The Seine

by Elaine Sciolino

  Troyes—the name is pronounced “trwah,” like trois, the number three—has approximately sixty thousand inhabitants. The town is known for its stained-glass windows, andouillette sausage, Gothic churches, sixteenth-century timbered houses, and the world’s largest collection of paintings by the Fauvist André Derain. English merchants traded in this area as early as the ninth century, often arriving via the Seine; the expression “troy ounce,” a system of tiny weights to measure precious metals and gemstones, is believed to have originated here in the Middle Ages. Troyes also was the birthplace of a twelfth-century poet and monk called Chrétien de Troyes. He wrote La queste del Saint Graal, which formed the basis for the Arthurian legends of the quest for the Holy Grail.

  As early as the twelfth century, the Seine at Troyes became a marvel of engineering, with a system of canals, aqueducts, and dikes. It supported water mills and opened the area to craftsmen. As Troyes was on the road from Italy to Flanders, it played host to great trade fairs renowned for their tanned animal skins and textiles. The town’s proximity to the river, coupled with the poor state of rural roads, meant that many traders chose to use the Seine to travel, transport their wares, and ship purchases to and from Paris. In a coincidental foreshadowing of the region’s role in Champagne production, Troyes took the shape of a Champagne cork. Nobility and clergy lived in the rounded head, where the cathedral stood; the lower classes lived in the stem. The town’s historic center has retained that shape. Even today, inhabitants of Troyes and official documents often refer to the old part of the city as the Bouchon de Champagne—the Champagne cork.

  In the fourteenth century, Troyes became the first town in France to use mills to turn rags into paper. Then, in 1524, a third of the city burned down and was rebuilt with tall, narrow timbered houses, many of which are still standing. As emperor, Napoléon launched a project to make the Seine navigable westward from Châtillon-sur-Seine through Troyes to Marcilly-sur-Seine and chose Troyes as the location for a large port. The project turned out to be more complicated and expensive than anticipated and was abandoned, but Troyes continued to thrive through its links to other towns along the river. In the nineteenth century, Troyes became notable for manufacturing fabric and hats and was celebrated as the center of the French textile industry. The fabric dyes released into the Seine turned its waters red, blue, yellow, and black.

  In the twentieth century, the city’s network of canals became unsanitary and difficult to navigate; most were filled in. Troyes’s historic center escaped damage during World War II, but the town lacked the money to expand. Although textile production declined sharply in the 1980s and 1990s in the face of foreign competition, it is still crucial for the local economy. So is tourism, thanks to the charming old town center and the cycling paths and walkways that line its defunct canal.

  Another important site is the synagogue and cultural center devoted to Rashi, an eleventh-century Jewish scholar and one of the most famous citizens of Troyes. Renowned for his commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud, Rashi created one of the first libraries in France. He remains a fixture in Jewish learning. In his writings, he also recorded details of everyday life—how people dressed, washed, cooked, killed animals, made glass—and how Jews interacted with the Christian world. (Jews could own fields and vineyards, Rashi tells us. They could borrow money from Gentiles, have their clothes laundered and tailored and their horses shoed by Gentiles, and own buildings together with Gentiles.)

  Over lunch, Andy ruminated about whether Rashi might have celebrated a Jewish custom called Tashlich. “On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, you walk to a body of water and throw in bread crumbs,” he explained. “It’s a symbol of throwing away your sins and starting afresh. Maybe Rashi threw bread crumbs into the Seine.” Then again, maybe he did not. It turns out that there are no recorded references to Tashlich before the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, long after Rashi’s death.

  However, Andy later discovered that Rashi wrote about a custom that was undertaken two to three weeks before Rosh Hashanah. Jews made baskets out of palm leaves and filled them with soil in which they planted beans. On the first evening of Rosh Hashanah, they swung the baskets seven times over their heads and then threw them into the river. Some people believe that the custom could have been a precursor to Tashlich. Andy could not determine whether Rashi himself or the Jews of Troyes during his lifetime ever practiced it. But what a lovely thought.

