Part 7

How should these little snacks of a French table not seem egregiously mean to an American, who is used to dine in fifteen minutes, even on a holiday, and to see a whole hog barbacued? The French dine to gratify, we to appease, appetite; we demolish a dinner, and they eat it. The guests who frequent these cafés are regular or flying visiters; some are accidental, others occasional, dining by agreement to enjoy each other’s company; others again are families, who dine out for a change, or to give a respite to their servants; and others live here, a kind of stereotype customers altogether: and these houses serve, in addition to their province of eating and drinking, as places of conference, or clubs; it is here that men communicate on political subjects, that news is circulated, and public opinion formed; and that kings are expelled, and others are set up on their thrones.

On a range with the restaurants, and over them, you will see lodged many of the fine arts; painters, engravers, dentists, barbers, and beautiful sultanas, look out from the highest windows upon these fair dominions, to which the severity of French morals has forbidden them access. In the lower rooms, on a level with the area of the garden, and peeping through the colonnade, west and east, are riches almost immeasurable, in exquisite and fashionable apparel for both sexes, and in jewellery, trinkets, and perfumery. This trade, which in other cities is pedling and huckstering, assumes here the dignity of a great commercial interest, and its productions are reckoned at upwards of a hundred millions of francs. The stores themselves are so little, and yet so pretty, that I have thoughts of sending you one of them over by the packet. Their arrangements are changed every hour, so as to keep up a continuous emotion and a series of agreeable excitements, and so as to present you a new set of temptations twelve times a day.

Everything that human industry, sharpened by necessity or competition, can effect--everything which can excite an appetite, can heighten a beauty, or hide a deformity, is here. I begin to love art almost as well as nature: I begin to love mother Eve in her fig-leaves, as well as in her unaproned innocence. After all, what is nature to us without art? Education is art. Indeed, rightly considered, art itself is nature; she has but left a part of her work unfinished to urge the industry and whet the ingenuity of man. In these stores, everything is sacrificed to the shop; there is no accommodation for the household gods. Persons with their families are not allowed to inhabit here. A man hoards space as a miser hoards money. It is a qualification indispensable in a clerk to be of a slender capacity. You would think you were in Lilliput, served by the fairies. The shop-girls, especially, are of such exquisite exility of figure, you can almost take one of them between your thumb and finger, and set her on the counter.

In our country, we have nothing yet to shew in the way of great works of art. We have nature, indeed, wild and beautiful, but without historic associations; tradition is dumb, and the “memory of man” runs back to the Eden of our race. It is a mighty advantage these old countries have over us; their reminiscences, their traditions, and their antiquities. What would be the Tower but for humpback Richard and the babes; or, what Hounslow Heath but for the ghosts of those who have been murdered there? And in these countries, which have no beginning, they can supply the vacant space into which authentic history does not venture, by legends and romances; and no matter how obscure may be one of their mountains and lakes, they can lie it into a reputation. Some things are beautiful from their accessories alone; as lords are sometimes lords only from their equipages. What is there beautiful in a ruin? We have plains as desolate as Babylon, and no one looks at them.

The Palais Royal, however magnificent as a bazaar, has still higher and better merits. It is the history of some of the most remarkable personages and events of the last two ages. Some day, when we have a ticket from the “_Intendant de sa Majesté_,” I will shew you them all; and first, that very celebrated old fop the Cardinal de Richelieu, who used to strut, with his train of a monarch, through this very garden and these very halls. You shall see the very theatre upon which he represented his woeful tragedies; his flatterers crowding around with wonderful grimace, and Corneille’s muse cowering her timid wings in silence. As you are a lady, and love trinkets, I will shew you, if it yet exists, that great miracle of massive gold and diamonds, the Cardinal’s Chapel; the two candlesticks, valued at a hundred thousand livres; the cross, twenty-two inches high, and of pure gold; the Christ of the same metal, and the crown and drapery all glittering in diamonds. And you shall see the prayer-book, too, encased in lamina of gold; in the centre the cardinal holding up the globe, and from the four corners four angels placing a crown upon his head. If you like, I will shew you also that other smooth-faced rogue, scarcely his inferior in political ability, the Cardinal Mazarin, who put the king’s money in his pocket, and stinted his little majesty in shirts. And if you love more cardinals, I will shew you yet another, more witty, and not less profligate and debauched, than the other two, the Cardinal de Retz. When we read his memoirs together, little did we foresee that one day we should look into the very chambers in which he held his nightly councils, with his fellow conspirators, plotting his rabble Revolution of the Fronde.

