by Grant Allen
Note three things about St. Eustache: (1) it replaces a church to St. Agnes, who is still one of its two patronesses; (2) it is the great musical church of Paris; (3) it is the church of the markets.
Immediately on entering, stand in the centre of the nave, and look up the church towards the choir and chevet. The enormous size of the building will at once strike you. Notice, too, the tall, round arches of the nave and aisles, the triforium above them (best seen from the aisles), and, higher still, the clerestory rising above the aisle-vaulting. The proportions are admirable. Observe also the roof, essentially Gothic in plan, though with an incongruous substitution of round for pointed arches. But note that all these quasi-Gothic constructive features are combined with classical columns and pilasters of the three great orders — Doric, Ionic, Corinthian — superimposed, and with such Renaissance detail as masks, cherubs, and other later decorative features.
Now walk up the R aisle. Everything in this church is, of course, comparatively modern, but still rich in symbolism. Most of the chapels have their names inscribed upon them — an excellent feature. The first, containing Franciscan Saints, has a good modern stained-glass window, representing the Saints and Patrons of the Order — St. Francis, St. Louis, etc. Observe the frescoes in the various chapels, and note their applicability to the saints to whom they are dedicated. I need not now enlarge upon this point. For example, the chapel of the Souls in Purgatory has a relief of Christ bound to the pillar — His purgatory — (a portion of it is preserved here) and a fresco representing mourning souls below, with triumphant ones in heaven. Observe from this point the beautiful Renaissance detail of the aisles and of the vaulting in the ambulatory, or passage behind the choir. Do not overlook the chapels of St. Agnes (co-patroness) and St. Cecilia, the inventress of the organ and patroness of music. The transepts are very short, but are decorated with good rose-windows and other excellent semi-Gothic detail. Walk round the ambulatory, noticing as you go the various chapels with their polychromatic decoration and their appropriate frescoes. Thus, that of St. Anne contains a representation of the Saint educating her daughter the Virgin. Note also on your L as you go the delicate work of the choir-screen, and the excellent vaulting and decoration of the lofty choir. The Lady Chapel behind the choir is not wholly pleasing. It contains a good 18th century statue of the Virgin and Child by Pigalle. Observe particularly in the North part of the ambulatory the chapel of Ste. Geneviève, with scenes from her legend. The chapel of St. Louis, next it, contains excellent modern frescoes from his life, by Barrias, and a fine stained-glass window of his education, with his mother, Blanche of Castille, looking on, beneath a canopy marked with fleurs-de-lis and the three castles of Castille. One fresco represents him taking the Crown of Thorns to the Sainte Chapelle. Observe these little historical reminiscences: they add interest. Pleasing reliefs in the North transept of St. Cecilia and King David, representing music, for which this church has always been celebrated, especially on St. Cecilia’s Day and Good Friday. They stand for Psalms and Hymns — the Jewish and the Christian psalmody. Notice, again, the figure of St. Agnes with her lamb, between the doorways, a tribute to the earlier dedication of the building. Above it, good stained-glass window of the Annunciation, with traditional details. (Do not be content to notice merely the points to which I call attention, but observe for yourself as you go the other figures, with their meaning and connection. To spell it all out is half the pleasure.) Above the Holy Water vessel in this Transept is a figure of Pope Alexander I, who first sanctioned the use of Holy Water, accompanied by angels. Beneath it, the baffled and disappointed demons, fleeing from the consecrated water. The next chapel contains the relics of St. Eustace and his children, martyrs. It is, perhaps, a little characteristic of modern feeling that the half-mythical namesake saint of the church should thus be relegated to a subordinate chapel in the edifice originally erected to his honour. The pictures are imitated from those in the Catacombs at Rome. Notice, in particular, the fresco of St. Eustace kneeling before the stag, which displays between its horns the miraculous image; also, the subsequent scenes of his legend (for which, see Mrs. Jameson). Beautiful view from this point of the choir and ambulatory.
Do not leave this interesting building without having examined all its details. It contains enough to occupy you for several hours, and is rich in illustrations of modern Catholic sentiment. Even the most tawdry bits of its modern church furniture become of interest when examined as parts of a consistent whole, falling into their due place in a great system of belief and the government of conduct. You have not really understood a church till you have grasped this connection between its various members. Ask yourself always, “Why is this here?” and though you may not always be able to see, the longer you proceed to investigate in this spirit, the more will the meaning of the whole come home to you. For example, return to the S Transept and observe the figure of St. Gregory: he is the musical Father from whom the Gregorian chants take their name, and as such deserves commemoration in the musical church.
