Some of these were known as Variable burners', which meant in plain language that they did not function on moonlit nights. But even when they deigned to be lighted, their rays were so feeble that the streets were as dark as before. This was why, under Napoleon as under Louis XIV, lantern-bearers still waited for the audience coming out of the theatres. And also why Caulaincourt, Master of the Horse, fell carriage and all, one night into a pot-hole in the Place Vendome.
A fine advertisement for the Highways Department and what was then grandiloquently labelled the Service of Illumination!
Every step taken in the Paris of that time shows how primitive its life still was. Going to the Seine, it is found cumbered with floating mills and boat wash-houses. There were embankments in only a few places, and bridges were no less rare. Upstream from the Pont de la Tournelle and downstream from the Pont de la Concorde there was nothing to connect the two banks. The quarter of the Arsenal was completely severed from that of the Jardin des Plantes, and when a citizen of Chaillot wanted to go and court a young lady of Crenelle, he had to hail the ferryman or re-enact in person the adventure of Hero and Leander. This lack of bridges and embankments was one of the first deficiencies to strike Napoleon, and he was determined to remedy it, however long it might take to accomplish.
He was shocked, too, by the medley o£ sheds, booths and red umbrellas lying between the parvis of Saint-Eustache and the fountain of the Innocents. 'The Paris market is unworthy of Paris!" he declared; but unfortunately he did nothing about it, and up to the end of his reign the strange jumble persisted, like a Flemish kermis, in which were sold, almost side by side, meat, fish, vegetables, coal and old hats.
The surrounding quarter was rich in picturesque, if often rather repulsive, sights. You might come upon many of the horrible butchers* shops to which animals were brought alive, to be slaughtered on the spot. Every morning, according to Prudhomme, herds of twenty or thirty oxen came in from the outskirts, driven by one man and two dogs, setting all the neighbourhood in an uproar and completing the congestion in streets already full of carts. This was followed by the bellowing of 'the victims being immolated almost in sight of the passers-by'. So much the worse for sensitive souls! The Paris that lacked clean, hygienic markets had no abattoirs either.
The other essential services of urban life that were nonexistent or still at a rudimentary stage would make a long list. Public transport was conspicuous by its absence, colleges were like prisons, the Stock Exchange was housed in a church, hospitals had prehistoric appointments; the whole of this poor capital seemed really to be installed among ruins.
Most of the public services had also retained the kindly dilatoriness of the past. Foreigners smiled at the leisurely ways of the post. 'I declare*, says Yorke in his travel notes, "that according to the official documents I have on my table, I could sail to Jamaica with a fair wind before a letter reached a post office in the provinces.
There were complaints, too, of high postal rates: a letter to Lyons or Bordeaux cost fourteen sous. Some people, it is true, got out of paying. As stamps had not yet been invented, and it was not the sender but the addressee that was made to pay, cunning people agreed among themselves on a clearly visible mark to be made on the cover- a star, a cross, a blot-which was to signify 'I'm. coming tomorrow', or "Marie has just had a baby'. The letter was delivered, the addressee examined It, learnt what he wanted to know and coolly returned it to the postman, keeping his fourteen sous.
A slow-motion postal service may be a bearable nuisance, but that a body of citizens entrusted with the maintenance of order should set an example of indiscipline was a far more serious affair. And this was precisely the case of the militia, another legacy of the Revolution which the Consulate would gladly have done without.
Day after day, Dubois's reports were full of criticisms of these so-called auxiliaries of the police, who neglected their guard duty, constantly roping in boys under sixteen to take their place, or deserted their sentry-box to spend the night carousing. 'Yesterday/ notes the Prefect, 'towards eleven at night, a patrol from the post at Gravilliers made bold tc enter a tavern known as the Petit-Trou, underneath the Paphos dance hall, and drink there with prostitutes/ When another patrol came up and attempted to put an end to the scandal, a regular battle ensued. And similar scenes became so frequent that many peaceable people were afraid to go out of an evening.
Another no less fantastic body was that of the Fire Brigade. To the 293 men belonging to it, divided into three companies, the decree of the 17th Messidor, year IX, had nominally given a military organization, but as there were no barracks available the firemen were in practice allowed to live at home. They took advantage of this to ply their usual trade, which for some unknown reason was generally that of shoemaker. Seldom attending drill, badly commanded by a certain Ledoux, whose slackness was proverbial, these fine fellows made a show of stirring their stumps when the fire alarm sounded; but what assistance could they render with hardly any material means available?
Their corps possessed only two fire-escapes, one stored at the library in the Rue de la Loi, the other at the house of the market superintendent. Moreover, as we have seen, water was hard to come by in Paris, especially at night. So that in
1808, when a fierce fire broke out in the Faubourg Mont-martre, the hydrants on the main boulevards, which were supplied by the pumping station at Chaillot, could not be used because an employee of Perier Brothers had turned off the mains and taken the key away in his pocket.
That same year the Cornmarket was allowed to burn down with little attempt to save it, and its famous dome collapsed with a resounding crash. But the most serious catastrophe of all took place in 1810, when the ballroom at the Austrian Embassy blazed like a match, and the body of the lovely Princess Schwarzenberg was discovered among the ruins, while some ten other victims died of their injuries.
This time the lack of safety appliances really roused the indignation of Napoleon, who had witnessed the tragedy, and he wrote at once to the Minister of Interior: "On Sunday, at the party given at the Austrian Embassy, there were only six firemen, several of whom were drunk. I have discharged the colonel 1 for not being present and not having organized the service himself/
Pour Ledoux! Unaware of all that was happening, he had spent a peaceful night outside Paris. But since he was so fond of the country, why was he not given the firemen of Nanterre to command instead?
Nearly all the views of Paris at that period have one characteristic in common. Whether you are looking at a canvas by Etienne Bouhot, an illustration by Garbizza or a gouache by Nicolle, you cannot help being struck by the small number of carriages circulating in the streets. Except for the shopping centres, like the Raubourg Saint-Denis, and the main thoroughfares, like the boulevards or the Champs-Elysees, Paris was mainly a world of pedestrians, which accounts for the quiet, provincial appearance of many quarters.
Vehicles were so scarce that sometimes in the course of their walks, people amused themselves by counting the number they saw passing. On his way from the Odeon to the Louvre the day before, so one good man tells us, he only came across eight cabs. And this scarcity of transport, deplored by the youth o£ the Directory, was equally inconvenient when the fine ladies of the Consulate wished to go out at night. 'How many charming women', wrote Norvins at a later date, 'have we had the happiness of accompanying to balls, holding an umbrella over their heads and carrying their shoes in our pockets!'