Chapter 2

I have seen a silver token almost as big as a shilling. On one side is represented a woman sitting, leaning with her left arm on a large open book, at her right is a cock perched on half a fluted column; and the inscription round these figures is, _Le Fevre, Le Sage et Compie. ngt. à Paris_. On the reverse is _B.P._ (bon pour) 20 _Sols à echanger en assignats_ de 50L and round this, _et au dessus l'an 4 me de la Liberté_, 1792.[8]

[Note 8: This and the former _echanger_, &c. and _remboursable_, &c. appear to be superfluous.]

In this Hôtel is the cabinet of the royal school of mineralogy, which Mr. Le Sage has been four and twenty years in forming and analyzing; it is contained in a magnificent building, with a dome and gallery almost entirely of marble.

THEATRES.

AT this time there were ten regular theatres open every evening. The first and most ancient of which is the Opera, or Royal Academy of Music. The old house which was in the Palais Royal, was burnt in 1781, and the present house, near St. Martin's Gate, was built in seventy-five days. The number of performers, vocal and instrumental, dancers, &c. employed in this theatre is about four hundred and thirty. The price of admission to the first boxes is seven livres ten sous, about six shillings and eight pence, (or three shillings and four pence as the exchange then was.)

2. The _French_ playhouse is at present called _Theatre de la Nation_. In the vestibule or porch is a marble statue of _Voltaire_, sitting in an arm chair; it is near the Luxembourg.

3. The Italian theatre behind the _Boulevart Richelieu_. Notwithstanding the name, nothing but French pieces, and French music, are performed here.

4. Theatre _de Monsieur_. _Rue Feydeau_. Comedies and operas are performed here, three times a week in the Italian, and the other days in the French language; for which purpose two sets of players are engaged at this house.

5. Theatre Français. Rue de Richelieu. At these four theatres the price of admission into the boxes was a crown.

6. Theatre de la Rue de Louvois.

7. Theatre Français. Rue de Bondy.

8. Theatre de la Demoiselle Montansier, au Palais Royal. The box price of these three last was half a crown.

9. Theatre du Marais, quartier St. Antoine.

10. Theatre de Moliere. Rue St. Martin.

To these must be added about five and twenty more; the best of which is the _Theatre de l'ambigu comique_, on the _North Boulevarts_;[9] the box price was half a crown. The others were rope dancers, and such kind of spectacles as _Sadler's Wells, &c._ and the prices were from two shillings down to sixpence. The French themselves, laughing at the great increase of their theatres, said, "We shall shortly have a public spectacle per street, an actor per house, a musician per cellar, and an author per garret."

[Note 9: These _Boulevarts_ were made in 1536, and planted with four rows of trees in 1668; these beautiful walks are too well known to be described here; they are 2400 _Toises_ (4800 yards, or almost three miles) long. The South Boulevarts are planted in the same manner, were finished in 1761, and are 3683 _Toises_, or fathom (above four miles) in length.]

PANTHEON. JACOBINS. QUAI VOLTAIRE. RUE ROUSSEAU. COCKADES.

THE new church of _Sainte Genevieve_ was begun in 1757; but the building was discontinued during the last war; in 1784 it was resumed, and is at present almost finished. The whole length of the front is thus inscribed in very large gilt capitals: _Aux grands hommes: la Patrie reconnoissante_. To great men: their grateful country. And over the entrance: _Pantheon Français. L'An III de la Liberté_.

As to the size of Paris, I saw two very large plans of that city and of London, on the same scale, on which it was said, that Paris covered 5,280,000 square _Toises_, and London only 3,900,000. A _Toise_ is two yards; and from the plan it appeared to be near the truth.

The new buildings which surround the garden of the Palais Royal form a parallelogram, that for beauty is not to be matched in Europe. They consist of shops, coffee-houses, music rooms, four of which are in cellars, taverns, gaming-houses, &c. and the whole square is almost always full of people. The square is 234 yards in length, and 100 in breadth; the portico which surround it consists of 180 arches.

