The next few entries contain the record of a short visit to Paris made at the conclusion of this year.
Nov. 3-5, 1815.—From London to Dover you are received at all the inns with a jerking empressement, that shows travellers to France are considered as the spoiled children of the travelling world, who are trying to get rid of themselves, and must be flattered and humoured. Elsewhere one meets an easy, quiet civility, as if one’s object might be one’s own business, and it was not necessary to incite and indulge one’s whims to keep up the spirit of change. But on this road the whole family pour out on all occasions, not excepting the young ladies en papillotes; there is a double portion of alacrity, and one is treated as if carrying despatches on which hung the fate of Europe.
Nov. 14, Hôtel Mont Blanc, Paris.—After an absence of eight years, I find that while the French have veered to every point of the compass as to morals, religion, and government, they have been constant to their milliners, opera-dancers, and restaurateurs, who are all the same I left. Madame Gardel still bears the palm for grace; Madame, or rather Monsieur, Le Roy, for millinery; and Véry and Beauvilliers are still the princes of restaurateurs. The gentleness, the smoothness of manners of the English, the harmony of their voices, and the repose and educated expression of their countenances, form a striking contrast to the harsh, sudden, angular, impatient appearance of the French. Sometimes these assume a veil of softness, but it is transparent, and suddenly thrown off when anything touches or even threatens their interest or their vanity in the most distant point.
I inhabit an apartment that affects to be luxurious. The suite of rooms are seven, and the walls ornamented with large looking-glasses; but my bedroom is without a carpet, and the curtains both of bed and window are of embroidered muslin, unlined, so I shiver in state. My bedroom also is without a bell, so that whenever I want my maid I must run or roar, which disagrees extremely with the dignified of coup-d’œil of my apartment.
Nov. 18.—My dear little —— has begun to take lessons in dancing from Mons. Reichard, who modestly says—‘Je suis le premier démonstrateur du monde;’ and who tells me that if —— attends to his dancing he will be a very handsome man—a whimsical connexion of cause and effect, recalling Molière’s Vous êtes orfèvre.
I had the pleasure of seeing in one evening, Corneille’s Menteur, and Les Plaideurs, by Racine. To see on the same night the first good French comedy (which, however, is an acknowledged translation from the Spanish), and the two best comic productions of the greatest tragic writers of this nation, was fortunate. But Les Plaideurs being founded on an alienation of mind, gives pain, in spite of all its humour and brilliancy. No superstructure can universally please on this foundation, which appears to me radically faulty, and equally an offence against good taste and good feeling.
When I saw the Comtesse de Pimbeche she immediately reminded me of my dear friend Mad. de Sévigné, who says, ‘Je suis une vraie Comtesse de Pimbeche;’ and I was glad to laugh at what had diverted her.
Nov. 20.—The poor dismantled Gallery! Here are the empty frames of the fine pictures, which have been restored to their rightful owners; a mournful memento, however just the act of restoration. Still, much is left. Albano’s Cupids still whet their arrows, and Cuyp’s soft light still beams from the walls.
The Hôtel des Invalides is one of the most glorious monuments of the reign of Louis XIV. The veterans are well fed and clothed. They lodge in a palace, and command a view spacious and magnificent, as far as regular plantations and wide alleys can make it so. Sixty years of age, or wounds that disable from service, are the titles of admission. They receive forty sous a month pocket-money.
The general idea of such a retreat for the veterans of war, flatters the imagination at a distance; but when we approach, it is in detail a melancholy sight. There is something so disproportioned between the grandeur of the building and the maimed, old, and debilitated figures who creep and shiver through its magnificent arcades; and also between the remuneration of a mere provision for the necessities of life, and those acts, always of self-devotion, sometimes of eminent heroism, connected with a military career, that one gladly escapes from so painful a contrast; and when one has said, This is the best that unlimited power can do for valour in the aggregate, one turns shuddering to the worst, and sees in their true light the calamities of war. A few priests and Sœurs de la Charité glide along among these feeble veterans, these remnants of themselves, adding to the solemnity of the picture. The day was bitterly cold; possibly the summer sun might have given it a different colouring.