Paris and the Parisians in 1835 Volume I Part 16

On the subject which the examination of these _prevenus d'Avril_ naturally led to, our two French friends seemed to be almost entirely of the same opinion; the legitimatist confessing that "any king was better than none," and the doctrinaire declaring that he would rather the country should have gone without the last revolution, glorious and immortal as it was, than that it should be exposed to another, especially such a one as MM. les Prevenus were about to prepare for them.

Being arrived at _le quartier Latin_, we amused ourselves by speculating upon the propensity manifested by very young men, who were still subjected to restraint, for the overthrow and destruction of everything that denotes authority or threatens discipline. Thus the walls in this neighbourhood abounded with inscriptions to that effect; "_A bas Philippe!_"--"_Les Pairs sont des a.s.sa.s.sins!_"--"_Vive la Republique!_" and the like. Pears of every size and form, with scratches signifying eyes, nose, and mouth, were to be seen in all directions: which being interpreted, denotes the contempt of the juvenile students for the reigning monarch. A more troublesome evidence of this distaste for authority was displayed a few days ago by four or five hundred of these disorderly young men, who a.s.sembling themselves together, followed with hootings and shoutings M. Royer Collard, a professor lately appointed by the government to the medical school, from the college to his home in the Rue de Provence.

Upon all such occasions, this government, or any other, would do well to follow the hint given them by an admirable manoeuvre of General Lobau's, the commander-in-chief of the National Guard. I believe the anecdote is very generally known; but, in the hope that you may not have heard it, I will indulge myself by telling you the story, which amused me infinitely; and it is better that I should run the risk of your hearing it twice, than of your not hearing it at all.

A party of _les jeunes gens de Paris_, who were exerting themselves to get up a little republican _emeute_, had a.s.sembled in considerable numbers in the Place Vendome. The drums beat--the commandant was summoned and appeared. The young malcontents closed their ranks, handled their pocket-knives and walking-sticks, and prepared to stand firm. The general was seen to dismiss an aide-de-camp, and a few anxious moments followed, when something looking fearfully like a military engine appeared advancing from the Rue de la Paix. Was it cannon?... A crowd of high-capped engineers surrounded it, as with military order and address it wheeled about and approached the spot where the rioters had formed their thickest phalanx. The word of command was given, and in an instant the whole host were drenched to their skins with water.

Many who saw this memorable rout, in which the laughing _pompiers_ followed with their leather pipes the scampering heroes, declare that no military manoeuvre ever produced so rapid an evacuation of troops. There is something in the tone and temper of this proceeding of the National Guard which appears to me strikingly indicative of the easy, quiet, contemptuous spirit in which these powerful guardians of the existing government contemplate its republican enemies.

Having reached the Luxembourg and obtained admission to the gardens, we again rested ourselves, that we might look about at our ease upon a scene that was not only quite novel, but certainly very singular to those who were accustomed to the ordinary aspect of the place.

In the midst of lilacs and roses an encampment of small white tents showed their warlike fronts. Arms, drums, and all sorts of military accoutrements were visible among them; while loitering troops, some smoking, some reading, some sleeping, completed the unwonted appearance of the scene.

It would have been impossible, I believe, in all France to have fixed ourselves on a spot where our two French friends would have found so many incitements to unity of opinion and feeling as this. Our conversation, therefore, was not only very amicable, but ran some risk of being dull from the mere want of contradiction; for to a hearty conscientious condemnation of the proceedings which led to this trial of the _prevenus d'Avril_ there was an unanimous sentence pa.s.sed _nem.

con._ throughout the whole party.

M. de L---- gave us some anecdotes of one or two of the persons best known among the prisoners; but upon being questioned respecting the others, he burst out indignantly in the words of Corneille--

----"Le reste ne vaut pas l'honneur d'etre nomme: Un tas d'hommes perdus de dettes et de crimes, Que pressent de nos loix les ordres legitimes, Et qui desesperant de les plus eviter, Si tout n'est renverse, ne sauraient subsister."

"Ben trovato!" exclaimed P----; "you could not have described them better--but...."

This "but" would very probably have led to observations that might have put our _belle harmonie_ out of tune, or at least have produced the renewal of our peaceable sparring, had not a little bustle among the trees at a short distance behind us cut short our session.

It seems that ever since the trials began, the chief duty of the gendarmes--(I beg pardon, I should say, of _la Garde de Paris_)--has been to prevent any a.s.sembling together of the people in knots for conversation and gossipings in the courts and gardens of the Luxembourg. No sooner are two or three persons observed standing together, than a policeman approaches, and with a tone of command p.r.o.nounces, "Circulez, messieurs!--circulez, s'il vous plait." The reason for this precaution is, that nightly at the Porte St. Martin a few score of _jeunes gens_ a.s.semble to make a very idle and unmeaning noise, the echo of which regularly runs from street to street till the reiterated report amounts to the announcement of an _emeute_. We are all now so used to these harmless little _emeutes_ at the Porte St.