The celebrated _Jacobins_ are a club, consisting at present of about 1300 members, and so called, because the place of meeting is in the hall which was formerly the library of the convent of that name, in the _Rue St. Honoré_, about 300 yards distant from the National Assembly. The proper name of the club is, _Society of the Friends of the Constitution_. There are three or four other societies of less note.

The _Quai_, which was formerly called _des Theatins_ is at present named _Quai Voltaire_, in honor of that philosopher, who died there in the house of the Marquis de _Villette_, in 1778.

The street which was formerly called _Platriere_, and in which the general post-office is situated, is called _Rue Jean Jaques Rousseau_, in honour of this writer, who resided some time in this street. I found him here in 1776, and he copied some music for me; he had no other books at that time than an English _Robinson Crusoe_ and an Italian _Tasso's Jerusalem_. He died 1st July, 1778, very soon after Voltaire, at the country seat of le Marquis _de Girardin_ about ten leagues from Paris; and is buried there, in a small island.

And the street which was formerly called _Chaussée d'Antin_ is now named _Rue de Mirabeau_, in honour of the late patriot of that name.

The church _des Innocens_ was pulled down in 1786, and the vast _cimetiére_ (burying ground) was filled up. Every night, during several months, carts were employed in carrying the bones found there, to other grounds out of Paris; it is now a market for vegetables. Very near this place was a fountain, which is mentioned in letters patent so long ago as 1273. It was rebuilt with extraordinary magnificence in 1550, repaired in 1708, and at last, in 1788, carefully removed to the center of the market, where it now stands.

The new _Quai de Gesvres_ was constructed in 1787, and all the shops which formed a long narrow alley for foot passengers only, were destroyed.

At this time no person was permitted to walk in any other part of the _Tuileries_ gardens than in the terrace of the _Feuillans_, which is parallel to the _Rue St. Honoré_, and under the windows of the _National Assembly_; the only fence to the other part of the garden was a blue ribband extended between two chairs.

Hitherto cockades of silk had been worn, the _aristocrats_ wore such as were of a paler blue and red, than those worn by the _democrats_, and the former were even distinguished by their carriages, on which a cloud was painted upon the arms, which entirely obliterated them, (of these I saw above thirty in the evening _promenade_, in the _Bois de Boulogne_:) but on the 30th of July, every person was compelled by the people to wear a linen cockade, without any distinction in the red and blue colours.

EXECUTION OF TWO CRIMINALS, WITH A BEHEADING MACHINE.

ON the 4th of August a criminal was beheaded, in the _Place de Grêve_. I did not see the execution, because, as the hour is never specified, I might have waited many hours in a crowd, from which there is no extricating one's self. I was there immediately after, and saw the machine, which was just going to be taken away. I went into a coffee-house and made a drawing, which is here engraven. It is called _la Guillotine_, from the name of the person who first brought it into use in Paris: that at _Lisle_ is called _le Louison_, for a similar reason. In English it is termed a maiden.[10]

[Note 10: Mr. Pennant, in the second volume of his Tour in Scotland, has given a long account of such a machine, from which the following particulars are taken. "It was confined to the limits of the forest of Hardwick, or the eighteen towns and hamlets within its precincts. The execution was generally at Halifax; Twenty five criminals suffered during the reign of Queen Elizabeth; the records before that time were lost. Twelve more were executed between 1623 and 1650, after which it is supposed the privilege was no more exerted.----This machine is now destroyed, but there is one of the same kind, in a room under the Parliament house, at Edinburgh, where it was introduced by the Regent Morton, who took a model of it as he passed through Halifax, and at length suffered by it himself. It is in form of a painters easel, and about ten feet high: at four feet from the bottom is a cross-bar, on which the felon laid his head, which was kept down by another placed above. In the inner edges of the frame are grooves; in these is placed a sharp axe, with a vast weight of lead, supported at the summit by a peg; to that peg is fastened a cord, which the executioner cutting, the axe falls, and beheads the criminal. If he was condemned for stealing a horse or a cow, the string was tied to the beast, which pulled out the peg and became the executioner."]

