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It has been seen that, according to Mercier and, after him, Castil Blaze, the extreme revolutionists among the Terrorist party desired that the Opera House in the Rue Richelieu might meet with the ordinary fate of theatres, in the hope that flames or flaming embers blown from the conflagration might reach the National Library, just opposite. This does not accord with the fact that the Convention did its utmost to encourage learning, literature, and art. The free system of the University, the College or Gymnasium at from eight to ten francs a month, and the Conservatoire de Musique, with its endowments, its scholarships, and its free tuition, all date from the first days of the Republic of 1789. As to the formal demolition of the Opera House, whose destiny was supposed to be fire, it happened in this way: —
On the 13th February, 1820, which was the last Sunday of the Carnival, an unusually brilliant audience had assembled at the Opera House, or Académie Royale, as it now once more was called. The Duke and Duchess of Berri were present; and before the performance had been brought to an end, the duke, struck by an assassin, was a dead man.
The circumstances of the murder were very dramatic, not only by their theatrical surroundings (for the performance still went on while the duke was expiring in the manager’s private apartments), but also by the remarkable way in which his whole life – with his double marriage and his two families – reproduced itself in the last few hours of his existence. The opera or operetta of the evening was at an end, and a portion of the ballet had been played, when the duke accompanied the duchess to her carriage, intending to return to his box to see the remainder of the performance. Then it was that the assassin grappled with him and pierced him to the heart. The duke was carried to the director’s room, and in accordance with the practice of the day, was at once bled in both arms. The internal hemorrhage was still so great, that it was thought necessary to widen the orifice.
“There,” says a contemporary writer, “lay the unhappy prince on a bed hastily arranged, and already soaked with blood, surrounded by his father, brother, sister, and wife, whose poignant anguish was from time to time relieved by some faint ray of hope, destined soon to be dispelled. When Dupuytren, accompanied by four of his most eminent colleagues, arrived, it was thought for a moment that the duke might yet be saved. But it soon became evident that the case was hopeless. The duke’s daughter had now been brought to him, and after embracing her several times, he expressed a desire to see the king, Louis XVIII. Then arrived two other daughters, the children of the union he had contracted in England. The duchess, seeing them now for the first time, received them with the greatest kindness, and said to them: ‘Soon you will have no father, and I shall have three daughters.’ In a neighbouring room the assassin was being interrogated by the Ministers Decaze and Pasquier, with the bloody dagger on the table before them; while on the stage the ballet of ‘Don Quixote’ was being performed in presence of an enthusiastic public. In the course of the night the king arrived, and his nephew expired in his arms at half-past six the next morning, begging that his murderer might be forgiven, and entreating the duchess not to give way to despair.”
The theatre on whose steps the crime had been committed was now demolished. The other Paris theatres were not indeed pulled down, but they were shut up for ten days, and there was general mourning in France, not only because a prince of the blood had been murdered, but also because the direct line of succession had to all appearance been brought to an end. It was not until more than seven months after the tragic scene at the Opera that the prince who was to have saved France, the “Enfant du Miracle,” was born.
The arrival of the two daughters born and brought up in England has been differently regarded by writers of different political views. Alexandre Dumas, in his Memoirs, and Castil Blaze, in his Histoire de l’Académie de Musique, represent the incident as a purely domestic one. M. Mauroy, in his recently published works, Les Secrets des Bourbons and Les derniers Bourbons, lays stress on the fact that these children were treated with a consideration not shown to other children of the duke’s, who were certainly born out of wedlock, and thus derives an argument in support of his proposition that the Duke of Berri contracted in England with the mother of these girls a regular marriage, invalid only in so far as it had never been sanctioned by the head of his house. Chateaubriand, as a royalist, would not allow the character of legitimate children to the two girls brought to the bedside of their dying father, and entrusted by him to the care of his wife, the duchess.
