"Vos climats ont produit d'assez rares merveilles
C'est le pays des grands talents
Des Fontenelle des Corneilles
Mais ce ne fut jamais l'asile du printemps."
HOUSE IN RUE PETIT SALUT. (RUE AMPÈRE 13.)
As the eighteenth century progressed, commercial prosperity returned with extraordinary rapidity, and the town shows every sign of making an intelligent use of its opportunities. A mission is sent to Smyrna and Adrianople to learn the textile methods of the East; dyers in the Rue Eau de Robec are busier than ever; the Quartier Cauchoise is set apart for industrial work, for silk and wools and linens; there is a great storehouse for grain, a huge "Halle des Toiles"; a Bourse for business men. In 1723 a new "Romaine," or Custom-House, was built, which involved the destruction of the Porte Haranguerie and the Porte de la Viconté, and upon its triangular pediment was placed Coustou's beautiful carving of "Commerce," of which I reproduce a drawing in these pages. After the Revolution the "Tribunal des Douanes" was held in the Maison Bourgtheroulde, until in 1838 the present "Douane" was built by Isabelle, and Coustou's relief was set beneath its rotunda inside. The various fortunes of the Custom-House of Rouen have been described by M. Georges Dubosc, another of those patriotic antiquarian writers, in whom Rouen is richer than any provincial town I know. His large volume on the architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gives so complete and accurate a list that I am fortunately relieved from any discussion of a period with which I must confess an uninstructed want of sympathy. But I owe it to his insight that the beautiful courtyard (illustrated in this chapter) in the Rue Petit Salut (now No. 13 Rue Ampère) was not put down as sixteenth century in my notes, a date to which I was inclined by the fine open staircase and doorway on the right of the courtyard. On its left is an undoubted Renaissance pillar, probably taken from its original position in another place, and high above you rises a gabled window with carved sides.
The only historical event I have been tempted to connect with this spot is the entry of Louis d'Orléans in 1452, who is said to have lodged in the "Hôtel d'Estellan, Rue Petit Salut." But the house is worth visiting if only to speculate on the dungeon windows in the corner of the little street outside, and to look up the Impasse Petit Salut a little further on, where the Tour de Beurre rises with an extraordinary effect of solitary beauty above the twisted roof trees into the sky.
By the time of Louis XV. it becomes somewhat difficult to find the interesting men of this or any other French city; you must look for them in the anti-chambers of the Duc de Choiseul, in the robing-rooms of the Pompadour or the Du Barry. In 1774 Rouen saw the typical sight of the Duchesse de Vauguyon reviewing her husband's troops. When Louis XV. passed through the town, and the Pompadour was seen smiling by his side, the citizens' reception of the doubtful honour was a very cold one. And when Louis XVI. paid his call of ceremony upon the Mayor, a still more melancholy presage broke the harmony of the peal that welcomed him from the Cathedral belfry, for the great bell Georges d'Amboise—which weighed 36,000 pounds, and had rung in every century since the great minister of Louis XII. gave him to the town—cracked suddenly, and was never heard again. He has a successor now, but his own metal was used for quite another purpose. When the Revolution broke out, the bronze that had served to call the faithful from all the countryside to prayer was melted into cannon and roundshot that were to send the Royalists to heaven by much quicker methods.
Rouen passed comparatively lightly through the Reign of Terror. Only 322 persons were guillotined in the whole of Normandy, and the local justices beheaded nearly as many in suppressing the disorders that followed the general disorganisation of society. Even on the 1st of November 1793 we hear of the first night of Boieldieu's "La Belle Coupable" performed at the Théatre de la Montagne. And though Thouret is sent up as Deputy to Paris (and afterwards to draw up the Constitution), though the irascible Marquis d'Herbouville is always making a disturbance, though the "Carabots" revolt and break out into pillage, it is only when "Anarchists" from Paris come down to trouble them that the good folk of Rouen "draw the line." In fact, they hanged the over-zealous Bourdier and Jourdain upon the quay just by the bridge.
It is interesting that no less a personage than Marat, then plain Dr Marat, had several Mémoires crowned by the Academy of Rouen, one of them on Mesmerism. Voltaire thought little of his capabilities then, but the "ami du peuple" left a gentle reputation in the town, and is even credited with having preserved an old illuminated manuscript under his mattress during some riots that threatened its safety. A more authenticated fact is that Charlotte Corday came from Caen, and popular tradition insists still that it was from the carving of Herodias on the façade of Rouen Cathedral (which the townsfolk call "La Marianne dansant," for some unknown reason) that the suggestion came to her of saving the People from their Friend.
The great Napoleon first saw Rouen in its capacity as a trading centre. Its industry very soon recovered after the Revolution, and an actual "Exposition" was organised in the Tribunal de Commerce, which was inspected by Josephine and the First Consul Bonaparte. He returned as Emperor, and in 1840 the city solemnly received him for the last time, when his body was brought back from St. Helena and passed beneath the first bridge across the Seine at Rouen.
The kings who had been deposed with so much bloodshed and fanfaronade, reappeared as if nothing had happened when Louis Philippe laid the first stone for the pedestal of Corneille's statue carved by David d'Angers. In 1871 that statue was all draped in black. The streets of Rouen, hung with funereal emblems, were all in the deepest mourning, every shop was closed and every window shuttered. Upon the plain of Sotteville a great army was manœuvring to and fro to the sound of words of command in a strange tongue. General Manteuffel, the Duke of Mecklenburgh, and "Prince Fritz" had led the German army of invasion into Rouen, and from December till July they occupied the town and its surrounding villages. For the last time Rouen was in the hands of foreigners. But the traces of this catastrophe have absolutely disappeared. The ruin of the Revolution and the iconoclasm of the religious struggles have left far deeper marks; and Rouen, sacked by the English, and occupied by the Germans, suffered more injury at the hands of her own citizens, than either from Time or from any foreign foe.