Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

We have seen that the Rue d’Enfer, thanks to the power of the monks over the fiend who once made night hideous by his unearthly screams, has long had the reputation of being the quietest street in Paris. Here numbers of artists have made their abode, sure, in the midst of monasteries and asylums, of the tranquillity so necessary to their labours.

Among the remarkable institutions in this neighbourhood may be mentioned the free school of drawing in the Rue de l’École de Médecine. A special school for girls, founded in 1803 in the Petit Rue de Touraine (now Rue Dupuytren), was afterwards transferred to No. 7 Rue de Seine.

The Church of the Cordeliers, pulled down at the beginning of the century, stood on the site now occupied by the School of Medicine. Behind the church a garden, laid out by the famous Le Notre, was the scene of the funeral ceremony and interment of Marat, stabbed by Charlotte Corday in the house just opposite, numbered 20 at the time. After the body had been publicly exhibited and made the subject of a picture by David, it was interred in the garden beneath an arbour which bore this inscription, among others equally singular: “Sacred heart of Marat, pray for us!” Exhumed some years later, the remains of Marat were carried to the Panthéon, whence they were taken out, to be cast into the gutter of the Rue Montmartre, their last resting-place.

Of the agglomeration of buildings which constituted the convent of the Cordeliers, the only one that remains is that which formerly contained the dormitories and the refectory. Within its walls is now established the Dupuytren Museum, with its specimens of pathological anatomy, not open to the public. The Practical School of Medicine, on the Place de l’École de Médecine, stands on the site formerly occupied by the rest of the cloister and its dependencies. The collective name of École Pratique is given to the dissection-rooms of the Faculty of Medicine and to the amphitheatres where free lectures are given, and where some six hundred students practise dissection and experimental chemistry.

Immediately opposite the Practical School is the School of Medicine, built in 1769 by the architect Gondouin. The edifice, as completed under Louis XVI., is composed of four blocks of buildings, leaving between them a large courtyard. The façade, looking on to the square, consists of a gallery of Ionic columns. Above the colonnade is an attic storey with twelve windows, broken, above the principal entrance, by a bas-relief representing Minerva and Generosity granting privileges to Surgery, followed by Vigilance and Prudence. The Genius of Art is seen presenting to the king the plan of the building.

This handsome edifice is the seat of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, whose mission it is to teach medicine and surgery in all their branches, and to examine the students and assign to them those diplomas, without which it is forbidden in France to practise medicine, surgery, or pharmacy. The title of professor at the Faculty of Medicine is the highest that a physician or surgeon can obtain. The number of titular professors amounts to twenty-six.

The Faculty possesses a library, two museums, and thirty laboratories; besides the botanical garden at No. 13 Rue Cuvier, close to the Garden of Plants. The front rooms and left wing of the school are occupied by the Orfila Museum, named after the famous chemist.

The Faculty of Medicine has, year by year, attracted so many additional students that at last the building, which dated from 1769, was found far too small; and it was decided some fifteen years ago to construct new wings, which now occupy all the space comprised between the Rue de l’École de Médecine, the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and the Rue Hautefeuille. The first stone of the new building was laid in 1878. To the right of the School of Medicine, the Rue Hautefeuille attracts the attention of the archæologist. The turrets of the middle ages and of the Renaissance have become rare in Paris; but the street in question possesses no less than six. The Rue Hautefeuille runs into the Place Saint-André des Arts, formed in 1809 on the site of the church of Saint-André des Arts, which was built in the thirteenth century on the foundations of an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint-Andéol and sold as national property in 1797, soon afterwards to be demolished. It was in the church of Saint-André des Arts that François Marie Arouet was baptised on the 22nd of November, 1694. The late M. Auguste Vitu, in his large illustrated work on Paris, claims, in recording this event, to have discovered the true interpretation of the anagrammatic process by which the bearer of the name of Arouet is supposed to have changed it into Voltaire. “Fs Voltaire” is, as M. Vitu points out, the exact anagram of “Arouet fils.” But why trouble about the matter? Who, after all, can tell us by what process the name of Poquelin, said to he derived from a Scotch village named Pawkelin (whence came the grandfather of the great comic dramatist) got converted into Molière?