“The Duke of Berri,” writes Chateaubriand, in the Mémoires d’outre-Tombe, “had had one of those liaisons which religion reproves, but which human frailty excuses. It may be said of him as the historian has said of Henri IV.: ‘He was often weak, but always faithful, and his passions never seemed to have enfeebled his religion.’ The Duke of Berri, seeking vainly in his conscience for something very guilty, and finding only a few weaknesses, wished, so to say, to collect them around his death-bed, to prove to the world the greatness of his contrition and the severity of his penance. He had a sufficiently just opinion of the virtue of his wife to confess to her his faults, and to fulfil, beneath her eyes, his desire to embrace those two innocent creatures, the daughters of his long exile. ‘Let them be sent for,’ cried the young princess; ‘they are my children also.’ When the Viscountess de Gontaut, who had not been told beforehand, seemed astonished, Madame (i. e. the Countess of Artois) noticed it, and said to her: ‘She knows everything; she has been sublime!’”
The rest of Chateaubriand’s narrative, especially as regards the Duke of Berri’s two daughters, corresponds closely enough with the one left by Dupuytren, whose style, somewhat expressive, somewhat emphatic for a man of science, is less copious, and also less magniloquent than that of the marvellous author of Le Gênie du Christianisme and of the Mémoires d’outre-Tombe.
What the prince chiefly thought of in his last moments was his murderer, Louvel. “Twenty times in the course of the fatal night,” says Dupuytren, the famous physician, whose account of the scene was published not many years ago, “he cried out, ‘Have I not injured this man? had he not some personal vengeance to exercise against me?’ In vain did Monsieur repeat to him, with tears in his eyes: ‘No, my son, you never injured, you never saw this man; he had no personal animosity against you.’ The prince returned incessantly to this groundless idea, and, without being conscious of it, furnished by his public and repeated inquiries the best proof that he had not provoked the frightful calamity which had befallen him. With this first idea he constantly associated another – that of obtaining pardon for his assassin. During his long and painful agony the prince begged for it at least a hundred times, and did so more earnestly in proportion as he felt his end approaching. Thus, when the increasing gravity of the symptoms made him fear that he would not live long enough to see the king, he called out piteously, ‘Ah! the king will not arrive. I shall not be able to ask him to forgive the man.’ Soon afterwards he appealed turn by turn to Monsieur and to the Duke of Augoulême, saying to them, ‘Promise me, father, promise me, brother, that you will ask the king to spare the man’s life.’ But when at last the king arrived, he no sooner saw his Majesty than, summoning all his strength, he cried out, ‘Spare his life, sir! spare the man’s life!’ ‘My nephew,’ the king replied, ‘you are not so ill as you think, and we shall have time to think of your request when you have recovered.’ Yet the prince continued as before, the king being still on his guard not to grant a pardon which was equally repugnant to the laws of nature and to those of society. Then this generous prince exclaimed in a tone of deep regret: ‘Ah, sir! you do not say “yes,”’ adding shortly afterwards: ‘If the man’s life were spared, the bitterness of my last moments would be softened.’ As his end drew near, pursuing the same idea, he expressed in a low voice, broken by grief, and with long intervals between each word, the following thought: ‘Ah!.. if only … I could carry away … the idea … that the blood of a man … would not flow on my account … after my death…’ This noble prayer was the last he uttered. His constantly increasing and now atrocious pain absorbed from this moment all his faculties.”
The heroism of the Duke of Berri and his dying prayer for the pardon of his murderer may be contrasted with the cowardice of his grandfather, Louis XV., taking the last sacrament twice over when he had only been scratched; and the cruelty with which he caused his assailant, who, murderously disposed, no doubt, had nevertheless scarcely injured him, to be subjected to the most frightful tortures, and finally torn to pieces by four horses.
