And what is worst, when done bathing here, you have no place to go to wash yourself.
The Pont des Arts is a light and airy bridge, from the door of the Institute to the Quai du Louvre; upon which no equipages are admitted. The Arts use their legs—cruribus non curribus utuntur. Between this and the “Pont Royal,” (a bridge of solid iron,) the antiquarians have got together for sale all the curious remains of the last century, Chineseries, Sevreries, and chimney pieces of Madame Pompadour. Next is the Quai Voltaire, in the east corner of which is the last earthly habitation of the illustrious individual whose name it bears. The apartment in which he died has been kept shut for the last forty years, and has been lately thrown open.
On the opposite side you see stretched out, huge in length, the heavy and monotonous Louvre, which, with the Tuileries adjoining, is, they say, the most spacious and beautiful palace in the world. I have not experienced what the artists call a perception of its beauties. There is a little pet corner, the eastern colonnade raised by Louis XIV., which is called the great triumph of French architecture. It consists of a long series of apartments, decorated with superb columns, with sculpture and mosaics, and a profusion of gilding, and fanciful ornaments.[2] From the middle gallery it was that Charles IX., one summer’s evening, amused himself shooting Hugonots, flying the St. Bartholomew, with his arquebuss. Nero was a mere fiddler to this fellow. This is the gallery of Philip Augustus, so full of romance. It was from here that Charles X. “cut and ran,” and Louis Philippe quietly sat down on his stool. See how the Palais des Beaux Arts is peppered with the Swiss bullets!
The edge of the river, for half a mile, is embroidered with washerwomen; and baths, and boats of charcoal, cover its whole surface. One cannot drown oneself here, but at the risk of knocking out one’s brains. One of the curiosities of this place, is the fête des Blanchisseuses, celebrated a few days ago. The whole surface of the river was covered with dances; floors being strewed upon the boats, and the boats, adorned with flags and streamers, rowing about, and filled with elegant washerwomen, just from the froth, like so many Venuses—now dissolving in a waltz, now fluttering in a quadrille. You ought to have seen how they chose out, the most beautiful of these washerwomen—the queen of the suds—and rowed her in a triumphal gondola through the stream, with music that untwisted all the chains of harmony.
“Not Cleopatra, on her galley’s deck,
Display’d so much of leg, or more of neck.”
This array of washing-boats relieves the French from that confusion and misery of the American kitchen, the “washing-day;” but to give us the water to drink, after all this scouring of foul linen, is not so polite. I have bought a filter of charcoal, which, they say, will intercept, at least, the petticoats and other such articles as I might have swallowed. The Seine here suffers the same want as one of his brother rivers, sung by the poets:—
“The River Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash the city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine,
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine.”
Just opposite this Quai, I observed “Schools of Natation,” for both sexes, kept entirely separate. An admonition is placed over the ladies’ school to this effect, in large letters; besides, it is hermetically secured against any impertinent intrusion, by a piece of linen. The ladies, however, were put to their last shifts, last summer, in maintaining this establishment. Such rigid notions do some persons here entertain of female decorum! But opposition has now died away; and the reports about gentlemen of the “other house” becoming love-sick, from swimming in the waters from the ladies’ bath, have been proved malicious: for the gentlemen’s house is farther up the stream, “et par consequence.”
The truth is, that a lady has as much right, and, unfortunately, in these ship-wrecking times, as much necessity often, to swim as a gentleman; and it is ascertained that, with the same chance, the woman is the better swimmer of the two. (I have this from the lady who keeps the bureau.) Her head is always above the water. All of them, and especially those who have the vapours, can swim without cork. The process of instruction is easy. All that the swimming master has to do, is just to thrust the little creatures into a pair of gum-elastic trousers, and a cravat inflated, and then pitch them in, one after another—only taking care not to put on the trousers without the cravat.
I will finish this paragraph, already too long, by an anecdote. It will shew you that ladies who swim cannot use too much circumspection,—I mean, by circumspection, looking up, as well as round about them. The ever-vigilant police about the Tuileries had observed a young gentleman very busy with tools, at an opposite garret window, for whole weeks together. Sometimes till the latest hour of the night his lamp was seen glimmering at the said window. At length, by the dint of looking, and looking, they discovered something like an “Infernal Machine,” placed directly towards the apartment of the king and queen, and the bed-chamber of the dear little princesses and Madame Adelaide. It was just after the July review, and General Mortier’s disaster; and suspicion lay all night wide awake. What needs many words? They burst into the room—the “Garde Municipale,” and the “police centrale,” the “pompiers,” and the “sapeurs,” and the serjeants clad in blue, with buttons to their arms, and swords to their sides, and coifed in chapeaux, three feet in diameter—breaking down all opposition of doors, and dragged forth the terrified young man.