[TO BE CONTINUED]
THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES OF PARIS.
"Paris," once said Victor Hugo to me, "is the hostess of all the nations. There all the world is at home. It is the second best place with all foreigners—the fatherland first, and afterward Paris."
There was a great deal of truth in the observation, and especially is it true as regards Americans. By our natural sociability and versatility of temperament, by our love of all bright and pleasant surroundings, by our taste for pleasure and amusement, we assimilate more closely in our superficial characteristics to the French nation than we do to any other. Our Britannic cousins are too cold, too unsociable, too heavy for our fraternization, and mighty barriers of dissimilarity of language, of tastes, of customs and manners divide us from the European nation which of all others we most closely resemble in essential particulars—namely, the Northern Germans. The Prussians have been called—and that, too, with a good deal of truth—the Yankees of Europe; and if the term "Yankees" means, as it usually does in European parlance, the entire population of the United States, we citizens of the great republic have every right to feel proud of the comparison. Yet, with all our genuine respect and admiration for the Prussians, there are but few American tourists who take kindly to that people or their country. The lack of the external polish, the graceful manners and winning ways of the Parisians is severely felt by the chance tarrier within the gates of Berlin. We accord our fullest meed of honor to the great conquering nation of Europe, to its wonderful system of education, its admirable military discipline, and its sturdy opposition to superstition and ignorance in their most aggressive form. And yet we do not like Prussia or the Prussians. We scoff at Berlin, planted on a sandy plain and new with the thriving, aggressive newness of some of our own cities. We long for the soft shadows of antiquity, the dim twilight of past glories, to overhang our daily path as we journey onward through the storied lands of the ancient world. We have enough of bright progressive prosperity at home. Something of the feeling of the artist, who turns from the trim, elegant damsel arrayed in the latest fashion to paint the figure of a beggar-girl draped in picturesque rags, hangs about us as we travel. It is only to Paris—Paris beautiful in its strange blending of smoky ruins and splendid, freshly-erected mansions—that we can pardon the white glare of newly-opened streets, the Vandal desecration of antique landmarks, the universal sacrifice of old memories, historic associations and antique picturesqueness on that altar of modern progress whose high priest was Baron Haussmann and whose divinity was Napoleon III.
We love Paris, we Americans abroad, and we like the Parisians. One side of our affection grows and strengthens and sends forth new shoots with every passing day. The longer one lives in Paris the better one loves it. Its beauty becomes part and parcel of one's daily life. The mighty sweep of palace and arcade and museum and church, the plash of sunlit fountains, the rustle and the shimmer of resplendent foliage, the grace of statue, the grandeur of monument, the far-stretching splendor of brilliant boulevard and bustling street,—all these make up a picture whose lines are engraven on our heart of hearts. Often, passing along the street, some far-off vista, some effect of light and color, some single point of view, strikes on the sense with new and startling beauty, and we pause to gaze and to admire, and to exclaim for the thousandth time, How fair is Paris!
And she is so prodigal of her treasures, this goodly city! She lavishes them on all comers without fee or favor. All day long her princely art-galleries stand open to welcome the passing visitor. One comes and goes unhindered and unquestioned in church or museum, and even the service of guides and boats and cars to the sewers, and of official guides to the Catacombs, is given without compensation—nay more, all fees are strictly; forbidden. There is no city on earth that receives its guests with such splendid and lavish hospitality. Apart from one's board and lodging, it is possible for a stranger to come to Paris and to visit all its principal sights without the expenditure of a single sou. And for the persons who, prolonging their stay, wish in some sort to take up their permanent residence in Paris, things are smoothed and ironed and the knots picked out in the most wonderful way. Your board is dainty and your bed soft. Velvet-footed and fairy-handed beings minister to your wants. You are clothed as if by magic in garments of marvelous beauty. The very rustle of your letter of credit is as an open sesame to treasure-chambers to which Ali Baba's cavern was but a shabby cellar. And if, on the contrary, your means are limited and your wants but few, the science of living has been so exactly conned and is so perfectly understood that your franc-piece will buy you as many necessaries as ever your fifty-cent greenback did home, and that, too, in face of the fact that all provisions are now, owing to the war and the taxes, as dear, if not dearer than they are in Philadelphia. If a stranger comes to Paris and wishes to live comfortably and economically, there are plenty of respectable, well-situated establishments in the best section of the city where he can obtain a comfortable, well-furnished room and well-cooked, well-served meals, for eight to ten francs a day—such accommodations as five dollars would scarcely avail to purchase in Philadelphia or New York.