The Rue Saint-André des Arts leads to the meeting-point of the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, the Rue Dauphine, and the Rue Mazarine. In connection with the Rue Dauphine must be mentioned a little street that runs out of it, the Rue Contrescarpe, where still exists the Restaurant Magny, famous for its literary frequenters, including George Sand and Saint-Beuve, who, with some others, founded the celebrated “Friday dinner,” at which no one abstained from meat. No. 5 in this street, is occupied by the Hôtel du Cheval Blanc, the celebrated inn which figures in the “Roman Comique” of Scarron and the “Trois Mousquetaires” of Dumas. Under the reign of Louis XIII. it seems to have been nothing more than the stables, coachhouse, and servants’ hostelry attached to the mansion of the Archbishop of Lyons.

The Rue Saint-André des Arts communicates with the Rue de l’École de Médecine by a short passage known as the Cour du Commerce, which is associated, on more than one point, with the French Revolution. In one of the old houses (now pulled down) on the side of the Rue de l’École de Médecine lived Danton. At the present No. 8 still existed, until two years ago, a reading-room which was established under the Reign of Terror by the widow of the Girondist Brissot, who, having inherited a large library from her husband, wished to turn it to profitable account. In the same house was the printing office of the Ami du Peuple, edited by Marat. The printing office was directed by Brune, who afterwards became a marshal of France, and died, like the atrocious journalist, by assassination.

Another souvenir, again of a sanguinary kind, belongs to the Cour du Commerce. One of the appendages to the stunted houses in the middle of the passage is a shed, where the first experiments were made with the guillotine. “Sic vos non vobis” might, in Virgilian phrase, be said of the first victims. These were sheep, which were subjected to an almost painless death in the interest, not of themselves, while condemned to perish by the butcher’s knife, but of men and women. Some day, let us hope, animals also will be killed with the least possible accompaniment of suffering.

CHAPTER XIX
THE ODÉON: THE LUXEMBURG PALACE

The Odéon – Its History – Erection of the Present Building in 1799 – Marie de Médicis and the Luxemburg Palace – The Judicial Annals of the Luxemburg – Trials of Fieschi and Louvel – Trial of Louis Napoleon – Trial of the Duc de Praslin

FROM the so-called Mountain of Sainte-Geneviève, where stands the Panthéon, all the streets lead down to the Seine; and before following the left bank of the river in its course through Paris, we have still many places and points of interest to deal with in the neighbourhood of the Panthéon and of the Luxemburg, including, indeed, the Luxemburg itself. This side of the river, though both the Louvre and the Tuileries stand on the right bank, is particularly rich in historical associations; and here, until a comparatively recent period – during which successful writers have become millionaires and men of fashion – was to be found the literary centre of Paris. This the names of the streets and thoroughfares proclaim. On the river bank is the Quai Voltaire, close to the Luxemburg the Rue Corneille, and between the two the Rue Racine and the Rue de La Harpe. In the Rue Corneille, by the way, stands the Hôtel Corneille, beloved of students, and in a street parallel to it, on the other side of the Odéon Theatre, the Hôtel de l’Empereur Joseph, named after Marie Antoinette’s father, Joseph II., who, when he visited a foreign capital, did not accept hospitality at the palace, but put up at some convenient hotel, that he might see the points of interest in the city at his leisure without having them exhibited to him. Foreign sovereigns who visit London have sometimes, in spite of themselves, had to follow, so far as residence is concerned, the example of the Emperor Joseph.

