Part 15

The coquetry of a French kitchen keeps alive expectation, and enhances enjoyment by surprise. You have here, too, the advantage of a male cook; the kitchen prefers the masculine to the feminine, like the grammars; and, besides, you have the tranquillity of a private house. If you ask a dish at Flicoteau’s, the waiter bawls it down to the kitchen, and as they are continually asking, he is continually bawling. At the end of the feast, you will see, standing before you, a tumbler full of toothpicks, one of which you will keep fumbling in your mouth the whole afternoon, as an evidence you have dined; and especially if you have not dined--for then you must keep up appearances;--some grease their mouths with a candle, and then you think they have been eating _paté de foie gras_.

I am sorry to have forgotten the locomotive cook; I mean a woman with an _appareil de cuisine_ about her neck, having meat and fish hung, by hooks, on both her haunches, and sausages, or fish, or potatoes, hissing in a frying-pan; and diffusing, for twenty yards around, a most appetising flavour. She haunts, usually, the Pont Neuf and its vicinity, and looks like gastronomy personified. She will give you, for four sous, of potatoes, with yesterday’s gazette, and, reclining under the parapet of the Quai--the king perhaps, all the while, envying you from the heights of the Louvre--you eat a more wholesome dinner at ten sous, than at the Place Sorbonne at twenty-four.

All the common world of Paris buys its provisions second-hand. The farmer arrives about two in the morning--he sells out to the hucksters, and these latter to the public, mixing in the leavings of the preceding day, a rotten egg with a fresh one, &c. A patient old woman, having nothing else to do, speculates over a bushel of potatoes, or a _botte_ of onions, twice twenty-four hours; and your milkwoman, perhaps, never saw a cow; cows are expensive in slops and provender, and snails and plaster of Paris are to be had almost for nothing. The French eat greater quantities of bread than their neighbours--and why at a cheaper rate?--The price is fixed, by the police, every fortnight, and its average is two-and-a-half cents--sixty per cent. lower than in London; and how much lower than with us? 450 millions of lbs. are consumed in Paris annually; each man eating twelve dollars’ worth. If you establish a Frenchman’s expense at 100, you will find 19 parts for bread, 22 for meat, 27 for wine and spirits.

Peaches, and apples, and melons, are not to be spoken of, in comparison with ours; but cherries, plums, and especially pears, are in great variety and abundance; and the fine grapes of Fontainebleau are eight cents per pound. In England, they have all the fruits of the Indies in the noblemen’s hot-houses; but who can buy them? There are men there who have the conscience to pay £150 for the fruits of a breakfast. “The strawberries at my Lady Stormont’s, last Saturday, cost £150,” says Hannah More. But I must bridle in my muse: she is getting a fit of statistics.

If a gentleman comes to Paris in the dog days, when his countrymen are spread over Europe, at watering places, and elsewhere, and when every soul of a Frenchman is out of town--if he is used to love his friends at home, and be loved by them, and to see them gather around him in the evenings--let him not set a foot in that unnatural thing, a bachelor’s apartment in a furnished hotel, to live alone, to eat alone, and to sleep alone! If he does, let him take leave of his wife and children, and settle his affairs.

Nor let him seek company at the Tavern Ordinary; here the guest arrives just at the hour, hangs up his hat, sits down in his usual place, crosses his legs, runs his fingers through his hair, dines, and then disappears, all the year round, without farther acquaintance. But let him look out a “Pension,” having an amiable landlady, or, which is the same, amiable lodgers. He will become domiciliated here after some time, and find some relief from one of the trying situations of life. You know nothing yet, happily, of the solitude, the desolation, of a populous city to a stranger. How often did I wish, during the first three months, for a cot by the side of some hoar hill of the Mahonoy. Go to a “Pension,” especially if you are a sucking child, like me, in the ways of the world; and the lady of the house, usually a pretty woman, will feel it enjoined upon her humanity to counsel and protect you, and comfort you, or she will manage an acquaintance between you and some countess or baroness, who lodges with her, or at some neighbour’s.

I live now with a most spiritual little creature; she tells me so many obliging lies, and no offensive truths, which I take to be the perfection of politeness in a landlady; and she admits me to her private parties--little family “réunions”--where I play at loto with Madame Thomas, and her three amiable daughters, just for a little cider, or cakes, or chestnuts, to keep up the spirit of the play; and then we have a song, a solo on the violin, or harp, and then a dance; and, finally, we play at little games, which inflict kisses, embraces, and other such penalties.

