SECTION I

The CitÉ—Notre Dame—The Sainte-Chapelle[178]—The Palais de Justice[179]

If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal, or on the Pont du Carrousel, and look towards the CitÉ when the tall buildings, the spire of the Sainte Chapelle and the massive grey towers of Notre Dame are ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not easily surpassed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the unlovely Pont des Arts, stride the arches of the Pont Neuf with their graceful curves; below is the little green patch of garden and the cascade of the weir; in the centre of the bridge the bronze horse with Henry IV., its royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing the site of the old garden of the Palais, where St. Louis sat on a carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediÆval towers of the Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais. Around all are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light with their thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one sails down the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother church of Notre Dame, with the graceful buttresses of the apse like folded pinions, seems to brood over the whole CitÉ.

From the time when Julius CÆsar addressed his legions on the little island of Lutetia Civitas Parisiorum to the present day, two millenniums of history have been enacted there, and few spots are to be found in Europe where so many associations are crowded together. In Gallo-Roman times the island was, as we have seen, even smaller, five islets having been incorporated with it since the thirteenth century. Some notion of the changes that have swept over its soil may be conceived on scanning FÉlibien's 1725 map, where no less than eighteen churches are marked, scarce a wrack of which now remains on the island. We must imagine the old mediÆval CitÉ as a labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets, with the present broad Parvis of Notre Dame of much smaller extent, at a higher level, enclosed by a low wall and approached by steps. Against the north tower leaned the Baptistery (St. Jean le Rond) and St. Denis of the Ferry against the apse. St. Pierre aux Boeufs, whose faÇade has been transferred to St. SÉvÉrin's on the south bank, stood at the east corner, St. Christopher at the west corner of the present HÔtel Dieu which covers the site of eleven streets and three churches. The old twelfth-century hospital, demolished in 1878, occupied the whole space south of the Parvis between the present Petit Pont and the Pont au Double. It possessed its own bridge, the Pont St. Charles, over which the buildings stretched, and joined the annexe (1606), which, until 1909, existed on the opposite side of the river.

Notre Dame.

The traveller who stands on the Parvis before the Church of Our Lady at Paris beholds the embodiment and most perfect expression of early Gothic architecture, the central type and model of the new style created by the genius of the masters of the Isle de France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. On the west front the builders have lavished all their artistic powers in a synthetic exposition of their outlook on life and eternity. As the worshipper approaches the central portal his eye is arrested by a representation of the ultimate and most solemn fact of human destiny, the Last Judgment. On the lintel the dead are seen rising from their graves at the last trump; prelate, noble and serf in one equality of doom. Above, the fine figure of St. Michael is seen weighing souls in the balance. At his left the damned are hauled in chains by grinning demons to Hell: at his right the elect raise joyful eyes toward Heaven. Crowning the tympanum is Christ the Judge, flanked by angels, and by the Virgin and the Baptist kneeling in intercession while He shows His wounded hands. On the archivolts are, to the right of the spectator, demons and damned souls and quaint personifications of death: to his left the heavenly host, choirs of angels, seated prophets and doctors and the army of martyrs. On the jambs are the five wise and five foolish virgins; apostles and saints on the embrasures of the door; below them reliefs of the virtues, each symbolised above its opposite vice. On the central pillar stands Christ in act of blessing; below Him, bas-reliefs typifying the seven liberal arts.[180]

We turn to the lovely portal of the Virgin under the north tower. In the lower compartment of the tympanum is figured the ark of the Covenant attended by prophets and kings; above, is the burial of the Virgin, and crowning all, Our Lady in glory. On the archivolts are angels, patriarchs, prophets, and kings. The jambs and casements are decorated with thirty-seven marvellously vivid reliefs of the signs of the Zodiac, the seasons and labours of the year, a kind of almanac of stone of rare invention and execution. On the embrasures of the door are, among others, the favourite Parisian saints: Denis, Genevieve and Stephen. On the central pier, below the Virgin and Child, are the Creation, Temptation and Fall. The whole of this portal will repay careful inspection.

St. Anne's portal, under the south tower, is more archaic, and indeed some of its sculptures are believed to have come from an earlier Romanesque building. Along the lintel are seen episodes in the life of St. Anne and in the life of Mary: in the central band, to the left, are the Presentation, the Annunciation, the Visitation; in the middle the Nativity in various scenes; to the right Herod, and the Adoration of the Magi. The whole of these reliefs are twelfth-century work, with the exception of the Presentation, which is thirteenth century. In the hemicycle above are the Virgin and Child under a Byzantine canopy with angels and founders on either side. On the central pier stands St. Marcel, Bishop of Paris, banning the horrible serpent that made his lair in a tomb: the retreating serpent's tail is seen on the pier. Both on this and on the north portal traces of painting still remain.

Before leaving, we note the beautiful mediÆval wrought hinges (restored) which came from the old church of St. Stephen and which have been copied for the central portal. The three portals were completed in 1208.

Above them and across the whole faÇade runs a gallery of kings, twenty-eight in number—a perennial source of controversy. Authorities are divided between the kings of France and the kings of Israel and Judah, the royal ancestry of the Virgin. From the analogy of other cathedrals we incline to the latter view. The gallery dates not later than 1220, but the statues are modern reproductions. Yet higher, on the pierced balustrade, is a group of the Virgin between two angels and on either side, over the N. and S. portals, Adam and Eve. A gallery of graceful columns knits the towers together (which were intended to be crowned by spires) before they soar from the faÇade. Between the towers, in olden times, as we know from an illumination in a Froissart MS., stood a great statue of the Virgin. The whole of this glorious fretwork of stone, including the tracery of the rose window, was once refulgent with gold and azure and crimson, and the finished front in its mediÆval glory has been compared to a colossal carved and painted triptych.

Notre Dame—Portal of St. Anne.
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On the central pier of the greater portal of the N. transept, called of the Cloister, we note a fine ancient statue of the Virgin, famed for its grace of expression. The smaller Porte Rouge, further eastward, is remarkable for some well-preserved antique sculpture: a Coronation of the Virgin in the tympanum and six scenes in the life of St. Marcel in the archivolt: some old gargoyles and reliefs may be seen on either side of the door.

We pursue our way by the east end of the cathedral, where in mediÆval times was an open waste, the Motte aux Papelards, the playground of the cathedral servants, the graceful outlines of the apse and the bold sweep of the flying buttresses ever varying in beauty as we pace around. The south portal (ill seen through the iron railings) called of St. Stephen or of the Martyrs is decorated with statues of the saint and of other martyrs, with scenes of their martyrdom. The inscription (p. 88) may be seen at the base to the R.

We may now enter the noble and harmonious interior, unhappily bared of its rich old decorations, its tombs and statues cleared away, its fine Gothic altar destroyed by clerical and royal vandals to give place to renaissance and pseudo-classic pomposities (p. 252). We approach the choir from the right aisle, noting a fourteenth-century statue of the Virgin and Child on the left as we reach the entrance, perhaps the very statue before which povre Gilles did his penance (p. 142) and proceed to examine all that remains of the "histories" in stone on the choir wall round the ambulatory, twenty-three in number, begun in 1319 by Master Jean Ravy, mason of Notre Dame, and finished (parfaites) by Master Jean le Bouteiller in 1351, all dorez et bien peints . Those on the choir screen were destroyed by the Cardinal Archbishop de Noailles in 1725. On the north side are twelve reliefs drawn from earlier New Testament history: on the south are nine from later episodes in the life of Christ. These naÏve mediÆval sculptures of varying merit will repay careful examination. The gilding and colouring are modern. Of the jewelled splendour of the western rose and of the two great rose windows of the transepts the eye will never tire. With every changing light new beauties and new combinations of colour reveal themselves. Those who care to read the subjects will discern in the north transept rose, incidents depicted in the life of the Virgin, and eighteen founders and benefactors: in the south are apostles and bishops crowned by angels.

Interior of Notre Dame.
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We return to the Porte Rouge in the Rue du CloÎtre opposite which is the Rue Massillon, where at Nos. 4 and 6 we may note some remains of the cloisters and canons' dwellings, once a veritable city within a city, fifty-one houses with gardens sequestered within a wall having four gates. We continue to the Rue Chanoinesse, where, No. 10, is the site of Canon Fulbert's house: at No. 18, by the courtesy of Messieurs Allez FrÈres, we may visit the curious old fifteenth-century tower of Dagobert[181] which marks the site of the old port of St. Landry and affords a fine view of the north side of Notre Dame. We return to No. 10 and descend the Rue des Chantres to the Quai aux Fleurs: at No. 9, the site of the house of Abelard and HÉloÏse, an inscription recalls the names of the unhappy lovers,

"... for ever sad, for ever dear,
Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear."

We turn westward along the Quai and ascend on our L., the narrow Rue de la Colombe, across which a double line of stones traces the position of the Gallo-Roman wall, that enclosed the CitÉ. We continue to ascend, and on our L., No. 26 Rue Chanoinesse, we enter a small court where we find a portion of the old pavement of St. Aignan's church, with the almost effaced lineaments on the tombstones of those, now forgotten, who were doubtless famous churchmen in their time, and where St. Bernard wept a whole day, fearing that God had withdrawn from him the power of converting souls. This faint trace of the past wealth of churches remains, but where are the sanctuaries of Ste. GeneviÈve des Ardents, St. Pierre des Arces, St. Denis of the Prison, St. Germain le Vieux, Ste. Croix, St. Symphorien, St. Martial, St. Bartholomew, and the church of the Barnabites, which replaced that of St. Anne, which replaced the old Abbey church of St. Eloy, all clustering around their parent church of Our Lady like nuns under their patroness' mantle? Until comparatively recent times the church of St. Marine was used as a joiner's workshop, and one of the chapels of Ste. Madeleine, parish church of the water-sellers, served as a wine merchant's store! All that survives of the ancient splendour of the CitÉ are Notre Dame and some portions of the Palais, including the Ste. Chapelle.

We turn R. to the Rue d'Arcole that has swept away the old church of St. Landry, near which, until the reign of Louis XIII., a market was held for the sale of foundling children at thirty sous. The scandal was abolished by the efforts of the gentle St. Vincent de Paul, Anne of Austria's confessor. Turning L. along this street we emerge on the Parvis, which we skirt to the R. along the faÇade of the new HÔtel Dieu, and reach the Rue de la CitÉ. We turn R., cross to the L. and follow the broad Rue de LutÈce to the Palais de Justice.

The Sainte Chapelle and the Palais de Justice.

Entering the Cour du Mai by the great iron grille which has replaced the old stone portal, flanked by two towers, a passage on the left leads us to the Cour de la Ste. Chapelle (p. 86). We enter by the west porch of the lower chapel. On the central pier is a restored figure of the Virgin whose original is said to have bowed her head to the famous Scotch theologian Duns Scotus, in recognition of his championship of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1304: in the decoration of the base of the column and of the embrasures of the door, the Fleur-de-Lys of St. Louis is seen alternating with the Castilian Tower of his mother, Blanche of Castile, a decorative motive repeated in the painting of the chapel.

Beautiful as are the vaultings and proportions of the lower chapel, and the decoration, copied, as in the upper chapel, from traces of the original colouring found under the whitewash, the visitor will doubtless prefer to ascend, after a cursory inspection, the narrow, winding stairway to the resplendent upper sanctuary, whose dazzling brilliancy moved an ancient writer to declare that "in the contest between light and darkness in architecture, the creator of the Ste. Chapelle in the pride of his victory built with light itself." In the apse, flooded by streams of colour falling from the windows, is the platform or tribune where, in a rich reliquary of gold, glittering with precious stones, and under a baldachin, the holy relics from Constantinople were exposed in days of old. Part of the tribune is preserved and one of the staircases by which it is ascended, that to the N., is said to date from the founder's time, and may often have been trodden by the very feet of St. Louis himself. Little else of the interior furniture has escaped destruction. The beautiful high altar, the rood loft, the choir stalls, have long disappeared. Four only of the statues of the apostles bearing the crosses of consecration are said to be originals—the fourth and fifth on each side of the nave counting from the west door; the relics, or all that escaped the political storms of the annÉe terrible, are now at Notre Dame, and the reliquary that contained them went to feed the hungry war-chest of the revolutionary armies. But the thirteenth-century jewelled windows, as left to us by the admirable restorers of 1855, are of paramount interest. The wealth of design and amplitude of the series are truly amazing. The panels, numbering about eleven hundred, are a compendium of sacred history and a revelation of the world to come: the whole scene from the Creation to the Apocalypse is unrolled before our eyes, pictured in a transparent symphony of colour. Seven windows of the nave and four of the apse deal with Old Testament history: three at the end of the apse with the New. The eighth window of the nave (the first to the R. of entrance), dealing with the story of the Translation of the relics from Constantinople, although the most restored—nineteen only of the sixty-seven subjects are original—is perhaps the most interesting, for among the nineteen may be seen St. Louis figured by the contemporary artist: receiving the relics at Sens; assisting to carry the relics, barefoot; taking part at the exposition of the relics with his queen and his mother; receiving an embassy from the Emperor Baldwin; carrying the Byzantine cross which holds a portion of the true cross. Another of the original panels contains a representation of the CitÉ with the enveloping arms of the Seine. The rose window at the west end is obviously later, and dates from the fifteenth century.

In olden times the lower part of the central window of the apse was made of white glass that the people massed in the courtyard below might behold the relics as St. Louis and his successors, after exhibiting them to the privileged congregation in the chapel, turned round to show them. Against the south wall of the nave is a little oratory with a squint through which it is said Louis XI. used to venerate the relics unobserved.

We step out from the west door of the upper chapel to examine the more richly decorated upper portal. The carvings are all modern and, except such as were suggested by traces of the old work, are copied from the west front of Notre Dame and other churches. Many a solemn and many a strange scene have been enacted in this royal oratory; the strangest of all perhaps when Charles V. of France, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV., and his son Wenceslaus, king of the Romans, in the rÔle of the three Holy Kings, came to venerate the relics and laid oblations before the shrine.

Before we turn away from the building we should observe on the west faÇade above the rose window wherein the architect has literally sported with the difficulties of construction in stone a charming design of fleurs-de-lys framed by quatrefoils along the balustrade; the central design is an R. (rex), crowned by two angels. The present spire is a fourth erection. The second, which replaced the original spire in 1383, was one of the wonders of Paris, and fell a victim to fire in 1630. A third, erected by Louis XIII., was demolished in 1791, and in 1853 Lassus, Viollet le Duc's principal colleague in the restoration of the chapel, designed the graceful flÈche we see to-day.

We return to the Cour du Mai: on the R., before we ascend the great stairway, we look down on the nine steps leading from the Vestibule (now a CafÉ Restaurant) of the Conciergerie, up which those doomed to the guillotine ascended to the fatal tumbrils awaiting them in the courtyard. We ascend to the Galerie Marchande: the stairway, rebuilt after the fire of 1776, replaced the old flight of stairs at whose feet heralds proclaimed treaties of peace and tournaments, criminals were branded, and books condemned by the Parlement, burned. Here Pantagruel loved to stand and cut the stirrup-straps of the fat councillors' mules, and see the gros suflÉ de conseiller fall flat when he tried to mount; and here the clercs of the Basoche planted the annual May-tree, brought from the forest of Bondy, with much playing of drums and trumpets and elaborate ceremony.

The Galerie Marchande, formerly known as the Galerie MerciÈre, was once a busy and fashionable bazaar, where lines of shops displayed fans, shoes, slippers and other dainty articles of feminine artillery. The further galleries were also invaded by the traders, who were only finally evicted in 1842. We turn R. and enter the Grande Salle or, as it is now known, the Salle des Pas Perdus. It, too, was once a busy mart, booksellers especially predominating, most of whom had stations there, much as we see them to-day, round the OdÉon Theatre. VÉrard's address was—"At the image of St. John the Evangelist, before Notre Dame de Paris, and at the first pillar in the Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice, before the chapelle where they sing the mass for Messieurs of the Parlement." Gilles Couteau's address was at "The Two Archers in the Rue de la Juiverie and at the third pillar at the Palais." Every pillar had its bookseller's shop. In 1618 the great chamber, the finest of its kind in Europe, with its rich stained glass, its double vaultings resplendent with blue and gold, was gutted by fire, and its long line of statues of the kings of France, from Pharamond to Henry IV.—the rois fainÉants with pendent arms and lowered eyes, the valiant warrior kings with heads and arms erect—disappeared for ever. This was the hall where the clercs of the Basoche performed their farces, sottises and moralitÉs, and where Victor Hugo has placed the scene of the famous performance of the moralitÉ, composed by Pierre Gringoire,[182] so vividly described in the opening chapters of Notre Dame.

Debrosse, who built the new Salle in 1622, left a noble and harmonious Renaissance chamber, which, again restored after the fire of 1776, endured until its destruction by fire during the Commune. The present rather frigid hall was completed in 1878 by J.L. Duc, who respected the traditional form and amplitude of the older structures. Nearly opposite the monument to Malesherbes (R.) was the position of the old Pilier des Consultations, where the lawyers were wont to give gratuitous legal help to the poor. The best time to visit the Hall is in the afternoon, when the courts are sitting and when the footsteps of the lawyers and their clients are indeed lost amid the buzz of conversation as they pace up and down.

The PremiÈre Chambre to the L., in the north-west corner of the Hall, is one of the most profoundly interesting in the agglomerated mass of buildings known as the Palais de Justice. This, now somewhat reduced in size, was the old Grande Chambre, rebuilt by Louis XII. on the occasion of his marriage with Princess Mary of England, which replaced the earlier bed-chamber of St. Louis.

Fra Gioconda's sumptuous decorations of 1502, which won for it the name of the Chambre dorÉe, the gold used being, it is said, equal in purity to the famous Dutch golden florin, have been partially restored. Here the kings of France held their Beds of Justice; here the Fronde held its sittings, and here on 15th April, 1654, the young king Louis XIV. strode in, booted and spurred, and is said to have uttered the famous words l'État c'est moi. Here too, renamed the Salle ÉgalitÉ, the dread Revolutionary Tribunal held its sittings and condemned 2742 victims; here on 14th October 1793, at half-past four in the morning, appeared Marie Antoinette, "widow of Louis Capet," before her implacable judges and heard her doom; hence the twenty-one Girondins trooped forth to their common fate; here Robespierre, St. Just, and, at length, the unwearied minister of death, Fouquier-Tinville himself, the revolutionary public prosecutor, heard their condemnation. We leave by the Cour du Mai and note, to our L., the restored clock tower, replacing the most ancient and famous clock of Paris. It was renewed by Germain Pilon in 1588 and restored in 1685. Demolished during the Revolution, the face and decoration were again renewed in 1852. The silvery-toned bell that hung here, called the tocsin, cast in 1371 and known as the cloche d'argent, was accused, together with the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, before the Commune on 21st August 1792, of having given the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and its immediate destruction was ordered. We turn along the picturesque river faÇade, and between its two mediÆval towers, de CÉsar and d'Argent, enter the Conciergerie.[183] The condemned cell of Marie Antoinette (transformed into a chapel) and the cell of Robespierre are shown, together with the chapel where the Girondins passed their last night and where their legendary banquet is famed to have taken place. The so-called Cuisine de St. Louis, a remain of the old Gothic palace of Philip le Bel, is no longer shown. The third tower on the river faÇade, which we pass on our way westward, has been wholly rebuilt. In the original tower was the judicial torture-chamber (an adjunct of every court of justice in olden times), used to wrest confessions from prisoners and evidence from unwilling witnesses, hence its name of Tour Bon Bec or Bavarde. The fine western faÇade and the Salle des Pas Perdus of the Cour d'Assises, looking on the Place Dauphine, were completed in 1868.

Few Law Courts in Europe have so venerable a history as the Palais de Justice. From the times when the Roman prÆtor set up his court, more than two thousand years ago, to the present day, a temple of Law and Justice has ever stood on this spot.

SECTION II

St. Julien le Pauvre—St. SÉvÉrin—The Quartier Latin

As we fare S. from the W. end of the Parvis of Notre Dame and cross the Petit Pont, we behold the old Roman Road, now Rue St. Jacques, rising straight before us and on the annexe of the HÔtel Dieu,[184] to the L. of the Place du Petit Pont find inscribed their names (p. 46), who nearly twelve centuries ago dared:—

"For that sweet motherland which gave them birth,
Nobly to do, nobly to die."

On the site of the Place stood the Petit ChÂtelet, demolished in 1782, a gloomy prison where many a rowdy student was incarcerated. To the L. of the Rue du Petit Pont we turn by the Rue de la BÛcherie and on our R. find the Rue St. Julien le Pauvre. Here on the L., hidden behind a pair of shabby wooden gates, stands the modest little twelfth-century church, now used for the Uniat Greek services, where St. Gregory of Tours found the drunken impostor (pp. 32, 33), where the University of Paris first held its sittings, and where twice a year the royal provost attended to swear to preserve the privileges of the rector, masters and scholars. Near by stood the house of Buridan (note [49]. At the end of the street we turn R. by the old Rues Galande and St. SÉvÉrin: at No. 4 of the latter, we see a trace of the original naming of the streets by Turgot, the marks of the erasure of the word "Saint" during the Revolution being clearly visible. Parallel with this street to the N. is the Rue de la Huchette, from which opens the curious old Rue du Chat qui PÊche and the Rue Zacharie, in mediÆval times called Sac À Lie, which communicates with the Rue St. SÉvÉrin. To our L. is the fine Gothic church of St. SÉvÉrin, one of the most beautiful and interesting in Paris, on the site of the oratory of Childebert I., where St. Cloud was shorn and took his vows. On the thirteenth-century N. portal of the tower have been replaced the two small lions in relief between which, in olden times, the curÉs are said to have exercised justice. We note the thirteenth-century W. portal, transferred from the old church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, and enter for the sake of the beautiful Gothic interior, mainly fifteenth century, with its double aisles and ambulatory and fine stained-glass in the nave. We turn L., on leaving, along the Rue des PrÊtres St. SÉvÉrin (No. 5 is the site of the old CollÈge de Lisieux) which is continued by the Rue Boutebrie, in former times the Rue des Enlumineurs, famous for those who practised the art, "che alluminare chiamata È in Parisi."[185] At the end of the Rue des PrÊtres we turn L. along the picturesque Rue de la Parcheminerie, where we may recall the old poet Corneille sitting at a cobbler's stall while his gaping shoe was patched, and where still remain, among other curious old houses, Nos. 6 and 7, which in the thirteenth century were owned by the canons of Norwich Cathedral, who maintained a number of scholars there. We are now on the very foyer of the University quarter, in mediÆval times swarming with poor scholars, the busy hive of knowledge, and so notorious for its misery and rowdy depravity, that Charles V. during his regency had the Rue du Fouarre closed at curfew by strong iron grilles. We pass on to the Rue St. Jacques, then R. to the Boulevard St. Germain, again sharply to the L. and descend the new Rue Dante, R. of which, in the Rue Domat, are some quaint old houses: at 12 bis is the site of the old CollÈge de Cournouailles (Brittany). The Rue Dante is continued by the Rue du Fouarre (Straw Street) where Siger taught (p. 103) and in one of whose colleges the author of the Divina Commedia probably sat as a scholar. The houses are all modernised and the name alone remains. We turn R. along the Rue Galande, noting R. the Rue des Anglais which reminds us that there the English scholars congregated. We pass on by the Rue Lagrange and reach the place Maubert of dread memories, for here were burnt many a Protestant martyr and the famous printer philosopher, Étienne Dolet, friend of Erasmus, of Marot and of Melancthon, whose statue in bronze stands on the Place. Dolet's martyrdom is still yearly celebrated there by democratic Parisians, and the Place has always been famous for its barricades during the Fronde and later Revolutionary times. We cross the Boulevard to the Rue des Carmes, whose name recalls the Carmelite monastery founded by St. Louis, and at No. 15 find the site of the old Italian College (CollÈge des Lombards). Much of this "hostel of the poor Italian scholars of the charity of Our Lady," as rebuilt by two Irish priests, Michael Kelly and Patrick Moggin, still exists, including the chapel, and is partly occupied by a Catholic Workmen's Club It gave shelter to forty missionary priests and an equal number of poor Irish scholars, and the earliest disciples of Loyola found temporary shelter there. Some idea of the vast extent of the ancient foundation may be gained by walking round to 34 Rue de la Montagne Ste. GeneviÈve on the other side of the MarchÉ where the principal portal may be seen. We return to the Place Maubert, which we recross, and descend direct before us to the Rue de la BÛcherie on our L. This street was the centre of the medical students, and from 1369 to the times of Louis XIV. the Faculty of Medicine held its lectures and demonstrations there. At No. 13 still remains the old anatomical and surgical theatre of the Faculty erected in 1617, which has been acquired by the Municipality, but had a neglected, almost ruined aspect when we last passed (Feb. 1906).[186] We continue along this street and return to the Place du Petit Pont.

