Our Hundred Days in Europe

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

So I passed for the last time over the threshold of the Café Procope, where Voltaire had matured his plays and Piron sharpened his epigrams; where Jouffroy had battled with his doubts and fears; where, since their time,--since my days of Parisian life,--the terrible storming youth, afterwards renowned as Léon Michel Gambetta, had startled the quiet guests with his noisy eloquence, till the old habitués spilled their coffee, and the red-capped students said to each other, "Il ira loin, ce gaillard-là!"

But what to me were these shadowy figures by the side of the group of my early friends and companions, that came up before me in all the freshness of their young manhood? The memory of them recalls my own youthful days, and I need not go to Florida to bathe in the fountain of Ponce de Leon.

I have sometimes thought that I love so well the accidents of this temporary terrestrial residence, its endeared localities, its precious affections, its pleasing variety of occupation, its alternations of excited and gratified curiosity, and whatever else comes nearest to the longings of the natural man, that I might be wickedly homesick in a far-off spiritual realm where such toys are done with. But there is a pretty lesson which I have often meditated, taught, not this time by the lilies of the field, but by the fruits of the garden. When, in the June honeymoon of the seasons, the strawberry shows itself among the bridal gifts, many of us exclaim for the hundredth time with Dr. Boteler, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." Nature, who is God's handmaid, does not attempt a rival berry. But by and by a little woolly knob, which looked and saw with wonder the strawberry reddening, and perceived the fragrance it diffused all around, begins to fill out, and grow soft and pulpy and sweet; and at last a glow comes to its cheek, and we say the peach is ripening. When Nature has done with it, and delivers it to us in its perfection, we forget all the lesser fruits which have gone before it. If the flavor of the peach and the fragrance of the rose are not found in some fruit and flower which grow by the side of the river of life, an earth-born spirit might be forgiven for missing them. The strawberry and the pink are very delightful, but we could be happy without them.

So, too, we may hope that when the fruits of our brief early season of three or four score years have given us all they can impart for our happiness; when "the love of little maids and berries," and all other earthly prettinesses, shall "soar and sing," as Mr. Emerson sweetly reminds us that they all must, we may hope that the abiding felicities of our later life-season may far more than compensate us for all that have taken their flight.

I looked forward with the greatest interest to revisiting the Gallery of the Louvre, accompanied by my long-treasured recollections. I retained a vivid remembrance of many pictures, which had been kept bright by seeing great numbers of reproductions of them in photographs and engravings.

The first thing which struck me was that the pictures had been rearranged in such a way that I could find nothing in the place where I looked for it. But when I found them, they greeted me, so I fancied, like old acquaintances. The meek-looking "Belle Jardinière" was as lamb-like as ever; the pearly nymph of Correggio invited the stranger's eye as frankly as of old; Titian's young man with the glove was the calm, self-contained gentleman I used to admire; the splashy Rubenses, the pallid Guidos, the sunlit Claudes, the shadowy Poussins, the moonlit Girardets, Géricault's terrible shipwreck of the Medusa, the exquisite home pictures of Gerard Douw and Terburg,--all these and many more have always been on exhibition in my ideal gallery, and I only mention them as the first that happen to suggest themselves. The Museum of the Hôtel Cluny is a curious receptacle of antiquities, many of which I looked at with interest; but they made no lasting impression, and have gone into the lumber-room of memory, from which accident may, from time to time, drag out some few of them.

After the poor unsatisfactory towers of Westminster Abbey, the two massive, noble, truly majestic towers of Notre Dame strike the traveller as a crushing contrast. It is not hard to see that one of these grand towers is somewhat larger than the other, but the difference does not interfere with the effect of the imposing front of the cathedral.

I was much pleased to find that I could have entrance to the Sainte Chapelle, which was used, at the time of my earlier visit, as a storehouse of judicial archives, of which there was a vast accumulation.

With the exception of my call at the office of the American Legation, I made but a single visit to any person in Paris. That person was M. Pasteur. I might have carried a letter to him, for my friend Mrs. Priestley is well acquainted with him, but I had not thought of asking for one. So I presented myself at his headquarters, and was admitted into a courtyard, where a multitude of his patients were gathered. They were of various ages and of many different nationalities, every one of them with the vague terror hanging over him or her. Yet the young people seemed to be cheerful enough, and very much like scholars out of school. I sent my card in to M. Pasteur, who was busily engaged in writing, with his clerks or students about him, and presently he came out and greeted me. I told him I was an American physician, who wished to look in his face and take his hand,--nothing more. I looked in his face, which was that of a thoughtful, hard-worked student, a little past the grand climacteric,--he was born in 1822. I took his hand, which has performed some of the most delicate and daring experiments ever ventured upon, with results of almost incalculable benefit to human industries, and the promise of triumph in the treatment of human disease which prophecy would not have dared to anticipate. I will not say that I have a full belief that hydrophobia--in some respects the most terrible of all diseases--is to be extirpated or rendered tractable by his method of treatment. But of his inventive originality, his unconquerable perseverance, his devotion to the good of mankind, there can be no question. I look upon him as one of the greatest experimenters that ever lived, one of the truest benefactors of his race; and if I made my due obeisance before princes, I felt far more humble in the presence of this great explorer, to whom the God of Nature has entrusted some of her most precious secrets.

There used to be--I can hardly think it still exists--a class of persons who prided themselves on their disbelief in the reality of any such distinct disease as hydrophobia. I never thought it worth while to argue with them, for I have noticed that this disbelief is only a special manifestation of a particular habit of mind. Its advocates will be found, I think, most frequently among "the long-haired men and the short-haired women." Many of them dispute the efficacy of vaccination. Some are disciples of Hahnemann, some have full faith in the mind-cure, some attend the séances where flowers (bought from the nearest florist) are materialized, and some invest their money in Mrs. Howe's Bank of Benevolence. Their tendency is to reject the truth which is generally accepted, and to accept the improbable; if the impossible offers itself, they deny the existence of the impossible. Argument with this class of minds is a lever without a fulcrum.