“Let us proclaim it loudly, to the glory of Parisians: that evangelical example has been as contagious, and as rapid in its contagion, as that of the midwives. In the major administrations, in factories and department stores, all the way to the doorstep of the corner shop, everyone has bravely acclaimed the Christian precept. On feast days, the workshop falls silent and shop windows are shuttered. It’s necessary to confess that on the way there, rebellious displays—and I mean the most flourishing in Paris—have been seen to collapse, never to rise again, under Parisian malediction; but in sum, the holy day of Sunday has remained victorious. Monday is in flight. What Paris wants, God wants.”
“Let me come back momentarily to the theaters, the railways, the omnibuses. How are the liberalities imposed on their treasuries financed?”
“From the authority’s usual funds, of course: additions to lines, prolongations of privileges, revisions of tariffs, sometimes even annual indemnities. All that were seen previously were subsidies profitable to the wealthy classes; it’s only just that the multitude should have its own.”
“Wait, look through the windows. What are those two men doing, standing on the sidewalk, one passing out colored pieces of paper and the other counting out silver coins—that postman and that artisan?”
“Those pieces of paper are postal bearer bonds—a recent progress—for a hundred francs or less, valid for three months at most and yielding no interest. One can find them at any post office, and, as you can see, in the postman’s box. There’s no more expeditious means of transferring small capital sums either between quarters in Paris or between Paris and the provinces. If a worker wants to share his salary with his absent mother he no longer waste three hours of his day—what am I saying?—his entire day. Out there, the good woman is no longer forced to drag herself to the next town to beg for the assistance of two local witnesses because she cannot sign her name—and all to receive a few francs. No, no one would believe that today, if the poor old woman were in bed, incapable of going out, she only had two courses of action: submit to the expense of a procuration passed before a notary or to abandon her son’s pious aid to the State.”
“It would be better, it seems to me, to issue banknotes of less than a hundred francs.”
“They would be in round figures: five francs, ten, twenty and fifty. The postal orders represent, with the aid of additional coupons, the exact sum requested. They would not, moreover, be delivered gratuitously. Would you like to know what a new idea is worth. Listen at the door of the people. Well, the grateful crowd call the postman their ‘little banker.’”
VII. Popular Progress Concluded
“These aged relatives you mention, these honorary artisans, are worthy of interest. Have they at least found their place in the midst of so many ameliorations?”
“I’ll tell you what I know. The sovereign has founded a shelter for them in Vincennes. The old veterans of the workshop are cordially welcome there; they enter it with joyful hearts. But the doors there cannot open as easily as at the Hôtel des Invalides, for cannons have long silences, while the battle against poverty knows no armistice. It recommences every morning at daybreak. For that reason, a new idea has been born, which, while the working man prepares a future of ease for his family by means of labor, will give satisfaction—at least, one hopes so—to his duties toward his aged relatives. Listen carefully.
“The administration of the Public Assistance, with the aid of the law of expropriation, bought, four kilometers from Paris, the area known as Long-Boyau, a green oasis extending to either side of the railway line to Lyon from Maison-Alfort to Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, where it reaches the Seine. Once having become its owner, its first concern was to build a railway station in the center and to divide the domain up into small parcels, with skillfully-drawn avenues to serve each plot. After that it delivered the whole to the Credit Bank of France with the following instructions:
“Every Parisian worker will be free to have designs on a six-hundred-meter plot of land and to do with it was he likes, on promising to pay once a week, on Sunday, a centime for each two meters of land, for a period of five years—which would make, for the six hundred meters, three francs a week, twelve a month, 156 a year and, in total, 780 francs for the five years.
“That weekly payment of three francs will comprise both the price of purchase and the interest. Acquitted week by week, with no lacuna, it will confer, at the end of five years, the investiture of the plot of land. If the acquirer cannot keep up the payments he will still have the choice either of allowing the plot to be sold at his own risk, with a simplified and economical procedure, accepting the loss or profiting for any surplus, or of abandoning the property to the Credit Bank without any chance of gain, in return for the sum he has contributed thus far, without interest.
