iBii i ii nmuM lr l lMM^M^l ll l l l l i«w a wmww^vl^ i >W1^iilmm m«^w^.ms»^ ,'5;-t.SiiU^*lJ&S*<^l»^:!^H.^si^S^l;^l%^^^ PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Tin; Maf.i iiANiiE m: (;ai.i;tti-.. 1'. 137- PARIS HERSELF AGAIN IN 1878-9. Ij^EOEGE AUGUSTUS,' SALA AUxnoR OF 'twice round the clock,' ' am-f.rica M the midst of wax; 'WILLIAM HOGABTH,' 'GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT,' ETC. BY BEETALL, CHAM, PELCOQ, GU^VIX, GILL, MAEIE, MOEIX, DEEOY, LALANXE, BENOIST, LAFOSSE, MAES, ETC. SIXTH EDITION. f anbon : VIZETELLY & CO., lo, SOUTHAMPTON ST., STRAND. SCKIBNER AND WELFORD, NEW YORK. 1SS2. [All riijlits rcservtd.l LONDON : BEADBL'RY, AGKEW, & CO., PEINTERS, WHITEFEIARS. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE VISCOUNTESS COMBEKMEEE, THE KIND FEIEND AND PATRONESS OF MY DEA]l JIOTfTEi;, AND ■WHO HAS KNOWN ME EVER SINGE I WAS A LITTLE CHILD, MOEE THAN FORTY YEARS AGO, WITH FEELINGS OF GRATEFUL ESTEEM. I §tVxtnk t\}h §ool\. PKEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. A CONSIDERABLE edition of Paris Herself Again having been exliaustecT within three weeks, I ma}^ he permitted to address a few words of thanks to the public for their prompt encouragement of a work, the letterpress of which I tried to make as entertaining as I could ; while ni}^ publishers, on their part, have spared no efforts to render the book as pictorially attractive as possible. Thus the objects which we mutually proposed to ourselves have been secured " all round." The public have evidently been pleased ; else they would not have bought up one edition of Paris Herself Again, and called for another. My booksellers, I take it, have equal reason to be complacent ; since, if the second edition be swiftly disposed of, they will be emboldened to issue a third, and so on, till they get into the " stride " of M. Emile Zola, who by this time, I should say, is in his fifty-fifth reprint of the fascinating and polished Assommoir ; thus I am satisfied to find that other people are not displeased with my poor performance. I say that it is poor — lamentably poor; for, my eight hundred pages or so, nevertheless, I feel (audaciously paraphrasing the illustrious philosopher) that I have only been picking up pebbles on the sea-shore, while the great ocean of Paris lay all undiscovered before me. I should like, had I the time and the means, to chronicle the hours of the day and uiglit in the vivacious capital, after the manner which I pursued more than twenty years ago, in a book called Twice Round the Clock. I should like to translate Dulaure ; to bring Mercier's Tableau de Paris down to the present day, or in a series of semi-historical semi-social essays, to compare the Paris of Madame de Sevigne and Tallemant des Reaux with the Paris of Honore de Balzac and Eugene Sue. A great deal in this direction has been done by the Brothers De Goncourt, and by Vlll PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. M. Maxima Ducamp ; but these eminent publicists naturally Avrite and think as Frenchmen do, and (sometimes) as though there were no other metropohs in the world save Paris ; whereas English readers, I apprehend, would prefer an exhaustive picture of the gay city as seen through spectacles, which in their time have been turned on most of the cities in the civilised world. But this is not to be, I am afraid. As it is, I have done my best, and am very thankful for the receiDtion given to my (I hope) harmless production. One Avord more. I have somebody else to thank besides the public ; but, ere I express my gratitude, I must relate a brief little ej)ilogue. A horny-handed son of toil, engaged in mining pursuits (or perhaps he was a brickmaker), in the north of England, came home to dinner one day, and found, to his indignation, that his wife had provided liver and bacon for his mid-day meal, instead of tripe and cowheel. During the lively altercation which followed the admission of her error, the son of toil remarked that the sharer of his joys and woes Avas quietl}^ removing the comb which confined her floAving tresses. *' Wat does thee du that fur ? " he asked, sternl3% *' Becos," replied his spouse, ''I dunno AA'antthee to drive t' coomb into ma skoull, Avan t' hammers me wi' t' poker." She Avas a philosopher, aiul prepared for all things, even for an aggravated assault Avith the poker. In a similar sx^irit, Avhen this book left the press, I, metaphorically speaking, flattened my beaA'-er over my eyes, buttoned my doublet up to the chin, folded my arms, shut my eyes, clenched my teeth, and prepared to be pelted by my old foes the critics. The Avriter of a book cannot run aAvaj^ He is in the pillory, and must take all that is throAvn at him, be it the fragrant rose, or the merr}" addled egg, or the festive deceased kitten. For many years since I have been lapidated more or less mercilessly by the critics. I have groAA'n callous, case-hardened, pachydermatous to censure. " For a consideration " I would not much mind abusing one of my OAvn books, even as the Dey of Algiers, after Lord Exmouth had bombarded half the cit}' into a mass of ruins, offered to bombard the other half, if the British Government Avould comj)ensate him for his trouble. To my PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. IX. astonisliment, and eventually to my delight, I found that nobody was peltmg Paris Herself Again. On the contrary, I found the kindest of notices of the book in all the journals which came within my ken. The Times, which was good enough to review a book of mine, called A Journey Due North, published twenty years ago, but which subsequently sank into stony silence concerning my writings, gave a graceful notice to Paris Herself Again. So did the Atlic- naum. The Observer spoke a great deal better of me and my productions than ever I or they deserved ; the GraiMc gave me the cheeriest and most genial of reviews ; the Pall Mall Gazette was loftily courteous, and grandly affable ; and my ancient and esteemed adversary, the Saturday Review, went out of its wa}', so it seemed to me, to be appreciative and complimentary. This I hold to be phenomenal. What has become of my enemies ? Where are they ? Are they gone out of town ? Will they, when they return, avail themselves of the publication of a second edition oi Paris Herself Again, to gu'd at me in the old familiar strain? I hope that they will not do anything of the kind. Life is not long enough for men of letters to abuse one another. By the time that these sheets issue from the press I shall be on the Sea, on my way to a far distant country which I have not gazed upon for sixteen years — to the Great Eepublic which I first visited when she was in the Midst of War, and which I hope to find in the full enjoyment of Peace, and returning prosperity. Ere I depart I should like to shake hands with everybody. I think that, for myself, I can sa}', that there is not one human creature living for whom I nourish one spark of unfriendly feeling ; and it is a matter of great joy to me to find from the welcome this book has received, not only from the public, but from the reviewers, that, at least, I have not been making enemies since my last work was published. G. A. S. November, 1879. PREFACE. I WENT to Paris at the end of the first week in July, hist year, intending to remain a fortnight in the French capital ; and I returned from Paris to London on the twenty-third of November, on the eve of my birthday : when I was fifty years of age. I mention these dates, and I have kept the circumstance of my fiftieth birthday in mind, for a purpose which I shall afterwards explain. I have rarely enjoyed myself so thoroughly and so heartily ; and I am sure that I have not, these many years past, suffered so much physical discomfort as I did during nearly five months' residence in Paris. As to the discomfort, I am not, of course, speaking of old times, when one was young and struggling and desperately poor ; nor do I allude to such privations as must be endured now and again when a man is travelling in partiall}'- civilised countries, or abiding in partially-civilised cities, such as Constantinople ; and I must frankly own that no inconsiderable proportion of the lack of comfort which I experienced in Paris was altogether of my own choosing. There are many new, spacious, clean, and airy hotels in Paris ; and I could have obtained, at no very extortionate rates, comfortable and luxurious apartments at the Grand or at the Louvre, at the Continental or at the Splendide, at the Chatham or at the Lille et Albion. But in July 78 the Paris Universal Exposition was at its flood. Thousands of strangers from all parts of the world were arriving in the capital every week ; and all the hotels in the fashionable quarters, from the Eue de Eivoli to high up in the Champs Elysees, and from the Paie de la Chaussee d'Antin along the Boulevards to the Madeleine, were thronged to repletion with English people. Now it happened that I had at the time a number of very good reasons for avoiding my country-men. As a rule, I find them when travelling on the Continent intensely disagreeable. I know that I am ; and surety there is room in the world enough for us both. It is my fortune, or my misfortune, to Xll PEEFACE. know intimately or slightly a vast number of people in all ranks and conditions in life ; and I had no wish to hear on the Boule- vard des Capucines the same interminable chatter on the Eastern Question — wither the Eastern Question ! — and the same club, * society/ and theatrical stories and scandals which I had been hearing since the beginning of the London season in Pall Mall and in Fleet Street — or in Seven Dials and Brick Lane, Spital- fields, if you like. I had no ambition to hear Codrus recite his Theseid at the Grand Hotel, or to meet Smudge, A.E.A., in the Piue de la Paix, and be scowled at by him because I had written some unpalatable things about his picture of ' The Maniacal Sunday- School Teacher ' in the Exhibition of the Eoyal Academy, And, finally, I shrank from meeting the people who, 1 felt sure, would ask me to dinner. There are, I believe, a host of Britons so hospitable that their chief occupation in life is to ask people to dinner. Throughout the London season they lie in wait for guests ; and when the season is at an end they rush over to Paris, and roam up and down the English-frequented streets for the sole purpose of making captives of their bow and spear, or rather, of their knife and fork invites. I was in bad health when I went to Paris. I cannot ever be in good health again, and half at least of my days are spent in the acutest physical pain ; and every dinner which I cannot have the choosing of mj'^self is so much bodily and mental torture, and another nail in my coffin. And I abhor tahlcs dilute ; holding, as I do, that it is abominable tyranny to be forced to dine with i^eople whom you certainly would not ask to dine with you. The majority of English i:)eople whom you meet at a foreign table (Vhote are either sullc}'' or sill^y. I know that I am both, b}^ turns ; and I prefer to dine in my own room or at a restaurant, Avhere I can read as I eat — to the detri- ment of digestion ; — quarrel with my food ; scold my companion ; snarl at the waiter ; and feel Comfortable. ' The pursuit of happiness ' is one among the inalienable Rights of Man enume- rated in the American Declaration of Independence. Comfort is, mundanely speaking, happiness ; and we are entitled to travel towards the bourne of felicit}^ by whichever route we choose to take. In this nice, sociable, and amiable frame of mind I gave my TREFACE. Xlh compatriots in Paris the widest of berths, and sought for a domicile in a neighbourhood thoroughly French. I would have sought one * over the water,' in the Rue de Seine or the Rue St. Andre des Arts ; but it was necessary'- for business purposes that I should have my den close to the Place de la Bourse, where there is an excellent branch of the General Post Office, and close to a cab-stand. On the * Surrey side ' of the Seine it was extremely difficult, during the Exhibition season, to procure cabs. Suddenl}^ I bethought me of a house called the Grand Hotel Beausejour, on the Boulevard Poissonniere, where, between 1854 and 1862, I had frequently resided. It was more of a maison mcuhUc than an hotel. The}^ could give you your morning cafe an lait, and cook some o^'iifs sur Ic plai, or even a cutlet at a pinch ; but the people of the house did not care much