THE PARIS OF 1869.
The devil.--Cathedrals and churches.--The
Louvre.--Modern French art.--The Beauvais clock,
with its droll little puppets.--Virtue in a red
gown.--The Luxembourg Palace.--The yawning statue
of Marshal Ney.--Gay life by gas-light.--The
Imperial Circus.--The Opera.--How the emperor and
empress rode through the streets after the
riots.--The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was
her fortune.--Napoleon's tomb.
IT may be the City of Destruction, the very gateway to depths unknown;
but with its fair, white dwellings, its fair, white streets, that
gleamed almost like gold beneath a summer sun, it seemed much more a
City Celestial. It may be, as some affirm, that the devil here walks
abroad at midday; but we saw neither the print of his hoofs upon the
asphaltum, nor the shadow of his horns upon the cream-like Caen stone.
We walked, and rode, and dwelt a time within its limits; and but for a
certain reckless gayety that gave to the Sabbath an air of Vanity Fair,
but for the mallet of the workman that disturbed our Sunday worship, we
should never have known that we were not in the most Christian of all
Christian cities. It is by no means imperative to do in Rome as the
Romans do, and one need not in Paris drink absinthe or visit the Jardin
Mabille.
Our first expedition was to the banker's and to the shops, and having
replenished our purse and wardrobe, we were prepared to besiege the
city. There was a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned
with blue satin, of our pretty _salon_, whence we peeped down upon the
street below between the yellow satin curtains that draped its wide
French window; or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted
ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny, impossible birds;
or made abortive attempts to penetrate the secrets of the buhl cabinets,
and to guess at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered organism;
or admired ourselves in the mirrors which gazed at each other from
morning till night, for our apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we
found most charming.
You will hardly care for a description of the dozen, more or less,
churches, old, new, and restored, with which we began and ended our
sight-seeing in Paris, where we looked upon sculptured saints without
number, and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more than our hearts'
content. There was St. Germain L'Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which
tolled the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We stood with the
_bonnes_ and babies under the trees of the square before it, gazing up
at the belfry with most severe countenances,--and learned, afterwards,
that the bell had been long since removed! There was the Madeleine of
more recent date, built in the form of a Greek temple, and interesting
just now for having been the church of Father Hyacinthe, to which we
could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron gate; we inquired
in excellent English of a French shopkeeper, and found at last an open
gateway, a little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time of search
and inquiry in darkness, and among wood, and shavings, and broken
chairs, and holy dust-pans, before passing around and entering the great
bronze doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice, grand and
beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds of lotteries. There was St.
Etienne du Mont, and within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the
patron saint of Paris--St. Genevieve. Who she was, or what she did to
gain this rather unenviable position, I failed to learn. Her name seems
to have outlived her deeds. Whether she was beautiful and beloved, and
put away earthly vanities for a holy life, or old and ugly, and bore her
lot with a patience that won saintship, I do not know. I can only tell
that tapers burn always upon her tomb, and if you buy one it will burn a
prayer for you. So we were told. There is one old church, St. Germain
des Pres, most beautifully colored within. Its pictures seem to have
melted upon the walls. But admired above all is the Sainte Chapelle, in
the Palais de Justice, a chapel fitted up by the fanatical St. Louis,
when this palace of justice, which holds now the courts of law, was a
royal residence. Of course all its brightness was dimmed long ago. Its
glories became dust, like its founder. But it has recently been
restored, and is a marvel of gilt, well-blended colors, and stained
glass. A graceful spire surmounts it, but the old, cone-capped towers,
rising from another part of the same building, possessed far greater
interest in our eyes; for here was the Conciergerie, where were confined
Marie Antoinette and so many more victims of the reign of terror.
On the "isle of the city," in the Seine, where, under the Roman rule, a
few mud huts constituted Paris, stands the church of Notre Dame, which
was three hundred years in building. With its spire and two square
towers, it may be seen from almost any part of the city. I wish you
might look upon the relics and the vestments which the priests wear upon
occasions of ceremony, hidden within this church, and displayed upon the
payment of an extra fee. I did not wonder that the Sisters of Charity,
who went into the little room with us, gazed aghast upon the gold and
silver, and precious stones.
Every one visits the galleries of the Louvre, of course. A little, worn
shoe, belonging once to Marie Antoinette, and the old gray coat of the
first emperor, were to us the most interesting objects among the relics.
