“So old, as if she had for ever stood,So strong as if she would for ever stand,”
“So old, as if she had for ever stood,So strong as if she would for ever stand,”
“So old, as if she had for ever stood,So strong as if she would for ever stand,”
whose bells at this moment are tolling over the dead, the venerable, the time-honouredNotre Dame de Paris.
This old lady is the queen of thecité. Her corner-stone was laid by Pope Alexander III. upon the ruins of an old Roman temple of Jupiter, in 1163. So you see she is a very reverend old lady. Her bell is eight feet in diameter, and requires sixteen men to set its clapper in motion. On entering the church, the work of so many generations, in contemplating its size, the immense height of its dome and roofs, and the huge pillars which sustain them, with the happy disposition and harmony of all these masses, one is seized with a very sudden reverence and a very modest sense of one’s own littleness; and yet a minute before one looked upon the glorious sun, and walked under “this most excellent canopy” almost without astonishment.
You will see here, at all hours of the day, persons devoutly at their beads, intent on theirprayer books, or kneeling at the cross. Except on days of parade, you will see almost six women to one man; and these rather old. Women must love something. When the day of their terrestrial affections has faded, their loves become celestial. When they can’t love anything else, why they love God. “Aime Dieu, Sainte Thérése, c’est toujours aimer.” The Emperor Julian stayed a winter on this island, at which time the river washed (not the Emperor[1]) but the base of the walls of the city; and Paris was accessible only by two wooden bridges. He called it hisLutetiaτην φιλην Αευχετιαν, his beloved city of mud.
ThePalais de Justice, orLit de Justice, as the French appropriately call it, (for the old lady does sometimes take a nap) is a next door neighbour. This palace lodged, long ago, the old Roman Præfects; the kings of the first race, the counts of Paris under the second; and twelve kings of the third.
The greatHôtel Dieu, or Hospital, counts all the years between us and king Pepin, about twelve hundred. It is a manly, solid, and majestic building; its façade is adorned with Doric columns, and beneath the entablature are Force, Prudence, and Justice, and several other virtues “stupified in stone.” But I will give you a more particular account of it, as well as of the right worshipful Notre Dame, and the Palace, when I write my book about Churches, Hospitals, and the courts of Justice. I will only remark now, that I visited this great Hospital a few days ago, and that I saw in it a thousand beds, and a poor devil stretched out on each bed, waiting his turn to be despatched; that the doctor came along about six, and prescribed abouillon et un lavementto them all round; a hundred or two of students following after, of whom about a dozen could approach the beds, and when symptoms were examined, and legs cut off, or some such surgical operation performed, the otherslistened.
But it would be ungrateful in me to pass without a special notice thePræfecturate of Police. If I now lodge in theRue D’Enfer, No.—, looking down upon the garden of the Luxembourg, and having my conduct registeredonce a week in the king’s books; if I have permission to abide in Paris; and, above all, if ever I shall have the permission to go out of it; whither am I to refer these inestimable privileges, but to the never-sleeping eye of the Præfecturate of Police? But the merits of this institution are founded upon a much wider scheme of benefits; for which I am going to look into myGuide to Paris.
It “discourages pauperism” by sending most of the beggars out of Paris, to besiege the Diligence on the highways: and gives aid to dead people by fishing them out of the Seine, at twenty-five francs a piece, into the Morgue. It protects personal safety by entering private houses in the night, and commits all persons taken in the fact (flagrant délit;) it preserves public decency by removing courtezans from the Palais Royal to the Boulevards, and other convenient places; and protects his Most Christian Majesty by seizing upon “Infernal Machines,” just after the explosion. In a word, this Præfecturate of the Police, with only five hundred thousand troops of the line, and the National Guard, encourages all sorts of public morals at the rate of seven hundred millions of francs per annum, besides protectingcommerce by taking gentlemen’s cigars out of their pockets at Havre.
Towards the south and west of the Island, you will see a little building distinguished from its dingy neighbours by its gentility and freshness. It stands retired by the river side, modestly, giving a picturesque appearance to the whole prospect, and a relief to the giant monuments which I have just described. This building is theMorgue.
If any gentleman, having lost his money at Frascati’s—or his health and his money too at the pretty Flora’s—or if any melancholy stranger lodging in theRue D’Enfer, absent from his native home and the sweet affections of his friends, should find life insupportable, (there are no disappointed lovers in this country,) he will lie in state the next morning at theMorgue. Upon a black marble table he will be stretched out, and his clothes, bloody or wet, will be hung over him, and there he will be kept (except in August, when he won’t keep) for three whole days and as many nights; and if no one claims him, why then the King of the French sells him for ten francs to the doctors; and his clothes, after six months, belong to François, the steward, who has them altered forhis dear little children, or sells them for second-hand finery in the market.
One of these suicides, as I have read in theRevue de Paris, was claimed the other day by his affectionate uncle as follows:—A youth wrote to his uncle that he had lost at gambling certain sums entrusted to him, in his province, to pay a debt in Paris, and that he was unwilling to survive the disgrace. The uncle recognised him, and buried him with becoming ceremony atPère la Chaise. In returning home pensively from this solemn duty, the youth rushed into his uncle’s arms, and they hugged and kissed, and hugged each other, to the astonishment of the spectators. It is so agreeable to see one’s nephews, after one has buried them, jump about one’s neck!
The annual number of persons who commit suicide in all France, I have seen stated at two thousand. Those who came to theMorguein 1822 were 260. Is it not strange that the French character, so flexible and fruitful of resources in all circumstances of fortune, should be subject to this excess? And that they should kill themselves, too, for the most absurd and frivolous causes. One, as I have read in the journals, from disgust at putting on his breechesin the cold winter mornings; and two lately (Ecousse and Lebrun) because a farce they had written did not succeed at the play-house. The authors chose to incur the same penalty in the other world that was inflicted on their vaudeville in this. And these Catos of Utica are brought here to theMorgue.
The greater part are caught in the Seine, by a net stretched across the river at St. Cloud. Formerly twenty-five francs were given for a man saved, and twenty if drowned; and the rogues cheated the government of its humanity by getting up a company, who saved each other. The sum is now reversed, so that they always allow one time, and even assist one a little sometimes, for the additional five francs.
The building, by the advance of civilization, has required, this season, to be repaired, and a new story is added. Multitudes, male and female, are seen going in and out at every hour of the day. You can step in on your way as you go to the flower market, which is just opposite. There is a lady at the bureau, who attends the sale and recognition of the corpses in her father’s absence, and who plays the piano, and excels in several of the ornamental branches.
She was crowned at the last distribution ofprizes, and is the daughter of the keeper, M. Perrin. He has four other daughters, who also give the same promise of accomplishment. Their morals do not run the same risk as most other children’s, of being spoilt by a bad intercourse from without. Indeed, they are so little used to associate abroad, that, getting into a neighbour’s the other day, they asked their playmates, running about through the house, “Where does your papa keep his dead people?” Innocent little creatures! M. Perrin is a man of excellent instruction himself, and entertains his visitors with conversations literary and scientific, and he writes a fine round text hand.
