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CHAPTER XI.
LA CITÉ

It is difficult to write of La Cité; it is indeed, impossible to write of it with fulness, unless one were to devote a large volume – or many large volumes – to it alone.

To the tourists it is mostly recalled as being the berceau of Nôtre Dame or the morgue. The latter, fortunately, is an entirely modern institution, and, though it existed in Dumas’ own time, did not when the scenes of the D’Artagnan or Valois romances were laid.

Looking toward Nôtre Dame from the Pont du Carrousel, one feels a veritable thrill of emotion as one regards this city of kings and revolutions.

The very buildings on the Ile de la Cité mingle in a symphony of ashen memories. The statue of the great Henri IV., bowered in trees; the two old houses at the apex of the Place Dauphine, in one of which Madame Roland was born; the massive Palais de Justice; the soaring Sainte Chapelle, which St. Louis built for the Crown of Thorns, and “to the glory of God and France,” and the towers of the Conciergerie, whose floor is for ever stained with the tears of Marie Antoinette.

Romance and history have both set their seal upon the locality, and no one better than Dumas has told its story in romance.

Henri of Navarre being Protestant, the Church would not open its doors to him, and thus his marriage to the talented but wicked Margot, sister of Charles IX., took place on a platform erected before its doors.

In the opening chapter of “Marguerite de Valois,” Dumas refers to it thus:

“The court was celebrating the marriage of Madame Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henri II. and sister of King Charles IX., with Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre; and that same morning the Cardinal de Bourbon had united the young couple with the usual ceremonial observed at the marriages of the royal daughters of France, on a stage erected at the entrance to Nôtre Dame. This marriage had astonished everybody, and occasioned much surmise to certain persons who saw clearer than others. They could not comprehend the union of two parties who hated each other so thoroughly as did, at this moment, the Protestant party and the Catholic party; and they wondered how the young Prince de Condé could forgive the Duke d’Anjou, the king’s father, for the death of his father, assassinated by Montesquieu at Jarnac. They asked how the young Duke de Guise could pardon Admiral de Coligny for the death of his father, assassinated at Orleans by Poltrot de Mère.”

La Cité

The Tour de Nesle is one of those bygones of the history of Paris, which as a name is familiar to many, but which, after all, is a very vague memory.

It perpetuates an event of bloodshed which is familiar enough, but there are no tangible remains to mark the former site of the tower, and only the name remains – now given to a short and unimportant rue.

The use of the title “La Tour de Nesle,” by Dumas, for a sort of second-hand article, – as he himself has said, – added little to his reputation as an author, or, rather, as a dramatist.

In reality, he did no more than rebuild a romantic drama, such as he alone knows how to build, out of the framework which had been unsuccessfully put together by another – Gaillardet. However, it gives one other historical title to add to the already long list of his productions.

The history of the Conciergerie is most lurid, and, withal, most emphatic, with regard to the political history of France. For the most part, it is more associated with political prisoners than with mere sordid crime, as, indeed, to a great extent were many of the prisons of France.

The summer tourist connects it with Marie Antoinette; visits the “Cachot de Marie Antoinette;” the great hall where the Girondists awaited their fate; and passes on to the Palais des Beaux Arts, with never a thought as to the great political part that the old prison played in the monarchial history of France.

To know it more fully, one should read Nogaret’s “Histoire des Prisons de Paris.” There will be found anecdotes and memoirs, “rares et precieux” and above all truthful.

It has been eulogized, or, rather, anathematized in verse by Voltaire, —

 
“Exterminez, grandes Dieux, de la terre ou nous sommes
Quiconque avec plaisir repand le sang des hommes,” —
 

and historians and romancists have made profuse use of the recollections which hang about its grim walls.

To-day it stands for much that it formerly represented, but without the terrible inquisitorial methods. In fact, in the Palais de Justice, which now entirely surrounds all but the turreted façade of tourelles, which fronts the Quai de l’Horloge, has so tempered its mercies that within the past year it has taken down that wonderful crucifix and triptych, so that those who may finally call upon the court of last appeal may not be unduly or superstitiously affected.