You shall see also Turenne and the great Condé. That gentleman gathering maxims--maxims of life at the court of Mazarin!--that is M. le due de Rochefoucauld; and I will introduce you to Madame de Motteville, and other famous wits and beauties of those times. In the room just opposite, where one dines upon soup, three courses, and a dessert, at forty sous, I will shew you the little “Grand Monarque” in his cradle. The dear little thing! It was here the great man first began; it was here he crept, I presume very unwillingly, to school; here he began to seek the bubble reputation, and to sigh at the feet--worthy a better devotion--of the “humble violet,” Madame la Vallière.

Just over head, Doctor Franklin used to sup with the Duke of Orleans and his family; and here Madame de Genlis gave lessons to the little Louis Philippe, causing his most Christian Majesty to walk fifteen miles a day in shoes with leaden soles. The Spartans did better, who, to make their kings hardy and robust, had them flogged daily at the shrine of some pagan goddess. In one of these rooms, the mob Republic held for awhile its meetings; and in this very garden, the tri-coloured cockade was adopted, at a great meeting in 1789, as the revolutionary emblem. On the south end is a gallery of paintings, they say very splendid. It was plundered in the Revolution, and since restored by the present proprietor, the King. If any one steals a picture or a book in Paris, and can prove quiet possession for a certain time, it is a vested right, and the owner is obliged to buy back his goods from the thief.

I sometimes walk in this garden with the scholars and the _bonnes_, of a morning, but it is disagreeable; it is not yet aired, and has a stale stupefactive smell from the preceding night’s banquet. It is by degrees ventilated, and life begins to flow into it about ten. Then the readers of news begin to gravitate around Monsieur Perussault’s pavilion. There is a dial here which announces, with a loud detonation, twelve; and as the important hour approaches, every one having a watch takes it out, and looks up with compressed lips, and waits in _uno obtutu_ until Apollo has fired off his cannon; then quick he twirls about the hands, and replaces it complacently in his fob, and walks away very happy to have the official hour in his pocket. You will see also a few _badauds_, who always arrive just afterwards, and stand the same way, looking up for half an hour or so, till informed that the time has already gone off.

It is of a hot summer evening, that this garden is unrivalled in beauty. You swim in a glare of light; the gas flashes from under the arcades; lamps innumerable shine through the interior and look down from five hundred windows above. It is not night, it is “but the daylight sick.” It is haunted by its company, and is full of life to the latest hours, and revelry holds her gambols here, when Paris everywhere over the immense city is lulled into its midnight slumbers. When summer has turned round upon its axis, and the first chills of autumn frighten joy from her court, she retires then to her last hold, the “_Galerie d’Orleans_.” This delightful promenade extends across the south end of the garden; it is three hundred feet long by thirty wide; its roof is of glass and its pavement of tesselated marble; it is bounded on both sides by stores, and cafés, and reading rooms, eighteen feet square, renting annually at four thousand francs each. It is kept warm enough for its company in winter, and is a fashionable resort during that season. It is a pleasant walk also in the twilight of a summer evening.

I know an ex-professor, by dining with him at the same ordinary, and we walk often under the crystal vaults of this gallery, and reason whole evenings away--now we stop, and then walk on, and then take snuff, and then make a whole round arm in arm, in great gravity and silence; at other times, being seated at a marble table, we calmly unfold the intricate mazes of the human mind and systems of human policy; and then we take coffee, with a little glass of quirsh. Last night we reasoned warmly upon the nature of slavery till I got mad, and whilst I sipped and read the newspaper, he amused himself with a drawing (for he is skilled in this art), which he presented me. It was a Liberty, of a healthy and robust complexion, her foot upon a negro slave. The negro sympathies have waxed very warm in this country.

Four of the houses just over us are consecrated to gambling. They are frequented, however, by rather the lower class and rabble of the profession. They who have some regard to reputation go to Frascati’s, to the Rue Richelieu; the more select to the “_Cercle_,” or to the “_Club Anglais_” upon the Boulevard, and the _Rue de Grammont_; and the “Jockey Club” receives the dandies and flash gentlemen of the turf. The three last are of English origin, and the “_Club Anglais_” is in the best English style. It receives only the high functionaries of the state, princes of the blood, ambassadors, and other eminent persons, and even these are not admitted to pick one another’s pockets here, unless known to be of good moral character. Games of hazard are prohibited, and the bets correspondent to the dignity of the company. The “_Cercle_,” also, is frequented by the upper sort of folk; it is _très distingué_; and the eating and service are of no common rate.