When a new corpse arrives, he puts himself at his desk, and with a graceful flourish enters it on the book; and when not claimed at the end of three days he writes down in German text, “inconnu;” if known, “connu.” The exhibition room is, since its enlargement, sufficient for the ordinary wants of society; but on emergencies, as on the “three glorious days,” and the like, they are obliged to accommodate a part of the corpses elsewhere. They have been seen strewed, on these occasions, over the garden; and Miss Perrin has to take some in her room. Alas! that no state of life should beexempt from its miseries! You who think to have propitiated fortune by the humility of your condition, come hither and contemplate M. Perrin. Only a few years ago, when quietly engaged in his official duties, his own wife came in with the other customers. He was struck with horror; and he went to his bureau and wrote down “connu.”
The notoriousHôtel de Villeis well placed in a group with these obscene images. It is the seat of the administration of justice for all Paris, a grey and grief-worn castle, with thePlace de Grêveby the side of it. There it stands by the great thermometer of Monsieur Chevalier, where the French people come twice a day to see if they ought to shiver or sweat. There is not a more abominable place in all Paris than thisPlace de Grêve. It holds about the same rank in the city that the hangman does in the community. There flowed the blood of the ferocious Republic, of the grim Empire, and the avenging Restoration. Lally’s ghost haunts the guilty place. Cartouche was burnt there, and the horrible Marchioness Brinvilliers; Damien and Ravaillac were tortured there. The beautiful Princess de Lamballe was assassinated there, and the martyrs of 1830 buried there.To complete your horror, there is yet the lamp post, the revolutionary gibbet, and the window through which Robespierre leaped out and broke—if I were not writing to a lady I would say—his d——d neck. No accusing spirit would fly to Heaven’s chancery with the oath.
I began to breathe as I stepped upon thePont Neuf. The atmosphere brightened, the prospect suddenly opened, and the noble river exhibited its twenty bridges, and its banks, turretted, towered, and castellated, as far as the eye could pierce. There is a romantic interest in the very name of this bridge, as in the “Bridge of Sighs,” though not a great deal richer in architecture than yours of Fair Mount. And what is the reason? Why is the Rialto more noble than your Exchange of Dock-street? You see Pierre and Jaffier, and the Jew, standing on it. ThePont Neufhas arched the Seine these two hundred years and more. It was once the centre of gaiety, and fashion, and business. Here were displayed the barbaric luxury of Marie de Medicis, and the pompous Richelieu; glittering equipages paraded here in their evening airings, and fair ladies in masks—better disguised in their own faces—crowded here to the midnight routes of the Carnival.
A company in 1709 had an exclusive privilege of a depôt of umbrellas at each end, that ladies and gentlemen paying a sou might cross without injury to their complexions. The fine arts, formerly natives of this place, have since emigrated to thePalais Royal—ripæ ulterioris amantes—and despair now comes hither at midnight—and the horrid suicide, by the silent statue of the great Henry, plunges into eternity.
On the left is theQuai des Augustins, where the patient bibliopolist sits over his odd volumes, and where the cheapest of all human commodities is human wit. A black and ancient building gives an imposing front to theQuai Conti; it is theHotel des Monnaies. Commerce, Prudence, and several other allegorical grandmothers are looking down from the balustrade. Next to it, (for the Muses, too, love the mint,) with a horse-shoe kind of face, is the Royal “Institut de France.” This court has supreme jurisdiction in the French republic of letters; it regulates the public judgment in matters of science, fine arts, language, and literary composition; it proposes questions, and rewards the least stupid, if discovered, with a premium, and gives its approbation of ingenious inventors;who, like Fulton, do not die of hunger in waiting for it.
You may attend the sittings of theAcadémie des Sciences, which are public, on Mondays. You will meet Pascal and Molière in the ante-chamber—as far as they dared venture in their lives. The members you will see in front of broad tables in the interior, and the president eminent above the rest, who ever and anon will ring a little bell by way of keeping less noise; the spectators, with busts of Sully, Bossuet, Fenelon, and Descartes, sitting gravely, tier over tier, around the extremities of the room. The secretary will then run over a programme of the subjects, not without frequent tinklings of the admonitory bell; at the end of which, debates will probably arise on general subjects, or matters of form. For example, M. Arago will call in question the veracity of that eminent man, M. Herschel, of New York, and his selenelogical discoveries; which have a great credit here, because no one sees the moon for the fogs, and you may tell as many lies about her as you please.
Afterwards, a little man of solemn mien, being seated upon a chair, will read you, alas, one of his own compositions. He will talk ofnothing but thegeognosie des couches atmospheriques; theisomorphismof themineralogical substances, and the “Asyntotes of the Parabola,” for an hour. You will then have an episode from Baron Larrey (no one listening) upon a bag of dry bones, displayed,à la Jehoshaphat, upon a wide table; followed by another reader, and then by another, to the end of the sitting. You will think the empire of dulness has come upon the earth.
The Institute was once theCollege des Quatre Nations, and was founded by Mazarin upon the ruins of the famousTour de Nesle. I need not tell you the history of this tower. Who does not know all about QueenIsabeau de Bavière?—of her window from the heights of the tower, from which she overlooked the Seine, before the baths of Count Vigier (what made him a count?) were invented. She was a great admirer of the fine forms of the human figure.
Her ill-treatment of her lovers—her sewing them up, to prevent their telling tales, in sacks, and then tossing them before day-light into the river, was, to say the least of it, very wrong! In crossing thePont des Arts, towards midnight, I have often heard something very like the voices of lamentation and violence. Sometimes, I thought I could hear distinctlyIsabeau!in the murmuring of the waters.
All the world runs to theBains Vigiers, which are anchored along this Quai, to bathe, at four sous; but the water is exceedingly foul. It is here the Seine,
“With disemboguing streams,Rolls the large tribute of its dead dogs.”
“With disemboguing streams,Rolls the large tribute of its dead dogs.”
“With disemboguing streams,Rolls the large tribute of its dead dogs.”
And what is worst, when done bathing here, you have no place to go to wash yourself.
ThePont des Artsis a light and airy bridge, from the door of the Institute to the Quai du Louvre; upon which no equipages are admitted. The Arts use their legs—cruribus non curribus utuntur. Between this and the “Pont Royal,” (a bridge of solid iron,) the antiquarians have got together for sale all the curious remains of the last century, Chineseries, Sevreries, and chimney pieces of Madame Pompadour. Next is theQuai Voltaire, in the east corner of which is the last earthly habitation of the illustrious individual whose name it bears. The apartment in which he died has been kept shut for the last forty years, and has been lately thrown open.
On the opposite side you see stretched out,huge in length, the heavy and monotonous Louvre, which, with the Tuileries adjoining, is, they say, the most spacious and beautiful palace in the world. I have not experienced what the artists call a perception of its beauties. There is a little pet corner, the eastern colonnade raised by Louis XIV., which is called the great triumph of French architecture. It consists of a long series of apartments, decorated with superb columns, with sculpture and mosaics, and a profusion of gilding, and fanciful ornaments.[2]From the middle gallery it was that Charles IX., one summer’s evening, amused himself shooting Hugonots, flying the St. Bartholomew, with his arquebuss. Nero was a mere fiddler to this fellow. This is the gallery of Philip Augustus, so full of romance. It was from here that Charles X. “cut and ran,” and Louis Philippe quietly sat down on his stool. See how the Palais des Beaux Arts is peppered with the Swiss bullets!