The Place de la Grève opposite was famous for something more than its commercial reputation, as readers of the Valois romances of Dumas, and of Hugo’s “Dernier Jour d’un Condamné” will recall. It was a veritable Gehenna, a sort of Tower Hill, where a series of events as dark and bloody as those of any spot in Europe held forth, from 1310, when a poor unfortunate, Marguerite Porette, was burned as a heretic, until 1830, – well within the scope of this book, – when the headsmen, stakesmen, and hangmen, who had plied their trade here for five centuries, were abolished in favour of a less public barrière on the outskirts, or else the platform of the prison near the Cimetière du Père la Chaise.

It was in 1830 that a low thief and murderer, Lacenaire, who was brought to the scaffold for his crimes, published in one of the Parisian papers some verses which were intended to extract sympathy for him as un homme de lettres. In reality they were the work of a barrister, Lemarquier by name, and failed utterly of their purpose, though their graphic lines might well have evoked sympathy, had the hoax carried:

 
“Slow wanes the long night, when the criminal wakes;
And he curses the morn that his slumber breaks;
For he dream’d of other days.
 
 
“His eyes he may close, – but the cold icy touch
Of a frozen hand, and a corpse on his couch,
Still comes to wither his soul.
 
 
“And the headsman’s voice, and hammer’d blows
Of nails that the jointed gibbet close,
And the solemn chant of the dead!”
 

La Conciergerie was perhaps one of the greatest show-places of the city for the morbidly inclined, and permission à visiter was at that time granted avec toutes facilités, being something more than is allowed to-day.

The associations connected with this doleful building are great indeed, as all histories of France and the guide-books tell. It was in the chapel of this edifice that the victims of the Terror foregathered, to hear the names read out for execution, till all should have been made away.

Müller’s painting in the Louvre depicts, with singular graphicness, this dreadful place of detention, where princes and princesses, counts, marquises, bishops, and all ranks were herded amid an excruciating agony.

In “The Queen’s Necklace” we read of the Conciergerie – as we do of the Bastille. When that gang of conspirators, headed by Madame de la Motte, – Jeanne de St. Remy de Valois, – appeared for trial, they were brought from the Bastille to the Conciergerie.

After the trial all the prisoners were locked for the night in the Conciergerie, sentence not being pronounced till the following day.

The public whipping and branding of Madame de la Motte in the Cour du Justice, – still the cour where throngs pass and repass to the various court-rooms of the Palais de Justice, – as given by Dumas, is most realistically told, if briefly. It runs thus:

“‘Who is this man?’ cried Jeanne, in a fright.

“‘The executioner, M. de Paris,’ replied the registrar.

“The two men then took hold of her to lead her out. They took her thus into the court called Cour de Justice, where was a scaffold, and which was crowded with spectators. On a platform, raised about eight feet, was a post garnished with iron rings, and with a ladder to mount to it. This place was surrounded with soldiers…

“Numbers of the partisans of M. de Rohan had assembled to hoot her, and cries of ‘A bas la Motte, the forger!’ were heard on every side, and those who tried to express pity for her were soon silenced. Then she cried in a loud voice, ‘Do you know who I am? I am the blood of your kings. They strike in me, not a criminal, but a rival; not only a rival, but an accomplice. Yes,’ repeated she, as the people kept silence to listen, ‘an accomplice. They punish one who knows the secrets of – ’

“‘Take care,’ interrupted the executioner.

“She turned and saw the executioner with the whip in his hand. At this sight she forgot her desire to captivate the multitude, and even her hatred, and, sinking on her knees, she said, ‘Have pity!’ and seized his hand; but he raised the other, and let the whip fall lightly on her shoulders. She jumped up, and was about to try and throw herself off the scaffold, when she saw the other man, who was drawing from a fire a hot iron. At this sight she uttered a perfect howl, which was echoed by the people.

“‘Help! help!’ she cried, trying to shake off the cord with which they were tying her hands. The executioner at last forced her on her knees, and tore open her dress; but she cried, with a voice which was heard through all the tumult, ‘Cowardly Frenchmen! you do not defend me, but let me be tortured; oh! it is my own fault. If I had said all I knew of the queen I should have been – ’

“She could say no more, for she was gagged by the attendants: then two men held her, while the executioner performed his office. At the touch of the iron she fainted, and was carried back insensible to the Conciergerie.”

