PANTHÉON
THE RUE DE BIÈVRE
(FROM THE QUAI DE MONTEBELLO)
We come next to the Rue Scribe, and crossing it, are at "Old England," a shop where the homesick may buy such a peculiarly English delicacy as marmalade, beneath the shadow of the gigantic Grand Hotel, notable not only for its million bedrooms but for marking the position of one of the few post offices of Paris, and also the only shop in the centre of the city which keeps a large and civilised stock of Havana cigars. One can live without Havana cigars, but post offices are a necessity, and in Paris they conceal themselves with great success; while, as for letter-boxes, it has been described as a city without one. To a Londoner accustomed to the frequent and vivid occurrence at street corners of our scarlet obelisks, it is so. Quite recently I heard of a young Englishman, shy and incorrigibly one-languaged, who, during a week in Paris, entrusted all his correspondence to a fire-alarm. But, as a matter of fact, Paris has letter-boxes in great number, only for the most part they are so concealed as to be solely for the initiated. Directly one learns that every tobacconist also sells stamps and either secretes a letter-box somewhere beneath his window, or marks the propinquity of one, life becomes simple.
Although normally one never has, in France, even in the official receptacle of one of the chief of the Bureaux des Postes, any of that confidence that one reposes in the smallest wall-box in England; yet one must perforce overcome this distrust or use only pneumatiques. The French do not carry ordinary letters very well, but if you register them nothing can keep the postman from you. A knock like thunder crashes into your dreams, and behold he is at your bedside, alert and important, be-ribboned with red tape, tendering for your signature a pen dipped in an inkstand concealed about his person. Every one who goes to France for amusement should arrange to receive one registered letter.
Its letter-boxes may be a trifle farcical, but in its facilities given to purchasers of stamps France makes England look an uncivilised country. Why it should be illegal for any one but a postal official to supply stamps in my own land, I have never been informed, nor have any of the objections to the system ever been explained away. In France you may get your stamps anywhere—from tobacconists for certain; from waiters for certain; from the newspaper kiosques for certain; and from all tradespeople almost for certain: hence one is relieved of the tiresome delays in post offices that are incident to English life. But I am inclined to think that when it comes to the post office proper, England has the advantage. The French post office (when you have found it) is always crowded and always overheated; and you remember what I told the men in the Mint.
To return to the Grand Hotel, I am minded to express the wish that something could be done to rid its pavement of the sly leering detrimental with an umbrella who comes up to the foreigner and offers his services as a guide to the night side of Paris. Not until an Englishman has killed one of these pests will this part of Paris be endurable. But from what I have observed I should say that few murders are less likely to occur....
And so we come to the Café de la Paix, and turning to the left, the Opera is before us. The Opera is one of the buildings of Paris that are taken for granted. We do not look at it much: we think of it as occupying the central position, adjacent to Cook's, useful as a place of meeting; we buy a seat there occasionally, and that is all. And yet it is the largest theatre in the world (the work of that Charles Garnier whose statue is just outside), and although it is not exactly beautiful, its proportions are agreeable; it does not obtrude its size (and yet it covers three acres); it sits very comfortably on the ground, and an incredible amount of patient labour and thought went to its achievement, as any one may see by walking round it and studying the ornamentation and the statuary, among which is Carpeaux's famous lively group "La Danse". One very pleasant characteristic of the Opera is the modesty with which it announces its performances: nothing but a minute poster in a frame, three or four times repeated, giving the information to the passer-by. Larger posters would impair its superb reserve.
The Opera has a little museum, the entrance to which is in the Rue Auber corner, by the statue of the architect (with his plan of the building traced in bronze below his bust). This museum is a model of its kind—small but very pertinent and personal in character. Here are one of Paganini's bows and his rosin box; souvenirs of Malibran presented to her by some Venetian admirers in 1835; Berlioz' season ticket for the Opera in 1838, and a page of one of his scores; Rossini in a marble statuette, asleep on his sofa, wearing that variety of whisker which we call a Newgate fringe; Rossini on his death-bed, drawn by L. Roux, and a page of a score and a cup and saucer used by him; a match box of Gounod's, a page of a score, and his marble bust; Meyerbeer on his death-bed, drawn by Mousseaux, a decoration worn by that composer, and a page of his score; two of Cherubini's tobacco boxes and a page of his score; Danton's clay caricature of Liszt—all hair and legs—at the piano, and a caricature of Liszt playing the piano while Lablache sings and Habeneck conducts; a bust of Fanny Cerrito, danseuse, in 1821—with a mischievous pretty face—that Cerrito of whom Thomas Ingoldsby rhymed; and a bust of Emma Livry, a danseuse of a later day, who died aged twenty-three from injuries received from fire during the répétition génerale of the "Muette de Portici" on November 15th, 1862. In a little coffer near by are the remains of the clothes the poor creature was wearing at the time. What else is there? Many busts, among them Delibes the composer of "Coppélia," whose grave we shall see in the Cimetière de Montmartre: here bearded and immortal; autograph scores by Verdi, Donizetti, Victor Massé, Auber, Spontini (whose very early piano also is here), and Hérold; a caricature by Isabey of young Vestris bounding in mid-air, models of scenes of famous operas, and a host of other things all displayed easily in a small but sufficient room. If all museums were as compact and single-minded!