attractive. Some of the earlier miners made large fortunes in a short
time. They had nothing to pay for their ground, and found from one
to twenty diamonds every day. When the price of claims went up, they
sold out, anywhere from two to ten thousand dollars, and went home.
One man made fifty thousand dollars in a month, divided his claim into
six parts, sold each part for one thousand five hundred dollars, and
went away satisfied. A ship was wrecked on the coast. The captain, of
course, was a very unfortunate man. Not knowing what to do, he went
to the diamond fields, where he stayed three months, and went away
with seventy-five thousand dollars. A Dutch Boer found, in one day,
thirty-one diamonds, which weighed respectively thirty-three carats,
eighteen, fifteen, nine, seven and a half, and other smaller ones.
He went away from the fields, and on returning, after an absence of
a month, his black servants, whom he had left in charge, turned over
to him more than three hundred diamonds. One man found a stone, at
the end of four days’ work, which brought him, in clean cash, eighty
thousand dollars.
[Sidenote: A CURIOUS FACT ABOUT DIAMONDS.]
A curious fact about the diamond is that it sometimes bursts. The
experts at the Cape can generally determine, by examining a stone,
whether it will burst or not. When first taken out, a small speck is
seen in it. If it is put aside in a dry place, it is in fragments
by the next morning. The miners keep such a stone in water or oil,
generally, until they find somebody green enough to buy it. The
bursting is caused by disappearance of moisture in the stone, and, of
course, it is retained there as long as the stone is kept moist.
XXVII.
THE UNDER-WORLD OF PARIS.
THE IMMORALITY AND LICENTIOUSNESS OF THE CAPITAL.—COMPARISON
WITH OTHER CITIES.—FRENCH ETHICS AND LITERATURE.—DIFFERENT
GRADES OF THE DEMI-MONDE.—THE TRUE STORY OF CAMILLE.—THE
GARDENS ON THE SEINE.—THE DANCES AND THE DANCERS.—THE PETITS
SOUPERS OF THE COCOTTES.—AFTER-MIDNIGHT SCENES.—ACTRESSES AND
CHAMPAGNE.—ADVENTURESSES AND CHÂTEAU MARGAUX.—INTERIOR OF A
THIEF’S DEN AND MURDERER’S CELLAR.—BLOODTHIRSTY VIRAGOES AND
DESPERATE CUTTHROATS.
The demi-monde is aptly named; for, while it is so eminently worldly,
the world rejects it, and in most instances assumes to be unconscious
of its existence. In the French capital it is accepted as a fact, and
it can hardly be any more dangerous there on that account, than it is
in cities where it is ignored. The French have gained the reputation,
but without any good reason, of being much more immoral than other
nations. We Americans are constantly asserting this, and our iteration
has had the effect, no doubt, of inducing us to believe that we are
a great deal better than they. Our assumptions are unquestionably
loftier, and we are more anxious to hide our defects; but that we
have fewer vices, setting aside our pretences, and stripping off our
shams, must not be too hastily admitted. It is to the disadvantage of
the modern Gauls that on many subjects they are inclined to say what
they think, while we are disposed to think what we do not say. They,
too, take human nature as they find it, as it has been from the first;
having no expectation of changing it by shutting it up on one side,
and giving it free vent on the other.
French authors are not at all squeamish or puritanical, and are
addicted to the treatment of themes which we discuss only in private.
The cities of France, notably Paris, do not robe themselves in
external sanctity, careless of the inner quality of their ethical
raiment, and, on account of their openness of speech and deportment,
they are gravely misjudged.
[Sidenote: THE WORST CITY IN THE WORLD.]
Paris is bad enough, Heaven knows; but that it is the wickedest city
on the globe, as is frequently asserted, must be taken with large
grains of allowance. The wickedest of cities are numerous. Not only
has Paris that reputation, but Vienna, Naples, St. Petersburg, Berlin,
London, New York, have it also. Even Boston, the centre of the land of
steady habits and high moral ideas, is pronounced by many persons, who
know it intimately, as unequalled for private profligacy. Stockholm,
in the far and frozen north, where the temperature might be fancied to
freeze the evil passions before they could have full play, has often
been declared more immoral than Paris, Naples, Vienna, or London. In
proportion to the population, there are more illegitimate children
born in Stockholm, it is said, than in any other capital of Europe;
and as marriage is held to be the best and purest condition of men and
women, this extraordinary extent of illegitimacy must be interpreted
to the Swedish city’s discredit.
