Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 1. Walton William

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СКАЧАТЬ Comte de Montgomery; Lally-Tollendal, Governor of the Indies; Foulon, contrôleur-général of the finances and his son-in-law, hanged to the street lanterns by the mob, down to the famous regicides and the obscure and ignoble multitude of criminals of all ages. The Place de la Bastile commemorates the fortress-jail of that name,—one of the worst of all jails and one to be discreetly forgotten; the column of July, in the centre of this place, was erected in memory of the victims of the Revolution of 1830. The statue of Henri IV on the Pont-Neuf marks the spot where the Grand Master of the Templars and one of his officers were burned at the stake; on the carrefour of the Observatory, that of Marshal Ney, the locality where that brave soldier was shot by order of the Chamber of Peers; from the little bell-tower at the side of the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, back of the Louvre, the signal was sounded for the Saint Bartholomew. The Châtelet and the Conciergerie were famous prisons; the ruins of the palace on the Quai d'Orsay have been but just removed, to make room for the new depot of the Orléans railway, after having stood since 1871 a most eloquent monument of the excesses of the Commune. It was even proposed to leave the shattered walls of the Tuileries as a permanent record of the follies of an unbridled democracy!

      This expansiveness, this frank parading of unseemly things, is supplemented by other public demonstrations of the passion of the hour. For some years after the fall of the Commune the national emotions found solace in stencilling in big letters on every possible wall or fronton or pediment, public or private,—Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité. The harassed citizen of the new republic looked up, or down, or sideways, at this official assurance of the sentiments breathed by all, high or low, and found comfort. Only, the wits of the agitated capital—who perceive some, but by no means all, of the opportunities which their fellow-citizens afford them—took occasion to read this text with the punctuation-mark—(.) point—after each noble word. Point is also the strongest of negations, so that the official declaration of faith was reduced to nullity,—"Liberty, none; Equality, none: Fraternity, not the slightest!"

      All this seems to constitute a curious national trait, and in literature, in the daily journals, the observing traveller is again impressed with this unbosoming, which the Parisian himself would probably brand as naïveté if he could perceive it. It flourishes perfectly side by side with his vanity; in fact, it probably has its origin in his vanity. "The Causes of Our Defeat in 1870," under various titles, have furnished and are still furnishing matter for interminable publication. In municipal affairs, the unshakable conviction that Paris is, simply, the only capital in the world does not in the least interfere with frank admissions concerning its limitations, which the least public-spirited villager in other climes would neither believe nor admit. Here, the journalist, the romancer, the historian, find in the most simple human demonstration, if it take place in the capital, something peculiarly and most admirably Parisien. Balzac, e.g., in the Double Famille, if we remember aright, brings two of his characters together late at night in a dusky street; the younger man thinks he recognizes the elder, but is not certain; he therefore approaches him doubtfully "as a Parisian does when he is undecided." This endless and childish delight in everything appertaining to his town, and the accompanying frank indifference to everything, pretty much, outside of it, is, in fact, so well known abroad that it has even brought down upon the Parisian's unconscious head the epithet that he would consider the uttermost of insults—"provincial!" He provincial! he who has invented those two withering words, "the provinces" and "bourgeois."

      Nevertheless, this capital of all possible civilizations does not hesitate to admit that it must by all means do all in its power to attract the wealthy tourist of other nations, on whom its prosperity is so largely dependent, especially since it has no longer the attractions of a royal or imperial court to offer. No presentation of the city of Paris at the present day would be complete without documents giving the opinions of its own cultured and intelligent classes on its general characteristics and its most urgent needs. With regard to this question of dependence upon strangers, endless quotations might be cited, and two or three may well be printed here as more valuable contributions to this contemporary history than any speculations by mere foreigners. The Revue Encyclopédique, published weekly by the great house of Larousse, has a column which it devotes to ideas of general interest, underscored, and in this column appeared, in the issue of January 23, 1897, the following communication: "For some time past the Avenue de L'Opéra, at Paris, has been lighted by electricity by means of incandescent lamps placed along the central axis of this great thoroughfare. This very handsome illumination serves only to accentuate more strongly the monotonous melancholy of the double row of commercial establishments the fronts of which are invariably closed at eight o'clock in the evening.... And sorrowful reflections are awakened of the brilliant evenings of thirty years ago, the movement of foreigners along the boulevards, the crowd of promenaders constantly changing before the dazzling show-windows of the end of the Second Empire. Why is not some effort made to revive this brilliant past by creating attractions capable of arousing the curiosity of the Parisians and, above all, of the foreigners? Could not some arrangement be made among all the shop-keepers of the grand boulevards and of the principal adjacent streets (Rue de la Paix, Rue Royale, Avenue de l'Opéra, etc.), that one evening a week be devoted to the exceptional adornment of their establishments?" And the writer goes on to suggest, with Parisian ingenuity, that a jury of artists might even be constituted to decide which display was the most brilliant and the most worthy, and to award suitable recompense. "By this means it is probable that the street and the boulevard would resume their former animation, to the great profit of the trade in articles of luxury, so profoundly affected by the desertion of the foreigners."

      In the year of grace, 1898, the Parisian world was greatly agitated by the fact that the Grand Prix de Paris was run at Longchamps on the 5th of June, and that, consequently, the Parisian season was brought to an ending most unreasonably early. These complaints were so insistent that they found voice in the Municipal Council and were brought before the Prefect of the Seine. It was contended that the treaty between the city and the Société d'encouragement of improvement of the equine breed, its lessee at Longchamps, had been violated, inasmuch as the great event had taken place before the middle of June. But the Société d'encouragement proved conclusively, by the terms of its lease from the city, that the date and the regulations of the race were left to its own judgment, and that, in point of fact, it had always taken place before the 15th of June. "But that which it is above all important to observe is, that the date of the Grand Prix is determined, not according to the whim of the Société d'encouragement, but indeed by that of the English Derby, which regulates also that of the French Derby. It is necessary, in fact, that the same horses should take part in the three trials. The English, having set the date of their Derby this year on the 26th of May, the French Derby, which precedes it, had to be run on the 22d of May, and the Grand Prix de Paris, which occurs regularly ten days after the English Derby, could only be run on Sunday, the 5th of June. It is impossible, moreover, in any way to postpone this date, for the reason that the horses cannot be maintained in racing condition for any longer period of time."

      Notwithstanding this conclusive reasoning, Le Temps, one of the most eminent and dignified journals of the capital, devoted a long article in its largest type, two days afterward, to the duty of the Conseil municipal in the matter. "This date is not, in fact, a matter of indifference to the interests of the city. It is, or it is considered to be, the moment selected for a general exodus of foreigners and even of Parisians in comfortable circumstances toward the seaside and other rural resorts. The shop-keepers therefore consider that they have cause for complaint if this moment arrive too early. The municipal councillors who have constituted themselves the spokesmen of their griefs have demanded and obtained a vote on a resolution having for its object the designation of the third Sunday in June, at the earliest, as the date of this equine solemnity.

      "Whether this date may or may not be adopted, it seems to us that the interest which it awakens is entitled to unqualified commendation. The Municipal Council in no way goes outside of its proper sphere; on the contrary, it is well within it, when it concerns itself with the general interests of the city of Paris, when it seeks for means of retaining in it СКАЧАТЬ