Chapter 9 THE LUXEMBOURG, THE ELYSéE AND THE PALAIS BOURBON

The kings and queens of France were not only rulers of the nation, but they dominated the life of the capital as well. Upon their crowning or entry into Paris it was the custom to command a gift by right from the inhabitants. In 1389 Isabeau de Bavière, of dire memory, got sixty thousand couronnes d'or, and in 1501, and again in 1504, was presented with six thousand and ten thousand livres parisis respectively.

The king levied personal taxes on the inhabitants, who were thus forced to pay for the privilege of having him live among them, those of the professions and craftsmen, who might from time to time serve the royal household, paying the highest fees.

It was during the period of Richelieu's ministry that Paris flowered the most profusely. The constructions of this epoch were so numerous and imposing that Corneille in his comedy "Le Menteur," first produced in 1642, made his characters speak thus:

Dorante: Paris semble à mes yeux un pays de roman

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En superbes palais a changé ses buissons

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Aux superbes dehors du palais Cardinal

Tout la ville entière, avec pomp batie

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In 1701, Louis XIV divided the capital into twenty quartiers, or wards, and in 1726-1728 Louis XV built a new city wall; but it was only with Louis XVI that the faubourgs were at last brought within the city limits. Under the Empire and the Restoration but few changes were made, and with the piercing of the new boulevards under Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann the city came to be of much the same general plan that it is to-day.

In the olden time, between the Palais de la Cité and the Louvre and the Palais des Tournelles, extending even to the walls of Charenton, was a gigantic garden, a carpet embroidered with as varied a colouring as the tapis d'orient of the poets, and cut here and there by alleys which separated it into little checker-board squares.

Within this maze was the celebrated Jardin Dedalus that Louis XI gave to Coictier, and above it rose the observatory of the savant like a signal tower of the Romans. This centered upon what is now the Place des Vosges, formerly the Place Royale.

To-day, how changed is all this "intermediate, indeterminate" region! How changed, indeed! There is nothing vague and indeterminate about it to-day.

The earliest of the little known Paris palaces was the Palais des Thermes. It may be dismissed almost in a word from any consideration of the royal dwellings of Paris, though it was the residence of several Roman emperors and two queens of France. A single apartment of the old palace of the Romans exists to-day-the old Roman Baths-but nothing of the days of the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, who founded the palace in honour of Julian who was proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers in 360 A.D. The Frankish monarchs, if they ever resided here at all, soon transferred their headquarters to the Palais de la Cité, the ruins falling into the possession of the monks of Cluny, who built the present Hotel de Cluny on the site.

Of all the minor French palaces the Luxembourg and the Elysée are the most often heard of in connection with the life of modern times. The first is something a good deal more than an art museum, and the latter more than the residence for the Republican president, though the guide-book makers hardly think it worth while to write down the facts.

Palais du Luxembourg

The Palais du Luxembourg has been called an imitation of the Pitti Palace at Florence, but, beyond the fact that it was an Italian conception of Marie de Médici's, it is difficult to follow the suggestion, as the architect, Jacques Debrosse, one of the ablest of Frenchmen in his line, simply carried out the work on the general plan of the time of its building, the early seventeenth century.

Its three not very extensive pavilions are joined together by a colonnade which encloses a rather foreboding flagged courtyard, a conception, or elaboration, of the original edifice by Chalgrin, in 1804, under the orders of Napoleon. The garden front, though a restoration of Louis Philippe, is more in keeping with the original Médici plan; that, at any rate, is to its credit.

To-day the Luxembourg, the Republican Palais du Sénat, is but an echo of the four centuries of aristocratic existence which upheld the name and fame of its first proprietor, the Duc de Piney-Luxembourg, Prince de Tigry, who built it in the sixteenth century. From 1733 to 1736 the palace underwent important restorations and the last persons to inhabit it before the Revolution were the Duchesse de Brunswick, the Queen Dowager of Spain and the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, to whom it had been given by Letters Patent in 1779.

