Part 4

The Boulevards--Boulevard Madelaine--Boulevard des Capucines--Boulevard Italien--Monsieur Carème--Splendid Cafés--The Baths--Boulevard Montmartre--The Shoe-black--The Chiffonnier--The Gratteur--The Commissionnaire--Boulevard du Temple--Scene at the Ambigù Comique--Sir Sydney Smith--Monsieur de Paris--The Café Turc--The Fountains--Recollections of the Bastille--The Halle aux Blés--The Bicêtre--Boulevard du Mont Parnasse.

_Paris, July, 1835._

The main street of Paris, and one of the most remarkable streets in the whole world, is the _Boulevard_. It runs from near the centre towards the east, and coils around the circumference of the city. Its adjacent houses are large, black, and irregular in height, resembling at a distance, battlements, or turretted castles. Its course is zig-zag, and each section has a different name, and different pursuits; so that it presents you a new face and character, a new and picturesque scene, at every quarter of a mile. This does not please, at first sight, an eye formed upon our Quaker simplicity of Philadelphia, but is approved by the general taste. Our Broadways, and Chestnut streets, and Regent-streets, are exhausted at a single view; the Boulevard entertains all day. Its side-walks are delightfully wide, and overshadowed with elms.

Before the visit of the allies, it had eight miles of trees,--a kind of ornament that is held in better esteem in European than in American cities. Our ancestors took a dislike to trees, from having so much grubbing at their original forests, and their enmity has been infused into the blood. To cut down a tree is now a passion become hereditary, and I have often spent whole days in its gratuitous indulgence. A squatter of the back woods begins by felling the trees indiscriminately; and he is most honoured, as those first Germans we read of in Cæsar, who has made the widest devastation around his dwelling. Your Pottsville, which ten years ago was a forest, has to-day not a fig-leaf to cover its nakedness.

Here is a gentleman just going to Philadelphia, who will hand you this letter; I send also a map of Paris, that I may have your company on such rambles as I may chance to take through the capital. To day I invite you to a walk upon the Boulevards.

On the west end is the Madelaine, in full view of the street. While the other monuments of Paris are “dim with the mist of years,” this stands, like a new-dressed bride, in white and glowing marble; its architecture fresh from the age of Pericles. This church became pagan in the Revolution; it was for a while the “Temple of Glory,” and has returned to the true catholic faith. Three mornings of the week, you will find at its feet half an acre in urns, baskets, and hedges, of all that nature has prettiest in her magazine of flowers; delighting the eye by their tasteful combination of colours, and embalming the air with their fragrance. I am sorry you are not a gentleman, I could describe to you so feelingly the flower-girl--her fichu too narrow by an inch; her frock rumpled and disordered, which seems hung upon her by the graces. Her laughing eyes emulate the diamond; and love has pressed his two fingers upon her brunette cheeks. This is the _Boulevard Madelaine_. On the south side, a sad looking garden occupies its whole length. I asked of a Frenchman whose it was; he says “it is the Minister of Strange Affairs.” It is the hotel of Monsieur Thiers, who wrote a book about the Revolution and a “Treatise upon Wigs,” and is now minister _des affaires étrangères_. I do not like him, this Mr. Thiers, and I don’t care to tell you the reason. I experienced yesterday some impudence and pertness from one of the clerks of his office; and these underlings you know represent usually the qualifications of their masters in such particulars.

To leave Paris for London requires your passport to be signed at the police office, at the American and English ambassadors’, and at the French minister’s. At the first office you are set down with a motley crew upon a bench, and there you sit, like one of those virtues in front of the “Palais Bourbon,” often an hour or two, until your name is called; and when it is called you don’t recognise it, and you keep sitting on, unless you take some one along with you to translate it for you. There is not anything in nature so unlike itself as one’s name Frenchified--even a monosyllable. As for “John,” it changes genders altogether, and becomes “_Jean_.” To the last three offices you pay the valedictory compliment of thirty francs, and get their impudence into the bargain. You will always find persons about your lodgings, called “_facteurs_,” (they should be called _benefactors_,) who will do all this for you, for a small consideration, much better than you can do it yourself.

You are now on the _Boulevard des Capucines_. It is raised about thirty feet, and the houses for a quarter of a mile are left in the valley. The garret and Miss Annette are alone above ground; all the high life here is below stairs. On the right side, you see apparently one of the happiest of human beings, the “_marchand des chiens_,” who sells little dogs and parrots. “_A six francs ma caniche!_”--“_Margot à dix francs!_” he cries, with a gentle voice, half afraid some one might hear him; he has become attached to his animals, and feels a sorrow to part with them. He feels as you for your chickens you have fed every day, when you must kill them for dinner. Poor little Azor, and Zémire! Only think of seeing them no more! He sells them a few francs cheaper, when the purchaser is rich and likely to treat them well. The French, especially the women, dote upon dogs beyond the example of all other nations, and yet have the nastiest race of curs upon the earth. A dog, they say, loves his master the more he is a vagabond, and the French in return love their dogs the more they are shabby. What would I give for a few of those eloquent _bow wows_ which resound in the night from an American barn-yard, and which protect so securely one’s little wife from the thieves and the lovers, while the husband is wandering in foreign lands.

