Nooks & Corners of Old Paris

by Georges Cain

The Beaumarchais Boulevard has an atmosphere of middle-class tranquillity about it. Nothing has survived of the fine mansion, surmounted with a feather-shaped weather-cock and flag, which was built there by the author of the Mariage de Figaro, nor yet of the famous gardens, once the wonder of Paris, which could only be visited with a special card signed by Beaumarchais himself and given but to few. Yet some one of our own generation has known them, and penetrated into what for a while remained of the gorgeous abode; and that some one is Victorien Sardou. Did he have a presentiment that, in talent and wit, he would one day be the successor of the Beaumarchais whose property he thus intruded on? Anyway, in 1839, Victorien Sardou, aged seven, was living with his parents in the Place de la Bastille. With his little companions he used to play at ball or with hoop round the elephant and the canal banks. At the entrance to the Beaumarchais Boulevard of to-day some long, worm-eaten palisades bordered a piece of waste ground. On the palisades were hung halfpenny pictures of actors, actresses, and soldiers; and no one was fonder of looking at them than the little Sardou.

One day, while enjoying his open-air picture-gallery, he caught a glimpse of a huge garden through the interstice between two of the palings. "What was this garden?" "Suppose he entered!" So he and another urchin of his own age wrenched away a paling with the sticks of their hoops, and in a delight of terror slipped into the unknown domain. What an amazement! They found themselves in a Sleeping Beauty's realm. Weeds, lianes, branches, trees had grown over everything. It was a flora and fauna of the virgin forests; rabbits, birds and butterflies were its denizens; and Robinson Crusoe was not more surprised in exploring his island than these two youngsters in wandering about this jungle.

Sardou vaguely remembers there being a ruined pavilion and some tumble-down old walls; what he recollects better are the banks, ditches, and slopes where he and his companion had such delightful escapades; and nothing is more interesting than to hear this witty and charming talker relate his stories of the bygone Paris which he regrets so much and remembers so well.

The old dwellings have disappeared. A single one still exists at the corner of the Rue Saint-Claude, No. 1. It is the celebrated abode in which the talented charlatan, Cagliostro, installed his furnaces, his crucibles, his alembics, his transformation machines, all the weird utensils that served for his magic sittings.

The house has not been much altered. It remains, as always, strange, enigmatical, mysterious, with its staircases constructed in the body of the walls, its secret corridors, its mechanical ceilings, its cellars of many exits. The greatest lords, the noblest dames frequented this abode. Cardinal de Rohan was a familiar guest. The report ran that gold was made there, and that Cagliostro, the great Copht, had discovered the secret of the philosopher's stone! He offered, continued the legend, repasts of thirteen covers at which the guests were enabled to call up the dead, which was why Montesquieu, Choiseul, Voltaire and Diderot had taken part at Cagliostro's last supper.

All that made a stir; there were murmurs; the thing was proclaimed a scandal. Louis XVI. shrugged his shoulders and Marie Antoinette forbade any one to "speak to her of this charlatan." But every one tried to obtain entrance into the "divine sorcerer's house," and Lorenza, his wife, was obliged to open a class of magic for the benefit of the ladies of the upper circles.

Then came the affair of the necklace. Cagliostro, being compromised with Cardinal de Rohan and Madame de Lamotte, was arrested and thrown into the Bastille; and it was not until ten months later, on the 1st of June 1787, that he was able to return to the house in the Rue Saint-Claude, escorted by a crowd of eight to ten thousand persons, blocking the Boulevard, the courtyard of the house and the staircases. He was cheered, embraced, carried in triumph. This grand day was a climax. A few hours after it, a King's order banished him from France, and the house was shut up. Only in 1805 were its doors reopened for the sale of the furniture; and the sight must have been a curious one! In 1855, the building was repaired; the leaves of the entrance gate were changed; those to-day opening into the Rue Saint-Claude came from the ancient buildings of the Temple; so that the gates of Louis XVI.'s prison give access now to the mansion where Cagliostro once performed his marvels.

In the Filles-du-Calvaire Boulevard stands the Winter Circus, still unchanged, with its Icarian Games and its equilibrists, its smiling horse-women who for so many years have leaped through the same paper-filled hoops and made the same pleased bow to the worshipping crowd. But, if the spectacle is not much varied, the public of youngsters is constantly renewed, and the laughs we heard in our childhood still welcome the same clowns' grimaces. Only Monsieur Loyal is no longer there, the admirable, imposing Monsieur Loyal, tight-buttoned in his fine blue coat, who, with such noble gesture and slashing whip, restrained the mocking clown's quips and quirks or the shyings of the mare Rigolette exhibited at liberty.