The Palais Royal--French courtesy--Rue Vivienne--Pleasures of
walking in the streets--Cafés in the Palais Royal--Mille
Colonnes--Véry’s--French dinners--Past History of the Palais
Royal--Galerie d’Orleans--Gambling--The unhappy Colton--Hells of
the Palais Royal--Prince Puckler Muskau--Lord Brougham--The King
and Queen.
_Paris, July, 1835._
You wish to see the _Palais Royal_? Then you must step from the
Boulevard Italien a quarter of a mile to the south-west. If you hate
Philadelphia sameness and symmetry, you will be gratified here to your
heart’s content. In Paris there are ten hundred and eighty streets,
besides lanes and alleys, all recommending themselves by the most
charming irregularities. That which you will now pass through, the “_Rue
Vivienne_,” is among the most bustling; it is a leading avenue, is alive
with business, and has pretensions far above its capacity. I must tell
you a word about the etiquette of these streets before you set out.
If a lady meets a gentleman upon the little side walk, which French
courtesy calls a “_trottoir_,” it is the lady always who _trots_ into
the mud. The French women seem used to this submission, and yield to it
instinctively; and, indeed, all who feel their weakness, as children and
old men, being subject to the same necessity, shew the same resignation.
Also, if a number of gentlemen are coteried, even across the broad walk
of the Boulevards, the lady walks round, not to incommode them; and it
is not expected of a French gentleman in a public place or vehicle that
he should give his seat to any one, of whatever age, sex, or condition,
or that he should deviate from his straight line on the street for
anything less than an omnibus. The French have been a polite people, and
they continue to trade on the credit of their ancestors. What is curious
to observe, is the complaisance with which human nature follows a
general example. A Russian wife, when the husband neglects to beat her
for a month or two, is alarmed at his indifference, and I have remarked
that the French women are the warmest defenders of this French
incivility.
Recollect, that as soon as you put your little foot upon this _Rue
Vivienne_, fifty waggons, a wedding coach, and three funerals, with I
don’t know how many _malle-postes_, cabs, _coucous_, and bell-eared
diligences--all but the _fiacres_, with their gaunt and fleshless
horses, which plead inability--will set themselves to run over you,
without the smallest respect for your Greek nose, your inky brows, and
black eyes. The danger is imminent, and it won’t do to have your two
feet in one sock. I have written home to your mother, to have prayers
performed in the churches for women’s husbands sojourning in Paris. And
by escaping from one danger, you are sure to run full butt against
another. Scylla and Charybdis, too, are so close together, that the
“prudent middle” is precisely the course that no prudent lady will think
of pursuing. To make it worse, the natives will have not the least
sympathy in your dangers; they have been used to get run over themselves
from time immemorial, and when we staring Yankees come over to see the
“Tooleries and the Penny Royal,” they are not aware that any allowance
is to be made for our ignorance. Besides, the driver knows a stranger as
far as he can see him, and takes aim accordingly; he gets twenty-five
francs for his body at the Morgue. It is known, that secret companies
for “running over people” exist all over Paris, and that the drivers are
the principal stockholders. The truth is, that it is reckoned amongst
the natural deaths of the place, and two hundred and fifty are marked
upon the bills of the last year. Under the old _régime_, when the
nobility put out a greater train of vehicles, and had a kind of monopoly
of running over the common people, I have heard it was still worse.
Then, if any one walked about the streets unmashed for twenty years, he
was entitled to the cross of St. Louis. I have escaped till now, but I
set it down entirely to the efficacy of your innocent prayers, which
have reversed the fates in my favour.
Your best way is to watch and imitate the address of the native women.
Here they are now, in front of my window, sprinkled over the whole
street, in their white stockings and prunellas, and in the very
filthiest of the French weather, without a spot to their garters. The
little things just pull up all the petticoats in the world more than
half leg, and then tip-toe they step from the convex surface of one
paving stone to another, with a dexterity and grace that go to one’s
heart.
A lady must expect, also, other embarrassments here, to which the
delicate pusillanimity of the sex is _yet_ but slightly exposed in our
country, besides the cat and nine kittens that she must jump over, and
the defunct lap-dogs that lie putrid in the gutters. The truth is, that
these streets are very often (I ask pardon of Madame de Rambouillet and
other good authorities) so in _deshabille_, they are not fit to be seen.
