When I began to jot down these notes, I made up my mind to eschew comparisons and moralizing; I find I have unconsciously done both, but will endeavour not to offend again. Still, I cannot help observing how the mere "moneyed nobody" rushes nowadays to the eminent painter to have his lineaments reproduced, when a guinea photograph would serve his purpose just as well for "family use;" for I take it that no one, besides his relations and friends, cares or will care to gaze upon his features. And yet our annual picture exhibitions are crowded with the portraits of these nonentities. They advertise themselves through the painters that transfer them to canvas, and the latter are content to pocket heavy fees, like the advertising agents they are. I am certain that neither Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyck, Hals, nor Rembrandt would have lent themselves to such transactions. When they, or a Reynolds, a Lawrence, a Gainsborough, conferred the honour of their brush upon some one, it was because he or she was already distinguished from his or her fellow-creatures by beauty, social position, talents, genius, or birth; not because he or she wanted to be, or, in default of such distinction, wanted to attract the public notice at all costs. That, I fancy, was the way in which painters of other days looked upon the thing. I know it was the way in which the young fellows at the "Childebert" did; and woe to their comrade who ventured to apply in art the principle of international maritime law, that "le pavillon couvre la marchandise" (the flag covers the cargo)! He was scouted and jeered at, and, moreover, rarely allowed to reap the pecuniary benefit of his artistic abasement. Hence the "patron for a portrait" seldom found his way to "La Childebert." When he did, the whole of the place conspired to make his life and that of his would-be protégé a misery.
To enumerate all the devices resorted to to make the sittings abortive, to "distort the features that had donned the bland smile of placid contentment" with the paralyzing fear of some impending catastrophe, would be impossible; the mention of a few must suffice. That most frequently employed, and comparatively easy of execution, was the setting alight of damp straw; the dense smoke penetrated every nook and cranny of the crazy building, and the sitter, mad with fright, rushed away. The chances were a hundred to one against his ever returning. Another was the intrusion of a male model offering his services as a Saint-Jérôme, or a female one offering hers as Godiva; for, curious to relate, the devotion of the wife of Leofric of Murcia was a favourite subject with the Childebertians. As a matter of course, the applicants were in the costume, or rather lack of costume, appropriate to the character. The strait-laced bourgeois or bourgeoise was shocked, and did not repeat the visit. The cry that there was a mad dog in the house was a common one on those occasions; and at last the would-be portrait-painters had to give in, and a big placard appeared on the frontispiece: "Le commerce des portraits a été cédé aux directeur et membres de l'École des Beaux-Arts."
The most curious thing in connection with the "Childebert" was that, though the place was inexpressibly ill kept, it escaped the most terrible visitations of the cholera. I prefer not to enter into details of the absolute disregard of all sanitary conditions, but in warm weather the building became positively uninhabitable. Long before the unsavoury spectacle of "learned fleas" became a feature of the suburban fairs, Émile Signol, who is best known as a painter of religious subjects, had trained a company of performers of a different kind of nocturnal pests. He averred in his opening lecture that their ingenuity was too great to remain unknown, and cited anecdotes fully proving his words. Certain is it that they were the only enemies before which the combined forces of the Childebertians proved powerless. But even under such trying circumstances the latter never lost their buoyant spirits, and their retreats en masse were effected in a manner the reports of which set the whole of Paris in a roar. One Sunday morning, the faithful worshippers, going to matins at the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés, found the square occupied by a troop of Bedouins, wrapt in their burnouses, and sleeping the sleep of the just. Some had squatted in corners, calmly smoking their chibouks. This was in the days of the Algerian campaign, and the rumour spread like wildfire that a party of Arab prisoners of war were bivouacked round the church, where a special service would be given in the afternoon as the first step to their conversion to Christianity. It being Sunday, the whole of Paris rushed to the spot. The Bedouins had, however, disappeared, but a collection was made in their behalf by several demure-looking young men. The Parisians gave liberally. That night, and two or three nights after, the nocturnal pests' occupation was gone, for the "Childebert" was lighted a giorno from basement to roof, and the Childebertians held high festival. The inhabitants of the streets adjacent to the Rue Childebert spent as many sleepless nights, though their houses were perfectly wholesome and clean.
