SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.
The river omnibuses.—Sèvres and its porcelain.—St. Cloud as it was.—The crooked little town.—Versailles.—Eugenie's "spare bedroom."—The queen who played she was a farmer's wife.—Seven miles of paintings.—The portraits of the presidents.
THERE are four ways of going to St. Cloud, from Paris, says the guide-book; we chose the fifth, and took one of the little steamboats—the river omnibuses—that follow the course of the Seine, stopping at the piers along the city, which occur almost as often as the street crossings. Very insignificant little steamers they are, made up of puff, and snort, and smoke, a miniature deck, and a man with a big bell. Up the river we steamed through a mist that hid everything but the green banks, the pretty villas whose lawns drabbled their skirts in the river, and after a time the islands that seemed to have dropped cool, wet, and green into the middle of the stream. We plunged beneath the dark arches of the stone bridges—the Pont d'Alma not to be forgotten, with its colossal sentinels on either side of the middle arch, calm, white, and still, leaning upon their muskets, their feet almost dipping into the water, their great, stony eyes gazing away down the river. What is it they seem to see beyond the bend? What is it they watch and wait for, gun in hand? We pulled our wraps about us, found a sheltered place, and went on far beyond our destination, through the gray vapor that gathered sometimes into great, plashing drops to fall upon the deck, or, hovering in mid-air, wiped out the distance from the landscape as effectually as the sweep of a painter's brush, while it softened and spiritualized everything near, from the sharply outlined eaves, and gables, and narrow windows of the village struggling up from the water, to the shadowy span of the bridges that seemed to rest upon air. Then down with the rain and the current we swept again, to land at the forsaken pier of Sèvres, from which we made our way over the pavings, so inviting in these French towns for missile or barricade, to the porcelain factory. No fear of missing it, since it is the one object of interest to strangers in the town; and whatever question we asked, the reply would have been the pointing of the finger in that one direction. Once there, we clattered and slipped over the tiled floor after a polite attendant, through its many show-rooms, and among its wilderness of pottery, ancient and modern. The manufactory was established by—I'm sure I don't know whom—in seventeen hundred and—something, at Vincennes, quite the other side of Paris; but a few years later, in the reign of Louis XV., was transferred to Sèvres, and put under the direction of government. It is almost impossible to gain permission to visit the workshops, but a permit to pass through the show-rooms can easily be obtained. There were queer old-fashioned attempts at glazed ware here, some of them adorned with pictures like those we used to see in our grandmothers' china closets, of puffy little pink gentlemen and ladies ambling over a pink foreground; a pink mountain, of pyramidal form, rising from the wide-rimmed hat of the roseate gentlemen; a pink lake standing on end at the feet of the lady, and a little pink house, upon which they might both have sat comfortably, with a few clouds of jeweller's cotton completing the picture. A striking contrast were these to the marvels of frailty and grace of later times. The rooms were hung with paintings upon porcelain, the burial of Attila, which we had seen at the Louvre, among them. Every conceivable model of vase, pitcher, and jar was here—quaint, beautiful conceptions of form adorned by the hand of skilful artists, from mammoth vases, whirling upon stationary pedestals, to the most delicate cup that ever touched red lips.
