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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

VIEW FROM THE PONT DE LA CONCORDE.

The last of the Bourbons buried at Saint-Denis was Louis XVIII., whose obsequies were conducted as nearly as possible on the ancient regal pattern. The exhibition of the king’s effigy in wax had in Louis XVIII.’s time been out of fashion for more than a century. But the customs observed in connection with the lying-in-state of Louis XIV. were for the most part revived. The king, who died on the 16th of September, 1824, was embalmed, and on the 18th was exposed on a state bed in the Hall of the Throne. His bowels and heart had been enclosed in caskets of enamel. The exhibition of the body lasted six days, during which it was constantly surrounded by the officers of the crown and the superior clergy. The translation of the remains to Saint-Denis took place on the[{97}] 23rd, in the midst of an imposing civil and military procession. The princes of the blood and grand officers of state occupied fourteen mourning coaches, each with eight horses, and the tail of the procession was formed by four hundred poor men and women bearing torches. Received at the entrance to the church by the Dean of the Royal Chapter and the Grand Almoner of France, the body was placed on trestles in the chancel while prayers were recited by the clergy. It was afterwards removed to an illuminated chapel, where it remained exposed for a whole month, the chapter performing services night and day. The interment took place on the 25th of October. The Grand Almoner said a solemn mass; and after the Gospel a funeral oration was pronounced by the Bishop of Hermopolis. Then four bishops blessed the body, and absolution having been pronounced, twelve of the body-guard carried down the coffin to the royal vault, and the Grand Almoner cast a shovelful of earth on the coffin, blessing it, and saying, “Requiescat in pace.” The king-at-arms approached the open vault, and threw into it his wand, his helmet, and his coat of arms, ordered the other heralds to imitate him, and calling up the grand officers of the crown, told them to bring the insignia of authority held from the defunct king. Each came in succession with the object entrusted to his care—such as the banner of the royal guard, the flags of the companies of the body-guard, the spurs, the gauntlets, the shield, the coat of arms, the helm, the pennon, the brand of justice, the sceptre, and the crown. The royal sword and banner were only presented at the mouth of the vault. The Grand Master of France inclined at the same time towards the coffin the end of his staff, and cried in a loud voice: “The king is dead!” The king-at-arms, taking three steps backwards, repeated in the same tone “The king is dead! The king is dead! The king is dead!” Then turning towards the persons assembled, he added: “Let us all pray to God for the repose of his soul.” The clergy and all present fell on their knees, prayed, and then stood up. The Grand Master then drew back his staff from above the vault, raised it in the air, and cried: “Long live the king!” The king-at-arms repeated: “Long live the king! Long live the king! Long live King Charles, the tenth of the name, by the grace of God King of France and of Navarre; very Christian, very august, very powerful; our honoured lord and master, to whom may God give a very long and very happy life. Cry all: ‘Long live the king!’” Music then sounded, and all present responded with cries of “Long live the king! Long live Charles X.!” The tomb was closed, and the ceremony was at an end.

At the funeral of the Comte de Chambord the hearse was surmounted by a dome, on which rested four crowns. It was not explained what kingdoms these crowns were intended to represent. As the head of the house of France, the right of the Count—heraldically speaking—to wear the French crown would scarcely be disputed. The four symbolical crowns on the Comte de Chambord’s hearse were possibly, then, meant to be simple reminders that the Bourbons claimed sovereign rights over four different countries; and, in the days of Louis Philippe, they in fact reigned in France, Spain, Naples, and Parma. But the revolution of 1848 in France, and the war of 1859 in Italy, cleared three thrones of their Bourbon occupants, and the last of the reigning Bourbons disappeared when, in 1868, Isabella of Spain fled from Madrid. Thus in the course of twenty years the four Bourbon crowns lost all real significance, and the Bourbon sovereigns increased the number of those “kings in exile,” so much more plentiful during the period of M. Alphonse Daudet than in that of Voltaire, who first observed them (in “Candide”) as a separate species.

Now that the Comte de Chambord reposes by the side of his grandfather, Charles X., there are as many of the Bourbons buried at Göritz as at St. Denis, where, in the burial-place of the French kings, the only really authentic bodies are those of the Duc de Berry, the Comte de Chambord’s father, and of Louis XVIII., his great-uncle. In regard to the latter occupants of the French throne, one knows at least where they are interred—Napoleon I. at the Invalides, Louis Philippe at Claremont, Napoleon III. at Chiselhurst, and the last two representatives of the Bourbons at Göritz. The first of the Bourbons Henry IV., together with his successors, Louis XIII., Louis XIV., and Louis XV., were all buried at St. Denis, in the vault known as that of the Bourbons; and to the coffins still supposed to contain their remains were added after the Restoration two more, which are reputed, without adequate foundation for the belief, to hold the bodies of Louis XVI. and of the child who died in the Temple—the so-called Louis XVII. The body of the Duc de Berry was laid in the vault of the Bourbons a few days after his[{98}] assassination in 1820; and that of Louis XVIII. was consigned to the same resting-place in 1824. But in 1793 the tombs of the French kings had been dismantled and their contents reinterred promiscuously in two large graves hastily dug for their reception; and the identity of the bones asserted to be those of Louis XVI. and Louis XVII., which were not placed in the Bourbon vault of the St. Denis church until 1815, could scarcely be demonstrated. “To celebrate the 10th of August, which marks the downfall of the French throne, we must on its anniversary,” said Barère in his report on the subject, addressed to the French Convention, “destroy the splendid mausoleums at St. Denis. Under the Monarchy the very tombs had learned to flatter the kings. Their haughtiness, their love of display, could not become softened even on the theatre of death; and the sceptre-bearers who have done so much harm to France and to humanity, seem even in the grave to be proud of their vanished greatness. The powerful hand of the Republic must efface without pity these arrogant epitaphs, and demolish these mausoleums which would bring back the frightful recollections of the kings.”

