Rue de Rivoli

“ For the automobiles were running lickety-split through the darkness without lights and the howls of their horns pierced the night. The few street lights burning a low candle power at the intersections of the great boulevards were hooded and cast but a pale glow on the pavements. And as we rode from our station and passed the Tuileries and the Rue de Rivoli, save for the dim outline of the iron railings of the Gardens ten feet from our cab window, we had no sign to mark our way. ”

“ There the first break in the straight line from the Place de la Concorde occurs. You deflect a little bit to the right, and before you is the Bastille column. The Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine are the main artery of the Fourth Arrondissement. No quarter of Paris affords more variety in walks at nightfall. Starting from the Boulevard de Sébastopol, the streets on the left, at angles and parallel to the main artery, are a labyrinth. ”

“ You cannot say you have seen the streets of Paris until you have walked them at sunrise; every one has seen them at night, but he must watch them change from night to day before he can claim to have seen them at their best. I walked under the arches of the Rue de Rivoli one morning when it was so dark that they looked like the cloisters of some great monastery, and it was impossible to believe that the empty length of the Rue Cambon had but an hour before been blocked by the blazing front of the Olympia, and before that with rows of carriages in front of the two Columbins. ”

“ But at that hour of general home-coming the square was crowded with hundreds of victorias, calèches, coupés, descending from the resplendent glory of the Arc-de-Triomphe toward the purple freshness of the Tuileries, crowding closely upon one another down the inclined surface of the avenue to the great cross-roads where the motionless statues, standing firmly on their pedestals with their wreath-encircled brows, watched them diverge toward Faubourg Saint-Germain, Rue Royale and Rue de Rivoli. ”

“ The fiacre by this time had emerged from the Rue de Rivoli and was rolling smoothly along the fine wooden pavement in front of the historic Conciergerie prison where Marie Antoinette was confined before her execution. Presently they recrossed the Seine, and the cab, dodging the tram car rails, proceeded at a smart pace up the "Boul' Mich'," which is the familiar diminutive bestowed by the students upon that broad avenue which traverses the very heart of their beloved Quartier Latin. ”

“ But Paris is so full of life—murmurs so of the fountain of intellectual youth for ever and ever—that rolling up the rue de Rivoli (much more the Boulevards) suggests a quicker beat of the fancy's heart; and I like it—I like it. The architectural beauty is wonderful. Give me Venice on water, Paris on land—each in its way is a dream city. If one had but the sun there—such a sun as one has in Italy! ”

“ The streets of Papeete, running back at right angles with the beach, seem to have wonderfully grand names, such as the Rue de Rivoli, Rue de Paris, &c. Every street is shaded by an avenue of high trees, whose branches meet and interlace overhead, forming a sort of leafy tunnel, through which the sea-breeze passes refreshingly. There is also what is called the Chinamen's quarter, through which we walked, and which consists of a collection of regular Chinese-built bamboo houses, whose occupants all wore their national costume, pigtail included. ”

“ Englishmen are often specially imprest with Paris as a city of contrasts, because one side of the principal line of hotels frequented by our countrymen looks down upon the broad, luxurious Rue de Rivoli, all modern gaiety and radiance, while the other side of their courtyards open upon the busy working Rue St. ”

“ At no time is there ever much doing in Rudge's main thoroughfare, but the hour at which a stranger, entering it, is least likely to suffer the illusion that he has strayed into Broadway, Piccadilly, or the Rue de Rivoli is at two o'clock on a warm afternoon in July. ”

“ He left them complete liberty, feeling happy at seeing them such good friends, whereby the flat was filled with noisy gaiety. It was a singular flat, this first floor in the Rue de Rivoli. The doors were opening and shutting all day long, the servants talked aloud; through the fresh bright luxury of the place there constantly swept a flight of huge skirts, and processions of tradespeople; and in addition there was all the disorder occasioned by Renée's friends, Maxime's chums, and Saccard's visitors. ”

