A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

We may leave les Halles (pronounced lay al, and not, as one would think, lays all: one of the pitfalls for the English in Paris) by the Rue Berger, and enter the Square des Innocents to look at its decorative fountain. The next street below the Rue des Innocents is the Rue de la Ferronnerie, where, on May 14th, 1610, Henri IV. was assassinated by Ravaillac before the door of No. 3. And so by the Rue St. Denis, which one is always glad to enter again, and the Rue de Rivoli, we come to Saint-Jacques, that grey aged isolated tower which we have seen so often from the heights and in the distance. It is a beautiful Gothic building, at the summit of which is the figure of St. James with his emblems, the originals of which are at the Cluny. The tower belonged to the church of St. Jacques-la-Boucherie, but that being in the way when Napoleon planned the Rue de Rivoli, it had to go.

The tower has not lately been open to the climbers, and I have never seen Paris from St. James's side, but I hope to. Blaise Pascal experimented here in the density of air; hence the presence of his statue below. It was also to Pascal, of whom we now think only as an ironist and wistful theologian, that Paris owes her omnibuses, for it was he that devised the first, which began to run on March 18th, 1662, from the Luxembourg to the Bastille. Pascal owed his conversion to his escape from a carriage accident on the Pont Neuf. His grave we saw at St. Etienne-du-Mont.

In crossing the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville one must not forget that this was once the terrible Place de Grève, the site of public executions for five centuries. Here we meet Catherine de Médicis again, for it was by her order that after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew the Huguenots Briquemont and Cavagnes were hanged here, and here also was executed Captain Montgomery, whom we are to meet in the next chapter. The foster-sister of Marie de Médicis was burned alive in the Place de Grève as a sorcerer; and Ravaillac, after assassinating Henri IV., here met his end. Among later victims was the famous Cartouche, of whom Thackeray wrote so entertainingly.

The Hôtel de Ville is not a building that I for one should choose to revisit, nor do I indeed advise others to bother about it at all; but externally at any rate it is fine, with its golden sentinels on high. Its chief merit is bulk; but there is a certain interest in observing a Republican palace of our own time, if only to see how near it can come to the real thing. A saturnine guide displays a series of spacious apartments, the principal attraction of which is their mural painting. All the best French Royal Academicians (so to speak) of twenty years ago had a finger in this pie, and their fantasies sprawl over ceilings and walls. With the exception of one room, the history of Paris is practically ignored, allegory being the master vogue. Poetry, Song, Inspiration, Fame, Ambition, Despair—all these undraped ladies may be seen, and many others. Also Electricity and Steam, Science and Art, distinguishable from their sisters only by the happy chance that although they forgot their clothes they did not forget their symbols.

LE BAISER
RODIN
(Luxembourg)

One beautiful thing only did I see, and that was a large design, perhaps the largest there, of Winter, by Puvis de Chavannes. But to say that I saw it is an exaggeration: rather, I was conscious of it. For the architect of the salon in which Puvis was permitted to work forgot to light it.

In the historical room there are crowded scenes by Laurens of the past of Paris—the hero of which is Etienne Marcel, whose equestrian statue may be seen from the windows, under the river façade of the building. Etienne Marcel, Merchant Provost, controlled Paris after the disastrous battle of Poictiers, where the King and the Dauphin were both taken prisoners. Power, however, made him headstrong, and he was killed by an assassin.

It is from the Hôtel de Ville that the city of Paris is administered, with the assistance of the Préfecture de Police on the island opposite. The Hôtel de Ville contains, so to speak, the Paris County Council, and I have been told that no building is so absurdly over-staffed. That may or may not be true. The high officials do not at any rate allow business to exclude the finer graces of life, for in the great hall in which I waited for the cicerone were long tables on which were some twenty or thirty baskets containing visiting cards, and open books containing signatures, and before each basket was a card bearing the name of an important functionary of the Hôtel de Ville—such as the Préfet de la Seine, and the Sous-Préfet, and their principal secretaries, and so forth. Every minute or so some one came in, found the basket to which he wished to contribute, and dropped a card in it. I wondered to what extent the social machinery of Paris bureaucracy would be disorganised if I were to change a few baskets, but I did not embark upon an experiment the results of which I should have had no means of contemplating and enjoying.