CHAPTER XVIII

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THE CATACOMBS: THE OBSERVATORY.

Origin of the Catacombs--The Quarries of Mont Souris--The Observatory--Marshal Ney--The School of Medicine.

Between the church where the hearts of royal princes were once deposited, and the catacombs where nameless human remains are still preserved, there is but little connection. It has already, however, been mentioned that a portion of the catacombs separates the Val de Grâce from its foundations; and a word may here not inappropriately be said of underground Paris. The catacombs are certainly miscalled. The name carries us back to antiquity; and those who have no positive information on the subject may be excused for thinking that here were buried the inhabitants of Lutetia in the time of Cæsar and of Julian the Apostate. As a matter of fact, however, the so-called catacombs are simply quarries to which have been removed from time to time since the closing years of the last century the skeletons and bones of those interred in the Paris cemeteries and graveyards, which, as they became too full, had to be relieved of their mouldering contents. In 1780 the inhabitants of some houses in the Rue de la Lingerie, alarmed by certain deplorable accidents which happened through the propinquity of their cellars to a large common graveyard formed to hold 2,000 bodies, addressed a petition to the lieutenant-general of police, pointing out the dangers by which the health of Paris was threatened. The lieutenant recommended the suppression of the Church of the Innocents, and the exhumation of the bodies deposited in the ancient cemetery attached to it, which it was proposed should be turned into a public thoroughfare. The suggestions of the lieutenant, M. Lenoir, having been accepted, his successor, M. Crosne, appointed a commission through the members of the Royal Society of Medicine, which was entrusted with the duty of emptying the cemetery of the Innocents of its dangerous contents. The decision arrived at was that the human remains should be removed from the cemetery and placed in the quarries of Mont-Souris. During the year 1786 the quarries were prepared for receiving the bones of whole generations of the Paris population. In some places pillars were built up in order to support the quarries where there seemed to be a probability of their giving way from above; in others, where the quarries were open, they were covered over, so that the new catacombs might be everywhere underground. Excavations, too, had to be made; and, finally, an upper storey was constructed, so that the bones now repose in two different layers, one above the other. On the 7th of April, 1787, the catacombs intended to serve as general ossuary to all the cemeteries of Paris were solemnly blessed and consecrated; and the same day began the translation of the contents of the cemetery of the Innocents to the catacombs. Dr. Theuriet, who superintended the removal, came to the conclusion, together with other medical men, his assistants, that, from the position of the limbs, a number of persons must have been buried in a state of lethargy, so hastily and carelessly were people interred in those days. After the cemetery of the Innocents had been cleared of its remains other burial-places were proceeded with; and though the work of transfer had not been finished when the Revolution broke out, which had the natural effect of interrupting it, some of the first victims of the great struggle were carried to the catacombs. The bones deposited in these subterranean vaults are arranged in an orderly and methodical style. There are no tombs in the catacombs, where the dead are absolutely on an equality. Here and there, however, the name of tomb has been fancifully given to some pillar or portion of a pillar which presented a monumental aspect. Thus the tomb of Gilbert, the unhappy poet, is pointed out, because, on the wall of the supposed sepulchre, someone has inscribed the well-known opening lines of his most celebrated poem,

Au banquet de la vie, infortuné convive, J’apparus un jour et je meurs. Je meurs, et sur la tombe où lentement j’arrive Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs![C]

[C] A literal prose translation reads somewhat baldly:--An unfortunate guest at life’s banquet I appeared for a day and now die; I die, and on the tomb to which I am slowly travelling none will come to shed a tear.

At other points the walls of the catacombs have, by some peculiarity of construction or of natural form, suggested legendary ideas. One pillar is called that of the “Imitation”; and elsewhere the pedestal of Saint-Laurent may be seen.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE OBSERVATORY.]

