LETTER XIX.
MORNING VIEW FROM THE RUE RIVOLI—THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE—GUICCIOLI—SISMONDI THE HISTORIAN, ETC.
It is now the middle of April, and, sitting at my window on the Rue Rivoli, I look through one of the long, clipped avenues of the Tuileries, and see an arch of green leaves, the sun of eight o'clock in the morning just breaking through the thin foliage and dappling the straight, even gravel-walk below, with a look of summer that makes my heart leap. The cholera has put an end to dissipation, and one gets up early, from necessity. It is delicious to step out before breakfast, and cross the street into those lovely gardens, for an hour or two of fresh air and reflection. It is warm enough now to sit on the stone benches about the fountains, by the time the dew is dry; and I know nothing so contemplative as the occupation of watching these royal swans, in the dreamy, almost imperceptible motion with which they glide around the edges of the basins. The gold fish swim up and circle about the breast of the imperial birds with a motion almost as idle; and the old wooden-legged soldier, who has been made warden of the gardens for his service, sits nodding on one of the chairs, or drawing fortifications with his stick in the gravel; and so it happens, that, in the midst of a gay and busy city one may feel always a luxurious solitude; and, be he ever so poor, loiter all day if he will, among scenes which only regal munificence could provide for him. With the Seine bounding them on one side, the splendid uniform façade of the Rue Rivoli on the other, the palace stretching across the southern terrace, and the thick woods of the Champs Elysées at the opposite gate, where could one go in the world to give his taste or his eye a more costly or delightful satisfaction?
The Bois de Boulogne, about which the Parisians talk so much, is less to my taste. It is a level wood of small trees, covering a mile or two square, and cut from corner to corner with straight roads for driving. The soil is sandy, and the grass grows only in tufts, the walks are rough, and either muddy or dusty always; and, barring the equipages and the pleasure of a word in passing an acquaintance, I find a drive to this famous wood rather a dull business. I want either one thing or the other—cultivated grounds like the Tuileries, or the wild wood.
I have just left the Countess Guiccioli, with whom I have been acquainted for some two or three weeks. She is very much frightened at the cholera, and thinks of going to America. The conversation turned principally upon Shelley, whom of course she knew intimately; and she gave me one of his letters to herself as an autograph. She says at times he was a little crazy—"fou," as she expressed it—but that there never was a nobler or a better man. Lord Byron, she says, loved him like a brother. She is still in correspondence with Shelley's wife, of whom also she speaks with the greatest affection. There were several miniatures of Byron hanging up in the room, and I asked her if any of them were perfect in the resemblance. "No," she said, "this was the most like him," taking down an exquisitely-finished miniature by an Italian artist, "mais il etaît beaucoup plus beau—beaucoup! beaucoup!" She reiterated the word with a very touching tenderness, and continued to look at the picture for some time, either forgetting our presence, or affecting it. She speaks English sweetly, with a soft, slow, honeyed accent, breaking into French when ever she gets too much interested to choose her words. She went on talking in French of the painters who had drawn Byron, and said the American, West's was the best likeness. I did not like to tell her that West's picture of herself was excessively flattered. I am sure no one would know her from the engraving of it, at least. Her cheek bones are high, her forehead is badly shaped, and, altogether, the frame of her features is decidedly ugly. She dresses in the worst taste, too, and yet, with all this, and poetry and celebrity aside, the Countess Guiccioli is both a lovely and a fascinating woman, and one whom a man of sentiment would admire, even at this age, very sincerely, but not for beauty. She has white and regular teeth, however, and her hair is incomparably the most beautiful I ever saw. It is of the richest and glossiest gold, silken and luxuriant, and changes, as the light falls upon it, with a mellow softness, than which nothing could be lovelier. It is this and her indescribably winning manner which are lost in a picture, and therefore, it is perhaps fair that she should be otherwise flattered. Her drawing-room is one of the most agreeable in Paris at present, and is one of the chief agrémens which console me for a detention in an atmosphere so triste as well as dangerous.
My bed-room window opens upon the court in the interior of the hotel Rivoli, in which I lodge. In looking out occasionally upon my very near neighbors opposite, I have frequently observed a gray-headed, scholar-like, fine-looking old man, writing at a window in the story below. One does not trouble himself much about his fellow-lodgers, and I had seen this gentleman at his work at all hours, for a month or more, without curiosity enough to inquire even his name. This morning the servant came in, with a Mon Dieu! and said M. Sismondi was frightened by the cholera, and was leaving his lodgings at that moment. The name startled me, and making some inquiries, I found that my gray-headed neighbor was no other than the celebrated historian of Italian literature, and that I had been living under the same roof with him for weeks, and watching him at his classical labors, without being at all aware of the honor of his neighborhood. He is a kind, benevolent-looking man, of about sixty, I should think; and always had a peculiarly affectionate manner to his wife, who, I am told by the valet, is an Englishwoman. I regretted exceedingly the opportunity I had lost of knowing him, for there are few writers of whom one retains a more friendly and agreeable remembrance.
In a conversation with Mr. Cooper, the other day he was remarking of how little consequence any one individual found himself in Paris, even the most distinguished. We were walking in the Tuileries, and the remark was elicited by my pointing out to him one or two celebrated persons, whose names are sufficiently known, but who walk the public promenades, quite unnoticed and unrecognised. He said he did not think there were five people in Paris who knew him at sight, though his works were advertised in all the bookstores, and he had lived in Paris one or two years, and walked there constantly. This was putting a strong case, for the French idolize Cooper; and the peculiarly translateable character of his works makes them read even better in a good translation than in the original. It is so all over the continent, I am told. The Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, prefer Cooper to Scott; and it is easily accounted for when one remembers how much of the beauty of the Waverly novels depends on their exquisite style, and how peculiarly Cooper's excellence lies in his accurate, definite, tangible descriptions. There is not a more admired author in Europe than Cooper, it is very certain; and I am daily asked whether he is in America at present—so little do the people of these crowded cities interest themselves about that which is immediately at their elbows.