Zerline looks after him with sudden sympathy, says that she heard him sigh, that he must be unhappy, and that, if her daughter lives, he is just the husband for her,—Zerline not having been particular as to marriage herself. She then rambles about the streets, singing,
"Achetez mes belles oranges,
Des fruits divins, des fruits exquis;
Des oranges comme les anges
N'en goutent pas en Paradis."
After this "hommage aux oranges!" to the discredit of Paradise, on which turns the plot of the play, a succession of maids of honour appear, clad in the same unfortunate livery of fardingales, enormous flat hats, powdered wigs, and stomachers. The Princess follows them, apparently armed by her costume against all the assaults of Cupid. But she, too, has an "affaire du cœur" upon her hands. In fact, from the Orangewoman up to the Throne, Cupid is the Lord of Palermo, with its "beau ciel, plaine fertile." The object of the Princess's love is the Marquis de Buttura, the suitor of her husband's supposed niece. Here is a complication! The enamoured wife receives a billet-doux from the suitor, proposing a meeting on his return from hunting. She tears the billet for the purpose of concealment, and in her emotion drops the fragments on the floor. That billet performs all important part in the end. The enamoured lady buys an orange, and gives a gold piece for it. Zerline, not accustomed to be so well paid for her fruit, begins to suspect this outrageous liberality; and having had experience in these matters, picks up the fragments of the letter, and gets into the whole secret.
The plot proceeds: the daughter of the orangewoman now appears. She is clad in the same preposterous habiliments. As the niece of the minister, she is created a princess, (those things are cheap in Italy,) and she, too, is in love with the officer in the tie-wig. She recognises the song of Zerline, "Achetez mes belles oranges," and sings the half of it. On this, the mother and daughter now recognise each other. It is impossible to go further in such a denouement. If Italian operas are proverbially silly, we are to recollect that this is not an Italian, but a French one; and that it is by the most popular comic writer of France.
The marriage of Gemma and Rodolf is forbidden by the pride of the King's sister, the wife of Boccanera, but Zerline interposes, reminds her of the orange affair, threatens her with the discovery of the billet-doux, and finally makes her give her consent: and thus the curtain drops. I grew tired of all this insipidity, and left the theatre before the catastrophe. The music seemed to me fitting for the plot—neither better nor worse; and I made my escape with right good-will from the clamour and crash of the orchestra, and from the loves and faux pas of the belles of Palermo.
The Obelisk.—I strayed into the Place de la Concorde, beyond comparison the finest space in Paris. I cannot call it a square, nor does it equal in animation the Boulevard; but in the profusion of noble architecture it has no rival in Paris, nor in Europe. Vive la Despotisme! every inch of it is owing to Monarchy. Republics build nothing, if we except prisons and workhouses. They are proverbially squalid, bitter, and beggarly. What has America, with all her boasting, ever built, but a warehouse or a conventicle? The Roman Republic, after seven hundred years' existence, remained a collection hovels till an Emperor faced them with marble. If Athens exhibited her universal talents in the splendour of her architecture, we must recollect that Pericles was her master through life—as substantially despotic, by the aid of the populace, as an Asiatic king by his guards; and recollect, also, that an action of damages was brought against him for "wasting the public money on the Parthenon," the glory of Athens in every succeeding age. Louis Quatorze, Napoleon, and Louis Philippe—two openly, and the third secretly, as despotic as the Sultan—were the true builders of Paris.
As I stood in the centre of this vast enclosure, I was fully struck with the effect of scene. The sun was sinking into a bed of gold and crimson clouds, that threw their hue over the long line of the Champs Elysées. Before me were the two great fountains, and the Obelisk of Luxor. The fountains had ceased to play, from the lateness of the hour, but still looked massive and gigantic; the obelisk looked shapely and superb. The gardens of the Tuilleries were on my left—deep dense masses of foliage, surmounted in the distance by the tall roofs of the old Palace; on my right, the verdure of the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de l'Etoile rising above it, at the end of its long and noble avenue; in my front the Palace of the Legislature, a chaste and elegant structure; and behind me, glowing in the sunbeams, the Madeleine, the noblest church—I think the noblest edifice, in Paris, and perhaps not surpassed in beauty and grandeur, for its size, by any place of worship in Europe. The air cool and sweet from the foliage, the vast place almost solitary, and undisturbed by the cries which are incessant in this babel during the day, yet with that gentle confusion of sounds which makes the murmur and the music of a great city. All was calm, noble, and soothing.
The obelisk of Luxor which stands in the centre of the "Place," is one of two Monoliths, or pillars of a single stone, which, with Cleopatra's Needle, were given by Mehemet Ali to the French, at the time when, by their alliance, he expected to have made himself independent. All the dates of Egyptian antiquities are uncertain—notwithstanding Young and his imitator Champollion—but the date assigned to this pillar is 1550 years before the Christian era. The two obelisks stood in front of the great temple of Thebes, now named Luxor, and the hieroglyphics which cover this one, from top to bottom, are supposed to relate the exploits and incidents of the reign of Sesostris.
It is of red Syenite; but, from time and weather, it is almost the colour of limestone. It has an original flaw up a third of its height, for which the Egyptian masons provided a remedy by wedges, and the summit is slightly broken. The height of the monolith is seventy-two feet three inches, which would look insignificant, fixed as it is in the centre of lofty buildings, but for its being raised on a plinth of granite, and that again raised on a pedestal of immense blocks of granite—the height of the plinth and the pedestal together being twenty-seven feet, making the entire height nearly one hundred. The weight of the monolith is five hundred thousand pounds; the weight of the pedestal is half that amount, and the weight of the blocks probably makes the whole amount to nine hundred thousand, which is the weight of the obelisk at Rome. It was erected in 1836, by drawing it up an inclined plane of masonry, and then raising it by cables and capstans to the perpendicular. The operation was tedious, difficult, and expensive; but it was worth the labour; and the monolith now forms a remarkable monument of the zeal of the king, and of the liberality of his government.
There is, I understand, an obelisk remaining in Egypt, which was given by the Turkish government to the British army, on the expulsion of the French from Egypt, but which has been unclaimed, from the difficulty of carrying it to England.