Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2. Edwards Henry Sutherland
than the Jew. Everything in this process makes one suspect that an odious plot had been woven against the Israelite in order to get hold of his fortune.”
It was not the Jews alone, however, who were maltreated in these cruel times. How severely Marguerite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis X., and Blanche and Jeanne de Bourgogne, her sisters-in-law, were punished for their undeniably licentious lives. The Abbey of Maubuisson, near Pontoise, was the theatre of their misdeeds. Their principal accomplices were Philippe and Gauthier d’Aunay, and they were both of them maltreated, skinned alive, and then decapitated and hung by the arms to the gallows. A beadle who had been mixed up with the princesses’ intrigues was condemned to the gibbet, and a monk who had played a still more active part in connection with them was tortured to death. Queen Marguerite, after being imprisoned in the Château Gaillard with her sister-in-law Blanche, was strangled there in 1315; Jeanne was detained in captivity at the Château of Dourdan – that same Jeanne de Bourgogne who, according to the tradition, threw from the Tour de Nesle into the Seine the students of whose discretion she wished to make sure.
But to return to the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, which, though by its site one of the very oldest in Paris, dates, by its structure, only from the eighteenth century. In 1754 Louis XV., finding himself seriously ill, vowed “that if, through the intercession of Sainte-Geneviève, he recovered, he would raise to her honour a new and sumptuous temple.” Restored to health he showed himself ready to keep his word. The architect employed to plan the structure was Soufflot, a man imbued with memories of Rome, where he had passed several years of his life. On the 6th of September, 1764, the first stone of the new church was laid by Louis XV. The construction had advanced far, and the dome had already been commenced, when Soufflot perceived with horror that the massive edifice threatened collapse, ugly cracks showing themselves here and there in the masonry. In despair, full of self-distrust, and harassed by the raillery of his critics, Soufflot died in 1720, without seeing the completion of his work. Rondelet, who took his place, substituted for the graceful but fragile pilasters and columns of his predecessor, heavy masonry supports devoid of beauty, but at least capable of keeping the roof aloft. For the pursuance of his undertaking, however, he required money, and the want of it more than once suspended or retarded his operations. Until 1789 the building went on with exasperating slowness. Then, however, it received an unexpected impetus. Mirabeau had just died. The Constituent Assembly wished to give the great orator a tomb worthy of him, and at the same time to create a monument in which might be brought together the tombs of all those great citizens who had deserved well of their country: to create a Westminster Abbey. This monument already existed; for it was precisely a sort of Panthéon that Soufflot, never suspecting to what purpose his edifice would be turned, had constructed. “In a civic transport,” says M. E. Quinet, “the Constituent Assembly baptised with the name of Panthéon a monument which now for the first time seemed to receive a soul. The church soon became a temple of Renown – a place where the People gather to pronounce their judgment on the dead. This is why that colonnade bears its splendours so high aloft; why the cupola lifts itself up as though it were a crown on the head of Paris. Here occurs the apotheosis, not of a shepherdess – Sainte-Geneviève, that is to say – but of France, of the country, in the form of illustrious men who have gone to breathe the air of another shore. What had been blamed as superfluous luxury for the prophetess of Nanterre was assuredly necessary for the glorification of glorious men. How could the columns be high enough, the capitals proud enough, the wreaths rich enough to celebrate those to whom their terrestrial country owed terrestrial honours? The defects which had been found in the church became so many beauties in the Panthéon.”
The assembly voted the following decree: “Art. I. The new edifice of Sainte-Geneviève shall be used for the reception of the ashes of the great men belonging to the period of French liberty. Art. II. The legislative body shall alone decide to whom this honour is to be awarded. Art. III. Honoré Riquetti Mirabeau is judged worthy to receive such honour. Art. IV. The legislature shall not, in the future, have power to decree this honour to any of its members who may die; that is a question which shall be decided by the succeeding magistracy. Art. V. Any exceptions which may be made in favour of great men who died before the Revolution, shall be decided only by the legislative body. Art. VI. The directory of the department of the Seine shall with promptitude put the edifice of Sainte-Geneviève into a condition to fulfil its new functions, and shall cause to be engraved over the pediment these words, ‘To the great men of a grateful country.’ Art. VII. Until the new church of Sainte-Geneviève is finished the body of Riquetti Mirabeau shall repose beside the ashes of Descartes, in the vault of the old church.”
