Rue Royale

“ Before him was the Rue Royale dipping down to the expanse of the Place de la Concorde, where rose the obelisk and the pair of plashing fountains. And, farther yet, the paling colonnade of the Chamber of Deputies bounded the horizon. It was a vista of sovereign grandeur under that pale sky over which twilight was slowly stealing, and which seemed to broaden the thoroughfares, throw back the edifices, and lend them the quivering, soaring aspect of the palaces of dreamland. ”

“ The rue de la Paix is a wide street, a fine street, yet it wakens none of those gracefully noble thoughts which come to an impressible mind in the middle of the rue Royale, and it certainly lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome. ”

“ Plunged in a restless sleep, my adolescence embodied in one uniform vision the whole of the quarter through which it might be strolling, and I had never dreamed that there could be an eighteenth century building in the Rue Royale, just as I should have been astonished to learn that the Porte-Saint-Martin and the Porte-Saint-Denis, those glories of the age of Louis XIV, were not contemporary with the most recently built tenements in the sordid regions that bore their names. Once only one of Gabriel's palaces made me stop for more than a moment ”

“ The very building they occupied as pupils, in Madame Héger’s pensionnat, had its own ghostly train of splendid associations, marching for ever, in shadowy procession, through and through the ancient rooms, and shaded alleys of the gardens. From the splendour of to-day in the Rue Royale, if you turn aside, near the statue of the General Beliard, you look down four flights of broad stone steps upon the Rue d’Isabelle. The chimneys of the houses in it are below your feet. ”

“ Once on my own feet, though I still felt a little shaky, I was able, by availing myself of Yorke's arm, to climb the steep path leading up the bluff, and soon found myself in the main street of the village, which the habitans called the Rue Royale.
We had come out into a large square or marketplace, [Pg 24] filled with the throng of people I had seen at the landing and many more, so that, as the people surged backward and forward to get a nearer view, the whole open space looked like a great posy-bed of many-hued flowers waving in a summer breeze. ”

“ It was not, all the same, for the sake of this checkered story that I mentioned the Palais de Justice and the Rue Royale. The most interesting fact, to my mind, about the high-street of Tours was that as you walked toward the bridge on the right-hand trottoir you can look up at the house, on the other side of the way, in which Honore de Balzac first saw the light. That violent and complicated genius was a child of the good-humored and succulent Touraine. ”

“ But you turn, instead, into the quiet, narrow way which a lover of Creole antiquity, in fondness for a romantic past, is still prone to call the Rue Royale. You will pass a few restaurants, a few auction-rooms, a few furniture warehouses, and will hardly realize that you have left behind you the activity and clatter of a city of merchants before you find yourself in a region of architectural decrepitude, where an ancient and foreign-seeming domestic life, in second stories, overhangs the ruins of a former commercial prosperity, and upon every thing has settled down a long sabbath of decay. ”

“ Shortly after, cane in hand, General Villivicencio moved with an ireful stride up the banquette of Rue Royale. Just as he passed the red-brick front one of the batten shutters opened the faintest bit, and a certain pair of lovely eyes looked after him, without any of that round simplicity which we have before discovered in them. As he half turned to knock at his son's door he glanced at this very shutter, but it was as tightly closed as though the house were an enchanted palace. ”

“ A commissionaire gave us the address of the bookstore we sought as we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles in the path of the determined," we said, stepping out upon the Rue Royale. Across the way was the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by lofty trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding among the shrubbery, and with all the tortuous paths made into mosaic pavement by the shimmering sunlight. [116] But to Axelle Villette was more real than that June day. ”

“ One beautiful summer night, when all nature seemed hushed in ecstasy, the last blush gone that told of the sun's parting, Monsieur Vignevielle, in the course of one of those contemplative, uncompanioned walks which it was his habit to take, came slowly along the more open portion of the Rue Royale, with a step which was soft without intention, occasionally touching the end of his stout cane gently to the ground and looking upward among his old acquaintances, the stars. ”

