The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862

'Iniquitous England,' writes a popular novelist, 'the vile executioner of all in which France most exulted, murdered grace in Marie Stuart, as it did inspiration in Jeanne d'Arc, and genius in Napoleon;'—'a race,' says another, 'gifted with a national feeling which well-nigh approaches superstition, yet which has chosen the whole world for its country. The gravity of these beings, accidentally brought together and isolated by mere interest, their life of mechanical activity, and of labor without relaxation as without life, all interest, yet freeze you at the same time.' 'The Englishman has made unto himself a language appropriate to his placid manners and silent habits. This language is a murmur interrupted by subdued hisses,'—'un murmure entre-coupé de sifflements doux.'

The gregarious hotel life in America commends itself to the time-saving habits of a busy race; but the love of speciality in France modifies this advantage: in our inns a stated price covers all demands except for wine; here each separate necessity is a specific charge—the sheet of writing paper, the cake of soap, and the candle figure among the innumerable items of the bill. Thus an infinite subdivision makes all business tedious, involving so many distinct processes and needless conditions; at every step we realize of how much less comparative value is time in the Old World. On the other hand, the rigid system that governs municipal life, the means adopted to render all public institutions both accessible and attractive, claim perpetually the gratitude of artists, students, and philosophers. A programme of exploration may be arranged at will, yielding a complete insight, and, when achieved, such has been the order, communicativeness and facility, that we have a more distinct and reliable idea of the whole circle of observation than it is possible to obtain elsewhere. We are continually reminded of Buffon's maxim: 'la genie est la patience.' A curious illustration of this systematic habit of the French occurred at Constantinople, during the Crimean war, where they immediately numbered the houses and named the streets, to the discomfiture of the passive Turks—one of whom, in his wonder at the mechanical superiority of these Frank allies, asked a soldier if the high fur cap on his head would come off. The concièrge beneath each porte cochére, the social distinction which makes each café and restaurant the nucleus of a particular class, the organized provision for all exigencies of human life in Paris, illustrate the same trait on a larger and more useful scale. If we survey the institutions and the monuments with care, and refer to their origin, associations and purposes, the historical and economical national facts are revealed with the utmost clearness and unity. The old Bastile represented, in its gloomy stolidity, the whole tragedy of the Revolution; and St. Genevieve combines the holy memories of the early church with that of the first French kings; the site of a fosse commune attests the valor of republican martyrs; the Champs Elysées are the popular earthly fields of a French paradise. One café is famed for the beauty of its mistress, another for the great chess-players who make it a resort; one is the daily rendezvous of the liberals, another of royalists, one of military men, another of artists; they flourish and fade with dynasties, and are respectively the favorites of provincials and citizens, gourmands and traders, men of letters and men of state.3 The Monte de Piété acquaints us with the vicissitudes and expedients of fortune; the Hotel Dieu is a temple of ancient charity; the Hospice des Enfants Trouvées startles us with the astounding fact that half the children born in Paris are illegitimate; and the Morgue yields no less appalling statistics of suicide. In Vernet's studio we feel the predominance of military taste and education in France; in the Ecole Polytecnique, the policy by which her youth are bred to serve their country; at the manufactories of the Gobelines and Sévres china, we perceive how naturally the mechanical genius of the race finds development in pottery and fabrics instead of ships and machines, as across the Channel and beyond the ocean; and in the self-possession, knowledge of affairs, and variety of occupation of the middle class of women, we see why they have no occasion to advocate their rights and complain of the inequality of the sexes.