Take off your hat; this is one of the choice and pre-eminent spots of the French capital; the very seat almost of the pleasures and amusements of Europe; it is the _Boulevard Italien_. It is here that gentlemen and ladies assemble of an evening to discuss the immense importance of a good dinner, when the labours of the day have closed, and not a care intrudes to distract the mind from the great business of deglutition and digestion. Men make splendid reputations here which live after them by the invention of a single soup. It is here they make the sauces in which one might eat his own grandfather. This place was respected by the Holy Alliance; and Lord Wellington, in 1815, pitched his marquee upon the Boulevard Italien.

It is in vain to expect perfection in an art unless we honour those who exercise its functions. Monsieur Carème, (whom I mention for the sake of honour, and who lives close by here in the Rue Lafitte,) now cook to the Baron Rothschild and ex-cook to the Prince of Wales, is one of the most considerable persons of this age; holding a high gentlemanly rank, and living in an enviable condition of opulence and splendour. He keeps his carriage, takes his airings of an evening, has his country seat, and his box at the opera; and has, indeed, every attribute requisite to make a gentleman in any country. The number of officers attached to his staff is greater than that of any general of the present _régime_; his assistant roaster has a salary above our President of the United States. It is by this honourable recompence of merit that, through all the vicissitudes of her various fortunes, France has still maintained unimpaired her great prerogative of teaching the nations how to cook.

Monsieur de Carème is worthy a particular notice. He had an ancestor who was “chef de cuisine,” of the Vatican, and invented a _soupe maigre_ for his Holiness; and another who was cook to the Autocratrix of all the Russias. How talents do run in some families! Himself, having served his apprenticeship under an eminent artist of the Boulevard Italien, he invented a _sauce piquante_, when quite a young man; and by a regular cultivation of his fine natural powers, he has reached a degree of perfection in his art which has long since set envy and rivalship at defiance. The truth is, that a great cook is as rare a miracle as a great poet. It is well known that Claude Lorraine could not succeed in pastry with all his genius.

“Et Balzac et Malherbe si fameux en bon mots, En cuisine peut-être n’aurait été que des sots.”

To whom, think you, does the British nation owe those Attic suppers, those feasts of the gods, which so surprised the Allied Monarchs, and brought so much glory upon his late majesty? To Monsieur de Carème. And to whom do you think the Baron Rothschild owes those clear and unclouded faculties with which he out-financiers all Europe and America? Certes, to Monsieur de Carème. All the Baron has to do is to dine; digestion is done by his cook. Carème has refused invitations to nearly every European court; and it was only upon the most urgent solicitations that he consented to reside eight months at Carlton House,--a portion of his life upon which he looks back with much displeasure and repentance, and the remnant of his days he designs to consecrate, with the greater zeal on this account, to the honour and interests of his native country. He is now preparing a digest of his art, after the manner of the Code Napoleon; and eminent critics, to whom he has communicated his work, pronounce it excellent, both for its literary and culinary merits.

To this Boulevard also the sweetmeat part of the creation resort about twilight to their creams and lemonades and _eau sucrée_. They seat themselves upon both margins of the _trottoir_ upon chairs, leaving an interval between, for the successive waves of pedestrians, who are also attracted hither by the fashion and elegance of the place. How charming, of a summer evening, to sit you down here upon one chair and put your feet upon another, and look whole hours away upon this little world; or to walk up and down and eye the double row of belles seated amidst the splendour of the gas-lamps. In this group are examples of nearly all that is extant of the human species. I have seen a Bedouin of the _Mer Rouge_ stumble upon a great ambassador from the Neva; and a Mandarin of the Loo-koo run foul of an ex-school-master of the Mohontongo. If any one is missing from your mines of Shamoken, come hither, and you will find him seated on a straw-bottomed chair on the Boulevard Italien.

These splendid cafés are multiplied by mirrors, and being open, or separated only by panels of glass, appear to form but a single tableau with the street, and those outside and in seem parts of the same company. I recommend you the _Café de Paris_, the _Café Hardi_, the _Café Veron_, if you wish to mix with the fashionable and merry world; if with the business world, with the great bankers, the millionaires, the _noblesse de la Bourse_, who smooth their cares with fat dinners and good wines, where else in the world should you go but to _Tortoni’s_? There are not two Tortonis upon the earth. A dinner you may get at the _Rocher Cancale_,--but a breakfast!--it is to be had no where in all Europe out of Tortoni’s. The ladies of high and fashionable life stop here before the door, and are served by liveried waiters elegantly in their barouches; they cannot think of venturing in, there are so many more gentlemen outside. You will see here, both in and out, the most egregious cockneys of Europe, the beau Brummels and the beau Nashes, the “Flashes,” and “Full-Swells” of London town, and, in elegant apposition, the Parisian exquisites.

