"A rainy day," writes Mr Gutzkow, on the 22nd March; "the sky grey, the Seine muddy, the streets filthy and slippery. You take refuge in the passages, and in the Palais Royal. Appointments are made in the passages and reading-rooms. Dinner at the Bœuf à la Mode, at the Grand Vatel or Restaurant Anglais, reserving Véry, Véfour, the Rocher de Cancale, for a brighter day and more cheerful mood."
"Paris is too large in bad weather, and too small in fine. Really, when the sun shines, Paris is very small. The fashionable part of the Boulevards, the Rue Vivienne, the Rue Richelieu, the Palais Royal, in all that region you are soon so much at home that your face is known to every shopkeeper. Always the same impressions. In the daytime often insipid; more cheerful at night, when the gas-lights gleam. The art of false appearances is here brought to the greatest perfection. The commonest shops are so arranged as to deceive the eye. Mirrors reflect the wares, and give the establishment an artificial extension, by lamplight a fantastical grandeur. You try the different restaurants, dining sometimes here, sometimes there, and gradually becoming initiated in the mysteries of the carte; for the most part avoiding all complicated preparations, and confining yourself to the dishes au naturel, as the surest means of not eating cat for calf. In the Palais Royal the shops are very dear, only the dinners on the first floor are cheap, and ennui is to be had gratis. Since so many handsome passages have been opened through the streets, the Palais Royal has lost its vogue. Some say that its decline began with its morality. The Cabinets particuliers, formerly of such evil repute, are now the smoking rooms of the coffeehouses. The Galerie d'Orleans is still the most frequented part of the Palais Royal. Here the loungers pull out their watches every five minutes; they all wait either for a friend or for dinner-time. Meanwhile they saunter to and fro, and admire the skill of their tailors in the range of mirrors on either side of the gallery.
"I followed the boulevards, the other day, from the Madeleine to the Column of July—a distance which it took me almost two hours to accomplish. From the Portes St Denis and St Martin, the boulevards lose their metropolitan aspect. They become more countrified and homely. The magnificence of the shops and coffeehouses diminishes and at last disappears. The luxurious gives way to the useful, the comfortable to the needy. At the Château d'Eau, where the boulevard turns off at a right angle, four or five theatres stand together. Here is the road to the Père la Chaise. Here fell the victims of Fieschi's infernal machine. From one of these little houses the murderous discharge was made. From which, I will not ask. Perhaps no one could tell me. Paris has forgotten her revolutions.
"Further on, the Goddess of Liberty flashes on us from the summit of the July Column. Why in that dancer-like attitude? It may show the artist's skill, but it is undignified, and seems to challenge the stormwind which once already blew down Freedom's Goddess from the Pantheon. Upon the column are engraved the names of the heroes of July.
"What stood formerly upon this spot? Upon yonder little house I read, 'Tavern of the Bastile.' This, then, was the birthplace of French freedom, of the freedom of the world. Upon this site, now bare, stood the fortress-prison, whose gloomy interior beheld for centuries the crimes of tyrants, the violence of despotism, whereof nought but dark rumours transpired to the world without. On the 14th July 1789, came the dawn. The Bastile was destroyed, and not one stone of it remained upon another. It is awfully impressive to contemplate this place, now so naked and empty, once so gloomily shadowed.
"We enter the suburb of the workmen, the faubourg St Antoine, the former ally and reliance of the Jacobins. Here things have a ruder and more strongly marked aspect. It is a sort of Frankfurt Sachsenhausen. By the Rue St Antoine we again reach the interior of the city, its most industrious and busy quarter. I love these working-day wanderings in the regions of labour. I prefer them to all the Sunday promenades upon the broad pavements of luxury. True that each of these intricate and dirty streets has its own particular and often nauseous odour. Here are the soapboilers, yonder a slaughter-house, here again, in the Rue des Lombards, the atmosphere is laden with the scent of spices and drugs. In the cellars, men, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, crush brimstone and pepper and a hundred other things in huge iron mortars; a noise and smell which reminds me of the treacle-grinders on the Rialto at Venice. And here, also, in these narrow alleys and dingy lanes, historical associations linger. Yonder is the battered chapel of St Méry, where, eight years ago, four hundred republicans, intrenched in the cloisters, strove against the whole armed might of Paris, and were overcome only by artillery. To-day the French Opposition takes things more easily. Its demonstrations are dinners, as in Germany. The popping of champagne corks causes no bloodshed. Written speeches, an article in a newspaper, a toast to the maintenance of order, another against tentatives insensées;—it will be long before such an opposition attains its end."
