Edwards Henry Sutherland
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
CHAPTER XVI
THE PALAIS ROYAL
Richelieu’s Palace – The Regent of Orleans – The Duke of Orleans – Dissipation in the Palais Royal – The Palais National – The Birthplace of Revolutions.
THE whole history of Paris may be read along the line of the Boulevards, and the whole life of the capital observed there in concentrated form. The Palais Royal, however, with its theatres, its restaurants, its shops of all kinds, its galleries, and its gardens, is in scarcely a less degree an epitome of Paris. It was formerly known as the Palais Cardinal, in memory of Richelieu, by whom, in its original shape, it was constructed. Richelieu afterwards made such frequent additions to the building that it lost all symmetry. In one of the wings a theatre was constructed; though it was not here, but in a large drawing-room, that the Cardinal’s tragedies, Eutrope and Mirame, were played. The palace, with its lateral developments, assumed at last the form of a quadrangle with a large garden in the interior. It suffered from the irremediable fault of not having been constructed from the first on a definite plan. But the garden, the fountain, the jewellers’ shops, the booksellers’ stalls, give the place a physiognomy of its own, and cause the beholder to overlook all architectural defects.
Having completed his palace, and convinced himself that he had constructed an edifice worthy the acceptance of his sovereign, Richelieu presented it to Louis XIII. (1636), afterwards confirming the gift in his will (1642). Corneille, the recipient now of favours, now of slights from the great Cardinal, wrote, in an admiring mood, of the Cardinal’s palace the following lines: —
“Non, l’univers entier ne peut rien voir d’égal
Aux superbes dehors du Palais-Cardinal.
Toute une ville entière, avec pompe bâtie,
Semble d’un vieux fossé par miracle sortie,
Et nous fait présumer, à ses superbes toits,
Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois.”2
In spite of Corneille’s praise, Louis XIII. seems to have thought but little of his minister’s gift. Nor could he in any case have turned it to much account, for he did not survive the astute counsellor for more than a year.
Louis XIV. passed some years of his childhood at the Palais-Cardinal, to which the name of Palais Royal was now given. Here the minister Mazarini, or Mazarin, resided during the troubles of the Fronde, and here it was that he heard the populace sing couplets about the Facchino Italiano. “They sing; they shall pay!” murmured the minister. But he was obliged all the same to take flight; and with the queen regent and the infant king he sought refuge at Saint-Germain. Never afterwards would the proud monarch inhabit the Palais Royal, which he assigned as a place of residence to Henrietta of France, Queen of England, and widow of Charles I. Afterwards, in 1692, Louis XIV. gave the Palais Royal as an absolute gift to his nephew, Philip of Orleans, Duke of Chartres, on the occasion of that prince’s marriage. The Palace had now been increased by the addition of the Hôtel Dauville in the adjacent Rue Richelieu, and of a gallery constructed by the celebrated architect Mansard.
The Regent of Orleans turned the theatre of Richelieu into an opera house, where he gave a number of masked balls which are remembered in history. Nor is the profligate life of which the Palais Royal now became the scene by any means forgotten. The theatre having been burnt down, the regent insisted on its being restored at the expense of the town; which was accordingly done. But the theatre was again destroyed by fire in 1781; and the Duke of Chartres, afterwards known during the Revolution as Philippe Égalité, the father of King Louis Philippe, instead of rebuilding it, constructed the three galleries surrounding the garden which still exist. The idea of three such galleries, communicating with the body of the palace, is said to have been entertained by Richelieu himself.
As prodigal as his grandfather, the regent, the Duke of Orleans, was obliged to have recourse to various expedients for replenishing his exhausted exchequer. It occurred to him to turn the galleries of the Palais Royal into long lines of shops. This involved the expenditure of a considerable sum of money, but the result was most remunerative. The new Palais Royal became a centre of attraction to all Paris. Around the garden the three galleries, together with the one still known as the Galerie d’Orléans, formed a sort of bazaar, where jewellery, fans, and ornaments of all kinds were offered for sale. The shops were varied by cafés and restaurants. In the garden the Café de la Régence was established, and the Richelieu Theatre being once more rebuilt, now formed the home of the Comédie Française. Towards the end of the Monarchical period the Palais Royal became a recognised place of dissipation. In contrast with the loose morality of the locality was the rigid exactitude with which, every day at noon, a cannon in the centre of the garden, fired by the rays of the sun through a powerful lens, announced the hour; and crowds of people used to assemble round it, watch in hand, towards twelve o’clock. Walking through the Palais Royal one day with the Duke of Orleans, the Abbé Delille was requested by the Prince to sum up in a few words his ideas of the place, and did so in the following quatrain: —
“Dans ce jardin tout se rencontre,
Excepté l’ombrage et les fleurs.
