principal theatres, and commence at midnight. The pit and stage are
thrown into a brilliant hall, with the orchestra in the centre; the
music is divine, and the etiquette perfect liberty. There is, of
course, a great deal of vulgar company, for every one is admitted who
pays the ten francs at the door; but all classes of people mingle in
the crowd; and if one is not amused, it is because he will neither
listen nor talk. I think it requires one or two masks to get one's eye
so much accustomed to the sight, that he is not disgusted with the
exteriors of the women. There was something very diabolical to me at
first in a dead, black representation of the human face, and the long
black domino. Persuading one's self that there is beauty under such an
outside, is like getting up a passion for a very ugly woman, for the
sake of her mind--difficult, rather. I soon became used to it,
however, and amused myself infinitely. One is liable to waste his wit,
to be sure; for in a crowd so rarely _bien composee_, as they phrase
it, the undistinguishing dress gives every one the opportunity of
bewildering you; but the feet and manner of walking, and the tone and
mode of expression, are indices sufficiently certain to decide, and
give interest to a pursuit; and, with tolerable caution, one is paid
for his trouble, in nineteen cases out of twenty.
At the public masks, the visitors are not all in domino. One half at
least are in caricature dresses, men in petticoats, and women in boots
and spurs. It is not always easy to detect the sex. An English lady, a
carnival-acquaintance of mine, made love successfully, with the aid of
a tall figure and great spirit, to a number of her own sex. She wore a
half uniform, and was certainly a very elegant fellow. France is so
remarkable indeed, for effeminate-looking men and masculine-looking
women, that half the population might change costume to apparent
advantage. The French are fond of caricaturing English dandies, and
they do it with great success. The imitation of Bond-street dialect in
another language is highly amusing. There were two imitation
exquisites at the "_Varietes_" one night, who were dressed to
perfection, and must have studied the character thoroughly. The whole
theatre was in a roar when they entered. Malcontents take the
opportunity to show up the king and ministers, and these are
excellent, too. One gets weary of fun. It is a life which becomes
tedious long before carnival is over. It is a relief to sit down once
more to books and pen.
The three last days are devoted to street-masking. This is the most
ridiculous of all. Paris pours out its whole population upon the
Boulevards, and guards are stationed to keep the goers and comers in
separate lines, and prevent all collecting of groups on the _pave_.
People in the most grotesque and absurd dress pass on foot, and in
loaded carriages, and all is nonsense and obscenity. It is difficult
to conceive the motive which can induce grown-up people to go to the
expense and trouble of such an exhibition, merely to amuse the world.
A description of these follies would be waste of paper.
On the last night but one of the carnival, I went to a ball at the
palace. We presented our invitations at the door, and mounted through
piles of soldiers of the line, crowds of servants in the king's
livery, and groves of exotics at the broad landing places, to the
reception room. We were ushered into the _Salle des Marechals_--a
large hall, the ceiling of which rises into the dome of the Tuileries,
ornamented with full-length portraits of the living marshals of
France. A gallery of a light airy structure runs round upon the
capitals of the pillars, and this, when we entered, and at all the
after hours of the ball, was crowded with loungers from the assembly
beneath--producing a splendid effect, as their glittering uniforms
passed and repassed under the flags and armor with which the ceilings
were thickly hung. The royal train entered presently, and the band
struck up a superb march. Three rows of velvet-covered seats, one
above another, went round the hall, leaving a passage behind, and, in
front of these, the queen and her family made a circuit of courtesy,
followed by the wives of the ambassadors, among whom was our
countrywoman, Mrs. Rives. Her majesty went smiling past, stopping here
and there to speak to a lady whom she recognized, and the king
followed her with his eternal and painfully forced smile, saying
something to every second person he encountered. The princesses have
good faces, and the second one has an expression of great delicacy and
tenderness, but no beauty. As soon as the queen was seated, the band
played a quadrille, and the crowd cleared away from the centre for the
dance. The Duke of Orleans selected his partner, a pretty girl, who, I
believe was English, and forward went the head couples to the
exquisite music of the new opera--Robert le Diable.
