The length, breadth, straightness, regularity, and beauty of these avenues strike the American visitor with astonishment. Fancy a street twice as wide as Broadway or Washington Street, with a sidewalk as wide as some of our ordinary streets, and shaded by a double line of trees, the street itself paved or laid in concrete or smooth hard asphalte; the houses tall, elegant, and of uniform style; brilliant, with elegant stores, cafés with their crowds at the tables set in front of them; the gay, merry throngs; little one-horse barouches, the French voitures, as they are called, flying here and there, and the more stylish turn-outs of the aristocracy,—and you have some idea of the great avenues leading up to the Arc d'Etoile. After passing this grand arch, you enter upon the magnificent Avenue de l'Impératrice, three hundred feet wide, which leads to the splendid Bois de Boulogne, an avenue that is crowded with the rush of elegant equipages, among which were to be seen those of foreign ambassadors, rich residents, English and other foreign noblemen, French ballet-dancers, and the demi-monde, every pleasant afternoon.
This great arch of triumph overwhelms one with its grandeur and vastness upon near approach; it lifts its square altar over one hundred and fifty feet from the ground; its width is one hundred and thirty-seven feet, and it is sixty-eight feet in thickness. The grand central arch is a great curve, ninety feet high and forty-five wide, and a transverse arch—that is, one going through it from one end to the other—is fifty-seven feet high and twenty-five wide. The arch fronts the magnificent Champs Elysées, adown which broad vista the visitor looks till he sees it expand into the grand Place de la Concorde, with its fountains and column of Luxor, beyond which rise the Tuileries. The outside of this arch has superb groups, representing warlike scenes, allegorical figures, &c., by some of the most celebrated French and Italian artists. Some of the great figures of Victory, History, Fame, &c., are from eighteen to twenty feet in height. Inside the arch, upon its walls, are cut in the solid stone the names of nearly a hundred victories, and also the names of French generals whose bravery won so much renown for the French nation, so much glory for their great Corsican captain, and which are names that are identified with his and la grande armée.
This superb monument was commenced, in 1806, by Napoleon, but not completed till 1836; and some idea may be obtained of the work and skill expended upon it from its cost, which was ten million four hundred and thirty-three thousand francs, or over two millions of dollars in gold. Two of the groups of bass-reliefs upon it cost nearly thirty thousand dollars. Ascent to the top is obtained by broad staircases, up a flight of two hundred and seventy-two steps, and the visitor may look down the Avenue de la Grande Armée, Avenue d'Eylau, or over the beautiful Avenue de l'Impératrice, or Champs Elysées, far as his eye can reach, and still farther by the aid of the telescopes and spy-glasses kept by the custodians on the summit.
Descending from the arch, we will take a stroll down the Avenue des Champs Elysées—the broad, beautiful avenue which appears to be the favorite promenade of Parisians. Upon either side of this avenue are open grounds, and groves of trees, in and amid which is every species of cheap amusement for the people—open booths in which are little games of chance for cheap prizes of glass ware and toys, merry-go-rounds, Punch and Judy shows, elegant cafés with their throngs of patrons sitting in front and watching the passers by, or the gay equipages on their way to the Bois de Boulogne. In one of these groves, at the side of the Champs Elysées, is the Circus of the Empress, where feats of horsemanship are performed, and in another a fine military band plays every afternoon; the old Palais de l'Industrie fronts upon this avenue, and the celebrated Jardin Mabille is but a few steps from it; but this should be seen by gas-light; so, indeed, should the whole avenue, which by night, in the summer, presents a most fairy-like scene. Then the groves are illuminated by thousands of colored lights; Cafés Chantants are seen with gayly-dressed singers, sitting in ornamented kiosks, which are illuminated by jets of gas in every conceivable form; here, at a corner, a huge lyre of fire blazes, and beneath it shines, in burning letters, the name of a celebrated café, or theatre; the little booths and penny shows are all gayly illuminated; gas gleams and flashes in all sorts of fantastic forms from before and within the café; and, looking far up the avenue, to where the great arch rears its dark form, you see thousands of colored lights flitting too and fro, hither and thither, in every direction, like a troup of elves on a midnight gambol; these are the lights upon the cabs and voitures, which are obliged by law to have them, and those of different quarters of the city are distinguished the one from the other by different colors.
The cheapness and convenience of these little one-horse open barouches of Paris make us long for the time when they and the English Hansom cab shall displace the great, cumbersome carriage we now use in America. One of these little fiacres, which you can hail at any time, and almost anywhere in the streets of Paris, carries you anywhere you may choose, to go in the city from one point to another, for a franc and a half fare, and a pour boire of about three or four cents to the driver; or, if taken by the hour, you can glide over the asphalte floor-like streets at the rate of two francs an hour. The police regulations respecting fares are very strict and rigidly enforced, as, in fact, are all police regulations, which are most excellent; and the order, system, and regularity which characterize all arrangements at places of public resort and throughout the city, give the stranger a feeling of perfect safety and confidence—confidence that he is under the protection and eye of a power and a law, one which is prompt and efficient in its action, and in no way to be trifled with. The fiacre drivers all have their printed carte of the tariff, upon which is their number, which they hand to customers upon entering the vehicle; these can be used in case of imposition or dispute, which, however, very seldom occurs; rewards are given to drivers for honesty in restoring articles left in vehicles, and the property thus restored to owners by the police in the course of a year is very large, sometimes reaching sixty or seventy thousand dollars.
