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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

A NIGHT REFUGE IN THE VAUGIRARD QUARTER.

Resting upon the tower was the Petit Nesle, given as a place of abode, in 1540, by Francis I. to Benvenuto Cellini. The king’s right to dispose of the house was questioned, indirectly, it is true, but in a very substantial manner, by the Provost of Paris, who, after giving the Florentine artist notice to quit, tried to turn him out by force; when Cellini, with his companions, apprentices, and servants, defended the place against the besiegers. It was in the Petit Nesle that this admirable sculptor executed, among[{289}] masterpieces, his colossal statue of Jupiter in silver. In his Memoirs Benvenuto tells a story which paints, in glaring colours, the disorderly character of the time. He was returning to the Petit Nesle—his Château of Nesle, as he calls it—carrying beneath his cloak, in a basket, 1,000 crowns in ancient gold, which the royal treasurer had just delivered to him by order of Francis I., when he was attacked by thieves before the Augustins—a “very dangerous place.” He then tells how he kept his assailants at a respectful distance by sweeping blows from his sword, and then ran away in all haste to his château, where he called to the garrison, which rushed out fully armed, thus enabling him to re-enter safe and sound the Petit Nesle, where he and his friends had a lively supper. This simple anecdote shows what a cut-throat place Paris was under the reign of Francis I., in the year 1540.

CARDINAL MAZARIN.
(From a Portrait in the Gallery of Versailles.)

Tour de Nesle and Petit Nesle have both disappeared, and on their site stands (as already mentioned) the Palace of the Institute, originally known as the Palais Mazarin. Cardinal Mazarin, having been unable to carry out personally the project he had formed of establishing a college for the benefit of sixty young noblemen, or young men of the citizen class belonging to the lands newly conquered by the Crown of France, ordered by his will, on the 6th of March, 1661, that, should the king be so pleased, a college should be founded for sixty sons of gentlemen or of citizens belonging to the various territories—German, Flemish, and Provençal—lately annexed[{290}] to France. Hence the name given to it of “College of the Four Nations”; the fourth nation being, of course, France. In like manner there were formerly “four nations” in the University of Paris. Mazarin had already drawn up the statute for the college, and he bequeathed to it the whole of his library, with an income of 45,000 francs secured on town property, the revenue of the Abbey of Saint-Michel, and two millions of livres (francs) in silver. The cardinal’s executors began by purchasing the Petit Nesle, the ditches and ramparts of the Rue des Fossés, which now became the Rue Mazarine; and a piece of land comprised between the Rue Mazarine, the Rue de Seine, and the Quay. The college was then erected and the library duly placed; and until the time of the Revolution the Institute, as it was in time to be called, formed an important centre for men devoted to the study of literature, science, or art.

At the time of the Revolution the college, being of suspicious origin, was confiscated, while, on the other hand, the library was enlarged by 50,000 volumes, themselves the result of confiscation.

In suppressing the Institute the Revolution did not spare any one of its five academies—not even the French academy, which, though it represented the literature of the country, had a taint of aristocracy about it. As soon, however, as France was delivered from the atrocities of the Revolution, the National Convention, in its last sitting but one, on the 25th October, 1795, reconstituted the Institute under the form of a society of 144 members, divided into three classes: (1) positive sciences, (2) political sciences, and (3) literature and art. The First Consul reorganised the society as four classes: (1) science, (2) literature, (3) ancient literature, (4) fine arts. Under this form the Restoration found nothing to change but the name; and the four classes of the Imperial Institute became once more “academies.” The fifth, that of moral and political sciences, created by the Convention, was re-established in 1832 on the proposition of M. Guizot, Minister of Public Instruction. Independently of their internal economy and their proprietorial rights, the five academies are bound together through the chief secretarial department, the library, and various collections belonging to the five academies in common. The unity of the academies is affirmed, moreover, every year through a formal sitting, of which the presidency falls in turn to each of the five academical presidents. “It is a commonplace,” says M. Auguste Vitu, in his work on Paris, “to run down academies. The five ancient, like the five modern academies, have rendered, all the same, the greatest services to science, and cast a brilliant light on literature and art. This is generally admitted in connection with the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Inscriptions. There is no foreign scientific man, however illustrious, who does not welcome the honour of becoming its associate or correspondent. The Academy of Sciences has taken part in every scientific advance; and to the Academy of Inscriptions, with its adventurous explorers, is due the immense development of Punic, Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian studies. It can be said to have created the science of epigraphy, that resurrection of history from stones. But the utility of the Academy of Fine Arts has been questioned often enough, and the French Academy is the recognised object not only of everyone’s ambition, but also, and above all, of everyone’s ridicule and satire; especially—if not exclusively—on the part of men of letters.... Whoever be elected to the French Academy, the election is sure to meet with much literary disapproval. The scientific men are accused of ignoring literature, and the dukes of being unable to spell. If, on the other hand, the Academy chooses a dramatist, a novelist, a journalist, or a critic, journalism is sure to ask why so-and-so was elected—my associate, my friend, perhaps—and not myself. These condemnations have weakened neither the authority nor the glory of the French Academy; they have, perhaps, even preserved it, by diminishing in its secret councils the influence of coteries. The idea of Cardinal Richelieu in creating it was to maintain the unity of the French language, and consequently of France, while giving to talent equal distinction with rank, birth, and official service.”