Part 3

The French dancing-master of that period taught us gambols and flourishes long since banished from the domain of social decorum. Being light and alert, I followed his prescriptions with joy, and learned with patience the lessons set me by the French mistress, who, while leading us through Florian's tales and La Fontaine's fables, did not forget to impress upon us her conviction that to be French was to be virtuous, but to be Parisian was to be perfect.

Let me now pass on to the years of my youngladyhood, when New York reflected Paris on a larger scale. The distinguished people of the society to which my youth was related either had been to Paris or expected to go there very shortly. Our circles were sometimes electrified by the appearance of a well-dressed and perfumed stranger, wearing the moustache which was then strictly contraband in the New York business world, and talking of manners and customs widely different from our own.

These elegant gentlemen were sometimes adventurers in pursuit of a rich wife, sometimes intelligent and well-informed travellers, and sometimes the agents of some foreign banking-house, for the drummer was not yet invented. If they were furnished with satisfactory credentials, the fathers of Gotham introduced them into their domestic circle, usually warning their daughters never to think of them as husbands,--a warning which, naturally, would sometimes defeat its own object.

I must here be allowed to say one word concerning the French novel, which, since that time, has here and there affected the tone of our society. In the days of which I speak, brothers who returned from Europe brought with them the romances of Balzac and Victor Hugo, which their sisters surreptitiously read. We heard also with a sort of terror of George Sand, the evil woman, who wrote such somnambulic books. We pictured to ourselves the wicked delight of reading them; and presently some friend confidentially lent us the forbidden volumes, which our Puritan nurture and habit of life did much to render harmless and not quite clear in meaning.

I should say that the works of Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo, and Eugène Sue had each exerted an appreciable influence upon the social atmosphere of this country. Of these four, Balzac was the least popular, having long been known only to readers acquainted with the French language. George Sand first became widely recognized through her "Consuelo." Victor Hugo's popular fame dates from "Les Miserables," and "The Mysteries of Paris" opened the doors to Eugène Sue, and _Rigolette_ and _Fleur de Marie_, new types of character to most of us, appeared upon the stage.

Still nearer was Paris brought to us by Carlyle's work on the French Revolution, which, falling like a compact and burning coal upon the American imagination, reddened the sober twilight of our firesides with the burning passion and frenzy of that great drama of enthusiasm and revenge. And here, lest I should entirely reverse the order in which historic things should be spoken of, let me dismiss those early memories, and, having shown you something of the far-reaching influence of the city, let me speak of it from nearer sight and study.

History must come first. I find it written in a certain record that Paris, in the time of Julius Cæsar, was a collection of huts built upon an island in the Seine, and bearing the name of Lutetia. Its inhabitants were called Parisii, which was the name of their tribe, supposed to be an offshoot from the Belgæ. I do not know whether this primitive settlement lay within the bounds of Gallia _Bracchiata_; but, if it did, how natural that to the other indebtedness of polite life, that of the trouser should be added! The city still possesses some interesting remains of the Roman period. The Hotel Cluny is also called "The Hotel of the Baths," and whoever visits it may at the same time explore a massive ruin which is said to have covered beneath its roof the baths of the Emperor Julian, surnamed "The Apostate."

A rapid panoramic retrospect will give us briefly the leading points of the city's many periods of interest. First must be named Paris of the early saints: Saint Genevieve, who saved it from the hands of Attila; Saint Denis, famous for having walked several miles after his head was cut off, carrying that deposed member under his arm.

