THE PARIS OF 1869.
The devil.—Cathedrals and churches.—The Louvre.—Modern French art.—The Beauvais clock, with its droll little puppets.—Virtue in a red gown.—The Luxembourg Palace.—The yawning statue of Marshal Ney.—Gay life by gas-light.—The Imperial Circus.—The Opera.—How the emperor and empress rode through the streets after the riots.—The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was her fortune.—Napoleon's tomb.
IT may be the City of Destruction, the very gateway to depths unknown; but with its fair, white dwellings, its fair, white streets, that gleamed almost like gold beneath a summer sun, it seemed much more a City Celestial. It may be, as some affirm, that the devil here walks abroad at midday; but we saw neither the print of his hoofs upon the asphaltum, nor the shadow of his horns upon the cream-like Caen stone. We walked, and rode, and dwelt a time within its limits; and but for a certain reckless gayety that gave to the Sabbath an air of Vanity Fair, but for the mallet of the workman that disturbed our Sunday worship, we should never have known that we were not in the most Christian of all Christian cities. It is by no means imperative to do in Rome as the Romans do, and one need not in Paris drink absinthe or visit the Jardin Mabille.
Our first expedition was to the banker's and to the shops, and having replenished our purse and wardrobe, we were prepared to besiege the city. There was a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned with blue satin, of our pretty salon, whence we peeped down upon the street below between the yellow satin curtains that draped its wide French window; or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny, impossible birds; or made abortive attempts to penetrate the secrets of the buhl cabinets, and to guess at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered organism; or admired ourselves in the mirrors which gazed at each other from morning till night, for our apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we found most charming.
You will hardly care for a description of the dozen, more or less, churches, old, new, and restored, with which we began and ended our sight-seeing in Paris, where we looked upon sculptured saints without number, and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more than our hearts' content. There was St. Germain L'Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which tolled the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We stood with the bonnes and babies under the trees of the square before it, gazing up at the belfry with most severe countenances,—and learned, afterwards, that the bell had been long since removed! There was the Madeleine of more recent date, built in the form of a Greek temple, and interesting just now for having been the church of Father Hyacinthe, to which we could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron gate; we inquired in excellent English of a French shopkeeper, and found at last an open gateway, a little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time of search and inquiry in darkness, and among wood, and shavings, and broken chairs, and holy dust-pans, before passing around and entering the great bronze doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice, grand and beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds of lotteries. There was St. Etienne du Mont, and within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the patron saint of Paris—St. Genevieve. Who she was, or what she did to gain this rather unenviable position, I failed to learn. Her name seems to have outlived her deeds. Whether she was beautiful and beloved, and put away earthly vanities for a holy life, or old and ugly, and bore her lot with a patience that won saintship, I do not know. I can only tell that tapers burn always upon her tomb, and if you buy one it will burn a prayer for you. So we were told. There is one old church, St. Germain des Prés, most beautifully colored within. Its pictures seem to have melted upon the walls. But admired above all is the Sainte Chapelle, in the Palais de Justice, a chapel fitted up by the fanatical St. Louis, when this palace of justice, which holds now the courts of law, was a royal residence. Of course all its brightness was dimmed long ago. Its glories became dust, like its founder. But it has recently been restored, and is a marvel of gilt, well-blended colors, and stained glass. A graceful spire surmounts it, but the old, cone-capped towers, rising from another part of the same building, possessed far greater interest in our eyes; for here was the Conciergerie, where were confined Marie Antoinette and so many more victims of the reign of terror.
On the "isle of the city," in the Seine, where, under the Roman rule, a few mud huts constituted Paris, stands the church of Notre Dame, which was three hundred years in building. With its spire and two square towers, it may be seen from almost any part of the city. I wish you might look upon the relics and the vestments which the priests wear upon occasions of ceremony, hidden within this church, and displayed upon the payment of an extra fee. I did not wonder that the Sisters of Charity, who went into the little room with us, gazed aghast upon the gold and silver, and precious stones.
