THERE is a subtle relation between the mere spectacle of Parisian
life and French history, like that which exists between physiognomy
and character. Careful observation of this sparkling tide on the
surface will reveal the hidden currents that direct its play. The
success of a man in France has been justly described as achieved
_moitié par son savoir_, _moitié par son savoir-faire_. Two
characteristics at once impress an American in Paris--the provision
for life independent of homes, and the excessive tendency to system
and detail: from the one comes a diffusive habit of feeling well
adapted to pastime, but most unfavorable to efficient individuality;
and from the other, a devotion to routine which secures results
brilliant in themselves but limited in their consequences. The bare
fact that we of England and America, however wide and intense be
the sphere of our activity, instinctively revolve about a permanent
centre, hallowed and held by the triple bond of habit, love, and
religion, gives a certain dignity and permanence to our interests
and aims which nourish political as well as personal consistency.
Imagine the case reversed: suppose, like civilized Ishmaelites, we
dwelt in a kind of metropolitan encampment, requiring no domicile
except a bed-room for seven hours in the twenty-four, and passing
the remainder of each day and night as nomadic cosmopolites: going
to a café to breakfast, a restaurant to dine, an estaminet to smoke,
a national library to study, a _cabinet de lecture_ to read the
gazettes, a public bath for ablution, an open church to pray, a
free lecture-room to be instructed, a thronged garden to promenade,
a theatre to be amused, a museum for science, a royal gallery for
art, a municipal ball, literary soirée, or suburban rendezvous for
society. Would not the very custom of enacting all the functions
of mundane existence, apart from the idea and the retirement of
home, generalize our ways of thinking, make us more children of
the time, and weaken the tenacity, as well as diminish the scope,
whereby the reflective man becomes the practical citizen? And if
the regime under which our education was initiated, had for its
great principles, skill, knowledge, and aptitude for specialties,
would not the natural fruit of such culture be a fragmentary
excellence? Herein, at least, some of the causes may be found of
that extraordinary union of genius and childhood in the French
nation; the ability to declaim like philosophers about freedom,
while an immense standing army--the most available resource of
tyranny--is recognized as the basis of civil power; an unrivalled
taste in the ornamental, and a savage ignorance of the comfortable;
a most profound and reliable insight in diagnosis, with a pitiable
incapacity for remedial applications; a prompt adaptation to
the moment, almost infantile, with a hackneyed insensibility to
experience; vivid aspirations, with little sense of what really
constitutes glory; making fine arts of cookery, talk, and dress,
while a battle-field and a caricature are their most popular
limning; deifying their military heroes, and, at the same time,
giving vent to their own enthusiasm in the lively figures of a new
dance. The social economy of Paris is based on a combination of
narrow means, with bright conceptions; we see it in the graceful
but frail upholstery, the exquisite fit of a plain muslin robe,
the bewitching trim of a cheap bonnet, the variety of a two-franc
dinner, the _bon-mot_ which atones for inability to read, the
absorption over a game of dominoes, the philosophic air with which
a cigarette is smoked, and the artistic ruffle of a chemisette; the
prolific fun educed from an anecdote, and the slight impression made
by a revolution; the incurious notice of what is comprehensive, and
the intense desire to make capital of the frivolous. To cultivate
illusions is apparently the science of Parisian life; vanity must
have its pabulum and fancy her triumph, though pride is sacrificed
and sense violated thereby; hence a coïncidence of thrift and wit,
shrewdness and sentimentality, love of excitement and patient
endurance, superficial enjoyment and essential deprivation--in the
mind, the life, and the development of France, wonderful to behold
and perplexing to consider.
