Part 16

And now, passing the flamboyant Italian façade--a meretricious imitation of the front of Saint-Gervais--of the Church of Saint-Paul-et-Saint-Louis, which has absorbed the name of old Saint-Paul, we reach at last the ample space where the two streets of Rivoli and of Saint-Antoine meet and so make one broad, unbroken thoroughfare through the length of the town, from the place where the Bastille was to the place now named Concorde. This grand highway has existed only since the middle of the nineteenth century. The Consulate and the First Empire had cut Rue de Rivoli along the upper edge of the Tuileries Gardens as far easterly as Rue de Rohan; from there it was prolonged, taking the line of some of the old, narrow streets and piercing through solid masses of ancient buildings, in the last years of Louis-Philippe; and was carried from the Hôtel de Ville to this point by the Second Empire. All through earlier days, the route, common and royal, from the Louvre and the Tuileries to the Hôtel Saint-Paul, the Tournelles, the Bastille, and the Arsenal, was by way of narrow Rue Saint-Honoré and its narrower continuation, Rue de la Ferronerie, thence around by Rue Saint-Denis into Rue des Lombards, and so along Rues de la Verrerie and Roi-de-Sicile to the old gate of Saint-Antoine, that stood just behind us here at the end of Rue Malher. Outside that gate was the country road leading to Vincennes, which was transformed into the city street, known to us as Rue Saint-Antoine, through the protection given by Charles V.'s new wall and by his Bastille. There had been, long before, a Rue Saint-Antoine, and it curves away here on our left, and is called Rue François-Miron, so named in honor of that _Prévôt des Marchands_ in Henri IV.'s time, who merits remembrance as an honest, high-minded, capable administrator of his weighty office.

Thus this street of old Saint-Antoine was the thoroughfare--at first from the entrance into the town by the old gate of Saint-Antoine, and afterward from the new street of Saint-Antoine and its entrance gate farther east--to the open space behind the Hôtel de Ville, alongside Saint-Gervais, and so to the bridges and the Palace on the Island. It was a street "marvellously rich" in shops, having no rival except in Rue Saint-Denis. Its shopkeepers shouted, from their doors or from the pavement in front, the merits of their wares to the throng swarming always along. Their wares were worthy of the city that, with its fast-growing population, equalled Venice herself in wealth, display, and splendor, if we may trust the word of an exultant scribbling citizen of the Paris of Charles V.

So, too, it was the grand highway for royal entries, for troops, for ambassadors with their trains, for any parade that demanded display and attracted spectators. Such an array came along here on August 26, 1660, when young Louis XIV. brought into his town his young bride, Maria Theresa of Spain, each of them being just twenty-two years old. It was the showiest pageant and the longest procession yet seen in Paris, taking ten or twelve hours to pass. The bride--a slight, pretty, girlish figure, in white satin and pearls, and a violet mantle of velvet--leaned back on the crimson velvet of her huge gilded chariot; at her right on horseback was the King, in cloth-of-gold and black lace, his collars and ruffles of white point. In the resplendent retinue nothing so blazed as the superb empty coach of the Cardinal-Minister Mazarin, its panels painted by Lebrun, drawn by the famous mules and escorted by the Mousquetaires. Less than a year later Mazarin was carried through Paris in his hearse, caring no more for mules or any tomfoolery.

The procession had entered the town under Claude Perrault's triumphal arch at the end of the Vincennes Avenue, and through Porte Saint-Antoine, cleaned up and sculptured afresh for this day, and so by new Rue Saint-Antoine, along this present Rue François-Miron. It was packed with spectators, among whom was La Fontaine, who sent a long rhymed description of the show to his patron, Fouquet, not omitting mention of the cardinal's mules. These, too, were spoken of with fitting praise in a letter written to a friend by young Madame Scarron--to be a widow, within a few weeks--who was also in the throng. Years after, she confessed to the credulous King that on that day she had first seen him and first loved him, and that she had never ceased to love him since! We may not consider the Duchess of Orleans unduly prejudiced when she refers to Madame de Maintenon as "that hussy."

At No. 88 Rue François-Miron you may see an excellent balcony of that period, solidly and richly wrought in iron, supported by captivating stone dragons of fantastic design. There were similar balconies on the front of the great mansion at No. 68--which was then No. 62--but of these only a small one is still left over the portal. They were all crowded with a most select mob of the elect on the day of this procession. There was Anne of Austria, in her black mantle, looking down on her son, her thoughts turning back to her own bridal procession over the same route, and her own youthful blond beauty of forty-five years before. By her side sat Henrietta of France, widow of Charles I., and her daughter, Henrietta Anne of England. The girl may have gazed with curiosity on the over-dressed fop riding at the bride's left wheel. This was Philippe d'Orléans, who was to be her husband, and was, through his complacent creatures, to poison her within ten years from this day. In another balcony sat Mazarin, too ill to take part in the procession.