The public gambling houses here are authorized by government, and pay for their charter annually six and a half millions of francs. The government has not thought it fit that the black-legs and courtezans should worship in the same temple. The ladies have therefore been turned out, poor things! to get a living as they can on the Boulevards and elsewhere, and the gamblers have the Palais Royal all to themselves. But why do not “the Chambers,” extend this system of financial economy to other moral offences, as stealing, drunkenness, and adultery? I would charter them every one, and enrich the state. If we can succeed in making a vice respectable, it is no vice at all; and why should not a proper protection of government and general custom render gambling or any vice as respectable as thieving or infanticide was at Sparta; or as duelling and privateering are amongst the modern civilized nations? The matter is now under discussion, but there are members of both houses who oppose these doctrines; they say that the government by such licences becomes accessory to the crimes of its subjects, and that bad passions, already rank enough in human nature, should not be made a direct object of education; moreover, they find it awkward that legislators, after having given the whole community a public licence to pick one another’s pockets, should stand up in the national tribune and talk about honesty. There are persons who have absurd prejudices.

But to be serious; indeed, I am very well disposed to such a feeling; I have just fallen accidentally upon the story, which every one knows, of the unhappy Colton. He wrote books in recommendation of virtue, and _critiques_ in reprobation of vice, with admirable talent. He was a clergyman by profession, and yet became a victim to this detestable passion. He subsisted by play several years amongst these dens of the Palais Royal, and at length falling into irretrievable misery, ended his life here by suicide. One feels a sadness of heart in looking upon the scene of so horrible an occurrence; one owes a tear to the errors of genius, to the weakness of our common humanity.

Gambling seems to be the universal passion; the two extremes of human society are equally subject to it. The savage of the Columbia River gambles his rifle and his squaw, and like any gentleman of the “_Cercle_,” commits suicide in his despair. Billiards, cards, Faro, and other games of hazard, are to be found at every hundred steps, in every street and alley of Paris; haunted by black-legs in waiting for your purse; and there is scarce a private ball or _soirée_, even to those of the court, in which immense sums are not lost and won by gambling. The shuffling of cards or rattling of dice is a part of the music of every Parisian saloon, and many fathers of families of the first rank get a living by it. To know how much better it is in London, one has only to read the London books. And how much better is it in America? To know this, you have only to visit our Virginia Springs and other places of fashionable resort. You will hear there the instruments of gambling at every hour of the night; and you will see tables, covered with the infamous gold, set out in the shade during the day; and you will see seated around these tables those who make the laws for “the only Republic upon the earth,” the members of the American Congress--with the same solemn gravity as if holding counsel upon the destinies of the nation. I have seen the highest officer of the House of Representatives step from the loo-table to the Speaker’s chair! The vices of the higher orders have this to aggravate their enormity, that the lower world is formed and encouraged by their example. Gambling in Virginia is a penitentiary offence.

I have visited these “Hells” of the Palais Royal. Their numbers are 113, 129, and 154 on the eastern gallery, and number 36 on the western; and from the look of the company, I presume one could get here very soon all the acquirements by which a man may be put in the way of being hanged. Bars are placed before the windows, by the humanity of the government, to prevent his Majesty’s subjects and others from throwing away their precious lives in their fits of despair.

That tall and robust, and stern-looking man, between fifty and sixty, in an old tattered great coat, and walking in the gait of a conspirator, is Chodruc Duclos. He was once the friend of Count Peyronnet, as they say; he lavished his fortune on him, and fought his duels. The Count became minister and Duclos poor; he claimed his protection, and was rejected by the ungrateful minister. He now walks here daily at the same hour, like some mysterious, unearthly being. He never speaks; and the last smile has died upon his lips.

I have a mind to tell you a queer anecdote of myself, which will fill the rest of this page without much changing the subject. In a walk through the Rue Richelieu, a few evenings ago, with a wag of an Englishman, a fellow-lodger, he proposed to gratify me with a peep into one of the evening _rendez-vous_, as he said, of the nobility. I entered with becoming reverence through a hall, where servants in livery attended, taking our hats and canes, with a princely ceremony, and bringing us refreshments. Tables in the several rooms were covered with gold, at which gentlemen and ladies were playing, and others were looking on intently and silently. Around, some were coteried in corners, others were strolling in groups, or pairs, through the rooms; and others again were rambling carelessly through the walks of an adjacent garden of flowers and shrubbery, illuminated, or were seated in secret conversation amongst its arbours.

