Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

“You disgrace the guillotine!” said Robespierre one day to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.

Of this historic hall nothing now remains but the four walls. Still, however, may be seen the little door of the staircase which Marie Antoinette ascended to appear before the revolutionary jury, and which she afterwards descended on the way to her dungeon.

The Galerie Saint-Louis is the name given to the ancient gallery {260} connected with the Galerie Marchande, its name being justified by the various forms in which incidents from the life of Saint Louis are represented on its walls. Here, in sculptured and coloured wood, is the effigy of Saint Louis, close to the open space where, when centuries ago it was a garden, the pious king was wont to imitate, and sometimes to render, justice beneath the spreading trees. One of the bureaux in the Palais de Justice contains an alphabetical list of all the sentences passed, by no matter what court, against any person born in one of the districts of Paris or of the department of the Seine. This record, contemplated by Napoleon I., was established in 1851 by M. Rouher, at that time Minister of Justice. The list is kept strictly secret; nor is any extract permitted except on the requisition of a magistrate, or on the application of one of the persons sentenced, requiring it in his own interest.

The Bureau of “Judicial Assistance,” dating from 1851, enables any indigent person to plead in formâ pauperis, whether as plaintiff or defendant. Nor is he obliged to plead in person. Not only stamped paper, but solicitors, barristers, and every legal luxury are supplied to him gratuitously. It is at the expense of the lawyers that the pauper litigant is relieved.

Two curious bureaux connected with the Palais de Justice are those in which are kept, sealed up and divided into series indicated by different colours, objects of special value taken from persons brought before the court, or voluntarily deposited by them; together with sums of money which, in like manner, have passed into the hands of legal authorities. Still more curious is the collection of articles of all kinds stored in a sort of museum, which presents the aspect at once of a bazaar and of a pawnbroker’s shop. Here, in striking confusion, are seen boots and shoes, clothes, wigs, rags, and a variety of things seized and condemned as fraudulent imitations; likewise instruments of fraud, such as false scales. Here, too, in abundance are murderous arms—knives, daggers, and revolvers. Singularly interesting is the collection of burglarious instruments of the most different patterns, from the enormous lump of iron, which might be used as a battering ram, to the most delicately-made skeleton key, feeble enough in appearance, but sufficiently strong to force the lock of an iron safe. There is now scarcely room for the constantly increasing collection of objects at the service of fraud and crime.

Beneath this strange exhibition, rendered still more sinister by the method and order with which it is arranged, are disposed in two storeys the four chambers which together constitute the civil tribunal. {261} Connected with the criminal tribunal, their duty is to try offences punishable by a scale of sentences, with five years’ imprisonment as the maximum. According to one of the last legislative enactments of the Second Empire, persons brought before a police-court remained provisionally at liberty except under grave circumstances. Cases, moreover, in which the offender has been taken in flagrante delicto are decided in three days. “This is a sign of progress,” says M. Vitu; “but Paris still needs an institution of which London is justly proud, that of district magistrates, something like our juges de paix, deciding police cases forthwith. The principal merit of this institution is that it prevents arbitrary detention and serious mistakes such as unfortunately are only too frequent with us. Instances have occurred, and will occur again, in which an inoffensive man, arrested by mistake, in virtue of a regular warrant intended for another of the same name, is sent straight to the criminal prison of Mazas. It will then take him a week to get set at liberty. In London he would have been taken at once to the magistrate of the district, who would have proceeded without delay to the verification of his identity. It would have been the affair of two hours at most, thanks to the service of constables at the disposal, day and night, of the English magistrate.”

The police-courts have sometimes to deal with remarkable cases, but as a rule their duties are of a somewhat trivial character. Adventurers of a low order, swindlers on a petty scale, and street thieves who have been caught with their hands in the pocket of a gentleman or the muff of a lady, are the sort of persons they usually deal with. To these may be added vendors of pretended theatrical admissions, hawkers of forbidden books, and a few drunkards. From morning till night the police are constantly bringing in poor wretches of both sexes; the men for the most part in blouses, the women in rags. They arrive in “cellular” {262} carriages, vulgarly called “salad baskets”; and leaving the vehicle they are kept together by a long cord attached to the wrist of each prisoner. The place of confinement where they remain pending the trial is called the “mouse-trap”: two rows, placed one above the other, each of twenty-five cells, containing one prisoner apiece. Every cell is closed in front by an iron grating, in the centre of which is a small aperture—a little square window looking into the corridor. Through this window, which can be opened and shut, but which is almost invariably kept open, the prisoner sees all that takes place in the passage, and the occasional arrival of privileged visitors helps to break the monotony of his day. The wire cages in which the prisoners are detained suggest those of the Zoological Gardens; and the character of the wild beast is too often imprinted on the vicious criminal features of the incarcerated ones.

Disputes with cab-drivers and hackney coachmen generally are, as a rule, settled by the commissary of the district or the quartier. But serious complaints have now and then to be brought before the Tribunal of Police. In former times the hackney coaches of Paris were at once the disgrace and the terror of the town. “Nothing,” writes Mercier, “can more offend the eye of a stranger than the shabby appearance of these vehicles, especially if he has ever seen the hackney coaches of London and Brussels. Yet the aspect of the drivers is still more shocking than that of the carriages, or of the skinny hacks that drag those frightful machines. Some have but half a coat on, others none at all; they are uniform in one point only, that is extreme wretchedness and insolence. You may observe the following gradation in the conduct of these brutes in human shape. Before breakfast they are pretty tractable, they grow restive towards noon, but in the evening they are not to be borne. The commissaries or justices of the peace are the only umpires between the driver and the drivee; and, right or wrong, their award is in favour of the former, who are generally taken from the honourable body of police greyhounds, and are of course allied to the formidable phalanx of justices of the peace. However, if you would roll on at a reasonable pace, be sure you take a hackney coachman half-seas-over. Nothing is more common than to see the traces giving way, or the wheels flying off at a tangent. You find yourself with a broken shin or a bloody nose; but then, for your comfort, you have nothing to pay for the fare. Some years ago a report prevailed that some alterations were to take place in the regulation of hackney coaches; the Parisian phaetons took the alarm and drove to Choisy, where the King was at that time. The least appearance of a commotion strikes terror to the heart of a despot. The sight of 1,800 empty coaches frightened the monarch; but his apprehensions were soon removed by the vigilance of his guard and courtiers. Four representatives of the phaetonic body were clapped into prison and the speaker sent to Bicêtre, to deliver his harangue before the motley inhabitants of that dreary mansion. The safety of the inhabitants doubtless requires the attention of the Government, in providing carriages hung on better springs and generally more cleanly; but the scarcity of hay and straw, not to mention the heavy impost of twenty sols per day for the privilege of rattling over the pavement of Paris, when for the value of an English shilling you may go from one end of the town to the other, prevents the introduction of so desirable a reformation.”