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

CHAPTER XXVI.
PRINTING IN PARIS – THE CENSORSHIP

Rue Visconti – Historical Buildings – The National School of Roads and Bridges – The Introduction of Printing into Paris – The First Printing Establishments – The Censorship

STARTING once more from the Place Saint-Sulpice, and proceeding by the Rue Bonaparte across the Rue Jacob to the Rue des Petits Augustins, we come to the ancient Rue des Marais, a narrow street opened in 1540 between the Rue des Petits Augustins and the Rue de Seine. It is now called the Rue Visconti, and contains at least one house which is worth a moment’s attention – the Hôtel de Ranes, No. 21. Here Nicholas d’Argouges, Marquis de Ranes, who built the house, was killed in 1678. Jean Racine came to live in the building as lodger in 1692; and here was born in that same year the last of his children, Louis Racine, author of that much-esteemed poem, “La Réligion.” It was here, too, that the immortal author of “Phèdre” expired on the 21st of April, 1699. Other theatrical associations are connected with this house.

Here, moreover, Adrienne Lecouvreur, the celebrated actress, died on the 20th of March, 1730, and, the last rites of the Church being refused, was carried away the same night in a hackney-coach by Voltaire and a friend of Marshal Saxe who had always been devoted to her. She was buried on the banks of the Seine at a point beyond the Palais Bourbon, which it is no longer possible to discover. The place was marked at the time by a simple memorial, which from malice or through neglect and the natural ravages of time, was destined soon to disappear.

Later on this same house was inhabited by Mdlle. Clairon, who only quitted it when she resigned her engagement at the Comédie Française.

At No. 17 in this interesting Rue Visconti existed in 1825 the printing-office founded by Honoré de Balzac. But the greatest novelist of France met with no greater success as a printer than the greatest novelist of England obtained as a publisher. Balzac, like Scott, contracted debts in his business enterprise which weighed heavily upon him and, compelling him to the severest literary labour, shortened his existence. It was to pay his debts that Balzac condemned himself to that perpetual work, those prolonged night-watches, which developed in him, robust as he was in his early days, the germs of that hypertrophy of the heart from which he died. In the street of Les Petits Augustins stood a convent, founded in the midst of a garden to fulfil a vow made by Queen Margaret at the Château d’Usson.

The convent was turned by the Constituent Assembly in 1790 into a depòt for monuments and ruins of monuments whose preservation was desirable in the interest of history or of art. Alexandre Lenoir, who had proposed the formation of this museum, was appointed its superintendent. In carrying out his seemingly peaceful work he found himself on one occasion in danger of his life, for some madman wounded him with a bayonet as he was protecting by main force the monument of Cardinal de Richelieu which a number of fanatics wished to destroy. The precious collection brought together by Lenoir was inaugurated in 1795 under the title of the National Museum of French Monuments.

An imperial decree of the 24th of February, 1811, ordered the creation of a School of Fine Arts, which was to contain common rooms for the lectures and separate studios for the different professors with their pupils. By order of the restored Louis XVIII., in April, 1816, the School of Fine Arts, with which no progress had been made under Napoleon, was to be completed. Then, however, it occurred to the king that it would be unbecoming to turn out from what had been considered their last resting-place so many statues, busts, tombs, and other monuments. Churches were now requested to claim the ornaments of which, under the Revolution, they had been despoiled, the different communes to take back the arms and other insignia which had been torn by fanatical revolutionists from their walls, while the great historic families were assured that they were now at liberty to resume possession of their ancestral sepulchres. But these permissions and appeals were for the most part in vain. Meanwhile the mausoleums of the kings and princes of France were removed to Saint-Denis, while many other monuments were placed in the museums of Paris and Versailles.

It was now possible to proceed with the School of Fine Arts, and the first stone of the building was laid on the 3rd of May, 1820. The original plan, drawn up by the architect Debret, was much amplified, under the reign of Louis Philippe, by M. Dauban, who finished it in 1838 – at least in its essential parts. New buildings were added under the Second Empire between the years 1860 and 1862. The National Special School of Fine Arts (such is its official title) furnishes instruction in drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, and every kind of engraving to French students aged not less than fifteen nor more than thirty, and even to foreigners who have obtained due authorisation from the Ministry of Fine Arts.

