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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Paris, by Thomas Okey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Story of Paris
+
+Author: Thomas Okey
+
+Illustrator: Katherine Kimball
+
+Release Date: August 28, 2008 [EBook #26450]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF PARIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Hélène de Mink and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note: Minor spelling inconsistencies, mainly hyphenated
+words, have been harmonised. Obvious printer errors have been
+repaired.
+
+Accents: In French sentences, most of them italicised, accents have
+been added when necessary according to the French spelling of the
+time.
+
+In an English context, French words have no accents if there are no
+accents in the original text. In case of an inconsistent use of
+accents, the French spelling has been favoured.
+
+The advertisement for other books in the series have been removed from
+page 3 to the end of this e-book.
+
+
+
+
+_The Story of Paris_
+
+[Illustration: _Winged Victory of Samothrace._]
+
+
+
+
+ THE STORY OF PARIS
+
+ _by Thomas Okey_
+
+ _With Illustrations by_
+
+ _Katherine Kimball_
+
+ _London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
+ Aldine House, 10-13 Bedford Street
+ Covent Garden, W.C. * * *
+ New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.--1919_
+
+
+
+
+ _First Edition, 1906_
+
+ _Reprinted, 1911; July, 1919_
+
+
+"I will not forget this, that I can never mutinie so much against
+France but I must needes looke on Paris with a favourable eye: it hath
+my hart from my infancy; whereof it hath befalne me, as of excellent
+things, the more other faire and stately cities I have seene since,
+the more hir beauty hath power and doth still usurpingly gaine upon my
+affections. I love that citie for hir own sake, and more in hir only
+subsisting and owne being, than when it is fall fraught and
+embellished with forraine pompe and borrowed garish ornaments. I love
+hir so tenderly that hir spottes, her blemishes and hir warts are
+deare unto me. I am no perfect French man but by this great citie,
+great in people, great in regard of the felicitie of hir situation,
+but above all great and incomparable in varietie and diversitie of
+commodities; the glory of France and one of the noblest and chiefe
+ornaments of the world. God of his mercy free hir and chase away all
+our divisions from hir. So long as she shall continue, so long shall I
+never want a home or a retreat to retire and shrowd myselfe at all
+times."
+
+ --MONTAIGNE.
+
+ "Quand Dieu eslut nonante et dix royaumes
+ Tot le meillor torna en douce France."
+
+ COURONNEMENT LOYS.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In recasting _Paris and its Story_ for issue in the "Mediæval Towns
+Series," opportunity has been taken of revising the whole and of
+adding a Second Part, wherein we have essayed the office of cicerone.
+
+Obviously in so vast a range of study as that afforded by the city of
+Paris, compression and selection have been imperative: we have
+therefore limited our guidance to such routes and edifices as seemed
+to offer the more important objects of historic and artistic interest,
+excluding from our purview, with much regret, the works of
+contemporary artists. On the Louvre, as the richest Thesaurus of
+beautiful things in Europe, we have dwelt at some length and even so
+it has been possible only to deal broadly with its contents. A book
+has, however, this advantage over a corporeal guide; it can be curtly
+dismissed without fear of offence, when antipathy may impel the
+traveller to pass by, or sympathy invite him to linger over, the
+various objects indicated to his gaze. In a city where change is so
+constant and the housebreaker's pick so active, any work dealing with
+monuments of the past must needs soon become imperfect. Since the
+publication of _Paris and its Story_ in the autumn of 1904, a
+picturesque group of old houses in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, including
+the Hôtel des Mousquetaires, the traditional lodging of Dumas'
+d'Artagnan, has been swept away and a monstrous mass of engineering is
+now reared on its site: even as we write other demolitions of historic
+buildings are in progress. Care has, however, been taken to bring this
+little work up to date and our constant desire has been to render it
+useful to the inexperienced visitor to Paris. Success in so
+complicated and difficult a task can be but partial, and in this as in
+so many of life's aims "our wills," as good Sir Thomas Browne says,
+"must be our performances, and our intents make out our actions;
+otherwise our pious labours shall find anxiety in our graves and our
+best endeavours not hope, but fear, a resurrection."
+
+It now remains to acknowledge our indebtedness to the following, among
+other authorities, which are here set down to obviate the necessity
+for repeated footnotes, and to indicate to readers who may desire to
+pursue the study of the history and art of Paris in more detail, some
+works among the enormous mass of literature on the subject that will
+repay perusal.
+
+For the general history of France, the monumental _Histoire de France_
+now in course of publication, edited by E. Lavisse; Michelet's
+_Histoire de France_, _Recits de l'Histoire de France_, and _Procès
+des Templiers_; Victor Duruy, _Histoire de France_; the cheap and
+admirable selection of authorities in the seventeen volumes of the
+_Histoire de France racontée par les Contemporains_, edited by B.
+Zeller; _Carl Faulmann, Illustrirte Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst_;
+the Chronicles of Gregory of Tours, Richer, Abbo, Joinville, Villani,
+Froissart, De Comines; _Géographie Historique_, by A. Guerard;
+Froude's essay on the Templars; _Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans_, by T.
+Douglas Murray; _Paris sous Philip le Bel_, edited by H. Geraud.
+
+For the later Monarchy, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, the
+Histories of Carlyle, Mignet, Michelet and Louis Blanc; the _Origines
+de la France Contemporaine_, by Taine; the _Cambridge Modern History_,
+Vol. VIII.; the Memoirs of the Duc de St. Simon, of Madame Campan,
+Madame Vigée-Lebrun, Camille Desmoulins, Madame Roland and Paul Louis
+Courier; the _Journal de Perlet_; _Histoire de la Société Française
+pendant la Révolution_, by J. de Goncourt; Goethe's _Die Campagne in
+Frankreich_, 1792; _Légendes et Archives de la Bastille_, by F. Funck
+Brentano; Life of Napoleon I., by J. Holland Rose; _L'Europe et la
+Révolution Française_, by Albert Sorel; the periodical, _La Révolution
+Française_; _Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution_,
+by C.D. Hazen.
+
+For the particular history of Paris, the exhaustive and comprehensive
+_Histoire de la Ville de Paris_, by Michel Félibien and Guy Alexis
+Lobineau; the so-called _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_, edited by
+L. Lalanne; _Paris Pendant la Domination Anglaise_, by A. Longnon; the
+more modern _Paris à Travers les Ages_, by M.F. Hoffbauer, E. Fournier
+and others; the _Topographie Historique du Vieux Paris_, by A. Berty
+and H. Legrand, and other works now issued or in course of publication
+by the Ville de Paris. Howell's _Familiar Letters_, Coryat's
+_Crudities_, Evelyn's _Diary_, and Sir Samuel Romilly's _Letters_,
+contain useful matter. For the chapters on Historical Paris, E.
+Fournier's _Promenade Historique dans Paris_, _Chronique des Rues de
+Paris_, _Énigmes des Rues de Paris_; the Marquis de Rochegude's _Guide
+Pratique à Travers le Vieux Paris_; the _Dictionnaire Historique de
+Paris_, by G. Pessard, and the excellent _Nouvel Itinéraire Guide
+Artistique et Archéologique de Paris_, by C. Normand, published by the
+_Société des Amis des Monuments Parisiens_.
+
+For French art, Félibien's _Entretiens_; the writings of Lady Dilke;
+_French Painting in the Sixteenth Century_, by L. Dimier; _Histoire de
+l'Art, Peinture, École Française_, by Cazes d'Aix and J. Bérard; the
+compendious _History of Modern Painting_, by R. Muther; _The Great
+French Painters_, by C. Mauclair; _La Sculpture Française_, by L.
+Gonse; _Mediæval Art_, by W.R. Lethaby; the Catalogue of the
+_Exposition des Primitifs Français_ (1904); _Le Peinture en Europe, Le
+Louvre_, by Lafenestre and Richtenberger, and the official catalogues
+of the Louvre collections. All these have been largely drawn upon and
+supplemented by affectionate memories of an acquaintance with Paris
+and many of its citizens dating back for more than thirty years.
+
+May we add a last word of practical counsel. Distances in Paris are
+great, and the traveller who would economise time and reduce fatigue
+will do well to bargain with his host to be free to take the mid-day
+meal wherever his journeyings may lead him.
+
+_April, 1906._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
+
+
+The demolition of Old Paris has proceeded apace since the publication
+of the _Story of Paris_ in 1906. The Tower of Dagobert; the old
+Academy of Medicine; the Annexe of the Hôtel Dieu and a whole street,
+the Rue du Petit Pont; the Hôtel of the Provost of Paris--all have
+fallen under the housebreakers' picks. As we write the curious vaulted
+entrance to the old charnel houses of St Paul is being swept away and
+the revision of this little book has been a melancholy task to a lover
+of historic Paris. Part II. of the work has been brought up to date
+and the changes in the Louvre noted: it is much to be regretted that
+the new edition of the official Catalogue of the Foreign Schools of
+Painting promised by the authorities in 1909 has not yet seen the
+light.
+
+_May, 1911._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ PAGE
+
+ _Introduction_ 1
+
+
+ PART I.: THE STORY
+
+ CHAPTER I
+
+ _Gallo-Roman Paris_ 9
+
+ CHAPTER II
+
+ _The Barbarian Invasions--St. Genevieve--The
+ Conversion of Clovis--The Merovingian
+ Dynasty_ 20
+
+ CHAPTER III
+
+ _The Carlovingians--The Great Siege of Paris
+ by the Normans--The Germs of Feudalism_ 35
+
+ CHAPTER IV
+
+ _The Rise of the Capetian Kings and the Growth
+ of Feudal Paris_ 51
+
+ CHAPTER V
+
+ _Paris under Philip Augustus and St. Louis_ 64
+
+ CHAPTER VI
+
+ _Art and Learning at Paris_ 84
+
+ CHAPTER VII
+
+ _Conflict with Boniface VIII.--The States-General--The
+ Destruction of the Knights-Templars--The
+ Parlement_ 107
+
+ CHAPTER VIII
+
+ _Étienne Marcel--The English Invasions--The
+ Maillotins--Murder of the Duke of Orleans--Armagnacs
+ and Burgundians_ 121
+
+ CHAPTER IX
+
+ _Jeanne D'Arc--Paris under the English--End
+ of the English Occupation_ 138
+
+ CHAPTER X
+
+ _Louis XI. at Paris--The Introduction of
+ Printing_ 144
+
+ CHAPTER XI
+
+ _Francis I.--The Renaissance at Paris_ 151
+
+ CHAPTER XII
+
+ _Rise of the Guises--Huguenot and Catholic--The
+ Massacre of St. Bartholomew_ 171
+
+ CHAPTER XIII
+
+ _Henry III.--The League--Siege of Paris by
+ Henry IV.--His Conversion, Reign and
+ Assassination_ 186
+
+ CHAPTER XIV
+
+ _Paris under Richelieu and Mazarin_ 204
+
+ CHAPTER XV
+
+ _The Grand Monarque--Versailles and Paris_ 223
+
+ CHAPTER XVI
+
+ _Paris under the Regency and Louis XV.--The
+ brooding Storm_ 242
+
+ CHAPTER XVII
+
+ _Louis XVI.--The Great Revolution--Fall of
+ the Monarchy_ 256
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ _Execution of the King--Paris under the First
+ Republic--The Terror--Napoleon--Revolutionary
+ and Modern Paris_ 271
+
+
+ PART II.: THE CITY
+
+ SECTION I
+
+ _The Cité--Notre Dame--The Sainte Chapelle--The
+ Palais de Justice_ 295
+
+ SECTION II
+
+ _St. Julien le Pauvre--St. Sévérin--The
+ Quartier Latin_ 313
+
+ SECTION III
+
+ _École des Beaux Arts--St. Germain des Prés--Cour
+ du Dragon--St. Sulpice--The Luxembourg--The
+ Odéon--The Cordeliers--The
+ Surgeons' Guild--The Musée Cluny--The
+ Sorbonne--The Panthéon--St.
+ Étienne du Mont--Tour Clovis--Wall
+ of Philip Augustus--Roman Amphitheatre_ 318
+
+ SECTION IV
+
+ _The Louvre--Sculpture: Ground Floor_ 333
+
+ SECTION V
+
+ _The Louvre (continued)--Pictures: First Floor_ 350
+
+ SECTION VI
+
+ _The Ville (S. of the Rue St. Antoine)--The
+ Hôtel de Ville--St. Gervais--Hôtel Beauvais--Hôtel
+ of the Provost of Paris--SS. Paul and Louis--Hôtel
+ de Mayenne--Site of the Bastille--Bibliothèque
+ de l'Arsenal--Hôtel Fieubert--Hôtel de Sens--Isle
+ St. Louis_ 400
+
+ SECTION VII
+
+ _The Ville (N. of the Rue St. Antoine)--Tour
+ St. Jacques--Rue St. Martin--St. Merri--Rue
+ de Venise--Les Billettes--Hôtels
+ de Soubise, de Hollande, de Rohan--Musée
+ Carnavalet--Place Royale--Musée Victor
+ Hugo--Hôtel de Sully_ 407
+
+ SECTION VIII
+
+ _Rue St. Denis--Fontaine des Innocents--Tower
+ of Jean sans Peur--Cour des Miracles--St.
+ Eustache--The Halles--St. Germain
+ l'Auxerrois_ 417
+
+ SECTION IX
+
+ _Palais Royal--Théâtre Français--Gardens and
+ Cafés of the Palais Royal--Palais Mazarin
+ (Bibliothèque Nationale)--St. Roch--Vendôme
+ Column--Tuileries Gardens--Place
+ de la Concorde--Champs Élysées_ 424
+
+ SECTION X
+
+ _The Basilica of St. Denis and the Monuments
+ of the Kings, Queens and Princes of
+ France_ 436
+
+ _Index_ 441
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ _The Winged Victory of Samothrace
+ (Photogravure) Frontispiece_
+
+ _Map of the Successive Walls of Paris_ _facing_ 1
+
+ _The Cité_ 11
+
+ _Remains of Roman Amphitheatre_ 14
+
+ _Tower of Clovis_ 25
+
+ _St. Germain des Prés_ 31
+
+ _St. Julien le Pauvre_ 38
+
+ _St. Germain l'Auxerrois_ 45
+
+ _Wall of Philippe Auguste, Cour de Rouen_ 67
+
+ _La Sainte Chapelle_ 73
+
+ _Refectory of the Cordeliers_ 77
+
+ _Notre Dame and Petit Pont_ 95
+
+ _Tower in Rue Valette in which Calvin is said to
+ have lived_ 99
+
+ _Palace of the Archbishop of Sens_ 115
+
+ _Palais de Justice, Clock Tower and Conciergerie_ 119
+
+ _Tower of Jean Sans Peur_ 135
+
+ _Tower of St. Jacques_ 153
+
+ _Pont Notre Dame_ 157
+
+ _Chapel, Hôtel de Cluny_ 158
+
+ _Tower of St. Étienne du Mont_ 161
+
+ _La Fontaine des Innocents_ 171
+
+ _West Wing of Louvre by Pierre Lescot_ 173
+
+ _Tritons and Nereids from the Old Fontaine des
+ Innocents_ (_Jean Goujon_) " 174
+
+ _Catherine de' Medici_ (_French School_) 180
+
+ _Petite Galerie of the Louvre_ 183
+
+ _Hôtel de Sully_ 195
+
+ _Old Houses near Pont St. Michel, showing spire
+ of the Ste. Chapelle_ 201
+
+ _The Medici Fountain, Luxembourg Gardens_ 209
+
+ _Pont Neuf_ 211
+
+ _The Institut de France_ 221
+
+ _Portion of the East Façade of the Louvre, from
+ Blondel's drawing_ (_reproduced by permission
+ of M. Lampue_) " 236
+
+ _River and Pont Royal_ 239
+
+ _South Door of Notre Dame_ 253
+
+ _Hôtel de Ville from River_ 293
+
+ _Chapel of Château at Vincennes_ 296
+
+ _Near the Pont Neuf_ 297
+
+ _Notre Dame--Portal of St. Anne_ 301
+
+ _Notre Dame--south side_ 303
+
+ _Notre Dame--south side from the Seine_ 304
+
+ _St. Sévérin_ 315
+
+ _Old Academy of Medicine_ 317
+
+ _Interior of Notre Dame_ 320
+
+ _Cour de Dragon_ 323
+
+ _Tower and Courtyard of Hôtel Cluny_ 325
+
+ _Arches in the Courtyard of the Hôtel Cluny_ 329
+
+ _Interior of St. Étienne du Mont_ 332
+
+ _Diana and the Stag_ (_Jean Goujon_) " 342
+
+ _St. George and the Dragon_ (_M. Colombe_) " 344
+
+ _Triptych of Moulins_ (_Maître de Moulins_) " 370
+
+ _Portrait of Elizabeth of Austria_ (_François
+ Clouet_) _facing_ 372
+
+ _Shepherds of Arcady_ (_Poussin_) " 376
+
+ _Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsus_ (_Lorrain_) " 378
+
+ _Embarkation for the Island of Cythera_
+ (_Watteau_) " 382
+
+ _Grace before Meat_ (_Chardin_) " 384
+
+ _Madame Récamier_ (_David_) " 388
+
+ _The Binders_ (_Millet_) " 394
+
+ _Landscape_ (_Corot_) " 396
+
+ _St. Gervais_ 402
+
+ _Hôtel of the Provost of Paris_ 404
+
+ _West door of St. Merri_ 409
+
+ _Cloister of the Billettes, fifteenth century_ 410
+
+ _Archives Nationales, Hôtel Soubise, showing
+ towers of Hôtel de Clisson_ 411
+
+ _Tower at the corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple_ 413
+
+ _Place des Vosges, Maison de Victor Hugo_ 418
+
+ _Cathedral of St. Denis_ 437
+
+ _Plan of Paris_ " 448
+
+_The majority of the photographs of sculpture have been taken by
+Messrs._ HAWEIS AND COLES, _while most of the other photographs are
+reproduced by permission of Messrs._ GIRAUDON.
+
+[Illustration: Map of the Successive Walls of Paris.]
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The History of Paris, says Michelet, is the history of the French
+monarchy: "Paris, France and the Dukes and Kings of the French, are
+three ideas," says Freeman, "which can never be kept asunder." The aim
+of the writer in the following pages has been to narrate the story of
+the capital city of France on the lines thus indicated. Moreover, men
+are ever touched by "sad stories of the death of kings," the pomp and
+majesty and the fate of princes. By a pathetic fallacy their capacity
+to suffer is measured by their apparent power to enjoy, and those are
+moved to tears by the spectacle of a Dauphin surrendered to the coarse
+and brutal tutelage of a sans-culotte, who read without emotion of
+thousands of Huguenot children torn from their mothers' arms and flung
+to the novercal cruelties of strangers in blood and creed. In the
+earlier chapters the legendary aspect of the story has been drawn upon
+rather more perhaps than an austere historical conscience would
+approve, but it is precisely a familiarity with these romantic
+stories, which at least are true in impression if not in fact, that
+the sojourner in Paris will find most useful, translated as they are
+in sculpture and in painting, on the decoration of her architecture,
+both modern and ancient, and implicit in the nomenclature of her ways.
+
+The story of Paris presents a marked contrast with that of an Italian
+city-state whose rise, culmination and fall may be roundly traced.
+Paris is yet in the stage of lusty growth. Time after time, like a
+young giantess, she has burst her cincture of walls, cast off her
+outworn garments and renewed her armour and vesture. Hers are no
+grass-grown squares and deserted streets; no ruined splendours telling
+of pride abased and glory departed; no sad memories of waning cities
+once the mistresses of sea and land; none of the tears evoked by a
+great historic tragedy; none of the solemn pathos of decay and death.
+Paris has more than once tasted the bitterness of humiliation;
+Norseman and Briton, Russian and German have bruised her fair body;
+the dire distress of civic strife has exhausted her strength, but she
+has always emerged from her trials with marvellous recuperation, more
+flourishing than before.
+
+Since 1871, when the city, crushed under a twofold calamity of foreign
+invasion and of internecine war, seemed doomed to bleed away to feeble
+insignificance, her prosperity has so increased that house rent has
+doubled and population risen from 1,825,274 in 1870 to 2,714,068 in
+1901. The growth of Paris from the settlement of an obscure Gallic
+tribe to the most populous, the most cultured, the most artistic, the
+most delightful and seductive of continental cities has been
+prodigious, yet withal she has maintained her essential unity, her
+corporate sense and peculiar individuality. Paris, unlike London, has
+never expatiated to the effacement of her distinctive features and the
+loss of civic consciousness. The city has still a definite outline and
+circumference, and over her gates to-day one may read, _Entrée de
+Paris_. The Parisian is, and always has been, conscious of his
+citizenship, proud of his city, careful of her beauty, jealous of her
+reputation. The essentials of Parisian life remain unchanged since
+mediæval times. Busy multitudes of alert, eager burgesses crowd her
+streets; ten thousand students stream from the provinces, from Europe,
+and even from the uttermost parts of the earth, to eat of the bread of
+knowledge at her University. The old collegiate life is gone, but the
+arts and sciences are freely taught as of old to all comers; and a
+lowly peasant lad may carry in his satchel the portfolio of a prime
+minister or the insignia of a president of the republic, even as his
+mediæval prototype bore a bishop's mitre or a cardinal's hat. The
+boisterous exuberance of youthful spirits still vents itself in rowdy
+student life to the scandal of bourgeois placidity, and the poignant
+self-revelation and gnawing self-reproach of a François Villon find
+their analogue in the pathetic verse of a Paul Verlaine. Beneath the
+fair and ordered surface of the normal life of Paris still sleep the
+fiery passions which, from the days of the Maillotins to those of the
+Commune, have throughout the crises of her history ensanguined her
+streets with the blood of citizens.[1] Let us remember, however, when
+contrasting the modern history of Paris with that of London, that the
+questions which have stirred her citizens have been not party but
+dynastic ones, often complicated and embittered by social and
+religious principles ploughing deep in the human soul, for which men
+have cared enough to suffer, and to inflict, death.
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+Those writers who are pleased to trace the permanency of racial traits
+through the life of a people dwell with satisfaction on passages in
+ancient authors who describe the Gauls as quick to champion the cause
+of the oppressed, prone to war, elated by victory, impatient of
+defeat, easily amenable to the arts of peace, responsive to
+intellectual culture; terrible, indefatigable orators but bad
+listeners, so intolerant of their speakers that at tribal gatherings
+an official charged to maintain silence would march, sword in hand,
+towards an interrupter, and after a third warning cut off a portion
+of his dress. If the concurrent testimony of writers, ancient,
+mediæval and modern, be of any worth, Gallic vanity is beyond dispute.
+Dante, expressing the prevailing belief of his age, exclaims, "Now,
+was there ever people so vain as the Sienese! Certes not the French by
+far."[2] Of their imperturbable gaiety and their avidity for new
+things we have ample testimony, and the course of this story will
+demonstrate that France, and more especially Paris, has ever been,
+from the establishment of Christianity to the birth of the modern
+world at the Revolution, the parent or the fosterer of ideas, the
+creator of arts, the soldier of the ideal. She has always evinced a
+wondrous preventive apprehension of coming changes. Sir Henry Maine
+has shown in his _Ancient Law_ that the idea of kingship created by
+the accession of the Capetian dynasty revolutionised the whole fabric
+of society, and that "when the feudal prince of a limited territory
+surrounding Paris began ... to call himself _King of France_, he
+became king in quite a new sense." The earliest of the western people
+beyond Rome to adopt Christianity, she had established a monastery
+near Tours, a century and a half before St. Benedict, the founder of
+Western monasticism, had organised his first community at Subiaco. In
+the Middle Ages Paris became the intellectual light of the Christian
+world. From the time of the centralisation of the monarchy at Paris
+she absorbed in large measure the vital forces of the nation, and all
+that was greatest in art, science and literature was drawn within her
+walls, until in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she became
+the centre of learning, taste and culture in Europe.[3] "Alone of the
+capitals of Modern Europe," said Freeman, "Paris can claim to have
+been the creator of the state of which it is now the head." The same
+authority bears witness to the unique position held by France in her
+generous and liberal treatment of new subjects, and the late
+historian, Mr. C.A. Fyffe, told the writer that when travelling in
+Alsace in 1871 the inhabitants of that province, so essentially German
+in race, were passionately attached to France, and more than once he
+heard a peasant exclaim, unable even to express himself in French:
+"_Nimmer will ich Deutsch sein._"
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+During the first Empire and the Restoration, after the tempest was
+stilled and the great heritage of the Revolution taken possession of,
+an amazing outburst of scientific, artistic and literary activity made
+Paris the _Ville Lumière_ of Europe. She is still the city where the
+things of the mind and of taste have most place, where the wheels of
+life run most smoothly and pleasantly, where the graces and
+refinements and amenities of social existence, _l'art des plaisirs
+fins_, are most highly developed and most widely diffused. There is
+something in the crisp, luminous air of Paris that quickens the
+intelligence and stimulates the senses. Even the scent of the wood
+fires as one emerges from the railway station exhilarates the spirit.
+The poet Heine used to declare that the traveller could estimate his
+proximity to Paris by noting the increasing intelligence of the
+people, and that the very bayonets of the soldiers were more
+intelligent than those elsewhere. Life, even in its more sensuous and
+material phases, is less gross and coarse,[4] its pleasures more
+refined than in London. It is impossible to conceive the pit of a
+London theatre stirred to fury by an innovation in diction in a
+poetical drama, or to imagine anything comparable to the attitude of a
+Parisian audience at the cheap holiday performances at the Français or
+the Odéon, where the severe classic tragedies of Racine, of Corneille,
+of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Molière or of
+Beaumarchais are played with small lure of stage upholstery, and
+listened to with close attention by a popular audience responsive to
+the exquisite rhythm and grace of phrasing, the delicate and
+restrained tragic pathos, and the subtle comedy of their great
+dramatists. To witness a _première_ at the Français is an intellectual
+feast. The brilliant house; the pit and stalls filled with
+black-coated critics; the quick apprehension of the points and happy
+phrases; the universal and excited discussion between the acts; the
+atmosphere of keen and alert intelligence pervading the whole
+assembly; the quaint survival of the time-honoured "overture"--three
+knocks on the boards--dating back to Roman times when the Prologus of
+the comedy stepped forth and craved the attention of the audience by
+three taps of his wand; the chief actor's approach to the front of the
+stage after the play is ended to announce to Mesdames and Messieurs
+what in these days they have known for weeks before from the press,
+that "the piece we have had the honour of playing" is by such a
+one--all combine to make an indelible impression on the mind of the
+foreign spectator.
+
+[Footnote 4: "Nous cuisinons même l'amour."--TAINE.]
+
+The Parisian is the most orderly and well-behaved of citizens. The
+custom of the _queue_ is a spontaneous expression of his love of
+fairness and order. Even the applause in theatres is organised. A
+spectacle such as that witnessed at the funeral of Victor Hugo in
+1885, the most solemn and impressive of modern times, is inconceivable
+in London. The whole population (except the Faubourg St. Germain and
+the clergy) from the poorest labourer to the heads of the State issued
+forth to file past the coffin of their darling poet, lifted up under
+the Arc de Triomphe, and by their multitudinous presence honoured his
+remains borne on a poor bare hearse to their last resting-place in the
+Panthéon. Amid this vast crowd, mainly composed of labourers,
+mechanics and the _petite bourgeoisie_, assembled to do homage to the
+memory of the poet of democracy, scarcely an _agent_ was seen; the
+people were their own police, and not a rough gesture, not a trace of
+disorder marred the sublime scene. The Parisian democracy is the most
+enlightened and the most advanced in Europe, and as of old the
+Netherlanders, in their immortal fight for freedom against the
+monstrous and appalling tyranny of Spain, were stirred to heroic deeds
+by the psalms of Clément Marot, even so to-day, where a few desperate
+and devoted men are moved to wrestle with a brutal despotism, the
+Marseillaise is their battle hymn. It is to Paris that the dearest
+hopes and deepest sympathies of generous spirits will ever go forth in
+
+ "The struggle, and the daring rage divine for liberty,
+ Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast dreams of
+ brotherhood."
+
+
+
+
+ "Siede Parigi in una gran pianura,
+ Nell' ombilico a Francia, anzi nel core.
+ Gli passa la riviera entro le mura,
+ E corre, ed esce in altra parte fuore;
+ Ma fa un' isola prima, e v'assicura
+ Della città una parte, e la migliore:
+ L'altre due (ch' in tre parti è la gran terra)
+ Di fuor la fossa, e dentro il fiume serra."
+
+ _Orlando Furioso_, Canto xiv.
+
+
+
+
+Part I.: The Story
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_Gallo-Roman Paris_
+
+
+The mediæval scribe in the fulness of a divinely-revealed cosmogony is
+wont to begin his story at the creation of the world or at the
+confusion of tongues, to trace the building of Troy by the descendants
+of Japheth, and the foundation of his own native city by one of the
+Trojan princes made a fugitive in Europe by proud Ilion's fall. Such,
+he was very sure, was the origin of Padua, founded by Antenor and by
+Priam, son of King Priam, whose grandson, yet another Priam, by his
+great valour and wisdom became the monarch of a mighty people, called
+from their fair hair, Galli or Gallici. And of the strong city built
+on the little island in the Seine who could have been its founder but
+the ravisher of fair Helen--Sir Paris himself? The naïve etymology of
+the time was evidence enough.
+
+But the modern writer, as he compares the geographical position of the
+capitals of Europe, is tempted to exclaim, _Cherchez le marchand!_ for
+he perceives that their unknown founders were dominated by two
+considerations--facilities for commerce and protection from enemies:
+and before the era of the Roman road-makers, commerce meant facilities
+for water carriage. As the early settlers in Britain sailed up the
+Thames, they must have observed, where the river's bed begins somewhat
+to narrow, a hill rising from the continuous expanse of marshes from
+its mouth, easily defended on the east and west by those fortified
+posts which, in subsequent times, became the Tower of London and
+Barnard's Castle, and if we scan a map of France, we shall see that
+the group of islands on and around which Paris now stands, lies in the
+fruitful basin of the Seine, known as the Isle de France, near the
+convergence of three rivers; for on the east the Marne, on the west
+the Oise, and on the south the Yonne, discharge their waters into the
+main stream on its way to the sea. In ancient times the great line of
+Phoenician, Greek and Roman commerce followed northwards the valleys
+of the Rhone and of the Saone, whose upper waters are divided from
+those of the Yonne only by the plateau of Dijon and the calcareous
+slopes of Burgundy. The Parisii were thus admirably placed for tapping
+the profitable commerce of north-west Europe, and by the waters of the
+Eure, lower down the Seine, were able to touch the fertile valley of
+the Loire. The northern rivers of Gaul were all navigable by the small
+boats of the early traders, and, in contrast with the impetuous sweep
+of the Rhone and the Loire in the south and west, flowed with slow and
+measured stream:[5] they were rarely flooded, and owing to the
+normally mild winters, still more rarely blocked by ice. Moreover, the
+Parisian settlement stood near the rich cornland of La Beauce, and to
+the north-east, over the open plain of La Valois, lay the way to
+Flanders. It was one of the river stations on the line of the
+Phoenician traders in tin, that most precious and rare of ancient
+metals, between Marseilles and Britain, and in the early Middle Ages
+became, with Lyons and Beaucaire, one of the chief fairs of that
+historic trade route which the main lines of railway traffic still
+follow to-day. The island now known as the Cité, which the founders of
+Paris chose for their stronghold, was the largest of the group which
+lay involved in the many windings of the Seine, and was embraced by a
+natural moat of deep waters. To north and south lay hills, marshes and
+forests, and all combined to give it a position equally adapted for
+defence and for commerce.
+
+[Footnote 5: The Seine takes five hours to flow through the seven
+miles of modern Paris.]
+
+[Illustration: THE CITÉ.]
+
+The Parisii were a small tribe of Gauls whose island city was the home
+of a prosperous community of shipmen and merchants, but it is not
+until the Conquest of Gaul by the Romans that Lutetia, for such was
+its Romanised name, joins the great pageant of history. It was--
+
+ "Armèd Cæsar falcon-eyed,"[6]
+
+who saw its great military importance, built a permanent camp there
+and made it a central _entrepôt_ for food and munitions of war. And
+when in 52 B.C. the general rising of the tribes under Vercingétorix
+threatened to scour the Romans out of Gaul and to destroy the whole
+fabric of Cæsar's ambition, he sent his favourite lieutenant,
+Labienus, to seize Lutetia where the Northern army of the Gauls was
+centred. Labienus crossed the Seine at Melun, fixed his camp on a spot
+near the position of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and began
+the first of the historic sieges for which Paris is so famous. But the
+Gaulish commander burnt the bridges, fired the city, and took up his
+position on the slopes of the hill of Lutetius (St. Genevieve) in the
+south, and aimed at crushing his enemy between his own forces and an
+army advancing from the north. Labienus having learnt that Cæsar was
+in a tight place, owing to a check at Clermont and the defection of
+the Eduans, by a masterly piece of engineering recrossed the Seine by
+night at the Point du Jour, where the double viaduct of the girdle
+railway crosses to-day, and when the Gauls awoke in the morning they
+beheld the bannered host of the Roman legions in battle array on the
+plain of Grenelle beneath. They made a desperate attempt to drive them
+against the river, but they lost their leader and were almost
+annihilated by the superior arms and strategy of the Romans. Labienus
+was able to join his master at Sens, and the irrevocable subjugation
+of the Gauls soon followed. With the tolerant and enlightened
+conquerors came the Roman peace, Roman law, Roman roads, the Roman
+schoolmaster; and a more humane religion abolished the Druidical
+sacrifices. Lutetia was rebuilt and became a prosperous and, next to
+Lyons, the most important of Gallo-Roman cities. It lay equidistant
+from Germany and Britain and at the issue of valleys which led to the
+upper and lower Rhine. The quarries of Mount Lutetius produced an
+admirable building stone, kind to work and hardening well under
+exposure to the air, whose white colour may have won for Paris the
+name of Leucotia, or the White City, by which it is sometimes known to
+ancient writers. Cæsar had done his work well, for so completely were
+the Gauls Romanised, that by the fifth or sixth century their very
+language had disappeared.[7]
+
+[Footnote 6: "_Cesare armato con gli occhi grifani._"--_Inferno_, iv.
+123.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+But towards the end of the third century three lowly wayfarers were
+journeying from Rome along the great southern road to Paris, charged
+by the Pope with a mission fraught with greater issues to Gaul than
+were the Cæsars and all their legions. Let us recall somewhat of the
+appearance of the city which Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius saw
+as they neared its suburbs and came down what is now known as the Rue
+St. Jacques. After passing the arches of the aqueduct, two of which
+exist to this day, that crossed the valley of Arcueil and brought the
+waters of Rungis,[8] Paray and Montjean to the baths of the imperial
+palace and the public fountains, they would discern on the hill of
+Lutetius to their right, the Roman camp, garrison and cemetery. Lower
+down to the east they would catch a glimpse of a great amphitheatre,
+capable of accommodating 10,000 spectators.[9]
+
+[Footnote 8: The water supply of Paris is even now partly derived from
+these sources, and flows along the old repaired Roman aqueduct.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Part of this amphitheatre was laid bare in 1869 by some
+excavations made for the Compagnie des Omnibus between the Rues Monge
+and Linné. Unhappily, the public subscription initiated by the
+Académie des Inscriptions to purchase the property proved inadequate,
+and the Company retained possession of the land. In 1883, however,
+other excavations were undertaken in the Rue de Navarre, which
+resulted in the discovery of other remains of the amphitheatre which
+have been preserved and made into a public park.]
+
+[Illustration: REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE.]
+
+On their left, where now stands the Lycée St. Louis, would be the
+theatre of Lutetia, and further on, the imposing and magnificent
+palace of the Cæsars, with its gardens sloping down to the Seine. The
+turbulent little stream of the Bièvre flowed by the foot of Mons
+Lutetius on the east, entering the main river opposite the eastern
+limit of the _civitas_ of Lutetia, gleaming white before them and
+girdled by the waters of the Seine. A narrow eel-shaped island,
+subsequently known as the Isle de Galilée, lay between the Isle of the
+Cité and the southern bank; two islands, the Isles de Notre Dame and
+des Vaches, divided by a narrow channel to the east, and two eyots,
+the Isles des Juifs and de Bussy, to the west. Another islet, the Isle
+de Javiaux or de Louviers, lay near the northern bank beyond the two
+eastern islands. Crossing a wooden bridge, where now stands the Petit
+Pont, they would enter the forum under a triumphal arch. Here would be
+the very foyer of the city; a little way to the left the prefect's
+palace and the basilica, or hall of justice;[10] to the right the
+temple of Jupiter. As they crossed the island they would find it
+linked to the northern bank by another wooden bridge (the Grand Pont)
+replaced by the present Pont Notre Dame.[11] In the distance to the
+north stood Mons Martis (Montmartre), villas nestling on its slopes
+and crowned with the temples of Mars and Mercury, four of whose
+columns are preserved in the church of St. Pierre: to the west the
+aqueduct from Passy bringing its waters to the mineral baths located
+on the site of the present Palais Royal. A road, now the Rue St.
+Martin, led to the north; to the east, fed by the streams of
+Menilmontant and Belleville, lay the marshy land which is still known
+as the quarter of the Marais.
+
+[Footnote 10: 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. In 1866 fragments of the triumphal
+arch were found in digging the foundations of the new Hôtel Dieu.]
+
+[Footnote 11: In 860 a new bridge was built east of the Grand Pont by
+Charles the Bold and defended by a tower at its head. The
+money-changers were established on the bridge by Louis VI., and it
+became known subsequently as the Pont au Change.]
+
+Denis, who by the mediæval hagiographers is invariably confused with
+Dionysius the Areopagite, and his companions, preached and taught the
+new faith unceasingly and met martyrs' deaths. In the _Golden Legend_
+he is famed to have converted much people to the faith, and "dyde do
+make many churches, and at length was brought before the judge who
+dyde do smyte off the hedes of the thre felawes by the temple of
+Mercurye. And anone the body of Saynte Denys reysed hymselfe up and
+bare his hede beetwene his armes, as the angels ladde hym two leghes
+fro the place which is sayd the hille of the martyrs unto the place
+where he now resteth by his election and the purveance of god. And
+there was heard so grete and swete a melodye of angels that many that
+herd it byleuyd in oure lorde."
+
+The work that Denis and his companions began was more fully achieved
+in the fourth century by the rude Pannonion soldier, St. Martin, who
+also evangelised at Paris. He is the best-known of Gallic saints, and
+the story of his conversion one of the most popular in Christendom.
+When stationed at Amiens he was on duty one bitter cold day at the
+city gate, and espied a poor naked beggar asking alms. Soldiers in
+garrison are notoriously impecunious, and Martin had nothing to give;
+but drawing his sword he cleaved his mantle in twain, and bestowed
+half upon the shivering wretch at his feet. That very night the Lord
+Jesus appeared to him in a dream surrounded by angels, having on His
+shoulders the half of the cloak which Martin had given to the beggar.
+Turning to the angels, Jesus said: "Know ye who hath thus arrayed Me?
+My servant Martin, though yet unbaptised, hath done this." After this
+vision Martin received baptism and remained steadfast in the faith.
+The illiterate and dauntless soldier became the fiery apostle of the
+faith, a vigorous iconoclast, throwing down the images of the false
+gods, breaking their altars in pieces and burning their temples. Of
+the Roman gods, Mercury, he said, was most difficult to ban, but Jove
+was merely stupid[12] and brutish, and gave him least trouble.
+
+[Footnote 12: "_Jovem brutum atque hebetem._"]
+
+On the 16th of March 1711, some workmen, digging a burial crypt for
+the archbishops of Paris under the choir of Notre Dame, came upon a
+wall, six feet below the pavement, which contemporary antiquarians
+believed to be the wall of the original Christian basilica over which
+the cathedral was built, but which modern authorities affirm to have
+been part of the old Gallo-Roman wall of the Cité. In the fabric of
+this wall the early builders had incorporated the remains of a temple
+of Jupiter, and among the _débris_ were found the fragments of an
+altar raised to Jove in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar by the _Nautæ_, a
+guild of Parisian merchant-shippers, and the table of another altar on
+whose foyer still remained some of the very burnt wood and incense
+used in the last pagan sacrifice. The mutilated stones, with their
+rude Gallo-Roman reliefs and inscriptions,[13] may be seen in the
+Frigidarium of the Thermæ, the old Roman baths by the Hôtel de Cluny,
+and are among the most interesting of historical documents in Paris.
+The Corporation of _Nautæ Parisiaci_, one of the most powerful of the
+guilds, among whose members were enrolled the chief citizens of
+Lutetia, who dedicated this altar to Jove, were the origin of the
+Commune or Civil Council of Paris, whose Provost[14] was known as late
+as the fourteenth century as the _Prévôt des Marchands d'Eau_. Their
+device was the _Nef_, or ship, which is and has been throughout the
+ages, the arms of Paris, and which to this day may be seen carved on
+the vaultings of the Roman baths.
+
+[Footnote 13: On the former may still be read: TIB ... CAESARE AVG.
+IOVI. OPTVM ... MAXSVMO. ARAM. NAVTAE. PARISIACI PVBLICE. POSIERVNT.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Not to be confounded with the Royal Provost, a king's
+officer, who in 1160 replaced the Capetian viscounts. The office was
+abolished in 1792.]
+
+In the great palace of which these baths formed but a part was enacted
+that scene so vividly described in the pages of Gibbon,[15] when, in
+355, Julian, after his victories over the Alemanni and the Franks, was
+acclaimed Augustus by the rebellious troops of Constantius. He had
+admonished the sullen legions, angry at being detached from their
+victorious and darling commander for service on the Persian frontier,
+and had urged them to obedience, but at midnight the young Cæsar was
+awakened by a clamorous and armed multitude besieging the palace, and
+at early dawn its doors were forced; the reluctant Julian was seized
+and carried through the streets in triumph, lifted on a shield, and
+for diadem crowned with a military collar, to be enthroned and saluted
+as emperor. In after life the emperor-philosopher looked back with
+tender regret to the three winters he spent in Paris before his
+elevation to the imperial responsibilities and anxieties. He writes of
+the busy days and meditative nights he passed in his dear Lutetia,
+with its two wooden bridges, its pure and pleasant waters, its
+excellent wine. He dwells on the mildness of its climate, where the
+fig-tree, protected by straw in the winter, grew and fruited. One
+rigorous season, however, the emperor well remembered[16] when the
+Seine was blocked by huge masses of ice. Julian, who prided himself on
+his endurance, at first declined the use of those charcoal fires which
+to this day are a common and deadly method of supplying heat in Paris.
+But his rooms were damp and his servants were allowed to introduce
+them into his sleeping apartment. The Cæsar was almost asphyxiated by
+the fumes, and his physicians to restore him administered an emetic.
+Julian in his time was beloved of the Lutetians, for he was a just and
+tolerant prince whose yoke was easy. He had purged the soil of Gaul
+from the barbarian invaders, given Lutetia peace and security, and
+made of it an important, imperial city. His statue, found near Paris,
+still recalls his memory in the hall of the great baths of the Lutetia
+he loved so well.
+
+[Footnote 15: French authorities believe the scene to have been
+enacted in the old palace of the Cité.]
+
+[Footnote 16: The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in
+Paris during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at
+Christmas time.]
+
+The so-called apostasy of this lover of Plato and worshipper of the
+Sun, who never went to the wars or travelled without dragging a
+library of Greek authors after him, was a philosophic reaction
+against the harsh measures,[17] the bloody and treacherous natures of
+the Christian emperors, and the fierceness of the Arian controversy.
+The movement was but a back-wash in the stream of history, and is of
+small importance. Julian's successors, Valentinian and Gratian,
+reversed his policy but shared his love for the fair city on the
+Seine, and spent some winters there. Lutetia had now become a rich and
+cultured Gallo-Roman city.
+
+[Footnote 17: By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence to
+sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had already become
+persecutors. Boissier, _La Fin du Paganisme_.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_The Barbarian Invasions--St. Genevieve--The Conversion of Clovis--The
+Merovingian Dynasty_
+
+
+In the Prologue to _Faust_, the Lord of Heaven justifies the existence
+of the restless, goading spirit of evil by the fact that man's
+activity is all too prone to flag,--
+
+ "_Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh._"[18]
+
+[Footnote 18: "He soon hugs himself in ease at any price."]
+
+As with men so with empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. It
+was not so much a corruption of morals as a growing slackness and
+apathy in public life and an intellectual sloth that hastened the fall
+of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of
+slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was
+content to administer and enjoy rather than to govern: unwilling or
+incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[19] For centuries
+the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the
+imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men,
+giants in stature and strength, surging like an angry sea against
+their boundaries.
+
+[Footnote 19: 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.]
+
+The end of the fifth century is the beginning of the evil times of
+Gallic story: the confederation of Frankish tribes who had conquered
+and settled in Belgium saw successive waves of invasion pass by, and
+determined to have their part in the spoils. They soon overran
+Flanders and the north, and at length under Clovis captured Paris and
+conquered nearly the whole of Gaul. That fair land of France, "one of
+Nature's choicest masterpieces, one of Ceres' chiefest barns for corn,
+one of Bacchus' prime wine cellars and of Neptune's best salt-pits,"
+became the prey of the barbarian. The whole fabric of civilisation
+seem doomed to destruction, Gaul had become the richest and most
+populous of Roman provinces; its learning and literature were noised
+in Rome; its rhetoricians drew students from the mother city herself;
+it was the last refuge of Græco-Roman culture in the west. But at the
+end of the sixth century Gregory of Tours deplores the fact that in
+his time there were neither books, nor readers, nor scholar who could
+compose in verse or prose, and that only the speech of the rustic was
+understood. He playfully scolds himself for muddling prepositions and
+confusing genders and cases, but his duty as a Christian priest is to
+instruct, not to charm, and so he tells the story of his times in such
+rustic Latin as he knows. He draws for us a vivid picture of Clovis,
+his savage valour, his astuteness, his regal passion.
+
+After the victory at Soissons over Syagrius, the shadowy king of the
+Romans, Clovis was met by St. Rémi, who prayed that a vase of great
+price and wondrous beauty among the spoil might be returned to him.
+"Follow us," said the king, "to Soissons, where the booty will be
+shared." Before the division took place Clovis begged that the vase
+might be accorded to him. His warriors answered: "All, glorious king,
+is thine." But before the king could grasp the vase, one, jealous and
+angry, threw his _francisque_[20] at it, exclaiming: "Thou shalt have
+no more than falls to thy lot." The broken vase was however
+apportioned to the king, who restored it to the bishop. But Clovis hid
+the wound in his heart, and at the annual review in the Champ de Mars
+near Paris, as the king strode along the line inspecting the weapons
+of his warriors, he stopped in front of the uncourtly soldier, took
+his axe from him, complained of its foul state, and flung it angrily
+on the ground. As the man stooped to pick it up Clovis, with his own
+axe, cleft his skull in twain, exclaiming: "Thus didst thou to the
+vase at Soissons." "Even so," says Gregory quaintly, "did he inspire
+all with great fear."
+
+[Footnote 20: The favourite arm of the Franks, a short battle-axe,
+used as a missile or at close quarters.]
+
+At this point of our story we are met by the first of those noble
+women, heroic and wise, for whom French history is pre-eminent. In the
+early fifth century "saynt germayn[21] of aucerre and saynt lew of
+troyes, elect of the prelates of fraunce for to goo quenche an heresye
+that was in grete brytayne, now called englond, came to nannterre for
+to be lodged and heberowed and the people came ageynst theym for to
+have theyr benyson. Emonge the people, saynt germayn, by
+thenseignemente of the holy ghoost, espyed out the lytel mayde saynt
+geneuefe, and made hyr to come to hym, and kyste hyr heed and
+demaunded hyr name, and whos doughter she was, and the people aboute
+hyr said that her name was geneuefe, and her fader seuere, and her
+moder geronce, whyche came unto hym, and the holy man sayd: is this
+child yours? They answerd: Ye. Blessyd be ye, said the holy man, whan
+god hath gyven to you so noble lignage, knowe ye for certeyn that the
+day of hyr natiyuyte the angels sange and halyowed grete mysterye in
+heuen with grete ioye and gladnes."
+
+[Footnote 21: Again we quote from the _Golden Legend_.]
+
+Tidings soon came to Paris that Attila, the felon king of Hungary, had
+enterprised to destroy and waste the parts of France, and the
+merchants for great dread they had, sent their goods into cities more
+sure. Genevieve caused the good women of the town to "wake in
+fastynges and in orysons, and bade the bourgeyses that they shold not
+remeuve theyr goodes for by the grace of god parys shold have none
+harme." At first the people hardened their hearts and reviled her, but
+St. Germain, who had meantime returned to Paris, entreated them to
+hearken to her, and our Lord for her love did so much that the
+"tyrantes approachyd not parys, thanke and glorye to god and honoure
+to the vyrgyn." At the siege of Paris by Childeric and his Franks,
+when the people were wasted by sickness and famine, "the holy vyrgyne,
+that pyte constrayned her, wente to the sayne for to goe fetche by
+shyp somme vytaylles." She stilled by her prayers a furious tempest
+and brought the ships back laden with wheat. When the city was at
+length captured, King Childeric, although a paynim, saved at her
+intercession the lives of his prisoners, and one day, to escape her
+importunate pleadings for the lives of some criminals, fled out of the
+gates of Paris and shut them behind him. The saint lived to build a
+church over the tomb of St. Denis and to see Clovis become a
+Christian. She died in 509, and was buried on the hill of Lutetius,
+which ever since has borne her name.
+
+The faithful built a little wooden oratory over her tomb, which Clovis
+and his queen Clotilde replaced in 506 by a great basilica dedicated
+to SS. Peter and Paul,--whose length the king measured by the distance
+he could hurl his axe--and the famous monastery of St. Genevieve.[22]
+
+[Footnote 22: 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.]
+
+The conversion of Clovis is the capital fact of early French history.
+Clotilde had long[23] importuned him to declare himself a Christian,
+and he had consented to the baptism of their firstborn, but the
+infant's death within a week seemed an admonition from his own jealous
+gods. A second son, however, recovered from grievous sickness at his
+wife's prayers, and this, aided perhaps by a shrewd insight into the
+trend of events, induced him to lend a more willing ear to the
+teachers of the new Faith. In 496 the Franks were at death grapple
+with their German foes at Tolbiac. Clovis, when the fight went against
+him, invoked the God of the Christians and prayed to be delivered from
+his enemies. His cry was heard and the advent of the new Lord of
+Battles was winged with victory.
+
+[Footnote 23: If we may believe Gregory of Tours, her arguments were
+vituperative rather than convincing. "Your Jupiter," said she, "is
+_omnium stuprorum spurcissimus perpetrator_."]
+
+The conversion of Clovis was a triumph for the Church: in her struggle
+with the Arian heresy in Gaul, she was now able to enforce the
+arguments of the pen by the edge of the sword. Her scribes are tender
+to his memory, for his Christianity was marked by few signs of grace.
+He remained the same savage monarch as before, and did not scruple to
+affirm his dynasty and extend his empire by treachery and by the
+assassination of his kinsmen. To the Franks, Jesus was but a new and
+more puissant tribal deity. "Long live the Christ who loves the
+Franks," writes the author of the prologue to the Salic law; and when
+the bishop was one day reading the Gospel story of the Passion, the
+king, _qui moult avait grand compassion_, cried out: "Ah! had I been
+there with my Franks I would have avenged the Christ." Nor was their
+ideal of kinship any loftier. Their realm was not a trust, but a
+possession to be divided among their heirs, and the jealousy and
+strife excited by the repeated partitions among sons, make the history
+of the Merovingian[24] dynasty a tale of cruelty and treachery whose
+every page is stained with blood.
+
+[Footnote 24: Merovée, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was
+fabled to be the issue of Clodio's wife and a sea monster.]
+
+[Illustration: TOWER OF CLOVIS.]
+
+Clovis, in 508, made Paris the official capital of his realm, and at
+his death in 511 divided his possessions between his four
+sons--Thierry, Clodomir, Childebert and Clothaire. Clodomir after a
+short reign met his death in battle, leaving his children to the
+guardianship of their grandmother, Clotilde. One day messengers came
+to her in the old palace of the Cæsars on the south bank of the Seine
+from Childebert and Clothaire praying that their nephews might be
+entrusted to them. Believing they were to be trained in kingly offices
+that they might succeed their father in due time, Clotilde granted
+their prayer and two of the children were sent to them in the palace
+of the Cité. Soon came another messenger, bearing a pair of shears and
+a naked sword, and Clotilde was bidden to determine the fate of her
+wards and to choose for them between the cloister and the edge of the
+sword. An angry exclamation escaped her: "If they are not to be raised
+to the throne, I would rather see them dead than shorn." The messenger
+waited to hear no more and hastened back to the two kings. Clothaire
+then seized the elder of the children and stabbed him under the
+armpit. The younger, at the sight of his brother's blood, flung
+himself at Childebert's feet, burst into tears, and cried: "Help me,
+dear father, let me not die even as my brother." Childebert's heart
+was softened and he begged for the child's life. Clothaire's only
+answer was a volley of insults and a threat of death if he protected
+the victim. Childebert then disentwined the child's tender arms
+clasping his knees--he was but six years of age--and pushed him to his
+brother, who drove a dagger into his breast. The tutors and servants
+of the children were then butchered, and Clothaire became at his
+brother's death, in 558, sole king of the Franks.[25] The third child,
+Clodoald, owing to the devotion of faithful servants escaped, and was
+hidden for some time in Provence. Later in life he returned to Paris
+and built a monastery at a place still known by his name (St. Cloud)
+about two leagues from the city.
+
+[Footnote 25: Among the wives of Clothaire was the gentle Radegonde,
+who turned with horror from the bloody scenes of the palace to live in
+works of charity with the poor and suffering, and in holy communion
+with priests and bishops. She was at length consecrated a deaconess by
+St. Médard, donned the habit of a nun, and founded a convent at
+Poitiers, where the poet Fortunatus had himself ordained a priest that
+he might be near her. Radegonde's memory is dear to us in England, for
+it was a small company of her nuns who settled on the Green Croft by
+the river bank below Cambridge, and founded a priory whose noble
+church and monastic buildings were subsequently incorporated in Jesus
+College when the nunnery was suppressed by Bishop Alcock in 1496.]
+
+In the days of Siegbert and Chilperic, kings of Eastern and Western
+France, the consuming flames of passion and greed again burst forth,
+this time fanned by the fierce breath of feminine rivalry. Siegbert
+had married Brunehaut, daughter of the Visigoth king of Spain:
+Chilperic had espoused her sister, Galowinthe, after repudiating his
+first wife, Adowere. When Galowinthe came to her throne she found
+herself the rival of Fredegonde, a common servant, with whom Chilperic
+had been living. He soon tired of his new wife, a gentle and pliant
+creature, Fredegonde regained her supremacy and one morning Galowinthe
+was found strangled in bed. The news came to King Siegbert and
+Brunehaut goaded him to avenge her sister's death. Meanwhile Chilperic
+had married Fredegonde, who quickly compassed the murder of her only
+rival, the repudiated queen, Adowere. Soon Chilperic drew the sword
+and civil war devastated the land. By foreign aid Siegbert captured
+and spoiled Paris and compelled a peace. Scarcely, however, had the
+victor dismissed his Germain allies, when Chilperic fell upon him
+again. Siegbert now determined to make an end. He entered Paris, and
+prepared to crush his enemy at Tournay. As he set forth, St. Germain,
+bishop of Paris, seized his horse's bridle and warned him that the
+grave he was digging for his brother would swallow him too. When he
+reached Vitry two messengers were admitted to see him. As he stood
+between them listening to their suit he was stabbed on either side by
+two long poisoned knives: the assassins had been sent by Fredegonde.
+
+But Fredegonde's tale of blood was not yet complete. She soon learned
+that Merovée, one of Chilperic's two sons by Adowere, had married
+Brunehaut. Merovée followed the rest of her victims, and Clovis, the
+second son, together with a sister of Adowere, next glutted her
+vengeance. "One day, after leaving the Synod of Paris," writes St.
+Gregory, "I had bidden King Chilperic adieu and had withdrawn
+conversing with the bishop of Albi. As we crossed the courtyard of the
+palace (in the Cité) he said: 'Seest thou not what I perceive above
+this roof?' I answered, 'I see only a second building which the king
+hath built.' He asked again, 'Seest thou naught else?' I weened he
+spoke in jest and did but answer--'If thou seest aught else, prithee
+show it unto me.' Then uttering a deep sigh, he said: 'I see the sword
+of God's wrath suspended over this house.'" Shortly after this
+conversation Chilperic having returned from the chase to his royal
+villa of Chelles, was leaning on the shoulder of one of his companions
+to descend from his horse, when Landeric, servant of Fredegonde,
+stabbed him to death.
+
+Thirty years were yet to pass before the curtain falls on the acts of
+the rival queens, their sons and grandsons, but the heart revolts at
+the details of the wars and lusts of these savage potentates.
+
+Battle and murder had destroyed Brunehaut's children and her
+children's children until none were left to rule over the realms but
+herself and the four sons of Thierry II. The nobles, furious at the
+further tyranny of a cruel and imperious woman, plotted her ruin, and
+in 613, when Brunehaut, sure of victory, marched with two armies
+against Clothaire II., she was betrayed near Paris to him, her
+implacable enemy. He reproached her with the death of ten kings, and
+set her on a camel for three days to be mocked and insulted by the
+army. The old and fallen queen was then tied to the tail of a horse:
+the creature was lashed into fury and soon all that remained of the
+proud queen was a shapeless mass of carrion. The traditional place
+where Brunehaut met her death is still shown at the corner of the Rue
+St. Honoré and the Rue de l'Arbre Sec. Thierry's four sons had already
+been put to death. In 597 her rival Fredegonde, at the height of her
+prosperity, had died peacefully in bed, full of years, and was buried
+in the church of St. Vincent[26] by the side of Chilperic, her
+husband.
+
+[Footnote 26: (_See_ pp. 32 and 36.)]
+
+Amid all this ruin and desolation, when the four angels of the
+Euphrates seem to have been loosed on Gaul, one force was silently at
+work knitting up the ravelled ends of the rent fabric of civilisation
+and tending a lamp which burned with the promise of ideals, nobler far
+than those which fed the ancient faith and polity. The Christian
+bishops were everywhere filling the empty curule chairs in the cities
+and provinces of Gaul. At the end of the sixth century, society lived
+in the Church and by the Church, and the sees of the archbishops and
+bishops corresponded to the Roman administrative divisions. All that
+was best in the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy was drawn into her bosom,
+for she was the one power making for unity and good government. From
+one end of the land to the other the bishops visited and corresponded
+with each other. They alone had communion of ideas, common sentiments
+and common interests. St. Gregory, bishop of Tours, was the son of a
+senator; St. Germain of Auxerre was a man of noble lineage, who had
+already exercised high public functions before he was made a bishop;
+St. Germain of Autun was ever on the move, now in Brittany, now at
+Paris, now at Arles, to crush heresy, to threaten a barbarian
+potentate, or to sear the conscience and, if need were, ban the person
+of a guilty Christian king.
+
+By the end of the sixth century two hundred and thirty-eight monastic
+institutions had been founded in Gaul, and from the sixth to the
+eighth century, eighty-three churches were built. The monasteries were
+so many nurseries of the industry, knowledge and learning which had
+not perished in the barbarian invasions; so many cities of refuge from
+violence and rapine, where the few who thirsted after righteousness
+and burned with charity might find shelter and protection. "Every
+letter traced on paper," said an old abbot, "is a blow to the devil."
+The ecclesiastical and monastic schools took the place of the
+destroyed Roman day-schools, and whatever modicum of learning the
+Frankish courts could boast of, was due to the monks and nuns of their
+time; for some at least of these potentates when not absorbed in the
+gratification of their lusts, their vengeance, greed or ambition,
+were possessed by nobler instincts.
+
+[Illustration: ST. GERMAIN DES PRÉS.]
+
+To St. Germain of Autun, made bishop in 555, Paris owes one of her
+earliest ecclesiastical foundations. His influence over Childebert,
+king of Paris, was great. He obtained an order that those who refused
+to destroy pagan idols in their possession were to answer to the
+king, and when Childebert and his warriors, seized by an irresistible
+fighting impulse, marched into Spain, and were bought off the siege
+and sack of Saragossa by the present of the tunic of St. Vincent, he
+induced the king to found the abbey and church of St. Vincent (St.
+Germain des Prés), to receive the relic and a great part of the spoil
+of Toledo, consisting of jewels, golden chalices, books and crucifixes
+of marvellous craftsmanship. In the same reign was begun on the site
+of the present sacristy of Notre Dame a great basilica, dedicated to
+St. Stephen, so magnificently decorated that it was compared to
+Solomon's Temple for the beauty and the delicacy of its art. The
+church of Ste. Marie or Notre Dame, already existing in 365, stood on
+a site extending westward into the present Place du Parvis Notre Dame.
+During this great outburst of zeal and devotion, another monastery
+(St. Vincent le Rond), was established and dedicated to St. Vincent,
+which subsequently became associated with the name of the earlier St.
+Germain of Auxerre (l'Auxerrois).
+
+A curious episode is found in Gregory's _Chronicle_, which is
+characteristic of the times, and proves that a monastery and church of
+St. Julien le Pauvre were already in existence. An impostor, claiming
+to have the relics of St. Vincent and St. Felix, came to Paris, but
+refused to deposit them with the bishop for verification. He was
+arrested and searched, and the so-called relics were found to consist
+of moles' teeth, the bones of mice, some bears' claws and other
+rubbish: they were flung into the Seine and the impostor was put in
+prison. Gregory, who was lodging in the monastery of St. Julien le
+Pauvre, went into the church shortly after midnight to say matins, and
+found the creature, who had escaped from the bishop's prison, lying
+drunk on the pavement. He had him dragged away into a corner, but so
+intolerable was the stench that the pavement was purified with water
+and sweet smelling herbs. When the bishops, who were at Paris for a
+synod, met at dinner the next day, the impostor was identified as a
+fugitive slave of the bishop of Tarbes.
+
+Dagobert the Great, who came to the throne in 628, and his favourite
+minister, St. Eloy, goldsmith and bishop (founder of the convent in
+Paris which long bore his name), are enshrined in the hearts of the
+people in many a song and ballad: St. Eloy, with his good humour, his
+ruddy countenance, his eloquence, gentleness, modesty, wit, and wide
+charity, singing in the church processions _à haute gamme jubilant et
+trépudiant_ like David of old before the ark: Dagobert, the Solomon of
+the Franks, the terror of the oppressor, the darling of the poor. The
+great king was fond of Paris and established himself there when not
+scouring his kingdom to administer justice or to crush his enemies. He
+was the second founder of the monastery of St. Denis, which he rebuilt
+and endowed with great magnificence, and to which he gave much
+importance by the establishment there of a great fair, which soon drew
+merchants from all parts of Europe. He was a patron of the arts and
+employed St. Eloy to make reliquaries[27] for St. Denis and the
+churches in Paris, of such richness and beauty that they were admired
+of the whole of France.
+
+[Footnote 27: 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.]
+
+The monkish scribes who wrote the Chronicles of St. Denis were not
+ungrateful to the memory of good King Dagobert, for it is there
+related that one day, as a holy anchorite lay sleeping on his stony
+couch on an island, being heavy with years, a venerable, white-haired
+man appeared to him and bade him rise and pray for the soul of King
+Dagobert of France. As he arose he beheld out at sea a crowd of devils
+bearing the king away in a little boat towards Vulcan's Cauldron,
+beating and tormenting him cruelly, who called unceasingly on St.
+Denis of France, on St. Martin and St. Maurice. Then thunder and
+tempest rolled down from heaven, and the three glorious saints
+appeared to him, arrayed in white garments. He was much affrighted,
+and on asking who they were, was answered: "We be they whom Dagobert
+hath called, and are come to snatch him from the hands of the devils
+and bear him to Abraham's bosom." The saints then vanished from before
+him and sped against the devils and reft the soul from them, which
+they were tormenting with threats and buffetings, and bare it to the
+joys perdurable of Paradise, chanting the words of the Psalmist
+_Beatus quem eligisti_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_The Carlovingians--The Great Siege of Paris by the Normans--The Germs
+of Feudalism_
+
+
+Chaos and misery followed the brilliant reign of Dagobert. In half a
+century his race had faded into the feeble _rois fainéants_,
+degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at
+fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were
+thirty. The bow of power is to him who can bend it, and in an age when
+human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is
+weakness. Soon the incapable, impotent and irresolute Merovingians
+were thrust aside by the more puissant Carlovingian race.
+
+Charles Martel, although buried with the Frankish kings at St. Denis,
+was content with the title of Duke of the Franks, and hesitated to
+proclaim himself king. He, like the other mayors of the palace, ruled
+through feeble and pensioned puppets when they did not contemptuously
+leave the throne vacant. In 751 Pepin the Short sent two prelates to
+sound Pope Zacchary, who, being hard pressed by the Lombards, lent a
+willing ear to their suit, agreed that he who was king in fact should
+be made so in name, and authorised Pepin to assume the title of king.
+Chilperic III., like a discarded toy, was relegated to a monastery at
+St. Omer, and Pepin the Short anointed at Soissons by St. Boniface
+bishop of Mayence, from that sacred "ampul full of chrism" which a
+snow-white dove had brought in its mouth to St. Rémi wherewith to
+anoint Clovis at Rheims. In the year 754 Stephen III., the first pope
+who had honoured Paris by his presence, came to ask the reward of his
+predecessor's favour and was lodged at St. Denis. There he anointed
+Pepin anew, with his sons Charles and Carloman, and compelled the
+Frankish chieftains, under pain of excommunication, to swear
+allegiance to them and their descendants.
+
+The city of Lutetia had much changed since the messengers of Pope
+Fabianus entered five centuries before. On that southern hill where
+formerly stood the Roman camp and cemetery were now the great basilica
+and abbey of St. Genevieve. The amphitheatre and probably much of the
+palace of the Cæsars were in ruins, all stripped of their marbles to
+adorn the new Christian churches. The extensive abbatial buildings and
+church, resplendent with marble and gold, on the west, dedicated to
+St. Vincent, were henceforth to be known as St. Germain of the Meadows
+(des Prés), for the saint's body had been translated from the chapel
+of St. Symphorien in the vestibule to the high altar of the abbey
+church a few weeks before the pope's arrival at St. Denis. The
+Cité[28] was still held within decayed Gallo-Roman walls, and the
+Grand and Petit Ponts of wood crossed the arms of the Seine. On the
+site of the old pagan temple to Jupiter by the market-place stood the
+church Our Lady: to the south-east stood the church of St. Stephen.
+The devotion of the _Nautæ_ had been transferred from Apollo to St.
+Nicholas, patron of shipmen, Mercury had given place to St. Michael,
+and to each of those saints oratories were erected. Other churches and
+oratories adorned the island, dedicated to St. Gervais, and St. Denis
+of the Prison (_de la chartre_), by the north wall where, abandoned
+by his followers, the saint was visited by his divine Lord, who
+Himself administered the sacred Host. A nunnery dedicated to St. Eloy,
+where three hundred pious nuns diffused the odour of Jesus Christ
+through the whole city, occupied a large site opposite the west front
+of Notre Dame. Near by stood a hospital, founded and endowed a century
+before by St. Landry, bishop of Paris, for the sick poor, which soon
+became known as the Hostel of God (_Hôtel Dieu_). The old Roman palace
+and basilica had been transformed into the official residence and
+tribunal of justice of the Frankish kings. On the south bank stood the
+church and monastery of St. Julien le Pauvre. A new Frankish city was
+growing on the north bank, bounded on the west by the abbey of St.
+Vincent le Rond, and on the east by the abbey of St. Lawrence. Houses
+clustered around the four great monasteries, and suburbs were in
+course of formation. The Cité was still largely inhabited by opulent
+merchants of Gallo-Roman descent, who were seen riding along the
+streets in richly decorated chariots drawn by oxen.
+
+[Footnote 28: The term Cité (_civitas_) was given to the old Roman
+part of many French towns.]
+
+Charlemagne during his long reign of nearly half a century (768-814)
+was too preoccupied with his noble but ineffectual purpose of
+cementing by blood and iron the warring races of Europe into a united
+_populus Christianus_, and establishing, under the dual lordship of
+emperor and pope, a city of God on earth, to give much attention to
+Paris. He did, however, spend a Christmas there, and was present at
+the dedication of the church of St. Denis, completed in 775 under
+Abbot Fulrad. It was a typical Frankish prince whom the Parisians saw
+enthroned at St. Denis. He had the abundant fair hair, shaven chin and
+long moustache we see in the traditional pictures of Clovis. Above
+middle height, with large, bright piercing eyes, which, when he was
+angered shone like carbuncles, he impressed all by the majesty of his
+bearing, in spite of a rather shrill and feeble voice and a certain
+asymmetrical rotundity below the belt.
+
+[Illustration: ST. JULIEN LE PAUVRE.]
+
+Abbot Fulrad was a sturdy prince and for long disputed the possession
+of some lands at Plessis with the bishop of Paris. The decision of the
+case is characteristic of the times. Two champions were deputed to act
+for the litigants, and met before the Count of Paris[29] in the
+king's chapel of St. Nicholas in the Palace of the Cité, and a solemn
+judgment by the cross was held. While the royal chaplain recited
+psalms and prayers, the two champions stood forth and held their arms
+outstretched in the form of a cross. In this trial of endurance the
+bishop's deputy was the first to succumb; his fainting arms drooped
+and the abbot won his cause.
+
+[Footnote 29: The Carlovingians had been careful to abolish the office
+of mayor of the palace.]
+
+Paris had grown but slowly under the Frankish kings. They lived ill at
+ease within city walls. Children of the fields and the forests, whose
+delight was in the chase or in war, they were glad to escape from
+Paris to their villas at Chelles or Compiègne. But the civil power of
+the Church grew apace. In the early sixth century the abbots of St.
+Germain des Prés at Paris held possession of nearly 90,000 acres of
+land, mostly arable, in various provinces: their annual revenue
+amounted to about £34,000 of our money: they ruled over more than
+10,000 serfs. From a list of the lands held in Paris in the ninth
+century by the abbey of St. Pierre des Fossés,[30] and published in
+the _Trésor des piéces rares ou inédites_, we are able to form some
+idea of the vast extent of monastic possessions in the city. The names
+of the various properties whose boundaries touch those of the abbey
+lands are given: private owners are mentioned only four times, whereas
+to ecclesiastical and monastic domains there are no less than ninety
+references. These monastic settlements were veritable garden cities,
+where most of our modern fruits, flowers and vegetables were
+cultivated; where flocks and herds were bred, and all kinds of
+poultry, including pheasants and peacocks, reared. Guilds of craftsmen
+worked and flourished; markets were held generally on saints' days,
+and pilgrimages were fostered. Charlemagne was an honest coiner and a
+protector of foreign traders; he was tolerant of the Jews, the only
+capitalists of the time, and under him Paris became the "market of the
+peoples," and Venetian and Syrian merchants sought her shores.
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+In Gallo-Roman days few were the churches outside the cities, but in
+the great emperor's time every villa[31] is said to have had its
+chapel or oratory served by a priest. Charlemagne was a zealous patron
+of such learning as the epoch afforded, and sought out scholars in
+every land. English, Irish, Scotch, Italian, Goth, and Bavarian--all
+were welcomed. The English scholar Alcuin, master of the Cloister
+School at York, became his chief adviser and tutor. He would have
+every child in his empire to know at least his paternoster, and every
+abbot on election was required to endow the monastery with some books.
+The choice of authors was not a wide one: the Old and New Testaments;
+the writings of the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, the emperor's
+favourite author; Josephus; the works of Bede; some Latin authors,
+chiefly Virgil; scraps of Plato translated into Latin--a somewhat
+exiguous and austere library, but one which reared a noble and valiant
+line of scholars and statesmen to rule the minds and bridle the savage
+lusts of the coming generations of men. Under Irish and Anglo-Saxon
+influences the cramped, minute script of the Merovingian scribes grew
+in beauty and lucidity; gold and silver and colour illuminated the
+pages of their books. The golden age of the Roman peace seemed
+dawning again in a new _Imperium Christianorum_.
+
+[Footnote 31: The villa of those days was a vast domain, part
+dwelling, part farm, part game preserve.]
+
+Towards the end of his reign the old emperor was dining with his court
+in a seaport town in the south of France, when news came that some
+strange, black, piratical craft had dared to attack the harbour. They
+were soon scattered, but the emperor was seen to rise from the table,
+and go to a window, where he stood gazing fixedly at the retreating
+pirates. Tears trickled down his cheeks and none dared to approach
+him. At length he turned and said: "Know ye my faithful servants,
+wherefore I weep thus bitterly? I fear not these wretched pirates, but
+I am afflicted that they should dare to approach these shores, and
+sorely do grieve when I foresee what evil they will work on my sons
+and on my people." His courtiers deemed they were Breton or Saracen
+pirates, but the emperor knew better. They were the terrible Northmen,
+soon to prove a bloodier scourge to Gaul than Hun or Goth or Saracen;
+and to meet them Charlemagne left an empire distracted by civil war,
+and a nerveless, feeble prince, Louis the Pious, Louis the Forgiving,
+fitter for the hermit's cell than for the throne and sword of an
+emperor.
+
+In 841 the black boats of the sea-rovers for the first time entered
+the Seine, and burnt Rouen and Fontenelle. In 845 a fleet of one
+hundred and twenty vessels swept up its higher waters and on Easter
+Eve captured, plundered and burnt Paris, sacked its monasteries and
+churches and butchered their monks and priests. The futile Emperor
+Charles the Bald bought them off at St. Denis with seven thousand
+livres of silver, and they went back to their Scandinavian homes
+gorged with plunder--only to return year by year, increased in numbers
+and ferocity. Words cannot picture the terror of the citizens and
+monks when the dread squadrons, with the monstrous dragons carved on
+their prows, their great sails and threefold serried ranks of
+men-of-prey, were sighted. Everyone left his home and sought refuge in
+flight; the monks hurried off with the bodies of the saints, the
+relics and treasures of the sanctuary, to hide them in far-away
+cities. In 852 Charles' soldiers refused to fight, and for two hundred
+and eighty-seven days the pirates ravaged the valley of the Seine at
+their will. Never within memory or tradition were such things known.
+Rouen, Bayeux, Beauvais, Paris, Meaux, Melun, Chartres, Evreux, were
+devastated; the islands of the Seine were whitened by the bones of the
+victims, and similar horrors were wrought along the other rivers of
+France. In 858 a body of the freebooters settled on the island of
+Oissel, below Rouen, and issued forth _en excursion_ to spoil and slay
+and burn at their pleasure: the once rich city of Paris was left a
+cinder heap; the abbey of St. Genevieve was sacked and burnt, Notre
+Dame, St. Stephen, St. Germain des Prés and St Denis alone escaping at
+the cost of immense bribes. Charles ordered two fortresses to be built
+for the defence of the approaches to the bridges, and continued his
+feeble policy of paying blackmail.
+
+In 865 St. Denis was pillaged. In 866 Robert the Strong, Count of
+Paris, had won the title of the Maccabeus of France, by daring to
+stand against the fury of the Northmen and to defeat them; but having
+in the heat of battle with the terrible Hastings taken off his
+cuirass, he was killed. By order of Charles, St. Denis was fortified
+in 869, after another pillage of St. Germain.
+
+In 876 began a second period of raids of even greater ferocity under
+the Norwegian Rollo the Gangr[32] (the walker), a colossus so huge
+that no horse could be found to bear him. In 884 the whole Christian
+people seemed doomed to perish. Flourishing cities and monasteries
+became heaps of smoking ruins; along the roads lay the bodies of
+priests and laymen, noble and peasant, freeman and serf, women and
+children and babes at the breast to be devoured of wolves and
+vultures. The very sanctuaries[33] were become the dens of wild
+beasts, the haunt of serpents and creeping things.
+
+[Footnote 32: The remains of the great Viking's castle are still shown
+at Aalesund, in Norway.]
+
+[Footnote 33: When Alan 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.]
+
+In 885 a great league of pirates--Danes, Normans, Saxons, Britons and
+renegade French--on their way to ravage the rich cities of Burgundy
+drew up before Paris; and their leader, Siegfroy, demanded passage to
+the higher waters. Paris, forsaken by her kings and emperors for more
+than a century, scarred and bled by three spoliations, was now to
+become a beacon of hope. The Roman walls were repaired, the towers on
+the north and south banks were strengthened. Bishop Gozlin, in whom
+great learning was wedded to incomparable fortitude, defied the
+pirates, warning them that the citizens were determined to resist and
+to hold Paris for a bulwark to the land.
+
+Of this most terrible of the Norman sieges of Paris, we have fuller
+record. A certain monk of St. Germain des Prés, Abbo by name, who had
+taken part in the defence, was one day sitting in his cell reading his
+Virgil. Desiring to exercise his Latin, and give an example to other
+cities, he determined to sing of a great siege with happier issue than
+that of Troy.[34] Abbo saw the black hulls and horrid prows of the
+pirates' boats as they turned the arm of the Seine below Paris, seven
+hundred strong vessels, and many more of lighter build. For two
+leagues and a half the very waters of the Seine were covered with
+them, and men asked into what mysterious caves the river had
+retreated. On November 26th, 885, the attack began at the unfinished
+tower on the north bank, replaced in later times by the Grand
+Châtelet. Three leaders stand eminent among the defenders of the city:
+Bishop Gozlin, the great warrior priest; his nephew, Abbot Ebles of
+St. Denis; and Count Eudes (Hugh) of Paris, son of Robert the Strong.
+The air is darkened with javelins and arrows; bishop and abbot are in
+the very eye of danger; the latter with one shaft spits seven of the
+besiegers, and mockingly bids their fellows take them to the kitchen
+to be cooked. On the morrow, reinforced by fresh troops, the assault
+is renewed, stones are hurled, arrows whistle; the air is filled with
+groans and cries; the defenders pour down boiling oil and melted wax
+and pitch. The hair of some of the Normans takes fire; they burn and
+the Parisians shout--"Jump into the Seine; the water will make
+your hair grow again and then look you that it be better combed." One
+well-aimed millstone says Abbo, sends the souls of six to hell. The
+baffled Northmen retire, entrench a camp at St. Germain l'Auxerrois,
+and prepare rams and other siege artillery.
+
+[Footnote 34: It must be admitted, however, that the poet's uncouth
+diction is anything but Virgilian.]
+
+Abbo now pauses to bewail the state of France: no lord to rule her,
+everywhere devastation wrought by fire and sword, God's people
+paralysed at the advancing phalanx of death, Paris alone tranquil,
+erect and steadfast in the midst of all their thunderbolts, _polis ut
+regina micans omnes super urbes_, a queenly city resplendent above all
+towns. The second attack begins with redoubled fury. After battering
+the walls of the north tower, monstrous machines on sixteen wheels are
+advanced and the besiegers strive to fill the fosse. Trees, shrubs,
+slaughtered cattle, wounded horses, the very captives slain before
+the eyes of the besieged, are cast in to fill the void. Bishop Gozlin
+brings down the Norman chieftain, who had butchered the prisoners, by
+a well-aimed arrow: his body, too, is flung into the fosse. The enemy
+cover the plain with their swords and the river with their bucklers;
+fireships are loosed against the bridge. In the city women fly to the
+sanctuaries; they roll their hair in the dust, beat their breasts and
+rend their faces, calling on St. Germain: "Blessed St. Germain,
+succour thy servants." The fighters on the walls take up the cry;
+Bishop Gozlin invokes the Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer, Star of the
+Sea, bright above all other stars, to save them from the cruel Danes.
+
+[Illustration: ST GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS.]
+
+On February 6th, 886, a sudden flood sweeps away the Petit Pont, and
+its tower, with twelve defenders, is isolated. With shouts of triumph
+the Northmen cross the river and surround it. The twelve refuse to
+yield, and fire is brought. The warriors (a touching detail) fearing
+lest their falcons be stifled, cut them loose. There is but one vessel
+wherewith to quench the flames and that soon drops from their hands;
+the little band rush forth; they set their backs against the ruins of
+the bridge, their faces to their foes and fought a hopeless fight. The
+walls of the city are lined with their kinsmen and friends impotent to
+help; the enemies of God, doomed one day to dine at Pluto's cauldron,
+press upon them; they fight till Phoebus sinks to the depths of the
+sea, so great is the courage of despair. The survivors are promised
+their lives if they will yield, they are disarmed, then treacherously
+slain, and their souls fly to heaven. But one, Hervé, of noble bearing
+and of great beauty, deemed a prince, is spared for ransom. With
+thunderous voice he refuses to bargain his life for gold, falls
+unarmed on his foes and is cut to pieces. "These things," writes Monk
+Abbo, "I saw with mine eyes," and he gives the names of the heroic
+twelve who went to receive the palm of martyrdom: Ermenfroi, Hervé,
+Herland, Ouacre, Hervi, Arnaud, Seuil, Jobert, Hardre, Guy, Aimard,
+Gossuin. Their names are inscribed on a little marble tablet over the
+Place du Petit Pont,[35] near the spot where they fell. Hail to the
+brave who across twelve centuries thrill our hearts to-day! They were
+examplars to the land; they helped to make France by their desperate
+courage and noble self-sacrifice, and to win for Paris the hegemony of
+her cities. The city is at length revictualled by Henry of Saxony and
+again the Parisians are left to themselves. On the sixth of April
+Bishop Gozlin, their shield, their two-edged axe, whose shaft and bow
+were terrible, passes to the Lord. On May 12th, Eudes steals away to
+implore further help from the emperor, and as soon as he sees the
+imperialists on the march returns and hews his way into Paris, to
+share the terrors of the siege. Henry the Saxon again appears, but is
+ambushed and slain and his army melts away. Yet again Paris is
+abandoned by her emperor and seeks help of heaven, for the waters are
+low, the besiegers are able to get footing on the island, set fire to
+the gates and attack the walls. The body of St. Genevieve, which had
+been transferred to the Cité, is borne about, and at night the ghostly
+figure of St. Germain is seen by the sentinels to pass along the
+ramparts, sprinkling them with holy water and promising salvation.
+Charles the Fat, the Lord's anointed, now appears with a multitude of
+a hundred tongues and encamps on Montmartre, but while the Parisians
+are preparing to second him in crushing their foes, they learn that
+the cowardly emperor has bought them off with a bribe and permission
+to winter in Burgundy. The Parisians, however, refused to give them
+passage and by an unparalleled feat of engineering they transported
+their ships overland for two miles and set sail again above the city.
+Next year, as Gozlin's successor, Bishop Antheric, was sitting at
+table with Abbot Ebles, a fearful messenger brought news that the
+_acephali_[36] were again in sight. Forgetting the repast, the two
+churchmen seized their weapons, called the city to arms, hastened to
+the ramparts, and the abbot slew their pilot with a well-aimed shaft.
+The Normans are terrified, and at length a treaty is made with their
+leaders, who promised not to ravage the Marne and some even entered
+Paris. But the ill-disciplined hordes were hard to hold in and bands
+of brigands, as soon as the ramparts were passed, began to plunder and
+slew a score of Christian men. The Parisians in their indignation
+sought out and--Hurrah! cries Abbo--found five hundred Normans in the
+city and slew them. But the bishop protected those that took refuge in
+his palace, instead of killing them as he ought to have done--_potius
+concidere debens_. For a time Paris had respite; cowardly Charles the
+Fat was deposed, and in 887 Count Eudes was acclaimed king of France
+after his return from Aquitaine, whose duke he had brought to
+subjection. He counselled a gathering of all the peoples outside Paris
+to make common cause against the Normans, and Abbo saw the proud
+Franks march in with heads erect, the skilful and polished Aquitaines,
+the Burgundians too prone to flight. But nought availed: the motley
+host soon melted away.
+
+[Footnote 35: The tablet has now (1911) disappeared. _See_ p. 313.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Abbo's favourite epithet. They were without a head, for
+they knew not Christ, the Head of Mankind.]
+
+At the extreme north-east of Paris the Rue du Crimée leads to a group
+of once barren hills, part of which is now made into the Park of the
+Buttes Chaumont. Here, by the Mount of the Falcon (Montfaucon[37]) in
+892 King Eudes fell upon an army of Northmen, who had come against
+Paris and utterly routed them. Antheric, the noble pastor, with his
+virgin-like face, led three hundred footmen into the fight and slew
+six hundred of the _acephali_. But Abbo's muse now fails him, for
+Eudes, noble Eudes, is no more worthy of his office, and Christ's
+sheep are perishing. Where is the ancient prowess of France? Three
+vices are working her destruction: pride, the sinful charms of Venus
+(_foeda venustas veneris_) and love of sumptuous garments. Her
+people are arrayed in purple vesture, and wear cloaks of gold; their
+loins are cinctured with girdles rich with precious stones. Monk Abbo
+wearies not of singing, but the deeds of noble Eudes are wanting; all
+the poet craves is another victory to rejoice Heaven; another defeat
+of the black host of the enemy.
+
+[Footnote 37: 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.]
+
+Alas! the noble Eudes was now a king with rebellious vassals. Paris
+was never captured again, but the _acephali_ were devouring the land.
+The grim spectres of Famine and Plague made a charnel-house of whole
+regions of France, while Eudes was fighting the Count of Flanders, a
+rival king, and the ineffectual emperor, Charles the Simple. He it was
+who after Eudes' death, by the treaty of St. Claire sur Epte in 902,
+surrendered to the barbarians the fair province, subsequently to be
+known as Normandy. The new prayer in the Litany, "From the fury of the
+Northmen, good Lord deliver us," was heard, and the dread name of
+Rollo vanishes from history to live again in song. Under the title of
+Robert, assumed from his god-father, he reappears to win a dukedom and
+a king's daughter; the Normans are broken in to Christianity, law and
+order; their land becomes one of the most civilized regions of France;
+the fiercest of church levellers are known as the greatest of church
+builders in Christendom. They gave their name to a style of Christian
+architecture in Europe and a line of kings to England,[38] Naples and
+Sicily.