Some forty or fifty years ago the catacombs were the object of daily visits, and the sight was one which every visitor to Paris felt called upon to see. Accidents, however, frequently took place; and at present no one enters the catacombs except at certain periods of the year, when the engineers have to make a formal report as to their condition. The ventilation is effected by means of numerous holes communicating with the upper air. The catacombs may be entered from various points. At the period of the daily visits, which were too often accompanied by accidents, the descent was made from the south, near the Luxemburg Gardens. The names of visitors are called over before they go down and again when they come up. The general aspect of the place is not so solemn as might be imagined. It suggests rather a vast wine-cellar in which the cases enclose bones instead of bottles. The relics of four million persons now repose there. This subterranean city contains streets and passages like the city above, and each thoroughfare, numbered as though it consisted of houses, corresponds closely enough to the street, with its numbers, of the metropolis overhead. The object of this carefully-planned correspondence is to be able, in case of accident, to furnish assistance as soon as possible at the spot indicated.

[Illustration: THE GARDENS OF THE OBSERVATORY, BOULEVARD ARAGO.]

The favourite point of descent for visitors to the catacombs is in the ominously-named Rue d’Enfer (the origin of the name has been already given); and here the visitor finds himself with the Children’s Asylum and the Convent of the Visitation on the one hand, and on the other the Convent of the Good Shepherd; behind which may be seen, at the end of the Luxemburg Gardens, the tower and cupola of the Observatory.

The Children’s Asylum is really a foundling hospital, established in an ancient building given by Gaston, Duke of Orleans, to the priests of the Oratory in 1655. For a long time the duty of gathering up and educating deserted children, and in particular new-born babes exposed, defenceless, to the inclemency of the weather, belonged, as a special Christian prerogative, to the bishop of Paris; and in the cathedral stood a bedstead, fastened into the pavement, on which, on fête days, children were exposed in order to awaken the charity of the public. Close to the bed were two or three nurses and a basin for the receipt of alms. This charity, of somewhat primitive type, gave rise to abuses. The nurses of the unknown children would now and then become tired of them, and got rid of them by simply selling them. It is said that at the Port Saint-Landry children fetched twenty sous apiece. Those of the foundlings who did not die helped to swell the number of the vagabonds, beggars, and thieves.

Such was the scandalous state of things which St. Vincent de Paul undertook to reform when he founded in 1638, near the gate of Saint-Victor, an asylum for foundlings directed by ladies of charity. In 1641 Louis XIII. ensured to it an annuity of four thousand livres (francs), which in 1644 was raised to twelve thousand. After being moved from place to place, the institution was located at a house in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, of which the first stone was laid in 1676 by Queen Marie-Thérèse, with a subsidiary establishment in connection with Notre Dame.

At present foundlings and poor orphans are received at the asylum of Les Enfants Assistés from the first day of their birth until their twelfth year. Immediately after their admission the children are sent into the country, where the newly-born are entrusted to nurses, while the elder ones are placed with artisans or farmers. The asylum receives, moreover, for a time, the children of hospital patients and of persons arrested or condemned for criminal offences. The number of children belonging to the latter category averages some four thousand a year, for whom 542 beds have been provided. The general expenses of the asylum exceed annually two millions and a half of francs (£100,000). Opposite the Children’s Asylum are the lofty walls of the convent of the Good Shepherd, administered by the lady hospitallers of Saint-Thomas de Villeneuve, for the benefit of penitent women.

Enclosed by the Rue d’Enfer, the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques, and the Boulevard Arago stands the Observatory, one of the most celebrated scientific establishments of Paris and of the world. It was founded by order of Louis XIV. Colbert took the work in hand, Claude Perrault designed it, and Cassini inaugurated it in the name of Science. The building, begun in 1667 and finished in 1672, still preserves its original design. With its square tower in front, on the side of the avenue, and its side wings in the form of octagonal pavilions, the Observatory would resemble some country house if its cupolas and the other appendages which surmount the terraces on its Italian roof did not indicate its scientific object. The four sides of this rectangular construction correspond exactly to the four cardinal points. The principal façade, to which, from the Luxemburg Gardens, leads the broad avenue, looks directly to the north. The posterior façade, on the Boulevard side, has a southern aspect. The left side, dominating the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, receives the rising sun, while the setting sun casts its rays on the right side, which runs in a line with the Rue d’Enfer. The latitude of the southern façade is taken, in the official geography and cosmography of France, for the latitude of Paris, so that the Paris meridian cuts the building into two equal parts. Neither wood nor iron has been employed in the construction, which is entirely of stone.