A Parisian lady, therefore (and she is to be imitated also in this),
when she ventures out on foot, is sharp-sighted as a lynx, and blind as
an owl; she has eyes to see and not to see, and she runs the gauntlet
through the midst of all these slippery and perilous obstructions in as
careless a good humour as you upon the smooth trottoirs of your Chestnut
and Broadways. It is true, the ladies of the _haut ton_ do not much
exercise their ambulatory functions--their “_vertu caminante_”--upon
these unsavoury promenades.
A French gentleman, who has resided a week and a half at New York (just
long enough to know the manners and customs of a country), told me this
very morning, that you American ladies stare in the streets at the
gentlemen, he ventured to say, “even to immodesty;” and I have heard
other foreigners make similar remarks, I presume without a proper
attention to the peculiar circumstances of the different countries. In a
Philadelphia street, a lady can give herself up to her thoughts, and her
soul has the free use of its wings. She can get into a romance, or a
reverie; she can study her lesson, or read a love-letter, and she can
stare at a French gentleman, without the least apprehension of danger.
Our streets are clean and decent, and are excellent places of parade;
and gentlemen and ladies go out expressly on fine evenings to stare at
one another. Indeed, Chestnut-street is so trim and neat that sometimes
one is almost obliged, like Diogenes, to spit in somebody’s face not to
soil its prettiness. Not so in Paris; you are here quite at your ease in
all such matters. A French lady, therefore,--and very properly,--sees no
one in the street, not even her husband. To get her to look at you, you
are obliged to take hold of her, shake her, and turn her about three or
four times. But when once upon the Boulevard Italien of an evening, or
upon the broad walk of the elegant Tuileries, when she has no longer
need of the faculties of her eyes, and ears, and nose too, to anticipate
and obviate danger--_ah, ma foi!_ her diamond eyes are no more chary of
their amorous glances than the hazle and bugle eyes of Chestnut or
Broadway of theirs. I tried to persuade this French gentleman,--who is a
baron, has a _bel air_, and large mustachios,--that this happened only
to him. I told him (and it is true, too,) of others, who could not get
the dear little girls of New York to look at them sufficiently. But I
must shew you the Palais Royal.
It is a third less than your Washington Square. Its trees are in two
regular rows along each margin. In the centre is an inclosure,
containing a shrubbery and flowers; and also an Apollo and a Diana in
bronze, and a _jet d’eau_ that separates in the air, and falls in a
“_fleur de lis_”--the only emblem of royalty that deceived the
Revolution and the Jacobins; and a lake, where the little fishes “wave
their wings of gold.” There is no access to vehicles, or street noise,
to disturb the quiet of this fairy retreat. It is in the centre, too, of
the city, in the vicinity of all the other chief places of diversion;
and here all the world meets after dinner to take coffee, to smoke, and
concert measures for the rest of the evening. You will see them creeping
in from the neighbouring streets, as you have seen the ants into a
sugarhouse.
If you wish to know where is the centre of the earth, it is the Palais
Royal. Ask a stranger, when he arrives, “whither will you go first?” he
will answer, “to the Palais Royal;” or ask a Frenchman, on the top of
Caucasus, “where shall I meet you again?” he will give you _rendez-vous_
at the Palais Royal; and no spot, they say, on the earth, has witnessed
so many tender recognitions. Just do you ask Mademoiselle Celeste, at
New York, “where did you get that superb _robe de chambre_?” and, I will
lay you six to one, she will say, “at the Palais Royal.”
Let us sit down beneath these pretty elms. Those upper rooms, which you
see so adorned with Ionic columns, with galleries, and vases, and little
Virtues, and other ornaments in sculpture--those are not his majesty’s
apartments; not the _salles des marechaux_, nor the _salle du trône_,
nor the _chambre à coucher de la reine_; they are the _cafés and
restaurants_ of the Palais Royal. And those multitudes you see
circulating about the galleries, and looking down from the
windows--those are not the royal family, nor the _garde du corps_, nor
the “hundred Swiss,” nor the _chambellans_, the _écuyers_, the
_aumoniers_, the _maitres de cérémonies_, the _introducteurs des
ambassadeurs_, nor the historiographers, nor even the _chauf-cire_, nor
the _capitaines des levrettes_--they are the cooks, and the garçons, in
their white aprons, of the cafés and restaurants; the only order that
has suffered no loss of dignity or corruption of blood by the
Revolution; the veritable noblesse of these times, the “_cordons bleus_”
of the order of the gridiron.