I fell into the little _cortege_ standing about the queen, and watched
the interesting party dancing the head quadrille for an hour. The Duke
of Orleans, who is nearly twenty, and seems a thoughtless,
good-natured, immature young man, moved about very gracefully with his
handsome figure, and seemed amused, and quite unconscious of the
attention he drew. The princesses were _vis-a-vis_, and the second
one, a dark-haired, slender, interesting girl of nineteen, had a
polytechnic scholar for her partner. He was a handsome,
gallant-looking fellow, who must have distinguished himself to have
been invited to court, and I could not but admire the beautiful
mixture of respect and self-confidence with which he demanded the hand
of the princess from the lady of honor, and conversed with her during
the dance. If royalty does not seal up the affections, I could scarce
conceive how a being so decidedly of nature's best nobility, handsome,
graceful, and confident, could come within the sphere of a
sensitive-looking girl, like the princess Christine, and not leave
more than a transient recollection upon her fancy. The music stopped,
and I had been so occupied with my speculations upon the polytechnic
boy, that I had scarcely noticed any other person in the dance. He led
the princess back to her seat by the _dame d'honneur_, bowing low,
colored a little, and mingled with the crowd. A few minutes after, I
saw him in the gallery, quite alone, leaning over the railing, and
looking down upon the scene below, having apparently abandoned the
dance for the evening. From something in his face, and in the manner
of resuming his sword, I was certain he had come to the palace with
that single object, and would dance no more. I kept him in my eye most
of the night, and am very sure he did not. If the little romance I
wove out of it was not a true one, it was not because the material was
improbable.
As I was looking still at the quadrille dancing before the queen, Dr.
Bowring took my arm and proposed a stroll through the other
apartments. I found that the immense crowd in the _Salle des
Marechals_ was but about one fifth of the assembly. We passed through
hall after hall, with music and dancing in each, all crowded and gay
alike, till we came at last to the _Salle du Trone_ where the old men
were collected at card-tables and in groups for conversation. My
distinguished companion was of the greatest use to me here, for he
knew everybody, and there was scarce a person in the room who did not
strongly excite my curiosity. One half of them at least were maimed;
some without arms, and some with wooden legs, and faces scarred and
weather-burnt, but all in full uniform, and nearly all with three or
four orders of honor on the breast. You would have held your breath
to have heard the recapitulation of their names. At one table sat
_Marshal Grouchy_ and _General Excelmans_; in a corner stood _Marshal
Soult_, conversing with a knot of peers of France; and in the window
nearest the door, _General Bernard_, our country's friend and citizen,
was earnestly engaged in talking to a group of distinguished-looking
men, two of whom, my companion said, were members of the chamber of
deputies. We stood a moment, and a circle was immediately formed
around Dr. Bowring, who is a great favorite among the literary and
liberal people of France. The celebrated _General Fabvier_ came up
among others, and _Cousin_ the poet. Fabvier, as you know, held a
chief command in Greece, and was elected governor of Paris _pro tem._
after the "three days." He is a very remarkable-looking man, with a
head almost exactly resembling that of the bust of Socrates. The
engravings give him a more animated and warlike expression than he
wears in private. _Cousin_ is a mild, retired-looking man, and was one
of the very few persons present not in the court uniform. Among so
many hundred coats embroidered with gold, his plain black dress looked
singularly simple and poet-like.
I left the diplomatist-poet conversing with his friends, and went back
to the dancing rooms. Music and female beauty are more attractive
metal than disabled generals playing at cards; and encountering in my
way an _attache_ to the American legation, I inquired about one or two
faces that interested me, and collecting information enough to pass
through the courtesies of a dance, I found a partner and gave myself
up, like the rest, to amusement.
Supper was served at two, and a more splendid affair could not be
conceived. A long and magnificent hall on the other side of the
_Salle du Trone_ was set with tables, covered with everything that
France could afford, in the royal services of gold and silver, and in
the greatest profusion. There was room enough for all the immense
assemblage, and when the queen was seated with her daughters and
ladies of honor, the company sat down and all was as quiet and well
regulated as a dinner party of four.
After supper the dancing was resumed, and the queen remained till
three o'clock. At her departure the band played _cotillons_ or waltzes
with figures, in which the Duke of Orleans displayed the grace for
which he is celebrated, and at four, quite exhausted with fatigue and
heat, I went with a friend or two into the long glass verandah, built
by Napoleon as a promenade for the Empress Maria Louisa during her
illness, where tea, coffee, and ices were served to those who wished
them after supper. It was an interesting place enough, and had my eyes
and limbs ached less, I should have liked to walk up and down, and
muse a little upon its recollections, but swallowing my tea as hastily
as possible, I was but too happy to make my escape and get home to
bed.
