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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

In August, 1803, Cadoudal went to Paris, and remained there, in spite of the constant search of which he was the object, for seven months. He was at last arrested in a hackney-cab, but not until after he had killed one of the police agents. Brought to trial, he avowed that his object had been to upset the Government in order to place Louis XVIII. on the throne. He was executed with eleven of his accomplices. After the Restoration his family was ennobled by Louis XVIII.

The Church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles was converted during the Revolution into a salt-petre store, and then fell into the possession of Jews, from whom it was bought back when public worship was restored in France.

Further on is the Abbey of Saint-Magloire, and beyond that the asylum of Saint-Jacques aux Pelerins, which dates from the early part of the fourteenth century. In 1317 under the reign of Philip V., called The Long, many notable and devout persons who had made the pilgrimage to Saint James Compostella in Galicia, moved by devotion, meditated the construction of a church and an asylum in the Rue Saint-Denis, to the glory of God, the Holy Virgin, and Saint James the Apostle, in order to lodge and feed the pilgrims, whether going or coming. The church was built with an asylum joined to it, and it was open, not only to the pilgrims, but also to seventy poor persons whom it received every day.

The Abbey of Saint-Magloire dates from the tenth century, when it stood half-way on the road from the Cité to Saint-Denis. It was converted by Marie de Médicis into a convent known as that of the Filles-Dieu, where penitent girls found shelter. It was suppressed, like all the other religious houses, in 1793. Some fifty years afterwards the foundations of the convent, which had fallen into ruin, were being dug up with a view to some new building, when ten Gothic statues were discovered, mutilated and blackened. Among the stone figures Saint James was easily recognised by his pilgrim’s costume. The statues were claimed by the town, and now figure in the Musée des Thermes. The shop which at present occupies the site of the ancient convent has for its sign:—“Aux Statues de Saint-Jacques.”

Another famous convent existed at one time in the Rue Saint-Jacques—the Convent of the Holy Sepulchre it was called, also known as the Hôtel of the Trinity. Built for the pilgrims returning from the East, it was kept up until the taking of Constantinople, more than a hundred years later. The Holy Sepulchre having then fallen into the hands of the Turks, the idea of making pilgrimages to it came to an end; and the hostelry for pilgrims to the Holy Land was no longer required. The convent was now occupied by the Brothers of the Passion, who had obtained letters patent from Charles VI. empowering them to play religious mysteries. Thus the earliest of French theatres stood in the Rue Saint-Denis. It has been said that the kings of France made their coronation processions along the Rue Saint-Denis; and when Louis XI. was crowned, fountains of wine, milk, and mead were established over the whole length of the Rue Saint-Denis. In the present day the Rue Saint-Denis has lost much of its ancient animation through the formation of the Boulevard de Sebastopol. But under the ancient régime it was really the leading thoroughfare in Paris. When, after the surrender of Paris to Henri IV., the Spanish garrison marched away, they defiled down the Rue Saint-Denis, while the king, standing at an open window, called out: “Now go home, and do not let us see you here again.” The Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, on the other side of the boulevard, is less rich in historical associations than the Rue Saint-Denis itself. It may be mentioned, however, that at Saint-Lazare the bodies of the French kings made a halt on their way to their last resting-place in the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

The region comprised between the left side of the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue de Rivoli on the south, the Rue Croix des Petits Champs on the west, and the Rue Étienne Marcel on the north, forms the vast quarter of the markets, with the parish church of Saint-Eustache, the Protestant Temple of the Oratory, the Central Markets, and the old Corn Market as its principal features.

Saint-Eustache is one of the most remarkable and one of the most admired churches in Paris. Erected on the site of an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint Agnes, which dated from the first years of the thirteenth century, it was already a parish church, under the invocation of Saint Eustache, in 1223. In the course of the next three centuries it became the richest and most frequented church in Paris. After Notre Dame, the Church of Saint-Eustache is the largest in Paris. Its coloured windows, signed Soulignac, and dating from the year 1631, eleven in number, {315} are admirable alike by colour and by design. In addition to its mural paintings, dating from the reign of Louis XIII. (discovered beneath a thick coat of plaster in 1849), Saint-Eustache contains a number of frescoes and paintings of high merit. In the Ninth Chapel the tomb of the great Colbert, executed by Coysevox, after the designs of Lebrun, is to be seen. The grand organ, reconstructed in 1844 after a destructive fire, is one of the most complete and most sonorous that exists. This church, thanks to its colossal dimensions and to the perfection of its organs (one at each end), is the favourite church of musicians; and it is here that the Society of Musical Artists celebrates annually the festival of Saint-Cecilia, their revered patroness. On such occasions a new mass or musical service of some kind is given; and it was in this church that the Abbé Liszt had one of his most famous masses performed only a few months before his death. The angle formed by the meeting of the streets called Montmartre, Pont-Neuf, Montorgueil, and Rambuteau, is known as the “Saint-Eustache Point.” It dominates the vast quadrilateral occupied by the Central Markets.

The Central Markets were founded by Philip Augustus, and they were soon surrounded by houses and shops. These markets in their present form were constructed on one design, and, so to say, at a stroke, under the reign of Napoleon III., by the architect Beltard, who sought his model in the finest of the Paris railway stations. The principal office of the fish market, at the corner of the Rue Pirouette and of the Rue Rambuteau, is in the ancient Hôtel du Heaume, a building of the fourteenth century. At number 108, Rue Rambuteau, was born Regnard, author of “The Gambler” and of “The Universal Legatee,” the house having been owned by his father, a fish salesman beneath the sign of Notre Dame. A little nearer the Church of Saint-Eustache, just at the mouth of the Rue de la Réalle, stands a house which once belonged to the carpet-maker, Jean Poquelin, and afterwards to his son and heir, J. B. Poquelin, better known by his adopted name of Molière. For the name of Poquelin, by the way, he was indebted to an ancestor serving in the Scottish Guard, who bore the surname and came from the place of Pawkelin.

The Paris markets are the scene of constant activity from morning till evening. Buying and selling comes to an end, it is true, with the approach of night; but then the remains of what has been sold, with rubbish of all kinds, have to be cleared away, and scarcely has this been done, when market carts arrive with produce for the next day. The provisions brought to Paris are either sold to the factors of the market, who buy wholesale and sell retail, or to the market men and market women, or to any private person whom it may suit to become a purchaser. The finest, best, and most highly quoted vegetables and {316} fruits come from the suburbs of Paris, where kitchen-gardening is carried to the last point of perfection. The farmers and gardeners of the environs, whose heavily-laden carts arrive towards nine in the evening, are their own salesmen in the markets. The growers of the departments and of Algeria send their fruit and their fresh vegetables to factors or commissioners, to be sold either in Pavilion Number 6—reserved for this kind of business—or at shops established in the neighbourhood of the markets.