Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 2

This innovation excited universal enthusiasm. The king was so well pleased with it, that he caused a medal to be struck bearing the inscription: "Urbis securitas et nitor [security and lighting of the city]." In a passage in Saint-Evremoniana, we find: "The invention of lighting Paris during the night by an infinity of lamps is worthy of attracting the most distant peoples to come and contemplate that which the Greeks and the Romans never imagined for the policing of their republics. The lights, enclosed in glass lanterns suspended in the air at an equal distance from each other, are arranged in an admirable order and give light all the night; this spectacle is so handsome and so well planned, that Archimedes himself, if he were still living, could add nothing more agreeable and more useful."

As late as the end of the eighteenth century, the vegetable and animal oils and fats furnished the only means of artificial illumination. The tallow-candle dates from the eleventh century, and was an humble partner for the much more aristocratic wax taper. In 1791, Philippe Lebon commenced a series of experiments upon the extraction from wood of a gas for illuminating purposes; and in the following year, Murdoch, in England, succeeded in extracting it from pit-coal. A manufactory of gas, constructed by the Comte de Chabrol, served to light the Hôpital Saint-Louis, in 1818; and, two years later, another furnished illumination for the Palais du Luxembourg and the Odéon. Chevreul's experiments in the saponification of fatty substances and the extraction of oleic, stearic, and margaric acids, undertaken in 1823, led to the manufacture and general use of stearic candles by 1831. In the previous year, the introduction of mineral oils and petroleums had begun; the very extensive importation of the coal-oil of Pennsylvania commenced in 1859, and has been supplemented of recent years by that of the produce of the oil-wells of the Caucasus. Both these are largely imported in the crude state, and are distilled and refined in France. The huile de colza, extracted from the colewort, is still very largely used, and is an excellent oil for lamps; and acetylene is beginning to take the place of coal-gas as an illuminator.

When the permanent street-lamps, burning oil, replaced the ancient lanterns and candles in the streets of Paris, they excited as much admiration as the latter had done. "The very great amount of light which they give," said the lieutenant of police, M. de Sartines, "forbids us to believe that anything better can ever be found." The introduction of gas excited much opposition, as late as 1830; the householders feared to be asphyxiated by sulphuretted hydrogen and adopted the new method with much hesitation. Philippe Lebon was assassinated on the Champs-Élysées on the evening of the coronation of Napoleon I, and his invention, "as is usually the case, made the tour of Europe before returning to benefit France,—the first companies that undertook to work his invention were managed by foreigners, Winsor, Pauwel, and Manley-Wilson." The five or six rival companies that furnished gas to the city, united in 1855 in one corporation, the Compagnie parisienne d'éclairage et de chauffage par le gaz. At present, the Compagnie du Gaz delivers it to private houses within the city at an average price of thirty centimes the cubic mètre, and at varying prices in the suburbs. It cannot refuse to furnish it to any subscriber, but it has the right of demanding that payments be made in advance.

Much apprehension was at first excited in the neighborhood of the companies' works by the enormous metal tanks, or reservoirs, until, as is related, an Englishman, named Clegg, one day went up to one of these huge gasometers, drove a hole through the side, and applied a lighted candle to the aperture. The escaping gas burned in a steady jet, as from a burner, but did not explode. At the opening of the siege of Paris, General Trochu was alarmed at the possibility of one of these gasometers in the suburbs being exploded by a German shell and destroying the ramparts in its vicinity; the Conseil de Défense, having communicated these apprehensions to the gas company, were assured by the latter that the reservoirs would not explode, even though pierced by a projectile. This statement was soon verified; at the works at Ivry, one of the enemy's shells fell through one of the iron cloches,—a long sheaf of fire rose in the air, and was extinguished within a few minutes. At La Villette, a shell burst inside the tank, but the gas escaped without any further damage. It was the latter usine that furnished the means of inflating the balloons that, for so long a time, constituted the city's only method of communication with the outside world.