A well-known French proverb was suggested some time in the last century by the relation of this mediæval miracle. The celebrated Madame Dudeffant, a wit and beauty of Horace Walpole's time, was told one day that the Archbishop of Paris had said that every one knew that Saint Denis had walked some distance after his decapitation, but that few people were aware that he had walked several miles on that occasion. Madame Dudeffant said, in reply: "Indeed, in such a case, it is the first step only that costs,"--_"Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte."_

Paris of the sleepy Merovingians,--do-nothing kings, a race made to be kicked out, and fulfilling its destiny,--Paris of Hugh Capet, in whose reign were laid the foundations of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Paris of 1176, whereof the old chronicler, John of Salisbury, writes: "When I saw the abundance of provisions, the gaiety of the people, the good condition of the clergy, the majesty and glory of all the church, the diverse occupations of men admitted to the study of philosophy, I seemed to see that Jacob's ladder whose summit reached heaven, and on which the angels ascended and descended. I must confess that truly the Lord was in this place. This passage also of a poet came to my mind: 'Happy is the man whose exile is to this place.'"

This suggests the familiar saying of our own time,--that good Bostonians, when they die, go to Paris.

Paris of Louis XI., he of the strong hand, the stony heart, the superstitious mind. Scott has seized the features of the time and of the man in his novel of "Quentin Durward." His hat, full of leaden images of saints, his cunning and pitiless diplomacy, and the personages of his brilliant court are brought vividly before us by the magician of the North.

Paris of Louis XIII., and its Richelieu live for us in Bulwer's vivid play, in which I have often seen the fine impersonation of Edwin Booth.

Paris of Louis XIV., the handsome young king, the idol, the absolute sovereign, who said: _"L'état, c'est moi;"_ the old man before whom Madame de Maintenon is advised to say her prayers, in order to make upon his mind a serious impression; the revoker of the edict of Nantes; he who tried to extinguish Dutch freedom with French blood; a god in his own time, a figure now faded, pompous, self-adoring.

Paris of Louis XV., the reign of license, the _Parc aux cerfs_, the period of the courtesan, Madame de Pompadour, and a host of rivals and successors,--a hateful type of womanhood, justly odious and gladly forgotten.

Paris of Louis XVI., the days of progress and of good intentions; the deficit, the ministry of Neckar, the states general, Mirabeau, Lafayette, Robespierre, the fall of the monarch, the reign of terror; the guillotine in permanence, science, virtue, every distinction supplying its victims.

Paris of Napoleon I.; a whiff of grape-shot that silences the last grumblings of the Revolution; the mighty marches, the strategy of Ulysses, the labors of Hercules, the glory of Jupiter, ending in the fate of Prometheus.

Paris of the returned Bourbons, Charles X., the Duc de Berri, the Duchess d'Angoulême; Paris of the Orleans dynasty, civil, civic, free, witty; wise here, and wicked there; the Mecca of students in all sciences; a region problematic to parents, who fear its vices and expense, but who desire its opportunities and elegance for their sons. This was in the days in which a visit to Paris was the _ne plus ultra_ of what parents could do to forward a son's studies, or perfect a daughter's accomplishments.

Having made my connections in this breathless review, I must return to speak of two modern works of art which treat of matters upon which my haste did not allow me, in the first instance, to dwell.

The first of these is Victor Hugo's picture of mediæval Paris, given in his famous romance entitled "Notre Dame de Paris." This remarkable novel preserves valuable details of the architecture of the ancient cathedral from which it takes its name. It paints the society of the time in gloomy colors. The clergy are corrupt, the soldiery licentious, the people forlorn and friendless. Here is a brief outline of the story. The beautiful gipsy, _Esmeralda_, dances and twirls her tambourine in the public streets. Her companion is a little goat, which she has taught to spell her lover's name, by putting together the letters which compose it. This lover is _Phoebus_, captain of the guard. _Claude Frollo_, the cunning, wicked priest of the period, has cast his evil eye upon the girl. He manages to surprise her when alone with her lover, and stabs the latter so as to endanger his life. A hideous dwarf, named _Quasimodo_, also loves _Esmeralda_, with humble, faithful affection. As the story develops, he turns out to have been the changeling laid in the place of the lovely girl-infant whom gipsies stole from her cradle. _Esmeralda_ finds her distracted parent, but only to be torn from her arms again. The priest, _Claude Frollo_, foiled in his unlawful passion, stirs up the wrath of the populace against _Esmeralda_, accusing her of sorcery. She is seized by the mob, and hanged in the public street. The narrative is powerful and graphic, but it shows the disease of Victor Hugo's mind,--a morbid imagination which heightens the color of human crimes in order to give a melodramatic brilliancy to the virtue which contrasts with them. According to his view, suffering through the fault of others is necessarily the lot of all good people. French romance has in it much of this despair of the cause of virtue. It springs, however remotely, from the dark days of absolutism, whose bitter secrets were masked over by the frolic fancy of the people who invented the joyous science of minstrelsy.

