Tour of Paris--The Seine--The Garden of Plants--The Animals--Island of
St. Louis--The Halle aux Vins--The Police--Palais de Justice--The
Morgue--Number of suicides--M. Perrin--The Hotel de Ville--Place de
Grêve--The Pont Neuf--Quai des Augustins--The Institute--Isabeau de
Bavière--The Bains Vigiers--The Pont des Arts--The Washerwomen’s
Fête--Swimming schools for both sexes--The Chamber of Deputies--Place de
la Revolution--Obelisk of Luxor--Hospital of the Invalids--Ecole
Militaire--The Champ de Mars--Talleyrand.
_September 14th, 1835._
After the nonsense of my last letter, I almost despair of putting you in
a humour to enjoy the serious matter likely to be contained in this. I
have just returned from an excursion on foot from the one end to the
other of Paris, making, as a sensible traveller ought to do, remarks
upon the customs, institutions, and monuments of the place, and here I
am with a sheet of double post to write you down these remarks. I would
call it a classical tour, but I have some doubts whether walking in a
straight line is a _tour_, and therefore I have called it simply a
journal.
I had for my companion the Seine--he was going for sea-bathing to the
Havre. His destination thence no more known than ours, when we float
into eternity. Some little wave may, however, roll till it reach the
banks of the Delaware--and who knows, that lifted into vapour by the
sun, it may not spread in rains upon the Broad Mountain, and at last
delight your tea-tables at Pine Hill. I therefore send you a kiss, and
in recommending the river to your notice, I must make you acquainted
with his history.
Most rivers except the Seine, and perhaps the Nile, have a high and
noble descent; this, as I have read in a French author, runs out of a
hole in the ground, in the flat and dirty country of the Côté d’or; it
was contained once in a monk’s kitchen near Dijon, and began the world,
like Russian Kate, by washing the dishes. At Paris it is called, by the
polite French, the _fleuve royale_. Any stream in this country which is
able to run down a hill is called a river,--_this_, of course, is a
_royal_ river. It receives a pretty large share of its bigness from the
Maine and Yonne, and some other streams, (for rivers, like great men,
are not only great of their own merits, but by appropriating that of
others) and is itself again lost in the great ocean. It is the most
beneficent river on the Continent--it distributes water, one of the
elements of life, to near a million of people, and it gives some to the
milkwoman who furnishes me with _café-au-lait_ in the Faubourg St.
Germain (where you will direct your letters from this date.) It is
received in its debut into Paris magnificently, the Garden of Plants
being on the left, and the great avenue of the Bastille and the elephant
on its right, and overhead, five triumphal arches, which were erected
for its reception by Bonaparte, sustaining the superb bridge of
Austerlitz. And here commences my journal.
At twelve I left the Garden of Plants, with only a peep through the
railings. One cannot go inside here without stumbling against all
creation. The whole of the three kingdoms--animal, vegetable, and
mineral--are gathered into this garden from the four corners of the
earth, as they were when Adam baptised them. I observed a great number
of plants growing out of the ground as fast as they could, and little
posts standing prim and stiff along side of them, to tell you their
names in apothecaries’ Latin--I mean their modern names--those they got
at the great christening have been entirely lost, and Monsieur de Buffon
and some others have been obliged to hunt them new ones out of the
dictionary.
I did go in a little, and stood alongside of an American acacia,
conceiting for a moment I was on my native earth again, and so I was,
for the tree was transplanted from the Susquehanna, and the soil was
brought with it. It would not otherwise grow out of its native country.
Alas, do you expect that one’s affections, so much more delicate, will
not pine and wither away where there is not a particle of their native
aliment to support them! I looked a long time upon a cedar of Lebanon;
it stands like a patriarch in the midst of his family, its broad
branches expanded hospitably, inviting the traveller to repose. Along
the skirts of the garden one sees lions, and tigers, and jackals, and an
elephant--a prisoner from Moscara, lately burnt by the Grand Army.
Several elephants fought and bled for their country on that occasion,
and this is one of them. And finally, I saw what you never have seen in
America, a giraffe, a sort of quadruped imitation of an ostrich, its
head twenty feet in the air; and there were a great number of children
and their dear little mammas giving it gingerbread. Deers also were
stalking through the park--but in docility and sleekness how inferior to
ours of the Mohanoy! and several bears were chained to posts, but not a
whit less bearish, nor better licked, though brought up in Paris, than
ours of the Sharp Mountain.
I could not help looking compassionately at a buffalo, who stood
thoughtful and melancholy under an American poplar; his head hanging
down, and gazing upon the earth. He had perhaps left a wife and
children, and the rest of the family, on the banks of the Missouri!
Wherever the eye strayed, new objects of interest were developed. Goats
afar off were hanging upon cliffs, as high as a man’s head; and sheep
from foreign countries (poor things!) were bleating through valleys--six
feet wide! All the parrots in the world were here prating; and whole
nations of monkies, imitating the spectators. Nothing in all this
Academy of Nature seemed to draw such general admiration as these
monkies and these parrots. What a concourse of observers! It is so
strange in Paris to hear words articulated without meaning, and see
grimaces that have no communication with the heart!
Just in leaving the Garden, the Seine has lent some of its water to St.