The School of Fine Arts occupies a palace worthy of the institution. Its general plan is simple in the extreme. Through the gate of its entrance, adorned with two colossal busts of Puget and of Poussin, may be seen a square courtyard whose walls are covered with admirable monuments, for the most part from the above-mentioned Musée des Monuments Français. This courtyard is separated from the principal one into which it leads by a sort of triumphal arch, dating from the year 1500. It was brought from the Château de Gaillon and reconstructed stone by stone. At the end of the principal courtyard is the grand façade due to M. Dauban, composed of two storeys of arcades separated by Corinthian pilasters. The vestibule of the ground floor contains fragments of ancient marbles, casts from the temple of Egina and of the Parthenon, clever, curious copies of paintings discovered at Pompeii, etc. The vestibule leads to a magnificent collection of plaster casts from the most celebrated ancient works of antiquity, including two columns from the temple of Jupiter Stator, and one of the corner-pieces of the Parthenon. In the floor above are to be seen the fifty-two copies of the Loggie of Raphael, executed in 1836 by the brothers Balze, under the direction of the illustrious Ingrès, who had made Raphael the study of his life. The same storey contains, among other celebrated works, the hemicycle, painted by Paul Delaroche, representing the principal masters of every age and of every school, grouped around Ictinus and Phidias, the painter and sculptor of the Parthenon. This masterpiece has been popularised, in engraving, by Henriquel Dupont, one of the most regretted professors of the School of Fine Arts. It is impossible to leave the School of Fine Arts without casting a glance on the mansions which either surround or adjoin it, from the beginning of the Quai Malaquais, at the corner of the Rue de Seine, to the Rue des Saint-Pères, all of which enjoy magnificent views of the Seine, the Louvre, and the Tuileries. They have all the same origin, having been built during the first years of the seventeenth century on the property of Queen Margaret. No. 1 on the Quai Malaquais, with its two meagre wings on each side of a feeble body, was the mansion of Aubespine; and it was there that the celebrated archæologist, Visconti, died in 1818. No. 5 was at one time occupied by Marshal Saxe.

The noble house, with its façade of red bricks and white stone – No. 9, at the other corner of the Rue Bonaparte – was the Hôtel Loménie de Brienne et Loutrec. Nos. 11 and 13, now replaced by the exhibition-rooms of the School of Fine Arts, were built by Cardinal Mazarin for his niece Marianne Martinozzi, left a widow in 1666 by the death of Prince de Conti, younger brother of the great Condé. Originally Hôtel Conti, it passed from Conti’s widow, who received the Hôtel Guénégaud in exchange, into the hands successively of the Créquis, the Tremvilles, the Lauzuns, and three or four other aristocratic families, to become subsequently the office of the general police.

The right corner of the Rue des Saints-Pères and of the Rue de Lille is occupied by a new building with windows few and far between, and gates which might be those of a fortress. This is the special school of living Oriental languages founded by Louis XIV., reorganised in 1795 and again in 1869 and 1871. For many years it was an annex of the National Library, where it occupied an old building in the New Street of the Little Fields. For some few years past it has been established at No. 2 in the Rue de Lille. The languages taught in this institution comprise literary Arabic, the Arabic of ordinary conversation, Armenian, Persian, Turkish, Annamite, Chinese, modern Greek, Japanese, Malay, Russian, Roumanian, Hindostanee, and the Tamul languages. Attached to the professors are teachers born in the different and distant lands whose languages are studied in this school.

At the opposite corner (Rue de Lille, No. 1) is a magnificent mansion which now belongs to the publishing house of Garnier Brothers. During the period immediately before the French Revolution the stables of the Countess of Artois were here established. Throughout the First Empire it was occupied by Count Réal, entrusted with the first department of the Ministry of General Police, in which there were altogether fifty-one departments. From 1821 to 1849 it was the office of the first military division.

On the right side of the Rue des Saints-Pères, opposite the former entrance to the hospital of La Charité, is the National School of Roads and Bridges – until 1788 the Hôtel Fleury; from 1824 to 1830 the Ministry of Worship; and throughout the reign of Louis Philippe the Ministry of Public Works.