LETTER XVIII.
CHOLERA--UNIVERSAL TERROR--FLIGHT OF THE INHABITANTS--CASES
WITHIN THE WALLS OF THE PALACE--DIFFICULTY OF ESCAPE--DESERTED
STREETS--CASES NOT REPORTED--DRYNESS OF THE ATMOSPHERE--
PREVENTIVES RECOMMENDED--PUBLIC BATHS, ETC.
_Cholera! Cholera!_ It is now the only topic. There is no other
interest--no other dread--no other occupation, for Paris. The
invitations for parties are _at last_ recalled--the theatres are _at
last_ shut or languishing--the fearless are beginning to be
afraid--people walk the streets with camphor bags and vinaigrettes at
their nostrils--there is a universal terror in all classes, and a
general flight of all who can afford to get away. I never saw a people
so engrossed with one single and constant thought. The waiter brought
my breakfast this morning with a pale face, and an apprehensive
question, whether I was quite well. I sent to my boot-maker yesterday,
and he was dead. I called on a friend, a Hanoverian, one of those
broad-chested, florid, immortal-looking men, of whose health for
fifty years, violence apart, one is absolutely certain, and he was at
death's door with the cholera. Poor fellow! He had fought all through
the revolution in Greece; he had slept in rain and cold, under the
open sky, many a night, through a ten years' pursuit of the profession
of a soldier of fortune, living one of the most remarkable lives,
hitherto, of which I ever heard, and to be taken down here in the
midst of ease and pleasure, reduced to a shadow with so vulgar and
unwarlike a disease as this, was quite too much for his philosophy. He
had been ill three days when I found him. He was emaciated to a
skeleton in that short time, weak and helpless, and, though he is not
a man to exaggerate suffering, he said he never had conceived such
intense agony as he had endured. He assured me, that if he recovered,
and should ever be attacked with it again, he would blow out his
brains at the first symptom. Nothing but his iron constitution
protracted the disorder. Most people who are attacked die in from
three to twenty-four hours.
For myself, I have felt and still feel quite safe. My rooms are in the
airiest quarter of Paris, facing the gardens of the Tuileries, with
windows overlooking the king's; and, as far as _air_ is concerned, if
his majesty considers himself well situated, it would be quite
ridiculous in so insignificant a person as myself to be alarmed. With
absolute health, confident spirits, and tolerably regular habits, I
have usually thought one may defy almost anything but love or a
bullet. To-day, however, there have been, they say, two cases _within
the palace-walls_, members of the royal household, and Casimir Perier,
who probably lives well and has enough to occupy his mind, is very low
with it, and one cannot help feeling that he has no certain exemption,
when a disease has touched both above and below him. I went to-day to
the Messagerie to engage my place for Marseilles, on the way to Italy,
but the seats are all taken, in both mail-post and diligence, for a
fortnight to come, and, as there are no _extras_ in France, one must
wait his turn. Having done my duty to myself by the inquiry, I shall
be content to remain quiet.
* * * * *
I have just returned from a social tea-party at a house of one of the
few English families left in Paris. It is but a little after ten, and
the streets, as I came along, were as deserted and still as if it were
a city of the dead. Usually, until four or five in the morning, the
same streets are thronged with carriages hurrying to and fro, and
always till midnight the _trottoirs_ are crowded with promenaders.
To-night I scarce met a foot-passenger, and but one solitary cabriolet
in a walk of a mile. The contrast was really impressive. The moon was
nearly full, and high in the heavens, and the sky absolutely without a
trace of a cloud; nothing interrupted the full broad light of the
moon, and the empty streets were almost as bright as at noon-day; and,
as I crossed the _Place Vendome_, I could hear, for the first time
since I have been in Paris, though I have passed it at every hour of
the night, the echo of my footsteps reverberated from the walls
around. You should have been in these crowded cities of Europe to
realize the impressive solemnity of such solitude.
It is said that fifty thousand people have left Paris within the past
week. Adding this to the thousand a day who are struck with the
cholera, and the attendance necessary to the sick, and a thinned
population is sufficiently accounted for. There are, however,
hundreds ill of this frightful disease, whose cases are not reported.