Martin, to make an island--saints not being able to make islands without
this accommodation. This island of St. Martin is covered, during summer,
with huge piles of wood, ingeniously arranged into pyramids and conic
sections. Some of the piles are built into dwellings, and let out for
the warm season; so you can procure here a very snug little summer
retreat, and burn your house to warm your toes in the winter. I ought to
tell you (for acute travellers never let anything of this kind slip),
that wood is here two sous a pound. That old woman, the government, is
very expensive in her way of living, and the moment she finds any
article of first necessity, as salt or fuel, &c., she claps a tax upon
it. Besides, all that money which your railroad fanatics about
Schuylkill lay out in contrivances to carry your coal to market, she
lays out in new frocks--and this is the reason wood is two cents a
pound.
A little onward, I stepped upon the quiet and peaceful island of St.
Louis--quiet! and yet it is inhabited by nearly all the lawyers of
Paris. St. Louis is the only saint that has not left off doing miracles.
The noisy arts will not venture on it, though four bridges have been
made for their accommodation. It reminds one of that world of Ovid’s,
where everything went off to Heaven except justice.--_Astræa ultima._
Like all other places of Paris, this island has its curiosities and
monuments. You will find here the ancient _Hotel de Mimes_, its ceilings
painted by Lebrun and Le Sueur, now a lumber-house for soldiers and
their iron beds; and if you give a franc to the cicerone (the porter and
his wife) you can get him to tell you that Bonaparte was hid here for
two days after the battle of Waterloo. He will shew you, if you seem to
doubt, the very paillasse upon which the Emperor, whilst the Allies were
marching into Paris, slept. You will find here, also, some imperishable
ruins of Lebrun and Le Sueur, in the once famous _Hotel de
Bretonvilliers_, now venerable for its dirt, as well as its antiquity.
I admired awhile the _Halle aux Vins_, one of the curiosities of the
left bank, enclosed on three sides by a wall, and on the side of the
Seine, by an iron railing 889 yards. It contains 800,000 casks of wine
and spirits, from which are drawn annually, for the use of Paris, twenty
millions of gallons. France, by a cunning legislation, prevents this
natural produce of her soil escaping from the country, by laying a
prohibitory duty upon the industry of other nations, which would enable
them to purchase it; so we have the whole drinking of it to ourselves,
and we oblige John Bull to stick to his inflammatory Port and Madeira.
_L’isle de la Cité_ comes next; the last, but not the least, remarkable
of the three sister islands, called the Island of the Cité, because once
all Paris was here, and there was no Paris anywhere else. Antony used to
quaff old Falernian on this island with Cæsar, and run after the
grisette girls and milliners, whilst they sent Labienus to look after
Dumnorix; and here in a later age came the gay and gartered earls;
knights in full panoply; fashionable belles in rustling silks, and the
winds brought delicate perfumes on their wings. At present no Arabic
incense is wasted upon the air of this island. Filth has set up her
tavern here, and keeps the dirtiest house of all Paris. But in the midst
of this beggary of comfort and decency, are glorious monuments which the
rust of ages has not yet consumed; the _Hôtel Dieu_, _Palais de
Justice_, and _Præfecturate_ of Police; and I had like to have forgotten
that majestic old pile, with fretted roofs and towers pinnacled in the
clouds, with Gothic windows, and grizly saints painted on them,
“So old, as if she had for ever stood,
So strong as if she would for ever stand,”
whose bells at this moment are tolling over the dead, the venerable, the
time-honoured _Notre Dame de Paris_.
This old lady is the queen of the _cité_. Her corner-stone was laid by
Pope Alexander III. upon the ruins of an old Roman temple of Jupiter, in
1163. So you see she is a very reverend old lady. Her bell is eight feet
in diameter, and requires sixteen men to set its clapper in motion. On
entering the church, the work of so many generations, in contemplating
its size, the immense height of its dome and roofs, and the huge pillars
which sustain them, with the happy disposition and harmony of all these
masses, one is seized with a very sudden reverence and a very modest
sense of one’s own littleness; and yet a minute before one looked upon
the glorious sun, and walked under “this most excellent canopy” almost
without astonishment.
You will see here, at all hours of the day, persons devoutly at their
beads, intent on their prayer books, or kneeling at the cross. Except
on days of parade, you will see almost six women to one man; and these
rather old. Women must love something. When the day of their terrestrial
affections has faded, their loves become celestial. When they can’t love
anything else, why they love God. “_Aime Dieu, Sainte Thérése, c’est
toujours aimer._” The Emperor Julian stayed a winter on this island, at
which time the river washed (not the Emperor[1]) but the base of the
walls of the city; and Paris was accessible only by two wooden bridges.
He called it his _Lutetia_ την φιλην Αευχετιαν, his beloved city of mud.
The _Palais de Justice_, or _Lit de Justice_, as the French
appropriately call it, (for the old lady does sometimes take a nap) is a
next door neighbour. This palace lodged, long ago, the old Roman
Præfects; the kings of the first race, the counts of Paris under the
second; and twelve kings of the third.