Louis Philippe, our citizen king, and proprietor of this garden, gets
thirty-two thousand francs annually from letting out these chairs. Sit
you down. It being after dinner, I will treat you to a _regale_; which
is, a cup of pure coffee, with a small glass of liqueur, _eau de vie_,
or rum, or quirsh. You can take them separate or together; in the latter
case, it is called “_gloria_;” or you may put your cognac into a cup,
with a large lump of sugar in the middle, and set it on fire, to destroy
the effects of the alcohol upon your nerves. See how the area of the
garden is already covered with its smoking, drinking, and promenading
community; and how the smoke, as if loth to quit us, still lingers,
until the whole atmosphere is narcotic with its incense. At a later
hour, we shall find in the Rotunda, at the north end, and upon tables
under these trees, ices in pyramids, and orgeat, and _eau sucrée_, and
all the other luxurious refreshments. Those two oriental pavilions, with
the gilded roofs, in front of the Rotonde, will distribute newspapers to
the studious, and the whole garden will buzz with conversation and
merriment, until the long twilight has faded into night.
Of the inside of the cafés and restaurants I must give you a few
particulars. In each, there is a woman of choice beauty, mounted on a
kind of throne. She is present always, and may be considered as one of
the fixtures of the shop. When you enter any of these cafés, you will
see, standing here and there through the room, an individual in a white
apron; he has mustachios; he holds a coffee-pot in his left hand, and
leaning gracefully over the right, reads his favourite journal--this is
the waiter! When you have cried three times “Garçon!” the lady at the
bureau will vibrate a little bell, and bring you instantly this waiter
from his studies. If you are a very decent-looking man, she will let you
cry only twice; and if you have an embroidered waistcoat, and look like
a lord, and have whiskers, she will not let you cry at all. The chair
occupied by this she-secretary, at the _Mille Colonnes_, cost ten
thousand francs; and she who sat, some years ago, upon that of the
“_café des Aveugles_,” the “_belle Limonadière_,” charmed all who had
eyes, and amongst the rest, a brother of the greatest emperor in the
world.
There are above a thousand of these cafés in Paris, and several of the
most sumptuous overlook the gardens of the Palais Royal. Ceres has
unlocked her richest treasures here, and has poured them out with a
prodigality that is unknown elsewhere. Fish, of fresh and salt water;
rare wines, of home and foreign production; and as for the
confectionaries, sucreries, fruiteries, and charcuiteries--the senses
are bewildered by the infinite variety. And the artists here have a
higher niche in the temple of Fame than even those of the Boulevard
Italien. Monsieur Véry supplied the allied monarchs at three thousand
francs per day. The “Purveyor of Fish” to his Majesty, who is of this
school, is salaried a thousand dollars above our chief justice of the
Union; and Monsieur Dodat, who is immortal for making sausages and the
“_Passage Vero-Dodat_,” has at _Père la Chaise_ a monument towering
like that of Cheops.
This is the true “Kitchen Cabinet” to which ours is no more to be
compared than the dish water to the dinner. Véry is in the kitchen what
the Emperor was in the camp; he is the Napoleon of gastronomy. All flesh
is nothing in his sight. Why, he will transform you a rabbit to a hare,
or an eel to a lamprey, as easily as you a Jackson-man to a Whig; and he
turns cocks into capons, and _vice versa_, by the simple artifice of a
sauce. You indeed condense the sense of a whole community into the
single head of a senator, or a President; and he just as easily a whole
flock of geese into a single goose. You, it is true, possess the
wonderful art, all know in what excellence, of puffing a man up beyond
the natural measure of his merits, and just so Monsieur Véry will puff
you a goose’s liver, however unmathematical it may seem, beyond the size
of the whole animal.