I had the honour to be a frequent guest at those gatherings, but I feel that a detailed description of them is beyond my powers. I have already said that the craziness of the structure would have rendered extremely dangerous any combined display of choregraphic art, as practised by the Childebertians and their friends, male and female, at the neighbouring Grande-Chaumière; it did, however, not prevent a lady or gentleman of the company from performing a pas seul now and then. This, it must be remembered, was the pre-Rigolbochian period, before Chicard with his chahut had been ousted from his exalted position by the more elegant and graceful evolutions of the originator of the modern cancan, the famous Brididi; when the Faubourg du Temple, the Bal du Grand Saint-Martin, and "the descent of the Courtille" were patronized by the Paris jeunesse dorée, and in their halcyon days, when the habitués of the establishment of Le Père Lahire considered it their greatest glory to imitate as closely as possible the bacchanalian gyrations of the choregraphic autocrat on the other side of the Seine. No mere description could do justice to these gyrations; only a draughtsman of the highest skill could convey an adequate idea of them. But, as a rule, the soirées at the "Childebert" were not conspicuous for such displays; their programme was a more ambitious one from an intellectual point of view, albeit that the programme was rarely, if ever, carried out. This failure of the prearranged proceedings mainly arose from the disinclination or inability of the fairer portion of the company to play the passive part of listeners and spectators during the recital of an unpublished poem of perhaps a thousand lines or so, though the reciter was no less a personage than the author. In vain did the less frivolous and male part of the audience claim "silence for the minstrel;" the interrupters could conceive no minstrel without a guitar or some kindred instrument, least of all a minstrel who merely spoke his words, and the feast of reason and flow of soul came generally to an abrupt end by the rising of a damsel more outspoken still than her companions, who proposed an adjournment to one of the adjacent taverns, or to the not far distant "Grande-Chaumière," "si on continue à nous assommer avec des vers." The threat invariably produced its effect. The "minstrel" was politely requested to "shut up," and Béranger, Desaugiers, or even M. Scribe, took the place of the Victor Hugo in embryo until the small hours of the morning; the departure of the guests being witnessed by the night-capped inhabitants of the Rue Childebert from their windows, amidst the comforting reflections that for another three weeks or so there would be peace in the festive halls of that "accursed building."
My frequent visits to "La Childebert" had developed a taste for the Bohemian attractions of the Quartier-Latin. I was not twenty, and though I caught frequent glimpses at home of some of the eminent men with whom a few years later I lived on terms of friendship, I could not aspire to their society then. It is doubtful whether I would have done so if I could. I preferred the Théâtre Bobino to the Opéra and the Comédie-Française; the Grande-Chaumière—or the Chaumière, as it was simply called—to the most brilliantly lighted and decorated ball-room; a stroll with a couple of young students in the gardens of the Luxembourg to a carriage-drive in the Bois de Boulogne; a dinner for three francs at Magny's, in the Rue Contrescarpe-Dauphine, or even one for twenty-two sous at Viot's or Bléry's, to the most sumptuous repast at the Café Riche or the Café de Paris. I preferred the buttered rolls and the bowl of milk at the Boulangerie Crétaine, in the Rue Dauphine, to the best suppers at the Café Anglais, whither I had been taken once or twice during the Carnival—in short, I was very young and very foolish; since then I have often wished that, at the risk of remaining very foolish for evermore, I could have prolonged my youth for another score of years.
For once in a way I have no need to be ashamed of my want of memory. I could not give an account of a single piece I saw during those two or three years at Bobino, but I am certain that not one of the companions of my youth could. It is not because the lapse of time has dimmed the recollection of the plots, but because there were no plots, or at any rate none that we could understand, and I doubt very much whether the actors and actresses were more enlightened in that respect than the audience. The pieces were vaudevilles, most of them, and it was sufficient for us to join in the choruses of the songs, with which they were plentifully interlarded. As for the dialogue, it might have been sparkling with wit and epigram; it was nearly always drowned by interpolations from one side of the house or the other. When the tumult became too great, the curtain was simply lowered, to be almost immediately raised, "discovering" the manager—in his dressing-gown. He seemed prouder of that piece of attire than the more modern one would be of the most faultless evening dress. He never appealed to us by invoking the laws of politeness; he never threatened to have the house cleared. He simply pointed out to us that the police would inevitably close the place at the request of the inhabitants of the Rue de Madame if the noise rose above a certain pitch, and disturbed their peaceful evening hours, spent in the bosom of their families; which remark was always followed by the audience intoning as one man Gretry's "Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de sa famille?" the orchestra—such an orchestra!—playing the accompaniment, and the manager himself beating time. Then he went on. "Yes, messieurs et mesdames, we are here en famille also, as much en famille as at the Grande-Chaumière; and has not M. Lahire obtained from the Government the permission de faire sa police tout seul! After all, he is providing exercise for your muscles; I am providing food for your brain."
The speech was a stereotyped one—we all knew it by heart; it invariably produced its effect in keeping us comparatively quiet for the rest of the evening, unless a bourgeois happened to come in. Then the uproar became uncontrollable; no managerial speech could quell it until the intruder had left the theatre.