The great _Hôtel Dieu_, or Hospital, counts all the years between us and
king Pepin, about twelve hundred. It is a manly, solid, and majestic
building; its façade is adorned with Doric columns, and beneath the
entablature are Force, Prudence, and Justice, and several other virtues
“stupified in stone.” But I will give you a more particular account of
it, as well as of the right worshipful Notre Dame, and the Palace, when
I write my book about Churches, Hospitals, and the courts of Justice. I
will only remark now, that I visited this great Hospital a few days ago,
and that I saw in it a thousand beds, and a poor devil stretched out on
each bed, waiting his turn to be despatched; that the doctor came along
about six, and prescribed a _bouillon et un lavement_ to them all round;
a hundred or two of students following after, of whom about a dozen
could approach the beds, and when symptoms were examined, and legs cut
off, or some such surgical operation performed, the others _listened_.
But it would be ungrateful in me to pass without a special notice the
_Præfecturate of Police_. If I now lodge in the _Rue D’Enfer_, No.--,
looking down upon the garden of the Luxembourg, and having my conduct
registered once a week in the king’s books; if I have permission to
abide in Paris; and, above all, if ever I shall have the permission to
go out of it; whither am I to refer these inestimable privileges, but to
the never-sleeping eye of the Præfecturate of Police? But the merits of
this institution are founded upon a much wider scheme of benefits; for
which I am going to look into my _Guide to Paris_.
It “discourages pauperism” by sending most of the beggars out of Paris,
to besiege the Diligence on the highways: and gives aid to dead people
by fishing them out of the Seine, at twenty-five francs a piece, into
the Morgue. It protects personal safety by entering private houses in
the night, and commits all persons taken in the fact (_flagrant délit_;)
it preserves public decency by removing courtezans from the Palais Royal
to the Boulevards, and other convenient places; and protects his Most
Christian Majesty by seizing upon “Infernal Machines,” just after the
explosion. In a word, this Præfecturate of the Police, with only five
hundred thousand troops of the line, and the National Guard, encourages
all sorts of public morals at the rate of seven hundred millions of
francs per annum, besides protecting commerce by taking gentlemen’s
cigars out of their pockets at Havre.
Towards the south and west of the Island, you will see a little building
distinguished from its dingy neighbours by its gentility and freshness.
It stands retired by the river side, modestly, giving a picturesque
appearance to the whole prospect, and a relief to the giant monuments
which I have just described. This building is the _Morgue_.
If any gentleman, having lost his money at Frascati’s--or his health and
his money too at the pretty Flora’s--or if any melancholy stranger
lodging in the _Rue D’Enfer_, absent from his native home and the sweet
affections of his friends, should find life insupportable, (there are no
disappointed lovers in this country,) he will lie in state the next
morning at the _Morgue_. Upon a black marble table he will be stretched
out, and his clothes, bloody or wet, will be hung over him, and there he
will be kept (except in August, when he won’t keep) for three whole days
and as many nights; and if no one claims him, why then the King of the
French sells him for ten francs to the doctors; and his clothes, after
six months, belong to François, the steward, who has them altered for
his dear little children, or sells them for second-hand finery in the
market.
One of these suicides, as I have read in the _Revue de Paris_, was
claimed the other day by his affectionate uncle as follows:--A youth
wrote to his uncle that he had lost at gambling certain sums entrusted
to him, in his province, to pay a debt in Paris, and that he was
unwilling to survive the disgrace. The uncle recognised him, and buried
him with becoming ceremony at _Père la Chaise_. In returning home
pensively from this solemn duty, the youth rushed into his uncle’s arms,
and they hugged and kissed, and hugged each other, to the astonishment
of the spectators. It is so agreeable to see one’s nephews, after one
has buried them, jump about one’s neck!
The annual number of persons who commit suicide in all France, I have
seen stated at two thousand. Those who came to the _Morgue_ in 1822 were
260. Is it not strange that the French character, so flexible and
fruitful of resources in all circumstances of fortune, should be subject
to this excess? And that they should kill themselves, too, for the most
absurd and frivolous causes. One, as I have read in the journals, from
disgust at putting on his breeches in the cold winter mornings; and two
lately (Ecousse and Lebrun) because a farce they had written did not
succeed at the play-house. The authors chose to incur the same penalty
in the other world that was inflicted on their vaudeville in this. And
these Catos of Utica are brought here to the _Morgue_.
The greater part are caught in the Seine, by a net stretched across the
river at St. Cloud. Formerly twenty-five francs were given for a man
saved, and twenty if drowned; and the rogues cheated the government of
its humanity by getting up a company, who saved each other. The sum is
now reversed, so that they always allow one time, and even assist one a
little sometimes, for the additional five francs.
The building, by the advance of civilization, has required, this season,
to be repaired, and a new story is added. Multitudes, male and female,
are seen going in and out at every hour of the day. You can step in on
your way as you go to the flower market, which is just opposite. There
is a lady at the bureau, who attends the sale and recognition of the
corpses in her father’s absence, and who plays the piano, and excels in
several of the ornamental branches.
She was crowned at the last distribution of prizes, and is the daughter
of the keeper, M. Perrin. He has four other daughters, who also give the
same promise of accomplishment. Their morals do not run the same risk as
most other children’s, of being spoilt by a bad intercourse from
without. Indeed, they are so little used to associate abroad, that,
getting into a neighbour’s the other day, they asked their playmates,
running about through the house, “Where does your papa keep his dead
people?” Innocent little creatures! M. Perrin is a man of excellent
instruction himself, and entertains his visitors with conversations
literary and scientific, and he writes a fine round text hand.