about supplying set repasts, and rather preferred that you should take your second breakfast and 3-our dinner abroad. It was a very clean, cheerful, and well-kept establishment, and in its management thoroughly French; although curiously enough, the majority of the guests were Germans. Close by, on the same Boulevard Poissonniere, was the Hotel St. Pliar, a house almost exclusively frequented by Belgians. I found the Beau- sejour in July '78 as clean and bright, as cheerful and well kept, as it had been between '54 and '62. Unfortunately, Madame la Patronne — to whom I hereby beg to convey the expression of my distinguished consideration, and for whose attention and civility I have really reason to be grateful — was suffering from that trop 2)lci)i, or was the rather in the full enjoyment of that plethora of guests which, during tlie Exhibition time, made business highly profitable to the hotel and lodging-house keepers, and Paris so very unhabitable. The utmost amount of accommo- dation which Madame could place at our disposal was a couple of little rabbit-hutch-like rooms on the second floor, above the entresol: one to serve as a salou, and the other, which contained two little beds of Procrustean proportions, was to do duty as a bedchamber. We paid between four and five guineas a week for these two little dens (which were prettily decorated, but were quite destitute of ventilation) ; and in them we were alternately XIV PREFACE. stewed, broiled, baked, and half frozen during a wet July, a torrid August, a semi-tropical September, a chill October, and a bitterly bleak November. There was a balcony to our salon overlooking the Boulevard ; and more than once in these volumes the reader will come across doleful complaints of the thundering sound of the omnibuses and chars-a-hanc, and the ceaseless roar of a multitude that seemed never to go to bed. We breakfasted on most mornings at the Caf^ Veron, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Eue Yivienne ; and I shall not readily forget the constant and thoughtful courtesy shown to me by M. Gosselin, the esteemed proprietor of the cafe in question. It was he who acted as my cicerone when I visited the Halles Centrales ; to him I was indebted for a great deal of varied information on all kmds of things Parisian ; and whenever my wife wanted anything in the way of millinery or dress or ' lal-lals,' his wife was always ready to tell her where to go, and how to procure the very best articles at the most moderate prices. When I first entered his establish- ment and ordered breakfast I was a total stranger to him ; but after half a dozen visits we came to be looked upon as regular clients, and the landlord became a genial and considerate friend. And this 1 hold to be the way of the French. At first sight they may strike you as being greedy for money, even to the verge of rapacity ; but so soon as they come to know you they turn out to be not onl}^ obliging but reall}^ affectionate folks, who will do anything for you. You may ask, looking at the wretched existence which we led in the two little cabins on the second floor above the entresol, why we did not decamp and find lodgings elsewhere. I will tell you why. I have already mentioned that we came to Paris for a fort- night only. But towards the close of every succeeding fortnight I used to receive a telegram from some business friends in Fleet Street, London, E.G., to this effect, ' Letters all right. Should like more. Pray stay another fortnight. Hope you're quite comfortable.' I was most miserably uncomfortable ; but I did not lilce to disoblige my business friends in Fleet Street, so I stayed on, until the fortnight grew into more than four montlis. We were alwa3"S saying that we positively must remove to some PREFACE. XV other hotel at the end of the week ; but we failed to move, never- theless. I had an immensity of work to do ; I hate packing ; very few of ni}' English friends (to my joy) ]iad found me out ; the land- lad}', the landlord, their amiable daughter, and the secretary and cashier, all overflowed with civility ; and so I stayed on, stewing, simmering, broiling, baking, and semi-congealing, according to the variations of a continually mutable temperature. I had come to Paris to write a few letters about the Exhibition for a newspaper with which I have been closely connected for more than one-and-twenty years, and the representative of which I have been in a great many distant countries, and on many momentous occasions. "NAlien my old and true friend jMr. Edward L. Lawson, one of the proprietors of the Daily TeletjrcqjJi, and chief editor of that journal, dismissed me on my mission with the heartiest of good wishes and a pocketful of money, his instructions amounted in effect to this : " Don't bother yourself too much about the Exhibition. Go there when you feel inclined ; but, for the rest, walk about and see things, and tell us all about them." These instructions, allowing m3'self a reasonable margin, I endeavoured to follow ; and the result is Paris Herself Again. Some of my readers may think that I liarc ' bothered ' myself about the Exhi- bition. I can only say that I have done in 1878 that which I did in the Paris Exhibition years 1855 and 1867. The last-named CongTess I described for the Daily Telegraph ; the first for another journal now defunct. I have not been able to help being from time to time technical ; because I delight in technics ; because I have a handicraft of my own, at which I could still work and earn a livelihood did my trade as a journalist fail me ; because I am always trying to understand processes of manufacture ; and because I often find such things as soap and candles, chocolate and pickles, upholstery and electro-plate, quite as interesting as the habitations of mankind and the ways of men. It is not my fault if I think Virtue's Cyclojhedia of the Useful Arts, andBeckmann's i//sfo;'^o/ Inventions, and Ure's Dictionary to be as entertaining reading as the Arabian Niglits. When Artemus Ward wrote to President Lincoln to ask him to attend one of his, Artemus's lectures, Mr. Lincoln replied that he had no doubt that Mr. Ward's lectm-es Xvi PREFACE. would be eminently pleasing to people who liked lectures, wliicli lie, the President, failed to do. Thus the readers who like to read about technics may be pleased with the technical portions of my book ; while those who do not like technics may skip them alto- gether. One word in conclusion, to explain why I made public so ostensibly uninteresting a fact that I was fifty last November. I drew attention to the circumstance as a justification of my pre- suming to write anything about Paris, and to show that I was to some extent qualified to write about it. I have known the French capital intimately, for forty years. I was taken there to school in August, 1839 ; and there at school I remained until the French language had become as femiliar to me as mine own. I was in Paris during the revolution of 1848 ; during the coup cVetat of 1851, when I nearly got shot ; during the Exhibition years of 1855 and 1867. I was in Paris on the 4th of September, 1870, when I nearly got murdered as a ' Prussian spy ; ' and, apart from the journalistic errands which have taken me to Paris, I have lived for months together, in all parts of the city, over and over again. So that if I do not know something about Paris now — I do not say that I know much — I shall not, I apprehend, ever know anything touching the city which I liave seen ' knocked into a cocked hat over and over again — barricaded, bombarded, beleaguered, dragooned, and all but sacked, but which is now ' Paris Herself Again' — comelier, richer, gaj-er, more fascinating than ever. And happier '? Que sais-je ? That is no business of mine. I have enough to do, myself, to try to be as little miserable as I can. 4C, MecHenhurgh Square, W.C. September, 1879. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAOK I. — THE CITY WITHOUT CABS 1 II. — OUT OF THE SEASON 8 III.— THAT DEAR OLD PALAIS ROYAL 19 IV.— PARIS CUT TO PIECES 37 v.— SUNDAY IN PARIS . 46 VL — ASTRAY IN THE EXHIBITION 57 VII.— BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE GR VND OPERA .... 73 VIIL — MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY 88 IX. — TO AND FRO IN THE EXHIBITION . . . . . . . 104 X. — FOREIGN VISITORS 116 XI. — ' FIGARO HERE, FIGARO THERE ! ' 128 XII.— LUNCHEON IN THE CHAMP DE MARS AND THE TROCADERO . . 145 XIII. — SIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE EXHIBITION . . . . .152 XIV. — THE NICE OLD GENTLEMAN 162 XV. — ON SUNDRY OLD WOMEN . 176 XVI. — GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION 189 XVIL — DINNER-TIME IN PARIS 209 XVIII. — IN THE HALLES CENTRALES 237 XIX. — THE GHOST OF THE GRISETTE 252 XX. — THE SEAMY SIDE OF PARIS LIFE 261 XXI. — UP AND DOWN IN THE EXHIBITION 277 XXIL— THROUGH THE PASSAGES 285 XXIII. — STILL THROUGH THE PASSAGES 300 XXTV. — EASILY PLEASED 312 XXV. — HIGH HOLIDAY IN THE CITY 320 XXVI. — GRAND PRIZE31EN 332 h XVin CONTENTS. CHAP. P^GE XXVII. — GOLD MEDALLISTS 347 XXVIII. — THE EXHIBITION LOTTERY 365 XXIX. — MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS . . . . . . . 378 XXX. — IN THE TEMPLE . . . 396 XXXI. — GOING ! GOING ! 415 XXXII. — GONE ! 430 XXXin. — IN THE BOIS 441 XXXIV. — PARIS REVISITED — PALM SUNDAY ON THE BOULEVARDS . . 450 XXXV. — EASTER EGGS AND APRIL FISHES 461 XXXVI. — THE GREAT HAM FAIR 472 XXXVII. — AT THE 'aSSOMMOIR' 483 XXXVIII. — GINGERBREAD FAIR 493 XXXIX. — IN THE RUE DE LA PAIX 505 XL. — THE LITTLE RED MAN 516 XLI. — THE AVENUE DE L'OPERA 525 XLII. — CHAM 535 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. I. THE CITY WITHOUT CABS. Paris, Aug. 7. Aeriving at seven in the morning, hungry and weary, at the Paris terminus of the Chemin de Fer du Nord, we cooled our heels during the ordinary and intolerable half-hour, and were driven by superior order from one salle d'attente to another, until it pleased the customs' officers to begin the usual farcical but ii-ritating examination of the passengers' luggage. This performance was not by any means the less stupid because it was a farce and a sham. There are very few things worth smuggling nowadays ; smugglers are careful to put their- contraband goods anywhere but in the boxes and portmanteaus which they know will be opened ; and, even if it were worth while to bribe the custom-house officers, modern French douaniers are a singularly unbribable race. They are, in Paris at least, incorruptible, but sulky. As they do not receive fees, they consider themselves to be absolved from the necessity of being civil ; so that everything in the Salle des Bagages, at seven A.M., goes as merrily as— well, as the Inchcape Bell in a fog. _ Dismissed from the unsatisfactory presence of a fiscal organisa- tion with vii'tually nothing to do, and doing it most elaborately, 2 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. and emerging into the courtyard of the terminus, I found, to my astonishment, that nearly the only vehicles in the vast area were some half-dozen of those well-remembered square boxes on wheels, with seats vis-a-vis, which seem to have started in life with the intention of becoming omnibuses, but, thinking better of it, have halted in a truncated condition. These ' shandrydans ' are drawn by a pair of steeds, each seemingly reared for the purpose on old coir-mats and broken Eau de Seltz sj^^hons, and presenting in their osteological development studies worthy the attention of a Gamgee, a Samuel Sidney, or a Walsh. The vehicles themselves are, I believe, called * paniers a salade,' from the energetic manner in which, while in motion, they shake up the passengers' bones. The patrons of these wretched carriages are, as a rule (according to Parisian legends), either wealthy farmers from Normandy, who have come up to the metropolis in quest of the graceless nephews to whom they intend to leave their fortunes ; or harmless lunatics, who are met at the station by the attendants of the asylums to which they are to be consigned. The railway porters were about to place my baggage on the roof of one of these rickety palanquins on wheels, when I mildly obsei-ved that I should prefer a cab. ' Une voitm'e ! ' cried one of the porters, his mouth distending to the broadest of grins, ' a Chaillot ; ' by which colloquialism he gave me to understand that I was demanding the Impossible. Then both porters hastened to explain to me that since Monday morning the