Was there ever anything so beautiful!--No, _d’honneur_! His boots are of Evrat, his coat Staub, vest Moreau, gloves and cravat Walker, and hat Bandoni; and Mrs. Frederic is his washerwoman! You will please give the superiority to the French. To make an elegant fop is more than the barber’s business; nature herself must have a finger in the composition. Besides, if a man is born a fool, he is a greater fool in Paris than elsewhere, there are such opportunities for acquirement.

These are the French people. Don’t you hate to see so many ninnies in mustachios? If I had not the great Marlborough, and Bonaparte, and Apollo, on my side, all three unwhiskered, I would go home in the next packet. The moment one has made one’s debut here in the world of beards, one is a man, and there is no manhood, founded on any other pretensions, that can dispense with this main qualification. It is the one eminent criterion of all merit; it is a diploma; a bill of credit as current as in the days Albuquerque; it is promotion in the army, in the diplomacy, even in the church; you cannot be a saint without this grisly recommendation. One loves the women, just because they have no beards on their faces.

Otherwise--_à la barbe près_--the French are well enough. It is the same kind of population, nearly, that one meets by the gross in New York, and everywhere else. I looked about for Monsieur Dablancour, but could see nothing of him. In a foreign country a man is always a caricature of himself. The French are here in their own element, and swim in it naturally. One is always awkward from the very sense of not knowing foreign customs; and always ridiculous abroad because everything is ridiculous which departs from common and inveterate habit, and nothing is ridiculous which conforms with it. In a nation of apes, it is becoming to be an ape. If you place a man of sense in a company of fools, it is the man of sense who is embarrassed and looks foolish. If one travelled into Timbuctoo, I presume one would feel very foolish for being white.

But this is not all that is worth your attention on the Boulevard Italien. If you love baths of oriental luxury, here are the _Bains Chinoises_ just opposite. Personal cleanliness is the French virtue _par excellence_. Bathing in other countries is a luxury, in France a necessity. Hot baths as good as yours at Swaim’s are at fifteen sous. The _Bains Vigiers_ at twenty sous a bath made their proprietor a count. You can have baths here simple and compound, inodorous and aromatic, with cold or warm, or clarified or Seine water; and you have them with naked floors and ungarnished walls, and with all the luxury of tapestry and lounges; baths double and single, with and without attendance, with a whole skin, or flayed alive with friction. And besides these baths ordinary and extraordinary--Russian, Turkish, and Chinese--you have baths specific against all human infirmities; baths alkalic, sulphurous, fumigatory, oleaginous, and antiphlogistic. All the mineral waters of Europe pour themselves at your feet in the middle of Paris. Spa, Seltzer, Barege, Aix-la-chapelle, and Ginsnack; manufactured, every one of them, in the street of the University, _Gros Caillou_, No. 21. And this is not all; there is the “ambulatory bath,” which walks to your bedside, and, embracing you, walks out again, at thirty sous. “_C’est un vrai pays de Cocagne que ce Paris._”

And if you love gew-gaws, gingumbobs, and pretty shop-girls, why here they are at the Bazaar. The French take care, as no other people, to furnish such places with pretty women, and they turn their influence, as women, to the account of the shop. The English, I have heard, put all their deformities into their bazaars, that customers, they say, may attend to the other merchandise. The French way is the more sensible. I have been ruined already several times by the same shop-girl, caressing and caressing each of one’s fingers, as she tries on a pair of gloves one does not want.

Or if you love the fine arts, where are all the print-shops of Paris? Why here. You can buy here Calypsos and Cleopatras all naked, with little French faces; and Scipios and Cæsars, and other marshals of the empire, from any price down to three sous a piece. Finally, if you love the best _patés_ in this world, we will just step over into the Passage Panorama to Madame Felix’s. Sweet Passage Panorama! How often have I walked up and down beneath thy crystal roof as the dusky evening came on, with arms folded, and in the narcotic influence of a choice Havannah, forgotten all, all but that a yawning gulf lies between me and my friends and native country!

Give a sou to this little Savoyard with the smiling face, who sweeps the crossings. “_Ah, Madame, regardez dans votre petite poche si vous n’avez pas un petit sou à me donner!_” How can you refuse him! If you do, he will make you just the same thankful bow, in the best forms of French courtesy.

