《BOOK THIRD CHAPTER II.A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. Page 1》
We have just attempted to restore, for the reader's benefit, that admirable church of Notre-Dame de paris.We have briefly pointed out the greater part of the beauties which it possessed in the fifteenth century, and which it lacks to-day; but we have omitted the principal thing,--the view of paris which was then to be obtained from the summits of its towers.
That was, in fact,--when, after having long groped one's way up the dark spiral which perpendicularly pierces the thick wall of the belfries, one emerged, at last abruptly, upon one of the lofty platforms inundated with light and air,--that was, in fact, a fine picture which spread out, on all sides at once, before the eye; a spectacle ~sui generis~, of which those of our readers who have had the good fortune to see a Gothic city entire, complete, homogeneous,--a few of which still remain, Nuremberg in Bavaria and Vittoria in Spain,--can readily form an idea; or even smaller specimens, provided that they are well preserved,--Vitré in Brittany, Nordhausen in prussia.
The paris of three hundred and fifty years ago--the paris of the fifteenth century--was already a gigantic city.We parisians generally make a mistake as to the ground which we think that we have gained, since paris has not increased much over one-third since the time of Louis XI.It has certainly lost more in beauty than it has gained in size.
paris had its birth, as the reader knows, in that old island of the City which has the form of a cradle.The strand of that island was its first boundary wall, the Seine its first moat.paris remained for many centuries in its island state, with two bridges, one on the north, the other on the south; and two bridge heads, which were at the same time its gates and its fortresses,--the Grand-Chatelet on the right bank, the petit-Chatelet on the left.Then, from the date of the kings of the first race, paris, being too cribbed and confined in its island, and unable to return thither, crossed the water.Then, beyond the Grand, beyond the petit-Chatelet, a first circle of walls and towers began to infringe upon the country on the two sides of the Seine.Some vestiges of this ancient enclosure still remained in the last century; to-day, only the memory of it is left, and here and there a tradition, the Baudets or Baudoyer gate, "porte Bagauda".
Little by little, the tide of houses, always thrust from the heart of the city outwards, overflows, devours, wears away, and effaces this wall.philip Augustus makes a new dike for it.He imprisons paris in a circular chain of great towers, both lofty and solid.For the period of more than a century, the houses press upon each other, accumulate, and raise their level in this basin, like water in a reservoir.They begin to deepen; they pile story upon story; they mount upon each other; they gush forth at the top, like all laterally compressed growth, and there is a rivalry as to which shall thrust its head above its neighbors, for the sake of getting a little air.The street glows narrower and deeper, every space is overwhelmed and disappears.The houses finally leap the wall of philip Augustus, and scatter joyfully over the plain, without order, and all askew, like runaways.There they plant themselves squarely, cut themselves gardens from the fields, and take their ease.Beginning with 1367, the city spreads to such an extent into the suburbs, that a new wall becomes necessary, particularly on the right bank; Charles V. builds it.But a city like paris is perpetually growing.It is only such cities that become capitals.They are funnels, into which all the geographical, political, moral, and intellectual water-sheds of a country, all the natural slopes of a people, pour; wells of civilization, so to speak, and also sewers, where commerce, industry, intelligence, population,--all that is sap, all that is life, all that is the soul of a nation, filters and amasses unceasingly, drop by drop, century by century.
So Charles V.'s wall suffered the fate of that of philip Augustus.At the end of the fifteenth century, the Faubourg strides across it, passes beyond it, and runs farther.In the sixteenth, it seems to retreat visibly, and to bury itself deeper and deeper in the old city, so thick had the new city already become outside of it.Thus, beginning with the fifteenth century, where our story finds us, paris had already outgrown the three concentric circles of walls which, from the time of Julian the Apostate, existed, so to speak, in germ in the Grand-Chatelet and the petit-Chatelet.The mighty city had cracked, in succession, its four enclosures of walls, like a child grown too large for his garments of last year.Under Louis XI., this sea of houses was seen to be pierced at intervals by several groups of ruined towers, from the ancient wall, like the summits of hills in an inundation,--like archipelagos of the old paris submerged beneath the new. Since that time paris has undergone yet another transformation, unfortunately for our eyes; but it has passed only one more wall, that of Louis XV., that miserable wall of mud and spittle, worthy of the king who built it, worthy of the poet who sung it,--
~Le mur murant paris rend paris murmurant~.*
*The wall walling paris makes paris murmur.
In the fifteenth century, paris was still divided into three wholly distinct and separate towns, each having its own physiognomy, its own specialty, its manners, customs, privileges, and history: the City, the University, the Town.The City, which occupied the island, was the most ancient, the smallest, and the mother of the other two, crowded in between them like (may we be pardoned the comparison) a little old woman between two large and handsome maidens.The University covered the left bank of the Seine, from the Tournelle to the Tour de Nesle, points which correspond in the paris of to-day, the one to the wine market, the other to the mint.Its wall included a large part of that plain where Julian had built his hot baths.The hill of Sainte-Geneviève was enclosed in it. The culminating point of this sweep of walls was the papal gate, that is to say, near the present site of the pantheon. The Town, which was the largest of the three fragments of paris, held the right bank.Its quay, broken or interrupted in many places, ran along the Seine, from the Tour de Billy to the Tour du Bois; that is to say, from the place where the granary stands to-day, to the present site of the Tuileries. These four points, where the Seine intersected the wall of the capital, the Tournelle and the Tour de Nesle on the right, the Tour de Billy and the Tour du Bois on the left, were called pre-eminently, "the four towers of paris."The Town encroached still more extensively upon the fields than the University. The culminating point of the Town wall (that of Charles V.) was at the gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, whose situation has not been changed.
As we have just said, each of these three great divisions of paris was a town, but too special a town to be complete, a city which could not get along without the other two.Hence three entirely distinct aspects: churches abounded in the City; palaces, in the Town; and colleges, in the University.Neglecting here the originalities, of secondary importance in old paris, and the capricious regulations regarding the public highways, we will say, from a general point of view, taking only masses and the whole group, in this chaos of communal jurisdictions, that the island belonged to the bishop, the right bank to the provost of the merchants, the left bank to the Rector; over all ruled the provost of paris, a royal not a municipal official.The City had Notre-Dame; the Town, the Louvre and the H?tel de Ville; the University, the Sorbonne. The Town had the markets (Halles); the city, the Hospital; the University, the pré-aux-Clercs.Offences committed by the scholars on the left bank were tried in the law courts on the island, and were punished on the right bank at Montfau?on; unless the rector, feeling the university to be strong and the king weak, intervened; for it was the students' privilege to be hanged on their own grounds.
The greater part of these privileges, it may be noted in passing, and there were some even better than the above, had been extorted from the kings by revolts and mutinies.It is the course of things from time immemorial; the king only lets go when the people tear away.There is an old charter which puts the matter naively: apropos of fidelity: ~Civibus fidelitas in reges, quoe tamen aliquoties seditionibus interrypta, multa peperit privileyia~.
In the fifteenth century, the Seine bathed five islands within the walls of paris: Louviers island, where there were then trees, and where there is no longer anything but wood; l'ile aux Vaches, and l'ile Notre-Dame, both deserted, with the exception of one house, both fiefs of the bishop--in the seventeenth century, a single island was formed out of these two, which was built upon and named l'ile Saint-Louis--, lastly the City, and at its point, the little islet of the cow tender, which was afterwards engulfed beneath the platform of the pont-Neuf.The City then had five bridges: three on the right, the pont Notre-Dame, and the pont au Change, of stone, the pont aux Meuniers, of wood; two on the left, the petit pont, of stone, the pont Saint-Michel, of wood; all loaded with houses.
The University had six gates, built by philip Augustus; there were, beginning with la Tournelle, the porte Saint- Victor, the porte Bordelle, the porte papale, the porte Saint- Jacques, the porte Saint-Michel, the porte Saint-Germain. The Town had six gates, built by Charles V.; beginning with the Tour de Billy they were: the porte Saint-Antoine, the porte du Temple, the porte Saint-Martin, the porte Saint-Denis, the porte Montmartre, the porte Saint-Honoré.All these gates were strong, and also handsome, which does not detract from strength.A large, deep moat, with a brisk current during the high water of winter, bathed the base of the wall round paris; the Seine furnished the water.At night, the gates were shut, the river was barred at both ends of the city with huge iron chains, and paris slept tranquilly.
From a bird's-eye view, these three burgs, the City, the Town, and the University, each presented to the eye an inextricable skein of eccentrically tangled streets.Nevertheless, at first sight, one recognized the fact that these three fragments formed but one body.One immediately perceived three long parallel streets, unbroken, undisturbed, traversing, almost in a straight line, all three cities, from one end to the other; from North to South, perpendicularly, to the Seine, which bound them together, mingled them, infused them in each other, poured and transfused the people incessantly, from one to the other, and made one out of the three.The first of these streets ran from the porte Saint-Martin: it was called the Rue Saint-Jacques in the University, Rue de la Juiverie in the City, Rue Saint-Martin in the Town; it crossed the water twice, under the name of the petit pont and the pont Notre- Dame.The second, which was called the Rue de la Harpe on the left bank, Rue de la Barillerié in the island, Rue Saint- Denis on the right bank, pont Saint-Michel on one arm of the Seine, pont au Change on the other, ran from the porte Saint-Michel in the University, to the porte Saint-Denis in the Town.However, under all these names, there were but two streets, parent streets, generating streets,--the two arteries of paris.All the other veins of the triple city either derived their supply from them or emptied into them.
Independently of these two principal streets, piercing paris diametrically in its whole breadth, from side to side, common to the entire capital, the City and the University had also each its own great special street, which ran lengthwise by them, parallel to the Seine, cutting, as it passed, at right angles, the two arterial thoroughfares.Thus, in the Town, one descended in a straight line from the porte Saint-Antoine to the porte Saint-Honoré; in the University from the porte Saint-Victor to the porte Saint-Germain.These two great thoroughfares intersected by the two first, formed the canvas upon which reposed, knotted and crowded together on every hand, the labyrinthine network of the streets of paris.In the incomprehensible plan of these streets, one distinguished likewise, on looking attentively, two clusters of great streets, like magnified sheaves of grain, one in the University, the other in the Town, which spread out gradually from the bridges to the gates.
Some traces of this geometrical plan still exist to-day.
Now, what aspect did this whole present, when, as viewed from the summit of the towers of Notre-Dame, in 1482? That we shall try to describe.
For the spectator who arrived, panting, upon that pinnacle, it was first a dazzling confusing view of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, places, spires, bell towers.Everything struck your eye at once: the carved gable, the pointed roof, the turrets suspended at the angles of the walls; the stone pyramids of the eleventh century, the slate obelisks of the fifteenth; the round, bare tower of the donjon keep; the square and fretted tower of the church; the great and the little, the massive and the aerial.The eye was, for a long time, wholly lost in this labyrinth, where there was nothing which did not possess its originality, its reason, its genius, its beauty,--nothing which did not proceed from art; beginning with the smallest house, with its painted and carved front, with external beams, elliptical door, with projecting stories, to the royal Louvre, which then had a colonnade of towers.But these are the principal masses which were then to be distinguished when the eye began to accustom itself to this tumult of edifices.
In the first place, the City.--"The island of the City," as Sauval says, who, in spite of his confused medley, sometimes has such happy turns of expression,--"the island of the city is made like a great ship, stuck in the mud and run aground in the current, near the centre of the Seine."
We have just explained that, in the fifteenth century, this ship was anchored to the two banks of the river by five bridges.This form of a ship had also struck the heraldic scribes; for it is from that, and not from the siege by the Normans, that the ship which blazons the old shield of paris, comes, according to Favyn and pasquier.For him who understands how to decipher them, armorial bearings are algebra, armorial bearings have a tongue.The whole history of the second half of the Middle Ages is written in armorial bearings,--the first half is in the symbolism of the Roman churches.They are the hieroglyphics of feudalism, succeeding those of theocracy.