From out the sea of pictures rise Murillo's Madonna, the lovely face
with a soul behind it, shining through, and the burial of the heroine of
Chateaubriand. Do you know it? The fair form, the sweeping hair of
Attila, and the dark lover with despair in his face? As for the Rubens
gallery,--his fat, red, undraped women here among the clouds, surrounded
by puffy little cherubs, had for us no charms. Rubens in Antwerp was a
revelation. We wandered through room after room, lighted from above,
crowded with paintings. To live for a time among them would be a
delight; to glance at them for a moment was tantalization. All around
were the easels of the artists who come here to sketch--sharp-featured,
heavy-browed men, with unkempt hair and flowing beards, and in shabby
coats, stood before them, pallet and brushes in hand; and women by the
score,--some of them young and pleasing, with duennas patiently waiting
near by; but more often they were neither young nor beautiful, and with
an evident renunciation of pomps and vanities. We glanced at their
copies curiously. Sometimes they seemed the original in miniature, and
sometimes,--ah well, we all fail.
We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures at the Palais de
l'Industrie one day, and were particularly impressed with the _nudite_
of the modern school of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very
beautiful, but there must be something higher! We saw there, too,
another day, the clock on exhibition for a time before being consigned
to its destined place at Beauvais. It was even more wonderful than the
one so famous at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary church
organ, and of similar shape; a mass of gilt and chocolate-colored wood;
a mass of dials, great and small--of time tables, and, indeed, of tables
for computing everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to show the
time in fifty different places, and everything else that could, by any
possible connection with time, be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon
the top, Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as judging the
world, his feet upon the clouds; on either side kneeling female figures
adored him. Just below, a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak
stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of fifty windows.
Just below the image of the Saviour, a figure emerged through an open
door at the striking of every quarter of an hour,--coming out with a
slide and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an opportunity of
observing all this in the three quarters of an hour of waiting. We
viewed the clock upon every side, being especially interested in a
picture at one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and a
long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships attached in some way
to the works within. They pitched back and forth without making any
progress whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had lately
suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests seated themselves with
us upon the bench before the clock as the hand approached the hour. They
wore the long black robes and odd little skull-caps, that fit so like a
plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in place by some law of
attraction unknown to us. One, of a different order, or higher grade, in
a shorter robe and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings that
added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up to his place just in time
to throw back his head and open his mouth as the clock struck, and the
last judgment began. The cock upon the front gave a preliminary and weak
flap of his wings, and emitted three feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I
am sure, have convulsed the very puppets. Certainly they all disappeared
from the windows, and something jumped into their places intended to
represent flames, but which looked so much like reversed tin petticoats,
that we supposed for a moment they were all standing on their heads. All
the figures upon the peaks turned their backs upon us. The image of
Christ began to wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back and
forth, clasping their own. Two angels raised to their lips long, gilt
trumpets, as if to blow a blast; then dropped them; then raised them a
second time, and even made a third abortive attempt. From one of the
open doors Virtue was jerked out to be judged, Virtue in a red gown. The
scales began to dance up and down. An angel appeared playing a guitar,
and Virtue went triumphantly off to the right, to slow and appropriate
music, an invisible organ playing meanwhile. Then Vice appeared. I
confess he excited my instant and profound pity. Such a poor, naked,
wretched-looking object as he was! with his hands to his face, as though
he were heartily ashamed to come out in such a plight. I venture to say,
if he had been decked out like Virtue, he might have stolen off to the
right, and nobody been the wiser. Good clothes do a great deal in Paris.
As it was, the scales danced up and down a moment, and then the devil
appeared with a sharp stick, and drove him around the corner to the
left, with very distant and feeble thunder for an accompaniment. That
ended the show. All the little puppets jumped back into all the little
windows, and we came away.