The Odéon, now known as the Second French Theatre, was at one time the First. The Théâtre Français, or Comédie Française, by its more historic title, has moved freely from one bank of the river to another. At the accession of Henry IV. Francis’ sole company of comedians (“comedians” being at that time a general name for actors of all kinds) established in the Hôtel Saint-Paul what was known as the Théâtre du Marais, where the works of Garnier, Royer, and the very earliest of French dramatists were produced. Some years later another company of “comedians” established a new theatre, which Corneille and Rotrou rendered illustrious, at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Finally, in 1658, the company formed by Molière was allowed to give representations at the Louvre, in the hall of the Cariatides. The success of the new company was so great that the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV., gave them hospitality in the Palais Royal, where were represented all Molière’s masterpieces, and the first piece written by Racine, “La Thébaide.” As long as Molière lived his company struggled victoriously against the Théâtre du Marais and the comedians of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, who, nevertheless, called themselves “the great comedians.” But in 1673 the death of the great comic poet proved fatal to his theatre. Four of his most celebrated actors, Baron, La Thorillière, and Monsieur and Madame Beauval, passed over to the enemy, while, to complete the discomfiture, the remainder of the company was expelled from the theatre in the Palais Royal, which the king now gave to Lulli the composer. The exiles took refuge in the Rue Mazarin, on the other side of the water, where they vegetated obscurely, though taking with them all Molière’s plays. Finally, in 1680, by order of Louis XIV., the two principal companies were united under the name of Comédie Française. The combined company established itself first in the theatre of the Palais Royal, then in the Rue Mazarin, where the Molière company had previously been playing; then, in 1689, in the Rue des Fossé’s Saint-Germain des Prés, which took the name, first of Rue de la Comédie and afterwards of Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, which it still preserves. Here, opposite the Café Procope – throughout the eighteenth century the first literary café in Paris – were produced the works of Regnard and Dancourt, of Dufresny and Destouches, of Crébillon, Lesage, Voltaire, Marivaux, Gresset, Piron, Diderot, and Sedaine. Here, too, Beaumarchais brought out his “Barber of Seville.”

In 1772 the comedians took possession of a new theatre, built on the site of the Hôtel de Condé, and it was in this house, now known as the Odéon, that they represented for the first time Beaumarchais’s “Marriage of Figaro.” The Revolution arrived, and in 1793 the Comédie Française, like so many other suspicious institutions, was suppressed as of royal and aristocratic origin; but only to revive a few years afterwards, in 1799, under the First Consul, who established it in the Rue Richelieu, where it still remains. Beginning its history with the production of a masterpiece, which in one form or other has made the tour of Europe, to remain permanently on the European stage in the shape of an opera, the Odéon, when the company of the Comédie Française had established itself in the Rue Richelieu, became a theatre of all work. Here were produced pieces which at the Comédie Française and elsewhere had been refused. The comedies of Picard, the first dramas of Casimir, Delavigne, Ponsard, Émile Augier, were brought out at the Odéon, which also served for the first performances of “François le Champi” and the “Marquis de Villemer,” of George Sand. During the Revolution the Odéon was successively called Théâtre de l’Égalité and Théâtre de la Nation. It owes to the First Republic, with its passion for everything Greek, Roman, and quasi-Republican, its name of Odéon. Twice it has been burnt down – the fate of all theatres; and once under very tragic circumstances. An unfortunate dramatist had been for years striving to get a piece produced. At last his work was accepted by the management of the Odéon. He had suffered, however, so much from disappointment that he could scarcely believe in the good fortune which seemed now to have come to him. In vain his wife endeavoured to raise his spirits. He had fallen into a fit of depression, and this on the very day fixed for the representation of his piece. Something, he remarked to his wife, always occurred at the last moment to prevent his success. “But it is assured now,” she replied. “Nothing can stand in your way at present – unless, indeed, between now and this evening the theatre should be burnt down.” At that moment a cry of “fire” was heard in the street – in the Rue Corneille where the dramatist and his wife lived. They rushed to the window and saw that the theatre was in flames.

The Odéon faces a large open square or “place” of the same name, and its back is just opposite the principal gate of the Luxemburg Gardens. To the right of the entrance to the gardens stands the palace; one of the two, both magnificent, for which Paris is indebted to two women, both members of the same family; Catherine de Médicis, who built the Tuileries, and Marie de Médicis, who built the Luxemburg. Catherine, however, only began the Tuileries, whereas Marie de Médicis completed the Luxemburg within a few years from its commencement.