The hostess of these great ladies was one Catherine Bellier, wife of Pierre de Beauvais; and this house is the Hôtel de Beauvais. The husband had been a pedlar or a shopkeeper, and had amassed sufficient wealth from ribbons to enable him to buy his title. The wife had served as first _femme-de-chambre_ to Anne of Austria, and had so learned many secrets of that queer court, of its Queen-Mother, and of her Cardinal. In that court there was no more unscrupulous creature than this Catherine Bellier. The deliciously outspoken Duchess of Orleans--the second wife of that Philippe we have just seen--describes this woman as one-eyed and hideous, of profligate life, and apt in all intrigue. To the day of her death she loved to appear in flamboyant costumes at the court, where she was treated with distinction because of what she knew. Anne of Austria gave her the stone for the construction of this _hôtel_, and she used to visit her waiting-woman and _confidente_ here. A popular verse of the day ran:

"_Mercredi notre auguste Reine, Cette charmante Souveraine, Fut chez Madame de Beauvais; Pour de son admirable palais Voir les merveilles étonnantes, Et les raretés surprenantes._"

[Illustration: The Hôtel de Beauvais.]

The design of the Hôtel de Beauvais, by Antoine Lepautre, is most daring and original in its great interior oval court, embellished with pilasters that are topped with finely carved stone masks. Despite the unhallowed devotion to cleanliness which, with its whitewash, has robbed it of its former lovely bloom of age, this court remains one of the most impressive specimens of seventeenth-century domestic architecture in all Paris. From the street we pass through an ample gateway, its curved top surmounted by a great shell. The vestibule is ornamented with escutcheons, alternating with the garlanded ox-skulls of Roman-Doric decoration--mistaken by many for rams' heads, so as to make a sculptor's pun on Bellier--all admirably carved in stone. The noble staircase has Corinthian columns, and a massive stone balustrade so perfectly pierced into fine lines of intertwisted tracery as to give delicacy to it, thick and broad as it is. Cut in stone escutcheons in the ceiling of this stairway are the intertwined initials of the brand-new nobility that built it. The grand _salons_ of the first floor have been partitioned off into small rooms for trade purposes. No character of any sort has been left to the interior.

The ground on which we tread here, while a portion of the Marais of old Paris, is not the Marais of modern Paris, as it is commonly designated. Yet this region toward the river, built on during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after the opening up of the grounds of the Hôtel Saint-Paul and the cutting of streets through them, holds enticements in architecture and in story that tempt us to turn our backs for a while on our own Marais.

Many of the streets here remain unmodernized and unspoiled, and here are _hôtels_ as perfectly preserved as this Hôtel de Beauvais. At No. 26 Rue Geoffroy-Lasnier we stop in delight before an entrance-door superbly carved and heavy with a glorious knocker--a lion's head holding a great ring in its mouth. Above this door we read: "_Hôtel de Châlons, 1625, et de Luxembourg, 1659._" The small court within, diminished by modern stables on one side, retains on its other side an ancient iron fountain. The façade of the miniature _hôtel_ giving on this court is in well-balanced stone and brick; its shapely windows are surrounded by male and female masks, and by delicate foliage twining about the monograms of the aforetime exalted owners--all elaborately carved in stone. The roof rises gracefully to its ridge, and each gable end is surmounted by a well-wrought iron finial. There is a modest garden behind, shut in and hid by the buildings about, which hide, too, the simple and attractive stateliness of that rear face of the Hôtel de Châlons. The enchanting isolation and the singular charm of this concealed corner give us the feeling that here is a bit of Bourges, gently dropped, tranquil and untroubled, into the midst of these turbulent streets.

A little farther along, at No. 32 in this street of Geoffroy-Lasnier, behind a commonplace house-front and a commonplace court, you shall find a staircase, with an iron rail below and a wooden rail above, that make a most uncommon and interesting picture.

Turning into Rue de Jouy, an altogether delightful old-time street, we pass through a monumental gateway at No. 7 into a symmetrical court. Facing us is the Hôtel d'Aumont, and it tells us more than is told by any structure hereabout of the merits of François Mansart. This front of two stories and of his own roof is faultless in proportion and dainty in adornment. He has given it the stamp of the stately days of the Grand Monarch by the four _oeils-de-boeuf_ above the perfect cornice of the second floor, two on either side of the central window. In the two corners of the court, at each angle of the building, are round-fronted stone _perrons_, broad and low and inviting. That on our left gives entrance to a small hall, the staircase in which carries an exquisite wrought-iron rail that lifts and lightens the stone steps. By them we mount to the chambers of the first floor, small as was the custom then, with one grand central reception-room, excellent in its proportions, its vaulted ceiling curiously carved in relief. All these rooms are, by the good taste and generous spirit of the owners of the property, kept in perfect condition, the furniture is of the period, and the painting--done by Lebrun a century later than the ceiling on which it is placed--is fresh and untarnished.