By a bourgeois was meant a man who wore broadcloth and a top hat, but especially the latter. In fact, that headgear was rarely seen within the inner precincts of the Quartier-Latin, even during the daytime, except on the head of a professor, or on Thursdays when the collegians—the term "lycéen" was not invented—were taken for their weekly outing. The semi-military dress of the present time had not been thought of then. The collegian wore a top hat, like our Eton boys, a white necktie, a kind of black quaker coat with a stand-up collar, a very dark blue waistcoat and trousers, low shoes, and blue woollen stockings. In the summer, some of them, especially those of the Collége Rollin, had a waistcoat and trousers of a lighter texture, and drab instead of blue. They were virtually prisoners within the walls of the college all the week, for in their Thursday promenades they were little more than prisoners taking exercise under the supervision of their gaolers. They were allowed to leave on alternate Sundays, provided they had parents, relations, or friends in Paris, who could come themselves or send their servants to fetch them in the morning and take them back at night. The rule applied to all, whether they were nine or double that number of years; it prevails even now. I only set foot in a French college of those days twice to see a young friend of mine, and I thanked my stars that four or five years of that existence had been spared to me. The food and the table appointments, the bedrooms—they were more like cells with their barred windows—would have been declined by the meanest English servant, certainly by the meanest French one. I have never met with a Frenchman who looks back with fond remembrance on his school-days.
The evening was generally wound up with a supper at Dagneaux's, Pinson's, or at the rôtisseuse—that is, if the evening happened to fall within the first ten days of the month; afterwards the entertainment nearly always consisted of a meat-pie, bought at one of the charcutiers', and washed down with the bottles of wine purchased at the Hôtel de l'Empereur Joseph II., at the south-eastern angle of the Rue de Tournon, where it stands still. The legend ran that the brother of Marie Antoinette had stayed there while on a visit to Paris, but it is scarcely likely that he would have done so while his sister was within a step of the throne of France; nevertheless the Count von Falkenstein—which was the name he adopted when travelling incognito—was somewhat of a philosopher. Did not he once pay a visit to Jean-Jacques Rousseau without having apprised him of his call? Jean-Jacques was copying music as the door opened to let in the visitor, and felt flattered enough, we may be sure; not so Buffon, whom Joseph surprised under similar circumstances, and who could never forgive himself for having been caught in his dressing-gown—he who never sat down to work except in lace ruffles and frill.
If I have been unwittingly betrayed into a semi-historical disquisition, it is because almost every step in that quarter gave rise to one, even amongst those light-hearted companions of mine, to the great astonishment of the fairer portion of the company. They only took an interest in the biography of one of the inhabitants of the street, whether past or present, and that was in the biography of Mdlle. Lenormand, a well-known fortune-teller, who lived at No. 5. They had heard that the old woman, who had been the mistress of Hébert of "Père Duchesne" fame, had, during the First Revolution, predicted to Joséphine de Beauharnais that she should be empress, as some gipsy at Grenada predicted a similar elevation to Eugénie de Montijo many years afterwards. Mdlle. Lenormand had been imprisoned after Hébert's death, but the moment Napoléon became first consul she was liberated, and frequently sent for to the Luxembourg, which is but a stone's throw from the Rue de Tournon. As a matter of course her fame spread, and she made a great deal of money during the first empire. Ignorant as they were of history, the sprightly grisettes of our days had heard of that; their great ambition was to get the five francs that would open the door of Mdlle. Lenormand's to them. Mdlle. Lenormand died about the year '43. Jules Janin, who lived in the same street, in the house formerly inhabited by Théroigne de Méricourt, went to the fortune-teller's funeral. The five francs so often claimed by the étudiante, so rarely forthcoming from the pockets of her admirer, was an important sum in those days among the youth of the Quartier-Latin. There were few whose allowance exceeded two hundred francs per month. A great many had to do with less. Those who were in receipt of five hundred francs—perhaps not two score among the whole number—were scarcely considered as belonging to the fraternity. They were called "ultrapontins," to distinguish them from those who from one year's end to another never crossed the river, except perhaps to go to one of the theatres, because there was not much to be seen at the Odéon during the thirties. With Harel's migration to the Porte St. Martin, the glory of the second Théâtre-Français had departed, and it was not until '41 that Lireux managed to revive some of its ancient fame. By that time I had ceased to go to the Quartier-Latin, but Lireux was a familiar figure at the Café Riche and at the divan of the Rue Le Peletier; he dined now and then at the Café de Paris. So we made it a point to attend every one of his first nights, notwithstanding the warnings in verse and in prose of every wit of Paris, Théophile Gautier included, who had written: