I have sometimes fancied I could discover national characteristics in
national edifices. In the Chateau of the Tuileries, for instance, I
perceive the same jumble of contrarieties that marks the French character;
the same whimsical mixture of the great and the little; the splendid and
the paltry, the sublime and the grotesque. On visiting this famous pile,
the first thing that strikes both eye and ear is military display. The
courts glitter with steel-clad soldiery, and resound with the tramp of
horse, the roll of drum, and the bray of trumpet. Dismounted guardsmen
patrol its arcades, with loaded carbines, jingling spears, and clanking
sabers. Gigantic grenadiers are posted about its staircases; young officers
of the guards loll from the balconies, or lounge in groups upon the
terraces; and the gleam of bayonet from window to window, shows that
sentinels are pacing up and down the corridors and ante-chambers. The first
floor is brilliant with the splendors of a court. French taste has tasked
itself in adorning the sumptuous suites of apartments; nor are the gilded
chapel and the splendid theater forgotten, where piety and pleasure are
next-door neighbors, and harmonize together with perfect French
_bienseance_.
Mingled up with all this regal and military magnificence is a world of
whimsical and make-shift detail. A great part of the huge edifice is cut up
into little chambers and nestling-places for retainers of the court,
dependents on retainers, and hangers-on of dependents. Some are squeezed
into narrow entre-sols, those low, dark, intermediate slices of apartments
between floors, the inhabitants of which seem shoved in edgewise, like
books between narrow shelves; others are perched like swallows, under the
eaves; the high roofs, too, which are as tall and steep as a French cocked
hat, have rows of little dormant windows, tier above tier, just large
enough to admit light and air for some dormitory, and to enable its
occupant to peep out at the sky. Even to the very ridge of the roof may be
seen here and there one of these air-holes, with a stove pipe beside it, to
carry off the smoke from the handful of fuel with which its weazen-faced
tenant simmers his _demi-tasse_ of coffee.
On approaching the palace from the Pont Royal, you take in at a glance all
the various strata of inhabitants; the garreteer in the roof; the retainer
in the entre-sol; the courtiers at the casements of the royal apartments;
while on the ground-floor a steam of savory odors and a score or two of
cooks, in white caps, bobbing their heads about the windows, betray that
scientific and all-important laboratory, the Royal Kitchen.
Go into the grand ante-chamber of the royal apartments on Sunday and see
the mixture of Old and New France; the old emigrés, returned with the
Bourbons; little withered, spindle-shanked old noblemen, clad in court
dresses, that figured in these saloons before the revolution, and have been
carefully treasured up during their exile; with the solitaires and _ailes
de pigeon_ of former days; and the court swords strutting out behind,
like pins stuck through dry beetles. See them haunting the scenes of their
former splendor, in hopes of a restitution of estates, like ghosts haunting
the vicinity of buried treasure; while around them you see the Young
France, that have grown up in the fighting school of Napoleon; all equipped
_en militaire_; tall, hardy, frank, vigorous, sunburned,
fierce-whiskered; with tramping boots, towering crests, and glittering
breast-plates.
It is incredible the number of ancient and hereditary feeders on royalty
said to be housed in this establishment. Indeed all the royal palaces
abound with noble families returned from exile, and who have
nestling-places allotted them while they await the restoration of their
estates, or the much-talked-of law indemnity. Some of them have fine
quarters, but poor living. Some families have but five or six hundred
francs a year, and all their retinue consists of a servant-woman. With all
this, they maintain their old aristocratical hauteur, look down with vast
contempt upon the opulent families which have risen since the revolution;
stigmatize them all as _parvenues_ or upstarts, and refuse to visit
them.
In regarding the exterior of the Tuileries, with all its outward signs of
internal populousness, I have often thought what a rare sight it would be
to see it suddenly unroofed, and all its nooks and corners laid open to the
day. It would be like turning up the stump of an old tree, and dislodging
the world of grubs, and ants, and beetles lodged beneath. Indeed there is a
scandalous anecdote current that in the time of one of the petty plots,
when petards were exploded under the windows of the Tuileries, the police
made a sudden investigation of the palace at four o'clock in the morning;
when a scene of the most whimsical confusion ensued. Hosts of supernumerary
inhabitants were found foisted into the huge edifice; every rat-hole had
its occupant; and places which had been considered as tenanted only by
spiders were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It is added
that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scampering and slamming of
doors, and whisking away in nightgowns and slippers; and several persons,
who were found by accident in their neighbors' chambers, evinced
indubitable astonishment at the circumstance.
As I have fancied I could read the French character in the national palace
of the Tuileries, so I have pictured to myself some of the traits of John
Bull in his royal abode of Windsor Castle. The Tuileries, outwardly a
peaceful palace, is in effect a swaggering military hold; while the old
castle, on the contrary, in spite of its bullying look, is completely under
petticoat government. Every corner and nook is built up into some snug,
cozy nestling place, some "procreant cradle," not tenanted by meager
expectants or whiskered warriors, but by sleek placemen; knowing realizers
of present pay and present pudding; who seem placed there not to kill and
destroy, but to breed and multiply. Nursery maids and children shine with
rosy faces at the windows, and swarm about the courts and terraces. The
very soldiers have a pacific look, and when off duty may be seen loitering
about the place with the nursery-maids; not making love to them in the gay
gallant style of the French soldiery, but with infinite bonhomie aiding
them to take care of the broods of children.
Though the old castle is in decay, everything about it thrives; the very
crevices of the walls are tenanted by swallows, rooks, and pigeons, all
sure of quiet lodgment; the ivy strikes its roots deep in the fissures, and
flourishes about the mouldering tower. [Footnote: The above sketch was
written before the thorough repairs and magnificent additions that have
been made of late years to Windsor Castle.] Thus it is with honest John;
according to his own account, he is ever going to ruin, yet everything that
lives on him thrives and waxes fat. He would fain be a soldier, and swagger
like his neighbors; but his domestic, quiet-loving, uxorious nature
continually gets the upper hand; and though he may mount his helmet and
gird on his sword, yet he is apt to sink into the plodding, painstaking
father of a family; with a troop of children at his heels, and his
womenkind hanging on each arm.