A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

Relics of the Revolution abound. Here is Marie Antoinette's last letter to the Princess Elizabeth, written the night before she was executed; a letter of Pétion, bidding his wife farewell, and of Barbaroux to his mother, both stained with tears. Here also is the journal of Louis XVI., 1766-1792, and the order for his inhumation (as Louis Capet), 21st January, 1793. His will is here too; and so is Napoleon's. I say no more because the collection is so vast, and also because a franc buys a most admirable catalogue, with facsimiles, beginning with the monogram of Charlemagne himself.

On leaving the Archives we may take an easterly course along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, with the idea of making eventually for the Carnavalet; but it is well to loiter, for this is the very heart of the Marais. One's feet will always be straying down byways that call for closer notice, and it is very likely that the Carnavalet will not be reached till to-morrow after all. Indeed, let "Hasta mañana" be your Marais motto.

One of the first buildings that one notices is the Mont de Piété, the chief of the Paris pawnbroking establishments. I am told that the system is an admirable one; but my own experience is against this opinion, for I was unable on a day of unexpected stress at the end of 1907 to effect an entrance at the very reasonable hour of a quarter past five. The closing of the English pawnbrokers at seven—the very moment at which the ordinary man's financial troubles begin—is sufficiently uncivilised; but to cease to lend money on excellent gold watches at five o'clock in the afternoon (with the bank closed on the morrow, too, being New Year's Day) is a scandal. My adventures in search of relief among French tradesmen who had been at my feet as recently as yesterday, before supplies had broken down, I shall never forget, nor shall I relate them here. This aims at being an agreeable book.

It is interesting to note that one of the entrances to the Mont de Piété is reserved for clients who wish to raise money on deeds, and I have seen cabmen very busy in bringing to it people who quite shamelessly hold their papers in their hands. And why on earth not? And yet your English pawner seldom reaches the Three Brass Balls with such publicity or by any other medium than his poor feet. Our Mont de Piété for the respectable is the solicitor's office. A trace of the wall, and one of its towers, built around Paris by Philip Augustus in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, may be seen in the courtyard of the Mont de Piété; but the wall is better observed in the Rue des Guillemites, at No. 14.

All about here once stood a large convent of the Blancs-Manteaux, or Servants of the Virgin Mary, an order which came into being in Florence in the thirteenth century and of whom the doctor Benazzi was the general. After the Blancs-Manteaux came the Hermits of St. Guillaume, or Guillemites, and later the Benedictines took it over. Next the Mont de Piété at the back is the church of the Blancs-Manteaux in its modern form. It is plain and unattractive, but it wears an air of some purpose, and one feels that it is much used in this very popular and not too happy quarter. Just opposite, in a doorway, I watched an old chiffonnière playing with a grey rabbit. Every inch of this neighbourhood offers priceless material to the hand of Mr. Muirhead Bone.

One of the old tavern signs of Paris is to be seen close by, at the corner of the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux and the Rue des Archives: a soldier standing by a cannon, representing l'homme armé. It is a comfortable little retreat and should be encouraged for such antiquarian piety.

The pretty turret at the corner of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and the Rue Vieille du Temple marks the site of the hôtel of Jean de la Balue. Turning to the left up the Rue Vieille du Temple we come at No. 87 to a very beautiful ancient mansion, with a spacious courtyard, built in 1712 for the Cardinal de Rohan. It is now the national printing works: hence the statue of Gutenberg in the midst. Visitors are allowed to see the house itself once a week, but I have not done so. You will probably not be interfered with if you just step to the inside of the second courtyard to see the bas-relief of the steeds of Apollo. Nos. 102 to 108 in the same street mark the remains of another fine eighteenth-century hôtel. There is also a house which one should see in the lower part of the street, on the south side of the Francs Bourgeois—No. 47, where by penetrating boldly one comes to a perfect little courtyard with some beautiful carvings in it, and, above, a green garden, tended, when I was there, by a Little Sister of the Poor. The principal courtyard has a very interesting bas-relief of Romulus and Remus at their usual meal, and also an old sundial. This palace was built in 1638.

Returning to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, we find at No. 38 the little impasse already referred to, where the Duc d'Orléans was assassinated. At No. 30 is a very impressive red-brick palace with a courtyard, now a nest of offices and factories, once the hôtel of Jean de Fourcy. A bust of Henri IV. has a place there. At No. 25 on the other side (seen better from the Rue Pavée) is an even more splendid abode—now also cut up into a rookery—the Hôtel de Lamoignon, once Hôtel d'Angoulême, built for Diane, Duchess of Angoulême, daughter of Henri II.: hence the symbols of the chase in the ornamentation. The hotel passed to President de Lamoignon in 1655.

And here is the Carnavalet—the spacious building, with a garden and modern additions, on the left—once the Hôtel des Ligneries, afterwards the Hôtel de Kernevenoy, afterwards the Hôtel de Sévigné, and now the museum of the city of Paris. The only way to understand Paris is to make repeated visits to this treasure-house. You will find new entertainment and instruction every time, because every time you will carry thither impressions of new objects of interest whose past you will want to explore. For in the Carnavalet every phase of the life of the city, from the days of the Romans and the Merovingians to our own, is illustrated in one way or another. The pictures of streets alone are inexhaustible: the streets that one knows to-day as they were yesterday and the day before yesterday and hundreds of years ago; the streets one has just walked through on the way here, in their stages of evolution: such, for example, as the picture of the wooden Pont des Meuniers in 1380 with the Tour Saint-Jacques behind it; the streets with dramas of the Revolution in progress, such as the picture of the emblems of Royalty being burned before the statue of Liberty (where the Luxor column now stands) in the Place de la Concorde on August 10th, 1793; such as the picture of the famous "serment" being taken in the court of the Jeu de Paume on June 20th, 1789; such as the picture of the funeral of Marat. For the perfection of topographical drawing look at the series by F. Hoffbauer. But it is impossible and needless to particularise. The visitor with a topographical or historical bent will find himself in a paradise and will return and return. One visit is ridiculous.

The catalogue, I may say, is not good, therein falling into line with the sculpture catalogue at the Louvre. Everything may be in it, but the arrangement is poor. In such a museum every article and every picture should of course have a description attached, if only for the benefit of the poor visitor, the humblest citizen of Paris whose museum it is.