All large cities furnish daily material for tragedy, and life there, keenly observed and aptly narrated, proves continually how much more strange is truth than fiction; but the impressive manners and melo-dramatic taste of the people, as well as their intricate police system, bring out more vividly these latent points of interest, as a reference to the Causes Célébres and the Memoirs of Vidocq illustrate. A friend of mine, returning from a trip to Lyons, became acquainted in the rail-car with an English gentleman, and when they reached the station, just before midnight, the two left for their hotels in the same cab. After a short drive, the vehicle suddenly came to a halt, the cabman sprang to the ground, and his passengers were left to surmise the occasion of their abrupt abandonment: presently a crowd collected, a shout was raised, and they learned that a valise had been stolen from the top of the carriage, and its owner had set off in pursuit of the thief. He ran with great swiftness, doubled corners, sprang over obstacles, and was in a fair way to distance his pursuer, when a soldier thrust out his foot and tripped up the fugitive, who was taken to the nearest police station. Confronted with the owner of the valise, he declared it was his own property, placed by mistake on the wrong cab. The official authorized to settle the difficulty not being present, my friend and his companion were informed they must leave the article in dispute, and the case itself, until the following morning, when a hearing would be had before one of the courts. On reaching their destination, the gentlemen parted with the understanding that they would dine together at a certain restaurant the next day. The appointed hour came, but not the Englishman; and my friend's appetite and patience were keen set, when, after an hour's delay, the truant made his appearance, looking pale, triste and exhausted. He soon explained the cause of his detention. He had gone to the police court to prove and regain his valise, and found at the bar a young man of genteel address and remarkable beauty; his costume was in the latest fashion, though somewhat soiled and torn from his fall and rough handling the previous night; but his countenance was intelligent and refined, and his bearing that of a gentleman. Upon a table lay the valise and the contents of the prisoner's pockets, among them a large penknife; he held convulsively to the rail and kept his eyes cast down; the judge had taken his seat, and a crowd of idlers and gens d'armes filled the room. The claimant immediately satisfied the court that the valise belonged to him by mentioning several articles it contained and producing the key. In the mean time the accused, earnestly watching the entrance, started and turned pale and red by turns as a beautiful girl, in the dress of a prosperous grisette, pushed her way into the crowd, stood on tiptoe, and exchanged glances with the prisoner. The latter, when asked his name, replied, 'I have brought disgrace enough upon it already,' and, seizing the penknife, thrust it into his heart, and fell dead. He was the descendant of a noble house in one of the southern provinces, and came to Paris as a medical student, and, through a devoted attachment to his mistress, whose costly tastes soon drained his purse, was induced to steal the trunks of travelers as they left the railway stations at night. In his apartment was found a large wardrobe; and a month's purloining was thus summarily expiated. Similar incidents occur elsewhere, but the details, when the scene is laid in Paris, are more picturesque and dramatic.

Two instances which I heard related will illustrate this same dramatic significance in the municipal system. After an émeute, the chef of police in a certain arrondissement, while engaged in superintending the removal of corpses from a barricade, noticed the body of a female whose delicate hands and finely-wrought robe were so alien to the scene as to excite suspicion. He ordered it to be placed in a separate apartment for examination. A more careful inspection confirmed his surmise that this was the body of no amazonian whose warlike zeal or accidental presence in such an affray could explain its discovery. There was no trace whereby the remains could be identified except a geranium leaf that was found imbedded in her long and disheveled tresses. This was given to a celebrated botanist, with orders to learn, if possible, from what plant it had been taken. The man of science visited all the houses of the neighborhood, and critically examined every specimen of the shrub he could find. At length, in the elegant library of a young abbé, he not only discovered one of the species, but, by means of a powerful microscope, detected the very branch whence the leaf had been nipped. By dexterous management the chef, thus scientifically put on the track, brought home the charge to the priest, who confessed the murder of the young lady in a fit of jealousy, and, by depositing her body, at night, amid the dead of humbler lineage, who had fallen in the revolutionary strife, thought to conceal all knowledge of his crime.

The lessee of an extensive 'hotel' had reason to believe that a child had entered and left the world in one of his tenants' apartments, without the cognizance of a human being except the mother; and, aware, as a landlord in Paris should be, of his responsibility to the municipal government, he communicated his suspicions to the authorities. The rooms were searched, the charge denied, and no proof elicited to warrant further action; and here the matter would have ended in any other country. But the police agent entrusted with the inquiry raked over the contents of a pigsty in the courtyard, and discovered a square inch of thin bone, which he exhibited to an anatomist, who pronounced it a fragment of a new-born infant's skull; the hogs were instantly killed, the contents of their stomachs examined, and small portions of the body found. The question then arose whether the child was born alive; pieces of the lungs were placed in a basin of water, and the fact that they floated on its surface proved, beyond a doubt, that the child had breathed; the crime of infanticide was then charged upon the unhappy mother, who, appalled by this evidence of her guilt, confessed.

