Volume Ii Part 11 (1/2)
”_Ah, ca_” And he put it back hastily, and felt of my travelling gown. ”What is this?”
”Only a wrapping gown.”
”_Ah, ca_” After fumbling a little more, he took sister H.'s bag, gave a dive here, a poke there, and a kind of promiscuous rake with his five fingers, and turned to the trunk. There he seemed somewhat dubious. Eying the fine silk and lace dresses,--first one, then the other,--”Ah, ah!” said he, and snuffed a little. Then he peeped under this corner, and c.o.c.ked his eye under that corner; then, all at once, plunged his arm down at one end of the trunk, and brought up a little square box. ”What's that?” said he. He unrolled and was about to open it, when suddenly he seemed to be seized with an emotion of confidence. ”_Non, non_” said he, frankly, and rolled it up, shoved it back, stuffed the things down, smoothed all over, signed my ticket, and pa.s.sed on. We locked up, gave the baggage to porters, and called a fiacre. As we left the station two ladies met us.
”Is there any one here expecting to see Mrs. C.?” said one of them.
”Yes, madam,” said I; ”_we_ do.”
”G.o.d bless you,” said she, fervently, and seized me by the hand. It was Mrs. C. and her sister. I gave He into their possession.
Our troubles were over. We were at home. We rode through streets whose names were familiar, crossed the Carrousel, pa.s.sed the Seine, and stopped before an ancient mansion in the Hue de Verneuil, belonging to M. le Marquis de Brige. This Faubourg St. Germain is the part of Paris where the ancient n.o.bility lived, and the houses exhibit marks of former splendor. The marquis is one of those chivalrous legitimists who uphold the claims of Henri VI. He lives in the country, and rents this hotel. Mrs. C. occupies the suite of rooms on the lower floor. We entered by a ponderous old gateway, opened by the _concierge_, pa.s.sed through a large paved quadrangle, traversed a short hall, and found ourselves in a large, cheerful parlor, looking out into a small flower garden. There was no carpet, but what is called here a parquet floor, or mosaic of oak blocks, waxed and highly polished. The sofas and chairs were covered with a light chintz, and the whole air of the apartment shady and cool as a grotto. A jardiniere filled with flowers stood in the centre of the room, and around it a group of living flowers--mother, sisters, and daughters--scarcely less beautiful. In five minutes we were at home. French life is different from any other.
Elsewhere you do as the world pleases; here you do as you please yourself. My spirits always rise when I get among the French.
Sabbath, June 5. Headache all the forenoon. In the afternoon we walked to the Madeleine, and heard a sermon on charity; listened to the chanting, and gazed at the fantastic ceremonial of the altar. I had antic.i.p.ated so much from Henry's description of the organs, that I was disappointed. The music was fine; but our ideal had outstripped the real. The strangest part of the performance was the censer swinging at the altar. It was done in certain parts of the chant, with rhythmic sweep, and glitter, and vapor wreath, that produced a striking effect.
There was an immense audience--quiet, orderly, and to all appearance devout. This was the first Romish service I ever attended. It ought to be impressive here, if any where. Yet I cannot say I was moved by it Rome-ward. Indeed, I felt a kind of Puritan tremor of conscience at witnessing such a theatrical pageant on the Sabbath. We soon saw, however, as we walked home, across the gardens of the Tuileries, that there is no Sabbath in Paris, according to our ideas of the day.
Monday, June 6. This day was consecrated to knick-knacks. Accompanied by Mrs. C., whom years of residence have converted into a perfect _Parisienne_, we visited shop after shop, and store after store.
The politeness of the shopkeepers is inexhaustible. I felt quite ashamed to spend a half hour looking at every thing, and then depart without buying; but the civil Frenchman bowed, and smiled, and thanked us for coming.
In the evening, we rode to L'Arc de Triomphe d'Etoile, an immense pile of ma.s.sive masonry, from the top of which we enjoyed a brilliant panorama. Paris was beneath us, from the Louvre to the Bois de Boulogne, with its gardens, and moving myriads; its sports, and games, and light-hearted mirth--a vast Vanity Fair, blazing in the sunlight.
