Volume 5 — From The Dublin University Magazine. Solutions of Some Parisian Problems.

Cabs And Their Patron.

The admirers of French novels have made acquaintance with some of the French representatives of our own carboys and carmen in the French metropolis. They are aware that their cabs or cabriolets are called Fiacres, and they are naturally desirous to know why they should be called by a name which by a little aspiration sounds unmistakably Irish. This trifling question has set some archaeological antiquaries by the ears. The following appears to be the genuine solution: Sanval, author of "Recherches sur les Antiquités de Paris," (end of seventeenth century.) said that, about forty years previous, a certain Nicholas Sauvage, agent to the proprietor of the Amiens coaches, and owner of a large house in the Rue Saint Martin, the front of which was adorned with the enseigne of Saint Fiacre, kept from forty to fifty horses in his stables, and also cabs for the convenience of the public at rather a dear figure. His establishment became so noted that all coaches for hire came to be called Fiacres.

Menage, in his "Origines de la Langue Françoise," 1684, gave a like account, but described the effigies of St. Fiacre as adorning the front of a house in Rue Saint Antoine.

Both writers appear to have been in error. A satiric Mazarinade dating 1652, and bearing for title the "Royal Supper of Pontoise," etc., has the following lines descriptive of the embarrassment of the worshipful supper-eaters when they wished to return home at a late hour to Paris:

Fiacre may have prospered in his business, and unprincipled rivals have carried out his idea, and adopted the effigies of the saint after whom the poor cabman was called. Thus Sanval may have seen the pictured saint presiding over the useful articles (originally let out at three sous the drive) in Rue Saint Martin, and Menage may have seen a rival, Rue Saint Antoine. It is more likely that the plagiarists appropriated for their vehicles the name of the saint than that of the humble individual, the inventor of the system.

Saint Fiachra was of that noble band of Irish missionaries who spread themselves over the Continent soon after the island was converted. St. Virgil became patron of Saltzburg, St. Killian of Franconia, St. Gall of Switzerland, St. Columbanus of the Vosges and of Bobbio in Italy. St. Fiachra was gladly welcomed by the bishop of Meaux in the seventh century, and devoted his services to the care of an hospital. The cabriolet drivers and (if we remember aright) the market gardeners of Paris honor him as their patron.

Mysteries Of The Rue D'Arbre ?ec. [Illegible]

No visitor will fail to visit the church of St. Germain d'Auxerrois, the parish church, as it may be called, of the inmates of the Tuileries, and within a few stones' throw of that luxurious but not very comfortable residence. The possession of the most finely furnished apartments will not give much pleasure to the dweller who is uncertain whether he may not be ejected from them to-morrow. The triple portal of the church dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, and the low steeple from a much earlier period. Owing to the late demolitions, the exterior of the church can now be examined with more convenience and pleasure than of yore, and many a saunterer will be surprised to see, arranged along the frieze of a lateral chapel projecting into the Rue d'Arbre Sec, various portions of a carp, separated from one another by roses, (architectural, to wit,) here a head, there a body, and then (a rose intervening) a tail. As far as the information got from passers-by extends, he must remain in ignorance of the cause of the strange ornamentation, but he may learn it here at second-hand, our authority being the archaeologist M. Didron. An individual inhabitant of the adjoining street (perhaps a fish-monger) had got permission to add this chapel to the old edifice; and to connect his name (Tronçon, a piece cut away) with the building, he devised this ingenious plan.

Another pious and equally ingenious dweller in the same street, who dealt in poultry, did so well in business that she built a new house at the corner, and in front erected a pious monument. Her name being Anne, she got a sculptor to execute a group for her, namely, St. Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin, teaching her daughter to read. Having thus secured her name from oblivion, she got her occupation transmitted to after-times by having various fowl sculptured in bas-relief on the plinth. Alas! how are casual visitors to know, when admiring the group, that it was executed at the expense of Anne the poulterer of the street of the withered tree; and who is aware of the circumstance from which the street itself got its name in old times?

In days when pilgrimages were in fashion, a certain house of entertainment in that street was much in favor with the really devout, as well as the wanderers who had returned in life from the Holy Land. These had brought home intelligence of a wonderful tree which had annually produced leaves and fruit in the vicinity of Hebron, from the days of Adam to that on which our Lord was crucified. [Footnote 242] On that day it withered, and, according to the assertion of the pilgrims, would remain sapless till the Holy City would be in the possession of a Christian power. Such a legend was calculated to make a deep impression on the customers of the auberge, for which an open-air artist was soon called on to execute the effigies of the famous dry tree for a sign. Afterward the inn communicated its name to the street.

Slang Banished From The Stage.