It is all folly to arraign any particular community as worse than
another. Communities are like the individuals who make them up. This
has certain defects which that has not. Circumstances and conditions
produce different results in different places; but, on the whole,
mankind, when thoroughly understood, will be found very similar in
most of the centres of civilization.
As Paris is acknowledged to be the capital of gayety and pleasure,
and as morals are left there to take their natural course rather
than to be hampered without benefit, Paris is the best place to
observe human nature in its disapproved relations. The demi-monde is
opposed to the grand-monde, and ought to represent, therefore, not
only women of a peculiar class, but the members of both sexes whom
society, as the expression of conventionality, refuses to acknowledge.
The demi-monde, in this sense, means the under-world, nowhere so
interesting a study as on the Seine.
[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE UNDER-WORLD.]
Outwardly, the French capital is most decorous. Vice shows like
virtue because it is relieved of grossness; even more, is softened
and rounded with grace. You do not see there, as in London or New
York, repulsive and revolting scenes. You do not encounter drunken and
disgusting men: you do not hear women, who have unsexed themselves,
indulging in ribaldry and profanity in the public thoroughfares, or
anywhere else in fact. Everybody and everything appears so proper that
inexperienced and innocent souls have expressed their astonishment
at the ill fame the city has acquired, and have concluded that its
bad name is undeserved. Promenading on the Boulevards or riding on
the Champs Elysées, they are unable to distinguish the Faubourg St.
Germain from the Quartier Latin—the upper-world from the under-world.
[Illustration: GRAND AVENUE OF THE CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS.]
It is estimated that more than fifty thousand of the women of Paris
live in a state of concubinage, which, in a population of two
millions, is something enormous. The proportion is startling, but more
from the facility attained there for procuring statistics than from
the fact itself. Actualities, whether painful or not, are known and
recorded in that capital, instead of being unsuspected, as they are
likely to be elsewhere. This vast number of unchaste women are by no
means professional courtesans,—probably five thousand would include
all of these,—but embrace half a dozen grades of illicit relations.
[Sidenote: CAUSE OF PARISIAN WICKEDNESS.]
The causes that contribute to prostitution in France are, first, the
unwillingness of men of education and position to marry girls who are
poor, and can therefore have no marriage portion. Wedlock among the
Parisians is far less sentimental and romantic than it is with us. It
a species of one-sided covenant and partnership, in which the wife is
expected to be loyal, and the husband to do as he pleases. He cares
less for sympathy and affinity than he would if he did not expect to
seek them outside of the domestic circle. He marries generally for
practical reasons; because it will benefit him socially, or be of
substantial advantage. In consequence of this, young women in humble
circumstances are little likely to be wedded. They have hearts if they
have not incomes, and when their affections are enlisted, they listen
to the voice of Nature without waiting for the sanction of the priest.
It is not the custom, either, in France for men or women to wed out of
their station, though love or passion does not respect social lines or
distinctions in that country more than in any other. Hence it may be
seen that unwedded wives must be numerous in Paris.
Another cause is the draft that the army makes upon the young men of
the country. Compelled to enter the military service before they are
married, their habits are such, after they have remained in the army
the allotted time, as do not conduce to matrimony. The whole land is
drained for the sake of steel-and-gunpowder parade. Thousands and tens
of thousands of people who have no interest whatever in, and are only
made the worse for, war, are compelled to furnish its sinews at a
ruinous cost to themselves.
