London.--Paris.--Sitting of the Geographical Society.--News from
Madagascar.--Popular Life in Paris.--Sights.--A Tale of
Murder.--Versailles.--St. Cloud.--Celebration of Sunday.
On the 2d of July I quitted Rotterdam, and embarked in a steamer
belonging to Messrs. Smith and Ers for London (distance 150 sea-miles,
time of passage 20 hours). This company was the first English one that
refused to allow me to pay. I had already taken my passage; but, as soon
as Mr. Smith heard my name, he insisted, in the kindest way, on
returning me the passage-money.
In London I spent about four weeks with my worthy friend, Mr.
Waterhouse, of the British Museum; and on the 1st of August I proceeded
to Paris.
The chief aim of my journey was to visit the island of Madagascar, with
whose government the French alone have relations. I was therefore
obliged to go to Paris to obtain information respecting this, to me,
unknown country. To say the truth, I was not sorry for this; for,
strange as the fact may appear to many of my readers, in all my
wanderings through the world I had never visited Paris.
I reached that city on the morning of the 2d of August, and at once set
about my work. My fortunate star led me to make my first visit to
Monsieur Jaumard, the President of the Geographical Society, and on that
very evening the society was to hold its last meeting for the present
summer.
I had a very warm letter of recommendation to Monsieur Jaumard from
Professor Carl Ritter, of Berlin. Monsieur Jaumard received me in the
kindest manner, and invited me to be present at the sitting. I was
introduced by the celebrated geographer, Monsieur Malte-Brun. A place
was assigned to me at some distance from the table. At the commencement
of the sitting the president made a speech in which he introduced me to
the society, said a few words respecting my travels, and concluded by
proposing that I should be received as an honorary member. The assembled
members held up their hands in assent, and my admission was carried
without a dissentient voice.
I was as much gratified as astonished at this distinction, which I had
not anticipated in the least; my pleasure was all the greater from the
fact that my old tutor, who had taught me history and geography,
officiated as corresponding member of this same society. The president
rose, and led me from my place to the table, at which I now took my
place as a member, amid the cordial congratulations of the whole
company.
I immediately consulted the gentlemen present with respect to my
intention of undertaking a voyage to Madagascar: they were unanimous in
thinking the plan quite impracticable under existing circumstances.
During my stay in Holland I had already gleaned from newspaper reports
that the French government intended sending a squadron to Madagascar,
and that a serious war was considered imminent. I now learned some
farther particulars. The French have for centuries possessed a little
island, called St. Maria, on the coast of Madagascar. In the time of the
late king Radama they succeeded in obtaining a footing in Madagascar
itself by acquiring a district in the Bay of Vanatobé. In this district
there is a rich depôt for coals; and the French employ 180 colored
workmen, Indians, negroes, etc., from the Mauritius, under the
superintendence of three white men. On the accession of Queen Ranavola,
after the death of Radama, the new sovereign ordered these people to
evacuate the district. They refused to obey the mandate, as they
considered the place to be the property of the French government.
Hereupon the queen sent 2000 soldiers, who fell upon the community,
killed two white men and a hundred negroes, and dragged away the rest
and sold them as slaves. The French government naturally demanded
satisfaction, though there was little chance of obtaining justice
without resorting to violent measures; and thus every one was prepared,
as I have said, for the breaking out of a serious war.
Wherever I made inquiries, these reports were confirmed; and I
consequently found myself compelled, if not to give up the plan of my
journey, at all events to modify it. As a matter of precaution, I took
with me a letter of recommendation from the French Admiralty to the
commanders of their vessels on foreign stations. I was asked to wait for
the return of the emperor, who had gone to some bathing-place, that I
might be introduced to him; but that would have kept me too long; and I
quitted Paris with my business in a very unfinished state.
The few days which I spent in this great city I utilized as much as
possible in getting at least a glance at its many objects of interest.
Of course I should not dream of giving an accurate description of what I
saw. The rage for traveling is so universal at the present day, and the
facilities for getting over hundreds of miles of ground, at least in
Europe, in a few days’ time, are so great, that a large majority of my
readers have probably been to Paris themselves; and those who have not
seen the great city are sure to know, from the descriptions of other
travelers, as much as I could tell them about it. I will, therefore,
only describe in a very few words the impressions I carried away with
me.
