Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2
TekstCHAPTER XXIV.
PARIS MARKETS
The Halles-Centrales – The Cattle Markets – Agriculture in France – The French Peasant
THE Panthéon, standing on the summit of the mountain of Sainte-Geneviève, and the Luxemburg Palace, surrounded by the galleries and the garden of the same name, dominate the rest of the left bank, which has still, however, one salient point in the Hôtel des Invalides. To the left of the Luxemburg Garden, on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, stands the National School of Mines, established in the house which formerly belonged to a religious order. Here, as in so many other of the public establishments of France, the instruction is gratuitous, under the direction of an inspector-general and thirteen professors. The museum contains all kinds of interesting geological and mineralogical specimens, together with a library of 30,000 volumes, which, like the museum, is open to the public.
The Rue de Tournon – to pass from the garden to the front of the palace – has already been mentioned in connection with that Hôtel de l’Empereur Joseph at which Joseph II., visiting his sister Marie Antoinette, elected to stay in preference to putting up at one of the royal palaces. The street owes its name to François de Tournon, cardinal-ambassador under Francis I. At that time the land through which the street was afterwards to run was the site of a large horse market, a sort of annex to the Marché Saint-Germain, and familiarly known as the Muddy Meadow – “le Pré crotté.” Very different were the Paris markets of those days from the system of markets now so perfectly organised. At present, when Paris has expanded so far beyond its ancient “barriers” that it has become one of the greatest cities in the world, the provisioning of its population is a question of the first importance. For breakfast, as for subsequent meals, the French metropolis requires a stupendous quantity of food, which must arrive regularly at a fixed hour, and be delivered promptly at the doors of the numberless beings whose mouths are to be filled.
At some hours before dawn a large number of market-gardeners and other cultivators from the vicinity of Paris enter the city and converge towards the same point. Enormous and noisy drays at the same time bring in to this common centre the consignments of edible produce which arrive by rail daily from the provinces or abroad.
The great market which receives all these goods, known as the Halles-Centrales, is situated opposite the beautiful church of Saint-Eustache, at the end of the Rues Coquillière, Montmartre, Montorgeuil, and Rambuteau. This immense and elegant building, constructed entirely of bricks and iron, consists of twelve pavilions, which shelter the sale of the various descriptions of goods. Each pavilion has its speciality. One is a wholesale, another a retail meat-market, a third is devoted to fish, a fourth to eggs and butter, and so on.
Markets are held in various parts of the city; but most of them are fed by the Central Market. Many of them recall the Central Market by the light character of the architecture in brick and iron. Two great cattle-markets are established at Sceaux and at Poissy, and a smaller one at La Chapelle Saint-Denis, connected with the Marché de la Villette, built with the view of absorbing all the smaller meat-markets.
Unlike England, France, in the matter of agricultural products, is self-sufficing. Two-thirds of the population are occupied, as proprietors, farmers, or labourers, with the cultivation of the soil. In England the agricultural classes represent only one-third of the population. In France there are nine millions of small landowners with a slight proportion of large ones; in England the land is in the possession of comparatively few persons. Up to the time of the Revolution the number of proprietors in France did not go beyond 30,000, and the peasantry at that period were in a state of utter poverty, the actual cultivators receiving, according to Alison, only a twelfth part of the produce for their share. “The people’s habitations,” wrote Arthur Young, “are miserable heaps of dirt – no glass, no air; the women and children are in rags – no shoes, no stockings. The proprietors of these badly cultivated lands, all absentees, were worshipping the king at Versailles in the most abject and servile manner, spending their scanty income and getting into scandalous debt.” “The agricultural population,” he says elsewhere, “are 76 per cent. worse fed and worse clad than in England. Impossible to have an idea of the animals who served us at table, called women by courtesy. In reality they are walking dunghills, without stockings, shoes, or sabots.”
