The king, the queen, the princes and princesses entered about nine; they passed slowly round the rooms, saluting the ladies, saying a few words to each, with a gentle inclination of the head, and a proportionate jutting out at the head’s antipodes:—the latter part of the compliment intended for us gentlemen. At the end of this fatiguing ceremony the royal family retired, bowing to us all in the lump.—I forgot to say, that being apart in a corner, as a modest maid who sits alone, the queen in passing dropped me a curtsey for myself. When her Majesty bowed to the whole multitude the honour was wasted by diffusion. To have one all to one’s self was very gratifying. They now posted themselves in a room at the south end of the company, accessible by two doors, through one of which gentlemen were admitted Indian file, and introduced personally to the king, the king standing on the right, the queen on the left of the room, and the little queens in the middle.
It was an imposing ceremony; and this was the manner of the introduction. For example, the Doctor, entering, gave his name and nation to the Aid-de-Camp, who pronounced it aloud; the king then prit la parole, et un verre d’eau sucrée, de la manière suivante: “You are from Philadelphia, I am glad to see you.”—And then the Doctor, who had studied his speech in the ante-chamber, replied, “Yes.”—After this he bowed a little to the queen, and walked out with an imperturbable gravity at the left door, as I had just done before him. We then went home, and told people we had spoken to the king.—This is a Reception at the Tuileries. To give you an account of the other charming fêtes we have seen this month, will require another sheet.—The hour is late, I bid you good night.
January 26th.
The first fête of which we partook was a great ball given at the Hotel de Ville, to relieve the poor of the “Quartier St. Germain.” Here, as every place else, where there is a chance of an innocent squeezing, there was a crowd. There were two thousand souls, all dancing in the same room; and the ladies, whom I include in the article of souls, were dressed dans l’excès de la belle coiffure. The Queen and Madame Adelaide, and other such like fine people, who were announced in the newspapers, hoaxed us by not coming. However, we danced all the poor out of the hospitals. We put on our rustling silks that the grisettes might get a blanket for their shivering babies, and our dear little prunellas, that they might have a pair of sabots, and a little bit of wool about their feet in the Faubourg St. Germain. Charity affects people in different ways. In Philadelphia it gives one a chill, or it sends one with a long face to pray at St. Stephens’; here, to “cut pigeon wing” at the Hotel de Ville.—The bill of fare was only ices, lemonades and eau sucrée—no liquors.
A Frenchman is always fuddled enough with his own animal spirits, and needs no rum. In all French parties in high life there is little ceremony about eating and drinking; it is economical to be well bred. Dancing is performed in the same monotonous dull way as in America. The “pirouettes and entrechats” are a monopoly of the Opera Français. English gravity was always afraid of being caught cutting a caper, and John Bull leads his lady through a dance as if conducting her to her pew. The fashion of now-a-days is any thing English, especially English whims and nonsense. “They are not dancing, but only walking in their sleep,” is a bon mot of his Majesty, who is not much addicted to wit—better if he were; Fieschi would never have thought of killing him. But they are better walkers than we are. They are better dressed, too, though with less cost. In our country the same dress suits all ladies of the same size, being always made after the last doll that came over by the packet, only a little more fashionable. And so we are
“Laced
From the full bosom to the slender waist,
Fine by degrees and beautifully less.”
And some of us
“Gaunt all at once and hideously little.”
In Paris, a mantua-maker is a bel esprit, and does not follow rigidly but studies to soften a little the tyranny and caprices of fashion, and she knows the value of the natural appearances in the constitution of beauty. The fashions have, to be sure, their general feature, but the shades of differences are infinite. The woman and the frock, though not indissolubly united, seem made for each other. The French lead fashion; we follow it: their genius is brought out by invention; ours quenched by imitation. I looked on upon this ball with all the gaze of young astonishment. Staring is an expression of countenance you will never see among savages and well-bred people; I am somewhere between the two.
Your husband dived into the crowd, to try to discover some pearl of French beauty; ineffectually. One is at a loss, he says, for a temptation. He is so anatomical! he would like better Helen’s skeleton than Helen herself. We don’t see the same thing in a woman by a great deal—or in anything else. Travellers don’t see the same things in Paris. Baron Rothschild and Sir Humphrey saw not the same thing in a guinea; and how many things did not Phidias see in his Venus, which neither you nor I will ever see in it.