Old and New Paris Part 20

CHAPTER XVI.

THE PALAIS ROYAL.

Richelieu's Palace--The Regent of Orleans--The Duke of Orleans--Dissipation in the Palais Royal--The Palais National--The Birthplace of Revolutions.

The whole history of Paris may be read along the line of the Boulevards, and the whole life of the capital observed there in concentrated form.

The Palais Royal, however, with its theatres, its restaurants, its shops of all kinds, its galleries, and its gardens, is in scarcely a less degree an epitome of Paris. It was formerly known as the Palais Cardinal, in memory of Richelieu, by whom, in its original shape, it was constructed. Richelieu afterwards made such frequent additions to the building that it lost all symmetry. In one of the wings a theatre was constructed; though it was not here, but in a large drawing-room, that the Cardinal's tragedies, _Eutrope_ and _Mirame_, were played. The palace, with its lateral developments, a.s.sumed at last the form of a quadrangle with a large garden in the interior. It suffered from the irremediable fault of not having been constructed from the first on a definite plan. But the garden, the fountain, the jewellers' shops, the booksellers' stalls, give the place a physiognomy of its own, and cause the beholder to overlook all architectural defects.

Having completed his palace, and convinced himself that he had constructed an edifice worthy the acceptance of his sovereign, Richelieu presented it to Louis XIII. (1636), afterwards confirming the gift in his will (1642). Corneille, the recipient now of favours, now of slights from the great Cardinal, wrote, in an admiring mood, of the Cardinal's palace the following lines:--

"Non, l'univers entier 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 fait presumer, a ses superbes toits, Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois."[B]

[B] "No, the entire universe can behold nothing equal to the superb exterior of the Palais-Cardinal. The whole town, splendidly built, seems to have sprung by a miracle out of an old ditch, making one fancy from its magnificent roofs that all its inhabitants must be G.o.ds or kings."

In spite of Corneille's praise, Louis XIII. seems to have thought but little of his minister's gift. Nor could he in any case have turned it to much account, for he did not survive the astute counsellor for more than a year.

Louis XIV. pa.s.sed some years of his childhood at the Palais-Cardinal, to which the name of Palais Royal was now given. Here the minister Mazarini, or Mazarin, resided during the troubles of the Fronde, and here it was that he heard the populace sing couplets about the _Facchino Italiano_. "They sing; they shall pay!" murmured the minister. But he was obliged all the same to take flight; and with the queen regent and the infant king he sought refuge at Saint-Germain. Never afterwards would the proud monarch inhabit the Palais Royal, which he a.s.signed as a place of residence to Henrietta of France, Queen of England, and widow of Charles I. Afterwards, in 1692, Louis XIV. gave the Palais Royal as an absolute gift to his nephew, Philip of Orleans, Duke of Chartres, on the occasion of that prince's marriage. The Palace had now been increased by the addition of the Hotel Dauville in the adjacent Rue Richelieu, and of a gallery constructed by the celebrated architect Mansard.

The Regent of Orleans turned the theatre of Richelieu into an opera house, where he gave a number of masked b.a.l.l.s which are remembered in history. Nor is the profligate life of which the Palais Royal now became the scene by any means forgotten. The theatre having been burnt down, the regent insisted on its being restored at the expense of the town; which was accordingly done. But the theatre was again destroyed by fire in 1781; and the Duke of Chartres, afterwards known during the Revolution as Philippe egalite, the father of King Louis Philippe, instead of rebuilding it, constructed the three galleries surrounding the garden which still exist. The idea of three such galleries, communicating with the body of the palace, is said to have been entertained by Richelieu himself.

As prodigal as his grandfather, the regent, the Duke of Orleans, was obliged to have recourse to various expedients for replenis.h.i.+ng his exhausted exchequer. It occurred to him to turn the galleries of the Palais Royal into long lines of shops. This involved the expenditure of a considerable sum of money, but the result was most remunerative.