The proposition of Barère was adopted, and the National Assembly decreed “that the tombs and mausoleums of the former kings in the church of St. Denis should be destroyed.” The execution of the decree was undertaken on the 6th of August, and three days afterwards fifty-one tombs had been demolished. One of the most remarkable of these tombs was the earliest—the tomb erected by St. Louis in memory of “Le Roi Dagobert,” of facetious memory, famed in song for having put on his breeches “à l’envers.” It is one of the most curious monuments of the thirteenth century, and at least as interesting by its subject as by its architecture. In three zones superposed, the first above the second, the second above the third, is represented the legend of Dagobert’s death. In the lowest of the three zones we see St. Denis revealing to a sleeping anchorite named Jean that King Dagobert is suffering torments; and close by the soul of Dagobert, represented by a naked child bearing a crown, is being maltreated by demons frightfully ugly, who are holding their prey in a boat. In the middle zone the same demons are running precipitately from the boat in the most grotesque attitudes at the approach of the three saints—Denis, Martin, and Maurice—who have come to rescue the soul of King Dagobert. In the highest of the bas-reliefs the soul of King Dagobert is free. The naked child is now standing in a winding-sheet, of which the two ends are held by St. Denis and St. Martin, and angels are awaiting him in Heaven, whither he is about to ascend. The commission appointed by the Convention did not destroy this tomb. They had it transported, with many other objects of artistic or of intrinsic value, to Paris; and on presenting to the National Assembly what had been saved from the general wreck, the representative of the commission spoke as follows:—“Citoyens représentatives—” Les prêtres ne sont pas ce qu’un vain peuple pense; Notre crédulité fait toute leur science.[B] Such was the language formerly held by an author whose writings prepared our revolution; the inhabitants of Franciade (the new Republican name given to the religious and royal St. Denis) have just proved to you that it is not foreign either to their mind or their heart. It is said that a miracle caused the head of the saint which we now offer you to travel from Montmartre to St. Denis. Another miracle, greater and more authentic, the miracle of the regeneration of opinions, brings this head to Paris. The new translation is marked, however, by this difference. The saint, according to the legend, kissed his hand respectfully at each step; and we have not once been tempted to kiss the offensive relic. His journey will not this time be chronicled in the martyrologies, but in the annals of reason; and it will be doubly useful to the human species. This skull and the holy rags which accompany it will cease at last to be the ridiculous object of popular veneration and the aliment of superstition, fanaticism, and lies. The gold and silver which surround them will help to strengthen the empire of liberty and reason. The treasures amassed in the course of centuries by the pride of kings, the stupid credulity of the devout, and the charlatanism of deceitful priests, seem to have been reserved by Providence for this glorious epoch. It will soon be said of kings, of priests, and of saints, They have been. Reason is now the order of the day; or, to speak the language of mysticism, the last judgment has arrived with the separation of the bad from the good. You, formerly the instruments of despotism, saints of both sexes, blessed of all kinds, be at least patriots: rise in a body, march to the help of our native land, be off to the mint—and may be by your help obtain in this life the happiness you promised us in another. We bring to you, citizen legislators,[{99}] all the rottenness that existed at Franciade. But as in the midst of it there are objects designated by the Commission of Monuments as precious for the arts, we have filled with them six chariots; you will say where they can provisionally be placed, that the Commission may make a selection.”

[B] The priests are not what a shallow people thinks them; our credulity is all their learning.

When Louis XVIII. returned to the throne of his ancestors, he made it almost his first care to re-establish their tombs, and he entrusted the work to the well-known architect, M. Viollet-Le-Duc. The task of disinterring and sorting the bones of the ancient kings would have been too difficult; but coffins presumed to be those of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were discovered in the cemetery of the Madeleine, and another coffin, which might have been that of Louis XVII., was also found. These three coffins were in 1815 placed with great solemnity in the vault of the Bourbons; to which, as before mentioned, were added in 1820 and 1824 the coffins (with bodies enclosed) of the Duc de Berry and of Louis XVIII. The one king whose remains can be said beyond doubt to be in the ancient burial-places of the French kings is Louis XVIII.