CHAPTER IX.
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC.
At the end of the last chapter we spoke of the profane application of some of the most sacred things to signboard purposes. In France this was still worse than in England. That amusing gossip, Tallemant des Réaux, in his “Contes et Historiettes,” tells us how an innkeeper of the Rue Montmartre, in Paris, put up for his sign the God’s head, (la Tête Dieu,) and notwithstanding all the efforts of the curé of St Eustache to make him take it down he would not comply until compelled by the magistrates. Though two centuries have elapsed, the French of the present day are not much better; for in Paris, in the Rue Mondétour, there is actually a café known as the Nom de Jesus.
Boursault, a clever writer of the time of Louis XIV., whose indignant letter about the Royal Arms we have noticed in a [former chapter], addressed a letter to Bizoton, one of the police magistrates, in which he vents his anger at some of the religious signs, and complains of the profanity of a lodging-house with the sign of the Annunciation in the Rue de la Huchette, in which there were as many rogues and reprobates as there were honest lodgers. Amongst the signs that shocked him most he names le Saint Esprit, (the Holy Ghost,) la Trinité, (the Trinity,) l’Image Notre Dame, &c.; but particularly one, representing Christ taken prisoner, with the profane motto, “Au juste prix.” This contains a blasphemous pun,—juste prix at once signifying a fixed price, and “just caught.” The sign was set up at a little ordinary in a lane between the Rue St Honoré and the Rue Richelieu. And, though Boursault says in his letter that he had so fumed and thundered against the landlord that he had taken it down, yet it made its appearance again afterwards, and was handed down to our time, since not many years ago it might have been observed in the Cour du Dragon, above the shop of an ironmonger.
Saints are still in full feather on the signboards in Roman Catholic countries. Amongst hundreds of others the following may be seen in Paris on cafés and hotels in the present day:—St Barbe, St Christophe, St Eustache, St Joseph, St Laurent, St Marie, St Louis, St Merri, St Michel, St Paul, St Phar, St Pierre, St Quentin, St Roc, St Thomas d’Aquin, St Vincent de Paul, &c., &c.
A curious French sign is mentioned by Coryatt, which he saw at Amiens. “I lay at the signe of the Ave Maria, where I read these two verses, written in golden letters upon the linterne of the doore, at the entry into the Inne. This in Greeke, Της φιλοξενιας μη ἐπιλανϐανεσθε, that is, Forget not your good entertainment; and this in Latine, Hospitibus hic tuta fides.”[402]
Saints were formerly very common on signboards, and this abuse also was wittily ridiculed by the pungent satire of Artus Desiré, a French poet of the fifteenth century:—
“En leur logis plein de vers et de teignes,
Où est logé le grand diable d’enfer,
Mettent de Dieu et de saints les enseignes,
Leurs ditz logis où n’y a que desroys.
Pendre font tous sur le pavé du roy
De grands tableaux et enseignes dorées,
Pour des montres qu’ils ont fort bien de quoy,
Et qu’il y a de tres grasses porées.
L’un pour enseigne aura la Trinité,
L’autre Saint Jehan, et l’autre Saint Savin,
L’autre Saint Maure, l’autre l’Humanité
De Jesus Christ notre Sauveur divin,
De Dieu, des saintz, sont leurs crieurs de vin,[403]
Tant aux citez que villes et villages,
Des susditz sainctz les devotes images,
En prophanant leur préciosité.”[404]