To the south of the Champs Elysées is the Cours de la Reine, planted by Catherine de’ Medici, for two years the most fashionable carriage drive in Paris. The charming Maison François I. brought from Moret, stone by stone, in 1826 stands re-erected at the further corner of the Cours. To the north, in the Cours de Gabriel, a fine gilded grille, surmounted with the arms of the Republic, gives access to the Elysée, the official residence of the President. It was once Madame Pompadour’s favourite house in Paris, and the piece of land she appropriated from the public to round off her gardens is still retained in its grounds. In the Avenue Montaigne (once the Allée des Veuves, a retired walk used by widows during their term of seclusion) Nos. 51 and 53 stand on the site of the notorious Bal Mabille,[176] the temple of the bacchanalia of the gay world of the Second Empire. In 1764 the Champs Elysées ended at Chaillot, an old feudal property which Louis XI. gave to Phillipe de Comines in 1450, and which in 1651 sheltered the unhappy widow of Charles I. Here Catherine de’ Medici built a château, but château and a nunnery of the Filles de Sainte Marie, founded by the English queen, disappeared in 1790. As we descend the Rue de Chaillot and pass the Trocadero we see across the Pont de Jéna the gilded dome of the Invalides and the vast field of Mars, the scene of the Feast of Pikes, and now encumbered by the relics of four World’s Fairs.
The Paris we have rapidly surveyed is, mainly, enclosed by the inner boulevards, which correspond to the ramparts of Louis XIII. on the north demolished by his successor between 1676 and 1707, and the line of the Philip Augustus wall and the Boulevard St. Germain on the south. Beyond this historic area are the outer boulevards which mark the octroi wall of Louis XVI.; further yet are the Thiers wall and fortifications of 1841. Within these wider boundaries is the greater Paris of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of profound concern to the economical and social student, but of minor interest to the ordinary traveller. The vogue of the brilliant and gay inner boulevards of the north bank so familiar to the foreigner in Paris is of comparatively recent growth. In the early nineteenth century the boulevard from the Place de la Madeleine to the Rue Cambon was almost deserted by day and dangerous by night—a vast waste, the proceeds of the confiscated lands of the Filles de la Conception. About the same time the fashionable cafés were migrating from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, south of which was built the Theatre of the Comédie Italienne, afterwards known as the Opéra Comique. Its façade was turned away from the boulevard lest the susceptible artists should be confounded with the ordinary “comediens of the boulevard.” From the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard St. Martin followed lines of private hotels, villas, gardens and convent walls. A great mound which separated the Boulevard St. Martin from the Boulevard du Temple still existed, and was not cleared away until 1853. From 1760 to 1862 the Boulevard du Temple was a centre of pleasure and amusement, where charming suburban houses and pretty gardens alternated with cheap restaurants, hotels, theatres, cafés, marionette shows, circuses, tight-rope dancers, waxworks, and cafés-chantants. In 1835, so lurid were the dramas played there, that the boulevard was popularly known as the Boulevard du Crime. But the expression of the dramatic and musical genius and social life of the Parisians in their higher forms is of sufficient importance to merit a concluding chapter.
CHAPTER XX
THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE—THE OPÉRA—SOME FAMOUS CAFÉS—CONCLUSION
AS early as 1341 the Rue des Jongleurs was inhabited by minstrels, mimes and players. They were men of tender heart, for in 1331 two jongleurs, Giacomo of Pistoia and Hugues of Lorraine, were touched by beholding a paralysed woman forsaken by the way, and determined to found a refuge for the sick poor: they hired a room and furnished it with some beds, but being unable to provide funds for maintenance, their warden collected alms from the charitable. In 1332, at a meeting of the Jongleurs of Paris, Giacomo and Hugues were present, and urged the claims of the poor upon their fellows. The players decided to found a guild with a hospital and church dedicated to St. Julian of the Minstrels,[177] but the Bishop of Paris, doubting their financial powers, required a certain sum to be paid within four years, in order to endow a chaplaincy and to compensate the curé of St. Merri. The players more than fulfilled their promise; their capitulary was confirmed by pope and king, and in 1343 they elected William the Flute Player and Henry of Mondidier as administrators; the servants of the Muses were therefore of no small importance in the fourteenth century. As early as 1398 the Confraternity of the Passion is known to have existed, and so charmed the people of Paris by its Passion Plays that the hour of vespers was advanced to allow the faithful time to attend the representations, which lasted from 1.30 to 5 o’clock without any interval. In 1548 the Confraternity was performing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, the old mansion of Jean Sans Peur, for it was then forbidden to play the mystery of the Passion any more, and limited to profane, decent and lawful pieces, which were not to begin before 3 o’clock. From 1566 to 1676 the Comedians of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as they were then called, continued their performances, and many ordinances were needed to purify the stage, to prevent licentious pieces and the use of words of double entente. Competitive companies performed at the Hôtel de Cluny, and in the Rue Michel le Comte, in those days a narrow street which became so blocked by carriages and horses during the performances that the inhabitants complained of being unable to reach their houses, and of suffering much from thieves and footpads. It was at the Hôtel de Bourgogne that the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine—Le Cid, Andromaque and Phèdre—were first performed.