French people are always so merry; whatever be the amusement, they never let conversation flag, and I don’t see any reason why it should. One, for example, begins to talk of Paris, then the Passage Panorama, then of Mrs. Alexander’s fine cakes, and then the pretty girl that sits behind the counter, and then of pretty girls that sit anywhere; and so one just lets oneself run with the association of ideas, or one makes a digression from the main story, and returns or not, just as one pleases. A Frenchman is always a mimic, an actor, and all that nonsense which we suffer to go to waste in our country, he economises for the enjoyment of society.

I am settled down in the family; I am adopted; the lady gives me, to be sure, now and then “a chance,” as she calls it, of a ticket in a lottery (“the only one left”) of some distinguished lady now reduced, or some lady who has had three children, where one never draws anything; or “a chance” of conducting her and a pretty cousin of hers, who has taken a fancy to me, to the play, who adores the innocency of American manners, and hates the dissipation of the French.

Have you never felt the pleasure of letting yourself be duped? Have you never felt the pleasure of letting your little bark float down the stream when you knew the port lay the other way. I look upon all this as a cheap return for the kindnesses I have so much need of; I am anxious to be cheated, and the truth is, if you do not let a French landlady cheat you now and then, she will drop your acquaintance. Never dispute any small items overcharged in her monthly bill, or she that was smooth as the ermine, will be suddenly bristled as the porcupine; and why, for the sake of limiting some petty encroachment upon your purse, should you turn the bright heaven of her pretty face into a hurricane?

Your actions should always leave a suspicion that you are rich, and then you are sure she will anticipate every want and wish you may have with the liveliest affection; she will be all ravishment at your successes; she will be in an abyss of chagrin at your disappointments. _Helas! oh, mon Dieu!_ and if you cry, she will cry with you! We love money well enough in America, but we do not feel such touches of human kindness, and cannot work ourselves up into such fits of amiability for those who have it. I do not say it is hypocrisy; a French woman really does love you if you have a long purse; and if you have not (I do not say it is hypocrisy neither) she really does hate you.

A great advantage to a French landlady is the sweetness and variety of her smile--a quality in which French women excel universally. Our Madam Gibou keeps her little artillery at play during the whole of the dinner time, and has brought her smile under such a discipline as to suit it exactly to the passion to be represented, or the dignity of the person with whom she exchanges looks.

You can tell any one who is in arrears as if you were her private secretary, or the wealth and liberality of a guest better than his banker, by her smile. If it be a surly knave who counts the pennies with her, the little thing is strangled in its birth; and if one who owes his meals, it miscarries altogether; and for a mere visiter she lets off one worth only three francs and a half; but if a favourite, who never looks into the particulars of her bill, and takes her lottery tickets, then you will see the whole heaven of her face in a blaze, and it does not expire suddenly, but like the fine twilight of a summer evening, dies away gently on her lips.

Sometimes I have seen one flash out like a squib, and leave you at once in the dark; it had lit on the wrong person; and at other times I have seen one struggling long for its life; I have watched it while it was gasping its last; she has a way, too, of knocking a smile on the head; I observed one at dinner to-day, from the very height and bloom of health fall down and die without a kick.

It is strange (that I may praise myself)--but I have a share of attentions in this little circle even greater than they who are amiable. If I say not a word, I am witty, and I am excessively agreeable by sitting still. “The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.” My unacquaintance with life and wickedness puts me in immediate _rapport_ with women, and removes many of the little obstacles which suspicious etiquette has set up between the sexes. Ladies, they say, never blush when talking to a blind man.

While a man of address is sailing about and about a woman, as Captain Ross hunting the North-west passage, I am looked upon either as a ship in distress and claiming a generous sympathy and protection, or a prize which belongs to the wreckers, and am towed at once into harbour. Sometimes, indeed, my ignorance of Paris and its ways is taken for affectation, and they suspect me for behaving as great ambassadors do, who affect simplicity to hide their diplomatic rogueries; but he cannot long pass himself for a rogue who is really honest. It is perhaps a mere complexion of physiognomy. I see, every day, faces which remind one of those doors which have written on them, “No admission,” and others, “Walk in without knocking.” It is certain that what we call dignity, however admired on parade, is not a good social quality. “_Dignitas et amor_”--I forget what Ovid says about it.

