You will see a smile sometimes crossing the serious features of the divine man, and now and then he will start—he has harpooned an idea. Soon after you enter, one will make your acquaintance, especially if you have a comic face. He will treat you to rum and coffee, he will offer you the journal, point out to you the amusing subjects, and set you talking. And you will be delighted, and you will say, not without reason, the Parisians are called the politest people upon the earth. They will not let you go until they have sucked the last drop of your blood, noted down your clownish looks, and airs, copied your features, and robbed you of your very name. At last they will make you mad; for they must see you under the influence of different passions; and if you are impudent they will kick you out of doors.
When you are gone, they will very likely quarrel over your spoils—about the right of ownership; and when the dispute is compromised, the most needy will traffic you away for a consideration. One will sell one of your bon mots for a lemonade; and another one of your sheepish looks for a riz-au-lait or some more expensive dish according to its dramatic interest and novelty. Some of these men keep regular offices, and sell out plots and counter-plots and bon-mots, as brokers do mortgages and bills of exchange. Others bring their rough materials to the great manufactory under which they are employed, and receive from Monsieur Scribe or some other master workman, their pay or an interest in the piece proportionate to the value of the contribution. I know of one who has been living upon the eighth of a vaudeville for several years; and another, who is getting along tolerably on a piece of a joke; being a partner with three or four others.
But you must not be running always to the theatre, there are other amusements which claim a share of your attention. At the Tivoli you will find concerts, balls, and fire-works; and you may take an airing every fine evening in a balloon. You have only to ride up to the Barrière de Clichy, or it will stop for you at your garret-window. Besides, you have to see the Panoramas, Cosmoramas, Neoramas, Georamas, and the Dioramas.
The Diorama is amongst the prettiest things in Paris. But how to describe it?—You find yourself seated in an immense church, into which you have passed through a dark entry; and whilst you are contemplating its august architecture, twilight comes on imperceptibly, and you see suddenly around you a full congregation, seated, or standing and kneeling, and very intent on their prayers; all which with a little brighter light were invisible. You are then regaled with solemn church music, and assist at the vespers. It is all enchantment. You forget it is day. The voices of men and virgins die away in the distant space, like the voices of unearthly beings. The light returns gradually, the worshippers fade away into air, and you are seated as at first in the silent and lonely cathedral.
You now enter another room, and a vast prospect of beautiful Swiss scenery is opened upon your view, bounded only by the horizon. Before you is a lake, and flocks and herds feeding, and all the glowing images of a country life. How still the atmosphere, and a little hazy and melancholy, as in our Indian summer; you can almost fancy the wood-pigeon’s moan. In the mean time a storm is brewing beyond the distant mountains; you see the gleams of the lightning, and hear the muttering of the thunder. At length the storm gathers thick around you; the end of a mountain is detached from its base, and the avalanche covers the lake, the flocks, inhabitants, and huts, and you are seated amidst the desolation. You are not conscious of the presence of any painting; all is nature and reality.
A few words of the musical entertainment will fill up the measure of this sinful letter. There is a rotunda in the Champs Elysées devoted to concerts every evening from six till nine, throughout the summer season. Here are played the fashionable airs and concertos, and all the chef-d’oeuvres of Italian and German masters. The little quavers play sometimes softly among the leaves of the trees, and now and then pour down like a deluge crash upon your ears. There are sixty musicians; and for all this ravishment a gentleman pays twenty sous, and a lady half-price.
In the winter season the whole of this music and more takes refuge at Musard’s, a central part of the city. Here is a large room fitted up brilliantly with lustres and mirrors, with a gallery over-head, and a room adjoining for refreshments. The orchestra is in the centre surrounded by seats for the audience. There are seats also around the extremities, and between is a wide promenade filled up every evening with visitors all the way from Peru and Pegu; and with any quantity of Parisian fashionables, who come hither to squeeze and quizz one another, and see the music.
Only think of all this refreshment of the ears, and eyes, this gratification and improvement of the taste at twenty sous a night! There is a similar establishment in another section of the city; and these with the concerts of the Conservatory, private concerts, and operas, make up the musical entertainments of Paris.
The French are not, naturally, a very musical people. After all their fuss about a royal “Académie de Musique,” and their twenty or thirty pupils at the expense of government, and sent for the improvement of their voices to Rome, they have produced little music. Their Boieldieu and Auber are the only composers who can take seats (and this at some distance) with the Rossinis, Mozarts, and Webers. Their great pianists, Hertz and Kalkbrenner, are Germans; Beriot, the greatest violin, is a Belgian; Lafont only is French. Their natural music, the Troubadour and the rest, has been so wailed in the nursery, and so screamed in the theatre, that the world is sick of it. A man advertised for a servant lately, who could not sing “Robin du Bois.”