I send you this by Mr. C——, of Philadelphia, with a single sheet of music, a delightful air from the Puritani—an air which is graven upon ten thousand hearts. Oh, if you had heard Rubini sing it over the coffin of Bellini at the Invalids! The sexton wept. It stole upon the ear as if from the spheres—mournful as the wood-pigeon’s moan:—
——“Soft as the mother’s lullaby
When babies sleep.”
Learn to sing it in your most plaintive voice. I will love you the more for recalling one of the tenderest scenes of my absence. Good night.
LETTER XXIII.
Return of Spring.—A New Venus.—The Artesian Well.—Montmartre—Donjon of Vincennes.—St. Ouen.—St. Germain.—The Pretender.—Machine de Marli.—Versailles.—The Water-works.—The Swiss Garden.—Trianon.—Races at Chantilly.—Stables of the Great Condé—Lodgings in a French Village.—A Domestic Occurrence.—The Boots.—The Alarm.—The Bugs.—Extract from Pepys.—Delights of Chantilly.—Unlucky Days.—Solitude in a Crowd.—The Cure.—The King’s Birth-day.—The Concert.—The Fire-works.—The Illuminations.—The Buffoons.—Punch.—The Eating Department.—The Mat de Cocagne.
Paris, May 6th, 1836.
Your letter, of March the 25th, has arrived. I am sorry to hear the north wind has given himself such airs. Here he has been quite reasonable. The lilacs of the Luxembourg are again in their pride. The gardener is stirring up the loose earth, while May recals the roses with refreshing showers. How delightful to see the Spring thus repairing the desolations of Winter! Your trees of Pine Hill, which persevere in being green the year round, do not please so much as those which strip off in November, and put on their green and flowery robes in April. Pines are called rightly, the dress of winter and the mourning of summer.
What has immutability to do with this earth? where one tires even with a uniformity of excellence. If I were to make, like Ovid, a golden age, I would say not a word of eternal Spring. How delightful is this morning! The sun has just poured out its first rays upon the dews, and every lilac has a pearl in its ear. They are setting out, in the Palais Royal, a new Venus of the whitest marble. Look at the jade, in the south-east corner, in her impudent attitude; she is stooping, and ungartering a snake from her leg. Pretty, to be sure, if one had a taste for a hieroglyphic woman; as for me, I like the little thing in its natural attributes of flesh and blood, in its straight nose; lips double dyed; and overlooking the humid eye of gray, or dark, or blue, and the “darling little foot.”
They are also setting out chairs for the Summer, and the gallery of Orleans already weeps its empty halls. These chairs are let at two sous the sitting, and bring money to the private purse of our “citizen king.” The “right of location” is 32,000 francs, and the lessee gets rich by the bargain. This sitting out upon chairs is an ancient custom; it is the way Frenchwomen take a walk. I have read in Scarron some verses in allusion to it.
Tous les jours une chaise
Me coute un écu,
Pour porter a l’aise
Votre chien, &c. &c.