“That gentleman,” said my companion, “on the right, with the Adonis neck, with myrrhed and glossy ringlets, is the Prince Puckler Muskau.” And when I had looked at him sufficiently--“That gentleman on the left in conversation with Don--Don--Don--I forget his name--that is Prince Carrimanico, of Rome; and that just in front is the Baron Blowminossoff, from Petersburgh.” I stared, particularly at my Lord Brougham, who had just come over to make a tour upon the continent for his health. He was attenuated by sickness and the cares of business, but I could discern distinctly the great traits of his character--the lowering indignation on his brow, the bitter curl and sarcasm on his lip, and the impetuous and overwhelming energy which distinguishes this great statesman, upon his strongly-marked features; and if I had not been informed his name, I should have marked him out at once as some eminent personage; and from a certain abrupt and fidgety manner, a hasty scratch at the back of his head, accompanied with two or three twitches of the nose, I should have suspected him for nobody else than the greatest statesman and orator of Europe--my Lord Brougham.

Among the ladies, also, several were highly distinguished. There were Madame la Contesse de Trotteville, and her beautiful cousin Mademoiselle Trottini, from Naples, with several of the French nobility; and there was the Countess of Crumple, and a fat lady, Madame Von Swellemburg, and others of the Dutch and English gentry. I fancied that a Duchess on my left (I forget her name) had a haughty and supercilious air, as if she felt the dignity of her blood, and the length of her genealogy. She seemed as if not pleased that everybody should be introduced, and wished someplace more exclusive. But there was one young and beautiful creature--but so beautiful that I could not with all my efforts keep my eyes off her--whom I observed more than once reciprocated my inquisitive looks. I felt flattered at being the object of her attention. The elegant creature! thought I; what a simplicity and sweetness of expression! and how strange, that, brought up amidst the art and refinement of a court, she should retain all the innocence of the dove upon her countenance.

In the midst of this admiration, and when I had just got myself almost bowed to by another countess, my companion let in the light upon the magic lantern. “These,” said he, “are women of the town, and these are gamblers and pickpockets, who come hither to Monsieur Frascati’s to rob and ruin one another.” I give you this for your private ear; if you tell it, mercy on me, I shall never hear the last of it. I shall be sung all over the village. There are persons there of half my years who would have detected such company at once. As I was going away, Miss Emmeline, Miss Adelaide, and Madame Rosalie, gave me their cards.

I saw this morning the Queen and the King’s most excellent Majesty. They passed through the Champs Elysées to their country habitation at Neuilly. The equipage was a plain carriage with six horses, a postillion on a front and rear horse; two other carriages and four, and guards. To see a king for the first time is an event. Ai’nt you mad?--you who never saw anything over there bigger than his most unchristian Majesty Black Hawk, and Higglewiggin his squaw.--I have now come to the interesting part of this letter. I am, yours.

LETTER V.

The Tuileries--The Gardens--The Statues--The Cabinets de Lecture--The King’s Band--Regulations of the Gardens--Yankee modesty--The English Parks--Proper estimate of riches--Policy of cultivating a taste for innocent pleasures--Advantages of gardens--Should be made ornamental--Cause of the French Revolution--Mr. Burke’s notion of the English Parks--Climate of France.

_Paris, July 24th, 1835._

I am going now to escort you to the Tuileries, for which you must scramble through a few filthy lanes a quarter of a mile towards the south-west. Who would live in this rank old Paris if it were not for its gardens? This garden is in the midst of the city, and contains near a hundred acres of ground. It has the Seine on the south side; the Palace of the Tuileries on the east; and on the north, the beautiful houses of the Rue Rivoli, the street intervening; and on the west, the Place Louis XV. between it and the Champs Elysées. The whole is enclosed with an iron railing tipped with gold near the Palace, and terraces, having a double row of tile trees are raised along the north and south sides. A beautiful parterre is spread out in front of the Palace, of oranges, red-rosed laurels, and other shrubs, with a reservoir, _jets d’eaux_, vases, and statues. The chief walks also have orange-trees on both margins during the summer, and one of these, as wide as Chestnut-street, runs from the centre pavilion of the palace through the middle of the garden, and continuing up through the Champs Elysées to the _Barrière de l’Etoile_, terminates in a full view of the great triumphal arch of Napoleon. In the interior are plots of woodland, and chairs, upon which, at two sous the sitting, you may repose or read in the shade, and little cabinets, which offer you for a sou your choice of the newspapers. The area is of hard earth and gravel, relieved here and there by enclosures of verdure; and on the west end, an octagonal lake is inhabited by swans, and fishes, and river gods, and a fountain is jetting its silvery streams in the air. This is the garden of the Tuileries. The whole surface is sprinkled with heathen mythology. Hercules strangles the Hydra, Theseus deals blows to the Minotaur, Prometheus sits sullen on his rock, and Antinous is mad to see his own gardens outdone, and the Pius Æneas, little Jule by the hand, bears off his aged parent upon his shoulders. Venus, too, looks beautiful on the back of a tortoise, and Ceres is beautiful, her head coiffed in the latest fashion with sheaves of wheat.