SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.
The river omnibuses.--Sevres and its
porcelain.--St. Cloud as it was.--The crooked
little town.--Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare
bedroom."--The queen who played she was a farmer's
wife.--Seven miles of paintings.--The portraits of
the presidents.
THERE are four ways of going to St. Cloud, from Paris, says the
guide-book; we chose the fifth, and took one of the little
steamboats--the river omnibuses--that follow the course of the Seine,
stopping at the piers along the city, which occur almost as often as the
street crossings. Very insignificant little steamers they are, made up
of puff, and snort, and smoke, a miniature deck, and a man with a big
bell. Up the river we steamed through a mist that hid everything but the
green banks, the pretty villas whose lawns drabbled their skirts in the
river, and after a time the islands that seemed to have dropped cool,
wet, and green into the middle of the stream. We plunged beneath the
dark arches of the stone bridges--the Pont d'Alma not to be forgotten,
with its colossal sentinels on either side of the middle arch, calm,
white, and still, leaning upon their muskets, their feet almost dipping
into the water, their great, stony eyes gazing away down the river.
What is it they seem to see beyond the bend? What is it they watch and
wait for, gun in hand? We pulled our wraps about us, found a sheltered
place, and went on far beyond our destination, through the gray vapor
that gathered sometimes into great, plashing drops to fall upon the
deck, or, hovering in mid-air, wiped out the distance from the landscape
as effectually as the sweep of a painter's brush, while it softened and
spiritualized everything near, from the sharply outlined eaves, and
gables, and narrow windows of the village struggling up from the water,
to the shadowy span of the bridges that seemed to rest upon air. Then
down with the rain and the current we swept again, to land at the
forsaken pier of Sevres, from which we made our way over the pavings, so
inviting in these French towns for missile or barricade, to the
porcelain factory. No fear of missing it, since it is the one object of
interest to strangers in the town; and whatever question we asked, the
reply would have been the pointing of the finger in that one direction.
Once there, we clattered and slipped over the tiled floor after a polite
attendant, through its many show-rooms, and among its wilderness of
pottery, ancient and modern. The manufactory was established by--I'm
sure I don't know whom--in seventeen hundred and--something, at
Vincennes, quite the other side of Paris; but a few years later, in the
reign of Louis XV., was transferred to Sevres, and put under the
direction of government. It is almost impossible to gain permission to
visit the workshops, but a permit to pass through the show-rooms can
easily be obtained. There were queer old-fashioned attempts at glazed
ware here, some of them adorned with pictures like those we used to see
in our grandmothers' china closets, of puffy little pink gentlemen and
ladies ambling over a pink foreground; a pink mountain, of pyramidal
form, rising from the wide-rimmed hat of the roseate gentlemen; a pink
lake standing on end at the feet of the lady, and a little pink house,
upon which they might both have sat comfortably, with a few clouds of
jeweller's cotton completing the picture. A striking contrast were these
to the marvels of frailty and grace of later times. The rooms were hung
with paintings upon porcelain, the burial of Attila, which we had seen
at the Louvre, among them. Every conceivable model of vase, pitcher, and
jar was here--quaint, beautiful conceptions of form adorned by the hand
of skilful artists, from mammoth vases, whirling upon stationary
pedestals, to the most delicate cup that ever touched red lips.