Martin, that we mind them no more than General Lobau himself: nevertheless, it is deemed proper, trumpery as the cause may be, to prevent anything like a gathering together of the mob in the vicinity of the Luxembourg, lest the same hundred-tongued lady who constantly magnifies the hootings of a few idle mechanics into an _emeute_ should spread a report throughout France that the Luxembourg was besieged by the people. The noise which had disturbed us was occasioned by the gathering together of about a dozen persons; but a policeman was in the midst of the group, and we heard rumours of an _arrestation_. In less than five minutes, however, everything was quiet again: but we marked two figures so picturesque in their republicanism, that we resumed our seats while a sketch was made from them, and amused ourselves the while in fancying what the ominous words could be that were so cautiously exchanged between them. M. de L---- said that there could be no doubt that they ran thus:

"Ce soir, a la Porte St. Martin!"

_Answer._--"J'y serai."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu.

"CE SOIR a LA PORTE ST. MARTIN!"

"J'Y SERAI."

London, Published by Richard Bentley, 1836.]

LETTER XXV.

Chapelle Expiatoire.--Devotees seen there.--Tri-coloured flag out of place there.--Flower Market of the Madeleine.--Pet.i.tes Maitresses.

Of all the edifices finished in Paris since my last visit, there is not one which altogether pleases me better than the little "Chapelle Expiatoire" erected in memory of Louis the Sixteenth, and his beautiful but ill-starred queen.

This monument was planned and in part executed by Louis the Eighteenth, and finished by Charles the Tenth. It stands upon the spot where many butchered victims of the tyrant mob were thrown in 1793.

The story of the royal bodies having been destroyed by quicklime is said to have been fabricated and circulated for the purpose of preventing any search after them, which might, it was thought, have produced a dangerous reaction of feeling among the whim-governed populace.

These bodies, and several others, which were placed in coffins, and inscribed with the names of the murdered occupants, lay buried together for many years after the revolution in a large _chantier_, or wood-yard, at no great distance from the place of execution.

That this spot had been excavated for the purpose of receiving these sad relics, is a fact well known, and it was never lost sight of from the terrible period at which the ground was so employed; but the unseemly vault continued undisturbed till after the restoration, when the bodies of the royal victims were sought and found. Their bones were then conveyed to the long-hallowed shrine of St. Denis; but the spot where the mangled remains were first thrown was consecrated, and is now become the site of this beautiful little Chapelle Expiatoire.

The enclosure in which this building stands is of considerable extent, reaching from the Rue de l'Arcade to the Rue d'Anjou. This s.p.a.ce is lined with closely-planted rows of cypress-trees on every side, which are protected by a ma.s.sive railing, neatly painted. The building itself and all its accompaniments are in excellent taste; simple, graceful, and solemn.

The interior is a small Greek cross, each extremity of which is finished by a semicircle surmounted by a semi-dome. The s.p.a.ce beneath the central dome is occupied by chairs and benches covered with crimson velvet, for the use of the faithful--in every sense--who come to attend the ma.s.s which is daily performed there.

As long as the daughter of the murdered monarch continued to reside in Paris, no morning ever pa.s.sed without her coming to offer up her prayers at this expiatory shrine.

One of the four curved extremities is occupied by the altar; that opposite to it, by the entrance; and those on either side, by two well-composed and impressive groups in white marble--that to the right of the altar representing Marie Antoinette bending beside a cross supported by an angel,--and that to the left, the felon-murdered monarch whose wretched and most unmerited destiny she shared. On the pedestal of the king's statue is inscribed his will; on that of the queen, her farewell letter to the Princess Elizabeth.

Nothing can exceed the chaste delicacy of the few ornaments admitted into the chapel. They consist only, I think, of golden candlesticks, placed in niches in the white marble walls. The effect of the whole is beautiful and impressive.

I often go there; yet I can hardly understand what the charm can be in the little building itself, or in the quiet ma.s.s performed there without music, which can so attract me. It is at no great distance from our apartments in the Rue de Provence, and a walk thither just occupies the time before breakfast. I once went there on a Sunday morning with some of my family; but then it was full--indeed so crowded, that it was impossible to see across the building, or feel the beauty of its elegant simplicity. The pale figures of the royal dead, the foully murdered, were no longer the princ.i.p.al objects; and though I have no doubt that all present were right loyal spirits, with whose feelings I am well enough disposed to sympathise, yet I could not read each saddened brow, and attach a romance to it, as I never fail to do during my week-day visits.