Now, in the midst of all this skill and profusion, “the devil’s in it if
you cannot dine;” yet have I perished myself several times of hunger in
the very midst of this Palais Royal. It is not enough that a table be
loaded with its dishes, there must be science, to call them by their
names, and taste, to discriminate their uses. What can you do with an
Iroquois from the “Sharp Mountain,” who does not know that sauce for a
gander is not sauce for a goose. Unless you have studied the
nomenclature, which is about equal to a first course of anatomy, you are
no more fit to enjoy a dinner at Véry’s than Tantalus in his lake. For
example, the garçon will present you a bill of fare as big as your
prayer-book; you open it; the first page presents you thirty soups,
(classically, _potages_,) and there you are to choose between a
“_puré_,” a “_consommé_,” “_à la Julien_, _à la Beauvais_, _à la Bonne
Femme_,” &c. &c. I prefer the “_consommé_,” and I will tell you how it
is made. It is a piece of choice beef and capon boiled many hours over a
slow fire to a jelly, and the juices concentrated, and served without
any extraneous mixture. The “_Julien_,” is a _pot pourri_ of all that is
edible or potable in the list of human aliments. It is a soup, for
which, if rightly made, an epicure would give away his birth-right; it
was invented, not by Julian the Apostate, but by Monsieur Julien, of the
Palais Royal.
The fluids being settled, you will turn then to the following page for
the solids: “_Papillottes de Levreaud_,” “_filet à la Napolitaine_,”
“_vol-au-vent_,” “_scolope de saumon_,” “_œuf au miroir_,” “_riz sauté à
la gláce_,” “_piqué aux truffles_,” &c. &c. Alas, my poor roasting and
frying countrymen! There is not a day but I see some poor Yankee
scratching his head in despair over this crabbed vocabulary of French
dishes. Your best way in this emergency is to call the garçon, and leave
all to him, and sit still like a good child, and take what is given to
you. I have known many a one to run all over Paris for a beef-steak, and
when he has got it, it was a horse’s rump. My advice is, that no one
come to Paris to dine in mean houses on cheap dinners, where you will
eat cats for hares, and have snails and chalk for your cream, and the
jelly of the “_consommé_,” from the barber’s. You are no more sure of
the ingredients of a dish under the disguises of a French cookery, than
of men’s sentiments from their faces or professions. You can get, to
begin with, olives, and eggs, boiled and poached, all that remains of
old simplicity, if you know how to ask for them; if not, carry the
shells about with you in your pocket.
We will dine to-morrow at the “_Mille Colonnes_.” Ladies often step
into this _café_ to be reflected; you can see here all your faces, and
behind and before you, as conveniently as Janus. One always enters this
threshold with reverence: it has dined the Holy Alliance. Besides the
usual officers and attendants, you will sometimes see here a little man,
grave, _distrait_, and meditative; do not disturb him; he is, perhaps,
busy about the _projét_ of some new sauce. He will start off abruptly
sometimes, and leave you in the middle of a phrase; it is not
incivility, he has just conceived a dish, and is going out to execute
it, or write it upon his tablets. Never ask for him in the mornings
before _one_--“_il compose_.” The French are not copyists in cookery,
any more than in fashions. They are inventors, and this keeps the
imagination on the rack. You will remark, that people always excel in
those things in which they invent, and are always mediocre in those
things in which they imitate.
After your potage, which you must eat sparingly, and without bread, (for
bread will satiate, and spoil the rest of your dinner,) you will take a
little “vin ordinaire,” or pure Burgundy, waiting for your first course;
and you will just cast a look over the official part of the Moniteur,
for there is no knowing when one may be made a Peer of France; and on
receiving one dish, always command the next. After the dessert you will
read the news all round; the _Messager_, _Gazette_, _Constitutionnel_,
_Debats_, _Quotidienne_, _National_, and the _Charivari_; and after
coffee, you may amuse yourself at checkers, domino, or improve your
morals by a game of chess. In looking about the room, you will see a
great number of guests, perhaps a hundred, not in stalls, as in our
eating-houses and the stables, but seated at white marble tables, in an
open and elegant saloon; the walls tapestried with mirrors.
If it be a serious gentleman, reading deliberately the newspaper over
his dessert, careless or contemptuous of what is going on around him,
and drinking his bottle of champagne alone--that is an Englishman. If a
_partie carré_, that is, a couple of ladies and their cavaliers, dining
with much noise and claret, observing a succession and analogy of
dishes, swallowing their wine drop by drop, as I read your letters,
fearing lest it should come too soon to an end, and prolonging expressly
the enjoyments of the repast--these are French people; or if you see a
couple of lads, hurried and impatient, and rating the waiters in no
gentle terms, “D--n your eyes, why don’t you bring in the dinner? and
take away that broth, and your black bottle; who the devil wants your
vinegar, and your dishwater, and your bibs too? And bring us, if you
can, a whole chicken’s leg at once, and not at seven different
times,”--these are from the “Far West,” and a week old in Paris.