At noon we strolled over to St. Cloud, a pleasant walk of a mile,
beginning with a shaded avenue, rough as a country road; then on, down a
street leading to the gates of the park of St. Cloud--a street so vain
of its destination that it was actually lifted up above the gardens on
either side. From the wide gates we passed into a labyrinth of shaded,
clean-swept ways, and followed one to the avenue of the fountains, where
we sat upon the edge of a stone basin to await the opening of the
palace. For do not imagine, dear reader, that you can run in and out of
palaces without ceremony and at all hours of the day. There is an
appointed time; there is the gathering outside of the curious; there is
the coming of a man with rattling, ringing keys; there is the throwing
open of wide gates and massive doors, and then--and not until then--the
entering in. As for the fountains, next to those at Versailles they have
been widely celebrated; but as they only played upon Sundays and fete
days, we did not see them. Their Sunday gowns of mist and flowing water
were laid aside, and naked and bare enough they were this day. The wide
basins, the lions and dolphins, were here, with the marble nymphs, and
fauns and satyrs, that make a shower-bath spectacle of themselves upon
gala days. When the hour refused to strike, and we grew hungry,--as one
will among the rarest and most wonderful things,--we left the park, to
find the crooked little town that sits in the dust always at the feet of
palaces. Its narrow streets ran close up to the gates, and would have
run in had they not been shut. Here in the low, smoke-stained room of an
inn that was only a wine-shop, we spent the time of waiting,--our elbows
upon the round, dark table, which, with the dirt and wooden chairs, made
up its only furnishing,--sipping the sour wine, cutting slices from the
long, melancholy stick of bread, all dust and ashes, and nibbling the
cheese that might have vied with Samson for strength. The diamond-paned
window was flung wide open, for the air seemed soiled and stained, like
the floor. Just across the narrow, empty street, an old house elbowed
our inn. The eaves of its thatched roof were tufted with moss, out from
which rose a mass of delicate pink blossoms--pretty innocents, fairly
blushing for shame of their surroundings. Through the long passage-way
came the sound of high-pitched voices--of a strange jargon from the
room opening upon the street, where a heavy-eyed maid, behind a pewter
bar, served the blue-bloused workmen gathered about the little tables.
The white palace of St. Cloud, with its Corinthian columns, stood
daintily back from its gates and the low-bred town; but its long wings
had run down, like curious children, to peep out through the bars; so,
you will see, it formed three sides of a square. It had lately been
refurnished for the prince imperial. The grand _salons_ need not be
described; one is especially noted as having been the place where a baby
was once baptized, who is now ex-emperor of France. In the same room the
civil contract of marriage between Napoleon I. and Marie Louise was
celebrated. A few elegant but less spacious rooms were interesting from
having been the private apartments of the poor queens and empresses who
have shared the throne of France. Gorgeous they were in tapestry and
gilding, filled with a gaping crowd of visitors, and echoing to the
voice of a voluble guide. Royal fingers may have touched the pretty
trinkets lying about; royal forms reclined upon the soft couches; royal
aching hearts beat to the tick of the curious gilt clock, that bore as
many faces as a woman, some one wickedly said; but it was impossible to
realize it, or to believe that high heels, and panniers, and jaunty hats
upon sweet-faced, shrill-voiced American girls had not ruled and reigned
here always, as they did this day.
Versailles lies out beyond St. Cloud, but we gave to it another day. We
were a merry party, led by Dr. R., who left the train at the station,
and filled the omnibus for the palace. There was an air of having seen
better days about the city, which was at one time the second of
importance in France; it fed and fattened upon the court, and when at
last the court went away not to return, it came to grief. The most vivid
recollection I have of the great court-yard, around which extend three
sides of the palace, is of its round paving-stones--that seemed to have
risen up preparatory to crying out--and the grove of weather-stained
statues upon high pedestals,--generals, cardinals, and statesmen who
hated and connived against each other in life, doomed now in stone to
stare each other out of countenance. I am sure we detected a wry face
here and there, to say nothing of clinched fists. It is a gloomy old
court-yard at best. The front of the main building is all that remains
of the old hunting-seat of Louis XIII., which his son would not suffer
to be destroyed. It is of dingy, mildewed brick, that can never in any
possible light appear palatial; and so blackened and purple-stained are
the statues before it that they might have been just brought from the
Morgue. The whole palace is only a show place now--a museum of painting
and statuary. As for the celebrated gardens, we walked for hours, and
still they stretched away on every side. We explored paths wide and
narrow, crooked and straight, and saw clipped trees by the mile, with
grottoes and the skeletons of the fountains that, like naughty children,
play o' Sundays, and all the wonderful trees, shrubs, and flowers
brought from the ends of the earth, and ate honey gingerbread (flavored
with extract of turpentine) before an open booth, and were ready to
faint with weariness; and when at last a broad avenue opened before us
with the Trianons, which must be seen, at the farther end, we would not
have taken the whole place as a gift. It must have been at this point
that we fortified ourselves with the gingerbread.