SECTION III

École des Beaux Arts[187]—St. Germain des PrÉs—Cour du Dragon—St. Sulpice—The Luxembourg—The OdÉon—The Cordeliers—The Surgeons' Guild—The MusÉe Cluny[188]— The Sorbonne[189]—The PanthÉon[190]—St. Étienne du Mont—Tour Clovis—Wall of Philip Augustus—Roman Amphitheatre

We cross to the S. bank of the Seine by the Pont du Carrousel (or des Saints PÈres). Opposite on the Quai Malaquais stands the École des Beaux Arts (on the site of the old Convent of the Petits Augustins where Lenoir organised his museum), founded by the Convention and now one of the most important art-teaching centres in Europe. We turn S. by the Rue Bonaparte, and soon find the entrance, on the R., to the first courtyard, in which we note, on our R., the fine Portal of the ChÂteau of Anet, built for Diana of Poitiers by Delorme and Goujon (1548): opposite the entrance, giving access to the second courtyard, is placed a faÇade, transitional in style, from the ChÂteau of Gaillon. An hour may profitably be spent on Sundays strolling through the rooms viewing the interesting collection of casts and reproductions of masterpieces of painting by the pupils of the school. Delaroche's famous Hemicycle, representing the great artists of every age, seventy-five figures larger than life, will be found in the theatre of the MusÉe des AntiquitÉs entered from the second courtyard.

We continue along the Rue Bonaparte past the new AcadÉmie de MÉdecine and on our L. soon sight the grey pile of the old Abbey Church of St. Germain des PrÉs, once refulgent in colour and gold. A part of the great tower is said to have resisted the Norman conflagrations, but the church as we now behold it, is that rebuilt 1000-1163; enlarged in 1237 and restored at various periods in the first half of the nineteenth century. Of the great fortress-monastery, with its immense domains of land; its cloisters, walls and towers; its prison and pillory, over which the puissant abbots once held sway, only a memory remains. The fortifications were razed in the seventeenth century and gave place to artizans' houses. The famous Fair of St. Germain has long been suppressed, where Henry IV. on the royal entry of Marie de' Medici, after promising the merchants that they should grow rich, since his queen had de l'argent frais, disappointed them all by chaffering much and buying nothing. Over the entrance of the church within the W. porch is a well-preserved Romanesque relief of the Last Supper. Some bases and capitals of the triforium date from the twelfth century, but the heavy Romanesque capitals of the eleventh century nave are restorations, and the beautiful early Gothic choir has also been much modified at various epochs. The interest of the interior is enhanced to the lover of French art by Flandrin's admirable frescoes (p. 391), illustrating scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Unhappily, they are seen with difficulty, and a bright, sunny day is necessary to appreciate the masterly art, the noble and reverent spirit that animates them. One of the most successful and best seen is the Entry into Jerusalem, L. of the choir.

If we turn by the Rue de l'Abbaye, N. of the church, we shall find part of the sixteenth-century Abbot's Palace yet standing, and a walk round the apse and the S. side of the church will afford a view of its massive bulk, its flying buttresses and steep-pitched roof. Crossing the Place St. Germain obliquely to the S.W. we reach the Rue de Rennes: at No. 50 is the entrance of the picturesque Cour du Dragon with an eighteenth-century figure of a Dragon carved over it. At the end of this curious courtyard, paved, as old Paris was paved, with the gutter down the middle, will be seen two old towers enclosing stairways. We return to the Rue Bonaparte and faring still S. reach the huge fabric of St. Sulpice with its massive, gloomy towers and pretentious faÇade of cumbrous splendour. We enter for the sake of Delacroix' fine paintings in the side chapel R. of entrance: Jacob wrestling with the Angel; Heliodorus driven from the Temple; and St. Michael and the Dragon. In this and in many of the numerous chapels are other decorative paintings by modern artists, few of which will probably appeal to the visitor. It was in this church that Camille Desmoulins was wedded to Lucille, Robespierre acting as best man. On the S. side of the ample Place St. Sulpice is the great Catholic Seminary,[191] and the whole neighbourhood has an essentially ecclesiastical character. Shops and emporiums displaying objets de piÉtÉ; all kinds of church furniture and art (most of it bad art) abound. We continue our southward way by the Rue FÉrou, opposite the end of which is the MusÉe du Luxembourg containing a collection of such contemporary sculpture and paintings as has been deemed worthy of acquisition by the State. The rooms are crowded with statuary and pictures which evince much talent and technical skill, but the visitor will be impressed by few works of great distinction. The English traveller, perchance, will leave with kindlier feelings towards those responsible for the Chantrey pictures, though envious of a collection whose catholicity embraces works by two great modern masters, Londoners by option—Legros and Whistler. But any impression that may be left on the traveller's mind by the inspection of the examples of contemporary French art exhibited in this museum should be supplemented and corrected by an examination of decorative works of greater range in the chief public edifices, such as the HÔtel de Ville, the Sorbonne, the PanthÉon and the École de MÉdecine. We enter the Luxembourg Gardens by the gate R. of the museum, turn L., pass the faÇade of the palace and opposite its E. wing discover the charming old Medici Fountain. After strolling about the delightful gardens, unhappily by the erection of the Observatory in 1672 reduced by more than one-third of their former extent, we leave by the gate N. of the Medici Fountain which gives on the Rue Vaugirard opposite the OdÉon Theatre, formerly the ThÉÂtre de la Nation, where the ComÉdie FranÇaise performed for a few years after 1781. The Paris booksellers still have their stalls inside the colonnade even as they used to do in the great Salle of the Palais de Justice.

Cour du Dragon
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Descending (R. of the OdÉon) the Rues Corneille, Casimir Delavigne and Antoine Dubois, we strike the Rue de l'École de MÉdecine where (No. 15 to R.) will be seen the Refectory, all that remains of the great Franciscan monastery, and now used as a pathological museum (MusÉe Dupuytren), for medical students. In this hall was laid the body of Marat after his assassination by Charlotte Corday, and the famous club of the Cordeliers, where the gentler rhetoric of Camille Desmoulins vied with the thunderous declamation of Danton to stir republican fervour, met in the Hall of Theology. We pass to No. 5, where are some remains of the old School of Surgery or Guild of SS. Cosmas and Damian, founded by St. Louis; adjacent stood the church of St. Cosmas, famous for the fiery zeal of its curÉ during the times of the League. The surgeons of the Guild being compelled by their charter to give professional aid to the poor every Monday, the churchwardens obtained a papal Bull authorising them to erect in their church a suitable consulting-room for the use of the patients. In 1694 the surgeons built an anatomical theatre which, enlarged in 1710, is now used as an art school. We continue our pilgrimage and, crossing the Boulevard St. Michel to the Rue des Écoles, descend on our L. the Rue de la Sorbonne and find the entrance to the beautiful late Gothic palace built for the abbots of Cluny in 1490.

Tower and Courtyard of HÔtel Cluny.
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The delightful old mansion, (p. 159) now the MusÉe de Cluny, is crowded with a selection of mediÆval and renaissance objects unparalleled in Europe for variety and excellence and beauty. The rooms themselves, with their fine carved chimney-pieces, where on winter days wood-fires, fragrant and genial, burn, are not the least charming part of the museum. Many of the exhibits (about 12,000) are uncatalogued, and the old catalogue, long out of date, may well be classed among the antiquities. The traveller will doubtless return again and again to this rich and fascinating museum. The present installation is provisional, and we do but indicate the chief classes of objects exhibited, most of which are clearly labelled. L. of vestibule, Rooms I. and II. contain a miscellaneous collection of wood carving, statuary, ivories, etc. Room III. has some important examples of carved and painted altar-pieces: 709 is late fifteenth-century work; 712, Flemish of the sixteenth century; 710, a German domestic altar-piece, near which stands a fine Flemish altar-piece (no number), carved with scenes from the Passion. On a screen in the centre are some important paintings, carvings and other objects of ecclesiastical art from the Rothschild Collection. Room IV. shows some beautiful renaissance furniture, cabinets, medals, etc. To the R. is the smaller Room V. The chief exhibits here are an eighteenth-century Neapolitan CrÈche, with more than fifty doll-like figures; a rich tabernacle of plateresque Spanish work, and some furniture of interest. We return and descend to Room VI. (on the R), a large hall, where many important mediÆval sculptures will be seen. At the four corners are thirteenth-century statues from the Ste. Chapelle. We may also mention: 429 (under a glass case), some lovely fourteenth-century statuettes, mourners from the tomb of Philip the Bold, by the Burgundian artist, Claus Sluter; a painted statue of the Baptist, Sienese work; statuette in wood of the Virgin, French art of the fourteenth century; 725, statuette in wood of St. Louis from the Ste. Chapelle. Other noteworthy examples of mediÆval plastic art by French, Italian and Netherland craftsmen will be found in this room, and around the walls are specimens of tapestries, carvings, paintings and mosaics, among the last being some from St. Denis and one, 4763, by David Ghirlandaio from St. Merri. We cross a passage to the parallel Hall VII., where hang three grand pieces of early sixteenth century Flemish tapestry, illustrating the story of David and Bathsheba. Among the statuary are: 251, Virgin and Child, French work of early sixteenth century; 448, The Three Fates, attributed to Germain Pilon, and said to be portraits of Diana of Poitiers and her daughters. 449, The Forsaken Ariadne; 456, Sleep; 450, Venus and Cupid; 479, a small and beautiful entombment, are French work of the sixteenth century. Hall VIII. Here are exhibited the sumptuously decorated robes of the Order of the Holy Ghost (p. 187); other examples of fine tapestry; a Venetian Galley Lamp; and some statuary of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

We return to the passage and ascend the stairs to the first floor. Here are three galleries devoted to Faiences and other specimens of the potter's art of French, Italian, Flemish, German, Spanish, Persian and Moorish provenance. All are of admirable craftsmanship, the Italian (including some from Faenza itself, the home of Faience ware) being of especial beauty and excellence. Among the Della Robbia ware is an exquisite Child-Baptist by Andrea. We now ascend three steps to the room which contains, among other objects, a matchless collection of Limoges enamels; some Venetian glass; and the marvellous fifteenth-century tapestries from Boussac, probably the finest of that fine period which have survived to us. The upper portion illustrates the Life and Martyrdom of St. Stephen; the lower, the story of the Lady and the Unicorn, or the Triumph of Chastity.

We descend to the Gallery of Hispano-Moorish and Persian pottery, and cross to a suite of small rooms where specimens of Jewish sanctuary art, old musical instruments, wedding cassoni and Flemish cabinets are displayed. We then turn R. to the Hall of Francis I., with a stately bed of the period; carved cabinets and cupboards, and proceed direct to the room devoted to the ivories. These are of extraordinary variety and beauty, and range from the sixth century downwards. The next room is crowded with an equally varied collection of bronze and iron work, among which we note a fifteenth-century statuette in bronze of Joan of Arc. The examples of the locksmith's art shown are of great beauty and excellence. The elaboration of French keys has a peculiar origin. Henry III., as a mark of royal favour, permitted his minions to possess a key of his private apartment: as a piece of swagger the royal favourite was wont to wear the key ostentatiously on his breast, whereby French smiths were spurred in emulation to produce keys of exquisite craftsmanship and design. Another kind of interest attaches to the key (No. 5962 in the case on the L. as we enter) which was made by Louis XVI. The following room contains specimens of the goldsmith's art. 5104 is a curious sixteenth-century model of a ship in gilded bronze, with figures of Charles V. and his court on the deck: it has an ingenious mechanism for discharging toy cannon. 5299, is a set of chessmen in rock crystal; 4988, the face of an altar, rich gold repoussÉ work, was given by the Emperor, Henry II., to Bale Cathedral. The glass case in the centre holds nine golden Visigothic crowns found near Toledo in 1860, the largest is that of King Reccesvinthus who reigned in the latter half of the seventh century; 5044 is a fourteenth-century Italian processional cross of great beauty. We retrace our steps to the Hall of Francis I., turn R. and enter the private chapel. Opposite the charming little apse are placed some admirably preserved fourteenth-century reliefs in stone from the Abbey of St. Denis. On leaving, we turn R. along the passage, hung with armour and weapons, to the stairway, descend to Room VI., ground floor, open a door at its W. end, and in the twinkling of an eye are swept back nigh two thousand years along the stream of the ages, for the frigidarium of the Baths of the Palace of the CÆsars is before us, a fabric of imperial architecture, spoiled of its decorations but yet massive and strong, as of elemental strength, defiant of time, the imperishable mark of Rome. We descend and find in the centre the altar (p. 17), bearing the inscription of the NautÆ. A statue of the Emperor Julian; some thirteenth and fourteenth-century statues are also exhibited. We may enter and rest in the garden where a twelfth-century cloister portal from the Benedictine Abbey of Argenteuil, a fourteenth-century portal from the Abbey of St. Denis, and other fragments of architecture are placed.

Arches in the Courtyard of the HÔtel Cluny.
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We return to the Rue des Écoles which we cross to the imposing new University buildings. The vestibule, grand staircase and amphitheatre are of noble and stately proportions and adorned with mural paintings, among which Puvis de Chavannes' great composition, The Sacred Grove, in the amphitheatre, is of chief interest.[192] We continue along the Rue de la Sorbonne and soon reach the old chapel, all that remains of Richelieu's Sorbonne, containing his tomb, a masterpiece of monumental art of the late seventeenth century, designed by Lebrun and executed by Girardon. The church of St. Benoist and its cloister, where FranÇois Villon assassinated his rival ChermoyÉ, has also been swept away. We proceed by the Rue Victor Cousin, a continuation of the Rue de la Sorbonne, and debouch on the broad Rue Soufflot. Turning L., an inscription on No. 14 marks the site of the Dominican monastery where the great schoolmen, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught. Opposite (No. 9), at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques is the site, marked by a plan, of the old Porte St. Jacques of the Philip Augustus wall. We are now on the Mount of St. Genevieve, crowned by the majestic and eminent PanthÉon, whose pediment is adorned by David d'Angers' sculptures, representing La Patrie, between Liberty and History, distributing crowns to her children. Among the figures are Malesherbes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mirabeau, Carnot, Bonaparte, behind whom stand an old grenadier and the famous drummer-boy of Arcole.

The PanthÉon has the most magnificent situation and, except the new church of the SacrÉ Coeur, is the most dominant building in Paris. Its dome is seen from nearly every eminence commanding the city, and has a certain stately, almost noble, aspect. But the spacious interior, despite the efforts of the artists of the third Republic, is chilling to the spectator. Swept and garnished, it has no warmth of historical or religious associations; it is devoid of human sentiment. The choice of painters to decorate the interior was an amazing act of official insensibility. The most discordant artistic temperaments were let loose on the devoted building. Puvis de Chavannes, the only painter among them who has grasped the limitation of mural art, has painted with restraint and noble simplicity incidents in the story of St. Genevieve. Jean Paul Laurens is responsible for a splendid but incongruous representation of the death of St. Genevieve. A St. Denis, scenes in the lives of Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Jeanne d'Arc, by Bonnat, Blanc, Levy, Cabanel and Lenepveu, are all excellent work of the kind so familiar to visitors to the Salon at Paris, but lacking in harmony and in inspiration. The angel appearing to Jeanne d'Arc seems to have been modelled from a figurante at the opera. The visitor who has perused the opening chapters of this book will have no difficulty in following the subjects depicted on the walls. A more ambitious scheme of decoration was abruptly closed by the Coup d'État of Napoleon III.: Chenavard, who had been commissioned, in 1848, to decorate the interior by a series of forty cartoons, illustrating the "History of Man from his first sorrows to the French Revolution," found his gigantic project made abortive by the Prince President's treachery.

To the L. of the PanthÉon, the library of St. Genevieve stands on the site of the CollÈge Montaigu and behind, in the Rue Clotilde, will be seen the steep-pitched roof of the old dormitory and refectory of the monastery of St. Genevieve: to our L. stands the picturesque church of St. Étienne du Mont (p. 85), whose interior is architecturally of much interest. The triforium, supported by round pillars and arches, in its turn supports a tournÉe, with another row of arches and pillars; some fine sixteenth-century coloured glass still remains. Biard's florid choir screen (p. 344) or jubÉ will at once attract the visitor, and the ever-present worshippers around the rich shrine R. of the choir will tell him that there such relics of the holy patroness of Paris as survived the Revolution are preserved. Two inscriptions near by recall the historical associations of the site. Leaving by the door this side of the choir, we issue into the Rue Clovis: opposite we sight the so-called Tower of Clovis, now enclosed in the buildings of the LycÉe Henri IV., and once the tower of the fine old abbey church of St. Genevieve. A closer examination from the courtyard proves it to be partly Romanesque, partly Gothic. We descend the Rue Clovis and at No. 7 find one of the best-preserved remains of the Philip Augustus wall. Proceeding to the end of the Rue Clovis, we turn R., ascend the Rue Cardinal Lemoine, and cross to the Rue Rollin, which we descend to its intersection with the Rue Monge: in the Rue de Navarre opposite will be found the ruins of the old Roman Arena (p. 13). To return, we descend the Rue Monge, which terminates at the Place Maubert, where we find ourselves on familiar ground; or we may re-ascend the Rue Rollin, retracing our steps to the Rue Cardinal Lemoine, cross L. to the Place Contrescarpe and on our L. find the interesting Rue Mouffetard with curious old houses: 99, the site of the Palace of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem, is now the MarchÉ des Patriarchs. The street terminates at the church of St. MÉdard, whose notorious cemetery (p. 245) is now a Square. We retrace our steps, noting L. the old fountain at the corner of the Rue Pot de Fer, continue to the end of the Rue Mouffetard, and descend by the Rue Descartes, where at No. 50 is an inscription marking the site of the Porte St. Marcel called Porte Bordet. We pass the École Polytechnique, on the site of the old College of Navarre, and continue down the Rue de la Montagne Ste. GeneviÈve to the Place Maubert.

SECTION IV

The Louvre [193]—Sculpture: Ground Floor.

No other edifice in Europe contains so vast a treasure of things beautiful and rare as the great royal palace of the Louvre, whose growth we have traced in our story. From periods so remote that works of art sometimes termed ancient are in comparison but of yesterday to the productions of the generation of artists who have just passed away, we may study the varying phases of the manifestation through the ages of the artistic sense in man. From Egypt, Chaldea and Assyria, from Persia, Phoenicia and Greece, rich and marvellous collections afford a unique opportunity for the study of comparative Æsthetics. We may safely assume, however, that the traveller will be chiefly interested in the manifold examples of the plastic and pictorial arts, here exhibited, from Greece downwards. In the limited space at our disposal we can do no more than indicate the principal and choicest objects in the various rooms, praying those whose leisure and interest impel them to more thorough examination of any one department, to possess themselves of the admirable and exhaustive special catalogues issued by the Directors of the Museum.

The nucleus of the gallery of sculpture and painting was formed by Francis I. and the Renaissance princes at the palace of Fontainebleau, where the canvases at the beginning of the seventeenth century had reached nearly 200. Colbert, during the reign of Louis XIV. by the purchase of the Mazarin and other Collections, added 647 paintings and nearly 6000 drawings in ten years. In 1681 the Cabinet du Roi, for so the collection of royal pictures was called, was transferred to the Louvre. They soon, however, followed their owner to Versailles, but some hundred were subsequently returned to Paris, where they might be inspected at the Luxembourg Palace by the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays. In 1709 Bailly, the keeper of the king's cabinet, took an inventory of the paintings and they were found to number 2376. In 1757 all were again returned to Versailles, and it was not until 1793, when the National Convention, on BarrÈre's motion, took the matter in hand, that they were restored to the Parisians and, together with the works of art removed from the suppressed churches and monasteries preserved by Lenoir, formed the famous gallery of the Louvre, which was formally opened to the public on the first anniversary of the memorable 10th of August. The arrival of the artistic spoils from Italy was stage-managed by Napoleon with consummate skill and imposing spectacular effect. Amid the applauding multitudes of Parisians a long procession of triumphal cars slowly wended its way, loaded with famous pictures, securely packed, but each bearing its title in monumental inscription. The Transfiguration, by Raphael: The Christ, by Titian, etc. Then followed the heavy rumbling of massive cars groaning under the weight of sculptures, these too inscribed: The Apollo Belvedere: The Laocoon, etc. Other chariots loaded with trunks containing famous books, precious manuscripts, captured flags, trophies of arms, gave the scene all the pomp and circumstance of a veritable Roman triumph. These spoils, which almost choked the Louvre during Napoleon's reign, were reduced by the return, in 1815, of 5233 works of art to their original owners under British supervision, and during the removal of the statues and pictures, ostentatiously effected to the bitter humiliation of the Parisians, British sentinels were stationed along the galleries and British soldiers stood under arms in the quadrangle and the Place du Carrousel to protect the workmen.

Before beginning our artistic pilgrimage let us pay grateful tribute to the memory of Alexandre Lenoir, to whose tact and love for the arts we owe the preservation of so many priceless objects here, at St. Denis, and other museums of Paris. Appointed by the National Assembly, Director of a Commission pour les Monuments formed to collect all objects of art worthy of preservation during the search for lead coffins to be cast into bullets, he induced the authorities to grant him the use of the monastery of the Petits Augustins (now part of the École des Beaux Arts) for their storage. There the admirable official succeeded in rescuing some 500 historical and royal monuments from Paris and St. Denis and some 2,600 pictures from the confiscated monasteries and ecclesiastical establishments, although existing receipts for about 600 pictures reclaimed from Lenoir by the Revolutionary Tribunal and burned, prove that he was only partially successful. In 1793 the National Convention assigned the Petits Augustins to Lenoir as a Museum of French Monuments, and the collection was pieced together, somewhat unskilfully it is true, and arranged in six rooms: many of the objects were in due time destined to find their way back to St. Denis, others to enrich the Louvre.

(a) Ancient Sculpture.

Entering the quadrangle of the Louvre and making our way to the S.W. angle we shall see, traced on the granite paving by a line of smaller stones, the outline of the E. and N. walls and towers of the old fortress of Philip Augustus, the position of the E. gateway, the Porte de Bourbon, being marked by its two flanking towers. Enclosed within these lines, the site of the massive old keep is shown by two circular strings of stones on the asphalt. Lescot's and Goujon's beautiful faÇade (p. 173) is now before us. Although the whole of the decorative sculpture was designed by Goujon, only three groups of figures can be safely attributed to his hand; those that adorn the three oeil de boeuf windows of the ground floor: Fame and Victory; Peace, and War disarmed; History and Glory. Concerning the two first-named figures—Fame blowing a trumpet, and a winged Victory offering a crown of laurel—on either side of the window in the S.W. angle, it is related that one day as King Henry II. sat at table with his architect, he asked him what he had in mind when he made the design. "Sire," answered Lescot, "by the first figure I meant Ronsard, and by the trumpet, the power of his verse, which carried his name to the four quarters of the earth." Ronsard, who was present, returned the compliment by a flattering poetic epistle which he sent to Lescot. Goujon's figures, destined for the pediment of the attic, were placed by Napoleon I. most awkwardly over the entrances to the Egyptian and Assyrian collections in the E. wing, and utterly spoiled of their effect. The monograms on either side of the windows: two D's interlaced with the bar of an H, or two C's with the whole of the letter H, are variously interpreted as the initials of Diana of Poitiers and Henry II. or Catherine de' Medici and Henry II.

We enter the palace by the Pavilion de l'Horloge (the clock pavilion) and, turning L. find on our L. a door which opens to the Salle des Caryatides (p. 173). Here, in the old Salle Basse, memories crowd upon us—the dangling bodies of the four terrorist chiefs of the Sections hanged by the Duke of Mayenne from the beams of the old ceiling; the Red Nuptials of fair Queen Margot and Henri Quatre; the chivalrous and handsome, but ill-fated young hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria, on his way, in 1576, to the Netherlands, his brain seething with romantic dreams of rescuing Mary Queen of Scots and seating her beside himself on the throne of England, taking part in a royal ball, disguised as a Moor, and leaving, smitten by the charms of Queen Margot; the lying in state of the murdered Henri; the dying Mazarin wheeled in his chair to witness the royal performances by MoliÈre. Beneath our feet in the caves are part of the foundations of the old feudal chÂteau, and pillars and fragments of old sculpture discovered in 1882-1884.

