Part 9

After this repast, I sallied out again, under the ægis of my same guide, who now led me through long and intricate passages, and through thickets of men and women, all getting along in the slime of each other’s tracks towards the Hotel de Ville. Here, in the midst of an immense crowd, were the shrines of the martyrs, and over them a chapel of crape, with all the other mournful emblems. The relatives of the deceased were hanging up chaplets, and reverend men were saying prayers, and sprinkling holy water upon the graves.

_July 28th._

This day was given to the general parade. More than a hundred thousand of the National Guard was arrayed upon the Boulevards; and the side walks were choaked up, and running over with the crowd, which was pushed back now and then, in great fright and confusion, by the gens d’armes, and the tails of the horses; and all the rest of Paris looked on from the windows, balconies, and roofs of the adjoining houses--I as much noticed, as a leaf of the Alleghany, upon a verandah of the Boulevard du Temple. Great was the noise, and long and patient the expectation. At length, there was a sudden flustering and bustle among the multitude, and I sat up closer to Madame Dodu--it was the King! He was accompanied by the Duke of Orleans and the Duke of Nemours, his sons, and passed along the line, followed by officers on horseback, very grim. He was received with not very ardent acclamations. Compared to “General Jackson’s visit,” it was a fifth-rate thing. Not a bird, though many flew over us, fell dead.

But how shall I describe to you the magnificence of the pomp? since in our country there is no object of comparison. How should we--_we_, who can hardly contain the Washington Grays, or Blues--which is it? with Johnson’s band, and the twenty little boys who run after them--how should we be able to conceive of a regular infantry of more than a hundred thousand men, with their ten thousand drums, and trumpets, and clarions, and accoutred in uniform, and trained to the last grace and dexterity of discipline? But, alas! what avails to individual power this exhibition of human strength, since we see its haughtiest pretensions, every day, the sport of some ignominious chance?

Achilles, they say, was killed by the most effeminate _roué_ of all Troy; and his great descendant, Pyrrhus, by an old woman, who lived “_au troisième_,” and pitched, Heaven knows what, upon his head through her window. What signifies the strength of Hercules, if it may be outwrestled by a vapour?--It is vexatious, too, to see how much events are under the control of accident, and how little Providence seems to trouble itself about them; and to think how vain a thing is that boast of the world--human wisdom! I knew a man, who missed his fortune, and was ruined by his prudence; and another, who saved his house from being burnt by his foolishness! Who has not heard of no less an Emperor than Bonaparte being saved by some vanity of his wife?--the infernal machine blowing up, she fixing her tournure, or something in her chamber, and he fretting at the delay, and churning his spite through his teeth? Why, I have read of a lady who saved her life by staying at home at loo, on a Sunday, instead of going to prayers, where the church fell in, and killed the whole congregation. Yet, with all this experience, men still continue to be haughty of their strength, self-sufficient of their wisdom, and to throw Providence in each other’s teeth when anything happens.

But this morality is interrupting the thread of my story. As the king and his escort approached the east end of the Boulevards, a deadly machine, prepared by a man named Fieschi, (infernal machine maker to his Majesty,) was discharged from the window of a small wine store, and made havoc of the crowd; the king, with his two sons, by a special Providence, standing unhurt amidst the slaughter--not a hair was singed, not a garment was rent!--He continued to the end of the line, and returned over the scene of the murder. His cool and undaunted countenance gave a favourable opinion of his courage; and his danger, accompanied by such cruel circumstances, has turned the sympathies of a great many in his favour, who cared not a straw for him yesterday. Of the twelve persons killed, Marshal Mortier, Duke of Treviso, is the most distinguished. Eighteen persons were wounded. I was so near as to smell the gunpowder, which was quite near enough for a foreigner. I have since visited the battle ground--what an atrocious spectacle!

The author of this murder is a Corsican, who has served a long time his apprenticeship to villainy in the French army. I have seen his machine: it is composed of a series of gun-barrels, and is a bungling contrivance. The French, with all their experience, don’t shine in this kind of manufacture. It would seem a most contemptible thing in the eyes of a Kentucky rifleman. This fellow’s fame, however, is assured; he will stand conspicuous in the catalogue of regicide villains. The others have all aimed at a single bird, but he at the whole flock. One is almost tempted to regret that Ravaillac’s boots are out of fashion. He attempted to escape through a back window, but the bursting of one of his guns disabled him. His head is fractured and mangled; they expect, however, that, by the care of his physician, he may get well enough to be hanged.

