By la loi du 9 Juillet, 1835, a line was built from Paris to St. Germain, seventeen kilometres, and its official opening for traffic, which took place two years later, was celebrated by a déjeuner de circonstance at the Restaurant du Pavillon Henri Quatre at St. Germain.
Then came “Le Nord” to Lille, Boulogne, and Calais; “L’Ouest” to Havre, Rouen, Cherbourg, and Brest; “L’Est” to Toul and Nancy; “L’Orleans” to Orleans and the Loire Valley; and, finally, the “P. L. M.” (Paris-Lyon et Méditerranée) to the south of France. “Then it was that Paris really became the rich neighbour of all the provincial towns and cities. Before, she had been a sort of pompous and distant relative”—as a whimsical Frenchman has put it.
The mutability of time and the advent of mechanical traction is fast changing all things—in France and elsewhere. The Chevaux Blancs, Deux Pigeons, Cloches d’Or, and the Hôtels de la Poste, de la Croix, and du Grand Cerf are fast disappearing from the large towns, and the way of iron is, or will be, a source of inspiration to the poets of the future, as has the postillon, the diligence, and the chaise de poste in the past. Here is a quatrain written by a despairing aubergiste of the little town of Salons, which indicates how the innovation was received by the provincials—in spite of its undeniable serviceability:
“En l’an neuf cent, machine lourde
A tretous farfit damne et mal,
Gens moult rioient d’icelle bourde,
Au campas renovoient cheval.”
The railways which centre upon Paris are indeed the ties that bind Paris to the rest of France, and vice versa. Their termini—the great gares—are at all times the very concentrated epitome of the life of the day.
The new gares of the P. L. M. and the Orleans railways are truly splendid and palatial establishments, with—at first glance—little of the odour of the railway about them, and much of the ceremonial appointments of a great civic institution; with gorgeous salles à manger, waiting-rooms, and—bearing the P. L. M. in mind in particular—not a little of the aspect of an art-gallery.
The other embarcadères are less up-to-date—that vague term which we twentieth-century folk are wont to make use of in describing the latest innovations. The Gare St. Lazare is an enormous establishment, with a hotel appendage, which of itself is of great size; the Gare du Nord is equally imposing, but architecturally unbeautiful; while the Gare de l’Est still holds in its tympanum the melancholy symbolical figure of the late lamented Ville de Strasbourg, the companion in tears, one may say, of that other funereally decorated statue on the Place de la Concorde.
Paris, too, is well served by her tramways propelled by horses,—which have not yet wholly disappeared,—and by steam and electricity, applied in a most ingenious manner. By this means Paris has indeed been transformed from its interior thoroughfares to its uttermost banlieu.
The last two words on the subject have reference to the advent and development of the bicycle and the automobile, as swift, safe, and economical means of transport.
The reign of the bicycle as a pure fad was comparatively short, whatever may have been its charm of infatuation. As a utile thing it is perhaps more worthy of consideration, for it cannot be denied that its development—and of its later gigantic offspring, the automobile—has had a great deal to do with the better construction and up-keep of modern roadways, whether urban or suburban.