+
+[Footnote 38: William the Conqueror was also known as William the
+Builder.]
+
+The people of Paris and of France never forgot the lesson of the dark
+century of the invasions. A subtle change had been operating. The
+empire had decomposed into kingdoms; the kingdoms were segregating
+into lordships. Men in their need were attracted to the few strong and
+dominant lords whose courage and resource afforded them a rallying
+point and shelter against disintegrating forces: the poor and
+defenceless huddled for protection to the seigneurs of strongholds
+which had withstood the floods of barbarians that were devastating the
+land. The seeds of feudalism were sown in the long winter of the
+Norman terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_The Rise of the Capetian Kings and the Growth of Feudal Paris_
+
+
+From 936 to the coronation of Hugh Capet at Noyon in 987, the
+Carlovingians exercised a slowly decaying power. The real rulers at
+Paris were Hugh the Tall and Hugh Capet,[39] grandson and
+great-grandson of Robert the Strong. They revolutionized the ideal of
+kingship and founded the line of kings of France which stretches
+onward through history for a thousand years until the guillotine of
+the Revolution cut it in twain. It is Hugh Capet whom Dante, following
+a legend of his time, calls the son of a butcher of Paris, and whom he
+hears among the weeping souls cleaving to the dust and purging their
+avarice in the fifth cornice of Purgatory.
+
+[Footnote 39: 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.]
+
+Their patrimony was a small one--the provinces of the Isle de France,
+La Brie, La Beauce, Beauvais and Valois; but their sway extended over
+the land of the Langue d'oil, with its strenuous northern life, _le
+doux royaume de la France_, the sweet realm of France, whose head was
+Paris, cradle of the great French Monarchy and home of art, learning
+and chivalry. The globe of the earth, symbol of universal empire,
+gives way to the hand of justice as the emblem of kingship. The Capets
+were, it is true, at first little more than seigneurs over other
+seigneurs, some of whom were almost as powerful as they; but that
+little, the drop of holy chrism by which they were consecrated of the
+Church, and the support of the French jurists, contained within them a
+promise and potency of future grandeur. They were the Lord's anointed,
+supported by the Lord's Vicar on earth: to disobey them was to disobey
+God: tribal sovereignty was to give way to territorial sovereignty.
+The people, long forsaken by their emperors, had in their turn
+forsaken them, in order "not to be at the mercy of all the great ones
+they surrendered themselves to one of the great ones" and in exchange
+for protection gave troth and service. Cities, churches and
+monasteries now assumed a new aspect. Paris had demonstrated the value
+of a walled city, and during the latter part of the Norman terror,
+from all parts of North France, monks and nuns and priests had brought
+their holy relics within it as to a city of refuge. Gone were its
+lines of villas from Gallo-Roman times extending freely into the
+country. The ample spaces within gave place to crowded houses and
+narrow streets held in a rigid ring of walls and moats. The might of
+the archbishops, bishops and abbots increased: they sat in the
+councils of kings and dominated the administration of justice; the
+moral, social and political life of the country centred around them.
+Armed with the sword and the cross they held almost absolute sway over
+their little republics, coined money, levied taxes, disposed of small
+armies and went to the chase in almost regal state.
+
+The advent of the year 1000 was regarded with universal terror in
+Christendom. A fear, based on a supposed apocalyptic prophecy that the
+end of the world was at hand, paralysed all political and social life.
+Churches were too small to contain the immense throngs of fearful
+penitents: legacies and donations from conscience-stricken worshippers
+poured wealth into their treasuries. But once the awe-inspiring night
+of the vernal equinox that began the year 1000 had passed, and the
+bright March sun rose again on the fair earth, unconsumed by the wrath
+of God, the old world "seemed to thrill with new life; the earth cast
+off her outworn garments and clothed herself in a rich and white
+vesture of new churches." Everywhere in Europe, and especially in
+Paris and in France, men strove in emulation to build the finest
+temples to God. The wooden roofs of the Merovingian and Carlovingian
+basilicas had ill withstood the ravage of war and fire. Stone took the
+place of wood, the heavy thrust of the roof led to increased mural
+strength, walls were buttressed, columns thickened. Massive towers of
+defence, at first round, then polygonal, then square, flanked the west
+fronts, veritable keeps, where the sacred vessels and relics might be
+preserved and defended in case of attack. Soon spaces are clamant for
+decoration and the stone soars into the beauty of Gothic vaulting and
+tracery.
+
+The growth of Paris is more intimately associated with the Capets than
+with any of the earlier dynasties, and at no period in its history is
+the ecclesiastical expansion more marked. Under the long reign of
+Hugh's son, King Robert the Pious, no less than fourteen monasteries
+and seven churches were built or rebuilt in or around the city; a new
+and magnificent palace and hall of Justice, with its royal chapel
+dedicated to St. Nicholas, rose on the site of the old Roman basilica
+and palace in the Cité. The king was no less charitable than pious;
+troops of the poor and afflicted followed him when he went abroad, and
+he fed a thousand daily at his table. But notwithstanding his
+munificent piety, he was early made to feel the power of the Church.
+His union with Queen Bertha, a cousin of the fourth degree, whom he
+had married a year before his accession, was condemned by the pope as
+incestuous, and he was summoned to repudiate her. Robert, who loved
+his wife dearly, resisted the papal authority, and excommunication and
+interdict followed.[40] Everyone fled from him; only the servants are
+said to have remained, who purged with fire all the vessels which were
+contaminated by the guilty couple's touch. The misery of his people at
+length subdued the king's spirit, and he cast off his faithful and
+beloved queen.
+
+[Footnote 40: A dramatic representation of the delivery of the papal
+bull, painted by Jean Paul Laurens, hangs in the museum of the
+Luxembourg.]
+
+The beautiful and imperious Constance of Aquitaine, her successor,
+proved a penitential infliction second only in severity to the
+anathemas of the Church. Troops of vain and frivolous troubadours from
+her southern home, in all kinds of foreign and fantastic costumes,
+invaded the court at Paris and shocked the austere piety of the king.
+He perceived the corrupting influence on the simple manners of the
+Franks of their licentious songs, lascivious music and dissolute
+lives, but was powerless to dismiss them. The tyrannous temper of his
+new consort became the torment of his life. He was forced even to
+conceal his acts of charity. One day, on returning from prayers,
+Robert perceived that his lance by the queen's orders had been adorned
+with richly chased silver. He looked around his palace and was not
+long in finding a poor, tattered wretch whom he ordered to search for
+a tool, and the pair locked themselves in a room; the silver was soon
+stripped from the lance, the king hastily thrust it into the beggar's
+wallet and bade him escape before the queen discovered the loss. The
+poor whom he admitted to his table, despite the angry protests of the
+queen, at times ill repaid his charity. On one occasion a tassel of
+gold was cut from his robe, and on the thief being discovered the
+king simply remarked: "Well, perhaps he has greater need of it than I,
+may God bless its service to him." The very fringe was sometimes
+stripped from his cloak as he walked abroad, but he never could be
+induced to punish any of these poor spoilers of his person. It is in
+King Robert's reign that we read of one of the earliest revolts
+against the institution of slavery, which was regarded as an integral
+part of the divine order of things. It was the custom of the Church at
+Paris to send serfs to the law courts to give evidence for their
+bishop or prior, or to do battle for them in the event of a judicial
+duel. The freemen in the eleventh century began to rebel against
+fighting with a despised serf, and refused the duel, whereupon early
+in the next century the king and his court decided that the serfs
+might lawfully testify and fight against freemen, and whoso refused
+the trial by battle should lose his suit and suffer excommunication.
+The prelates exchanged serfs, used them as substitutes in times of
+war, allowed them to marry outside their church or abbey only by
+special permission and on condition that all children were equally
+divided between the two proprietors. If a female serf married a
+freeman he and their children became serfs. Serfs were only permitted
+to make a will by consent of their master; every favour was paid for
+and liberty bought at a great price. Merchants even and artizans in
+towns owed part of their produce to the seigneur. In the eleventh
+century burgesses as well as serfs and Jews were given to churches,
+exchanged, sold or left in wills by their seigneurs. The story of
+mediæval Paris is the story of the efforts of serf and burgess to win
+their economic freedom.
+
+The declining years of King Robert were embittered by the impiety of
+rebellious sons, who were reduced to submission only at the price of a
+protracted and bloody campaign in Burgundy. The broken-hearted father
+did not long survive his victory. He died in 1031, and the benisons
+and lamentations of the poor and lowly winged his spirit to its rest.
+If we may believe some writers, pious King Robert's memory is
+enshrined in the hymnology of the Church, which he enriched with some
+beautiful compositions. He was often seen to enter St. Denis in regal
+habit to lead the choir at matins, and would sometimes challenge the
+monks to a singing contest.
+
+In 1053, towards the end of Henry I.'s almost unchronicled reign, an
+alarming rumour came to Paris. The priests of St. Ermeran at Ratisbon
+claimed to have possession of the body of St. Denis, which they
+alleged had been stolen from the abbey in 892 by one Gisalbert. The
+loss of a province would not have evoked livelier emotion, and Henry
+at once took measures to convince France and Christendom that the true
+body was still at St. Denis. Before an immense concourse of bishops,
+abbots, princes and people, presided over by the king, his brother and
+the archbishops of Rheims and of Canterbury, the remains of St. Denis
+and his two companions were solemnly drawn out of the silver coffers
+in which they had been placed by Dagobert, together with a nail from
+the cross and part of the crown of thorns, all locked with two keys in
+a chest richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and preserved in
+a vault under the high altar. After having been borne in procession
+they were exposed on the high altar for fifteen days and then restored
+to their resting-place. The stiff-necked priests of Ratisbon,
+fortified with a papal bull of 1052, still maintained their claim to
+the possession of the body, but no diminution was experienced in the
+devotion either of the French peoples or of strangers of all nations
+to the relics at St. Denis.
+
+The chief architectural event of Henry's reign at Paris was the
+rebuilding on a more magnificent scale of the Merovingian church and
+abbey of St. Martin in the Fields (des Champs), whose blackened walls
+and desolate lands were eloquent of the Norman terror. The buildings
+stood outside Paris about a mile beyond the Cité on the great Roman
+road to the north, where St. Martin on his way to Paris healed a
+leper. The foundation, which soon grew to be one of the wealthiest in
+France, included a hostel for poor pilgrims endowed by Philip I. with
+a mill on the Grand Pont, to which the monks added the revenue from an
+oven.[41] In the eighteenth century, when the monastery was
+secularised, the abbot was patron of twenty-nine priories, three
+vicarates and thirty-five parishes, five of which were in Paris. Some
+of the old building has been incorporated in the existing
+Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. The Gothic Priory chapel, with its
+fine twelfth-century choir, is used as a machinery-room, and the
+refectory, one of the most precious and beautiful creations attributed
+to Pierre de Montereau, is now a library.
+
+[Footnote 41: The possession of an oven was a lucrative monopoly in
+mediæval times. The writer has visited 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.]
+
+Philip I. brought to the indolent habit inherited from his father a
+depraved and vicious nature. After a regency of eight years he became
+king at the age of fifteen, and lived to defile his youth and
+dishonour his manhood by debauchery and adultery, simony and
+brigandage. Early in his career he followed the evil counsels of his
+provost Étienne, and purposed the spoliation of the treasury of St.
+Germain des Prés to pay for his dissolute pleasures. "As the
+sacrilegious pair," says the chronicler, "drew near the relics,
+Étienne was smitten with blindness and the terrified Philip fled."
+
+Philip after a reign void of honour or profit to France left his son
+Louis VI. (the Lusty) a heritage of shame, a kingdom reduced to little
+more than a baronage over a few _comtés_, whose cities of Paris,
+Etampes, Orleans and Sens were isolated from royal jurisdiction by
+insolent and rebellious vassals. Many of the great seigneurs were but
+freebooters, living by plunder. The violence and lawlessness of these
+and other smaller scoundrels, who levied blackmail on merchants and
+travellers, made commerce almost impossible. Corruption, too, had
+invaded many of the monasteries and fouled the thrones of bishops, and
+a dual effort was made by king and Church to remedy the evils of the
+times. The hierarchy strove to centralise power at Rome that the
+Church might be purged of wolves in sheep's clothing: the Capetian
+monarchs to increase their might at Paris in order to subdue insolent
+and powerful vassals to law and obedience.
+
+In 1097 the Duke of Burgundy learned that Archbishop Anselm of
+Canterbury was about to pass through his territory with a rich escort
+on his way to Rome. The usual ambush was laid and the party were held
+up. As the duke hastened to spoil his victims, crying out--"Where is
+the archbishop?" he turned and saw Anselm, impassive on his horse,
+gazing sternly at him. In a moment the savage and lawless duke was
+transformed to a pallid, stammering wretch with downcast eyes, begging
+permission to kiss the old man's hand and to offer him a noble escort
+to safeguard him through his territory. It was the moral influence of
+prelates such as this and monks such as St. Bernard that enabled the
+hierarchy to enforce the celibacy of the clergy, to cleanse the
+bishoprics and abbeys, to wrest the privilege of conferring benefices
+from lay potentates and feudal seigneurs who bartered them for money,
+and to make and unmake kings.
+
+The end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries saw
+the culmination of the power of the reformed orders. All over France,
+religious houses--the Grande Chartreuse, Fontevrault, Cîteaux,
+Clairvaux--sprang up as if by enchantment. Men and women of all
+stations and classes flocked to them, a veritable host of the Lord,
+"adorning the deserts with their holy perfection and solitudes by
+their purity and righteousness."
+
+St. Bernard, the terror of mothers and of wives, by his austerity, his
+loving-kindness,[42] his impetuous will and masterful activity, his
+absolute faith and remorseless logic, his lyric and passionate
+eloquence, carried all before him and became the dictator of
+Christendom. He it was who with pitying gesture as of a kind father,
+his eyes suffused with tender joy, received Dante from the hands of
+Beatrice in the highest of celestial spheres, and after singing the
+beautiful hymn to the Virgin, led him to the heaven of heavens, to the
+very ecstasy and culmination of beatitude in the contemplation and
+comprehension of the triune God Himself. But religious no less than
+seculars are subdued by what they work in. Already in the tenth
+century Richer complained that the monks of his time were beginning to
+wear rich ornaments and flowing sleeves, and with their tight-fitting
+garments[43] looked like harlots rather than monks.
+
+[Footnote 42: He was said to be "kind even to Jews."]
+
+[Footnote 43: The indignant scribe is most precise: they walked abroad
+_artatis clunibus et protensis natibus_.]
+
+In the polluting atmosphere of Philip's reign matters had grown worse.
+St. Bernard denounced the royal abbey of St. Denis as "a house of
+Satan, a den of thieves." "The walls of the churches of Christ were
+resplendent with colour but His poor were naked and left to perish;
+their stones were gilded with the money of the needy and wretched to
+charm the eyes of the rich."
+
+In 1095 the task of cleansing the Abbey of St. Maur des Fossés at
+Paris seemed so hopeless, that the abbot resigned in despair rather
+than imperil his soul, and a more resolute reformer was sought. In
+1107 the bishop of Paris was commanded by Rome to proceed to the abbey
+of St. Eloy and extirpate the evils there flourishing, for the nuns,
+it was reported, had so declined in grace, owing to the proximity of
+the court and intercourse with the world, that they had lost all sense
+of shame and lived in open sin, breaking the bonds of common decency.
+The scandal was so great that the bishop determined to cut them off
+from the house of the Lord; the abbey was reduced to a priory and
+given over to the abbot of the now reformed monastery of St. Maur, and
+its vast lands were parcelled out into several parishes.[44] The
+rights of the canons of Notre Dame were to be maintained; on St.
+Eloy's day the abbot of St. Maur was to furnish them with six pigs,
+two and a half measures of wine and three of fine wheat, and on St.
+Paul's day with eight sheep, the same quantity of wine, six crowns and
+one obole. The present Rue de la Cité and the Boulevard du Palais give
+approximately the east and west boundaries of the suppressed abbey,
+part of whose site is now occupied by the Prefecture de Police.
+
+[Footnote 44: 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.]
+
+But the way of the reformer is a hard one. At the Council of Paris,
+1074, the abbot of Pontoise was severely ill-treated for supporting,
+against the majority of the Council, the pope's decrees excluding
+married clerics from the churches, and the reform of the canons of
+Notre Dame led to exciting scenes. Bishop Stephen of Senlis was sent
+in 1128 to introduce the new discipline, but the archdeacons and
+canons, supported by royal favour, resisted, and Bishop Stephen was
+stripped of his revenues and hastened back to his metropolitan, the
+archbishop of Sens. The archbishop laid Paris under interdict and the
+influence of St. Bernard himself was needed to compose the quarrel.
+
+On Sunday, August 20, 1133, when returning from a visitation to the
+abbey of Chelles, the abbot and prior of St. Victor[45] at Paris were
+ambushed and the prior was stabbed. Some years later, in the reign of
+Louis VII., Pope Eugene III. came to seek refuge in Paris from the
+troubles excited at Rome by the revolution of Arnold of Brescia, and
+celebrated mass before the king at the abbey church of St. Genevieve.
+The canons had stretched a rich, silken carpet before the altar on
+which the pontiff's knees might rest, and when he retired to the
+sacristy to disrobe, his officers claimed the carpet, according to
+usage. The canons and their servants resisted, there was a bout of
+fisticuffs and sticks, the king intervened, anointed majesty himself
+was struck, and during the scuffle which ensued the carpet was torn to
+shreds in a tug-of-war between the claimants. Here was urgent need for
+reform. The pope decided to introduce the new discipline and appointed
+a fresh set of canons. The dispossessed canons met them with insults
+and violence, drowned their voices by howling and other indignities,
+and only ceased on being threatened with the loss of their eyes and
+other secular penalties.
+
+[Footnote 45: _See_ note 2, p. 63.]
+
+Louis VI., the _noble damoiseau_ as he is called by the Chronicle of
+St. Denis, enthroned in 1108, was the pioneer of the great French
+Monarchy, ever on the move, hewing his way, sword in hand, through his
+domains, subduing the violence, and burning and razing the castles of
+his insolent and disobedient vassals. The famous Suger, abbot of St.
+Denis, was his wise and firm counsellor, who led the Church to make
+common cause with him and lend her diocesan militia. The king would
+have the peasant to till, the monk to pray, and the pilgrim and
+merchant to travel in peace. He was an itinerant regal justiciary,
+destroying the nests of brigands, purging the land with fire and sword
+from tyranny and oppression. Wise in council, of magnificent courage
+in battle, he was the first of the Capetians to associate the cause of
+the people with that of the monarchy. They loved him as a valiant
+soldier-king, destroyer and tamer of feudal tyrants, the protector of
+the Church, the vindicator of the oppressed. He lifted the sceptre of
+France from the mire and made of it a symbol of firm and just
+government.
+
+It is in Louis' reign that we have first mention of the Oriflamme
+(golden flame) of St. Denis, which took the place of St. Martin's
+cloak as the royal standard of France. The Emperor Henry V. with a
+formidable army was menacing the land. Louis rallied all his friends
+to withstand him and went to St. Denis to pray for victory. Pope
+Eugene and Abbot Suger received Louis, who fell prostrate before the
+relics. Suger then took from the altar the standard--famed to have
+been sent by heaven, and formerly carried by the first liege man of
+the abbey, the Count de Vexin, when the monastery was in danger of
+attack--and handed it to the king: the pope gave him a pilgrim's
+wallet. The sacred banner was fashioned of silk in the form of a
+gonfalon, of the colours of fire and gold, and was suspended at the
+head of a gilded lance.[46]
+
+[Footnote 46: A modern reproduction may be seen in the church of St.
+Denis, but the exact shape is doubtful, no less than three different
+forms being known to antiquarians.]
+
+The strenuous reign of Louis was marked by a great expansion of Paris,
+which became more than ever the ordinary dwelling-place of the king
+and the seat of his government. The market which from Roman times had
+been held at the bifurcation of the northern road near the fields
+(Champeaux), belonging to St. Denis of the Prison, was extended.
+William of Champeaux founded the great abbey of St. Victor,[47] famed
+for its sanctity and learning, where Abelard taught and St. Thomas of
+Canterbury, whose hair shirt was long preserved there, and St. Bernard
+lodged. At the urgent prayer of his wife Adelaide, the king built a
+nunnery at Montmartre, and lavishly endowed it with lands, ovens, the
+house of Guerri, a Lombard money-changer, some shops and a
+slaughter-house in Paris, and a small _bourg_, still known as Bourg la
+Reine, about five miles south of the city. Certain rights of fishing
+at Paris, to which Louis VII. added five thousand herrings yearly from
+the port of Boulogne, were also granted. The churches of Ste.
+Geneviève la Petite, founded to commemorate the miraculous staying of
+the plague of the burning sickness (_les ardents_); of St. Jacques de
+la Boucherie; and of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, so named from the heads
+of oxen carved on the portal, were also built.
+
+[Footnote 47: The abbey was suppressed at the time of the Revolution
+and the site is now occupied by the Halle aux Vins.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_Paris under Philip Augustus and St. Louis_
+
+
+During twenty-eight years of the reign of Louis VII. no heir to the
+crown was born. At length, on the 22nd of August, 1165, Adelaide of
+Champagne, his third wife, lay in child-bed and excited crowds
+thronged the palace in the Cité. The king, "afeared of the number of
+his daughters and knowing how ardently his people desired a child of
+the nobler sex," was beside himself with joy when the desire of his
+heart was held up to him; curious eyes espied the longed-for heir
+through an aperture of the door and in a moment the good news was
+spread abroad. There was a sound of clarions and of bells and the city
+as by enchantment shone with an aureole of light. An English student
+roused by the uproar and the glare of what seemed like a great
+conflagration leapt to the window and beheld two old women hurrying by
+with lighted tapers. He asked the cause. They answered: "God has given
+us this night a royal heir, by whose hand your king shall suffer shame
+and ill-hap." This was the birth of Philip le Dieu-donné--Philip sent
+of Heaven--better known as Philip Augustus. Under him and Louis IX.
+mediæval Paris, faithfully reflecting the fortunes of the French
+Monarchy, attained its highest development.
+
+When Philip Augustus took up the sceptre at fifteen years of age, the
+little realm of the Isle de France was throttled by a ring of great
+and practically independent feudatories, and in extent was no larger
+than half-a-dozen of the eighty-seven departments into which France is
+now divided. The English king held the mouths of all the great rivers
+and all the great cities, Rouen, Tours, Bordeaux. In thirty years
+Philip had burst through to the sea, subdued the Duke of Burgundy and
+the great counts, wrested the sovereignty of Normandy, Brittany and
+Maine from the English Crown, won Poitou and Aquitaine, crushed the
+emperor and his vassals in the memorable battle of Bouvines, and
+become one of the greatest of European monarchs. The king, who had
+owed his life to the excellence of his armour,[48] was received in
+Paris with a frenzy of joy. The whole city came forth to meet him,
+flowers were strewn in his path, the streets were hung with tapestry,
+Te Deums sung in all the churches, and for seven days and nights the
+popular enthusiasm expressed itself in dance, in song and joyous
+revel. It was the first national event in France. The Count of
+Flanders was imprisoned in the new fortress of the Louvre, where he
+lay for thirteen years, with ample leisure to meditate on the fate of
+rebellious feudatories. "Never after," say the chroniclers, "was war
+waged on King Philip, but he lived in peace."
+
+[Footnote 48: 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.]
+
+Two vast undertakings make the name of Philip Augustus memorable in
+Paris--the beginning of the paving of the city and the building of its
+girdle of walls and towers. One day as the king stood at the window of
+his palace, where he was wont to distract himself from the cares of
+state by watching the Seine flow by, some carts rattled along the
+muddy road beneath the window and stirred so foul and overpowering an
+odour that the king almost fell sick. Next day the provost and the
+sheriffs and chief citizens were summoned before him and ordered to
+set about paving the city with stone. The work was not however
+completed until the reign of Charles V., a century and a half later.
+It was done well and lasted till the sixteenth century, when it was
+replaced by the miserable cobbles, known as the pavement of the
+League. Whether the city grew much sweeter is doubtful; certainly
+Paris in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was as
+evil-smelling as ever. Montaigne, in the second half of the sixteenth
+century, complains that the acrid smell of the mud of Paris weakened
+the affection he bore to that fair city, and Howell writes in 1620,
+"the city is always dirty, and by perpetual motion the mud is beaten
+into a thick, black and unctuous oil that sticks so that no art can
+wash it off, and besides the indelible stain it leaves, gives so
+strong a scent that it may be smelt many miles off, if the wind be in
+one's face as one comes from the fresh air of the country." Horace
+Walpole in the eighteenth century, called Paris "the beastliest town
+in the universe."
+
+[Illustration: WALL OF PHILIPPE AUGUSTE, COUR DE ROUEN.]
+
+The great fortified wall of Philip Augustus began at the north-west
+water-tower, which stood just above the present Pont des Arts, and
+passed through the quadrangle of the Louvre, where a line on the
+paving marks its course, to the Porte St. Honoré, near the Oratoire.
+It continued northwards within the line of the present Rue Jean
+Jacques Rousseau and by the Rue du Jour to the Porte Montmartre, whose
+site is marked by a tablet on No. 30 Rue Montmartre. Turning eastward
+by the Painters' Gate (135 Rue St. Denis) and the Porte St. Martin,
+near the Rue Grenier St. Lazare, the fortification described a curve
+in a south-easterly direction by the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, where
+traces of the wall have been found at No. 55, and where part of a
+tower may be seen at No. 57. The line of the wall continued in the
+same direction by the Lycée Charlemagne, No. 101 Rue St. Antoine,
+where stood another gate, to the north-east water-tower, known as the
+Tour Barbeau, which stood near No. 32 Quai des Célestins. The opposite
+or southern division began at the south-east water-tower, La
+Tournelle, and the Gate of St. Bernard on the present Quai de la
+Tournelle, and went southward just within the Rues des Fossés St.
+Bernard and Cardinal Lemoine, to the Porte St. Victor, near No. 2 Rue
+des Écoles. The wall then turned westward above the Rue Clovis, where
+at No. 7 one of the largest and best-preserved remains may be seen. It
+enclosed the abbey of St. Genevieve, continued within the Rue des
+Fossés St. Jacques, and, between the Porte St. Jacques and the Porte
+St. Michel doubled outwards to enclose the Parloir aux Bourgeois near
+the south end of the Rue Victor Cousin. The south-western angle was
+turned near the end of the Rue Soufflot and the beginning of the Rue
+Monsieur le Prince. Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain, it then
+followed within the line of the latter street, and continued within
+the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. In the Cour de Rouen, entered through
+the Passage du Commerce, No. 61 Rue St. André des Arts, an important
+remnant may be seen with the base of a tower, and where the Rue Mazet
+cuts the last-named street stood the Porte du Buci. We may now trace
+the march of the wall and towers within the Rue Mazarine and across
+the Rue Guénégaud, where in a court behind No. 29 other fragments
+exist, to the south-west water-tower, the notorious Tour de Nesle[49]
+whose site is occupied by the east wing of the Institut. The west
+passage of the Seine was blocked by chains, which were drawn at night
+from tower to tower and fixed on boats and piles just above the line
+of the present Pont des Arts. A similar chain blocked the east passage
+of the river, drawn from the Tour Barbeau to La Tournelle, crossing
+the islands now known as the Isle St. Louis. The wall was twenty years
+building and was completed in 1211. It was eight feet thick, pierced
+by twenty-four gates and fortified by about five hundred towers. Much
+of the land it enclosed was not built upon; the _marais_ on the north
+bank were drained and cultivated for market and fruit gardens.
+
+[Footnote 49: Jeanne de Burgogne, 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.]
+
+The moated château of the Louvre, another of Philip's great buildings
+stood outside the wall, on the site of the old Frankish camp or
+_Lower_, and commanded the valley route to Paris. It was at once a
+fortress, a treasury, a palace and a prison. Parts of two wings of the
+structure are incorporated in the present palace of the Louvre, and
+the site of the remaining wings, the massive keep and the towers, are
+marked out on the pavement of the quadrangle.
+
+The king erected also (1181-1183) two great warehouses at the old
+market at Champeaux: one for the drapers, the other for the weavers,
+that the merchants might sell their wares under cover and lock up
+their goods at night. They were known as _les Halles_, and the market
+ever since has borne that name. Here too Philip caused to be burnt at
+the stake the first heretics[50] executed at Paris, sparing the women
+and other simple folk who had been misled by the chief sectaries, of
+whom one, beyond the reach of earthly penalties and buried in the
+cemetery of les Innocents, was finally excommunicated, his bones
+exhumed and flung on a dungheap. "_Beni soit le Seigneur en toutes
+choses!_" says Pigord the chronicler who tells the story.
+
+[Footnote 50: It should be remembered that heresy was the solvent
+antisocial force of the age and was regarded with the same feelings of
+abhorrence as anarchist doctrines and propaganda are regarded by
+modern statesmen.]
+
+Of the impression that the Paris of Philip Augustus made on a
+provincial visitor, we were able, fortunately, to give some account.
+"I am at Paris," writes Guy of Bazoches, about the end of the twelfth
+century, "in this royal city, where the abundance of nature's gifts
+not only retains those that dwell there but invites and attracts those
+who are afar off. Even as the moon surpasses the stars in brightness,
+so does this city, the seat of royalty, exalt her proud head above all
+other cities. She is placed in the bosom of a delicious valley, in the
+centre of a crown of hills, which Ceres and Bacchus enrich with their
+gifts. The Seine, that proud river which comes from the east, flows
+there through wide banks and with its two arms surrounds an island
+which is the head, the heart, and the marrow of the whole city; two
+suburbs extend to right and left, even the lesser of which would
+rouse the envy of many another city. These suburbs communicate with
+the island by two stone bridges; the Grand Pont towards the north in
+the direction of the English sea, and the Petit Pont which looks
+towards the Loire. The former bridge, broad, rich, commercial, is the
+centre of a fervid activity, and innumerable boats surround it laden
+with merchandise and riches. The Petit Pont belongs to the
+dialecticians, who pace up and down disputing. In the island adjacent
+to the king's palace, which dominates the whole town, the palace of
+philosophy is seen where study reigns alone as sovereign, a citadel of
+light and immortality."
+
+After Louis VIII.'s brief reign of three years, there rises to the
+seat of kings at Paris one of the gentlest and noblest of the sons of
+men, a prince indeed, who, amid all the temptations of absolute power
+maintained a spotless life, and at death laid down an earthly crown to
+assume a fairer and an imperishable diadem among the saints in heaven.
+All that was best in mediævalism--its desire for peace and order and
+justice; its fervent piety, its passion to effect unity among Christ's
+people and to wrest the Holy Land from the pollution of the infidel;
+its enthusiasm for learning and for the things of the mind; its love
+of beauty--all are personified in the life of St. Louis.
+
+The young prince was eleven years of age when his father died. During
+his minority he was nurtured in learning and piety[51] by his mother,
+Blanche of Castile, whose devotion to her son, and firm and wise
+regency were a fitting prelude to the reign of a saintly king. Even
+after he attained his majority, St. Louis always sought his mother's
+counsel and was ever respectful and submissive to her will. When the
+news of her death reached him in the Holy Land, he went to his
+oratory, fell on his knees before the altar, submissive to the will of
+God, and cried out with tears in his eyes, that he had loved the
+queen, "his most dear lady and mother, beyond all mortal creatures."
+
+[Footnote 51: She was wont to say to her son--"I would rather see thee
+die than commit a mortal sin."]
+
+The king's conception of his office was summed up in two
+words--_Gouverner bien_. "Fair son," said he one day to Prince Louis,
+his heir, "I pray thee win the affection of thy people. Verily, I
+would rather that a Scotchman came from Scotland and ruled the kingdom
+well and loyally than that thou shouldst govern it ill." Joinville his
+biographer tells with charming simplicity how the king after hearing
+mass in the chapel at Vincennes outside Paris was wont to walk in the
+woods for refreshment and then, sitting at the foot of an old oak
+tree, whose position is still shown, would listen to the plaints of
+his poorer people without let of usher or other official and
+administer justice to them. At other times, clothed in a tunic of
+camlet, a surcoat of wool (_tiretaine_) without sleeves, a mantle of
+black taffety, and a hat with a peacock's plume, he would walk with
+his Council in the garden of his palace in the Cité, and on the poorer
+people crowding round him all speaking at once he would cry: "Silence!
+one at a time," and call for a carpet to be spread on the ground, on
+which he would sit, surrounded with his councillors, and judge them
+diligently.
+
+In 1238 St. Louis was profoundly shocked by the news that the crown of
+thorns was a forfeited pledge at Venice for an unpaid loan advanced by
+some Venetian merchants to the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople. He
+paid the debt,[52] redeemed the pledge, and secured the relic for
+Paris. The king met his envoys at Sens, and barefooted, himself
+carried the sacred treasure enclosed in three caskets, one of wood,
+one of silver and one of gold, to Paris. The procession took eight
+days to reach the city, and so great were the multitudes who thronged
+to see it, that a large platform was raised in a field outside the
+walls, from which several prelates exposed it in turn to the
+veneration of the people. Thence it was taken to the cathedral of
+Notre Dame, the king dressed in a simple tunic, and barefoot, still
+carrying the relic. From the cathedral it was transferred to the royal
+chapel of St. Nicholas within the precincts of the palace. A year
+later the Emperor Baldwin was constrained to part with other relics,
+including a piece of the true cross, the blade of the lance and the
+sponge of the Passion. To enshrine them and the crown of thorns the
+chapel of St. Nicholas was demolished and the beautiful Sainte
+Chapelle built in its place. The upper chapel was dedicated to the
+relics; the lower to the Blessed Virgin, and on solemn festivals the
+king would himself expose the relics to the people. St. Louis was
+zealous in his devotion and for a time attended matins in the new
+chapel at midnight, until, suffering much headache in consequence, he
+was persuaded to have the office celebrated in the early morning
+before prime. His piety, however, was by no means austere: he had all
+the French gaiety of heart, dearly loved a good story, and was
+excellent company at table, where he loved to sit conversing with
+Robert de Sorbon, his chaplain. "It is a bad thing," he said one day
+to Joinville, "to take another man's goods, because _rendre_ (to
+restore) is so difficult, that even to pronounce the word makes the
+tongue sore by reason of the r's in it."
+
+[Footnote 52: By a subtle irony, part of the money was derived from
+the tribute of the Jews of Paris.]
+
+[Illustration: LA SAINTE CHAPELLE.]
+
+At another time they were talking of the duties of a layman towards
+Jews and Infidels. "Let me tell you a story," said St. Louis. "The
+monks of Cluny once arranged a great conference between some learned
+clerks and Jews. When the conference opened, an old knight who for
+love of Christ was given bread and shelter at the monastery,
+approached the abbot and begged leave to say the first word. The
+abbot, after some protest against the irregularity, was persuaded to
+grant permission, and the knight, leaning on his stick, requested that
+the greatest scholar and rabbi among the Jews might be brought before
+him. 'Master,' said the knight, 'do you believe that the Blessed
+Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus and held Him at her breast, and that
+she is the Virgin Mother of God?' The Jew answered that he believed it
+not at all. 'Then,' said the knight, 'fool that thou art to have
+entered God's house and His church, and thou shalt rue it,' Thereupon
+he lifted his stick, smote the rabbi under the ear and felled him to
+the ground. The terrified Jews fled, carrying their master with them,
+and so," said St. Louis, "ended the conference. And I tell you, let
+none but a great clerk dispute; the business of a layman when he hears
+the Christian religion defamed is to defend it with his sharp sword
+and thrust his weapon into the miscreant's body as far as it will go."
+
+St. Louis, however, did not apply the moral in practice. Although
+severe in exacting tribute from the Jews, he spent much money in
+converting them and held many of their orphan children at the font; to
+others he gave pensions, which became a heavy financial burden to
+himself and his successors. He was stern with blasphemers, whose lips
+he caused to be branded with a hot iron. "I have heard him say,"
+writes Joinville, "with his own mouth, that he would he were marked
+with a red-hot iron himself if thereby he could banish all oaths and
+blasphemy from his kingdom. Full twenty-two years have I been in his
+company, and never have I heard him swear or blaspheme God or His holy
+Mother or any Saint, howsoever angry he may have been: and when he
+would affirm anything, he would say, 'Verily it is so, or verily it is
+not so,' Before going to bed he would call his children around him and
+recite the fair deeds and sayings of ancient princes and kings,
+praying that they would remember them for good ensample; for unjust
+and wicked princes lost their kingdoms through pride and avarice and
+rapine." When he was in the east he heard of a Saracen lord of Egypt
+who caused all the best books of philosophy to be transcribed for the
+use of young men, and he determined to do the like for the youth of
+Paris. Five thousand scribes were employed to copy the Scriptures and
+the writings of the Fathers and classic authors, preserved in various
+abbeys in France. He had a convenient and safe place built at the
+treasury of the Sainte Chapelle, where he housed the books, for a
+church without a library was said to be a fortress without ammunition.
+Scholars had free access to them, and he himself was wont in his
+leisure time to shut himself up there for study, reading rather the
+Holy Fathers than the writings of the best doctors of his own time.
+
+St. Louis was a steadfast friend to the religious orders. On his
+return from the Holy Land he brought with him six monks from Mount
+Carmel and established them on the north bank of the Seine, near the
+present Quai des Célestins; they were subsequently transferred to the
+University quarter, on a site now occupied by the Marché aux Carmes.
+The prior of the Grande Chartreuse was also prayed to spare a few
+brothers to found a house in Paris; four were sent, and the king
+endowed them with his Château de Vauvert, including extensive lands
+and vineyards. The château was reputed to be haunted by evil spirits,
+and the street leading thither as late as the last century was known
+as the Rue d'Enfer. St. Louis began a great church for them, and the
+eight cells, each with its three rooms and garden, were increased to
+thirty before the end of his reign; in later times the order became
+one of the richest in Paris and occupied a vast expanse of land to the
+south of the Luxembourg. The fine series of paintings illustrating the
+life of St. Bruno, by Lesueur, now in the Louvre, was executed for the
+smaller cloister of the monastery. The Grands Augustins were
+established on the south bank of the Seine, near the present Pont
+Neuf, and the Serfs de la Vierge, known later as the Blancs Manteaux,
+from their white cloaks, in the Marais. They were subsequently
+amalgamated with the Guillemites, or the Hermits of St. William, and
+at No. 14 Rue des Guillemites some remains of their monastery may yet
+be seen. The church of the Blancs Manteaux, rebuilt in the seventeenth
+century, also exists in the street of that name.
+
+In 1217 the first of the Dominicans were seen at Paris. On the 12th of
+September seven preaching friars, among whom were Laurence the
+Englishman and a brother of St. Dominic, established themselves in a
+house near the _parvis_ of Notre Dame. In 1218 the University gave
+them a home opposite the church of St. Étienne des Grez (St. Stephen
+of the Greeks), in the Rue St. Jacques, and in the following year,
+when St. Dominic came to Paris, the brothers had increased to thirty.
+The saint himself drew up the plans of their monastery and always
+cherished a particular affection for the Paris house. Their church was
+opened in 1220, and being dedicated to St. Jacques, the Dominicans
+were known as Jacobins all over France. St. Louis endowed them with a
+school; they soon became one of the most powerful and opulent of the
+religious orders, and their church, a burial-place for kings and
+princes. The Friars Minor soon followed. St. Francis himself, in his
+deep affection for France, had determined to go to Paris and found a
+house of his order, but being dissuaded by his friend, Cardinal
+Ugolin, sent in 1216 a few of his disciples. These early friars, true
+_poverelli di Dio_, would accept no endowment of house or money, and
+supporting themselves by their hands, carried their splendid devotion
+among the poor, the outcast, and the lepers of Paris. In 1230 the
+Cordeliers, as they were called,[53] accepted the _loan_ of a house
+near the walls in the south-western part of the city; St. Louis
+built them a church, and left them at his death part of his library
+and a large sum of money.[54] They too soon became rich and powerful
+and their church one of the largest and most magnificent in Paris. St.
+Bonaventure and Duns Scotus taught at their school of theology; their
+monastery in the sixteenth century was the finest and most spacious in
+Paris, with cells for a hundred friars and a vast refectory, which
+still exists. St. Louis founded the hospital known as the
+Quinze-Vingts (15 + 20) for three hundred poor knights whose eyes had
+been put out by the Saracens. Subsequently it became a night shelter
+for a like number of blind beggars whither they might repair after
+their long quest in the streets of Paris. St. Louis at his death left
+them an annual _rente_ of thirty livres parisis that every inmate
+might have a good mess of pottage daily, and Philip le Bel ordered a
+fleur-de-lys to be embroidered on their dress that they might be known
+as the king's poor folk. The buildings, now transferred to the Rue de
+Charenton, originally covered a vast area of ground between the Palais
+Royal and the Louvre, and were sold in 1779 to a syndicate of
+speculators by Cardinal de Rohan of diamond-necklace[55] notoriety; an
+act of jobbery which brought his Eminence a handsome commission. The
+Quinze-Vingts were privileged to place collecting-boxes and to beg
+inside the churches. Since, however, the differences in the relative
+opulence of churches was great, the right to beg in certain of the
+richer ones was put up to auction every year, and those who promised
+to pay the highest premium to the funds of the hospital were
+adjudicated the privilege of begging there. This curious arrangement
+was in full vigour until the latter half of the eighteenth century,
+when the foundation was removed. Twelve blind brothers and twelve
+seeing brothers--husbands of blind women who were lodged there on
+condition that they served as leaders through the streets--had a share
+in the management of the institution. Luxury seems to have sometimes
+invaded the hostel, for in 1579 a royal degree forbade the sale of
+wine to the brethren and denounced the blasphemy with which their
+conversation was often tainted. In 1631 they were forbidden to use
+stuffs other than serge or cloth for their garments, or to use velvet
+for ornament.
+
+[Footnote 53: On account of the cord they wore round their habit.]
+
+[Footnote 54: 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 an
+embrace of fervent affection for a great space of time in silence.
+They parted without speaking a word, marvellously comforted.]
+
+[Footnote 55: The innocence of Marie Antoinette in this scandalous
+affair has been clearly established. See _L'affaire du Collier_, by M.
+Funck Brentano. Paris, 1903.]
+
+[Illustration: REFECTORY OF THE CORDELIERS.]
+
+The establishment of the abbeys of St. Antoine, of the Friars of the
+Holy Cross, and of the Sisters of St. Bega or Béguines, were also due
+to the king's piety, and the whole city was surrounded with religious
+houses. "Even as a scribe," says an old writer, "who hath written his
+book illuminates it with gold and silver, so did the king illumine his
+kingdom with the great quantity of the houses of God that he built."
+
+St. Louis was, however, firm in his resistance to ecclesiastical
+arbitrariness. The prelates complained to him on one occasion that
+Christianity was going to the dogs, because no one feared their
+excommunications, and prayed that he would order his sergeants to lend
+the secular arm to enforce their authority. "Yes," answered the king,
+"if you will give me the particulars of each case that I may judge if
+your sentence be just." That, they objected, appertained to the
+ecclesiastical courts, but St. Louis was inflexible, and they remained
+unsatisfied.
+
+Many were St. Louis' benefactions to the great hospital of Paris, the
+Hôtel Dieu. Rules, dating from 1217, for the treatment of the sick
+poor were elaborated in his reign with admirable forethought. The
+sick, after confession and communion, were to be put to bed and
+treated as if they were the masters of the house. They were to be
+daily served with food before the nursing friars and sisters, and all
+that they desired was to be freely given if it could be obtained and
+were not prejudicial to their recovery. If the sickness were dangerous
+the patient was to be set apart and to be tended with especial
+solicitude. The sick were never to be left unguarded and even to be
+kept seven days after they were healed, lest they should suffer a
+relapse. The friars and sisters were to eat twice a day: the sick
+whenever they had need. A nurse who struck a patient was
+excommunicated. Viollet le Duc was of opinion that in many respects
+the Hôtel Dieu in the Middle Ages was superior to our modern
+hospitals. Among many details denoting the tender forethought of the
+administrator, we may note that in the ward for the grievously sick
+and infirm the beds were made lower, and 60 _cottes_ of white fur and
+300 felt boots were provided to keep the poor patients warm when they
+were moved from their beds to the _chambres aisées_. In later times,
+lax management and the decline of piety which came with the religious
+and political changes of the Renaissance made reform urgent, and in
+1505 the Parlement appointed a committee of eight _bourgeois clercs_
+to control the receipts. The buildings were much increased in 1636,
+but were never large enough, and in 1655 the priory of St. Julien was
+united to the hospital. "As many as 6000 patients," says Félibien,
+writing in 1725, "have been counted there at one time, five or six in
+one bed." No limitations of age or sex or station or religion or
+country were set. Everybody was received, and in Félibien's time the
+upkeep amounted to 500,000 livres per annum. The old Hôtel Dieu was
+situated to the south of Notre Dame, and stood there until rebuilt on
+its present site in 1878.
+
+St. Louis sought diligently over all the land for the _grand sage
+homme_ who would prove an honest and fearless judge, punishing the
+wicked without regard to rank or riches; and what he exacted of his
+officers he practised himself. He punished his own brother, the Count
+of Artois, for having forced a sale of land on an unwilling man, and
+ordered him to make restitution. The Sire de Coucy, one of the most
+powerful of his barons, was summoned to Paris and in spite of his
+bravado, arrested, imprisoned in the Louvre and sentenced to death,
+for having hanged three young fellows for poaching. The sale of the
+provostship of Paris was abolished and a man of integrity, Étienne
+Boileau, appointed with adequate emoluments. So completely was this
+once venal office rehabilitated, that no seigneur regarded the post as
+beneath him. Boileau was wont to sleep in his clothes on a camp bed in
+the Châtelet to be in readiness at any hour, and often St. Louis would
+be seen sitting beside the provost on the judgment seat, watching over
+the administration of justice. The judicial duel in civil cases was
+forbidden; the Royal Watch instituted to police the streets of Paris;
+the charters of the hundred crafts of Paris were confirmed and many
+privileges granted to the great trade guilds.
+
+In 1270 St. Louis put on a second time the crusader's badge, "the dear
+remembrance of his dying Lord," and met his death in the ill-fated
+expedition to Tunis. So feeble was the king when he left Paris, that
+Joinville carried him from the Hôtel of the Count of Auxerre to the
+Cordeliers, where the old friends and fellow-warriors in the Holy Land
+parted for ever. When stricken with the plague the dying monarch was
+laid on a couch strewn with ashes. He called his son, the Count of
+Alençon to him, gave wise and touching counsel, and, after holy
+communion, recited the seven penitential psalms: having invoked
+"Monseigneurs St. James and St. Denis and Madame St. Genevieve," he
+crossed his hands on his heart, gazed towards heaven and rendered his
+soul to his Creator. _Piteuse chouse est et digne de pleurer le
+trépassement de ce saint prince_, says Joinville, to whom the story
+was told by the king's son--"A piteous thing it is and worthy of tears
+the passing away of this holy prince."
+
+The bones of the dead king, from which the flesh[56] had been removed
+by boiling, were sent for burial to St. Denis, which he had chosen for
+the place of his sepulture. Joinville,[57] his friend and companion,
+from whose priceless memoirs we have chiefly drawn, ends his story
+thus:--"I make known to all readers of this little book that the
+things which I say I have seen and heard of the king are true, and
+steadfastly shall they believe them. And the other things of which I
+testify but by hearsay, take them in a good sense if it please you,
+praying God that by the prayers of Monseigneur St. Louis it may please
+Him to give us those things that He knoweth to be necessary as well
+for our bodies as for our souls. Amen."
+
+[Footnote 56: It was buried in the church of Monreale at Palermo.]
+
+[Footnote 57: 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 declared that if he had
+wronged any one of them 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.]
+
+King Louis was tall of stature, with a spare and graceful figure; his
+face was of angelic sweetness, with eyes as of a dove, and crowned
+with abundant fair hair. As he grew older he became somewhat bald and
+held himself slightly bent. "Never," says Joinville, when describing a
+charge led by the king, which turned the tide of battle, "saw I so
+fair an armed man. He seemed to sit head and shoulders above all his
+knights; his helmet of gold was most fair to see, and a sword of
+Allemain was in his hand. Four times I saw him put his body in danger
+of death to save hurt to his people."
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_Art and Learning at Paris_
+
+
+Two epoch-making developments--the creation of Gothic architecture and
+the rise of the University of Paris--synchronise with the period
+covered by the reigns of Philip Augustus and St. Louis, and may now
+fitly be considered.
+
+The memory of the Norman terror had long passed from men's minds. The
+Isle de France had been purged of robber lords, and with peace and
+security, wealth and population had increased. The existing churches
+were becoming too small for the faithful and new and fairer temples
+replaced the old: the massive square towers, the heavy walls and thick
+pillars of the Norman builders, blossomed into grace and light and
+beauty. Already in the beginning of the twelfth century the church of
+St. Denis was in urgent need of extension. On festival days so great
+were the crowds pressing to view the relics, that many people had been
+trodden under foot, and Abbot Suger determined to build a larger and
+nobler church. Great was the enthusiasm of the people as the new
+temple rose. Noble and burgess, freeman and serf, harnessed themselves
+like beasts of burden to the ropes and drew the stone from the quarry.
+A profound silence reigned, broken only by the murmur of those who
+confessed their sins when a halt was made. A trumpet sounded, banners
+were unfurled, and the silent host resumed its way. Arrived at the
+building the whole multitude burst forth into a song of praise. All
+would lend their aid in raising the new house of God and of His holy
+martyrs, and the burial-place of their kings. In 1161 Maurice de
+Sully, a peasant's son, who had risen to become bishop of Paris,
+determined to erect a great minster adequate to the demands of his
+time. The old churches of Notre Dame and of St. Stephen[58] and many
+houses were demolished, and a new street, called of Notre Dame, was
+made. Sully devoted the greater part of his life and private resources
+to the work. The king, the pope, seigneurs, guilds of merchants and
+private persons, vied with each other in making gifts. Two years were
+spent in digging the foundations of the new Notre Dame, and in 1163
+Pope Alexander III. is said to have laid the first stone. In 1182, the
+choir being finished, the papal legate, Henri de Châteaux-Marcay,
+consecrated the high altar, and in 1185 the Patriarch of Jerusalem
+celebrated mass in the choir. At Sully's death, in 1196, the walls of
+the nave were erect and partly roofed, and the old prelate left a
+hundred livres for a covering of lead. The transepts and nave were
+completed in 1235.
+
+[Footnote 58: The relics were transferred to a new church of St.
+Stephen (St. Étienne du Mont), built by the abbot of St. Genevieve as
+a parish church for his servants and tenants.]
+
+In 1240 an ingenious and sacrilegious thief, climbing to the roof to
+haul up the silver candlesticks from the altar by a noose in a rope,
+set fire to the altar cloth, and the choir was seriously injured.
+Sully's work had been Romanesque, and choir and apse were now rebuilt
+in the new style, to harmonise with the remainder of the church. By
+the end of the thirteenth century the chapels round the apse and in
+the nave, the Porte Rouge and the south portal were added, and the
+great temple was at length completed. The choir of St. Germain des
+Prés and the exquisite little church of St. Julien le Pauvre were
+rebuilt at the end of the twelfth century, and the beautiful
+refectory of St. Martin des Champs was created about 1220. But the
+culmination of Gothic art is reached in the wondrous sanctuary that
+St. Louis built for the crown of thorns, "the most precious piece of
+Gothic," says Ruskin, "in Northern Europe." Michelet saw a whole world
+of religion and poetry--tears of piety, mystic ecstasy, the mysteries
+of divine love--expressed in the marvellous little church, in the
+fragile and precious paintings of its windows.[59] The work was
+completed in three years, and has been so admirably restored by
+Viollet le Duc that the visitor may gaze to-day on this pure and
+peerless gem almost as St. Louis left it, for the gorgeous interior
+faithfully reproduces the mediæval colour and gold. During the
+Revolution it was used as a granary and then as a club. It narrowly
+escaped destruction, and men now living can remember seeing the old
+notices on the porch of the lower chapel--_Propriété nationale à
+vendre_. All that remains of the relics has long been transferred to
+the treasury of Notre Dame. The old Quinze-Vingts, the Chartreux, the
+Cordeliers, St. Croix de la Bretonnerie, St. Catherine, the Blancs
+Manteaux, the Mathurins and other masterpieces of the Gothic builders
+have all disappeared.
+
+[Footnote 59: The early glass-workers were particularly fond of their
+beautiful red. "Wine of the colour of the windows of the Sainte
+Chapelle," was a popular locution of the time.]
+
+Gothic architecture was eminently a product of the Isle de France.
+"France not only _led_," says Mr. Lethaby, "but _invented_. In a very
+true sense what we call Gothic is Frenchness of the France which had
+its centre in Paris." The thirteenth century rivals the finest period
+of Greek art for purity, simplicity, nobility and accurate science of
+construction. Imagination was chastened by knowledge, but not
+systematised into rigid rules. Each master solved his problem in his
+own way, and the result was a charm, a variety, and a fertility of
+invention, never surpassed in the history of art. Early French
+sculpture is a direct descendant of Greek art, which made its way into
+Gaul by the Phoenician trade route, and the Merovingian Franks were
+always in touch with the Eastern Mediterranean, and with the stream of
+early Byzantine[60] art. French artists achieved a perfection in the
+representation of the human form which anticipated by a generation the
+work of the Pisani in Italy, for the early thirteenth-century statues
+on the west front of Chartres Cathedral are carved with a naturalness
+and grace which the Italian masters never surpassed, and the
+marvellously mature and beautiful silver-gilt figure of a king, in
+high relief, found in 1902 immured in an old house at Bourges and
+exhibited in 1904 among the Primitifs Français at the Louvre, was
+wrought more than a century before the birth of Donatello. Some
+fragments of the old sculptures that adorned St. Denis and other
+twelfth and thirteenth-century churches may still be found in the
+museums of Paris. The influence of the French architects, as Emile
+Bertaux has demonstrated in the first volume of his _Art dans l'Italie
+Méridionale_, extended far beyond the limits of France, and is clearly
+traceable in the fine hunting-palace, erected for Frederic II. in the
+thirteenth century, at Castello del Monte, near Andria, in Apulia. But
+of the names of those who created these wonderful productions few are
+known; the great masterpieces of the thirteenth century are mostly
+anonymous. Jean de Chelles, one of the masons of Notre Dame, has left
+his name on the south portal and the date, Feb. 12, 1257, on which it
+was begun, "in honour of the holy Mother of Christ." He was followed
+by Pierre de Montereau, "master of the works of the church of Blessed
+Mary at Paris," whose name thus appears in a deed of sale dated 1265.
+The Sainte Chapelle is commonly attributed to Pierre de Montereau, but
+the attribution is a mere guess.
+
+[Footnote 60: The researches of Professor Strzygowski of Gratz, and
+other authorities in the field of Byzantine and Eastern archæology,
+tend to prove the dominant importance of the Christian East in the
+development of early ecclesiastical architecture and the subordinate
+influence of Roman models.]
+
+Nor did the love of beauty during this marvellous age express itself
+solely in architecture. If we were asked to specify one trait which
+more than any other characterises the "dark ages" and differentiates
+them from modern times, we should be tempted to say, love of
+brightness and colour. Within and without, the temples of God were
+resplendent with silver and gold, with purple and crimson and blue;
+the saintly figures and solemn legends on their porches, the capitals,
+the columns, the groins of the vaultings, the very crest of the roof,
+were lustrous with colour and gold. Each window was a complex of
+jewelled splendour; the pillars and walls were painted or draped with
+lovely tapestries and gorgeous banners: the shrines and altars
+glittered like Aaron's breastplate, with precious stones--jasper and
+sardius and chalcedony, sapphire and emerald, chrysolite and beryl,
+topaz and amethyst and pearl. The Church illuminated her sacred books
+with exquisite painting, bound them with precious fabrics, and clasped
+them with silver and gold; the robes of her priests and ministrants
+were rich with embroideries. "People," said William Morris, "have long
+since ceased to take in impressions through their eyes," indeed so
+insensible, so atrophied to colour have the eyes of moderns grown amid
+their drab surroundings, that the aspect of a building wherein skilful
+hands have in some small degree essayed to realise the splendour of
+the past dazes the beholder; a sense of pain rather than of delight
+possesses him and he averts his gaze.
+
+Nor were the churches of those early times anything more than an
+exquisite expression of what men were surrounded by in their daily
+lives and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and
+burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and
+paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic
+use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and
+simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity
+different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If
+painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: so
+was a shoemaker. Astronomy and grammar were arts: so was spinning.
+Apothecaries and lawyers were artists: so was a tailor. Dante[62] uses
+the word _artista_ as denoting a workman or craftsman, and when he
+wishes to emphasise the degeneracy of the citizens of his time as
+compared with those of the old Florentine race, he does so by saying
+that in those days their blood ran pure even _nell' ultimo artista_
+(in the commonest workman). Let us be careful how we speak of these
+ages as "dark"; at least there were "retrievements out of the night."
+Already before the tenth century the basilica of St. Germain des Prés
+was known as St. Germain _le doré_ (the golden), from its glowing
+refulgence, and St. Bernard as we have seen, declaimed against the
+resplendent colour and gold in the churches of his time. Never since
+the age of Pericles has so great an effusion of beauty descended on
+the earth as during the wondrous thirteenth century in the Isle de
+France and especially in Paris.[63]
+
+[Footnote 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_ and surrounded
+with orchards and gardens.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Par. XVI. 51.]
+
+[Footnote 63: 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 hot baths, a larger proportion to population than exists
+to-day, and Dr. Gasquet has described in his _English Monastic Life_
+the admirable provisions for personal cleanliness made in mediæval
+monasteries.]
+
+We pass from the enthusiasm of art to that of learning. From earliest
+times, schools, free to the poor, had been attached to every great
+abbey and cathedral in France. At the end of the eleventh century four
+were eminent at Paris: the schools of St. Denis, where the young
+princes and nobles were educated; of the Parvis Notre Dame, for the
+training of young _clercs_,[64] the famous _Scola Parisiaca_, referred
+to by Abelard; of St. Genevieve; and of St. Victor, founded by William
+of Champeaux, one of the most successful masters of Notre Dame. The
+fame of this teacher drew multitudes of young men from the provinces
+to Paris, among whom there came, about 1100, Peter Abelard, scion of a
+noble family of Nantes. By his wit, erudition and dialectical sublety
+he soon eclipsed his master's fame and was appointed to a chair of
+philosophy in the school of Notre Dame. William, jealous of his young
+rival, compassed his dismissal, and after teaching for a while at
+Melun, Abelard returned to Paris and opened a school on Mont St.
+Genevieve, whither crowds of students followed him. So great was the
+fame of this brilliant lecturer and daring thinker that his school was
+filled with eager listeners from all countries of Europe, even from
+Rome herself.
+
+[Footnote 64: Hence the name of _clerc_ applied to any student, even
+if a layman.]
+
+Abelard was proud and ambitious, and the highest prizes of an
+ecclesiastical and scholastic career seemed within his grasp. But
+Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, had a niece, accomplished and passing
+fair, Héloïse by name, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the great
+teacher. It was proposed that Abelard should enter the canon's house
+as her tutor, and Fulbert's avarice made the proposition an acceptable
+one. Abelard, like Arnault Daniel, was a good craftsman in his mother
+tongue, a facile master of _versi d'amore_, which he would sing with a
+voice wondrously sweet and supple. Now Abelard was thirty-eight years
+of age: Héloïse seventeen. _Amor al cor gentil ratto s'apprende_,[65]
+and Minerva was not the only goddess who presided over their meetings.
+For a time Fulbert was blind, but scandal cleared his eyes and Abelard
+was expelled from the house; Héloïse followed and took refuge with her
+lover's sister in Brittany, where a child, Astrolabe, was born.
+Peacemakers soon intervened and a secret marriage was arranged, which
+took place early one morning at Paris, Fulbert being present. But the
+lovers continued to meet; scandal was again busy and Fulbert published
+the marriage. Héloïse, that the master's advancement in the Church
+might not be impeded, gave the lie to her uncle and fled to the nuns
+of Argenteuil. Fulbert now plotted a dastardly revenge. By his orders
+Abelard was surprised in his bed, and the mutilation which, according
+to Eusebius, Origen performed on himself, was violently inflicted on
+the great teacher. All ecclesiastical preferment was thus rendered
+canonically impossible; Abelard became the talk of Paris, and in
+bitter humiliation retired to the abbey of St. Denis. Before he made
+his vows, however, he required of Héloïse that she should take the
+veil. The heart-broken creature reproached him for his disloyalty,
+and repeating the lines which Lucan puts into the mouth of Cornelia
+weeping for Pompey's death, burst into tears and consented to take the
+veil.
+
+[Footnote 65: "Love is quickly caught in gentle heart."--Inf. V. 100.]
+
+A savage punishment was inflicted by the ecclesiastical courts on
+Fulbert's ruffians, who were made to suffer the _lex talionis_ and the
+loss of their eyes: the canon's property was confiscated. The great
+master, although forbidden to open a school at St. Denis, was
+importuned by crowds of young men not to let his talents waste, and
+soon a country house near by was filled with so great a company of
+scholars that food could not be found for them. But enemies were
+vigilant and relentless, and he had shocked the timid by doubting the
+truth of the legend that Dionysius the Areopagite had come to France.
+
+In 1124 certain of Abelard's writings on the Trinity were condemned,
+and he took refuge at Nogent-sur-Seine, near Troyes, under the
+patronage of the Count of Champagne. He retired to a hermitage of
+thatch and reeds, the famous Paraclete, but even there students
+flocked to him, and young nobles were glad to live on coarse bread and
+lie on straw, that they might taste of wisdom, the bread of the
+angels. Again his enemies set upon him; he surrendered the Paraclete
+to Héloïse and a small sisterhood, and accepted the abbotship of St.
+Gildes in his own Brittany. A decade passed, and again he was seen in
+Paris. His enemies now determined to silence him, and St. Bernard, the
+dictator of Christendom, denounced his writings. Abelard appealed for
+a hearing, and the two champions met in St. Stephen's church at Sens
+before the king, the hierarchy and a brilliant and expectant audience;
+the ever-victorious knight-errant of disputation, stood forth, eager
+for the fray, but St. Bernard simply rose and read out seventeen
+propositions from his opponent's works, which he declared to be
+heretical. Abelard in disgust left the lists, and was condemned
+unheard to perpetual silence. The pope, to whom he appealed, confirmed
+the sentence, and the weary soldier of the mind, old and heart-broken,
+retired to Cluny; he gave up the struggle, was reconciled to his
+opponents, and died absolved by the pope near Chalons in 1142. His
+ashes were sent to Héloïse, and twenty years later she was laid beside
+him at the Paraclete. A well-known path, worn by generations of
+unhappy lovers, leads to a monument in Père-la-Chaise Cemetery at
+Paris which marks the last resting-place of Abelard and Héloïse, whose
+remains were transferred there in 1817.
+
+It is commonly believed that Abelard's school on Mont St. Genevieve
+was the origin of the Latin Quarter in Paris, but the migration to the
+south had probably begun before Abelard came, and was rather due to
+the overcrowding of the episcopal schools. Teachers and scholars began
+to swarm to the new quarter over the bridge where quiet, purer air and
+better accommodation were found. Ordinances of Bishop Gilbert, 1116,
+and Stephen, 1124, transcribed by Félibien, make this clear. So
+disturbed were the canons by the numbers of students in the cloister,
+that _externes_ were to be no longer admitted, nor other schools
+allowed on the north side where the canons lodged. The growing
+importance of the new schools, which tended to the advantage of the
+abbey of St. Genevieve, soon alarmed the bishops, and the theologians
+were ordered to lecture only between the two bridges (the Petit and
+Grand Ponts.) But it was Abelard's brilliant career that attracted
+like a lodestar the youth of Europe to Paris, and made that city the
+"oven where the intellectual bread of the world was baked."
+Providence, it was said, had given Empire to Germany, Priestcraft to
+Italy, Learning to France. What a constellation of great names glows
+in the spiritual firmament of mediæval Paris: William of Champeaux,
+Peter Lombard, Maurice de Sully, Pierre de Chartreux, Abelard,
+Gilbert[66] l'Universel, Adrian IV., St. Thomas of Canterbury, and his
+biographer John of Salisbury. Small wonder that the youth of the
+twelfth century sought the springs of learning at Paris!
+
+[Footnote 66: Afterwards bishop of London.]
+
+[Illustration: NOTRE DAME AND PETIT PONT.]
+
+There was no discipline or college life among the earliest students.
+Each master, having obtained his license from the bishop's chancellor,
+rented a room at his own cost, and taught what he knew--even, it was
+sometimes complained, what he did not know. We read of one Adam du
+Petit Pont, who, in the twelfth century, expounded Aristotle in the
+back-room of a house on the bridge amid the cackle of cocks and hens,
+and whose _clientèle_ had many a vituperative contest with the
+fish-fags of the neighbourhood. The students grouped themselves
+according to nationalities, and with their masters held meetings in
+any available cloister, refectory, or church. When funds were needed,
+a general levy was made and any balance that remained was spent in a
+festive gathering in the nearest tavern. The aggregation of thousands
+of young men, some of whom were cosmopolitan vagabonds, gave rise to
+many evils. Complaints are frequent among the citizens of the
+depredations and immoralities of riotous _clercs_, who lived by their
+wits or by their nimble fingers, or by reciting or singing licentious
+ballads:--the _paouvres escolliers_, whose miserable estate,
+temptations, debauchery, ignoble pleasures, remorse and degradation
+have been so pathetically sung by François Villon, master of arts,
+poet, bohemian, burglar and homicide. The richer scholars often
+indulged in excesses, and of the vast majority who were poor, some
+died of hunger. It was the spectacle of half-starving _clercs_ begging
+for bread that evoked the compassion of pious founders of colleges,
+which originally were simply hostels for needy scholars. On the return
+of Louis VII. from a pilgrimage to Becket's shrine, his brother Robert
+founded about 1180 the church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a hostel
+for fifteen students, who, in 1217, were endowed with a chapel of
+their own, dedicated to St. Nicholas, and were then known as the poor
+scholars of St. Nicholas.[67] In 1171 a London merchant (Jocius de
+Londonne), passing through Paris on his return from the Holy Land,
+touched by the sight of some starving students begging their bread,
+founded a hostel for eighteen poor scholars at the Hôtel Dieu, who in
+return for lodging and maintenance were to perform the last Christian
+rites to the friendless dead. This, known as the college of the
+Dix-huit, was afterwards absorbed in the Sorbonne. In 1200 Étienne
+Belot and his wife, burgesses of Paris, founded a hostel for thirteen
+poor scholars who were known as the _bons enfants_. In all, some dozen
+colleges were in being when St. Louis came to the throne. In 1253, St.
+Louis' almoner, Robert of Cerbon or Sorbon, a poor Picardy village,
+founded[68] a modest college of theology, and obtained from Blanche of
+Castile a small house above the palace of the Thermæ where he was able
+to maintain a few poor students of theology. Friends came to his aid
+and soon sixteen were accommodated, to whom others, able to maintain
+themselves, were added. In 1269 a papal bull confirmed the
+establishment of the _pauvres maistres estudiants_ in the faculty of
+theology at Paris. Even when enriched by later founders it was still
+called _la pauvre Sorbonne_. By the renown of their erudition the
+doctors of the Sorbonne became the great court of appeal in the Middle
+Ages in matters of theology, and the Sorbonne synonymous with the
+university. Some of the hostels were on a larger scale. The college of
+Cardinal Lemoine, founded in 1302 by the papal legate, housed sixty
+students in arts and forty in theology. Most were paying residents,
+but a number of bursaries were provided for those whose incomes were
+below a certain amount. Each _boursier_ was given daily two loaves of
+white bread of twelve ounces, "the common weight in the windows of
+Paris bakers."
+
+[Footnote 67: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 68: 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.]
+
+In 1304, Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair, left her mansion
+near the Tour de Nesle and 2000 livres annually to found the college
+of Navarre for seventy poor scholars, twenty in grammar, thirty in
+philosophy, and twenty in theology. The first were allowed four sous
+weekly; the second, six; the third, eight. If any were possessed of
+annual incomes respectively of thirty, forty and sixty livres, they
+ceased to hold bursaries. The maintenance fund seems, however, to have
+been mismanaged, for we soon read of the scholars of the college
+walking the streets of Paris every morning crying--"Bread, bread, good
+people, for the poor scholars of Madame of Navarre!"
+
+Some forty colleges were in existence by the end of the fourteenth
+century and had increased to fifty by the end of the fifteenth; in the
+seventeenth, Evelyn gives their number as sixty-five. In Félibien's
+time some had disappeared, for in his map (1725) forty-four colleges
+only are marked. Nearly the whole of these colleges clustered around
+the slopes of Mont St. Genevieve, which at length became that
+Christian Athens that Charlemagne dreamt of. Each college had its own
+rules. Generally students were required to attend matins (in summer at
+3 a.m., winter at 4), mass, vespers and compline. When the curfew of
+Notre Dame sounded, they retired to their dormitories. Leave to sleep
+out was granted only in very exceptional cases. Tennis was allowed,
+cards and dice were forbidden. The college of Montaigu, founded in
+1314 by Archbishop Gilles de Montaigu, housed eighty-two poor scholars
+in memory of the twelve apostles and seventy disciples. There the rod
+was never spared to the _fainéant_; the discipline so severe, that the
+college became the terror of the youth of Paris, and fathers were wont
+to sober their libertine sons by threatening to make _capetes_[69] of
+them. This was the _Collège de Pouillerye_ denounced by Rabelais and
+notorious to students as the _Collège des Haricots_, because they were
+fed there chiefly on beans. Erasmus was a poor _boursier_ there,
+disgusted at its mean fare and squalor, and Calvin, known as the
+"accusative," from his austere piety. Desmoulins, the inaugurator of
+the Revolution, and St. Just, its fiery and immaculate apostle, sat on
+its benches. To obtain admission to the college of Cluny (1269) the
+scholar must pass an entrance examination. He then spent two years at
+logic, three at metaphysics, two in Biblical studies; he held weekly
+disputations and preached every fortnight in French; he was
+interrogated every evening by the president on his studies during the
+day. If students evinced no aptitude for learning they were dismissed;
+if only moderate progress were made, the secular duties of the college
+devolved upon them. It was the foundation of these colleges which
+organised themselves, about 1200, into powerful corporations of
+masters and scholars (_universitates magistrorum et scholiarum_) that
+gave the university its definite character.
+
+[Footnote 69: The Montaigu scholars were called _capetes_ from their
+peculiar _cape fermée_, or cloak, such as Masters of Arts used to
+wear. The Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève occupies the site of the
+college.]
+
+[Illustration: TOWER IN RUE VALETTE IN WHICH CALVIN IS SAID TO HAVE
+LIVED.]
+
+When the term "university" first came into use is unknown. It is met
+with in the statutes (1215) which, among other matters, define the
+limits of age for teaching. A master in the arts must not lecture
+under twenty-one; of theology under thirty-five. Every master must
+undergo an examination as to qualification and moral fitness at the
+Episcopal Chancellor's Court. Early in the twelfth century the four
+faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts and Theology were formed and the
+national groups reduced to four: French, Picards, Normans and English.
+Each group elected its own officers, and in 1245 at latest the _Quatre
+Nations_ were meeting in the church of St. Julien le Pauvre to choose
+a common head or rector, who soon superseded the chancellor as head
+of the university. The rectors in process of time exercised almost
+sovereign authority in the Latin Quarter; they ruled a population of
+ten thousand masters and students, who were exempt from civic
+jurisdiction. In 1200 some German students ill-treated an innkeeper
+who had insulted their servant. The provost of Paris and some armed
+citizens attacked the students' houses and blood was shed, whereupon
+the masters of the schools complained to the king, who was fierce in
+his anger, and ordered the provost and his accomplices to be cast into
+prison, their houses demolished and vines uprooted. The provost was
+given the choice of imprisonment for life or the ordeal by water. Then
+followed a series of ordinances which abolished secular jurisdiction
+over the students and made them subject to ecclesiastical courts
+alone.
+
+In the reign of Philip le Bel a provost of Paris dared to hang a
+scholar. The rector immediately closed all classes until reparation
+was made, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin the _curés_
+of Paris assembled and went in procession, bearing a cross and holy
+water to the provost's house, against which each cast a stone, crying,
+in a loud voice--"Make honourable reparation, thou cursed Satan, to
+thy mother Holy Church, whose privileges thou hast injured, or suffer
+the fate of Dathan and Abiram." The king dismissed his provost, caused
+ample compensation to be made, and the schools were reopened.
+
+The famous Petit Pré aux Clercs (Clerks' Meadow) was the theatre of
+many a fight with the powerful abbots of St. Germain des Prés.[70]
+From earliest times the students had been wont to take the air in the
+meadow, which lay between the monastery and the river, and soon
+claimed the privilege as an acquired right. In 1192 the inhabitants of
+the monastic suburb resented their insolence, and a free fight ensued,
+in which several scholars were wounded and one was killed. The rector
+inculpated the abbot, and each appealed to Rome, with what result is
+unknown. After nearly a century of strained relations and minor
+troubles, Abbot Gerard in 1278 had walls and other buildings erected
+on the way to the meadow: the scholars met in force and demolished
+them. The abbot, who was equal to the occasion, rang his bells, called
+his vassals to arms and sent a force to seize the gates of the city
+that gave on the suburb, to prevent reinforcements reaching the
+scholars; his retainers then attacked the rioters, killed several and
+wounded many. The rector complained to the papal legate and threatened
+to close the schools if reparation were not made and justice done
+within fifteen days, whereupon the legate ordered the provost of the
+monastery to be expelled for five years. The royal council forced the
+abbot to exile ten of his vassals, to endow two chantries for the
+repose of the souls of slain _clercs_ and compensate their fathers by
+fines of two hundred and four hundred livres respectively, and to pay
+the rector two hundred livres to be distributed among poor scholars.
+In 1345 another bloody fight took place between the monks and the
+scholars over the right to fish there.
+
+[Footnote 70: There were two Prés, the Petit Pré roughly represented
+by the area now enclosed by the Rues de Seine, Jacob and Bonaparte;
+and the Grand Pré which extended nearly to the Champ de Mars. A narrow
+stream, the Petite Seine, divided them.]
+
+Many circumstances contributed to make Paris the capital of the
+intellectual world in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. France has
+ever been the home of great enthusiasms and has not feared to "follow
+where airy voices lead." The conception and enforcement of a Truce of
+God (_Trève de Dieu_) whereby all acts of hostility in private or
+public wars ceased during certain days of the week or on church
+festivals; the noble ideal of Christian chivalry; the first
+crusade--all had their origin in France. The crusaders carried the
+prestige of the French name and diffused the French idiom over Europe.
+It was a French monk preaching in France who gave voice to the general
+enthusiasm; a French pope approved his impassioned oration; a French
+shout "_Dieu le veut_" became the crusader's war-cry. The conquest of
+the Holy Land was organised by the French, its first Christian king
+was a French knight, its laws were indited in French, and to this day
+every Christian in the East is a Frank whatever tongue he may speak.
+The French jurists were famed for their supreme excellence all over
+Western Europe. In the thirteenth century Brunette Latini wrote his
+most famous work, the _Livres dou Trésor_, in French, because it was
+_la parleure plus delitable, il plus commune à toutes gens_ ("the most
+delightful of languages and the most common to all peoples"). Martin
+da Canale composed his story of Venice in French for the same reason,
+and Marco Polo dictated his travels in French in a Genoese prison.
+When St. Francis was sending the brothers to establish the order in
+distant lands, he himself chose France, but was dissuaded by his
+friend, Cardinal Ugolin. "When inebriated with love and compassion for
+Christ," says the writer of the _Speculum_, "and overflowing with
+sweetest melody of the Spirit, ofttimes would he find utterance in the
+French tongue; the strains of the divine whisperings which his ear had
+caught he would express in a French song of joyous exultation, and
+making the gestures of one playing a viol, he would sing in French of
+our Lord Jesus Christ."
+
+Never in the history of civilisation were men possessed with such
+passion for the spiritual life or such faith in the reasoning faculty
+as in the thirteenth century in Paris. The holiest mysteries were
+analysed and defined; everywhere was a search for new things.
+Conservative Churchmen became alarmed and complained of disputants and
+blasphemers exercising their wits at every street corner. The four
+camel-loads of manuscripts, the works and commentaries of Aristotle,
+brought by the Jews from Spain--a monstrous and mutilated version
+translated from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin--became
+the battle-ground of the schools. The Church at first forbade the
+study of Aristotle, then by the genius of Aquinas, Christianised and
+absorbed him; his works became a kind of intellectual tennis-ball
+bandied between the Averroists, who carried their teachings to a
+logical consequence, and the more orthodox followers of Aquinas. For
+three years the faculty was torn asunder by the rival factions. Siger
+of Brabant, whose eternal light Dante saw refulgent amid other doctors
+of the Church in the heaven of the Sun, was an Averroist; Siger--
+
+ "Che leggendo nel vico degli strami
+ Sillogizzò invidiosi veri."[71]
+
+[Footnote 71: Par. X. 136. "Who lecturing in Straw St. deduced truths
+that brought him hatred."]
+
+The Rue du Fouarre (Straw), where Siger taught and perhaps Dante
+studied was the street of the Masters of the Arts. Every house in it
+was a hostel for scholars or a school. It was in the Rue du Fouarre
+that Pantagruel "held dispute against all the regents, professors of
+arts and orators and did so gallantly that he overthrew them all and
+set them all upon their tails." The street still exists, though wholly
+modernised, opposite the foot of the Petit Pont. Its name has been
+derived from the straw spread on the floor of the schools or on which
+the students sat, but there is little doubt that Benvenuto da
+Imola's[72] explanation, that it was so named from a hay and straw
+market held there, is the correct one.
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+The wonderful thirteenth century saw the meridian glory of the
+university. It was the age of the great Aristotelian schoolmen who all
+taught at Paris--Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and
+Roger Bacon, their candid critic, who carried the intellectual
+curiosity of the age beyond the tolerance of his Franciscan superiors
+and twice suffered disciplinary measures at Paris.
+
+In the fourteenth century the university of Paris was as renowned as
+ever. Among many tributes from great scholars we choose that of
+Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, who in his _Philobiblon_ writes: "O
+Holy God of gods in Zion, what a mighty stream of joy made glad our
+hearts whenever we had leisure to visit Paris, the Paradise of the
+world, and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few for the
+greatness of our love! There are delightful libraries more aromatic
+than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manners of
+volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars;
+there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of
+Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of
+all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most
+excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary
+world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the
+nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the
+mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes
+the hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin
+characters all that Cadmus collected in Phoenician letters; there
+indeed opening our treasures and unfastening our purse-strings we
+scattered money with joyous heart and purchased inestimable books with
+mud and sand."
+
+In 1349 the number of professors (_maistres-regents_) on the rolls was
+502; in 1403 they had increased to 709, to which must be added more
+than 200 masters of theology and canon law. "The University," wrote
+Pope Alexander IV. in a papal bull, "is to the Church what the tree of
+life was to the earthly Paradise, a fruitful source of all learning,
+diffusing its wisdom over the whole universe; there the mind is
+enlighted and ignorance banished and Jesus Christ gives to His spouse
+an eloquence which confounds all her enemies."
+
+But decadence soon ensued. The multiplication and enrichment of
+colleges proved fatal to the old democratic vigour and equality. Some
+colleges pretended to superiority and the movement lost its unity.
+Scholasticism had done its work and no new movement took its place.
+Teachers lost all originality and did but ruminate and comment on the
+works of their great predecessors. Schools declined in numbers,
+scholars in attendance and ordinances were needed to correct the
+abuses covered by the title of scholar. The Jacobin and Cordelier
+teachers, moreover, had exhausted much life from the university; but
+its fame continued, and Luther in his early conflicts with the papacy
+appealed against the pope to the university of Paris. But it made the
+fatal blunder of opposing the Reform and the Renaissance, instead of
+absorbing them, and the interest of those great movements centres
+around the college of France.
+
+In the general decay, however, the Jesuit College of Clermont, known
+later as of Louis le Grand, stood forth renowned and exuberant. During
+the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the erudition of its
+teachers, their excellent method and admirable discipline, made it the
+premier college of Paris and in the heyday of its fame five hundred
+scholars crowded its halls, among them the scions of the nobility of
+France. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the university had
+its seat in the college and concentrated there the endowments, or such
+as had escaped spoliation, of twenty-six suppressed colleges. The
+college of Louis le Grand and nine others of the multitude that
+clustered around the hill of St. Genevieve, were all that survived
+when the Revolution burst forth, and it is not without interest to
+note that on 19th June 1781, the central body sitting at the famous
+Jesuit college unanimously awarded a prize of six hundred livres to a
+poor young _boursier_ of the college of Arras, named Louis François
+Maximilian Marie Robespierre, for twelve years of exemplary conduct
+and of success in examinations and competitions.
+
+Before we close this chapter a word of acknowledgment is due to the
+mediæval church in Paris for her careful fostering of elementary
+education. By the Taille of 1292 already referred to, we learn that
+schools for children of both sexes were distributed nearly over the
+whole of the city radiating from the mother church of Notre Dame. At
+the beginning of the fifteenth century twenty-one parishes had one or
+two of these schools; in 1449 a thousand schoolboys took part in a
+procession to Notre Dame to render thanks for the recovery of
+Normandy. The Church inspected the sanitary condition of the schools
+and exacted a standard of proficiency for the qualification of masters
+and mistresses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_Conflict with Boniface VIII.--The States-General--The
+Destruction of the Knights-Templars--The Parlement_
+
+
+In 1302 the eyes of Europe were again drawn to Paris where the Fourth
+Philip, surnamed the Fair, a prince who, in Dante's grim metaphor,
+scourged the shameless harlot of Rome from head to foot, and dragged
+her to do his will in France, was grappling with the great pontiff,
+Boniface VIII.--the most resolute upholder of the papacy in her claim
+to universal secular supremacy--and essaying a task which had baffled
+the mighty emperors themselves.
+
+The king knowing he had embarked on a struggle in which the greatest
+potentates had been worsted, determined to appeal to the patriotism of
+all classes of his subjects and fortify himself on the broad basis of
+such popular opinion as then existed. For the first time the
+States-General were summoned, after the burning of the papal bull in
+Paris on the memorable Sunday of 11th February 1302. Their meeting
+marks an epoch in French history, and for the first time members of
+the _Tiers État_ (the third estate, or commons), sat beside the
+privileged orders of clergy and nobles, and were recognised as one of
+the legitimate orders of the realm. The assembly was convoked to meet
+in Notre Dame on the 10th of April. The question was the old one
+which had rent Christendom asunder for centuries: Was the pope at Rome
+to be supreme over the princes and peoples of the earth in secular as
+well as in spiritual matters? The utmost enthusiasm prevailed, and
+though the prelates spoke with a somewhat timid voice, the assembled
+members swore to risk their lives and property rather than sacrifice
+the honour of the crown and their own liberties to the insolent
+usurpation of Rome. Excommunication followed, but Philip had ordered
+all the passes from Italy to be guarded, so that no papal letter or
+messenger should enter France. "Boniface, who," says Villani, the
+Florentine chronicler, "was proud and scornful, and bold to attempt
+every great deed, magnanimous and puissant," replied by announcing the
+publication of a bull deposing the king from his throne and releasing
+his subjects from their allegiance. Philip at an assembly in the
+garden of the palace in the Cité, and in presence of the chief
+ecclesiastical, religious and lay authorities, again laid his case
+before the people and read an appeal against the pope to a future
+Council of the Church.
+
+The bull of deposition was to be promulgated on 8th September. On the
+7th, while the aged pope was peacefully resting at his native city of
+Anagni, Guillaume de Nogaret, Philip's minister, bearing the royal
+banner of France, Sciarra Colonna and other disaffected Italian
+nobles, with three hundred horsemen, flung themselves into Anagni,
+crying--"Death to Pope Boniface." The papal palace was unguarded: at
+the first alarm the cardinals fled and hid themselves, and all but a
+few faithful servants forsook their master. The defenceless pope
+believed that his hour was come, but, writes Villani, "Great-souled
+and valiant as he was, he said, 'Since like Jesus Christ I must be
+taken by treachery and suffer death, at least I will die like a pope.'
+He commanded his servants to robe him in the mantle of Peter, to
+place the crown of Constantine on his head and the keys and crozier in
+his hands." He ascended the papal throne and calmly waited. Guillaume,
+Sciarra and the other leaders burst into the apartment, sword in hand,
+uttering the foulest of insults; but awed and cowed by the indomitable
+old pontiff, who stood erect in appalling majesty, their weapons
+dropped as though their hands were palsied and none durst offend him.
+They set a guard outside the room and proceeded to loot the palace.
+For three days the grand old pope--he was eighty-six years of
+age--remained a prisoner, until the people of Anagni rallied and
+rescued him, and he returned to Rome. In a month the humiliated
+Boniface died of a broken heart, and before two years were passed his
+successor in Peter's chair, Pope Clement V., revoked all his bulls and
+censures, expunged them from the papal register, solemnly condemned
+his memory and restored the Colonna family to all their honours.
+Dante, who hated Boniface as cordially as Philip did, and cast him
+into hell, was yet revolted at the cruelty of the "new Pilate, who had
+carried the fleur-de-lys into Anagni, who made Christ captive, mocked
+Him a second time, renewed the gall and vinegar, and slew Him between
+two living thieves." But the "new Pilate was not yet sated." The
+business at Anagni had only been effected _spendendo molta moneta_;
+the disastrous battle of Courtrai and the inglorious Flemish wars had
+exhausted the royal treasury; and the debasement of the coinage
+availing nought, Philip turned his lustful eyes on a once powerful lay
+order, whose chief seat was at Paris and whose wealth and pride were
+the talk of Christendom.