Si l’on y dérègle ses mœurs,
Du moins on y règle sa montre.”3
After the execution of the Duke of Orleans, who, having had the infamy to vote for the death of his blameless relative Louis XVI., was himself, by a mild retribution, to perish on the scaffold, the Palais Royal was appropriated by the State, and the place was now invaded by all the ruffians and reprobates of Paris. Let us on this subject hear Mercier in his “Tableau de Paris.” “The Athenians,” he writes, “raised temples to their Phrynes; curs find them in this enclosure already built. Speculators and their correlatives go three times a day to the Palais Royal, the centre of political and every other kind of debauchery. Some are occupied with the rise and fall of the funds. Gaming-tables are kept in every café, and it is a sight to see the sudden change in the expression of the players’ faces as they lose or win. The Palais Royal is an elegant box of Pandora, beautifully carved, delicately worked, but containing what everyone knows it contains. All these followers of Sardanapalus or of Lucullus inhabit the Palais Royal, in apartments which the King of Assyria and the Roman Emperors would have envied.” Under the Directory the number of gambling houses was limited, first to four, afterwards to eight; and it was not until the reign of Louis Philippe that they were finally suppressed. The gambling house at Number 113 figures in the “Peau de Chagrin” of Balzac; also in Dumas’ “Femme au Collier de Velours.”
As for the “Palace” – the mansion inhabited by Mazarin and the infant Louis XIV., afterwards by Henrietta of England, and then by various members of the Orleans family – Napoleon established public offices in it. During the Hundred Days the palace was occupied by Lucien Bonaparte, and on the restoration of the Monarchy the whole place was bought back from the Government by the then Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe. Some changes were made in the direction of the galleries, the popularity of which remained as great as ever. Nor was this diminished by the foreign occupation, for the Palais Royal was thronged day and night by officers of the Allied Army. It was now that the Café Lemblin became the head-quarters of Bonapartist officers on half-pay, and the Café des Mille Colonnes that of the officers serving in the newly organised Royalist army; and between the two bodies of officers numerous duels were fought. An ingenious rhymed description of the Palais Royal in its best and worst days has been left by Désaugiers, the celebrated songwriter of the period before Béranger, of which we may quote the concluding lines, telling how the resort, from being the scene of political storms, came to be the general rendez-vous of pleasure-seekers of every kind and every nationality, from the Fleming to the Turk, and from the genius to the fool: —
“Si de maint politique orage
Le Palais Royal
Devint le théâtre infernal,
Du gai carnaval
Il est aujourd’hui l’héritage:
Jeu, spectacle, bal
Y sont dans leur pays natal,
Flamand, Provençal,
Turc, Africain, Chinois, sauvage,
Au moindre signal
Tout se trouve au Palais Royal.
Bref, séjour banal,
Du grand, du sot, du fou, du sage,
Le Palais Royal
Est le rendez-vous général.”
Reformed in so many respects under the reign of Louis Philippe, the Palais Royal was destined at the same time to be overshadowed by the increasing importance of the Boulevards.
After the Revolution of 1848 the Palais Royal, now styled Palais National, was once more treated as State property. Under the Second Empire it became the residence of Prince Jerome, succeeded by his son, Prince Napoleon. On the ornamentation of the portico, some fleurs de lis dating from the time of Richelieu, which the Revolutionists of 1789 and of 1848 had forgotten to scrape off, were erased and replaced by Imperial eagles, themselves destined to disappear in the revolution of the 4th of September, 1871, when, at the same time, the Republican motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” was restored. Meanwhile, on the 23rd of May, 1871, while the expiring Commune was still struggling against the army of Versailles, the palace was invaded by the Communards and set in flames. The whole of the left wing, with part of the central pavilion, was burnt down. In the midst of the general incendiarism, the Théâtre Français, which may be regarded as an annexe of the Palais Royal, though it is entered from the Rue Richelieu, had itself a narrow escape from fire.
