Part 10
I took an indolent stroll with a friend this morning to the _Hopital des Invalides_, on the other side of the river. Here, not long since, were twenty-five thousand old soldiers. There are but five thousand now remaining, most of them having been dismissed by the Bourbons. It is of course one of the most interesting spots in France; and of a pleasant day there is no lounge where a traveller can find so much matter for thought, with so much pleasure to the eye. We crossed over by the _Pons Louis Quinze_, and kept along the bank of the river to the esplanade in front of the hospital. There was never a softer sunshine, or a more deliciously-tempered air; and we found the old veterans out of doors, sitting upon the cannon along the rampart, or halting about, with their wooden legs, under the trees, the pictures of comfort and contentment. The building itself, as you know, is very celebrated for its grandeur. The dome of the _Invalides_ rises upon the eye from all parts of Paris, a perfect model of proportion and beauty. It was this which Bonaparte ordered to be gilded, to divert the people from thinking too much upon his defeat. It is a living monument of the most touching recollections of him now. Positively the blood mounts, and the tears spring to the eyes of the spectator, as he stands a moment, and remembers what is around him in that place. To see his maimed followers, creeping along the corridors, clothed and fed by the bounty he left, in a place devoted to his soldiers alone, their old comrades about them, and all glowing with one feeling of devotion to his memory, to speak to them, to hear their stories of--"_L'Empereur_" it is better than a thousand histories to make one _feel_ the glory of "the great captain." The interior of the dome is vast, and of a splendid style of architecture, and out from one of its sides extends a superb chapel, hung all round with the tattered flags taken in _his_ victories alone. Here the veterans of his army worship, beneath the banners for which they fought. It is hardly appropriate, I should think, to adorn thus the church of a "religion of peace;" but while there, at least, we feel strangely certain, somehow, that it is right and fitting; and when, as we stood deciphering the half-effaced insignia of the different nations, the organ began to peal, there certainly was anything but a jar between this grand music, consecrated as it is by religious associations, and the thrilling and uncontrolled sense in my bosom of Napoleon's glory. The anthem seemed to _him_!
The majestic sounds were still rolling through the dome when we came to the monument of _Turenne_. Here is another comment on the character of Bonaparte's mind. There was once a long inscription on this monument, describing, in the fulsome style of an epitaph, the deeds and virtues of the distinguished man who is buried beneath. The emperor removed and replaced it by a small slab, graven with the single word TURENNE. You acknowledge the sublimity of this as you stand before it. Everything is in keeping with its grandeur. The lofty proportions and magnificence of the dome, the tangible trophies of glory, and the maimed and venerable figures, kneeling about the altar, of those who helped to win them, are circumstances that make that eloquent word as articulate as if it were spoken in thunder. You feel that Napoleon's spirit might walk the place, and read the hearts of those who should visit it, unoffended.
We passed on to the library. It is ornamented with the portraits of all the generals of Napoleon, save one. _Ney's_ is not there. It should, and will be, at some time or other, doubtless; but I wonder that, in a day when such universal justice is done to the memory of this brave man, so obvious and it would seem necessary a reparation should not be demanded. Great efforts have been making of late to get his sentence publicly reversed, but, though they deny his widow and children nothing else, this melancholy and unavailing satisfaction is refused them. Ney's memory little needs it, it is true. No visiter looks about the gallery at the _Invalides_ without commenting feelingly on the omission of his portrait; and probably no one of the scarred veterans who sit there, reading their own deeds in history, looks round on the faces of the old leaders of whom it tells, without remembering and feeling that the brightest name upon the page is wanting. I would rather, if I were his son, have the regret than the justice.
We left the hospital, as all must leave it, full of Napoleon. France is full of him. The monuments and the hearts of the people, all are alive with his name and glory. Disapprove and detract from his reputation as you will (and as powerful minds, with apparent justice, _have_ done), as long as human nature is what it is, as long as power and loftiness of heart hold their present empire over the imagination, Napoleon is immortal.
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The promenading world is amused just now with the daily appearance in the Tuileries of a Polish lady, dressed in the Polonaise undress uniform, decorated with the order of distinction given for bravery at Warsaw. She is not very beautiful, but she wears the handsome military cap quite gallantly; and her small feet and full chest are truly captivating in boots and a frogged coat. It is an exceedingly spirited, well-charactered face, with a complexion slightly roughened by her new habits. Her hair is cut short, and brushed up at the sides, and she certainly handles the little switch she carries with an air which entirely forbids insult. She is ordinarily seen lounging very idly along between two polytechnic boys, who seem to have a great admiration for her. I observe that the Polish generals touch their hats very respectfully as she passes, but as yet I have been unable to come at her precise history.
