A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

It was my original intention to devote a large proportion of this book to this fascinating area—to describe it minutely street by street—and I have notes for that purpose which would fill half the volume alone. But the publication of the £32,000,000 scheme for renovating this and other of the older parts of Paris (one of the principal points in which is the isolation of the Musée Carnavalet, which is the heart of the Marais), coming just at that time, acted like a douche of iced water, and I abandoned the project. Instead therefore I merely say enough (I hope) to impress on every reader the desirability, the necessity, of hastening to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and its dependencies, and refer them to the two French writers whom I have found most useful in my own researches—the Marquis de Rochegude, author of a Guide Pratique à travers le Vieux Paris (Hachette) and the Vicomte de Villebresme, author of Ce que reste du Vieux Paris (Flammarion). To these I would add M. Georges Cain, the director of the Carnavalet, to whom I refer later.

No matter where one enters the Marais, it offers the same alluring prospect of narrow streets and high and ancient houses, once the abode of the nobility and aristocracy, but now rookeries and factories—and, over all, that sense of thorough insanitation which so often accompanies architectural charm in France and Italy, and which seems to matter so little to Latin people. Hence the additional wickedness of destroying this district. The Municipality, however, having acquired superfine foreign notions as to public health, will doubtless have its way.

Wherever one enters the Marais one finds the traces of splendour, intrigue and romance; howsoever modern conditions may have robbed them of their glory, to walk in these streets is, for any one with any imagination, to recreate Dumas. For the most part one must make one's own researches, but here and there a tablet may be found, such as that over the entrance to a narrow and sinister passage at No. 38 Rue des Francs Bourgeois, which reads thus: "Dans ce passage en sortant de l'hôtel Barbette le Duc Louis d'Orléans frère du Roi Charles VI. fut assassiné par Jean Sans Peur, Duc de Bourgogne, dans la nuit du 23 ou 24 Novembre, 1407". Five hundred years ago! That gives an idea of the antiseptic properties of the air of Paris. The Duke of Orléans, I might remark here, was symmetrically avenged, for his son assassinated Jean Sans Peur on the bridge of Montereau all in due course.

The Marais was at its prime from the middle of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth; at which period the Faubourg St. Antoine was abandoned by fashion for the Faubourg St. Germain, as we shall see when the time comes to wander in the Rue de Varenne and the Rue de Grenelle on the other side of the river.

Let us enter the Marais by the Rue du Temple at the Square du Temple, a little south of the Place de la République. One must make a beginning somewhere. The Temple, which has now disappeared, was the head-quarters of the Knight Templars of France before their suppression in 1307: it then became the property of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, who held it until the Revolution, when all property seems to have changed hands. Rousseau found sanctuary here in 1765; and here Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned for a while in 1792. More tragic by far, it was here that the little Dauphin died. Napoleon pulled down the Tower: Louis XVIII. on his accession awarded the property to the Princesse de Condé, and Louis-Philippe, on his, took it back again.

The Rue du Temple has many interesting old houses and associations. Just north of the Square is the church of Elizabeth of Hungary, the first stone of which was laid in 1628 by a less sainted monarch, Marie de Médicis. It is worth entering to see its carved wood scenes from Scripture history. At 193 once lived Madame du Barry; at 153 was, in the reign of Louis XV., the barreau des vinaigrettes—the vinaigrette being the forerunner of the cab, a kind of sedan chair and jinrickshaw; at 62 died Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, in the Hôtel de Montmorency.

L'HOMME AU GANT
TITIAN
(Louvre)

From the Square du Temple we may also walk down the Rue des Archives, parallel with the Rue du Temple on the east. This street now extends to the Rue de Rivoli. It is rich in old palaces, some with very beautiful relics of their grandeur still in existence, such as the staircase at No. 78. The fountain at the corner of the Rue des Haudriettes dates only from 1705. At No. 58 is the gateway, restored, of the old palace of the Constable de Clisson, built in 1371. Later it belonged to the Guise family and then to the Soubise. The Revolution made it the property of the State, and Napoleon directed that the Archives should be preserved here. The entrance is in the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, across the green court; but do not go on a cold day, because there is no heating process, owing to the age of the building and the extraordinary value of the collections. The rooms in themselves are of some interest for their Louis XV. decoration and mural paintings, but one goes of course primarily to see the handwriting of the great. Here is the Edict of Nantes signed by Henri IV.; a quittance signed by Diana de Poictiers, very boldly; a letter to Parliament from Louis XI., in his atrocious hand; a codicil added by Saint Louis to his will on board a vessel on the coast of Sardinia, exquisitely written. The scriveners have rather gone off than improved since those days; look at the "Registre des enquêteurs royaux en Normandie," 1248, for a work of delicate minuteness. Marie Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV., wrote an attractive hand, but Louis XIV.'s own signature is dull. Voltaire is discovered to have written very like Swinburne.