Mansart's commission for this construction came from that Duc d'Aumont who was Maréchal of France and Governor of Paris under Louis XIII. A descendant of the early fighters of old France, he seems to have been one of those favorites of fortune who, in the phrase of Beaumarchais, give themselves only the trouble to be born. At the age of ten he began his career as a colonel of cavalry, and continued it through a long line of lucky promotions in place and pay. Dying in 1704, he left this _hôtel_ packed with furniture, paintings, _bibelots_, and curios, and its stables filled with the carriages he had invented; an amazing collection, requiring months for its sale by his heirs.

The _hôtel_ is now occupied by the Pharmacie Centrale of France, to whose officials is due our gratitude for their rare and scrupulous respect for this delightful relic. Over its spacious gardens behind they have erected their immense laboratories and offices, which we may enter under the great vaulted porch at No. 21 Rue des Nonnains-d'Hyères. That once narrowest of the streets of old Paris, as quaint as its name, given it by the branch of the Hyères nunnery having its seat here, has become a broad and bustling thoroughfare. The plain rear elevation of the _hôtel_ can be seen here from the little corner of the garden that is still kept, and kept green by the choice plants of the company. In it is a capital bust of Dorvault, physician, author, founder of the Pharmacie Centrale. This may be the very bit of garden noticed by Dr. Martin Lister, an English traveller in France at the close of the seventeenth century. He dined with the Duc d'Aumont, and records that, opening from the dining-room, was a greenhouse through which his noble host led him into the garden.

Along through the rocky ravine that bears the name of Charlemagne, and does him no honor, we pass, by way of Rue Saint-Paul, into the short street that started in life as Rue Neuve-Saint-Paul, and has now taken the name of Charles V. Here, among the ancient fronts, we are attracted by that which is numbered 12, low and wide, with two floors and dormers above. Through its entrance-door, capped by a well-carved mask that smiles stonily down on us, we may enter the court by the courtesy of the sister, who smiles sweetly. This building is occupied by the girls' school of a sisterhood, whose youthful _communiantes_ happen to be forming in procession for a function to-day. They flutter about in innocent white, in unconscious contrast with the great lady and great criminal whom we have come to see. For this was the Hôtel d'Aubray, and its most distinguished tenant was the Marquise de Brinvilliers.

Let us look about the court and the little garden behind, both embraced by the two wings of the structure. That wing on our right, with round arches and a round tower at its end, is evidently of the original fabric and intended for stabling. This wing on our left, now extended by a new chapel, was, when built, meant to contain only this staircase, whose wide and broad stone steps and well-wrought iron balustrade mount gradually about a spacious central well. Here, resting on the bench at its foot, we may recall what is known about the strange and monstrous woman who once lived here.

She was Marie-Madeleine Dreux d'Aubray, and her father was an officer of Louis XIV., appointed Civil Lieutenant of the Châtelet Prison. He married her in 1651, when she was twenty-one, to the wealthy and dissolute Marquis de Brinvilliers, who was not a model husband. She was nothing loath, with her inborn instincts, to follow the example set by him. Among her lovers, a certain Gaudin de Sainte-Croix was much talked of; so much so that the lady's father, more powerful than her husband, and doubtless more outraged by the shameless publicity of the _liaison_, had Sainte-Croix taken from his daughter's carriage, as they rode together, and put into the Bastille. There his cell-mate was an Italian known only as Exili, a past-master in poisons, who boasted that he had brought to death at least one hundred and fifty men and women in Rome alone. He taught his trade to Sainte-Croix, who proved to be an apt pupil, and who continued his studies after his release. He took rooms with an apothecary in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and fitted up a laboratory. There his Marquise visited him, and was taught in her turn the use of his potions, among which the "manna of Saint-Nicholas" became her favorite.