“For the worker, therefore, even if he falls into difficulties, it will be a means of saving, a kind of piggy-bank.
“He will, in addition, have the right, by adding a second payment of three francs a week, to demand, when the time comes, the construction on his land of a solid house containing two rooms to the ground floor, two on the first floor, a small cellar and a loft.
“All that has been done, and this is what has resulted from it:
“The area of Long-Boyau has been resold in parcels, and further villages have been marked out on the same basis. The least well-off artisans have made the purchase, first of the land, which they have cultivated for five years, and then of the house. The most robust or the most artful have bought the land and the house simultaneously and have acquitted themselves at the end of five years, by paying six francs instead of three per week.”
“Thus far I don’t see where the relatives come into it.”
“We’re getting there. The worker has taken his aged father and mother there. They have cultivated the small domain, guarded and maintained the house. The small income, doubtless very modest, is sufficient for them to live—one needs so little when one has one’s own harvest, and that little is so good! Believe me, the privilege of domestic production is easily accommodated in the neighborhood of want. It is a burden, but one has the strength to bear it. They get by there. Then again, the children send small sums from time to time; they come on Sundays, conveyed cheaply by the railway, and those worthy people have the pride, when they embrace their parents, of treading upon their own land, the dream and chimera of their whole lives. They feel that they are proprietors, attached to the land, the heritage of their labor, the horizon of their small family, and hence to the nation, to the order, and to the sovereign, which have given them so much enjoyment.”
“Very good, but what deal has the Credit Bank done with the Public Assistance?”
“I don’t know, but the contract wasn’t difficult. In sum, the land can now be resold on a basis of one franc thirty a meter, interests included. I’ll wager that there’s a profit on the acquisition en bloc.
“No one is permitted to obtain these advantages if he is not French and Parisian, or, if not Paris born, he does not count ten years of continuous residence and labor in Paris.”
“Why is that?”
“Can’t you see that without that rule, all France would descend on Paris? In any case, establishments of that sort are beginning to spread through the provinces.”
Our frugal meal was finished, and our purses had only been lightened by a few coins. A mystery, in the epoch in which we’re living, but a mystery explained by the moderate rent paid by our restaurateur and the ease with which he obtains provisions.
We quit the Saint-Antoine colony, only encountering in our passage smiling faces, and very happy ourselves with all that we had seen.
VIII. Material Progress
“Let us now consider physical progress, and know first that the most splendid and fecund of all is the removal of the Canal Saint-Martin and the railways, great and small, all the way to the gates of the city.”
“No more canal or railways in Paris! People don’t miss them?”
“Miss what? The canal? I won’t talk about all the harm it did to Paris—forgotten and forgiven. But tell me what services it has ever rendered? Opened to navigation in 1822, it was already flagrantly unnecessary a few years later—which is to say, when the railways came to gravitate around us. No more reason for being then, but it existed, and was allowed to exist, that’s all. In any case, it isn’t entirely dead; it flows underground, reduced to the modest role of a large cast iron tunnel, alimenting the houses and drinking-fountains of the surrounding area.
“The circular railway of Auteuil? It no longer did any more, in favor of circulation, than a simple omnibus. The new one, about which I’ll tell you shortly, is much more important.
“The lines to the suburbs, the provinces, and beyond the frontiers? Their bourgeois stations, planted in the entrails of the city, certainly offered, by virtue of that circumstance, a few advantages for the comings and goings of businessmen, always in a hurry: short distance economies, it’s true, but economies that were dearly bought.