The remains of Voltaire were transported to the Panthéon soon after those of Mirabeau, and with a pomp no less magnificent. On the 30th of May, 1791, Gossin, deputy for Bar-le-Duc, addressed the Tribune in an enthusiastic outburst thus: “It was on the 30th of May that the honours of sepulture were refused to Voltaire, and it is on the same day that the national gratitude must acquit itself of its duty of reverence towards one who has prepared men for toleration and liberty.” The procession which accompanied the relics of Voltaire on their conveyance to the Panthéon was imposing in the extreme. Representatives of numerous corporations and professions attended to do homage to his memory, and at one point in the cortège eight women dressed in white, and carrying a statue of Liberty which appeared to be pointing to a complete edition of Voltaire’s works, were borne along in a gilded car. Finally came the sarcophagus, drawn by twelve white horses. After halts innumerable the solemn procession drew up before the Panthéon to the flare of torches.
The name of Panthéon, sufficiently heathen in character, had not hitherto been applied to the church of Sainte-Geneviève; but it appeared a few days later in a petition demanding the same honours for Rousseau, and signed by poets, artists, and scholars. The Assembly would willingly have acceded, but such was the resistance of the inhabitants of Montmorency, who eagerly requested that the ashes of this great writer might be left in their midst, that it deferred its decision.
On the 21st of January, 1793, the Convention decreed that the body of Lepelletier, deputy of Saint-Fargeau, who had been assassinated for having voted the death of the king, should be translated to the Panthéon. Then Marat, to whom, after the stab of Charlotte Corday, the Convention had already erected a mausoleum on the Place du Carrousel, was judged worthy of the Panthéon. On the 25th of November, 1793, Marie Joseph Chénier, speaking before the Tribune, and armed with documents, proved the transactions which Mirabeau had had with the Court, contrasting therewith the disinterestedness of Marat, whose remains, as he eloquently maintained, should displace at the Panthéon those of Mirabeau, unworthy of such a resting-place. The Convention adopted his propositions in a decree which was not executed until after the fall of Robespierre, on the 22nd of September, 1794. The official programme of the ceremonies, still extant, is interesting enough. After having fixed the order and the route of the cortège the authors of the programme added: “The procession will stop when it arrives on the Place of the Panthéon; a tipstaff of the Convention will advance towards the door of entrance, and there will be read the decree which excludes from the Panthéon the relics of Mirabeau. Thereupon the body of Mirabeau shall be conveyed out of the precincts of the Panthéon, and handed over to the commissary of police for that section. Then the body of Marat shall be placed in triumph on a platform elevated in the Panthéon… All citizens assisting at this ceremony shall be unarmed.” From the last injunction it is evident that the authorities feared the possibility of a riot. Everything, however, passed off quietly. The body of Mirabeau was laid in a corner of the cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
At length, on the 19th of October, 1794, the turn of Rousseau came. His body, borne by a deputation of the inhabitants of Ermonville, where he had breathed his last, was received at the Tuileries, where the future arch-chancellor pronounced over it an impressive speech. The remains of the philosopher, enclosed in an urn, were then conveyed to the Panthéon, escorted by the crowd and preceded by an orchestra playing various airs from his own “Devin du Village.”
But the political tide was already on the turn. On the 1st of February, 1795, the bust of Marat, placed in several of the theatres and cafés, was hooted and overthrown. His remains, according to the Abbé de Montgaillard in his history of the Revolution, were snatched from the Panthéon, dragged through the streets by young men, and cast amongst the refuse of the Rue Montmartre – “a tabernacle,” says the abbé, “worthy of