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

 
“Toute femme varie
Bien fol qui s’y fie.”
 

These lines are usually given, “Souvent femme varie,” etc. Such, indeed, is the version adopted by the author of Le Roi s’Amuse– in the situation where, in Verdi’s operatic arrangement of Victor Hugo’s play, the canzone “La donna è mobile” occurs. “Toute femme varie” seems too absolute. The calumnious verses were, in any case, according to the legend on the subject, scratched out by order of Louis XIV., who found that they annoyed Mlle. de la Vallière.

Henry II. inherited all the taste of Francis for the Castle of Chambord, to which he made several additions, including a stately staircase in the western court, where the armorial bearings of his mistress Diana, a crowned H and a crescent, are seen in company with his own device: “Donec totum impleat orbem.” It was at Chambord that this sovereign ratified, in 1552, the treaty which he had concluded the year before at Fontainebleau with the Protestant princes of Germany. Charles IX. repaired and adorned the castle, though to no very great extent, owing to the failure of his resources. The modest Louis XIII. was frequently at Chambord; and historians say that during one of his stays there Mlle. de Hautefort put a love-letter under his collar; when, afraid to touch it with his fingers, he removed it by means of the tongs. Louis XIV. cared little for the castle, which, magnificent as it was, fell far short of the splendour with which he loved to be surrounded. He gave, however, several grand fêtes at Chambord, and witnessed there the first performance of two of Molière’s plays – one of them Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

After the battle of Fontenoy, in 1745, Chambord was presented by Louis XV. to Maurice de Saxe; but it was not until three years later, on the conclusion of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, that the Marshal took up his abode at the castle. He constructed barracks there for two regiments of Uhlans, and established in the park a stud of Russian horses, which, though they roamed just where they liked, would at sound of trumpet come galloping up, as if of their own accord, for drill. Within the castle Maurice de Saxe lived amid almost regal pomp. When not occupied with military duties he gave himself up to pleasure. Mdme. Favart, for whom he had conceived a violent passion, often performed before him at Chambord.

When the Revolution broke out Chambord had long since gone back to the Crown. The Republican Government, not knowing what to do with such an edifice, thought of demolishing it, but happily abandoned the barbarous idea. The furniture, however, and the works of art were sold by auction; and the escutcheons and other ensigns of royalty on various parts of the building would have been effaced had not the architect called in to estimate the cost of the work asked too large a sum.

Napoleon thought several times of restoring the castle. After dethroning Charles V. of Spain, he wished to present it in a habitable state to the ex-King, but found that the expense of repairing and refurnishing it would be far more than he could afford. In 1809 Chambord was made into a principality, with the title of “Principality of Wagram,” and was given, with an endowment of 500,000 francs a year, to Marshal Berthier. The allowance was, in part at least, to be expended on furniture and on the more pressing repairs. In the reign of Louis XVIII., the endowment having ceased, the Princess of Wagram obtained the royal permission to alienate a possession which had become burdensome; and soon after, at the Count de Calonne’s suggestion, it was bought by public subscription and bestowed as a dependency on the posthumous son of the Duke of Berry – “Duke of Bordeaux,” as he was in the first instance called. This provoked the ire of many Liberals, and notably of Paul-Louis Courier, who wrote a very energetic pamphlet on the subject. He dwelt much on the bad effect which would probably be produced on the heir to the throne by living in the midst of so many memorials of the depravity of his forefathers. “At Chambord,” he asked, “what will the Duke learn? The place is full of his ancestors, and for that reason alone it would hardly be fit for him. I would rather he lived among us than among them. There, too, are the faces of a Diana and a Chateaubriand, whose names of ill-repute still sully the walls of the castle. Interpreters to explain the emblems will, doubtless, not be wanting to the Duke; and what instruction for a child destined one day to reign!” The pamphlet obtained for its author two months’ imprisonment.

In 1828 the Duchess of Berry took possession of the castle in her son’s name. It was her desire to restore it to its former state, but this has yet to be done. The Castle of Chambord has never since its first construction been adequately repaired, and it is now said to be on the point of falling into general ruin.