London and Paris differ as widely from one another as the English
character from the French. In both cities there is plenty of life and
bustle; but one can see at the first glance that in Paris it is not all,
as in London, a _business life_. One does not see those rigid
self-contained figures, wending their way with restless steps, careless
of all that is passing around them, and seeming to consider every wasted
minute as an irreparable loss. In Paris, lounging seems the order of the
day, and even the bustling man of business finds time to greet his
friends and exchange a few words with them, and to pause, moreover, for
a few minutes in front of this or that shop, and admire the wares
displayed with such really wonderful taste in the window.
The houses themselves don’t look so grave as the London domiciles. They
are of large size (for in some more than thirty families live), and are
not nearly so much blackened by coal-smoke as the London houses are. The
doors are all open, and afford a view into neat court-yards, which are
sometimes adorned with flowers--decidedly a more agreeable aspect than
the tightly-closed doors of London, which seem to give the houses an
uninhabited look.
In the evening the difference is most perceptible, for then the
characteristic restlessness and love of pleasure inherent in the French
display themselves in full force. All the streets, the public squares,
the places of amusement, are equally crowded; and the Englishman,
accustomed to spend his evenings in the family circle, by the fireside,
for seven or eight months in the year, and in the garden of his cottage
during the remaining four or five, might fancy, on first seeing the
pressure and crush in the streets of Paris, that some public festival
was being celebrated.
The centres of all this life are the Boulevards; and very bright and
fairy-like is the scene there, on a fine summer evening, with their
magnificent cafés standing wide open, and splendid shops, bright as day
with the glare of thousands of gas-lamps, and with their motley crowd of
carriages in the roads and of pedestrians, either wandering to and fro
on the broad pavements, or sitting at neat little tables in front of the
coffee-houses.
The Champs Elysées are no less attractive, though they scarcely realize
their name of _fields_; for, except in the short space between the Place
de la Concorde and the Rondpoint, trees and grass-plots have begun to
vanish rather rapidly, to be replaced by handsome houses and hotels. The
view in the Champs Elysées is closed by one of the finest monuments of
modern architecture--the Arc de l’Etoile--a colossal triumphal arch,
built by Napoleon the Great, in the style of the Roman gate of Septimius
Severus. The chief victories of the great conqueror are sculptured with
exquisite skill on this monument.
A broad road, or avenue, which in a short time will probably also be
quite filled with houses, leads from this point to the celebrated Bois
de Boulogne. The name of this wood was so frequently in every body’s
mouth, that I naturally expected to see a forest of great sturdy trees,
something in the style of the “Prater” at Vienna, or the “Thiergarten”
at Berlin; but it was not so. In spite of its age, the Bois de Boulogne
has never become a forest. The trees have remained small and spare, and
it is a difficult matter to find a shady spot. The new and tasteful
arrangement of this locality, and the addition of a beautiful fountain,
are due to the present emperor, Napoleon III. He seems to be so
fortunate in all his undertakings, that I should not wonder if he
succeeded in making the trees grow.
The Tuileries Gardens are not very spacious, but they contain glorious
specimens of venerable old trees. Here, as in all public places in
Paris, chairs in abundance are to be had. You must pay for them; but the
sum asked is very moderate--one sou per chair, whether you are a tenant
for five minutes or for half a day.
Between the Champs Elysées and the Tuileries Gardens lies the Place de
la Concorde, one of the finest squares in Europe. In old times it was
called the Place Louis XV.; and here it was that the guillotine worked
with horrible industry during the years 1792, 1793, and 1794, numbering
Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Philippe Egalité, Marie Helène of France,
Robespierre, and hundreds besides, among its victims. Now this place is
adorned by two beautiful fountains, and on the spot occupied by the
guillotine rises the great obelisk of Luxor. This obelisk, seventy-two
feet in height, and of five hundred thousand pounds weight, is hewn out
of a single block of stone: 1550 years before the Christian era it was
set up in front of a temple at Thebes, in Upper Egypt. Mehemet Ali
presented it to the French government. Louis Philippe had a ship built
at Toulon expressly for its conveyance to France, peculiarly fashioned,
so as to ascend the Nile to Luxor, near Thebes. Eight hundred men were
engaged for three months in removing the obelisk from the temple to the
ship. In the month of December, 1833, it arrived in Paris, but its
erection was not accomplished until October, 1836. The cost of
transporting and setting it up amounted to two millions of francs.
Late building operations have completely united the palace of the
Tuileries with the Louvre, so that the two now form a single
structure--undoubtedly the grandest of its kind in Europe. A few years
ago houses of irregular architecture separated these two palaces, and
the quarter of Paris surrounding them is said to have been one of the
most extensive and the dirtiest in the city. Louis Philippe intended to
have these old buildings pulled down, and to build broad straight
streets that should unite the Tuileries with the Louvre; but millions of
money were required to realize the idea, and constitutional kings can
not dispose of the funds of the state at their own sweet will. Napoleon
arranged all that more conveniently; the Senate and the Corps
Legislatif, far more accommodating than were their predecessors, the
Chambers of Peers and of Deputies, are always happy to fulfill the
wishes of their sovereign.