+
+After the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment there of a
+Christian kingdom, pilgrims flocked to the holy places. Soon, however,
+piteous stories reached Jerusalem of the cruel spoliation and murder
+of unarmed pilgrims, on their journey from the coast, by hordes of
+roving lightly-armed Bedouins, against whom the heavily-armed Franks
+were powerless. The evil was growing well-nigh intolerable when, in
+1118, two young French nobles, Hugh of Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer,
+with other seven youths of highest birth, bound themselves into a lay
+community, with the object of protecting the pilgrims' way. They took
+the usual vows of poverty, charity and obedience; St. Bernard drew up
+their Rule--and we may be sure it was austere enough--pope and
+patriarch confirmed it. Their garb was a mantle of purest white linen
+with a red cross embroidered on the shoulder. The order was housed in
+a wing of the palace, which was built on the site of Solomon's Temple,
+hard by the Holy Sepulchre, and its members called themselves the Poor
+Soldiers of Christ and of Solomon's Temple. Their banner, half of
+black, half of white, was inscribed with the device "_non nobis
+Domine_." Their battle-cry "Beauceant," and their seal, two figures on
+horseback, have not been satisfactorily interpreted--the latter
+probably portrays a knight riding away with a rescued pilgrim. Soon
+the little band of nine was joined by hundreds of devoted youths from
+rich and noble families; endowments to provide them with arms and
+horses and servants flowed in, and thus was formed the most famous,
+the purest and the most heroic body of warriors the world has ever
+seen. Hugh de Payens had gathered three hundred Knights-Templars
+around him at Jerusalem: in five years nearly every one had been slain
+in battle. But enthusiasm filled the ranks faster than they were mowed
+down: none ever surrendered and the order paid no money for ransom.
+When hemmed in by overwhelming numbers, they fought till the last man
+fell, or died, a wounded captive, in the hands of the Saracens. Of
+the twenty-two Grand Masters, seven were killed in battle, five died
+of wounds, and one of voluntary starvation in the hands of the
+infidel.
+
+When Acre was lost, and the last hold of the Christians in the Holy
+Land was wrested from them, only ten Knights-Templars of the five
+hundred who fought there escaped to Cyprus. They chose Jacques de
+Molay for Grand Master, replenished their treasury and renewed their
+members; but their mission was gone for ever. The order was exempt
+from episcopal jurisdiction and subject to the pope alone; its wealth,
+courage and devotion were rusting for lack of employment. Boniface
+VIII., with that grandeur and daring which make of him, despite his
+faults, so magnificent a figure in history, conceived the idea of
+uniting them with the other military orders--the Hospitallers and the
+Teutonic Knights--and making of the united orders an invincible army
+to enforce on Europe the decrees of a benevolent and theocratic
+despotism. They soon became suspected and hated by bishops and kings
+alike, and at length were betrayed by the papacy itself to their
+enemies.
+
+In 1304, a pair of renegade Templars,[73] who for their crimes were
+under sentence of imprisonment for life in the prison at Toulouse,
+sought an introduction to the king, and promised in return for their
+liberty to give information of certain monstrous crimes and sacrileges
+of common and notorious occurrence in the order. Depositions were
+taken and sent to Philip's creature, Pope Clement V. Some
+communication passed between them, but no action was taken and the
+matter seemed to have lapsed. About a year after these events the
+pope wrote an affectionate letter to Jacques de Molay, inviting him to
+bring the treasure of the order and his chief officers to France, to
+confer with himself and the king respecting a new crusade. Jacques and
+his companions, suspecting nothing, came and were received by pope and
+king with great friendliness: the treasure, twelve mules' load of gold
+and silver, was stored in the vaults of the great fortress of the
+Templars at Paris. Some rumours reached de Molay of the delation made
+by the Toulousian prisoners, but the pope reassured him in an
+interview, April 1307, and lulled him into security. On 14th September
+of the same year the royal officers of the realm were ordered to hold
+themselves armed for secret service on 12th October, and sealed
+letters were handed to them to be opened that night. At dawn on the
+13th, all the Templars in France were arrested in their beds and flung
+into the episcopal gaols, and the bishops then proceeded to "examine"
+the prisoners. One hundred and forty were dealt with in Paris, the
+centre of the order. The charges and a confession of their truth by
+the Grand Master were read to them; denial, they were told, was
+useless: liberty would be the reward of confession, imprisonment the
+penalty of denial.
+
+[Footnote 73: 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."]
+
+A few confessed and were set free. The remainder were "examined."
+Starvation and torture of the most incredible ferocity did their work.
+Thirty-six died under the rack in Paris, and many more in other
+places; most of the remainder confessed to anything the inquisitors
+required. Clement, warned by the growing feeling in Europe, now became
+alarmed, and the next act in the drama opens at the abbey of St.
+Genevieve in Paris, where a papal commission sat to hear what the
+Templars had to say in their defence. All were invited to give
+evidence and promised immunity in the name of the pope. Hundreds came
+to Paris to defend their order,[74] but having been made to understand
+by the bishops that they would be burned as heretics if they retracted
+their confessions, they held back for a time until solemnly assured by
+the papal commissioners that they had nothing to fear, and might
+freely speak. Ponzardus de Gysiaco, preceptor of Payens, then came
+forward and disclosed the atrocious means used to extort confessions,
+and said if he were so tortured again he would confess anything that
+were demanded of him; he would face death, however horrible, even by
+boiling and fire, in defence of his order, but long-protracted and
+agonising torture was beyond human endurance. Ponzardus was sent back
+to confinement and the warders were bidden to see that he suffered
+naught for what he had said. The rugged old master, Jacques de Molay,
+scarred by honourable wounds, the marks of many a battle with the
+infidel, was brought before the court and his alleged confession read
+to him. He was stupefied, and swore that if his enemies were not
+priests he would know how to deal with them. A second time he was
+examined and preposterous charges of unnatural crimes were preferred
+against the order by the king's chancellor, Guillaume de Nogaret. They
+were drawn from a chronicle at St. Denis, and based on certain
+statements alleged to have been made by Saladin, Sultan of Babylon
+(Egypt). Again he was stupefied, and declared he had never heard of
+such things. And now the Templars' courage rose. Two hundred and
+thirty-one came forward, emaciated, racked and torn; among them one
+poor wretch was carried in, whose feet had been burnt by slow
+fires.[75] Nearly all protested that the confessions had been wrung
+from them by torture, that their accusers were perjurers, and that
+they would maintain the purity of their order _usque ad mortem_ ("even
+unto death"). Many complained that they were poor, illiterate
+soldiers, neither able to pay for legal defence nor to comprehend the
+charges indicted in Latin against them. It was Philip's turn now to be
+alarmed, but the prelates were equal to the crisis. The archbishop of
+Sens, metropolitan of Paris and brother of the king's chief adviser,
+convoked a provincial court at his palace in Paris, and condemned to
+the stake fifty-four of the Knights who had retracted their
+confessions. On the 10th of May the papal commissioners were appealed
+to: they expressed their sorrow that the episcopal court was beyond
+their jurisdiction, but would consider what might be done. Short time
+was allowed them. The stout-hearted archbishop was not a man to show
+weakness; he went steadily on with his work, and in spite of appeals
+from the papal judges for delay, the fifty-four were led forth on the
+afternoon of the 12th[76] to the open country outside the Porte St.
+Antoine, near the convent of St. Antoine des Champs, and slowly
+roasted to death. They bore their fate with the constancy of martyrs,
+each protesting his innocence with his last breath, and declaring
+that the charges alleged against the order were false. Two days later,
+six more were sent to the stake at the Place de Grève. In spite of
+threats, the prelates went on with their grim work of terror. Many of
+the bravest Templars still gave the lie to their traducers, but the
+majority were cowed; further confessions were obtained, and the pope
+was satisfied. The proudest, bravest and richest order in Christendom
+was crushed or scattered to the four corners of the world; their vast
+estates were nominally confiscated to the Knights Hospitallers. But
+our "most dear brother in Christ, Philip the king, although he was not
+moved by avarice nor intended the appropriation of the Templars'
+goods"[77] had to be compensated for the expense of the prosecution:
+the treasure of the order failed to satisfy the exorbitant claims of
+the crown, and the Hospitallers were said to have been impoverished
+rather than enriched by the transfer.
+
+[Footnote 74: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 75: An approved method of extracting confessions. As late as
+1584 at the examination of a papal emissary, the titular archbishop of
+Cashel, before the Lords Justices, Archbishop Loftus and Sir H. Wallop
+at Dublin, the easy method failing to do any good "we made
+commission," writes Loftus to Walsingham, "to put him to torture such
+as your honour advised us, which was to toast his feet against the
+fire with hot boots. Yielding to the agony he confessed,"
+etc.--Froude's _History_, x. p. 619.]
+
+[Footnote 76: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 77: _Nihil sibi appropriare intendebat._]
+
+[Illustration: PALACE OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF SENS.]
+
+The last act was yet to come. On 11th March 1314, a great stage was
+erected in the _parvis_ of Notre Dame, and there, in chairs of state,
+sat the pope's envoy, a cardinal, the archbishop of Sens, and other
+officers of Christ's Church on earth. The Grand Master, Jacques de
+Molay, and three preceptors were exposed to the people; their alleged
+confession and the papal bull suppressing the order, and condemning
+them to imprisonment for life, were read by the cardinal. But, to the
+amazement of his Eminence, when the clauses specifying the enormities
+to which the accused had confessed were being recited, the veteran
+Master and the preceptor of Normandy rose, and in loud voices, heard
+of all the people, repudiated the confession, and declared that they
+were wholly guiltless, and ready to suffer death. They had not long to
+wait. Hurried counsel was held with the king, and that same night
+Jacques de Molay and the preceptor of Normandy were brought to a
+little island on the Seine, known as the Isle of the Trellises,[78]
+and burnt to death, protesting their innocence to the last.
+
+[Footnote 78: 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.]
+
+"God pays debts, but not in money." An Italian chronicler relates that
+the Master, while expiring in the flames, solemnly cited pope and king
+to meet him before the judgment-seat of God. In less than forty days
+Clement V. lay dead: in eight months Philip IV. was thrown by his
+horse. Seven centuries later the grisly fortress of the Templars
+opened its portals, and the last of the unbroken line of the kings of
+France was led forth to a bloody death.
+
+Those who would read the details of the dramatic examination at Paris
+before the papal commissioners, may do so in the minutes published by
+Michelet.[79] The great historian declares that a study of the
+evidence shook his belief in the Templars' innocence, and that if he
+were writing his history again, he must needs alter his attitude
+towards them. Such is not the impression left on the mind of the
+present writer. Moreover it has been pointed out that there is a
+suspicious identity in the various groups of testimonies,
+corresponding to the episcopal courts whence such testimonies came.
+The royal officers, after the severest search, could find not a single
+compromising document in the Templars' houses, nothing but a few
+account books, works of devotion and copies of St. Bernard's Rule.
+There were undoubtedly unworthy and vicious knights among the fifteen
+thousand Templars belonging to the order, but the charges brought
+against them are too monstrous for belief. The call which they had
+responded to so nobly, however, had long ceased. They were wealthy,
+proud and self-absorbed. Sooner or later they must infallibly have
+gone the way of all organisations which have outlived their use and
+purpose. It is the infamy of their violent destruction for which pope
+and king must answer at the bar of history.
+
+[Footnote 79: 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.]
+
+Philip's reign is also remarkable for the establishment of the
+Parlement in Paris. From earliest times of the Monarchy, the kings had
+dispensed justice, surrounded by the chief Churchmen and nobles of the
+land, thus constituting an ambulatory tribunal which was held wherever
+the sovereign might happen to be. In 1302 Philip restricted it to
+judicial functions, and housed it in his palace of the Cité, which on
+the kings ceasing to dwell there in 1431 became the Palais de Justice.
+The ancient palace was rebuilt and enlarged by Philip. A vast hall
+with a double barrel-roof decorated with azure and gold, supported by
+a central row of columns adorned with statues of the kings of
+France--the most spacious and most beautiful Gothic chamber in
+France--and other courts and offices accommodated the Parlement. The
+tribunal was at first composed of twenty-six councillors or judges, of
+whom thirteen were lawyers, presided over by the royal chancellor, and
+sat twice yearly for periods of two months. It consisted of three
+chambers or courts.[80] The nobles who at first sat among the lay
+members gradually ceased to attend owing to a sense of their legal
+inefficiency, and the Parlement became at length a purely legal body.
+During the imprisonment of John the Good in England, the
+Parlement[81] sat _en permanence_, and henceforth became the _cour
+souveraine et capitale_ of the kingdom. The purity of its members was
+maintained by severest penalties. In 1336 one of the presidents was
+convicted of receiving bribes and hanged. Twelve years later the
+falsification of some depositions was punished with the same severity,
+and in 1545 a corrupt chancellor was fined 100,000 livres, degraded,
+and imprisoned for five years. The chief executive officer of the
+Parlement, known as the Concierge, appointed the bailiffs of the court
+and had extensive local jurisdiction over dishonest merchants and
+craftsmen, whose goods he could burn. His official residence, known as
+the Conciergerie, subsequently became a prison, and so remains to this
+day. The entrance flanked by the two ancient _tours de César et
+d'Argent_, is one of the most familiar objects in Paris. There the
+Count of Armagnac was assassinated and the cells are still shown where
+Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, and many of the chief victims of the
+Terror were lodged before their execution; where Danton, Hébert,
+Chaumette, and Robespierre followed each other in one self-same
+chamber.
+
+[Footnote 80: In the seventeenth century the councillors had increased
+to one hundred and twenty and the courts to seven.]
+
+[Footnote 81: The term "Parlement" was originally applied to the
+transaction of the common business of a monastic establishment after
+the conclusion of the daily chapter.]
+
+[Illustration: PALAIS DE JUSTICE, CLOCK TOWER AND CONCIERGERIE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_Étienne Marcel--the English Invasions--The
+Maillotins--Murder of the Duke of Orleans--Armagnacs and
+Burgundians_
+
+
+With the three sons of Philip who successively became kings of France,
+the direct line of the Capetian dynasty ends: with the accession of
+Philip VI. in 1328, the house of Valois opens the sad century of the
+English wars--a period of humiliation and defeat, of rebellious and
+treacherous princes, civil strife, famine and plague, illumined only
+by the heroism of a peasant-girl, who, when king and nobles were sunk
+in shameless apathy or sullen despair, saved France from utter
+extinction. Pope after pope sought to make peace, but in vain: _Hui
+sont en paix, demain en guerre_ ("to-day peace, to-morrow war") was
+the normal and inevitable situation until the English had wholly
+subjected France or the French driven the English to their natural
+boundary of the Channel.
+
+Never since the days of Charlemagne had the French Monarchy been so
+powerful as when the Valois came to the throne: in less than a
+generation Crecy and Poitiers had made the English name a terror in
+France, and a French king, John the Good, was led captive to England.
+In 1346 Paris saw her _faubourgs_ wasted, the palace of St. Germain
+and the fortress of Montjoie St. Denis[82] spoiled and burnt, and the
+English camp fires nightly glowing. Once again, as in the dark Norman
+times, she rose and determined to save herself. Étienne Marcel, the
+leader of the movement, whose statue now stands near the site of the
+Maison aux Piliers was a rich merchant prince of old family, a member
+of the great drapers' guild, and elected Provost of the _Marchands
+d'Eau_ in 1355. He it was who bought for 2400 florins of gold the
+Maison des Dauphins, better known as the Maison aux Piliers or Hôtel
+de Ville, on the Place de Grève and transferred thither the seat of
+the civic administration from the old Parloir aux Bourgeois, enclosed
+in the south wall of Paris. The Dauphin,[83] who had assumed the title
+of Lieutenant-General, convoked the States-General at Paris, but he
+was forced by Marcel and his party to grant some urgent reforms, and a
+Committee of National Defence was organised by the trade guilds and
+the provost, who became virtually dictator of Paris. Marcel's rule was
+however stained by the butchery of the Marshal of Champagne and the
+Duke of Normandy before the very eyes of the Dauphin in the palace of
+the Cité, who, horrified, fled to Compiègne to rally the nobles.
+During the ensuing anarchy the poor, dumb, starving serfs of France,
+in their hopeless misery and despair, rose in insurrection and swept
+like a flame over the land. Froissart, who writes from the distorted
+stories told him by the seigneurs, has woefully exaggerated the
+atrocities of the _Jacquerie_."[84] There was much arson and pillage,
+but barely thirty of the nobles are known to have perished. Of the
+merciless vengeance taken by the seigneurs there is ample
+confirmation: the wretched peasants were easily out-manoeuvred and
+killed like rats by the mail-clad nobles and their men-at-arms.
+Meanwhile the Dauphin was marching on Paris: Marcel seized the Louvre
+and set 3000 workmen to fortify the city. In less than a year the
+greater part of the northern walls, with gates, bastilles and fosses,
+was completed--the greatest feat, says Froissart, the provost ever
+achieved. A citizen army was raised, whose hoods of red and blue, the
+colours of Paris, distinguished them from the royal sympathisers.
+Marcel turned for support to the _Jacques_, and on their suppression
+essayed to win over Charles of Navarre. On 30th November 1357, Charles
+stood on the royal stage on the walls of the abbey of St. Germain des
+Prés, whence the kings of France were wont to witness the judicial
+combats in the Prés aux Clercs, and addressed an assembly of 10,000
+citizens. _Moult longuement_ he sermonised, says the _Grandes
+Chroniques_, so that dinner was over in Paris before he finished.
+After yet another harangue at the Maison aux Piliers on 15th June
+1358, he was acclaimed by people with "Navarre! Navarre!" and elected
+the Captain of Paris. An obscure period of plot and counterplot
+followed which culminated in the ruin of Marcel and his followers.
+Froissart accuses the provost of a treacherous intent to open the
+gates of St. Honoré and of St. Antoine to Navarre's English
+mercenaries at midnight on 31st July, and gives a dramatic story of
+the discovery of the plot and slaying of the provost by Jean Maillart,
+his friend and associate. We supplement his version from the Chronicle
+of St. Denis: on the last day of July, Marcel and his suite repaired
+to the bastille of St. Denis and ordered the guards to surrender the
+keys to Charles of Navarre's treasurer. Maillart, who had been won
+over by the Dauphin, had preceded him. The guard refused to hand over
+the keys and an angry altercation ensued between the former friends.
+Maillart mounted horse, seized a royal banner, sped to the Halles and
+to the cry of "Montjoie St. Denis!" called the royal partizans to
+arms: a similar appeal was made by Pepin des Essards. Meanwhile Marcel
+had reached the bastille of St. Antoine, where he was met by Maillart
+and the royal partizans. "Stephen, Stephen!" cried the latter, "what
+dost thou here at this hour?" "I am here," answered the provost, "to
+guard the city whose governor I am." "_Par Dieu_," retorted Maillart,
+"thou art here for no good," and turning to his followers, said,
+"Behold the keys which he holds to the destruction of the city." Each
+gave the other the lie. "Good people," protested Marcel, "why would
+you do me ill? All I wrought was for your good as well as mine."
+Maillart for answer smote at him, crying, "Traitor, _à mort, à mort_!"
+There was a stubborn fight, and Maillart felled the provost by a blow
+with his axe; six of the provost's companions were slain, and the
+remainder haled to prison. Next day the Dauphin entered Paris in
+triumph, and the popular leaders were executed on the Place de Grève.
+The provost's body was dragged to the court of the church of St.
+Catherine du Val des Écoliers, naked, that it might be seen of all, on
+the very spot where the bodies of the Marshal of Champagne and the
+Duke of Normandy had been flung six months before: after a long
+exposure it was cast into the Seine. All the reforms were revoked by
+the king, but the remembrance of the time when the merchants and
+people of Paris had dared to speak to their royal lord face to face of
+justice and good government, was never obliterated.
+
+[Footnote 82: The royal war-cry, "Montjoie St. Denis," was uttered
+when the king took the Oriflamme from the altar at St. Denis.]
+
+[Footnote 83: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 84: 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.]
+
+Next year the English peril again threatened Paris. The invasion of
+1359 resembled a huge picnic or hunting expedition. The king of
+England and his barons brought their hunters, falcons, dogs and
+fishing tackle. They marched leisurely to Bourg la Reine, less than
+two leagues from Paris, pillaged the surrounding country and turned to
+Chartres, where tempest and sickness forced Edward III. to come to
+terms. After the treaty of Bretigny, in 1360, the Parisians saw their
+good King John again, who was ransomed for a sum equal to about ten
+million pounds of present-day value. The memory of this and other
+enormous ransoms exacted by the English, endured for centuries, and
+when a Frenchman had paid his creditors he would say,--_j'ai payé mes
+Anglais_.[85] ("I have paid my English.") A magnificent reception was
+accorded to the four English barons who came to sign the Peace at
+Paris. They were taken to the Sainte Chapelle and shown the fairest
+relics and richest jewels in the world, and each was given a spine
+from the crown of thorns, which he deemed the noblest jewel that could
+be presented to him.
+
+[Footnote 85: Howell mentions the locution in a letter dated 1654.]
+
+The Dauphin, who on the death of good King John in London (1364)
+became Charles V., by careful statesmanship succeeded in restoring
+order to the kingdom and to its finances[86] and in winning some
+successes against the English.
+
+[Footnote 86: Charles taxed and borrowed heavily. Even the members of
+his household were importuned for loans, however small. His cook lent
+him frs. 67.50.]
+
+In 1370 their camp fires were again seen outside Paris: but Marcel's
+wall had now been completed. Charles refused battle and allowed them
+to ravage the suburbs with impunity. Before the army left, an English
+knight swore he would joust at the gates of the city, and spurred
+lance in hand against them. As he turned to ride back, a big butcher
+lifted his pole-axe, smote the knight on the neck and felled him; four
+others battered him to death, "their blows," says Froissart, "falling
+on his armour like strokes on an anvil."
+
+By wise council rather than by war Charles won back much of his
+dismembered country. He was a great builder and patron of the arts.
+The Louvre, being now enclosed within the new wall and no longer part
+of the defences of Paris, was handed over to Raymond of the Temple,
+Charles' "beloved mason," to transform into a sumptuous palace with
+apartments for himself and his queen, the princes of the blood and the
+officers of the royal household. The rooms were decorated with
+sculpture by Jean de St. Romain, _tailleur d'ymages_ and other carvers
+in stone, and with paintings, by Jean d'Orléans. Each suite was
+furnished with a private chapel, those of the king and queen being
+carved with much "art and patience." A gallery was built for the
+minstrels and players of instruments. A great garden was planted
+towards the Rue St. Honoré on the north and the old wall of Philip
+Augustus on the east, in which were an "Hôtel des Lions," or
+collection of wild beasts, and a tennis court, where the king and
+princes played. The palace accounts still exist, with details of
+payments for "wine for the stone-cutters which the king our lord gave
+them when he came to view the works." Jean Callow and Geoffrey le
+Febre were paid for planting squares of strawberries, hyssop, sage,
+lavender, balsam, violets, and for making paths, weeding and carrying
+away stones and filth; others were paid for planting bulbs of lilies,
+double red roses and other good herbs. Twenty francs were paid to
+Gobin d'Ays, "who guards our nightingales of our chastel of the
+Louvre." The first royal library was founded by Charles, and Peter the
+Cage-maker was employed to protect the library windows of stained
+glass from birds--it overlooked the falconry--and other beasts, by
+trellises of wire. In order that scholars might work there at all
+hours, thirty small chandeliers were provided and a silver lamp was
+suspended from the vaulting. Solemn masters at _grants gages_ were
+employed to translate the most notable books[87] from Latin into
+French; scribes and bookbinders of the university were exempted from
+the watch. An interesting payment of six francs in gold, made to
+Jacqueline, widow of a mason "because she is poor and helpless and her
+husband met his death in working for the king at the Louvre,"
+demonstrates that royal custom had anticipated modern legislation.
+
+[Footnote 87: This priceless collection of books, which at length
+filled three rooms, was appropriated for a nominal sum by the Duke of
+Bedford during the English occupation in Paris and sent to England. A
+few, barely fifty, have survived, of which the greater number have
+been acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale.]
+
+Charles surrendered the royal palace in the Cité, associated with
+bitter memories of Marcel's dictatorship, to the Parlement, and partly
+bought, partly erected an irregular group of exquisite Gothic mansions
+and chapels which he furnished with sumptuous magnificence and
+surrounded with tennis courts, falconries, menageries, delightful and
+spacious gardens--a _hostel solennel des grands esbattements_,
+"where," as the royal edict runs, "we have had many joys and with
+God's grace have recovered from several great sicknesses, wherefore we
+are moved to that hostel by love, pleasure and singular affection."
+This royal city within a city, known as the Hôtel St. Paul, covered
+together with the monastery and church of the Célestins, a vast space,
+now roughly bounded by the Rue St. Paul, the quai des Célestins and
+the Rue de Sully, the Rue de l'Arsenal and the Rue St. Antoine.
+Charles VII. was the last king who dwelt there; the buildings fell to
+ruin, and between 1519 and 1551 were gradually sold. No vestige of
+this palace of delight now remains, nothing but the memory of it in a
+few street names,--the streets of the Fair Trellis, of the Lions of
+St. Paul, of the Garden of St. Paul, and of the Cherry Orchard. To
+Charles V. is also due the beautiful chapel of Vincennes and the
+completion of Étienne Marcel's wall. This third enclosure, began at
+the Tour de Billi, which stood at the angle formed by the Gare de
+l'Arsenal and the Seine, extended north by the Boulevard Bourdon, the
+Place de la Bastille, and the line of the inner Boulevards to the
+Porte St. Denis; it then turned south-west by the old Porte
+Montmartre, the Place des Victoires and across the garden of the
+Palais Royal to the Tour du Bois, a little below the present Pont du
+Carrousel. It was fortified by a double moat and square towers. The
+south portion was never begun. In 1370, Charles' provost, Hugues
+Aubriot, warned his royal master that the Hôtel St. Paul would be
+difficult to defend, and advised him to replace the Bastille[88] of
+St. Antoine by a great stronghold which might serve as a state
+prison[89] and as a defence from within and without. In 1380 the dread
+Bastille of sinister fame, with its eight towers, was raised--ever a
+hateful memory to the citizens, for it was completed by the royal
+provost when the provost of the merchants had been suppressed by
+Charles VI. in 1383.
+
+[Footnote 88: Each gate of the new wall was defended by a kind of
+fortress called a Bastide or Bastille.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Aubriot is said to have been the first prisoner
+incarcerated in the dungeon of his own Bastille.]
+
+"Woe to thee O land, when thy king is a child!" During the minority
+and reign of Charles VI. France lay prostrate under a hail of evils
+that menaced her very existence, and Paris was reduced to the
+profoundest misery and humiliation. The breath had not left the old
+king's body before his elder brother, the Count of Anjou, who was
+hiding in an adjacent room, hastened to seize the royal treasure and
+the contents of the public exchequer. No regent had been appointed,
+and the four royal dukes, the young king's uncles of Anjou, Burgundy,
+Bourbon, and Berri, began to strive for power.
+
+In 1382 Anjou, who had been suffered to hold the regency, sought to
+enforce an unpopular tax on the merchants of Paris. A collector having
+seized an old watercress seller at the Halles with much brutality, the
+people revolted, armed themselves with the loaded clubs (_maillotins_)
+stored in the Hôtel de Ville for use against the English, attacked and
+put to death with great cruelty some of the royal officers and opened
+the prisons. The court temporised, promised to remit the tax and to
+grant an amnesty; but with odious treachery caused the leaders of the
+movement to be seized, put them in sacks and flung them at dead of
+night into the Seine. The angry Parisians now barricaded their streets
+and closed their gates against the king. Negotiations followed and by
+payment of 100,000 francs to the Duke of Anjou the citizens were
+promised immunity and the king and his uncles entered the city. But
+the court nursed its vengeance, and after the victory over the
+Flemings at Rosebecque, Charles and his uncles with a powerful force
+marched on Paris. The Parisians, 20,000 strong, stood drawn up in arms
+at Montmartre to meet him. They were asked who were their chiefs and
+if the Constable de Clisson might enter Paris. "None other chiefs have
+we," they answered, "than the king and his lords: we are ready to obey
+their orders." "Good people of Paris," said the Constable on his
+arrival at their camp, "what meaneth this? meseems you would fight
+against your king." They replied that their purpose was but to show
+the king the puissance of his good city of Paris. "'Tis well," said
+the Constable, "if you would see the king return to your homes and
+put aside your arms."
+
+On the morrow, 11th January 1383, the king and his court, with 12,000
+men-at-arms, appeared at the Porte St. Denis, and there stood the
+provost of the merchants with the chief citizens in new robes, holding
+a canopy of cloth of gold. Charles, with a fierce glance, ordered them
+back; the gates were unhinged and flung down; the royal army entered
+as in a conquered city. A terrible vengeance ensued. The President of
+the Parlement and other civil officers, with three hundred prominent
+citizens, were arrested and cast into prison. In vain was the royal
+clemency entreated by the Duchess of Orleans, the rector of the
+university and chief citizens all clothed in black. The bloody diurnal
+work of the executioner began and continued until a general pardon was
+granted on March 1st on payment of an enormous fine. The liberties of
+the city met the same fate. The Maison aux Piliers reverted to the
+crown, the provostship of the merchants, and all the privileges of the
+Parisians, were suppressed, and the hateful taxes reimposed. Never had
+the heel of despotism ground them down so mercilessly; yet was no
+niggardly welcome given to Isabella of Bavaria, Charles' consort, on
+her entry into Paris in 1389. "I, the author of this book," says
+Froissart, after describing at length the usual incidents of a royal
+procession--the fountains running with wines, aromatic with Orient
+spices, the music, the ballets, the spectacles, the sumptuous
+decorations--"I marvelled when I beheld such great foison, for all the
+grant Rue St. Denis was as richly covered with cloth of camelot and of
+silk like as were all the cloth had for nothing or that we were in
+Alexandria or Damascus." A curious incident is related by the
+chronicler of St. Denis; Charles, desirous of being present incognito
+at the wondrous scene, bade Savoisy take horse and let him ride
+behind _en croupe_. Thus mounted the pair rode to the Châtelet to see
+the queen pass. There they found much people and a strong guard of
+sergeants, armed with stout staves with which the officers smote amain
+to keep back the press, and in the scuffle the king received many a
+thwack on the shoulders, whereat was great merriment when the thing
+was known at court in the evening. Three years later a royal progress
+of far different nature was witnessed in Paris. The king, a poor
+demented captive, was borne in by the Duke of Orleans to the Hôtel St.
+Paul. In 1393, when he had somewhat recovered from his madness, a
+grand masked ball was given to celebrate the wedding of one of the
+ladies of honour who was a widow. The marriage of a widow was always
+the occasion of riotous mirth, and Charles disguised himself and five
+of his courtiers as satyrs. They were sewed up in tight-fitting
+vestments of linen, which were coated with resin and pitch and covered
+with rough tow; on their heads they wore hideous masks. While the
+ladies of the court were celebrating the marriage the king and his
+companions rushed in howling like wolves and indulged in the most
+uncouth gestures and jokes. The Duke of Orleans, drawing too near with
+a torch to discover their identity, set fire to the tow and in a
+second they were enveloped in so many shirts of Nessus. Unable to
+fling off their blazing dresses they madly ran hither and thither,
+suffering the most excruciating agony and uttering piteous cries. The
+king happened to be near the young Duchess of Berri who, with
+admirable presence of mind, flung her robe over him and rescued him
+from the flames. One knight saved himself by plunging into a large tub
+of water in the kitchen, one died on the spot, two died on the second
+day, another lingered for three days in awful torment. The horror of
+the scene[90] so affected Charles that his madness returned more
+violently than ever. His queen abandoned him and he was left to wander
+like some wild animal about his rooms in the Hôtel St. Paul, untended,
+unkempt, verminous, his only companion his low-born mistress Odette.
+
+[Footnote 90: The scene is quaintly illustrated in an illuminated copy
+of Froissart in the British Museum.]
+
+The bitterness of the avuncular factions was now intensified. The
+House of Burgundy by marriage and other means had grown to be one of
+the most powerful in Europe and was at fierce enmity with the House of
+Orleans. At the death of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, his son
+Jean sans Peur, sought to assume his father's supremacy as well as his
+title: the Duke of Orleans, strong in the queen's support, determined
+to foil his purpose. Each fortified his hôtel in Paris and assembled
+an army. Friends, however, intervened; they were reconciled, and in
+November 1407 the two dukes attended mass at the Church of the Grands
+Augustins, took the Holy Sacrament and dined together. As Jean rose
+from table the Duke of Orleans placed the Order of the Porcupine round
+his neck; swore _bonne amour et fraternité_, and they kissed each
+other with tears of joy. On 23rd November a forged missive was handed
+to the Duke of Orleans, requiring his attendance on the queen. He set
+forth on a mule, accompanied by two squires and five servants carrying
+torches. It was a sombre night, and as the unsuspecting prince rode up
+the Rue Vieille du Temple behind his little escort, humming a tune and
+playing with his glove, a band of assassins fell upon him from the
+shadow of the postern La Barbette, crying "_à mort, à mort_" and he
+was hacked to death. Then issued from a neighbouring house at the
+sign of Our Lady, Jean sans Peur, a tall figure concealed in a red
+cloak, lantern in hand, who gazed at the mutilated corpse. "_C'est
+bien_," said he, "let's away." They set fire to the house to divert
+attention and escaped. Four months before, the house had been hired on
+the pretext of storing provisions, and for two weeks a score of
+assassins had been concealed there, biding their time. On the morrow,
+Burgundy with the other princes went to asperse the dead body with
+holy water in the church of the Blancs Manteaux, and as he drew nigh,
+exclaiming against the foul murder, blood is said to have issued from
+the wounds. At the funeral he held a corner of the pall, but his guilt
+was an open secret, and though he braved it out for a time he was
+forced to flee to his lands in Flanders for safety. In a few months,
+however, Jean was back in force at Paris, and a doctor of the Sorbonne
+pleaded an elaborate justification of the deed before the assembled
+princes, nobles, clergy and citizens at the Hôtel St. Paul. The poor
+crazy king was made to declare publicly that he bore no ill-will to
+his dear cousin of Burgundy, and later, on the failure of a conspiracy
+of revenge by the queen and the Orleans party, to grant full pardon
+for a deed "committed for the welfare of the kingdom." The cutting of
+the Rue Étienne Marcel has exposed the strong machicolated tower still
+bearing the arms of Burgundy (two planes and a plumb line), which Jean
+sans Peur built to fortify the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as a defence and
+refuge against the Orleans faction and the people of Paris. The
+Orleans family had for arms a knotted stick, with the device "_Je
+l'ennuis_": the Burgundian arms with the motto, "_Je le tiens_,"
+implied that the knotted stick was to be planed and levelled.
+
+The arrival of Jean sans Peur, and the fortification of his hôtel were
+the prelude to civil war, for the Orleanists and their allies had
+rallied to the Count of Armagnac, whose daughter Anne, the new Duke
+Louis of Orleans had married, and fortified themselves in their
+stronghold on the site now occupied by the Palais Royal.
+
+[Illustration: TOWER OF JEAN SANS PEUR.]
+
+The Armagnacs, for so the Orleanists were now called, thirsted for
+revenge, and for five years Paris was the scene of frightful
+atrocities as each faction gained the upper hand and took a bloody
+vengeance on its rivals. At length the infamous policy of an alliance
+with the English was resorted to. The temptation was too great for the
+English king, and in 1415 Henry V. met the French army, composed
+almost entirely of the Armagnacs, at Agincourt, and inflicted on it a
+defeat more disastrous than Crecy or Poitiers. The famous oriflamme of
+St. Denis passed from history in that fatal year of 1415. The Count of
+Armagnac hurried to Paris, seized the mad king and the dauphin, and
+held the capital.
+
+In 1417 the English returned under Henry V. The Burgundians had
+promised neutrality, and the defeated Armagnacs were forced in their
+need to "borrow[91] of the saints." But hateful memories clung to them
+in Paris and they were betrayed. On the night of 29th May 1418, the
+son of an ironmonger on the Petit Pont, who had charge of the wicket
+of the Porte St. Germain, crept into his father's room and stole the
+keys while he slept. The gate was then opened to the Burgundians, who
+seized the person of the helpless and imbecile king. Some Armagnacs
+escaped, bearing the dauphin with them, and the remainder were flung
+into prison. The Burgundian partisans in the city, among whom was the
+powerful corporation of the butchers and fleshers, now rose, and on
+Sunday, 14th June, ran to the prisons. A night of terror ensued.
+Before dawn, fifteen hundred Armagnacs were indiscriminately butchered
+under the most revolting circumstances; the count himself perished,
+and a strip of his skin was carried about Paris in mockery of the
+white scarf of the Armagnacs. Jean sans Peur and Queen Isabella[92]
+entered the city, amid the acclamation of the people, and soon after a
+second massacre followed, in spite of Jean's efforts to prevent it.
+Burgundy was now master of Paris, but the Armagnacs were swarming in
+the country around and the English marching without let on the city.
+In these straits he sought a reconciliation with the dauphin and his
+Armagnac counsellors at Melun, on 11th July 1419. On 10th September a
+second conference was arranged, and duke and dauphin, each with ten
+attendants, met in a wicker enclosure on the bridge at Montereau. Jean
+doffed his cap and knelt to the dauphin, but before he could rise was
+felled by a blow from an axe and stabbed to death.
+
+[Footnote 91: They melted down the reliquaries in the Paris churches.]
+
+[Footnote 92: 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 delivered to the
+provost at the Châtelet, and one night, _sans declarer la cause au
+people_, 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.]
+
+In 1521 a monk at Dijon showed the skull of Jean sans Peur to Francis
+I., and pointing to a hole made by the assassin's axe, said: "Sire, it
+was through this hole that the English entered France." On receipt of
+the news of his father's murder, the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip le
+Bon, flung himself into the arms of the English, and by the treaty of
+Troyes on May 20, 1420, Henry V. was given a French princess to wife
+and the reversion of the crown of France, which, after Charles' death,
+was to be united ever more to that of England. But the French crown
+never circled Henry's brow: on August 31, 1422, he lay dead at
+Vincennes. His body after being embalmed was exposed with great pomp
+in the royal abbey of St. Denis before its translation to Westminster
+Abbey and an infant son of nine months was left to inherit the dual
+monarchy. Within a few weeks of Henry's death the hapless king of
+France was entombed under the same roof; a royal herald cried "for
+God's pity on the soul of the most high and most excellent Charles,
+king of France, our natural sovereign lord," and in the next breath
+hailed "Henry of Lancaster, by the grace of God, king of France and of
+England, our sovereign lord." All the royal officers broke their
+wands, flung them in the tomb and reversed their maces as a token that
+their functions were at an end. The red rose of Lancaster was added to
+the arms of Paris and at the next festival the Duke of Bedford was
+seen in the Sainte Chapelle of St. Louis, exhibiting the crown of
+thorns to the people as Regent of France, and a statue[93] of Henry V.
+of England was raised in the great hall of the Palais de Justice,
+following on the line of the kings of France from Pharamond to
+Charles.
+
+[Footnote 93: The statue was mutilated at the expulsion of the English
+in 1446 and was destroyed in the fire of 1618.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_Jeanne d'Arc--Paris under the English--End of the English Occupation_
+
+
+The occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in her
+story, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of
+Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two kings, riding abreast _moult
+noblement_, followed by the Dukes of Clarence and Bedford, entered
+Paris after its signature, the whole way from the Porte St. Denis to
+Notre Dame was filled with people crying, "_Noël, noël!_"
+
+The university, the parlement, the queen-mother, the whole of North
+France, from Brittany and Normandy to Flanders, from the Channel to
+the line of the Loire, accepted the situation, and the Duke of
+Burgundy, most powerful of the royal princes, was a friend of the
+English. Yet a few French hearts beat true. While the regent Duke of
+Bedford was entering Paris, a handful of knights unfurled the royal
+banner at Melun, crying--"Long live King Charles, seventh of the name,
+by the grace of God king of France!" And what a pitiful incarnation of
+national independence was this to whom the devoted sons of France were
+now called to rally!--a feeble youth of nineteen, indolent,
+licentious, mocked at by the triumphant English as the "little king of
+Bourges."
+
+The story of the resurrection of France at the call of an untutored
+village girl is one of the most enthralling dramas of history, which
+may not here be told. When all men had despaired; when the cruelty,
+ambition and greed of the princes of France had wrought her
+destruction; when the miserable dauphin at Chinon was prepared to seek
+safety by an ignominious flight to Spain or Scotland; when Orleans,
+the key to the southern provinces, was about to fall into English
+hands--the means of salvation were revealed in the ecstatic visions of
+a simple peasant maid. Jeanne deemed her mission over after the solemn
+coronation at Rheims, but to her ill-hap, was persuaded to follow the
+royal army after the retreat of the English from Senlis, and on 23rd
+August she occupied St. Denis. She declared at her trial that her
+voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her
+attack Paris. On the 8th September the assault was made, but it was
+foiled by the king's apathy, the incapacity and bitter jealousy of his
+counsellors, and the action of double-faced Burgundy. In the afternoon
+Jeanne, while sounding the depth of the fosse with her lance,[94] was
+wounded by an arrow in the thigh. She remained till late evening, when
+she was carried away to St. Denis at whose shrine she hung up her
+arms--her mysterious sword from St. Catherine de Fierbois and her
+banner of pure white, emblazoned with the fleur-de-lys and the figure
+of the Saviour, with the device "Jesu Maria."
+
+[Footnote 94: 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.]
+
+Six months later, while Charles was sunk in sloth at the château of
+Sully, Jeanne was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of
+Compiègne, and her enemies closed on her like bloodhounds. The
+university of Paris and the Inquisition wrangled for her body, but
+English gold bought her from her Burgundian captors and sent her to a
+martyr's death at Rouen. Those who would read the sad record of her
+trial may do so in the pages of Mr. Douglas Murray's translation of
+the minutes of the evidence, and may assist in imagination at the
+eighteen days' forensic baiting of the hapless child (she was but
+nineteen years of age), whose lucid simplicity broke through the
+subtle web of theological chicanery which was spun to entrap her by
+the most cunning of the Sorbonne doctors.
+
+"The English burnt her," says a Venetian merchant, "thinking that
+fortune would turn in their favour, but may it please Christ the Lord
+that the contrary befall them!" And so in truth it happened. Disaster
+after disaster wrecked the English cause; the Duke of Bedford died,
+Philip of Burgundy and Charles were reconciled, and Queen Isabella
+went to a dishonoured grave. The English were driven out of Paris, and
+in 1453, of all the "large and ample empery" of France, won at the
+cost of a hundred years of bloodshed and cruel devastation, a little
+strip of land at Calais and Guines alone remained to the English
+crown. Charles, who with despicable cowardice had suffered the heroic
+Maid to be done to death by the English without a thought of
+intervention, was moved to call for a tardy reparation of the
+atrocious injustice at Rouen; and a quarter of a century after the Te
+Deum sung in Notre Dame at Paris for her capture, another, a very
+different scene, was witnessed in the cathedral. "The case for her
+rehabilitation," says Mr. Murray, "was solemnly opened there, and the
+mother and brothers of the Maid came before the court to present their
+humble petition for a revision of her sentence, demanding only 'the
+triumph of truth and justice.' The court heard the request with some
+emotion. When Isabel d'Arc threw herself at the feet of the
+Commissioners, showing the papal rescript and weeping aloud, so many
+joined in the petition that at last, we are told, it seemed that one
+great cry for justice broke from the multitude."
+
+The story of Paris under the English is a melancholy one. Despite the
+coronation of the young king at Notre Dame and the rigid justice and
+enlightened policy of Bedford's regency, they failed to win the
+affection of the Parisians. Rewards to political friends, punishments
+and confiscations inflicted on the disaffected, the riotous and
+homicidal conduct of some of the English garrison, the depression in
+commerce and depreciation of property brought their inevitable
+consequences--a growing hatred of the English name.[95] The chapter of
+Notre Dame was compelled to sell the gold vessels from the treasury.
+Hundred of houses were abandoned by their owners, who were unable to
+meet the charges upon them. In 1427 by a royal instrument the rent of
+the Maison des Singes was reduced from twenty-six livres to fourteen,
+"seeing the extreme diminution of rents."
+
+[Footnote 95: 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 was open table kept, and servants distributed the
+meats and wine even of the king himself."]
+
+Some curious details of life in Paris under the English have come down
+to us. By a royal pardon granted to Guiot d'Eguiller, we learn that he
+and four other servants of the Duke of Bedford, and of our "late very
+dear and very beloved aunt the Duchess of Bedford whom God pardon,"
+were drinking one night at ten o'clock in a tavern where hangs the
+sign of _L'Homme Armé_.[2] Hot words arose between them and some other
+tipplers, to wit, Friars Robert, Peter, and William of the Blancs
+Manteaux, who were disguised as laymen and wearing swords. Friar
+Robert lost his temper and struck at the servants with his naked
+sword. The friar, owing to the strength of the wine or to inexperience
+in the use of secular weapons, cut off the leg of a dog instead of
+hitting his man; the friars then ran away, pursued by three of the
+servants--Robin the Englishman, Guiot d'Eguiller and one Guillaume.
+The fugitive friars took refuge in a deserted house in the Rue du
+Paradis (now des Francs Bourgeois), and threw stones at their
+pursuers. There was a fight, during which Guillaume lost his stick and
+snatching Guiot's sword struck at Friar Robert through the door of the
+house. He only gave one "_cop_," but it was enough, and there was an
+end of Friar Robert.
+
+A certain Gilles, a _povre homme laboureur_, went to amuse himself at
+a game of tennis in the hostelry kept by Guillaume Sorel, near the
+Porte St. Honoré, and fell a-wrangling with Sorel's wife concerning
+some lost tennis balls. Madame Sorel clutched him by the hair and tore
+out some handfuls. Gilles seized her by the hood, disarranged her
+coif, so that it fell about her shoulders, "and in his anger cursed
+God our Creator." This came to the bishop's ears, and Gilles was cast
+for blasphemy into the bishop's oven, as the episcopal prison was
+called, where he lay in great misery. He was examined and released on
+promising to offer a wax candle of two pounds' weight before the image
+of our Lady of Paris at the entrance of the choir of Notre Dame.
+
+The fifteen years of English rule at Paris came to a close in 1446.
+Three years before that date, a goldsmith was at _déjeuner_ with a
+baker and a shoemaker, and they fell a-talking of the state of trade,
+of the wars and of the poverty of the people of Paris. The
+goldsmith[96] grumbled loudly and said that his craft was the poorest
+of all; people must have shoes and bread, but none could afford to
+employ a goldsmith. Then, thinking no evil, he said that good times
+would never return in Paris until there were a French king, the
+university full again, and the Parlement obeyed as in former times.
+Whereupon Jean Trolet, the shoemaker, added that things could not last
+in their present state, and that if there were only five hundred men
+who would agree to begin a revolution, they would soon find thousands
+leagued with them. Jean Trolet's loose tongue cost him dear, but the
+general unrest which this incident illustrates burst forth in plot
+after plot, and on 13th April, 1446, the Porte St. Jacques was opened
+by some citizens to the Duke of Richemont, Constable of France, who,
+with 2000 knights and squires, entered the city and, to the cry of
+_Ville gagnée!_ the fleur-de-lys waved again from the ramparts of
+Paris. The English garrison under Lord Willoughby fortified themselves
+in the Bastille of St. Antoine but capitulated after two days. Bag and
+baggage, out they marched, circled the walls as far as the Louvre, and
+embarked for Rouen amid the execrations of the people. Never again did
+an English army enter Paris until the allies marched in after Waterloo
+in 1815.
+
+[Footnote 96: The fifteenth-century goldsmiths of Paris: Loris, the
+Hersants, and Jehan Gallant, were famed throughout Europe.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_Louis XI. at Paris--The Introduction of Printing_
+
+
+Paris saw little of Charles VII. who, after the temporary activity
+excited by the expulsion of the English, had sunk into his habitual
+torpor and bondage to women. In 1461 the wretched monarch, morbid and
+half-demented, died of a malignant disease, all the time haunted by
+fears of poison and filial treachery. The people named him Charles _le
+bien servi_ (the well-served), for small indeed was the praise due to
+him for the great deliverance.
+
+When the new king, Louis XI., quitted his asylum at the Burgundian
+court to be crowned at Rheims and to repair to St. Denis, he was
+shocked by the contrast between the rich cities and plains of Flanders
+and the miserable aspect of the country he traversed--ruined villages,
+fields that were so many deserts, starving creatures clothed in rags,
+and looking as if they had just escaped from dungeons.
+
+It is beyond the scope of the present work to describe the successful
+achievement of Louis' policy of concentrating the whole government in
+himself as absolute sovereign of France, by the overthrow of feudalism
+and the subjection of the great nobles with their almost royal power
+and state. His indomitable will, his consummate patience, his profound
+knowledge of human motives and passions, his cynical indifference to
+means, make him one of the most remarkable of the kings of France. In
+1465, menaced by a coalition of nobles, the so-called League of the
+Public Good, Louis hastened to the capital. Letters expressing his
+tender affection for his dear city of Paris preceded him--he was
+coming to confide to them his queen and hoped-for heir; rather than
+lose his Paris, which he loved beyond all cities of the world, he
+would sacrifice half his kingdom. But the Parisians were far from
+being impressed by the majesty of their new monarch. "Our king," says
+De Comines, "used to dress so ill that worse could not be--often
+wearing bad cloth and a shabby hat with a leaden image stuck in it."
+When he entered Abbeville with the magnificent Duke of Burgundy, the
+people said "_Benedicite!_ is that a king of France? Why, his horse
+and clothes together are not worth twenty francs!" and a Venetian
+ambassador was amazed to see the most mighty and most Christian king
+take his dinner in a tavern on the market-place of Tours, after
+hearing mass in the cathedral. The citizens remembered, too, his
+refusal to accord them some privileges granted to other cities; they
+were sullen at first and would not be wooed. The university declined
+to arm her scholars, Church and Parlement were hostile. The idle,
+vagabond _clercs_ of the Palais and the Cité composed coarse gibes and
+satirical songs and ballads against his person. Louis, however, set
+himself with his insinuating grace of speech to win the favour of the
+Parisians. He supped with the provost and sheriffs and their wives at
+the Hôtel de Ville. He chose six members from the burgesses, six from
+the Parlement and six from the university, to form his Council, and
+with daring confidence, decided to arm Paris. A levy of every male
+able to bear arms between sixteen and sixty years of age was made, and
+the citizen army was reviewed near St. Antoine des Champs, in the
+presence of the king and queen. From 60,000 to 80,000 men, half of
+them well-armed, marched past, with sixty-seven banners of the trades
+guilds, not counting those of the municipal officers, the Parlement
+and the university. The nobles were checkmated, and they were glad to
+accede to a treaty which gave them ample spoils, and Louis, time to
+recover himself. The "Public Good" was barely mentioned.
+
+Louis, when at Paris, refused to occupy the Louvre and chose to dwell
+in the new Hôtel des Tournelles, near the Porte St. Antoine, built for
+the Duke of Bedford and subsequently presented to Louis when Dauphin
+by his royal father; for thither a star led him one evening as he left
+Notre Dame. Often would he issue _en bourgeois_ from the Tournelles to
+sup with his gossips in Paris and scarcely a day passed without the
+king being seen at mass in Notre Dame.
+
+"When King Louis," says De Comines, "retired from the interview[97]
+with Edward IV. of England, he spake with me by the way and said he
+found the English king too ready to visit Paris, which thing was not
+pleasing to him. The king was a handsome man and very fond of women;
+he might find some affectionate mistress there, who would speak him so
+many fair words that she would make him desire to return; his
+predecessors had come too often to Paris and Normandy, and he did not
+like his company this side the sea, but beyond the sea he was glad to
+have him for friend and brother."
+
+[Footnote 97: At the conclusion of the Hucksters' Peace at Amiens.]
+
+Louis had long desired to punish the Count of St. Pol for treachery,
+and as a result of a treaty with Charles of Burgundy, in 1475, had him
+at length in the Bastille. Soon on a scaffold in the Place de Grève
+his head rolled from his body at a tremendous _coup_ of Petit Jean's
+sword, and a column of stone twelve feet high erected where he fell,
+gave terrible warning to traitorous princes, however mighty; for the
+count was Constable of France, the king's brother-in-law, a member of
+the Imperial House of Luxemburg, and connected with many of the
+sovereign families of Europe.
+
+Two years later another noble victim, the Duke of Nemours, fell into
+the king's power and saw the inside of one of Louis' iron cages in the
+Bastille. The king, who had learnt that the chains had been removed
+from the prisoner's legs, that he might go to hear mass, commanded his
+jailer not to let him budge from his cage except to be tortured
+(_gehenné_) and the duke wrote a piteous letter, praying for clemency
+and signing himself _le pauvre Jacques_. In vain: him, too, the
+headsman's axe sent to his account at the Halles.
+
+The news of the humiliating Peace of Peronne, after the king had
+committed the one great folly of his career by gratuitously placing
+himself in Charles the Bold's power,[98] was received by the Parisians
+with many gibes. The royal herald proclaimed at sound of trumpet by
+the crossways of Paris: "Let none be bold or daring enough to say
+anything opprobrious against the Duke of Burgundy, either by word of
+mouth, by writing, by signs, paintings, roundelays, ballads, songs or
+gestures." On the same day a commission seized all the magpies and
+jackdaws in Paris, whether caged or otherwise, which were to be
+registered according to their owners, with all the pretty words that
+the said birds could repeat and that had been taught them: the pretty
+word that these chattering birds had been taught to say was "Peronne."
+Louis' abasement at Peronne was, however, amply avenged by the battle
+of Granson, when the mighty host of "invincible" Charles was
+overwhelmed by the Switzers in 1476. A year later, the whole fabric
+of Burgundian ambition was shattered and the great duke lay a
+mutilated and frozen corpse before the walls of Nancy. Louis' joy at
+the destruction of his enemy was boundless, but in the very
+culmination of his success he was struck down by paralysis, and though
+he rallied for a time the end was near. Haunted by fear of treachery,
+he immured himself in the gloomy fortress of Plessis. The saintly
+Francesco da Calabria, relics from Florence, from Rome, the Holy Oil
+from Rheims, turtles from Cape Verde Islands--all were powerless; the
+arch dissembler must now face the ineluctable prince of the dark
+realms, who was not to be bribed or cajoled even by kings.
+
+[Footnote 98: The reader will hardly need to be reminded that this
+amazing folly forms one of the principal episodes in Scott's _Quentin
+Durward_.]
+
+When at last Louis took to his bed, his physician, Jacques Cottier,
+told him that most surely his hour was come. Confession made, he gave
+much political counsel and some orders to be observed by _le Roi_, as
+he now called his son, and spoke, says De Comines, "as dryly as if he
+had never been ill. And after so many fears and suspicions Our Lord
+wrought a miracle and took him from this miserable world in great
+health of mind and understanding. Having received all the sacraments
+and suffering no pain and always speaking to within a paternoster of
+his death, he gave orders for his sepulture. May the Lord have his
+soul and receive him in the realm of Paradise!"
+
+It was in Louis' reign that the art of printing was introduced into
+Paris. As early as 1458 the master of the mint had been sent to Mainz
+to learn something of the new art, but without success. In 1463, Fust
+and his partner, Schöffer, had brought some printed books to Paris,
+but the books were confiscated and the partners were driven out of the
+city, owing to the jealousy of the powerful corporation of the scribes
+and booksellers, who enjoyed a monopoly from the Sorbonne of the sale
+of books in Paris; and in 1474 Louis paid an indemnity of 2500 crowns
+to Schöffer for the confiscation of his books and for the trouble he
+had taken to introduce printed books into his capital. In 1470, at the
+invitation of two doctors of the Sorbonne, Guillaume Fichet and Jean
+de la Puin, Ulmer Gering of Constance and two other Swiss printers set
+up a press near Fichet's rooms in the Sorbonne. In 1473 a press was at
+work at the sign of the Soleil d'Or (Golden Sun), in the Rue St.
+Jacques, under the management of two Germans, Peter Kayser, Master of
+Arts, and John Stohl, assisted by Ulmer Gering. In 1483 the last-named
+removed to the Rue de la Sorbonne, where the doctors granted to him
+and his new partner, Berthold Rumbolt of Strassburg, a lease for the
+term of their lives. They retained their sign of the Soleil d'Or,
+which long endured as a guarantee of fine printing. The earliest works
+had been printed in beautiful Roman type, but unable to resist the
+favourite Gothic introduced from Germany, Gering was led to adopt it
+towards the year 1480, and the Roman was soon superseded. From 1480 to
+1500 we meet with many French printers' names: Antoine Vérard, Du Pré,
+Cailleau, Martineau, Pigouchet--clearly proving that the art had then
+been successfully transplanted.
+
+The re-introduction of Roman characters about 1500 was due to the
+famous house of the Estiennes, whose admirable editions of the Latin
+and Greek classics are the delight of bibliophiles. Robert Estienne
+was wont to hang proof sheets of his Greek and Latin classics outside
+his shop, offering a reward to any passer-by who pointed out a
+misprint or corrupt reading. Their famous house was the meeting-place
+of scholars and patrons of literature. Francis I. and his sister
+Margaret of Angoulême, authoress of the Heptameron, were seen there,
+and legend says that the king was once kept waiting by the
+scholar-printer while he finished correcting a proof. All the
+Estienne household, even the children, conversed in Latin, and the
+very servants are said to have grown used to it. In 1563 Francis I.
+remitted 30,000 livres of taxes to the printers of Paris, as an act of
+grace to the professors of an art that seemed rather divine than
+human. But in spite of royal favour printing was a poor career. The
+second Henry Estienne, who composed a Greek-Latin lexicon, died in
+poverty at a hospital in Lyons; the last of the family, the third
+Robert Estienne, met a similar miserable end at the Hôtel Dieu in
+Paris. So great was the reaction in the university against the
+violence of the Lutherans and the daring of the printers, that in 1534
+all the presses were ordered to be closed. In 1537 no book was allowed
+to be printed without permission of the Sorbonne, and in 1556 an order
+was made, it is said at the instance of Diane de Poitiers, that a copy
+in vellum of every book printed by royal privilege should be deposited
+at the royal library. After Gering's death the forty presses then
+working in Paris were reduced to twenty-four, in order that every
+printer might have sufficient work to live by and not be tempted by
+poverty to print prohibited books or execute cheap and inferior
+printing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_Francis I.--The Renaissance at Paris_
+
+
+The advent of the printing-press and the opening of a Greek
+lectureship by Gregory Tyhernas and Hermonymus of Sparta at the
+Sorbonne warns us that we are at the end of an epoch. With the
+accession of Charles VIII. and the beginning of the Italian wars a new
+era is inaugurated. Gothic architecture had reached its final
+development and structural perfection, in the flowing lines of the
+flamboyant style;[99] painting and sculpture, both in subject and
+expression, assume a new aspect. The diffusion of ancient literature
+and the discovery of a new world, open wider horizons to men's minds,
+and human thought and human activity are directed towards other, and
+not always nobler, ideals. Mediævalism passes away and Paris begins to
+clothe herself in a new vesture of stone.
+
+[Footnote 99: 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.]
+
+The Paris of the fifteenth century was a triple city of overhanging
+timbered houses, "thick as ears of corn in a wheatfield," of narrow,
+crooked streets,[100] unsavoury enough, yet purified by the vast open
+spaces and gardens of the monasteries, from which emerged the
+innumerable spires and towers of her churches and palaces and
+colleges. In the centre was the legal and ecclesiastical Cité, with
+its magnificent Palais de Justice; its cathedral and a score of fair
+churches enclosed in the island, which resembled a great ship moored
+to the banks of the Seine by five bridges all crowded with houses. One
+of the most curious characteristics of Old Paris was the absence of
+any view of the river, for a man might traverse its streets and
+bridges without catching a glimpse of the Seine.
+
+[Footnote 100: The drainage of an old city was offensive to the smell
+rather than essentially insanitary. "Mediæval sewers," says Dr.
+Charles Creighton in his _History of Epidemics in Britain_, pp. 323-4,
+"were banked-up water-courses ... freely open to the greatest of all
+purifying agents, the oxygen of the air."]
+
+The portal of the Petit Châtelet at the end of the Petit Pont opened
+on the university and learned district on the south bank of the Seine,
+with its fifty colleges and many churches clustering about the slopes
+of the mount of St. Genevieve, which was crowned by the great
+Augustine abbey and church founded by Clovis. Near by, stood the two
+great religious houses and churches of the Dominicans and Franciscans,
+the Carthusian monastery and its scores of little gardens, the lesser
+monastic buildings and, outside the walls, the vast Benedictine
+abbatial buildings and suburb of St. Germain des Prés, with its
+stately church of three spires, its fortified walls, its pillory and
+its permanent lists, where judicial duels were fought. On the north
+bank lay the busy, crowded industrial and commercial district known as
+the Ville, with its forty-four churches, the hôtels of the rich
+merchants and bankers, the fortified palaces of the nobles, all
+enclosed by the high walls and square towers of Charles the Fifth's
+fortifications, and defended at east and west by the Bastille of St.
+Antoine and the Louvre. To the east stood the agglomeration of
+buildings known as Hôtel St. Paul, a royal city within a city, with
+its manifold princely dwellings and fair gardens and pleasaunces
+sloping down to the Seine; hard by to the north was the Duke of
+Bedford's Hôtel des Tournelles, with its memories of the English
+domination. At the west, against the old Louvre, were among others,
+the hôtels of the Constable of Bourbon and the Duke of Alençon, and
+out in the fields beyond, the smoking kilns of the Tuileries (tile
+factories).
+
+[Illustration: TOWER OF ST. JACQUES.]
+
+North and east and west of the municipal centre, the Maison aux
+Piliers, on the Place de Grève, was a maze of streets filled with the
+various crafts of Paris. The tower of the great church of St. Jacques
+de la Boucherie, as yet unfinished, emerged from the butchers' and
+skinners' shops and slaughter-houses, which at the Rue des Lombards
+met the clothiers and furriers; the cutlers and the basket-makers were
+busy in streets now swept away to give place to the Avenue Victoria.
+Painters, glass-workers and colour merchants, grocers and druggists,
+made bright and fragrant the Rue de la Verrerie, weavers' shuttles
+rattled in the Rue de la Tixanderie (now swallowed up in the Rue de
+Rivoli); curriers and tanners plied their evil-smelling crafts in the
+Rue (now Quai) de la Mégisserie, and bakers crowded along the Rue St.
+Honoré. The Rue des Juifs sheltered the ancestral traffic of the
+children of Abraham. At the foot of the Pont au Change, on which were
+the shops of the goldsmiths and money-lenders stood the grim
+thirteenth-century fortress of the Châtelet, the municipal guard-house
+and prison; to the north in the Rue de Heaumarie (Armourers) lay the
+Four aux Dames or prison of the abbesses of Montmartre; further on
+westward stood the episcopal prison, or Four de l'Evêque. North-west
+of the Châtelet was the Hôtel du Chevalier du Guet or watch-house and
+round about it a congeries of narrow, crooked lanes, haunts of
+ill-fame, where robbers lurked and vice festered. A little to the
+north were the noisy market-place of the Halles and the cemetery of
+the Innocents with its piles of skulls, and its vaulted arcade
+painted (1424) with the Dance of Death. Further north stood the
+immense abbey of St. Martin in the Fields, with its cloister and
+gardens and, a little to the west, the grisly crenelated and turreted
+fortress of the Knights-Templars, huge in extent and one of the most
+solid edifices in the whole kingdom. This is the Paris conjured from
+the past with such magic art by Victor Hugo in "Notre Dame," and
+gradually to be swept away in the next centuries by the Renaissance,
+pseudo-classic and Napoleonic builders and destroyers, until to-day
+scarcely a wrack is left behind.
+
+With the Italian campaigns of Charles VIII., _notre petit roi_, as
+Brantôme calls him, and of the early Valois-Orleans kings, France
+enters the arena of European politics, wrestles with the mighty
+Emperor Charles V. and embarks on a career of transalpine conquest.
+But in Italy, conquering France was herself conquered by the charm of
+Italian art, Italian climate and Italian landscape. When Charles VIII.
+returned to Paris from his expedition to Naples he brought with him a
+collection of pictures, tapestry, and sculptures in marble and
+porphyry, that weighed thirty-five tons; by him and his successors
+Italian builders, Domenico da Cortona and Fra Giocondo, were employed.
+The latter supervised the rebuilding of the Petit Pont and after the
+destruction of the last wooden Pont Notre Dame in 1499--when the whole
+structure, with its houses and shops, fell with a fearful crash into
+the river--he was made head of the Commission of Parisian artists who
+replaced it by a noble stone bridge, completed in 1507. This, too, was
+lined with tall gabled houses of stone, and adorned with the arms of
+Paris and statues of Notre Dame and St. Denis. On its restoration in
+1659 the façades of the houses were decorated with medallions of the
+kings of France held by caryatides bearing baskets of fruit and
+flowers on their heads. These houses were the first in Paris to be
+numbered, odd numbers on one side, even on the other, and were the
+first to be demolished when, on the eve of the Revolution, Louis XVI.
+ordered the bridges to be cleared.
+
+The French Renaissance is indissolubly associated with Francis I., who
+in 1515 inherited a France welded into a compact, absolute monarchy,
+and inhabited by a prosperous and loyal people; for the twelfth Louis
+had been a good and wise ruler, who to the amazement of his people
+returned to them the balance of a tax levied to meet the cost of the
+Genoese Expedition, which had been over estimated, saying, "It will be
+more fruitful in their hands than in mine." Commerce had so expanded
+that it was said that for every merchant seen in Paris in former times
+there were, in his reign, fifty. Scarce a house was built along an
+important street that was not a merchant's shop or for the practice of
+some art. Louis introduced the cultivation of maize and the mulberry
+into France, and so rigid was his justice that poultry ran about the
+open fields without risk of pillage from his soldiers. It was the
+accrued wealth of his reign, and the love inspired by "Louis, father
+of his people,"[101] that supported the magnificence, the luxury and
+the extravagance of Francis I. The architectural creations of the new
+style were first seen in Touraine, in the royal palaces of Blois and
+Chambord, and other princely and noble châteaux along the luscious and
+sunny valleys of the Loire. Italian architecture was late in making
+itself felt in Paris, where the native art made stubborn resistance.
+
+[Footnote 101: 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.]
+
+[Illustration: PONT NOTRE DAME.]
+
+The story of the state entry of Francis I. into Paris after the death
+of Louis XII., as told by Galtimara, Margaret of Austria's envoy, who
+witnessed the scene from a window, is characteristic. After the solemn
+procession which was _belle et gorgiaise_ he saw the king, clothed in
+a glittering suit of armour and mounted on a barbed charger, accoutred
+in white and cloth of silver, prick his steed, making it prance and
+rear, _faisant rage_, that he might display his horsemanship, his fine
+figure and dazzling costume before the queen and her ladies. It was
+all _bien gorrière à voir_. "Born between two adoring women," says
+Michelet, "Francis was all his life a spoilt child." Money flowed
+through his hands like water[102] to gratify his ambition, his
+passions and his pleasures. Doubtless his interviews with Da Vinci at
+Amboise, where he spent much of his time in the early years of his
+reign, fired that enthusiasm for art, especially for painting, which
+never wholly left him; for the veteran artist, although old and
+paralysed in the right hand, was otherwise in possession of all his
+incomparable faculties.
+
+[Footnote 102: "He was well named after St. Francis, because of the
+holes in his hands," said a Sorbonne doctor.]
+
+[Illustration: CHAPEL, HÔTEL DE CLUNY.]
+
+The question as to the existence of an indigenous school of painting
+before the Italian artistic invasion is still a subject of
+acrimonious discussion among critics; there is none, however, as to
+its existence in the plastic arts. The old French tradition died hard,
+and not before it had stamped upon Italian Renaissance architecture
+the impress of its native genius and adapted it to the requirements of
+French life and climate. The Hôtel de Cluny, finished in 1490, still
+remains to exemplify the beauty of the native French domestic
+architecture modified by the new style. The old Hôtel de Ville,[103]
+designed by Dom. da Cortona and submitted to Francis in 1532, was
+dominated by the French style, and not until nearly a century after
+the first Italian Expedition were the last Gothic builders superseded.
+The fine Gothic church of St. Merri was begun as late as 1520 and not
+finished till 1612, and the transitional churches of St. Étienne and
+St. Eustache remind one, by the mingling of Gothic and Renaissance
+features, of the famous metamorphosis of Agnel and Cianfa in Dante's
+Inferno, and one is tempted to exclaim, _Ome, come ti muti! Vedi, che
+già non sei nè duo nè uno!_[104]
+
+[Footnote 103: The authorship of this famous building is much
+canvassed by authorities. M.E. Mareuse, secretary of the Committee of
+Inscriptions, affirms that Domenico must be considered the _unique
+architecte_ of our old Municipal Palace: other writers claim with
+equal confidence Pierre Chambiges as the architect. Charles Normand
+after an exhaustive examination of documents, declares that the
+Italian master's design was followed in the south court, but that
+after his death in 1549 the design was ordered to be revised and the
+great façade was erected in a style wholly different from the original
+plan. This eminent authority inclines to the belief that the new
+design was due to Du Cerceau. Certain it is that French masters were
+associated with Domenico, for we know that on the 19th June 1534, a
+rescript came from the city fathers to the masters Pierre Chambiges,
+Jacques Arasse, Jehan Aesselin, Loys Caquelin and Dominique de
+Cortona, reminding them that it would be more seemly to push the works
+forward and keep an eye on the workmen instead of going away to dine
+together.]
+
+[Footnote 104: "Ah! me, how thou art changed! See, thou art neither
+two nor one."]
+
+[Illustration: TOWER OF ST. ÉTIENNE DU MONT.]
+
+After the death of Da Vinci Francis never succeeded in retaining a
+first-rate painter in his service. Andrea del Sarto and Paris Bordone
+did little more than pay passing visits, and the famous school of
+Fontainebleau was founded by Rosso and Primaticcio, two decadent
+followers of Michel Angelo. The adventures of that second-rate artist
+and first-rate bully, Benvenuto Cellini, at Paris, form one of the
+most piquant episodes in artistic autobiography. After a gracious
+welcome from the king he was offered an annual retaining fee of three
+hundred crowns. He at once dismissed his two apprentices and left in a
+towering rage, only returning on being offered the same appointments
+that had been enjoyed by Leonardo da Vinci--seven hundred crowns a
+year, and payment for every finished work. The Petit Nesle[105] was
+assigned to Cellini and his pupils as a workshop, the king assuring
+him that force would be needed to evict the possessor--it had been
+assigned to the provost--adding, "Take great care you are not
+assassinated." On complaining to the king of the difficulties he met
+with and the insults offered to him on attempting to gain possession,
+he was answered: "If you are the Benvenuto I have heard of, live up to
+your reputation; I give you full leave." Benvenuto took the hint,
+armed himself, his servants and two apprentices, and bullied the
+occupants and rival claimants out of their wits. It was at this Tour
+de Nesle that Francis paid Cellini a surprise visit with his mistress
+Madame d'Estampes, his sister Margaret of Valois, the Dauphin and his
+wife Catherine de' Medici, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Henry II. of
+Navarre, and a numerous train of courtiers. The artist and his merry
+men were at work on the famous silver statue of Jupiter for
+Fontainebleau, and amid the noise of the hammering the king entered
+unperceived. Cellini had the torso of the statue in his hand, and at
+that moment a French lad who had caused him some little displeasure
+had felt the weight of the master's foot, which sent him flying
+against the king. But the artist had done a bad day's work by evicting
+a servant of Madame d'Estampes from the tower, and the injured lady
+and Primaticcio, her _protégé_, decided to work his ruin. When Cellini
+arrived at Fontainebleau with the statue, Francis ordered it to be
+placed in the grand gallery decorated by Rosso. Primaticcio had just
+arranged there the casts which he had been commissioned to bring from
+Rome, and Benvenuto saw what was meant--his own work was to be
+eclipsed by the splendour of the masterpieces of ancient art. "Heaven
+help me!" cried he, "this is indeed to fall against the pikes!" Now
+the god held the globe of the earth in the left hand, the thunderbolt
+in the right. The artist contrived to thrust a portion of a large wax
+candle as a torch between the flames of the bolt, and set the statue
+up on its gilded pedestal. Madame entertained the king late at table,
+hoping that he would either forget the work or see it in a bad light;
+but when Francis entered the gallery late at night, followed by his
+courtiers, "which by God's grace was my salvation," says Cellini, the
+statue was illuminated by a flood of light from the torch which so
+enhanced its beauty that the king was ravished with delight, and
+expressed himself in ecstatic praise, declaring the statue to be more
+beautiful and more marvellous than any of the antique casts around.
+His enemies were thus discomfited, and on Madame d'Estampes
+endeavouring to depreciate the work, she was grossly mocked by the
+artist in a very characteristic and quite untranscribable way.
+Benvenuto was more than ever patronised by the king, who did him the
+great honour of accosting him as _mon ami_, and approving his scheme
+for the fortification of Paris. Cellini often recalled with pleasure
+the four years he spent with the _gran re Francesco_ at Paris.
+
+[Footnote 105: The Petit Nesle comprised the south-west gate and
+tower: the Grand Nesle, the Hôtel de Nesle within the wall. See p.
+68.]
+
+"The French are remembered in Italy only by the graves they left
+there," said De Comines, and once again the Italian campaigns ended in
+disaster. At the defeat of Pavia, in 1525--the Armageddon of the
+French in Italy--the efforts and sacrifices of three reigns were lost
+and the _gran re_, whose favourite oath is said to have been _foi de
+gentilhomme_, went captive to the king of Spain in Madrid, whence he
+issued, stained by perjury, and three years later, signed "the moral
+annihilation of France in Europe," at Cambray.
+
+During the tranquil intervals that ensued on this rude awakening from
+dreams of an Italian Empire, and between the third and fourth wars
+with the emperor, the king was able to initiate a project that had
+long been dear to him. "Come," says Michelet, "in the still, dark
+night, climb the Rue St. Jacques, in the early winter's morning. See
+you yon lights? Men, yea, old men, mingled with children, are
+hurrying, a folio under one arm, in the hand an iron candlestick. Do
+they turn to the right? No, the old Sorbonne is yet sleeping snug in
+her warm sheets. The crowd is going to the Greek schools. Athens is at
+Paris. That man with the fine beard in majestic ermine is a descendant
+of emperors--Jean Lascaris: that other doctor is Alexander, who
+teaches Hebrew."
+
+The schools they were pressing to were those of the Royal College of
+France. Already in 1517 Erasmus had been offered a salary of a
+thousand francs a year, with promise of further increment, to
+undertake the direction of the college, but declined to leave his
+patron the emperor. The prime movers in the great scheme were the
+king's confessor, Guillaume Parvi, and the famous Grecian, Guillaume
+Budé, who in 1530 was himself induced to undertake the task which
+Erasmus had declined. Twelve professors were appointed in Greek,
+Hebrew, mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric and medicine, each of the
+twelve with a salary of two hundred gold crowns (about £80), and the
+dignity of royal councillors. The king's vast scheme of a great
+college and magnificent chapel, with a revenue of 50,000 crowns for
+the maintenance (_nourriture_) of six hundred scholars, where the most
+famous doctors in Christendom should offer gratuitous teaching in all
+the sciences and learned languages, was never executed. Too much
+treasure had been wasted in Italy, and it was not till the reign of
+Louis XIII. that it was partially carried out. The first stone was
+laid in 1610, the works were slowly continued under succeeding reigns,
+and the project had only been partially carried out when the monarchy
+fell. The college as we now see it was not completed till 1842. Chairs
+were founded for Arabic by Henry III., for surgery, anatomy and botany
+by Henry IV., and for Syrian by Louis XIV. Little is changed to-day;
+the placards, so familiar to students in Paris, announcing the
+lectures are indited in French instead of in Latin as of old; the
+lectures are still free to all, and the most famous scholars of the
+day teach there, but in French and not in Latin.[106]
+
+[Footnote 106: Students in 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).]
+
+How dramatic are the contrasts of history! While the new learning was
+organising itself amid the pomp of royal patronage; while the young
+Calvin was sitting at the feet of its professors and the Lutheran
+heresy germinating at Paris, Ignatius Loyola, an obscure Spanish
+soldier and gentleman, thirty-seven years of age, was sitting--a
+strange mature figure--among the boisterous young students at the
+College of St. Barbara, patiently preparing himself for dedication to
+the service of the menaced Church of Rome; and in 1534, on the
+festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, a little group of
+six companions met around the fervent student, in the crypt of the old
+church at Montmartre, and decided to found on the holy hill of St.
+Denis' martyrdom the first house of the Society of Jesus.
+
+In 1528, says the writer of the so-called _Journal d'un Bourgeois de
+Paris_, the king began to pull down the great tower of the Louvre, in
+order to transform the château into a _logis de plaisance_, "yet was
+it great pity for the castle was very fair and high and strong, and a
+most proper prison to hold great men."
+
+The tall, massive keep, which darkened the royal apartments in the
+south wing, was the tower here meant, and after some four months'
+work, and an expenditure of 2,500 livres, the grim pile, with its
+centuries of history, was cleared away. Small progress, however, had
+been made with the restoration of the old château up to the year 1539,
+when the heavy cost of preparing the west wing for the reception of
+the Emperor Charles V., induced Francis to consider a plan which
+involved the replacement of the whole fabric by a palace in the new
+Renaissance style, and the picturesque palace with its high crenelated
+walls, its strong towers, high-pitched roofs, dormer windows, and tall
+chimneys, its gilded emblazonry, its vanes, splendid with azure and
+gold glittering in the sun, as painted in the Duke of Berry's _Book of
+Hours_, was doomed. In 1546 Pierre Lescot, Seigneur de Clagny, was
+appointed architect without salary, but given the office of almoner to
+the king, and made lay abbot of Clermont. Pierre Lescot was an
+admirable artist, who has left us some of the finest examples of early
+French Renaissance architecture in Paris. But Francis lived only to
+see the great scheme begun, most of Lescot's work being done under
+Henry II.
+
+From the same anonymous writer we learn something of Parisian life in
+the reign of Francis I. One day a certain Monsieur Cruche, a popular
+poet and playwright, was performing moralities and novelties on a
+platform in the Place Maubert, and among them a farce "funny enough to
+make half a score men die of laughter, in which the said Cruche,
+holding a lantern, feigned to perceive the doings of a hen and a
+salamander."[107] The amours of the king with the daughter of a
+councillor of the Parlement, named Lecoq, were only too plainly
+satirised. But it is ill jesting with kings. A few nights later,
+Monsieur Cruche was visited by eight disguised courtiers, who treated
+him to a supper in a tavern at the sign of the Castle in the Rue de la
+Juiverie, and induced him to play the farce before them. When the
+unhappy player came to the first scene, he was set upon by the king's
+friends, stripped and beaten almost to death with thongs. They were
+about to put him in a sack and throw him into the Seine, when poor
+Cruche, crying piteously, discovered his priestly tonsure, and thus
+escaped.
+
+[Footnote 107: The salamander was figured on the royal arms of
+Francis.]
+
+After the defeat at Pavia, the king became morbidly pious. By trumpet
+cry at the crossways of Paris, we learn from the _Journal_,
+games--quoits, tennis, contreboulle--were prohibited on Sundays;
+children were forbidden to sing along the streets, going to and from
+school; blasphemers[108] were to be severely punished. In 1527 a
+notary was burned alive in the Place de Grève for a great blasphemy of
+our Lord and His holy Mother. In June of the next year some Lutherans
+struck down and mutilated an image of the Virgin and Child at a street
+corner near St. Gervais; the king was so grieved and angry that he
+wept violently, and offered a reward of one hundred gold crowns, but
+the offenders could not be found. Daily processions came from the
+churches to the spot, and all the religious orders, clothed in their
+habits, followed "singing with such great fervour and reverence that
+it was fair to see." The rector, doctors, masters, bachelors and
+scholars of the university, and children with lighted tapers, went
+there in great reverence. On Corpus Christi day the street was draped
+and a fair canopy stretched over the statue. The king himself walked
+in procession, bearing a white taper, his head uncovered in _moult
+gran révérence_; hautboys, clarions and trumpets played melodiously;
+cardinals, prelates, great seigneurs and nobles, each with his taper
+of white wax, followed, with the royal archers of the guard in their
+train. On the morrow a procession from all the parishes of Paris, with
+banners, relics and crucifixes, accompanied by the king and nobles,
+brought a new and fair image of silver, two feet in height, which the
+king had caused to be made. Francis himself ascended a ladder and
+placed it where the other image had stood, then kissed it and
+descended with tears in his eyes. Thrice he kneeled and prayed, the
+bishop of Lisieux, his almoner, reciting fair orisons and lauds to the
+honour of the glorious Virgin and her image. Again the trumpets,
+clarions and hautboys played the _Ave Regina cælorum_, and the king,
+the cardinal of Louvain, and all the nobles presented their tapers to
+the Virgin. Next day the Parlement, the provost and sheriffs, came and
+put an iron trellis round the silver image for fear of robbers.[109]
+
+[Footnote 108: For the first offence a fine; for the second, the lips
+to be cloven; for the third, the tongue pierced; for the fourth,
+death.]
+
+[Footnote 109: 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.]
+
+Never were judicial and ecclesiastical punishments so cruel and
+recurrent as during the period of the Renaissance. It is a common
+error to suppose that judicial cruelty reached its culmination in the
+Middle Ages.[110] Punishments are described with appalling iteration
+in the pages we are following. The Place de Grève was the scene of
+mutilations, tortures, hangings, and quarterings of criminals and
+traitors, the king and his court sometimes looking on. Coiners of
+false money were boiled alive at the pig-market; robbers and assassins
+were broken on the wheel and left to linger in slow agony (_tant
+qu'ils pourraient languir_). The Lutherans were treated like vermin,
+and to harbour them, to possess or print or translate one of their
+books, meant a fiery death. In 1525 a young Lutheran student was put
+in a tumbril and brought before the churches of Notre Dame and St.
+Genevieve, crying mercy from God and Mary and St. Genevieve; he was
+then taken to the Place Maubert, where, after his tongue had been
+pierced, he was strangled and burnt. A _gendarme_ of the Duke of
+Albany was burnt at the pig-market for having sown Lutheran errors in
+Scotland.
+
+[Footnote 110: "The moral brutality of the Renaissance is clearly shown
+in its punishments. In this matter it reached with perfection its
+prototype, the times of the cruel Roman Emperors.... Never has
+'justice' been more barbarous; not even in the darkest Middle Ages has
+torture been more refined, more devilish, than in the days of
+Humanism.... Truly it is no accident that immediately after, indeed,
+even before, the end of the Renaissance, everywhere in Western Europe
+the fires began to glow wherein thousands of unhappy wretches expired
+in torments for the sake of their faith; men's minds were only too
+well prepared for such horrors." GUSTAV KÖRTING (_Anfänge der
+Renaissancelitteratur_, pp. 161, 162.)]
+
+On Corpus Christi day, 1532, a great procession was formed, the king
+and provost walking bare-headed to witness the burning of six
+Lutherans--a scene often repeated. The Fountain of the Innocents, the
+Halles, the Temple, the end of the Pont St. Michel, the Place Maubert,
+and the Rue St. Honoré were indifferently chosen for these ghastly
+scenes. Almost daily the fires burnt. A woman was roasted to death for
+eating flesh on Fridays. In 1535, so savage were the persecutions,
+that Pope Paul III., with that gentleness which almost invariably has
+characterised the popes of Rome in dealing with heresy, wrote to
+Francis protesting against the horrible and execrable punishments
+inflicted on the Lutherans, and warned him that although he acted from
+good motives, yet he must remember that God the Creator, when in this
+world, used mercy rather than rigorous justice, and that it was a
+cruel death to burn a man alive; he therefore prayed and required the
+king to appease the fury and rigour of his justice and adopt a policy
+of mercy and pardon. This noble protest was effective, and some
+clemency was afterwards shown. But in 1547 the fanatical king, a mass
+of physical and moral corruption, soured and gloomy, went to his end
+amid the barbarities wreaked on the unhappy Vaudois Protestants. The
+cries of three thousand of his butchered subjects and the smoke from
+the ruins of twenty-five towns and hamlets were the incense of his
+spirit's flight.
+
+One important innovation at court, fraught with evil, is due to
+Francis. "In the matter of ladies," says Du Bellay, "I must confess
+that before his time they frequented the court but rarely and in
+small numbers, but Francis on coming to his kingdom and considering
+that the whole decoration of a court consisted in the presence of
+ladies, willed to people it with them more than was the custom in
+ancient times." Then was begun that unhappy intervention of women in
+the government of the state, the results of which will be only too
+evident in the further course of this story.
+
+[Illustration: LA FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_Rise of the Guises--Huguenot and Catholic--the Massacre of St.
+Bartholomew_
+
+
+"Beware of Montmorency and curb the power of the Guises," was the
+counsel of the dying Francis to his son. Henry II., dull and
+heavy-witted that he was, neglected the advice, and the Guises
+flourished in the sun of royal favour. The first Duke of Guise and
+founder of his renowned house was Claude, a poor cadet of René II.,
+Duke of Lorraine. He succeeded in allying by marriage his eldest son
+and successor, Francis, to the House of Bourbon; his second son,
+Charles, became Cardinal of Lorraine, and his daughter, wife to James
+V. of Scotland. Duke Francis, by his military genius and wise
+statesmanship; Charles, by his learning and subtle wit, exalted their
+house to the lofty eminence it enjoyed during the stirring period that
+now opens. In 1558, after the disastrous defeat of Montmorency at St.
+Quentin, when Paris lay at the mercy of the Spanish and English
+armies, the duke was recalled from Italy and made Lieutenant-General
+of the realm. By a short and brilliant campaign, he expelled the
+English from Calais, and recovered in three weeks the territory held
+by them for more than two hundred years. Francis gained an unbounded
+popularity, and rose to the highest pinnacle of success; but short
+time was left to his royal master wherein to enjoy a reflected glory.
