The cemetery of Pere la Chaise is on a height commanding a view of Paris
and of the whole extent of country from Vincennes to St. Cloud. Le Pere
la Chaise was confessor to Louis XIV. and sometime proprietor of this
large field, now the burying-ground of a great proportion of the
population of Paris. It is laid out, with due regard to the irregularity
of the ground, in walks and allees; and the care of adorning and
planting is left to the relations and friends of the deceased here
interred. It is adorned with tombs and monuments, some of which display
more taste than is usually brought to such designs: around these tombs
are planted poplars and cypresses, roses and jasmines; and thus the
quarter where the rich are buried, (for even here "the people of quality
flock all together,") has the air of a pretty shrubbery. The price of so
much land as may suffice for one corpse is now three hundred francs, and
the ground, with whatever may be erected upon it, becomes the property
of "heirs and assigns for ever." The money so raised is, I believe,
applied to the maintenance of infirmaries or other public charities.
That part of the cemetery where the poor, or those who do not buy their
graves, are buried, is dug very deep on the occasion of each interment:
the ground is taken up regularly; and it is supposed that the bodies
first buried will be reduced to earth before it shall be necessary to
dig over the same ground a second time.
Such is, by law, the mode of sepulture throughout France: no one can be
buried in a church, nor even in his own garden or field, unless at a
certain distance from all habitation; and cemeteries, regulated like
that of Pere la Chaise, are every where provided. These burying-grounds
are to be restored to cultivation, wholly or in part, as the case may
require, during the time necessary for the complete rotting of the
bodies beneath; a space of fourteen years, says Hamlet's grave-digger,
for "all but your tanner:" this however must depend more on the nature
of the soil than on the former occupation of the persons deceased; but
Shakspeare is allowed to jest on every subject.
I will own that the view of the great cemetery of the capital of France
displeased, and even disgusted me; and that the law in regard to this
matter appeared to me a scheme of irreligious legislators for putting
out of sight all that might remind them of death, and for desecrating
church-yards, and for rooting out of the minds of the people their
veneration for ancient usages and consecrated places. An enclosure,
destined to the uses of a church-yard, turned into a flower-garden,--or
a flower-garden, still retaining its finery, turned into a
church-yard;--monuments surmounted, not by the symbol of salvation, but
by vases in which no ashes were contained, and which are absurd in a
place where bodies are not burned, but buried;--inscriptions, which
spoke not of eternity, but were such as if the person beneath had died
without hope or fear,--all this offended me. The provisions of the law
of burial, which does not allow families to repose together even in
death, since each corpse must take its place in the row or line,--this
law, which destroys all sepulchral memorials of families or
individuals,--(for if the land be restored to cultivation the sepulchres
cannot well be preserved,) all this shocked my habitual notions and
ancient prejudices.
Yet what can be more dangerous to the health of a great city, than that,
in every populous part of it, there should be a small enclosure,
containing, at a little depth under ground, dead bodies in every stage
of putrefaction,--a dunghill of most noxious exhalation, slightly
covered with mould? How much is this danger increased by the contagious,
(I was going to say pestilential, but it is now doubted whether
pestilence be contagious or not,) by the contagious nature of many
diseases! What can be more indecent, and at the same time dangerous,
than that, at the digging of a grave, bodies should be disturbed before
they are assimilated to the dust to which they are committed, and that
skulls and other bones should be thrown out for play-things to
thoughtless children? Such things I have seen, and so has every man who
has been present at the digging of a grave in any town in England; such
things are even represented on the stage, to the disgrace of our
national character, for the sake of the grave-diggers' puns, and an
ingenious moralizing on the skull of Yorick. Custom reconciles us to
things in themselves most shocking. Medea might have slain her children
_coram populo_, if the people had been used to it. They _were_ used to
gladiators.
Yet custom will not prevent infection: we ought, in spite of custom, to
be sensible of the indecency of our mode of interment, and of the risk
we run by heaping our dead on each other in a narrow boundary, yearly
encroached upon by the altar-tombs of the wealthy, and rendered still
narrower by a predilection, foolish as it may seem, for the sunny side
of the church-yard. How then are the dead to be disposed of? a question
to my mind more difficult to answer than "how are the dead raised up?"