Mr Gutzkow, who does not conceal his ultra-liberal opinions, seems almost to regret the revolutionary days, and to pity Paris for the tranquillity which a firm and judicious government has at length succeeded in establishing within its walls. Had a republican outbreak taken place during his abode in the French capital, one might have expected to find him raising impromptu battalions from the eighty thousand Germans and Alsatians, who form an important item of the Parisian population. His doctrines will hardly gain him much favour with the powers that be in his own country. But for that he evidently cares little. He is one of the progress; Young Germany reckons in him a stanch and devoted partisan. With his democratic tendencies, and in Paris, where monuments of revolutions abound, and where a thousand names and places recall the struggles between the people and their rulers, it is not wonderful that his enthusiasm occasionally boils over, and that he vents or hints opinions which maturer reflection would perhaps induce him to repudiate.
A visit to Michel Chevalier suggests a comparison between the different modes of attaining to public honours and ministerial office in France and in Germany. "Most delightful to me was the acquaintance of Chevalier. Delightful and afflicting. Afflicting when I contrasted the treatment of talent in Germany with that which it meets in France. Michel Chevalier, the accomplished writer who knows how to handle so well and agreeably the dry topics of national economy, of railways and public works, ten years ago was a St Simonian. When the association of Menilmontant was prosecuted by the French government, he was condemned to a year's imprisonment. But those who persecuted him for his principles, prized him for his talents. Instead of letting him undergo his punishment, as would have been the case in Germany, they gave him money and sent him to North America, commissioned to make observations upon that country. Chevalier published, in the Journal des Debats, his able letters from the United States, returned to France, became professor at the University, and, a year ago, was made counsellor of state." In opposition to this example, Mr Gutzkow traces the progress of the German candidate for his office; pipes, beer, and dogs at the university, plucked in his examination, a place in an administration, counsellor, knight of several orders, vice-president of a province, president of a province, minister.
Although there are in Paris more Germans than foreigners of any other nation, little is seen and heard of them. They do not hang together, and form a society of their own, as do the English, and even the Spaniards and Italians. They may be classed under the heads of political refugees, artisans, men of science and letters, merchants and bankers. Few of them are of sufficient rank and importance to represent their nation with dignity, or sufficiently wealthy to make themselves talked of for their lavish expenditure and magnificent establishments. They have not, like the English, colonized and appropriated to themselves one of the best quarters of Paris. Mr Gutzkow complains of the scanty kindness and attention shown to his countrymen by the richer class of German residents. "I was in a drawing-room," he says, "whose owner was indebted for his fortune to a marriage with a German lady. Yet the Germans there present were neglected both by host and hostess. The German artist or scholar must not reckon on a Schickler or a Rothschild to introduce him into the higher circles of Parisian life. These rich bankers are of the same breed as the German waiters in Switzerland and Alsace, who, even when waiting upon Germans, pretend to understand only French. Music is the German's best passport to French society. You may be a great scientific genius, and find no admission at the renowned soirées of the Countess Merlin. Do but offer to take a part in one of the musical choruses, to strengthen the bass or the tenor, and you are welcome without name or fame, and even without varnished boots."
We have been diffuse upon the lighter texts afforded us by Mr Gutzkow's work, and must abstain from touching upon its graver portions. They will repay perusal. A vein of satire, sometimes verging on bitterness, is here and there perceptible in his pages. It forms no unpleasant seasoning to a very palatable book.