Some objectionable things, which, when they assume troublesome proportions, are extinguished by public opinion amongst ourselves, are stifled by the strong hand of power in France. In 1859, a warning was given to those theatres in Paris which were suspected of a leaning to Argot, (slang,) that they should for the future accept no piece in which it prevailed. So the poor gamins, who enjoy a play from the Paradis of the theatre, could no more relish the phraseology of their peculiar world and their peculiar philosophy. The higher powers argued thus: "Argot is the ordinary communication between formats of all descriptions, whether they plot against the peace and well-being of society, or bewail their misfortunes at the bagne; ergo, it is not a fit and proper dialect to be spoken before gentlemen and ladies, honest citizens and their wives and children; ergo, it must not be spoken." So the poor gamin of vicious propensities must be content in his hours of relaxation to learn the language of that half of the world to which he does not belong.

Yet many of his pet words are not of a low or disreputable origin. Such is the word Binette, nowhere heard now except among the folk who live by their wits, and yet presenting a noble and sublime image in the days of the Grand Monarque, in fact, no less an object than his flowing and majestic peruke. Binette of the Rue des Petits Champs (street of the little fields) was his majesty's hair-dresser, and a great man would feel his dignity outraged if a hint was given that his wig was not confectioned by the great Binette. Now from Caesar to the wisp that stops a bung-hole, the descent is not greater than between the Binette (the wig, not the man) of the seventeenth and that of the nineteenth century.

In thieves' Latin ardent represents a candle. The thief has accurately preserved the vocabulary of the Hotel Rambouillet, the Holland House of the seventeenth century. One of the Precieuses of that temple of literary elegance, when directing the lackey to snuff the candle, would thus express herself: "Inutile, ostez le superflu de cet ardent!" [Footnote 243]

The gamin is not great on the subject of verbal roots: he uses the words, but does not trouble himself about the quarter from whence they come. He is not aware that his own name is the galopin (tavern-boy) of the middle ages. When he says that such or such article of dress, or food, or what you will, is chouette, (nice,) he is merely retaining the souef (doux) of the old French poetry. His friend is his copin, the compaign (comrade) of old times; the boy he despises is a capon, the name applied to the Jews in the days of Philip the Fair. His rigolo comes to him from the verb rigoler, (to amuse one's self,) so often used in Maistre Pathelin, our Village Lawyer, a farce of the fifteenth century. An umbrella is a rifflard with him, though he is little aware that it gets that name from Mons. Rifflard, the "Paul Pry" of the Petite Ville of Picard.

Edouard Fournier, in his Enigmes des Rues de Paris, relates this characteristic anecdote on the subject of slang. It is the antithesis of O'Connell's victory over the fish-woman.

"A lady of the Halles (Fish Market) had one day a war of words with a meraicher, (market gardener,) and, ye gods! such words as they were! She told off one by one her relentless rosary of abuse. A grave-looking man stood still, and attentively listened to the explosion of the wonderful vocabulary.

"'Not bad, not bad,' said he from time to time. At last came the famous phrase, 'You're no better than a melon,' and it served for finale to the torrent of invectives—for the bouquet to the fire-work of coarse words.

"'Very well, indeed!' cried the grave man. 'And why very well?' said I. 'Because,' said he, 'this woman has just rendered homage to the literature which I profess.' 'How?' 'She has nearly spoken Greek. Yes, indeed, monsieur, the language of Homer. She has just honored this bumpkin with the epithet [Footnote 244] which Thersites, in the second book of the Iliad, line 235, applied to the Grecian kings in council.'"

An Unhealthy Suburb.

With any one's experience of the worst parts of the existing cities of Europe, it would be hard for him to realize the condition of the Quartier Montmartre in former days. The terrible description in Victor Hugo's romance gives only one small phase of it. All the results of extreme poverty, vice, negligence, and thorough laziness united to make a scene of squalor and wretchedness without parallel. There was no thought of removing nuisances, and at this day a section of some heaps of the old strata presents as curious a variety of substances as were ever discovered by the great Abbeville explorer himself. Some future professor, descended from Mr. Chaillu's gorilla, finding various evidences of human workmanship so far below the ordinary platform of the human family in A.D. 2500. will set them down as a deposit of the year 10,000 A.C. Many a police-raid was effected on the inhabitants of the Cour des Miracles, of the Rue Temps-Perdu, of that of the Vide Gousset, (pickpocket,) of the Bout-du-Monde, of the Ville-Neuve; many hundreds seized and sent to the Salpetrière (house of correction) or to La Nouvelle France, (Canada,) and yet the wretched little dens in the filthy, ill-smelling lanes would not fail to get new tenants. "Unfeeling nobles, bad government!" say we. At last in the days of Louis XIII. it was announced that any artisan choosing to settle in the quarter might exercise his trade without let or hindrance, or paying duty or incurring expenses incidental to the carrying on of trades in other portions of the city. Makers of articles of household furniture chiefly availed themselves of the privilege; a better class of inhabitants took possession, and the atmosphere improved.