In populous cities,--a situation unfavourable to human life,--of thirty
persons, one dies yearly: each individual requires for his grave two
square yards of earth; grown persons rather more, as every grave ought
to be separated from that nearest to it; and children will require less
than two square yards; but upon an average, a population of seventy-two
thousand six hundred souls, or more properly on this occasion, bodies,
will cover with their dead, in the space of one year, an acre of land.
The dead of the city of Paris in fourteen years,--Shakspeare's period
for entire decomposition,--would take up a hundred and forty acres. If
cemeteries are not restored to cultivation, the dead, after a few
generations, will starve the living; at least it must be borne in mind
that cemeteries, near great towns, must be allotted in situations where
land is most valuable. Unwillingly I abandon all my prepossessions in
favour of holy ground and other "circumstance" of christian burial. The
dead ought not to be carried into the church before interment: that
practice is still allowed in France, but ought, for obvious reasons, to
be suppressed: the coffin ought to have no lid or cover; thus the
compression of the ascending vapour will be more complete, and the
assimilation of the body to the surrounding mould will not be retarded:
if the horrible accident of burying any one alive should unhappily
occur, at the least, that which most aggravates the horror of such a
misfortune,--the lingering torments of the interred,--are prevented:
portions of land ought to be appropriated, in the neighbourhood of great
cities, to the uses of sepulture and cultivation successively: lastly,
the rich ought to be contented with cenotaphs and inscriptions to their
memory on the walls and pavements of churches, while masses and other
commemorations may be celebrated in the presence of catafalques.
The catacombs are, or is, (for I have forgotten my English grammar,) one
of the _lions_ of the environs of Paris; and such a _lion_! Let the word
"lumen" mean "life," and call it "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens,
cui lumen ademptum." When the Cimetiere du Pere la Chaise was
substituted for church-yards, out of these latter, now to be applied to
secular uses, were dug the human bones that were found in laying the
foundations of buildings: these bones were carried to certain stone
quarries, now no longer worked, a little to the south of Paris. So far,
so good: but it came into the heads of the managers of this affair to
make a pretty thing of it: on the sides of the passages of the quarry,
and in the wider spaces, they ranged these bones in squares and circles,
and wheels and stars; a skull in the middle, and rays of thighbones,
brachia, and lacerti; of the ossa, ilium, ischium, and coccygis,--there
was no os _sacrum_,--they made obelisks and pyramids; and this "region
of horror,"--these "doleful shades,"--under the abused name of the
catacombs, attract the idle and curious traveller to see by what
fantastic devices that which is most respectable and venerable to
humanity and to faith can be tricked out into raree-show. This place
cannot be visited without inconvenience: it were to be wished, as in the
case of the opera tune, that, instead of difficulty, there might be
impossibility: it is excessively damp; moisture issues from above,
though on the sides it is hidden by the choice tapestry with which they
are decorated; but the ground is slippery; each person gropes along with
a wax taper in his hand, sometimes obliged to curve himself. It is some
consolation, at length, to find here an altar, on which, once in the
year, on All Souls' Day, a _missa pro defunctis_ is said. I trust in
the good taste, if not in the piety of the French people, so far, as to
hope that this altar will be set up in a chapel above-ground, and that
the catacombs will be filled with earth, and closed till the
consummation of all things.
The cimetiere and the catacombs are, strictly speaking, in the environs
of Paris, being without the walls. I made however with my sons several
excursions to places in the neighbourhood, setting out in the morning,
passing the day at the place of our visit, and returning in the cool of
the evening. Mrs. ----, and my daughters, who had remained in England
for the purpose of spending some time with her relations before quitting
the country, arrived at Paris, under the conduct of one of her brothers,
towards the middle of July,--in fact, as it happened, on the memorable
fourteenth. I took an apartment for a month in the Rue Neuve des
Mathurins, and during that month also we made excursions. I shall make a
few observations on what I saw; and "first with the first," the pride of
Louis XIV and of France, the deserted palace or chateau of Versailles.