  Since the Seine runs around much of Troyes—only the canals run through it—we had to walk to the edge of town to see the river itself. It took some persistence, but we found a path to the Seine. We started on the riverbank near a public swimming pool, across the street from a Total gas station. It was not the prettiest spot.

  A metal barrier blocked our way, and a sign announced that swimming was banned: “Danger zone. Strong current. Risk of drowning. Dangerous river bed. Unstable banks.” The water itself looked cool, clear, and not very deep. Plants with long green leaves undulated gracefully in the shallow rapids. The rush of water made a lively sound.

  We walked under the shade of tall sycamore trees and passed a sports club and a group of men playing boules. The river was channeled into two concrete beds, resembling an artificial canal more than a natural waterway. The stone benches lining the unpaved path faced toward the road, away from the unremarkable river.

  Near a local university, the river narrowed and made a double curve. We strolled along a shabby path and passed drab apartment buildings and a forlorn post office. A concrete staircase led down to a riverbank and a lane that a sign said was called “The Alley of the Pretty Jump.” It could have been a glorious place for a riverside café, but the wooden benches needed painting and repair, and the “alley” was pockmarked with weeds and littered with plastic and paper. “We can see why the Seine doesn’t figure in the collective imagination of Troyes,” Andy said.

  At the other end of the alley, we climbed a stone staircase, and suddenly the Seine was caressing a tiny island. The concrete walls disappeared, replaced by shallow mudbanks covered with stones. Trees made deep shadows on the water. Lily pads sat on its surface. The river had turned tropical.

  At Troyes, the Seine is deep enough for canoes, kayaks, and even small motorboats. But the French governmental river authority does not consider the river officially navigable until it is joined by the Aube at Marcilly-sur-Seine, thirty miles away by car. There is little financial impetus to keep dredging the river and maintaining the canal walls, since most cargo traffic now moves by truck and train.

  The biggest town between Troyes and Paris is Nogent-sur-Seine, best known these days for its two steam-spewing nuclear reactors. It is also where the geographical areas of Champagne, Brie, and Burgundy come together. A museum in Nogent is dedicated to the sculptor Camille Claudel, who lived there for three years when she was growing up. Later, she destroyed many of her sculptures and is best known these days for her long relationship with Auguste Rodin and, alas, her descent into madness.

  Forty miles farther toward Paris, at the town of Montereau-Fault-Yonne, the more powerful and much wider Yonne empties into the Seine. It swells her size and doubles her flow as she leaves Burgundy and crosses into the province of Île-de-France (Island of France), which includes the city of Paris and the surrounding suburbs. From the outskirts of Île-de-France, the Seine is close enough to Paris to feel like a gateway to the city, and then, closer still, an extension of it.

  Meandering downstream, the river embraces the forest of Fontainebleau, best known for its château. Fontainebleau was a royal residence from the reign of Louis VII, in the twelfth century, through Napoléon III in 1870. Its 110-square-mile forest, filled with oak, pine, chestnut, and beech trees, borders the Seine for nearly twelve miles as it winds its way west. Part of the château is perched on a cliff a hundred feet above the river. There are trails, but they are narrow, overgrown dirt paths more suited to hiking than a leisurely stroll. This is not the well-paved biking bliss of the Loire, although it
is one of the most peaceful spots from which to view the river.

  No navigable waterway connects the château to the river. But in 1609 Henri IV came close when he dug a canal to the Ru de Changis, a small stream that flowed into the Seine; a carp pond at the château, once part of the canal, still exists. And while living in Fontainebleau, Marie-Antoinette came to like the idea of Seine river travel. One day in 1783, she cruised the river on the Duc d’Orléans’s coche d’eau, a flat-bottomed “water coach.” It had to be pulled by horses on a towpath along the river and could go only as far as the town of Melun, ten miles north of the château and thirty-seven miles southeast of Paris. Nevertheless, the queen enjoyed the ride so much that she ordered the same type of boat to be built for her. She may have taken it out on the river during her two final stays in Fontainebleau.

