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

The passionate letters were all copied in the Secretary’s Office; and it is only from these copies, as printed and published in 1792 by Manuel, procureur of the Commune of Paris, that the epistles are now known. They were obviously not written for general reading. Jotted down from day to day, without thought of anything but the woman he loved and the passion by which he was inspired, they contain passages which even persons without prudery (a fault charged by Mirabeau against Sophie’s mother) might have desired to see omitted; but they are eloquent, impassioned, and, though affected by the senses, written from the heart. During his captivity at Vincennes, which lasted forty-two months, Mirabeau composed a number of works, many of which, as mentioned in the letters to Sophie, seem to have been lost. He made for Sophie’s own private reading some edifying translations from the tales of Boccaccio and from the Basia of Johannes Secundus; and he wrote a novel that every one would not care to read, called “Ma Conversion.” Liberated from prison in December, 1780, he went straight to Pontarlier, where he constituted himself a prisoner. He wished to obtain a divorce for Sophie from her husband and for himself from his wife; and it is related that in the former case the husband was only too happy to pay the expenses of the suit. He also wrote an eloquent, indignant attack against lettres de cachet, which, not daring to publish it in France, he brought out in Switzerland. From Switzerland he went to London. After a time he returned to France, and in 1786, anxious as ever to play an active part in life, got himself sent by the Government on a secret mission to Prussia; where he was to study the effect that would probably be produced in Germany by the death of Frederick the Great, then imminent, the character of the Prussian prince who was to succeed him, and the possibility, moreover, of raising in Prussia a loan for France. Such missions, of which the precise object was never clearly defined, belonged to the system of the ancient régime. Mirabeau was present at the death of Frederick and at the inauguration of his successor; when with marvellous confidence he gave the new sovereign some advice as to the art and method of governing a great country. Mirabeau, meanwhile, did his work conscientiously as agent of the French court; addressing to the minister Calonne seventy letters, which were published in 1789, the year of the Revolution, under the title of “Secret History of the Court of Berlin, Letters a French Traveller, from July, 1786, to January, 1787.” The book, full of satirical portraits and still more satirical observations, caused considerable scandal; and the parliament lost no time in ordering it to be burnt by the public executioner.

During his stay at Berlin Mirabeau collected materials for his “Prussian Monarchy,” published in 1788 (four volumes in quarto or eight volumes in octavo); a vast composition which at least bore witness to Mirabeau’s capacity in matters of politics, legislation, administration, and finance. In his address to the Batavians he set forth all the principles which were afterwards to serve as basis to the declaration of the rights of man. His “Observations on the Prison of Bicêtre,” and on the effects of the severity of punishments, may be looked upon as the complement of his “Lettres de Cachet.”

Writing in great haste, he astonished the reader by his energy and intellectual fecundity, in the midst of the constant embarrasments of a precarious and harassed life. “Mirabeau,” says M. Nisard, “learns as he writes and writes as he learns. To conceive and to produce are with him one and the same thing. The convocation of the States General opened to him a theatre worthy of his genius and of his immense ambition. He hurried to Provence and presented himself as a candidate before the Assembly of the Nobility, which, in spite of his persistent demands, put him aside as being neither owner nor occupier of land in Provence. He then turned to the people and was promptly elected a representative of the Tiers État.

His entry into political life was an event of the highest importance. Two days before the opening of the Assembly he began the publication of the Journal of the States General. At the first meeting of the Assembly the master of the ceremonies made known the king’s wish that the three orders should carry on their debates in three separate chambers. This involved the departure of the representatives of the Tiers État from their habitual rendezvous. “Tell your master,” exclaimed Mirabeau, in words which were to become historical, “that we are hereby the will of the people, and that nothing can move us but the force of bayonets.” Meanwhile Mirabeau, who had begun his political life with so much dignity, was actually ruining his position by his own personal extravagance. He entered into relations with the court, and before delivering his speeches submitted them to the king and queen. The king asked for a list of his debts, which amounted to 200,000 francs, and included a sum that had been owing seventeen years for his wedding suit. Besides paying his debts, Louis XVI. promised to furnish his new auxiliary with a pension of 6,000 francs per month. He placed, moreover, in the hands of the Count de La Marck, who had acted as intermediary, a sum of one million, which was to be given to Mirabeau at the end of the session if, as he had promised to do, he served with fidelity the cause of the king and queen.

