LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

From drawings by John Fulleylove, Esq. The portraits from photographs by Messrs. Braun, Clément et Cie.

Madame de Sévigné (from the portrait by Mignard).[Frontispiece]
PAGE
Alphonse de Lamartine (from a sketch by David d'Angers,"un soir chez Hugo")facing[10]
Madame Récamier (from the portrait by Gros)facing[40]
The Abbaye-aux-Bois[43]
Portal of Châteaubriand's Dwelling in Rue du Bac[46]
The Court of the Pension Vauquerfacing[52]
Honoré de Balzac (from the portrait by Louis Boulanger)facing[64]
Les Jardies[70]
The Antiquary's Shop, and in the background the house whereVoltaire diedfacing[78]
The Pension Vauquer[80]
The Commemorative Tablet to Balzac[84]
The Figure of d'Artagnan (from the Dumas Monument byGustave Doré)facing[90]
Alexandre Dumasfacing[104]
The Wall of the Carmelites[113]
Rue Tiquetonne, with the Hôtel de Picardiefacing[118]
The Hôtel de Toulouse[128]
Alfred de Musset (from the sketch by Louis-Eugène Lami)facing[144]
The Cemetery of Picpus[153]
Victor Hugo (from the portrait by Bonnat)facing[160]
The Hôtel du Prévôt[175]
Anne de Bretagne (from a portrait by an unknown artist in aprivate collection)facing[186]
Louis XII (from a water-color portrait by an unknown artist,in a private collection)facing[190]
Sully (from a portrait attributed to Quesnel, in the MuséeCondé at Chantilly)facing[194]
The Court of the Hôtel de Béthune. Sully's Residence[196]
The Hôtel de Mayenne. In the distance, the Temple Sainte-Marie,called the Church of the Visitationfacing[198]
The Place des Vosgesfacing[214]
The Hôtel de Beauvaisfacing[238]
The Staircase of the Dwelling of the Marquise de Brinvilliersfacing[246]
The Hôtel de Sensfacing[254]
Marguerite de Valois (from a portrait by an unknown artist, inthe Musée de Montpellier)facing[258]
The Hôtel Lamoignonfacing[262]
The Tourelle of the Hôtel Barbette[268]
The Gateway of the Hôtel de Clisson[276]

THE SOUTHERN BANK IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE SOUTHERN BANK IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In preceding chapters we have come upon the small beginnings of the Scholars' Quarter; we have had glimpses of the growth of the great mother University and of her progeny of out-lying colleges; and we have trodden, with their scholars and students, the slope of "the whole Latin Mountain," as it was named by Pantaléon, that nephew of Pope Urban IV., who extolled the learning he had acquired here. Looking down from its crest, over the hill-side to the Seine, we have had under our eyes the mediæval Pays Latin, filling up the space within its bounding wall, built by Philippe-Auguste and left untouched by Charles V.; we have seen that wall gradually obliterated through the ages, its gate-ways with their flanking towers first cut away, its fabric picked to pieces, stone by stone; while, beyond its line, we have watched the building up, early in the seventeenth century, of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, over the Pré-aux-Clercs, and in the fields beyond, and along the river-bank toward the west. In the centre of this new quarter the nobility of birth was soon intrenched behind its garden-walls, and in the centre of the old quarter the aristocracy of brains was secluded within its courts. The boundary-line of the two quarters, almost exactly defined by the straight course from the Institute to the Panthéon, speedily became blurred, and the debatable neutral ground between was settled by colonists from either region, servants of the State, of art, of letters. In our former strollings through long-gone centuries, we have visited many of these and many of the dwellers on the University hill; we are now to turn our attention to those brilliant lights on the left bank who have helped to make Paris "la ville lumière" during the forenoon of the nineteenth century.

Through the heart of the faubourg curved the narrow Rue Saint-Dominique, from Esplanade des Invalides to Rue des Saints-Pères. This eastern end, nearly as far west as Rue de Bellechasse, has been carried away by new Boulevard Saint-Germain, and with it the hôtel of the de Tocqueville family, which stood at No. 77 of the ancient aristocratic street. Here in 1820 lived the Comtesse de Tocqueville, with her son, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel, a lad of fifteen. Here he remained until the events of 1830 sent him to the United States, with a mission to study their prison systems; a study extended by him to all the institutions of the Republic, which had a profound interest for the French Republicans of that time. His report on those prisons appeared in 1832, and in 1835 he put forth the first volume of "De la Démocratie en Amérique," its four volumes being completed in 1840. That admirable survey of the progress of democracy—whose ascendancy he predicted, despite his own predilections—still carries authority, and at the time created a wide-spread sensation. It made its author famous, and promoted him to the place of first-assistant lion in the salon of Madame Récamier, whose head lion was always Châteaubriand. De Tocqueville had settled, on his return to Paris, in this same faubourg; residing until 1837 at 49 Rue de Verneuil, and from that date to 1840 at 12 Rue de Bourgogne. Elected Deputy in 1839, he soon crossed the Seine, and we cannot follow him to his various residences in the quarter of the Madeleine. For a few months in 1849 he served as Minister for Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of the Prince-President, and was among the Deputies put into cells in December, 1851. His remaining years, until his death at Cannes in 1859, were spent in retirement from all public affairs.

A notable inhabitant of the University quarter, in the early years of the nineteenth century, was François-Pierre-Guillaume Guizot, a young professor at the Sorbonne. His classes were crowded by students and by men from outside, all intent on his strong and convincing presentation of his favorite historical themes. He lived, near his lecture-room, at No. 10 Rue de la Planche, a street that now forms the eastern end of Rue de Varennes, between Rues du Bac and de la Chaise. From 1823 to 1830 his home was at 37 Rue Saint-Dominique, where now is No. 203 Boulevard Saint-Germain, next to the Hôtel de Luynes, already visited with Racine. This latter period saw Guizot, after a temporary dismissal from his chair by the Bourbon King, at the height of his powers and his prestige as a lecturer. He carried his oratory to the Chamber of Deputies in 1830, and there compelled equal attention. In 1832 we find him, Minister of Public Instruction, installed in the official residence at 116 Rue de Grenelle, on the corner of Rue de Bellechasse. His work while there still lasts as the basis of the elementary education of France, and it is to him that she owes her primary schools. Pushed out from this office in 1836 by the pushing Thiers, he went to England as Ambassador for a few months in 1840, and in the autumn of that year he took up his abode in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he remained until he was driven out in 1848. That ancient mansion, no longer in existence, stood on the triangle made by Boulevard and Rue des Capucines. With his desertion of this Southern Bank, we lose sight of his dwellings, always thereafter in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Guizot and Louis-Philippe failed in their fight against a nation, and the men of February, 1848, revolted against the Prime Minister as well as against the King of the French. That opéra-bouffe monarch with the pear-shaped face, under the guise of Mr. Smith, with a fat umbrella, slipped out of the back door of the Tuileries and away to England; Guizot got away to the same safe shores in less ludicrous disguise. He returned to his own land in 1849, and lived until 1874, always poor, always courageous, and always at work. Among his many volumes of these years, all marked by elevation of thought and serenity of style, as well as by absence of warmth and color, were his "Mémoires," wherein he proves, to the satisfaction of his austere dogmatism, that he had always been in the right throughout his public career.