discover the nunneries to be so much more corrupt than the monasteries, but it is a little suspicious that in every case the former are expropriated to the latter. The abbot of St. Maur evidently had some qualms concerning the expropriation of St. Eloy, and wished to restore it to the bishop.

[48] The abbey was suppressed at the time of the Revolution, and the site is now occupied by the Halle aux Vins.

[49] In the ardour of the fight the king found himself surrounded by the enemy's footmen, was unhorsed, and while they were vainly seeking for a vulnerable spot in his armour some French knights had time to rescue him.

[50] Jeanne de Bourgogne, queen of Philip le Long, lived at the Hôtel de Nesle, and is said to have seduced scholars by night into the tower, had them tied in sacks and flung into the Seine. If we may believe Villon, this was the queen--

"Qui commanda que Buridan Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine."

Legend adds that the schoolman, made famous by his thesis, that if an ass were placed equidistant between two bundles of hay of equal attraction he would die of hunger before he could resolve to eat either, was saved by his disciples, who placed a barge, loaded with straw, below the tower to break his fall.

[51] She was wont to say to her son--"I would rather see thee die than commit a mortal sin."

[52] By a subtle irony, part of the money was derived from the tribute of the Jews of Paris.

[53] In the catalogue of the Acts of Francis I., quoted by Lavisse, is an order to pay the Dames des Filles de Joie, which follow the court, forty-five livres tournois for their payments, due for the month of May 1540, as it has been the custom to do from most ancient times (_de toute ancienneté_.)

[54] On account of the cord they wore round their habit.

[55] St. Louis loved the Franciscans, and in the _Fioretti_ a beautiful story is told how the king, in the guise of a pilgrim, visiting Brother Giles at Perugia, knelt with the good friar in the embrace of fervent affection for a great space of time in silence. They parted without speaking a word.

[56] The sale or the provostship of Paris was abolished and a man of integrity, Etienne Boileau, appointed with adequate emoluments. So completely was this once venal office rehabilitated, that no seigneur regarded the post as beneath him.

[57] It was buried in the church of Monreale at Palermo.

[58] Joinville was a brave and tender knight; he tells us that before starting to join the crusaders at Marseilles he called all his friends and household before him, and prayed that if he had wronged any one of them he would declare it and reparation should be made. After a severe penance he was assoiled, and as he set forth, durst not turn back his eyes lest his heart should be melted at leaving his fair château of Joinville and his two children whom he loved so dearly.

[59] The relics were transferred to a new church of St. Stephen (St. Etienne du Mont), built by the abbot of St. Genevieve as a parish church for his servants and tenants.

[60] The early glass-workers were particularly fond of their beautiful red. "Wine of the colour of the glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle," was a popular locution of the time.

[61] Brunetto Latini, in the thirteenth century contrasted the high towers and grim stone walls of the fortress-palaces of the Italian nobles with the large, spacious and painted houses of the French, their rooms adorned _pour avoir joie et delit_ (to have joy and delight) and surrounded with orchards and gardens.

[62] Another delusion of moderns is that there was an absence of personal cleanliness in those ages. In the census of the inhabitants of Paris, who in 1292 were subject to the Taille, there are inscribed the names of no less than twenty-six proprietors of public baths: a larger proportion to population than exists to-day.

[63] Hence the name of _clerc_ applied to any student, even if a layman.

[64] "Love is quickly caught in gentle heart."

[65] Afterwards bishop of London.

[66] The two churches still existed in the eighteenth century and stood on the site of the southern Cours Visconti and Lefuel of the present Louvre.

[67] The actual originator was, however, the queen's physician, Robert de Douai, who left a sum of money which formed the nucleus of the foundation.

[68] The Montaigue scholars were called _capetes_ from their peculiar _cape fermée_, or cloak, such as Masters of Arts used to wear. The Bibliothèque St. Genevieve occupies the site of the college.

[69] The Rue des Anglais still exists in the Latin Quarter.

[70] This interesting twelfth-century building will be found in the Rue St. Julien le Pauvre, and is now used as a Uniat Greek church.

