HÔTEL CARNAVALET.
Seasons.” After changing hands more than once and being restored in the seventeenth century by another famous architect, Mansart, the house was occupied for eighteen years by Madame de Sévigné, the author of the famous “Letters.” When it was taken over by the city it was again thoroughly restored, and it now stands not only as a fine example of sixteenth and seventeenth century architecture but as a repository for bits and sections of old buildings from other parts of the city.
Not far away is the Hôtel Lamoignon, built toward the end of the sixteenth century for one of Henry II’s daughters. It is used for business purposes to-day, but its façade is still imposing with lofty Corinthian pilasters which rise from the ground to the roof. In the course of its vicissitudes it was the first home of the city’s historical library, and in the nineteenth century it was made into apartments, in one of which Alphonse Daudet, the novelist once lived.
Montaigne speaks with frankness of the evil smells of the streets of this time, and it is small wonder, since animals were slaughtered not far from the city hall, and the offscourings of the abattoirs drained into the Seine emitting foul odors as they went. Charles was moved to improve the condition of the Grève, which was a mud-hole and a dump-heap, not, apparently, because its state made it a disgraceful entrance to the city hall, but because it inconvenienced the crowds who assembled to witness tortures and executions on the square.
With Charles IX on the throne of France, Catherine de Medicis sought to provide for her youngest son by placing him on the vacant throne of Poland. A splendid fête at the Tuileries celebrated his election, and he set forth joyfully for his new kingdom. He had lived in his adopted country only a few months when the news of his brother’s death reached him. The French crown, was, naturally, more attractive than the Polish, and Henry planned immediate departure for his fatherland. He had been long enough in Poland to know something of the temper of his subjects and he fled like a criminal before the pursuit of enraged peasants armed with scythes and flails. If they had known him better they might not have been so eager to keep him.
The Parisians were not fond of Henry. He made his formal entry into the city adorned with frills and ear-rings, and accompanied by sundry small pet animals. It was his habit to carry fastened about his neck a basket of little dogs and occasionally he dug down under them to find important papers. Silly as it sounds this habit at least had the merit of being more humane than Charles IX’s custom of having fights between dogs and wild beasts.
Henry began at once to change for the worse his mother’s already vile court. Occasionally he was stricken with remorse and made such public exhibition of repentance as caused excessive mirth to all beholders of the processions wherein he and the dissolute young men, his “minions,” walked barefooted through the city. It is related that the court pages were once sharply switched in the Hall of the Cariatides in the Louvre for having indulged in a take-off of one of these penitential exercises of their king’s.
Except for the continuing of the work on the Louvre, decorating the old clock on the palace on the Cité (see Chapter VI) beginning the Pont Neuf across the western tip of the Cité, and establishing a few religious houses, Henry III was too busy contending with the Parisians to have time or inclination to beautify the city.