She had scarcely quitted Paris when this murder of her lover before her door and the speedy gratification of her desire for vengeance on the assassin were thus set forth in verses sung freely in the public streets:—
La Royne Vénus demi-morte
De voir mourir devant sa porte
Son Adonis, son cher Amour,
Pour vengeance a devants a face
Fait défaire en la mesme place
L’assassin presque au mesme jour.
The Hôtel de Torpane, in the Rue de Bernardins, was the mansion of the Bignon family, which has produced so many illustrious men in literature and in law. It was demolished in 1830, but remains of it still subsist. Some years ago a stone, bearing the motto of the Bignon family—“Multa renascentur”—was found (what irony!) in the midst of the ruins. Nothing of a fallen house lives again except, perhaps, certain ornaments which, like the sculpture of the Hôtel de Tortonne, are carried elsewhere—in this particular case, to a back room in the École des Beaux-Arts. The statues which once adorned the Hôtel de Torpane are said—but probably without foundation—to be from the hand of Jean Goujon.
Mention has already been made of the Hôtel Carnavalet, where the genius of Jean Goujon may really be studied. It owes its name to the widow of M. Kernevenoy, whose Breton name had become softened into that of Carnavalet, and who in his lifetime had been the worthy friend of Ronsard and of Brantôme. Madame “Carnavalet” bought the house for herself and her son. She maintained it in its original beauty, which it was impossible to increase. She did, however, add some ornaments, especially the sculptured masks which figure here and there on the façade, and which, according to the ingenious idea of M. Fournier, may have been intended to suggest, through the “Carnival,” her husband’s family name.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ.
“Uncle” and “Aunt”—Organisation of the Mont-de-Piété—Its Various Branches—Its Warehouses and Sale-rooms.
FRENCH idioms, and particularly slang ones, are seldom translatable into English. The cant Parisian word, however, for a pawnbroker bears quite a comic resemblance to the word employed in London. The medical student of our metropolis, when he is at low water, takes his watch to his “uncle.” The medical student of Paris resorts, under like circumstances, to his “aunt.” Neither would think of employing the dignified historical word used by the student of Brussels, who, as if mindful of the pawnbroker’s origin, calls him “the Lombard.”
The English student speaks of the unfortunate watch in question as being “up the spout”; the Parisian declares that his is “on the nail”—the idea apparently being that the chronometer is “hung up” until more prosperous days.
The great pawnbroking establishment, or Mont-de-Piété, of Paris, is situated in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, with a principal branch office in the Rue Bonaparte; but it may be interesting meanwhile to glance at those minor establishments which are scattered over the whole of the French capital. Like their counterparts in London, they excite in the philosophic beholder a melancholy curiosity, above all in the poorer quarters, where dire necessity compels the levying of those loans which, in more fashionable parts, are the result of an extravagant life.