Our walks through the Exhibition lightened visibly our pockets. The prices of all the objects exposed for sale are exorbitant, money melted like snow and we came home utterly penniless.
There are different means of locomotion through the great extent of the Exhibition, beginning by the Tonqinoise “puss-puss,” to the last technical invention—the “trottoir roulant,” moving sidewalks, three rows of which run along without stopping. The first row moves very slowly, and it is easy to jump on it; the second row moves faster, and the third one races with the swiftness of an express train. Great agility is needed to pass from one trottoir to the other, and it happens sometimes that the backs of clumsy pedestrians rest on one trottoir, whilst his legs are being dragged on the neighbouring one.
In the Rue de Paris, near the Eiffel Tower, different attractions are to be found: bearded women, mermaids, and other marvels of past, present, and future life. In a miorama we crossed from Marseilles to Constantinople without leaving Paris. Another panorama gives the illusion of a sea-voyage round the world. In the Palais des Optiques we went down under the sea, and were introduced to horrid monsters. We came upon a gigantic telescope showing the moon at the distance of sixty kilometres. A huge wheel 177 metres high, with thirty-two waggons, wheels round intrepid passengers. The Palais de la Femme contains amazing toilettes of past and ultra modern times. I fell in love with a costume of the last note of modernity, which Sergy wanted to purchase, but I was reasonable enough to refuse the present, for the price was unheard of. The Panorama du Mont Blanc shows a group of excursionists climbing up the Alps, which reminded me of our ascent on the Mont Blanc.
To come into the Vieux Paris representing the Paris of past centuries, we had to cross a drawbridge and enter through a tower-gate guarded by sentinels of the middle ages, holding long lances, into the Rue des Remparts, a corner of a street in the fourteenth century, with dwellings filled with mediæval attributes. On the front of the houses, instead of numbers, the pictures of different birds are reproduced. In the narrow, tortuous streets we found ourselves surrounded by people dressed according to the fashion of ancient times; knights in armour and ladies of the middle-ages walked to-and-fro. My imagination travelled, transporting me to the days of long ago, and I felt as if the clock had been put back several centuries. When we passed the Tour du Châtelet, the fourteenth century had vanished by magic into the time of the Tudors, making a jump through the space of over two hundred years. Chants resounded from the church of St. Julien, which belonged formerly to the “Minstrels Brotherhood.” On the Square we saw the gibbet watched over by mousquetaires armed with muskets and wearing three-cornered hats. In the Rue des Vieilles Écoles, the house inhabited by Molière is exactly reproduced. Ladies in paniers and powdered perukes promenaded, escorted by their cavaliers dressed as marquesses. Different processions circulated. Here is a band of clerks directing their steps towards the Court of Justice, with inkstands adjusted to their girdles, carrying in their hands burning torches. In the Criminal Hall, instead of law suits, Mysteries are represented.
Not far from the Vieux Paris is the Andalousie du temps des Maures. The entry represents the exact copy of the Alcazar in Seville; on the Plaza de Toros, instead of horrid bull-fights, pretty Andalusian gitanas (Spanish gypsies) with a rose placed above the left ear in their jet-black hair, dance seguedillas and habaneras. It was fire which ran in their veins. I was very much astonished to see our Turkoman promenading amongst the audience. We were told that the impressario had invited him to come every night gratis to his establishment, as a living decoration. I cannot conceive what can be in common between an inhabitant from Central Asia and Spanish life.
Opposite Andalousia an Alpine village has spread itself ungeographically, with its cattle, shepherds, watchmaker-shops and wooden toy-makers. Amidst natural glaciers and water-falls, an animated crowd dressed in the costumes of all the Swiss cantons, walk about. We saw the house where Bonaparte passed the night on his march with his army of 30,000 men across the St. Gothard pass, with all the furniture just as it was then. There was the armchair by the hearth in which the great man sat, gazing into the glowing coals. What pictures did he see in the flames? Did his thoughts wander back to Josephine, or to new laurels and glory?
The Exhibition opened at ten. We went there as soon as the gates were thrown open and left it only when we found ourselves almost too tired to stand. We met there many friends from Russia, Mr. Radde amongst them, director of the Museum in Tiflis, an eminent biologist versed in all the antiquities and questions of the past. He is awfully abstruse-minded, and always looking as if he just descended from the clouds. One day, when Mr. Radde called upon us at the Villa des Lilas, he made the acquaintance of our landlord, who had nothing of the Adonis about him, with his round moon face, and a tiny baby nose disappearing between his fat cheeks. In a fit of absent-mindedness he began to pity the cherub-faced gentleman for having such a terrible inflammation, and on both sides of the face all the more. Our landlord thanked him for his compassion, but said that happily, he never suffered from toothache, and was not afflicted therefore, with inflammation of any kind. I had to make a desperate effort to be serious when witnessing this comic scene.
We knew our Paris well, and had a jolly good time at night, enjoying theatres and café-chantants. I did feel gay going to naughty places in the quartier Montmartre without caring whether it was proper or not. At the Chat Noir the programme was very varied, exhibiting celebrities dressed in a costume remarkable for its lack of stuff, and famed for the height to which they could raise one leg and knock their own noses with it while standing upon the other. We visited the Cabaret du Ciel and the Cabaret de l’Enfer, two rather disreputable establishments with quaint representations of bliss in heaven and tortures in hell. In the first cabaret the customers are received by a bevy of white-winged, long-haired masculine beings, and in the second one, an establishment where the lights blaze red, the attendants, attired as devils, greet the visitors making demoniac grimaces. The Cabaret Alexandre Bruyant is very amusing; the proprietor of this establishment well merits his surname of Bruyant—(noisy.) He meets his guests shouting in a voice of thunder, and making mocking jeers. When an old lady with orange-coloured hair and a very powdered face came in, he exclaimed, “Oh, la belle brune, n’a-t-elle pas un teint eclatant?” (Oh, the dark beauty, hasn’t she got a dazzling complexion?) A general laugh arose. Then he came up to me and patting my shoulder roared, “Pauvre petite créature, comme elle a l’air maladif!” (“Poor little thing, how ailing and sickly she looks!”) The newcomers, feeling rather scared at being addressed in such a rough manner, and displeased at being made to appear ridiculous, wanted to get away, but when they saw that this queer reception was one of the peculiarities of the house, they settled themselves comfortably at separate little tables, and laughed in their turn good-humouredly at the reception of new arrivals.
The distribution of prizes at the Exhibition took place a few days before we left Paris. My husband received for our Turkestan section the Great Cross of the Légion d’Honneur. The Russian Commissaire, when packing up different objects, found it difficult to bring back to Tashkend a huge “arba” (a two-wheeled cart) and it was decided to leave it here and present it to some collector of curiosities. But no one wanted such a gift, and the commissaires had recourse to another means of getting rid of this encumbering “arba,” they asked a carter, promising him a good tip, to harness his horse to the cart and take it along as far as the highway leading to Versailles, and then leave it there to its own fate.