How should these little snacks of a French table not seem egregiously
mean to an American, who is used to dine in fifteen minutes, even on a
holiday, and to see a whole hog barbacued? The French dine to gratify,
we to appease, appetite; we demolish a dinner, and they eat it. The
guests who frequent these cafés are regular or flying visiters; some are
accidental, others occasional, dining by agreement to enjoy each other’s
company; others again are families, who dine out for a change, or to
give a respite to their servants; and others live here, a kind of
stereotype customers altogether: and these houses serve, in addition to
their province of eating and drinking, as places of conference, or
clubs; it is here that men communicate on political subjects, that news
is circulated, and public opinion formed; and that kings are expelled,
and others are set up on their thrones.
On a range with the restaurants, and over them, you will see lodged many
of the fine arts; painters, engravers, dentists, barbers, and beautiful
sultanas, look out from the highest windows upon these fair dominions,
to which the severity of French morals has forbidden them access. In the
lower rooms, on a level with the area of the garden, and peeping through
the colonnade, west and east, are riches almost immeasurable, in
exquisite and fashionable apparel for both sexes, and in jewellery,
trinkets, and perfumery. This trade, which in other cities is pedling
and huckstering, assumes here the dignity of a great commercial
interest, and its productions are reckoned at upwards of a hundred
millions of francs. The stores themselves are so little, and yet so
pretty, that I have thoughts of sending you one of them over by the
packet. Their arrangements are changed every hour, so as to keep up a
continuous emotion and a series of agreeable excitements, and so as to
present you a new set of temptations twelve times a day.
Everything that human industry, sharpened by necessity or competition,
can effect--everything which can excite an appetite, can heighten a
beauty, or hide a deformity, is here. I begin to love art almost as well
as nature: I begin to love mother Eve in her fig-leaves, as well as in
her unaproned innocence. After all, what is nature to us without art?
Education is art. Indeed, rightly considered, art itself is nature; she
has but left a part of her work unfinished to urge the industry and whet
the ingenuity of man. In these stores, everything is sacrificed to the
shop; there is no accommodation for the household gods. Persons with
their families are not allowed to inhabit here. A man hoards space as a
miser hoards money. It is a qualification indispensable in a clerk to be
of a slender capacity. You would think you were in Lilliput, served by
the fairies. The shop-girls, especially, are of such exquisite exility
of figure, you can almost take one of them between your thumb and
finger, and set her on the counter.
In our country, we have nothing yet to shew in the way of great works of
art. We have nature, indeed, wild and beautiful, but without historic
associations; tradition is dumb, and the “memory of man” runs back to
the Eden of our race. It is a mighty advantage these old countries have
over us; their reminiscences, their traditions, and their antiquities.
What would be the Tower but for humpback Richard and the babes; or,
what Hounslow Heath but for the ghosts of those who have been murdered
there? And in these countries, which have no beginning, they can supply
the vacant space into which authentic history does not venture, by
legends and romances; and no matter how obscure may be one of their
mountains and lakes, they can lie it into a reputation. Some things are
beautiful from their accessories alone; as lords are sometimes lords
only from their equipages. What is there beautiful in a ruin? We have
plains as desolate as Babylon, and no one looks at them.
The Palais Royal, however magnificent as a bazaar, has still higher and
better merits. It is the history of some of the most remarkable
personages and events of the last two ages. Some day, when we have a
ticket from the “_Intendant de sa Majesté_,” I will shew you them all;
and first, that very celebrated old fop the Cardinal de Richelieu, who
used to strut, with his train of a monarch, through this very garden and
these very halls. You shall see the very theatre upon which he
represented his woeful tragedies; his flatterers crowding around with
wonderful grimace, and Corneille’s muse cowering her timid wings in
silence. As you are a lady, and love trinkets, I will shew you, if it
yet exists, that great miracle of massive gold and diamonds, the
Cardinal’s Chapel; the two candlesticks, valued at a hundred thousand
livres; the cross, twenty-two inches high, and of pure gold; the Christ
of the same metal, and the crown and drapery all glittering in diamonds.