The new Palais Royal became a centre of attraction to all Paris. Around the garden the three galleries, together with the one still known as the Galerie d'Orleans, formed a sort of bazaar, where jewellery, fans, and ornaments of all kinds were offered for sale. The shops were varied by cafes and restaurants. In the garden the Cafe de la Regence was established, and the Richelieu Theatre being once more rebuilt, now formed the home of the Comedie Francaise. Towards the end of the Monarchical period the Palais Royal became a recognised place of dissipation. In contrast with the loose morality of the locality was the rigid exact.i.tude with which, every day at noon, a cannon in the centre of the garden, fired by the rays of the sun through a powerful lens, announced the hour; and crowds of people used to a.s.semble round it, watch in hand, towards twelve o'clock. Walking through the Palais Royal one day with the Duke of Orleans, the Abbe Delille was requested by the Prince to sum up in a few words his ideas of the place, and did so in the following quatrain:--

"Dans ce jardin tout se rencontre, Excepte l'ombrage et les fleurs.

Si l'on y deregle ses moeurs, Du moins on y regle sa montre."[C]

[C] "In this garden one may meet with everything, except shade and flowers. In it, if one's morals go wrong, at least one's watch may be set right."

After the execution of the Duke of Orleans, who, having had the infamy to vote for the death of his blameless relative Louis XVI., was himself, by a mild retribution, to perish on the scaffold, the Palais Royal was appropriated by the State, and the place was now invaded by all the ruffians and reprobates of Paris. Let us on this subject hear Mercier in his "Tableau de Paris." "The Athenians," he writes, "raised temples to their Phrynes; curs find them in this enclosure already built.

Speculators and their correlatives go three times a day to the Palais Royal, the centre of political and every other kind of debauchery. Some are occupied with the rise and fall of the funds. Gaming-tables are kept in every cafe, and it is a sight to see the sudden change in the expression of the players' faces as they lose or win. The Palais Royal is an elegant box of Pandora, beautifully carved, delicately worked, but containing what everyone knows it contains. All these followers of Sardanapalus or of Lucullus inhabit the Palais Royal, in apartments which the King of a.s.syria and the Roman Emperors would have envied."

Under the Directory the number of gambling houses was limited, first to four, afterwards to eight; and it was not until the reign of Louis Philippe that they were finally suppressed. The gambling house at Number 113 figures in the "Peau de Chagrin" of Balzac; also in Dumas' "Femme au Collier de Velours."

As for the "Palace"--the mansion inhabited by Mazarin and the infant Louis XIV., afterwards by Henrietta of England, and then by various members of the Orleans family--Napoleon established public offices in it. During the Hundred Days the palace was occupied by Lucien Bonaparte, and on the restoration of the Monarchy the whole place was bought back from the Government by the then Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe. Some changes were made in the direction of the galleries, the popularity of which remained as great as ever. Nor was this diminished by the foreign occupation, for the Palais Royal was thronged day and night by officers of the Allied Army. It was now that the Cafe Lemblin became the head-quarters of Bonapartist officers on half-pay, and the Cafe des Mille Colonnes that of the officers serving in the newly organised Royalist army; and between the two bodies of officers numerous duels were fought. An ingenious rhymed description of the Palais Royal in its best and worst days has been left by Desaugiers, the celebrated songwriter of the period before Beranger, of which we may quote the concluding lines, telling how the resort, from being the scene of political storms, came to be the general _rendez-vous_ of pleasure-seekers of every kind and every nationality, from the Fleming to the Turk, and from the genius to the fool:--

"Si de maint politique orage Le Palais Royal Devint le theatre infernal, Du gai carnaval Il est aujourd'hui l'heritage: Jeu, spectacle, bal Y sont dans leur pays natal, Flamand, Provencal, Turc, Africain, Chinois, sauvage, Au moindre signal Tout se trouve au Palais Royal.