The National School of Roads and Bridges, created by Louis XV. in 1741, and developed by different decrees of the two empires, has for its special object the education of young men quitting the Polytechnic School after good examinations as civil engineers. It is placed beneath the authority of the Minister of Public Works, and directed by an Inspector-General of Roads and Bridges. It comprises twenty chairs devoted to different branches of the engineer’s art, without counting drawing – scientific and artistic – and the English and German languages. It contains a laboratory, a library, and a gallery of models to which the public is not admitted.

Returning towards the east as far as the Rue Saint-Benoît, we find, on the eastern side of the street, the printing department of the firm of Quantin, in a line with the publishing and administrative departments. At this printing and publishing office, which has given to the world so many fine editions, especially of illustrated books, Revue des Deux Mondes has been printed ever since it first appeared.

The art of printing has had a chequered history in Paris, being sometimes protected, sometimes oppressed by the crown, and too frequently crippled by two bodies who, in particular, should have nursed it – the University and the Parliament. It was introduced into the French capital by Allemand La Pierre, prior of the Sorbonne, one of the greatest scholars of his time, and Guillaume Fichet, doctor in theology, who, in 1470, invited Ulrich Gering of Constance, Michel Friburger of Colmar, and Martin Krantz, to come and establish a printing-office within the Sorbonne walls.

The three associates acceded to the request, and with the machines they fitted up printed a succession of interesting volumes during their stay at the Sorbonne, which lasted till 1473. Then their establishment was transferred to the Rue Saint-Jacques, under the sign of the “Golden Sun,” beside the church of Saint-Benoît. Here a number of elegant works were produced. In 1484 Friburger and Krantz retired from the concern, in order probably to return to Germany, the name of Gering alone being appended to publications posterior to the month of October in that year. Ultimately the printing-offices were again moved to a house belonging to the Sorbonne, though the sign of the “Golden Sun” was still preserved.

Printers now began to multiply rapidly in Paris. One of the most celebrated was Antoine Vérard, who from 1485 published a large number of works, chiefly in French, and remarkable for the beauty of their Gothic characters. Towards the end of 1499, at the period when the Bridge of Notre Dame, on which his house stood, gave way, he removed to a spot near the crossway of Saint-Séverin, afterwards shifting twice more – first to the Rue Saint-Jacques, and then to the Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame, where he remained till his death.

In 1513 Louis XII. testified his sympathy for the art of printing by liberating it from a heavy tax and from certain tolls to which it had previously been subject. Two years later his successor, Francis I., exempted the printers of Paris from all military service except in case of imminent peril.

In 1521 – when already Claude Garamond had replaced the old Gothic and semi-Gothic characters by Roman letters and italics – Francis I., hitherto favourable to printing, issued an edict to the effect that no book should be printed or sold unless it had previously been examined and approved by the University and the Theological Faculty. Every book, moreover, had now to pass beneath the inspection of the Provost of Paris. This edict sorely fettered the two dozen printers who were then at work in the capital.

In 1522 the famous Robert Étienne, whom we call Stephens, published a beautiful edition of the New Testament in Latin; but the Sorbonne, displeased at the production of an edition which tended to popularise the Scriptures, attacked the text of Étienne, though without any apparent desire to engage in direct controversy on the point. It does not appear that the work was suppressed; but ten years later the Sorbonne showed itself much more potent in dealing with a new edition of the Latin Bible published by Robert Étienne, son and successor of the before-mentioned, with annotations – borrowed from the most learned authorities – on the original Hebrew. The younger Étienne had published this edition by special privilege obtained from the king. To secure it against criticism he had not printed it till after a careful comparison of the ancient manuscripts of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the abbey of Saint-Denis; he had not even omitted to call in the most famous theologians to assist him. Yet, despite all his precautions, he could not avert the wrath of the Sorbonne; and he was obliged to humiliate himself before that body and promise to print nothing henceforth “nisi cum bonâ eorum gratiâ.” These submissions saved Étienne, but could not obviate the danger which threatened the art of printing. The era of persecution had begun. The Sorbonne, which had at first patronised the art of Gutenberg, was so terrified now at the rapid propagation of Luther’s doctrines that it addressed to Francis I. an urgent request on the subject of heretical books, representing strongly to the king that if he wished to save religion, attacked and shaken on all sides, he must, by a stern edict, permanently abolish in France the art of printing, which daily produced so many pernicious books. The project of the Sorbonne was on the point of being realised, when it was cleverly thwarted by Jean de Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who explained to the zealous monarch that in preserving so precious an art he could effectually remedy the abuses of which such violent complaints were made.