Let us now return to the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, which, abandoned by the Opera, remained deserted for eight years, from 1794 to 1802. On September 30th of this year it was re-opened under the direction of the author and actor Du Maniaut, who brought out operas, melodramas, comedies, and pantomimes until the publication, in 1806, of the decree which put an end to the liberty of the stage. He afterwards, however, obtained permission to represent pantomimes and prologues, or vaudevilles, on condition that in each of these little pieces not more than two actors were employed. In September, 1810, Du Maniaut produced “The Man of Destiny” – a title indicating the Emperor Napoleon, whose victories were represented in a series of historical and allegorical pictures in honour of his marriage with Marie Louise. The music was by the celebrated Piccini, attached to the private staff of his Majesty the Emperor. The Man of Destiny was impersonated by a dancer and mimic named Chevalier, and his career, begun in Egypt, was continued up to the triumphal entry of the French troops into Berlin. After remaining closed for several years, the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre was re-opened in 1814, and thenceforward played a very important part in connection with the dramatic literature of the country. Here Mlle. Georges, Mme. Dorval, Frédéric Lemaître, and many other famous artistes, appeared. Here, too, were produced with enormous success “Marion Delorme,” “Lucrèce Borgia,” and “Marie Tudor,” from Victor Hugo’s pen; all the dramas of Alexandre Dumas, including “Antoine,” “Angèle,” “Richard Darlington,” and “La Tour de Nesle”: “The Mysteries of Paris” and “Mathilde” of Eugène Sue, “The Two Locksmiths” of Félix Pyat, the “Dame de Saint-Tropez” and “Don César de Bazan” of Adolphe d’Ennery. Here, too, the “Vautrin” of Balzac was brought out – to be stopped, after sixteen representations, by Government order, on the ground that Frédéric Lemaître’s make-up in the part of the hero was intended to throw ridicule on the person of King Louis Philippe. The house built by Le Noir, which the Committee of Public Safety had looked upon as of doubtful solidity, enjoyed a life of ninety years, and might have been in existence still; but on the 24th of May, 1871, without any apparent motive for so useless and stupid an act, the Communists set fire to it. The old theatre was burnt to the ground, together with an adjoining building, which, in the days of the Republic of Vienna, had belonged to the Venetian Ambassador.
Rebuilt on the same site, but after a different plan, the Porte St. – Martin Theatre was re-opened in the autumn of 1873, when Victor Hugo’s “Marie Tudor” was revived. To this succeeded a couple of great successes – “The Two Orphans” and “Round the World,” the former written by that fertile inventor of new plots, M. Adolphe d’Ennery, and the latter adapted by him from Jules Verne’s famous novel.
Close to this famous playhouse is the new Renaissance Theatre, which first opened its doors on the 8th of March, 1873. The Porte Saint-Martin contains 1,800 seats, the Renaissance only 1,200. Started as a dramatic theatre, with Belot’s “Femme de Feu” and Zola’s “Thérèse Raquin” in the bill, it was destined to obtain its chief success as an operetta theatre with the charming works of Charles Lecoq, including ”La petite Mariée,” “Le petit Duc,” etc. In these works Mesdames Théo, Jeanne Granier, and Zulma Bouffar first appeared.
At the point where the Boulevards St. – Martin and St. – Denis meet stands the Triumphal Arch known as the Porte St. – Martin, which Louis XIV. erected in 1674 on the site of the previous Gate, which dated from the minority of Louis XIII. The Porte St. – Martin faces on the one side the Rue St. – Martin, and on the other the Faubourg St. – Martin: that is to say, south and north. The low reliefs decorating the arch on all sides represent the taking of Besançon, the taking of Limburg, and the defeat of the Germans, in the form of an eagle repulsed by Mars. The pedestal bears a Latin inscription, which in English would run thus: – “To Louis the Great, for having twice taken Besançon and Franche-Comté, and for having crushed the German, Spanish, and Dutch armies. The Provost of the Merchants and the Citizens of Paris, 1674.”
At the end of the Rue St. – Martin, leading out of the boulevard of that name, stands the Church of St. Méry, near which a most determined struggle took place in that insurrection of the 6th of June, 1832, which was one of the numerous Republican movements directed against Louis Philippe by the disappointed revolutionists of 1830, who, aiming at a Republic, had brought about the re-establishment of a Monarchy. The Republicans received powerful aid from the Bonapartists: these two parties being at this, as on so many other occasions, ready to unite against royalty, while reserving to themselves the ultimate decision of the question whether the Empire or the Republic should be re-established.