It is rather a handsome and extensive building, than a monument to the
glory of a great king and a great nation. The front toward Paris,
composed in part of some corps-de-logis of the ancient hunting-seat of
Louis XIII. is irregular, and this grande cour, (and a grand court it
certainly is,) does not form a whole. The approach to the garden front
is through a passage, and to take a view of this front one must first go
away from it. At the edge of the terrace one does not see the wings,
which recede, and form a line with the back of this part of the palace:
below the steps of the terrace, the lower part of the building is hidden
by the intervening ground. This inversion of the wings has not the
effect of breaking the too great length of the building: it is said to
have been the project of Napoleon to erect a magnificent colonnade or
portico in front of that part which stands forward on the terrace; thus
the wings, if such they may be called, would be thrown into the back
ground: for this they are indeed too handsome; but in the back ground
they have been placed by the plan of Louis XIV. One would suppose that
they retire to form, on the other side, a part of the eastern front; but
they are not even seen from the grand court. The architectural ornaments
of the garden facade are not many; slight Corinthian pilasters only; the
entrance, even, is what may be called a garden door, hardly
distinguishable from the other windows of the ground floor.
The staircase is handsome, but not sufficiently so for that to which it
leads. I shall not pretend to describe the suite of state apartments.
One wonders that men of five feet and some inches high should build, for
their own use, rooms so disproportionate to their stature. The chamber
in which Louis XIV. died is amongst the largest of these rooms: from its
windows are seen the three avenues, called _la patte de corbeau_, or of
some other bird: the ends of these avenues are not near enough to the
palace; a defect easily to be supplied. This chamber, the central one of
the grande cour, remained unoccupied, in token of respect for the memory
of that great monarch, who rendered null the efforts of a powerful
coalition against him, put his grandson in quiet possession of Spain and
the Indies, carried the frontier of France to the Rhine, made all Europe
begin to learn French, and exemplified the truth of William of Wykeham's
motto,--"manners maketh man."
When I saw the palace of Versailles, it was unfurnished; they were
renewing the gilding, and repairing the damages of revolution and
neglect. The celebrated gallery runs the whole length of the central
part of the garden front. The side opposite the windows is panelled with
mirrors in a manner exactly resembling the old wainscot which I remember
in my youth, and which has now given place to stucco, silk, and paper.
What splendid scenes have these mirrors reflected! and all that was then
so glorious is now as unsubstantial as the shadowed form.
The chapel is such an one as may be expected in such a palace. The seat
of the royal family is in what is called the tribune, which is entered
from the state apartments, and is at the height of half the chapel from
the pavement, looking down on the altar at the opposite end. In all the
royal chapels, the place of the king is thus situated, thus elevated
above the altar. Of this I cannot approve: let me quote a story which
will explain my meaning. King George III. sent, as a present to the
Emperor of China, a handsome town-built chariot. On board the vessel
which conveyed it, (it was packed up in separate pieces) a mandarin
attended, to see it mounted and put together, that he might inform
himself of the uses of the several parts.--He readily understood all the
rest; but the two seats, the one within, and the coachman's seat,
covered, of course, with a superb hammer-cloth, perplexed him. "For whom
is that seat?" said he, pointing to the inside of the carriage. He was
told that it was for the Emperor. "And that?" pointing to the
coach-box. "For the man who guides the horses." "Do you think," said he,
with a sudden burst of indignation, "that our glorious sovereign, the
son of the sun, &c. &c. will allow any one to be placed higher than
himself?"
From the southern end of the terrace is seen the orangery below,
sheltered from the north by the terrace, and the southern end of the
central part of the palace; and from the east by that wing in which are
the _petits appartements_. Oranges, in this climate, endure the open air
during five months in the year: those of the Tuilleries had already
taken their station in the garden when I arrived at Paris, in the end of
April. It is said that Louis XIV. received a Turkish ambassador at a
first audience in this orangery. This envoy having learned at Paris that
Versailles was a most magnificent palace, and at the Sublime Porte that
flattery was a most important part of his trade, began to offer to the
king his prepared compliments. The king quietly allowed him to proceed
and finish; and then taking him on the terrace, and into the state
rooms, enjoyed his surprise, mingled, as may be supposed, with some
confusion, at having repeated his lesson rather too soon.