When a new corpse arrives, he puts himself at his desk, and with a
graceful flourish enters it on the book; and when not claimed at the end
of three days he writes down in German text, “_inconnu_;” if known,
“_connu_.” The exhibition room is, since its enlargement, sufficient for
the ordinary wants of society; but on emergencies, as on the “three
glorious days,” and the like, they are obliged to accommodate a part of
the corpses elsewhere. They have been seen strewed, on these occasions,
over the garden; and Miss Perrin has to take some in her room. Alas!
that no state of life should be exempt from its miseries! You who think
to have propitiated fortune by the humility of your condition, come
hither and contemplate M. Perrin. Only a few years ago, when quietly
engaged in his official duties, his own wife came in with the other
customers. He was struck with horror; and he went to his bureau and
wrote down “_connu_.”
The notorious _Hôtel de Ville_ is well placed in a group with these
obscene images. It is the seat of the administration of justice for all
Paris, a grey and grief-worn castle, with the _Place de Grêve_ by the
side of it. There it stands by the great thermometer of Monsieur
Chevalier, where the French people come twice a day to see if they ought
to shiver or sweat. There is not a more abominable place in all Paris
than this _Place de Grêve_. It holds about the same rank in the city
that the hangman does in the community. There flowed the blood of the
ferocious Republic, of the grim Empire, and the avenging Restoration.
Lally’s ghost haunts the guilty place. Cartouche was burnt there, and
the horrible Marchioness Brinvilliers; Damien and Ravaillac were
tortured there. The beautiful Princess de Lamballe was assassinated
there, and the martyrs of 1830 buried there. To complete your horror,
there is yet the lamp post, the revolutionary gibbet, and the window
through which Robespierre leaped out and broke--if I were not writing to
a lady I would say--his d----d neck. No accusing spirit would fly to
Heaven’s chancery with the oath.
I began to breathe as I stepped upon the _Pont Neuf_. The atmosphere
brightened, the prospect suddenly opened, and the noble river exhibited
its twenty bridges, and its banks, turretted, towered, and castellated,
as far as the eye could pierce. There is a romantic interest in the very
name of this bridge, as in the “Bridge of Sighs,” though not a great
deal richer in architecture than yours of Fair Mount. And what is the
reason? Why is the Rialto more noble than your Exchange of Dock-street?
You see Pierre and Jaffier, and the Jew, standing on it. The _Pont Neuf_
has arched the Seine these two hundred years and more. It was once the
centre of gaiety, and fashion, and business. Here were displayed the
barbaric luxury of Marie de Medicis, and the pompous Richelieu;
glittering equipages paraded here in their evening airings, and fair
ladies in masks--better disguised in their own faces--crowded here to
the midnight routes of the Carnival.
A company in 1709 had an exclusive privilege of a depôt of umbrellas at
each end, that ladies and gentlemen paying a sou might cross without
injury to their complexions. The fine arts, formerly natives of this
place, have since emigrated to the _Palais Royal_--_ripæ ulterioris
amantes_--and despair now comes hither at midnight--and the horrid
suicide, by the silent statue of the great Henry, plunges into eternity.
On the left is the _Quai des Augustins_, where the patient bibliopolist
sits over his odd volumes, and where the cheapest of all human
commodities is human wit. A black and ancient building gives an imposing
front to the _Quai Conti_; it is the _Hotel des Monnaies_. Commerce,
Prudence, and several other allegorical grandmothers are looking down
from the balustrade. Next to it, (for the Muses, too, love the mint,)
with a horse-shoe kind of face, is the Royal “_Institut de France_.”
This court has supreme jurisdiction in the French republic of letters;
it regulates the public judgment in matters of science, fine arts,
language, and literary composition; it proposes questions, and rewards
the least stupid, if discovered, with a premium, and gives its
approbation of ingenious inventors; who, like Fulton, do not die of
hunger in waiting for it.
You may attend the sittings of the _Académie des Sciences_, which are
public, on Mondays. You will meet Pascal and Molière in the
ante-chamber--as far as they dared venture in their lives. The members
you will see in front of broad tables in the interior, and the president
eminent above the rest, who ever and anon will ring a little bell by way
of keeping less noise; the spectators, with busts of Sully, Bossuet,
Fenelon, and Descartes, sitting gravely, tier over tier, around the
extremities of the room. The secretary will then run over a programme of
the subjects, not without frequent tinklings of the admonitory bell; at
the end of which, debates will probably arise on general subjects, or
matters of form. For example, M. Arago will call in question the
veracity of that eminent man, M. Herschel, of New York, and his
selenelogical discoveries; which have a great credit here, because no
one sees the moon for the fogs, and you may tell as many lies about her
as you please.