[71] Par. X. 136. "Who lecturing in Straw St. deduced truths that brought him hatred."

[72] Benvenuto was certainly in France and possibly in Paris during the fourteenth century. At any rate he would be familiar with Parisian students, many of whom were Italians.

[73] In the seventeenth century the councillors had increased to one hundred and twenty and the courts to seven.

[74] The term "Parlement" was originally applied to the transaction of the common business of a monastic establishment after the conclusion of the daily chapter.

[75] The contemporary chronicler, Villani, says of one of these scoundrels that he "was named Nosso Dei, one of our Florentines, a man filled with every vice."

[76] The indictment covers seven quarto pages. The charges may be briefly classified as blasphemy, heresy, spitting and trampling on the crucifix, obscene and secret rites, and unnatural crimes.

[77] There is a significant entry on page 273 of the published trial: _in ista pagina nihil est scriptum_. The empty page tells of the moment when the papal commissioners, having heard that the fifty-four had been burned, suspended the sitting.

[78] _Nihil sibi appropriare intendebat._

[79] Or the isle of the Jews, which, with its sister islet of Bussy, were subsequently joined to the island of the Cité, and now form the Place Dauphine and the land that divides the Pont Neuf. Philip watched the fires from his palace garden.

[80] It is to be hoped that some English scholar will do for these most important records, the earliest report of any great criminal trial which we possess, what Mr T. Douglas Murray has done for the Trial and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc.

[81] During John the Good's reign, the province of Dauphiny had been added to the French crown, and the king's eldest son took the title of Dauphin.

[82] So called from the familiar appellation "Jacques Bonhomme," applied half in contempt, half in jest, by the seigneurs to the peasants who served them in the wars.

[83] The bastilles were fortified castles before the chief gates of Paris.

[84] Howell mentions the locution in a letter dated 1654.

[85] Charles taxed and borrowed heavily. Even the members of his household were importuned for loans, however small. His cook lent him frs. 67.50.

[86] The scene is quaintly illustrated in an illuminated copy of Froissart in the British Museum.

[87] The scene of the assassination is marked by an escutcheon and an inscription.

[88] They melted down the reliquaries in the Paris churches.

[89] In 1417 Charles, returning from a visit to the queen at the castle of Vincennes, met the Chevalier Bois-Burdon going thither. He ordered his arrest, and under torture a confession reflecting on the queen's honour was extorted. Bois-Burdon was sewn in a sack and dropped into the Seine. The queen was banished to Tours, and her jewels and treasures confiscated. Furious with the king and the Armagnac faction, she made common cause with the Duke of Burgundy.

[90] A portrait of Jean sans Peur exists in the Louvre, No. 1002.

[91] An equestrian statue in bronze stands at the south end of the Rue des Pyramides, a few hundred yards from the spot where the Maid fell before the Porte St. Honoré.

[92] The faculty of Theology declared her sold to the devil, impious to her parents, stained with Christian blood. The faculty of Law decreed her deserving of punishment, but only if she were obstinate and of sound mind.

[93] In 1421 and 1422 the people of Paris had seen Henry V. and his French consort sitting in state at the Louvre, surrounded by a brilliant throng of princes, prelates and barons. Hungry crowds watched the sumptuous banquet and then went away fasting, for nothing was offered them. "It was not so in the former times under our kings," they murmured, "then there was open table kept, and servants distributed the meats and wine even of the king himself."

[94] Part of the Rue de l'Homme Armé still exists.

[95] The fifteenth-century goldsmiths of Paris: Loris, the Hersants, and Jehan Gallant, were famed throughout Europe.

[96] The reader will hardly need to be reminded that this amazing folly forms one of the principal episodes in Scott's _Quentin Durward_.

[97] Flamboyant windows were a natural, technical development of Gothic. The aim of the later builders was to facilitate the draining away of the water which the old mullioned windows used to retain.

[98] One of the façades of this remarkable building may be seen in the courtyard of the Beaux Arts at Paris.

