On his Pont-Neuf sits Henri IV. on his horse, and every Frenchman looks up as he passes, with almost the same emotion felt by the Frenchmen of Voltaire's day, at the effigy of the most essentially French of all French kings. The statue faces "the symmetrical structures of stone and brick," planned by him for his Place Dauphine, in honor of the birth of his son. They are hardly altered since their construction by his good friend Achille de Harlay, President of Parliament, whose name is retained in the street behind the place and in front of the Palace of Justice. The King looks out, a genial grin between his big, ugly, Gascon-Bourbon nose and his pushing chin, over his beloved Paris, well worth the mass he gave for it; for, from the day he got control, it grew in form and comeliness for him. His kindly, quizzical eyes seem to see, over the Island and the river, his own old Marais, the quarter which held the hôtel of his menus plaisirs, and which it was his greater pleasure to rebuild and make beautiful. And "la perle du Marais"—his Place Royale—deserves his unchanging regard, almost unchanged as it is, since he planned it and since its completion, which he never saw. It is the grand tangible monument he has left to Paris, and speaks of him as does nothing else in the town.
When he came into his capital on March 22, 1594, he found the enclosure of the Tournelles en friche. Within a few days he gave a piece of it, holding an old house, that fronted on Rue Saint-Antoine, to his good Rosny, whom he made Duc de Sully a little later. This Maximilien de Béthune had been the most faithful helper of Henri de Navarre and he continued to be the most faithful servant of Henri IV. He had many homely virtues, rare in those days, rare in any days. He was courageous, honest, laborious; he did long and loyal service to the State; he worked almost a miracle for the finances of the kingdom, carrying his economies into every detail, even to the ordering of costumes in black, to spare the expense of the richly colored robes in vogue. A vigilant watch-dog, he was surly and snappish withal, and he had a greedy grip on all stray bones that fell fairly in his way. His wealth and power grew with his chances. He seems to have put something of himself into his hôtel, which faces us at No. 143 Rue Saint-Antoine. It bears on its lordly front an honesty of intention that is almost haughty, with a certain self-sufficiency that shows a lack of humor; all most characteristic of the man. Neither he nor his abode appeals to our affections, howsoever they may compel our respect.
Sully.
(From a portrait attributed to Quesnel, in the Musée Condé at Chantilly.)
Having got this well-earned gift of land from the King, he cleared away the old buildings upon it, and erected this superb structure. His architect was doubtless Jean du Cerceau, for the heaviness of his early work is apparent in these walls, but their owner evidently enforced his personal tastes on them. The façade, on the shapely court, has its own touch of distinction, dashed by the touch of pomposity that dictated, to the four secretaries employed on his memoirs, his stock phrase, "Such was Sully!" This front is over-elaborate. The main body and the two wings—which are a trifle too long and too large, and so crowd and choke that main body—are all heavily sculptured. On every side, stone genii bear arms, stone women pose as the seasons and the elements, stone masks and foliage, whose carving is finer than the sculpture, crowd about the richly chiselled windows. Yet those windows look down on the court in a most commanding way; and the fabric, behind all its floridness, shows a power in the rectitude of its lines that must needs be acknowledged.
The Court of the Hôtel de Béthune. Sully's Residence.
The garish windows of the restaurant on the ground floor glare intrusively out on the old-time court, and a discordant note is struck by the signs, all about its doorways, of the new-fangled industries within—a water-cure, a boxing-school, a gymnasium. School-boys play noisily in this court, and, in the garden behind, schoolgirls take the air demurely. To reach their garden, we pass through a spacious hall, along one side of which mounts a wide, substantial staircase, its ceiling overloaded with panels and mouldings. Set in a niche in the garden-wall is a bust of the Duke of Sully. This garden façade is in severer taste than that of the front court, its wings are less obtrusive, and its whole effect is admirable. The little garden once made one with the garden of the Hôtel de Chaulnes behind, that faced the Place Royale, to which Sully thus had entrance. That entrance may be found through the two small doors of No. 7, Place des Vosges, and behind that building is Sully's orangerie, in perfect preservation.