There is so much to be seen in both these palaces, in the way of
pictures, antiquities, models of fortresses, ships, and other
curiosities, that one might wander about for weeks in the labyrinth of
halls and galleries, quite unconscious of the lapse of time. One of the
apartments is dedicated entirely to relics of Napoleon the First. Here
are to be seen his tent-bed, his writing-table, his arm-chair, his
robes, various uniforms and hats, many golden keys of conquered cities
and fortresses, Turkish and Arabian saddles, and many other properties.
The worshipers of this modern Cæsar attach a great value to the
handkerchief with which the death-damps were wiped from his brow at St.
Helena. Not one of the other members of the Bonaparte family is
represented by any article in the collection, except perhaps the Duke of
Reichstadt, one of whose coats is displayed there.
The Luxembourg Gardens, on the south bank of the Seine, are very
prettily laid out. The palace, built in a severe style, possesses a rich
gallery of pictures, mostly modern pieces. The halls and chambers are
arranged with great splendor and true artistic taste.
Of the churches I visited but few. Notre Dame is distinguished by its
pure Gothic architecture. The church of St. Geneviève is one of the
oldest in Paris. It contains the tomb of the patroness of Paris, in a
neat chapel, built in the Byzantine style, behind the chief altar. In
the church of St. Sulpice, the façade, with its double rows of pillars
and a gallery, is remarkable. In the background of this church, in a
kind of niche, is a marble statue representing the Virgin Mary standing
with the infant Jesus on a globe. A cupola-shaped roof, with a beautiful
fresco of the Ascension, rises over the statue, which, exquisitely
chiseled, and with the light falling upon it with magic effect, has a
most solemn and impressive appearance. Again, I could not help remarking
the amount of poetry and effect developed in the Roman Catholic
religion--and what an advantage does this effect give it among the
excitable masses of the people, over the simple and rather monotonous
forms of Protestant worship! It is unfortunate, however, that abuses,
more or less objectionable, have every where crept in, and are very
damaging, if not entirely destructive, to this poetic feeling. Take, for
instance, the wretched custom adopted in French churches of paying for
chairs. There are few or no benches, but great stores of chairs are
heaped up against the walls. For each chair the charge is a sou; and at
the end of the year all these sous no doubt make up a round sum, which
is very welcome to the worthy dignitaries of the church; but the
devotions of the congregation are terribly disturbed. Every moment the
verger comes pushing his way through the people; first he brings a
chair, then takes one away; now he asks for money, and then he chats
with some regular customer. And is not the idea of being obliged to pay,
in a temple of God, for the right of sitting down, enough in itself to
drive away all serious and devout thoughts?
The Pantheon is built in the Grecian style; the interior forms a cross.
This church contains monuments of many celebrated Frenchmen. I felt the
greatest interest in those of J. J. Rousseau and Voltaire.
The Hôtel des Invalides is a magnificent institution for the reception
of 5000 old soldiers who have been frequently wounded in battle, or have
lost an arm or a leg. The building seems very conveniently arranged, and
the old pensioners are said to be well treated; but no one has thought
of providing a grass-plot for their delectation. Even the courts are
destitute of trees and benches. The officers have had a small garden
laid out at their own expense. The dome of the “Invalides” is of great
size. The interior is ornamented with a great number of captured flags,
and on the walls appear great tablets, graced with the names of
celebrated generals. Behind the high altar is the chapel, where the
remains of Napoleon, solemnly brought from St. Helena in 1840, are to
rest until the mausoleum is finished. It was nearly completed at the
time of my visit. It consists of a beautiful rotunda, surrounded by
twelve pillars, with twelve colossal statues of marble in the
intervening spaces. The floor is likewise of marble, with a laurel
wreath in mosaic surrounding the sarcophagus, which is cut out of a
single block of porphyry. The entrance porch, from which two flights of
steps lead downward into the rotunda, is supported by two gigantic
statues. The gate and the statues, which are of bronze, are beautifully
executed. The part of the church that rises over the mausoleum is nearly
covered with gilding, and when the full light of day shines upon it the
effect is magical.
