THE LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF PARIS.
I have written of the startling contrasts of London; what shall I say
of those of Paris? It is the gayest city in the world, yet the one in
which there are more suicides than in any other. It is the city of
pleasure, yet where pleasure often turns to pain, and the dance of
dissipation, whirling faster and faster, becomes the dance of death.
It is a city which seems devoted to amusement, to which the rich and
the idle flock from all countries to spend life in an endless round of
enjoyment; with which some of our countrymen have become so infatuated
that their real feeling is pretty well expressed in the familiar
saying--half witty and half wicked--that "all good Americans go to
Paris _when they die_." Certainly many of them do not dream of any
higher Paradise.
And yet it is a city in which there are many sad and mournful scenes,
and in which he who observes closely, who looks a little under the
surface, will often walk the streets in profound melancholy. In short,
it is a city of such infinite variety, so many-colored, that the
laughing and the weeping philosopher may find abundant material for
his peculiar vein. Eugene Sue, in his "Mysteries of Paris," has made
us familiar with certain tragic aspects of Parisian life hidden from
the common eye. With all its gayety, there is a great deal of
concealed misery which keeps certain quarters in a chronic state of
discontent, which often breaks out in bloody insurrections; so that
the city which boasts that it is "the centre of civilization," is at
the same time the focus of revolution, of most of the plots and
conspiracies which trouble the peace of Europe. As the capital of a
great nation, the centre of its intellectual, its literary, and its
artistic life, it has a peculiar fascination for those who delight in
the most elevated social intercourse. Its salons are the most
brilliant in the world, so that we can understand the feeling of
Madame de Stael, the woman of society, who considered her banishment
from Paris by the first Napoleon as the greatest punishment, and who
"would rather see the stones of the Rue du Bac than all the mountains
of Switzerland"; and yet this very brilliancy sometimes wearies to
satiety, so that we can understand equally the feeling of poor, morbid
Jean Jacques Rousseau, who more than a hundred years ago turned his
back upon it with disgust, saying, "Farewell, Paris! city of noise,
and dust, and strife! He who values peace of mind can never be far
enough from thee!"
If we are quite just, we shall not go to either of these extremes. We
shall see the good and the evil, and frankly acknowledge both. Paris
is generally supposed to be a sinner above all other cities; to have a
kind of bad eminence for its immorality. It is thought to be a centre
of vice and demoralization, and some innocent young preachers who have
never crossed the sea, would no doubt feel justified in denouncing it
as the wickedest city in the world. As to the extent to which
immorality of any kind prevails, I have no means of judging, except
such as every stranger has; but certainly as to intemperance, there is
nothing here to compare with that in London, or Glasgow, or Edinburgh;
and as to the other form of vice we can only judge by its public
display, and there is nothing half so gross, which so outrages all
decency, as that which shocks and disgusts every foreigner in the
streets of London. No doubt here, as in every great capital which
draws to itself the life of a whole nation, there is a concentration
of the bad as well as the good elements of society, and we must expect
to find much that is depraved and vicious; but that in these respects
Paris is worse than London, or Berlin, or Vienna, or even New York, I
see no reason to believe.
Without taking, therefore, a lofty attitude of denunciation on the one
hand, or going into sudden raptures on the other, there are certain
aspects of Paris which lie on the surface, and which any one may
observe without claiming to be either wiser or better than his
neighbors.
I have tried to see the city both in its brighter lights and its
darker shadows. I have lived in Paris, first and last, a good deal. I
was here six months in 1847-8, and saw the Revolution which overthrew
Louis Philippe, and have been here often since. I confess I am fond of
it, and always return with pleasure. That which strikes the stranger
at once is its bright, sunny aspect; there is something inspiring in
the very look of the people; one feels a change in the very air. Since
we came here now, we have been riding about from morning to night. Our
favorite drive is along the Boulevards just at evening, when the lamps
are lighted, and all Paris seems to be sitting out of doors. The work
of the day is over, and the people have nothing to do but to enjoy
themselves. By hundreds and thousands they are sitting on the wide
pavements, sipping their coffee, and talking with indescribable
animation. Then we extend our ride to the Champs Elysees, where the
broad avenue is one blaze of light, and places of amusement are open
on every side, from which comes the sound of music. It is all a fairy
scene, such as one reads of in the Arabian Nights. Thousands are
sitting under the trees, enjoying the cool evening air, or coming in
from a ride to the Bois de Boulogne.
