I hired a cabriolet and driver the other night, and went with a lady from New Orleans to see the most famous of the “Guinguettes.” Here all the little world seemed to me completely and reasonably happy, behaving with all the decency, and dancing with almost the grace, of high life. We visited half a dozen, paying only ten sous at each for admission. I must not tell you it was Sunday night: it is so difficult to keep Sunday all alone, and without any one to help you. The clergy find a great deal of trouble to keep it themselves here, there is so little encouragement. On Sunday only, these places are seen to advantage. I am very far from approving of dancing on this day, if one can help it; but I have no doubt that in a city like Paris the dancers are more taken from the tavern and gin-shops than from the churches. I do not approve, either, of the absolute denunciation this elegant amusement incurs from many of our religious classes inAmerica. If human virtues are put up at too high a price, no one will bid for them. Not a word is said against dancing in the Old or New Testament, and a great deal in favour. Miriam danced, you know how prettily; and David danced. To be sure, the manner of his dancing was not quite so commendable, according to the fashion of our climates. In the New Testament, to give enjoyment to the dance, the water was changed into wine. If you will accept classical authority I will give you pedantrypar dessus la tête. The Greeks ascribed to dancing a celestial origin, and they admitted it even amongst the accomplishments and amusements of their divinities. The Graces are represented almost always in the attitude of dancing; and Apollo, the most amiable of the gods, and the god of wisdom, too, is called by Pindar the “dancer.” Indeed, I could shew you, if I pleased, that Jupiter himself sometimes took part in a cotillon, and on one occasion danced a gavot.
Mεστοισιν δ’ωρχειτο πατηρ ανδρωντε Θεωντε.
Mεστοισιν δ’ωρχειτο πατηρ ανδρωντε Θεωντε.
Mεστοισιν δ’ωρχειτο πατηρ ανδρωντε Θεωντε.
There, it is proved to you from an ancient Greek poet. I could shew you, too, that Epaminondas, amongst his rare qualities, is praised by Cornelius Nepos for his skill in dancing; and that Themistocles, in an evening party at Athens, passed for a clown, for refusing to take a share in a dance. But it is so foppish to quote Greek, and to be talking to women about the ancients. Don’t you say that dancing is not a natural inclination, or I will set all the savages on you of the Rocky Mountains, and I don’t know how many of the dumb animals—especially the bears, who, even on the South-Sea Islands, where they could not have any relations with theAcadémie Royale de Musique, yet always express their extreme joy (Captain Cook says) by this agreeable agitation of limbs. And if you won’t believe all this, I will take you to see a Negro holiday on the Mississippi. Now, this is enough about dancing; it is very late, and I must dance off to bed.
It is necessary to be as much in love with dancing as I am to preach so pedantically about it as I have in this postscript. Its enormous length, when you have seen Mademoiselle Taglioni, needs no apology. When you do see her, take care her legs don’t get into your head; they kept capering in mine all last night.
The Boulevards—Boulevard Madelaine—Boulevard des Capucines—Boulevard Italien—Monsieur Carème—Splendid Cafés—The Baths—Boulevard Montmartre—The Shoe-black—The Chiffonnier—The Gratteur—The Commissionnaire—Boulevard du Temple—Scene at the Ambigù Comique—Sir Sydney Smith—Monsieur de Paris—The Café Turc—The Fountains—Recollections of the Bastille—The Halle aux Blés—The Bicêtre—Boulevard du Mont Parnasse.
The Boulevards—Boulevard Madelaine—Boulevard des Capucines—Boulevard Italien—Monsieur Carème—Splendid Cafés—The Baths—Boulevard Montmartre—The Shoe-black—The Chiffonnier—The Gratteur—The Commissionnaire—Boulevard du Temple—Scene at the Ambigù Comique—Sir Sydney Smith—Monsieur de Paris—The Café Turc—The Fountains—Recollections of the Bastille—The Halle aux Blés—The Bicêtre—Boulevard du Mont Parnasse.
Paris, July, 1835.
Themain street of Paris, and one of the most remarkable streets in the whole world, is theBoulevard. It runs from near the centre towards the east, and coils around the circumference of the city. Its adjacent houses are large, black, and irregular in height, resembling at a distance, battlements, or turretted castles. Its course is zig-zag, and each section has a different name, and different pursuits; so that it presents you a new face and character, a newand picturesque scene, at every quarter of a mile. This does not please, at first sight, an eye formed upon our Quaker simplicity of Philadelphia, but is approved by the general taste. Our Broadways, and Chestnut streets, and Regent-streets, are exhausted at a single view; the Boulevard entertains all day. Its side-walks are delightfully wide, and overshadowed with elms.
