Paris [antikvár]

What a pity that the name Paris, in French, is masculine ! One pictures the French capital so much more readily as a beautiful woman; with her charm, her desire to please, her changes of expression, her faithful heart, and — although no other city in the world is more anxious to keep her age -old privilege of being loved — her coquetry in hiding her years. But the first love of the historians and archeologists is the exact. They have declined to follow the Golden Legend. They tell us that, although Saint Denis did indeed preach to the Parisians and suffer martyrdom in about 250 A.D., he was not the same bishop who, in the beginnings of the Christian era, came from the land of the Parthenon and of Alcibiades, so bringing to the predestined city beauty, elegance, and a soul. Imprisoned in the Ile de la Cité, beheaded at Montmartre, he could not, according to them, have carried his head under his arm to the spot which is the present site of the old abbey, chosen by the kings of France as their last resting-place. No matter ! History unadorned is as rich in wonders as legend. Be that as it may, the scientists of the past have established that the Seine, after having filled the whole of the Parisian basin, subsided into two branches, then into its present bed, at that time dotted with islands which in their turn, except for two, disappeared. Of these islands, we know that one — our Cité — at the more Northern point of the bend of the river, formed a crossing place between the lands of the Loire and those of the upper Oise, then of the Sambre. It was a ready-made trade-route, and also a natural fishing-ground. This island suited the little tribe of the Parisii: and a small community of farmers and boatmen sprang up there. The two thousandth anniversary of Paris was celebrated rather arbitrarily in 1951. The historical date of birth is shown by a monument discovered in 1711 underneath the