With a guide, whom in my ignorance I thought necessary, I saw the sights of the town, and afterwards, for the first time, saw a French play. So little experience of the world had I, that, during the interval, I left my overcoat, which I had not given up to the attendant, lying on the seat in the pit, and my neighbour had to explain to me that such great confidence in my fellow-men was out of place.
Everything was new to me, everything fascinated me. I, who only knew "indulgence" from my history lessons at school, saw with keen interest the priest in a Brussels church dispense "indulgence plénière," or, in Flemish, vollen aflaet. I was interested in the curious names of the ecclesiastical orders posted up in the churches, marvelled, for instance, at a brotherhood that was called "St. Andrew Avellin, patron saint against apoplexy, epilepsy and sudden death."
In the carriage from Brussels I had for travelling companion a pretty young Belgian girl named Marie Choteau, who was travelling with her father, but talked all the time to her foreign fellow-traveller, and in the course of conversation showed me a Belgian history and a Belgian geography, from which it appeared that Belgium was the centre of the globe, the world's most densely built over, most religious, and at the same time most enlightened country, the one which, in proportion to its size, had the most and largest industries. I gave her some of my bountiful supply of Eau de Cologne.
IV.
The tiring night-journey, with its full four hours' wait at Liège, was all pure enjoyment to me, and in a mood of mild ecstasy, at last, at half-past ten on the morning of November 11th 1866, I made my entry into Paris, and was received cordially by the proprietors of a modest but clean little hotel which is still standing, No. 20 Rue Notre Dame des Victoires, by the proprietors, two simple Lorrainers, François and Müller, to whom Gabriel Sibbern, who was staying there, had announced my arrival. The same morning Sibbern guided my first steps to one of Pasdeloup's great classical popular concerts.
In the evening, in spite of my fatigue after travelling all night, I went to the Théâtre Français for the first time, and there, lost in admiration of the masterly ensemble and the natural yet passionate acting, with which I had hitherto seen nothing to compare, I saw Girardin's Le supplice d'une femme, and Beaumarchais' Le mariage de Figaro, in one evening making the acquaintance of such stars as Régnier, Madame Favart, Coquelin and the Sisters Brohan.
Régnier especially, in his simple dignity, was an unforgettable figure, being surrounded, moreover, in my eyes by the glory which the well-known little poem of Alfred de Musset, written to comfort the father's heart, had shed upon him. Of the two celebrated sisters, Augustine was all wit, Madeleine pure beauty and arch, melting grace.
These first days were rich days to me, and as they did not leave me any time for thinking over what I had seen, my impressions overwhelmed me at night, till sometimes I could not sleep for sheer happiness. This, to me, was happiness, an uninterrupted garnering of intellectual wealth in association with objects that all appealed to my sympathies, and I wrote home: "To be here, young, healthy, with alert senses, keen eyes and good ears, with all the curiosity, eagerness to know, love of learning, and susceptibility to every impression, that is youth's own prerogative, and to have no worries about home, all that is so great a happiness that I am sometimes tempted, like Polycrates, to fling the handsome ring I had from Christian Richardt in the gutter."
For the rest, I was too fond of characteristic architecture to feel attracted by the building art displayed in the long, regular streets of Napoleon III, and too permeated with national prejudices to be able at once to appreciate French sculpture. I was justified in feeling repelled by many empty allegorical pieces on public monuments, but during the first weeks I lacked perception for such good sculpture as is to be found in the foyer of the Théâtre Français. "You reel at every step," I wrote immediately after my arrival, "that France has never had a Thorwaldsen, and that Denmark possesses an indescribable treasure in him. We are and remain, in three or four directions, the first nation in Europe. This is pure and simple truth."
To my youthful ignorance it was the truth, but it hardly remained such after the first month.