After these facts, it has been gravely asked whether or not Mirabeau sold himself to the court. Saint-Beuve has answered the question in his own ingenious way, by saying that Mirabeau, without selling himself, allowed himself to be paid. The distinction scarcely amounts to a difference. Mirabeau now wrote frequently to the king and still more frequently to the queen, till at last nothing would satisfy him but to have an interview with Marie Antoinette, whose minister he would gladly have become, the king leaving everything to the queen, the queen everything to the would-be director of her policy. Before long the double position held by Mirabeau produced its inevitable effects. To maintain his influence with the Assembly and with his own constituents he had to play the part of a tribune, while, to gain his subsidies from the court, he was bound to show himself a firm supporter of the monarchy.

Inordinately ambitious, dissipated in the extreme, an aristocrat by taste and a democrat by conviction, he was perpetually in trouble of the most exasperating kind. In February, 1791, he was elected to the presidency of the Assembly, as candidate of the Moderate party, the Right. His vigorous opposition to the law proposed against the émigrés laid him open to grave suspicions. “Silence, those thirty voices!” he called out when Barnave, Lameth, and their friends among the orators of the Left tried to interrupt him. This debate was the last in which the dramatic side of Mirabeau’s oratorical talent was fully shown. Labours, excesses of every kind, had at last worn out his robust constitution. It was said that poison had been administered to him; but he was the author of his own destruction. The very day after his not-too-creditable understanding with the court he rushed into expenditure of every sort, so that one of his best friends could not help saying: “Mirabeau is badly advised in making such a display of his opulence. He must be afraid of passing for an honest man.” He knew that he was killing himself, and though his doctor, Cabanis, begged him to lead a more moderate life, the advice passed unheeded. He was taken ill on the 27th of March at Argenteuil, near Paris; which did not prevent him from participating next day in an important debate. He triumphed, but left the Assembly exhausted, depressed, and with death written on his face. On the morrow he was hopelessly ill, and at the end of April he expired.

The news of his death caused universal grief, and it was at once voted that his remains should be deposited in the former church of St. Geneviève, known since the Revolution as the Pantheon. Here the ashes of the greatest writer the Revolution had produced were allowed to repose until, in the Autumn of 1794, the Republicans of the Left having meanwhile been enlightened as to the part Mirabeau had played in connection with the court, they were removed to give place to the dust of Marat, whom Charlotte Corday had just assassinated. What honest man, asked someone at the time, could desire his remains to lie by the side of Mirabeau? The great orator was now worse treated by the republic than Molière, Voltaire, and Adrienne Lecouvreur had been by the clergy of the ancient monarchy. His relics were disturbed from what should have been their last resting-place, and conveyed at night without form or ceremony to Clamart, the graveyard of those who died at the hands of the executioner. There is nothing sadder in the modern history of France than the story of the entries and exits of its reputed great men into and out of the church or temple now once more known as the Pantheon.

A longer period of hospitality than Mirabeau was allowed to enjoy fell to the lot of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose remains, disinterred from his first place of burial in the middle of the Lake of Ermenonville, were carried to the Pantheon that same autumn which saw the relics of Mirabeau ejected from the grand national mausoleum. Rousseau was the third of the great men to whom, in the language of the well-known inscription, their native land was grateful. “Aux grands hommes: la patrie reconnaissante.” Rousseau was, no more than Napoleon, a Frenchman. His family, however, unlike that of Napoleon, is said to have been of French origin. He was descended from a Protestant bookseller, who was forced to quit France by the persecutions of the 16th century and afterwards settled at Geneva.

Rousseau’s birth cost his mother her life. “My mother died when I was born,” he says in the Confessions, “so that my birth was the first of my misfortunes.” His father, a watchmaker by trade and a man of some education, had the greatest affection for his son, but was unable to forget at what cost he had been brought into the world. Thus Rousseau’s first impressions were of the saddest kind.