By the by, masquerading in men's clothes is not at all uncommon in Paris. I have sometimes seen two or three women at a time dining at the restaurants in this way. No notice is taken of it, and the lady is perfectly safe from insult, though every one that passes may penetrate the disguise. It is common at the theatres, and at the public balls still more so. I have noticed repeatedly at the weekly _soirées_ of a lady of high respectability, two sisters in boy's clothes, who play duets upon the piano for the dance. The lady of the house told me they preferred it, to avoid attention, and the awkwardness of position natural to their vocation, in society. The tailors tell me it is quite a branch of trade--making suits for ladies of a similar taste. There is one particularly, in the _Rue Richelieu_, who is famed for his nice fits to the female figure. It is remarkable, however, that instead of wearing their new honors meekly, there is no such impertinent puppy as a _femme deguisée_. I saw one in a _café_, not long ago, rap the _garçon_ very smartly over the fingers with a rattan, for overrunning her cup; and they are sure to shoulder you off the sidewalk, if you are at all in the way. I have seen several amusing instances of a probable quarrel in the street, ending in a gay bow, and a "_pardon, madame!_"
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There has been a great deal of excitement here for the past two days on the result of a gambling quarrel. An English gentleman, a fine, gay, noble-looking fellow, whom I have often met at parties, and admired for his strikingly winning and elegant manners, lost fifty thousand francs on Thursday night at cards. The Count St. Leon was the winner. It appears that Hesse, the Englishman, had drank freely before sitting down to play, and the next morning his friend, who had bet upon the game, persuaded him that there had been some unfairness on the part of his opponent. He refused consequently to pay the debt, and charged the Frenchman, and another gentleman who backed him, with deception. The result was a couple of challenges, which were both accepted. Hesse fought the Count on Friday, and was dangerously wounded at the first fire. His friend fought on Saturday (yesterday), and is reported to be mortally wounded. It is a little remarkable that both the _losers_ are shot, and still more remarkable, that Hesse should have been, as he was known to be, a natural son of George the Fourth; and Count Leon, as was equally well known, a natural son of Bonaparte!
Everybody gambles in Paris. I had no idea that so desperate a vice could be so universal, and so little deprecated as it is. The gambling-houses are as open and as ordinary a resort as any public promenade, and one may haunt them with as little danger to his reputation. To dine from six to eight, gamble from eight to ten, go to a ball, and return to gamble till morning, is as common a routine for married men and bachelors both, as a system of dress, and as little commented on. I sometimes stroll into the card-room at a party, but I can not get accustomed to the sight of ladies losing or winning money. Almost all Frenchwomen, who are too old to dance, play at parties; and their daughters and husbands watch the game as unconcernedly as if they were turning over prints. I have seen English ladies play, but with less philosophy. They do not lose their money gayly. It is a great spoiler of beauty, the vexation of a loss. I think I never could respect a woman upon whose face I had remarked the shade I often see at an English card-table. It is certain that vice walks abroad in Paris, in many a shape that would seem, to an American eye, to show the fiend too openly. I am not over particular, I think, but I would as soon expose a child to the plague as give either son or daughter a free rein for a year in Paris.
LETTER XVI.
THE CHOLERA--A MASQUE BALL--THE GAY WORLD--MOBS--VISIT TO THE HOTEL DIEU.