But it may be thought that these are the pleasures of the rich. On the
contrary, they are the pleasures of all classes; and that is the
charming thing about it. That which pleases me most in Paris is the
_general_ cheerfulness. I do not observe such wide extremes of
condition as in London, such painful contrasts between the rich and
the poor. Indeed, I do not find here such abject poverty, nor see
such dark, sullen, scowling faces, which indicate such brutal
degradation, as I saw in the low quarters of London. Here everybody
seems to be, at least in a small way, comfortable and contented. I
have spoken once before of the industry of the people (no city in the
world is such a hive of busy bees) and of their economy, which shows
itself even in their pleasures, of which they are fond, but which they
get _very cheap_. No people will get so much out of so little. What an
English workman would spend in a single drunken debauch, a Frenchman
will spread over a week, and get a little enjoyment out of it every
day. It delights me to see how they take their pleasures. Everybody
seems to be happy in his own way, and not to be envious of his
neighbor. If a man cannot ride with two horses, he will go with one,
and even if that one be a sorry hack, with ribs sticking out of his
sides, and that seems just ready for the crows, no matter, he will
pile his wife and children into the little, low carriage, and off they
go, not at great speed, to be sure, but as gay and merry as if they
were the Emperor and his court, with outriders going before, and a
body of cavalry clattering at their heels. When I have seen a whole
family at Versailles or St. Cloud dining on five francs (oh no, that
is too magnificent; they carry their dinner with them, and it probably
does not cost them two francs), I admire the simple tastes which are
so easily satisfied, and the miracle-working art which extracts honey
from every daisy by the roadside.
Such simple and universal enjoyment would not be possible, but for one
trait which is peculiar to the French--an entire absence of _mauvaise
honte_, or false shame; the foolish pride, which is so common in
England and America, of wishing to be thought as rich or as great as
others. In London no one would dare, even if he were allowed, to show
himself in Hyde Park in such unpretentious turnouts as those in which
half Paris will go to the Bois de Boulogne. But here everybody jogs
along at his own gait, not troubling himself about his neighbor. "Live
and let live" seems to be, if not the law of the country, at least the
universal habit of the people. Whatever other faults the French have,
I believe they are freer than most nations from "envy, malice, and all
uncharitableness."
With this there is a feeling of self-respect, even among the common
people, that is very pleasing. If you speak to a French servant, or to
a workman in a blouse, he does not sink into the earth as if he were
an inferior being, or take a tone of servility, but answers politely,
yet self-respectingly, as one conscious that he too is a man. The most
painful thing that I found in England was the way in which the
distinctions of rank, which seem to be as rigid as the castes of
India, have eaten into the manhood and self-respect of our great
Anglo-Saxon race. But here "a man's a man," and especially if he is a
Frenchman, he is as good as anybody.
From this absence of false pride and false shame comes the readiness
of the people to talk about their private affairs. How quickly they
take you into their confidence, and tell you all their little personal
histories! The other day we went to the Salpetriere, the great
hospital for aged women, which Mrs. Field describes in her "Home
Sketches in France," where are five thousand poor creatures cared for
by the charity of Paris. Hundreds of these were seated under the
trees, or walking about the grounds. As I went to find one of the
officials, I left C---- standing under an arch. Seeing her there, one
of the old women, with that politeness which is instinctive with the
French, invited her into her little room. When I came back, I found
they had struck up a friendship. The good mother--poor, dear, old
soul!--had told all her little story: who she was, and how she came
there, and how she lived. She made her own soup, she said, and had put
up some pretty muslin curtains, and had a tiny bit of a stove, and so
got along very nicely. This communicativeness is not confined to the
inmates of hospitals. It is a national trait, which makes us love a
people that give us their confidence so freely.
I might add many other amiable traits, which give a great charm to the
social life of the French, and fill their homes with brightness and
sunshine.
But of course there is another side to the picture. There is lightning
in the beautiful cloud, and sometimes the thunder breaks fearfully
over this devoted city. I do not refer to great public calamities,
such as war and siege, bringing "battle, and murder, and sudden
death," but to those daily tragedies, which are enacted in a great
city, which the world never hears of, where men and women drop out of
existence, as one
"Sinks into the waves with bubbling groan,"
and disappear from view, and the ocean rolls over them, burying the
story of their unhappy lives and their wretched end. Something of this
darker shading to bright and gay Paris, one may discover who is
curious in such matters. There is a kind of fascination which
sometimes lures me to search out that which is sombre and tragic in
human life and in history. So I have been to the Prison de la
Roquette, over which is an inscription which might be written over the
gates of hell: DEPOT DES CONDAMNES. Here the condemned are placed
before they are led to death, and in the open space in front take
place all the executions in Paris. Look you at those five stones deep
set in the pavement, on which are planted the posts of the Guillotine!
