We can say, with certainty, that this tower was never seen by Dagobert, for, long before this tree had sprouted from the ground, he lived in the old Palace, the home of the early kings, at the other end of the island. There he flourished, for the ten years between 628 and 638, in coarse splendor and coarser conviviality, his palace packed with barbaric gold and silver, with crude wall paintings and curious hangings. For this monarch made much of the arts of his day, whenever he found leisure from his fighting and his drinking. Because of his love of luxury, a century of cyclopædias has "curved a contumelious lip" at his "corrupt court." On the other hand, he has been styled "Saint Dagobert" by writers unduly moved to emotion by his gifts to the churches at Saint-Denis, Rheims, Tours; and by his friendship for certain bishops. But Rome, mindful of sundry other churches plundered and destroyed by him, has not assented to this saintship. We may accept his apt popular epithet, "le bon," which meant, in those bellicose days, only merry or jovial; an easy virtue not to be denied by priggish biographers to this genial ruffian. By turns, he devoted himself to the flowing bowl in his palace there, and to building religious edifices all over the face of France. And he has accentuated the supremacy of the Church over all the warriors and the rulers of his day, in the soaring majesty of the two towers that dominate the buried outlines of his favorite church of Saint-Martin at Tours, solid and lasting in their isolation. There the man is brought almost into touch with us, while here only his name is recalled by this tower, which he never saw.
The shadow-land of ancient French history, into which we have made this little journey, is not darker than this narrow staircase, as we creep dizzily upward, losing count of steps, stopping to take breath at the infrequent windows, round-topped at first, then square and small. It is with surprise that we realize, stepping out on the tower-roof, that our standing-place is only five floors from the ground; and yet from this modest height, overtopped by the ordinary apartment house of Paris, we find an outlook that is unequalled even by that from Notre-Dame's towers. For, as we come out from the sheltering hood of our stair-way top, the great cathedral itself lies before us, like some beautiful living creature outstretched at rest. Words are impertinent in face of the tranquil strength of its bulk and the exquisite delicacy of its lines, and we find refuge in the affectionate phrase of Mr. Henry James, "The dear old thing!"
Beyond the cathedral square, over the bronze Charlemagne on his bronze horse, glints the untravelled narrower arm of the Seine; we turn our heads and look at its broader surface, all astir with little fidgetty bateaux-mouches and big, sedate barges. At both banks are anchored huge wash-houses and bathing establishments. From this island-centre all Paris spreads away to its low encircling slopes, to the brim of the shallow bowl in which it lies. In sharp contrast with all that newness, our old tower stands hemmed about by a medley of roofs of all shapes and all ages; their red tiles of past style, here and there, agreeably mellowing the dull dominant blue of the Paris slate. On these roofs below jut out dormers, armed with odd wheels and chains for lifting odd burdens; here on one side is an outer staircase that starts in vague shadow, and ends nowhere, it would seem; far down glimmers the opaque gray of the glass-covered courts at our feet. A little toward the north—where was an entrance to this court, in old days, from a gateway on the river-bank—is the roof that sheltered Racine, along with the legal gentry of the Hôtel des Ursins. And all about us, below, lies the little that is left of la Cité, the swept and set-in-order leavings of that ancient network of narrow streets, winding passages, blind alleys, all walled about by tall, scowling houses, leaning unwillingly against one another to save themselves from falling. This was the whole of Gallic Lutetia, the centre of Roman Lutetia, the heart of mediæval Paris, the "Alsatia" of modern Paris; surviving almost to our time, when the Second Empire let light and air into its pestilent corners. Every foot of this ground has its history. Down there, Villon, sneaking from the University precincts, stole and starved and sang; there Quasimodo, climbing down from his tower, foraged for his scant supplies; there Sue's impossibly dark villany and equally impossible virtue found fitting stage-setting; there, François, honest and engaging thief, slipped narrowly through the snares that encompassed even vagabonds, in the suspicious days and nights of the Terror.
The nineteenth century, cutting its clean way through this sinister quarter, cutting away with impartial spade the round dozen churches and the hundreds of houses that made their parishes, all clustered close about the cathedral and the palace, has happily left untouched this gray tower, built when or for what no one knows. It is a part of all that it has seen, in its sightless way, through the changing centuries of steady growth and of transient mutilation of its town. It has seen its own island and the lesser islands up-stream gradually alter their shapes; this island of the city lengthening itself, by reaching out for the two low-shored grassy eyots down-stream, where now is Place Dauphine and where sits Henri IV. on his horse. The narrow channel between, that gave access to the water-gate of the old Palace, has been filled in, so making one island of the three, and Rue de Harlay-au-Palais covers the joining line. So the two islands on the east—Île Notre-Dame and Île aux Vaches—have united their shores to make Île Saint-Louis. The third island, most easterly of all—Île des Javiaux of earliest times, known later as Île Louvier—has been glued to the northern bank of the mainland, by the earthing-in of the thin arm of the river, along the line of present Boulevard Morland, and Quai Henri IV. And the two great islands as we know them—the permanent outcome of all these topographical transformations—have been chained to each other and to both banks, by numerous beautiful bridges.
