CHAPTER VI.
OLD PARIS
The Paris of Dumas was Méryon’s—though it is well on toward a half-century since either of them saw it. Hence it is no longer theirs; but the master romancer and the master etcher had much in common.
They both drew with a fine, free hand, the one in words that burn themselves in the memory, and the other in lines which, once bitten on the copper plate, are come down to us in indelible fashion. The mention of Méryon and his art is no mere rambling of the pen. Like that of Dumas, his art depicted those bold, broad impressions which rebuilt “old Paris” in a manner which is only comparable to the background which Dumas gave to “Les Trois Mousquetaires.”
The iconoclastic Haussman caused much to disappear, and it is hard to trace the footsteps of many a character of history and romance, whose incomings and outgoings are otherwise very familiar to us.
There are many distinct cities which go to make up Paris itself, each differing from the other, but Dumas and Méryon drew them each and all with unerring fidelity: Dumas the University Quarter and the faubourgs in “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” and Méryon the Cité in “The Stryge.”
The sheer beauty and charm of old-world Paris was never more strongly suggested than in the work of these two masters, who have given a permanence to the abodes of history and romance which would otherwise have been wanting. It is a pleasurable occupation to hunt up the dwellings of those personages who may, or may not, have lived in the real flesh and blood. The mere fact that they lived in the pages of a Dumas—or for that matter of a Balzac or a Hugo—is excuse enough for most of us to seek to follow in their footsteps.
In spite of the splendour of the present and the past, Paris is by no means too great to prevent one’s tracing its old outlines, streets, and landmarks, even though they have disappeared to-day, and the site of the famous Hôtel Chevreuse or the Carmelite establishment in the Rue Vaugirard—against whose wall D’Artagnan and his fellows put up that gallant fight against the cardinal’s guard—are in the same geographical positions that they always were, if their immediate surroundings have changed, as they assuredly have.
Indeed, the sturdy wall which kept the Carmelite friars from contact with the outer world has become a mere hoarding for gaudily coloured posters, and the magnificent Hôtel Chevreuse on the Boulevard St. Germain has been incorporated into a modern apartment-house, and its garden cut through by the Boulevard Raspail.
The destruction of “Old Paris”—the gabled, half-timbered, mediæval city—is not only an artistic regret, but a personal one to all who know intimately the city’s history and romance. It was inevitable, of course, but it is deplorable.