The edge of the river, for half a mile, is embroidered with washerwomen; and baths, and boats of charcoal, cover its whole surface. One cannot drown oneself here, but at the risk of knocking out one’s brains. One of the curiosities of this place, is thefête des Blanchisseuses, celebrated a few days ago. The whole surface of the river was covered with dances; floors being strewed upon the boats, and the boats, adorned with flags and streamers, rowing about, and filled with elegant washerwomen, just from the froth, like so many Venuses—now dissolving in a waltz, now fluttering in a quadrille. You ought to have seen how they chose out, the most beautiful of these washerwomen—the queen of the suds—and rowed her in a triumphal gondola through the stream, with music that untwisted all the chains of harmony.
“Not Cleopatra, on her galley’s deck,Display’d so much of leg, or more of neck.”
“Not Cleopatra, on her galley’s deck,Display’d so much of leg, or more of neck.”
“Not Cleopatra, on her galley’s deck,Display’d so much of leg, or more of neck.”
This array of washing-boats relieves the French from that confusion and misery of the American kitchen, the “washing-day;” but to give us the water to drink, after all this scouring of foul linen, is not so polite. I have bought a filter of charcoal, which, they say,will intercept, at least, the petticoats and other such articles as I might have swallowed. The Seine here suffers the same want as one of his brother rivers, sung by the poets:—
“The River Rhine, it is well known,Doth wash the city of Cologne;But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine,Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine.”
“The River Rhine, it is well known,Doth wash the city of Cologne;But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine,Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine.”
“The River Rhine, it is well known,Doth wash the city of Cologne;But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine,Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine.”
Just opposite this Quai, I observed “Schools of Natation,” for both sexes, kept entirely separate. An admonition is placed over the ladies’ school to this effect, in large letters; besides, it is hermetically secured against any impertinent intrusion, by a piece of linen. The ladies, however, were put to their last shifts, last summer, in maintaining this establishment. Such rigid notions do some persons here entertain of female decorum! But opposition has now died away; and the reports about gentlemen of the “other house” becoming love-sick, from swimming in the waters from the ladies’ bath, have been proved malicious: for the gentlemen’s house is farther up the stream, “et par consequence.”
The truth is, that a lady has as much right, and, unfortunately, in these ship-wrecking times,as much necessity often, to swim as a gentleman; and it is ascertained that, with the same chance, the woman is the better swimmer of the two. (I have this from the lady who keeps the bureau.) Her head is always above the water. All of them, and especially those who have the vapours, can swim without cork. The process of instruction is easy. All that the swimming master has to do, is just to thrust the little creatures into a pair of gum-elastic trousers, and a cravat inflated, and then pitch them in, one after another—only taking care not to put on the trousers without the cravat.
I will finish this paragraph, already too long, by an anecdote. It will shew you that ladies who swim cannot use too much circumspection,—I mean, by circumspection, looking up, as well as round about them. The ever-vigilant police about the Tuileries had observed a young gentleman very busy with tools, at an opposite garret window, for whole weeks together. Sometimes till the latest hour of the night his lamp was seen glimmering at the said window. At length, by the dint of looking, and looking, they discovered something like an “Infernal Machine,” placed directly towards the apartment of the king and queen, and the bed-chamber of the dear little princesses and Madame Adelaide. It was just after the July review, and General Mortier’s disaster; and suspicion lay all night wide awake. What needs many words? They burst into the room—the “Garde Municipale,” and the “police centrale,” the “pompiers,” and the “sapeurs,” and the serjeants clad in blue, with buttons to their arms, and swords to their sides, and coifed in chapeaux, three feet in diameter—breaking down all opposition of doors, and dragged forth the terrified young man.
The tongues of all Paris were now set loose, as usual, and proclamations were read through the streetsde l’horrible assassinat tenté contre la vie du roi, et de la famille royale, &c. &c., and all that for four sous! It was even said, that he had made important revelations to the Minister of the Interior; and that some of the most distinguished Carlists were implicated in his guilt. At length, he was brought up before the Chamber of Peers, with his machine; where it was examined, and discovered to be—what do you think?—a telescope! The young man alleged that he was getting it up for astronomical purposes; but the president, a shrewd man about machines, observed that its obliquity was in an opposite direction to the stars.
The Seine flows gently by the side of the Tuileries, both from the pleasure it has had in bathing the royal family, and the delight of listening to the king’s band, which plays here every evening; and from this onwards, the right bank is occupied by the gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées. If you wish to know how much more beautiful than the gardens of Armida is this garden of the Tuileries, I refer you to my former letters; especially to that one which I wrote you when I had just fallen from the clouds. I admired, then, everything with sensibility, and a good many things with ecstacy. Somebody has said, that every one who is born, is as much a first man as Adam; which I do not quite believe. He came into the midst of a creation, which rushed, with the freshness of novelty, upon his senses, and was not introduced to him by gradual acquaintance.
How many things did this first man see in Eden which you and I could never have seen in it; and which he himself had never seen in it if he had been put out to nurse, or had been brought up at the “College Rolin.” How oftenhave I since wandered through this garden without even glancing at the white and snowy bosom of the Queen of Love; how often walked upon this goodly terrace, strolling all the while, the pretty Miss Smith at one arm, and thy incomparable self at the other, by the wizard Schuylkill, or the silent woods of the Mohontongo.
Opposite this garden, on theQuai d’Orsay, is the Hotel, not finished, of the Minister of the Interior, the most enormous building of all Paris. It has turned all the houses near it into huts.That, just under its huge flanks, with a meek and prostrate aspect, as if making an apology for intruding into the presence of its prodigious neighbour—that is the Hotel of the Legion of Honour. Alas, what signifies it to have bullied all Europe for half a century!
Close by is a little chateau, formerly of theMarquis de Milraye, which I notice only to tell you an anecdote of his wife. The prince Philip came to Paris and died very suddenly, under Louis XIV. He was a great roué and libertine, and some one moralizing, expressed, before the Marchioness, doubts about his salvation. “Je vous assure,” said she, very seriously, “qu’à des gens de cette qualité-là, Dieu y regarde bien à deux fois pour les autres.” Which proves that ladiesbred in high life don’t think that kings may be condemned like you and I.
The next object of importance, and the object of most importance in all Paris, is theChamber of Deputies. I wished to go in, but four churlish and bearded men disputed me this privilege. I sat down, therefore, upon the steps, having Justice, Temperance, and Prudence, and another elderly lady, on each side of me; and I consoled myself, and said—
“In this House the Virtues are shut out of doors.” I had also in the same group, Sully, Hôpital, Daguesseau, and Colbert. What superhuman figures! And I had in front the Bridge of Concord, upon which are placed twelve statues in marble, also of the colossal breed. A deputy, as he waddles through the midst of them, seems no bigger than Lemuel Gulliver, just arrived at Brobdignag. Four, are of men distinguished in war—Condé, who looks ridiculously grim, and Turenne, Duguesclin, and Bayard; and four eminent statesmen—Suger, Richelieu, Sully, Colbert; and four men famous on the sea—Tourville, Suffren, Duquesne, and who was the other? He whose name would shame an epic poem, or the Paris Directory, Duguay-Trouin. I tookoff my hat to Suffren, for he helped us with our Independence.