The Observatory, a state establishment under the control of the Ministry of Public Instruction, is governed by a director, who has attached to him titular astronomers, eight adjunct astronomers, and five assistant astronomers. The administration is in the hands of the director, aided by a council, who, moreover, superintends the scientific surveys, and is charged with the correspondence and the publication of reports.

The meridian of Paris, traced in a great hall on the second storey, divides the edifice into two parts by a line which, prolonged north and south, would reach, in one direction, Dunkirk on the North Sea, in the other Callioure on the Mediterranean. These two lines, which intersect one another at the central point of the façade, served as basis for the numerous triangles upon which were drawn up, in the last century, the map of France, known as the map of Cassini, and in the middle of the present century the map known as the “staff map,” begun under the direction of General Pelet. The east wing contains the chambers of observation and the instruments belonging to them; the west wing an amphitheatre capable of holding 8,000 persons. It was here that the illustrious Arago delivered his lectures.

In 1815 was constructed, on the octagonal tower of the east, the great copper cupola furnished with apertures for telescopes, the floor of which moves round, so that the astronomer in observation can follow the revolutions of the stars throughout the night. This revolving dome, the largest known in the scientific world, has a diameter of about thirteen metres. In its centre is the immense parallactic telescope of Bruner. It is nine metres long and thirty-eight centimetres in diameter. Mention must be made, in other parts of the edifice, beneath smaller cupolas, of hydrometers for measuring the rain, the equatorial telescope of Secrétan and Eychens, together with thermometers, regulators, telegraphic and registering apparatus, Gamby’s mural circle, micrometers, the great meridian circle, and the immense telescope, one of the four largest telescopes in the world, furnished with a mirror silvered by the Foucourt process and having a diameter of 120 centimetres.

The Observatory avenue was the scene of a tragic event on the 7th of December, 1815, when, at daybreak, in front of the wall of a public dancing-place, known as the Closerie des Lilas, Marshal Ney, condemned to death by sentence of the Court of Peers, was shot. Marshal Ney, Duke of Elchingen and Prince of Moscow (or of “Moskowa,” the Moscow river), after gaining distinction in all Napoleon’s campaigns, found himself, under the Restoration, in 1814, charged with the duty of seizing his former chief, who had just disembarked from Elba, and bringing him as a prisoner to Paris. Though far from being an enthusiastic supporter of the Bourbons, Ney considered that after the arrangements of Vienna and the pacification of Europe, Napoleon had committed a serious offence in coming back to France. Marshal Soult, then Minister of War, sent him to the south of France, where he was to take measures against Napoleon from headquarters at Besançon. Before proceeding on his mission Ney had an audience of Louis XVIII., in the course of which, speaking of Napoleon, he promised to bring him back “in an iron cage.” Arriving at Besançon, Ney learned that the Count of Artois, brother of the king, had gone to Lyons, where he at once wrote to the count saying that as the small number of troops at Besançon did not require his presence in that town, he begged his royal highness to employ him near his person, and, if possible, as commander of the vanguard; desiring, as in all other circumstances, to give proofs of his zeal and fidelity. On the day following, M de Maillé, the count’s first gentleman of the chamber, went to inform the marshal of the prince’s departure from Lyons and of Bonaparte’s arrival at Grenoble. Ney thereupon decided to move his headquarters to Lons-le-Saunier, “resolved,” as he wrote to the Minister of War, “to attack the enemy on the first favourable occasion.” On reaching Lons-le-Saunier, he heard that Napoleon had entered Lyons, on which he concentrated his forces without delay, and gave instructions to his generals. His orderly officer having told him that the soldiers in their excitement were on the point of breaking out into mutiny, and were shouting “Vive l’Empereur,” he replied, “They must fight. I will myself take a gun from the hands of a grenadier. I will begin the action, and will shoot the first man who refuses to follow me.” The next day, on the 13th of March, Ney was informed that Bonaparte was being everywhere received with acclamation, and that everywhere the troops sent against him were joining his standard. At Bourg, Maçon, and Dijon the re-establishment of the Empire had been proclaimed; and the artillery, which had been ordered to join the Royalist army, had gone over to Napoleon’s forces. In presence of this irresistible movement, the marshal fell into a state of the utmost perplexity. On the night of the 13th emissaries from Bonaparte came to see him. They declared that the return of Napoleon met with the approval of England and Austria; told him that his soldiers would certainly abandon him, and explained to him, by narrating the triumphal progress of his former chief, how impossible he would find it to act against the current of public opinion. All this had a great effect upon Ney. Uncertain, shaken in his resolution, he consulted the two principal generals, Lecourbe and Bourmont, serving under his orders, and, on the ground that the public current was irresistible, determined to abandon the Royalist cause. Forgetting all his promises, all his emphatic protestations of loyalty, he joined the side that was now triumphant. He assembled his troops in the public square of Lons-le-Saunier on the morning of the 14th, and appeared in the midst of them surrounded by his staff. Drawing his sword, and in a loud impressive voice, he read the following proclamation, which had been handed to him by Napoleon’s envoys:--“Officers, under-officers, and soldiers. The cause of the Bourbons is lost for ever. The dynasty adopted by the French nation is about to reascend the throne. To the Emperor Napoleon, our sovereign, alone belongs the right of reigning for our dear country. Let the Bourbon nobility make up its mind to leave the country once more, or consent to live in the midst of us. What, in either case, does it matter? The sacred cause of liberty and independence will suffer no more from their fatal hands. They wished to tarnish our military glory; but they made a mistake. This glory is the fruit of actions too noble ever to be forgotten. Soldiers, these are no longer the times in which nations can be governed by stifling their rights. Liberty triumphs at last, and Napoleon, our august emperor, will establish it on durable foundations. Henceforth this cause shall be ours and that of France. Let the brave men I have the honour to command take this truth to their hearts.