CHAPTER XII.
L’UNIVERSITÉ QUARTIER

L’Université is the quartier which foregathered its components, more or less unconsciously, around the Sorbonne.

To-day the name still means what it always did; the Ecole de Médicine, the Ecole de Droit, the Beaux Arts, the Observatoire, and the student ateliers of the Latin Quarter, all go to make it something quite foreign to any other section of Paris.

The present structure known as “The Sorbonne” was built by Richelieu in 1629, as a sort of glorified successor to the ancient foundation of Robert de Sorbonne, confessor to St. Louis in 1253. The present Université, as an institution, was founded, among many other good and valuable things, which he has not always been given credit for, by the astute Napoleon I.

With the work of the romancer, it is the unexpected that always happens. But this very unexpectedness is only another expression of naturalness; which raises the question: Is not the romancist more of a realist than is commonly supposed?

Dumas often accomplished the unconventional, and often the miraculous, but the gallant attack of D’Artagnan and his three whilom adversaries against the Cardinal’s Guard is by no means an impossible or unreasonable incident. Considering Dumas’ ingenuity and freedom, it would be unreasonable to expect that things might not take the turn that they did.

Of “Les Trois Mousquetaires” alone, the scheme of adventure and incident is as orderly and sagacious as though it had been laid down by the wily cardinal himself; and therein is Dumas’ success as the romancist par excellence of his time. A romancist who was at least enough of a realist to be natural, if unconventional.

Dumas is supposed to have fallen from the heights scaled by means of “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” when he wrote “Vingt Ans Après.” As a piece of literary workmanship, this perhaps is so; as a chronicle of great interest to the reader, who would trace the movement of its plot by existing stones and shrines, it is hardly the case.

One can get up a wonderful enthusiasm for the old Luxembourg quarter, which the Gascon Don Quixote entered by one of the southern gates, astride his Rosinante. The whole neighbourhood abounds with reminiscences of the characters of the tale: D’Artagnan, with the Rue des Fossoyeurs, now the Rue Servandoni; Athos with the Rue Ferou; Aramis, with the Rue de la Harpe, and so on.

There is, however, a certain tangible sentimentality connected with the adventures of Athos, Aramis, D’Artagnan, and Porthos in “Twenty Years After,” that is not equalled by the earlier book, the reputed scenes of which have, to some extent, to be taken on faith.

In “Vingt Ans Après,” the scene shifts rapidly and constantly: from the Rue Tiquetonne, in Paris, to the more luxurious precincts of the Palais Royal; countrywards to Compiègne, to Pierrefonds – which ultimately came into the possession of Porthos; to England, even; and southward as far as Blois in Touraine, near to which was the country estate of Athos.

At the corner of the Rue Vaugirard, which passes the front of the Luxembourg Palace, and the Rue Cassette, is the wall of the Carmelite Friary, where D’Artagnan repaired to fulfil his duelling engagements with the three musketeers of the company of De Treville, after the incidents of the shoulder of Athos, the baldric of Porthos, and the handkerchief of Aramis.

Both sides of the river, and, indeed, the Cité itself, are alive with the association of the King’s Musketeers and the Cardinal’s Guards; so much so that one, with even a most superficial knowledge of Paris and the D’Artagnan romances, cannot fail to follow the shifting of the scenes from the neighbourhood of the Palais du Luxembourg, in “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” to the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, in “Vingt Ans Après” and the “Vicomte de Bragelonne.”

In “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne,” the fraternal mousquetaires take somewhat varying paths from those which they pursued in the first two volumes of the series. Porthos and Athos had arrived at distinction and wealth, and surrounded themselves accordingly; though, when they came to Paris, they were doubtless frequenters – at times – of their old haunts, but they had perforce to live up to their exalted stations.

With D’Artagnan and Aramis this was not so true. D’Artagnan, it would seem, could not leave his beloved Palais Royal quarter, though his lodgings in the hôtel in the Rue Tiquetonne could have been in no way luxurious, judging from present-day appearances.

In the Université quarter, running squarely up from the Seine is a short, unpretentious, though not unlovely, street – the Rue Guenegard.

