Royal Palaces and Parks of France
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Title: Royal Palaces and Parks of France
Author: M. F. Mansfield
Illustrator: Blanche McManus
Release date: June 19, 2008 [eBook #25842]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
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ROYAL PALACES AND PARKS OF FRANCE
* * * * *
_WORKS OF
FRANCIS MILTOUN_
_Rambles on the Riviera_ $2.50
_Rambles in Normandy_ 2.50
_Rambles in Brittany_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals of Northern France_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals of Southern France_ 2.50
_In the Land of Mosques and Minarets_ 3.00
_Royal Palaces and Parks of France_ 3.00
_Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country_ 3.00
_Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces_ 3.00
_Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy and the Border Provinces_ 3.00
_Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car_ 3.00
_The Automobilist Abroad_ net 3.00
(_Postage Extra_)
_L. C. Page and Company_
_53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass._
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Terrace of Henri IV, Saint Germain_ (_See page 286_)]
[Illustration]
ROYAL PALACES AND PARKS OF FRANCE
by
FRANCIS MILTOUN
Author of "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," "Castles
and Chateaux of Old Burgundy," "Rambles in Normandy,"
"Italian Highways and Byways
from a Motor-Car," etc.
With Many Illustrations
Reproduced from paintings made on the spot by Blanche Mcmanus
Boston
L. C. Page & Company
1910
Copyright, 1910.
by L. C. Page & Company.
(Incorporated)
All rights reserved
First Impression, November, 1910
Printed by
The Colonial Press
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
Preface
"A thousand years ago, by the rim of a tiny spring, a monk who had
avowed himself to the cult of Saint Saturnin, robed, cowled and
sandalled, knelt down to say a prayer to his beloved patron saint.
Again he came, this time followed by more of his kind, and a wooden
cross was planted by the side of the "Fontaine Belle Eau," by this
time become a place of pious pilgrimage. After the monk came a
king, the latter to hunt in the neighbouring forest."
It was this old account of fact, or legend, that led the author and
illustrator of this book to a full realization of the wealth of historic
and romantic incidents connected with the French royal parks and
palaces, incidents which the makers of guidebooks have passed over in
favour of the, presumably, more important, well authenticated facts of
history which are often the bare recitals of political rises and falls
and dull chronologies of building up and tearing down.
Much of the history of France was made in the great national forests and
the royal country-houses of the kingdom, but usually it has been only
the events of the capital which have been passed in review. To a great
extent this history was of the gallant, daring kind, often written in
blood, the sword replacing the pen.
At times gayety reigned supreme, and at times it was sadness; but always
the pageant was imposing.
The day of pageants has passed, the day when lords and ladies moved
through stately halls, when royal equipages hunted deer or boar on royal
preserves, when gay cavalcades of solemn corteges thronged the great
French highways to the uttermost frontiers and ofttimes beyond. Those
days have passed; but, to one who knows the real France, a ready-made
setting is ever at hand if he would depart a little from the beaten
paths worn smooth by railway and automobile tourists who follow only the
lines of conventional travel.
France, even to-day, the city and the country alike, is the paradise of
European monarchs on a holiday. One may be met at Biarritz on the shores
of the Gascon gulf; another may be taking the waters at Aix or Vichy,
shooting pigeons under the shadow of the Tete de Chien, or hunting at
Rambouillet. This is modern France, the most cosmopolitan meeting place
and playground of royalty in the world.
French royal parks and palaces, those of the kings and queens of
mediaeval, as well as later, times, differ greatly from those of other
lands. This is perhaps not so much in their degree of splendour and
luxury as in the sentiment which attaches itself to them. In France
there has ever been a spirit of gayety and spontaneity unknown
elsewhere. It was this which inspired the construction and maintenance
of such magnificent royal residences as the palaces of Saint
Germain-en-Laye, Fontainebleau, Versailles, Compiegne, Rambouillet,
etc., quite different from the motives which caused the erection of the
Louvre, the Tuileries or the Palais Cardinal at Paris.
Nowhere else does there exist the equal of these inspired royal
country-houses of France, and, when it comes to a consideration of their
surrounding parks and gardens, or those royal hunting preserves in the
vicinity of the Ile de France, or of those still further afield, at
Rambouillet or in the Loire country, their superiority to similar
domains beyond the frontiers is even more marked.
In plan this book is a series of itineraries, at least the chapters are
arranged, to a great extent in a topographical sequence; and, if the
scope is not as wide as all France, it is because of the prominence
already given to the parks and palaces of Touraine and elsewhere in the
old French provinces in other works in which the artist and author have
collaborated. It is for this reason that so little consideration has
been given to Chambord, Amboise or Chenonceaux, which were as truly
royal as any of that magnificent group of suburban Paris palaces which
begins with Conflans and ends with Marly and Versailles.
Going still further afield, there is in the Pyrenees that chateau, royal
from all points of view, in which was born the gallant Henri of France
and Navarre, but a consideration of that, too, has already been included
in another volume.
The present survey includes the royal dwellings of the capital, those of
the faubourgs and the outlying districts far enough from town to be
recognized as in the country, and still others as remote as Rambouillet,
Chantilly and Compiegne. All, however, were intimately connected with
the life of the capital in the mediaeval and Renaissance days, and
together form a class distinct from any other monumental edifices which
exist, or ever have existed, in France.
Mere historic fact has been subordinated as far as possible to a recital
of such picturesque incidents of the life of contemporary times as the
old writers have handed down to us, and a complete chronological review
has in no manner been attempted.
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 13
II. THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH GARDENS 14
III. THE ROYAL HUNT IN FRANCE 43
IV. THE PALAIS DE LA CITE AND TOURNELLES 61
V. THE OLD LOUVRE AND ITS HISTORY 75
VI. THE LOUVRE OF FRANCIS I AND ITS SUCCESSORS 85
VII. THE TUILERIES AND ITS GARDENS 106
VIII. THE PALAIS CARDINAL AND THE PALAIS
ROYAL 131
IX. THE LUXEMBOURG, THE ELYSEE AND THE
PALAIS BOURBON 151
X. VINCENNES AND CONFLANS 168
XI. FONTAINEBLEAU AND ITS FOREST 180
XII. BY THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 203
XIII. MALMAISON AND MARLY 215
XIV. SAINT CLOUD AND ITS PARK 229
XV. VERSAILLES: THE GLORY OF FRANCE 244
XVI. THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES AND THE TRIANONS 260
XVII. SAINT GERMAIN-EN-LAYE 279
XVIII. MAINTENON 296
XIX. RAMBOUILLET AND ITS FOREST 309
XX. CHANTILLY 324
XXI. COMPIEGNE AND ITS FOREST 342
INDEX 363
[Illustration: List of Illustrations]
PAGE
TERRACE OF HENRI IV, SAINT GERMAIN (_see page 286_) _Frontispiece_
THE LOUVRE, THE TUILERIES AND THE PALAIS ROYAL OF TO-DAY _facing_ 12
"JARDIN FRANCAIS--JARDIN ANGLAIS" 15
HENRI IV IN AN OLD FRENCH GARDEN _facing_ 20
PARTERRE DE DIANE, CHENONCEAUX 27
PLAN OF SUNKEN GARDEN (JARDIN CREUX) 30
A PARTERRE _facing_ 32
BASSIN DE LA COURONNE, VAUX-LE-VICOMTE _facing_ 42
A "CUREE AUX FLAMBEAUX" _facing_ 46
AN IMPERIAL HUNT AT FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 52
RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE, RAMBOUILLET _facing_ 56
BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF OLD PARIS (Map) _facing_ 74
THE XIV CENTURY LOUVRE _facing_ 82
THE LOUVRE _facing_ 90
ORIGINAL PLAN OF THE TUILERIES (Diagram) 106
SALLE DES MARECHAUX, TUILERIES _facing_ 116
THE GALLERIES OF THE PALAIS ROYAL 146
BOURBON-ORLEANS DESCENDANTS OF LOUIS PHILIPPE (Diagram) _facing_ 146
PALAIS DU LUXEMBOURG _facing_ 154
DOOR IN THRONE ROOM, LUXEMBOURG 156
THE PETIT LUXEMBOURG _facing_ 156
THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS _facing_ 158
THE THRONE OF THE PALAIS BOURBON 161
VINCENNES UNDER CHARLES V 168
CHATEAU DE VINCENNES _facing_ 172
A HUNT UNDER THE WALLS OF VINCENNES _facing_ 174
CONFLANS 176
ORIGINAL PLAN OF FONTAINEBLEAU 180
FROM PARIS TO FONTAINEBLEAU (Map) _facing_ 180
PALAIS DE FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 186
SALLE DU THRONE, FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 190
FRAGMENTS FROM FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 192
CHEMINEE DE LA REINE, FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 194
MONUMENT TO ROUSSEAU AND MILLET AT BARBISON _facing_ 200
CHATEAU DE BAGATELLE 204
CHATEAU DE MALMAISON _facing_ 218
THE GARDENS OF SAINT CLOUD _facing_ 236
THE CASCADES AT SAINT CLOUD _facing_ 240
COUR DE MARBRE, VERSAILLES _facing_ 264
THE POTAGER DU ROY, VERSAILLES _facing_ 270
THE BASSIN DE LATONE, VERSAILLES _facing_ 272
THE FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE, VERSAILLES _facing_ 274
PETIT TRIANON _facing_ 276
LAITERIE DE LA REINE, PETIT TRIANON 277
SAINT GERMAIN (Diagram) 280
THE VALLEY OF THE SEINE, FROM THE TERRACE AT SAINT
GERMAIN _facing_ 288
FAUTEUIL OF MME. DE MAINTENON 297
CHATEAU DE MAINTENON _facing_ 300
AQUEDUCT OF LOUIS XIV AT MAINTENON _facing_ 306
CHATEAU DE RAMBOUILLET (Diagram) 309
LAITERIE DE LA REINE, RAMBOUILLET _facing_ 312
CHATEAU DE RAMBOUILLET _facing_ 316
CHANTILLY (Diagram) 325
STATUE OF LE NOTRE, CHANTILLY _facing_ 326
CHATEAU DE CHANTILLY _facing_ 336
COMPIEGNE (Diagram) 343
NAPOLEON'S BEDCHAMBER, COMPIEGNE _facing_ 352
COURS DE COMPIEGNE _facing_ 356
Royal Palaces and Parks of France
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The modern traveller sees something beyond mere facts. Historical
material as identified with the life of some great architectural glory
is something more than a mere repetition of chronologies; the sidelights
and the co-related incidents, though indeed many of them may be but
hearsay, are quite as interesting, quite as necessary, in fact, for the
proper appreciation of a famous palace or chateau as long columns of
dates, or an evolved genealogical tree which attempts to make plain that
which could be better left unexplained. The glamour of history would be
considerably dimmed if everything was explained, and a very seamy block
of marble may be chiselled into a very acceptable statue if the workman
but knows how to avoid the doubtful parts.
An itinerary that follows not only the ridges, but occasionally plunges
down into the hollows and turns up or down such crossroads as may have
chanced to look inviting, is perhaps more interesting than one laid out
on conventional lines. A shadowy something, which for a better name may
be called sentiment, if given full play encourages these side-steps, and
since they are generally found fruitful, and often not too fatiguing,
the procedure should be given every encouragement.
Not all the interesting royal palaces and chateaux of France are those
with the best known names. Not all front on Paris streets and quays, no
more than the best glimpses of ancient or modern France are to be had
from the benches of a sight-seeing automobile.
Versailles, and even Fontainebleau, are too frequently considered as but
the end of a half-day pilgrimage for the tripper. It were better that
one should approach them more slowly, and by easy stages, and leave them
less hurriedly. As for those architectural monuments of kings, which
were tuned in a minor key, they, at all events, need to be hunted down
on the spot, the enthusiast being forearmed with such scraps of historic
fact as he can gather beforehand, otherwise he will see nothing at
Conflans, Marly or Bourg-la-Reine which will suggest that royalty ever
had the slightest concern therewith.
Dealing first with Paris it is evident it is there that the pilgrim to
French shrines must make his most profound obeisance. This applies as
well to palaces as to churches. In all cases one goes back into the past
to make a start, and old Paris, what there is left of it, is still old
Paris, though one has to leave the grand boulevards to find this out.
Colberts and Haussmanns do not live to-day, or if they do they have
become so "practical" that a drainage canal or an overhead or
underground railway is more of a civic improvement than the laying out
of a public park, like the gardens of the Tuileries, or the building and
embellishment of a public edifice--at least with due regard for the best
traditions. When the monarchs of old called in men of taste and culture
instead of "business men" they builded in the most agreeable fashion. We
have not improved things with our "systems" and our committees of
"_hommes d'affaires_."
It is the fashion to-day to decry the cavaliers and the wearers of
"love-locks," but they had a pretty taste in art and an eye for artistic
surroundings, those old fellows of the sword and cloak; a much more
pretty taste than their descendants, the steam-heat and running-water
partisans of to-day. Louis XV and Empire drawing and dining-rooms are
everywhere advertised as the attractions of the great palace hotels, and
some of them are very good copies of their predecessors, though one
cannot help but feel that the clientele as a whole is more insistent on
telephones in the bedrooms and auto-taxis always on tap than with regard
to the sentiment of good taste and good cheer which is to be evoked by
eating even a hurried meal in a room which reproduces some historically
famous Salle des Gardes or the Chambre of the OEil de Boeuf of the
Louvre, if, indeed, most of the hungry folk know what their surroundings
are supposed to represent.
Any chronicle which attempts to set down a record of the comings and
goings of French monarchs is saved from being a mere dull chronology of
dates and resume of facts by its obligatory references to the architects
and builders who made possible the splendid settings amid which these
picturesque rulers passed their lives.
The castle builders of France, the garden designers, the architects,
decorators and craftsmen of all ranks produced not a medley, but a
coherent, cohesive whole, which stands apart from, and far ahead of,
most of the contemporary work of its kind in other lands. Castles and
keeps were of one sort in England and Scotland, of still another along
the Rhine, and if the Renaissance palaces and chateaux first came into
being in Italy it is certain they never grew to the flowering luxuriance
there that they did in France.
Thus does France establish itself as leader in new movements once again.
It was so in the olden time with the arts of the architect, the
landscape gardener and the painter; it is so to-day with respect to such
mundane, less sentimental things as automobiles and aeroplanes.
Another chapter, in a story long since started, is a repetition, or
review, of the outdoor life of the French monarchs and their followers.
Not only did Frenchmen of Gothic and Renaissance times have a taste for
travelling far afield, pursuing the arts of peace or war as their
conscience or conditions dictated; but they loved, too, the open country
and the open road at home; they loved also _la chasse_, as they did
tournaments, _fetes-champetres_ and outdoor spectacles of all kinds. Add
these stage settings to the splendid costuming and the flamboyant
architectural accessories of Renaissance times in France and we have
what is assuredly not to be found in other lands, a spectacular and
imposing pageant of mediaeval and Renaissance life and manners which is
superlative from all points of view.
This is perhaps hard, sometimes, to reconcile with the French attitude
towards outdoor life to-day, when _la chasse_ means the hunting of tame
foxes (a sport which has been imported from across the channel),
"_sport_" means a prize fight, and a garden party or a _fete-champetre_
a mere gossiping rendezvous over a cup of badly made tea. In the France
of the olden time they did things differently--and better.
Not all French history was made, or written, within palace walls; much
of it came into being in the open air, like the two famous meetings by
the Bidassoa, Napoleon's first sight of Marie Louise on the highroad
leading out from Senlis, or his making the Pope a prisoner at the Croix
de Saint Heram, in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
It is this change of scene that makes French history so appealing to
those who might otherwise let it remain in shut-up and dry-as-dust books
on library shelves.
The French monarchs of old were indeed great travellers, and it is by
virtue of the fact that affairs of state were often promulgated and
consummated _en voyage_ that a royal stamp came to be acquired by many a
chateau or country-house which to-day would hardly otherwise be
considered as of royal rank.
Throughout France, notably in the neighbourhood of Paris, are certain
chateaux--palaces only by lack of name--of the nobility where royalties
were often as much at home as under their own royal standards. One
cannot attempt to confine the limits where these chateaux are to be
found, for they actually covered the length and breadth of France.
Journeying afield in those romantic times was probably as comfortably
accomplished, by monarchs at least, as it is to-day. What was lacking
was speed, but they lodged at night under roofs as hospitable as those
of the white and gold caravanserai (and some more humble) which perforce
come to be temporary abiding places of royalties _en tour_ to-day. The
writer has seen the Dowager Queen of Italy lunching at a neighbouring
table at a roadside _trattoria_ in Piedmont which would have no class
distinction whatever as compared with the average suburban road-house
across the Atlantic. At Biarritz, too, the automobiling monarch,
Alphonse XIII, has been known to take "tea" on the terrace of the great
tourist-peopled hotel in company with mere be-goggled commoners. _Le
temps va!_ Were monarchs so democratic in the olden time, one wonders.
The court chronicles of all ages, and all ranks, have proved a gold
mine for the makers of books of all sorts and conditions. Not only court
chroniclers but pamphleteers, even troubadours and players, have
contributed much to the records of the life of mediaeval France. All
history was not made by political intrigue or presumption; a good deal
of it was born of the gentler passions, and a chap-book maker would put
often into print many accounts which the recorder of mere history did
not dare use. History is often enough sorry stuff when it comes to human
interest, and it needs editing only too often.
Courtiers and the fashionable world of France, ever since the days of
the poetry-making and ballad-singing Francis and Marguerite, and before,
for that matter, made of literature--at least the written and spoken
chronicle of some sort--a diversion and an accomplishment. Royal or
official patronage given these mediaeval story-tellers did not always
produce the truest tales. Then, as now, writer folk were wont to
exaggerate, but most of their work made interesting reading.
These courtiers of the itching pen did not often write for money. Royal
favour, or that of some fair lady, or ladies, was their chief return in
many more cases than those for which their accounts were settled by mere
dross. It is in the work of such chroniclers as these that one finds a
fund of unrepeated historic lore.
The dramatists came on the scene with their plots ready-made (and have
been coming ever since, if one recalls the large number of French
costume plays of recent years), and whether they introduced errors of
fact, or not, there was usually so much truth about their work that the
very historians more than once were obliged to have recourse to the
productions of their colleagues. The dramatists' early days in France,
as in England, were their golden days. The mere literary man, or
chronicler, was often flayed alive, but the dramatist, even though he
dished up the foibles of a king, and without any dressing at that, was
feted and made as much of as a record piano player of to-day.
One hears a lot about the deathbed scribblers in England in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there was not much of that sort
of thing in France. No one here penned bitter jibes and lascivious
verses merely to keep out of jail, as did Nash and Marlowe in England.
In short, one must give due credit to the court chroniclers and
ballad-singers of France as being something more than mere pilfering,
blackmailing hacks.
All the French court and its followers in the sixteenth century shouted
epigrams and affected being greater poets than they really were. It was
a good sign, and it left its impress on French literature. Following in
the footsteps of Francis I and the two Marguerites nobles vied with each
other in their efforts to produce some epoch-making work of poesy or
prose, and while they did not often publish for profit they were glad
enough to see themselves in print. Then there were also the professional
men of letters, as distinct from the courtiers with literary ambitions,
the churchmen and courtly attaches of all ranks with the literary bee
humming in their bonnets. They, too, left behind them an imposing
record, which has been very useful to others coming after who were
concerned with getting a local colour of a brand which should look
natural.
It is with such guiding lights as are suggested by the foregoing resume
that one seeks his clues for the repicturing of the circumstances under
which French royal palaces were erected, as well as for the truthful
repetition of the ceremonies and functions of the times, for the court
life of old, whether in city palace or country chateau, was a very
different thing from that of the Republican regime of to-day.
Not only were the royal Paris dwellings, from the earliest times, of a
profound luxuriance of design and execution, but the private hotels, the
palaces, one may well say, of the nobility were of the same superlative
order, and kings and queens alike did not disdain to lodge therein on
such occasions as suited their convenience. The suggestive comparison is
made because of the close liens with which royalty and the higher
nobility were bound.
It is sufficient to recall, among others of this class, the celebrated
Hotel de Beauvais which will illustrate the reference. Not only was this
magnificent town house of palatial dimensions, but it was the envy of
the monarchs themselves, because of its refined elegance of
construction. This edifice exists to-day, in part, at No. 68 Rue
Francois Miron, and the visitor may judge for himself as to its former
elegance.
Loret, in his "Gazette" in verse, recounts a visit made to the Hotel de
Beauvais in 1663 by Marie Therese, the Queen of Louis XIV.