This (northern) quarter of the city has been, from the earliest times, incommoded by the number of streams arising among the northern and eastern hills adjoining the city, (Paris lying in a natural bowl-like cavity,) and endeavoring to find their way under houses and streets to the Seine. Many efforts have been made from time to time, to provide courses for these troublesome rivulets in channels arched over or open to the day; yet so late as 1855 some houses in the Faubourg Montmartre were filled to the ground floor by subterranean inundations; the inhabitants wondering what could bring water into their kitchens and cellars, and they so much above the level of the Seine. At the present time, under the strong volition of the emperor, an effective attempt is being made at the formation of a large subterranean river and its feeders.

Begging A Thriving Business.

Many visitors to the existing exhibition, while exploring and admiring the Place de Carrousel and its surroundings, will scarcely dream of the space between the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Palais Royal having been once occupied by an hospital for three hundred poor blind men. This at present magnificent quarter was a poor place in the days of St. Louis, and there were the straggling habitations built. Dust-heaps and filth of many kinds distinguished the locality, and in this uninviting spot the three hundred blind endured life from the days of good Saint Louis.

At its first institution, the hospital was a mere night refuge—a retreat where the blind men were sure of a house over their heads and a sort of bed to sleep on after their criailleries all day through the streets. The old charities were seldom complete in themselves. The pious founders did a certain portion of the good work, leaving to the public an opportunity of completing it. Philip the Fair added a dress stamped with the fleur de lys, and the poor blind man thus equipped was on a level with Edie Ochiltree, and so privileged, he "tote jor ne finit de braire," (the whole day he ceased not his braying,) as an old writer coarsely expressed himself.

There was a parallel to this institution in higher quarters, even in literary regions. In the College of Navarre, placed under the highest patronage, the pupils went in the morning through the streets, stretching out the hand, and crying, "Bread, bread for the poor scholars of Madame de Navarre!"

The three hundred were well looked after, all things considered. They had a poor-box in every church of France. They were privileged not only to beg at the doors, but even to exercise their quest in the church itself. A difficulty arose from the circumstance of some churches affording to the "King's Bedesmen" a better harvest than others. All or most would naturally crowd to fleece the richest and most charitable congregations, and dire confusion would ensue. But there were heads equal to the emergency. Once a year an auction was held; a good church was set up, bedesmen bid for its possession; it was knocked down to the best small batch of bidders, and the money they gave then, or as they made it, put into a common fund. The least well off or least speculative got the worst stands, but they received their share of the money arising from the auction.

This exceptional state of things continued till within the second half of last century, when the office of grand almoner became invested in the Cardinal de Rohan. The wretched habitations of the three hundred, their poor church left to ruin, the dust-heaps and pools of evil odor with which they were surrounded, so badly harmonized with the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, the Tuileries, and the Louvre, between which they lay, that it entered the speculative mind of the cardinal that it would be a profitable business to remove the poor inmates to a more cleanly and comfortable domicile, and sell the large plot of land on which the straggling settlement reposed. A solvent company was found, the land disposed of for six millions of livres, and the Hotel of the Black Musketeers, Rue de Charenton, was purchased for the blind men at somewhat less than half a million. This took place in 1779, and since then the churches and the streets have been relieved from the annoyance of the state beggars. They still occupy the Hotel Rue de Charenton, and the curious traveller now passing down the magnificent Rue Rivoli, with palaces on either hand, can scarcely persuade himself that the space round him was, less than a century since, a dedalus of dirty lanes and ill-kept, squalid dwellings.

The Morgue And Its Derivation.

"Whoe'er was at Paris must needs know the Grève" was said and sung three half-centuries ago. Whoever was or was not at Paris must have heard of the Morgue, where the bodies of unknown persons who have met with sudden deaths were exposed for some days, to be recognised by their friends. Perhaps he is not aware of the cause of applying to the temporary abode of the quiet dead a name implying such a different idea. The dismal little building is now not to be found in its old locality, Quai du Marché Neuf, south side of the Cité.