The little boy was brought up by his father’s sister, and many were the novels or rather romances that he read under her guidance. Soon, however, he turned to more serious studies, his favourite authors being now the Greek and Roman historians, and particularly Plutarch. When the boy was old enough to adopt a trade he was apprenticed to an engraver. But such was the severity of his master that his sole thought was how to escape from the tyrant. One evening when he had gone out for a walk in the neighbourhood of Geneva, he found on his return the city gates closed. Fearing the anger of the engraver, he resolved not to go back to him at all. Chance took him to the house of M. de Pontverre, curé of Confignon, who, finding the boy was a Protestant, resolved to profit by the opportunity of making a convert. M. de Pontverre, instead of sending the little Rousseau back to his employer, conveyed him to a Madame de Varennes, who had herself just been converted to the Catholic religion. To Madame de Varennes young Rousseau became warmly attached, and he was in despair when suddenly she went away. The strange idea now occurred to him, possessing no musical knowledge or next to none, of passing as a musician. He commenced, in fact, to give lessons in music. From Lausanne, where he had begun his hazardous tuition, he took flight to Neufchâteau, where once more he insisted on teaching music.

At last, by giving lessons in music he taught himself, and he had no trouble in getting a certain number of pupils. After various adventures he turned up in Paris, where he was engaged as tutor by a young officer, who soon, however, discovered that the would-be preceptor had a great deal to learn. Finding that Madame de Varennes was at Chambéry, he determined to visit her, and, being well received, remained with her some considerable time. He now gave himself up to studying sentiment, until after the lapse of a few years Madame de Varennes became tired of his society, and the young man left Chambéry for Montpellier, where he proposed to get medical treatment for a fancied polypus of the heart. He had read, during the latter part of his stay at Chambéry, so many medical books that he ended by becoming an imaginary invalid. From Montpellier, where the doctors professed their utter inability to recognise the polypus complained of, he went to Lyons, where he got an engagement as tutor in a family. A year afterwards, in 1841, he left Lyons for Paris, now fired by literary ambition and excited by the news that constantly reached him of the triumphs of Voltaire. He took with him to the French capital a new system of musical notes, a five-act comedy, and fifteen louis d’or. His musical innovations, submitted to the Academy, were not understood; but perhaps for that reason they made some noise and facilitated his introduction into many good houses. For some little time he led a life of elegant leisure, during which he made the acquaintance of several of the first literary men of the day. But it was necessary for him to earn his living, and he was glad to accept an engagement with Madame Dupin, daughter of the famous financier, Samuel, who wanted a secretary; and soon afterwards Madame de Broglie got him sent to Venice as secretary to the French Ambassador, Count de Montaigne. Before long, however, Rousseau had a violent quarrel with his chief, who seems to have been a man of unbearable disposition.

Returning to Paris, he resolved once more to adopt a literary career. He wrote articles on musical subjects for the Encyclopédie, and made sketches of operas, ballets, and divertissements, until one day, going to see his friend Diderot, imprisoned at the time in the castle of Vincennes, he happened to read as he walked along, in the Mercure de France, an advertisement offering a prize to the author of the best essay on this subject: “Has the progress of science and art tended to corrupt or to purify manners?” According to Diderot and his friends, it was he, the imprisoned philosopher critic, tale writer, and dramatist, who suggested to Rousseau that, instead of taking the commonplace view of the matter, he would do well to maintain, as paradoxically as he pleased, that the development of art and science had exercised not a healthy but a baneful effect. Rousseau, however, maintained that the idea of treating the subject from the negative point of view originated with himself alone. “If ever anything,” he wrote long afterwards, “resembled a sudden inspiration, it was the movement that at once took place in my mind on reading the advertisement. Suddenly my intelligence was dazzled by a thousand lights. Crowds of ideas assailed me with a force and a confusion which caused me inexpressible trouble; my head was seized with a giddiness resembling intoxication.” Whoever suggested to Rousseau the idea of his essay, it was to him that the Academy of Dijon adjudged the prize. His paradoxes wounded many a writer, many a poet, many a would-be philosopher. But meanwhile all the literary and scientific society of Paris had been thrown by Rousseau’s arguments into a state of commotion.