The Palais Royal was destined to be the birthplace of more than one revolution. It was here that the great movement of 1789, and the minor one of July, 1830, began. The revolution of July seems, in the first instance, to have been intended simply as a protest, an act of resistance against arbitrary measures – and in particular against the muzzling of the Press to such an extent as to render it impossible under modern conditions to publish a newspaper. The celebrated ordonnances had the immediate effect of throwing a multitude of journeyman printers out of work, and it was by these men that in one part of the city the insurrection was commenced. With them the question was not a political one in theory alone; it was a question whether they should get the hateful ordonnances repealed or remain without work: that is to say, starve.
The 26th of July passed off very calmly in Paris as a whole. At the Palais Royal, however, some young men were seen mounting chairs, as formerly Camille Desmoulins had done. “They read the Moniteur aloud,” says a witness of the scene, “appealed to the people against the infraction of the charter, and endeavoured by violent gesticulation and inflammatory harangues to excite in their hearers and in themselves a vague appetite for agitation. But dancing was going on in the environs of the capital; the people were engaged in labour or amusement. The bourgeoisie alone gave evidence of consternation. The ordonnances had dealt it a twofold blow: they had struck at its political power in the persons of its legislators, and at its moral power in those of its writers.”
At first there was nothing to be seen throughout the whole bourgeois portion of the population but one dull, uniform stupor. Bankers, traders, manufacturers, printers, lawyers, and journalists accosted each other with scared and astounded looks. There was in this sudden muzzling of the Press a sort of arrogant challenge that stunned men’s faculties. So much daring inferred proportionate strength.
The most active section of the bourgeoisie went to work on the 27th, and nothing was left undone to stir up the people. The Gazette, the Quotidienne, and the Universel had submitted to the ordonnances from conviction or from party spirit; the Journal des Débats and the Constitutionnel from fear and mercantile policy. The Globe, the National, and the Temps, which defiantly continued to appear, were profusely circulated. The police order of the preceding day, forbidding their publication, only served to stimulate curiosity. Copies were disposed of by hundreds in the cafés, the reading-rooms, and the restaurants. Journalists hurried from manufactory to manufactory, and from shop to shop, to read the articles aloud and comment upon them. Individuals in the dress, and with the manners and appearance of men of fashion, were seen mounting on stone posts and holding forth as professors of insurrection; whilst students paraded the streets, armed with canes, waving their hats and crying “Vive la Charte!”
The ordinary demagogues, cast into the midst of a movement they could not comprehend, looked on with surprise at all these things; but, gradually yielding to the contagion of the hour, they imitated the bourgeoisie, and running about with bewildered countenances, shouted like others for the charter.
Begun in the Palais Royal, this revolution was continued and virtually concluded at the neighbouring Tuileries, where the Swiss Guard, fighting as faithfully for the restored monarchy as they had fought for the monarchy of Louis XVI., perished at the hands of the insurgents. The great Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen, had already commemorated the heroism of Louis the Sixteenth’s Swiss Guard in a magnificent figure of a wounded, expiring, but still undaunted lion, carved on a cliff or mountainside close to the town of Lucerne. The loyal mercenaries of Charles X. showed the same lionlike courage that those of Louis XVI. had displayed.
There can be no doubt that the sight of the Swiss uniforms – scarlet, like that of the Household troops of most sovereigns – irritated greatly the people of Paris, who looked upon the revolution now taking place as a national movement under the tricolour flag against the monarchy, restored by foreign power after the defeat of Napoleon, with the white flag as its emblem. “The sight of those red uniforms,” wrote an eye-witness of many of the scenes that took place during the three days of July, “redoubled the fury of the insurgents; fresh combatants rushed forth from every alley, and a barricade was manned and seized by the people. The Swiss sustained this attack with vigour; the guards advanced to support them, and the Parisians were beginning to give way, when a young man advanced to rally and cheer them on, waving a tricolour flag at the end of a lance, and shouting, ‘I will show you how to die!’ He fell, pierced with balls, within ten paces of the guards. This engagement was terrible; the Swiss left many of their numbers stretched on the pavement.”
