You will see also a General Jackson, with the head of a hickory-nut, with a purse, I believe, of “carraway comfits,” and in a great hurry pouring out the “twenty-five millions,” a king, a queen, and a royal family, all of plaster of Paris. If you step into one of these stores you will see a gentleman in mustachios, whom you will mistake for a nobleman, who will ask you “to give yourself the pain to sit down,” and he will put you up a paper of bon-bons, and he will send it home for you, and he will accompany you to the door, and he will have “the honour to salute you”—all for four sous.—But I must get on with my biography.
We went, the first day of the year, to the Palace, and saw the king and the queen with our own eyes. I must tell you all about it. Paris usually comes to town three months before this. The gentry, and the woodcock, and all the Italian singers come in October, and every thing runs over with the reflux of the natives, and the influx of foreigners. Of the latter, the greater part are English, who, to escape the ignominy of staying in London at this season, or being uneasy on their seats, (I mean their country seats,) come hither to walk in the Rue de la Paix, and sleep in the Rue Castiglione. You will see now and then a knot of American girls, who sun themselves upon the Boulevards, or sit in the Tuileries to do mischief with their looks upon bearded Frenchmen.
But the gaieties at this season only essay their little wings; they do not venture beyond the opera and private parties, and a display of black eyes and fashionable equipages at the Bois de Boulogne, until the close of the year. Then all the sluices are set loose. Then magnificent beauty encircles the boxes at the opera, decked in all the gems which the “swart Indian culls from the green sea,” and overlooks the gazing deluge of spectators from the pit, and the nut-brown maids of Italy and France wave around the ball-room in all the swimming voluptuousness of the waltz. Grisi warbles more divinely at the Italien, and, at the Grand Opera, more sweetly, Taglioni
“Twirls her light limbs, and bares her breasts of snow.”
“Due pome acerbe, e pur d’ivorio fatte,
Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo,
Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte.”
Harlequin now puts on his fustian mantle, and all Paris, her caps and bells, turning out upon the Boulevards, and men and women run wild through the streets. This is the Carnival, which will continue gathering force as it goes, till the end of February, as a snow-ball upon your Pine-Hill comes down an avalanche into the valley. On Shrove-Tuesday all will be still—operas, balls, concerts, fêtes, the racket of the fashionable soirée, and the orgies of the Carnival will be hushed; and then the quiet and social parties will employ the rest of the season.
My Lord Granville will be “at home” on Monday, and the Duchess de Broglie “at home” on Saturday; in a word, every one that can afford it will be “at home” one evening in the week, receiving and entertaining with gaiety and simplicity his friends, until the dogstar shall send again the idle world to its shady retreats of Montmorency and St. Cloud. The first drawing-room or “reception” at court, on the New Year’s night gives the watch-word, and announces that the season of mirth has begun. This is followed by the regular court-balls, and balls ministerial and diplomatic; and the balls of the bankers and other opulent individuals bring up the rear.
We put ourselves in a black suit, in silk stockings and pumps, with a little, military tinsel, under the arm; stepped into a remise (a remise is a public carriage disguised as a private one) and in a few minutes stood upon the broad steps of the Tuileries; from which we were conducted up into the rooms, with no more ceremony than writing our names upon a registry in the hall.—The English and French books say that we Americans have a great penchant for kings, and that we run after nobility and titles more than becomes republicans. Whether this be true or not, and whether it is really an inclination of human nature that, like other passions, will have its way, I do not stop to inquire; with me I declare it to be mere curiosity; I had the same when a mere child, for a puppet show, without wishing to be “Punch” or “Judy.” But here I am moralising again when I should be telling you of the “Reception.”
You must imagine a long suite of rooms, and the edges all round embroidered with ladies, strung together like pearls—ladies dressed in the excess of the toilet, and many hundred lustres pouring down a blaze of light upon their charms; and the interior of the rooms filled with gentlemen clad in various liveries, mostly military—in all you may reckon about four thousand, including Doctor C. and me. Here was my Lady Granville ambassadress and her Lord; I love a broad pair of shoulders on a woman—even a little too broad; and here was the fair Countess of Comar Plotocka. The richest mine that sleeps between your Broad and Sharp Mountains would not buy this lady’s neck. I have heard it valued at three millions. It would make a rail-road from here to Havre.
I have half-a-mind to put in here as a note, that we Americans in our citizen coats, and other republican simplicities, make no kind of figure at a court. When one contemplates brother Jonathan by the side of Prince Rousimouski, all gorgeous in the furs of the Neva—I can’t find any other comparison than that character of arithmetic they call zero; for he seems of no other use than to give significance to some figure that is next to him. It is strange how much human dignity is improved by a fashionable wardrobe; I have seen a nobleman spoiled altogether by a few holes in his breeches.