And you shall see the prayer-book, too, encased in lamina of gold; in
the centre the cardinal holding up the globe, and from the four corners
four angels placing a crown upon his head. If you like, I will shew you
also that other smooth-faced rogue, scarcely his inferior in political
ability, the Cardinal Mazarin, who put the king’s money in his pocket,
and stinted his little majesty in shirts. And if you love more
cardinals, I will shew you yet another, more witty, and not less
profligate and debauched, than the other two, the Cardinal de Retz. When
we read his memoirs together, little did we foresee that one day we
should look into the very chambers in which he held his nightly
councils, with his fellow conspirators, plotting his rabble Revolution
of the Fronde.
You shall see also Turenne and the great Condé. That gentleman gathering
maxims--maxims of life at the court of Mazarin!--that is M. le due de
Rochefoucauld; and I will introduce you to Madame de Motteville, and
other famous wits and beauties of those times. In the room just
opposite, where one dines upon soup, three courses, and a dessert, at
forty sous, I will shew you the little “Grand Monarque” in his cradle.
The dear little thing! It was here the great man first began; it was
here he crept, I presume very unwillingly, to school; here he began to
seek the bubble reputation, and to sigh at the feet--worthy a better
devotion--of the “humble violet,” Madame la Vallière.
Just over head, Doctor Franklin used to sup with the Duke of Orleans and
his family; and here Madame de Genlis gave lessons to the little Louis
Philippe, causing his most Christian Majesty to walk fifteen miles a day
in shoes with leaden soles. The Spartans did better, who, to make their
kings hardy and robust, had them flogged daily at the shrine of some
pagan goddess. In one of these rooms, the mob Republic held for awhile
its meetings; and in this very garden, the tri-coloured cockade was
adopted, at a great meeting in 1789, as the revolutionary emblem. On the
south end is a gallery of paintings, they say very splendid. It was
plundered in the Revolution, and since restored by the present
proprietor, the King. If any one steals a picture or a book in Paris,
and can prove quiet possession for a certain time, it is a vested right,
and the owner is obliged to buy back his goods from the thief.
I sometimes walk in this garden with the scholars and the _bonnes_, of a
morning, but it is disagreeable; it is not yet aired, and has a stale
stupefactive smell from the preceding night’s banquet. It is by degrees
ventilated, and life begins to flow into it about ten. Then the readers
of news begin to gravitate around Monsieur Perussault’s pavilion. There
is a dial here which announces, with a loud detonation, twelve; and as
the important hour approaches, every one having a watch takes it out,
and looks up with compressed lips, and waits in _uno obtutu_ until
Apollo has fired off his cannon; then quick he twirls about the hands,
and replaces it complacently in his fob, and walks away very happy to
have the official hour in his pocket. You will see also a few _badauds_,
who always arrive just afterwards, and stand the same way, looking up
for half an hour or so, till informed that the time has already gone
off.
It is of a hot summer evening, that this garden is unrivalled in beauty.
You swim in a glare of light; the gas flashes from under the arcades;
lamps innumerable shine through the interior and look down from five
hundred windows above. It is not night, it is “but the daylight sick.”
It is haunted by its company, and is full of life to the latest hours,
and revelry holds her gambols here, when Paris everywhere over the
immense city is lulled into its midnight slumbers. When summer has
turned round upon its axis, and the first chills of autumn frighten joy
from her court, she retires then to her last hold, the “_Galerie
d’Orleans_.” This delightful promenade extends across the south end of
the garden; it is three hundred feet long by thirty wide; its roof is of
glass and its pavement of tesselated marble; it is bounded on both sides
by stores, and cafés, and reading rooms, eighteen feet square, renting
annually at four thousand francs each. It is kept warm enough for its
company in winter, and is a fashionable resort during that season. It is
a pleasant walk also in the twilight of a summer evening.
I know an ex-professor, by dining with him at the same ordinary, and we
walk often under the crystal vaults of this gallery, and reason whole
evenings away--now we stop, and then walk on, and then take snuff, and
then make a whole round arm in arm, in great gravity and silence; at
other times, being seated at a marble table, we calmly unfold the
intricate mazes of the human mind and systems of human policy; and then
we take coffee, with a little glass of quirsh. Last night we reasoned
warmly upon the nature of slavery till I got mad, and whilst I sipped
and read the newspaper, he amused himself with a drawing (for he is
skilled in this art), which he presented me. It was a Liberty, of a
healthy and robust complexion, her foot upon a negro slave. The negro
sympathies have waxed very warm in this country.
