For about half an hour we followed the verdant banks of the river, whose breadth appeared to be at least double what it had been in the times of the French, if one can rely on the estimations of Du Laure and Joanne.30 Finally, we climbed a small hill and arrived at the summit, and an exclamation escaped all our throats.
In front of us unfolded the most impressive scene that can ever have been offered to human contemplation. It was really Paris, none of us had any doubt about it; those grandiose ruins really were the tomb of the queen of the Old World. Her proud head still floats above those desolate spaces.
In a valley whose extent our eyes could scarcely embrace, domes, columns, porticos, slender steeples, immense heaps of rubble, frontons, statues, capitals, entablatures, ridges and cornices projected pell-mell. To our left we could see, boldly and proudly outlined against the dark sky, the crown of the triumphal arch elevated by one of the last Poleons of France to the glory of her armies. No earthquake had, therefore, obliterated the great city, and it ought to be possible to rediscover today what it was three thousand years ago, when the gigantic avalanche of earth, ash and sand under which it is buried descended upon it.
We stood there pensively for some time, absorbed in mute contemplation. Silence had fallen around us, as if, habituated as they were to the view, its grandeur still induced and indefinable effect of terror and vertigo in them. They did not know, however, what riches, marvels and memories lay beneath those heaps of sand, beneath that arid plain, where only a few sickly and jaundiced grasses grew. They say that it never rains there, and that the sky is always veiled; a superstitious dread prevents them from bringing their flocks to graze there, and even the bravest dare not venture there by night.
People recount that on certain stormy nights, life seems to reveal itself within those abysses. Myriads of phosphorescent glimmers skim the ground, and confused sounds resound in the bowels of the earth. Hammers fall on anvils, machines hiss, workmen shout, horses whinny, carriages roll heavily over paved roads. Outbursts of laughter mingle with stifled sobs, dolorous plaints with mocking sniggers, blasphemies with chaste prayers. One can hear the clamor of orgies and the sighs of virgins, imprecations and sacred canticles, the gnashing of teeth and joyful songs, dull groans, desperate cries and the murmur of amorous voices, the rattle of chains and the sound of kisses, the collapse of stacks of gold coins and the croaks of hunger. Then, suddenly, the strident call of the clarion resounds, and, over the tumult, causing all heads to bow, the grave voice of thousands of organs rises up, launching funereal symphonies into space, which seem to be announcing the funeral of an entire world. Then, gradually, the fires go out, silence is reborn, and death resumes possession of its empire.
It depends on you, Monsieur le Ministre, whether a part of these dreams will become realities. You understand, however, and the great intelligence of the Emperor cannot fail to agree with you, that in order for a rapid and complete result to be obtained, it will be necessary for the means at my disposal to correspond to the importance of the objective prescribed for us.
I have the honor of being, with respect to Your Excellency, Monsieur le Ministre, your very humble, very devoted and very obedient servant,
Admiral Baron Quésitor.
II
To Admiral Baron Quésitor, Commandant of the Caledonian Naval forces in the French Seas
Noumea, 30 June 1875
Minister of the Navy and the Colonies
Office of the Minister
No. 8717
(n.b. Note this number in the margin of the reply)
Monsieur l’Amiral
I have had the honor of communicating to the Emperor the dispatch from Paris that you addressed to me on 20 May last.
His Majesty has instructed me to transmit his congratulations to you, and deigned to sign yesterday a decree that, on my suggestion, confers upon you the Grand Cross of the Imperial Order of the Green Falcon.
His majesty desires that the clearance of the ruins of Paris be commenced without delay and be carried out with all possible rapidity. With that intention, He is placing under your command two infantry regiments and three regiments of military engineers, forming a total of 5,122 men, who will be embarked in the early days of next month.
The administration is putting at your disposal, in addition: 10,321 pickaxes, 9,814 spades, 2,503 sets of pincers, 1,001 mattocks, 6,062 birch brooms, 3,603 heather brooms, 1,025 horsehair brooms, 6,206 wheelbarrows, 1,409 tumbrils, 807 watchmen’s cabins, 1,206 skips, 301,837 kilos of rails, 12,004 sleepers, 203,128 rail-chairs, 711,902 rivets, 127 spirit levels, 142 surveyor’s poles, 59 rotating plates, 24 steam-cranes, 19 mechanical sweepers, 201 portable engines, 99 locomotives, 3,001 horses, 603 mules and 13 photographers.
It has been decided that a scientific commission will be attached to the expedition. It is composed of three members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, three members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belle-Lettres and three members of the Académie des Sciences. You will, I have no doubt, treat these venerable scholars with all the respect that is their due, and you will obtain inspiration from their experience and advice.
Receive, Monsieur l’Amiral, the assurance of my most distinguished consideration.
Minister of the Navy and the Colonies.
Comte A. Statarie
III
To His Excellency the Minister of Public Education in
Religion and the Fine Arts in Noumea (Caledonia)
Paris, 30 November 4875
Monsieur le Ministre,
The scientific commission charged by Your Excellency with exploring the ruins of Paris has remained silent for some time, leaving it to Admiral Quésitor to keep the ministry up to date with all the details of the expedition. We did not want to send out our first report until the results obtained would not only be of a nature to satisfy public curiosity but also to focus the attention of archeologists.