The names given to bridge and temple, fount and promenade, arc
and avenue, recal saints of the middle ages, kings whose reigns
embody memorable eras, brave soldiers, great victories, authors
and savans--all reflecting glory on the nation. The guide at the
Concierge tells you: 'Le cachot où fût deténu Marie Antoinette a
eté converti en chapelle.' If roaming in the Luxembourg, you think
of poor Ney's last words, on the spot where he perished, 'I need no
priest to teach me how to die'--the honors paid to his memory are
cited to atone for the sacrifice; if you descant on the murder of
the King in 1793, you are told that the mass, so long discontinued,
is now celebrated on the anniversary of his death. All that meets
the eye and ear either protests against what in the past of France
is disgraceful, or celebrates what is glorious. Whoever rules, the
lamp of national fame is thus kept burning. The very cafés and
restaurants possess an historical interest. The Frères Provinceaux
was frequented by General Bonaparte; the Café Foy was the rendezvous
of Italian liberals, the Zemblin that of the officers of the Empire,
and the Caveau of the Garde Imperiale; the Regence has witnessed
games of chess either shared or overlooked by Voltaire, Rousseau,
Franklin, Marmontel, and Saint Pierre. At the Place de la Bastille,
the column erected to the memory of those who fell when Charles the
Tenth was 'hurled from his forfeit throne,' links that recent event
to the site of a prison tragically identified with the Reign of
Terror. The gates of St. Denis and St. Martin attest the rendezvous
of more than one _emeute_; and from the Champs Elysées to the arch
of triumph de l'Etoile, is the scene where some of the most pregnant
dramas of modern history were enacted.
The routine of a banker's life would seem antagonistic to romance
and dramatic incident; yet the celebrated financiers of France
occupy the fore-ground in her civic history: Ouvrard's interview
with Napoleon at a memorable crisis; the details of Law's career,
including the wonderful vicissitudes to which the famous Mississippi
scheme gave birth; and the charlatan adventurer's intrigues with
the Duke of Orleans and escape from the Paris mob, are like the
most exciting chapters of a modern novel. Lafitte stood at the
side of Louis Philippe when the new Constitution was proclaimed,
and staid the waves of insurrection at the obsequies of Manuel.
If, in the social phenomena elsewhere, we find hints for romance
and incongruities the more piquant, here they are more patent.
Hospitality is not a national characteristic, as in cities less
amply provided with external resources, and the effect is to secure
for social aspirants, who have the means and the tact to entertain,
advantages they could never realize in other capitals. A wealthy
man, with decent manners and average intelligence, ambitious of
fame as a host, or the delights of gifted intercourse, puts himself
in communication with diplomats, savans and men of letters, who
never object to a good dinner, or women endowed with the graces
which lend a charm to the _soirée_, and his _salon_ is nightly
filled with people of fashion and celebrity. The dramatic star, the
popular author, the famous militaire, the brilliant _cantatrice_
will attract those who are insensible to the zest of pâtés and
champagne. 'Do you know that man?' asks some aristocrat of the
illustrious guest when they encounter the parvenu-Amphytrion. 'He
dines me occasionally,' is the cool reply. Foreigners of either sex,
even with a damaged reputation, find no obstacles to such partial
successes. Let the frail one have preserved somewhat of her youthful
vivacity and the bulk of her fortune, and she has only to hunt up a
poor Marchesa or Countess of the Faubourg San Germain, and install
her as a friend of the house, in a costly hotel, and coronated
paste-board will soon fill her vase in the ante-chamber, and wits
and beauties, official and distinguished strangers surround her
fauteuil. That there is little meaning in these arrangements; that
they merely serve as a pastime, like an opera or vaudeville we pay
to witness, is true; but, on the other hand, facilities thus easily
obtained by cash and policy, afford scope and yield opportunities
for the display of character and the drama of social life, which
more exclusive circles never know. The art _tenir un salon_ is one
peculiar to the French, and there are ladies of that nation, whose
fame is as traditionally and even historically established as that
of great generals, statesmen, and poets; their rivalry equals the
competition of the other sex in war and politics; and, strange as
it may appear to an American, the social _prestige_ thus acquired
and transmitted is as often based upon sin as sanctity; an equivocal
character united to attractions of manner or rare intelligence,
makes the popularity of one _Madame_ and a reputation as a devotee
that of another. In a word, society in Paris is an arena so free,
versatile, necessary--protected by established conventionalities,
and moulded by the laws of taste--that it includes infinite
possibilities, as the French memoirs and plays annually demonstrate.