Thus the City first presented itself to the eye, with its stern to the east, and its prow to the west.Turning towards the prow, one had before one an innumerable flock of ancient roofs, over which arched broadly the lead-covered apse of the Sainte-Chapelle, like an elephant's haunches loaded with its tower.Only here, this tower was the most audacious, the most open, the most ornamented spire of cabinet-maker's work that ever let the sky peep through its cone of lace.In front of Notre-Dame, and very near at hand, three streets opened into the cathedral square,--a fine square, lined with ancient houses.Over the south side of this place bent the wrinkled and sullen fa?ade of the H?tel Dieu, and its roof, which seemed covered with warts and pustules.Then, on the right and the left, to east and west, within that wall of the City, which was yet so contracted, rose the bell towers of its one and twenty churches, of every date, of every form, of every size, from the low and wormeaten belfry of Saint-Denis du pas (~Carcer Glaueini~) to the slender needles of Saint-pierre aux Boeufs and Saint-Landry.
Behind Notre-Dame, the cloister and its Gothic galleries spread out towards the north; on the south, the half-Roman palace of the bishop; on the east, the desert point of the Terrain.In this throng of houses the eye also distinguished, by the lofty open-work mitres of stone which then crowned the roof itself, even the most elevated windows of the palace, the H?tel given by the city, under Charles VI., to Juvénal des Ursins; a little farther on, the pitch-covered sheds of the palus Market; in still another quarter the new apse of Saint- Germain le Vieux, lengthened in 1458, with a bit of the Rue aux Febves; and then, in places, a square crowded with people; a pillory, erected at the corner of a street; a fine fragment of the pavement of philip Augustus, a magnificent flagging, grooved for the horses' feet, in the middle of the road, and so badly replaced in the sixteenth century by the miserable cobblestones, called the "pavement of the League;" a deserted back courtyard, with one of those diaphanous staircase turrets, such as were erected in the fifteenth century, one of which is still to be seen in the Rue des Bourdonnais. Lastly, at the right of the Sainte-Chapelle, towards the west, the palais de Justice rested its group of towers at the edge of the water.The thickets of the king's gardens, which covered the western point of the City, masked the Island du passeur.As for the water, from the summit of the towers of Notre-Dame one hardly saw it, on either side of the City; the Seine was hidden by bridges, the bridges by houses.
And when the glance passed these bridges, whose roofs were visibly green, rendered mouldy before their time by the vapors from the water, if it was directed to the left, towards the University, the first edifice which struck it was a large, low sheaf of towers, the petit-Chàtelet, whose yawning gate devoured the end of the petit-pont.Then, if your view ran along the bank, from east to west, from the Tournelle to the Tour de Nesle, there was a long cordon of houses, with carved beams, stained-glass windows, each story projecting over that beneath it, an interminable zigzag of bourgeois gables, frequently interrupted by the mouth of a street, and from time to time also by the front or angle of a huge stone mansion, planted at its ease, with courts and gardens, wings and detached buildings, amid this populace of crowded and narrow houses, like a grand gentleman among a throng of rustics. There were five or six of these mansions on the quay, from the house of Lorraine, which shared with the Bernardins the grand enclosure adjoining the Tournelle, to the H?tel de Nesle, whose principal tower ended paris, and whose pointed roofs were in a position, during three months of the year, to encroach, with their black triangles, upon the scarlet disk of the setting sun.
This side of the Seine was, however, the least mercantile of the two.Students furnished more of a crowd and more noise there than artisans, and there was not, properly speaking, any quay, except from the pont Saint-Michel to the Tour de Nesle.The rest of the bank of the Seine was now a naked strand, the same as beyond the Bernardins; again, a throng of houses, standing with their feet in the water, as between the two bridges.
《BOOK THIRD CHAPTER II.A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. Page 2》
There was a great uproar of laundresses; they screamed, and talked, and sang from morning till night along the beach, and beat a great deal of linen there, just as in our day. This is not the least of the gayeties of paris.
The University presented a dense mass to the eye.From one end to the other, it was homogeneous and compact.The thousand roofs, dense, angular, clinging to each other, composed, nearly all, of the same geometrical element, offered, when viewed from above, the aspect of a crystallization of the same substance.
The capricious ravine of streets did not cut this block of houses into too disproportionate slices.The forty-two colleges were scattered about in a fairly equal manner, and there were some everywhere.The amusingly varied crests of these beautiful edifices were the product of the same art as the simple roofs which they overshot, and were, actually, only a multiplication of the square or the cube of the same geometrical figure.Hence they complicated the whole effect, without disturbing it; completed, without overloading it. Geometry is harmony.Some fine mansions here and there made magnificent outlines against the picturesque attics of the left bank.The house of Nevers, the house of Rome, the house of Reims, which have disappeared; the H?tel de Cluny, which still exists, for the consolation of the artist, and whose tower was so stupidly deprived of its crown a few years ago. Close to Cluny, that Roman palace, with fine round arches, were once the hot baths of Julian.There were a great many abbeys, of a beauty more devout, of a grandeur more solemn than the mansions, but not less beautiful, not less grand. Those which first caught the eye were the Bernardins, with their three bell towers; Sainte-Geneviève, whose square tower, which still exists, makes us regret the rest; the Sorbonne, half college, half monastery, of which so admirable a nave survives; the fine quadrilateral cloister of the Mathurins; its neighbor, the cloister of Saint-Benoit, within whose walls they have had time to cobble up a theatre, between the seventh and eighth editions of this book; the Cordeliers, with their three enormous adjacent gables; the Augustins, whose graceful spire formed, after the Tour de Nesle, the second denticulation on this side of paris, starting from the west. The colleges, which are, in fact, the intermediate ring between the cloister and the world, hold the middle position in the monumental series between the H?tels and the abbeys, with a severity full of elegance, sculpture less giddy than the palaces, an architecture less severe than the convents.Unfortunately, hardly anything remains of these monuments, where Gothic art combined with so just a balance, richness and economy. The churches (and they were numerous and splendid in the University, and they were graded there also in all the ages of architecture, from the round arches of Saint-Julian to the pointed arches of Saint-Séverin), the churches dominated the whole; and, like one harmony more in this mass of harmonies, they pierced in quick succession the multiple open work of the gables with slashed spires, with open-work bell towers, with slender pinnacles, whose line was also only a magnificent exaggeration of the acute angle of the roofs.
The ground of the University was hilly; Mount Sainte- Geneviève formed an enormous mound to the south; and it was a sight to see from the summit of Notre-Dame how that throng of narrow and tortuous streets (to-day the Latin Quarter), those bunches of houses which, spread out in every direction from the top of this eminence, precipitated themselves in disorder, and almost perpendicularly down its flanks, nearly to the water's edge, having the air, some of falling, others of clambering up again, and all of holding to one another.A continual flux of a thousand black points which passed each other on the pavements made everything move before the eyes; it was the populace seen thus from aloft and afar.
Lastly, in the intervals of these roofs, of these spires, of these accidents of numberless edifices, which bent and writhed, and jagged in so eccentric a manner the extreme line of the University, one caught a glimpse, here and there, of a great expanse of moss-grown wall, a thick, round tower, a crenellated city gate, shadowing forth the fortress; it was the wall of philip Augustus.Beyond, the fields gleamed green; beyond, fled the roads, along which were scattered a few more suburban houses, which became more infrequent as they became more distant.Some of these faubourgs were important: there were, first, starting from la Tournelle, the Bourg Saint-Victor, with its one arch bridge over the Bièvre, its abbey where one could read the epitaph of Louis le Gros, ~epitaphium Ludovici Grossi~, and its church with an octagonal spire, flanked with four little bell towers of the eleventh century (a similar one can be seen at Etampes; it is not yet destroyed); next, the Bourg Saint- Marceau, which already had three churches and one convent; then, leaving the mill of the Gobelins and its four white walls on the left, there was the Faubourg Saint-Jacques with the beautiful carved cross in its square; the church of Saint- Jacques du Haut-pas, which was then Gothic, pointed, charming; Saint-Magloire, a fine nave of the fourteenth century, which Napoleon turned into a hayloft; Notre-Dame des Champs, where there were Byzantine mosaics; lastly, after having left behind, full in the country, the Monastery des Chartreux, a rich edifice contemporary with the palais de Justice, with its little garden divided into compartments, and the haunted ruins of Vauvert, the eye fell, to the west, upon the three Roman spires of Saint-Germain des prés.The Bourg Saint-Germain, already a large community, formed fifteen or twenty streets in the rear; the pointed bell tower of Saint- Sulpice marked one corner of the town.Close beside it one descried the quadrilateral enclosure of the fair of Saint- Germain, where the market is situated to-day; then the abbot's pillory, a pretty little round tower, well capped with a leaden cone; the brickyard was further on, and the Rue du Four, which led to the common bakehouse, and the mill on its hillock, and the lazar house, a tiny house, isolated and half seen.
But that which attracted the eye most of all, and fixed it for a long time on that point, was the abbey itself.It is certain that this monastery, which had a grand air, both as a church and as a seignory; that abbatial palace, where the bishops of paris counted themselves happy if they could pass the night; that refectory, upon which the architect had bestowed the air, the beauty, and the rose window of a cathedral; that elegant chapel of the Virgin; that monumental dormitory; those vast gardens; that portcullis; that drawbridge; that envelope of battlements which notched to the eye the verdure of the surrounding meadows; those courtyards, where gleamed men at arms, intermingled with golden copes;--the whole grouped and clustered about three lofty spires, with round arches, well planted upon a Gothic apse, made a magnificent figure against the horizon.
When, at length, after having contemplated the University for a long time, you turned towards the right bank, towards the Town, the character of the spectacle was abruptly altered. The Town, in fact much larger than the University, was also less of a unit.At the first glance, one saw that it was divided into many masses, singularly distinct.First, to the eastward, in that part of the town which still takes its name from the marsh where Camulogènes entangled Caesar, was a pile of palaces.The block extended to the very water's edge.Four almost contiguous H?tels, Jouy, Sens, Barbeau, the house of the Queen, mirrored their slate peaks, broken with slender turrets, in the Seine.
These four edifices filled the space from the Rue des Nonaindières, to the abbey of the Celestins, whose spire gracefully relieved their line of gables and battlements.A few miserable, greenish hovels, hanging over the water in front of these sumptuous H?tels, did not prevent one from seeing the fine angles of their fa?ades, their large, square windows with stone mullions, their pointed porches overloaded with statues, the vivid outlines of their walls, always clear cut, and all those charming accidents of architecture, which cause Gothic art to have the air of beginning its combinations afresh with every monument.
Behind these palaces, extended in all directions, now broken, fenced in, battlemented like a citadel, now veiled by great trees like a Carthusian convent, the immense and multiform enclosure of that miraculous H?tel de Saint-pol, where the King of France possessed the means of lodging superbly two and twenty princes of the rank of the dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy, with their domestics and their suites, without counting the great lords, and the emperor when he came to view paris, and the lions, who had their separate H?tel at the royal H?tel.Let us say here that a prince's apartment was then composed of never less than eleven large rooms, from the chamber of state to the oratory, not to mention the galleries, baths, vapor-baths, and other "superfluous places," with which each apartment was provided; not to mention the private gardens for each of the king's guests; not to mention the kitchens, the cellars, the domestic offices, the general refectories of the house, the poultry-yards, where there were twenty-two general laboratories, from the bakehouses to the wine-cellars; games of a thousand sorts, malls, tennis, and riding at the ring; aviaries, fishponds, menageries, stables, barns, libraries, arsenals and foundries.This was what a king's palace, a Louvre, a H?tel de Saint-pol was then.A city within a city.