The moment has now come, and it is to me that the honor of representing the commission with regard to Your Excellency has fallen.
No incident troubled our crossing, which was too rapid to allow us to make many significant observations en route. On 21 August we came into harbor, and less than three weeks thereafter, a double railway line having linked the ruins to the sea, all the equipment was disembarked, an immense camp extended around Paris, and the clearance commenced.
The geological agglomeration that covers Paris is far from presenting a uniform surface; soundings carried out at intervals have permitted us to establish that although, at certain points, it rises thirty-six meters above the original ground level, it is sometimes only thirteen or fourteen meters deep. It is formed by successive layers, which were certainly superimposed on one another with prodigious rapidity. The origin and nature of the upheaval will remain, according all appearances, permanently insoluble problems; however, the form that the debris of organized bodies has assumed and the direction that the mineralogical deposits have affected reveal to the most inexperienced eye a great irruption that arrived from the south-east.
The entire mass can be divided into two quite distinct parts.
The upper stratum, which nowhere exceeds five meters, is composed of earth, ash and sand, forming three beds of various thickness.
The second stratum reveals the most varied elements. On proceeding from top to bottom, one first encounters two thick banks, one of quartz and the other of marl; they rest on a thin deposit of chalk, which is succeeded by two considerable foundations of oysterous schist and lobsterous clay. The latter system is characterized by the presence of an immeasurable quantity of oyster-shells and fossil fish, all of which are known to our ichthyologists. We have found, among other debris, the remains of Anguilla tartarea, Astacus burdigalensis and Goujo friturius.31
The flora is equally rich, and offers us, especially in the inferior layers, a few interesting subjects of observation. The most abundant species are the laurel (Laurus militaria) and the camellia (Camellia feminea), very often accompanied by pet
rifactions, among which one can make our leaves of tobacco (Nicotiana cigaretica) and absinthe (Ductaria charantonia).
The fauna has not furnished us with the opportunity for any important discovery. However, the bones of Canis canichus and those of Felis gouttierius are numerous, and we have discovered a complete head of Lepus civeticus—but these animals are already described in our treatises of paleontology.
I am limiting myself to listing here the most salient facts that have emerged from our observations; this brief summary will shortly be completed by a detailed memoir that my colleague Monsieur E. de Beaupré intends to address to the Académie des Sciences. The conclusions are explicit; they undermine a few historical data admitted previously, and provide a definitive solution to the chronological quarrel that has divided archeologists for such a long time. In fact, M. de Beaupré has demonstrated, with evidence, that the great geological revolution in which France was destroyed occurred toward the middle of the seventeenth century, no later than the year 1700 of the Christian Era. One must therefore, unhesitatingly, regard as falsified or interpolated in the surviving fragments of French authors, al the passages that seem to accord Paris a longer existence.
The Emperor’s orders instructed us to clear, before anything else, the triumphal arch erected on the right bank of the Seine. Three days sufficed for that work, and the glorious monument emerged intact from the shroud that had enveloped it for thirty centuries. It was then permitted to us to admire at our leisure that masterpiece of ancient architecture, to which, without any doubt, these beautiful lines from the Anthologie Française are addressed:
Rise up toward the skies, [gate of]32 victory
So that the giant of our glory
Might pass through without bending down!
All the faces of the monument are covered with perfectly-preserved sculptures. Beneath the arch, twenty meters high, a multitude of names engraved in the stone were designed to conserve the memory of the principal victories won by the French, and on thirty shields placed around the attic one can read the names of their most illustrious generals. We have established that important distinction without difficulty. A fragment of Duruy includes a list, unfortunately incomplete, of the principal French leaders,33 and in that number feature the Ducs de Valmy, Montebello and Castiglione, whose three names we have found inscribed on the shields. The effects of time have, however, rendered the majority of these inscriptions illegible, and we are far from having succeeded in deciphering all of them. We can, however, cite among the battles those of Kellermann, Lannes, Augereau, Ney, Masséna, Lafayette, Kléber, Dumouriez and Murat. We have similarly gleaned the names of generals Valmy, Montebello, Castiglione, Elchingen, Austerlitz,34 Marengo, Wagram and Aboukir.
This triumphal arch and the immense avenue that precedes it comprise the most grandiose entrance to a capital of which the imagination has ever been able to dream; reality here exceeds the fantastic tales in which the marvels of Babylon and Nineveh are celebrated.
Twenty meters wide, ornamented with flower-beds and fountains, shaded by centuries-old trees whose roots we have found transformed into lignite, the avenue extends as far as the eye can see, bordered along its entire length by constructions lavished with marble and gold.
Here, however, a difficulty arises. How can such a considerable number of princely dwelling gathered in the same place be explained? We have contrived to resolve this question triumphantly.