A social atmosphere thus concentrated in effect, and diffusive in
its nature, brings into contact associations which more intense
domestic life and a more formal organization keep apart. The
company in an English drawing-room may vary from year to year, but
its tone and character remain intact; while in Paris saloons are
designated by historical allusions and renowned for special and
temporary features. If it is desired to recal a certain epoch and
set of people, the whole idea is conveyed by such names as Hotel
Rambouillet or the Salons du Restoration; whereas Holland House
bears an identical fame as a place consecrated by intellectual
hospitality, under successive reigns. Pedantry and artificial
consequence belong to the fashionable levees of Louis the
Fourteenth's time, while those of the first Napoleon represent an
entirely diverse set of ideas and feelings. It is because society
is directly exposed to the 'form and pressure' of the hour in
Paris that it is thus Protean; religion, politics, and the taste
in art and letters instantly stamp the talk and the manners as the
coin of the realm bears the image of a new potentate; the life of
the family, of the devotee, of artistic genius, of statesmanship
and of arms, penetrate and interfuse in the social sphere, and an
acute writer, therefore, alludes with literal truth to the period
when 'the perfume of the boudoir mingled with the incense of the
sacristy.' There phrases of society are bestowed upon art and
politics; the favorable commencement of a new regime has been called
its honey-moon; and a critic of Watteau's pictures refers to him as
'cet maitre coquet et naif.'
The caprice and tasteful arrangements in the minutiæ of life, noted
by Yorick in his sketch of a Sunday in the French metropolis, when
La Fleur brought the butter for his master's _dejeuner_, on a fresh
currant-leaf, and found the bouquet he presented his own chosen fair
had changed hands three times in the course of the day--though not
so patent now, are equally characteristic; the valet still knows
his master's debts, and the _femme de chambre_ her mistress's love
affairs; there is the same familiarity in the relation of master
and servant, but the chance is, there is less gossip between them,
as both have more ideas and think oftener than before the days of
cheap literature, steam, and telegraphs. Comedy still makes sport
of husbands; 'the literary mind of France takes a religious turn'
occasionally; and 'people laugh at every thing' as they did in the
time of the young Duchess of Burgundy, whose remark to this effect
was then considered so _naive_. The _mariage de convenance_ is quite
as prevalent, children as artificial, and old people as child-like;
the _precieuses ridicules_ are, however, on the wane, being fused in
the cosmopolitan pressure of a more general intelligence, while the
_femme savante_ has given place, in a great degree, to the female
authors, who are too alive to the inspiration of the times, and
their own ideas to be pedantic.
To such an extent does the tyranny of custom dominate in the social
history of France, that duels and gaming have their periods of
triumph as well as bonnets and constitutions; at times they have
each enjoyed a fashionable _prestige_, so that individuals, without
the least taste for either occupation, in order to be _comme il
faut_ have sought to lose a notable amount at roulette and to
provoke some famous swordsman to combat. An acute observer of
Parisian life, prophesies that two growing tastes are now at work
destined to modify the French character, one the rage for English
horses, and the other the use of cigars. Of the normal traits of
the national mind, that which apparently remains most intact is the
instinct of military life. The same adaptation for the camp that we
recognize in Froissart's Chronicles and Napoleon's campaigns, is
obvious at this moment. 'This is worth considering,' says Montaigne,
'that our nation places valor (vaillance) in the highest degree of
virtue.'
The same extravagant notion of an Englishman's whims and _sangfroid_
prevail in the French capital as used to supply farce-writers
before the age of steam. Veron recently published the anecdote of
_un Anglais_, who had been his neighbor at a restaurant for several
weeks, bidding him good-by one day, as he was going on a trip round
the world; and eighteen months after, the traveller reäppeared at
the accustomed hour and table, and found his old companion in the
same seat; meantime, the Englishman had circumnavigated the globe.
We are told in Paris of every conceivable mania on the part of
English collectors; one spent a fortune in bottles of water from all
the rivers in the world, one in every kind of pipe, and another in
specimens of bird's eggs. On the other hand, the French are better
understood across the Channel; it is curious, at the present era of
alliance, to read one of the old travellers, who reported France
to Londoners, in the heyday of British prejudice. 'What is there,'
says the famous Thomas Nashe, 'in France to be learned more than
in England, but falsehood in friendship, perfect slovenry, and to
love no man for my pleasure? I have known some that have continued
there by the space of half-a-dozen years, and when they came home
they have had a little, weerish, lean-face, under a broad French
hat, kept a terrible coil with the dust in the street in their long
cloaks of gray paper, and spoken English strangely. Naught else have
they profited by their travel, but to distinguish the true Bordeaux
grape and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleans;
yet peradventure to wear a velvet patch on their face and walk
melancholy with their arms folded.'[A]
[A] _The Unfortunate Traveller: or Life of Jack Wilton._ London,
1594.