In 1791 the Convention thought so little of it that they made it a prison, and a few years later it was called again the Palais du Directoire, and, before the end of the century, the Palais du Consulat. This was but a brief glory, as Napoleon transferred his residence in accordance with his augmenting ambitions, to the Tuileries in the following year.

By 1870 the edifice had become known as the Palais du Sénat, then as the headquarters of the Préfecture of the Seine, and finally, as to-day, the Palais du Luxembourg, the seat of the French Senate and the residence of the president of that body.

The principal public apartments are the Library, the "Salle des Séances," the "Buvette"-formerly Napoleon's "Cabinet de Travail," the "Salle des Pas Perdus"-formerly the "Salle du Trone," the Grand Gallery and the apartments of Marie de Médici. The chapel is modern and dates only from 1844.

The Palais du Petit Luxembourg is the official residence of the president of the Senate and dates also from the time of Marie de Médici. The picture gallery is housed in a modern structure to the west of the Petit Luxembourg.

The fa?ade of the Palais du Sénat is not altogether lovely and has little suggestion of the daintiness of the Petit Luxembourg, but, for all that, it presents a certain dignified pose and the edifice serves its purpose well as the legislative hall of the upper house.

The Petit Luxembourg

The gardens of the Luxembourg form another of those favourite Paris playgrounds for nursemaids and their charges. It is claimed that the children are all little Legitimists in the Luxembourg gardens, whereas they are all Red Republicans at the Tuileries. One has no means of knowing this with certainty, but it is assumed; at any rate the Legitimists are a very numerous class in the neighbourhood. Another class of childhood to be seen here is that composed of the offsprings of artists and professors of the Latin quarter, and of the active tradesmen of the neighbourhood. They come here, like the others, for the fresh air, to see a bit of greenery, to hear the band play, to sail their boats in the basins of the great fountain and enjoy themselves generally.

One notes a distinct difference in the dress and manners of the children of the gardens of the Luxembourg from those of the Tuileries and wonders if the breach will be widened further as they grow up.

The Jardin du Luxembourg is all that a great city garden should be, ample, commodious, decorative and as thoroughly typical of Paris as the Pont Neuf. Innumerable, but rather mediocre, statues are posed here and there between the palace and the observatory at the end of the long, tree-lined avenue which stretches off to the south, the only really historical monument of this nature being the celebrated Fontaine de Médicis by Debrosse, the architect of the palace. It was a memorial to Marie de Médici.

The Luxembourg Gardens

While one is in this quarter of Paris he has an opportunity to recall a royal memory now somewhat dimmed by time, but still in evidence if one would delve deep.

As a matter of fact, royalty never had much to do with this hybrid quarter of Paris, though, indeed, its past was romantic enough, bordering as it does upon the real Latin Quarter of the students. Bounded on one side by the immense domain of the Luxembourg, it stretched away indefinitely beyond Vaugiraud, almost to Clamart and Sceaux.

At No. 27 Boulevard Montparnasse is an elaborate seventeenth house-front half hidden by the "modern style" flats of twentieth century Paris. This relic of the grand siècle, with its profusion of sculptured details, was the house bought by Louis XIV about 1672 and given to the "widow Scarron," the "young and beautiful widow of the court," as a recompense for the devotion with which she had educated the three children of the Marquise de Montespan, who, in 1673, were legitimatized as princes of the royal house-the Duc de Maine, the Comte de Vexin and Mademoiselle de Mantes.

Madame Scarron, who became in time Madame de Maintenon, the "vraie reine du roi," died in 1719, and the house passed to La Tour d'Auvergne.

On this same side of the river are the Palais de l'Institut and the Palais Bourbon. The Palais de l'Institut, or Palais Mazarin, is hardly to be considered one of the domestic establishments, the dwellings of kings, with which contemporary Paris was graced. It was but a creation of Mazarin, the minister, on the site of the H?tel de Nesle, and was first known as the Palais des Quatre Nations, where were educated, at the expense of the Cardinal, sixty young men of various nationalities.