On the back ground of this Palace is a delightful woodland, where the members often seek refreshment from the fatigues of business in the open air. Here you will see a Lycurgus seated apart, and ruminating upon the fate of empires; and there a pair of Solons, unfolding the mazes of human policy, straying arm in arm through its solitary gravel walks. M. Q——, a member of this Chamber, and sometimes minister, was seen walking here assiduously during the last summer evenings; and often, when the twilight had just faded into night, a beautiful female figure was seen walking with him. It did not seem to be of mortal race, but a spirit rather of some brighter sphere which had consented awhile to walk upon this earth with Monsieur Q——. It was, however, the wife of Monsieur O——, another member of this Chamber.
One essential difference you may remark between Numa Pompilius and Deputy Q——, is, that the one met ladies in the woods for the making of laws, and the other for the breaking of them. Monsieur O——, informed of the fact, took a signal revenge upon the seducer ofhis wife. And what do you think it was? He called him out, to be sure, and blew out his brains. Not a bit of it. He waylaid him, then, and despatched him secretly? Much less. I will tell you what he did. He took Monsieur Q——’s wife in exchange. In telling this tale, which I had on pretty good authority, I do not mean to say—Heaven preserve me!—that there are not honest wives in Paris.
“Il en est jusqu’à trois que je pourrais nommer.”
“Il en est jusqu’à trois que je pourrais nommer.”
“Il en est jusqu’à trois que je pourrais nommer.”
I have now before me one of the most execrable spots upon this earth—which all the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten—the “Place de la Revolution”[3]—where the Queen of France suffered death with her husband, to propitiate the horrible Republic. I saw once my mother in agitation, upon reading a newspaper—sobbing and even weeping aloud;—she read (and set me to weeping too) the account of this execution of the Queen. It is the farthest remembrance of my life, and I am now standing on the spot—on the very spot on which this deed was perpetrated—which made women weep in their huts beyond the Alleghany!
With the manifold faults of this Queen, one cannot, at the age of sober reason, look upon the place of her execution, and think over her hapless fate, without feeling all that one has of human nature melting into compassion. She was a woman whom anything of a gentleman would love, with all her faults. Moreover, no one expects queens, in the intoxication of their fortune, to behave like sober people. Not even the sound and temperate head of Cæsar preserved its prudence in this kind of prosperity. The guillotine was erected permanently in the centre of this Place, and was fed with cart-loads at a time. The most illustrious of its victims were, the Queen, Louis XVI., his sister Mademoiselle Elizabeth, and the father of the present king. The grass does not grow upon the guilty Place, and the Seine flows quickly by it.
If you wish to have the finest view of all Paris—the finest perhaps of all Europe, of a similar kind—you must stand upon the centre of this Place; and you must hurry, as the Obelisk of Luxor has just arrived from Egypt, and will occupy it shortly. Towards the east, you have spread out before you the gardens of the Tuileries, bordered by the noble colonnade of the Rue Rivoli and the Seine;—towards thewest, the Champs Elysées, and the broad walk leading gently up to Napoleon’s arch, which stands proudly on the summit, and “helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale.” On the north, you have in full view, through the Rue Royale, the superb Madelaine, on the side of its most brilliant sculpture; and in symmetry with it, the noble front of the Palais Bourbon on the south. On fine evenings, and days of parade, you will see from the Arch to the Palace, about two miles, a moving column of human beings upon the side walks; and innumerable equipages, with horses proud of their trappings, and lackeys of their feathers, meeting and crossing each other upon the intervening roads; and upon the area of the Tuileries, all that which animated life has most amiable and beautiful. You will see, amidst the parterres of flowers, and groups of oranges, and its marble divinities, swans swimming upon the silvery lakes; multitudes of children at their sports, and everywhere ladies and their cavaliers, in all the colours of the toilette, sitting or standing, or sauntering about, and appearing through the trees, upon the distant terraces, as if walking upon the air. All this will present you a rich and variegatedtableau, of which prose like mine can give you no reasonable perception.
The great obelisk which is to stand here, is now lying upon the adjacent wharf. It is seventy-two feet high, and is to be raised higher, by a pedestal of twenty feet. It is a single block of granite, with four faces, and each face has almost an equal share of the magnificent prospect I have just tried to describe. It tapers towards the top, and its sides, older than the alphabet, are embossed with a variety of curious images. Birds are singing, rustics labouring, or playing on their pipes, sheep are bleating, and lambs skipping. A slave is on his knees, and a Theban gentleman recumbent in his fauteuil; and one is at his wine,—he who “hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass, 3,000 years ago.”—The men are in caps, a third their size; and the women in low hoods, like a chancellor’s wig.
Little did the miner think who dug it from the quarry, little did the sculptor think, as he carved these images on it, and how little did Sesostris think, in reading over his history of Paris, that it would, one day, make the tour of Europe, and establish itself here in the Place dela Concorde. An expensive and wearisome journey it has had of it. It is nine years since it stepped from its pedestal at Luxor. It was a good notion of Charles X., but not original. The Emperor Constantius brought one, the largest ever known, (150 feet high,) to Rome. Two magnificent ones, set up by the Doge Ziana, adorn the Piazzetta of St. Mark’s, brought from some island of the Archipelago.
The French army at Alexandria, in 1801, had two young ones on their way to Paris, which fell, poor things! into the rapacious hands of the British Museum. And now the English, jealous of this Luxorique magnificence, are going to bring over Cleopatra’s needle, to be up with them; and we are going to put something in our Washington Square; and then the French, some of these days, will bring over the Pyramids.
At the corner of the Rue Royale you will see two palaces, one the depôt of fine furniture and jewels, the other of the armour of the crown. Here are shields that were burnished for Cressy and Agincourt. Here is the armour of Francis when made prisoner at Pavia, of Henry when mortally wounded by Montgomery; complete sets of armour of Godfrey de Bouillon and Joanof Arc, the sword of King Cassimer, and that of the holy father Paul V. Spiders are now weaving their webs in casques that went to Jerusalem. The diamonds of the crown deposited here before the Revolution in rubies, topaz, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, &c., were 7432 in number, amongst which were the famous jewels called theSanciand theRegent, so notorious in the history of jewels; the latter has figured about the world in the king’s hats, and Napoleon’s sword. An antiquarian would find extreme delight in this room; as for me I scarce know which is Mambrino’s helmet and which the barber’s basin.
I had no sooner quitted the deputies than I found myself under the greatHospital of the Invalids, whose lofty and gilded dome was blazing in the setting sun. Napoleon put up this gilding to amuse gossiping Paris in his Russian defeats; as Alcibiades, to divert Athens from his worse tricks, cut off his dog’s tail; and as Miss Kitty, to withdraw a more dangerous weapon from the baby’s hand, gives it a rattle. 3800 soldiers are now lodged in this Hospital, or rather, pieces of soldiers; for one has an arm at Moscow, another a leg at Algiers, needing no nourishment from the state. Here is one whose lowerlimbs were both lost at the taking of Paris. He seems very happy. He saves the shoemaker’s, hosier’s, and half the tailor’s bill. He is fat, too, and healthy, for he has the same rations as if he were all there. If I were expert at logic, I would prove to you that this piece of an individual might partly eat himself up, his legs being buried in the suburbs, and he dining on the potatoes which grow there; and I could prove, if I was put to it, that with a proper assistance from cork, he might be running about town with his legs in his cheeks. There are two sorts of historians,—one, of those who confine themselves to a simple narrative of facts and descriptions; the other, searching after causes and effects, and accompanying the narrative with moral reflections. I belong to the latter class.
