We go our way toward our third staircase, not by the stupidly straight line of Rue Monge, but by vagrant curves that bring us to the prison of Sainte-Pélagie, soon to disappear, and to the Roman amphitheatre just below, happily rescued forever. Here, in Rue Cardinal-Lemoine, we slip under the stupid frontage of No. 49 to the court within, where we are faced by the hôtel of Charles Lebrun. We mount the stone steps that lead up to a wide hall, and so go through to a farther court, now unfortunately roofed over. This court was his garden, and this is the stately garden-front that was the true façade, rather than that toward the street; for this noble mansion—the work of the architect Germain Boffrand, pupil and friend of Hardouin Mansart—was built after the fashion of that time, which shut out, by high walls, all that was within from sight of the man in the street, and kept the best for those who had entry to the stiff, formal gardens of that day.
Pupil of Poussin, protégé of Fouquet, friend of Colbert, Lebrun was the favorite court painter and decorator, and the most characteristic exponent of the art of his day; his sumptuous style suiting equally François I.'s Fontainebleau, and Louis XIV.'s Versailles. He aided Colbert in the founding of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and in the purchase by the State of the Gobelins. This factory took its name from the famous dyer who came from Rheims, and tinted the clear Bièvre with his splendid scarlet, says Rabelais; so that it took the name of la Rivière des Gobelins, of which Ronsard sings. The statesman and the artist in concert built up the great factory of tapestries and of furniture, such as were suitable for royal use. Made Director of the Gobelins and Chancellor of the Academy, and making himself the approved painter of the time to his fellow-painters and to the buying public, Lebrun's fortune grew to the possession of this costly estate, which extended far away beyond modern Rue Monge. The death of Colbert—whose superb tomb in Saint-Eustache is the work of his surviving friend—left him to the hatred of Louvois, who pushed Mignard, Molière's friend, into preferment. And Lebrun, genuine and honest artist, died of sheer despondency, in his official apartment on the first floor of the factory, facing the chapel. His rooms have been cut up and given over to various usages, and no trace can be found in the Gobelins of its first director.
His body rests in his parish church, a few steps farther on, through ancient Rue Saint-Victor, now curtailed and mutilated. Along its line, before we come to the square tower of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, we skirt the dirty yellow and drab wall of the famous seminary alongside the church, and bearing its name. Its entrance is at No. 30 Rue de Pontoise, and among the many famous pupils who have gone in and out since Calvin was a student here, we may mention only Ernest Renan. In 1838, the director of the school being the accomplished Dupanloup, this boy of fifteen came fresh from Brittany to his studies here. We shall follow him to his later and larger schools, in other pages. When Jean "le Moine," the son of a Picardy peasant, came to sit in a cardinal's chair, and was sent to Paris as legate by Pope Boniface VIII., he established a great college in the year 1303. For it he bought the chapel, the dwellings, and the cemetery of the Augustins that were all in fields of thistles. So came the name "du Chardonnet" to the church now built on the ruins of Lemoine's chapel, in the later years of the seventeenth century. Lebrun decorated one of its chapels for the burial of his mother, and his own tomb is there near hers. Some of his work still shows on the ceiling; and in an adjacent chapel, in odd proximity, once hung a canvas from the brush of Mignard. In striking contrast, the busts of the two men face each other in the Louvre; that of Mignard is alert with intelligence in face and poise of head, while Lebrun's suggests a somewhat slow-witted earnestness.
From this short stay in the realm of Louis the Unreal, we go to the island that bears the name of the Louis who was called a saint, but who was a very real man. All the streets along here that take us to the river, as far easterly as the one that bears the name of Cardinal Lemoine, were cut through the grounds of his college and of the Bernadins, an ancient foundation alongside. Of the buildings of this vast monastery, the refectory remains, behind the wall on the western side of Rue de Poissy. This characteristic specimen of thirteenth-century architecture, but little spoiled by modern additions, is used for the caserne of the Sapeurs-Pompiers. Here, at the foot of the street on the river-bank on our right, is the great space where Boulevard Saint-Germain comes down to the quay, and where the old wall came down to its great tower on the shore. On our left, as we cross broad Pont de la Tournelle, we get an impressive view of Notre-Dame. And now we find ourselves in a provincial town, seemingly far removed from our Paris in miles and in years, by its isolation and tranquillity and old-world atmosphere. Its long, lazy main street is named after the royal saint, and its quays keep the titles of royal princes, Bourbon, Orléans, Anjou. A great royal minister, Maximilien de Béthune, gives his name to another quay, and his great master gives his to the new boulevard crossing it. Henry often crossed his faithful Sully, but they were at one in the orders issued, in the year before the King's murder, for the sweeping away of the woodyards, that made this island the storehouse of the town's timber, and for the construction of these streets and buildings. The works planned by Henri IV. were carried out by Marie de' Medici and Louis XIII. A concession was given for the laying out of streets and for the buildings on this island, and for the construction of a new stone bridge to the Marais, to the three associates, Marie, Le Regrettier, Poultier, who gave their names to the bridge and to two of the streets. There was already a small chapel in the centre, the scene of the first preaching of the First Crusade, and this chapel has been enlarged to the present old-time parish church. Just within its entrance is the bénitier, filled with water from the mouth of a marble cherub who wears a pretty marble "bang." It came from the Carmelites of Chaillot, in souvenir of "Sister Louise."
The sites on the island's banks, newly opened in the early years of Louis XIII.'s reign, were in demand at once for the mansions of the wealthy, and a precocious city started up. Corneille's Menteur, new to Paris and the island, rhapsodizes in one of his captivating flights, this time without lying:
"J'y croyais ce matin voir une île enchantée,
Je la laissai déserte et la trouve habitée;
Quelque Amphion nouveau, sans l'aide des maçons,
En superbes palais à changé ses buissons."
We shall come hither again, in company with Voltaire to one of these palaces, with Balzac to another. In these high old houses in these old streets dwelt old families, served by old retainers devoted to their mistresses, who hugged their firesides like contented tabby-cats. They had no welcome for intruders into their "Ville-Saint-Louis" from the swell quarters on the other side of the river, and it used to be said that "l'habitant du Marais est étranger dans l'Île."