We recognize the life of Paris by the analytical pictures of the
French novelists and the graphic details of the memoirs. No mode of
national existence had ever been so candidly revealed; the stranger,
if familiar with the authors of the country, is better acquainted
with what is peculiar in the habits and tableaux around him, than
an unlettered native. Parisian character and the salient qualities
which distinguish metropolitan and provincial existence have been
daguerreotyped and anatomized by Balzac; each class, economy, and
phase he makes the basis of a story, has been not only carefully
observed but artistically and psychologically studied; what memories
of an old pension haunt the reader of Père Goriot--a kind of prose
Lear, as he gazes upon some venerable house of that description;
how intensely he realizes the consciousness of the well-endowed
yet sated young Parisian, as he recals the opening chapters of
La Peau de Chagrin; every aspect and secret of Grisette life has
been depicted; the poetry of the career of a gifted French noble,
whose first youth witnessed the prologue of the fatal revolutionary
drama, is embalmed in tragic or tender lines in the autobiography of
Chateaubriand; Saint Beuve's critiques have revived the associations
of each epoch of French literature; Lammenais recorded what of
faith lingered in the heart of the people; Scribe reflects the most
shifting traits of manners and character; and thus each indigenous
figure, building, and custom appeals to the imaginative memory as
well as to the curious eye.
The _salon_ of a literary clique suggests the extraordinary social
history of Paris; and the names of De Staël, Sévigné, Recamier, and
others, memorable as female arbiters and queens in conversation,
occur to us in connection with each political era and great name in
science, art and letters. Delaroche's portrait of Napoleon amid the
Alps and at Fontainebleau has stamped that remarkable countenance
in all its intensity of expression upon the mind; and thus it ever
reäppears on the scene of his power. The new style of pavement
attests the triumphs of barricades; and every old lamp-post the
horrors of the Reign of Terror. We cannot pass a foundling hospital
without thinking of Rousseau; the Jardin des Plants brings back
the benign researches of Buffon, Michaux, Cuvier, and the host of
French naturalists; old Montaigne's Essays are recalled by many
a philosophic hint and maxim of worldly wisdom; and each glimpse
of the comedy of French life is eloquent of Moliere. As we pass
either palace or prison, the fair vision of Maria Antoinette, as
it lives in Burke's description, the heroic devotion of Madame
Roland, and the heart-melting voice of Charlotte Corday, appeal
to remembrance; and thus the localities of Paris lead the fancy,
at every step, from the guillotine to the fête, from massacre to
beauty, from blood to flowers; and in early morning rambles we
almost expect to see the First Consul roaming _incog._, wrapt in
his gray coat. Notre Dame to the admirers of Victor Hugo, seems
less a Cathedral than an architectural Romance. Yet, there is no
city where the past is so lost sight of in the present, and where
local tradition has so slight a hold upon the sympathies. It is
fortunate, therefore, that when inclined to detach ourselves from
the immediate--here so absorbing--and rehearse the story of the
past, with every needful aid to memory and imagination, there is
an available and complete resource: we have but to quit Paris for
Versailles. The Place de Carousel and the Tuileries are unimpressive
in comparison with the stately decadence of that palatial chateau;
before which the mob, with ferocious glances, heaved like a raging
sea up to the balcony where stood the Queen and Lafayette; the
first solemn confronting of regal and popular will, ere the deadly
struggle began--whose renewal is ever at hand. Within those walls
is gathered the pictorial history of France in one successive and
elaborate series; the battles, counsels, domestic life of every
reign; the lineaments of heroes, poets and kings; the deeds, and
the men and women that are identified with the country from the
beginning. To live at Versailles, with a good library at hand, and
pass hours of every day in these halls, would make us intimate, not
only in a technical but in a picturesque way, with the annals and
the celebrities of the kingdom. It would be as if French history was
enacted before us and we saw the features of the leading spirits
of each generation as we listened to their achievements. 'C'est
à la Seine,' says a popular historiographer, 'que Paris doit ses
premiers aggrandizement;' but so completely have modern activity
and embellishment overlaid the rude defences whereby barbaric
hordes indicated the site of a magnificent capital, that few of the
artists who linger on the bridges to note the effect of moon-light
on arch and islet, or of the scholars that haunt the book-stalls
on the _quai_, have the associations of the past awakened by these
picturesque and suggestive localities; yet they signalize the
enterprise of Philip the Handsome, of Charles the Fifth, of Francis
the First, Henry the Second, Henry the Fourth, Philipe Augustus,
and Louis the Fourteenth. There Clovis and his Germanic tribes and
his converted Clotilde, formed the nucleus of Pepin's inheritance,
and Charlemagne established his name; thither came the Scandinavian
pirates, and musing on the banks of the dingy stream now associated
with science and fêtes, with baths and suicides, with boot-blacks
and laundresses, with the romance of student life, artistic,
medical and literary, and charming to the eye for elegant bridges
and massive quays--the historical dreamer recals a century and a
half of wars between French and English kings: the Black Prince and
Joan of Arc, Calvin and the Huguenots, Guise and St. Bartholomew,
Condé, Montmorency, Maria de Medicis, Anne of Austria, Richelieu,
Louis the Sixteenth--the Revolution, Bonaparte, and the Bourbon!