Paris cabmen had been en greve ; that the strike would probably become general ; that there was a deadly feud between the Compagnie Generale des Voitures and their drivers ; that the average number of visitors to the Exliibition had been dim- inished by one-thuxl in consequence of the lack of facilities for loco- motion ; and that, altogether, il y avait du proprc, which was equiv- alent to an intimation that things vehicular were in a pretty mess. Although my astonishment had by this time become changed into dismay, I did not wholly give up the battle as lost, or resign myself unreservedly to the bone-bruisingprt?irera saZafZe. Exhibiting small silver moneys as an earnest of future bount}^ and speaking the worst French at my command, I pointed to an empty four- wheeled cab in the background, and insisted upon having it. In vain it was represented to me that the driver had his blue flag up, signifying that he was hue, or engaged. I continued to point, to in- sist, and to jingle small coins. At length the pleasant conviction may have burst on the porters that I was Ultinius Romanorum, or the last of the Milords Anglais. One of them went in quest of the distant cabman, who, after long parley and seemingly receiving THE CITY WITHOUT CABS. unimpeachable guarantees as to my British nationality, was induced to listen to reason. His * machine ' was an ancient cab, of the construction formerly known as a * Dame Blanche.' Its perfume was not that of Araby the Blest, and it was drawn by two half- starved white dobbins; but I entered it with as much alacrity as though it had been the golden coach of a High-Sheriff; and I thought the mile and a half an hour, which seemed to be the utmost speed which the knock-kneed, shoulder-shotten Kosinantes could attain, a very fair rate of progress indeed. At the other Paris railway stations, on the self-same Tuesday morning, there were, I was given to understand, no cabs at all ; and the passengers from the provinces were landed on the pave- ment, where they were left sitting on their luggage, and lamenting, like Lord Ullin m the ballad. I am bound to admit that the sohtary Automedon, in a glazed hat and a red waistcoat, who pUed at the Gare du Nord, did not take an excessive advantage of my helplessness. This worthy son of Dioreus held his hand after charging me not more than double the usual fare ; and he left the amount of pourhoire to my generosity. AVe parted mutually satisfied. He called me * Mou bourgeois,' and I called him * Mon brave.' I think that he must have been the father of a family. ' Yes,' he replied, in answer to my inquiries, ' there was a strike, and a devil of a one.' ' Tant pis pour la Compagnie, tant pis pour le public, tant pis pour nous, et tant mieux pour le Mont de Piete. B 2 4 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. He was, it will be obvious, a philosopher, albeit one of the pessimist kind. I should sa}^ myself, that strikes are bad things all round and for everybody, except the pawnbrokers and the publicans. Just now the shops of the marcliands de v'nis are crammed with mutinous cabdrivers, and the consumption of schnick and jJeiit hleu is enormous. If the cab collapse continues the wives of the Jehus on strike will soon be setting about making up bundles full of Lares and Penates to be de^josited in the kindly but strict custody of ma tantc. It did not enter into my scheme of operations to visit the Exhibition during the earlier days of my sojourn in the French metropolis. * J'avais d'autres chats afouetter;' which in these days of ' French puzzles ' in The World may be translated that I had other fish to fry. I was anxious to see what Paris in its Repub- lican and peaceful aspect was like before I explored the wondrous regions of the Champs de Mars and the Trocadero. For it so happens that, although I have once or twice passed rapidly through the gay city on my way to far-distant countries since 1870, eight long years have elapsed since I trod the boulevards of Paris as a flaneur, — since I halted before the kiosques to look at the ever- fresh and ever-spiteful political caricatures, — since I sipped a mazagran or a Bavaroise at the Cafe de la Paix, the Grand, or the Ilelder. I quitted Paris on a grim September night in 1870, when * the gentlemen of the pavement ' were in power, and the Siege was about to begin. What changes have taken place smce then ! How much blood, how many tears, have been shed ! What treasure wasted ! What hopes blasted ! What pride humbled ! What clever combinations, calculations, forecasts, shattered and trampled in the dust by a derisive Fate ! I left Paris for Lyons that lowering September night, left it a city full of the rumours of war and be- leaguerment, full of rage and terror, full of doubt and dread ; and I have come back to a Paris which, abating the squabble between the cabmen and their employers, seems to be about the most smiling, the most peaceful, and the most prosperous city that I have ever beheld. Whether among the political ashes still live their wonted fires, it is not my purpose just now to inquire. Not wishing, then, to see the Exhibition yet a while, I was prepared to witness with some equanimity the dire tribulation of innumerable groups of English and American tourists, who throughout the day, and along the great line of boulevards frou:, the Porte St. Denis to the Place de la Madeleine, were vainly endeavouring to persuade the very few hackney-carriage drivers who were on the stands, to take them to the Champ de Mars. THE CITY WITHOUT CABS. Only one-fiftli of the vehicles ordinarily in circulation were out, it is said, yesterday ; and the police inspectors, who generally show so much alacrit}^ in jotting down the little faults of the cabmen, wandered about in a listless manner, with blank note-books and un- used pencils. The most uTitating part of the affair was that among the few broughams and vic- torias, which at first sight appeared to be plying for hire, nearly every one proved on nearer inspection to be dis- playing above the driver's seat the little blue banner, signifying that the carriage was en- gaged. Not a ' Bonny Blue Flag ' by any means. To the weary footed rather an ensign of , woe. Sometimes engaged ' was rendered in the masculine, as lone, and sometimes in the feminine, as louee ; but in nearly every case the Amaxelates when hailed shook his head, either courteously, ironically, or defiantly. One gentleman, in a green waistcoat and a hat covered with white oilskin, cursed me so heartily and so copiously Avhen I asked him to drive me from the Rue Yivienne to the Rue de Labruycre, that I almost fancied that he must be our famous ' Ben, the Hackney coachman bold,' come to life again, and metamorphosed into a vituperative Gaul. You Avill remember the bold Ben of whom it is sung in the touching ballad of ' Tamaroo' : ' How he'd swear and how he'd drive, num- ber Three Hundred and Sixty-five, Avith his high fol liddle, iddle, high gee woa.' The man with the verdant vest and the white hat swore at me, but declined to drive me. I gave him as good as he had given ; PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. and then proceeded to toil along the broiling boulevard, remote, unfriended, melancholy, and slow, recalling in my mind a certain morning seven-and-twenty years ago, when, as happened yesterday, there were no cabs to be had for love or money in Paris. Stay ! If you Avere a Republican Deputy, M. de Maupas, Prefect of Police, had placed a limited number of private hackney carriages at the disposal of the Representatives of the Extreme Left, who were conveyed, free, gratis, and for nothing, to Mazas, to the Conci- ergerie, or to La Roquette. Tliat was on the 2d of December 1851. In the Exhibition year, 18G7, things were bad enough in the cab Avay, and there was a partial, but not a general strike. I don't think, however, that I ever paid more than three times the proper fare ; and not more than twice, on inquiring of a Jehu how much I was to pay him, did the gentleman on the box raise his whip and ' offer ' to strike me across the face. In the year last men- tioned, M. Pietri, then Prefect of Police, caused it to be intimated to the cockers that if they did not immediately resume work, and keep civil tongues in their heads, their licenses would be for- feited en masse, and their places supplied by gunners and drivers from the artillery. Such high-handed measures are perhaps impracticable under a Republican regime, although M. Albert Gigot, the existing jedile, is prepared, I hear, ' to act with energy should circumstances de- mand it.' Circumstances, I should say, demand that something THE CITY AVITHOUT CABS. 7 should be done at once. The company and the cabmen are losing as it is at least a thousand pounds a day in fares to the Exhibition and back again, to say nothing of the ordinary courses ; and the disgusted public are beginning to patronise all kinds of abnormal vehicles — wagonnettes, char-a-bancs, tapissiercs, vans, and carts of every description, the drivers of which charge only seventy-five centimes from the central boulevards to the Champ de Mars. There is a railway to the Exhibition, but the route is a roundabout one, and an unconscionable time is occupied in getting over it. To-morrow I shall go down to the banks of the Seine, and see ■whether they are doing anything with the hateaux-mouches — the tiny steamboats which rendered such good service in 1867. Mean- while the discontented coachmen are to meet in public conclave on Thursday, by permission of the Prefect of Police, to discuss matters with their masters. The first thing that the drivers have to do is, I take it, to get on their boxes agam. I am prepared to be overcharged, but I Want a Cab. AN INDEPENDENT CABMAN, BY CHAM, ' Drive me to the Hotel .' ' Not a bit of it. I only drive to hotels that give me a commission.' CAFE CONCERT IN THE CHAMPS ELYSEES, II. OUT OF THE SEASON. Aug-. 9. Everybody ' worth knowing ' is supposed to have left Paris ; but there nevertheless remain in the fair city some two millions of peoj)le who are decidedly worth observing and studying. With the exceptions, indeed, that towards five in the afternoon no tilburies, dogcarts, nor tandems are visible in front of the Jockey Club ; that the Bois de Boulogne is for tlie moment quite shorn of its eques- trian and charioteering glories ; that some of the theatres are preparing to close their doors, while the box-offices of all are easy of access, with the exception of the Grand Opera ; and that it is not very difficult to obtain a cabinet at the Cafd Anglais, at Durand's, at the Maison Doree, and other favourite resorts of the ' Gommeux' class,* the absence of ' ever3'body worth knowing,' and the suspension until next November of ' Le Highlife du West- end,' which Anglo-maniacal Frenchmen are so fond of talking about, is scarcely perceptible. The daily and nightly crowds on the * This, comparatively speaking, halcyon state of tilings did not long endure. The great restaurants began to be, towards the end of Septemlur, inconveniently over-crowded, and the crush continued till the end of October. OUT OF THE SEASON. U boulevards are as great as ever, and would be but little diminished in density, I imagine, were there no Exhibition in progress ; the diamonds blaze and the nieknacks glisten, in the innumerable shop-windows in this City of Frivolity, just as they did when the season was at its height ; the supply of variegated bonnets and hats is yet so surprisingly abundant as to lead the unsophisticated visitor to the conclusion that every Frenchwoman must have three heads ; the open-air concerts in the Champs Elysees and the Orangerie of the Tuileries, the Hippodrome, the dancing saloons CnXCERT OF THE ORANGERIE IX THE TUILERIES GARDSX.-.. and Alcazars, the al-fresco cafes and brasseries, are continuously thronged, quite irrespective of Exhibition patronage ; and, in short, Paris to mc is what it has been any time these forty years, a perpetual and kaleidoscopic Fair. It is not so in London, where the denizens of the other ' Ends,' which are populous and busy all the year round, impinge only to an inconsiderable extent on the real 'West End; ' and 10 PAillS HERSELF AGAIN. where, so soon as tlie genuine ' High Life ' withdraws itself foi* its autumnal pleasuring on the Continent, in the provinces, or at the watering-places, and is obsequiously attended thereto by its servants, its factors, and its purveyors — by all its belongings indeed, save its cats, which are left in locked-up London houses to starve — a void in the region which high life inhabits is distinctly manifest and felt. "When fashionable London condescends to be * out of town,' tens of thousands of minor satellites of fashion vanish at AT trouat:lle. OUT OF THE SEASON. 