Three worlds well-known to the Police: prostitutes, thieves, gamblers - The Panorama Moral — The nymphs of the Palais-Royal-A badly-lighted parlour-A paying prefecture - Adventures with pickpockets - Cheating the Customs - Gambling and gamblers
NAPOLEON, running that morning through the daily report from his Prefect of Police, must have realized at once that Dubois was approaching a particularly serious subject. A personal letter accompanying the document and bearing the motto of the Freemasons' Lodge, Amour et Verite, opened in these terms:
'Sire, I have to speak to you about the streets of Paris. Corruption is rife there.... Let me explain: You have probably never heard of the Panorama Moral, an ironical name for the most immoral thing in the world. In the Rue de la Loi, behind a gated entrance, opposite Beauvilliers the caterer, at Mme Saint-Amand's, a — practically public — entertainment has been established . . /
What was the attraction? We can hardly describe it as crudely as the Prefect. Suffice to say that the panorama bore no resemblance to its namesakes of the boulevard, those enormous optical illusions so skilfully depicted by the painter Prevot, representing the wonders of Paris, Naples and Amsterdam. The wonders here consisted of natural beauties of a more intimate character, which those with a taste for scenes from real life came to contemplate on the quiet. They were shown into little parlours furnished in their honour, the walls of which resembled those of Nero's palace in Britan-nicus:
'Even these walls, my Lord, may have eyes.'
They had eyes in the Rue de la Loi, and the hostess made a decent profit out of them. Mme de Saint-Amand herself might have adopted the motto Amour et Verite,
But the Chief of Police was not given to joking in his official reports. He went on to enlarge upon his subject, addressing the Emperor in pathetic terms. c Sire, you may well have a great task to fulfil, that of making us more virtuous; we should then be really worthy of loving you. Nothing, says Plato, is more disagreeable to the gods than the offerings of the impure.'
Probably Napoleon considered that Plato had nothing to do with the Panorama Moral, and that Dubois, on the other hand, was little qualified to play the moralist. More than one unkind story was told of htm and his wife, formerly Mile Rosalie, but he did at least take his duties seriously, and the Emperor believed him to be one of those cunning poachers who can, in case of need, make excellent gamekeepers. Hadn't he every sort of reason for knowing the more or less shady milieux of the capital? The prostitutes because he made a profit out of them, the gambling houses because they paid him a tax, the thieves because he himself was to some extent in that line.
And now that we are clear as to the morals of the man, we may explore the pretty world that formed his clientele.
When a foreigner came to Paris in Napoleon's day, the first things he wanted to see were the reviews on the Carrousel, with the Emperor and his bodyguard, and the prostitutes of the Palais-Royal. In all the records of their travels left us by tourists from across the Channel and the Rhine this double leit-motif is obligatory, and the second often plays a more important part than the first. The most serious-minded people, family men among them, could hardly wait to get out of their carriages before rushing to "this horrible scene of debauch situated in the midst of the great city, which has corrupted and rotted the whole of society/ 1
The fete gdante held there differed little from that of the preceding century. Under the arcades, so Yorke tells us, 'the gaming houses alternate with hovels in which seductive young women follow the avowable profession of selling you garters, thread, lavender water, toothbrushes and sealing-wax.
'Yorke,
You enter, and the most you perceive in the shop is a few packets of toothpowder mingled with balls of thread. These places are to the neighbouring seraglios what cook-shops are to restaurants. In the former you are served in a twinkling of the eye: the dish you have ordered is brought at once to your table/
It was towards the close of day that the Palais-Royal assumed its true character. Then beauties of aH ages and colours — for there were even negresses among them — nymphs whose transparent tunics began very low at the top and ended very high at the bottom, came to seek their fortunes under the arcades. 'They are so shameless that a well-bred woman cannot walk past them without feeling shocked and even offended/ 1
But the masculine element felt otherwise. To be convinced of this we have only to study the painting in which Boilly shows a corner of the arcades, with stout gentlemen in kerseymere trousers surrounded by fair promenaders, who can scarcely be taken for their daughters.
Between these inquisitive creatures and their patrons brief romances sprang up such as the shade of Restif de la Bretonne would not have disowned. The surroundings of the Palais afforded them favourable refuges in abundance, some of them, it is said, hired out by Mme Montansier in the annexes of her theatre. There were others to suit all purses, from the mezzanine floors of the arcades, usually inhabited by the most elegant of these ladies (the imperial bearing of one of them led her to be nicknamed Josephine, which worried the authorities), to the more or less wretched lodgings in which certain matrons sheltered the small fry of the battalion of Cytherea.
These charitable persons, who played an important part in the life of the Palais-Royal, were always ready to help a shopgirl out of work who wanted a new dress, or a little nursemaid tired of leading her charges round the shady walks near by. How could the poor girls withstand the lure of such easy money? But these adventures ended badly at times.
During the summer of 1803, for instance, the frequenters of the gardens, having heard howls coming from a neighbouring house decided to go up to the second floor, where they found a crowd of miserable youngsters on the landing, left there by their nursemaids, who were engaged in less childish occupations in the apartment opposite. The police, called in on the spot, arrested the nursemaids, took charge of the children, summoned their parents and gave them a thorough dressing-down. 'The Commissioner", says Pradhonime, who recounts the anecdote, c had the double satisfaction of saving the children from the dangers that threatened them and giving a lesson at the same time to all mothers, who, in the situation in life to which nature has confined them, should never cease to watch over the upbringing of their children.'
1 Sir John Dean Paul.
Although the trade of gallantry was more flourishing at the Palais-Royal than anywhere else, it was rife in many other quarters of Paris. In the side streets off the boulevards, at the doors of the theatres, in the windings of the Butte des Moulins, in the little streets of the Carrousel, strange loiterers everywhere offered their services to the passers-by. Some dragged them off to the rear of the poulterers' sheds in the market-place of La Vallee, others into the deserted halls of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain, as far as the pavement of the cloisters.
Kotzebue, who had known Paris before the Revolution, thought the prostitutes had increased in number when he returned in. 1804, but they seemed to him rather less brazen, attacking pedestrians only in dark places. In the lamplight 'they merely showed themselves'.
One evening, at the junction of the Rue Vivienne and the Rue des Petits-Champs, he counted no less than fourteen of these ladies. 'Out of the fourteen, only one dared to hang for a moment on my arm and beg me to take her under my pelisse, because she was very cold, which I could well believe; but she let go as soon as I replied curtly, "No, mademoiselle!" All they venture to do in such a case is to retort with a mocking air, "Ah, you are cruel!"'
We need not admire his virtue, for he adds a little farther on that c out of a hundred of these women I hardly saw two that were pretty.' From which we may deduce that the young woman of the pelisse was hideously ugly.