Afterwards, a little man of solemn mien, being seated upon a chair, will
read you, alas, one of his own compositions. He will talk of nothing
but the _geognosie des couches atmospheriques_; the _isomorphism_ of the
_mineralogical substances_, and the “_Asyntotes of the Parabola_,” for
an hour. You will then have an episode from Baron Larrey (no one
listening) upon a bag of dry bones, displayed, _à la Jehoshaphat_, upon
a wide table; followed by another reader, and then by another, to the
end of the sitting. You will think the empire of dulness has come upon
the earth.
The Institute was once the _College des Quatre Nations_, and was founded
by Mazarin upon the ruins of the famous _Tour de Nesle_. I need not tell
you the history of this tower. Who does not know all about Queen
_Isabeau de Bavière_?--of her window from the heights of the tower, from
which she overlooked the Seine, before the baths of Count Vigier (what
made him a count?) were invented. She was a great admirer of the fine
forms of the human figure.
Her ill-treatment of her lovers--her sewing them up, to prevent their
telling tales, in sacks, and then tossing them before day-light into the
river, was, to say the least of it, very wrong! In crossing the _Pont
des Arts_, towards midnight, I have often heard something very like the
voices of lamentation and violence. Sometimes, I thought I could hear
distinctly _Isabeau!_ in the murmuring of the waters.
All the world runs to the _Bains Vigiers_, which are anchored along this
Quai, to bathe, at four sous; but the water is exceedingly foul. It is
here the Seine,
“With disemboguing streams,
Rolls the large tribute of its dead dogs.”
And what is worst, when done bathing here, you have no place to go to
wash yourself.
The _Pont des Arts_ is a light and airy bridge, from the door of the
Institute to the Quai du Louvre; upon which no equipages are admitted.
The Arts use their legs--_cruribus non curribus utuntur_. Between this
and the “Pont Royal,” (a bridge of solid iron,) the antiquarians have
got together for sale all the curious remains of the last century,
Chineseries, Sevreries, and chimney pieces of Madame Pompadour. Next is
the _Quai Voltaire_, in the east corner of which is the last earthly
habitation of the illustrious individual whose name it bears. The
apartment in which he died has been kept shut for the last forty years,
and has been lately thrown open.
On the opposite side you see stretched out, huge in length, the heavy
and monotonous Louvre, which, with the Tuileries adjoining, is, they
say, the most spacious and beautiful palace in the world. I have not
experienced what the artists call a perception of its beauties. There is
a little pet corner, the eastern colonnade raised by Louis XIV., which
is called the great triumph of French architecture. It consists of a
long series of apartments, decorated with superb columns, with sculpture
and mosaics, and a profusion of gilding, and fanciful ornaments.[2] From
the middle gallery it was that Charles IX., one summer’s evening, amused
himself shooting Hugonots, flying the St. Bartholomew, with his
arquebuss. Nero was a mere fiddler to this fellow. This is the gallery
of Philip Augustus, so full of romance. It was from here that Charles X.
“cut and ran,” and Louis Philippe quietly sat down on his stool. See how
the Palais des Beaux Arts is peppered with the Swiss bullets!
The edge of the river, for half a mile, is embroidered with washerwomen;
and baths, and boats of charcoal, cover its whole surface. One cannot
drown oneself here, but at the risk of knocking out one’s brains. One of
the curiosities of this place, is the _fête des Blanchisseuses_,
celebrated a few days ago. The whole surface of the river was covered
with dances; floors being strewed upon the boats, and the boats, adorned
with flags and streamers, rowing about, and filled with elegant
washerwomen, just from the froth, like so many Venuses--now dissolving
in a waltz, now fluttering in a quadrille. You ought to have seen how
they chose out, the most beautiful of these washerwomen--the queen of
the suds--and rowed her in a triumphal gondola through the stream, with
music that untwisted all the chains of harmony.
“Not Cleopatra, on her galley’s deck,
Display’d so much of leg, or more of neck.”
This array of washing-boats relieves the French from that confusion and
misery of the American kitchen, the “washing-day;” but to give us the
water to drink, after all this scouring of foul linen, is not so polite.
I have bought a filter of charcoal, which, they say, will intercept, at
least, the petticoats and other such articles as I might have swallowed.
The Seine here suffers the same want as one of his brother rivers, sung
by the poets:--
“The River Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash the city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine,
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine.”
Just opposite this Quai, I observed “Schools of Natation,” for both
sexes, kept entirely separate. An admonition is placed over the ladies’
school to this effect, in large letters; besides, it is hermetically
secured against any impertinent intrusion, by a piece of linen. The
ladies, however, were put to their last shifts, last summer, in
maintaining this establishment. Such rigid notions do some persons here
entertain of female decorum! But opposition has now died away; and the
reports about gentlemen of the “other house” becoming love-sick, from
swimming in the waters from the ladies’ bath, have been proved
malicious: for the gentlemen’s house is farther up the stream, “_et par
consequence_.”
The truth is, that a lady has as much right, and, unfortunately, in
these ship-wrecking times, as much necessity often, to swim as a
gentleman; and it is ascertained that, with the same chance, the woman
is the better swimmer of the two. (I have this from the lady who keeps
the bureau.) Her head is always above the water. All of them, and
especially those who have the vapours, can swim without cork. The
process of instruction is easy. All that the swimming master has to do,
is just to thrust the little creatures into a pair of gum-elastic
trousers, and a cravat inflated, and then pitch them in, one after
another--only taking care not to put on the trousers without the cravat.
