A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

There is another and hardly less direct walk eastward to the Place de la République, which, taken slowly and amusedly, instructs one as fully in the manners of the busy small Parisian as the Boulevards in those of the flâneur. This route is by the Rue de Provence, the Rue Richer, the Rue des Petites-Ecuries and the Rue Château-d'Eau—practically a straight line, and in the old days a highway. You see the small Parisian at his busiest—at her busiest—this way.

CHAPTER XVII
MONTMARTRE

Steep Streets—The Musée Moreau—The Sacré-Cœur—Françoise-Marguerite—Paris and Her Beggars—A Ferocious Cripple—The Communard Insurrection—The Maison Dufayel—Heinrich Heine—The Cimetière de Montmartre—The Boulevard de Clichy—Cabarets Good and Bad—An Aged Statesman is Entertained—Three Bals—Paris and Late Hours—The Night Cafés—The Tireless Dancers—A Coat-tail—The Dead Maître d'Hôtel.

One may gain Montmartre by every street that runs off the Grands Boulevards on the left, between the Opéra and the Place de la République; but when the night falls and the tide begins to turn that way, it is the Rue Blanche and the Rue Pigalle that do most of the work. All are very steep. To the wayfarer climbing the hill in no hurry, I recommend for its interest the Rue des Martyrs (Balzac once lived at No. 47), leading out of the Rue Laffitte; or, starting from the Boulevards at a more easterly point, one may gain it by the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, which runs into the Rue des Martyrs at Notre Dame de Lorette and is full of activity and variety.

By taking the Rue de la Rochefoucauld one may spend a few minutes in a little white building there which was once the home and studio of the painter Gustave Moreau and is now left to the nation as a permanent memorial of his labours. In industry the man must have approached Rubens and Rembrandt, for this, though a large house, is literally filled with paintings and drawings and studies, which not only cover the walls but cover screens built into the walls, and screens within screens, and screens within those. The menuisier and Moreau together have contrived to make No. 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld the most tiring house in Paris—at least to me, who do not admire the work of this painter, or at any rate do not want to see more of it than is in the Luxembourg, where may be seen several of his pictures, including the most famous of all, the Salome. Herr Baedeker considers that Moreau's works have a charm of their own, but I do not find it. I find a striving after the grandiose and startling, with only occasional lapses into sincerity and good colour. It is better than Wiertz, no doubt; but less entertaining, because less shocking.

Montmartre's life may for our purpose be divided into three distinct periods: day, evening, and the small hours. By day one may roam its streets of living and of dead and study Paris from its summit; in the evening its cabarets are in full swing; and then comes midnight when its supper cafés open, not to close or cease their melodies until the shops are doing business again.

Montmartre (so called because it was here that St. Denis and his associates were put to death) really is a mountain, as any one who has climbed to the Sacré-Cœur can tell. The last two hundred yards are indeed nearly as steep as the Brecon Beacons; but the climb is worth it if only for the view of Paris. (There is, however, a funicular railway.) As for the cathedral, that seems to me to be better seen and appreciated from the distance: from the train as one enters Paris in the late afternoon, with the level sun lighting its pure walls; from the heights on the south side of the river; from the Boulevard des Italiens up the Rue Laffitte; and from the Buttes-Chaumont, as in Mr. Dexter's exquisite drawing. For the cathedral itself is not particularly attractive near at hand, and within it is cold and dull and still awaiting its glass. It was, however, one of the happiest thoughts that has come to Rome in our time to set this fascinating bizarre Oriental building here. It gave Paris a new note that it will now never lose.

Before leaving, one ought perhaps to have a peep at Françoise-Marguerite, for one is not likely to see her equal again. Françoise-Marguerite, otherwise known as La Savoyarde de Montmartre, is the great bell given to the cathedral by the province of Savoy. She weighs nineteen tons, is nine feet tall, and her voice has remarkable timbre.

Behind the new cathedral lies the old church of St. Pierre-de-Montmartre, on the side of which, it is said, once stood a temple of Mars. (Hence, for some lexicographers, Mont-Mars and Montmartre; but I prefer to think of St. Denis wandering here without his head.) It was in the crypt of this church, I have somewhere read, that Ignatius Loyola, with Xavier and Laine, founded the order of Jesuits.