All this was changed by the Revolution, when immense numbers of tenants became proprietors of the land they had previously cultivated, as serfs, for their masters. The progress from destitution to comfort was effected in less than twenty years, and since then the condition of the peasantry has been constantly improving. Under the system of small ownerships agriculture, as an art, may not be brought to the highest possible pitch of perfection, but the agriculturists thrive and are happy. France is not a corn-exporting country; and it is quite possible that under a system of large estates the sum of her agricultural produce might be greater than it really is. The peasants, however, under the system of “la petite culture” produce more butter and their fowls more eggs than they need for their own consumption or for sale in France. Accordingly great quantities of eggs and butter are sent to England, France’s best customer for produce of this kind.
The small proprietors, too, keep rabbits and pigeons, many of which find their way not only to the Paris markets but to England. A century ago, until the time of the Revolution, the landholding aristocracy had alone the right of shooting rabbits and keeping pigeons. “The birds,” says M. Nottelle, writing on this subject, “ate the seed of the poor peasants in the neighbourhood and the rabbits ate the corn when it was green. These exclusive privileges were abolished on the celebrated night of the 4th of August, 1789.” Yet it should always be remembered that the noble proprietors gave up their exclusive privileges – doubtless under the influence of the Revolution, but, nevertheless, as a matter of fact – of their own accord. Now everyone can keep pigeons; but the owners are ordered by the mayor to keep them in the pigeon-house during seed-time. If they are allowed to fly at this period they are considered as game, and may be shot. The owner, moreover, is fined. Occasionally in the French market frogs are to be seen, and it is quite possible that in the days before the Revolution the epithet “frog-eating” could be more fitly applied to the generality of Frenchmen than it can now, when the thighs of frogs are only to be met with at certain restaurants, where they are served, equally with snails, as a rare delicacy.
It has been seen that before 1789 the French peasants were poor and miserable. Arthur Young’s descriptions of them have been quoted often enough. A century earlier than Arthur Young, La Bruyère, author of “Les Caractères,” spoke of them as looking like ferocious animals. “The men and women,” he continued, “are meagre, dark-looking objects, their dirty rags scarcely covering them, and retiring at night into filthy dens or hovels.” It is possible, then, as M. Nottelle, in his unpretentious but interesting and instructive little book on the French peasantry since the Revolution, declares, that several millions of peasants were obliged to live on roots. “No doubt,” he adds, “they ate frogs, though it took much time to get a decent dish of them. But time was not a great object to these poor famished slaves. From this, most likely, Shakespeare called the French ‘frog-eaters,’ and foreigners have come to the conclusion that many of the French feed mostly on frogs. It is not easy, however, to exist on frogs, which are too dear to be eaten by the generality of people.”
It is said, too, that frogs are in favour with the devout, for they may be eaten as fish on fast days. Not only frogs but also snails are to be seen exhibited for sale in some of the Paris markets. It may be that in the days when the unhappy French peasantry were on the verge of starvation they found themselves reduced to a disgusting diet of snails and even slugs. However that may have been, the only snail eaten by the French at the present day, and the only kind of snail to be seen in the Paris markets, is the “escargot,” in its streaked whity-brown shell. The escargot is found chiefly in the wine countries, especially Burgundy, where it feeds on the leaves of the vine. One of the few places in Paris where snails and frogs used to be sold, cooked, no doubt in perfection, is or was the famous restaurant in the “New Street of the Little Fields” – otherwise Rue Neuve des Petits Champs – which Thackeray celebrated in his ballad on the subject of Bouillabaisse.
Many interesting anecdotes of the French peasants are told by a writer from whom I have recently quoted. Living in the midst of their property, with their domestic animals around them, they become very much attached to their cattle, not sentimentally but by reason of the beasts’ market value. A story is told of a farmer who sent to the cattle-show a fat pig, that obtained a medal which he afterwards wore with great pride as though he himself had carried it off. The peasant’s love of his cow surpasses even his affection for his pig. A peasant proprietor lamented the loss of one of his cows to such an extent that a friend at last said to him: “If you had lost your wife your grief could scarcely be greater.” “Maybe,” he replied; “for many of the farmers about here would gladly give me their daughter in marriage, while none of them would give me a cow.” In one of Pierre Dupont’s songs this preference on the part of the peasant of the cow to the wife finds full expression. The cow, it is true, becomes in the poet’s lines an ox; but cows, like oxen, are used in France for the plough. “I love Jeanne, my wife,” exclaims the peasant of Pierre Dupont’s song; “well, I would rather see her die than see the death of my oxen”; or, in the French —
Eh bien, j’aimerais mieux
La voir mourir que voir mourir mes bœufs.
