Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. William Walton
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should so frequently expend themselves upon "violent discussions of politique pure." "Is it not true that in what concerns the general progress of urban life, whether it be the question of transportation, or that of gas, or that of electricity, we are behind, and very greatly behind, the condition which has been attained in London, in New York, in Berlin, and even in Geneva and in some of our cities of the provinces?" These reflections appeared to be especially opportune on the evening of the election which was to replace in the Municipal Council those members who were about to leave it for the Chamber of Deputies. "The electors who are interested in the aspect under which the city will present itself to foreigners in 1900, at the moment of the Exposition Universelle, will not allow to escape this opportunity of manifesting their sentiments upon this subject. … All those who labor to augment its prosperity accomplish much more—be it known—for the amelioration of the condition of the work-people than the dreamers of national confiscations and of obligatory collectivism, and their efforts, if they are in the majority, will be otherwise efficacious in retaining the foreigners than by the moving forward some fifteen days of the date of the Grand Prix. Although it is not to be despised, a season of fifteen days' duration is, taking it altogether, but a slight gain. The foreigners flock hither the whole year round, and it is the whole year round that it is necessary to make them find it safe and agreeable to visit here, visits to which they are inclined and from which the entire city derives such great benefits."
This exposition may be considered as an authentic, contemporary document, and, as has been premised, these opinions are coeval and coterminous with an admirable civic self-satisfaction. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to stipulate that in these general observations it is the frame of mind and the mode of speech of what are known everywhere as the upper classes, the more intelligent and refined, which are taken into account—the Parisian workman, day-laborer, and semi-criminal, though they figure very largely in the results of the general elections (worse luck!), do not necessarily appear in the discussion of these questions of high importance. It may be remembered that, at the period of this much-discussed Grand Prix, there was much contradictory testimony as to the existence of a general feeling of hostility toward America and the Americans among the French because of the Spanish war. Many depositions were made on both sides, but there was a general consensus of opinion among the heads of the larger Parisian commercial and manufacturing establishments as to that of their work-people. "Their political views and manner of looking at things have no other horizon than that of the newspaper they are in the habit of reading," said one chief of an important house, "they take no notice of the effect which such crises may have upon their work." "We believe them to be absolutely indifferent," said another; "I can assure you that the workmen take not the slightest interest in this question, and they probably would not understand it if it were put to them," testified a third. "As to the working-class," said a merchant in the Rue de Rivoli, "they occupy themselves with their own affairs, and nothing beyond. Apart from the social question, all they want is to earn as much money as possible, and do the least work possible for it." One of these sons of toil corroborated these statements very frankly. "I can assure you," said he, "that neither my comrades nor myself side with one or the other. I assure you that it matters nothing to us. We have something better to do than to gossip about the war."
Much the same conditions have obtained in the formation and development of this superior intellectual and aristocratic Parisian society as in that of other civilized nations. We are all more or less familiar with the general demonstrations by which the historians demonstrate the development of the wealthy classes, by the aid and support of which alone the letters and the arts arise and flourish. In the earliest stages of society, the struggle for life absorbs all possible energy; a little comfort and security, and consequent leisure, bring in the arts. The half-starved hunting-dog follows the game steadily, stealthily, without a superfluous sign or motion; after the chase, and the subsequent feast and the subsequent luxurious slumber, he awakes to indulge in unpractical gambols and barkings around his master—it is the dance; Art is invented! The three superior social classes, the king, the clergy, and the nobles, which were definitely established in France at the outbreak of the Revolution, were the legitimate development of the feudal system, and had, apparently, legitimately conquered their position. They had been the protectors of the people even before the Carlovingian epoch, and when the people finally arose and overturned them, it was only because they had completely forgotten their high mission through a long course of years.
To Stendhal's observation, that, in the tenth century, a man considered himself lucky if he were not killed, and had a good leathern jacket for winter, Taine adds, and a woman, if she were not violated by a whole band of ruffians. In those truly Dark Ages the peasant accepted quite willingly the hardest feudal obligations as a harbor of refuge from the ills that menaced him on every side. The sixth and seventh centuries of our era are considered to have been among the worst that the world has seen; it was declared that it was not with water, but with His tears, that God moistened the earth out of which He made man. After the fall of the Romans, it was the Church alone that saved human society from "a Mongol anarchy;" in the last years of the Empire, the cities, illy defended by their natural protectors, gave to their bishops, with the title of defensor civitatis, the principal municipal authority. The Church alone retained any influence over the conquering barbarian; before the shaven monk or the mitred abbot, the wolfish and ignorant chief, long-haired, filthy, and half-clad in furs, hesitated, listened to his words in the council, stooped before his altars—"like Saint Lupicin before the Burgonde king Chilpéric, Saint Karileff before the king Childebert." In his moments of repose, after the chase, or the battle, or the feast, the menaces of the prelate began to stir in his guilty soul—aided, perhaps, by the reproaches or the advice of his wife or his concubine; he hesitated to violate the sanctuary lest he should fall dead with a broken neck on the threshold; if he had been carried away by his passions, and committed murder or robbery, he repented and made reparation, sometimes a hundred-fold. The cloister offered a refuge to those who fled aghast from the world and sought meditation and solitude; the abbey was not only an asylum, but a haunt of learning and practical industry, a seat of instruction for the farmer, the workman, the student. "Thus the most evil centuries of the Middle Ages," says Duruy, "were acquainted with virtues of which the finest ages of paganism were ignorant; and thus, thanks to a few souls of the elect, animated by the pure spirit of Christianity, humanity was arrested on the edge of the abyss in which it seemed about to precipitate itself."
Nevertheless, this historian admits that Christianity, which had not modified the manners of Roman society, was itself an element in the dissolution of the Empire, and that the Church itself acquired some of the rudeness of the barbarians with which it came into such intimate contact. "Germans and Franks aspired to the honor of the episcopate, and carried into the basilicas customs and manners which were strange there. The great intellectual movement which had formerly animated religious society slackened, then ceased; the shadows descended upon the Church itself."
After Charlemagne's short-lived empire, the universal dissolution set in again. Against the bands of brigands, four or five hundred strong each, that traversed the country, any defender was welcome, and a second upholder of society arose—the stout warrior, skilled in arms, who gathered retainers around him, secured a hold or a castle, and offered protection in return for service rendered. His title or his lineage mattered but little in the tenth century, his defence was much too welcome for any carping about his arms or his ancestry—he was an ancestor himself. The original source of many noble houses is more than doubtful—Tertulle, the founder of the Plantagenets; Rollo, Duke of Normandy; the ancestors of Robert le Fort; the Capétiens were said to have been descended from a butcher of Paris. "'In these times,'" says Taine, quoting the Spanish chronicle, "'the kings, counts, nobles, and all the knights, in order to be ready at any moment, kept their horses in the hall in which they slept with their wives.'