Quitting St. Eustache, you can continue westward a few steps, and then turn down a short street on the left, which leads you obliquely to a curious circular building, the Bourse de Commerce. Skirt round this till you come to its ugly façade, and then continue your way into the Rue du Louvre.
This short walk will have enabled you to take your bearings in the heart of the old district north of the river. You can prolong it a little, if you choose, through the town of Louis XIV, by walking northward along the Rue du Louvre as far as the new Post Office, and then turning to the left into the little circular Place des Victoires with its clumsy rearing equestrian statue of the Grand Monarch. The Place dates from his reign, and was designed by Mansart. Originally known as the Place Louis XIV, it was decorated by an earlier statue of the king, destroyed in the Revolution. The Restoration replaced it by the present ugly monument. A few steps to the NW stands the Church of Notre-Dame des Victoires, begun in 1656, to commemorate the taking of La Rochelle, the Huguenot stronghold. It is instructive to compare this building of the worst period with the Mediæval and Renaissance churches you have just been examining. The Rue Notre-Dame des Victoires will lead you hence up to the Bourse (adequately viewed from outside), whence the brand-new Rue du 4 Septembre takes you straight back to the Opéra and the centre of modern Paris.
I have only walked you here through a small part of this older town; but if you care to explore the interesting district, rich in Renaissance and even Mediæval buildings, which lies to the east of the Hôtel de Ville, you cannot do better than take Mr. Augustus Hare’s Paris as your guide — a valuable book, especially rich in historical reminiscences of the Renaissance period, the epoch of Louis XIV, and the Great Revolution. Mr. Hare will lead you to many forgotten nooks of old Paris, which the modest dimensions of the present handbook are insufficient to deal with. But I advise you only to explore these less-known byways after you have examined all the objects of first-rate importance here enumerated.
The Musée Carnavalet, also in this district, you had better defer visiting till after you have seen the École des Beaux-Arts, in the St. Germain Quarter, south of the river. It will be noticed later.
B. THE OUTER RING OF LOUIS XIV
A second, and doubtless to the reader by this time more familiar walk, round the Great Boulevards, will suffice to give a hasty conception of the Paris of Louis XIV and his immediate successors. Even if you are already well acquainted with the route, go over it once more, if only on the top of an omnibus, at this stage of your investigation, in order to take your bearings more fully. It must be borne in mind for the purposes of this walk or ride that in the earlier mediæval period the district between the Boulevards and the central core consisted, for the most part, of gardens and fields, among which were interspersed a few rural monasteries and suburban churches. These last have long since, of course, become wholly imbedded in modern Paris, but I will note as we pass a few earlier objects which it may be interesting for those who have ti
me to diverge and visit.
Start from the Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde (noting here and elsewhere the Roman reminiscence of the bronze ships of Paris on the gas-lamps — as you see them at the Thermes), and walk up the Rue Royale, — the first portion of the great ring of streets which girdles the city of Louis XIV. The Rue St. Honoré, to your R, was, before the construction of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysées, the chief road which led westward out of ancient Paris. The Porte St. Honoré stood on this site, where it crossed the barrier by the modern Rue Royale. Beyond it, the street takes the characteristic name of the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré; and all the other streets which cross the girdle similarly change their name to that of the corresponding Faubourg as they pass beyond it. These long straggling roads, lined with houses on the outskirts (Faubourg St. Honoré, Montmartre, St. Denis, du Temple, etc.), have finally become the chief residential quarters of the city at the present day.
The handsome classical building in front of us is the Madeleine — (Church of St. Mary Magdalen) — the last stage in the classical mania which substituted Græco-Roman temples for Christian churches and other edifices. (See previous stages in St. Paul and St. Louis, the Sorbonne, the Invalides, the Panthéon, etc.) Begun under Louis XV, it was not completed till the Restoration. In style it follows the late Roman variation on the Corinthian-Greek model. Notice, however, as you approach, that even this Grecian building bears on its purely classical pediment the stereotyped Parisian subject of the Last Judgment, with the Angel of the Last Trump, and the good and wicked to R and L of the Redeemer. Only, in this case, St. Mary Magdalen, under whose invocation, as the inscription states, the church is dedicated, kneels by the L side of Christ, imploring mercy for the wicked. Compare this last term in the treatment of this old conventional portal-relief with its naïf beginnings at Notre-Dame and St. Denis. It is also worth while to enter and inspect the chapels, the paintings and sculpture in which will reveal their dedications. (See also Baedeker.)