Four of the houses just over us are consecrated to gambling. They are
frequented, however, by rather the lower class and rabble of the
profession. They who have some regard to reputation go to Frascati’s, to
the Rue Richelieu; the more select to the “_Cercle_,” or to the “_Club
Anglais_” upon the Boulevard, and the _Rue de Grammont_; and the “Jockey
Club” receives the dandies and flash gentlemen of the turf. The three
last are of English origin, and the “_Club Anglais_” is in the best
English style. It receives only the high functionaries of the state,
princes of the blood, ambassadors, and other eminent persons, and even
these are not admitted to pick one another’s pockets here, unless known
to be of good moral character. Games of hazard are prohibited, and the
bets correspondent to the dignity of the company. The “_Cercle_,” also,
is frequented by the upper sort of folk; it is _très distingué_; and the
eating and service are of no common rate.
The public gambling houses here are authorized by government, and pay
for their charter annually six and a half millions of francs. The
government has not thought it fit that the black-legs and courtezans
should worship in the same temple. The ladies have therefore been turned
out, poor things! to get a living as they can on the Boulevards and
elsewhere, and the gamblers have the Palais Royal all to themselves. But
why do not “the Chambers,” extend this system of financial economy to
other moral offences, as stealing, drunkenness, and adultery? I would
charter them every one, and enrich the state. If we can succeed in
making a vice respectable, it is no vice at all; and why should not a
proper protection of government and general custom render gambling or
any vice as respectable as thieving or infanticide was at Sparta; or as
duelling and privateering are amongst the modern civilized nations? The
matter is now under discussion, but there are members of both houses
who oppose these doctrines; they say that the government by such
licences becomes accessory to the crimes of its subjects, and that bad
passions, already rank enough in human nature, should not be made a
direct object of education; moreover, they find it awkward that
legislators, after having given the whole community a public licence to
pick one another’s pockets, should stand up in the national tribune and
talk about honesty. There are persons who have absurd prejudices.
But to be serious; indeed, I am very well disposed to such a feeling; I
have just fallen accidentally upon the story, which every one knows, of
the unhappy Colton. He wrote books in recommendation of virtue, and
_critiques_ in reprobation of vice, with admirable talent. He was a
clergyman by profession, and yet became a victim to this detestable
passion. He subsisted by play several years amongst these dens of the
Palais Royal, and at length falling into irretrievable misery, ended his
life here by suicide. One feels a sadness of heart in looking upon the
scene of so horrible an occurrence; one owes a tear to the errors of
genius, to the weakness of our common humanity.
Gambling seems to be the universal passion; the two extremes of human
society are equally subject to it. The savage of the Columbia River
gambles his rifle and his squaw, and like any gentleman of the
“_Cercle_,” commits suicide in his despair. Billiards, cards, Faro, and
other games of hazard, are to be found at every hundred steps, in every
street and alley of Paris; haunted by black-legs in waiting for your
purse; and there is scarce a private ball or _soirée_, even to those of
the court, in which immense sums are not lost and won by gambling. The
shuffling of cards or rattling of dice is a part of the music of every
Parisian saloon, and many fathers of families of the first rank get a
living by it. To know how much better it is in London, one has only to
read the London books. And how much better is it in America? To know
this, you have only to visit our Virginia Springs and other places of
fashionable resort. You will hear there the instruments of gambling at
every hour of the night; and you will see tables, covered with the
infamous gold, set out in the shade during the day; and you will see
seated around these tables those who make the laws for “the only
Republic upon the earth,” the members of the American Congress--with the
same solemn gravity as if holding counsel upon the destinies of the
nation. I have seen the highest officer of the House of Representatives
step from the loo-table to the Speaker’s chair! The vices of the higher
orders have this to aggravate their enormity, that the lower world is
formed and encouraged by their example. Gambling in Virginia is a
penitentiary offence.
I have visited these “Hells” of the Palais Royal. Their numbers are 113,
129, and 154 on the eastern gallery, and number 36 on the western; and
from the look of the company, I presume one could get here very soon all
the acquirements by which a man may be put in the way of being hanged.