11 the same time, and do not reappear until the sun of fashion once more rises above the horizon. Paris, in its existing condition, appears to be perfectly able to dispense with aristocratic patronage ; it is only the exclusively patrician classes who are unable to dis- pense with Paris, and who will eagerly return to their beloved Boulevards, and their more beloved Bois, so soon as they have exhausted the delights of Trouville and Dieppe, of Spa and of Ostend; and so soon as that Exhibition, which for political reasons they dislike, is at an end. As for Hombourg and Wiesbaden, Ems and Carlsbad, those villeggiaturc must not be mentioned to French ears polite just now. The wounds of 1870 are no longer green, but they are not yet cicatrised. The cruel gashes, materi- ally, are healed — for France seems to be busier and wealthier than ever she was — but, morally, the deep hurts are only skinned over ; and by the Kepublican section of the press and the people the German is as cordially hated, and the spoliation of Alsace and Lorraine is as bitterly resented, as ever. AVhat elements of future turbulence and discord may be latent beneath -this smiling and brilliant surface, it would be as rash to conjecture, as, indeed, it is humanly impossible to foretell ; but, to judge only from the external aspect of things, Paris at the present moment spells peace and goodwill to all mankind. If the abhorred German will only be prudent enough to dub himself, while resi- dent in Paris, an Alsatian, a Swiss, or, better still, an Austrian, he will not be molested ; and the news- papers are singularly free from invectives against the Emperor AVilliam or Prince Bismarck. A few — a very few— of the * journaux serieux ' have followed, from day to day, the imbroglio of the East- ern Question, and have yet some- thing cogent to say concerning the Treaty of Berlin and the Anglo- Turkish Convention ; but, on the whole, the tribulations of Turkey and the aggressive designs of Russia seem to trouble the Pari- a duval waitress. sian public far less than do the recent sedition among the white-aproned waitresses at the Duval 12 rARIS ITErtSELF AGAIN. restaurants and the still existing strike of the cahmen. On one point, however, politicians of all shades of opinion seem to have made up their minds — that the M'ord Cyprus is a capital one on which to cut jokes, first, because there is a French opera called La Reine de Chypre ; next, because iii French slang * cliiper ' means to purloin ; and finall}', because the French have gotten into their heads the extraordinary notion that the English are inordinately fond of * Cyprus wine.' On this last topic it is quite useless to reason Avith them. As well might you attempt to shake their faith in THospitalite Ecossaise ' — I should like to learn the ideas of a Highland hotel-keeper as to Scotch hospitality — or to persuade them that Englishmen have abandoned the practice of selling their wives, with ropes round their necks, in Smithfield, as to represent to them that Cyprus wine, in its modern form at least, is a mixture of fermented grape-juice flavoured with resin, extremely unpleasant to the English taste, and an almost entire stranger to the Englisli market. The Parisians persist in speaking of this beverage ag ' ce vin cher aux Anglais.' Perhaps thej' think that the capital of C^'prus is Oporto, or that Madeira is somewhere near Paphos. While the * serious ' papers are talking of * Sir Wolseley,' and of the instructions transmitted to him by 'Lord Layard ' to mount nothing but hundred-ton guns on the Cypriote batteries, the caricaturists indulge in good-natured * skits ' at Bri- tannia, ahvays rejiresented as a high-cheeked female in spectacles, with a chronic grin, and very prominent front teeth, sitting on a rock sipping Ic vin cher mix Anr/lais out of a 'patent tea-cup,' while a hapless little Greek of Ilcllas wriggles impaled on one of the prongs of her trident, or writhes crushed under her pon- derous shield. One facetious print paraphrases the old Joe Miller of the sanctimonious grocer who, liaving assured himself that his apprentice has sloe-leaved the tea and sanded the sugar, bids him come to prayers. ' Have yon protected Cyprus ? ' asks Britannia of our Premier. An answer in the affirmative is given. ' Do you intend to protect Tenedos and Mitylene ? ' Again an affirmative reply is made. * Then come and hear some Litanies,' says the lady who rules the waves. To the ordinary French mind the liturgy of the Anglican Church is exclusively composed of litanies. Finally, in M. Andre Gill's satirical journal La Lnnc llonsse, and with the title ' La Farce i^rime le Droit,' the British Lion is repre- sented witli the limbs of a Lifcguardsman, clad (trousers and all) in blazing scarlet, and with a most portentous tail protruding from beneath the short jacket. This leonine dragoon is indulging in a triumphantly hearty swig from a bottle labelled ' Chypre,' to OUT OF THE SEASON. 13 the astonishment and disgust of a very thirsty-looking Eussian bear in the guise of a Cossack, who has nothing on the table before him but an empty glass. All this badinage, however, is essentially good-natured. One reads no words of abuse against ' Perfidious Albion,' who ' French commerce would destroy, and monopolise to herself the Empire of the Seas.' I have scanned a dozen papers this morning without finding any indignant protest against the Mediterranean being turned into ' an EngKsh lake ; ' nor have I been able to meet with any reference to the contingency of Lord Sandon's steam plough interfering with the vested interests of France in the Holy Places. All this strikes me with the greater force, inasmuch as I can re- member how, in 1839 and 1840, France in general, and the Pari- sians in particular, were in a white-hot fit of passion with England touching Syria tmd the Holy Places. I can remember it, because at the time I was a boy at a French college, and because the favourite diversion during the play-hour of my schoolfellows was to gird at me and revile me, to cuff and spit at me, because I was a * rosbif,' a ' pomme-de-terre,' a ' goddam,' or Englishman. I had bribed Marshal Grouchy with the guineas of William Pitt to stay away from the field of Waterloo until Blucher had come up. I had brought back the Bourbons, the Swiss Guard, the Jesuits, and the billets cle confession. I had embittered the last years of 14 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. tlie life of the Emperor Napoleon by countenancing and applauding the atrocious tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe. But these were past offences. In 1839 and 1840 I was accused of firing on a French hospital at St. Jean d'Acre, of insulting the French flag at the Pirteus, of stealing the crockeryware and breaking the chairs and tables of a French Vice-Consul at Alexandretta, of inciting the Grand Vizier to kick the first dragoman of the French Embassy at Constantinople ; of stirring up strife against France in the islands of the Pacific ; and finally and comprehensibly of being a perfidious child of Albion, bent on destroying French commerce and mono- polising to myself the Empire of the Seas. That was Paris torn by anxieties of impending war. The Paris of 1878 cares appa- rently not one farthing about any kind of Avar whatsoever. Her voice is all for Peace, and for Business, wholesale or retail, on a strictly ready-money basis. I never knew this ingenious and per- severing people to be hungrier than they are now after francs and centimes. It is only Glory which seems to be at a discount. They may have had enough of it, and to spare, eight years ago. That which singularly contributes to the pacific aspect of Paris at the present moment is the marked absence of soldiers from the streets. Enghshmen who are habitually resident here may not be struck by the change which, from a military point of view, has come over the French capital. To me, after virtually eight years' absence, the transformation is simply marvellous. Until the col- lapse of the Second Empire I had never known Paris but as a tremendously martial city. You saw as many soldiers on the boulevards as you did at Berlin ; but the French warrior was more conspicuous, more animated, and more picturesque than the Prus- sian type of militarism. In Berlin you meet so many broad- shouldered stunted privates, and so many gaunt, whiskered, and tight-waisted officers in tunics, inckelhauhcs, and red-striped trou- sers (and all seemingly with pokers down their backs underneath their tunics), that you begin to think after a while that these must form the normal garb of the population, and that the few people in civilian costume whom you come across are strangers like your- self. But the Paris which I knew down to September 1870 was a very masquerade of varied and brilliant uniforms. Only recall those that you beheld in the course of a stroll under the arcades of the Hue de Eivoli, between the Rue de Castiglione and the Place du Palais Royal. Stately Cent Gardes, with their shining casques, their towering plumes, their sky-blue tunics, their buck- skins and then- jackboots. Soldiers of the Guides, rivalling in the tight fit of their jackets and overalls, and the abundance of OUT OF THE SEASON. 15 THE BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS. their embroidery, our liorse artillerymen of the last generation. Grenadiers, Voltigeurs, Chasseurs, Eclaireurs, Zouaves, Sapeurs, Cantinieres of the Imperial Guard, Chasseurs de Vincennes, Chas- seurs d'Afrique, Spahis, Turcos — iihi sunt ? What has become of all these parti-coloured warriors ? I might just as well be inquisitive, perhaps, as to what has become of the Imperial lacqueys at the Tuileries, gorgeous in green and gold and hair-powder ; of the postillions and the piqueurs, the cooks and the marmitons, of the Imperial household ; although I have little doubt that, were an Empire or a Monarchy restored to-morrow, all the old costumes would come to light again, and many of the old servitors would be found ready to wear them. The footmen and bargemen, the cooks and scullions, of Charles I. lay by, quietly enough, during the Protectorate ; but they flocked to Whitehall, eager for their old posts, and clamorous for arrears of wages, so soon as Charles II. had come to his own again. So may it be should the wheel of French Fortune ever again place a crown on a French head ; but as regards the military, those soldiers of the Imperial Guard who were not killed in battle or who did not die 16 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. of fever and ague in the Prussian prison-camps, have long since, I surmise, been absorbed into the ranks of the regulai* army, or, their term of service having expired, have taken their discharge and obtained employment * dans le civil.' They may have become cash-collectors for notaries, railway guards and porters, gardiens at the Louvre or the Luxembourg, telegraph messengers, and what not. Li France there is always plenty of employment for the old soldier. A few of the Cent Gardes have, I fancy, taken service in the Garde Republicaine. At least I have noticed on duty outside the theatres at night more than one austere Eepubli- can warrior, of such a tremen- dous number of inches, so well set up, and so bushily moustached, that I could not help fancying that he had belonged in old times to the famous cohort of giants in sky-blue tunics Avho used to stand, motion- less as statues, on the grand stair- case of the Tuile- ries on gala-da3^s. Exit grand stair- case, with many other pomps and vanities of the world Imperial. The parti - co- loured warriors have disapj)eared, and the few soldiers seen in the streets are clad with almost quaker- like sobriety. The officers only wear their epaulettes when on duty; and altogether there is a remarkable absence of military parade and swagger, of the twisting of moustaches, the trailing of sabres, AT THE TUILERIES — UN COUP d'(EIL EN PASSANT. OUT OF THE SEASON. 