I have seen the following seven engravings of such an instrument. The most ancient is engraven on wood, merely outlines, and very badly drawn; it is in _Petrus de Natalibus Catalogus Sanctorum, 1510_.

There was a German translation of some of _Petrarch's_ Works, published in 1520; this contains an engraving in wood, representing an execution, with a great number of figures, correctly drawn.

_Aldegrever_, in 1553, published another print on this subject.

The fourth is in _Achillis Bocchii Quæstiones Symbolicæ_, 1550.

There is one in _Cats's_ Dutch Emblems, 1650.

And the two last are in _Golfrieds's_ Historical Chronicles, in German, folio, 1674. These five last are engraven on copper.

In all these representations the axe is either straight or semicircular, but always horizontal. The sloping position of the French axe appears to be the best calculated for celerity.

Machines of this kind are at present made use of for executions throughout all France, and criminals are put to death in no other manner.

The following is the account of an execution, which I had from an eye-witness.

The crowd began to assemble at ten in the morning, and waited, exposed to the intense heat of the sun in the middle of July, till four in the afternoon, when the criminals, a Marquis and a Priest, were brought, in two coaches; they were condemned for having forged _assignats_.

The Marquis ascended the scaffold first; he was as pale as if he had already been dead, and he endeavoured to hide his face, by pulling his hair over it; there were two executioners, dressed in black, on the scaffold, one of which immediately tied a plank of about 18 inches broad, and an inch thick, to the body of the Marquis, as he stood upright, fastening it about the arms, the belly, and the legs; this plank was about four feet long, and came almost up to his chin; a priest who attended, then applied a crucifix to his mouth, and the two executioners directly laid him on his belly on the bench, lifted up the upper part of the board which was to receive his neck, adjusted his head properly, then shut the board and pulled the string which is fastened to the peg at the top of the machine, which lifted up a latch, and down came the axe; the head was off in a moment, and fell into a basket which was ready to receive it, the executioner took it out and held it up by the hair to show the populace, and then put it into another basket along with the body: very little blood had issued as yet.

The Priest was now taken out of the coach, from which he might have seen his companion suffer; the bloody axe was hoisted up and he underwent the same operation exactly. Each of these executions lasted about a minute in all, from the moment of the criminal's ascending the scaffold to that of the body's being taken away. It was now seen that the body of the Marquis made such a violent expiration that the belly raised the lid of the basket it was in, and the blood rushed out of the great arteries in torrents.

The windows of the _Place de Grêve_ were, as usual on such occasions, filled with ladies.[11] Many persons were performing on violins, and trumpets, in order to pass the time away, and to relieve the tediousness of expectation.

[Note 11: Mrs. Robinson tells me, that when she was at Paris, a few years ago, her _valet de place_, came early one morning, informing her there would be a _grand spectacle_, and wanted to know if he should hire a place for her. This superb spectacle was no other than the execution of two murderers, who were to be broken alive on the wheel, in the Place de Grêve, on that day. She however says, that she declined going.]

I have on several other days seen felons sitting on stools on this scaffold, with their hands tied, and their arms and bodies fastened to a stake by a girth, bareheaded, with an inscription over their heads, specifying their crimes and punishment; they are generally thus exposed during five or fix hours, and then sent to prison, or to the gallies according to the sentence.

VERSAILLES. BOTANY. SOUNDING MERIDIANS.

I went once to Versailles; there is hardly any thing in the palace but the bare walls, a very few of the looking-glasses, tapestry, and large pictures remaining, as it has now been near two years uninhabited. I crossed the great canal on foot; there was not a drop of water in it.

In the _Menagerie_ I saw the Rhinoceros, which has been 23 years there; there is likewise a lion, with a little dog in the same den, as his companion, and a zebra.

The collection of orange trees cannot be matched in any country where these trees do not grow naturally; the number is about six hundred, the largest trunk is about fifteen inches in diameter, and the age of the most ancient of these trees exceeds three centuries.