Rousseau, however, instead of profiting by the striking success he had achieved, resolved in the first place to put in practice the principles of simplicity and even asceticism which he had expounded in his treatise. At the time of the essay’s being published he occupied the lucrative post of cashier to M. de Franceuil, one of the Farmers General. But he now refused to have anything to do with finance, preferring to gain his bread by copying music. This resolution did but increase his reputation and cause his writings to be in greater demand than ever. Soon afterwards, in 1762, his opera, The Village Seer (Le devin du village), was represented at Fontainebleau with immense success. The king wished the author of the graceful pastoral to be presented to him, and a pension awaited him. But he turned his back on the seductions of fortune and resumed his copying. There were not wanting detractors, who saw in this fine spirit of independence simply the pride of Antisthenes visible through the holes in his coat.

In 1753 Rousseau published his “Letters on French Music” and his “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.” Then he journeyed to Geneva, where he returned to Protestantism in order to recover the title of citizen, which in due time he lost once more, after the publication of “Emile.” Tired of the world, he now accepted an asylum which was offered to him by his friend, Madame d’Epinay, in the valley of Montmorency, where he wrote nearly the whole of his famous “Nouvelle Héloïse.” The work would doubtless have benefited by the omission of many a rhetorical phrase; but the passion for nature, the exalted delirium of the heart and the senses, the storms, the tears which it contained, were things so new that the whole generation allowed itself to be carried away with the transports of Rousseau. He had found inspiration for the book, it was said, in his unfortunate love for Madame d’Houdelot – a love which almost degenerated into a mental derangement and which commenced his series of misfortunes. Madame d’Epinay, who was then in relationship with Grimm, saw with no kindly eye the affection of Jean Jacques for another than she. Rousseau soon found his position so disagreeable that, breaking with Madame d’Epinay, he abruptly quitted her house although it was the depth of winter. Hospitality was offered to him at Montlouis, near Montmorency, and there he wrote his “Letter to d’Alembert on Stage Plays,” a pamphlet which caused a considerable stir. Voltaire was then the king of the theatre; and to attack one was to attack the other. Voltaire was enraged, and could not keep within bounds. He insulted his adversary, who, however, did not reply in the same tone. This quarrel, which ended to the advantage of Rousseau, had the effect of diverting his mind for a moment; but very soon he became once more a prey to that morbid melancholy and suspicion which were to accompany him to his grave, and which rendered the remainder of his life painful to contemplate. He died in 1788 at Ermenonville, whither he had been invited on a country visit by M. de Girardin, at a time when old age, infirmities, and misery had already driven him to distraction.

The eccentricities and weakness of his character, however, vanish in presence of his literary fame. Although his remains are not at Ermenonville, the place is often visited by strangers interested in Rousseau’s last days. M. Thiébaut de Berneaud, in his “Voyage à Ermenonville,” 1826, declares that when, eleven years earlier, in 1815, “the chief of one of the hostile armies arrived at Plessis-Belleville” and, examining his topographical map, found himself close to Ermenonville, he asked whether this was not the place where Jean Jacques Rousseau had breathed his last, and receiving an affirmative reply, declared that as long as there were Prussians in France Ermenonville should be exempt from war contributions. The unnamed warrior marched, says M. Thiébaut de Berneaud, towards the last abode of the sentimental philosopher, and, uncovering himself as he drew near, ordered his troops to treat Ermenonville, its inhabitants, and all that belonged to it, with respect – a command which was religiously observed.

Rousseau was one of the few distinguished men of letters in France who cared for country life, and he must be allowed to share with Bernardin de St. Pierre the credit of having introduced not only sentiment but landscape into the French novel. He could not have lived permanently in Paris, though he was a resident in the capital when he declared that if the officers of the crown insisted on his paying exorbitant taxes, he would go on to the boulevards, sit under a tree, and die of hunger. Even at that time he took constant rambles in the Bois de Vincennes, through which he had to pass to visit his friend Diderot, confined in the château.

Apart from the fine foliage and the exhilarating air which serve to attract visitors to Vincennes, the place is celebrated for its fortress, which neither centuries nor revolutions have swept away. The dungeon, which is now the only remnant of the citadel commenced by Philippe de Valois, and completed by Charles the Wise on the ruins of the castle to which Philippe Augustus used to resort in view of the pleasures of the chase, was formerly encircled by eight towers, grouped around its walls like vassals around their lord. These, however, have been demolished by revolutions and by time.