The occasion chosen for the outbreak was the funeral of General Lamarque – equally popular with Bonapartists and Republicans. A number of enthusiastic young men drew the funeral car, which was followed by exiles from all parts of Europe. Among the pall-bearers were General Lafayette, Marshal Clausel, and M. Laffitte. Of the insurgents, some took part in the procession, while others looked on in expectation of events that were inevitable. The crowd broke into several gunsmiths’ shops, and finally into the arsenal. Many, too, had brought arms with them; and after a few hours’ fighting the insurgents had gained several important positions, and determined to attack the bank, the post-office, and some neighbouring barracks. Their chief object at this moment was to render inaccessible the Rue Saint-Martin and the surrounding streets. Here they intended to establish the head-quarters of their insurrection, without having the slightest notion that at that very instant M.M. Thiers, Miguet, and other members of the Government were dining together at the Rocher de Cancale, fifty yards only from the camp wherein the Republicans were fortifying themselves with the firm resolution of proclaiming a Republic or dying in the attempt. A remarkable example was given towards the evening of this day of what M. Louis Blanc calls the sympathy of the Paris National Guard for heroism, though most persons would regard it as a proof of incapacity and cowardice.
Eight insurgents, returning from the Place Maubert, presented themselves towards the decline of day at one of the bridges of the city which was occupied by a battalion of the National Guard. They authoritatively claimed their right to go over and join their friends who were fighting on the other side of the river, and as the guards hesitated to let them pass, they advanced resolutely towards the bridge at half charge, with fixed bayonets. The soldiers instantly ranged themselves on either side, and gave unimpeded passage to these eight men, whose infatuated heroism they at once admired and, reflecting upon its inevitable result, deplored.
The enthusiasm of the insurgents at this period is shown by many a curious incident, such as that of their moulding bullets from lead stripped off the roofs of houses; whilst boys, too young to bear weapons, loaded the guns, using for wadding the police notices they had torn off the walls, or, when that resource failed, taking the shirts off their own backs to tear to shreds for the purpose. It was all, however, a forlorn hope; and the rising was destined to be crushed by superior force.
More than one reference to the defence of the Cloître St. – Méry will be found in the novels of Balzac, and a dramatic description of it occurs in the memoirs of Alexandre Dumas.
CHAPTER IX
THE BOULEVARDS (continued)
The Porte St. – Martin – Porte St. – Denis – The Burial Place of the French Kings – Funeral of Louis XV. – Funeral of the Count de Chambord – Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle – Boulevard Poissonnière – Boulevard Montmartre – Frascati.
JUST beyond the Porte Saint-Martin the Boulevard Saint-Denis crosses the great thoroughfare, which is called on one side Boulevard de Sébastopol, on the other, Boulevard de Strasbourg. The Boulevard de Strasbourg was so designated (long before the Franco-German war, which suggests quite another origin for the name) in honour of the city where Prince Louis Napoleon made his first attempt to restore the Empire in France. The circumstances of the rash enterprise, represented at the time by the Government newspapers as merely ridiculous, were sufficiently romantic to deserve a few words of mention. Quitting his mother, with whom he had been living at the Castle of Arenberg, in Switzerland, he went as if to take the waters at Baden-Baden, a place he found suitable to his purpose from its vicinity to Alsace, and from the opportunity it afforded him of covering his ambitious views under the mask of pleasure. It was there that the prince gained the co-operation of Colonel Vaudrey, who commanded the 4th regiment of artillery at Strasburg, in which frontier city the prince had resolved to proclaim the restoration of the Empire before marching towards the capital. The Alsacian democrats were to be gained over by holding out to them a prospect of a fair representation of the people, while the garrison of Strasburg was to be captivated by the cry of “Vive l’Empereur!” The citizens were to be summoned to liberty, and the young men of the schools to arms. The ramparts were then to be entrusted to the keeping of the national guards, and the prince was to march to Paris at the head of the troops. “And then,” says Louis Blanc, in his sketch of the project, “the pictures that naturally presented themselves to the mind of Louis Napoleon were towns surprised, garrisons carried away by the movement, young men eagerly enlisting among his adventurous followers, old soldiers quitting the plough from all quarters to salute the eagle borne aloft, amidst acclamations, caught up by echo after echo along the roads; bitter recollections of the invasion, proud memories of the great wars, reviving, meanwhile, in every part of the Vosges, Lorraine, and Champagne.” The ardour of the conspirators steadily increased, and had they not possessed resolution and daring of their own, there was a woman in their midst who would have set them a bold example. Madame Gordon, the daughter of a captain of the Imperial Guard, had been initiated at Lille into the projects of Louis Napoleon without the knowledge of the prince himself, and entering impetuously into the conspiracy, she hastened to Strasburg, or rather to Baden-Baden in the immediate neighbourhood, and, appearing there as a professional singer, gave a series of concerts. Prince Louis was charmed with the lady’s talents, and, on expressing his admiration, was astonished to find that she had come to Baden-Baden with no object but to help him in the attempt he was about to make on the other side of the Rhine.