The fighting, all over Paris, abounded in scenes which were either fantastic, heroic, or lamentable. The Marquis d’Antichamp had taken up his post, seated on a chair under the colonnade of the Louvre, opposite Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. Bent under the burden of his years, and hardly able to sustain his tottering frame, he encouraged the Swiss to the fight by his presence, and sat with folded arms gazing on the terrible spectacle before him with stoical insensibility. A band of insurgents attacked the powder magazine at Ivry on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, broke the gate in with hatchets and pole-axes, rushed into the courtyard, and obliged the people of the place to throw them packages of powder out of the windows. The insurgents, with all the hot-headed recklessness of the moment, continued with their pipes in their mouths to catch the packages as they fell, and carried them off in their arms. The debtors confined in Sainte-Pélagie, using a beam for a battering-ram, burst the gates, and then went and joined the guards on duty outside to prevent the escape of the criminal prisoners. A sanguinary encounter took place in the Rue de Prouvaires, and exhibited the spectacle, common enough in civil wars, of brothers fighting in opposite ranks. Throughout the whole city a sort of moral intoxication beyond all description had seized upon the inhabitants. Amidst the noise of musketry, the rolling of the drums, the cries and groans of the combatants, a thousand strange reports prevailed and added to the universal bewilderment. A hat and feathers were carried about in some parts of the town, said to be those of the Duke of Ragusa, whose death was reported. The audacity of some of the combatants was incredible. A workman, seeing a company of the 5th regiment of the line advancing upon the Place de la Bourse, ran straight up to the captain and struck him a blow on the head with an iron bar. He reeled, and his face was bathed in blood; but he had still strength enough left to throw up his soldiers’ bayonets with his sword as they were about to fire on the aggressor. The leaders of the people added the most perfect self-denial to their intrepidity; and they ranged themselves by preference under the orders of those combatants whose dress proclaimed that they belonged to the more favoured classes of society. Furthermore, the young men found at every step guides for their inexperience in the persons of old soldiers who had survived the battles of the Empire – a warlike generation whom the Bourbons had for ever incensed in 1815.
CHAPTER XVII
THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE
Its History – The Roman Comique – Under Louis XV. – During the Revolution – Hernani.
LET us now return to the Palais Royal, and to the theatre which adjoins it. The Comédie Française, or Théâtre Français, as it is also called, was never, as the first of these names might suggest, devoted exclusively to comedy. The word “comedy” was used in France in the early days of its stage to denote any kind of theatrical entertainment. The famous “Ballet Comique de la Reine,” produced towards the end of the 16th century, was, in fact, a dramatic entertainment with singing and dancing, strongly resembling what would now be called an opera; and the author of the work explains, in his preface, that he calls it “ballet comique,” instead of “ballet” alone, because it possesses a dramatic character. Volumes innumerable have been written on the origin of the French theatre, which had as humble a beginning as the theatre in all other European countries; with the exception, however, of opera, which in the earliest days of the musical drama enjoyed the special patronage of kings, princes, cardinals, and great noblemen.
In Italy, during the Renaissance period, the musical drama was invented by popes, cardinals, and other illustrious personages bent on restoring in modern form the ancient drama of the Greeks. The spoken drama of France, as of other European countries, had humbler beginnings, and the first regular troop of the Comédie Française had its origin in a combination of wandering companies.
At the end of the sixteenth, and during the early part of the seventeenth century, the English stage, with Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatic poets of the Elizabethan period, was far superior to the stage of France, which scarcely indeed existed at the time. But towards the end of the seventeenth century the French theatre enjoyed the supreme advantage of possessing simultaneously the three greatest dramatists that France even to this day has produced: Corneille, Molière, and Racine.