+On the 27th June 1559, lists were erected across the Rue St. Antoine,
+between the Tournelles and the Bastille. The peace with Spain, and the
+double marriage of the king's daughter to Philip II. of Spain and of
+his sister to the Duke of Savoy, were to be celebrated by a
+magnificent tournament in which the king, proud of his strength and
+bodily address, was to hold the field with the Duke of Guise and the
+princes against all comers. For three days the king distinguished
+himself by his triumphant prowess, and at length challenged the Count
+Montgomery de Lorge, captain of the Scottish Guards; the captain
+prayed to be excused, but the king insisted and the course was run.
+Several lances were broken, but in the last encounter, the stout
+captain failed to lower his shivered lance quickly enough, and the
+broken truncheon struck the royal visor, lifted it and penetrated the
+king's eye. Henry fell senseless and was carried to the palace of the
+Tournelles, where he died after an agony of eleven days. Fifteen years
+later, Montgomery was captured fighting with the Huguenots, and
+beheaded on the Place de Grève while Catherine de' Medici looked on
+"_pour goûter_," says Félibien quaintly, "_le plaisir de se voir
+vangée de la mort de son mary_." The tower in the interior of the
+Palais de Justice, where the unhappy Scottish noble was imprisoned
+after his capture, was known as the Tour Montgomery, until demolished
+in the reign of Louis XVI. There was, however, little love lost
+between Henry's queen, Catherine de' Medici, and her royal husband,
+who had long neglected her for the maturer charms of his mistress,
+Diane de Poitiers.
+
+[Illustration: WEST WING OF LOUVRE BY PIERRE LESCOT.]
+
+Henry saw Lescot's admirable design for the reconstruction of the west
+wing of the Louvre completed. The architect had associated a famous
+sculptor, Jean Goujon, with him, who executed the beautiful figures in
+low relief which still adorn the quadrangle front between the Pavilion
+de l'Horloge and the south-west angle, and the noble Caryatides, which
+support the musicians' gallery in the Salle Basse, or Grande Salle of
+Charles V.'s Louvre, now known as the Salle des Caryatides. The
+agreement, dated 5th September 1550, awards forty-six livres each for
+the four plaster models and eighty crowns each for the four carved
+figures. Lescot preserved the external wall of the old château as the
+kernel of his new wing, and the enormous strength of the original
+building of Philip Augustus may be estimated by the fact that the
+embrasures of each of the five casements of the first floor looking
+westwards now serve as offices. So _grandement satisfait_ was Henry
+with the perfection of Lescot's work, that he determined to continue
+it along the remaining three wings, that the court of the Louvre might
+be a _cour non-pareille_. The south wing was, however, only begun when
+his tragic death occurred, and the present inconsequent and huge
+fabric is the work of a whole tribe of architects, whose intermittent
+activities extended over the reigns of nine French sovereigns.
+
+Lescot and Goujon were also associated in the construction of the most
+beautiful Renaissance fountain in Paris, the Fontaine des Innocents,
+which formerly stood against the old church of the Innocents at the
+corner of the Rue aux Fers. It was while working on one of the figures
+of this fountain that Jean Goujon is traditionally said to have been
+shot as a Huguenot during the massacre of St. Bartholomew.[111]
+
+[Footnote 111: A document recently discovered at Modena however,
+proves that Goujon, after the massacre of Vassy, fled to Italy with
+other Protestants and died in obscurity at Bologna.]
+
+[Illustration: TRITONS AND NEREIDS FROM THE OLD FONTAINE DES
+INNOCENTS. _Jean Goujon._]
+
+Europe was now in travail of a new era, and unhappy France reeled
+under the tempest of the Reformation. A daring spirit of enquiry and
+of revolt challenged every principle on which the social fabric had
+been based, and the only refuge in the coming storm in France was the
+Monarchy. Never had its power been more absolute. The king's will was
+law--a harbour of safety, indeed, if he were strong and wise and
+virtuous: a veritable quicksand, if feeble and vicious. And to
+pilot the state of France in these stormy times, Henry II. left a
+sickly progeny of four princes, miserable puppets, whose favours were
+disputed for thirty years by ambitious and fanatical nobles, queens
+and courtesans.
+
+Francis II., a poor creature of sixteen years, the slave of his wife
+Marie Stuart and of the Guises, was called king of France for
+seventeen months. He it was who sat daily by Mary in the royal garden,
+on the terrace at Amboise overlooking the Loire, and, surrounded by
+his brothers and the ladies of the court, gazed at the revolting and
+merciless executions of the Protestant conspirators,[112] who, under
+the Prince of Condé, had plotted to destroy the Guises and to free the
+king from their influence. It was the first act in a horrible drama, a
+dread pursuivant of the civil and religious wars which were to
+culminate in the massacre of St. Bartholomew at Paris. The stake was a
+high one, for the victory of the reformers would sound the death-knell
+of the Catholic cause in Europe. There is little reason to doubt that
+the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, who now emerges into
+prominence, was genuinely sincere in her disapproval of the horrors of
+Amboise, and in her efforts to bring milder counsels to bear in
+dealing with the Huguenots whom she feared less than the Guises; but
+the fierce passions roused by civil and religious hatred were
+uncontrollable. When the Huguenot noble, Villemongis, was led to the
+scaffold at Amboise, he dipped his hands in the blood of his
+slaughtered comrades, and, lifting them to heaven, cried: "Lord,
+behold the blood of Thy children; Thou wilt avenge them." It has been
+truly said that the grass soon grows over blood, shed on the
+battle-field; never over blood shed on the scaffold. Treachery and
+assassination were the interludes of plots and battles, and the
+thirst for vengeance during thirty years was never slaked. In 1563 the
+Duke of Guise was shot in the back by a fanatical Huguenot, and as the
+wounded Prince of Condé was surrendering his sword to the Duke of
+Anjou after the defeat of 1569, the Baron de Montesquieu, _brave et
+vaillant gentilhomme_, says Brantôme, rode up, exclaiming: "Mort Dieu!
+kill him! kill him!" and blew out the wounded captive's brains with a
+pistol shot.
+
+[Footnote 112: One thousand two hundred are said to have suffered
+death during the month of vengeance.]
+
+The treaty of St. Germain, which has so often been charged on
+Catherine as an act of perfidy, was rather an imperative necessity, if
+respite were to be had from the misery into which the land had fallen.
+Its conditions were honourably carried out, and Catholic excesses were
+impartially and severely repressed. Charles IX., who was now twenty
+years of age and strongly attached to Coligny, began to assert his
+independence of the queen-mother and of the Guises,[113] and his first
+movement was in the direction of conciliation. The young king offered
+the hand of his fair sister, Princess Marguerite, to Henry of Navarre,
+and received the Admiral and Jeanne of Navarre with much honour at
+court. Pressure was brought to bear upon him, but, pope or no pope,
+said Charles, he was determined to conclude the marriage and himself
+would take Margot by the hand in open church and give her away. The
+party of the Guises, and especially Paris, were furious. The capital,
+with the provost, the Parlement, the university, the prelates, the
+religious orders, had always been hostile to the Huguenots. The people
+could with difficulty be restrained at times from assuming the office
+of executioners as Protestants were led to the stake. Any one who did
+not uncover as he passed the image of the Virgin at the street
+corners, or who omitted to bend the knee as the Host was carried by,
+was attacked as a Lutheran. When the heralds published the peace with
+the Huguenots at the crossways of Paris, filth and mud were thrown at
+them, and they went in danger of their lives: now Coligny and his
+Huguenots were holding their heads high in Paris, proud and insolent
+and a heretic prince of Navarre was to wed the king's sister.
+
+[Footnote 113: Henry of Guise had succeeded to the dukedom after his
+father's assassination.]
+
+Jeanne of Navarre died soon after her arrival at court,[114] but the
+alliance was hurried on. The betrothal took place in the Louvre, and
+on Sunday, 17th August 1572, a high dais was erected outside Notre
+Dame for the celebration of the marriage. When the ceremony had been
+performed by the Cardinal de Bourbon, Henry conducted his bride to the
+choir of the cathedral, and went walking in the bishop's garden while
+mass was sung. The office ended, he returned and led his wife to the
+bishop's palace to dinner, and a magnificent state supper at the
+Louvre concluded this momentous day. Three days of balls, masquerades
+and tourneys followed, amid the murmuring of a sullen populace. These
+were the _noces vermeilles_--the red nuptials--of Marguerite of France
+and Henry of Navarre.
+
+[Footnote 114: 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 and wardrobes that she might be spied upon.]
+
+Meanwhile Catherine and Charles had differed on a matter of foreign
+policy. Her support of the Prince of Orange against Spain in the
+Netherlands was conditional on an alliance with England and the
+marriage of her son the Duke of Alençon with Elizabeth. But the
+English Queen's habitual duplicity made any reliance on her word
+impossible and when Marie learned that Elizabeth, while professing her
+inclination for the Duke and her desire to aid the Protestant cause
+in Flanders, was protesting to her Council that she would never marry
+a boy with a pock-spoiled face, and was in secret communication with
+Alva, to turn the situation to her own profit, she flung herself into
+Guise's arms and abandoned Coligny and the Huguenots: for the
+disastrous defeat of the Protestants at Mons and the growing fury of
+the Catholic fanatics at Paris, threatened to wreck the throne, and
+while Elizabeth was toying with these tremendous issues the furies
+were let loose. Charles still chivalrously determined to stand by
+Coligny. Catherine, terrified at the result of her own work, and
+resolved to regain her ascendency, conspired with her third son, the
+Prince of Anjou, the future Henry III., to destroy and have done with
+the Protestants. Coligny had often been warned of the danger he would
+run in Paris, but the stout old soldier knew no fear, and came to take
+part in the festivities of the wedding. The sounds of revelry had
+barely died away when Coligny, who was returning from the Louvre, by
+the east gate, the Porte Bourbon, to his hôtel, walking slowly and
+reading a petition, was fired at from a window as he passed the
+cloister of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and wounded in the arm. He
+stopped and noted the house whence the smoke came: it was the house of
+the preceptor of the Duke of Guise. The king was playing at tennis
+when the news reached him: he flung down his racquet, exclaiming,
+"What! shall I never be in peace? must I suffer new trouble every
+day?" and went moody and pensive to his chamber. In a few moments the
+Prince of Condé and Henry of Navarre burst in, uttering indignant
+protests, and begged permission to leave Paris. Charles assured them
+he would do justice, and that they might safely remain: in the
+afternoon he went with his mother and the princes to visit the
+admiral. The king asked to be left alone in the wounded man's chamber,
+remained a long time with him, and protesting that though the wound
+was his friend's, the grief was his own, swore to avenge him.
+
+Coligny once again was warned by his friends to beware of the court,
+but he refused to distrust Charles. Many and conflicting are the
+reports of what followed. We shall not be accused of any Protestant
+bias if we base our story mainly on that of the two learned
+Benedictine priests[115] who are responsible for five solid tomes of
+the _Histoire de la Ville de Paris_. On the morrow of the attempt on
+Coligny's life, the queen-mother invited Charles and his brother of
+Anjou to walk, after dinner, in the garden of her new palace in the
+Tuileries:[116] they were joined by the chief Catholic leaders, and a
+grand council was held. The queen dwelt on the perilous situation of
+the monarchy and the Catholic cause, and urged that now was the time
+to act: Coligny lay wounded; Navarre and Condé were in their power at
+the Louvre; for ten Huguenots in Paris the Catholics could oppose a
+thousand armed men; rid France of the Huguenot chiefs and a formidable
+evil were averted. Her course was approved, but the leaders shrank
+from including the two princes of Navarre and Condé: they were to be
+given their choice--recantation or death. By order of the king 12,000
+arquebusiers were placed along the river and the streets, and arms
+were carried into the Louvre. The admiral's friends, alarmed at the
+sinister preparations, protested to Charles but were reassured and
+told to take Cosseins and fifty arquebusiers to guard his house. The
+provost of Paris was then summoned by the Duke of Guise and ordered to
+arm and organise the citizens and proceed to the Hôtel de Ville at
+midnight. The king, Guise said, would not lose so fair an opportunity
+of exterminating the Huguenots. The Catholic citizens were to tie a
+piece of white linen on their left arm and place a white cross in
+their caps that they might be recognised by their friends. At midnight
+the windows of their houses were to be illuminated by torches, and at
+the first sound of the great bell at the Palais de Justice the bloody
+work was to begin. Meanwhile Catherine, doubtful of Charles, repaired
+to his chamber with Anjou and her councillors to fix his wavering
+purpose; she heaped bitter reproaches upon him, worked on his fears
+with stories of a vast Huguenot conspiracy and hinted that cowardice
+prevented him from seizing the fairest opportunity that God had ever
+offered, to free himself from his enemies. She repeated an Italian
+prelate's vicious epigram: "_Che pietà lor ser crudel, che crudeltà
+lor ser pietosa_,"[117] and concluded by threatening to leave the
+court with the Duke of Anjou rather than witness the destruction of
+the Catholic cause. Charles, who had listened sullenly, and, if we may
+believe Anjou, for a long while angrily refused to sacrifice Coligny,
+was at length stung by the taunt of cowardice and broke into a
+delirium of passion; he swore by _la mort dieu_ to compass the death
+of every Huguenot in France, that none might be left to reproach him
+afterwards.
+
+[Footnote 115: Félibien and Lobineau, 1725.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Catherine was accustomed to treat of important state
+matters requiring absolute secrecy in her new garden. The
+_pourparlers_ between her and Lord Buckhurst, relative to the proposed
+marriage of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou, took place under
+the trees in the Tuileries garden.]
+
+[Footnote 117: "That to show pity was to be cruel to them: to be cruel
+to them was to show pity."]
+
+[Illustration: CATHERINE DE' MEDICI.
+
+_French School, 16th Century._]
+
+Catherine gave him no time for farther vacillation. The great bell of
+St. Germain l'Auxerrois was rung, and at two in the morning of Sunday,
+St. Bartholomew's Day, 24th August 1572, the Duke of Guise and his
+followers issued forth to do their Sabbath morning's work. Cosseins
+saw his leader coming and knew what was expected of him. Guise, who
+believed the blood of his murdered father lay on Coligny's head,
+made sure of his vengeance. The admiral's door was forced, his
+servants were poignarded, and Besme, a German in the service of Guise,
+followed by others, burst into his room. The old man stood erect in
+his _robe de chambre_, facing his murderers. "Art thou the admiral?"
+demanded Besme. "I am he," answered Coligny with unfaltering voice
+and, gazing steadily at the naked sword pointed at his breast, added,
+"Young man, thou shouldst show more respect to my white hairs; yet
+canst thou shorten but little my brief life." For answer he was
+pierced by Besme's sword and stabbed to death by his companions. Guise
+stood waiting in the street below and the body was flung down to him
+from the window. He wiped the blood from the old man's face, looked at
+it, and said, "It is he!" Spurning the body with his foot he cried,
+"Courage, soldiers! we have begun well; now for the others, the king
+commands it." Meanwhile the bell of the Palais de Justice, answering
+that of St. Germain, was booming forth its awful summons, and the
+citizens hastened to perform their part.
+
+All the Huguenot nobles dwelling near the admiral were pitilessly
+murdered, and a similar carnage took place at the Louvre. Marguerite,
+the young bride of Navarre, in her Memoirs, tells of the horrors of
+that morning, how, when half-asleep, a wounded Huguenot nobleman
+rushed into her chamber, pursued by four archers, and flung himself on
+her bed imploring protection, followed by a captain of the guard from
+whom she gained his life. She entreated the captain to lead her to her
+sister's room, and as she fled thither, more dead than alive, another
+fugitive was hewn down by a hallebardier only three paces from her;
+she fell fainting in the captain's arms. Meanwhile Charles, the
+queen-mother, and Anjou, after the violent scene in the king's
+chamber, had lain down for two hours' rest and then went to a window
+which overlooked the _basse-cour_ of the Louvre, to see the "beginning
+of the executions." If we may believe Henry's story, they had not been
+there long before the sound of a pistol shot filled them with dread
+and remorse, and a messenger was sent to bid Guise spare the admiral
+and stay the whole undertaking; but the nobleman who had been sent
+returned saying that Guise had told him it was too late: the admiral
+was dead, and the executions had begun all over the city. A dozen
+Protestant nobles of the suites of Condé and Navarre, who at the
+king's invitation had taken up their quarters in the Louvre, were
+seized; one was even dragged from a sick-bed: all were taken to the
+courtyard and hewn in pieces by the Swiss guards under the eyes of
+Charles, who cried: "Let none escape." Meantime the Catholic leaders
+had been scouring the streets on horseback, shouting to the people
+that a Huguenot conspiracy to murder the king had been discovered, and
+that it was the king's wish that all the Huguenots should be
+destroyed.
+
+A list of the Huguenots in Paris had been prepared and all their
+houses marked. None was spared. Old and young, women and children,
+were pitilessly butchered. All that awful Sunday the orgy of slaughter
+and pillage went on; every gate of the city had been closed and the
+keys brought to the king. Night fell and the carnage was not stayed.
+Two days yet and two nights the city was a prey to the ministers of
+death, and some Catholics, denounced by personal enemies, were
+involved in the massacre. The resplendent August sun, the fair sky and
+serene atmosphere were held to be a divine augury, and a white thorn
+in the cemetery of the Innocents blooming out of season was hailed as
+a miracle and a visible token from God that the Catholic religion was
+to blossom again by the destruction of the Huguenots. The murders did
+not wholly cease until September. Various were the estimates of the
+slain--20,000, 5,000, 2,000. A goldsmith named Cruce went about
+displaying his robust arm and boasting that he had accounted for 400
+Huguenots. The streets, the front of the Louvre, the public places
+were blocked by dead bodies; tumbrils[118] were hired to throw them
+into the Seine, which literally for days ran red with blood.
+
+[Footnote 118: 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.]
+
+[Illustration: PETITE GALERIE OF THE LOUVRE.]
+
+The princes of Navarre and Condé saw the privacy of their chambers
+violated by a posse of archers on St. Bartholomew's morning; they were
+forced to dress and were haled before the king, who with a fierce look
+and glaring eyes, swore at them, reproached them for waging war upon
+him, and ordered them to change their religion. On their refusal he
+grew furious with rage, and by dint of threats wrung from them a
+promise to go to mass.
+
+Charles is said to have stood at a window in the Petite Galerie of the
+Louvre and to have fired across the river with a long arquebus on some
+Huguenots who, being lodged on the southern side, in the Huguenot
+quarter, known as _la petite Genève_, had escaped massacre, and were
+riding up to learn what was passing. The statement is much canvassed
+by authorities. It is at least permissible to doubt the assertion,
+since the first floor[119] of the Petite Galerie, where the king is
+traditionally believed to have placed himself, was not in existence
+before the time of Henry IV. If the ground floor be meant, a further
+difficulty arises from the fact that the southern end was not
+furnished with a window in Charles IX.'s time.
+
+[Footnote 119: Now known as the Galerie d'Apollon.]
+
+On the 26th of August the king was forced to avow responsibility
+before the Parlement for measures which he alleged had been necessary
+to suppress a Huguenot insurrection aiming at the assassination of
+himself and the royal family and the destruction of the Catholic
+religion in France. The ears of the Catholic princes of Europe and of
+the pope were abused by this specious lie; they believed that the
+Catholic cause had been saved from ruin; the so-called victory was
+hailed with transports of joy, and a medal was struck in Rome to
+celebrate the defeat of the Huguenots.[120]
+
+[Footnote 120: _Ugonottorum strages._ Inscription on the obverse of
+the medal.]
+
+Such was the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris. The death-roll of
+the victims is known to the Recording Angel alone. It was a tremendous
+folly no less than an indelible crime, for it steeled the heart of
+every Protestant to avenge his slaughtered brethren. To "take Paris
+justice" became synonymous with assassination all over Protestant
+Europe.
+
+Many of the Huguenot leaders escaped from Paris while the soldiers
+sent to despatch them were pillaging, and the flames of civil strife
+burst forth fiercer than ever. The court had prepared for massacre,
+not for war; and while the king was receiving the felicitations of the
+courts of Spain and Rome, he was forced by the Peace of La Rochelle to
+concede liberty of conscience to the Protestants and to restore their
+sequestered estates and offices. After two years of agony of mind and
+remorse, Charles IX. lay dying of consumption, abandoned by all save
+his faithful Huguenot nurse. The blood flowing from his nostrils
+seemed a token of God's wrath; and moaning "Ah! _ma mie_, what
+bloodshed! what murders! I am lost! I am lost!" the poor crowned
+wretch passed to his account. He had not yet reached his twenty-fourth
+year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_Henry III.--The League--Siege of Paris by Henry IV.--His Conversion,
+Reign and Assassination_
+
+
+When the third of Catherine's sons, having resigned the sovereignty of
+Poland, was being consecrated at Rheims, the crown is said to have
+twice slipped from his head, the insentient diadem itself shrinking in
+horror from the brow of a prince destined to pollute it with deeper
+shame. Treacherous and bloody, Henry mingled grovelling piety with
+debauchery, and made of the court at Paris a veritable Alsatia, where
+paid assassins who stabbed from behind and _mignons_ who struck to the
+face, were part of the train of every prince. The king's minions with
+their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their
+hair powdered and curled, their neck-ruffles so broad that their heads
+resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,--gambling,
+blaspheming swashbucklers--were hateful alike to Huguenot and
+Catholic. On 29th April 1578 three of them fought out a famous quarrel
+with three of the Guises' bullies at the horse market subsequently
+converted into the Place Royale. The duel began at five o'clock in the
+morning and was fought so furiously that three of the combatants lost
+their lives. Quélus, the king's favourite minion, with fifteen wounds,
+lingered for thirty-three days, Henry constantly at his bedside and
+offering in vain large sums of money to the surgeons to save him.
+
+Less than four years after St. Bartholomew the Peace of 1576 gave the
+Huguenots all they had ever demanded or hoped for. In 1582 died the
+Duke of Alençon, Catherine's last surviving son and heir to the
+throne; Henry, in spite of a pilgrimage on foot by himself and his
+queen to Notre Dame de Cléry from which they returned with blistered
+feet, gave no hope of posterity and the Catholic party were confronted
+by the possibility of the sceptre of St. Louis descending to a
+relapsed heretic. A tremendous wave of feeling ran through France, and
+a Holy League was formed to meet the danger, with the Duke of Guise as
+leader. The king tried in vain to win some of the Huguenot and League
+partisans by the solemn institution of the Order of the Holy
+Ghost,[121] in the church of the Augustinians, to commemorate his
+elevation to the thrones of Poland and France on the day of Pentecost.
+The people were equally recalcitrant. When Henry entered Paris after
+the campaign of 1587, they shouted for their idol, the Balafré,[122]
+crying, "Saul has slain his thousands but David his tens of
+thousands." The king in his jealousy and disgust forbade Guise to
+enter Paris; Guise coolly ignored the command, and a few months later
+arrived at the head of a formidable train of nobles, amid the joyous
+acclamation of the people, who greeted him with chants of "_Hosannah,
+Filio David!_" Angry scenes followed. The duke sternly called his
+master to duty, and warned him to take vigorous measures against the
+Huguenots or lose his crown; the king, pale with anger, dismissed him
+and prepared to strike.
+
+[Footnote 121: Examples of magnificent costumes of the order may be
+seen in the Cluny Museum.]
+
+[Footnote 122: The Duke of Guise was so called from his face being
+scarred by a wound received at the battle of Dolmans.]
+
+On the night of the 11th May a force of Royal Guards and 4,000 Swiss
+mercenaries entered Paris, but the Parisians, with that genius for
+insurrection which has always characterised them, were equal to the
+occasion. The sixteen sections into which the communal government of
+the city was divided met; in the morning the people were under arms;
+and barricades and chains blocked the streets. The St. Antoine
+section, ever to the front, stood up to the king's Guards and to the
+Swiss advancing to occupy their quarter, defeated them, and with
+exultant cries rushed to threaten the Louvre itself. Henry was forced
+to send his mother to treat with the duke; she returned with terms
+that meant a virtual abdication. Henry took horse and fled, vowing he
+would come back only through a breach in the walls. But Guise was
+supreme in Paris, and the pitiful monarch was soon forced to yield; he
+signed the terms of his own humiliation, and went to Blois to meet
+Guise and the States-General with bitterness in his heart, brooding
+over his revenge. Visitors to the château of Blois, which has the same
+thrilling interest for the traveller as the palace of Holyrood, will
+recall the scene of the tragic end of Guise, the incidents of which
+the official guardians are wont to recite with dramatic gesture.
+Fearless and impatient of warnings, the great captain fell into the
+trap prepared for him and was done to death in the king's chamber,
+like a lion caught in the toils. Henry, who had heard mass and prayed
+that God would be gracious to him and permit the success of his
+enterprise, hastened to his mother, now aged and dying. "Madame," said
+he, "I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of
+France." The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king's chamber
+only by a partition, paled as he heard his nephew's struggles. "_Ne
+bougez pas_," said the Marshal of Aumont putting his hand to his
+sword, "the king has some accounts to settle with you too." Next
+morning the old cardinal was led out and hewn in pieces. The two
+bodies were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds to prevent
+their being worshipped as relics: it was Christmas Eve of 1588.
+
+The stupid crime brought its inevitable consequences--
+
+ "Revenge and hate bring forth their kind,
+ Like the foul cubs their parents are."
+
+The Commune of Paris and the Leaguers were stung to fury; the Sorbonne
+declared the king deposed; the pope banned him and a popular preacher
+called for another blood-letting. Henry, in a final act of shame and
+despair, flung himself into the king of Navarre's arms, and on the
+31st July 1589, the two Henrys encamped at St. Cloud and threatened
+Paris with an army of 40,000 men. On the morrow Jacques Clément, a
+young Dominican friar, after preparing himself by fasting, prayer and
+holy communion, left Paris with a forged letter for the king, reached
+the camp and asked for a private interview. While Henry was reading
+the letter the friar snatched a knife from his sleeve and mortally
+stabbed him.[123] He lingered until 2nd August, and after pronouncing
+Henry of Navarre his lawful successor and bidding his Council swear
+allegiance to the new dynasty, the last of the thirteen Valois kings
+passed to his doom. Catherine de' Medici had already preceded him,
+burdened with the anathemas of the Cardinal of Bourbon. The people of
+Paris swore that if her body were brought to St. Denis they would
+fling it to the shambles or into the Seine, and a famous theologian,
+preaching at St. Bartholomew's church, declared to the faithful that
+he knew not if it were right to pray God for her soul, but that if
+they cared to give her in charity a Pater or an Ave they might do so
+for what it was worth. This was the reward of her thirty years of
+devoted toil, of vigils and of plots to further the Catholic cause.
+Not until a quarter of a century had passed were her ashes laid beside
+those of her husband in the rich Renaissance tomb, which still exists,
+in the royal church of St. Denis. Jacques Clément, who had been cut to
+pieces by the king's Guards, was worshipped as a martyr, and his
+mother rewarded for having given birth to the saviour of France.
+
+[Footnote 123: 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 kept in the _Hôtel des Lions_, reconstructed in
+1570 for Charles IX., for baiting by dogs, to be shot. He had dreamt
+that he was set upon and eaten by wild beasts.]
+
+Henry of Navarre, unable to carry on the siege with a divided army,
+directed his course for Normandy. The exultant Parisians proclaimed
+the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the title of Charles X., and the
+Duke of Mayenne, with a large army, marched forth to give battle to
+Henry. So confident were the Leaguers of victory, that their leaders
+hired windows along the Rue St. Antoine to witness the return of the
+duke bringing the "Béarnais"[124] dead or a prisoner. Henry did indeed
+return, but it was after a victorious campaign. He captured the
+Faubourg St. Jacques, and fell upon the abbey of St. Germain des Prés
+while the astonished monks were preparing to sing mass, climbed the
+steeple of the church and gazed on Paris. Having refreshed his troops,
+the Béarnais suffered them to pillage the city south of the Seine, and
+turned to the west to fix his capital at Tours. In 1590 he won the
+brilliant victory at Ivry over the armies of the League and of Spain
+which Macaulay has popularised in a stirring poem: the road to Paris
+was open and Henry sat down to besiege the city.
+
+[Footnote 124: So called derisively, because he was born and brought
+up in the poor province of Béarn, in the Pyrenees.]
+
+The Leaguers fought and suffered with the utmost constancy;
+reliquaries were melted down for money, church bells for cannon, and
+the clergy and religious orders were caught by the military
+enthusiasm. The bishop of Senlis and the prior of the Carthusians, two
+valiant Maccabees, were seen, crucifix in one hand, a pike in the
+other, leading a procession of armed priests, monks and scholars
+through the streets. Friars from the mendicant orders were among them,
+their habits tucked up, hoods thrown back, casques on their heads and
+cuirasses on their breasts. All marched sword by side, dagger in
+girdle, musket on shoulder, the strangest army of the church militant
+ever seen. As they passed the Pont Notre Dame the papal legate was
+crossing in his carriage, and was asked to stop and give his blessing.
+After this benediction a salvo of musketry was called for, and some of
+the host of the Lord, forgetting that their guns were loaded with
+ball, killed a papal officer and wounded a servant of the ambassador
+of Spain.
+
+Four months the Parisians endured starvation and all the attendant
+horrors of a siege, the incidents of which, as described by
+contemporaries, are so ghastly that the pen recoils from transcribing
+them. At length, when they were at the last extremity, the Duke of
+Parma arrived with a Spanish army, forced Henry to raise the siege,
+and revictualled the city. After war, anarchy. In November 1591 it was
+discovered that secret letters were passing between Brizard, an
+officer in the service of the Duke of Mayenne in Paris, and a royalist
+at St. Denis. The sections demanded Brizard's instant execution, and
+on his discharge by the Parlement the _curé_ of St. Jacques fulminated
+against that body and declared that cold steel must be tried (_faut
+jouer des couteaux_). A secret revolutionary committee of ten was
+appointed, and a _papier rouge_ or lists of suspects in all the
+districts of Paris was drawn up under three categories: P. (_pendus_),
+those to be hanged; D. (_dagués_), those to be poignarded; C.
+(_chassés_), those to be expelled. On the night of the 15th November a
+meeting was held at the house of the _curé_ of St. Jacques, and in the
+morning the president of the Parlement, Brisson, was seized and
+dragged to the Petit Châtelet, where a revolutionary tribunal, in
+black cloaks, on which were sewn large red crosses, condemned him to
+death. Meanwhile two councillors of the Parlement, Larcher and Tardif,
+had been seized, the latter by the _curé_ of St. Cosme, and haled to
+the Châtelet. All three were dragged to a room, and the executioner
+was forced to hang them from a beam; the bodies were then stripped, an
+inscription was hung about their necks, and they were suspended from
+the gallows in the Place de Grève. The sections believed that Paris
+would rise: they only shocked the more orderly citizens. The Duke of
+Mayenne, who was at Lyons, on the receipt of the news hastened to
+Paris, temporised a while and, when sure of support, seized four of
+the most dangerous leaders of the sections and hanged them without
+trial in the Salle basse of the Louvre. All save the more violent
+partisans were now weary of the strife and the Leaguers themselves
+were divided. The sections aimed at a theocratic democracy; another
+party favoured the Duke of Mayenne; a third, the Duke of Guise; a
+fourth, the Infanta of Spain. It was decided to convoke the
+States-General at Paris in 1593, and a conference was arranged with
+Henry's supporters at Suresnes. Crowds flocked there, crying, "Peace,
+peace; blessed be they who bring it; cursed they who prevent it."
+Henry knew the supreme moment was come. France was still profoundly
+Catholic: he must choose between his religion and France. He chose to
+heal his country's wounds and perhaps to save her very existence.
+Learned theologians were deputed to confer with him at Paris, whom he
+astonished and confounded by his knowledge of Scripture; they declared
+that they had never met a heretic better able to defend his cause. But
+on 23rd July 1573, he professed himself convinced, and the same
+evening wrote to his mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées, that he had spoken
+with the bishops, and that a hundred anxieties were making St. Denis
+hateful to him. "On Sunday," he adds, "I am to take the perilous leap.
+_Bonjour_, my heart; come to me early to-morrow. It seems a year since
+I saw you. A million times I kiss the fair hands of my angel and the
+mouth of my dear mistress."
+
+On Sunday, under the great portal of St. Denis, the archbishop of
+Bourges sat enthroned in a chair covered with white damask and
+embroidered with the arms of France and of Navarre. He was attended by
+many prelates and the prior and monks of St. Denis: the cross and the
+book of the Gospels were held before him. Henry drew nigh. "Who are
+you?" demanded the archbishop. "I am the king." "What do you ask?" "I
+wish to be received in the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman
+Church." "Is it your will?" "Yes, I will and desire it." Henry then
+knelt and made profession of his faith, kissed the prelate's ring,
+received his blessing and was led to the choir, where he knelt before
+the high altar and repeated his profession of faith on the holy
+Gospels amid cries of "_Vive le roi!_"
+
+The clerical extremists in Paris anathematised all concerned. Violent
+_curés_ again donned their armour, children were baptised and mass was
+sung by cuirassed priests. The _curé_ of St. Cosme seized a partisan,
+and with other fanatics of the League hastened to the Latin Quarter to
+raise the university. But the people were heartsick of the whole
+business; and when Henry entered Paris after his coronation at
+Chartres, resplendent in velvet robes embroidered with gold and seated
+on his dapple grey charger, his famous helmet with its white plumes
+ever in his hand saluting the ladies at the windows, he was hailed
+with shouts of joy. Shops were reopened, the artisan took up his tools
+and the merchant went to his counter with a sigh of relief. A general
+amnesty was proclaimed, and the Spanish garrison were allowed to
+depart with their arms. As they filed out of the Porte St. Denis in
+heavy rain, three thousand strong, the king was sitting at a window
+above the gates. "Remember me to your master," he cried, "but do not
+return." On the morrow the provost and sheriffs and chief citizens
+came to the Louvre bearing presents of sweetmeats, sugar-plums and
+malmsey wine. "Yesterday I received your hearts, to-day I receive your
+sweets," the king remarked; all were charmed by his wit, his
+forbearance and generosity. The stubborn university was last to give
+way, but when the doctors of theology learnt that Henry had touched
+for the king's evil and that many had been cured, they too were
+convinced. Paris, "well worth a mass," was wooed and won. The
+memorable Edict of Nantes established liberty of worship and political
+equality for the Protestants. The war with Spain was brought to a
+successful issue, and Henry, with his minister the Duke of Sully,
+probably the greatest financial genius France has ever known, by wise
+and firm statesmanship lifted the country from bankruptcy to
+prosperity and contentment.
+
+[Illustration: HÔTEL DE SULLY.]
+
+Henry, like one of his predecessors, had of _bastards et bastardes une
+moult belle compagnie_, but as yet no legitimate heir. A divorce from
+Marguerite of Valois and a politic marriage with the pope's niece,
+Marie de' Medici,[125] gave him a magnificent dowry (600,000 golden
+crowns and a yearly income of 20,000), an additional bond to the
+papacy, and several children. Margot, once convinced that the divorce
+was not to enable Henry to marry that _bagasse_ Gabrielle, made small
+objection and soon consoled herself. In 1606 one of her discarded
+lovers was executed in front of her dwelling in the palace of the
+archbishop of Sens for having shot his rival in her affections, a
+young page of twenty, as he was handing her into her carriage.
+
+[Footnote 125: 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_.]
+
+Like all his race, Henry was susceptible to the charms of the
+daughters of Eve, but, unlike his descendants, he never sacrificed
+France to their tears and wiles. When the question of the succession
+was urgent and he thought of marrying Gabrielle d'Estrées, Sully
+opposed the union. The impatient Gabrielle used all her powers of
+fascination to compass the dismissal of the great minister, who was
+present at the interview in her room at the cloister of St. Germain,
+and who has left us a vivid description of the scene. Gabrielle burst
+into passionate reproaches and employed in turn all the arts of
+feminine guile. Her eyes streaming with tears, sobbing and wailing,
+she seized her royal lover's hand and smothered it with kisses; she
+called for a poignard that by plunging it into her heart he might
+behold his image graven there; she appealed to his love for their
+children and flung herself hysterically on the bed, protesting she
+could live no longer seeing herself disgraced, and a servant whom so
+many complained of, preferred to a mistress whom all praised. It was
+of no avail. "Let me tell you," answered Henry, calmly, "if I must
+choose between you and Sully, I would sooner part with ten mistresses
+such as you than one faithful servant such as he."
+
+In 1610 the king was making great preparations for a war with Austria,
+and, on the 14th May, desiring to consult Sully, who was unwell in his
+rooms at the Arsenal, he determined to spare him the fatigue of
+travelling to the Louvre, and to drive to the Arsenal. With much
+foreboding the king had agreed to the coronation of Marie de' Medici,
+which had been celebrated at St. Denis with great pomp. The ceremony
+was attended by two sinister incidents: the Gospel for the day, taken
+from Mark x., included the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees who
+tempted Him by asking--"Is it lawful for a man to put away his
+wife?"--the Gospel was hurriedly changed; and when the usual largesse
+of gold and silver pieces was thrown to the crowd not a voice cried,
+"_Vive le roi_," or "_Vive la reine_." That night the king tossed
+restless on his bed, pursued by evil dreams. On the morrow his
+counsellors begged him to defer his journey, but nineteen plots to
+assassinate him had already failed: he gently put aside their
+warnings, and repeated his favourite maxim that fear had no place in a
+generous heart. It was a warm day, and the king entered his open
+carriage, attended by the Dukes of Epernon and Montbazon and five
+other courtiers; a number of _valets de pied_ followed him. In the
+narrow Rue de la Ferronnerie the carriage was stopped by a block in
+the traffic, and the servants were sent round by the cemetery of the
+Innocents. While the king was listening to the reading of a letter by
+the Duke of Epernon, one Francis Ravaillac, who had been watching his
+opportunity for twelve months, placed his foot on a wheel of the
+coach, leaned forward, and plunged a knife into the king's breast.
+Before he could be seized he pulled out the fatal steel and doubled
+his thrust, piercing him to the heart. "_Je suis blessé_," cried
+Henry, and never spoke again. Ravaillac was seized, and all the
+refined cruelties inflicted on regicides were practised upon him. He
+was dragged to the Place de Grève, his right hand cut off, and, with
+the fatal knife, flung into the flames; the flesh was torn from his
+arms, breast and legs; melted lead and boiling oil were poured into
+the wounds. Horses were then tied to each of his four limbs, the body
+was torn to pieces and burnt to ashes.[126] Some writers have
+inculpated the Jesuits for the murder, but it may more reasonably be
+attributed to the fury of a crazy fanatic. Certain it is that Henry's
+heart was given to the Jesuits for the church of their college of la
+Flèche, which was founded by him.
+
+[Footnote 126: In 1586 six poor wretches convicted of plotting the
+assassination of Queen Elizabeth were dragged to Tyburn, "hanged but
+for a moment, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was
+unimpaired and cut in pieces afterwards with due precautions for the
+protraction of the pain."--Froude's _History_.]
+
+The first Bourbon king has left his impress on the architecture of
+Paris. "Soon as he was master of Paris," says a contemporary, "one saw
+naught but masons at work." Small progress had been made during the
+reign of Henry II.'s three sons with their father's plans for the
+rebuilding of the Louvre. The work had been continued along the river
+front after Lescot's death in 1578 by Baptiste du Cerceau, and
+Catherine de' Medici had erected a gallery on the south, known as the
+Petite Galerie--a ground-floor building with a terrace on top,
+intended for a meeting-place and promenade but not for residence. She
+had also begun in 1564 the palace of the Tuileries, which, like the
+Louvre, was designed to be a quadrangular building and of which the
+west wing alone was ever constructed, but abandoned it on being warned
+by her astrologer, Ruggieri, that she should die under the ruins of a
+house near St Germain.[127] Henry, soon after he had entered Paris,
+elaborated a vast scheme for finishing the Tuileries, demolishing the
+churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, quadrupling the size of the
+old Louvre, and joining the two palaces by continuing the Grande
+Galerie, already begun by Catherine, to the west, to afford a means of
+escape in the event of an attack on the Louvre. Towards the east the
+hôtels d'Alençon, de Bourbon and the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois
+were to be demolished, and a great open space was to be levelled
+between the new east front of the Louvre and the Pont Neuf. At Henry's
+accession Catherine's architects, Philibert de l'Orme and Jean
+Bullant, had completed the superb domed central pavilion of the
+Tuileries, with its two contiguous galleries, and begun the end
+pavilions, the former using the Ionic order as a delicate flattery of
+Catherine, "since among the ancients that order was employed in
+temples dedicated to a goddess." The gardens, with the famous maze and
+Palissy's beautiful grotto or fountain, had been completed in 1476,
+and for some years were a favourite promenade for Catherine and her
+court. Henry's plans were so far carried out that on New Year's day,
+1606, he could lead the Dauphin along the Grande Galerie to the
+Pavilion de Flore at the extreme west of the river front, and enter
+the south wing of the Tuileries which had been extended to meet it.
+The Pavilion de Flore thus became the angle of junction between the
+two palaces. An upper floor was imposed on the Petite Galerie, and
+adorned with paintings representing the kings of France. Unhappily the
+fire of 1661 destroyed all the portraits save that of Marie de' Medici
+by Porbus, and all the subsequent decorations by Poussin. Henry
+intended the ground floor of the Grande Galerie for the accommodation
+of his best craftsmen--painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry
+weavers, smiths, and others. The quadrangle, however, remained as the
+last Valois had left it--half Renaissance, half Gothic--and the
+north-east and south-east towers of the original château were still
+standing to be drawn by Sylvestre towards the middle of the
+seventeenth century.
+
+[Footnote 127: The new palace was situated in the parish of St.
+Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish church of the Louvre.]
+
+The unfinished Hôtel de Ville was taken in hand after more than
+half-a-century and practically completed.[128] The larger, north
+portion of the Pont Neuf was built, the two islets west of the Cité
+were incorporated with the island to form the Place Dauphine and the
+ground that now divides the two sections of the bridge--a new street,
+the Rue Dauphine, being cut through the garden of the Augustins and
+the ruins of the college of St. Denis. The Place Royale (now des
+Vosges) was designed and partly built--that charming relic of
+seventeenth and eighteenth century fashionable Paris, where Molière's
+_Précieuses_ lived.
+
+[Footnote 128: The north tower was left only partially constructed,
+and was finished by Louis XIII.]
+
+Henry also partly rebuilt the Hôtel Dieu, created new streets, and
+widened others.[129] New fountains and quays were built; the Porte du
+Temple was reopened, and the Porte des Tournelles constructed.
+Unhappily, some of the old wooden bridges remained, and on Sunday,
+22nd December 1596, the Pont aux Meuniers (Miller's Bridge), just
+below the Pont au Change, suddenly collapsed, with all its shops and
+houses, and sixty persons perished. They were not much regretted, for
+most of them had enriched themselves by the plunder of Huguenots, and
+during the troubles of the League. The bridge was rebuilt of wood, at
+the cost of the captain of the corps of archers, and as the houses
+were painted each with the figure of a bird, the new bridge was known
+as the Pont aux Oiseaux (Bridge of Birds). It spanned the river from
+the end of the Rue St. Denis and the arch of the Grand Châtelet to the
+Tour de l'Horloge of the Palais de Justice. In 1621, however, it and
+the Pont au Change were consumed by fire in a few hours and, in 1639,
+the two wooden bridges were replaced by a bridge of stone, the Pont au
+Change, which stood until rebuilt in 1858.
+
+[Footnote 129: By a curious coincidence the widening of the Rue de la
+Ferronnerie had been ordered just before the king was assassinated.]
+
+[Illustration: OLD HOUSES NEAR PONT ST. MICHEL, SHOWING SPIRE OF THE
+STE. CHAPELLE.]
+
+We are able to give the impression which the Paris of Henri Quatre
+made on an English traveller, a friend of Ben Jonson and author of
+_Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' Travell_. The
+first objects that met Coryat's eye are characteristic. As he
+travelled along the St. Denis road he passed "seven[130] faire
+pillars of freestone at equal distances, each with an image of St.
+Denis and his two companions, and a little this side of Paris was the
+fairest gallows I ever saw, built on Montfaucon, which consisted of
+fourteene fair pillars of freestone." He notes "the fourteene gates of
+Paris, the goodly buildings, mostly of fair, white stone and"--a
+detail always unpleasantly impressed on travellers--"the evil-smelling
+streets, which are the dirtiest and the most stinking I ever saw in
+any city in my life. Lutetia! well dothe it brooke being so called
+from the Latin word _lutum_, which signifieth dirt." Coryat was
+impressed by the bridges--"the goodly bridge of white freestone nearly
+finished (the Pont Neuf); a famous bridge that far exceedeth this,
+having one of the fairest streets in Paris called our Ladies street;
+the bridge of Exchange where the goldsmiths live; St. Michael's
+bridge, and the bridge of Birds." He admires the "Via Jacobea, full of
+booke-sellers' faire shoppes, most plentifully furnished with bookes,
+and the fair building, very spacious and broad, where the Judges sit
+in the Palais de Justice, the roofs sumptuously gilt and embossed,
+with an exceeding multitude of great, long bosses hanging downward."
+Coryat next visited the fine quadrangle of the Louvre, whose outside
+was exquisitely wrought with festoons, and decked with many stately
+pillars and images. From Queen Mary's bedroom he went to a room[131]
+"which excelleth not only all that are now in the world but also all
+that were since the creation thereof, even a gallery, a perfect
+description whereof would require a large volume, with a roofe of most
+glittering and admirable beauty. Yea, so unspeakably fair is it that a
+man can hardly comprehend it in his mind that hath not seen it with
+his bodily eyes." The Tuileries gardens were the finest he ever beheld
+for length of delectable walks.
+
+[Footnote 130: They marked the seven resting-places of the saint as he
+journeyed to St. Denis after his martyrdom.]
+
+[Footnote 131: The Grande Galerie.]
+
+Next day Coryat saw the one thing above all he desired to see, "that
+most rare ornament of learning Isaac Casaubon," who told him to
+observe "a certain profane, superstitious ceremony of the papists--a
+bedde carried after a very ethnicall manner, or rather a canopy in the
+form of a bedde, under which the Bishop of the city, with certain
+priests, carry the Sacrament. The procession of Corpus Christi," he
+adds, "though the papists esteemed it very holy, was methinks very
+pitiful. The streets were sumptuously adorned with paintings and rich
+cloth of arras, the costliest they could provide, the shews of Our
+Lady street being so hyperbolical in pomp that it exceedeth all the
+rest by many degrees. Upon public tables in the streets they exposed
+rich plate as ever I saw in my life, exceeding costly goblets and what
+not tending to pomp; and on the middest of the tables stood a golden
+crucifix and divers other gorgeous images. Following the clergy, in
+capes exceeding rich, came many couples of little singing choristers,
+which, pretty innocent punies, were so egregiously deformed that moved
+great pity in any relenting spectator, being so clean shaved round
+about their heads that a man could perceive no more than the very
+rootes of their hair."
+
+At the royal suburb Coryat saw "St. Denis, his head enclosed in a
+wonderful, rich helmet, beset with exceeding abundant pretious
+stones," but the skull itself he "beheld not plainly, only the
+forepart through a pretty, crystall glass, and by light of a wax
+candle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+_Paris under Richelieu and Mazarin_
+
+
+Before Coryat left Paris he rode a sorry jade to Fontainebleau which,
+"though I did excarnificate his sides," would not stir until a
+gentleman of the court drew his rapier and ran him to the "buttock."
+At the palace he saw the "Dolphin whose face was full and fat-cheeked,
+his hair black, his look vigorous and courageous." The Dolphin that
+Coryat saw came to the throne, at nine years of age, in 1610, as Louis
+XIII. For a time the regent, Marie de' Medici, was content to suffer
+the great Sully to hold office, but soon favouritism and the greed of
+princes, to the ill-hap of France, drove him in the prime of life from
+Paris into the retirement of his château of Villebon, and a feeble and
+venal Florentine, Concini, who came to Paris in the time of Marie,
+took his place. The Prince of Condé, now a Catholic, the Duke of
+Mayenne, and a pack of nobles fell upon the royal treasury like hounds
+on their quarry. In 1614, so critical was the financial situation,
+that the States-General were called to meet in the Salle Bourbon,[132]
+but to little purpose. Recriminations were bandied between the
+noblesse and the Tiers État. The insolence of the former was
+intolerable. One member of the Tiers was thrashed by a noble and could
+obtain no redress. The clergy refused to bear any of the public
+burdens. The orator of the Tiers, speaking on his knees according to
+usage, warned the court that despair might make the people conscious
+that a soldier was none other than a peasant bearing arms, and that
+when the vine-dresser took up the arquebus he might one day cease to
+be the anvil and become the hammer. But there was no thought for the
+common weal; each order wrangled for its own privileges, and their
+meeting-place was closed on the pretext that the hall was wanted for a
+royal ballet. No protest was raised, and the States-General never met
+again until the fateful meeting at Versailles, in 1789, when a similar
+pretext was tried, with very different consequences. Among the clergy,
+however, sat a young priest of twenty-nine years of age, chosen for
+their orator, Armand Duplessis de Richelieu, who made rapid strides to
+fame.
+
+[Footnote 132: In the Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the old Louvre,
+sometimes known as the Petit Bourbon. It was demolished to give place
+to the new east façade of the Louvre.]
+
+In 1616 the nobles were once more in arms, and Condé was again bought
+off. The helpless court was in pitiful straits and the country
+drifting to civil war, when Richelieu, who, meanwhile, had been made a
+royal councillor and minister for foreign affairs, took the Condé
+business in hand. He had the prince arrested in the Louvre itself and
+flung into the Bastille; the noble blackmailers were declared guilty
+of treason, and three armies marched against them. The triumph of the
+court seemed assured, when Louis XIII., now sixteen years of age,
+suddenly freed himself from tutelage, and with the help of the
+favourite companion of his pastimes, Albert de Luynes, son of a
+soldier of fortune, determined to rid himself of Concini. The
+all-powerful Florentine, on 24th April 1617, was crossing the bridge
+that spanned the eastern fosse of the Louvre, when the captain of the
+royal Guards, who was accompanied by a score of gentlemen, touched him
+on the shoulder and told him he was the king's prisoner. "I, a
+prisoner!" exclaimed Concini, moving his hand towards his sword.
+Before he could utter another word he fell dead, riddled with pistol
+shots; Louis appeared at a window, and all the Louvre resounded with
+cries of "_Vive le roi!_" Concini's wife, to whom he owed his
+ascendency over the queen-mother, was accused of sorcery, beheaded and
+burnt on the Place de Grève; Marie was packed off to Blois and
+Richelieu exiled to his bishopric of Luçon. De Luynes, enriched by the
+confiscated wealth of the Concini, now became supreme at Paris only to
+demonstrate a pitiful incapacity. The nobles had risen and were
+rallying round Marie; the Protestants were defying the state; but
+Luynes was impotent, and soon went to a dishonoured grave, leaving
+chaos behind him.
+
+Richelieu's star was now in the ascendant. The king drew near to his
+mother, and both turned to the one man who seemed able to knit
+together the distracted state. A cardinal's hat was obtained for him
+from Rome, and the illustrious churchman ruled in Paris for eighteen
+years. Everything went down before his commanding genius, his iron
+will and his indefatigable industry. "I reflect long," said he,
+"before making a decision, but once my mind is made up, I go straight
+to the goal. I mow down all before me, and cover all with my scarlet
+robe." The Huguenots, backed by the English, aimed at founding an
+independent republic: Richelieu captured La Rochelle[133] and wiped
+them out as a political party. The great nobles sought to divide power
+with the crown: he demolished their fortresses, made them bow their
+necks to the royal yoke or chopped off their heads. They defied the
+king's edict against duelling: the Count of Bouteville, the most
+notorious duellist of his time, and the Count of Les Chapelles were
+sent to the scaffold for having defiantly fought duels in the Place
+Royale in open noonday, at which the Marquis of Buffy was killed. The
+execution made a profound impression, for the Count was a Montmorency,
+and the Condés, the Orleans, the Montmorencys and all the most
+powerful nobles brought pressure to bear on the king and swore that
+the sentence should never be carried out. But Richelieu was firm as a
+tower. "It is an infamous thing," he told Louis, "to punish the weak
+alone; they cast no baleful shade: we must keep discipline by striking
+down the mighty." Richelieu crushed the Parlement and revolutionised
+the provincial administrations. He maintained seven armies in the
+field, and two navies on the seas at one and the same time. He added
+four provinces to France--Alsace, Lorraine, Artois and Rousillon,
+humiliated Austria and exalted his country to the proud position of
+dominant factor in European politics. He foiled plot after plot and
+crushed rebellion. The queen-mother, Gaston Duke of Orleans her second
+son and heir to the throne, the Marquis of Cinq-Mars the king's own
+favourite--each tried a fall with the great minister, but was thrown
+and punished with pitiless severity. Marie herself was driven to
+exile--almost poverty--at Brussels, and died a miserable death at
+Cologne. The despicable Gaston, who twice betrayed his friends to save
+his own skin, was watched, and when the queen, Anne of Austria, gave
+birth to a son after twenty years of marriage, he was deprived of his
+dignities and possessions and interned at Blois. The Marquis of
+Cinq-Mars, and the last Duke of Montmorency, son and grandson of two
+High Constables of France, felt the stroke of the headsman's axe.
+
+[Footnote 133: The Church of Notre Dame des Victoires commemorates the
+victory.]
+
+In 1642, when the mighty cardinal had attained the highest pinnacle
+of success and fame, a mortal disease declared itself. His physicians
+talked the usual platitudes of hope, but he would have none of them,
+and sent for the _curé_ of St. Eustache. "Do you pardon your enemies?"
+the priest asked. "I have none, save those of the state," replied the
+dying cardinal, and, pointing to the Host, exclaimed, "There is my
+judge." Louis heard of his death without emotion, and simply
+remarked--"Well, a great politician has gone." In six months his royal
+master was gone too.
+
+Paris, under Marie de' Medici and Richelieu, saw many and important
+changes. In 1612 a new Jacobin monastery was founded in the Rue St.
+Honoré for the reformed Dominicans, destined later to be the theatre
+of Robespierre's triumphs and to house the great Jacobin revolutionary
+club.[134] In the same year the queen-regent bought a château and
+garden from the Duke of Piney-Luxembourg, and commissioned her
+architect, Solomon Debrosse, to build a new palace in the style of the
+Pitti at Florence. The work was begun in 1615, and resulted in the
+picturesque but somewhat Gallicised Italian palace which, after
+descending to Gaston of Orleans and his daughter the Grande
+Mademoiselle, ends a chequered career as palace, revolutionary prison,
+house of peers, and socialist meeting-place by becoming the
+respectable and dull Senate-house of the third Republic. The beautiful
+Renaissance gardens have suffered but few changes; adorned with
+Debrosse's picturesque fountain, they form one of the most charming
+parks in Paris. The same architect was employed to restore the old
+Roman aqueduct of Arcueil and finished his work in 1624. In 1614 the
+equestrian statue in bronze of Henry IV., designed by Giovanni da
+Bologna, and presented to Marie by Cosimo II. of Tuscany, reached
+Paris after many vicissitudes and was set up on the Pont Neuf by
+Pierre de Fouqueville, who carved for it a beautiful pedestal of
+marble, whereon were inscribed the most signal events and victories of
+Henry's reign. This priceless statue was melted down for cannon during
+the Revolution, and for years its site was occupied by a _café_. In
+1818, during the Restoration, another statue of Henry IV., by Lemot,
+cast from the melted figure of Napoleon I. on the top of the Vendôme
+column, was erected where it now stands. The founder, who was an
+imperialist, is said to have avenged the emperor by placing pamphlets
+attacking the Restoration in the horse's belly.
+
+[Footnote 134: The Marché St. Honoré now occupies its site.]
+
+[Illustration: THE MEDICI FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.]
+
+In the seventeenth century the Pont Neuf was one of the busiest
+centres of Parisian life. Streams of coaches and multitudes of
+foot-passengers passed by. Booths of all kinds displayed their wares;
+quacks, mountebanks, ballad-singers and puppet-shows, drew crowds of
+listeners. Evelyn describes the footway as being three to four feet
+higher than the road; and at the foot of the bridge, says the
+traveller, is a water-house, "whereon, at a great height is the story
+of our Saviour and the Woman of Samaria pouring water out of a bucket.
+Above is a very rare dyall of several motions with a chime. The water
+is conveyed by huge wheels, pumps and other engines, from the river
+beneath." This was the famous Château d'Eau, or La Samaritaine,
+erected in 1608 and rebuilt in 1712 to pump water from the Seine and
+distribute it to the Louvre and the Tuileries palaces. The timepiece
+was an _industrieuse horloge_, which told the hours, days, and months.
+The present baths of La Samaritaine mark its site and retain its name.
+
+[Illustration: PONT NEUF.]
+
+In 1624, Henry the Fourth's great scheme for enlarging and completing
+the Louvre was committed by Richelieu to his architect, Jacques
+Lemercier, and the first stone of the Pavilion de l'Horloge was laid
+on 28th June by Louis. Lemercier was great enough and modest enough to
+adopt his predecessor's design and having erected the pavilion,
+continued Lescot's west wing northwards, turned the north-west angle
+and carried the north wing to about a fourth of its designed extent.
+The Pavilion de l'Horloge thus became the central feature of the west
+wing, which was exactly doubled in extent. The south-east and
+north-east towers of the eastern wing of the old Gothic Louvre,
+however, remained intact, and even as late as 1650 Sylvestre's drawing
+shows us the south-east tower still standing and the east wing only
+partly demolished. Lemercier also designed a grand new palace for the
+cardinal, north of the Rue St. Honoré, including in the plans two
+theatres: a small one to hold about six hundred spectators, and a
+larger one, which subsequently became the opera-house, capacious
+enough to seat three thousand. Magnificent galleries, painted by
+Philippe de Champaigne and other artists, represented the chief events
+in the cardinal's reign, and were hung with the portraits of the great
+men of France, each with a Latin distich in letters of gold. The
+courts were adorned with carvings of ships' prows and anchors,
+symbolising the cardinal's function as Grand Master of Navigation;
+spacious gardens, with an avenue of chestnut trees, which cost 300,000
+francs to train, added to its splendours.
+
+In this palace the great minister, busy with a yet vaster scheme for
+building an immense Place Ducale to the north, passed away leaving its
+stately magnificence to the king, whose widow, Anne of Austria,
+inhabited it during the regency with her sons, Louis XIV. and Philip,
+Duke of Orleans, the founder of the Bourbon-Orleans family. The famous
+architect, François Mansard, was employed by her to extend the Palais
+Royal as it was then called, which in 1652 was occupied by Henrietta
+Maria, Charles I.'s widow, whose court ill repaid the hospitality of
+France by acts of Vandalism. In 1661, on the marriage of Henrietta
+Anne, her daughter, to the Duke of Orleans it was assigned to the
+Orleans princes, a portion being reserved for Louis XIV. where he
+lodged his mistress Mme. de la Vallière. The palace subsequently
+became infamous as the scene of almost incredible orgies during the
+regency. In 1730 Philip II.'s austere and pious son, Prince Louis,
+after having made an _auto-da-fé_ of forty pictures of the nude from
+the Orleans collection, permitted the destruction of Richelieu's
+superb avenue of trees. The buildings were further extended by Philip
+Egalité, who erected shops along the sides of the gardens, which as
+_cafés_ and gambling-saloons became a haunt of fashionable vice and
+dissipation in the late eighteenth century. The gardens of the royal
+palaces had always been open to well-dressed citizens, but notices
+forbade entrance to beggars, servants, and all ill-clad persons under
+pain of imprisonment, the carcan, and other graver penalties. Egalité,
+however, to win popularity, opened his gardens without restriction,
+and they soon became the forum of the revolutionary agitation. Here
+Camille Desmoulins declaimed his impassioned orations and called Paris
+to arms. The gambling-hells, of which there were over three hundred,
+survived the Revolution, and Blücher and many an officer of the allied
+armies lost immense sums there. The Palais Royal became subsequently
+the residence of Louis Philippe, and now serves as the meeting-place
+of the Conseil d'État.
+
+In the early seventeenth century nine lovers of literature associated
+themselves for the purpose of holding a friendly symposium, where they
+discoursed of books, and read and criticised each other's
+compositions; the meetings were followed by a modest repast and a
+peripatetic discussion. The masterful cardinal, who would rule the
+French language as well as the state, called the nine together, and in
+1635 organised them into an Académie Française, whose function should
+be to perfect and watch over the purity of the French tongue. The
+Parlement granted letters-patent, limited the number of academicians
+to forty, and required them to take cognisance of French authors and
+the French language alone. The original nine, however, were far from
+gratified, and always regretted the "golden age" of early days.
+Richelieu established the Jardin des Plantes for the use of medical
+students, where demonstrations in botany were given; he rebuilt the
+college and church of the Sorbonne where his monument,[135] by
+Girardon from Lebrun's designs, may still be seen. He cheapened the
+postal service,[136] established the Royal Press at the Louvre which
+in twenty years published seventy Greek, Latin, Italian and French
+classics. He issued the first political weekly gazette in France, was
+a liberal patron of men of letters and of artists, and saw the birth
+and fostered the growth of the great period of French literary and
+artistic supremacy.
+
+[Footnote 135: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 136: A letter from Paris to Lyons was taxed at two sous.]
+
+Another of Henry the Fourth's plans for the aggrandisement of Paris
+was carried out by the indefatigable minister. As early as 867 the
+bishops of Paris had been confirmed by royal charter, in their
+possession of the two islands east of the Cité, the Isle Notre Dame
+and Isle aux Vaches. From time immemorial these had been used as
+timber-yards, and in 1616 the chapter of the cathedral was induced to
+treat with Christophe Marie, contractor for the bridges of France, and
+others, who agreed to fill in the channel[137] which separated the
+islands; to cover them with broad streets of houses and quays, and to
+build certain bridges; but expressly contracted never to fill up the
+arm of the Seine between the Isle Notre Dame, and the Cité. The first
+stone of the new bridge which was to connect the islands with the
+north bank was laid by Louis XIII. in 1614 and named Pont Marie, after
+the contractor. In 1664 a church, dedicated to St. Louis, was begun
+on the site of an earlier chapel by Levau, but not completed until
+1726 by Donat.
+
+[Footnote 137: The Rue Poulletier marks the line of the old channel
+between the islands.]
+
+The new quarter soon attracted the attention of rich financiers, civic
+officers, merchants and lawyers, some of whose hôtels were designed by
+Levau, and decorated by Lebrun and Lesueur. Madame Pompadour's brother
+lived there; the Duke of Lauzan, husband of the Grande Mademoiselle,
+lived in his hôtel on the Quai d'Anjou (No. 17); Voltaire lived with
+Madame du Châtelet in the Hôtel Lambert (No. 1 Quai d'Anjou). To the
+_précieuses_ of Molière's time the Isle St. Louis (for so it was
+called) became the Isle de Delos, around whose quays the gallants and
+ladies of the period were wont to promenade at nightfall. _The Isle_,
+as it is now familiarly known, is one of the most peaceful quarters of
+Paris, and has a strangely provincial aspect to the traveller who
+paces its quiet streets.
+
+In 1622 Paris was raised from its subjection to the Metropolitan of
+Sens, and became for the first time the seat of an archbishopric; the
+diocese was made to correspond to the old territories of the Parisii.
+
+Among the many evils attendant on a monarchy, which Samuel recited to
+the children of Israel, that of the possibility of a regency might
+well have found place. Louis XIV. was less than five years of age when
+his father died, and once again the great nobles turned the
+difficulties of the situation to their own profit. By a curious
+anomaly, while women were excluded from succession to the throne of
+France, the queen-mother was invariably preferred to all other
+claimants for the Regency, and Anne of Austria became regent in
+accordance with old custom. She retained in office Cardinal Mazarin,
+Richelieu's faithful disciple, chosen by him to continue the
+traditions of his policy. The new cardinal-minister, scion of an old
+Sicilian family, was a typical Italian; he had none of his
+predecessor's virile energy and directness of purpose, but ruled by
+his subtle wit and cool, calculating patience. "Time and I," was his
+device. He was an excellent judge of men, and profoundly distrusted
+"the unlucky," always satisfying himself that a man was "lucky,"
+before he employed him. Conscious of his foreign origin, Mazarin
+hesitated to take strong measures, and advised a policy of
+conciliation with the disaffected nobles. Anne filled their pockets,
+and for a time the whole language of the court is said to have
+consisted of the five little words "_La reine est si bonne_." But the
+ambitious courtiers soon aimed at higher game, and a plot was
+discovered to assassinate the foreign cardinal; the Duke of Beaufort,
+chief conspirator, a son of the Duke of Vendôme, and grandson of Henry
+IV., by Gabrielle d'Estrées, was imprisoned in the keep at Vincennes,
+and his associates interned at their châteaux.
+
+The finances which Richelieu had left in so flourishing a condition
+were soon exhausted by the lavish benevolence of the court, and were
+unhappily in the hands of Emery (a clever but cynical official, who
+had formerly been a fraudulent bankrupt), whose rigorous exactions and
+indifference to public feeling aroused the indignation of the whole
+nation. In 1646, 23,800 defaulters lay rotting in the jails, and an
+attempt to enforce an odious tax on all merchandise entering Paris led
+to an explosion of popular wrath. The Parlement, by the re-assertion
+of its claims to refuse the registration of an obnoxious decree of the
+crown, made itself the champion of public justice; the four sovereign
+courts met in the hall of St. Louis, and refused to register the tax.
+Anne was furious and made the boy-king hold a "bed[138] of justice"
+to enforce the registration of the decree. But the Parlement stood
+firm, declared itself the guardian of the public and private weal,
+claiming even to reform abuses and to discuss and vote on schemes of
+taxation. So critical was the situation that the court was forced to
+bend, and to postpone the humiliation of the Parlement to a more
+convenient season. The glorious issue of the campaigns of Condé
+against the Houses of Spain and Austria seemed to offer the desired
+opportunity. On 26th August 1648, while a Te Deum was being sung at
+Notre Dame for the victory of Lens, and a grand trophy of
+seventy-three captured flags was displayed to the people, three of the
+most stubborn members of the Parlement were arrested. One escaped, but
+while the venerable Councillor Broussel was being hustled into a
+carriage, a cry was raised, which stirred the whole of Paris to
+insurrection. In the excitement a street porter was shot by a captain
+of the Guards, the Marquis of Meilleraye, and the next morning the
+court, aroused by cries of "Liberty and Broussel," found the streets
+of Paris barricaded and the citizens in arms. De Retz, the suffragan
+archbishop of Paris, came in his robes to entreat Anne to appease the
+people, but was snubbed for his pains. "It is a revolt," she cried,
+"to imagine a revolt possible; these are silly tales of those who
+desire it: the king will enforce order." De Retz, angry and insulted,
+left to join the insurrection and to become its leader. The venerable
+president of the Parlement, Molé, and the whole body of members next
+repaired to the Palais Royal with no better success: Anne's only
+answer was a gibe. As they returned crestfallen from the Palais Royal
+they were driven back by the infuriated people, who threatened them
+with death, and clamoured for Broussel's release or Mazarin as a
+hostage. Nearly all the councillors fled, but the president, with
+exalted courage, faced them and, answering gravely, as if in his
+judgment-seat, said, "If you kill me, all my needs will be six feet of
+earth": he strode on with calm self-possession, amid a shower of
+missiles and threats, to the hall of St. Louis. The echo of Cromwell's
+triumph in England, however, seemed to have reached the Palais Royal,
+and the queen-regent was at length induced to treat. The demands of
+the people were granted and Broussel was liberated, amid scenes of
+tumultuous joy.
+
+[Footnote 138: 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.]
+
+In February of the next year the regency made an effort to reassert
+its authority. The queen and the royal princes left Paris for the
+palace of St. Germain and gathered an army under Condé: the Parlement
+taxed themselves heavily, tried their hands at organising a citizen
+militia, and allied themselves with the popular Duke of Beaufort, now
+at liberty, and leader of a troop of brilliant but giddy young nobles.
+The Bastille was captured by the Parlement, and the university
+promised its support and a subsidy. Thus arose the civil war of the
+Fronde, one of the most extraordinary contests in history, whose name
+is derived from the puerile street fights with slings, of the
+printers' devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war
+read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens
+were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque
+form of cavalry, called the corps of the _Portes Cochères_, formed by
+a conscription of one horseman for every house with a carriage gate,
+became the derision of the royal army. They issued forth, beplumed and
+beribboned, and fled back to the city, amid the execrations of the
+people, at the sight of a handful of troops. Every defeat--and the
+Parisians were always defeated--formed a subject for songs and
+mockery. Councils of war were held in taverns, and De Retz was seen
+at a sitting of the Parlement in the hall of St. Louis with a poignard
+sticking out of his pocket: "There is the archbishop's prayer-book,"
+said the people. The more public-spirited members of the Parlement
+soon, however, tired of the folly; Mazarin won over De Retz by the
+offer of a cardinal's hat, and a compromise was effected with the
+court, which returned to Paris in April 1649. The People were still
+bitter against Mazarin, and invaded the Palais de Justice, demanding
+the cardinal's signature to the treaty, that it might be burned by the
+common hangman.
+
+Successful generals are bad masters, and the jackboot was now supreme
+at court. Soon Condé's insolent bearing and the vanity of his
+_entourage_ of young nobles, dubbed _petits maîtres_, became
+intolerable: he was arrested at the Louvre, and sent to the keep at
+Vincennes. But Mazarin, thinking himself secure, delayed the promised
+reward to De Retz, who joined the disaffected friends of Condé: the
+court, again foiled, was forced to release Condé, surrender the two
+princes, and exile the hated Mazarin, who, none the less, ruled the
+storm by his subtle policy from Cologne. Condé, disgusted alike with
+queen and Parlement, now fled to the south, and raised the standard of
+rebellion.
+
+The second phase of the wars of the Fronde became a more serious
+matter. Turenne, won over by the court, was given command of the royal
+forces, and moved against Condé. The two armies, after indecisive
+battles, raced to Paris and fought for its possession outside the
+Porte St. Antoine. The Frondeurs occupied what is now the Faubourg St.
+Antoine: the royalists the heights of Charonne. It was a stubborn and
+bloody contest. The armies were led by the two greatest captains of
+the age, and fought under the eyes of their king, who with the
+queen-mother watched the struggle from the eminence now crowned by
+the cemetery of Père la Chaise. "I have seen not one Condé to-day, but
+a dozen," cried Turenne, as victory inclined to the Royalists. The
+last word was, however, with the Duke of Orleans: while he sat
+hesitating in the Luxembourg, the Grande Mademoiselle ordered the guns
+of the Bastille to be turned against Turenne, and the citizens opened
+the gates to Condé. Again his incorrigible insolence and brutality
+made Paris too hot for him, and with the disaffected princes he
+returned to Flanders to seek help from his country's enemies--a fatal
+mistake, which Mazarin was not slow to turn to advantage. He prudently
+retired while public feeling was won over to the young king, who was
+soon entreated by the Parlement and citizens to return to Paris. When
+the time was ripe, Mazarin had the Duke of Orleans interned at Blois,
+Condé was condemned to death _in contumacio_: De Retz was sent to
+Vincennes. Ten councillors of the Parlement were imprisoned or
+degraded, and in three months Mazarin returned to Paris with the pomp
+and equipage of a sovereign. It was the end of the Fronde, and of the
+attempt of the Parlement of Paris, a venal body[139] devoid of
+representative basis, to imitate the functions of the English House of
+Commons. The crown emerged from the contest more absolute than before,
+and Louis never forgot the days when he was a fugitive with his
+mother, and driven to lie on a hard mattress at the palace of St.
+Germain. In 1655 the Parlement of Paris met to prepare remonstrances
+against a royal edict: the young king heard of it while hunting at
+Vincennes, made his way to the hall of St. Louis booted[140] and
+spurred, rated the councillors and dissolved the sitting.
+
+[Footnote 139: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 140: The added indignity of the whip is an invention of
+Voltaire.]
+
+The years following on the internal peace were a period of triumphant
+foreign war and diplomacy. Mazarin achieved his purpose of marrying
+the Infanta of Spain to his royal master; he added to and confirmed
+Richelieu's territorial gains and guided France at last to triumph
+over the Imperial House of Austria. On 9th March 1661, after a
+pathetic scene in his sumptuous palace, where the stricken old
+cardinal dragged his tottering steps along its vast galleries, casting
+a despairing look on the marvellous treasures of art he had collected
+and sorrowing like a child at the idea of separating from them for
+ever, the great Italian, "whose heart was French if his tongue were
+not," confronted death at Vincennes with firmness and courage. Mazarin
+was, however, a costly servant, who bled his adopted country to
+satisfy his love for the arts and splendours of life, to furnish
+dowries to his nieces, and to exalt his family. His vast palace (now
+the Bibliothèque Nationale), with its library of 35,000 volumes,
+freely open to scholars, was furnished with princely splendour. He
+left 2,000,000 livres to found a college for the gratuitous education
+of sixty sons of gentlemen from the four provinces--Spanish, Italian,
+German and Flemish--recently added to the crown, in order that French
+culture and grace might be diffused among them; they were to be taught
+the use of arms, horsemanship, dancing, Christian piety, and
+_belles-lettres_. A vast domed edifice was raised on the site of the
+Tour de Nesle, and became famous as the College of the Four Nations.
+It was subsequently expropriated and given by the Convention to the
+five learned academies of France, and is now known as the Institut de
+France.
+
+[Illustration: THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+_The Grand Monarque--Versailles and Paris_
+
+
+The century of Louis XIV., whose triumphs have been so extravagantly
+celebrated by Voltaire, saw the culmination and declension of military
+glory and literary splendour at Paris, and of regal magnificence at
+Versailles. Gone were the times of cardinal dictators. When the
+ministers came after Mazarin's death to ask the king whom they should
+now address themselves to, the answer came like a thunderbolt: "To
+me!"
+
+What brilliant constellations of great men cast their influences over
+the beginning of Louis XIV.'s reign! "Sire," said Mazarin, when dying,
+"I owe you all, but I can partially acquit myself by leaving you
+Colbert:"--austere Colbert, whose Atlantean shoulders bore the burden
+of five modern ministries; whose vehement industry, admirable science
+and sterling honesty created order out of financial chaos and found
+the sinews of war for an army of 300,000 men before the Peace of
+Ryswick and 450,000 for the war of the Spanish succession; who
+initiated, nurtured and perfected French industries; who created a
+navy that crushed the combined English and Dutch fleets off Beachy
+Head, swept the Channel for weeks, burnt English ports, carried terror
+into English homes, and for a time paralysed English commerce.
+Louvois, his colleague, organised an army that made his master the
+arbiter of Europe; Condé and Turenne were its victorious captains.
+Vauban, greatest of military engineers, captured towns in war and made
+them impregnable in peace, and shared with Louvois the invention of
+the combined musket and bayonet, the deadliest weapon of war as yet
+contrived. De Lionne, by masterly diplomacy, prepared and cemented the
+conquests of victorious generals. Supreme in arts of peace were
+Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Lebrun, Claude Lorrain,
+Puget, Mansard, and Perrault. We shall learn in the sequel what the
+Grand Monarque did with this unparalleled inheritance.
+
+None of the great ones of the earth is so intimately known to us as
+the magnificent histrion, whose tinselled grandeur and pompous egoism
+have been laid bare by the Duke of St. Simon, prince of memoirists.
+Never has the frippery of a court been shrivelled by such fierce and
+consuming light, glaring like a fiery sun on its meretricious
+splendours. And what a court it is! What a gilded crowd of princes and
+paramours, harlots and bastards, struts, fumes and intrigues through
+these Memoirs! By a few strokes of his pen, in words that bite like
+acid, he etches for us the fools and knaves, the wife-beaters and
+adulterers, the cardsharpers and gamesters, the grovelling sycophants
+with their petty struggles for precedence or favour, their slang,
+their gluttony and drunkenness, their moral and physical corruption.
+
+External grandeur and regal presence,[141] a profound belief in his
+divinely-appointed despotism, and in earlier years a rare capacity for
+work, the lord of France certainly possessed. "He had a grand mien,"
+says St. Simon, "and looked a veritable king of the bees." Much has
+been made of Louis' incomparable grace and respectful courtesy to
+women; but the courtesy of a king who doffs his hat to every serving
+wench yet contrives a staircase to facilitate the debauching of his
+queen's maids-of-honour, and exacts of his mistresses and the ladies
+of his court submission to his will and pleasure, even under the most
+trying of physical disabilities, is at least wanting in consistency.
+Louis' mental equipment was less than mediocre; he was ignorant of the
+commonest facts of history, and fell into the grossest blunders in
+public. Like all small-minded men, he was jealous of superior merit
+and preferred mediocrity rather than genius in his ministers. Small
+wonder that his reign ended in shame and disaster.
+
+[Footnote 141: Louis used, however, to stilt his low stature by means
+of thick pads in his boots.]
+
+On the 6th of June 1662, the young Louis, notwithstanding much public
+misery consequent on two years of bad harvests, organised a
+magnificent carrousel (tilting) in the garden that fronted the
+Tuileries. Five companies of nobles, each led by the king or one of
+the princes, were apparelled in gorgeous costumes as Romans, Persians,
+Turks, Armenians and Indians. Louis, who arrayed as emperor, led the
+Romans, was followed by a superb train of many squires, twenty-four
+pages, fifty horses each led by two grooms, and fifty footmen dressed
+as lictors, carrying gilded fasces. The royal princes headed similar
+processions. So great was the display of jewels that all the precious
+stones in the world seemed brought together; so richly were the
+costumes of the knights and the trappings of the horses embroidered
+with gold and silver that the cloth beneath could barely be seen. An
+immense amphitheatre afforded seats for a multitude of spectators, and
+in a smaller pavilion, richly gilded, sat the two queens of France,
+the queen of England, and the royal princesses. The first day was
+spent in tilting at Medusa heads and heads of Moors: the second at
+rings. The king is said to have greatly distinguished himself by his
+skill. Maria Theresa, his young queen, distributed the prizes, and the
+garden was afterwards named the Place du Carrousel.
+
+Louis, however, hated Paris, for his forced exile and the humiliations
+of the Fronde rankled in his memory. Nor were the associations of St.
+Germain any more pleasant. A lover of the chase and all too prone to
+fall into the snares of "fair, fallacious looks and venerial trains,"
+the retirement of his father's hunting lodge at Versailles, away from
+the prying eyes and mocking tongues of the Parisians, early attracted
+him. There he was wont to meet his mistress, Madame de la Vallière,
+and there he determined to erect a vast pleasure-palace and gardens.
+The small château, built by Lemercier in the early half of the
+seventeenth century, was handed over to Levau in 1668, who, carefully
+respecting his predecessor's work in the Cour de Marbre, constructed
+two immense wings, which were added to by J.H. Mansard, as the
+requirements of the court grew. The palace stood in the midst of a
+barren, sandy plain, but Louis' pride demanded that Nature herself
+should bend to his will, and an army of artists, engineers and
+gardeners was concentrated there, who at the sacrifice of incredible
+wealth and energy, had so far advanced the work that the king was able
+to come into residence in 1682.
+
+In spite of seas of reservoirs fed by costly hydraulic machinery at
+Marly, which lifted the waters of the Seine to an aqueduct that led to
+Versailles, the supply was deemed inadequate, and orders were given to
+divert the river Eure between Chartres and Maintenon to the gardens of
+the palace. For years an army of thirty thousand men was employed in
+this one task, at a cost of money and human life greater than that of
+many a campaign. So heavy was the mortality in the camp that it was
+forbidden to speak of the sick, and above all of the dead, who were
+carried away in cartloads by night for burial. All that remains of
+this cruel folly are a few ruins at Maintenon.
+
+After the failure of this scheme, subterranean water-courses were
+contrived. The _plaisir du roi_ must be sated at any cost, and at
+length a magnificent garden was created, filled with a population of
+statues and adorned with gigantic fountains. Soon however, the king
+tired of the bustle and noise of Versailles, and a miserable and
+swampy site at Marly, the haunt of toads and serpents and creeping
+things, was transformed into a splendid hermitage. Hills were
+levelled, great trees brought from Compiègne, most of which soon died
+and were as quickly replaced; fish-ponds, adorned by exquisite
+paintings, were made and unmade; woods were metamorphosed into lakes,
+where the king and a select company of courtiers disported themselves
+in gondolas and where cascades refreshed their ears in summer heat;
+precious paintings, statues and costly furniture charmed the eye
+inside the hermitage--and all to receive the king and his intimates
+from Wednesday to Saturday on a few occasions in the year. St. Simon
+with passionate exaggeration declares that Marly cost more than
+Versailles.[142] Nothing remains to-day of all this splendour: it was
+neglected by Louis' successors and sold in lots during the Revolution.
+
+[Footnote 142: 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.)]
+
+After a life of wanton licentiousness, Louis, at the age of forty, was
+captivated by the mature charms of a widow of forty-three, a colonial
+adventuress of noble descent, who after the death of her husband, the
+crippled comic poet Scarron, became governess to the king's children
+by Madame de Montespan. Soon after the death of Maria Theresa, the
+widow Scarron, known to history as Madame de Maintenon, was secretly
+married to her royal lover, who for the remainder of his life remained
+her docile slave.
+
+A narrow bigot in matters of religion and completely under the
+influence of fanatics, Madame de Maintenon persuaded Louis that a
+crusade against heresy would be a fitting atonement for his past sins.
+By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 22nd October 1685, the
+charter of Protestant liberties was destroyed, and those who had given
+five out of ten marshals to France, including the great Turenne, were
+denied the right of civil existence. Whole cities were depopulated;
+tens of thousands (for the Huguenots had long ceased to exist as a
+political force) of law-abiding citizens expatriated themselves and
+carried their industries to enrich foreign lands.[143] Many pastors
+were martyred, and drummers stationed at the foot of the scaffold
+drowned their exhortations. Let us not say persecution is ineffective;
+the Huguenots who at one time threatened to turn the scale in favour
+of the Protestant powers and to wreck the Catholic cause in Europe,
+practically disappear from history. On the whole, the measure was
+approved by Paris; Racine, La Fontaine, the great Jansenist Arnault,
+as well as Bossuet and Massillon, applauded. Louis was hailed a second
+Constantine, and believed he had revived the times of the apostles.
+But the consequences were far-reaching and disastrous. In less than
+two months the Catholic James II. of England was a discrowned
+fugitive, and the Calvinist William of Orange, the inveterate enemy of
+France, sat in his place; England's pensioned neutrality was turned to
+bitter hostility, and every Protestant power in Europe stirred to
+fierce resentment. Seven years of war ensued, which exhausted the
+immense resources of France; seven years,[144] rich in glory perhaps,
+but lean years indeed to the dumb millions who paid the cost in blood
+and money.
+
+[Footnote 143: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 144: 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.]
+
+After three short years of peace and recuperation, the acceptance of
+the crown of Spain by Louis' grandson, Philip of Anjou, in spite of
+Maria Theresa's solemn renunciation for herself and her posterity of
+all claim to the Spanish succession, roused all the old jealousy of
+France and brought her secular enemy, the House of Austria, to a new
+coalition against her.
+
+Woe to the nation whose king is thrall to women. The manner in which
+this momentous step was taken is characteristic of Louis. Two councils
+were held in Madame de Maintenon's room at Versailles; her advice was
+asked by the king, and apparently turned the scale in favour of
+acceptance. "For a hundred years," says Taine, "from 1672 to 1774,
+every time a king of France made war it was by pique or vanity, by
+family or private interest, or by condescension to a woman." Still
+more amazing is the fact that, for years, the court of Madrid was
+ruled by a Frenchwoman, Madame des Ursins, the _camarera mayor_ of
+Philip's queen, who made and unmade ministers, controlled all public
+appointments, and even persuaded the French ambassador to submit all
+despatches to her before sending them to France. Madame de Maintenon
+was equally omnipotent at Versailles; she decided what letters should
+or should not be shown to the king, kept back disagreeable news, and
+held everybody in the hollow of her hand, from humblest subject to
+most exalted minister. This was the atmosphere from which men were
+sent to meet the new and more potent combination of States that
+opposed the Spanish succession. Chamillart, a pitiful creature of
+Madame de Maintenon's, sat in Colbert's place; gone were Turenne and
+Condé and Luxembourg; the armies of the descendant of St. Louis were
+led by the Duke of Vendôme, a foul lecher, whose inhuman vices went
+far to justify the gibe of Mephistopheles that men use their reason
+"_um thierischer als jedes Thier zu sein_."
+
+The victories of the Duke of Marlborough and of Prince Eugene spread
+consternation at Versailles. When, in 1704, the news of Blenheim oozed
+out, the king's grief was piteous to see. Scarce a noble family but
+had one of its members killed, wounded, or a prisoner. Two years later
+came the defeat of Ramillies, to be followed in three months by the
+disaster at Turin. The balls and masquerades and play at Marly went
+merrily on; but at news of the defeat of Oudenarde and the fall of
+Lille, even the reckless courtiers were subdued, and for a month
+gambling and even conversation ceased. At the sound of an approaching
+horseman they ran hither and thither, with fear painted on their
+cheeks. Wildest schemes for raising money were tried; taxes were
+levied on baptisms and marriages; sums raised for the relief of the
+poor and the maintenance of highways were expropriated, and the
+wretched peasants were forced to repair the roads without payment,
+some dying of starvation at their work. King and courtiers, with
+ill-grace, sent their plate to the mint and a plan for the recapture
+of Lille was mooted, in which Louis was to take part, but, for lack of
+money, the king's ladies were not to accompany him to the seat of war
+as they had hitherto done.[145] The expedition was to remain a
+secret; but the infatuated Louis could withhold nothing from Madame de
+Maintenon, who never rested until she had foiled the whole scheme and
+disgraced Chamillart, for having concealed the preparations from her.
+
+[Footnote 145: 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."]
+
+Versailles had now grown so accustomed to defeats that Malplaquet was
+hailed as half a victory; but, in 1710, so desperate was the condition
+of the treasury, that a financial and social _débâcle_ was imminent.