Mercredi, notre auguste Reine,
Cette charmante souveraine,
Fut chez Madame de Beauvais
Pour de son amiable palais
Voir les merveilles etonnantes
Et les raretes surprenantes.
Times have changed, for the worse or for the better. The sedan-chair and
the coach have given way to the automobile and the engine, and the wood
fire to a stale calorifer, or perhaps a gas-log.
The comparisons _are_ odious; there is no question as to this; but it is
by contrast that the subject is made the more interesting.
From the old Palais des Thermes (now a part of the Musee de Cluny) of
the Roman emperors down through the Palais de la Cite (where lodged the
kings of the first and second races) to the modern installations of the
Louvre is a matter of twelve centuries. The record is by no means a
consecutive one, but a record exists which embraces a dozen, at least,
of the Paris abodes of royalty, where indeed they lived according to
many varying scales of comfort and luxury.
Not all the succeeding French monarchs had the abilities or the
inclinations that enabled them to keep up to the traditions of the
art-loving Francis I, but almost all of their number did something
creditable in building or decoration, or commanded it to be done.
Louis XIV, though he delayed the adjustment of Europe for two centuries,
was the first real beautifier of Paris since Philippe Auguste. Privately
his taste in art and architecture was rather ridiculous, but publicly he
and his architects achieved great things in the general scheme.
[Illustration: _The_ Louvre _The_ Tuileries & _The_ Palais Royal _of_
To-Day]
Napoleon I, in turn, caught up with things in a political sense, in
truth he ran ahead of them, but he in no way neglected the
embellishments of the capital, and added a new wing to the Louvre, and
filled Musees with stolen loot, which remorse, or popular clamour,
induced him, for the most part, to return at a later day.
In a decade Napoleon made much history, and he likewise did much for the
royal palaces of France. After him a gap supervened until the advent of
Napoleon III, who, weakling that he was, had the perspicacity to give
the Baron Haussmann a chance to play his part in the making of modern
Paris, and if the Tuileries and Saint Cloud had not disappeared as a
result of his indiscretion the period of the Second Empire would not
have been at all discreditable, as far as the impress it left on Paris
was concerned.
CHAPTER II
THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH GARDENS
The French garden was a creation of all epochs from the fifteenth to the
seventeenth centuries, and, for the most part, those of to-day and of
later decades of the nineteenth century, are adaptations and
restorations of the classic accepted forms.
From the modest _jardinet_ of the moyen-age to the ample gardens and
_parterres_ of the Renaissance was a wide range. In their highest
expression these early French gardens, with their _broderies_ and
_carreaux_ may well be compared as works of art with contemporary
structures in stone or wood or stuffs in woven tapestries, which latter
they greatly resembled.
Under Louis XIV and Louis XV the elaborateness of the French garden was
even more an accentuated epitome of the tastes of the period. Near the
end of the eighteenth century a marked deterioration was noticeable and
a separation of the tastes which ordained the arrangement of
contemporary dwellings and their gardens was very apparent. Under the
Empire the antique style of furniture and decoration was used too, but
there was no contemporary expression with regard to garden making.
[Illustration: JARDIN FRANCAIS
JARDIN ANGLAIS]
In the second half of the nineteenth century, under the Second Empire,
the symmetrical lines of the old-time _parterres_ came again into being,
and to them were attached composite elements or motives, which more
closely resembled details of the conventional English garden than
anything distinctly French.
The English garden was, for the most part, pure affectation in France,
or, at best, it was treated as a frank exotic. Even to-day, in modern
France, where an old dwelling of the period of Henri IV, Francois I,
Louis XIII, Louis XIV, or Louis XV still exists with its garden, the
latter is more often than not on the classically pure French lines,
while that of a modern cottage, villa or chateau is often a poor,
variegated thing, fantastic to distraction.
Turning back the pages of history one finds that each people, each
century, possessed its own specious variety of garden; a species which
responded sufficiently to the tastes and necessities of the people, to
their habits and their aspirations.
Garden-making, like the art of the architect, differed greatly in
succeeding centuries, and it is for this reason that the garden of the
moyen-age, of the epoch of the Crusades, for example, did not bear the
least resemblance to the more ample _parterres_ of the Renaissance.
Civilization was making great progress, and it was necessary that the
gardens should be in keeping with a less restrained, more luxurious
method of life.
If the gardens of the Renaissance marked a progress over the _preaux_
and _jardinets_ of mediaevalism, those of Le Notre were a blossoming
forth of the Renaissance seed. Regretfully, one cannot say as much for
the garden plots of the eighteenth century, and it was only with the
mid-nineteenth century that the general outlines took on a real charm
and attractiveness again, and this was only achieved by going back to
original principles.
The first gardens were the _vergers_ and _preaux_, little checker-board
squares of a painful primitiveness as compared with later standards.
These squares, or _carreaux_, were often laid out in foliage and
blossoming plants as suggestive as possible of their being made of
carpeting or marble. When these miniature enclosures came to be
surrounded with trellises and walls the Renaissance in garden-making may
be considered as having been in full sway.
Under Louis XIV a certain affluence was noticeable in garden plots, and
with Louis XV an even more notable symmetry was apparent in the
disposition of the general outlines. By this time, the garden in France
had become a frame which set off the architectural charms of the
dwelling rather than remaining a mere accessory, but it was only with
the replacing of the castle-fortress by the more domesticated chateau
that a really generous garden space became a definite attribute of a
great house.
The first gardens surrounding the French chateaux were developments, or
adaptations, of Italian gardens, such as were designed across the Alps
by Mercogliano, during the feudal period.
Later, and during the time of the Crusades, the garden question hardly
entered into French life. Gardens, like all other luxuries, were given
little thought when the graver questions of peace and security were to
be considered, and, for this reason, there is little or nothing to say
of French gardens previous to the twelfth century.
An important species of the gardens of the moyen-age was that which was
found as an adjunct to the great monastic institutions, the _preaux_,
which were usually surrounded by the cloister colonnade. One of the most
important of these, of which history makes mention, was that of the
Abbaye de Saint Gall, of which Charlemagne was capitular. It was he who
selected the plants and vegetables which the dwellers therein should
cultivate.
Of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there is an abundant literary
record, and, in a way, a pictorial record as well. From these one can
make a very good deduction of what the garden of that day was like;
still restrained, but yet something more than rudimentary. From now on
French gardens were divided specifically into the _potager_ and
_verger_.
The _potager_ was virtually a vegetable garden within the walls which
surrounded the seigneurial dwelling, and was of necessity of very
limited extent, chiefly laid out in tiny _carreaux_, or beds, bordered
by tiles or bricks, much as a small city garden is arranged to-day. Here
were cultivated the commonest vegetables, a few flowers and a liberal
assortment of herbs, such as rue, mint, parsley, sage, lavender, etc.
The _verger_, or _viridarium_, was practically a fruit garden, as it is
to-day, with perhaps a generous sprinkling of flowers and aromatic
plants. The _verger_ was always outside the walls, but not far from the
entrance or the drawbridge crossing the moat and leading to the chateau.
It was to the _verger_, or orchard, curiously enough, that in times of
peace the seigneur and his family retired after luncheon for diversion
or repose.
"D illocques vieng en cest vergier
Eascuns jour pour s'esbanoier."
Thus ran a couplet of the "Roman de Thebes"; and of the hundred or more
tales of chivalry in verse, which are recognized as classic, nearly all
make mention of the _verger_.
It was here that young men and maidens came in springtime for the fete
of flowers, when they wove chaplets and garlands, for the moyen-age had
preserved the antique custom of the coiffure of flowers, that is to say
hats of natural flowers, as we might call them to-day, except that
modern hats seemingly call for most of the products of the barnyard and
the farm in their decoration, as well as the flowers of the field.
The rose was queen among all these flowers and then came the lily and
the carnation, chiefly in their simple, savage state, not the highly
cultivated product of to-day. From the ballads and the love songs, one
gathers that there were also violets, eglantine, daisies, pansies,
forget-me-nots, and the marguerite, or _consoude_, was one of the most
loved of all.
The carnation, or _oeillet_, was called _armerie_; the pansy was
particularly in favour with the ladies, who embroidered it on their
handkerchiefs and their girdles. Still other flowers found a place in
this early horticultural catalogue, the marigold, gladiolus, stocks,
lily-of-the-valley and buttercups.
Frequently the _verger_ was surrounded by a protecting wall, of more or
less architectural pretense, with towers and accessories conforming to
the style of the period, and decorative and utilitarian fountains,
benches and seats were also common accessories.
[Illustration: _Henri IV in an Old French Garden_]
The old prints, which reproduced these early French gardens, are most
curious to study, amusing even; but their point of view was often
distorted as to perspective. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
perspective was almost wholly ignored in pictorial records. There was
often no scale, and no depth; everything was out of proportion with
everything else, and for this reason it is difficult to judge of the
exact proportions of many of these early French gardens.
The origin of garden-making in France, in the best accepted sense of the
term, properly began with the later years of the thirteenth century and
the early years of the fourteenth; continuing the tradition, remained
distinctly French until the mid-fifteenth century, for the Italian
influence did not begin to make itself felt until after the Italian wars
and travels of Charles VIII, Louis XI and Francis I.
The earliest traces of the work of the first two of these monarchs are
to be seen at Blois and, for a time henceforth, it is to be presumed
that all royal gardens in France were largely conceived under the
inspiration of Italian influences. Before, as there were primitives in
the art of painting in France, there were certainly French gardeners in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One of these, whoever he may
have been, was the designer of the _preaux_ and the _treilles_ of the
Louvre of Charles V, of which a pictorial record exists, and he, or
they, did work of a like nature for the powerful house of Bourgogne, and
for Rene d'Anjou, whom we know was a great amateur gardener.
The archives of these princely houses often recount the expenses in
detail, and so numerous are certain of them that it would not be
difficult to picture anew as to just what they referred.
Debanes, the gardener of the Chateau d'Angers, on a certain occasion,
gave an accounting for "X Sols" for repairing the grass-plots and for
making a _petit preau_. Again: "XI Sols" for the employ of six gardeners
to trim the vines and clean up the alleys of the _grand_ and _petit
jardin_.
Luxury in all things settled down upon all France to a greater degree
than hitherto in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and almost
without exception princely houses set out to rival one another in the
splendour of their surroundings. Now came in the ornamental garden as
distinct from the _verger_, and the _preau_ became a greensward
accessory, at once practical and decorative, the precursor of the
_pelouse_ and the _parterre_ of Le Notre.
The _preau_ (in old French _prael_) was a symmetrical square or
rectangular grass-grown garden plot. From the Latin _pratum_, or
_pratellum_, the words _preau_, _pre_ and _prairie_ were evolved
naturally enough, and came thus early to be applied in France to that
portion of the pleasure garden set out as a grassy lawn. The word is
very ancient, and has come down to us through the monkish vocabulary of
the cloister.
Some celebrated verse of Christine de Pisan, who wrote "The Life of
Charles V," thus describes the cloister at Poissy.
"Du cloistre grand large et especieux
Que est carre, et, afin qu'il soit mieulx
A un prael, ou milieu, gracieux
Vert sans grappin
Ou a plante en my un tres hault pin."
It was at this period, that of Saint Louis and the apotheosis of Gothic
architecture, that France was at the head of European civilization,
therefore in no way can her preeminence in garden-making be questioned.
The gardens of the Gothic era seldom surpassed the _enclos_ with a
rivulet passing through it, a spring, a pine tree giving a welcome
shade, some simple flowers and a _verger_ of fruit trees.
The neighbours of France were often warring among themselves but the
Grand Seigneur here was settling down to beautifying his surroundings
and framing his chateaux, manors and country-seats in dignified and most
appealing pictures. Grass-plots appeared in dooryards, flowers climbed
up along castle walls and shrubs and trees came to play a genuinely
esthetic role in the life of the times.
An illustrious stranger, banished from Italy, one Brunetto Latini, the
master of Dante, who had sought a refuge in France, wrote his views on
the matter, which in substance were as above.
About this time originated the progenitors of the _gloriettes_, which
became so greatly the vogue in the eighteenth century. Practically the
_gloriette_, a word in common use in northern France and in Flanders,
was a _logette de plaisance_. The Spaniards, too, in their _glorietta_,
a pavilion in a garden, had practically the same signification of the
word.
In the fourteenth century French garden the _gloriette_ was a sort of
arbour, or trellis-like summer-house, garnished with vines and often
perched upon a natural or artificial eminence. Other fast developing
details of the French garden were tree-bordered alleys and the planting
of more or less regularly set-out beds of flowering plants.
Vine trellises and vine-clad pavilions and groves were a speedy
development of these details, and played parts of considerable
importance in gardening under the French Renaissance.
In this same connection there is a very precise record in an account of
the gardens of the Louvre under Charles V concerning the contribution of
one, Jean Baril, maker of Arlors, to this form of the landscape
architect's art.
"Ornamental birds--peacocks, pheasants and swans now came in as adjuncts
to the French land and water garden." This was the way a certain
pertinent comment was made by a writer of the fifteenth century. From
the "Menagier de Paris," a work of the end of the fourteenth century,
one learns that behind a dwelling of a prince or noble of the time was
usually to be found a "_beau jardin tout plante d'arbres a fruits, de
legumes, de rosiers, orne de volieres et tapise de gazon sur lesquels se
promenent les paons_."
French gardens of various epochs are readily distinguished by the width
of their alleys. In the moyen-age the paths which separated the garden
plots were very narrow; in the early Renaissance period they were
somewhat wider, taking on a supreme maximum in the gardens of Le Notre.
Trimmed trees entered into the general scheme in France towards the end
of the fifteenth century. Under Henri IV and under Louis XII trees were
often trimmed in ungainly, fantastic forms, but with the advent of Le
Notre the good taste which he propagated so widely promptly rejected
these grotesques, which, for a fact, were an importation from Flanders,
like the _gloriettes_. Not by the remotest suggestion could a clipped
yew in the form of a peacock or a giraffe be called French. Le Notre
eliminated the menagerie and the aviary, but kept certain geometrical
forms, particularly with respect to hedges, where niches were frequently
trimmed out for the placing of statues, columns surmounted with golden
balls, etc.
The most famous of the frankly Renaissance gardens developed as a result
of the migrations of the French monarchs in Italy were those surrounding
such palaces and chateaux as Fontainebleau, Amboise, and Blois. Often
these manifestly French gardens, though of Italian inspiration in the
first instance, were actually the work of Italian craftsmen. Pucello
Marceliano at four hundred _livres_ and Edme Marceliano at two hundred
_livres_ were in the employ of Henri II. It was the former who laid out
the magnificent _Parterre de Diane_ at Chenonceaux, where Catherine de
Medici later, being smitten with the skill of the Florentines, gave the
further commission of the _Jardin Vert_, which was intended to complete
this _parterre_, to Henri le Calabrese and Jean Collo.
The later Renaissance gardens divided themselves into various classes,
_jardins de plaisir_, _jardins de plaisance_, _jardins de proprete_,
etc. _Parterres_ now became of two sorts, _parterres a compartiments_
and _parterres de broderies_, names sufficiently explicit not to need
further comment.
[Illustration: _"Parterre de Diane," Chenonceaux_]
It is difficult to determine just how garden _broderies_ came into
being. They may have been indirectly due to woman's love of embroidery
and the garden alike. The making of these garden _broderies_ was a
highly cultivated art. Pierre Vallet, embroiderer to Henri IV, created
much in his line of distinction and note, and acquired an extensive
clientele for his flowers and models. Often these gardens, with their
_parterres_ and _broderies_ were mere additions to an already existing
architectural scheme, but with respect to the gardens of the Luxembourg
and Saint Germain-en-Laye they came into being with the edifices
themselves, or at least those portions which they were supposed to
embellish. Harmony was then first struck between the works of the
horticulturist--the garden-maker--and those of the architect--the
builder in stone and wood. This was the prelude to those majestic
ensembles of which Le Notre was to be the composer.
Of the celebrated French palace and chateau gardens which are not
centered upon the actual edifices with which they are more or less
intimately connected, but are distinct and apart from the gardens which
in most cases actually surround a dwelling, may be mentioned those of
Montargis, Saint Germain, Amboise, Villers-Cotterets and Fontainebleau.
These are rather parks, like the "home-parks," so called, in England,
which, while adjuncts to the dwellings, are complete in themselves and
are possessed of a separate identity, or reason for being. Chiefly
these, and indeed most French gardens of the same epoch, differ greatly
from contemporary works in Italy in that the latter were often built and
terraced up and down the hillsides, whereas the French garden was laid
out, in the majority of instances, on the level, though each made use of
interpolated architectural accessories such as balustrades, statuary,
fountains, etc.
Mollet was one of the most famous gardeners of the time of Louis XIV. He
was the gardener of the Duc d'Aumale, who built the gardens of the
Chateau d'Anet while it was occupied by Diane de Poitiers, and for their
time they were considered the most celebrated in France for their upkeep
and the profusion and variety of their flowers. This was the highest
development of the French garden up to this time.
It is possible that this Claude Mollet was the creator of the
_parterres_ and _broderies_ so largely used in his time, and after.
Mollet's formula was derived chiefly from flower and plant forms,
resembling in design oriental embroideries. He made equal use of the
labyrinth and the sunken garden. His idea was to develop the simple
_parquet_ into the elaborate _parterre_. He began his career under Henri
III and ultimately became the gardener of Henri IV. His elaborate work
"Theatre des Plans et Jardinage" was written towards 1610-1612, but was
only published a half a century later. It was only in the sixteenth
century that gardens in Paris were planned and developed on a scale
which was the equal of many which had previously been designed in the
provinces.
[Illustration: PLAN of SUNKEN GARDEN (_JARDIN CREUX_)]
The chief names in French gardening--before the days of Le Notre--were
those of the two Mollets, the brothers Boyceau, de la Barauderie and
Jacques de Menours, and all successively held the post of Superintendent
of the Garden of the King.
In these royal gardens there was always a distinctly notable feature,
the _grand roiales_, the principal avenues, or alleys, which were here
found on a more ambitious scale than in any of the private gardens of
the nobility. The central avenue was always of the most generous
proportions, the nomenclature coming from royal--the _grand roial_ being
the equivalent of _Allee Royale_, that is, Avenue Royal.
By the end of the sixteenth century the Garden of the Tuileries, which
was later to be entirely transformed by Le Notre, offered an interesting
aspect of the _parquet_ at its best. In "_Paris a Travers les Ages_" one
reads that from the windows of the palace the garden resembled a great
checker-board containing more than a hundred uniform _carreaux_. There
were six wide longitudinal alleys or avenues cut across by eight or ten
smaller alleys which produced this rectangular effect. Within some of
the squares were single, or grouped trees; in others the conventional
_quincunx_; others were mere expanses of lawn, and still others had
flowers arranged in symmetrical patterns. In one of these squares was a
design which showed the escutcheons of the arms of France and those of
the Medici. These gardens of the Tuileries were first modified by a
project of Bernard Palissy, the porcelainiste. He let his fancy have
full sway and the criss-cross alleys and avenues were set out at their
junctures with moulded ornaments, enamelled miniatures, turtles in
faience and frogs in porcelain. It was this, perhaps, which gave the
impetus to the French for their fondness to-day for similar effects, but
Bernard Palissy doubtless never went so far as plaster cats on a
ridgepole, as one may see to-day on many a pretty villa in northern
France. This certainly lent an element of picturesqueness to the
Renaissance Garden of the Louvre, a development of the same spirit which
inspired this artist in his collaboration at Chenonceaux. This was the
formula which produced the _jardin delectable_, an exaggeration of the
taste of the epoch, but still critical of its time.
The gardens of the Renaissance readily divided themselves into two
classes, those of the _parterres a compartiments_ and those of the
_parterres de broderies_. The former, under Francis I and Henri II, were
divided into geometrical compartments thoroughly in the taste of the
Renaissance, but bordered frequently with representations of designs
taken from Venetian lace and various other contemporary stuffs. There
were other _parterres_, where the compartments were planned on a more
utilitarian scale; in other words, they were the _potagers_ which
rendered the garden, said Olivier de Serres, one of "profitable
beauty." Some of the compartments were devoted entirely to herbs and
medicinal plants while others were entirely given over to flowers. In
general the compartments were renewed twice a year, in May and August.
[Illustration: _A Parterre_]
The _Grand Parterre_ at Fontainebleau, called in other days the
_Parterre de Tiber_, offered as remarkable an example of the terrace
garden as was to be found in France, the terraces rising a metre or more
above the actual garden plot and enclosing a sort of horticultural
arena.
It was in the sixteenth century that architectural motives came to be
incorporated into the gardens in the form of square, round or octagonal
pavilions, and here and there were added considerable areas of tiled
pavements, features which were found at their best in the gardens of the
Chateau de Gaillon and at Langeais.