The Rue Royale forms the first part of the girdle of Louis XIV. From the Madeleine onward, we enter that wider part of this girdle which still distinctively bears the name of the Boulevard. To our L, Baron Haussmann’s quite modern Bd. Malesherbes opens up a vista of the recent and unsatisfactory Church of St. Augustin — a great ornate pseudo-Romanesque building, unhappily accommodated to the space at the architect’s disposal. Proceeding along the Bd. de la Madeleine, and then the Bd. des Capucines, we arrive in a few minutes at the Place de l’Opéra, undoubtedly the central nodal point of modern Paris. To our L stands the great Opéra House, erected at vast expense in the gaudy meretricious style of the Second Empire, and decorated with good, but too voluptuous modern sculpture. Two new streets branch R and L of it. Walk round them, and so take the measure of the building. To our R the Avenue de l’Opéra has been run diagonally across the older streets of Louis XIV’s town, towards the Palais Royal and the Théâtre Français. This is now one of the finest thoroughfares of the existing town. Nevertheless, the old Boulevard, above all in this part of its circuit, remains the centre of Parisian life, thought, and movement. Especially is it the region of cafés and theatres. Here also the older Rue de la Paix, one of the earliest fine open thoroughfares in Paris, leads to the irregular octagonal Place Vendôme, laid out under Louis XIV, and said to owe its canted corners to the king’s own personal initiative. [This Place is a good example of the best domestic architecture of the Eighteenth Century. Its centre is occupied by the great bronze column (Colonne Vendôme) originally erected by Napoleon to commemorate his victories. It was pulled down by the Commune, but (the fragments having been preserved) was re-erected after the triumph of the National party. Round it in a long spiral run a series of reliefs, suggested by those on Trajan’s Column at Rome: but while the Roman pillar was surrounded by a Forum of several stories, with open porticoes from which the sculpture could be inspected, the sculpture on Napoleon’s is quite invisible, except just at the base, owing to the lack of any similar elevated platform from which to view it.] The other great street diverging from the Place de l’Opéra to the R, the Rue du 4 Septembre, leads to the Bourse (uninteresting), and is part of the modern arterial system.
Continuing along the line of Louis XIV’s Boulevards, we reach next the Bd. des Italiens, and then turn obtusely round into the Bd. Montmartre. To our L lies the Faubourg of that name, long since swallowed up by the engulfing city. At the Rue St. Denis (the great north road of Paris), we arrive at one of the debased classical triumphal arches (Porte St. Denis) which Louis XIV erected in place of the ancient castellated gates. It is (more or less) decorated with contemporary reliefs representing his victories; these, and the inscriptions, are worth examining. Beyond the gate, the road to St. Denis, much traversed in earlier times by pilgrims, takes the significant name of Rue du Faubourg St. Denis. A little further on, the modern trunk line of the (Haussmannesque) Bd. de Sébastopol, hewn straight through the heart of the earlier town, intersects the old fortifications, leading R to the Cité, and L to the Gare de l’Est, in which direction it is known as the Bd. de Strasbourg. The next corner, the Rue St. Martin, which similarly changes its name to that of its Faubourg as it crosses the limit of the earlier town, is marked by a second of Louis XIV’s arches, the Porte St. Martin (not quite so ugly), whose sculpture is again worthy of notice on historical grounds, if not on artistic. [A little way down the Rue St. Martin to the R lies the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers (uninteresting internally) which occupies the site of the former Cluniac Priory of St. Martin-des-Champs, after which the street is still called. This was one of the principal old monasteries in the belt outside the girdling walls of Philippe Auguste, though included within those of Étienne Marcel. It was founded as early as the 11th century. The Conservatoire itself, as an industrial exhibition, is hardly worth a visit (except for technical purposes), but it ought to be inspected for the sake of the old church of the monastery which it contains (enter it to view interior; open on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays only) as well as for the fine Refectory of the 13th century, a beautiful Gothic hall, probably erected by Pierre de Montereau, the architect of the Sainte Chapelle, who also built the other Refectory, now destroyed, at St. Germain-des-Prés in the southern Faubourg. A little further on in the same street is the interesting Gothic church of St. Nicolas-des-Champs, with rather picturesque Renaissance additions. It stood, when first built, far out in the country. The fine west porch is of the 15th century. These buildings are chiefly worth notice as enabling the visitor mentally to restore the outer ring of monasteries and churches during the early mediæval period, afterwards englobed in the town of Louis XIV, and now in many cases adapted to alien modern uses.]