The last scene, the dismissal of the troops, was in the Place Vendôme, where I procured a convenient view of the ceremony. I must not forget, that in this place I lost my faithful guide, who had borne the fatigues and adventures of the day with me. Whether she had wandered from the way, or wearied had sat down, or had stopped to garter up her stockings, is uncertain--certain it is that she was lost here in the crowd, _nec post oculis est reddita nostris_.

On the west of the great column, the statue of Bonaparte all the while peering over him, sat the king on horseback, saluting the brigades as they passed by. His three sons attended him, and some of his generals and foreign ambassadors; and the queen and her daughters, and Madame Adelaide, the sister, and such like fine people, were on a gallery overhead, fanned by the national flags. As the queen descended, there was a shout from the multitude more animated than any during the whole day. The king sat here several hours, and received the affection of his troops bareheaded, bow following bow in perpetual succession, and each bow accompanied by a smile--just such a smile as one is obliged to put on when one meets an amiable and pretty woman whom one loves, in a fit of the cholic.

_July 29th._

All Paris was so overwhelmed with grief for the death of General Mortier, and the “narrow escape of the king,” that it blighted entirely the immense enjoyment we had expected for this day--the last and best of the “three glorious days.” Ball-rooms and theatres were erected with extraordinary preparation all over the _Champs Elysées_, and the fireworks were designed to be the most brilliant ever exhibited in Europe. Multitudes had come from distant countries to see them. I say nothing of the private losses and disappointments; of the booths and fixtures put up and now to be removed, and the consequent ruin of individuals; or of the sugar-plums, candies, gingerbread-nuts, barley-sugar, and all the rancid butter of Paris bought up to make short cakes--all broken up by this one man; and the full cup of pleasure dashed from our very lips to the ground. We were to have such an infinite feast, too, furnished by the government. As for me, I was delighted a whole week in advance, and now--I am very sorry.

Under the Empire, and before, and long after, it was a common part of a great festival here to have thrown to the people bread and meat, and wine, and to set them to scramble for the possession, as they do ravens, or hounds in a kennel, or the beasts at the Menagerie. To put the half-starved population up as an amusement for their better-fed neighbours; to pelt them with pound loaves and little pies; to set a hurricane of sausages to rain over their heads; and to see the hungry clowns gape with enormous mouths, and scramble for these eatables, and to see the officers,--facetious fellows, employed to heave out these provisions,--deceive the expectant mouths by feints and tricks, by throwing sometimes a loaf of leather, or of cork, to leap from one skull to another--what infinite amusement! One of the benefits of the last Revolution was to put an end to this dishonour of the French nation. This is all I have to say of the “three glorious days.” I must trust to-morrow to furnish me something for this blank space. Good night.

* * * * *

_Rue St. Anne, August 2nd._

Louis Philippe has had nothing but trouble with these French people ever since he undertook their government. He has about the same enjoyment of his royalty, as one sea-sick, has of the majesty of the ocean. He is lampooned in the newspapers, caricatured in the print-shops, hawked about town, placarded upon the walls of every street, and gibbeted upon every gateway and lamp-post of the city. In 1831, a revolt was suppressed by Marshal Soult at Lyons; another was got up in the same place in 1834, in which there were six days’ fighting, six thousand slain, and eighteen hundred crammed into the prisons. In Paris, there were three days’ skirmishing at the Cloister St. Merri, in which were five hundred arrests in one night; and one hundred and fifty are on trial (the “_Procès Monstre_,” so much talked of,) in the Chamber of Peers; and now we have, superadded, this affair of Fieschi, with great expectations for the future.

The foreigners here are full of ill-bodings, and I hear nothing but revolutions in every rustling leap. We shall have our brains knocked out by the mob some one of these days. It rains nothing but Damiens and Ravaillacs, and Jacques Clements, all over town. Every one is prophetic; and I am going, after the general example, to cast the king’s horoscope quietly in my corner, and calculate for you his chances. It will be a pretty thing if I can’t eke out a letter from so important an event, and the only one of any kind that has happened since I have been in Paris.

The main strength of the government is the Chamber of Deputies, which is chosen by less than two hundred thousand electors. It represents, then, not the mass of the people, who are thirty-two millions, but property, which has a natural interest in peace and quietude upon any reasonable terms. Besides, the voters being divided into small electoral colleges, are tangible, and easily bribed by offices and local interests; and the members of the Chamber, also, are allowed to hold other offices, and are very eager to possess them; and if the king does not bind both these parties about his neck, he has less policy than the world gives him credit for. He has, with his ministry, one hundred and fifty thousand of these bribes at his disposal. So, also, has he a large majority of this Chamber in his favour. Freeholders paying less than two hundred francs annual tax are not entitled to a vote. These are murmuring and struggling for an extension of suffrage, but this they do not expect from a change, and are therefore in favour of the present dynasty.