We are now on the _Boulevard Montmartre_. Here are cashmeres and silks from Arabia; merinos _veritable barbe de Pacha_, chalys, _mousseline Thibet_, Pondicherry, _unis et broché_, and pocket handkerchiefs at two sous. Ah, come along! And here are six pairs of ladies’ legs, shewing at the window the silk stockings. How gracefully gartered! And from above, how the white curtain falls down modestly in front almost to the knee. Don’t be in such a hurry! they are twice as natural as living legs! And here are dolls brevetted by the king, and milliners _à prix fixe_, at a fixed price; and here is M. Dutosq, _fabricant de sac en papier_, manufacturer of little paper-bags-to-put-sugar-in to his majesty; and Madame Raggi, who lets out Venuses and other goddesses to the drawing-schools, at two sous an hour. And look at this shop of women’s ready-made articles. Here one can be dressed cap-à-pie for four francs and eleven centimes (three quarters of a dollar), frock, petticoat, fichu, bonnet, stockings and chemise! A student, also, can buy here a library in the street from a quarter of a mile of books, at six sous a volume. I have just bought Rousseau in calf, octavo, at ten sous!

Since the last Revolution, commerce has taken a new spirit; the _bourgeois_ blood has got uppermost. The greatest barons now are the Rothschilds, and the greatest ministers the Lafittes. The style, too, has risen to the level of the new bureau-cratic nobility. The shopkeeper of these times is at your service, a _commerçant_, his “boutique” is a _magazin_, his “contoir” his _bureau_, and his “pratique” his _clientelle_. Even the signs, as you see, speak a magnificent language. It is the “_Magazin du Doge de Venise_,” or “_Magazin du Zodiaque--des Vépres Siciliennes_,” or “_Grand Magazin de Nouveauté_.” And if the Doge of Venice is “selling out cheap,” the language is of course worthy of a Doge--it is “_au rabais par cessation de commerce_.” The Bourse is now a monument of the capital, and disputes rank with the Louvre. The “_petit Marquis_” is the banker’s son, and the marshals of the empire are sold “second hand” in the frippery market. I intended to write you in English, but the French creeps on in spite of me.

This is one of the prettiest of the Boulevards, and you will see here a great many fine women _en promenade_ of a morning about twelve. When a French lady walks out, she always takes on one side her _caniche_ by a string, and at the other, sometimes, her beau without a string. In either way she monopolizes the whole street, and you are continually getting between her and the puppy, very much to your inconvenience; for if you offend the dog the mistress is, of course, implacable, and you will very likely have to meet her gallant in the Forest of Bondy the next morning. But you can turn this evil sometimes to advantage. If you see, for instance, a pretty woman alone, with her curly companion, you can just walk on, “commercing with the skies” till the lady gets one side of you and the dog the other; this will give you the opportunity of begging her pardon, of patting and stroking the dog a little,--it may break the ice towards an acquaintance, or, if the place be convenient to fall, you had better let her trip you up, and then she will be very sorry. If you think it is a little thing to get a pretty woman’s pity on your side, you are very much mistaken.

Let me introduce you to this shoe-black. He has, as you see, a little box, a brush or two in it, and blacking, and a fixture on the top for a foot; this is his _fond de boutique_, his stock in trade. He brushes off the mud to the soles of your feet, and shews you your own features in your boots for three sous. This one has just dissolved an ancient firm; and his advertisement, which he calls a “prospectus,” standing here so prim upon a board, announces the event. The partnership is dissolved, but the whole “_personnel_,” he says, of the establishment remains with the present proprietor; and M. Badaraque, ex-partner, has also the honour to inform us, that he has transported the “_appareil de son établissement_” to the “_Place de la Bourse, une des plus jolies locations de la ville_.” The “_Decrotteur en chef_” at the Palais Royal, and other places of fashion, has his assistants, and serves a dozen or two of customers at a time. He has a shop furnished with cloth-covered benches in amphitheatre, as at the Chamber of Deputies, with a long horizontal iron support for the foot, and pictures are hung around the walls. “_On dit, monsieur, que c’est d’après Teniers--celui, monsieur? c’est d’après Vandyke._” And there are newspapers and reviews; so that to polish a gentleman’s boots and his understanding are parts of the same process.

There is a variety of other little trades and industries, which derive their chief means of life from the wants and luxuries of this street, which I may as well call to your notice _en passant_: I mean trades that are “_tout Parisiennies_”; that is to say, unknown in any other country than Paris. You will see an individual moving about, at all hours of the night, silent and active, and seeing the smallest bit of paper in the dark where you can see nothing, and, with a hook in the end of a stick, picking it up, and pitching it with amazing dexterity into a basket tied to his left shoulder; with a cat-like walk, being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, stirring up the rubbish of every nook and gutter of the street, under your very nose--this is the _chiffonnier_. He is a very important individual. He is in matter what Pythogoras was in mind; and his transformations are scarcely less curious than those of the Samian sage.