  Although most painters of the Seine were drawn to the west of Paris, some found inspiration near Fontainebleau. In the 1880s, Alfred Sisley moved with his family to a village near Moret-sur-Loing, close to the château’s forest. From there, he painted more than two hundred canvases. Recently, Moret-sur-Loing and four other nearby municipalities created an eleven-mile Sisley walking trail along the banks of the river, with enameled plaques displaying reproductions of his work in the places where he painted. The nineteenth-century artist Rosa Bonheur also painted along this part of the river. She bought a château and installed a studio; the château is now a museum containing her personal possessions (including a Sioux tribal costume that Buffalo Bill gave her).

  Melun itself, which is a bit farther on, originated as a Gallo-Roman settlement on the Île Saint-Etienne, an island in the Seine, and later spilled onto both banks. In that sense, it is a miniature version of Paris, which the Romans first built on the Île de la Cité. Just a few miles away from Melun is a must-see detour: the seventeenth-century château of Vaux-le-Vicomte. With its perfect proportions, it is a masterpiece of Baroque architecture, more intimate and manageable than the much larger and grander château it inspired: Louis XIV’s Versailles.

  As the river enters the Paris suburbs, trees, greenery, and private homes make way for factories, graffiti-decorated quays, and high-rise office and apartment buildings. Ivry-sur-Seine is the final town the Seine touches before it reaches Paris, a little more than a mile away. This is where the Seine meets the Marne, a river most famous for the World War I battle thirty miles upstream, where French soldiers and their British allies pushed back the seemingly unstoppable German war machine.

  Then come two one-way bridges named after Nelson Mandela. On the left, a large sign for a company with the letters SNB reads “Matériaux Routiers / Remblais Granulats” (Road Material / Aggregate Back-fill). On the right is a line of working barges at anchor and, behind them, the top of a French mortgage bank building, Crédit Foncier. Infrastructure trumps image. The sight is unspectacular.

  But at this point, what does it matter? The Boulevard Périphérique, the highway that rings the city, announces that the traveler has arrived—whether by car, by bike, on foot, or in a boat—at the doorstep of Paris. All that’s missing to make this a grand entry point for the Seine is a glorious bronze statue of the goddess Sequana.

  PART THREE

  The Spine of Paris

  An image of the coat of arms of the city of Paris. Below is the motto Fluctuat nec mergitur, “She is tossed on the waves but does not sink.”

  EIGHT

  It Started with a Canoe

  The river . . . provides water which

  is very clear to the eye and very

  pleasant for one who wishes to

  drink. . . . And a good kind of vine

  grows thereabouts.

  —EMPEROR JULIAN, Misopogon

  IN 1991, Paris embarked on a massive urban-renewal project to build a business complex and a park in the Bercy neighborhood, along the eastern edge of the Right Bank. When the planning began, no one gave much thought to Bercy’s history.

  An archaeologist named Philippe Marquis who was assigned to the site as an official observer noticed something strange. As construction workers dug up the earth, Marquis saw unusual black layers in the sediment. He ordered the project to stop and petitioned the Ministry of Culture to investigate. A careful excavation revealed that bulldozers had struck more than six millennia into the past.

  About twenty-six feet underground, the workers had encountered traces of Neolithic wooden huts and jetties, and the remains of ten long, shallow Neolithic dugout canoes. Some of the canoes were only fragments, others almost intact. One bulldozer had accidentally split a canoe in two. “The site is the most spectacular of its kind ever found in Paris,” Philippe Velay, then the archaeology curator at the Musée Carnavalet, said on French television. “It shows that the city is much older than we thought.”

  I went to see the oldest of these boats for myself in the Carnavalet, the most Parisian of Paris museums. Located in two adjoining mansions in the Marais, it contains hundreds of thousands of pieces of art, furniture, and ephemera, all connected to the city’s history. Among its five-star objects are a replica of the Bastille prison carved from one of its stones, the armchair in which the philosopher Voltaire died, some of the original furniture from the cork-lined bedroom of the Right Bank apartment of Marcel Proust, and Napoléon’s favorite toiletries case.

