THE PALAIS DE LA CITE AND TOURNELLES

Not every one assumes the Paris Palais de Justice to ever have been the home of kings and queens. It has not, however, always been a tilting ground for lawyers and criminals, though, no doubt, when one comes to think of it, it is in that rôle that it has acted its most thrilling episodes.

The Saint Chapelle, the Conciergerie and the great clock of the Tour de l’Horloge mark the Palais de Justice down in the books of most folk as one of the chief Paris “sights,” but it was as a royal residence that it first came into prominence.

This palace, not the conglomerate half-secular, half-religious pile of to-day, but an edifice of some considerable importance, existed from the earliest days of the Frankish invasion, and when occupied by Clotilde, the wife of Clovis, was known as the Palais de la Cite.

Under the last of the kings of the First Race this palace took on really splendid proportions. When Hugues Capet arrived on the throne he abandoned the kingly residence formerly occupied by the Frankish rulers, the Palais des Thermes, and installed his goods and chattels in this Palais de la Cite, which his son Robert had rebuilt under the direction of Enguerrand de Marigny.

Up to the time of Francis I it remained the preferred residence of the French monarchs, regardless of the grander, more luxuriously disposed Louvre, which had come into being.

Philippe Auguste, by a contrary caprice, would transact no kingly business elsewhere, and it was within the walls of this palace that he married Denmark’s daughter. His successors, Saint Louis, Philippe-le-Hardi, and Philippe-le-Bel did their part in enlarging and beautifying the structure, and Saint Louis laid the foundations of that peerless Gothic gem La Saint Chapelle.

From the windows of the Palais de la Cite another Charles assisted at an official massacre, differing little from that of Saint Bartholemew’s, which was conducted from the Louvre.

On the first floor of the Palais de Justice of to-day is the apartment paved in a mosaic of black and white marble, with a painted and gilded wooden vaulting, where Charles V received the Emperor Charles IV and the “Roi des Romains.” The three monarchs, accompanied by their families, here supped together around a great round marble table, a secret supper prolific of an entente cordiale which must have been the forerunner of recent ceremonies of a similar nature in France.

Known as the Salle de Marbre, this great chamber came later to be the Tribunal where the courts sat. It was only after the death of Charles VI, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, that the Palais de la Cite was given over wholly to the disciples of Saint Yves, the judges, advocates and notaries. It became also the definite seat of the Parliament and took the nomenclature of Palais de Justice, though still inhabited at intermittent intervals by French royalties. One such notable occasion was that when Henry V of England was here married to Catherine de France, and when Henry VI of England took up his temporary residence here as king to the French.

In the fourteenth century the precincts of the Palais de la Cite the open courtyard one assumes is meant were invaded by the stalls of small shopkeepers, some of which actually took root in wood and stone and became fixtures to such an extent that the courtyard was known as the Galerie des Merciers.

The great marble chamber after becoming the meeting place of the Tribunal played a part at times dignified and at others banal. An incident is recorded where the clerks and minor court officials danced on the famous marble table and “played farces” with the judicial bench serving as a stage. It was said that, on account of the immoralities which they represented, the authorities were obliged to suppress the performances by law, as they have in recent years the flagrant freedom of the “Quat’z Arts.”

Up to the times of Francis I but few events of importance unrolled themselves within the Palais de la Cite, but in 1618 a violent conflagration broke out leaving only the round towers of the Conciergerie, the tower and the church, and that part of the main structure which housed the great Salle de Marbre, unharmed. Apropos of this, a joyous rhymester of the time made the following quatrain:

“Certes ce fût un triste jeu
Quand a Paris Dame Justice
Pour avoir mange trop d’epice
Se mit le Palais tout en feu.”

Jacques Debrosse was charged with rebuilding the edifice after the fire and refitted first the Grand Salle, to-day the famous Salle des Pas Perdus, crowded with the shuffling coming and going crowd of men and women whose business, or no business at all, brings them to this central point for the dissemination of legal gossip. It is a magnificent apartment, and, to no great extent, differs from what it was before the conflagration.

This Salle consists of two parallel naves separated by a range of arcades and lighted by two great circular openings with four round-headed windows at either end. Its attributes are practically the same as they were in 1622. The structure, take it as a whole, may be said to date only from the seventeenth century, but certain it is that the old Palais de la Cite is incorporated therein, every stone of it, and if its career was humdrum that was the fault of circumstances rather than from any inherent faults of its own.

