FURTHER AFIELD.
London was now quite out of the question: Paris compelled me to be so
busy with itself. I had not seen it for years, and had never gone below
the surface. The tomb of Napoleon, and the view from the Arch (see
Guide) were about the measure of my experience. This time I found a
guide of another kind, and he gave me a glimpse of the real show.
He put me down at the Flute, a delightful club, where they try to amuse
themselves all the year round. When they are not fiddling, at select
evening concerts, they are showing their pictures; and when they are
not showing their pictures, they are holding an assault-at-arms--the
Flute is a great school of fence--or reviewing the year in a fancy
piece, written, mounted, and played by their own men, in their own
theatre. My Mentor gave me a month--as he facetiously put it--at
another club, the choicest thing there. Through an acquaintance at the
Jockey, I found a box-seat on a coach for the private race meeting at
La Marche--very pretty, very select; no coming in your thousands, as
at the Grand Prix, but just a snug thing between you and me, and a few
others, of entirely the right sort. The women looked sweet and fresh as
a bed of primroses; the course was like a tennis lawn; we lunched _al
fresco_, and no one threw bones on the grass. Far, far away the yell of
the bookmaker, and the smell of town. I never enjoyed anything more.
I was presented all round, and was engaged for a reception that night,
at the house of one of the chaperones.
‘You will see the best salon in Paris,’ said A.
‘And what is a salon?’
‘Well, I don’t know; they say nobody knows but themselves. Perhaps a
crowd of clever people trying to kill the worm of ennui. Nothing like
that at home, where the beast is as sacred as the cow at Benares.’
It was _grand monde_ tinctured with literature--that was the social
blend. We went to a delightfully old-fashioned house, one of the few
left, and saluted a delightfully old-fashioned person--a Marquise, I
believe, to complete the harmony of association--who looked like an
original of some Moreau le Jeune. Her hair was silver--perfect Louis
XV., without the powder puff; she had quick piercing eyes, black amid
all this whiteness, and there was a suspicion of hoop in her skirts.
She was the queen of a little court, and very condescending. The
courtiers acted up to their part by elegant flatteries. They told
little stories _at_ her to exemplify her wit and spirit, and capped
quotations from her last book, in stage asides. The book was just out,
and we had learned it by heart that morning, as the inevitable topic
of the small hours. It was a dainty _article de Paris_; all her ripe
experiences of life distilled in maxim, after the manner of M. de la
Rochefoucauld. Every other maxim was about love; they are sometimes
too young, but never too old for that vital theme. There was a certain
disinterested grandeur in the attitude of the Marquise. ‘I too have
played the grand game,’ she seemed to say, ‘and now I umpire the
match.’
‘“One of the consolations of old age for a woman,” said a quoting
courtier to his neighbours, “is to dare follow her inclinations without
peril of love, and show herself a devoted friend, without encouraging
dangerous hopes.” Is it possible to speak with more _finesse_?’
‘I overheard you,’ said the Marquise gaily, ‘but you weaken the
compliment by talking so loud. I am not old enough to be deaf.’
‘For my part,’ said the other, ‘I want to know how the Marquise found
you all out so well, _vous autres_. Listen to this: “Habit has as much
power over the nature of men as the unknown over the mind of women.”
That is my pearl from the chaplet. It is so true.’
‘And so finely said!’
‘Ah, all you care about is the workmanship,’ said our hostess. ‘But I
tell you, I have lived all that.’
A General came by, with a charming woman on his arm. He was, in some
sort, a counterpart of the elderly muse--silvery hair, a raven brow,
and sparkling eyes.
‘The butcher of the Commune,’ whispered A. to me. ‘His column made the
fewest prisoners.’
‘They are beginning to be troublesome again, General,’ I heard the lady
say. ‘That dreadful meeting yesterday! Did you see the account?’
‘We are ready for them, Madame; and with the old argument, mitraille; I
assure you they only pretend to like it: it hurts.’
There was a story about everybody--not always a good one; but their
worst stories were told in their best way. With us, there is so much
ingenuity of subterfuge in the other direction. We might do as well, if
we dared. They dare, because the women insist on it, and the sovereign
obligation is to keep the women amused--the best women, and best is
brightest here. It is a great assault of arms for the gallery, and, if
you have a good place, it is pleasanter to be in the gallery than in
the ring. The exertion is terrible; some of the most noted performers,
I believe, lie abed all next day. You have to justify by gifts, as well
as by graces; and the gifts are not always there. Beautiful statues
are left on their pedestals: the word tells.