+The Dauphin, on leaving the opera at Paris, had been assailed by
+crowds of women shouting, "Bread! bread!" and only escaped by throwing
+them money and promises. To appease the people, the poor were set to
+level the boulevard near St. Denis, and were paid in doles of
+bread--bad bread. Even this failed them one morning, and a woman who
+made some disturbance was dragged to the pillory by the archers of the
+watch. An angry mob released her, and proceeded to raid the bakers'
+shops. The ugly situation was saved only by the firmness and sagacity
+of the popular Marshal Boufflers. Another turn of the financial screw
+was now meditated, and, as the taxes had already "drawn all the blood
+from his subjects, and squeezed out their very marrow," the conscience
+of the lord of France was troubled. His Jesuit confessor, Le Tellier,
+promised to consult the Sorbonne, whose learned doctors decided that,
+since all the wealth of his subjects rightly belonged to the king, he
+only took what was his own.
+
+Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the quarrel between
+Jansenists and Jesuits concerning subtle doctrinal differences had
+grown acute through the publication of Pascal's immortal _Lettres
+Provinciales_, and by Quesnel's _Réflexions Morales_ which the Jesuits
+had succeeded in subjecting to papal condemnation. In 1709, Le Tellier
+induced his royal penitent to decree the destruction of one of the
+two Jansenist establishments, and Port Royal des Champs, between
+Versailles and Chevreuse, rendered famous by the piety and learning of
+Arnault, Pascal and Nicolle, was doomed. On the night of 28th October
+1709, the convent was surrounded by Gardes Françaises and Suisses, and
+on the following morning the chief of the police, with a posse of
+archers of the watch entered, produced a _lettre de cachet_, and gave
+the nuns a quarter of an hour to prepare for deportation. The whole of
+the sisters were then brutally expelled, "_comme on enlève les
+créatures prostituées d'un lieu infâme_," says St. Simon, and
+scattered among other religious houses in all directions. The friends
+of the buried were bidden to exhume their dead, and all unclaimed
+bodies were flung into a neighbouring cemetery, where dogs fought for
+them as for carrion. The church was profaned, all the conventual
+buildings were razed and sold in lots, not one stone being left on
+another; the very ground was ploughed up and sown, "not, it is true
+with salt," adds St. Simon, and that was the only favour shown.
+
+Two years after the scene at Port Royal, amid the heartless gaiety of
+the court, the Angel of Death was busy in Louis' household. On 14th
+April 1711, the old king's only lawful son, the Grand Dauphin,
+expired; on 12th February 1712, the second Dauphiness, the sweet and
+gentle Adelaide of Savoy, Louis' darling, died of a malignant fever;
+six days later the Duke of Burgundy, her husband, was struck down; on
+8th March, the Duke of Brittany, their eldest child, followed them.
+Three Dauphins had gone to the vaults of St. Denis in less than a
+year; mother, father, son, had died in twenty-four days--a sweep of
+Death's scythe, enough to touch even the hearts of courtiers. In a few
+days the king gave orders for the usual play to begin at Marly, and
+the dice rattled while the bodies of the Dauphin and Dauphiness lay
+yet unburied.
+
+In May 1714, the Duke of Berri, son of the Grand Dauphin, died, and
+the sole direct heir to the throne was now the king's great-grandson,
+the Duke of Anjou, a sickly child of five years. On September 1715,
+the Grand Monarque made a calm and an edifying end to his long reign
+of seventy-two years, declaring that he owed no man restitution, and
+trusted in God's mercy for what he owed to the realm. He called the
+young child, who was soon to be Louis XV., to his bedside, and
+apparently without any sense of irony, exhorted him to remember his
+God, to cherish peace, to avoid extravagance, and study the welfare of
+his people. After receiving the last sacraments he repeated the
+prayers for the dying in a firm voice and, calling on God's aid,
+passed peacefully away. None but his official attendants, his priest
+and physicians, saw the end: two days before, Madame de Maintenon had
+retired to St. Cyr.
+
+The demolition of what remained of mediæval Paris proceeded apace
+during Louis XIV.'s lifetime, and, at his death, the architectural
+features of its streets were substantially those of the older Paris of
+to-day. Colbert had taken up the costly legacy of the unfinished
+Louvre before the petrified banalities of Versailles and Marly had
+engulfed their millions, and, in 1660, the Hôtel de Bourbon was given
+over to the housebreakers to make room for the new east wing of the
+palace. So vigorously did they set to work that when Molière, whose
+company performed there three days a week in alternation with the
+Italian opera, came for the usual rehearsal, he found the theatre half
+demolished. He applied to the king, who granted him the temporary use
+of Richelieu's theatre in the Palais Royal, and his first performance
+there was given on 20th January 1661.
+
+Levau was employed to carry on Lemercier's work on the Louvre, and had
+succeeded in completing the north wing and the river front in harmony
+with Lescot's design, when in 1664 Colbert stayed further progress and
+ordered him to prepare a model in wood of his proposed east wing.
+Levau was stupefied, for he had elaborated with infinite study a
+design for this portion of the palace, which he regarded as of supreme
+importance, and which he hoped would crown his work. He had already
+laid the foundations and erected the scaffolding when the order came.
+Levau made his model, and a number of architects were invited to
+criticise it: they did, and unanimously condemned it. Competitive
+designs were then exhibited with the model and submitted to Colbert,
+who took advantage of Poussin's residence at Rome to send them to the
+great Italian architects for their judgment. The Italians delivered a
+sweeping and general condemnation, and Poussin advised that Bernini
+should be employed to design a really noble edifice. Louis was
+delighted by the suggestion, and the loan of the architect of the
+great Colonnade of St. Peter's was entreated of the pope by the king's
+own hand in a letter dated 11th April 1665.
+
+Bernini, in spite of his sixty-eight years, came to Paris, accompanied
+by his son, where he was treated like a prince, and drew up a scheme
+of classic grandeur. Levau's work on the east front was destroyed, and
+in October 1665, Bernini's foundations were begun. The majestic new
+design, however, ignored the exigencies of existing work and of
+internal convenience, and gave opportunities for criticisms and
+intrigue, which Colbert and the French architects,[146] forgetting
+for the moment all domestic rivalry, were not slow to make the most
+of. The offended Italian, three days after the ceremony of laying the
+foundation stone by the king on the 17th October 1665, left to winter
+in Rome, promising to return with his wife in the following February.
+He carried with him a munificent gift of 3000 gold louis and a pension
+of 12,000 livres for himself and of 1,200 for his son. The pension was
+paid regularly up to 1674, but the great Bernini was never seen in
+Paris again.
+
+[Footnote 146: Bernini, according to Charles Perrault, was short in
+stature, good-humoured, and seasoned his conversation with parables,
+good stories and _bons mots_; never tiring of talking of his own
+country, of Michel Angelo and of himself. For a full history of these
+intrigues, see Ch. Normand's _Paris_.]
+
+Among the designs originally submitted to Colbert, and approved by him
+and Lebrun, was one which had not been sent to Rome. It was the work
+of an amateur, Claude Perrault, a physician, whose brother, Charles
+Perrault, was chief clerk in the Office of Works. This was brought
+forth early in 1667, and a commission, consisting of Levau, Lebrun,
+Claude Perrault and others, appointed to report on its practicability.
+Levau promptly produced his own discarded designs, and both were
+submitted to the king for a final decision on 13th May. Louis was
+fascinated by the stately classicism of Perrault's design, and this
+was adopted. "Architecture must be in a bad state," said his rivals,
+"since it is put in the hands of a physician." Colbert seems, however,
+to have distrusted Claude's technical powers and on his brother
+Charles' advice a council of specialists, consisting of Levau, Lebrun,
+and Claude was appointed under the presidency of Colbert. Charles was
+made secretary and many were the quarrels between the rival architects
+over practical details. Perrault's new wing was found to be
+seventy-two feet too long, but the sovereign fiat had gone forth, the
+new east façade was raised and the whole of Levau's river front was
+masked by a new façade, rendered necessary by the excessive length of
+Perrault's design. The whole south wing[147] is in consequence much
+wider than any of the others which enclose the great quadrangle. Poor
+Levau's end was hastened by vexation and grief. Even to this day the
+north-east wing of Perrault's façade projects unsymmetrically beyond
+the line of the north front. The work has been much criticised and
+much praised. It evoked Fergusson's ecstatic admiration, was extolled
+by Reynolds and eulogised by another critic as one of the finest
+pieces of architecture in any age. Strangely enough, neither of these
+ever saw, nor has anyone yet seen, more than a partial and stunted
+realisation of Perrault's design, for, as the accompanying
+reproduction of a drawing by Blondel demonstrates, the famous east
+front of the Louvre is like a giant buried up to the knees, and the
+present first-floor windows were an afterthought, their places having
+been designed as niches to hold statues. The exactitude of Blondel's
+elevations was finally proved in 1903 by the admirable insight of the
+present architect of the Louvre, Monsieur G. Redon, who was led to
+undertake the excavations which brought to light a section of
+Perrault's decorated basement, by noticing that the windows of the
+ground floor evidently implied a lower order beneath. This basement,
+seven and a half metres in depth, now buried, was in Perrault's scheme
+designed to be exposed by a fosse of some fifteen to twenty metres in
+width, and the whole elevation and symmetry of the wing would have
+immensely gained by the carrying out of his plans.
+
+[Footnote 147: 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.]
+
+[Illustration: PORTION OF THE EAST FAÇADE OF THE LOUVRE FROM BLONDEL'S
+DRAWING, SHOWING PERRAULT'S BASE.]
+
+The construction was, however, interrupted in 1676, owing to the
+king's abandonment of Paris. Colbert strenuously protested against the
+neglect of the Louvre, and warned his master not to squander his
+millions away from Paris and suffer posterity to measure his grandeur
+by the ell of Versailles. It availed nothing. In 1670, 1,627,293
+livres were allotted to the Louvre; in 1672 the sum had fallen to
+58,000 livres; in 1676 to 42,082; in 1680 the subsidies practically
+ceased, and the great palace was utterly neglected until 1754 when
+Perrault's work was feebly continued by Gabriel and Soufflot.
+
+Two domed churches in the south of Paris--the Val de Grâce and St.
+Louis of the Invalides--were also erected during Louis XIV.'s
+lifetime. Among the many vows made by Anne of Austria during her
+twenty-two years' unfruitful marriage was one made in the sanctuary of
+the nunnery of the Val de Grâce, to build there a magnificent church
+to God's glory if she were vouchsafed a Dauphin. At length, on 18th
+April 1645, the proud queen was able to lead the future king, a boy of
+seven years, to lay the first stone. The church was designed by F.
+Mansard on the model of St. Peter's at Rome, and was finished by
+Lemercier and others.
+
+A refuge had been founded as early as Henry IV.'s reign in an old
+abbey in the Faubourg St. Marcel, for old and disabled soldiers. Louis
+XIV., the greatest creator of _invalides_ France had seen, determined
+in 1670 to extend the foundation, and erect a vast hospital, capable
+of accommodating his aged, crippled or infirm soldiers. Bruant and
+J.H. Mansard[148] among other architects were employed to raise the
+vast pile of buildings which, when completed, are said to have been
+capable of housing 7,000 men. A church dedicated to St. Louis was
+comprehended in the scheme, and, in 1680, a second Église Royale was
+erected, whose gilded dome is so conspicuous an object in south Paris;
+the Église Royale, which Mansard designed, was subsequently added to
+the church of St. Louis, and became its choir. Louis XIV.,
+anticipating Napoleon's maxim that war must support war, raised the
+funds needed for the foundation by ingeniously requiring all ordinary
+and extraordinary treasurers of war to retain two deniers[149] on
+every livre that passed through their hands.
+
+[Footnote 148: Jules Hardouin, the younger Mansard, was a nephew and
+pupil of François Mansard, and assumed his uncle's name. The latter
+was the inventor of the Mansard roof.]
+
+[Footnote 149: The sixth part of a sou.]
+
+The old city gates of the Tournelle, Poissonnière (or St. Anne), St.
+Martin, St. Denis, the Temple, St. Jacques, St. Victor, were
+demolished, and triumphal arches, which still remain, erected to mark
+the sites of the Portes St. Denis and St. Martin. Another arch, of St.
+Antoine, was designed to surpass all existing or ancient monuments of
+the kind, and many volumes were written concerning the language in
+which the inscription should be composed, but the devouring maw of
+Versailles had to be filled, and the arch was never completed. The
+king for whose glory the monument was to be raised, cared so little
+for it, that he suffered it to be pulled down.
+
+Many new streets[150] were made, and others widened, among them the
+ill-omened Rue de la Ferronnerie. The northern ramparts were levelled
+and planted with trees from the Porte St. Antoine in the east to the
+Porte St. Honoré in the west, and in 1704 it was decided to continue
+the planting in the south round the Faubourg St. Germain. The Place
+Louis le Grand (now Vendôme), and the Place des Victoires were
+created; the river embankments were renewed and extended, and a fine
+stone Pont Royal by J.H. Mansard, the most beautiful of the existing
+bridges of Paris, was built to replace the old wooden structure that
+led from the St. Germain quarter to the Tuileries. This in its turn
+had replaced a ferry (_bac_) established by the Guild of Ferrymen, to
+transport the stone needed for the construction of the Tuileries, and
+the street which leads to the bridge still bears the name of the Rue
+du Bac. The Isle Louviers was acquired by the Ville, and the
+evil-smelling tanneries and dye-houses that disfigured the banks of
+the Seine between the Grève and the Châtelet were cleared away; many
+new fountains embellished the city, and ten new pumps increased the
+supply of water. The poorer quarters were, however, little changed
+from their old insanitary condition. A few years later Rousseau, fresh
+from Turin, was profoundly disappointed by the streets of Paris as he
+entered the city by the Faubourg St. Marceau. "I had imagined," he
+writes, "a city as fair as it was great, and of a most imposing
+aspect, whose superb streets were lined with palaces of marble and of
+gold. I beheld filthy, evil-smelling, mean streets, ugly houses black
+with dirt, a general air of uncleanness and of poverty, beggars and
+carters, old clothes shop and tisane sellers."
+
+[Footnote 150: Twelve alone were added to the St. Honoré quarter by
+levelling the Hill of St. Roch and clearing away accumulated rubbish.]
+
+[Illustration: RIVER AND PONT ROYAL.]
+
+It is now time to ask what had been done with the magnificent
+inheritance which the fourteenth Louis had entered upon at the opening
+of his reign: he left to his successor, a France crushed by an
+appalling debt of 2,400,000,000 livres; a noblesse and an army in
+bondage to money-lenders; public officials and fund-holders unpaid,
+trade paralysed, and the peasants in some provinces so poor that even
+straw was lacking for them to lie upon, many crossing the frontiers
+in search of a less miserable lot. Scarcity of bread made disease
+rampant at Paris, and as many as 4,500 sick poor were counted at one
+time in the Hôtel Dieu alone. Louis left a court that "sweated
+hypocrisy through every pore," and an example of licentious and
+unclean living and cynical disregard of every moral obligation, which
+ate like a cancer into the vitals of the aristocracy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+_Paris under the Regency and Louis XV.--The brooding Storm_
+
+
+Under the regency of the profligate Philip of Orleans, a profounder
+depth was sounded. The vices of Louis' court were at least veiled by a
+certain regal dignity, and the Grand Monarque was always keenly
+sensitive, and at times nobly responsive, to any attack upon the
+honour of France; but under the regent, libertinage and indifference
+to national honour were flagrant and shameless. The Abbé Dubois, a
+minister worthy of his prince, was, says St. Simon, "a mean-looking,
+thin little man, with the face of a ferret, in whom every vice fought
+for mastery." This creature profaned the seat of Richelieu and
+Colbert, and rose to fill a cardinal's chair. The revenues of seven
+abbeys fed his pride and luxury, and his annual income was estimated
+at 1,534,000 livres, including his bribe from the English Government.
+
+Visitors to Venice whose curiosity may have led them into the church
+of S. Moisè, will remember to have seen there a monument to a famous
+Scotchman--John Law. This is the last home of an outlaw, a gambler,
+and an adventurer, who, by his amazing skill and effrontery, plunged
+the regency into a vortex of speculation, and for a time controlled
+the finances of France. He persuaded the regent that by a liberal
+issue of paper money he might wipe out the accumulated national
+deficit of 100,000,000 livres, revive trade and industry, and
+inaugurate a financial millennium. In 1718 Law's Bank at Paris after
+a short and brilliant career as a private venture, was converted into
+the Banque Royale, and by the artful flotation of a gigantic trading
+speculation called the Mississippi Company, the bank-notes and company
+shares were so manipulated that the latter were inflated to twenty
+times their nominal value. The whole city seethed in a ferment of
+speculation. The offices of the Bank in the Rue Quincampoix were daily
+besieged by a motley crowd of princes, nobles, fine ladies,
+courtesans, generals, prelates, priests, bourgeois and servants. A
+hunchback made a fortune by lending his back as a desk; lacqueys
+became masters in a day, and a _parvenu_ foot-man, by force of habit,
+jumped up behind his own carriage in a fit of abstraction. The
+inevitable catastrophe came at the end of 1719. The Prince of Conti
+was observed taking away three cartloads of silver in exchange for his
+paper; a panic ensued, every holder sought to realise, and the
+colossal fabric came down with a crash, involving thousands of
+families in ruin and despair. Law, after bravely trying to save the
+situation and narrowly escaping being torn in pieces, fled to poverty
+and death at Venice, and the financial state of France was worse than
+before. Law was not, however, absolutely a quack; there was a seed of
+good in his famous system of mobilising credit, and the temporary
+stimulus it gave to trade permanently influenced mercantile practice
+in Europe.
+
+In 1723, Louis XV. reached his legal majority. The regent became chief
+minister, and soon paid the penalty of his career of debauchery,
+leaving as his successor the Duke of Bourbon, degenerate scion of the
+great Condé and one of the chief speculators in the Mississippi
+bubble. A perilous lesson had two years before been instilled into the
+mind of the young Louis. After his recovery from an illness, an
+immense concourse of people had assembled at a _fête_ given in the
+gardens of the Tuileries palace; enormous crowds filled every inch of
+the Place du Carrousel and the gardens; the windows and even the roofs
+of the houses were alive with people crying "_Vive le roi!_" Marshal
+Villeroi led the little lad of eleven to a window, showed him the sea
+of exultant faces turned towards him, and exclaimed, "Sire, all this
+people is yours; all belongs to you. Show yourself to them, and
+satisfy them; you are the master of all."
+
+The Infanta of Spain, at four years of age, had been betrothed to the
+young king, and in 1723 was sent to Paris to be educated for her
+exalted future. She was lodged in the Petite Galerie of the Louvre,
+over the garden still known as the Garden of the Infanta,[151] and
+after three years of exile the homesick little maid was returned to
+Madrid; for Louis' weak health made it imperative that a speedy
+marriage should be contracted if the succession to the throne were to
+be assured. The choice finally fell on the daughter of Stanislaus
+Leczynski, a deposed king of Poland and a pensioner of France.
+Voltaire relates that the poor discrowned queen was sitting with her
+daughter Marie in their little room at Wissembourg when the father,
+bursting in, fell on his knees, crying, "Let us thank God, my child!"
+"Are you then recalled to Poland?" asked Marie. "Nay, daughter, far
+better," answered Stanislaus, "you are the queen of France." A
+magnificent wedding at Fontainebleau exalted gentle, pious Marie from
+poverty to the richest queendom in Europe; to a life of cruel neglect
+and almost intolerable insult.
+
+[Footnote 151: It extended as far as the entrance to the quadrangle
+opposite the Pont des Arts. Blondel's drawings show a double line of
+trees, north and south, enclosing a Renaissance garden of elaborate
+design: a charming _bosquet_, or wood, filled the eastern extremity.]
+
+The immoral Duke of Bourbon was followed by Cardinal Fleury, and at
+length France experienced a period of honest administration, which
+enabled the sorely-tried land to recover some of its wonted
+elasticity. The Cardinal was, however, dominated by the Jesuits, and
+both Protestants and Jansenists felt their cruel hand. During the
+persecution of the Jansenists in 1782 a deacon, named Pâris, died and
+was canonised by the popular voice. Miracles were said to have been
+wrought at his sepulchre in the cemetery of St. Médard; fanatics flung
+themselves down on the tomb and writhed in horrible convulsions. So
+great was the excitement and disorder that the Archbishop of Paris
+denounced the miracles as the work of Satan, and the Government
+ordered the cemetery to be closed. The next morning a profane
+inscription was found over the entrance to the cemetery:--
+
+ "_De par le roi défense à Dieu
+ De faire miracle en ce lieu._"[152]
+
+[Footnote 152: "By order of the king, God is forbidden to work
+miracles in this place."]
+
+Before Louis sank irrevocably into the slothful indulgence that
+stained his later years, he was stirred to essay a kingly _rôle_ by
+Madame de Chateauroux, the youngest of four sisters who had
+successively been his mistresses. She fired his indolent imagination
+by appeals to the memory of his glorious ancestors, and the war of the
+Austrian succession being in progress, Louis set forth with the army
+of the great Marshal Saxe for Metz, where in August 1744 he was
+stricken down by a violent fever, and in an access of piety was
+induced to promise to dismiss his mistress and return to his abused
+queen. As he lay on the brink of death, given up by his physicians
+and prepared for the end by the administration of the last sacraments,
+a royal phrase admirably adapted to capture the imagination of a
+gallant people came from his lips. "Remember," he said to Marshal
+Noailles, "remember that when Louis XIII. was being carried to the
+grave, the Prince of Condé won a battle for France." The agitation of
+the Parisians as the king hovered between life and death was
+indescribable. The churches were thronged with sobbing people praying
+for his recovery; when the courtiers came with news that he was out of
+danger they were borne shoulder high in triumph through the streets,
+and fervent thanksgiving followed in all the churches. People hailed
+him as Louis le Bien-Aimé; even the callous heart of the king was
+pierced by their loyalty and he cried, "What have I done to deserve
+such love?" So easy was it to win the affection of this warm-hearted
+people.
+
+The brilliant victories of Marshal Saxe, and the consequent Peace of
+Aix-la-Chapelle, brought some years of prosperity. Wealth increased;
+Paris became more than ever a centre of intellectual splendour and
+social refinement, where the arts administered to luxurious ease and
+to the fair frailties of passion. But it was a period of riotous pride
+and regal licentiousness unparalleled even in the history of France.
+Louis XIV. at least exacted good breeding and wit in his mistresses:
+his descendant enslaved himself to the commonest and most abandoned of
+women. For twenty years the destinies of the people, and the whole
+patronage of the Government, the right to succeed to the most sacred
+and exalted offices in the Church, were bartered and intrigued for in
+the chamber of a harlot and procuress, and under the influence of the
+Pompadours and the Du Barrys a crowned _roué_ allowed the state to
+drift into financial, military and civil[153] disaster.
+
+[Footnote 153: In 1753 between 20th January and 20th February two
+hundred persons died of want (_misère_) in the Faubourg St. Antoine.]
+
+"Authentic proofs exist," says Taine, "demonstrating that Madame de
+Pompadour cost Louis XV. a sum equal to about seventy-two millions of
+present value (£2,880,000)." She would examine the plans of campaign
+of her marshals in her boudoir, and mark with patches (_mouches_) the
+places to be defended or attacked. Such was the mad extravagance of
+the court that to raise money recourse was had to taxation of the
+clergy, which the prelates successfully resisted; the old quarrel with
+the Jansenists was revived, and soon Church and Crown were convulsed
+by an agitation that shook society to its very base. During the
+popular ferment the king was attacked in 1757 by a crack-brained
+fanatic named Damiens, who scratched him with a penknife as he was
+entering his coach at Versailles. The poor crazy wretch, who at most
+deserved detention in an asylum, was first subjected to a cruel
+judicial torture, then taken to the Place de Grève, where he was
+lacerated with red-hot pincers and, after boiling lead had been poured
+into the wounds, his quivering body was torn to pieces by four horses,
+and the fragments burned to ashes.
+
+A few years later the long-suffering Jansenists were avenged with
+startling severity. The Jesuits, to their honour be it said, shocked
+by the infamies of the royal seraglio in the Parc aux Cerfs, made use
+of their ascendency at Court to awaken in the king's mind some sense
+of decency: they did but add the bitter animosity of Madame de
+Pompadour to the existing hostility of the Parlement of Paris. Louis,
+urged by his minister the Duke of Choiseul, and by the arts of his
+mistress, abandoned the Jesuits to their enemies: the Parlement
+suppressed the Society, secularised its members and confiscated its
+property.
+
+The closing years of the Well-Beloved's reign were years of
+unmitigated ignominy and disaster. Indian conquests were muddled away,
+and the gallant Dupleix died broken-hearted and in misery at Paris.
+Canada was lost. During the Seven Years' War the incapacity and
+administrative corruption of Madame de Pompadour's favourites made
+them the laughing-stock of Paris. In 1770 the Duke of Choiseul refused
+to tolerate the vile Du Barry, whom we may see in Madame Campan's
+Memoirs sitting on the arm of Louis' chair at a council of state,
+playing her monkey tricks to amuse the old sultan, snatching sealed
+orders from his hand and making the royal dotard chase her round the
+council chamber. She swore to ruin the duke and, aided by a cabal of
+Jesuit sympathisers and noble intriguers, succeeded in compassing his
+dismissal. The Parlement of Paris paid for its temerity: it and the
+whole of the parlements in France were suppressed, and seven hundred
+magistrates exiled by _lettres de cachet_. Every patriotic Frenchman
+now felt the gathering storm. Madame Campan writes that twenty years
+before the crash came it was common talk in her father's house (he was
+employed in the Foreign Office) that the old monarchy was rapidly
+sinking and a great change at hand. Indeed, the writing on the wall
+was not difficult to read. The learned and virtuous Malesherbes and
+many another distinguished member of the suppressed parlements warned
+the king of the dangers menacing the crown, but so sunk was its wearer
+in sensual stupefaction that he only murmured: "Well, it will last my
+time," and with his flatterers and strumpets uttered the famous
+words--"_Après nous le déluge_." So lost to all sense of honour was
+Louis, that he defiled his hands with bribes from tax-farmers who
+ground the faces of the poor, and became a large shareholder in an
+infamous syndicate of capitalists that bought up the corn of France in
+order to export and then import it at enormous profit. This abominable
+_Pacte de Famine_ created two artificial famines in France; its
+authors battened on the misery of the people, and for any who lifted
+their voices against it the Bastille yawned.
+
+In 1768 the poor abused and neglected queen, Marie Leczinska died. The
+court sank from bad to worse: void now of all dignity, all gaiety, all
+wit and all elegance, it drifted to its doom. Six years passed, when
+Louis was smitten by confluent small-pox and a few poor women were
+left to perform the last offices on the mass of pestiferous corruption
+that once was the fifteenth Louis of France.[154] None could be found
+to embalm the corpse, and spirits of wine were poured into the coffin
+which was carried to St. Denis without pomp and amid the
+half-suppressed curses of the people. Before the breath had left the
+body, a noise as of thunder was heard approaching the chamber of the
+Dauphin and Marie Antoinette: it was the sound of the courtiers
+hastening to grovel before the new king and queen. Warned that they
+had now inherited the awful legacy of the French monarchy, they flung
+themselves in tears on their knees, and exclaimed--"O God, guide and
+protect us! We are too young to govern."
+
+[Footnote 154: 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.]
+
+The degradation of the monarchy during the reign is reflected in the
+condition of the Louvre. Henry IV.'s great scheme, which Louis XIII.
+had inherited and furthered, included a colossal equestrian statue,
+which was to stand on a rocky pedestal in the centre of a new Place,
+before the east front of the Louvre, but the regency revoked the
+scheme, and for thirty years nothing was done. It had even been
+proposed under the ministry of Cardinal Fleury to pull the whole
+structure down and sell the site. The neglect of the palace during
+these years is almost incredible. Perrault's fine façade was hidden by
+the half-demolished walls of the Hôtels de Longueville, de Villequier,
+and de Bourbon. The east wing itself was unroofed on the quadrangle
+side and covered with rotting boarding. Perrault's columns on the
+outer façade were unchannelled, the capitals unfinished, the portal
+unsculptured, and the post-office stabled its horses along the whole
+of the wing from the middle entrance to the north angle. The royal
+apartments of Anne of Austria in the Petite Galerie were used as
+stables; so, too, were the halls where now is housed the collection of
+Renaissance sculpture. The Infanta's garden was a yard where grooms
+exercised their horses; a colony of poor artists and court attendants
+were lodged in the upper floors, and over most of the great halls
+entresols were constructed to increase this kind of accommodation. The
+building was described as a huge caravanserai, where each one lodged
+and worked as he chose, and over which might have been placed the
+legend, "_Ici on loge à pied et à cheval_." Worse still, an army of
+squatters, ne'er-do-wells, bankrupts and defaulting debtors took
+refuge in the wooden sheds left by the contractors, or built others--a
+miserable gangrene of hovels--against the east façade. Perrault's base
+had been concealed by rubbish and apparently forgotten. Stove-pipes
+issued from the broken windows of the upper floors, the beautiful
+stone-work was blackened by smoke, cracked by frost and soiled by
+rusting iron clamps; the quadrangle was a chaos of uncut stone,
+rubbish and filth, in the centre of which, where the king's statue was
+designed to stand, the royal architect had built himself a large
+mansion; a mass of mean houses encumbered the Carrousel, and the
+almost ruined church of St. Nicholas was a haunt of beggars. Such a
+grievous eyesore was the building that the provost in 1751 offered, in
+the name of the citizens, to repair and complete the palace if a part
+were assigned to them as an Hôtel de Ville. In 1754 Madame de
+Pompadour's brother, M. de Marigny, had been appointed Commissioner of
+Works, and Louis was persuaded to authorise the repair and completion
+of the Louvre. Gabriel being made architect set about his work in 1758
+by clearing out the squatters and the accumulated rubbish in the
+quadrangle, and evicting the occupants of the stables. The ruins of
+the Hôtels de Longueville, de Villequier, and de Bourbon were
+demolished and grass plots laid before Perrault's east front, which
+was restored and for the first time made visible. The west front,
+giving on the quadrangle, was then repaired and the third floor nearly
+completed, when funds were exhausted and it was left unroofed. An
+epigram, put into the mouth of the king of Denmark, who visited Paris
+in 1768, tersely describes the condition of the palace at this time:--
+
+ "J'ai vu le Louvre et son enceinte immense,
+ Vaste palais qui depuis deux cent ans,
+ Toujours s'achève et toujours se commence.
+ Deux ouvriers, manoeuvres fainéants,
+ Hâtent très lentement ces riches bâtiments
+ Et sont payés quand on y pense."[155]
+
+[Footnote 155: "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."]
+
+During Louis XVI.'s reign little or nothing was done. Soufflot was
+making feeble efforts to complete Perrault's north front when the
+Revolution came to arrest his work. So lost to reverence and devoid of
+artistic sentiment were the official architects of this period, that a
+sacrilege worse than any wrought by revolutionists was perpetrated at
+the instance of the canons of Notre Dame. Louis XIV. had begun the
+vandalism by demolishing the beautiful old Gothic high altar and
+replacing it by a huge, ponderous anachronism in marble, on whose
+foundation stone, laid in 1699, was placed an inscription to the
+effect that Louis the Great, son of Louis the Just, having subdued
+heresy, established the true religion in his realm and ended wars
+gloriously by land and sea, built the altar to fulfil the vow of his
+father, and dedicated it to the God of Arms and Master of Peace and
+Victory under the invocation of the Holy Virgin, patroness and
+protector of his States. The beautiful fifteenth-century stalls, the
+choir screen, and many of the fine old Gothic tombs of marble and
+bronze in the church, the monuments of six centuries, were destroyed.
+But to the reign of Louis the Well-Beloved was reserved the crowning
+infamy: in 1741 the glorious old stained-glass windows, rivalling
+those of Chartres in richness, were destroyed by Levreil and replaced
+by grisaille with yellow fleur-de-lys ornamentation. Happily the
+destruction of the rose windows was deemed too expensive, and they
+escaped. The famous colossal statue of St. Christopher, the equestrian
+monument of Philip le Bel, and a popular statue of the Virgin, were
+broken down by these clerical iconoclasts. In 1771 the canons
+instructed Soufflot to throw down the pillar of the central porch,
+with its beautiful statue of Christ, to make room for their
+processions to enter. The priceless sculpture of the tympanum was cut
+through to make a loftier and wider entrance, and the whole symmetry
+of the west front was grievously destroyed.[156] This hideous
+architectural deformity remained until a son of the Revolution,
+Viollet le Duc, restored the portal to its original form. After the
+havoc wrought at Notre Dame, Soufflot's energies were diverted to the
+holy mount of St. Genevieve. Louis XV. had attributed his recovery at
+Metz to the intercession of the saint, and in 1754, when the abbot
+complained to the king of the almost ruined condition of the abbey
+church, he found a sympathetic listener. Soufflot and the chapter, who
+shared the prevalent contempt of Gothic, decided to abandon the
+venerable old pile, with its millennial associations of the patron
+saint of Paris, and to build a grand domed classic temple on the abbey
+lands to the west. Funds for the sacred work were raised by levying a
+tax on public lotteries. The old church, with the exception of the
+tower, was finally demolished in 1802, when the rude stone coffin
+which had held the body of St. Genevieve until it was burnt by
+revolutionary fanatics, was transferred to St. Étienne du Mont.
+
+[Footnote 156: 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.]
+
+[Illustration: SOUTH DOOR OF NOTRE DAME.]
+
+On 6th September 1764, the crypt of the new St. Genevieve being
+completed, the Well-Beloved laid the first stone of the church.
+Scarcely was the scaffolding removed after thirteen years of
+constructive labour, and the expenditure of sixteen millions of
+livres, when it became necessary to call in Soufflot's pupil Rondelet,
+to shore up the walls and strengthen the columns which had proved too
+weak to sustain the weight of the huge cupola. But before the temple
+was consecrated, the Revolutionists came, and noting its monumental
+aspect used it with admirable fitness as a Panthéon Français for the
+remains of their heroes; the dome designed to cover the relics of St.
+Genevieve soared over the ashes of Voltaire, Mirabeau, Rousseau and
+Marat. Thrice has this unlucky fane been the prize of Catholic and
+Revolutionary reactionaries. In 1806 Napoleon I. restored it to
+Christian worship; in 1822 the famous inscription--"_Aux grands Hommes
+la Patrie reconnaissante_" was removed by Louis XVIII., and replaced by
+a dedication to God and St. Genevieve; in 1830 Louis Philippe, the
+citizen king, transferred it to secular and monumental uses, and
+restored the former inscription; in 1851 the perjured Prince-President
+Napoleon, while the streets of Paris were yet red with the blood of
+his victims, again surrendered it to the Catholic Church; in 1885 it
+was reconverted to a national Walhalla for the reception of Victor
+Hugo's remains.
+
+The pseudo-classic church of St. Sulpice, begun in 1665 and not
+completed until 1777, is a monument of the degraded taste of this
+unhappy time. At least three architects, Gamart, Levau and the Italian
+Servandoni, are responsible for this monstrous pile, whose towers have
+been aptly compared by Victor Hugo to two huge clarionets. The
+building has, however, a certain _puissante laideur_, as Michelet said
+of Danton, and is imposing from its very mass, but it is dull and
+heavy and devoid of all charm and imagination. Nothing exemplifies
+more strikingly the mutation of taste that has taken place since the
+eighteenth century than the fact that this church is the only one
+mentioned by Gibbon in the portion of his autobiography which refers
+to his first visit to Paris, where it is distinguished as "one of the
+noblest structures in Paris."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+_Louis XVI.--The Great Revolution--Fall of the Monarchy_
+
+
+Crowned vice was now succeeded by crowned folly. The grandson of Louis
+XV., a well-meaning but weak and foolish youth, and his thoughtless,
+pleasure-loving queen, were confronted by state problems that would
+have taxed the genius of a Richelieu in the maturity of his powers.
+Injustice, misery, oppression, discontent, were clamant and almost
+universal; taxes had doubled since the death of Louis XIV.; there were
+30,000 beggars in Paris alone, and from 720,000 in 1700 the population
+had in 1784 decreased to 620,000. The penal code was of inhuman
+ferocity; law was complicated, ruinous and partial, and national
+credit so low that loans could be obtained only against material
+pledges and at interest five times as great as that paid by England.
+Wealthy bishops and abbots[157] and clergy, noblesse and royal
+officials, were wholly exempt from the main incidents of taxation; for
+personal and land taxes, tithes and forced labour, were exacted from
+the common people alone. No liberty of worship, nor of thought:
+Protestants were condemned to the galleys by hundreds; booksellers met
+the same fate. Authors and books were arbitrarily sent by _lettres de
+cachet_ to the Bastille or Vincennes. Yet in spite of all repression,
+a generation of daring, witty, emancipated thinkers in Paris was
+elaborating a weapon of scientific, rationalistic and liberal doctrine
+that cut at the very roots of the old _régime_. "I care not whether a
+man is good or bad," says the Deity in Blake's prophetic books, "all I
+care, is whether he is a wise man or a fool." While France was in
+travail of the palingenesis of the modern world, the futile king was
+trifling with his locks and keys and colouring maps, the queen playing
+at shepherdesses at Trianon or performing before courtiers, officers
+and equerries the _rôles_ of Rosina in the _Barbier de Seville_ and of
+Colette in the _Devin du Village_, the latter composed by the
+democratic philosopher, whose _Contrat Social_ was to prove the Gospel
+of the Revolution.[158] Jean Jacques Rousseau, the solitary,
+self-centred Swiss engraver and musician, has described for us in
+words that will bear translation how an ineffaceable impression of the
+sufferings of the people was burnt into his memory, and the fire of an
+unquenchable hatred of their oppressors was kindled in his breast.
+Journeying on foot between Paris and Lyons, he was one day diverted
+from his path by the beauty of the landscape, and wandered about,
+seeking in vain to discover his way. "At length," he writes, "weary,
+and dying of thirst and hunger, I entered a peasant's house, not a
+very attractive one, but the only one I could see. I imagined that
+here as in Switzerland every inhabitant of easy means would be able to
+offer hospitality. I entered and begged that I might have dinner by
+paying for it. The peasant handed me some skim milk and coarse barley
+bread, saying that was all he had. The milk seemed delicious and I ate
+the bread, straw and all, but it was not very satisfying to one
+exhausted by fatigue. The man scrutinised me and judged by my
+appetite the truth of the story I had told. Suddenly, after saying
+that he perceived I was a good, honest youth and not there to spy upon
+him, he opened a trap door, descended and returned speedily with some
+good wheaten bread, a ham appetising but rather high, and a bottle of
+wine which rejoiced my heart more than all the rest. He added a good
+thick omelette and I enjoyed a dinner such as those alone who travel
+on foot can know. When it came to paying, his anxiety and fears again
+seized him; he would have none of my money and pushed it aside,
+exceedingly troubled, nor could I imagine what he was afraid of. At
+last he uttered with a shudder the terrible words, _commis, rats de
+cave_" ("assessors, cellar rats"). He made me understand that he hid
+the wine because of the _aides_,[159] and the bread because of the
+_tailles_,[160] and that he would be a ruined man if it were supposed
+that he was not dying of hunger. That man, although fairly well-off,
+dared not eat the bread earned by the sweat of his brow, and could
+only escape ruin by pretending to be as miserable as those he saw
+around him. I issued forth from that house indignant as well as
+affected, deploring the lot of that fair land where nature had
+lavished all her gifts only to become the spoil of barbarous
+tax-farmers (_publicans_)." And Voltaire, that implacable avenger of
+injustice, in verse that rends the heart, has in _les Finances_,
+(1775), pictured a peaceful home ruined; its inmates evicted to
+misery, to the galleys and to death, by the cruel exactions of the
+royal director of the _aides_ and _gabelles_, with his _sergents de la
+finance habillés en guerriers_. The elder Mirabeau too has told how he
+saw a bailiff cut off the hand of a peasant woman who had clung to her
+kitchen utensils when distraint was made on her poor possessions for
+dues exacted by the tax-farmers. In 1776 two poor starving wretches
+were hanged on the gallows of the Place de Grève at Paris for having
+stolen some bread from a baker's shop.
+
+[Footnote 157: Taine estimates the revenues of thirty-three abbots in
+terms of modern values at from 140,000 to 480,000 francs (£5,600 to
+£19,200). Twenty-seven abbesses enjoyed revenues nearly as large.]
+
+[Footnote 158: The score of Rousseau's opera is still preserved in the
+Bibliothèque Nationale.]
+
+[Footnote 159: The Excise duty.]
+
+[Footnote 160: Personal and land-taxes paid by the humbler classes
+alone.]
+
+ "But though the gods see clearly, they are slow
+ In marking when a man, despising them,
+ Turns from their worship to the scorn of fools."
+
+Half a century had elapsed since that meal in the peasant's house when
+the Nemesis that holds sleepless vigil over the affairs of men stirred
+her pinions and, like a strong angel with glittering sword, prepared
+to avenge the wrongs of a people whose rulers had outraged every law,
+human and divine, by which human society is held together. King,
+nobles, and prelates had a supreme and an awful choice. They might
+have led and controlled the Revolution; they chose to oppose it, and
+were broken into shivers as a potter's vessel.
+
+After the memorable cannonade at Valmy, a knot of defeated German
+officers gathered in rain and wind moodily around the circle where
+they durst not kindle the usual camp-fire. In the morning the army had
+talked of nothing but spitting and devouring the whole French nation:
+in the evening everyone went about alone; nobody looked at his
+neighbour, or if he did, it was but to curse and swear. "At last,"
+says Goethe, "I was called upon to speak, for I had been wont to
+enliven and amuse the troop with short sayings. This time I said,
+'From this day forth, and from this place, a new era begins in the
+history of the world and you can all say that you were present at its
+birth.'" This is not the place to write the story of the French
+Revolution. Those who would read the tremendous drama may be referred
+to the pages of Carlyle. As a formal history, that work of
+transcendent genius is open to criticism, especially on the score of
+accuracy in detail. Indeed to the present writer the magnificent and
+solemn prosody seems to partake of the nature of a Greek chorus--the
+comment of an idealised spectator, assuming that the hearer has the
+drama unfolding before his eyes. Recent researches have supplemented
+and modified our knowledge. It is no longer possible to accept the
+more revolting representations of the misery[161] of the French
+peasantry as true of the whole of France, for France before the
+Revolution was an assemblage of many provinces of varying social
+conditions, subjected to varying administrative laws. Nor can we
+accept Carlyle's portraiture of Robespierre as history, after Louis
+Blanc's great work. So far from Robespierre having been the
+bloodthirsty protagonist of the later Terror, it was precisely his
+determination to make an end of the more savage excesses of the
+extreme Terrorists and to chastise their more furious pro-consuls,
+such as Carrier and Fouché, that brought about his ruin. It was men
+like Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varenne and Barrère, the bloodiest of
+the Terrorists, who, to save their own heads, united to cast the odium
+of the later excesses on Robespierre, and to overthrow him.[162] The
+Thermidorians had no intention of staying the Terror and the actual
+consequences of their success were wholly unexpected by them. But
+whatever defects there be in Carlyle, his readers will at least
+understand the significance of the Revolution, and why it is that the
+terrible, but temporary excesses which stained its progress have been
+so unduly magnified by reactionary politicians, while the cruelties of
+the White Terror[163] are passed by.
+
+[Footnote 161: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 162: See also Bodley's _France_, where the author favours
+the view that Robespierre was not a democrat with a thirst for blood,
+but rather a man of government, destroyed as a reactionary by
+surviving Revolutionists who saw their end coming.]
+
+[Footnote 163: 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.]
+
+Camille Desmoulins has described in his Memoirs how on 11th July he
+was lifted on the famous table, known as the tripod of the Revolution,
+in front of the Café Foy, in the garden of the Palais Royal, and
+delivered that short but pregnant oration which preceded the capture
+of the Bastille on the 14th, warning the people that a St. Bartholomew
+of patriots was contemplated, and that the Swiss and German troops in
+the Champ de Mars were ready for the butchery. As the crowd rushed to
+the Hôtel de Ville, shouting "To arms!" they were charged by the
+Prince de Lambesc at the head of a German regiment, and the first
+blood of the Revolution in Paris was shed.
+
+The Bastille, like the monarchy, was the victim of its past sins. That
+grisly fortress, long useless as a defence of Paris, with the jaws of
+its rusty cannon opening on the most populous quarter of the city to
+overawe sedition, and its sinister memories of the Man in the Iron
+Mask,[164] symbolised in the popular mind all that was hateful in the
+old _régime_, though it had long ceased to be more than occasionally
+used as a state prison. If we would restore its aspect we must imagine
+the houses at the ends of the Rue St. Antoine and the Boulevard Henri
+IV. away and the huge mass erect on their site and on the lines
+marked in white stone on the present Place de la Bastille. A great
+portal, always open by day, yawned on the Rue St. Antoine opposite the
+Rue des Tournelles and gave access to the first quadrangle which was
+lined with shops and the houses of the _personnel_ of the prison: then
+came a second gate, with entrances for carriages and for foot
+passengers, each with its drawbridge. Beyond these a second quadrangle
+was entered, to the right of which stood the Governor's house and an
+armoury. Another double portal to the left gave entrance across the
+old fosse once fed by the waters of the Seine, to the prison fortress
+itself, with its eight tall blackened towers, each divided into five
+floors, and its crenelated ramparts.
+
+[Footnote 164: 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.]
+
+The Bastille, which in the time of the English rule, had seen as its
+captains the Duke of Exeter, Falstaff, and invincible Talbot, was
+first used in Richelieu's time as a permanent state prison, and filled
+under Louis XIV. with Jansenists and Protestants, who were thus
+separated from the prisoners of the common jails; and, later, under
+Louis XV. by a whole population of obnoxious pamphleteers and
+champions of philosophy. Books as well as their authors were
+incarcerated, and released when considered no longer dangerous; the
+tomes of famous _Encyclopédie_ spent some years there. From the middle
+of the eighteenth century the horrible, dark and damp dungeons, half
+underground and sometimes flooded, formerly inhabited by the lowest
+type of criminals, were reserved as temporary cells for insubordinate
+prisoners, and since the accession of Louis XIV. they were no more
+used. The Bastille during the reigns of the three later Louis was the
+most comfortable prison in Paris, and detention there rather than in
+the other prisons was often sought for and granted as a favour; the
+prisoners might furnish their rooms, and have their own libraries and
+food. In the middle of the seventeenth century, certain rooms were
+furnished at the king's expense for those who were without means. The
+rooms were warmed, the prisoners well fed, and sums varying from three
+to thirty-five francs per day, according to condition,[165] were
+allotted for their maintenance. A considerable amount of personal
+liberty was allowed to many and indemnities were in later years paid
+to those who had been unjustly detained. But a prison where men are
+confined indefinitely without trial and at a king's arbitrary pleasure
+is none the less intolerable, however its horrors be mitigated.
+Prisoners were sometimes forgotten, and letters are extant from
+Louvois and other ministers, asking the governor to report how many
+years certain prisoners had been detained, and if he remembered what
+they were charged with. In Louis XIV.'s reign 2228 persons were
+incarcerated there; in Louis XV.'s, 2567. From the accession of Louis
+XVI. to the destruction of the prison the number had fallen to 289.
+Seven were found there when the fortress was captured, the remainder
+having been transferred to Vincennes and other prisons by the governor
+who had some fears of treachery within but none of danger from
+without. Four were accused of forgery, two insane; one, the Count of
+Solages, accused of a monstrous crime, was detained there to spare the
+feelings of his family. So unexpected was the attack, that although
+well furnished with means of defence, the governor had less than
+twenty-four hours' provisions in hand when the assault began.
+
+[Footnote 165: Only five francs were allowed for a bourgeois; a man of
+letters was granted ten; a Marshal of France obtained the maximum.]
+
+The Bastille, some time before its fall, was already under sentence of
+demolition, and various schemes for its disposal were before the
+court. One project was to destroy seven of the towers, leaving the
+eighth standing in a dilapidated state. On the site of the seven, a
+pedestal formed of chains and bolts from the dungeons and gates was to
+bear a statue of Louis XVI. in the attitude of a liberator, pointing
+with outstretched hand towards the remaining tower in ruins. But Louis
+XVI. was always too late, and the Place de la Bastille, with its
+column raised to those who fell in the Revolution of July, 1830, now
+recalls the second and final triumph of the people over the Bourbon
+kings. Some stones of the Bastille were, however, "in order that they
+might be trodden under foot by the people for ever," built into the
+new Pont Louis Seize, subsequently called Pont de la Révolution and
+now known as Pont de la Concorde; others were sold to speculators and
+were retailed at prices so high that people complained that Bastille
+stones were as dear as the best butcher's meat. Models of the
+Bastille, dominoes, inkstands, boxes and toys of all kinds were made
+of the material and had a ready sale all over France.
+
+Far to the west and on the opposite side of the Seine is the immense
+area of the Champ de Mars, where, on the anniversary of the fall of
+the Bastille, was enacted the fairest scene of the Revolution. The
+whole population of Paris, with their marvellous instinct of order and
+co-operation, spontaneously set to work to dig the vast amphitheatre
+which was to accommodate the 100,000 representatives of France, and
+400,000 spectators, all united in an outburst of fraternal love and
+hope to swear allegiance to the new Constitution before the altar of
+the Fatherland. The king had not yet lost the affection of his people.
+As he came to view the marvellous scene an improvised bodyguard of
+excavators, bearing spades, escorted him about. When he was swearing
+the oath to the Constitution, the queen, standing on a balcony of the
+_École militaire_, lifted up the dauphin as if to associate him in his
+father's pledge. Suddenly the rain which had marred the great festival
+ceased, the sun burst forth and flooded in a splendour of light, the
+altar, Bishop Talleyrand, his four hundred clergy, and the king with
+upraised hand. The solemn music of the _Te Deum_ mingled with the wild
+pæan of joy and enthusiasm that burst from half a million throats.
+
+The unconscionable folly, the feeble-minded vacillation and miserable
+trickery by which this magnificent popularity was muddled away is one
+of the saddest tragedies in the stories of kings. It is clear from Sir
+S. Romilly's letters that after the acceptance of the Constitution,
+Louis was popular among all classes. But the people, with unerring
+instinct, had fixed on the queen as one of the chief obstacles to what
+might have been a peaceful revolution. Neither Marie Antoinette nor
+Louis Capet comprehended the tremendous significance of the forces
+they were playing with--the resolute and invincible determination of a
+people of twenty-six millions to emancipate itself from the
+accumulated wrongs of centuries. "_Eh bien! factieux_," said Marie to
+the Commissioners from the Assembly after the return from Varennes,
+"_vous triomphez encore!_" The despatches and opinions of American
+ambassadors during this period are of much value. The democratic
+Thomas Jefferson, reviewing in later years the course of events,
+declared that had there been no queen there would have been no
+revolution. Governor Morris, whose anti-revolutionary and conservative
+leanings made him the friend and confidant of the royal family, writes
+to Washington on January 1790: "If only the reigning prince were not
+the small-beer character he is, and even only tolerably watchful of
+events, he would regain his authority," but "what would you have," he
+continues scornfully "from a creature who, in his situation, eats,
+drinks, and sleeps well, and laughs, and is as merry a grig as lives.
+He must float along on the current of events and is absolutely a
+cypher." Nor would the court forego its crooked ways. "The queen is
+even more imprudent," Morris writes in 1791, "and the whole court is
+given up to petty intrigues worthy only of footmen and chambermaids."
+Moreover, in its amazing ineptitude, the monarchy had already toyed
+with republicanism by lending active military support to the
+revolutionists in America, at a cost to the already over-burdened
+treasury of 1,200,000,000 livres.
+
+The American ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, was crowned at court with
+laurel as the apostle of liberty, and in the very palace of
+Versailles, medallions of Franklin were sold, bearing the inscription:
+"_Eripui coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis_" ("I have snatched the
+lightning from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants"). The
+revolutionary song, _Ça ira_, owes its origin to Franklin's invariable
+response to inquiries as to the progress of the American revolutionary
+movement.[166] There was explosive material enough in France to make
+playing with celestial fire perilous, and while the political
+atmosphere was heavy with the threatening storm, thousands of French
+soldiers returned saturated with enthusiasm and sympathy for the
+American revolution. Already before the Feast of the Federation the
+queen had been in secret correspondence with the _émigrés_ at Turin
+and at Coblenz who were conspiring to throttle the nascent liberty of
+France. Madame Campan relates that the queen made her read a
+confidential letter from the Empress Catherine of Russia, concluding
+with these words: "Kings ought to proceed in their career undisturbed
+by the cries of the people as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by
+the howling of dogs." Mirabeau was already in the pay of the monarchy;
+and attempts were made to buy over Robespierre, who up to 10th August
+was an avowed defender of the Constitution, by an offer of the
+emoluments and the nominal post of tutor to the dauphin in return for
+his support of the royal cause.
+
+[Footnote 166: When Sir S. Romilly called on Franklin in 1783, the
+latter expressed his amazement that the French Government had
+permitted the publication of the American Constitution, which produced
+a great impression in Paris. The music of _Ça ira_, taken from a dance
+tune, _Le Carillon National_, very popular in the _guinguettes_ of
+Paris, has been published in the _Révolution Française_ for 16th
+December 1898.]
+
+As early as December 1790 the court had been in secret communication
+with the foreigner. Louis' brother, the Count of Artois (afterwards
+Charles X.), with the queen's and king's approval, had made a secret
+treaty with the House of Hapsburg, the hereditary enemy of France, by
+which the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia and Spain agreed to cross the
+frontier at a given signal, and close on France with an army a hundred
+thousand strong. It was an act of impious treachery, and the beginning
+of the doom of the French Monarchy. Yet if but some glimmer of
+intelligence and courage had characterised the preparations for the
+flight of the royal family to join the armed forces waiting to receive
+them near the frontier, their lives at least had been saved.
+
+The incidents of the four months' "secret" preparations to leave the
+Tuileries as described by Madame Campan--the disguised purchases of
+elaborate wardrobes of underlinen and gowns; the making of a
+dressing-case of enormous size, fitted with many and various articles
+from a warming-pan to a silver porringer; the packing of the
+diamonds--read like scenes in a comedy. The story of the pretended
+flight of the Russian baroness and her family; the start delayed by
+the queen losing her way in the slums of the Carrousel; the colossal
+folly of the whole business has been told by Carlyle in one of the
+most dramatic chapters in history.
+
+The Assembly declared on hearing of Louis' flight, that the government
+of the country was unaffected and that the executive power remained in
+the hands of the ministers. After voting a levy of three hundred
+thousand National Guards to meet the threatened invasion, they passed
+calmly to the discussion of the new Penal Code.
+
+The king returned to Paris through an immense and silent multitude.
+"Whoever applauds the king," said placards in the street, "shall be
+thrashed; whoever insults him, hung." The idea of a republic as a
+practical issue of the situation was now for the first time put
+forward by the extremists, but met with little sympathy, and a
+Republican demonstration in the Champ de Mars was suppressed by the
+Assembly by martial law at the cost of many lives. Owing to the
+aversion felt by Marie Antoinette to Lafayette, who with affectionate
+loyalty more than once had risked his popularity and life to serve the
+crown, the court made the fatal mistake of opposing his election to
+the mayoralty of Paris and paved the way for the triumph of Pétion and
+of the Dantonists.
+
+At the news of the first victories of the invading Prussians and
+_émigrés_, Louis added to his amazing tale of follies by vetoing the
+formation of a camp near Paris and by turning a deaf ear to the
+earnest entreaties of the brave and sagacious Dumouriez and accepting
+his resignation. He sent a secret agent with confidential instructions
+to the _émigrés_ and the coalesced foreign armies: the ill-starred
+proclamation[167] of the Duke of Brunswick completed the destruction
+of the monarchy. While the French were smarting under defeat and stung
+by the knowledge that their natural defender, the king, was leagued
+with their enemies, this foreign soldier warned a high-spirited and
+gallant nation that he was come to restore Louis XVI. to his
+authority, and threatened to treat as rebellious any town that opposed
+his march, to shoot all persons taken with arms in their hands, and in
+the event of any insult being offered to the royal family to take
+exemplary and memorable vengeance by delivering up the city of Paris
+to military execution and complete demolition. When the proclamation
+reached Paris at the end of July 1792, it sounded the death knell of
+the king and the triumph of the Republicans. Paris was now to become,
+in Goethe's phrase, the centre of the "world whirlwind"--a storm
+centre launching forth thunderbolts of terror. After the Assembly had
+twice refused to bring the king to trial, the extremists were able to
+organise and direct an irresistible wave of popular indignation
+towards the Tuileries, and on 10th August the palace was stormed.
+While a band of brave and devoted Swiss guards was being cut to pieces
+in hundreds, the feeble and futile king had fled to the Assembly and
+was sitting safely with his wife and children in a box behind the
+president's chair.
+
+[Footnote 167: 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.]
+
+No room for compromise now. The printed trial of Charles I. was
+everywhere sold and read. "This," people said, "was how the English
+dealt with an impossible king and became a free nation." Old and new
+were in death-grapple, and the lives of many victims, for the people
+lost heavily,[168] had sealed the cause of the Revolution with a
+bloody consecration. Unhappily, the city of Paris, like all great
+towns in times of scarcity (and since 1780 scarcity had become almost
+permanent), had been invaded by numbers of starving vagabonds--the
+dregs that always rise to the surface in periods of political
+convulsion, ready for any villainy. When news came of the capture of
+Verdun, of the indecent joy of the courtiers, and that the road to
+Paris was open to the avenging army of Prussians, the horrors of the
+Armagnac massacres were renewed during four September days at the
+prisons of Paris, while the revolutionary ministry and the Assembly
+averted their gaze and, to their everlasting shame, abdicated their
+powers. The September massacres were the application by a minority of
+desperate and savage revolutionists of the _ultima ratio_ of kings to
+a desperate situation: the tragedy of King Louis is the tragedy of a
+feeble prince called to rule in a tremendous crisis, where weakness
+and well-meaning folly are the fatalest of crimes.
+
+[Footnote 168: The numbers have been variously estimated from 100 to
+5000 killed on the popular side.]
+
+On 21st September 1792 royalty was formally abolished, and on the
+22nd, when "the equinoctional sun marked the equality of day and night
+in the heavens," civil equality was proclaimed at Paris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+_Execution of the King--Paris under the First Republic--the
+Terror--Napoleon--Revolutionary and Modern Paris_
+
+
+An inscription opposite No. 230 Rue de Rivoli indicates the site of
+the old Salle du Manége, or Riding School,[169] of the Tuileries,
+where the destinies of modern France were debated. Three
+Assemblies--the Constituent, the Legislative and the prodigious
+National Convention--filled its long, poorly-furnished amphitheatre,
+decorated with the tattered flags captured from the Prussians and
+Austrians, from 7th November 1789 to 9th May 1793.
+
+[Footnote 169: The Académie d'Équitation was an expensive and
+exclusive establishment where the young nobles and gentlemen of
+fortune were taught fencing, riding and dancing. It was long and
+narrow, 240 feet by 60, and only the most powerful voices could be
+heard in the Assembly. The Rue de Rivoli between the Rues d'Alger and
+de Castiglione cuts through the site.]
+
+There, on Wednesday, 16th January 1793, began the solemn judgment of
+Louis XVI. by 721 representatives of the people of France. The sitting
+opened at ten o'clock in the morning, but not till eight in the
+evening did the procession of deputies begin, as the roll was called,
+to ascend the tribune, and utter their word of doom. All that long
+winter's night, and all the ensuing short winter's day, the fate of a
+king trembled in the balance, as the judgment: death--banishment:
+banishment--death, with awful alternation echoed through the hall.
+Amid the speeches of the deputies was heard the chatter of fashionable
+women in the boxes, pricking with pins on cards the votes for and
+against death, and eating ices and oranges brought to them by friendly
+deputies. Above, in the public tribunes, sat women of the people,
+greeting the words of the deputies with coarse gibes. Betting went on
+outside. At every entrance, cries, hoarse and shrill, were heard of
+hawkers selling "The Trial of Charles I." Time-serving Philip Egalité,
+Duke of Orleans, voted _la mort_, but failed to save his skin. An
+Englishman was there--Thomas Paine, author of the _Rights of Man_ and
+deputy for Calais. His voice was raised for clemency, for temporary
+detention, and banishment after the peace. "My vote is that of Paine,"
+cried a member, "his authority is final for me." One deputy was
+carried from a sick-bed to cast his vote in the scale of mercy; others
+slumbering on the benches were awakened and gave their votes of death
+between two yawns. At length, by eight o'clock on the evening of the
+17th, exactly twenty-four hours after the voting began, the President
+rose to read the result. A most august and terrible silence reigned in
+the Assembly as President Vergniaud rose and pronounced the sentence
+"Death" in the name of the French nation. The details of the voting as
+given in the _Journal de Perlet_, 18th January 1793, are as follows:
+"Of the 745 members one had died, six were sick, two absent without
+cause, eleven absent on commission, four abstained from voting. The
+absolute majority was therefore 361. Three hundred and sixty-six voted
+for death, three hundred and nineteen for detention and banishment,
+two for the galleys, twenty-four for death with various reservations,
+eight for death with stay of execution until after the peace, two for
+delay with power of commutation." Three Protestant ministers and
+eighteen Catholic priests voted for death. Louis' defenders were there
+and asked to be heard; they were admitted to the honours of the
+sitting. At eleven o'clock the weary business of thirty-seven hours
+was ended, only, however, to be resumed the next morning, for yet
+another vote must decide between delay or summary execution. Again the
+voice of Paine was heard pleading for mercy, but without avail. At
+three o'clock on Sunday morning the final voting was over. Six hundred
+and ninety members were present, of whom three hundred and eighty
+voted for death within twenty-four hours.
+
+To the guillotine on the fatal Place de la Révolution, formerly Place
+Louis XV., the very scene of a terrible panic at his wedding
+festivities which cost the lives of hundreds of sightseers, the
+sixteenth Louis of France was led on the morning of 21st January 1793.
+As he turned to address the people, Santerre ordered the drums to
+beat--it was the echo of the drums reverberating through history which
+had smothered the cries of the Protestant martyrs sent to the scaffold
+by the fourteenth Louis a century before. This was the beginning of
+that _année terrible_, into which was crowded the most stupendous
+struggle in modern history. Threatened by the monarchies of Europe,
+united to crush the Revolution, France, in the tremendous words of
+Danton, flung to the coalesced kings, the head of a king as a gage of
+battle. A colossal energy, an unquenchable devotion were evoked by the
+supreme crisis, and directed by a committee of nine inexperienced
+young civilians, sitting in a room of the Tuileries at Paris, to whom
+later Carnot, an engineer officer, was added. "The whole Republic,"
+they proclaimed, "is a great besieged city: let France be a vast camp.
+Every age is called to defend the liberty of the Fatherland. The
+young men will fight: the married will forge arms. Women will make
+clothes and tents: children will tear old linen for lint. Old men
+shall be carried to the market-place to inflame the courage of all."
+In twenty-four hours, 60,000 men were enrolled; in two months,
+fourteen armies organised. Saltpetre for powder failed; it was torn
+from the bowels of the earth. Steel, too, and bronze were lacking:
+iron railings were transmuted into swords, and church bells and royal
+statues into cannon. Paris became a vast armourer's shop. Smithy fires
+in hundreds roared and anvils clanged in the open places--one hundred
+and forty at the Invalides, fifty-four at the Luxembourg. The women
+sang as they worked:--
+
+ "Cousons, filons, cousons bien,
+ V'là des habits de notre fabrique
+ Pour l'hiver qui vient.
+ Soldats de la Patrie
+ Vous ne manquerez de rien."[170]
+
+[Footnote 170: "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."]
+
+The smiths chanted to the rhythm of their strokes:--
+
+ "Forgeons, forgeons, forgeons bien!"
+
+On the new standards waving in the breeze ran the legend: "The French
+people risen against Tyrants." Toulon was in the hands of the English;
+Lyons in revolt. With enemies in her camp, with one arm tied by the
+insurrection in La Vendée, the Revolution hurled her ragged and
+despised _sans-culottes_,[171] against her enemies. How vain is the
+wisdom of the great! Burke thought that the Revolution had expunged
+France in a political sense out of the system of Europe, and his
+opinion was shared by every European statesman; but before the year
+closed, the proud and magnificently accoutred armies of kings were
+scattered over the borders, civil war was crushed, the Revolution
+triumphant. Soon the "dwarfish, ragged _sans-culottes_, the small
+black-looking Marseillaises dressed in rags of every colour," whom
+Goethe saw tramping out of Mayence "as if the goblin king had opened
+his mountains and sent forth his lively host of dwarfs," had forced
+Prussia, the arch-champion of monarchy, to make peace and leave its
+Rhine provinces in the hands of regicides. Meanwhile terror reigned in
+Paris. In the frenzy of mortal strife the Revolution struck out
+blindly and cut down friend as well as foe; the innocent with the
+guilty. At least the guillotine fell swiftly and mercifully. Gone were
+the days of the wheel, the rack, the boiling lead and the stake. Under
+the _ancien régime_ the torture of _accused_ persons was one of the
+sights shown to foreigners in Paris. Evelyn, when visiting the city in
+1651, was taken to see the torture of an _alleged_ thief in the
+Châtelet, who was "wracked in an extraordinary manner, so that they
+severed the fellow's joints in miserable sort." Failing to extort a
+confession, "they increased the extension and torture, and then
+placing a horne in his mouth, such as they drench horses with, poured
+two buckets of water down, so that it prodigiously swelled him." There
+was another "malefactor" to be dealt with, but the traveller had seen
+enough, and he leaves, reflecting that it represented to him "the
+intolerable sufferings which our Blessed Saviour must needs undergo
+when His body was hanging with all its weight upon the nailes of the
+Crosse."
+
+[Footnote 171: The term implied rather an excess than a defect of
+nether garment and was applied in scorn by the fashionable wearers of
+_culottes_ to the plebeian wearers of trousers.]
+
+Too much prominence has been given by historians to the dramatic and
+violent activities of the men of '93 to the exclusion of acts of
+peaceful and constructive statesmanship. The 11,210 decrees issued by
+the National Convention in Paris from September '92 to October '95,
+included a comprehensive and admirable scheme for national education,
+with provision for free meals in elementary schools and the moral and
+physical training of the young. It fulminated against the degradation
+of public monuments, ordered an inventory to be made of all
+collections of works of art, and decided that the Republic be charged
+with the maintenance of artists sent to Rome.
+
+It decreed the adoption, began the discussion, and voted the most
+important articles of the civil code. It inaugurated the telegraph and
+the decimal system, established the uniformity of weights and
+measures, the bureau of longitudes, reformed the calendar, instituted
+the Grand Livre, increased and completed the Museum of Natural
+History, opened the Museum of the Louvre, created the Conservatoire of
+the Arts and Crafts, the Conservatoire of Music, the Polytechnic
+School and the Institute.
+
+The Convention abolished negro slavery in the French colonies, and
+Wilberforce reminded a hostile House of Commons that infidel and
+anarchic France had given example to Christian England in the work of
+emancipation. In 1793 it was reported that the aged Goldoni had been
+in receipt of a pension from the _ancien régime_ and was now dependent
+on the slender resources of a compassionate nephew: the Convention at
+once decreed as an act of justice and beneficence that the pension of
+4000 livres should be renewed, and all arrears paid up. This is but
+one of many acts of grace and succour among its records.
+
+The closing months of '95 were sped with those whiffs of grape-shot
+from the Pont Royal and the Rue St. Honoré, that shattered the last
+attempt, this time by the Royalists, at government by insurrection.
+The Convention closed its stupendous career, and five Directors of
+the Republic met in a room furnished with an old table, a sheet of
+paper and an ink-bottle, and set about organising France for a normal
+and progressive national life. But Europe had by her fatuous
+interference with the internal affairs of France sown dragons' teeth
+indeed and a nation of armed men had sprung forth, nursing hatred of
+monarchy and habituated to victory. "_Eh, bien, mes enfants_," cried a
+French general before an engagement when provisions were wanting to
+afford a meal for his troops, "we will breakfast after the victory."
+But militarism invariably ends in autocracy. The author of those
+whiffs of grape-shot was appointed in 1796 Commander-in-Chief of the
+army of Italy, and a new and sinister complexion was given to the
+policy of the Republic. "Soldiers," cries Napoleon, "you are
+half-starved and almost naked; the Government owes you much but can do
+nothing for you. Your patience, your courage do you honour, but win
+for you neither glory nor profit. I am about to lead you into the most
+fertile plains of the world; you will find there great cities and rich
+provinces; there you will reap honour, glory and riches. Soldiers of
+Italy, will you lack courage?" This frank appeal to the baser motives
+that sway men's minds, this open avowal of a personal ambition, was
+the beginning of the end of Jacobinism in France. Soon the wealth of
+Italy streamed into the bare coffers of the Directory at
+Paris:--20,000,000 of francs from Lombardy, 12,000,000 from Parma and
+Modena, 35,000,000 from the Papal States, an equally large sum from
+Tuscany; one hundred finest horses of Lombardy to the five Directors,
+"to replace the sorry nags that now draw your carriages"; convoys of
+priceless manuscripts and sculpture and pictures to adorn Parisian
+galleries. So persistent were these raids on the collections of art in
+Italy that Napoleon is known there to this day as _il gran ladrone_
+and the chief duty of the new French officials in Italy, said Lucien
+Bonaparte, was to supervise the packing of pictures and statues for
+Paris. No less than 5233 of these works of art were confiscated by the
+Allies in 1815, and returned to their former owners.
+
+In less than a decade the rusty old stage properties and the baubles
+of monarchy were furbished anew, sacred oil from the little phial of
+Rheims anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed
+the diadem with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican
+patriot crowned himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old
+pomposities of a court came strutting back to their places:--Arch
+Chancellors, Grand Electors, Constables, Grand Almoners, Grand
+Chamberlains, Grand Marshals of the Palace, Masters of the Horse,
+Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mère and a bevy of Imperial Highnesses
+with their ladies-in-waiting. One thing only was wanting, as a Jacobin
+bitterly remarked--the million of men who were slain to end all that
+mummery. The fascinating story of how this amazing transformation was
+effected cannot be told here. The magician who wrought it was
+possessed of a soaring imagination, of a mental instrument of
+incomparable force and efficiency, of an iron will, a prodigious
+intellectual activity, and a piercing insight into the conditions of
+material success, rarely, if ever before, united in the same degree in
+one man. Napoleon Bonaparte was of ancient, patrician Florentine
+blood, and perchance the descendant of one of those of Fiesole--
+
+ "In cui riviva la sementa santa
+ Di quei Romani che vi rimaser quando
+ Fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta."[172]
+
+He cherished a particular affection for Italy, and, so far as his
+personal aims allowed, treated her generously. His descent into
+Lombardy awakened the slumbering sense of Italian nationality. In more
+senses than one, says Mr. Bolton King the historian of Italian unity,
+Napoleon was the founder of modern Italy.
+
+[Footnote 172: _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."]
+
+The reason of Napoleon's success in France is not far to seek. Two
+streams of effort are clearly traceable through the Revolution. The
+earlier thinkers, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot
+and the Encyclopedists, whose admiration for England was unbounded,
+aimed at reforming the rotten state of France on the basis of the
+English parliamentary and monarchical system: it was a middle-class
+movement for the assertion of its interests in the state and for
+political freedom. The aim of the Jacobin minority, inspired by the
+doctrines of the _Contrat Social_ of Rousseau, was to found a
+democratic state based on the principle of the sovereignty of the
+people. If the French crown and the monarchies of Europe had allowed
+the peaceful evolution of national tendencies, the Constitutional
+reformers would have triumphed, but in their folly they tried to sweep
+back the tide, with the result we have seen. For when everything is
+put to the touch, when victory is the price of self-sacrifice, it is
+the idealist who comes to the front, and as the nineteenth-century
+prophet Mazzini taught, men will lay down their lives for principles
+but not for interests.
+
+Let us not forget that it was the Jacobin minority who in the heat and
+glow of their convictions saved the people of France. Led astray by
+their old guides, abandoned in a dark and trackless waste, their heads
+girt with horror, menaced by destruction on every side, the people
+groped, wandering hither and thither seeking an outlet in vain. At
+length a voice was heard, confidant, thrilling as a trumpet call; "Lo
+this is the way! follow, and ye shall emerge and conquer!" It may not
+have been the best way, but it was _a_ way and they followed.
+
+It is easy enough to pour scorn on the _Contrat Social_ as a political
+philosophy, but an ideal, a faith, a dogma are necessary to evoke
+enthusiasm, the contempt of material things and of death itself. These
+the _Contrat Social_ gave. It defined with absolute precision the
+principles latent in the movement of reform that broke up mediævalism.
+Does power descend from God, its primeval source; or does it ascend,
+delegated from the people? Once stated, the French mind with its
+intense lucidity and logicality saw the line of cleavage between old
+and new--divine right: or sovereignty of the people--and bade all men
+choose where they would stand. The _Contrat Social_ with its consuming
+passion for social justice, its ideal of a state founded on the
+sovereignty of the people, became the gospel of the time. Men and
+women conned its pages by heart and slept with the book under their
+pillows. Napoleon himself in his early Jacobin days was saturated with
+its doctrines, and in later times astutely used its phrases as
+shibboleths to cloak his acts of despotism. But in that terrible
+revolutionary decade the Jacobins had spent their lives and their
+energies. A profound weariness of the long and severe tension, and a
+yearning for a return to orderly civil life came over men's minds. The
+masses were still sincerely attached to the Catholic faith: the
+middle-classes hailed with relief the advent of the strong man who
+proved himself able to crush faction; the peasants were won by a
+champion of the Revolution who made impossible the return of the
+_aides_, the _tailles_, the _gabelles_, and all the iniquitous
+oppressions of the _ancien régime_ and guaranteed them the possession
+of the confiscated _émigré_ and ecclesiastical lands; the army
+idolised the great captain who promised them glory and profit; the
+Church rallied to an autocrat who restored the hierarchy. Moreover,
+the brilliancy of Napoleon's military genius was balanced by an
+all-embracing political sagacity. The chief administrative decrees of
+the Convention, especially those relating to education and the civil
+and penal codes, were welded into form by ceaseless energy. Everything
+he touched was indeed degraded from the Republican ideal, but he drove
+things through, imposed his own superhuman activity into his
+subordinates, and became one of the chief builders of modern France.
+"The gigantic entered into our very habits of thought," said one of
+his ministers. But his efforts to maintain the stupendous twenty
+years' duel with the combined forces of England and the continental
+monarchies, and his own overweening ambition, broke him at length, and
+he fell, to fret away his life caged in a lonely island in
+mid-Atlantic.
+
+The new ideas were none the less revolutionary of social life. The
+salon, that eminently French institution, soon felt their power. The
+charming irresponsible gaiety and frivolity of the old _régime_ gave
+place to more serious preoccupation with political movements. The
+fusing power of Rousseau's genius had melted all hearts; the solvent
+wit of Voltaire and the precise science of the Encyclopedists were a
+potent force even among the courtiers themselves. The centre of social
+life shifted from Versailles to Paris and the salons gained what the
+court lost. Fine ladies had the latest pamphlet of Siéyès read to them
+at their toilette, and maids caught up the new phrases from their
+mistresses' lips. Did a young gallant enter a salon excusing himself
+for being late by saying, "I have just been proposing a motion at the
+club," every fair eye sparkled with interest. A deputy was a social
+lion, and a box for the National Assembly exchanged for one at the
+opera at a premium of six livres. Speeches were rehearsed at the
+salons and action determined. Chief of the hostesses was Madame[173]
+Necker: at her crowded receptions might be seen Abbé Siéyès, the
+architect of Constitutions; Condorcet, the philosopher; Talleyrand,
+the patriotic bishop; Madame de Staël, with her strong, coarse face
+and masculine voice and gestures. More intimate were the Tuesday
+suppers at which a dozen chosen guests held earnest communion. Madame
+de Beauharnais was noted for her excellent table, and her Tuesday and
+Thursday dinners: at her rooms the masters of literature and music had
+been wont to meet. Now came Buffon the naturalist; Bailly of Tennis
+Court oath fame; Clootz, the friend of humanity. The widow of
+Helvetius, with her many memories of Franklin, welcomed Volney, author
+of the _Ruins of Empires_, and Chamfort, the candid critic of
+Academicians. At the salon of Madame Pancroute, Barrère, the glib
+orator of the Revolution, was the chief figure.
+
+[Footnote 173: Mlle Curchod, for whom Gibbon "sighed as a lover but
+renounced as a son."]
+
+Julie Talma was famed for her literary and artistic circle. Here Marie
+Joseph Chenier, the revolutionary dramatic poet of the Comédie
+Française, declaimed his couplets. Here came Vergniaud, the eloquent
+chief of the ill-fated Gironde; Greuze, the painter; Roland, the stern
+and minatory minister, who spoke bitter words, composed by his wife,
+to the king; Lavoisier, the chemist, who is said to have begged that
+the axe might be stayed while he completed some experiments, and was
+told that the Republic had no lack of chemists. Madame du Deffand,
+whose hôtel in the Rue des Quatre Fils still exists, welcomed
+Voltaire, D'Alembert, Montesquieu and the Encyclopedists.
+
+In the street, the great open-air salon of the people, was a feverish
+going to and fro. Here were the tub-thumpers of the Revolution holding
+forth at every public place; the strident voices of ballad-singers at
+the street corners; hawkers of the latest pamphlets hot from the Quai
+des Augustins; the sellers of journals crying the _Père Duchesne_,
+_L'Ami du Peuple_, the _Jean Bart_, the _Vieux Cordelier_. Crowds
+gathered round Bassett's famous shop for caricature at the corner of
+the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue des Mathurins. The walls of Paris were
+a mass of variegated placards and proclamations. The charming signs of
+the old _régime_, the Pomme rouge, the Rose Blanche, the Ami du
+Coeur, the Gracieuse, the Trois Fleurs-de-lys Couronnées gave place
+to the "Necker," the "National Assembly," the "Tiers," the
+"Constitution"--these, too, soon to be effaced by more Republican
+appellations. For on the abolition of the monarchy and the
+inauguration of the Religion of Nature, the words "royal" and "saint"
+disappear from the revolutionary vocabulary. A new calendar is
+promulgated: streets and squares are renamed: Rues des Droits de
+l'Homme, de la Révolution, des Piques, de la Loi, efface the old
+landmarks. We must now say Rue Honoré, not St. Honoré, and Mont Marat
+for Montmartre. Naturalists had written of the queen bee: away with
+the hated word! She is now named of all good patriots the _abeille
+pondeuse_, the egg-laying bee. In the Punch and Judy shows the gallows
+gives place to the guillotine. No more emblems on playing cards of
+king, queen, and knave: allegorical figures of Genius, Liberty and
+Equality take their places, and since Law alone is above them all,
+Patriotism, as it flings down its biggest card, shall cry no longer,
+"Ace of trumps," but "Law of trumps," and "Genius of trumps." Chess
+terms too were republicanised. Furniture becomes of Spartan
+simplicity. The people lie down on patriotic beds and eat and drink
+from patriotic mugs and platters. Lotteries are abolished, regulations
+launched against the sale of indecent literature, drawings or
+paintings; the open following of the profession of Rahab prohibited;
+bull fights suppressed. Silver buckles are needed by the national war
+chest: shoes shall now be clasped by patriotic buckles of copper. The
+monarchial "_vous_" (you) shall give place to "_toi_" (thou); and
+"monsieur" and "madame" to "_citoyen_" and "_citoyenne_." The formal
+subscriptions to letters, "Your humble servant," "Your obedient
+servant," shall no more recall the old days of class subjection; we
+write now "Your fellow citizen," "Your friend," "Your equal." Every
+house bears an inscription, giving the names and ages of the
+occupants, decorated with patriotic colours of red, white and blue,
+with figures of the Gallic cock and the _bonnet rouge_. Over every
+public building runs the legend, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or
+Death"[174]--it is even seen over the cages of the wild beasts at the
+Jardin des Plantes.
+
+[Footnote 174: The meaning of this much misunderstood phrase was
+simply that the citizens were ready to sacrifice their lives in
+defence of the revolutionary principles.]
+
+Nowhere did the revolutionary ploughshare cut deeper than among the
+clergy and the religious orders. Nearly forty monasteries and convents
+were suppressed in Paris, and strange scenes were those when the
+troops of monks and friars issued forth to secular life, some crying
+"_Vive Jésus le Roi, et la Révolution_," for the new ideas had
+penetrated even the cloister. The barbers' shops were invaded, and
+strange figures were seen smoking their pipes along the Boulevards.
+Some went to the wars; others, especially the Benedictines, appealed
+for teaching appointments; many faithful to their vows, went forth to
+poverty, misery, and death.
+
+The nuns and sisters gave more trouble, and the scenes that attended
+their expulsion and that of the non-juring clergy burned into the
+memories of the pious. "What do they take from me?" cried the _curé_
+of St. Marguerite in his farewell sermon. "My cure? All that I have is
+yours, and it is you they despoil. My life? I am eighty-four years of
+age, and what of life remains to me is not worth the sacrifice of my
+principles." Descending the pulpit the venerable priest passed through
+a sobbing congregation to a garret in one of the Faubourgs. There were
+but few, however, who imitated the dignified protest of the _curé_ of
+St. Marguerite. Many a pulpit rang with fiery denunciations, which
+recalled the savage fanaticism of the League. Some of the younger
+clergy and a few of the bishops were on the side of the early
+Revolutionists. The Abbé Fouchet was the Peter the Hermit of the
+crusade for Liberty, and so popular were his sermons in Notre Dame
+that a seat there fetched twenty-four sous. But the corruption and
+apostasy of the hierarchy as a whole, and their betrayal of the
+people, had borne its acrid fruit of popular contempt and hostility,
+and the fanaticism of the worship of Reason answered the fanaticism of
+the Cross. In Notre Dame and other churches, which became Temples of
+Reason, statues of Liberty replaced those of the _ci-devant_ Holy
+Virgin and every _Décadi_ services were held in honour of Liberty or
+of the Supreme Being. _The Rights of Man_, the Constitution,
+despatches from the armies and new laws were read. Prayers were made
+to the Supreme Being and Liberty was invoked. Patriotic hymns were
+sung, virtuous acts in the sections recited and addresses on morality,
+the domestic virtues and other ethical subjects were given. In some,
+an orator of morality was appointed. Births, marriages and deaths were
+announced and--an essential detail--_collections_ were made in aid of
+suffering Humanity. A _Décadi_ Ritual[175] was printed with a
+selection of hymns and prayers to be used in the Temples of Reason.
+The services were crowded, famous preachers often evoked tears, tracts
+were published and saints of Liberty were in course of evolution. But
+less than eight years after Robespierre's solemn Festival of the _Être
+Suprème_ all the hierarchy of the old religion returned, sixty
+archbishops and bishops, and an army of priests, and a gorgeous Easter
+Mass in Notre Dame celebrated the reestablishment of the Catholic
+faith by Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution.
+
+[Footnote 175: The services seem to have been not very dissimilar to a
+modern Ethical Society meeting. The notorious Festival of the 20th
+Brumaire was a Fête of Liberty not of Reason, the mistake being due to
+a careless transcription in the _procès-verbal_ of the Convention. A
+living representative of Liberty was chosen as less likely to tend to
+idolatry than an image of stone. See _La Révolution Française_, 14th
+April 1899, _La Déesse de la Liberté_.]
+
+It is not within the scope of the present work to deal with the later
+annals of Paris. Superficial students of her modern history have
+freely charged her with political irresponsibility and fickleness; no
+charge could be less warranted by facts. For a thousand years her
+citizens were loyal and faithful subjects of a monarchy, and endured
+for a century and a half an infliction of misgovernment, oppression
+and grinding taxation such as probably no other European people would
+have tolerated. With touching fidelity and indomitable steadfastness
+they have cherished the principles of the Great Revolution, in whose
+name they swept the shams and wrongs of the _ancien régime_ away.
+There is a profounder truth than perhaps Alphonse Karr imagined in his
+famous epigram, _Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose_. Every
+political upheaval of the nineteenth century in Paris has been at
+bottom an effort to realise the revolutionary ideals of political
+freedom and social equality in the face of external violence or
+internal corruption and treachery. Twice the hated Bourbons were
+reimposed on the people of Paris by the bayonets of the foreigner:
+twice they rose and chased them away. A compromise followed--that of a
+citizen king, Louis Philippe of Orleans, once a Jacobin doorkeeper and
+a soldier of the Revolution, who had fought valiantly at Valmy and
+Jemappes--but he too identified himself with reactionary ministers,
+and became a fugitive to England, the bourne of deposed kings. The
+Second Republic which followed grew distrustful of the people and
+disfranchised at one stroke 3,000,000 citizens: one of the causes of
+the success of the _coup d'état_ of Napoleon III. was an astute edict
+which restored universal suffrage.
+
+During the negation of political rectitude and decency which
+characterised the period of the Second Empire, a little band of
+Republicans refused to bow the knee to the new pinchbeck Cæsar, "the
+man," says Freeman, "whose lips uttered the words _je le jure_ and
+kept the oath by a December massacre." Inspired by Victor Hugo, their
+fiery poet and seer, whose _Châtiments_ have the passionate intensity
+of an Isaiah, they braved exile, poverty, calumny and flattery; they
+"stooped into a dark, tremendous sea of doubt, pressed God's lamp to
+their breasts and emerged" to witness a sad and bitter day of
+reckoning, when the corruption and vice of the Second Empire were
+swallowed up in shame and disaster at Sedan.[176] The Third Republic,
+with admirable energy and patriotism, rose to save the self-respect of
+France. The first and Imperial war, up to Sedan, was over in a month;
+the second national and popular war endured for five months.
+
+[Footnote 176: "The collapse of the Empire is tremendous. I have no
+pity for the melodramatic villain who ends as he began, in causeless
+and wanton blood." Lord Coleridge, _Life_, ii., p. 172.]