Still another cause is the number of illegitimate children, who,
regarded as the children of the state, are reared and educated by the
state, and at a certain age are left to provide for themselves. Many
of the young men seek military service, while the young women, for
the most part, become what their mothers have been before them. Their
tastes and their ideas are superior to their rank. They are unwilling
to look for husbands in a lower grade, and cannot secure them in a
higher. Gallants and lovers, however, are abundant and persevering,
and under the circumstances seldom woo in vain. France, moreover,
tolerates, if it does not encourage, relations that other countries
raise their hands in holy horror at. It does not act on the conviction
that the absence of one virtue expels all the other virtues; it
refuses to brand and ostracize a woman because she has merely been
unfortunate, or to make her responsible for the wrong she has
sustained at the hands of man. France, it must be admitted, is juster
to women than other nations are, for it gives them an opportunity to
be independent and advance themselves, even though they have committed
what we might regard as the unpardonable sin.
[Sidenote: THE DIFFERENT GRADES.]
The first circle of the demi-monde in Paris and other French cities,
though it is not so called, includes the educated and rather refined
women I have mentioned, who from poverty, dependence, or want of fixed
position, cannot marry in the rank to which they properly belong.
Their antecedents shape their destiny, and they hardly regard the
relation they have been accustomed to consider inevitable as they
would regard it had they been differently trained, and had the ethics
of the nation been less liberal.
The second circle is represented largely by the grisettes. Many
of them marry, and live domestically all their lives; but many
others have a gay and coquettish disposition, prefer lovers to
husbands, excitement to routine, display to conventionality, and the
exhilarations of to-day to the serenities of to-morrow. These are
truly of the half world, for they are half married, and yet wholly
independent. They live with their masculine friends; take care of
their apartments; are their companions at concerts, balls, and
theatres, in the evening; and yet they have their regular daily duties
at the shops where they are employed. They are not isolated; they
have society of their own; are contented, cheerful, and often enjoy
themselves better than the women who have been honored by wedlock.
The most showy and best defined type of the demi-monde is the
adventuress, who is the popular representative of the entire class.
The French playwrights have delineated her fully, and made her
familiar to everybody. “Camille,” and “The Marble Heart,” have
heroines of this sort. The former drama treats her sentimentally, and
the latter cynically. She is not so generous and self-sacrificing as
Camille, nor so selfish and sordid as Marco. After Alexandre Dumas
wrote “Camille,” and achieved such astonishing success, another
Parisian _littérateur_ composed “The Marble Heart” as an offset to it,
declaring Marco to be the real, instead of the ideal lorette.
[Sidenote: TRUE STORY OF CAMILLE.]
The story of “Camille,” or “La Dame aux Camelias,” as it is termed
in the original, is founded very largely on fact. The central figure
of Dumas’ pathetic drama had genuine existence. Her name was Marie
Duplessis. She was as lovely in person and as elegant in manner as she
is portrayed on the stage. Indeed, the theatric picture was almost
a photograph, and the incidents of Marie’s life have been closely
followed. The Armand was a young and excessively romantic physician,
who, having met the beautiful cocotte at an opera ball, fell so
desperately in love with her that he wished to make her his wife.
She had too much good sense and prudence, independent of feeling, to
permit such a sacrifice; but his devotion and generosity touched her
nearly, and soon awoke an answering passion. In spite of her errors,
she seems to have been intrinsically a fine and noble woman, who,
under favorable circumstances, might have been pure and true. So much
was she impressed by his chivalry that she cast off her admirers,
purchased a handsome villa near Versailles, and begged her new lover
to share it with her. He did so; for he was infatuated with Marie,
and would not listen to the sober counsels of his family and friends.
His father, in very moderate circumstances, was sorely troubled at
the conduct of his son, who had no thought nor care for anything but
his mistress. The old gentleman, unable to influence the head-strong
boy, sought an interview with the lady of the camellias, and begged
her to break off the connection. She undertook the task, and succeeded
where his family had failed. Her success, however, was obtained at the
expense of truth and her own heart; for she made her lover believe
that her attachment to him was waning.
Armand, with all the gloom of the Inferno weighing upon his spirits,
went to Italy, trusting that absence and travel would enable him
to forget the woman he now deemed unworthy of him. He was gone a
twelvemonth. He bore separation much better than she, as men usually
do. Before half that time the charming lorette fell ill and died.
The doctors asserted that her ailment was consumption, but the poets
insisted it was a clear case of broken heart. Her death, with her
previous history and romantic reformation, moved the curiosity and
appealed to the sentiment of Paris, especially after the tale had been
told in gushing style, and in any number of short paragraphs in one of
the gossipping journals.