The Grand Trianon alone were we permitted to enter. It is in the form of
an Italian villa, with a ground floor only, and long windows opening
upon delightful gardens. Like Versailles, it is now a mere show,
although a suit of apartments was fitted up here some time since, in
anticipation of a neighborly visit from Queen Victoria to Eugenie,
making of the little palace a kind of guest chamber, a spare bedroom. As
we followed a winding path through the park, we came suddenly upon an
open glade, surrounded and shaded by forest trees. Over the tiny lake,
in the centre, swans were sailing. Half hidden among the wide-spread,
sweeping branches of the trees were the scattered farm-houses of a
deserted village--only half a dozen in all, of rude, half Swiss
architecture, made to imitate age and decay, quaintly picturesque. Here
Marie Antoinette and her court played at poverty. Do you remember how,
when she grew weary of solemn state, she came here with a few favored
ones to forget her crown, and dream she was a farmer's wife? The dairy
was empty, the marble slab bare upon which she made butter for her
guests. Just beyond was the mill, but the wheel was still. It was a
pleasant dream--a dream of Arcadia. Ah, but there was a fearful
awakening! "The poorest peasant in the land," said the queen, "has one
little spot which she can call her own; the Queen of France asks no
more." So she shut the gates upon the people who had claimed and held
the right, from all time, to wander at will through the gardens of
their kings. Then they hated her, whom they had greeted with shouts of
welcome when she came a bride from over the border. "The Austrian! the
Austrian!" they hissed through the closed gates. And one day they
dragged her out from a bare cell in the Conciergerie,--no make-believe
of rough walls, of coarse fare there,--they bound the slender hands
behind her, they thrust into a prison cart the form that had been used
to rest upon down and silken cushions, and bore her over the rough
stones to the scaffold. Ah, it makes one shudder!
To see the two hundred rooms of the palace of Versailles requires a day,
at least; but we, fearful that this might be our last opportunity,
determined to spend the remaining hour or two and our last atom of
strength in the attempt. A wandering cabman pounced upon us as we came
down the avenue from the Trianons, and bore us back to the palace, where
we toiled up and down the grand stairway, and peeped into the chapel
that had echoed to the mockery of worship in the time of the king who
built all this--the king who loved everybody's wife but his own--so
faithlessly! There was a dizzy hurrying through corridors lined with
statuary, through one _salon_ after another hung with Horace Vernet's
paintings describing the glories of France--the crowning of its kings,
the reception of its ambassadors, the signing of its treaties, the
winning of its battles; but was all this bloodshed, and all this agony
depicted upon canvas, for the glory of France? There were immense
galleries, where, on every side, from cornice to floor, one was
conscious of nothing but smoke and cannon, wounds and gore, and rolling
eyes. We walked over the prescribed three miles and a half of floors
slippery as ice, and gazed upon the seven miles of pictures, with a
feeling less of pleasure or gratified curiosity than of satisfaction at
having _done_ Versailles. Room after room was devoted to portraits, full
lengths and half lengths, side faces and full fronts; faces to be
remembered, if one had not been in such mortal haste, and faces that
would never have been missed from the ermined robes. In a quiet corner
we were startled to find some of our good presidents staring down upon
us from the wall. A mutual surprise it seemed to be. But if we Americans
must be awkward and clownish to the last degree, half civilized, and but
one remove from barbarism, don't let us put the acme of all this upon
canvas, and hang it in the palace of kings. Here was President Grant
represented in the saloon of a steamboat,--America to the last,--one leg
crossed, one heel upon the opposite knee, and his head about to sink
into his coat collar in an agony of terror at finding himself among
quality. His attitude might have been considered graceful and dignified
in a bar-room, or even in the saloon of a Mississippi steamer; but it
utterly failed in both particulars in the Palace of Versailles, among
courtly men and high-bred women.