To-day the redoubtable citadel in which so many kings have sojourned is a military establishment, which includes an artillery arsenal, barracks, hospitals, a cannon foundry, a factory of arms, a château, a church, and a great number of store-rooms. Its precincts are immense. Other fortresses are hidden in the immediate vicinity, and guard the approaches. Artillerymen incessantly go and come between the fortress and the village and the village and the practice-ground.

Penetrating the sombre vault which leads from the door of entrance to the interior court, the visitor finds before him the ancient royal residence, whose façade preserves something of the majesty of antiquity. To the left stands the chapel built by Charles V. in imitation of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, and which he dedicated to the Trinity and the Virgin, the fencing-room, and the tower of the reservoir; to the right the formidable dungeon rears its head towards heaven.

In the space enclosed by these various constructions are stacked up, in faultless order, parallelograms of cannons and pyramids of bullets. Long rows of howitzers, their mouths directed skywards, are to be seen side by side with masses of enormous bombs. In the large neighbouring buildings are halls which contain, suspended from the walls, hooked up round the pillars, and symmetrically arranged in corners, a prodigious stock of guns, bayonets, and sabres. Everything shines and glitters: there is not a particle of dust anywhere. An army could here find sufficient weapons to invade a country. The church is close at hand. It recalls a peaceful and merciful divinity in a place consecrated to war. Prayers are uttered at a spot where men are incessantly trying to find how to kill the greatest number of their fellows in the shortest possible space of time.

The Gothic church, with its fine exterior masonry, is void of all ornamentation within. It gives one the impression of having been sacked at some stage in its history. In a lateral chapel there is a monument raised to the memory of the Duc d’Enghien.

What the Parisians, however, come particularly to see, what they love, what they visit with the greatest eagerness, is the dungeon. This old monument in stone is to them an object of worship. They envelop it with a fond curiosity, and, despite the horror they feel at the terrible scenes it has witnessed during so many centuries, they will not see it disappear without regret. In their imagination it is a legendary, monument, and, in all probability, if the Bastille had not been torn up from the soil by the Great Revolution, that prison-fortress would now have been preserved with the utmost care for the gratification of public curiosity.

No one finding himself at Vincennes after a country stroll fails to ascend to the summit of the dungeon. The visitor pants a little, perhaps, on reaching the platform which crowns it, but he is recompensed for his fatigue by the immense panorama which opens around him. There below, in that transparent vapour which the sun’s rays never more than half penetrate, those myriads of roofs, those monstrous domes, those belfries, that stubble of chimneys whence clouds of smoke are escaping, that distant and ceaseless din which reminds one of the waves breaking on some shore, proclaim the gayest city in the world. At the foot of the edifice the forest stretches away, and behind the screen of trees lies a limitless country, in which cultivated fields extend to the horizon. Everywhere orchards, hamlets, villages meet the eye. The Seine is not far off, and at no great distance, like a band of silver, the Marne meanders capriciously through an immense plain studded with clumps of trees.

On one side a view is obtained of Montreuil, famed for its peaches; on the other, by the river bank, a congregation of villas and cottages in picturesque disorder shows the site of Port-Creuil, where Frederic Soulié sought literary repose. At a little distance lies Saint-Maur, where verdure-loving Parisian business-men like to spend Sunday with their families. Some of them, indeed, reside there permanently; and year by year bricks and mortar may be seen to encroach further and further upon the surrounding country. Hard by is Saint-Mandé, where Armand Carrel died of the wound received in his duel with Emile de Girardin. His tomb is in the cemetery, where stands a statue in his honour.