Before the visit of the allies, it had eight miles of trees,—a kind of ornament that is held in better esteem in European than in American cities. Our ancestors took a dislike to trees, from having so much grubbing at their original forests, and their enmity has been infused into the blood. To cut down a tree is now a passion become hereditary, and I have often spent whole days in its gratuitous indulgence. A squatter of the back woods begins by felling the trees indiscriminately; and he is most honoured, as those first Germans we read of in Cæsar, who has made the widest devastation around his dwelling. Your Pottsville, which ten years ago was a forest, has to-day not a fig-leaf to cover its nakedness.
Here is a gentleman just going to Philadelphia, who will hand you this letter; I send alsoa map of Paris, that I may have your company on such rambles as I may chance to take through the capital. To day I invite you to a walk upon the Boulevards.
On the west end is the Madelaine, in full view of the street. While the other monuments of Paris are “dim with the mist of years,” this stands, like a new-dressed bride, in white and glowing marble; its architecture fresh from the age of Pericles. This church became pagan in the Revolution; it was for a while the “Temple of Glory,” and has returned to the true catholic faith. Three mornings of the week, you will find at its feet half an acre in urns, baskets, and hedges, of all that nature has prettiest in her magazine of flowers; delighting the eye by their tasteful combination of colours, and embalming the air with their fragrance. I am sorry you are not a gentleman, I could describe to you so feelingly the flower-girl—her fichu too narrow by an inch; her frock rumpled and disordered, which seems hung upon her by the graces. Her laughing eyes emulate the diamond; and love has pressed his two fingers upon her brunette cheeks. This is theBoulevard Madelaine. On the south side, a sad looking garden occupies its whole length. I asked of a Frenchmanwhose it was; he says “it is the Minister of Strange Affairs.” It is the hotel of Monsieur Thiers, who wrote a book about the Revolution and a “Treatise upon Wigs,” and is now ministerdes affaires étrangères. I do not like him, this Mr. Thiers, and I don’t care to tell you the reason. I experienced yesterday some impudence and pertness from one of the clerks of his office; and these underlings you know represent usually the qualifications of their masters in such particulars.
To leave Paris for London requires your passport to be signed at the police office, at the American and English ambassadors’, and at the French minister’s. At the first office you are set down with a motley crew upon a bench, and there you sit, like one of those virtues in front of the “Palais Bourbon,” often an hour or two, until your name is called; and when it is called you don’t recognise it, and you keep sitting on, unless you take some one along with you to translate it for you. There is not anything in nature so unlike itself as one’s name Frenchified—even a monosyllable. As for “John,” it changes genders altogether, and becomes “Jean.” To the last three offices you pay the valedictory compliment of thirty francs, and get their impudenceinto the bargain. You will always find persons about your lodgings, called “facteurs,” (they should be calledbenefactors,) who will do all this for you, for a small consideration, much better than you can do it yourself.
You are now on theBoulevard des Capucines. It is raised about thirty feet, and the houses for a quarter of a mile are left in the valley. The garret and Miss Annette are alone above ground; all the high life here is below stairs. On the right side, you see apparently one of the happiest of human beings, the “marchand des chiens,” who sells little dogs and parrots. “A six francs ma caniche!”—“Margot à dix francs!” he cries, with a gentle voice, half afraid some one might hear him; he has become attached to his animals, and feels a sorrow to part with them. He feels as you for your chickens you have fed every day, when you must kill them for dinner. Poor little Azor, and Zémire! Only think of seeing them no more! He sells them a few francs cheaper, when the purchaser is rich and likely to treat them well. The French, especially the women, dote upon dogs beyond the example of all other nations, and yet have the nastiest race of curs upon the earth. A dog, they say, loves his master themore he is a vagabond, and the French in return love their dogs the more they are shabby. What would I give for a few of those eloquentbow wowswhich resound in the night from an American barn-yard, and which protect so securely one’s little wife from the thieves and the lovers, while the husband is wandering in foreign lands.
Take off your hat; this is one of the choice and pre-eminent spots of the French capital; the very seat almost of the pleasures and amusements of Europe; it is theBoulevard Italien. It is here that gentlemen and ladies assemble of an evening to discuss the immense importance of a good dinner, when the labours of the day have closed, and not a care intrudes to distract the mind from the great business of deglutition and digestion. Men make splendid reputations here which live after them by the invention of a single soup. It is here they make the sauces in which one might eat his own grandfather. This place was respected by the Holy Alliance; and Lord Wellington, in 1815, pitched his marquee upon the Boulevard Italien.
