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On 26th August 1648, while a Te Deum was being sung at Notre Dame for the victory of Lens, and a grand trophy of seventy-three captured flags was displayed to the people, three of the most stubborn members of the Parlement were arrested. One escaped, but while the venerable Councillor Broussel was being hustled into a carriage, a cry was raised, which stirred the whole of Paris to insurrection.
A bridge over the water which runs from the Lac d'Amour leads through a gateway into the Béguinage, where a circle of small houses whitewashed, with stepped gables, and green woodwork on the windows surrounds a lawn planted with tall trees. There is a view of the spire of Notre Dame beyond the roofs, a favourite subject for the painters who come here in numbers on summer afternoons.
On the 2d of January, 1813, for instance, I remember he went, accompanied only by Marshal Duroc, to visit the basilica of Notre Dame, the works of the archbishopric, those of the central depot of wines, and then, crossing the bridge of Austerlitz, the granaries, the fountain of the elephant, and finally the palace of the Bourse, which his Majesty often said was the handsomest building then existing in Europe.
The Emperor set out, thus dressed, from the Tuileries; and it was not till he had reached Notre- Dame, that he placed over his shoulders the grand coronation mantle. This was of crimson velvet, studded with golden bees, lined with white satin, and fastened with a gold cord and tassel.
"It must be near morning now," he mused; "perhaps the sun is just gilding the towers of Notre Dame; or, may be, a dull, drizzling rain is beating on Paris, sobbing on these mounds above me. Paris! it seems like a dream. Did I ever walk in its gay boulevards in the golden air? Oh, the delight and pain and passion of that sweet human life!"
The commune of Paris instituted a sacrilegious festival in the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame, where an actress was enthroned as "Goddess of Liberty." There were priests and bishops who abjured the Christian faith, and there were others who adhered to it at the peril of their lives. The prisons, which were packed with all classes, were theaters of strange and thrilling scenes.
Was I a brother to you the day we went to Notre Dame de Fourvieres, that day when, at the foot of the altar, we swore to love each other for ever and ever, and you fastened around my neck a holy relic and said, 'Wear this always for my sake, never part from it, and it will bring you good fortune'?"
There, too, beneath the clear blue sky of France, the forest-lands of Versailles and St. Germains stretch in dark luxuriance around and afar. There you may see sleeping on the verge of the landscape the mighty city, crowned with the thousand spires from which, proud above the rest, rises the eyry of Napoleon's eagle, the pinnacle of Notre Dame.
He showed it to Louvois, in order that it might be altered, which, as it was not then finished, was easy to do. Louvois sustained that the window was all right. The King insisted then, and on the morrow also, but Louvois, pigheaded and inflated with his authority, would not yield. The next day the King saw Le Notre in the gallery.
Paris and Notre Dame de l'Atre have rejected me each in their turn like a waif, and here I am condemned to live apart, for I am still too much a man of letters to become a monk, and yet I am already too much a monk to remain among men of letters." He leapt up and was silent, dazzled by jets of electric light which flooded him as the train stopped. He had returned to Paris.
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