It is a little more than two centuries ago, in the year 1689, that the theatre where “the comedians of the king” habitually performed received the title of Comédie Française; though its constitution dates from 1680, when, by order of Louis XIV., the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne was united to that of the Théâtre Guénégaud in the Rue Mazarin. The history of the Comédie Française cannot well be separated from that of Corneille and of Molière, its greatest writers; though Molière, who died in 1673, and Corneille, who died in 1684, produced their works long before the Théâtre Français was officially constituted. Perhaps the most interesting account of the origin of the French theatre is to be found in the “Roman Comique” of Scarron, in which one of the leading personages is Madeleine Béjard, elder sister of the charming but unfaithful Armande Béjard, known to everyone as Molière’s wife. Possibly, as in the case of the “Ballet Comique de la Reine,” the adjective in the title of Scarron’s work is used to signify, not “comic,” but “dramatic,” or “theatrical.” Scarron in any case shows us how Molière (introduced under another name) joined a strolling company when he had just finished his studies as a law student. The incident might have been borrowed from Cervantes’ “Gipsy of Madrid,” wherein an infatuated young man throws in his lot with a troop of gipsies. But it is beyond doubt that the youth, “not brought up to the profession,” who becomes a member of a wandering troop involved in the adventures and humours so graphically described by Scarron was no other than Molière himself, or Poquelin, to give him his proper family designation, as distinguished from his more euphonious theatrical name.
One of the most interesting members of this celebrated company was Mdlle. du Parc, for whom is claimed the unique honour of having been passionately beloved by the three greatest dramatists of France: Corneille, Molière, and Racine. Having to choose between three writers, of whom the first was old, the second middle-aged, and the third young, Mdlle. du Parc was eccentric enough to select the last; a preference which left Molière silent, but which provoked from Corneille some verses so admirable that one cannot but forgive the lady who, by her heartless conduct, called forth such lines. Corneille and Molière had at this time separate companies, and Mdlle. du Parc appears to have acted in both. Corneille in any case endeavoured to persuade Mdlle. du Parc to pass from Molière’s company to his own, pointing out to her that the troop of his friend Molière “was very inferior in tragedy, so that she would always be sacrificed, since she excelled above all in the tragic style.” Racine employed the same kind of argument as Corneille, and ultimately succeeded in taking away the much-admired actress from Molière’s company in order to attach her to his theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where tragedies from his pen were habitually produced. Mdlle. du Parc, who had previously caused an estrangement between Corneille and Molière, now brought about a complete rupture between Molière and Racine.
The story of Mdlle. du Parc, with the intrigues of which she was made the object, brings out clearly the fact that in the early days of the French stage there was not one theatre, but three; Corneille, Molière, and Racine having each his separate company. In the present day the Théâtre Français comprises in its repertory all the masterpieces of France’s three greatest dramatists; and many imagine that for this famous establishment may be claimed the honour of having first produced them. But the finest tragedies and comedies that France possesses were written for theatres of little or no standing; and not, as just pointed out, for one, but for three different theatres. An actress celebrated in her time, Mdlle. Beaupré, made some celebrated remarks on the subject of French dramatic literature, which give a good idea of the esteem in which the art of playwriting must have been held in France immediately before the advent of Molière. “M. de Corneille,” she said, “has done the greatest harm to the dramatic profession. Before his time we had very good pieces which were written for us in a night for three crowns. Now M. de Corneille charges large sums for his plays and we earn scarcely anything.”
Even in these early days Louis XIV. took the greatest interest in theatrical representations, especially those given by Molière’s company. Perhaps the very best period of the French stage was between the years 1645, when Molière abandoned the law courts to join a troop of wandering players, and 1680, when the two most important companies of the day were combined; at which time Molière had been dead seven years, while Corneille was on the point of dying.
The Comédie Française was formed in the most arbitrary manner. It has been said that the company which had been in the habit of playing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne was joined to that of the Théâtre Guénégaud in the Rue Mazarin. But there was at that day a third theatre in Paris, the Théâtre du Marais; and in order that everything dramatic might be concentrated at the one establishment, this unhappy house was simply suppressed. By Royal decree the number of actors and actresses connected with the Comédie Française was fixed at twenty-seven. A year later the establishment received for the first time an annual subvention, to the amount of 12,000 livres or francs. At the same time the French comedians were authorised, in lieu of previous arrangements, to deduct the full expenses of the theatre before paying anything to the authors.
