You are now on the Boulevard des Capucines. It is raised about thirty feet, and the houses for a quarter of a mile are left in the valley. The garret and Miss Annette are alone above ground; all the high life here is below stairs. On the right side, you see apparently one of the happiest of human beings, the “marchand des chiens,” who sells little dogs and parrots. “A six francs ma caniche!”—“Margot à dix francs!” he cries, with a gentle voice, half afraid some one might hear him; he has become attached to his animals, and feels a sorrow to part with them. He feels as you for your chickens you have fed every day, when you must kill them for dinner. Poor little Azor, and Zémire! Only think of seeing them no more! He sells them a few francs cheaper, when the purchaser is rich and likely to treat them well. The French, especially the women, dote upon dogs beyond the example of all other nations, and yet have the nastiest race of curs upon the earth. A dog, they say, loves his master the more he is a vagabond, and the French in return love their dogs the more they are shabby. What would I give for a few of those eloquent bow wows which resound in the night from an American barn-yard, and which protect so securely one’s little wife from the thieves and the lovers, while the husband is wandering in foreign lands.
Take off your hat; this is one of the choice and pre-eminent spots of the French capital; the very seat almost of the pleasures and amusements of Europe; it is the Boulevard Italien. It is here that gentlemen and ladies assemble of an evening to discuss the immense importance of a good dinner, when the labours of the day have closed, and not a care intrudes to distract the mind from the great business of deglutition and digestion. Men make splendid reputations here which live after them by the invention of a single soup. It is here they make the sauces in which one might eat his own grandfather. This place was respected by the Holy Alliance; and Lord Wellington, in 1815, pitched his marquee upon the Boulevard Italien.
It is in vain to expect perfection in an art unless we honour those who exercise its functions. Monsieur Carème, (whom I mention for the sake of honour, and who lives close by here in the Rue Lafitte,) now cook to the Baron Rothschild and ex-cook to the Prince of Wales, is one of the most considerable persons of this age; holding a high gentlemanly rank, and living in an enviable condition of opulence and splendour. He keeps his carriage, takes his airings of an evening, has his country seat, and his box at the opera; and has, indeed, every attribute requisite to make a gentleman in any country. The number of officers attached to his staff is greater than that of any general of the present régime; his assistant roaster has a salary above our President of the United States. It is by this honourable recompence of merit that, through all the vicissitudes of her various fortunes, France has still maintained unimpaired her great prerogative of teaching the nations how to cook.
Monsieur de Carème is worthy a particular notice. He had an ancestor who was “chef de cuisine,” of the Vatican, and invented a soupe maigre for his Holiness; and another who was cook to the Autocratrix of all the Russias. How talents do run in some families! Himself, having served his apprenticeship under an eminent artist of the Boulevard Italien, he invented a sauce piquante, when quite a young man; and by a regular cultivation of his fine natural powers, he has reached a degree of perfection in his art which has long since set envy and rivalship at defiance. The truth is, that a great cook is as rare a miracle as a great poet. It is well known that Claude Lorraine could not succeed in pastry with all his genius.
“Et Balzac et Malherbe si fameux en bon mots,
En cuisine peut-être n’aurait été que des sots.”
To whom, think you, does the British nation owe those Attic suppers, those feasts of the gods, which so surprised the Allied Monarchs, and brought so much glory upon his late majesty? To Monsieur de Carème. And to whom do you think the Baron Rothschild owes those clear and unclouded faculties with which he out-financiers all Europe and America? Certes, to Monsieur de Carème. All the Baron has to do is to dine; digestion is done by his cook. Carème has refused invitations to nearly every European court; and it was only upon the most urgent solicitations that he consented to reside eight months at Carlton House,—a portion of his life upon which he looks back with much displeasure and repentance, and the remnant of his days he designs to consecrate, with the greater zeal on this account, to the honour and interests of his native country. He is now preparing a digest of his art, after the manner of the Code Napoleon; and eminent critics, to whom he has communicated his work, pronounce it excellent, both for its literary and culinary merits.
To this Boulevard also the sweetmeat part of the creation resort about twilight to their creams and lemonades and eau sucrée. They seat themselves upon both margins of the trottoir upon chairs, leaving an interval between, for the successive waves of pedestrians, who are also attracted hither by the fashion and elegance of the place. How charming, of a summer evening, to sit you down here upon one chair and put your feet upon another, and look whole hours away upon this little world; or to walk up and down and eye the double row of belles seated amidst the splendour of the gas-lamps. In this group are examples of nearly all that is extant of the human species. I have seen a Bedouin of the Mer Rouge stumble upon a great ambassador from the Neva; and a Mandarin of the Loo-koo run foul of an ex-school-master of the Mohontongo. If any one is missing from your mines of Shamoken, come hither, and you will find him seated on a straw-bottomed chair on the Boulevard Italien.
These splendid cafés are multiplied by mirrors, and being open, or separated only by panels of glass, appear to form but a single tableau with the street, and those outside and in seem parts of the same company. I recommend you the Café de Paris, the Café Hardi, the Café Veron, if you wish to mix with the fashionable and merry world; if with the business world, with the great bankers, the millionaires, the noblesse de la Bourse, who smooth their cares with fat dinners and good wines, where else in the world should you go but to Tortoni’s? There are not two Tortonis upon the earth. A dinner you may get at the Rocher Cancale,—but a breakfast!—it is to be had no where in all Europe out of Tortoni’s. The ladies of high and fashionable life stop here before the door, and are served by liveried waiters elegantly in their barouches; they cannot think of venturing in, there are so many more gentlemen outside. You will see here, both in and out, the most egregious cockneys of Europe, the beau Brummels and the beau Nashes, the “Flashes,” and “Full-Swells” of London town, and, in elegant apposition, the Parisian exquisites.
Was there ever anything so beautiful!—No, d’honneur! His boots are of Evrat, his coat Staub, vest Moreau, gloves and cravat Walker, and hat Bandoni; and Mrs. Frederic is his washerwoman! You will please give the superiority to the French. To make an elegant fop is more than the barber’s business; nature herself must have a finger in the composition. Besides, if a man is born a fool, he is a greater fool in Paris than elsewhere, there are such opportunities for acquirement.
These are the French people. Don’t you hate to see so many ninnies in mustachios? If I had not the great Marlborough, and Bonaparte, and Apollo, on my side, all three unwhiskered, I would go home in the next packet. The moment one has made one’s debut here in the world of beards, one is a man, and there is no manhood, founded on any other pretensions, that can dispense with this main qualification. It is the one eminent criterion of all merit; it is a diploma; a bill of credit as current as in the days Albuquerque; it is promotion in the army, in the diplomacy, even in the church; you cannot be a saint without this grisly recommendation. One loves the women, just because they have no beards on their faces.