One special and distinct feature of the French Renaissance garden was
the labyrinth, of which three forms were known. The first was composed
of merely low borders, the second of hedges shoulder high, or even
taller, and the third was practically a roofed-over grove. The latter
invention was due, it is said, to the discreet Louis XIV. In the
Tuileries garden, in the time of Catherine de Medici, there was a
labyrinth greatly in vogue with the Parisian nobles who "found much
pleasure in amusing themselves therein."
In that garden the labyrinth was sometimes called the "Road of
Jerusalem" and it was presumably of eastern origin.
In the seventeenth century grottos came to be added to the garden,
though this is seemingly an Italian tradition of much earlier date.
Among the notable grottos of this time were that of the _Jardin des
Pins_ at Fontainebleau, and that of the Chateau de Meudon, built by
Philibert Delorme, of which Ronsard celebrated its beauties in verse.
The art was not confined to the gardens of royalties and the nobility,
for the _bourgeoisie_ speedily took up with the puerile idea (said to
have come from Holland, by the way), and built themselves grottos of
shells, plaster and boulders. It was then that the _chiens de faience_,
which the smug Paris suburbanite of to-day so loves, were born.
By the seventeenth century the equalized _carreaux_ of the early
geometrically disposed gardens were often replaced with the oblongs,
circles and, somewhat timidly introduced, more bizarre forms, the idea
being to give variety to the ensemble. There was less fear for the
artistic effect of great open spaces than had formerly existed, and the
avenues and alleys were considerably enlarged, and such architectural
and sculptural accessories as fountains, balustrades and perrons were
designed on a more extensive scale. Basins and canals and other
restrained surfaces of water began to appear on a larger scale, and
greater insistence was put upon their proportions with regard to the
decorative part which they were to play in the ensemble.
This was the preparatory period of the coming into being of the works of
Le Notre and Mansart.
The _Grand Siecle_ lent a profound majesty to royal and noble dwellings,
and its effect is no less to be remarked upon than the character of
their gardens. The moving spirit which ordained all these things was the
will of the _Roi Soleil_.
_Parterres_ and _broderies_ were designed on even a grander scale than
before. They were frequently grouped into four equal parts with a
circular basin in the centre, and mirror-like basins of water sprang up
on all sides.
Close to the royal dwelling was the fore-court, as often dressed out
with flowers and lawn as with tiles and flags. From it radiated long
alleys and avenues, stretching out almost to infinity. At this time the
grass-plots were developed to high order, and there were groves,
rest-houses, bowers, and _theatres de verdure_ at each turning.
Tennis-courts came to be a regularly installed accessory, and the basins
and "mirrors" of water were frequently supplemented by cascades, and
some of the canals were so large that barges of state floated thereon.
Over some of the canals bridges were built as fantastic in design as
those of the Japanese, and again others as monumental as the Pont Neuf.
In their majestic regularity the French gardens of the seventeenth
century possessed an admirable solemnity, albeit their amplitude and
majesty give rise to justifiable criticism. It is this criticism that
qualifies the values of such gardens as those of Versailles and Vaux,
but one must admit that the scale on which they were planned has much to
do with this, and certainly if they had been attached to less majestic
edifices the comment would have been even more justifiable. As it is,
the criticism must be qualified.
The aspect of the garden by this time had been greatly modified. Aside
from such great ensembles as those of Versailles was now to be
considered a taste for something smaller, but often overcrowded with
accessories of the same nature, which compared so well with the vastness
of Versailles, but which, on the other hand, looked so out of place in
miniature.
It was not long now before the "style pompadour" began to make itself
shown with regard to garden design--the exaggeration of an undeniable
grace by an affected mannerism. All the rococco details which had been
applied to architecture now began to find their duplication in the
garden rockeries--weird fantasies built of plaster and even shells of
the sea.
By later years of the eighteenth century there came on the scene as a
designer of gardens one, De Neufforge. His work was a prelude to the
classicism of the style of Louis XVI which was to come. There was, too,
at this time a disposition towards the English garden, but only a slight
tendency, though towards 1780 the conventional French garden had been
practically abandoned. The revolution in the art of garden-making
therefore preceded that of the world of politics by some years.
There are three or four works which give specific details on these
questions. They are "_De la Distribution des Maisons de Plaisance_," by
Blondel (1773), his "_Cours d'Architecture_" of the same date, and
Panseron's volume entitled "_Recueil de Jardinage_," published in 1783.
The following brief resume shows the various steps through which the
French formal garden passed. In the moyen-age the garden was a thing
quite apart from the dwelling, and was but a diminutive dooryard sort of
a garden. The garden of the Renaissance amplified the regular lines
which existed in the moyen-age, but was often quite as little in accord
with the dwelling that it surrounded as its predecessor.
The union of the garden and the dwelling and its dependencies was
clearly marked under Louis XIV, while the gardens of Louis XV tended
somewhat to modify the grand lines and the majestic presence of those of
his elder. These gardens of Louis XV were more fantastic, and followed
less the lines of traditional good taste. Shapes and forms were
complicated and indeed inexplicably mixed into a melange that one could
hardly recognize for one thing or another, certainly not as examples of
any well-meaning styles which have lasted until to-day. The straight
line now disappeared in favour of the most dissolute and irrational
curves imaginable, and the sober majesty of the gardens of Louis XIV
became a tangle of warring elements, fine in parts and not
uninteresting, effective, even, here and there, but as a whole an
aggravation.
Finally the reaction came for something more simple and more in harmony
with rational taste.
The best example remaining of the Louis XV garden is that which
surrounds the _Pavillon de Musique_ of the Petit Trianon, an addition
to the garden which Louis XIV had given to the Grand Trianon. By
comparison with the big garden of Le Notre this latter conception is as
a boudoir to a reception hall.
The garden of Louis XVI was a composite, with interpolations from across
the Rhine, from Holland and Belgium and from England even; features
which got no great hold, however, but which, for a time, gave it an air
less French than anything which had gone before.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century the formal garden was
practically abandoned in France. It was the period of the real decadence
of the formal garden. This came not from one cause alone but from many.
To the straight lines and gentle curves of former generations upon
generations of French gardens were added sinuosities as varied and
complicated as those of the Vale of Cashmere, and again, with tiny stars
and crescents and what not, the ground resembled an ornamental ceiling
more than it did a garden. The sentimentalism of the epoch did its part,
and accentuated the desire to carry out personal tastes rather than
build on traditionally accepted lines. The taste for the English garden
grew apace in France, and many a noble plantation was remodelled on
these lines, or rooted up altogether. Immediately neighbouring upon the
dwelling the garden still bore some resemblance to its former outlines,
but, as it drew farther away, it became a park, a wildwood or a
preserve.
Isabey Pere, a miniaturist, under Napoleonic stimulus, designed a number
of French gardens in the early years of the nineteenth century,
following more or less the conventional lines of the best work of the
seventeenth century, and succeeded admirably in a small way in
resuscitating the fallen taste. Isabey's gardens may have lacked much
that was remarkable in the best work of Le Notre, but they were
considerably better than anything of a similar nature, so far as
indicating a commendable desire to return to better ideals.
Under the Second Empire a great impulse was given to garden design and
making in Paris itself. It was then that the parks and squares came
really to enter into the artistic conception of what a city beautiful
should be.
Leaving the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg out of the
question, the Parc Monceau and that of the Buttes Chaumont of to-day,
the descendants of these first Paris gardens show plainly how thoroughly
good they were in design and execution.
The majority of professional gardeners of renown in France made their
first successes with the gardens of the city of Paris, reproducing the
best of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century work, which
had endured without the competition of later years having dulled its
beauty, though perhaps the _parterres_ of to-day are rather more warm in
colouring, even cruder, than those of a former time.
The _jardin fleuriste_ and the _parterre horticole_ of the nineteenth
century appealed however quite as much in their general arrangement and
the modification of their details and their rainbow colours, as any
since the time of Louis XVI. According to the expert definition the
_jardin fleuriste_ was a "garden reserved exclusively to the culture and
ornamental disposition of plants giving forth rich leaves and beautiful
flowers." The above quoted description is decidedly apt.
The seventeenth century French garden formed a superb framing for the
animated fetes and reunions in which took part such a brilliant array of
lords and ladies of the court as may have been invited to taste the
delicacies of a fete amid such luxurious appointments.
The fashionable and courtly life of the day, so far as its open-air
aspect was concerned, centered around these gardens and parks of the
great houses of royalty and the nobility. The costume of the folk of the
time, with cloak and sword and robes of silk and velvet and gilded
carriages and _chaises-a-porteurs_, had little in common with the
out-of-door garden-party life of to-day, where the guests arrive in
automobiles, be-rugged and be-goggled and somewhat the worse for a dusty
journey. It is for this reason that Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte, in
spite of the suggestion of sumptuousness which they still retain, are,
from all points of view, more or less out of scale with the life of our
times.
The modern garden, whether laid out in regular lines, or on an
ornamental scale, as a flower garden purely, or in a composite style, is
usually but an adjunct to the modern chateau, villa or cottage. It is
more intimate than the vast, more theatrically disposed area of old, and
is more nearly an indication of the personal tastes of the owner because
of its restrained proportions.
[Illustration: _Bassin de la Couronne, Vaux-le-Vicomte_]
CHAPTER III
THE ROYAL HUNT IN FRANCE
Just how great a part the royal hunt played in the open-air life of the
French court all who know their French history and have any familiarity
with the great forests of France well recognize.
The echo of French country architecture as evinced in the "_maisons de
plaisance_" and "_rendezvous de chasse_" scattered up and down the
France of monarchial times lives until to-day, scarcely fainter than
when the note was originally sounded. Often these establishments were
something more than a mere hunting-lodge, or shooting-box, indeed they
generally aspired to the proportions of what may readily be accepted as
a country-house. They established a specious type of architecture which
in many cases grew, in later years, into a chateau or palace of
manifestly magnificent appointments.
At the great hunting exposition recently held at Vienna the _clou_ of
the display was a French royal hunting-lodge in the style of Louis XVI,
hung with veritable Gobelin tapestries, loaned by the French government
and picturing "The Hunt in France." It was called by the critics a
unique painting in a beautiful frame.
In the days of Francis I and his sons, the royal hunt was given a great
impetus by Catherine de Medici, wife of Henri II.
Francis, in company with his sons, had gone to Marseilles to meet the
Medici bride, who was on her way to make her home at the Paris Louvre,
and when he found her possessed of so lively manners and such great
intelligence he became so charmed with her that, it is said, he danced
with her all of the first evening. What pleased the monarch even more,
and perhaps not less his sons, was that she shot with an arquebuse like
a sharpshooter, and could ride to hounds like a natural-born Amazon. She
was more than a rival, as it afterwards proved, of that arch-huntress,
Diane de Poitiers.
History recounts in detail that last royal hunt of Francis I at
Rambouillet, when he was lying near to death, the guest of his old
friend, d'Angennes.
The old manor, half hunting-lodge, half fortress, and very nearly royal
in all its appointments, proved a comfortable enough rest-house, and on
the day after his arrival, in March, 1547, the monarch commanded the
preparations for a royal hunt to commence at daybreak in the
neighbouring forest.
The equipage started forth in full ceremonial on the quest of stag and
boar. The bugles blew and a sort of stimulated courage once more entered
the king's breast, courage born of the excitement around him, the baying
of the hounds and the tramping and neighing of impatient horses. He had
forced himself from his bed and on horseback and started off with the
rest, defying the better counsel of his retainers.
His strength proved to be born of a fictitious enthusiasm, and, speedily
losing interest, he was brought back to the manor where he had his
apartments, and put speechless and half dead to bed, actually dying the
next day from this last over-exertion, scarce half a century of the span
of his life accomplished.
Henri de Navarre also was a true lover of the open. Born in a mountain
town in the Pyrenees he would rather camp on a bed of pine needles in
the forest than lie on a tuft of down. He preferred his beloved Bayonne
ham, spiced with garlic, to a sumptuous dinner in _Jarnet_ house, a
famous Paris tavern of the day; and had rather quench his thirst with a
quaff of the wine of Jurancon than the finest _cru_ in Paris cellars.
He hated the parade of courts, was dirty, unkempt and careless, a
genuine son of the soil, heedless of fate, and an excellent huntsman.
Up to the seventeenth century the ladies of the French court showed a
keener interest for falconry than for the hunt by horse and hounds.
The heroines of the Fronde, and the generation which followed, seemed to
lose interest in this form of sport, and gave their favour to packs of
hounds, and followed with equal interest the hunt for deer, wolves,
boars, foxes and hares as they were tracked through forests and over
arid wastes.
The old hunting horn, the winding horn of romance, still exists at the
hunts of France, a relic of the days of Louis XIV. It sounds the
conventional comings and goings of the huntsmen in the same classic
phraseology as of old--the _lancer_, the _bien allee_, the _vue_, the
_changement de foret_, the _accompagne_, the _bat l'eau_, the _hallali
par terre_, and the _curee_.
The "_Curee aux Flambeaux_" was one of the most picturesque ceremonies
connected with the royal hunt in France. It began in the gallant days,
and lived even until the time of the Second Empire.
[Illustration: _A "Curee aux Flambeaux"_]
The _curee_, that is the giving up to the hounds the remains of an
animal slain in chase, does not always take place at night, but when
it does the torches play the part of impressive and picturesque
accessories. When a _curee_ takes place at the spot where the animal is
actually killed the French sporting term for the ceremony is "_force et
abattu_." This, however, is usually preceded by another called "_le
pied_," which consists in cutting off one of the feet of the dead animal
and offering it to the person in whose honor the hunt was held.
When the _curee_ takes place by torchlight the body of the animal is
carried beneath the windows of the chateau, a circle is formed by the
"_piqueurs_," or head hunters, and all who have participated in the
pursuit; and, to the sound of a trumpet, loaned by the sportsmen, one of
the _valets de venerie_ cuts up the stag. The _meutes_, that is to say,
the hounds which are let slip last of all, and which terminates the
chase--are then brought by the _valet des chiens_, who has great
difficulty in keeping them from breaking loose. When the entrails have
been cut away the valet sits astride the animal, holding up the _nappe_,
or head and neck, shaking it at the already furious hounds. It is the
care of the valet during this interval to conceal the pieces of flesh
which are still under the body. The hounds are then loosened, but are
kept within bounds by the whips of the _piqueurs_ and the _valet des
chiens_. When the dogs are sufficiently exasperated the brutes are
allowed to rush upon the remains of their victim; only, however, to be
driven back again by whipping. When their docility has thus been proven
the definite signal, "_lachez tout_," is given, and the hounds rush
towards the stag.
The _curee_ then presents a savage spectacle: the air is filled with
growling, barking and yelling, while the ground is covered with
scrambling dogs, their mouths reeking with blood.
The feminine costume for the hunt in the time of Louis XIII was of
broadcloth or velvet, with a great feather-ornamented "picture" hat.
Only now and again a lady on horseback after 1650 dared borrow doublet
and jacket, and mount astride.
The ladies followed the hunt of Louis XIV on horseback, seldom, if ever,
in the older manner of sitting behind their cavalier on the same steed.
From the time of Catherine de Medici, indeed, the Italian side-saddle
had become the fashion for women.
Under Louis XV the ladies sought a little more comfort, and followed the
equipage sitting in a sort of hamper-like, diminutive basket, hung from
the broad back of a sturdy quadruped. Dresses became more fanciful,
both in materials and colours. From this it was but a step to even more
elaborate toilettes which necessitated a conveyance of some sort on
wheels, but the most intrepid still clung to the traditionally classic
methods. Marie Antoinette had her _equipage de chasse_, and Madame
Durfort was constantly abroad in the forests of Montmorency and Boissy,
directing the operation of eight or ten professional huntsmen. Among her
guests were frequently the ambassadors of Prussia, Russia and Austria.
In the time of Louis XIV the Comtesse de Lude devoted herself to the
hunt with a frenzy born of an inordinate enthusiasm. At the head of a
pack of hounds she knew no obstacle, and, on one occasion, penetrated on
horseback, followed by her dogs, into the oratory of the nuns of the
Convent of Estival.
By the end of the seventeenth century the hunt in France had become no
more a sport for ladies. Hunting was still a noble sport, but it was
more for men than for women. The court hunted not only in royal company,
but accepted invitations from any seigneur who possessed an ample
preserve and who could put up a good kill; magistrates, financiers and
bishops, indeed all classes, became followers of the hunt.
Montgaillard tells of a hunt in which he took part on the feast day of
Saint Bernard, with the monks of the Bernardin Convent in Languedoc. In
the episcopal domain of Saverne six hundred beaters were employed on one
occasion to provide sport for an assembled company of lords and ladies.
These were the days when the bishops were in truth _Grand Seigneurs_.
The women of the court, while they played the game, ceded nothing to the
men in bravery. Neither rain, hail nor snow frightened them. On the 28th
of June, 1713, Louis XIV was hunting the deer at Rambouillet when a
terrific, cyclonic storm fell upon the equipage, but not a man nor woman
in the monarch's party quit. The Duchesse de Berry was "wet to the
skin," but her ardour for the hunt was not in the least cooled.
To-day at Fontainebleau or Rambouillet the echo is sounded from the
hunting horn of Labaudy, the sugar-king, who pulls off at least two
"hunts," with his spectacular equipage, each year, and it is a sight
too; a French hunting party was ever picturesque, and if to-day not as
practical as the more blood-loving Englishman's hunt, is at least
traditionally sentimental, even artificial to the extent, at any rate,
that it seems stagy, even to the inclusion of the automobiles which
bring and carry away the participants. "Other days, other ways" never
had a more strict application than to _la chasse a courre_ in France.
Two accounts are here given of two comparatively modern figures in the
French hunting field, which show the great store set by the sport in
France.
In the annals of the Chateau de Grosbois, belonging to-day to the Prince
de Wagram, are the accounts of an early nineteenth century hunt, which
shows that the game cost dear. The "Grand Veneur" of the Napoleonic
reign was a master sportsman, indeed, and to-day, in a gallery of the
chateau, are preserved the guns of the master, his hunting crop and
saddle, his "colours" and his hunting horn.
From the registers of the chateau, under date of December 10, 1809, the
following, which concerned a hunting party given by the chatelain, is
extracted verbatim.
Note of the Maitre d'Hotel for collations for the guests 8,226 francs
Illuminations 1,080 francs
Gratifications to the beaters 1,000 francs
Eau de Cologne for the ladies 30 francs
Gun-bearers 148 francs
Helpers (150) 600 francs
Aids (200) 315 francs
Another hunt was given in 1811, in honour of Napoleon, when such items
as three thousand francs for an orchestra, a like sum for bouquets for
the ladies, a thousand or two for bonbons and fans, and twelve thousand
for hired furniture, etc., to say nothing of the expenses of the hunt
itself, made the bag somewhat costly. It was not always easy for the
master of the hunt to get justice when it came to paying for his
supplies, and in these same records a mention of a dozen leather
breeches at a hundred and forty francs each was crossed off and a
marginal note, _Non_, added in the hand of Marechal Berthier, Prince de
Wagram, himself.
The chief figure in the French hunting world of to-day is another
descendant of the Napoleonic portrait gallery, Prince Murat. At the age
of twelve the young Prince Joachim had already followed the hounds at
Fontainebleau and Compiegne. In his double quality of relative and
companion of the Prince Imperial he was one of the chiefs of the
equipment of the Imperial Hunt. To-day, though well past the span of
life, he is as active and as enduring in his participation in the
strenuous sport as many a younger man and his knowledge of the grand art
of _venerie_, and his ardour for being always ahead with the hounds, is
noted by all who may happen to see him while jaunting through the
Foret de Compiegne, keeping well up with the traditions of his worthy
elder, the "Premier Cavalier" of the First Empire, the King of Naples.
[Illustration: _An Imperial Hunt at Fontainebleau_]
He won his first stripes in the hunting field at Compiegne in 1868, at a
hunt given in honour of the Prince de Hohenzollern and the Princesse,
who was the sister of the King of Portugal. It was a most moving event,
so much so that it just escaped being turned into a drama, for one of
the ladies of the court had a leg broken, and the minister, Fould, was
almost mortally injured. A "_dix cors_," a stag with antlers of ten
branches, had been run down at the Rond Royal where it had taken refuge
in a near-by copse, and after an hour's hard chase was finally cornered
in the courtyard of some farm buildings of the Hameau d'Orillets. A
troop of cows was entering the courtyard at the same moment, and a most
confused melee ensued. The Inspector of Forests saved the situation and
the cows of the farmer, and the stag fell to the carabine of Prince de
la Moskowa, with the young Prince Murat on his pony in the very front
rank.