You see by the papers, I presume, the official accounts of the cholera in Paris. It seems very terrible to you, no doubt, at your distance from the scene, and truly it is terrible enough, if one could realize it, anywhere; but many here do not trouble themselves about it, and you might be in this metropolis a month, and if you observed the people only, and frequented only the places of amusement, and the public promenades, you might never suspect its existence. The weather is June-like, deliciously warm and bright; the trees are just in the tender green of the new buds, and the public gardens are thronged all day with thousands of the gay and idle, sitting under the trees in groups, laughing and amusing themselves, as if there were no plague in the air, though hundreds die every day. The churches are all hung in black; there is a constant succession of funerals; and you cross the biers and hand-barrows of the sick, hurrying to the hospitals at every turn, in every quarter of the city. It is very hard to realize such things, and, it would seem, very hard even to treat them seriously. I was at a masque ball at the _Théatre des Varietés_, a night or two since, at the celebration of the _Mi-Careme_, or half-Lent. There were some two thousand people, I should think, in fancy dresses, most of them grotesque and satirical, and the ball was kept up till seven in the morning, with all the extravagant gaiety, noise, and fun, with which the French people manage such matters. There was a _cholera-waltz_, and a _cholera-galopade_, and one man, immensely tall, dressed as a personification of the _Cholera_ itself, with skeleton armor, bloodshot eyes, and other horrible appurtenances of a walking pestilence. It was the burden of all the jokes, and all the cries of the hawkers, and all the conversation; and yet, probably, nineteen out of twenty of those present lived in the quarters most ravaged by the disease, and many of them had seen it face to face, and knew perfectly its deadly character!
As yet, with few exceptions, the higher classes of society have escaped. It seems to depend very much on the manner in which people live, and the poor have been struck in every quarter, often at the very next door to luxury. A friend told me this morning, that the porter of a large and fashionable hotel, in which he lives, had been taken to the hospital; and there have been one or two cases in the airy quarter of St. Germain, in the same street with Mr. Cooper, and nearly opposite. Several physicians and medical students have died too, but the majority of these live with the narrowest economy, and in the parts of the city the most liable to impure effluvia. The balls go on still in the gay world; and I presume they _would_ go on if there were only musicians enough left to make an orchestra, or fashionists to compose a quadrille. I was walking home very late from a party the night before last, with a captain in the English army. The gray of the morning was just stealing into the sky; and after a stopping a moment in the _Place Vendome_, to look at the column, stretching up apparently unto the very stars, we bade good morning, and parted. He had hardly left me, he said, when he heard a frightful scream from one of the houses in the _Rue St. Honoré_, and thinking there might be some violence going on, he rang at the gate and entered, mounting the first staircase that presented. A woman had just opened a door, and fallen on the broad stair at the top, and was writhing in great agony. The people of the house collected immediately; but the moment my friend pronounced the word cholera, there was a general dispersion, and he was left alone with the patient. He took her in his arms, and carried her to a coach-stand, without assistance, and, driving to the _Hotel Dieu_, left her with the _Soeurs de Charité_. She has since died.
As if one plague were not enough, the city is still alive in the distant faubourgs with revolts. Last night, the _rappel_ was beat all over the town, the national guard called to arms, and marched to the _Porte St. Denis_, and the different quarters where the mobs were collected.
Many suppose there is no cholera except such as is produced by poison; and the _Hotel Dieu_, and the other hospitals, are besieged daily by the infuriated mob, who swear vengeance against the government for all the mortality they witness.
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I have just returned from a visit to the _Hotel Dieu_--the hospital for the cholera. Impelled by a powerful motive, which it is not now necessary to explain, I had previously made several attempts to gain admission in vain; but yesterday I fell in fortunately with an English physician, who told me I could pass with a doctor's diploma, which he offered to borrow for me of some medical friend. He called by appointment at seven this morning, to accompany me on my visit.
It was like one of our loveliest mornings in June--an inspiriting, sunny, balmy day, all softness and beauty--and we crossed the Tuileries by one of its superb avenues, and kept down the bank of the river to the island. With the errand on which we were bound in our minds, it was impossible not to be struck very forcibly with our own exquisite enjoyment of life. I am sure I never felt my veins fuller of the pleasure of health and motion; and I never saw a day when everything about me seemed better worth living for. The splendid palace of the Louvre, with its long _façade_ of nearly half a mile, lay in the mellowest sunshine on our left; the lively river, covered with boats, and spanned with its magnificent and crowded bridges on our right; the view of the island, with its massive old structures below, and the fine gray towers of the church of _Notre Dame_ rising, dark and gloomy, in the distance, rendered it difficult to realize anything but life and pleasure. That under those very towers, which added so much to the beauty of the scene, there lay a thousand and more of poor wretches dying of a plague, was a thought my mind would not retain a moment.
