Part 27 (2/2)
Spinsters and bachelors, we all arrived safely at Rousses, the entrance to France, and here, if I were to write before repeating the alphabet, you would see what a pen could do in a pa.s.sion.
The carriage was stopped by three custom-house officers, and taken under a shed, where the doors were closed behind it. We were then required to dismount and give our honors that we had nothing new in the way of clothes; no ”jewelry; no unused manufactures of wool, thread, or lace; no silk of floss silk; no polished metals, plated or varnished; no toys, (except a heart each); nor leather, gla.s.s, or crystal manufactures.” So far, I kept my temper.
Our trunks, carpet-bags, hat-boxes, dressing-cases, and _portfeuilles_, were then dismounted and critically examined--every dress and article unfolded; s.h.i.+rts, cravats, unmentionables and all, and searched thoroughly by two ruffians, whose fingers were no improvement upon the labors of the washerwoman. In an hour's time or so we were allowed to commence repacking. Still, I kept my temper.
We were then requested to walk into a private room, while the ladies, for the same purpose, were taken, by a woman, into another. Here we were requested to unb.u.t.ton our coats, and, begging pardon for the liberty, these courteous gentlemen thrust their hands into our pockets, felt in our bosoms, pantaloons, and shoes, examined our hats, and even eyed our ”pet curls” very earnestly, in the expectation of finding us crammed with Geneva jewelry. Still, I kept my temper.
Our trunks were then put upon the carriage, and a sealed string put upon them, which we were not to cut till we arrived in Paris. (Nine days!) They then demanded to be paid for the sealing, and the fellows who had unladen the carriage were to be paid for their labor. This done, we were permitted to drive on. Still, I kept my temper!
We arrived, in the evening, at Morez, in a heavy rain. We were sitting around a comfortable fire, and the soup and fish were just brought upon the table. A soldier entered and requested us to walk to the police-office. ”But it rains hard, and our dinner is just ready.” The man in the mustache was inexorable. The commissary closed his office at eight, and we must go instantly to certify to our pa.s.sports, and get new ones for the interior. Cloaks and umbrellas were brought, and, _bon gre_, _mal gre_, we walked half a mile in the mud and rain to a dirty commissary, who kept us waiting in the dark fifteen minutes, and then, making out a description of the person of each, demanded half a dollar for the new pa.s.sport, and permitted us to wade back to our dinner. This had occupied an hour, and no improvement to soup or fish.
Still, I kept my temper--rather!
The next morning, while we were forgetting the annoyances of the previous night, and admiring the new-pranked livery of May by a glorious suns.h.i.+ne, a civil _arretez vous_ brought up the carriage to the door of _another custom-house_! The order was to dismount, and down came once more carpet-bags, hat-boxes, and dressing-cases, and a couple of hours were lost again in a fruitless search for contraband articles. When it was all through, and the officers and men _paid_ as before, we were permitted to proceed with the gracious a.s.surance that we should not be troubled again till we got to Paris! I bade the commissary good morning, felicitated him on the liberal inst.i.tutions of his country and his zeal in the exercise of his own agreeable vocation, and--I am free to confess--lost my temper! Job and Xantippe's husband! could I help it!
I confess I expected better things of _France_. In Italy, where you come to a new dukedom every half-day, you do not much mind opening your trunks, for they are petty princes and need the pitiful revenue of contraband articles and the officer's fee. Yet even they leave the person of the traveller sacred; and where in the world, except in France, is a party, travelling evidently for pleasure, subjected _twice at the same border_ to the degrading indignity of a search! Ye ”hunters of Kentucky”--thank heaven that you can go into Tennessee without having your ”plunder” overhauled and your pockets searched by successive parties of scoundrels, whom you are to pay ”by order of the government,” for their trouble!
The Simplon, which you pa.s.s in a day, divides two nations, each other's physical and moral antipodes. The handsome, picturesque, lazy, unprincipled Italian, is left in the morning in his own dirty and exorbitant inn; and, on the evening of the same day, having crossed but a chain of mountains, you find yourself in a clean auberge, nestled in the bosom of a Swiss valley, another language spoken around you, and in the midst of a people, who seem to require the virtues they possess to compensate them for more than their share of uncomeliness. You travel a day or two down the valley of the Rhone, and when you are become reconciled to _cretins_ and _goitres_, and ill-dressed and worse formed men and women, you pa.s.s in another single day the chain of the Jura, and find yourself in France--a country as different from both Switzerland and Italy, as they are from each other. How is it that these diminutive cantons preserve so completely their nationality? It seems a problem to the traveller who pa.s.ses from one to the other without leaving his carriage.
