CHAPTER IV
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London.--Paris.--Sitting of the Geographical Society.--News from Madagascar.--Popular Life in Paris.--Sights.--A Tale of Murder.--Versailles.--St. Cloud.--Celebration of Sunday.
On the 2d of July I quitted Rotterdam, and embarked in a steamer belonging to Messrs. Smith and Ers for London (distance 150 sea-miles, time of passage 20 hours). This company was the first English one that refused to allow me to pay. I had already taken my passage; but, as soon as Mr. Smith heard my name, he insisted, in the kindest way, on returning me the passage-money.
In London I spent about four weeks with my worthy friend, Mr. Waterhouse, of the British Museum; and on the 1st of August I proceeded to Paris.
The chief aim of my journey was to visit the island of Madagascar, with whose government the French alone have relations. I was therefore obliged to go to Paris to obtain information respecting this, to me, unknown country. To say the truth, I was not sorry for this; for, strange as the fact may appear to many of my readers, in all my wanderings through the world I had never visited Paris.
I reached that city on the morning of the 2d of August, and at once set about my work. My fortunate star led me to make my first visit to Monsieur Jaumard, the President of the Geographical Society, and on that very evening the society was to hold its last meeting for the present summer.
I had a very warm letter of recommendation to Monsieur Jaumard from Professor Carl Ritter, of Berlin. Monsieur Jaumard received me in the kindest manner, and invited me to be present at the sitting. I was introduced by the celebrated geographer, Monsieur Malte-Brun. A place was assigned to me at some distance from the table. At the commencement of the sitting the president made a speech in which he introduced me to the society, said a few words respecting my travels, and concluded by proposing that I should be received as an honorary member. The assembled members held up their hands in assent, and my admission was carried without a dissentient voice.
I was as much gratified as astonished at this distinction, which I had not anticipated in the least; my pleasure was all the greater from the fact that my old tutor, who had taught me history and geography, officiated as corresponding member of this same society. The president rose, and led me from my place to the table, at which I now took my place as a member, amid the cordial congratulations of the whole company.
I immediately consulted the gentlemen present with respect to my intention of undertaking a voyage to Madagascar: they were unanimous in thinking the plan quite impracticable under existing circumstances. During my stay in Holland I had already gleaned from newspaper reports that the French government intended sending a squadron to Madagascar, and that a serious war was considered imminent. I now learned some farther particulars. The French have for centuries possessed a little island, called St. Maria, on the coast of Madagascar. In the time of the late king Radama they succeeded in obtaining a footing in Madagascar itself by acquiring a district in the Bay of Vanatobé. In this district there is a rich depôt for coals; and the French employ 180 colored workmen, Indians, negroes, etc., from the Mauritius, under the superintendence of three white men. On the accession of Queen Ranavola, after the death of Radama, the new sovereign ordered these people to evacuate the district. They refused to obey the mandate, as they considered the place to be the property of the French government. Hereupon the queen sent 2000 soldiers, who fell upon the community, killed two white men and a hundred negroes, and dragged away the rest and sold them as slaves. The French government naturally demanded satisfaction, though there was little chance of obtaining justice without resorting to violent measures; and thus every one was prepared, as I have said, for the breaking out of a serious war.
Wherever I made inquiries, these reports were confirmed; and I consequently found myself compelled, if not to give up the plan of my journey, at all events to modify it. As a matter of precaution, I took with me a letter of recommendation from the French Admiralty to the commanders of their vessels on foreign stations. I was asked to wait for the return of the emperor, who had gone to some bathing-place, that I might be introduced to him; but that would have kept me too long; and I quitted Paris with my business in a very unfinished state.
The few days which I spent in this great city I utilized as much as possible in getting at least a glance at its many objects of interest. Of course I should not dream of giving an accurate description of what I saw. The rage for traveling is so universal at the present day, and the facilities for getting over hundreds of miles of ground, at least in Europe, in a few days’ time, are so great, that a large majority of my readers have probably been to Paris themselves; and those who have not seen the great city are sure to know, from the descriptions of other travelers, as much as I could tell them about it. I will, therefore, only describe in a very few words the impressions I carried away with me.
