Formerly, before Louis XIV. admitted them to the Louvre, the Guild of Painters and Sculptors held its meetings in the Rue Trainée, and its fêtes and funeral masses in the chapel of S. André in S. Eustache; in consequence of which the king, to do honour to the Academy, allowed its rector, Antoine Coysevox, to add the royal lily to his arms, and to place them in this chapel, thus honouring Coysevox at the same time as his fellow sculptors and painters. The guild was founded by Lebrun, and held its meetings at the Sieur Martin de Charmois' house. This Seigneur de Lauré was secretary to Marshal Schomberg; and full of zeal for art and artists, was the author of the scheme of a guild. Signed by Lebrun, Sarazin, Perrier, Bourdon, de la Hire Corneille, Juste d'Egmont, Vanolstat, Hause, de Guernier, Errard, Van-Mol, Guillier, and Eustace Lesueur, the petition was presented to the king, and supported by chancellor Séguier and de la Veillière, it obtained the royal assent. Like our later foundation, the Academy made several moves before it was finally settled. First in Charmois' house, it migrated to the Hôtel Clisson, Rue des Deux-Boules, where it held its meetings until the squabbles of the rival artists subsided, and accommodation was found for the members at the Louvre. Most appropriately, the decoration of this chapel was given in 1850 to Isidore Pils, one of the great painters of the latter part of this century, so well known by his Battle of the Alma, the Mort d'une Sœur de Charité, and La Prière à l'Hospice. The subjects are from the life and death of the titular saint, Andrew; on one side, his crucifixion upon the transverse cross which bears his name; upon the other, Angels bearing him to heaven. In the latter, a more delicious little group of children, soi-disant Angels, has rarely been painted, even by that master of chubby and graceful babies, Prud'hon. Pils, says M. l'abbé Koeneg[69] loved children, and he certainly painted them as none but a lover of childhood could have done. The chapel Richelieu was founded by the great cardinal, and is the burial place of the Vrillière family, whose hotel is now the Banque de France. The door close by is called the Porte de la Miséricorde by reason of its paintings, which represent the Seven Works of Mercy. They are by M. Biennourry.
The Chapelle des Catéchismes is a very ancient foundation, having been erected in the old church by Louis d'Orléans, the brother of Charles VI., in honour of S. Michael. Two centuries later, the Orléans family sold it to Président Forget, and a chapel was built out of it to serve, first as a sacristy, and then as a room for confraternities to hold their meetings in. The staircase is very elegant, with its handsome wrought-iron grille and balustrade of the time of Louis XVI. The chapel seems to be used now as a boys' vestry, and the effect of the acolytes in their red cassocks and white albs passing up or down this beautiful flight of steps is picturesque in the extreme. S. Eustache is one of the few churches in Paris which has not adopted the Roman use as regards the dress of the acolytes, who still wear the long alb plaited or trimmed with lace, and the sash, red, white, or pale blue, according to the season. Years ago, before the Parisian rite was superseded by the Roman, there were many little differences in the ritual; to wit, the two precentors sitting near the chancel grille, vested in copes, and at certain times during mass marching up and down the choir. Then again, on great festivals, six men holding censers stood in a row, and throwing them up, knelt upon one knee to catch them. The effect of this during Benediction was grand in the extreme; the Roman practice of two boys gently swinging the censers bearing no comparison to the Parisian. The Lady chapel, known as Notre-Dame de Bon-Secours, served in the 17th century as the assembling place of various charitable societies, and notably of the Société de Bons-Secours, which was so much patronised by the noblesse and the rich tradespeople. The chapel is in the same style as the side ones, and is a mass of colour, the decorations being by M. Dénuel. The frescoes were originally undertaken by Ary Scheffer, who, perhaps fortunately for posterity, was so long working out his subject that he gave the matter up, Couture taking his place. But great artist as he was, Couture was hardly the man to decorate a church; his work and his sympathies were so eminently Classic in style, that it is difficult to feel that his paintings illustrate pages of Gospel history and legendary lore. There is no more religious sentiment in Couture's work than in the Eclectic decadence of Italy, or the 18th century French school. Many persons object to our latest group of religious painters; but the feeling expressed in the pictures of M. Lhermitte, of Bastien-Lepage, of Mr. C. Pierce, of M. Dagnan-Bouveret, and even in M. Béraud's Crucifixion, to say nothing of Herr Uhde's work, is far more religious than in many, one might almost say, in most of the frescoes and pictures by modern artists in the various churches. Sentimentality is not religious sentiment, and cast-up eyes do not necessarily express devotion. Again, the light is so bad in this chapel that it is very difficult to judge of Couture's work, even from the æsthetic point of view; and therefore we cannot think this picture equal to the grand Romains de la Décadence in the Louvre. The altar is a handsome specimen of the reign of Louis XIII., but the statue which surmounts it, by Pigalle, has the usual sentimental character of 18th century sculpture. A plaque informs the faithful that it was blessed by Pius VII. in 1804; but, unfortunately, a pope's blessing will not turn a piece of marble into a fine work of art.