The company had scarcely taken possession of the Théâtre de Guénégaud when they were obliged to leave it for another and more commodious building in the Rue des Fossés, Saint-Germain-des-Prés; and it was here that the name of Comédie Française was first adopted. Hence the name of the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, in which street, newly baptised, the Comédie Française was for so many years installed.
The Comédie Française had everything to itself until the year 1699, when much alarm and indignation was caused in the ranks of the company by the establishment of an opposition theatre, the Comédie Italienne. The French comedians were ready to do anything in order to keep their monopoly. In a formal petition they represented to the king that they were twenty-six in number (the principal actress had died) and capable, if necessary, of amusing His Majesty at two different theatres. They thought it hard, however, that after quitting, by His Majesty’s orders, first the Hôtel de Bourgogne, then the Théâtre Guénégaud, they should now be threatened in their new abode, which had cost them 200,000 francs to construct.
The king paid no attention to these representations, and the Comédie Italienne soon became the home of French comic opera, doing a flourishing business according to the tariff of those days, when a place in the pit cost five sous, and a seat in the boxes ten.
The Comédie Française did not in the long run suffer from the popularity of the opposition theatre, and perhaps profited by it. But soon the Comédie Française was to be subjected to a new inconvenience, and in the very year which had witnessed the invasion of the Comédie Italienne a tax was imposed on theatres generally for the benefit of the poor – “taxe des pauvres” – which exists even to the present day. The members of the Comédie Française endeavoured to meet the difficulty by raising the prices on the occasion of first representations.
After the death of Louis XIV. the Comédie Française remained, as before, under the supreme government of the king, his ministers, and the gentlemen of the chamber. The new sovereign showed himself as munificent in the matter of the subvention as his predecessor, and the theatre was once more guaranteed an annual grant of 12,000 francs. A custom was now for the first time introduced, which has since become universal – that of playing a first piece in one act before the principal play of the evening.
Under Louis XV. the Comédie Française was directed, in the matter of engagements and general administration, by the Duc de Richelieu, to whom were submitted the petitions intended for the king. The members of the Comédie Française kept a careful watch over the privileges conferred upon them, and we find them complaining whenever there are any signs of these privileges being interfered with by a rival establishment. Every booth opened at a temporary fair excited the suspicion of the comedians; and they at last succeeded in procuring an order by which the directors of the much-hated Comédie Italienne, now known as the Opéra Comique, were prevented from playing comedies, especially those which had been written expressly for the Comédie Française.
In 1770 the famous company again changed their domicile, and, by the king’s special permission, took possession of the theatre built in 1671 at the palace of the Tuileries. Here they remained twelve years, until 1782, when they left the palace of the kings of France and installed themselves in the house afterwards to become known as the Odéon, on the left bank of the Seine, close to the Luxemburg Palace. According to Fréron, the daring satirist who was in no way afraid to take even Voltaire for his mark, the dramatic literature of France had now fallen to a very low point, by reason of the worldly success of its authors. “The gay life of most of our authors helps,” wrote Fréron, “to keep them within the bounds of mediocrity. Love of pleasure, the attractions of society that luxury which had so long kept them at a respectful distance, now enervate their souls. They are men of society, men of fashion, runners after women, and themselves much run after. They are at every party, every entertainment; no supper is complete without them; they are sumptuously dressed, and have luxuriously furnished rooms. It was not by supping out every night in society that the Corneilles, the Molières, the La Fontaines, and the Boileaus composed those masterpieces which will constitute for ever their glory and the glory of France. They were simply lodged and simply clothed; a large flat cap covered the sublime head of the great Corneille, but all the assembly rose before him when he made his appearance at the play.” Since the days of Fréron the incomes and the luxury of French dramatic authors have greatly increased; a result mainly due to the exertions of Beaumarchais, whose Marriage of Figaro was produced at the Comédie Française two years after its installation at the Odéon in 1784. It was Beaumarchais who secured for French dramatic authors a fixed proportion of the receipts, and caused this equitable arrangement, previously unknown, to be perpetuated.