It runs by the Hôtel de la Monnaie, and embouches on the Quai Conti, but if you ask for it from the average stroller on the quais, he will reply that he never heard of it.

It was here, however, at “Au Grand Roi Charlemagne,” “a respectable inn,” that Athos lived during his later years.

In the course of three hundred years this inn has disappeared, – if it ever existed, – though there are two hôtels, now somewhat decrepit, on the short length of the street.

Perhaps it was one of these, – the present Hôtel de France, for instance, – but there are no existing records to tell us beyond doubt that this is so.

There is another inn which Dumas mentions in “The Forty-Five Guardsmen,” not so famous, and not traceable to-day, but his description of it is highly interesting and amusing.

“Near the Porte Buci,” says Chapter VII. of the book before mentioned, “where we must now transport our readers, to follow some of their acquaintances, and to make new ones, a hum, like that in a beehive at sunset, was heard proceeding from a house tinted rose colour, and ornamented with blue and white pointings, which was known by the sign of ‘The Sword of the Brave Chevalier,’ and which was an immense inn, recently built in this new quarter. This house was decorated to suit all tastes. On the entablature was painted a representation of a combat between an archangel and a dragon breathing flame and smoke, and in which the artist, animated by sentiments at once heroic and pious, had depicted in the hands of ‘the brave chevalier,’ not a sword, but an immense cross, with which he hacked in pieces the unlucky dragon, of which the bleeding pieces were seen lying on the ground. At the bottom of the picture crowds of spectators were represented raising their arms to heaven, while from above angels were extending over the chevalier laurels and palms. Then, as if to prove that he could paint in every style, the artist had grouped around gourds, grapes, a snail on a rose, and two rabbits, one white and the other gray.

“Assuredly the proprietor must have been difficult to please, if he were not satisfied, for the artist had filled every inch of space – there was scarcely room to have added a caterpillar. In spite, however, of this attractive exterior, the hôtel did not prosper – it was never more than half full, though it was large and comfortable. Unfortunately, from its proximity to the Pré-aux-Clercs, it was frequented by so many persons either going or ready to fight, that those more peaceably disposed avoided it. Indeed, the cupids with which the interior was decorated had been ornamented with moustaches in charcoal by the habitués; and Dame Fournichon, the landlady, always affirmed that the sign had brought them ill-luck, and that, had her wishes been attended to, and the painting represented more pleasing things, such as the rose-tree of love surrounded by flaming hearts, all tender couples would have flocked to them.

“M. Fournichon, however, stuck to his sign, and replied that he preferred fighting men, and that one of them drank as much as six lovers.”

Dumas’ reference to this curiously disposed “happy family” calls to mind the anecdote which he recounts in “The Taking of the Bastille,” concerning salamanders:

“The famous trunk, which had now been dignified with the name of desk, had become, thanks to its vastness, and the numerous compartments with which Pitou had decorated its interior, a sort of Noah’s ark, containing a couple of every species of climbing, crawling, or flying reptiles. There were lizards, adders, ant-eaters, beetles, and frogs, which reptiles became so much dearer to Pitou from their being the cause of his being subjected to punishment more or less severe.

“It was in his walks during the week that Pitou made collections for his menagerie. He had wished for salamanders, which were very popular at Villers-Cotterêts, being the crest of François I., and who had them sculptured on every chimneypiece in the château. He had succeeded in obtaining them; only one thing had strongly preoccupied his mind, and he ended by placing this thing among the number of those which were beyond his intelligence; it was, that he had constantly found in the water these reptiles which poets have pretended exist only in fire. This circumstance had given to Pitou, who was a lad of precise mind, a profound contempt for poets.”

Here, at “The Sword of the Brave Chevalier,” first met the “Forty-Five Guardsmen.” In the same street is, or was until recently, a modernized and vulgarized inn of similar name, which was more likely to have been an adaption from the pages of Dumas than a direct descendant of the original, if it ever existed. It is the Hôtel la Trémouille, near the Luxembourg, that figures in the pages of “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” but the hôtel of the Duc de Treville, in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier, has disappeared in a rebuilding or widening of this street, which runs from the Place de St. Sulpice to the Place de la Croix-Rouge.

