A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

From Temple to Church—Napoleon the Christian—The Chapelle Expiatoire—More Irony of History—Mi-Carême—The Art of Insolence—Spacious Streets—The Champions of France—Marius—Letter-boxes and Stamps—The Facteur at the Bed—Killing a Guide no Murder—The Largest Theatre in the World—A Theatrical Museum.

The Madeleine has had a curious history. The great Napoleon built it, on the site of a small eighteenth-century church, as a Temple of Glory, a gift to his soldiers, where every year on the anniversaries of Austerlitz and Jena a concert was to be held, odes read, and orations delivered on the duties and privileges of the warrior, any mention of the Emperor's own name being expressly forbidden. That was in 1806. The building was still in progress when 1815 came, with another and more momentous battle in it, and Napoleon and his proposal disappeared. The building of the Temple of Glory was continued as a church, and a church it still is; and the memory of Jena and Austerlitz is kept alive in Paris by other means (they have, for example, each a bridge), no official orations are delivered on the soldier's calling, no official odes recited. It was a noble idea of the Emperor's, and however perfunctorily carried out, could not have left one with a less satisfied feeling than some of the present ceremonials in the Madeleine, which has become the most fashionable Paris church. Napoleon, however, is not wholly forgotten, for in the apse, I understand, is a fresco representing Christ reviewing the chief champions of Christianity and felicitating with them upon their services, the great Emperor being by no means absent. Herr Baedeker says that the fresco is there, but I have not succeeded in seeing it, for the church is lit only by three small cupolas and is dark with religious dusk.

Within, the Madeleine is a surprise, for it does not conform to its fine outward design. One expects a classic severity and simplicity, and instead it is paint and Italianate curves. The wisest course for the visitor is to avoid the steps and the importunate mendicants at the railings, and slip in by the little portal on the west side where the discreet closed carriages wait.

Louis XVIII., with his passion—a very natural one—to obliterate Napoleon and the revolutionaries and resume monarchical continuity, wished to complete the Madeleine as a monument to Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette; but he did not persevere with the idea. He built instead, on the site of the old cemetery of the Madeleine, where Louis XVI. and the Queen had been buried, the Chapelle Expiatoire. It is their memory only which is preserved here, for, after Waterloo, their bones were carried to St. Denis, where the other French kings lie. Their statues, however, are enshrined in the building (which is just off the Boulevard Haussmann, isolated solemnly and impressively among chestnut trees and playing children), the king being solaced by an angel who remarks to him in the words used by Father Edgeworth on the scaffold, "Fils de St. Louis, montez au ciel!" and the queen by religion, personified by her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth. The door-keeper, who conducted me as guide, was in raptures over Louis XVI.'s lace and the circumstance that he was hewn from a single block of marble. I liked his enthusiasm: these unfortunate monarchs deserve the utmost that sculptor and door-keeper can give them.

Paris has changed its mind more completely and frequently than any city in the world—and no illustration of that foible is better than this before us. Consider the sequence: first the king; then the prisoner; then the execution—the body and head being carried to the nearest cemetery, the Madeleine, where the guillotine's victims were naturally flung, and carelessly buried. Ten months later the queen's body and head follow. (It is said that the records of the Madeleine contain an entry by a sexton, which runs in English, "Paid seven francs for a coffin for the Widow Capet".) That was in 1793. Not until 1815 do they find sepulture befitting them, and then this chapel rises in their honour and they become saints.

LA DENTELLIÈRE
JAN VERMEER OF DELFT
(Louvre)

Among other bodies buried here was that of Charlotte Corday. Also the Swiss Guards, whom we saw meeting death at the Tuileries. A strange place, and to-day, in a Paris that cares nothing for Capets, a perfect example of what might paradoxically be called well-kept neglect.

To me the Madeleine has always a spurious air: nothing in it seems quite true. Externally, its Roman proportions carry no hint of the Christian religion; within, there is a noticeable lack of reverence. Every one walks about, and the Suisses are of the world peculiarly and offensively worldly. Standing before the altar with its representation of the Magdalen, who gives the church its name, being carried to Heaven, it is difficult to realise that only thirty-eight years ago this very spot was running red with the blood of massacred Communards.