Such a panorama, its fore-ground crowded with memorable figures, its
perspective dim with the smoke of battle, its groups distinguishable
by varied symbols--the oriflamme, the lilies, the cross, the
tri-color--blood-stained yet radiant with female beauty and animated
by martial prowess, seems to bear no relation to the living scene
typical of prosperous order and the age of commerce, of luxury and
of science. Yet the analyst detects in the most common-place fact
of to-day the influence of a dynasty and the bequest of an era.
Madame de Genlis tells us how she taught the boy Louis Philipe
after Rousseau's maxims; and made him cosmopolitan in taste by her
German system of gardening, dining after the English fashion, and
taking supper _en Italien_; and Veron says her pupil, when he became
King, introduced the rage for fine horses and clever jockeys; it
was, according to the same authority, the _fermiers generaux_ who
initiated French cookery as a unique art in their table rivalry with
the old noblesse. 'Scarcity of fuel,' says the _Quarterly Review_,
'has not been without its effect in forming the manners of the
polished Parisians, and has transferred to the theatre and the café
those attractions, which in the British islands belong essentially
to the domestic hearth.' The use of tobacco, in the form of cigars,
is another modification of the national habits; but a few years ago
it was deemed a nuisance, now it prevails among both sexes; and keen
observers declare that the French have grown more contemplative
and less excitable as the puff has superseded the pinch, and the
slowly-evolved cloud--emblem of ruminating quiescence--taken the
place of those 'pungent grains of titillating dust' which stimulate
a bon-mot rather than lure to reflection.
'You would hardly believe,' said Madame de Maintenon, 'how much a
talent for combing hair contributed to my elevation:' tact in the
minor economies, the ability to minister to approbativeness and
epicurism, no where finds such scope as in Paris. 'Be more amiable,'
said an experienced mother to her daughter, an _employé_ of the
opera, 'be more tender and _empresse_ to your admirers, if not for
your child's sake, or for your mother's, then for your _voiture_!'
The triumph of material niceties here reaches its acme: from what
an infinite variety of petty resources is French subsistence and
enjoyment derived! A journal of our day announces the death of a
distinguished _claquer_, at his country-seat, and the event is
signalized by an obituary notice, declaring him 'master of the art
of expressing feeling according to the subject!' A eulogy nowhere
else applicable to any but an author, composer or artist, thus
celebrates one whose vocation it was to testify approbation and
blame at the theatre! Liquorice-water, the caricature of an abbe, an
omelette scientifically fried, a fancy clock; a woman in front of
Tortoni's letting off swallows from a basket, at two sous a flight;
a bird-cage, a flower-stand, a plaster bust, a lap-dog, a fan, a
little glass of Otard, a cake of scented soap, an opera-glass, a
pan of charcoal, a wax candle, or a parrot, an elegant coiffure,
a geranium leaf, or a bit of sugar--where on earth, but in Paris,
do such things weigh so much in the scale of diurnal experience,
felicity, and even fate?
How many 'gentle stoics' exhibit frugality and contentment; how
many complacent epicureans ingenuity in pleasure-seeking; how
many devotees of science isolated self-devotion, in that mart
of humanity! We are told of a famous surgeon who questioned the
credited idea that a vital gun-shot wound is followed by an
involuntary leap, or sudden turning of the body: called to the
field, and mortally wounded, he exclaimed, 'It is true; I could
not help that movement,' and so died. In no other meridian do
the frivolous and the solemn, the fantastic and the philosophic
associations of life thus incongruously blend.
