A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

MADAME LE BRUN ET SA FILLE
MADAME LE BRUN
(Louvre)

At the Rue Drouot, at the conjunction of the Boulevards des Italiens and de Montmartre, there is an angle. Hitherto we have been walking west by north; we now shall walk west by south. From this point we shall also observe a difference in the character of the street, which will become steadily more bourgeois. At this corner, where the traffic is always so congested, owing largely to the omnibuses with the three white horses abreast that cross to and from the Rue Richelieu, all the best cafés are behind us.

If that £32,000,000 reconstruction scheme of which I have already spoken comes to pass, this point will be unrecognisable, for among the items in that programme is the uniting of the Boulevard Haussmann, which now comes to an abrupt end at the Rue Taitbout, with the Boulevard de Montmartre, which, as a glance at the map will show, is in a line with it. But my hope is that the improvement will be long deferred.

It is in the Rue Richelieu that the Bibliothèque Nationale stands, where the foreign resident in Paris may read every day, precisely as at the British Museum, provided always that he is certified by his Consul to be worthy of a ticket, and the visitor may on certain days examine priceless books and autographs, prints and maps and cameos and wonderful antiquities. Here once lived Cardinal Mazarin, and it is in the galerie that bears his name that the rarest bindings are to be seen—some from Grolier's own shelves. Among the MSS. is that of Pascal's Pensées. The library, which is now perhaps the finest in existence, has been built up steadily by the kings of France, even from Charlemagne, but Louis XII. was the first of them who may really be called a bibliophile, to be worthily followed by François I. It was not until 1724, in the reign of Louis XV., that the royal collection was removed to this building. The Revolution greatly added to its wealth by transferring hither the libraries of the destroyed convents and monasteries. The treasures in the Cabinet de Médailles I cannot describe; all I can say is that they ought not to be missed. They may be called an extension of the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre.

Before leaving the Bibliothèque I should add that in certain of its rooms, with an entrance in the Rue Vivienne, exhibitions are periodically held, and it is worth while to ascertain if one is in progress. In the spring of 1908 I saw there a most satisfying display of Rembrandt's etchings.

It was in one of the old book-shops in the neighbourhood of the Bibliothèque that I received my first impression of the Paris Bourse. I was turning over little pocket editions of Voltaire's Pucelle and naughty Crébillons and such ancient boudoir fare, when I began to be conscious of a sound as of a thousand boys' schools in deadly rivalry. On hurrying out to learn the cause I found Paris in its usual condition of self-containment and intent progress; no one showed any sign of inquisitiveness or excitement; but on the steps of the Bourse I observed a shouting, gesticulating mob of men who must, I thought, be planning a new Reign of Terror. But no; they were merely financiers engaged in the ordinary work of life. The Bourse is free, and I climbed the steps, pushed through the money-makers, and entered. Never again. I have seen men engaged in the unlovely task of acquiring lucre by more or less improper means in various countries, but I never saw anything so horrible as the rapacity expressed upon the faces of this heated Bourse populace.

Capel Court is not indifferent to the advantages of a successful coup, but Capel Court differs from the Bourse not only in a comparative retention of its head, but also in a certain superficial appearance of careless aristocracy. Capel Court dresses well and keeps time for a practical joke now and then. The Bourse is shabby and in the grip of avarice. Wall Street and the Chicago pit, I am told, are worse: I have not seen them; but no race-course scramble for odds could exceed the horrors of that day in the Bourse. The home, by the way, of this daily vociferous service of Mammon, was built on the site of the old convent of the Filles de St. Thomas. During the Revolution the connection between the Bourse and Heaven was even closer, for the church of the Petits Pères was then set apart for Exchange purposes.

Returning to the point where we left the Boulevard—at the Rue Richelieu—I am moved to ask what would happen in London if Messrs. Baker in the Tottenham Court Road or Messrs. Gardiner in Knightsbridge were suddenly to break out into caricature and embellish their windows with scarifying cartoons of Kings, Kaisers, Presidents and Premiers? The question may sound odd, but it is simple enough if you visit the High Life tailor at the corner of the Rue Richelieu, or, farther east, a similar establishment at the corner of the Rue de Rougemont, for it then becomes obvious that it is quite part of the duties of the large Parisian clothier to do his part in forming public opinion. These cartoons are always bold and clever, although often too municipal for the foreigner's apprehension.

I have said somewhere that one of my favourite streets in Paris is the Rue Montorgeuil. That is largely, as I have explained, because it is old and narrow, and the people swarm in it, and the stalls are so many, and the houses are high and white and take the sun so bravely, and it smells of Paris; and also, of course, because the Compas d'Or is here, bringing the middle ages so nigh. Another favourite is the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre (which is now the next on the left eastward) for its busy happy shops and its moving multitudes. In its own narrow way it is almost as crowded as the Grands Boulevards.

A little way up this street, on the right, is a gateway leading into a very curious backwater, as noticeably quiet as the highways are noisy and restless: the Cité Bergère, the largest of those cités within a cité of which Paris has several, to be compared in London only with St. Helen's Place in Bishopsgate or Park Row at Knightsbridge. The Cité Bergère is practically nothing but hotels—high and narrow, with dirty white walls and dirty green shutters—very cheap, and very incurious as to the occupations of their guests, whether male or female. It has a gate at each end which is closed at night and penetrated thereafter only at the goodwill of the concierge, whom it is well to placate. The Cité Bergère leads into the Cité Rougemont (hence offering an opportunity to an innkeeper between the two to hang out the imposing sign of the Hôtel des Deux Cités), and from the Cité Rougemont you gain that district of Paris where the woollen merchants congregate.