Garnier and Cassignac relate, in fact, that one of the last sovereigns of France, having been obliged to reconquer his throne by force of arms, rewarded the zeal of the leaders who had helped him in that struggle with the gift of sumptuous habitations.35 Is it not natural to presume that they were built in the vicinity of the monument consecrated to the glory of French warriors, and that they became a kind of addendum to it? We hesitated to admit this hypothesis, however, in spite of its plausibility, until an interesting epigraphic discovery dispelled all our doubts.
In the course of the excavations at the extremity of the avenue, an engineer discovered an indicative plaque similar to those placed at the corners of our streets. It bore the words:
AVENUE DES CH... ...ES.
Enlightenment was there, and did not take long to illuminate our eyes. A brief discussion sufficed for us to restore the letters erased by time and complete the inscription, which must obviously have been:
AVENUE DES CHEFS-ILLUSTRES.
The Avenue des Chefs-Illustres terminated in a vast square, once magnificently decorated, but only one of its ornaments survives intact: an immense needle formed by a single stone, twenty-five meters high and entirely covered by characters that we have been unable to decipher. We think that it ought to be recognized as an ex-voto, probably a religious monument erected to the memory of the ancient sailors who inaugurated river commerce, always so active on the Seine. In fact, the situation of the square on the bank of the river, a fragment of an inscription—ERE DE LA MARINE—and the debris of numerous rostral columns all concur in demonstrating that the interests and services of river navigation were centralized in that location.
A precious discovery results from these observations and the impossibility of comprehending a single word of the symbolic writing with which the monument is covered. We see there the proof that among the French, as among many other peoples of antiquity, the priests had a special language, known only to initiates and unintelligible to laymen. I will add—a fact whose great importance will not escape Your Excellency—that Monsieur Nairan believes that he recognizes in these mysterious characters a vague resemblance to the hieratic script of the primitive Egyptians.
I have the honor of being, with respect to Your Excellency, Monsieur le Ministre, your most humble, most devoted and most obedient servant,
L. Le Rouge,
Membre de l’Institut,
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
IV
To His Excellency the Minister of Public Education in
Religion and the Fine Arts in Noumea (Caledonia)
Paris, 28 December 4875
Monsieur le Ministre,
Since the date of its last report, the scientific commission to the ruins of Paris has continued its work actively, but the ice and snow have recently created a fairly serious obstacle for us, and ten days have been spent installing our workers—previously lodged in tents—in the cleared buildings, as best we could.
However, in spite of the relative slowness with which we are now advancing, the progress made in the month of December has yielded precious secrets, and also embarrassing problems.
On leaving the Place de la Navigation one encounters an important road to the right, bordered on one side by houses preceded by covered arcades and on the other by a very extensive garden, the extremity of which we have not yet reached.
We know from Max du Camp36 that gardens were very rare within the perimeter of Paris. Our first thought was, therefore, that the immense space must have served as a cemetery, and partial excavations carried out a trifle haphazardly at various points have confirmed this supposition.
Several tombs still exist. In those that we have opened all traces of organic matter have disappeared under the effects of the centuries, but the group and the statue that surmounted two of them were still in a perfect state of conservation.
The group is composed of three individuals: a vigorous man and two young people, doubtless his sons; all three are engaged in a desperate struggle with snakes that have them in their coils. We have no information about the terrible accident that cost the family members their lives, and the geographical location of Paris scarcely permits the supposition that snakes of those dimensions can ever have lived wild there; these must therefore have escaped from a menagerie, and only been recaptured after immolating three innocent victims.37
The statue, similarly sculpted in marble, represents a knife-grinder busy sharpening a blade on a stone. The head is beautiful ad expressive, but we have no way of knowing by virtue of what exceptional circum
stance a tomb of white marble was build for a man of such humble status, and who seems to have hardly possessed enough to enable him to buy clothes. Perhaps it is necessary to see him as the hero of one of the popular insurrections so dear to Parisians.38
On the other side of the street, the clearing of the buildings has only furnished us with one discovery worthy of inclusion in this report.
In the middle of a small quadrangular square lay a fallen equestrian statue in bronze. The horse, massive in form, supports a thin young woman, frail, delicate, dressed in iron armor and wearing a crown of laurels. She is standing upright in her stirrups and her right hand is waving a flag. On the front of the granite pedestal, a very brief inscription has become illegible.
This singular monument constitutes an enigma, of which we have given up attempting to penetrate the meaning.
In order to study the woman more closely, we have separated her from the horse, and in the cavity thus opened, we have found the following words traced in chalk: République française. Pucelle d’Orléans: an inexplicable phrase, which complicates the problem instead of clarifying it.
We have had several discussions on this subject. Many hypotheses, sometimes very ingenious, were proposed, discussed and set aside, then taken up again re-examined, modified, and finally rejected. Despairing of arriving at a satisfactory solution, we have taken the decision to pack the statue up and send it to Noumea, in the desire that it be submitted to the examination of our colleagues at the Institut.
I have the honor of being, with respect to Your Excellency, Monsieur le Ministre, your most humble, most devoted and most obedient servant,
J. Lepère
Membre de l’Institut, Académie des Beaux-Arts
Investigations of the Future Page 6