Volume Ii Part 34 (1/2)
Some, surrounded by their growing families, though they abhor the tyranny of the government, acquiesce wearily, and even dread change lest something worse should arise.
We know not in America how many atrocities and cruelties that attended the _coup d'etat_ have been buried in the grave which intombed the liberty of the press. I have talked with eye witnesses of those scenes, men who have been in the prisons, and heard the work of butchery going on in the prison yards in the night. While we have been here, a gentleman to whom I had been introduced was arrested, taken from bed by the police, and carried off, without knowing of what he was accused. His friends were denied access to him, and on making application to the authorities, the invariable reply was, ”Be very quiet about it. If you make a commotion his doom is sealed.” When his wife was begging permission for a short interview, the jailer, wearied with her importunities, at last exclaimed unguardedly, ”Madam, there are two hundred here in the same position; what would you have me do?”
[Footnote: That man has remained in prison to this day.]
At that very time an American traveller, calling on us, expatiated at length on the peaceful state of things in Paris--on the evident tranquillity and satisfaction universally manifest.
JOURNAL--(Continued.)
Sat.u.r.day, August 27. Left Paris with H., the rest of our party having been detained. Reached Boulogne in safety, and in high spirits made our way on board the steamer, deposited our traps below, came on deck, and prepared for the ordeal. A high north-wester had been blowing all day, and as we ran along behind the breakwater, I could see over it the white and green waves fiendishly running, and showing their malign eyes sparkling with hungry expectation. ”Come out, come out!” they seemed to say; ”come out, you little black imp of a steamer; don't be hiding behind there like a coward. We dare you to come out here and give us a chance at you--we will eat you up, as so many bears would eat a lamb.”
And sure enough, the moment her bows pa.s.sed beyond the pier, the sea struck her, and tossed her like an eggsh.e.l.l, and the deck, from stem to stern, was drenched in a moment, and running with floods as if she had been under water. For a few moments H. and I both enjoyed the motion. We stood amids.h.i.+ps, she in her shawl, I in a great tarpauling which I had borrowed of Jack, and every pitch sent the spray over us.
We exulted that we were not going to be sick. Suddenly, however, so suddenly that it was quite mysterious, conscience smote me. A profound, a deep-seated remorse developed itself just exactly in the deepest centre of the pit of my stomach.
”H.,” said I, with a decided, grave air, ”I'm going to be seasick.”
”So am I,” said she, as if struck by the same convictions that had been impressed on me. We turned, and made our way along the leeward quarter, to a seat by the bulwarks. I stood holding on by the railrope, and every now and then addressing a few incoherent and rather guttural, not to say pectoral, remarks to the green and gloomy sea, as I leaned over the rail. After every paroxysm of communicativeness, (for in seasickness the organ of secretiveness gives way,) I regained my perpendicular, and faced the foe, with a determination that I would stand it through--that the grinning, howling brine should get no more secrets out of me. And, in fact, it did not.
Meanwhile, what horrors--what complicated horrors--did not that crowded deck present! Did the priestly miscreants of the middle ages ever represent among the torments of purgatory the deck of a channel steamer? If not, then they forgot the ”lower deep,” that Satan doubtless thought about, according to Milton.
There were men and women of every age and complexion, with faces of every possible shade of expression. Defiance, resolute and stern, desperate resolves never to give in, and that very same defiant determination sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. A deep abyss of abdominal discontent, revealing afar the shadow, the penumbra, of the approaching retch. And there were _boulevers.e.m.e.nts,_ and hoa.r.s.e confidences to the sea of every degree of misery. The wind was really risen quite to a gale, and the sea ran with fearful power. Two sailors, standing near, said, ”I wouldn't say it only to you, Jack, but in all the time I've crossed this here channel, I've seen nothin' like this.”
”Nor I neither,” was the reply.
About mid channel a wave struck the windward quarter, just behind the wheel, with a stroke like a rock from a ballista, smashed in the bulwarks, stove the boat, which fell and hung in the water by one end, and sent the ladies, who were sitting there with boxes, baskets, shawls, hats, spectacles, umbrellas, cloaks, down to leeward, in a pond of water. One girl I saw with a bruise on her forehead as large as an egg, and the blood streaming from her nostrils. Shrieks resounded, and for a few moments, we had quite a tragic time.
About this time H. gave in, and descended to Tartarus, where the floor was compactly, densely stowed with one ma.s.s of heaving wretches, with nothing but washbowls to relieve the sombre mosaic. How H. fared there she may tell; I cannot. I stood by the bulwark with my boots full of water, my eyes full of salt spray, and my heart full of the most poignant regret that ever I was born. Alas! was that channel a channel at all? Had it two sh.o.r.es? Was England over there, where I saw nothing but monstrous, leaping, maddening billows, saying, ”We are glad of it; we want you; come on here; we are waiting for you; we will serve you up”?
At last I seriously began to think of Tartarus myself, and of a calm repose flat on my back, such as H. told of in his memorable pa.s.sage.
But just then, dim and faint on the horizon, I thought I discerned the long line of a bank of land. It was. This was a channel; that was the sh.o.r.e. England had not sunk. I stood my ground; and in an hour we came running, bounding, and rolling towards the narrow mouth of the Folkstone pier heads.
LETTER XLIX
LONDON.
MY DEAR:--
Our last letters from home changed all our plans. We concluded to hurry away by the next steamer, if at that late hour we could get pa.s.sage. We were all in a bustle. The last shoppings for aunts, cousins, and little folks were to be done by us all. The Palais Royal was to be rummaged; bronzes, vases, statuettes, bonbons, playthings--all that the endless fertility of France could show--was to be looked over for the ”folks at home.”
You ought to have seen our rooms at night, the last evening we spent in Paris. When the whole gleanings of a continental tour were brought forth for packing, and compared with the dimensions of original trunks--ah, what an hour was that! Who should reconcile these incongruous elements--bronzes, bonnets, ribbons and flowers, plaster casts, books, muslins and laces--elements as irreconcilable as fate and freedom; who should harmonize them? And I so tired!
”Ah,” said Jladame B., ”it is all quite easy; you must have a packer.”
”A packer?”
”Yes. He will come, look at your things, provide whatever may be necessary, and pack them all.”
So said, so done. The man came, saw, conquered; he brought a trunk, twine, tacks, wrapping paper, and I stood by in admiration while he folded dresses, arranged bonnets, caressingly enveloped flowers in silk paper, fastened refractory bronzes, and m.u.f.fled my plaster animals with reference to the critical points of ears and noses,--in short, reduced the whole heterogeneous a.s.sortment to place and proportion, shut, locked, corded, labelled, handed me the keys, and it was done. The charge for all this was quite moderate.