Every one visits the galleries of the Louvre, of course. A little, worn shoe, belonging once to Marie Antoinette, and the old gray coat of the first emperor, were to us the most interesting objects among the relics. From out the sea of pictures rise Murillo's Madonna, the lovely face with a soul behind it, shining through, and the burial of the heroine of Chateaubriand. Do you know it? The fair form, the sweeping hair of Attila, and the dark lover with despair in his face? As for the Rubens gallery,—his fat, red, undraped women here among the clouds, surrounded by puffy little cherubs, had for us no charms. Rubens in Antwerp was a revelation. We wandered through room after room, lighted from above, crowded with paintings. To live for a time among them would be a delight; to glance at them for a moment was tantalization. All around were the easels of the artists who come here to sketch—sharp-featured, heavy-browed men, with unkempt hair and flowing beards, and in shabby coats, stood before them, pallet and brushes in hand; and women by the score,—some of them young and pleasing, with duennas patiently waiting near by; but more often they were neither young nor beautiful, and with an evident renunciation of pomps and vanities. We glanced at their copies curiously. Sometimes they seemed the original in miniature, and sometimes,—ah well, we all fail.
We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures at the Palais de l'Industrie one day, and were particularly impressed with the nudité of the modern school of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very beautiful, but there must be something higher! We saw there, too, another day, the clock on exhibition for a time before being consigned to its destined place at Beauvais. It was even more wonderful than the one so famous at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary church organ, and of similar shape; a mass of gilt and chocolate-colored wood; a mass of dials, great and small—of time tables, and, indeed, of tables for computing everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to show the time in fifty different places, and everything else that could, by any possible connection with time, be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon the top, Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as judging the world, his feet upon the clouds; on either side kneeling female figures adored him. Just below, a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of fifty windows. Just below the image of the Saviour, a figure emerged through an open door at the striking of every quarter of an hour,—coming out with a slide and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an opportunity of observing all this in the three quarters of an hour of waiting. We viewed the clock upon every side, being especially interested in a picture at one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and a long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships attached in some way to the works within. They pitched back and forth without making any progress whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had lately suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests seated themselves with us upon the bench before the clock as the hand approached the hour. They wore the long black robes and odd little skull-caps, that fit so like a plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in place by some law of attraction unknown to us. One, of a different order, or higher grade, in a shorter robe and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings that added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up to his place just in time to throw back his head and open his mouth as the clock struck, and the last judgment began. The cock upon the front gave a preliminary and weak flap of his wings, and emitted three feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I am sure, have convulsed the very puppets. Certainly they all disappeared from the windows, and something jumped into their places intended to represent flames, but which looked so much like reversed tin petticoats, that we supposed for a moment they were all standing on their heads. All the figures upon the peaks turned their backs upon us. The image of Christ began to wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back and forth, clasping their own. Two angels raised to their lips long, gilt trumpets, as if to blow a blast; then dropped them; then raised them a second time, and even made a third abortive attempt. From one of the open doors Virtue was jerked out to be judged, Virtue in a red gown. The scales began to dance up and down. An angel appeared playing a guitar, and Virtue went triumphantly off to the right, to slow and appropriate music, an invisible organ playing meanwhile. Then Vice appeared. I confess he excited my instant and profound pity. Such a poor, naked, wretched-looking object as he was! with his hands to his face, as though he were heartily ashamed to come out in such a plight. I venture to say, if he had been decked out like Virtue, he might have stolen off to the right, and nobody been the wiser. Good clothes do a great deal in Paris. As it was, the scales danced up and down a moment, and then the devil appeared with a sharp stick, and drove him around the corner to the left, with very distant and feeble thunder for an accompaniment. That ended the show. All the little puppets jumped back into all the little windows, and we came away.