It might have been thought that after the death of the Count of Chambord, the Count of Paris, who now became the true heir to the French throne, would have been acknowledged not only by all his relatives, but by the Legitimist party, equally with the Orleanists. But the will by which the Count of Chambord left a large sum of money to two Italian representatives – Count Bardi and the Duke of Parma – without making any mention of the Count of Paris, was yet another indication of the little cordiality felt by the Bourbons of the elder branch for the grandson of Louis Philippe, the great-grandson of Philippe Égalité. The reasons which animated the Countess of Chambord in her opposition to the Count of Paris do not demand long consideration. Possibly she was vexed at the scanty assistance given by the Count of Paris to the head of the family in 1871, and again in 1873; and it is a fact, in any case, that the Count of Paris did not attend the Count of Chambord’s funeral. This abstention was due to the Countess of Chambord’s strange decision that her husband’s foreign relatives should be regarded as nearer to him than his French kinsman, who, moreover, by the Count of Chambord’s death would become the legitimate heir to the French throne. Don Carlos, as representative of the Spanish Bourbons, was, it is true, more nearly related to the Count of Chambord than the Count of Paris as representing the Orleans family, just as much, indeed, as sixth cousins are more nearly related than eighth cousins. But the Bourbon prince who, at the beginning of the last century, ascended the Spanish throne lost, in doing so, his character of Frenchman, just as the offshoots from the Spanish Bourbons, on becoming established in Naples and in Parma, lost their Spanish character. It is well, even in connection with such lofty subjects as the divine right to rule, not to lose sight of practical considerations; and one can imagine no possible combination of circumstances under which the French would consent to be ruled either by a Spaniard or by an Italian. To argue in the present day that a foreign prince who is descended from Louis XIV. has therefore a better title to reign in France than a French prince who can only boast of a collateral relationship with that sovereign, but who is himself the grandson of a French king, is to attach strange importance to a mere theory spun to suit the occasion. Such a theory may have harmonised with the Countess of Chambord’s private prejudices. But to state it is enough to show its weakness. If for one moment, and simply to conform to the arbitrary arrangements of a funeral pageant, the Count of Paris could have recognised it, he would by doing so have shown himself unworthy of all confidence. It is better for him to have broken altogether with the unrecognised claimants and dispossessed occupiers of foreign thrones than to remain their ally at the cost of such sacrifices as were demanded from him. King Louis Philippe, in his last instructions to his grandson, laid no stress upon the principle of descent, but called upon him to be above all “of his own time and of France.” The shadowy potentates to whom the Count of Paris was invited to submit himself at Frohsdorf are as far removed from France by their nationality as from the present time by their ideas.

The fault, however, charged against the Count of Paris by the late Count of Chambord is as nothing compared to the offence of which his grandfather, Louis Philippe, is held to have been guilty; which, again, cannot be likened for atrocity to the crime committed by Louis Philippe’s father, Philippe Égalité.

When, in 1873, there was a prospect of a Royalist restoration, the Count of Paris, according to the Countess of Chambord, speaking as with the voice of her late husband, did not give the Count the support which he had a right to expect; and the Count of Chambord seems, in particular, to have complained to the Countess that the Count of Paris had refused to accept the white flag – “the flag of Ivry,” as the Count of Chambord called it, unmindful, it would seem, of the fact that Ivry was a victory gained by one French army over another, and by Protestants over Catholics. The important point, however, in the eyes of the Count of Chambord, was that the grandson of Louis Philippe, the great-grandson of Philippe Égalité, stuck to the Revolutionary tricolour, and declined to return to the flag of the ancient monarchy. The grandson of a usurper and great-grandson of a regicide could have no claim, then, either in the past or in the present, to represent a line of kings towards which the grandfather had played the part of a betrayer and the great-grandfather that of a murderer.

If the Count of Chambord’s widow, remembering her husband’s last instructions, disavows Louis Philippe’s grandson, his mother, the Duchess of Berry, disavowed Louis Philippe, and even organised against him an armed rebellion. Thus, while Louis Philippe was hated as an enemy both by the grandfather and by the mother of the Count of Chambord, his father was worse than the enemy of the Count of Chambord’s great-uncle, Louis XVI. The Count of Chambord must naturally have inherited something of the horror and hatred with which the Orleans family, in one or other of its members, was regarded successively by Louis XVI., Charles X., and the Count’s own mother, the Duchess of Berry.

