His darling Constitution overthrown, Pépé wandered forth an exile. But hope never deserted him. Baffled, he was not discouraged. He sought on all sides for means to renew the struggle. And truly some of his projects, however creditable to his intrepidity and zeal, say little for his prudence and coolness of judgment. What can be thought of his application in 1823 to Mavrocordato for a thousand chosen Greeks, with whom he proposed to land in Calabria! Of course the chief of the new Greek government civilly declined leading a thousand of his countrymen for any such desperate venture. In 1830 the general's hopes were raised high by the success of the French revolution. His active brain teemed with projects, and in his mind's eye he again saw the tri-colored banner floating from St. Elmo's towers. Vain delusions, not destined to realization. The feeble attempts of the Italian patriots were easily suppressed, and Pépé retired to Paris, to mourn the fate of his beloved and beautiful country, doomed to languish in Austrian servitude and under Bourbon despotism.
FRENCH PLAYERS AND PLAYHOUSES.[13]
In these dull days of latter winter few of our readers will quarrel with us for transporting them to the gayest capital in Europe, the city of pleasure, the Capua of the age. In London, at least, there is just now little to regret; it wears its dreariest, dirtiest, and most disconsolate garb. The streets are slippery with black mud and blacker ice, a yellow halo surrounds the gas lamps, even the Bude lights look quenched and uncomfortable; cabmen, peevish at the paucity of fares, curse with triple intensity the wood pavement and the luckless garrons that slide and stumble over it; the blue and benumbed fingers of Italian grinders can scarcely turn the organ handles; tattered children and half-starved women, pale, shivering, and tearful, pester the pedestrian with offers of knitted wares, and of winter nosegays, meagre and miserable as themselves. The popular cheerfulness and merry-making of Christmas time are over, and have not yet been succeeded by the bustle and gaiety of the fashionable world. London is abandoned to its million of nobodies; the few thousands whose presence gives it life are still on the list of absentees.
Mark the contrast. But a minute ago we were in London—dull, empty London—and behold! we are in Paris—gay, crowded, lively Paris—now at the height of its season, and in full swing of carnival dissipation. By a process of which, since the days of Scheherazade, we alone possess the secret, we have flown over Kent, skimmed the Channel, sped across the uninteresting plains of Picardy, and are seated at dinner—where? In the spacious saloon of the Hotel des Princes, at the succulent table of the Café de Paris, or in the gaudy and dazzling apartments of the Maison Dorée? No matter. Or let us choose the last, the Maison Dédorée as it has been called, its external gilding having ill resisted the assaults of winter's snows and summer's parching heat. But although, as Mr. Moore of Ireland has informed us, all that's bright must fade, it follows not that the substantial deteriorates with the superficial. And the cookery of the Maison Dorée has improved as its gilding has rubbed off, until even the Café de Paris and the far-famed Trois Frères must veil their inferior charms before the manifold perfections of this Apician sanctuary. Here, then, we establish ourselves, in this snug embrasure, whence we have a full view of the throng of diners, whilst plate glass and a muslin curtain alone intervene between us and the broad asphalt of the Boulevard. A morocco book, a sheet of vellum, and a pencil, are before us. We write a dozen lines, and hand them to our companion; he reads, nods approval, and transfers the precious document to the smug and expectant waiter. The sharp eye of that Ganymede of the Gilt House had at once detected our Britannic origin, conspicuous in our sober garb and shaven chins; and doubtless he anticipated one of those uncouth bills of fare, infamous by their gastronomical solecisms, which Englishmen are apt to perpetrate, for he smiles with an air of agreeable disappointment as he glances at our judicious menu. No cause for wonder, most dapper of garçons! 'Tis not the first time, by many, that we have tabled our Napoleons on your damask napery. Schooled by indigestion, like Dido by misfortune, we have learned to order our dinner, even at Paris; and are no more to be led astray in the labyrinth of your interminable carte, than you, versed in the currency of Albion, are to be deluded by a Brummagem sovereign, or a note of the Bank of Elegance. So, presto, to work! our blessing and a double pourboire your promised reward. And, verily, he earns them well. The potage à la bisque is irreproachable; the truffles, those black diamonds of the epicure, are the pick of Perigueux; the chambertin is of the old green seal, the sparkling ai frappé to a turn, and, whilst we tranquilly degustate and deliberately imbibe, the influence of that greatest achievement of human genius, a good dinner, percolates through our system, telling upon our moral as upon our physical man. We feel ineffably benevolent: doubtless we look so; for yonder old gentleman with the white hair, red ribbon, and ditto face, dining, tête-à-tête with himself, and who is now at his eleventh dish—a tempting but inexplicable compound, which Ortila himself would be puzzled to analyse—contemplates us, in the intervals of his forkings-in, with a benign and admiring look. Our trusty friend and vis-à-vis turns his head, and we behold ourselves reflected in the opposite mirror. 'Tis as we thought: our physiognomy is philanthropical in the extreme. Quite the "mild, angelic air," that Byron talks of, when describing a gentleman in very different circumstances.