An historian quotes a royal letter, the possession of which he
accounts for by the statement that he purchased it of a rogue who
stole it at the sack of the Tuileries; a philosopher cannot study
in peace without a group of tropical plants and two gazelles in
sight; the Amazonian market-women, whose savage air would frighten
a novice, keep a plaster bust of the Emperor on their stalls, and
throw nosegays into Eugenie's carriage; the identical transparency
which represented the Goddess of Reason in the bloodiest days of the
Revolution, was subsequently used as the festal effigy of Liberty,
Josephine, Faith, Hortense, and the present Empress; a painter's
model impiously engraves on his card: _Nature de Christ_; an amateur
takes down a new dance in short-hand; a female novelist assumes male
attire, in order to observe life in Paris with more facility; the
best poet of the South is a barber; at the same shop-window the
_flaneur_ gazes on a print of Napoleon at St. Helena, contemplating,
with folded arms, the declining sun--and a national guard lacing the
stays of a grisette; the municipal authorities imprison a refractory
opera-singer, and, without their permission, not a bucket of water
can be dipped from the Gulf of Lyons; our dinner-companion says
good-by, after coffee, and goes deliberately to blow his brains
out. The fireman makes loves to the _femme de chambre_, while in
the act of extinguishing a conflagration; the people read their
fate in placards; Galignani's column of foreign news is arbitrarily
cut down, and the suppressed items come to light in Charivari;
a deposed king's effects are sold at auction, and Sevres ware
bearing his crest thenceforth adorn American tables; the streets
swarm with police and spies, and the child of a Dutch admiral and
Hortense Beauharnais, having turned the cannon upon the populace,
issues a religious bulletin after the massacre: no flower-market
in the world is patronized so well as the Parisian, and no urban
gardens more frequented than the Tuileries and Luxembourg, while
rural life is irksome to the citizen, and only sought as a pretext
for love-making, a dance, or dinner al fresco. Catch a few phrases
from the leaf of a courtier's memoirs, the mouth of a neighbor
at restaurant or theater, or the bourgeois in a crowd, and an
epitome of this mingled levity and talent, this comedy of life,
and quickness of apprehension, without seriousness of conviction,
is hinted at once. 'They are like me, they regret their mud,' said
Madame de Maintenon, watching the restless carp in their pellucid
vase; 'il y quelqu'un qui fait encore plus d'ennemis qu'un cheval
anglais--ce'st la femme de theatre,' was the observation of a
Parisian sage; 'my confessor has ordered me to be dull in company,'
said Madame Scarron, 'to mortify the passion, he detects in me,
of wishing to please by my understanding.' 'Un femme d'esprit ne
doit rien à personne,' bluntly remarks an obese traveler, as he
shifts his feet to avoid the provision-basket of his vis-a-vis.
Opera-girls, we are told by Veron, have a passion to appear in
mourning for some distant relative whom they have never seen.
In 1740, Montesquieu, in a letter to a friend, wrote: 'France is
nothing but Paris and a few distant provinces.' 'Here,' says a
traveller of the last century, 'things are estimated by their _air_;
a watch may be a master-piece without exactness, and a woman rule
the whole town without beauty, if they have an air. Here life's a
dance, and awkwardness of step its greatest disgrace. Character,
here, is dissolved into the public, and 'an original' a name of
mirth. _Cela se fait_, _et cela ne se fait pas_, are here the
supreme umpires of conduct. Their religion is superstition, fashion,
sophism. Tyranny may grind the face, but not the countenance of
a Frenchman; his feet are made to dance in wooden shoes. The
parliament resembles an old toothless mastiff. France was the
country of Le Soeur and Racine, and is that of Voltaire.'
