Historic Paris

by Jetta Sophia Wolff

CHAPTER XXI
THE LUXEMBOURG

ARRONDISSEMENT VI. (LUXEMBOURG)

THE palace that gives its name to the arrondissement was founded by Marie de’ Medici and built on the model of the Pitti palace at Florence by Salomon de Brosse between the years 1615-20. The site chosen was in the neighbourhood of the vast monastery and extensive grounds of the Chartreux. The duc de Luxembourg had an hôtel there. It was sold to the Queen and razed; but vainly was the new edifice on the spot called by its builder “Palais Médicis.” The name of the razed mansion prevailed over that of the Queen.

A garden was begun in 1613 on a space in the Abbey grounds where, in a previous age, a Roman camp had stretched.

JARDIN ET PALAIS DU LUXEMBOURG

Marie left the palace to her second son, Gaston d’Orléans. It was the abode of various royal personages till the outbreak of the Revolution. Then it became a prison. Camille Desmoulins and many of his compeers were shut up there. The Chartreux fled and their monastery was levelled with the ground. The Terror over, the palace became successively Palais des Directeurs, Sénat Conservateur, Chambre des Pairs and, in 1852, Sénat Impérial. After Sedan it became the Sénat de la République. The gardens were extended across the property of the Chartreux. They are beautiful gardens. The Renaissance fountain is the work of Jacques de Brosse. The statues we see on every side among the lawns and the flower-beds, in the shady alleys, most of them the work of noted sculptors, show us famous men and women of every period of French history from Ste-Bathilde and Ste-Geneviève to our own day.

The Petit Luxembourg is also due to Marie de’ Medici, built a few years after the completion of the larger palace. From the day of its inauguration by Richelieu it knew many inhabitants of note: Barras, Buonaparte and Joséphine, etc., sojourned there. It was used at one time as a senate house, then as a Préfecture. We see in an adjacent wall a marble mètre—the standard measure put there under the Directoire. Finally the mansion was chosen as the official residence of the president of the Senate.

Rue Vaugirard, on which the chief entrance of both these palaces open, is the longest street in Paris and one of the oldest. It is, like many another long Paris street, made up of several thoroughfares once distinct. The first of these, Rue du Val-Girad, led from the village named from its chief landowner, an abbé of St-Germain-des-Prés, Gérard de Meul. In close proximity to the Palace is the Odéon, the Second Théâtre-Français, once the “Français” itself, built in 1782, on the site of the hôtel de Condé, burnt down in 1799, rebuilt by Chalgrin, reopened in 1808 as théâtre de l’Impératrice, badly burnt a few years later, restored as the théâtre Français, then again restored in 1875. The place surrounding the theatre and the streets opening out of it are rich in historic and literary associations. No. 1, Café Voltaire, was a meeting-place of eighteenth-century men of letters of every class and type. At No. 2 lived Camille Desmoulins and his Lucile. There he was arrested. In Rue Rotrou, No. 4, now a well-known bookseller’s shop, was once the famous Café Tabourey. André Chenier lived in Rue Corneille. Rue Tournon was opened in 1540, across the site of a horse-market bearing the realistic name Pré-Crotté, on land belonging to the Chapter of St-Germain-des-Prés, and named after its abbé, Cardinal de Tournon. At No. 2, hôtel Chatillon (seventeenth century), Balzac passed three years, 1827-30. No. 4 dates from the days of Louis XIV as hôtel Jean de Palaiseau, later hôtel Montmorency. Lamartine lived here in 1848. At No. 5 lived and died the notorious devineresse Mlle Lenormand, “sybille de l’Impératrice Joséphine.” Another prophetess, Mme Moreau, lived here in the time of Napoléon III. No. 7, hôtel du Sénat et des Nations, sheltered Gambetta for a time, also Alphonse Daudet. At No. 6, hôtel de Brancas (1540), inhabited in its early years by the duchesse de Montpensier, rebuilt under the Regency, we see a very fine staircase and frescoed boudoir. Pacha lived for some years at No. 13. No. 8 dates from 1713, on the site of a more recent hôtel. At No. 10, hôtel Concini, Louis XIII lived for a time to be near his mother, Marie de’ Medici, at the Luxembourg. St. François de Sales stayed here. It served as the hôtel des Ambassadeurs Extraordinaires (1630-1748), was sequestered at the Revolution; then became a barracks as it is to-day. At No. 19 the Scot, Admiral Jones, famous for his help in the American War of Independence, died in 1791; his bones were taken to America in 1905. No. 33, the well-known restaurant Foyot, was in old days hôtel de Tréville, where royalties sometimes dined incognito. At No. 19 we come to an old curiosity shop surmounted by a barber’s pole, and on the doorpost we read the words, with their delicate flavour of irony: