_May 8th._--As we had taken a house at Passy, the servants and trunks
went there: but we staid till the afternoon that we might see the
Gallery of the Louvre and as much of Paris as we could. In the first
saloon of this museum are the earliest works of the French and Italian
artists. In the next the celebrated battle-pieces of Le Brun. We
then entered the great gallery, which appears to have no end; this
magnificent apartment is fourteen hundred feet in length. The ceiling
is particularly pretty. I was very much disappointed in the pictures;
there were such a number that I could hardly distinguish them. The
Déluge by Poussin is very sublime. I also admired the St. Michael
vanquishing Satan. The inside of a kitchen, and another painting in
which there is a lamp, are very natural. There is a picture of some
dogs, and another of some game, both of which I liked. A basket of
fruit and some butterflies is also very pretty.
From the Louvre we went to the Palais Royal. It was begun by Cardinal
Richelieu in 1629, and completed in 1636. It was converted by the Duke
of Orleans into a bazaar: the front towards the street of St. Honoré
was built by him after the destruction of the Opera House. It presents
two pavilions adorned with columns. After passing under a portico we
entered a square. In the centre is a garden interspersed by young trees
and encircled by lattice work; in the middle of the garden is a _jet
d'eau_, which cools the air very much. Round the square are beautiful
little shops; the prettiest are the jewellers'. In the windows were
a great many ornaments of mother-of-pearl, harps, dogs, men, carts,
etc. The china-shops are very pretty also. One very pretty ornament
was a gold boy with a china cup on his back and a dog holding a stick
in its mouth, at each end of which was a glass for ink; there were
bead-necklaces, smelling-bottles, and every kind of thing. When we
returned we went immediately to Passy. This village was about a mile
from Paris. When we arrived at our house in the Rue Basse, we found all
hands busily employed in cleaning. It was a large house, but dirty from
top to bottom. It had been occupied for a year by an English family
who had been abroad for three years; their housekeeper and lady's-maid
were English, and disliked being in France so much that they sat in
their own rooms and left the management of the house entirely to the
foreign servants. There was a courier who bought and managed for the
family. The consequence was that we found the house in the greatest
confusion. The kitchen was like a pig-sty, and the rooms were very
dirty and untidy. There were backs of books, old bottles, and all kinds
of litters lying about. There was a German housemaid who was to stay on
in the house with us, and she and our servants did little that day but
clean. Though we were all anxious to come to a house, I began to think
I would sooner have stayed where we were than come here. When we went
to bed we expected at least to be at rest, instead of which the beds
were so full of bugs that we were bit all over.