London and Paris differ as widely from one another as the English character from the French. In both cities there is plenty of life and bustle; but one can see at the first glance that in Paris it is not all, as in London, a _business life_. One does not see those rigid self-contained figures, wending their way with restless steps, careless of all that is passing around them, and seeming to consider every wasted minute as an irreparable loss. In Paris, lounging seems the order of the day, and even the bustling man of business finds time to greet his friends and exchange a few words with them, and to pause, moreover, for a few minutes in front of this or that shop, and admire the wares displayed with such really wonderful taste in the window.
The houses themselves don’t look so grave as the London domiciles. They are of large size (for in some more than thirty families live), and are not nearly so much blackened by coal-smoke as the London houses are. The doors are all open, and afford a view into neat court-yards, which are sometimes adorned with flowers--decidedly a more agreeable aspect than the tightly-closed doors of London, which seem to give the houses an uninhabited look.
In the evening the difference is most perceptible, for then the characteristic restlessness and love of pleasure inherent in the French display themselves in full force. All the streets, the public squares, the places of amusement, are equally crowded; and the Englishman, accustomed to spend his evenings in the family circle, by the fireside, for seven or eight months in the year, and in the garden of his cottage during the remaining four or five, might fancy, on first seeing the pressure and crush in the streets of Paris, that some public festival was being celebrated.
The centres of all this life are the Boulevards; and very bright and fairy-like is the scene there, on a fine summer evening, with their magnificent cafés standing wide open, and splendid shops, bright as day with the glare of thousands of gas-lamps, and with their motley crowd of carriages in the roads and of pedestrians, either wandering to and fro on the broad pavements, or sitting at neat little tables in front of the coffee-houses.
The Champs Elysées are no less attractive, though they scarcely realize their name of _fields_; for, except in the short space between the Place de la Concorde and the Rondpoint, trees and grass-plots have begun to vanish rather rapidly, to be replaced by handsome houses and hotels. The view in the Champs Elysées is closed by one of the finest monuments of modern architecture--the Arc de l’Etoile--a colossal triumphal arch, built by Napoleon the Great, in the style of the Roman gate of Septimius Severus. The chief victories of the great conqueror are sculptured with exquisite skill on this monument.
A broad road, or avenue, which in a short time will probably also be quite filled with houses, leads from this point to the celebrated Bois de Boulogne. The name of this wood was so frequently in every body’s mouth, that I naturally expected to see a forest of great sturdy trees, something in the style of the “Prater” at Vienna, or the “Thiergarten” at Berlin; but it was not so. In spite of its age, the Bois de Boulogne has never become a forest. The trees have remained small and spare, and it is a difficult matter to find a shady spot. The new and tasteful arrangement of this locality, and the addition of a beautiful fountain, are due to the present emperor, Napoleon III. He seems to be so fortunate in all his undertakings, that I should not wonder if he succeeded in making the trees grow.
The Tuileries Gardens are not very spacious, but they contain glorious specimens of venerable old trees. Here, as in all public places in Paris, chairs in abundance are to be had. You must pay for them; but the sum asked is very moderate--one sou per chair, whether you are a tenant for five minutes or for half a day.
Between the Champs Elysées and the Tuileries Gardens lies the Place de la Concorde, one of the finest squares in Europe. In old times it was called the Place Louis XV.; and here it was that the guillotine worked with horrible industry during the years 1792, 1793, and 1794, numbering Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Philippe Egalité, Marie Helène of France, Robespierre, and hundreds besides, among its victims. Now this place is adorned by two beautiful fountains, and on the spot occupied by the guillotine rises the great obelisk of Luxor. This obelisk, seventy-two feet in height, and of five hundred thousand pounds weight, is hewn out of a single block of stone: 1550 years before the Christian era it was set up in front of a temple at Thebes, in Upper Egypt. Mehemet Ali presented it to the French government. Louis Philippe had a ship built at Toulon expressly for its conveyance to France, peculiarly fashioned, so as to ascend the Nile to Luxor, near Thebes. Eight hundred men were engaged for three months in removing the obelisk from the temple to the ship. In the month of December, 1833, it arrived in Paris, but its erection was not accomplished until October, 1836. The cost of transporting and setting it up amounted to two millions of francs.
