A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

The Luxembourg gardens lead to the Avenue de l'Observatoire, a broad and verdant pleasaunce with a noble fountain at the head, in the midst of which an armillary sphere is held up by four undraped female figures representing the four quarters of the globe, at whom a circle of tortoises spout water from the surface of the basin. Beneath the upholders of the sphere are eight spirited sea horses by Frémiet, the sculptor who designed "Pan and the Bear Cubs" in the Luxembourg.

A few yards to the west of this fountain is one of the simplest and most satisfying of Parisian sculptured memorials, at the corner of the Rue d'Assas and the Boulevard de l'Observatoire—the bas-relief on the Tarnier maternity hospital, representing the benevolent Tarnier in his merciful work.

Let us now descend the Boulevard St. Michel to the Sorbonne, which is the heart of the Latin Quarter (or perhaps the brain would be the better word), disregarding for the moment the Panthéon, and turning our backs on the Observatoire and the Lion de Belfort, in the streets around which, every September, the noisiest of the Parisian fairs rages, and on the Bal Bullier, where the shop assistants of this neighbourhood grasp each other in the dance every Thursday and Sunday night. Not that this high southern district of Paris is not interesting; but it is far less interesting than certain parts nearer the Seine, and this book may not be too long.

The Sorbonne is not exciting, but it is not unamusing to watch young France gaining knowledge. I have called it the heart of the Latin Quarter, although when one thinks of the necessitous, irresponsible youthful populace of these slopes, it is rather in a studio than in a lecture centre that one would fix its cardiac energy. That, however, is the fault of Du Maurier and Murger; for I suppose that for every artist that the Latin Quarter fosters it has scores of other students. But here I am in unknown territory. This book, which describes (as I warned you) Paris wholly from without, is never so external as among the young bloods who are to be met at night in the Café Harcourt, or who dance at the annual ball of the Quatz'-Arts, or plunge themselves into congenial riots when unpopular professors mount the platform. I know them not; I merely rejoice in their existence, admire their long hair and high spirits and happy indigence, and wish I could join them among Jullien's models, or in the disreputable cabaret of Le Père Lunette, or at a solemn disputation, such as that famous one in which the sophist Buridan, after being thrown into the Seine in a sack and rescued, "maintained for a whole day the thesis that it was lawful to slay a Queen of France".

The Sorbonne takes its name from Robert de Sorbon, the confessor of St. Louis, who had suffered much as a theological student and wished others to suffer less; for students in his day existed absolutely on charity. St. Louis threw himself into his confessor's scheme, and the Sorbonne, richly endowed, was opened in 1253, in its original form occupying a site in a street with the depressing name of Coupe-Gueule. From a hostel it soon became the Church's intellect, and for five and a half centuries it thus existed, almost continually, I regret to say, pursuing what Gibbon calls "the exquisite rancour of theological hatred". Its hostility to Joan of Arc and the Reformation were alike intense. Richelieu built the second Sorbonne, on the site of the present one. The Revolution in its short sharp way put an end to it as a defender of the faith, and in 1808, under Napoleon, it sprang to life again with a broader and humaner programme as the Université de France.

THE FONTAINE DE MÉDICIS
(GARDEN OF THE LUXEMBOURG)

Although arriving on the wrong day (a very easy thing to do in Paris) I induced the concierge to show me Puvis de Chavannes' vast and beautiful fresco in the Sorbonne's amphitheatre, entitled "La Source"—which is, I take it, the spring of wisdom. Thursday is the right day. In the chapel is the tomb of Richelieu, a florid monument with the dying cardinal and some very ostentatious grief upon it. Near by stands an elderly gentleman who charges twice as much for postcards as the dealers outside; but one must not mind that. The church is not impressive, nor has a recent meretricious work by Weerts, representing the Love of Humanity and the Love of Country—the crucified Christ and a dead soldier—done it much good. Before it is a monument to Auguste Comte.

And now let us descend the hill and cheer and enrich our eyes in one of the most remarkable museums in the world—the Cluny. Paris is too fortunate. To have the Louvre were enough for any city, but Paris also has the Carnavalet. To have the Carnavalet were enough, but Paris also has the Cluny. The Musée de Cluny is devoted chiefly to applied art, and is a treasury of mediæval taste. It is an ancient building, standing on the site of a Roman palace, the ruins of whose baths still remain. The present mansion was built by a Benedictine abbot in the fifteenth century: it became a storehouse of beautiful and rare objects in 1833, when the collector Alphonse du Sommerard bought it; and on his death the nation acquired both the house and its treasures, which have been steadily increasing ever since. Without, the Cluny is a romantic blend of late Gothic and Renaissance architecture: within, it is like the heaven of a good arts-and-craftsman; or, to put it another way, like an old curiosity shop carried out to the highest power. I do not say that we have not as good collections at South Kensington; but it is beyond doubt that the Cluny has a more attractive setting for them.