Part 5

The beau, by his pains, peruses once again his dicky, or cravat, of a morning, in the “_Magazin des Modes_,” whilst the politician has his breeches reproduced in the “_Journal des Debats_;” and many a fine lady pours out her soul upon a _billet-doux_ that once was the dishclout. The _chiffonnier_ stands at the head of the little trades, and is looked up to with envy by the others. He has two coats, and wears on holidays a chain and quizzing-glass, and washes his hands with _pâte d’amand_. He rises, too, like the Paris gentry, when the chickens roost; and when the lark cheers the morning, goes to bed. All the city is divided into districts, and let out to these _chiffonniers_ by the hour; to one, from ten to eleven, and from eleven to twelve to another, and so on through the night; so that several get a living and consideration from the same district. This individual does justice to the literary compositions of the day; he crams into his _chiffonnerie_ indiscriminately the last Vaudeville, the last sermon of the Archbishop, and the last _éloge_ of the Academy.

Just below him is the _Gratteur_. This artist scratches the live-long day between the stones of the pavement for old nails from horses’ shoes, and other bits of iron--always in hopes of a bit of silver, and even, perhaps, a bit of gold; more happy in his hope than a hundred others in the possession. He has a store in the Faubourgs, where he deposits his ferruginous treasure. His wife keeps this store, and is a “_Marchande de Fer_.” He maintains a family, like another man; one or two of his sons he brings up to scratch for a living, and the other he sends to college; and he has a lot “in perpetuity” in Père la Chaise. His rank is, however, inferior to the _Chiffonnier_, who will not give him his daughter in marriage, and he don’t ask him to his _soirées_.

In all places of much resort you will see an individual, broad-shouldered and whiskered, looking very affable and officious, especially upon strangers, mostly about grocer-stores and street corners. Let me introduce you to him, also. He wants to carry your letters, and run errands for you from one end of Paris to the other. He will carry, also, your wood to your room, a _billet-doux_ to your mistress, and your boots to the cobbler’s, and, for a modest compensation, perform any service that one person may require of another; also, as you see, a very important individual. Indeed, he holds amongst men nearly the same place that Mercury holds amongst the gods. About his neck he wears a brass medal, polished bright as honour--at once his badge of office and pledge of fidelity. If you seem to doubt his honesty, he points to his medal, and holds up his head; that’s enough. If only the Peers could point to their decorations with the same confidence! For instance, if you walk out in the bright day, not being a Parisian, you are of course overtaken by the rain; for a Paris sunshine and shower are as close together as a babe’s smiles and tears; and then you just step into a “_Cabinet de lecture_,” and you have not read half the worth of your sou, when your coat has embraced you, and your umbrella is between you and the merciless heavens. This is the _commissionnaire_. I should have noticed among the little industries the “Broker of theatrical pleasures;” he sells the pass A, who retires early, to B, who goes in late; and the _Clacqueur_, who for two or three francs a night applauds or hisses the new plays. But we must get on with our journey.

Here on the _Boulevard Poissonnière_, or near it, resides Mr. ----, of New Jersey; he has been sent over (hapless errand!) to convert these French people to Christianity. He is a very clever man; and we will ask if he is yet alive. The journals of this morning say three or four missionaries have been eat up by the Sumatras.

This is the famous Arch of Triumph of the Porte St. Denis. It compliments Louis XIV. on his passage of the Rhine in 1672, and is the counterpart of the Napoleon Arch at the Barrière de l’Etoile. It is seventy-two feet high, and has at each side an obelisk, supported by a lion, and decorated with trophies. That fat Dutch woman at the left base stands for Holland; and that vigorous, muscular-looking man on the right, is deputy to the Rhine; and that overhead on horseback, is great “baby Louis.”

We have now left the fashionable world at our heels--this is the _Boulevard du Temple_. This Boulevard, a few years ago, was a delightful and romantic walk of an evening; but noise and business have now violated all the secret retreats of Paris, one after another, and there is no spot left of the great capital in which you can hear your own voice. There were here, before the Revolution, five theatres; and the lists of fame are crowded with the theatrical celebrities which drew the homage of the whole city to this street. This is the only spot in the world that has furnished clowns for posterity; Baron and Le Kain are hardly more fresh in the memory of man than Galimafré and Bobèche. This was the theatre of their triumphs. It was here, too, that the world came to see a living skeleton of eight pounds, and his wife of eight hundred,--that men, to the great astonishment of our ancestors, swallowed carving knives and boiling oil,--that turkeys danced quadrilles, and fleas drove their coaches and six; and it was here that Mademoiselle Rose stood on her head on a candlestick. There are yet six theatres here; but the street once so adorned with gardens, and equipages, and fashionable ladies, and an infinity of other attractions, is now, alas! built up with gaunt houses, and differs scarcely from the other Boulevards.