Speaking of picture galleries, we spent a pleasant hour in the gallery of the Luxembourg—a collection of paintings made up from the works of living artists, and of those who have been less than a year deceased. It is sufficiently small to be enjoyable. There is something positively oppressive in the vastness of many of these galleries. You feel utterly unequal to them; as though the finite were about to attempt the comprehension of the infinite. One picture here, by Ary Scheffer, was exhibited in America, a few years since. It is the head and bust of a dead youth in armor—a youth with a girlish face. There are others by Henri Scheffer, Paulin Guerin, and a host more I will not name. One, a scene in the Conciergerie, "Reading the List of the Condemned to the Prisoners," by Müller, haunted me long after the doors had swung together behind us. The palace of the Luxembourg, small, remarkable for the beauty of its architecture and charming garden, built for that graceless regent, Marie de Medici, is now the residence of the president of the Senate; and indeed the Senate itself meets here. We were shown through the rooms open to the public, the private apartments of Marie de Medici among them, in one of which was a bust of the regent. The garden, like all gardens, is filled with trees and shrubs, flowers and fountains, but yet with a certain charm of its own. The festooning of vines from point to point was a novelty to us, as was the design of one of the fountains. Approaching it from the rear, we thought it a tomb,—perhaps the tomb of Marshal Ney, we said, whose statue we were seeking. It proved to be an artificial grotto, and within it, sprinkled with the spray of the fountain, embowered in a mass of glistening, green ivy, reclined a pair of pretty, marble lovers; peering in upon them from above, scowled a dreadful ogre—a horrible giant. The whole effect, coming upon it unexpectedly, was startling.
We had a tiresome search for this same statue of Marshal Ney. We chased every marble nymph in the garden, and walked and walked, over burning pebbles and under a scorching sun, until we almost wished he had never been shot. At last, away beyond the garden, out upon a long avenue, longer and hotter if possible than the garden paths, we found it,—erected upon the very spot where he was executed. He stands with arm outstretched, and mouth opened wide, as though he were yawning with the wearisomeness of it all. It is a pity that he should give way to his feelings so soon, since he must stand there for hundreds of years to come. The guide-books say he is represented in the act of encouraging his men. They must have been easily encouraged.
Of the out-door gay life by gas-light, we saw less than we had hoped to see in the French capital. The season was unusually cold and wet, and most of the time it would have required the spirit of a martyr to sip coffee upon the sidewalk. One garden concert we did attend, and found it very bright and fairy-like, and all the other adjectives used in this connection. We sat wrapped in shawls, our feet upon the rounds of the chair before us, and shivered a little, and enjoyed a great deal. We went one night—in most orthodox company—to the Cirque de l'Impératrice, a royal amphitheatre with handsome horses, pretty equestriennes, and a child balanced and tossed about on horseback, showing a frightened, painful smile, which made of the man who held her a Herod in our eyes. A girl very rich in paint and powder, but somewhat destitute in other particulars, skipped and danced upon a slack rope in a most joyous and airy manner. When we came out, a haggard woman, with an old, worn face, was crouching in a little weary heap by the door that led into the stables, wrapped in an old cloak; and that was our dancing girl!
We went to the opera, too; it was Les Huguenots. To this day I cannot tell who were the singers. I never knew, or thought, or cared. And the bare shoulders flashing with jewels in the boxes around us, the claqueurs in the centre, hired to applaud, clapping their hands with the regularity of clock-work, the empty imperial box, were nothing to the sight of Paris portrayed within itself. You know the familiar opera; do think how strange it was to see it in Paris; to look upon the stage and behold the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame; the excited populace rising up to slay and to be slain, with all the while this same fickle French people serenely smiling, and chatting, and looking upon it—the people who were even then ready at a word to reënact the same scenes for a different cause. Just outside, only a day or two before, something of the same spirit, portrayed here for our amusement, had broken out again in the election riots. And we remembered that, as we drove around the corner to the opera house, mounted soldiers stood upon either side, while every other man upon the street was the eye, and ear, and arm of the emperor, who knew that the very ground beneath his fair, white city tottered and reeled.