CHAPTER XLIII.
THE PARIS RIVER AND PARIS COMMERCE

The Society of the Water-Merchants of Paris – The Navigation of the Seine – The Paris Slaughter-Houses – Records of Famine in France – The Lot of the French Peasant in the Last Century – The Paris Food Supply

THE navigation of the Seine has had remarkable effects on the commerce, and even the municipal government, of the great city traversed by this stream. Turning to the annals of the middle ages, one finds that nearly all the powerful towns seated on rivers profited by their position to secure as much as possible exclusive rights of navigation. With this view, the citizens showed themselves as eager and as voracious as the nobility. Take, for instance, the towns of Cologne or of Mayence, which in mediæval times forced all the boats passing down the Rhine to stop for three days and allow the inhabitants to purchase from their cargo whatever merchandise seemed desirable.

At Paris, the inhabitants showed themselves equally resolved to profit by their position on the banks of the Seine. A society was formed at an early date, under the title of “Society of the Water-Merchants of Paris,” in which were included the principal merchants receiving and distributing their goods by means of the river flowing through the town. This association, mentioned for the first time in documents belonging to the reign of Louis VI., claimed the right of levying sixty sous on every boat which took a cargo of wine to Paris during the vintage.

It was easy enough for the owners of the vessels to come to terms with the proprietors of the castles on the river-banks, who desired only to derive a small profit from the passage of the boats; but it was not so easy to pass the tradesmen of the towns on the Seine, who, finding their interests injured by the detention of the Parisians, complained bitterly, and endeavoured, from time to time, to throw off the yoke of tyrannical Paris. Burgundy on one side and Normandy on the other protested against the pretended privileges of the Hanseatic League, but all in vain. The town of Auxerre made strenuous endeavours at one time to prevent the Parisian merchants from introducing into their town the cargoes of salt sent from Normandy. Rouen was far less accommodating than Auxerre had shown itself. People had forgotten how it was that the merchants of Paris enjoyed such exceptional privileges. But the Parisian burgesses were rich and powerful. Besides their river privileges, they were entitled to half of all the money received in fines; and the richer the citizens of Paris became, the better able they were to pay the various taxes levied in the name of the king. The king, moreover, received half the fines imposed upon smugglers; and anyone who ventured to land the least merchandise without formal permission from the water-merchants was exposed to penalties. The corporation of water-merchants showed no respect for persons in levying its dues. Thus, it seized on one occasion the wine purchased by the Abbé de St. Germain l’Auxerrois, because it had been landed without formal permission. The abbé appealed to the king, who submitted the matter to the Parliament, which, deciding that the abbé had acted within his rights, ordered the seizure to be annulled. The Hanseatic League was sufficiently powerful, however, to prevent the execution of the order, and the Abbé de St. Germain remained without his wine.

Commerce by land had in those days but little importance, partly by reason of the badness of the roads, partly on account of the dangers to which travellers were exposed. There was but one important road to Paris, that of Orleans; and on this road, at Mont Chéry, a post was maintained, where dues were levied on cloth, linen, grain, cattle, sheep, and even hedgehogs. According to the barbarous custom of the time, a Jew was stopped at this post and made to pay for the privilege of entering Paris. He was charged something extra if he carried with him his lamp – probably the lamp with seven branches, used for the celebration of the Sabbath. His Hebrew books were also taxed.

It was only, in fact, by means of the Seine that the Parisians were able with ease to receive goods of all kinds from the outside. Accordingly, the river trade was for a long time the most important branch of the Parisian commerce. The association of water-merchants was looked upon as an association of merchants generally, and, naturally enough, a ship was adopted as principal object in the arms of Paris.

The association of water-merchants prided itself on keeping up a constant supply of provisions, and boats were constantly reaching the capital from Burgundy at one end of the Seine or Normandy at the other. It was on Burgundy for many centuries that Paris depended for its wine, and it was not until a certain nobleman, dilapidated in constitution, sought refuge in the Governorship of Gascony, where the wine of the province restored him to health, that Bordeaux gained the good name it has since enjoyed among the Parisians.

