At the west extremity of this North Boulevard, facing the Rue de la Concorde, stands an unfinished church, called La Magdeleine, whose cemetery received not only the bodies of Lewis XVI, his consort, and his sister, but of the greater part of the victims that perished by guillotine.
In the space comprised between La Magdeleine and the Vieille Rue du Temple, I speak within compass when I say that there are sometimes to be seen fifty ambulating conjurers of both sexes. They all vary the form of their art. Some have tables, surmounted by flags, bearing mysterious devices; some have wheels, with compartments adapted to every age and profession—One has a robe charged with hieroglyphics, and tells you your fortune through a long tube which conveys the sound to your ear; the other makes you choose in a parcel, a square piece of white paper, which becomes covered with characters at the moment when it is thrown into a jug that appears empty. The secret of this is as follows:
The jug contains a little sulphuret of potash, and the words are written with acetite of lead. The action of the exterior air, on, the sulphuret of potash, disengages from it sulphurated hydrogen gas, which, acting on the oxyd of lead, brings to view the characters that before were invislble.
Here, the philosophic Parisians stop before the movable stall of an astrologer, who has surmounted it with an owl, as an emblem of his magic wisdom. Many of them take this animal for a curiosity imported from foreign countries; for they are seldom able to distinguish a bat from a swallow.
"Does that bird come from China, my dear?" says a lusty dame to her elderly husband, a shopkeeper of the Rue St. Denis.—"I don't know, my love," replies the other.—"What eyes it has got," continues she; "it must see a great deal better than we." "No;" cries a countryman standing by; "though its eyes are so big, it can't, in broad day, tell a cow from a calf."
The lady continues her survey of the scientific repository; and the conjurer, with an air of importance, proposes to her to draw, for two sous, a motto from Merlin's wheel. "Take one, my dear," says the husband; "I wish to know whether you love me." The wife blushes and hesitates; the husband insists; she refuses, and is desirous of continuing her walk, saying that it is all foolishness.—"What if it is?" rejoins the husband, "I've paid, so take a motto to please me." For this once, the lady is quite at a nonplus; she at last consents, and, with a trembling hand, draws a card from the magic wheel: the husband unrolls it with eagerness and confidence, and reads these words: "My young lover is and will be constant."—"What the devil does this mean?" exclaims the old husband; quite disconcerted. —"'Tis a mistake," says the conjurer; "the lady put her hand into the wrong box; she drew the motto from the wheel for young girls, instead of that for married women. Let Madame draw again, she shall pay nothing more."—"No, Mr. Conjurer," replies the shopkeeper, "that's enough. I've no faith in such nonsense; but another time, madam, take care that you don't put your hand into the wrong box." The fat lady, with her face as red as fire, follows her husband, who walks off grumbling, and it is easy to see, by their gestures, that the fatal motto has sown discord in the family, and confirmed the shopkeeper's suspicions.
Independently of these divers into futurity, the corners of streets and walls of public squares, are covered with hand-bills announcing books containing secrets, sympathetic calculations of numbers in the lottery, the explanation of dreams in regard to those numbers, together with the different manners of telling fortunes, and interpreting prognostics.
At all times, the marvellous has prevailed over simple truth, and the Cumæan Sibyl attracted the inquisitive in greater crowds than Socrates, Plato, or any philosopher, had pupils in the whole course of their existence.
In Paris, the sciences are really making a rapid progress, notwithstanding the fooleries of the pseudo-philosophers, who parade the streets, and here, on the Boulevards, as well as in other parts of the town, exhibit lessons of physics.
One has an electrifying machine, and phials filled with phosphorus: for two sous, he gives you a slight shock, and makes you a present of a small phial.