The American in Paris; vol. 1 of 2

by John Sanderson

The immense plain to the west of the Invalids and in front of the Ecole Militaire, is the Champ de Mars, the rendezvous of horses fleet in the race, and cavalry to be trained for the battle. I am quite vexed that I have not space to tell you of the great Revolutionary fête which was once celebrated in this very place; how the ladies of the first rank volunteered and worked with their own dear little hands to put up the scaffolding; and how the king was brought out here with his white and venerable locks and air of a martyr, and the queen, her eyes swollen with weeping; their last appearance but one! before the people. And it would be very gratifying to take a look at that good old revolutionary patriarch, Talleyrand. How he officiated at the immense ceremony, at the head of two hundred priests, all habited in immaculate white surplices, and all adorned with tri-coloured scarfs, and then how the holy man blessed the new standards of France, and consecrated the eighty-three banners of the Departments.

I wish to write all this, but winged time will not wait upon my desires; besides, this letter is already the longest that was ever written; it has as many curiosities, too, as the shield of Achilles. The bridge just opposite is the Pont de Jena. The allies were about to destroy it on account of its name, and put gunpowder under it, but Louis the Eighteenth would not allow it. Le jour où vous ferez sauter le Pont de Jena, je me mette dessus! and Blucher was moved. This bridge is the end of my letter and journey; finis chartæque viæque.

The cholera, the deuce take it, has got into Italy, and I shall perhaps lose altogether the opportunity of a visit to that country. I shall not kiss the feet of his Holiness, nor see the Rialto, nor the Bridge of Sighs; nor Venice and her gondolas, nor look upon the venerable palace of her Doges. Alas, I shall not linger at Virgil’s tomb! nor swim in the Tiber, nor taste one drop of thy pure fountain, Egeria! nor thine, Fons Blandusiæ splendidior vitreo.

LETTER X.

Faubourg St. Germain—Quartier Latin—The Book-stalls—Phrenologists—Dupuytren’s Room—Medical Students—Lodgings—Bill at the Sorbonne—French Cookery—A Gentleman’s Boarding-house—The Locomotive Cook—Fruit—The Pension—The Landlady—Pleasure in being duped—Smile of a French Landlady—The Boarding-house—Amiable Ladies—The Luxembourg Gardens—The Grisettes—Their naïveté and simplicity—Americans sent to Paris—Parisian Morals—Advantages in visiting Old Countries—American Society in Paris.

Paris, November 24th, 1835.

Nearly all who love to woo the silent muses are assembled in this region, the Faubourg St. Germain. Here are the libraries bending under their ponderous loads, and here are the schools and colleges, and all the establishments devoted to science and letters; for which reason, no doubt, it is dignified by the name of the Quartier Latin. When the west of the river was yet overspread with its forests, this quarter was covered with houses, and adorned with a palace and amphitheatre, baths, an aqueduct, and a “Field of Mars” for the parade of the Roman troops, where Julius Cæsar used to make them shoulder their firelocks.

But now, though it contains a fourth of the population of the town, and retains its literary character, so far has luxury got ahead of philosophy, that it has no greater dignity of name than the “Faubourgs.” It stands apart as if the city of some other people. Some few, indeed, from the fashionable districts, in a desperate Captain Ross kind of expedition, do sometimes come over here, and have got back safe, but having found nothing but books and such things of little interest, it remains unexplored.

The population has become new by retaining its old customs. By standing still it shews the “march of intellect” through the rest of the city. Here you see yet that venerable old man who wears a cue and powder, and buckles his shoes, and calls his shop a boutique; who garters up his stockings over the knees, goes to bed at eight, and snuffs the candle with his fingers; and you see everywhere the innumerable people, clattering through the muddy and narrow lanes in their sabots. Poverty not being able to get lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, the Palais Royal, and, though she tried hard, in the Boulevards, has been obliged, on account of the cheap rents, to come over here and to strike up a sort of partnership with science, and they now carry on various kinds of industry, under the firm of Misère et Compagnie.

In the central section of this Latin country, the staple is the bookshop. Everywhere you will see the little store embossed with its innumerable volumes inside and out, on the ceilings, on the floor, and on screens throughout the room, leaving just a little space for a little bookseller; and stalls are covered with the same article in the open air, in all those positions where, in other towns, you find mutton and fat beef. When you see a long file of Institutes and Bartholos wrapped in their yellow parchment, you are near the Temple of Themis—the Ecole des Lois.