Great fairs were held at various points along the course of the Seine, which were scenes at once of commerce and of amusement. Foreign merchants and tradesmen, students from the university, mountebanks, drink-sellers, adventurers, and thieves, were brought together by every fair. Buying and selling came to an end on the ringing of the Angélus, and the scenes which followed partook, more or less, of the nature of orgies. All trades were subjected in mediæval Paris to strict regulations, and for sixty days in the year the Parisians were deprived of fresh bread. There was a master-baker, or “grand panetier,” who was held responsible for the acts of the bakers, his subordinates, on whose behalf he had frequently to appear before the Grand Provost of the capital. The pastrycooks, like the bakers, formed a corporation of their own, with special duties and privileges.

The taverns in the middle ages, as now, were frequented by the lower classes, and they had such a bad reputation that Louis IX., by a special edict, forbade their frequentation. Nevertheless, the tavern-keepers formed a corporation, legally established with its own statutes, and with licences, imposed by the State on very onerous terms. The king’s proclamation, then, against the frequentation of taverns was without effect.

At the different landing-places and stations on the Seine, the goods brought up by boats were cried for sale, preference being always given to the wine imported from the royal vineyards in Burgundy and elsewhere. The Seine is a great thoroughfare costing nothing to keep up, and the chief line of communication between the capital and the Burgundy vineyards. Naturally, too, it was by the Seine that fish was sent to Paris from Normandy and Brittany. Ten kinds of fish are mentioned in the ancient octroi lists as habitually forwarded to Paris. Of these, herrings were, in particular, supplied very abundantly.

One of the most important trade corporations of medieval Paris was that of the butchers, who, throughout French history, have shown a constant tendency to coalesce. At present, however, there is no bond of union between them, except that which results from their being subjected to the same regulations in respect to the prices to be charged.

An entertaining account of the privileges and corporate character of the ancient Paris butchers is given by M. Ducamp, who writes so well in his bulky work on Paris that even the chapter it contains on the abattoir is not only devoid of horrors, but invested with interest.

“The animals bought in the market do not,” he says, “make a long stay there, but are promptly conducted to the slaughter-houses, which now extend from the other side of the Canal de l’Ourcq, over an area of 211,672 metres, opening on to the Rue de Flandres. The two establishments pronounced necessary by the decree of the 6th of August, 1859, were constructed simultaneously; the slaughter-house was thrown open on the 1st of January, 1867.

“The names of some of the old Paris streets indicate the site of the markets in which butchers displayed their stock. One is reminded of their existence in the city by the church of St. Pierre aux Bœufs, which was destroyed in 1857; then, near the Châtelet, by St. Jacques de la Boucherie, by the Rues de la Tuerie, de la Tonnerie, and de la Vieille-Place-aux-Veaux, surnamed the Place aux Saincts-Jons, after the name of a celebrated family of butchers; and by the Quai de la Mégisserie. Formerly, animals were killed everywhere: to each stall a slaughter-house was attached.” “Blood streams down the streets,” said Mercier; “it curdles under your feet and reddens your shoes.”

Despite various attempts made to banish beyond the walls these slaughter-houses, which from every point of view were so dangerous, the old spirit of routine long predominated, and in the early part of the present century animals still had their throats cut in front of the very doors where meat was sold. It required no fewer than three Imperial decrees (9th Feb. and 19th July, 1810, and 24th Feb., 1811) to put an end to this intolerable state of things. These decrees prescribed the immediate construction of five slaughter-houses adjacent to the Quartiers du Roule, de Montmartre, de Popincourt, d’Ivry, and de Vaugirard; but the work was not finished till the end of 1818. To-day, they have partly disappeared, swept away by new thoroughfares; and they ought to be entirely replaced by the great establishment of the Rue de Flandres. This latter is not beautiful, and has about it nothing ornamental; it is joined to the cattle market by a bridge thrown over the Canal de l’Ourcq.

As well as at the market, the animals are counted when they enter the slaughter-house, into which they are carefully introduced one by one through a half-open door. Opposite this door, and beyond a vast paved court, are thirty-two pavilions, separated into equal groups by three horizontal and three transversal streets, intersecting each other at right angles. These pavilions contain stalls, in which the beasts are kept whilst alive, and 125 tubs (échaudoirs) in which their flesh is divided up after the slaughtering has taken place within the interior court, situated in the centre of the buildings. These échaudoirs and courts are paved with care, and the ground, sloped for drainage, terminates in a gutter which carries all waste fluids down a sink. There are a great many fountains and an abundant supply of water.

