The student revels of the quartier have become more sedate, if not more fastidious, and there is no such Mardi Gras and Mi-Carême festivities as used to hold forth on the boulevards in the forties. And on the Buttes Chaumont and Montmartre are found batteries of questionable amusements,—especially got up for the delectation of les Anglais, provincials, and soldiers off duty,—in place of the cabarets, which, if of doubtful morality, were at least a certain social factor.
New bridges span the Seine, and new thoroughfares, from humble alleys to lordly and magnificent boulevards, have clarified many a slum, and brightened and sweetened the atmosphere; so there is some considerable gain there.
The Parisian cabby is, as he always was, a devil-may-care sort of a fellow, who would as soon run you down with his sorry old outfit as not; but perhaps even his characteristics will change sooner or later, now that the automobile is upon us in all its proclaimed perfection.
The “New Opera,” that sumptuous structure which bears the inscription “Académie Nationale de Musique,” begun by Garnier in 1861, and completed a dozen years later, is, in its commanding situation and splendid appointments, the peer of any other in the world. In spite of this, its fame will hardly rival that of the Comédie Française, or even the Opéra Comique of former days, and the names of latter-day stars will have difficulty in competing with those of Rachel, Talma, and their fellow actors on the stage of other days.
Whom, if you please, have we to-day whose name and fame is as wide as those just mentioned? None, save Madame Bernhardt, who suggests to the well-informed person—who is a very considerable body—the preëminent influences which formerly emanated from Paris in the fifties. But this of itself is a subject too vast for inclusion here, and it were better passed by. So, too, with the Parisian artists who made the art of the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Decamps, Delacroix, Corot, and Vernet are names with which to conjure up reminiscences as great as those of Rubens, Titian, and Van Dyke. This may be disputed, but, if one were given the same familiarity therewith, it is possible that one’s contrary opinion would be greatly modified.
To-day, in addition to the glorious art collection of former times, there are the splendid, though ever shifting, collections of the Musée du Luxembourg, the mural paintings of the Hôtel de Ville, which are a gallery in themselves, and the two spring Salon exhibitions, to say nothing of the newly attempted Salon d’Automne. Curiously enough, some of us find great pleasure in the contemplation of the decorations in the interiors of the great gares of the Lyons or the Orleans railways. Certainly these last examples of applied art are of a lavishness—and even excellence—which a former generation would not have thought of.
The Arc de Triomphe d’Étoile, of course, remains as it always has since its erection at the instigation of Napoleon I.; while the Bois de Boulogne came into existence as a municipal pleasure-ground only in the early fifties, and has since endured as the great open-air attraction of Paris for those who did not wish to go farther afield.
The churches have not changed greatly in all this time, except that they had some narrow escapes during the Franco-Prussian War, and still narrower ones during the Commune. It may be remarked here en passant that, for the first time in seventy years, so say the records, there has just been taken down the scaffolding which, in one part or another, has surrounded the church of St. Eustache. Here, then, is something tangible which has not changed until recently (March, 1904), since the days when Dumas first came to Paris.
The Paris of the nineteenth century is, as might naturally be inferred, that of which the most is known; the eighteenth and seventeenth are indeed difficult to follow with accuracy as to the exact locale of their events; but the sixteenth looms up—curiously enough—more plainly than either of the two centuries which followed. The histories, and even the guide-books, will explain why this is so, so it shall have no place here.
Order, of a sort, immediately came forth from out the chaos of the Revolution. The great Napoleon began the process, and, in a way, it was continued by the plebeian Louis-Philippe, elaborated in the Second Empire, and perfected—if a great capital such as Paris ever really is perfected—under the Third Republic.