“Look, in order to judge the matter better, place yourself in a balloon, above Paris, and look around. You’ll see, in the confines of the city, an edge skirted by four lines: the first is an interior boulevard, the second the fortifications, the third and extramural railways line and the fourth another boulevard. The three thoroughfares and the rampart run in parallel, and thus make a circular tour of Paris. It is to that rim, that set of circular routes, that the railways and highways heading for the metropolis come to connect; it’s there, instead of gates, the monuments of stations are planted. Everything is therefore linked, like the strands of a web, and the suburbs too are admirably served.
“Now look down into the interior of the city. You will see rich avenues unfurling over the effaced lines of the railways and the canal, full of sunlight and pedestrians.
“Believe me, it is at present that Paris is truly Paris, the city par excellence. On the first of January 1860, at the blast of a whistle, the old enclosure flew away, like a backdrop in the Opéra. Very good—but the furrows of the railways and the muddy ditch of the canal still remained, along with other enclosures forgotten by the demolishers, inside which there was nothing but walls and solitude, mud and rags. Paris has swept away those barrages and all that filth; it has entered everywhere, has spread everywhere, from the center to the circumference. Today its level rises limpidly to the rim of the vase.”
“All right, I yield to your lyricism. But what an expense for the city and the State!”
“Bah! You ought to say what profits! Listen. The State, in accord with the Parisian municipal authorities, has conceded to companies the right to take over and parcel out the land occupied in Paris by the railways and the canal, on condition that the acquirers cover it, within an agreed interval, with buildings constructed following an overall plan, and that they build new extramural stations with monumental proportions and elegance. The sale of the land was fruitful—so fruitful that the State and the municipality, for the contingent of advantages they had reserved, found their coffers filling up with banknotes, and the capital being adorned by opulent constructions.
“Apart from those bold reforms you will see many other ameliorations while floating at the height of your balloon. Paris is transfigured, my dear, and if you ask me how that gigantic work was accomplished, I will reply that the services were accepted of a powerful enchantress and numerous small genies, her children.
“The enchantress, you already know, is the new law of public expropriation. Paris is the jewel-case of France, the gateau-city, the fishing-hook-city. It has been said that it merits being a exception, that all in all, it is alone, and ought to have its own law, the law of a father and mother toward an only daughter; that it is useful for the outlying districts if the center is splendid, splendor there being, inversely to the common principle its necessity. Having understood that thought, houses and land were expropriated not only for streets and squares but for great popular foundations like the Saint-Antoine Colony, and also for conceptions of wholeness, grandeur and brilliance.”
“One can go a long way with those three words.”
“Don’t interrupt, I beg you. The protective measures of old are still there, maintaining a good guard, and, in addition, the commission of artists that I mentioned is of a nature to reassure Parisians. I’ll go on.
“One bourgeois does not want his hillock leveled, another refuses to fill in his cellar, a third leaves a visible terrain in the state of a rubbish-dump. If the matter is of interest to the municipality, the hillock, the cellar and the rubbish-dump fall into the hands of the city, after a decree, and investigation of public interest, judgment, the fixation of compensation, etc.
“Another innovation: it’s no longer necessary that the indemnity be paid out before taking possession. Part is paid in cash; the city pays the remainder over time.”
“But...”
“I can guess your objection. The law determined that payment, in matters of public utility, would be in advance. Well, my friend, that statute no longer exists. A great pity, in truth, for Parisians! Their wealth is estimated on a broad footing; they have confidence in the city. In any case, as I’ve told you, it’s a matter of a spoiled only daughter, and the State has paternally returned caution to her clothing allowance.
“Thanks to these facilities, our lord mayor, always devoured by the fever of beautiful things, has been able to lead from the front, with loose reins, large-scale works, some of rigorous utility, others decorative, on either side of the river. He has done it, unusually, without adding anything, or very little, to the charges of the municipal budget.”
“Unusual, indeed.”
“And yet, quite real, as you’ll understand. The city, as far as is possible, does nothing by itself; that’s its law. Thus, in every deal, it substitutes companies for itself, to which it transmits its engagements, only remaining involved to supervise and extract its share of the profit, and to reassure, by its guarantee, the evicted proprietors.