Still, I don’t think they make the best of their women. There is,
perhaps, a finer use. They try to make the most of them, certainly. The
women shape the whole civilisation, and they are just now labouring
with much energy at the decline and fall. I have always wondered why
they do not include a representation of this commanding interest in the
government--_Le Ministère de la Femme_. It would soon rule the whole
cabinet, for the incumbent would be sure to know the business of most
of the other departments--War, Commerce, Interior, Foreign Affairs.
It is too good for every day--life on the top of a twelfth cake, and
some of the figures no more to be visited by sun and rain and the winds
of Heaven than if they were cast in sugar. I heard one of them taking
the law from another, on the authority of a gazette of fashion, as to
the right way of getting up on a winter’s morning. There are two ways,
it seems. ‘An hour before you turn out, _ma chère_, the maid is to
light your fire, and put up the screen. Silver lined with pink silk
is pretty; it throws a sort of rosy morning light into the room. Mind
you have your chocolate on a warmer! And do you know how to warm your
toast-rack? A little live charcoal sprinkled with vanilla; it makes the
air so sweet. Raoul gave me such a love of a toast-rack (_un amour_)
the other day. They are making them in gold now. Don’t jump up at once,
mind--snooze. What do you wear for a _déshabillé_? I like satin lined
with swansdown, and velvet fastenings; buttons are so horribly cold.
Line your slippers with swansdown, too; I hate a cold slipper. B-r-r-r!
Madame d’Argenson warms her bath-room with little gusts of rose vapour,
pumped through a hole in the wall; it is an idea. Do you know how to
get warm? Never get cold. Floss silk for your stockings, if you please.
I won’t even _see_ cold. I have my blinds embroidered with a rising
sun, and the maid brings in fresh flowers with the chocolate. It makes
summer in the room. _Excusez du peu._ Then, if you want to know how
happy you are, just lift the blind, and peep out, and see the people
dancing on the pavement to keep themselves warm. But you’ll see enough
of that when you drive, if you like to look at such things. I don’t.
They are making little things in enamel, for muff warmers, now; tiny
apples filled with hot water--not big ones, or you’ll spoil the shape
of your hands. Besides, big ones would make your fingers red; you only
want to make them rosy, _pas trop n’en faut_.
‘What kind of gloves do you sleep in? I prefer a plush lining to the
kid. Some say swansdown. I think it’s _too_ warm. Remember there is
the coverlet. Stick to plush, you can’t do better, from head to foot.
I have seen the nightcap fastened with a little cosy turtle-dove, just
under the left ear--if you lie on that side. And make her bring you a
light _crême de Sabaillon_ when you turn in. You know, two fresh eggs,
and a small glass of Madeira. B-r-r-r! how I hate the cold.’
A padded person of the sterner sex, who was one of the council,
propounded a still more original scheme. ‘_Chère Comtesse_, why all
these precautions, when you might so easily get out of the way? I
travel in search of perpetual summer, and find it. My man begins to
move south, as soon as the cold threatens here, and the moment he
finds settled sunshine, he telegraphs me to come on. I never go till
Nature is ready, and, when I reach one place, he starts for another, so
I always have sunshine in reserve. We keep steadily flying south till
the turn of the weather, and then we make north again for the Paris
May. I was only caught twice by rain last year, and once by sleet,
and then I threatened to discharge him if it happened again. _Chère
Comtesse_, life is too precious: do not waste it in these trials. Will
you have a cup of tea?’
‘He is very wretched, for all his make-believe,’ said Mentor, ‘he is
going to marry; and he is in a torment of prospective jealousy. It
is the funniest case in the world. The young person is faultless;
all our young persons are, you know. He pays the proper visits,
always in evening-dress--it is our way--and talks to her about the
picture-gallery of the Louvre, and the Advent sermons, for just
three-quarters of an hour by the clock, with her mother on guard all
the time. This is courtship. When she marries, she will acquire the
privilege of watching others in the same way, and of being herself
unwatched; and there the retribution comes in. He is not in the least
jealous now; he only knows he is going to be. There are complications,
you see. He is not only about to marry the young person, he is very
fond of her, which is perhaps inexcusable at his time of life. In the
days of his age he remembers his youth, and--_il n’a pas confiance_.