Meanwhile the University exercised its right of supervision. In 1534 Christian Wechel was censured and threatened with a fine for having sold one of the works of Erasmus. The same year, on the 13th of January, Francis I. issued letters patent which prohibited all printing and exposed printers to rigorous punishment. These letters were not registered by the Parliament, which remonstrated to the king concerning so arbitrary a proceeding. A month afterwards the king’s advocate, Jacques Cappel, communicated to the Parliament new letters patent, by which Francis I. annulled the previous ones, but ordered that the Parliament should elect twenty-four persons, well qualified and cautioned, from whom he might select twelve who alone should print at Paris, and not elsewhere, “books which were approved and essential to the public welfare.” The printing of any other books was to be visited with formidable punishments.

The art of Gutenberg, however, resisted all these measures, and apparently the king did not persevere in his hostile projects, for in 1543 he exempted the printers from service in the City Guard. Two years later, nevertheless, Robert Étienne, having published an edition of the Bible which excited the wrath of the Sorbonne, found himself so persecuted that he had to retire to Lyons, whence he could not venture to return to Paris till he had obtained the protection of Henri II. A worse fate befell a Lyons printer, named Étienne Dolet, who had taken refuge in Paris. He was arrested, imprisoned in the Conciergerie, and at the end of eighteen months strangled and burned in the Place Maubert on the 3rd of August, 1546.

In 1551 Robert Étienne, seriously menaced, was forced to seek refuge at Geneva, leaving at Paris his wife and children, who might have starved had not Henri II., on the prayer of Charles Étienne, Robert’s brother, restored to them the goods of the proscribed printer. This same monarch gave a further proof of his goodwill in exempting printers, by an edict of the 23rd of September, 1553, from the taxes to which books were then liable.

In 1556 Henri decreed that a copy, printed on vellum, of every book whose publication was authorised, should be contributed to the Royal Library; and that every such copy should be magnificently bound. It is supposed to have been to Diana of Poitiers, a great bibliophile, that this decree was due.

Charles IX. showed no little favour to printing. By letters patent, dated March, 1560, he confirmed and continued to the printers all those favours, rights, privileges, liberties, exemptions, and so forth, which had been ceded by his royal predecessors. One printer, however, Martin Lhomme by name, derived small benefit from these letters patent, for in the same year, on a decree of the Parliament, he was hanged.

This printer, a native of Rouen, living at Paris in the Rue du Mûrier, was accused of having sold a book entitled “The Royal Tiger,” which was a satire directed against the Guises. He was condemned, according to the Parliamentary decree, “to be hanged and strangled on a scaffold erected in the Place Maubert, a suitable and convenient spot.” The goods of the prisoner were to be confiscated to the king, and the objectionable book was to be burned in the printer’s presence previously to his execution.

Not long afterwards, in September, 1563, an ordinance appeared which proclaimed that all printers, binders, and sellers of libellous placards and other publications should be punished, for the first offence with the whip, for the second with death. A further ordinance, issued the same month, forbade printers to put any unauthorised volume in type “under pain of being hanged and strangled.”

In spite of all these fetters the art of printing lived on and even prospered. Henri Étienne, having returned into possession of the paternal establishment, published in 1572 the four first volumes, in folio, of the Thesaurus linguæ Græcæ, a work which his father had planned, and which it took Henri eleven years to execute. This monument of literary learning was published under the auspices of several sovereigns, with Charles IX. amongst them.

In July, 1575, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine complained, in the general assembly, that the books of Ambroise Paré, first surgeon to the king, were being printed, although they contained a doctrine pernicious to the public welfare and to good morals. The dean, therefore, prayed the University to lay a petition before Parliament to the effect that the writings of this author might be examined by medical professors. Attempts were at the same time made to subject the printers of these works to a fine.

The sixteenth century had been a time of conflict for the art of printing, just as it had been for the Reformation. The subsidence of the civil wars benefited both. Hardly established on the throne, Henri IV., by letters patent, dated 20th February, 1595, confirmed to the printers their privileges, and liberated them from the taxes which, the year before, had been newly imposed upon them. At the moment of his accession he had exempted them from the duties payable for the confirmation of their ancient rights.