[Illustration: PLACE DE L’OBSERVATOIRE.]

“Soldiers, I have often led you to victory. I will now conduct you to that immortal phalanx which the Emperor Napoleon is leading towards Paris, and which will arrive there within a few days, when our hopes and our happiness will be for ever realised. Long live the Emperor! Lons-le-Saunier, March 13, 1815, Marshal of the Empire, Prince de la Moskowa.”

From the very first words of this proclamation the soldiers, who hated the Bourbons, raised frantic acclamations. A furious joy, says M. Thiers, broke out like thunder in the ranks. Placing their shakos at the end of their muskets, they raised them in the air and cried out with significant violence, “Vive l’Empereur! Vive le Maréchal Ney!” Then they broke the ranks, rushed headlong towards the marshal, and kissing, some his hands, others the skirts of his coat, thanked him after their manner for having accomplished the desire of their hearts. Those who could not get near him surrounded his aides-de-camp; rather embarrassed at receiving homages which they certainly did not deserve, for they were strangers to the sudden change that had been brought about. “We knew,” cried the soldiers, “that you and the marshal would not leave us in the hands of the émigrés.” The inhabitants showed themselves not less enthusiastic than the troops; and Ney returned to his quarters under the escort of an excited crowd, frantic with joy. When, however, he found himself at home, he read in the countenances of his aides-de-camp uneasiness and even disapproval. One of them, a former émigré, broke his sword, saying at the same time: “You should have told us beforehand, M. le Maréchal. You should not have made us witnesses of such a sight.”

“And what would you have had me do?” replied Ney. “Could I stop the advancing sea with my hands?”

Others, while admitting that it was impossible to make the soldiers fight against Napoleon, expressed their regret at his having undertaken, at such a short interval, two such contrary parts.

“You are children,” replied the marshal. “It is necessary to do one thing or another. Can I go and hide myself like a coward to avoid the responsibility of events beyond me. Marshal Ney cannot take refuge in the dark. Besides, there is only one way to diminish the evil: by taking a decided part at once so as to avert civil war; to get into our hands the man who has returned and prevent him from committing follies. For,” he added, “I am not giving myself over to a man but to my country; and if this man wished to lead us back once more to the Vistula, I would not follow him.” Having treated in this manner those who blamed him. Marshal Ney received at dinner, besides the generals, all the regimental chiefs with the exception of one who refused to come. After the defeat of Waterloo, in which he is represented by French historians as everywhere seeking death, Ney was brought before the Chamber of Peers, and for his disloyalty condemned to death.