It is in vain to expect perfection in an art unless we honour those who exercise its functions. Monsieur Carème, (whom I mentionfor the sake of honour, and who lives close by here in the Rue Lafitte,) now cook to the Baron Rothschild and ex-cook to the Prince of Wales, is one of the most considerable persons of this age; holding a high gentlemanly rank, and living in an enviable condition of opulence and splendour. He keeps his carriage, takes his airings of an evening, has his country seat, and his box at the opera; and has, indeed, every attribute requisite to make a gentleman in any country. The number of officers attached to his staff is greater than that of any general of the presentrégime; his assistant roaster has a salary above our President of the United States. It is by this honourable recompence of merit that, through all the vicissitudes of her various fortunes, France has still maintained unimpaired her great prerogative of teaching the nations how to cook.
Monsieur de Carème is worthy a particular notice. He had an ancestor who was “chef de cuisine,” of the Vatican, and invented asoupe maigrefor his Holiness; and another who was cook to the Autocratrix of all the Russias. How talents do run in some families! Himself, having served his apprenticeship under an eminent artist of the Boulevard Italien, heinvented asauce piquante, when quite a young man; and by a regular cultivation of his fine natural powers, he has reached a degree of perfection in his art which has long since set envy and rivalship at defiance. The truth is, that a great cook is as rare a miracle as a great poet. It is well known that Claude Lorraine could not succeed in pastry with all his genius.
“Et Balzac et Malherbe si fameux en bon mots,En cuisine peut-être n’aurait été que des sots.”
“Et Balzac et Malherbe si fameux en bon mots,En cuisine peut-être n’aurait été que des sots.”
“Et Balzac et Malherbe si fameux en bon mots,En cuisine peut-être n’aurait été que des sots.”
To whom, think you, does the British nation owe those Attic suppers, those feasts of the gods, which so surprised the Allied Monarchs, and brought so much glory upon his late majesty? To Monsieur de Carème. And to whom do you think the Baron Rothschild owes those clear and unclouded faculties with which he out-financiers all Europe and America? Certes, to Monsieur de Carème. All the Baron has to do is to dine; digestion is done by his cook. Carème has refused invitations to nearly every European court; and it was only upon the most urgent solicitations that he consented to reside eight months at Carlton House,—a portion of his life upon which he looks back with muchdispleasure and repentance, and the remnant of his days he designs to consecrate, with the greater zeal on this account, to the honour and interests of his native country. He is now preparing a digest of his art, after the manner of the Code Napoleon; and eminent critics, to whom he has communicated his work, pronounce it excellent, both for its literary and culinary merits.
To this Boulevard also the sweetmeat part of the creation resort about twilight to their creams and lemonades andeau sucrée. They seat themselves upon both margins of thetrottoirupon chairs, leaving an interval between, for the successive waves of pedestrians, who are also attracted hither by the fashion and elegance of the place. How charming, of a summer evening, to sit you down here upon one chair and put your feet upon another, and look whole hours away upon this little world; or to walk up and down and eye the double row of belles seated amidst the splendour of the gas-lamps. In this group are examples of nearly all that is extant of the human species. I have seen a Bedouin of theMer Rougestumble upon a great ambassador from the Neva; and a Mandarin of the Loo-koo run foul of an ex-school-master of the Mohontongo. If any one is missing from your mines of Shamoken, come hither, and you will find him seated on a straw-bottomed chair on the Boulevard Italien.
These splendid cafés are multiplied by mirrors, and being open, or separated only by panels of glass, appear to form but a single tableau with the street, and those outside and in seem parts of the same company. I recommend you theCafé de Paris, theCafé Hardi, theCafé Veron, if you wish to mix with the fashionable and merry world; if with the business world, with the great bankers, the millionaires, thenoblesse de la Bourse, who smooth their cares with fat dinners and good wines, where else in the world should you go but toTortoni’s? There are not two Tortonis upon the earth. A dinner you may get at theRocher Cancale,—but a breakfast!—it is to be had no where in all Europe out of Tortoni’s. The ladies of high and fashionable life stop here before the door, and are served by liveried waiters elegantly in their barouches; they cannot think of venturing in, there are so many more gentlemen outside. You will see here, both in and out, the most egregious cockneys of Europe, the beau Brummels and the beau Nashes, the“Flashes,” and “Full-Swells” of London town, and, in elegant apposition, the Parisian exquisites.
Was there ever anything so beautiful!—No,d’honneur! His boots are of Evrat, his coat Staub, vest Moreau, gloves and cravat Walker, and hat Bandoni; and Mrs. Frederic is his washerwoman! You will please give the superiority to the French. To make an elegant fop is more than the barber’s business; nature herself must have a finger in the composition. Besides, if a man is born a fool, he is a greater fool in Paris than elsewhere, there are such opportunities for acquirement.
These are the French people. Don’t you hate to see so many ninnies in mustachios? If I had not the great Marlborough, and Bonaparte, and Apollo, on my side, all three unwhiskered, I would go home in the next packet. The moment one has made one’s debut here in the world of beards, one is a man, and there is no manhood, founded on any other pretensions, that can dispense with this main qualification. It is the one eminent criterion of all merit; it is a diploma; a bill of credit as current as in the days Albuquerque; it is promotion in the army, in the diplomacy, even in the church; you cannot be a saint without this grisly recommendation. One loves the women, just because they have no beards on their faces.