With the celebrated cemetery of Père la Chaise I was greatly
disappointed; but seeing the cemetery at New York had perhaps spoiled me
for admiring any other. The graves are certainly adorned with tombs,
flowers, and shrubs, but every thing is so crowded together that there
is scarcely room to walk. The number of monuments distinguished by grace
and richness of adornment is small, and their effect is lost by their
position. The most interesting among these is that of Abélard and
Heloise, who died in the twelfth century, and whose ashes were removed
to this resting-place in the nineteenth.
The graves of the poor are in a division by themselves. Here I found on
many--particularly on the graves of children--monuments that seemed to
me much more attractive and more touching than the tombs of the rich.
They consisted of little glass cases, containing tiny altars, on which
the favorite playthings of the dead babies were displayed. In one I
noticed a tiny basket, in which lay the thimble and sewing implements of
some industrious little worker whose labor here on earth was finished--a
simple memorial, but one that spoke eloquently to the heart!
The cemetery of Père la Chaise was not opened till the year 1804; it
contains 100 acres, and is entirely surrounded by a high wall. The view
from the hill that rises in the midst is the best reward for a very
toilsome walk.
I could only pay a flying visit to the Jardin des Plantes and the
Museum. The wealth of the former in exotic plants and animals is well
known; both institutions are reckoned among the most remarkable in
Europe.
I was much pleased with my visit to the Manufacture des Gobelins, or, as
I might term it, Picture Carpet. This tapestry is wrought with such
perfection, that a close inspection is required to convince the beholder
he is gazing, not at an oil-painting, but a woven fabric. The drawing is
very correct, and the mingling and transition of the various colors
delicate and finished, as if a practiced pencil had been at work. For
hours I stood watching the workmen, without obtaining the slightest clew
to the secret of the art they practiced. The workman has a kind of large
frame before him, on which the threads, or tissue, or warp (I am
unacquainted with the right term) are perpendicularly fastened; at his
side he has a huge basket of Berlin wool, wound on shuttles, and of all
imaginable hues and shades. The picture he has to copy is not a worked
pattern divided into squares, but an oil-painting; and it is not placed
in front of the artistic weaver, but behind him. He works at the wall of
threads before him, beginning from below and making his way upward,
without even sketching the picture he wants to copy; I noticed some
workmen, however, who had indicated the part at which they were
working--a foot, for instance, or a hand--by a few strokes on the edge
of the frame. Those men who imitate Persian and Indian carpets,
producing fabrics a quarter of an inch thick, and which resembles cut
velvet, have the original, also an oil-painting, suspended above their
heads. In some apartments the most gorgeous Gobelins were displayed.
They are very dear; a piece of tapestry, fifteen to twenty feet in
height by eight or ten in breadth, will cost from 100,000 to 150,000
francs. But then a workman has frequently to labor for ten or more years
at such a piece. The wages of the workmen are not very high; I was told,
however, that after a certain number of years of service they receive a
pension, which is granted in a shorter period should they become blind
over their work--a calamity which not unfrequently befalls them.
My last visit was to the Morgue, where the bodies of persons found dead
are exposed for identification by relatives or friends. Many of my
readers will perhaps wonder how I, a woman, could visit such a place;
but they must remember that, during my journeyings, I have frequently
been face to face with death, and that its aspect, consequently, was
less terrible to me than to the majority of people; and I can therefore
look at times even with a kind of mournful complacency upon its image,
mindful of that last journey all of us must take.
The Morgue is a large vaulted apartment, divided into two halves by a
partition of glass. In the division behind the glass wall are six or
eight low tables, or slabs, on which the corpses are laid out. The
clothes they had on when found are hung upon the walls. The other half
of the room is for the visitors, among whom, if any of the bodies show
marks of violence, secret agents of the police are accustomed to mingle,
to glean from the expression of countenance, or from any chance remark,
a clew by which to track the criminal. The corpses are thus exposed for
three days, but the clothes are left hanging for a longer period. The
most terrible sights are sometimes seen here. Thus I saw a male corpse
that had lain for some months in the water, and on the next table a
young girl whose head had been completely cut off; it had afterward been
sewn on the neck. The poor creature had been murdered by her lover
through jealousy. A remarkable incident in this murder was that the
perpetrator, disturbed in the very fact, leaped from the window of a
room on the sixth story without injuring himself. He scrambled up from
the ground and ran away. Three days afterward, when I left Paris, he had
not been apprehended.
