Lyons.
Michelet’s Description.
Another variety, very little understood out of France, is that of extremes meeting in the same town. This is sometimes especially striking in the southern towns, and it may be of very long standing, like the conflict between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism at Nîmes, a city that cannot be correctly described as either Protestant or Catholic; and yet there is more of each religion in it than there would be if the rival faith were extirpated. But the best example in France of a city combining the most opposite characteristics is Lyons. It is at the same time most republican and most clerical. “There is one town above all,” wrote Michelet, “where the antagonism of two ages, of the spirit of old times and the new spirit, strikes even the eyes in all its grandeur—that town is Lyons.... I leaned on the parapet on the steep of Fourvières, and said to myself, as I looked upon the opposite hill, gloomy, black below, under the cypresses of the Jardin des Plantes, colossal above in its piles of work-people’s houses, ten or fifteen storeys high,—I said, These are not two hills; they are two religions. The two towns of Lyons, that of the convents and that of the workshops, are the goals of pilgrimage for the poor. Some of them come to the Lyons of miracles and seek charity; these come to Fourvières.[91] But thou, good workman, wilt come to the hill of labour, the serious Croix Rousse. The part in the banquet which thou desirest is bread won by thine own hands.” I was reminded of these words of Michelet when, at Lyons, I said to a mechanic who was working on Sunday, “This task prevents you from going to mass.” The man paused an instant in his labour, looked up at me seriously, and answered, “It is not my custom to go to mass. He who works prays.” He then resumed his prayer with hearty strokes of a hammer.
The Nation of Paris.
As in England, London is a kind of nation in itself, so in France we have the nation of Paris. The word is so little of an exaggeration that Paris has often, on the most momentous occasions, acted quite independently of the country, and did actually proclaim its right to autonomy under the Commune, whilst the constant effort of the municipal council ever since has been to erect itself into a parliament at the Hôtel de Ville, and have its own way in spite of the assemblies at the Palais Bourbon or the Luxembourg.
Character of Paris Local.
The Parisian nation has not the same characteristics as the nation of Londoners. The distinguishing character of London is to be, not local, but world-wide; the character of Paris is to be as local as ancient Athens, and as contemptuous of all that lies outside. It is commonly believed that Paris is France, but how can it be France when it is so utterly unlike the provinces? This error comes from the foreigners’ habit of staying in Paris only, so that Paris is very really and truly all France to them, being the only France they know. Yet the character of the French capital, so far from being representative, is all its own.
Paris Artistic.
France is not, generally speaking, an artistic country. In the provinces few care for art or know anything about it, whereas Paris is the most artistic city in Europe; and that not simply as the place where pictures and statues are produced in the greatest numbers, and architects find most employment, but as the place where art sentiment is most generally developed, so that it runs over into a thousand minor channels, till the life of the capital is saturated with it.
French Provincial Life.