The simplicity of original manners is, however, wonderfully preserved in this district. The more fashionable parts are so filled with strangers--with parasite plants, that you can scarcely distinguish the indigenous population. This is the true classical and traditional district--the only place in which you can find unadulterated Frenchmen. The inhabitant of this quarter has rather more than a French share of _embonpoint_, and aims at dignity, and his whiskers leave a part of his chin uncovered; his clothes are large and fine in texture; he carries an umbrella, and, on _fête_ days, a cane, to give him an important air and keep off the dogs. If it rains, he takes a fiacre; he keeps by him his certificate of marriage and “_extrait de batême_,” and has not got over the prejudice of being born in lawful wedlock. His wife is pretty, but not handsome; her features are regular, and face plump--indeed, she is plump all over. He loves his wife by instinct. She keeps his books, and he asks her advice in all his business; she suckles his children, and gives him _tisane_ when he is sick.

I saw this individual and his wife together a few evenings ago at the _Ambigù Comique_. I sometimes go to this theatre, and the _Gaité_ and the _Cirque Olympique_. A vicious student was tempted every now and then to pinch Madame behind. She bore it impatiently, indeed, but silently, for some time. “_Qu’est-ce que tu as?_--_Qu’as tu donc, ma femme?_” At last she communicated to her husband the fact. He immediately grew a foot taller upon his seat; and then he looked at the young man from head to foot with one of those looks which mean so much more than words. Not wishing, however, to disturb the play, he contained himself, only riggling on his seat, and eyeing him occasionally, to the end of the act; and then he got up. “_Quoi, monsieur_,” said he, “_vous avez l’impertinence de pincer les fesses de madame?_” and then thrusting his tongue into the lower lip, he put on an expression, such as you will never meet outside the Boulevard du Temple. You would go a mile any time barefooted to see it. “I would have you to know, sir, that I am a _rentier_, (a freeholder) _que je paye rente à la ville de Paris_; that I am called Grigou, monsieur; and that I live in the Rue d’Angouleme, No. 22;” and he sat down. The little wife now tried to appease him, which made him the more pugnacious; she reminded him he was the father of a family, had children, and, finally, that he had a wife; and then she sat up close by him, and then she came over to the other side, just in front of me, for security.--The bourgeois of this district lives in a larger house than he could get for the same rent in any other part of Paris; he is usually independent in his circumstances, and has a certain _à plomb_, or confidence in himself, and a liberty in all his movements, which give a full relief to his natural feelings and traits of character.

Some distance towards the right, you will find the great market of frippery--one of the curiosities of this district. Every old thing upon the earth is sold there for new. There are 1800 shops. Nothing was ever so restored from raggedness to apparent green youth and integrity as an old coat in the hands of these Israelites, unless it be the conscience of those who sell. A garment that has served at least two generations, and been worn last by a beggar, you will buy in this market for new in spite of your teeth. It is a good study of human nature to see here how far the human face may be modified by its pursuits and meditations.

This building in the _Rue du Temple_, with the superb portico and Ionic columns, and two colossal statues in front, is one of great historical importance; and ladies who love knights would not pardon me for passing it unnoticed. The ancient edifice was built seven hundred years ago, and was occupied by one of the most powerful orders of Christianity--the Knights Templars. Here it was that Philip le Bel tortured and burnt alive these soldier monks, seizing their treasures, and bestowing their other possessions upon his new favourites, the Knights of Malta. Who has not heard of the war-cry of _Beauseant_, which chilled the blood of the Saracens on the plains of Syria, and has since made many a woman tremble in her slippers at midnight? This was his lodging. Heavens! how wide you open your eyes!--yes, here lodged the Knights of the Red Cross, and Richard Cœur de Lion used to put up in this temple in going to the Holy Land. It became national property in the Revolution, and was given at the Restoration (1814) to the _Princesse de Condé_, who established the present “Convent of the Temple.” The ladies who now occupy it are called the _Dames Benedictines_, and, like the other nuns, of whom there are at present more than twenty orders in France, they devote themselves to education, and other benevolent employments.

