Restaurants were numerous, being souvenirs of coffee-houses formerly renowned, like the Godet and Yon cafés. There one found singing and dancing, and, now and again, plotting. It was at the Burgundy Vintage Restaurant in the Temple faubourg, the ordinary rendezvous of Paris wedding-breakfasts or National Guard love-feasts, that—on the 9th of May 1831, at the end of a banquet given to celebrate the acquittal of Guinard, Cavaignac, and the Garnier brothers, charged with plotting against the State—Évariste Gallois, with a knife in his hand, proposed in three words this threatening toast: "To Louis-Philippe!"
The great Flaubert lived on the Temple Boulevard at No. 42. There, on Sundays, he gathered his disciples at noisy lunches—Zola, Goncourt, Daudet, de Maupassant, Huysmans, Céard, George Pouchet—a few yards away from a building of tragic fame. No. 50, in fact, was the wretched house whose third-story Venetian blinds concealed Fieschi and the twenty-five pistol barrels loaded with bullets which constituted his infernal machine. A train of powder passed over twenty-five lights. The discharge of grapeshot to be vomited by this dreadful instrument of death was terrible. The grocer Morey, who had helped to prepare the monstrous crime, had even taken the useful precaution to damage four of the gun-barrels, whose explosion was to suppress Fieschi himself.
Pépin, another accomplice, had been careful to walk his horse several times past the fatal window; and from behind the Venetian blinds, Fieschi, who was an excellent shot, had been able at his ease to regulate the aim of his horrible slaughtering-machine. It was intended that Louis-Philippe, who had ten times escaped the assassin's hand, should, on this occasion, be struck by it. The conspirators, however, had not calculated that the King, when reviewing the National Guard, would avoid the middle of the Boulevard, which sloped down towards the sides for draining purposes, and would keep to the lower portions, along which the troops were stationed. The rain of bullets therefore passed over the King's head, touching only the top of his cocked-hat, and mowed down women, children, officers and other spectators that were on the King's left. It was a frightful butchery; the Boulevard streamed with blood. More than forty victims lay on the road, among them being the glorious Marshal Mortier, who expired on one of the marble tables in the Turkish Coffee-house, whither the dead and wounded had been transported. Fieschi, who was wounded, was arrested in the backyard of the next house, while trying to fly through the Rue des Fossés-du-Temple. On the 19th of February 1836, he ascended the scaffold with his accomplices, Pépin and Morey.
At the corner of the Temple Boulevard, to the right, in front of the first house in the Voltaire Boulevard, the barricade was raised where Delescluze was killed in May 1871. At this spot, formerly stood the Gaiety Theatre; while the Lyric Theatre opened its doors on the present site of the Metropolitan railway station in the Republic Square.
THE PORTE SAINT-MARTIN
Houbron, pinxit (G. Cain Collection)
The Saint-Martin Boulevard, where Paul de Kock took up his abode, in order to study from his windows, which were on the first story, near the Porte Saint-Martin, the seething life of the Capital, now has no animation except in the evening. Four theatres—the Folies-Dramatiques, the Ambigu, the Porte Saint-Martin, and the Renaissance—add life and movement to it then; and nothing is more amusing than the hour following the end of the performances. The coffee-houses fill with visitors, cigarettes are lighted, newspaper-vendors shout the latest news; people hustle, and touts run after carriages, in which one sees a rapidly passing vision of pretty women in light-coloured dresses and opera-cloaks. Afterwards issue the actors, with blue chins and turned-up collars, and often looking cross. Last of all, come the handsome actresses, who quickly step into their brougham, inside which may frequently be seen, dimly outlined behind the red point of a cigarette, the form of an expectant friend.