Over that in the centre hangs the fatal knife, which descends on the
neck of the victim, whose head rolls into the basket below.
But prisons are not peculiar to Paris, and probably quite as many
executions have been witnessed in front of Newgate, in London. But
that which gives a peculiar and sadder interest to this spot, is that
here took place one of the most terrible tragedies even in French
history--the massacre of the hostages in the days of the Commune. In
that prison yard the venerable Archbishop of Paris was shot, with
others who bore honored names. No greater atrocity was enacted even in
the Reign of Terror. There fiends in human shape, with hearts as hard
as the stones of the street, butchered old age. In another quarter of
Paris, on the heights of Montmartre, the enraged populace shot down
two brave generals--Lecompte and Clement-Thomas. I put my hand into
the very holes made in the wall of a house by the murderous balls.
Such cowardly assassinations, occurring more than once in French
history, reveal a trait of character not quite so amiable as some that
I have noticed. They show that the polite and polished Frenchman may
be so aroused as to be turned into a wild beast, and give a color of
reason to the savage remark of Voltaire--himself one of the race--that
"a Frenchman was half monkey and half tiger."
I will present but one other dark picture. I went one day, to the
horror of my companion, to visit THE MORGUE, the receptacle of all the
suicides in Paris, where their bodies are exposed that they may be
recognized by friends. Of course some are brought here who die
suddenly in the streets, and whose names are unknown. But the number
of suicides is fearfully great. Bodies are constantly fished out of
the Seine, of those who throw themselves from the numerous bridges.
Others climb to the top of the Column in the Place Vendome, or of that
on the Place of the Bastille, or to the towers of Notre Dame, and
throw themselves over the parapet, and their mangled bodies are picked
up on the pavement below. Others find the fumes of charcoal an easier
way to fall into "an eternal sleep." But thus, by one means or other,
by pistol or by poison, by the tower or the river, almost every day
has its victim. I think the exact statistics show more than one
suicide a day throughout the year. When I was at the Morgue there were
two bodies stretched out stark and cold--a man and a woman, _both
young_. I looked at them with very sad reflections. If those poor lips
could but speak, what tragedies they might tell! Who knows what hard
battle of life they had to fight--what struggles wrung that manly
breast, or what sorrow broke that woman's heart? Who was she?
"Had she a father? had she a mother?
Had she a sister? had she a brother?
Or one dearer still than all other?"
Perhaps she had led a life of shame, but all trace of passion was gone
now:
"Death had left on her
Only the beautiful."
And as I marked the rich tresses which hung down over her shoulders, I
thought Jesus would not have disdained her if she had come to him as a
penitent Magdalen, and with that flowing hair had wiped His sacred
feet.
I do not draw these sad pictures to point a moral against the French,
as if they were sinners above all others, but I think this great
number of suicides may be ascribed, in part at least, to the mercurial
and excitable character of the people. They are easily elated and
easily depressed; now rising to the height of joyous excitement, and
now sinking to the depths of despair. And when these darker moods come
on, what so natural as that those who have not a strong religious
feeling to restrain them, or to give them patience to bear their
trials, should seek a quick relief in that calm rest which no rude
waking shall ever disturb? If they had that faith in God, and a life
to come, which is the only true consolation in all time of our
trouble, in all time of our adversity, they would not so often rush to
the grave, thinking to bury their sorrows in the silence of the tomb.
Thus musing on the lights and shadows of Paris, I turn away half in
admiration and half in pity, but all in love. With all its shadows, it
is a wonderful city, by far the greatest, except London, in the modern
world, and the French are a wonderful people; and while I am not blind
to their weaknesses, their vanity, their childish passion for military
glory, yet "with all their faults I love them still." And I have
written thus, not only from a feeling of love for Paris from personal
associations, but from a sense of _justice_, believing that the harsh
judgment often pronounced upon it is hasty and mistaken. All such
sweeping declarations are sure to be wrong. No doubt the elements of
good and evil are mingled here in large proportions, and act with
great intensity, and sometimes with terrific results. But Frenchmen
are not worse than other men, nor Paris worse than other cities. If it
has some dark spots, it has many bright ones, in its ancient seats of
learning and its noble institutions of charity. Taking them all
together, they form a basis for a very kindly judgment. And I believe
that He who from His throne in Heaven looks down upon all the dwellers
upon earth, seeing that in the judgment of truth and of history this
city is not utterly condemned, would say "Neither do I condemn thee:
go and sin no more."