In the gray of the dawn a watchful observer may behold the two extremes of Paris life ominously hinted;—a cloaked figure stealthily dropping a swathed effigy of humanity, just 'sent into this breathing world,' in the rotary cradle of the asylum for enfants trouvés, and a cart full of the corpses of the poor, driven into the yard of a hospital for dissection.

Summoned one evening at dusk to the sick chamber of a countryman, I realized the shadows of life in Paris. From the dazzling Boulevard the cab soon wound through dim thoroughfares, up a deserted acclivity, to a gloomy porch. A cold mist was falling, and I heard the bell sound through a vaulted arch with desolate echoes. When the massive door opened, a lamp suspended from a chain revealed a paved entresol and broad staircase; there was something prison-like even in the patrician dimensions of the edifice; the light nickered at every gust. Ascending, I pulled a cordon bleu, and was admitted into the apartment. It consisted of four places or rooms, the furniture of which was in the neatest French style, both of wood and tapestry; but the fireplace was narrow, and so ill-constructed that while the heat ascended the chimney the smoke entered the room. A nurse, with one of those keen, self-possessed faces and that efficient manner so often encountered in Paris, ushered me to the invalid's presence. He was a fair specimen of a philosophic bachelor inured to the life of the French metropolis; everything about him was in good taste, from the model of the lamp to the cover of the arm-chair; and yet an indescribable cheerlessness pervaded his elegant lodging. The last play of Scribe, the day's Journal des Debats, a bouquet, and a Bohemian glass, were on the marble table at his side. His languid eye brightened and his feverish hand tightened convulsively over mine; years had elapsed since he left our native town; he had drunk of the cup of pleasure, and cultivated the resources of literature and science in this their great centre; but now, in the hour of physical weakness, the yearning for domestic and home scenes filled his heart; and his mind reacted from the blandishments of a luxurious materialism and a refined egotism of life. It was like falling back upon the normal conditions of existence thus to behold the 'ills that flesh is heir to' in the midst of a city where such rich outward provision for human activity and enjoyment fills the senses. Excessive civilization has its morbid tendencies, and great refinement in one direction is paralleled by an equal degree of savagery in another. There is in absolute relation between the facilities for pleasure and the frequency of suicide. Of all places in the world, Paris is the most desolate to an invalid stranger. The custom of living there in lodgings isolates the visitor; the occupants of the dwelling are not alive to the claims of neighborhood; with his landlord he has only a business and formal connection; thus thrown upon himself, without the nerve or the spirits for external amusement, few situations are more forlorn. The Parisian French are intensely calculating and selfish; illness and grief are so alien to their tastes that, to the best of their ability, they ignore and abjure them. As long as health permits, out-of-door life or companionship solaces that within; the stranger may be enchanted; but when confined to his apartment and dependent on chance visitors or hireling services, he longs for a land where domestic life and household comfort are better cultivated and understood.

The stranger's funeral is peculiarly sad everywhere, but in Paris its melancholy is enhanced by the interference of foreign usages. Over the dead as well as the living the municipal authorities claim instant power, and the bereaved must submit to their time and arrangements in depositing the mortal remains of the loved in the grave. The black scarfs and chapeaux of the undertakers and their prescriptive orders were strangely dissonant to the group of Americans collected at the obsequies of a young countryman, and seemed incongruous when associated with the simple Protestant ceremonial performed in another tongue. Under the direction of those sable officials we entered the mourning coaches and followed the plumed hearse. It is an impressive custom—one of the humanities of the Catholic—to lift the hat at the sight of such a procession; such an act, performed like this by prince and beggar in the crowded street, so gay, busy, self-absorbed, bears affecting witness to the common vicissitudes and instincts of mankind. The dead leaves strewed the avenue of Pere la Chaise, and the bare trees creaked in the gale as we threaded sarcophagi, tablets, and railed cenotaphs; in the distance, smoke-canopied, stretched the vast city; around were countless effigies of the dead of every rank, from the plain slab of the undistinguished citizen to the wreathed obelisk of the hero, from the ancient monument of Abelard and Heloise to the broken turf on the new grave of poverty only designated by a wooden cross; gray clouds flitted along the zenith, and a pale streak of light defined the wide horizon; Paris with its frivolity, temples, business, pleasures, trophies and teeming life, sent up a confused and low murmur in the distance; only the wind was audible among the tombs. Never had the beautiful Church of England services appeared to me so grand and pathetic as when here read over the coffin of one who had died in exile, and with only a few of his countrymen, most of them unacquainted even with his features, to attend his burial.