We note Goujon's Caryatides (p. 174), traverse the hall, filled with Roman sculpture and, turning R. along the Corridor de Pan, enter the Salle Grecque, which contains a small but precious collection of Greek sculptures. In the centre are three archaic works: a draped Juno, and in glass cases, a Head of Apollo, and a Head of a Man, the latter still bearing traces of the original colouring. Also in cases are: Head of a Lapith from the Parthenon; and Head of a woman attributed to the sculptor Calamis, acquired in 1908 from the Humphrey Ward collection. Three bas-reliefs from a temple of Apollo at Thasos show a marked advance in artistic expression, which reaches its ultimate perfection in the lovely fragment of the Parthenon frieze, and in a mutilated metope from the same temple. An interesting comparison is afforded by the metopes (The Labours of Hercules) from the Temple of Jupiter at Olympia, earlier and transitional in style but admirable in craftsmanship. On the walls and in the embrasures of the S. windows are a number of stele, or sepulchral reliefs,[194] executed by ordinary funeral masons, which will demonstrate the remarkable general excellence of Attic sculpture in the finest period: 766, to Philis, daughter of Cleomedes, is especially noteworthy. Even the inferior reliefs are characterised by an atmosphere of dignified and restrained melancholy.

We return to the Corridor de Pan and continue past the Salle des Caryatides through halls filled with GrÆco-Roman work of secondary importance, to the sanctuary of the serenely beautiful Venus of Melos, the best-known and most admired of Greek statues in Europe. Much has been written by eminent critics as to the attitude of the complete statue. Three conflicting theories may be briefly summarised: (1) That the left hand held an apple, the right supporting the drapery; (2) that the figure was a Victory holding a shield and a winged figure on an orb; (3) the latest conjecture, by Solomon Reinach, that the figure is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, who held a trident in the extended left arm. It was to this exquisite creation[195] of idealised womanhood that the poet Heine dragged himself in May 1848 to bid adieu to the lovely idols of his youth, before he lay, never again to rise, on his mattress-grave in the Rue d'Amsterdam. "As I entered the hall," he writes, "where the most blessed goddess of beauty, our dear lady of Melos, stands on her pedestal, I well-nigh broke down, and fell at her feet sobbing piteously, so that even a heart of stone must be softened. And the goddess gazed at me compassionately, yet withal so comfortless, as who should say: 'Seest thou not that I have no arms and cannot help thee?'"

To the R. of the Salle de la Venus de Milo is the Salle Melpomene, with a fine colossal figure of the Tragic Muse, and, No. 419[196] (163), an excellent Head of a Woman. We enter the Salle de la Pallas de Velletri, and ranged along its centre find: 436, a fine bust of Alexander the Great; the Venus of Arles, 439, said to be a copy of an early work by Praxiteles; a magnificent Head of Homer, 440; and 441, Apollo, the Lizard-slayer, after a bronze by Praxiteles. The colossal Pallas, in a recess to the R., was found at Velletri in 1797: it is another Roman reproduction of a Greek bronze. Near the entrance to the next room stands a pleasing Venus, 525, and in the centre the famous "Borghese Gladiator" or HÉros Combattant, actually, a warrior attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be flayed alive by order of Apollo; to L. 562, the Borghese Centaur, and near the exit, 529, the charming Diana of Gabii, a Greek girl fastening her mantle. We pass to the Salle du Tibre, in the centre of which stands the famous Diana and the Stag, acquired for Francis I., much admired and over-rated by the sculptors of the renaissance: at the end is a colossal group, symbolising the Tiber and Rome. We turn R. and again enter the Corridor de Pan, pass through the Salle Grecque and reach the Rotonde with the Borghese Mars in its centre. We turn L., continue direct through Rooms XIV. to XVIII. the old Petite Galerie[197] and the apartments of the queen mothers of France still retaining their ceiling decorations by Romanelli. We then turn R. to the spacious Salle d'Auguste, (XIX), at the end of which, in a recess, stands a majestic draped statue of Augustus. In the centre are a bust, 1204, said to be the head of Antiochus III., king of Syria 223-187 B.C., and 1207 the stately Roman Orator as Mercury, which an inscription on the tortoise states to be the work of Cleomanes, an Athenian. In this and the subsequent halls are placed many imperial busts[198] of much historical and some artistic interest. We return to Room XVIII. where we find, 1205, the colossal bust of Antinous, the beautiful young favourite of Hadrian, who in a fit of melancholy flung himself into the Nile and (deified) became the most popular of the gods in the PanthÉon of the later Empire: the eyes were originally formed of jewels. This is the bust referred to by J.A. Symonds, in his Sketches and Studies in S. Europe, as by far the finest of the simple busts of the imperial favourite. In Room XV. is a statue, 1121, of the Emperor Julian, found at Paris, some curious Mithraic reliefs, and, in Room XIV. are interesting Roman altars and sacrificial reliefs. We again enter the Rotonde, turn L. and proceed across the Vestibule Daru to the Escalier Daru, ascending which, we are confronted by the majestic Victory of Samothrace, one of the noblest examples of Greek art, wrought immediately before it had spent its creative force and began to direct a subtle and technical mastery to serve private luxury and pomp. We descend and return to the Quadrangle.

(b) MediÆval and Renaissance Sculpture.

We cross the quadrangle to the S.E. and enter[199] the MusÉe des Sculptures du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, where the sense of beauty inherent in the Gallic race is seen expressed in a medium which has always appealed to its peculiar objective and lucid temperament. We proceed to Room I., which contains some typical early Madonnas and other figures in wood and stone; a fifteenth-century statuette in marble (No. 211), in the embrasure of the second window, is worthy of special attention. The fine sepulchral monument of Phil. Bot, Seneschal of Burgundy, an effigy on a grave-stone borne by eight mourners, illustrates a favourite design of the Burgundian sculptors. The recumbent figure, 224, of Philippe VI. of France (1350), attributed to Andrieu Beaunepveu, the art-loving Charles V's. cher ymagier, is one of the earliest attempts at portraiture. Centre of hall, 887 and 888, recumbent statues of Charles IV. and Jeanne d'Évreux, fourteenth-century, by Jean de LiÈge. The tomb of Philippe de Morvillier, 420, in the recess of a window, is an example of early fifteenth-century acrolithic monumental sculpture; the head and hands of the figure being of marble according to a common custom dating from Greek times. On either side of the entrance are fine busts of Charles VIII. and Marie of Anjou.

Rooms II., IX. and X. should next be visited. In IX. stands the oldest fragment of mediÆval sculpture in the Louvre, a capital from the old abbey of St. Genevieve, whereon an eleventh-century artist has carved a quaint relief of Daniel in the Lions' Den. The Virgin and Child in the same room, 37, is late twelfth-century; the painted statue of Childebert, 48, from the abbey of St. Germain, is an example of the more mature art of the thirteenth century, as are also in Room II., 78, a scene in the Inferno from Notre Dame, and two lovely angels from the tomb of St. Louis' brother, in the embrasures of the window.

The fourteenth-century Madonnas in these mediÆval rooms possess a peculiar, intimate character and mark the change of feeling which came over French artists of the time. The impersonal, unemotional and regal bearing of the thirteenth-century figures give way to a more naturalistic treatment. The Virgin's impassive features soften; they become more human; she turns to her child with a maternal smile (which later becomes conventionalised into a simper), or permits a caress. In Room X. are: 889, 890, two fifteenth-century statues, admirable and living portraitures of Charles V. and his queen, from the church of the CÉlestins, whose preservation is due to the excellent Lenoir—statues famous in their day, and mentioned by the contemporary Christine de Pisan as moult proprement faits; 892, a fifteenth-century statue in wood of St. John; 943, Eve, a fine example of the German school of the sixteenth century, painted and gilded; other works are temporarily placed in this room. We return to Room III., noting in passing (Room IX.) 875, a small thirteenth-century relief of St. Matthew writing his Gospel at the dictation of an angel.

Diana and the Stag.
Jean Goujon.
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The stubborn individuality of French sculptors who long resisted the encroaching advance of the Italian renaissance is well seen in Room III. by the works of Michel Colombe (? 1430-1570), after whom this hall is named. The exquisite relief on the L. wall, St. George and the Dragon, displays an art touched indeed by the new Italian life, but impressed with an intimate charm and spirit which are eminently French. The Virgin and Child, 143, and the tombs of Roberte Legendre and her husband have also been ascribed to this truly great master. The fine effigies of Philippe de Comines the annalist, and his wife, 126, are wrought in the traditional French manner, the decorations on the tomb being obviously by another and Italianised artist; the shells on the shields denote that the knight had made the pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella in Galicia. Beneath is the tomb of their daughter, Jeanne. The sixteenth-century Virgin of Ecouen, 144, is typically French in treatment; the large relief on the L. wall from the old church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, 199, is an excellent example of transitional Franco-Italian sculpture; and the half-reclining bronze effigy of Prince Carpi from the great Franciscan church (the Cordeliers) of Paris, is wholly Italian in style. The gruesome figure, La Mort, in the embrasure of a window, from the old cemetery of Les Innocents, and a fine bust, 173, of John of Alesso, will also be noted. We pass to Room IV., dominated by the most eminent sculptor of the French renaissance, Jean Goujon (? 1520-1567), whose famous Diana and the Stag, from a fountain at Diana of Poitiers' chÂteau of Anet, marks the increasing influence of the Italians, and especially of Cellini, who were attracted to Fontainebleau by the patronage of Francis I. A more intimate example, however, of Goujon's genius will be seen in the beautiful bas-reliefs on the L. wall, Tritons and Nereids, from the Fontaine des Innocents, executed 1548-49, and those (R. wall) from the old choir screen of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in 1544, happily rescued from clerical vandals.[200] For sheer loveliness of form and poetry of outline, those reliefs are unsurpassed by any contemporary artist. His younger contemporary, Germain Pilon (1535-1590), is well represented in this room. The Three Graces (trois grÂces dÉcentes), which Catherine de' Medici commissioned him to execute, to sustain an urn containing the heart of her royal husband at the CÉlestins, is an early work; the admirable kneeling bronze effigy, 257, of RenÉ of Birague, a maturer production. The four cardinal virtues in oak were executed for the abbey church of St. Genevieve: they were originally covered with stucco and held on high the saint's reliquary. The too lachrymose Madonna in terra-cotta, 256, already ushers in the decadence. Portrait busts of Henry II., 227, the vicious Henry III., 253, and of the feeble Charles IX., 252, are also to be noted. Pilon's pupil, Bart. Prieur (†1611), is responsible for the monument to the Constable Anne of Montmorency and Madeleine of Savoy, in the recess of a window, and the three bronze statues placed by the opposite wall. With Pierre Biard the elder, who about 1600 executed the elaborate choir-screen of St. Étienne du Mont, the French renaissance sinks to a not inglorious end. His Fame (224, bis), in Room III. and a copy of Giov. da Bologna's Mercury, made for the Duke of Epernon's tomb, hints at the impending pomposity and extravagance of the later French pseudo-classic school. Room V. affords an instructive comparison with some productions of the Italian renaissance. 332, Florentine school, is a charming bust of Beatrice d'Este, the girl bride of Lodovico il Moro, autocrat of Milan. The fine bas-relief, 386, Julius CÆsar, was formerly ascribed to Donatello; 389, Virgin and Child, is also a school work; 403, the Child-Baptist, is a good example of Mino da Fiesole's sweet and tender style, as are some Madonna bas-reliefs in the embrasure of the first window. Here, too, and in the next window, are some well-wrought early renaissance reliefs in bronze (scenes in the life of a physician), by a Paduan artist, from the tomb of a celebrated professor of Verona, Marc'antonio della Torre. In the lunette of the R. wall is embedded Cellini's Nymph of Fontainebleau, and on either side of the noble portal from the Palazzo Stanza at Cremona, which forms the entrance to Room VI., stand the divine Michael Angelo's so-called Two Slaves, actually fettered Virtues intended for the unfortunate tomb of Pope Julius II. These priceless statues, given to Francis I. by Robert Strozzi, subsequently found their way to Richelieu's garden, and during the later years of the monarchy lay neglected in a stable in the Faubourg du Roule: when put up to auction in 1793 the vigilant and admirable Lenoir seized them for his MusÉe National at the Augustins. Among other objects we note, 396, a fine bust of Filippo Strozzi by Benedetto da Maiano. We enter Room VI. The excellent bust of the Baptist, 383, by Desiderio da Settignano is officially assigned to Donatello, and the coloured Virgin and Child in wood to the Sienese Jacopo della Quercia. Room VII. contains many beautiful specimens of della Robbia ware, and among the statues and busts we note Louis XII. by Lorenzo da Mugiano, of which the head has been restored. Provisionally placed in this room is a recently acquired relief in marble of the Madonna by Agostino di Duccio.

St. George and the Dragon.
Michel Colombe.
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(c) Modern Sculpture.

We cross the quadrangle to the N.W. and find the entrance to the MusÉe des Sculptures Modernes, where we may trace the rapid decline and utter degradation of French sculpture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and some signs of its recovery during the revolutionary period. Many causes contributed to the decay; the essentially bourgeois and commonplace taste of Colbert and the influence of his artistic henchman, Lebrun; the slavish worship of GrÆco-Roman and Roman models, fostered by the creation of the École de Rome; and the teachings of critics like Lessing and Winkelmann, who drew their inspiration not from pure Greek models, but from the decadent and sterile art of the Empire, stored in the Vatican. Among the artists whose individuality stands forth from the mass of sculptures in these rooms is Charles Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720), who gives his name to Room I. to the L. of the vestibule. His chief works are in the "royal pandemonium," at Versailles, but in the vestibule will be found excellent examples of his art, 555, Nymph with a shell, and 560, Shepherd playing a flute. In Room I., 561, Marie Adelaide of Savoy as Diana; 557, a fine bronze bust of the great CondÉ and a bust of Ant. Coypel acquired in 1910, are worth attention, as is also 552, the grand monument to Mazarin in Room II. Pierre Puget (1622-1694), who gives his name to this hall, began his career as a carver of figure-heads at the arsenals of Toulouse and Marseilles. He was the chief exponent of the bombastic and exuberant art of the century, and the inventor of the peculiar gusty draperies in statuary known as the coup de vent dans la statuaire. 794, Milo (the famous athlete of Crotona), attacked by a Lion, his most popular work, and 796, a relief, Diogenes and Alexander, esteemed by Gonse one of the most Éclatante creations of modern sculpture, will be found in this room. Some bronzes, 702-704, Louis XIII., Anne of Austria, and the child Louis XIV., from an old monument on the Pont au Change by Simon Guillain (1581-1658) are of interest. The Coustous, Nicholas (1658-1733) and Guillaume (1677-1746), nephews and pupils of Coysevox are represented in Room III. 547, Apollo presenting the Image of Louis XIV. to France (embrasure of window); 548, Adonis (centre of room); 549, Julius CÆsar; and 550, Louis XV., are due to the former: the statue of Louis' queen Maria Leczinska, 543, to the latter, whose masterpiece, the Horse-tamers of Marly, stands at the entrance of the Champs ÉlysÉes opposite Coysevox', Mercury and Fame on winged horses, at the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens. J.B. Pigalle (1714-1785) is but poorly represented by: 785, a bronze bust of GuÉrin; and 781, a Mercury in lead, which has much suffered from exposure to the atmosphere in the Luxembourg Gardens. A most talented portraitist in marble was J.J. Caffieri (1725-1792), whose seven masterly busts in the foyer of the ThÉÂtre FranÇais, paid for by free passes, which the artist promptly sold, will be familiar to playgoers. His diploma work, The River, 518 (L. of entrance), and a bust of the poet Nivelle de la ChaussÉe, 519 (embrasure of window), will be found in this room. J.A. Houdon (1741-1828), whose admirable bust of MoliÈre, and marvellously vivid statue of the seated Voltaire—the greatest production of eighteenth-century French sculpture—will be also known to playgoers at the FranÇais, gives his name to Room IV. Few artists maintained so high and consistent a standard of excellence.[201] 716 is a replica in bronze of a statue of Diana, executed for the Empress Catherine II. of Russia; 708, Diderot; 711, Rousseau; 712 Voltaire; 713, Franklin; 715, Washington; 717, Mirabeau, are busts of revolutionary heroes of which many replicas exist, executed at seventy-two francs each (if with shoulders ninety-six francs), to save himself from starvation during the revolutionary period. Two exquisitely charming terra-cotta busts in glass cases of the children, Louise and Alexandre Brogniart, and 1034, 1035, the original busts in plaster of Mme. Houdon and Sabine Houdon, will also be noted. Like Caffieri, Houdon was an habituÉ of the FranÇais, and in his old age would totter to the theatre supported by his servant, to calmly sleep the performance out. A favourite exponent of the suave and languishing style that appealed to the decadent tastes of the age was Antoine Pajou (1730-1809) here represented by 775, a Bacchante, and 772, Maria Leczinska as Charity. Other two works by Pigalle, 782, Love and Friendship, and 783, bust of Marshal Saxe, may be noticed before quitting this room. Room V. is dedicated to A.D. Chaudet (1763-1810), whose diploma work, Phorbas and Œdipus, 533, is here shown; 537, a Bacchante, is a rather poor example of the art of Claude Michel (1738-1814), known as Clodion whose popularity rivalled that of his master Pajou, and whose prodigious output of marble and terra-cotta sculpture failed to keep pace with the demands of his clients. 777 is Pajou's, The Forsaken Psyche. By the seductive and sentimental Canova are 523 and 524, variants of a favourite theme, Love and Psyche.[202] With some sense of relief we enter the more invigorating atmosphere of Room VI., named after the sturdy FranÇois Rude (1784-1855), who flung off the yoke of the Roman classicists, and from whose simple, austere atelier issued works instinct with a new life, such as the dramatic group, The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, on the E. base of the Triumphal Arch of the Etoile. Rude, who rescued the art from the fetid atmosphere of a corrupt society and emancipated it from a hide-bound pedagogy, is here represented by his Jeanne d'Arc, 813; Maurice de Saxe, 811; and 815, Napoleon awakening to Immortality, a model for a monument to the Emperor. In the centre are 810, Mercury in bronze, and the Neapolitan fisher lad (no number). Rude's contemporary and fellow-liberator, David d'Angers (1789-1856), chiefly renowned for his pediment sculpture on the PanthÉon (p. 330) is here represented by 566, Philopoeman, the famous general of the Achaen League; busts of Arago and of BÉranger; 567 bis, Child and Grapes, and a series of medals in the embrasures of the windows. Of Antoine Barye (1796-1875), pupil of pÈre Rude and another victorious assailant of the "Bastille of Classicism," this room exhibits three masterly works in bronze; 494, Centaur and Lapith; 495, Jaguar and Hare; and (no number), Tiger and Crocodile. A later contemporary and excellent master was Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875), after whom Room VII. is named. Here stand his models for the famous group, Dancing, which adorns the Opera faÇade; and for The Four Quarters of the World, at the Fountain of the Observatoire. Among others of his productions may be cited a bronze group, Ugolino and his Children. In a new room (Salle Moderne) are some more recent works transferred from the Luxembourg, among which is Chapu's Joan of Arc.

SECTION V

The Louvre (continued)—Pictures: First Floor.

(a) Foreign Schools.

We enter by the Pavilion Denon, in the middle of the S. wing, opposite the Squares du Louvre which are bounded on the W. by the Place du Carrousel and the monument to Gambetta. Turning L. along the Galerie Denon we mount the Escalier Daru to the first landing below the Winged Victory (p. 341), turn R., ascend to a second landing, and on either side find two charming frescoes from the Villa Lemmi, which was decorated by Botticelli to celebrate the Nuptials of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giovanna Albizzi.[203] To the L., 1297, The Three Graces are presented to the bride; R., 1298, The Seven Liberal Arts to the bridegroom. The latter fresco is generally believed to have been the work of a pupil. On the wall that forms an angle with this is a fresco, The Crucifixion, 1294, by Fra Angelico from the Dominican monastery at Fiesole. A door L. of 1297 leads to

Room VII.

containing a small but choice collection of early Italian paintings, all of which will repay careful study. We note on the entrance wall, 1260, a Virgin and Child by Cimabue—if indeed we may now assign any work to that elusive personality.[204] L. of this is a genuine Giotto, 1312, described by Vasari: St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. In the predella, Vision of Pope Innocent III.; Papal Confirmation of the Rule; The Saint preaching to the Birds—each scene portrayed with all the sweet simplicity of a chapter in the Fioretti. Below 1260 is a predella, 1302, by Taddeo Gaddi: Death of the Baptist; the Crucifixion; Martyrdom of the Saint. On the R. wall is 1301, a conventional early Florentine Annunciation by Agnolo Gaddi, his pupil. Among the early Sienese on the L. wall is 1383, a charming little Simone Martini: Christ bearing the Cross. The gem of the collection and one of the most precious pictures in Europe is 1290, on this wall, Fra Angelico's Coronation of the Virgin, which Vasari declared might have been painted by one of the blessed spirits or angels represented in the picture, so unspeakably delightful were their forms; so gentle and delicate their mien, so glorious their coloration. "Even so," he adds, "must they be in heaven and I never gaze on this picture without discovering fresh beauties, nor withdraw my eyes from it, satisfied with seeing." The scenes in the predella are from the life of St. Dominic and form an interesting parallel with those of the Giotto. Other works by the angelic master are (L. of this) 1293, Martyrdom of SS. Cosmas and Damian, and 1294A, The Resurrection: R. is 1291, The Dance of Herodias. R. of 1383 is 1278 by Gentile da Fabriano: The Presentation, a portion of a predella. To the same is also attributed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 1279, Virgin and Child and Donor, Pandolfo Malatesta. 1422 bis, is by Pisanello: Portrait of a Princess of the House of Este, identified by Mr G.F. Hill, from the sprig of juniper in her dress, as Ginevra d'Este, married to Sigismondo Malatesta in 1435. R. of 1291 is 1319, the Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas by Benozzo Gozzoli, described by Vasari. On opposite wall, 1272, formerly assigned to Masaccio: portraits of Giotto, the artist himself Paolo Uccelo, Donatello, Manetti and Brunelleschi; painted, says Vasari, "that posterity might keep them in memory." R. of this is 1273, a battle scene by the same, similar to that in our National Gallery. Both had been badly restored even in Vasari's time. L. of 1272 are 1343 and 1344: a Nativity, and a Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints adoring, by Fra Filippo Lippi. The former, according to gossiping Vasari, was executed at the Convent of S. Margherita at Prato where having been smitten by the bellissima grazia ed aria of one of the novices, Lucrezia Buti, Fra Lippo painted her portrait in this picture, fell madly in love, and eloped[205] with her: the latter exquisite painting Vasari extols as a most rare work which was held in the greatest esteem by the masters of his day. Opposite on L. wall is 1525, a predella: Birth of the Virgin, considered by Crowe and Cavalcaselle an excellent example of Luca Signorelli's art. R. wall, 1321, the Visitation, and 1322, an intimate domestic scene, painted with much tenderness, a bibulous old Florentine magistrate bending to embrace his little grandson, are masterly works by Domenico Ghirlandaio. 1296, Virgin and Child and St. John, is a beautiful early work by Botticelli, and 1367 is a like subject by Mainardi, in a tondo, a popular form of composition invented by Botticelli. R. of exit is 1295, a copy of the master's famous Madonna of the Magnificat at Florence. L. wall, 1263, Virgin and Child, SS. Julian and Nicholas by Lorenzo di Credi, highly eulogised by Vasari as the artist's most careful work in oil wherein he surpassed himself. 1566 (L. of exit), is an indifferent late painting by Perugino. In the lunette over the door is a Raphael school fresco formerly attributed to the master and bought for the sum of 207,000 francs in 1875! We now enter the long

Grande Galerie, Room VI.

and begin with Section A. On the R. is 1565, Holy Family, by Perugino. 1567, Combat of Love and Chastity, by the same, was painted in 1505 to the elaborate specification of the enthusiastic and acquisitive patron of the renaissance, Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, for her famous "Grotta." The artist's slovenly execution of the work brought him a well-deserved rebuke from the Marchioness. 1261, by Lorenzo Costa, a flattering symbolic representation of the Court at Mantua was also painted for her. Isabella, to whom a Cupid hands a laurel crown, is seen standing near a grove of trees, surrounded by poets and philosophers.