The thousand workmen who daily attend the place commence their labours at six in the morning and continue till towards one in the afternoon. At two o’clock the butchers come to make their purchases from the “chevillards,” as those men are called whose business consists in procuring beasts at market in order to kill and sell them in portions to the retailers. As soon as it is dressed, every animal is hung up to a strong iron peg, or cheville, whence the name of the wholesale buyers is derived. One hundred and eighty numbered vehicles, each of an officially certified weight, ply between the slaughter-houses and the different quarters of the city. Before leaving, they have to pass before the pavilion of the octroi clerks, and stand on a weigh-bridge, so that the exact quantity of meat they carry may be formally attested. The dues, payable on the spot, are 2·0735 centimes per kilogramme, of which some two centimes are reserved especially for what are called the slaughter-house dues.

The work goes on every day; but Good Friday, as may well be imagined, causes a great rush of activity. The store-rooms are empty, the wants of the town must be supplied, and the men fall to work; wholesale slaughtering then takes place incessantly from the middle of the night until, perhaps, three o’clock the next afternoon. Notwithstanding the old slaughter-houses still subsisting, it is the one in the Rue Flandres which employs the greatest number of men and contributes most to the food of Paris. In 1868, in the general slaughter-house, and in the slaughter-houses of Villejuif, Grenelle, Belleville, de la Petite-Villette, and Batignolles, 1,725,365 animals were put to death, representing a weight of 107,577,968 kilogrammes of meat ready for retail sale. The average weight of the oxen was 350 kilogrammes, of cows 210, of calves 65, and of sheep 19. The average prices of meat bought at the slaughter-house were, in 1868, 1·34 francs for ox-beef, 1·25 francs for cow-beef, 1·65 francs for veal, and 1·35 francs for mutton.

After describing how the slaughterers perform their work, in language somewhat too graphic for our readers, M. Ducamp points out the difference between the Christian and the Jewish method of slaughtering animals. The Jewish butcher in every case cuts the animal’s throat. To strike with a pole-axe might have the effect of coagulating the victim’s blood, and the Levitical laws on the subject are strict and not to be trifled with. No animal, according to the Jewish custom, should be put to death except in piety, and the Jewish sacrificer, like his counterpart among the Mohammedans of India, utters solemn words as he makes the fatal cut.

The history of the alimentation of Paris might be made the subject of an entire volume. Under the ancient monarchy it was the story of fat years alternating with lean years; which latter were at times years of famine. Famine, indeed, was one of the plagues of France until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Instead of allowing, as in the present day, supply to follow demand, the Government of the country maintained laws and regulations for particular provinces and privileges for particular corporations. Wheat had to be sold at fixed places and nowhere else, and often it was left to rot in one district, while at another, not many miles distant, the peasants were dying of hunger. The peasants, moreover, were burdened with such heavy charges, such distressing dues, that they sometimes gave up in despair the task of cultivating their fields.

Desperate and indignant at the oppression practised upon them, they would from time to time rise against their agrarian tyrants. “Jacqueries” were organised in which all sorts of horrors were perpetrated. But in the end the insurgent peasants were reduced to order. It was found necessary to “hang them a little,” according to the expression of Mme. de Sévigné – so amiable, so charming, when writing of persons in her own position of life. Then the poor man went back to his hut and took up once more the shovel and the hoe. For he had plenty of work to do, and out of the little he earned he had to pay taxes to the king, tithes to the clergy, and dues of all kinds to his lord and master, the landed proprietor. The last-named alone could claim from him so many days of free labour; so much for every lamb that was born, so much for every sheep that for the first time gave milk; every tenth animal from all the animals possessed by the peasant on Christmas Eve; a certain stipulated piece of meat from the carcase of every animal slaughtered; and, finally, a share – sometimes a full quarter – of the harvest, with all sorts of minor dues, such as the feeding of the proprietor’s hounds.