Thus early initiated in the chivalrous sport of the hunt the young man
followed every hunt, big or little, which was held in the environs of
Paris for many years, and by the time that he came to possess the
epaulettes of an Officier de Cuirassiers he was known to all the hunts
from the Ardennes to Anjou.
For the past generation he has been retired to civil life by a
Republican decree, and since that time has lived in his suburban Paris
property, devoting himself to the raising of hunters. Here he lives
almost on the borders of that great extent of forest which occupies the
northern section of the Ile de France, occasionally organizing a hunt,
which takes on not a little of the noble aspect of a former time, the
prince following always within sound of the hunting horn and the baying
of the hounds, if not actually always within sight of the quarry.
It is here, in his Villa Normande, near which Saint Ouen gave Dagobert
that famous counsel which has gone down in history, that the Prince and
Princesse Murat come to pass two or three months each year with their
children, their allied parents and the "great guns" of the old regime
who still gather about the master of the hunt as courtiers gather around
their king.
At Chamblay there have been held magnificent gun shoots under the
organization of the prince and his equipage. His kennels contain
forty-eight of the finest bred hounds in France, and are guarded by
three caretakers, the goader, Carl, whose fame has reached every
hunting court of Europe and a couple of _valets des chiens_. The
prince's colours are distributed as follows: a huzzar jacket of blue,
with collar, plaquettes, and vest of grenadine and breeches of a darker
blue.
Formerly Prince Murat hunted the roe-deer in the valley of the Oise, but
many enclosures of private property having made this exceedingly
difficult in later years he is to-day obliged to go farther afield. In
the spring the equipage goes to Rosny, near Mantes, and perhaps during
the same season occasionally to Rambouillet.
The hunts at Chamblay are the perfection of the practice of the art.
Seldom is the quarry wanting. The refrain of the Ode to Saint Hubert
lauds the prowess of this great "Maitre d'Equipage."
"Par Saint Hubert mon patron
C'est quelque due de haut renom
* * *
Sonnez: ecuyers et piqueux
Un Murat vien en ces lieux."
Chamblay fortunately being neither populous nor near a great town there
is no throng of curious spectators hovering about to get in the way and
scare the game and the hounds and their followers out of their wits. The
Chasse de Chamblay is the devotion of the _vrais veneurs_; the Prince
Murat and his son, the Prince Joachim, (to-day at the military school at
Saint Cyr), the Prince Eugene Murat, the Comte de Vallon, the Baron de
Neuflize and a few famous _veneurs_ in gay uniforms come from afar to
give eclat to the hunt of the master. And the ladies: the following
names are of those devoted to the prowess of the Prince Murat--Madame la
Princesse, la Princesse Marguerite Murat, Mademoiselle d'Elchingen, the
Duchesse and the Marquise d'Albufera, the Duchesse de Camestra, and
Madame Kraft.
From this one sees that romance is not all smouldering. If other proof
were wanting a perusal of that most complete and interesting account of
the hunt in France in modern times, "_Les Chasses de Rambouillet_"
(_Ouvrage offert par Monsieur Felix Faure_) would soon establish it.
This was not a work destined for the public at large. The hunt was ever
a sport of kings in France, and though France has become Republican its
_Chasse Nationale_ at Rambouillet partakes not a little of the aspect of
those courtly days when there was less up-to-dateness and more
sentiment.
[Illustration: _Rendezvous de Chasse, Rambouillet_]
There were but one hundred copies of this work printed for the friends
of the late president of the Republic--"Other Sovereigns," as the
dedication reads, "Princes, Grand Dukes, Ambassadors."
Rambouillet was the theatre of the most splendid hunts of the sixteenth
century, and down through the ages it has ever held a preeminent place;
holds it to-day even. Louis XVI in the Revolutionary torment even
regretted the cutting off of his prerogative of the royal hunt, but he
had no choice in the matter. In his journal of 1789 one reads: "the cerf
runs alone in the Parc en Bas" (Rambouillet), and again in 1790: "Seance
of the National Assembly at noon; Audience of a deputation in the
afternoon. The deer plentiful at Gambayseuil."
The Revolution felled many French institutions; low, great,
ecclesiastical and monarchial monuments, the trees of the forest, and
the royal game, by a system of poaching, had become greatly diminished
in quantity.
The nineteenth century, so frankly democratic in its latter years, was
less favourable to the hunt than the monarchial days which had gone
before. It had a considerable prominence under Charles X, more perhaps
than it ever had under Napoleon, who in his infancy and laborious
adolescence had few opportunities of following it; and in the later
years of his life he was too busy.
Napoleon III was not really a "good hunter," though he was something of
a marksman and took a considerable pride in his skill in that
accomplishment.
Entering the democratic era, Jules Grevy seems to have been only a
pot-hunter of the _bourgeoisie_, who practiced the art only because he
wanted a jugged hare for his dinner, or again simply to kill time.
Sadi-Carnot was still less a hunter of the romantic school, but assisted
frequently at the ceremonial shootings which were arranged for visiting
monarchs. On one occasion he was put down on the record-sheet of a hunt
at Rambouillet as responsible only for the death of eighteen heads,
whilst a visiting Grand Duke pulled down a hundred and fifty.
It was notably during the presidency of Felix Faure that Rambouillet
again took on its animation of former times. The chateau had been
furbished up once more after a long sleep, and, to the great
satisfaction of the inhabitants of the town, there were more comings and
goings than there had been for a quarter of a century.
In the summer and autumn the president made Rambouillet his preferred
residence, and there received many visiting sovereigns and notables of
all ranks. In one year a score of "Official Hunts" were held, to which
all the members of the diplomatic corps were invited, while there were
two or three affairs of an "International" character in honour of
visiting sovereigns.
All was under the control of the Grand Veneur of the Third Republic, the
Comte de Girardin, and while a truly royal flavour may have been lacking
the general aspect was much the same as it might have been in the days
of the monarchy. The Captain of the Hunt under Felix Faure was the
Inspector of Forests, Leddet, and the Premier Veneur was the Commandant
Lagarenne.
The president himself was a marksman of the first rank, and never was
there a reckoning up of the _tableau_ but that he was near the head of
the list. So accomplished was he with the rifle that on more than one
occasion he was obliged to practically efface himself in favour of some
visiting monarch, as it was said he did in the case of the King of
Portugal in 1895, the Grand Ducs Vladimir and Nicolas in 1896.
Huntsmen not royal by virtue of title, or alliance, the Republican
president beat to a stand-still. He had no pity nor favour for a mere
ambassador, whether he hailed from England or Germany, nor for members
of the Institute, Senators nor Deputies. With Prince Albert of Monaco
he held himself equal, and for every bird shot on the wing by the head
of the house of Grimaldi the "longshoreman" of Havre brought down
another.
_La chasse a courre_ before the law in France to-day may be practiced
only under strictly laid down conditions. The huntsman must legally have
his dogs under such control, and keep sufficiently close to them, as to
be able to recover the quarry immediately after it has been closed in
upon by the hounds.
Like shooting, since the Decree of 1844, hunting with hounds may only be
undertaken under authority of a _permis de chasse_, and in open season,
during the daytime, and with the consent of the owners over whose
properties the hunt is to be held.
The ceremony of the hunt in France now follows the traditions of the
classic hunt of the monarchy. The _veneur_ decides on the rendezvous,
whether the quarry be stag or chevreuil, fox or hare. The _piqueur_
follows close up with the dogs, sets them on or calls them off, and
recalls them if they go off on a false scent.
CHAPTER IV
THE PALAIS DE LA CITE AND TOURNELLES
Not every one assumes the Paris Palais de Justice to ever have been the
home of kings and queens. It has not, however, always been a tilting
ground for lawyers and criminals, though, no doubt, when one comes to
think of it, it is in that role that it has acted its most thrilling
episodes.
The Saint Chapelle, the Conciergerie and the great clock of the Tour de
l'Horloge mark the Palais de Justice down in the books of most folk as
one of the chief Paris "sights," but it was as a royal residence that it
first came into prominence.
This palace, not the conglomerate half-secular, half-religious pile of
to-day, but an edifice of some considerable importance, existed from the
earliest days of the Frankish invasion, and when occupied by Clotilde,
the wife of Clovis, was known as the Palais de la Cite.
Under the last of the kings of the First Race this palace took on really
splendid proportions. When Hugues Capet arrived on the throne he
abandoned the kingly residence formerly occupied by the Frankish rulers,
the Palais des Thermes, and installed his goods and chattels in this
Palais de la Cite, which his son Robert had rebuilt under the direction
of Enguerrand de Marigny.
Up to the time of Francis I it remained the preferred residence of the
French monarchs, regardless of the grander, more luxuriously disposed
Louvre, which had come into being.
Philippe Auguste, by a contrary caprice, would transact no kingly
business elsewhere, and it was within the walls of this palace that he
married Denmark's daughter. His successors, Saint Louis,
Philippe-le-Hardi, and Philippe-le-Bel did their part in enlarging and
beautifying the structure, and Saint Louis laid the foundations of that
peerless Gothic gem--La Saint Chapelle.
From the windows of the Palais de la Cite another Charles assisted at an
official massacre, differing little from that of Saint Bartholemew's,
which was conducted from the Louvre.
On the first floor of the Palais de Justice of to-day is the apartment
paved in a mosaic of black and white marble, with a painted and gilded
wooden vaulting, where Charles V received the Emperor Charles IV and the
"Roi des Romains." The three monarchs, accompanied by their families,
here supped together around a great round marble table, a secret supper
prolific of an _entente cordiale_ which must have been the forerunner of
recent ceremonies of a similar nature in France.
Known as the Salle de Marbre, this great chamber came later to be the
Tribunal where the courts sat. It was only after the death of Charles
VI, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, that the Palais de la
Cite was given over wholly to the disciples of Saint Yves, the judges,
advocates and notaries. It became also the definite seat of the
Parliament and took the nomenclature of Palais de Justice, though still
inhabited at intermittent intervals by French royalties. One such
notable occasion was that when Henry V of England was here married to
Catherine de France, and when Henry VI of England took up his temporary
residence here as king to the French.
In the fourteenth century the precincts of the Palais de la Cite--the
open courtyard one assumes is meant--were invaded by the stalls of small
shopkeepers, some of which actually took root in wood and stone and
became fixtures to such an extent that the courtyard was known as the
Galerie des Merciers.
The great marble chamber after becoming the meeting place of the
Tribunal played a part at times dignified and at others banal. An
incident is recorded where the clerks and minor court officials danced
on the famous marble table and "played farces" with the judicial bench
serving as a stage. It was said that, on account of the immoralities
which they represented, the authorities were obliged to suppress the
performances by law, as they have in recent years the flagrant freedom
of the "Quat'z Arts."
Up to the times of Francis I but few events of importance unrolled
themselves within the Palais de la Cite, but in 1618 a violent
conflagration broke out leaving only the round towers of the
Conciergerie, the tower and the church, and that part of the main
structure which housed the great Salle de Marbre, unharmed. Apropos of
this, a joyous rhymester of the time made the following quatrain:
"Certes ce fut un triste jeu
Quand a Paris Dame Justice
Pour avoir mange trop d'epice
Se mit le Palais tout en feu."
Jacques Debrosse was charged with rebuilding the edifice after the fire
and refitted first the Grand Salle, to-day the famous Salle des Pas
Perdus, crowded with the shuffling coming and going crowd of men and
women whose business, or no business at all, brings them to this central
point for the dissemination of legal gossip. It is a magnificent
apartment, and, to no great extent, differs from what it was before the
conflagration.
This Salle consists of two parallel naves separated by a range of
arcades and lighted by two great circular openings with four
round-headed windows at either end. Its attributes are practically the
same as they were in 1622. The structure, take it as a whole, may be
said to date only from the seventeenth century, but certain it is that
the old Palais de la Cite is incorporated therein, every stone of it,
and if its career was humdrum that was the fault of circumstances rather
than from any inherent faults of its own.
The Conciergerie, that inelegant, inconsistent architectural mixture of
the ancient and modern, considered apart, though it properly enough is
usually considered with the Palais de Justice, was formerly the dwelling
or guardhouse of the Concierge of the Palais de la Cite. His post was
not merely that of the keeper of the gates; he was a personage at court
and was as autocratic as his more plebeian contemporaries of to-day, for
the Paris concierge, as we, who have for years lived under their
despotism well know, is a very dreadful person.
In addition to being the governor of the royal dwelling this concierge
was the guardian of the royal prisoners. In 1348 he was further invested
with the official title of Bailli and the post was, at times, occupied
by the highest and the most noble in the land, among others Philippe de
Savoie, the friend of Charles VI, and Juvenal des Oursins, the historian
of this prince. The first to combine the two functions, that of Bailli
and Concierge, was Jacques Coictier, the doctor of Louis XI.
As a virtual prison the Conciergerie only came to be transformed when
Charles V quitted the residence of the Palais de la Cite, and the
Conciergerie, as such, only figures on the Tournelles registers under
date of 1391.
The fire of the latter part of the eighteenth century destroyed a large
part of the building, but enough remained to patch together the most
serviceable of Revolutionary prisons, for at one time it held at least
twelve hundred poor souls, of whom two hundred and eighty-eight were
killed off at one fell blow.
But one woman among them all actually came to her death within the
prison walls. This was La Belle Bouquetiere of the Palais Royal who, in
an access of jealous furor, horribly mutilated a royal guardsman, and
for this met a most cruel death by being transfixed to a post and
submitting to a trial of "_le fer et le feu_." In just what manner the
punishment was applied one can best imagine for himself.
The Revolutionary role of the Conciergerie is a thing apart from the
purport of this book, hence is not further referred to.
Going back to the time of Francis I, among the famous prisoners of state
were Louis de Berquin, the Comte de Mongomere, the regicides Ravaillac
and Damiens, the Marechal d'Ancre, Cartouche, Mandrin and others.
To-day, as a prison, the Conciergerie still performs its functions
acceptably, safeguarding those up for the assizes, and those condemned
to death before being sent on their long journey.
The three great flanking towers of the Conciergerie are its chief
architectural distinction to-day. That of the left, the largest, is the
Tour d'Argent, that of the middle, the Tour Bonchet, and the third, the
Tour de Cesar or the Tour de l'Horloge. This last is the only one which
has preserved its mediaeval crenulated battlements aloft. The great clock
has been commonly considered the largest timepiece of its kind extant,
but it is doubtful if this now holds good with railways and insurance
companies vying with each other to furnish the hour so legibly that he
who runs may read.
Across the Pont au Change, from the Palais de la Cite, by the Louvre and
out into the Faubourg Saint Antoine, one comes to the Place des Vosges,
the old Place Royale, which occupies almost the same area as was covered
by the courtyard of the Palais des Tournelles, so called from its many
towers.
All around the Palais des Tournelles was located a series of splendid
_hotels prives_ of the nobility. In one of these, the Hotel de Saint
Pol, the king once lodged twenty-two visiting princes of the quality of
Dauphin (the eldest son of a ruling monarch), their suites and
domestics.
Charles V in his time amalgamated with his royal palace three of these
magnificent private dwellings, the Hotel du Petit Musc, the Hotel de
l'Abbe de Saint Maur and the Hotel du Comte d'Etampes.
The palace proper really faced on what is now the Rue Saint Antoine,
opposite the Hotel Saint Pol. Its historic and romantic memories of the
sword and cloak period of gallantry were many, but the edifice was
demolished by the order of Catherine de Medici.
In the palace Charles VI was confined, during the period of his
insanity, by order of the cruel Isabeau de Baviere. The Duke of Bedford,
when regent for the minor Henry VI, lodged here, and upon the expulsion
of the English it became the residence of Charles VII. Louis XI and
Louis XII each inhabited it, and the latter died within its walls.
The Palais des Tournelles will go down to history chiefly because of
that celebrated jousting bout held in its courtyard on the marriage day
of the two princesses, Elizabeth and Marguerite.
Henri II and the elder princes, his sons, were to ride forth in
tournament and break lances, if possible, with all comers. The court,
including Catherine de Medici and the princess Elizabeth, wife of
Philippe II, the late husband of Mary Tudor, the two Marguerites and
other high personages were seated on a dais upholstered in damascened
silk and ornamented with many-coloured streamers.
The time was July and the morning. At a signal from Catherine music
burst forth and the bouts began.
The king rode forth at the head of his chevaliers, wearing a suit of
golden armour, his sword handle set with jewels, and, in spite of the
presence of his wife, his lance flying black and white streamers, the
colours of Diane de Poitiers, who had lately turned her affections from
father unto son.
A herald proclaimed the opening of the combat, and before night the king
had broken the lances of the Ducs de Ferrare, de Guise, and de Nemours,
and was just about disarming when a masked knight approached from the
Faubourg Saint Antoine and challenged the king, who, in spite of being
implored to desist by his queen, entered the lists again and was
ultimately wounded unto death by the sable knight.
Henri II expired the same night in a bedchamber of the Palais des
Tournelles, whither he had been carried, at the age of forty-one, the
victim of chance, or the wile of the Sieur de Montgomeri, the ancestor
of England's present Earl of Eglinton. The captain of the Scotch Guards,
Montgomeri, was not immediately pursued (he meantime had fled the
court), but Catherine de Medici harboured for him a most bitter rancour.
Pro and con ran his cause, for he had his partisans, but the Marechal de
Matignon finally caught up with him in Normandy and he was tortured and
condemned to death for the crime of _lese majeste_--beating the king at
his own game.
The widowed queen angrily ordered Diane de Poitiers from the court, and
caused the Palais des Tournelles to be razed. This was her only means of
showing her contempt for the woman who had played her royal spouse to
his death as the Romans played the gladiators of old; and Tournelles, as
a palatial monument of its time, blotted out the rest when it
disappeared from view.
A forest of spirelets soared aloft from the gables and rooftrees of the
Palais des Tournelles. There was no spectacle of the time more imposing
than this sky-line silhouette of a Paris palace; not at Chambord nor
Chenonceaux was the spectacle more fine. It was like a fairy castle,
albeit that it was in the heart of a great city.
To the right of the Palais des Tournelles, beyond the Porte Saint
Antoine, was the ink-black, frowning donjon of the Bastille, its
severity in strong contrast with the more luxurious palaces of the
princes which surrounded it not far away.
The charming Place des Vosges, which occupies the site of Tournelles
to-day, is another of Paris's breathing spaces. Well may it be called a
royal garden--a park virtually on a diminutive scale--since it was
originally known as the Place Royale, under Henri IV.
With the advent of the gascon Henri de Bearn this delightful little
unspoiled corner of old Paris took on the aspect which it now has.
Within this enclosure were the usual garden or park attributes, more or
less artificially disposed, but making an ideal open-air playground for
the court, shut in from outside surroundings by the outlines of the old
palace walls, and not too far away from the royal palace of the Louvre.
The first and greatest historic souvenir of this garden was a Carrousel
given in 1612, by Marie de Medici, two years after the tragic death of
Henri IV, celebrating the alliance between France and Spain. Under
Richelieu the square became known as the Place des Vosges, and, in spite
of the law against duelling, which had by this time come into force, it
became a celebrated meeting place for duellists like Ivry, the "Grand'
Roue" or the "Vel' Hiver" of to-day.
It was on May 12, 1627, that the Comte des Chappell killed Bussy
d'Amboise on this spot, and left a bloody souvenir, which was only
forgotten by the historians when they had to recount another meeting,
this time between the Catholic Duc de Guise and the Protestant Coligny
d'Andelot.
"Monsieur," said the duke, "we will now proceed to settle that little
account between our illustrious houses," and with that he drew his
sword and killed Coligny, as if he were but stamping the life out of a
caterpillar.
Now, with all this bloody memory behind, the Place became one of the
most elegant residential quarters of the capital, preferred above all by
the nobility, the Rohans, the Alegres and Rotroux.
At No. 21 lived Victor Hugo, just before the Coup d'Etat, in the house
first made famous as the habitation of the somewhat infamous Marion
Delorme.
Among other illustrious names who have given a brilliance to these
alleyed walks and corridors are to be recalled Corneille, Conde, Saint
Vincent de Paul, Moliere, Turenne, Madame de Longueville, De Thou,
Cinq-Mars, Richelieu, D'Ormesson, the Prince de Talmon, the Marquis de
Tesse and the Comte de Chabanne.
It is possible that this charming Paris square will remain as ever it
has been, for a recent attempt of the owner of one of the houses which
borders upon it to change the disposition of the facade brought about a
law-suit which compelled him to respect the procedure which obtained in
1605 when it was ordained the Place Royale.