This Hospital was planned by the great Henry; the great Louis built it; and it was furnished with lodgers by the great Napoleon. It has all the air of a hospital; long ranges of rooms and chilling corridors; and thisréunionof mutilated beings is a horrid spectacle! They lead a kind of inactive, lounging, alms-house existence. How much better had the munificence of government given to each hisallowance, with the privilege of remaining with his friends and relations, than to be thus cut off from all the charities and consolations of domestic life, and without the last, best consolation of afflicted humanity—a woman.
The dome is magnificent with paintings, gildings, carvings, and such like decorations. The chapel, the most splendid part, is tapestried with flags taken in war from the enemy. What an emblem in a Christian church! There are several hundreds yet remaining, notwithstanding the great numbers burnt, to save them from their owners, the allies. “There are some here from all countries,” said my guide, growing a foot taller. “Those are from Africa; those from Belgium; and those three from England.” When I asked him to shew me those from America, he replied, with a shrug—“Cela viendra, monsieur.”
The immense plain to the west of the Invalids and in front of theEcole Militaire, is theChamp de Mars, the rendezvous of horses fleet in the race, and cavalry to be trained for the battle. I am quite vexed that I have not space to tell you of the great Revolutionary fête which was once celebrated in this very place; how the ladies of the first rank volunteered and workedwith their own dear little hands to put up the scaffolding; and how the king was brought out here with his white and venerable locks and air of a martyr, and the queen, her eyes swollen with weeping; their last appearance but one! before the people. And it would be very gratifying to take a look at that good old revolutionary patriarch, Talleyrand. How he officiated at the immense ceremony, at the head of two hundred priests, all habited in immaculate white surplices, and all adorned with tri-coloured scarfs, and then how the holy man blessed the new standards of France, and consecrated the eighty-three banners of the Departments.
I wish to write all this, but winged time will not wait upon my desires; besides, this letter is already the longest that was ever written; it has as many curiosities, too, as the shield of Achilles. The bridge just opposite is thePont de Jena. The allies were about to destroy it on account of its name, and put gunpowder under it, but Louis the Eighteenth would not allow it.Le jour où vous ferez sauter le Pont de Jena, je me mette dessus!and Blucher was moved. This bridge is the end of my letter and journey;finis chartæque viæque.
The cholera, the deuce take it, has got intoItaly, and I shall perhaps lose altogether the opportunity of a visit to that country. I shall not kiss the feet of his Holiness, nor see the Rialto, nor the Bridge of Sighs; nor Venice and her gondolas, nor look upon the venerable palace of her Doges. Alas, I shall not linger at Virgil’s tomb! nor swim in the Tiber, nor taste one drop of thy pure fountain, Egeria! nor thine,Fons Blandusiæ splendidior vitreo.
Faubourg St. Germain—Quartier Latin—The Book-stalls—Phrenologists—Dupuytren’s Room—Medical Students—Lodgings—Bill at the Sorbonne—French Cookery—A Gentleman’s Boarding-house—The Locomotive Cook—Fruit—The Pension—The Landlady—Pleasure in being duped—Smile of a French Landlady—The Boarding-house—Amiable Ladies—The Luxembourg Gardens—The Grisettes—Their naïveté and simplicity—Americans sent to Paris—Parisian Morals—Advantages in visiting Old Countries—American Society in Paris.
Faubourg St. Germain—Quartier Latin—The Book-stalls—Phrenologists—Dupuytren’s Room—Medical Students—Lodgings—Bill at the Sorbonne—French Cookery—A Gentleman’s Boarding-house—The Locomotive Cook—Fruit—The Pension—The Landlady—Pleasure in being duped—Smile of a French Landlady—The Boarding-house—Amiable Ladies—The Luxembourg Gardens—The Grisettes—Their naïveté and simplicity—Americans sent to Paris—Parisian Morals—Advantages in visiting Old Countries—American Society in Paris.
Paris, November 24th, 1835.
Nearlyall who love to woo the silent muses are assembled in this region, theFaubourg St. Germain. Here are the libraries bending under their ponderous loads, and here are the schools and colleges, and all the establishments devoted to science and letters; for which reason, no doubt, it is dignified by the name of theQuartier Latin. When the west of the river was yetoverspread with its forests, this quarter was covered with houses, and adorned with a palace and amphitheatre, baths, an aqueduct, and a “Field of Mars” for the parade of the Roman troops, where Julius Cæsar used to make them shoulder their firelocks.
But now, though it contains a fourth of the population of the town, and retains its literary character, so far has luxury got ahead of philosophy, that it has no greater dignity of name than the “Faubourgs.” It stands apart as if the city of some other people. Some few, indeed, from the fashionable districts, in a desperate Captain Ross kind of expedition, do sometimes come over here, and have got back safe, but having found nothing but books and such things of little interest, it remains unexplored.
The population has become new by retaining its old customs. By standing still it shews the “march of intellect” through the rest of the city. Here you see yet that venerable old man who wears a cue and powder, and buckles his shoes, and calls his shop aboutique; who garters up his stockings over the knees, goes to bed at eight, and snuffs the candle with his fingers; and you see everywhere the innumerable people,clattering through the muddy and narrow lanes in theirsabots. Poverty not being able to get lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, the Palais Royal, and, though she tried hard, in the Boulevards, has been obliged, on account of the cheap rents, to come over here and to strike up a sort of partnership with science, and they now carry on various kinds of industry, under the firm ofMisère et Compagnie.
In the central section of this Latin country, the staple is the bookshop. Everywhere you will see the little store embossed with its innumerable volumes inside and out, on the ceilings, on the floor, and on screens throughout the room, leaving just a little space for a little bookseller; and stalls are covered with the same article in the open air, in all those positions where, in other towns, you find mutton and fat beef. When you see a long file of Institutes and Bartholos wrapped in their yellow parchment, you are near the Temple of Themis—theEcole des Lois.
When you see in descending St. Jaques, a morose, surly, bibliomaniacal little man, entrenched behind a Homer, a Horace, and a Euclid’s Elements, that is theCollège de France; and when you stumble over a pile of the Martyrs, it is theSorbonne; and as you approach theEcole Médecine, five hundred Bichats and Richerands beckon you to its threshold. Besides, you will see ladies and gentlemen looking out from the neighbouring windows, and recommending themselves in their various anatomical appearances;en squellette, or half dissected, or turned wrong side out. There is a shop, too, of phrenological skulls, and a lady who will explain you the bumps; and if you like, you can get yourself felt for a franc or two, and she will tell you where is yourPhilo-pro—what do you call it? She told me our intellectual qualities were placed in front, and the sensual in the back part of the skull, very happily, because the former could look out ahead, and keep the latter in order. And next door is a shop of all the wax preparations of human forms and diseases, and here is another lady who will point you out their resemblances with originals, who will analyse you a man into all his component parts, and put him up again; and she puts up, also, “magnificent skeletons” and mannikins for foreign countries.
