Christ give them the rest that he keeps in store,
And anchor their souls in the harbor of God!”
He arrived at Marseilles with but five dollars for the expense of a journey of five hundred miles on foot. Dark outlook, indeed, on entering for the first time a country with whose language he was unacquainted. Through rain and mud, sunshine and darkness, he moved on, courageous as ever, and enjoying with the same zest his glimpses of ancient cathedrals and renowned localities. At Lyons he received a small amount of money by mail, and at a time when death by starvation seemed but a few hours removed. The story of his mishaps by land and by water, on his way from Lyons to Paris is a very exciting narration, as he relates them in his “Views Afoot,” and yet shows the best side of a most terrible experience. But Paris was reached at last, and in the first week of February, 1846, they found a lodging place in the Rue de la Harpe, at the rate of two dollars and eighty cents a month. He lived on twenty cents a day, and in place of a teacher of French, subscribed at a circulating library and picked out the words and phrases by downright hard study in his fireless and damp attic. For five weeks he studied and rambled and endured privation, learning Paris by heart and finding himself made free and happy by the atmosphere of gayety which pervades everything there. His favorite resort was the Place de la Concorde, which is an open space at one side of the palace of the Tuileries, and at the foot of that magnificent embowered avenue called the Champs Elysées. There were then, as now, the enchanting groves, with the gardens, concert bowers, and shy booths. There was the obelisk from Luxor, which called Bayard’s attention to Egypt and created a strong desire to see that ancient land of the Nile. There were the solid walls of the Tuileries upon one side, the river Seine upon another, while the twin palaces, with the distant front of the Madeleine Church showing between them, shut out the populous city on the other. But the pavements, flowers, fountains, bronze figures, obelisk and palaces were the least of the attractions which called this persevering young student to that celebrated square. It was there that many of the most important acts in the history of France were performed. It was there that kings were made, and there they were beheaded. It was there that priests had preached, and there that they were murdered. It was there that in the crimson and lurid days of ’94, the Red Revolutionists each day filled the baskets at the foot of the guillotine with the heads of twoscore and often threescore citizens. Who would surmise that in a city so gay, so cheerful, so imbued with the very spirit of pleasure and childlike life, such hideous deeds of blood and destruction could be performed! Quick-tempered, excitable people, going with the flash of a thought from one extreme to the other. No place in all Paris better exhibits the character of the nation, than the Place de la Concorde. There Bayard often lingered and pondered, seeing clearly through the film of gay attire, garlands of roses, delightful wines, and gorgeous carriages, the dangerous yet often heroic elements, which have so often thrown off the crust of fashion and politeness, and flooded the beautiful city with seething torrents from the deepest hell.
PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.
He sought out the master-pieces of art in the galleries, cathedrals, and parks, and dwelt long and caressingly upon their entrancing forms, having now passed through a school that left him a competent critic. He gazed after the carriage where Louis Philippe rode in state, and wondered if such a monarchy could endure, and with a powerful yearning fumbled the unintelligible leaves of Victor Hugo, Beranger, and Lamartine—not, however, to be long unintelligible.
There, again, he was in financial distress, and was saved from great suffering by the unexpected kindness of a merchant, who, like Mr. Chandler and Mr. Patterson at the beginning of his career, loaned him money, although Bayard was a stranger and could give no security.
From Paris via Versailles and Rouen, he walked to Dieppe, and, after crossing the Channel, travelled by third-class car to London, where he arrived with but thirty cents in French money. With no money to pay his lodging, with a letter from home in the post-office, on which he could not pay the postage, he made desperate attempts to obtain employment as a printer. But the “Trade Unions” were so omnipotent, that no stranger without a certificate could be set at work without a “strike.” At last, when long without his usual meals, and sure of being refused a lodging, he applied to Mr. Putnam, who was conducting the London agency of the American publishing firm, who loaned him five dollars, and he could again eat and sleep. Several weeks of waiting intervened, in which Mr. Putnam kindly kept Bayard in employment, at a salary sufficient to pay his board, before the money came from America to take them home. Even then the captain of the vessel on which he returned with his two friends who started with him nearly two years before, was compelled to take a promise for a part of the fare. Captain Morgan, who commanded the vessel, was one of the noblest men that ever paced a deck, and so popular did he become, that his biography was published thirty years after this passage, in an illustrated number of “Scribner’s Magazine.” Their voyage was a fair one, their landing in New York a happy one; but no pen except his own can describe the joy of seeing again his own country, and of walking at evening into the door of that home which he left two years before as a boy, and to which he then returned a man.