[99] Brittany was incorporated with the Monarchy 1491.

[100] The good king's portrait by an Italian sculptor may be seen in the Louvre, Room VII., and on his monument in St. Denis he kneels beside his beloved and _chère Bretonne_, Anne of Brittany, whose loss he wept for eight days and nights.

[101] "He was well named after St. Francis, because of the holes in his hands," said a Sorbonne doctor.

[102] "Ah! me, how thou art changed! See, thou art neither two nor one."

[103] Travellers to Paris in the days of King Francis had cause to remember gratefully that monarch's solicitude, for a maximum of charges was fixed, and an order made that every hotel-keeper should affix his prices outside the door, that extortion might be avoided. Among other maxima, the price of a pair of sheets, to "sleep not more than five persons," was to be five deniers (a penny).

[104] The salamander was figured on the royal arms of Francis.

[105] About £600,000 in present-day value.

[106] For the first offence a fine; for the second, the lips to be cloven; for the third, the tongue pierced; for the fourth, death.

[107] The image was stolen in 1545 and replaced by one of wood. This was struck down in 1551, and the bishop of Paris substituted for it one of marble.

[108] One thousand two hundred are said to have suffered death during the month of vengeance.

[109] Henry of Guise had succeeded to the dukedom after his father's assassination.

[110] Suspicions of poison were entertained by the Huguenots. Jeanne, in a letter to the Marquis de Beauvais, complained that holes were made in her rooms that she might be spied upon.

[111] Félibien and Lobïneau, 1725.

[112] "That to show pity was to be cruel to them: to be cruel to them was to show pity."

[113] The municipality gave presents of money to the archers who had taken part in the massacre, to the watermen who prevented the Huguenots from crossing the Seine, and to grave-diggers for having buried in eight days about 1,100 bodies.

[114] Now known as the Galerie d'Apollon.

[115] _Ugonottorum strages._ Inscription on the obverse of the medal.

[116] Examples of magnificent costumes of the order may be seen in the Cluny Museum.

[117] The Duke of Guise was so called from his face being scarred by a wound received at the battle of Dolmans.

[118] The king had premonitions of a violent end. One day, after keeping Easter at Negeon with great devotion, he suddenly returned to the Louvre and ordered all the lions, bears, bulls, and other wild animals he kept there for baiting by dogs, to be shot. He had dreamt that he was set upon and eaten by wild beasts.

[119] So called derisively, because he was born and brought up in the poor province of Bearn, in the Pyrenees.

[120] Her majesty, we learn from the _Mémoires_ of L'Estoile, was of a rich figure, stout, fine eyes and complexion. She used no paint, powder or other _vilanie_.

[121] The new palace was situated in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish church of the Louvre.

[122] The north tower was left only partially constructed, and was finished by Louis XIII.

[123] By a curious coincidence the widening of the Rue de la Ferronnerie had been ordered just before the king was assassinated.

[124] They marked the seven resting-places of the saint as he journeyed to St. Denis after his martyrdom.

[125] The Grande Galerie.

[126] In the Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the old Louvre, sometimes known as the Petit Bourbon.

[127] The church of Notre Dame des Victoires commemorates the victory.

[128] The Marché St. Honoré now occupies its site.

[129] In 1793 the tomb was desecrated, and the head removed from the body, but in 1863, as an inscription tells, the head was recovered by the historian Duruy, and after seventy years reunited to the trunk.

[130] A letter from Paris to Lyons was taxed at two sous: it now costs three.

[131] The Rue Poulletier marks the line of the old channel between the islands.

[132] So named from the wooden seat, or _couche de bois_, covered with rich stuff embroidered with _fleur-de-lys_, on which the king sat when he attended a meeting of the Parlement.

[133] One of the schemes of Francis I. to raise money had been to offer the benches to the highest bidders, and under the law of 1604 the office of councillor became a hereditary property on payment to the court of one-sixtieth of its value. Moreover, the Parlement was but a local body, one among several others in the provinces.

[134] The added indignity of the whip is an invention of Voltaire.