Late building operations have completely united the palace of the Tuileries with the Louvre, so that the two now form a single structure--undoubtedly the grandest of its kind in Europe. A few years ago houses of irregular architecture separated these two palaces, and the quarter of Paris surrounding them is said to have been one of the most extensive and the dirtiest in the city. Louis Philippe intended to have these old buildings pulled down, and to build broad straight streets that should unite the Tuileries with the Louvre; but millions of money were required to realize the idea, and constitutional kings can not dispose of the funds of the state at their own sweet will. Napoleon arranged all that more conveniently; the Senate and the Corps Legislatif, far more accommodating than were their predecessors, the Chambers of Peers and of Deputies, are always happy to fulfill the wishes of their sovereign.
There is so much to be seen in both these palaces, in the way of pictures, antiquities, models of fortresses, ships, and other curiosities, that one might wander about for weeks in the labyrinth of halls and galleries, quite unconscious of the lapse of time. One of the apartments is dedicated entirely to relics of Napoleon the First. Here are to be seen his tent-bed, his writing-table, his arm-chair, his robes, various uniforms and hats, many golden keys of conquered cities and fortresses, Turkish and Arabian saddles, and many other properties. The worshipers of this modern Cæsar attach a great value to the handkerchief with which the death-damps were wiped from his brow at St. Helena. Not one of the other members of the Bonaparte family is represented by any article in the collection, except perhaps the Duke of Reichstadt, one of whose coats is displayed there.
The Luxembourg Gardens, on the south bank of the Seine, are very prettily laid out. The palace, built in a severe style, possesses a rich gallery of pictures, mostly modern pieces. The halls and chambers are arranged with great splendor and true artistic taste.
Of the churches I visited but few. Notre Dame is distinguished by its pure Gothic architecture. The church of St. Geneviève is one of the oldest in Paris. It contains the tomb of the patroness of Paris, in a neat chapel, built in the Byzantine style, behind the chief altar. In the church of St. Sulpice, the façade, with its double rows of pillars and a gallery, is remarkable. In the background of this church, in a kind of niche, is a marble statue representing the Virgin Mary standing with the infant Jesus on a globe. A cupola-shaped roof, with a beautiful fresco of the Ascension, rises over the statue, which, exquisitely chiseled, and with the light falling upon it with magic effect, has a most solemn and impressive appearance. Again, I could not help remarking the amount of poetry and effect developed in the Roman Catholic religion--and what an advantage does this effect give it among the excitable masses of the people, over the simple and rather monotonous forms of Protestant worship! It is unfortunate, however, that abuses, more or less objectionable, have every where crept in, and are very damaging, if not entirely destructive, to this poetic feeling. Take, for instance, the wretched custom adopted in French churches of paying for chairs. There are few or no benches, but great stores of chairs are heaped up against the walls. For each chair the charge is a sou; and at the end of the year all these sous no doubt make up a round sum, which is very welcome to the worthy dignitaries of the church; but the devotions of the congregation are terribly disturbed. Every moment the verger comes pushing his way through the people; first he brings a chair, then takes one away; now he asks for money, and then he chats with some regular customer. And is not the idea of being obliged to pay, in a temple of God, for the right of sitting down, enough in itself to drive away all serious and devout thoughts?
The Pantheon is built in the Grecian style; the interior forms a cross. This church contains monuments of many celebrated Frenchmen. I felt the greatest interest in those of J. J. Rousseau and Voltaire.
The Hôtel des Invalides is a magnificent institution for the reception of 5000 old soldiers who have been frequently wounded in battle, or have lost an arm or a leg. The building seems very conveniently arranged, and the old pensioners are said to be well treated; but no one has thought of providing a grass-plot for their delectation. Even the courts are destitute of trees and benches. The officers have had a small garden laid out at their own expense. The dome of the “Invalides” is of great size. The interior is ornamented with a great number of captured flags, and on the walls appear great tablets, graced with the names of celebrated generals. Behind the high altar is the chapel, where the remains of Napoleon, solemnly brought from St. Helena in 1840, are to rest until the mausoleum is finished. It was nearly completed at the time of my visit. It consists of a beautiful rotunda, surrounded by twelve pillars, with twelve colossal statues of marble in the intervening spaces. The floor is likewise of marble, with a laurel wreath in mosaic surrounding the sarcophagus, which is cut out of a single block of porphyry. The entrance porch, from which two flights of steps lead downward into the rotunda, is supported by two gigantic statues. The gate and the statues, which are of bronze, are beautifully executed. The part of the church that rises over the mausoleum is nearly covered with gilding, and when the full light of day shines upon it the effect is magical.
