Just as the ordinary workaday Paris will always centre about some
point; so, through all periods of history, the Paris of the
nobles and the upper classes converges towards some particular
spot. It is a periodically recurrent phenomenon which presents
ample matter for reflection to those who are fain to observe or
describe the various social zones; and possibly an enquiry into
the causes that bring about this centralization may do more than
merely justify the probability of this episode; it may be of
service to serious interests which some day will be more deeply
rooted in the commonwealth, unless, indeed, experience is as
meaningless for political parties as it is for youth.
In every age the great nobles, and the rich who always ape the
great nobles, build their houses as far as possible from crowded
streets. When the Duc d'Uzes built his splendid hotel in the Rue
Montmartre in the reign of Louis XIV, and set the fountain at his
gates--for which beneficent action, to say nothing of his other
virtues, he was held in such veneration that the whole quarter
turned out in a body to follow his funeral--when the Duke, I say,
chose this site for his house, he did so because that part of
Paris was almost deserted in those days. But when the
fortifications were pulled down, and the market gardens beyond
the line of the boulevards began to fill with houses, then the
d'Uzes family left their fine mansion, and in our time it was
occupied by a banker. Later still, the noblesse began to find
themselves out of their element among shopkeepers, left the Place
Royale and the centre of Paris for good, and crossed the river to
breathe freely in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where palaces were
reared already about the great hotel built by Louis XIV for the
Duc de Maine--the Benjamin among his legitimated offspring.
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