CHAPTER II.
PARIS—LALANDE AND BOSCOVICH—TOULOUSE—ARCHBISHOP DE BRIENNE—HIS CHARACTER AND CONDUCT—THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II.—FLORAL GAMES—A PHILOSOPHICAL KNIGHT OF MALTA.
In the spring of 1776,[[16]] we embarked at Dover for Calais, and arrived at Paris with letters for Lord Stormont (but he was absent), for Colonel St. Paul (secretary of embassy), &c., and for Lalande and Boscovich, two famous scientific men.
The Faubourg St. Germain was at that time the part of the town to which all strangers resorted. I was struck with the contrast between London and Paris. The houses, of which there are so many, particularly in that part of the town, entre cour et jardin, appeared to me to be immense—a Swiss porter with a splendid costume at every door, and carriages sweeping in and out with gold coronets, and coachmen driving with bag-wigs. The ladies full dressed in the morning; gentlemen walking with bags and with swords; and children in dress-coats skipping over the kennels I had seen in the country towns; but in Paris they were not trusted to walk in the bustle of the streets.
We went to see everything during the fortnight of our stay at Paris that could well be seen, and were often accompanied by the astronomer royal, M. de Lalande, for whom Dr. Shepherd, an old friend of my mother, who was Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, had given her a letter.
M. de Lalande was a man of great scientific knowledge, and had also published a “Voyage d’Italie,” of which it is said that when he asked a Venetian senator how he liked it, the answer was, “Monsieur de Lalande nous désirons tous que vous fassiez un second voyage.” It is so long since I read it, and when I did I was very young, and did not know Italy, that I cannot say whether the skilful evasion was or was not a fair criticism; but it is probable that Lalande, like many others of all nations, was not just to a country which is so much visited and so little known—from whom, however, I am happy to except Eustace.[[17]]
To return to Lalande. I must do him the justice to say that I do not recollect his making any remark, or using any expression, which might denote a disrespect for religion, though he had the reputation, unfortunately, of being an atheist. I think it difficult, if not impossible, that an astronomer should be one, but I have heard that, when delivering a lecture on this science, he happened to say, “Providence directed so and so,” and that he corrected himself, adding, “I beg pardon; I mean Nature.” However this may have been, I believe it is certain that, having been brought up at a college of Jesuits, he wished to become one of that order, but was prevented by his father, for which many years after he expressed some regret. “For,” said he, “if I had become a Jesuit, I should have had better health, deeper knowledge, and some religion.”
Boscovich was an ex-Jesuit, a Dalmatian of the city of Ragusa, so famous for its men of learning and science. He was not only a good mathematician and astronomer, but also a good Latin poet; he had the talent, which many others of his countrymen have possessed, of composing with great facility extempore verses in Latin.
Two lines of his epigram on the planets may be thus translated:
’Twixt Mars and Venus as this globe was hurled,
’Tis plain that love and war must rule the world.
In the present time (1835), I should change or correct it thus:
So Boscovich has sung, but now ’tis plain,
That fear of war and love of money reign.
There was something so natural and good natured in his manner it was impossible not to like him. On his first visit to us, as he was going away he mistook the door, and opened that of an inner room. Finding his mistake, he said to my mother, “No doubt you have heard that the Jesuits are capable of all that is bad, but do not think I was going to commit a robbery.”[[18]] He composed an extempore distich in verse, and I am sorry I did not ask him to write it down.
His place at Paris was “Inspecteur de l’Optique de la Marine,” a place created for him by his friend M. de Vergennes, then Prime Minister. He lived there in the best society, and was generally esteemed.
On the second Sunday after our arrival at Paris we went to see the court and gardens of Versailles, and took our stand among many others in the great gallery to see the King and Queen and their attendants pass to their chapel.
I was not so much struck with the beauty of Marie Antoinette as with the gracefulness of her person, and the very pleasing smile with which her salutation was accompanied, for she noticed us as she passed. Louis XVI. appeared grave and rather melancholy.
We saw the Comte and Comtesse d’Artois at dinner, and it was impossible not to be charmed with the liveliness and elegance of figure which characterised Charles X., who was then a “winged Mercury,” and whose open-hearted, benevolent countenance still retains a charm which neither years nor misfortunes can ever destroy.
At the door, talking to some one of her acquaintance, stood the Princesse de Lamballe, handsome and distinguished in her appearance. How painful it is to recur to scenes which recal to the mind the dreadful events which occurred a few years afterwards.
We left Paris for Toulouse, taking the road of Orleans and Limoges, a long and tiresome journey, with little interesting or picturesque.
Montauban I thought prettily situated, and it put me in mind of Rinaldo, Bradamante, and other personages with whom Ariosto had made me acquainted.
At length, after six days’ posting, we reached the Palladian City, as Toulouse was called in old times, and it still, in some measure, deserved the appellation, as it could boast of three academies—des Sciences, des Beaux Arts, and des Belles Lettres—the last of which is so well known by the name of les Jeux Floraux.
We spent the winter in this capital of Languedoc, were well lodged, and had no want of society. At that time many of the first families of the province went rarely to Paris. They had large and handsome houses at Toulouse, where they spent the winter, as they spent the summer on their estates. There was no Chambre des Pairs or des Députés to take them to the metropolis, and unless they had employment at Court, or business to call them thither, they preferred remaining where they were both honoured and valued.
