There remains to-day but a very imperceptible vestige of the Placede Greve, such as it existed then; it consists in the charming littleturret, which occupies the angle north of the Place, and which, alreadyenshrouded in the ignoble plaster which fills with paste the delicatelines of its sculpture, would soon have disappeared, perhaps submergedby that flood of new houses which so rapidly devours all the ancientfacades of Paris.
The persons who, like ourselves, never cross the Place de Greve withoutcasting a glance of pity and sympathy on that poor turret strangledbetween two hovels of the time of Louis XV., can easily reconstruct intheir minds the aggregate of edifices to which it belonged, and findagain entire in it the ancient Gothic place of the fifteenth century.
It was then, as it is to-day, an irregular trapezoid, bordered on oneside by the quay, and on the other three by a series of lofty, narrow,and gloomy houses. By day, one could admire the variety of its edifices,all sculptured in stone or wood, and already presenting completespecimens of the different domestic architectures of the Middle Ages,running back from the fifteenth to the eleventh century, from thecasement which had begun to dethrone the arch, to the Roman semicircle,which had been supplanted by the ogive, and which still occupies, belowit, the first story of that ancient house de la Tour Roland, at thecorner of the Place upon the Seine, on the side of the street with theTannerie. At night, one could distinguish nothing of all that mass ofbuildings, except the black indentation of the roofs, unrollingtheir chain of acute angles round the place; for one of the radicaldifferences between the cities of that time, and the cities of thepresent day, lay in the facades which looked upon the places andstreets, and which were then gables. For the last two centuries thehouses have been turned round.
In the centre of the eastern side of the Place, rose a heavy and hybridconstruction, formed of three buildings placed in juxtaposition. It wascalled by three names which explain its history, its destination, andits architecture: "The House of the Dauphin," because Charles V., whenDauphin, had inhabited it; "The Marchandise," because it had served astown hall; and "The Pillared House" (_domus ad piloria_), because ofa series of large pillars which sustained the three stories. The cityfound there all that is required for a city like Paris; a chapel inwhich to pray to God; a _plaidoyer_, or pleading room, in which to holdhearings, and to repel, at need, the King's people; and under the roof,an _arsenac_ full of artillery. For the bourgeois of Paris were awarethat it is not sufficient to pray in every conjuncture, and to pleadfor the franchises of the city, and they had always in reserve, in thegarret of the town hall, a few good rusty arquebuses. The Greve had thenthat sinister aspect which it preserves to-day from the execrable ideaswhich it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of Dominique Bocador,which has replaced the Pillared House. It must be admitted that apermanent gibbet and a pillory, "a justice and a ladder," as they werecalled in that day, erected side by side in the centre of the pavement,contributed not a little to cause eyes to be turned away from thatfatal place, where so many beings full of life and health have agonized;where, fifty years later, that fever of Saint Vallier was destined tohave its birth, that terror of the scaffold, the most monstrous of allmaladies because it comes not from God, but from man.
It is a consoling idea (let us remark in passing), to think that thedeath penalty, which three hundred years ago still encumbered with itsiron wheels, its stone gibbets, and all its paraphernalia of torture,permanent and riveted to the pavement, the Greve, the Halles, the PlaceDauphine, the Cross du Trahoir, the Marche aux Pourceaux, that hideousMontfaucon, the barrier des Sergents, the Place aux Chats, the PorteSaint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte Saint Jacques,without reckoning the innumerable ladders of the provosts, the bishop ofthe chapters, of the abbots, of the priors, who had the decree of lifeand death,--without reckoning the judicial drownings in the river Seine;it is consoling to-day, after having lost successively all the pieces ofits armor, its luxury of torment, its penalty of imagination and fancy,its torture for which it reconstructed every five years a leather bedat the Grand Chatelet, that ancient suzerain of feudal society almostexpunged from our laws and our cities, hunted from code to code, chasedfrom place to place, has no longer, in our immense Paris, any more thana dishonored corner of the Greve,--than a miserable guillotine, furtive,uneasy, shameful, which seems always afraid of being caught in the act,so quickly does it disappear after having dealt its blow.
CHAPTER III. KISSES FOR BLOWS.