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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

But in 1854 the Figaro (which, it need scarcely be said, derived its name from the celebrated barber invented by Beaumarchais) was revived by Mme. Villemessant, and it played an important part, though by no means a consistent one, under the Second Empire. This it still continues to do; and whatever its political views may be, it is the[{272}] most amusing, the most interesting, and one may almost say, the most literary journal in Europe. Among the celebrated writers who have from time to time contributed to its columns may be mentioned Edmond About, Théodore de Banville, Henri Rochefort, B. Jouvin, Albert Wolff, and Henri de Pène, who, for criticising the manners of French subalterns, found himself exposed to the necessity of fighting all the lieutenants and sub-lieutenants of the French army, a task from which he was saved by being almost mortally wounded by the first of his antagonists. The cause of M. de Pène’s encounter with the junior officers of the French army, as represented by the clever swordsman who ran him through the lungs, was an article, written by the contributor to the Figaro, on a ball given at the École Militaire. The youthful officers were, he declared, too constant and too eager in their attendance at the buffet; and he added that when one of them had a plate of cakes offered to him by a waiter, he said he was not sure that he[{273}] could eat them all, but that he would accept them nevertheless. The jest was an ancient one, but it angered the young bloods of the Military School, and their indignation demanded a victim, who at once offered himself in the person of the author of the injurious statement.

The case of Henri de Pène and of so many other fighting journalists, with the redoubtable Henri Rochefort and Paul de Cassagnac among them, suggests that in France a newspaper-writer should be as much a master of the sword as of the pen. This does not interfere with the fact that one of the most gentle and amiable of modern French writers, M. Ernest Legouvé, possessed the reputation of being the first fencer of his day.

CHAPTER XLI.
FROM THE QUAI VOLTAIRE TO THE PANTHEON.

The Quai Voltaire—Its Changes of Name—Voltaire—His Life in Paris and Elsewhere—His Remains laid in the Pantheon—Mirabeau—Rousseau—Vincennes.

WHAT a number of names had the Quai Voltaire borne before receiving the illustrious one by which it has now been known for about a century! First Quai Malaquais; then Quai du Pont Rouge, when the red bridge had just been constructed to replace the old ferry opposite the Rue de Beaune; in 1648 Quai des Théatins, after the religious order of that name established by Mazarin; finally on the 4th of May, 1791, by decision of the Commune of Paris, Quai Voltaire. During forty years Voltaire had almost uninterruptedly been absent from France, when, on the 10th of February, 1778, he returned, and the mansion he had purchased in the Rue Richelieu for himself and his niece Denise not being ready for his reception, accepted the hospitality of the Marquis de Villette, in whose house, on the quay now known as that of Voltaire, he died May 30th, 1778. The fact is recorded in an inscription placed on the façade of the former Hôtel de Villette.

Before conferring upon the quay the name borne by one of the most witty and most powerful writers that France ever produced, the Commune received a report and pronounced through one of its members a eulogium in his honour. Until the time of the Revolution it was the custom in France, as in other countries at a much later period, to name streets and other thoroughfares after some aristocratic family. Since the Revolution, however, it has become usual to substitute, in connection with the thoroughfares and public places of Paris, the names of national celebrities and national benefactors. In this latter character Voltaire will not be universally accepted, though his aim was certainly to do good; and that he had “done some good,” was, he once declared, the only epitaph he aspired to. According to an observation attributed to M. de Tocqueville, Voltaire possessed in greater abundance than anyone else the wit that everyone possesses; and D. F. Strauss, in the six lectures on Voltaire which he wrote for and dedicated to the Princess Louise of Hesse, says much the same thing when he admiringly declares that every quality of the French mind belonged to Voltaire in a more marked degree than to any other Frenchman. Goethe seems to have thought still more highly of him. “Voltaire,” he said, “will always be looked upon as the greatest man in the literature of modern times, and perhaps even of all times; as the most astonishing creation of Nature, a creation in which it has pleased her to collect for once in a single frail organisation every variety of talent, all the glories of genius, all the powers of thought.”

THE LATE ALBERT WOLFF, OF THE FIGARO.
(From a Photograph by G. Camus, Paris.)