[Illustration: STATUE OF MARSHAL NEY.]

[Illustration: SCHOOL OF DRAWING, RUE DE L’ÉCOLE DE MÉDECINE.]

Out of 161 members present, 128 voted death, 17 transportation, while 5 members abstained from voting. Amongst the peers who pronounced for capital punishment may be mentioned Châteaubriand, the Duc de Valmy, the Duc de Bellune, Lauriston, General Monnier, and the Comtes Dupont, de Beauharnais, de Tascher, de Sèze, Séguier, Lamoignon, and d’Aguesseau.

From the prison of the Luxemburg, his place of confinement, the marshal was taken at an early hour of the morning to the avenue of the Observatory, and was, as before mentioned, placed against the wall. Protesting his innocence, and appealing to God and to posterity, he died, pierced to the heart by half-a-dozen bullets. The Duke of Wellington was accused at the time of not lifting a finger to save Ney from the consequences of his treason. It has since been shown by the evidence of the duke’s own words that he approached the king on the subject. But he met with such a reception that it was impossible for him to persist.

On the critical day, when Napoleon’s envoys appealed to him, and when his troops were longing, to a man, to swell the numbers of Napoleon’s forces, the marshal, it is argued, could scarcely have acted otherwise than as he did. Of the 128 peers who voted for the marshal’s execution, a considerable number were of Napoleonic creation.

After the Revolution of 1848 a tablet was affixed to the fatal wall in memory of Ney, and a sum of money voted for the erection of a statue. It was reserved, however, for Napoleon III. to commemorate, on the spot where he had fallen by the bullets of his own countrymen, the heroism of the marshal. The monument was inaugurated on the 7th of December, 1853, the anniversary of the marshal’s death, the ceremony being presided over by Comte de Persigny, Minister of the Interior, and Ney’s grandson by marriage. The monument consists of a pedestal in white marble, resting on a foundation of red granite, and supporting the statue of the marshal, modelled by Rude. Sabre in hand, Ney appears to be leading his troops to a charge or to an assault.

We have seen that the Rue d’Enfer, thanks to the power of the monks over the fiend who once made night hideous by his unearthly screams, has long had the reputation of being the quietest street in Paris. Here numbers of artists have made their abode, sure, in the midst of monasteries and asylums, of the tranquillity so necessary to their labours.

Among the remarkable institutions in this neighbourhood may be mentioned the free school of drawing in the Rue de l’École de Médecine. A special school for girls, founded in 1803 in the Petit Rue de Touraine (now Rue Dupuytren), was afterwards transferred to No. 7 Rue de Seine.

The Church of the Cordeliers, pulled down at the beginning of the century, stood on the site now occupied by the School of Medicine. Behind the church a garden, laid out by the famous Le Notre, was the scene of the funeral ceremony and interment of Marat, stabbed by Charlotte Corday in the house just opposite, numbered 20 at the time. After the body had been publicly exhibited and made the subject of a picture by David, it was interred in the garden beneath an arbour which bore this inscription, among others equally singular: “Sacred heart of Marat, pray for us!” Exhumed some years later, the remains of Marat were carried to the Panthéon, whence they were taken out, to be cast into the gutter of the Rue Montmartre, their last resting-place.

Of the agglomeration of buildings which constituted the convent of the Cordeliers, the only one that remains is that which formerly contained the dormitories and the refectory. Within its walls is now established the Dupuytren Museum, with its specimens of pathological anatomy, not open to the public. The Practical School of Medicine, on the Place de l’École de Médecine, stands on the site formerly occupied by the rest of the cloister and its dependencies. The collective name of École Pratique is given to the dissection-rooms of the Faculty of Medicine and to the amphitheatres where free lectures are given, and where some six hundred students practise dissection and experimental chemistry.

Immediately opposite the Practical School is the School of Medicine, built in 1769 by the architect Gondouin. The edifice, as completed under Louis XVI., is composed of four blocks of buildings, leaving between them a large courtyard. The façade, looking on to the square, consists of a gallery of Ionic columns. Above the colonnade is an attic storey with twelve windows, broken, above the principal entrance, by a bas-relief representing Minerva and Generosity granting privileges to Surgery, followed by Vigilance and Prudence. The Genius of Art is seen presenting to the king the plan of the building.