Now and then you will see arrive a cart, which pours out a dozen, or so, of naked men and women, as you do a cord of wood, upon thepavement, which are distributed into the dissecting rooms, after the ladies and gentlemen standing about have sufficiently entertained themselves with the spectacle. And just step into “Dupuytren’s Room,” and you will see all the human diseases, arranged beautifully in families; here is the plague, and there is the cholera morbus; here is the gout, and there is the palsy staring you in the face; and there are whole cabinets of sprained ankles, broken legs, dislocated shoulders, and cracked skulls. In a word, every thing is literary in this quarter. One evening you are invited to a party for squaring the circle, another for finding out the longitude; and another:—“My dear sir, come this evening, we have just got in a subject. The autopsis will begin at six.”
The medical students are about four thousand; those of law and theology about the same number; and many a one lodges, eats, and clothes himself, and keeps his sweetheart, all for twelve dollars per month. With the exception of the last, I am living a kind of student’s life. I have a room twenty feet square, overlooking, from the second story, the beautiful garden of the Luxembourg, and the great gate opening from theRue d’Enfer. This is my parlour duringthe day, and a cabinet having a bed, and opening into it, converts the two into a bed-chamber for the night; and the price, including services, is eight dollars per month.
I find at ten, a small table covered with white porcelain, and a very neat little Frenchwoman comes smiling in with a coffee-pot in one hand, and a pitcher of boiling milk in the other, and pours me out with her rosy fingers a large cup of the bestcafé au laitin the world, and sits down herself, and descants fluently on the manners and customs of the capital, and improves my facilities in French.
If you wish bad coffee, it is not to be had in this country. The accompaniments are two eggs, or some equivalent relish, a piece of fresh butter, and a small loaf of bread—all this for eighteen sous, (a sou is a twentieth less than our cent.) I dine out wherever I may chance to be, and according to the voracity or temperance of my appetite, from one and a half to five francs, at six o’clock. A French dinner comes at the most sociable hour, when the cares and labours of the day are past, and the mind can give itself up entirely to its enjoyments, or its repose.
I have dined sometimes at the illustriousFlicoteau’s on the Place Sorbonne, with the medical students, and have looked upon the rooms once occupied by J. Jaques Rousseau, and upon the very dial on which he could not teach Thérése, his grisette wife, to count the hours. I have dined, too, at Viot’s, with the law students, and have taken coffee with Molière, and Fontenelle, and Voltaire, at the Procope. The following is a bill at the Sorbonne.
You have also, which serves at once for vinegar and wine, a half bottle of claret, at six sous; and a dessert, a bunch of grapes or three cherries, for two; or of sweetmeats, a most delicate portion—one of those infinitesimals of a dose, such as the Homœopathists administer in desperate cases. Yet this—if a dish were only what it professes to be on its face, the soup, not the rinsings of the dishcloth, the fricassee not poached upon the swill-tub,—this would still be supportable—if a macaroni were only a macaroni; which in a cheap Paris fare, I understand,is not to be presumed. In sober sadness, this is very bad.
We have a right to expect that a thing which calls itself a hare, should not be a cat. But, alas! it is the end of all human refinement, that hypocrisy should take the place of truth. You can discern no better the component parts of a French dish in a French cookery, than you can a virtue in a condiment of French affability. But ——. It is an homage which a horse’s rump renders to a beefsteak. At my last dinner here, I had two little ribs held together in indissoluble matrimony of mutton. I tried to divorce them, but to no purpose, till the perspiration began to flow abundantly. I called the “garçon,” and exhibited to him their toughness.—“Cependant, Monsieur, le mouton était magnifique!” I offered him five francs if he would sit down and eat it; he refused. He had perhaps a mother or some poor relation depending on him; I did not insist.
M. Flicoteau belongs to the romantic school. I prefer the classical. I need hardly say that the French students, who dine here, have an unhealthy and shrivelled appearance—you recollect the last run of the shad on the Juniatta. It is the very spot on which the Sorbonne usedto starve its monks, and M. Flicoteau, for his own sake, keeps starving people here ever since? Sixteen sous is a student’s ordinary dinner. His common allowance for clothing, and other expenses by the year, is three hundred dollars.
He eats for a hundred, lodges for fifty, and has the remainder for his wardrobe and amusements. The students of medicine are mostly poor and laborious, and being obliged to follow their filthy occupation of dissecting, are negligent of dress and manners. The disciples of the law are more from the richer classes, have idle time, keep better company, and have an airplus distingué.
The doctors of law in all countries take rank above medicine. The question of precedence, I recollect, was determined by the Duke of Mantua’s fool, who observed that the “rogue always walks ahead of the executioner.” Theology, alas! hides her head in a peaceful corner of the Sorbonne, where once she domineered, and begs to be unnoticed in her humble and abject fortunes. A student of Divinity eats asoup maigre, ariz-au-lait, flanked by a dessert of sour grapes. His meals would take him to Heaven, if he had no other merits.
The other resorts of eating, besides the restaurants, are as follow: theGargotte, theCuisine Bourgeoise, and, of a higher grade, thePension Bourgeoise. In the Gargotte you don’t get partridges. Your dinner costs seven sous. You have a little meat, dry and somewhat stringy, veal or mutton, whichever Monsieur pleases. Whether it died the natural way, or a violent death by the hands of the butcher, it is impossible to know. You have, besides, a thick soup, a loaf of bread three feet long, standing in the corner by the broom, and fried potatoes; also, water and the servant girlà discretion. At seventeen sous, you have all the aforesaid delicacies, with a table cloth into the bargain; and at twenty, the luxurious addition of a napkin, and a fork of Algiers metal. This is the Gargotte.
When you have got to twenty-five sous, you are in the Cuisine Bourgeoise. Here your “couvert,” consists of a spoon, a fork, a knife, a napkin, a glass, and a small bottle, called a caraffon; your plate is changed—already a step towards civilization; and you have a cucumber a foot long, radishes a little withered, asparagus just getting to seed, and salt and pepper, artistly arranged; and a horse’s rump cooked into a beefsteak, and washed down with “veritablemacon”—that is, the best sort of logwood alcoholised. You have, also, a little dessert here of sour grapes, wrinkled apricots, or green figs, which are exhibited for sale, at the window, between meals.
The flaps of mutton and the drumsticks of turkeys, which you get so tender, have been served up, once or twice, at the Hotel Ordinary; but they are preferred much to the original dishes. One likes sometimes better Ephraim’s gleanings, than Abiezer’s vintage. The French have a knack of letting nothing go to loss. Why they make more of a dead horse or cow than others of the living ones. They do not even waste the putrid offals of the butcheries; they sell the maggots to feed chickens.
But when you pay forty sous, that’s quite another affair. You are now in themonde gourmande. Spinage has butter in it; custards have sugar in them; soup is calledpotage;—everything now has an honest name; bouilli isbœuf à la mode; fried potatoespomme de terre à la maitre d’hotel; and a baked cat is,lapin sauté a l’estragon. This is the gentleman’s boarding-house.