From the tower where we are placed, the H?tel Saint-pol, almost half hidden by the four great houses of which we have just spoken, was still very considerable and very marvellous to see.One could there distinguish, very well, though cleverly united with the principal building by long galleries, decked with painted glass and slender columns, the three H?tels which Charles V. had amalgamated with his palace: the H?tel du petit-Muce, with the airy balustrade, which formed a graceful border to its roof; the H?tel of the Abbe de Saint-Maur, having the vanity of a stronghold, a great tower, machicolations, loopholes, iron gratings, and over the large Saxon door, the armorial bearings of the abbé, between the two mortises of the drawbridge; the H?tel of the Comte d' Etampes, whose donjon keep, ruined at its summit, was rounded and notched like a cock's comb; here and there, three or four ancient oaks, forming a tuft together like enormous cauliflowers; gambols of swans, in the clear water of the fishponds, all in folds of light and shade; many courtyards of which one beheld picturesque bits; the H?tel of the Lions, with its low, pointed arches on short, Saxon pillars, its iron gratings and its perpetual roar; shooting up above the whole, the scale- ornamented spire of the Ave-Maria; on the left, the house of the provost of paris, flanked by four small towers, delicately grooved, in the middle; at the extremity, the H?tel Saint-pol, properly speaking, with its multiplied fa?ades, its successive enrichments from the time of Charles V., the hybrid excrescences, with which the fancy of the architects had loaded it during the last two centuries, with all the apses of its chapels, all the gables of its galleries, a thousand weathercocks for the four winds, and its two lofty contiguous towers, whose conical roof, surrounded by battlements at its base, looked like those pointed caps which have their edges turned up.
Continuing to mount the stories of this amphitheatre of palaces spread out afar upon the ground, after crossing a deep ravine hollowed out of the roofs in the Town, which marked the passage of the Rue Saint-Antoine, the eye reached the house of Angoulême, a vast construction of many epochs, where there were perfectly new and very white parts, which melted no better into the whole than a red patch on a blue doublet.Nevertheless, the remarkably pointed and lofty roof of the modern palace, bristling with carved eaves, covered with sheets of lead, where coiled a thousand fantastic arabesques of sparkling incrustations of gilded bronze, that roof, so curiously damascened, darted upwards gracefully from the midst of the brown ruins of the ancient edifice; whose huge and ancient towers, rounded by age like casks, sinking together with old age, and rending themselves from top to bottom, resembled great bellies unbuttoned.Behind rose the forest of spires of the palais des Tournelles.Not a view in the world, either at Chambord or at the Alhambra, is more magic, more aerial, more enchanting, than that thicket of spires, tiny bell towers, chimneys, weather-vanes, winding staircases, lanterns through which the daylight makes its way, which seem cut out at a blow, pavilions, spindle-shaped turrets, or, as they were then called, "tournelles," all differing in form, in height, and attitude.One would have pronounced it a gigantic stone chess-board.
To the right of the Tournelles, that truss of enormous towers, black as ink, running into each other and tied, as it were, by a circular moat; that donjon keep, much more pierced with loopholes than with windows; that drawbridge, always raised; that portcullis, always lowered,--is the Bastille. Those sorts of black beaks which project from between the battlements, and which you take from a distance to be cave spouts, are cannons.
Beneath them, at the foot of the formidable edifice, behold the porte Sainte-Antoine, buried between its two towers.
Beyond the Tournelles, as far as the wall of Charles V., spread out, with rich compartments of verdure and of flowers, a velvet carpet of cultivated land and royal parks, in the midst of which one recognized, by its labyrinth of trees and alleys, the famous Daedalus garden which Louis XI. had given to Coictier.The doctor's observatory rose above the labyrinth like a great isolated column, with a tiny house for a capital.Terrible astrologies took place in that laboratory.
There to-day is the place Royale.
As we have just said, the quarter of the palace, of which we have just endeavored to give the reader some idea by indicating only the chief points, filled the angle which Charles V.'s wall made with the Seine on the east.The centre of the Town was occupied by a pile of houses for the populace. It was there, in fact, that the three bridges disgorged upon the right bank, and bridges lead to the building of houses rather than palaces.That congregation of bourgeois habitations, pressed together like the cells in a hive, had a beauty of its own.It is with the roofs of a capital as with the waves of the sea,--they are grand.First the streets, crossed and entangled, forming a hundred amusing figures in the block; around the market-place, it was like a star with a thousand rays.
The Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, with their innumerable ramifications, rose one after the other, like trees intertwining their branches; and then the tortuous lines, the Rues de la platrerie, de la Verrerie, de la Tixeranderie, etc., meandered over all.There were also fine edifices which pierced the petrified undulations of that sea of gables.At the head of the pont aux Changeurs, behind which one beheld the Seine foaming beneath the wheels of the pont aux Meuniers, there was the Chalelet, no longer a Roman tower, as under Julian the Apostate, but a feudal tower of the thirteenth century, and of a stone so hard that the pickaxe could not break away so much as the thickness of the fist in a space of three hours; there was the rich square bell tower of Saint- Jacques de la Boucherie, with its angles all frothing with carvings, already admirable, although it was not finished in the fifteenth century.(It lacked, in particular, the four monsters, which, still perched to-day on the corners of its roof, have the air of so many sphinxes who are propounding to new paris the riddle of the ancient paris.Rault, the sculptor, only placed them in position in 1526, and received twenty francs for his pains.) There was the Maison-aux-piliers, the pillar House, opening upon that place de Grève of which we have given the reader some idea; there was Saint-Gervais, which a front "in good taste" has since spoiled; Saint-Méry, whose ancient pointed arches were still almost round arches; Saint-Jean, whose magnificent spire was proverbial; there were twenty other monuments, which did not disdain to bury their wonders in that chaos of black, deep, narrow streets. Add the crosses of carved stone, more lavishly scattered through the squares than even the gibbets; the cemetery of the Innocents, whose architectural wall could be seen in the distance above the roofs; the pillory of the Markets, whose top was visible between two chimneys of the Rue de la Cossonnerie; the ladder of the Croix-du-Trahoir, in its square always black with people; the circular buildings of the wheat mart; the fragments of philip Augustus's ancient wall, which could be made out here and there, drowned among the houses, its towers gnawed by ivy, its gates in ruins, with crumbling and deformed stretches of wall; the quay with its thousand shops, and its bloody knacker's yards; the Seine encumbered with boats, from the port au Foin to port-l'Evêque, and you will have a confused picture of what the central trapezium of the Town was like in 1482.
With these two quarters, one of H?tels, the other of houses, the third feature of aspect presented by the city was a long zone of abbeys, which bordered it in nearly the whole of its circumference, from the rising to the setting sun, and, behind the circle of fortifications which hemmed in paris, formed a second interior enclosure of convents and chapels.Thus, immediately adjoining the park des Tournelles, between the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Vielle Rue du Temple, there stood Sainte-Catherine, with its immense cultivated lands, which were terminated only by the wall of paris.Between the old and the new Rue du Temple, there was the Temple, a sinister group of towers, lofty, erect, and isolated in the middle of a vast, battlemented enclosure.Between the Rue Neuve-du- Temple and the Rue Saint-Martin, there was the Abbey of Saint-Martin, in the midst of its gardens, a superb fortified church, whose girdle of towers, whose diadem of bell towers, yielded in force and splendor only to Saint-Germain des prés.Between the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint- Denis, spread the enclosure of the Trinité.
Lastly, between the Rue Saint-Denis, and the Rue Montorgueil, stood the Filles-Dieu.On one side, the rotting roofs and unpaved enclosure of the Cour des Miracles could be descried.It was the sole profane ring which was linked to that devout chain of convents.
Finally, the fourth compartment, which stretched itself out in the agglomeration of the roofs on the right bank, and which occupied the western angle of the enclosure, and the banks of the river down stream, was a fresh cluster of palaces and H?tels pressed close about the base of the Louvre.The old Louvre of philip Augustus, that immense edifice whose great tower rallied about it three and twenty chief towers, not to reckon the lesser towers, seemed from a distance to be enshrined in the Gothic roofs of the H?tel d'Alen?on, and the petit-Bourbon.This hydra of towers, giant guardian of paris, with its four and twenty heads, always erect, with its monstrous haunches, loaded or scaled with slates, and all streaming with metallic reflections, terminated with wonderful effect the configuration of the Town towards the west.
《BOOK THIRD CHAPTER II.A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. Page 3》
Thus an immense block, which the Romans called ~iusula~, or island, of bourgeois houses, flanked on the right and the left by two blocks of palaces, crowned, the one by the Louvre, the other by the Tournelles, bordered on the north by a long girdle of abbeys and cultivated enclosures, all amalgamated and melted together in one view; upon these thousands of edifices, whose tiled and slated roofs outlined upon each other so many fantastic chains, the bell towers, tattooed, fluted, and ornamented with twisted bands, of the four and forty churches on the right bank; myriads of cross streets; for boundary on one side, an enclosure of lofty walls with square towers (that of the University had round towers); on the other, the Seine, cut by bridges, and bearing on its bosom a multitude of boats; behold the Town of paris in the fifteenth century.
Beyond the walls, several suburban villages pressed close about the gates, but less numerous and more scattered than those of the University.Behind the Bastille there were twenty hovels clustered round the curious sculptures of the Croix-Faubin and the flying buttresses of the Abbey of Saint- Antoine des Champs; then popincourt, lost amid wheat fields; then la Courtille, a merry village of wine-shops; the hamlet of Saint-Laurent with its church whose bell tower, from afar, seemed to add itself to the pointed towers of the porte Saint- Martin; the Faubourg Saint-Denis, with the vast enclosure of Saint-Ladre; beyond the Montmartre Gate, the Grange- Batelière, encircled with white walls; behind it, with its chalky slopes, Montmartre, which had then almost as many churches as windmills, and which has kept only the windmills, for society no longer demands anything but bread for the body.Lastly, beyond the Louvre, the Faubourg Saint- Honoré, already considerable at that time, could be seen stretching away into the fields, and petit-Bretagne gleaming green, and the Marché aux pourceaux spreading abroad, in whose centre swelled the horrible apparatus used for boiling counterfeiters.Between la Courtille and Saint-Laurent, your eye had already noticed, on the summit of an eminence crouching amid desert plains, a sort of edifice which resembled from a distance a ruined colonnade, mounted upon a basement with its foundation laid bare.This was neither a parthenon, nor a temple of the Olympian Jupiter.It was Montfau?on.
Now, if the enumeration of so many edifices, summary as we have endeavored to make it, has not shattered in the reader's mind the general image of old paris, as we have constructed it, we will recapitulate it in a few words.In the centre, the island of the City, resembling as to form an enormous tortoise, and throwing out its bridges with tiles for scales; like legs from beneath its gray shell of roofs.On the left, the monolithic trapezium, firm, dense, bristling, of the University; on the right, the vast semicircle of the Town, much more intermixed with gardens and monuments.The three blocks, city, university, and town, marbled with innumerable streets.Across all, the Seine, "foster-mother Seine," as says Father Du Breul, blocked with islands, bridges, and boats.All about an immense plain, patched with a thousand sorts of cultivated plots, sown with fine villages.On the left, Issy, Vanvres, Vaugirarde, Montrouge, Gentilly, with its round tower and its square tower, etc.; on the right, twenty others, from Conflans to Ville-l'Evêque.On the horizon, a border of hills arranged in a circle like the rim of the basin.Finally, far away to the east, Vincennes, and its seven quadrangular towers to the south, Bicêtre and its pointed turrets; to the north, Saint-Denis and its spire; to the west, Saint Cloud and its donjon keep.Such was the paris which the ravens, who lived in 1482, beheld from the summits of the towers of Notre-Dame.
Nevertheless, Voltaire said of this city, that "before Louis XIV., it possessed but four fine monuments": the dome of the Sorbonne, the Val-de-Grace, the modern Louvre, and I know not what the fourth was--the Luxembourg, perhaps. Fortunately, Voltaire was the author of "Candide" in spite of this, and in spite of this, he is, among all the men who have followed each other in the long series of humanity, the one who has best possessed the diabolical laugh.Moreover, this proves that one can be a fine genius, and yet understand nothing of an art to which one does not belong.Did not Moliere imagine that he was doing Raphael and Michael-Angelo a very great honor, by calling them "those Mignards of their age?"
