The Boulevards--Boulevard Madelaine--Boulevard des
Capucines--Boulevard Italien--Monsieur Carème--Splendid Cafés--The
Baths--Boulevard Montmartre--The Shoe-black--The Chiffonnier--The
Gratteur--The Commissionnaire--Boulevard du Temple--Scene at the
Ambigù Comique--Sir Sydney Smith--Monsieur de Paris--The Café
Turc--The Fountains--Recollections of the Bastille--The Halle aux
Blés--The Bicêtre--Boulevard du Mont Parnasse.
_Paris, July, 1835._
The main street of Paris, and one of the most remarkable streets in the
whole world, is the _Boulevard_. It runs from near the centre towards
the east, and coils around the circumference of the city. Its adjacent
houses are large, black, and irregular in height, resembling at a
distance, battlements, or turretted castles. Its course is zig-zag, and
each section has a different name, and different pursuits; so that it
presents you a new face and character, a new and picturesque scene, at
every quarter of a mile. This does not please, at first sight, an eye
formed upon our Quaker simplicity of Philadelphia, but is approved by
the general taste. Our Broadways, and Chestnut streets, and
Regent-streets, are exhausted at a single view; the Boulevard entertains
all day. Its side-walks are delightfully wide, and overshadowed with
elms.
Before the visit of the allies, it had eight miles of trees,--a kind of
ornament that is held in better esteem in European than in American
cities. Our ancestors took a dislike to trees, from having so much
grubbing at their original forests, and their enmity has been infused
into the blood. To cut down a tree is now a passion become hereditary,
and I have often spent whole days in its gratuitous indulgence. A
squatter of the back woods begins by felling the trees indiscriminately;
and he is most honoured, as those first Germans we read of in Cæsar, who
has made the widest devastation around his dwelling. Your Pottsville,
which ten years ago was a forest, has to-day not a fig-leaf to cover its
nakedness.
Here is a gentleman just going to Philadelphia, who will hand you this
letter; I send also a map of Paris, that I may have your company on
such rambles as I may chance to take through the capital. To day I
invite you to a walk upon the Boulevards.
On the west end is the Madelaine, in full view of the street. While the
other monuments of Paris are “dim with the mist of years,” this stands,
like a new-dressed bride, in white and glowing marble; its architecture
fresh from the age of Pericles. This church became pagan in the
Revolution; it was for a while the “Temple of Glory,” and has returned
to the true catholic faith. Three mornings of the week, you will find at
its feet half an acre in urns, baskets, and hedges, of all that nature
has prettiest in her magazine of flowers; delighting the eye by their
tasteful combination of colours, and embalming the air with their
fragrance. I am sorry you are not a gentleman, I could describe to you
so feelingly the flower-girl--her fichu too narrow by an inch; her frock
rumpled and disordered, which seems hung upon her by the graces. Her
laughing eyes emulate the diamond; and love has pressed his two fingers
upon her brunette cheeks. This is the _Boulevard Madelaine_. On the
south side, a sad looking garden occupies its whole length. I asked of a
Frenchman whose it was; he says “it is the Minister of Strange
Affairs.” It is the hotel of Monsieur Thiers, who wrote a book about the
Revolution and a “Treatise upon Wigs,” and is now minister _des affaires
étrangères_. I do not like him, this Mr. Thiers, and I don’t care to
tell you the reason. I experienced yesterday some impudence and pertness
from one of the clerks of his office; and these underlings you know
represent usually the qualifications of their masters in such
particulars.
To leave Paris for London requires your passport to be signed at the
police office, at the American and English ambassadors’, and at the
French minister’s. At the first office you are set down with a motley
crew upon a bench, and there you sit, like one of those virtues in front
of the “Palais Bourbon,” often an hour or two, until your name is
called; and when it is called you don’t recognise it, and you keep
sitting on, unless you take some one along with you to translate it for
you. There is not anything in nature so unlike itself as one’s name
Frenchified--even a monosyllable. As for “John,” it changes genders
altogether, and becomes “_Jean_.” To the last three offices you pay the
valedictory compliment of thirty francs, and get their impudence into
the bargain. You will always find persons about your lodgings, called
“_facteurs_,” (they should be called _benefactors_,) who will do all
this for you, for a small consideration, much better than you can do it
yourself.
You are now on the _Boulevard des Capucines_. It is raised about thirty
feet, and the houses for a quarter of a mile are left in the valley. The
garret and Miss Annette are alone above ground; all the high life here
is below stairs. On the right side, you see apparently one of the
happiest of human beings, the “_marchand des chiens_,” who sells little
dogs and parrots. “_A six francs ma caniche!_”--“_Margot à dix francs!_”
he cries, with a gentle voice, half afraid some one might hear him; he
has become attached to his animals, and feels a sorrow to part with
them. He feels as you for your chickens you have fed every day, when you
must kill them for dinner. Poor little Azor, and Zémire! Only think of
seeing them no more! He sells them a few francs cheaper, when the
purchaser is rich and likely to treat them well. The French, especially
the women, dote upon dogs beyond the example of all other nations, and
yet have the nastiest race of curs upon the earth. A dog, they say,
loves his master the more he is a vagabond, and the French in return
love their dogs the more they are shabby. What would I give for a few of
those eloquent _bow wows_ which resound in the night from an American
barn-yard, and which protect so securely one’s little wife from the
thieves and the lovers, while the husband is wandering in foreign lands.