Bref, sejour ba.n.a.l, Du grand, du sot, du fou, du sage, Le Palais Royal Est le rendez-vous general."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GARDENS OF THE PALAIS ROYAL.]

Reformed in so many respects under the reign of Louis Philippe, the Palais Royal was destined at the same time to be overshadowed by the increasing importance of the Boulevards.

After the Revolution of 1848 the Palais Royal, now styled Palais National, was once more treated as State property. Under the Second Empire it became the residence of Prince Jerome, succeeded by his son, Prince Napoleon. On the ornamentation of the portico, some _fleurs de lis_ dating from the time of Richelieu, which the Revolutionists of 1789 and of 1848 had forgotten to sc.r.a.pe off, were erased and replaced by Imperial eagles, themselves destined to disappear in the revolution of the 4th of September, 1871, when, at the same time, the Republican motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," was restored. Meanwhile, on the 23rd of May, 1871, while the expiring Commune was still struggling against the army of Versailles, the palace was invaded by the Communards and set in flames. The whole of the left wing, with part of the central pavilion, was burnt down. In the midst of the general incendiarism, the Theatre Francais, which may be regarded as an annexe of the Palais Royal, though it is entered from the Rue Richelieu, had itself a narrow escape from fire.

The Palais Royal was destined to be the birthplace of more than one revolution. It was here that the great movement of 1789, and the minor one of July, 1830, began. The revolution of July seems, in the first instance, to have been intended simply as a protest, an act of resistance against arbitrary measures--and in particular against the muzzling of the Press to such an extent as to render it impossible under modern conditions to publish a newspaper. The celebrated _ordonnances_ had the immediate effect of throwing a mult.i.tude of journeyman printers out of work, and it was by these men that in one part of the city the insurrection was commenced. With them the question was not a political one in theory alone; it was a question whether they should get the hateful _ordonnances_ repealed or remain without work: that is to say, starve.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PALAIS ROYAL AFTER THE SIEGE.]

The 26th of July pa.s.sed off very calmly in Paris as a whole. At the Palais Royal, however, some young men were seen mounting chairs, as formerly Camille Desmoulins had done. "They read the _Moniteur_ aloud,"

says a witness of the scene, "appealed to the people against the infraction of the charter, and endeavoured by violent gesticulation and inflammatory harangues to excite in their hearers and in themselves a vague appet.i.te for agitation. But dancing was going on in the environs of the capital; the people were engaged in labour or amus.e.m.e.nt. The _bourgeoisie_ alone gave evidence of consternation. The _ordonnances_ had dealt it a twofold blow: they had struck at its political power in the persons of its legislators, and at its moral power in those of its writers."

At first there was nothing to be seen throughout the whole _bourgeois_ portion of the population but one dull, uniform stupor. Bankers, traders, manufacturers, printers, lawyers, and journalists accosted each other with scared and astounded looks. There was in this sudden muzzling of the Press a sort of arrogant challenge that stunned men's faculties.

So much daring inferred proportionate strength.

The most active section of the _bourgeoisie_ went to work on the 27th, and nothing was left undone to stir up the people. The _Gazette_, the _Quotidienne_, and the _Universel_ had submitted to the _ordonnances_ from conviction or from party spirit; the _Journal des Debats_ and the _Const.i.tutionnel_ from fear and mercantile policy. The _Globe_, the _National_, and the _Temps_, which defiantly continued to appear, were profusely circulated. The police order of the preceding day, forbidding their publication, only served to stimulate curiosity. Copies were disposed of by hundreds in the cafes, the reading-rooms, and the restaurants. Journalists hurried from manufactory to manufactory, and from shop to shop, to read the articles aloud and comment upon them.