I mean by gentleman, a youth, who has just come over from England or America, to thelectures, or a French clerk of thecorps bureaucratique, or an apprentice philosopher, who calls himself a “man of letters.” It is one of the advantages of this place, that you are not often oppressed by the intelligence and gravity of your convives, and have a chance of shining. It is in the power of any man to have wit, if he but knows how to select his company. In thispension, the dishes succeed one another, and are not crammed, as on our tables,roti fricandeau,salade,vol au vent—all into the same service, to distract and pall the appetite, or get cold waiting on each other.
The coquetry of a French kitchen keeps alive expectation, and enhances enjoyment by surprise. You have here, too, the advantage of a male cook; the kitchen prefers the masculine to the feminine, like the grammars; and, besides, you have the tranquillity of a private house. If you ask a dish at Flicoteau’s, the waiter bawls it down to the kitchen, and as they are continually asking, he is continually bawling. At the end of the feast, you will see, standing before you, a tumbler full of toothpicks, one of which you will keep fumbling in your mouth the whole afternoon, as an evidence you have dined; and especially if you have notdined—for then you must keep up appearances;—some grease their mouths with a candle, and then you think they have been eatingpaté de foie gras.
I am sorry to have forgotten the locomotive cook; I mean a woman with anappareil de cuisineabout her neck, having meat and fish hung, by hooks, on both her haunches, and sausages, or fish, or potatoes, hissing in a frying-pan; and diffusing, for twenty yards around, a most appetising flavour. She haunts, usually, the Pont Neuf and its vicinity, and looks like gastronomy personified. She will give you, for four sous, of potatoes, with yesterday’s gazette, and, reclining under the parapet of the Quai—the king perhaps, all the while, envying you from the heights of the Louvre—you eat a more wholesome dinner at ten sous, than at the Place Sorbonne at twenty-four.
All the common world of Paris buys its provisions second-hand. The farmer arrives about two in the morning—he sells out to the hucksters, and these latter to the public, mixing in the leavings of the preceding day, a rotten egg with a fresh one, &c. A patient old woman, having nothing else to do, speculates over a bushel of potatoes, or abotteof onions, twicetwenty-four hours; and your milkwoman, perhaps, never saw a cow; cows are expensive in slops and provender, and snails and plaster of Paris are to be had almost for nothing. The French eat greater quantities of bread than their neighbours—and why at a cheaper rate?—The price is fixed, by the police, every fortnight, and its average is two-and-a-half cents—sixty per cent. lower than in London; and how much lower than with us? 450 millions of lbs. are consumed in Paris annually; each man eating twelve dollars’ worth. If you establish a Frenchman’s expense at 100, you will find 19 parts for bread, 22 for meat, 27 for wine and spirits.
Peaches, and apples, and melons, are not to be spoken of, in comparison with ours; but cherries, plums, and especially pears, are in great variety and abundance; and the fine grapes of Fontainebleau are eight cents per pound. In England, they have all the fruits of the Indies in the noblemen’s hot-houses; but who can buy them? There are men there who have the conscience to pay £150 for the fruits of a breakfast. “The strawberries at my Lady Stormont’s, last Saturday, cost £150,” says Hannah More. But I must bridle in my muse: she is getting a fit of statistics.
If a gentleman comes to Paris in the dog days, when his countrymen are spread over Europe, at watering places, and elsewhere, and when every soul of a Frenchman is out of town—if he is used to love his friends at home, and be loved by them, and to see them gather around him in the evenings—let him not set a foot in that unnatural thing, a bachelor’s apartment in a furnished hotel, to live alone, to eat alone, and to sleep alone! If he does, let him take leave of his wife and children, and settle his affairs.
Nor let him seek company at the Tavern Ordinary; here the guest arrives just at the hour, hangs up his hat, sits down in his usual place, crosses his legs, runs his fingers through his hair, dines, and then disappears, all the year round, without farther acquaintance. But let him look out a “Pension,” having an amiable landlady, or, which is the same, amiable lodgers. He will become domiciliated here after some time, and find some relief from one of the trying situations of life. You know nothing yet, happily, of the solitude, the desolation, of a populous city to a stranger. How often did I wish, during the first three months, for a cot by the side of some hoar hill of the Mahonoy.Go to a “Pension,” especially if you are a sucking child, like me, in the ways of the world; and the lady of the house, usually a pretty woman, will feel it enjoined upon her humanity to counsel and protect you, and comfort you, or she will manage an acquaintance between you and some countess or baroness, who lodges with her, or at some neighbour’s.
I live now with a most spiritual little creature; she tells me so many obliging lies, and no offensive truths, which I take to be the perfection of politeness in a landlady; and she admits me to her private parties—little family “réunions”—where I play at loto with Madame Thomas, and her three amiable daughters, just for a little cider, or cakes, or chestnuts, to keep up the spirit of the play; and then we have a song, a solo on the violin, or harp, and then a dance; and, finally, we play at little games, which inflict kisses, embraces, and other such penalties.
French people are always so merry; whatever be the amusement, they never let conversation flag, and I don’t see any reason why it should. One, for example, begins to talk of Paris, then the Passage Panorama, then of Mrs. Alexander’s fine cakes, and then the pretty girl that sits behind the counter, and then of pretty girls thatsit anywhere; and so one just lets oneself run with the association of ideas, or one makes a digression from the main story, and returns or not, just as one pleases. A Frenchman is always a mimic, an actor, and all that nonsense which we suffer to go to waste in our country, he economises for the enjoyment of society.
I am settled down in the family; I am adopted; the lady gives me, to be sure, now and then “a chance,” as she calls it, of a ticket in a lottery (“the only one left”) of some distinguished lady now reduced, or some lady who has had three children, where one never draws anything; or “a chance” of conducting her and a pretty cousin of hers, who has taken a fancy to me, to the play, who adores the innocency of American manners, and hates the dissipation of the French.
Have you never felt the pleasure of letting yourself be duped? Have you never felt the pleasure of letting your little bark float down the stream when you knew the port lay the other way. I look upon all this as a cheap return for the kindnesses I have so much need of; I am anxious to be cheated, and the truth is, if you do not let a French landlady cheat you now and then, she will drop your acquaintance. Never dispute any small items overcharged in her monthly bill, or she that was smooth as the ermine, will be suddenly bristled as the porcupine; and why, for the sake of limiting some petty encroachment upon your purse, should you turn the bright heaven of her pretty face into a hurricane?
Your actions should always leave a suspicion that you are rich, and then you are sure she will anticipate every want and wish you may have with the liveliest affection; she will be all ravishment at your successes; she will be in an abyss of chagrin at your disappointments.Helas! oh, mon Dieu!and if you cry, she will cry with you! We love money well enough in America, but we do not feel such touches of human kindness, and cannot work ourselves up into such fits of amiability for those who have it. I do not say it is hypocrisy; a French woman really does love you if you have a long purse; and if you have not (I do not say it is hypocrisy neither) she really does hate you.
A great advantage to a French landlady is the sweetness and variety of her smile—a quality in which French women excel universally. Our Madam Gibou keeps her little artillery at play during the whole of the dinner time, and hasbrought her smile under such a discipline as to suit it exactly to the passion to be represented, or the dignity of the person with whom she exchanges looks.