In 1624 a regular censorship was started by Louis XIII., who by an edict appointed four censors, chosen from the Faculty of Theology, to each of whom was accorded a salary of 500 livres, with honours, immunities, etc. The University protested against this edict, which encroached upon its secular rights. The dispute lasted long, and the four theologians resigned their office. But in 1626 the king entrusted the Guard of the Seals with the choice of censors, and the University lost this part of its privileges. Three years later Louis XIII. issued an ordinance which forbade the printing or selling of any book not inscribed with the names of the author and the printer.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were lands of refuge in which writers who feared the political laws and the despotism of their own country could always find free presses: Holland, that is to say, and Switzerland. It was in Holland that Bayle published his famous Dictionary.

The Constitution of 1791 “guaranteed” to every man “the liberty of writing, printing, and publishing his thoughts without his works being liable to any censure or inspection before their publication.” The Convention passed no law against the press. The pamphlets of the enemies of the Revolution still exist, and testify to the plenitude of the liberty enjoyed by writers at this period. Some of these, it is true, were accused of connivance with the foes of their country, and punished for that crime; but there was no question of process against the press.

The Consulate, with its strict régime, had less respect for the liberty of the pen. By a decree of 17th February, 1800, the consuls granted power to suppress those journals which published articles contrary to the welfare of society, the sovereignty of the people, or the glory of the national arms. Under the Empire new fetters were placed upon the press. In 1810 the number of printers in Paris was limited to sixty. In the following year another twenty were authorised; but, on the other hand, the censorship which had been suspended was re-established. The Restoration accorded to printers full liberty for producing works of more than twenty sheets, but maintained the censorship for smaller publications, and subjected the newspapers to royal authority.

The press had taken too great a part in the Revolution of July not to derive from it, at first, in any case, some advantage. The new Charter, in proclaiming the liberty of the press, within the limits of the law, declared that the censorship could never be re-established. Some years later, however, heavy fetters were once more placed upon the newspapers of France, though book-publishers retained their former measure of liberty.

At the period of 1835, under the monarchy of July, numerous prosecutions were instituted against the press; and the jury who tried these cases, though it often acquitted, sometimes condemned with rigour. The Republican journal, the Tribune, succumbed beneath the weight of the fines imposed on it.

The Republic of 1848 accorded to the press a liberty quite as unlimited as it now enjoys, though the free use it made of this liberty produced a reaction and new fetters in the following year.

The invention of printing was made the subject of a play by the unfortunate Gérard de Nerval, author of the Voyage en Orient, and of a translation of Faust which Goethe himself admired. In Gérard de Nerval’s drama figure a good angel and a demon; and when the good angel, always anxious to benefit humanity, invents printing, the demon comes forward and says: “I invent the censorship.” Of the censorship in connection with printed works some account has been given, and a few words may be added in reference to the censorship as bearing upon works written for the stage.

The dramatic censorship was established in France in the middle of the fifteenth century – that is to say, in the earliest days, of the French stage. The clerks and students classed together as “La Basoche” were forbidden to act any play or “satire” until after it had received the approval of the censor. It must be supposed that the corrections and commands of the censor were set at naught; for, thirty-four years later, an order was published forbidding the members of the Basoche to play at all, or even to ask permission to play. This was under the reign of Louis XI. Under Charles VIII. theatrical representations were again authorised, but only under rigid supervision. Louis XII. gave absolute liberty to the comedians. All kinds of personalities were permitted to dramatic writers, who, with impunity, could even attack the throne. On one point alone was Louis XII. fastidious, he objected to attacks on the honour of the queen; and for her protection in the midst of the general licence now exhibited on the stage, authors were required to “respect ladies under penalty of being hanged.” The threat was a severe one; and by reason, perhaps, of its very severity, it was never found necessary to carry it out. Under Francis I. the censorship was re-established in full force, and an order was published calling upon the players to be careful in their representations not to speak the passages which had been marked out. In 1548 the priests, who hated all theatrical performances, and looked upon stage-players as beyond the pale or the Church, procured the formal interdiction, by the Parliament, of the mediæval mysteries, into which much profanity had been introduced.