Let us return to paris and to the fifteenth century.
It was not then merely a handsome city; it was a homogeneous city, an architectural and historical product of the Middle Ages, a chronicle in stone.It was a city formed of two layers only; the Romanesque layer and the Gothic layer; for the Roman layer had disappeared long before, with the exception of the Hot Baths of Julian, where it still pierced through the thick crust of the Middle Ages.As for the Celtic layer, no specimens were any longer to be found, even when sinking wells.
Fifty years later, when the Renaissance began to mingle with this unity which was so severe and yet so varied, the dazzling luxury of its fantasies and systems, its debasements of Roman round arches, Greek columns, and Gothic bases, its sculpture which was so tender and so ideal, its peculiar taste for arabesques and acanthus leaves, its architectural paganism, contemporary with Luther, paris, was perhaps, still more beautiful, although less harmonious to the eye, and to the thought.
But this splendid moment lasted only for a short time; the Renaissance was not impartial; it did not content itself with building, it wished to destroy; it is true that it required the room.Thus Gothic paris was complete only for a moment. Saint- Jacques de la Boucherie had barely been completed when the demolition of the old Louvre was begun.
After that, the great city became more disfigured every day. Gothic paris, beneath which Roman paris was effaced, was effaced in its turn; but can any one say what paris has replaced it?
There is the paris of Catherine de Medicis at the Tuileries;*--the paris of Henri II., at the H?tel de Ville, two edifices still in fine taste;--the paris of Henri IV., at the place Royale: fa?ades of brick with stone corners, and slated roofs, tri-colored houses;--the paris of Louis XIII., at the Val-de- Grace: a crushed and squat architecture, with vaults like basket-handles, and something indescribably pot-bellied in the column, and thickset in the dome;--the paris of Louis XIV., in the Invalides: grand, rich, gilded, cold;--the paris of Louis XV., in Saint-Sulpice: volutes, knots of ribbon, clouds, vermicelli and chiccory leaves, all in stone;--the paris of Louis XVI., in the pantheon: Saint peter of Rome, badly copied (the edifice is awkwardly heaped together, which has not amended its lines);--the paris of the Republic, in the School of Medicine: a poor Greek and Roman taste, which resembles the Coliseum or the parthenon as the constitution of the year III., resembles the laws of Minos,--it is called in architecture, "the Messidor"** taste;--the paris of Napoleon in the place Vendome: this one is sublime, a column of bronze made of cannons;--the paris of the Restoration, at the Bourse: a very white colonnade supporting a very smooth frieze; the whole is square and cost twenty millions.
*We have seen with sorrow mingled with indignation, that it is the intention to increase, to recast, to make over, that is to say, to destroy this admirable palace.The architects of our day have too heavy a hand to touch these delicate works of the Renaissance.We still cherish a hope that they will not dare. Moreover, this demolition of the Tuileries now, would be not only a brutal deed of violence, which would make a drunken vandal blush--it would be an act of treason.The Tuileries is not simply a masterpiece of the art of the sixteenth century, it is a page of the history of the nineteenth.This palace no longer belongs to the king, but to the people.Let us leave it as it is.Our revolution has twice set its seal upon its front.On one of its two fa?ades, there are the cannon-balls of the 10th of August; on the other, the balls of the 29th of July.It is sacred. paris, April 1, 1831.(Note to the fifth edition.)
**The tenth month of the French republican calendar, from the 19th of June to the 18th of July.
To each of these characteristic monuments there is attached by a similarity of taste, fashion, and attitude, a certain number of houses scattered about in different quarters and which the eyes of the connoisseur easily distinguishes and furnishes with a date.When one knows how to look, one finds the spirit of a century, and the physiognomy of a king, even in the knocker on a door.
The paris of the present day has then, no general physiognomy.It is a collection of specimens of many centuries, and the finest have disappeared.The capital grows only in houses, and what houses! At the rate at which paris is now proceeding, it will renew itself every fifty years.
Thus the historical significance of its architecture is being effaced every day.Monuments are becoming rarer and rarer, and one seems to see them gradually engulfed, by the flood of houses.Our fathers had a paris of stone; our sons will have one of plaster.
So far as the modern monuments of new paris are concerned, we would gladly be excused from mentioning them.It is not that we do not admire them as they deserve.The Sainte-Geneviève of M. Soufflot is certainly the finest Savoy cake that has ever been made in stone.The palace of the Legion of Honor is also a very distinguished bit of pastry. The dome of the wheat market is an English jockey cap, on a grand scale.The towers of Saint-Sulpice are two huge clarinets, and the form is as good as any other; the telegraph, contorted and grimacing, forms an admirable accident upon their roofs. Saint-Roch has a door which, for magnificence, is comparable only to that of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin.It has, also, a crucifixion in high relief, in a cellar, with a sun of gilded wood.These things are fairly marvellous.The lantern of the labyrinth of the Jardin des plantes is also very ingenious.
As for the palace of the Bourse, which is Greek as to its colonnade, Roman in the round arches of its doors and windows, of the Renaissance by virtue of its flattened vault, it is indubitably a very correct and very pure monument; the proof is that it is crowned with an attic, such as was never seen in Athens, a beautiful, straight line, gracefully broken here and there by stovepipes.Let us add that if it is according to rule that the architecture of a building should be adapted to its purpose in such a manner that this purpose shall be immediately apparent from the mere aspect of the building, one cannot be too much amazed at a structure which might be indifferently--the palace of a king, a chamber of communes, a town-hall, a college, a riding-school, an academy, a warehouse, a court-house, a museum, a barracks, a sepulchre, a temple, or a theatre.However, it is an Exchange.An edifice ought to be, moreover, suitable to the climate.This one is evidently constructed expressly for our cold and rainy skies. It has a roof almost as flat as roofs in the East, which involves sweeping the roof in winter, when it snows; and of course roofs are made to be swept.As for its purpose, of which we just spoke, it fulfils it to a marvel; it is a bourse in France as it would have been a temple in Greece.It is true that the architect was at a good deal of trouble to conceal the clock face, which would have destroyed the purity of the fine lines of the fa?ade; but, on the other hand, we have that colonnade which circles round the edifice and under which, on days of high religious ceremony, the theories of the stock-brokers and the courtiers of commerce can be developed so majestically.
These are very superb structures.Let us add a quantity of fine, amusing, and varied streets, like the Rue de Rivoli, and I do not despair of paris presenting to the eye, when viewed from a balloon, that richness of line, that opulence of detail, that diversity of aspect, that grandiose something in the simple, and unexpected in the beautiful, which characterizes a checker-board.
However, admirable as the paris of to-day may seem to you, reconstruct the paris of the fifteenth century, call it up before you in thought; look at the sky athwart that surprising forest of spires, towers, and belfries; spread out in the centre of the city, tear away at the point of the islands, fold at the arches of the bridges, the Seine, with its broad green and yellow expanses, more variable than the skin of a serpent; project clearly against an azure horizon the Gothic profile of this ancient paris.Make its contour float in a winter's mist which clings to its numerous chimneys; drown it in profound night and watch the odd play of lights and shadows in that sombre labyrinth of edifices; cast upon it a ray of light which shall vaguely outline it and cause to emerge from the fog the great heads of the towers; or take that black silhouette again, enliven with shadow the thousand acute angles of the spires and gables, and make it start out more toothed than a shark's jaw against a copper-colored western sky,--and then compare.
And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb--on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of pentecost--climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes.Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously.First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin.Then, all at once, behold!--for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,--behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony.First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations.
Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries.You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning.Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass.The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer.At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germaine des prés.Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars.Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs.
Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to.Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing.Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;--than this furnace of music,--than these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,--than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra,--than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.
《第三卷 二 巴黎鸟瞰》
巴黎圣母院这座令人叹为观止的教堂,我们在前面曾试图为读者尽量使其原貌恢复,简要指出了这座教堂在十五世纪时诸多美妙之处,而这些妙处恰好是今天所见不到的.不过我们省略了最美不胜收的一点,那就是从圣母院钟楼顶上一览无余的巴黎景观.
厚厚墙壁上的钟楼,垂直开凿着一道螺旋形楼梯,只要顺着这黑暗的楼梯拾级而上,经过漫长摸索之后,终于来到两个高平台当中的一个,只见阳光普照,清风徐徐,一片向四面八方同时舒展开去的美景尽收眼底.如同自身生成这样的一种景观,我们的读者如果有幸参观一座完整的.清一色的峨特城池,例如至今尚存的巴伐利亚的纽伦堡.西班牙的维多利亚,或者甚至小一些.却只要保存完好的样品,例如布列塔尼的维特雷.普鲁士的诺豪森,便可想见一斑了.
三百五十年前的巴黎,巴黎的十五世纪,已经是一座大都市了.我们这些巴黎人,对于从那以后所取得的进展,普遍抱有错误的想法.其实,从路易十一以来,巴黎的扩展顶多不超过三分之一,而且,其美观方面的损失远远超过了在范围扩大方面的收获.
众所周知,巴黎诞生于形似摇篮的老城那座古老的小岛.巴黎最早的城廓就是这小岛的河滩,塞纳河就是它最早的沟堑.以后若干世纪,巴黎依然是个岛屿,一南一北,有两道桥有两个桥头堡,既是城门又是堡垒,右岸的称为大堡,左岸的叫做小堡.后来,从第一代诸王统治时期起,由于过于狭窄地方,再也没有回旋的余地,巴黎才跨过了塞纳河.于是,越过了大堡和小堡,最早的一座城廓和塔楼开始侵入塞纳河两岸的田野.这座古老的城廓直至上世纪还有一点遗迹,今天只留下了回忆,不过,这儿那儿还偶而从前流传下来的东西可以发现,例如博代门,又称博杜瓦耶门,即ＰｏｒｔａＢａｇａｕｄａ.渐渐地,房屋象洪流一直从城市中心向外扩展.泛滥.侵蚀.损坏和吞没这道城廓.为了抵挡这股洪流,菲利浦-奥古斯都造了一道新堤坝,建起一圈高大坚实的塔楼像锁链似地把巴黎捆绑起来.以后整整一个多世纪,密密麻麻的房屋就在这***里互相挤压,堆积,在水库里的水不断上涨,因而开始向高空发展,楼上加楼,层层叠叠,宛如液流受压,不停向上喷射,争先恐后,看谁有能耐把脑袋瓜伸得比别人高,好多呼吸点空气.越来越深街道,越来越窄;所有空地都填满了,消失了.房屋终于跳越了菲利浦-奥古斯都圈定的城垣,兴高彩烈地在平原上四散开了,就像逃犯一样,混乱不堪,到处乱窜.它们在平原上安顿下来,在田野上开辟花园,生活的日子过得很舒服.从1367年起,城市向郊区竭力扩张,以致后来不得不再建一堵围墙,尤其是在右岸.这堵墙是查理五世建造的.可是,像巴黎这样一个都市总是持续不断的发展,只有这样的城市才能成为京城.这种大漏斗似的城市,一个国家地理的.政治的.精神的.智力的所有词流,一个民族的所有自然词流,统统流到这里汇集;可以说是文明之井,又是阴沟,凡是商业.工业.文化.居民,一个民族的一切元气.一切生命.一切灵魂,都一个世纪又一个世纪,一滴又一滴,不断在这里过滤,在这里沉积.因此查理五世的城廓也遭受菲利浦-奥古斯都的城廓的命运.早在十五世纪末,那城廓就被跨越,被超过了,关厢也跑得更远了.到了十六世纪,乍一看城垣好象后退了,越发深入到旧城里面,因为城外一座新城已经很可观了.因此,我们就以十五世纪暂且来说吧,那时巴黎就已经冲破那三道同心圆的城墙了,远在叛教者朱利安时代,大堡和小堡就可以说是这三道城墙的胚胎了.生机勃勃的城市接连撑破了四道城箍,就像一个孩子长大了,撑破前一年的衣裳了一样.在路易十一时代,随处可见在这片房屋海洋中有旧城廓若干从正在坍塌的钟楼群露了出来,如同是洪水中冒出水面来的山巅,也仿佛是淹没在新巴黎城中的老巴黎城露出来的若干岛屿.
