CHAPTER II

A Bird's-Eye View of Paris
WE have endeavoured to restore for the reader this admirable Cathedral of Notre Dame. We have briefly enumerated most of the beauties it pos¬ sessed in the fifteenth century, though lost to it now; but we have omitted the chief one — the view of Paris as it then appeared from the summits of the towers.
When, after long g ropings up the dark perpendicular stair-case which pierces the thick walls of the steeple towers, one emerged at last unexpectedly on to one of the two high platforms inundated with light and air, it was in truth a marvellous picture spread out before you on every side ; a spectacle sui generis of which those of our readers can best form an idea who have had the good fortune to see a purely Gothic city, complete and homogeneous, of which there are still a few remaining, such as Nuremberg in Bavaria, Vit- toria in Spain, or even smaller specimens, provided they are well-preserved, like Vitré in Brittany and Nordhausen in Prussia.
The Paris of that day, the Paris of the fifteenth century, was already a giant city. We Parisians in general are mis¬ taken as to the amount of ground we imagine we have gained since then. Paris, since the time of Louis XI, has not increased by much more than a third; and, truth to tell, has lost far more in beauty than ever it has gained in size.
Paris first saw the light on that ancient island in the Seine, the Cité, which has, in fact, the form of a cradle. The strand of this island was its first enclosure, the Seine its first moat.
For several centuries Paris remained an island, with two bridges, one north, the other south, and two bridge heads, which were at once its gates and its fortresses: the Grand-
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Châtelet on the right bank, the Petit-Châtelet on the left. Then, after the kings of the first generation, Paris, finding itself too cramped on its island home, where it no longer had room to turn round, crossed the river; whereupon, be¬ yond each of the bridge-fortresses, a first circle of walls and towers began to enclose pieces of the land on either side of the Seine. Of this ancient wall some vestiges were still standing in the last century ; to-day, nothing is left but the memory, and here and there a tradition, such as the Baudets or Baudoyer Gate — porta bagauda.
By degrees the flood of dwellings, constantly pressing forward from the heart of the city, overflows, saps, eats away, and finally swallows up this enclosure. Philip Au¬ gustus makes a fresh line of circumvallation, and immures Paris within a chain of massive and lofty towers. For up¬ ward of a century the houses press upon one another, ac¬ cumulate, and rise in this basin like water in a reservoir. They begin to burrow deeper in the ground, they pile storey upon storey, they climb one upon another, they shoot up in height like all compressed growth, and each strives to raise its head above its neighbour for a breath of air. The streets grow ever deeper and narrower, every open space fills up and disappears, till, finally, the houses overleap the wall of Philip Augustus, and spread themselves joyfully over the country like escaped prisoners, without plan or system, gathering themselves together in knots, cutting slices out of the surrounding fields for gardens, taking plenty of elbow- room.
By 1367, the town has made such inroads on the suburb that a new enclosure has become necessary, especially on the right bank, and is accordingly built by Charles V. But a town like Paris is in a state of perpetual growth — it is only such cities that become capitals. They are the reservoirs into which are directed all the streams — geographical, politi¬ cal, moral, intellectual — of a country, all the natural ten¬ dencies of the people; wells of civilization, so to speak — but also outlets — where commerce, manufacture, intelli- , gence, population, all that there is of vital fluid, of life, of soul, in a people, filters through and collects incessantly, drop by drop, century bv century. The wall of Charles V,
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however, endures the same fate as that of Philip Augustus. By the beginning of the fifteenth century it, too, is over¬ stepped, left behind, the new suburb hurries on, and in the sixteenth century it seems visibly to recede farther and far¬ ther into the depths of the old city, so dense has the new town become outside it.
Thus, by the fifteenth century — to go no farther — Paris had already consumed the three concentric circles of wall, which, in the time of Julian the Apostate, were in embryo, so to speak, in the Grand-Châtelet and the Petit-Châtelet. The mighty city had successively burst its four girdles of wall like a child grown out of last year’s garments. Under Louis XI, clusters of ruined towers belonging to the old fortified walls were still visible, rising out of the sea of houses like hilltops out of an inundation — the archipelagoes of the old Paris, submerged beneath the new.
