One of the pleasantest places in Paris. The street opens out into a perfect little square, built in 1699 on the site of the Abbey stables. The painter Delacroix has his studio at No. 6, which is now a museum to his memory.

Saint-Sulpice

The Church of Saint-Sulpice was built over a period of 134 years by six different architects. The last phase of building, begun in 1732, never got finished, so the two western towers don’t match. (Currently (2009) work is under way to restore the tower which is finishged.) In the end, it’s a great echoing barn of a place, famous for two things; first, the sound of its organ, which has been the preferred instrument of generations of great French composers (Widor, Franck, Dupré); and second, for the kind of sentimental religious art which produces droopy plaster saints. The Lady Chapel is a splendid example of this genre, and the square outside is surrounded by shops selling holy medals etc. This sort of art, indeed, is known in French as ‘sulpicien’. Also in the square is rather a nice fountain with four stone bishops sitting on thrones, water running out beneath them.

Not very remarkable, is it? Yet between 1790 and 1805 No. 5 Rue de Tournon saw more action than many whole streets, housing in turn three extraordinary people.

The first was called Hébert. He was the Editor – indeed, the entire editorial staff – of a Revolutionary newspaper called Le Père Duchesne. This paper was notable for its vulgarity, for its love of blood, for its ardent condemnation of Royalty, and for the fact that every tenth word, whether it fitted the sense of the sentence or not, was the same; was a word not normally printed in newspapers; and began with F.

As the paper was, of course, a great success, Hébert moved out to better lodgings in 1793. His flat was taken over by Anne-Marie Lenormand, who was a Prophetess. Lots of famous people came to see her and she did a roaring trade until Robespierre, then head of the Government, got annoyed because she told him he would be executed before the end of the year, and had her thrown in jail. The Luxembourg palace was handy, and while imprisoned there she met Joséphine de Beauharnais, for whom she foresaw the death of her husband, remarriage to a Corsican soldier, and eventual divorce.

Before the end of the year Robespierre had fallen from power and parted with his head, and Anne-Marie, doubtless muttering ‘told him so’, was released. When Joséphine, widowed, married a Corsican called Napoléon and became an Empress, Anne-Marie was back in favour and fashion. In 1809, however, she warned General Moreau that he was about to be arrested. Moreau left the country in a hurry and the Police, naturally vexed, imprisoned the clairvoyant instead. After the fall of Napoleon she was released again and went to live in Belgium. There she was arrested again in 1818, this time for fraud because one of her prophecies didn’t come true. She came back to No. 5 Rue de Tournon and lived there until she died, aged 71, in 1843. As she had predicted that she would live to be 124, this was a disappointment to her admirers. Nevertheless, a later occupant received a spirit message from the lady in 1866....

The third tenant was the most amazing of the lot.

She was born a simple village girl, christened Anne-Josèphe, in a hamlet called near Marcour in 1762. She arrived in Paris at the age of 22, equipped with a formidable beauty and a cunning little mind, the Scarlett O’Hara of her place and time, and pinched the names of her childhood haunts to give herself a resounding title; Théroigne de Méricourt. Pictures of her survive; narrow waist, good skin (it helped to be a country girl), enormous eyes and that expression of eager innocence which has melted hearts and ruined fortunes in every generation.

In the Summer of 1789, Théroigne stepped full into the spotlight of History. She was involved in everything, and what she missed, her enemies accused her of. She took part, according to some accounts, in the storming of the Bastille, for which she was awarded a sword of honour. And when, in October of the same year, the women of Paris marched on Versailles to demand bread, they were, according to the royalist press, met at the city gates by Théroigne de Méricourt on horseback, resplendent in a scarlet riding-habit, sword at her side, loaded pistols in her belt. They say she led the procession to Versailles, and was a member of the delegation which presented the women’s demands to Marie-Antoinette, whom it is reported she fixed with a haughty stare. Actually, the only element of truth in this is that she was at Versailles at the time, and may have observed the women passing by.

Nevertheless, over the next few months Théroigne made herself famous in revolutionary circles by her championship of the Rights of Women. Politicians of every colour and opinion flocked to her flat in Rue de Tournon. One of her opponents described a visit like this:

‘On the dressing-table were a comb, a dagger, some vegetable rouge, a red cap of liberty, a pair of pistols, some curls, a scarf and a few pamphlets including the Declaration of the Rights of Man. On the walls, pictures of the Bastille and the deaths of revolutionary heroes. Next to the bed, a pike, and in the same area a very revealing velvet riding-habit. She herself appeared in a suggestive state of dress, wearing red morocco shoes and black wool stockings, a blue damask petticoat and a white silk bodice, a flame-coloured gauze bonnet on her head, surmounted by a green pom-pom. Her scarf was blue, white and red, as was her make-up.’

Unfortunately for Théroigne, the monarchy was not yet abolished, and in 1790, two months after the arrival of her sword of honour, she was investigated for her conduct at Versailles. It was said that when the police searched her apartment they discovered letters demonstrating that, of all the famous men who had visited her in the past year, at least 38 had not gone home at bedtime.

Unwilling to undergo further interrogation, Théroigne went home to Belgium. This was not the best of moves, since Belgium was part of the Austrian Empire, which opposed the new government of France. The Belgian authorities handed her over to a gang of French émigré noblemen, who abducted her, attempted to rape her, and had her imprisoned at Kufstein in the Tyrol. Luckily, she now came across a scrupulously honest Austrian investigator, who was able to demonstrate the falsehood of her accusers. She was sent on to Vienna, where the Emperor Leopold, Marie-Antoinette’s brother, visited her in prison and had her released a few days later. Not even Royalty could resist those eyes.

Back in Paris, she was every man’s hero. She told the story of her captivity as guest of honour at the Jacobin club. Contemporary playing-cards used her portrait for that new and egalitarian figure, the Citizeness of Spades. In June 1792, when the mob entered the Tuileries Palace and manhandled the King, she was at work organising a regiment of women, and on the 10th August, when the Monarchy finally fell, she showed immense courage under the fire of the Swiss Guards. For a few more months her popularity remained, while she grew ever more brazen, more outspoken, more notorious, more thoroughly slandered – and still, at the age of 31, ridiculously attractive. She visited the National Assembly constantly, and was one of the leaders of the movement to give women both the vote and the right to bear arms. She assisted in preparing a Declaration of the Rights of Woman. Her speeches read like those of Mrs. Pankhurst, more than a hundred years ahead of her time.

While no man could resist those eyes, unfortunately most women both could and did. And it was the women of Paris, whom she had led so gloriously, who dragged her down in the end. On the 15th May 1793, she made yet another speech on the Terrasse des Feuillants, between the Tuileries gardens and the Manège, where the National Assembly was sitting. She spoke mostly in defence of the Girondins, a party whose mass arrest and execution was to mark the start of the Reign of Terror a month later. Here she was set upon by the poissardes, those very women of the people whose cause she had always upheld, stripped naked and whipped until the tender skin broke and ran red. Her humiliation was total. While her body suffered, something snapped in her head.

The mental breakdown was total and irreversible. It began with nervous prostration and went on to fits of dementia. While the King was tried and executed, she was unaware; through the reign of Terror and the deaths of all her lovers, she faced the wall in a succession of asylums. Through the Directorate, the Consulate and the Empire she lived in an underground cell, on all fours like an animal, refusing clothes or comfort, deprived of speech. Through the whole Napoleonic Empire, the Restoration, the Waterloo campaign, she survived and existed for twenty-four years. She finally died in June 1817, of chronic pneumonia. It seems a harsh punishment for a little excess of amorous enthusiasm.