At noon we strolled over to St. Cloud, a pleasant walk of a mile, beginning with a shaded avenue, rough as a country road; then on, down a street leading to the gates of the park of St. Cloud—a street so vain of its destination that it was actually lifted up above the gardens on either side. From the wide gates we passed into a labyrinth of shaded, clean-swept ways, and followed one to the avenue of the fountains, where we sat upon the edge of a stone basin to await the opening of the palace. For do not imagine, dear reader, that you can run in and out of palaces without ceremony and at all hours of the day. There is an appointed time; there is the gathering outside of the curious; there is the coming of a man with rattling, ringing keys; there is the throwing open of wide gates and massive doors, and then—and not until then—the entering in. As for the fountains, next to those at Versailles they have been widely celebrated; but as they only played upon Sundays and fête days, we did not see them. Their Sunday gowns of mist and flowing water were laid aside, and naked and bare enough they were this day. The wide basins, the lions and dolphins, were here, with the marble nymphs, and fauns and satyrs, that make a shower-bath spectacle of themselves upon gala days. When the hour refused to strike, and we grew hungry,—as one will among the rarest and most wonderful things,—we left the park, to find the crooked little town that sits in the dust always at the feet of palaces. Its narrow streets ran close up to the gates, and would have run in had they not been shut. Here in the low, smoke-stained room of an inn that was only a wine-shop, we spent the time of waiting,—our elbows upon the round, dark table, which, with the dirt and wooden chairs, made up its only furnishing,—sipping the sour wine, cutting slices from the long, melancholy stick of bread, all dust and ashes, and nibbling the cheese that might have vied with Samson for strength. The diamond-paned window was flung wide open, for the air seemed soiled and stained, like the floor. Just across the narrow, empty street, an old house elbowed our inn. The eaves of its thatched roof were tufted with moss, out from which rose a mass of delicate pink blossoms—pretty innocents, fairly blushing for shame of their surroundings. Through the long passage-way came the sound of high-pitched voices—of a strange jargon from the room opening upon the street, where a heavy-eyed maid, behind a pewter bar, served the blue-bloused workmen gathered about the little tables.
The white palace of St. Cloud, with its Corinthian columns, stood daintily back from its gates and the low-bred town; but its long wings had run down, like curious children, to peep out through the bars; so, you will see, it formed three sides of a square. It had lately been refurnished for the prince imperial. The grand salons need not be described; one is especially noted as having been the place where a baby was once baptized, who is now ex-emperor of France. In the same room the civil contract of marriage between Napoleon I. and Marie Louise was celebrated. A few elegant but less spacious rooms were interesting from having been the private apartments of the poor queens and empresses who have shared the throne of France. Gorgeous they were in tapestry and gilding, filled with a gaping crowd of visitors, and echoing to the voice of a voluble guide. Royal fingers may have touched the pretty trinkets lying about; royal forms reclined upon the soft couches; royal aching hearts beat to the tick of the curious gilt clock, that bore as many faces as a woman, some one wickedly said; but it was impossible to realize it, or to believe that high heels, and panniers, and jaunty hats upon sweet-faced, shrill-voiced American girls had not ruled and reigned here always, as they did this day.
Versailles lies out beyond St. Cloud, but we gave to it another day. We were a merry party, led by Dr. R., who left the train at the station, and filled the omnibus for the palace. There was an air of having seen better days about the city, which was at one time the second of importance in France; it fed and fattened upon the court, and when at last the court went away not to return, it came to grief. The most vivid recollection I have of the great court-yard, around which extend three sides of the palace, is of its round paving-stones—that seemed to have risen up preparatory to crying out—and the grove of weather-stained statues upon high pedestals,—generals, cardinals, and statesmen who hated and connived against each other in life, doomed now in stone to stare each other out of countenance. I am sure we detected a wry face here and there, to say nothing of clinched fists. It is a gloomy old court-yard at best. The front of the main building is all that remains of the old hunting-seat of Louis XIII., which his son would not suffer to be destroyed. It is of dingy, mildewed brick, that can never in any possible light appear palatial; and so blackened and purple-stained are the statues before it that they might have been just brought from the Morgue. The whole palace is only a show place now—a museum of painting and statuary. As for the celebrated gardens, we walked for hours, and still they stretched away on every side. We explored paths wide and narrow, crooked and straight, and saw clipped trees by the mile, with grottoes and the skeletons of the fountains that, like naughty children, play o' Sundays, and all the wonderful trees, shrubs, and flowers brought from the ends of the earth, and ate honey gingerbread (flavored with extract of turpentine) before an open booth, and were ready to faint with weariness; and when at last a broad avenue opened before us with the Trianons, which must be seen, at the farther end, we would not have taken the whole place as a gift. It must have been at this point that we fortified ourselves with the gingerbread.