There are two ladies, for example, whom I constantly see there, ever in the same place, and ever in the same att.i.tude. The elder of these I feel perfectly sure must have pa.s.sed her youth near Marie Antoinette, for it is at the foot of her statue that she kneels--or I might almost say that she prostrates herself, for she throws her arms forward on a cus.h.i.+on that is placed before her, and suffers her aged head to fall upon them, in a manner that speaks more sorrow than I can describe.

The young girl who always accompanies and kneels beside her may, I think, be her granddaughter. They have each of them "_Gentlewoman born_" written on every feature, in characters not to be mistaken. The old lady is very pale, and the young one looks as if she were not pa.s.sing a youth of gaiety and enjoyment.

There is a grey-headed old man, too, who is equally constant in his attendance at this melancholy chapel. He might sit as a model for a portrait of _le bon vieux temps_; but he has a stern though sad expression of countenance, which seems to be exactly a masculine modification of what is pa.s.sing at the heart and in the memory of the old lady at the opposite side of the chapel. These are figures which send the thoughts back for fifty years; and seen in the act of a.s.sisting at a ma.s.s for the souls of Louis Seize and his queen, produce a powerful effect on the imagination.

I have ventured to describe this melancholy spot, and what I have seen there, the more particularly because, easy as it is of access, you might go to Paris a dozen times without seeing it, as in fact hundreds of English travellers do. One reason for this is, that it is not opened to the public gaze as a show, but can only be entered during the hour of prayer, which is inconveniently early in the day.

As this sad and sacred edifice cannot justly be considered as a public building, the elevation of the tri-coloured flag upon it every fete-day might, I think, have been spared.

Another, and a very different novelty, is the new flower-market, that is now kept under the walls and columns of the majestic church of La Madeleine. This beautiful collection of flowers appears to me to produce from its situation a very singular effect: the relative attributes of art and nature are reversed;--for here, art seems sublime, vast, and enduring; while nature is small, fragile, and peris.h.i.+ng.

It has sometimes happened to me, after looking at a work of art which raised my admiration to enthusiasm, that I have next sought some marvellous combination of mountain and valley, rock and river, forest and cataract, and felt as I gazed on them something like shame at remembering how nearly I had suffered the work of man to produce an equal ecstasy. But here, when I raised my eyes from the little flimsy crowd of many-coloured blossoms to the simple, solemn pomp of that long arcade, with its spotless purity of tint and its enduring majesty of graceful strength, I felt half inclined to scorn myself and those around me for being so very much occupied by the roses, pinks, and mignonette spread out before it.

Laying aside, however, all philosophical reflections on its locality, this new flower-market is a delightful acquisition to the Parisian _pet.i.te maitresse_. It was a long expedition to visit the _marche aux fleurs_ on the distant quay near Notre Dame; and though its beauty and its fragrance might well repay an hour or two stolen from the pillow, the sweet decorations it offered to the boudoir must have been oftener selected by the _maitre d'hotel_ or the _femme de chambre_ than by the fair lady herself. But now, three times in the week we may have the pleasure of seeing numbers of graceful females in that piquant species of dishabille, which, uniting an equal portion of careful coquetry and saucy indifference, gives to the morning attire of a pretty, elegant, Frenchwoman, an air so indescribably attractive.

Followed by a neat _soubrette_, such figures may now be often seen in the flower-market of the Madeleine before the brightness of the morning has faded either from their eyes, or the blossoms they so love to gaze upon. The most ordinary linen gown, made in the form of a wrapper--the hair _en papillote_--the plain straw-bonnet drawn forward over the eyes, and the vast shawl enveloping the whole figure, might suffice to make many an _elegante_ pace up and down the fragrant alley incognita, did not the observant eye remark that a veil of rich lace secured the simple bonnet under the chin--that the shawl was of cashmere--and that the little hand, when ungloved to enjoy the touch of a myrtle or an orange blossom, was as white as either.

LETTER XXVI.

Delicacy in France and in England.--Causes of the difference between them.

There is nothing perhaps which marks the national variety of manners between the French and the English more distinctly than the different estimate they form of what is delicate or indelicate, modest or immodest, decent or indecent: nor does it appear to me that all the intimacy of intercourse which for the last twenty years has subsisted between the two nations has greatly lessened this difference.

Nevertheless, I believe that it is more superficial than many suppose it to be; and that it arises rather from contingent circ.u.mstances, than from any original and native difference in the capability of refinement in the two nations.

Among the most obvious of these varieties of manner, is the astounding freedom with which many things are alluded to here in good society, the slightest reference to which is in our country banished from even the most homely cla.s.s. It seems that the opinion of Martine is by no means peculiar to herself, and that it is pretty generally thought that

"Quand on se fait entendre, on parle toujours bien."