“So much for the law of expropriation and its consequences. As for the other means put to work, I’ll cite you a few, in summary.
“Fuming factory chimneys have been swept out of Paris, without mercy, as one frees a drawing-room painted with frescos from a smoking hearth. It is forbidden to establish new factories, even if they do not produce smoke. The existing ones are maintained precariously, in return for a gradual indemnity until the epoch of their retreat.
“Terrain ceded by the city must be covered with buildings within a given time, and under the prescribed conditions.
“Finally, the most precious complement of the preceding institutions, is that of a committee of artists—true artists—charged with studying and supervising the execution of the thoroughfares, squares and monuments. It is composed of all the greatest geniuses of France and abroad, genius being cosmopolitan. Its mission is to bring expatriated beauty back to Paris. In some instances it acts by itself, in others it opens competitions. Nothing is free from its control. If a proprietor wants to build, he submits his plans to it. It can veto either the dispositions of the edifice, in the interests of hygiene, or the external appearance, or its points of contact and harmony with neighboring edifices. Where public works are concerned it signs its works magisterially on stone as the poet does in vellum, because it hopes, like him, for immortality.”
“Well, I can see that Parisians have abdicated all their rights.”
“Their rights to what? Paris is not only for Parisians; it belongs, does honor and brings profit to all. Absorb that thought. After all, if it is a tyranny, the tyranny is elegant, artistic and fertile. The Parisians find it good to allow themselves to be embellished and enriched, without protesting too much.”
“You haven’t noticed that your enthusiastic chatter has brought us back to our point of departure, the Place de la Bastille.”
“I know—it was deliberate. Now look at the square; I permit you to do so. What a harmonious distribution, what a brillian
t meeting of brought thoroughfares! To judge it well, let’s place ourselves in the center facing the Seine.
“Behind us is the Boulevard Beaumarchais, in front of us the Boulevard d’Italie, the old Arsenal station. You can see it over there crossing the river over the new Pont d’Austerlitz, connecting the Route d’Italie, which is regenerates in passing, to the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, thus connecting by a single magisterial thoroughfare the Bastille and the Porte d’Italie.
“To our right is the old Rue Saint-Antoine; to the side, the new Avenue de l’Arsenal, which has punctured the overly peaceful quarter of Sully.
“To our left is the great Boulevard de Lyon, usurping the course of the former railway, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and, finally, the Avenue Richard-Lenoir, a cheerful thoroughfare that now traverses the entirety of Paris and is prolonged as far as Pantin, in the place where that obscure, filthy serpent known as the Canal Saint-Martin once crawled and drooled.
“Could one not say that all the sumptuous ameliorations that I sketched just now meet at this point?”
IX. Material Progress Continued
“You will now see file before your eyes a host of examples of petty, familiar, everyday progress. Individually, they are trivial, but collectively, they make up a whole. Let’s go along the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
“At intervals of distance, you’ll notice these slim and elegant bronze columns; they’re new candelabras whose light is artfully put to profit: at the summit, a gas-lamp, above it, a large clock-face, luminous by night, striking four times an hour; to either side of it a barometer and a thermometer. Lower down, large display panels for posters in white, blue, pink and green, all tastefully disposed.
“You’re looking at me; this is the thinking: the municipal authority has appointed itself the general farmer of Parisian bill-posting—both farmer and proprietor—and it earns good money thereby, while morality does not lose by it. No more of those filthy advertisements that made women and children lower their eyes, no more pell-mell inscriptions ruining the cleanliness of our streets. A Parisian wall, no matter where, if it is not carved from stone, must be painted in oils. A fence that encloses a plot of land or a property under construction is made of flat planks carefully juxtaposed, covered with oil-based paint. A façade, whether it is called the Rue Mouffetard or the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, is neat and fresh. That is wanted, and it is enforced, and that is what has given Paris the festival air of wealth that delights the eyes.
The Aerial Valley Page 20