To prove their rights the civic authorities had recourse to the original
plans still preserved in the national archives. This is a demonstration
of how carefully European nations preserve the written records of their
pasts.
The decision finally arrived at by the courts--that the Place des Vosges
must be kept intact as originally planned--gave joy to the hearts of all
true Parisians and archeologists alike.
[Illustration: BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF OLD PARIS]
CHAPTER V
THE OLD LOUVRE AND ITS HISTORY
A stroll by the banks of the Seine will review much of the history of
the capital, as much of it as was bound up with Notre Dame, the Louvre
and the Palais de la Cite (now the Palais de Justice), and that was a
great deal, even in mediaeval and Renaissance times.
The life of the Louvre was Paris; the life of Paris that of the nation;
and the life of the nation that of the people. This even the Parisians
of to-day will tell you. It is scant acknowledgment of the provinces to
be sure, but what would you? The French capital is much more the capital
of France than London is of England, or Washington of America--leaving
politics out of the question.
Paris before the conquest by the Franks was practically only the
Seine-surrounded isle known as Lutetia, and later as "La Cite," and the
slight overflow which crept up the slopes of the Montagne de la Sainte
Genevieve. From the Chatelet to the Louvre was a damp, murky swamp
called, even in the moyen-age, Les Champeaux, meaning the Little Fields,
but swampy ones, as inferred by studying the evolution of the name still
further.
A rapid rivulet descended from Menilmontant and mingled with the Seine
somewhere near the Garden of the Tuileries.
Clovis and his Franks attacked the city opposite the isle, and, upon the
actual achievement of their conquest, threw up an entrenched camp on the
approved Roman plan in what is now the courtyard of the old Louvre, and
filled the moat with the waters of this rivulet. The ensemble was,
according to certain authorities, baptized the Louvre, or Lower, meaning
a fortified camp. This entrenchment was made necessary in order that the
Franks might sustain themselves against the Gallo-Roman occupants of
Lutetia, and in time enabled them to acquire the whole surrounding
region for their own dominion. This the Lower, or Louvre, made possible,
and it is well deserved that its name should be thus perpetuated, though
actually the origin of the name is in debate, as will be seen by a
further explanation which follows.
Little by little this half-barbaric camp--in contradistinction to the
more solid works of the Romans--became a _placefort_, then a chateau,
then a palace and, finally, as the young lady tourist said, an art
museum. Well, at any rate, it was a dignified evolution.
Two Louvres disappeared before the crystallization of the present rather
irregularly cut gem. From the Merovingians dates the Louvre des Champs,
the hostile, militant Louvre, with its high wood and stone tower,
familiar only in old engravings. After this the moyen-age Louvre,
attributable to Saint Louis and Charles V, with its great tower, its
thick walls of stone and its deep-dug moats, came into being. With
Francis I came a more sympathetic, a more subtle era of architectural
display, a softening of outlines and an interpolation of flowering
gables. It was thus that was born that noble monument known as the New
Louvre, which combined all the arts and graces of a fastidious ambition.
Nothing remains of the old Louverie (to which the name had become
corrupted) which Philippe Auguste early in the thirteenth century caused
to be turned into an ambitious quadrangular castle from a somewhat more
humble establishment which had evolved itself on the site of the
Frankish camp, save the white marble outline sunken in the pavement of
the courtyard of the palace of to-day. By destiny this palace, set down
in the very heart of Paris, was to dominate everything round about.
From the date of its birth, and since that time, it has had no rivals
among Paris or suburban palaces. Its very situation compelled the
playing of an auspicious part, and the Seine flowing swiftly by its
ramparts added no small charm to the fetes and ceremonies of both the
Louvre and the Tuileries.
Never was a great river so allied with the life of a royal capital;
never a stream so in harmony with other civic beauties as is the Seine
with Paris. When Henri II entered Paris after his Sacrament he
contemplated a water-festival on the Seine, which was to extend from the
walls of the Louvre to the towers of Notre Dame, a festival with such
elaborate decorations as had never been known in the French capital.
The kings of France after their Sacrament entered the Louvre by the
quay-side entrance, followed by their cortege of gayly caparisoned
cavaliers and gilded coaches with personages of all ranks in doublet and
robe, cape and doublet. The scintillating of gold lace and burnished
coats gave a brilliance which rivalled that of the sun.
No sooner had the cavalcade entered the gates of the Louvre than it came
out again to participate in the day and night festival, which had the
bosom of the Seine for its stage and its bridges and banks for the act
drop and the wings.
The receptions of Ambassadors, the baptisms of royalties, royal
marriages and celebrations of victories, or treaties, were all feted in
the same manner.
Napoleon glorified the Peace of Amiens under similar conditions, and
there is scarce a chronicler of any reign but that recounts the part
played by the Seine in the ceremonies of the court of the New and Old
Louvre.
It was amid a setting which lent itself so readily to all this that the
Old Louvre, which was rebuilt by Francis I, first came to its glory.
The origin of the name Louvre has still other interpretation from that
previously given. It seems to be a question of grave doubt among the
savants, but because the note is an interesting one it is here
reproduced. The name may have been derived as well from the word
_oeuvre_, from the Latin _opus_; it may have been evolved from
_lupara_, or _louverie_ (place of wolves), which seems improbable. It
may have had its evolution from either one of these origins, or it may
not.
Anglo-Saxons may be proud of the fact that certain French savants have
acknowledged that the name of the most celebrated of all Paris palaces
is a derivation from a word belonging to their tongue and meaning
habitation. This, then, is another version and one may choose that which
is most to his liking, or may go back and show his preference for
_lower_, meaning a fortified place.
A palace--something more elaborate than a mere habitation--stood on the
same site in the twelfth century, a work which, under the energies of
Philippe Auguste, in 1204 began to grow to still more splendid
proportions, though infinitesimal one may well conclude as compared with
the mass which all Paris knows to-day under the inclusive appellation of
"The Louvre."
The Paris of Philippe Auguste was already a city of a hundred and twenty
thousand inhabitants, with mean houses on every side and little pretense
at even primitive comforts or conveniences. This far-seeing monarch laid
hand first on the great citadel tower of the fortified _lower_, added to
its flanking walls and built a circling rampart around the capital
itself. It is recounted that the rumbling carts, sinking deep in mud and
plowing through foot-deep dust beneath the palace windows, annoyed the
monarch so much that he instituted what must have been the first city
paving work on record, and commanded that all the chief thoroughfares
passing near the Louvre should be paved with cobbles. This was real
municipal improvement. He was a Solon among his kind for, since that
day, it has been a _sine qua non_ that for the well-keeping of city
streets they must be paved, and, though cobblestones have since gone out
of fashion, it was this monarch who first showed us how to do it.
The Louvre of Philippe Auguste was the most imposing edifice of the
Paris of its time. To no little extent was this imposing outline due to
its great central tower, the _maitresse_, which was surrounded by
twenty-three _dames d'honneur_, without counting numberless _tourelles_.
This hydra-towered giant palace was the real guardian of the Paris of
mediaevalism, as its successor is indeed the real centre of the Paris of
to-day.
The city was but an immense mass of low-lying gable-roofed houses, whose
crowning apex was the sky-line of the Louvre, with that of Tournelles
only less prominent to the north, and that of La Cite hard by on the
island where the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame now stand.
Before the hand of Francis fell upon the Louvre it was but an isolated
stronghold--a combined castle, prison and palace, gloomy, foreboding and
surrounded by moats and ramparts almost impassable. Philippe Auguste
built well and made of it an admirable and imposing castle and a place
of defence, and a defence it was, and not much more.
For its time it was of great proportions and of an ideal situation from
a strategic point of view; far more so than the isolated Palais de la
Cite in the middle of the Seine.
Four gates led out from the inner courtyard of the Old Louvre: one to
the Seine; one to the south, facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois; another
towards the site of the later Tuileries; and the other to about where
the Rue Marengo cuts the Rue de Rivoli of to-day.
With the endorsement given it by Philippe Auguste the Louvre now became
the official residence of the kings of the Capetian race, whereas
previously they had dwelt but intermittently at Paris, chiefly in the
Palais de la Cite.
The monarch, as if to test the efficiency of his new residence as a
stronghold, made a dungeon tower, his greatest constructive achievement
until he built the castle of Gisors, and in the tower imprisoned the
Comte de Flandre, whom he had taken prisoner at Bouvines. Louis IX
(Saint Louis), in his turn, built a spacious annex to Philippe Auguste's
Louvre, to which he attached his name.
[Illustration: THE XIV CENTURY LOUVRE]
Charles V totally changed the aspect of the palace from what it had
formerly been--half-fortress, half-residence--and made of it a veritable
palace in truth as well as in name, by the addition of numerous
dependencies.
Within a tower which was built during the reign of this monarch, called
the Tour de la Librairie, he assembled his royal bibelots and founded
what was afterwards known as the Bibliotheque du Louvre, the egg from
which was hatched the present magnificently endowed _Bibliotheque
Nationale_ in the Rue Richelieu.
It is related that in 1373 the valet-de-chambre of Charles V made a
catalogue of the nine hundred and ten volumes which formed this
collection, an immense number for the time when it is known that his
predecessor, Jean-le-Bon, possessed but seven volumes of history and
four devotional books as his entire literary treasure.
This seems to be a bibliographical note of interest which has hitherto
been overlooked. Charles V was evidently a man of taste, or he would not
have built so well, though all is hearsay, as not a fragment remains of
the work upon which he spent his talents and energies.
From the death of Charles V, in 1364, until 1557 the Louvre by some
caprice ceased to be a permanent royal residence. At the latter epoch
the ambitious, art-loving Francis I conceived the idea that here was a
wealth of scaffolding upon which to graft some of his Renaissance
luxuries and, by a process of "restoration" (perhaps an unfortunate word
for him to have employed, since it meant the razing of the fine tower
built by Charles V), added somewhat to the splendours thereof, though in
a fickle moment, as was his wont, allowed a gap of a dozen years to
intervene between the outlining of his project and the terrifically
earnest work which finally resulted in the magnificent structure
accredited to him, though indeed it meant the demolition of the original
edifice.
It was at this period that Charles V entered into the ambitious part
which Francis was to henceforth play in the Louvre, so perhaps the
interruption was pardonable.
CHAPTER VI
THE LOUVRE OF FRANCIS I AND ITS SUCCESSORS
One can attribute the demise of the Old Louvre to the coming of Charles
V to Paris in 1539. This royal residence, hastily put in order to
receive his august presence, seemed so coldly inconvenient and
inhospitable to his host, Francis I, that that monarch decided forthwith
upon its complete reconstruction and enlargement. Owing to various
combinations of circumstances the actual work of reconstruction was put
off until 1546, thus the New Louvre as properly belongs to the reign of
Henri II as to that of his father.
Francis I, more than any other European monarch of his time, or, indeed,
before or since, left his mark as an architect of supreme tastes over
every edifice with which he came into personal contact. His mania was
for building--when it was not for affairs of the heart--and so daring
was he that when he could not get an old fabric to remodel he would
brave all, as did Louis XIV at Versailles, and erect a dream palace in
the midst of a desert. This he did at Chambord in the Sologne. At Paris
his difficulties were perhaps no less, but he had his materials and his
workmen ready at hand.
Francis's repairs and embellishments to the Old Louvre were by no means
perfunctory, but he saw possibilities greater than he was able to
perform with the means at hand. He first razed the central tower, or
_donjon_, and scarce before the departure of his royal guest, was
already dreaming of replacing the entire fabric with another which
should bear the same name. One has read of the monarch's thoughts when
he was awaiting the coming to Paris of his old enemy in the peninsula;
how he regretted the moment when he should sally out to meet him and
leave his new-found friend, the Duchesse d'Etampes, in spite of her
pleadings for him to remain by her. All this is mere historic incident,
and has little to do with Francis's art instincts and ambitions. He
probably thought this very thing himself when he replied to the
importunate lady: "Duchesse, I must tear myself away without more ado; I
go to meet my brother monarch at Amboise on the Loire."
It was Francis I, the passionate lover of art, who collected the first
pictures which formed the foundation of the present collections of the
Musee National du Louvre. He bought many in foreign parts, and many
others were brought from Italy by Italian artists, whom he had commanded
to the capital: Primaticcio brought with him, upon his arrival, more
than a hundred antique statues. These art objects were first assembled
at Fontainebleau and ornamented the apartments of the king. Among them
were Da Vinci's "La Joconde" and Raphael's "Holy Family and Saint
Michael."
Henri II, Henri IV, and Louis XIII did little to enrich the art
collections of the palace, but Louis XIV charged his minister, Colbert,
with numerous purchases. In 1661 he bought the fine collection left by
Cardinal Mazarin, and ten years later purchased the contents of the
celebrated gallery belonging to the banker Jacob of Cologne. The state
expended for these acquisitions nearly six hundred thousand _livres_,
and received for this sum six hundred paintings and six thousand
drawings.
It was at this period that the royal collections were transferred to
Paris, a little before the death of Colbert, when they were placed in
the galleries of the Louvre; though it was a hundred years later that a
national museum was actually created. This was virtually brought about
from the fact that the royal collections were transported in a great
part to Versailles, only to be returned to Paris in 1750, transferred
again to Versailles, and ultimately to be returned to Paris under the
sheltering wing of the grand old Louvre.
The Museum of the Louvre, the Museum National et Central des Arts, is
the outgrowth of a Decree of the Convention, dated July 27, 1793. It was
aided and enriched considerably under Napoleon I, that passionate lover
of the beautiful, who, none too scrupulously, would even seek to "make a
campaign" in order to acquire art works for the museum of his capital.
Many of these abducted art treasures (like the horses of Saint Marc, for
instance) were afterwards returned to their original owners, but the
nucleus of this unrivaled art museum was chiefly due to the consul and
emperor.
As soon as Charles V had left the Louvre demolition was at once begun by
Francis, and in 1541 an Italian, Serlio, was bidden prepare a set of
plans for the Renaissance glory that was to be. Serlio, refusing, or
debating the price, was cast aside for the Frenchman, Lescot, whose plan
was adopted.
The work can in no way be said to have suffered by the change of plans,
for though Pierre Lescot was as yet a name unknown in the world of
architecture his talents were sufficiently great, magistrate and
parliamentary counsellor though he was, to give to Paris what has ever
been accounted its chief Renaissance glory.
Work was begun at once, a work which was not interrupted by intrigues of
court, of love, of war, nor by the deaths of Francis I nor his
successor, Henri II.
Although the work was begun in an energetic manner it was 1555 before
the western wing was ready for the hand of the sculptors, but from this
time on, judging from the interpolated monograms of Charles IX and Henri
IV on the south wing, work progressed less hurriedly. The two other
constructions, which were to enclose the quadrangle to the north and
east, were completed under such circumstances that there has never been
a question as to their period.
For fifteen years the work went on, when suddenly it was abandoned as
were the plans of Lescot. A sole wing, that following the Seine and
abutting at right angles against the Pavilion de l'Horloge, had
resulted.
The sculptures of its south facade, as well as certain of its interior
decorations, were entrusted to Jean Goujon (1520-1572), who became a
victim of the horrible night of Saint Bartholomew, planned in the same
Louvre by the wily Medici.
Henri II often dwelt over Lescot's plans and devices, and, on one
occasion, when the poet Ronsard was present, demanded of the architect
the meaning of the decorations surrounding a great _oeil-de-boeuf_
window, two kneeling figures, one blowing a trumpet, and the other
extending a palm branch. "Victory and Fame," replied Lescot. And, in
honour of the architect and his sentiment, Ronsard composed his
"Franciade." The detail was actually by Goujon, whose design it was,
under the oversight of the master architect. One may see this _chef
d'oeuvre_ to-day just above the courtyard portal to the west.
At the death of Henri II, Catherine de Medici came here to live alone,
and built the great extension, which stands to-day and joins the Old
Louvre with that portion along the banks of the Seine by the double
arch, through which swing the autobusses coming from the Rive Gauche
with such a Juggernaut grind that fears for the foundation of the palace
are ever uppermost in the minds of those responsible for its
preservation.
[Illustration: _The Louvre_]
It is in this Catherine de Medici portion of the Louvre (1578) that the
present Galerie des Antiques is installed, and which is usually
thronged, in season and out, with globe-trotting sight-seers who give
seldom a thought to its constructive elegance and its association with
the Medici.
With the first years of the reign of Charles IX, there is to be remarked
a notable slowness of procedure with regard to the construction of the
New Louvre. This was brought about chiefly by the conception of the
Tuileries and the work which was actually begun thereon. Soon a gigantic
idea radiated from the ambitious mind of Catherine de Medici. In this
connection it must be remembered, however, that Catherine, so commonly
reviled as "the Italian," was not all Italian; French blood flowed
through her veins through that of her mother, Madeleine de la Tour
d'Auvergne. She came first to France, landing at Marseilles, whence she
arrived from Leghorn, and forthwith commenced her journey Parisward,
arriving finally at the Louvre as the bride of Prince Henri in the guise
of a simple, clever girl, though indeed she was twenty years the elder.
Now she dreamed of uniting her chateau of the Tuileries with that of the
king by a long, connecting gallery. She put action to the thought and
under Pierre (II) Chambiges, a relative of the Chambiges of
Fontainebleau and Saint Germain, the Petite Galerie, a mere means of
communication between the two chateaux, and not the least to be likened
to a defensive structure, was begun and work thereon carried out between
1564 and 1571, though it remained for Thibaut Metezeau, in 1595-1596, to
carry it on a stage further under Henri IV.
This architect introduced the notorious mezzanine, which has so
intrigued historians of the Louvre because of the unequal elevations of
the various floors, a procedure which was unavoidable save by recourse
to a substitution less to be objected to than the existing fault.
Actually the connection with the Tuileries was made by the prolongation
of this gallery by the Ducerceau brothers in 1595. The work existing
to-day, but only in its reconstructed form, is the same as that
completed by Napoleon III (1863-1868).
Charles IX and Henri III, though making the Louvre their residence,
practically had no hand in its embellishment. The former gave his
energies and ideals full play in the Saint Bartholomew massacres and
shot at poor unfortunates who fled beneath the windows of his apartments
on the quay-side of the Louvre. This, if not the chief incident of his
association with the fabric, is at least the best remembered one. Henri
III, too, led a scandalous life within the walls of the Louvre and fled
on horseback, smuggled out a back door, as it were, on a certain May
evening in 1588, never more to return, for the Dominican monk Jacques
Clement killed him with a knife-thrust before he had got beyond Saint
Cloud.
The accepted tale of the part played by the famous window of the Louvre
in the drama of Saint Bartholomew's night is as follows: As the signal
tolled from the belfry of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois it was answered by
another peal from the great bell of the Palais de Justice, where, within
a small apartment over the watergate of the Louvre, the queen and her
two sons were huddled together not knowing what might happen next. The
multitude streamed by on the quay before the palace, and, finally, amid
all the horror of Coligny's murder, and the throwing of his body from a
window of the Louvre to the street below, Charles IX stood at his window
regarding the fleeing Huguenots as so much small game, shooting away at
them with an arquebuse as they went by, and with an unholy glee, even
boasting that he had killed a score of heretics in a quarter of an hour.
Historians of those exciting times were perhaps none too faithful
chroniclers and Charles's "excellent shots" in his "royal hunt," and
hideous oaths and threats such as: "We'll have them all, even the women
and children," are not details as well authenticated as we would like to
have them. Like Rizzio's blood stains they lack conviction.
The ambitious white-plumed Henri de Navarre, when he became Henri IV of
France, set about to connect the tentacle which stretched southward from
the Old Louvre with the Tuileries (a continuation of the project of
Catherine de Medici), and, by the end of the sixteenth century, had
built a long facade under the advice of the brothers Ducerceau. This
work was added to on the courtyard side under the Second Empire, when a
reconstruction, more likely a strengthening of underpinning and walls
because of their proximity to the swift-flowing waters of the Seine, of
the work of Henri IV was undertaken.
Joining the Tuileries and this work of Ducerceau was the celebrated
Pavilion de Flore, a work of the Henri IV period rather than that of
Catherine de Medici.
From the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Lesdiguieres ran this long
gallery of the Ducerceau and numerous interstices and unfinished vaults
and arches leading towards the Old Louvre were, at this epoch, completed
by Metezeau and Dupaira. The chief apartment of this structure became
known as the _Galerie Henri IV_, and was completed in 1608.