The Conciergerie, that inelegant, inconsistent architectural mixture of the ancient and modern, considered apart, though it properly enough is usually considered with the Palais de Justice, was formerly the dwelling or guardhouse of the Concierge of the Palais de la Cite. His post was not merely that of the keeper of the gates; he was a personage at court and was as autocratic as his more plebeian contemporaries of to-day, for the Paris concierge, as we, who have for years lived under their despotism well know, is a very dreadful person.

In addition to being the governor of the royal dwelling this concierge was the guardian of the royal prisoners. In 1348 he was further invested with the official title of Bailli and the post was, at times, occupied by the highest and the most noble in the land, among others Philippe de Savoie, the friend of Charles VI, and Juvenal des Oursins, the historian of this prince. The first to combine the two functions, that of Bailli and Concierge, was Jacques Coictier, the doctor of Louis XI.

As a virtual prison the Conciergerie only came to be transformed when Charles V quitted the residence of the Palais de la Cite, and the Conciergerie, as such, only figures on the Tournelles registers under date of 1391.

The fire of the latter part of the eighteenth century destroyed a large part of the building, but enough remained to patch together the most serviceable of Revolutionary prisons, for at one time it held at least twelve hundred poor souls, of whom two hundred and eighty-eight were killed off at one fell blow.

But one woman among them all actually came to her death within the prison walls. This was La Belle Bouquetiere of the Palais Royal who, in an access of jealous furor, horribly mutilated a royal guardsman, and for this met a most cruel death by being transfixed to a post and submitting to a trial of “le fer et le feu.” In just what manner the punishment was applied one can best imagine for himself.

The Revolutionary rôle of the Conciergerie is a thing apart from the purport of this book, hence is not further referred to.

Going back to the time of Francis I, among the famous prisoners of state were Louis de Berquin, the Comte de Mongomere, the regicides Ravaillac and Damiens, the Marechal d’Ancre, Cartouche, Mandrin and others. To-day, as a prison, the Conciergerie still performs its functions acceptably, safeguarding those up for the assizes, and those condemned to death before being sent on their long journey.

The three great flanking towers of the Conciergerie are its chief architectural distinction to-day. That of the left, the largest, is the Tour d’Argent, that of the middle, the Tour Bonchet, and the third, the Tour de Cesar or the Tour de l’Horloge. This last is the only one which has preserved its mediaeval crenulated battlements aloft. The great clock has been commonly considered the largest timepiece of its kind extant, but it is doubtful if this now holds good with railways and insurance companies vying with each other to furnish the hour so legibly that he who runs may read.

Across the Pont au Change, from the Palais de la Cite, by the Louvre and out into the Faubourg Saint Antoine, one comes to the Place des Vosges, the old Place Royale, which occupies almost the same area as was covered by the courtyard of the Palais des Tournelles, so called from its many towers.

All around the Palais des Tournelles was located a series of splendid hotels prives of the nobility. In one of these, the Hotel de Saint Pol, the king once lodged twenty-two visiting princes of the quality of Dauphin (the eldest son of a ruling monarch), their suites and domestics.

Charles V in his time amalgamated with his royal palace three of these magnificent private dwellings, the Hotel du Petit Musc, the Hotel de l’Abbe de Saint Maur and the Hotel du Comte d’Etampes.

The palace proper really faced on what is now the Rue Saint Antoine, opposite the Hotel Saint Pol. Its historic and romantic memories of the sword and cloak period of gallantry were many, but the edifice was demolished by the order of Catherine de Medici.

In the palace Charles VI was confined, during the period of his insanity, by order of the cruel Isabeau de Baviere. The Duke of Bedford, when regent for the minor Henry VI, lodged here, and upon the expulsion of the English it became the residence of Charles VII. Louis XI and Louis XII each inhabited it, and the latter died within its walls.

The Palais des Tournelles will go down to history chiefly because of that celebrated jousting bout held in its courtyard on the marriage day of the two princesses, Elizabeth and Marguerite.

Henri II and the elder princes, his sons, were to ride forth in tournament and break lances, if possible, with all comers. The court, including Catherine de Medici and the princess Elizabeth, wife of Philippe II, the late husband of Mary Tudor, the two Marguerites and other high personages were seated on a dais upholstered in damascened silk and ornamented with many-coloured streamers.

The time was July and the morning. At a signal from Catherine music burst forth and the bouts began.