Among the Francias we distinguish, 1436, a Crucifixion; 1556 is a PietÀ by Cosimo Tura in the characteristic hard manner of the Ferrarese master, being the upper portion of the central altar-piece, Virgin and Child Enthroned, in the National Gallery; 1417, Virgin and Child with two Saints, is a doubtful Pinturicchio; 1114, Virgin and Child between SS. Jerome and Zanobi is a good example of Albertinelli's pleasing but somewhat characterless style; 1516 and 1516A are two Andrea del Sartos; 1264 is another Lorenzo di Credi: Christ and the Magdalen. Last of all we note 1418, a rather inky Nativity, in the grand and broad-manner of the later Roman School by Giulio Romano, much admired by Vasari.

We return to the L. wall and note 1526, Signorelli's Adoration of the Magi; further on are 1154, an excellent Fra Bartolomeo, The Holy Family, and 1153, The Annunciation, a graceful and suave composition, original in treatment, by the same master. We pass to some more Andrea del Sartos: 1515, according to Vasari, a Nostra Donna bellissima, was painted in quick time for Francis I., and 1514, Charity, was executed in Paris for the gran re and highly esteemed by him. This picture has much suffered by transference from the worm-eaten original panel to canvas, in 1750, and by a later restoration in 1799. We are soon arrested by some masterpieces of the Milanese school, and first by the Da Vincis: 1599 is the famous Virgin of the Rocks, whose genuineness is warmly championed by French critics as against the similar picture in the National Gallery stoutly defended as the original by English authorities. Professor Legros with impartial judgment assures us that both are copies of a lost original; 1597, a doubtful attribution, is a rather effeminate John the Baptist, by some critics believed to be a second Gioconda portrait; 1600, the supposed portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli, mistress of Ludovico il Moro, is also ascribed by the official catalogue to Da Vinci. It would, however, be hard to persuade us that Leonardo had any hand in this portrait, excellent though it be, which seems rather by Beltraffio, Solario, or another of the Milanese masters; 1602, Bacchus, is another doubtful Leonardo. 1488, L. of 1597, is an admirable work by Sacchi: Four Doctors of the Church with symbols of the Evangelists. By Solario, a younger contemporary of Da Vinci, are 1532, a Crucifixion; 1530, a masterpiece, the much admired Virgin of the Green Cushion; and 1533, Head of the Baptist.

The sweet and tender Luini is seen almost at his best in 1355, Salome with the Baptist's head: other works by him are 1362, Silence, and 1353, a Holy Family. At the end of this section hangs 1169, Beltraffio's, Virgin of the Casio Family, esteemed by Vasari the painter's best production. We proceed to Section B, same wall, where hang two grand Mantegnas, painted for Isabella d'Este's "Grotta," towards the end of the artist's career. 1375, Parnassus, executed in 1497, represents the Triumph of Venus over Mars, celebrated by Apollo and the Muses—a delightful group of partially draped female figures dancing to Apollo's lyre; 1376, Triumph of Virtue (virtÙ, mental and moral excellence) over the Vices of Sensuality and Sloth, a less successful composition, executed in 1502. Another masterpiece is 1374, Our Lady of Victory, a noble and virile work, painted in 1496 to commemorate the defeat of the French at Taro in 1495 by Isabella's consort, Francesco Gonzaga, the donor, who is seen kneeling in full armour; 1373, is an earlier work, the central and most important of the three sections of the predella of the Triptych at S. Zeno in Verona—a powerful, reverent, though somewhat hard, conception of the cardinal tragedy of Christianity. From Mantegna to his brothers-in-law, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and other Venetian masters the transition is easy. The school is here represented by a most valuable collection from Bartolomeo Vivarini, No. 1607, to Guardi. 1158, Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Saints; and 1158A, a Man's Portrait, are however dubious attributions. 1156, Two Portraits; and 1157, a Venetian Envoy at Cairo, are Gentile school works. 1134, by Antonello da Messina, A Condottiere, is an amazingly vivid and powerful portrait. Carpaccio's St. Stephen preaching at Jerusalem, 1211, is part of the Historia of the Protomartyr, painted for St. Stephen's Guild at Venice. The naÏve attempts at local colour—Turkish women sitting on the ground in groups as they may still be seen in Turkey to-day, and quaint architectural details—are noteworthy. Cima is well represented by 1259, Virgin and Child, with the Baptist and the Magdalen. 1351, A Holy Family, by Lotto, was formerly assigned to Dosso Dossi. 1350 is an early and charming little work, St. Jerome, by the same master. We return to Palma Vecchio's grand composition, 1399, The Adoration of the Shepherds, which under a false signature, once passed for a Titian. 1135, Holy Family, with SS. Sebastian and Catherine, is a form of composition known as a Santa Conversazione, which Palma brought to its ultimate perfection. The official catalogue of 1903 persists in ascribing it to Giorgione. The claims of Palma himself, Pellegrino da San Daniele, Cariani and Sebastiano del Piombo, have all found protagonists among modern critics. How excellent a standard of craftsmanship was maintained by the Venetian school is well exemplified by 1673, a portrait by an unknown artist. 1352, The Visitation, by Sebastiano del Piombo, although much injured by restorers, is a fair example of that master's grandiose style in his Roman period. We now reach the Titians. 1577 and 1580, are good average Sante Conversazioni, the latter is, however, assigned by Mr. Berenson to a pupil. 1581, The Supper at Emmaus, a mature and genuine work; and 1578, the much-admired Virgin and Child with the Rabbit, painted in 1530, next claim our attention. 1593 and 1591 are unknown portraits, the former attributed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to Pordenone. On the R. wall opposite the Carpaccio is hung, 1587, a magnificent work of the painter's[206] old age, Jupiter and Antiope, unhappily much injured by fire and by more than one restoration. Two characteristic Sante Conversazioni from Bonifazio's atelier may next be noted, 1172, over a doorway; and 1171, skied[ii] on the L. wall. The later interpreters of the pomp and grandeur of the Venetian state, Veronese and Tintoret, are represented to L. and R. by several typical canvases. Among these we note, 1196 (L. wall), an excellent Veronese, The Supper at Emmaus; and 1465, a sketch by Tintoret for the great Paradiso in the Ducal Palace. The eighteenth-century masters (following after the Jupiter and Antiope) are well exemplified in a fine Canaletto, 1203, View of the Salute Church and the Grand Canal; and several good examples of the more romantic Guardi. A Last Supper, 1547, and other works by Tiepolo, the last of the Venetian masters of the grand style; and some Bassanos—1429, by Jacopo, Giov. da Bologna is an admirable portrait—conclude the collection of Venetians. We pass to the Italian Eclectics, the once admired but now depreciated Carracci, Guido Reni and Domenichino. 1613, St. Cecilia, is a famous picture by the last named. R. of the next section (C), are two Peruginos; 1564, a beautiful tondo, Virgin and Child, Saints and Angels; and 1566A, St. Sebastian, a careful and pleasing study of the nude. We cross to the L. wall, rich with examples of Raphael, and of his school; and turn first to a lovely little panel, 1509, Apollo and Marsyas, of most enigmatical authorship,[207] bought in 1883 from Mr. Morris Moore for 200,000 francs. Sold, in 1850, as a Mantegna, it has since been variously assigned to Raphael, Perugino, Timoteo Viti, and Francia. Perugino's influence, however, if not his hand, is sufficiently obvious. 1506, unknown Portrait, is another doubtful Raphael, confidently attributed by Morelli to Perugino's pupil, Bacchiacca. We are on more certain ground with 1497, the popular Virgin of the Diadem, undoubtedly designed by the master during his Roman period, and probably executed by his pupil, Giulio Romano. 1501, St. Margaret, painted during the same period for Francis I., was also, according to Vasari, almost wholly executed by Giulio. This unhappy picture was, however, racommodÉ (mended) in 1685, and since has been severely mauled by restorers. 1507, Joan of Aragon: the head alone, says Vasari, was painted by the master who left the portrait to be completed by his famous pupil. 1499, the charming little Holy Family, was probably executed by a pupil. 1508, two unknown portraits, has small claim to be classed as a Raphael. The exquisite little panels, 1502 and 1503, of St. Michael and St. George, are, however, precious and genuine works painted in 1504 at Urbino. They symbolise the overthrow of the hated tyrant CÆsar Borgia, and the return of the exiled Duke Guidobaldo to his loving subjects. On the R. wall of Section D. are hung some works by the Italian Naturalists (a seceding school from the Eclectics), to whose chief representative Caravaggio (called the anti-Christ of painting), is due 1121, Death of the Virgin. This realistic representation of a sacred subject so shocked the pious at Rome that it was removed from the church for which it was painted. 1124, Portrait of Alof, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, brought the artist a chain of gold, two Turkish prisoners and a knighthood. Salvator Rosa's Landscape, 1480; and a characteristic and much-appreciated Battle Scene, 1479, hang on this wall.

We cross to the L. wall, devoted to the Spanish school. The recently acquired El Greco (no number), King Ferdinand, is one of that master's best works outside Spain. By Ribera, who was obviously much influenced by the Italian Naturalists are: 1723, St. Paul the Hermit; 1722, The Entombment; and 1721, Adoration of the Shepherds, the last a masterpiece, wrought in the sombre manner of this powerful artist. From the magnificent show of Murillos stands forth, 1709, The Immaculate Conception, a favourite Spanish theme, by the most popular of Spanish masters. This grandiose representation of the Woman of the Apocalypse, clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, was acquired at the Soult sale in 1852 for 615,000 francs. From the same collection came the superb composition 1710, The Birth of the Virgin, of which a small sketch in oil is possessed by the National Gallery. We cross to the R. wall where hangs 1716, The Miracle of S. Diego; at the prayer of the saint, angels descend from heaven and prepare a miraculous repast for his needy Franciscan friars, to the great amazement of brother cook. Other Murillos, including a characteristic Beggar Boy, 1717 (L. wall) will be seen on either side. By Velasquez, the supreme master of the school are: (L. wall) 1734, Meeting of Thirteen Spanish Gentlemen, Velasquez and Murillo standing left of the group; and 1732, one of the many portraits scattered about Europe of Philip IV. The sombre Zurbaran is represented by 1739 and 1738, A Bishop's Funeral, and St. Pierre Nolasque and St. Raymond de PeÑafort. Four portraits, 1704-1705B, by the facile and popular Madrid artist Goya, should by no means be passed without notice. There follows next a small collection of English paintings, rather indifferent in quality, but historically of much interest, by reason of the inspiration drawn from Constable and Bonington by the Barbizon school. Bonington, whose untimely death was a grievous loss to modern art, passed much of his time in Paris and was the link between the Valley of the Stour and the Forest of Fontainebleau.

We pass to some productions of the German school. On the R. wall hang 2738 and 2738C, Episodes in the Life of St. Ursula by the Master of St. SÉvÉrin.[208] Opposite is 2737, an earlier specimen of the Cologne school, Descent from the Cross, by the Master of St. Bartholomew. 2709 and 2709A, Head of an Old Man, and Head of a Child, are ascribed to Albert DÜrer. But the chief glory of this collection are the Holbein portraits on the L. wall, four of which are of supreme excellence; 2715, Erasmus; 2714, William Wareham, Archbishop of Canterbury; 2713, Nicholas Kratzer, Astrologer to Henry VIII.; and 2718, Anne of Cleves. 2719, Richard Southwell is a doubtful Holbein.

Section E is filled with Flemish paintings. R. hangs, among other of his works, Phil. de Champaigne's masterpiece, 1934, portraits of Mother Catherine Agnes Arnaud and of his own daughter, Sister Catherine, painted for the Convent of Port Royal. The intimate association of this grave and virile artist, who settled at Paris when nineteen years of age, with the austere and pious Jansenists of Port Royal, is also traceable in 1928, The Last Supper. On the L. are some excellent works by Rubens: 2075, Flight of Lot; 2077, Adoration of the Magi; 2113, Portrait of Helen Fourment, the artist's second wife, and their two children; 2144, Lady's Portrait, said to be that of Suzanne Fourment. The ignoble Kermess, 2115, will be familiar to readers of Zola.

Section F on the L. is occupied by a rich collection of Rembrandt's works: 2548, the oft-reproduced Flayed Ox, is a masterly rendering of an unattractive subject; no number, Old Man Reading; in 2547 the artist has immortalised his faithful servant, Hendrickje Stoffels; 2536, Tobit and the Angel; 2549 and 2550, Bathsheba, and Susannah and the Elders are two studies of the nude; 2542, The Joiner's Family, formerly known as the Holy Family; 2540, Philosopher in Meditation. 2537, The Good Samaritan; and 2539, The Supper at Emmaus, are painted with profound and reverent piety. Opposite the Rembrandts are Gerard Dow's masterpiece; 2348, The Sick Woman, and other works by the same artist. We now enter at the end of the Grande Galerie, the new

Salle Vandyck, Room XVII.

Here, among other portraits, by the first of portrait painters (according to Reynolds) hangs the superb rendering of Charles I., 1967, bought by Louis XV. for Madame du Barry's boudoir on the fiction that it was a family picture, since the page holding the horse was named Barry. Michelet says that he never visited the Louvre without pausing to muse before this historic canvas.[209] Before we descend to the new Rubens room we note by this master three large canvases, 2086, 2087, 2096: Birth of Marie de' Medici at Florence; her education; the widowed Queen as Regent of France, which properly belong to the suite of paintings exposed in the

Salle de Rubens, Room XVIII.

to which we now descend. In this sumptuous hall, specially erected for the purpose, are exhibited, with the three exceptions noted, the famous paintings completed in 1625 by the artist and his pupils for the Luxembourg Palace to the order of the Regent Marie. These spacious and grandiose compositions illustrate in pompous and pagan symbolism the chief events in her career: all the principal figures are due to Reubens' own hand. Reynolds was wont to say of Reubens' colouring that his figures looked as if they fed on roses: these, however, would seem to have fed upon less ethereal diet. L. of entrance, 2085, The Three Fates spinning Marie's destiny; L. wall, 2088, Reception of her Portrait; R. wall, 2089, Her Marriage by Procuration to Henry—the Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany, her uncle, places the ring on her finger; L., 2090, Disembarkation at Marseilles; R., 2091, The Marriage at Lyons; L., 2092, Birth of Louis XIII. at Fontainebleau; R., 2093, Departure of Henry for Germany, who hands to his consort the symbols of the Regency; L., 2094, Coronation of Marie at St. Denis: the dogs are said to have been painted by Snyders; R., 2095, Apotheosis of Henry. Like the ascending Faust in Henry's portly form,—

"Bleibt ein Erdenrest
Zu tragen peinlich."

L., 2097, Marie's journey to Anjou; R., 2098, Exchange at Hendaye of the Princess Elizabeth of France affianced to Philip IV., and of Anne of Austria, affianced to Louis XIII.; L., 2099, Felicity of the Regency—this picture was hastily improvised at Paris; R., 2100, The Majority of Louis XIII.; L., 2101, Escape of Marie from the ChÂteau of Blois; R., 2102, Reconciliation with her son, Louis XIII., at Angers; End wall, L., 2103, Conclusion of Peace; R., 2104, Meeting between Marie and Louis in Olympia. R. of entrance, 2105, The Triumph of Truth.

Enclosing this hall are a series of Cabinets XX.-XXXVI., containing a large and important collection of works by the Netherland painters. We ascend, turn R., and enter Room XX., which is devoted to Franz Hals and contains 2386 and 2387, superb portraits of Nicholas van Beresteyn and his wife; and 2388 the same, with their Family; 2383, Descartes. Room XXI., Cuyp, after whom the room is named, is seen in four typical works, 2341-2344; 2415 and 2414 are excellent Dutch Interiors by Peter de Hoogh. In Room XXII. reigns the jovial Van Steen: two characteristic paintings are here shown; 2578, Feast in an Inn, and 2580, Evil Company. 2587 is a masterly Terburg, The Amorous Soldier, and 2459 a similar subject treated by Gabriel Metsu. Room XXIII. is assigned to Van Goyen, and Room XXIV. to Adrian van Ostade, Hals' pupil. In the latter room, 2495, the so-called Family of the Painter, and 2496, The Schoolmaster, stand forth pre-eminent. 2509 and 2510, Travellers Halting and a Winter Scene, are by Adrian's brother, Isaac. Room XXV. is rich in landscapes by Ruysdael, of which 2557, The Forest, and 2558, Tempest near the Dykes of Holland, are masterpieces: 2588, The Music Lesson, is a fine Terburg. Room XXVI., dedicated to Hobbema, contains his fine landscapes: 2403, A Forest Scene, and 2404, The Mill, and another exquisite Terburg, 2589, The Concert. Some typical Paul Potters also hang here. We proceed round to Room XXIX., which holds a precious collection of Van Eycks and Memlings. 1986 is an exquisite little masterpiece painted by Jean with infinite patience and care, Virgin and Child and Donor. Fine Memlings are:—2024, The Baptist; 2025, The Magdalen; 2027, Marriage of St. Catherine; 2028, a Triptych—the Resurrection, St. Sebastian and the Ascension Here too are hung, 1957, Gerard Dow's Wedding at Cana; 2196, Van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross, and some excellent Flemish school paintings. Room XXX. is the Quentin Matsys Room: 2029 is the well-known Banker and his Wife, of which many replicas exist; 2030, by the same artist, Virgin and Child. The fine example of the fifteenth-century painter, known as the Master of the Death of Mary, 2738, hangs in this room. This profoundly reverent and sincere work consists of: a central panel, Descent from the Cross, below which is The Last Supper, and above, in the lunette, St. Francis receiving the Stigmata; Friar Leo is seen asleep against a rock. A remarkable work by Peter Brueghel, The Blind leading the Blind, will also arrest attention. Room XXXI., named after Anthony More, contains a miscellaneous collection, among which the artist's portraits (2481A) of Edward VI. of England, and of (2479) a Spanish Dwarf, and Peter Brueghel's Village, 1918, and a Country Dance, 1918B, are of chief interest. The Teniers Room, XXXII., shows some excellent works by the younger master: 2155, St. Peter denies his Lord; 2156, The Prodigal Son; 2157, Works of Charity; 2158, Temptation of St. Anthony. We next pass to three rooms in which are hung works by Netherland artists, formerly in the La Caze collection, among which, in Room XXXIII., are 2579, Van Steen's, Family Repast; and 2454, Nicholas Maes', Grace before Meat. In XXXIV. are two well-known works: 1916, Adrian Brouwer's, The Smoker; and 2384, The Gipsy, a masterpiece by Franz Hals. A fine Vandyck, 1979, Head of an Old Man; Rubens' portrait of Marie de' Medici, 2109; and a sketch in oils, 2122, Elevation of the Cross, are in Room XXXV. We return to the Salle Vandyck and the Grande Galerie, along which we retrace our steps and enter, at its further end, the

Salon CarrÉ, Room IV.

where an assortment of masterpieces is hung from the various schools we have visited. We begin with the Raphaels: On the L. (W. wall), 1496, La Belle JardiniÈre, painted in 1507, is the most delightful of the Florentine Madonnas for which it is said a flower-girl of Florence sat; Vasari relates that the unfinished mantle was left to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio to complete; 1498, The Holy Family, styled of Francis I. and designed at Rome (1518) in the zenith of the artist's power, was presented by Pope Leo X. to Francis' queen; the inky hand of Giulio had no small part in the work. In the same year was painted 1504, (diagonally opposite) the dramatic St. Michael, a picture which evoked much interest at Rome, and whose coloration was adversely criticised by Sebastiano del Piombo; here also the hand of Giulio is all too apparent, and the picture, moreover, has suffered much in its transference from wood to canvas. 1505, N. wall, the masterly and authentic portrait of Baltazar Castiglione, was executed in 1506. On the same wall among the Venetians we find the much-disputed Al Fresco Concert, 1136, here ascribed to Giorgione, an ascription which has the support of Morelli and Berenson. The magnificent Titian, 1590, variously known as Titian and his Mistress, and the Lady with the Mirror, is supposed to be the portraits of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara and his mistress, Laura Diante, later his wife, the daughter of a poor artizan who more than once sat to Titian as a model. The portrait on the S. wall, 1592, The Man with the Glove, extolled by Vasari as an opera stupenda, and 1584, The Entombment, on the E. wall, are the two greatest Titians in the Louvre, where the artist's majesty and power are displayed in their highest degree. 1583, The Crown of Thorns, E. wall, is a work of the painter's old age.[210] The sensual features of Francis I., 1588, S. wall, were painted from a medal.

By Tintoret is 1464, Susannah; and by Veronese, the grand composition that expatiates over the S. wall, 1192, known as The Marriage at Cana, executed in his most pompous and stately manner for the refectory of the Benedictine monastery of St. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice. The artist is seen in the foreground playing a viol: Titian a bass viol. Many other historical figures are more or less convincingly identified by critics. On the opposite wall is another large refectory composition, 1193, The Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee. A characteristic ceiling decoration, Rebellion and Treason, from the Hall of the Council of the Ten at Venice; and 1190, N. wall, Holy Family, are by the same artist. The Portrait, 1601, N. wall, by Da Vinci of his friend Monna Lisa, wife of Fr. del Giocondo, known as La Gioconda, is the most fascinating picture in Europe. A whole symphony of praise has been lavished on this miraculously beautiful creation in which psychical and physical perfection have been blended with potent and subtle genius. 1598, S. wall, Virgin and Child and St. Anne, attributed to the same, though of somewhat doubtful authenticity, is worth careful study. By another Milanese master is 1354, S. wall, Luini's Virgin and Sleeping Child. Of the two fine Correggios, 1117 and 1118, N. wall, The Marriage of St. Catherine, and Jupiter and Antiope, the former is referred to by Vasari, in his life of Girolamo da Carpi, as a divine thing, wherein the figures are so superlatively beautiful that they seem to have been painted in Paradise; the latter formed part of Isabella d'Este's collection, to which we have so often referred. 1731, N. wall, is the marvellous portrait by Velasquez of the Infanta Margarita Maria, Philip IV.'s fair-haired darling child by his second wife. This is one of the most characteristic of the master's work out of Spain, and profoundly influenced Manet and the Modern Impressionist School. The great French master Poussin's typical classical subject, 741, together with Jouvenet's masterpiece, 437, Descent from the Cross, have also their place of honour in this Hall. In the

Salle DuchÂtel, Room V.

entered from the N.E. angle of this room, we find, R., some Luini frescoes: 1359, 1360, the Nativity, and The Adoration of the Magi, and 1361, Christ Blessing, full of this master's tenderness and charm. Some excellent portraits by Antonio Moro, 2480, 2481 and, a most beautiful Memling, 2026, Virgin and Child with Donors, will also be noted. As we pursue our way to the Escalier Daru at the end of the room, we pass L. and R., one of the earliest and one of the latest works of Ingres (p. 390), 421, Œdipus and the Sphinx, painted in 1808; and the most popular nude in the French school, 422, La Source, painted in 1856.

(b) The French School.

The great schools of Christian painting in Western Europe which we have reviewed, were born, grew and flourished in the free cities of the Netherlands and of Italy. French masters working in Paris, Tours, Dijon, Moulins, Aix, and Avignon, were inevitably subdued by the dominant and powerful masters of the north and south, and how far they succeeded in impressing a local and racial individuality on their works is, and long will be, a fruitful theme for criticism. The collection of French Primitifs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, exhibited in Paris in 1904, and the publication of Dimier's[211] uncompromising and powerful defence of those critics who, like himself, deny the existence of any indigenous French School of painting whatsoever, have recently concentrated the attention of the artistic world on a passionately debated controversy. Undoubtedly most of the examples of the so-called Franco-Flemish school which formerly hung unquestioned among collections of Flemish paintings, did when massed together, as they were in 1904 in the Pavilion de Marsan, display more or less well-defined extra-Flemish characteristics—a modern feeling for Nature and an intimate realism in the treatment of landscapes, a freer, more supple and more vivacious drawing of the human figure—reasonably explained by the theory of a school of painters expressing independent local feeling and genius. But even if all the paintings which the patriotic bias of French critics now attributes to French or Franco-Flemish masters[212] be accepted, the continuity is broken by many gaps which can only be filled by assuming, after the fashion of biologists, the existence of missing links.

