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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

With Robespierre the grand period of the Jacobins came to an end, and nearly a hundred and twenty of them perished on the scaffold. Their hall was now closed and the club forbidden to meet except as a “regenerated society.” At last the Committees of Public Safety and of General Security issued a decree which put an end to the Society of Jacobins.

In the year 1796 a new Jacobin club was formed in the Riding School of the Tuileries, which soon afterwards moved to the church in the Rue du Bac, and boldly announced that it meant to revive the Jacobin traditions. “Jacobins of the Riding School” this society was called, and, after some ridicule (for the French public had grown sick of the Revolution), it was suppressed by an order from the Directory (1799).

The Jacobin Club, however, as Arthur Young knew and described it, not only dictated the proceedings of the National Assembly, using this body as a sort of tool or cat’s-paw by which it practically governed France, but exerted such an influence on Parisian society that enthusiasm for Liberal ideas took possession even of the fair sex. “The present devotion to liberty,” he writes, “is a sort of rage. It absorbs every other passion and permits no other object to remain in view than what promises to confirm it. Dine with a large party at the Duke de La Rochefoucauld’s, ladies and gentlemen are all equally politicians.” Young adds, however, that one effect of the Revolution was to lessen the enormous influence of the gentler sex. Previously they had “mixed themselves in everything in order to govern everything,” and the men of the kingdom had been mere “puppets moved by their wives.” But now, “instead of giving the ton to questions of national debate, they {166} must receive it and be content to move in the political sphere of some celebrated leader.” They were thus sinking into the position which, as Young considered, Nature had intended for them; and he maintained that the daughters of France would now become “more amiable and the nation better governed.”

CHAPTER XVI.
THE PALAIS ROYAL.

Richelieu’s Palace—The Regent of Orleans—The Duke of Orleans—Dissipation in the Palais Royal—The Palais National—The Birthplace of Revolutions.

THE whole history of Paris may be read along the line of the Boulevards, and the whole life of the capital observed there in concentrated form. The Palais Royal, however, with its theatres, its restaurants, its shops of all kinds, its galleries, and its gardens, is in scarcely a less degree an epitome of Paris. It was formerly known as the Palais Cardinal, in memory of Richelieu, by whom, in its original shape, it was constructed. Richelieu afterwards made such frequent additions to the building that it lost all symmetry. In one of the wings a theatre was constructed; though it was not here, but in a large drawing-room, that the Cardinal’s tragedies, Eutrope and Mirame, were played. The palace, with its lateral developments, assumed at last the form of a quadrangle with a large garden in the interior. It suffered from the irremediable fault of not having been constructed from the first on a definite plan. But the garden, the fountain, the jewellers’ shops, the booksellers’ stalls, give the place a physiognomy of its own, and cause the beholder to overlook all architectural defects.

Having completed his palace, and convinced himself that he had constructed an edifice worthy the acceptance of his sovereign, Richelieu presented it to Louis XIII. (1636), afterwards confirming the gift in his will (1642). Corneille, the recipient now of favours, now of slights from the great Cardinal, wrote, in an admiring mood, of the Cardinal’s palace the following lines:—

“Non, l’univers entier ne peut rien voir d’égal
Aux superbes dehors du Palais-Cardinal.
Toute une ville entière, avec pompe bâtie,
Semble d’un vieux fossé par miracle sortie,
Et nous fait présumer, à ses superbes toits,
Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois.”[[B]]

[[B]] “No, the entire universe can behold nothing equal to the superb exterior of the Palais-Cardinal. The whole town, splendidly built, seems to have sprung by a miracle out of an old ditch, making one fancy from its magnificent roofs that all its inhabitants must be gods or kings.”