Paris / Grant Allen's Historical Guides

by Grant Allen

Immediately on entering, stand in the centre of the nave, and look up the church towards the choir and chevet. The enormous size of the building will at once strike you. Notice, too, the tall, round arches of the nave and aisles, the triforium above them (best seen from the aisles), and, higher still, the clerestory rising above the aisle-vaulting. The proportions are admirable. Observe also the roof, essentially Gothic in plan, though with an incongruous substitution of round for pointed arches. But note that all these quasi-Gothic constructive features are combined with classical columns and pilasters of the three great orders—Doric, Ionic, Corinthian—superimposed, and with such Renaissance detail as masks, cherubs, and other later decorative features.

Now walk up the R aisle. Everything in this church is, of course, comparatively modern, but still rich in symbolism. Most of the chapels have their names inscribed upon them—an excellent feature. The first, containing Franciscan Saints, has a good modern stained-glass window, representing the Saints and Patrons of the Order—St. Francis, St. Louis, etc. Observe the frescoes in the various chapels, and note their applicability to the saints to whom they are dedicated. I need not now enlarge upon this point. For example, the chapel of the Souls in Purgatory has a relief of Christ bound to the pillar—His purgatory—(a portion of it is preserved here) and a fresco representing mourning souls below, with triumphant ones in heaven. Observe from this point the beautiful Renaissance detail of the aisles and of the vaulting in the ambulatory, or passage behind the choir. Do not overlook the chapels of St. Agnes (co-patroness) and St. Cecilia, the inventress of the organ and patroness of music. The transepts are very short, but are decorated with good rose-windows and other excellent semi-Gothic detail. Walk round the ambulatory, noticing as you go the various chapels with their polychromatic decoration and their appropriate frescoes. Thus, that of St. Anne contains a representation of the Saint educating her daughter the Virgin. Note also on your L as you go the delicate work of the choir-screen, and the excellent vaulting and decoration of the lofty choir. The Lady Chapel behind the choir is not wholly pleasing. It contains a good 18th century statue of the Virgin and Child by Pigalle. Observe particularly in the North part of the ambulatory the chapel of Ste. Geneviève, with scenes from her legend. The chapel of St. Louis, next it, contains excellent modern frescoes from his life, by Barrias, and a fine stained-glass window of his education, with his mother, Blanche of Castille, looking on, beneath a canopy marked with fleurs-de-lis and the three castles of Castille. One fresco represents him taking the Crown of Thorns to the Sainte Chapelle. Observe these little historical reminiscences: they add interest. Pleasing reliefs in the North transept of St. Cecilia and King David, representing music, for which this church has always been celebrated, especially on St. Cecilia’s Day and Good Friday. They stand for Psalms and Hymns—the Jewish and the Christian psalmody. Notice, again, the figure of St. Agnes with her lamb, between the doorways, a tribute to the earlier dedication of the building. Above it, good stained-glass window of the Annunciation, with traditional details. (Do not be content to notice merely the points to which I call attention, but observe for yourself as you go the other figures, with their meaning and connection. To spell it all out is half the pleasure.) Above the Holy Water vessel in this Transept is a figure of Pope Alexander I, who first sanctioned the use of Holy Water, accompanied by angels. Beneath it, the baffled and disappointed demons, fleeing from the consecrated water. The next chapel contains the relics of St. Eustace and his children, martyrs. It is, perhaps, a little characteristic of modern feeling that the half-mythical namesake saint of the church should thus be relegated to a subordinate chapel in the edifice originally erected to his honour. The pictures are imitated from those in the Catacombs at Rome. Notice, in particular, the fresco of St. Eustace kneeling before the stag, which displays between its horns the miraculous image; also, the subsequent scenes of his legend (for which, see Mrs. Jameson). Beautiful view from this point of the choir and ambulatory.