At the death of Henri IV, Richelieu, who at times builded so well, and
who at others was a base destroyer of monuments, demolished that portion
which remained of the edifice of Charles V. The work of Pierre Lescot
was preserved, however, and to give symmetry and an additional extent of
available space the rectangle facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois to-day
was completed, thus enclosing in one corner of its ample courtyard the
foundations of the earlier work whose outlines are plainly traced in the
pavement that those who view may build anew--if they can--the old
structure of Philippe Auguste. In mere magnitude the present quadrangle
is something more than four times the extent of the Louvre of the time
of Charles V.
This courtyard of the Louvre is perhaps that spot in all Paris which
presents the greatest array of Renaissance art treasures. From ground to
sky-line the facades are embroidered by the works from the magic hand of
the _Siecle Italien_. Jean Goujon himself has left his brilliant
souvenirs on all sides, caryatides, festoons, bas-reliefs, statues and
colonnades.
Enthusiasm and devotion knew no bounds among those old craftsmen, but
all is well-ordered, regular and correct. "He who mentions the Louvre to
a Frenchman gives a greater pleasure than that of Mehemet-Ali when one
praises the pyramids." In a way the Louvre is the most magnificent
edifice in the universe; "four palaces one piled up on another, _une
ville entiere_." And when the Louvre was linked with the Tuileries in
the real, what a splendour it must have been for former generations to
marvel at! "_La plus belle et la plus grande chose sous le soleil._"
This work of aggrandizement of the quadrangle was carried out by the
architect Lemercier on the basis of a project adopted in 1642, and, to a
great extent, completed before the arrival of Anne d'Autriche, twenty
years later.
This queenly personage had ideas of her own as to what sort of a
residence she would have in Paris, and beyond her personal needs little
was done for the moment towards actually linking up the various loose
ends, each more or less complete in itself, which now composed the Paris
palace of the French monarchs.
Her son, the king in person if not in power, was not likely to be
endowed with instincts which would put him in the rank of the
traditional castle or palace builders of his race; it was literature,
music and painting which more particularly flourished during his reign,
and so the Austrian contented herself at first with merely putting the
former apartments of Catherine de Medici into condition for her personal
use and building a Salle-de-Spectacle, and--happy thought--a
Salle-des-Bains.
Louis XIV, as he found time, after the war of the Fronde, actually did
bethink himself of completing, in a way, the work of his elders, and
charged the architect Levau to finish off the north wing, which was done
in 1660. A year later the Galerie Henri IV was practically destroyed by
fire and rebuilt by Levau, who gave the commission for its interior
decoration to Lebrun.
Soon the south wing was completed, leaving only the gap for the eastern
facade which was intended to be the chief entrance to the mass of
buildings, which still bore the comprehensive name of "The Louvre."
For the accomplishment of this facade, the demolition of certain
dwellings of the nobility which had clustered around the royal fabric
was necessary, and the Hotels du Petit Bourbon, de Villequier, de
Chaumont, La Force, De Crequy, de Longueville, and de Choisy fell before
the picks of the house-breakers. Levau commenced work on the facade at
once, and made rapid progress until 1664, when an abrupt order came for
him to stop all work. Political conspiracy, graft, if you like, was at
work, and Colbert, little favourable towards Levau, made a proposition
to the king to open a competition for the design and execution of the
facade. Willingly enough, his mind doubtless more occupied with other
things, Louis XIV agreed, and a general call was sent out to all French
architects to enter the lists. Confusion reigned, and Levau was about to
be recalled when Colbert spied an unrolled parchment in the corner and
pounced upon it eagerly as the means of saving him from the dubious
efforts of the former incumbent.
It was the "non-professional" plan submitted by a doctor in medicine,
one Charles Perrault. Jealous competitors made all sorts of criticisms
and objections, the chief contention being that if by any chance an
architectural design by a "pill-roller" proved pleasing to the eye it
was bound to be impracticable from an economic or constructive point of
view, or both. This is often enough true, and it proved to be so in this
case, for in spite of a certain amount of advice from an expert Italian
builder, who had come to Paris to help the good doctor with his
difficult task (for he actually received a commission for the work and
completed it in 1674), the facade did not fit the rest of the fabric
with which it was intended to join up, and to-day it may be observed by
the curious as being several feet out of line with the structure which
faces on the Rue de Rivoli.
Louis XIV practically had no regard for the Louvre and its architectural
traditions; his palatial garden-city idea, worked out at Versailles,
shows what an innovator he was. He allowed the Louvre to be filled up
with all sorts of riffraff, who were often given a lodging there in
place of a money payment for some service rendered. The Louvre thus
became a sort of genteel poor-house, while king and court spent their
time in the more ample country-house behind the Meudon hills.
By 1750 the Louvre had become little more than an immense ruin, humbled
and desecrated; a veritable orphan. The Marquis de Marigny, Surintendant
des Batiments Royaux, obtained the authorization to chase out the
parasites and clean up the Augean stable and put things in order as best
pleased his esthetic fancy, but only with the early years of the
nineteenth century did the Louvre become a real palace again and worthy
of its traditions.
From 1803 to 1813 the architects Fontaine and Percier were constantly
engaged in the work of repairs and additions, and built (for Napoleon I)
the gallery which extends from what is now the Place Jeanne d'Arc to the
Pavillon de Rohan, along the Rue de Rivoli. This detached portion (bound
only to the Tuileries) was finally joined to the seventeenth century
work of Lemercier under Louis Napoleon in 1852. This gallery, the work
of "moderns," is no mean example of palace-building, either. It was the
work of Visconti and Lefuel, and with the adoption of this plan was
finally accomplished the interpolation of that range of pavilions which
gives the architecture of the Louvre one of its principal distinctions.
Named after the principal ministers of former administrations--Donon,
Mollien, Daru, Richelieu, Colbert, Turgot, etc., these pavilions break
up what would otherwise be monotonous, elongated facades.
The inauguration of this last built portion of the palace was held on
August 14, 1857, the occasion being celebrated by a banquet given by
Napoleon III to all the architects, artists and labourers who had been
engaged upon the work. In the same Salle, two years later, which took
the name of Salle des Etats, the emperor gave a _diner de gala_ to the
generals returning from the Italian campaign.
Still further resume of fact with regard to the main body of the Louvre,
as well as with respect to its individual components, will open
never-ending vistas and pageants. It is not possible in a chapter, a
book or a five-foot shelf to limn all that is even of cursory interest.
The well-known, the little-known and the comparatively unknown mingle in
varying proportions, according to the individual mood or attitude. To
some the appeal will lie in the vastness of the fabric, to others in the
varied casts of characters which have played upon its stage, still
others will be impressed with the dramatic incidents, and many more will
retain only present-day memories of what they have themselves seen. The
Louvre is a study of a lifetime.
To resume a none too complete chronology, it is easy to recall the
following important events which have taken place in the Louvre since
the days of Henri III, the period at which only the barest beginnings of
the present structure had been projected.
In 1591 a ghastly procedure took place when four members of the Conseil
des Seize were hung in the Salle des Caryatides by orders of the Duc de
Mayenne.
Like the horoscope which foretold the death of Henri III, another royal
prophecy was cast in 1610 that reminds one of that which perhaps had
not a little to do with the making away with the last of the Valois
princes.
The Duc de Vendome, the son of Henri IV by Gabrielle d'Estrees, handed
the king a documentary horoscope signed by an astrologer calling himself
La Brosse, which warned the king that he would run a great danger on May
14 in case he went abroad.
"La Brosse is an ass," cried the king, and crumpled the paper beneath
his feet.
On the day in question the king started out to visit his minister,
Sully, at the Arsenal. It was then in turning from the Rue Saint Honore
into the Rue de la Ferroniere that the royal coach, frequently blocked
by crowds, offered the opportunity to the assassin Ravaillac, who,
jumping upon the footboard, stabbed the king twice in the breast.
After having been wounded the king was brought dying to the Louvre. His
royal coach drew up beneath the vault through which throngs all Paris
to-day searching for a "short cut" from the river to Saint Honore. It
was but a short, brief journey to the royal apartments above in the
Pavilion de l'Horloge, but it must have been an interminable calvary to
the gallant Henri de Navarre. The body was received by Marie de Medici
in tears, and the Ducs de Guise and d'Epernon clattered out the
courtyard on horseback to spread the false news that the king had
suffered no harm. Fearing the results of too precipitate publishing of
the disaster no other course was open.
A gruesome memory is that the Swiss Guard at the Louvre surreptitiously
acquired a "_quartier_" of the dismembered body of the regicide and
roasted it in a fire set alight beneath the balcony of Marie de Medici
as an indication of their faithfulness and loyalty.
It was Sully, the king's minister, who ran first up the stairs to
acquaint the queen of the tragedy--faithful ever to the interests of his
royal master. In spite of this, one of the first acts of Marie de Medici
as regent was to drive the Baron de Rosny and Duc de Sully away. Such is
virtue's reward--sometimes.
* * * * *
"Lying on his bed, his face uncovered, clad in white satin and a bonnet
of red velvet embroidered with gold, was all that remained of Henri IV
of France and Navarre. Around the bed were nuns and monks from all the
monasteries of Paris to keep vigil of his soul."
So ends the chronicle closing the chapter of the relations of Henri IV
with his Paris palace.
No particularly tragic event took place here for some years. Henriette
de France, widow of Charles I of England, taking refuge in France from
the troublous revolt at home, lived in the Louvre in 1644. She had at
first been graciously received by Mazarin, but was finally accorded only
the most strict necessities of life, a mere lodging in the Louvre, a
modest budget and a restricted entourage.
In 1662, under Louis XIV, Moliere and his troup, in a theatre installed
in the Salle des Caryatides, gave the first "command" performance on
record. The plays produced were, "Nicodeme" and "Le Docteur Amoureux."
An "art note" of interest is that Sylvain Bailly, the first curator of
the Musee du Louvre, was born within its precincts in 1736.
In the dark days of July, 1830, the populace attempted to pillage and
sack the palace, but after a bloody reprisal retired, leaving hundreds
of dead on the field. The _parterre_ beneath the famous colonnade was
their burial place, though a decade later the bodies were exhumed and
again interred under the Colonne de Juillet in the Place de la Bastille.
Le Notre, the gardener of kings, laid out the first horticultural
embellishments of the palace surroundings under Louis XIV, and with
little change his scheme of decoration lasted until the time of Louis
Philippe, who made away with much that was distinctive and excellent.
Napoleon III came to the front with an improved decorative scheme, but
the hard flags of to-day, the dusty gravel and the too sparse
architectural embellishments do not mark the gardens of the Louvre as
being anything remarkable save as a desirable breathing spot for Paris
nursemaids and their charges.
The iron gates of the north, south and east sides were put into place
only in 1855, and at the Commune served their purpose fairly well in
holding the rabble at bay, a rabble to whose credit is the fact that it
respected the artistic inheritance enclosed by the Louvre's walls. No
work of art in the museums was stolen or destroyed, though the library
disappeared.
CHAPTER VII
THE TUILERIES AND ITS GARDENS
[Illustration: ORIGINAL PLAN of the TUILERIES]
No more sentimental interest ever attached itself to a royal French
palace than that which surrounded the Tuileries from its inception by
Charles IX in the mid-sixteenth century to its extinction by the Commune
in 1871.
The Palace of the Tuileries is no more, the Commune did for it as it did
for the Hotel de Ville and many another noble monument of the capital,
and all that remains are the gardens set about with a few marble
columns and gilt balls--themselves fragments of former decorative
elements of the palace--to suggest what once was the heritage bequeathed
the French by the Medici who was the queen of Saint Bartholomew's night.
It was a palace of giddy gayety that drew its devotees to it only to
destroy them. "Crowned fools who wished to be called kings, and others."
Even its stones were chiselled as if with a certain malignancy and
fatalism, for they have all disappeared, and their history, even, has
not been written as large as that of those of many contemporary
structures.
Of the last five kings to which the Tuileries gave shelter--not counting
the Second Emperor--only one went straightway to the tomb; one went to
the scaffold and three others to exile. A sorry dowry, this, for an
inheritor of a palace at once so noble and admirable in spite of its
unluckiness.
With the court followers and the nobility of the last days of the
monarchy it was the same thing; the Tuileries was but a temporary
shelter. The scaffold accounted for many and banishment engulfed others
to forgetfulness.
It was a commonplace at the time to repeat the warning: "O! Tuileries!
O! Tuileries! Mad indeed are those who enter thy walls, for like Louis
XVI, Napoleon, Charles X and Louis Philippe you shall make your exit by
another door."
The origin of the name Tuileries is somewhat ignominiously traced from
that of a tile factory which existed here in the heart of Paris, on the
banks of the Seine, in the sixteenth century. The property, which
comprised a manor-house as well as the tile fields, was known by the
name of La Sablonniere, and came to the Marquis Neuville de Villeroy,
Superintendent of Finances, who built on the spot a sort of fortified
chateau, which, if not of palatial dimensions, was of a palatial
prodigality of luxury.
Louise de Savoie, mother of Francis I, acquired the property in 1518 and
nine years later gave it to Jean Tiercelin, the Maitre d'Hotel of the
dauphin, who later was to become Henri II.
The lodge, or manor-house, had, by 1564, fallen into so ruinous a state
that Catherine de Medici, the widow of Henri II, set about to lay the
foundations of a new royal palace.
Catherine never resided in her projected palace, and in 1566 Charles IX,
her son, gave the commission to Philibert Delorme to build a palace,
"neighbouring upon the Louvre, but not to be connected therewith, on the
site of the Tuileries."
On July 11, work was begun, and the central pavilion and the two
extremes were carried up two stories within a year. The central
structure was a great circular-domed edifice, enclosing a marvellous
Escalier d'Honneur. The facade, preceded by two terraced porticos, was
on the courtyard, or garden, between the edifice and the Louvre. It sat
back to the present Rue des Tuileries.
The Tuileries did not become a royal residence for some time after its
completion, for Charles IX clung tenaciously to his well-guarded
apartments in the Louvre; for the central structure of the Tuileries,
because of its lack of comparative height, was hardly as much of a
stronghold as he would have liked.
A contemporary note in connection with Charles IX and the Tuileries is
found in Ronsard's "_Epitre a Charles IX_."
"J'ay veu trop de macons
Bastir les Tuileries,
Et en trop de facons
Faire les momeries."
Work on the edifice so auspiciously planned by Delorme was practically
discontinued during the reign of Henri III, owing to lack of funds.
The Renaissance of Delorme, Bullant, Lescot, each of whom had a hand in
the building of the Tuileries, expressed certain characteristic phases
of architectural art in the reigns of Francis I and Henri II. The reign
of Charles IX was only another phase of that long reign of Catherine de
Medici, and architectural influences continued to follow along the same
reminiscent Italian lines, particularly with reference to such edifices
as the Medici herself caused to be built. In the dedication of Philibert
Delorme's "_Traite d'Architecture_" he expressed himself thus with
regard to the Tuileries:
"Madame, I see from day to day with an increasing pleasure the interest
that your Majesty takes in architecture. The palace which you have built
at Paris near the Pont Neuf and the Louvre is, according to its
disposition, excellent and admirable to the extent that it pleases me
beyond measure."
After Delorme considerable changes were made and successfully carried
out under the architects Ducerceau, Duperac, Levau and Dorbay.
A distinct feature of the work of Delorme was his use of the column
ornamented throughout its length, which, as he says in his written
works, he first employed in the "_Palais de la Majeste de la Royne-Mere
a Paris_."
Of the ability of Delorme there is no diversity of opinion to-day, nor
was there in his time. Besides the Tuileries he has to his credit the
Chateau d'Anet, the Chateau de Saint Maur, that of Meudon--built for the
Cardinal de Lorraine,--and his important additions to the Chateau de la
Muette and the Chateaux of Saint Germain, Madrid and Fontainebleau.
As might be supposed Catherine de Medici professed a great admiration
for Delorme and recompensed his talents with a royal generosity, even
nominating him as Abbe of the Convent of Saint Eloi de Noyon, a fact
which caused the poet Ronsard to evolve a political satire: "La Truelle
Crossee."
At the same time that she was building the Tuileries Catherine de Medici
caused additions to be made to the Louvre; at least she undertook the
completion of the unfinished portion, which had been left for other
hands to do.
The first historic souvenir which stands out prominently with regard to
the Palais des Tuileries is the fete given four days before the fateful
Saint Bartholomew's night. It was the marriage fete of the gallant Henri
de Bearn, King of Navarre, and the wise and witty Marguerite de Valois.
Henri IV, coming to the throne a quarter of a century after the
admirable first year's work on the Tuileries had been completed, found
that little had been done towards making it a really habitable place. It
had been hurriedly finished off to the second story, and had served well
enough for a temporary residence, or as an overflow establishment where
balls and fetes might be given without crowding, but to the ambitious
Henri IV nothing would do but that the pavilions should be bound
together with a more imposing ligature, and that the Pavillon de Flore
should in turn be linked up with the Louvre by a gallery.
Under Louis XIII this latter really came to a conclusion according to
the plans of the architect Ducerceau, but the inspiration of making the
Louvre and the Tuileries one was due to Henri IV.
Under Louis XIV and Louis XV the palace in its still attenuated form was
scarcely more than a rambling lodging, utterly lacking any of the noble
apartments with which it was afterwards endowed. The court at this time
practically made Versailles its headquarters. Neither of the
above-mentioned monarchs made aught but cursory visits to the Tuileries
and left its occupancy to officers of the household and ministers of
state.
It was in the reign of Louis XV that the Florentine artist, Servandoni,
who was at the same time an eminent architect, a remarkable painter and
a _maestro_ of a musician, organized in the Palais des Tuileries the
Theatre des Machines, the first installed at Paris, and there came the
Comedie Francaise, the Opera and the Bouffes (the _Comedie Italienne_)
and gave command performances before the court.
When the French resolved that Louis XVI should live in Paris, the Palais
des Tuileries was actually offered him, but it was a rather shabby place
of royal residence so far as its interior appointments were concerned,
though in all ways appealing when viewed from without. Considerable
repairs and embellishments were made, but warring factions did much to
make difficult any real artistic progress.
With the advent of Louis XVI there came a contrast to gayety and freedom
from care in royal hearts and heads. On October 5 Louis XVI and the
royal family hid themselves behind barred doors, the convention taking
up its sittings under the same roof and forthwith passing an act which
allowed the completion of the palace according to the plans of Vignon at
an expense of three hundred thousand _livres_. An almost entire
transformation took place, the money being seemingly well spent, and the
structure now first took its proper place among the monumental art
treasures of the capital.
A dramatic incident took place at the great gate of the Tuileries, which
faced the courtyard, when, on May 28, 1795, the populace surged in waves
against its sturdy barrier. The Deputy Feraud met them at the steps.
"You may enter only over my dead body," he said. No reply was made but
to crack his skull, behead the trunk and carry the head aloft on a pike
to the very Tribune where Boissy d'Anglas was presiding.
The Salle de Spectacle of the Tuileries was, even at this period, the
largest auditorium of its kind in Europe, having eight thousand stalls
and boxes, which gave a seating capacity of considerably more than that
number of persons.
In 1793 this playhouse, of which the parquet occupied the ground floor
of the Pavillon de Marsan, underwent a strange metamorphosis when it
became the legislative hall for the National Convention. All the names
and emblems showing forth in its decorations and indicative of its
ancient rule were changed into Republican devices and symbols. The
Pavillon de Marsan was called the Pavillon de l'Egalite, the Pavillon du
Centre became the Pavillon de l'Unite and the Pavillon de Flore the
Pavillon de la Liberte, where was lodged the Committee of Public
Safety.
The Hall of the Convention, according to reports of the time, was an
appalling mixture of grandeur and effeminacy with respect to its
architectural lines. Surrounding that portion where the legislators
actually sat was the great amphitheatre which for three years was
occupied by a curious, vociferous public, more demonstrative, even, than
those that had attended the former theatrical representations in the
same apartment.
From the opening of the National Convention to the reaction of
"Thermidor" it is estimated that more than three million people assisted
at what they rightly, or wrongly, considered as a "spectacle" staged
only for their amusement.
By the time Napoleon had come into power the Tuileries was hardly
habitable, and before taking up his residence he was obliged to make
immediate and extensive transformations.
On February 19, 1800, Napoleon, still First Consul, left the Palais de
Luxembourg and took up his residence in the Tuileries, the Third Consul,
Lebrun, being lodged in the Pavillon de Flore, in the "Petite
Appartement," which Marie Antoinette had fitted up for her temporary
accommodation when in town. Lebrun, however, gave up his lodging to the
Pope when the Pontiff came to Paris at Napoleon's orders. Consul
Cambaceres, however, refused to shelter himself beneath the roof of the
Tuileries, and indicated a preference for the magnificent Hotel
d'Elboeuf, which was accommodatingly put at his disposition.
