I meet at Col Wardle's a very pleasant French society: conversation, music and singing fill up the evening.
April 15th.
I have been presented to a very agreeable lady, Madame Esther Fournier, who holds a conversazione at her house in the Rue St Honoré every Wednesday evening. Here there is either a concert, a ball or private theatricals; while in a separate room play goes forward and crebs, a game of dice similar to hazard, is the fashionable game. Refreshments are handed round and at twelve o'clock the company break up. Mme Fournier is a lady of very distinguished talent and always acts a principal rôle herself in the dramatic performances given at her private theatricals.
I have become acquainted too with a very pleasant family, M. and Mme Vanderberg, who are the proprietors of a large house and magnificent garden in the Faubourg du Roule. M. Vanderberg is a man of very large fortune.[62] He has three daughters, handsome and highly accomplished, and one son; one of them was married to General R——, but is since divorced; the second is married to a young colonel of Hussars, and the third is still unmarried; but being very young, handsome, accomplished and rich, there will be no lack of suitors whenever she is disposed to accept the connubial chain. I have dined several times with this family. There is an excellent table. The choicest old wines are handed about during dinner, and afterwards we adjourn to another room to take coffee and liqueurs.
If there is no evening party, the company retire, some for the theatre, some for other houses, where they have to pass the evening; if the family remain at home you have the option of retiring or remaining with them, and the evening is filled up with music or petits jeux. I meet with several agreeable and distinguished people at this house, among whom are M. Anglas, Mme Duthon from the Canton de Vaud, a lady of great vivacity and talent, and General Guilleminot and his lady. Col. Paulet, who married M. Vanderberg's second daughter, was on the staff of General Guilleminot at the battle of Waterloo and suffered much from a fever and ague that he caught on the night bivouacs.
I have attended a séance of the Institution of the Sourds-Muets founded by the famous Abbé de l'Epée, and continued with equal success by his successor the Abbé S[icard],[63] who delivered the lecture and exhibited the talent and proficiency of his pupils. The eldest pupil, Massieu, himself deaf and dumb, is an extraordinary genius and he may be said in some measure to direct all the others. Massieu, who has a very interesting and even handsome countenance, and manners extremely prepossessing, conducts the examination of the pupils by means of signs, and writing on a slate or paper; and it is wonderful to observe the progress made by these interesting young persons, who have been so harshly treated by Nature. The definitions they give of substances and qualities are so just and happy; and in their situation, definition is everything, for they cannot learn by rote, as other boys often do, who, in the study of philology, acquire only words and not things or meanings. The deaf and dumb persons, on the contrary, acquire at once by this method of instruction the philosophy of grammar; and then it is far from being the dry study that many people suppose. A German princess who was present exclaimed in a transport of admiration at some of the specimens of definitions and inferences given by the pupils; " Oh! I wish that I were born deaf and dumb, were it only to learn grammar properly!" Sir Sidney Smith was present at this lecture and seemed inclined to make himself a little too conspicuous. For instance, before the examination began, he seated himself close by the Abbé S[icard] and pulling a paper out of his pocket said that he had found it on the ground on his way hither; and that it was part of a leaf from an edition of Cicero which contained a sentence so applicable to the character and talents of his friend the Abbé, that he requested permission to read it aloud and translate it into French for the benefit of those who did not understand Latin. He then read the sentence. The Abbé, not to be out-done in compliments, then rose and made a most flaming speech in eulogium of his friend "the heroic defender of St John d'Acre" and pointed him out to the audience as the first person who had foiled the arms of the "Usurper."
Now this word "Usurper" applied to Napoleon did not at all please the audience, and it shewed a great deal of servility on the part of the Abbé to insult fallen greatness, and in the person too of a man who had rendered such vast services to science. In fact this episode was received coldly, and somewhat impatiently by the audience; and many thought it was a thing got up between the Admiral and the Abbé to flatter each other's vanity; indeed my friend Mrs Wallis, next to whom I was placed, and who does not at all agree with the gallant Admiral in politics, intimated this in a whisper, loud enough to be heard by all the audience and added: "Such a humbug is enough to make one sick." Sir Sidney Smith heard all this and seemed a good deal abashed and disconcerted; he, however, had the good sense to say nothing, and the examination began.
PARIS, May 5th.
I formed a party with some friends to visit the cemetery of Père la Chaise. We remarked in particular the places where poor Labédoyère and Marshal Ney are buried. There is no tombstone on the former, but some shrubs have been planted, and a black wooden cross fixed to denote the spot where he lies.
To Marshal Ney there is a stone sepulchre with this inscription: "Cy-gît le Maréchal Ney, Prince de la Moskowa." This cemetery is most beautifully laid out. The multitude of tombs, the variety of inscriptions in prose and verse, some of which are very affecting, the yews, the willows, all render this a delightful spot for contemplation; it commands an extensive view of Paris and the surrounding country. Foreigners of distinction who die in Paris are generally buried here; but it would require a volume to describe to you in detail this interesting cemetery. I think the practice of strewing flowers over the grave is very touching and classic; it reminded me of the description of Marcellus's death in Virgil: