Twenty Centuries of Paris

by Mabell S. C. Smith

It was Philip who built the first quay to restrain the Seine from damaging its banks. The king bought the Hôtel de Nesle of which the Tour de Nesle, scowling across at the Louvre, was a part. Its grounds had stretched down to the water where they fringed the stream with willows under which the townspeople used to enjoy the shade on hot summer days. The king had the trees cut down and a wall constructed to check the swirl of the river whose two arms rejoin just above after their separation by the island.

In the palace the administrative work of the city and of France was conducted, and so extensive was it now with all Philip’s territorial additions and all his activities calling for court adjustment that the ancient building was found to be much too small. Enguerrand de Marigny superintended its enlargement, and so generously did he build that the old palace came to be called “Saint Louis’ little hall.” The grandest part of the new structure was the Great Hall, called to-day in its rebuilt form the Salle des Pas Perdus. It was lofty and adorned with much vivid blue and gold. Statues of all the kings of France from Pharamond were placed on the upper parts of the pillars, visualizing historical characters for the youth of the town who might read dates on tablets affixed. For long years the curious were delighted by the sight of the skeleton of what chroniclers have described as a sort of crocodile, which had been found under the palace when the new foundations were dug. Across one end of the room was the enormous marble slab known as the table of Saint Louis. What is supposed to be a fragment of it is now in the lower part of the palace. Around this table met the members of three different law courts. When dinners or suppers of ceremony were given by the monarch only royalties were allowed to sit at this post of honor. An idea of its size may be gained from the knowledge that the Clerks of the Basoche at a later time used to enact plays upon it as a stage.

This organization, the Clerks of the Basoche, came into being in Philip the Fair’s time. The clerks of the law courts used to hold trials to adjust differences among themselves. They played the parts of attorneys and court officers, and no doubt there was a fine display of imitative rhetoric. The word basoche probably is derived from basilica, and was adopted because it was high-flown and unusual. The president was called the King of the Basoche until Henry III, who felt a bit weak about his own royal strength, forbade the use of the title.

In the court in front of the palace the clerks used to plant a tree or pole on the last day of every May, and this entrance is called even now the Cour du Mai. Here stood the tumbrils that carried the Revolutionary victims to the guillotine. At the foot of the former staircase convicts were branded, and here Beaumarchais gained the best possible free advertisement when his books were burned as being hostile to the well-being of society.

Opening out of the Salle des Pas Perdus is the “First Chamber,” the room which replaces Saint Louis’ bedchamber. Many a stern tribunal has been held there since the time of the gentle king. It was here that Louis XIV commanded his abashed hearers to understand that “I am the State,” and here sat the court that gave Marie Antoinette a poor semblance of trial.

With its prisons on one side stirring with memories of the Revolution, and its wonderful Gothic jewel, the Sainte Chapelle, on the other, the Palace of Justice, with all its myriads of rooms for a myriad of purposes, is one of the most story-laden and varied in Europe.

When Enguerrand de Marigny had finished his work of enlargement Philip commanded a season of rejoicing in the city. For a whole week the townsfolk poured in to the palace to see and to admire, and all the shops were closed so that there might be no other distractions. These same people had to pay the bills for the new construction, and, since the privilege of free entrance was one of long standing it is to be hoped that they felt themselves sufficiently rewarded for their enforced outlay by the pleasure given to their esthetic sense.

To the ceremony of the knighting of the king’s three sons, which was a part of the celebration, they were not admitted in numbers, as that was in the more private Louvre.

Philip the Fair’s immediate successors, Louis X, le Hutin, the Quarreler (1314-1316), Philip V, the Long (1316-1322), and Charles IV, the Fair (1322-1328), were rulers of small account. They all did some fighting, all inherited their father’s capacity to raise financial trouble for their subjects, and all had serious domestic difficulties. Their wives were unfaithful to them, and the three women were imprisoned or forced to enter the Church. Two brothers, Pierre and Philip Gualtier d’Aulnay, the lovers of Louis’ wife, Marguerite of Burgundy and of Charles’s wife, Blanche, were executed on the Grève. Philip’s wife, Jeanne of Burgundy, was the playful lady who dropped Buridan into the Seine from the Tour de Nesle.

After Marguerite had been strangled in her prison Louis le Hutin married Clémence of Hungary. His posthumous son, John I, lived but a few days, and Philip the Long claimed the confirmation of the promise which the Parliament of Paris, sitting in the palace, had made to support him rather than let the throne go to a possible daughter of Louis. This decision established the Salic law as applying to the throne.