So great is the cow-passion by which the French peasantry are animated, that when one of them had stolen the cow of his neighbour, the exhortations of the priest were powerless to enforce restitution.
“You must return it to the owner,” said the priest.
“But, father, I have confessed my fault.”
“Yes, yes; but you must do as I tell you. Send back the cow to its owner.”
The man hesitated; he did not wish to restore the cow.
“Then no absolution; no sacrament.”
The peasant still demurred.
“Think,” the priest then said, “of the day of judgment, when all the village will be assembled on the green, and you will be there holding the cow by the tail, and everybody will know you stole it. How ashamed you will be!”
“Really! but will the owner of the cow be there too?”
“Of course he will.”
“Well, if I see him, I will then give him back his cow.”
One more anecdote may be permitted in reference not indeed to the Paris markets, but to those by whom the Paris markets are supplied. Not only is the French peasant prudent and economical: he is also, as is shown by the story just told, very cunning. Equally so is the peasant woman. One day at a market in Normandy people were much surprised at seeing a woman offer an excellent horse for sale at the price of five francs, and still more astonished at her asking 500 francs for a dog she wished to dispose of. The two animals were to be sold together. They were ultimately got rid of on the terms demanded. The explanation of the mystery was this. The peasant woman was the widow of a man who in his will had directed that the horse was to be sold for the benefit of his own family and the dog for the benefit of his wife. She had so arranged matters that out of the joint sale 500 francs, the price of the dog, came to her, while five francs went to her husband’s relations.
It seems strange and somewhat absurd to English Conservatives that so many peasants in France should have a vote; but inasmuch as of these peasants nine millions are proprietors, the establishment of universal suffrage in France was not a revolutionary but a Conservative measure. The peasantry, moreover, are in some degree trained to public affairs by the part they play in the communal councils. There are about 40,000 communes in France, and each commune has its mayor and its municipal councillors elected by universal suffrage for the management of local affairs. Every peasant may become a municipal councillor and, if duly elected by the municipal council, a mayor. The municipal council meets periodically for the discussion of local affairs; so that its members accustom themselves to public speaking and the interchange of ideas. France has now about 10,000,000 electors, of whom two-thirds are peasants, but, as before explained, peasants in the possession of landed property.
CHAPTER XXV.
SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS
Its Origin and History – Its Library – Its Organ – Saint-Sulpice
IF the Pantheon and the Luxemburg are by their size, their appurtenances, and their dominant position, the most important buildings on the left bank of the Seine, the most interesting, by its antiquity, is the church, with the monastery attached to it, of Saint-Germain-des-Prés; which, like the cathedral-church of Notre Dame in the city, and the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois on the right bank, belong to the most ancient period of the Merovingian monarchy, to that, in other words, of Childebert I. and Ultrogothe his wife, who reigned at Paris from 511 to 538. Childebert, returning from an expedition against the Visgoths, brought back from Spain as trophies of his victory the tunic of Saint Vincent, a gold cross and precious stones, together with some vases which were said to have belonged to King Solomon. By the advice of Saint Germain, Bishop of Paris, he constructed for the reception of the holy relics a church and a monastery at the western end of the gardens belonging to the Palace of the Hot Baths, or Palais des Thermes. On the very day of Childebert’s death, in 558, Saint Germain consecrated the new church as “Church of the Holy Cross and of St. Vincent”; and he was himself buried in it when he died in 596. After the death of the good bishop the church which he had dedicated to the Holy Cross and to St. Vincent got to be known under no other name than that of Saint-Germain; and it now became the burial-place of the kings, queens, and princes of the Merovingian dynasty.