If the municipality was somewhat slow in adopting the use of gas for its streets, it claims to be the first to have introduced that of electricity. This new method of illumination appeared in 1876, and in the following year the Avenue de l'Opéra was lit up by the Jablochkoff system. In England, the use of electricity for lighting public streets and dwellings was inaugurated in the town of Godalming in 1881; and in America, in New York, in 1882. The Place du Carrousel followed the Avenue de l'Opéra, using sixteen Mersanne lights; experiments were made in the Parc Monceau with fourteen arc lights, and in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont with fifty arc lights and seventy-nine incandescent. The tragic burning of the Opéra-Comique, in May, 1887, gave a great impulse to the adoption of the new method in preference to the use of gas, and the city north of the Seine was divided into five secteurs, each furnished by its own electrical company. This method still prevails, the number of secteurs having been increased to seven, one for the left bank of the river, and the different companies hold their concessions for the space of eighteen years. The unit of measurement is the hectowatt-heure, the price of which ranges from ten to fifteen centimes, whilst in other cities, according to statistics of November, 1897, it ranged from five to seven centimes in Brussels, from six to seven in London, and at about seven and a half in Berlin.

This excessive price has had the natural result of curtailing the use of electricity as an illuminator; and the usual thrifty habits of the French householder and municipality contribute to make the capital anything but a well-lighted city at night,—contrary to the general impression. The stranger who leaves the main boulevards and enters any of the minor streets, even such a wide and important one as the Boulevard Saint-Germain, is struck with the village darkness of these thoroughfares. Not only is there no other means of illumination generally but the street-lamps burning gas, which are sufficiently widely spaced,—and, in the case of the boulevard just mentioned, masked by trees,—but all the house-fronts are tightly closed and as black as night. One may cross the Place Vendôme, five minutes from the Opéra, in the middle of the evening in the middle of the season, and have barely light enough to avoid other pedestrians. All around the great circle the houses show no gleam of light in their windows, with two or three exceptions, and the effect is anything but cheerful. In this Place, as in so many localities in Paris, the pedestrians take to the middle of the streets,—in the wide thoroughfares, to cross them, or to avoid détours, and in the narrow ones, because of the insufficiency of sidewalks,—and good eyesight becomes of the utmost importance. Fortunately, the cabs and carriages all carry double lanterns, and even the bicyclers, those terrors to foot-passengers, are compelled to show a light of some kind and to sound some kind of warning. Of these, the neat and efficient little lantern and the bell fixed to the handle-bar are not yet in general use,—the French cycler mounts any kind of a lamp, even a paper Venetian lantern, on the front of his machine, and rings a tea-bell, or sounds a small horn, as he dashes along. If he display no consideration whatever for the pedestrian, he, in turn, perils his own neck with the utmost willingness, and the risks he takes in the narrow and crowded streets, and the coolness and skill with which he avoids the fate he so justly deserves, are equally remarkable.

In the summer of 1898, the discussion concerning the deficient éclairage électrique, periodically revived, took on new animation in view of the approaching Exposition of 1900 and the admitted inferiority of Paris in this respect to other cities. The question was brought up in the Conseil Municipal in the spring; the various companies made a proposition to modify their contracts with the city and to effect a considerable reduction in their price, as much as twenty-five or thirty-five per cent, to individual consumers, in return for a prolongation of their contracts to 1930,—the present ones expiring in 1907 and 1908. This prolongation, they said, would allow them to assume the heavy expense of establishing new plants, and extending their wires, while at the same time reducing the price,—the near approach of the end of the present contracts restraining them from doing either in view of the necessity of securing a speedy return upon the capital already invested. The municipal councillors replied with another proposition,—to maintain the status quo until the expiration of the present contracts, and then, in some ten or fifteen years, when the condition of the municipal finances would permit, to establish three great compagnies fermières, which should furnish both gas and electricity at a very moderate price, to be set by the Conseil itself. The objections to this plan were set forth very freely,—in the first place, it prolonged an intolerable situation, and just at the moment when the capital was inviting all the world to visit her. In the second place, nothing is more doubtful than the future,—it is quite possible that in the course of fifteen years electricity may be superseded by some other power, as the utilization of the solar heat; if the Municipal Council are so convinced of the excellence of their system, why not put it in practice at once, as they have the power? Moreover, it is very doubtful if the financial condition of the city will be better in 1907 or 1908 than it is at present; it will be necessary at that date, at the expiration of the concessions, to purchase the plants of the companies. The municipal debt, so far from diminishing, has, so far, steadily increased; it is estimated that the city will have to borrow, in these ten years, the sum of four hundred and seventy-five millions of francs,—twenty millions for the conversion of the loan of 1886, forty millions for the water-supply, a hundred and sixty-five millions for the Métropolitan railway, fifty millions for education, and two hundred millions for the opening and maintenance of highways. It is, therefore, highly probable that the municipal control of the electric lighting, so far from bringing any amelioration of the lot of the consumer, will only be considered as another source of municipal revenue, like the State monopoly of tobacco, powder, etc. It is recalled that these monopolies always incite the public administration to draw from them the greatest possible profit,—as in the case of the water-supply, the price of which has doubled since the city has assumed the management of it. One of the immediate results of this augmentation has been a great increase in the number of electric elevators.

