The American in Paris; vol. 1 of 2

by John Sanderson

the “high altar and castle of Despotism,” the Bastille! Where are now the damp and secret cells, the sombre corridors, and the grim countenances of the gaolers, and where the mob of 1789, and the mad passions that levelled its towers and battlements? Quiet as the Seine that sleeps upon its dungeons! The present substitutes for the Bastille are, the Depôt at the Prefecture of Police; St. Pelagie for state crimes, and La Force for civil; the Conciergerie for those awaiting trial, and the Salpetrière for those awaiting the execution of their sentence.

Bonaparte has built here an immense granary, containing always corn enough for the consumption of the capital for two months. This, with the Halle aux blés in the centre of the city, supplies the whole population. Paris has six hundred bakers, who are obliged to keep always in this granary one hundred thousand sacks of flour, worth thirty shillings sterling per sack; and therefore it is called the Grenier de Reserve. Here lived the witty and profligate Beaumarchais; his castle is rased; all but Figaro are dead. You have in sight the Hospital of the Quinze-vingts, which contains three hundred blind, who have twenty-four sous a day each for a living, with the produce of their industry, which is wonderfully ingenious. Now we have passed the Garden of Plants, and the Bridge of Austerlitz. For this latter favour we owe something to the Russians, who saved this bridge from its bad name and Blucher’s gunpowder.

That upon the hill is the Salpetrière, the Insane Hospital for women. What a huge pile! One to put the sane ones in would not be half the size. This front on the boulevard is six hundred feet. The building in the rear is of similar dimensions, and the Rotonde between, with the octagon dome, is the chapel. It contains now four thousand five hundred poor, aged above seventy; one thousand five hundred crazy; all women. I went in on Sunday. What immense conversation! There is a similar institution for the other sex, called the Bicêtre. Paris has twenty hospitals, affording thirty thousand beds, and classed by the several diseases and infirmities. It has no poor-houses, but each of its twelve arrondissements, or municipal divisions, has a “Bureau de Bienfaisance,” which distributes provisions to the indigent, and provides labour for the idle; and there is a plenty of benevolent societies, with specific objects. Nor do they want customers, for the number of paupers are near fifty thousand. I forgot to tell you there is a hospital here (the Hospice des Ménages) for widowers. What an object of charity is a man without a wife! They have made, however, the terms hard; one has to stay married twenty years to be admitted. The institution is under the care of the sisters of Charity.

This of Val de Grace is for the military, and that of the Rue d’Enfer for the foundlings; not an unnatural association, but emblematic of the two chief concerns of the capital—killing off the people by war, and making up the loss by adultery. And this is the Rue St. Jaques, one of the classical streets of the city. The great rogues pay their last visit to this end of it, and the great men to the other: if you kill ten thousand of your fellow creatures you go to the Pantheon at the west end, if one only, you come here to the Place St. Jaques, now the seat of the guillotine and the public executions. At length we are on the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse, at the end of our journey. Yet could you not get a drop of helicon here, though perishing with thirst. All one can offer you is a little sour Burgundy, which is cheaper than inside the wall. This is the reason why you see all this rabble, five hundred at a view, carousing and dancing in their sabots, drinking and caressing, tour-à-tour, the necks of their bottles and their belles; it is the reason why thousands are crowding here to drink who are not dry, and Paris is losing daily her sober reputation, and learning to get drunk like her neighbours.

The bad system of the ports, is in France transferred to all the petty towns. A couple of sergeants, musketted and whiskered, walk with grim dignity at each side of the gates. They stop and examine all vehicles, public and private, and all such persons as carry in provisions to the market, forcing them to pay an octroi, or duty, to the city of Paris, which prevents those rogues, the poor people, from getting a dinner untaxed. They even stop sometimes the foot passengers; especially those notorious smugglers, the women. If any one chance to be half gone, she is not allowed to go any farther, unless she produce a certificate from the parish priest, or some equally good authority. Quantities of lace and silks have passed in under such pretexts. The best commentary I know upon the wisdom of this policy is the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse.

When Paris was surrounded by this wall, fifty years ago, the people murmured and made a riot, and hung up several of the ring-leaders, on the same principles of law recently laid down by our chief justice Lynch. They entered suits, too, against the city, to put her in the Bastille; but a compromise ended the strife, and the wall was built. Here is a line from an old book relating to these times—

“Les murs murant Paris rendent Paris murmurant.”

I could not think of descending from Parnassus without a line of poetry.

LETTER IV.

The Palais Royal—French courtesy—Rue Vivienne—Pleasures of walking in the streets—Cafés in the Palais Royal—Mille Colonnes—Véry’s—French dinners—Past History of the Palais Royal—Galerie d’Orleans—Gambling—The unhappy Colton—Hells of the Palais Royal—Prince Puckler Muskau—Lord Brougham—The King and Queen.