The formal arrangement and straight lines of the garden have, of course,
been blamed by those who, according to the present English taste, wish
every thing in this kind to be tortured into irregularity. I do not
desire that the trees should be clipt, but sympathize rather with the
old duchess, who said it made her melancholy to see so many millions of
leaves, not one of which was permitted to grow as it pleased. But a
garden near a house ought to partake of the regularity of the building;
and the house ought not to look, according to the ingenious expression
of the author of Waverly, as if it had walked out of the town, and found
its place in the fields by chance. The grand central walk leads down to
the water-works, which are, doubtless, very fine, when the water spouts
forth from the shells of tritons and the mouths of dolphins. On each
side of this allee, are bowers and bosquets, statues and fountains,
vases and beds of flowers. Turning to the right, through avenues of
well-grown, unclipt trees, one arrives at the Grand and Petit
Trianon,--two very pretty country-seats, at which grandeur was pleased
to escape from itself. In the Jardin Anglois, the good taste of Marie
Antoinette has shown itself superior to rules for avoiding rule, and
planned all according to the advantages of the site.
The view of the country from Versailles is pleasing: but how was it
possible for him, who had the choice of this spot or of St. Germains for
his purpose, to choose the former? I will not believe the reason that
from the latter are seen the towers of St. Denis: his piety, or, if not
his piety, that force by which most men are unhappily but too well
enabled to shut their eyes on death, and all that may remind them of it,
would have surmounted this objection. A superbly-elevated natural
terrace, with a wide and varied prospect; the Seine, here a lordly
stream; an extensive forest abounding with game; a proud height, from
which his palace would have shown majestically to the country
around;--all these advantages, not one of which is possessed by
Versailles, ought to have induced Louis XIV. to prefer St. Germains. The
only unpleasing feature in the view from the terrace is the aqueduct,
made to carry to Versailles the water of the Seine raised by the machine
of Marly. Certainly he who can command money can command labour; and
labour can erect a series of arches on the side of a high hill. Let this
fault be redeemed by the canal of Languedoc.
The handsome tower-like chateau of St. Germains, when I saw it, was used
as a caserne: the chapel was filled with military stores. We entered the
apartment in which our James II. lived and died an exile, chased from
his house and home by his son-in-law. History records many deeds more
atrocious, but none more disgraceful, than this violation of family
confidence,--of the pledge of good faith given and received. But, what
is more disgraceful still, the English nation, besotted by prejudices,
sees nothing disgraceful in the transaction.
The palace of St. Cloud is an agreeable, and, according to the favourite
English phrase, a comfortable habitation, splendidly, but not too richly
furnished. The salle-a-manger particularly attracted my notice, being
the first good specimen I had seen of a French dining-room. It is a room
large enough for about forty persons to dine in it conveniently. A round
table of mahogany, or coloured like mahogany, one fauteuil, and half a
dozen chairs, seemingly not belonging to this room, but brought from
another, standing round the table on a mat which went underneath it; a
chandelier, or lustre, hanging over the tables;--such, with a few
articles for the use of the attendants, was the furniture of the room.
Instead of a sideboard, a painted shelf went round the room at about
four feet from the floor. On one of the panes of the window, a
thermometer, with the scale marked on glass, was fixed on the outside:
thus the temperature of the outer air might be known without opening
the casement.
An English family of moderate fortune lives very much in the
dining-room: a French family would as soon think of sitting in the
kitchen as in the salle-a-manger at any other than eating hours. The
English think it marvellous that a French lady should receive visits in
her bed-room; but to this bed-room is annexed a cabinet; which conceals
all objects that ought to be put out of sight: the bed is either hidden
by the drapery, or covered by a handsome counterpane, with a _traversin_
or bolster at each end, which, as it is placed lengthways against the
wall, the two ends resembling each other in the woodwork also, gives it,
during the day-time, the appearance of a couch.