Speaking of picture galleries, we spent a pleasant hour in the gallery
of the Luxembourg--a collection of paintings made up from the works of
living artists, and of those who have been less than a year deceased. It
is sufficiently small to be enjoyable. There is something positively
oppressive in the vastness of many of these galleries. You feel utterly
unequal to them; as though the finite were about to attempt the
comprehension of the infinite. One picture here, by Ary Scheffer, was
exhibited in America, a few years since. It is the head and bust of a
dead youth in armor--a youth with a girlish face. There are others by
Henri Scheffer, Paulin Guerin, and a host more I will not name. One, a
scene in the Conciergerie, "Reading the List of the Condemned to the
Prisoners," by Mueller, haunted me long after the doors had swung
together behind us. The palace of the Luxembourg, small, remarkable for
the beauty of its architecture and charming garden, built for that
graceless regent, Marie de Medici, is now the residence of the president
of the Senate; and indeed the Senate itself meets here. We were shown
through the rooms open to the public, the private apartments of Marie de
Medici among them, in one of which was a bust of the regent. The garden,
like all gardens, is filled with trees and shrubs, flowers and
fountains, but yet with a certain charm of its own. The festooning of
vines from point to point was a novelty to us, as was the design of one
of the fountains. Approaching it from the rear, we thought it a
tomb,--perhaps the tomb of Marshal Ney, we said, whose statue we were
seeking. It proved to be an artificial grotto, and within it, sprinkled
with the spray of the fountain, embowered in a mass of glistening, green
ivy, reclined a pair of pretty, marble lovers; peering in upon them from
above, scowled a dreadful ogre--a horrible giant. The whole effect,
coming upon it unexpectedly, was startling.
We had a tiresome search for this same statue of Marshal Ney. We chased
every marble nymph in the garden, and walked and walked, over burning
pebbles and under a scorching sun, until we almost wished he had never
been shot. At last, away beyond the garden, out upon a long avenue,
longer and hotter if possible than the garden paths, we found
it,--erected upon the very spot where he was executed. He stands with
arm outstretched, and mouth opened wide, as though he were yawning with
the wearisomeness of it all. It is a pity that he should give way to his
feelings so soon, since he must stand there for hundreds of years to
come. The guide-books say he is represented in the act of encouraging
his men. They must have been easily encouraged.
Of the out-door gay life by gas-light, we saw less than we had hoped to
see in the French capital. The season was unusually cold and wet, and
most of the time it would have required the spirit of a martyr to sip
coffee upon the sidewalk. One garden concert we did attend, and found it
very bright and fairy-like, and all the other adjectives used in this
connection. We sat wrapped in shawls, our feet upon the rounds of the
chair before us, and shivered a little, and enjoyed a great deal. We
went one night--in most orthodox company--to the Cirque de
l'Imperatrice, a royal amphitheatre with handsome horses, pretty
equestriennes, and a child balanced and tossed about on horseback,
showing a frightened, painful smile, which made of the man who held her
a Herod in our eyes. A girl very rich in paint and powder, but somewhat
destitute in other particulars, skipped and danced upon a slack rope in
a most joyous and airy manner. When we came out, a haggard woman, with
an old, worn face, was crouching in a little weary heap by the door that
led into the stables, wrapped in an old cloak; and that was our dancing
girl!
We went to the opera, too; it was Les Huguenots. To this day I cannot
tell who were the singers. I never knew, or thought, or cared. And the
bare shoulders flashing with jewels in the boxes around us, the
_claqueurs_ in the centre, hired to applaud, clapping their hands with
the regularity of clock-work, the empty imperial box, were nothing to
the sight of Paris portrayed within itself. You know the familiar opera;
do think how strange it was to see it in Paris; to look upon the stage
and behold the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame; the excited populace
rising up to slay and to be slain, with all the while this same fickle
French people serenely smiling, and chatting, and looking upon it--the
people who were even then ready at a word to reenact the same scenes for
a different cause. Just outside, only a day or two before, something of
the same spirit, portrayed here for our amusement, had broken out again
in the election riots. And we remembered that, as we drove around the
corner to the opera house, mounted soldiers stood upon either side,
while every other man upon the street was the eye, and ear, and arm of
the emperor, who knew that the very ground beneath his fair, white city
tottered and reeled.