Take off your hat; this is one of the choice and pre-eminent spots of
the French capital; the very seat almost of the pleasures and amusements
of Europe; it is the _Boulevard Italien_. It is here that gentlemen and
ladies assemble of an evening to discuss the immense importance of a
good dinner, when the labours of the day have closed, and not a care
intrudes to distract the mind from the great business of deglutition and
digestion. Men make splendid reputations here which live after them by
the invention of a single soup. It is here they make the sauces in which
one might eat his own grandfather. This place was respected by the Holy
Alliance; and Lord Wellington, in 1815, pitched his marquee upon the
Boulevard Italien.
It is in vain to expect perfection in an art unless we honour those who
exercise its functions. Monsieur Carème, (whom I mention for the sake
of honour, and who lives close by here in the Rue Lafitte,) now cook to
the Baron Rothschild and ex-cook to the Prince of Wales, is one of the
most considerable persons of this age; holding a high gentlemanly rank,
and living in an enviable condition of opulence and splendour. He keeps
his carriage, takes his airings of an evening, has his country seat, and
his box at the opera; and has, indeed, every attribute requisite to make
a gentleman in any country. The number of officers attached to his staff
is greater than that of any general of the present _régime_; his
assistant roaster has a salary above our President of the United States.
It is by this honourable recompence of merit that, through all the
vicissitudes of her various fortunes, France has still maintained
unimpaired her great prerogative of teaching the nations how to cook.
Monsieur de Carème is worthy a particular notice. He had an ancestor who
was “chef de cuisine,” of the Vatican, and invented a _soupe maigre_ for
his Holiness; and another who was cook to the Autocratrix of all the
Russias. How talents do run in some families! Himself, having served his
apprenticeship under an eminent artist of the Boulevard Italien, he
invented a _sauce piquante_, when quite a young man; and by a regular
cultivation of his fine natural powers, he has reached a degree of
perfection in his art which has long since set envy and rivalship at
defiance. The truth is, that a great cook is as rare a miracle as a
great poet. It is well known that Claude Lorraine could not succeed in
pastry with all his genius.
“Et Balzac et Malherbe si fameux en bon mots,
En cuisine peut-être n’aurait été que des sots.”
To whom, think you, does the British nation owe those Attic suppers,
those feasts of the gods, which so surprised the Allied Monarchs, and
brought so much glory upon his late majesty? To Monsieur de Carème. And
to whom do you think the Baron Rothschild owes those clear and unclouded
faculties with which he out-financiers all Europe and America? Certes,
to Monsieur de Carème. All the Baron has to do is to dine; digestion is
done by his cook. Carème has refused invitations to nearly every
European court; and it was only upon the most urgent solicitations that
he consented to reside eight months at Carlton House,--a portion of his
life upon which he looks back with much displeasure and repentance, and
the remnant of his days he designs to consecrate, with the greater zeal
on this account, to the honour and interests of his native country. He
is now preparing a digest of his art, after the manner of the Code
Napoleon; and eminent critics, to whom he has communicated his work,
pronounce it excellent, both for its literary and culinary merits.
To this Boulevard also the sweetmeat part of the creation resort about
twilight to their creams and lemonades and _eau sucrée_. They seat
themselves upon both margins of the _trottoir_ upon chairs, leaving an
interval between, for the successive waves of pedestrians, who are also
attracted hither by the fashion and elegance of the place. How charming,
of a summer evening, to sit you down here upon one chair and put your
feet upon another, and look whole hours away upon this little world; or
to walk up and down and eye the double row of belles seated amidst the
splendour of the gas-lamps. In this group are examples of nearly all
that is extant of the human species. I have seen a Bedouin of the _Mer
Rouge_ stumble upon a great ambassador from the Neva; and a Mandarin of
the Loo-koo run foul of an ex-school-master of the Mohontongo. If any
one is missing from your mines of Shamoken, come hither, and you will
find him seated on a straw-bottomed chair on the Boulevard Italien.
These splendid cafés are multiplied by mirrors, and being open, or
separated only by panels of glass, appear to form but a single tableau
with the street, and those outside and in seem parts of the same
company. I recommend you the _Café de Paris_, the _Café Hardi_, the
_Café Veron_, if you wish to mix with the fashionable and merry world;
if with the business world, with the great bankers, the millionaires,
the _noblesse de la Bourse_, who smooth their cares with fat dinners and
good wines, where else in the world should you go but to _Tortoni’s_?
There are not two Tortonis upon the earth. A dinner you may get at the
_Rocher Cancale_,--but a breakfast!--it is to be had no where in all
Europe out of Tortoni’s. The ladies of high and fashionable life stop
here before the door, and are served by liveried waiters elegantly in
their barouches; they cannot think of venturing in, there are so many
more gentlemen outside. You will see here, both in and out, the most
egregious cockneys of Europe, the beau Brummels and the beau Nashes,
the “Flashes,” and “Full-Swells” of London town, and, in elegant
apposition, the Parisian exquisites.
