WELL IN THE COURTYARD, CLUNY MUSEUM.
The large open space to which the Panthéon gives its name—Place du Panthéon—was the scene of terrible conflicts between the troops and the insurgents during the Revolution of February, 1848, and again during the unsuccessful insurrection of June in the same year, when troops and national guards all took part against the workmen set free to starve or fight by the closing of the national workshops which, for financial reasons, could no longer be carried[{65}] on, and against the social democrats who placed themselves at their head. On the northern side of the Place stands the Sainte-Geneviève Library, which, like all the Paris libraries, is open to all comers.
INTERIOR OF THE PANTHÉON.
A foreigner who happened to visit the Quartier Latin, and observed the students strolling, lounging, or driving off to the theatre or a ball, might fancy that they led an easy and idle life, but he would be mistaken. These youths, ardent pleasure-seekers as they are, give three-fourths of their time to severe study. Earlier in the day a visitor to the Rue Saint-Jacques might have seen them waiting impatiently for the classes to begin at the College of France; might have seen them issue thence, full of enthusiasm for the great thinkers of their time, and wend their way to this or that public institution affording facilities for private study. A proportion of them would be found to resort to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, where a noble collection of books ranged on shelves adorned with delicate sculptures may well conduce to the tranquil exercise of the mind.[{66}]
The first library of Sainte-Geneviève, which was founded as a private institution in 1624, and became national property in 1790, occupied in the buildings of the old abbey of the same name a habitation which had to be abandoned some forty years ago, because the building began everywhere to crumble and threaten collapse. The new library was finished and inaugurated in 1850; and although the external architecture is somewhat plain and heavy, the interior is highly artistic, with many a mural painting by master hands. Formerly this library possessed a very curious collection of crayon sketches, portraits of personages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were transferred by an imperial decree to the library of the Rue de Richelieu. It can support this loss, however, rich as it is in quaint and valuable specimens of art. For its manuscripts, with certain exceptions, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève is not remarkable; though it boasts a particularly fine collection of old printed books, with bindings sumptuous and fantastic enough to turn the head of a bibliophile.
Dependent on the church of Sainte-Geneviève, which it was destined to survive, is the church of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount. Among the wonders of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont is the tomb of Sainte Geneviève, whose relics, patroness saint of Paris as she was, were burnt in 1793 by the Paris Commune in the Place de Grève. During the fête of Sainte Geneviève, from the 3rd to the 11th of January, the church is crowded with pilgrims from the Paris suburbs to the number, it is calculated, of more than one hundred thousand. In the chapel immediately facing the altar stands a monument which contains the heart of Monseigneur Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, assassinated on the 3rd of January, 1857, in this very church, when he was opening the nine days’ service in honour of Sainte Geneviève, by a priest whom he had interdicted. The predecessor of Monseigneur Sibour, Monseigneur Affre, was shot dead by the insurgents of June, 1848, when exhorting them from a barricade to cease fighting. His successor, Monseigneur Darboy, was put to death with the other hostages whom the Paris Commune in 1871 had taken with the view of securing for the Communards made prisoners by the troops the character of prisoners of war.