In this connection, the experience of the city with the gas company is recalled. In 1888, the Compagnie parisienne du gaz offered to lower the price to twenty-five centimes the cubic mètre for lighting and to twenty for motive power, in return for certain considerations which involved no pecuniary cost to the city. The Conseil Municipal refused this offer. The result was somewhat as follows: in 1888, there were consumed in Paris and in the banlieue, in round numbers, two hundred and ninety-eight millions of cubic mètres of gas, and in 1897, three hundred and fifteen; the average consumption for the period 1888-1898 being thus something over three hundred millions. Consequently, if the terms of the company had been accepted, the consumers would have had to pay in these ten years a hundred and thirty-three million francs less,—and the municipal council had made a present of this sum to the shareholders of the Compagnie du gaz. In the present case, the acceptance of the offer of the electrical companies would involve a reduction in the cost to the consumers, and also to the city, of two or three million francs a year, that is to say, of thirty or forty-five millions for the fifteen years of waiting which are proposed,—supposing, which is not at all probable, that the consumption would not greatly increase with the lowering of the cost. So that, from every point of view, it is considered that the necessity is for immediate reform.

ALL these larger administrative municipal details, and the Third Republic itself, date from 1870, the most important year in the history of France, and it may be thought that no record, however brief, of the machinery of government, of the characteristics, the aspirations, and tendencies of this modern society, would be approximately correct without some allusion to its recent origin, to those tremendous political events which so transformed it, and which still remain for it an endless and hopelessly bitter source of speculation, of discussion, and of fierce recrimination. In this overthrow of a nation, it is the great figure of the Chancellor of the German Empire that fills the scene, moving apparently at his will kings, emperors, and ambassadors, and influencing, even at this late day, every measure of the government of the capital and the nation by an enduring Consternation,—by a fear that does but increase from year to year. The incompetence of the Emperor, the folly of the Empress, probably but served to aid or to accelerate the ruin which Bismarck thought necessary to secure his great building,—the Confederation of the North German states had been consolidated by the defeat of Austria at Sadowa, but France, he was convinced, would never consent to the re-establishment of the German Empire. Even the vanquished admit that he did not want war for the sake of war; but, by his own admission, in 1892, he was willing to secure this necessary result by any trick, even that of the forger.

Despite the recent assertions of the French minister, M. Ollivier, it is probable that the Empire of Louis Napoleon had lost all its allies. Austria, anxious to avenge Sadowa, was restrained by the threat of the intervention of Russia; that power still considered the dual empire its rival in the Balkans and still remembered the Crimea; an offensive and defensive alliance had been concluded by Prussia with the German states south of the Main. Thus prepared, the chancellor waited for an opportunity, and as none presented itself soon enough, he made one. The revolution in Spain in 1868 had driven Queen Isabella into exile and left her throne vacant; Marshal Prim, who retained the reins of power, was negotiating in the different courts of Europe to find an acceptable new sovereign. At the beginning of July, 1870, Paris was surprised to hear that the candidate chosen by him, and who would probably be proclaimed by the Cortès, was Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. This negotiation had been carried on secretly, the French ambassador at Madrid had been informed of nothing, and from Marshal Prim's documents it was afterward learned that Bismarck himself had suggested the prince for the crown. It was very certain that France would oppose this union of the dynasties of Berlin and Madrid, and, in fact, on the 6th of July the government sent a message to the Chamber protesting against this candidature and declaring that it would be compelled to oppose it, if necessary, to the last extremity.