The whole secret of the matter is, that in France everybody understands the art of making the most out of everything. No scrap of food is wasted, no morsel cast aside, till every particle of nourishment it can yield is carefully extracted. The portions given to the guests at the minor hotels, where one lives en pension at so much per diem, are carefully measured for individual consumption. The slice of steak, the tiny omelette, the minute moulded morsels of butter, even the roll of bread and little sucrier and cream-jug placed before each person, have each been carefully gauged as to the usual dimensions of an ordinary appetite. Nothing is squandered and nothing is wasted. When one recalls the aspect of our hotel tables at home—the bread-plates left with their piles of cold, uneatable corn-bread, and heavy, chilled muffins and sodden toast uneaten, uncared-for and wasted; the huge steak, with its scrap of tenderloin carefully scolloped out, and the rest left to be thrown away; the broiled chicken—the legs scorned in favor of the more toothsome breast; the half-emptied plates of omelettes and fried potatoes,—one realizes how low prices for board in Paris are still compatible with the increased price of provisions, and why we must pay five dollars at home for accommodations for which we expend two here. The same wastefulness creeps into all the details of our hotel-life. If we want a glass of ice-water, for instance, we are straight-way supplied with a pitcher brimming over with huge crystal lumps of transparent ice. One-half the quantity would suffice for all actual purposes: the rest is left to melt and run to waste.
The fact is, that we citizens of the United States live more luxuriously than any other people on the face of the earth. On an average we dress better, fare better, sleep softer, and combat the cold in winter and the heat in summer with more scientific persistency, than do any of the so-called luxurious nations of Europe. Take, for instance, the matter of heating and lighting. A few of the leading hotels in Paris, and a small minority among the most expensive suites of private apartments, have gas introduced into all the rooms, but as a general thing it is confined to the public rooms, and the unfortunate wight who longs to see beyond the end of his nose is forced to wrestle with dripping candles and unclean lamps, known only by tradition in our native land. The gaslight, which is a common necessary in the simplest private dwelling in an American city, is here a luxury scarcely attainable save by the very wealthiest. And we do not know how precious our gaslight is till we have lost it. To sit in a dim parlor where four lighted candles struggle vainly to disperse the gloom, to dress for opera or ball by the uncertain glimmer of those greasy delusions, is enough to make one forswear all the luxuries of Paris, and flee homeward forthwith.
Then in winter comes the question of warmth. What is more delicious than to plunge from the iced-champagne atmosphere of a sparkling winter's day in America into the nest-like, all-pervading warmth of an American home? Here such comfort is wholly unknown. The cold, though less severe than with us, is damp, raw and insidious, and creeps under wraps with a treacherous persistency that nothing can shut out. The ill-fitting windows, opening in the old door-like fashion, let in every breath of the chill outer air. A fire is a handful of sticks or half a dozen lumps of coal. The calorifère, a poor substitute for our powerful furnaces, is a luxury for the very rich—an innovation grudgingly granted to the whims of the occupants of the most costly and fashionable of private apartments. Warmth, our cosy, all-pervading warmth, is a winter luxury that we leave behind us with the cheerful light of our universal gas-burners.
In summer we sorely miss the cold, pure ice-water of our native land, and we long for it with a thirst which vin ordinaire and Bavarian beer are powerless to assuage. The ill-tasting limestone-tainted water of Paris is a poor substitute for our sparkling draughts of Schuylkill or Croton. Ice-pitchers, water-coolers and refrigerators are unknown quantities in the sum-total of Parisian luxuries. The "cup of cold water," which the traveler in our country finds gratuitously supplied in every waiting-room and railway-station, every steamboat, every car and every hotel, is here something that must be specially sought for, and paid for at an exorbitant price. Ice can be purchased only in small quantities for immediate consumption. Ten cents for a few lumps swimming in water on a tepid plate is the usual tariff for this our American necessity, this rare Parisian luxury.