Was there ever anything so beautiful!--No, _d’honneur_! His boots are of
Evrat, his coat Staub, vest Moreau, gloves and cravat Walker, and hat
Bandoni; and Mrs. Frederic is his washerwoman! You will please give the
superiority to the French. To make an elegant fop is more than the
barber’s business; nature herself must have a finger in the composition.
Besides, if a man is born a fool, he is a greater fool in Paris than
elsewhere, there are such opportunities for acquirement.
These are the French people. Don’t you hate to see so many ninnies in
mustachios? If I had not the great Marlborough, and Bonaparte, and
Apollo, on my side, all three unwhiskered, I would go home in the next
packet. The moment one has made one’s debut here in the world of beards,
one is a man, and there is no manhood, founded on any other pretensions,
that can dispense with this main qualification. It is the one eminent
criterion of all merit; it is a diploma; a bill of credit as current as
in the days Albuquerque; it is promotion in the army, in the diplomacy,
even in the church; you cannot be a saint without this grisly
recommendation. One loves the women, just because they have no beards
on their faces.
Otherwise--_à la barbe près_--the French are well enough. It is the same
kind of population, nearly, that one meets by the gross in New York, and
everywhere else. I looked about for Monsieur Dablancour, but could see
nothing of him. In a foreign country a man is always a caricature of
himself. The French are here in their own element, and swim in it
naturally. One is always awkward from the very sense of not knowing
foreign customs; and always ridiculous abroad because everything is
ridiculous which departs from common and inveterate habit, and nothing
is ridiculous which conforms with it. In a nation of apes, it is
becoming to be an ape. If you place a man of sense in a company of
fools, it is the man of sense who is embarrassed and looks foolish. If
one travelled into Timbuctoo, I presume one would feel very foolish for
being white.
But this is not all that is worth your attention on the Boulevard
Italien. If you love baths of oriental luxury, here are the _Bains
Chinoises_ just opposite. Personal cleanliness is the French virtue _par
excellence_. Bathing in other countries is a luxury, in France a
necessity. Hot baths as good as yours at Swaim’s are at fifteen sous.
The _Bains Vigiers_ at twenty sous a bath made their proprietor a count.
You can have baths here simple and compound, inodorous and aromatic,
with cold or warm, or clarified or Seine water; and you have them with
naked floors and ungarnished walls, and with all the luxury of tapestry
and lounges; baths double and single, with and without attendance, with
a whole skin, or flayed alive with friction. And besides these baths
ordinary and extraordinary--Russian, Turkish, and Chinese--you have
baths specific against all human infirmities; baths alkalic, sulphurous,
fumigatory, oleaginous, and antiphlogistic. All the mineral waters of
Europe pour themselves at your feet in the middle of Paris. Spa,
Seltzer, Barege, Aix-la-chapelle, and Ginsnack; manufactured, every one
of them, in the street of the University, _Gros Caillou_, No. 21. And
this is not all; there is the “ambulatory bath,” which walks to your
bedside, and, embracing you, walks out again, at thirty sous. “_C’est un
vrai pays de Cocagne que ce Paris._”
And if you love gew-gaws, gingumbobs, and pretty shop-girls, why here
they are at the Bazaar. The French take care, as no other people, to
furnish such places with pretty women, and they turn their influence, as
women, to the account of the shop. The English, I have heard, put all
their deformities into their bazaars, that customers, they say, may
attend to the other merchandise. The French way is the more sensible. I
have been ruined already several times by the same shop-girl, caressing
and caressing each of one’s fingers, as she tries on a pair of gloves
one does not want.
Or if you love the fine arts, where are all the print-shops of Paris?
Why here. You can buy here Calypsos and Cleopatras all naked, with
little French faces; and Scipios and Cæsars, and other marshals of the
empire, from any price down to three sous a piece. Finally, if you love
the best _patés_ in this world, we will just step over into the Passage
Panorama to Madame Felix’s. Sweet Passage Panorama! How often have I
walked up and down beneath thy crystal roof as the dusky evening came
on, with arms folded, and in the narcotic influence of a choice
Havannah, forgotten all, all but that a yawning gulf lies between me and
my friends and native country!
Give a sou to this little Savoyard with the smiling face, who sweeps the
crossings. “_Ah, Madame, regardez dans votre petite poche si vous
n’avez pas un petit sou à me donner!_” How can you refuse him! If you
do, he will make you just the same thankful bow, in the best forms of
French courtesy.
We are now on the _Boulevard Montmartre_. Here are cashmeres and silks
from Arabia; merinos _veritable barbe de Pacha_, chalys, _mousseline
Thibet_, Pondicherry, _unis et broché_, and pocket handkerchiefs at two
sous. Ah, come along! And here are six pairs of ladies’ legs, shewing at
the window the silk stockings. How gracefully gartered! And from above,
how the white curtain falls down modestly in front almost to the knee.