It is only those who are taken to the hospitals, the poor and
destitute, who are numbered in the official statements. The physicians
are wearied out with their _private_ practice. The medical lectures
are suspended, and a regular physician is hardly to be had at all.
There is scarce a house in which some one has not been taken. You see
biers and litters issuing from almost every gate, and the better ranks
are no longer spared. A sister of the premier, M. Perier, died
yesterday; and it was reported at the _Bourse_, that several
distinguished persons, who have been ill of it, are also dead. No one
feels safe; and the consternation and dread on every countenance you
meet, is enough to chill one's very blood. I went out to-day for a
little exercise, not feeling very well, and I was glad to get home
again. Every creature looks stricken with a mortal fear. And this
among a French population, the gayest and merriest of people under all
depressions ordinarily, is too strong a contrast not to be felt
painfully. There is something singular in the air, too; a
disagreeable, depressing dryness, which the physicians say must
change, or all Paris will be struck with the plague. It is clear and
cold, but almost suffocating with dryness.
It is very consoling in the midst of so much that is depressing, that
the preventives recommended against the cholera are so agreeable.
"Live well," say the doctors, "and bathe often. Abstain from excesses,
keep a clear head and good spirits, and amuse yourself as much and as
rationally as possible." It is a very excellent recipe for happiness,
let alone the cholera. There is great room for a nice observance of
this system in Paris, particularly the eating and bathing. The baths
are delightful. You are received in handsome saloons, opening upon a
garden in the centre of the building, ornamented with statues and
fountains, the journals lying upon the sofas, and everything arranged
with quite the luxury of a palace. The bathing-rooms are furnished
with taste; the baths are of marble, and covered inside with
spotlessly white linen cloths; the water is perfumed, and you may lie
and take your coffee, or have your breakfast served upon the mahogany
cover which shuts you in--a union of luxuries which is enough to
enervate a cynic. When you are ready to come out, a pull of the bell
brings a servant, who gives you a _peignoir_--a long linen wrapper,
heated in an oven, in the warm folds of which you are enveloped, and
in three minutes are quite dry. In this you may sit, at your ease,
reading, or musing, or lie upon the sofa without the restraint of a
tight dress, till you are ready to depart; and then four or five
francs, something less than a dollar, pays for all.
LETTER XIX.
MORNING VIEW FROM THE RUE RIVOLI--THE BOIS DE
BOULOGNE--GUICCIOLI--SISMONDI THE HISTORIAN, ETC.
It is now the middle of April, and, sitting at my window on the _Rue
Rivoli_, I look through one of the long, clipped avenues of the
Tuileries, and see an arch of green leaves, the sun of eight o'clock
in the morning just breaking through the thin foliage and dappling the
straight, even gravel-walk below, with a look of summer that makes my
heart leap. The cholera has put an end to dissipation, and one gets up
early, from necessity. It is delicious to step out before breakfast,
and cross the street into those lovely gardens, for an hour or two of
fresh air and reflection. It is warm enough now to sit on the stone
benches about the fountains, by the time the dew is dry; and I know
nothing so contemplative as the occupation of watching these royal
swans, in the dreamy, almost imperceptible motion with which they
glide around the edges of the basins. The gold fish swim up and circle
about the breast of the imperial birds with a motion almost as idle;
and the old wooden-legged soldier, who has been made warden of the
gardens for his service, sits nodding on one of the chairs, or drawing
fortifications with his stick in the gravel; and so it happens, that,
in the midst of a gay and busy city one may feel always a luxurious
solitude; and, be he ever so poor, loiter all day if he will, among
scenes which only regal munificence could provide for him. With the
_Seine_ bounding them on one side, the splendid uniform _facade_ of
the _Rue Rivoli_ on the other, the palace stretching across the
southern terrace, and the thick woods of the _Champs Elysees_ at the
opposite gate, where could one go in the world to give his taste or
his eye a more costly or delightful satisfaction?
The _Bois de Boulogne_, about which the Parisians talk so much, is
less to my taste. It is a level wood of small trees, covering a mile
or two square, and cut from corner to corner with straight roads for
driving. The soil is sandy, and the grass grows only in tufts, the
walks are rough, and either muddy or dusty always; and, barring the
equipages and the pleasure of a word in passing an acquaintance, I
find a drive to this famous wood rather a dull business. I want either
one thing or the other--cultivated grounds like the Tuileries, or the
wild wood.
