Part 12
The Duke of Orleans is a handsome young man, and so spare and delicate as almost to call into question his mother’s reputation. He assumes more dignity of manner than is natural to a Frenchman at his age; he is not awkward, but a little stiff; his smile seems compulsory, and more akin to the lips than the heart. Any body else would have laughed out on this occasion. He has been with the army in Africa, and has returned moderately covered with laurels. The Duke of Némours is just struggling into manhood, and is shaving to get a beard as assiduously as his father to get rid of it. He also has fought valiantly somewhere--I believe in Holland. Among the ladies there is one who pleases me exceedingly; it is Madame Adelaide, the king’s sister. She has little beauty, but a most affable and happy expression of countenance. She was a pupil of Madame Genlis, who used to call her “_cette belle et bonne Princesse_.” She was married secretly to General Athelin, her brother’s secretary, during their residence in England. She revealed this marriage, with great fear of his displeasure, to her brother, after his accession to the throne, throwing herself on her knees.--After some pause, he said, embracing her tenderly,--“Domestic happiness is the main thing after all; and now that he is the king’s brother-in-law, we must make him a duke.” Madame Adelaide is now in the Indian summer of her charms.
One who knows royalty only from the old books, necessarily looks about for that motley gentleman, the king’s fool. The city of Troyes used to have a monopoly of supplying this article; but the other towns, I have heard, grew jealous of the privilege, and they have them now from all parts of the kingdom. Seriously, the splendour of ancient courts has faded away wonderfully in every respect. When Sully went to England, says the history, he was attended by two hundred gentlemen, and three hundred guns saluted him at the Tower. The pomp and luxury of drawing-rooms and levees were then most gorgeous.
The eye was dazzled with the glittering display; nothing but yeomen of the guards with halberds, and wearing hats of rich velvet, plumed like the peacock, with wreaths and rosettes in their shoes; and functionaries of the law, in black gowns, and full wigs; and bishops, and other church dignitaries, in aprons of black silk; and there were knights of the garter, the lord steward, the lord chancellor, and the Lord knows who. And the same grandeur and brilliancy in the French courts--_chambellans_, and _écuyers_, and _aumoniers_, all the way down to the _chauf-cire_, and keeper of the royal hounds; and one swam in a sea of gems and plumes, and sweet and honied ladies. Republicanism has set her irreverend foot upon all this regal splendour. I wish I had come over a hundred years ago. The king’s salary before the Revolution, though provisions were at half their present rate, was thirty millions; that of Charles X. was twenty-five; and the present king’s is only twelve millions, with one million to the Duke of Orleans.
_I_ and Louis Philippe do not agree altogether about the manner in which the French people ought to be governed. The censorship of the press, the espionage, the violation of private correspondence, the jail and the gibbet, will not arrest the hand of the regicide. I have read in a journal to-day, that 2,746 persons have already been imprisoned for having censured the acts of the present government, in the person of the king. The devil will get his Most Christian Majesty if he goes on at this rate. Why don’t he learn that the strength of kings, in these days, is in their weakness? Why don’t he set up M. Thiers, and then M. Guizot, and then M. Thiers again, as they do in England? Look at King William--does any body shoot him? and yet he rides out with four cream-coloured horses, with blue eyes, every day, and sometimes he walks into the Hungerford Market, and asks the price of shrimps. Louis plays a principal part in all his measures, even his high-handed measures. If he makes himself a target, he must expect to be shot at. In the beginning of his reign, he played the liberal too loosely. “Why talk of censorship?” said he--“_il n’y aura plus de délits de la presse_.”--“I am but a bridge to arrive at the Republic.”
With his present acts, this language is in almost ludicrous contrast. He is a Jacobin turned king, say his enemies; and we must expect he will run the career of all renegades. I have not described his disasters and dangers in a lamentable tone, because I don’t choose to affect a sympathy I do not feel. He had a quiet and delightful habitation at Neuilly; and since he has not preferred it to this “bare-picked bone of Majesty,” at the Tuileries, let him abide the consequences. However, I shall be one of those who will deplore his loss, from the good will I bear the French people, for I have not the least doubt that, with twenty years’ possession of the throne, he will bring them, in all that constitutes real comfort and rational liberty, to a degree of prosperity unknown to their history.
Remember, I am talking French, not American politics. To infer from the example of America, that the institutions of a Republic may be introduced into these old governments of Europe, requires yet the “experiment” of another century. If we can retain our democracy when our back woodlands are filled up, when New York and Philadelphia have become a London and Paris; when the land shall be covered with its multitudes, struggling for a scanty living, with passions excited by luxurious habits and appetites;--if we can then maintain our universal suffrage and our liberty, it will be fair and reasonable enough in us to set ourselves up for the imitation of others. Liberty, as far as we yet know her, is not fitted to the condition of these populous and luxurious countries. Her household gods are of clay, and her dwelling, where the icy gales of Alleghany sing through the crevices of her hut.
I have spent a day at the exhibition of the students of the University, which was conducted with great pomp. There was a _concour_ for prizes, and speeches in the learned languages; nothing but _clarissimi_ and _eruditissimi_, Thiers and Guizots. Don’t you love modern Latin? I read, the other day, an ode to “Hannæ Moræ,” and I intend to write one some of these days to Miss Kittæ J. Nellæ, of Pine Hill. A propos! what is doing at the Girard College? when are they to choose the professors? and who are the trustees? I must be recommended τοισι ανθροποισι μεγαλοισι. Please tell Mr. S---- I confide to him my interests, as a good catholic does his soul to the priest, without meddling himself in the matter. Good night.
LETTER IX.
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!