“MY DEAR VICTOR—It is six in the morning: I have just come from the
English Ambassador’s ball, and as my plans, for the day do not admit of
my sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment, saturated as I am
with the enchantments of a fairy night, all other pleasures would be
too wearisome to keep me awake, except that of conversing with you.
Indeed, were I not to write to you now, when should I find the
possibility of doing so? Time flies here with such a frightful
rapidity, my pleasures and my affairs whirl onwards together in such a
torrentuous galopade, that I am compelled to seize occasion by the
forelock; for each moment has its imperious employ. Do not then accuse
me of negligence: if my correspondence has not always that regularity
which I would fain give it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind
in which I live, and which carries me hither and thither at its will.
“However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I
assure you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous and
fashionable company, to whom, towards the discharge of my debts, I
propose to consecrate four hours to-day. I give you the preference to
all the world, even to the lovely Duchess of San Severino, a delicious
Italian, whom, for my special happiness, I met last summer at the
Waters of Aix. I have also a most important negotiation to conclude
with one of our Princes of Finance: but n’importe, I commence with
thee: friendship before love or money—friendship before everything. My
despatches concluded, I am engaged to ride with the Marquis de
Grigneure, the Comte de Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we
may recover, for a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure
has lost, the appetite which we all of us so cruelly abused last night
at the Ambassador’s gala. On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of
a caprice prestigieux and a comfortable mirobolant. Fancy, for a
banquet-hall, a royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of the
shrubs transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming through the
foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women and most brilliant
cavaliers of Paris. Orleans and Nemours were there, dancing and eating
like simple mortals. In a word, Albion did the thing very handsomely,
and I accord it my esteem.
“Here I pause, to call for my valet-de-chambre, and call for tea; for
my head is heavy, and I’ve no time for a headache. In serving me, this
rascal of a Frédéric has broken a cup, true Japan, upon my honor—the
rogue does nothing else. Yesterday, for instance, did he not thump me
prodigiously, by letting fall a goblet, after Cellini, of which the
carving alone cost me three hundred francs? I must positively put the
wretch out of doors, to ensure the safety of my furniture; and in
consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious young negro, in whom wisdom
hath not waited for years—Eneas, my groom, I say, will probably be
elevated to the post of valet-de-chambre. But where was I? I think I
was speaking to you of an oyster breakfast, to which, on our return
from the Park (du Bois), a company of pleasant rakes are invited. After
quitting Borel’s, we propose to adjourn to the Barrière du Combat,
where Lord Cobham proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought
over from England—one of these, O’Connell (Lord Cobham is a Tory,) has
a face in which I place much confidence; I have a bet of ten louis with
Castijars on the strength of it. After the fight, we shall make our
accustomed appearance at the ‘Cafe de Paris,’ (the only place, by the
way, where a man who respects himself may be seen,)—and then away with
frocks and spurs, and on with our dress-coats for the rest of the
evening. In the first place, I shall go doze for a couple of hours at
the Opera, where my presence is indispensable; for Coralie, a charming
creature, passes this evening from the rank of the RATS to that of the
TIGERS, in a pas-de-trois, and our box patronizes her. After the Opera,
I must show my face to two or three salons in the Faubourg St. Honoré;
and having thus performed my duties to the world of fashion, I return
to the exercise of my rights as a member of the Carnival. At two
o’clock all the world meets at the Théâtre Ventadour: lions and
tigers—the whole of our menagerie will be present. Evoé! off we go!
roaring and bounding Bacchanal and Saturnal; ’tis agreed that we shall
be everything that is low. To conclude, we sup with Castijars, the most
‘furiously dishevelled’ orgy that ever was known.”