17 and the clanking of spurs. These remarks appl}', obviously, only to the public thoroughfares of Paris, to the cafes and the public gardens in which the military element was formerly so aiTogantly prominent. For the rest it is understood that France is in this instant month of August 1878 in possession of an immense army and reserve, splendidly armed, equipped, and organised, and sedu- lously trained to grave and systematic work. What it is to do, and when and where it is to do it, the public do not seem to be very anxious to know. The army, in Paris at least, is sedulously kept out of sight, and it is only Peace, for the moment, that we are happily enabled to contemplate — meek-eyed Peace. Her meekness is modified to a slight extent just at present by the cabmen's strike. The strike, controversially considered, continues ; but tourists need murmur no more, for there are plenty of cabs to be had at ordinary fares. A police-agent is always at your elbow at the time of hii-mg and discharge, and is * down ' on the driver if he attempts an overcharge in a moment. But such drivers and such carriages ! Younger sons of younger brothers, discharged unjust serving- men, and ostlers tradefallen; Auvergnat commissionnaires past the carrying of messages ; invalided croque-morts and gavroches grown too old to play at marbles on the quays ; ragged varlets in blouses white and blue, and many absolutely in their shirt-sleeves — and the shirts look as though they had been stolen from the red-nosed innkeeper at Daventry ; all Falstaff's ragged regiment, in a word, plus a horde of Callot's Bohemians, seem to have been pressed into the service of the Compagnie Geuerale des Voitures, and to have been promoted from the kennel to the coachbox. They are, as a rule, civil enough ; and many of them have told me that they are entirely opposed to the strike, and that they have no desire save to earn an honest livmg, if the rates they are called upon to pay were only calculated on a slightly less exorbitant scale ; but the Company seem reluctant to intrust these improvised charioteers with a better class of vehicles. No spruce landaus, no sparkling victorias, no trim little brougham-coupes, have as yet reappeared, and the vast majority of the vehicles in circulation are the most ramshackle old ' cruelty vans ' that ever you saw out of the purlieus of an Irish fair. As for the horses, the spectacle of the forlorn bags of skin and bones tottering along on broken-kneed legs would make Mr. Colam cry. I have not seen a cab-horse to-day that a Spaniard would give a dozen dollars for to be disembowelled in the bull-ring. The greater number of the temporary cabbies are, moreover, wholly unacquainted with the art of driving. They know PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. uf/:-iA*- no more of the Rule of the Road than, in all probahility, they know of the Rule of Three. Like Leigh Hunt's pig, they ' go up all manner of streets ; ' and during the last thirtj'-six hours two matters for astonishment and gratitude have constantly been pre- sent to my mind : hrst, that I have not been run over ; and next, that I have not, vicarioush'^, run over anybody else. •uncha"*- riTu: r.u.us koyal. III. THAT DEAR OLD TALAIS ROYAL. Auq. 12. Was it not the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker who pro- fessed not to know where Russell Square was ; and was it not Theodore Hook, avIio, following the lofty Secretary of the Admiralty at a humbly tuft-huntmg distance, inquired whereabouts, on the Avay to Bloomsbury the traveller changed horses ? I am very much afraid tliat the Palais Royal, a region which for very many reasons is dearer to me than any locahty of which I am aware in Paris, has been, these ten years since, slowly fading to the com- jilexion of the sere, the yellow leaf, socially speaking ; and that, had I tlie honour of the acquaintance of M. le Vicomte Satin des Gommeux of the Jockey Club, or M. le General Roguet de la Poguerie of the Cercle des Mirlitons, either of those gentlemen (on liis return from Biarritz or Trouville) might, if questioned con- cerning that which was once the most fashionable, and which will always be the most famous, resort in the metropolis, reply, Avith a faintly perceptible moue of disdain on his patrician countenance : * Le Palais Ro3'al ! Voulez-vous dire celui de Pekin ? Le Palais Royal ! mais, mon cher, on n'y va plus.' The irrevocable tendency of civilisation is to march from the East to the West. We have heard that axiom before. The move- ment is from sunrise to sunset ; so that when ' all earthl}^ things shall come to gloom,' and 'the sun himself shall die,' as the poet Campbell gloomily sings, it will be in the remotest of Occidents that Fashion will expire. The Palais Royal has only experienced c 2 20 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. \1C0MTE SATIN DES GOMMEUX. tlie application of a universal law. Fashionable civilisation spreading westward, spreading to innumerable new boulevards. THAT DEAR OLD TALAIH ROYAL. 21 GENERAL EOGUET BE LA POGUERIE. spreading to the Pare Monceaux, overrunning the Champs Elysees, and threatening to overlap the Bois de Boulogne, has con- temptuously pronounced the Palais Ptoyal to he situated, as things go, clans un 2>({}js imjyossihle. It is no longer a place to dine, to promenade, to flirt, or even to conspire in : — from a fashionahle point of view. It is too far away. It is, fashionably considered, 22 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. fit Pekin. The great restaurateurs, Vefour excepted, have de- serted the arcades of the Pahiis Pu\yal for the western houlevards. The cafes are, socially and intellectually, only the shadows of their former selves ; and finally the edifice has — temporarily perchance — lost the slight political importance which under the Second Empire it possessed. The side of the vast quadrangle faciiig the Pue St. Honore is, as most people know, a magnificent palace, erst the town residence of the Dukes of Orleans. Thither did the profligate cynic Philippe £galite turn sad eyes as the death-tumbril bore him through a hooting mob, past the old splendid home which he had once inha- bited, to where the guillotine awaited him in the Place de la Revo- lution — noAv the Place of Concord. And in July 1830, from the windows of that selfsame Palais Poyal, did the son of figalite look wistfully, half fearfully, half hopefull}'-, on another mob, yelling and triumphant, which, after storriiing the Louvre and sacking the Tuile- ries, came screeching the Marseillaise, roaring ' Vive la Charte ! ' * Vive la E^publique ! ' * Vive Lafayette ! ' ' Vive Louis Philippe ! ' The last cry won the day ; and Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, went forth from the Palais Poyal a Citizen King. Eighteen years after- wards the mob came back to his house to turn it out of windows. At home, beyond the sea, I have a number of thin folios, superbly bound in crimson morocco, gilt and tooled, and with the inner sides lined with blue watered silk. They are full of reports and collections of statistics from the Ministers and Heads of Departments between 1825 and 1848 — reports written in a fair, round, fat, clerkly hand — the hand of the employe who takes his time, who leisurely nibs his pen and synnnetrically rules his lines, who puts on a pair of black-calico sleeves before he begins to work, and refreshes him- self between column and column of figures — the 'nines' and ' sixes' with prodigiously long tails — with a pinch of snuff. Some of these fidios bear, emblazoned in gold, the crowned escutcheon with the lilies of France. Others have only the initials ' L. P.' I bought the lot, fifteen years ago, for a song, in a rag-shop at New York ; and they have served very conveniently since as rei)ositories for newsi)aper cuttings. But how did they get out of the Tuileries and the Palais Poyal ? and how did the}-- manage to cross the Atlantic ? There is but one possible answer to the first inquiry. The mob ! The volumes may have formed part of the rapine of February 1848. Again in an old curiositj^-shop, in the Chaussee d'Antin, I picked uj) an exquisitely beautiful little vase of Sevres porcelain, 2)dte tcndre, in colour a rich azure, almost equalling the renowned old licit da lioi. One side of the vase bore the THAT DEAR OLD TALAIS ROYAL. 23 initials, ' L. P. ;' on the other side was painted, in a cartouche, a sweet little group of Cupids. I turned up the vase to find the Sevres mark. I found something else : the words, to wit, stamped in red letters, ' Chateau des Tuileries, 1835.' Unquestionahle * loot,' this : all cries of ' Mort aux voleurs ! ' during the escalade of Fehruary '48 to the contrary, notwithstanding. The vase was cracked right across, but had been very skilfully mended. I got it, the thing being entamc, cheap. In September 1870, the multi- tude were in a patriotically honest mood, and forbore to plunder. The palace of the Palais Poyal had, however, enjoyed full twenty years of tranquil splendour. Even before the reestablish- ment of the Second Empire it had been the residence of old Jerome Bonaparte, ex-King of "Westphalia, the * petit polisson ' of Napoleon I., the consort en 2^>'e/nn'rcs noces of the ill-used Miss Paterson of Baltimore, and whom his Imperial nephew, not know- ing very well what to do, made at last Governor of the Invalides. The old gentleman was a Waterloo man, and had not behaved badlj' in that fight. By the Parisians he was generally, in virtue of an atrociously twisted conundrum, called TOncle Tom,' since, it was argued, Napoleon I. being ' le Grand Homme,' and Napoleon III. * le Petit Homme,' old Jerome must necessaril}^ stand in the rela- tion of ' Uncle Tom ' or ' t'homme,' to the latter. His son Napoleon Jerome, kept high state at the Palais Boyal, gave good dinners and bad cigars, and hatched vain intrigues there against his cousin and benefactor, until the Em})ire tumbled to pieces like a pack of cards — cards marked by gamblers who had lost their cunning and could no longer faire saiitcr la coupe. Very dreary must be the saloons of the palace now. Very dank and dismal must be the empt}^ stable and coachhouses in the courtyard facing the Galerie d'Orleans. How many times have I watched ' Monseigneur's ' barouches and landaus, with their satin-skinned horses, emerge, ^^ 24 PARIS HERSELF AGAIX. spruce, natty, brilliant with sub-Imperial veneer and sub-Imperial varnish, from those stables ! Sometimes it was the whim of Monseigneur to travel ' post ' to his country residence ; and on those occasions there would be a full-dress parade in the court- yard of a heavy heiiine de voyage, hung high on C springs, and painted bright yellow. This equipage would be drawn by four fat Picard horses, gris pommdes in hue, theii* manes plaited and tails tied up with parti-coloured ribbons. Brave in ribbons, likewise, •were the glazed cocked-hats of the postillions, full-powdered their tie-wigs, bright scarlet their waistcoats and the lappels of their green jackets, dazzlingly white their buckskins, lustrous black their jackboots, radiant the silver badges on their arms. Behind the herline came fourgons, or closed vans, full perchance of deli- cacies from Chevet's or Cuvillier's, or Potel and Chabot's, for pic- nic purposes. On everything external blazed the sub-Imperial arms — the reflection from the greater glory of Imperialism at the Tuileries hard b3^ The guard turned out ; the drums rolled ; gleaming arms were presented, as the herline de voyage rattled out of the C0U7' dlionneur of the Palais Royal. Ichabod ! I suppose that a snufiy old concierge or two are cteemed to be enough to keep watch and ward, at present, over this ex-Eoyal, ex-Imperial habita- tion. The ghost of the Napoleonic era is a very woebegone one, and Bonapartism, /or the moment, seems to exercise less influence over the minds of the multitude than ever I can remember it to have done. Still it must be admitted that the Second Empire, while it lasted, did things very handsomely indeed. The pieces in its repertoires were got up regardless of expense, and its pour- hoires were unstinted. * Ce que Ton ne saurait nier,' quoth General Fleury, when, at St. Petersburg, he learned the downfall of his Imperial master, * c'est que pendant dix-huit ans nous nous sommes diablement amuses.' Disestablished politically, ostracised by the fashionable world, the Palais Boyal might ostensibly run the risk of sinking to the level of a tenth-rate neighbourhood. It is not only the great eating-house and coffee-house keepers who have quitted it for the boulevards. To a considerable extent it has even sufl'ered aban- donment at the hands of the cheap tailors, who have discovered that a * coin de rue,' or corner of a populous street, is a necessity in carr3dng on the business of a slop-shop palace on a large scale ; and at the present day Albert Smith's Mr. Ledburj', with his friend Jack Johnson, would find some difliculty in purchasing for eleven francs a pair of the celebrated Palais Royal pantaloons, the favourite pattern for which was lemon-colour striped with THAT DEAU OLD TALAIS ROYATv. 