If the gaze is now turned sharply towards Paris, it encounters, beyond Alfort and its schools, Charenton, celebrated for that mansion of which Sébastien Leblanc conceived the first idea in 1741, and, at the confluence of the Seine and the Marne, the château of Conflans, so long the residence of the Archbishop of Paris. In that immense space which lies beneath the eye there is scarcely a stone or a tree which does not recall some memory. All those roads, all those footpaths, have been trodden by men who were destined to leave a deep mark on the history of France. There is not a corner in this sylvan expanse where some civil or religious combat has not taken place. The Normans, the English, even the Cossacks have made incursions here. There is, according to the expression of one French writer, not a tuft of grass which has not been stained with human blood. Through the villages in sight princes and kings have passed. Torch-lit cortèges, conducting prisoners to the dungeon and to death, have alternated with triumphal processions, escorting sovereigns to their capital to the flourish of trumpets. On that hill yonder Charles VII. raised a castle – the Castle of Beauty – which preserves the memory of Agnes Sorel. In another part of the wood, near Créteil, a little house was once the residence of Odette, who consoled Charles VI. Saint-Mandé once possessed a little park in which Louis XIV., before he was the Louis XIV. of Versailles and of Madame de Maintenon, felt the beat of his own heart; for it was there that he met the fascinating de la Vallière. Under the shade of those old oaks many other beautiful phantoms may by the imaginative mind be seen gracefully gliding: Gabrielle d’Estrées, for instance, Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Longueville, and Madame de Pompadour.

The wood of Vincennes is to-day, of course, very different from what it was at the period when Philip Augustus, enamoured of the chase, had it surrounded by solid walls, in order to preserve the fallow deer and roebucks which he had imported from England. But if it has lost a great deal of its ancient character, together with some of its noblest old trees, it has gained in lakes, lawns, and avenues, where the laborious population of Paris love to lounge or stroll in a clear and recreative air.

Once arrived in the Bois de Boulogne, the visitor has not to travel far in order to see the Marne, that most capricious of French rivers. There is scarcely a Parisian who has not taken an exploring stroll along the banks of this stream, which conducts the oarsman to the very point whence he started. Artists and dreamers in search of leafy shade, of trees overhanging a limpid stream, of mills beating the clear water with their black wheels, know the Marne well. On summer days many a peal of laughter may be heard to proceed from behind some shrubbery. Tourists come to the place in quest of breakfast: they are not in want of appetite, and they have for companions youth and gaiety. Frocks which the wearers are not afraid of rumpling alternate with woollen blouses: the visitors row and sing, seeking, later on, some rustic restaurant where, beneath a green arbour, they can enjoy a bottle of white wine and a snack of fish, with an omelette, or some other light accessory.

On hot Sundays, beneath a cloudless sky, numberless picnics are held in the Bois de Vincennes – a thing unfashionable in the Bois de Boulogne, where visitors would consider it beneath their dignity to eat from a cloth spread on the green turf. At Vincennes excursionists do not stand on ceremony, and if the weather is sultry men may be seen lounging in their shirt sleeves, and taking, in other respects, an ease which the inhabitants of the Boulevards, who resort to the Bois de Boulogne, would contemplate with horror. If the families, however, who divert themselves at Vincennes do not rent a box at the opera, their unpretentious music probably affords them a pleasure none the less. It is a distinctly popular place to which they resort. You do not see there on Sunday new toilettes which evoke cries of astonishment: unpublished dresses dare not show themselves there, eccentric fashions do not bewilder the spectator’s eye. People walk about there without pretension, usually on foot, in family groups, arriving by omnibus or rail.

Sometimes, however, at the time of the races you see those coaches and calèches which four high-spirited horses draw at a gallop. Beautiful ladies and fine gentlemen are hastening to share in the pleasures of the course. This is the hour of lace and silk.

The Bois de Boulogne is associated with steeple-chasing, instead of the flat-racing of the Bois de Vincennes. The public, says the before-mentioned writer, “who are not conversant with the science of the turf, and scarcely wish to be so, better understand the courage and skill which the jockeys must display when they find themselves in presence of a stream or hurdle. Curiosity and emotion are both excited in connection with these exhibitions. People go as near as they can to the obstacle and measure its height or width with their eye. Some take up their stand at a fixed barrier; others wait at a bridge which precedes a ditch. The horses having started, a universal gaze follows them. Will they get over or not? All the spectators hold their breath, their hearts beating rapidly. Meanwhile the jockeys are dressed in purple, gold, and silver: they arrive like so many flying sparks. Their horses clear the obstacles. Hurrah! they are on the flat again. But if by accident both horse and rider get rolled on the grass, it must be confessed that the pleasure of the curious is, in this event, no less.”