She in the first place acquired the mansion or “hôtel” of Piney-Luxemburg, whose last name was to remain attached to the new edifice. She then purchased a quantity of land, which was converted into gardens – the Luxemburg Gardens, as they were naturally to be called. The architect of the Queen’s palace was Jacques de Brosse, otherwise “Salomon” de Brosse, who worked with so much diligence at the task confided to him that, beginning the building in 1615, he had finished it by 1620, when it was at once inhabited. To the rapidity with which it was constructed the palace owes, no doubt, its rare homogeneity of style, so sadly wanting in most public buildings, the construction of which has sometimes occupied centuries. Its architectural pre-eminence might have been disputed upwards of twenty years ago; but since the burning of the Tuileries by the Communards the Luxemburg must beyond question be considered the finest palace in the French capital. Jacques de Brosse has been suspected of reproducing in the Luxemburg Palace the characteristic features of some of the Florentine palaces, and particularly that of the Pitti Palace, to flatter Marie de Médicis. It is only necessary to have visited Florence to be convinced that de Brosse did nothing of the kind. Although this architect, like others, had doubtless studied classic and mediæval architecture, it should be admitted that to his greatest work he has given a particularly French stamp. Marie de Médicis left to her second son, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, her magnificent palace with the grounds belonging to it. The famous Mlle. Montpensier next inherited it, from whom it passed to her sister, Elizabeth of Orleans. Then the whole property went back to the crown, but only for a short time. At the death of Louis XIV. the Orleans family became once more possessors of the Luxemburg. But as though this palace was destined to remain in the hands of women, the regent made it over to his too notorious daughter, the Duchess of Berry. At the time of the Revolution the Luxemburg was seized by the Republican Government, and under the Reign of Terror was turned into a state prison. Here Beauharnais and his wife (the future Empress Josephine), Camille Desmoulins, Danton, and thousands of others less celebrated, were confined while waiting to be brought before the terrible tribunal. The storm had scarcely passed when the first regular Government which had been established since the taking of the Bastille, the Directory, took possession of it.

The Luxemburg was now once more a palace, and seemed about to regain its former splendour. To this period of its history belongs a memorable event – the triumphal reception of the young conqueror of Italy. The ceremony took place in the courtyard of the palace, and is said to have been of a most imposing character. But the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire was approaching, and that same Bonaparte was about to upset the Government which had received him with such enthusiastic acclamations. Now, in place of the Directory, the Consulate installed itself in the palace of Marie de Médicis. Finally, in 1861, the Luxemburg was made over to the new Napoleonic Senate; and under the name, now of Senate, now of Chamber of Peers, it was destined to be occupied permanently by the members of the upper house.

The judicial annals of the Luxemburg, in connection with the numerous occasions on which the Chamber of Peers performed the functions of a court of justice, are full of interest. Of the trial of Marshal Ney we have already spoken. It was followed some years afterwards by that of Louvel, the assassin of the Duke of Berry. Then, immediately after the revolution of 1830, came the impeachment of Charles X.’s ministers, and, in the middle of Louis Philippe’s reign, the trial of Prince Louis Napoleon, after his landing at Boulogne and before his imprisonment at Ham. Among other prosecutions under the reign of Louis Philippe of which the Luxemburg was the scene may be mentioned those of the Duc de Praslin, and of Fieschi and the seven or eight other regicides who attempted the life of the fearless “citizen king.” It was certainly no want of personal courage that made Louis Philippe disappear in a hackney-cab, when, by facing the insurrection of 1848, he might according to the best military authorities, so easily have crushed it.

Giuseppe Fieschi, who heard his doom pronounced at the Luxemburg, was one of the most remarkable regicides of whom history has preserved a record. His crime is distinguished from that of other attempts on the lives of kings by the fact that he was actuated neither by personal revenge nor conscientious motive. Most regicides obey some deep political conviction or some suggestion of religious fanaticism. Viewed in this light, they are the mere instruments of an idea. Fieschi, however, was a unique exception to the rule. Political conviction he had none. He was neither a Legitimist nor a Republican. He had been a spy, and would have become once more a police-agent had the police required his aid. To the philosophical and legal student Fieschi must indeed remain a problem. A rapid glance thrown over his life and over the debates which took place in the Chamber of Peers will show this man always to have been greedy for notoriety; and in this insane longing to draw public attention to himself may perhaps, if anywhere, be found the motive of his crime.