This handsome edifice is the seat of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, whose mission it is to teach medicine and surgery in all their branches, and to examine the students and assign to them those diplomas, without which it is forbidden in France to practise medicine, surgery, or pharmacy. The title of professor at the Faculty of Medicine is the highest that a physician or surgeon can obtain. The number of titular professors amounts to twenty-six.

The Faculty possesses a library, two museums, and thirty laboratories; besides the botanical garden at No. 13 Rue Cuvier, close to the Garden of Plants. The front rooms and left wing of the school are occupied by the Orfila Museum, named after the famous chemist.

[Illustration: THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.]

[Illustration: NEW WING OF SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, BETWEEN THE BOULEVARD SAINT-GERMAIN AND RUE DE L’ÉCOLE DE MÉDECINE.]

The Faculty of Medicine has, year by year, attracted so many additional students that at last the building, which dated from 1769, was found far too small; and it was decided some fifteen years ago to construct new wings, which now occupy all the space comprised between the Rue de l’École de Médecine, the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and the Rue Hautefeuille. The first stone of the new building was laid in 1878. To the right of the School of Medicine, the Rue Hautefeuille attracts the attention of the archæologist. The turrets of the middle ages and of the Renaissance have become rare in Paris; but the street in question possesses no less than six. The Rue Hautefeuille runs into the Place Saint-André des Arts, formed in 1809 on the site of the church of Saint-André des Arts, which was built in the thirteenth century on the foundations of an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint-Andéol and sold as national property in 1797, soon afterwards to be demolished. It was in the church of Saint-André des Arts that François Marie Arouet was baptised on the 22nd of November, 1694. The late M. Auguste Vitu, in his large illustrated work on Paris, claims, in recording this event, to have discovered the true interpretation of the anagrammatic process by which the bearer of the name of Arouet is supposed to have changed it into Voltaire. “Fs Voltaire” is, as M. Vitu points out, the exact anagram of “Arouet fils.” But why trouble about the matter? Who, after all, can tell us by what process the name of Poquelin, said to he derived from a Scotch village named Pawkelin (whence came the grandfather of the great comic dramatist) got converted into Molière?

[Illustration: HÔTEL DU CHEVAL BLANC.]

The Rue Saint-André des Arts leads to the meeting-point of the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, the Rue Dauphine, and the Rue Mazarine. In connection with the Rue Dauphine must be mentioned a little street that runs out of it, the Rue Contrescarpe, where still exists the Restaurant Magny, famous for its literary frequenters, including George Sand and Saint-Beuve, who, with some others, founded the celebrated “Friday dinner,” at which no one abstained from meat. No. 5 in this street, is occupied by the Hôtel du Cheval Blanc, the celebrated inn which figures in the “Roman Comique” of Scarron and the “Trois Mousquetaires” of Dumas. Under the reign of Louis XIII. it seems to have been nothing more than the stables, coachhouse, and servants’ hostelry attached to the mansion of the Archbishop of Lyons.

The Rue Saint-André des Arts communicates with the Rue de l’École de Médecine by a short passage known as the Cour du Commerce, which is associated, on more than one point, with the French Revolution. In one of the old houses (now pulled down) on the side of the Rue de l’École de Médecine lived Danton. At the present No. 8 still existed, until two years ago, a reading-room which was established under the Reign of Terror by the widow of the Girondist Brissot, who, having inherited a large library from her husband, wished to turn it to profitable account. In the same house was the printing office of the _Ami du Peuple_, edited by Marat. The printing office was directed by Brune, who afterwards became a marshal of France, and died, like the atrocious journalist, by assassination.

Another souvenir, again of a sanguinary kind, belongs to the Cour du Commerce. One of the appendages to the stunted houses in the middle of the passage is a shed, where the first experiments were made with the guillotine. “_Sic vos non vobis_” might, in Virgilian phrase, be said of the first victims. These were sheep, which were subjected to an almost painless death in the interest, not of themselves, while condemned to perish by the butcher’s knife, but of men and women. Some day, let us hope, animals also will be killed with the least possible accompaniment of suffering.

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