Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2. Edwards Henry Sutherland

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      On the return from Elba the Polytechnic School was again formed into a body of artillery; and it then received the only visit Napoleon paid to it throughout the Empire. With all his admiration for it, he regarded it as infected with the spirit of republicanism. Monge defended the pupils against the bad opinion entertained by the emperor, saying that, ardent Republicans when the school was first formed, they had not yet had time to become zealous Imperialists; at which Napoleon is said to have smiled.

      Broken up in 1816 in consequence of some act of insubordination, and reorganised towards the end of 1817 under a civilian administration, the Polytechnic School was now placed under the Ministry of the Interior. Five years later, however, in 1822, it was once more organised on a military system. Like all the students of those days, the pupils of the Polytechnic School were enthusiastic Liberals, and when the Revolution of July, 1830, broke out they joined the people and acted for the most part as officers. One of them, Vanneau by name, was killed in the attack made on the barracks of the Swiss guards in the Rue de Babylone; and afterwards, by universal desire, the name of the young man was given to a neighbouring street, which still bears it.

      Since then the Polytechnic has been mixed up with every important political movement that has taken place in France. On the 7th of June, 1832, many students, in spite of orders to the contrary, went out to assist at the funeral of General Lamarque, and took part in the outbreak to which it led. In 1848 the school was called out in a body to support the provisional government, which invited it, together with the Normal School and the School of Saint-Cyr, to take part in all the celebrations of the new Republic.

      Amongst the distinguished men produced by the Polytechnic School since its creation under the First Republic may be mentioned Arago, Gay-Lussac, Biot, Poisson, and Carnot. Foreign governments have often asked permission to send young men of promise to this school; at once an effect and a cause of its European reputation.

      CHAPTER XV.

      THE HÔTEL CLUNY

The Rue des Carmes – Comte de Mun and the Catholic Workmen’s Club – The Place Maubert – The Palais des Thermes – The Hotel Cluny – Its History – Its Art Treasures

      THE street in which the Polytechnic School is situated bears its name, and descending the northern slope of the so-called “mountain of Sainte-Geneviève,” the “Street of the Seven Ways” takes, at the point where the Rue de l’École Polytechnique crosses the Rue Saint-Hilaire, the name of Rue des Carmes. In ancient times it contained, besides the grand Couvent des Carmes founded in 1318, the College of Dace, established for Danish students, the College of Soissons, where Peter Ramus fell in the St. Bartholomew massacre, and finally the College of the Lombards. At the end of a large courtyard, surrounded with gardens, is seen the portico of a church with Ionic columns, whose pediment, frightfully mutilated, has quite a tragic aspect. This is the chapel of the ancient College of the Lombards, founded in 1334 by A. Chini of Florence, bishop of Tournai. The college was then the “House of the poor Italians” by the charity of the beneficent Marie. Three centuries later it was falling into ruins when two Irish priests undertook to build it up for the benefit of the priests and poor students of their country, who for two centuries possessed this corner of the earth, when, on its becoming too small, they abandoned it in 1776 and moved to the Rue Cheval-Vert. The chapel was then for many years taken possession of by industrial speculators, who turned it into shops and even into a stable. It was restored to public worship through the activity of Comte de Mun. In one part of the building is established the Catholic Workmen’s Club of Sainte-Geneviève, which has existed since May, 1875, and which offers to workmen and also clerks of all professions and trades a centre of instruction and even of amusement. To this institution are due the popular lectures (Conférences Populaires) delivered by M. Léon Gautier of the Institute, Albert de Mun, Father Montsabre, M. d’Hulst, etc. Without neglecting religious studies, the lecturers occupy themselves with the most varied subjects, such as literature, political and social economy, art and music. Here a certain number of workmen assemble every evening and, above all, on Sunday, when, after hearing mass, they can finish their day in an interesting and improving manner, reading books and newspapers and taking part in various games.

      The Workmen’s Club of Sainte-Geneviève is not the only one of the kind in Paris; there are at least ten formed on the same plan and which reach directly and surely, without any attempt at noisy propagandism, their essential aim: that of depriving the dram shop and the tavern of their prey.

      The lower part of the Rue des Carmes leads to the market of the same name and to the Place Maubert, which occupies the site of the ancient convent. The cloister of the Couvent des Carmes was remarkable as a masterpiece of architecture.

      The Place Maubert was in the middle ages the true forum of the University Quarter, the meeting place of the students, the boatmen of the Seine, and market people from all parts of the country, as well as the central academy of the language spoken by the populace. Thus it was said of a man who was coarse in his talk that he had “learned his compliments in the Place Maubert.” The “Compliments of the Place Maubert” was indeed the title of a dictionary of plebeianisms. The name of the place or square is corrupted from that of Jean Aubert, second Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève. Receiving from all sides the outpourings of six popular streets, the Place Maubert has witnessed many tumultuous scenes. Here in 1418 assembled the partisans of Bourgogne who set out to massacre the partisans of Armagnac in their prisons. Here were burnt as heretics Alexandre d’Evreux and Jean Pointer in 1533; the mason Poille in 1535, the goldsmith Claude Lepeintre in 1540, and finally, in 1546, the printer Étienne Dolet, who, by his religious and political opinions as well as by the bitterness of his polemical writings, had made for himself implacable enemies. Across the Place Maubert was dragged the body of Ramus, assassinated in 1572 at the College of Presles in the Rue des Carmes. On one side of it were raised in 1588 the first barracks of the partisans of the House of Guise against King Henri III., and sixty years later the barricades of the Fronde.

      At a few steps from the Place Maubert stood, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the Rue de Bièvre and the Rue des Grands Degrés, two attorneys’ offices, where were engaged two young clerks destined one day to dazzle the world of letters and of the stage. One was Crébillon; the other Voltaire.

      All kinds of famous houses existed on or in the immediate neighbourhood of the Place Maubert: that, for instance, of Grandjean, the celebrated surgeon and oculist to Louis XVI., and that of Marie Antoinette. Local tradition assigns one of the houses to Gabrielle d’Estrées – “la belle Gabrielle” of Henri IV., and here she may really have lived, though the hostile critics of the tradition point out that the architecture of the house does not take us further back than the reign of Louis XV. Part of the house in question is now let out in artisans’ lodgings. On the ground floor, painted red, is the Château Rouge, called also – it must be feared with more than external significance – the Guillotine. A special chapter is devoted to the Château Rouge by M. Macé, in his volume on the police of Paris. It is composed of two large rooms, which are filled from morning till night with the disreputable and dangerous classes; close by is a lodging-house, constructed in the garden of the ancient mansion, and let out entirely to Swiss workmen, who live together in the most economical manner, and pass the gaping mouth of the Château Rouge ten times a day without ever going in. It was at the СКАЧАТЬ