The king rode forth at the head of his chevaliers, wearing a suit of golden armour, his sword handle set with jewels, and, in spite of the presence of his wife, his lance flying black and white streamers, the colours of Diane de Poitiers, who had lately turned her affections from father unto son.

A herald proclaimed the opening of the combat, and before night the king had broken the lances of the Ducs de Ferrare, de Guise, and de Nemours, and was just about disarming when a masked knight approached from the Faubourg Saint Antoine and challenged the king, who, in spite of being implored to desist by his queen, entered the lists again and was ultimately wounded unto death by the sable knight.

Henri II expired the same night in a bedchamber of the Palais des Tournelles, whither he had been carried, at the age of forty-one, the victim of chance, or the wile of the Sieur de Montgomeri, the ancestor of England’s present Earl of Eglinton. The captain of the Scotch Guards, Montgomeri, was not immediately pursued (he meantime had fled the court), but Catherine de Medici harboured for him a most bitter rancour. Pro and con ran his cause, for he had his partisans, but the Marechal de Matignon finally caught up with him in Normandy and he was tortured and condemned to death for the crime of lese majeste beating the king at his own game.

The widowed queen angrily ordered Diane de Poitiers from the court, and caused the Palais des Tournelles to be razed. This was her only means of showing her contempt for the woman who had played her royal spouse to his death as the Romans played the gladiators of old; and Tournelles, as a palatial monument of its time, blotted out the rest when it disappeared from view.

A forest of spirelets soared aloft from the gables and rooftrees of the Palais des Tournelles. There was no spectacle of the time more imposing than this sky-line silhouette of a Paris palace; not at Chambord nor Chenonceaux was the spectacle more fine. It was like a fairy castle, albeit that it was in the heart of a great city.

To the right of the Palais des Tournelles, beyond the Porte Saint Antoine, was the ink-black, frowning donjon of the Bastille, its severity in strong contrast with the more luxurious palaces of the princes which surrounded it not far away.

The charming Place des Vosges, which occupies the site of Tournelles to-day, is another of Paris’s breathing spaces. Well may it be called a royal garden a park virtually on a diminutive scale since it was originally known as the Place Royale, under Henri IV.

With the advent of the gascón Henri de Bearn this delightful little unspoiled corner of old Paris took on the aspect which it now has. Within this enclosure were the usual garden or park attributes, more or less artificially disposed, but making an ideal open-air playground for the court, shut in from outside surroundings by the outlines of the old palace walls, and not too far away from the royal palace of the Louvre.

The first and greatest historic souvenir of this garden was a Carrousel given in 1612, by Marie de Medici, two years after the tragic death of Henri IV, celebrating the alliance between France and Spain. Under Richelieu the square became known as the Place des Vosges, and, in spite of the law against duelling, which had by this time come into force, it became a celebrated meeting place for duellists like Ivry, the “Grand’ Roue” or the “Vel’ Hiver” of to-day.

It was on May 12, 1627, that the Comte des Chappell killed Bussy d’Amboise on this spot, and left a bloody souvenir, which was only forgotten by the historians when they had to recount another meeting, this time between the Catholic Duc de Guise and the Protestant Coligny d’Andelot.

“Monsieur,” said the duke, “we will now proceed to settle that little account between our illustrious houses,” and with that he drew his sword and killed Coligny, as if he were but stamping the life out of a caterpillar.

Now, with all this bloody memory behind, the Place became one of the most elegant residential quarters of the capital, preferred above all by the nobility, the Rohans, the Alegres and Rotroux.

At N lived Victor Hugo, just before the Coup d’Etat, in the house first made famous as the habitation of the somewhat infamous Marion Delorme.

Among other illustrious names who have given a brilliance to these alleyed walks and corridors are to be recalled Corneille, Conde, Saint Vincent de Paul, Moliere, Turenne, Madame de Longueville, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, Richelieu, D’Ormesson, the Prince de Talmon, the Marquis de Tesse and the Comte de Chabanne.

It is possible that this charming Paris square will remain as ever it has been, for a recent attempt of the owner of one of the houses which borders upon it to change the disposition of the façade brought about a law-suit which compelled him to respect the procedure which obtained in 1605 when it was ordained the Place Royale.

To prove their rights the civic authorities had recourse to the original plans still preserved in the national archives. This is a demonstration of how carefully European nations preserve the written records of their pasts.

The decision finally arrived at by the courts that the Place des Vosges must be kept intact as originally planned gave joy to the hearts of all true Parisians and archeologists alike.