However a change of government may interfere with a Parisian's freedom of speech and pen, the autocrat is yet to appear who dares place an interdict on his culinary aptitudes. The science of dining in Paris has, notwithstanding, its new mysteries; and in order to be abreast of the times, it is wise, instead of drawing on past experience, to take counsel of a friend who holds the present clue to the labyrinth of bills of fare and fair bills. The little cabinet of my favorite restaurant, sacred to the initiated, had the same marble table, cheerful outlook, pictured ceiling and breezy curtains,—the same look of elegant snugness; but, when we had seated ourselves in garrulous conclave over the carte, it was to the member of our party whose knowledge was of the latest acquisition that we submitted the choice of a repast; and as he discoursed of the mysterious excellences of cotelletes a la Victoria, rissoles a la Orleans, patés de fois gras a la Bonaparte, paupicettes de veau a la Demidoff, truffes a la Perigord, etc., we realized that the same incongruous blending of associations, the same zest for glory and dramatic instinct, ruled the world of cookery as of letters, and that, with all the political vicissitudes since our last dinner in Paris, her prandial distinction had progressed.

From the restaurant to the theatre, is, in Paris, a most natural transition; and the play and players of the day will be found far more closely representative of the social tone, the political creed, the artistic tastes of the hour, than elsewhere. The drama, for instance, in vogue not long since at the Vaudeville Theatre in the Place de la Bourse, is one we can scarcely imagine successful in another city, at least to such a degree. It was Les Filles de Marbre; and this is the plot. The opening scene is at Athens, in the studio of Phidias. It is the day after that on which Alcibiades cut off his dog's tail; and, exulting in the effect produced by that exploit, he enters with the rich Gorgias, who has ordered and paid Phidias in advance for statues of his three friends, Laïs, Phryné, and Aspasia. He finds Phidias unwilling to part with the statues, on which he has worked so long and ardently till, like Pygmalion of old, he has fallen in love with his own creation; he will not even allow Gorgias to see them, and the latter departs swearing vengeance. Diogenes enters, and a satirical brisk dialogue ensues, at the end of which Phidias draws aside a curtain and shows his work to Diogenes, who, stoic as he is, can not refrain from an exclamation of delight. The group is admirably arranged on the stage, and the effect is very fine as Theä, a young slave, holds back the drapery from the group while the moon illumines it with a soft light. At this moment an approaching tumult is heard. Theä drops the curtain, and Gorgias with his friends, heated with Cyprus wine, enters, accompanied by the 'myrmidons of the law.' He again demands the statues, for which Phidias has already received his gold. Phidias expostulates, then entreats,—no, Gorgias will have his statues. At this, Theä, who had long loved Phidias, unknown to him, hardly noticed, never requited, throws herself at Gorgias's feet and cries, 'Take me, sell me; I am young and strong, but leave Phidias his statues.' Gorgias says, 'Who are you? Poor creature, you are not worth over fifty drachmas! Away! Guards, do your duty! Slaves, seize the statues.' Then Diogenes, hitherto half asleep on a mat in the corner, cries, 'Stop, Gorgias! You always profess justice, strict justice. Why don't you ask with whom of you the statues will prefer to stay?' A shout of laughter from his jolly companions makes Gorgias accede to this droll proposal. 'So be it!' cries he; and Diogenes draws aside the curtain, and holds up his lantern, which, with a strong French reflector, throws a powerful light on the upper part of the group, with a fine and startling effect. The group represents Aspasia seated, with a scroll and stylus, Laïs leaning over her, and Phryné at her feet looking up, all draped, artistically posed, and the three beautiful girls that perform the parts look as like marble as possible.