Don’t be in such a hurry! they are twice as natural as living legs! And
here are dolls brevetted by the king, and milliners _à prix fixe_, at a
fixed price; and here is M. Dutosq, _fabricant de sac en papier_,
manufacturer of little paper-bags-to-put-sugar-in to his majesty; and
Madame Raggi, who lets out Venuses and other goddesses to the
drawing-schools, at two sous an hour. And look at this shop of women’s
ready-made articles. Here one can be dressed cap-à-pie for four francs
and eleven centimes (three quarters of a dollar), frock, petticoat,
fichu, bonnet, stockings and chemise! A student, also, can buy here a
library in the street from a quarter of a mile of books, at six sous a
volume. I have just bought Rousseau in calf, octavo, at ten sous!
Since the last Revolution, commerce has taken a new spirit; the
_bourgeois_ blood has got uppermost. The greatest barons now are the
Rothschilds, and the greatest ministers the Lafittes. The style, too,
has risen to the level of the new bureau-cratic nobility. The shopkeeper
of these times is at your service, a _commerçant_, his “boutique” is a
_magazin_, his “contoir” his _bureau_, and his “pratique” his
_clientelle_. Even the signs, as you see, speak a magnificent language.
It is the “_Magazin du Doge de Venise_,” or “_Magazin du Zodiaque--des
Vépres Siciliennes_,” or “_Grand Magazin de Nouveauté_.” And if the Doge
of Venice is “selling out cheap,” the language is of course worthy of a
Doge--it is “_au rabais par cessation de commerce_.” The Bourse is now a
monument of the capital, and disputes rank with the Louvre. The “_petit
Marquis_” is the banker’s son, and the marshals of the empire are sold
“second hand” in the frippery market. I intended to write you in
English, but the French creeps on in spite of me.
This is one of the prettiest of the Boulevards, and you will see here a
great many fine women _en promenade_ of a morning about twelve. When a
French lady walks out, she always takes on one side her _caniche_ by a
string, and at the other, sometimes, her beau without a string. In
either way she monopolizes the whole street, and you are continually
getting between her and the puppy, very much to your inconvenience; for
if you offend the dog the mistress is, of course, implacable, and you
will very likely have to meet her gallant in the Forest of Bondy the
next morning. But you can turn this evil sometimes to advantage. If you
see, for instance, a pretty woman alone, with her curly companion, you
can just walk on, “commercing with the skies” till the lady gets one
side of you and the dog the other; this will give you the opportunity of
begging her pardon, of patting and stroking the dog a little,--it may
break the ice towards an acquaintance, or, if the place be convenient to
fall, you had better let her trip you up, and then she will be very
sorry. If you think it is a little thing to get a pretty woman’s pity on
your side, you are very much mistaken.
Let me introduce you to this shoe-black. He has, as you see, a little
box, a brush or two in it, and blacking, and a fixture on the top for a
foot; this is his _fond de boutique_, his stock in trade. He brushes off
the mud to the soles of your feet, and shews you your own features in
your boots for three sous. This one has just dissolved an ancient firm;
and his advertisement, which he calls a “prospectus,” standing here so
prim upon a board, announces the event. The partnership is dissolved,
but the whole “_personnel_,” he says, of the establishment remains with
the present proprietor; and M. Badaraque, ex-partner, has also the
honour to inform us, that he has transported the “_appareil de son
établissement_” to the “_Place de la Bourse, une des plus jolies
locations de la ville_.” The “_Decrotteur en chef_” at the Palais Royal,
and other places of fashion, has his assistants, and serves a dozen or
two of customers at a time. He has a shop furnished with cloth-covered
benches in amphitheatre, as at the Chamber of Deputies, with a long
horizontal iron support for the foot, and pictures are hung around the
walls. “_On dit, monsieur, que c’est d’après Teniers--celui, monsieur?
c’est d’après Vandyke._” And there are newspapers and reviews; so that
to polish a gentleman’s boots and his understanding are parts of the
same process.
There is a variety of other little trades and industries, which derive
their chief means of life from the wants and luxuries of this street,
which I may as well call to your notice _en passant_: I mean trades that
are “_tout Parisiennies_”; that is to say, unknown in any other country
than Paris. You will see an individual moving about, at all hours of the
night, silent and active, and seeing the smallest bit of paper in the
dark where you can see nothing, and, with a hook in the end of a stick,
picking it up, and pitching it with amazing dexterity into a basket tied
to his left shoulder; with a cat-like walk, being everywhere and nowhere
at the same time, stirring up the rubbish of every nook and gutter of
the street, under your very nose--this is the _chiffonnier_. He is a
very important individual. He is in matter what Pythogoras was in mind;
and his transformations are scarcely less curious than those of the
Samian sage.
The beau, by his pains, peruses once again his dicky, or cravat, of a
morning, in the “_Magazin des Modes_,” whilst the politician has his
breeches reproduced in the “_Journal des Debats_;” and many a fine lady
pours out her soul upon a _billet-doux_ that once was the dishclout. The
_chiffonnier_ stands at the head of the little trades, and is looked up
to with envy by the others. He has two coats, and wears on holidays a
chain and quizzing-glass, and washes his hands with _pâte d’amand_. He
rises, too, like the Paris gentry, when the chickens roost; and when the
lark cheers the morning, goes to bed. All the city is divided into
districts, and let out to these _chiffonniers_ by the hour; to one, from
ten to eleven, and from eleven to twelve to another, and so on through
the night; so that several get a living and consideration from the same
district. This individual does justice to the literary compositions of
the day; he crams into his _chiffonnerie_ indiscriminately the last
Vaudeville, the last sermon of the Archbishop, and the last _éloge_ of
the Academy.