+
+Dynastic and ecclesiastical ambition die hard, and the new Republic
+has had to weather many a storm in her career of a third of a
+century. Carducci in a fine poem has imagined Letizia, mother of the
+Bonapartes, a wandering shade haunting the desolate house at Ajaccio,
+recalling the tragic fate of her children, and, like a Corsican Niobe,
+standing on her threshold, fiercely stretching forth her arms to the
+savage Ocean, calling from America, from Britain, from burning Africa,
+some one of her hapless progeny to find a haven in her breast. But the
+assegais of South African savages laid low the last hope of the
+Imperialists, and it may reasonably be predicted that neither the
+shades nor the living descendants of Bonaparte or Bourbon will ever
+trouble again the internal peace of France nor her people be ruled by
+one "regnant by right divine and luck o' the pillow." Throughout the
+whole land a profound desire of peace possesses men's minds[177] and a
+firm determination to effect a material and moral recuperation from
+the disasters of the Empire.
+
+[Footnote 177: "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."]
+
+The beneficent results of the Great Revolution have leavened the whole
+world. In no small degree may it be said of France that by her stripes
+we have been healed. With true insight the Revolutionists perceived
+that national liberty is the one essential element of national
+progress:--
+
+ "When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go,
+ Nor the second or third to go,
+ It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last."
+
+But the great work is yet incomplete. Political liberty and equality
+have been won. A more tremendous task awaits the peoples of the old
+and new worlds alike--to achieve industrial emancipation and
+inaugurate a reign of social justice. And we know that Paris will
+have no small part in the solution of this problem.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It now remains to consider the impress which this stormy period left
+on the architecture of Paris. We have seen that the Convention
+assigned the royal Palace of the Louvre for the home of a national
+museum. The neglect of the fabric, however, continued. Already Marat
+had appropriated four of the royal presses and their accessories for
+the _Ami du Peuple_ and the types founded for Louis XIV. were used to
+print the diatribes of the fiercest advocate of the Terror. All along
+the south façade, print and cook shops were seen, and small
+huckstering went on unheeded. In 1794 the ground floor of the Petite
+Galerie was used as a Bourse. On the Place du Carrousel, and the site
+of the Squares du Louvre were a mass of mean houses which remained
+even to comparatively recent times. In 1805 the masterful will and
+all-embracing activity of Napoleon were directed to the improvement of
+Paris, which he determined to make the most beautiful capital in the
+world. His architects, Percier and Fontaine, were set to work on the
+Louvre, and yet another vast plan was elaborated for completing the
+Palace. A northern wing, corresponding to Henry's IV.'s south wing,
+was to be built eastwards along the new Rue de Rivoli, from the
+Pavilion de Marsan at the north end of the Tuileries; the Carrousel
+was to be traversed by a building, separating the two palaces,
+designed to house the National Library, the learned Societies and
+other bodies. The work was begun in 1812, the Emperor commanding that
+the grand apartments were to be prepared for the sovereigns who would
+come, _à lui faire cortège_, after the success of the Russian
+campaign! Of this ambitious plan, however, all that was carried out
+was a portion of the Rue de Rivoli façade, from the Pavilion de
+Marsan to the Pavilion de Rohan, which latter was finished under the
+Restoration. Some external decorative work was done on the south
+façade. Perrault's Colonnade was restored, the four façades of the
+quadrangle were completed, and a new bridge to lead to the "Palace of
+the Arts" was built. Little or nothing was done to further Napoleon's
+plan until the Republic of 1848 decreed the completion of the north
+façade, which was actually achieved under the Second Empire by
+Visconti in 1857, who built other structures, each with three courts,
+inside the great space enclosed by the north and south wings to
+correct their want of parallelism. Later (1862-1868), Henry the
+Fourth's long gallery and the Pavilions de Flore and Lesdiguières were
+rebuilt, and smaller galleries were added to those giving on the Cour
+des Tuileries: after the disastrous fire which destroyed the Tuileries
+in 1871, the Third Republic restored the Pavilions de Flore and de
+Marsan.
+
+But the vicissitudes of this wonderful pile of architecture are not
+yet ended. The discovery of Perrault's base at the east and of
+Lemercier's at the north, will inevitably lead to their proximate
+disclosure. Ample space remains at the east for the excavation of a
+wide and deep fosse, which would expose the wing to view as Perrault
+intended it; but on the Rue de Rivoli side the problem is more
+difficult, and probably a narrow fosse, or _saut de loup_, will be all
+that space will allow there.
+
+Napoleon I.'s new streets near the Tuileries and the Louvre soon
+became the fashionable quarter of Paris. The Italian arcades and every
+street name recalled a former victory of the Consulate in Italy and
+Egypt. The military glories of a revolutionary empire, which at one
+time transcended the limits of that of Charlemagne; which crashed
+through the shams of the old world and toppled in the dust their
+imposing but hollow state, were wrought in bronze on the Vendôme
+Column, cast from the cannon captured from every nation in Europe. The
+Triumphal Arch of the Carrousel, crowned by the bronze horses from St.
+Mark's at Venice; the majestic Triumphal Arch of the Etoile--a
+partially achieved project--all paraded the Emperor's fame. Of more
+practical utility were the quays built along the south bank of the
+Seine and the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, which latter Blücher
+would have blown up had Wellington permitted it.
+
+The erection of the new church of the Madeleine, begun in 1764, had
+been interrupted by the Revolution, and in 1806, Napoleon ordered that
+it should be completed as a Temple of Glory. The Restoration
+transformed it to a Catholic church, which was finally completed under
+Louis Philippe in 1842, and it soon became the most fashionable place
+of worship in Paris. Napoleon drove sixty new streets through the
+city, cleared away the posts that marked off the footways, began the
+raised pavements and kerbs, and ordered the drainage to be diverted
+from the gutters in the centre of the roadway.
+
+The Restoration erected two basilicas--Notre Dame de Lorette and St.
+Vincent de Paul. The Expiatory Chapel raised to the memory of Louis
+XVI. and Marie Antoinette on the site of the old cemetery of the
+Madeleine--where they lay, until transferred to St. Denis, in one red
+burial with the brave Swiss Guards who vainly spent their lives for
+them--is now threatened with demolition. Three new bridges--of the
+Invalides, the Archevêché and Arcole--were added, and fifty-five new
+streets.
+
+Under the citizen king, Napoleon's Arch of Triumph of the Etoile was
+completed, and the Columns of Luxor, on the Place de la Concorde, and
+of July on the Place de la Bastille, were raised. It was the period of
+the admirable architectural restorations of Viollet le Duc. The great
+architect has described how his passion for Gothic was stirred when,
+taken as a boy to Notre Dame, the rose window of the south transept
+seized on his imagination. While gazing at it the organ began to play,
+and he thought that the music came from the window--the shrill, high
+notes from the light colours, the solemn, bass notes from the dark and
+more subdued hues. It was a reverent and admiring spirit such as this
+which inspired the famous architect's loving treatment of the Gothic
+restoration in Paris and all over France. To him more than to any
+other artist we owe the preservation of such masterpieces as Notre
+Dame and the Sainte Chapelle.
+
+But the great changes which have made modern Paris were effected under
+the Second Empire. In 1854, when the Haussmannisation of the city
+began, the Paris of the First Empire and of the Restoration remained
+essentially unaltered. It was a city of a few grand streets and of
+many mean ones. Pavements were still rare, and drainage was imperfect.
+In a few years the whole aspect was changed. Twenty-two new boulevards
+and avenues were created. Streets of appalling uniformity and
+directness were ploughed through Paris in all directions. "Nothing is
+more brutal than a straight line," says Victor Hugo, and there is
+little of interest in the monotonous miles of dreary coincidence which
+constitute the architectural legacy of the Second Empire.
+
+The sad task of the Third Republic has been to heal the wounds and
+cover up the destruction wrought by the Civil War of 1871. The chief
+architectural creations of the Third Republic are the Hôtel de Ville,
+the new Sorbonne, the Trocadero, and the completion of the magnificent
+and colossal temple, rich with precious marble and stone of every
+kind, which, at a cost of £10,000,000 sterling, has been raised to
+the Muses at the end of the Avenue de l'Opéra. The Church, too, has
+lavished her millions on the mighty basilica of the Sacré Coeur,
+which towers over Paris from the heights of Montmartre.
+
+[Illustration: HÔTEL DE VILLE FROM RIVER.]
+
+But some of the glory of past ages remains hidden away in corners of
+the city; some has been recovered from the vandalism of iconoclastic
+eighteenth-century architects, canons, revolutionists and
+nineteenth-century prefects. Let us now wander awhile about the great
+city and refresh our memories of her dramatic past by beholding
+somewhat of the interest and beauty which have been preserved to us;
+for "to be in Paris itself, amid the full, delightful fragrance of
+those dainty visible things which Huguenots despised--that, surely,
+were the sum of good fortune!"
+
+
+
+
+ "I see ... long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen
+ on the destruction of the old, perishing.... I see a
+ beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this
+ abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free, in their
+ triumphs and defeats, through long, long years to come, I
+ see the evil of this time and of the previous time, of which
+ this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for
+ itself and wearing out."--DICKENS.
+
+
+
+
+Part II: The City
+
+
+
+
+SECTION I
+
+_The Cité--Notre Dame--The Sainte-Chapelle[178]--The Palais de
+Justice_[179]
+
+[Footnote 178: Open 11-4 or 5. Closed Mondays and Chief Festivals.]
+
+[Footnote 179: Open daily, except Sundays, 11-4.]
+
+
+If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal, or on the Pont
+du Carrousel, and look towards the Cité when the tall buildings, the
+spire of the Sainte Chapelle and the massive grey towers of Notre Dame
+are ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not
+easily surpassed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the
+unlovely Pont des Arts, stride the arches of the Pont Neuf with their
+graceful curves; below is the little green patch of garden and the
+cascade of the weir; in the centre of the bridge the bronze horse with
+Henry IV., its royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing
+the site of the old garden of the Palais, where St. Louis sat on a
+carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the
+flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the
+Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediæval towers of
+the Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais.
+Around all are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light
+with their thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one
+sails down the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother
+church of Notre Dame, with the graceful buttresses of the apse like
+folded pinions, seems to brood over the whole Cité.
+
+[Illustration: CHAPEL OF CHÂTEAU AT VINCENNES.]
+
+[Illustration: NEAR THE PONT NEUF.]
+
+From the time when Julius Cæsar addressed his legions on the little
+island of _Lutetia Civitas Parisiorum_ to the present day, two
+millenniums of history have been enacted there, and few spots are to
+be found in Europe where so many associations are crowded together. In
+Gallo-Roman times the island was, as we have seen, even smaller, five
+islets having been incorporated with it since the thirteenth century.
+Some notion of the changes that have swept over its soil may be
+conceived on scanning Félibien's 1725 map, where no less than eighteen
+churches are marked, scarce a wrack of which now remains on the
+island. We must imagine the old mediæval Cité as a labyrinth of
+crooked and narrow streets, with the present broad Parvis of Notre
+Dame of much smaller extent, at a higher level, enclosed by a low wall
+and approached by steps. Against the north tower leaned the Baptistery
+(St. Jean le Rond) and St. Denis of the Ferry against the apse. St.
+Pierre aux Boeufs, whose façade has been transferred to St.
+Sévérin's on the south bank, stood at the east corner, St. Christopher
+at the west corner of the present Hôtel Dieu which covers the site of
+eleven streets and three churches. The old twelfth-century hospital,
+demolished in 1878, occupied the whole space south of the Parvis
+between the present Petit Pont and the Pont au Double. It possessed
+its own bridge, the Pont St. Charles, over which the buildings
+stretched, and joined the annexe (1606), which, until 1909, existed on
+the opposite side of the river.
+
+
+NOTRE DAME.
+
+The traveller who stands on the Parvis before the Church of Our Lady
+at Paris beholds the embodiment and most perfect expression of early
+Gothic architecture, the central type and model of the new style
+created by the genius of the masters of the Isle de France in the late
+twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. On the west front the builders
+have lavished all their artistic powers in a synthetic exposition of
+their outlook on life and eternity. As the worshipper approaches the
+central portal his eye is arrested by a representation of the ultimate
+and most solemn fact of human destiny, the Last Judgment. On the
+lintel the dead are seen rising from their graves at the last trump;
+prelate, noble and serf in one equality of doom. Above, the fine
+figure of St. Michael is seen weighing souls in the balance. At his
+left the damned are hauled in chains by grinning demons to Hell: at
+his right the elect raise joyful eyes toward Heaven. Crowning the
+tympanum is Christ the Judge, flanked by angels, and by the Virgin and
+the Baptist kneeling in intercession while He shows His wounded hands.
+On the archivolts are, to the right of the spectator, demons and
+damned souls and quaint personifications of death: to his left the
+heavenly host, choirs of angels, seated prophets and doctors and the
+army of martyrs. On the jambs are the five wise and five foolish
+virgins; apostles and saints on the embrasures of the door; below them
+reliefs of the virtues, each symbolised above its opposite vice. On
+the central pillar stands Christ in act of blessing; below Him,
+bas-reliefs typifying the seven liberal arts.[180]
+
+[Footnote 180: This portal suffered much from the vandalism of
+Soufflot and his clerical employers of the eighteenth century (p.
+252): all that remains of the original carvings in the tympanum is a
+portion of the figure of Christ and the angels. The Revolutionary
+Chaumette, when it was proposed to destroy the Gothic _simulacra_ of
+superstition, protected the carvings on the west portals on the plea
+that they related to astronomy, to philosophy and the arts. The
+astronomer Dupuis was added to the Commission and the reliefs were
+saved.]
+
+We turn to the lovely portal of the Virgin under the north tower. In
+the lower compartment of the tympanum is figured the ark of the
+Covenant attended by prophets and kings; above, is the burial of the
+Virgin, and crowning all, Our Lady in glory. On the archivolts are
+angels, patriarchs, prophets, and kings. The jambs and casements are
+decorated with thirty-seven marvellously vivid reliefs of the signs of
+the Zodiac, the seasons and labours of the year, a kind of almanac of
+stone of rare invention and execution. On the embrasures of the door
+are, among others, the favourite Parisian saints: Denis, Genevieve and
+Stephen. On the central pier, below the Virgin and Child, are the
+Creation, Temptation and Fall. The whole of this portal will repay
+careful inspection.
+
+St. Anne's portal, under the south tower, is more archaic, and indeed
+some of its sculptures are believed to have come from an earlier
+Romanesque building. Along the lintel are seen episodes in the life of
+St. Anne and in the life of Mary: in the central band, to the left,
+are the Presentation, the Annunciation, the Visitation; in the middle
+the Nativity in various scenes; to the right Herod, and the Adoration
+of the Magi. The whole of these reliefs are twelfth-century work, with
+the exception of the Presentation, which is thirteenth century. In the
+hemicycle above are the Virgin and Child under a Byzantine canopy with
+angels and founders on either side. On the central pier stands St.
+Marcel, Bishop of Paris, banning the horrible serpent that made his
+lair in a tomb: the retreating serpent's tail is seen on the pier.
+Both on this and on the north portal traces of painting still remain.
+
+Before leaving, we note the beautiful mediæval wrought hinges
+(restored) which came from the old church of St. Stephen and which
+have been copied for the central portal. The three portals were
+completed in 1208.
+
+Above them and across the whole façade runs a gallery of kings,
+twenty-eight in number--a perennial source of controversy. Authorities
+are divided between the kings of France and the kings of Israel and
+Judah, the royal ancestry of the Virgin. From the analogy of other
+cathedrals we incline to the latter view. The gallery dates not later
+than 1220, but the statues are modern reproductions. Yet higher, on
+the pierced balustrade, is a group of the Virgin between two angels
+and on either side, over the N. and S. portals, Adam and Eve. A
+gallery of graceful columns knits the towers together (which were
+intended to be crowned by spires) before they soar from the façade.
+Between the towers, in olden times, as we know from an illumination in
+a Froissart MS., stood a great statue of the Virgin. The whole of this
+glorious fretwork of stone, including the tracery of the rose window,
+was once refulgent with gold and azure and crimson, and the finished
+front in its mediæval glory has been compared to a colossal carved
+and painted triptych.
+
+[Illustration: NOTRE DAME--PORTAL OF ST. ANNE.]
+
+On the central pier of the greater portal of the N. transept, called
+of the Cloister, we note a fine ancient statue of the Virgin, famed
+for its grace of expression. The smaller Porte Rouge, further
+eastward, is remarkable for some well-preserved antique sculpture: a
+Coronation of the Virgin in the tympanum and six scenes in the life of
+St. Marcel in the archivolt: some old gargoyles and reliefs may be
+seen on either side of the door.
+
+We pursue our way by the east end of the cathedral, where in mediæval
+times was an open waste, the Motte aux Papelards, the playground of
+the cathedral servants, the graceful outlines of the apse and the bold
+sweep of the flying buttresses ever varying in beauty as we pace
+around. The south portal (ill seen through the iron railings) called
+of St. Stephen or of the Martyrs is decorated with statues of the
+saint and of other martyrs, with scenes of their martyrdom. The
+inscription (p. 88) may be seen at the base to the R.
+
+[Illustration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTH SIDE.]
+
+[Illustration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTH SIDE--FROM THE SEINE.]
+
+We may now enter the noble and harmonious interior, unhappily bared of
+its rich old decorations, its tombs and statues cleared away, its fine
+Gothic altar destroyed by clerical and royal vandals to give place to
+renaissance and pseudo-classic pomposities (p. 252). We approach the
+choir from the right aisle, noting a fourteenth-century statue of the
+Virgin and Child on the left as we reach the entrance, perhaps the
+very statue before which _povre Gilles_ did his penance (p. 142) and
+proceed to examine all that remains of the "histories" in stone on the
+choir wall round the ambulatory, twenty-three in number, begun in 1319
+by Master Jean Ravy, mason of Notre Dame, and finished (_parfaites_)
+by Master Jean le Bouteiller in 1351, all _dorez et bien peints_.
+Those on the choir screen were destroyed by the Cardinal Archbishop de
+Noailles in 1725. On the north side are twelve reliefs drawn from
+earlier New Testament history: on the south are nine from later
+episodes in the life of Christ. These naïve mediæval sculptures of
+varying merit will repay careful examination. The gilding and
+colouring are modern. Of the jewelled splendour of the western rose
+and of the two great rose windows of the transepts the eye will never
+tire. With every changing light new beauties and new combinations of
+colour reveal themselves. Those who care to read the subjects will
+discern in the north transept rose, incidents depicted in the life of
+the Virgin, and eighteen founders and benefactors: in the south are
+apostles and bishops crowned by angels.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME.]
+
+We return to the Porte Rouge in the Rue du Cloître opposite which is
+the Rue Massillon, where at Nos. 4 and 6 we may note some remains of
+the cloisters and canons' dwellings, once a veritable city within a
+city, fifty-one houses with gardens sequestered within a wall having
+four gates. We continue to the Rue Chanoinesse, where, No. 10, is the
+site of Canon Fulbert's house: at No. 18, by the courtesy of Messieurs
+Allez Frères, we may visit the curious old fifteenth-century tower of
+Dagobert[181] which marks the site of the old port of St. Landry and
+affords a fine view of the north side of Notre Dame. We return to No.
+10 and descend the Rue des Chantres to the Quai aux Fleurs: at No. 9,
+the site of the house of Abelard and Héloïse, an inscription recalls
+the names of the unhappy lovers,
+
+ "... for ever sad, for ever dear,
+ Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear."
+
+[Footnote 181: Now (1911) demolished.]
+
+We turn westward along the Quai and ascend on our L., the narrow Rue
+de la Colombe, across which a double line of stones traces the
+position of the Gallo-Roman wall, that enclosed the Cité. We continue
+to ascend, and on our L., No. 26 Rue Chanoinesse, we enter a small
+court where we find a portion of the old pavement of St. Aignan's
+church, with the almost effaced lineaments on the tombstones of those,
+now forgotten, who were doubtless famous churchmen in their time, and
+where St. Bernard wept a whole day, fearing that God had withdrawn
+from him the power of converting souls. This faint trace of the past
+wealth of churches remains, but where are the sanctuaries of Ste.
+Geneviève des Ardents, St. Pierre des Arces, St. Denis of the Prison,
+St. Germain le Vieux, Ste. Croix, St. Symphorien, St. Martial, St.
+Bartholomew, and the church of the Barnabites, which replaced that of
+St. Anne, which replaced the old Abbey church of St. Eloy, all
+clustering around their parent church of Our Lady like nuns under
+their patroness' mantle? Until comparatively recent times the church
+of St. Marine was used as a joiner's workshop, and one of the chapels
+of Ste. Madeleine, parish church of the water-sellers, served as a
+wine merchant's store! All that survives of the ancient splendour of
+the Cité are Notre Dame and some portions of the Palais, including the
+Ste. Chapelle.
+
+We turn R. to the Rue d'Arcole that has swept away the old church of
+St. Landry, near which, until the reign of Louis XIII., a market was
+held for the sale of foundling children at thirty sous. The scandal
+was abolished by the efforts of the gentle St. Vincent de Paul, Anne
+of Austria's confessor. Turning L. along this street we emerge on the
+Parvis, which we skirt to the R. along the façade of the new Hôtel
+Dieu, and reach the Rue de la Cité. We turn R., cross to the L. and
+follow the broad Rue de Lutèce to the Palais de Justice.
+
+
+THE SAINTE CHAPELLE AND THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.
+
+Entering the Cour du Mai by the great iron grille which has replaced
+the old stone portal, flanked by two towers, a passage on the left
+leads us to the Cour de la Ste. Chapelle (p. 86). We enter by the west
+porch of the lower chapel. On the central pier is a restored figure of
+the Virgin whose original is said to have bowed her head to the famous
+Scotch theologian Duns Scotus, in recognition of his championship of
+the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1304: in the decoration of
+the base of the column and of the embrasures of the door, the
+Fleur-de-Lys of St. Louis is seen alternating with the Castilian Tower
+of his mother, Blanche of Castile, a decorative motive repeated in the
+painting of the chapel.
+
+Beautiful as are the vaultings and proportions of the lower chapel,
+and the decoration, copied, as in the upper chapel, from traces of the
+original colouring found under the whitewash, the visitor will
+doubtless prefer to ascend, after a cursory inspection, the narrow,
+winding stairway to the resplendent upper sanctuary, whose dazzling
+brilliancy moved an ancient writer to declare that "in the contest
+between light and darkness in architecture, the creator of the Ste.
+Chapelle in the pride of his victory built with light itself." In the
+apse, flooded by streams of colour falling from the windows, is the
+platform or tribune where, in a rich reliquary of gold, glittering
+with precious stones, and under a baldachin, the holy relics from
+Constantinople were exposed in days of old. Part of the tribune is
+preserved and one of the staircases by which it is ascended, that to
+the N., is said to date from the founder's time, and may often have
+been trodden by the very feet of St. Louis himself. Little else of the
+interior furniture has escaped destruction. The beautiful high altar,
+the rood loft, the choir stalls, have long disappeared. Four only of
+the statues of the apostles bearing the crosses of consecration are
+said to be originals--the fourth and fifth on each side of the nave
+counting from the west door; the relics, or all that escaped the
+political storms of the _année terrible_, are now at Notre Dame, and
+the reliquary that contained them went to feed the hungry war-chest of
+the revolutionary armies. But the thirteenth-century jewelled windows,
+as left to us by the admirable restorers of 1855, are of paramount
+interest. The wealth of design and amplitude of the series are truly
+amazing. The panels, numbering about eleven hundred, are a compendium
+of sacred history and a revelation of the world to come: the whole
+scene from the Creation to the Apocalypse is unrolled before our eyes,
+pictured in a transparent symphony of colour. Seven windows of the
+nave and four of the apse deal with Old Testament history: three at
+the end of the apse with the New. The eighth window of the nave (the
+first to the R. of entrance), dealing with the story of the
+Translation of the relics from Constantinople, although the most
+restored--nineteen only of the sixty-seven subjects are original--is
+perhaps the most interesting, for among the nineteen may be seen St.
+Louis figured by the contemporary artist: receiving the relics at
+Sens; assisting to carry the relics, barefoot; taking part at the
+exposition of the relics with his queen and his mother; receiving an
+embassy from the Emperor Baldwin; carrying the Byzantine cross which
+holds a portion of the true cross. Another of the original panels
+contains a representation of the Cité with the enveloping arms of the
+Seine. The rose window at the west end is obviously later, and dates
+from the fifteenth century.
+
+In olden times the lower part of the central window of the apse was
+made of white glass that the people massed in the courtyard below
+might behold the relics as St. Louis and his successors, after
+exhibiting them to the privileged congregation in the chapel, turned
+round to show them. Against the south wall of the nave is a little
+oratory with a squint through which it is said Louis XI. used to
+venerate the relics unobserved.
+
+We step out from the west door of the upper chapel to examine the more
+richly decorated upper portal. The carvings are all modern and, except
+such as were suggested by traces of the old work, are copied from the
+west front of Notre Dame and other churches. Many a solemn and many a
+strange scene have been enacted in this royal oratory; the strangest
+of all perhaps when Charles V. of France, the Holy Roman Emperor
+Charles IV., and his son Wenceslaus, king of the Romans, in the _rôle_
+of the three Holy Kings, came to venerate the relics and laid
+oblations before the shrine.
+
+Before we turn away from the building we should observe on the west
+façade above the rose window wherein the architect has literally
+sported with the difficulties of construction in stone a charming
+design of fleurs-de-lys framed by quatrefoils along the balustrade;
+the central design is an R. (rex), crowned by two angels. The present
+spire is a fourth erection. The second, which replaced the original
+spire in 1383, was one of the wonders of Paris, and fell a victim to
+fire in 1630. A third, erected by Louis XIII., was demolished in 1791,
+and in 1853 Lassus, Viollet le Duc's principal colleague in the
+restoration of the chapel, designed the graceful flèche we see to-day.
+
+We return to the Cour du Mai: on the R., before we ascend the great
+stairway, we look down on the nine steps leading from the Vestibule
+(now a Café Restaurant) of the Conciergerie, up which those doomed to
+the guillotine ascended to the fatal tumbrils awaiting them in the
+courtyard. We ascend to the Galerie Marchande: the stairway, rebuilt
+after the fire of 1776, replaced the old flight of stairs at whose
+feet heralds proclaimed treaties of peace and tournaments, criminals
+were branded, and books condemned by the Parlement, burned. Here
+Pantagruel loved to stand and cut the stirrup-straps of the fat
+councillors' mules, and see the _gros suflé de conseiller_ fall flat
+when he tried to mount; and here the clercs of the Basoche planted the
+annual May-tree, brought from the forest of Bondy, with much playing
+of drums and trumpets and elaborate ceremony.
+
+The Galerie Marchande, formerly known as the Galerie Mercière, was
+once a busy and fashionable bazaar, where lines of shops displayed
+fans, shoes, slippers and other dainty articles of feminine artillery.
+The further galleries were also invaded by the traders, who were only
+finally evicted in 1842. We turn R. and enter the Grande Salle or, as
+it is now known, the Salle des Pas Perdus. It, too, was once a busy
+mart, booksellers especially predominating, most of whom had stations
+there, much as we see them to-day, round the Odéon Theatre. Vérard's
+address was--"At the image of St. John the Evangelist, before Notre
+Dame de Paris, and at the first pillar in the Grande Salle of the
+Palais de Justice, before the chapelle where they sing the mass for
+Messieurs of the Parlement." Gilles Couteau's address was at "The Two
+Archers in the Rue de la Juiverie and at the third pillar at the
+Palais." Every pillar had its bookseller's shop. In 1618 the great
+chamber, the finest of its kind in Europe, with its rich stained
+glass, its double vaultings resplendent with blue and gold, was gutted
+by fire, and its long line of statues of the kings of France, from
+Pharamond to Henry IV.--the _rois fainéants_ with pendent arms and
+lowered eyes, the valiant warrior kings with heads and arms
+erect--disappeared for ever. This was the hall where the clercs of the
+Basoche performed their _farces_, _sottises_ and _moralités_, and
+where Victor Hugo has placed the scene of the famous performance of
+the _moralité_, composed by Pierre Gringoire,[182] so vividly
+described in the opening chapters of _Notre Dame_.
+
+[Footnote 182: Notes exist of payments in 1502, 1505 to Pierre
+Gringoire, _histrion et facteur_ for the mysteries--well and honestly
+performed--at the entries of Madame la reine, before the portail of
+the Châtelet.]
+
+Debrosse, who built the new Salle in 1622, left a noble and harmonious
+Renaissance chamber, which, again restored after the fire of 1776,
+endured until its destruction by fire during the Commune. The present
+rather frigid hall was completed in 1878 by J.L. Duc, who respected
+the traditional form and amplitude of the older structures. Nearly
+opposite the monument to Malesherbes (R.) was the position of the old
+Pilier des Consultations, where the lawyers were wont to give
+gratuitous legal help to the poor. The best time to visit the Hall is
+in the afternoon, when the courts are sitting and when the footsteps
+of the lawyers and their clients are indeed lost amid the buzz of
+conversation as they pace up and down.
+
+The _Première Chambre_ to the L., in the north-west corner of the
+Hall, is one of the most profoundly interesting in the agglomerated
+mass of buildings known as the Palais de Justice. This, now somewhat
+reduced in size, was the old _Grande Chambre_, rebuilt by Louis XII.
+on the occasion of his marriage with Princess Mary of England, which
+replaced the earlier bed-chamber of St. Louis.
+
+Fra Gioconda's sumptuous decorations of 1502, which won for it the
+name of the _Chambre dorée_, the gold used being, it is said, equal in
+purity to the famous Dutch golden florin, have been partially
+restored. Here the kings of France held their Beds of Justice; here
+the Fronde held its sittings, and here on 15th April, 1654, the young
+king Louis XIV. strode in, booted and spurred, and is said to have
+uttered the famous words _l'État c'est moi_. Here too, renamed the
+Salle Égalité, the dread Revolutionary Tribunal held its sittings and
+condemned 2742 victims; here on 14th October 1793, at half-past four
+in the morning, appeared Marie Antoinette, "widow of Louis Capet,"
+before her implacable judges and heard her doom; hence the twenty-one
+Girondins trooped forth to their common fate; here Robespierre,
+St. Just, and, at length, the unwearied minister of death,
+Fouquier-Tinville himself, the revolutionary public prosecutor, heard
+their condemnation. We leave by the Cour du Mai and note, to our L.,
+the restored clock tower, replacing the most ancient and famous clock
+of Paris. It was renewed by Germain Pilon in 1588 and restored in
+1685. Demolished during the Revolution, the face and decoration were
+again renewed in 1852. The silvery-toned bell that hung here, called
+the _tocsin_, cast in 1371 and known as the _cloche d'argent_, was
+accused, together with the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, before the
+Commune on 21st August 1792, of having given the signal for the
+massacre of St. Bartholomew, and its immediate destruction was
+ordered. We turn along the picturesque river façade, and between
+its two mediæval towers, de César and d'Argent, enter the
+Conciergerie.[183] The condemned cell of Marie Antoinette (transformed
+into a chapel) and the cell of Robespierre are shown, together with
+the chapel where the Girondins passed their last night and where their
+legendary banquet is famed to have taken place. The so-called _Cuisine
+de St. Louis_, a remain of the old Gothic palace of Philip le Bel, is
+no longer shown. The third tower on the river façade, which we pass on
+our way westward, has been wholly rebuilt. In the original tower was
+the judicial torture-chamber (an adjunct of every court of justice in
+olden times), used to wrest confessions from prisoners and evidence
+from unwilling witnesses, hence its name of Tour Bon Bec or Bavarde.
+The fine western façade and the Salle des Pas Perdus of the Cour
+d'Assises, looking on the Place Dauphine, were completed in 1868.
+
+[Footnote 183: Permission to visit on Thursdays, 9-5, to be obtained
+by written application to the Prefect of Police, Rue de Lutèce.]
+
+Few Law Courts in Europe have so venerable a history as the Palais de
+Justice. From the times when the Roman prætor set up his court, more
+than two thousand years ago, to the present day, a temple of Law and
+Justice has ever stood on this spot.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION II
+
+_St. Julien le Pauvre--St. Sévérin--The Quartier Latin._
+
+
+As we fare S. from the W. end of the Parvis of Notre Dame and cross
+the Petit Pont, we behold the old Roman Road, now Rue St. Jacques,
+rising straight before us and on the annexe of the Hôtel Dieu,[184] to
+the L. of the Place du Petit Pont find inscribed their names (p. 46),
+who nearly twelve centuries ago dared:--
+
+ "For that sweet motherland which gave them birth,
+ Nobly to do, nobly to die."
+
+On the site of the Place stood the Petit Châtelet, demolished in 1782,
+a gloomy prison where many a rowdy student was incarcerated. To the L.
+of the Rue du Petit Pont[184] we turn by the Rue de la Bûcherie and on
+our R. find the Rue St. Julien le Pauvre. Here on the L., hidden
+behind a pair of shabby wooden gates, stands the modest little
+twelfth-century church, now used for the Uniat Greek services, where
+St. Gregory of Tours found the drunken impostor (pp. 32, 33), where
+the University of Paris first held its sittings, and where twice a
+year the royal provost attended to swear to preserve the privileges
+of the rector, masters and scholars. Near by stood the house of
+Buridan (_note_, p. 68). At the end of the street we turn R. by the
+old Rues Galande and St. Sévérin: at No. 4 of the latter, we see a
+trace of the original naming of the streets by Turgot, the marks of
+the erasure of the word "Saint" during the Revolution being clearly
+visible. Parallel with this street to the N. is the Rue de la
+Huchette, from which opens the curious old Rue du Chat qui Pêche and
+the Rue Zacharie, in mediæval times called Sac à Lie, which
+communicates with the Rue St. Sévérin. To our L. is the fine Gothic
+church of St. Sévérin, one of the most beautiful and interesting in
+Paris, on the site of the oratory of Childebert I., where St. Cloud
+was shorn and took his vows. On the thirteenth-century N. portal of
+the tower have been replaced the two small lions in relief between
+which, in olden times, the curés are said to have exercised justice.
+We note the thirteenth-century W. portal, transferred from the old
+church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, and enter for the sake of the
+beautiful Gothic interior, mainly fifteenth century, with its double
+aisles and ambulatory and fine stained-glass in the nave. We turn L.,
+on leaving, along the Rue des Prêtres St. Sévérin (No. 5 is the site
+of the old Collège de Lisieux) which is continued by the Rue
+Boutebrie, in former times the Rue des Enlumineurs, famous for those
+who practised the art, "_che alluminare chiamata è in Parisi_."[185]
+At the end of the Rue des Prêtres we turn L. along the picturesque Rue
+de la Parcheminerie, where we may recall the old poet Corneille
+sitting at a cobbler's stall while his gaping shoe was patched, and
+where still remain, among other curious old houses, Nos. 6 and 7,
+which in the thirteenth century were owned by the canons of Norwich
+Cathedral, who maintained a number of scholars there. We are now on
+the very foyer of the University quarter, in mediæval times swarming
+with poor scholars, the busy hive of knowledge, and so notorious for
+its misery and rowdy depravity, that Charles V. during his regency had
+the Rue du Fouarre closed at curfew by strong iron grilles. We pass on
+to the Rue St. Jacques, then R. to the Boulevard St. Germain, again
+sharply to the L. and descend the new Rue Dante, R. of which, in the
+Rue Domat, are some quaint old houses: at 12 _bis_ is the site of the
+old Collège de Cournouailles (Brittany). The Rue Dante is continued by
+the Rue du Fouarre (Straw Street) where Siger taught (p. 103) and in
+one of whose colleges the author of the _Divina Commedia_ probably sat
+as a scholar. The houses are all modernised and the name alone
+remains. We turn R. along the Rue Galande, noting R. the Rue des
+Anglais which reminds us that there the English scholars congregated.
+We pass on by the Rue Lagrange and reach the place Maubert of dread
+memories, for here were burnt many a Protestant martyr and the famous
+printer philosopher, Étienne Dolet, friend of Erasmus, of Marot and of
+Melancthon, whose statue in bronze stands on the Place. Dolet's
+martyrdom is still yearly celebrated there by democratic Parisians,
+and the Place has always been famous for its barricades during the
+Fronde and later Revolutionary times. We cross the Boulevard to the
+Rue des Carmes, whose name recalls the Carmelite monastery founded by
+St. Louis, and at No. 15 find the site of the old Italian College
+(Collège des Lombards). Much of this "hostel of the poor Italian
+scholars of the charity of Our Lady," as rebuilt by two Irish priests,
+Michael Kelly and Patrick Moggin, still exists, including the chapel,
+and is partly occupied by a Catholic Workmen's Club It gave shelter
+to forty missionary priests and an equal number of poor Irish
+scholars, and the earliest disciples of Loyola found temporary shelter
+there. Some idea of the vast extent of the ancient foundation may be
+gained by walking round to 34 Rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève on the
+other side of the Marché where the principal portal may be seen. We
+return to the Place Maubert, which we recross, and descend direct
+before us to the Rue de la Bûcherie on our L. This street was the
+centre of the medical students, and from 1369 to the times of Louis
+XIV. the Faculty of Medicine held its lectures and demonstrations
+there. At No. 13 still remains the old anatomical and surgical theatre
+of the Faculty erected in 1617, which has been acquired by the
+Municipality, but had a neglected, almost ruined aspect when we last
+passed (Feb. 1906).[186] We continue along this street and return to
+the Place du Petit Pont.
+
+[Footnote 184: The annexe, the inscription and the Rue du Petit
+Pont--all have disappeared (1911).]
+
+[Footnote 185: _Purgatorio_, XI. 81.]
+
+[Illustration: ST. SÉVÉRIN.]
+
+[Illustration: OLD ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.]
+
+
+
+
+SECTION III
+
+_École des Beaux Arts_[187]--_St. Germain des Prés_--_Cour du
+Dragon_--_St. Sulpice_--_The Luxembourg_--_The Odéon_--_The
+Cordeliers_--_The Surgeons' Guild_--_The Musée Cluny_[188]--_The
+Sorbonne_[189]--_The Panthéon_[190]--_St. Étienne du Mont_--_Tour
+Clovis_--_Wall of Philip Augustus_--_Roman Amphitheatre_
+
+[Footnote 186: Now demolished (1911).]
+
+[Footnote 187: Open Sundays, 10-4.]
+
+[Footnote 188: Open 11-4 or 5, closed Mondays and Chief Festivals.]
+
+[Footnote 189: May be visited Thursdays and Sundays, 11-4. Apply
+Concierge, 7 Rue des Écoles.]
+
+[Footnote 190: Open 10-4 or 5, closed Mondays and Festivals.]
+
+
+We cross to the S. bank of the Seine by the Pont du Carrousel (or des
+Saints Pères). Opposite on the Quai Malaquais stands the École des
+Beaux Arts (on the site of the old Convent of the Petits Augustins
+where Lenoir organised his museum), founded by the Convention and now
+one of the most important art-teaching centres in Europe. We turn S.
+by the Rue Bonaparte, and soon find the entrance, on the R., to the
+first courtyard, in which we note, on our R., the fine Portal of the
+Château of Anet, built for Diana of Poitiers by Delorme and Goujon
+(1548): opposite the entrance, giving access to the second courtyard,
+is placed a façade, transitional in style, from the Château of
+Gaillon. An hour may profitably be spent on Sundays strolling through
+the rooms viewing the interesting collection of casts and
+reproductions of masterpieces of painting by the pupils of the school.
+Delaroche's famous Hemicycle, representing the great artists of every
+age, seventy-five figures larger than life, will be found in the
+theatre of the Musée des Antiquités entered from the second courtyard.
+
+We continue along the Rue Bonaparte past the new Académie de Médecine
+and on our L. soon sight the grey pile of the old Abbey Church of St.
+Germain des Prés, once refulgent in colour and gold. A part of the
+great tower is said to have resisted the Norman conflagrations, but
+the church as we now behold it, is that rebuilt 1000-1163; enlarged in
+1237 and restored at various periods in the first half of the
+nineteenth century. Of the great fortress-monastery, with its immense
+domains of land; its cloisters, walls and towers; its prison and
+pillory, over which the puissant abbots once held sway, only a memory
+remains. The fortifications were razed in the seventeenth century and
+gave place to artizans' houses. The famous Fair of St. Germain has
+long been suppressed, where Henry IV. on the royal entry of Marie de'
+Medici, after promising the merchants that they should grow rich,
+since his queen had _de l'argent frais_, disappointed them all by
+chaffering much and buying nothing. Over the entrance of the church
+within the W. porch is a well-preserved Romanesque relief of the Last
+Supper. Some bases and capitals of the triforium date from the twelfth
+century, but the heavy Romanesque capitals of the eleventh century
+nave are restorations, and the beautiful early Gothic choir has also
+been much modified at various epochs. The interest of the interior is
+enhanced to the lover of French art by Flandrin's admirable frescoes
+(p. 391), illustrating scenes from the Old and New Testaments.
+Unhappily, they are seen with difficulty, and a bright, sunny day is
+necessary to appreciate the masterly art, the noble and reverent
+spirit that animates them. One of the most successful and best seen is
+the Entry into Jerusalem, L. of the choir.
+
+If we turn by the Rue de l'Abbaye, N. of the church, we shall find
+part of the sixteenth-century Abbot's Palace yet standing, and a walk
+round the apse and the S. side of the church will afford a view of its
+massive bulk, its flying buttresses and steep-pitched roof. Crossing
+the Place St. Germain obliquely to the S.W. we reach the Rue de
+Rennes: at No. 50 is the entrance of the picturesque Cour du Dragon
+with an eighteenth-century figure of a Dragon carved over it. At the
+end of this curious courtyard, paved, as old Paris was paved, with the
+gutter down the middle, will be seen two old towers enclosing
+stairways. We return to the Rue Bonaparte and faring still S. reach
+the huge fabric of St. Sulpice with its massive, gloomy towers and
+pretentious façade of cumbrous splendour. We enter for the sake of
+Delacroix' fine paintings in the side chapel R. of entrance: Jacob
+wrestling with the Angel; Heliodorus driven from the Temple; and St.
+Michael and the Dragon. In this and in many of the numerous chapels
+are other decorative paintings by modern artists, few of which will
+probably appeal to the visitor. It was in this church that Camille
+Desmoulins was wedded to Lucille, Robespierre acting as best man. On
+the S. side of the ample Place St. Sulpice is the great Catholic
+Seminary,[191] and the whole neighbourhood has an essentially
+ecclesiastical character. Shops and emporiums displaying _objets de
+piété_; all kinds of church furniture and art (most of it bad art)
+abound. We continue our southward way by the Rue Férou, opposite the
+end of which is the Musée du Luxembourg containing a collection of
+such contemporary sculpture and paintings as has been deemed worthy
+of acquisition by the State. The rooms are crowded with statuary and
+pictures which evince much talent and technical skill, but the visitor
+will be impressed by few works of great distinction. The English
+traveller, perchance, will leave with kindlier feelings towards those
+responsible for the Chantrey pictures, though envious of a collection
+whose catholicity embraces works by two great modern masters,
+Londoners by option--Legros and Whistler. But any impression that may
+be left on the traveller's mind by the inspection of the examples of
+contemporary French art exhibited in this museum should be
+supplemented and corrected by an examination of decorative works of
+greater range in the chief public edifices, such as the Hôtel de
+Ville, the Sorbonne, the Panthéon and the École de Médecine. We enter
+the Luxembourg Gardens by the gate R. of the museum, turn L., pass the
+façade of the palace and opposite its E. wing discover the charming
+old Medici Fountain. After strolling about the delightful gardens,
+unhappily by the erection of the Observatory in 1672 reduced by more
+than one-third of their former extent, we leave by the gate N. of the
+Medici Fountain which gives on the Rue Vaugirard opposite the Odéon
+Theatre, formerly the _Théâtre de la Nation_, where the _Comédie
+Française_ performed for a few years after 1781. The Paris booksellers
+still have their stalls inside the colonnade even as they used to do
+in the great Salle of the Palais de Justice.
+
+[Footnote 191: Now suppressed and the building taken over by the State
+(1911).]
+
+[Illustration: COUR DU DRAGON.]
+
+Descending (R. of the Odéon) the Rues Corneille, Casimir Delavigne and
+Antoine Dubois, we strike the Rue de l'École de Médecine where (No. 15
+to R.) will be seen the Refectory, all that remains of the great
+Franciscan monastery, and now used as a pathological museum (Musée
+Dupuytren), for medical students. In this hall was laid the body of
+Marat after his assassination by Charlotte Corday, and the famous club
+of the Cordeliers, where the gentler rhetoric of Camille Desmoulins
+vied with the thunderous declamation of Danton to stir republican
+fervour, met in the Hall of Theology. We pass to No. 5, where are some
+remains of the old School of Surgery or Guild of SS. Cosmas and
+Damian, founded by St. Louis; adjacent stood the church of St. Cosmas,
+famous for the fiery zeal of its curé during the times of the League.
+The surgeons of the Guild being compelled by their charter to give
+professional aid to the poor every Monday, the churchwardens obtained
+a papal Bull authorising them to erect in their church a suitable
+consulting-room for the use of the patients. In 1694 the surgeons
+built an anatomical theatre which, enlarged in 1710, is now used as an
+art school. We continue our pilgrimage and, crossing the Boulevard St.
+Michel to the Rue des Écoles, descend on our L. the Rue de la Sorbonne
+and find the entrance to the beautiful late Gothic palace built for
+the abbots of Cluny in 1490.
+
+[Illustration: TOWER AND COURTYARD OF HÔTEL CLUNY.]
+
+The delightful old mansion, (p. 159) now the Musée de Cluny, is
+crowded with a selection of mediæval and renaissance objects
+unparalleled in Europe for variety and excellence and beauty. The
+rooms themselves, with their fine carved chimney-pieces, where on
+winter days wood-fires, fragrant and genial, burn, are not the least
+charming part of the museum. Many of the exhibits (about 12,000) are
+uncatalogued, and the old catalogue, long out of date, may well be
+classed among the antiquities. The traveller will doubtless return
+again and again to this rich and fascinating museum. The present
+installation is provisional, and we do but indicate the chief classes
+of objects exhibited, most of which are clearly labelled. L. of
+vestibule, Rooms I. and II. contain a miscellaneous collection of
+wood carving, statuary, ivories, etc. Room III. has some important
+examples of carved and painted altar-pieces: 709 is late
+fifteenth-century work; 712, Flemish of the sixteenth century; 710, a
+German domestic altar-piece, near which stands a fine Flemish
+altar-piece (no number), carved with scenes from the Passion. On a
+screen in the centre are some important paintings, carvings and other
+objects of ecclesiastical art from the Rothschild Collection. Room IV.
+shows some beautiful renaissance furniture, cabinets, medals, etc. To
+the R. is the smaller Room V. The chief exhibits here are an
+eighteenth-century Neapolitan _Crèche_, with more than fifty doll-like
+figures; a rich tabernacle of plateresque Spanish work, and some
+furniture of interest. We return and descend to Room VI. (on the R), a
+large hall, where many important mediæval sculptures will be seen. At
+the four corners are thirteenth-century statues from the Ste.
+Chapelle. We may also mention: 429 (under a glass case), some lovely
+fourteenth-century statuettes, mourners from the tomb of Philip the
+Bold, by the Burgundian artist, Claus Sluter; a painted statue of the
+Baptist, Sienese work; statuette in wood of the Virgin, French art of
+the fourteenth century; 725, statuette in wood of St. Louis from the
+Ste. Chapelle. Other noteworthy examples of mediæval plastic art by
+French, Italian and Netherland craftsmen will be found in this room,
+and around the walls are specimens of tapestries, carvings, paintings
+and mosaics, among the last being some from St. Denis and one, 4763,
+by David Ghirlandaio from St. Merri. We cross a passage to the
+parallel Hall VII., where hang three grand pieces of early sixteenth
+century Flemish tapestry, illustrating the story of David and
+Bathsheba. Among the statuary are: 251, Virgin and Child, French work
+of early sixteenth century; 448, The Three Fates, attributed to
+Germain Pilon, and said to be portraits of Diana of Poitiers and her
+daughters. 449, The Forsaken Ariadne; 456, Sleep; 450, Venus and
+Cupid; 479, a small and beautiful entombment, are French work of the
+sixteenth century. Hall VIII. Here are exhibited the sumptuously
+decorated robes of the Order of the Holy Ghost (p. 187); other
+examples of fine tapestry; a Venetian Galley Lamp; and some statuary
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+
+We return to the passage and ascend the stairs to the first floor.
+Here are three galleries devoted to Faiences and other specimens of
+the potter's art of French, Italian, Flemish, German, Spanish, Persian
+and Moorish provenance. All are of admirable craftsmanship, the
+Italian (including some from Faenza itself, the home of Faience ware)
+being of especial beauty and excellence. Among the Della Robbia ware
+is an exquisite Child-Baptist by Andrea. We now ascend three steps to
+the room which contains, among other objects, a matchless collection
+of Limoges enamels; some Venetian glass; and the marvellous
+fifteenth-century tapestries from Boussac, probably the finest of that
+fine period which have survived to us. The upper portion illustrates
+the Life and Martyrdom of St. Stephen; the lower, the story of the
+Lady and the Unicorn, or the Triumph of Chastity.
+
+We descend to the Gallery of Hispano-Moorish and Persian pottery, and
+cross to a suite of small rooms where specimens of Jewish sanctuary
+art, old musical instruments, wedding cassoni and Flemish cabinets are
+displayed. We then turn R. to the Hall of Francis I., with a stately
+bed of the period; carved cabinets and cupboards, and proceed direct
+to the room devoted to the ivories. These are of extraordinary variety
+and beauty, and range from the sixth century downwards. The next room
+is crowded with an equally varied collection of bronze and iron work,
+among which we note a fifteenth-century statuette in bronze of Joan of
+Arc. The examples of the locksmith's art shown are of great beauty and
+excellence. The elaboration of French keys has a peculiar origin.
+Henry III., as a mark of royal favour, permitted his minions to
+possess a key of his private apartment: as a piece of swagger the
+royal favourite was wont to wear the key ostentatiously on his breast,
+whereby French smiths were spurred in emulation to produce keys of
+exquisite craftsmanship and design. Another kind of interest attaches
+to the key (No. 5962 in the case on the L. as we enter) which was made
+by Louis XVI. The following room contains specimens of the goldsmith's
+art. 5104 is a curious sixteenth-century model of a ship in gilded
+bronze, with figures of Charles V. and his court on the deck: it has
+an ingenious mechanism for discharging toy cannon. 5299, is a set of
+chessmen in rock crystal; 4988, the face of an altar, rich gold
+repoussé work, was given by the Emperor, Henry II., to Bale Cathedral.
+The glass case in the centre holds nine golden Visigothic crowns found
+near Toledo in 1860, the largest is that of King Reccesvinthus who
+reigned in the latter half of the seventh century; 5044 is a
+fourteenth-century Italian processional cross of great beauty. We
+retrace our steps to the Hall of Francis I., turn R. and enter the
+private chapel. Opposite the charming little apse are placed some
+admirably preserved fourteenth-century reliefs in stone from the Abbey
+of St. Denis. On leaving, we turn R. along the passage, hung with
+armour and weapons, to the stairway, descend to Room VI., ground
+floor, open a door at its W. end, and in the twinkling of an eye are
+swept back nigh two thousand years along the stream of the ages, for
+the frigidarium of the Baths of the Palace of the Cæsars is before us,
+a fabric of imperial architecture, spoiled of its decorations but yet
+massive and strong, as of elemental strength, defiant of time, the
+imperishable mark of Rome. We descend and find in the centre the altar
+(p. 17), bearing the inscription of the _Nautæ_. A statue of the
+Emperor Julian; some thirteenth and fourteenth-century statues are
+also exhibited. We may enter and rest in the garden where a
+twelfth-century cloister portal from the Benedictine Abbey of
+Argenteuil, a fourteenth-century portal from the Abbey of St. Denis,
+and other fragments of architecture are placed.
+
+[Illustration: ARCHES IN THE COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL CLUNY.]
+
+We return to the Rue des Écoles which we cross to the imposing new
+University buildings. The vestibule, grand staircase and amphitheatre
+are of noble and stately proportions and adorned with mural paintings,
+among which Puvis de Chavannes' great composition, The Sacred Grove,
+in the amphitheatre, is of chief interest.[192] We continue along the
+Rue de la Sorbonne and soon reach the old chapel, all that remains of
+Richelieu's Sorbonne, containing his tomb, a masterpiece of monumental
+art of the late seventeenth century, designed by Lebrun and executed
+by Girardon. The church of St. Benoist and its cloister, where
+François Villon assassinated his rival Chermoyé, has also been swept
+away. We proceed by the Rue Victor Cousin, a continuation of the Rue
+de la Sorbonne, and debouch on the broad Rue Soufflot. Turning L., an
+inscription on No. 14 marks the site of the Dominican monastery where
+the great schoolmen, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught.
+Opposite (No. 9), at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques is the site,
+marked by a plan, of the old Porte St. Jacques of the Philip Augustus
+wall. We are now on the Mount of St. Genevieve, crowned by the
+majestic and eminent Panthéon, whose pediment is adorned by David
+d'Angers' sculptures, representing La Patrie, between Liberty and
+History, distributing crowns to her children. Among the figures are
+Malesherbes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mirabeau, Carnot, Bonaparte, behind
+whom stand an old grenadier and the famous drummer-boy of Arcole.
+
+[Footnote 192: The Collège de France may be seen further along the Rue
+des Écoles at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques.]
+
+The Panthéon has the most magnificent situation and, except the new
+church of the Sacré Coeur, is the most dominant building in Paris.
+Its dome is seen from nearly every eminence commanding the city, and
+has a certain stately, almost noble, aspect. But the spacious
+interior, despite the efforts of the artists of the third Republic, is
+chilling to the spectator. Swept and garnished, it has no warmth of
+historical or religious associations; it is devoid of human sentiment.
+The choice of painters to decorate the interior was an amazing act of
+official insensibility. The most discordant artistic temperaments were
+let loose on the devoted building. Puvis de Chavannes, the only
+painter among them who has grasped the limitation of mural art, has
+painted with restraint and noble simplicity incidents in the story of
+St. Genevieve. Jean Paul Laurens is responsible for a splendid but
+incongruous representation of the death of St. Genevieve. A St. Denis,
+scenes in the lives of Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Jeanne
+d'Arc, by Bonnat, Blanc, Levy, Cabanel and Lenepveu, are all excellent
+work of the kind so familiar to visitors to the Salon at Paris, but
+lacking in harmony and in inspiration. The angel appearing to Jeanne
+d'Arc seems to have been modelled from a _figurante_ at the opera. The
+visitor who has perused the opening chapters of this book will have no
+difficulty in following the subjects depicted on the walls. A more
+ambitious scheme of decoration was abruptly closed by the Coup d'État
+of Napoleon III.: Chenavard, who had been commissioned, in 1848, to
+decorate the interior by a series of forty cartoons, illustrating the
+"History of Man from his first sorrows to the French Revolution,"
+found his gigantic project made abortive by the Prince President's
+treachery.
+
+To the L. of the Panthéon, the library of St. Genevieve stands on the
+site of the Collège Montaigu and behind, in the Rue Clotilde, will be
+seen the steep-pitched roof of the old dormitory and refectory of the
+monastery of St. Genevieve: to our L. stands the picturesque church of
+St. Étienne du Mont (p. 85), whose interior is architecturally of much
+interest. The triforium, supported by round pillars and arches, in its
+turn supports a _tournée_, with another row of arches and pillars; some
+fine sixteenth-century coloured glass still remains. Biard's florid
+choir screen (p. 344) or _jubé_ will at once attract the visitor, and
+the ever-present worshippers around the rich shrine R. of the choir will
+tell him that there such relics of the holy patroness of Paris as
+survived the Revolution are preserved. Two inscriptions near by recall
+the historical associations of the site. Leaving by the door this side
+of the choir, we issue into the Rue Clovis: opposite we sight the
+so-called Tower of Clovis, now enclosed in the buildings of the Lycée
+Henri IV., and once the tower of the fine old abbey church of St.
+Genevieve. A closer examination from the courtyard proves it to be
+partly Romanesque, partly Gothic. We descend the Rue Clovis and at No. 7
+find one of the best-preserved remains of the Philip Augustus wall.
+Proceeding to the end of the Rue Clovis, we turn R., ascend the Rue
+Cardinal Lemoine, and cross to the Rue Rollin, which we descend to its
+intersection with the Rue Monge: in the Rue de Navarre opposite will be
+found the ruins of the old Roman Arena (p. 13). To return, we descend
+the Rue Monge, which terminates at the Place Maubert, where we find
+ourselves on familiar ground; or we may re-ascend the Rue Rollin,
+retracing our steps to the Rue Cardinal Lemoine, cross L. to the Place
+Contrescarpe and on our L. find the interesting Rue Mouffetard with
+curious old houses: 99, the site of the Palace of the Patriarchs of
+Alexandria and Jerusalem, is now the Marché des Patriarchs. The street
+terminates at the church of St. Médard, whose notorious cemetery (p.
+245) is now a Square. We retrace our steps, noting L. the old fountain
+at the corner of the Rue Pot de Fer, continue to the end of the Rue
+Mouffetard, and descend by the Rue Descartes, where at No. 50 is an
+inscription marking the site of the Porte St. Marcel called Porte
+Bordet. We pass the École Polytechnique, on the site of the old College
+of Navarre, and continue down the Rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève to
+the Place Maubert.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. ÉTIENNE DU MONT.]
+
+
+
+
+SECTION IV
+
+_The Louvre[193]--Sculpture: Ground Floor._
+
+[Footnote 193: The Louvre is open from 9-5 in summer, from 10-4 in
+winter. On Sundays it is open from 10-4. It is closed on Mondays and
+holidays and on Thursdays till 1 o'clock.]
+
+
+No other edifice in Europe contains so vast a treasure of things
+beautiful and rare as the great royal palace of the Louvre, whose
+growth we have traced in our story. From periods so remote that works
+of art sometimes termed ancient are in comparison but of yesterday to
+the productions of the generation of artists who have just passed
+away, we may study the varying phases of the manifestation through the
+ages of the artistic sense in man. From Egypt, Chaldea and Assyria,
+from Persia, Phoenicia and Greece, rich and marvellous collections
+afford a unique opportunity for the study of comparative æsthetics.
+We may safely assume, however, that the traveller will be chiefly
+interested in the manifold examples of the plastic and pictorial arts,
+here exhibited, from Greece downwards. In the limited space at our
+disposal we can do no more than indicate the principal and choicest
+objects in the various rooms, praying those whose leisure and interest
+impel them to more thorough examination of any one department, to
+possess themselves of the admirable and exhaustive special catalogues
+issued by the Directors of the Museum.
+
+The nucleus of the gallery of sculpture and painting was formed by
+Francis I. and the Renaissance princes at the palace of Fontainebleau,
+where the canvases at the beginning of the seventeenth century had
+reached nearly 200. Colbert, during the reign of Louis XIV. by the
+purchase of the Mazarin and other Collections, added 647 paintings and
+nearly 6000 drawings in ten years. In 1681 the Cabinet du Roi, for so
+the collection of royal pictures was called, was transferred to the
+Louvre. They soon, however, followed their owner to Versailles, but
+some hundred were subsequently returned to Paris, where they might be
+inspected at the Luxembourg Palace by the public on Wednesdays and
+Saturdays. In 1709 Bailly, the keeper of the king's cabinet, took an
+inventory of the paintings and they were found to number 2376. In 1757
+all were again returned to Versailles, and it was not until 1793, when
+the National Convention, on Barrère's motion, took the matter in hand,
+that they were restored to the Parisians and, together with the works
+of art removed from the suppressed churches and monasteries preserved
+by Lenoir, formed the famous gallery of the Louvre, which was formally
+opened to the public on the first anniversary of the memorable 10th of
+August. The arrival of the artistic spoils from Italy was
+stage-managed by Napoleon with consummate skill and imposing
+spectacular effect. Amid the applauding multitudes of Parisians a long
+procession of triumphal cars slowly wended its way, loaded with famous
+pictures, securely packed, but each bearing its title in monumental
+inscription. THE TRANSFIGURATION, by RAPHAEL: THE CHRIST, by TITIAN,
+etc. Then followed the heavy rumbling of massive cars groaning under
+the weight of sculptures, these too inscribed: THE APOLLO BELVEDERE:
+THE LAOCOON, etc. Other chariots loaded with trunks containing famous
+books, precious manuscripts, captured flags, trophies of arms, gave
+the scene all the pomp and circumstance of a veritable Roman triumph.
+These spoils, which almost choked the Louvre during Napoleon's reign,
+were reduced by the return, in 1815, of 5233 works of art to their
+original owners under British supervision, and during the removal of
+the statues and pictures, ostentatiously effected to the bitter
+humiliation of the Parisians, British sentinels were stationed along
+the galleries and British soldiers stood under arms in the quadrangle
+and the Place du Carrousel to protect the workmen.
+
+Before beginning our artistic pilgrimage let us pay grateful tribute
+to the memory of Alexandre Lenoir, to whose tact and love for the arts
+we owe the preservation of so many priceless objects here, at St.
+Denis, and other museums of Paris. Appointed by the National Assembly,
+Director of a _Commission pour les Monuments_ formed to collect all
+objects of art worthy of preservation during the search for lead
+coffins to be cast into bullets, he induced the authorities to grant
+him the use of the monastery of the Petits Augustins (now part of the
+École des Beaux Arts) for their storage. There the admirable official
+succeeded in rescuing some 500 historical and royal monuments from
+Paris and St. Denis and some 2,600 pictures from the confiscated
+monasteries and ecclesiastical establishments, although existing
+receipts for about 600 pictures reclaimed from Lenoir by the
+Revolutionary Tribunal and burned, prove that he was only partially
+successful. In 1793 the National Convention assigned the Petits
+Augustins to Lenoir as a Museum of French Monuments, and the
+collection was pieced together, somewhat unskilfully it is true, and
+arranged in six rooms: many of the objects were in due time destined
+to find their way back to St. Denis, others to enrich the Louvre.
+
+
+(_a_) ANCIENT SCULPTURE.
+
+Entering the quadrangle of the Louvre and making our way to the S.W.
+angle we shall see, traced on the granite paving by a line of smaller
+stones, the outline of the E. and N. walls and towers of the old
+fortress of Philip Augustus, the position of the E. gateway, the Porte
+de Bourbon, being marked by its two flanking towers. Enclosed within
+these lines, the site of the massive old keep is shown by two circular
+strings of stones on the asphalt. Lescot's and Goujon's beautiful
+façade (p. 173) is now before us. Although the whole of the decorative
+sculpture was designed by Goujon, only three groups of figures can be
+safely attributed to his hand; those that adorn the three _oeil de
+boeuf_ windows of the ground floor: Fame and Victory; Peace, and War
+disarmed; History and Glory. Concerning the two first-named
+figures--Fame blowing a trumpet, and a winged Victory offering a crown
+of laurel--on either side of the window in the S.W. angle, it is
+related that one day as King Henry II. sat at table with his
+architect, he asked him what he had in mind when he made the design.
+"Sire," answered Lescot, "by the first figure I meant Ronsard, and by
+the trumpet, the power of his verse, which carried his name to the
+four quarters of the earth." Ronsard, who was present, returned the
+compliment by a flattering poetic epistle which he sent to Lescot.
+Goujon's figures, destined for the pediment of the attic, were placed
+by Napoleon I. most awkwardly over the entrances to the Egyptian and
+Assyrian collections in the E. wing, and utterly spoiled of their
+effect. The monograms on either side of the windows: two D's
+interlaced with the bar of an H, or two C's with the whole of the
+letter H, are variously interpreted as the initials of Diana of
+Poitiers and Henry II. or Catherine de' Medici and Henry II.
+
+We enter the palace by the Pavilion de l'Horloge (the clock pavilion)
+and, turning L. find on our L. a door which opens to the Salle des
+Caryatides (p. 173). Here, in the old Salle Basse, memories crowd upon
+us--the dangling bodies of the four terrorist chiefs of the Sections
+hanged by the Duke of Mayenne from the beams of the old ceiling; the
+Red Nuptials of fair Queen Margot and Henri Quatre; the chivalrous and
+handsome, but ill-fated young hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria, on
+his way, in 1576, to the Netherlands, his brain seething with romantic
+dreams of rescuing Mary Queen of Scots and seating her beside himself
+on the throne of England, taking part in a royal ball, disguised as a
+Moor, and leaving, smitten by the charms of Queen Margot; the lying in
+state of the murdered Henri; the dying Mazarin wheeled in his chair to
+witness the royal performances by Molière. Beneath our feet in the
+_caves_ are part of the foundations of the old feudal château, and
+pillars and fragments of old sculpture discovered in 1882-1884.
+
+We note Goujon's Caryatides (p. 174), traverse the hall, filled with
+Roman sculpture and, turning R. along the Corridor de Pan, enter the
+Salle Grecque, which contains a small but precious collection of Greek
+sculptures. In the centre are three archaic works: a draped Juno, and
+in glass cases, a Head of Apollo, and a Head of a Man, the latter
+still bearing traces of the original colouring. Also in cases are:
+Head of a Lapith from the Parthenon; and Head of a woman attributed to
+the sculptor Calamis, acquired in 1908 from the Humphrey Ward
+collection. Three bas-reliefs from a temple of Apollo at Thasos show a
+marked advance in artistic expression, which reaches its ultimate
+perfection in the lovely fragment of the Parthenon frieze, and in a
+mutilated metope from the same temple. An interesting comparison is
+afforded by the metopes (The Labours of Hercules) from the Temple of
+Jupiter at Olympia, earlier and transitional in style but admirable in
+craftsmanship. On the walls and in the embrasures of the S. windows
+are a number of stele, or sepulchral reliefs,[194] executed by
+ordinary funeral masons, which will demonstrate the remarkable general
+excellence of Attic sculpture in the finest period: 766, to Philis,
+daughter of Cleomedes, is especially noteworthy. Even the inferior
+reliefs are characterised by an atmosphere of dignified and restrained
+melancholy.
+
+[Footnote 194: The architectural framework is believed to represent
+the portal of Hades.]
+
+We return to the Corridor de Pan and continue past the Salle des
+Caryatides through halls filled with Græco-Roman work of secondary
+importance, to the sanctuary of the serenely beautiful Venus of Melos,
+the best-known and most admired of Greek statues in Europe. Much has
+been written by eminent critics as to the attitude of the complete
+statue. Three conflicting theories may be briefly summarised: (1) That
+the left hand held an apple, the right supporting the drapery; (2)
+that the figure was a Victory holding a shield and a winged figure on
+an orb; (3) the latest conjecture, by Solomon Reinach, that the figure
+is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, who held a trident in the extended left
+arm. It was to this exquisite creation[195] of idealised womanhood
+that the poet Heine dragged himself in May 1848 to bid adieu to the
+lovely idols of his youth, before he lay, never again to rise, on his
+mattress-grave in the Rue d'Amsterdam. "As I entered the hall," he
+writes, "where the most blessed goddess of beauty, our dear lady of
+Melos, stands on her pedestal, I well-nigh broke down, and fell at her
+feet sobbing piteously, so that even a heart of stone must be
+softened. And the goddess gazed at me compassionately, yet withal so
+comfortless, as who should say: 'Seest thou not that I have no arms
+and cannot help thee?'"
+
+[Footnote 195: We are credibly informed that this priceless statue was
+first offered to the English Government for 4,000 francs and refused!
+The French Government bought it for 6,000 francs.]
+
+To the R. of the Salle de la Venus de Milo is the Salle Melpomene,
+with a fine colossal figure of the Tragic Muse, and, No. 419[196]
+(163), an excellent Head of a Woman. We enter the Salle de la Pallas
+de Velletri, and ranged along its centre find: 436, a fine bust of
+Alexander the Great; the Venus of Arles, 439, said to be a copy of an
+early work by Praxiteles; a magnificent Head of Homer, 440; and 441,
+Apollo, the Lizard-slayer, after a bronze by Praxiteles. The colossal
+Pallas, in a recess to the R., was found at Velletri in 1797: it is
+another Roman reproduction of a Greek bronze. Near the entrance to the
+next room stands a pleasing Venus, 525, and in the centre the famous
+"Borghese Gladiator" or _Héros Combattant_, actually, a warrior
+attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work
+of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be
+flayed alive by order of Apollo; to L. 562, the Borghese Centaur, and
+near the exit, 529, the charming Diana of Gabii, a Greek girl
+fastening her mantle. We pass to the Salle du Tibre, in the centre of
+which stands the famous Diana and the Stag, acquired for Francis I.,
+much admired and over-rated by the sculptors of the renaissance: at
+the end is a colossal group, symbolising the Tiber and Rome. We turn
+R. and again enter the Corridor de Pan, pass through the Salle Grecque
+and reach the Rotonde with the Borghese Mars in its centre. We turn
+L., continue direct through Rooms XIV. to XVIII. the old Petite
+Galerie[197] and the apartments of the queen mothers of France still
+retaining their ceiling decorations by Romanelli. We then turn R. to
+the spacious Salle d'Auguste, (XIX), at the end of which, in a recess,
+stands a majestic draped statue of Augustus. In the centre are a bust,
+1204, said to be the head of Antiochus III., king of Syria 223-187
+B.C., and 1207 the stately Roman Orator as Mercury, which an
+inscription on the tortoise states to be the work of Cleomanes, an
+Athenian. In this and the subsequent halls are placed many imperial
+busts[198] of much historical and some artistic interest.
+
+[Footnote 196: Unfortunately the numeration of the sculpture in the
+Louvre is in a most chaotic state. Some of the objects are unnumbered;
+others retain their old numbers, yet others have both old and new
+numbers.]
+
+[Footnote 197: There was originally a fosse between it and the garden
+which Marie de' Medici bridged by a wooden structure, known as the
+Pont d'Amour, to facilitate interviews with her favourite Concini.]
+
+[Footnote 198: It may not be inopportune to summarise here,
+Bienkowski's criterion for dating Roman busts, which is as follows:
+Augustan and Julio-Claudian epoch, head only rendered; Flavian,
+shoulders rendered but juncture of arms not indicated; the sculptors
+of Trajan's time included the juncture of the arms, and of Hadrian's
+and the Antonines, part of the upper arm. Later, the bust developed to
+a half-length figure. It is necessary of course to exclude decapitated
+busts subsequently restored or fitted with heads of another epoch.]
+
+We return to Room XVIII. where we find, 1205, the colossal bust of
+Antinous, the beautiful young favourite of Hadrian, who in a fit of
+melancholy flung himself into the Nile and (deified) became the most
+popular of the gods in the Panthéon of the later Empire: the eyes were
+originally formed of jewels. This is the bust referred to by J.A.
+Symonds, in his _Sketches and Studies in S. Europe_, as by far the
+finest of the simple busts of the imperial favourite. In Room XV. is a
+statue, 1121, of the Emperor Julian, found at Paris, some curious
+Mithraic reliefs, and, in Room XIV. are interesting Roman altars and
+sacrificial reliefs. We again enter the Rotonde, turn L. and proceed
+across the Vestibule Daru to the Escalier Daru, ascending which, we
+are confronted by the majestic Victory of Samothrace, one of the
+noblest examples of Greek art, wrought immediately before it had spent
+its creative force and began to direct a subtle and technical mastery
+to serve private luxury and pomp. We descend and return to the
+Quadrangle.
+
+
+(_b_) MEDIÆVAL AND RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE.
+
+We cross the quadrangle to the S.E. and enter[199] the Musée des
+Sculptures du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, where the sense of
+beauty inherent in the Gallic race is seen expressed in a medium which
+has always appealed to its peculiar objective and lucid temperament.
+We proceed to Room I., which contains some typical early Madonnas and
+other figures in wood and stone; a fifteenth-century statuette in
+marble (No. 211), in the embrasure of the second window, is worthy of
+special attention. The fine sepulchral monument of Phil. Bot,
+Seneschal of Burgundy, an effigy on a grave-stone borne by eight
+mourners, illustrates a favourite design of the Burgundian sculptors.
+The recumbent figure, 224, of Philippe VI. of France (1350),
+attributed to Andrieu Beaunepveu, the art-loving Charles V's. _cher
+ymagier_, is one of the earliest attempts at portraiture. Centre of
+hall, 887 and 888, recumbent statues of Charles IV. and Jeanne
+d'Évreux, fourteenth-century, by Jean de Liège. The tomb of Philippe
+de Morvillier, 420, in the recess of a window, is an example of early
+fifteenth-century acrolithic monumental sculpture; the head and hands
+of the figure being of marble according to a common custom dating from
+Greek times. On either side of the entrance are fine busts of Charles
+VIII. and Marie of Anjou.
+
+[Footnote 199: Now (1911) entered from the E. portal (_Antiquités
+Égyptiennes_).]
+
+Rooms II., IX. and X. should next be visited. In IX. stands the oldest
+fragment of mediæval sculpture in the Louvre, a capital from the old
+abbey of St. Genevieve, whereon an eleventh-century artist has carved
+a quaint relief of Daniel in the Lions' Den. The Virgin and Child in
+the same room, 37, is late twelfth-century; the painted statue of
+Childebert, 48, from the abbey of St. Germain, is an example of the
+more mature art of the thirteenth century, as are also in Room II.,
+78, a scene in the Inferno from Notre Dame, and two lovely angels from
+the tomb of St. Louis' brother, in the embrasures of the window.
+
+The fourteenth-century Madonnas in these mediæval rooms possess a
+peculiar, intimate character and mark the change of feeling which came
+over French artists of the time. The impersonal, unemotional and regal
+bearing of the thirteenth-century figures give way to a more
+naturalistic treatment. The Virgin's impassive features soften;
+they become more human; she turns to her child with a maternal smile
+(which later becomes conventionalised into a simper), or permits a
+caress. In Room X. are: 889, 890, two fifteenth-century statues,
+admirable and living portraitures of Charles V. and his queen, from
+the church of the Célestins, whose preservation is due to the
+excellent Lenoir--statues famous in their day, and mentioned by the
+contemporary Christine de Pisan as _moult proprement faits_; 892, a
+fifteenth-century statue in wood of St. John; 943, Eve, a fine example
+of the German school of the sixteenth century, painted and gilded;
+other works are temporarily placed in this room. We return to Room
+III., noting in passing (Room IX.) 875, a small thirteenth-century
+relief of St. Matthew writing his Gospel at the dictation of an angel.
+
+[Illustration: DIANA AND THE STAG.
+
+_Jean Goujon._]
+
+The stubborn individuality of French sculptors who long resisted the
+encroaching advance of the Italian renaissance is well seen in Room
+III. by the works of Michel Colombe (? 1430-1570), after whom this
+hall is named. The exquisite relief on the L. wall, St. George and the
+Dragon, displays an art touched indeed by the new Italian life, but
+impressed with an intimate charm and spirit which are eminently
+French. The Virgin and Child, 143, and the tombs of Roberte Legendre
+and her husband have also been ascribed to this truly great master.
+The fine effigies of Philippe de Comines the annalist, and his wife,
+126, are wrought in the traditional French manner, the decorations on
+the tomb being obviously by another and Italianised artist; the shells
+on the shields denote that the knight had made the pilgrimage to St.
+James of Compostella in Galicia. Beneath is the tomb of their
+daughter, Jeanne. The sixteenth-century Virgin of Ecouen, 144, is
+typically French in treatment; the large relief on the L. wall from
+the old church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, 199, is an excellent
+example of transitional Franco-Italian sculpture; and the
+half-reclining bronze effigy of Prince Carpi from the great Franciscan
+church (the Cordeliers) of Paris, is wholly Italian in style. The
+gruesome figure, _La Mort_, in the embrasure of a window, from the old
+cemetery of Les Innocents, and a fine bust, 173, of John of Alesso,
+will also be noted. We pass to Room IV., dominated by the most eminent
+sculptor of the French renaissance, Jean Goujon (? 1520-1567), whose
+famous Diana and the Stag, from a fountain at Diana of Poitiers'
+château of Anet, marks the increasing influence of the Italians, and
+especially of Cellini, who were attracted to Fontainebleau by the
+patronage of Francis I. A more intimate example, however, of Goujon's
+genius will be seen in the beautiful bas-reliefs on the L. wall,
+Tritons and Nereids, from the Fontaine des Innocents, executed
+1548-49, and those (R. wall) from the old choir screen of St. Germain
+l'Auxerrois in 1544, happily rescued from clerical vandals.[200] For
+sheer loveliness of form and poetry of outline, those reliefs are
+unsurpassed by any contemporary artist. His younger contemporary,
+Germain Pilon (1535-1590), is well represented in this room. The Three
+Graces (_trois grâces décentes_), which Catherine de' Medici
+commissioned him to execute, to sustain an urn containing the heart of
+her royal husband at the Célestins, is an early work; the admirable
+kneeling bronze effigy, 257, of René of Birague, a maturer production.
+The four cardinal virtues in oak were executed for the abbey church
+of St. Genevieve: they were originally covered with stucco and held on
+high the saint's reliquary. The too lachrymose Madonna in terra-cotta,
+256, already ushers in the decadence. Portrait busts of Henry II.,
+227, the vicious Henry III., 253, and of the feeble Charles IX., 252,
+are also to be noted. Pilon's pupil, Bart. Prieur (d. 1611), is
+responsible for the monument to the Constable Anne of Montmorency and
+Madeleine of Savoy, in the recess of a window, and the three bronze
+statues placed by the opposite wall. With Pierre Biard the elder, who
+about 1600 executed the elaborate choir-screen of St. Étienne du Mont,
+the French renaissance sinks to a not inglorious end. His Fame (224,
+_bis_), in Room III. and a copy of Giov. da Bologna's Mercury, made
+for the Duke of Epernon's tomb, hints at the impending pomposity and
+extravagance of the later French pseudo-classic school. Room V.
+affords an instructive comparison with some productions of the Italian
+renaissance. 332, Florentine school, is a charming bust of Beatrice
+d'Este, the girl bride of Lodovico il Moro, autocrat of Milan. The
+fine bas-relief, 386, Julius Cæsar, was formerly ascribed to
+Donatello; 389, Virgin and Child, is also a school work; 403, the
+Child-Baptist, is a good example of Mino da Fiesole's sweet and tender
+style, as are some Madonna bas-reliefs in the embrasure of the first
+window. Here, too, and in the next window, are some well-wrought early
+renaissance reliefs in bronze (scenes in the life of a physician), by
+a Paduan artist, from the tomb of a celebrated professor of Verona,
+Marc'antonio della Torre. In the lunette of the R. wall is embedded
+Cellini's Nymph of Fontainebleau, and on either side of the noble
+portal from the Palazzo Stanza at Cremona, which forms the entrance to
+Room VI., stand the divine Michael Angelo's so-called Two Slaves,
+actually fettered Virtues intended for the unfortunate tomb of Pope
+Julius II. These priceless statues, given to Francis I. by Robert
+Strozzi, subsequently found their way to Richelieu's garden, and
+during the later years of the monarchy lay neglected in a stable in
+the Faubourg du Roule: when put up to auction in 1793 the vigilant and
+admirable Lenoir seized them for his Musée National at the Augustins.
+Among other objects we note, 396, a fine bust of Filippo Strozzi by
+Benedetto da Maiano. We enter Room VI. The excellent bust of the
+Baptist, 383, by Desiderio da Settignano is officially assigned to
+Donatello, and the coloured Virgin and Child in wood to the Sienese
+Jacopo della Quercia. Room VII. contains many beautiful specimens of
+della Robbia ware, and among the statues and busts we note Louis XII.
+by Lorenzo da Mugiano, of which the head has been restored.
+Provisionally placed in this room is a recently acquired relief in
+marble of the Madonna by Agostino di Duccio.
+
+[Footnote 200: The canons decided that these were unworthy of the
+enlightened taste of the eighteenth century and had them cleared away.
+The relief of the Evangelists was discovered in 1850 embedded in the
+wall of a house in the Rue St. Hyacinthe.]
+
+[Illustration: ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. _Michel Colombe._]
+
+
+(_c_) MODERN SCULPTURE.
+
+We cross the quadrangle to the N.W. and find the entrance to the Musée
+des Sculptures Modernes, where we may trace the rapid decline and
+utter degradation of French sculpture during the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries, and some signs of its recovery during the
+revolutionary period. Many causes contributed to the decay; the
+essentially bourgeois and commonplace taste of Colbert and the
+influence of his artistic henchman, Lebrun; the slavish worship of
+Græco-Roman and Roman models, fostered by the creation of the École de
+Rome; and the teachings of critics like Lessing and Winkelmann, who
+drew their inspiration not from pure Greek models, but from the
+decadent and sterile art of the Empire, stored in the Vatican. Among
+the artists whose individuality stands forth from the mass of
+sculptures in these rooms is Charles Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720), who
+gives his name to Room I. to the L. of the vestibule. His chief works
+are in the "royal pandemonium," at Versailles, but in the vestibule
+will be found excellent examples of his art, 555, Nymph with a shell,
+and 560, Shepherd playing a flute. In Room I., 561, Marie Adelaide of
+Savoy as Diana; 557, a fine bronze bust of the great Condé and a bust
+of Ant. Coypel acquired in 1910, are worth attention, as is also 552,
+the grand monument to Mazarin in Room II. Pierre Puget (1622-1694),
+who gives his name to this hall, began his career as a carver of
+figure-heads at the arsenals of Toulouse and Marseilles. He was the
+chief exponent of the bombastic and exuberant art of the century, and
+the inventor of the peculiar gusty draperies in statuary known as the
+_coup de vent dans la statuaire_. 794, Milo (the famous athlete of
+Crotona), attacked by a Lion, his most popular work, and 796, a
+relief, Diogenes and Alexander, esteemed by Gonse one of the most
+_éclatante_ creations of modern sculpture, will be found in this room.
+Some bronzes, 702-704, Louis XIII., Anne of Austria, and the child
+Louis XIV., from an old monument on the Pont au Change by Simon
+Guillain (1581-1658) are of interest. The Coustous, Nicholas
+(1658-1733) and Guillaume (1677-1746), nephews and pupils of Coysevox
+are represented in Room III. 547, Apollo presenting the Image of Louis
+XIV. to France (embrasure of window); 548, Adonis (centre of room);
+549, Julius Cæsar; and 550, Louis XV., are due to the former: the
+statue of Louis' queen Maria Leczinska, 543, to the latter, whose
+masterpiece, the Horse-tamers of Marly, stands at the entrance of the
+Champs Élysées opposite Coysevox', Mercury and Fame on winged horses,
+at the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens. J.B. Pigalle (1714-1785) is
+but poorly represented by: 785, a bronze bust of Guérin; and 781, a
+Mercury in lead, which has much suffered from exposure to the
+atmosphere in the Luxembourg Gardens. A most talented portraitist in
+marble was J.J. Caffieri (1725-1792), whose seven masterly busts in
+the foyer of the Théâtre Français, paid for by free passes, which the
+artist promptly sold, will be familiar to playgoers. His diploma work,
+The River, 518 (L. of entrance), and a bust of the poet Nivelle de la
+Chaussée, 519 (embrasure of window), will be found in this room. J.A.
+Houdon (1741-1828), whose admirable bust of Molière, and marvellously
+vivid statue of the seated Voltaire--the greatest production of
+eighteenth-century French sculpture--will be also known to playgoers
+at the Français, gives his name to Room IV. Few artists maintained so
+high and consistent a standard of excellence.[201] 716 is a replica in
+bronze of a statue of Diana, executed for the Empress Catherine II. of
+Russia; 708, Diderot; 711, Rousseau; 712 Voltaire; 713, Franklin; 715,
+Washington; 717, Mirabeau, are busts of revolutionary heroes of which
+many replicas exist, executed at seventy-two francs each (if with
+shoulders ninety-six francs), to save himself from starvation during
+the revolutionary period. Two exquisitely charming terra-cotta busts
+in glass cases of the children, Louise and Alexandre Brogniart, and
+1034, 1035, the original busts in plaster of Mme. Houdon and Sabine
+Houdon, will also be noted. Like Caffieri, Houdon was an _habitué_ of
+the Français, and in his old age would totter to the theatre supported
+by his servant, to calmly sleep the performance out. A favourite
+exponent of the suave and languishing style that appealed to the
+decadent tastes of the age was Antoine Pajou (1730-1809) here
+represented by 775, a Bacchante, and 772, Maria Leczinska as Charity.
+Other two works by Pigalle, 782, Love and Friendship, and 783, bust of
+Marshal Saxe, may be noticed before quitting this room. Room V. is
+dedicated to A.D. Chaudet (1763-1810), whose diploma work, Phorbas and
+OEdipus, 533, is here shown; 537, a Bacchante, is a rather poor
+example of the art of Claude Michel (1738-1814), known as Clodion
+whose popularity rivalled that of his master Pajou, and whose
+prodigious output of marble and terra-cotta sculpture failed to keep
+pace with the demands of his clients. 777 is Pajou's, The Forsaken
+Psyche. By the seductive and sentimental Canova are 523 and 524,
+variants of a favourite theme, Love and Psyche.[202] With some sense
+of relief we enter the more invigorating atmosphere of Room VI., named
+after the sturdy François Rude (1784-1855), who flung off the yoke of
+the Roman classicists, and from whose simple, austere atelier issued
+works instinct with a new life, such as the dramatic group, The
+Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, on the E. base of the Triumphal
+Arch of the Etoile. Rude, who rescued the art from the fetid
+atmosphere of a corrupt society and emancipated it from a hide-bound
+pedagogy, is here represented by his Jeanne d'Arc, 813; Maurice de
+Saxe, 811; and 815, Napoleon awakening to Immortality, a model for a
+monument to the Emperor. In the centre are 810, Mercury in bronze, and
+the Neapolitan fisher lad (no number). Rude's contemporary and
+fellow-liberator, David d'Angers (1789-1856), chiefly renowned for his
+pediment sculpture on the Panthéon (p. 330) is here represented by
+566, Philopoeman, the famous general of the Achaen League; busts of
+Arago and of Béranger; 567 _bis_, Child and Grapes, and a series of
+medals in the embrasures of the windows. Of Antoine Barye (1796-1875),
+pupil of père Rude and another victorious assailant of the "Bastille
+of Classicism," this room exhibits three masterly works in bronze;
+494, Centaur and Lapith; 495, Jaguar and Hare; and (no number), Tiger
+and Crocodile. A later contemporary and excellent master was Jean
+Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875), after whom Room VII. is named. Here
+stand his models for the famous group, Dancing, which adorns the Opera
+façade; and for The Four Quarters of the World, at the Fountain of the
+Observatoire. Among others of his productions may be cited a bronze
+group, Ugolino and his Children. In a new room (Salle Moderne) are
+some more recent works transferred from the Luxembourg, among which is
+Chapu's Joan of Arc.