'Now, Phidias,' cries Diogenes, 'come, what have you to say to your marble girls?'

'Laïs, Aspasia, Phryné, I am Phidias. You owe me your existence, and I love you; you know it, and that I am poor.'

'That's a bad argument, Phidias,' says Diogenes.

'I am poor, and have nothing but you. Stay by him to whom you owe your glory and your immortality!'

The statues remain immovable.

Gorgias addresses them: 'I am Gorgias, the rich Athenian; I alone am as rich as all the kings of Asia, and I offer you a palace paved with gold. Aspasia, Laïs, Phryné, which of us do you choose?'

The statues turn their heads and smile faintly on Gorgias, who starts and stands as if petrified. The Athenians look horror-struck. Phidias covers his face with his hands, and, uttering a cry, falls to the ground. A soft and enervating strain of music fills the air.

'By all the gods!' cries Gorgias, 'I believe the statues moved their lips as if to smile upon me.'

'I know you by that smile, O girls of marble,' says Diogenes,—'courtesans of the past, courtesans of the future!' and he returns to his mat.

At this moment Theä's voice is heard in the far distance, singing a few mystical, mournful bars of music, and the curtain falls.

This is the 'argument,'—the other four acts work it out.

The next act opens in a restaurant of to-day in the Bois de Boulogne, near Paris. A young artist lives there, and falls desperately in love with an actress, for whom he leaves his art, his mother, and his betrothed, is ruined in purse, and returns at last, heart-broken, to his old home, to die; the actress all the while sees his despair with indifference, and proves herself therefore a 'fille de marbre'

In another recent piece, we are told that a 'procession of nuns, dressed in white, sing a lay at midnight. In the intervals, a chorus of frogs in the neighboring swamp croak the refrain in unison. Sax, the great brass-founder, who made the Last Trumpets for the 'Wandering Jew,' and the instruments for the Band of the Guides, is engaged upon the frogpipes required. The illusion will be heightened by characteristic scenery and mephitic exhalations. M. Sax visited the pool in the Bois de Boulogne, known as the Marée d'Auteuil, and brought back many useful ideas in reference to the quadruped with whose vocal powers he desired to become acquainted. The frog voices will be a series of eight, representing a full octave.'

The Provincial, at Paris, is a standard theme for playwrights; what the Scotch were to Johnson, Lamb, and Sidney Smith, is the native of Provence or Brittany to the comic writers of the metropolis,—a nucleus for wit and an occasion for practical jokes. One of the late pieces, called 'My Uncle,' turned upon the devices of a wild youth to obtain money from his simple-hearted relative in the country. For months a pretended love affair, a marriage, and the birth of an heir, elicited remittances, which were expended upon banquets, at which a bevy of gay students applauded the ingenuity of their entertainer. At last the uncle comes to town, and it becomes quite a study to carry on the game, which yields occasion for innumerable salient contrasts between rustic simplicity and city acumen. A diagnosis of the provincial's ways in Paris, like every form of life there, has been given by a shrewd observer, who mentions among other signs that the novice may be recognized by the fact that he keeps his toothpick after dinner and carries it to the theatre.

I found that marvelous actress, Rachel, before her visit to America, much attenuated; indeed, she resembled a bundle of nerves electrified with vitality; her bleached skin, thin arms, large, scintillating eyes, and that indescribable something which marks the Jewish physiognomy, gave her a weird, sibyl-like appearance, as of one wasted by long vigils. There was in her glance and action the spasmodic inspiration observable in Malibran towards the close of her career. The play was Racine's Andromache, and the depth and energy of Hermione's emotions were illustrated by a sudden transition of tone, a working of the features, that a painter might study forever, and a gesture, bearing, look and utterance which were the consummation of histrionic art; yet so exclusively was this the ease, that admiration never lost itself in sympathy; it was the perfection of acting, not of nature; it won and chained the scrutinizing mind, but failed to sway the heart; it lacked the magnetic element; and while the critic was baffled in the attempt to pick a flaw, and the elocutionist in raptures at the sublime possibilities of his art, it was Rachel, not Hermione, the genius of the performer, not the reality of the character, that won the earnest attention, and woke the constant plaudits.4