Just below him is the _Gratteur_. This artist scratches the live-long
day between the stones of the pavement for old nails from horses’ shoes,
and other bits of iron--always in hopes of a bit of silver, and even,
perhaps, a bit of gold; more happy in his hope than a hundred others in
the possession. He has a store in the Faubourgs, where he deposits his
ferruginous treasure. His wife keeps this store, and is a “_Marchande de
Fer_.” He maintains a family, like another man; one or two of his sons
he brings up to scratch for a living, and the other he sends to
college; and he has a lot “in perpetuity” in Père la Chaise. His rank
is, however, inferior to the _Chiffonnier_, who will not give him his
daughter in marriage, and he don’t ask him to his _soirées_.
In all places of much resort you will see an individual,
broad-shouldered and whiskered, looking very affable and officious,
especially upon strangers, mostly about grocer-stores and street
corners. Let me introduce you to him, also. He wants to carry your
letters, and run errands for you from one end of Paris to the other. He
will carry, also, your wood to your room, a _billet-doux_ to your
mistress, and your boots to the cobbler’s, and, for a modest
compensation, perform any service that one person may require of
another; also, as you see, a very important individual. Indeed, he holds
amongst men nearly the same place that Mercury holds amongst the gods.
About his neck he wears a brass medal, polished bright as honour--at
once his badge of office and pledge of fidelity. If you seem to doubt
his honesty, he points to his medal, and holds up his head; that’s
enough. If only the Peers could point to their decorations with the same
confidence! For instance, if you walk out in the bright day, not being a
Parisian, you are of course overtaken by the rain; for a Paris sunshine
and shower are as close together as a babe’s smiles and tears; and then
you just step into a “_Cabinet de lecture_,” and you have not read half
the worth of your sou, when your coat has embraced you, and your
umbrella is between you and the merciless heavens. This is the
_commissionnaire_. I should have noticed among the little industries the
“Broker of theatrical pleasures;” he sells the pass A, who retires
early, to B, who goes in late; and the _Clacqueur_, who for two or three
francs a night applauds or hisses the new plays. But we must get on with
our journey.
Here on the _Boulevard Poissonnière_, or near it, resides Mr. ----, of
New Jersey; he has been sent over (hapless errand!) to convert these
French people to Christianity. He is a very clever man; and we will ask
if he is yet alive. The journals of this morning say three or four
missionaries have been eat up by the Sumatras.
This is the famous Arch of Triumph of the Porte St. Denis. It
compliments Louis XIV. on his passage of the Rhine in 1672, and is the
counterpart of the Napoleon Arch at the Barrière de l’Etoile. It is
seventy-two feet high, and has at each side an obelisk, supported by a
lion, and decorated with trophies. That fat Dutch woman at the left base
stands for Holland; and that vigorous, muscular-looking man on the
right, is deputy to the Rhine; and that overhead on horseback, is great
“baby Louis.”
We have now left the fashionable world at our heels--this is the
_Boulevard du Temple_. This Boulevard, a few years ago, was a delightful
and romantic walk of an evening; but noise and business have now
violated all the secret retreats of Paris, one after another, and there
is no spot left of the great capital in which you can hear your own
voice. There were here, before the Revolution, five theatres; and the
lists of fame are crowded with the theatrical celebrities which drew the
homage of the whole city to this street. This is the only spot in the
world that has furnished clowns for posterity; Baron and Le Kain are
hardly more fresh in the memory of man than Galimafré and Bobèche. This
was the theatre of their triumphs. It was here, too, that the world came
to see a living skeleton of eight pounds, and his wife of eight
hundred,--that men, to the great astonishment of our ancestors,
swallowed carving knives and boiling oil,--that turkeys danced
quadrilles, and fleas drove their coaches and six; and it was here that
Mademoiselle Rose stood on her head on a candlestick. There are yet six
theatres here; but the street once so adorned with gardens, and
equipages, and fashionable ladies, and an infinity of other attractions,
is now, alas! built up with gaunt houses, and differs scarcely from the
other Boulevards.
The simplicity of original manners is, however, wonderfully preserved in
this district. The more fashionable parts are so filled with
strangers--with parasite plants, that you can scarcely distinguish the
indigenous population. This is the true classical and traditional
district--the only place in which you can find unadulterated Frenchmen.
The inhabitant of this quarter has rather more than a French share of
_embonpoint_, and aims at dignity, and his whiskers leave a part of his
chin uncovered; his clothes are large and fine in texture; he carries an
umbrella, and, on _fête_ days, a cane, to give him an important air and
keep off the dogs. If it rains, he takes a fiacre; he keeps by him his
certificate of marriage and “_extrait de batême_,” and has not got over
the prejudice of being born in lawful wedlock. His wife is pretty, but
not handsome; her features are regular, and face plump--indeed, she is
plump all over. He loves his wife by instinct. She keeps his books, and
he asks her advice in all his business; she suckles his children, and
gives him _tisane_ when he is sick.
