The American in Paris; vol. 2 of 2

by John Sanderson

We had a little spurt to-day upon rail-roads, and steam-boats; in which M. Thiers said there was in the United States a reckless disregard of human life; (a prolonged sensation!) and George Lafayette, his American partialities getting the better of his judgment, got up and defended our humanity. He gave himself as an example of the possibility of descending the Mississippi without being blown up—but nobody believed him; (grand mouvement dissentient!)

Since on the subject of Chambers, why not pay a visit to the “Chamber of Peers.” For this you must ascend the Seine to the Pont Neuf, and half a mile thence towards the south will bring you to the Palace of Luxembourg, the place of its sittings.

I wished a few days ago to see the interior of Madelaine, into which there is no admission; “not for the queen,” said the door-keeper; but after a little fuss about honesty, and receiving thirty sous, he permitted me to go in. In traversing the Luxembourg the same day, as I went whistling along, innocent of thought, I fell upon the ice against the statue of a goddess. In returning to my senses, I found a pair of fair arms about my neck; it was not the Queen of Love, who had stepped from her pedestal, but a servant maid, who did me this service, she said, by order of her mistress; and the incorruptible little wench refused, either for love or money, to tell me her mistress’s name.

I attempted a few days after to enter the Chamber of Peers, and was refused by the door-keeper; but, on placing in his hands a few francs, he furnished me the necessary passport.—What is the reason we find in no country the same fidelity from the public servants as from those in private life?

This anecdote is to introduce you with proper ceremony to the Peers. The etiquette of great houses always requires the guests to be detained a reasonable time in the ante-chamber. But since I am on the subject of bribery and corruption—your agent here, Mr. R., told me in excuse for high commissions, he had to hire witnesses to prove the decease of heirs; this he mentioned as a common business transaction.—“And did you succeed?” “Oh, yes, we killed them all off,” was his reply. I have seen also in Philadelphia an Irish labourer, taken at random from the street, who swore before a magistrate, a false oath, for a bribe of five dollars.

Now if this bribery is so easy in all the worlds, old and new, ask your husband, if you please, who makes laws, whether it ought not to suggest to the statesman, the impropriety of exacting oaths at all; which do not make the honest man more faithful, and certainly make the dishonest more corrupt.

The Peers have their chamber in the second story of this Palace. It is a semicircle on a diameter of eighty feet. A beautiful row of Corinthian pillars of veined stucco sustains the vault, upon which Le Sueur has painted the usual number of Virtues, civil and military; and between these pillars are statues of the most famous ancient orators and statesmen; Solon, Aristides, Scipio, Demosthenes, Cicero, Camillus, Cincinnatus, Cato of Utica, Phocion, and Leonidas. The disposition of the chairs and benches is the same as in the Chamber of Deputies. It is tapestried with blue velvet, wainscotted with looking-glasses, and a beautiful lustre descending in the centre produces the light of five hundred tapers.

It is a rich and elegant chamber—a kind of boudoir of the French nobility. The staircase which leads to it is the most magnificent, they say, of all Europe.—The Peers are either dukes, marquises, counts, viscounts, or barons, and except the members of the royal family, and princes of the blood, are titled only for life. They sit at the same time as the Deputies, under the Presidency of the Chancellor of France. Their concurrence is necessary to all laws, and they try all cases of state crimes and high treasons. They have had a long time on hand Fieschi and the never ending “Procès Monstre.”

To set apart a few hundred individuals from the great herd, and give them the highest opportunities of improvement and polish, would furnish, one might suppose, at least a pretty ornament to a nation. However, it turns out that, in a high degree of fortune men do not submit to the labour necessary to intellectual improvement, and that they are exposed to more vicious temptations; that they have less dread of public opinion, and are spoilt in temper, by indulgences. In a word, we know that human nature does not bear a very high degree of refinement.

As the taste may be rude and uncultivated, so it may be excessively delicate; and fastidiousness is almost as disagreeable as grossness. But inequalities are an ordinance of nature in society, as much as in the structure of the globe we inhabit; nor can we level the hills, or so raise the valleys that the hills will lose their eminence. The three great classes, besides the other reasons for their existence, may, for aught I know, be necessary to the improvement, and well-being of each other; the upper communicating emulation and refinement to that immediately below, and the lower furnishing nerve and industry to that immediately above.