The abbey remained for a long time an isolated building, which the high walls, erected around the church and convent in 1239 by Simon, abbé of Saint-Germain, made into a veritable fortress, which was strengthened in 1368 by Charles V., who, at war with the English, feared a sudden attack on their part against the suburbs of Paris. A narrow canal was at the same time dug, which placed the ditches of the fortified abbey in communication with the Seine. This canal, called at the time “the little Seine,” was filled up towards the middle of the sixteenth century, when the line of land thus formed became the Rue des Petits Augustins, now Rue Bonaparte.
Of this ancient church, three times burned by the Normans and three times rebuilt, but little now remains. Thirty years ago fragments of the walls and two of the gates were still to be seen. But the last traces of the old abbey disappeared when through the Place Saint Germain-des-Prés the Rue de Rennes was made to run. The church, however, was destined to survive, in a sadly mutilated condition, the convent and the walls. It suffered greatly, like so many other sacred buildings, at the time of the Revolution, when the tombs of the Merovingian kings were broken into and their contents dispersed. These or portions of them are now to be found in the abbey of Saint-Denis.
Again and again the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés has been restored: as in 1644, in 1820, at the time of the Restoration, and finally under Napoleon III. The choir preserves intact the style of the twelfth century. Among the tombs may be seen the tomb of King Casimir of Poland, who, after becoming a monk, was made abbé of Saint-Germain, and died holding that office in 1672. In a chapel on the opposite side of the church is the tomb of Olivier and Louis de Castellan, who fell in the service of Louis XIV., and a little further on the chapel of the Douglases, many of whom served in the Scottish Guard. Here too are the remains of Boileau and Descartes. The sacred pictures around the choir and the nave are the work of Hippolyte Flandrin, the most celebrated among the pupils of Ingrès, who died before completing his work, and to whom, in the church he loved to decorate, a monument in white marble has been erected, surmounted by his bust.
It must not be forgotten that during the greater part of its history the ancient church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was outside Paris, which gradually grew towards it and at last surrounded it. On the 2nd of November, 1589, Henry IV., besieging Paris, went up the convent tower, accompanied by a single monk, to examine the situation of the town. He is said to have afterwards gone round the walls of the cloister. But he did not enter the church, and he withdrew without uttering one single word.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés was at one time known as the Church of the Three Steeples. These were destroyed in 1822 under Louis XVIII. as a measure of economy, since it would otherwise have been necessary to restore them.
The monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés used to contain a library, which was at that time the largest in Paris, and the only one that was open to the public. Begun by Father du Breul, author of the “Antiquities of Paris,” it was augmented through legacies from the physician Noel Vaillant, the Abbé Baudran, the Abbé Jean d’Estrées, the Abbé Renaudot, the Chancellor Séguier, the Cardinal Gesvres, the Councillor of State De Harlay, and others, who, dying, left their libraries to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The collection included 100,000 printed volumes, and 20,000 manuscripts, all of which found their way to the National Library, where they are now preserved. Close to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and between this church and that of Saint-Sulpice, was held the famous market or fair of Saint-Germain. In the fifteenth century the Saint-Germain fair used indeed to be held in the garden of the presbytery of Saint-Sulpice. Antiquaries are not quite agreed as to the antiquity of Saint-Sulpice; not, that is to say, as to the precise date, undoubtedly a remote one, of its origin. A tombstone of the tenth century, found in 1724, when, during the restoration of the church, the foundations had to be examined, showed that the cemetery, attached to which there would naturally be a chapel, had existed from the earliest period. A new chapel or church is supposed to have been built in place of the more ancient one during the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. A nave was added to it under Francis I., and three chapels in 1614. In 1643 a council was held under the presidency of the Prince de Condé, at which it was determined to rebuild the church, which was too small for the requirements of the neighbourhood and, above all, was falling into ruins. The first stone of the new church was laid by Anne of Austria in 1646. The building operations were, however, discontinued in 1678; and it was not until 1721 that – thanks to a lottery for which permission was given by Louis XV. – enough money was found to enable the architect, Servandoni, to complete the work. The architecture of Saint-Sulpice has been severely criticised, especially by Victor Hugo, who compared the lofty towers (one, by the way, much loftier than the other) to clarinets. The church of Saint-Sulpice is remarkable, among its various treasures, for a magnificent balustrade enclosing the choir, and the statues of the twelve apostles by Bouchardon which surround it. The pulpit given in 1788 by the Duc de Richelieu is surmounted by an admirable group sculptured in wood: “Charity surrounded by her children.” Very curious is the obelisk in white marble, more than eight metres high, constructed in the most scientific manner by Sully and Lemonnier, in 1773, to determine the occurrence of the spring equinox and of Easter Day. The two enormous shells which hold at the entrance to the church the holy water were gifts from the Republic of Venice to Francis I.