Nevertheless, he had several accomplices, who cannot be supposed to have been actuated by a love of notoriety. In the midst of the general horror caused by Fieschi’s murderous, and in the case of many members of the king’s suite fatal attempt, the Legitimist journals taunted the Republicans with the crime, who, in their turn, cast the responsibility upon the Legitimists. Louis Philippe had been duly warned by the police that some conspiracy was being prepared against him. He was to proceed on the 28th of July, 1835, to a review, accompanied by a numerous staff. Endeavours had been made, if he insisted on going to the review, to induce him to take another route. He refused, however, to make any change in his arrangements, and as he was passing along the lower boulevard, close to the Jardin Turc, a battery, formed of twenty-four musket-barrels – afterwards to be known as the “infernal machine” – discharged upon the king and his staff a hail of bullets. The Duc de Trévise (Marshal Mortier), General de Vérigny, and several other officers fell mortally wounded; and inside a house from whose window the bullets had been fired was arrested Fieschi, the chief of the assassins. It was found impossible to connect the crime with the action of any political party, though at the trial suspicion was indirectly cast upon the Revolutionists, whose hopes had been so bitterly disappointed by the proclamation of a constitutional king instead of the establishment of a republic. That many of the attempts made upon the life of Louis Philippe were due to this party – who could not forget that they had driven away Charles X. only to replace him by Louis Philippe – is indisputable. But the trial of Fieschi (the details of whose crime have been already related) brought to light in connection with the case no political circumstances of any kind. Against the theory generally accepted by French historians, that Fieschi, in preparing his diabolical outrage, was moved only by love of notoriety, must be placed the fact that he did not possess enough money to construct the “infernal machine” without assistance, and that he was supplied with funds by several workmen, who cannot themselves be supposed to have been burdened by any superfluity of cash, and who, in their turn, must have been supplied from some quarter destined to remain unknown. It was not until a month afterwards that, through his avowals, some of Fieschi’s accomplices were discovered; and it was not till the February of the following year that the trial before the Chamber of Peers was brought to an end. After eleven appearances before the court on eleven different occasions, Fieschi and two of the direct participators in his crime were condemned to death.

In the course of the evidence abundant particulars were furnished as to the life led by Fieschi since his earliest days. He had served in the Neapolitan army under Murat, whom, after the general collapse of the Napoleonic system, he seems to have betrayed to the Austrians. He had been imprisoned for various offences, and when at liberty had acted, in Italy and in France, as informer and spy. He had at last succeeded in obtaining a very small post under the Administration as keeper of some kind of mill; and as he was dismissed from this appointment only a few months before his attempt on the life of the king (a warrant being at the same time issued for his arrest), it is barely possible that in preparing his crime he was moved by some idea of personal vengeance acting upon a disordered brain.

Endeavours were made to obtain a commutation of the capital sentence on behalf of Fieschi’s accomplices; to which the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe’s eldest son, replied: “If I myself, or any member of the king’s family, had been struck, it might have been possible to grant the commutation demanded; but no relation of any of the victims has suggested it.” Fieschi and two of his accomplices were accordingly executed, without either of them saying the least word as to the origin of the foul conspiracy. Nineteen persons had been killed or mortally wounded by the explosion of the infernal machine, and twenty-three wounded seriously.

The prosecution of Louvel, another of the political prisoners arraigned at the Luxemburg, (to go back some years) began before his victim, the Duke of Berry, was dead; and in the very opera-house at whose doors, just as he was stepping into his carriage, the unfortunate man had been stabbed. In the manager’s private apartments the unhappy prince lay stretched on a bed, hastily arranged and already soaked with blood, surrounded by his nearest relatives. The poignant anguish of his wife was from time to time relieved by some faint ray of hope, destined soon to be dispelled. In a neighbouring room the assassin was being interrogated by the ministers Decazes and Pasquier, with the bloody dagger on the table before them; while on the stage the ballet of “Don Quixote” was being performed in presence of an enthusiastic public. In the course of the night King Louis XVIII. arrived; and his nephew expired in his arms at half-past six the next morning, begging that his murderer might be forgiven. The same day (Feb. 14th, 1820) the Chamber of Peers was, by special order of the king, constituted as a court of justice to try Louvel.