The rest of the letter is on matters of finance, equally curious and
instructive. But pause we for the present, to consider the fashionable
part: and caricature as it is, we have an accurate picture of the
actual French dandy. Bets, breakfasts, riding, dinners at the “Café de
Paris,” and delirious Carnival balls: the animal goes through all such
frantic pleasures at the season that precedes Lent. He has a wondrous
respect for English “gentlemen-sportsmen;” he imitates their
clubs—their love of horse-flesh: he calls his palefrenier a groom,
wears blue birds’s-eye neck-cloths, sports his pink out hunting, rides
steeple-chases, and has his Jockey Club. The “tigers and lions” alluded
to in the report have been borrowed from our own country, and a great
compliment is it to Monsieur de Bernard, the writer of the above
amusing sketch, that he has such a knowledge of English names and
things, as to give a Tory lord the decent title of Lord Cobham, and to
call his dog O’Connell. Paul de Kock calls an English nobleman, in one
of his last novels, Lord Boulingrog, and appears vastly delighted at
the verisimilitude of the title.
For the “rugissements et bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale, galop
infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement,” these words give a most
clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball. A sight more hideous
can hardly strike a man’s eye. I was present at one where the four
thousand guests whirled screaming, reeling, roaring, out of the
ball-room in the Rue St. Honoré, and tore down to the column in the
Place Vendôme, round which they went shrieking their own music, twenty
miles an hour, and so tore madly back again. Let a man go alone to such
a place of amusement, and the sight for him is perfectly terrible: the
horrid frantic gayety of the place puts him in mind more of the
merriment of demons than of men: bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs,
pistol-shots, pour out of the orchestra, which seems as mad as the
dancers; whiz, a whirlwind of paint and patches, all the costumes under
the sun, all the ranks in the empire, all the he and she scoundrels of
the capital, writhed and twisted together, rush by you; if a man falls,
woe be to him: two thousand screaming menads go trampling over his
carcass: they have neither power nor will to stop.
A set of Malays drunk with bhang and running amuck, a company of
howling dervishes, may possibly, in our own day, go through similar
frantic vagaries; but I doubt if any civilized European people but the
French would permit and enjoy such scenes. Yet our neighbors see little
shame in them; and it is very true that men of all classes, high and
low, here congregate and give themselves up to the disgusting worship
of the genius of the place.—From the dandy of the Boulevard and the
“Café Anglais,” let us turn to the dandy of “Flicoteau’s” and the Pays
Latin—the Paris student, whose exploits among the grisettes are so
celebrated, and whose fierce republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on
the alert. The following is M. de Bernard’s description of him:—
“I became acquainted with Dambergeac when we were students at the Ecole
de Droit; we lived in the same Hotel on the Place du Panthéon. No
doubt, madam, you have occasionally met little children dedicated to
the Virgin, and, to this end, clothed in white raiment from head to
foot: my friend, Dambergeac, had received a different consecration. His
father, a great patriot of the Revolution, had determined that his son
should bear into the world a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to
the great displeasure of his godmother and the parish curate,
Dambergeac was christened by the pagan name of Harmodius. It was a kind
of moral tricolor-cockade, which the child was to bear through the
vicissitudes of all the revolutions to come. Under such influences, my
friend’s character began to develop itself, and, fired by the example
of his father, and by the warm atmosphere of his native place,
Marseilles, he grew up to have an independent spirit, and a grand
liberality of politics, which were at their height when first I made
his acquaintance.
“He was then a young man of eighteen, with a tall, slim figure, a broad
chest, and a flaming black eye, out of all which personal charms he
knew how to draw the most advantage; and though his costume was such as
Staub might probably have criticised, he had, nevertheless, a style
peculiar to himself—to himself and the students, among whom he was the
leader of the fashion. A tight black coat, buttoned up to the chin,
across the chest, set off that part of his person; a low-crowned hat,
with a voluminous rim, cast solemn shadows over a countenance bronzed
by a southern sun: he wore, at one time, enormous flowing black locks,
which he sacrificed pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being
more revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his
code and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in
his pocket by way of a breviary.
