A BALLAD OF PARIS WOMEN[1]
Bright talkers do the walls of Florence hold;
Venetian damsels’ repartee is gay;
The ancient ladies in their courts of old
With merry gibe enlivened the long day.
But whether she be Lombardese or Roman,
Or, if you please, in great Genóa born,
A Piedmont or a brilliant Savoy woman—
The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.
The belles of lovely Naples, so they say,
In clever conversation take great pride;
German and Prussian maids with chatter gay
Entrance the swains that in those lands abide.
Whether she live in Greece or Egypt, then,
Or Hungary or other land adorn,
A Spaniard be or dark-browed Castellan—
The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.
Heavy of speech are Swiss girls and Breton,
The Gascon also and the Toulouse maid,
Two chatterboxes from the Petit Pont
Would without effort put them in the shade.
Whether in Calais or in fair Lorraine
The maiden lives or greets an English morn,
Whether she’s Picard or Valencienne—
The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.
Envoi
For sparkling wit, then, give the foremost prize,
O Prince, to damsels who are Paris born.
Though we may jest with bright Italian eyes,
The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.
Louis’ son, Charles VIII (1483-1498), reigned with a personal enthusiasm which diminished the power of the nobles, yet permitted the rise of the Third Estate, the political combination of the peasantry and the citizens or bourgeois class. He repaired the palace and the Sainte Chapelle in which he introduced an organ. His interest in Italy being excited Charles began a war there of no great importance in itself, but interesting as bringing to France a knowledge of art and architecture, which, when increased at the time of Louis XII’s (1498-1515) southern expedition, imposed ready-made upon France the style called Renaissance.
This style was a renewal of the classic influence. It flattened roofs and doors and windows, and decorated with designs borrowed or copied from the Greeks and Romans. An intermediate style shows a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance as was natural in this period of architectural change. While roofs and windows were flattening there were frequent combinations of pointed roofs and flat windows, of pointed windows and flat roofs. Sculptors were loath entirely to give up Gothic decoration yet were eager to show their knowledge of Renaissance. The result is called Transition, and often is too conglomerate to be pleasing. The most charming example in Paris is the Hôtel de Cluny, built adjoining the Thermes by the Abbots of Cluny and rebuilt by Louis XII.[2] Exquisite in every detail, and filled with one of the best collections of medieval domestic art in Europe it is a joy to the architect and the antiquarian. No happier afternoon can be spent in Paris than in roaming through these treasure-laden rooms and then in sitting in the Garden of the Thermes, letting the eye wander from the Roman ruins sixteen centuries old, massive and severe, to the lighter elegances of the medieval abbey, and then through the bars of the enclosure to the rushing streets of modern Paris. The French babies rolling on the grass are growing up with such contrasts so usual to them that they never will know the thrill that fires the American at the sight of these links in the chain of a great city’s history.