When the villa at Versailles was advertised for sale, with its
elegant furniture and dainty articles of virtu, a crowd gathered, and
the bidding was so spirited by reason of active competition, that
everything brought nearly double its actual value. Dumas, then quite
young, was present, and secured, as a memento, a handsome ring which
Marie had worn.
Six months after, some one called at Dumas’ house to see him
personally. The author found the stranger to be a pale and melancholy
young man, who said he had come with the hope of buying the ring that
had been purchased at the sale. Further conversation revealed the fact
that the stranger had been Marie’s lover; that he had given her the
ring; and now, overwhelmed by the news of her death, of which he had
just been apprised, he begged, as a special favor, that he might be
permitted to purchase what to him had such inestimable value.
Dumas, deeply touched by the story, insisted upon making a present of
the trinket to the bereaved youth, and afterwards wrote out the tender
tale which has since drawn tears from half the world.
[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE ADVENTURESS.]
The adventuress is usually favored by nature, and carries her fair
face and symmetrical form to the best market. If not handsome, she is
winning, has great _chic_, clear insight, a thorough understanding,
and the weaknesses of our common humanity.
Good and kind at first, she has become what man has made of her; and
in the vocation she has chosen, vanity and self are her impelling
powers. Her beauty is a commodity she offers to the highest bidder.
She receives large sums, but she squanders them recklessly; for
display is almost the only passion of her being. She shines in the
Bois; bets desperately at Baden; turns heads at Vienna; shocks the
proprieties of London; dashes resplendent along the Nevski, in the
height of the gayeties of Petersburg; creates a sensation at Florence;
astonishes the staid Germans at Berlin; interrupts the opera at
Madrid; and finally, furnishes the subject of a letter for the New
York Herald.
[Sidenote: CAREER AND FATE OF A COQUETTE.]
Her career is necessarily brief, for her reign must end when years
begin to tell. Between twenty and thirty-five her golden harvest
must be gathered. Not unfrequently she dies by her own hand; but
oftener she has learned prudence ere her charms have waned, and is
contrite when it is no longer easy or graceful to sin. It is a great
mistake to suppose that the adventuress is invariably drawn out of
the Seine, and exposed at the Morgue. No longer able to repeat her
triumphs, she likes to withdraw from Paris, in some retired town seek
the consolations of religion, and bestow charity upon the poor. She
is more interesting at forty than in the flush of her glowing youth;
since then the flame of her self-love has been allowed to smoulder,
and the radiance of her true womanhood returns once more.
The fourth circle of the demi-monde are those priestesses of Venus
who sin without satisfaction, and laugh without gayety. They are not
materially different in Paris from what they are in other cities.
They have gone down by slippery and sable steps, but not to a level
with despair. They do not despair and live, in the air of France; for
with despair comes the pan of charcoal. They have intervals akin to
cheerfulness, and highly-spiced sensations bounding from pleasure to
delirium. They need not cease to hope or fear, since there is still
a deeper deep; and that is the fifth circle, whose representatives
frequent the streets at night, the cheaper cafés, and the common
gardens, in search of means to continue in their horrid trade. Even
these are not so degraded as the same kind of unfortunates are with
us. They do not drink; they do not swear; they do not importune
strangers rudely; they do not from the first disgust in their effort
to attract. They have apartments of their own, a certain kind of
society and a species of freedom that women, however fallen, always
enjoy in France. They are not labelled outcasts, as in England and
America, and therefore, in their darkest hours, they have glimpses
of the heaven of hope. Careless and improvident as they are in their
youth, they frequently provide for the future as years go on, and come
to their end through confession and ecclesiastical forgiveness of all
their transgressions.
[Sidenote: THE LOWEST CLASSES.]