And women, too, are more familiar and easy of access to modesty of rank. Jupiter, you know, when he made love to Antiope, with all his rays about him, was rejected, and he succeeded afterwards as a satyr. I knew a pretty American woman once, who, gartering up her stockings in the garden, was reminded, that the gardener was looking. “Well! he is only a working man,” she replied, and went on with the exhibition; she would have been frightened to death if it had been a lord. I make these remarks because other travellers would be likely to leave them out, and because it is good to know how to live to advantage in all the various circumstances of life.

In recommending you a French boarding-house, it is my duty at the same time to warn you of some of its dangers, which are as follows: Your landlady will be in arrears for her rent 200 francs, and will confide to you her embarrassment. Having a rigid, inexorable _propriètaire_, and getting into an emergency, she will at length ask you, with many blushes and amiable scruples, the loan of the said money; and her gratitude, poor thing! at the very expectation of getting it, will overcome her so, she will offer you, her arms about your neck, her pretty self, as security for the debt.

This is not all; the baroness (her husband being absent at Moscow, or anywhere else,) will invite you to a supper. She will live in a fine parlour, chamber adjoining, and will entertain you with sprightly and sensible conversation, and all the delicacies of the table, until the stars have climbed half way up the heavens; and you will find yourself _tête-à-tête_ with a lady at midnight, the third bottle of champagne sparkling on the board.--I am glad I did not leave my virtue in America; I should have had such need of it in this country! Indeed, if it had been anybody else, not softened by the experience of nine lustrums; not fortified like me by other affections--if it had been anybody else in the world, he would have been ruined by Madame la Baronne. Nor when you have resisted Russia, have you won all the victories. On a fine summer’s morning, when all is joyous and good-humoured, your landlady will present you the following cards, with notes and explanations. “This is from the belle Gabrielle. She assists her uncle in the store, and is quite disheartened with her business. Uncles are such cross things! This is from one of my acquaintances, Flora--oh, beautiful _au possible_! She paints birds and other objects for the print shops, but she finds the confinement injurious to her health. You must call and see them, especially Flora, she has such a variety of talent besides painting; and she will give you the most convincing proofs of good character and connexions. Gabrielle also is very pretty, but she is a young and innocent creature, and her education, especially her music, not so far advanced.”

The garden of the Luxembourg comes next. It contains near a hundred acres, and lies in the midst of this classical district. It is not so gaily ornamented as the Tuileries, but is rich in picturesque and rural scenery. It has, indeed, two very beautiful ornaments. At the north end, the noble edifice, constructed by Marie de Medicis, the palace of the Luxembourg, which contains a gallery of paintings, the chamber of Peers, and other curiosities; and the Observatory, a stately building, is in symmetry with this palace on the south.

In the interior there are groves of trees and grass plots surrounded by flower-beds; and numerous statues, most of which have seen better days; ranges of trees, and an octagonal piece of water inhabited by two swans, which are now swimming about in graceful solemnity, adorn the parterre in front of the palace. All these objects I have in view of my windows. The garden has altogether an air of philosophy very grateful to men of studious dispositions. Many persons are seated about, in reading or conversation, or strolling with books through its groves, and squads of students are now and then traversing it to their college recitations.

On benches overlooking the parterre is seated, all day long, the veteran of the war, the old soldier, in his regimentals, his sword as a companion laid beside him on the bench; he finds a repose here for his old age amidst the recreations of childhood; and five or six hundred little men in red breeches, whose profession it is to have their brains knocked out for their country at sixpence a day, are drilled here every morning early, to keep step and to handle their firelocks. There is one corner in which there is a fountain surmounted by a nymph, and which has a gloomy and tufted wood, and an appearance of sanctity, which makes it respected by the common world, and by the sun.

One man only is seen walking there at a time, the rest retiring out of respect for his devotions. For a week past it has been frequented daily by a poet. He recites with appropriate action his verses, heedless of the profane crowd. He appears pleased with his compositions, and smiles often, no doubt in anticipation of their immortality. I often sit an hour of an evening at my window, and look down upon the stream of people which flows in and out, and the sentinel who walks up and down by the gate ridiculously grim.

I love to read the views and dispositions of men in their faces. I witness some pleasant flirtations, too, under the adjacent lime trees, and many gratified and disappointed assignations. Now, a lady wrapped in her cloak walks up and down the most secret avenue, upon the anxious watch; the lover comes at length, and she hastens to his embraces, and they vanish; and next in his turn a gentleman walks sentinel, until his lady comes, or, impatient and disappointed, goes off in a rage, or night covers him with her sable mantle.--Were I not bound by so many endearing affections of kindred and friendship to my native country, there is not one spot upon the earth I would prefer to the sweet tranquillity of this delicious retirement.