The Triptych of Moulins.
MaÎtre de Moulins.
View larger image

We make our way to the small but increasing collection of French Primitifs possessed by the Louvre, along the Grande Galerie as far as Section D. and, turning R., enter Rooms IX.-XIII. Beginning with Room X., devoted to fifteenth-century masters, on the L. wall is 995, Martyrdom of St. Denis, ascribed to the Burgundian Jean Malouet, court painter of Jean sans Peur, and owing its completion to Henri Bellechose, after the former's death in 1415. To L. of the main subject, the saint is seen in prison, receiving the sacred Host from the hands of Christ; 996, a PietÀ on the L. wall has also been attributed to Malouet. 999, L. wall, a portrait group of Jean JouvÉnal des Ursins and his family, by an unknown fifteenth-century artist, is admirable in execution and important for contemporary costumes. Below (1005A) is the fine picture so admired in the exhibition of the Primitifs in 1904 by the MaÎtre de Moulins,[213] St Mary Magdalen and Donatrix, eminently French in feeling. 1004 and 1005, portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, are now catalogued under this master's name. The realistic PietÀ (1001B) on the L. wall is assigned to the school of Nicholas Froment of the papal city of Avignon. 288 and 289 at either end of the R. wall, portraits of Guillaume JouvÉnal des Ursins and of Charles VII., are by the well-known Jehan Fouquet of Tours, who unites the gentleness of the Tuscan school with the vivacity of the Gallic temperament. 998D, Virgin and Donors, is now tentatively ascribed to the Master of the Legend of St. Ursula. We next note a Crucifixion, the famous altar-piece (998A) of the Parlement of Paris recently transferred from the Palais de Justice. To the L. are St. Louis and the Baptist, R., St. Denis and Charlemagne; in the background are seen the old Louvre and the abbey of St. Germain. 998C is a similar altar-piece from St. Germain des PrÉs, painted about 1490, Descent of the Cross; in the background are other representations of the old Louvre, St. Germain and Montmartre. 304A, portraits of good King RenÉ and his second wife Jeanne de Laval, by Nicholas Froment of Avignon. (1001D) St. Helena and the Miracle of the Cross, by an unknown artist, about 1480. R. of entrance, Christ, St. Agricola and Donor, school of Avignon; below this hangs 997A, portrait of the sinister Jean sans Peur, and 997B, portrait of Philip le Bon of Burgundy, artist unknown. We pass to

Room XI.

which contains a series of most interesting historical portraits. Among the sixteenth-century painters cited by FÉlibien,[214] the Vasari of French painting, most of whom are but names to us, we may distinguish the Clouet family of four generations. The senior Jehan, born in Flanders in 1420, came to France in 1460 as painter to the Duke of Burgundy. His son, also, named Jehan, figures in the Royal accounts in 1528 as valet and court painter to Francis I., and was known as MaÎtre Jehan or Jehanet. To him, an artist of great simplicity and charm, are attributed 126 and 127, R. wall, portraits of his royal master. Sons of the junior Jehan were FranÇois (1500-1572), the best-known and most talented of the Clouets, who was naturalised in 1541, and Jehan the younger, known as Clouet de Navarre (1515-1589), court painter to Margaret of Valois. By the former, who assisted his father during the last ten years of his life and succeeded him as court painter, are two admirable portraits, 128 and 129, of Charles IX. and his queen, Elizabeth of Austria; 130, Henry II., and (on the end wall) 131, the Duke of Guise, are also attributed to him. To the latter artist is ascribed 134, Louis of St. Gelais. Each of these elusive personalities, whose Flemish ancestry is evident, was known as MaÎtre Jehanet, and much confusion has thus arisen. We now turn to some portraits by unknown artists of the period, among which may be noted: 1033, Henry III.; 132, Charles IX.; 1024, Diana of France, legitimised daughter of Henry II.; 1030, Catherine de' Medici; 1035, Ball given by Henry III. in celebration of the marriage of his favourite minion, Anne, Duke of Joyeuse, with Margaret of Lorraine in 1581; the king is seen seated with his mother, Catherine de' Medici, and his wife, Louise of Lorraine; the Duke of Guise (le BalafrÉ) leans against his chair. On the same wall are 1015, FranÇois, Duke of Guise; and 1007, King Francis I. On the end wall, 1032, Henry III.; by the window opposite, 1022, the young Duke of AlenÇon (p. 178), by no means ill-favoured; and 1023, Louise of Lorraine, queen of Henry III. By a contemporary of the later Clouets, Jean Cousin (1501-1589), is 155 on the L. wall, The Last Judgment. Cousin was a versatile craftsman, and some stained glass by him still exists at S. Gervais and in the chapel at Vincennes. Among other artists mentioned by FÉlibien is Martin FrÉminet (1567-1616), whose Mercury commanding Æneas to forsake Dido, 304, hangs on the end wall.

Portrait of Elizabeth of Austria, Wife of Charles IX.
FranÇois Clouet.
View larger image

The two years' sojourn of Solario in France at the invitation of the Cardinal of Amboise, of Da Vinci at the solicitation of Louis XII., and the foundation of the school of Fontainebleau in 1530 by Rosso (1496-1540), Primaticcio (1504-1570), and Nicolo dell' Abbate (1512-1571), mark the eclipse of whatever schools of French painting were then existing; for the grand manner and dramatic power of the Italians, fostered by royal patronage, carried all before them. This room possesses by Rosso, known as MaÎtre Roux, 1485, a PietÀ, and 1486, The Challenge of the Pierides, and Primaticcio is represented by some admirable drawings exhibited in cases in the centre of the room. Readers of Vasari will remember numerous references in his pages to Italian artists who went to serve, and agents employed to buy Italian works for, the gran re Francesco nel suo luogo di Fontainebleo. But the sterility of the Fontainebleau school may be inferred from the fact that when Marie de' Medici desired to have the walls of the Luxembourg royally decorated, she was compelled to have recourse to a foreigner, Rubens. Neglecting for a moment Room XII. and turning to

Room XIII.

we come upon some charming works by the brothers Lenain, whom FÉlibien dismisses in a few lines, while giving scores of pages to artists whose names and works have long been forgotten. So little is known of the brothers Antoine and Louis, who died in 1648, and Matthieu, who survived them nearly thirty years, that critics have only partially succeeded in differentiating their works, which are usually exhibited under their united names. Obviously dominated by the Netherland masters, their manner is yet pervaded by essentially French qualities—a love of Nature and a certain atmosphere of poetry and gentleness alien to the Flemish and Dutch schools. Nine of their works are here seen. A Smithy, 540; Peasants playing at Cards, 546; and Return from Haymaking, 542, are good examples. Skied in this room is 976, portrait of Louis XIII. by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), leader of the new academic French school of the seventeenth century, an artist of prodigious activity and master of the army of court painters who served Louis XIV. Vouet, who had worked in Italy, acquired there the grand and spacious manner of the later Venetians, which was admirably adapted to the decorative requirements of his royal patrons. To his pupil, Eustache Lesueur (1617-1655), is due 586, St. Bruno and his Companions bestowing Alms, one of the famous series illustrating the life of St. Bruno, of which the greater number are in

Room XII.

whither we now return. This eminently religious and tender artist is well represented in the Louvre, and the sympathetic student will appreciate the austere and sincere devotion expressed in these pictures, painted for the brethren of the Charterhouse in the Rue d'Enfer. The finest, a masterpiece, both in beauty of composition and depth of feeling, is 584, The Death of St. Bruno. The artist's careful application to his monumental task may be estimated by the fact that 146 preliminary drawings for this series are preserved in the Louvre. Lesueur's modesty and high purpose went almost unheeded amid the exultant prosperity of the fashionable courtier-artists of his day. We retrace our steps, pass through Room XIII., turn R., and enter the spacious

Room XIV.

also devoted to seventeenth-century artists. Lesueur is here seen in another masterpiece; 560, R. wall, St. Paul at Ephesus, a mai[215] picture; and 556, same wall, Christ bearing His Cross. The influence of Raphael in the former is very apparent. The hierophant of the school, Vouet, is represented in this room by some dozen examples, among which hangs his masterpiece 971, L. wall, Presentation at the Temple. A work, 25, Charity, by his short-lived rival, Jacques Blanchard, (1600-1638), known in his day as the French Titian, may be seen towards the end of this long gallery on the R. wall. A talented artist too was Jean de Bologne, an Italian by birth and known as Le Valentin (1591-1634). A good example of his style will be seen in 56 (same wall), Susannah. We now turn to Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665), the greatest master of his age, whose exalted and lucid conceptions, ripe scholarship, admirable art and fertility of invention, may be adequately appreciated at the Louvre alone, which holds a matchless collection of nearly fifty of his works. The visitor, fresh from the rich and glowing colour, the grandeur and breadth of the later Italians, will perchance experience a certain chill before the sobriety, the cold intellectuality and severe classic reserve of this powerful artist. Let us however remember his aim and ideal: to produce a picture in which correct drawing and science of linear and aerial perspective should subserve harmony of composition, lucid expression and classic grace. To approach Poussin and his younger contemporary Claude rightly, the traveller will do well to free his mind from Ruskin's partial and prejudiced depreciation of these two supreme masters, in order to effect an equally partial appreciation of Turner.[216] The story of Poussin's single-minded and stubborn application to his art cannot here be told. After a life of poverty at Paris and two unsuccessful attempts to work his way to Rome, he at length reached that Mecca of French artists, where a commission to paint two pictures, now at Vienna, for Cardinal Barbarini, established his reputation. Two of his works executed about 1630 during this first Roman period hang here; 709 and 710, R. wall, The Rain of Manna, and, The Philistines smitten by Plague. In 1640, after two years' negotiations and the personal intervention of Louis XIII., he was persuaded to return to Paris to take part in the decoration of the Louvre; but in spite of his generous pay and of the fine palazzetto and charming garden allotted to him for residence, the petty jealousies, chicanery and low standard of his rivals, revolted his artistic conscience: he obtained leave to return to Rome "to fetch his wife," and never left the eternal city again. Two of his works painted during this second and last Roman period are 717 (L. of entrance), Institution of the Eucharist, and 735 (L. wall), a ceiling composition executed for Richelieu, Time rescuing Truth from the assaults of Envy and Discord, whose subjective interest is obvious; 704, L. of entrance, Rebecca at the Well, is described at great length by FÉlibien, who saw it in progress. It was painted (1648) for a rich patron who desired a composition treated like Guido's Virgin, and filled with several young girls of differing types of beauty. The finished picture so delighted amateurs at Paris that large sums were offered in vain to divert it from the fortunate possessor; 711, L. wall, is the famous Judgment of Solomon (1649). On the same wall are 731, Echo and Narcissus; 734, his masterpiece, Shepherds of Arcady—a group of shepherds of the Vale of Tempe in the heyday of health and beauty, are arrested in their enjoyment of life by the warning inscription on a tomb: Et in arcadia ego (I, too, once lived in Arcady); 736-739, The Four Seasons were painted (1660-1664) for Richelieu. These beautiful compositions, more especially the last, The Deluge, typifying winter, will repay careful study. On the R. wall are, 724, the well-known Rape of the Sabine Women; 740, a most perfect work of his maturity, Orpheus and Eurydice (1659); and 742, Apollo and Daphne, his last work, left unfinished. Such are some of the more striking manifestations of this remarkable genius who alone, says Hazlitt, has the right to be considered as the painter of classical antiquity. His integrity was so rigid that he once returned part of the price paid for one of his works which he deemed excessive. To the modern, Poussin is somewhat antipathetic by reason of his scholarly aloofness and insensibility to the passions and actualities of life. As Reynolds remarked: he lived and conversed with ancient statues so long, that he was better acquainted with them than with the people around him, and had studied the ancients so much, that he had acquired a habit of thinking in their way. He saw Nature through the glass of Time, says Hazlitt, and his friend Dom Bonaventura tells how he often met the solitary artist sketching in the Forum or returning from the Campagna with specimens of moss, pebbles, flowers, etc., to be used as models. When asked the secret of his artistic perfection, he would modestly answer: "Je n'ai rien nÉgligÉ."

Shepherds of Arcady.
Poussin.
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Claude GelÉe (1600-1682) known as Claude, and one of the greatest names in the history of modern painting, also spent most of his artistic career at Rome. He was the first to bring the glory of the sun and the sun-steeped atmosphere on to canvas. He touches a new chord in the symphony of colour and by his poetic charm and romantic feeling stirs a deeper emotion. He, too, was a strenuous, implacable worker, a loving student of Nature, passing days in silent abstraction before her varying moods.

The Louvre possesses sixteen Claudes, among which we may emphasise on the L. wall, 310, View of a Port; 311, a poetic and glowing representation of the Roman Forum, before the old Campo Vaccino, with its romantic and picturesque aspect, had been excavated by modern archÆologists. 314 and 316, Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsis, and Ulysses restoring Chryseis to her father, are typical imaginary classic compositions and variations on the artist's favourite theme—the effects of sunlight on an atmosphere of varying luminosity and on the limpid, rippling waves of the sea. We now come to the grand monarque of the arts at Paris during the century, Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), founder of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture that finally eclipsed the old Painters' Guild which, from the thirteenth century, had monopolised the exercise of the art at Paris. So tyrannous had the Guild become that, in 1646, it ordered the number of court painters to be reduced to four each for the king and queen. An attempt to apply this regulation to the painters lodged at the Louvre roused Lebrun's hostility, who induced the regent, Anne of Austria, to found a rival AcadÉmie Royale on the model of the famous Academy of St. Luke at Florence. Twelve anciens were chosen by lot and the new Academy, Lebrun at its head, was inaugurated on 1st February 1648. The angry Guild swooped down on the Academy on 19th March, armed with a police warrant, to seize all its pictures and effects, a blow which Lebrun parried by a royal decree annulling the warrant. Hereupon the Guild organised their own Academy of St. Luke under the leadership of Vouet and Mignard, and after some temporary reconciliations and as many bickerings and hostilities, Lebrun won Mazarin's favour by a judicious gift of two paintings, and the AcadÉmie Royale obtained in 1658 a new constitution, an increase of members to forty, free quarters, and pensions, which, under Colbert, were raised to 4,000 livres. The Guild fought hard and won some concessions, but the AcadÉmie Royale remained supreme, and both were finally overwhelmed in the revolutionary storm.

In 1661 Lebrun was commanded by Louis XIV. to paint cartoons for tapestry illustrating the life of Alexander the Great. Five of these huge canvases hang in this room, R. and L., 509-513; 511, R. wall, The Family of Darius at Alexander's Feet, so charmed the king that he appointed Lebrun first royal painter, and granted him a patent of nobility. For thirty years the royal favourite was sole arbiter of taste and ruled supreme over the arts, until his star paled before the rising luminary, his rival Mignard. Lebrun's best work is to be seen at Versailles, but 510, R. wall, The Battle of Arbela, is an excellent example of his facile and adroit style. In 1686 the old favourite was commanded by Louis to paint a rival picture to Mignard's, Christ bearing His Cross, which was incensed with extravagant adulation by the courtiers. Lebrun set to work and in three months completed his Christ on the Cross, which the king loudly appreciated. Both pictures, 630 and 500, now hang on the L. wall a few paces from each other. Pierre Mignard (1612-1695) was a fellow-pupil with Lebrun under Vouet, and like him in early years a sojourner in Rome: his popular Madonnas, modelled from his Italian wife, added a new word (mignardes) to the French language. One such, 628, hangs a little further along this wall. In 1657 he won royal favour by a portrait of the young Louis, a branch of art in which he excelled. Mignard was a supple flatterer, and Louis sat to him many times. Once, later in the monarch's life, his royal sitter asked if he observed any change. "Sire," answered the courtly painter, "I only perceive a few more victories on your brow." A portrait of Madame de Maintenon, 639, is seen (L. wall) in this room. Mignard's greatest work, however, great in range if not in art, is the painting of the cupola of the church at the Val de GrÂce, which is not only an indifferent painting, but was the occasion of a bad poem by his friend MoliÈre.[217] Two other eminent portraitists, Nicholas LargilliÈre (1656-1746), and Hyacinth Rigaud (1659-1743), may now fitly be considered.

By Rigaud, who was regarded as the first painter of Europe for truth of resemblance united with magnificence of presentment, are: a masterly portrait of Bossuet, 783; and a superb rendering of the roi-soleil, 781, both on the L. wall. Further along, on the same wall, are 784, portrait of his mother in two aspects painted for the sculptor Coysevox; and his last work, 780, Presentation at the Temple. Rigaud was especially successful with the rich bourgeoisie of Paris, and later became court painter, supreme in expressing the grandiose and inflated pomposities of the age. He, says Reynolds, in the tumour of his presumptuous loftiness, was the perfect example of Du Pile's rules, that bid painters so to draw their portraits that they seem to speak and say to us: "Stop, look at me! I am that invincible king: majesty surrounds me. Look! I am that valiant soldier: I struck terror everywhere. I am that great minister, etc." By LargilliÈre, who lacks the psychological insight of his contemporary, is, L. wall, 483, Portrait of the Comte de la Chartre. He was a master of the accessories and upholstery of portraiture and painted some 1500 sitters during his long career, part of which was passed in England as court painter to Charles II. and James II. A third successful portraitist was Jean Marc Nattier (1685-1766), whose ingenious and compliant art aimed at endowing a commonplace sitter with distinction and grace, and who generally was able to strike a happy medium between flattery and truth. Better represented at Versailles, he is but poorly seen here in 657, R. wall, A Magdalen, and 661A, L. wall, Unknown Portrait. 441 is an interesting portrait of Fagon, Louis XIV.'s favourite physician, by Jean Jouvenet (1644-1717), known as Le Grand, a talented and docile pupil of Lebrun, whose four large compositions executed for the church of St. Martin des Champs, 432-435, are hung in this room. 434, R. wall, Resurrection of Lazarus, is perhaps the best. His works are a connecting link between the pompous spread-eagle manner of the SiÈcle de Louis XIV. and the gay abandonment and heartless frivolity of the reign of Louis XV. We pass from this room to the Collection of Portraits in

Room XV.

of which some few possess artistic importance and many historical interest. We bestow what attention we may desire and pass direct to

Room XVI.

devoted to seventeenth-century art. Chief among the painters who interpreted the refined sensuality and more pleasant vices of the age, yet not of them, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who began by painting St. Nicholases at three francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and became famous as the Peintre des ScÈnes Galantes. These scenes of coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched, powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he clothes with a refined and delicate vesture of grace and fascination. He has a poetic touch for landscape and a tender, pathetic sense of the tears in mortal things which make him akin to Virgil in literature, for over the languorous and swooning air and sun-steeped glades the coming tempest lours. His success, as Walter Pater suggests, in painting these vain and perishable graces of the drawing-room and garden-comedy of life, with the delicate odour of decay which rises from the soil, was probably due to the fact that he despised them. The whole age of the Revolution lies between these irresponsible and gay courtiers in the scÈnes galantes of Watteau and the virile peasant scenes in the "epic of toil" painted by Millet. In this room hangs his Academy picture, the Embarkation for Cythera, 982, L. wall, its colour unhappily almost worn away by over cleaning. His pupils, Pater (1696-1736), and Lancret (1690-1743), imitated his style, but were unable to soar to the higher plane of their master's genius. The former is represented by a FÊte ChampÊtre, 689, R. wall: the latter by the Four Seasons, 462-465, R. wall; on the L. wall, 468, The Music Lesson, and 469, Innocence, both from the Palace of Fontainebleau. The FÊte Galante dies with these artists whom we shall meet again better represented in the Salle La Caze. A famous contemporary of Pater and Lancret and first painter to the king was Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752), grandson of NoËl Coypel (1629-1707), and son of Antoine (1661-1722), both of whom are represented in the Louvre (Rooms XIV.-XVI., 157-166, and 167-175), His Perseus and Andromeda, 180, hangs R. of the entrance of this room. Charles AndrÉ Vanloo (1705-1765), known as Carle Vanloo, (whose grandfather, Jacob Vanloo, is represented by two pictures, 2451, 2452, hung among the Dutch artists in Rooms XXIV. and XXVI.), enjoyed a great vogue in his day. His facile drawing and riotous colour temporarily enriched the language with a new verb—to vanlooter. 899, on the L. wall, A Hunting Picnic, is an admirable specimen of his supple talent. The flaunting sensuality of FranÇois Boucher (1703-1770), and of Jean HonorÉ Fragonnard (1732-1806), who lavished undoubted genius and ignoble industry in the service of the depraved boudoir tastes of the Pompadours and Du Barrys that ruled at Versailles, are seen here and in the Salle la Caze in all their eloquent vulgarity. That Boucher had in him the elements of a great painter may be inferred from the charming little sketch, 30, R. wall, Diana, and from the excellent interior, 50A, L. wall, Breakfast. His popular pastoral scenes, executed with amazing facility, with their beribboned shepherds and dainty shepherdesses, are exemplified in 32 and 33, R. wall, and 34 and 35, L. wall. Other works by this fluent servant of La Pompadour are 31, R. wall, Venus commanding Vulcan to forge arms for Æneas, and 36, L. wall, Vulcan presenting them to Venus. Boucher with all his faults was a grand decorative artist of extraordinary versatility, but the loose habits and careless methods of his later days are reflected in slovenly drawing and waning powers of invention. Reynolds, who visited him in Paris, noted the change, and describes how he found the artist at work on a large picture without studies or models of any kind, and on expressing his surprise, was told by Boucher that he did in earlier days use them, but had dispensed with them for many years. Fragonnard, who on his return from Rome, had set about some canvases in the grand traditional style of the earlier masters, of which an example may be seen in 290, R. wall, Coresus[218] and Callirrhoe, soon perceived that fame lay not in that direction, and devoted himself with exuberant talent and unconscionable facility to satisfy the frivolous tastes and refined animality of royal and courtly patrons. For it was a time when life was envisaged as a perpetual feast of enjoyment; a vision of roguish eyes and rouged and patched faces of sprightly beribboned and perfumed gallants, playing at shepherds and shepherdesses, of luxurious sensuality untrammelled by a Christianity minus the Ten Commandments, soon to be hustled away by the robust and democratic ideals of David. Another early work of Fragonnard in this room is 291, R. wall, The Music Lesson: some of his more characteristic productions we shall meet with in the Salle La Caze. A somewhat feeble protest against the prevailing vulgarity and debasement of contemporary art was made by Jean Baptiste SimÉon Chardin (1699-1779) and Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) in their rendering of scenes of domesticity and of the pathos of simple lives. Chardin is well seen in this room in his laborious studies of still life, 89 and 90, L. wall, diploma works, and in 91 and 92, same wall, The Industrious Mother, and Grace before Meat. The last, a delightful work, won for the artist Diderot's powerful advocacy, and made him the popular interpreter of bourgeois intimacies. Other patient studies of still life are: 95, 96, 101, and 102; and R. wall 94. On the same wall hang, 97, The Ape as Antiquary, and 99, The Housewife. If Chardin touches the border-line between sentiment and sentimentality, Greuze (end wall) in 369, Return of the Prodigal; 370, A Father's Crime; and 371, The Undutiful Son, certainly oversteps it. Each of these became the theme of extravagant eulogy and didactic preachments by Diderot, his literary protagonist, who hailed him as a French Hogarth making Virtue amiable and Vice odious. An even more equivocal note is struck (L. wall) in 372A, The Milkmaid; and 372, The Broken Pitcher, where as Gautier acutely remarks, the artist contrives to make Virtue exhale the same sensual delight as Vice had done, and to suggest that Innocence will fall an easy victim to temptation. Madame Du Barry was much attracted by the latter picture and possessed a replica of it. Other works and studies, R. wall, by the artist are in this room. 368, end wall, Severus Reproaching Caracalla, was painted as a diploma picture. But Greuze essayed here a flight beyond his powers: to his profound disgust the Academy refused to admit him as an historical, and classed him as a genre painter. No survey of eighteenth century French painting would be complete without some reference to Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), the famous marine and landscape artist, whose paintings of the principal ports of France are hung in the MusÉe de la Marine on the second floor. Here we may distinguish among some score of his works: 921, The Bathers; 923, A Landscape; and 932, A Seascape: The Setting Sun, all on the L. wall.