Since then, unfortunately for us, Paris has changed again ; but it has broken through one more enclosure, that of Louis XV, a wretched wall of mud and rubbish, well worthy of the King who built it and of the poet who sang of it :
“Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant.” 1
In the fifteenth century Paris was still divided into three towns, perfectly distinct and separate, having each its pe¬ culiar features, specialty, manners, customs, privileges, and history: the City, the University, the Town. The City, which occupied the island, was the oldest and the smallest of the trio — the mother of the other two — looking, if we may be allowed the comparison, like a little old woman be¬ tween two tall and blooming daughters. The University covered the left bank of the Seine from the Tournelle to the Tour de Nesle — points corresponding in the Paris of to-day to the Halles-aux-Vins and the Mint, its circular wall tak¬ ing in a pretty large portion of that ground on which Julian had built his baths/ It also included the Hill of Sainte- Geneviève. The outermost point of the curving wall was the Papal Gate; that is to say, just about the site of the Panthéon. The Town, the largest of the three divisions of
'This might be freely translated: The dam damming Paris, sets Paris damning.
'Portions of these Roman baths still exist in the Hôtel de Cluny.
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Paris, occupied the right bank. Its quay, interrupted at sev¬ eral points, stretched along the Seine from the Tour de Billy to the Tour du Bois; that is, from the spot where the Grenier d’ Abondance now stands to that occupied by the Tuileries. These four points at which the Seine cut through the circumference of the Capital— la Tournelle and the Tour de Nesle on the left, the Tour de Billy and the Tour de Bois on the right bank — were called par excellence “the four towers of Paris.” The Town encroached more deeply into the surrounding country than did the University. The farthest point of its enclosing wall (the one built by Charles V) was at the gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, the situation of which has not changed.
As we have already stated, each of these three great divi¬ sions of Paris was a town — but a town too specialized to be complete, a town which could not dispense with the other two. So, too, each had its peculiarly characteristic aspect. In the City, churches were the prevailing feature; in the Town, palaces; in the University, colleges. Setting aside the less important originalities of Paris and the capricious legal intricacies of the right of way, and taking note only of the collective and important masses in the chaos of com¬ munal jurisdictions, we may say that, broadly speaking, the island belonged to the Bishop, the right bank to the Provost of the Merchants’ Guild, and the left bank to the Rector of the University. The Provost of Paris — a royal, not a municipal office— had authority over all. The City boasted Notre Dame; the Town, the Louvre and the Hôtel-de-Ville; the University, the Sorbonne. Again, the Town had the Halles, the City the Hôtel-Dieu, the University the Pré-aux- Clercs.1 Crimes committed by the students on the right bank, were tried on the island in the Palais de Justice, and punished on the right bank at Montfaucon, unless the Rector, feeling the University to be strong and the King weak, thought fit to intervene; for the scholars enjoyed the priv¬ ilege of being hanged on their own premises.
Most of these privileges (we may remark in passing), and there were some of even greater value than this, had
1 The recreation and fighting ground of the students, the present Fau¬ bourg Saint-Germain.
/
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been extorted from the kings by mutiny and revolts. It is the immemorial course: Le roi ne lâche que quand, le peuple arrache — the King only gives up what the people wrest from him. There is an old French charter which defines this pop¬ ular loyalty with great simplicity : Civibus fidelitas in reges, quæ tamen aliquoties seditionibus interrupta , multa peperit privilégia.1
In the fifteenth century the Seine embraced five islands within the purlieus of Paris: the Louvre, on which trees then grew; the lle-aux-Vaches and the He Notre Dame, both uninhabited except for one poor hovel, both fiefs of the Bishop (in the seventeenth century these two islands were made into one and built upon, now known as the He Saint- Louis) ; finally the City, having at its western extremity the islet of the Passeur-aux-Vaches — the cattle ferry — now buried under the foundations of the Pont Neuf. The City had, in those days, five bridges — three on the right: the Pont Notre Dame and the Pont-aux-Change being of stone, and the Pont-aux-Meuniers of wood; and two on the left: the Petit-Pont of stone, and the Pont Saint-Michel of wood — all lined with houses. The University had six gates built by Philip Augustus, namely — starting from the Tournelle — the Porte Saint-Victor, the Porte Bordelle, the Porte Papale, the Porte Saint-Jacques, the Porte Saint-Michel and the Porte Saint-Germain. The Town also had six gates, built by Charles V, namely — starting from the Tour de Billy — the Porte Saint-Antoine, the Porte du Temple, the Porte Saint- Martin, the Porte Saint-Denis, the Porte Montmartre and the Porte Saint-Honoré. All these gates were strong, and at the same time handsome — which is no detriment to strength. A wide and deep fosse, filled during the winter months with a swift stream supplied by the Seine, washed the foot of the walls all round Paris. At night the gates were shut, the river was barred at the two extremities of the town by the massive iron chains, and Paris slept in peace.