The old chapel has since been transformed into the "Salle des Séances" of the Institut de France, the Five French Academies. The black, gloomy fa?ade of the edifice, to-day, in spite of the cupola which gives a certain inspiring dignity, is not lovely, and tradition and sentiment alone give it its present interest, though it is undeniably picturesque.

An inscription used to be on the pedestal of one of the fountains opposite the entrance which read:

"Superbe habitant du desert

En ce lieu, dis moi, que fais tu

-Tu le vois à mon habit vert

Je suis membre de l'institut."

If the inscription were still there it would save the asking of a lot of silly questions by strangers who pass this way for the first time. The Palais de l'Institut is one of the sights of Paris, and its functions are notable, though hardly belonging to the romantic school of past days, for at present poets often make their entrée via Montmartre's "Chat Noir," or are elected simply because some other candidate has been "blackbouled."

Still following along the left bank of the Seine one comes to the Palais Bourbon, the Chambre des Deputés, as it is better known. This edifice, where now sit the French deputies, was built by Girardini for the Dowager Duchesse de Bourbon in 1722, and, though much changed during various successive eras, is still a unique variety of architectural embellishment which is not uncouth, nor yet wholly appealing. Napoleon remade the heavily imposing fa?ade, so familiar to all who cross the river by the Pont de la Concorde, but its grimness is its charm rather than its grace.

The structure cost its first proprietor twenty million or more francs, and since it has become national property the outlay has been constant. Everything considered it makes a poor showing; but its pseudo-Greek fa?ade, were it removed, would certainly be missed in this section of Paris.

The principal apartments are the "Salle des Pas Perdus," the "Salle des Séances," and the "Salle des Conferences"-where, in 1830, the Duc d'Orleans took the oath as king of France.

A recent discovery has been made in the lumber room of this old Palais Bourbon, where deputies howl and shout and make laws as noisily as in any other of the world's parliaments.

This particular "find" was the throne constructed in 1816 for Louis XVIII, with its upholstering of velvet embroidered with the golden fleur-de-lis. The records tell that this throne also served Louis Philippe under the Second Empire, and also was used under the Monarchy of July. It was after the momentous "Quatre Setembre" that it was finally relegated to the garret, but now, as a historical souvenir of the first rank, it has been placed prominently where all who visit the Palais Bourbon may see it.

The history of the Palais de l'Elysée has not been particularly vivid, though for two centuries it has played a most important part in the life of the capital. In later years it has served well enough the presidential dignity of the chief magistrate of the French Republic and is thus classed as a national property. Actually, since its construction, it has changed its name as often as it has changed its occupants. Its first occupant was its builder, Louis d'Auvergne, Comte d'Evreux, who built himself this great town house on a plot of land which had been given him by Louis XV. Apparently the young man had no means of his own for the construction of his luxurious city dwelling, for he refilled his coffers by marriage with the rich daughter of the financier Crozat.

The new-made countess's mother-in-law apparently never had much respect for her son's choice as she forever referred to her as "the little gold ingot."

"The ingot" served to construct the palace, however, though at the death of its builder, soon after, it came into the proprietorship of La Pompadour, who spent the sum of six hundred and fifty thousand livres in aggrandizing it. It became her town house, whither she removed when she grew tired of Versailles or Bagatelle.

History tells of an incident in connection with a fête given at the Palais de l'Elysée by La Pompadour. It was at the epoch of the "bergeries à la Watteau." The blond Pompadour had the idea of introducing into the salons a troop of living, sad-eyed sheep, combed and curled like the poodles in the carriages of the fashionables in the Bois to-day. The quadrupeds, greatly frightened by the flood of light, fell into a panic, and the largest ram among them, seeing his duplicate in a mirror, made for it in the traditional ram-like manner. He raged for an hour or more from one apartment to another, followed by the whole flock, which committed incalculable damage before it could be turned into the gardens. Such was one of the costly caprices of La Pompadour. She had many.