One is compelled to like France in spite of himself. You are no sooner over the Jura than you are enslaved, past all possible ill-humor, by the universal politeness. You stop for the night at a place, which, as my friend remarked, resembles an inn only in its _in_-attention, and after a bad supper, worse beds, and every kind of annoyance, down comes my lady-hostess in the morning to receive her coin, and if you can fly into a pa.s.sion with _such_ a cap, and _such_ a smile, and _such_ a ”_bon jour_,” you are of less penetrable stuff than man is commonly made of.
I loved Italy, but detested the Italians. I detest France, but I can not help liking the French. ”Politeness is among the virtues,” says the philosopher. Rather, it takes the place of them all. What can you believe ill of a people whose slightest look toward you is made up of grace and kindness.
We are dawdling along thirty miles a day through Burgundy, sick to death of the bare vine-stakes, and longing to see a festooned vineyard of Lombardy. France is such an ugly country! The diligences lumber by, noisy and ludicrous; the cow-tenders wear c.o.c.ked hats; the beggars are in the true French extreme, theatrical in all their misery; the climate is rainy and cold, and as unlike that of Italy as if a thousand leagues separated them, and the roads are long, straight, dirty, and uneven. There is neither pleasure nor comfort, neither scenery nor antiquities, nor accommodations for the weary--nothing but _politeness_. And it is odd how it reconciles you to it all.
LETTER LXVII.
PARIS AND LONDON--REASONS FOR LIKING PARIS--JOYOUSNESS OF ITS CITIZENS--LAFAYETTE'S FUNERAL--ROYAL RESPECT AND GRAt.i.tUDE--ENGLAND--DOVER--ENGLISH NEATNESS AND COMFORT, AS DISPLAYED IN THE HOTELS, WAITERS, FIRES, BELL-ROPES, LANDSCAPES, WINDOW-CURTAINS, TEA-KETTLES, STAGE-COACHES, HORSES, AND EVERYTHING ELSE--SPECIMEN OF ENGLISH RESERVE--THE GENTLEMAN DRIVER OF FAs.h.i.+ON--A CASE FOR MRS. TROLLOPE.
It is pleasant to get back to Paris. One meets everybody there one ever saw; and operas and coffee, Taglioni and Leontine Fay, the belles and the Boulevards, the shops, spectacles, life, lions, and lures to every species of pleasure, rather give you the impression that, outside the barriers of Paris, time is wasted in travel.
What pleasant idlers they look! The very shopkeepers seem standing behind their counters for amus.e.m.e.nt. The soubrette who sells you a cigar, or ties a c.r.a.pe on your arm (it was for poor old Lafayette), is coiffed as for a ball; the _frotteur_ who takes the dust from your boots, sings his lovesong as he brushes away, the old man has his bouquet in his bosom, and the beggar looks up at the new statue of Napoleon in the Place Vendome--everybody has some touch of fancy, some trace of a heart on the look-out, at least, for pleasure.
I was at Lafayette's funeral. They buried the old patriot like a criminal. Fixed bayonets before and behind his hea.r.s.e, his own National Guard disarmed, and troops enough to beleaguer a city, were the honors paid by the ”citizen king” to the man who had made him! The indignation, the scorn, the bitterness, expressed on every side among the people, and the ill-smothered cries of disgust as the two _empty_ royal carriages went by, in the funeral train, seemed to me strong enough to indicate a settled and universal hostility to the government.
I met Dr. Bowring on the Boulevard after the funeral was over. I had not seen him for two years, but he could talk of nothing but the great event of the day--”You have come in time,” he said, ”to see how they carried the old general to his grave! What would they say to this in America? Well--let them go on! We shall see what will come of it? They have buried Liberty and Lafayette together--our last hope in Europe is quite dead with him!”
After three delightful days in Paris we took the northern diligence; and, on the second evening, having pa.s.sed hastily through Montreuil, Abbeville, Boulogne, and voted the road the dullest couple of hundred miles we had seen in our travels, we were set down in Calais. A stroll through some very indifferent streets, a farewell visit to the last French _cafe_, we were likely to see for a long time, and some unsatisfactory inquiries about Beau Brummel, who is said to live here still, filled up till bedtime our last day on the continent.
The celebrated Countess of Jersey was on board the steamer, and some forty or fifty plebeian stomachs shared with her fas.h.i.+onable ladys.h.i.+p and ourselves the horrors of a pa.s.sage across the channel. It is rather the most disagreeable sea I ever traversed, though I _have_ seen ”the Euxine,” ”the roughest sea the traveller e'er ----s,” etc., according to Don Juan.
I was lying on my back in a berth when the steamer reached her moorings at Dover, and had neither eyes nor disposition to indulge in the proper sentiment on approaching the ”white cliffs” of my fatherland. I crawled on deck, and was met by a wind as cold as December, and a crowd of rosy English faces on the pier, wrapped in cloaks and shawls, and indulging curiosity evidently at the expense of a s.h.i.+ver. It was the first of June!
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