From a bird’s-eye view, these three great divisions — the City, the University, and the Town — presented each an in¬ extricably tangled network of streets to the eye. Neverthe-
1 Fidelity to the kings, though broken at times by revolts, procured the burghers many privileges.
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less, one recognised at a glance that the three fragments formed together a single body. You at once distinguished two long, parallel streets running, without a break or devia¬ tion, almost in a straight line through all these towns from end to end, from south to north, at right angles with the Seine; connecting, mingling, transfusing them, incessantly pouring the inhabitants of one into the walls of the other, blending the three into one. One of these two streets ran from the Porte Saint-Jacques to the Porte Saint-Martin, and was called Rue Saint-Jacques in the University, Rue de la Juiverie (Jewry) in the City, and Rue Saint-Martin in the Town, crossing the river twice, as the Petit-Pont and the Pont Notre Dame. The second — which was called Rue de la Harpe on the left bank, Rue de la Barillerie on the island, Rue Saint-Denis on the right bank, Pont Saint-Michel on one arm, of the Seine, Pont-aux-Change on the other — ran from the Porte Saint-Michel in the University to the Porte Saint-Denis in the Town. For the rest, under however many names, they were still only the two streets, the two thoroughfares, the two mother-streets, the main arteries of Paris, from which all the other ducts of the triple city started, or into which they flowed.
Independently of these two principal streets, cutting dia¬ metrically through the breadth of Paris and common to the entire capital, the Town and the University had each its own main street running in the direction of their length, parallel to the Seine, and intersecting the two “arterial” streets at right angles. Thus, in the Town you descended in a straight line from the Porte Saint-Antoine to the Porte Saint- Honoré; in the University, from the Porte Saint Victor to the Porte Saint-Germain. These two great thoroughfares, crossing the two first mentioned, formed the frame on to which was woven the knotted, tortuous network of the streets of Paris. In the inextricable tangle of this network, however, on closer inspection, two sheaf-like clusters of streets could be distinguished, one in the University, one in the Town, spreading out from the bridges to the gates. Something of the same geometrical plan still exists.
Now, what aspect did this present when viewed from the top of the towers of Notre Dame in 1482?
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That is what we will endeavour to describe.
To the spectator, arrived breathless on this summit, the first glance revealed only a bewildering jumble of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, squares, spires, and steeples. Everything burst upon the eye at once — the carved gable, the high, pointed roof, the turret clinging to the corner wall, the stone pyramid of the eleventh century, the slate obelisk of the fifteenth, the round, stark tower of the donjon-keep, the square and elaborately decorated tower of the church, the large, the small, the massive, the airy. The gaze was lost for long and completely in this maze, where there was noth¬ ing that had not its own originality, its reason, its touch of genius, its beauty; where everything breathed of art, from the humblest house with its painted and carved front, its visible timber framework, its low-browed doorway and pro¬ jecting storeys, to the kingly Louvre itself, which, in those days, boasted a colonnade of towers. But here are the most important points which struck the eye when it became some¬ what accustomed to this throng of edifices.
To begin with, the City. “The island of the City,” as Sauvai observes — who, with all his pompous verbosity, sometimes hits upon these happy turns of phrase — “the island of the City is shaped like a great ship sunk into the mud and run aground lengthwise, about mid-stream of the Seine.” As we have already shown, in the fifteenth century this ship was moored to the two banks of the Seine by five bridges. This likeness to a ship had also struck the fancy of the heraldic scribes; for, according to Favyn and Pasquier, it was from this circumstance, and not from the siege by the Normans, that is derived the ship em¬ blazoned in the arms of Paris. To him who can decipher it, heraldry is an algebra, a complete language. The whole history of the later half of the Middle Ages is written in heraldry, as is that of the first half in the symbolism of the Roman churches — the hieroglyphics of feudalism succeeding those of theocracy.
The City, then, first presented itself to the view, with its stern to the east and its prow to the west. Facing towards the prow there stretched an endless line of old roofs, above which rose, broad and domed, the lead-roofed transept of
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the Sainte-Chapelle, like an elephant with its tower, except that here the tower was the boldest, airiest, most elaborate and serrated spire that ever showed the sky through its fretted cone.
