An epitome of society this. Paris was indeed full of adventurers, of criminals even among the high-born, of gamblers so mad over games of chance that special laws had to be passed driving them out of the city. There is still standing near the Hôtel de Ville the Hôtel d’Aubray where lived the famous poisoner, the Marquise de Brinvilliers.
A glance at the career of this woman shows a social condition amazing in its calm iniquity. The marquise herself, of seemingly guileless charm, acquired from a lover the destructive skill which she utilized in removing from her path her relatives and any other people who interfered with her in any way. Her trial is a “celebrated case” not only because of her own rank but because other people of note were suspected of being in collusion with her. Torture was abolished under Louis XIV but not until after Madame de Brinvilliers had been made to drink many buckets of water and to be sadly bent across wooden horses.
She was beheaded on the Grève, her body burned and the ashes thrown to the winds. At about the same time accident disclosed an astounding number of cases of poisoning or attempted poisoning. Mme. de Montespan undoubtedly tried to make way with the father of her children, the king, and rumors were constant of many other instances. “So far,” said Mme. de Sevígné’s son, “I have not been accused of attempting to poison little mamma, and that is a distinction in these days.”
Paris was lively enough during this reign, for Versailles was not so far away but that its people could go to town for city diversions, and as Louis grew more serious with age and court etiquette more rigorous and burdensome, the town made its call more and more insistently. Louis himself, hugely bewigged and elaborately elegant, however, does not often appear in the picture. Once he took part in a gorgeous carrousel—a carnival chiefly of equestrian sports—which took place in the large square—now called the Place du Carrousel—lying between the Louvre and the Tuileries. Once, twenty-five years later, he was entertained at the Hôtel de Ville at a dinner at which the city officials waited upon him in person. Yet neither of these pictures lingers in the memory like that of the bewigged monarch usually most punctilious in his dress for occasions, appearing in the palace of the Cité before the Parliament, booted for the chase, arrogantly careless of any courtesy toward the body he addressed and haughtily insisting with the full force of his sincere belief that he and the State were one,—“L’État c’est moi.”
Power was dear to the king’s heart and he so impressed his magnificence on his people that they thought it only fitting that he should have a rising sun carved on the buildings which he erected, such as that part of the Louvre which he built to complete the eastern quadrangle. (See plan, Chapter XXII). The eastern exterior of this section, facing the church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, shows the superb colonnade designed by Perrault, a sort of universal genius, who was both a physician and an architect. Another piece of his work was the Observatory, still in active use on the left bank near the University. The king’s appreciation of splendor demanded completeness, and so his handsome buildings were placed in the setting of stately gardens, his chief designer being Le Nôtre whose work is still to be seen encircling the palaces in the environs of Paris. In the city he laid out the gardens of the Tuileries, and that superb avenue, the Champs Elysées, which leads from the broad Place de la Concorde to Napoleon’s Arch of Triumph. The four hundredth anniversary of Le Nôtre’s birth was celebrated on March 12, 1913, when Parisians recalled his work with almost unanimous approval because of its harmony with the impressive buildings which it supplemented.
Other important buildings of Louis’ reign were the Invalides or Soldiers’ Home with its church and its later addition, the work of Mansard who gave his name to the curb-roof which we know. Beneath Mansard’s beautiful dome the body of Napoleon now lies “among the people whom I loved.”
Louis’ contest with the pope over the king’s position as head of the French church tended to lessen his interest in the establishment of religious institutions, but the famous church of Saint Sulpice, whose twin towers are landmarks on the left bank, was begun by him, together with the seminary whose square ugliness is soon to house the overflow from the near-by Luxembourg museum. Since the quarrel between church and state in 1902-03, the building has stood bleakly empty except when it was used to shelter some of the refugees made homeless by the Seine floods a few years ago.
The Abbey-in-the-Woods, removed by Louis from Picardy to Paris and made famous by the residence there in the middle of the last century of the witty Madame Récamier, has been until very recently one of the chief historic “sights” near the celebrated left bank department store, the Bon Marché.
The Church of Saint Nicholas-du-Chardonnet is interesting chiefly because of the tomb which LeBrun, the painter, designed in honor of his mother, a sepulcher opening at the summons of a hovering angel.
Among Louis’ good works must be counted the union of several hospitals into one known as the Salpêtrière from its occupying the site of a saltpeter manufactory, and devoted to-day to the care of nervous diseases and insanity.