Otherwise—à la barbe près—the French are well enough. It is the same kind of population, nearly, that one meets by the gross in New York, and everywhere else. I looked about for Monsieur Dablancour, but could see nothing of him. In a foreign country a man is always a caricature of himself. The French are here in their own element, and swim in it naturally. One is always awkward from the very sense of not knowing foreign customs; and always ridiculous abroad because everything is ridiculous which departs from common and inveterate habit, and nothing is ridiculous which conforms with it. In a nation of apes, it is becoming to be an ape. If you place a man of sense in a company of fools, it is the man of sense who is embarrassed and looks foolish. If one travelled into Timbuctoo, I presume one would feel very foolish for being white.
But this is not all that is worth your attention on the Boulevard Italien. If you love baths of oriental luxury, here are theBains Chinoisesjust opposite. Personal cleanliness is the French virtuepar excellence. Bathing in other countries is a luxury, in France a necessity. Hot bathsas good as yours at Swaim’s are at fifteen sous. TheBains Vigiersat twenty sous a bath made their proprietor a count. You can have baths here simple and compound, inodorous and aromatic, with cold or warm, or clarified or Seine water; and you have them with naked floors and ungarnished walls, and with all the luxury of tapestry and lounges; baths double and single, with and without attendance, with a whole skin, or flayed alive with friction. And besides these baths ordinary and extraordinary—Russian, Turkish, and Chinese—you have baths specific against all human infirmities; baths alkalic, sulphurous, fumigatory, oleaginous, and antiphlogistic. All the mineral waters of Europe pour themselves at your feet in the middle of Paris. Spa, Seltzer, Barege, Aix-la-chapelle, and Ginsnack; manufactured, every one of them, in the street of the University,Gros Caillou, No. 21. And this is not all; there is the “ambulatory bath,” which walks to your bedside, and, embracing you, walks out again, at thirty sous. “C’est un vrai pays de Cocagne que ce Paris.”
And if you love gew-gaws, gingumbobs, and pretty shop-girls, why here they are at the Bazaar. The French take care, as no otherpeople, to furnish such places with pretty women, and they turn their influence, as women, to the account of the shop. The English, I have heard, put all their deformities into their bazaars, that customers, they say, may attend to the other merchandise. The French way is the more sensible. I have been ruined already several times by the same shop-girl, caressing and caressing each of one’s fingers, as she tries on a pair of gloves one does not want.
Or if you love the fine arts, where are all the print-shops of Paris? Why here. You can buy here Calypsos and Cleopatras all naked, with little French faces; and Scipios and Cæsars, and other marshals of the empire, from any price down to three sous a piece. Finally, if you love the bestpatésin this world, we will just step over into the Passage Panorama to Madame Felix’s. Sweet Passage Panorama! How often have I walked up and down beneath thy crystal roof as the dusky evening came on, with arms folded, and in the narcotic influence of a choice Havannah, forgotten all, all but that a yawning gulf lies between me and my friends and native country!
Give a sou to this little Savoyard with the smiling face, who sweeps the crossings. “Ah,Madame, regardez dans votre petite poche si vous n’avez pas un petit sou à me donner!” How can you refuse him! If you do, he will make you just the same thankful bow, in the best forms of French courtesy.
We are now on theBoulevard Montmartre. Here are cashmeres and silks from Arabia; merinosveritable barbe de Pacha, chalys,mousseline Thibet, Pondicherry,unis et broché, and pocket handkerchiefs at two sous. Ah, come along! And here are six pairs of ladies’ legs, shewing at the window the silk stockings. How gracefully gartered! And from above, how the white curtain falls down modestly in front almost to the knee. Don’t be in such a hurry! they are twice as natural as living legs! And here are dolls brevetted by the king, and millinersà prix fixe, at a fixed price; and here is M. Dutosq,fabricant de sac en papier, manufacturer of little paper-bags-to-put-sugar-in to his majesty; and Madame Raggi, who lets out Venuses and other goddesses to the drawing-schools, at two sous an hour. And look at this shop of women’s ready-made articles. Here one can be dressed cap-à-pie for four francs and eleven centimes (three quarters of a dollar), frock, petticoat, fichu, bonnet, stockings andchemise! A student, also, can buy here a library in the street from a quarter of a mile of books, at six sous a volume. I have just bought Rousseau in calf, octavo, at ten sous!