Three days later, M. Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, sought an interview with the King of Prussia at Ems, where he was taking the waters, and requested him, as head of the Hohenzollern family, not to give his consent to the candidature of Prince Leopold. The king replied that, in this affair, he had intervened not as King of Prussia but as head of the family, and the interview ended without any definite assurances on his part. However, Prince Anthony of Hohenzollern, the father of Leopold, officially announced that his son was no longer a candidate. Then the French diplomacy came to Bismarck's aid by committing a great blunder; M. Benedetti sought another interview with the king, who had not yet heard of this withdrawal, informed him of it, and requested him to give the French government formal assurance that Prince Leopold would abide by it. This promise the king refused to give, but he notified the ambassador that he would inform him when he had received a confirmation of the renunciation. When this was received, he sent word to M. Benedetti by an aide-de-camp, refusing him the third audience which he requested, stating that he approved of the prince's decision, but declining to bind himself with regard to any future negotiations.

An official statement of these interviews was drawn up under the eyes of the king by his private councillor Abeken, and telegraphed to Bismarck, with authority to publish it. This statement contained nothing that need inflame the national feeling in either Germany or France, but, as re-edited by the chancellor, it represented the French ambassador as unduly importunate, and as having received a flat refusal from the monarch. The patriotism on both sides took fire; and war was declared on the 19th of July. The Germans assert that it would have been inevitable in any case, without this falsification of the despatch of Ems, but the Iron Chancellor is convicted, on his own testimony, of having desired it and of having wrought to bring it about.

M. Émile Ollivier, Louis Napoleon's minister, president of the Conseil, whose "light heart" for the "great responsibility" of the war with Germany has earned him a special measure of obloquy, has within the last two or three years appeared again in public, in his own defence. In an interview granted an editor of the Gil Blas on the twenty-sixth anniversary of his fall, the ex-minister made a series of statements justifying the men and measures of that fatal period, and contributing some very important assertions to history. "We committed no faults," said M. Ollivier; "we were unfortunate, that was all, and I have nothing, nothing with which to reproach myself." France, he declares, was assured of the alliance of Austria and Italy, even after Reischoffen; the plan of campaign, which has been so much criticised, the scattering of the troops along the frontier, was imposed by the Austrian general staff. Sedan, however, chilled these allies, and delivered Germany, as Bismarck himself wrote, from all danger of a coalition against her. The inertia of the Emperor, who was ill with the stone, who could not command himself, and "would suffer no one to take the command in his place;" the errors of the generals, including Mac-Mahon; the treason of Bazaine, and the council of war held by the ministers and presided over by the Empress, at which the fatal march on Sedan was determined upon, all combined to ruin the national cause. The Empress would not comprehend, notwithstanding the instances of the Emperor, of Mac-Mahon, of Prince Napoleon, that "it was at Paris alone that the Empire could be defended, at Paris that France could be armed, at Paris that the allies, who had promised their aid, could be constrained to pronounce their adherence." Through a false conception of the interests of the dynasty, it was resolved to go to Sedan, notwithstanding the Emperor, who said to Mac-Mahon: "Since it is so, let us go and get our heads broken." The last volume of M. Ollivier's work, L'Empire libéral: études, récits et souvenirs, has appeared in this present year (1898), and completes an able and very interesting defence of a dynasty which has not found many apologists as yet.

General Trochu, military commandant of Paris during the siege, has also, in his Mémoires, published in 1896, dwelt upon the all-important part which the capital might have played in the great drama of the national defence. "I dreamed," he says, "of a Parisian population forgetting before the grandeur of the common peril its animosity toward the Empire, in order to associate itself with us in the supreme effort which we were about to make in conjunction with it; of Paris, with its immense resources, put in a state of defence by the labor of a hundred thousand arms and, after a brief delay, rendered impregnable." This theory of the great importance of the capital is, however, by no means held by all the military critics of the war.