Half an hour's walk brought us to the _Place Notre Dame_, on one side of which, next this celebrated church, stands the hospital. My friend entered, leaving me to wait till he had found an acquaintance of whom he could borrow a diploma. A hearse was standing at the door of the church, and I went in for a moment. A few mourners, with the appearance of extreme poverty, were kneeling round a coffin at one of the side altars; and a solitary priest, with an attendant boy, was mumbling the prayers for the dead. As I came out, another hearse drove up, with a rough coffin, scantily covered with a pall, and followed by one poor old man. They hurried in, and I strolled around the square. Fifteen or twenty water-carriers were filling their buckets at the fountain opposite, singing and laughing; and at the same moment four different litters crossed toward the hospital, each with its two or three followers, women and children, friends or relatives of the sick, accompanying them to the door, where they parted from them, most probably for ever. The litters were set down a moment before ascending the steps; the crowd pressed around and lifted the coarse curtains; farewells were exchanged, and the sick alone passed in. I did not see any great demonstration of feeling in the particular cases that were before me; but I can conceive, in the almost deadly certainty of this disease, that these hasty partings at the door of the hospital might often be scenes of unsurpassed suffering and distress.
I waited, perhaps, ten minutes more. In the whole time that I had been there, twelve litters, bearing the sick, had entered the _Hotel Dieu_. As I exhibited the borrowed diploma, the thirteenth arrived, and with it a young man, whose violent and uncontrolled grief worked so far on the soldier at the door, that he allowed him to pass. I followed the bearers to the yard, interested exceedingly to observe the first treatment and manner of reception. They wound slowly up the stone staircase to the upper story, and entered the female department--a long low room, containing nearly a hundred beds, placed in alleys scarce two feet from each other. Nearly all were occupied, and those which were empty my friend told me were vacated by deaths yesterday. They set down the litter by the side of a narrow cot, with coarse but clean sheets, and a _Soeur de Charité_, with a white cap, and a cross at her girdle, came and took off the canopy. A young woman, of apparently twenty-five, was beneath, absolutely convulsed with agony. Her eyes were started from their sockets, her mouth foamed, and her face was of a frightful, livid purple. I never saw so horrible a sight. She had been taken in perfect health only three hours before, but her features looked to me marked with a year of pain. The first attempt to lift her produced violent vomiting, and I thought she must die instantly. They covered her up in bed, and leaving the man who came with her hanging over her with the moan of one deprived of his senses, they went to receive others, who were entering in the same manner. I inquired of my companion how soon she would be attended to. He said, "possibly in an hour, as the physician was just commencing his rounds." An hour after this I passed the bed of this poor woman, and she had not yet been visited. Her husband answered my question with a choking voice and a flood of tears.
I passed down the ward, and found nineteen or twenty in the last agonies of death. They lay perfectly still, and seemed benumbed. I felt the limbs of several, and found them quite cold. The stomach only had a little warmth. Now and then a half groan escaped those who seemed the strongest; but with the exception of the universally open mouth and upturned ghastly eye, there were no signs of much suffering. I found two who must have been dead half an hour, undiscovered by the attendants. One of them was an old woman, nearly gray, with a very bad expression of face, who was perfectly cold--lips, limbs, body, and all. The other was younger, and looked as if she had died in pain. Her eyes appeared as if they had been forced half out of the sockets, and her skin was of the most livid and deathly purple. The woman in the next bed told me she had died since the _Soeur de Charité_ had been there. It is horrible to think how these poor creatures may suffer in the very midst of the provisions that are made professedly for their relief. I asked why a simple prescription of treatment might not be drawn up the physicians, and administered by the numerous medical students who were in Paris, that as few as possible might suffer from delay. "Because," said my companion, "the chief physicians must do everything _personally_, to study the complaint." And so, I verily believe, more human lives are sacrificed in waiting for experiments, than ever will be saved by the results. My blood boiled from the beginning to the end of this melancholy visit.
I wandered about alone among the beds till my heart was sick, and I could bear it no longer; and then rejoined my friend, who was in the train of one of the physicians, making the rounds. One would think a dying person should be treated with kindness. I never saw a rougher or more heartless manner than that of the celebrated Dr. ----, at the bedsides of these poor creatures. A harsh question, a rude pulling open of the mouth, to look at the tongue, a sentence or two of unsuppressed comments to the students on the progress of the disease, and the train passed on. If discouragement and despair are not medicines, I should think the visits of such physicians were of little avail. The wretched sufferers turned away their heads after he had gone, in every instance that I saw, with an expression of visibly increased distress. Several of them refused to answer his questions altogether.