此后,不断变迁的,只是对我们并不是什么好事.不过,它以后只跨过了一道城墙,就是路易十五兴建的.这道用污泥和垃圾筑成的可怜城墙,倒是与这位国王很相称,与诗人的歌唱也很相称:环绕巴黎的墙垣叫巴黎不胜其烦
到了十五世纪,还是分成三个完全分开.截然不同的城市巴黎,各有其面貌.特色.风俗.习惯.特权和历史.这就是老城.大学城.新城.老城在河洲上,最古老,范围也最小,是另两座城市的母亲,夹在她俩中间,用一个较不恰当的比方,就像是一个老太婆夹在两个高挑个儿的美女中间.大学城在塞纳河左岸,从小塔一直延伸到纳勒塔,这两个地方分别相当于今日巴黎的酒市场和铸币坊.大学城的城廓相当深远地伸入那片朱利安曾建造其温泉浴室的田野.包括在其中也有圣日芮维埃芙山.这道弧形城墙的中心顶点是教皇门,即大致上相当于现在先贤祠的位置.新城是巴黎三大块中最大的一块,位于塞纳河的右岸.沿河的堤岸,虽然冲垮了,或者说有几个地段中断了,还是沿着塞纳河而下,从比利炮台一直延伸到树林炮台,换言之,从今日丰登谷仓所在地直至杜伊勒里宫所在地.京城的城廓破塞纳阿切成了四个点,左岸为小塔和纳勒塔,右岸是比利炮台和树林炮台,这四个点被誉称为巴黎四塔.新城伸入田野的深度远超过大学城.在圣德尼门和圣马丁门是新城城廓(即查理五世城廓)的顶点,这两座城门的地点至今没有变动过.
正如上述,巴黎这三大块,每个都是一座城市,只是过于特别,反而不完整了,任何一座都不能脱离另两座而单独存在.因此面貌迥然不同.老城,教堂林立;新城,宫殿鳞次栉比;大学城,学府比比皆是.这里暂且不谈种种次要老巴黎城的特点,也不谈那随心所欲的过路税,只是从一般的观点和整体上来看看市政管辖的混乱状况.大体来说,小岛归主教管辖,右岸归府尹管辖,左岸归学董管辖.巴黎府尹是王室大臣而不是市府官吏,统管一切.老城有圣母院,新城有卢浮宫和市政厅,大学城有索邦学堂.新城还有菜市场,老城有主宫医院,大学城有神学子草场.学生在左岸犯了法,必须在小岛上的司法宫受审,却要在右岸的鹰山受惩处.除非学董认为学府势努力比王势力强大,出面进行干预,那是因为在校内被吊死是学生们的一种特权.
(顺便提一下,大部分这种特权,以及比这一条更好的其他特权,都是靠造反和叛乱强行从国王手中夺取来的.这是从古以来的做法.只有人民去夺取,国王才舍得丢弃.有一份关于效忠国王的古老文献就直言不讳地写道:"市民对国王的效忠,虽然有时被叛乱所打断,还是产生了市民的特权."
在十五世纪,在巴黎城廓内塞纳河流经五个河洲:鲁维埃洲,那时树木葱郁,如今只剩下柴禾了;母牛洲和圣母院洲,都是一片荒凉,只有一间破屋,两洲均是主教采地(到了十七世纪,两洲合并为一,在上面大兴土木,现在叫做圣路易洲);最后便是及其尖端的牛渡小洲老城,后来这个小洲沉陷在新桥的土堤下面了.老城当时有五座桥,右边有三座,即圣母院石桥.钱币兑换所石桥.磨坊木桥;左边有两座,即圣米歇尔木桥和石头小桥,桥上都有房屋.大学城有菲利浦-奥古斯都兴建的六座门,从小塔作为起点,就是圣维克多门.博代尔门.教皇门.圣雅各门.圣米歇尔门.圣日耳曼门.新城有查理五世兴建的六座门,从比利炮台起,便是圣安东门.圣殿门.圣马丁门.圣德尼门.蒙马特尔门.圣奥诺雷门.所有这些门都是既坚固又美丽,美丽并不影响其坚固.有一道沟堑,又宽又深,冬汛水涨,水流急速,环绕着整个巴黎的城墙根;水来自塞纳河.夜里各城门紧闭,全城两端用几根粗大铁链拦住沟面,巴黎便可安然入睡了.
俯瞰之下,老城.大学城.新城这三镇,都是街道纵横交错,乱七八糟,像一件编织的毛衣,拆也拆不开.不过,我们第一眼便可看出,这三大部分还是形成一个整体的,有两条平行的长街,不断延伸,毫无阻碍,几乎笔直,从南向北,正好与塞纳河垂直,一起贯穿三城,把三城加以连接混合,把这一座城市的人流不停地注入和移入另一城内,三城由此合而为一.第一条长街从圣雅各门至圣马丁门,在大学城称之为圣雅各街,在老城称之为犹太街,在新城则叫作圣马丁街.这条长街跨过塞纳河两次,一次名叫小桥,另一次名叫圣母院桥.第二条长街在左岸,名为竖琴街,在老城河洲上叫做箍桶街,在右岸叫做圣德尼街,它在塞纳河两道河汊上也各有一座桥,一座叫做圣米歇尔桥,另一座叫钱币兑换所桥.这条长街起自大学城的圣米歇尔门,止于新城的圣德尼门.不过,名称尽管不同,街道始终只有两条.这是两条母体街,是两条繁衍街,是巴黎的两条大动脉,向三座城池的一切大小血管输送血液或回收血液.
除了这横贯巴黎全城.为京都所共有的两条主干道之外,新城和大学城都单独各有一条特别的大街,纵贯各自城区,并与塞纳河并行,而且延伸开去,恰好与那条动脉大街交叉成直角.这样,在新城,从圣安东门可以一直地到达圣奥诺雷门;在大学城,可以从圣维克多门直至圣日耳曼门.这两条大道与上述两条长街交叉,形成总网络,巴黎那迷宫似的路网,四面八方,密密麻麻,盘绕结节,这个路网就基于那总网络之上.然而,只要留神观察,从这难以辨认的网络图中还可以清楚看出两束大街,一束在大学城,另一束在新城,就象两束鲜花,从各座桥到每座城门竞相开放.
这个几何平面图至今仍依稀可辨.
现在,我们要问,1482年从巴黎圣母院钟楼上俯瞰全城,是一幅怎样的图景呢?这是我们就要详细描述的.
游客气喘吁吁地爬上了那钟楼顶上,首先看到的是一片数不清的屋顶.烟囱.街道.桥梁.广场.尖塔和钟楼,令人眼花缭乱.一切一齐涌至眼前:石砌的山墙.尖角的屋顶.墙拐角悬空的小塔.石垒的金字塔.十五世纪石板方碑.城堡光秃秃的圆形主塔.教堂装饰精细的方形塔,大的,小的,粗大厚重的,小巧玲珑的,纷至沓来,叫人目不暇接.目光深深陷入这迷宫里,叫人看得出神了.在迷宫里,从那门面雕梁画栋.外部屋架木头结构.大门扁圆.楼层悬垂的最末等的房舍,直到当时塔楼如柱子林立的富丽堂皇的卢浮宫,无一不是匠心独运,美不胜收,无一不是艺术的精品.然而,当我们的眼睛渐渐适应这纷繁的建筑物时,还是可以区分出一些主要群体来的.
首先是老城.用索瓦尔的说法,叫"城岛",在他杂乱的著作中有时也有一些文笔优美的词句:城岛好象一艘大船顺流驶向塞纳河中央,结果陷入泥沙而搁浅了.我们刚才说过,在十五世纪时,这只大船由五座桥梁系泊于塞纳河两岸.这种大船形状也曾引起纹章记述家的震惊,因为,据法万和帕斯基埃说,巴黎古老城徽之所以以船做为纹章,原因就在于此,而并不是由于诺曼底人围攻巴黎.对于擅长破译纹章的人来说,纹章始终是一个难解之谜,纹章是一种难以读懂的语言.中世纪后半期的全部历史都写在纹章中,正如前半期的历史都写在罗曼教堂的象征符号之中.这是继神权政治象形文字之后的封建制度象形文字.
因此,老城首先映入眼帘的是船尾朝东,船头向西.你一转向船头,呈现在面前的是一片无边无际的古老屋顶,仿佛是一群铺天盖地的牛羊,而浮现在其上面的是圣小教堂后殿的铅皮圆屋顶,远望过去,仿佛一只大象后背上驮着教堂的钟楼.这里不妨略带一句,这钟楼的尖顶如箭矢直刺天空,是所有钟楼尖顶中最大胆求新.最精雕细刻.最玲珑剔透的,透过其网眼似的塔锥,碧空一览无余.圣母院前面,有三条街道像三条河流似地注入教堂广场,这是有着古老房屋的美丽广场.广场南侧,侧立着主宫医院那皱巴巴.阴沉沉的正面屋墙,以及探头探脑仿佛长满脓疱和疣子的屋顶.右边,左边,东边,西边,在老城如此窄小的城池内,矗立着二十一座教堂的钟楼,年代不一,形状各异,大小不同,从被称为"海神狱"(ｃａｒｃｅｒＧｌａｕｃｉｎｉ)的隘口圣德尼教堂那罗曼式低矮.腐蛀的风铃花形的钟楼,直至牛市圣彼得教堂和圣朗德里教堂那些细针状的钟楼,形形色色,应有尽有.圣母院后面,北边是峨特式长廊的隐修院,南边是半罗曼式的主教府邸,东边是"场地"荒芜尖岬.在那层层叠叠的房屋中,还可以从当时屋顶上高耸的那种透空的石烟囱帽,分辨出各宫殿最高层的窗户,分辨出查理六世在位时巴黎府赠给朱韦纳.德.于尔森的那座官邸.稍远处,是帕吕市场那些涂了沥青的简陋棚屋;再过去是老圣日耳曼教堂崭新的半圆形后殿,1458年延伸到费弗的一段街道;还有,随处可见人群拥挤的十字路口,某街角的耻辱柱,菲利浦-奥古斯都时代留下来的一段漂亮的石板路,正中划明供驰马的箭道,不过到了十六世纪改成乱七八糟的碎石路,名为同盟路;还有一个荒凉的后院,楼梯上有着十五世纪常见的.如今在布尔多内街还可看到的那种半透明的角楼.最后,在圣小教堂右边,是司法宫座落在水边的朝西的群塔.老城西边是御花园,树木参天,把牛渡小洲遮住了.至于塞纳河,从圣母院钟楼上俯瞰,几乎只能看见老城两侧的河水而已.塞纳河隐没在各座桥下,而各座桥又隐没在房屋下面.
放眼望去,这些桥梁的屋顶是碧绿的,塞纳河的雾气使它们早早地长满了青苔.若向左边大学城眺望,映入眼帘的第一座建筑物,就是小堡那有如花束的粗矮塔群,小堡张开大口的门廊把小桥的一端吞没了.如果再纵目从东向西,从小塔向纳勒塔远望,只见长长一带房舍,雕梁画栋,彩色玻璃窗户,层层叠叠,突出在石路上方;还可以看见一溜市民房舍的墙壁,曲折绵延,望不到尽头,常常被一个街口所切断,也不时被一幢石墙大楼的正面或侧面所切割;大楼四平八稳,连同庭院和花园,厢房和主体,夹在那一个接一个紧挨着的狭窄民舍当中,犹如一个领主老爷夹在一大堆平民百姓中间.沿河街道上有五.六座这样的大厦,如与贝尔纳丹修道院共用小塔旁边大院墙的洛林公馆,又如纳勒公馆,其主塔正好是巴黎的标界,那黑色三角形的尖形屋顶一年当中有三个月把血红的夕阳遮住了一角.