Return to the main line of the Boulevards, which here become distinctly shabbier and pass through a poorer district. This part of Paris is destitute of immediate interest, but should be traversed in order to give the visitor a just idea of the extent and relations of the eighteenth century city. We arrive before long at the Place de la République, formerly Place du Château-d’Eau, now adorned with a new bronze statue of the Republic. From this Place several more new Boulevards in various directions pierce through the poorer and densely-populated regions of eastern and north-eastern Paris. Along the main line, the Bds. du Temple, des Filles du Calvaire, and Beaumarchais lead hence through increasingly poorer-looking districts to the Place de la Bastille, where stood the famous strong castle of that name (Bastille St. Antoine), destroyed in the Revolution. Its site is now occupied by the Colonne de Juillet, erected to commemorate the Revolution of 1830. Hence the Rue St. Antoine leads R in one line into the Rue de Rivoli near the Hôtel de Ville. Beyond the line of the Boulevards, L, it takes the name of Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine. This was the region of the poorer and fiery revolutionists of 1789–93.
The district within the Boulevards in this direction was in the Valois period the most fashionable part of Paris. It contained the old royal palace of the Hôtel St. Paul, together with numerous other hôtels of
the French nobility. From the Place de la Bastille, also, new Boulevards diverge in several directions. You had better return to the centre of the town by the Rue St. Antoine, where the third turning to the R will lead you direct into the Place des Vosges, a curious belated relic of the Paris of Henri IV. Its interesting architecture and quiet stranded air will well repay you for the slight détour, and will suggest to you the possibility of many similar agreeable walks in the same district. Mr. Hare will prove a most efficient guide to this quaint district, for those who have time to explore it thoroughly. Remember always that the least important part of Paris, historically speaking, is the western region which alone is known to most passing strangers.
V. THE FAUBOURG ST. GERMAIN (Luxembourg, etc.)
[THE town on the North Side, we saw, was early surrounded by a suburban belt of gardens and monasteries. A similar zone encircled the old University on the South Bank. The wall of Philippe Auguste, you will remember, bent abruptly southward in order to enclose the abbey of Ste. Geneviève; but an almost more important monastic establishment was left outside it a little to the west. This was the gigantic abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés, whose very name betokens its original situation. This rich and powerful community, whose building covered an enormous area of ground on the Left Bank, and grew at last into a town by itself, was originally founded by Childebert I as a thank-offering for his victory over the Visigoths in Spain in 543. Childebert, it may be remarked, was one of the most religious-minded among the Frankish monarchs, — which is why we have more than once met with his effigy in Gothic sculpture. He was also one of those few Merovingian kings who especially made his residence in Paris. On the portal of the other St. Germain (l’Auxerrois), which has numerous points in common with this one, we saw him represented with his wife Ultrogothe and the earlier St. Germain, a naïve way of expressing the fact that the King and Queen first gave that church to the sainted bishop. At the Louvre, too, we saw his statue from this very monastery. Among the sacred objects which Childebert brought back from Spain was the tunic of St. Vincent, the patron saint of prisoners. When he was besieging Saragossa, he saw the inhabitants carry this tunic in unarmed procession round the walls; which so convinced him of its value that he raised the siege, on condition that he might take the holy object home with him. He also brought a large rich gold cross, ornamented with precious stones, from Toledo, — a piece of jeweller’s work which might probably be compared with the crowns of the Gothic kings preserved at Cluny. St. Germain, Bishop of Paris (who must not be confounded with his earlier namesake of Auxerre), recommended to the king the foundation of a new church and abbey, in order fitly to receive these holy relics. A church was therefore built in the garden belt outside the wall, and was originally dedicated (as was natural) to the Holy Cross and St. Vincent. The latter thus became one of the local saints of Paris, through its possession of his tunic; and his effigy may often be seen, with or without that of his brother deacon St. Stephen, on many of the older buildings of the city. We noticed him in particular on the portal of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and on the frescoes within, though it was premature then to explain his presence. Note here that possession of the body of a Saint (St. Denis, Ste. Geneviève) or of some important relic (St. Vincent’s tunic, St. Martin’s cloak at St. Séverin) almost invariably gives rise to local churches, and decides the cult of local patrons.