LA BOHÉMIENNE
FRANZ HALS
(Louvre)
At the Cluny we saw the Thermes, a visible sign of Roman occupation; just off the Rue Monge is another, the amphitheatre, still in very good condition, with the grass growing between the crevices of the great stone seats. You will find it in the Place des Arènes, a vestige of Roman manners and pleasures now converted into an open space for children and bonnes and surrounded by flats. But save for the desertion that the ages have brought it, the arena is not so very different, and standing there, one may easily reconstruct the spectators and see again the wild beasts emerging from the underground passages, which still remain.
And now for the Panthéon, which rises above us.
CHAPTER XII
THE PANTHÉON AND ST. GENEVIÈVE
A Church's Vicissitudes—St. Geneviève—A Guardian of Paris—Illustrious Converts—The Golden Legend—A Sabbath-breaker—Geneviève's Sacred Body—Her Tomb—The Panthéon Frescoes—Joan of Arc—The Panthéon Tombs—Mirabeau and Marat—Voltaire's Funeral—The Thoughts of the Thinker—From the Dome—St. Etienne-du-Mont—The Fate of St. Geneviève—The Relic-hunters—The Mystery of the Wine-press.
The Panthéon, like the Madeleine, has had its vicissitudes. The new Madeleine, as we shall see, was begun by Napoleon as a splendid Temple of military glory and became a church; the new Panthéon was begun by Louis XV. as a splendid cathedral and became a Temple of Glory, not, however, military but civil. Louis XV., when he designed its erection on the site of the old church, intended it to be the church of St. Geneviève, whose tomb was its proudest possession; when the Revolution altered all that, it was made secular and dedicated "aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante," and the first grand homme to be buried there was Mirabeau (destined, however, not to remain a grand homme very long, as we shall see), and the next Voltaire. In 1806 Napoleon made it a church again; in 1830 the Revolutionaries again secularised it; in 1851 it was consecrated again, and in 1885 once more it became secular, to receive the body of Victor Hugo, and secular it has remained; and considering everything, secular it is likely to be, for whatever of change and surprise the future holds for France, an excess of ecclesiastical ecstasy is hardly probable.
So much of Louis XV.'s idea remains, in spite of the perversion of his purpose, that scenes from the life of St. Geneviève are painted on the Panthéon's walls and sculptured on its façade; while in its last sacred days the church was known again as St. Geneviève's. Possibly there are old people in the neighbourhood who still call it that. I hope so.