The park of St. Cloud is not a park in the English sense of the word; it
is a pretty pleasure-ground, with great variety of surface. If King
George III. had been as much accustomed to the continental notion of a
park as the king his grandfather probably was, he would not have
expressed so much surprise, when, on his visit to Magdalen College,
Oxford, he was asked if he would be pleased to see the park. "Park!
what, have you got a park?"--"We call it a park, sir, because there are
deer in it."--"Deer! How big is it?"--"Nine acres, an it please your
Majesty."--"Well, well, I must go and see a park of nine acres: let us
go and see a park of nine acres."
From the elevated ground of the park of St. Cloud, where the lantern
rears its head, Paris is seen over an extent of flat and marshy ground,
over which the Seine winds with as many evolutions and curvatures as a
serpent. The fable of the sun and the wind contending which of them
could first induce a traveller to quit his cloak, might be paralleled by
one invented on the sinuosity of rivers in plain countries. Let nature
oppose rocks and mountains, the river holds on its way by torrent and by
cataract: arrived at a level country, it seems to amuse itself by delay.
If it were told, at an English gaming club, that the mountain and the
plain had engaged in a contest, which of them should most effectually
divert the course of a river from its direct line to the ocean, the odds
would, most likely, be in favour of the mountain. But the result is
otherwise.
The road from Paris to St. Germains en Laye is the most varied and
agreeable of any in the environs. From the avenue and bridge of Neuilly
it passes by Mont Valerien, a finely-wooded hill; through Nanterre, the
birth-place of Ste. Genevieve, patroness of Paris; near Malmaison, the
last abode of Napoleon in France; by Marly, where all is beautiful
except the aqueduct. There is a steam-engine to raise the water, and
pipes to conduct it, which workmen were repairing. We clambered up by
the side of the pipes, at every step induced to mount higher by the
beauties of the prospect, the same as that from the terrace of St.
Germains. It reminded me of the view from Richmond Hill, but it is
bolder and more romantic; and the Seine, being nearer to the hill than
the Thames at Richmond, appears an equally important feature in the
landscape.
One of the roads to St. Cloud passes through the Bois de Boulogne: this
wood was much injured while the allied armies remained in the
neighbourhood of Paris: young trees had been planted, and appeared
thriving. Let us hope that a long, a very long peace, may obliterate all
traces of a war which desolated all Europe, and more than Europe, for a
quarter of a century. Indeed, I cannot help agreeing in the wish
expressed by one of the common people, in answer to another who
congratulated him on the good news of the peace of Amiens:--"Ay," said
the first, "I wish we may never have such good news again." A third
cried out, "D--n your jacobin eyes, what do you mean by that?" The
congratulator explained, "Why, doesn't see, that, for us to have good
news of peace again, we must first have war again? and he wishes we may
never have another war." The wish, it seems, was then a symptom of
jacobinism; but in the present day, it must be considered as laudable to
join in it, as I do most cordially, since it is the end proposed by the
Holy Alliance.
At Meudon, is a very pretty palace, from the terrace of which the eye
looks down on a beautiful ravine, and then traverses the plain which is
seen from the park of St. Cloud. While my sons and I were loitering on
the bridge of this latter place, the daughter of Louis XVI. passed by on
horseback. She returned our salute by an inclination of the body, while
the principal person in attendance (a general officer he seemed to be,)
took off his hat, as Dr. ---- said, determinately. Three years only
after the restoration, to see this princess for the first time was an
interesting occurrence; and I certainly regarded her with a very
different feeling from that of the Parisian, who, on her entrance into
the capital, after five and twenty years of suffering and exile, showed
what he was _not_ thinking of, by exclaiming, "Comme son chapeau est
petit!"[17]
We returned to the restaurateur's to dine; and, passing the bridge in
the evening, saw the water works play in honour of the arrival of the
king; a sheet of water thrown down artificial rocks; a pretty play-thing
enough.