The obligations of serving in the army, and of lodging and feeding the king’s troops, were onerous indeed; and what with the charges imposed and the dues levied by the crown, the landlord, and the church, the position of the peasant was lamentable indeed.

The laws for the preservation of game were not the least oppressive of those by which the unhappy serf was crushed. He was bound to cultivate certain kinds of vegetables and grain to the taste of the birds, to leave the crops in the ground, and to allow the privileged sportsman to invade his farm and perhaps destroy everything of value upon it. Nor was it prudent to make any complaint on the subject, and the Parliament of Paris, in an edict of the year 1779, punished as rebellious the inhabitants of a parish which had claimed from sportsmen an indemnity for damages. A curious characteristic incident took place in Paris itself on the very eve of the Revolution. In the month of April, 1787, the Duke of Orleans, in the ardour of pursuit, followed a stag into the heart of Paris, down the Faubourg Montmartre, across the Place Vendôme, and through the Rue St. Honoré to the Place Louis V., upsetting and wounding numbers of persons as he tore along.

The nobility and clergy paid no taxes. Everything fell upon the labourer, who was borne down by imposts. M. Maxime Ducamp speaks of a caricature he has seen, published the year before the Revolution, in which a peasant, old and ragged, is represented leaning forward upon his hoe, so that he has the appearance of a three-footed animal. On his bended back rests a sleek bishop and a haughty nobleman. The harvest is being devoured beneath the peasant’s eyes by rabbits, hares, and pigeons. Jacques Bonhomme, the typical peasant, is pensive; but his features, strongly accentuated, express anything but resignation, and he mutters, in his own provincial dialect, “We must hope that this game will soon be at an end.”

In Alsace, at the time of the German invasion of 1870, an ancient traditional caricature might have been seen, evidently the outcome of feudal times, in which the position of the peasant was still more forcibly painted. Seven typical figures are presented. The Emperor says, “I levy tribute.” The nobleman says, “I have a free estate.” The clergyman says, “I take tithes.” The Jew (mediæval type of the trader) says, “I live on my profits.” The soldier says, “I pay for nothing.” The beggar says, “I have nothing.” The peasant says, “God help me, for these six other men have all to be supported by me.”

In the glorious days of the ancient régime Paris itself suffered constantly from famine, and looked for its food-supplies to the provinces and to foreign parts, whence they often failed to arrive, from the effects of brigandage or of civil war. The bad state of the roads was another obstacle in the way of this most necessary commerce; and, worst of all, there were laws in force by which tolls and custom dues were levied at the entrance of each town through which the provisions had to pass.

In the “Journal du Bourgeois de Paris,” written in the reign of Charles VI., there are constant lamentations on the exorbitant prices charged for provisions. “Meat was so dear,” we read in one place, “that an ox, of which the ordinary price was eight francs, or at most ten, cost fifty francs. The laws adopted for remedying these evils were of the strangest kind. If wheat was worth eight francs the measure, it was forbidden to sell it for more than four francs; and the bakers were ordered to sell their bread at prices corresponding with the price fixed for the wheat. The result was immediate and inevitable. The corn-merchants ceased to sell, the millers to grind, the bakers to knead, and the whole city fell into a state of distress impossible to describe. In vain,” writes the chronicler just cited, “did people press round the bakers’ shops; there was no bread to be had. Towards evening might be heard through Paris piteous complaints, piteous cries, piteous lamentations, and little children calling out, ‘I am dying of hunger,’ while on the dunghills of the city, in the year 1420, might be found, here ten, here twenty or thirty children, boys and girls, who were starving and perishing with cold, so that no heart could remain unmoved. But it was impossible to help them, for there was no bread, nor corn, nor wood, nor coal.”

“This epoch,” says M. Maxime Ducamp, “was the very saddest of all our history; never was a nation so near its end. One might have thought that in this state of suffering, the nation, having reached the last point of prostration, must lie down and die. Nothing of the kind. Its morbid energy took possession of it. It gave itself to the devil – so, at least, say the ballads of the time. It turned into ridicule both famine and plague, became seized with a vertigo which pathology can explain, and danced that strange Danse Macabre – dance of death – which, for the starving, was a sort of consolation; for they were reminded that in presence of the eternal scythe we are all equal, and that tyrannical lords are mowed down equally with oppressed serfs.”