The chapel of S. Louis de Gonzague was the property of the Colbert family, and contains the tomb of the great minister. The monument was executed from a design by Lebrun, and, although of the usual type of that period, it is not without a certain grandeur. A black marble sarcophagus supports the kneeling figure of Colbert, arrayed in the robes of the order of the Saint-Esprit. The hands, joined in prayer, are exquisitely modelled. The expression of the face is fine, and the flow of the draperies is well executed. At the foot of the monument are figures of Religion by Tubi and Abundance by Coysevox; the latter a good example of the sculptor's style. This was one of the monuments saved from the Vandal mob in 1792, by Lenoir, who marched it off to the museum of the Petits-Augustins, where it remained until 1801, when it was returned to S. Eustache.
More relics are to be seen in the next chapel, those of S. Pierre l'Exorciste, a saint who suffered in the neighbourhood of Rome, having obligingly dug his own grave previously to being beheaded. The authenticity of the relics are vouched for by the sign manual of Cardinal Caprara. One requires faith to believe in the authenticity of these, or any other relics; not that one doubts their preservation by loving hands after the martyrdoms, but there is a great gulf of time which is not easily bridged over. Take, for instance, the relic of the True Cross kept at Notre-Dame. It is not at all improbable that the cross might have been preserved by the friends of Our Lord; and the same remark applies to many of the other relics with which S. Louis and others adorned the Sainte-Chapelle—the Spear, the Handcuffs, the Crown of Thorns, even the linen stained by the precious blood. That the Apostles, or S. Joseph of Arimathea, or Nicodemus, or S. Mary and her sister Martha, would have done their best to gain possession of these relics of their dear Master, is not only possible, but probable. We are all relic-mongers at heart; our forefathers gathered together the remains of saints and martyrs; we ourselves keep locks and curls of hair, babies' teeth, bits of clothing, rings, and photographs. Where is the difference? If the lost first-born's only tooth is precious to its mother, why should not S. Holocaustus' toe-nail be equally so to those who live in the Saint's parish or commune? We have Charles I.'s hair, and Queen Elizabeth's stockings; and there is no reason why a thousand years hence they should not still be in their cases. But if a great upheavement took place, such as the siege of Jerusalem, or the first French Revolution, the saving of such relics would be difficult, although not by any means impossible. Take the finding of the True Cross by S. Helena early in the 4th century. If this be true, it is by no means impossible that it was preserved up to the time of S. Louis. Nor is it impossible that someone connected with the church of S. Denis should have secreted the relic before the desecration of the tombs in 1793. Rumours precede acts; and having a valuable relic, why not hide it away when dangers lurk in the distance? But if so, why did not this person preserve the vessels in which the relics were kept? Why not have buried all those costly chalices, crosses and reliquaries? Why have left them to be seized upon by profane hands and melted up, if there were time to save their contents? But the chief difficulty is to account reasonably for the gap between the Crucifixion and the finding of the Cross; and it requires such a long bridge of faith to traverse this space of three hundred years that one feels reluctantly obliged to take the "Invention" of the Cross in its most literal sense.