The Strasburg expedition having failed, it pleased the enemies of the prince to cast ridicule upon it; and he was accused of having exhibited himself in his uncle’s boots, just as some years afterwards, in connection with the Boulogne expedition, he was said to have carried with him a trained eagle which at a given moment was to fly to the top of the Boulogne Column in memory of the Great Army. Both at Boulogne, however, and at Strasburg the prince had considerable chances of success: a fact sufficiently proved (apart from any demonstration in detail) by the popularity he was seen to possess when, in 1848, he appeared as candidate for the Presidency of the French Republic. At Strasburg, as afterwards at Boulogne, he did not make his attack until after he had had the ground thoroughly reconnoitred, and had ascertained that the troops before whom he was about to present himself were largely composed of his partisans.
The soldiers of the 4th regiment of artillery were waiting, drawn up face to face in two lines, with their eyes fixed on Colonel Vaudrey, who stood alone in the centre of the yard. Suddenly the prince appeared in the uniform of an artillery officer, and hurried up to the colonel, who introduced him to the troops, crying out: “Soldiers, a great revolution begins at this moment. The nephew of the Emperor stands before you. He comes to place himself at your head. He is here on French soil to restore to France her glory and her liberty. He is here to conquer or to die for a great cause – the cause of the people. Soldiers of the 4th regiment of artillery, may the Emperor’s nephew reckon on you?” At these words an indescribable transport seized the troops. As one man they cried, “Vive l’Empereur!” and brandished their arms amid shouts of enthusiasm. Louis Napoleon, deeply affected, made signs that he wished to speak. “It was in your regiment,” he said, “that the Emperor Napoleon, my uncle, first saw service; with you he distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon; it was your brave regiment that opened the gates of Grenoble to him on his return from the island of Elba. Soldiers, new destinies are reserved for you!” And, taking the Eagle from an officer who carried it, “Here,” he said, “is the symbol of French glory, which must henceforth be also the symbol of liberty.” The shouts were redoubled, they mingled with the strains of martial music, and the regiment prepared to march.
The excitement went on increasing, and cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” filled the air, when suddenly a strange rumour began to spread. It was said that the self-proclaimed nephew of the emperor was in reality the nephew of Colonel Vaudrey. The enthusiasts of a second before, lending ear to the idle whisper, now hesitated; and in revolts the man who hesitates or meets with hesitation is lost. The people of Strasburg had shown numerous marks of sympathy for the heir of the first Napoleon, and many officers and soldiers had espoused his cause. But the first impulse had received a check, and the power of discipline and routine soon asserted itself. The question now was, how the heir of the first Napoleon might escape from the mass of troops by which he was surrounded. Two of his adherents offered to cut a way for him, sword in hand; but this wild proposal was naturally rejected, and the prince had to surrender himself prisoner.
What to do with him, however, was for some time a difficult problem to the authorities. To try the Prince by an ordinary jury would be awkward, inasmuch as there was a considerable chance of his acquittal; while it was already known that if he were brought before the Chamber of Peers, many members of that august body had declared their resolution not to sit in judgment upon him. At last it was resolved to send him into exile. He was not allowed to go back to Switzerland, where he had been living for some years, and he was ultimately ordered to make America his destination. It was said that he promised to remain there for not less than ten years. But there is no proof of any such compact having been entered into, and the prince was soon to be heard of again in London.
Formerly associated solely with the first attempt of Prince Louis Napoleon to place himself on the throne of France, the Boulevard of Strasburg now seems to mark the fact that the Alsatian city, so thoroughly French in feeling, has been made the capital of a province of the German Empire.
It has been said that the Boulevard Saint-Denis crosses the Boulevard de Strasbourg; and it terminates at the Porte Saint-Denis, erected two years earlier than the Porte Saint-Martin, to which it is superior both by the boldness of its architecture and by the magnificence of its ornamentation.
