The greatest function of the Seine, when one tries to focus the memory on its past, is to recall to us that old Paris was a trinity. Born of the river itself rose the Cité, the home of the Church and state, scarce finding room for her palaces and churches, while close to her side, on the south bank, the Université spread herself out, and on the right bank the Ville hummed with trade and became the home of the great municipal institutions.
Dumas shifts the scenes of his Parisian romances first from one side to the other, but always his mediæval Paris is the same grand, luxurious, and lively stage setting. Certainly no historian could hope to have done better.
Intrigue, riot, and bloodshed of course there were; and perhaps it may be thought in undue proportions. But did not the history of Paris itself furnish the romancer with these very essential details?
At all events, there is no great sordidness or squalor perpetuated in Dumas' pages. Perhaps it is for this reason that they prove so readable, and their wearing qualities so great.
There is in the reminiscence of history and the present aspect of the Seine, throughout its length, the material for the constructing a volume of bulk which should not lack either variety, picturesqueness, or interest. It furthermore is a subject which seems to have been shamefully neglected by writers of all ranks.
Turner, of the brilliant palette, pictured many of its scenes, and his touring-companion wrote a more or less imaginative and wofully incorrect running commentary on the itinerary of the journey, as he did also of their descent of the Loire. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, accompanied by a series of charming pictures by Joseph Pennell (the first really artistic topographical illustrations ever put into the pages of a book), did the same for the Saône; and, of course, the Thames has been "done" by many writers of all shades of ability, but manifestly the Seine, along whose banks lie the scenes of some of the most historic and momentous events of mediæval times, has been sadly neglected.
Paris is divided into practically two equal parts by the swift-flowing current of the Seine, which winds its way in sundry convolutions from its source beyond Chatillon-sur-Seine to the sea at Honfleur.