25 black, or else a cliess-board-looking check ; or for twenty francs the equally renowned Palais Royal swallow-tailed coat — a festive garment of a bright chocolate colour with a collar of green cotton velvet, and gilt buttons, the die of which represented an English * sportsman ' on a very long-legged horse, pursuing a fox with a tail like a turnspit's. I miss, too, those wonderful dressing- gowns with monastic hoods, cheap at twenty-two francs ; and the * sportsman's ' complete rig-out for the shooting season, consisting of a coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-coloured holland, bound with white tape and plenteous in pockets ; leather gaiters — if they were not haply of brown paper — abounding in buttons and tags ; and a giheciere or game-bag with a covering of tasselled network, to keep the flies from the pheasants, partridges, and rabbits which the bold * sportman ' was to shoot — the whole complete for forty- five francs. How often have I pictured to myself the effect of half an hour's steady rain on the brown holland suit and brown leather — or paper — leggings of that bold ' sportman ' ! There yet re- main slop-shops in the Palais Royal ; but they are few in number, and subdued in aspect. Their dummies look dusty, clammily pallid, and generally dejected, from their obvious inability to cope with the pretentious lay-figures of the ' coin de rue ' slop palaces; the boys in Glengarry jackets, knickerbockers, purple hose, and preposterously rouged faces ; the aristocratic coachmen with buff greatcoats reaching down to their feet, white neckcloths, bushy black whiskers, and gold-laced hats with monstrous cockades ; the dashing Amazons with Tyrolese hats and golden hair, and coral- handled whips, and who never forget to lift a corner of their habits to a sufficient altitude to assure the spectator that they are provided with under-garments of chamois leather, with black feet. These artistic exuberances are beyond the present capacity of the poor old Palais Royal. It was thus not without a certain feeling of sadness that I sate down in the sunshine outside the Cafe de la Rotonde, and, looking across the vast quadrangle, and peering into the dim recesses of the distant arcades, I tried to conjure up memories of the days that shall return no more. So have I sate, hour after hour, out- side Florian's at Venice, when the City was Enslaved, and when there seemed to be nobody alive in St. Mark's Place beyond myself, loafing over an ' arancio-selz ' and a ' Virginia ; ' a listless waiter leaning against one of the columns of the Procuratie ; a brace of prowling Austrian gendarmes ; a poor little fioraja, who could find no customers for her pretty threehalfpenny bouquets, and had gone to sleep in sheer weariness on a step ; and the pigeons 2G PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. that flock from tlie cupolas of the Basilica and the leads of the Patriarch's Palace, at their stated hours, to be fed ; and, survejdng this scene of silence and decay and desolation, I have asked myself inwardly, passionately, Is this to go on for Ever ? Will the uprising tocsin never sound ? Will these mfernal Tedeschi never go away ? They are gone. The city and the land are free ; and the last time I sat at Florian's I was half stunned by the clamour of the Italian people shouting ' Evvivas ! ' to Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, standing at one of the windows of his palace, with Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, on his right hand; with Humbert, Prince Royal, and jMargaret, the Pearl of Savo}^, on his left. The Palais Pi03'al, built in deliberate imitation of the Piazza San INIarco, and presenting a really noble albeit imperfect cop3% just as our Covent Garden piazzas present a stunted and squalid caricature, of an unapproachable model, must always bear a jileasantly dim resemblance to its peerless Venetian original. Un- fortunately the incurable mania of the French for the over-orna- mentation of every monument of architecture which the}' possess lias led to the conversion of the immense area between the arcades into a garden. It never was a handsome garden ; and at present it is more than usually ill-kept, exliibiting only a gravelly walk, with a few patches of gray-green herbage, and scragg}' shrubs here and there. Were the whole expanse smoothl}^ paved, a I'ltaliana, in a simple but elegant pattern, in white and gray or white and pink marble, and were the ugly newspaper kiosks, the toy and cake stalls, and the supplementary booth fronting the Eotonde, all of which impede the view to an exasperating extent, swept away, the garden of the Palais Royal would assuredly be one of the most magnificent spectacles in Europe, especially at night, since in the basement of every one of its sections is a shop, or a cafe, scarcely ever closing until after ten o'clock, and necessarily brilliantly lighted with gas. The majority of the entresols and first floors are, again, occupied by restaurants ; and the illumination of these bright saloons enhances, to a wonderful degree, the nocturnal brilliance of the scene ; but it is aggravating to enjoy no full and sweeping view of the arcades on either side, and of the radiant frontage of the Galeric d'Oiieans, at the extremity, parallel with the palace. It is more aggravating to find no military band present at night to discourse enlivening strains. The condition of the Palais Royal does not, I suppose, concern the Ville de Paris. Its maintenance may be the business of the State, or of the mysterious proprietors oiimmeuhlcs, who bought, for a trifling price, the National Domains during the First Revolution, and who seem to have been living very Ol'T.SIDK A BOLLKVARD CAKft. P. 27. THAT DEAR OLD PALAIS llOYAL. 27 comfortably ever since on the interest accruing from their hicky investments. I am quite ignorant as to whether the Orleans family continue to hold any portion of the house -property in the Palais Ptoyal, which was originally intended to form one continuous palatial residence, but the arcades of which were speedily let out as shops, restaurants, and gambhng-houses by a Duke Avhose finances had become embarrassed through his iicnchant for building. Paris is to me a permanent and most wondrous problem gener- ally ; but I do not know anything within its walls more perplexing and more wonderful than the sight of the thousands of well-dressed people who sit all day, and during a great portion of the night, in and outside the boulevard cafes, smoking, drinking, playing at cards and dominoes, and otherwise enjoying themselves. They play piquet and drink * grogs Americains ' — v/eak rum-and- water, hot, with sugar and lemon — at eleven o'clock of the forenoon in August ; they are playing dominoes and drinking ' bocks ' of frotby 28 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. beer, refreshing to the palate but apparently innocent of malt, at six o'clock P.M. They are imbibing coffee and cognac at eight, after dinner. They are consuming ices and sorbets at ten ; they are sipping more American grogs at midnight ; and yet, to all seeming, they have not ' turned a hair,' as the saying is, in the way of inebriety. They are all as sober as judges ; and yet they have been laughing and shaking in Rabelais' easy-chair for the last thu'teen hours. "Who are they ? Whence do they come ? "Where are they going ? Where do they live ? They cannot be all shop- keepers who have left their wives to manage the shop, since they frequently bring both the male and female branches of their families to the cafe with them. They bring grandams of eighty, who drink hot rum-punch. They bring little brats of seven, who drink 'bocks' and ask for the Vie Parisienne. Vogue la galcre ! But where is the galley, and who tugs at the labouring oar ? How do they get the money to pay their score and give the gar(^on his liourhoire I If I were to sit inside or outside a tavern from morn till midnight, even if I drank nothing stronger than barley-water, and smoked nothing more powerful than cigarettes of lavender, those conversant with my affairs would very soon suggest my incarceration at Colney Hatch or the expediency of the removal of myself and my household to St. Pancras Wdrldiouse. Again, I frequently notice that, when some depraved vagabond in a tattered blouse is arraigned before the Cour d' Assises or the Police Correc- tionnelle, the Public Prosecutor rarely omits to mention in the act of accusation that the prisoner is an habitual haunter of cstamineis and brasseries. Why, it was the Public Prosecutor's twin brother, or at least his cousin-german, that I saw at eleven in the forenoon drinking hot rum-and-water, and blocking his adversary at dominoes with a double-five at the Cafe des Mille Constellations! The only solution that I can possibly find for the problem is that the cafe frequenters are aWj^roprictairescVimmcublcs; tliat their grandfathers purchased large slices of the National Domains at pei)percorn prices in the year 1792, and that they and all their families have been living prosperously and hilariously on the dividends ever since. The}' — if there be indeed such a class of Parisians, deriving their incomes from such a source — do not seem to be much given to patronising the poor old Palais Ptoyal. It is too quiet for them. The passing show is not exciting enough to interest the Jidneitr class. In tlie daytime, sitting on your rush -bottomed chair outside the Ptotonde, you see few people beyond a succession of youthful nurserymaids and elderly bonnes. Tlie nurserymaids are occa- sionally pretty ; and if they are not well-favoured, they make up THAT DEAR OLD PALAIS ROYAL. 29 for the absence of good looks by a very fascinating coquettishness ; but the ugliness of the elderly bonnes is fearful to look upon. 30 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. When 3-011 have seen an old Frenchwoman you have seen Mother Redcap — j'ou have seen the Witch of Endor. These attendants bring with them troojis of sickly, monkey-faced children. The French are a gallant, chivalrous, ingenious, and witt}' people, but they are certainl}- not a good-looking race; and, as a rule, the dolls in the toy-shops, though facially idiotic, are much prettier than the little girls who nurse them. Children, moreover, of the upper classes have ceased to resort to the Palais Koyal to hold skipping competi- tions or to form daylight quadrilles. The perambulators are few and shabb}'. Some few soldiers are to be seen. Noblesse oblige; and these gallant sons of Mars have come to pay their homage to the youthful nurserymaids. A * INIondaine ' rarely shows her painted countenance and elaborate toilette in the garden. Gaunt pale- faced lads in blouses smoking cigarettes of bad tobacco or sucking THAT DEAR OLD TALAIS ROYAL. 31 pipes of blackened brier-root, slatternl}' workgirls in dresses of cheap printed calico from Roubaix or St. Etienne and 'coiffces en cheveux' — the i5rett3'and becominf:5Avhite cap of the Parisian grisctte has, like the grisctte herself, almost enth-ely disappeared — are ' trapesing ' np and down in couples, staring in all tlie shops, and apparently in no hurry to go back to their work ; while now and again, in a corner behind some angle of stonework, there broods, huddled up on a chair, an old, old man, with a parchment face furrow^ed into a thousand wrinkles, lack-lustre eyes, a weather- beaten hat with the nap all gone and the brim drooping, a patched brown surtout buttoned up to his throat and with the place of a button supplied here and there by a pin, deplorable trousers, inde- scribable shoes, and one glove. Who is he ? Balzac must have been aware of him forty years ago. He may be a contemporary of the terrible 'Ferragus.' "Was he a prefect under the Restoration, a banker in the days of the Orleans dynasty, a police spy under the Second Empu'e, a croupier at one of the gaming-houses ? To me he looks like an incarnation of the poor old Palais Eoyal itself run to seed. And yet they tell me the Palais Royal is gayer just now than it has been during any period these eleven years past ; but so far as the experience of my own eyes enables me to judge, it has only been momentarily galvanised into a deadly-lively spasm of vitality by the presence of the English and American visitors to the Exhibition. From the minds of these worthy and unsophisti- cated people you cannot eradicate the long since fixed idea that the Palais Ro3^al is still the centre of 'Life in Paris,' '''""?! ^^^ \ '^"^^^^^ ""F l'^'^ /^ the pivot on which " \ •" *^ .. S '^ -^- -^ III // ^ all Gallic gaieties ^ turn, the 'hub' of the Parisian universe, as Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, is the 'hub of the universe,' generally speak- ing. You meet travelled Britons, cosmopolitan Britons, on the Boulevards or in the Rue de la Paix ; you look for your 32 I'AKIS HERSELF AGAIX. travelled American in the courtyard of the Grand Hotel, or under the arcades of the extravagantly magnificent Hotel Continental in the Rue de Castigiione ; but the 'Innocents abroad,' be they of British or of Transatlantic origin, float at once to the Palais Eoyal. I have met to-day at least half a dozen Ritualist curates — the}^ are among XvSSi?