In 1736 the reposoir[70] in the Palais-Royal was constructed from the design of Servandoni, the architect of S. Sulpice; and its importance attracted multitudes of curiosity-hunters from all parts of the town.
In 1729 Jean-François-Robert Secousse succeeded his uncle, and was the author of a pamphlet which he gave away to his parishioners entitled: Lettre d'un Curé à N—— au sujet des Spectacles. His successor, Jean-Jacques Poupart, was for some time confessor to Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. When the storm arose, he took the oath to the Constitution; but, finding the lengths to which it carried him, he retracted, went into hiding, and administered to his flock in secret. During the early years of the Revolution, no church suffered more than S. Eustache. Situated in the midst of a populous district, it became the scene of untold horrors. But it was also the resting place for Mirabeau's body on its way to the Panthéon, on the 4th April, 1791; and had nothing worse than the funeral oration by Cerutti, pronounced from the banc-d'œuvre,[71] taken place, the sacrilege would have been but small. Trouble was looked for in the following May, when the hairdressers' assistants caused a service to be said for the great orator; but instead of the church being invaded by 10,000 persons, as was expected, a poor 600 were all that put in an appearance, and these were well conducted. Not so the Women's Club which was held in the building, if Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins[72] is to be trusted:
La société révolutionnaire siégeait á Saint-Eustache; elle était composée de femmes perdues, aventurières de leur sexe, recrutées dans le vice, où dans les réduits de la misère, ou dans les cabanons de la démence. Le scandale de leurs séances, le tumulte de leurs motions, la bizarrerie de leur éloquence, l'audace de leurs pétitions importuna le Comité de Salut Public, qui ferma le club. On peut juger par là ce qu'il devait en être de la pauvre église. Près de là siégeait aussi le fameux club de la rue Mauconseil.
Another club for women, founded by an actress named Lacombe, was dissolved after a speech of Robespierre's, in which we find that "Cette réunion de vraies sans-culottes ne saurait durer plus long-temps, parce qu'elle prête au ridicule et aux propos malins."
In 1793 the Feast of Reason was celebrated with as much profanity and indecency here as at Notre-Dame, as witness Mercier's account, told in the forcible language of Carlyle:
The corresponding festival in the church of S. Eustache offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables overloaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pasties, and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors; whosoever presented himself took part of the good things; children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft, in a serene manner; cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors (continues the exaggerative man) were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of chapel-balustrades, of priests' and canons' stalls; and the dancers—I exaggerate nothing—the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and Destruction.[73]
S. Eustache was re-opened for divine service sooner than many of the other churches, M. Poupart coming out of his hiding in June, 1795; but he had to share his church for some time with the philanthropists and the municipal councillors, who held their meetings there upon certain days. And the church was, moreover, but four walls and a roof; nearly all the contents had vanished. The altars, the bronze statues, the pulpit, the pictures, the tombs, the slabs and epitaphs, all but the banc-d'œuvre, had gone to the museum of the Petits-Augustins; happily, for otherwise they would have gone into the fire.
In 1804, Pius VII., dragged to Paris by Napoleon to perform the coronation ceremony, was invited to visit S. Eustache and bless a statue of the Blessed Virgin; which he did with "une bonté paternelle." The occasion naturally called forth all the ceremonial of which the church was capable: Suisses (beadles), vergers, MM. les maires, and MM. les marguilliers, magistrates, juges de paix, clergy, M. le curé Bossic, and his eminence the cardinal archbishop. His Holiness was received at the church door by the archbishop, M. de Belloy, and divers other bishops and dignitaries of church and state; who had to submit to hearing a Latin oration by the curé. The music was brilliantly executed by a large choir, and the ceremonial of an imposing character; peculiarly touching was the moment when the archbishop, an old man of ninety-six, who had to be supported by two prelates, mounted the steps of the altar, and presented the linen cloth to his Holiness for wiping his hands. After mass a reception took place in one of the chapels, and a number of the faithful had the honour of "kissing the papal slipper," says the account of the ceremony signed by a number of the dignitaries present.
Among the celebrities buried in the church or the burial-ground hard by are the following: Bernard de Girard, Seigneur du Haillan, historian, who died in 1610; Marie Jars de Gournay, the adopted daughter of Montaigne, and the editress of his essays; Vincent Voiture, poet and wit, who died in 1650; the Academician François de la Motte-le-Vayer; the poet Isaac Benserade; another Academician Furetière; the graceful music-maker, Rameau; the painter, Lafosse; a superintendent of finance, Claude de Bullion (a curiously appropriate name); Phélippeau, duke of la Vrillière; the chancellor d'Amenonville; a peer and marshal, François d'Aubusson de la Feuillade, who worshipped his king, the fourteenth Louis, and elevated a wondrous monument to his glory, the prancing steed and man in the Place des Victoires; and a medicine man of the same king a member, too, of the Academy, Martin Cureau de la Chambre, aged seventy-five when he died in 1669. The physician is said to have been the consulter-general of the king, and they carried on a secret correspondence, in which the former thought that the sovereign would "court grand risque de faire à l'avenir de mauvais choix de ministres," if he survived Cureau. The last curate buried in the church was Poupart, in 1796.
What is now the market of S. Joseph was formerly the burial-ground dedicated to that Saint. It belonged to the parish of S. Eustache, and in 1630 Chancellor Séguier built a chapel therein at his own expense. Here Molière and La Fontaine were buried, but the monuments were carried off to the museum of the Petits-Augustins, where they remained until 1818, when they were re-erected at Père-la-Chaise. Molière was also born in the parish, at a house, since pulled down, which occupied the site of the corner of the rue St. Honoré and the rue du Pont Neuf, formerly de la Tonnellerie.