With the celebrated cemetery of Père la Chaise I was greatly disappointed; but seeing the cemetery at New York had perhaps spoiled me for admiring any other. The graves are certainly adorned with tombs, flowers, and shrubs, but every thing is so crowded together that there is scarcely room to walk. The number of monuments distinguished by grace and richness of adornment is small, and their effect is lost by their position. The most interesting among these is that of Abélard and Heloise, who died in the twelfth century, and whose ashes were removed to this resting-place in the nineteenth.
The graves of the poor are in a division by themselves. Here I found on many--particularly on the graves of children--monuments that seemed to me much more attractive and more touching than the tombs of the rich. They consisted of little glass cases, containing tiny altars, on which the favorite playthings of the dead babies were displayed. In one I noticed a tiny basket, in which lay the thimble and sewing implements of some industrious little worker whose labor here on earth was finished--a simple memorial, but one that spoke eloquently to the heart!
The cemetery of Père la Chaise was not opened till the year 1804; it contains 100 acres, and is entirely surrounded by a high wall. The view from the hill that rises in the midst is the best reward for a very toilsome walk.
I could only pay a flying visit to the Jardin des Plantes and the Museum. The wealth of the former in exotic plants and animals is well known; both institutions are reckoned among the most remarkable in Europe.
I was much pleased with my visit to the Manufacture des Gobelins, or, as I might term it, Picture Carpet. This tapestry is wrought with such perfection, that a close inspection is required to convince the beholder he is gazing, not at an oil-painting, but a woven fabric. The drawing is very correct, and the mingling and transition of the various colors delicate and finished, as if a practiced pencil had been at work. For hours I stood watching the workmen, without obtaining the slightest clew to the secret of the art they practiced. The workman has a kind of large frame before him, on which the threads, or tissue, or warp (I am unacquainted with the right term) are perpendicularly fastened; at his side he has a huge basket of Berlin wool, wound on shuttles, and of all imaginable hues and shades. The picture he has to copy is not a worked pattern divided into squares, but an oil-painting; and it is not placed in front of the artistic weaver, but behind him. He works at the wall of threads before him, beginning from below and making his way upward, without even sketching the picture he wants to copy; I noticed some workmen, however, who had indicated the part at which they were working--a foot, for instance, or a hand--by a few strokes on the edge of the frame. Those men who imitate Persian and Indian carpets, producing fabrics a quarter of an inch thick, and which resembles cut velvet, have the original, also an oil-painting, suspended above their heads. In some apartments the most gorgeous Gobelins were displayed. They are very dear; a piece of tapestry, fifteen to twenty feet in height by eight or ten in breadth, will cost from 100,000 to 150,000 francs. But then a workman has frequently to labor for ten or more years at such a piece. The wages of the workmen are not very high; I was told, however, that after a certain number of years of service they receive a pension, which is granted in a shorter period should they become blind over their work--a calamity which not unfrequently befalls them.
My last visit was to the Morgue, where the bodies of persons found dead are exposed for identification by relatives or friends. Many of my readers will perhaps wonder how I, a woman, could visit such a place; but they must remember that, during my journeyings, I have frequently been face to face with death, and that its aspect, consequently, was less terrible to me than to the majority of people; and I can therefore look at times even with a kind of mournful complacency upon its image, mindful of that last journey all of us must take.
The Morgue is a large vaulted apartment, divided into two halves by a
## partition of glass. In the division behind the glass wall are six or
eight low tables, or slabs, on which the corpses are laid out. The clothes they had on when found are hung upon the walls. The other half of the room is for the visitors, among whom, if any of the bodies show marks of violence, secret agents of the police are accustomed to mingle, to glean from the expression of countenance, or from any chance remark, a clew by which to track the criminal. The corpses are thus exposed for three days, but the clothes are left hanging for a longer period. The most terrible sights are sometimes seen here. Thus I saw a male corpse that had lain for some months in the water, and on the next table a young girl whose head had been completely cut off; it had afterward been sewn on the neck. The poor creature had been murdered by her lover through jealousy. A remarkable incident in this murder was that the perpetrator, disturbed in the very fact, leaped from the window of a room on the sixth story without injuring himself. He scrambled up from the ground and ran away. Three days afterward, when I left Paris, he had not been apprehended.