The _Jardin Potager_, or kitchen garden, is of fifty acres, divided into about five or six and twenty small gardens, of one, two, or three acres, walled round, both for shelter to the plants, and for training fruit trees against. One of these gardens, of two acres, was entirely allotted to the culture of melons, and these were all of the warty _rock cantalupe_ kind, and were growing under hand-glasses, in the manner of our late cucumbers for pickling.

The season had been so unfavourable for wall-fruit, that (as the gardener told me) all these gardens had yielded less than a dozen peaches and nectarines.

The fruit was sent regularly to the Royal Family in Paris.

There is a botanical garden at the _Petit Trianon_ in the park of Versailles, but the person who shews it was out of the way, so that I did not see it.

I passed several mornings in the Botanical National Garden, (_ci-devant Jardin du Roi_.) That part of the garden which contains the botanical collection is separated from the other part, which is open to the public at large, by iron palisades. The names of the plants are painted on square plates of tin, stuck in the ground on the side of each plant. I saw a _Strelitzia_, which was there called _Ravenala_, (probably from some modern botanist's name) _Mr. Thouin_, who superintends this garden, said to me, "We will not have any aristocratic plants, neither will we call the new Planet by any other name than that of its discoverer, _Herschel_." I neglected to ask him why the plant might not retain its original and proper name of _Heliconia Bihai_?

I here found the _Anastatica Hierochuntica_ or _Rose of Jericho_, which I sought for in vain for several years, and advertised for in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, for January 1791, and in the newspapers. Many descriptions and figures of this plant are to be found in old books, and the dried plants are frequently to be met with. Old _Gerard_ very justly says, "The coiner spoiled the name in the mint, for of all plants that have been written of, there is not any more unlike unto the rose." The annexed figure represents a single plant; it had been transplanted into a deep pot, which had been filled with earth, so as to make it appear like two plants. The stalks are shrubby, the leaves are fleshy, and of a glaucous or sea-green colour. The _corolla_ consists of four very small white petals. Its scientific description may be found in _Linnæus_[12]. One of the _silicles_ is drawn magnified.

[Note 12: _Genera plantarum_, 798.]

Mr. Thouin pointed out to me a new and very beautiful species of _Zinnia_, of which the flower is twice the size of that of the common sort, and of a deep purple colour: a new _verbascum_, from the Levant; it was about four feet high, the leaves were almost as woolly as those of the _Stachys lanata_, and terminated in a point like a spur; it had not yet flowered. And a new _solanum_, with spines the colour of gold.

He recommended the flower of the _spilanthus brasiliana_, which our nurserymen call _Verbesina_ _acmella_ as an excellent dentifrice.

I also found here the _amethystea, coerulea_: this annual has been lost in England above twenty years.[13]

[Note 13: The seeds which are sold in the London shops, for those of this plant, are those of the _hyssopus bracteatis_.]

The _datura fastuosa_, the French call _Trompette du jugement à trois fleurs l'une dans l'autre_; I have myself raised these with triple flowers, both purple and white, though some of our nurserymen pretended the flowers were never more than double. The _anthemis arabica_, a very singular and pretty annual. A _zinnia hybrida_, which last has not yet been cultivated in England. Twenty-two sorts of _medicago polymorpha, (snails and hedgehogs_) of these I had seen only four in England.

Here was a small single moss-rose plant, in a pot, which is the only one I ever saw in France. The air is too hot for those roses, and for the same reason none of the American plants, such as the _magnolia_ (tulip tree) _kalmia_, &c. thrive in France, though kept in pots in the shade and well watered; the heat of the atmosphere dries the trunk of these trees. But there are many other plants, to the growth of which the climate is much more favourable than it is in England. In the open part of this garden are a great number of _bignonia-catalpa_ trees, which were then in flower, resembling horse-chesnut flowers at a distance, but much larger and more beautiful; and many _nerium oleander_ trees, in wooden chests; several of these trees are about eight feet high and the trunk a foot in diameter; they were then full of flowers of all the sorts, single and double, red and white; these are placed in the green-house in the winter.