This class, from the great division of property in the Revolution, is by far the most numerous. Not more than fifteen hundred landed proprietors of the kingdom have a revenue above twelve thousand pounds. The king has also his means of popularity with the poorer classes, amongst which I may mention the “Savings Banks,” established on the responsibility of the government; one hundred of these are in Paris alone. They not only encourage the economy, industry, and orderly habits of the lower classes, but bind them by the strongest of all interests to the government. For the active support of this power, there is a national guard of eight hundred thousand men, all proprietors, and having interests to hazard in a revolution. There is an immense regular army of near five hundred thousand men, and disaffection in this body would indeed be dangerous; but who is the master spirit, who can hope, of a force so dispersed, and with a continual change of position and officers, to concert a general plan of revolt? Finally, the chief learning and talent of the nation is on the side of the king.

In his councils you find such men as Thiers, Guizot, Royer Collard, Villemain, Barrante, Keratry, and a number of others of the same caste, who were the main instruments in setting up the present government, and have of course a personal interest in its support.

The elements of the opposition are the liberals in favour of a constitutional monarchy, with an extension of suffrage and other popular rights, unwilling to endure under their present rulers what they resisted under their predecessors; secondly, the republicans, downright enemies of all sorts of monarchy, and in favour of an elective government, as that of the United States; this party is numerous, but without any concentration of strength; and finally, the Carlists, the partisans of the ancient monarchy, and its legitimate sovereigns. These parties all abut against each other, and have scarce a common interest; and I do not see from what quarter any one of them can set up a rival dangerous to the existing authority.

The present king has industry and capacity in a high degree, and he exerts both diligently in improving the condition of the people. He favours agriculture, commerce, and the arts of peace; he thrives by his own wit, as well as by the silliness of his predecessors. New streets and houses are rising up to bless him all over Paris. The nation was dragooned into Louis XVIII. and Charles X. by foreign bayonets; Louis Philippe is its own free choice. He took part also in the Revolution, and cannot be feared as the partisan of anti-revolutionary doctrines; the peasants need not dread under his reign a restitution of the spoils of the nobility. He is also exemplary in private life; he rises early and looks after his business, knocks up his boys and packs them off to school with the other urchins of the city, and thinks there is no royal way to mathematics.

For his pacific policy alone he deserves to go to heaven. It cannot be doubtful, that war is one of the most aggravated miseries that can afflict our wretched human nature this side the grave. For the essential cause of their revolutions and national calamities, the French need not reason beyond a simple statistical view of their wars for the last five centuries. They had, in this period, thirty-five years of civil, and forty of religious wars; and of foreign wars, seventy-six on, and one hundred and seventy-six off, the French territory; and their great battles are one hundred and eighty-four. One does not comprehend why the judgments of heaven should not fall upon a nation which consumes a half nearly of its existence in carrying on offensive wars. And, moreover (a new virtue in a French king), Louis Philippe keeps no left-handed wives--no “Belles Feronières,” no “Gabrielle d’Etrées,” or “Madame Lavallières;” he sticks to his rib of Sicily, with whom he has nine children living, all in a fresh and vigorous health. Why then seek to kill a king recommendable by so many excellent qualities? Attempts at regicide are not always proofs of disloyalty in a nation.

A great number of desperate men, mostly the refuse of the army, have been turned loose upon the community, and these, in disposing of their own worthless lives, seek that of the king, in order to die gloriously upon the Place St. Jaques. I have no doubt that the majority of the nation desire ardently his safety. France has tried alternately the two extremes of human government, or rather misgovernment. She has rushed from an unlimited monarchy to a crazy democracy, and back into a military despotism. She has tilted the vessel on one side, then run to the other, and at length is taking her station in the middle. The general temper of the public mind now favours a moderate government, and this is wisdom bought at so dear a rate, that it would be underrating the common sense of the nation to suppose it will be lightly regarded.

Here is a copy of each of the Paris newspapers. You will see something of the spirit in which they are conducted, and one of the chief engines by which the nation is governed. There is certainly no country in which a newspaper has so great an influence, and none in which the editor is so considerable a man, as in Paris.

The _Constitutionnel_ opposes and defends all parties, and is pleased and displeased with all systems of government. It courts the favour of the “Petite Bourgeoisie,” the shopkeepers, who are always restless and displeased, but their interests require a quiet pursuit of business. This is the most gossiping gazette of them all, and gossips very agreeably.

