CHAPTER XXX

THE MADELEINE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD ARRONDISSEMENT VIII. (ÉLYSÉE) The handsome church which forms so distinct a feature of this quarter of the city was begun to be built in the year 1764 to replace an older church, originally a convent chapel, in the district known as Ville l’Evêque because the bishop of Paris had a country house--a villa--there. The Revolution found the new church unfinished, and when Napoléon was in power he decided to complete the structure as a temple of military glory to be dedicated to the Grande Armée. Napoléon fell. The building was restored to the ecclesiastical authorities and its construction as a church, dedicated to Ste. Marie-Madeleine, completed during the years 1828-42. Begun on the model of the Pantheon at Rome, the building was finished on the plan of the Maison Carrée at Nismes. It is 108 mètres in length, 43 m. broad. The fine Corinthian columns we see are forty-eight in number. The great bronze doors are the largest church doors known. Their splendid bas-reliefs are the work of Triquetti (1838). Specimens of every kind of marble found in France have been used in the grand interior. In the wonderful painting “l’Histoire de la France Chrétienne,” we see in the centre Pope Pius VII and Napoléon in the act of making the Concordat, surrounded by King Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Jeanne d’Arc, Henri IV, Sully, Louis XIII, etc. The statues and other decorations are all modern, the work of the most distinguished artists of the nineteenth century. The abbé Deguerry, vicar in 1871, shot by the Communards, is buried there in the chapel Notre-Dame de la Compassion. The _place_ surrounding the church dates from 1815. At No. 7 lived Amédée Thierry (1820-29), Meilhac, and during fifty years Jules Simon who died there in 1896. We see his statue before the house. Behind the church we see the statue of Lavoisier, put to death at the Revolution. The streets opening out of Place de la Madeleine are modern, cut across ancient convent lands, and the old farm lands of les Mathurins. No. 5 Rue Tronchet is said to have been at one time the home of Chopin. Rue de l’Arcade, of yore “Chemin d’Argenteuil”--Argenteuil Road--got its name from an arcade destroyed in the time of Napoléon III, which stretched across the gardens of the convent of Ville l’Evêque, where the houses 15 and 18 now stand. Several of the houses we see along the street date from the eighteenth century, none are of special interest. Rue Pasquier brings us to the Square Louis XVI and the chapelle Expiatoire built on the graveyard of the Madeleine. In that graveyard, made in 1659 upon the convent kitchen garden, were buried many of the most noted men and women of the tragic latter years of the eighteenth century. There were laid the numerous victims of the fire on the Place de la Concorde, at that time Place Louis XVI, caused by fireworks at the festivities after the wedding of Louis XVI. The thousand Swiss Guards who died to defend the Tuileries, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Mme Roland, Charlotte Corday and hundreds more of the _guillotinés_ were buried there. When, in 1794, the churchyard was disaffected and put up for sale, the whole territory was bought by an ardent royalist and under Louis XVIII the chapel we see was built; an altar in the crypt marks the spot where some of the remains of the King and Queen were found. Rue d’Anjou, opened in 1649, formerly Rue des Morfondus, has known many illustrious inhabitants: Madame Récamier, the comtesse de Boigne, etc. La Fayette died at No. 8 (1834). No. 22 dates from 1763. The Mairie was originally the hôtel de Lorraine. Many of the ancient _hôtels_ have been replaced by modern erections. In Rue de Surène, in olden days Suresnes Road, we see at No. 23 the handsome hôtel de Lamarck-Arenberg, dating from 1775, and the petit hôtel du Marquis de l’Aigle of about the same date. Rue de la Ville l’Évêque dates from the seventeenth century, recalling by its name the days when, from the thirteenth century onwards, the bishops of Paris had a rural habitation, a villa and perhaps a farm in this then outlying district. Around the _villeta episcopi_ grew up a little township included within the city bounds in the time of Louis XV. The ancient thirteenth-century church, dedicated like its modern successor to Ste-Marie-Madeleine, stood on the site of No. 11 of the modern boulevard Malesherbes. The Benedictine convent close by, of later foundation, built like the greater number of the most noted Paris convents in the early years of the seventeenth century, was suppressed and razed at the Revolution. Many noted persons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had their residences in the Ville l’Evêque. Guizot died there in 1875. No. 16, l’hôtel du Maréchal Suchet, is now an Institut. No. 20 the _hôtel_ of Prince Arenberg. No. 25-27 are ancient. Rue Boissy d’Anglas, opened in the eighteenth century, bearing for long three different names in the different parts of its course, records in its present name that of a famous conventional (1756-1826). In the well-known provision shop, Corcellet, Avenue de l’Opéra, we may see the portrait of the famous Gourmet, who in pre-Revolution days lived at the fine mansion No. 1, now the Cercle artistique “l’Épatant,” and carried out there his luxurious and ultra-refined taste in the matter of food and the manner of serving it. Horses to whom a _recherché cuisine_ could not be offered, had their oats served to them in silver mangers. Sequestered at the Revolution, it still remained the abode of a gourmet of repute; sold later to the State, it became an Embassy, then a club. No. 12 dates from Louis XV and has been the abode of several families of historic name. Prince de Beauvau lived there in more modern days and baron Hausmann died there. Lulli died at No. 28 (1637). Curious old houses are seen in the Cité Berreyer and Cité du Retiro. Rue Royale, in its earliest days Chemin des Remparts--Rampart Road--for the third Porte St-Honoré in the city wall was at the point where it meets the Rue du Faubourg, became a street--Rue Royale-des-Tuileries--in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1792 it became Rue de la Révolution, then, from 1800 to 1814, Rue de la Concorde. Most of the houses we see there date from the eighteenth century, built by the architect Gabriel, who lived at No. 8. Mme de Staël lived for a time at No. 6. This leads us to Place de la Concorde, built by Gabriel; it was opened in 1763 as Place Louis XV, to become a hundred and thirty years later Place de la Révolution, with in its centre a statue of Liberty replacing the overturned statue of the King. Its name was changed several times during the years that followed, till in 1830 the name given by the Convention was restored for good. In olden days it was surrounded by moats and had on one side a _pont-tournant_; the _place_ was the scene of national fêtes in times past as it is in our own times. It was also not unfrequently the scene of tragedy and death. The guillotine was set up there on January 21, 1793, for the execution of the King. Marie-Antoinette, Charlotte Corday and many other notable victims of the Revolution were beheaded there ... in the end, Robespierre himself. In 1814 the Allies of those days gathered there for the celebration of a grand _Te-Deum_. The statues we see surrounding the vast place personify the great towns of France--that of Strasbourg the most remarkable. The fine “Chevaux de Marly” at the starting-point of the Champs-Elysées are the work of Coustou, Mercury and la Renommée, at the entrance of the Tuileries gardens, of Coysevox. Handsome buildings (eighteenth century) flank the _place_ on its northern side. The Ministère de la Marine was in pre-Revolution days the _garde meuble_ of the Kings of France. Splendid jewels, including the famous diamond known as le Regent, were stolen thence in 1792. What is now the Automobile Club was for many years the official residence of the papal Nuncio. L’hôtel Crillon, built as a private mansion, was for a time the Spanish Embassy; most of the beautiful woodwork for which it was noted has been sold and taken away.