That night we slept opposite the cathedral in the eighteenth-century Hôtel Lion d'Or. I recollect the thrill of excitement my sister and I felt as the big bus rattled into the courtyard of that quaint hostelry and agile valets in yellow-and-black striped waistcoats ran to open the door for us. We felt that we were at last to live a storybook life of adventure and romance.
The deep-toned bells of the cathedral awakened us at dawn, and in the pale light we rushed to the windows to look out on the sculptured façade of the wonderful building in order that we might feel again the strange charm that had so wrought upon us at our first sight of it. In the open square before us a valiant figure caught our attention, a figure of bronze that sat upon a spirited charger and held aloft a spear—Jeanne d'Arc, before the cathedral that had witnessed her brief hour of glory. The story we knew well, but shape and color it had never had before. The centuries before ours had been hardly more to us than Arabian Nights' tales, yet here was the visible evidence of the mighty procession of people who had existed before our day. We could not take the shortest walk in the city without being reminded of the dim perspective of history stretching far back of our youth, for here it was written in tangible and enduring stone.
At the rear of the Hôtel Lion d'Or we could see the old hotel of the sign of the Maison Rouge, where the father and mother of Jeanne d'Arc were housed at the time of the crowning of the dauphin. We could walk over the cobblestone of the narrow rue de Tambour, which was once, so history says, one of the largest and most frequented of the streets of Rheims. We could look up at the Maison des Musiciens, so old a building that no one knows for what it was originally built. On its quaint façade how often we curiously examined the broken figures of the sculptured musicians, for this was the street down which the royal processions passed on their way to the coronation at the cathedral. The soldiers in the vanguard had struck and broken the statues with their spears to make way for the banners and pennants of the brilliant cavalcade. How full of color and splendor the street must have appeared then! But that was all past, and the musicians, in our time, looked down only upon market-women trundling their wares through to the market-place beyond. The old building, nevertheless, still served to re-create, in the fancy of two wondering girls, those stately yesterdays.
In the rue Carnot how often we paused to glance up at a curious archway supporting two round towers! Old, very old it looked. And no wonder! for it dated from the Middle Ages. Under the arch we could catch a glimpse of the walls of the cathedral, gray as frost, and the prison, with beggars sitting in its grim shadow.
How the past centuries peered out at us from every corner, showing in quaint portals such as the one on the school of the Petit Lycée, with its bas-reliefs of a laughing child on one side and a crying one on the other, known to the "bons enfants" since the beginning of the school as "Jean qui rit" and "Jean qui pleure." Or that of the old house of the La Salle family, in the rue de l'Arbalète, with its life-size figures of Adam and Eve to guard the entrance.
When we walked down the rue Cérès we passed the house where Louis XIV's famous minister, Colbert, was born, and often pictured him coming out of the wide doorway, the courtly, velvet-clad figure that the portrait of him in the art museum had made familiar to our minds: for many a trip we made to the Hôtel des Ville to see the paintings and the wonderful illuminated books in the library and the beautiful old building itself. We would often stop, I remember, to read the list of marriages posted in the vestibule, the Maries, the Yvonnes, and the Marguerites, the Jeans, the Marcels, and Pierres who were to "live happily ever afterward," or so we confidently believed. Several years later the elder sister came with her lover to read shyly her own, for the old and dignified Salle des Marriages was to be the background of her romance, too.
We had read Dumas, and Anne of Austria, as every one knows, figures largely in his tales. But that she was more real than d'Artagnan we had hardly conceived, until one day we stood before the seventeenth century house in the rue de l'Université which once had the honor of sheltering her. It belonged to Jean Mailefer, and he has left an account of the visit in quaintly spelled old French which we were fortunate enough to have a chance to read. He was very proud of the magnificence of his dwelling, and spread its luxury before us as a peacock might spread his gorgeous tail for humbler birds to admire. It was fit for a queen he felt, and lo! she was coming. He describes exultantly the sound of the trumpets that signalized the consequential arrival of royalty. "Tatera, tatera, tatera! Que d'honeurs qui vont tomber sur mes foibles espaulles!" ["What honors to fall upon my poor shoulders!">[ The pride of the seventeenth century—how laughably like it is to that of the twentieth. The queen as she entered, jestingly said, "The house is my own!" "Yes, grande Princess, you are right," responded its owner, quickly. At the same time the Marshal Duplessis asked of him, "Monsieur, are you the master of this house?" "Monsieur," replied the gallant gentleman of Rheims, bowing with a grand air, I make no doubt, "Monsieur, I was but a moment ago; but when the sun appears, the stars are eclipsed."
In the rue de la Grue we searched out the house where was born Tronson du Coudray, an eloquent lawyer of the Paris Parliament and the courageous defender of Marie Antoinette. With all our young enthusiasm we loved him as the champion of the ill-fated queen. The Porte de Paris, the great iron gateway in Rheims, the guidebooks told us was a triumph of the smith's art, but it held our imaginations in thrall because it had been built in honor of the crowning of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Somewhere we had found an account of the coronation, and read how joyously they had entered the city, and how in the cathedral, in the midst of the acclamations and applause, so loud and prolonged that they covered the sound of the bells and the noise of the cannon, the "gracieuse Marie Antoinette" had fainted and thus "elle a perdu quelques instants du plus beau jour de sa vie" ["she had lost some moments of the most beautiful day of her life">[. We loved to imagine her against the background of that rich interior of the cathedral, the light through its glowing windows touching with iridescence the tall gray pillars; the royal pennants and draperies, bright tones against the sombre hues of the marvelous tapestries; gold flashing here and there from tall candlesticks and brilliant uniforms; wonderful gems catching fire from the great arched windows that seemed, in the brightness of the sun, to be themselves made of rival jewels. A splendid setting for "the most beautiful day of her life." "The height, the space, the gloom, the glory," how they typified that life!
The Porte de Paris, too, was eloquent of the fierce days of the Revolution. The people of Rheims tell how the mob one day came surging toward it, when the ringleaders proposed that they destroy the gilded crown upon its apex as the symbol of hated royalty. Then the mayor, a man of tactful resource, called to the most furious of the band and asked if he had a ten-sou piece at his service. The man readily passed it to him, whereupon the mayor at once gave it to a beggar standing near. "Take it," said he; "Monsieur will have nothing with a crown upon it." Every one laughed, and the crown on the gate was saved.
Under the wide arch of the Porte de Paris victorious Napoleon entered after the Prussian occupation of the city in 1814. It was already nightfall when the fierce battle was fought, and not until eleven o'clock was Napoleon able to enter the city. What an ovation he received from the rejoicing citizens—the Remois! It thrilled us to read it. All at once the great bells of the cathedral thundered forth a welcome, while at the same time every window in the town was lighted and a great cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" rang from end to end of the city. The house in the rue de Vesle, where he slept that night, is an old acquaintance.