A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

"The Commune.—Burning of the Tuileries, the Ministry of Finance, the Louvre Library, the Hôtel de Ville, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, the Palace of the Quai d'Orsay, the Lyric, the Châtelet and the Porte St. Martin theatres, etc.

"The Republic.—Reconstruction of the buildings burnt by the Commune; Avenue de l'Opéra, the Opera House; Streets: Etienne Marcel, Réaumur, Avenue de la République, etc. In 1892, 4,090 streets, in 1902 there were 4,261 streets. The Exhibition 1878 left the Trocadero, and that of 1889 the Eiffel Tower, and that of 1900 the two Palaces of the Champs-Elysées and the bridge Alexander III." (To this one should add the Métro, still uncompleted, which has the advantage over London's Tubes of being only just below the surface, so that no lift is needed.)

THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE DU CARROUSEL (WEST FAÇADE)

The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, at the east end of the gardens, is a mere child compared with the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, which stands there, so serenely and magnificently, at the end of the vista in the west, nearly two amazing miles away; it could be placed easily, with many feet to spare, under that greater monument's arch (as Victor Hugo's coffin was); but it is more beautiful. Both were the work of Napoleon, both celebrate the victories of 1805-06. The Carrousel is surmounted by a triumphal car and four horses; but here again, as in the case of the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont Neuf, there have been ironical changes. Napoleon, when he ordained the arch, which was intended largely to reproduce that of Severus at Rome, ravished for its crowning the quadriga from St. Mark's at Venice: those glorious gleaming horses over the door. That was as it should be: he was a conqueror and entitled to the spoils of conquest. But after his fall came, as we have seen, a pedantic disgorgement of such treasure; the golden team trotted back to the Adriatic, and a new decoration had to be provided for the Carrousel. Hence the present one, which represents—what? It is almost inconceivable; but, Louis XVIII. having commissioned it, it represents the triumph no longer of Napoleon but of the Restoration! Amusing to remember this under the Third Republic, as one looks up at it and then at the bas-reliefs of the battle of Austerlitz, the peace of Tilsit, the capitulation of Ulm, the entry into Munich, the entry into Vienna and the peace of Pressburg. Time's revenges indeed.

Standing under the Arc du Carrousel one makes the interesting but disappointing discovery that the Arc de Triomphe, the column of Luxor in the Place de la Concorde, the fountain, the Arc du Carrousel, the Gambetta monument and the Pavillon Sully of the Louvre do not form a straight line, as by all the laws of French architectural symmetry they should—especially here, where compasses and rulers seem to have been at work on every inch of the ground, and, as I have ascertained, general opinion considers them to do. All is well, from the west, until the Arc du Carrousel; it is the Gambetta and the Pavilion Sully that throw it out.

The Gambetta! This monument fascinates me, not by its beauty nor because I have any especial reverence for the statesman; but simply by the vigour of his clothes, the frock coat and the light overcoat of the flamboyant orator, holding forth for evermore (or until his hour strikes), urgent and impetuous and French. To the frock coat in sculpture we in London are no strangers, for have we not Parliament Square? but our frock coats are quiescent, dead even, things of stone. Gambetta's, on the contrary, is tempestuous—surely the most heroic frock coat that ever emerged from the quarries of Carrara. It might have been cut by the Great Mel himself.

I have never seen a computation of the stone and bronze population of Paris, but the statues must be thousands strong. A Pied Piper leading them out of the city would be worth seeing, although I for one would regret their loss. Paris, I suppose, was Paris no less than now in the days before Gambetta masqueraded as a Frock Coated Victory almost within hail of the Winged Victory of Samothrace; but Paris certainly would not be Paris any more were some new turn of the wheel to whisk him away and leave the Place du Carrousel forlorn and tepid. The loss even of the smug figure of Jules Simon, just outside Durand's, would be something like a bereavement. I once, by the way, saw this statue wearing, after a snowstorm, a white fur cap and cape that gave him a character—something almost Siberian—beyond anything dreamed of by the sculptor.

It is not until one has walked through the gardens of the Tuileries that the wealth of statuary in Paris begins to impress the mind. For there must be almost as many statues as flowers. They shine or glimmer everywhere, as in the Athenian groves—allegorical, symbolical, mythological, naked. The Luxembourg Gardens, as we shall see, are hardly less rich, but there one finds the statues of real persons. Here, as becomes a formal garden projected by a king, realism is excluded. Formal it is in the extreme; the trees are sternly pollarded, the beds are mathematically laid out, the paths are straight and not to be deviated from. None the less on a hot summer's day there are few more delightful spots, with the placid bonnes sitting so solidly, as only French women can sit, over their needlework, and their charges flitting like discreet butterflies all around them; and here are two old philosophers—another Bouvard and Pécuchet—discussing some problem of conduct or science, and there a family party lunching heartily, without shame. Pleasant groves, pleasant people!