[135] Louis used, however, to stilt his low stature by means of thick pads in his boots.

[136] Taine, basing his calculation on a MS. bound with the monogram of Mansard, estimated the cost of Versailles in modern equivalent at about 750,000,000 francs (£30,000,000 sterling.)

[137] The writer, whose youth was passed among the descendants of the Huguenot silk-weavers of Spitalfields, has indelible memories of their sterling character and admirable industry.

[138] Marshal Luxembourg was dubbed the _Tapissier de Notre Dame_ (the upholsterer of Notre Dame), from the number of captured flags he sent to the cathedral.

[139] In a previous campaign the king had taken his queen and two mistresses with him in one coach. The peasants used to amuse themselves by coming to see the "three queens."

[140] When the Duke of Orleans was about to start for Spain, the king asked whom he had chosen to accompany him. Orleans mentioned, among others, Fontpertius. "What, nephew!" exclaimed Louis, "a Jansenist!" "So far from being a Jansenist," replied Orleans, "he doesn't even believe in God." "Oh, if that is so," said the king, "I see no reason why he should not go."

[141] Among the privileges granted to England was the monopoly of supplying the Spanish Colonies with negro slaves.

[142] Levau's south façade was not completely hidden by Perrault's screen, for the roofs of the end and central pavilions emerged from behind it until they were destroyed by Gabriel in 1755.

[143] Jules Hardouin, the younger Mansard, was a nephew and pupil of François Mansard, who assumed his uncle's name. The latter was the inventor of the Mansard roof.

[144] The sixth part of a sou.

[145] Twelve alone were added to the St. Honoré quarter by levelling the Hill of St. Roch and clearing away accumulated rubbish.

[146] It extended as far as the entrance to the quadrangle opposite the Pont des Arts. A double line of trees, north and south, enclosed a Renaissance garden of elaborate design, and a charming _bosquet_, or wood, filled the eastern extremity.

[147] "By order of the king, God is forbidden to work miracles in this place."

[148] In 1753 between 20th January and 20th February two hundred persons died of want (_misère_) in the Faubourg St. Antoine.

[149] Some conception of the insanitary condition of the court may be formed by the fact that fifty persons were struck down there by this loathsome disease during the king's illness.

[150] "I have seen the Louvre and its huge enclosure, a vast palace which for two hundred years is always being finished and always begun. Two workmen, lazy hodmen, speed very slowly those rich buildings, and are paid when they are thought of."

[151] The aspect of the west front with Soufflot's "improvements" is well seen in _Les Principaux Monuments Gothiques de l'Europe_, published in Brussels, 1843.

[152] Taine estimates the revenues of thirty-three abbots in terms of modern values at from 140,000 to 480,000 francs (£5600 to £19,200). Twenty-seven abbesses enjoyed revenues nearly as large.

[153] The score of Rousseau's opera is still preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

[154] The Excise duty.

[155] Personal and land-taxes paid by the humbler classes alone.

[156] It is difficult, however, to read the sober and irrefutable picture of their miserable condition, given in the famous Books II. and V. of Taine's _Ancien Régime_, without deep emotion.

[157] After the Thermidorian reaction in 1795, ninety-seven Jacobins were massacred by the royalists at Lyons on 5th May; thirty at Aix on 11th May. Similar horrors were enacted at Avignon, Arles, and Marseilles, and at other places in the south.

[158] When de Brézé reported this to the king, he seemed vexed, and answered petulantly, "Well, if they won't go they must be left there."

[159] A whole library has been written concerning the identity of this famous prisoner. There is little doubt that the mask was of velvet and not of iron, and that the mysterious captive who died on 19th November 1703 in the Bastille was Count Mattioli of Bologna, who was secretly arrested for having betrayed the confidence of Louis XIV.

[160] Only five francs were allowed for a bourgeois, a man of letters was granted ten; a Marshal of France obtained the maximum.

[161] It was composed by one of the _émigrés_, M. de Limon, approved by the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, and signed, against his better judgment, by the Duke of Brunswick.