^. the most innocent and the foolishest creatures that I know — the Rev. Mr. Chadband r-^v ■d^T'_f j^^Tr^yrv 'i'-'' <& AA^^x/.a .^my///^h \ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ De Beauvoir Town; also the three Miss Sowerbys of Leamington ; Captain Swabber, R.N., and his nu- merous famil}'-, of Palmerston Road, Southsea ; and little Mr. Sam G3'nger, M.R.C.S., from Barrow- in-I'urness. Sam is rather a gay dog when he has got the Channel safely between him and Mrs. G. (who is serious), his Uni- tarian aunts, and his Baptist grand- mother; and he informed me, with a sly wink, that after handing over all his patients, ^^ro ton., to old Nob- bier, the general practitioner, he had come to Paris * for a bit of a spree.' Ingenuous Samuel ! as though the Palais Royal were on the way to the Spree ! Equally numerous are the American Innocents. No shrewd and somewhat cynical New Yorkers ; but few serene and complacent-witli- higher-culture Bostonians ; and fewer still well-bred, albeit some- what haughty. South Carolinians and Virginians do you meet under the tln-onged arcades. But you meet there highly-resi:)ectable people from Brattlebur}-, in the State of Vermont, and Toledo, in the State of Ohio, You meet Professor Popcorn of the THAT DEAR OLD TALAIS ROYAL, 33 Homespun University, Princeton, Delaware; you meet Elder Prigarsin of the Scandinavian Church of Snickersnee, New Jersey; you meet Dr. llufus Clamchowder, erst Brigadier-General of Volunteers (he fought valiantly at Antietam), at present pharmaceutist (he has got a patent pill), of Barkum, Blisterum county, Michigan. I met Miss Desdemona Wugg of Philadelphia, author of the alarming work entitled Proof Positive; or Shakespeare's j^^^'l/^ written hy a Woman, and that Woman a Wugg ! Miss W. Avore her cele- hrated brown-hoUand dress, with the large mother- o' -pearl buttons, her broad-brimmed beaver hat with the green veil, her tortoiseshell- rimmed spectacles, and her buff-leather gauntlets. Abating her spectacles, she might be one of Cromwell's Ironsides. What do all these excellent people want in the dear old Palais Boyal ? To change their English and American money into napoleons and five-franc pieces ? Why, money-changers' shops abound all over modern Paris. To buy diamonds and rubies at the few remaining first-class jewellers under the arcades? No; they scarcely look hke people who want expensive jewellery. To dine at the cheap restaurants ? Possibly ; but then they are here all day — long before lunch and long before dinner-time. They want, I apprehend, to see * Life in Paris ; ' but the life, dear sii'S and madams, is no longer here. The glory of the Palais Royal has departed. The quick-eared, quicker-eyed Hebrews who keep the very cheap jewelry shops, with the open fronts and ' Entree Libre ' inscribed over the portals, might be very irate did they hear me thus asperse the liveliness of the Palais Royal. I wonder who buys this ghttering rubbish — the thin gilt lockets, with big staring initials, enamelled in gaudy enamel, or set with false stones ; the flimsy necklaces, the pancake-looking brooches, the clumsy brace- lets, the sham-gold tiaras and belts, the multitudinous array oi * charms ' for chatelaines — a very microcosm of tinsel and pinch- beck. Who buys them ? Why, inconsequent radoteur that I am, I used to buy the tinselled and pinchbeck rubbish myself long years ago, Vv'hen I was young : §4 rArjs iiEr.sELr AoAijt. ' ' IIo, pretty page, witli tlie dimpled chin, That never has known the barber's shearj All your aim is woman to win, — This is the way that boys begin, — Wait till you come to Forty Year.' The girls were very pliant when I brought them home the thin gilt lockets with the enamelled initials, the flimsy necklaces, and clumsy bracelets, as presents. They smiled, and said things pleasant to hear. Now, not all the gold of Ballarat, not all the silver of Nevada laid at their feet, would win a smile, save one of derision, from them. But I can avail myself of a surer recipe for chasing away melan- choly in the Palais Itoyal. Just as, when I feel hipped and dull at home, I always turn to a little thin folio of the ' characaturas ' of Lionardo da Vinci, engraved by Wenceslaus Hollar from the originals in the Portland Museum, and find myself, ere five minutes be past, shaking with laughter over Lionardo's incom- parably droll portraits — types of * odd-fish ' humanity three hundred years old, but which at every turn you will find repeated in London society — so in the Palais Royal, when ' the Something Bitter ' surges up from the memories of the past, I seldom fail to find a cheerful solace by repairing to the Galerie d' Orleans, and surveying the contents of that ever-delightful terracotta pig-shop. Do you know those pigs ? They are modelled by a skilful artist named (I think) L. Desbords, who likewise excels in the repre- sentation of monkeys, and is even a proficient of what may be termed the Humorous Nude, in the shape of little statuettes of ladies more or less in the costume of Hans Breitmann's Mermaid ; but it is in the plastic delineation of porcine life and manners that the genius of M. L. Desbords most brilliantly shines. He seems to have based his studies first on a careful perusal of a translation of Charles Lamb's Essay on Roast Pig ; then (to my thinking) he has carefully considered the pig as demonstrated in England by George Morland and in France by Decamps ; tlien he has gone to nature — to the pigst}^ ; and finally he has evolved out of his own internal consciousness an anthropochoisine corned}', preserving in piggy all his piggishness, j'et investing him, pour rire, with certain human attributes. Thus you see the pig who is ' tight,' and the pig who is suffering from a headache on the day following his orgie ; the pig who is beating, or is being beaten by, his wife ; and — subtle stroke of true genius \—tlic j)ig who is having a Jew words with his mother-in-law. The only contemporary artist who can be for an instant compared with this porcine Praxiteles of the Palais Eoyal is our own aihnirable Britain Iviviere. Do you THAT DEAn OLD PALAIS EOYAL. 35 know that consummate painter's picture of * Circe ' — the enclian- tress gazing at the companions of Ulysses, changed by her magic arts (and her Hoyal Tullocligorum whisky) into swine ? Every phase of human hoggishness developed by excess into an unmiti- gated pigdom is there illustrated. Mr. Eiviere and M. Desbords .have travelled to Circeland by parallel roads. In the shop where these wondrous porcine terracottas are sold there is besides a plentiful stock of miscellaneous plasticity, comprising many .genume works of art; but I care little for the Antinous or the 'Callipygian Venus, the Dancing Faun or the Huntress Diana, in ■•such merry company as that of M. Desbords. Est modus in rchus. 'There is a time to laugh and a time to weep ; and when I am in the Galerie d'Orleans my attention is absorbed by the pigs, and by nothing else. Was it not in this same gallery that there might have been seen strolling on most afternoons, so late as the early part of the reign of Louis Philippe, an old, old man, who was niclmamed by his few associates ' Valois Collier ' ? The old man had been the husband of the infamous Jeanne de St. Eemy, ' Countess ' de la Motte, who was wont to boast (with some show of truth, it would seem) that she had a strain of the royal blood of the Valois in her veins. This convict-countess was, you will remember, the prime mover in that phenomen-al swindle of the 'Affaire du CoUier,' or Diamond-Necklace business. They ran her in at last. She was whipped and branded on both shoulders with the letter V (for Volcuse), and locked up in the Salpetriere for life ; but she made her escape (owing probably to court influence) from that penitentiary, iind made her way to that grand refuge for villany, London, where she met a miserable death by jumping out of the window of a Lambeth lodging-house, hotly pursued by the bailiffs who sought to an-est her at the suit of a pettifogging attornej'. I am writing •on this matter from memory, as I have by me neither IMr. Carlyle's -wonderful disquisition on the Diamond Necklace, nor JMr. Henry Vizetelly's exhaustive examen on the same subject. One of the ■queerest tragi-comic episodes extant, this Afiaire du Collier. It was one of the levers de ridcau of the tremendous drama of the Revolution ; and to think of old La Motte, inconsolable widower of this flagellated and stigmatised convict-countess, surviving the eighteenth century, and crawling through the years of the ninc- iteenth «vea into the ' thirties.' He enjoyed, it is said, in his latter years a trifling pension from the Prefecture of Police. Pos- sibly he did the Eue de Jerusalem some slight service in the way of espionage. Well, Dr. Titus Gates died a pensioner of the 36 PARIS HERSELF AOATN, government of William III., and made a tolerably decent end of it. Society can afford to pass a statute of limitations for the benefit of any ancient rascals who have become historical and can do no more harm. Within the memory of men still living, there was a nonogenarian chieftain in one of the Sandwich islands, whom whaling captains were glad to * interview ' — paying half a dollar a head for the privilege — on the score that the savage patri- arch had been at the killing of Captain Cook ; and that at the cannibal banquet which followed the murder, the Illustrious Navi- gator's great toe had fallen to his (the patriarch's) share. Still I don't think that any Indian government would pension off Nana Sahib with fifty rupees j^er mensem, were the Butcher of Cawnpore (they say he is alive, and doing very well as a commission agent in the Cashmere-shawl trade) unearthed. A short shrift and sus. jJcr coll. in a pigskin rope must needs be the lot of that unutterable miscreant, were he as old as Methuselah when captured. But I must get away from the Galerie d'Orleans, and from the Palais Royal too, for good and all. The place is too fidl of dis- solving views. Wli}', on the site of this same Orleans i)assage, were the notorious Galeries de Bois, the resort of all the painted profligacy of the Directory, the Consulate, the First Empire, and the liestoration ! In 1815, the Galeries de Bois were nicknamed, owing to the extensive Muscovite patronage which they enjoyed, * Le Camp des Tar tares.' But in the year of Invasion and Occu- pation after Waterloo, when Beranger was writing *Le Menetrier de Mcudon ' and ' La Complainte de ces Demoiselles,' all Paris was a hostile camp. Our Highlanders bivouacked in the Champs Elysees. Lord Uxbridge's troopers jiicketed their horses in the Bois de Bou- logne. The Russian head-quarters were in the Place Vendome. The Prussians held the heights of Montmartre. The Austrians were in the Champ de Mars and the Carrousel. But all these alien warriors came down to the Palais Royal, to stare at the jewellers' shops and the painted ' demoiselles ' of the Galeries de Bois ; to lose their money at the gambling-houses, or be cheated out of it at the restaurants. Waterloo Avas avenged at last by the gros hatail- lons of the bankers at roulette and ireiitc ct quarante, and by the sale to the invaders of man}^ thousand bottles of rubbishing cham- piigne at twelve francs the flask. 'Rouge gagne!' 