You can tell any one who is in arrears as if you were her private secretary, or the wealth and liberality of a guest better than his banker, by her smile. If it be a surly knave who counts the pennies with her, the little thing is strangled in its birth; and if one who owes his meals, it miscarries altogether; and for a mere visiter she lets off one worth only three francs and a half; but if a favourite, who never looks into the particulars of her bill, and takes her lottery tickets, then you will see the whole heaven of her face in a blaze, and it does not expire suddenly, but like the fine twilight of a summer evening, dies away gently on her lips.
Sometimes I have seen one flash out like a squib, and leave you at once in the dark; it had lit on the wrong person; and at other times I have seen one struggling long for its life; I have watched it while it was gasping its last; she has a way, too, of knocking a smile on the head; I observed one at dinner to-day, from the very height and bloom of health fall down and die without a kick.
It is strange (that I may praise myself)—but I have a share of attentions in this little circle even greater than they who are amiable. If I say not a word, I am witty, and I am excessively agreeable by sitting still. “The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.” My unacquaintance with life and wickedness puts me in immediaterapportwith women, and removes many of the little obstacles which suspicious etiquette has set up between the sexes. Ladies, they say, never blush when talking to a blind man.
While a man of address is sailing about and about a woman, as Captain Ross hunting the North-west passage, I am looked upon either as a ship in distress and claiming a generous sympathy and protection, or a prize which belongs to the wreckers, and am towed at once into harbour. Sometimes, indeed, my ignorance of Paris and its ways is taken for affectation, and they suspect me for behaving as great ambassadors do, who affect simplicity to hide their diplomatic rogueries; but he cannot long pass himself for a rogue who is really honest. It is perhaps a mere complexion of physiognomy. I see, every day, faces which remind one of those doors which have written on them, “No admission,” and others, “Walk in without knocking.” It is certain that what we call dignity, however admired on parade, is not a good social quality. “Dignitas et amor”—I forget what Ovid says about it.
And women, too, are more familiar and easy of access to modesty of rank. Jupiter, you know, when he made love to Antiope, with all his rays about him, was rejected, and he succeeded afterwards as a satyr. I knew a pretty American woman once, who, gartering up her stockings in the garden, was reminded, that the gardener was looking. “Well! he is only a working man,” she replied, and went on with the exhibition; she would have been frightened to death if it had been a lord. I make these remarks because other travellers would be likely to leave them out, and because it is good to know how to live to advantage in all the various circumstances of life.
In recommending you a French boarding-house, it is my duty at the same time to warn you of some of its dangers, which are as follows: Your landlady will be in arrears for her rent 200 francs, and will confide to you her embarrassment. Having a rigid, inexorablepropriètaire, and getting into an emergency, shewill at length ask you, with many blushes and amiable scruples, the loan of the said money; and her gratitude, poor thing! at the very expectation of getting it, will overcome her so, she will offer you, her arms about your neck, her pretty self, as security for the debt.
This is not all; the baroness (her husband being absent at Moscow, or anywhere else,) will invite you to a supper. She will live in a fine parlour, chamber adjoining, and will entertain you with sprightly and sensible conversation, and all the delicacies of the table, until the stars have climbed half way up the heavens; and you will find yourselftête-à-têtewith a lady at midnight, the third bottle of champagne sparkling on the board.—I am glad I did not leave my virtue in America; I should have had such need of it in this country! Indeed, if it had been anybody else, not softened by the experience of nine lustrums; not fortified like me by other affections—if it had been anybody else in the world, he would have been ruined by Madame la Baronne. Nor when you have resisted Russia, have you won all the victories. On a fine summer’s morning, when all is joyous and good-humoured, your landlady will present you the following cards, with notes and explanations. “This is from the belle Gabrielle. She assists her uncle in the store, and is quite disheartened with her business. Uncles are such cross things! This is from one of my acquaintances, Flora—oh, beautifulau possible! She paints birds and other objects for the print shops, but she finds the confinement injurious to her health. You must call and see them, especially Flora, she has such a variety of talent besides painting; and she will give you the most convincing proofs of good character and connexions. Gabrielle also is very pretty, but she is a young and innocent creature, and her education, especially her music, not so far advanced.”
The garden of the Luxembourg comes next. It contains near a hundred acres, and lies in the midst of this classical district. It is not so gaily ornamented as the Tuileries, but is rich in picturesque and rural scenery. It has, indeed, two very beautiful ornaments. At the north end, the noble edifice, constructed by Marie de Medicis, the palace of the Luxembourg, which contains a gallery of paintings, the chamber of Peers, and other curiosities; and the Observatory, a stately building, is in symmetry with this palace on the south.
In the interior there are groves of trees and grass plots surrounded by flower-beds; and numerous statues, most of which have seen better days; ranges of trees, and an octagonal piece of water inhabited by two swans, which are now swimming about in graceful solemnity, adorn the parterre in front of the palace. All these objects I have in view of my windows. The garden has altogether an air of philosophy very grateful to men of studious dispositions. Many persons are seated about, in reading or conversation, or strolling with books through its groves, and squads of students are now and then traversing it to their college recitations.
On benches overlooking the parterre is seated, all day long, the veteran of the war, the old soldier, in his regimentals, his sword as a companion laid beside him on the bench; he finds a repose here for his old age amidst the recreations of childhood; and five or six hundred little men in red breeches, whose profession it is to have their brains knocked out for their country at sixpence a day, are drilled here every morning early, to keep step and to handle their firelocks. There is one corner in which there is a fountain surmounted by a nymph, and which has a gloomy and tufted wood, and an appearance of sanctity,which makes it respected by the common world, and by the sun.
One man only is seen walking there at a time, the rest retiring out of respect for his devotions. For a week past it has been frequented daily by a poet. He recites with appropriate action his verses, heedless of the profane crowd. He appears pleased with his compositions, and smiles often, no doubt in anticipation of their immortality. I often sit an hour of an evening at my window, and look down upon the stream of people which flows in and out, and the sentinel who walks up and down by the gate ridiculously grim.
I love to read the views and dispositions of men in their faces. I witness some pleasant flirtations, too, under the adjacent lime trees, and many gratified and disappointed assignations. Now, a lady wrapped in her cloak walks up and down the most secret avenue, upon the anxious watch; the lover comes at length, and she hastens to his embraces, and they vanish; and next in his turn a gentleman walks sentinel, until his lady comes, or, impatient and disappointed, goes off in a rage, or night covers him with her sable mantle.—Were I not bound by so many endearing affections of kindred andfriendship to my native country, there is not one spot upon the earth I would prefer to the sweet tranquillity of this delicious retirement.
When you visit the Luxembourg you will see multitudes every where of bouncing demoiselles, with nymph-looking faces, caps without bonnets, and baskets in their hands, traversing the garden from all quarters, running briskly to their work in the morning, and strolling slowly homewards towards evening—These are thegrisettes. They are very pretty, and have the laudable little custom of falling deeply in love with one. They are common enough all over Paris, but in this classical region they are as the leaves in Vallambrosa. They are in the train of the muses, and love the groves of the Academy. A grisette, in this Latin Quarter, is a branch of education. If a student is ill, his faithful grisette nurses him and cures him; if he is destitute, she works for him; and if he falls into irretrievable misfortune, she dies with him. Thus a mutual dependence endears them to each other; he defends her with his life, and, sure of his protection, she feels her consequence, and struts in her new starched cap the reigning monarch of the Luxembourg.