不过,塞纳河的这一边远不如那一边商业繁荣,这一边学生比工匠多,因此更喧闹,人群也更多,真正说起来,河沿街只从圣米歇尔桥到纳勒塔这一段而已.河岸其他部分,或者如过了贝尔纳丹修道院都是光秃秃的河滩,或者如两座桥梁中间都是些屋基浸在河里的拥挤不堪的民舍.洗衣女的喧闹声震天价响,她们从早到晚叫呀,说呀,唱呀,狠捶衣服呀,跟现在的情形一样.这算得上是巴黎人一件不小的乐趣吧.
大学城看起来是一个整体.从这一头到那一头,都是清一色的整体.那成千上万的屋顶密密麻麻,有棱有角,粘附紧贴,几乎都是由一几何原理构成的,俯瞰之下,犹如同一物质的晶体状态.横七竖八的街道,并没有把这一片房屋切成大小过于参差不齐的碎块.四十二所学院相当均匀地分布在大学城,到处都有;这些漂亮建筑物的屋顶,形式多样,十分有趣,都是与它们所凌驾的普通屋顶全出自同一艺术,终究是同一几何图形的平方或立方的乘积罢了.因此,这些屋顶只是使整体趋于多样化,而没有扰乱整体的统一;只是使整体臻于完备,而没有变成累赘.几何学的精髓,就是和谐一致.在其中,还可以看见若干漂亮的府邸,金碧辉煌,凸起在左岸那些美丽的顶楼之上,如现在已不复存在的内韦尔公馆.罗马公馆.兰斯公馆,还有克吕尼府第,至今犹存,让艺术家感到欣慰,不过几年前有人竟然愚不可及地把它的塔楼砍掉了.克吕尼附近,有座罗马式宫殿,开着几道样式别致的圆顶拱门,那就是朱利安所建的温泉浴室.还有许多修道院,跟上述官邸相比,更带有一种虔诚之美,并兼有一种庄严之气,但其雄伟壮丽绝不亚于官邸.首先引人注意的是那座带有三座钟楼的贝尔纳丹修道院;还有圣日芮维埃芙修道院,它的方形塔尚在,但其余的全荡然无存,令人唏嘘叹惜.还有索拜学堂,半是神学院半是寺院,只幸存下来令人赞叹不已的中堂,即圣马太教派那四边形的美丽隐修院;这隐修院的旁边是圣伯努瓦隐修院,在本书出版第七版和第八版之间,人们在隐修院的墙上马马虎虎造了一个戏台;还有三道巨大山墙并列的结绳派修道院,以及奥古斯都教派修道院,其姿态优美的尖塔形如齿状,在巴黎这一边,从西数起,位于纳勒塔之后,算是第二个这种形状的尖塔.各个学院实际上是修道院与人世之间的中间环节,在府邸和寺院之间这一建筑系列里位居其中,严肃而又优雅,雕刻不如宫殿那么潇洒,建筑风格不像修道院那样严肃.峨特艺术恰好不偏不倚地在华丽与朴素之间保持了平衡,不幸的是这些文物几乎已不存在了.大学城里教堂众多,座座光彩照人,从圣朱利安的圆拱穹窿到圣塞维兰的尖拱穹窿,建筑艺术各个时期的风格无所不有.这些教堂都凌驾一切之上,而且,仿佛在这和声组合中又增添了一种和声,教堂那如箭穿空的尖顶,那刺空的钟楼,那象针一样的塔尖(这种针状的线条不过是屋顶尖角一种绝妙的夸张而已),不时把一面面山墙犬牙交错的边缘刺破了.
大学城,丘陵众多.圣日芮维埃芙山像一个巨大圆瓶隆起在东南边,这倒是很值得从圣母院顶上观看一下的:只见那许许多多狭窄弯曲的街道(今天的拉丁区),那密密麻麻的屋宇,从山顶上向四面八方分散开来,径直地沿着山坡向下俯冲,直至河边,有的像要跌倒,有的像要再爬起来,但又都似乎彼此相互扶持.还可以看见象蚁群一样黑点,熙熙攘攘,络绎不绝,在街上擦肩而过,叫人看得眼花缭乱.那便是从远方高处所看见的市民.
这无数的房顶.尖塔.高高低低的屋宇,把大学城的外廓线,折叠的折叠,扭曲的扭曲,蚕食的蚕食,真是千奇百怪.从它们的空隙中,最后可以隐约看见一大段爬满青苔的院墙.一座厚实的圆塔.一道状如堡垒的有雉堞的城门,那就是菲利浦—奥古斯都修道院.再过去是一片碧绿的草地,再过去是一条条在远方消失的道路,沿途还稀稀拉拉散布着几间近郊房舍,而且越远房舍越稀少.这些关厢村镇有些还是很大的.首先是从小塔作为起点的圣维克多镇,那里有一座在比埃弗尔河上的单拱桥,一座可以看到胖子路易墓志铭(éｐｉｔａｐｈｉｕｍＬｕｄｉｖｉｃｉＧｒｏｓｓｉ)的修道院,还有一座有着八角尖顶.尖顶旁有四个十一世纪小钟楼的教堂(这样的教堂现在在埃唐普还有一座,还没有拆毁);其次是圣马尔索镇,那里有三座教堂和一座修道院.然后,左边越过戈伯兰家的磨坊和四道白墙,就到了圣雅各镇,那里交叉路口有座雕刻精美十字架,那里有一座上隘口圣雅各教堂,当时是峨特式的,尖顶十分可爱;还有十四世纪圣玛格鲁瓦教堂,拿破仑曾把它漂亮的中堂改做草仓;还有田园圣母院,里面有拜占庭风格的镶嵌画.最后,我们的视线越过平原的夏特赫寺院-与司法宫同时代的富丽堂皇的建筑物,有着分隔成格子状的小花园-,再越过人迹罕有的沃维尔废墟,向西望去便是圣日耳曼—德—普瑞教堂的三座罗曼式尖形屋顶.圣日耳曼镇已算得上一个大市镇,有十五到二十条街道.圣絮尔皮斯修道院的尖顶钟楼就在镇上的一角.在其近旁,可以看出圣日耳曼集市场的四边形围墙,至今,依然是个市场;接着是寺院住持的耻辱柱,那是漂亮的小圆塔,塔顶有个铅皮的塔锥.砖瓦坊和通往公用烘炉的窑炉街,都在更远的地方,磨坊在街尽头的土丘上,还有麻疯病院那座孤伶伶的偏僻小房子.然而,特别意人注目,叫人目不转睛的,还是圣日耳曼—德—普瑞修道院本身.当然,这座寺院,落落大方,既像一座教堂,又像一座领主府邸,称得上是修道院宫殿,巴黎历任主教都以能在此留宿一夜为荣;还有那斋堂,建筑师把它造得非同凡响,其气派.美观.花瓣格子窗的壮丽,都像是主教堂似的;还有那供奉圣母的精巧的小教堂,那宏大的僧舍,那宽阔的一个个花园,那狼牙闸门,那吊桥,那看上去像是把四周绿茵剪成一个个缺口的墙垛子,以及那常有武士的甲胄与主教金光闪闪的道袍交相辉映的座座庭院,所有这一切都围绕着那座落在峨特式后殿的三座半圆拱顶的高尖塔而联系在一起,犹如一幅金碧辉煌的画图挂在天边.
在大学城长久留连之后,最后,您再转向右岸,放眼眺望新城,景色马上改变了.其实,新城比大学城面积大得多,却不像大学城那样浑然一体.一眼便可以看出,新城分成好几大片.景色迥异.首先,在东边,新城的这一部分今天仍然沿用加缪洛热纳诱使恺撒陷入泥潭的那片沼泽为名.在十五世纪,那里宫殿如林,这一大片房屋直抵河边.儒伊公馆.桑斯公馆.巴尔博公馆和王后行宫这四座府第几乎紧换在一起,其石板屋顶和细长的角楼都倒映在塞纳河中.这四座大厦都座落在诺南迪埃尔街和塞莱斯坦修道院之间,四座府邸的山墙和雉堞在修道院的尖顶的衬托下,轮廓线越发显得优雅飘逸.这些豪华公馆的前面,尽管有不少暗绿色的破房子濒临水边,却遮不住公馆正面的美丽棱角,遮不住公馆宽大的石框方形格子窗.堆满塑像的尖拱门廊.棱角总是那样分明的墙垣的尖脊,也遮不住所有这一切美妙的建筑奇葩.正是这些建筑奇葩,才使得峨特艺术又重新与每座宏伟建筑物结合在一起.这一座座华丽公馆的后面,是巧夺天工的圣波尔行宫的围墙,它伸向四面八方,广阔无边,形式多样,有时看起来像一座城堡,有着断垣.绿篱和雉堞有时看起来像一座女修道院,隐没在大树之中.圣波尔行宫规模宏大,法兰西国王在这里足可以冠冕堂皇地安顿二十二位诸如王太子或勃艮第公爵这样身份的王亲国戚,以及他们成群的仆役和侍从,更不用说那班大领主了;皇帝来巴黎观光时也在这里下榻;还有社会名流在这行宫里也各有单独的府邸.这里不妨说一下,当时一个王爷的寓所起码不少于十一个房间,从金碧辉煌的卧室直至祈祷室,应有尽有,暂且不谈一道道长廊,一间间浴室,一个个炉灶房,以及每套寓所必备的其他"额外空地";更不用说国王的每位佳宾专用的一座座花园;也不必说大大小小的厨房.地窖.配膳室.家人公共膳堂;还有一些家禽饲养场,设有二十二个通用实验室,从烧烤到配酒都研究;还有上百种娱乐,什么曲棍球啦,手网球啦,铁环球啦;还有养禽栏,养鱼池,驯马场,马厩,牛羊圈;图书室,兵器室和打铁场.这就是当时一座宫殿.一座卢浮宫.一座圣波尔行宫的情况.一座城中之城.
从我们所在的圣母院钟楼上眺望圣波尔行宫,它虽然被上述四座公馆几乎遮住了一半,但依然很宏大,看起来美不胜收.可以很清楚分辨出那三座被查理五世合并为这座行宫的大厦,尽管它们由几道带有彩色玻璃窗和小圆柱的长廊与行宫主体建筑巧妙地紧紧连结在一起.这三座大厦是小缪斯府邸.圣莫尔神父府邸和埃唐普伯爵府邸.小缪斯府邸,屋顶边缘装饰着花边形栏杆,姿态优雅;圣莫尔神父府邸,地形起伏象一座碉堡,有一座大炮台,还能看到许多箭孔.熗眼.铁雀,萨克逊式宽阔大门上端,在吊桥的两边槽口之间,刻有神父的纹章;埃唐普伯爵府邸,主楼顶层已经坍塌,看起来呈圆形,有无数个缺口,好似一个鸡冠;老橡树三三两两,疏疏落落,好像一朵朵偌大的花菜;个个水池,池水清澈,光影掩映,涟漪粼粼,有几只天鹅在戏水;还有许多庭院,可以看见其中一幅幅如画的景色.社会名流公馆,尖拱低矮,萨克逊式柱子粗短,狼牙闸门一道道,好像狮子吼叫个不停;穿过这一切可以望见圣母玛丽亚教堂斑驳的尖塔;左边,还有巴黎府尹公馆,两侧是四座精工镂空的小塔;正中深处才是真正的圣波尔行宫,门面一再增多,自查理五世起屡次对行宫进行妆扮修饰,画蛇添足,杂乱无章,两百年来建筑师个个随心所欲,在各座小教堂任意增添半圆后殿,在道道长廊上任意砌起山墙,在屋顶上任意树起无数随风转动的风标;行宫的两座高塔相连,圆锥形顶盖的底部围着一道垛子,顶盖看起来就像卷边的尖帽.