I saw this individual and his wife together a few evenings ago at the
_Ambigù Comique_. I sometimes go to this theatre, and the _Gaité_ and
the _Cirque Olympique_. A vicious student was tempted every now and then
to pinch Madame behind. She bore it impatiently, indeed, but silently,
for some time. “_Qu’est-ce que tu as?_--_Qu’as tu donc, ma femme?_” At
last she communicated to her husband the fact. He immediately grew a
foot taller upon his seat; and then he looked at the young man from head
to foot with one of those looks which mean so much more than words. Not
wishing, however, to disturb the play, he contained himself, only
riggling on his seat, and eyeing him occasionally, to the end of the
act; and then he got up. “_Quoi, monsieur_,” said he, “_vous avez
l’impertinence de pincer les fesses de madame?_” and then thrusting his
tongue into the lower lip, he put on an expression, such as you will
never meet outside the Boulevard du Temple. You would go a mile any time
barefooted to see it. “I would have you to know, sir, that I am a
_rentier_, (a freeholder) _que je paye rente à la ville de Paris_; that
I am called Grigou, monsieur; and that I live in the Rue d’Angouleme,
No. 22;” and he sat down. The little wife now tried to appease him,
which made him the more pugnacious; she reminded him he was the father
of a family, had children, and, finally, that he had a wife; and then
she sat up close by him, and then she came over to the other side, just
in front of me, for security.--The bourgeois of this district lives in a
larger house than he could get for the same rent in any other part of
Paris; he is usually independent in his circumstances, and has a certain
_à plomb_, or confidence in himself, and a liberty in all his movements,
which give a full relief to his natural feelings and traits of
character.
Some distance towards the right, you will find the great market of
frippery--one of the curiosities of this district. Every old thing upon
the earth is sold there for new. There are 1800 shops. Nothing was ever
so restored from raggedness to apparent green youth and integrity as an
old coat in the hands of these Israelites, unless it be the conscience
of those who sell. A garment that has served at least two generations,
and been worn last by a beggar, you will buy in this market for new in
spite of your teeth. It is a good study of human nature to see here how
far the human face may be modified by its pursuits and meditations.
This building in the _Rue du Temple_, with the superb portico and Ionic
columns, and two colossal statues in front, is one of great historical
importance; and ladies who love knights would not pardon me for passing
it unnoticed. The ancient edifice was built seven hundred years ago, and
was occupied by one of the most powerful orders of Christianity--the
Knights Templars. Here it was that Philip le Bel tortured and burnt
alive these soldier monks, seizing their treasures, and bestowing their
other possessions upon his new favourites, the Knights of Malta. Who has
not heard of the war-cry of _Beauseant_, which chilled the blood of the
Saracens on the plains of Syria, and has since made many a woman tremble
in her slippers at midnight? This was his lodging. Heavens! how wide you
open your eyes!--yes, here lodged the Knights of the Red Cross, and
Richard Cœur de Lion used to put up in this temple in going to the Holy
Land. It became national property in the Revolution, and was given at
the Restoration (1814) to the _Princesse de Condé_, who established the
present “Convent of the Temple.” The ladies who now occupy it are called
the _Dames Benedictines_, and, like the other nuns, of whom there are at
present more than twenty orders in France, they devote themselves to
education, and other benevolent employments.
It was in this old building that Louis XVI. and his queen were
imprisoned in 1792. The king was taken out from here the 20th of
January, 1793, to the scaffold; the queen about eleven months after; and
Madame Elizabeth, his sister, in the following year; leaving his
daughter here alone at thirteen years of age. Sir Sydney Smith was
confined in the same room in 1798. Bonaparte, in 1811, demolished the
old edifice to the last stone--from what motive?--and in 1812 it was
fenced round, and the grass grew upon the guilty place. The religious
ladies who now reside here, are purifying it by prayers and other acts
of devotion. _A propos_ of Sydney Smith; I met him at an evening party
lately. He looks like the history of the last half century. He is a
venerable old man, and very sociable with the young girls, who were
climbing his knees, and hanging about his neck, and getting his name
_albummed_ in their little books to carry to America.
I will now shew you a house in this street, (_Rue des Marais du Temple_,
No. 31,) a house that, once seen, will never depart from your memory.
Its closed doors and windows, as if no one lived there; its iron
railing, without entrance, and the interstices condemned with wood, in
front; and the slit in the centre of the door to receive the
correspondence of its horrible master, who sits within as a spider in
its web, you will see all the rest of your life. It is the house of
MONSIEUR de Paris. Oh, dear! and who is Monsieur de Paris? He is a civil
magistrate, and belongs to the executive department. No one living, is
perhaps, so great a terror to evil doers as this Monsieur de Paris.