In the great as well as the little Chatelet (prison) of past days there was a room called the little prison, where new-comers were brought "to sit for their portraits," that is, undergo a rigorous inspection as to their features by the lower officials of the place. Readers of Pickwick's incarceration will not require an elaborate description of the process. Now, such a sharp and supercilious scrutiny of the countenance is expressed by the word Morgue. The humorist, D'Assoucy, has left a description of the inspection he underwent on such an occasion, and the terror into which he was thrown by a long sharp knife, wielded by a short, broad, and fat officer, but which was only designed to cut away the ribbons that secured his breeches, and the band of his hat, and thus remove all available instruments of self destruction in the Grand Chatelet.

When this apartment changed its destination, and became a place of exposure for the dead, it continued to retain its name; and, on the destruction of the building, the title went to the sinister-looking edifice built for the same purpose. While the Chatelet remained, the sisters of the hospital convent of St. Catherine, corner of the streets of St. Denis and of the Lombards, bestowed the rites of sepulture on the poor remains not recognized. The other specialty of the good sisters was the relief of poor women in destitute circumstances.

The easily led populace of Paris were long under the impression that a visit to the Morgue, and the consequent withdrawal of a corpse, would cost the friends a hundred and one crowns. So the bereaved families were seldom in a hurry with their visit. In vain did the lieutenant of police in 1736 endeavor to undeceive them.

In 1767, a gentleman, taking the packet boat from Fontainebleau to Paris, quitted the conveyance rather hurriedly, leaving a case behind him. After some little delay it was opened, and much terrified were the assistants at finding what appeared the body of a young man who had been strangled. A commissary of police was called on, accompanied by a surgeon. A procès-verbal was drawn up by them, and the body sent to the Morgue to be identified. Soon after, the negligent or guilty passenger arrived in a hurry at the office of the boat, and asked for the forgotten parcel. His request was followed by his seizure and presentation before the worthy magistrate, who had so laudably done his duty. On being charged with the murder, he burst into a fit of laughter, and covered the poor official with confusion by announcing that the corpse of the strangled man was a mummy which he was just after bringing from Egypt, and had forgotten to carry away with the rest of his luggage. In order to get his property out of the dead-house, he was obliged to make application to the lieutenant of police, and this circumstance soon scattered the news far and near. A few nights after, all Paris was breaking its sides in the theatre laughing at an uproarious farce by Saconnet, displaying in the richest colors the wisdom and skill of the police commissary and the surgeon. Repeated instances were made by these gentlemen to the minister, M. de Sartines, to restrain the representation. On the last time he observed: "Toleration is a virtue which I love to practise to the utmost limits allowable." The piece had a run of forty nights.

A King And Minister Well Matched.

Among the many puzzles met in history and biography is the retaining of his place by Louvois, prime minister to Louis XIV. Every student of history is aware of the great self-esteem which dwelt within the monarch; and it would be natural to suppose that, in order to retain his favor, officer or minister should diligently cultivate obsequiousness, and have no will or opinion but that of his master. It was not so, however, with this minister; and it is a historic fact that the king resolved on a great public undertaking on account of a difference he had with his minister in their guesses at the breadth of the window at which they were standing. Louis said it was such a breadth, Louvois guessed it was an inch or two more or less, and insisted on the exactness of his eye-calculation so persistently that the king called for a ruler to decide the matter, and resolved on a transaction which he knew would be distasteful to his opinionative contradictor.

In Louis' reign, and under the superintendence of Louvois, was raised the noble pile of the Invalides—a building which will be, or ought to be, at least, visited by every one who takes interest in the well being of men who have suffered in the defence or for the glory of their country. Mansard, the architect, who has given his name to French attics (Mansardes?) was much incommoded by the impatience of the minister, whose self appreciation would be content with nothing less than the carving of his bourgeois coat of arms in the neighborhood of the royal achievement wherever it was set up. He gained only mortification by the movement, as Louis had them all effaced. The great man was enraged at this instance of disrespect, and was obliged to content himself with a posthumous revenge. He would be buried at the Invalides, and, through the complaisance of the curé, M. de Mauray, it was done. His body was laid in one of the vaults, but, after all, was not allowed to remain there. The king's parasites gave him information, and the corpse was removed.

Louvois, fearing that something of this kind would happen, was resolved to attach his memory to the Invalides by surer means. In one mansarde he got sculptured a barrel of powder in the act of explosion, signalizing the war he had originated; in another, a plume of ostrich feathers; and, in two others, an owl and a bat, all emblematic of his high dignity, his wisdom, and wakefulness. The masterpiece, however, was a wolf, the upper part only seen, surmounted by a tuft of palm-leaves, holding the OEil de Boeuf between his forepaws and looking intently into the court. Thus was a pun in marble executed: (le) Loup voit (the wolf is looking)—Louvois, both having the same sound, and the great man's name inseparably connected with the Invalides.