Since the last Revolution, commerce has taken a new spirit; thebourgeoisblood has got uppermost. The greatest barons now are the Rothschilds, and the greatest ministers the Lafittes. The style, too, has risen to the level of the new bureau-cratic nobility. The shopkeeper of these times is at your service, acommerçant, his “boutique” is amagazin, his “contoir” hisbureau, and his “pratique” hisclientelle. Even the signs, as you see, speak a magnificent language. It is the “Magazin du Doge de Venise,” or “Magazin du Zodiaque—des Vépres Siciliennes,” or “Grand Magazin de Nouveauté.” And if the Doge of Venice is “selling out cheap,” the language is of course worthy of a Doge—it is “au rabais par cessation de commerce.” The Bourse is now a monument of the capital, and disputes rank with the Louvre. The “petit Marquis” is the banker’s son, and the marshals of the empire are sold “second hand” in the frippery market. I intended to write you in English, but the French creeps on in spite of me.
This is one of the prettiest of the Boulevards, and you will see here a great many fine womenen promenadeof a morning about twelve. When a French lady walks out, she always takes on one side hercanicheby a string, and at the other, sometimes, her beau without a string. In either way she monopolizes the whole street, and you are continually getting between her and the puppy, very much to your inconvenience; for if you offend the dog the mistress is, of course, implacable, and you will very likely have to meet her gallant in the Forest of Bondy the next morning. But you can turn this evil sometimes to advantage. If you see, for instance, a pretty woman alone, with her curly companion, you can just walk on, “commercing with the skies” till the lady gets one side of you and the dog the other; this will give you the opportunity of begging her pardon, of patting and stroking the dog a little,—it may break the ice towards an acquaintance, or, if the place be convenient to fall, you had better let her trip you up, and then she will be very sorry. If you think it is a little thing to get a pretty woman’s pity on your side, you are very much mistaken.
Let me introduce you to this shoe-black. He has, as you see, a little box, a brush or two in it,and blacking, and a fixture on the top for a foot; this is hisfond de boutique, his stock in trade. He brushes off the mud to the soles of your feet, and shews you your own features in your boots for three sous. This one has just dissolved an ancient firm; and his advertisement, which he calls a “prospectus,” standing here so prim upon a board, announces the event. The partnership is dissolved, but the whole “personnel,” he says, of the establishment remains with the present proprietor; and M. Badaraque, ex-partner, has also the honour to inform us, that he has transported the “appareil de son établissement” to the “Place de la Bourse, une des plus jolies locations de la ville.” The “Decrotteur en chef” at the Palais Royal, and other places of fashion, has his assistants, and serves a dozen or two of customers at a time. He has a shop furnished with cloth-covered benches in amphitheatre, as at the Chamber of Deputies, with a long horizontal iron support for the foot, and pictures are hung around the walls. “On dit, monsieur, que c’est d’après Teniers—celui, monsieur? c’est d’après Vandyke.” And there are newspapers and reviews; so that to polish a gentleman’s boots and his understanding are parts of the same process.
There is a variety of other little trades and industries, which derive their chief means of life from the wants and luxuries of this street, which I may as well call to your noticeen passant: I mean trades that are “tout Parisiennies”; that is to say, unknown in any other country than Paris. You will see an individual moving about, at all hours of the night, silent and active, and seeing the smallest bit of paper in the dark where you can see nothing, and, with a hook in the end of a stick, picking it up, and pitching it with amazing dexterity into a basket tied to his left shoulder; with a cat-like walk, being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, stirring up the rubbish of every nook and gutter of the street, under your very nose—this is thechiffonnier. He is a very important individual. He is in matter what Pythogoras was in mind; and his transformations are scarcely less curious than those of the Samian sage.
The beau, by his pains, peruses once again his dicky, or cravat, of a morning, in the “Magazin des Modes,” whilst the politician has his breeches reproduced in the “Journal des Debats;” and many a fine lady pours out her soul upon abillet-douxthat once was the dishclout. Thechiffonnierstands at the head of the littletrades, and is looked up to with envy by the others. He has two coats, and wears on holidays a chain and quizzing-glass, and washes his hands withpâte d’amand. He rises, too, like the Paris gentry, when the chickens roost; and when the lark cheers the morning, goes to bed. All the city is divided into districts, and let out to thesechiffonniersby the hour; to one, from ten to eleven, and from eleven to twelve to another, and so on through the night; so that several get a living and consideration from the same district. This individual does justice to the literary compositions of the day; he crams into hischiffonnerieindiscriminately the last Vaudeville, the last sermon of the Archbishop, and the lastélogeof the Academy.
Just below him is theGratteur. This artist scratches the live-long day between the stones of the pavement for old nails from horses’ shoes, and other bits of iron—always in hopes of a bit of silver, and even, perhaps, a bit of gold; more happy in his hope than a hundred others in the possession. He has a store in the Faubourgs, where he deposits his ferruginous treasure. His wife keeps this store, and is a “Marchande de Fer.” He maintains a family, like another man; one or two of his sons he brings up to scratch fora living, and the other he sends to college; and he has a lot “in perpetuity” in Père la Chaise. His rank is, however, inferior to theChiffonnier, who will not give him his daughter in marriage, and he don’t ask him to hissoirées.
