Paris, February, 1836.
There has been raging, the whole of this month, a disease which prevails here, usually about this season of the year—a kind of intermitting fever. It affects the whole city with a violent agitation of limbs, and often drives the features entirely out of the human countenance. You can’t recognise your most intimate friends. The fit comes on exactly at midnight, and then the whole of Paris rushes out of doors, like an insurrection.
Men of the most sober habits, but ten minutes before—men and women, who all day long were in the entire possession of their senses—the moment it strikes twelve, pour out like a deluge upon the streets; some scrambling into cabriolets, and others running through the mud up to, I don’t know where, until they get together in the theatre, or some great town-hall, and there they dance the whole night long, as if their legs had taken leave of their senses. Towards morning, they get into a kind of paroxysm—not a galloping consumption, but a gallopade—which being over, they recover, and go quietly to bed, and the fit does not return till the next midnight.
The doctor was seized with this disorder yesterday, at the usual hour, and I never saw any more of him till this morning. After a little sleep, he feels much calmer, and it is thought he will recover.—— But I am getting alarmed about myself; the disease is catching.—In a word, I am going to-night, exactly at twelve, to the Grand Masquerade, at the Grand Opera; and I am, this minute, going to embellish myself for the occasion. I have two days between me and the packets; and, consequently, time enough for my correspondence. Good night.
What a silly old world this is! Nothing can be farther from my wishes, than to say any thing rude of your dear French people; but, ’pon honour, they are the greatest fools I have seen in my life, and I have seen a good many. If you don’t believe me, you have but to say so; and then I will take you to the mad-house, and prove to you that all the world is reasonable. The Boulevards have been running over with the mob these three days; and the galleries, and windows, and roofs of the adjacent houses are bending under their multitudes; cavalcades, the most fantastic, are passing up one side of the street, and returning by the other for several miles, from the earliest to the latest sun; while the margin, and middle, and all the interstices are filled with a nation of buffoons, trying, each one, by some ridiculous figure, attitude, or action, to outshine his neighbour in foolery: and all are as intent upon this, as if pursuing some main purpose of their existence.
There goes the archbishop, with a pig by the tail; and there a nun on the back of an ass, her heels kicking its sides most ridiculously, without increasing its speed; and there a two-years’ baby, in breeches and silk hose, is giving pap to its papa, a great Irish giant of a man, seven feet or more, in a slobbered bib. I saw, yesterday, a dozen, male and female, carried along upon a platform, leisurely eating their soup out of—what do you think?—If any thing can beggar description altogether ’tis a Carnival.
On the last day, the Mardi gras, there is an extraordinary exhibition of sumptuous equipages. An American Colonel keeps immense stables, inferior only to the great Condés, for these occasions. He has thirty-six horses, all of the noblest blood, and on this last day, out he comes, with my Lord S——, who lives also in great circumstances, in elegant rivalry. His and my lord’s faces are well known upon the Boulevards—“Delia is not better known to our dogs.” The Colonel popped out yesterday, seventeen carriages-and-four, and knocked all the other showmen upon the head. He is praised this morning in every one of the newspapers.
Maskers and harlequins are horrid in day-light, especially in Paris with their gay liveries all besmirched in mire; they are only tolerable in moonlight and candlelight when half the mummery is concealed. That which delights me most is the “Masquerades,” which I will now tell you of, though I cannot pretend to describe them in all their pomp and circumstance.
The most frequented are those at Musard’s, and the most fashionable those at the Grand Opera. In the former, conversation is relieved by dancing, and many of the gentlemen are in masks and fancy costume, and every thing is intended here for vivid impressions. The orchestra has the extraordinary addition of the tolling of a bell, and the dragging of a chain, mixed with a full war-whoop of human voices. At this house there is much liberty of action with entire liberty of speech.
I saw here one of the finest figures of a woman I have ever seen, in a cook-maid’s dress, and looking as innocent as if she had lived before Adam and Eve. I dialogued with her now and then as she came over to my side in the dance.—“Have you a place?” “Yes.”—“Do you like your master?” “Very much.”—“Would’nt change?” “No.”—“How much does he give you?” “A hundred francs a month.”—“But if I give you five hundred?” “Ah! c’est une autre affaire.”