“ From the Conciergerie they crossed Pont au Change, and made their way by narrow and devious turnings to the eastern end of Rue Saint-Honoré, and through its length to Rue du Chemin-du-Rempart—now Rue Royale—and so to the scaffold. Short Rue Saint-Florentin was then Rue de l'Orangerie, and was crowded by sightseers hurrying to the place. Those of the victims not already confined in the Conciergerie were sent to the condemned cells there, for the night between sentence and execution. ”

“ Passing—as we so often passed —down the Rue Montpensier and the consecutive Rue Serviez, into the Rue du Lycée, then turning from it to the right for a short distance, till, with the English club at the corner on our left, we turned into the Place Royale, and, with the fine theatre frowning on our backs, quickly made our way between the rows of plane-trees, but just uncurling their leaves, to the terrace whence the whole enormous expanse of mountain can be viewed, our admiration at the magnificent scene unfolded before us never diminished. ”

“ Priscilla is not an extravagant child.”
“Marriage, Adrian dear,” Mrs. Van Twilliger announced in a tone of finality and while he sighed and looked worried—for he was familiar with his daughter’s view on love and marriage—she called her maid.
“Roberts,” she said, “ask Miss Priscilla to come here.”
And a minute later her daughter came into the boudoir, looking charming in her little rounded corsage which spoke eloquently of the Third Empire and the Rue Royale and casually of Fifth Avenue, and her underdress of silver lace frills, with floats and flutes of transparent chiffon. ”

“ But the doctor was more impatient than I, and first taking Black Hawk aside for a minute's low-toned consultation, he made his hasty adieus to our host, and bidding us follow him, he was off. Turning off the Rue Royale into the Rue Bonhomme, he went up the hill a long block to the Rue de l'Église, and then, turning to the left, he called back to us:
"'Tis a straight road from here on, messieurs; shall we race for it? It may mean more than life to a fair lady." ”

“ Nevertheless, the artistic beauties of Paris did not, of course, absorb her attention to the extent of causing her to disregard the attractions and temptations which our capital offers to the curiosity of a young and elegant woman who does not scorn the fascination of dress. Queen Wilhelmina used to go into ecstasies over the beauty and luxury of [Pg 255] our shops; and Queen Emma would have the greatest difficulty in dragging her from the windows of the tradesmen in the Rue Royale and the Rue de la Paix. It nearly always ended with a visit to the shop and the making of numerous purchases. ”

“ The Place Royale, as it now stands, was built in 1604, under Henri IV (vide page 92) , it is now inhabited by persons of small incomes who like to have spacious and lofty apartments without incurring the expence of such; in the more fashionable quarters, the arcades all round the square, the fountains, the trees, and the handsome railing, give it a very fine though curious appearance, and the houses have a most venerable aspect. We will now leave the Place [Pg 237] Royale by the southern gateway, and enter the Rue St. Antoine, and nearly opposite to No. 143, is the Hôtel de Sully ”

“ The Boulevard de Waterloo is scarcely as fashionable as the Bontanique or the Regent, but it certainly possesses another and greater charm, inasmuch as the trees are more abundant, and, being older than those in the other boulevards, their branches meet overhead, forming long avenues of dark foliage which in summer constitute a cool and pleasant promenade.
Hugh Trethowen, dressed with evident care, had strolled from his hotel in the Place Royale one afternoon, three days later, and, walking up the Rue de Namur, had turned into this leafy resort of idlers. ”

“ Richelieu had lived at 20 and 23 of the Place-Royale, now Place des Vosges, and at the mansion known as the Petit Luxembourg, Rue de Vaugirard. The great man determined to erect for himself a more splendid residence, and made choice of the triangular site formed by the Rue des Bons-Enfants, Rue St-Honoré and the city wall of Charles V, whereon to build. ”

“ Leading out of the Place Royale is the Rue de Cérès, in which there is a modernised sixteenth-century house claiming to be the birthplace, on the 29th August 1619, of Jean Baptiste Colbert, son of a Reims wool-merchant, and the famous minister who did so much to consolidate the finances of the State which the royal voluptuary, masquerading at Reims in Roman garb, afterwards made such dreadful havoc of. ”

