In the picture gallery at the Luxembourg is a choice collection of pictures of the modern French school such as Guérin, David, etc. The subjects are extremely well chosen, being taken from the mythology or from ancient and modern history. I was too glad to find no crucifixions, martyrdoms, nor eternal Madonnas. I distinguished in particular the Judgment of Brutus and the Serment des Horaces et des Curiaces. Connoisseurs find the attitudes too stiff and talk to you of the Italian school; but I prefer these; yet I had better hold my tongue on this subject, for I am told I know nothing about painting.
Poor Labédoyère[40] is sentenced to be shot by the Court Martial which tried him, and the sentence will be carried immediately into execution. His fate excites universal sympathy, and I have seen many people shed tears when talking on this subject. He certainly ought to be protected by the 12th Article of the Capitulation. The French are very uneasy; the Allies have begun to strip the Louvre and there is no talk of what the terms of peace are to be, or what is the determination of the Allies. This is a dreadful state of uncertainty for the French people and may lead to a general insurrection. The Allies continue pouring troops into France and levying contributions. "Vae victis" seems their motto. France is now a disarmed nation, and no French uniform is to be seen except that of the National Guard and the "Garde Royale." France is at the mercy of her enemies and prostrate at their feet; a melancholy prospect for European liberty!
The Allies have parades and reviews two or three times a week and the Sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia constantly attend; Wellington is their showman. These crowned Heads like mightily playing at soldiers; I should think His Grace must be heartily tired of them. Massacres and persecutions of the Protestants have begun to take place in the South of France, and the priests are at work again threatening with excommunication and hell the purchasers and inheritors of emigrant estates and church lands. These priests and emigrants are incorrigible. Frequent quarrels take place almost every evening in the Palais Royal between the Prussian officers and the French, particularly some of the officers from the army of the Loire. I rather suspect these latter are the aggressors. The Prussians being gorged with plunder come there to eat, drink and amuse themselves and have as little stomach for fighting as the soldier of Lucullus had after having enriched himself; but the officers of the army of the Loire are, poor fellows, in a very different predicament; they have not even been paid what is due to them, and they, having none of those nice felicities (to use an expression of Charlotte Smith's)[41] which make life agreeable, are ready for any combat, to set their life on any cast, "to mend it, or to be rid of 't." The Prussians indulge in every sort of dissipation, which they are enabled to do by the plunder which they have accumulated, and of which they have formed, I understand, a dépôt at St Germain. They send these articles of plunder to town every day to be sold, and then divide the profits, which are sure to be spent in the Palais Royal, and other places of revel and debauchery.
They sometimes affect a fastidiousness of stomach which is quite laughable, and not at all peculiar to the Germans, who are in general blessed by nature with especial good appetites; and they spend so much money that the English officers who have not had the advantages of plunder that these Prussians have had must appear by the side of them stingy and niggardly.
I was witness one day to a whimsical scene, which will serve to give you an idea of the airs of importance these gentlemen give themselves. I was one day at Versailles and after having visited the palace and gardens I entered the Salon of a restaurateur and called for a veal cutlet and vin ordinaire. There was a fat Prussian Major with two or three of his companions at one of the tables, who had been making copious libations to Bacchus in Burgundy and Champaign. He heard me call for vin ordinaire, and whether it was to show his own magnificence I know not, but he called out to the cafetière: "Madame, votre vin ordinaire est il buvable? car j'en veux donner a mon trompette, et s'il n'est pas bon, il n'en boira pas. Faites venir mon trompette." Now I dare say in his own country this Major would not have disdained even the "schwarze Bier" of Brandenburgh.
Scarcely any quarrels, I believe, take place between the English and French, nor did I hear of any violent fracas but one. In this instance, the English officers concerned must have been sad, brutal, vulgar fellows. They, however, after behaving in a most gross insulting manner, were compelled by some Frenchmen not to eat but to drink their words, and that out of a vessel not usually employed in drinking. I shall not repeat the contemptible affair, but it furnished the subject of a caricature.
The English officers in general behave in a handsome and liberal manner, and their conduct was spoken of in high terms of encomium by very many of the French themselves. I regret however exceedingly that any of the British officers should have imbibed the low prejudices and vulgar hatred against the French, which certain people preach up in England to cover their own peculations and interested views. A young friend of mine, with whom I was one day talking on political subjects, said to me: "I cannot help agreeing with you in many things, but I am staggered when I think that your ideas and reasoning are so contrary to the ideas in which I have been brought up; so that I rather avoid entering at all on political questions."
I do not wonder at all at this, for I recollect when I was at school at Eton, the system was to drill into the heads of the boys strong aristocratic principles and hatred of Democracy and of the French in particular; we were ordered to write themes against the French Revolution and verses of triumph over their defeats, with now and then a sly theme on the great advantage of hereditary nobility; in these verses God Almighty was to be represented as closely allied to the British Government and a sleeping partner of the Administration. One of the fellows of Eton College actually told the late Mr Adam Walker, the celebrated lecturer on natural and experimental philosophy, who was accustomed to give lectures annually to the Etonians, that his visits were no longer agreeable and would be dispensed with in future; as "Philosophy had done a great deal of harm and had caused the French Revolution."
With respect to my visit to Versailles, I was much struck with the vast size and magnificence of the buildings and with the ingenuity displayed in the arrangement of the grounds and the numerous groups of statues, grottos, aqueducts, fountains and ruins. Still it pleases me less than St Cloud, for I prefer the taste of the present day in gardening and the arrangement of ground, to the ponderous and tawdry taste of the time of Louis XIV, and I prefer St Cloud to Versailles, just as I should prefer a Grecian Nymph in the simple costume of Arcadia to a fine court lady rouged and dressed out with hoops, diamonds, and headdress of the tune of Queen Anne. Napoleon must have had an exquisite taste.
[32] Exceptions to this are, I understand, the Gallery at Florence, and the
Museo Vaticano at Rome, which are both open to all and no fees allowed.