I will finish this paragraph, already too long, by an anecdote. It will
shew you that ladies who swim cannot use too much circumspection,--I
mean, by circumspection, looking up, as well as round about them. The
ever-vigilant police about the Tuileries had observed a young gentleman
very busy with tools, at an opposite garret window, for whole weeks
together. Sometimes till the latest hour of the night his lamp was seen
glimmering at the said window. At length, by the dint of looking, and
looking, they discovered something like an “Infernal Machine,” placed
directly towards the apartment of the king and queen, and the
bed-chamber of the dear little princesses and Madame Adelaide. It was
just after the July review, and General Mortier’s disaster; and
suspicion lay all night wide awake. What needs many words? They burst
into the room--the “_Garde Municipale_,” and the “_police centrale_,”
the “_pompiers_,” and the “_sapeurs_,” and the serjeants clad in blue,
with buttons to their arms, and swords to their sides, and coifed in
chapeaux, three feet in diameter--breaking down all opposition of doors,
and dragged forth the terrified young man.
The tongues of all Paris were now set loose, as usual, and proclamations
were read through the streets _de l’horrible assassinat tenté contre la
vie du roi, et de la famille royale_, &c. &c., and all that for four
sous! It was even said, that he had made important revelations to the
Minister of the Interior; and that some of the most distinguished
Carlists were implicated in his guilt. At length, he was brought up
before the Chamber of Peers, with his machine; where it was examined,
and discovered to be--what do you think?--a telescope! The young man
alleged that he was getting it up for astronomical purposes; but the
president, a shrewd man about machines, observed that its obliquity was
in an opposite direction to the stars.
The Seine flows gently by the side of the Tuileries, both from the
pleasure it has had in bathing the royal family, and the delight of
listening to the king’s band, which plays here every evening; and from
this onwards, the right bank is occupied by the gardens of the Tuileries
and the Champs Elysées. If you wish to know how much more beautiful than
the gardens of Armida is this garden of the Tuileries, I refer you to my
former letters; especially to that one which I wrote you when I had just
fallen from the clouds. I admired, then, everything with sensibility,
and a good many things with ecstacy. Somebody has said, that every one
who is born, is as much a first man as Adam; which I do not quite
believe. He came into the midst of a creation, which rushed, with the
freshness of novelty, upon his senses, and was not introduced to him by
gradual acquaintance.
How many things did this first man see in Eden which you and I could
never have seen in it; and which he himself had never seen in it if he
had been put out to nurse, or had been brought up at the “College
Rolin.” How often have I since wandered through this garden without
even glancing at the white and snowy bosom of the Queen of Love; how
often walked upon this goodly terrace, strolling all the while, the
pretty Miss Smith at one arm, and thy incomparable self at the other, by
the wizard Schuylkill, or the silent woods of the Mohontongo.
Opposite this garden, on the _Quai d’Orsay_, is the Hotel, not finished,
of the Minister of the Interior, the most enormous building of all
Paris. It has turned all the houses near it into huts. _That_, just
under its huge flanks, with a meek and prostrate aspect, as if making an
apology for intruding into the presence of its prodigious
neighbour--that is the Hotel of the Legion of Honour. Alas, what
signifies it to have bullied all Europe for half a century!
Close by is a little chateau, formerly of the _Marquis de Milraye_,
which I notice only to tell you an anecdote of his wife. The prince
Philip came to Paris and died very suddenly, under Louis XIV. He was a
great roué and libertine, and some one moralizing, expressed, before the
Marchioness, doubts about his salvation. “_Je vous assure_,” said she,
very seriously, “_qu’à des gens de cette qualité-là, Dieu y regarde bien
à deux fois pour les autres._” Which proves that ladies bred in high
life don’t think that kings may be condemned like you and I.
The next object of importance, and the object of most importance in all
Paris, is the _Chamber of Deputies_. I wished to go in, but four
churlish and bearded men disputed me this privilege. I sat down,
therefore, upon the steps, having Justice, Temperance, and Prudence, and
another elderly lady, on each side of me; and I consoled myself, and
said--
“In this House the Virtues are shut out of doors.” I had also in the
same group, Sully, Hôpital, Daguesseau, and Colbert. What superhuman
figures! And I had in front the Bridge of Concord, upon which are placed
twelve statues in marble, also of the colossal breed. A deputy, as he
waddles through the midst of them, seems no bigger than Lemuel Gulliver,
just arrived at Brobdignag. Four, are of men distinguished in
war--Condé, who looks ridiculously grim, and Turenne, Duguesclin, and
Bayard; and four eminent statesmen--Suger, Richelieu, Sully, Colbert;
and four men famous on the sea--Tourville, Suffren, Duquesne, and who
was the other? He whose name would shame an epic poem, or the Paris
Directory, Duguay-Trouin. I took off my hat to Suffren, for he helped
us with our Independence.
On the back ground of this Palace is a delightful woodland, where the
members often seek refreshment from the fatigues of business in the open
air. Here you will see a Lycurgus seated apart, and ruminating upon the
fate of empires; and there a pair of Solons, unfolding the mazes of
human policy, straying arm in arm through its solitary gravel walks. M.