Grace before Meat.
Chardin.
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It will now be opportune to make our way to the La Caze collection. We pass out from the end of this room and descend the Escalier Daru to the first landing; then ascend L. of the Victory of Samothrace to the Rotonde, pass direct through the Salle des Bijoux, and turn L. through Room II. to

Room I.

The La Caze collection. We note on the R. wall, an excellent Lenain, 548, A Peasant Meal, and some admirable portraits by LargilliÈre, 484-491, of which the last, Portrait of the Artist, his Wife and Daughter, is a masterly work. Among the fine portraits by Rigaud, 791-795, that of the Young Duke of LesdiguiÈres, stands pre-eminent. We cross to the L. wall, where the rich collection of works by Watteau and his followers is placed: 983, Gilles, a scene from a Comedy, is one of Watteau's most precious pictures. Near it are: 984, The Disdainful; 986, Gathering in a Park. 985, Sly-Puss, a charming little picture, is followed by 988, 989, 990 and 992, four other studies. 991 is a carefully finished classical subject, Jupiter and Antiope. Near these are grouped: 470-473, four small works by Lancret, and 690-693, a like number of typical variations of the scÈne galante by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic works executed with wonderful sleight of hand, 292-301. The prevailing taste of his patrons may be judged by 295, L. wall, a sketch of one of his most successful and oftenest repeated subjects. On this same wall are a varied series of Chardin's studies of still life; a poor replica, 93, of his Grace before Meat; 104, The Ape as Painter, and other similar homely subjects.

Here also are two historical revolutionary portraits by Greuze: 378, The Girondin, GensonnÉ, and 379, the Poet-Deputy, Fabre d'Eglantine. Among the later Venetians are some Tintorets, R. wall: 1468, Susannah; 1469, Virgin and Child, Saints and Donor; 1470, Portrait of Pietro Mocenigo. Spanish art is represented by a fine but unpleasing Ribera, 1725, Boy with a Club-foot, and to Velasquez are ascribed: 1735, The Infanta Maria Teresa, Queen of Louis XIV.; 1736, Unknown Portrait; 1733, L. of entrance, Philip IV. 1945 and 1946, R. wall, the Provost and Sheriffs, and Jean de Mesme, President of the Parlement of Paris, are excellent examples of Philippe de Champaigne's austere and honest art.

From the studios of Boucher and of Comte Joseph Marie Vien (1716-1809) there came towards the end of the eighteenth century the virile, revolutionary figure of Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), who burst like a thunderstorm on the corrupt artistic atmosphere of the age, sweetening and bracing French art for half a century. Shocked by the slovenly drawing and vulgarity of the fashionable masters, and nursed on Plutarch, he applied himself to the study of the antique with a determination to rejuvenate the painter's art and establish a school, drawing its inspiration from heroic Greece and Rome. The successive phases of this potent but rather theatrical genius may be well followed in the Louvre. Neglecting for the present his earlier and pre-revolutionary works, we retrace our steps through Room II. noting in passing, 143, The Funeral at Ornans (a remarkable, realistic painting by a later revolutionary, to whom we shall return) and enter

Room III.

on the L. wall of which hangs 188, David's famous canvas: The Sabine Women, over which he brooded during his imprisonment in the Luxembourg after the Thermidorian reaction. David regarded this composition as the most successful expression of his theory of art. He studied whole libraries of antiquities and vainly imagined it to be the most "Greek" of all his works. Nothing, however, could be farther removed from the tranquil self-restraint and noble simplicity of Greek art than these self-conscious, histrionic groups of figures, without one touch of naturalness. The old preoccupation with classic models inherited from Poussin and the Roman school, still dominates even this revolutionary artist, who best displays his great genius when he forgets his theories and paints direct from life, as in 199, Mme. RÉcamier; and 198 (opposite wall), Pius VII. David's fierce Jacobinism (he had been a member of the terrible Committee of Public Safety) did not prevent him from worshipping the rising star of the First Consul, who, on assuming the Imperial crown, appointed him court painter and commissioned him to execute, 202A, Consecration of Napoleon I. at Notre Dame. In this grandiose historic scene, containing at least 150 portraits, the eye is at once drawn to the central actor who, having crowned himself, is placing a diadem on the kneeling Josephine's brow. The story runs, that David had originally drawn Pope Pius VII. with hands on knees. Bonaparte entering the studio, at once ordered the artist to represent the pontiff in the act of blessing, exclaiming: "I didn't bring him all this way to do nothing." For this picture and for the Distribution of the Eagles 180,000 francs were paid.

Madame RÉcamier.
David.
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Among the painters of the new school was Pierre Prud'hon (1758-1823), whose fame was made by two pictures, 747 and 756, on opposite walls, first exhibited in 1808: Justice and Divine Wrath pursuing Crime; and the graceful but somewhat invertebrate, Rape of Psyche. 746, an Assumption, was executed for the Tuileries Chapel in 1819. Other works by this master, whose Correggiosity is evident, hang in the room. Two famous pupils of David were FranÇois Pascal Simon GÉrard (1770-1837) and Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835). By the former, known as the King of Painters and Painter of Kings, are: 328, Love and Psyche; and 332, a charming portrait of the painter Isabey and his daughter. By the latter, who owed the Imperial favour to the good graces of Josephine, are: 391, Bonaparte at Arcole; 392A, Lieut. SarlovÈze, a typical Beau-Sabreur portrait; and 388, Bonaparte visiting victims of the Plague at Jaffa, a striking composition, which advanced the artist to the front rank of his profession. Gros was the parent of the grand battle-pictures of the future; the painter of the Napoleonic epos. Young artists were wont to attach a sprig of laurel to this work in which the first signs of the coming storm of Romanticism are discerned.

The real champion of the movement was, however, Jean Louis AndrÉ ThÉodore GÉricault (1791-1824), whose epoch-making picture, 338, The Raft of the Medusa, we now observe. This daring and passionate revolt from frigid classicism and preoccupation with a conventional antiquity was received but coldly by the professional critics on its appearance in 1819, though with enthusiasm by the people. Failing to find a buyer at Paris, its exhibition in England by a speculator, proved a financial success. 339-343, are military subjects of lesser range by this young innovator: 348, Epsom Races, was painted in England in 1821, three years before his premature death. To follow on with the French school we retrace our steps by the Rotonde and the Escalier Daru through Room XVI. to Room XV., L. of which, is the entrance to

Room VIII.

We revert to David whose Oath of the Horatii, 189, exhibited in 1785; and The Lictors bearing to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons, 191, exhibited in the fateful year 1789, hang skied on the R. wall. These paintings, hailed with prodigious enthusiasm, revolutionised the fashions and tastes of the day and gave artistic expression to the coming political and social changes. 200A on the same wall, The Three Ladies of Ghent, was painted during the artist's exile in Belgium, for the old Terrorist was naturally not a persona grata to the restored Bourbons. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1857), the most famous of David's pupils, two of whose works we have seen in Room V., was the bitterest opponent of the new Romantic school and steadfast champion of his master's artistic ideal. To him more than to any other teacher is due the tradition of clean, correct and comely drawing that characterises the French school. It is somewhat difficult perhaps for a foreigner, observing the paintings by Ingres in this room, fully to comprehend[219] the reverence in which he is held by his countrymen. More than once Professor Legros has described to the present writer the thrill of emotion that passed through him and his fellow-students when they saw the aged master enter the École des Beaux Arts at Paris. If, however, the visitor will inspect the marvellous Ingres drawings in the Salle des Desseins (p. 394), he will appreciate his genius more adequately. The master's chief work in the present room is 417, R. wall, Apotheosis of Homer, a ceiling composition in which the arch-poet, laurel-crowned, has at his footstool seated figures symbolising the Iliad and the Odyssey, while the most famous poets and philosophers of the ages are grouped below him. The Odalisque, 422B, L. wall, is a characteristic nude, and a few other subject pictures will be noted. Among his portraits, 418, Cherubini; 428B, Bertier de Vaux, are generally regarded as masterpieces. Ingres despised colour, he never appealed to the emotions; his type of beauty is external and soulless, and he leaves the spectator cold.

Meanwhile the new Romantic school of brilliant colourists grew and flourished. Ary Scheffer, Delaroche, Delacroix, cradled in the storms of the revolutionary period, are all represented around us. The sentimental Ary Scheffer (1795-1858) is seen, L. wall, in 841, St. Augustine and St. Monica, an immensely popular but affected and feeble composition. Some portraits by this artist may be also found on the walls. Greater than he in breadth of composition, opulence of colour and artistic virtuosity, was Paul Delaroche, whose Death of Queen Elizabeth, 216, end wall, now asserts itself. His greatest work, however, and one which won him much fame, is his well-known Hemicycle in the Beaux Arts (p. 319). A twin spirit with GÉricault was the impetuous Ferdinand Victor EugÈne Delacroix (1798-1863), who is more fully hung in this collection. Of the brilliant compositions which with indefatigable industry he poured forth in the heyday of the movement, we may note some excellent examples: 212, L. wall, The Wreck of Don Juan; 211, L. wall, Jewish Wedding at Morocco; and, 213, Capture of Constantinople by the Venetians and Franks. Earlier works are, 207, R. of entrance, Virgil and Dante nearing the City of Dis, executed with feverish energy in a few weeks for the Salon of 1822; and 208, L. of entrance, The Massacre of Scio, a glowing canvas painted in 1834. Jean Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864), the Lesueur of the century, and like him uniting artistic genius and wide erudition with profound religious faith and true modesty, is represented most poorly of all; 284, Portrait of a Young Girl being the only example of this master's work here. Flandrin can only be truly appreciated in the church of St. Germain des PrÉs (p. 320). Before we turn to the Barbizon painters, we note Gros' fine composition, 389, L. wall, Napoleon at Eylau; and 390, R. wall, Francis I. and Charles V. visiting the Tombs at St. Denis.

With ThÉodore Rousseau (1812-1867), the all-father of the modern French landscape school, and chief of the little band of enthusiasts who grouped themselves about him at Barbizon, we touch the greatest artistic movement of the age. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875), the ever-young and gentle spirit, the tenderest emanation of the century; Jean FranÇois Millet (1814-1875), the inspired and cultured peasant, mightiest of them all, grand and solemn interpreter of the fundamental and tragic pathos of human toil, ever discerning God's image in the most bent and ill-shapen of his creatures; Constant Troyon (1810-1865), the grandest animal painter of his day; Narcisse Diaz de la PeÑa (1809-1876), once a poor errand lad with a maimed leg, painter of forest depths and of the rich hues of summer foliage; Charles FranÇois Daubigny (1817-1878), latest of the little band, faithful and tender student of nature, painter of the countryside, of the murmuring waters of the Seine and the Oise—these once despised and rejected of men have long won fame and appreciation. No princely patronage shone on them in their early struggles nor smoothed their path; they wrought out the beauty of their souls under the hard discipline of poverty in loving and awful communion with Nature. They have revealed to us new tones of colour in the air, in the forest and the plain, and a new sense of the pathos and beauty in simple lives and common things.

827, L. wall, is Rousseau's Forest at Fontainebleau, a fine effect of setting sun and loving representation of his favourite tree, the oak; 829 and 830, R. wall, are also by this master. On the same wall 643, Millet's Spring, whose coloration at first sight may seem forced and strange, is absolutely faithful to Nature, as the writer who once observed similar colour effects in the forest can testify. 644, The Gleaners, "the three fates of poverty," is, next to the Angelus, the most popular of Millet's works. Corot, the Theocritus of modern painting, is represented by 138, the lovely and poetical Morning, 141, Souvenir de Mortefontaine and 141 bis, Castelgandolfo. R. and L. are, 889 and 890, two grand and massive compositions by Troyon: Oxen going to the Plough; and, The Return to the Farm: landscapes that smell of the very earth, and rendered with a marvellous breadth of style and penetrating sympathy; 184, end wall, and 185, R. of entrance, Grape Harvest in Burgundy, and Spring, are by Daubigny.

One of the most aggressive, ebullient and individual of painters was Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), whose harshly realistic Funeral at Ornans we have seen in Room II. In 1855 Courbet, finding his works badly hung in the International Exhibition at Paris, erected a wooden shed near the entrance, where he exhibited thirty-eight of his large pictures, and defiantly painted outside in big letters—REALISM: G. COURBET. Strong of body and coarse in habit, this peintre-animal, as he was called, delighted to Épater le bourgeois, and painted his studies of the nude with a brutal reality that stripped the female form of all the beauty and grace with which the superior ideality of man has invested it. This swashbuckler of realism, who despised the old masters, denounced imagination as humbug, and would have great men, railway stations, factories and mines painted as the vÉritÉs vraies, the saints and miracles of the age, was, however, often better than his artistic creed, and is here represented by some pleasing Fontainebleau pictures: L. wall, 147, Deer in Covert; R. wall, 66, Source of the Puits Noir, and L., 147 bis, The Waves, a most powerful and original interpretation of the sombre majesty of the sea. For in truth the creed of Realism, whether in literature or in art, involves a fallacy, and the creations of the imaginative and idealistic faculty in man are as real as those which result from the faculty of seeing mean things meanly and coarse things coarsely. Courbet's violent revolutionary nature nearly cost him his life in 1848 and involved him in the Commune in 1871, during which he presided over the destruction of the VendÔme Column (though he saved the Luxembourg and the Thiers' collection from the violence of the people). Poor Courbet, mulcted in enormous damages for his share in the overthrow of the Column, was ruined and died in exile. A more potent revolutionist, the arch-Impressionist Manet and founder of the school, has at length forced the portals of the Louvre and is represented by the celebrated Olympia, 204, around which so many fierce battles were waged in 1865.

We proceed to supplement this small collection of Barbizon pictures by a visit to the recently acquired (1903) Thomy-ThiÉry and Chauchard collections. Returning to the Salle La Caze by Room XVI., and the Escalier Daru, we issue from it, pass direct before us and continue through the rooms devoted to exhibits of furniture (in Hall II. is a superb specimen of cabinet-work—Louis XV.'s writing-table). Turning R., we then enter a series of Cabinets, containing an admirable and most important collection of drawings, beginning with the early Italian masters and following on chronologically to the later Italians and to the German, Netherland and French masters. If the visitor have leisure he will be repaid by returning at some convenient time to study these carefully. But even the most hurried traveller should not omit to glance through them, and more especially at the lovely Da Vincis in the second cabinet and the Ingres drawings further along. Arrived at the end, we shall find on our L. a wooden staircase, which we mount and reach

Room XXXVII.

the Salle FranÇaise de 1830. Here are exhibited Delaroche's Princes in the Tower; Flandrin's Portrait of Mme. Vinet and some early works of the Barbizon school; Corot, 139, the Forum at Rome; 140, the Colosseum; 141F, The Belfry at Douai and others. Millet's sketch of the Church at GrÉville, 641, was found in his studio after his death; another study is 642, The Bathers; 644A, The Seamstress, 642A is a portrait of the artist's sister-in-law. By Rousseau are two small landscapes, 831 and 832; and The Landes, 830, a masterpiece. Diaz and DuprÉ are seen in a number of studies and paintings.

Room XXXVIII.

contains the Thomy-ThiÉry pictures, excellently hung and forming one of the most rich and precious collections in the Louvre. On the R. wall as we enter are a numerous series of genre paintings, happily conceived and wrought by Alexandre Gabriel Decamps (1803-1860). This room holds many excellent Rousseaus, among which are: 2896, Banks of the Loire; 2900, an excellent study of his favourite Oak Trees; 2901, The Pyrenees; 2903, Springtide. Millet is well represented by a priceless little collection: 2892, The Binders;2890, The Rubbish-burners; 2893, The Winnower; 2894, A Motherly Precaution; 2895, The Wood Chopper. By Corot are shown no less than twelve examples: 2801-2812. All are most exquisitely poetical and delicate, but we may specially note: 2804, Shepherds' Dance at Sorrento; 2805, The Pollard Willows; 2806, Souvenir of Italy; 2807, The Pond; 2808, Entrance to a Village; 2810, View of Sin-le-Noble; 2811, Evening. A magnificent set of Troyons next claims our admiration, eleven in all, 2906-2916, of which: 2913, Girl with Turkeys; 2909, Morning; 2914, The Barrier; 2916, The Heights of Suresnes, are superlative. The ten Diaz pictures, 2854-2863, are of perhaps lesser interest, although they will all repay careful attention. Of Daubigny's intimate landscapes thirteen are offered to our appreciation, 2813-2825, among which: 2821, The Thames at Erith; 2822, The Mill at Gyliers; and 2824, Morning, are notable. By the melancholy and poetical Jules DuprÉ (1812-1889), whose landscapes oft breathe the tragic pathos of storm and desolation, and who is said to have broken into a passionate outburst of tears and sobs as he watched the magnificent spectacle of a nocturnal tempest, are twelve compositions, 2864-2875; and let us not omit some half-score Delacroix, 2843-2853, among which is a rare religious subject, 2849, Christ on the Cross. The glass cases in the centre of the room exhibit a numerous collection of bronzes by Barye, whom we have seen among the modern sculptors in Room VI.

Room XXXIX.

is the Salle FranÇaise du Second Empire and contains Horace Vernet's well known, The BarriÈre de Clichy, Defence of Paris in 1814; and Ary Scheffer's, Death of GÉricault. 2938 is the great caricaturist Daumier's portrait of ThÉodore Rousseau. Numerous examples of the myopic art of Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) will attract attention in this Room. To reach the Chauchard collection, provisionally exhibited in the old Colonial office, we descend to the first floor, traverse the Grande Galerie and the new Rubens Room. This, prodigieux accroissement de richesses, as it is termed by the official catalogue, contains a large number of masterpieces by the Barbizon painters and raises the Louvre collections of that school to supreme importance. No less than eight Millet's are included, the most famous of which, if not the greatest, The Angelus, 102, is much faded, but always attracts a crowd of admirers. 103, Woman at the Well, is a scene at the artist's birthplace; 104, is one of the most inspired of the master's creations, The Shepherdess watching her Flock. 99, The Winnower; 105, Girl with a Distaff, and 106, The Sheep Fold—a lovely pastoral scene by night. Among the twenty-six Corots are many of his finest works; 6, Goatherd playing the Flute; 8, The Dance of the Nymphs; 15, Rest beneath the Willows; 16, The Ford; 20, Forest Glade: Souvenir of Ville Avray; 24, Dance of Shepherdesses; 27, The Mill of St. Nicholas-les-Arras. Some noble Rousseaus are included: 107, Avenue in the Forest of d'Isle-Adam; 108, Pond by the Wayside; 112, Road in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Troyon's score of canvases make a brave show: 127, The White Cow, painted in 1856, was a favourite of the artist who kept it by him until his death and bequeathed it to his mother. By Charles Jacque, the painter of sheep, three works are shown including 72, The Great Sheepfold. Daubigny, Descamps, Diaz and others of the school are well represented in the collection. Admirers of "the little master of little pictures" will find among the twenty-six Meissonier's, which the Chauchard bequest brings to the Louvre, two of the most famous of his works: 87, The Napoleonic picture, Campaign of France, 1814; and 80, Amateurs of Painting. All these examples of the most successful but least inspired of modern artists exemplify his patient, concentrated, meticulous style. By an ingenious fiction that the installation is only provisional, six characteristic Venetian pictures by the veteran, Ziem, have been retained in the collection.[220] 136, is, however, wrongly named, and should read Scene from the Giudecca.

We have completed our rapid survey of the chief paintings in the Louvre, for the more recent developments of French art must be sought in the Luxembourg, where they are all too inadequately represented. The self-imposed limitations of this work will not carry us thither, but the most cursory visit to the Louvre would be incomplete without some notice of the collections of Persian and Egyptian art which we may conveniently glance at on our way as we leave. Descending to the first floor by the staircase up which we mounted, we turn obliquely to the R. and enter the E. gallery containing the Persian terra-cotta reliefs and other objects from the royal palace of Darius, and Artaxerxes,[221] his son, at Susa, including the marvellous coloured Frieze of the Archers; one of the colossal capitals (restored), that supported the roof of the Throne Room; a model of the same; and some fine terra-cotta reliefs of Lions and of winged Bulls.

We pass on through the MediÆval and Renaissance collections, turn an angle R., and enter the South Gallery, where some remarkable specimens of ancient art will be found among the Egyptian Antiquities. The painted statue (Hall III.) of the Seated Scribe is one of the most precious examples the world possesses of an art admirable in its naturalism and power of vivid portraiture, and the charming figure of a priestess, known as Dame Toui, exquisitely wrought in wood, is equally noteworthy. A superb example of a royal papyrus of the Book of the Dead will also invite attention. We pass on through a suite of beautifully decorated rooms filled with a choice collection of Etruscan and Greek Ceramic art, each of which offers a rich feast of beauty and historic interest.

At length we reach again the collection of paintings, Room III., whence we may pass through the Salle des Bijoux with a small exhibit of ancient jewellery, to the Rotonde, and turning L., enter the magnificent Galerie d'Apollon (the old Petite Galerie of Henry IV.), and examine the wealth of enamels; the exquisite productions of the goldsmith's art as applied to the sacred vessels of the church; precious stones; cameos; and such as remain of the old crown jewels. We may leave the palace by returning to the Rotonde; pass through the Salle La Caze and descend the Escalier Henry II. to the L., noting the caissons of its ceiling, decorated by Jean Goujon, and reach the Quadrangle under the Pavilion de l'Horloge, where we began our visit; or we pass from the Rotonde down the Escalier Daru to the exit in the Pavilion Denon, which gives on the Squares du Louvre. In the latter case it will be of some interest before leaving to pass for a moment by the exit and along the Galerie Mollien, where on the R. among the models of Roman masterpieces executed for Francis I., under Primaticcio's supervision, will be found one of the Laocoon, which shows its condition before Bernini's bungling restoration had deformed the group. To the unsated sightseer there yet remain the rich and comprehensive collections of Egyptian and Asiatic antiquities on the ground floor of the E. wing entered on either side of the E. portal.

SECTION VI

The Ville (S. of the Rue St. Antoine)—The HÔtel de Ville[222]—St. Gervais—HÔtel Beauvais—HÔtel of the Provost of Paris—SS. Paul and Louis—HÔtel de Mayenne—Site of the Bastille—BibliothÈque de l'Arsenal[223]—HÔtel Fieubert—HÔtel de Sens—Isle St. Louis.

We take the MÉtropolitain to the HÔtel de Ville station and make our way to the Place de l'HÔtel de Ville, formerly Place de GrÈve, a little W. of the station.

In 1141 a sloping bank of sand (grÈve), to the E. of the Rue St. Martin and facing the old port of the NautÆ at St. Landry on the island of the CitÉ, was ceded by royal charter, to the burgesses of Paris for a payment of seventy livres. "It is void of houses," says the charter, "and is called the gravia, and is situated where the old market-place (vetus forum) existed." This was the origin of the famous Place de GrÈve,[224] where throbbed the very heart of civic, commercial and industrial Paris. On its eastern side stood the old Maison aux Piliers, a long, low building, whose upper floor was supported by columns. Here every revolutionary and democratic movement has been organised, from the days of Marcel to those of the Communes of 1789—when the last Provost of the Merchants met his death—and of 1871, when the fine old Renaissance HÔtel de Ville was destroyed by fire. The place of sand was much smaller in olden times, and from 1310, when Philip the Fair burned three heretics, to September, 1822, when the last political offenders, the four serjeants of Rochelle, were executed, and to July 1830, when the last murderer was hung there, has soaked up the blood of many a famous enemy of State and Church and of innumerable notorious and obscure criminals, including the infamous Marquise de Brinvilliers, who was burned alive, and Cartouche, broken on the wheel. A permanent gibbet stood there and a market cross, and there during the English wars the infuriated Parisians tied the hands and feet of hundreds of English prisoners taken at Pontoise and flung them into the Seine. Every St. John's eve—the church and cloister of St. Jean stood behind the HÔtel de Ville—a great bonfire was lighted in the Place de GrÈve, fireworks were let off, and a salvo of artillery celebrated the festival. When the relations between Crown and Commune were felicitous the king himself would take part in the fÊte and fire the pile with a torch of white wax decorated with crimson velvet. A royal supper and ball in the Grande Salle concluded the revels. Not infrequently the ashes at the stake where a poor wretch had met his doom had scarcely cooled before the joyous flames and fireworks of the Feu de St. Jean burst forth, and the very day after the execution of the Count of Bouteville the people were dancing round the fires of St. John. The present HÔtel de Ville, by Ballu and Deperthes, completed in 1882,[225] is one of the finest modern edifices in Europe, and contains some of the most important productions of contemporary French painters and sculptors: Puvis de Chavannes, Carolus Duran, Benjamin Constant, Jean Paul Laurens, CarriÈre Dalou, Chapu and others.