A deep and strangely-blended impression of sadness and gayety sunk into our hearts as we gazed. All is vivacity, gracefulness, and sparkle, to the eye; but ah, what fires are smouldering below! Are not all these vines rooted in the lava and ashes of the volcano side?
Tuesday, June 7. _A la Louvre_! But first the ladies must ”shop”
a little. I sit by the counter and watch the pretty Parisian _shopocracy_. A lady presides at the desk. Trim little grisettes serve the customers so deftly, that we wonder why awkward men should ever attempt to do such things. Nay, they are so civil, so evidently disinterested and solicitous for your welfare, that to buy is the most natural thing imaginable.
But to the Louvre! Provided with catalogues, I abandoned the ladies, and strolled along to take a kind of cream-skimming look at the whole.
I was highly elated with one thing. There were three Madonnas with dark hair and eyes: one by Murillo, another by Carracci, and another by Guido. It showed that painters were not so utterly hopeless as a cla.s.s, and given over by common sense to blindness of mind, as I had supposed.
H. begins to recant her heresy in regard to Rubens. Here we find his largest pieces. Here we find the real originals of several real originals we saw in English galleries. It seems as though only upon a picture as large as the side of a parlor could his exuberant genius find scope fully to lay itself out.
When I met II. at last--after finis.h.i.+ng the survey--her cheek was flushed, and her eye seemed to swim. ”Well, H.,” said I, ”have you drank deep enough this time?”
”Yes,” said she, ”I have been _satisfied_, for the first time.”
Wednesday, June 8. A day on foot in Paris. Surrendered H. to the care of our fair hostess. Attempted to hire a boat, at one of the great bathing establishments, for a pull on the Seine. Why not on the Seine, as well as on the Thames? But the old Triton demurred. The tide _marched_ too strong--”_Il marche trop fort._” Onward, then, along the quays; visiting the curious old book stalls, picture stands, and flower markets. Lean over the parapet, and gaze upon this modern Euphrates, rus.h.i.+ng between solid walls of masonry through the heart of another Babylon. The river is the only thing not old. These waters are as turbid, tumultuous, unbridled, as when forests covered all these banks--fit symbol of peoples and nations in their mad career, generation after generation. Inst.i.tutions, like hewn granite, may wall them in, and vast arches span their flow, and hierarchies domineer over the tide; but the scorning waters burst into life unchangeable, and sweep impetuous through the heart of Vanity Fair, and dash out again into the future, the same grand, ungovernable Euphrates stream.
I do not wonder Egypt adored her Nile, and Rome her Tiber. Surely, the life artery of Paris is this Seine beneath my feet! And there is no scene like this, as I gaze upward and downward, comprehending, in a glance, the immense panorama of art and architecture--life, motion, enterprise, pleasure, pomp, and power. Beautiful Paris! What city in the world can compare with thee?
And is it not chiefly because, either by accident or by instinctive good taste, her treasures of beauty and art are so disposed along the Seine as to be visible at a glance to the best effect? As the instinct of the true Parisienne teaches her the mystery of setting off the graces of her person by the fascinations of dress, so the instinct of the nation to set off the city by the fascinations of architecture and embellishment. Hence a chief superiority of Paris to London. The Seine is straight, and its banks are laid out in broad terraces on either side, called _quais,_ lined with her stateliest palaces and gardens. The Thames forms an elbow, and is enveloped in dense smoke and fog. London lowers; the Seine sparkles; London shuts down upon the Thames, and there is no point of view for the whole river panorama.
Paris rises amphitheatrically, on either side the Seine, and the eye from the Pont d'Austerlitz seems to fly through the immense reach like an arrow, casting its shadow on every thing of beauty or grandeur Paris possesses.