Q----, a member of this Chamber, and sometimes minister, was seen
walking here assiduously during the last summer evenings; and often,
when the twilight had just faded into night, a beautiful female figure
was seen walking with him. It did not seem to be of mortal race, but a
spirit rather of some brighter sphere which had consented awhile to walk
upon this earth with Monsieur Q----. It was, however, the wife of
Monsieur O----, another member of this Chamber.
One essential difference you may remark between Numa Pompilius and
Deputy Q----, is, that the one met ladies in the woods for the making of
laws, and the other for the breaking of them. Monsieur O----, informed
of the fact, took a signal revenge upon the seducer of his wife. And
what do you think it was? He called him out, to be sure, and blew out
his brains. Not a bit of it. He waylaid him, then, and despatched him
secretly? Much less. I will tell you what he did. He took Monsieur Q----’s
wife in exchange. In telling this tale, which I had on pretty good
authority, I do not mean to say--Heaven preserve me!--that there are not
honest wives in Paris.
“Il en est jusqu’à trois que je pourrais nommer.”
I have now before me one of the most execrable spots upon this
earth--which all the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten--the “Place de la
Revolution”[3]--where the Queen of France suffered death with her
husband, to propitiate the horrible Republic. I saw once my mother in
agitation, upon reading a newspaper--sobbing and even weeping
aloud;--she read (and set me to weeping too) the account of this
execution of the Queen. It is the farthest remembrance of my life, and I
am now standing on the spot--on the very spot on which this deed was
perpetrated--which made women weep in their huts beyond the Alleghany!
With the manifold faults of this Queen, one cannot, at the age of sober
reason, look upon the place of her execution, and think over her hapless
fate, without feeling all that one has of human nature melting into
compassion. She was a woman whom anything of a gentleman would love,
with all her faults. Moreover, no one expects queens, in the
intoxication of their fortune, to behave like sober people. Not even the
sound and temperate head of Cæsar preserved its prudence in this kind of
prosperity. The guillotine was erected permanently in the centre of this
Place, and was fed with cart-loads at a time. The most illustrious of
its victims were, the Queen, Louis XVI., his sister Mademoiselle
Elizabeth, and the father of the present king. The grass does not grow
upon the guilty Place, and the Seine flows quickly by it.
If you wish to have the finest view of all Paris--the finest perhaps of
all Europe, of a similar kind--you must stand upon the centre of this
Place; and you must hurry, as the Obelisk of Luxor has just arrived from
Egypt, and will occupy it shortly. Towards the east, you have spread out
before you the gardens of the Tuileries, bordered by the noble colonnade
of the Rue Rivoli and the Seine;--towards the west, the Champs Elysées,
and the broad walk leading gently up to Napoleon’s arch, which stands
proudly on the summit, and “helps the ambitious hill the heavens to
scale.” On the north, you have in full view, through the Rue Royale, the
superb Madelaine, on the side of its most brilliant sculpture; and in
symmetry with it, the noble front of the Palais Bourbon on the south. On
fine evenings, and days of parade, you will see from the Arch to the
Palace, about two miles, a moving column of human beings upon the side
walks; and innumerable equipages, with horses proud of their trappings,
and lackeys of their feathers, meeting and crossing each other upon the
intervening roads; and upon the area of the Tuileries, all that which
animated life has most amiable and beautiful. You will see, amidst the
parterres of flowers, and groups of oranges, and its marble divinities,
swans swimming upon the silvery lakes; multitudes of children at their
sports, and everywhere ladies and their cavaliers, in all the colours of
the toilette, sitting or standing, or sauntering about, and appearing
through the trees, upon the distant terraces, as if walking upon the
air. All this will present you a rich and variegated tableau, of which
prose like mine can give you no reasonable perception.
The great obelisk which is to stand here, is now lying upon the adjacent
wharf. It is seventy-two feet high, and is to be raised higher, by a
pedestal of twenty feet. It is a single block of granite, with four
faces, and each face has almost an equal share of the magnificent
prospect I have just tried to describe. It tapers towards the top, and
its sides, older than the alphabet, are embossed with a variety of
curious images. Birds are singing, rustics labouring, or playing on
their pipes, sheep are bleating, and lambs skipping. A slave is on his
knees, and a Theban gentleman recumbent in his fauteuil; and one is at
his wine,--he who “hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass, 3,000
years ago.”--The men are in caps, a third their size; and the women in
low hoods, like a chancellor’s wig.
Little did the miner think who dug it from the quarry, little did the
sculptor think, as he carved these images on it, and how little did
Sesostris think, in reading over his history of Paris, that it would,
one day, make the tour of Europe, and establish itself here in the Place
de la Concorde. An expensive and wearisome journey it has had of it. It
is nine years since it stepped from its pedestal at Luxor. It was a good
notion of Charles X., but not original. The Emperor Constantius brought
one, the largest ever known, (150 feet high,) to Rome. Two magnificent
ones, set up by the Doge Ziana, adorn the Piazzetta of St. Mark’s,
brought from some island of the Archipelago.
The French army at Alexandria, in 1801, had two young ones on their way
to Paris, which fell, poor things! into the rapacious hands of the
British Museum. And now the English, jealous of this Luxorique
magnificence, are going to bring over Cleopatra’s needle, to be up with
them; and we are going to put something in our Washington Square; and
then the French, some of these days, will bring over the Pyramids.