“ In going to the Bastille with De Retz, I fancied that I saw a man suddenly turn round and follow us; and, on my return, I evidently perceived that I was watched. Whatever was the object, it did not at all suit me that any one should spy my actions; and, therefore, after various hare-like doublings, I turned down the Rue des Minims, got into the Place Royale, and gliding under the dark side of the arcades, made my escape by the other end, and gradually worked my way up to my lodging. My good landlady was somewhat surprised to see me, but I found my apartments prepared, and in order ”

“ On coming from the well-lighted regions of the Rue Saint-Honore, the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, and the Rue de Richelieu, where the crowd is constantly pushing, where glitter the masterpieces of industry, fashion, and art, every man to whom Paris by night is unknown would feel a sense of dread and melancholy, on finding himself in the labyrinth of little streets which lie round that blaze of light reflected even from the sky. ”

“ For if all the houses of the Grand' Rue are not actually fifteenth century—and they are not—they all look of an age; they all belong to the same school of architecture, and the harmony of the whole street is perfect. ”

“ We may join the early-goers among these men, who make their way to another house, not far distant. There 220 are temptations to stop before, and explore within, the seventeenth-century mansions all along Rues Sévigné and du Parc-Royal, but we pass on into Rue Turenne—once Rue Saint-Louis, the longest and widest and foremost in fashion of Marais streets, now merely big and bustling, with little left of its ancient glory—until we come to its No. ”

“ Not all have disappeared for ever of those vast melancholy gardens, those hoary mansions buried in streets where the grass grows, and whose noble but gloomy façades would never cause one to suspect the riches they contain. Many are in the vicinity of the Hôtel des Invalides. Others are in the Rue Vanneau, the Rue Bellechasse, the Rue de Varenne, the Rue Saint-Guillaume, the Rue Bonaparte; some also in the Rue Visconti, which dark narrow lane possesses illustrious souvenirs. ”

“ Not a prettier shoe could be seen on the Boulevards, and scarce one so small. It would have been very strange to see such delicate articles of dress at any hotels of the neighborhood, and stranger still to find them in the humblest window of so dismal a court.
There was a mystery about the matter that perplexed me. Every one knows, who knows any thing about Paris, that that part of the city along the Rue de Seine, between the Rues Jacob and Bussy, and though very reputable in its way, is yet no place for delicate ladies, not even as a promenade, and much less as a residence. ”

“ Paris, in the old parts of it, is, as the French express it, mal percée. The way to remedy this evil is obvious. I will venture to suggest one improvement,—that the Rue St. Honoré be continued, no matter whether in a straight or curved line, through the streets of St. Denis and St. Martin, by piercing these two streets, to the line of streets which lead to the Place de l'Elephant and the Rue du Fauxbourg St. Antoine.
I will also take the liberty of hinting that a populous city can well afford to keep its streets clean: the streets themselves pay this expense ”

“ I knew no one in it, so, unconsciously catching the spirit of the place, I hurried on past the Palais Royal, at which I cast a lingering glance, wondering if it would ever be my good fortune to join the throng of gayly dressed courtiers and enter boldly with them. Turning down the Rue St. Louis, I soon gained the Tuileries. The entrance to that portion of the palace, the Pavilion Marsan, occupied by Madame du Maine was almost deserted, but a lacquey who was lounging in the vestibule took in my name, and, returning in a moment, informed me that I was to enter. ”

“ To the LIBRARY, therefore, at once let us go. The exterior and interior, as to architectural appearance, are rather of a sorry description: heavy; comparatively low, without ornament, and of a dark and dingy tint. Towards the street, it has the melancholy air of a workhouse. But none of the apartments, in which the books are contained, look into this street; so that, consequently, little inconvenience is experienced from the incessant motion and rattling of carts and carriages--the Rue de Richelieu being probably the most frequented in Paris. ”