The sixth class, the lowest and last of the semi-mundanes, are more
nearly pariahs than any others of their kind. They rarely make any
provision for to-morrow, since to-morrow is as dismal and as painful
as to-day. Almost always in want, their wastefulness is such that they
would be poor if every month were marked by a shower of gold. It is
they who accost strangers at night on the Boulevards; ask loungers
in the cafés to buy coffee and wine for them; make _poses_ and
smoke cigars in the streets; and are sometimes arrested for brawls,
intoxication, and pilfering. When they have reached this grade of
degradation they cannot go back; they cannot stand still; they cannot
fall lower. They put formidable obstacles in their proper path, and
are their own worst enemies. Such elasticity and endurance as they
may have is soon spent. Before a great while, a damp cellar or dingy
garret is broken open, a suffocating odor is perceived, the rude
bed holds a corpse; a brazier of charcoal tells the story, and adds
another to the countless tragedies which invariably keep the balance
with life.
[Illustration: BALL AT MABILLE, PARIS.]
The gardens of Paris, like the Mabille, the Closerie de Lilas,
the Château Rouge, and many others reveal another feature of the
under-world. The Mabille, to which strangers generally go, is the
least indecorous, and, I may add, the dullest. There half a dozen
couples, the women being generally of the lowest demi-monde class, are
paid so much per night for dancing of the most extraordinary sort.
What it lacks in delicacy is made up in energy. The greatest ambition
of the cocottes is to kick the hats from the heads of their partners,
and to throw their drapery into the wildest confusion. Their movements
belong rather to gymnastics than the quadrille, which they pretend to
execute, and when their leaping and plunging begin to pall upon the
spectators, they have recourse to the shamefully indecent can-can.
[Sidenote: MABILLE, CHÂTEAU ROUGE, AND PRADO.]
The Mabille draws strangers, as honey draws flies. Eminently
respectable and altogether staid persons go there, and closely observe
the dancers, without any apparent disapproval too, when they would
be supremely shocked at home at the slightest intimation of such
licentious conduct. I have observed pious matrons from New England
watching the saltatorial goddesses through their spectacles, as they
might watch the gambols of unknown animals. The Mabille soon grows
wearisome, and few persons frequent it on their second visit to Paris.
The Château Rouge is a more extended, demonstrative, and free-and-easy
place of resort than the Mabille. It is much more democratic also;
the prices of admission for men (women are admitted without charge)
being one franc, instead of three. To encourage attendance, prizes are
offered to those who shall be present the greatest number of nights
during the season, and the announcement of the prizes is placarded
upon the wall, so that every one may see them. Silk gowns are the
temptations for the gentler, and watches for the sterner sex. I should
imagine that some of the girls expected a reward for lifting their
gaiters in a direct line above their heads, so often do they attempt
it, and so generally do they succeed.
The Closerie de Lilas, called the Prado in winter, is the place where
the students and the grisettes go in crowds, and where they whirl
and make merry for the pure love of the thing. The attendance is
very large on Thursday and Sunday nights, when I have seen five or
six hundred persons of both sexes, flushed with wine, and dancing
like mad dervishes. The revels there are fast and furious enough.
License reigns supreme, and Bacchus and Venus seem to inspire the
orgies. Paris always limits its public exhibitions, and minions of the
law are ever present to keep licentiousness within bounds. Without
stimulants the grisettes and cocottes become wild with excitement as
the music of Offenbach pours out under the sky to infect them with
its sensuous frenzy. Doubtless the students and their lemans enjoy
themselves to the utmost; for they could not counterfeit enjoyment so
excellently. They smoke, and drink, and laugh, and talk, and chat, and
caper together without the smallest reserve or restraint, as if they
had not, and never would have, any other thought than of the present
moment and its absorbing pleasure.
[Sidenote: A DELIRIUM OF DANCING.]
When the weather is unfavorable, they have their balls in a large,
covered space; and to see and hear them leaping, tumbling, screaming,
and roaring in one confused and palpitating mass, impresses the
self-contained and impassive Anglo-Saxon very strangely. Those French
revellers have few concealments. They do their wooing in the presence
of hundreds; they have their little quarrels in the midst of their
carnival of glee. Elise appeals to Jacques with shrugs and starts, and
streaming eyes; and Victoire complains of neglect, and emphasizes his
jealousy to Marguerite before the giddy throng, as if they were in
the privacy of their own apartments. They make up their differences
with petting words and copious caresses, and enact their melodramas
regardless of curious eyes and smiling lookers-on.