We pass to the E. of the HÔtel, where stands the church of St. Gervais and St. Protais, whose faÇade by Solomon Debrosse (1617) "is regarded," says FÉlibien (1725), "as a masterpiece of art by the best architectural authorities" ("les plus intelligens en architecture"). The church, which has been several times rebuilt, occupies the site of the old sixth-century building, near which stood the elm tree where suitors waited for justice to be done by the early kings. "Attendre sous l'orme" ("To wait under the elm") is still a proverbial expression for waiting till Doomsday.

St. Gervais.
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The lofty Gothic interior, dating from the late fifteenth century, is lighted by some sixteenth and seventeenth-century stained glass, and among the pictures that have escaped transportation to the Louvre may be noted a lunette over the clergy stalls R. of the nave, God the Father, by Perugino; and a remarkable tempera painting, The Passion, attributed to DÜrer's pupil, AldegrÄver, in the fifth chapel, L. aisle. The curious old panelled and painted little Chapelle Scarron (fourth to the L.) and the sixteenth-century carved choir stalls from the abbey church of Port Royal are of interest: the beautiful vaulting of the Lady Chapel is also noteworthy. Some good modern paintings may be seen (with difficulty) in the side chapels. The Rue FranÇois Miron leading E. from the Place St. Gervais was part of the Rue St. Antoine, before the cutting of the Rue de Rivoli, and the chief artery from the E. to the centre of Paris. On the R. of this street, No. 26, Rue Geoffrey l'Asnier, is the fine portal of the seventeenth-century HÔtel de ChÂlons, where the whilom ambassador to England, Antoine de la Borderie, lived (1608). Yet further on in the Rue FranÇois Miron is the Rue de Jouy: at No. 7, is the charming HÔtel d'Aumont by Hardouin Mansard. We continue our eastward way along the Rue FranÇois Miron and among other interesting houses note No. 68, the princely HÔtel de Beauvais, erected 1660, for Anne of Austria's favourite femme de chambre, Catherine Henriette Belier, wife of Pierre Beauvais. The street faÇade has been much disfigured and the magnificent wrought-iron balcony, whence Anne, Mazarin and Turenne, together with the Queen of England, watched the solemn entry of Louis XIV. and his consort Maria ThÉrÈse, has been destroyed: but the beautiful circular porch with its Doric columns and metopes and the stately courtyard where the architect, Jean Lepautre, has triumphed over the irregularity of the site and created a marvellous symmetry of form—all this still remains, together with the noble stairway on the L., decorated by the Flemish sculptor, Desjardins. In the house at the sign of the Falcon which formerly stood on this spot, Tasso in the splendour of his early years was lodged by his patron, the Cardinal d'Este, and composed the greater part of the Gerusalemme Liberata. The Rue FranÇois Miron is continued by the Rue St. Antoine: at No. 119, we enter the Passage Charlemagne and pass to the second courtyard where remains a goodly portion of the old HÔtel of the Royal Provost of Paris, [226] given to Aubriot by Charles V. At No. 101 is the site of one of the gates of the Philip Augustus wall and at No. 99 stands the Jesuit Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, in the typical baroque style so familiar to visitors to Rome. The once lavishly decorated interior has suffered much from the Revolutionists. Germain Pilon's Virgin still remains in the chapel L. of the high altar, but the four angels in silver that sustained the hearts of Louis XIII. and XIV., and the noble bronze statues from the mausoleum of the Princes of CondÉ, admired by Bernini, are only a memory. At No. 65, a malodorous court leads to the old vaulted entrance to the charnel-houses of St. Paul, where Rabelais and the Man with the Iron Mask were buried;[227] and to the R. of this vault a narrow street leads to the MarchÉ Ste. Catherine on the site of the canons' houses of the monastery of Ste. Catherine du Val des Écoliers (p. 124). At the corner of the Rue du Petit Musc is the magnificent HÔtel de Mayenne, begun by Du Cerceau for Diana of Poitiers and completed for the Duke of Mayenne, leader of the forces of the League: this too has a fine courtyard. The chamber in which the leaders of the League met and decided to assassinate Henry III. still exists. An inscription over No. 5 marks the site of the forecourt of the Bastille where the revolutionists penetrated on 14th July: on the pavement in front of No. 1 and across the end of the street and in front of No. 5 Place de la Bastille, round the opposite corner, lines of white stones mark part of the huge space on which the gloomy and sinister old fortress stood. We turn S.W. by the Boulevard Henry IV., past the imposing new barracks of the Garde RÉpublicaine, and then L. by the Rue de Sully. At No. 3 we enter the BibliothÈque de l'Arsenal, one of the most important libraries of Paris, where an attendant will show Sully's private cabinet and antechamber, with the rich decorations as they were left by his successor, including a ceiling painted by Vouet. Many an intimate outpouring of the Victor of Ivry's domestic woes did Sully endure here—complaints of his ill-tempered Marie's scoldings, the contrast between his lawful wife's sour greetings and the endearing graces and merry, roguish charms of his mistresses; their quarrels and exactions. All of which the great minister would listen to reprovingly, and exhort his dejected royal master not to permit himself, who had vanquished the hosts of his enemies in battle, to be overcome by a woman's petulancy. To the S. of the library the Boulevard Morland marks the channel which separated the Isle de Louviers from the N. bank of the river. We return to the Boulevard Henry IV. and cross to the Quai des CÉlestins, where on our L. stands part of a tower of the Bastille, discovered in 1899 during the construction of the Metropolitan Railway and transferred here. At the corner of the Rue du Petit Musc opposite, is the fine HÔtel Fieubert, erected by Hardouin Mansard (1671) on part of the site of the Royal HÔtel St. Paul. The principal faÇade, 2 bis Quai des CÉlestins, has unhappily been irretrievably spoilt by subsequent additions. Continuing westward, we note No. 32, the site of the Tour Barbeau of the Philip Augustus wall. An inscription bids us remember that there stood the old Tennis Court of the Croix Noire, where MoliÈre's troupe of the Illustre ThÉÂtre performed in 1645. Turning R. up the Rue Falconnier, we come upon (L.) the grand old fifteenth-century palace of the archbishops of Sens (p. 114), now a glass merchant's warehouse. We regain the Place de l'HÔtel de Ville by the Quai of the same name, or cross the Pont Marie, and stroll about the quiet streets of the Isle St. Louis (p. 214), and return by the Pont Louis Philippe at its western extremity.

SECTION VII

The Ville (N. of the Rue St. Antoine)—Tour St. Jacques—Rue St. Martin—St. Merri—Rue de Venise—Les Billettes—HÔtels du Soubise,[228] de Hollande, de Rohan [229]—MusÉe Carnavalet[230]—Place Royale—MusÉe Victor Hugo—HÔtel de Sully.

Two parallel historic roads named of St. Martin and of St. Denis cut northwards through the mass of houses that now crowd the Marais: the latter, the Grande ChaussÉe de Monseigneur St. Denis, to the shrine of the martyred saint of Lutetia, the former, the great Roman Street which led to the provinces of the north.

We set forth northwards from the Place du ChÂtelet, at the foot of the Pont au Change, where stood the massive pile of the Grande ChÂtelet, originally built to defend the bridge from the Norman pirates as the Petit ChÂtelet was to defend the Petit Pont. It subsequently became the official seat and prison of the Provost of Paris, where he held his criminal court and organised the City Watch, and was demolished in 1802. Below this festered an irregular maze of slums, the aggregation of seven centuries, the most fetid, insanitary and criminal quarter of Paris, known as the VallÉe de MisÈre, which only disappeared in 1855. On our R. soars the beautiful flamboyant Gothic tower, all that remains of the great church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie. This fine monument was saved by the good sense of the architect Giraud who, when the church was sold to the housebreakers during the Revolution, inserted a clause in the warrant exempting the tower from demolition. It was afterwards used as a lead foundry and twice narrowly escaped destruction by fire. Purchased by the Ville, it seemed safe at last, but again it was threatened in 1853 by the prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli: luckily, however, the new street just passed by on the north. The statue of Pascal under the vaulting reminds the traveller that the great thinker conducted some barometrical experiments on the summit, and the statues of the patron saints of craftsmen in the niches, that under its shadow the industrial arts were practised. We ascend the Rue St. Martin from the N.E. corner of the Square, and on our R. find the late Gothic church of St. Merri, built on the site of the seventh-century Chapel of St. Pierre, where Odo Falconarius, one of the defenders of Paris in the siege of 886, is known to have been buried. We enter for the sake of the beautiful sixteenth-century glass in the choir and a curious old painting of the same epoch in the first chapel beyond the entrance to the sacristy, Ste. GeneviÈve and her Flock, with a view of Paris in the background. We continue to ascend the street, noting No. 122, an old fountain and some reliefs, and soon reach, R. and L., the quaint and narrow mediÆval Rue de Venise, formerly the Ruelle des Usuriers, home of the Law speculators (p. 242). At No. 27, L. of the Rue St. Martin and corner of the Rue Quincampoix, is the old inn of the EpÉe de Bois (now À l'ArrivÉe de Venise), where Prince de Hoorn and two other nobles assassinated and robbed a banker in open day and were broken alive on the wheel in the Place de GrÈve. Mirabeau and L. Racine, with other wits are said to have met there and Mazarin granted letters patent to a company of dancing masters who taught there, under the direction of the Roi des Violins: from these modest beginnings grew the National Academy of Dancing. We return E. along the Rue de Venise and pass to its end; then cross obliquely to the R. and continue E., along the Rue Simon le Franc, traversing the Rue du Temple, to the Rue des Blancs Manteaux. This we follow still eastward to its intersection with Rue des Archives. Turning down this street to the R. we cross, and at Nos. 24 or 26 enter the fifteenth-century cloister (restored) of the monastery of the Billettes, founded at the end of the thirteenth century to commemorate the miracle of the Sacred Host, which had defied the efforts of Jonathan, the Jew to destroy it by steel, fire and boiling water. The chapel, built on the site of the Jew's house in 1294, was rebuilt in 1754, and is now a Protestant church. The miraculous Host was preserved as late as the early eighteenth century in St. Jean en GrÈve, and carried annually in procession on the octave of Corpus Christi. We return northwards along the Rue des Archives, and reach at the corner of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois the fine pseudo-classic HÔtel de Soubise, now the National Archives, erected in 1704 for the Princesse de Soubise on the site of the old HÔtel of the Constable of France, Olivier de Clisson, where Charles VI., after his terrible vengeance on the revolted burgesses, agreed to remit further punishment, and where the Duke of Clarence established himself at the time of the English occupation. It became later (1553) the fortress of the Guises and rivalled the Louvre in strength and splendour. The picturesque Gothic portal (restored) of the old HÔtel de Clisson still exists higher up the Rue des Archives. The lavishly decorated HÔtel de Soubise, entered from the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, in which are exhibited historical documents and other objects of profound interest, though bereft of much of its former splendour is well worth a visit. The sumptuous chambers contain much characteristic and well-preserved decorative work by Boucher, Natoire, Carle Vanloo and others.[231] Opposite the hÔtel and between Nos. 59 and 57 may be seen a portion of a tower, repaired in brick, of the old Philip Augustus wall, and in the courtyard of the Mont de PiÉtÉ (No. 55) the line of the wall is traced: a nearer view of the tower may be obtained from the courtyard to the R.

Cloister of the Billettes, Fifteenth Century.
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We proceed eastward past the rebuilt church of the Blancs Manteaux and at the corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple find a charming Gothic tourelle (restored), all that remains of the mansion built in 1528 by Jean de la Balue. Descending the Rue Vieille du Temple to the R., we may examine (No. 47) the old HÔtel de Hollande, erected in 1638, where the Dutch ambassadors resided; and ascending, at No. 87, we find the HÔtel de Rohan (1712), home of the Cardinal de Rohan of diamond-necklace fame, now the Imprimerie Nationale. The Salon des Singes, charmingly decorated by Huet, and other interesting rooms are shown. The fine relief by Le Lorrain of the Horses of Apollo in a passage to the R. of the courtyard should by no means be missed. We return to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, and at No. 38 find an inscription[232] over the entrance to a picturesque court which marks the place where the Duke of Orleans was assassinated by Jean Sans Peur (p. 132). Still proceeding E. we pass yet more interesting domestic architecture—No. 31, HÔtel d'Albret, where goody Scarron used to visit Madame de Montespan and where she was appointed governess to the royal bastards; 25, HÔtel de Lamoignon, once occupied by Diana of France, daughter of Henry II., and where Malesherbes was born.

Nos. 14 and 16, corner of the Rue de SÉvignÉ, is the HÔtel de Carnavalet, a magnificent renaissance mansion, in raising which no less than four famous architects had part—Lescot, Bullant, Du Cerceau and the elder Mansard. For twenty years (1677-1697) it was the home of Madame SÉvignÉ, queen of letter-writers. Her Carnavalette, as she delighted to call it, is now the civic museum of Paris. The beautiful reliefs over the entrance, including the two superb lions against a background of trophies, are by Goujon, as are also the satyrs' heads on the keystones of the arcades of the courtyard. The Four Seasons and some of the lateral figures that decorate the courtyard were designed by him. In the centre stands a bronze statue of Louis XIV as a Roman conqueror, by Coysevox, which once stood on the Place de GrÈve before the old HÔtel de Ville. The museum, which contains a collection,[233] historic and prehistoric, relating to the city of Paris, is especially rich in objects, all carefully labelled, illustrating the great Revolution, and is of profound interest to students of that period: the second floor is devoted to the last siege of Paris. From the museum we fare yet further E. along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois to the Place Royale (now des Vosges), the site of the Palace of the Tournelles, once a favourite pleasure-house with a fair garden, of the kings of France, and where the Duke of Bedford lived during the English occupation, projecting to transform it into an English park for his exclusive use. There the ill-fated Henry II. lay eleven days in excruciating agony (p. 172), calling for his seule princesse, the beloved Diana, while Catherine, like a she-dragon, watched lest her rival entered. After his death the palace becoming hateful to Catherine, she had it demolished. It was subsequently used as a horse-market, and there the three minions of Henry III. began their bloody duel with the three bullies of the Duke of Guise at five in the morning of 27th April 1578, and fought on until every one was either slain or severely wounded.

How different is the present aspect of this once courtly square! Here noble gentlemen in dazzling armour jousted, while from the windows of each of the thirty-five pavilions, gentle dames and demoiselles smiled gracious guerdon to their cavaliers. Around the bronze statue of Louis XIII., proudly erect on the noble horse cast by Daniello da Volterra, in the midst of the gardens, fine ladies were carried in their sedan-chairs and angry gallants fought out their quarrels. And now on this royal Place, the Perle du Marais, the scene of these brilliant revels, peaceful inhabitants of the east of Paris sun themselves and children play. Bronze horse and royal rider went to the melting pot of the Revolution to be forged into cannon that defeated and humbled the allied kings of Europe, and a feeble marble equestrian statue, erected under the Restoration, occupies its place.

We cross the Square obliquely and at No. 6, Victor Hugo's old house, find a delightful little museum of portraits, busts, casts, illustrations of his works in various mediums, and personal and intimate objects belonging to the poet. It was at this house that in 1847 the two greatest novelists of their age met. Dickens has described how he was welcomed with infinite courtesy and grace by Hugo, a noble, compact, closely-buttoned figure, with ample dark hair falling loosely over his clean-shaven face and with features never so keenly intellectual, and softened by a sweet gentility. We leave the Place by the S. exit, and entering the Rue St. Antoine turn R. to No. 62, where stands the HÔtel de Sully, built by Du Cerceau in 1634. The stately but now rather grimy inner courtyard is little altered, but the fine faÇade has been disfigured by the erection of a mean building between the wings. We return from the MÉtropolitain station at the end of the Rue FranÇois Miron.

Place des Vosges, Maison de Victor Hugo.
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SECTION VIII

Rue St. Denis—Fontaine des Innocents—Tower of Jean sans Peur—Cour des Miracles—St. Eustache—The Halles—St. Germain l'Auxerrois.

From the ChÂtelet Station of the MÉtropolitain we strike northwards along the Rue St. Denis, passing R. and L. the Rue des Lombards, the Italian business quarter of old Paris, where Boccaccio, son of Boccassin, the money-changer, was born. We continue past the ill-omened Rue de la Ferronnerie and soon reach the Square and Fontaine des Innocents. This charming renaissance fountain was transferred here in 1786 from the corner of the old Rues aux Fers (now the widened Rue Berger) and St. Denis, where it had been designed and decorated by Lescot and Goujon to celebrate the solemn entry of Henry II. in 1549. The beautiful old fountain has been considerably modified and somewhat debased. The longer side has been divided to make a third, and a new fourth side has been added by Pajou. The whole has been elevated much too high by the addition of the terrace steps, and an unsightly dome has been added. Five of the exquisite reliefs of the Naiads by Goujon still remain, and three have been added by Pajou. These latter may be distinguished by their higher relief and lack of refinement.

The site of the immense Necropolis of Les Innocents,[234] which for six centuries swallowed up half the dead of Paris, roughly corresponds to the parallelogram formed by the modern Rues Berger, St. Denis, Ferronnerie and de la Lingerie, and one of the old vaulted charnel-houses may still be seen at the ground floor of No. 7 Rue des Innocents. The huge piles of human remains and skulls that grinned from under the gable roof of the gallery painted with the Dance of Death were, in 1786, carted away to the catacombs under Paris, formed by the old Gallo-Roman quarrymen as they quarried the stone used to rebuild Lutetia. For centuries this enclosure was the refuge of vagabonds and scamps of all kinds, a receptacle for garbage, the haunt of stray cats and dogs, whose howlings by night made sleep impossible to nervous folk; and the lugubrious clocheteur, or crier of the dead, with lantern and bell, his tunic figured with skull and cross-bones, bleating forth:—

"Reveillez-vous gens qui dormez,
Priez Dieu pour les trÉpassez."

was no soothing lullaby.

A curious early fifteenth-century rhyme is associated with this charnel-house. One morning, two bourgeoises of Paris, the wife of Adam de la Gonesse and her niece, went abroad to have a little flutter and eat two sous' worth of tripe in a new inn. On their way they met Dame Tifaigne, the milliner, who recommended the tavern of the "Maillez," where the wine was excellent. Thither they went and fared not wisely but too well. When fifteen sous had already been spent, they determined to make a day of it, and ordered roast goose with hot cakes. After further drinking, gauffres, cheese, peeled almonds, pears, spices and walnuts were called for, and the feast ended in songs. When the bad quarter of an hour came, their sum of sous proving inadequate, they parted with some of their finery to meet the score, and at midnight left the inn dancing and singing—

"Amours au vireli m'en vois."

The streets of Paris, however, at midnight were unsafe even for sober ladies, and these soon fell among thieves, were stripped of the rest of their clothing, then taken up for dead by the watch and flung into the mortuary in the cemetery of the Innocents; but, to the terror of the gravedigger, were found lying outside the next morning, singing—

"Druin, Druin, ou es allez?
Apporte trois harens salez
Et un pot de vin du plus fort."

Pursuing our way N. by the Rue St. Denis we pass (R.) the restored fourteenth-century church of St. Leu and St. Gilles, and on our L. two old reliefs of St. Peter and St. Andrew embedded in the corner of a modern house at the corner of the Rue St. Denis and the Rue Étienne Marcel. Near by stood the Painters' Gate of the Philip Augustus wall. We turn L. by the latter street and soon sight on our R. the massive machicolated Tower of Jean sans Peur (p. 133). It was at the HÔtel de Bourgogne that the ConfrÈres de la Passion de JÉsus Christ were performing in the sixteenth century, and where in 1548 they were forbidden by royal decree to play the mystery of the Passion any longer, and limited to profane, decent and lawful plays. From 1566-1576 the comÉdiens of the HÔtel de Bourgogne continued their performances, which at length became so gross that complaints were made of the blasphÈmes et impudicitÉs enacted there, and that not a farce was played that was not orde, sale et vilaine. Repeated ordinances were levelled at the actors, aiming at the purification of the stage and preventing words of double entente. It was here, too, that the most exalted and noble masterpieces of Corneille and Racine—Le Cid, Andromaque and PhÈdre—were first enacted. We turn R. by the Rue FranÇaise, again R. by the Rue Tiquetonne, then L. by the curious Rue Dussoubs to the new Rue RÉamur, where on the opposite side, to the L., is the narrow passage between Nos. 100 and 102 that leads to the once notorious Cour des Miracles, so vividly portrayed in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame. It was here that Jean Du Barry and his mistress, Jeanne Vaubernier, kept a gambling-hell. Jeanne, subsequently married to Jean's brother, was the daughter of a monk and formerly known as Mademoiselle Lange. She it was who became the famous Du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Here also dwelt HÉbert, editor of the foul PÈre Duchesne. Both perished on the scaffold. We cross the Cour and leave by the Rue Damiette (L.), turn again L. and descend the Rue du Nil to the Rue des Petits Carreaux. This we follow to the L., and continue down it and the busy and picturesque Rue Montorgeuil, noting (L.) No. 78, the curious house at the sign of the Rocher de Cancale. 72-64 were part of the roomy sixteenth-century posting house of the Golden Compasses, and have quaint reliefs carved on their faÇades. We may enter at 64, the spacious old coaching yard, still used by market carts and waggons. The courtyard on the opposite side, No. 47, was the office of the old sedan-chair porters. We continue to descend, and at length sight the tall apse of the majestic church of St. Eustache, which towers over the Halles. Begun in 1532 by Pierre Lemercier, it was not completed until more than a century later by Jacques Lemercier, architect of the extended Louvre. We enter, by the side portal, the spacious, lofty and beautiful interior with its not unpleasing mingling of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It was here that in 1587 a friar reciting the story of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots roused his hearers to such a tempest of passion that the whole congregation melted into a common paroxysm of tears. Here, too, on 4th April 1791 was celebrated, amid the gloom and sorrow of a whole people, the funeral of their "Sovereign-Man," Mirabeau. Not till five o'clock did the league-long procession reach the church in solemn silence, interrupted only by the sound of muffled drums and wailing music, "new clangour of trombones and metallic dirge-voice, amid the infinite hum of men." After the funeral oration a discharge of arms brought down some of the plaster from the vaultings of the church, and the body went—the first tenant—to the PanthÉon of the heroes of the Fatherland. We leave by the west portal—a monstrous pseudo-classic pile, added 1775-1778. To our L. is the vast area once covered by a congeries of picturesque Halles and streets:—the Halle aux Draps; the MarchÉ des Herborists, with their mysterious stores of simples and healing herbs and leeches; the potato and onion markets; the butter and cheese markets; the fish market; the queer old Rue de la Tonnellerie, under whose shabby porticoes, sellers of rags, old clothes, iron and furniture, crowded against the bread market; the MarchÉ des Prouvaires, beloved of thrifty housewives—all swallowed up by the vast modern structure of iron and glass, known as Les Halles. The Halle au BlÉ, or corn market, last to disappear, was built on the site of the HÔtel de la Reine which Catherine de' Medici had erected when frightened from the Tuileries by her astrologer Ruggieri. The site is now occupied by the Bourse de Commerce, but one curious decorated and channelled column, which conceals a stairway used by Catherine and her Italian familiar when they ascended to the roof to consult the stars, has been preserved.

The Rue Pirouette N. of the Halles reminds us that there, until the reign of Louis XVI., stood the royal pillory, a tall octagonal tower of two floors. The unhappy wretches condemned to exposure there were placed with head and hands protruding through holes in a revolving wheel, and were left for three hours on three market days, to the gibes and missiles of the populace. There, too, was a place of execution for state offenders, the Constable of Clisson in 1344 and le pauvre Jacques (p. 147) in 1477 having perished on this spot.

