It is strange to read two such different accounts from the pen of two compatriots. Ought not families to agree among themselves?
Up to the day when Tivoli removed its illuminations, its balloon ascents and parachute descents - triumphs of the Garnerin family-to the slopes of the Rue de Glichy, Frascati had bid fair to become the most fashionable resort, thanks to its specially favourable situation above the boulevard, at the corner of the Rue de la Loi. A dance hall with room for 1,000 couples, gambling arcades in which supper was served, a small garden crowded with rustic bridges, temples and mills in painted wood, with miniature rocks and cascades — here was enough to attract the world of fashion. It responded, it even flocked there to excess on the evening when Juliette Recamier was nearly suffocated by her admirers, 'paying dear for the pleasure of being beautiful/
Not all the like establishments that our city had to show at the beginning of the century enjoyed such a lasting popularity. The Jardin des Capucines, which offered 'shades favourable to the sweet effusions of love, the confidences of friendship and the artifices of coquetry', disappeared from between the Place Vendome and the boulevards when the Rue de la Paix was driven through; and the bals musettes-popular dance halls with accordion bands - with their rustic restaurants, which had opened at Bagatelle and Mousseaux, did not survive the resumption of possession of these two estates by the Imperial Crown.
As^for the Hameau de Chantilly, which made the fame of the Elysee-Bourbon for a few years, it was turned out of there by Murat, the new owner of the Palace. Of its ephemeral fame only one document exists: the poster in which the manager of the place, Velloni, invited the public to come and dine under the thatched roofs of the Hamlet, play at see-saw and shuttlecock, and dance on the Grand Terrace.
'The price of admission', he announced, 'will be one franc per day, of which sixty-five centimes will be taken in refreshments of some kind/
So that admission to the Elysee, round about 1800, actually cost only five sous. It must be admitted that this was dirt cheap.
The attractiveness of a town is much less dependent on the ingenuity of its amusement purveyors than on the permanent spectacle it presents to itself: the animation of its streets, the beauty of its vistas, everything in fact that gives it a personal, lively charm.
Paris possessed more attractions of this kind than any other capital, but they were not to be found in its new quarters, which were to remain encumbered with public works until the end of the Empire.
Dare one confess that the talent of the Sovereign as a builder of towns appears somewhat questionable? Of the two Napoleons, the better urbanist was the one with no genius. The other, the Great Man, did not always see things in the right light. 1 When by good luck his plans had real beauty about them, they were so ambitious that it would take ten years and more to carry them out. 2 For his contemporaries this meant enormous undertakings being embarked in all over Paris, and a gigantic pile of building materials on the public thoroughfares.
2 One day he thought of erecting a church of Saint-Napoleon on the Place du Carrousel; another day, a column to Charlemagne on the Place des Victoires; a cemetery for Generals on the esplanade of the Invalides; a temple of Janus on the Pont-Neuf. Later on he talked of rebuilding Saint-Cloud, repairing Versailles as a Home for old soldiers, moving the Jardin des Plantes to the Pare Monceau, and so on.
2 This was the case with the Madeleine, the Bourse, the Arc de Triomphe. As for the Palace of the King of Rome, he stopped short at the foundations.
For a long time the Carrousel, the Place des Victoires and certain parts of the boulevards were thus turned into depositories of freestone, through which carriages and pedestrians would have the greatest difficulty in passing. For a long time the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue de CastigMone, hardly paved, hardly built, would remain fringed by waste ground, and at the least gust of wind the riverside dwellers would complain of being blinded by the dust.
The state of some localities became so shocking during the last years of the Empire, especially those of the Madeleine, the EtoHe and the slopes of ChaiUot, that foreigners could not conceal their surprise. When Napoleon, showing the fat King of Wurtemberg round the capital, asked him what he thought of it, the other answered, not without irony, C I think it's very fine ... for a town that the architects have taken by assault/
Fortunately the stroller encountered fewer hindrances in the central quarters. These had even become more accessible than before along the banks of the Seine, the scenery of which had been singularly beautified since the beginning of the reign. Four bridges built; 1 3,000 yards of new embankments-all the result of ten years of effort. Works really worthy, in this case, of the Napoleonic idea.
Now the houses no longer stood with their foundations in the mud of the river bank; the lower streets were no longer in danger of being turned into Venetian canals, as they had been during the horrible winter of 1801-02; the small arm of the Monnaie ran less risk of drying up, as it had done a year later. 2 Along the river, in future, traffic would circulate almost without interruption from the Qual d'Orsay to the Quai Montebello, from the Barriere des Bonshommes to the Place de Greve. And what a marvellous journey! Nowhere in the world could anything like it be found.
The Parisians were well aware of this. They never tired of the changing spectacle of their river with its boats, its timber-floats, its barges laden with merchandise, its water-coach coming from Boulogne. A pleasant, convenient observation post had been at their disposal since the spring of 1804: the Pont des Arts, or rather, of the Louvre.
1 The bridge of the Louvre, or the Arts, was opened in 1803, and so was the future Pont-Saint-Louis, between the island of that name and the Cite. The bridge to be known later as of Austerlitz was not opened till 1906, the future Pont d'lena in 1812.
2 In September 1803 the little arm was literally dry. The poor went hunting for old sous in the sand.
Of this light foot-bridge, which was to have a long life, it was at first attempted to make a sort of hanging garden. Boxes of flowers and shrubs, removed at night to a little conservatory in the middle of the bridge, decorated both sides of it. "By this means', said a poet-journalist, e the air is gently cooled by that of the river, and scented with all the perfumes of the heliotrope, the rose, the mignonette, the jasmine and the orange flower. Two lines of charming women complete the embellishment of this truly picturesque passage, which in every way resembles that of a happy life — it is too short/
The beauty of the scenery could not, however, blind one to certain eyesores still disfiguring the Seine: on the banks, too many floating mills and laundry boats. There was also an aspect of the scene that scandalized the moralists. The youth of the First Empire was rightly fond of cold baths, but erred by its ignorance of the use of bathing-drawers, which led strollers on the embankments to fancy they had been transported to the shores of the St. Lawrence or the Potomac, among some savage tribe. 'Yesterday evening*, complains a censor, C I saw a mother and daughter gazing from the top of the Pont des Arts at seven or eight completely naked bathers, who, having climbed on to some coal barges, were flinging themselves, one after another, into the Seine. The mother was making the most ridiculous remarks on the danger these divers were running, with no thought of the danger incurred by her own daughter/