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The Story of Paris
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 "Mediaeval 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 Hotel 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 Proces des Templiers; Victor Duruy, Histoire de France; the cheap and admirable selection of authorities in the seventeen volumes of the Histoire de France racontee 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; Geographie 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 Vigee-Lebrun, Camille Desmoulins, Madame Roland and Paul Louis Courier; the Journal de Perlet; Histoire de la Societe Francaise pendant la Revolution, by J. de Goncourt; Goethe's Die Campagne in Frankreich, 1792; Legendes et Archives de la Bastille, by F. Funck Brentano; Life of Napoleon I., by J. Holland Rose; L'Europe et la Revolution Francaise, by Albert Sorel; the periodical, La Revolution Francaise; 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 Felibien 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 a 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, Enigmes des Rues de Paris; the Marquis de Rochegude's Guide Pratique a Travers le Vieux Paris; the Dictionnaire Historique de Paris, by G. Pessard, and the excellent Nouvel Itineraire Guide Artistique et Archeologique de Paris, by C. Normand, published by the Societe des Amis des Monuments Parisiens.
For French art, Felibien's Entretiens; the writings of Lady Dilke; French Painting in the Sixteenth Century, by L. Dimier; Histoire de l'Art, Peinture, Ecole Francaise, by Cazes d'Aix and J. Berard; the compendious History of Modern Painting, by R. Muther; The Great French Painters, by C. Mauclair; La Sculpture Francaise, by L. Gonse; Mediaeval Art, by W.R. Lethaby; the Catalogue of the Exposition des Primitifs Francais (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 Hotel Dieu and a whole street, the Rue du Petit Pont; the Hotel 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
Etienne 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 Cite--Notre Dame--The Sainte Chapelle--The Palais de Justice 295
SECTION II
St. Julien le Pauvre--St. Severin--The Quartier Latin 313
SECTION III
_Ecole des Beaux Arts--St. Germain des Pres--Cour
du Dragon--St. Sulpice--The Luxembourg--The
Odeon--The Cordeliers--The
Surgeons' Guild--The Musee Cluny--The
Sorbonne--The Pantheon--St.
Etienne 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 Hotel de Ville--St. Gervais--Hotel Beauvais--Hotel of the Provost of Paris--SS. Paul and Louis--Hotel de Mayenne--Site of the Bastille--Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal--Hotel Fieubert--Hotel 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--Hotels
de Soubise, de Hollande, de Rohan--Musee
Carnavalet--Place Royale--Musee Victor
Hugo--Hotel 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--Theatre Francais--Gardens and
Cafes of the Palais Royal--Palais Mazarin
(Bibliotheque Nationale)--St. Roch--Vendome
Column--Tuileries Gardens--Place
de la Concorde--Champs Elysees_ 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 Cite 11
Remains of Roman Amphitheatre 14
Tower of Clovis 25
St. Germain des Pres 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, Hotel de Cluny 158
Tower of St. Etienne 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
Hotel 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 Facade 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
Hotel de Ville from River 293
Chapel of Chateau 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. Severin 315
Old Academy of Medicine 317
Interior of Notre Dame 320
Cour de Dragon 323
Tower and Courtyard of Hotel Cluny 325
Arches in the Courtyard of the Hotel Cluny 329
Interior of St. Etienne du Mont 332
Diana and the Stag (Jean Goujon) " 342
St. George and the Dragon (M. Colombe) " 344
Triptych of Moulins (Maitre de Moulins) " 370
Portrait of Elizabeth of Austria (Francois 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 Recamier (David) " 388
The Binders (Millet) " 394
Landscape (Corot) " 396
St. Gervais 402
Hotel of the Provost of Paris 404
West door of St. Merri 409
Cloister of the Billettes, fifteenth century 410
Archives Nationales, Hotel Soubise, showing towers of Hotel 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.
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, Entree 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 Francois 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, mediaeval 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 Lumiere 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 Francais or the Odeon, where the severe classic tragedies of Racine, of Corneille, of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Moliere 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 premiere at the Francais 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 meme 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 Pantheon. 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 Clement 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 citta una parte, e la migliore:
L'altre due (ch' in tre parti e 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 mediaeval 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 naive 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 Cite, 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.]
THE CITE.
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--
"Armed Caesar falcon-eyed,"[6]
who saw its great military importance, built a permanent camp there and made it a central entrepot for food and munitions of war. And when in 52 B.C. the general rising of the tribes under Vercingetorix threatened to scour the Romans out of Gaul and to destroy the whole fabric of Caesar'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 Caesar 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. Caesar 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 Caesars 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 Linne. Unhappily, the public subscription initiated by the Academie 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.]
REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE.
On their left, where now stands the Lycee St. Louis, would be the theatre of Lutetia, and further on, the imposing and magnificent palace of the Caesars, with its gardens sloping down to the Seine. The turbulent little stream of the Bievre 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 Galilee, lay between the Isle of the Cite 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 Hotel 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 mediaeval 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 Cite. In the fabric of this wall the early builders had incorporated the remains of a temple of Jupiter, and among the debris were found the fragments of an altar raised to Jove in the reign of Tiberius Caesar by the Nautae, 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 Thermae, the old Roman baths by the Hotel de Cluny, and are among the most interesting of historical documents in Paris. The Corporation of Nautae 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 Prevot 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 Caesar 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 Caesar 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 Cite.]
[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 Graeco-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. Remi, 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: Merovee, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was fabled to be the issue of Clodio's wife and a sea monster.]
TOWER OF CLOVIS.