From the Place St. Eustache we cross (L.) to the Rue Vauvilliers, formerly the Rue du Four St. HonorÉ, the west side of which still retains much of its old aspect, and many of the shops, their old signs: Au Chou Vert; Le Panier Fleuri, etc. Descending this street southwards, a turn (R.) up the Rue de Vannes will bring us to the Ruggieri column, transformed (1812) into a fountain, as the inscription tells. Resuming our way down the Rue Vauvilliers we turn R. by the Rue St. HonorÉ and opposite, at the corner of the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, find the old fountain of the Croix du Trahoir, erected in the reign of FranÇois I. and rebuilt by Soufflot in 1775. Here tradition places the cruel death of Queen Brunehaut (p. 29). Descending this street to the Rue de Rivoli, we note, No. 144, to the L. an inscription marking the site of the HÔtel de Montbazon where Coligny was assassinated. We cross to the Rue Perrault and soon reach the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois from whose tower rang the signal for the St. Bartholomew butchery. The porch was added in 1431 for the convenience of distinguished worshippers; for it was the parish church of the ChÂteau of the Louvre and consequently the royal chapel. The saints and martyrs on the portail and porch are therefore closely associated with the history of Paris: opposite to us extends Perrault's famous E. faÇade of the Louvre.

SECTION IX

Palais Royal—ThÉÂtre FranÇais—Gardens and CafÉs of the Palais Royal—Palais Mazarin (BibliothÈque Nationale)[235]—St. Roch—VendÔme Column—Tuileries Gardens—Place de la Concorde—Champs ÉlysÉes.

From the Palais Royal Station of the MÉtropolitain we issue before the great palace begun by Richelieu (p. 212). To our L. stands the ThÉÂtre FranÇais, occupied by the ComÉdie FranÇaise since 1799, on the site of the old VariÉtÉs Amusantes or Palais VariÉtÉs built in 1787, a little to the W. of Richelieu's Theatre of the Palais Cardinal. This latter was the scene of MoliÈre's triumphs and of his piteous death, and the original home of the French Opera whose position is indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. HonorÉ. It was at the ThÉÂtre des VariÉtÉs, when the staid old ComÉdie FranÇaise was rent by rival factions that Chenier's patriotic tragedy, Charles IX., was performed on 4th November 1789, and the pit acclaimed Talma with frantic applause as he created the rÔle of Charles IX., and the days of St. Bartholomew were acted on the stage. The bishops tried to stop the performances, and priests refused absolution to those of their penitents who went to see them. The Royalists among the Comedians replied at the Nation (the OdÉon) by playing a royalist repertory, Cinna and Athalie, amid shouts from the pit for William Tell and the Death of CÆsar, and the stage became an arena where political factions strove for mastery. Men went to the theatre armed as to a battle. Every couplet fired the passions of the audience, the boxes crying, "Vive le Roi!" to be answered by the hoarse voices of the pit, "Vive la nation!" Shouts were raised for the busts of Voltaire and of Brutus: they were brought from the foyer and placed on the stage. The very kings of shreds and patches on the boards came to blows and the Roman toga concealed a poignard. For a time "idolatry" triumphed at the Nation, but Talma and the patriots at length won. A reconciliation was effected, and at a performance of the Taking of the Bastille, on 8th January 1791, Talma addressed the audience, saying that they had composed their differences. Naudet, the Royalist champion, was recalcitrant, and amid furious shouts from the pit, "On your knees, citizen!" at length gave way, embraced Talma with ill-grace, and on the ensuing nights the Revolutionary repertory, The Conquest of Liberty, Rome Saved, and Brutus, held the boards.

In the stormy year of 1830, when the July Revolution made an end for ever of the Bourbon cause in Paris, the ComÉdie FranÇaise again became a scene of fierce strife. Hernani, a drama in verse, had been accepted from the pen of Victor Hugo, the brilliant and exuberant master of the new Romantic school of poets who had determined to emancipate themselves from the traditions, long since hardened into dogmas, of the great dramatists of the siÈcle de Louis Quatorze. On the night of the first performance each side—Romanticists and Classicists—had packed the theatre with partisans. The air was charged with feeling; the curtain rose, but less than two lines were uttered before the pent-up passions of the audience burst forth:—

DoÑa Josefa—"Serait-ce dÉjÀ lui? C'est bien À l'escalier
DÉrobÉ—"

The last word had not passed the actress' lips when a howl of execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of verse. The Romanticists, led by ThÉophile Gautier, answered in withering blasphemies; the Classicists began to

"... prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks,"

and the pit became a pandemonium of warring factions. Night after night the literary sects renewed their fights, and the representations, as Hugo said, resembled battles rather than performances. The year 1830 was the '93 of the classic drama, but the passions it evoked have long since been calmed and Hernani and Le Roi s'Amuse, the latter suppressed by Louis Philippe after its first appearance, have taken their places in the classic repertory of the FranÇais beside the tragedies of Corneille and Racine.

At No. 161 Rue St. HonorÉ, now CafÉ de la RÉgence, beloved of chess players, is the site of the Porte St. HonorÉ of the Charles V. wall before which Joan of Arc was wounded at the Siege of Paris in 1429. The old chess-players' temple where Diderot loved to watch the matches; where the author of Gil Blas beheld in a vast and brilliantly lighted salon, a score of silent and grave pousseurs de bois (wood-shovers) surrounded by crowds of spectators amid a silence so profound that the movement of the pieces alone could be heard; where Voltaire and D' Alembert were often seen; where Jean Jacques Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor was forced to seek police protection; where Robespierre loved to play a cautious game and the young and impecunious Napoleon Bonaparte, an impatient player and bad loser, waited on fortune; where strangers from all corners of the earth congregated as in an arena where victory was esteemed final and complete; where Poles, Turks, Moors and Hindoos in their picturesque garbs made a scene unparalleled even at the Rialto of Venice; where on Sunday afternoons a seat was worth a monarch's ransom—this classic CafÉ de la RÉgence which, until 1852, stood on the Place du Palais Royal, no longer exists.

We enter the gardens of the Palais by the colonnade to the R. of the ThÉÂtre FranÇais and pass N. along the W. colonnade. On this side was situated the famous CafÉ de Foy (p. 261), founded in 1700, whose proprietor was in early days alone permitted to place chairs and tables on the terrace. There, in the afternoon, would sit the finely apparelled sons of Mars, and other gay dogs of the period, with their scented perukes, amber vinaigrettes, silver-hilted swords and gold-headed canes quizzing the passers-by. In summer evenings, after the conclusion of the opera at 8-30, the bonne compagnie in full dress would stroll under the great overarching trees of the grande allÉe, or sit at the cafÉs listening to open-air performers, sometimes revelling in the moonlight as late as the small hours of the morning.

It was from one of the tables of the CafÉ Foy that Camille Desmoulins sounded the war-cry of the Revolution. Every day a special courier from Versailles brought the bulletins of the National Assembly, which were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the fountains, and when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent death. Later the CafÉ Foy made a complete volte-face, raised its ices to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed with sword-sticks and loaded canes, raised their hats when the king's name was uttered, and one evil day planted a gallows outside the cafÉ, painted with the national colours. The excited patriots stormed the house, expelled the Royalists and disinfected the salon with gin. Next day the Royalists returned in force and cleansed the air with incense: after many fatalities the cafÉ was closed for some days and the triumph of the Jacobins at length made any suspicion of Royalism too perilous. During the occupation of Paris by the allies many a fatal duel between the foreign officers and the Imperialists was initiated there.

The extremer section of the Revolutionists frequented the CafÉ Corazza, still extant on this side of the garden, which soon became a minor Jacobin's, where, after the club was closed, the excited orators continued their discussions: Chabot, Collot d'Herbois and other Terrorists met there. The CafÉ Valois was patronised by the Feuillants, and so excited the ire of the FÉdÉrÉs, who met at the Caveau, that one day they issued forth, assailed their opponents' stronghold and burned the copies of the Journal de Paris found there.

In the earlier days of the Revolution when its leaders looked for sympathy to England, "a brave and generous nation, whose name alone like that of Rome evokes ideas of Liberty," the people during an exhibition of anti-monarchical feeling went about destroying the insignia of royalty. On coming in the Palais Royal to the sign of the English king's head over a restaurant, an orator mounted a chair in the gardens, and informed them that it was the head of a good king, ruling over a free nation: it was spared, amid shouts of "Vive la LibertÉ." Later, at the CafÉ des Milles Colonnes, the handsome Madame Romain, La Belle LimonadiÈre, sat majestically on a real throne used by a king whom Napoleon had overthrown.

We leave the gardens by the issue in the middle of the N. colonnade, mount the steps and at the corner of the Rue Vivienne and the Rue des Petits Champs opposite, come upon the Palais Mazarin (p. 222), now the BibliothÈque Nationale, with a fine faÇade on each street. In the Rue Vivienne stood also the princely HÔtel Colbert, of which only the name remains—the Passage Colbert. We turn W. along the Rue des Petits Champs and skirt the W. walls of the modernised palace northwards along the Rue de Richelieu to the main Cour d'Honneur, opposite the Square Louvois. Hence we may enter some rooms, which contain a magnificent and matchless collection of printed books, bindings and illuminated MSS. The second of the two halls where these treasures are exposed, the Galerie Mazarin, is a part of the old palace and retains its fine frescoed ceiling. As we retrace our steps down the Rue Richelieu we may enter, on our L. the equally rich and sumptuous museum of coins, medals, antiques, intaglios, gems, etc. Having regained the Rue des Petits Champs, we resume our westward way, noting at No. 45, corner of the Rue St. Anne, the fine double faÇade of the HÔtel erected by Lulli and bearing the great musician's coat-of-arms, a design of trumpets, lyres and cymbals, and soon cross the Avenue de l'OpÉra to the Rue St. Roch on our L. This we descend to the church of the same name, with old houses still nestling against it, famous for Bonaparte's whiffs of grape-shot that scattered the Royalist insurrectionary forces stationed there on 5th October 1795. We descend to the Rue de Rivoli. To our L., at the Place des Pyramids, a statue of Joan of Arc recalls her ill-advised attack on Paris, and to our R., on the railings of the Tuileries Garden opposite No. 230, Rue de Rivoli, is the inscription marking the site of the Salle du ManÉge (p. 271). Northward hence extend Napoleon's Rues de Castiglione and de la Paix, the Regent Street of Paris, divided by the Place VendÔme, which was intended by its creator, Louvois, to be the most spacious in the city. A monumental parallelogram of public offices was designed to enclose the Place, but Versailles engulfed the king's resources and the ambitious scheme was whittled down, the area much reduced, and the site and foundations of the new buildings were handed over to the Ville. What the Allies failed to do in 1814 the Commune succeeded in doing in 1871, and the boastful Column of VendÔme, a pitiful plagiarism of Trajan's Column at Rome, was laid in the dust, only however to be raised again by the Third Republic in 1875. We enter the Tuileries Gardens crossing the Terrace of the Feuillants, all that is left of the famous monastery and grounds where Lafayette's club of constitutional reformers met. The beautiful gardens remain much as Le Notre designed them for Louis XIV: every spring the orange trees, some of them dating back it is said to the time of Francis I., are brought forth from the orangery to adorn the central avenue, and the gardens become vocal with many voices of children at their games—French children with their gentle humour and sweet refined play. R. and L. of the central avenue we find the two marble exhedrÆ, erected in 1793 for the elders who presided over the floral celebrations of the month of Germinal by the children of the Republic.

Of the gorgeous palace of the Tuileries at the E. end of the gardens, with its inharmonious but picturesque faÇade stretching across the western limit of the Louvre from the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Marsan, not one stone is left on another. We remember it after its fiery purgation by the Commune in 1871, a gaunt shell blackened and ruined, fitting emblem of the wreck which the enthroned wantonness and corruption of the Second Empire had made of France.

We fare again westward along the gardens and emerge into the Place de la Concorde by the gate adorned with Coysevox' statues, Fame and Mercury on Winged Horses, facing, on the opposite side of the vast area, Guillaume Coustou's Horse Tamers from Marly.

The Place, formerly of Louis XV., with its setting of pavilions adorned with groups of statuary representing the chief cities of France, was created by Gabriel in 1763-1772 on the site of a dreary, marshy waste used as a depot for marble. It was adorned in 1763 with an equestrian statue of Louis XV., by Pigalle, elevated on a pedestal which was decorated at the corners by statues of the cardinal virtues. Mordant couplets, two of which we transcribe, affixed on the base, soon expressed the judgment of the Parisians:—

"Grotesque monument! InfÂme piÉdestal!
Les vertus sont À pied, le vice est À cheval."

"Il est ici comme À Versailles,
Toujours sans coeur et sans entrailles."

After the fall of the monarchy the Place was known as the Place de la RÉvolution, and in 1792, Louis XV. with the other royal simulacra in bronze having been forged into the cannon that thundered against the allied kings of Europe, a plaster statue of Liberty was erected, at whose side the guillotine mowed down king and queen, revolutionist and aristocrat in one bloody harvest of death, ensanguining the very figure of the goddess herself, who looked on with cold and impassive mien. She too fell, and in her place stood a fascis of eighty-three spears, symbolising the unity of the eighty-three departments of France. In 1795 the Directory changed the name to Place de la Concorde, and again in 1799 a seated statue of Liberty holding a globe was set up. In the hollow sphere a pair of wild doves built their nest—a futile augury, for in 1801 Liberty II. was broken in pieces, and the model for a tall granite column erected in its place by Napoleon I. One year passed and this too disappeared. After the Restoration, among the other inanities came, in 1816, a second statue of Louis XV., and the Place resumed its original name. Ten years later an expiatory monument to Louis XVI. was begun, only to be swept away with other Bourbon lumber by the July Revolution of 1830. At length the famous obelisk from Luxor, after many vicissitudes, was elevated in 1836 where it now stands.

The Place as we behold it dates from 1854, when the deep fosses which surrounded it in Louis XV.'s time, and which were responsible for the terrible disaster that attended the wedding festivities of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, were filled up, and other improvements and embellishments effected. The vast space and magnificent vistas enjoyed from this square are among the finest urban spectacles in Europe. To the north, on either side of the broad Rue Royale which opens to the Madeleine, stand Gabriel's fine edifices (now the Ministry of Marine and the Cercle de la Rue Royale), designed to accommodate foreign ambassadors. To the south is the Palais Bourbon, now the Chamber of Deputies; to the east are the gardens of the Tuileries, and to the west is the stately Grande Avenue of the Champs ÉlysÉes rising to the colossal Arch of Triumph crowning the eminence of the Place de l'Étoile. As our eyes travel along the famous avenue, memories of the military glories and of the threefold humiliation of Imperial France crowd upon us. For down its ample way there marched in 1814 and 1815 two hostile and conquering armies to occupy Paris, and in 1871 the immense vault of the Arc de Triomphe, an arch of greater magnitude than any raised to Roman CÆsars, echoed to the shouts of another exultant foreign host, mocking as they strode beneath it at the names of German defeats inscribed on its stones. And on the very Place de la Concorde, German hussars waltzed in pairs to the brazen music of a Uhlan band, while a line of French sentries across the entrance to the Tuileries gardens gazed sullenly on. To this day the mourning statue of Strassbourg with her sable drapery and immortelles, still keeps alive the bitter memory of her loss.

To the south of the Champs ÉlysÉes is the Cours de la Reine, planted by Catherine de' Medici, for two years the most fashionable carriage drive in Paris. This we follow and at No. 16 find the charming Maison FranÇois I. brought from Moret, stone by stone, in 1826. To the north, in the Cours de Gabriel, a fine gilded grille, surmounted with the arms of the Republic, gives access to the ÉlysÉe, the official residence of the President. It was once Madame Pompadour's favourite house in Paris, and the piece of land she appropriated from the public to round off her gardens is still retained in its grounds. In the Avenue Montaigne, leading S.W. from the Rond Point (once the AllÉe des Veuves, a retired walk used by widows during their term of seclusion) Nos. 51 and 53 stand on the site of the notorious Bal Mabille,[236] the temple of the bacchanalia of the gay world of the Second Empire. In 1764 the Champs ÉlysÉes ended at Chaillot, a little to the W. of the Rond Point, an old feudal property which Louis XI. gave to Philippe de Comines in 1450, and which in 1651 sheltered the unhappy widow of Charles I. Here Catherine de' Medici built a chÂteau, but chÂteau and nunnery of the Filles de Sainte Marie, founded by the English queen, disappeared in 1790. S. of the Champs ÉlysÉes on the opposite bank of the Seine rises the gilded dome of the Invalides, and to the S.W. stretches the vast field of Mars, the scene of the Feast of Pikes, and now encumbered with the relics of four World-Fairs.

The Paris we have rapidly surveyed is, mainly, enclosed by the inner boulevards, which correspond to the ramparts of Louis XIII. on the north, demolished by his successor between 1676 and 1707, and the line of the Philip Augustus wall and the Boulevard St. Germain on the south. Beyond this historic area are the outer boulevards which mark the octroi wall of Louis XVI.; further yet are the Thiers wall and fortifications of 1841. Within these wider boundaries is the greater Paris of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of profound concern to the economical and social student, but of minor interest to the ordinary traveller. The vogue of the brilliant and gay inner boulevards of the north bank so familiar to the foreigner in Paris is of comparatively recent growth. In the early nineteenth century the boulevard from the Place de la Madeleine to the Rue Cambon was almost deserted by day and dangerous by night—a vast waste, the proceeds of the confiscated lands of the Filles de la Conception. From the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard St. Martin followed lines of private hÔtels, villas, gardens and convent walls. A great mound which separated the Boulevard St. Martin from the Boulevard du Temple was not cleared away until 1853. From 1760 to 1862 the Boulevard du Temple was a centre of pleasure and amusement, where charming suburban houses and pretty gardens alternated with cheap restaurants, hotels, theatres, cafÉs, marionette shows, circuses, tight-rope dancers, waxworks, and cafÉs-chantants. In 1835, so lurid were the dramas played there, that the boulevard was popularly known as the Boulevard du Crime.

In the early nineteenth century the favourite promenade of Parisian flaneurs was displaced from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, whither the proprietors of cafÉs and restaurants followed. A group of young fellows entered one evening a small cabaret near the ComÉdie Italienne (now OpÉra Comique), found the wine to their taste and the cuisine excellent, praised host and fare to their friends, and the modest cabaret developed into the CafÉ Anglais, most famous of epicurean temples, frequented during the Second Empire by kings and princes, to whom alone the haughty proprietor would devote personal care. The sumptuous cafÉs Tortoni, founded in 1798, and De Paris, opened 1822, have long since passed away. So has the CafÉ Hardy, whose proprietor invented dÉjeuners À la fourchette, although its rival and neighbour, the CafÉ Riche, stills exists. Many others of the celebrated cafÉs of the Boulevards have disappeared or suffered a transformation into the more popular Brasseries and Tavernes of which so many, alternating with the theatres, restaurants and dazzling shops that line the most-frequented evening promenade of Paris, invite the thirsty or leisurely pleasure-seeker of to-day.

Nowhere may the traveller gain a better impression of the essential gaiety and sociability of the Parisian temperament than by sitting outside a cafÉ on the boulevards on a public festival and observing his neighbours and the passers-by: their imperturbable good humour; their easy manners; their simple enjoyments; their quick intelligence, alert gait and expressive gestures; the wonderful skill of the women in dress. The glittering halls of pleasure that appeal to so many visitors, the Bohemian cafÉs of the outer boulevards, the Folies BergÈres, the Moulins Rouges, the Bals Bulliers, with their meretricious and vulgar attractions, frequented by the more facile daughters of Gaul, "whose havoc of virtue is measured by the length of their laundresses' bills," as a genial satirist of their sex has phrased it—all these manifestations of la vie, so unutterably dull and sordid, are of small concern to the cultured traveller. The intimate charm and spirit of Paris will be heard and felt by him not amid the whirlwind of these saturnalia largely maintained by the patronage of English-speaking visitors, but rather in the smaller voices that speak from the inmost Paris which we have essayed to describe. Nor can we bid more fitting adieu to Lutetia than by translating Goethe's words to Eckermann: "Think of the city of Paris where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded."

The Basilica of St. Denis and the Monuments of the Kings, Queens and Princes of France.

No historical pilgrimage to Paris would be complete without a visit to the Sanctuary of its protomartyr and the burial-place of its kings. Taking train from the Gare du Nord, either main line or local train-tramway and being arrived at the railway station of the grimy industrial suburb of St. Denis, we cross the canal and continue along the Rue du Chemin de Fer and the Rue de la RÉpublique, to the Cathedral, architecturally the most important relic of the great age of the early ecclesiastical builders. The west faÇade before us, completed about 1140 by Abbot Suger, is of profound interest, for here we may behold the round Romanesque arch side by side with the Pointed, and the very first grip of the new Gothic on the heavy Norman architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W. portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of form are so admirably blended. The choir was so far advanced in 1143 that mass was sung at the high altar during a heavy storm while the incomplete ribs of the new Gothic vaulting swayed over head. In 1219, however, Suger's structure was nearly destroyed by fire and the upper part of the choir, the nave and transepts were afterwards rebuilt in the pure Gothic of the times, the more active reconstruction being effected between 1231 and 1281. A visit to the monuments is unhappily a somewhat mingled experience. Owing to the inscrutable official regulations in force, the best of the mediÆval tombs are only seen with difficulty and from a distance that renders any appreciation of their beauty impossible.[237] The monuments are mainly those claimed by Lenoir for his Museum at Paris when the decree of 1792 was promulgated, ordering the "effacement of the proud epitaphs and the destruction of the Mausoleums, that recalled the dread memories of kings": they were restored to their original places so far as possible by Viollet le Duc. The head of St. Denis is said to have been found when his shrine was desecrated and appropriated by the revolutionists, and in the cant of the time was brought back to Paris by "a miracle greater and more authentic than that which conveyed it from Montmartre to St. Denis, a miracle of the regeneration of opinion, registered not in the martyrology but in the annals of reason."

Cathedral of St. Denis.
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We are first led past some mediÆval tombs in the N. transept, then by those of the family of St. Louis, which include that of his eldest son, one of the most beautiful creations of thirteenth-century sculpture. Our own Henry III. who attended the funeral is figured among the mourners around the base which are only partially seen from afar. The monument to Louis XII. and his beloved and chÈre Bretonne, Anne, is next shown. It is in Italian style and was wrought by the Justes, a family of Tourraine sculptors. The Royal effigies are twice rendered: once naked in death under a tabernacle and again kneeling in prayer. Before we ascend the steps leading to the raised ambulatory, we are shown across the choir, and R. of the high altar, the fine thirteenth-century tomb of Dagobert, with some quaint reliefs, impossible to see in detail, illustrating his legend (p. 34) and a statue of Queen Nantilde also of the thirteenth century. Nor should we omit to note the two rare and beautiful twelfth-century statues, in the style of the Chartres sculpture, of a king and queen on either side of the portal of the N. transept brought from the church of Notre Dame de Corbeil. To our L. is a masterpiece of the French renaissance, the tomb by Lescot and Pilon of Henry II. and Catherine de' Medici, who are represented twice, as in the monument to Louis XII. We ascend the steps to the ambulatory and below, to our L., are summarily shown some important Valois tombs: Philippe de Valois, John II., Charles V. and others, by contemporary sculptors, such as Andrieu Beaunepveu and Pierre de Chelles—all of great interest to the traveller but utterly impossible of appreciation under the cursory glance permitted by the vergers. A second monument to Henry II. and Catherine, with recumbent and draped figures, is next indicated; Catherine is portrayed in her old age and rigid devotion. As we pace round the ambulatory we are shown some remains of twelfth-century stained glass in the choir chapels (that in the Lady Chapel including the figure of Abbot Suger,) and a modern representation of the Oriflamme to the L. of the high altar. Opposite the sacristy is a curious twelfth-century tomb from St. Germain des PrÉs, with the effigy of Queen Fredegonde outlined in mosaic and copper. We descend to the gloomy old crypt, with the curious Romanesque capitals of its columns, where now lie the remains of the later Bourbons. On returning to the church the tombs of Philip the Bold and Philip the Fair are shown, and to the L. the grandiose monument to Francis I., designed by Delorme, with five kneeling effigies: the king, Claude his queen, and their three children. The fine base reliefs represent the battles of Marignano and Cerisole. Then follows the beautiful urn executed by Pierre Bontemps, to contain the heart of the gran re Francesco. In conclusion, we are permitted to see the tombs of Louis of Orleans and of Valentine of Milan, early fifteenth-century, by a Milanese artist; and Charles of Etampes, an excellent work of the middle of the fourteenth-century. Before returning to Paris we should not omit to walk round the basilica and examine the sculptures of the portal of the N. transept, which have suffered less from iconoclasts and restorers.

Map of Paris.

INDEX

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D

E

F

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H

I

J

L

M

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