In all places of much resort you will see an individual, broad-shouldered and whiskered, looking very affable and officious, especially upon strangers, mostly about grocer-stores and street corners. Let me introduce you to him, also. He wants to carry your letters, and run errands for you from one end of Paris to the other. He will carry, also, your wood to your room, abillet-douxto your mistress, and your boots to the cobbler’s, and, for a modest compensation, perform any service that one person may require of another; also, as you see, a very important individual. Indeed, he holds amongst men nearly the same place that Mercury holds amongst the gods. About his neck he wears a brass medal, polished bright as honour—at once his badge of office and pledge of fidelity. If you seem to doubt his honesty, he points to his medal, and holds up his head; that’s enough. If only the Peers could point to their decorations with the same confidence! For instance, if you walk out in the bright day, not being a Parisian,you are of course overtaken by the rain; for a Paris sunshine and shower are as close together as a babe’s smiles and tears; and then you just step into a “Cabinet de lecture,” and you have not read half the worth of your sou, when your coat has embraced you, and your umbrella is between you and the merciless heavens. This is thecommissionnaire. I should have noticed among the little industries the “Broker of theatrical pleasures;” he sells the pass A, who retires early, to B, who goes in late; and theClacqueur, who for two or three francs a night applauds or hisses the new plays. But we must get on with our journey.
Here on theBoulevard Poissonnière, or near it, resides Mr. ——, of New Jersey; he has been sent over (hapless errand!) to convert these French people to Christianity. He is a very clever man; and we will ask if he is yet alive. The journals of this morning say three or four missionaries have been eat up by the Sumatras.
This is the famous Arch of Triumph of the Porte St. Denis. It compliments Louis XIV. on his passage of the Rhine in 1672, and is the counterpart of the Napoleon Arch at the Barrière de l’Etoile. It is seventy-two feet high,and has at each side an obelisk, supported by a lion, and decorated with trophies. That fat Dutch woman at the left base stands for Holland; and that vigorous, muscular-looking man on the right, is deputy to the Rhine; and that overhead on horseback, is great “baby Louis.”
We have now left the fashionable world at our heels—this is theBoulevard du Temple. This Boulevard, a few years ago, was a delightful and romantic walk of an evening; but noise and business have now violated all the secret retreats of Paris, one after another, and there is no spot left of the great capital in which you can hear your own voice. There were here, before the Revolution, five theatres; and the lists of fame are crowded with the theatrical celebrities which drew the homage of the whole city to this street. This is the only spot in the world that has furnished clowns for posterity; Baron and Le Kain are hardly more fresh in the memory of man than Galimafré and Bobèche. This was the theatre of their triumphs. It was here, too, that the world came to see a living skeleton of eight pounds, and his wife of eight hundred,—that men, to the great astonishment of our ancestors, swallowed carving knives and boiling oil,—that turkeys danced quadrilles, andfleas drove their coaches and six; and it was here that Mademoiselle Rose stood on her head on a candlestick. There are yet six theatres here; but the street once so adorned with gardens, and equipages, and fashionable ladies, and an infinity of other attractions, is now, alas! built up with gaunt houses, and differs scarcely from the other Boulevards.
The simplicity of original manners is, however, wonderfully preserved in this district. The more fashionable parts are so filled with strangers—with parasite plants, that you can scarcely distinguish the indigenous population. This is the true classical and traditional district—the only place in which you can find unadulterated Frenchmen. The inhabitant of this quarter has rather more than a French share ofembonpoint, and aims at dignity, and his whiskers leave a part of his chin uncovered; his clothes are large and fine in texture; he carries an umbrella, and, onfêtedays, a cane, to give him an important air and keep off the dogs. If it rains, he takes a fiacre; he keeps by him his certificate of marriage and “extrait de batême,” and has not got over the prejudice of being born in lawful wedlock. His wife is pretty, but not handsome; her features areregular, and face plump—indeed, she is plump all over. He loves his wife by instinct. She keeps his books, and he asks her advice in all his business; she suckles his children, and gives himtisanewhen he is sick.
