Part 7 (2/2)

I went with a large party at the early hour of eight. We fell into the train of carriages, advancing slowly between files of dragoons, and stood before the door in our turn in the course of an hour. The staircases were complete orangeries, with immense mirrors at every turn, and soldiers on guard, and servants in livery, from top to bottom. The long saloon, lighted by ten chandeliers, was dressed and hung with wreaths as a receiving-room; and pa.s.sing on through the s.p.a.cious lobbies, which were changed into groves of pines and exotics, we entered upon the grand scene. The _coup d'oeil_ would have astonished Aladdin. The theatre, which is the largest in Paris, and gorgeously built and ornamented, was thrown into one vast ball-room, ascending gradually from the centre to platforms raised at either end, one of which was occupied by the throne and seats for the king's family and suite. The four rows of boxes were crowded with ladies, and the house presented, from the floor to the _paradis_, one glittering and waving wall of dress, jewelry, and feathers. An orchestra of near a hundred musicians occupied the centre of the hall; and on either side of them swept by the long, countless mult.i.tudes of people, dressed with a union of taste and show; while, instead of the black coats which darken the complexion of a party in a republican country, every other gentleman was in a gay uniform; and polytechnic scholars, with their scarlet-faced coats, officers of the ”National Guard” and the ”line,” gentlemen of the king's household, and foreign ministers, and _attaches_, presented a variety of color and splendor which nothing could exceed.

The theatre itself was not altered, except by the platform occupied by the king; it is sufficiently splendid as it stands; but the stage, whose area is much larger than that of the pit, was hung in rich drapery as a vast tent, and garnished to profusion with flags and arms. Along the sides, on a level with the lower row of boxes, extended galleries of crimson velvet, festooned with flowers. These were filled with ladies, and completed a circle about the house of beauty and magnificence, of which the king and his dazzling suite formed the _corona_. Chandeliers were hung close together from one end of the hall to the other. I commenced counting them once or twice, but some bright face flitting by in the dance interrupted me. An English girl near me counted fifty-five, and I think there must have been more. The blaze of light was almost painful. The air glittered, and the fine grain of the most delicate complexions was distinctly visible. It is impossible to describe the effect of so much light and s.p.a.ce and music crowded into one spectacle. The vastness of the hall, so long that the best sight could not distinguish a figure at the opposite extremity, and so high as to absorb and mellow the vibration of a hundred instruments--the gorgeous sweep of splendor from one platform to the other, absolutely drowning the eye in a sea of gay colors, nodding feathers, jewelry, and military equipment--the delicious music, the strange faces, dresses, and tongues, (one-half of the mult.i.tude at least being foreigners), the presence of the king, and the gallant show of uniforms in his conspicuous _suite_, combined to make up a scene more than sufficiently astonis.h.i.+ng. I felt the whole night the smothering consciousness of senses too narrow--eyes, ears, language, all too limited for the demand made upon them.

The king did not arrive till after ten. He entered by a silken curtain in the rear of the platform on which seats were placed for his family.

The ”_Vive le Roi_” was not so hearty as to drown the music, but his majesty bowed some twenty times very graciously, and the good-hearted queen curtsied, and kept a smile on her excessively plain face, till I felt the muscles of my own ache for her. King Philippe looks anxious.

By the remarks of the French people about me when he entered, he has reason for it. I observed that the polytechnic scholars all turned their backs upon him; and one exceedingly handsome, spirited-looking boy, standing just at my side, muttered a ”_sacre!_” and bit his lip, with a very revolutionary air, at the continuance of the acclamation.

His majesty came down, and walked through the hall about midnight. His eldest son, the Duke of Orleans, a handsome, unoffending-looking youth of eighteen, followed him, gazing round upon the crowd with his mouth open, and looking very much annoyed at his part of the pageant. The young duke has a good figure, and is certainly a very beautiful dancer. His mouth is loose and weak, and his eyes are as opaque as agates. He wore the uniform of the _Garde Nationale_, which does not become him. In ordinary gentleman's dress, he is a very authentical copy of a Bond-street dandy, and looks as little like a Frenchman as most of Stultz's subjects. He danced all the evening, and selected, very popularly, decidedly the most vulgar women in the room, looking all the while as one who had been petted by the finest women in France (Leontine Fay among the number), might be supposed to look, under such an infliction. The king's second son, the Duke of Nemours, pursued the same policy. He has a brighter face than his brother, with hair almost white, and dances extremely well. The second daughter is also much prettier than the eldest. On the whole, the king's family is a very plain, though a very amiable one, and the people seem attached to them.

These general descriptions, are, after all, very vague. Here I have written half a sheet with a picture in my mind of which you are getting no semblable idea. Language is a mere skeleton of such things.