“Although of different ways of thinking in politics, certain sympathies
of character and conduct united Dambergeac and myself, and we speedily
became close friends. I don’t think, in the whole course of his three
years’ residence, Dambergeac ever went through a single course of
lectures. For the examinations, he trusted to luck, and to his own
facility, which was prodigious: as for honors, he never aimed at them,
but was content to do exactly as little as was necessary for him to
gain his degree. In like manner he sedulously avoided those horrible
circulating libraries, where daily are seen to congregate the ‘reading
men’ of our schools. But, in revenge, there was not a milliner’s shop,
or a lingère’s, in all our quartier Latin, which he did not
industriously frequent, and of which he was not the oracle. Nay, it was
said that his victories were not confined to the left bank of the
Seine; reports did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by
him accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the
Boulevard Poissonnière. Such recitals were, for us less favored
mortals, like tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited our
ambition, but not our jealousy; for the superiority of Harmodius was
acknowledged by us all, and we never thought of a rivalry with him. No
man ever cantered a hack through the Champs Elysées with such elegant
assurance; no man ever made such a massacre of dolls at the
shooting-gallery; or won you a rubber at billiards with more easy
grace; or thundered out a couplet out of Béranger with such a roaring
melodious bass. He was the monarch of the Prado in winter: in summer of
the Chaumière and Mont Parnasse. Not a frequenter of those fashionable
places of entertainment showed a more amiable laisser-aller in the
dance—that peculiar dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and
which squeamish society has banished from her salons. In a word,
Harmodius was the prince of mauvais sujets, a youth with all the
accomplishments of Göttingen and Jena, and all the eminent graces of
his own country.
“Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast and
absorbing occupation—politics, namely; in which he was as turbulent and
enthusiastic as in pleasure. La Patrie was his idol, his heaven, his
nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed, of his country. I
have spoken to you of his coiffure à la Sylla; need I mention his pipe,
his meerschaum pipe, of which General Foy’s head was the bowl; his
handkerchief with the Charte printed thereon; and his celebrated
tricolor braces, which kept the rallying sign of his country ever close
to his heart? Besides these outward and visible signs of sedition, he
had inward and secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs,
frequented associations, read the Constitutionnel (Liberals, in those
days, swore by the Constitutionnel), harangued peers and deputies who
had deserved well of their country; and if death happened to fall on
such, and the Constitutionnel declared their merit, Harmodius was the
very first to attend their obsequies, or to set his shoulder to their
coffins.
“Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less
lively. He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a claqueur
at a theatre. At this period, missionaries were rife about Paris, and
endeavored to re-illume the zeal of the faithful by public preachings
in the churches. ‘Infâmes jesuites!’ would Harmodius exclaim, who, in
the excess of his toleration, tolerated nothing; and, at the head of a
band of philosophers like himself, would attend with scrupulous
exactitude the meetings of the reverend gentlemen. But, instead of a
contrite heart, Harmodius only brought the abomination of desolation
into their sanctuary. A perpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang
from under the feet of the faithful; odors of impure assafoetida would
mingle with the fumes of the incense; and wicked drinking choruses
would rise up along with the holy canticles, in hideous dissonance,
reminding one of the old orgies under the reign of the Abbot of
Unreason.
“His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the
claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit! They knew him,
and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and his
famous war-cry, ‘La Carte au chapeau!’ was so much dreaded, that the
‘entrepreneurs de succès dramatiques’ demanded twice as much to do the
Odeon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius frequented), as to
applaud at any other place of amusement: and, indeed, their double pay
was hardly gained; Harmodius taking care that they should earn the most
of it under the benches.”
This passage, with which we have taken some liberties, will give the
reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent Paris
student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him: the
grisette is his heroine; and dear old Béranger, the cynic-epicurean,
has celebrated him and her in the most delightful verses in the world.
Of these we may have occasion to say a word or two anon. Meanwhile let
us follow Monsieur de Bernard in his amusing descriptions of his
countrymen somewhat farther; and, having seen how Dambergeac was a
ferocious republican, being a bachelor, let us see how age, sense, and
a little government pay—the great agent of conversions in France—nay,
in England—has reduced him to be a pompous, quiet, loyal supporter of
the juste milieu: his former portrait was that of the student, the
present will stand for an admirable lively likeness of