Rapidly now I sped onward, paying brief visits to the Palais de Justice, the Hotel de Ville, and spending a cool half hour in Notre Dame. I love to sit in these majestic fanes, abstracting them from the superst.i.tion which does but desecrate them, and gaze upward to their lofty, vaulted arches, to drink in the impression of architectual sublimity, which I can neither a.n.a.lyze nor express. Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt. There is little ornament here. That roof looks plain and bare; yet I feel that the air is dense with sublimity. Onward I sped, crossing a bridge by the Hotel Dieu, and, leaving the river, plunged into narrow streets. Explored a quadrangular market; surveyed the old church of St Genevieve, and the new--now the Pantheon; went onward to the Jardin des Plantes, and explored its tropical bowers. Many things remind me to-day of New Orleans, and its levee, its Mississippi, its cathedral, and the luxuriant vegetation of the gulf. In fact, I seem to be walking in my sleep in a kind of glorified New Orleans, all the while. Yet I return to the gardens of the Tuileries and the Place Vendome, and in the shadow of Napoleon's Column the illusion vanishes. Hundreds of battles look down upon me from their blazonry.
In the evening I rested from the day's fatigue by an hour in the garden of the Palais Royal. I sat by one of the little tables, and called for an ice. There were hundreds of ladies and gentlemen eating ices, drinking wine, reading the papers, smoking, chatting; scores of pretty children were frolicking and enjoying the balmy evening. Here six or eight midgets were jumping the rope, while papa and mamma swung it for them. Pretty little things, with their flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, how they did seem to enjoy themselves! What parent was ever far from home that did not espy in every group of children his own little ones--his Mary or his Nelly, his Henry or Charlie? So it was with me. There was a ring of twenty or thirty singing and dancing, with a smaller ring in the centre, while old folks and boys stood outside. But I heard not a single oath, nor saw a rough or rude action, during the whole time I was there. The boys standing by looked on quietly, like young gentlemen. The best finale of such a toilsome day of sightseeing was a warm bath in the Rue du Bac, for the trifling sum of fifteen sous. The cheapness and convenience of bathing here is a great recommendation of Paris life. They will bring you a hot bath at your house for twenty-five cents, and that without bustle or disorder. And nothing so effectually as an evening bath, as my experience testifies, cures fatigue and propitiates to dreamless slumber.
Thursday, June 9. At the Louvre. Studied three statues half an hour each--the Venus Victrix, Polyhymnia, and Gladiateur Combattant. The first is mutilated; but if _disarmed_ she conquers all hearts, what would she achieve in full panoply? As to the Gladiator, I noted as follows on my catalogue: A pugilist; antique, brown with age; att.i.tude, leaning forward; left hand raised on guard, right hand thrown out back, ready to strike a side blow; right leg bent; straight line from the head to the toe of left foot; muscles and veins most vividly revealed in intense development; a wonderful _petrifaction,_ as if he had been smitten to stone at the instant of striking.
Here are antique mosaics, in which colored stones seem liquefied, realizing the most beautiful effects of painting--quadrigae, warriors, arms, armor, vases, streams, all lifelike. Ascending to the hall of French paintings I spent an hour in studying one picture--La Meduse, by Gericault. It is a s.h.i.+pwrecked crew upon a raft in mid ocean. I gazed until all surrounding objects disappeared, and I was alone upon the wide Atlantic. Those transparent emerald waves are no fiction; they leap madly, hungering for their prey. That distended sail is filled with the lurid air. That dead man's foot hangs off in the seething brine a stark reality. What a fixed gaze of despair in that father's stony eye! What a group of deathly living ones around that frail mast, while one with intense eagerness flutters a signal to some far-descried bark! Coleridge's Ancient Mariner has no colors more fearfully faithful to his theme. Heaven pities them not. Ocean is all in uproar against them. And there is no voice that can summon the distant, flying sail! So France appeared to that prophet painter's eye, in the subsiding tempests of the revolution. So men's hearts failed them for fear, and the dead lay stark and stiff among the living, amid the sea and the waves roaring; and so mute signals of distress were hung out in the lurid sky to nations afar.