A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

THE COURTYARD OF THE COMPAS D'OR, RUE MONTORGEUIL

This book is not a guide for the gastronome and gourmet. How indeed could it be, even although when heaven sends a cheerful hour one would scorn to refrain? Yet none the less it would be pleasant in this commentary upon a city illustrious for its culinary ingenuity and genius to say something of restaurants. But what is one to say here on such a theme? Volumes are needed. Every one has his own taste. For me Voisin's remains, and will, I imagine, remain the most distinguished, the most serene, restaurant in Paris, in its retired situation at the corner of the Rue Saint-Honoré and the Rue Cambon, with its simple decoration, its unhastening order and despatch, its Napoleonic head-waiter, its Bacchic wine-waiter (with a head that calls for vine leaves) and its fastidious cuisine. To Voisin's I should always make my way when I wished not only to be delicately nourished but to be quiet and philosophic and retired. Only one other restaurant do I know where the cooking gives me the satisfaction of Voisin's—where excessive richness never intrudes—and that is a discovery of my own and not lightly to be given away. Voisin's is a name known all over the world: one can say nothing new about Voisin's; but the little restaurant with which I propose to tantalise you, although the resort of some of the most thoughtful eaters in Paris, has a reputation that has not spread. It is not cheap, it is little less dear indeed than the Café Anglais or Paillard's, to name the two restaurants of renown which are nearest to it; its cellar is poor and limited to half a dozen wines; its two rooms are minute and hot; but the idea of gastronomy reigns—everything is subordinated to the food and the cooking. If you order a trout, it is the best trout that France can breed, and it is swimming in the kitchen at the time the solitary waiter repeats your command; no such asparagus reaches any other Paris restaurant, no such Pré Salé and no such wild strawberries. But I have said enough; almost I fear I have said too much. These discoveries must be kept sacred.

And for lunch to-day? Shall it be chez Voisin, or chez Foyot, by the Sénat, or chez Lapérouse (where the two Stevensons used to eat and talk) on the Quai des Augustins? Or shall it be at my nameless restaurant?

Voisin's to-day, I think.

CHAPTER II
THE ILE DE LA CITÉ

Paris Old and New—The Heart of France—Saint Louis—Old Palaces—Henri IV.'s Statue—Ironical Changes—The Seine and the Thames—The Quais and their Old Books—Diderot and the Lady—Police and Red Tape—The Conciergerie—Marie Antoinette—Paris and its Clocks—Méryon's Etchings—French Advocates—A Hall of Babel—Sainte Chapelle—French Newspapers Serious and Comic—The Only Joke—The English and the French.

Where to begin? That is a problem in the writing of every book, but peculiarly so with Paris; because, however one may try to be chronological, the city is such a blend of old and new that that design is frustrated at every turn. Nearly every building of importance stands on the site of some other which instantly jerks us back hundreds of years, while if we deal first with the original structure, such as the remains of the Roman Thermes at the Cluny, built about 300, straightway the Cluny itself intrudes, and we leap from the third century to the nineteenth; or if we trace the line of the wall of Philip Augustus we come swiftly to so modern an institution as the Mont-de-Piété; or if we climb to such a recent thoroughfare as the Boulevard de Clichy, with its palpitatingly novel cabarets and allurements, we must in order to do so ascend a mountain which takes its name from the martyrdom of St. Denis and his companions in the third century. It is therefore well, since Paris is such a tangle of past and present, to disregard order altogether and to let these pages reflect her character. Expect then, dear reader, to be twitched about the ages without mercy.

Let us begin in earnest by leaving the mainland and adventuring upon an island. For the heart of Paris is enisled: Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, the Palais de Justice, the Hôtel Dieu, the Préfecture de Police, the Morgue—all are entirely surrounded by water. The history of the Cité is the history of Paris, almost the history of France.