The Grand Trianon alone were we permitted to enter. It is in the form of an Italian villa, with a ground floor only, and long windows opening upon delightful gardens. Like Versailles, it is now a mere show, although a suit of apartments was fitted up here some time since, in anticipation of a neighborly visit from Queen Victoria to Eugenie, making of the little palace a kind of guest chamber, a spare bedroom. As we followed a winding path through the park, we came suddenly upon an open glade, surrounded and shaded by forest trees. Over the tiny lake, in the centre, swans were sailing. Half hidden among the wide-spread, sweeping branches of the trees were the scattered farm-houses of a deserted village—only half a dozen in all, of rude, half Swiss architecture, made to imitate age and decay, quaintly picturesque. Here Marie Antoinette and her court played at poverty. Do you remember how, when she grew weary of solemn state, she came here with a few favored ones to forget her crown, and dream she was a farmer's wife? The dairy was empty, the marble slab bare upon which she made butter for her guests. Just beyond was the mill, but the wheel was still. It was a pleasant dream—a dream of Arcadia. Ah, but there was a fearful awakening! "The poorest peasant in the land," said the queen, "has one little spot which she can call her own; the Queen of France asks no more." So she shut the gates upon the people who had claimed and held the right, from all time, to wander at will through the gardens of their kings. Then they hated her, whom they had greeted with shouts of welcome when she came a bride from over the border. "The Austrian! the Austrian!" they hissed through the closed gates. And one day they dragged her out from a bare cell in the Conciergerie,—no make-believe of rough walls, of coarse fare there,—they bound the slender hands behind her, they thrust into a prison cart the form that had been used to rest upon down and silken cushions, and bore her over the rough stones to the scaffold. Ah, it makes one shudder!
To see the two hundred rooms of the palace of Versailles requires a day, at least; but we, fearful that this might be our last opportunity, determined to spend the remaining hour or two and our last atom of strength in the attempt. A wandering cabman pounced upon us as we came down the avenue from the Trianons, and bore us back to the palace, where we toiled up and down the grand stairway, and peeped into the chapel that had echoed to the mockery of worship in the time of the king who built all this—the king who loved everybody's wife but his own—so faithlessly! There was a dizzy hurrying through corridors lined with statuary, through one salon after another hung with Horace Vernet's paintings describing the glories of France—the crowning of its kings, the reception of its ambassadors, the signing of its treaties, the winning of its battles; but was all this bloodshed, and all this agony depicted upon canvas, for the glory of France? There were immense galleries, where, on every side, from cornice to floor, one was conscious of nothing but smoke and cannon, wounds and gore, and rolling eyes. We walked over the prescribed three miles and a half of floors slippery as ice, and gazed upon the seven miles of pictures, with a feeling less of pleasure or gratified curiosity than of satisfaction at having done Versailles. Room after room was devoted to portraits, full lengths and half lengths, side faces and full fronts; faces to be remembered, if one had not been in such mortal haste, and faces that would never have been missed from the ermined robes. In a quiet corner we were startled to find some of our good presidents staring down upon us from the wall. A mutual surprise it seemed to be. But if we Americans must be awkward and clownish to the last degree, half civilized, and but one remove from barbarism, don't let us put the acme of all this upon canvas, and hang it in the palace of kings. Here was President Grant represented in the saloon of a steamboat,—America to the last,—one leg crossed, one heel upon the opposite knee, and his head about to sink into his coat collar in an agony of terror at finding himself among quality. His attitude might have been considered graceful and dignified in a bar-room, or even in the saloon of a Mississippi steamer; but it utterly failed in both particulars in the Palace of Versailles, among courtly men and high-bred women.