“ We started, drove down the Rue Castiglione, along the Rue de Rivoli, struck off by the Louvre and over the Pont Neuf. Standing in conversation with Joanna, I had the gutter urchin's confidence of the pavement, the impudence of the street. Seated beside Madame la Comtesse de Verneuil in an elegant victoria I was as dumb as a fish, until her graciousness set me more at my ease. As we passed through the Quartier I trembled lest any of my fellow students should see me. "Asticot avec une femme du monde chic! Il court les bonnes fortunes ce sacré petit diable. ”

“ Any day the Garden of the Tuileries was a microcosm repaying study. There idle Paris sunned itself; through it the promenaders flowed from the Rue de Rivoli gate by the palace to the entrance on the Place de la Concorde, out to the Champs-Elysees and back again; here in the north grove gathered thousands to hear the regimental band in the afternoon; children chased butterflies about the flower-beds and amid the tubs of orange-trees ”

“ Politics are too much attended to in England to allow a due respect to be paid to anything else; and should the French establish a freer government, academicians will not be held in such estimation when rivalled in the public esteem by the orators who hold forth liberty and property in a free parliament.”
Napoleon I. began the Rue de Rivoli, tracing it alongside the Tuileries Gardens and the Palais Royal to the Louvre as far as the Rue de Rohan. ”

“ Built by the founder of the family, Gui de La Trémoille—as it was then spelt—the great fighter who died in 1398, that superb specimen of fourteenth-century architecture, with additions late in the fifteenth and early in the sixteenth centuries, stood at the corner of Rues des Bourdonnais and de Béthisy—two of the oldest streets on the north bank—until the piercing of Rue de Rivoli in 1844 compelled its destruction. Fragments of its fine Gothic carvings are set in the wall of the court of No. 31 Rue des Bourdonnais, a building which occupies a portion of the original site. ”

“ He was the author of a large number of novels dealing with Parisian life, and for many years his rooms in the Rue de Rivoli were the meeting-place of the most famous French literary, artistic and political celebrities. ”

“ The maid is there with more letters than the little brass mail-box will hold. I eagerly open my American mail to find it filled with holiday greetings. So, it can still be Christmas somewhere in the world! I am standing at the window with a Christmas card in my hand, thinking pleasant thoughts of the faraway city called New York where there is still peace on earth, good-will to men, when down the Rue de Rivoli passes a motor-lorry piled high with black crosses. There are fields in France that are planted with black crosses, acres and acres of them. ”

“ No enterprise has more conspicuously helped to assure the position of Paris as the capital of the world's culture than Bonaparte's grouping of the nation's art treasures in a central and magnificent building. In the first year of his Empire Napoleon gave orders for the construction of vast galleries which were to connect the northern pavilion of the Tuileries with the Louvre and form a splendid façade to the new Rue de Rivoli. ”

“ But the good behaviour of the men had a reconciling effect, and their ingenuity delighted him. The quickness with which they raised whole streets of mud-huts, less picturesque than the tents, [190] but (like most unpicturesque things) more comfortable, was like an Arabian Nights' tale. "Each little street holds 144 men, and every corner-door has the number of the street upon it as soon as it is put up; and the postmen can fall to work as easily as in the Rue de Rivoli at Paris." ”

“ With the Seine bounding them on one side, the splendid uniform façade of the Rue Rivoli on the other, the palace stretching across the southern terrace, and the thick woods of the Champs Elysées at the opposite gate, where could one go in the world to give his taste or his eye a more costly or delightful satisfaction? ”

“ The Tuileries are certainly very magnificent, and, to walk across from the Seine to the Rue Rivoli, and look up the endless walks and under the long perfect arches cut through the trees, may give one a very pretty surprise for once—but a winding lane is a better place to enjoy the loveliness of green leaves, and a single New England elm, letting down its slender branches to the ground in the inimitable grace of nature, has, to my eye, more beauty than all the clipped vistas from the king's palace to the Arc de l'Etoile, the Champs Elysées inclusive. ”