Do not leave this interesting building without having examined all its details. It contains enough to occupy you for several hours, and is rich in illustrations of modern Catholic sentiment. Even the most tawdry bits of its modern church furniture become of interest when examined as parts of a consistent whole, falling into their due place in a great system of belief and the government of conduct. You have not really understood a church till you have grasped this connection between its various members. Ask yourself always, “Why is this here?” and though you may not always be able to see, the longer you proceed to investigate in this spirit, the more will the meaning of the whole come home to you. For example, return to the S Transept and observe the figure of St. Gregory: he is the musical Father from whom the Gregorian chants take their name, and as such deserves commemoration in the musical church.

Quitting St. Eustache, you can continue westward a few steps, and then turn down a short street on the left, which leads you obliquely to a curious circular building, the Bourse de Commerce. Skirt round this till you come to its ugly façade, and then continue your way into the Rue du Louvre.

This short walk will have enabled you to take your bearings in the heart of the old district north of the river. You can prolong it a little, if you choose, through the town of Louis XIV, by walking northward along the Rue du Louvre as far as the new Post Office, and then turning to the left into the little circular Place des Victoires with its clumsy rearing equestrian statue of the Grand Monarch. The Place dates from his reign, and was designed by Mansart. Originally known as the Place Louis XIV, it was decorated by an earlier statue of the king, destroyed in the Revolution. The Restoration replaced it by the present ugly monument. A few steps to the NW stands the Church of Notre-Dame des Victoires, begun in 1656, to commemorate the taking of La Rochelle, the Huguenot stronghold. It is instructive to compare this building of the worst period with the Mediæval and Renaissance churches you have just been examining. The Rue Notre-Dame des Victoires will lead you hence up to the Bourse (adequately viewed from outside), whence the brand-new Rue du 4 Septembre takes you straight back to the Opéra and the centre of modern Paris.

I have only walked you here through a small part of this older town; but if you care to explore the interesting district, rich in Renaissance and even Mediæval buildings, which lies to the east of the Hôtel de Ville, you cannot do better than take Mr. Augustus Hare’s Paris as your guide—a valuable book, especially rich in historical reminiscences of the Renaissance period, the epoch of Louis XIV, and the Great Revolution. Mr. Hare will lead you to many forgotten nooks of old Paris, which the modest dimensions of the present handbook are insufficient to deal with. But I advise you only to explore these less-known byways after you have examined all the objects of first-rate importance here enumerated.

The Musée Carnavalet, also in this district, you had better defer visiting till after you have seen the École des Beaux-Arts, in the St. Germain Quarter, south of the river. It will be noticed later.

B. THE OUTER RING OF LOUIS XIV

A second, and doubtless to the reader by this time more familiar walk, round the Great Boulevards, will suffice to give a hasty conception of the Paris of Louis XIV and his immediate successors. Even if you are already well acquainted with the route, go over it once more, if only on the top of an omnibus, at this stage of your investigation, in order to take your bearings more fully. It must be borne in mind for the purposes of this walk or ride that in the earlier mediæval period the district between the Boulevards and the central core consisted, for the most part, of gardens and fields, among which were interspersed a few rural monasteries and suburban churches. These last have long since, of course, become wholly imbedded in modern Paris, but I will note as we pass a few earlier objects which it may be interesting for those who have time to diverge and visit.

Start from the Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde (noting here and elsewhere the Roman reminiscence of the bronze ships of Paris on the gas-lamps—as you see them at the Thermes), and walk up the Rue Royale,—the first portion of the great ring of streets which girdles the city of Louis XIV. The Rue St. Honoré, to your R, was, before the construction of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysées, the chief road which led westward out of ancient Paris. The Porte St. Honoré stood on this site, where it crossed the barrier by the modern Rue Royale. Beyond it, the street takes the characteristic name of the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré; and all the other streets which cross the girdle similarly change their name to that of the corresponding Faubourg as they pass beyond it. These long straggling roads, lined with houses on the outskirts (Faubourg St. Honoré, Montmartre, St. Denis, du Temple, etc.), have finally become the chief residential quarters of the city at the present day.