CHAPTER XXX. THE MADELEINE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD
ARRONDISSEMENT VIII. (ELYSEE)
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 Napoleon
was in power he decided to complete the structure as a temple of
military glory to be dedicated to the Grande Armée. Napoleon
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 Napoleon 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 Napoleon 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
guillotines 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 hotel de Lorraine. Many of the ancient hotels have been replaced by modern erections.
In Rue de Surene, in olden days Suresnes Road, we see at No. 23 the
handsome hotel de Lamarck-Arenberg, dating from 1775, and the petit
hotel du Marquis de l'Aigle of about the same date.
Rue de la Ville l'Eveque 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 seven teenth century, was suppressed
and razed at the Revolution. Many noted persons of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries had their residences in the Villel'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 Retire
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 Revolution, 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
Renomée, 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'hotel 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.
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