FÊTE GIVEN AT THE LUXEMBOURG ON THE 20TH OF FRIMAIRE, ANNO VII.
Bonaparte hands to the Directory the treaty of Campo-Formio
Opposite the Luxembourg, is the Rue de Tournon, where Théroigne de Méricourt and Mademoiselle Lenormand lived; the Countess d'Houdetot dwelt at No. 12, the appearance of which has hardly changed since. If he were to come back and wander about these parts, Jean-Jacques Rousseau would again find almost intact the home of her he chiefly loved, quite near to the Rue Servandoni, a dark, damp lane lurking beneath the walls of Saint-Sulpice, where Condorcet, during the Terror, succeeded in safely hiding himself at the house of Madame Vernet, No. 15. There he terminated—under what sorry conditions!—his Tableau of the Progress of the Human Mind. His wife was living at Auteuil and there painted pastels. No industry prospered under the Terror. "Every one," says Michelet, "was in a hurry to fix on the canvas a shadow of this uncertain life." On the 6th of April, his work being finished, Condorcet dressed himself as a workman, with long beard and cap down over his eyes, a "Horace" in his hand, and in his pocket some poison, for a case of need, prepared him by Cabanis; and escaped from Madame Vernet's. All day, he roamed about the country, in the vicinity of Fontenay-aux-Roses, hoping to find with some friends, Monsieur and Madame Suard, a shelter that they refused him. He spent the night in the woods; then, on the morrow, haggard and starved, he entered a Clamart public-house. There, he made a ravenous meal, while reading his dear Horace. Being questioned and suspected, he was carried off to the district, put on an old horse and thus conducted to the prison at Bourg-la-Reine. At dawn, the gaolers, on going into his cell, stumbled over his corpse. Poison had made an end of this noble life of work, glory, and misery.
Aloft in the same quiet quarter, Saint-Sulpice rears its two unequal towers, on which Chappe planted the great arms of his aërial telegraph. It was in the fine vestry of this imposing church, which has preserved its admirable wood-carvings, that Camille Desmoulins signed the marriage register, when, on the 29th of December 1790, he married his adored Lucile Duplessis. The marriage was a veritable romance; and all Paris crowded to the gates of Saint-Sulpice to see the procession go by. The bride and bridegroom were congratulated; and cheers were given for the witnesses, whose names had already become popular; Sillery, Pétion, Mercier, and Robespierre. Then, the wedding party ascended the Rue de Condé to go and breakfast at Camille's home, No. 1 Rue du Théâtre François (to-day, No. 38 Rue de l'Odéon), on the third floor. There, on the 20th of March 1794, the day of his mother's death, he was arrested, bound like a malefactor, and thence was taken to the Luxembourg hard by. On the 5th of April, Camille was executed amid the shouts of the people who had so flattered him. Lucile followed him to the scaffold a week later! They had sworn to love each other in life and death.... The idyll finished in blood.
Round about Saint-Sulpice, one comes across the Rue Férou, the Rue Cassette, the Rue Garancière, the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, the Rue Madame, with their ancient names and provincial aspect, devout and silent quarters of monastic and semi-mysterious life, and, for this reason, full of infinite charm.
There, on all sides, are heard convent bells and liturgic sounds. The few shops that exist are austere in air and devoted to religious purposes: chasuble makers', holy image dealers', church book and jewellery sellers'. Behind long, sombre walls, shoots of verdure, the plumes of a tree joyously bursting forth remind one of large, unkempt gardens, where all grows wild, full of flowers and birds, inhabited by pious persons and old people who pray as they walk and regretfully dream of the times that are no more.
In the huge Paris, noisy and flippant, mad with sound and movement, tramways and underground railways, it is the refuge of the past, the quarter for prayer, silence, and oblivion; there still seem to live "a few dolent voices of yearnings for the past, which ring the curfew," says Chateaubriand in his Memoirs from beyond the Grave.
Old mansions are numerous.
In the Rue de Varenne alone, each portal awakes a remembrance of the most illustrious names of France's nobility: Broglie, Bourbon, Condé, Villeroy, Castries, Rohan-Chabot, Tessé, Béthune-Sully, Montmorency, Rougé, Ségur, Aubeterre, Narbonne-Pelet, &c., and some of the hosts of these aristocratic dwellings were certainly found disguised, dressed up as horse-dealers, drovers, peasants, workmen, in the Golden Cup hostelry at the corner of the Rue de Varenne, which was celebrated in the history of the Chouannerie: the heroes of Tournebut, my dear friend Lenôtre's interesting work, put up there, says the author, who, himself filled with enthusiasm, knows how to inspire his reader with the same. It was one of the meeting-places used by the sworn companions of George Cadoudal, who hid there several times; and there, too, the royalist conspirators met to complete, for Vendémiaire, Anno IV., their arrangements relative to the abduction of the Convention.