Twenty Centuries of ParisSmith, Mabell S. C. (Mabell Shippie Clarke)
History
Twenty Centuries of Paris
Smith, Mabell S. C. (Mabell Shippie Clarke)
Paris (France) -- History
The town was forced, also, to pay her share of the war indemnity and of
the support of the garrisons with which the allies saddled the frontier
and the chief cities. One hundred twenty-five thousand dollars a day was
the sum which Paris expended in hospitality toward her very unwelcome
guests. Needless to say there was not much ready money for improving the
city.
One reverent monument, the Chapelle Expiatoire, the king did begin to
the memory of his brother. The bodies of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
had been buried in the graveyard behind the Madeleine. Their remains
were removed to Saint Denis in 1815, but the small domed chapel, hemmed
in to-day by busy Paris streets, rises in remembrance of them and
sanctifies the one great grave before it in which lie the bodies of two
thousand unrecorded victims of the Revolution, while the barrier on
right and left is formed by the tombs of the seven hundred Swiss guards
slain in defense of their sovereigns when the mob stormed the Tuileries
on the tenth of August, 1792.
The renewed religious feeling introduced by the royalists expressed
itself in the erection of two churches, Saint Vincent-de-Paul and Our
Lady of Loretto, both in the style of Latin basilicas, though Saint
Vincent’s is made majestic by two square towers not unlike those on
Saint Sulpice. The approach to Saint Vincent’s is by two semicircular
inclined planes, divided by a flight of steps--a handsome entrance.
There are but few at all like it in all Paris. More interesting than the
architecture of these churches is their position, on the north and just
within the “exterior boulevards” which mark Louis XVI’s wall. Population
must have increased heavily in this district to call for two churches of
large size and so near together. Many of the fifty-five new streets laid
out in this reign must have been in this section.
An engraving of 1822 shows that the Champs Élysées had become a field
for the performances of mountebanks, jugglers, rope-walkers,
stilt-walkers, and wandering musicians.
Louis died unlamented. He had been fat when first he entered the
Tuileries; his manner of life was not one calculated to reduce adipose
tissue. His subjects joked about his habits by punning upon his name,
calling Louis _Dixhuit_ (Louis XVIII) _Louis des Huitres_ (Oyster
Louis). He was the last king to die in Paris or even in France, and the
last to be buried with his kind in Saint Denis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account