We saw at Sevre a most splendid collection of china, for the greatest
part ornamental. Every one has seen some of this china, but it is well
worth while to see it _en masse_ in a great quantity at this repository.
The working part of the manufacture was not opened to us; as I had not
been aware that, for this purpose, it was necessary to be fortified,
_muni_, with a permission of the director. If I translate _muni_ by
_fortified_, it is in the sense of the Englishman, who being invited to
be present at a mass, "assister a une messe,"--asked what it was
expected of him to _do_ there.
We went to St. Ouen, celebrated by Madame de Staeel as the birth-place of
the revolution and of the _charte_; and thence, along the bank of the
Seine, to the port of St. Denis,--the point, that is on the river,
towards which one of the streets of the town extends itself. It is a
small _bourg_; but the seat of a sous-prefecture. On the abolition of
royalty, the ashes of the kings of France, who for many ages had been
interred in the church of St. Denis, were dug up and thrown to the
winds: they were punished for the crime of having been kings, as
Cromwell was punished for having been an usurper. Royalty was called an
usurpation on the sovereign people. The roof of the church was stripped
of its lead to be melted into bullets for the use of the armies, and the
windows were broken for no use at all. The building was thus left
exposed to all the injuries of the seasons, till that great
counter-revolutionist Napoleon undertook to repair it as a burial-place
for the monarchs of "the fourth dynasty,"--a phrase by which he
ingeniously reminded the French that, as the race of Capet was not the
first, it had no imprescriptible right to be the last race of their
sovereigns. The force of this argument prevailed, while maintained by
the argument of force. The audacious _roturier_ who had seized on the
sceptre of royalty, like the daring mortal who stole fire from heaven,
was chained on a barren rock, with vultures,--their prey a fallen great
man,--to gnaw his entrails: on this rock he found his grave. The
reparations of the church of St. Denis, continued by order of the king,
were, at this time, nearly completed. Some remains of the bodies of
Louis XVI. and his queen, rescued from the unseemly sepulture to which
infuriated republicanism had consigned them, had been here honourably
deposited. We had seen the mortal spoil of the brave Prince de Conde
lying in state at the Palais Bourbon; it had here also found its place.
The church resembles that of Notre Dame; it is not so large, but
proportionably loftier; and the pillars, with the whole of the
architecture, are lighter.
Sceaux is a small town, six miles to the south of Paris, situated on a
ridge commanding a fine view to the south and north. It is, as well as
St. Denis, the seat of a sous-prefecture. Hither the Parisians resort
during summer on Sundays to dance under arbours in gardens, and enjoy
other sports, with the zest of those who have been "long in populous
cities pent."
James I. issued an ordinance in favour of Sunday sports: Charles I.
renewed it: the spirit of those who observe no festival but Sunday, and
who keep Sunday like a fast, prevails in England. Such persons will
hardly think it a sufficient set-off against the enormities of the
amusements of Sceaux, that, during four months residence at Paris, I did
not see one drunken man, not even on a Sunday.
The chateau of Vincennes is an ancient feudal castle with modern
additions: it has a chace before it, an extensive open space left for
military exercises and sports of chivalry, and to prevent surprise from
an enemy, who might, under the shadow of a wood, have approached too
near without being discovered. In the moat, surrounding the castle, the
Duc d'Enghien was put to death. Every one must lament the early fate of
this prince, and the extinction of an illustrious house. The duke
perished for having done or attempted to do what he thought to be his
duty, and Bonaparte, in causing him to suffer death, regarded himself as
acting according to his own. He is said to have declared at St. Helena
that, were the deed to be done again, he would do it. The "greenest
usurpation," to use a phrase of Burke's, has never scrupled to inflict
capital punishment on those who endeavoured its overthrow. In the
beginning of the reign of William III. a man was guilty of intending the
death of the king; and having nothing to plead in his defence except the
defect, according to his reasoning, of the king's title, and that
"murderare" was bad Latin,--both which pleas were considered as equally
valid by the court,--received the sentence of a traitor. But some time
must elapse ere the conduct of Bonaparte be judged by principles applied
to that of other men.