But we have no time to dwell upon our personal fascinations, or to speculate upon the cause of their increase within the last half hour; no eyes have we save for that Lucullian salmi steaming before us; and, like ourselves, all around us are absorbed in absorbing. Though every table is full, there is little noise in the crowded apartment. Men go to the Maison Dorée to eat, not to chatter. Without, too, there is a lull, after the bustle and racket of the afternoon. The day has been splendid—crisp, bright, and invigorating, and all the dandies and beauties of Paris have been abroad, driving in the Champs Elysées, galloping through the leafless avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, basking in the winter sun upon the cheerful Boulevards. The morning's amusements are over; those of the night have not yet begun. It is the moment of the interlude, the hour of dine, and Paris is busied in the most important of its diurnal acts. But, alas for the briefness of earthly joys, and the limited capacity of mortal stomachs! Sad is it that not even in this Golden Mansion can a feeble child of clay dine twice. We long for the appetite of a Dando, for the digestion of the bird of the desert, to recommence our meal, from the soup to the fondu. Vain are our aspirations. The soft languor of repletion steals over us, as we dally with our final olive, and buzz the Lafitte. Waiter! the coffee. At the word, the essence of Mocha, black as Erebus, and fragrant as a breeze, from the Spice Islands, smokes beneath our nostrils, the sparkling glasses receive the golden liqueur, and—WE HAVE DINED.
Good dinners and amusing theatricals enter largely into the pleasurable anticipations of English visiters to Paris. The fame of French cooks and actors is universal; all are eager to taste their productions, and witness their performances. Let a tyrannical royal ordinance or sumptuary law close the playhouses and cut down the bills of fare from a volume to a page, and a sensible diminution will ensue in the influx of foreigners into France. However great the desire to visit Versailles, stare at the Vendôme column, and ramble round the Palais Royal, those attractions, if put into the scale, will frequently be found less weighty than a vaudeville, a dinner at Véry's, and a breakfast at the renowned Rocher. In their expectations, both gastronomical and theatrical, strangers in Paris are often disappointed. We refer, of course, to tyros; not to the regular birds of passage who consider a month or two in the French metropolis as essential a part of their annual recreations as Ascot or the moors. These, of course, are well versed in Parisian mysteries, both of the drama and the dining room. But to the novice, a guide is necessary, whether through the crowded columns of a restaurateur's complicated carte, or amidst the fair promises held out by the two dozen playbills posted each morning at eleven o'clock upon the walls and pillars of Paris. For want of it, many a Johnny Newcome finds himself, after much bewilderment and painful deliberation, masticating an unsatisfactory dinner or witnessing a stupid play. We have often wondered that, amongst the multitude of Paris guide books, not one was to be found containing minute instructions to the stranger as to the dinners he should order, and the plays and actors he should see; giving, in short, a series of bills of fare, culinary and histrionic. This deficit has at last been supplied, at least as regards things theatrical. A book has been published which should find a place in the portmanteau of every Englishman starting for the French capital. Partly a compilation from French works, and partly the result of the author's own experience, it contains the general history of each of the Paris theatres, biographical and critical sketches of the actors, lists and anecdotes of the principal musicians and authors who compose and write for the stage, and, finally, an enumeration of the best performers at each theatre, and of the pieces in which they are seen to the greatest advantage. We need say no more to demonstrate the utility of the work to those going abroad. And by those remaining at home, its lively pages will be found a mine of amusing anecdote and curious information. Abounding in racy and pungent details, sometimes valuable from their connexion with historical characters, and as illustrations of the manners and morals of the times, the history of the French stage might almost be indefinitely prolonged; and, amidst the multitude of materials, it required some ingenuity to select, as Mr. Hervey has done, those most suitable to the taste of the day, and to pack them into a single volume.