When you visit the Luxembourg you will see multitudes every where of bouncing demoiselles, with nymph-looking faces, caps without bonnets, and baskets in their hands, traversing the garden from all quarters, running briskly to their work in the morning, and strolling slowly homewards towards evening--These are the _grisettes_. They are very pretty, and have the laudable little custom of falling deeply in love with one. They are common enough all over Paris, but in this classical region they are as the leaves in Vallambrosa. They are in the train of the muses, and love the groves of the Academy. A grisette, in this Latin Quarter, is a branch of education. If a student is ill, his faithful grisette nurses him and cures him; if he is destitute, she works for him; and if he falls into irretrievable misfortune, she dies with him. Thus a mutual dependence endears them to each other; he defends her with his life, and, sure of his protection, she feels her consequence, and struts in her new starched cap the reigning monarch of the Luxembourg.

A grisette never obtrudes her acquaintance, but question her and you will find her circumstantially communicative. Such information as she possesses, and a great deal more, she will retail to you with a naïveté and simplicity, you would swear she was brought up amongst your innocent lambs and turtle-doves of the Shamoken. She is the most ingenious imitation of an innocent woman in the world; and never was language employed more happily for the concealment of thought (I ask pardon of Prince Talleyrand) than in the mouth of a grisette. The Devil is called the father of lies (I ask pardon again of the Prince), but there is not one of these little imps but can outdo her papa in this particular.

When sent with goods from shopkeepers to their customers--the common practice of this place--she will lie and wrestle for her patron, and perjure herself like a Greek; when accused, she will listen to reproaches, insults, even abuse, as long as there is any point of defence, with the resignation of Saint Michael; and there is no trick of the stage, no artifice of rhetoric, recommended by Cicero, that she leaves out in her pleadings; if at last overcome--why, she surrenders.

She remains awhile mute, and then sets herself to look sorry with all her might; at last she bursts into tears, with sighs and sobs, until she disarms you. “Well, let me see what you have got.” She will now wipe away gracefully the briny drops with the corner of her apron, brighten up again, shew you her goods again, and cheat you once more by way of reparation for her former rogueries.

There is a modiste, lodged in the adjoining room, from New Orleans, who entertains about twenty of these every morning at her levee. I make sometimes one of the group, and from this opportunity, and from the lady’s information, I am thus learned about grisettes.

It is important for one’s mamma to know whether it is a good or bad fashion that, so common now-a-days, of sending a young gentleman, just stepping from youth into manhood, to Europe, especially to Paris. I will venture some remarks for your information, though I have no very settled opinion on the subject. I know several Americans engaged here, some in medical and scientific schools, and some in painting and other arts, who appear to me to be exceedingly diligent, and to make as profitable a use of their time as they would anywhere else. I know some who mix pleasure with business, and a little folly with their wisdom; and some (you will please to put me in this class) who do not taste dissipation with their “extremest lips.”

But I know some also, who, under pretext of law and medicine, study mischief only, and return home worse, if possible, than when they came out. I know one now, who, having too much health, overruns his revenues occasionally, and draws upon home for a doctor’s and apothecary’s bill; and another poor devil who has gone to Mont Pieté with his last trinket. There came one from the Mississippi lately, who being very young and rich, and unmarried, set up a kind of seraglio, and died of love yesterday; they are burying him to-day at Père la Chaise.

I know one also, who has lived here nine years, who reads Voltaire, keeps a French cook, and his principles are as French as his stomach; and another who entertains the French noblesse with fêtes and soirées, to the tune of a hundred thousand per annum; from his stable, thirty-six horses, full bred, better than many of his Majesty’s subjects, come prancing out on days of jubilee upon the Boulevards.

If a young man’s morals should get out of order at home, Paris is not exactly the place I would send him to be cured. It is true, if drunkenness be the complaint, it is not a vice of the place; and, if curable at all, which I do not believe, Paris, from its common use of light wines, and variety of amusements, is perhaps the best place to make the attempt. It is certainly not the most dangerous place for falling into this vice. If he be fond of gambling, here it is a genteel accomplishment, and brought out under the patronage of the government. And to keep a mistress is not only not disgraceful in French society, but is always mentioned to one’s credit. It is a part of a gentleman’s equipage, and adds to his gentility; for it implies that he possesses that most considerable merit that a gentleman can aspire to in this country, and most others--money. “_Il a la plus jolie maitresse de Paris!_” you cannot say anything more complimentary if it were of the prime minister, and it would scarce be an injurious imputation if said of one’s father confessor.