“_Monsieur_,” you must recollect, has its particular and its general
meanings. _Monsieur_ means any body; _un_ monsieur is a gentleman of
some breeding and education; _La maison de_ monsieur is the family of
the king’s eldest son; Monsieur _de Meaux_ means the Archbishop; and
Monsieur _de Paris_ means the Hangman! He is also called the “_Executeur
de la haute justice_,” or “_Executeur des hautes œuvres_,” and vulgarly,
the _Bourreau_. This is his Hotel. The name of the present incumbent is
Mr. Henry Sanson. His family consists of a son, a person of mild and
gentle manners, who is now serving his apprenticeship to the business
under his eminent parent; and two daughters. The elder, about fifteen,
is remarkable for beauty and accomplishments. The father is rich, his
salary being above that of the President of the Royal Court, and he has
spared no expense in the education of the girls. They will be
sumptuously endowed.
The two ends of society are affected sometimes in nearly the same way. A
princess, being obliged to select her husband from her own rank and
religion, runs the hazard of a perpetual virginity; and _Mademoiselle de
Paris_ experiences exactly the same inconvenience; she can marry but a
hangman. There is no one of all Europe who has performed the same
eminent functions as Mr. Henry Sanson, or to whom, without loss of
dignity, he can offer the hand of his fair daughter. Ye lords and
gentlemen, if you think you have all the pride to yourselves, you are
mistaken, the hangman has his share, like another man.
Mr. Sanson has appropriated one or two rooms of this building to a
museum of ancient instruments used in judicial torture--Luke’s iron
bed, Ravaillac’s boots, and such like relics; and is quite a
_dilettanti_ in this department of science. We expect a course of
gratuitous lectures, as at the “_Musée des Arts et Metiers_,” when the
season begins. Amongst other objects, you will see the sword with which
was beheaded the _Marquis de Laly_. I am going to tell you an anecdote I
have read of this too famous execution, which is curious.
About the year 1750, in the middle of the night, three young men of the
high class of nobility, after breaking windows, and the heads of street
passengers, and beating the guard, (which was the privilege of the
higher classes in those times,) strolling down the _Faubourg St.
Martin_, laughing and talking, and well fuddled with champagne, arrived
at the door of this house. They heard the sound of instruments, and
music so lively, seemed to indicate a hearty bourgeois dance. How
fortunate! they could now pass the night pleasantly. One of them
knocked, and a polite well-dressed person opened. A young lord explained
the motive of their visit, and was refused. “You are wrong,” said the
nobleman; “we are of the court, and do you honour in sharing your
amusements.” “I am obliged, nevertheless, to refuse,” replied the
stranger; “neither of you know the person you are addressing, or you
would be as anxious to withdraw, as now to be admitted.” “Excellent,
upon honour! and who the devil are you?” “The executioner of Paris.”
“Ha, ha! what you? you the gentleman who breaks limbs, cuts off heads,
and tortures poor devils so agreeably?” “Such indeed are the duties of
my office; I leave, however, the details you speak of to my deputies,
and it is only when a lord like either of you is subject to the
penalties of the law, that I do execution on him with my own hands.” The
individual who held this dialogue with the executioner was the Marquis
de Laly. Twenty years after, he died by the hands of this man, upon
whose office he was now exercising his raillery.
One of the ornaments of this Boulevard is the _Café Turc_, fitted up
with a furniture of two hundred thousand francs. It would do honour to
the Italien. What a display of belles and beaux, about seven of an
evening, through its spacious rooms, and gardens, and galleries!--one
lends his ear to the concert; another, retired in a grotto at the side
of his _bonne amie_, drinks large draughts of love; and another drinks
_eau sucrée_. And here is the largest elephant upon the earth, which
bears the same relation to all other elephants that the Trojan horse did
to all other horses. This monster was to be cast in bronze, and
surmounted by a tower, forming a figure of about eighty feet in height.
That which you see here is only the model, in plaster of Paris. The
stair-way leads up through one of the legs, six and a quarter feet in
the ancle. There were to be twenty-four _bas reliefs_ in marble,
representing the arts and sciences; and the bronze was to be obtained
from the fusion of the cannon captured by the imperial army in Spain.
Louis Philippe, who is charged with the public works begun by Bonaparte,
will be puzzled to finish this elephant.
Paris contains one hundred and eighty-nine great fountains, of which,
about twenty are of beautiful architecture, adorned with sculpture and
statuary, and enlivened by _jets d’eaux_, and form a principal ornament
of the city. This elephant was intended to add one to the number. That,
so imposing and picturesque, which we just now passed, on the Boulevard
du Temple, is called the _Chateau_. The building with the jet on the top
forms a cone. The water falls from its summit into vases, which overflow
in cascades that tumble down from story to story into a large basin at
the base, where eight lions of bronze spout torrents in _jets d’eaux_
from their mouths. Its cost was one hundred thousand francs.
It would be too long to particularise the others. On one, you will see
Leda caressing her swan, Cupid lurking on the watch; on another,
Tantalus gaping in vain for the liquid, which passes by his lips into
the pail of the waterman; on another, Hygeia giving drink to a fatigued
soldier; and, on another, Charity suckling one of her children, wrapping
another from the cold in the folds of her frock, and quenching the
parched lips of a third with the pure stream. I have just bought you a
clock representing the “Fountain of the Innocents,” with all its waters
in motion. It was the Duchess de Berri’s, and is of delicate
workmanship. Please to have the proper respect for its dignity, and
indulgence for its frailty. I will send it by the next Packet.