The _Academie Royale_ should be borne over the water like the chapel of Loretto, and set down in Broadway with all its lights, music, and people, to give you half a notion of the ”_Bal en faveur des Pauvres_.” And so it is with everything except the little histories of one's own personal atmosphere, and that is the reason why egotism should be held virtuous in a traveller, and the reason why one cannot study Europe at home.

After getting our American party places, I abandoned myself to the strongest current, and went in search of ”lions.” The first face that arrested my eye was that of the d.u.c.h.ess D'Istria, a woman celebrated here for her extraordinary personal beauty.

Directly opposite this lovely dutchess, in the other stage-box, sat Donna Maria, the young Queen of Portugal, surrounded by her relatives.

The ex-empress, her mother, was on her right, her grandmother on her left, and behind her some half dozen of her Portuguese cousins. She is a little girl of twelve or fourteen, with a fat, heavy face, and a remarkably pampered, sleepy look. She was dressed like an old woman, and gaped incessantly the whole evening. The box was a perfect blaze of diamonds. I never before realized the beauty of these splendid stones. The necks, heads, arms, and waists of the ladies royal were all streaming with light. The necklace of the empress mother particularly flashed on the eye in every part of the house. By the unceasing exclamations of the women, it was an unusually brilliant show, even here. The little Donna has a fine, well-rounded chin; and when she smiled in return to the king's bow, I thought I could see more than a child's character in the expression of her mouth. I should think a year or two of mental uneasiness might let out a look of intelligence through her heavy features. She is likely to have it, I think, with the doubtful fortunes that seem to beset her.

I met Don Pedro often in society before his departure upon his expedition. He is a short, well-made man, of great personal accomplishment, and a very bad expression, rather aggravated by an unfortunate cutaneous eruption. The first time I saw him, I was induced to ask who he was, from the apparent coldness and dislike with which he was treated by a lady whose beauty had strongly arrested my attention.

He sat by her on a sofa in a very crowded party, and seemed to be saying something very earnestly, which made the lady's Spanish eyes flash fire, and brought a curl of very positive anger upon a pair of the loveliest lips imaginable. She was a slender, aristocratic-looking creature, and dressed most magnificently. After glancing at them a minute or two, I made up my mind that, from the authenticity of his dress and appointments, he was an Englishman, and that she was some French lady of rank whom he was particularly annoying with his addresses. On inquiry, the gentleman proved to be Don Pedro, and the lady the Countess de Lourle, _his sister_! I have often met her since, and never without wondering how two of the same family could look so utterly unlike each other. The Count de Lourle is called the Adonis of Paris. He is certainly a very splendid fellow, and justifies the romantic admiration of his wife, who married him clandestinely, giving him her left hand in the ceremony, as is the etiquette, they say, when a princess marries below her rank. One can not help looking with great interest on a beautiful creature like this, who has broken away from the imposing fetters of a royal sphere, to follow the dictates of natural feeling. It does not occur so often in Europe that one may not sentimentalize about it without the charge of affectation.

To return to the ball. The king bowed himself out a little after midnight, and with him departed most of the fat people, and all the little girls. This made room enough to dance, and the French set themselves at it in good earnest. I wandered about for an hour or two; after wearying my imagination quite out in speculating on the characters and rank of people whom I never saw before and shall probably never see again, I mounted to the _paradis_ to take a last look down upon the splendid scene, and made my exit. I should be quite content never to go to such a ball again, though it was by far the most splendid scene of the kind I ever saw.

LETTER XII.

PLACE LOUIS XV.--PANORAMIC VIEW OF PARIS--A LITERARY CLUB DINNER--THE GUESTS--THE PRESIDENT--THE EXILED POLES, ETC.

I have spent the day in a long stroll. The wind blew warm and delicious from the south this morning, and the temptation to abandon lessons and lectures was irresistible. Taking the _Arc de l'Etoile_ as my extreme point I yielded to all the leisurely hinderances of shop-windows, beggars, book-stalls, and views by the way. Among the specimen-cards in an engraver's window I was amused at finding, in the latest Parisian fas.h.i.+on, ”HUSSEIN-PACHA, _Dey d'Algiers_.”

These delightful Tuileries! We rambled through them (I had met a friend and countryman, and enticed him into my idle plans for the day), and amused ourselves with the never-failing beauty and grace of the French children for an hour. On the inner terrace we stopped to look at the beautiful hotel of Prince Polignac, facing the Tuileries, on the opposite bank. By the side of this exquisite little model of a palace stands the superb commencement of Napoleon's ministerial hotel, breathing of his glorious conception in every line of its ruins. It is astonis.h.i.+ng what a G.o.dlike impress that man left upon all he touched.

Every third or fourth child in the gardens was dressed in the full uniform of the National Guard--helmet, sword, epaulets, and all. They are ludicrous little caricatures, of course, but it inoculates them with love of the corps, and it would be better if that were synonymous with a love of liberal princ.i.p.als. The _Garde Nationale_ are supposed to be more than half ”Carlists” at this moment.