The other work which I have now in mind is Meyerbeer's opera of "The Huguenots," which I mention here because it brings so vividly to mind the features of another period in the history of Paris. It represents, as an opera may, the frightful days in which a king's hospitality was made a trap for the wholesale butchery of as many Protestants as could be lured within the walls of Paris,--the massacre which bears the name of Saint Bartholomew. Nobles and leaders were shot down in the streets, or murdered in their beds, while the hollow phrases of the royal favor still rang in their ears. I have seen, near the church of St. Germain l'Auxerois, the palace window from which the kerchief of Catherine de Medici gave the signal for the fatal onslaught. "Do you not believe my word?" asked the Queen Mother one day of the English ambassador. "No, by Saint Bartholomew, Madam," was the sturdy reply.

Meyerbeer's opera is truly a Protestant work of art, vigorous and noble. Through all the intensity of its dramatic situations runs the grand choral of Luther:--

A mighty fortress is our God.

So true faith holds its own, and sails its silver boat upon the bloody sea of martyrdom.

Am I obliged to have recourse to a novel and an opera in order to bring before your eyes a vision of Paris in those distant ages? Such are our indebtednesses to art and literature. And here I must again mention, as a great master in both of these, Thomas Carlyle, who has given us so vivid and graphic a picture of the Revolution in France, which followed so nearly upon our own War of Independence.

I, a grandmother of to-day, recall the impression which this great conflict had made upon the grandparents of my childhood. Most wicked and cruel did they esteem it, in all of its aspects. To people of our day, it appears the inevitable crisis of a most malignant state of national disease. Much of political quackery was swept away forever, one may hope, by its virulent outbreak. No half-way nostrums, no outside tinkering, answered for this fiery patient, whose fever set the whole continent of Europe in a blaze. War itself was gentle in comparison with the acts of its savage delirium, in which the vengeance of defrauded ages fell upon victims most of whom were innocent of personal offence. The reign of humanitarian theory led strangely to a period of military predominance which has had no parallel since the days of Alexander of Macedon. Then War itself died of exhaustion. The stupor of reaction quenched the dream of civil and religious liberty. But the patient stirred again in 1830 and 1848, and the dream, scarcely yet realized, became more and more the settled purpose of his heart.

Now the government in 1830 was manifestly in the wrong. The stupid old Bourbon Prince, Charles X., had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing, but the French people had learned and unlearned many things. They had learned the illusion of Monarchy, the corruption of the demagogue, the futility of the sentimentalist. The impotence of the aristocracy was one of the lessons of the day. Was ever a people more rapidly educated? Take the _canaille_ of the pre-revolutionary history, and the _peuple_ of the Revolution. What a contrast! It is the lion asleep in the toils, and the lion awake, and turning upon his captors in fury. The French people have never gone back to what they were before that great outbreak. The mighty, volcanic heart has made its pulsations felt through all assumptions, through all restraints. Yet the French people are easily tricked. They are easily led to receive pedantry for education, bigotry for religion, constraint for order, and successful pretension for glory.