Our tower raised its head in time to see the gradual wearing away of the mighty Roman aqueduct, that brought water to the Palais des Thermes of the Roman rulers—whose immense frigidarium is safe and sound within the enclosure of the Cluny Museum—from the Bièvre, away off on the southern outskirts. This aqueduct started at the point where later was built the village of Arceuil—named from the mediæval, or late, Latin Arculi—where was quarried the best stone that builded old Paris; and curved with the valley of the Bièvre like a huge railway viaduct, leaving that stream when it bent in its course to the Seine near the Salpêtrière, and entering the town along the easterly line of Rue Saint-Jacques, and so straight away to the baths. This tower well remembers the new aqueduct, constructed massively on the ruins of the Roman, between 1613 and 1633, from Rungis, still farther south, to the Luxembourg Palace. Imperial and royal baths must have pure water, while wells and rivers must perforce content the townspeople. They had their aqueduct at last, however, laid, still along the top of these others, during the Second Empire. It is worth the little trip by rail to Arceuil to see the huge arches that climb along the valley carrying these piled-up conduits.
Our old tower has seen the baby town creep, from its cradle on the shore, up that southern slope to where on its summit it found the tomb of its patron, Sainte Geneviève—one tower of her abbey still shows gray above the garden-walls of Lycée Henri IV.—and thence, its strength so grown as to burst its girdle of restraining wall, it strode far afield. Roman and Christian settlements, with all their greenery—palace, abbey, and school, each set within its spacious gardens—gradually gave place to these serried shining roofs we see, here and there pierced by church spires and punctuated by domes. And on the northern bank, our tower has seen the rising tide of the centuries swallow up the broad marshes along the shore and the wide woodlands behind; bearing down Roman villa and temple, Christian nunnery and monastery, washing away each successive breakwater of wall, until it surged over the crest of the encircling hills, now crowned by the imposing basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre.
It may have been here in time to look down on the stately procession escorting the little ten-year-old Henry IV., the new King of England, from the Palace to the cathedral; wherein was celebrated the service by which one English cardinal and two French bishops tried to consecrate him King of France. It saw, when the ceremony was ended, the turbulent mob of common French folk crowding about the boy-king and his English escort as they returned, and ignominiously hustling them into the Palace. Not many years later, on April 13, 1436, it possibly saw the French soldiery march into Place de Grève, over the bridge and through the streets behind, from their captured gate of Saint-Jacques; and not many days thereafter, the English soldiery hurrying along behind the northern wall from the Bastille to the Louvre, and there taking boat for their sail to Rouen; the while the Parisian populace, mad with joy on that wall, welcomed the incoming friend and cursed the outgoing foe.
Our tower has watched, from its own excellent point of view, the three successive fires in and about the Palace, in 1618, 1736, and 1776. Between them, these fires carried away the constructions of Louis XII., the vast Salle des Pas-Perdus, the ancient donjon, the spires and turrets and steep roofs that swarmed about the Sainte-Chapelle, whose slender height seems to spring more airily from earth to sky by that clearance. Only that chapel, the Salle-des-Gardes, the corner tower on the quay, the kitchens of Saint-Louis behind it, and the round-capped towers of the Conciergerie, are left of the original palace. The present outer casing of this Tour de l'Horloge is a restoration of that existing in 1585, but the thirteenth-century fabric remains, and the foundations are far earlier, in the view of the late Viollet-le-Duc. Its clock dates from 1370, having been twice restored, and its bell has sounded, as far as our tower, the passing of many historic hours. It rang menacingly an hour later than that of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, which had been advanced by the queen-mother's eagerness, on Saint Bartholomew's night. It was en carillon all of Friday, June 12, 1598, for the peace procured by Henri IV. between Spain and Savoy; and the birth of his son was saluted by its joyous chimes, at two o'clock of the afternoon of Friday, September 28, 1601.
Nearly two years later—on Friday, June 20, 1603—our tower stared in consternation, out over the end of the island, at the gallant Henry treading jauntily and safely across the uncompleted arches of the Pont-Neuf, from shore to shore. The new bridge was a wonder, and in attempts to climb along its skeleton, many over-curious citizens had tumbled into the river; "but not one of them a king," laughed their king, after his successful stepping over. The bridge was built slowly, and was at last ready for traffic on February 6, 1607, and has stood so strong and stable ever since, that it has passed into a proverb as the common comparison for a Frenchman's robust health. It is the only bridge between the islands and either bank that has so stood, and this tower has seen each of the others wrecked by fire or flood. The tall wooden piles, on which the mediæval bridgeways were built, slowly rotted, until they were carried away by the fierce current. And fire found its frequent quarry in the tall houses that lined either side of the roadway, shops on the lower floor, and tenants above.
Thus our tower doubtless heard, on Friday, October 25, 1499, the wrenching and groaning of the huge wooden piles of Pont Notre-Dame—its first pile driven down by temporarily sane Charles VI.—as they bent and broke and tumbled into the Seine, with their burden of roadway and of buildings; whereby so thick a cloud of dust rose up from the water, that rescue of the inmates was almost impossible. Among the few saved, on that calamitous holiday of Saint-Crespin and Saint-Crespinien, was a baby found floating down-stream in its cradle, unwet and unharmed. So, too, Pont aux Meuniers and all its houses and mills fell in fragments into the stream on December 22, 1596. It was a wooden bridge, connecting the island end of Pont au Change diagonally with the shore of the mainland. It is reported that the dwellers on the bridge were rich men, many of them slayers and plunderers of the Huguenots on the festival of Saint Bartholomew. So it was said that the weak hand of city supervision, neglecting the bridge, was aided by the finger of God, pushing it down!