I saw this individual and his wife together a few evenings ago at theAmbigù Comique. I sometimes go to this theatre, and theGaitéand theCirque Olympique. A vicious student was tempted every now and then to pinch Madame behind. She bore it impatiently, indeed, but silently, for some time. “Qu’est-ce que tu as?—Qu’as tu donc, ma femme?” At last she communicated to her husband the fact. He immediately grew a foot taller upon his seat; and then he looked at the young man from head to foot with one of those looks which mean so much more than words. Not wishing, however, to disturb the play, he contained himself, only riggling on his seat, and eyeing him occasionally, to the end of the act; and then he got up. “Quoi, monsieur,” said he, “vous avez l’impertinence de pincer les fesses de madame?” and then thrusting his tongue into the lower lip, he put on an expression, such as you will never meet outside the Boulevard du Temple. You would go a mile any time barefooted to see it. “Iwould have you to know, sir, that I am arentier, (a freeholder)que je paye rente à la ville de Paris; that I am called Grigou, monsieur; and that I live in the Rue d’Angouleme, No. 22;” and he sat down. The little wife now tried to appease him, which made him the more pugnacious; she reminded him he was the father of a family, had children, and, finally, that he had a wife; and then she sat up close by him, and then she came over to the other side, just in front of me, for security.—The bourgeois of this district lives in a larger house than he could get for the same rent in any other part of Paris; he is usually independent in his circumstances, and has a certainà plomb, or confidence in himself, and a liberty in all his movements, which give a full relief to his natural feelings and traits of character.
Some distance towards the right, you will find the great market of frippery—one of the curiosities of this district. Every old thing upon the earth is sold there for new. There are 1800 shops. Nothing was ever so restored from raggedness to apparent green youth and integrity as an old coat in the hands of these Israelites, unless it be the conscience of those who sell. A garment that has served at least two generations,and been worn last by a beggar, you will buy in this market for new in spite of your teeth. It is a good study of human nature to see here how far the human face may be modified by its pursuits and meditations.
This building in theRue du Temple, with the superb portico and Ionic columns, and two colossal statues in front, is one of great historical importance; and ladies who love knights would not pardon me for passing it unnoticed. The ancient edifice was built seven hundred years ago, and was occupied by one of the most powerful orders of Christianity—the Knights Templars. Here it was that Philip le Bel tortured and burnt alive these soldier monks, seizing their treasures, and bestowing their other possessions upon his new favourites, the Knights of Malta. Who has not heard of the war-cry ofBeauseant, which chilled the blood of the Saracens on the plains of Syria, and has since made many a woman tremble in her slippers at midnight? This was his lodging. Heavens! how wide you open your eyes!—yes, here lodged the Knights of the Red Cross, and Richard Cœur de Lion used to put up in this temple in going to the Holy Land. It became national property in the Revolution, and was given at theRestoration (1814) to thePrincesse de Condé, who established the present “Convent of the Temple.” The ladies who now occupy it are called theDames Benedictines, and, like the other nuns, of whom there are at present more than twenty orders in France, they devote themselves to education, and other benevolent employments.
It was in this old building that Louis XVI. and his queen were imprisoned in 1792. The king was taken out from here the 20th of January, 1793, to the scaffold; the queen about eleven months after; and Madame Elizabeth, his sister, in the following year; leaving his daughter here alone at thirteen years of age. Sir Sydney Smith was confined in the same room in 1798. Bonaparte, in 1811, demolished the old edifice to the last stone—from what motive?—and in 1812 it was fenced round, and the grass grew upon the guilty place. The religious ladies who now reside here, are purifying it by prayers and other acts of devotion.A proposof Sydney Smith; I met him at an evening party lately. He looks like the history of the last half century. He is a venerable old man, and very sociable with the young girls, who were climbing his knees, and hanging abouthis neck, and getting his namealbummedin their little books to carry to America.
I will now shew you a house in this street, (Rue des Marais du Temple, No. 31,) a house that, once seen, will never depart from your memory. Its closed doors and windows, as if no one lived there; its iron railing, without entrance, and the interstices condemned with wood, in front; and the slit in the centre of the door to receive the correspondence of its horrible master, who sits within as a spider in its web, you will see all the rest of your life. It is the house ofMonsieurde Paris. Oh, dear! and who is Monsieur de Paris? He is a civil magistrate, and belongs to the executive department. No one living, is perhaps, so great a terror to evil doers as this Monsieur de Paris. “Monsieur,” you must recollect, has its particular and its general meanings.Monsieurmeans any body;unmonsieur is a gentleman of some breeding and education;La maison demonsieur is the family of the king’s eldest son; Monsieurde Meauxmeans the Archbishop; and Monsieurde Parismeans the Hangman! He is also called the “Executeur de la haute justice,” or “Executeur des hautes œuvres,” and vulgarly, theBourreau. This is his Hotel. The name ofthe present incumbent is Mr. Henry Sanson. His family consists of a son, a person of mild and gentle manners, who is now serving his apprenticeship to the business under his eminent parent; and two daughters. The elder, about fifteen, is remarkable for beauty and accomplishments. The father is rich, his salary being above that of the President of the Royal Court, and he has spared no expense in the education of the girls. They will be sumptuously endowed.