The Porte Saint-Denis was constructed in 1672 by the order and at the expense of the City of Paris, to celebrate the success of that astonishing campaign in which, during less than sixty days, forty strongholds and three provinces fell before the armies of the victorious monarch. The town side of the arch bears, on the left, a colossal figure of Holland, on the right, another of the Rhine: two masterpieces, due to the chisel of the Auguier Brothers. At the top of the arch is a frieze representing in low relief the famous passage of the Rhine under the orders of Louis XIV. On the Faubourg side the low relief at the top of the arch represents the taking of Maestricht. The Porte Saint-Denis bears this simple inscription: “Ludovico Magno” – “To Louis the Great.”
At the end of the Rue Faubourg Saint-Denis is the necropolis of Saint-Denis – the burial-place of the French kings.
The obsequies of French kings have from the earliest times been attended with as much pomp and show as their coronations. It was not enough to embalm the body, place it in several coffins, and finally carry it to the royal burial place at Saint-Denis – to observe an elaborate ceremonial, which the Court functionaries and the officials of State followed out to the minutest detail; the effigy of the dead king was exposed for forty days in the palace, stretched on a State bed, clothed in royal garments, the crown on the head, the sceptre in the right hand, and the brand of justice on the left, with a crucifix, a vessel of holy water, and two golden censers at the foot of the couch. The officers of the palace, meanwhile, continued their duties as usual, and even went so far as to serve the king’s meals as though he were still living. The embalmed body was afterwards transported to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, with the innumerable formalities laid down beforehand; while at the interment so many honours were paid to it that to enumerate them would be to fill a small volume. The details of the ceremony were so minute and fastidious that battles of etiquette constantly took place among the exalted persons figuring in the assembly.
At the burial of Philip Augustus, the Papal Legate and the Archbishop of Rheims disputed for precedence; and as neither would give way, they performed service at the same time in the same church, but at different altars. A like scandal occurred at the funeral of St. Louis. When his successor, Philip III., wished to enter the Abbey of Saint-Denis at the head of the procession, the doors were closed in his face. The abbot objected to the presence, not of the king, his master, but of the Bishop of Paris and the Archbishop of Sens, whom he had observed among the officiating clergy, and who, according to his view, had no right to perform service in the Abbey of Saint-Denis, where he alone was chief. The difference was arranged by the archbishop and bishop stripping themselves of their pontifical garments, and acknowledging the supremacy of the abbot in his own sanctuary.
At the death of Charles VI. it was found necessary to consult the Duke of Bedford as to the conduct of the funeral ceremony, and under the direction of the foreigner it was performed with great magnificence. The duke observed as nearly as possible the ancient ceremonial, the only important variation being that (possibly in his character of Englishman) he ordered the interment to be followed by a grand dinner. Even at the dinner – where, at least, concord might have been expected – there were absurd wranglings on points of etiquette between the State officials.
These royal funerals naturally cost enormous sums of money, which were charged partly to the Crown, partly to the City of Paris. The obsequies of Francis I. took five hundred thousand livres from the purse of his successor, without counting the contribution, probably of equal amount, from the town. The effigies of his two sons who had died before him were carried with his own relics to Saint-Denis. Thus there were three coffins in the procession. By the observance of a similar custom, there were in the funeral procession of St. Louis no fewer than five.
At the interments of the old kings genuine grief was often exhibited by the people. Such, however, was not the case at the obsequies of Louis XIV. The Duke de Saint-Simon, in his Memoirs, speaks of this funeral as a very poor affair, remarkable only for the confused style in which it was conducted. The king had left no directions in regard to his burial; and partly for the sake of economy, partly to save trouble, it was decided to regulate the ceremonies by those observed at the interment of Louis XIII., who, in his will, had ordered that they should be as simple as possible. “His modesty and humility, like the other Christian and heroic qualities he possessed, had not,” says Saint-Simon, “descended to his son. But the funeral of Louis XIII. was accepted as a precedent, and no one saw the slightest objection to it, attachment and gratitude being virtues which had ceased to exist.” Nor did the Duke of Orleans pay a flattering tribute to the royal memory, when, regent though he had only just become, he absented himself from the ceremony of carrying the king’s heart to the Grand Jesuits: “that heart,” says Saint-Simon, “which loved no one, and which excited so little love.”