The Revolution of 1848 was justified in all but its method. And method has often been the weak point in French politics. Methods are handed down more surely than ideas are inherited. The violent measures whose record forms so large a part of French history have left behind them a belief in military, rather than in moral, action. The _coup d'état_ would seem by its name to be a French invention; but it is a method abhorred of Justice. Justice recognizes two sides, and gives ear to both. Passion sees but one, and blots out in blood the representatives of the other. The Revolution of 1848 was the rather premature explosion of a wide and subtle conspiracy. But if the conflicting opinions and interests then current could have encountered each other, as in England or America, in open daylight, trusting only in the weapons of reason, a very different result would have been achieved. Do not conspire, is one of the lessons which Paris teaches by her history. Do not say, nor teach others to say: "If we cannot have our way, we will have your life." Say, rather: "Let both sides state their case, and plead their cause, and let the weight of Reason decide which shall prevail."

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Paris as I first knew it, half a century ago, was a place imposing for its good taste and good manners. A stranger passing through it with ever so little delay would necessarily have been impressed with the general intelligence, and with the æsthetic invention and nicety which, more than anything else, have given the city its social and commercial prestige.

In those days, Chateaubriand and Madame Récamier were still alive. The traditions of society were polite. The theatres were vivacious schools of morality. The salon was still an institution. This was not what we should call a party, but the habitual meeting of friends in a friend's house,--a good institution, if kept up in a good spirit.

The natural sociability of the French made the salon an easy and natural thing for them. Salons were of all sorts. Some shone in true glory; some disguised evil purposes and passions with artificial graces. I think the institution of the salon indigenous to Paris, although it has by no means stopped there.

The great point in administering a salon is to do it sincerely. Where the children are put out of the way, the old friends neglected, the rich courted, and celebrities impaled and exhibited, the institution is demoralizing, and answers no end of permanent good. A friendly house, that opens its doors as often and as widely as the time and fortune of its inmates can afford, is a boon and blessing to many people.

I suppose that the French salons were of both sorts. Sydney Smith speaks of a certain historical set of Parisian women who dealt very lightly with the Decalogue, but who, on the other hand, gave very pleasant little suppers. French society, no doubt, afforded many occasions of this sort, but far different were the meetings in which the literary world of Paris listened to the unpublished memoirs of Chateaubriand; far different was the throng that gathered, twice a day, around the hearth of the wise and devout Madame Swetchine.

In the days just mentioned, I passed through Paris, returning from my bridal journey, which had carried me to Rome. I was eager to explore every corner of the enchanted region. What I did see, I have never forgotten,--the brilliant shops, the tempting _cafés_, the varied and entertaining theatres. I attended a _séance_ of the Chamber of Deputies, a lecture of Edgar de Quinet, and one of Philarete Charles. De Quinet's lecture was given at the Sorbonne. I remember of it only the enthusiasm of the audience,--the faces at once fiery and thoughtful, the occasional cries of "De Quinet," when any passage particularly stirred the feelings of the auditors. Of Philarete Charles, I remember that his theme was "English Literature," and that at the close of his lecture he took occasion to reprobate the whole literary world of America. The _bon homme_ Franklin, he said, had outwitted the French Court. The country of Franklin was utterly without interest from an intellectual point of view. "When," said he, "we take into account the late lamentable disorders in New York (some small election riot, in 1844), we shall agree upon the low state of American civilization and the small prospect of good held out by the republic." He was unaware, of course, that Americans were among his hearers; but a certain tidal wave of anger arose in my heart, and had not my graver companion held me down, I should have arisen then, as I certainly should now, to say: "Monsieur Philarete Charles, you are uttering falsehoods."

In those days, I first saw Rachel, then in the full affluence of her genius. The trenchant manner, the statuesque drapery, the chain-lightning effects, were much as they were afterwards seen in this country. But when I saw her, seven years after that first time, in London, I thought that her unrivalled powers had bloomed to a still fuller perfection than before. Of finest clay, thrilled by womanly passion and tempered by womanly tact, we need not remember the faults of the person in the perfection of the artist. Alfred de Musset has left a charming account of a supper at her house. I certainly have never seen on the boards a tragic conception equal to hers. Ristori, able as she was, seemed to me to fall short in Rachel's great parts, if we except the last scene of "Marie Stuart," in which the Christian woman, following the crucifix to her death, showed a sense of its value which the Jewish woman could neither feel nor counterfeit.