+
+[Footnote 201: _Copiez, copiez toujours et surtout copiez juste_ was
+his favourite maxim.]
+
+[Footnote 202: The best criticism passed on this facile artist was
+uttered by Flaxman: "That man's hand is too great for his head."]
+
+
+
+
+SECTION V
+
+_The Louvre (continued)--Pictures: First Floor._
+
+(_a_) FOREIGN SCHOOLS.
+
+
+We enter by the Pavilion Denon, in the middle of the S. wing, opposite
+the Squares du Louvre which are bounded on the W. by the Place du
+Carrousel and the monument to Gambetta. Turning L. along the Galerie
+Denon we mount the Escalier Daru to the first landing below the Winged
+Victory (p. 341), turn R., ascend to a second landing, and on either
+side find two charming frescoes from the Villa Lemmi, which was
+decorated by Botticelli to celebrate the Nuptials of Lorenzo
+Tornabuoni and Giovanna Albizzi.[203] To the L., 1297, The Three
+Graces are presented to the bride; R., 1298, The Seven Liberal Arts to
+the bridegroom. The latter fresco is generally believed to have been
+the work of a pupil. On the wall that forms an angle with this is a
+fresco, The Crucifixion, 1294, by Fra Angelico from the Dominican
+monastery at Fiesole. A door L. of 1297 leads to
+
+ROOM VII.
+
+containing a small but choice collection of early Italian paintings,
+all of which will repay careful study. We note on the entrance wall,
+1260, a Virgin and Child by Cimabue--if indeed we may now assign any
+work to that elusive personality.[204] L. of this is a genuine Giotto,
+1312, described by Vasari: St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. In the
+predella, Vision of Pope Innocent III.; Papal Confirmation of the
+Rule; The Saint preaching to the Birds--each scene portrayed with all
+the sweet simplicity of a chapter in the Fioretti. Below 1260 is a
+predella, 1302, by Taddeo Gaddi: Death of the Baptist; the
+Crucifixion; Martyrdom of the Saint. On the R. wall is 1301, a
+conventional early Florentine Annunciation by Agnolo Gaddi, his pupil.
+Among the early Sienese on the L. wall is 1383, a charming little
+Simone Martini: Christ bearing the Cross. The gem of the collection
+and one of the most precious pictures in Europe is 1290, on this wall,
+Fra Angelico's Coronation of the Virgin, which Vasari declared might
+have been painted by one of the blessed spirits or angels represented
+in the picture, so unspeakably delightful were their forms; so gentle
+and delicate their mien, so glorious their coloration. "Even so," he
+adds, "must they be in heaven and I never gaze on this picture without
+discovering fresh beauties, nor withdraw my eyes from it, satisfied
+with seeing." The scenes in the predella are from the life of St.
+Dominic and form an interesting parallel with those of the Giotto.
+Other works by the angelic master are (L. of this) 1293, Martyrdom of
+SS. Cosmas and Damian, and 1294A, The Resurrection: R. is 1291, The
+Dance of Herodias. R. of 1383 is 1278 by Gentile da Fabriano: The
+Presentation, a portion of a predella. To the same is also attributed
+by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 1279, Virgin and Child and Donor, Pandolfo
+Malatesta. 1422 _bis_, is by Pisanello: Portrait of a Princess of the
+House of Este, identified by Mr G.F. Hill, from the sprig of juniper
+in her dress, as Ginevra d'Este, married to Sigismondo Malatesta in
+1435. R. of 1291 is 1319, the Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas by
+Benozzo Gozzoli, described by Vasari. On opposite wall, 1272, formerly
+assigned to Masaccio: portraits of Giotto, the artist himself Paolo
+Uccelo, Donatello, Manetti and Brunelleschi; painted, says Vasari,
+"that posterity might keep them in memory." R. of this is 1273, a
+battle scene by the same, similar to that in our National Gallery.
+Both had been badly restored even in Vasari's time. L. of 1272 are
+1343 and 1344: a Nativity, and a Virgin and Child with Angels and
+Saints adoring, by Fra Filippo Lippi. The former, according to
+gossiping Vasari, was executed at the Convent of S. Margherita at
+Prato where having been smitten by the _bellissima grazia ed aria_ of
+one of the novices, Lucrezia Buti, Fra Lippo painted her portrait in
+this picture, fell madly in love, and eloped[205] with her: the latter
+exquisite painting Vasari extols as a most rare work which was held in
+the greatest esteem by the masters of his day. Opposite on L. wall is
+1525, a predella: Birth of the Virgin, considered by Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle an excellent example of Luca Signorelli's art. R. wall,
+1321, the Visitation, and 1322, an intimate domestic scene, painted
+with much tenderness, a bibulous old Florentine magistrate bending to
+embrace his little grandson, are masterly works by Domenico
+Ghirlandaio. 1296, Virgin and Child and St. John, is a beautiful early
+work by Botticelli, and 1367 is a like subject by Mainardi, in a
+tondo, a popular form of composition invented by Botticelli. R. of
+exit is 1295, a copy of the master's famous Madonna of the Magnificat
+at Florence. L. wall, 1263, Virgin and Child, SS. Julian and Nicholas
+by Lorenzo di Credi, highly eulogised by Vasari as the artist's most
+careful work in oil wherein he surpassed himself. 1566 (L. of exit),
+is an indifferent late painting by Perugino. In the lunette over the
+door is a Raphael school fresco formerly attributed to the master and
+bought for the sum of 207,000 francs in 1875! We now enter the long
+
+GRANDE GALERIE, ROOM VI.
+
+and begin with Section A. On the R. is 1565, Holy Family, by Perugino.
+1567, Combat of Love and Chastity, by the same, was painted in 1505 to
+the elaborate specification of the enthusiastic and acquisitive patron
+of the renaissance, Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, for her
+famous "Grotta." The artist's slovenly execution of the work brought
+him a well-deserved rebuke from the Marchioness. 1261, by Lorenzo
+Costa, a flattering symbolic representation of the Court at Mantua was
+also painted for her. Isabella, to whom a Cupid hands a laurel crown,
+is seen standing near a grove of trees, surrounded by poets and
+philosophers.
+
+[Footnote 203: For further details, we may refer the reader to Vernon
+Lee's essay: "Botticelli at the Villa Lemmi," _Juvenilia_ I.]
+
+[Footnote 204: "It cannot be proved that a single picture attributed
+to Cimabue was painted by him." Editorial Note to new edition of
+_Crowe and Cavalcaselle_, I., p. 181.]
+
+[Footnote 205: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, however, assign the work to
+Pesellino, who is represented in this room by two small pictures, 1414
+and 1415, on the wall.]
+
+Among the Francias we distinguish, 1436, a Crucifixion; 1556 is a
+Pietà by Cosimo Tura in the characteristic hard manner of the
+Ferrarese master, being the upper portion of the central altar-piece,
+Virgin and Child Enthroned, in the National Gallery; 1417, Virgin and
+Child with two Saints, is a doubtful Pinturicchio; 1114, Virgin and
+Child between SS. Jerome and Zanobi is a good example of
+Albertinelli's pleasing but somewhat characterless style; 1516 and
+1516A are two Andrea del Sartos; 1264 is another Lorenzo di Credi:
+Christ and the Magdalen. Last of all we note 1418, a rather inky
+Nativity, in the grand and broad-manner of the later Roman School by
+Giulio Romano, much admired by Vasari.
+
+We return to the L. wall and note 1526, Signorelli's Adoration of the
+Magi; further on are 1154, an excellent Fra Bartolomeo, The Holy
+Family, and 1153, The Annunciation, a graceful and suave composition,
+original in treatment, by the same master. We pass to some more Andrea
+del Sartos: 1515, according to Vasari, a _Nostra Donna bellissima_,
+was painted in quick time for Francis I., and 1514, Charity, was
+executed in Paris for the _gran re_ and highly esteemed by him. This
+picture has much suffered by transference from the worm-eaten original
+panel to canvas, in 1750, and by a later restoration in 1799. We are
+soon arrested by some masterpieces of the Milanese school, and first
+by the Da Vincis: 1599 is the famous Virgin of the Rocks, whose
+genuineness is warmly championed by French critics as against the
+similar picture in the National Gallery stoutly defended as the
+original by English authorities. Professor Legros with impartial
+judgment assures us that both are copies of a lost original; 1597, a
+doubtful attribution, is a rather effeminate John the Baptist, by some
+critics believed to be a second Gioconda portrait; 1600, the supposed
+portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli, mistress of Ludovico il Moro, is also
+ascribed by the official catalogue to Da Vinci. It would, however, be
+hard to persuade us that Leonardo had any hand in this portrait,
+excellent though it be, which seems rather by Beltraffio, Solario, or
+another of the Milanese masters; 1602, Bacchus, is another doubtful
+Leonardo. 1488, L. of 1597, is an admirable work by Sacchi: Four
+Doctors of the Church with symbols of the Evangelists. By Solario, a
+younger contemporary of Da Vinci, are 1532, a Crucifixion; 1530, a
+masterpiece, the much admired Virgin of the Green Cushion; and 1533,
+Head of the Baptist.
+
+The sweet and tender Luini is seen almost at his best in 1355, Salome
+with the Baptist's head: other works by him are 1362, Silence, and
+1353, a Holy Family. At the end of this section hangs 1169,
+Beltraffio's, Virgin of the Casio Family, esteemed by Vasari the
+painter's best production. We proceed to Section B, same wall, where
+hang two grand Mantegnas, painted for Isabella d'Este's "Grotta,"
+towards the end of the artist's career. 1375, Parnassus, executed in
+1497, represents the Triumph of Venus over Mars, celebrated by Apollo
+and the Muses--a delightful group of partially draped female figures
+dancing to Apollo's lyre; 1376, Triumph of Virtue (_virtù_, mental and
+moral excellence) over the Vices of Sensuality and Sloth, a less
+successful composition, executed in 1502. Another masterpiece is 1374,
+Our Lady of Victory, a noble and virile work, painted in 1496 to
+commemorate the defeat of the French at Taro in 1495 by Isabella's
+consort, Francesco Gonzaga, the donor, who is seen kneeling in full
+armour; 1373, is an earlier work, the central and most important of
+the three sections of the predella of the Triptych at S. Zeno in
+Verona--a powerful, reverent, though somewhat hard, conception
+of the cardinal tragedy of Christianity. From Mantegna to his
+brothers-in-law, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and other Venetian
+masters the transition is easy. The school is here represented by a
+most valuable collection from Bartolomeo Vivarini, No. 1607, to
+Guardi. 1158, Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Saints; and 1158A, a Man's
+Portrait, are however dubious attributions. 1156, Two Portraits; and
+1157, a Venetian Envoy at Cairo, are Gentile school works. 1134, by
+Antonello da Messina, A Condottiere, is an amazingly vivid and
+powerful portrait. Carpaccio's St. Stephen preaching at Jerusalem,
+1211, is part of the _Historia_ of the Protomartyr, painted for St.
+Stephen's Guild at Venice. The naïve attempts at local colour--Turkish
+women sitting on the ground in groups as they may still be seen in
+Turkey to-day, and quaint architectural details--are noteworthy. Cima
+is well represented by 1259, Virgin and Child, with the Baptist and
+the Magdalen. 1351, A Holy Family, by Lotto, was formerly assigned to
+Dosso Dossi. 1350 is an early and charming little work, St. Jerome, by
+the same master. We return to Palma Vecchio's grand composition, 1399,
+The Adoration of the Shepherds, which under a false signature, once
+passed for a Titian. 1135, Holy Family, with SS. Sebastian and
+Catherine, is a form of composition known as a Santa Conversazione,
+which Palma brought to its ultimate perfection. The official catalogue
+of 1903 persists in ascribing it to Giorgione. The claims of Palma
+himself, Pellegrino da San Daniele, Cariani and Sebastiano del Piombo,
+have all found protagonists among modern critics. How excellent a
+standard of craftsmanship was maintained by the Venetian school is
+well exemplified by 1673, a portrait by an unknown artist. 1352, The
+Visitation, by Sebastiano del Piombo, although much injured by
+restorers, is a fair example of that master's grandiose style in his
+Roman period. We now reach the Titians. 1577 and 1580, are good
+average _Sante Conversazioni_, the latter is, however, assigned by Mr.
+Berenson to a pupil. 1581, The Supper at Emmaus, a mature and genuine
+work; and 1578, the much-admired Virgin and Child with the Rabbit,
+painted in 1530, next claim our attention. 1593 and 1591 are unknown
+portraits, the former attributed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to
+Pordenone. On the R. wall opposite the Carpaccio is hung, 1587, a
+magnificent work of the painter's[206] old age, Jupiter and Antiope,
+unhappily much injured by fire and by more than one restoration. Two
+characteristic _Sante Conversazioni_ from Bonifazio's atelier may next
+be noted, 1172, over a doorway; and 1171, skied on the L. wall. The
+later interpreters of the pomp and grandeur of the Venetian state,
+Veronese and Tintoret, are represented to L. and R. by several typical
+canvases. Among these we note, 1196 (L. wall), an excellent Veronese,
+The Supper at Emmaus; and 1465, a sketch by Tintoret for the great
+Paradiso in the Ducal Palace. The eighteenth-century masters
+(following after the Jupiter and Antiope) are well exemplified in a
+fine Canaletto, 1203, View of the Salute Church and the Grand Canal;
+and several good examples of the more romantic Guardi. A Last Supper,
+1547, and other works by Tiepolo, the last of the Venetian masters of
+the grand style; and some Bassanos--1429, by Jacopo, Giov. da Bologna
+is an admirable portrait--conclude the collection of Venetians. We
+pass to the Italian Eclectics, the once admired but now depreciated
+Carracci, Guido Reni and Domenichino. 1613, St. Cecilia, is a famous
+picture by the last named. R. of the next section (C), are two
+Peruginos; 1564, a beautiful tondo, Virgin and Child, Saints and
+Angels; and 1566A, St. Sebastian, a careful and pleasing study of the
+nude. We cross to the L. wall, rich with examples of Raphael, and of
+his school; and turn first to a lovely little panel, 1509, Apollo and
+Marsyas, of most enigmatical authorship,[207] bought in 1883 from Mr.
+Morris Moore for 200,000 francs. Sold, in 1850, as a Mantegna, it has
+since been variously assigned to Raphael, Perugino, Timoteo Viti, and
+Francia. Perugino's influence, however, if not his hand, is
+sufficiently obvious. 1506, unknown Portrait, is another doubtful
+Raphael, confidently attributed by Morelli to Perugino's pupil,
+Bacchiacca. We are on more certain ground with 1497, the popular
+Virgin of the Diadem, undoubtedly designed by the master during his
+Roman period, and probably executed by his pupil, Giulio Romano. 1501,
+St. Margaret, painted during the same period for Francis I., was also,
+according to Vasari, almost wholly executed by Giulio. This unhappy
+picture was, however, _racommodé_ (mended) in 1685, and since has been
+severely mauled by restorers. 1507, Joan of Aragon: the head alone,
+says Vasari, was painted by the master who left the portrait to be
+completed by his famous pupil. 1499, the charming little Holy Family,
+was probably executed by a pupil. 1508, two unknown portraits, has
+small claim to be classed as a Raphael. The exquisite little panels,
+1502 and 1503, of St. Michael and St. George, are, however, precious
+and genuine works painted in 1504 at Urbino. They symbolise the
+overthrow of the hated tyrant Cæsar Borgia, and the return of the
+exiled Duke Guidobaldo to his loving subjects. On the R. wall of
+Section D. are hung some works by the Italian Naturalists (a seceding
+school from the Eclectics), to whose chief representative Caravaggio
+(called the anti-Christ of painting), is due 1121, Death of the
+Virgin. This realistic representation of a sacred subject so shocked
+the pious at Rome that it was removed from the church for which it was
+painted. 1124, Portrait of Alof, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta,
+brought the artist a chain of gold, two Turkish prisoners and a
+knighthood. Salvator Rosa's Landscape, 1480; and a characteristic and
+much-appreciated Battle Scene, 1479, hang on this wall.
+
+[Footnote 206: Mr. H. Cook has, however, given reasons for post-dating
+Titian's birth from 1477 to 1489-90, in spite of the master's twice
+repeated assertion of his great age in letters to Charles V. See
+_Nineteenth Century_ Magazine, 1902, p. 156.]
+
+[Footnote 207: It is, however, accepted by Eugène Müntz as a genuine
+Raphael, executed at Florence about 1507.]
+
+We cross to the L. wall, devoted to the Spanish school. The recently
+acquired El Greco (no number), King Ferdinand, is one of that master's
+best works outside Spain. By Ribera, who was obviously much influenced
+by the Italian Naturalists are: 1723, St. Paul the Hermit; 1722, The
+Entombment; and 1721, Adoration of the Shepherds, the last a
+masterpiece, wrought in the sombre manner of this powerful artist.
+From the magnificent show of Murillos stands forth, 1709, The
+Immaculate Conception, a favourite Spanish theme, by the most popular
+of Spanish masters. This grandiose representation of the Woman of the
+Apocalypse, clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, was
+acquired at the Soult sale in 1852 for 615,000 francs. From the same
+collection came the superb composition 1710, The Birth of the Virgin,
+of which a small sketch in oil is possessed by the National Gallery.
+We cross to the R. wall where hangs 1716, The Miracle of S. Diego; at
+the prayer of the saint, angels descend from heaven and prepare a
+miraculous repast for his needy Franciscan friars, to the great
+amazement of brother cook. Other Murillos, including a characteristic
+Beggar Boy, 1717 (L. wall) will be seen on either side. By Velasquez,
+the supreme master of the school are: (L. wall) 1734, Meeting of
+Thirteen Spanish Gentlemen, Velasquez and Murillo standing left of the
+group; and 1732, one of the many portraits scattered about Europe of
+Philip IV. The sombre Zurbaran is represented by 1739 and 1738, A
+Bishop's Funeral, and St. Pierre Nolasque and St. Raymond de Peñafort.
+Four portraits, 1704-1705B, by the facile and popular Madrid artist
+Goya, should by no means be passed without notice. There follows next
+a small collection of English paintings, rather indifferent in
+quality, but historically of much interest, by reason of the
+inspiration drawn from Constable and Bonington by the Barbizon school.
+Bonington, whose untimely death was a grievous loss to modern art,
+passed much of his time in Paris and was the link between the Valley
+of the Stour and the Forest of Fontainebleau.
+
+We pass to some productions of the German school. On the R. wall hang
+2738 and 2738C, Episodes in the Life of St. Ursula by the Master of
+St. Sévérin.[208] Opposite is 2737, an earlier specimen of the Cologne
+school, Descent from the Cross, by the Master of St. Bartholomew. 2709
+and 2709A, Head of an Old Man, and Head of a Child, are ascribed to
+Albert Dürer. But the chief glory of this collection are the Holbein
+portraits on the L. wall, four of which are of supreme excellence;
+2715, Erasmus; 2714, William Wareham, Archbishop of Canterbury; 2713,
+Nicholas Kratzer, Astrologer to Henry VIII.; and 2718, Anne of Cleves.
+2719, Richard Southwell is a doubtful Holbein.
+
+[Footnote 208: From an age when the personality of the painter was of
+less importance than the subjects he painted, few names of German
+artists have come down to us.]
+
+Section E is filled with Flemish paintings. R. hangs, among other of
+his works, Phil. de Champaigne's masterpiece, 1934, portraits of
+Mother Catherine Agnes Arnaud and of his own daughter, Sister
+Catherine, painted for the Convent of Port Royal. The intimate
+association of this grave and virile artist, who settled at Paris when
+nineteen years of age, with the austere and pious Jansenists of Port
+Royal, is also traceable in 1928, The Last Supper. On the L. are some
+excellent works by Rubens: 2075, Flight of Lot; 2077, Adoration of the
+Magi; 2113, Portrait of Helen Fourment, the artist's second wife, and
+their two children; 2144, Lady's Portrait, said to be that of Suzanne
+Fourment. The ignoble Kermess, 2115, will be familiar to readers of
+Zola.
+
+Section F on the L. is occupied by a rich collection of Rembrandt's
+works: 2548, the oft-reproduced Flayed Ox, is a masterly rendering of
+an unattractive subject; no number, Old Man Reading; in 2547 the
+artist has immortalised his faithful servant, Hendrickje Stoffels;
+2536, Tobit and the Angel; 2549 and 2550, Bathsheba, and Susannah and
+the Elders are two studies of the nude; 2542, The Joiner's Family,
+formerly known as the Holy Family; 2540, Philosopher in Meditation.
+2537, The Good Samaritan; and 2539, The Supper at Emmaus, are painted
+with profound and reverent piety. Opposite the Rembrandts are Gerard
+Dow's masterpiece; 2348, The Sick Woman, and other works by the same
+artist. We now enter at the end of the Grande Galerie, the new
+
+SALLE VANDYCK, ROOM XVII.
+
+Here, among other portraits, by the first of portrait painters
+(according to Reynolds) hangs the superb rendering of Charles I.,
+1967, bought by Louis XV. for Madame du Barry's boudoir on the fiction
+that it was a family picture, since the page holding the horse was
+named Barry. Michelet says that he never visited the Louvre without
+pausing to muse before this historic canvas.[209] Before we descend to
+the new Rubens room we note by this master three large canvases, 2086,
+2087, 2096: Birth of Marie de' Medici at Florence; her education; the
+widowed Queen as Regent of France, which properly belong to the suite
+of paintings exposed in the
+
+SALLE DE RUBENS, ROOM XVIII.
+
+to which we now descend. In this sumptuous hall, specially erected for
+the purpose, are exhibited, with the three exceptions noted, the
+famous paintings completed in 1625 by the artist and his pupils for
+the Luxembourg Palace to the order of the Regent Marie. These spacious
+and grandiose compositions illustrate in pompous and pagan symbolism
+the chief events in her career: all the principal figures are due to
+Reubens' own hand. Reynolds was wont to say of Reubens' colouring that
+his figures looked as if they fed on roses: these, however, would seem
+to have fed upon less ethereal diet. L. of entrance, 2085, The Three
+Fates spinning Marie's destiny; L. wall, 2088, Reception of her
+Portrait; R. wall, 2089, Her Marriage by Procuration to Henry--the
+Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany, her uncle, places the ring on her
+finger; L., 2090, Disembarkation at Marseilles; R., 2091, The Marriage
+at Lyons; L., 2092, Birth of Louis XIII. at Fontainebleau; R., 2093,
+Departure of Henry for Germany, who hands to his consort the symbols
+of the Regency; L., 2094, Coronation of Marie at St. Denis: the dogs
+are said to have been painted by Snyders; R., 2095, Apotheosis of
+Henry. Like the ascending Faust in Henry's portly form,--
+
+ "Bleibt ein Erdenrest
+ Zu tragen peinlich."
+
+L., 2097, Marie's journey to Anjou; R., 2098, Exchange at Hendaye of
+the Princess Elizabeth of France affianced to Philip IV., and of Anne
+of Austria, affianced to Louis XIII.; L., 2099, Felicity of the
+Regency--this picture was hastily improvised at Paris; R., 2100, The
+Majority of Louis XIII.; L., 2101, Escape of Marie from the Château of
+Blois; R., 2102, Reconciliation with her son, Louis XIII., at Angers;
+End wall, L., 2103, Conclusion of Peace; R., 2104, Meeting between
+Marie and Louis in Olympia. R. of entrance, 2105, The Triumph of
+Truth.
+
+[Footnote 209: The picture subsequently found its way to the
+apartments of Louis XVI., and followed him from Versailles to Paris.
+The vacillation 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.]
+
+Enclosing this hall are a series of Cabinets XX.-XXXVI., containing a
+large and important collection of works by the Netherland painters. We
+ascend, turn R., and enter Room XX., which is devoted to Franz Hals
+and contains 2386 and 2387, superb portraits of Nicholas van Beresteyn
+and his wife; and 2388 the same, with their Family; 2383, Descartes.
+Room XXI., Cuyp, after whom the room is named, is seen in four typical
+works, 2341-2344; 2415 and 2414 are excellent Dutch Interiors by Peter
+de Hoogh. In Room XXII. reigns the jovial Van Steen: two
+characteristic paintings are here shown; 2578, Feast in an Inn, and
+2580, Evil Company. 2587 is a masterly Terburg, The Amorous Soldier,
+and 2459 a similar subject treated by Gabriel Metsu. Room XXIII. is
+assigned to Van Goyen, and Room XXIV. to Adrian van Ostade, Hals'
+pupil. In the latter room, 2495, the so-called Family of the Painter,
+and 2496, The Schoolmaster, stand forth pre-eminent. 2509 and 2510,
+Travellers Halting and a Winter Scene, are by Adrian's brother, Isaac.
+Room XXV. is rich in landscapes by Ruysdael, of which 2557, The
+Forest, and 2558, Tempest near the Dykes of Holland, are masterpieces:
+2588, The Music Lesson, is a fine Terburg. Room XXVI., dedicated to
+Hobbema, contains his fine landscapes: 2403, A Forest Scene, and 2404,
+The Mill, and another exquisite Terburg, 2589, The Concert. Some
+typical Paul Potters also hang here. We proceed round to Room XXIX.,
+which holds a precious collection of Van Eycks and Memlings. 1986 is
+an exquisite little masterpiece painted by Jean with infinite patience
+and care, Virgin and Child and Donor. Fine Memlings are:--2024, The
+Baptist; 2025, The Magdalen; 2027, Marriage of St. Catherine; 2028, a
+Triptych--the Resurrection, St. Sebastian and the Ascension Here too
+are hung, 1957, Gerard Dow's Wedding at Cana; 2196, Van der Weyden's
+Descent from the Cross, and some excellent Flemish school paintings.
+Room XXX. is the Quentin Matsys Room: 2029 is the well-known Banker
+and his Wife, of which many replicas exist; 2030, by the same artist,
+Virgin and Child. The fine example of the fifteenth-century painter,
+known as the Master of the Death of Mary, 2738, hangs in this room.
+This profoundly reverent and sincere work consists of: a central
+panel, Descent from the Cross, below which is The Last Supper, and
+above, in the lunette, St. Francis receiving the Stigmata; Friar Leo
+is seen asleep against a rock. A remarkable work by Peter Brueghel,
+The Blind leading the Blind, will also arrest attention. Room XXXI.,
+named after Anthony More, contains a miscellaneous collection, among
+which the artist's portraits (2481A) of Edward VI. of England, and of
+(2479) a Spanish Dwarf, and Peter Brueghel's Village, 1918, and a
+Country Dance, 1918B, are of chief interest. The Teniers Room, XXXII.,
+shows some excellent works by the younger master: 2155, St. Peter
+denies his Lord; 2156, The Prodigal Son; 2157, Works of Charity; 2158,
+Temptation of St. Anthony. We next pass to three rooms in which are
+hung works by Netherland artists, formerly in the La Caze collection,
+among which, in Room XXXIII., are 2579, Van Steen's, Family Repast;
+and 2454, Nicholas Maes', Grace before Meat. In XXXIV. are two
+well-known works: 1916, Adrian Brouwer's, The Smoker; and 2384, The
+Gipsy, a masterpiece by Franz Hals. A fine Vandyck, 1979, Head of an
+Old Man; Rubens' portrait of Marie de' Medici, 2109; and a sketch in
+oils, 2122, Elevation of the Cross, are in Room XXXV. We return to the
+Salle Vandyck and the Grande Galerie, along which we retrace our steps
+and enter, at its further end, the
+
+SALON CARRÉ, ROOM IV.
+
+where an assortment of masterpieces is hung from the various schools
+we have visited. We begin with the Raphaels: On the L. (W. wall),
+1496, La Belle Jardinière, painted in 1507, is the most delightful of
+the Florentine Madonnas for which it is said a flower-girl of Florence
+sat; Vasari relates that the unfinished mantle was left to Ridolfo
+Ghirlandaio to complete; 1498, The Holy Family, styled of Francis I.
+and designed at Rome (1518) in the zenith of the artist's power, was
+presented by Pope Leo X. to Francis' queen; the inky hand of Giulio
+had no small part in the work. In the same year was painted 1504,
+(diagonally opposite) the dramatic St. Michael, a picture which evoked
+much interest at Rome, and whose coloration was adversely criticised
+by Sebastiano del Piombo; here also the hand of Giulio is all too
+apparent, and the picture, moreover, has suffered much in its
+transference from wood to canvas. 1505, N. wall, the masterly and
+authentic portrait of Baltazar Castiglione, was executed in 1506. On
+the same wall among the Venetians we find the much-disputed Al Fresco
+Concert, 1136, here ascribed to Giorgione, an ascription which has the
+support of Morelli and Berenson. The magnificent Titian, 1590,
+variously known as Titian and his Mistress, and the Lady with the
+Mirror, is supposed to be the portraits of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara and
+his mistress, Laura Diante, later his wife, the daughter of a poor
+artizan who more than once sat to Titian as a model. The portrait on
+the S. wall, 1592, The Man with the Glove, extolled by Vasari as an
+_opera stupenda_, and 1584, The Entombment, on the E. wall, are the
+two greatest Titians in the Louvre, where the artist's majesty and
+power are displayed in their highest degree. 1583, The Crown of
+Thorns, E. wall, is a work of the painter's old age.[210] The sensual
+features of Francis I., 1588, S. wall, were painted from a medal.
+
+[Footnote 210: See, however, note to p. 357.]
+
+By Tintoret is 1464, Susannah; and by Veronese, the grand composition
+that expatiates over the S. wall, 1192, known as The Marriage at Cana,
+executed in his most pompous and stately manner for the refectory of
+the Benedictine monastery of St. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice. The
+artist is seen in the foreground playing a viol: Titian a bass viol.
+Many other historical figures are more or less convincingly identified
+by critics. On the opposite wall is another large refectory
+composition, 1193, The Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee. A
+characteristic ceiling decoration, Rebellion and Treason, from the
+Hall of the Council of the Ten at Venice; and 1190, N. wall, Holy
+Family, are by the same artist. The Portrait, 1601, N. wall, by Da
+Vinci of his friend Monna Lisa, wife of Fr. del Giocondo, known as La
+Gioconda, is the most fascinating picture in Europe. A whole symphony
+of praise has been lavished on this miraculously beautiful creation in
+which psychical and physical perfection have been blended with potent
+and subtle genius. 1598, S. wall, Virgin and Child and St. Anne,
+attributed to the same, though of somewhat doubtful authenticity, is
+worth careful study. By another Milanese master is 1354, S. wall,
+Luini's Virgin and Sleeping Child. Of the two fine Correggios, 1117
+and 1118, N. wall, The Marriage of St. Catherine, and Jupiter and
+Antiope, the former is referred to by Vasari, in his life of Girolamo
+da Carpi, as a divine thing, wherein the figures are so superlatively
+beautiful that they seem to have been painted in Paradise; the latter
+formed part of Isabella d'Este's collection, to which we have so often
+referred. 1731, N. wall, is the marvellous portrait by Velasquez of
+the Infanta Margarita Maria, Philip IV.'s fair-haired darling child by
+his second wife. This is one of the most characteristic of the
+master's work out of Spain, and profoundly influenced Manet and the
+Modern Impressionist School. The great French master Poussin's typical
+classical subject, 741, together with Jouvenet's masterpiece, 437,
+Descent from the Cross, have also their place of honour in this Hall.
+In the
+
+SALLE DUCHÂTEL, ROOM V.
+
+entered from the N.E. angle of this room, we find, R., some Luini
+frescoes: 1359, 1360, the Nativity, and The Adoration of the Magi, and
+1361, Christ Blessing, full of this master's tenderness and charm.
+Some excellent portraits by Antonio Moro, 2480, 2481 and, a most
+beautiful Memling, 2026, Virgin and Child with Donors, will also be
+noted. As we pursue our way to the Escalier Daru at the end of the
+room, we pass L. and R., one of the earliest and one of the latest
+works of Ingres (p. 390), 421, OEdipus and the Sphinx, painted in
+1808; and the most popular nude in the French school, 422, _La
+Source_, painted in 1856.
+
+
+(_b_) THE FRENCH SCHOOL.
+
+The great schools of Christian painting in Western Europe which we
+have reviewed, were born, grew and flourished in the free cities of
+the Netherlands and of Italy. French masters working in Paris, Tours,
+Dijon, Moulins, Aix, and Avignon, were inevitably subdued by the
+dominant and powerful masters of the north and south, and how far they
+succeeded in impressing a local and racial individuality on their
+works is, and long will be, a fruitful theme for criticism. The
+collection of French Primitifs of the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries, exhibited in Paris in 1904, and the publication of
+Dimier's[211] uncompromising and powerful defence of those critics
+who, like himself, deny the existence of any indigenous French School
+of painting whatsoever, have recently concentrated the attention of
+the artistic world on a passionately debated controversy. Undoubtedly
+most of the examples of the so-called Franco-Flemish school which
+formerly hung unquestioned among collections of Flemish paintings, did
+when massed together, as they were in 1904 in the Pavilion de Marsan,
+display more or less well-defined extra-Flemish characteristics--a
+modern feeling for Nature and an intimate realism in the treatment of
+landscapes, a freer, more supple and more vivacious drawing of the
+human figure--reasonably explained by the theory of a school of
+painters expressing independent local feeling and genius. But even if
+all the paintings which the patriotic bias of French critics now
+attributes to French or Franco-Flemish masters[212] be accepted, the
+continuity is broken by many gaps which can only be filled by
+assuming, after the fashion of biologists, the existence of missing
+links.
+
+[Footnote 211: _French Painting in the Sixteenth Century_, by L.
+Dimier. 1904.]
+
+[Footnote 212: A more rational classification into schools would
+perhaps, as Dimier has hinted, follow the lines of racial
+division--French and Teutonic. For many of the Flemish artists were
+French in race, as, for instance, Roger Van der Weyden, who was known
+to Italians as Rogerus Gallicus, and called himself Roger de la
+Pasture.]
+
+We make our way to the small but increasing collection of French
+Primitifs possessed by the Louvre, along the Grande Galerie as far as
+Section D. and, turning R., enter Rooms IX.-XIII. Beginning with Room
+X., devoted to fifteenth-century masters, on the L. wall is 995,
+Martyrdom of St. Denis, ascribed to the Burgundian Jean Malouet, court
+painter of Jean sans Peur, and owing its completion to Henri
+Bellechose, after the former's death in 1415. To L. of the main
+subject, the saint is seen in prison, receiving the sacred Host from
+the hands of Christ; 996, a Pietà on the L. wall has also been
+attributed to Malouet. 999, L. wall, a portrait group of Jean Jouvénal
+des Ursins and his family, by an unknown fifteenth-century artist, is
+admirable in execution and important for contemporary costumes. Below
+(1005A) is the fine picture so admired in the exhibition of the
+Primitifs in 1904 by the Maître de Moulins,[213] St Mary Magdalen and
+Donatrix, eminently French in feeling. 1004 and 1005, portraits of the
+Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, are now catalogued under this master's
+name. The realistic Pietà (1001B) on the L. wall is assigned to the
+school of Nicholas Froment of the papal city of Avignon. 288 and 289
+at either end of the R. wall, portraits of Guillaume Jouvénal des
+Ursins and of Charles VII., are by the well-known Jehan Fouquet of
+Tours, who unites the gentleness of the Tuscan school with the
+vivacity of the Gallic temperament. 998D, Virgin and Donors, is now
+tentatively ascribed to the Master of the Legend of St. Ursula. We
+next note a Crucifixion, the famous altar-piece (998A) of the
+Parlement of Paris recently transferred from the Palais de Justice. To
+the L. are St. Louis and the Baptist, R., St. Denis and Charlemagne;
+in the background are seen the old Louvre and the abbey of St.
+Germain. 998C is a similar altar-piece from St. Germain des Prés,
+painted about 1490, Descent of the Cross; in the background are other
+representations of the old Louvre, St. Germain and Montmartre. 304A,
+portraits of good King René and his second wife Jeanne de Laval, by
+Nicholas Froment of Avignon. (1001D) St. Helena and the Miracle of the
+Cross, by an unknown artist, about 1480. R. of entrance, Christ, St.
+Agricola and Donor, school of Avignon; below this hangs 997A, portrait
+of the sinister Jean sans Peur, and 997B, portrait of Philip le Bon of
+Burgundy, artist unknown. We pass to
+
+ROOM XI.
+
+which contains a series of most interesting historical portraits.
+Among the sixteenth-century painters cited by Félibien,[214] the
+Vasari of French painting, most of whom are but names to us, we may
+distinguish the Clouet family of four generations. The senior Jehan,
+born in Flanders in 1420, came to France in 1460 as painter to the
+Duke of Burgundy. His son, also, named Jehan, figures in the Royal
+accounts in 1528 as valet and court painter to Francis I., and was
+known as Maître Jehan or Jehanet. To him, an artist of great
+simplicity and charm, are attributed 126 and 127, R. wall, portraits
+of his royal master. Sons of the junior Jehan were François
+(1500-1572), the best-known and most talented of the Clouets, who was
+naturalised in 1541, and Jehan the younger, known as Clouet de Navarre
+(1515-1589), court painter to Margaret of Valois. By the former, who
+assisted his father during the last ten years of his life and
+succeeded him as court painter, are two admirable portraits, 128 and
+129, of Charles IX. and his queen, Elizabeth of Austria; 130, Henry
+II., and (on the end wall) 131, the Duke of Guise, are also attributed
+to him. To the latter artist is ascribed 134, Louis of St. Gelais.
+Each of these elusive personalities, whose Flemish ancestry is
+evident, was known as Maître Jehanet, and much confusion has thus
+arisen. We now turn to some portraits by unknown artists of the
+period, among which may be noted: 1033, Henry III.; 132, Charles IX.;
+1024, Diana of France, legitimised daughter of Henry II.; 1030,
+Catherine de' Medici; 1035, Ball given by Henry III. in celebration
+of the marriage of his favourite minion, Anne, Duke of Joyeuse, with
+Margaret of Lorraine in 1581; the king is seen seated with his mother,
+Catherine de' Medici, and his wife, Louise of Lorraine; the Duke of
+Guise (le Balafré) leans against his chair. On the same wall are 1015,
+François, Duke of Guise; and 1007, King Francis I. On the end wall,
+1032, Henry III.; by the window opposite, 1022, the young Duke of
+Alençon (p. 178), by no means ill-favoured; and 1023, Louise of
+Lorraine, queen of Henry III. By a contemporary of the later Clouets,
+Jean Cousin (1501-1589), is 155 on the L. wall, The Last Judgment.
+Cousin was a versatile craftsman, and some stained glass by him still
+exists at S. Gervais and in the chapel at Vincennes. Among other
+artists mentioned by Félibien is Martin Fréminet (1567-1616), whose
+Mercury commanding Æneas to forsake Dido, 304, hangs on the end wall.
+
+[Footnote 213: The late fifteenth-century artist, provisionally known
+as the Master of Moulins and also as the Painter of the Bourbons, is
+the author of the famous Triptych of the Cathedral of Moulins. Some
+critics believe him to be identical with Jehan Perréal (Jehan de
+Paris).]
+
+[Footnote 214: _Entretiens sur les Vies et sur les Ouvrages des plus
+Excellens Peintres Anciens et Modernes._ André Félibien. Paris,
+1666-1688.]
+
+[Illustration: THE TRIPTYCH OF MOULINS.
+
+_Maître de Moulins._]
+
+[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH OF AUSTRIA, WIFE OF CHARLES IX.
+
+_François Clouet._]
+
+The two years' sojourn of Solario in France at the invitation of the
+Cardinal of Amboise, of Da Vinci at the solicitation of Louis XII.,
+and the foundation of the school of Fontainebleau in 1530 by Rosso
+(1496-1540), Primaticcio (1504-1570), and Nicolo dell' Abbate
+(1512-1571), mark the eclipse of whatever schools of French painting
+were then existing; for the grand manner and dramatic power of the
+Italians, fostered by royal patronage, carried all before them. This
+room possesses by Rosso, known as Maître Roux, 1485, a Pietà, and
+1486, The Challenge of the Pierides, and Primaticcio is represented by
+some admirable drawings exhibited in cases in the centre of the room.
+Readers of Vasari will remember numerous references in his pages to
+Italian artists who went to serve, and agents employed to buy Italian
+works for, the _gran re Francesco nel suo luogo di Fontainebleo_.
+But the sterility of the Fontainebleau school may be inferred from the
+fact that when Marie de' Medici desired to have the walls of the
+Luxembourg royally decorated, she was compelled to have recourse to a
+foreigner, Rubens. Neglecting for a moment Room XII. and turning to
+
+ROOM XIII.
+
+we come upon some charming works by the brothers Lenain, whom Félibien
+dismisses in a few lines, while giving scores of pages to artists
+whose names and works have long been forgotten. So little is known of
+the brothers Antoine and Louis, who died in 1648, and Matthieu, who
+survived them nearly thirty years, that critics have only partially
+succeeded in differentiating their works, which are usually exhibited
+under their united names. Obviously dominated by the Netherland
+masters, their manner is yet pervaded by essentially French
+qualities--a love of Nature and a certain atmosphere of poetry and
+gentleness alien to the Flemish and Dutch schools. Nine of their works
+are here seen. A Smithy, 540; Peasants playing at Cards, 546; and
+Return from Haymaking, 542, are good examples. Skied in this room is
+976, portrait of Louis XIII. by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), leader of the
+new academic French school of the seventeenth century, an artist of
+prodigious activity and master of the army of court painters who
+served Louis XIV. Vouet, who had worked in Italy, acquired there the
+grand and spacious manner of the later Venetians, which was admirably
+adapted to the decorative requirements of his royal patrons. To his
+pupil, Eustache Lesueur (1617-1655), is due 586, St. Bruno and his
+Companions bestowing Alms, one of the famous series illustrating the
+life of St. Bruno, of which the greater number are in
+
+ROOM XII.
+
+whither we now return. This eminently religious and tender artist is
+well represented in the Louvre, and the sympathetic student will
+appreciate the austere and sincere devotion expressed in these
+pictures, painted for the brethren of the Charterhouse in the Rue
+d'Enfer. The finest, a masterpiece, both in beauty of composition and
+depth of feeling, is 584, The Death of St. Bruno. The artist's careful
+application to his monumental task may be estimated by the fact that
+146 preliminary drawings for this series are preserved in the Louvre.
+Lesueur's modesty and high purpose went almost unheeded amid the
+exultant prosperity of the fashionable courtier-artists of his day. We
+retrace our steps, pass through Room XIII., turn R., and enter the
+spacious
+
+ROOM XIV.
+
+also devoted to seventeenth-century artists. Lesueur is here seen in
+another masterpiece; 560, R. wall, St. Paul at Ephesus, a _mai_[215]
+picture; and 556, same wall, Christ bearing His Cross. The influence
+of Raphael in the former is very apparent. The hierophant of the
+school, Vouet, is represented in this room by some dozen examples,
+among which hangs his masterpiece 971, L. wall, Presentation at the
+Temple. A work, 25, Charity, by his short-lived rival, Jacques
+Blanchard, (1600-1638), known in his day as the French Titian, may be
+seen towards the end of this long gallery on the R. wall. A talented
+artist too was Jean de Bologne, an Italian by birth and known as Le
+Valentin (1591-1634). A good example of his style will be seen in 56
+(same wall), Susannah. We now turn to Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665),
+the greatest master of his age, whose exalted and lucid conceptions,
+ripe scholarship, admirable art and fertility of invention, may be
+adequately appreciated at the Louvre alone, which holds a matchless
+collection of nearly fifty of his works. The visitor, fresh from the
+rich and glowing colour, the grandeur and breadth of the later
+Italians, will perchance experience a certain chill before the
+sobriety, the cold intellectuality and severe classic reserve of this
+powerful artist. Let us however remember his aim and ideal: to produce
+a picture in which correct drawing and science of linear and aerial
+perspective should subserve harmony of composition, lucid expression
+and classic grace. To approach Poussin and his younger contemporary
+Claude rightly, the traveller will do well to free his mind from
+Ruskin's partial and prejudiced depreciation of these two supreme
+masters, in order to effect an equally partial appreciation of
+Turner.[216] The story of Poussin's single-minded and stubborn
+application to his art cannot here be told. After a life of poverty at
+Paris and two unsuccessful attempts to work his way to Rome, he at
+length reached that Mecca of French artists, where a commission to
+paint two pictures, now at Vienna, for Cardinal Barbarini, established
+his reputation. Two of his works executed about 1630 during this first
+Roman period hang here; 709 and 710, R. wall, The Rain of Manna, and,
+The Philistines smitten by Plague. In 1640, after two years'
+negotiations and the personal intervention of Louis XIII., he was
+persuaded to return to Paris to take part in the decoration of the
+Louvre; but in spite of his generous pay and of the fine _palazzetto_
+and charming garden allotted to him for residence, the petty
+jealousies, chicanery and low standard of his rivals, revolted his
+artistic conscience: he obtained leave to return to Rome "to fetch his
+wife," and never left the eternal city again. Two of his works painted
+during this second and last Roman period are 717 (L. of entrance),
+Institution of the Eucharist, and 735 (L. wall), a ceiling composition
+executed for Richelieu, Time rescuing Truth from the assaults of Envy
+and Discord, whose subjective interest is obvious; 704, L. of
+entrance, Rebecca at the Well, is described at great length by
+Félibien, who saw it in progress. It was painted (1648) for a rich
+patron who desired a composition treated like Guido's Virgin, and
+filled with several young girls of differing types of beauty. The
+finished picture so delighted amateurs at Paris that large sums were
+offered in vain to divert it from the fortunate possessor; 711, L.
+wall, is the famous Judgment of Solomon (1649). On the same wall are
+731, Echo and Narcissus; 734, his masterpiece, Shepherds of Arcady--a
+group of shepherds of the Vale of Tempe in the heyday of health and
+beauty, are arrested in their enjoyment of life by the warning
+inscription on a tomb: _Et in arcadia ego_ (I, too, once lived in
+Arcady); 736-739, The Four Seasons were painted (1660-1664) for
+Richelieu. These beautiful compositions, more especially the last, The
+Deluge, typifying winter, will repay careful study. On the R. wall
+are, 724, the well-known Rape of the Sabine Women; 740, a most perfect
+work of his maturity, Orpheus and Eurydice (1659); and 742, Apollo and
+Daphne, his last work, left unfinished. Such are some of the more
+striking manifestations of this remarkable genius who alone, says
+Hazlitt, has the right to be considered as the painter of classical
+antiquity. His integrity was so rigid that he once returned part of
+the price paid for one of his works which he deemed excessive. To
+the modern, Poussin is somewhat antipathetic by reason of his
+scholarly aloofness and insensibility to the passions and actualities
+of life. As Reynolds remarked: he lived and conversed with ancient
+statues so long, that he was better acquainted with them than with the
+people around him, and had studied the ancients so much, that he had
+acquired a habit of thinking in their way. He saw Nature through the
+glass of Time, says Hazlitt, and his friend Dom Bonaventura tells how
+he often met the solitary artist sketching in the Forum or returning
+from the Campagna with specimens of moss, pebbles, flowers, etc., to
+be used as models. When asked the secret of his artistic perfection,
+he would modestly answer: "_Je n'ai rien négligé._"
+
+[Footnote 215: The Goldsmiths' Guild of Paris was accustomed, from
+1630-1701, to present to Notre Dame an _ex-voto_ picture every
+May-day, painted by the most renowned artist of the time.]
+
+[Footnote 216: The reader may be referred to Hazlitt's essay, _On a
+Landscape of Nicholas Poussin_, as an antidote to Ruskin's wayward
+criticism.]
+
+[Illustration: SHEPHERDS OF ARCADY.
+
+_Poussin._]
+
+Claude Gelée (1600-1682) known as Claude, and one of the greatest
+names in the history of modern painting, also spent most of his
+artistic career at Rome. He was the first to bring the glory of the
+sun and the sun-steeped atmosphere on to canvas. He touches a new
+chord in the symphony of colour and by his poetic charm and romantic
+feeling stirs a deeper emotion. He, too, was a strenuous, implacable
+worker, a loving student of Nature, passing days in silent abstraction
+before her varying moods.
+
+The Louvre possesses sixteen Claudes, among which we may emphasise on
+the L. wall, 310, View of a Port; 311, a poetic and glowing
+representation of the Roman Forum, before the old Campo Vaccino, with
+its romantic and picturesque aspect, had been excavated by modern
+archæologists. 314 and 316, Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsis, and Ulysses
+restoring Chryseis to her father, are typical imaginary classic
+compositions and variations on the artist's favourite theme--the effects
+of sunlight on an atmosphere of varying luminosity and on the limpid,
+rippling waves of the sea. We now come to the grand monarque of the
+arts at Paris during the century, Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), founder of
+the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture that finally eclipsed the
+old Painters' Guild which, from the thirteenth century, had monopolised
+the exercise of the art at Paris. So tyrannous had the Guild become
+that, in 1646, it ordered the number of court painters to be reduced to
+four each for the king and queen. An attempt to apply this regulation to
+the painters lodged at the Louvre roused Lebrun's hostility, who induced
+the regent, Anne of Austria, to found a rival Académie Royale on the
+model of the famous Academy of St. Luke at Florence. Twelve _anciens_
+were chosen by lot and the new Academy, Lebrun at its head, was
+inaugurated on 1st February 1648. The angry Guild swooped down on the
+Academy on 19th March, armed with a police warrant, to seize all its
+pictures and effects, a blow which Lebrun parried by a royal decree
+annulling the warrant. Hereupon the Guild organised their own Academy of
+St. Luke under the leadership of Vouet and Mignard, and after some
+temporary reconciliations and as many bickerings and hostilities, Lebrun
+won Mazarin's favour by a judicious gift of two paintings, and the
+Académie Royale obtained in 1658 a new constitution, an increase of
+members to forty, free quarters, and pensions, which, under Colbert,
+were raised to 4,000 livres. The Guild fought hard and won some
+concessions, but the Académie Royale remained supreme, and both were
+finally overwhelmed in the revolutionary storm.
+
+[Illustration: LANDING OF CLEOPATRA AT TARSUS.
+
+_Lorrain._]
+
+In 1661 Lebrun was commanded by Louis XIV. to paint cartoons for
+tapestry illustrating the life of Alexander the Great. Five of these
+huge canvases hang in this room, R. and L., 509-513; 511, R. wall, The
+Family of Darius at Alexander's Feet, so charmed the king that he
+appointed Lebrun first royal painter, and granted him a patent of
+nobility. For thirty years the royal favourite was sole arbiter of
+taste and ruled supreme over the arts, until his star paled before the
+rising luminary, his rival Mignard. Lebrun's best work is to be seen
+at Versailles, but 510, R. wall, The Battle of Arbela, is an excellent
+example of his facile and adroit style. In 1686 the old favourite was
+commanded by Louis to paint a rival picture to Mignard's, Christ
+bearing His Cross, which was incensed with extravagant adulation by
+the courtiers. Lebrun set to work and in three months completed his
+Christ on the Cross, which the king loudly appreciated. Both pictures,
+630 and 500, now hang on the L. wall a few paces from each other.
+Pierre Mignard (1612-1695) was a fellow-pupil with Lebrun under Vouet,
+and like him in early years a sojourner in Rome: his popular Madonnas,
+modelled from his Italian wife, added a new word (_mignardes_) to the
+French language. One such, 628, hangs a little further along this
+wall. In 1657 he won royal favour by a portrait of the young Louis, a
+branch of art in which he excelled. Mignard was a supple flatterer,
+and Louis sat to him many times. Once, later in the monarch's life,
+his royal sitter asked if he observed any change. "Sire," answered the
+courtly painter, "I only perceive a few more victories on your brow."
+A portrait of Madame de Maintenon, 639, is seen (L. wall) in this
+room. Mignard's greatest work, however, great in range if not in art,
+is the painting of the cupola of the church at the Val de Grâce, which
+is not only an indifferent painting, but was the occasion of a bad
+poem by his friend Molière.[217] Two other eminent portraitists,
+Nicholas Largillière (1656-1746), and Hyacinth Rigaud (1659-1743),
+may now fitly be considered.
+
+[Footnote 217: _La Gloire du Dome du Val de Grâce._ The subject of the
+picture is La Gloire des Bienheureux, and contains 200 figures.]
+
+By Rigaud, who was regarded as the first painter of Europe for truth
+of resemblance united with magnificence of presentment, are: a
+masterly portrait of Bossuet, 783; and a superb rendering of the
+_roi-soleil_, 781, both on the L. wall. Further along, on the same
+wall, are 784, portrait of his mother in two aspects painted for the
+sculptor Coysevox; and his last work, 780, Presentation at the Temple.
+Rigaud was especially successful with the rich bourgeoisie of Paris,
+and later became court painter, supreme in expressing the grandiose
+and inflated pomposities of the age. He, says Reynolds, in the tumour
+of his presumptuous loftiness, was the perfect example of Du Pile's
+rules, that bid painters so to draw their portraits that they seem to
+speak and say to us: "Stop, look at me! I am that invincible king:
+majesty surrounds me. Look! I am that valiant soldier: I struck terror
+everywhere. I am that great minister, etc." By Largillière, who lacks
+the psychological insight of his contemporary, is, L. wall, 483,
+Portrait of the Comte de la Chartre. He was a master of the
+accessories and upholstery of portraiture and painted some 1500
+sitters during his long career, part of which was passed in England as
+court painter to Charles II. and James II. A third successful
+portraitist was Jean Marc Nattier (1685-1766), whose ingenious and
+compliant art aimed at endowing a commonplace sitter with distinction
+and grace, and who generally was able to strike a happy medium between
+flattery and truth. Better represented at Versailles, he is but poorly
+seen here in 657, R. wall, A Magdalen, and 661A, L. wall, Unknown
+Portrait. 441 is an interesting portrait of Fagon, Louis XIV.'s
+favourite physician, by Jean Jouvenet (1644-1717), known as Le Grand,
+a talented and docile pupil of Lebrun, whose four large compositions
+executed for the church of St. Martin des Champs, 432-435, are hung in
+this room. 434, R. wall, Resurrection of Lazarus, is perhaps the best.
+His works are a connecting link between the pompous spread-eagle
+manner of the _Siècle de Louis XIV._ and the gay abandonment and
+heartless frivolity of the reign of Louis XV. We pass from this room
+to the Collection of Portraits in
+
+ROOM XV.
+
+of which some few possess artistic importance and many historical
+interest. We bestow what attention we may desire and pass direct to
+
+ROOM XVI.
+
+devoted to seventeenth-century art. Chief among the painters who
+interpreted the refined sensuality and more pleasant vices of the age,
+yet not of them, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), the melancholy youth
+from French Flanders, who began by painting St. Nicholases at three
+francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and
+became famous as the _Peintre des Scènes Galantes_. These scenes of
+coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched,
+powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land
+where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he
+clothes with a refined and delicate vesture of grace and fascination.
+He has a poetic touch for landscape and a tender, pathetic sense of
+the tears in mortal things which make him akin to Virgil in
+literature, for over the languorous and swooning air and sun-steeped
+glades the coming tempest lours. His success, as Walter Pater
+suggests, in painting these vain and perishable graces of the
+drawing-room and garden-comedy of life, with the delicate odour of
+decay which rises from the soil, was probably due to the fact that he
+despised them. The whole age of the Revolution lies between these
+irresponsible and gay courtiers in the _scènes galantes_ of Watteau
+and the virile peasant scenes in the "epic of toil" painted by Millet.
+In this room hangs his Academy picture, the Embarkation for Cythera,
+982, L. wall, its colour unhappily almost worn away by over cleaning.
+His pupils, Pater (1696-1736), and Lancret (1690-1743), imitated his
+style, but were unable to soar to the higher plane of their master's
+genius. The former is represented by a Fête Champêtre, 689, R. wall:
+the latter by the Four Seasons, 462-465, R. wall; on the L. wall, 468,
+The Music Lesson, and 469, Innocence, both from the Palace of
+Fontainebleau. The Fête Galante dies with these artists whom we shall
+meet again better represented in the Salle La Caze. A famous
+contemporary of Pater and Lancret and first painter to the king was
+Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752), grandson of Noël Coypel
+(1629-1707), and son of Antoine (1661-1722), both of whom are
+represented in the Louvre (Rooms XIV.-XVI., 157-166, and 167-175), His
+Perseus and Andromeda, 180, hangs R. of the entrance of this room.
+Charles André Vanloo (1705-1765), known as Carle Vanloo, (whose
+grandfather, Jacob Vanloo, is represented by two pictures, 2451, 2452,
+hung among the Dutch artists in Rooms XXIV. and XXVI.), enjoyed a
+great vogue in his day. His facile drawing and riotous colour
+temporarily enriched the language with a new verb--to _vanlooter_.
+899, on the L. wall, A Hunting Picnic, is an admirable specimen of his
+supple talent. The flaunting sensuality of François Boucher
+(1703-1770), and of Jean Honoré Fragonnard (1732-1806), who lavished
+undoubted genius and ignoble industry in the service of the depraved
+boudoir tastes of the Pompadours and Du Barrys that ruled at
+Versailles, are seen here and in the Salle la Caze in all their
+eloquent vulgarity. That Boucher had in him the elements of a great
+painter may be inferred from the charming little sketch, 30, R. wall,
+Diana, and from the excellent interior, 50A, L. wall, Breakfast. His
+popular pastoral scenes, executed with amazing facility, with their
+beribboned shepherds and dainty shepherdesses, are exemplified in 32
+and 33, R. wall, and 34 and 35, L. wall. Other works by this fluent
+servant of La Pompadour are 31, R. wall, Venus commanding Vulcan to
+forge arms for Æneas, and 36, L. wall, Vulcan presenting them to
+Venus. Boucher with all his faults was a grand decorative artist of
+extraordinary versatility, but the loose habits and careless methods
+of his later days are reflected in slovenly drawing and waning powers
+of invention. Reynolds, who visited him in Paris, noted the change,
+and describes how he found the artist at work on a large picture
+without studies or models of any kind, and on expressing his surprise,
+was told by Boucher that he did in earlier days use them, but had
+dispensed with them for many years. Fragonnard, who on his return from
+Rome, had set about some canvases in the grand traditional style of
+the earlier masters, of which an example may be seen in 290, R. wall,
+Coresus[218] and Callirrhoe, soon perceived that fame lay not in that
+direction, and devoted himself with exuberant talent and
+unconscionable facility to satisfy the frivolous tastes and refined
+animality of royal and courtly patrons. For it was a time when life
+was envisaged as a perpetual feast of enjoyment; a vision of roguish
+eyes and rouged and patched faces of sprightly beribboned and perfumed
+gallants, playing at shepherds and shepherdesses, of luxurious
+sensuality untrammelled by a Christianity minus the Ten Commandments,
+soon to be hustled away by the robust and democratic ideals of David.
+Another early work of Fragonnard in this room is 291, R. wall, The
+Music Lesson: some of his more characteristic productions we shall
+meet with in the Salle La Caze. A somewhat feeble protest against the
+prevailing vulgarity and debasement of contemporary art was made by
+Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) and Jean Baptiste Greuze
+(1725-1805) in their rendering of scenes of domesticity and of the
+pathos of simple lives. Chardin is well seen in this room in his
+laborious studies of still life, 89 and 90, L. wall, diploma works,
+and in 91 and 92, same wall, The Industrious Mother, and Grace before
+Meat. The last, a delightful work, won for the artist Diderot's
+powerful advocacy, and made him the popular interpreter of bourgeois
+intimacies. Other patient studies of still life are: 95, 96, 101, and
+102; and R. wall 94. On the same wall hang, 97, The Ape as Antiquary,
+and 99, The Housewife. If Chardin touches the border-line between
+sentiment and sentimentality, Greuze (end wall) in 369, Return of the
+Prodigal; 370, A Father's Crime; and 371, The Undutiful Son, certainly
+oversteps it. Each of these became the theme of extravagant eulogy and
+didactic preachments by Diderot, his literary protagonist, who hailed
+him as a French Hogarth making Virtue amiable and Vice odious. An even
+more equivocal note is struck (L. wall) in 372A, The Milkmaid; and
+372, The Broken Pitcher, where as Gautier acutely remarks, the artist
+contrives to make Virtue exhale the same sensual delight as Vice
+had done, and to suggest that Innocence will fall an easy victim to
+temptation. Madame Du Barry was much attracted by the latter picture
+and possessed a replica of it. Other works and studies, R. wall, by
+the artist are in this room. 368, end wall, Severus Reproaching
+Caracalla, was painted as a diploma picture. But Greuze essayed here a
+flight beyond his powers: to his profound disgust the Academy refused
+to admit him as an historical, and classed him as a _genre_ painter.
+No survey of eighteenth century French painting would be complete
+without some reference to Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), the famous
+marine and landscape artist, whose paintings of the principal ports of
+France are hung in the Musée de la Marine on the second floor. Here we
+may distinguish among some score of his works: 921, The Bathers; 923,
+A Landscape; and 932, A Seascape: The Setting Sun, all on the L. wall.
+
+[Illustration: EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA. _Watteau._]
+
+[Footnote 218: Coresus, a priest of Bacchus at Calydon, whose love was
+scorned by the nymph Callirrhoe, called forth a pestilence on the
+land. The Calydonians, ordered by the oracle to sacrifice the nymph,
+led her to the altar. Coresus, forgetting his resentment, sacrificed
+himself instead of her, who, conscious of ingratitude, killed herself
+at a fountain.]
+
+[Illustration: GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
+
+_Chardin._]
+
+It will now be opportune to make our way to the La Caze collection. We
+pass out from the end of this room and descend the Escalier Daru to
+the first landing; then ascend L. of the Victory of Samothrace to the
+Rotonde, pass direct through the Salle des Bijoux, and turn L. through
+Room II. to
+
+ROOM I.
+
+The La Caze collection. We note on the R. wall, an excellent Lenain,
+548, A Peasant Meal, and some admirable portraits by Largillière,
+484-491, of which the last, Portrait of the Artist, his Wife and
+Daughter, is a masterly work. Among the fine portraits by Rigaud,
+791-795, that of the Young Duke of Lesdiguières, stands pre-eminent.
+We cross to the L. wall, where the rich collection of works by
+Watteau and his followers is placed: 983, Gilles, a scene from a
+Comedy, is one of Watteau's most precious pictures. Near it are: 984,
+The Disdainful; 986, Gathering in a Park. 985, Sly-Puss, a charming
+little picture, is followed by 988, 989, 990 and 992, four other
+studies. 991 is a carefully finished classical subject, Jupiter and
+Antiope. Near these are grouped: 470-473, four small works by Lancret,
+and 690-693, a like number of typical variations of the _scène
+galante_ by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier:
+Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of
+Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of
+Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher
+are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47,
+The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's
+Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic works
+executed with wonderful sleight of hand, 292-301. The prevailing taste
+of his patrons may be judged by 295, L. wall, a sketch of one of his
+most successful and oftenest repeated subjects. On this same wall are
+a varied series of Chardin's studies of still life; a poor replica,
+93, of his Grace before Meat; 104, The Ape as Painter, and other
+similar homely subjects.
+
+Here also are two historical revolutionary portraits by Greuze: 378,
+The Girondin, Gensonné, and 379, the Poet-Deputy, Fabre d'Eglantine.
+Among the later Venetians are some Tintorets, R. wall: 1468, Susannah;
+1469, Virgin and Child, Saints and Donor; 1470, Portrait of Pietro
+Mocenigo. Spanish art is represented by a fine but unpleasing Ribera,
+1725, Boy with a Club-foot, and to Velasquez are ascribed: 1735, The
+Infanta Maria Teresa, Queen of Louis XIV.; 1736, Unknown Portrait;
+1733, L. of entrance, Philip IV. 1945 and 1946, R. wall, the Provost
+and Sheriffs, and Jean de Mesme, President of the Parlement of Paris,
+are excellent examples of Philippe de Champaigne's austere and honest
+art.
+
+From the studios of Boucher and of Comte Joseph Marie Vien (1716-1809)
+there came towards the end of the eighteenth century the virile,
+revolutionary figure of Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), who burst
+like a thunderstorm on the corrupt artistic atmosphere of the age,
+sweetening and bracing French art for half a century. Shocked by the
+slovenly drawing and vulgarity of the fashionable masters, and nursed
+on Plutarch, he applied himself to the study of the antique with a
+determination to rejuvenate the painter's art and establish a school,
+drawing its inspiration from heroic Greece and Rome. The successive
+phases of this potent but rather theatrical genius may be well
+followed in the Louvre. Neglecting for the present his earlier and
+pre-revolutionary works, we retrace our steps through Room II. noting
+in passing, 143, The Funeral at Ornans (a remarkable, realistic
+painting by a later revolutionary, to whom we shall return) and enter
+
+ROOM III.
+
+on the L. wall of which hangs 188, David's famous canvas: The Sabine
+Women, over which he brooded during his imprisonment in the Luxembourg
+after the Thermidorian reaction. David regarded this composition as
+the most successful expression of his theory of art. He studied whole
+libraries of antiquities and vainly imagined it to be the most "Greek"
+of all his works. Nothing, however, could be farther removed from the
+tranquil self-restraint and noble simplicity of Greek art than these
+self-conscious, histrionic groups of figures, without one touch of
+naturalness. The old preoccupation with classic models inherited from
+Poussin and the Roman school, still dominates even this revolutionary
+artist, who best displays his great genius when he forgets his
+theories and paints direct from life, as in 199, Mme. Récamier; and
+198 (opposite wall), Pius VII. David's fierce Jacobinism (he had been
+a member of the terrible Committee of Public Safety) did not prevent
+him from worshipping the rising star of the First Consul, who, on
+assuming the Imperial crown, appointed him court painter and
+commissioned him to execute, 202A, Consecration of Napoleon I. at
+Notre Dame. In this grandiose historic scene, containing at least 150
+portraits, the eye is at once drawn to the central actor who, having
+crowned himself, is placing a diadem on the kneeling Josephine's brow.
+The story runs, that David had originally drawn Pope Pius VII. with
+hands on knees. Bonaparte entering the studio, at once ordered the
+artist to represent the pontiff in the act of blessing, exclaiming: "I
+didn't bring him all this way to do nothing." For this picture and for
+the Distribution of the Eagles 180,000 francs were paid.
+
+[Illustration: MADAME RÉCAMIER. _David._]
+
+Among the painters of the new school was Pierre Prud'hon (1758-1823),
+whose fame was made by two pictures, 747 and 756, on opposite walls,
+first exhibited in 1808: Justice and Divine Wrath pursuing Crime; and
+the graceful but somewhat invertebrate, Rape of Psyche. 746, an
+Assumption, was executed for the Tuileries Chapel in 1819. Other works
+by this master, whose Correggiosity is evident, hang in the room. Two
+famous pupils of David were François Pascal Simon Gérard (1770-1837)
+and Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835). By the former, known as the King of
+Painters and Painter of Kings, are: 328, Love and Psyche; and 332, a
+charming portrait of the painter Isabey and his daughter. By the
+latter, who owed the Imperial favour to the good graces of Josephine,
+are: 391, Bonaparte at Arcole; 392A, Lieut. Sarlovèze, a typical
+Beau-Sabreur portrait; and 388, Bonaparte visiting victims of the
+Plague at Jaffa, a striking composition, which advanced the artist to
+the front rank of his profession. Gros was the parent of the grand
+battle-pictures of the future; the painter of the Napoleonic epos.
+Young artists were wont to attach a sprig of laurel to this work in
+which the first signs of the coming storm of Romanticism are
+discerned.
+
+The real champion of the movement was, however, Jean Louis André
+Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), whose epoch-making picture, 338, The
+Raft of the Medusa, we now observe. This daring and passionate revolt
+from frigid classicism and preoccupation with a conventional antiquity
+was received but coldly by the professional critics on its appearance
+in 1819, though with enthusiasm by the people. Failing to find a buyer
+at Paris, its exhibition in England by a speculator, proved a
+financial success. 339-343, are military subjects of lesser range by
+this young innovator: 348, Epsom Races, was painted in England in
+1821, three years before his premature death. To follow on with the
+French school we retrace our steps by the Rotonde and the Escalier
+Daru through Room XVI. to Room XV., L. of which, is the entrance to
+
+ROOM VIII.
+
+We revert to David whose Oath of the Horatii, 189, exhibited in 1785;
+and The Lictors bearing to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons, 191,
+exhibited in the fateful year 1789, hang skied on the R. wall. These
+paintings, hailed with prodigious enthusiasm, revolutionised the
+fashions and tastes of the day and gave artistic expression to the
+coming political and social changes. 200A on the same wall, The Three
+Ladies of Ghent, was painted during the artist's exile in Belgium,
+for the old Terrorist was naturally not a _persona grata_ to the
+restored Bourbons. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1857), the most
+famous of David's pupils, two of whose works we have seen in Room V.,
+was the bitterest opponent of the new Romantic school and steadfast
+champion of his master's artistic ideal. To him more than to any other
+teacher is due the tradition of clean, correct and comely drawing that
+characterises the French school. It is somewhat difficult perhaps for
+a foreigner, observing the paintings by Ingres in this room, fully to
+comprehend[219] the reverence in which he is held by his countrymen.
+More than once Professor Legros has described to the present writer
+the thrill of emotion that passed through him and his fellow-students
+when they saw the aged master enter the École des Beaux Arts at Paris.
+If, however, the visitor will inspect the marvellous Ingres drawings
+in the Salle des Desseins (p. 394), he will appreciate his genius more
+adequately. The master's chief work in the present room is 417, R.
+wall, Apotheosis of Homer, a ceiling composition in which the
+arch-poet, laurel-crowned, has at his footstool seated figures
+symbolising the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, while the most famous poets
+and philosophers of the ages are grouped below him. The Odalisque,
+422B, L. wall, is a characteristic nude, and a few other subject
+pictures will be noted. Among his portraits, 418, Cherubini; 428B,
+Bertier de Vaux, are generally regarded as masterpieces. Ingres
+despised colour, he never appealed to the emotions; his type of beauty
+is external and soulless, and he leaves the spectator cold.
+
+[Footnote 219: Whistler, while disliking his art, was wont to wish he
+had been his pupil.]
+
+Meanwhile the new Romantic school of brilliant colourists grew and
+flourished. Ary Scheffer, Delaroche, Delacroix, cradled in the storms
+of the revolutionary period, are all represented around us. The
+sentimental Ary Scheffer (1795-1858) is seen, L. wall, in 841, St.
+Augustine and St. Monica, an immensely popular but affected and feeble
+composition. Some portraits by this artist may be also found on the
+walls. Greater than he in breadth of composition, opulence of colour
+and artistic virtuosity, was Paul Delaroche, whose Death of Queen
+Elizabeth, 216, end wall, now asserts itself. His greatest work,
+however, and one which won him much fame, is his well-known Hemicycle
+in the Beaux Arts (p. 319). A twin spirit with Géricault was the
+impetuous Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who is more
+fully hung in this collection. Of the brilliant compositions which
+with indefatigable industry he poured forth in the heyday of the
+movement, we may note some excellent examples: 212, L. wall, The Wreck
+of Don Juan; 211, L. wall, Jewish Wedding at Morocco; and, 213,
+Capture of Constantinople by the Venetians and Franks. Earlier works
+are, 207, R. of entrance, Virgil and Dante nearing the City of Dis,
+executed with feverish energy in a few weeks for the Salon of 1822;
+and 208, L. of entrance, The Massacre of Scio, a glowing canvas
+painted in 1834. Jean Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864), the Lesueur of
+the century, and like him uniting artistic genius and wide erudition
+with profound religious faith and true modesty, is represented most
+poorly of all; 284, Portrait of a Young Girl being the only example of
+this master's work here. Flandrin can only be truly appreciated in the
+church of St. Germain des Prés (p. 320). Before we turn to the
+Barbizon painters, we note Gros' fine composition, 389, L. wall,
+Napoleon at Eylau; and 390, R. wall, Francis I. and Charles V.
+visiting the Tombs at St. Denis.
+
+With Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), the all-father of the modern
+French landscape school, and chief of the little band of enthusiasts
+who grouped themselves about him at Barbizon, we touch the greatest
+artistic movement of the age. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875),
+the ever-young and gentle spirit, the tenderest emanation of the
+century; Jean François Millet (1814-1875), the inspired and cultured
+peasant, mightiest of them all, grand and solemn interpreter of the
+fundamental and tragic pathos of human toil, ever discerning God's
+image in the most bent and ill-shapen of his creatures; Constant
+Troyon (1810-1865), the grandest animal painter of his day; Narcisse
+Diaz de la Peña (1809-1876), once a poor errand lad with a maimed leg,
+painter of forest depths and of the rich hues of summer foliage;
+Charles François Daubigny (1817-1878), latest of the little band,
+faithful and tender student of nature, painter of the countryside, of
+the murmuring waters of the Seine and the Oise--these once despised
+and rejected of men have long won fame and appreciation. No princely
+patronage shone on them in their early struggles nor smoothed their
+path; they wrought out the beauty of their souls under the hard
+discipline of poverty in loving and awful communion with Nature. They
+have revealed to us new tones of colour in the air, in the forest and
+the plain, and a new sense of the pathos and beauty in simple lives
+and common things.
+
+827, L. wall, is Rousseau's Forest at Fontainebleau, a fine effect of
+setting sun and loving representation of his favourite tree, the oak;
+829 and 830, R. wall, are also by this master. On the same wall 643,
+Millet's Spring, whose coloration at first sight may seem forced and
+strange, is absolutely faithful to Nature, as the writer who once
+observed similar colour effects in the forest can testify. 644, The
+Gleaners, "the three fates of poverty," is, next to the Angelus, the
+most popular of Millet's works. Corot, the Theocritus of modern
+painting, is represented by 138, the lovely and poetical Morning, 141,
+Souvenir de Mortefontaine and 141 _bis_, Castelgandolfo. R. and L.
+are, 889 and 890, two grand and massive compositions by Troyon: Oxen
+going to the Plough; and, The Return to the Farm: landscapes that
+smell of the very earth, and rendered with a marvellous breadth of
+style and penetrating sympathy; 184, end wall, and 185, R. of
+entrance, Grape Harvest in Burgundy, and Spring, are by Daubigny.
+
+One of the most aggressive, ebullient and individual of painters was
+Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), whose harshly realistic Funeral at Ornans
+we have seen in Room II. In 1855 Courbet, finding his works badly hung
+in the International Exhibition at Paris, erected a wooden shed near
+the entrance, where he exhibited thirty-eight of his large pictures,
+and defiantly painted outside in big letters--REALISM: G. COURBET.
+Strong of body and coarse in habit, this _peintre-animal_, as he was
+called, delighted to _épater le bourgeois_, and painted his studies of
+the nude with a brutal reality that stripped the female form of all
+the beauty and grace with which the superior ideality of man has
+invested it. This swashbuckler of realism, who despised the old
+masters, denounced imagination as humbug, and would have great men,
+railway stations, factories and mines painted as the _vérités vraies_,
+the saints and miracles of the age, was, however, often better than
+his artistic creed, and is here represented by some pleasing
+Fontainebleau pictures: L. wall, 147, Deer in Covert; R. wall, 66,
+Source of the Puits Noir, and L., 147 _bis_, The Waves, a most
+powerful and original interpretation of the sombre majesty of the sea.
+For in truth the creed of Realism, whether in literature or in art,
+involves a fallacy, and the creations of the imaginative and
+idealistic faculty in man are as real as those which result from the
+faculty of seeing mean things meanly and coarse things coarsely.
+Courbet's violent revolutionary nature nearly cost him his life in
+1848 and involved him in the Commune in 1871, during which he presided
+over the destruction of the Vendôme Column (though he saved the
+Luxembourg and the Thiers' collection from the violence of the
+people). Poor Courbet, mulcted in enormous damages for his share in
+the overthrow of the Column, was ruined and died in exile. A more
+potent revolutionist, the arch-Impressionist Manet and founder of the
+school, has at length forced the portals of the Louvre and is
+represented by the celebrated Olympia, 204, around which so many
+fierce battles were waged in 1865.
+
+We proceed to supplement this small collection of Barbizon pictures by
+a visit to the recently acquired (1903) Thomy-Thiéry and Chauchard
+collections. Returning to the Salle La Caze by Room XVI., and the
+Escalier Daru, we issue from it, pass direct before us and continue
+through the rooms devoted to exhibits of furniture (in Hall II. is a
+superb specimen of cabinet-work--Louis XV.'s writing-table). Turning
+R., we then enter a series of Cabinets, containing an admirable and
+most important collection of drawings, beginning with the early
+Italian masters and following on chronologically to the later Italians
+and to the German, Netherland and French masters. If the visitor have
+leisure he will be repaid by returning at some convenient time to
+study these carefully. But even the most hurried traveller should not
+omit to glance through them, and more especially at the lovely Da
+Vincis in the second cabinet and the Ingres drawings further along.
+Arrived at the end, we shall find on our L. a wooden staircase, which
+we mount and reach
+
+ROOM XXXVII.
+
+the Salle Française de 1830. Here are exhibited Delaroche's Princes in
+the Tower; Flandrin's Portrait of Mme. Vinet and some early works of
+the Barbizon school; Corot, 139, the Forum at Rome; 140, the
+Colosseum; 141F, The Belfry at Douai and others. Millet's sketch of
+the Church at Gréville, 641, was found in his studio after his death;
+another study is 642, The Bathers; 644A, The Seamstress, 642A is a
+portrait of the artist's sister-in-law. By Rousseau are two small
+landscapes, 831 and 832; and The Landes, 830, a masterpiece. Diaz and
+Dupré are seen in a number of studies and paintings.
+
+ROOM XXXVIII.
+
+contains the Thomy-Thiéry pictures, excellently hung and forming one
+of the most rich and precious collections in the Louvre. On the R.
+wall as we enter are a numerous series of _genre_ paintings, happily
+conceived and wrought by Alexandre Gabriel Decamps (1803-1860). This
+room holds many excellent Rousseaus, among which are: 2896, Banks of
+the Loire; 2900, an excellent study of his favourite Oak Trees; 2901,
+The Pyrenees; 2903, Springtide. Millet is well represented by a
+priceless little collection: 2892, The Binders; 2890, The
+Rubbish-burners; 2893, The Winnower; 2894, A Motherly Precaution;
+2895, The Wood Chopper. By Corot are shown no less than twelve
+examples: 2801-2812. All are most exquisitely poetical and delicate,
+but we may specially note: 2804, Shepherds' Dance at Sorrento; 2805,
+The Pollard Willows; 2806, Souvenir of Italy; 2807, The Pond; 2808,
+Entrance to a Village; 2810, View of Sin-le-Noble; 2811, Evening. A
+magnificent set of Troyons next claims our admiration, eleven in all,
+2906-2916, of which: 2913, Girl with Turkeys; 2909, Morning; 2914, The
+Barrier; 2916, The Heights of Suresnes, are superlative. The ten Diaz
+pictures, 2854-2863, are of perhaps lesser interest, although they
+will all repay careful attention. Of Daubigny's intimate landscapes
+thirteen are offered to our appreciation, 2813-2825, among which:
+2821, The Thames at Erith; 2822, The Mill at Gyliers; and 2824,
+Morning, are notable. By the melancholy and poetical Jules Dupré
+(1812-1889), whose landscapes oft breathe the tragic pathos of storm
+and desolation, and who is said to have broken into a passionate
+outburst of tears and sobs as he watched the magnificent spectacle of
+a nocturnal tempest, are twelve compositions, 2864-2875; and let us
+not omit some half-score Delacroix, 2843-2853, among which is a rare
+religious subject, 2849, Christ on the Cross. The glass cases in the
+centre of the room exhibit a numerous collection of bronzes by Barye,
+whom we have seen among the modern sculptors in Room VI.
+
+[Illustration: THE BINDERS.
+
+_Millet._]
+
+[Illustration: LANDSCAPE.
+
+_Corot._]
+
+ROOM XXXIX.
+
+is the Salle Française du Second Empire and contains Horace Vernet's
+well known, The Barrière de Clichy, Defence of Paris in 1814; and Ary
+Scheffer's, Death of Géricault. 2938 is the great caricaturist
+Daumier's portrait of Théodore Rousseau. Numerous examples of the
+myopic art of Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) will attract
+attention in this Room. To reach the Chauchard collection,
+provisionally exhibited in the old Colonial office, we descend to the
+first floor, traverse the Grande Galerie and the new Rubens Room.
+This, _prodigieux accroissement de richesses_, as it is termed by the
+official catalogue, contains a large number of masterpieces by the
+Barbizon painters and raises the Louvre collections of that school to
+supreme importance. No less than eight Millet's are included, the most
+famous of which, if not the greatest, The Angelus, 102, is much faded,
+but always attracts a crowd of admirers. 103, Woman at the Well, is a
+scene at the artist's birthplace; 104, is one of the most inspired of
+the master's creations, The Shepherdess watching her Flock. 99, The
+Winnower; 105, Girl with a Distaff, and 106, The Sheep Fold--a lovely
+pastoral scene by night. Among the twenty-six Corots are many of his
+finest works; 6, Goatherd playing the Flute; 8, The Dance of the
+Nymphs; 15, Rest beneath the Willows; 16, The Ford; 20, Forest Glade:
+Souvenir of Ville Avray; 24, Dance of Shepherdesses; 27, The Mill of
+St. Nicholas-les-Arras. Some noble Rousseaus are included: 107, Avenue
+in the Forest of d'Isle-Adam; 108, Pond by the Wayside; 112, Road in
+the Forest of Fontainebleau. Troyon's score of canvases make a brave
+show: 127, The White Cow, painted in 1856, was a favourite of the
+artist who kept it by him until his death and bequeathed it to his
+mother. By Charles Jacque, the painter of sheep, three works are shown
+including 72, The Great Sheepfold. Daubigny, Descamps, Diaz and others
+of the school are well represented in the collection. Admirers of "the
+little master of little pictures" will find among the twenty-six
+Meissonier's, which the Chauchard bequest brings to the Louvre, two of
+the most famous of his works: 87, The Napoleonic picture, Campaign of
+France, 1814; and 80, Amateurs of Painting. All these examples of the
+most successful but least inspired of modern artists exemplify his
+patient, concentrated, meticulous style. By an ingenious fiction that
+the installation is only provisional, six characteristic Venetian
+pictures by the veteran, Ziem, have been retained in the
+collection.[220] 136, is, however, wrongly named, and should read
+Scene from the Giudecca.
+
+[Footnote 220: Pictures by living artists are excluded from the
+Louvre.]
+
+We have completed our rapid survey of the chief paintings in the
+Louvre, for the more recent developments of French art must be sought
+in the Luxembourg, where they are all too inadequately represented.
+The self-imposed limitations of this work will not carry us thither,
+but the most cursory visit to the Louvre would be incomplete without
+some notice of the collections of Persian and Egyptian art which we
+may conveniently glance at on our way as we leave. Descending to the
+first floor by the staircase up which we mounted, we turn obliquely to
+the R. and enter the E. gallery containing the Persian terra-cotta
+reliefs and other objects from the royal palace of Darius, and
+Artaxerxes,[221] his son, at Susa, including the marvellous coloured
+Frieze of the Archers; one of the colossal capitals (restored), that
+supported the roof of the Throne Room; a model of the same; and some
+fine terra-cotta reliefs of Lions and of winged Bulls.
+
+[Footnote 221: The student of history will not need to be reminded
+that the famous retreat of the Ten Thousand, so dramatically described
+by Xenophon, was occasioned by the death in battle of their ally
+Cyrus, in his ill-omened attempt to dispossess his brother,
+Artaxerxes, of the crown of Persia.]
+
+We pass on through the Mediæval and Renaissance collections, turn an
+angle R., and enter the South Gallery, where some remarkable specimens
+of ancient art will be found among the Egyptian Antiquities. The
+painted statue (Hall III.) of the Seated Scribe is one of the most
+precious examples the world possesses of an art admirable in its
+naturalism and power of vivid portraiture, and the charming figure of
+a priestess, known as _Dame Toui_, exquisitely wrought in wood, is
+equally noteworthy. A superb example of a royal papyrus of the Book of
+the Dead will also invite attention. We pass on through a suite of
+beautifully decorated rooms filled with a choice collection of
+Etruscan and Greek Ceramic art, each of which offers a rich feast of
+beauty and historic interest.
+
+At length we reach again the collection of paintings, Room III.,
+whence we may pass through the Salle des Bijoux with a small exhibit
+of ancient jewellery, to the Rotonde, and turning L., enter the
+magnificent Galerie d'Apollon (the old Petite Galerie of Henry IV.),
+and examine the wealth of enamels; the exquisite productions of the
+goldsmith's art as applied to the sacred vessels of the church;
+precious stones; cameos; and such as remain of the old crown jewels.
+We may leave the palace by returning to the Rotonde; pass through the
+Salle La Caze and descend the Escalier Henry II. to the L., noting the
+caissons of its ceiling, decorated by Jean Goujon, and reach the
+Quadrangle under the Pavilion de l'Horloge, where we began our visit;
+or we pass from the Rotonde down the Escalier Daru to the exit in the
+Pavilion Denon, which gives on the Squares du Louvre. In the latter
+case it will be of some interest before leaving to pass for a moment
+by the exit and along the Galerie Mollien, where on the R. among the
+models of Roman masterpieces executed for Francis I., under
+Primaticcio's supervision, will be found one of the Laocoon, which
+shows its condition before Bernini's bungling restoration had deformed
+the group. To the unsated sightseer there yet remain the rich and
+comprehensive collections of Egyptian and Asiatic antiquities on the
+ground floor of the E. wing entered on either side of the E. portal.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VI
+
+_The Ville (S. of the Rue St. Antoine)--The Hôtel de Ville[222]--St.