Toulouse was an archbishopric, and also at that time the seat of one of those Courts of Justice now abolished, which were called Parliaments.
That of Toulouse had the reputation of being corrupt and prejudiced, an accusation which in many respects was unfair. The affair of Calas, whose father was executed for supposed murder, had made a great noise. The liberals and philosophers had taken it up warmly; but, after all the inquiries we could make of unprejudiced persons, we never could decide whether the sentence was just or unjust.
From the time of the wars of the Albigenses, religious intolerance has unfortunately been prevalent on both sides of the question, and has been constantly productive of bloodshed and discord. The Protestants were violent Calvinists, and many of their antagonists bigoted Jansenists. The first, on account of their republican ideas, were often supported by the revolutionary party, which was then forming, and making great progress.
The high clergy were very tolerant, very charitable, and very delightful in society; perhaps not always sufficiently strict to the rules of that exact morality which is expected in the profession to which they were devoted. But it may be said of many of its members, who were afterwards victims of their loyalty and principles, what the celebrated Duke of Marlborough said of himself, “that he could more easily die a martyr than live a saint.”
In this number we cannot include M. de Brienne, who was at that time Archbishop of Toulouse. It was not his fate to die a martyr. He became Archbishop of Sens and Prime Minister; but his success in that post did not come up to the expectations which had been formed from his talents in the administration of his diocese and in society. He had a sensible countenance, an active person, and great facility of expression. By all accounts his quickness of comprehension was such as hardly to give time to others to explain themselves, for he seemed to understand every subject more clearly than the person whom it chiefly concerned.
It was said that Louis XVI. would not allow Monsieur de Brienne to be Archbishop of Paris on account of his connexion with a certain lady, and that the archbishop parodied on this occasion a song in the “Chasse d’Henri Quatre:”
Si le roi Louis
Voulait me donner
Paris, sa grande ville,
Et qu’il me fallût quitter
L’amour de ma mie—
Je dirais au roi Louis:
Reprenez votre Paris,
J’aime mieux ma mie, o gué!
J’aime mieux ma mie.
Whether Monsieur de Brienne said or sang these lines, I know not; but I have heard he had no taste for music, for, being at the Sistine Chapel at Rome in the Holy Week, he had allowed that the singing was very fine; on which a friend said to him, “I see you begin to like music.” He is reported to have answered, “No, I cannot go so far; but I can now comprehend that a person may be fond of music without being either a fool or a madman.” It is a pity he did not write more, for his preface to the “Memoir of Monsieur de Brienne,” who was a page of Louis XIV., is very good, and the style excellent.
He visited his diocese every year, but did not remain long at a time. He was there while we were at Toulouse to receive the Emperor of Germany, Joseph II., who travelled in the most unostentatious manner, under the title of Count Falkenstein. At his departure he thanked the archbishop for his hospitality, but declined his offer of accompanying him to the next place whither he was going, saying, “I cannot think of taking you from a city where your duty requires your presence.”
The emperor knew very well what he was saying, and the archbishop answered with a bow.[[19]]
In one of the little towns of Languedoc through which Joseph passed, a lady of the place heard some one complain that the “empereur n’a point de cortége,” on which she wrote the following lines:
La bienfaisance le précède
La modeste vertu se tient à son côté.
A la vertu l’humanité succède,
Et la marche finit par l’immortalité.
To which she annexed the title of “Cortége de l’Empereur.” I believe the original history of “The Maid and the Magpie,” which has given occasion to such pretty operas, was a circumstance that happened at Toulouse. A lady missed her jewels, and knowing that it was impossible that any one but her own maid could have entered the room at the time, the poor girl was imprisoned, tried, and executed. The jewels were afterwards found on the roof of the house, and a magpie was discovered to have been the thief. In one of the chapels of the cathedral there was always a lamp burning for the repose of her soul, on this account, and the family of the lady used to pray there.
The inhabitants of Toulouse had a taste for poetry, and many agreeable compositions in different kinds of metre were often read at the academy of the “Jeux Floraux,” an institution which is said to have owed its commencement to a lady named Clémence Isaure, of whose history, unfortunately, nothing more is known, to the great annoyance of whichever academician has the task of pronouncing an eulogium on this their benefactress, as is done regularly once a year. The prizes distributed on these occasions for the best compositions are flowers, in silver gilt (vermeil), appropriated to each different species of poetry. This institution dates from the early times of the Troubadours. The patois of Languedoc is an offspring of their language, and in some respects it resembles the Spanish.
One of these discourses, at the Floral Games, was read by the Chevalier d’A——, a knight of Malta, and a man of some little taste in literature. He was excessively lively, though not young; and he had many Italian books. We were not at the ceremony of pronouncing his vows, which took place while we were at Toulouse; but he told us that when he rose from this awful renunciation of the world, the first person he saw was Lady L——, a person very different in appearance from most of her countrywomen, for, though an Irishwoman, she was remarkably plain. “My first thought,” added the Chevalier d’A——, “then was, ‘Well, if all women are like Lady L——, there will be no great sacrifice in renouncing them.’” There was a convent of ladies, of the Order of Malta, which he took us to see. It was built in an elegant style of Italian architecture, and the ladies received us with great politeness. This Order dated from the time of the Crusades; and they had to make the same proofs of gentle blood for the same number of generations as the knights.