It is, perhaps, well to dwell, at some length, in any effort—however superficial—to appreciate the present condition and the promise for the future of this nation and this capital, on this period of the war with Germany, for the burden of contemporary testimony seems to be that there has been, practically, no recovery from the blow. Nothing is more interesting in contemporary sociology than the tone of depression, almost of humility, of lack of national elasticity and self-assertiveness, in the current French literature. There are still to be met with, of course, the familiar assertions that France is "the cradle of enlightened liberties," the "hope of struggling nationalities," and similar vague phrases, but always qualified with some allusion to the present depression and extinguishment. These admissions appear on every hand:—in Le Temps, of November 7, 1898, in its review of the second volume of M. Samuel Denis's Histoire contemporaine: La chute de L'Empire, we read: "The period comprised between the 15th of July, 1870, and the last months of the year 1875 is, perhaps, of all our national history, the most fruitful in dramatic events. It is, without any doubt, that which has for us all the keenest interest,—the most poignant. The history of these days of mourning, it is what our fathers did, with their tears and with their blood, and it is the history of events which still oppress with all their weight our national life. It is that which constitutes our malady; it is, that after twenty-eight years, we are still the vanquished." The Duc de Broglie, in an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 1, 1896, a review of the colonial policy of the Third Republic between the years 1871 and 1896, a period in which her ministers strove—with very doubtful success, he thinks—to recover in some degree the prestige lost in the war and in the subsequent check in Egypt, vis-à-vis with England, sums up: "We are not alone in bearing the heavy heritage of the war of 1870; all the world has its part in the sentiment of general uneasiness, from which no one escapes. It is the common condition, and even though France should be the only one to suffer from it, the other peoples, still, should not resign themselves to it without mortification.... Well! behold it revived, this sombre right of conquest, in all its nakedness, in all its rigor;—it has installed itself in the very centre, in the full light of civilization, and all, statesmen as well as doctors of philosophy, political and social, have bowed before it.... So long as this spectacle lasts, a brand is imprinted upon the front of modern society like a memento homo which recalls to it that the progress with which it flatters itself has purified only the surface and which notifies democracy, so proud of its puissance, that it is only a dust of men, a plaything, like all human things, of all the winds that blow of brute strength or of fortune."

Some interesting details have recently appeared concerning the official residence, the Tuileries, under the last of the French Empires. For the commonplace furniture which they found there, the Emperor and the Empress gradually substituted other, much more luxurious. His apartments were on the ground-floor, communicating by a small stairway with those of the Empress on the floor above. There, the first salon, in pale green and gold, reserved for the chamberlains and the ladies of honor, was furnished with a great mirror in which were reflected all the gardens, the Champs Élysées and the Arch of Triumph in the distance; this room gave access to the pink salon, of which the chimney-piece was in white marble, set off with lapis-lazuli and gold, and the ceiling represented the Arts rendering homage to her Majesty. From this salon the visitor entered the blue one, where she gave private audience, "always receiving her guests graciously and manifesting an unwillingness to part with them." Beyond the salon bleu was a little cabinet with a secretary, a little boudoir, the library with small ebony tables, the dressing-room, the oratory, entered through folding-doors, and finally the bedchamber of the Empress.

The Imperial couple breakfasted in their apartments tête-à-tête but the dinner was served in state and in full dress. On Sundays, after déjeuner, the court heard mass in the chapel, the voices of the singers were accompanied by harps, and the sermon was never to exceed a half-hour in length. The Emperor, wearing the uniform of a general, sat through the service in imperturbable gravity, his hands crossed. On Good Friday, the Stabat Mater was chanted by the best artists; the ladies were in black, with long black veils.

A species of military discipline was imposed upon all those who were lodged in the palace. All the doors were closed at midnight, and the officer of the guard reported next morning all the delinquents who came in later. No workman from outside was admitted into the palace, all alterations and repairs were under the charge of the officials of the Régie. In addition to the military guard, a brigade of special police exercised a constant surveillance over the neighborhood and all the entrances of the building. The agents, costumed en parfaits gentlemen, stood about in groups at all the doors, and, without interrupting their conversation, watched narrowly all those who presented themselves for admission. When the Emperor went out, in a phaeton or brake, driving himself, a small unpretentious coupé or brougham followed him everywhere, a short distance behind, and in it was the chief of police attached to his person. At the masked balls of the Tuileries, every gentleman was obliged to remove his mask on entering; police officials were stationed at all the doors, and several of them, wearing the Imperial livery, passed about among the guests, serving refreshments. The official balls of the Tuileries were splendid, but invitations to the balls of the Empress on "Mondays," were the most prized. For this information, we are indebted to an article in the Century Magazine.