Individuals in the dress, and with the manners and appearance of men of fas.h.i.+on, were seen mounting on stone posts and holding forth as professors of insurrection; whilst students paraded the streets, armed with canes, waving their hats and crying "_Vive la Charte!_"

The ordinary demagogues, cast into the midst of a movement they could not comprehend, looked on with surprise at all these things; but, gradually yielding to the contagion of the hour, they imitated the _bourgeoisie_, and running about with bewildered countenances, shouted like others for the charter.

Begun in the Palais Royal, this revolution was continued and virtually concluded at the neighbouring Tuileries, where the Swiss Guard, fighting as faithfully for the restored monarchy as they had fought for the monarchy of Louis XVI., perished at the hands of the insurgents.

The great Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen, had already commemorated the heroism of Louis the Sixteenth's Swiss Guard in a magnificent figure of a wounded, expiring, but still undaunted lion, carved on a cliff or mountainside close to the town of Lucerne. The loyal mercenaries of Charles X. showed the same lionlike courage that those of Louis XVI. had displayed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MONTPENSIER GALLERY, PALAIS ROYAL.]

There can be no doubt that the sight of the Swiss uniforms--scarlet, like that of the Household troops of most sovereigns--irritated greatly the people of Paris, who looked upon the revolution now taking place as a national movement under the tricolour flag against the monarchy, restored by foreign power after the defeat of Napoleon, with the white flag as its emblem. "The sight of those red uniforms," wrote an eye-witness of many of the scenes that took place during the three days of July, "redoubled the fury of the insurgents; fresh combatants rushed forth from every alley, and a barricade was manned and seized by the people. The Swiss sustained this attack with vigour; the guards advanced to support them, and the Parisians were beginning to give way, when a young man advanced to rally and cheer them on, waving a tricolour flag at the end of a lance, and shouting, 'I will show you how to die!'

He fell, pierced with b.a.l.l.s, within ten paces of the guards. This engagement was terrible; the Swiss left many of their numbers stretched on the pavement."

The fighting, all over Paris, abounded in scenes which were either fantastic, heroic, or lamentable. The Marquis d'Antichamp had taken up his post, seated on a chair under the colonnade of the Louvre, opposite Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. Bent under the burden of his years, and hardly able to sustain his tottering frame, he encouraged the Swiss to the fight by his presence, and sat with folded arms gazing on the terrible spectacle before him with stoical insensibility. A band of insurgents attacked the powder magazine at Ivry on the Boulevard de l'Hopital, broke the gate in with hatchets and pole-axes, rushed into the courtyard, and obliged the people of the place to throw them packages of powder out of the windows. The insurgents, with all the hot-headed recklessness of the moment, continued with their pipes in their mouths to catch the packages as they fell, and carried them off in their arms. The debtors confined in Sainte-Pelagie, using a beam for a battering-ram, burst the gates, and then went and joined the guards on duty outside to prevent the escape of the criminal prisoners. A sanguinary encounter took place in the Rue de Prouvaires, and exhibited the spectacle, common enough in civil wars, of brothers fighting in opposite ranks. Throughout the whole city a sort of moral intoxication beyond all description had seized upon the inhabitants. Amidst the noise of musketry, the rolling of the drums, the cries and groans of the combatants, a thousand strange reports prevailed and added to the universal bewilderment. A hat and feathers were carried about in some parts of the town, said to be those of the Duke of Ragusa, whose death was reported. The audacity of some of the combatants was incredible. A workman, seeing a company of the 5th regiment of the line advancing upon the Place de la Bourse, ran straight up to the captain and struck him a blow on the head with an iron bar. He reeled, and his face was bathed in blood; but he had still strength enough left to throw up his soldiers'

bayonets with his sword as they were about to fire on the aggressor.

The leaders of the people added the most perfect self-denial to their intrepidity; and they ranged themselves by preference under the orders of those combatants whose dress proclaimed that they belonged to the more favoured cla.s.ses of society. Furthermore, the young men found at every step guides for their inexperience in the persons of old soldiers who had survived the battles of the Empire--a warlike generation whom the Bourbons had for ever incensed in 1815.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO THE COMeDIE FRANcAISE.]

