A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

Such pictures deserve the most faithful owners and the most thoughtful hospitality....

But if we cannot get all as we wish it, at least we must be grateful for the next best thing, and to M. Chauchard and the Louvre authorities we must all be supremely grateful.

The Louvre is to-day the most wonderful museum in the world; but what would one not give to be able to visit it as it was in 1814, when it was in some respects more wonderful still. For then it was filled with the spoils of Napoleon's armies, who had instructions always to bring back from the conquered cities what they could see that was likely to beautify and enrich France. It is a reason for war in itself. I would support any war with Austria, for example, that would bring to London Count Czernin's Vermeer and the Parmigianino in the Vienna National Gallery; any war with Germany that would put the Berlin National Gallery at our disposal. Napoleon had other things to fight for, but that comprehensive brain forgot nothing, and as he deposed a king he remembered a blank space in the Louvre that lacked a Raphael, an empty niche waiting for its Phidias. The Revolution decreed the Museum, but it was Napoleon who made it priceless and glorious. After the fall of this man a trumpery era of restitution set in. Many of his noble patriotic thefts were cancelled out. The world readjusted itself and shrank into its old pettiness. Priceless pictures and statues were carried again to Italy and Austria, Napoleon to St. Helena.

CHAPTER VIII
THE TUILERIES

A Vanished Palace—The Most Magnificent Vista—Enter Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette—The Massacre of the Swiss Guards—The Blood of Paris—A Series of Disasters—The Growth of Paris—The Napoleonic Rebuilders—The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel—The Irony of History—A Frock Coat Rampant—The Statuary of Paris—The Gardens of the Tuileries—Monsieur Pol, Charmer of Birds—The Parisian Sparrow—Hyde Park—The Drum.

Had we turned our back only thirty-eight years ago on Frémiet's statue of Joan of Arc (which was not there then) in the Place de Rivoli, and walked down what is now the Rue de Tuileries towards the Seine, we should have had on our left hand a beautiful and imposing building—the Palace of the Tuileries, which united the two wings of the Louvre that now terminate in the Pavillon de Marsan just by the Place de Rivoli and the Pavillon de Flore on the Quai des Tuileries. The palace stretched right across this interval, thus interrupting the wonderful vista of to-day from the old Louvre right away to the Arc de Triomphe—probably the most extraordinary and beautiful civilised, or artificial, vista in the world. The palace had, however, a sufficiently fine if curtailed share of it from its own windows.

All Parisians upwards of forty-five must remember the Palace perfectly, for it was not destroyed until 1871, during the Commune, and it was some years after that incendiary period before all traces were removed and the gardens spread uninterruptedly from the Carrousel to the Concorde.

The Palace of the Tuileries (so called because it occupied a site previously covered by tile kilns) was begun in 1564 and had therefore lived for three centuries. Catherine de Médicis planned it, but, as we shall read later, she lost interest in it very quickly owing to one of those inconvenient prophecies which were wont in earlier times so to embarrass rulers, but which to-day in civilised countries have entirely gone out. The Tuileries was a happy enough palace, as palaces go, until the Revolution: it then became for a while the very centre of rebellion and carnage; for Louis XVI. and the Royal Family were conveyed thither after the fatal oath had been sworn in the Versailles tennis-court. Then came the critical 10th of August, when the King consented to attend the conference in the Manège (now no more, but a tablet opposite the Rue Castiglione marks the spot) and thus lost everything.

The massacre of the Swiss Guards followed: but here it is impossible, or at least absurd, not to hear Carlyle. Mandal, Commander of the National Guard, I would premise, has been assassinated by the crowd; the Constitutional Assembly sits in the Manège, and the King, a prisoner in the Tuileries, but still a hesitant and an optimist, is ordered to attend it. At last he consents. "King Louis sits, his hands leant on his knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space fixedly on Syndic Rœderer; then answers, looking over his shoulder to the Queen: Marchons! They march; King Louis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth, the two royal children and governess: these, with Syndic Rœderer, and Officials of the Department; amid a double rank of National Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully; but hear only these words from Syndic Rœderer: 'The King is going to the Assembly; make way'. It has struck eight, on all clocks, some minutes ago: the King has left the Tuileries—forever.