Straight down the broad Champs Elysées, till we came into that magnificent and most beautiful of all squares in Paris, the Place de la Concorde. Here, in this great open square, which the guide-books describe as four hundred paces in length, and the same in width, several other superb views of the grand avenues and splendid public buildings are obtained. Standing in the centre, I looked back, up the broad Champs Elysées, more than a mile in length, the whole course slightly rising in grade, till the view terminated with the Triumphal Arch. Looking upon one side, we saw the old palace of the Bourbons, now the palace of the Corps Législatif. Fronting upon one side of the Place are two magnificent edifices, used as government offices, and up through the Rue Royale that divides them, the vista is terminated by the magnificent front of the Madeleine.
Here, in the centre of the square, we stood opposite the celebrated obelisk of Luxor, that expensive gift of the Pacha of Egypt to Louis Philippe, and which, from the numerous bronze models of it sold in the fancy goods stores in America, is getting to be almost as familiar as Bunker Hill monument. Indeed, a salesman in Tiffany and Company's room of bronzes, in Broadway, New York, once told me that, notwithstanding the hieroglyphics upon the bronze representations of this obelisk that they sell, he had more than once had people, who looked as though they ought to have known better, cry out, "O, here's Bunker Hill Monument; and it looks just like it, too."
The Luxor obelisk was a heavy, as well as an expensive present, for it weighed five hundred thousand pounds, and it cost the French government more than forty thousand dollars to get it in place upon its pedestal; but now that it is here, it makes a fine appearance, and, as far as proportions and looks go, appears to be very appropriately placed in the centre of this magnificent square, its monolith of red granite rising one hundred feet; though, as we lean over the rail that surrounds it, the thought suggests itself, that this old chronicle of the deeds of Sesostris the Great, who reigned more than a thousand years before Paris had an existence, and whose hundred-gated city is now a heap of ruins, was really as out of place here, in the great square of the gayest of modern capitals, as a funeral monument in a crowded street, or an elegy among the pages of a novel. Around the square, at intervals, are eight huge marble statues, seated upon pedestals, which represent eight of the great cities of France, such as Marseilles, Rouen, Lyons, Bordeaux, &c. Each figure is said to face in the direction in which the city or town it is called for lies from Paris.
The great bronze fountains that stand in the centre of the square have round basins, fifty feet in diameter, above which rise others of lesser sizes. Tritons and water nymphs about the lower basin hold dolphins, which spout streams of water into the upper ones, and at the base sit ponderous granite figures, which the Parisians say do well to sit down, for, if they stood up, they would soon be fatigued by their own weight. But the great fountain here in the Place de la Concorde marks an historic spot. It is no more nor less than the site of that horrid instrument, the guillotine, during the French revolution; and it was here, in this great square, now filled with bright and happy crowds, gazing at the flashing waters of the fountains, the statues, and obelisk, or rambling amid the pretty walks, lined with many-hued flowers, in the gardens of the Tuilleries near by,—it was here, round and about, that the fierce crowd surged during some of the bloodiest scenes in French history. Near where rises the bronze fountain, the horrid scaffold once stood; here, where the crystal streams rush and foam, shine and sparkle in the sunbeams, once poured out the richest and basest blood of France, in torrents almost rivalling those that now dash into the great basin that covers the spot they crimsoned; here the head of Louis XVI. fell from his shoulders; here Charlotte Corday met death unterrified; here twenty-two Girondists poured out their life-blood; here poor Marie Antoinette bent her neck to the cruel knife, and the father of Louis Philippe met his death; here the victims of the fell tyrant Robespierre fell by hundreds. At length Danton himself, and his party, were swept before the descending axe; and finally the bloody Robespierre and his fierce associates met a just retribution beneath the sweep of the insatiate blade, sixty or seventy falling beneath it in a day.
Great heavens! would they never tire of blood, or was the clang of the guillotine music to their ears, that for more than two years they kept the horrid machine in motion, till twenty-eight hundred victims fell beneath its stroke! Well said Chateaubriand, in opposing the erection of a fountain upon the very site of the scaffold, that all the water in the world would not be sufficient to efface the bloody stains with which the place was sullied. It thus fell out that it was agreed, that any monument placed in this memorable square should be one which should bear no allusion to political events, and the gift of Mehemet Ali afforded opportunity to place one. So here the laudatory inscription to a warlike Egyptian of three thousand years ago and more is placed, to change the current of men's thoughts, who may stand here and think of the surging crowd of fierce sans-culottes, and still fiercer women, who once thronged this place, and who were treated to their fill of what their brutal natures demanded—blood, blood!