Seventeen years ago, I entertained the design of writing the history of
the French revolution, which then appeared to be terminated by the
assumption of the imperial title by Bonaparte: a counter-revolution was
in reality effected; all was reversed that had been done during the
revolution; republican principles,--the very name of republic,--was
extinguished, and, as a Frenchman well expressed himself, "a la chute de
Bonaparte les Bourbons n'avoient qu' a monter le trone tout dresse."[18]
I was told it was too soon to write the history of so stormy a period.
Yet Thucydides, Tacitus, Davila, Clarendon, were contemporary with the
times of which they wrote. It was not too soon, at the time of
Bonaparte's elevation, to write with impartiality, as I was disposed to
do, the history of the preceding events, but it was too soon for readers
to judge without passion.
In the chateau is a small room, hung with black, with an altar, on
which, by the care of the family of Conde, masses are said for the
repose of the soul of their unfortunate relative; and some military
accoutrements, said to have been his, are shown to strangers whom
sympathy may render credulous. He desired to have the assistance of a
priest before the execution of the sentence of the commission. "Veux-tu
mourir en capucin?"[19] is said to have been the answer. I pass over all
other obvious reflections on this circumstance, to remark that it
implied an eulogy on the Capucins, which, from all that I have seen and
know of them, they well deserve. Brutus and Cassius were called the last
of Romans; the Capucins may perhaps be the last of Christians.
The bottom of the fosse is flat, about twelve feet broad: a wall, of the
height of a man, supports the earth of the outer side: the spot, where
the execution took place, was pointed out to us. The sign of the cross
fortified him in the absence of that other spiritual succour which had
been refused to him.
In front of the castle is shown an oak under which Saint Louis was wont
to sit. The title of saint was given to this king _honoris causa_: in
his time it was honourable; at the present day, the recollection of his
valour, probity, piety, disinterestedness, and great talents is
necessary to rescue Louis IX. from the ridicule of having been a saint
and a crusader. The fashion of this world passeth away: religion would
have passed away with it, had it depended on the fashion of this world.
Veritas Domini manet in aeternum. Let those, who now wish to maintain it,
remember that it is not truth because useful, but useful because truth.
Forty years ago, who could return into the country, after having made
the visit of a countryman to London, without having seen Bedlam? I was
contented with the view of the two admirable statues of furious and
melancholy madness at the entrance of the court. I went to Charenton
without seeing the Maison des Fous. Such an asylum ought not to be an
object of passing curiosity: there may be among the patients some who
are amused by visits, but there are others who are very much afflicted
by them. Besides, my sons were with me: it requires long experience and
observation of the miseries of human life to harden the mind to the
endurance of such a scene as a mad-house presents. Terror and pity have
sometimes too strong an influence on young imaginations, when excited by
theatric exhibition of fictitious woe; how much more when called forth
by the sight of real misery such as this,--of man in his lowest state of
degradation and wretchedness!
We made our remarks on the confluence of the Seine and Marne: the latter
is by far the more rapid river of the two, and, though not quite so
broad, seems to bear along a greater quantity of water. It flows, for
some distance, in the same bed with the river in which its independent
existence is merged, and its name lost, without mingling with it, as if
resenting the injustice of its own lot. This appearance I afterwards
looked for in vain at the junction of the Rhone and Saoene, though it is
recorded, if I mistake not, by classical authority. The Saoene has no
pretension to an equality with the Rhone, and ought quietly to submit to
its fate.
On the day of my departure from Paris, I attended mass in the chapel of
the Palace of the Tuilleries. This is one of the sights that the English
go to gaze at, it being new to them not only in deed, but in thought;
and even "Augusto mense," there was great resort of them. To me it
appeared nothing wonderful that the Most Christian King should assist at
mass; that, supported by his attendants on account of his great bulk, he
should place himself on his knees, and his guards present arms, at the
moment of the elevation of the host. Monsieur, now Charles X. and other
members of the royal family, passed through the room in which we were,
in their way to the tribune of the king.
Before I leave Paris, I must indulge in a few remarks on the spirit of
the times, and the state of the public mind at this epoch.