Meanwhile the assassin had, according to custom, been confronted with the body of his victim, and in the presence of the corpse was subjected to a full interrogatory.

In the body you see before you, do you recognise, he was asked, the wound made by your hand?

A. Yes.

Q. In the name of a prince who, until the last moment, supplicated the king in favour of his assassin, I call upon you to name your accomplices, and those who suggested to you the horrible project of assassination.

A. There are none to name.

Q. Who induced you to commit this crime?

A. I wished to give an example to the great personages of my country.

Q. Was the arm you employed poisoned?

A. No; I neither poisoned it nor caused it to be poisoned.

The next ceremony was the opening of the body, which was performed by MM. Dupuytren, Bourgon, and Roux. The doctors in a formal report described the wound, and certified that the lesions caused by it had “without doubt” produced the prince’s death. To leave nothing in a state of uncertainty – not even what was strikingly obvious – they examined the dagger which had been “represented as having served for the commission of the crime,” and introduced it into the wound; after which they certified that the latter corresponded in dimensions and form with the former.

The post-mortem examination and the report on the condition of the body having been finished, the clothes of the murdered prince were at the request of his wife given to her. They consisted of a green tail-coat, a yellow waistcoat, a pair of grey trousers, a shirt, and a flannel vest; the coat, waistcoat and trousers composing a costume which was doubtless fashionable at the time, but which in the present day would look somewhat grotesque.

Louvel was kept 114 days in prison, while minute inquiries were being made in every direction with the view of discovering his supposed accomplices. But, like Damiens and Ravaillac, he had acted alone, and in pursuance of a fixed idea which tormented him until he struck the fatal blow. He was kept in solitary confinement, and during the greater part of the time in a strait-waistcoat. During his imprisonment he spoke much and with all the agents who were put to guard him; and he was guarded day and night. He displayed remarkable vanity, being quite proud of sleeping at the Luxemburg while the trial lasted, and of being able to date his letters from the Luxemburg Palace. He was much preoccupied with the effect that this would produce. He continued to attribute his crime to a fixed idea which had never quitted him for six years, and which at last destroyed him. “I know I have committed a crime,” he said; “but in fifty years it will, perhaps, be regarded as a virtuous action.”

The trial of the prisoner was begun on the 5th of June and concluded on the following day, Towards the end of the proceedings the president of the court, in the name of God and of Heaven, adjured Louvel, since he was to succumb to human justice, not to draw upon himself “the eternal punishment to which execrable men are condemned by refusing to declare the instigators and accomplices of the crimes they have committed.” Louvel, rising hurriedly from his seat, exclaimed in a strong, steady voice: “No; I am alone.”

Asked if he had anything to say why sentence should not be passed, he spoke as follows: —

“If I have this day to blush for a national crime which I alone have committed, I have the consolation of believing in my last moments that I have not dishonoured the nation. I have not dishonoured my family. You must see in me nothing but a Frenchman resolved to sacrifice himself in order to destroy, according to his mind, the greatest enemies of his country. You accuse me of being guilty of having attacked the life of a prince. Yes, I am guilty of that crime; but some of the men who compose the Government are in their present position because they also have mistaken crimes for virtues.”

There was not and could not be any substantial defence to the charge of assassination; and after a long trial, in which every conceivable question, connected or unconnected with the case, was put to the prisoner, and after an imprisonment of some four months, he was at last condemned to death. He bore the announcement of the sentence with equanimity, and on the morning of the execution seemed only anxious to know whether the crowd assembled to witness his death would be enough to give national importance to the incident.

Twenty years later the Chamber of Peers was again to be convoked – this time under Louis Philippe – in order to judge Prince Louis Napoleon, who had invaded France to assert Napoleonic principles and his own personal right to the French throne. Only a few years previously Prince Louis Napoleon had made a like attempt at Strasburg, when, though a certain measure of support had been secured beforehand from the officers in the Strasburg garrison, he was arrested, and dismissed with no further punishment than an engagement on his part never again to set foot in France.