A poetic husband is out of humour with his wife, whose sedentary habits have become a serious item in the household expenses.
As I am about to leave Paris I have taken several flights to the country, to satisfy what yet remains of unsatiated curiosity; to Fontainbleau, where I walked upon the footsteps of the Belle Gabrielle, and stood upon the spot where the thunder of retributive justice fell upon the head of Napoleon. I stood this morning at nine by the Barrière des Martyrs accompanied by Mr. ——, of Philadelphia. We went to see an Artesian well they are boring there towards the centre of the earth; and through which we are to have a short passage to the Indies; and to get a peep of the sun at midnight. It is already nine hundred feet; the temperature increasing; and they are going to make mother Earth keep us in hot water. She is to heat our baths, warm our houses, make the tea, and spoil your trade in Anthracite coal; so says M. Arago, secretary of the Institute, member of the Chamber of Deputies, &c. But I have little taste for wells, except in very hot weather—unless it be those
——“delicate wells
Which a sweet smile forms in a lovely cheek.”
These are agreeable in all weathers.
We breakfasted in coming along, on the Heights of Montmartre, where we surveyed the great village, and stood on a level with its steeples. This was Henry the Fourth’s Camp at his taking of Paris; and lately of the English on a similar errand. Here were a great many John Bullish looking children with jovial rubicund faces, running about the hill. They have profited, the little rogues, by the gallantry of their mothers. The French children of the poorer classes have generally a sallow and unhealthy look.
Next we walked around the “Donjon of Vincennes,” its ditches and its towers. It has great titles stuck on its scutcheon. It has imprisoned the great Condé, Retz, Fouquet, Vendome, and Conti; also in later times, Diderot and Mirabeau: and it contains in its chapel the remains of the Duc d’Enghein, who was shot here. It was formerly the residence of kings. Philip Augustus lived here, and St. Louis, and Francis I., and Henry IV., and Blanche of Castile, and Agnes, called the “Lady of Beauty.” Charles IX. died here, and Mazarin, and that wicked creature Isabelle de Bavière. I visited this village last summer in fête-time, and had a dance in the Rotonde de Mars, and excellent music in the Grand salon des Chorybantes.
On this excursion we strolled also into the village of St. Ouen, four and a half miles from Paris. Here is a royal chateau, where Louis XVIII. reposed the second of May 1814, before his solemn entrance into the city. It is a delightful situation, overlooking the Seine, and the old kings as far back as Dagobert had a place here, which Louis XI. gave to the monks of St. Denis, “Afin qu’ils priassent Dieu pour la conservation de sa personne.” The Pavilion of Queen Blanche is yet remaining. On the site of the old palace is the elegant mansion of M. Terneaux, whose predecessors were M. and Madame Necker.
One of the curiosities of the place is the cradle, which rocked Madame de Staël. M. Terneaux is a member of the Deputies; he makes laws and Cashmere shawls—the shawls equal in tissue and beauty to those of Indus. Every body comes hither to see his Thibet goats and merinoes, and his silos, which are immense excavations in which grain is preserved fresh for many years.
We now went two leagues and a half further to St. Germain, and walked upon its elegant Terrace. The Pretender is buried here, and several of the little Pretenders; and in going along we looked at the Machine de Marli, which desires to be remembered to the Falls of Niagara. The water is climbing up an immense hill by dribbles to supply the little squirting Cupids at Versailles.
St. Germain was once the seat of the pleasures and magnificence of the Grand Monarch. He left it, because St. Denis, standing upon a high eastern eminence, overtopped his palace, a memento mori amidst the royal cups. Kings do not choose that these telltales of mortality shall look in at their windows.