A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

The high road from the centre of Paris to the Latin Quarter is across the Pont du Carrousel and up the narrow Rue Mazarine, which skirts the Institut. We have seen on the Quai des Célestins the site of one of Molière's theatres: here, at Nos. 12-14, is the house in which he established his first theatre, on the last day of 1643. The Rue Mazarin runs into the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie Française, at No. 14 in which was that theatre, whose successor stands at the foot of the Rue Richelieu. Parallel with the Rue Mazarin is the Rue de Seine, interesting for its old print shops, not the least interesting department of which is the portfolios containing students' sketches, some of them very good. (I might equally have said some of them very bad.)

Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain we climb what is now the Rue de l'Odéon to the Place and theatre of that name, with the statue of Augier the dramatist before it. The Place de l'Odéon demands some attention, for at No. 1, now the Café Voltaire, was once the famous Café Procope, very significant in the eighteenth century, the resort of Voltaire and the Encyclopædists, and later of the Revolutionaries. Camille Desmoulins indeed made it his home. You may see within portraits of these old famous habitués. Procopio, a Sicilian who founded his establishment for the shelter of poor actors and students (whom Paris then loathed in private life), was the father of all the Paris cafés.

The Café Procope was to men of intellect what some few years later Tortoni's was to men of fashion. The Café Tortoni was in the Boulevard des Italiens. Let Captain Gronow tell its history: "About the commencement of the present [nineteenth] century, Tortoni's, the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, was opened by a Neapolitan, who came to Paris to supply the Parisians with good ice. The founder of this celebrated café was by name Veloni, an Italian, whose father lived with Napoleon from the period he invaded Italy, when First Consul, down to his fall. Young Veloni brought with him his friend Tortoni, an industrious and intelligent man. Veloni died of an affection of the lungs, shortly after the café was opened, and left the business to Tortoni; who, by dint of care, economy, and perseverance, made his café renowned all over Europe. Towards the end of the first Empire, and during the return of the Bourbons, and Louis Philippe's reign, this establishment was so much in vogue that it was difficult to get an ice there; after the opera and theatres were over, the Boulevards were literally choked up by the carriages of the great people of the court and the Faubourg St. Germain bringing guests to Tortoni's.

"In those days clubs did not exist in Paris, consequently the gay world met there. The Duchess of Berri, with her suite, came nearly every night incognito; the most beautiful women Paris could boast of, old maids, dowagers, and old and young men, pouring out their sentimental twaddle, and holding up to scorn their betters, congregated here. In fact, Tortoni's became a sort of club for fashionable people; the saloons were completely monopolised by them, and became the rendez-vous of all that was gay, and I regret to add, immoral.

"Gunter, the eldest son of the founder of the house in Berkeley Square, arrived in Paris about this period, to learn the art of making ice; for prior to the peace, our London ices and creams were acknowledged, by the English as well as foreigners, to be detestable. In the early part of the day, Tortoni's became the rendez-vous of duellists and retired officers, who congregated in great numbers to breakfast; which consisted of cold pâtés, game, fowl, fish, eggs, broiled kidneys, iced champagne, and liqueurs from every part of the globe.

"Though Tortoni succeeded in amassing a large fortune, he suddenly became morose, and showed evident signs of insanity: in fact, he was the most unhappy man on earth. On going to bed one night, he said to the lady who superintended the management of his café, 'It is time for me to have done with the world'. The lady thought lightly of what he said, but upon quitting her apartment on the following morning, she was told by one of the waiters that Tortoni had hanged himself."

Some one should write a book—but perhaps it has been done—on the great restaurateurs. Paris would, of course, provide the lion's share; but there would be plenty of material to collect in other capitals. The life of our own Nicol of the Café Royal, for example, would not be without interest; and what of Sherry and Delmonico?

While on the subject of meeting-places of remarkable persons, I might say that a latter-day resort of intellectuals who have allowed the world and its temptations to be too much for them is not so very far away from us at this point—the cabaret of Le Père Lunette at No. 4 Rue des Anglais. I do not say that this is a modern Procope, but it has some of the same characteristics: men of genius have met here and illustrious portraits are on the wall; but they are not frescoes such as could be included in this book, for old Father Spectacles puts satire before propriety.

In the colonnade round the Odéon theatre are bookstalls, chiefly offering new books at very low rates. We emerge on the south side in the Rue Vaugiraud, with the Médicis fountain of the Luxembourg just across the road. The Luxembourg Palace was built by Marie de Médicis, the widow of Henri IV., and it fulfilled the functions of a palace until the Revolution, when, prisons being more important than palaces, it became a prison. Among those conveyed hither were the Vicomte de Beauharnais and his wife Joséphine, who was destined one day to be anything but a prisoner. After the Revolution the Luxembourg became the Palace of the Directoire and then the Palace of the First Consul. In 1800 Napoleon moved to the Tuileries, and a little while afterwards he established the Senate here, and here it is still. I cannot describe the Palace, for I have never been in it, but the Musée I know well.

The Luxembourg galleries are dedicated to modern art. They have nothing earlier than the nineteenth century, and may be said to carry on the history of French painting from the point where it is left in Room VIII. at the Louvre, while little is quite so modern as the permanent portion of the Petit Palais. One plunges from the street directly into a hall of very white sculpture, which for the moment affects the sight almost like the beating wings of gulls. The difference between French and English sculpture, which is largely the difference between nakedness and nudity, literally assaults the eye for the moment; and then the more beautiful work quietly begins to assert itself—Rodin's "Pensée," on the left, holding the attention first and gently soothing the bewildered vision. Rodin indeed dominates this room, for here are not only his "Pensée" (the "Penseur" is not so very far away, two hundred yards or so, at the Panthéon), but his "John the Baptist," gaunt and urgent in the wilderness (with Dubois' "John the Baptist as a boy" near by, to show from what material prophets are evolved) and the exquisite "Danaïdes" and the "Age d'Airain," and the giant heads of Hugo and Rochefort, and the little delicate sensitive Don Quixotic head of Dalou the sculptor, which has just been added, and the George Wyndham and the G.B.S. and other recent portraits; while through the doorway to the next room one sees the "Baiser," immense and passionate. I reproduce both the "Baiser," [opposite page 294], and the "Pensée," [opposite page 46].