According to M. Poirson, one of the latest and best historians of Henri IV., the theatre, under his happy reign, enjoyed absolute liberty. Louis XIII., or rather his powerful minister, again introduced the censorship; and, later on, every reader of Molière knows what trouble the great comic dramatist met with at the hands of the censorship in connection with one of his masterpieces, Tartufe. Authorised by the king, the piece was interdicted by the Parliament, after its first representation, besides being condemned by a mandamus from the Archbishop of Paris; and it was not until three years after its original production that Molière obtained full permission to perform it. Louis XIV., despot as he was, hesitated, in the midst of the disputes between the Gallican Church and the Court of Rome, to interfere in a matter which his clergy had taken so deeply to heart. Molière had fresh difficulties to contend with in connection with Don Juan, which he was obliged to modify in many passages before he could obtain permission to perform it. The cynicism of the hero’s reflections was declared to be in opposition (as Molière intended it to be) to religious feeling; and the Parliament thought it impious that Sganarelle (afterwards the Leporello of Mozart) should, on seeing his master carried down to eternal torments, think of nothing but his wages and ask pathetically from whom he was to get them.

Under Louis XIV. the political side of the censorship first shows itself. In a farce played at the Théâtre Italien under the title of La Fausse Prude, Mme. de Maintenon was recognised; and when Racine, at Mme. de Maintenon’s request, composed Esther for the pupils of St. Cyr, the piece seemed full of political allusions, and everyone at Court was so convinced that Esther was Mme. de Maintenon, and Vashti Mme. de Montespan, that the performance was at last forbidden. Haman, in the proscribed piece, was thought to be the minister, Louvois, and in the persecution of the Jews a reference was seen to the cruel edicts against the Protestants. The Athalie of the same dramatic poet shared the fate of Esther, and for like reasons.

On the death of Louis XIV. Esther and Athalie were freed from the interdict which had weighed upon them, and now the picture of Judæa under its tyrannical rulers was looked upon as that of France, while in the character of Joas was seen the young king Louis XV. The censorship now became, above all, political. No allusion was to be made to a minister or to any state official, these rules being applicable to all state functionaries, whether belonging to France or not. A phrase in a comedy of this time, “From his rotundity one might take him for a president,” was condemned by the Parliament of Paris, whose president at the time was somewhat stout.

Voltaire had to take infinite trouble in order to get permission to produce his Mahomet. The official censor, Crébillon, having objected to Mahomet– in a spirit of jealousy, as Voltaire maintained – its author obtained from the Duke de Richelieu permission to entrust the censorship of the work to his friend, d’Alembert; though Crébillon, from one point of view, seems to have been not far wrong, since Mahomet, on its production as authorised by d’Alembert, excited on the part of the religious world general disapprobation, so that Voltaire, after a time, had to withdraw the piece.

The ingenious and daring measures by which Beaumarchais at last succeeded in getting removed from his Marriage of Figaro the veto pronounced upon it by King Louis XVI. have been told in another place. This brings us to the time of the Revolution, when all restrictions on personal liberty were, for a time at least, abolished. Theatrical representations were now given inside Notre Dame. On the first anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI., January 21st, 1794, was performed at the National Opera, “on behalf of, and for the people, gratis, in joyful commemoration of the death of the tyrant,” Miltiades at Marathon, the Siege of Thionville, and the Offering to Liberty. The censorship, abolished for a moment, was soon re-established under the Republic; and now stage kings and stage queens were absolutely suppressed. “Not only were they forbidden to appear on the stage,” says a writer on this subject, “but even their names were not to be pronounced behind the scenes, and the expressions ‘côté du roi,’ ‘côté de la reine,’ were changed into ‘côté jardin,’ ‘côté cour,’ which, at the theatre of the Tuileries, indicated respectively the left and right of the stage from the stage point of view. At first all pieces in which kings and queens appeared were prohibited, but the dramas of sans culottes origin were so stupid that the Republic was absolutely obliged to return to the old monarchical repertory. Kings, however, were turned into chiefs; princes and dukes became representatives of the people; seigneurs subsided into mayors, and substitutes more or less synonymous were found for such offensive words as crown, throne, sceptre, etc. The scenes of most of the new operas were laid in Italy, Prussia, Portugal – everywhere except France, where it would have been indispensable from a political, and impossible from a poetical point of view, to make the lovers address one another as ‘citoyen, and ‘citoyenne.’”