Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

THE BIÈVRE.

Nothing is spared to provide the patients with salutary occupations, agreeable pastimes, and innocent amusements. They are encouraged to study music, singing, and drawing, and for those who have no artistic tastes, cards, draughts, dominoes, billiards, and bowls are provided. Among the outdoor recreations walks in the most beautiful parts of the wood of Vincennes, carriage excursions and picnics may be mentioned. The Thursday and Sunday concerts form, however, the great delight of the place. These are not given by the director simply as entertainments. They are prescribed by the regulations, and have formed part of the institutions of the House since 1811. In the spacious hall, which serves at once as ball-room and concert-room, assemble upwards of a hundred convalescents of both sexes. In the dress and demeanour of those present there is nothing remarkable, except that they are more quietly attired, and generally better behaved than in fashionable society. The billiard-room is much frequented, and the general aspect of the card-room reminds Dr. Linas of one of the aristocratic Paris clubs.

It should have been mentioned that at the periodical concerts the music is contributed by the patients, some of whom are singers, others violinists or pianists. The officials of the establishment join the inmates either as performers or among the audience. In like manner the patients and attendants act together in the comedies and dramas which are sometimes represented.

Charenton, though placed under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior, has its own particular administration, in which a clerk may in due time, after successive promotions, rise to be a functionary of almost the first rank. No one voluntarily quits the establishment; and the servants, like the officials, remain there until they are compelled by old age to resign. Charenton, like other madhouses, has had celebrities among its inmates, including the Marquis de Sade, who, after sending one of his infamous books to Napoleon, was at once ordered to be arrested and placed in a lunatic asylum; the same punishment which, at a later date, was inflicted by the Emperor Nicholas on a writer, blameless in his morality, who had attacked the existing order of things in Russia.

CHAPTER XXX.
THE RIVER BIÈVRE AND THE MANUFACTORY OF THE GOBELINS.

The Brothers Gobelin—Lebrun—The Gobelins under Louis XIV.—At the Time of the Revolution—The Manufactory of Sèvres.

THE Bièvre is a stream which, many years ago, behaved so badly in the matter of inundations that it was put under ground. Canalised subterraneously, it runs beneath or by the side of the Horse Market, passes near the Salpêtrière, and enters the Seine close to the Orleans Railway terminus. It is between the Bièvre and the Rue Mouffetard that the buildings of the Gobelins manufactory, so famed for its tapestry and dyes, are situated.

The superiority of the products of this factory is by some attributed to peculiar saline properties in the stream. Of these Rabelais speaks in thoroughly Rabelaisian style; and it was doubtless in consequence of the tinctorial qualities of the river that the brothers Gobelin established on its banks their famous manufactory.