For she took pains and showed conscience in her experiments, mainly on the patients in the hospitals, wherein she was a constant charitable worker. Thus she soon learned to dispense her poisoned wafers with scientific slowness and precision. But she was anxious that her charity should begin at home. Her father failed gradually with some obscure and unaccountable malady, and died in torment; and she nursed him tenderly to the end. There were too many in her family for her comfort, and her relatives outside had been too solicitous about her; so some sickened and some died off, she caring for all and lamenting each death. She had a sister, a Carmelite nun, who was never blinded by the round, girlish face, appealing blue eyes, and beguiling ways that bewitched so many. This woman guarded her own life and watched over others of the family. The attempts made by the marchioness on her husband's life were caused to fail, it is believed, by the attenuation of the poisons mixed for her by Sainte-Croix, who doubtless feared that he must marry the widow if he allowed her to become a widow. He himself was found dead, in 1672, in his laboratory, poisoned by the fumes of his devilish brews, through the breaking of the glass mask worn at his work. The official search among his effects discovered a casket, addressed to the marchioness at this dwelling; being opened, its contents were found to be her own ardent love-letters to him, a document detailing the doses and periods for the proper administration of the poisons, and a choice assortment of preparations of opium, antimony, sulphur. There was also a water-like liquid, unknown to chemists, which was found to kill animals instantaneously, leaving no lesions of any organ that could be traced by science. Sainte-Croix's servant made a disclosure, and the marchioness, hearing of his arrest and the finding of her package, made "confession by avoidance" by a flight to England. She slipped down these stairs, out through that doorway, and took coach around the corner for a northern port.

Colbert's brother was then Ambassador at the court of Saint James, and between them her capture was planned; she got wind of it, and fled to Liège, where she felt sure of safety in a convent. To her appears, after a while, a handsome and susceptible young _abbé_, who allows himself to be corrupted, and arranges for an elopement to a more congenial refuge for lovers. She climbs gayly into his carriage, his men surround it, and she is driven across the frontier into France and to the Bastille. The _abbé_ was Desgrais, an eager police officer detailed for this duty. He returned to her room in the convent, and found scattered sheets of paper containing notes that began a confession. This confession she was forced to complete and confirm by the torture by water--repugnant to her coquetry, because it would spoil her figure; "_toute mignonne et toute gracieuse_," had said an adorer of her early days. She showed courage at the last, Madame de Sévigné states, in the letters that were full of the trial and execution. She was burned, having first been beheaded. "Her poor little body was thrown, after her execution, into a good large fire, and her ashes blown about by the wind; so that we may be breathing her," Sévigné writes. This took place late in the afternoon of July 16, 1676--she was just over forty-five years of age--on Place de Grève, to which she was carted in a tumbril, having stopped on the way in front of Notre-Dame, and there, on her knees on the stones--her feet bare, a rope around her neck, a consecrated lighted taper in her uplifted hand--made to confess afresh.

[Illustration: The Staircase of the Dwelling of the Marquise de Brinvilliers.]

The painter Lebrun was one of the great crowd that gathered to see her go by, and he made a drawing, which you may see in the gallery of Old French Designs in the Louvre. She half sits, half reclines, in her tumbril, clad in a gown, its cowl drawn forward; her head is thrown back; her thick chestnut hair brushed away from her face; her eyes are wide and her mouth drawn with terror; her face is round, her lips are thick; in her folded hands she holds a cross, and she stares straight before her without seeing. At one side is the profile of a woman, very lean and ugly, her expression full of horror as she bends forward to gaze.

Turning from this street down through Rue Beautreillis, we pass the end of Rue des Lions, on whose southern side we have already found remains of the Hôtel des Lions du Roi. On its northern side is a row of plaster-fronted houses, commonplace and shabby. In one of those garrets there was living, shortly after 1830, a poor family of Jews named Félix, lately arrived from the Canton Aarau in Switzerland. Their two little girls went about the streets, singing and picking up coppers. One day in the Place Royale, among those who stopped to listen was a kindly eyed gentleman, who handed to the younger and thinner of the two pinched children a piece of silver. "That is Victor Hugo," said a woman in the crowd, as he went his way to his home in the corner. That small singer was Élisa Rachel Félix, known to us as the great Rachel.

Years after, when the world had given all that it could give to Rachel, she returned, from a voyage to Egypt in search of health, to the Place Royale to die. "It is on the way to Père-Lachaise," she said, when, in 1857, she moved into the immense and superbly furnished apartment on the first floor of No. 9, where her friends, she thought, would have ample room for her burial service. It is only a step in space from this garret to that palace. There, within a few months--although her death came at the country-seat of Victorien Sardou's father, whom she was visiting--that service was held, and from there her body was borne to Père-Lachaise.

Going down Rue du Petit-Musc, we reach the Quai des Célestins, and here on our left is the beginning of broad Boulevard Henri IV., cutting away, in its diagonal course through the grounds of the Hôtel Saint-Paul, much history and romance. Nothing is left of the gardens of the Hôtel de Lesdiguières, whose site is marked by a tablet on the corner of the street of that name, at No. 10 Rue de la Cerisaie. This tablet tells us that the _hôtel_ was the residence of the Czar Peter the Great in 1717; the guest, during his short sojourn in Paris, of the Maréchal de Villeroy, its owner then. We prefer to go back from that visit over a hundred years to a more attractive presence in this house. This was Gabrielle d'Estrées, beloved of Henry, who--for his fondness for her and their two fine boys--would have made her his wife, and have made them his legitimate successors, if he could have had his way.