We pa.s.sed out by the guarded gate of the Tuileries to the _Place Louis XV._ This square is a most beautiful spot, as a centre of unequalled views, and yet a piece of earth so foully polluted with human blood probably does not exist on the face of the globe. It divides the Tuileries from the _Champs Elysees_, and ranges of course, in the long broad avenue of two miles, stretching between the king's palace and the _Arc de l'Etoile_. It is but a list of names to write down the particular objects to be seen in such a view, but it commands, at the extremities of its radii, the most princely edifices, seen hence with the most advantageous foregrounds of s.p.a.ce and avenue, and softened by distance into the misty and unbroken surface of engraving. The king's palace is on one hand, Napoleon's Arch at a distance of nearly two miles on the other, Prince Talleyrand's regal dwelling behind, with the church of Madelaine seen through the _Rue Royale_, while before you, to the south, lies a picture of profuse splendor: the broad Seine, spanned by bridges that are the admiration of Europe, and crowded by specimens of architectural magnificence; the Chamber of Deputies; and the _Palais Bourbon_, approached by the _Pont Louis XVI._ with its gigantic statues and simple majesty of structure; and, rising over all, the grand dome of the ”_Invalides_,” which Napoleon gilded, to divert the minds of his subjects from his lost battle, and which Peter the Great admired more than all Paris beside. What a spot for a man to stand upon, with but one bosom to feel and one tongue to express his wonder!

And yet, of what, that should make a spot of earth sink to perdition, has it not been the theatre? Here were beheaded the unfortunate Louis XVI.--his wife, Marie Antoinette--his kinsman, Philip duke of Orleans, and his sister Elizabeth; and here were guillotined the intrepid Charlotte Corday, the deputy Brissot, and twenty of his colleagues, and all the victims of the revolution of 1793, to the amount of two thousand eight hundred; and here Robespierre and his cursed crew met at last with their insufficient retribution; and, as if it were destined to be the very blood-spot of the earth, here the fireworks, which were celebrating the marriage of the same Louis that was afterward brought hither to the scaffold, exploded, and killed fourteen hundred persons. It has been the scene, also, of several minor tragedies not worth mentioning in such a connexion. Were I a Bourbon, and as unpopular as King Philippe I. at this moment, the view of the Place Louis XV. from my palace windows would very much disturb the beauty of the perspective. Without an _equivoque_, I should look with a very ominous dissatisfaction on the ”Elysian fields” that lie beyond.

We loitered slowly on to the _Barrier Neuilly_, just outside of which, and right before the city gates, stands the Triumphal Arch. It has the stamp of Napoleon--simple grandeur. The broad avenue from the Tuileries swells slowly up to it for two miles, and the view of Paris at its foot, even, is superb. We ascended to the unfinished roof, a hundred and thirty-five feet from the ground, and saw the whole of the mighty capital of France at a _coup d'oeil_--churches, palaces, gardens; buildings heaped upon buildings clear over the edge of the horizon, where the spires of the city in which you stand are scarcely visible for the distance.

I dined, a short time since, with the editors of the _Revue Encyclopedique_ at their monthly reunion. This is a sort of club dinner, to which the eminent contributors of the review invite once a month all the strangers of distinction who happen to be in Paris. I owed my invitation probably to the circ.u.mstance of my living with Dr.

Howe, who is considered the organ of American principles here, and whose force of character has given him a degree of respect and prominence not often attained by foreigners. It was the most remarkable party, by far, that I had ever seen. There were nearly a hundred guests, twenty or thirty of whom were distinguished Poles, lately arrived from Warsaw. Generals Romarino and Langermann were placed beside the president, and another general, whose name is as difficult to remember as his face is to forget, and who is famous for having been the last on the field, sat next to the head seat. Near him were General Bernard and Dr. Bowring, with Sir Sidney Smith (covered with orders, from every quarter of the world), and the president of Colombia. After the usual courses of a French dinner, the president, Mons. Julien, a venerable man with snow-white hair, addressed the company. He expressed his pleasure at the meeting, with the usual courtesies of welcome, and in the fervent manner of the old school of French politeness; and then pausing a little, and lowering his voice, with a very touching cadence, he looked around to the Poles, and began to speak of their country. Every movement was instantly hushed about the table--the guests leaned forward, some of them half rising in their earnestness to hear; the old man's voice trembled, and sunk lower; the Poles dropped their heads upon their bosoms, and the whole company were strongly affected. His manner suddenly changed at this moment, in a degree that would have seemed too dramatic, if the strong excitement had not sustained him. He spoke indignantly of the Russian barbarity toward Poland--a.s.sured the exiles of the strong sympathy felt by the great ma.s.s of the French people in their cause, and expressed his confident belief that the struggle was not yet done, and the time was near when, with France at her back, Poland would rise and be free. He closed, amid tumultuous acclamation, and all the Poles near him kissed the old man, after the French manner, upon both his cheeks.

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