I was told that a few weeks before, some fishermen had brought in a
table-leaf with the body of a woman tied to it, but the head and feet
were missing. The fishermen had discovered the body in the river by
chance; it had been weighted with stones, and sunk. All possible
measures were immediately taken by the authorities to find the head and
feet; and, contrary to expectation, they were eventually found, though
hidden in separate places. The body was then put together and exposed in
the Morgue. One of the secret agents quickly noticed among the
spectators an old woman who could scarcely suppress an exclamation on
seeing the corpse. When she left the room the agent requested her to
accompany him to the commissary, and on being asked if she knew the
deceased, she replied that she recognized in the poor creature a
likeness to a woman who had lived in her neighborhood a short time ago,
but who had lately removed to quite another quarter of the town. Farther
questioning brought out the fact that the murdered woman had come from
the provinces a few months before with a sum of money, intending to
carry on some small trade in Paris; she made acquaintance with a man who
professed himself willing to serve her, and announced to her, after a
short time, that he had found a better and cheaper dwelling for her. She
accepted his offer, left her old domicile without giving the address of
her new one, and since that time nothing more had been heard of her.
Inquiries were made of the commissionaires, or porters of the
neighborhood, one of whom remembered carrying her luggage, and pointed
out the house where he had deposited it. A secret agent betook himself
thither, but found the door locked. At his summons the porter appeared.
The agent asked him if a Monsieur X---- did not live in that house; and
on receiving an answer in the negative, added, “That is very singular,
for the address is quite correct,” at the same time showing a paper. The
porter declared there must be some mistake, for the house belonged to
Monsieur L----, who passed the greater part of the year in the country,
but had given particular orders that not a single room should be let.
The agent departed, but the house was watched, and at about eleven
o’clock at night two suspicious-looking characters were seen to enter.
After making sure that there was no other means of exit, a sufficient
number of armed policemen rushed into the house, and secured the porter
and his two associates without much resistance. The house was carefully
searched, and in one of the rooms they discovered not only the
frame-work of the table on a leaf of which the woman had been bound, but
traces of blood, and the bloodstained axe with which the unhappy
creature, lured into the house by the murderers, had been killed. But
enough of these horrors, of which, alas! Paris offers but too many
examples.
My excursions in the environs of the capital were limited to Versailles,
Trianon, and St. Cloud, which I visited on one and the same day.
The railway takes one, in an hour, to Versailles, past the little town
of Sèvres, celebrated for its great porcelain manufactory. Sèvres is
picturesquely situated in a broad valley watered by the Seine. The
railroad runs, throughout nearly the whole distance, parallel with the
valley at a considerable elevation, so that the traveler sees the
charming, highly-cultivated country gliding past like scenes in a magic
lantern.
As regards Versailles itself, I candidly confess myself unable to
describe it. I can only assure my readers that such splendor in
buildings, gardens, halls, pictures, and general arrangements could
only arise in France, under a king like Louis XIV., who rivaled the
Romans themselves in luxury, and held the modest opinion that _he_ was
the state, and the people but an accessory to his greatness.
Hurrying through the lofty halls, and marking the innumerable pictures,
representing battles, assaults, burning towns and villages, with the
inhabitants half naked and in full flight, I could not help asking
myself in what we are superior to the wild Indian. Our civilization has
refined our customs, but our deeds have remained the same. The savage
kills his enemies with a club; we slay ours with cannon balls. The
savage hangs up scalps, skulls, and similar trophies in his wigwam; we
paint them on canvas to decorate our palaces withal; where, then, is the
great difference?
At St. Cloud I could only visit the gardens, the palace being occupied
by the empress. The fountains here are said to be very grand, but they
do not play every Sunday. It was on a Sunday that I went to St. Cloud,
but, unfortunately, not on one of the high days; there were, however,
pedestrians in plenty, and, had I been an Englishwoman, I should have
been horrified; for there were children here, and even young men and
maidens, so lost to all sense of propriety as to play at ball on a
Sunday!
I have already observed that the good Parisians are rather too fond of
pleasure, and I am ready to allow that too much of any thing is
objectionable; but, on the other hand, I submit, even at the risk of
being anathematized as unchristianlike by English ladies generally, that
it is quite natural for people who have to sit for the whole week long
at the work-table, in the shop, or in the counting-house, to indulge in
a little recreation on Sundays. I can not imagine the bountiful Creator
of all things looking with displeasure upon really innocent relaxation.
It is all very well for rich people, who can amuse themselves every day
in the week, and let their children have a holiday on Saturday, to make
it a rule to observe the Sabbath strictly; but to the poor man, who
works hard all the six days to maintain himself and his family in
honesty, the Almighty will surely grant permission to forget his cares
in harmless pleasure on the seventh.