I was told that a few weeks before, some fishermen had brought in a table-leaf with the body of a woman tied to it, but the head and feet were missing. The fishermen had discovered the body in the river by chance; it had been weighted with stones, and sunk. All possible measures were immediately taken by the authorities to find the head and feet; and, contrary to expectation, they were eventually found, though hidden in separate places. The body was then put together and exposed in the Morgue. One of the secret agents quickly noticed among the spectators an old woman who could scarcely suppress an exclamation on seeing the corpse. When she left the room the agent requested her to accompany him to the commissary, and on being asked if she knew the deceased, she replied that she recognized in the poor creature a likeness to a woman who had lived in her neighborhood a short time ago, but who had lately removed to quite another quarter of the town. Farther questioning brought out the fact that the murdered woman had come from the provinces a few months before with a sum of money, intending to carry on some small trade in Paris; she made acquaintance with a man who professed himself willing to serve her, and announced to her, after a short time, that he had found a better and cheaper dwelling for her. She accepted his offer, left her old domicile without giving the address of her new one, and since that time nothing more had been heard of her. Inquiries were made of the commissionaires, or porters of the neighborhood, one of whom remembered carrying her luggage, and pointed out the house where he had deposited it. A secret agent betook himself thither, but found the door locked. At his summons the porter appeared. The agent asked him if a Monsieur X---- did not live in that house; and on receiving an answer in the negative, added, “That is very singular, for the address is quite correct,” at the same time showing a paper. The porter declared there must be some mistake, for the house belonged to Monsieur L----, who passed the greater part of the year in the country, but had given particular orders that not a single room should be let. The agent departed, but the house was watched, and at about eleven o’clock at night two suspicious-looking characters were seen to enter. After making sure that there was no other means of exit, a sufficient number of armed policemen rushed into the house, and secured the porter and his two associates without much resistance. The house was carefully searched, and in one of the rooms they discovered not only the frame-work of the table on a leaf of which the woman had been bound, but traces of blood, and the bloodstained axe with which the unhappy creature, lured into the house by the murderers, had been killed. But enough of these horrors, of which, alas! Paris offers but too many examples.
My excursions in the environs of the capital were limited to Versailles, Trianon, and St. Cloud, which I visited on one and the same day.
The railway takes one, in an hour, to Versailles, past the little town of Sèvres, celebrated for its great porcelain manufactory. Sèvres is picturesquely situated in a broad valley watered by the Seine. The railroad runs, throughout nearly the whole distance, parallel with the valley at a considerable elevation, so that the traveler sees the charming, highly-cultivated country gliding past like scenes in a magic lantern.
As regards Versailles itself, I candidly confess myself unable to describe it. I can only assure my readers that such splendor in buildings, gardens, halls, pictures, and general arrangements could only arise in France, under a king like Louis XIV., who rivaled the Romans themselves in luxury, and held the modest opinion that _he_ was the state, and the people but an accessory to his greatness.
Hurrying through the lofty halls, and marking the innumerable pictures, representing battles, assaults, burning towns and villages, with the inhabitants half naked and in full flight, I could not help asking myself in what we are superior to the wild Indian. Our civilization has refined our customs, but our deeds have remained the same. The savage kills his enemies with a club; we slay ours with cannon balls. The savage hangs up scalps, skulls, and similar trophies in his wigwam; we paint them on canvas to decorate our palaces withal; where, then, is the great difference?
At St. Cloud I could only visit the gardens, the palace being occupied by the empress. The fountains here are said to be very grand, but they do not play every Sunday. It was on a Sunday that I went to St. Cloud, but, unfortunately, not on one of the high days; there were, however, pedestrians in plenty, and, had I been an Englishwoman, I should have been horrified; for there were children here, and even young men and maidens, so lost to all sense of propriety as to play at ball on a Sunday!
I have already observed that the good Parisians are rather too fond of pleasure, and I am ready to allow that too much of any thing is objectionable; but, on the other hand, I submit, even at the risk of being anathematized as unchristianlike by English ladies generally, that it is quite natural for people who have to sit for the whole week long at the work-table, in the shop, or in the counting-house, to indulge in a little recreation on Sundays. I can not imagine the bountiful Creator of all things looking with displeasure upon really innocent relaxation. It is all very well for rich people, who can amuse themselves every day in the week, and let their children have a holiday on Saturday, to make it a rule to observe the Sabbath strictly; but to the poor man, who works hard all the six days to maintain himself and his family in honesty, the Almighty will surely grant permission to forget his cares in harmless pleasure on the seventh.
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