He is meditating some domestic ukase about visitors, and positively
wants to include his mother-in-law in the family circle. “The duenna,
or the cheap defence of households,” is, I believe, the idea. All this,
of course, implies no suspicion of the lady, but only a most horrible
retrospective suspicion of himself. “Do to others as you would not
be done by,” has been the rule of his joyous life; and--_il n’a pas
confiance_. We used to call him “Proverbs.” His choicest conversational
effect was a detestable little saying about the folly of acquiring
the material of happiness for yourself, when you might always command
the stores of your friends. He never quotes his proverb now. I would
rewrite the story of Don Juan from his case, with this torment for
the Nemesis. Let Juan marry and settle on this prospect of eternal
anguish, and leave old raw-head the Commandant, and his horse, for the
nursery tales.’
To a lazy man like myself there is but one drawback in this city; you
are rather expected to make love to your neighbour’s wife. The nuisance
is even greater than in London. They are not exactly rude to you, if
you don’t, but they mark their sense of your behaviour in a thousand
delicate ways. It is considered disrespectful to the lady of the house.
We went to the Opera, and, of course, he led me behind the scenes. It
is certainly magnificent. The most self-indulgent monarchs have never
enjoyed half so much luxury as these essentially combining people get
on the joint-stock principle. They are true democrats, and, as their
institutions develop, the poorest will have his _parc aux cerfs_. There
is no selfishness in the _foyer de la danse_; all the subscribers are
brothers, all equal, all free, as in a temple of faith. _Ces dames_
make no distinctions of persons. It was touching to see Army, Navy,
Commerce, Senate, and Bar--Bench, I believe, as well--paying homage
at these gauze-curtained shrines. Radical and Conservative leaders,
wealthy Jews, the epigrammatic General I had just met, sparks from
the club, and some hideous heads of age that ought to have been under
nightcaps, were all at their devotions, visiting one shrine after
another, sometimes with offerings. _Mesdames_ were occasionally
wayward and severe, but I am loath to believe that they are cruel
divinities, and I am confirmed in this by those who know them best. It
was a brilliant scene, the green room itself a blaze of decoration,
in ceiling, chandeliers and walls; portraits of great dancers and
composers on the panels; grand pictorial compositions above, the War
dance, the Country dance, the Love dance, the Bacchic dance; below, a
curious patchwork of black coat and white skirt, with here and there
a sylph pirouetting for practice, on a floor that slopes like the
stage--a fleece cloud driven by the wind--or holding on for support
to an iron bar cased with velvet, and pointing, with satin-shod toe,
to another and a brighter world. Here, as I have said, Valour reposes
after the toils of war, and Legislation after the fatigues of debate.
Art sketching in the corner is represented by that solitary, who has a
passion for problems, and who is haunted by the desire to transfer this
poetry of motion to canvas, and to make the work tremble with life as
you gaze. Great soul and genius, the only single-minded one in all this
throng--hail!
We looked in at another club on the way home, a mere _tripot_ this,
but gorgeous like all the rest, and throwing blazing beams across the
boulevard from its many chandeliers. Here their industry is _baccarat_,
and the net profits of many a mine and factory, transmitted by
inheritance to youths of spirit who want to see the world, pass from
hand to hand across the baize. Sailors reef the topsail in storms, coal
miners lie on backs or bellies in the dark, girls ripen to premature
womanhood in the tropic heat of factories, to feed this sport. I lost a
few coins, supped, and came away. One of the players was pointed out to
me as the inventor of a new diversion, the Snail Race. The race-course
is a smooth board, with a lighted candle at the end, laid on the table
in a darkened room. The snails naturally creep towards the light.
There are miniature hurdles, and a water-jump, and the handicapping is
done with pellets of clay. You may lose quite enough at this to make it
exciting, by maintaining a due disproportion between the amount of the
wager and the value of the snail. It is played between five and six,
just before dressing for dinner, and it fills in an hour that many find
heavy on their hands.
Next day it was a drive in the Bois to salute one’s friends. I had
already quite a list of them. Surely this people have the secret, I
thought, as we span along through alleys of tender green, with sunlight
dancing in the leaves, blue and white in the bordering villas, and the
purple slopes of Valérien to close in the scene. We skipped the Lake,
according to directions, and looked out for faces under the acacia
trees. They were all there. I was so delighted with it that I could not
go indoors; so we pushed on, by the Cours la Reine, and the river, to
see more.
They have the philosophic taste for angling; the banks were lined, yet
the waters lost nothing by their sport. It was live and let live, with
man and fish. We had left the black coats behind us; they were blouses
now; and everywhere the white and blue and green, the brightness, and
the leisured groups. A worthy pair of retired _rentiers_, male and
female, seemed to have devoted the whole afternoon to washing their
poodle in the Seine. Monsieur lathered him, and drove him into the
water for the rinsing with innocent oaths and ejaculations, ‘_cré
nom!_ _bigre!_ _saperlipopette!_’ or whistled him back with a properly
certificated dog-call, when he seemed to be going out of his depth.