It was in this old building that Louis XVI. and his queen were imprisoned in 1792. The king was taken out from here the 20th of January, 1793, to the scaffold; the queen about eleven months after; and Madame Elizabeth, his sister, in the following year; leaving his daughter here alone at thirteen years of age. Sir Sydney Smith was confined in the same room in 1798. Bonaparte, in 1811, demolished the old edifice to the last stone--from what motive?--and in 1812 it was fenced round, and the grass grew upon the guilty place. The religious ladies who now reside here, are purifying it by prayers and other acts of devotion. _A propos_ of Sydney Smith; I met him at an evening party lately. He looks like the history of the last half century. He is a venerable old man, and very sociable with the young girls, who were climbing his knees, and hanging about his neck, and getting his name _albummed_ in their little books to carry to America.

I will now shew you a house in this street, (_Rue des Marais du Temple_, No. 31,) a house that, once seen, will never depart from your memory. Its closed doors and windows, as if no one lived there; its iron railing, without entrance, and the interstices condemned with wood, in front; and the slit in the centre of the door to receive the correspondence of its horrible master, who sits within as a spider in its web, you will see all the rest of your life. It is the house of MONSIEUR de Paris. Oh, dear! and who is Monsieur de Paris? He is a civil magistrate, and belongs to the executive department. No one living, is perhaps, so great a terror to evil doers as this Monsieur de Paris. “_Monsieur_,” you must recollect, has its particular and its general meanings. _Monsieur_ means any body; _un_ monsieur is a gentleman of some breeding and education; _La maison de_ monsieur is the family of the king’s eldest son; Monsieur _de Meaux_ means the Archbishop; and Monsieur _de Paris_ means the Hangman! He is also called the “_Executeur de la haute justice_,” or “_Executeur des hautes œuvres_,” and vulgarly, the _Bourreau_. This is his Hotel. The name of the present incumbent is Mr. Henry Sanson. His family consists of a son, a person of mild and gentle manners, who is now serving his apprenticeship to the business under his eminent parent; and two daughters. The elder, about fifteen, is remarkable for beauty and accomplishments. The father is rich, his salary being above that of the President of the Royal Court, and he has spared no expense in the education of the girls. They will be sumptuously endowed.

The two ends of society are affected sometimes in nearly the same way. A princess, being obliged to select her husband from her own rank and religion, runs the hazard of a perpetual virginity; and _Mademoiselle de Paris_ experiences exactly the same inconvenience; she can marry but a hangman. There is no one of all Europe who has performed the same eminent functions as Mr. Henry Sanson, or to whom, without loss of dignity, he can offer the hand of his fair daughter. Ye lords and gentlemen, if you think you have all the pride to yourselves, you are mistaken, the hangman has his share, like another man.

Mr. Sanson has appropriated one or two rooms of this building to a museum of ancient instruments used in judicial torture--Luke’s iron bed, Ravaillac’s boots, and such like relics; and is quite a _dilettanti_ in this department of science. We expect a course of gratuitous lectures, as at the “_Musée des Arts et Metiers_,” when the season begins. Amongst other objects, you will see the sword with which was beheaded the _Marquis de Laly_. I am going to tell you an anecdote I have read of this too famous execution, which is curious.

About the year 1750, in the middle of the night, three young men of the high class of nobility, after breaking windows, and the heads of street passengers, and beating the guard, (which was the privilege of the higher classes in those times,) strolling down the _Faubourg St. Martin_, laughing and talking, and well fuddled with champagne, arrived at the door of this house. They heard the sound of instruments, and music so lively, seemed to indicate a hearty bourgeois dance. How fortunate! they could now pass the night pleasantly. One of them knocked, and a polite well-dressed person opened. A young lord explained the motive of their visit, and was refused. “You are wrong,” said the nobleman; “we are of the court, and do you honour in sharing your amusements.” “I am obliged, nevertheless, to refuse,” replied the stranger; “neither of you know the person you are addressing, or you would be as anxious to withdraw, as now to be admitted.” “Excellent, upon honour! and who the devil are you?” “The executioner of Paris.” “Ha, ha! what you? you the gentleman who breaks limbs, cuts off heads, and tortures poor devils so agreeably?” “Such indeed are the duties of my office; I leave, however, the details you speak of to my deputies, and it is only when a lord like either of you is subject to the penalties of the law, that I do execution on him with my own hands.” The individual who held this dialogue with the executioner was the Marquis de Laly. Twenty years after, he died by the hands of this man, upon whose office he was now exercising his raillery.