All these places centre around that famous affaire which took place before the Carmelite establishment on the Rue Vaugirard: that gallant sword-play of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, – helped by the not unwilling D’Artagnan, – against Richelieu’s minions, headed by Jussac.

Within the immediate neighbourhood, too, is much of the locale of “Les Trois Mousquetaires.” Here the four friends themselves lodged, “just around the corner, within two steps of the Luxembourg,” though Porthos more specifically claimed his residence as in the Rue de Vieux-Colombier. “That is my abode,” said he, as he proudly pointed to its gorgeous doorway.

The Hôtel de Chevreuse of “la Frondeuse duchesse,” famed alike in history and the pages of Dumas, is yet to be seen in somewhat changed form at No. 201 Boulevard St. Germain; its garden cut away by the Boulevard Raspail.

At No. 12 or 14 Rue des Fossoyeurs, beside the Panthéon, – still much as it was of yore, – was D’Artagnan’s own “sort of a garret.” One may not be able to exactly place it, but any of the decrepitly picturesque houses will answer the description.

It is a wonderfully varied and interesting collection of buildings which is found on the height of Ste. Geneviève, overlooking the Jardin and Palais du Luxembourg: the hybrid St. Etienne du Mont, the pagan Panthéon, the tower of the ancient Abbaye de Ste. Geneviève, and the Bibliothèque, which also bears the name of Paris’s patron saint.

The old abbey must have had many and varied functions, if history and romance are to be believed, and to-day its tower and a few short lengths of wall, built into the Lycée Henri Quatre, are all that remain, unless it be that the crypt and dungeons, of which one reads in “Chicot the Jester,” are still existent. Probably they are, but, if so, they have most likely degenerated into mere lumber-rooms.

The incident as given by Dumas relates briefly to the plot of the Guises to induce Charles IX., on the plea of some religious ceremony, to enter one of the monkish caches, and there compel him to sign his abdication. The plot, according to the novelist, was frustrated by the ingenious Chicot.

At all events, the ensemble to-day is one most unusual, and the whole locality literally reeks with the associations of tradition.

Architecturally it is a jumble, good in parts, but again shocking in other parts.

The Église St. Etienne du Mont is a weird contrast of architectural style, but its interior is truly beautiful, and on the wall near the south transept are two tablets, on which one may read the facts concerning Ste. Geneviève, which likely enough have for the moment been forgotten by most of us.

The old abbey must have been a delightful place, in spite of the lurid picture which Dumas draws of it.

Probably in none of Dumas’ romances is there more lively action than in “The Queen’s Necklace.” The characters are in a continual migration between one and another of the faubourgs. Here, again, Dumas does not forget or ignore the Luxembourg and its environment. He seems, indeed, to have a special fondness for its neighbourhood. It was useful to him in most of the Valois series, and doubly so in the D’Artagnan romances.

Beausire, one of the thieves who sought to steal the famous necklace, “took refuge in a small cabaret in the Luxembourg quarter.” The particular cabaret is likely enough in existence to-day, as the event took place but a hundred years ago, and Dumas is known to have “drawn from life” even his pen-portraits of the locale of his stories. At any rate, there is many a cabaret near the Luxembourg which might fill the bill.

The gardens of the Luxembourg were another favourite haunt of the characters of Dumas’ romances, and in “The Queen’s Necklace” they are made use of again, this time, as usual, as a suitable place for a promenade or a rendezvous of the fair Oliva, who so much resembled Marie Antoinette.

Like the Rue du Helder, celebrated in “The Corsican Brothers,” the Rue de Lille, where lived, at No. 29, De Franchi’s friend, Adrien de Boissy, is possessed of an air of semi-luxuriousness, or, at any rate, of a certain middle-class comfort.

It lies on the opposite side of the Seine from the river side of the Louvre, and runs just back of the site formerly occupied by the Duc de Montmorenci, where was held the gorgeous ceremony of the marriage of the Marquis St. Luc, of which one reads in “Chicot the Jester.”

There is not much of splendour or romance about the present-day Rue de Lille; indeed, it is rather commonplace, but as Dumas places the particular house in which De Boissy lived with definiteness, and, moreover, in that it exists to-day practically unaltered, there seems every good reason why it should be catalogued here.