我们的目光继续朝这向远处延伸的圆形行宫一层层向上攀登,视线跨越新城圣安东街那条在鳞次栉比的屋顶之间的峡谷,就可以看到-我们总是只谈主要的文物-昂古莱姆府邸,一座经过好几个时期才建成的庞大建筑物.其中有些部分簇新雪白,在整体中显得有些格格不入,就好象一件蓝色短外套补了一块红补丁.不过,这座现代式样的宫殿,屋顶又尖又高,显得很新奇,而且屋顶上布满镂花的沟堑,又用铅皮把屋顶覆盖住,铅皮上有着许多闪闪发光的镀金的铜镶嵌细作,形成千姿百态的花藤装饰,曼妙舒展.这如此奇妙镶嵌的屋顶,就从这座古老建筑物的暗褐色残败景象中脱颖而出,显得格外飘逸.这座古老建筑物的那些肥大塔楼,由于年久失修而中间凸起,宛如大酒桶由于腐烂而倾倒下来,从上到下裂开,看上去就像解开钮扣而袒露在外的一个个大肚皮.后面屹立着小塔宫,塔楼尖顶林立.看遍世上的任何地方,不论是香博尔,还是阿朗布拉,也比不上这里那么神奇,那么虚渺,那么引人入胜.那一片林立的尖塔.小钟楼.烟囱.风标.螺旋梯.螺栓,还有许多像是一个模子做出来的穿孔的灯笼,以及连片的楼台亭阁,成簇的纺缍形小塔(当时把小塔ｔｏｕｒｅｌｌｅ这个词称为ｔｏｕｒｎｅｌｌｅ),形状各种各样,高低大小不一,风貌千姿百态.整个昂古莱姆府邸,就好像是一个巨大的石头棋盘.
小塔宫右边,是一座座黝黑的高大炮台,沟堑环绕,像是用一根绳子把它们捆扎在一起,彼此吻合.只见那座主楼上熗眼比窗户要多得多,那个吊桥总是高高吊起,那道狼牙闸门总是关闭,这就是巴士底城堡.从城垛子中间伸出来一个个黑喙,远远望去以为是承溜,其实全是大炮.
在这座可怕的城堡脚下,处在其炮弹的威胁之下,那便是圣安东门,隐藏在两座炮台之间.
过了小塔宫,直至查理五世兴建的城墙,呈现在眼前的是一片片庄稼,一座座林苑,犹如一张松软的地毯,只见这里绿树成荫,花叶婆婆.在林苑中央,树木繁茂,幽径曲折,一看这树林和曲径的迷宫,就可认出这就是路易十一赏赐给科瓦蒂埃的那座著名的迷宫花园.这位大夫的观象台高踞于迷宫之上,仿佛是一根孤零零的大圆柱,柱顶盘却是一间小屋.他就在这间小药房里进行了不起的星相学研究.
如今这里是王宫广场.
如前所述,我们只提到了王宫几处杰出的建筑物,目的是想让读者对宫殿区在致有个印象.宫殿区占据着查理五世城墙与东边塞纳河之间的夹角.新城的中心是一大片平民百姓的住宅.事实上,新城通往右岸的三座桥梁就是从这里开始的.一般说来是桥梁先产生民宅,然后才产生王宫的.这一大片市民住宅,好像蜂房似地拥挤在一起,却也自有其美观之处.一个京城的屋顶大都在此,好象一个大海的波涛,颇为壮观.首先,大街小巷,纵横交错,在这一整块群体中景象纷呈,十分有趣.以菜市场为中心,街道向四方辐辏,犹如一颗巨星辐射出万道金光.圣德尼大街和圣马丁大街,岔道难以胜数,就像两棵大树,枝桠交错,紧挨着往上猛长.还有许许多多弯弯曲曲的线路,如石膏坊街,玻璃坊街,织布坊街,等等,蜿蜒于整个区域.还有不少美丽的房屋,拔地而起,刺破那一片山墙海洋的石化波涛:那就是小堡.小堡屹立在钱币兑换所桥头,而桥后,塞纳河河水在水磨桥的轮扇下翻滚;当时的小堡,已不是叛教者朱利安时代那种罗马式样的炮楼,而是十三世纪封建时代的炮台,石头非常坚硬,就是用铁镐刨三个钟头也啃不下拳头大的一块来.除了小堡,还有屠宰场圣雅各教堂的华丽方形钟楼,各个墙角布满雕像,尽管十五世纪时尚未峻工,却已经让人赞叹不已了.当时钟楼甚至还没有那四只直至今日仍然蹲坐在屋顶四角的怪兽,这四只怪兽看上去像是四个狮身人面像,要人看见新巴黎时非去解开旧巴黎的谜不可.雕刻家罗尔只是到了一五二六年才把它们安放上去.他的这一番呕心沥血只挣得二十法朗.再有,就是面向河滩广场的柱子阁,我们在前面已向读者稍做介绍了.然后是圣热尔韦教堂,后来增建了一座高雅的门廊,把教堂糟蹋了;还有圣梅里教堂,它古老的尖拱建筑几乎还是半圆拱腹的式样;面圣约翰教堂,其壮丽的尖顶是众所周知的;还有其他二十来座古建筑物,并不在意让自己巧夺天工的英姿湮没在这一片混乱的.窄小的.阴暗的街道之中.此外,还可以加上十字街头那些多过绞刑架的饰有雕像的石十字架;越过层层叠叠的屋顶远远可瞥见其围墙的圣婴教堂的公墓;从群钟共鸣街两座烟突间可望见其顶端的菜市场耻辱柱;竖立在始终挤满黑压压人群的岔路口的特拉瓦十字教堂的梯道;小麦市场一排环形的简陋房屋;还可以看见菲利浦－奥古斯都古老城墙的片段;散落在房舍当中,塔楼爬满常春藤,城门破败,墙壁摇摇欲坠,面目全非;还有沿岸街,店铺星罗棋布,屠宰场的剥皮作坊鲜血淋漓;从草料港到主教港,塞纳河上船只络绎不绝.说到这里,新城的梯形中心地带在1482年是什么样子,想必您会有个模糊的印象吧.
除了这两个街区-一个是宫殿区,另一个是住宅区-以外,新城还有一个景观,那就是从东到西,一条几乎环绕全城四周的漫长的寺院地带.这个地带位于那围住巴黎城的碉堡城廓的后面,修道院和小教堂连片,构成巴黎第二道内城墙.例如,挨着小塔林苑,在圣安东街和老圣殿街之间,有圣卡特琳教堂及其一望无际的田园,只是由于巴黎城墙挡住了,其界限才没有再扩展开去.在圣殿老街和新街之间,坐落着圣殿教堂,屹立在一道筑有雉堞的宽阔围墙中间,一簇塔楼高耸,孤零零的好不凄凉.在圣殿新街和圣马丁街之间,又有圣马丁修道院,坐落在花园中间,筑有防御工事,塔楼连成一片,钟楼重叠,仿佛教皇三重冠,这座教堂雄伟壮丽,坚不可摧,仅次于圣日耳曼－德－普瑞教堂.在圣马丁和圣德尼两条街之间,是三一教堂的一片围墙.最后,在圣德尼街和蒙托格伊街之间是修女院,旁边是奇迹宫廷的腐烂屋顶和残垣断壁.这是混迹于这一由修道院组成的虔诚链条中绝无仅有的世俗环节.
在右岸层层叠叠的屋顶中,独自展现在我们眼前的还有第四块区域,位于城墙西角和塞纳河下游的河岸之间,那是拥挤在卢浮宫脚下一个由宫殿和府邸组成的新地带.菲利浦－奥古斯都所建的这座老卢浮宫,庞大无比,其巨大主塔的周围簇拥着二十三座宛如嫔妃的塔楼,其他许多小塔就更不用说了.这座宫殿远远望去,好象镶嵌在阿郎松府邸和小波旁宫那些峨特式的尖顶之间.这些连成一片的塔楼,仿佛希腊神话中的多头巨蛇,成了巴黎城的巨大守护神,始终昂着二十四个头,端部屋面大得吓人,或是铅皮的,或是石板为鳞的,全都闪烁着金属的亮光,这巨蛇出人意外地一下子刹住新城西部的外形.
这样,古罗马人称之为岛(ｉｎｓｕｌａ)的这一片浩瀚的市民住宅区,左右两边各有一大片密集的宫殿,一边以小塔宫为首,另一边则以卢浮宫为首,北边是一长溜寺院和围起来的田园,纵目眺望,浑然一体.这万千华厦的屋顶有瓦盖的,也有石板铺的,重重叠叠,勾勒出种种奇怪景观,而展现在这些华厦之上的则是右岸四十四座教堂的钟楼,都是纹花细镂,有凹凸花纹的,有格子花纹的;无数街道纵横交错;一边的界限是竖立着方形塔楼(大学城城墙却是圆形塔楼)的高大墙墙,另一边则是横架着座座桥梁和穿行着无数船只的塞纳河.这便是十五世纪新城的概貌.
城墙外面,城门口紧挨着几个城关市镇,但数量少于大学城那边,也比那边分散.巴士底城堡的背后,有二十来所破旧房屋躲在那有着新奇雕塑的福班十字教堂和有着扶壁拱垛的田园圣安东修道院的周围;然后是淹没在麦田里的博潘库尔镇;小酒店毗连的库尔蒂伊欢乐村庄;圣洛朗镇,远远望去,它教堂的钟楼好像和圣马丁门的尖塔连接在一起;圣德尼镇及圣拉德尔辽阔的田园;过了蒙马尔特门,是白墙环绕的谷仓-艄女修道院,修道院后面,便是蒙马尔特,石灰石山坡上当时教堂的教量大致与磨坊相当,以后只剩下磨坊了,因为社会如今只需要满足肉体的食粮而已.最后,过了卢浮宫,牧场上横着圣奥诺雷镇,当时规模已十分可观;还有树木葱笼的小布列塔尼田庄;还有小猪市,市场中心立着一口可怕的大炉,专门用来蒸煮那班制造假钞的人.在库尔蒂伊和圣洛朗之间,您可能早已注意到,在荒凉的平原上有一个土丘,顶上有座类似建筑物的东西,远远望去,好像一座坍塌的柱廊,站立在墙根裸露的屋基上面.这并非一座巴特农神庙,也不是奥林匹斯山朱庇特殿堂.这是鹰山!
我们虽然想尽可能简单,却还是逐一列举了这么多建筑物.随着我们逐渐勾画出旧巴黎的总形象时,如果这一长串列举并没有在读者心目中把旧巴黎的形象弄得支离破碎的话,那么,现在便可以用三言两语进行概括了.中央是老城岛,其形状就像一只大乌龟,覆盖着瓦片屋顶的桥梁好似龟爪,灰色屋顶宛若龟壳,龟爪就从龟壳下伸了出来.左边是仿如梯形的大学城,巨石般的一整块,坚实,密集,拥挤,布满尖状物.右边是广大半圆形的新城,花园和历史古迹更多.老城.大学城.新城这三大块,街道纵横交错,像大理石上密密麻麻的花纹一般.流经全境的是塞纳河,德.普勒尔神父称之为"塞纳乳娘",河上小岛.桥梁.舟楫拥塞.巴黎四周是一望无垠的平原,点缀着千百种农作物,散落着许多美丽的村庄;左边有伊锡.旺韦尔.沃吉拉尔.蒙特鲁日,以及有座圆塔和一座方塔的戎蒂伊,等等;右边有二十来个村庄,从孔弗兰直至主教城.地平线上,山岭逶迤.环抱,好像一个面盆的边缘.最后,远处东边是樊尚林苑及其七座四角塔楼;南边是比塞特及其尖顶小塔;北边是圣德尼及其尖顶,西边是圣克鲁及其圆形主塔.这就是1482年的乌鸦从圣母院钟楼顶上所见到的巴黎.
然而,像这样一座都市,伏尔泰却说在路易十四以前只有四座美丽的古迹,即索拜学堂的圆顶.圣恩谷教堂.现代的卢浮宫和现已无从查考的另一座,也许是卢森堡宫吧.幸运的是,尽管如此,伏尔泰还是写下了《老实人》,仍然是空前绝后最善于冷嘲热讽的人.不过,这也正好证明:一个人可以是了不起的天才,却可能对自己缺乏天资的某种艺术一窍不通.莫里哀把拉斐尔和米凯朗琪罗称为他们时代的小儒,难道他不是认为很恭维他们吗?