CHAPTER XVII.

THE COMeDIE FRANcAISE.

Its History--The Roman Comique--Under Louis XV.--During the Revolution--Hernani.

Let us now return to the Palais Royal, and to the theatre which adjoins it. The Comedie Francaise, or Theatre Francais, as it is also called, was never, as the first of these names might suggest, devoted exclusively to comedy. The word "comedy" was used in France in the early days of its stage to denote any kind of theatrical entertainment. The famous "Ballet Comique de la Reine," produced towards the end of the 16th century, was, in fact, a dramatic entertainment with singing and dancing, strongly resembling what would now be called an opera; and the author of the work explains, in his preface, that he calls it "ballet comique," instead of "ballet" alone, because it possesses a dramatic character. Volumes innumerable have been written on the origin of the French theatre, which had as humble a beginning as the theatre in all other European countries; with the exception, however, of opera, which in the earliest days of the musical drama enjoyed the special patronage of kings, princes, cardinals, and great n.o.blemen.

In Italy, during the Renaissance period, the musical drama was invented by popes, cardinals, and other ill.u.s.trious personages bent on restoring in modern form the ancient drama of the Greeks. The spoken drama of France, as of other European countries, had humbler beginnings, and the first regular troop of the Comedie Francaise had its origin in a combination of wandering companies.

At the end of the sixteenth, and during the early part of the seventeenth century, the English stage, with Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatic poets of the Elizabethan period, was far superior to the stage of France, which scarcely indeed existed at the time. But towards the end of the seventeenth century the French theatre enjoyed the supreme advantage of possessing simultaneously the three greatest dramatists that France even to this day has produced: Corneille, Moliere, and Racine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PUBLIC FOYER, COMeDIE FRANcAISE.]

It is a little more than two centuries ago, in the year 1689, that the theatre where "the comedians of the king" habitually performed received the t.i.tle of Comedie Francaise; though its const.i.tution dates from 1680, when, by order of Louis XIV., the company of the Hotel de Bourgogne was united to that of the Theatre Guenegaud in the Rue Mazarin. The history of the Comedie Francaise cannot well be separated from that of Corneille and of Moliere, its greatest writers; though Moliere, who died in 1673, and Corneille, who died in 1684, produced their works long before the Theatre Francais was officially const.i.tuted.

Perhaps the most interesting account of the origin of the French theatre is to be found in the "Roman Comique" of Scarron, in which one of the leading personages is Madeleine Bejard, elder sister of the charming but unfaithful Armande Bejard, known to everyone as Moliere's wife. Possibly, as in the case of the "Ballet Comique de la Reine,"

the adjective in the t.i.tle of Scarron's work is used to signify, not "comic," but "dramatic," or "theatrical." Scarron in any case shows us how Moliere (introduced under another name) joined a strolling company when he had just finished his studies as a law student. The incident might have been borrowed from Cervantes' "Gipsy of Madrid," wherein an infatuated young man throws in his lot with a troop of gipsies. But it is beyond doubt that the youth, "not brought up to the profession," who becomes a member of a wandering troop involved in the adventures and humours so graphically described by Scarron was no other than Moliere himself, or Poquelin, to give him his proper family designation, as distinguished from his more euphonious theatrical name.

One of the most interesting members of this celebrated company was Mdlle. du Parc, for whom is claimed the unique honour of having been pa.s.sionately beloved by the three greatest dramatists of France: Corneille, Moliere, and Racine. Having to choose between three writers, of whom the first was old, the second middle-aged, and the third young, Mdlle. du Parc was eccentric enough to select the last; a preference which left Moliere silent, but which provoked from Corneille some verses so admirable that one cannot but forgive the lady who, by her heartless conduct, called forth such lines. Corneille and Moliere had at this time separate companies, and Mdlle. du Parc appears to have acted in both.