The tongues of all Paris were now set loose, as usual, and proclamations were read through the streets de l’horrible assassinat tenté contre la vie du roi, et de la famille royale, &c. &c., and all that for four sous! It was even said, that he had made important revelations to the Minister of the Interior; and that some of the most distinguished Carlists were implicated in his guilt. At length, he was brought up before the Chamber of Peers, with his machine; where it was examined, and discovered to be—what do you think?—a telescope! The young man alleged that he was getting it up for astronomical purposes; but the president, a shrewd man about machines, observed that its obliquity was in an opposite direction to the stars.
The Seine flows gently by the side of the Tuileries, both from the pleasure it has had in bathing the royal family, and the delight of listening to the king’s band, which plays here every evening; and from this onwards, the right bank is occupied by the gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées. If you wish to know how much more beautiful than the gardens of Armida is this garden of the Tuileries, I refer you to my former letters; especially to that one which I wrote you when I had just fallen from the clouds. I admired, then, everything with sensibility, and a good many things with ecstacy. Somebody has said, that every one who is born, is as much a first man as Adam; which I do not quite believe. He came into the midst of a creation, which rushed, with the freshness of novelty, upon his senses, and was not introduced to him by gradual acquaintance.
How many things did this first man see in Eden which you and I could never have seen in it; and which he himself had never seen in it if he had been put out to nurse, or had been brought up at the “College Rolin.” How often have I since wandered through this garden without even glancing at the white and snowy bosom of the Queen of Love; how often walked upon this goodly terrace, strolling all the while, the pretty Miss Smith at one arm, and thy incomparable self at the other, by the wizard Schuylkill, or the silent woods of the Mohontongo.
Opposite this garden, on the Quai d’Orsay, is the Hotel, not finished, of the Minister of the Interior, the most enormous building of all Paris. It has turned all the houses near it into huts. That, just under its huge flanks, with a meek and prostrate aspect, as if making an apology for intruding into the presence of its prodigious neighbour—that is the Hotel of the Legion of Honour. Alas, what signifies it to have bullied all Europe for half a century!
Close by is a little chateau, formerly of the Marquis de Milraye, which I notice only to tell you an anecdote of his wife. The prince Philip came to Paris and died very suddenly, under Louis XIV. He was a great roué and libertine, and some one moralizing, expressed, before the Marchioness, doubts about his salvation. “Je vous assure,” said she, very seriously, “qu’à des gens de cette qualité-là, Dieu y regarde bien à deux fois pour les autres.” Which proves that ladies bred in high life don’t think that kings may be condemned like you and I.
The next object of importance, and the object of most importance in all Paris, is the Chamber of Deputies. I wished to go in, but four churlish and bearded men disputed me this privilege. I sat down, therefore, upon the steps, having Justice, Temperance, and Prudence, and another elderly lady, on each side of me; and I consoled myself, and said—
“In this House the Virtues are shut out of doors.” I had also in the same group, Sully, Hôpital, Daguesseau, and Colbert. What superhuman figures! And I had in front the Bridge of Concord, upon which are placed twelve statues in marble, also of the colossal breed. A deputy, as he waddles through the midst of them, seems no bigger than Lemuel Gulliver, just arrived at Brobdignag. Four, are of men distinguished in war—Condé, who looks ridiculously grim, and Turenne, Duguesclin, and Bayard; and four eminent statesmen—Suger, Richelieu, Sully, Colbert; and four men famous on the sea—Tourville, Suffren, Duquesne, and who was the other? He whose name would shame an epic poem, or the Paris Directory, Duguay-Trouin. I took off my hat to Suffren, for he helped us with our Independence.
On the back ground of this Palace is a delightful woodland, where the members often seek refreshment from the fatigues of business in the open air. Here you will see a Lycurgus seated apart, and ruminating upon the fate of empires; and there a pair of Solons, unfolding the mazes of human policy, straying arm in arm through its solitary gravel walks. M. Q——, a member of this Chamber, and sometimes minister, was seen walking here assiduously during the last summer evenings; and often, when the twilight had just faded into night, a beautiful female figure was seen walking with him. It did not seem to be of mortal race, but a spirit rather of some brighter sphere which had consented awhile to walk upon this earth with Monsieur Q——. It was, however, the wife of Monsieur O——, another member of this Chamber.
One essential difference you may remark between Numa Pompilius and Deputy Q——, is, that the one met ladies in the woods for the making of laws, and the other for the breaking of them. Monsieur O——, informed of the fact, took a signal revenge upon the seducer of his wife. And what do you think it was? He called him out, to be sure, and blew out his brains. Not a bit of it. He waylaid him, then, and despatched him secretly? Much less. I will tell you what he did. He took Monsieur Q——’s wife in exchange. In telling this tale, which I had on pretty good authority, I do not mean to say—Heaven preserve me!—that there are not honest wives in Paris.
“Il en est jusqu’à trois que je pourrais nommer.”