Pélérinage balzacien: rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève

Another of the touristic perambulations which I undertook in October might better be described as a literary pilgrimage.  The rue Tournefort is deep in the 5e arrondissement, running southwards from the Panthéon, and Honoré de Balzac, the great nineteenth-century novelist whom I might have mentioned once or twice, knew it well enough to set Le Père Goriot there. 

 
Madame Vauquer, née de Conflans, est une vieille femme qui, depuis quarante ans, tient à Paris une pension bourgeoise établie rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, entre le quartier latin et le faubourg Saint-Marcel.

My effort at a translation: Madame Vauquer, née  de Conflans, is an old woman who for forty years has kept a boarding house in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, between the Latin Quarter and the inner suburb of  Saint-Marcel.
  

Much has changed, mercifully:

           ...les maisons y sont mornes, les murailles y sentent la prison....  Nul quartier de             Paris n’est plus horrible, ni, disons-le, plus inconnu.'

    ...the houses there are grim; the walls suggest a prison... No part of Paris is more horrible nor, it      might be said, more unknown.

Much has not, though:

A brusque and rude slope

Elle est située dans le bas de la rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, à l’endroit où le terrain s’abaisse vers la rue de l’Arbalète par une pente si brusque et si rude que les chevaux la montent ou la descendent rarement.

 [The boarding-house] is to be found at the bottom of the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, where the land drops down towards the rue de l’Arbalète so abruptly and roughly that horses rarely go up or down it.

What is also striking about his description of the area are the 'tons jaunes' and sombre colours: he described the street as a 'cadre de bronze', a picture-frame of bronze well-suited to the picture he was about to paint.  Much of what inspired this description must have disappeared with the smartening-up of the street, but there is still a papery yellowness about it.  Certainly the relative quietude remains.

It is generally accepted that the house to the left is the Maison Vauquer, also described in meticulous detail by Balzac.  Here he played out the first episode of his great drama: here Rastignac planned his conquest of Parisian society, here Goriot, because of his compulsive generosity, had to move progressively further upstairs as he gradually tightened his belt; here Vautrin met his come-uppance!  It is fascinating to  find the settings of books or places frequented by authors and by people I admire.

  
'La façade de la pension donne sur un jardinet, en sorte que la maison tombe à angle droit sur la rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, où vous la voyez coupée dans sa profondeur.

   The front of the house overlooks a little garden, and it is at a right angle to the rue Neuve-Sainte-  Geneviève,  which cuts it in section from top to bottom.

In an imminent post I will follow the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève to its namesake, the tomb of St. Geneviève at the church of St-Etienne-du-Mont.

Jour de l'Armistice

I break my fortnight-long silence (for which I apologise) because of today's date and its commemoration in Meudon.  The Armistice which ended the First World War has been remembered first with a Mass in Meudon's parish church of Saint-Martin (St Martin of Tours, whose feast-day is also on the eleventh of November), and then with a parade from the hôtel de ville to the cemetery to the south of town.

The congregation outside Saint-Martin

Having set off from the town hall down the hill and on the left, the parade turns into the rue de la République.

The parade approaches the cemetery.

The parade enters the cemetery.

All of this was done with calm and unaffected dignity.  A similar impression was given by the Tricolore flags fixed to the cab of every bus:

The Tricolore (just above the driver's cab).

The sobering thought has not escaped me that those of my age a century ago were sent to France not to enrich their lives, studying the luminous subtlety of man's art and being, but to have their lives ruined or ended in the calamity of industrialised warfare: requiescant in pace; qu'ils reposent en paix.