The last alterations carried out in this part of the Palais de Justice have, alas! disturbed and changed everything; so that, of the registrar's office, occupied by Richard and de Bault, which ought to have remained sacred for ever, and of the unique exit from the Prison, where such heartrending adieux were witnessed, and of the antechamber of death, whose pavement was trodden by the condemned of all parties, nothing is left to-day!
Administrative vandals have turned it into the Palace restaurant; and cold meat, beer, and lemonade are sold in it. A telephone has been installed, and a "coffee filter"! Gaunt spindle-trees struggle in vain to thrive in the sombre, narrow courtyard illustrious for its past scenes of agony! As Paul-Louis Courier used to repeat: Immane nefas.
THE DAUPHINE SQUARE IN 1780
Drawing by Duché de Vancy (Exhibition of Painting, Carnavalet Museum)
At the rear of the Palais de Justice was formerly the delightful Dauphine Square, where the first "Public Exhibitions of Youth" were held, the exhibits being works of artists not belonging to the official Academies. The Carnavalet Museum possesses a most amusing pencil drawing, signed "Duché de Vancy," and dated May 1783, which bears this manuscript inscription: "Picturesque view of the Exhibition of paintings and drawings, on the Dauphine Square, the day of the lesser Corpus Christi feast." As a matter of fact, on the Sunday of the Corpus Christi, "when it did not rain," artists had the authorisation—in the morning—to submit their works to the public; if it did rain—and this was the case in 1783—the fête was adjourned to the following Thursday. The pictures were exposed in the northern corner of the Square, on white hangings fixed by the shopkeepers in front of their shops; and the Exhibition extended on to the bridge as far as opposite the good Henri's statue. Oudry, Restout, de Troy, Grimoud, Boucher, Nattier, Louis Tocqué, and, last of all, Chardin showed their works there. In an excellent study devoted to these Exhibitions of Youth, Monsieur Prosper Dorbec details the works that Chardin took to this ephemeral Salon of the Dauphine Square. In 1728, when he was twenty-nine, he presented there two masterpieces, The Ray-fish and The Side-board, which to-day are two of the glories of the French School at the Louvre Museum. Up to the time of the Revolution, this little artistic manifestation roused Parisian enthusiasm; and what a pretty sight must have been offered by the Dauphine Square, and the pink fronts of the two corner houses and the old Pont-Neuf—an exquisite, picturesque setting—with the throng of amateurs, saunterers, critics, fine ladies, artists, amiable models in light-coloured costume, full of mirth and busy talk, eagerly gazing, on a mild May morning, at the freshly-hung canvases of the Minor Exhibitors of the Dauphine Square.