And a more generalized and recent portrait is given by our
countryman, Henry James: 'Your true Frenchman will sit for any
number of consecutive hours glued to the benches of the _Champs
Elysees_ in order to see the _monde_ pass by--to see it merely with
his eyes, remember--never speaking to a soul, never knowing a soul
in all the moving mass, yet perfectly content to see the monotonous
waves roll on and repeat their tiresome glare, till darkness comes
at last to snatch them from sight, and the beholder (let us hope)
from imbecility. To frequent from childhood to manhood, and from
manhood to old age, the same unchanging scenes; to sit year in and
year out on the same dusty sidewalks, in front of the same crowded
and noisy _cafés_, playing the same eternal dominoes, seeing pass
the same throng of similar people, each as like the other in his
diversity as a big pea is like a little pea, as a double clover
is like a single clover, or a wilted cabbage is like a fresh one;
everlastingly sipping the same _eau sucre_; everlastingly hearing
and repeating the same stupid gossip of Mrs. B. to-day, which was
heard and repeated of Mrs. A. yesterday; everlastingly resorting to
the same play-house to applaud the same actors; running to the same
opera to go into ecstasies over the same fiddle; strolling along
the same streets to gaze at the same or similar prints in the same
windows at the end of the year which he gazed upon at the beginning;
such is your true Frenchman's conception of variety, such is his
ideal of life; and he cannot but heartily despise a state of things
like that at home, which drops all this imbecile routine out as an
infinite dreariness and _ennui_; a full stomach, a faithful wife or
mistress, and an honored name, and he will agree to live forever in
immortal joy. Life to him is not the commerce or play of an infinite
inward ideal, with a responsive outward organization; it is rather
the commerce or play of a finite outward organization with what is
still more finite and outward than itself, namely, the universe of
sense. GOD forbid that I should undervalue a mental constitution
so pronounced, and, in its way, so admirable; I only allege it to
show that the Frenchman commits suicide only when some tangible
possession takes its departure from him; only when poverty, or some
other palpable calamity, comes to shake him out of his easy-going
routine, and that he can't imagine any profounder source of disgust.'
Garvani's illustrations of Paris life contain a domestic interior
which might serve an artist, a political economist, or a dramatic
author, so entirely does it suggest the ways and means of the
domiciliated Parisian. Like his frugal Caledonian brother, he
prefers the nook of a vast and substantial edifice to a small
isolated tenement; and is content to occupy a floor, and adjust
the height thereof to the length of his purse: both space and cash
are saved by the arrangement; while a far more uniform, permanent,
and effective architecture is secured. Thus each huge dwelling
is a world in itself; the ground-floor may be a shop, but ascend
the steps and you find the guardian genius of the place, whom if
you are a resident or an habitué of the premises, it is well to
propitiate. All the conveniences of a family are found in each of
these suites, which vary in extent and costliness as you ascend;
survey the neat glass case, wherein sits the porter's wife in her
spotless cap, knitting, with an alcove containing a bed, perhaps
in the back-ground, and a dainty pendulum or flower near by, and a
sleepy cat purring at her side; accept her courteous directions,
mount the polished oaken staircase, note the different colored cords
hanging at each door, look in upon the prosperous family who hold a
_salon_ once a week on the _premiere etage_, or the smaller domestic
establishment above; the economical traveller's winter-apartment,
full of knick-knacks and sunshine, _au troisieme_; or mount, if
you will, to the highest region of all to find the provident
musician practising in his cheerful attic; or the light-hearted and
hard-working grisette, his neighbor, with her box of mignonette at
her side, embroidering a kerchief, or making artificial flowers:
while she muses of the next holiday, when her beau is to escort
her to a dance at Montmorenci. These, and a thousand similar
scenes, have been so graphically described in novels, plays, and
memoirs, that such a casual inspection seems like a process of
memory rather than observation, so exactly does the still-life and
local arrangement correspond with vague images of apartments in the
French capital to which biographers, novelists, and playwrights have
conducted us. This way of living in colonies, the diversities of
condition thus brought under one roof, is another of those special
phases of life in Paris, which render it eminently dramatic and
scenical. Yet the convenience thus secured is often modified to
Anglo-Saxon appreciation, by miserable provision for a fire, scraps
of rug instead of an entire carpet, and a want of comfort scarcely
atoned for by sundry cheap expedients for elegance; so that we can
well believe the assertion of an American envoy, fresh from his snug
country-seat, that the charms of the French capital were dispelled
for him by a habit his chimney had of smoking, and his waiter of
bringing him punch in a tea-pot. The requirements of warmth and ease
are secondary in the estimation of the fair Parisian; she says: 'Le
salon sera rouge et or, la chambre á coucher en brocatelle jaune
et le boudoir en satin de chine blue; ce sera ravissant.' And yet
there is not a city in the world where a comfortable retreat, in
our sense of the word, is more requisite. Cold humidity is the
normal trait of the winter climate; catarrh is almost permanently
epidemic; many of the inhabitants can echo the declaration of one
their frank fellow-citizens, who says: 'Depuis que je me connais,
je suis enrhumée. J'aurai en froid en venant au monde.' Moccasins,
snuff, and eau sucre, are the usual remedies; and their universal
use confirms and suggests atmospheric causes.