+Gervais--Hôtel Beauvais--Hôtel of the Provost of Paris--SS. Paul and
+Louis--Hôtel de Mayenne--Site of the Bastille--Bibliothèque de
+l'Arsenal[223]--Hôtel Fieubert--Hôtel de Sens--Isle St. Louis._
+
+[Footnote 222: Open, 2-4, by ticket obtained at the Secretary's
+office.]
+
+[Footnote 223: Open, 10-4, daily, except Chief Festivals.]
+
+
+We take the _Métropolitain_ to the Hôtel de Ville station and make our
+way to the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, formerly Place de Grève, a
+little W. of the station.
+
+In 1141 a sloping bank of sand (grève), to the E. of the Rue St.
+Martin and facing the old port of the Nautæ at St. Landry on the
+island of the Cité, was ceded by royal charter, to the burgesses of
+Paris for a payment of seventy livres. "It is void of houses," says
+the charter, "and is called the _gravia_, and is situated where the
+old market-place (_vetus forum_) existed." This was the origin of the
+famous Place de Grève,[224] where throbbed the very heart of civic,
+commercial and industrial Paris. On its eastern side stood the old
+Maison aux Piliers, a long, low building, whose upper floor was
+supported by columns. Here every revolutionary and democratic movement
+has been organised, from the days of Marcel to those of the Communes
+of 1789--when the last Provost of the Merchants met his death--and of
+1871, when the fine old Renaissance Hôtel de Ville was destroyed by
+fire. The place of sand was much smaller in olden times, and from
+1310, when Philip the Fair burned three heretics, to September, 1822,
+when the last political offenders, the four serjeants of Rochelle,
+were executed, and to July 1830, when the last murderer was hung
+there, has soaked up the blood of many a famous enemy of State and
+Church and of innumerable notorious and obscure criminals, including
+the infamous Marquise de Brinvilliers, who was burned alive, and
+Cartouche, broken on the wheel. A permanent gibbet stood there and a
+market cross, and there during the English wars the infuriated
+Parisians tied the hands and feet of hundreds of English prisoners
+taken at Pontoise and flung them into the Seine. Every St. John's
+eve--the church and cloister of St. Jean stood behind the Hôtel de
+Ville--a great bonfire was lighted in the Place de Grève, fireworks
+were let off, and a salvo of artillery celebrated the festival. When
+the relations between Crown and Commune were felicitous the king
+himself would take part in the _fête_ and fire the pile with a torch
+of white wax decorated with crimson velvet. A royal supper and ball in
+the Grande Salle concluded the revels. Not infrequently the ashes at
+the stake where a poor wretch had met his doom had scarcely cooled
+before the joyous flames and fireworks of the Feu de St. Jean burst
+forth, and the very day after the execution of the Count of Bouteville
+the people were dancing round the fires of St. John. The present Hôtel
+de Ville, by Ballu and Deperthes, completed in 1882,[225] is one of
+the finest modern edifices in Europe, and contains some of the most
+important productions of contemporary French painters and sculptors:
+Puvis de Chavannes, Carolus Duran, Benjamin Constant, Jean Paul
+Laurens, Carrière Dalou, Chapu and others.
+
+[Footnote 224: The masons of Paris were wont to stand on the Place
+waiting to be hired, and sometimes contrived to exact higher wages.
+Hence the origin of the term _faire grève_ (to go out on strike).]
+
+[Footnote 225: Charles Normand, founder of the Société des Amis des
+Monuments, appeals for information concerning the fate of the old
+inscription commemorating the laying of the foundation stone of the
+former Hôtel de Ville in 1533. It is said to have been appropriated
+(_se serait emparé_) by an Englishman in 1874.]
+
+We pass to the E. of the Hôtel, where stands the church of St. Gervais
+and St. Protais, whose façade by Solomon Debrosse (1617) "is
+regarded," says Félibien (1725), "as a masterpiece of art by the
+best architectural authorities" ("_les plus intelligens en
+architecture_"). The church, which has been several times rebuilt,
+occupies the site of the old sixth-century building, near which stood
+the elm tree where suitors waited for justice to be done by the early
+kings. "_Attendre sous l'orme_" ("To wait under the elm") is still a
+proverbial expression for waiting till Doomsday.
+
+[Illustration: ST. GERVAIS.]
+
+The lofty Gothic interior, dating from the late fifteenth century, is
+lighted by some sixteenth and seventeenth-century stained glass, and
+among the pictures that have escaped transportation to the Louvre may be
+noted a lunette over the clergy stalls R. of the nave, God the Father,
+by Perugino; and a remarkable tempera painting, The Passion, attributed
+to Dürer's pupil, Aldegräver, in the fifth chapel, L. aisle. The curious
+old panelled and painted little Chapelle Scarron (fourth to the L.) and
+the sixteenth-century carved choir stalls from the abbey church of Port
+Royal are of interest: the beautiful vaulting of the Lady Chapel is also
+noteworthy. Some good modern paintings may be seen (with difficulty) in
+the side chapels. The Rue François Miron leading E. from the Place St.
+Gervais was part of the Rue St. Antoine, before the cutting of the Rue
+de Rivoli, and the chief artery from the E. to the centre of Paris. On
+the R. of this street, No. 26, Rue Geoffrey l'Asnier, is the fine portal
+of the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Châlons, where the whilom ambassador
+to England, Antoine de la Borderie, lived (1608). Yet further on in the
+Rue François Miron is the Rue de Jouy: at No. 7, is the charming Hôtel
+d'Aumont by Hardouin Mansard. We continue our eastward way along the Rue
+François Miron and among other interesting houses note No. 68, the
+princely Hôtel de Beauvais, erected 1660, for Anne of Austria's
+favourite _femme de chambre_, Catherine Henriette Belier, wife of Pierre
+Beauvais. The street façade has been much disfigured and the magnificent
+wrought-iron balcony, whence Anne, Mazarin and Turenne, together with
+the Queen of England, watched the solemn entry of Louis XIV. and his
+consort Maria Thérèse, has been destroyed: but the beautiful circular
+porch with its Doric columns and metopes and the stately courtyard where
+the architect, Jean Lepautre, has triumphed over the irregularity of the
+site and created a marvellous symmetry of form--all this still remains,
+together with the noble stairway on the L., decorated by the Flemish
+sculptor, Desjardins. In the house at the sign of the Falcon which
+formerly stood on this spot, Tasso in the splendour of his early years
+was lodged by his patron, the Cardinal d'Este, and composed the greater
+part of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. The Rue François Miron is continued
+by the Rue St. Antoine: at No. 119, we enter the Passage Charlemagne and
+pass to the second courtyard where remains a goodly portion of the old
+Hôtel of the Royal Provost of Paris,[226] given to Aubriot by Charles V.
+At No. 101 is the site of one of the gates of the Philip Augustus wall
+and at No. 99 stands the Jesuit Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, in the
+typical baroque style so familiar to visitors to Rome. The once lavishly
+decorated interior has suffered much from the Revolutionists. Germain
+Pilon's Virgin still remains in the chapel L. of the high altar, but the
+four angels in silver that sustained the hearts of Louis XIII. and XIV.,
+and the noble bronze statues from the mausoleum of the Princes of Condé,
+admired by Bernini, are only a memory. At No. 65, a malodorous court
+leads to the old vaulted entrance to the charnel-houses of St. Paul,
+where Rabelais and the Man with the Iron Mask were buried;[227] and to
+the R. of this vault a narrow street leads to the Marché Ste. Catherine
+on the site of the canons' houses of the monastery of Ste. Catherine du
+Val des Écoliers (p. 124). At the corner of the Rue du Petit Musc is the
+magnificent Hôtel de Mayenne, begun by Du Cerceau for Diana of Poitiers
+and completed for the Duke of Mayenne, leader of the forces of the
+League: this too has a fine courtyard. The chamber in which the leaders
+of the League met and decided to assassinate Henry III. still exists. An
+inscription over No. 5 marks the site of the forecourt of the Bastille
+where the revolutionists penetrated on 14th July: on the pavement in
+front of No. 1 and across the end of the street and in front of No. 5
+Place de la Bastille, round the opposite corner, lines of white stones
+mark part of the huge space on which the gloomy and sinister old
+fortress stood. We turn S.W. by the Boulevard Henry IV., past the
+imposing new barracks of the Garde Républicaine, and then L. by the Rue
+de Sully. At No. 3 we enter the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, one of the
+most important libraries of Paris, where an attendant will show Sully's
+private cabinet and antechamber, with the rich decorations as they were
+left by his successor, including a ceiling painted by Vouet. Many an
+intimate outpouring of the Victor of Ivry's domestic woes did Sully
+endure here--complaints of his ill-tempered Marie's scoldings, the
+contrast between his lawful wife's sour greetings and the endearing
+graces and merry, roguish charms of his mistresses; their quarrels and
+exactions. All of which the great minister would listen to reprovingly,
+and exhort his dejected royal master not to permit himself, who had
+vanquished the hosts of his enemies in battle, to be overcome by a
+woman's petulancy. To the S. of the library the Boulevard Morland marks
+the channel which separated the Isle de Louviers from the N. bank of the
+river. We return to the Boulevard Henry IV. and cross to the Quai des
+Célestins, where on our L. stands part of a tower of the Bastille,
+discovered in 1899 during the construction of the Metropolitan Railway
+and transferred here. At the corner of the Rue du Petit Musc opposite,
+is the fine Hôtel Fieubert, erected by Hardouin Mansard (1671) on part
+of the site of the Royal Hôtel St. Paul. The principal façade, 2 _bis_
+Quai des Célestins, has unhappily been irretrievably spoilt by
+subsequent additions. Continuing westward, we note No. 32, the site of
+the Tour Barbeau of the Philip Augustus wall. An inscription bids us
+remember that there stood the old Tennis Court of the Croix Noire, where
+Molière's troupe of the Illustre Théâtre performed in 1645. Turning R.
+up the Rue Falconnier, we come upon (L.) the grand old fifteenth-century
+palace of the archbishops of Sens (p. 114), now a glass merchant's
+warehouse. We regain the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville by the Quai of the
+same name, or cross the Pont Marie, and stroll about the quiet streets
+of the Isle St. Louis (p. 214), and return by the Pont Louis Philippe at
+its western extremity.
+
+[Illustration: HÔTEL OF THE PROVOST OF PARIS.]
+
+[Footnote 226: All demolished (1911).]
+
+[Footnote 227: Under process of demolition (1911).]
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VII
+
+_The Ville (N. of the Rue St. Antoine)--Tour St. Jacques--Rue St.
+Martin--St. Merri--Rue de Venise--Les Billettes--Hôtels du
+Soubise,[228] de Hollande, de Rohan[229]--Musée Carnavalet[230]--Place
+Royale--Musée Victor Hugo[230]--Hôtel de Sully._
+
+[Footnote 228: Open Sundays, 12-3.]
+
+[Footnote 229: Open Thursdays at 2 o'clock by a permit from the
+Director.]
+
+[Footnote 230: Open daily (except Monday) 10-4 or 5 (1 fr.).
+Thursdays and Sundays free. Closed till 12.30 Tuesdays.]
+
+
+Two parallel historic roads named of St. Martin and of St. Denis cut
+northwards through the mass of houses that now crowd the Marais: the
+latter, the Grande Chaussée de Monseigneur St. Denis, to the shrine of
+the martyred saint of Lutetia, the former, the great Roman Street
+which led to the provinces of the north.
+
+[Illustration: WEST DOOR OF ST. MERRI.]
+
+We set forth northwards from the Place du Châtelet, at the foot of the
+Pont au Change, where stood the massive pile of the Grande Châtelet,
+originally built to defend the bridge from the Norman pirates as the
+Petit Châtelet was to defend the Petit Pont. It subsequently became
+the official seat and prison of the Provost of Paris, where he held
+his criminal court and organised the City Watch, and was demolished in
+1802. Below this festered an irregular maze of slums, the aggregation
+of seven centuries, the most fetid, insanitary and criminal quarter of
+Paris, known as the Vallée de Misère, which only disappeared in 1855.
+On our R. soars the beautiful flamboyant Gothic tower, all that
+remains of the great church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie. This fine
+monument was saved by the good sense of the architect Giraud who, when
+the church was sold to the housebreakers during the Revolution,
+inserted a clause in the warrant exempting the tower from demolition.
+It was afterwards used as a lead foundry and twice narrowly escaped
+destruction by fire. Purchased by the Ville, it seemed safe at last,
+but again it was threatened in 1853 by the prolongation of the Rue de
+Rivoli: luckily, however, the new street just passed by on the north.
+The statue of Pascal under the vaulting reminds the traveller that the
+great thinker conducted some barometrical experiments on the summit,
+and the statues of the patron saints of craftsmen in the niches, that
+under its shadow the industrial arts were practised. We ascend the Rue
+St. Martin from the N.E. corner of the Square, and on our R. find the
+late Gothic church of St. Merri, built on the site of the
+seventh-century Chapel of St. Pierre, where Odo Falconarius, one of
+the defenders of Paris in the siege of 886, is known to have been
+buried. We enter for the sake of the beautiful sixteenth-century glass
+in the choir and a curious old painting of the same epoch in the first
+chapel beyond the entrance to the sacristy, Ste. Geneviève and her
+Flock, with a view of Paris in the background. We continue to ascend
+the street, noting No. 122, an old fountain and some reliefs, and soon
+reach, R. and L., the quaint and narrow mediæval Rue de Venise,
+formerly the Ruelle des Usuriers, home of the Law speculators (p.
+242). At No. 27, L. of the Rue St. Martin and corner of the Rue
+Quincampoix, is the old inn of the Epée de Bois (now à l'Arrivée de
+Venise), where Prince de Hoorn and two other nobles assassinated and
+robbed a banker in open day and were broken alive on the wheel in the
+Place de Grève. Mirabeau and L. Racine, with other wits are said to
+have met there and Mazarin granted letters patent to a company of
+dancing masters who taught there, under the direction of the Roi des
+Violins: from these modest beginnings grew the National Academy of
+Dancing. We return E. along the Rue de Venise and pass to its end;
+then cross obliquely to the R. and continue E., along the Rue Simon le
+Franc, traversing the Rue du Temple, to the Rue des Blancs Manteaux.
+This we follow still eastward to its intersection with Rue des
+Archives. Turning down this street to the R. we cross, and at Nos. 24
+or 26 enter the fifteenth-century cloister (restored) of the monastery
+of the Billettes, founded at the end of the thirteenth century to
+commemorate the miracle of the Sacred Host, which had defied the
+efforts of Jonathan, the Jew to destroy it by steel, fire and
+boiling water. The chapel, built on the site of the Jew's house in
+1294, was rebuilt in 1754, and is now a Protestant church. The
+miraculous Host was preserved as late as the early eighteenth century
+in St. Jean en Grève, and carried annually in procession on the octave
+of Corpus Christi. We return northwards along the Rue des Archives,
+and reach at the corner of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois the fine
+pseudo-classic Hôtel de Soubise, now the National Archives, erected in
+1704 for the Princesse de Soubise on the site of the old Hôtel of the
+Constable of France, Olivier de Clisson, where Charles VI., after his
+terrible vengeance on the revolted burgesses, agreed to remit further
+punishment, and where the Duke of Clarence established himself at the
+time of the English occupation. It became later (1553) the fortress of
+the Guises and rivalled the Louvre in strength and splendour. The
+picturesque Gothic portal (restored) of the old Hôtel de Clisson still
+exists higher up the Rue des Archives. The lavishly decorated Hôtel de
+Soubise, entered from the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, in which are
+exhibited historical documents and other objects of profound interest,
+though bereft of much of its former splendour is well worth a visit.
+The sumptuous chambers contain much characteristic and well-preserved
+decorative work by Boucher, Natoire, Carle Vanloo and others.[231]
+Opposite the hôtel and between Nos. 59 and 57 may be seen a portion
+of a tower, repaired in brick, of the old Philip Augustus wall, and in
+the courtyard of the Mont de Piété (No. 55) the line of the wall is
+traced: a nearer view of the tower may be obtained from the courtyard
+to the R.
+
+[Footnote 231: At the north end of the Rue des Archives is the site,
+now a square and a market, of the grisly old fortress of the Knights
+Templars, whose walls and towers and round church were still standing
+a century ago. The enclosure was a famous place of refuge for
+insolvent debtors and political offenders, and sheltered Rousseau in
+1765 when a _lettre de cachet_ was issued for his arrest. In the
+gloomy keep, which was not destroyed until 1811, were imprisoned the
+royal family of France after the abandonment of the Tuileries on 10th
+August 1792. The old market of the Temple, the centre of the _petites
+industries_ of Paris, has been recently demolished. West of this is
+the huge Museum of the Arts and Crafts (Conservatoire des Arts et
+Métiers), on the site of the abbatial buildings and lands of St.
+Martin of the Fields, still preserving in its structure the beautiful
+thirteenth-century church and refectory of the Abbey.]
+
+[Illustration: CLOISTER OF THE BILLETTES, FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
+
+[Illustration: ARCHIVES NATIONALES, HÔTEL SOUBISE, SHOWING TOWERS OF
+HÔTEL DE CLISSON.]
+
+[Illustration: TOWER AT THE CORNER OF THE RUE VIELLE DU TEMPLE.]
+
+We proceed eastward past the rebuilt church of the Blancs Manteaux and
+at the corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple find a charming Gothic
+tourelle (restored), all that remains of the mansion built in 1528 by
+Jean de la Balue. Descending the Rue Vieille du Temple to the R., we
+may examine (No. 47) the old Hôtel de Hollande, erected in 1638, where
+the Dutch ambassadors resided; and ascending, at No. 87, we find the
+Hôtel de Rohan (1712), home of the Cardinal de Rohan of
+diamond-necklace fame, now the Imprimerie Nationale. The Salon des
+Singes, charmingly decorated by Huet, and other interesting rooms are
+shown. The fine relief by Le Lorrain of the Horses of Apollo in a
+passage to the R. of the courtyard should by no means be missed. We
+return to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, and at No. 38 find an
+inscription[232] over the entrance to a picturesque court which marks
+the place where the Duke of Orleans was assassinated by Jean Sans Peur
+(p. 132). Still proceeding E. we pass yet more interesting domestic
+architecture--No. 31, Hôtel d'Albret, where goody Scarron used to
+visit Madame de Montespan and where she was appointed governess to the
+royal bastards; 25, Hôtel de Lamoignon, once occupied by Diana of
+France, daughter of Henry II., and where Malesherbes was born.
+
+[Footnote 232: Removed to give place to the name of a firm of
+wholesale chemists (1911).]
+
+Nos. 14 and 16, corner of the Rue de Sévigné, is the Hôtel de
+Carnavalet, a magnificent renaissance mansion, in raising which no
+less than four famous architects had part--Lescot, Bullant, Du Cerceau
+and the elder Mansard. For twenty years (1677-1697) it was the home of
+Madame Sévigné, queen of letter-writers. Her _Carnavalette_, as she
+delighted to call it, is now the civic museum of Paris. The beautiful
+reliefs over the entrance, including the two superb lions against a
+background of trophies, are by Goujon, as are also the satyrs' heads
+on the keystones of the arcades of the courtyard. The Four Seasons and
+some of the lateral figures that decorate the courtyard were designed
+by him. In the centre stands a bronze statue of Louis XIV as a Roman
+conqueror, by Coysevox, which once stood on the Place de Grève before
+the old Hôtel de Ville. The museum, which contains a collection,[233]
+historic and prehistoric, relating to the city of Paris, is especially
+rich in objects, all carefully labelled, illustrating the great
+Revolution, and is of profound interest to students of that period:
+the second floor is devoted to the last siege of Paris. From the
+museum we fare yet further E. along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois to
+the Place Royale (now des Vosges), the site of the Palace of the
+Tournelles, once a favourite pleasure-house with a fair garden, of the
+kings of France, and where the Duke of Bedford lived during the
+English occupation, projecting to transform it into an English park
+for his exclusive use. There the ill-fated Henry II. lay eleven days
+in excruciating agony (p. 172), calling for his _seule princesse_, the
+beloved Diana, while Catherine, like a she-dragon, watched lest her
+rival entered. After his death the palace becoming hateful to
+Catherine, she had it demolished. It was subsequently used as a
+horse-market, and there the three minions of Henry III. began their
+bloody duel with the three bullies of the Duke of Guise at five in
+the morning of 27th April 1578, and fought on until every one was
+either slain or severely wounded.
+
+[Footnote 233: Recently augmented.]
+
+How different is the present aspect of this once courtly square! Here
+noble gentlemen in dazzling armour jousted, while from the windows of
+each of the thirty-five pavilions, gentle dames and demoiselles smiled
+gracious guerdon to their cavaliers. Around the bronze statue of Louis
+XIII., proudly erect on the noble horse cast by Daniello da Volterra,
+in the midst of the gardens, fine ladies were carried in their
+sedan-chairs and angry gallants fought out their quarrels. And now on
+this royal Place, the Perle du Marais, the scene of these brilliant
+revels, peaceful inhabitants of the east of Paris sun themselves and
+children play. Bronze horse and royal rider went to the melting pot of
+the Revolution to be forged into cannon that defeated and humbled the
+allied kings of Europe, and a feeble marble equestrian statue, erected
+under the Restoration, occupies its place.
+
+We cross the Square obliquely and at No. 6, Victor Hugo's old house,
+find a delightful little museum of portraits, busts, casts,
+illustrations of his works in various mediums, and personal and
+intimate objects belonging to the poet. It was at this house that in
+1847 the two greatest novelists of their age met. Dickens has
+described how he was welcomed with infinite courtesy and grace by
+Hugo, a noble, compact, closely-buttoned figure, with ample dark hair
+falling loosely over his clean-shaven face and with features never so
+keenly intellectual, and softened by a sweet gentility. We leave the
+Place by the S. exit, and entering the Rue St. Antoine turn R. to No.
+62, where stands the Hôtel de Sully, built by Du Cerceau in 1634. The
+stately but now rather grimy inner courtyard is little altered, but
+the fine façade has been disfigured by the erection of a mean
+building between the wings. We return from the Métropolitain station
+at the end of the Rue François Miron.
+
+[Illustration: PLACE DES VOSGES, MAISON DE VICTOR HUGO.]
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VIII
+
+_Rue St. Denis--Fontaine des Innocents--Tower of Jean sans Peur--Cour
+des Miracles--St. Eustache--The Halles--St. Germain l'Auxerrois._
+
+
+From the Châtelet Station of the Métropolitain we strike northwards
+along the Rue St. Denis, passing R. and L. the Rue des Lombards, the
+Italian business quarter of old Paris, where Boccaccio, son of
+Boccassin, the money-changer, was born. We continue past the
+ill-omened Rue de la Ferronnerie and soon reach the Square and
+Fontaine des Innocents. This charming renaissance fountain was
+transferred here in 1786 from the corner of the old Rues aux Fers (now
+the widened Rue Berger) and St. Denis, where it had been designed and
+decorated by Lescot and Goujon to celebrate the solemn entry of Henry
+II. in 1549. The beautiful old fountain has been considerably modified
+and somewhat debased. The longer side has been divided to make a
+third, and a new fourth side has been added by Pajou. The whole has
+been elevated much too high by the addition of the terrace steps, and
+an unsightly dome has been added. Five of the exquisite reliefs of the
+Naiads by Goujon still remain, and three have been added by Pajou.
+These latter may be distinguished by their higher relief and lack of
+refinement.
+
+The site of the immense Necropolis of Les Innocents,[234] which for
+six centuries swallowed up half the dead of Paris, roughly corresponds
+to the parallelogram formed by the modern Rues Berger, St. Denis,
+Ferronnerie and de la Lingerie, and one of the old vaulted
+charnel-houses may still be seen at the ground floor of No. 7 Rue des
+Innocents. The huge piles of human remains and skulls that grinned
+from under the gable roof of the gallery painted with the Dance of
+Death were, in 1786, carted away to the catacombs under Paris, formed
+by the old Gallo-Roman quarrymen as they quarried the stone used to
+rebuild Lutetia. For centuries this enclosure was the refuge of
+vagabonds and scamps of all kinds, a receptacle for garbage, the haunt
+of stray cats and dogs, whose howlings by night made sleep impossible
+to nervous folk; and the lugubrious _clocheteur_, or crier of the
+dead, with lantern and bell, his tunic figured with skull and
+cross-bones, bleating forth:--
+
+ "Reveillez-vous gens qui dormez,
+ Priez Dieu pour les trépassez."
+
+was no soothing lullaby.
+
+[Footnote 234: 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."
+
+ "_Tabesne cadavera solvat
+ An rogas haud refert._"--LUCAN.]
+
+A curious early fifteenth-century rhyme is associated with this
+charnel-house. One morning, two _bourgeoises_ of Paris, the wife of
+Adam de la Gonesse and her niece, went abroad to have a little flutter
+and eat two sous' worth of tripe in a new inn. On their way they met
+Dame Tifaigne, the milliner, who recommended the tavern of the
+"Maillez," where the wine was excellent. Thither they went and fared
+not wisely but too well. When fifteen sous had already been spent,
+they determined to make a day of it, and ordered roast goose with hot
+cakes. After further drinking, gauffres, cheese, peeled almonds,
+pears, spices and walnuts were called for, and the feast ended in
+songs. When the bad quarter of an hour came, their sum of sous proving
+inadequate, they parted with some of their finery to meet the score,
+and at midnight left the inn dancing and singing--
+
+ "Amours au vireli m'en vois."
+
+The streets of Paris, however, at midnight were unsafe even for sober
+ladies, and these soon fell among thieves, were stripped of the rest
+of their clothing, then taken up for dead by the watch and flung into
+the mortuary in the cemetery of the Innocents; but, to the terror of
+the gravedigger, were found lying outside the next morning, singing--
+
+ "Druin, Druin, ou es allez?
+ Apporte trois harens salez
+ Et un pot de vin du plus fort."
+
+Pursuing our way N. by the Rue St. Denis we pass (R.) the restored
+fourteenth-century church of St. Leu and St. Gilles, and on our L. two
+old reliefs of St. Peter and St. Andrew embedded in the corner of a
+modern house at the corner of the Rue St. Denis and the Rue Étienne
+Marcel. Near by stood the Painters' Gate of the Philip Augustus wall.
+We turn L. by the latter street and soon sight on our R. the massive
+machicolated Tower of Jean sans Peur (p. 133). It was at the Hôtel de
+Bourgogne that the Confrères de la Passion de Jésus Christ were
+performing in the sixteenth century, and where in 1548 they were
+forbidden by royal decree to play the mystery of the Passion any
+longer, and limited to profane, decent and lawful plays. From
+1566-1576 the comédiens of the Hôtel de Bourgogne continued their
+performances, which at length became so gross that complaints were
+made of the _blasphèmes et impudicités_ enacted there, and that not a
+farce was played that was not _orde_, _sale et vilaine_. Repeated
+ordinances were levelled at the actors, aiming at the purification of
+the stage and preventing words of _double entente_. It was here, too,
+that the most exalted and noble masterpieces of Corneille and
+Racine--_Le Cid_, _Andromaque_ and _Phèdre_--were first enacted. We
+turn R. by the Rue Française, again R. by the Rue Tiquetonne, then L.
+by the curious Rue Dussoubs to the new Rue Réamur, where on the
+opposite side, to the L., is the narrow passage between Nos. 100 and
+102 that leads to the once notorious Cour des Miracles, so vividly
+portrayed in Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame_. It was here that Jean Du
+Barry and his mistress, Jeanne Vaubernier, kept a gambling-hell.
+Jeanne, subsequently married to Jean's brother, was the daughter of a
+monk and formerly known as Mademoiselle Lange. She it was who became
+the famous Du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Here also dwelt Hébert,
+editor of the foul _Père Duchesne_. Both perished on the scaffold. We
+cross the Cour and leave by the Rue Damiette (L.), turn again L. and
+descend the Rue du Nil to the Rue des Petits Carreaux. This we follow
+to the L., and continue down it and the busy and picturesque Rue
+Montorgeuil, noting (L.) No. 78, the curious house at the sign of the
+Rocher de Cancale. 72-64 were part of the roomy sixteenth-century
+posting house of the Golden Compasses, and have quaint reliefs carved
+on their façades. We may enter at 64, the spacious old coaching yard,
+still used by market carts and waggons. The courtyard on the opposite
+side, No. 47, was the office of the old sedan-chair porters. We
+continue to descend, and at length sight the tall apse of the majestic
+church of St. Eustache, which towers over the Halles. Begun in 1532 by
+Pierre Lemercier, it was not completed until more than a century later
+by Jacques Lemercier, architect of the extended Louvre. We enter, by
+the side portal, the spacious, lofty and beautiful interior with its
+not unpleasing mingling of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It
+was here that in 1587 a friar reciting the story of the execution of
+Mary Queen of Scots roused his hearers to such a tempest of passion
+that the whole congregation melted into a common paroxysm of tears.
+Here, too, on 4th April 1791 was celebrated, amid the gloom and sorrow
+of a whole people, the funeral of their "Sovereign-Man," Mirabeau. Not
+till five o'clock did the league-long procession reach the church in
+solemn silence, interrupted only by the sound of muffled drums and
+wailing music, "new clangour of trombones and metallic dirge-voice,
+amid the infinite hum of men." After the funeral oration a discharge
+of arms brought down some of the plaster from the vaultings of the
+church, and the body went--the first tenant--to the Panthéon of the
+heroes of the Fatherland. We leave by the west portal--a monstrous
+pseudo-classic pile, added 1775-1778. To our L. is the vast area once
+covered by a congeries of picturesque Halles and streets:--the Halle
+aux Draps; the Marché des Herborists, with their mysterious stores of
+simples and healing herbs and leeches; the potato and onion markets;
+the butter and cheese markets; the fish market; the queer old Rue de
+la Tonnellerie, under whose shabby porticoes, sellers of rags, old
+clothes, iron and furniture, crowded against the bread market; the
+Marché des Prouvaires, beloved of thrifty housewives--all swallowed up
+by the vast modern structure of iron and glass, known as Les Halles.
+The Halle au Blé, or corn market, last to disappear, was built on the
+site of the Hôtel de la Reine which Catherine de' Medici had erected
+when frightened from the Tuileries by her astrologer Ruggieri. The
+site is now occupied by the Bourse de Commerce, but one curious
+decorated and channelled column, which conceals a stairway used by
+Catherine and her Italian familiar when they ascended to the roof to
+consult the stars, has been preserved.
+
+The Rue Pirouette N. of the Halles reminds us that there, until the
+reign of Louis XVI., stood the royal pillory, a tall octagonal tower
+of two floors. The unhappy wretches condemned to exposure there were
+placed with head and hands protruding through holes in a revolving
+wheel, and were left for three hours on three market days, to the
+gibes and missiles of the populace. There, too, was a place of
+execution for state offenders, the Constable of Clisson in 1344 and
+_le pauvre Jacques_ (p. 147) in 1477 having perished on this spot.
+
+From the Place St. Eustache we cross (L.) to the Rue Vauvilliers,
+formerly the Rue du Four St. Honoré, the west side of which still
+retains much of its old aspect, and many of the shops, their old
+signs: _Au Chou Vert_; _Le Panier Fleuri_, etc. Descending this street
+southwards, a turn (R.) up the Rue de Vannes will bring us to the
+Ruggieri column, transformed (1812) into a fountain, as the
+inscription tells. Resuming our way down the Rue Vauvilliers we turn
+R. by the Rue St. Honoré and opposite, at the corner of the Rue de
+l'Arbre Sec, find the old fountain of the Croix du Trahoir, erected in
+the reign of François I. and rebuilt by Soufflot in 1775. Here
+tradition places the cruel death of Queen Brunehaut (p. 29).
+Descending this street to the Rue de Rivoli, we note, No. 144, to the
+L. an inscription marking the site of the Hôtel de Montbazon where
+Coligny was assassinated. We cross to the Rue Perrault and soon reach
+the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois from whose tower rang the signal
+for the St. Bartholomew butchery. The porch was added in 1431 for the
+convenience of distinguished worshippers; for it was the parish church
+of the Château of the Louvre and consequently the royal chapel. The
+saints and martyrs on the portail and porch are therefore closely
+associated with the history of Paris: opposite to us extends
+Perrault's famous E. façade of the Louvre.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION IX
+
+_Palais Royal--Théâtre Français--Gardens and Cafés of the Palais
+Royal--Palais Mazarin (Bibliothèque Nationale)_[235]_--St.
+Roch--Vendôme Column--Tuileries Gardens--Place de la Concorde--Champs
+Élysées._
+
+[Footnote 235: Open Tuesdays and Fridays, 10 to 4.]
+
+
+From the Palais Royal Station of the Métropolitain we issue before the
+great palace begun by Richelieu (p. 212). To our L. stands the Théâtre
+Français, occupied by the Comédie Française since 1799, on the site of
+the old Variétés Amusantes or Palais Variétés built in 1787, a little
+to the W. of Richelieu's Theatre of the Palais Cardinal. This latter
+was the scene of Molière's triumphs and of his piteous death, and the
+original home of the French Opera whose position is indicated by an
+inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. Honoré. It was
+at the Théâtre des Variétés, when the staid old Comédie Française was
+rent by rival factions that Chenier's patriotic tragedy, _Charles
+IX._, was performed on 4th November 1789, 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 at the Nation (the Odéon) by playing a royalist
+repertory, _Cinna_ and _Athalie_, amid shouts from the pit for
+_William Tell_ and the _Death of Cæsar_, and the stage 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.
+
+In the stormy year of 1830, when the July Revolution made an end for
+ever of the Bourbon cause in Paris, the Comédie Française again became
+a scene of fierce strife. _Hernani_, a drama in verse, had been
+accepted from the pen of Victor Hugo, the brilliant and exuberant
+master of the new Romantic school of poets who had determined to
+emancipate themselves from the traditions, long since hardened into
+dogmas, of the great dramatists of the siècle de Louis Quatorze. On
+the night of the first performance each side--Romanticists and
+Classicists--had packed the theatre with partisans. 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:--
+
+ DOÑA JOSEFA--"Serait-ce déjà lui? C'est bien à l'escalier
+ Dérobé--"
+
+The last word had not passed the actress' 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
+verse. The Romanticists, led by Théophile Gautier, answered in
+withering blasphemies; the Classicists began to
+
+ "... prove their doctrine orthodox
+ By apostolic blows and knocks,"
+
+and the pit became a pandemonium of warring factions. Night
+after night the literary sects renewed their fights, and the
+representations, as Hugo said, resembled battles rather than
+performances. The year 1830 was the '93 of the classic drama, but the
+passions it evoked have long since been calmed and _Hernani_ and _Le
+Roi s'Amuse_, the latter suppressed by Louis Philippe after its first
+appearance, have taken their places in the classic repertory of the
+Français beside the tragedies of Corneille and Racine.
+
+At No. 161 Rue St. Honoré, now Café de la Régence, beloved of chess
+players, is the site of the Porte St. Honoré of the Charles V. wall
+before which Joan of Arc was wounded at the Siege of Paris in 1429.
+The old chess-players' temple where Diderot loved to watch the
+matches; where the author of _Gil Blas_ beheld in a vast and
+brilliantly lighted salon, a score of silent and grave _pousseurs de
+bois_ (wood-shovers) surrounded by crowds of spectators amid a silence
+so profound that the movement of the pieces alone could be heard;
+where Voltaire and D' Alembert were often seen; where Jean Jacques
+Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor
+was forced to seek police protection; where Robespierre loved to play
+a cautious game and the young and impecunious Napoleon Bonaparte, an
+impatient player and bad loser, waited on fortune; where strangers
+from all corners of the earth congregated as in an arena where
+victory was esteemed final and complete; where Poles, Turks, Moors and
+Hindoos in their picturesque garbs made a scene unparalleled even at
+the Rialto of Venice; where on Sunday afternoons a seat was worth a
+monarch's ransom--this classic Café de la Régence which, until 1852,
+stood on the Place du Palais Royal, no longer exists.
+
+We enter the gardens of the Palais by the colonnade to the R. of the
+Théâtre Français and pass N. along the W. colonnade. On this side was
+situated the famous Café de Foy (p. 261), founded in 1700, whose
+proprietor was in early days alone 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 _grande
+allée_, or sit at the cafés listening to open-air performers,
+sometimes revelling in the moonlight as late as the small hours of the
+morning.
+
+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. Next day the Royalists
+returned in force and cleansed the air with incense: after many
+fatalities the café was closed for some days and the triumph of the
+Jacobins at length made any suspicion of Royalism too perilous. During
+the occupation of Paris by the allies many a fatal duel between the
+foreign officers and the Imperialists was initiated there.
+
+The extremer section of the Revolutionists frequented the Café
+Corazza, still extant on this side of the garden, which soon became a
+minor Jacobin's, 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.
+
+In the earlier days of the Revolution when its leaders looked for
+sympathy to England, "a brave and generous nation, whose name alone
+like that of Rome evokes ideas of Liberty," the people during an
+exhibition of anti-monarchical feeling went about destroying the
+insignia of royalty. On coming in the Palais Royal to the sign of the
+English king's head over a restaurant, an orator mounted a chair in
+the gardens, and informed them that it was the head of a good king,
+ruling over a free nation: it was spared, amid shouts of "_Vive la
+Liberté_." Later, at the Café des Milles Colonnes, the handsome Madame
+Romain, _La Belle Limonadière_, sat majestically on a real throne used
+by a king whom Napoleon had overthrown.
+
+We leave the gardens by the issue in the middle of the N. colonnade,
+mount the steps and at the corner of the Rue Vivienne and the Rue des
+Petits Champs opposite, come upon the Palais Mazarin (p. 222), now the
+Bibliothèque Nationale, with a fine façade on each street. In the Rue
+Vivienne stood also the princely Hôtel Colbert, of which only the name
+remains--the Passage Colbert. We turn W. along the Rue des Petits
+Champs and skirt the W. walls of the modernised palace northwards
+along the Rue de Richelieu to the main Cour d'Honneur, opposite the
+Square Louvois. Hence we may enter some rooms, which contain a
+magnificent and matchless collection of printed books, bindings and
+illuminated MSS. The second of the two halls where these treasures are
+exposed, the Galerie Mazarin, is a part of the old palace and retains
+its fine frescoed ceiling. As we retrace our steps down the Rue
+Richelieu we may enter, on our L. the equally rich and sumptuous
+museum of coins, medals, antiques, intaglios, gems, etc. Having
+regained the Rue des Petits Champs, we resume our westward way, noting
+at No. 45, corner of the Rue St. Anne, the fine double façade of the
+Hôtel erected by Lulli and bearing the great musician's coat-of-arms,
+a design of trumpets, lyres and cymbals, and soon cross the Avenue de
+l'Opéra to the Rue St. Roch on our L. This we descend to the church of
+the same name, with old houses still nestling against it, famous for
+Bonaparte's whiffs of grape-shot that scattered the Royalist
+insurrectionary forces stationed there on 5th October 1795. We descend
+to the Rue de Rivoli. To our L., at the Place des Pyramids, a statue
+of Joan of Arc recalls her ill-advised attack on Paris, and to our R.,
+on the railings of the Tuileries Garden opposite No. 230, Rue de
+Rivoli, is the inscription marking the site of the Salle du Manége (p.
+271). Northward hence extend Napoleon's Rues de Castiglione and de la
+Paix, the Regent Street of Paris, divided by the Place Vendôme, which
+was intended by its creator, Louvois, to be the most spacious in the
+city. A monumental parallelogram of public offices was designed to
+enclose the Place, but Versailles engulfed the king's resources and
+the ambitious scheme was whittled down, the area much reduced, and the
+site and foundations of the new buildings were handed over to the
+Ville. What the Allies failed to do in 1814 the Commune succeeded in
+doing in 1871, and the boastful Column of Vendôme, a pitiful
+plagiarism of Trajan's Column at Rome, was laid in the dust, only
+however to be raised again by the Third Republic in 1875. We enter the
+Tuileries Gardens crossing the Terrace of the Feuillants, all that is
+left of the famous monastery and grounds where Lafayette's club of
+constitutional reformers met. The beautiful gardens remain much as Le
+Notre designed them for Louis XIV: every spring the orange trees, some
+of them dating back it is said to the time of Francis I., are brought
+forth from the orangery to adorn the central avenue, and the gardens
+become vocal with many voices of children at their games--French
+children with their gentle humour and sweet refined play. R. and L. of
+the central avenue we find the two marble exhedræ, erected in 1793 for
+the elders who presided over the floral celebrations of the month of
+Germinal by the children of the Republic.
+
+Of the gorgeous palace of the Tuileries at the E. end of the gardens,
+with its inharmonious but picturesque façade stretching across the
+western limit of the Louvre from the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion
+de Marsan, not one stone is left on another. We remember it after its
+fiery purgation by the Commune in 1871, a gaunt shell blackened and
+ruined, fitting emblem of the wreck which the enthroned wantonness and
+corruption of the Second Empire had made of France.
+
+We fare again westward along the gardens and emerge into the Place de
+la Concorde by the gate adorned with Coysevox' statues, Fame and
+Mercury on Winged Horses, facing, on the opposite side of the vast
+area, Guillaume Coustou's Horse Tamers from Marly.
+
+The Place, formerly of Louis XV., with its setting of pavilions
+adorned with groups of statuary representing the chief cities of
+France, was created by Gabriel in 1763-1772 on the site of a dreary,
+marshy waste used as a depot for marble. It was adorned in 1763 with
+an equestrian statue of Louis XV., by Pigalle, elevated on a pedestal
+which was decorated at the corners by statues of the cardinal virtues.
+Mordant couplets, two of which we transcribe, affixed on the base,
+soon expressed the judgment of the Parisians:--
+
+ "_Grotesque monument! Infâme piédestal!
+ Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval._"
+
+ "_Il est ici comme à Versailles,
+ Toujours sans coeur et sans entrailles._"
+
+After the fall of the monarchy the Place was known as the Place de la
+Révolution, and in 1792, Louis XV. with the other royal simulacra in
+bronze having been forged into the cannon that thundered against the
+allied kings of Europe, a plaster statue of Liberty was erected, at
+whose side the guillotine mowed down king and queen, revolutionist and
+aristocrat in one bloody harvest of death, ensanguining the very
+figure of the goddess herself, who looked on with cold and impassive
+mien. She too fell, and in her place stood a _fascis_ of eighty-three
+spears, symbolising the unity of the eighty-three departments of
+France. In 1795 the Directory changed the name to Place de la
+Concorde, and again in 1799 a seated statue of Liberty holding a globe
+was set up. In the hollow sphere a pair of wild doves built their
+nest--a futile augury, for in 1801 Liberty II. was broken in pieces,
+and the model for a tall granite column erected in its place by
+Napoleon I. One year passed and this too disappeared. After the
+Restoration, among the other inanities came, in 1816, a second statue
+of Louis XV., and the Place resumed its original name. Ten years later
+an expiatory monument to Louis XVI. was begun, only to be swept away
+with other Bourbon lumber by the July Revolution of 1830. At length
+the famous obelisk from Luxor, after many vicissitudes, was elevated
+in 1836 where it now stands.
+
+The Place as we behold it dates from 1854, when the deep fosses which
+surrounded it in Louis XV.'s time, and which were responsible for the
+terrible disaster that attended the wedding festivities of Louis XVI.
+and Marie Antoinette, were filled up, and other improvements and
+embellishments effected. The vast space and magnificent vistas enjoyed
+from this square are among the finest urban spectacles in Europe. To
+the north, on either side of the broad Rue Royale which opens to the
+Madeleine, stand Gabriel's fine edifices (now the Ministry of Marine
+and the Cercle de la Rue Royale), designed to accommodate foreign
+ambassadors. To the south is the Palais Bourbon, now the Chamber of
+Deputies; to the east are the gardens of the Tuileries, and to the
+west is the stately Grande Avenue of the Champs Élysées rising to the
+colossal Arch of Triumph crowning the eminence of the Place de
+l'Étoile. As our eyes travel along the famous avenue, memories of the
+military glories and of the threefold humiliation of Imperial France
+crowd upon us. For down its ample way there marched in 1814 and 1815
+two hostile and conquering armies to occupy Paris, and in 1871 the
+immense vault of the Arc de Triomphe, an arch of greater magnitude
+than any raised to Roman Cæsars, echoed to the shouts of another
+exultant foreign host, mocking as they strode beneath it at the names
+of German defeats inscribed on its stones. And on the very Place de la
+Concorde, German hussars waltzed in pairs to the brazen music of a
+Uhlan band, while a line of French sentries across the entrance to the
+Tuileries gardens gazed sullenly on. To this day the mourning statue
+of Strassbourg with her sable drapery and immortelles, still keeps
+alive the bitter memory of her loss.
+
+To the south of the Champs Élysées is the Cours de la Reine, planted
+by Catherine de' Medici, for two years the most fashionable carriage
+drive in Paris. This we follow and at No. 16 find the charming Maison
+François I. brought from Moret, stone by stone, in 1826. To the north,
+in the Cours de Gabriel, a fine gilded grille, surmounted with the
+arms of the Republic, gives access to the Élysée, the official
+residence of the President. It was once Madame Pompadour's favourite
+house in Paris, and the piece of land she appropriated from the public
+to round off her gardens is still retained in its grounds. In the
+Avenue Montaigne, leading S.W. from the Rond Point (once the Allée des
+Veuves, a retired walk used by widows during their term of seclusion)
+Nos. 51 and 53 stand on the site of the notorious Bal Mabille,[236]
+the temple of the bacchanalia of the gay world of the Second Empire.
+In 1764 the Champs Élysées ended at Chaillot, a little to the W. of
+the Rond Point, an old feudal property which Louis XI. gave to
+Philippe de Comines in 1450, and which in 1651 sheltered the unhappy
+widow of Charles I. Here Catherine de' Medici built a château, but
+château and nunnery of the Filles de Sainte Marie, founded by the
+English queen, disappeared in 1790. S. of the Champs Élysées on the
+opposite bank of the Seine rises the gilded dome of the Invalides, and
+to the S.W. stretches the vast field of Mars, the scene of the Feast
+of Pikes, and now encumbered with the relics of four World-Fairs.
+
+[Footnote 236: 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.]
+
+The Paris we have rapidly surveyed is, mainly, enclosed by the inner
+boulevards, which correspond to the ramparts of Louis XIII. on the
+north, demolished by his successor between 1676 and 1707, and the line
+of the Philip Augustus wall and the Boulevard St. Germain on the
+south. Beyond this historic area are the outer boulevards which mark
+the octroi wall of Louis XVI.; further yet are the Thiers wall and
+fortifications of 1841. Within these wider boundaries is the greater
+Paris of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of profound concern
+to the economical and social student, but of minor interest to the
+ordinary traveller. The vogue of the brilliant and gay inner
+boulevards of the north bank so familiar to the foreigner in Paris is
+of comparatively recent growth. In the early nineteenth century the
+boulevard from the Place de la Madeleine to the Rue Cambon was almost
+deserted by day and dangerous by night--a vast waste, the proceeds of
+the confiscated lands of the Filles de la Conception. From the
+Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard St. Martin followed lines of
+private hôtels, villas, gardens and convent walls. A great mound which
+separated the Boulevard St. Martin from the Boulevard du Temple was
+not cleared away until 1853. From 1760 to 1862 the Boulevard du Temple
+was a centre of pleasure and amusement, where charming suburban houses
+and pretty gardens alternated with cheap restaurants, hotels,
+theatres, cafés, marionette shows, circuses, tight-rope dancers,
+waxworks, and cafés-chantants. In 1835, so lurid were the dramas
+played there, that the boulevard was popularly known as the _Boulevard
+du Crime_.
+
+In the early nineteenth century the favourite promenade of Parisian
+_flaneurs_ was displaced from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des
+Italiens, whither 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, 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 _déjeuners à la fourchette_, although its rival
+and neighbour, the Café Riche, stills exists. Many others of the
+celebrated cafés of the Boulevards have disappeared or suffered a
+transformation into the more popular Brasseries and 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
+visitors, the Bohemian cafés of the outer boulevards, the Folies
+Bergères, the Moulins Rouges, the Bals Bulliers, with their
+meretricious and vulgar attractions, frequented by the more facile
+daughters of Gaul, "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 English-speaking 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 Lutetia 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."
+
+
+
+
+SECTION X
+
+_The Basilica of St. Denis and the Monuments of the Kings, Queens and
+Princes of France._
+
+
+No historical pilgrimage to Paris would be complete without a visit to
+the Sanctuary of its protomartyr and the burial-place of its kings.
+Taking train from the Gare du Nord, either main line or local
+train-tramway and being arrived at the railway station of the grimy
+industrial suburb of St. Denis, we cross the canal and continue along
+the Rue du Chemin de Fer and the Rue de la République, to the
+Cathedral, architecturally the most important relic of the great age
+of the early ecclesiastical builders. The west façade before us,
+completed about 1140 by Abbot Suger, is of profound interest, for here
+we may behold the round Romanesque arch side by side with the Pointed,
+and the very first grip of the new Gothic on the heavy Norman
+architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W.
+portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain
+us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait
+for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave
+and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its
+chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of
+form are so admirably blended. The choir was so far advanced in 1143
+that mass was sung at the high altar during a heavy storm while the
+incomplete ribs of the new Gothic vaulting swayed over head. In 1219,
+however, Suger's structure was nearly destroyed by fire and the upper
+part of the choir, the nave and transepts were afterwards rebuilt in
+the pure Gothic of the times, the more active reconstruction being
+effected between 1231 and 1281. A visit to the monuments is unhappily
+a somewhat mingled experience. Owing to the inscrutable official
+regulations in force, the best of the mediæval tombs are only seen
+with difficulty and from a distance that renders any appreciation of
+their beauty impossible.[237] The monuments are mainly those claimed
+by Lenoir for his Museum at Paris when the decree of 1792 was
+promulgated, ordering the "effacement of the proud epitaphs and the
+destruction of the Mausoleums, that recalled the dread memories of
+kings": they were restored to their original places so far as possible
+by Viollet le Duc. The head of St. Denis is said to have been found
+when his shrine was desecrated and appropriated by the revolutionists,
+and in the cant of the time was brought back to Paris by "a miracle
+greater and more authentic than that which conveyed it from
+Montmartre to St. Denis, a miracle of the regeneration of opinion,
+registered not in the martyrology but in the annals of reason."
+
+[Footnote 237: We cannot too strongly impress on the traveller the
+desirability of visiting the admirable Musée de Sculpture Comparée at
+the Trocadero where casts of the most important sculpture and
+architecture in France, including many of the monuments, here and
+elsewhere in Paris, may be conveniently studied.]
+
+[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. DENIS.]
+
+We are first led past some mediæval tombs in the N. transept, then by
+those of the family of St. Louis, which include that of his eldest
+son, one of the most beautiful creations of thirteenth-century
+sculpture. Our own Henry III. who attended the funeral is figured
+among the mourners around the base which are only partially seen from
+afar. The monument to Louis XII. and his beloved and _chère Bretonne_,
+Anne, is next shown. It is in Italian style and was wrought by the
+Justes, a family of Tourraine sculptors. The Royal effigies are twice
+rendered: once naked in death under a tabernacle and again kneeling in
+prayer. Before we ascend the steps leading to the raised ambulatory,
+we are shown across the choir, and R. of the high altar, the fine
+thirteenth-century tomb of Dagobert, with some quaint reliefs,
+impossible to see in detail, illustrating his legend (p. 34) and a
+statue of Queen Nantilde also of the thirteenth century. Nor should we
+omit to note the two rare and beautiful twelfth-century statues, in
+the style of the Chartres sculpture, of a king and queen on either
+side of the portal of the N. transept brought from the church of Notre
+Dame de Corbeil. To our L. is a masterpiece of the French renaissance,
+the tomb by Lescot and Pilon of Henry II. and Catherine de' Medici,
+who are represented twice, as in the monument to Louis XII. We ascend
+the steps to the ambulatory and below, to our L., are summarily shown
+some important Valois tombs: Philippe de Valois, John II., Charles V.
+and others, by contemporary sculptors, such as Andrieu Beaunepveu and
+Pierre de Chelles--all of great interest to the traveller but utterly
+impossible of appreciation under the cursory glance permitted by the
+vergers. A second monument to Henry II. and Catherine, with recumbent
+and draped figures, is next indicated; Catherine is portrayed in her
+old age and rigid devotion. As we pace round the ambulatory we are
+shown some remains of twelfth-century stained glass in the choir
+chapels (that in the Lady Chapel including the figure of Abbot Suger,)
+and a modern representation of the Oriflamme to the L. of the high
+altar. Opposite the sacristy is a curious twelfth-century tomb from
+St. Germain des Prés, with the effigy of Queen Fredegonde outlined in
+mosaic and copper. We descend to the gloomy old crypt, with the
+curious Romanesque capitals of its columns, where now lie the remains
+of the later Bourbons. On returning to the church the tombs of Philip
+the Bold and Philip the Fair are shown, and to the L. the grandiose
+monument to Francis I., designed by Delorme, with five kneeling
+effigies: the king, Claude his queen, and their three children. The
+fine base reliefs represent the battles of Marignano and Cerisole.
+Then follows the beautiful urn executed by Pierre Bontemps, to contain
+the heart of the _gran re Francesco_. In conclusion, we are permitted
+to see the tombs of Louis of Orleans and of Valentine of Milan, early
+fifteenth-century, by a Milanese artist; and Charles of Etampes, an
+excellent work of the middle of the fourteenth-century. Before
+returning to Paris we should not omit to walk round the basilica and
+examine the sculptures of the portal of the N. transept, which have
+suffered less from iconoclasts and restorers.
+
+[Illustration: Map of Paris.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+ A
+
+ ABBEYS, their foundation and growth, 30
+
+ Abbo, his story of the siege of Paris, 43-49
+
+ Abbots, their power and wealth, 39, 52
+
+ Abelard and Héloïse, 91-93;
+ their tomb, 93;
+ and house, 305
+
+ Académie Française, 213
+
+ _Acephali_, the, 47, 49
+
+ Adam du Petit Pont, 94
+
+ Agincourt, 134
+
+ Aignan's, St., remains of, 305
+
+ Alcuin, 40
+
+ Alençon, Duke of, 177, 187
+
+ Amphitheatre, Roman, 13, 14, 332
+
+ _Ancien Régime_, the, 275, 280, 286
+
+ Anselm, story of, 58
+
+ Antheric, Bishop, 47, 48
+
+ Antoine, St., Abbey of, 79
+
+ Antoinette, Marie, _note_, 78, 249, 257, 265, 268, 311, 312
+
+ Aqueduct, Roman, 13, 208
+
+ Aquinas, 103, 104
+
+ Aristotle, study of, at Paris, 103
+
+ Armagnac, Count of, 134
+
+ Armagnacs, the, 134;
+ massacre of, 136
+
+ Augustins, the Grands, 75
+
+ Austria, Anne of, 207, 212, 215, 217, 237
+
+
+ B
+
+ BACON, ROGER, 104
+
+ Bailly, 282
+
+ Balafré, le, 187
+
+ Bal des Ardents, 131
+
+ Barrère, 282
+
+ Barry, Mme. du, 248, 421
+
+ Bartholomew, St., massacre of, 175, 179-185
+
+ Basoche, the, 309
+
+ Bastille, the, 128, 146, 218, 261-264;
+ column of, 291;
+ site of, 406
+
+ Baths, Roman, 13, 17;
+ public, _note_, 90
+
+ Bazoches, Guy of, his impression of Paris, 69
+
+ Beauharnais, Mme. de, 282
+
+ Beaux Arts, École des, 318
+
+ Bedford, Duke of, _note_, 127;
+ Regent at Paris, 137;
+ his death there, 140
+
+ Béguines, the, 79
+
+ Bellay, du, 169
+
+ Benvenuto da Imola, 104
+
+ Bernard, St., 58, 59, 61, 63, 89, 92
+
+ Bernini, 234, 235, 398
+
+ Bibliothèque Nationale, 222, 429;
+ de l'Arsenal, 406
+
+ Billettes, cloister of, 410
+
+ Bishops, their power and patriotism, 30
+
+ Blancs Manteaux, church of, 133
+
+ Blancs Manteaux, the, 76, 142
+
+ Boccaccio, 417
+
+ Bonaventure, St., 78
+
+ Boniface VIII., Pope, 107-109, 111
+
+ Boulevards, the, 238, 434-436
+
+ Bourbon, Hôtel de, 204, 233
+
+ Bretigny, treaty of, 125
+
+ Brunehaut, her career and death, 27-29
+
+ Brunswick, Duke of, his proclamation, 269
+
+ Bullant, Jean, 198
+
+ Burgundy, Duke of, 132;
+ defeat of, 146
+
+ Buridan, _note_, 68, 313
+
+ Bursaries, foundation of, 97
+
+ Bussy, Island of, _note_, 117
+
+
+ C
+
+ CÆSAR, JULIUS, 11, 13, 297
+
+ Café Corazza, 428
+
+ Café de Foy, 261, 427
+
+ Café de la Régence, 426, 427
+
+ Café Milles Colonnes, 428
+
+ _Ça ira_, origin of, 266
+
+ Calvin, 98, 164
+
+ Campan, Madame, Memoirs of, 248, 267
+
+ Capet, Hugh, 51
+
+ Capetians, rise of, 51
+
+ Cards, playing, renamed, 203
+
+ Carlovingians, their rise, 35
+
+ Carlyle, his history, 260, 268
+
+ Carmelites, the, 75, 316
+
+ Carrousel, the, 225;
+ arch of, 291
+
+ Casaubon, Isaac, 202
+
+ Castile, Blanche of, 70, 96
+
+ Catholic Faith, restoration of, 286
+
+ Cellini, at Paris, 160, 163
+
+ Champ de Mars, 22, 261, 264, 433
+
+ Champeaux, William of, 63, 90, 94;
+ market of, 63
+
+ Champs Élysées, 432
+
+ Chapelle, Sainte, the, 72, 86, 306-309
+
+ Charlemagne at St. Denis, 37;
+ his love of learning, 40
+
+ Charles, the Bold, 41;
+ the Fat, 47, 48;
+ the Simple, 49
+
+ Charles V., completes Marcel's wall, 125;
+ his success against English, 125;
+ a great builder, 126
+
+ Charles VI., minority of, 128;
+ narrow escape of, 131;
+ his vengeance on the Parisians, 130;
+ his madness, 131
+
+ Charles VII., 138; his wretched death, 144
+
+ Charles VIII, 151
+
+ Charles IX., 176;
+ his pitiful death, 185
+
+ Charles X., 267
+
+ Charonne, 219
+
+ Charterhouse, the monks of, 75
+
+ Châtelet, the Grand, 44, 154, 408
+
+ Châtelet, the Petit, 152, 192, 408
+
+ Chaumette, _note_, 299
+
+ Chelles, Jean de, 87
+
+ Chenier, Marie Joseph, 282
+
+ Childebert, 26
+
+ Chilperic III., 35
+
+ Choiseul, Duke of, 248
+
+ Cité, the, 11, _note_, 36, 37, 295
+
+ Clarence, Duke of, 138
+
+ Claude Lorrain, 224, 377
+
+ Clement V., Pope, 111
+
+ Clément, Jacques, 189, 190
+
+ Clergy, their wealth, 256
+
+ Clisson, Constable of, 129
+
+ Clootz, 282
+
+ Clotilde, 24, 26
+
+ Cloud, St., 27
+
+ Clovis, captures Paris, 21;
+ stories of, 21, 24;
+ conversion of, 24;
+ makes Paris his capital, 26;
+ Tower of, 331
+
+ Cluny, Hôtel de, 159;
+ Museum of, 324-329
+
+ Colbert, 223, 234, 235, 237
+
+ Coligny, Admiral, 176;
+ attempted assassination of, 178;
+ his assassination, 181
+
+ Collège, de Cluny, 98;
+ de France, 163, 329;
+ des Jesuits, 105;
+ des Lombards, 316;
+ de Montaigu, 97;
+ de Navarre, 97;
+ de la Sorbonne, 96
+
+ Colleges, foundation of, 95-98
+
+ Comédie Française, 424-426
+
+ Comines, De, 145, 148, 163
+
+ Commune, origin of, 17
+
+ Conciergerie, the, 120, 312
+
+ Concini, assassination of, 205
+
+ Condé, Prince of, 175, 176, 178, 183, 204, 209, 210
+
+ Condorcet, 282
+
+ Constance of Aquitaine, 54
+
+ Contrat, Social, the, 279, 280
+
+ Convention, the National, its constructive work, 275
+
+ Cordeliers, the, 76;
+ club of, 324
+
+ Corneille, 224, 314
+
+ Cortona, Dom. da, 155, 159
+
+ Coryat, his impressions of Paris, 200-203
+
+ Cour du Dragon, 321;
+ des Miracles, 421;
+ de Rouen, 67
+
+ Crecy, 121,134
+
+
+ D
+
+ DAGOBERT THE GREAT, 33, 34, 305
+
+ Damiens, 247
+
+ Dante, 59, 89, 103, 109, 159, 278
+
+ Danton, 273, 324
+
+ Dark Ages, the so-called, 88, 89
+
+ Da Vinci, 158, 354, 372
+
+ Debrosse, Solomon, 208
+
+ Deffand, Mme. du, 282
+
+ Denis, St., legends of, 15; Abbey
+ of, 33;
+ body of, exposed, 56;
+ church of, 23, 84, 193;
+ head of, 203;
+ tombs at, 436-440
+
+ Desmoulins, Camille, 98, 213, 261, 324
+
+ Diamond necklace, the, 78
+
+ Dickens, at Paris, 416
+
+ Dionysius, 13, 15
+
+ Dolet, Étienne, 316
+
+ Dominic, St., at Paris, 76
+
+ Dominicans, the, 76
+
+ Dubois, Abbé, 242
+
+ Durham, Bishop of, his praise of Paris, 104
+
+
+ E
+
+ EBLES, ABBOT, 44, 47
+
+ Edward IV., of England, 146
+
+ Egalité, Philip, 213, 272
+
+ Elizabeth, Queen, her crooked policy, 177
+
+ Eloy, St., 33;
+ abbey of, 37, 60
+
+ Élysée, the, 433
+
+ Emigrés, the, 267, 268
+
+ Empire, the second, its fall, 287;
+ changes under, at Paris, 292
+
+ Encyclopedists, the, 279, 281, 282
+
+ English Barons at Paris, 125
+
+ English, occupy Paris, 138;
+ expelled from Paris, 143
+
+ Erasmus, 98, 163
+
+ Estampes, Mme. d', 162
+
+ Estiennes, the, 148-150
+
+ Estrées, Gabrielle d', 193, 195, 196, 216
+
+ Étienne du Mont, St., _note_, 85, 159, 331
+
+ Etoile, Arch of, l', 291
+
+ Eudes, Count, 44, 47, 48, 49
+
+ Eugene III., Pope, at Paris, 61
+
+ Eustache, St., church of, 159, 421
+
+ Evelyn, at Paris, 210, 275
+
+
+ F
+
+ FEUDALISM, rise of, 50, 52
+
+ Fioretti, the, _note_, 78
+
+ Fontainebleau, school of, 160, 372
+
+ Francis I., 149, 156, 157;
+ fixes hotel charges, _note_, 164;
+ his morbid piety, 166;
+ and death, 169;
+ Maison de, 433
+
+ Francis II., 175
+
+ Francis, St., 102
+
+ Franciscan Refectory, 322
+
+ Franciscans, the, 76
+
+ Franklin, Benjamin, 266, 282
+
+ Fredegonde, her career and death, 27-29
+
+ French art, its stubborn individuality, 159
+
+ French language, the, its universality, 102
+
+ Froissart, 300
+
+ Fronde, the, 218, 219
+
+ Fulbert, Canon, 91
+
+ Fulrad, Abbot, 38
+
+
+ G
+
+ GALERIE, GRANDE, 198, 353
+
+ Galerie, Petite, 198, 250, 399
+
+ Galilée, Island of, 14
+
+ Gauls, their permanent traits, 3, 4
+
+ Genevieve, St., 22, 23, 47;
+ church and abbey of, 23, 36, 61, 112, 254, 331
+
+ Germain, St., of Paris, 28, 30
+
+ Germain, St., des Prés, church and abbey of, 32, 36, 85, 89, 152,
+ 319-321;
+ abbot's palace of, 321
+
+ Germain, St., l'Auxerrois, 22, 30;
+ church of, 32, 44, 423
+
+ Gervais, St., church of, 36, 402
+
+ Gibbon, 255, _note_, 282
+
+ Giocondo, Fra, 155
+
+ Girondins, the, 311, 312
+
+ Goethe, 259, 269, 275, 436
+
+ Goldoni, 275
+
+ Gothic architecture, rise of, 53, 84-88;
+ its development to Flamboyant style, 151
+
+ Goujon, Jean, 174, 337, 343, 399, 415;
+ his death, _note_, 174
+
+ Gozlin, Bishop, 43, 45, 46, 47
+
+ Greek first taught at Paris, 151
+
+ Gregory, St., 21, 28, 30, 31, 32
+
+ Greuze, 282, 384, 386
+
+ Guillaume de Nogaret, 113
+
+ Guillemites, the, 76
+
+ Guise, Cardinal of, 171
+
+ Guise, Duke of, 178, 180, 187;
+ assassination of, 188
+
+ Guises, the, 171, 175, 176
+
+
+ H
+
+ HALLE AUX VINS, the, 63
+
+ Halles, the, 69, 129, 146, 154, 422
+
+ Heine, his appreciation of Paris, 5;
+ at the Louvre, 339
+
+ Helvetius, 282
+
+ Henry I., 56
+
+ Henry II., 171;
+ his tragic death, 172
+
+ Henry III., 178, 186, 188;
+ his assassination, 189
+
+ Henry V. of England, 136, 137
+
+ Henry VI. of England, 137, 141
+
+ Heretics, first execution of, 69
+
+ Holy Ghost, order of, 187, 326
+
+ Hôtel, d'Aumont, 403;
+ de Beauvais, 403;
+ de Bourbon, 153;
+ Burgundy, 133;
+ Carnavalet, 415;
+ de Clisson, 412;
+ Dieu, 37, 80, 81, 200, 297;
+ Fieubert, 406;
+ de Hollande, 414;
+ de Lulli, 429;
+ de Mayenne, 405;
+ de Nesle, 68;
+ Provost of Paris, 403;
+ de Rohan, 413;
+ St. Paul, 127, 133, 152;
+ de Soubise, 411;
+ de Sully, 416;
+ des Tournelles, 146, 153;
+ de Ville, 159, 199, 292, 400
+
+ Hugo, Victor, 7, 155, 255, 287, 310;
+ house of, 416
+
+ Huguenots, the, 175, 176, 177, 179, 206, 228
+
+
+ I
+
+ INFANTA, the, 244;
+ garden of, 244, 250
+
+ Innocents, cemetery of the, 69, 155, 182, 417-420;
+ fountain of, 417
+
+ Institut, the, 222
+
+ Invalides, the, 237
+
+ Iron Mask, Man of, 261, 405
+
+ Isabella of Bavaria, her welcome, 130;
+ joins Jean sans Peur, 136
+
+ Italian art at Paris, 155, 159
+
+
+ J
+
+ JACOBINS, the, 76;
+ club of, 208
+
+ Jacquerie, the, 122
+
+ Jacques, St., de la Boucherie, 63, 154, 408
+
+ Jansenists, the, 231, 245, 247
+
+ Jean sans Peur, 131-136, 414, 420
+
+ Jeanne d'Arc wounded at siege of Paris, 139;
+ her trial and rehabilitation, 140
+
+ Jefferson, Thomas, 265
+
+ Jesuits, the, 164, 198, 231, 245, 247, 248
+
+ John the Good, 118, 121, 125
+
+ Joinville, 81, _note_, 82
+
+ Julian, the Emperor, 17;
+ statue of, 18, 341;
+ his love of Paris, 18
+
+ Julien le Pauvre, St., church of, 32, 37, 85, 99, 313
+
+ Justice, bed of, 216
+
+
+ L
+
+ LATIN QUARTER, the, 93, 99
+
+ Latini, Brunetto, _note_, 89
+
+ Lavoisier, 282
+
+ Law, John, 242, 243
+
+ League, the, 187, 188, 191, 193
+
+ Lebrun, 215, 224, 235, 378, 379
+
+ Leczinska, Marie, 244, 249
+
+ Lemercier, Jacques, 210, 421
+
+ Lenoir, Alexandre, 335
+
+ Lescot, his work on the Louvre, 165, 173, 174
+
+ Lesueur, 75, 215, 373, 374
+
+ Levau, 215, 234
+
+ Lombard, Peter, 94
+
+ Londonne, Jocius de, 96
+
+ Lorraine, Cardinal of, assassinated, 189
+
+ Louis VI., the Lusty, 58, 62, 63
+
+ Louis, St., his youth, 70;
+ affection for his mother, 70;
+ conception of kingship, 71;
+ popular justice, 71;
+ piety, 72;
+ love of stories, 72;
+ the Jews and, 73, 74;
+ founds library of Sainte Chapelle, 75;
+ his rigid justice, 79, 81;
+ death, 81;
+ personal appearance and prowess, 83
+
+ Louis, St., island of, 214, 407;
+ church of, 215
+
+ Louis XI. at Paris, 145, 146;
+ his death, 148
+
+ Louis XII. returns taxes, 156
+
+ Louis XIII., 204, 205, 208
+
+ Louis XIV., 212, 215, 220;
+ his court, 224, 225;
+ hatred of Paris, 225;
+ his "three queens" at the wars, 230;
+ his death, 233
+ Louis XV., his majority, 243;
+ popularity, 244, 246;
+ death, 249
+
+ Louis XVI., 256, 257;
+ trial and execution of, 271-273
+
+ Louis XVIII., 255
+
+ Louis Philippe, 287
+
+ Louviers, island of, 14, 240, 406
+
+ Louvois, 224
+
+ Louvre, the, 68, 126, 164, 173, 198, 210, 233-237, 250-252, 289-290,
+ 333-336;
+ Sculpture, ancient, 336-341;
+ mediæval and renaissance, 341-346;
+ modern, 346-350;
+ Pictures, foreign schools, 350-368;
+ French schools, 368-398;
+ Persian and Egyptian art, 398-399
+
+ Loyola, Ignatius, 164
+
+ Lutetia, 11, 14, 18, 19
+
+ Luther, appeals to Paris, 104
+
+ Lutherans at Paris, 167, 169
+
+ Luxembourg, palace of, 208;
+ museum of, 322;
+ palace and gardens of, 322
+
+ Luxor, column of, 291
+
+ Luynes, Albert de, 205
+
+
+ M
+
+ MADELEINE, Church of, 291
+
+ Maillart, Jean, 123
+
+ Maillotins, the, 129
+
+ Maintenon, Mme. de, 227, 228, 229, 231, 233
+
+ Maison aux Piliers, 122, 123, 130
+
+ Manége, Salle du, 271, 429
+
+ Mansard, François, 212, 237
+
+ Mansard, J.H., 226, 237
+
+ Marais, the, 15, 407
+
+ Marat, 255, 289, 324
+
+ Marcel, Étienne, 122-124
+
+ Marchands d'Eau, Provost of, 122
+
+ Margaret of Angoulême, 149
+
+ Marguerite of Valois, 176, 177, 181, 194, 195
+
+ Marly, 227, 230, 232
+
+ Marseillaises, the, 275
+
+ Martel, Charles, 35
+
+ Martin, St., legend of, 16
+
+ Martin, St., des Champs, 57, 86, 155, _note_, 412
+
+ Maur des Fossés, St., _note_, 39, 60
+
+ Mayenne, Duke of, 192, 204
+
+ Mazarin, 213, 216, 219, 222;
+ palais, 222, 429
+
+ Mazzini, 279
+
+ Médard, St., church of, 333
+
+ Medici, Catherine de', 173, 176, 180;
+ her death, 189
+
+ Medici, Marie de', 195, 196, 204, 206, 207
+
+ Medici fountain, 322
+
+ Medicine, faculty of, 318
+
+ Merovingian dynasty, 26
+
+ Merri, St., church of, 159, 408
+
+ Mirabeau, 255, 267;
+ funeral of, 422;
+ the elder, 258
+
+ Mississippi bubble, the, 243
+
+ Molay, Jacques de, 111, 112, 113, 116
+
+ Molière, 224, 233
+
+ Monarchy, growing power of, 174;
+ absolutism of, 220, 223
+
+ Monasteries, reform of, 60;
+ suppression of, 284
+
+ Montereau, Pierre de, 57, 88
+
+ Montfaucon, 48;
+ gallows of, 201
+
+ Montgomery, Count of, 172
+
+ Montjoie, St. Denis, war cry of, _note_, 121
+
+ Montmartre, 15;
+ abbey of, 65
+
+ Morris, Governor, 265
+
+ Morris, William, 88
+
+
+ N
+
+ NANTES, EDICT OF, revocation of, 228
+
+ Napoleon I., 276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 289, 290, 291, 426
+
+ Napoleon, Louis, 255, 287
+
+ Navarre, Charles of, 123
+
+ Navarre, Henry of, 178, 183, 189;
+ his conversion and kingship, 193, 194;
+ divorce, 193;
+ assassination, 197;
+ statue of, 208, 210
+
+ Navarre, Jeanne of, 176, 177
+
+ _Nautæ_, altar of, 17, 328
+
+ Necker, Mme., 282
+
+ Nemours, Duke of, execution of, 147
+
+ Nicholas, St., chapel of, 39, 72;
+ church of, 251
+
+ _Noces vermeilles_, the, 177
+
+ Normans, the, 41, 49
+
+ Norwich, Canons of, 314
+
+ Notre Dame, church of, 32, 36, 72, 85, 107, 109, 116, 142, 143, 252,
+ 298-305;
+ de Lorette, 291;
+ des Victoires, 206;
+ island of, 14;
+ Parvis of, 297
+
+
+ O
+
+ ODÉON, theatre of the, 322
+
+ Opera, Italian, the, 233
+
+ Opera, the new, 293
+
+ Orders, the religious, 59
+
+ Oriflamme, the, 62, 440
+
+ Orleans, Duke of, 133;
+ assassinated, 136;
+ Philip of, 212, 242
+
+ Orme, Philibert de l', 198
+
+ Ovens, public, 57
+
+
+ P
+
+ PAINE, THOMAS, 272
+
+ Palace of Archbishop of Sens, 407
+
+ Palais de Justice, 53, 118, 137, 152, 309-313
+
+ Palais Royal, 15, 212, 213, 217, 234;
+ gardens of, 261, 427
+
+ Palissy, 199
+
+ Panthéon, the, 254, 330
+
+ Paris, her essential unity, 2;
+ apprehension of coming changes, 4;
+ intellectual culture, 5, 21;
+ conquest by Romans, 12;
+ origin of, 9-12;
+ geographical position, 10-13;
+ device of, 17;
+ sacked by the Northmen, 41;
+ siege of, by Northmen, 43;
+ growth under Capets, 53;
+ expansion under Louis VI., 63;
+ evil smells at, 65;
+ first paving of, 65;
+ capital of intellectual world, 101;
+ faubourgs wasted by English, 121, 124, 125;
+ first library at, 126;
+ occupied by English, 138, 143;
+ life at, under English, 141-143;
+ bridges of, 152;
+ sieges of, by Henry of Navarre, 189, 191;
+ sections of, their insurrection, 191, 192;
+ its dirt, 202;
+ misery at, 231, 241, 247, 256;
+ a vast camp, 273, 274
+
+ Parisian democracy, its enlightenment, 7
+
+ Parisians, their responsive nature and love of order, 6;
+ loss of liberties, 130;
+ their loyalty and tolerance, 286
+
+ Parisii, the, 10, 11
+
+ Parlement, the, 118, 216-218, 220
+
+ Parloir aux Bourgeois, 122
+
+ Pascal, 231
+
+ Passion, Confrères de la, 420
+
+ Paul, St., charnel-houses, 405
+
+ Paul and Louis, SS., church of, 405
+
+ Peasantry, their condition, 260
+
+ Pepin the Short, 35
+
+ Père la Chaise, 220
+
+ Peronne, peace of, 146
+
+ Perrault, Charles, 235;
+ Claude, 224, 235-236, 250
+
+ Petit, Nesle, the, 160
+
+ Philip I., 57
+
+ Philip Augustus, birth of, 64;
+ his entry into Paris, 65;
+ wall of, 65-68, 405, 407
+
+ Philip le Bel, 78, 100, 107, 117
+
+ Philip VI., 121
+
+ Pierre, St., church of, 15
+
+ Pierre aux Boeufs, St., church of, 63, 297
+
+ Pillory, the, 423
+
+ Place, Châtelet, 407;
+ de la Concorde, 430-433;
+ de Grève, 116, 146, 154, 168, 197, 400;
+ Maubert, 169, 316;
+ Royale, 186, 200, 207, 415, 416;
+ Vendôme, 429
+
+ Plantes, Jardin des, 214
+
+ Poitiers, 121, 134;
+ Diana of, 150, 173
+
+ Pol, St., Count of, 146
+
+ Pompadour, Mme., 215, 247
+
+ Pont, au Change, _note_, 15, 154, 200;
+ de la Concorde, 264;
+ Grand, 15, 70;
+ Marie, 214;
+ aux Meuniers, 200;
+ Neuf, 210;
+ Notre Dame, 155;
+ aux Oiseaux, 200;
+ Petit, 14, 70, 152, 155;
+ Royal, 240
+
+ Ponzardus de Gysiaco, 113
+
+ Pope Paul III., his humane protest, 169
+
+ Port Royal, suppression of, 232
+
+ Porte, St. Antoine, 124;
+ St. Denis, 123, 238;
+ St. Jacques, 143;
+ St. Martin, 238
+
+ Poussin, 234, 375-377
+
+ Prés aux Clercs, the, 100;
+ students at, 101
+
+ Printing, art of, at Paris, 148-150
+
+ Provost, of Marchands d'Eau, 17;
+ suppressed, 130;
+ royal, _note_, 17
+
+ Puget, 224, 347
+
+ Punishments, cruelty of, during Renaissance, 168
+
+
+ Q
+
+ QUAI, DES AUGUSTINS, 283;
+ de la Mégisserie, 154
+
+ Quinze-Vingts, the, 78
+
+
+ R
+
+ RABELAIS, _note_, 39, 98, 405
+
+ Racine, 224
+
+ Radegonde, St., _note_, 27
+
+ Ravaillac, 197
+
+ Reason, temples of, 285, 286
+
+ Reformation, the, 174
+
+ Renaissance, architecture at Paris, 156
+
+ Republic, the second, 287
+
+ Republic, the third, 287, 292
+
+ Retz, de, Cardinal, 216, 219
+
+ Revolution, the great, its beneficent results, 288
+
+ Reynolds, 236, 361, 362, 377, 380
+
+ Richelieu, 205, 206, 208, 214
+
+ Robert the Pious, 53, 54, 55
+
+ Robespierre, 106, 260, 267, 426
+
+ Roch, St., church of, 429
+
+ Rohan, Cardinal of, 78
+
+ Rollo, 42, 49
+
+ Romilly, Sir S., his letters, 265
+
+ Ronsard, 337
+
+ Rousseau, J.J., 240, 255, 257, 281, 426
+
+ Royalty abolished, 270
+
+ Rue, des Anglais, 316;
+ de l'Arbre Sec, 29, 423;
+ des Archives, 410, 412;
+ du Bac, 240;
+ des Blancs Manteaux, 410;
+ du Dante, 316;
+ Étienne Marcel, 133, 420;
+ de la Ferronnerie, 238, 417;
+ du Fouarre, 103, 316;
+ François Miron, 403;
+ des Francs Bourgeois, 412;
+ Guénégaud, 68;
+ des Lombards, 154, 417;
+ Montorgeuil, 421;
+ Mouffetard, 333;
+ des Petits Champs, 429;
+ Quincampoix, 243;
+ de Rivoli, 154;
+ St. Antoine, 405;
+ St. Denis, 407;
+ St. Jacques, 13, 149, 283, 313;
+ St. Martin, 15, 408;
+ de Venise, 409;
+ Vieille du Temple, 136, 414
+
+ Ruggieri column, 422, 423
+
+ Ruskin, 86, 375
+
+
+ S
+
+ SACRÉ COEUR, church of the, 293
+
+ Salisbury, John of, 94
+
+ Salons, the, 281
+
+ Samaritaine, la, 210
+
+ _Sans-culottes_, the, 274
+
+ Savoy, Adelaide of, 232
+
+ Saxony, Henry of, 47
+
+ Scholars, poor, at Paris, 94
+
+ Schools, rise of, at Paris, 90;
+ elementary, 106
+
+ Scotus Duns, 78, 306
+
+ Sculpture, French, 87
+
+ Seigneurs, their lawlessness, 58
+
+ Sens, archbishop of, 61, 114, 116
+
+ September, massacres of, 270
+
+ Serfs, at Paris, 54
+
+ Sévérin, St., church of, 297, 314
+
+ Sévigné, Mme. de, 415
+
+ Sick, the care of in Middle Ages, 80
+
+ Siéyès, 281, 282
+
+ Siger, 103, 316
+
+ Signs, old, 283, 423
+
+ Simon, St., Duke of, 224, 232, 242
+
+ Sorbon, Robert of, 72, 96
+
+ Sorbonne, the, 292;
+ chapel of, 329
+
+ Soufflot, 237, 252, 254
+
+ Staël, Mme. de, 282
+
+ States-General, the, 107, 122, 192, 204
+
+ Stephen, St., church of, 32, 85
+
+ Streets, renaming of, 283
+
+ Stuart, Marie, 175
+
+ Suger, Abbot, 62, 84
+
+ Sully, Duke of, 193, 196, 406
+
+ Sully, Maurice de, 85, 94
+
+ Sulpice, St., church of, 255, 321
+
+
+ T
+
+ TALLEYRAND, 265, 282
+
+ Talma, Julie, 282
+
+ Tasso, 405
+
+ Tellier, le, 231
+
+ Templars, destruction of, 109-118;
+ fortress of, 117, 155
+
+ Terror, the, 260, 275;
+ the White, 261
+
+ Thermidorians, the, 260
+
+ Thomas, St., of Canterbury, 94;
+ church of, 95
+
+ Thorns, Crown of, redeemed by St. Louis, 71
+
+ _Tiers État_, the, 107
+
+ Tolbiac, battle of, 24
+
+ Torture, late use of in England, _note_, 114
+
+ Tour de Nesle, 68
+
+ Trellises, island of, 117
+
+ Tribunal, revolutionary, 311
+
+ Trocadero, the, 292, _note_, 438
+
+ Truce of God, the, 101
+
+ Tuileries, the, 153, 273;
+ gardens of, 179, 430;
+ palace of, 198;
+ attack on, 269
+
+ Turenne, 219, 260
+
+ Twelve, the, 46, 47, 313
+
+
+ U
+
+ UNIVERSITY, origin of the, 98;
+ decadence of, 104;
+ the modern, 329
+
+ Ursins, Mme. des, 229
+
+
+ V
+
+ VACHES, ISLE DES, 14
+
+ Val de Grâce, 237
+
+ Vallière, Mme. de la, 212, 226
+
+ Valois, House of, 121
+
+ Varennes, flight to, 267
+
+ Vauban, 224
+
+ Vendôme, Duke of, 230;
+ column of, 291, 430;
+ place, 240
+
+ Venetian merchants at Paris, 40
+
+ Vergniaud, 272, 282
+
+ Versailles, 226, 230
+
+ Victoires, Place des, 240
+
+ Victor, St., abbey of, 61
+
+ Villon, François, _note_, 68, 94, 330
+
+ Vincennes, chapel of, 128
+
+ Vincent, St., 36;
+ de Paul, church of, 291
+
+ Viollet le Duc, 80, 292
+
+ Volney, 282
+
+ Voltaire, 215, 223, 244, 255, 258, 281, 426
+
+
+ W
+
+ WALL, GALLO-ROMAN, 16, 36;
+ of Philip-Augustus, 66, 68, 233, 330;
+ of Marcel, 123;
+ of Charles V., 128
+
+ Wars, religious, 175
+
+ Watch, the royal, 81
+
+ Willoughby, Lord, 143
+
+ Workmen, compensation of;
+ by Charles V., 127
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK
+ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
+
+_The Mediæval Town Series_
+
+ASSISI.* By LINA DUFF GORDON. [_4th Edition._
+
+BRUGES.+ By ERNEST GILLIAT-SMITH. [_3rd Edition._
+
+BRUSSELS.+ By ERNEST GILLIAT-SMITH.
+
+CAIRO.+ By STANLEY LANE-POOLE. [_2nd Edition._
+
+CAMBRIDGE.+ By CHARLES W. STUBBs, D.D.
+
+CHARTRES.+ By CECIL HEADLAM.
+
+CONSTANTINOPLE.* By WILLIAM H. HUTTON. [_2nd Edition._
+
+EDINBURGH.+ By OLIPHANT SMEATON.
+
+FERRARA.+ By ELLA NOYES.
+
+FLORENCE.+ By EDMUND G. GARDNER. [_8th Edition._
+
+LONDON.+ By HENRY B. WHEATLEY. [_2nd Edition._
+
+MOSCOW.* By WIRT GERRARE. [_2nd Edition._
+
+NUREMBERG.* By CECIL HEADLAM. [_4th Edition._
+
+PARIS.+ By THOMAS OKEY.
+
+PERUGIA.* By MARGARET SYMONDS and LINA DUFF GORDON. [_5th Edition._
+
+PRAGUE.* By Count Lutzow.
+
+ROME.+ By NORWOOD YOUNG. [_4th Edition._
+
+ROUEN.+ By THEODORE A. COOK. [_3rd Edition._
+
+SEVILLE.+ By WALTER M. GALLICHAN.
+
+SIENA.+ By EDMUND G. GARDNER. [_2nd Edition._
+
+TOLEDO.* By HANNAH LYNCH. [_2nd Edition._
+
+VERONA.+ By ALETHEA WIEL. [_2nd Edition._
+
+VENICE.+ By THOMAS OKEY.
+
+_The prices of these(*) are 3s. 6d. net in cloth, 4s. 6d. net in
+leather; these(+) 4s. 6d. net in cloth, 5s. 6d. net in leather._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Paris, by Thomas Okey
+
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