Bars are placed before the windows, by the humanity of the government,
to prevent his Majesty’s subjects and others from throwing away their
precious lives in their fits of despair.
That tall and robust, and stern-looking man, between fifty and sixty, in
an old tattered great coat, and walking in the gait of a conspirator, is
Chodruc Duclos. He was once the friend of Count Peyronnet, as they say;
he lavished his fortune on him, and fought his duels. The Count became
minister and Duclos poor; he claimed his protection, and was rejected by
the ungrateful minister. He now walks here daily at the same hour, like
some mysterious, unearthly being. He never speaks; and the last smile
has died upon his lips.
I have a mind to tell you a queer anecdote of myself, which will fill
the rest of this page without much changing the subject. In a walk
through the Rue Richelieu, a few evenings ago, with a wag of an
Englishman, a fellow-lodger, he proposed to gratify me with a peep into
one of the evening _rendez-vous_, as he said, of the nobility. I entered
with becoming reverence through a hall, where servants in livery
attended, taking our hats and canes, with a princely ceremony, and
bringing us refreshments. Tables in the several rooms were covered with
gold, at which gentlemen and ladies were playing, and others were
looking on intently and silently. Around, some were coteried in corners,
others were strolling in groups, or pairs, through the rooms; and others
again were rambling carelessly through the walks of an adjacent garden
of flowers and shrubbery, illuminated, or were seated in secret
conversation amongst its arbours.
“That gentleman,” said my companion, “on the right, with the Adonis
neck, with myrrhed and glossy ringlets, is the Prince Puckler Muskau.”
And when I had looked at him sufficiently--“That gentleman on the left
in conversation with Don--Don--Don--I forget his name--that is Prince
Carrimanico, of Rome; and that just in front is the Baron Blowminossoff,
from Petersburgh.” I stared, particularly at my Lord Brougham, who had
just come over to make a tour upon the continent for his health. He was
attenuated by sickness and the cares of business, but I could discern
distinctly the great traits of his character--the lowering indignation
on his brow, the bitter curl and sarcasm on his lip, and the impetuous
and overwhelming energy which distinguishes this great statesman, upon
his strongly-marked features; and if I had not been informed his name, I
should have marked him out at once as some eminent personage; and from a
certain abrupt and fidgety manner, a hasty scratch at the back of his
head, accompanied with two or three twitches of the nose, I should have
suspected him for nobody else than the greatest statesman and orator of
Europe--my Lord Brougham.
Among the ladies, also, several were highly distinguished. There were
Madame la Contesse de Trotteville, and her beautiful cousin
Mademoiselle Trottini, from Naples, with several of the French
nobility; and there was the Countess of Crumple, and a fat lady, Madame
Von Swellemburg, and others of the Dutch and English gentry. I fancied
that a Duchess on my left (I forget her name) had a haughty and
supercilious air, as if she felt the dignity of her blood, and the
length of her genealogy. She seemed as if not pleased that everybody
should be introduced, and wished someplace more exclusive. But there was
one young and beautiful creature--but so beautiful that I could not with
all my efforts keep my eyes off her--whom I observed more than once
reciprocated my inquisitive looks. I felt flattered at being the object
of her attention. The elegant creature! thought I; what a simplicity and
sweetness of expression! and how strange, that, brought up amidst the
art and refinement of a court, she should retain all the innocence of
the dove upon her countenance.
In the midst of this admiration, and when I had just got myself almost
bowed to by another countess, my companion let in the light upon the
magic lantern. “These,” said he, “are women of the town, and these are
gamblers and pickpockets, who come hither to Monsieur Frascati’s to rob
and ruin one another.” I give you this for your private ear; if you
tell it, mercy on me, I shall never hear the last of it. I shall be sung
all over the village. There are persons there of half my years who would
have detected such company at once. As I was going away, Miss Emmeline,
Miss Adelaide, and Madame Rosalie, gave me their cards.
I saw this morning the Queen and the King’s most excellent Majesty. They
passed through the Champs Elysées to their country habitation at
Neuilly. The equipage was a plain carriage with six horses, a postillion
on a front and rear horse; two other carriages and four, and guards. To
see a king for the first time is an event. Ai’nt you mad?--you who never
saw anything over there bigger than his most unchristian Majesty Black
Hawk, and Higglewiggin his squaw.--I have now come to the interesting
part of this letter. I am, yours.