The gallery of the Louvre recalls the finest palaces of Italy, and equals, in value and interest, any gallery in the world. Venice is far richer in Titian's pictures, and Rome and Florence keep the greatest works of Raphael and Michael Angelo. To understand Quintin Matsys and Rubens, you must go to Antwerp, where their finest productions remain. But the Louvre has an unsurpassed variety and interest, and exhibits not a few of the chief treasures of ancient and modern art. Among these are some of the masterpieces of Titian, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, the Conception of Murillo, Paul Veronese's great picture of the marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the ever-famous Venus of Milo.

In one of the principal galleries of Venice, I was once shown a large picture by the French artist David. I do not remember much about its merits, but, on asking how it came there, I was told that its place had formerly been occupied by a famous picture by Paul Veronese. Napoleon I., it will be remembered, robbed the galleries of Italy of many of their finest pictures. After his downfall, most of these stolen treasures were restored to their rightful owners; but the French never gave up the Paul Veronese picture, which was this very one that now hangs in the Louvre, where its vivid coloring and rich grouping look like a piece of Venice, bright and glorious like herself.

The student of art, returning from Italy, is possessed with the mediæval gloom and glory which there have filled his eyes and his imagination. With a sigh, looking toward our Western world, so rich in action, so poor as yet in art, he pauses here in surprise, to view a cosmopolitan palace of her splendors. It consoles him to think that the Beautiful has made so brave a stand upon the nearer borders of the Seine. Encouraged by the noble record of French achievement, he carries with him across the ocean the traditions of Jerome, of Rosa Bonheur, of Horace Vernet.

* * * * *

In historical monuments, Paris is rich indeed. The oldest of these that I remember was the Temple,--the ancient stronghold of the Knights Templar, who were cruelly extirpated in the year 1307. It was a large, circular building, occupied, when I visited it, as a place for the sale of second-hand commodities. I remember making purchases of lace within its walls which were nearly black with age. You will remember that Louis XVI. and his family were confined here for some time, and that here took place the sad parting between the King and the dear ones he was never to see again. I will subjoin a brief extract from the diary of my grandfather, Col. Samuel Ward, of the Revolutionary War, who was in Paris at the time of the King's execution:--

_January 17, 1792._ The Convention up all night upon the question of the King's sentence. At eleven this night the sentence of death was pronounced,--three hundred and sixty-six for death; three hundred and nineteen for seclusion or banishment; thirty-six various; majority of five absolute. The King desired an appeal to be made to the people, which was not allowed. Thus the Convention have been the accusers, the judges, and will be the executors of their own sentence. This will cause a great degree of astonishment in America, where the departments are so well divided that the judges have power to break all acts of the Legislature interfering with the exercise of their office.

_January 20._ The fate of the King disturbs everybody.

_January 21._ I had engaged to pass this day, which is one of horror, at Versailles, with Mr. Morris. The King was beheaded at eleven o'clock. Guards at an early hour took possession of the Place Louis XV., and were posted at each avenue. The most profound stillness prevailed. Those who had feeling lamented in secret in their houses, or had left town. Others showed the same levity and barbarous indifference as on former occasions. Hitchborn, Henderson, and Johnson went to see the execution, for which, as an American, I was sorry. The King desired to speak: he had only time to say he was innocent, and forgave his enemies. He behaved with the fortitude of a martyr. Santerre ordered the executioner to dispatch.

Louis Napoleon ordered the destruction of this venerable monument of antiquity, and did much else to efface the landmarks of the ancient Paris, and to give his elegant capital the air of a city entirely modern.