The turning of wickets, the gingling of keys, and grating of bolts, were
the sounds heard here forty-six years ago. What recollections rise out
of the ground to meet you at every step as you tread upon this
unhallowed spot. One hears almost the chains clank, and the prisoner
groan in his cell! It was here, where the charcoal now floats so
peacefully on the lake, and where the boatman sings his absent mistress
so joyously, that stood, in horrid majesty--
“With many a foul and midnight murder fed,”
the “high altar and castle of Despotism,” the _Bastille_! Where are now
the damp and secret cells, the sombre corridors, and the grim
countenances of the gaolers, and where the mob of 1789, and the mad
passions that levelled its towers and battlements? Quiet as the Seine
that sleeps upon its dungeons! The present substitutes for the Bastille
are, the Depôt at the Prefecture of Police; _St. Pelagie_ for state
crimes, and _La Force_ for civil; the _Conciergerie_ for those awaiting
trial, and the _Salpetrière_ for those awaiting the execution of their
sentence.
Bonaparte has built here an immense granary, containing always corn
enough for the consumption of the capital for two months. This, with the
_Halle aux blés_ in the centre of the city, supplies the whole
population. Paris has six hundred bakers, who are obliged to keep always
in this granary one hundred thousand sacks of flour, worth thirty
shillings sterling per sack; and therefore it is called the _Grenier de
Reserve_. Here lived the witty and profligate Beaumarchais; his castle
is rased; all but Figaro are dead. You have in sight the Hospital of the
Quinze-vingts, which contains three hundred blind, who have twenty-four
sous a day each for a living, with the produce of their industry, which
is wonderfully ingenious. Now we have passed the Garden of Plants, and
the Bridge of Austerlitz. For this latter favour we owe something to the
Russians, who saved this bridge from its bad name and Blucher’s
gunpowder.
That upon the hill is the _Salpetrière_, the Insane Hospital for women.
What a huge pile! One to put the sane ones in would not be half the
size. This front on the boulevard is six hundred feet. The building in
the rear is of similar dimensions, and the _Rotonde_ between, with the
octagon dome, is the chapel. It contains now four thousand five hundred
poor, aged above seventy; one thousand five hundred crazy; all women. I
went in on Sunday. What immense conversation! There is a similar
institution for the other sex, called the _Bicêtre_. Paris has twenty
hospitals, affording thirty thousand beds, and classed by the several
diseases and infirmities. It has no poor-houses, but each of its twelve
_arrondissements_, or municipal divisions, has a “_Bureau de
Bienfaisance_,” which distributes provisions to the indigent, and
provides labour for the idle; and there is a plenty of benevolent
societies, with specific objects. Nor do they want customers, for the
number of paupers are near fifty thousand. I forgot to tell you there is
a hospital here (_the Hospice des Ménages_) for widowers. What an object
of charity is a man without a wife! They have made, however, the terms
hard; one has to stay married twenty years to be admitted. The
institution is under the care of the sisters of Charity.
This of _Val de Grace_ is for the military, and that of the _Rue
d’Enfer_ for the foundlings; not an unnatural association, but
emblematic of the two chief concerns of the capital--killing off the
people by war, and making up the loss by adultery. And this is the Rue
St. Jaques, one of the classical streets of the city. The great rogues
pay their last visit to this end of it, and the great men to the other:
if you kill ten thousand of your fellow creatures you go to the Pantheon
at the west end, if one only, you come here to the Place St. Jaques, now
the seat of the guillotine and the public executions. At length we are
on the _Boulevard du Mont Parnasse_, at the end of our journey. Yet
could you not get a drop of helicon here, though perishing with thirst.
All one can offer you is a little sour Burgundy, which is cheaper than
inside the wall. This is the reason why you see all this rabble, five
hundred at a view, carousing and dancing in their sabots, drinking and
caressing, tour-à-tour, the necks of their bottles and their belles; it
is the reason why thousands are crowding here to drink who are not dry,
and Paris is losing daily her sober reputation, and learning to get
drunk like her neighbours.
The bad system of the ports, is in France transferred to all the petty
towns. A couple of sergeants, musketted and whiskered, walk with grim
dignity at each side of the gates. They stop and examine all vehicles,
public and private, and all such persons as carry in provisions to the
market, forcing them to pay an _octroi_, or duty, to the city of Paris,
which prevents those rogues, the poor people, from getting a dinner
untaxed. They even stop sometimes the foot passengers; especially those
notorious smugglers, the women. If any one chance to be half gone, she
is not allowed to go any farther, unless she produce a certificate from
the parish priest, or some equally good authority. Quantities of lace
and silks have passed in under such pretexts. The best commentary I know
upon the wisdom of this policy is the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse.
When Paris was surrounded by this wall, fifty years ago, the people
murmured and made a riot, and hung up several of the ring-leaders, on
the same principles of law recently laid down by our chief justice
Lynch. They entered suits, too, against the city, to put her in the
Bastille; but a compromise ended the strife, and the wall was built.
Here is a line from an old book relating to these times--
“Les murs murant Paris rendent Paris murmurant.”
I could not think of descending from Parnassus without a line of
poetry.