One of the ornaments of this Boulevard is the _Café Turc_, fitted up with a furniture of two hundred thousand francs. It would do honour to the Italien. What a display of belles and beaux, about seven of an evening, through its spacious rooms, and gardens, and galleries!--one lends his ear to the concert; another, retired in a grotto at the side of his _bonne amie_, drinks large draughts of love; and another drinks _eau sucrée_. And here is the largest elephant upon the earth, which bears the same relation to all other elephants that the Trojan horse did to all other horses. This monster was to be cast in bronze, and surmounted by a tower, forming a figure of about eighty feet in height. That which you see here is only the model, in plaster of Paris. The stair-way leads up through one of the legs, six and a quarter feet in the ancle. There were to be twenty-four _bas reliefs_ in marble, representing the arts and sciences; and the bronze was to be obtained from the fusion of the cannon captured by the imperial army in Spain. Louis Philippe, who is charged with the public works begun by Bonaparte, will be puzzled to finish this elephant.

Paris contains one hundred and eighty-nine great fountains, of which, about twenty are of beautiful architecture, adorned with sculpture and statuary, and enlivened by _jets d’eaux_, and form a principal ornament of the city. This elephant was intended to add one to the number. That, so imposing and picturesque, which we just now passed, on the Boulevard du Temple, is called the _Chateau_. The building with the jet on the top forms a cone. The water falls from its summit into vases, which overflow in cascades that tumble down from story to story into a large basin at the base, where eight lions of bronze spout torrents in _jets d’eaux_ from their mouths. Its cost was one hundred thousand francs.

It would be too long to particularise the others. On one, you will see Leda caressing her swan, Cupid lurking on the watch; on another, Tantalus gaping in vain for the liquid, which passes by his lips into the pail of the waterman; on another, Hygeia giving drink to a fatigued soldier; and, on another, Charity suckling one of her children, wrapping another from the cold in the folds of her frock, and quenching the parched lips of a third with the pure stream. I have just bought you a clock representing the “Fountain of the Innocents,” with all its waters in motion. It was the Duchess de Berri’s, and is of delicate workmanship. Please to have the proper respect for its dignity, and indulgence for its frailty. I will send it by the next Packet.

The turning of wickets, the gingling of keys, and grating of bolts, were the sounds heard here forty-six years ago. What recollections rise out of the ground to meet you at every step as you tread upon this unhallowed spot. One hears almost the chains clank, and the prisoner groan in his cell! It was here, where the charcoal now floats so peacefully on the lake, and where the boatman sings his absent mistress so joyously, that stood, in horrid majesty--

“With many a foul and midnight murder fed,”

the “high altar and castle of Despotism,” the _Bastille_! Where are now the damp and secret cells, the sombre corridors, and the grim countenances of the gaolers, and where the mob of 1789, and the mad passions that levelled its towers and battlements? Quiet as the Seine that sleeps upon its dungeons! The present substitutes for the Bastille are, the Depôt at the Prefecture of Police; _St. Pelagie_ for state crimes, and _La Force_ for civil; the _Conciergerie_ for those awaiting trial, and the _Salpetrière_ for those awaiting the execution of their sentence.

Bonaparte has built here an immense granary, containing always corn enough for the consumption of the capital for two months. This, with the _Halle aux blés_ in the centre of the city, supplies the whole population. Paris has six hundred bakers, who are obliged to keep always in this granary one hundred thousand sacks of flour, worth thirty shillings sterling per sack; and therefore it is called the _Grenier de Reserve_. Here lived the witty and profligate Beaumarchais; his castle is rased; all but Figaro are dead. You have in sight the Hospital of the Quinze-vingts, which contains three hundred blind, who have twenty-four sous a day each for a living, with the produce of their industry, which is wonderfully ingenious. Now we have passed the Garden of Plants, and the Bridge of Austerlitz. For this latter favour we owe something to the Russians, who saved this bridge from its bad name and Blucher’s gunpowder.

That upon the hill is the _Salpetrière_, the Insane Hospital for women. What a huge pile! One to put the sane ones in would not be half the size. This front on the boulevard is six hundred feet. The building in the rear is of similar dimensions, and the _Rotonde_ between, with the octagon dome, is the chapel. It contains now four thousand five hundred poor, aged above seventy; one thousand five hundred crazy; all women. I went in on Sunday. What immense conversation! There is a similar institution for the other sex, called the _Bicêtre_. Paris has twenty hospitals, affording thirty thousand beds, and classed by the several diseases and infirmities. It has no poor-houses, but each of its twelve _arrondissements_, or municipal divisions, has a “_Bureau de Bienfaisance_,” which distributes provisions to the indigent, and provides labour for the idle; and there is a plenty of benevolent societies, with specific objects. Nor do they want customers, for the number of paupers are near fifty thousand. I forgot to tell you there is a hospital here (_the Hospice des Ménages_) for widowers. What an object of charity is a man without a wife! They have made, however, the terms hard; one has to stay married twenty years to be admitted. The institution is under the care of the sisters of Charity.