* * * * *
I have just left the Countess Guiccioli, with whom I have been
acquainted for some two or three weeks. She is very much frightened at
the cholera, and thinks of going to America. The conversation turned
principally upon Shelley, whom of course she knew intimately; and she
gave me one of his letters to herself as an autograph. She says at
times he was a little crazy--"_fou_," as she expressed it--but that
there never was a nobler or a better man. Lord Byron, she says, loved
him like a brother. She is still in correspondence with Shelley's
wife, of whom also she speaks with the greatest affection. There were
several miniatures of Byron hanging up in the room, and I asked her if
any of them were perfect in the resemblance. "No," she said, "this was
the most like him," taking down an exquisitely-finished miniature by
an Italian artist, "_mais il etait beaucoup plus beau--beaucoup!
beaucoup!_" She reiterated the word with a very touching tenderness,
and continued to look at the picture for some time, either forgetting
our presence, or affecting it. She speaks English sweetly, with a
soft, slow, honeyed accent, breaking into French when ever she gets
too much interested to choose her words. She went on talking in French
of the painters who had drawn Byron, and said the American, West's was
the best likeness. I did not like to tell her that West's picture of
herself was excessively flattered. I am sure no one would know her
from the engraving of it, at least. Her cheek bones are high, her
forehead is badly shaped, and, altogether, the _frame_ of her features
is decidedly ugly. She dresses in the worst taste, too, and yet, with
all this, and poetry and celebrity aside, the Countess Guiccioli is
both a lovely and a fascinating woman, and one whom a man of sentiment
would admire, even at this age, very sincerely, but not for beauty.
She has white and regular teeth, however, and her hair is incomparably
the most beautiful I ever saw. It is of the richest and glossiest
gold, silken and luxuriant, and changes, as the light falls upon it,
with a mellow softness, than which nothing could be lovelier. It is
this and her indescribably winning manner which are lost in a picture,
and therefore, it is perhaps fair that she should be otherwise
flattered. Her drawing-room is one of the most agreeable in Paris at
present, and is one of the chief _agremens_ which console me for a
detention in an atmosphere so triste as well as dangerous.
* * * * *
My bed-room window opens upon the court in the interior of the hotel
Rivoli, in which I lodge. In looking out occasionally upon my very
near neighbors opposite, I have frequently observed a gray-headed,
scholar-like, fine-looking old man, writing at a window in the story
below. One does not trouble himself much about his fellow-lodgers, and
I had seen this gentleman at his work at all hours, for a month or
more, without curiosity enough to inquire even his name. This morning
the servant came in, with a _Mon Dieu!_ and said _M. Sismondi_ was
frightened by the cholera, and was leaving his lodgings at that
moment. The name startled me, and making some inquiries, I found that
my gray-headed neighbor was no other than the celebrated historian of
Italian literature, and that I had been living under the same roof
with him for weeks, and watching him at his classical labors, without
being at all aware of the honor of his neighborhood. He is a kind,
benevolent-looking man, of about sixty, I should think; and always had
a peculiarly affectionate manner to his wife, who, I am told by the
valet, is an Englishwoman. I regretted exceedingly the opportunity I
had lost of knowing him, for there are few writers of whom one retains
a more friendly and agreeable remembrance.
In a conversation with Mr. Cooper, the other day he was remarking of
how little consequence any one individual found himself in Paris,
even the most distinguished. We were walking in the Tuileries, and the
remark was elicited by my pointing out to him one or two celebrated
persons, whose names are sufficiently known, but who walk the public
promenades, quite unnoticed and unrecognised. He said he did not think
there were five people in Paris who knew him at sight, though his
works were advertised in all the bookstores, and he had lived in Paris
one or two years, and walked there constantly. This was putting a
strong case, for the French idolize Cooper; and the peculiarly
translateable character of his works makes them read even better in a
good translation than in the original. It is so all over the
continent, I am told. The Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, prefer
Cooper to Scott; and it is easily accounted for when one remembers how
much of the beauty of the Waverly novels depends on their exquisite
style, and how peculiarly Cooper's excellence lies in his accurate,
definite, tangible descriptions. There is not a more admired author in
Europe than Cooper, it is very certain; and I am daily asked whether
he is in America at present--so little do the people of these crowded
cities interest themselves about that which is immediately at their
elbows.
LETTER XX.