But are these the people that would do such horrid deeds—these men we see around us, with varnished boots, immaculate linen, and irreproachable costume? these ladies, gentle creatures, with faultless costume, ravishing boots, dainty toilets, and the very butterflies of fashion? If you would like something approaching a realization of your imagination, wait till you get into the Latin quarter, or in some of the old parts of Paris, where narrow lanes have not yet been made into broad avenues; where low-browed, blue-bloused workmen are playing dominoes in cheap wine-shops; and coarse women, with big, bare, red arms, and handkerchief-swathed heads, stand in the doorways and bandy obscene jests at the passers by; where foul odors assail the olfactories; where you meet the sergent-de-ville frequently; and where, despite of what you have heard of the great improvements made in Paris, you see just such places as the Tapis Franc, described in Eugene Sue's Mysteries of Paris, and in which, despite the excellence of the Parisian police, you had rather not trust yourself after dark without a guard; and you will meet to-day those whom it would seemingly take but little to transform into the fierce mob of 1792.
The gigantic improvements made in Paris during the reign of Louis Napoleon are apparent even to the newly-arrived tourist, and are unequalled by any city in the world. Broad, elegant avenues have been cut through densely-populated and filthy districts; great squares, monuments, opera-houses, theatres, and public buildings of unexampled splendor have arisen on every side; palaces and monuments have been repaired and restored, the great quadrangle of the Louvre and Tuilleries completed. Turn which way one will, he sees the evidences of this remarkable man's ability—excellent police arrangements, drainage, public works, liberality to foreigners, &c. What little opportunity I had of judging the French people almost leads me to believe that no government could be invented under the sun that would satisfy them for any length of time, and that they would attempt revolutions merely for a new sensation.
From this square it is but a few steps to the garden of the Tuilleries. The portion of the garden that is immediately contiguous to the palace is not open to the public, but separated from it by a sort of trench and an iron railing. The public portion of the garden is beautifully laid out with parterres of flowers, fountains, bronze and marble statues, &c. While promenading its walks, our attention was attracted to a man who seemed upon the best of terms with the birds that flew from the trees and bushes, and perched upon his head, hands, and arms, ate bird-seed off his hat and shoulders, and even plucked it from between his lips. He was evidently either some "Master of the Birds to the Emperor," or a favored bird-charmer, as he appeared to be familiarly acquainted with the feathered warblers, and also the police, who sauntered by without interfering with him.
The exciting scenes of French history, that are familiar to every school-boy's memory, render Paris, to say nothing of its other attractions, one of those points fraught with historical associations that the student longs to visit. To stand upon the very spot where the most memorable events of French history took place, beneath the shadow of some of the self-same buildings and monuments that have looked down upon them, and to picture in one's mind how those scenes of the past must have appeared, is pleasant experience to those of an imaginative turn. Here we stand in the Place de la Bastille, the very site of the famous French prison; the horrors of its dungeons and the cruelties of its jailers have chilled the blood of youth and roused the indignation of maturer years; but here it was rent asunder and the inmost secrets exposed by the furious mob, in the great revolution of 1789, and not a vestige of the terrible prison now remains. In the broad, open square rises a tall monument of one hundred and fifty feet, from the summit of which a figure of Liberty, with a torch in one hand and broken chain in another, is poised upon one foot, as if about to take flight. The stones of the cruel dungeons of the Bastille now form the Pont de la Concorde, trampled under foot, as they should be, by the throngs that daily pass and repass that splendid bridge. The last historical and revolutionary act in this square was the burning of Louis Philippe's throne there in 1848.
Passing through the Rue de la Paix, celebrated for its handsome jewelry and gentlemen's furnishing goods stores, and as a street where you may be sure of paying the highest price asked in Paris for any thing you wish to purchase, we came out into the Place Vendôme, in the middle of which stands the historic column we have so often read of, surmounted by the bronze statue of the great Napoleon, who erected this splendid and appropriate trophy of his victories. One hundred and thirty-five feet high, and twelve in diameter, is this well-known column, and the bronze bass-reliefs, which commence at the base and circle round the shaft to its top, are cast from twelve hundred pieces of Russian and Austrian cannon, which the great Corsican captured in his campaign of 1805, which ended with the tremendous battle of Austerlitz. The bass-reliefs on the pedestal are huge groups of weapons, warlike emblems, &c., and four huge bronze eagles, weighing five hundred pounds each, holding wreaths, are perched at the four corners of the pedestal.
The iron railing around this monument is thickly hung with wreaths of immortelles; these are placed here by the surviving soldiers of the grand army of Napoleon I., and are renewed once a year upon some celebrated anniversary, when the spectacle of this handful of trembling veterans of the first empire, showing their devotion to the memory of their great chieftain, is a most touching one, while the deference and honor shown to these shattered relics of France's warlike host, whose deeds have won it an imperishable name in military glory, must be gratifying to their pride. I saw an old shrunken veteran with a wooden leg hobbling along with a stick, who wore an old-fashioned uniform, upon which glittered the medals and decorations of the first empire, to whom sentinels at public stations, as he passed, presented arms with a clang and clatter that seemed to send the faint sparks of dying fire up into his eyes, with a momentary martial gleam beneath his shaggy white eyebrows, as he raised his shrunken hand in acknowledgment to his old fashioned képi, while the military salutes, and even deferential raising of hats, of young officers, his superiors in rank, that he passed, were returned with a smile beneath his snowy mustache that bespoke what an incense to his pride as a soldier of the grand army were all such tokens.
But it was a still more interesting sight to see, at the court-yard of the Hotel des Invalides, at about noon, on the occasion of some daily military routine, some thirty or forty of these old soldiers in various uniforms, wearing side arms only, some hobbling upon one leg, others coming feebly but determinedly into line as they ever did on the great battle-fields of the empire, and stand in dress parade while the band played its martial strains, and their own flags surmounted by the French eagles waved before them, and a splendid battalion of French troops (some of their sons and grandsons, perhaps), officers and men, presented arms to them as they saluted the flags they had won renown under half a century before, and then slowly, and with an effort at military precision that was almost comical, filed back to their quarters.
We used to read in Rogers's poem of Ginevra that,
"If ever you should come to Modena,
(Where, among other relics, you may see