The history of the Hôtel de Clisson would weary us, were it told in detail. We may jump to the year 1553, when it came to Anne d'Est, wife of François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise. He and his family were beginning to feel and to show their growing power, and he found these walls not wide enough for his swelling consequence. He bought the Hôtels de Laval and de la Roche-Guyon, whose grounds adjoined his own; so adding to his estate, while others, following the example of François I., were cutting up and selling their Paris lands. Soon the Hôtel de Guise was made up of several mansions, rebuilt and run together, within one enclosure, bounded by Rues de Paradis (now the western end of Rue des Francs-Bourgeois), du Chaume (now des Archives), des Quatre-Fils, and Vieille-du-Temple. The heirs of the last Guise, who died in 1671, sold this property at the end of the seventeenth century, and it came into the grasping hands of Madame de Soubise; bought with the savings of the French peasants, squeezed from them by Louis XIV.'s farmers of taxes, and by him poured into the lap of this lady, one of the many ladies so turning an honest penny. Her complaisant husband, François de Rohan, Prince de Soubise, began to tear down much of the old work, and to replace it by new work, in 1706. For thirty years he kept the most skilful artists and artisans of that day employed on the place within and without; and he left the Hotel de Soubise much as we find it now. To him we owe this striking cour d'honneur, square with curved ends, and framed in a colonnade of coupled columns, that leads a covered gallery from the grand entrance around to the portal of the main building. This is his façade of three stories, with pediment, its columns both composite and Corinthian. For general effect this court has no parallel in Paris.
A light elegant staircase, its ceiling delicately painted, leads to the first floor, whose rooms retain some of their mouldings, their wood-carvings, their decorated doorways and ceilings. Gone, however, are the tapestries, "the most beautiful in the world and most esteemed in Christendom, after those of the Vatican," Sauval assures us.
Vast and magnificent as was this palace, it did not suffice for the son of this prince, the Cardinal Armand Gaston de Rohan, Bishop of Strasburg, who, says Sauval, "was, in his prosperity, very insolent and blinded." On the site of the demolished Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon he built for himself the Palais Cardinal, now commonly known as the Hôtel de Strasbourg. The library, great and precious, which he there collected, together with his hôtel and his blind insolence, came to his grand-nephew, the Cardinal de Rohan of the Diamond Necklace, the last cardinal of a family of cardinals.
At his death, in 1803, desertion and emptiness came to the Hôtel de Strasbourg, as they had already come to the Hôtel de Soubise. The huge size of the buildings rendered them unfit for private residences. At length they were taken for the State by the Emperor, at the urging of Daunou, Director of the Archives of France. By the decree of March 6, 1808, those archives took for their own the Hôtel de Soubise, and the Hôtel de Strasbourg was given to the Imprimerie Impériale. No after-revolution nor any change of rulers has troubled them. As their contents grew, new structures have been added, over the gardens and on the street behind, all done in good taste, all suggesting the uses for which they are meant. The Imprimerie, entered from Rue Vieille-du-Temple, through a court containing a statue of Gutenberg, does the work for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, for the Ministers and for the Institute. Its Bulletin des Lois, issued to all the Communes of France, carries to completion the mission meant for it when it was begun by Louis XIII., Hugo asserts.
The archives of France must be studied and may not be described. This amazing collection of manuscripts, charters, diplomas, letters, and autographs begins with the earliest day of writing and of records in France, and comes down through all the centuries. It is a spot for unhurried and unhindered browsing during long summer days.
Just in this region is to be seen, better than anywhere, an aspect of the Marais not yet seen in our historic strolling. It is the Marais of to-day and of every day, the work-a-day Marais, whose heart is here in this street of the Temple and the old street of the Temple. In them, and in the streets that cross them, are numerous mansions of a bygone time, with little to say to us in architecture, nothing at all to say to us in history or letters. Side by side with them are tall buildings and huge blocks of modern construction; new and old held and possessed by factories, warehouses, show-rooms; their upper portions given over to strange handicrafts, strangely met together. The making of syphon-tops is next door on the same floor to the wiring of feathers, as Daudet discovered. These narrow streets between the buildings, and these walled-in courts within them, are hushed all through the working-hours, save for the ceaseless muffled rumble of the machinery, and the unbroken low murmur of the human toilers, both intent on their tasks.
Suddenly at noon, these streets are all astir with an industrial, unarmed mob, and the whole quarter is given over to an insurrection, peaceful and unoffending. These workers are making their way to restaurant or rôtisserie or cabaret; some of them saunter along, taking their breakfast "sur le pouce." The men, in stained blouses, are alert, earnest, and self-respecting; the girls, direct of gaze, frank of manner, shrill of voice, wear enwrapping aprons, that fall from neck to ankle, and their hair, the glory of the French working-woman who goes hatless, is dressed with an artless art that would not dishonor a drawing-room. We can carry away with us, from these last scenes, no more captivating memory than this of the most modern woman of our Marais.
INDEX
Abelard, Pierre, I., [75] et seq.
Amboise, Bussy d', II., site of his murder, [107]