On a mount in this garden is a _meridien sonnant_ (sounding meridian) this is an iron mortar which holds four pounds of gunpowder, it is loaded every morning, and exactly at noon the sun discharges the piece by means of a burning glass, so placed that the _focus_ at that moment fires the powder in the touch-hole. The first meridian that was made of this kind is in the garden of the _Palais Royal_, at the top of one of the houses; I could not see it, but it is thus described in the _Paris Guide_: "The touch-hole of the cannon is two inches long and half a line (the twentieth part of an inch) broad, this length is placed in the direction of the meridian line. Two _transoms_ or _cross-staves_ placed vertically on a horizontal plane, support a _lens_ or burning glass, which, by their means, is fixed according to the sun's height monthly, so as to cause the _focus_ to be exactly over the touch-hole at noon. It is said to have been invented by _Rousseau_." Small meridians of this sort are sold in the shops; these are dials of about a foot square, engraven on marble, with a little brass cannon and a _lens_.

The market for plants and flowers in pots, and for nosegays, is kept on the _Quai de la Megisserie_, twice a week, very early in the morning; the following were the most abundant: _Nerium_ double flowering pomegranate, _vinca rosea_, (Madagascar periwinkle) _prickly lantana, peruvian heliotropium_ (turnsole) tuberoses, with very large and numerous single and double flowers, and very great quantities of common sweet basil, which is much used in cookery.

I visited the apothecaries garden, and also two or three nursery gardens in that neighbourhood, but found nothing remarkable in them.

There are many gardens in the environs of Paris which are worthy of notice, but I was prevented from seeing them in consequence of the disturbances hereafter mentioned. In the books which describe these places, I find the village of _Montreuil-sous-le-Bois_ particularly mentioned on account of its fertility. In the _Tableau de Paris_ it is said, "Three acres of ground produce to the proprietor twenty thousand livres annually, (near 800 guineas.) The rent of an acre is six hundred livres, and the king's tax sixty (together about six and twenty guineas.) The peaches which are produced here are the finest in the world, and are sometimes sold for a crown a piece. When a prince has given a splendid entertainment, three hundred Louis d'ors worth of these fruits have been eaten." It is situated on a hill, just above _Vincennes_, about three miles from the fauxbourg _Saint Antoine_, and is likewise celebrated for its grapes, strawberries, all sorts of wall fruit, pease, and every kind of esculent vegetables. In the garden called _Mouceaux_ which belongs to the _ci-devant Duke of Orleans_; at the extremity of the _fauxbourg du Roule_ are, it is said, magnificent hot-houses, of which I have no recollection, though I was in the garden in 1776. There is a description of these gardens in print, with sixteen copper plates. In the _Luxembourg_ gardens only common annuals were growing, such as marigolds, sun-flowers, &c. probably self sown; neither were there in the _Tuileries_ gardens, which I afterwards saw, any remarkable plants.

I bought very large peaches in the markets at 30 _sous_ each, the ordinary ones were at 10 _sols_. The melons (which are brought to market in waggons, piled up like turnips in England) were all of the netted sort, and of so little flavor, that they would not be worth cultivating, were it not for the sake of cooling the mouth in hot weather; they were sold at 15 or 20 sous each. Strawberries were still plentiful (second week in August.) _Cerneaux_, which are the kernel of green walnuts, were just coming into season.

I had now no opportunity of acquiring any more knowledge of the plants in France, and shall only add, that I passed the winter of 1783 and 1784, at _Marseille_ and at _Hieres_; and that besides oranges, lemons, cedras,[14] pistachios, pomegranates, and a few date palm trees, I found several species of _geranium_, myrtles, and _cactus opuntia_, (Indian fig) growing in the soil, and likewise the _mimosa farnesiana_, sweet scented sponge tree, or fragrant acacia, the flowers of which are there called _fleurs de cassier_; these flowers, together with those of the jasmine, and those which fall from the orange and lemon trees, are sold to the perfumers of _Provence_ and _Languedoc_.

[Note 14: These trees are planted as close together as possible, hardly eight feet asunder, and no room is left for any walks, so that these gardens are, properly speaking, orange orchards. The oranges were then sold at the rate of ten for a penny English.]