At the corner of the Rue Royale you will see two palaces, one the depôt
of fine furniture and jewels, the other of the armour of the crown. Here
are shields that were burnished for Cressy and Agincourt. Here is the
armour of Francis when made prisoner at Pavia, of Henry when mortally
wounded by Montgomery; complete sets of armour of Godfrey de Bouillon
and Joan of Arc, the sword of King Cassimer, and that of the holy
father Paul V. Spiders are now weaving their webs in casques that went
to Jerusalem. The diamonds of the crown deposited here before the
Revolution in rubies, topaz, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, &c., were
7432 in number, amongst which were the famous jewels called the _Sanci_
and the _Regent_, so notorious in the history of jewels; the latter has
figured about the world in the king’s hats, and Napoleon’s sword. An
antiquarian would find extreme delight in this room; as for me I scarce
know which is Mambrino’s helmet and which the barber’s basin.
I had no sooner quitted the deputies than I found myself under the great
_Hospital of the Invalids_, whose lofty and gilded dome was blazing in
the setting sun. Napoleon put up this gilding to amuse gossiping Paris
in his Russian defeats; as Alcibiades, to divert Athens from his worse
tricks, cut off his dog’s tail; and as Miss Kitty, to withdraw a more
dangerous weapon from the baby’s hand, gives it a rattle. 3800 soldiers
are now lodged in this Hospital, or rather, pieces of soldiers; for one
has an arm at Moscow, another a leg at Algiers, needing no nourishment
from the state. Here is one whose lower limbs were both lost at the
taking of Paris. He seems very happy. He saves the shoemaker’s,
hosier’s, and half the tailor’s bill. He is fat, too, and healthy, for
he has the same rations as if he were all there. If I were expert at
logic, I would prove to you that this piece of an individual might
partly eat himself up, his legs being buried in the suburbs, and he
dining on the potatoes which grow there; and I could prove, if I was put
to it, that with a proper assistance from cork, he might be running
about town with his legs in his cheeks. There are two sorts of
historians,--one, of those who confine themselves to a simple narrative
of facts and descriptions; the other, searching after causes and
effects, and accompanying the narrative with moral reflections. I belong
to the latter class.
This Hospital was planned by the great Henry; the great Louis built it;
and it was furnished with lodgers by the great Napoleon. It has all the
air of a hospital; long ranges of rooms and chilling corridors; and this
_réunion_ of mutilated beings is a horrid spectacle! They lead a kind of
inactive, lounging, alms-house existence. How much better had the
munificence of government given to each his allowance, with the
privilege of remaining with his friends and relations, than to be thus
cut off from all the charities and consolations of domestic life, and
without the last, best consolation of afflicted humanity--a woman.
The dome is magnificent with paintings, gildings, carvings, and such
like decorations. The chapel, the most splendid part, is tapestried with
flags taken in war from the enemy. What an emblem in a Christian church!
There are several hundreds yet remaining, notwithstanding the great
numbers burnt, to save them from their owners, the allies. “There are
some here from all countries,” said my guide, growing a foot taller.
“Those are from Africa; those from Belgium; and those three from
England.” When I asked him to shew me those from America, he replied,
with a shrug--“_Cela viendra, monsieur_.”
The immense plain to the west of the Invalids and in front of the _Ecole
Militaire_, is the _Champ de Mars_, the rendezvous of horses fleet in
the race, and cavalry to be trained for the battle. I am quite vexed
that I have not space to tell you of the great Revolutionary fête which
was once celebrated in this very place; how the ladies of the first rank
volunteered and worked with their own dear little hands to put up the
scaffolding; and how the king was brought out here with his white and
venerable locks and air of a martyr, and the queen, her eyes swollen
with weeping; their last appearance but one! before the people. And it
would be very gratifying to take a look at that good old revolutionary
patriarch, Talleyrand. How he officiated at the immense ceremony, at the
head of two hundred priests, all habited in immaculate white surplices,
and all adorned with tri-coloured scarfs, and then how the holy man
blessed the new standards of France, and consecrated the eighty-three
banners of the Departments.
I wish to write all this, but winged time will not wait upon my desires;
besides, this letter is already the longest that was ever written; it
has as many curiosities, too, as the shield of Achilles. The bridge just
opposite is the _Pont de Jena_. The allies were about to destroy it on
account of its name, and put gunpowder under it, but Louis the
Eighteenth would not allow it. _Le jour où vous ferez sauter le Pont de
Jena, je me mette dessus!_ and Blucher was moved. This bridge is the end
of my letter and journey; _finis chartæque viæque_.
The cholera, the deuce take it, has got into Italy, and I shall perhaps
lose altogether the opportunity of a visit to that country. I shall not
kiss the feet of his Holiness, nor see the Rialto, nor the Bridge of
Sighs; nor Venice and her gondolas, nor look upon the venerable palace
of her Doges. Alas, I shall not linger at Virgil’s tomb! nor swim in the
Tiber, nor taste one drop of thy pure fountain, Egeria! nor thine, _Fons
Blandusiæ splendidior vitreo_.