Napoleon entered the Tuileries in state, preceded and followed by an
imposing cortege. At the gate of the Carrousel the consuls alighted from
their carriages, and were received by the Consular Guard. On their
arrival the consuls read the following inscription posted at the
entrance: "On August 10th monarchy in France was forever abolished; it
will never be restored." By the 20th of February the inscription had
disappeared. Besides, orders were given to cut down the two liberty
trees which had been planted in the courtyard. On August 10 a large
quantity of cannon shot had been lodged in the facade of the Tuileries,
and around the shot were written these words: "Tenth of August." The
cannon balls disappeared, as well as the inscriptions, when the Arc de
Triomphe was erected on the Place du Carrousel.
This alteration gave great satisfaction. It was important for the
tranquillity of France that the new government should inherit rather the
sword of Charlemagne than the guillotine of Marat.
[Illustration: _Salle des Marechaux, Tuileries_]
The imperial court soon displayed its splendour and magnificence in
the Palais des Tuileries, as a foregone conclusion anticipated.
In a gorgeous and imposing Salle du Trone one might have seen in the
deep casement of the central window, standing up, their hats off, the
group of the Corps Diplomatique, the members of which, loaded with
decorations, ensigns, and diamonds, trembled in the presence of the
Little Corporal of other days; on the other side, the host of the
Princes of the Rhine Confederation--all the personages that Germany,
Russia, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Spain, all Europe, in one word, England
excepted, had sent to Paris.
It is needless to say that the wedding reception of Napoleon and Marie
Louise at the Tuileries was celebrated with unusual magnificence.
Another event, on account of its peculiar moment, strongly excited the
enthusiasm of the French. On March 20, 1811, at seven o'clock in the
morning, the first salute of cannon announced that the empress had given
birth to a child, the future Aiglon, the King of Rome.
After Napoleon's occupancy of the Tuileries it again served the monarch
under the Empire, the Restoration, under Louis Philippe and under the
Second Empire. The palace of unhappy memory saw successively the fall of
Napoleon, the entry of Louis XVIII, the file-by of the Allies, the
flight of Louis XVIII, of Charles X, Louis Philippe and Napoleon III.
Up to the time of the Second Empire the Tuileries preserved, more or
less, its original interior arrangement, and, to a great extent, the
decorations with which it had been embellished under Louis XIV, Louis
XVI, and Napoleon I.
The Pavilion de Flore, at the juncture of the Tuileries and the Louvre
of Henri IV, was practically rebuilt during the Second Empire, but it
followed closely the contemporary designs of the adjoining building.
Here are quartered executive offices of the Prefecture de la Seine. That
portion facing the Pont Royal contains a series of fine sculptures by
Carpeaux, the sole modern embellishments of this nature to be seen in or
on a Paris palace.
As the Commune mob was fleeing before the army of Versailles a
conflagration broke out in the Tuileries and soon the whole edifice was
in flames. Within what may have been the briefest interval on record for
a conflagration of its size the Tuileries was but a smoking pile of
half-calcined stones.
The Tuileries had another brief day of glory when the Prince President,
Louis Napoleon, entered its gates, coming straight from his inauguration
at Notre Dame.
The cannon at the Hotel des Invalides blazed out a welcome and every
patriot Republican shouted: "Vive Napoleon!" They little knew, little
cared perhaps, that he would some day become the Second Emperor.
The throng poured forth from the cathedral after the _Domine Salvum_ and
the benediction, the clergy leading the way, followed by the president
and his attendants. The orchestra played a lively march, and the great
bell in the tower boomed forth a glorious peal.
* * * * *
The president's carriage drew up before the gates of the Tuileries and
he entered the great apartment where a reception was given to various
public and military bodies. Between seven and eight thousand naval and
military officers paid their respects, and about half a battalion of the
army saluted, among them two Mamelukes. While this ceremony was going
on, the Place du Carrousel was occupied by several squadrons of cavalry
and the inner courtyards were practically infantry camps. The government
was taking no chances at the beginning of its career. The reception
lasted until well on towards evening, when a banquet of four hundred
covers was laid and partaken of by the invited guests.
The last days of the Tuileries may be said to have commenced with that
eventful September 3, 1870, at five o'clock in the afternoon, when the
Empress Eugenie received a telegraphic despatch from Napoleon III
announcing his captivity and the defeat of Sedan. It was the overthrow.
The evening and the night were calm; the masses, as yet, were unaware of
the fatal news the journals would publish on the morrow. The following
day was Sunday; the weather superb; the disaster was finally announced
and the masses thronged from all parts to the Place de la Concorde,
where a squadron of Cuirassiers barred the bridge leading to the Palais
Bourbon where the deputies were in session.
On the arrival of the news the empress had called in General Trochu, the
Military Governor of Paris, and asked him if he could guarantee order.
He replied in the affirmative. Some hours later a group of deputies came
to the empress and counselled her to sign, not an abdication, but a
momentary renunciation of her powers as regent. Eugenie refused
point-blank.
The throng, passing by the left bank, had arrived at the Chamber of
Deputies, and the formal sitting became a revolutionary one. At three
o'clock the imperial dynasty was proclaimed as at an end, and a
provisionary government installed. Henri Rochefort, the present editor
of the "_Intransingeant_," was delivered from the prison of Sainte
Pelagie and made a member of the government.
By this time the mob which had invaded the Place de la Concorde became
menacing. The cry, "Aux Tuileries," first launched by the street gamins,
soon became the slogan of the crowd. To say it was to do it; the great
iron gates were closed, but in default of a protecting force of arms it
was an easy matter to scale them.
Behind the curtained windows of the palace the empress witnessed the
assault and murmured to her ladies-in-waiting: "It is then finished."
She turned towards the Prince de Metternich and the Chevalier Nigra,
and, in the voice of a suppliant, demanded: "_Que me consillez vous?_"
"You must leave at once, Madame; in a moment the palace will be
invaded."
The empress became resigned and accompanied by Madame Le Breton,
Metternich and Nigra started for the Pavilion de Flore, passing through
the Galerie de Musee and the Galerie d'Apollon, finally leaving by the
gate of the Louvre, which is opposite Saint Germain l'Auxerrois.
The empress was at last out of the palace, but not yet out of danger. A
band of manifestants, making for the Hotel de Ville and shouting; "Vive
la Republique," recognized the empress, but she mounted an empty fiacre
with Madame Le Breton, and giving the driver the first address that
entered her mind thus escaped further indignities, and perhaps danger.
Finally she found a refuge with Doctor Evans, the American dentist
living in the Avenue Malakoff, from whose house she left for England on
the following day.
This is the Frenchman's point of view of one of the picturesque
incidents of history. It disposes of the legend that the empress left
the Tuileries in the carriage of Doctor Evans, but this cannot be
helped, with due regard for the consensus of French opinion. Doctor
Evans was a family friend, besides being the dentist who cared for the
imperial teeth, and it is not going beyond the truth to state that the
fortunate American acquired not a little of his vogue and wealth by his
association with Napoleon III and his family.
By this time the populace had invaded the palace and cursed with
indignities unmentionable the marble halls, and the furnishings in
general, and pillaged such portable property as pleased the individual
fancies of the spoilsmen.
After the signing of the Peace Treaty by the Bordeaux Assembly, which
now represented the governmental head, and Thiers had become president,
that worthy would do away with the cannon of which the National Guard
still held possession in their garrison on the Butte of Montmartre. The
orders which he sent forth came to be the signal for another outbreak on
the part of the populace. On March 18 the Commune was proclaimed and
Citoyen Dardelle, an old African hunter, was appointed military governor
of the Tuileries. Whatever this individual's military qualifications may
have been, he delivered himself to the enjoyment of a high and dissolute
life in his luxurious apartments in the palace; a fact which was
speedily made note of by the still restless populace.
The Citoyen Rousselle, a member of the Communal Government, had the idea
of organizing a series of popular concerts in the gardens of the
Tuileries for the profit of the wounded in the late friction.
Hung on the walls, at the entrance of each apartment was a placard which
read: "Fellow men, the gold with which these walls were built was earned
by your sweat." "To-day you are coming to your own." "Remain faithful to
your trust and see to it that the tyrants enter never more."
During one of these public concerts a poem of Hegesippe Moreau was read
which terminated as follows, and set the populace aflame.
* * *
"Et moi j'applaudirai; ma jeuneusse engourdie
Se rechauffera a ce grand incendie."
He referred to the burning of the former abode of emperors and kings as
a sort of sacrifice to the common good. The public had held itself in
hand very well up to this moment, but applauded the verses vociferously.
The last of the concerts was held on May 21, the same day as the Army of
Versailles entered Paris. Night came, and with it the raging, red flames
springing skywards from the roof of the Tuileries.
In a few moments the flames had enveloped the entire building. All the
forces that it was possible to gather had been ordered upon the scene,
but they were unable to save the old palace, and by one o'clock in the
morning it was but a mass of smoking ruins. The Communards had done
their work well. Before leaving its precincts they had sprinkled coal
oil over every square metre of carpet, window-hangings and tapestries,
and the slow-match was not long in passing the fire to its inflammable
timber. The library of the Louvre was destroyed, but the museums,
galleries and their famous collections fortunately escaped.
For a dozen years the lamentable ruins of the old palace of the
Tuileries reared their singed walls, a witness and a reproach to the
tempestuosity of a people. Finally, in 1882, Monsieur Achille Picard
undertook their removal for thirty-three thousand francs, and within a
year not a vestige, not an unturned stone remained in its original place
as a witness to this chapter of Paris history.
Two porticos of the Pavillon de l'Horloge, originally forming a part of
the Tuileries, have been re-erected on the terrace of the Orangerie,
facing the Place de la Concorde.
There remain but two survivors of the late imperial sway in France, the
Empress Eugenie who lives in England, and Emile Olivier, "_l'homme au
coeur leger_," who lives at Saint Tropez in the Midi.
A Paris journalist a year or more ago, while sitting among a little
coterie of literary and artistic folk at Lavenue's famous terrace-cafe,
recounted the following incident clothed in most discreet language, and
since it bears upon the Tuileries and its last occupants it is repeated
here.
"Last night beneath the glamour of a September moon I saw a black shadow
silently creep out from beneath the gloom of the arcades of the Rue de
Rivoli just below the Hotel Continental. It crossed the pavement and
passed within the railings of the gardens opposite, one of the gates to
which, by chance or prearranged design, was still open. It moved slowly
here and there upon the gravelled walks and seated itself upon a
solitary bench as if it were meditating upon the splendid though sad
hours that had passed. Was it a wraith; was it Eugenie, late empress of
the French?"
To have remembered such a dream of fancy for forty long years one must
have been endowed with superhuman courage, or an inexplicable
conscience.
The Rue des Pyramides, which has been prolonged to the banks of the
Seine, will give those of the present generation who have never seen the
Tuileries an exact idea of its location. If it still existed the facade
of the palace would front upon this street.
The most moving history of the detailed horrors of the Commune,
particularly with reference to the part played by the Tuileries therein,
is to be found in Maxime Ducamp's "_Les Derniers Convulsions de Paris_."
One relic of the Tuileries left unharmed found a purchaser in a
Roumanian prince, at a public sale held as late as 1889. This was the
ornately beautiful iron gate which separated the Cour du Carrousel from
the Cour des Tuileries. Roumanian by birth, French at heart and Parisian
by adoption, this wealthy amateur, for a trifle over eight thousand
francs, became the owner of a royal souvenir which must have cost five
hundred times that sum.
The eastern front of the Tuileries opened into a courtyard formed under
the direction of the first Napoleon. It was separated from the Place du
Carrousel by a handsome iron railing with gilt spear-heads extending the
whole range of the palace. From this court there were three entrances
into the Place du Carrousel, the central gate corresponding with the
central pavilion of the palace, the other two having their piers
surmounted by colossal figures of victory, peace, history and France. A
gateway under each of the lateral galleries also communicated on the
north with the Rue de Rivoli, and on the south with the Quai du Louvre.
The Place du Carrousel was named in honour of a tournament held upon the
spot by Louis XIV in 1662. It communicated on the north with the Rue
Richelieu and the Rue de l'Echelle, and on the south with the Pont Royal
and the Pont du Carrousel. To-day in the square stands the triumphal
arch erected by Napoleon in 1806, after the designs of Percier and
Fontaine.
The newly laid-out and furbished-up gardens make the Place du Carrousel
even more attractive than it was when set about with flagged areas,
gravelled walks and paved road ways, and, while the monumental and
architectural accessories excel the horticultural embellishments in
quantity, the general effect is incomparably finer at present than
anything known before.
Plans for rebuilding the Place du Carrousel provide for a division into
three distinct parts, three grand _pelouses_, _a boulingrins a la
Francais_, or lawns of a circumscribed area, according to the best
traditions of Le Notre, a border of flowers and a few decoratively
disposed clumps of flowering shrubs, the whole combined in such a way
that the perspective and vista down the Champs Elysees will in no manner
suffer. The architect-landscapist, M. Redon, who has been charged with
the work, has drawn his inspiration from a series of unexecuted designs
of Le Notre which have recently been brought to light from the innermost
depths of the national archives. It was a safe way of avoiding an
anachronism, and this time a government architect has chosen well his
plan of execution.
In later years the question of the reembellishment of the Garden of the
Tuileries has ever been before the public, but little has actually been
changed save the remaking of certain garden plots, the planting of a few
shrubs or the placing of a few statues.
The Garden of the Tuileries has a superficial area of 232,632 square
metres. It is the most popular of all open spaces in the capital to the
Parisian who would take his walks abroad not too far from the centre of
things. The chief curiosity of the garden is the celebrated chestnut
tree which burst into flower on the day of Napoleon's arrival from
Elba--March 20. The precocious tree has ever been revered by the
Bonapartists since, though the tree has never performed the trick the
second time.
Statues innumerable are scattered here and there through the garden and
give a certain sense of liveliness to the area. Some are by famous
names, others by those less renowned, but as a whole they make little
impression on one, chiefly, perhaps, because one does not come to the
Garden of the Tuileries to see statues.
To the left and right are the terraces, first laid out by the celebrated
Le Notre. Like the hanging gardens of Babylon, they overlook a lower
level of _parterres_, gravelled walks and ornamental waters. Along the
Rue de Rivoli is the Terrasse de l'Orangerie, and on the side of the
river is the Terrasse de la Marine.
According to the original plans of Le Notre the garden was set down as
five hundred _toises_ in length, and one hundred and sixty-eight
_toises_ in width, the latter dimension corresponding to that of the
facade of the palace.
Along the shady avenues of this admirable city garden of to-day an
enterprising _concessionaire_ has won a fortune by renting out
rush-bottomed chairs to nursemaids, retired old gentlemen with red
ribbons in their buttonholes, and trippers from across the channel. It
is a perfectly legitimate enterprise and a profitable one it would seem,
and has been in operation considerably more than half a century.
It was from the Gardens of the Tuileries in 1784 that took place
Blanchard's celebrated ascension in Montgolfier's balloon and brought
forth the encomium from the British Royal Society that the body was not
in the least surprised that a Frenchman should have solved the problem
of "volatability." The French monarch, more practical, was so mightily
pleased with the success of the experiment that he bestowed upon the
author the sum of four hundred thousand francs from his treasury to be
used for the perfection of the art.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PALAIS CARDINAL AND THE PALAIS ROYAL
With the Louvre and the Tuileries the Palais Royal shares the popular
interest of the traveller among all the monuments of Paris. No other
edifice evokes more vivid souvenirs of its historic past than this
hybrid palace of Richelieu. One dreams even to-day, of its
sumptuousness, its legends, its amusing and extravagant incidents which
cast a halo of romantic interest over so many illustrious personages. So
thoroughly Parisian is the Palais Royal in all things that it has been
called "the Capital of Paris."
Not far from the walled and turreted stronghold of the old Louvre rose
the private palaces, only a little less royal, of the Rambouillets, the
Mercoeurs and other nobles of the courtly train. They lived, too, in
almost regal state until Armand du Plessis de Richelieu came to humble
their pride, by fair means or foul, by buying up or destroying their
sumptuous dwellings, levelling off a vast area of land, and, in 1629,
commencing work on that imposing pile which was first known as the
Palais Cardinal, later the Palais d'Orleans, then as the Palais de la
Revolution and finally as the Palais Royal.
It was near, yet far enough away from the royal residence of the Louvre
not to be overshadowed by it. The edifice enclosed a great square of
ground laid out with symmetrically planted trees and adorned with
fountains and statues.
From the great central square four smaller courts opened out to each of
the principal points of the compass; there were also, besides the living
rooms, a chapel, two theatres, ballrooms, boudoirs and picture
galleries, all of a luxury never before dreamed of but by kings.
The main entrance was in the Rue Saint Honore, and over its portal were
the graven arms of Richelieu, surmounted by the cardinal's hat and the
inscription: "Palais Cardinal." Like his English compeer, Wolsey,
Richelieu's ardour for building knew no restraint. He added block upon
block of buildings and yard upon yard to garden walls until all was a
veritable labyrinth. Finally the usually subservient Louis saw the
condition of things; he liked it not that his minister should dwell in
marble halls more gorgeous than his own. As a matter of policy the
Cardinal ceased to build more and at his death, as if to atone, willed
the entire property to his king.
As the Palais Cardinal, the edifice was subjected to many impertinent
railleries from the public which, as a whole, was ever antagonistic to
the "_Homme Rouge_." They did not admit the right of an apostolic
prelate of the church to lodge himself so luxuriously when the very
precepts of his religion recommended modesty and humility. Richelieu's
contemporaries did not hesitate to admire wonderingly all this luxury of
life and its accessories, and Corneille, in the "_Menteur_" (1642),
makes one of the principal characters say:
"Non, l'univers ne peut rien voir d'egal
Aux superbes dehors du Palais Cardinal;
Toute une ville entiere avec pompe batie,
Semble d'un vieux fosse par miracle sortie,
Et nous fais presumer a ses superbes toits
Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois."
The ground plan of the Palais Cardinal was something unique among city
palaces. In the beginning ground values were not what they are to-day in
Paris. There were acres upon acres of greensward set about and cut up
with gravelled walks, great alleyed rows of trees, groves without number
and galleries and colonnades innumerable. Without roared the traffic of
a great city, a less noisy traffic than that of to-day, perhaps, but
still a contrasting maelstrom of bustle and furor as compared with the
tranquillity within.
After the edifice was finished it actually fell into disuse, except for
the periodical intervals when the Cardinal visited the capital. At other
times it was as quiet as a cemetery. Moss grew on the flags, grass on
the gravelled walks and tangled shrubbery killed off the budding flowers
of the gardens.
Richelieu's last home-coming, after the execution of Cinq-Mars at Lyons,
was a tragic one. The despot of France, once again under his own
rooftree, threw himself upon his bed surrounded by his choicest pictures
and tapestries, and paid the price of his merciless arrogance towards
all men--and women--by folding his wan hands upon his breast and
exclaiming, somewhat unconvincingly: "Thus do I give myself to God." As
if recalling himself to the stern reality of things he added: "I have no
enemies but those of State."
In a robe of purple silk, supported by pillows of the finest down and
covered with the rarest of laces, he rigidly straightened himself out
and expired without a shudder, with the feeling that he was well beyond
the reach of invisible foes. But before he died Richelieu received a
visit from his king in person. This was another token of his invincible
power.
Thus the Palais Royal was evolved from the Palais Cardinal of Richelieu.
Richelieu gave the orders for its construction to Jacques Lemercier
immediately after he had dispossessed the Rambouillets and the
Mercoeurs, intending at first to erect only a comparatively modest
town dwelling with an ample garden. Vanity, or some other passion,
finally caused to grow up the magnificently proportioned edifice which
was called the Palais Cardinal instead of that which was to be known
more modestly as the Hotel de Richelieu.
Vast and imposing, but not without a certain graceful symmetry, the
Palais Royal of to-day is a composition of many separate edifices
divided by a series of courts and gardens and connected by arcaded
galleries. The right wing enclosed an elaborate Salle de Spectacle while
that to the left enclosed an equally imposing chamber with a ceiling by
Philippe de Champaigne, known as the Galerie des Hommes Illustres, and
further ornamented with portraits of most of the court favourites of
both sexes of the time. The architectural ornamentation of this gallery
was of the Doric order, most daringly interspersed with moulded ships'
prows, anchors, cables and what not of a marine significance.
In 1636, divining the attitude of envy of many of the nobility who
frequented his palace, Richelieu--great man of politics that he
was--made a present of the entire lot of curios to Louis XIII, but
undertaking to house them for him, which he did until his death in 1642.