We saw the emperor and empress one day, after having looked for them long and in vain upon the Champs Elysées, and in the Bois de Boulogne where gay Paris disports itself. It was the morning after the riot, when they drove unattended, you will remember, through the streets where the rioters had gathered. We were in one of the shops upon the Rue de Rivoli. Just across the way rose the Tuileries from the sidewalk. A crowd began to collect about the open archway through the palace, which affords entrance and egress to the great square around which the palace is built. "What is it?" we asked of the voluble Frenchman who was gradually persuading us that brass was gold. "L'Empereur," he replied; which sent us to the sidewalk, and put from our minds all thoughts of oxidized silver and copper-colored gold. Just within the arch paced a lackey in livery of scarlet and gold, wearing a powdered wig and general air of importance. On either side, the sentries froze into position. The gendarmes shouted and gesticulated, clearing the streets. A mounted attendant emerged from the archway; there followed four bay horses attached to a plain, dark, open carriage; upon the front seat were two gentlemen, upon the back, a gentleman with a lady by his side. His hair was iron gray, almost silvery. He turned his face from us as he raised his hat gravely to the crowd, displaying a very perceptible bald spot upon the back of his head as he was whizzed around the corner and down the street. And that was Napoleon III. We saw no American lady in Paris dressed so simply as the empress. Something of black lace draped her shoulders; a white straw bonnet, trimmed with black, with a few pink roses resting upon her hair, crowned her head. She bowed low to the right and left, with a peculiar, graceful motion, and a smile upon the face a little worn and pale, a little faded,—but yet the face we all know so well. Beautiful Spanish woman, whose face was your fortune, though you smiled that day upon the people, your cheeks were pale, your eyes were full of tears.
There is nothing more wonderful in Paris than the tomb prepared to receive the remains of the first Napoleon, in the chapel of the Hôtel des Invalides; fitting, it would seem to be, that he should rest here among his old soldiers. We left the carriage at the gateway, and crossed the open court, mounted the wide steps, followed the half dozen other parties through the open doors, and this was what we saw. At the farther end of the great chapel or church, an altar, approached by wide, marble steps; gilt and candles embellished it, and a large, gilt cross upon it bore an image of the crucified Lord. All this was not unlike what we had seen many times. But four immense twisted columns rose from its four corners—columns of Egyptian marble, writhing like spotted serpents. They supported a canopy of gold, and the play of lights upon this, through the stained windows above and on either side, was indescribable. As we entered the door, darkness enveloped it, save where an invisible sun seemed to touch the roof of gold and rest lightly upon the pillars; an invisible sun, indeed, for, without, the sky was heavy with clouds. As we advanced, this unearthly light touched new points—the gilded candlesticks, the dying Saviour, but above all the writhings of these monster serpents, until the whole seemed a thing of life, a something which grew and expanded every moment, and was almost fearful to look upon. Filling the centre of the chapel was a circular marble wall breast-high. Do you remember, in going to the old Senate chamber at Washington, after passing through the rotunda, the great marble well-curb down which you could look into the room below? This was like that, only more vast. Over it leaned a hundred people, at least, gazing down upon what? A circular, roofless room, a crypt to hold a tomb; each pillar around its circumference was the colossal figure of a woman; between these hung the tattered tri-colors borne in many a fierce conflict, beneath the burning suns of Egypt and over the dreary snows of Russia, with seventy colors captured from the enemies of France. A wreath of laurel in the mosaic floor surrounded the names Austerlitz, Marengo, Friedland, Jena, Wagram, Moscow, and Pyramids, and in the centre rose the sarcophagus of Finland granite, prepared to hold the body of him whose ambition knew no bounds. The letter N upon one polished side was the only inscription it bore. He who wrote his name in blood needed no epitaph. The entrance to this crypt is through bronze doors, behind the altar, and gained by passing under it. On either side stood a colossal figure in bronze; kings they seemed to be, giant kings, in long black robes and with crowns of black upon their heads. One held, upon the black cushion in his hands, a crown of gold and a golden sword; the other, a globe crowned with a cross and a golden sceptre. They were so grand, and dark, and still, they gazed upon us so fixedly from out their great, grave eyes, that I felt a chill in all my bones. They guard his tomb. They hold his sword and sceptre while he sleeps. I almost expected the great doors to swing open at the touch of his hand, and to see him come forth. Over these doors were his own words: "I desire that my ashes may repose upon the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people I have loved so well." On either side, as we came out, we read upon the tombs the names of Bertrand and Duroc,—faithful in death! We wondered idly whose remains were guarded in the simple tomb near the door. It was surrounded by an iron railing, and bore no inscription. Who can it be, we said, that is nameless here among the brave? Little did we imagine at the time that here rested the body of the great Napoleon, as it was brought from St. Helena; but his spirit seemed to pervade the very atmosphere, and we came out into the gloom of the day as though we had, indeed, come from the presence of the dead.