The _Journal des Debats_ represents the “_haute Bourgeoisie_,” the rich industrial classes, whose great interests are, order and security of property, and the maintenance of peace with foreign countries. The “_Partie Doctrinaire_,” the chief supporters of this paper, are a kind of genteel liberals, holding the balance between confirmed royalists and democrats, and ultra liberals. They have supported their doctrines with a great display of scholastic learning, which has given them their appellation of “Doctrinaires.” Their leaders are mostly from the schools, as Royer Collard, Guizot, and Villemain, Keratry and Barrante. This paper has a leaning towards a vigorous monarchy and the Orleans dynasty; it is now doing what it can in its moderate way to discredit the republicanism of the United States.

The _Gazette de France_ and the _Quotidienne_ are opposed directly to the present government, and in favour of the legitimate monarchy in the person of Henry V. The former advocates royalty with extended suffrage, the increase of power in the provinces, and decrease of the influence of the capital; the latter insists upon the re-establishment, in its fullest extent, of the ancient monarchy.

The _National_ asserts republicanism outright, on the system of the United States. It is conducted with spirit and ability, at present, by M. Carrel. In assuming his office he announced himself in his address as follows:--“_La responsibilité du National pése en entier dès ce jour sur ma seule tête; si quelqu’un s’oubliât en invective au sujêt de cette feuille, il trouverait à qui parler._” With this the paper called the _Tribune_, edited also with ability, co-operates.

The _Moniteur_ reports the speeches of the Chambers, and official documents, and is the ostensible organ of the government. The _Temps_, the _Courier_, the _Messager_, and _Journal du Commerce_, all advocate reform on constitutional principles. There are smaller papers, too, conducted with ability. These, with Galignani, and some other English prints, make up the newsmongerie of Paris. The price of Galignani and the principal French papers is twenty dollars a year, and their number of regular subscribers about 20,000. In Paris they are generally read by the hour, and transferred from one individual to another, and disposed of in the evening to the public establishments, or sent off to the country. In this manner, they are read by an immense number of persons daily. The price of advertising in the best papers is about thirty sous per line.

The first men of the nation are amongst the constant contributors to these papers, both as correspondents and editors. The editorial corps around each, discuss the leading topics, and form a board to admit or reject communications. These have their daily meetings with the functionaries of the state, and their correspondents in every foreign country. Argus, with his hundred eyes, and Briareus, with his hundred hands, preside over the preparation of the daily meal. In our country, where the same man caters, cooks, and does the honours, it would be unfair to make any comparison of ability. There is one point, however, in which there is no good reason why we should allow the French or any other people the superiority: it is, the decency of language in which animated debates are conducted. To be eloquent, or even vituperative, it is not necessary to be abusive, or transgress the rules of good breeding; polish neither dulls the edge nor enervates the vigour of the weapon. The existence of agencies between the owners and readers of newspapers is an immense gain to the liberty of the press. There can be very little freedom of opinion where the editor and proprietor, as in the United States, stand in immediate relation with their patrons.

In speaking of the powers of the government, I have said nothing of the Chamber of Peers. It is but a feather in either scale. It wants the hereditary influence and great estates necessary to command popular respect. The title of Peer is for life only, and is the reward of prescribed services in all the chief employments of the state. It is a cheap dignity, which pleases grown-up children, and consists of a ribbon in the button-hole.

I have said nothing, either, of Bonapartism, which has gasped its last. The most violent enmities against the Emperor seem to have burnt out. No danger is now apprehended either from his family or his partisans, and the mind is open to a full sense of the glory he has conferred upon the nation; and there is mixed up with admiration of his talents, a sentiment of affection, from the recollection of his great reverses of fortune and his patient sufferings. I have heard all parties speak of him with great respect and praise. It is a good policy of the present government to have taken into favour all his plans for the improvement of the country, and to have placed him in his citizen’s coat, and cocked hat, stripped of its military plumes, upon his column.

When I write politics to ladies, Apollo keeps twitching me all the while by the ear; but I thought any other subject to-day would be impertinent. Yet why should ladies be ignorant of what enters so largely into the conversation of society, and makes so important a part of the learning of their children? I am meditating a journey to Rome, and expect to set out next week with a gentleman of Kentucky. His Holiness, I presume, will be delighted to see some one all the way from the Sharp Mountain. Direct your letters as usual. Very tenderly, yours.

LETTER VII.

The Garden of Plants--The Omnibus--The Museum of Natural History--American Birds--The Naturalist--Study of Entomology--The Botanic Garden--Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy--The Menagerie--The Giraffe--Notions of America--The Cedar of Lebanon--Effects of French Cookery--French Gastronomy--Goose Liver Pie--Mode of Procuring the Repletion of the Liver.

_Paris, August 14th, 1835._