At the death of Louis XIII the Palais Cardinal, which had been left to
him in its entirety by the will of Richelieu, came to Anne d'Autriche,
the regent, who, with the infant Louis XIV and the royal family,
installed herself therein, and from now on (October 7, 1642), the
edifice became known as the Palais Royal.
Now commenced the political role of this sumptuous palace which hitherto
had been but the Cardinal's caprice. Mazarin had succeeded Richelieu,
and to escape the anger of the Frondeurs, he, with the regent and the
two princes, Louis XIV and the Duc d'Anjou, fled to the refuge of Saint
Germain-en-Laye.
In company with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who had been rudely
awakened from her slumbers in the Luxembourg, they took a coach in the
dead of night for Saint Germain. It was a long and weary ride; the _Pavi
du Roi_ was then, as now, the most execrable suburban highroad in
existence.
When calm was reestablished Mazarin refused to allow the regent to take
up her residence again in the old abode of Richelieu and turned it over
to Henriette de France, the widow of Charles I, who had been banished
from England by Cromwell.
Thirty odd years later Louis XIV, when he was dreaming of his Versailles
project, made a gift of the property to his nephew, Philippe d'Orleans,
Duc de Chartres. Important reconstructions and rearrangements had been
carried on from time to time, but nothing so radical as to change the
specious aspect of the palace of the Cardinal's time, though it had been
considerably enlarged by extending it rearward and annexing the Hotel
Danville in the present Rue Richelieu. Mansart on one occasion was
called in and built a new gallery that Coypel decorated with fourteen
compositions after the AEnid of Virgil.
Under the regency the Salon d'Entree was redecorated by Oppenard, and a
series of magnificent fetes was organized by the pleasure-loving queen
from the Austrian court. Richelieu's theatre was made into an
opera-house, and masked balls of an unparalleled magnificence were
frequently given, not forgetting to mention--without emphasis
however--suppers of a Pantagruelian opulence and lavish orgies at which
the chronicles only hint.
In 1661, Monsieur, brother of the king, took up his official residence
in the palace, enlarged it in various directions and in many ways
transformed and improved it. Having become the sole proprietor of the
edifice and its gardens, by Letters Patent of February, 1692, the Duc
d'Orleans left this superb property, in 1701, to his son the too famous
regent, Philippe d'Orleans, whose orgies and extravagances rendered the
Palais Royal notorious to the utmost corners of Europe.
The first years of the eighteenth century were indeed notorious. It was
then that Palais Royal became the head-centre for debauch and abandon.
It is from this epoch, too, that date the actual structures which to-day
form this vast square of buildings, at all events their general outline
is little changed to-day from what it was at that time.
If the regent's policy was to carry the freedom and luxury of
Richelieu's time to excess, replacing even the edifices of the Cardinal
with more elaborate structures, his son Louis (1723-1752) sought in his
turn to surround them with an atmosphere more austere.
A disastrous fire in 1763 caused the Palais Royal to be rebuilt by order
of Louis Philippe d'Orleans, the future Philippe-Egalite, by the
architect Moreau, who carried out the old traditions as to form and
outline, and considerably increased the extent and number of the arcades
from one hundred and eighty to two hundred and seven. These the astute
duke immediately rented out to shopkeepers at an annual rental of more
than ten millions. This section was known characteristically enough as
the Palais Marchand, and thus the garden came to be surrounded by a
monumental and classic arcade of shops which has ever remained a
distinct feature of the palace.
A second fire burned out the National Opera, which now sought shelter in
the Palais Royal, and in 1781 the Theatre des Varietes Amusantes was
constructed, and which has since been made over into the home of the
Comedie Francaise.
The transformations imposed by Philippe-Egalite were considerable, and
the famous chestnut trees, which had been planted within the courtyard
in the seventeenth century by Richelieu, were cut down. He built also
the three transverse galleries which have cut the gardens of to-day into
much smaller plots than they were in Richelieu's time. In spite of this
there is still that pleasurable tranquillity to be had therein to-day,
scarcely a stone's throw from the rush and turmoil of the whirlpool of
wheeled traffic which centres around the junction of the Rue Richelieu
with the Avenue de l'Opera. It is as an oasis in a turbulent sandstorm,
a beneficent shelf of rock in a whirlpool of rapids. The only thing to
be feared therein is that a toy aeroplane of some child will put an eye
out, or that the more devilish _diabolo_ will crack one's skull.
Under the regency of the Duc Philippe d'Orleans the various apartments
of the palace were the scenes of scandalous goings-on, which were
related at great length in the chronicles of the time. It was a very
mixed world which now frequented the _purlieus_ of the Palais Royal. Men
and women about town jostled with men of affairs, financiers,
speculators and agitators of all ranks and of questionable
respectability. Milords, as strangers from across the Manche came first
to be known here, delivered themselves to questionable society and still
more questionable pleasures. It was at a little later period that the
Duc de Chartres authorized the establishment of the cafes and
restaurants which for a couple of generations became the most celebrated
rendezvous in Paris--the Cafe de Foy, the Cafe de la Paix, the Cafe
Carrazzo and various other places of reunion whose very names, to say
nothing of the incidents connected therewith, have come down to history.
It was the establishment of these public rendezvous which contributed
so largely to the events which unrolled themselves in the Palais Royal
in 1789. This "Eden de l'Enfer," as it was known, has in late years been
entirely reconstructed; the old haunts of the Empire have gone and
nothing has come to take their place.
Then came another class of establishments which burned brilliantly in
the second rank and were, in a way, political rendezvous also--the Cafe
de Chartres and the Cafe de Valois. Of all these Palais Royal cafes of
the early nineteenth century the most gorgeous and brilliant was the
Cafe des Mille Colonnes, though its popularity was seemingly due to the
charms of the _maitresse de la maison_, a Madame Romain, whose husband
was a dried-up, dwarfed little man of no account whatever. Madame
Romain, however, lived well up to her reputation as being
"_incontestablement la plus jolie femme de Paris_." By 1824 the fame of
the establishment had begun to wane and in 1826 it expired, though the
"_Almanach des Gourmands_" of the latter year said that the proprietor
was the Very of _limonadiers_, that his ices were superb, his salons
magnificent--and his prices exorbitant. Perhaps it was the latter that
did it!
Another establishment, founded in 1817, was domiciled here, the clients
being served by "_odalisques en costume oriental, tres seduisantes_."
This is quoted from the advertisements of the day. The cafe was called
the Cafe des Circassiennes, and there was a _sultane_, who was the
presiding genius of the place. It met with but an indifferent success
and soon closed its doors despite its supposedly all-compelling
attractions.
In the mid-nineteenth century a revolution came over the cafes of Paris.
Tobacco had invaded their precincts; previously one smoked only in the
_estaminets_. Three cafes of the Palais Royal resisted the innovation,
the Cafe de la Galerie d'Orleans, the Cafe de Foy and the Cafe de la
Rotonde. To-day, well, to-day things are different.
The Theatre du Palais Royal of to-day was the Theatre des Marionettes of
the Comte de Beaujolais, which had for contemporaries the Fantoches
Italiens, the Ombres Chinoises and the Musee Curtius, perhaps the first
of the wax-works shows that in later generations became so popular. The
Palais Royal had now become a vast amusement enterprise, with side-shows
of all sorts, theatres, concerts, cafes, restaurants, clubs,
gambling-houses and what not--all paying rents, and high ones, to the
proprietor.
In the centre of the garden, where is now the fountain and its basin,
was a circus, half underground and half above, and there were
innumerable booths and kiosks for the sale of foolish trifles, all
paying tribute to the ground landlord.
Gaming at the Palais Royal was not wholly confined to the public
gambling houses. During the carnival season of 1777 the gambling which
went on in the royal apartments became notorious for even that
profligate time: in one night the Duc de Chartres lost eight thousand
_livres_. Louis XVI, honest man, took all due precautions to reduce this
extravagance, but was impotent.
Between the courtyard fountain and the northern arcade of the inner
palace was placed the famous Cannon du Palais Royal, which, by an
ingenious disposition, was fired each day at midday by the action of the
sun's rays. All the world stood around awaiting the moment when watches
might be regulated for another twenty-four hours.
The celebrated Abbe Delille, to whom the beauties of the gardens were
being shown, deplored the lack of good manners on the part of the
habitues and delivered himself of the following appropriate quatrain:
"Dans ce jardin tout se rencontree
Excepte l'ombrage et les fleurs;
Si l'on y deregle ses moeurs
Du moins on y regle sa montre."
The Galerie de Bois was perhaps the most disreputable of all the palace
confines. It was a long, double row of booths which only disappeared
when Louis-Philippe built the glass-covered Galerie d'Orleans.
Up to the eve of the Revolution the Palais Royal enjoyed the same
privileges as the Temple and the Luxembourg, and became a sort of refuge
whereby those who sought to escape from the police might lose themselves
in the throng. The monarch himself was obliged to ask permission of the
Duc d'Orleans that his officials might pursue their police methods
within the outer walls.
It was July 12, 1789. The evening before, Louis XVI had dismissed his
minister, Neckar, but only on Sunday, the 12th, did the news get abroad.
At the same time it was learned that the regiment known as the Royal
Allemand, under the orders of the Prince de Lambesc, had charged the
multitude gathered before the gates of the Tuileries. Cries of "A Mort!"
"Aux Armes!" "Vengeance!" were hurled in air from all sides.
At high noon in the gardens of the Palais Royal, on the 13th, as the
midday sun was scorching the flagstones to a grilling temperature, the
sound of a tiny cannon shot smote the still summer air with an echo
which did not cease reverberating for months. The careless, unthinking
promenaders suddenly grew grave, then violently agitated and finally
raving, heedlessly mad. A young unknown limb of the law, Camille
Desmoulins, rushed bareheaded and shrieking out of the Cafe de Foy,
parted the crowd as a ship parts the waves, sprang upon a chair and
harangued the multitude with such a vehemence and conviction that they
were with him as one man.
"Citizens," he said, "I come from Versailles * * * It only remains for
us to choose our colours. _Quelle couleur voulez vous?_ Green, the
colour of hope; or the blue of Cincinnati, the colour of American
liberty and democracy."
_"Nous avons assez delibere!_ Deliberate further with our hands not our
hearts! We are the party the most numerous: To arms!"
On the morrow, the now famous 14th of July, the Frenchman's "glorious
fourteenth," the people rose and the Bastille fell.
Revolutionary decree, in 1793, converted the palace and its garden into
the Palais et Jardin de la Revolution, and appropriated them as national
property. Napoleon granted the palace to the Tribunal for its seat, and
during the Hundred Days Lucien Bonaparte took up his residence there. In
1830 Louis Philippe d'Orleans gave a great fete here in honour of the
King of Naples who had come to the capital to pay his respects to the
French king. Charles X, assisting at the ceremony as an invited guest,
was also present and a month later came again to actually inhabit the
palace and make it royal once more.
[Illustration: The Galleries of the Palais-Royal under Napoleon First.]
The table herewith showing the ramifications of the Bourbon Orleans
family in modern times is interesting--all collateral branches of the
genealogical tree sprouting from that of Louis Philippe. The heraldic
embellishments of this family tree offer a particular interest in that
the armorial blazonings are in accord with a decree of the French
Tribunal, handed down a few years since, which establishes the right to
the head of the house to bear the _ecu plein de France--d'azur a trois
fleurs de lys d'or_, thus establishing the Orleans legitimacy.
[Illustration]
The Republic of 1848 made the palace the headquarters of the Cour des
Comptes and of the Etat Major of the National Guard. Under Napoleon III
the Palais Royal became the dwelling of Prince Jerome, the uncle of the
emperor. Later it served the same purpose for the son of Prince
Napoleon. It was at this epoch that the desecration of scraping out the
blazoned _lys_ and the chipping off the graven Bourbon _armoiries_ took
place. Whenever one or the other hated Bourbon symbol was found, eagles,
phoenix-like, sprang up in their place, only in their turn to
disappear when the Republican device of '48 (now brought to light
again), _Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite_--replaced them.
During the Commune of 1870 a part of the left wing and the central
pavilion suffered by fire, but restorations under the architect,
Chabrol, brought them back again to much their original outlines.
Through all its changes of tenure and political vicissitudes little
transformation took place as to the ground plan, or sky-line silhouette,
of the chameleon palace of cardinal, king and emperor, and while in no
sense is it architecturally imposing or luxurious, it is now, as ever in
the past, one of the most distinctive of Paris's public monuments.
To-day the Palais Royal proper may be said to face on Place du Palais
Royal, with its principal entrance at the end of a shallow courtyard
separated from the street by an iron grille and flanked by two
unimposing pavilions. The principal facade hides the lodging of the
Conseil d'Etat and is composed of but the ground floor, a story above
and an attic.
The Aile Montpensier, which follows on from the edifice which houses the
Comedie Francaise, was, until recently, occupied by the Cour des
Comptes. The Aile de Valois fronts the street of that name, and here the
Princes d'Orleans and King Jerome made their residence. To-day the same
wing is devoted to the uses of the Under Secretary for the Beaux Arts.
It is not necessary to insist on, nor reiterate, the decadence of the
Palais Royal. It is no longer the "capitol of Paris," and whatever its
charms may be they are mostly equivocal. It is more a desert than an
oasis or a _temple de la volupte_, and it was each of these things in
other days. Its priestesses and its gambling houses are gone, and who
shall say this of itself is not a good thing in spite of the admitted
void.
The mediocrity of the Palais Royal is apparent to all who have the
slightest acquaintance with the architectural orders, but for all that
its transition from the Palais du Cardinal, Palais Egalite, Palais de
la Revolution and Palais du Tribunat to the Palais Royal lends to it an
interest that many more gloriously artistic Paris edifices quite lack.
There is a movement on foot to-day to resurrect the Palais Royal to some
approach to its former distinction, which is decidedly what it has not
been for the past quarter of a century. Satirical persons have demanded
as to what should be made of it, a _velodrome_ or a skating-rink, but
this is apart from a real consideration of the question for certain it
is that much of its former charm can be restored to it without turning
it into a Luna Park. It is one of the too few Paris breathing-spots, and
as such should be made more attractive than it is at the present time.
It was sixty years ago, when Louis Philippe was the legitimate owner of
the Palais Royal, its galleries, its shops, its theatre and its gardens,
that it came to its first debasement. "One went there on tip-toe, and
spoke in a whisper," said a writer of the time, and one does not need to
be particularly astute to see the significance of the remark.
It was Alphonse Karr, the _ecrivain-jardinier_, who set the new vogue
for the Palais Royal, but his interest and enthusiasm was not enough to
resurrect it, and so in later years it has sunk lower and lower. The
solitude of the Palais Royal has become a mockery and a solecism. It is
virtually a _campo santo_, or could readily be made one, and this in
spite of the fact that it occupies one of the busiest and noisiest
quarters of the capital, a quadrangle bounded by the Rues Valois,
Beaujolais, Montpensier and the Place du Palais Royal.
The moment one enters its portal the simile accentuates and the hybrid
shops which sell such equivocal bric-a-brac to clients of no taste and
worse affectations carry out the idea of a cloister still further, for
actually the clients are few, and those mostly strangers. One holds his
breath and ambles through the corridors glad enough to escape the bustle
of the narrow streets which surround it, but, on the other hand, glad
enough to get out into the open again.
CHAPTER IX
THE LUXEMBOURG, THE ELYSEE AND THE PALAIS BOURBON
The kings and queens of France were not only rulers of the nation, but
they dominated the life of the capital as well. Upon their crowning or
entry into Paris it was the custom to command a gift by right from the
inhabitants. In 1389 Isabeau de Baviere, of dire memory, got sixty
thousand _couronnes d'or_, and in 1501, and again in 1504, was presented
with six thousand and ten thousand _livres parisis_ respectively.
The king levied personal taxes on the inhabitants, who were thus forced
to pay for the privilege of having him live among them, those of the
professions and craftsmen, who might from time to time serve the royal
household, paying the highest fees.
It was during the period of Richelieu's ministry that Paris flowered the
most profusely. The constructions of this epoch were so numerous and
imposing that Corneille in his comedy "Le Menteur," first produced in
1642, made his characters speak thus:
Dorante: Paris semble a mes yeux un pays de roman
* * *
En superbes palais a change ses buissons
* * *
Aux superbes dehors du palais Cardinal
Tout la ville entiere, avec pomp batie
* * *
In 1701, Louis XIV divided the capital into twenty _quartiers_, or
wards, and in 1726-1728 Louis XV built a new city wall; but it was only
with Louis XVI that the faubourgs were at last brought within the city
limits. Under the Empire and the Restoration but few changes were made,
and with the piercing of the new boulevards under Napoleon III and Baron
Haussmann the city came to be of much the same general plan that it is
to-day.
In the olden time, between the Palais de la Cite and the Louvre and the
Palais des Tournelles, extending even to the walls of Charenton, was a
gigantic garden, a carpet embroidered with as varied a colouring as the
_tapis d'orient_ of the poets, and cut here and there by alleys which
separated it into little checker-board squares.
Within this maze was the celebrated Jardin Dedalus that Louis XI gave to
Coictier, and above it rose the observatory of the savant like a signal
tower of the Romans. This centered upon what is now the Place des
Vosges, formerly the Place Royale.
To-day, how changed is all this "intermediate, indeterminate" region!
How changed, indeed! There is nothing vague and indeterminate about it
to-day.
The earliest of the little known Paris palaces was the Palais des
Thermes. It may be dismissed almost in a word from any consideration of
the royal dwellings of Paris, though it was the residence of several
Roman emperors and two queens of France. A single apartment of the old
palace of the Romans exists to-day--the old Roman Baths--but nothing of
the days of the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, who founded the palace in
honour of Julian who was proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers in 360 A.D.
The Frankish monarchs, if they ever resided here at all, soon
transferred their headquarters to the Palais de la Cite, the ruins
falling into the possession of the monks of Cluny, who built the present
Hotel de Cluny on the site.
Of all the minor French palaces the Luxembourg and the Elysee are the
most often heard of in connection with the life of modern times. The
first is something a good deal more than an art museum, and the latter
more than the residence for the Republican president, though the
guide-book makers hardly think it worth while to write down the facts.
The Palais du Luxembourg has been called an imitation of the Pitti
Palace at Florence, but, beyond the fact that it was an Italian
conception of Marie de Medici's, it is difficult to follow the
suggestion, as the architect, Jacques Debrosse, one of the ablest of
Frenchmen in his line, simply carried out the work on the general plan
of the time of its building, the early seventeenth century.
Its three not very extensive pavilions are joined together by a
colonnade which encloses a rather foreboding flagged courtyard, a
conception, or elaboration, of the original edifice by Chalgrin, in
1804, under the orders of Napoleon. The garden front, though a
restoration of Louis Philippe, is more in keeping with the original
Medici plan; that, at any rate, is to its credit.
To-day the Luxembourg, the Republican Palais du Senat, is but an echo of
the four centuries of aristocratic existence which upheld the name and
fame of its first proprietor, the Duc de Piney-Luxembourg, Prince de
Tigry, who built it in the sixteenth century. From 1733 to 1736 the
palace underwent important restorations and the last persons to inhabit
it before the Revolution were the Duchesse de Brunswick, the Queen
Dowager of Spain and the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, to
whom it had been given by Letters Patent in 1779.
[Illustration: _Palais du Luxembourg_]
In 1791 the Convention thought so little of it that they made it a
prison, and a few years later it was called again the Palais du
Directoire, and, before the end of the century, the Palais du Consulat.
This was but a brief glory, as Napoleon transferred his residence in
accordance with his augmenting ambitions, to the Tuileries in the
following year.
By 1870 the edifice had become known as the Palais du Senat, then as the
headquarters of the Prefecture of the Seine, and finally, as to-day, the
Palais du Luxembourg, the seat of the French Senate and the residence of
the president of that body.
The principal public apartments are the Library, the "Salle des
Seances," the "Buvette"--formerly Napoleon's "Cabinet de Travail," the
"Salle des Pas Perdus"--formerly the "Salle du Trone," the Grand Gallery
and the apartments of Marie de Medici. The chapel is modern and dates
only from 1844.
The Palais du Petit Luxembourg is the official residence of the
president of the Senate and dates also from the time of Marie de Medici.
The picture gallery is housed in a modern structure to the west of the
Petit Luxembourg.
[Illustration]
The facade of the Palais du Senat is not altogether lovely and has
little suggestion of the daintiness of the Petit Luxembourg, but,
for all that, it presents a certain dignified pose and the edifice
serves its purpose well as the legislative hall of the upper house.
[Illustration: _The Petit Luxembourg_]
The gardens of the Luxembourg form another of those favourite Paris
playgrounds for nursemaids and their charges. It is claimed that the
children are all little Legitimi
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