  When I visited the Carnavalet in pursuit of the story of Paris, Sylvie Robin, one of the curators, was waiting with a set of keys. The museum had closed for renovation; most of its contents had been put into storage. Robin led me through damp, unlit corridors lined with packing crates to our destination: a large, high-ceilinged hall. There, shoved against a wall, was an artifact labeled P06, protected from the elements in a twenty-foot-long glass case, awaiting the arrival of a custom-built, climate-controlled moving container.

  P06 is a long, thin length of wood the color of mud. Robin explained that it was one of the dugout canoes known as “pirogues.” The Stone Age settlers would use stone tools to carve each pirogue from a single piece of oak. This pirogue was between 6,400 and 6,800 years old, the oldest of the prehistoric boats discovered at Bercy. When it was unearthed, along with other objects from the era, its provenance upended long-held assumptions about the origins of Paris. “As far as we know, this is the first boat that traveled on the Seine,” she said. “It is the most important prehistoric object found in northern France in decades. And it was discovered by chance.”

  The canoe measures about twenty feet long and three feet wide and is big enough to carry ten men, though its sturdiness is a thing of the past. Over time, layers of wet sediment crushed the boat nearly flat. As she spoke, Robin grew more animated, allowing herself to be swept up in the magical retelling of history. “In this boat that sits before us, the very first Parisians went up and down the river to hunt and to trade,” she said. “I sometimes imagine what life was like in their settlement, and I say to myself, ‘There were once people here who sat down with their basket of chickens and prepared a meal.’”

  In that era, the Seine was already a primitive but navigable river with its own identity. It has evolved significantly ever since. Under Caesar’s rule, at the start of Paris’s recorded history, it still wasn’t a single river but more like an archipelago of islands with interwoven waterways that could spread out to a width of about three and a half miles during floods. The riverbanks were broader and their slopes gentler. A swath of the Right Bank was low enough for the river to cover parts of what is now northern Paris—from the place de l’Alma to the Grands Boulevards and the Canal Saint-Martin—before curving around to rejoin the main flow at what is today the Bassin de l’Arsenal and Bercy. The hills of Montmartre, Belleville, and Trocadéro were too high and the river too shallow for the water to reach them.

  The poet André Velter called the limestone, sand, gypsum, calcium, and sandstone beneath the prehistoric Seine “the sedimentation of memory.” He added, “Secretly, the Seine is still there, united almost in the flesh with the walls and pavestones that were
founded on what she abandoned, what she left behind.”

  Robin explained that the canoes were found at the site of one of the small, cliff-lined waterways at Bercy where nomadic hunter-gatherers passed through, then created encampments. P06 belonged to a people known as the Cerny. They were the monument builders of Neolithic France, located mostly in the Yonne and Seine River basins. Named after a village twenty-five miles south of Paris where prehistoric ceramic shards were collected from a field in the 1960s, the Cerny were the first Europeans to stop wandering and begin to build primitive settlements by the Seine. They grew wheat as their principal grain, and erected monuments for their dead.

  Before the canoes were found in Bercy, the accepted history was that the Romans created Lutetia (Lutèce in modern French) on the Île de la Cité in 52 b.c., on a site originally established by the tribe known as the Parisii, the first permanent inhabitants. The discovery in Bercy supported the idea that towns may have existed in present-day Paris much earlier than that. Between a few hundred and a thousand people might have inhabited them, farming, raising livestock, running businesses, fishing, and hunting animals like wild boar, deer, beavers, turtles, and wolves.

  Archaeologists at the Bercy dig found more than canoes; they also unearthed nearly fifty thousand artifacts that comprised the necessary objects of a civilization. Among them were hundreds of vases, bowls, and cups—about two hundred of them miraculously intact. Excavators also found flints and arrowheads; a millstone; a polished ax; fishhooks; remnants of tools including handles, picks, hoes, small stones, shells, a carved and polished boar tusk; and a fossil with a carp tail. The jaws of wild boars—probably kept as totems—were hidden at the foot of a wall that would have surrounded the village. The most precious artifact was a five-foot-long hunter’s bow in yew wood discovered under a cluster of branches, one of the oldest weapons ever found in Europe.