[162] The numbers have been variously estimated from 100 to 5000 killed on the popular side.

[163] "Sew we, spin we, sew we well, behold the coats we have made for the winter that is coming. Soldiers of the Fatherland, ye shall want for nothing."

[164] _Inferno._ XV. 76-78.--"In whom lives again the seed of those Romans who remained there when the nest (Florence) of so much wickedness was made."

[165] Mdlle. Curchod, for whom Gibbon "sighed as a lover."

[166] "We could rouse no enthusiasm," said the head of a State Department to the writer at the time of the Fashoda incident, "even for a war for the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, much less against England."

[167] _See_ p. 41.

[168] According to Sir Thomas Browne, bodies soon consumed there. "'Tis all one to lie in St. Innocents' churchyard as in the sands of Egypt, ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six feet as the _moles_ of Adrianus."--_Urn Burial_, p. 351.

[169] The picture subsequently found its way to the apartments of Louis XVI., and followed him from Versailles to Paris. The attitude of this ill-fated monarch towards his advisers, says Michelet, was much influenced by a fixed idea that Charles I. lost his head for having made war on his people, and that James II. lost his crown for having abandoned them.

[170] _French Painting in the Sixteenth Century_, by L. Dimier. London, 1904.

[171] The picture, Une Dame présentée par la Madeleine, attributed to the Maître de Moulins at the Exhibition of Primitifs in the Pavilion de Marsan has now been acquired by the Louvre.

[172] M. Lafenestre, the Director of the Louvre, informs the writer that he sees no sufficient reason at present for modifying the traditional attributions of the pictures loaned by the Louvre to the Exhibition of the Primitifs in the Pavilion de Marsan.

[173] One of the few non-dramatic compositions of Molière is an eulogistic poem on Mignard's decoration of this dome.

[174]

"O the fair statue! O the fair pedestal! The Virtues are on foot: Vice is on horseback."

[175]

"He is here as at Versailles Without heart and without bowels."

[176] A description of this and of other public balls of the Second Empire will be found in Taine's _Notes sur Paris_, which has been translated into English.

[177] In 1664 we find _Guilliaume roy des Ménéstriers_, the viol players and masters of dancing, acting in the name of the foundation against the usurpations of the Fathers of the Christian Doctrine. In 1720 the title of the church was confirmed by royal decree as St. Julian of the Minstrels. The church and the street of the minstrels were swept away to make the Rue Rambuteau.

[178] It became the second Théâtre Français in 1819.

[179] It became the Théâtre Français in 1799, and was burnt down in 1900.

[180] The word is derived from basilica, a law court.

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

the insigna of a president=> the insigna of a president {pg vii}

counseller=> counsellor {pg 58}

sublety=> subtlety {pg 87}

in French story=> in French history {pg 131}

Ville gagneé=> Ville gagnée {pg 137}

facades=> façades {pg 149}

soldier and gentlemen=> soldier and gentleman {pg 156}

statemanship=> statemanship {pg 161}

was flung out of window=> was flung out of a window {pg 172}

chateâu=> château {pg 176}

St. Medard=> St. Médard {pg 230}

la Patrie reconnaisante=> la Patrie reconnaissante {pg 239}

Galerie Merciere=> Galerie Mercière {pg 241}

detention there rather in=> detention there rather than in {pg 251}

sleep well=> sleeps well {pg 253}

Champ du Mars=> Champ de Mars {pg 255}

Place de la Revolution=> Place de la Révolution {pg 260}

north facade=> north façade {pg 276}

joiner's workship=> joiner's workshop {pg 283}

famous D'Artagan=> famous D'Artagnan {pg 303}

Place du Carrouels=> Place du Carrousel {pg 304}

Salle de la Venus de Milo=> Salle de la Vénus de Milo {pg 305}

Sculptures du Moyen age=> Sculptures du Moyen âge {pg 305}

Montmatre=> Montmartre {pg 320}

Le Médecin malgre lui=> Le Médecin malgré lui {pg 325}

Montmarte=> Montmartre {index}