The Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles XBeale, Sophia
History
The Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles X
Beale, Sophia
Church buildings -- France -- Paris; Paris (France) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
eternity, as you lay up potatoes in your cellar for winter. Here are the
names graven overhead in a catalogue, on the marble, of men famous for
giving counsel to the Emperor (who never took any) in the Senate, and of
men who gained a great deal of celebrity by having their brains knocked
out on the fields of Austerlitz and Marengo. When Marat was deified by
the Convention he was interred here in 1793, and in 1794 he was
disinterred and undeified, and then thrown into his native element, the
common sewer, in the Rue Montmartre--to purify him."[77]
In 1830 another _bouleversement_ took place, and the law of the
Constituante was promulgated once more; but inasmuch as some former
heroes had found their way, through change of opinion, into the sewers,
it was decreed that nobody's ashes should be considered worthy of burial
in the national Walhalla until ten years had elapsed from the time of
death. Thus citizens could be turned into _les grands hommes_ in a
comparatively short period, as compared to the years often required for
beatification or canonization. The second Republic also busied itself
with lowering the cross, and replacing the inscription _Aux grands
hommes, la Patrie reconnaissante_. It was used as an ambulance during
the 1848 troubles, but restored to divine service by that devoted son of
the Church, Louis-Napoléon, soon after his iniquitous massacre of the
people in the streets of the city; and then, having endowed himself with
Imperial honours, he obtained the aid of the archbishop to create a
number of chaplains to serve at the altar of S. Geneviève. The decree of
1851, which took "ultérieurement des mesures pour régler l'exercise
permanent de culte catholique," only lasted nineteen years. When the
city was besieged, the permanency of the services exploded like the
bombs from Mont Valérien, and the crypt became a powder-magazine. The
church was shored up, the windows were bricked, and the interior was
filled with some 30,000 bundles of straw, as a precaution against the
enemy's artillery. But the German invasion left the building as it found
it, and the troubles in the immediate future were the work of the Comité
central. The soldiers were replaced by National Guards, who began their
occupation by industriously sawing off the arms of the crosses upon the
pediment, and at the summit of the dome, and converting the emblems of
Christianity into flagstaffs for the red flag of the Commune. From the
26th March until the 24th May it waved aloft in all its pride; but upon
the latter day it saw the church occupied by the Versaillais, who
entered just in time to save the building from the vengeance of the
Fedérés, who had threatened it with fire. Like all the other churches
and public buildings, the Panthéon suffered far more from the shells of
the Communists than from those of the enemy; and it took some years
before all the repairs were executed, and "_le plus beau gâteau de
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