La Pompadour's brother, the Marquis de Menars et de Marigny, continued the work of embellishment of the property up to the day when Louis XV bought it as a dwelling for the ambassadors to his court. Its somewhat restricted park, ornamented with a grotto and a cascade, was at this time one of the curiosities of the capital.

In 1773, the financier Beaujon bought the property from the king and added considerably to it under the direction of the architect Boullée, who also re-designed the gardens. Thanks to Beaujon, the wonderful Gobelins of to-day were hung upon the walls, and many paintings by Rubens, Poissin, Van Loo, Von Ostade, Murillo, Paul Potter and Joseph Vernet were added.

The death of the financier brought the property into the hands of the Duchesse de Bourbon, the sister of Louis Philippe, and the mother of the Duc d' Enghien, who died so tragically at Vincennes a short time after. The duchess renamed her new possession Elysée-Bourbon and there led a very retired and sad life among surroundings so splendid that they merited a more gay existence.

At the Revolution the palace became a national property, and, under the Consulate, was the scene of many popular fêtes, it having been rented to a concern which arranged balls and other entertainments for the pleasure of all who could afford to pay. Its name was now the Hameau de Chantilly, and, considering that the entrance tickets cost but fifteen sous-including a drink-it must have proved a cheap, satisfying and splendid amusement for the people.

This state of affairs lasted until 1805, when Murat bought it and here held his little court up to his departure for Naples, when, in gratefulness for past favours, he gave it to Napoleon. The emperor greatly loved this new abode, which he rechristened the Elysée-Napoleon.

After his defeat at Waterloo Napoleon, limping lamely Parisward, down through the Forests of Compiègne and Villers-Cotterets, sought in the Elysée-Napoleon the repose and rest which he so much needed, the throng meanwhile promenading before the palace windows, shouting at the tops of their voices "Vive l'Empereur!" though, as the world well knew, his power had waned forever; the eagle's wings were broken. The throng still crowded the precincts of the palace, but the emperor fled secretly by the garden gate.

On the return of the Duchesse de Bourbon from Spain the magnificent structure became again the Elysée-Bourbon. The duchess ceded the palace to the Duc and Duchesse de Berry but, at the duke's death, in 1820, his widow abandoned it.

Some time after it was occupied by the Duc de Bordeaux, and, in 1830, it became one of the long list of establishments whose maintenance devolved upon the Civil List, though it remained practically uninhabited all through the reign of Louis Philippe.

In 1848, the National Assembly designated the palace as the official residence for the presidents of the French Republic. Three years after, on the night of the first of December, as the last preparations were being made by Louis Bonaparte for the Coup d' état and the final strangling of the young republic, the residence of the president was transferred to the Tuileries, and the palace of the Faubourg Saint Honoré was again left without a tenant, and served only to give hospitality from time to time to passing notables.

After the burning of the Tuileries, and the coming of the Third Republic, the Elysée Palace again became the presidential residence, and so it remains to-day.

One of the most notable of modern events connected with the Elysée Palace was the diner de ceremonie offered by the president of the Republic and Madame Fallières to Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt in April, 1910. The dinner was served in the "Grand Salle des Fêtes" and the music which accompanied the repast was furnished by the band of the Garde Republicain, beginning with the national anthem of America and finishing with that of France. Never had a private citizen, a foreigner, been so received by the first magistrate of France. The toast of President Fallières was as follows: "Before this repast terminates I wish to profit by the occasion offered to drink the health of Monsieur Theodore Roosevelt, an illustrious man, a great citizen and a good friend of France and the cause of peace. I raise my glass to Madame Roosevelt who may be assured of our respectful and sympathetic homage, and I am very glad to be able to say to our guests that we count ourselves very fortunate in being allowed to meet them in person and show them this mark of respect."

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