The chapels of the nave and of the choir, decorated by the most celebrated artists of this century, present admirable specimens of religious painting. Eugène Delacroix is represented in the chapel of the Holy Angels by two mural pictures and a painted ceiling, all instinct with his fiery genius. The Triumph of Saint Michael, Heliodorus Beaten with Rods, and Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, are the subjects. The artists who have painted the various chapels are too numerous to mention. The organ-loft rests on composite columns of a grandiose character, the work of Servandoni, and the organ is worthy of the loft built for its reception. Reconstructed in 1861 by Cavaillé-Coll, this majestic instrument with its ten octaves possesses 5 complete key-boards, 118 registers, 20 pedals, and about 7,000 pipes. The organ of Saint-Sulpice is said to be the largest in Europe, and on Sundays and holidays the congregation is never without a certain number of dilettanti who have come to hear the gigantic instrument speak beneath the eloquent fingers of M. Widor, whose duties as organist have not prevented him from writing the music of a ballet, “La Korrigane,” for the Opéra, and of a lyric work, “Maître Ambros,” for the Opéra Comique. Widor, the organist of Saint-Sulpice, composing ballet-music reminds one of the still more violent relief sought by Hervé, who passed from the organ-loft to the stage of the Folies Dramatiques with his burlesque operettas of “L’Œil Crevé” and “Le Petit Faust.” The hero of M. Hervé’s operatic vaudeville “Nitouche” is perhaps a typical personage in the musical world of Paris. He also is an organist by profession, a composer of light opera by aspiration; and he gets into sad trouble by teaching frivolous airs to the pupils of the convent school where he is employed to play psalms and hymns.
Strangely enough, by what hazard can scarcely be said, in the organ-loft of Saint-Sulpice is to be found the harpsichord of Marie Antoinette. What a contrast between the delicate sounds of this feeble instrument and the thunder of its colossal neighbour!
The church of Saint-Sulpice, renamed in 1793, at the height of the Revolution, Temple of Victory, was the scene on the 9th of November, 1799, of a banquet, at which General Bonaparte presided. In 1802 it was restored to public worship. The existing church rests on an immense crypt, in which the architects have respected the pillars of the original church. In this subterranean church, which is adorned with statues of Saint Paul and Saint John the Evangelist by Pradier, the catechism is taught and conferences are held. The plan of Servandoni comprised a space in front of the church, enclosed by symmetrical façades, the model of which may be seen in the south-east corner of the square, between the Rue des Canettes and the Rue Saint-Sulpice. This part of the architect’s project was, however, abandoned.
Completed in virtue of a decree of the year 1811, and planted with trees in 1838, the Place Saint-Sulpice has been adorned since 1847 with a monumental fountain constructed by Visconti in place of an older one removed to the Marché Saint-Germain. The four statues which form part of the design, in the midst of three concentric basins, represent Bossuet, Fénélon, Massillon, and Fléchier. Beneath the eyes of the four preachers in bronze a flower-market is held twice a week.
Quitting the Place Saint-Sulpice by the Rue Bonaparte, passing before Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and crossing the Rue Jacob, we reach the section of the Rue Bonaparte which was originally called Rue des Petits Augustins, and which stands on what, until it was filled up, was the bed of the Little Seine.