The American in Paris; vol. 1 of 2

by John Sanderson

I have now before me one of the most execrable spots upon this earth—which all the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten—the “Place de la Revolution”[3]—where the Queen of France suffered death with her husband, to propitiate the horrible Republic. I saw once my mother in agitation, upon reading a newspaper—sobbing and even weeping aloud;—she read (and set me to weeping too) the account of this execution of the Queen. It is the farthest remembrance of my life, and I am now standing on the spot—on the very spot on which this deed was perpetrated—which made women weep in their huts beyond the Alleghany!

With the manifold faults of this Queen, one cannot, at the age of sober reason, look upon the place of her execution, and think over her hapless fate, without feeling all that one has of human nature melting into compassion. She was a woman whom anything of a gentleman would love, with all her faults. Moreover, no one expects queens, in the intoxication of their fortune, to behave like sober people. Not even the sound and temperate head of Cæsar preserved its prudence in this kind of prosperity. The guillotine was erected permanently in the centre of this Place, and was fed with cart-loads at a time. The most illustrious of its victims were, the Queen, Louis XVI., his sister Mademoiselle Elizabeth, and the father of the present king. The grass does not grow upon the guilty Place, and the Seine flows quickly by it.

If you wish to have the finest view of all Paris—the finest perhaps of all Europe, of a similar kind—you must stand upon the centre of this Place; and you must hurry, as the Obelisk of Luxor has just arrived from Egypt, and will occupy it shortly. Towards the east, you have spread out before you the gardens of the Tuileries, bordered by the noble colonnade of the Rue Rivoli and the Seine;—towards the west, the Champs Elysées, and the broad walk leading gently up to Napoleon’s arch, which stands proudly on the summit, and “helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale.” On the north, you have in full view, through the Rue Royale, the superb Madelaine, on the side of its most brilliant sculpture; and in symmetry with it, the noble front of the Palais Bourbon on the south. On fine evenings, and days of parade, you will see from the Arch to the Palace, about two miles, a moving column of human beings upon the side walks; and innumerable equipages, with horses proud of their trappings, and lackeys of their feathers, meeting and crossing each other upon the intervening roads; and upon the area of the Tuileries, all that which animated life has most amiable and beautiful. You will see, amidst the parterres of flowers, and groups of oranges, and its marble divinities, swans swimming upon the silvery lakes; multitudes of children at their sports, and everywhere ladies and their cavaliers, in all the colours of the toilette, sitting or standing, or sauntering about, and appearing through the trees, upon the distant terraces, as if walking upon the air. All this will present you a rich and variegated tableau, of which prose like mine can give you no reasonable perception.

The great obelisk which is to stand here, is now lying upon the adjacent wharf. It is seventy-two feet high, and is to be raised higher, by a pedestal of twenty feet. It is a single block of granite, with four faces, and each face has almost an equal share of the magnificent prospect I have just tried to describe. It tapers towards the top, and its sides, older than the alphabet, are embossed with a variety of curious images. Birds are singing, rustics labouring, or playing on their pipes, sheep are bleating, and lambs skipping. A slave is on his knees, and a Theban gentleman recumbent in his fauteuil; and one is at his wine,—he who “hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass, 3,000 years ago.”—The men are in caps, a third their size; and the women in low hoods, like a chancellor’s wig.

Little did the miner think who dug it from the quarry, little did the sculptor think, as he carved these images on it, and how little did Sesostris think, in reading over his history of Paris, that it would, one day, make the tour of Europe, and establish itself here in the Place de la Concorde. An expensive and wearisome journey it has had of it. It is nine years since it stepped from its pedestal at Luxor. It was a good notion of Charles X., but not original. The Emperor Constantius brought one, the largest ever known, (150 feet high,) to Rome. Two magnificent ones, set up by the Doge Ziana, adorn the Piazzetta of St. Mark’s, brought from some island of the Archipelago.

The French army at Alexandria, in 1801, had two young ones on their way to Paris, which fell, poor things! into the rapacious hands of the British Museum. And now the English, jealous of this Luxorique magnificence, are going to bring over Cleopatra’s needle, to be up with them; and we are going to put something in our Washington Square; and then the French, some of these days, will bring over the Pyramids.

At the corner of the Rue Royale you will see two palaces, one the depôt of fine furniture and jewels, the other of the armour of the crown. Here are shields that were burnished for Cressy and Agincourt. Here is the armour of Francis when made prisoner at Pavia, of Henry when mortally wounded by Montgomery; complete sets of armour of Godfrey de Bouillon and Joan of Arc, the sword of King Cassimer, and that of the holy father Paul V. Spiders are now weaving their webs in casques that went to Jerusalem. The diamonds of the crown deposited here before the Revolution in rubies, topaz, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, &c., were 7432 in number, amongst which were the famous jewels called the Sanci and the Regent, so notorious in the history of jewels; the latter has figured about the world in the king’s hats, and Napoleon’s sword. An antiquarian would find extreme delight in this room; as for me I scarce know which is Mambrino’s helmet and which the barber’s basin.

I had no sooner quitted the deputies than I found myself under the great Hospital of the Invalids, whose lofty and gilded dome was blazing in the setting sun. Napoleon put up this gilding to amuse gossiping Paris in his Russian defeats; as Alcibiades, to divert Athens from his worse tricks, cut off his dog’s tail; and as Miss Kitty, to withdraw a more dangerous weapon from the baby’s hand, gives it a rattle. 3800 soldiers are now lodged in this Hospital, or rather, pieces of soldiers; for one has an arm at Moscow, another a leg at Algiers, needing no nourishment from the state. Here is one whose lower limbs were both lost at the taking of Paris. He seems very happy. He saves the shoemaker’s, hosier’s, and half the tailor’s bill. He is fat, too, and healthy, for he has the same rations as if he were all there. If I were expert at logic, I would prove to you that this piece of an individual might partly eat himself up, his legs being buried in the suburbs, and he dining on the potatoes which grow there; and I could prove, if I was put to it, that with a proper assistance from cork, he might be running about town with his legs in his cheeks. There are two sorts of historians,—one, of those who confine themselves to a simple narrative of facts and descriptions; the other, searching after causes and effects, and accompanying the narrative with moral reflections. I belong to the latter class.

This Hospital was planned by the great Henry; the great Louis built it; and it was furnished with lodgers by the great Napoleon. It has all the air of a hospital; long ranges of rooms and chilling corridors; and this réunion of mutilated beings is a horrid spectacle! They lead a kind of inactive, lounging, alms-house existence. How much better had the munificence of government given to each his allowance, with the privilege of remaining with his friends and relations, than to be thus cut off from all the charities and consolations of domestic life, and without the last, best consolation of afflicted humanity—a woman.

The dome is magnificent with paintings, gildings, carvings, and such like decorations. The chapel, the most splendid part, is tapestried with flags taken in war from the enemy. What an emblem in a Christian church! There are several hundreds yet remaining, notwithstanding the great numbers burnt, to save them from their owners, the allies. “There are some here from all countries,” said my guide, growing a foot taller. “Those are from Africa; those from Belgium; and those three from England.” When I asked him to shew me those from America, he replied, with a shrug—“Cela viendra, monsieur.”