“ There would seem to be little that was pleasant or memorable in our perambulations of the main street of a little fishing-town,—the Bailie, with his stump of a pipe for company, always choosing the esplanade, while Christie and I as frequently idled along the opposite pavement, pausing now and then at the little shop-windows and gazing at their mean or meagre displays, illumined by a farthing candle, with a keener zest than I had ever experienced in the Rue Rivoli or the Palais Royal. Our walk rarely extended beyond either extremity of this street ”

“ The work was begun in 1812, the Emperor commanding that the grand apartments were to be prepared for the sovereigns who would come, à lui faire cortège, after the success of the Russian campaign! Of this ambitious plan, however, all that was carried out was a portion of the Rue de [Pg 290] Rivoli façade, from the Pavilion de Marsan to the Pavilion de Rohan, which latter was finished under the Restoration. ”

“ With a most anxious eye I scanned the lists of arrivals at the usual haunts of my countrymen, in the Rue Rivoli, and the Place Vendome, but without success; there were long catalogues of “Milors,” with their “couriers,” &c. but not one name known to me in the number.
I repaired to Galignani’s library, which, though crowded as ever with English, did not present to me one familiar face. From thence I turned into the Palais Royale, and at last, completely jaded by walking, and sick from disappointment, I sat down upon a bench in the Tuilleries Garden. ”

“ He drank brandy again in the morning, and walked to the banker's. His remittance awaited him, and he came out of the Rue de la Paix with thirty gold napoleons in his pocket.
He met all the Americans at breakfast at Trappe's in the Palais Royal, and strolling to the morgue with a part of them, kept on to Vincennes, and spent a wretched day in the forest. At the Place de la Bastille, returning, he got into a cabriolet alone and searched ineffectually along the Rue Rivoli for a companion who would ride with him. "Go through the Rue de Beaux Arts!" ”

“ Never for one instant had there been a knife in the American's hand. Yet there lay the great Luigi Rivoli stabbed to the heart. There was the knife in his back. Dame!
Men's mouths hung open stupidly, as they stared wide-eyed. Gradually it grew clear and obvious. Of course--he had been knocked backwards into that group of his jackals, Malvin, Borges, Hirsch and Bauer, and one of them, who hated him, had been so excited and uplifted by the sight of his defeat that he had turned upon him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hosiers, artificial flower makers, clock-makers, and jewellers, are the principal tradesmen in the Rue de Richelieu; but it has no similarity with Bond-street. The houses are of stone, and generally very lofty--while the Academie de Musique7 and the Bibliothèque du Roi are public buildings of such consequence and capacity (especially the former) that it is absurd to name the street in which they are situated with our own. The Rue Vivienne is comparatively short; but it is pleasing, from the number of flowers, shrubs, and fruits, brought thither from the public markets for sale. ”

“ A quartet of Legionaries swaggered into the café and approached the bar--Messieurs Malvin, Borges, Bauer and Hirsch, henchmen and satellites of Luigi Rivoli--and saluted to Carmelita's greeting of "Buona sera, Signori...."
"Bonsoir, M. Malvin," added she to the dapper, low-bowing Austrian, whose evil face, with its close-set ugly eyes, sharp crooked nose, waxed moustache, and heavy jowl, were familiar to her as those of one of Luigi's more intimate followers. "Where is Signor Luigi Rivoli to-night? He has no guard duty?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ To see her life and work, one must follow her as, leaving the Rue Victor Hugo, up through the steep and twilit streets, she passes, moving as no woman can move who does not walk bare-footed, passing with the silence of a ghost and the grace of Atalanta, giving good-day to every one she meets, friends or strangers, up, up, past the Rue Peysette, the Rue Petit Versailles, till the houses begin to disappear and the road turns from a street to a country road set on either side with balisiers, gigantic ferns, whispering canes ”