The two ends of society are affected sometimes in nearly the same way. A princess, being obliged to select her husband from her own rank and religion, runs the hazard of a perpetual virginity; andMademoiselle de Parisexperiences exactly the same inconvenience; she can marry but a hangman. There is no one of all Europe who has performed the same eminent functions as Mr. Henry Sanson, or to whom, without loss of dignity, he can offer the hand of his fair daughter. Ye lords and gentlemen, if you think you have all the pride to yourselves, you are mistaken, the hangman has his share, like another man.
Mr. Sanson has appropriated one or two rooms of this building to a museum of ancientinstruments used in judicial torture—Luke’s iron bed, Ravaillac’s boots, and such like relics; and is quite adilettantiin this department of science. We expect a course of gratuitous lectures, as at the “Musée des Arts et Metiers,” when the season begins. Amongst other objects, you will see the sword with which was beheaded theMarquis de Laly. I am going to tell you an anecdote I have read of this too famous execution, which is curious.
About the year 1750, in the middle of the night, three young men of the high class of nobility, after breaking windows, and the heads of street passengers, and beating the guard, (which was the privilege of the higher classes in those times,) strolling down theFaubourg St. Martin, laughing and talking, and well fuddled with champagne, arrived at the door of this house. They heard the sound of instruments, and music so lively, seemed to indicate a hearty bourgeois dance. How fortunate! they could now pass the night pleasantly. One of them knocked, and a polite well-dressed person opened. A young lord explained the motive of their visit, and was refused. “You are wrong,” said the nobleman; “we are of the court, and do you honour in sharing your amusements.” “I am obliged, nevertheless, to refuse,” replied the stranger; “neither of you know the person you are addressing, or you would be as anxious to withdraw, as now to be admitted.” “Excellent, upon honour! and who the devil are you?” “The executioner of Paris.” “Ha, ha! what you? you the gentleman who breaks limbs, cuts off heads, and tortures poor devils so agreeably?” “Such indeed are the duties of my office; I leave, however, the details you speak of to my deputies, and it is only when a lord like either of you is subject to the penalties of the law, that I do execution on him with my own hands.” The individual who held this dialogue with the executioner was the Marquis de Laly. Twenty years after, he died by the hands of this man, upon whose office he was now exercising his raillery.
One of the ornaments of this Boulevard is theCafé Turc, fitted up with a furniture of two hundred thousand francs. It would do honour to the Italien. What a display of belles and beaux, about seven of an evening, through its spacious rooms, and gardens, and galleries!—one lends his ear to the concert; another, retired in a grotto at the side of hisbonne amie, drinks large draughts of love; and another drinkseausucrée. And here is the largest elephant upon the earth, which bears the same relation to all other elephants that the Trojan horse did to all other horses. This monster was to be cast in bronze, and surmounted by a tower, forming a figure of about eighty feet in height. That which you see here is only the model, in plaster of Paris. The stair-way leads up through one of the legs, six and a quarter feet in the ancle. There were to be twenty-fourbas reliefsin marble, representing the arts and sciences; and the bronze was to be obtained from the fusion of the cannon captured by the imperial army in Spain. Louis Philippe, who is charged with the public works begun by Bonaparte, will be puzzled to finish this elephant.
Paris contains one hundred and eighty-nine great fountains, of which, about twenty are of beautiful architecture, adorned with sculpture and statuary, and enlivened byjets d’eaux, and form a principal ornament of the city. This elephant was intended to add one to the number. That, so imposing and picturesque, which we just now passed, on the Boulevard du Temple, is called theChateau. The building with the jet on the top forms a cone. The water falls from its summit into vases, which overflow incascades that tumble down from story to story into a large basin at the base, where eight lions of bronze spout torrents injets d’eauxfrom their mouths. Its cost was one hundred thousand francs.
It would be too long to particularise the others. On one, you will see Leda caressing her swan, Cupid lurking on the watch; on another, Tantalus gaping in vain for the liquid, which passes by his lips into the pail of the waterman; on another, Hygeia giving drink to a fatigued soldier; and, on another, Charity suckling one of her children, wrapping another from the cold in the folds of her frock, and quenching the parched lips of a third with the pure stream. I have just bought you a clock representing the “Fountain of the Innocents,” with all its waters in motion. It was the Duchess de Berri’s, and is of delicate workmanship. Please to have the proper respect for its dignity, and indulgence for its frailty. I will send it by the next Packet.
The turning of wickets, the gingling of keys, and grating of bolts, were the sounds heard here forty-six years ago. What recollections rise out of the ground to meet you at every step as you tread upon this unhallowed spot. One hearsalmost the chains clank, and the prisoner groan in his cell! It was here, where the charcoal now floats so peacefully on the lake, and where the boatman sings his absent mistress so joyously, that stood, in horrid majesty—