We saw the emperor and empress one day, after having looked for them
long and in vain upon the Champs Elysees, and in the Bois de Boulogne
where gay Paris disports itself. It was the morning after the riot, when
they drove unattended, you will remember, through the streets where the
rioters had gathered. We were in one of the shops upon the Rue de
Rivoli. Just across the way rose the Tuileries from the sidewalk. A
crowd began to collect about the open archway through the palace, which
affords entrance and egress to the great square around which the palace
is built. "What is it?" we asked of the voluble Frenchman who was
gradually persuading us that brass was gold. "L'Empereur," he replied;
which sent us to the sidewalk, and put from our minds all thoughts of
oxidized silver and copper-colored gold. Just within the arch paced a
lackey in livery of scarlet and gold, wearing a powdered wig and general
air of importance. On either side, the sentries froze into position. The
_gendarmes_ shouted and gesticulated, clearing the streets. A mounted
attendant emerged from the archway; there followed four bay horses
attached to a plain, dark, open carriage; upon the front seat were two
gentlemen, upon the back, a gentleman with a lady by his side. His hair
was iron gray, almost silvery. He turned his face from us as he raised
his hat gravely to the crowd, displaying a very perceptible bald spot
upon the back of his head as he was whizzed around the corner and down
the street. And that was Napoleon III. We saw no American lady in Paris
dressed so simply as the empress. Something of black lace draped her
shoulders; a white straw bonnet, trimmed with black, with a few pink
roses resting upon her hair, crowned her head. She bowed low to the
right and left, with a peculiar, graceful motion, and a smile upon the
face a little worn and pale, a little faded,--but yet the face we all
know so well. Beautiful Spanish woman, whose face was your fortune,
though you smiled that day upon the people, your cheeks were pale, your
eyes were full of tears.
There is nothing more wonderful in Paris than the tomb prepared to
receive the remains of the first Napoleon, in the chapel of the Hotel
des Invalides; fitting, it would seem to be, that he should rest here
among his old soldiers. We left the carriage at the gateway, and crossed
the open court, mounted the wide steps, followed the half dozen other
parties through the open doors, and this was what we saw. At the farther
end of the great chapel or church, an altar, approached by wide, marble
steps; gilt and candles embellished it, and a large, gilt cross upon it
bore an image of the crucified Lord. All this was not unlike what we had
seen many times. But four immense twisted columns rose from its four
corners--columns of Egyptian marble, writhing like spotted serpents.
They supported a canopy of gold, and the play of lights upon this,
through the stained windows above and on either side, was indescribable.
As we entered the door, darkness enveloped it, save where an invisible
sun seemed to touch the roof of gold and rest lightly upon the pillars;
an invisible sun, indeed, for, without, the sky was heavy with clouds.
As we advanced, this unearthly light touched new points--the gilded
candlesticks, the dying Saviour, but above all the writhings of these
monster serpents, until the whole seemed a thing of life, a something
which grew and expanded every moment, and was almost fearful to look
upon. Filling the centre of the chapel was a circular marble wall
breast-high. Do you remember, in going to the old Senate chamber at
Washington, after passing through the rotunda, the great marble
well-curb down which you could look into the room below? This was like
that, only more vast. Over it leaned a hundred people, at least, gazing
down upon what? A circular, roofless room, a crypt to hold a tomb; each
pillar around its circumference was the colossal figure of a woman;
between these hung the tattered tri-colors borne in many a fierce
conflict, beneath the burning suns of Egypt and over the dreary snows of
Russia, with seventy colors captured from the enemies of France. A
wreath of laurel in the mosaic floor surrounded the names Austerlitz,
Marengo, Friedland, Jena, Wagram, Moscow, and Pyramids, and in the
centre rose the sarcophagus of Finland granite, prepared to hold the
body of him whose ambition knew no bounds. The letter N upon one
polished side was the only inscription it bore. He who wrote his name in
blood needed no epitaph. The entrance to this crypt is through bronze
doors, behind the altar, and gained by passing under it. On either side
stood a colossal figure in bronze; kings they seemed to be, giant kings,
in long black robes and with crowns of black upon their heads. One held,
upon the black cushion in his hands, a crown of gold and a golden sword;
the other, a globe crowned with a cross and a golden sceptre. They were
so grand, and dark, and still, they gazed upon us so fixedly from out
their great, grave eyes, that I felt a chill in all my bones. They guard
his tomb. They hold his sword and sceptre while he sleeps. I almost
expected the great doors to swing open at the touch of his hand, and to
see him come forth. Over these doors were his own words: "I desire that
my ashes may repose upon the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the
French people I have loved so well." On either side, as we came out, we
read upon the tombs the names of Bertrand and Duroc,--faithful in death!
We wondered idly whose remains were guarded in the simple tomb near the
door. It was surrounded by an iron railing, and bore no inscription. Who
can it be, we said, that is nameless here among the brave? Little did we
imagine at the time that here rested the body of the great Napoleon, as
it was brought from St. Helena; but his spirit seemed to pervade the
very atmosphere, and we came out into the gloom of the day as though we
had, indeed, come from the presence of the dead.