From the Place St. Eustache we cross (L.) to the Rue Vauvilliers, formerly the Rue du Four St. Honoré, the west side of which still retains much of its old aspect, and many of the shops, their old signs: Au Chou Vert; Le Panier Fleuri, etc. Descending this street southwards, a turn (R.) up the Rue de Vannes will bring us to the Ruggieri column, transformed (1812) into a fountain, as the inscription tells. Resuming our way down the Rue Vauvilliers we turn R. by the Rue St. Honoré and opposite, at the corner of the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, find the old fountain of the Croix du Trahoir, erected in the reign of François I. and rebuilt by Soufflot in 1775. Here tradition places the cruel death of Queen Brunehaut (p. [29]). Descending this street to the Rue de Rivoli, we note, No. 144, to the L. an inscription marking the site of the Hôtel de Montbazon where Coligny was assassinated. We cross to the Rue Perrault and soon reach the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois from whose tower rang the signal for the St. Bartholomew butchery. The porch was added in 1431 for the convenience of distinguished worshippers; for it was the parish church of the Château of the Louvre and consequently the royal chapel. The saints and martyrs on the portail and porch are therefore closely associated with the history of Paris: opposite to us extends Perrault's famous E. façade of the Louvre.
SECTION IX
Palais Royal—Théâtre Français—Gardens and Cafés of the Palais Royal—Palais Mazarin (Bibliothèque Nationale)[235]—St. Roch—Vendôme Column—Tuileries Gardens—Place de la Concorde—Champs Élysées.
From the Palais Royal Station of the Métropolitain we issue before the great palace begun by Richelieu (p. [212]). To our L. stands the Théâtre Français, occupied by the Comédie Française since 1799, on the site of the old Variétés Amusantes or Palais Variétés built in 1787, a little to the W. of Richelieu's Theatre of the Palais Cardinal. This latter was the scene of Molière's triumphs and of his piteous death, and the original home of the French Opera whose position is indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. Honoré. It was at the Théâtre des Variétés, when the staid old Comédie Française was rent by rival factions that Chenier's patriotic tragedy, Charles IX., was performed on 4th November 1789, and the pit acclaimed Talma with frantic applause as he created the rôle of Charles IX., and the days of St. Bartholomew were acted on the stage. The bishops tried to stop the performances, and priests refused absolution to those of their penitents who went to see them. The Royalists among the Comedians replied at the Nation (the Odéon) by playing a royalist repertory, Cinna and Athalie, amid shouts from the pit for William Tell and the Death of Cæsar, and the stage became an arena where political factions strove for mastery. Men went to the theatre armed as to a battle. Every couplet fired the passions of the audience, the boxes crying, "Vive le Roi!" to be answered by the hoarse voices of the pit, "Vive la nation!" Shouts were raised for the busts of Voltaire and of Brutus: they were brought from the foyer and placed on the stage. The very kings of shreds and patches on the boards came to blows and the Roman toga concealed a poignard. For a time "idolatry" triumphed at the Nation, but Talma and the patriots at length won. A reconciliation was effected, and at a performance of the Taking of the Bastille, on 8th January 1791, Talma addressed the audience, saying that they had composed their differences. Naudet, the Royalist champion, was recalcitrant, and amid furious shouts from the pit, "On your knees, citizen!" at length gave way, embraced Talma with ill-grace, and on the ensuing nights the Revolutionary repertory, The Conquest of Liberty, Rome Saved, and Brutus, held the boards.
In the stormy year of 1830, when the July Revolution made an end for ever of the Bourbon cause in Paris, the Comédie Française again became a scene of fierce strife. Hernani, a drama in verse, had been accepted from the pen of Victor Hugo, the brilliant and exuberant master of the new Romantic school of poets who had determined to emancipate themselves from the traditions, long since hardened into dogmas, of the great dramatists of the siècle de Louis Quatorze. On the night of the first performance each side—Romanticists and Classicists—had packed the theatre with partisans. The air was charged with feeling; the curtain rose, but less than two lines were uttered before the pent-up passions of the audience burst forth: —
Doña Josefa—"Serait-ce déjà lui? C'est bien à l'escalier
Dérobé—"
The last word had not passed the actress' lips when a howl of execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of verse. The Romanticists, led by Théophile Gautier, answered in withering blasphemies; the Classicists began to
"... prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks,"
and the pit became a pandemonium of warring factions. Night after night the literary sects renewed their fights, and the representations, as Hugo said, resembled battles rather than performances. The year 1830 was the '93 of the classic drama, but the passions it evoked have long since been calmed and Hernani and Le Roi s'Amuse, the latter suppressed by Louis Philippe after its first appearance, have taken their places in the classic repertory of the Français beside the tragedies of Corneille and Racine.
At No. 161 Rue St. Honoré, now Café de la Régence, beloved of chess players, is the site of the Porte St. Honoré of the Charles V. wall before which Joan of Arc was wounded at the Siege of Paris in 1429. The old chess-players' temple where Diderot loved to watch the matches; where the author of Gil Blas beheld in a vast and brilliantly lighted salon, a score of silent and grave pousseurs de bois (wood-shovers) surrounded by crowds of spectators amid a silence so profound that the movement of the pieces alone could be heard; where Voltaire and D' Alembert were often seen; where Jean Jacques Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor was forced to seek police protection; where Robespierre loved to play a cautious game and the young and impecunious Napoleon Bonaparte, an impatient player and bad loser, waited on fortune; where strangers from all corners of the earth congregated as in an arena where victory was esteemed final and complete; where Poles, Turks, Moors and Hindoos in their picturesque garbs made a scene unparalleled even at the Rialto of Venice; where on Sunday afternoons a seat was worth a monarch's ransom—this classic Café de la Régence which, until 1852, stood on the Place du Palais Royal, no longer exists.