Sometimes I have seen one flash out like a squib, and leave you at once in the dark; it had lit on the wrong person; and at other times I have seen one struggling long for its life; I have watched it while it was gasping its last; she has a way, too, of knocking a smile on the head; I observed one at dinner to-day, from the very height and bloom of health fall down and die without a kick.
It is strange (that I may praise myself)—but I have a share of attentions in this little circle even greater than they who are amiable. If I say not a word, I am witty, and I am excessively agreeable by sitting still. “The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.” My unacquaintance with life and wickedness puts me in immediate rapport with women, and removes many of the little obstacles which suspicious etiquette has set up between the sexes. Ladies, they say, never blush when talking to a blind man.
While a man of address is sailing about and about a woman, as Captain Ross hunting the North-west passage, I am looked upon either as a ship in distress and claiming a generous sympathy and protection, or a prize which belongs to the wreckers, and am towed at once into harbour. Sometimes, indeed, my ignorance of Paris and its ways is taken for affectation, and they suspect me for behaving as great ambassadors do, who affect simplicity to hide their diplomatic rogueries; but he cannot long pass himself for a rogue who is really honest. It is perhaps a mere complexion of physiognomy. I see, every day, faces which remind one of those doors which have written on them, “No admission,” and others, “Walk in without knocking.” It is certain that what we call dignity, however admired on parade, is not a good social quality. “Dignitas et amor”—I forget what Ovid says about it.
And women, too, are more familiar and easy of access to modesty of rank. Jupiter, you know, when he made love to Antiope, with all his rays about him, was rejected, and he succeeded afterwards as a satyr. I knew a pretty American woman once, who, gartering up her stockings in the garden, was reminded, that the gardener was looking. “Well! he is only a working man,” she replied, and went on with the exhibition; she would have been frightened to death if it had been a lord. I make these remarks because other travellers would be likely to leave them out, and because it is good to know how to live to advantage in all the various circumstances of life.
In recommending you a French boarding-house, it is my duty at the same time to warn you of some of its dangers, which are as follows: Your landlady will be in arrears for her rent 200 francs, and will confide to you her embarrassment. Having a rigid, inexorable propriètaire, and getting into an emergency, she will at length ask you, with many blushes and amiable scruples, the loan of the said money; and her gratitude, poor thing! at the very expectation of getting it, will overcome her so, she will offer you, her arms about your neck, her pretty self, as security for the debt.
This is not all; the baroness (her husband being absent at Moscow, or anywhere else,) will invite you to a supper. She will live in a fine parlour, chamber adjoining, and will entertain you with sprightly and sensible conversation, and all the delicacies of the table, until the stars have climbed half way up the heavens; and you will find yourself tête-à-tête with a lady at midnight, the third bottle of champagne sparkling on the board.—I am glad I did not leave my virtue in America; I should have had such need of it in this country! Indeed, if it had been anybody else, not softened by the experience of nine lustrums; not fortified like me by other affections—if it had been anybody else in the world, he would have been ruined by Madame la Baronne. Nor when you have resisted Russia, have you won all the victories. On a fine summer’s morning, when all is joyous and good-humoured, your landlady will present you the following cards, with notes and explanations. “This is from the belle Gabrielle. She assists her uncle in the store, and is quite disheartened with her business. Uncles are such cross things! This is from one of my acquaintances, Flora—oh, beautiful au possible! She paints birds and other objects for the print shops, but she finds the confinement injurious to her health. You must call and see them, especially Flora, she has such a variety of talent besides painting; and she will give you the most convincing proofs of good character and connexions. Gabrielle also is very pretty, but she is a young and innocent creature, and her education, especially her music, not so far advanced.”
The garden of the Luxembourg comes next. It contains near a hundred acres, and lies in the midst of this classical district. It is not so gaily ornamented as the Tuileries, but is rich in picturesque and rural scenery. It has, indeed, two very beautiful ornaments. At the north end, the noble edifice, constructed by Marie de Medicis, the palace of the Luxembourg, which contains a gallery of paintings, the chamber of Peers, and other curiosities; and the Observatory, a stately building, is in symmetry with this palace on the south.
In the interior there are groves of trees and grass plots surrounded by flower-beds; and numerous statues, most of which have seen better days; ranges of trees, and an octagonal piece of water inhabited by two swans, which are now swimming about in graceful solemnity, adorn the parterre in front of the palace. All these objects I have in view of my windows. The garden has altogether an air of philosophy very grateful to men of studious dispositions. Many persons are seated about, in reading or conversation, or strolling with books through its groves, and squads of students are now and then traversing it to their college recitations.
On benches overlooking the parterre is seated, all day long, the veteran of the war, the old soldier, in his regimentals, his sword as a companion laid beside him on the bench; he finds a repose here for his old age amidst the recreations of childhood; and five or six hundred little men in red breeches, whose profession it is to have their brains knocked out for their country at sixpence a day, are drilled here every morning early, to keep step and to handle their firelocks. There is one corner in which there is a fountain surmounted by a nymph, and which has a gloomy and tufted wood, and an appearance of sanctity, which makes it respected by the common world, and by the sun.
One man only is seen walking there at a time, the rest retiring out of respect for his devotions. For a week past it has been frequented daily by a poet. He recites with appropriate action his verses, heedless of the profane crowd. He appears pleased with his compositions, and smiles often, no doubt in anticipation of their immortality. I often sit an hour of an evening at my window, and look down upon the stream of people which flows in and out, and the sentinel who walks up and down by the gate ridiculously grim.