Madame stood by with towel, comb, and brush. For this they had kept
the little grocer’s shop at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques de la
Boucherie for seven-and-twenty years, and toiled late and early,
Sabbath and fête, and put savings in the Paris Loans! ‘And why not?’ I
ask, with ever increasing emphasis, while anyone shall say, ‘And why?’
All classes seem so happy, I thought, so innocently gay--it is the
stock reflection of the tourist in the Paris streets.
I was standing on the bridge; and just then there was a rush past me
of the _avant-garde_ of a crowd, followed by the main body. They
were fierce-looking and sorrowful. Those who were not in blouses wore
grease-polished coats and hats--always a bad sign--and the few who were
not frowning had the grease in their smile, always a worse. There was
a woman at the head of them, in black, and carrying a black flag, an
angular creature, as lantern-jawed as a saint from a missal, with eyes
like live coals.
‘What is it? Who is it?’
‘The Red Virgin. We want bread, _citoyen_.’
It was not literally true, I think--most of them looked fat
enough--prospectively true, perhaps. They hurried off towards the outer
boulevards, I following, and, on their way, they pillaged a baker’s
shop, the Black or Red one standing by, and waving her corpse-flag with
approval, but touching no morsel of the food. Then they poured into
a dirty little hall, garnished in the vestibule with a collection of
pamphlets inciting to murder and arson, and began to ‘meet.’
They had a clear issue before them, and they knew their own minds.
They were met to see how they could burn down civilisation. Nothing
more, nothing less. Government was to go, property, laws, classes, the
whole framework, with all the pretty things I had lately seen--the drag
that took me to La Marche, the salons, the Opera, the coaches in the
Wood, myself too, I suppose, by implication, though none took notice of
me. They spoke with beautiful volubility, precision, logic, each man
perfect in the spouter’s gift.
Presently the Virgin in black rose, and I began to understand why she
was called the Red. She spoke in sing-song the chaunted dirge of the
thing they wanted to burn. It was very grotesque, and very serious.
‘Citizens, it must all go, only the fire can purge it. Nothing will
better it; it has been bettering for eighteen centuries, and it is
worse to-day. I believed once, like them, and wrote hymns to the
other Virgin, and I know she never hears. She is made of stone, like
their hearts. O citizens, the infamy of it!--their fine houses and
fine feasts, fine adulteries and fine lies, with labour for their
everlasting bond-slave and thrall. _Voyons!_ it is all a mockery. How
many of you, before we broke the bread shop open, had eaten to-day?’
‘_Moi!_’ shouted perhaps twenty voices, and about as many hands were
held up, while about five times as many were held down. ‘If there
were only one,’ said the Red Virgin, ‘we would burn it for that one.
What! with ships in every port, and the finest climate and soil in the
universe, and all the labour and all the martyrdom of the past behind
us to start us fair, we cannot give every man his crust and his cup
of wine! _Voyons: on se moque de nous!_ Stand out of the way, with
your governments and your religions, and leave us to ourselves, to be
good. We should be so good without you. It would be so easy; love comes
naturally to man, and justice; only the _laws_ of loving and the _laws_
of justice bar the way. The codes are between us and the Sun. Burn
them, and start afresh. _Vive l’Anarchie!_’
‘_Vive l’Anarchie!_’ cried most of us, but it was not _nem. con._ ‘Down
with the Virgin,’ shouted a big, black-muzzled fellow near the door;
and he meant the Red one too!
‘_A la porte l’espion!_’ roared fifty others back at him. It was a
fight.
He was not alone--‘_à bas la Vierge!_’ repeated his body-guard,
closing round him. The chairs were broken into fragments in an instant,
and I was luckily able to interpose my walking-stick between one of the
fragments and the head of a prostrate man.
So they fell to buffets, the troubled souls who had met to settle the
new law of love, beating each other cruelly with hand and foot. It was
clear possession, and their tormentors were, perhaps, the self-same
legion that once did duty in the swine. They tore each other, in sheer
impatience for the rise of the curtain on the great poetic drama of
the Millennial Reign. They had bad seats for the show, I think; that
had something to do with it; in the comparative airiness of the boxes,
patience does not come so hard.
I strolled away. Out of focus, too, this group of humanity; and worse
than the last!