Just in front of Notre Dame three streets opened into the Cathedral close — a fine square of old houses. On the south side of this glowered the furrowed, beetling front of the Hôtel-Dieu, with its roof as if covered with boils and warts. Then, on every side, right, left, east, and west, all within the narrow circuit of the City, rose the steeples of its- twenty-one churches, of all dates, shapes, and sizes, from the low, wormeaten Roman belfry of Saint-Denis du Pas ( career Glaucini ) to the slender, tapering spires of Saint-Pierre aux Bœufs and Saint-Landry. Behind Notre Dame northward, stretched the cloister with its Gothic gal¬ leries; southward, the semi-Roman palace of the Bishop, and eastward, an uncultivated piece of ground, the terrain, at the point of the island. Furthermore, in this sea of houses, the eye could distinguish, by the high, perforated mitres of stone which at that period capped even its top¬ most attic windows, the palace presented by the town, in the reign of Charles VI, to Juvenal des Ursins; a little farther on, the black-barred roofs of the market-shed in the Marché Palus ; farther off still, the new chancel of Saint- Germain le Vieux, lengthened in 1458 by taking in a piece of the Rue aux Febves with here and there a glimpse of causeway, crowded with people, some pillory at a corner of the street, some fine piece of the pavement of Philip Augustus — magnificent flagging, furrowed in the middle for the benefit of the horses, and so badly replaced in the middle of the sixteenth century by the wretched cobblestones called “pavé de la Ligue” ; some solitary court-yard with one of those diaphanous wrought-iron stair-case turrets they were so fond of in the fifteenth century, one of which is still to be seen in the Rue des Bourdonnais. Lastly, to the right of the Sainte-Chapelle, westward, the Palais de Justice dis¬ played its group of towers by the water’s edge. The trees of the royal gardens, which occupied the western point of the island, hid the ferry-man’s islet from view. As for the water, it was hardly visible on either side of the City ‘ .om
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the towers of Notre Dame: the Seine disappeared under the bridges, and the bridges under the houses.
And when one looked beyond these bridges, on which the house-roofs glimmered green — moss-grown before their time from the mists of the river — and turned one’s gaze to the left towards the University, the first building which caught the eye was a low, extensive cluster of towers, the Petit-Châtelet, whose yawning gateway swallowed up the end of the Petit-Pont. Then, if you ran your eye along the river bank from east to west, from the Tournelle to the Tour de Nesle, it was one long line of houses with sculp¬ tured beams, coloured windows, overhanging storeys jutting out over the roadway — an interminable zigzag of gabled houses broken frequently by the opening of some street, now and then by the frontage or corner of some grand mansion with its gardens and its court-yards, its wings and outbuildings; standing proudly there in the midst of this crowding, hustling throng of houses, like a grand seigneur among a mob of rustics. There were five or six of these palaces along the quay, from the Logis de Lorraine, which shared with the Bernardines the great neighbouring en¬ closure of the Tournelle, to the Tour de Nesle, the chief tower of which formed the boundary of Paris, and whose pointed gables were accustomed, for three months of the year, to cut with their black triangles the scarlet disk of the setting sun.
Altogether, this side of the Seine was the least mercantile of the two : there was more noise and crowding of scholars than artisans, and there was no quay, properly speaking, except between the Pont Saint-Michel and the Tour de Nesle. The rest of the river bank was either a bare strand, like that beyond the Bernardine Monastery, or a row of houses with their feet in the water, as between the two bridges. This was the domain of the washerwomen; here they called to one another, chattered, laughed, and sang, from morning till night along the river side, while they beat the linen vigorously — as they do to this day, con¬ tributing not a little to the gaiety of Paris.
The University itself appeared as one block forming from end to end a compact and homogeneous whole. Seen from
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above, this multitude of closely packed, angular, clinging roofs, built, for the most part, on one geometrical principle, gave the impression of the crystallization of one substance. Here the capricious cleavage of the streets did not cut up the mass into such disproportionate slices. The forty-two colleges were distributed pretty equally over the whole, and were in evidence on all sides. The varied and charming roof¬ lines of these beautiful buildings originated in the same art which produced the simple roofs they overtopped, being practically nothing more than a repetition, in the square or cube, of the same geometrical figure. Consequently, they lent variety to the whole without confusing it, completed without overloading it — for geometry is another form of harmony. Several palatial residences ’fitted their heads sumptuously here and there above the picturesque roofs of the left bank: the Logis de Nevers, the Logis de Rome, the Logis de Reims, which have disappeared; also the Hôtel de Cluny, which for the consolation of the artist still exists, but the tower of which was so stupidly shortened a few years ago. Near the Hôtel Cluny stood the Baths of Julian, a fine Roman palace with circular arches. There was, be¬ sides, a number of abbeys, more religious in style, of graver aspect than the secular residences, but not inferior either in beauty or in extent. The most striking of these were the Bernardines’ Abbey with its three steeples; Sainte- Geneviève, the square tower of which still exists to make us more deeply regret the rest; the Sorbonne, part college,