言归正传,还是再回到巴黎和十五世纪这上面来吧.
当时巴黎不单是一座美丽的城市而已,而且还是清一色建筑风格的城市,是中世纪建筑艺术和中世纪历史的产物,是一部岩石的编年史.这是只由两层构成的城市,即罗曼层和峨特层,因为罗马层除了在朱利安的温泉浴室穿过中世纪坚硬表皮还露出来以外,早已消失了.至于凯尔特层,哪怕挖掘许多深井,也无法再找到什么残存的东西了.
五十年后,文艺复兴开始,巴黎这种如此严格,却又如此丰富多采的统一性,掺入了华丽的气派,叫人眼花缭乱,诸如各种别出心裁的新花样,各种体系,五花八门的罗马式半圆拱顶.希腊式圆柱.峨特式扁圆穹窿,十分细腻而又刻意求精的雕刻,对蔓藤花饰和茛菪叶饰的特别爱好,路德的现代建筑艺术的异教情调,不一而足.这样,巴黎也许更加美丽多姿了,尽管看上去和想起来不如当初那么和谐.然而,这一光辉灿烂的时间并不长久.文艺复兴并不是无私的,它不仅要立,而且要破.它需要地盘,这倒也是实话.因此,峨特艺术风格的巴黎,完整无缺的时间只是一刹那而已.屠宰场圣雅各教堂几乎尚未峻工,就开始拆毁古老的卢浮宫了.
从此以后,这座伟大城市的面貌日益变得难以辨认了.罗曼式样的巴黎在峨特式样的巴黎的淹没下消失了,到头来峨特式样的巴黎自己也消失了.谁能说得上代替它的又是怎么样的巴黎呢?
在杜伊勒里宫,那是卡特琳.德.梅迪西斯的巴黎;在市政厅,那是亨利二世的巴黎,两座大厦还是优雅迷人的;在王宫广场,是亨利四世的巴黎,王宫的正面是砖砌的,墙角是石垒的,屋顶是石板铺的,不少房屋是三色的;在圣恩谷教堂,是路易十三的巴黎,这是一种低矮扁平的建筑艺术,拱顶呈篮子提手状,柱子像大肚皮,圆顶像驼背,要说都说不来;在残老军人院,是路易十四的巴黎,气势宏大,富丽堂皇,金光灿烂,却又冷若冰霜;在圣絮尔皮斯修道院,是路易十五的巴黎,涡形装饰,彩带系结,云霞缭绕,细穗如粉丝,菊苣叶饰,这一切都是石刻的;在先贤祠,是路易十六的巴黎,罗马圣彼得教堂拙劣的翻版(整个建筑呆头呆脑地蜷缩成一堆,这就无法补救其线条了);在医学院,是共和政体的巴黎,一种摹仿希腊和罗马的可怜风格,活像罗马的大竞技场和希腊的巴特农神庙,仿佛是共和三年宪法摹仿米诺斯法典,建筑艺术上称为穑月风格;在旺多姆广场,是拿破仑的巴黎,这个巴黎倒是雄伟壮观,用大炮铸成一根巨大的铜柱;在交易所广场,是复辟时期的巴黎,雪白的列柱支撑着柱顶盘的光滑中楣,整体呈正方形,造价两千万.
由于格调.式样和气势相类似,各有一定数量的民房与上述每座独具特色的历史古迹紧密相联系.这些民房分散在不同的街区,但行家的目光还是一眼便可把它们区分开来,并确定其年代,只要善于识别,哪怕是一把敲门槌,也能从中发现某个时代的精神和某个国王的面貌.
因此,今日巴黎并没有整体的面貌,而是收藏好几个世纪样品的集锦,其中精华早已消失了.如今,京城一味扩增房屋,可那是什么样子的房屋呀!照现在巴黎的发展速度来看,每五十年就得更新一次.于是,巴黎最富有历史意义的建筑艺术便天天在消失,历史古迹日益减少,仿佛眼睁睁看这些古迹淹在房舍的海洋中,渐渐被吞没了.我们祖先建造了一座坚石巴黎,而到了我们子孙,它将成为一座石膏巴黎了.
至于新巴黎的现代建筑物,我们有意略去不谈.这并非因为我们不愿恰当加以赞赏.苏弗洛先生建造的圣日芮维埃芙教堂,不用说是有史以来萨瓦省用石头建造的最美丽蛋糕.荣誉军团官也是一块非常雅致的点心.小麦市场的圆顶是规模巨大的一顶英国赛马骑手的鸭舌帽.圣絮尔皮斯修道院的塔楼是两大根单簧管,而且式样平淡无奇;两座塔楼屋顶上那电报天线歪歪扭扭,起伏波动,像在不断做鬼脸,煞是可爱!圣罗希教堂门廊之壮丽,只有圣托马斯.阿奎那教堂的门廊可相媲美;它在一个地窖里还有一座圆雕的耶稣受难像和一个镀金的木雕太阳,都是奇妙无比的东西.植物园的迷宫之灯也是巧妙异常.至于交易所大厦,柱廊是希腊风格的,门窗的半圆拱是罗马风格的,扁圆的宽大拱顶是文艺复兴风格的,无可争辩地这是一座极其规范.极其纯粹的宏伟建筑物.证据就是:大厦顶上还加上一层阿提喀顶楼,这在雅典也未曾见过,优美的直线,随处被烟突管切断,雅致得很!还得补充一句,凡是一座建筑物,其建筑艺术必须与其用途结合得天衣无缝,以至于人们一眼见到这建筑物,其用途便一目了然,这是司空见惯的,因此任何一座古迹,无论是王宫,还是下议院.市政厅.学堂.驯马场.科学院.仓库.法庭.博物馆.兵营.陵墓.寺院.剧场,都令人惊叹得无以复加.且慢,这里说的是一座交易所.此外,任何一座建筑还应当与气候条件相适应.显然,这座交易所是特意为我们寒冷而多雨的天气建造的,它的屋顶几乎是平坦的,就像近东的那样,这样做是冬天一下雪,便于清扫屋顶,更何况一个屋顶本来就是为了便于打扫而造的.至于刚才在上面所提到的用途,那可真是物尽其用了;在法国是交易所,要是在希腊,作为神庙又有何不可!诚然,建筑师设计时把大时钟钟面遮掩起来是煞费一番苦心的,要不然,屋面的纯净优美的线条就被破坏了.话说回来,相反地,围绕整座建筑物造了一道柱廊,每逢重大的宗教节日,那班证券经纪人和商行掮客便可以在柱廊下冠冕堂皇地进行高谈阔论了.
毫无疑问,上述这一切都是无以伦比的壮丽的宏伟建筑.此外,还有许多漂亮的街道,式样繁多,生趣盎然,里沃黎街便是一例.我可以满怀信心地说,从气球上俯瞰巴黎,总有一天它会呈现出丰富的线条,多采的细节,万般的面貌,简朴中见某种难以名状的伟大,优美中见某种有如奕棋般的出奇制胜的绝招.
然而,不论您觉得如今的巴黎如何令人叹为观止,还是请您在头脑中恢复十五世纪时巴黎的原状,重新把它建造起来;看一看透过那好似一道奇妙绿篱的尖顶.圆塔和钟楼的灿烂阳光;瞧一瞧那一滩绿.一滩黄的塞纳河河水,波光粼粼,色泽比蛇皮更光陆怪离,您就把塞纳河端起来往这宽大无边的城市中间泼洒,就把塞纳河这一素练往岛岬一撕,再在桥拱处把它折叠起来;您再以为蓝天的背景,清晰地勾画出这古老巴黎峨特式样的剪影,让其轮廓飘浮在那缠绕于无数烟囱的冬雾之中;您把这古老的巴黎浸没在沉沉夜幕里,看一看在那阴暗的建筑物迷宫中光与影的追逐游戏;您洒下一缕月光,这迷宫便朦胧浮现,那座座塔楼遂从雾霭中伸出尖尖的头顶来;要不,您就再现那黑黝黝的侧影,用阴影复活尖塔和山墙的无数尖角,并使乌黑的侧影突现在落日时分彤红的天幕上,其齿形的边缘宛如鲨鱼的颔额.-然后,您就比较一下吧.
您要是想获得现代的巴黎所无法给您提供的有关这古城的某种印象,那么您不妨就在某一盛大节日的清晨,在复活节或圣灵降临节日出的时分,登上某个高处,俯瞰整个京城,亲临其境地体验一下晨钟齐鸣的情景.等天空一发出信号,也就是太阳发出的信号,您就可以看见万千座教堂同时颤抖起来.首先是从一座教堂到另一座教堂发出零散的丁当声,好像是乐师们相互告知演奏就要开始了;然后,突然间,您看见-因为似乎耳朵有时也有视觉-每一钟楼同时升起声音之柱.和声之烟.开始时,每口钟颤震发出的声音,清澈单纯,简直彼此孤立,径直升上灿烂的晨空.随后,钟声渐渐扩大,溶合,混和,相互交融,共同汇成一支雄浑壮美的协奏曲.最后只成为一个颤动的音响整体,不停地从无数的钟楼发出宏亮的乐声来;乐声在京城上空飘扬,荡漾,跳跃,旋转,然后那震耳欲聋的振辐渐渐摇荡开去,一直传到天外.然而,这和声的海洋并非一片混杂;不论它如何浩瀚深邃,仍不失其清澈透亮.您可以从中发现每组音符从群钟齐鸣中悄然逃离,独自起伏回荡;您可以从中倾听木铃和巨钟时而低沉.时而高元的唱和;还可以看见从一座钟楼到另一座钟楼八度音上下跳动,还可以看见银钟的八度音振翅腾空,轻柔而悠扬,望见木铃的八度音跌落坠地,破碎而跳跃;还可以从八度音当中欣赏圣厄斯塔舍教堂那七口大钟丰富的音阶升降往复;还可以看见八度音奔驰穿过那些清脆而急速的音符,这些音符歪歪扭扭形成三.四条明亮的曲线,随即像闪电似地消失了.那边,是圣马丁修道院,钟声刺耳而嘶哑;这边,是巴士底,钟声阴森而暴躁;另一端,是卢浮宫的巨塔,钟声介于男中音和男低音之间.王宫庄严的钟乐从四面八方不停地抛出明亮的颤音,恰好圣母院钟楼低沉而略微间歇的钟声均匀地落在这颤音上面,仿佛铁锤敲打着铁砧,火花四溅.您不时还可看见圣日耳尔-德-普瑞教堂三重钟声飞扬,各种各样的乐声阵阵掠过.随后,这雄壮的组合声部还不时略微间歇,让道给念圣母经时那密集应和的赋格曲,乐声轰鸣,如同星光闪亮.在这支协奏曲之下,在其最悠远处,可以隐隐约约分辨出各教堂里面的歌声,从拱顶每个颤动的毛孔里沁透出来.-诚然,这是一出值得人们倾听的歌剧.通常,从巴黎散发出来的哄哄嘈杂声,在白天,那是城市的说话声;在夜间,那是城市的呼吸声;此时,这是城市的歌唱声.因此,请您聆听一下这钟楼乐队的奏鸣,想象一下在整个音响之上弥散开来的五十万人的悄声细语.塞纳河亘古无休的哀诉.风声没完没了的叹息.天边山丘上宛如巨大管风琴木壳的四大森林那遥远而低沉的四重奏;如同在一幅中间色调的画中,您再泯除中心钟乐里一切过于沙哑.过于尖锐的声音;那么,请您说说看,世上还有什么声音更为丰富,更为欢快,更为灿烂,更为耀眼,胜过这钟乐齐鸣,胜过这音乐熔炉,胜过这许多高达三百尺的石笛同时发出万般铿锵的乐声,胜过这浑然只成为一支乐队的都市,胜过这曲暴风骤雨般的交响乐!
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