Less than a century ago Paris contained but four theatres. These were, the French Comedy, the Royal Academy of Music or Grand Opera, the Italian Comedy, where vaudevilles and comic operas were performed, and the Theatre de la Foire. The two last named were the ancestors of the present Opera Comique. "Up to 1593," says Mr. Hervey, "the actors of the Théatres de la Foire St. Germain and St. Laurent consisted of dogs, cats, monkeys, and even rats, some of the latter animals being so admirably trained as to dance a grand ballet on a table, whilst one in particular, a white rat from Lapland, executed a saraband with surpassing grace." In 1716 the manager of one of these theatres obtained leave to give musical performances. This was the origin of the Opera Comique, which, forty years later, was amalgamated with the Italian comedy at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, whence, in 1783, the united companies transferred themselves to the Salle Favart. To the four theatres above enumerated, a few others were added during the reigns of Louis XV. and his successor, but they were of little note, and the increase in the number of theatrical establishments was unimportant until the revolution. Then license was universal, and no special one was required to open theatres. In 1791 a prodigious number were established, and, for some years afterwards, nearly fifty, large and small, existed in Paris. In the time of the empire twenty-eight of these remained, until Napoleon issued an edict reducing them to ten. At the present day the French capital contains twenty-two theatres, including the new Théatre Montpensier, the privilege for which was conceded to Alexandre Dumas at the request of the prince whose name it bears. Besides these there are a number of petty playhouses outside the barriers, at Batignolles, Belleville, and similar places, and Mr. Hervey informs us that a license has just been granted for a third French opera-house. Play-loving as the population of Paris undoubtedly is, it must be admitted that ample provision is made for its gratification.
The natural classification of the more important of the Parisian theatres, about fifteen in number, is under four heads: opera—tragedy, comedy, and drama—vaudeville—melodrama. The first division includes the French opera, the Italians, the Opera Comique; the second, the Français and the Odeon; at the Porte St. Martin and Ambigu Comique, melodrama is the staple commodity, varied, however, with performances of a lighter kind; whilst vaudevilles, broad farces, and short comedies constitute the chief stock in trade of the remainder. At many of the theatres an entire change in the style of the performances is of no unfrequent occurrence. We have known the Gaité in the dolefuls, and the Porte St. Martin abandoning its scaffolds, trap-doors, and other melodramatic horrors, for fun, farce, and ballet. As a regular thing, dancing is only to be seen at the Grand Opera. The license of each theatre specifies the nature of the performances allowed it, but this is a matter difficult exactly to define, and the rule is easy of evasion. A better check, perhaps, is the jealousy with which one theatre beholds another infringing on its attributes. Thus, some years ago, at the Français, where the performances should be confined to tragedy, high comedy, and drama, a play interspersed with songs was brought out. The Vaudeville viewed this as a usurpation of its privileges, and forthwith produced a piece called "La Tragédie au Vaudeville," saying that if the Français sang vaudevilles, the Vaudeville was justified in singing tragedy.