The arms over the chapel of the Sainte-Madeleine are those of France barré, commemorating the foundation (in the old church) by Charles, Comte de Valois, duc d'Angoulême, a natural son of Charles IX., that most excellent Christian king and zealous son of the Church, who persecuted and slaughtered heretics for the good of their souls, thereby converting them (in the next world) from the error of their ways, and so covering his own multitudinous sins and wickednesses. There is a handsome confessional of carved wood, period Louis XV., in this chapel; and in the next, the relics of S. Vincent de Paul are enclosed in a fine Louis XIV. châsse. Lest any reader doubts the correctness of my translation, let me give the list of these relics in the original. "Les reliques de St. Vincent de Paul se composent d'une image teinte du sang du saint prêtre retrouvée légèrement coagulé quand on a ouvert son tombeau, de deux médailles formées de sa chair et de ses os mis en pâte, d'une parcelle de sa chair, de fragments de son suaire, de la soutane qu'il portait de son vivant, de la soutane dont il a été retrouvé vêtu dans sa bière, enfin d'un morceau de cette bière. Le tout est muni du cachet de la Mission et accompagné de quatres authentiques signés par MM. les supérieurs de Saint-Lazare." This and the S. Madeleine are the oldest of the chapels, and are both architecturally fine, with wrought-iron grilles of elegant and cunning workmanship. The paintings (1634), attributed to Simon Vouët or his Italian pupils, represent scenes in the life of S. Anne, to whom the chapel was originally dedicated by Anne de Monsigot, dame de Bourlon, who may be seen humbly sitting upon the stairs of the temple, with her two children standing by her side; while above, the high priest Zachariah is receiving the Blessed Virgin, who is presented by her mother and father. Very beautiful are the Angels bearing the instruments of the Passion, which are painted upon the eight compartments of the ceiling.
The founder of the chapel of S. Geneviève was one Jehan Brice, a merchant, whose desire that it should be richly decorated was carried out by the widow, Guillemette de l'Arche, in 1546, who is said to have been the heroine of a tale, which has been made familiar to us through the Italian opera of La Gazza Ladra. It appears that an old MS. in the possession of M. Boblet gives the list of foundation masses in the parish, and amongst them is one entitled La Pie Voleuse, which was said daily for the poor servant unjustly accused of stealing the spoon, found later on in the roof of the church. But the unwonted hour fixed for the mass, 4 a.m., and the name thereof, seem rather to point to the magpie than to the maid. May not the mass have been for the thief rather than for the innocent damsel? And was it not made thus early to assure the attendance of all the feathered tribes (who are wont to rise betimes), and to be unto them at once a warning and a duty paid to their cousin-german, the mean and wicked magpie? A Tobias and the Angel, by Santi di Tito, belonging originally to Louis XV., and ascribed to Andrea del Sarto, is of a certain interest. The frescoes, taken from the life of S. Louis in the chapel bearing his name, are amongst the best in the church. M. Barrias has thrown much grandeur into his subject, S. Louis carrying the Crown of Thorns to the Sainte-Chapelle; but no one has so thoroughly depicted the ascetic beauty of the King, his true piety and unflinching faith, as M. Olivier-Merson in the wall-paintings of the corridor of the Cour de Cassation, in the Palais de Justice. In all the works of the latter painter the truest religious sentiment is invariably to be found; and if he errs upon the side of ugliness, is it not an infinitely smaller fault than the sentimental upturned eyes and radiant beauty of the German religious painters of the Cornelius and Hesse schools?
The tribune over the sacristy door was put up by the Duchesse d'Orléans, Adélaïde, the mother of Louis Philippe, in 1778, that she might enjoy privacy when she was present at the offices. It is a noble example of the finished style of Louis XVI.
Amongst the treasures of S. Eustache are an ivory crucifix in the sacristy: a bone of the patron Saint, from the cemetery of S. Priscilla, given in 1660 by Pope Alexander VII. to Sieur Chauvin; a tooth, formerly in the church of S. Jacques-l'Hôpital; and some bones of S. Eustache and his wife and children, said to have been formerly amongst the treasures of S. Denis; but I find no record of them in Dom Millet. The frescoes in the chapel of the patron Saint were painted by M. le Hénaff, in imitation of those found in the catacombs of Rome, the painter having copied the incorrect drawing as well as the fervent feeling of the early painters.
One or two more pictures by Vouët may be seen; and in the chapel of the Redemption are the frescoes of M. Glaize, one of the few painters who seems to have understood the spirit in which a church should be decorated.