'Rouge perd!' ' Via, Monsieur! ' and 'Garden, I'addition ! ' were sweeter sounds to the French ear than the dreadful * Sauvc qui pout ! ' of Mont St. Jean. A STUDENT OF THE QUAKTIER LATIX, IV. TARIS CUT TO PIECES. Aug. 14. I HAVE not yet revisited the Qimrtier Latin, the districts of the Odeon and the Pantheon, or the long, stately, silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain: — all situate on what has been termed the * Surrey side of the Seine.' When I cross the Pont Neuf, and dive into that which was to me, many years ago, a familiar and a beloved region, I shall have much cause, I fear, for disappointment and regret. I read, for example, the other da}', that the Hue de la Harpe, that once teeming hive of students, grisettcs, and Polish refugees, had been entirely demolished ; and I am prepared to find even the Kue de I'Ecole de Medecine reduced to a phan- tom of its former self. The Paris of Vautrin and the Pere Goriot is fast becoming a legendary city ; and as for the Paris of Eugene Sue's ]\[ystcrics, it has been utterly swept away these many years. So long ago as the first week in December 1851 — two nights after 38 PAIUS HERSELF AGAIN. A EOUEMUN OF THE STUDIOS. the Coup (VEtat — I sujiped in company with an English friend at the veritable (largotte of the *Lai)in Blanc,' in the line nux L'eves, a house almost exclusively frequented by bandits and their female PARIS CUT TO PIECES. 89 companions ; and the ' Ogress ' who kept the estabhshment was good enough to tell us, as she served us our ' Arlequin,' that the Rue aux Feves had at last begun to ' smell too loud ' in the nostrils of authority, and that it was forthwith to he pulled down, in order to widen the approaches to the Palais de Justice. I]A (EE^^^'ao/i'm THE PLACE PE tA BASTILLE. 40 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Meanwhile the transformation of the cit}--, which, with magical rapidity, has taken phxce on what we may term the ' Middlesex side,' is sufficient to amaze and perplex that most assiduous of pedestrians, the 'oldest inhabitant,' to say nothing of the foreigner who only makes periodical trips to Paris. Take, for instance, one strip of the Boulevard, and one side only thereof, extending from the Madeleine to the Cafe Anglais. Keep straight on, and there will be no danger of your losing your wa3\ You must reach in time the Rue de Eichelieu, the Rue Vivienne, the Rue Mont- martre ; and I suppose that the route continues onward, although intersected by many new boulevards, to the ultimate Place de la Bastille. But, branch off to the right from that strip of which I spoke, with the intent, say, of getting into the Rue Neuve St. Augustin, the Rue Neuve des Petits-Champs — how they would stare if you entered a restaurant and asked for bouillabaisse ! — or the Rue St. Honore, and, before you are five minutes older, you will find yourself wandering in the most 'feckless' manner among the irreconcilable segments of a Paris which has been cut to pieces. Some of the old side streets, it is true, remain. I come upon the Rue Louis le Grand, the Rue du Port Mahon, the Rue de Gram- mont, and the Rue St. Anne ; but those thoroughfares no longer seem to lead direct to the goals at which they were wont to cul- minate. Threading the well-remembered, narrow, full-flavoured little thoroughfare, full of maisons garnies, fruiterers, and wine- shops, you come suddenly on a great Babel of a brand-now street, broad, lined Vv'ith tall mansions and splendid shops, abounding with palatial hotels and garish cafes, and blazing with gas, inter- mingled with the well-nigh blinding electric light. I am accustomed, for a reason which I shall speedily have the honour of practically explaining to you, seldom to breakfast or dine twice running at the same restaurant. I am making a list of menus and a collection of bills ; and a very remarkable body of documentary evidence they will turn out to be, I fancy. Thus, I wished a couple of evemngs since to dine at the Restaurant Gaillon — an excellent and moderately-priced place of entertainment, hard by the Fontaine Gaillon. I took the Rue de la Michodiere route ; but, alas, it led me neither to Gaillon's Fountain nor to Gail- Lni's Restaurant. It landed me on the brilliant but barren strand of a new street, at the upper end of which I could discern the colossal but meretricious facade of the New Opera House. Fairly bewildered and desoriente, I was fain to ask my way. * Suivez toujours la Rue de la Michodiere' was the direction of the obliging citizen in a blouse to whom I addressed myself. But where was PARIS err TO riECi;s. 41 the Eue de la Miclioditre — that part of it at least Avhich was to come ? I lighted upon it at last, in a painfully dislocated and fragmentary condition, on the other side of the hrand-new street, but certainly two hundred and fifty yards from where I should have exjiected to find it. I came upon the Fountain and the Res- taurant Gaillon at last — the last, fortunatel}', as good as ever, and indeed altogether unaltered ; for the proprietor, M. Grossetete, had taken pains to affix to the centres of all the great mirrors in his dining-saloons x^lacards conveying his respectful compliments to his * nombreuse et estimable clientele,' and containing the pleasing announcement that he had resolved * firmly to maintain his ancient and accepted prices' during the whole of the Exhibi- tion season. Ahi tu etfac similitei', I would say to the proprietor of the Restaurant du Grand lilcorcheur, who charged me this morn- ing at breakfast three francs for two modei'ately-sized peaches, and five francs for a bottle of rin de Grave, which I could have bought in London for a couple of shillings. Ere I enter on the great theme of Paris restaurants, their pro- visions and their prices, I may just venture parenthetically to note one circumstance typically illustrating the perfectly arbitrary manner in which the tariff of articles of food is made to fluctuate. The water just now in Paris is almost undrinliable. The Faculty are unanimous in denouncing its unwholesomeness; and every- body is diluting his rin ordinaire with a slightly aerated and very 42 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN, palatable naineral water called the ' Eaii de St. Galmier.' It is almost as refreshing as Apollinaris ; and the Parisians are patro- nising it to an enormous extent, not only from gastric but from patriotic motives, St. Galmier being a French source. I have heard, it is true, of one over-scruj)ulous anti-German gentleman who objected to drink St. Galmier on the ground that it came from the * Source Badois,' and that Baden is in Germany. His scruples were, however, removed, fii'st by exhibiting to him a bottle, from the label of which it was made manifest that the name of the spring was ' Badoit,' with a t instead of an s ; and next, by point- ing out to him that if the water had been, indeed, of Teutonic origin, ' Source ' happens to be a feminine noun, and the require- ments of French grammar would have demanded the substitution of * Badoise ' for ' Badois.' I should say that St. Galmier would yield a very fair profit if it were sold retail at fourjDence a bottle. At the Duval restaurant they charge fift}' centimes for this bever- age ; at restaurants of the second class the price is seventy-five centimes, and at those of the first class a franc. At the gi'and liotels the charge for St. Galmier is one franc fifty centimes. I never had the audacity to stay at Claridge's ; but is there any hotel in London the Expensive, I wonder, where they charge eighteenpence for a bottle of soda-water ? But let vLSi return to Paris Cut to Pieces. That which remains of the Michodiere puts me in mind but very faintly of old times. There is yet at the boule- vard corner of the street a readj'-made-clotlies shop ; but it is a far less pretentious establish- ment than the one on the same site, of which I remember the * inauguration ' some four-and- twenty years ago, and which did business under the imposing title of ' Le Prophete.' Whether the prophet in question was Mohammed or John of Leyden, Francis Moore or Zadkiel, was not stated ; but tlic entire concern was, nevertheless, conducted on the loftiest and most ceremonious scale. Why the presence of a Jciiissicr-lilie per- sonage of grave and reverend aspect, clad in a full suit of black, with a white cravat, and a steel chain round his neck, should have been provided as necessarily auxiliary to the carrying on the affairs of an emporium of coats, vests, and pantaloons, I could never satisfactorily determine ; nor could the sable-clad and steel-chained functionary himself be considered in the long-run as a success. Tbc French public ut large do not like TAKIS CUT TO PIECES. 43 hidsslers, they associate those officials with the law; and ere long an unpleasant impression arose in the popular mind that the pro- prietors of ' Le Prophete ' were in difficulties, and that the solemn individual with the steel chain was the man in possession. After a time they prudently withdrew the man in chains, and I heard that he subsequently transferred his services to the conductors of a three-franc dinner, wine included, in the Passage des Indiges- tions. Nothing disheartened, however, the * Prophete ' people replaced their discredited linissier by a stalwart negro, who mounted guard at the boulevard entrance to the shop. In a green tunic, with gilt buttons, buckskins, topboots, and a splendid gold- lace band and cockade to his hat, he looked like one of the Imperial grooms — the grooms of the Emperor Soulouque, I mean. For a time the Ethiop at the * Prophete ' was amazingly popular, and attracted large crowds to the slop-shop. ' Un beau noii',' tlie f/risettes and bonnes used to sa}', gazing admiringly at this glorified black man. His reign, however, was brief. He was eclipsed by a j-ellow-faced Chinaman, with a pigtail and a purple petticoat, who was retained by the proprietors of an adjoining tea-shop ; and the sable groom, being afflicted, besides, with a weakness for 'le Pihum des lies,' faded into the Infinities. But, ah, ere I leave the Rue de la Michodiere, to stray hither and thither through Paris Cut to Pieces, my mind recurs to one modest little houtiquc, the disappearance of which awakens the ver}'- pleasantest and the very saddest of memoirs. Whereabouts was Madame Busque's? There are cabarets, billiard-rooms, blancMs- sar/es defin, milk and fruit-shops galore, in the Hue de la Micho- diere of 1878 ; but I am unable to fix upon any one of these establishments as standing on the premises erst tenanted by the excellent old lady whose lot I have not ceased to lament. And who, you will ask, was Madame Busque? She kept a crcmerie in the Michodiere. She sold butter and eggs, milk and cheese ; but in her little back parlour and at her little round table — on which at night-time not more than a single candle was ever permitted to shine — she provided dejeuners d la fourchette, and dinners, forti- fying in quantity and delicious in quality. Well do I remember the succulence of her potage croutc an pot, and especially her matchless monies d la poulcttc. Her wine was sound, albeit of no particular vintage. Pier fromafje de Brie was superb. One did not care for Boquefort, Camembert, or Pont I'Eveque in those days. We brought our own cigars, petits Bordeaux not unfre- quently, and costing only a halfpenny, very smokable little weeds. In 1854-5 we had not come to the complexion of Pvegalias Britani- u PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. MADAIIE BUSQUE, 'DliVOUTEST OF ROMAxVISTS,' cas at a franc apiece. For my part, looking at the fact tliat it is next door to tlie impossible to obtain cigars of even tolerable quality in Paris, and not having the courage to smuggle genuine havanas into the territory of the Eepublic, I would as lief smoke petits Bordeaux as anything else. Unfortunately that particular brand has come to be of simply indescribable' vileness. The monopoly of the Ilrr/ie is one of the chief social curses of France; the lucifer match monopoly is another ; and since the Siege the PARIS CUT TO PIECES. 45 quality of botli products has been growing steadily worse year after year. I'li^ Parisians are accustomed to say bitterly that there exists an infallible preventive against the breaking out of confla- grations in France, namely, to thatch the houses Avith the govern- ment tobacco, and try to set fire to them with the * concession ' ahimcttes. The first won't burn, and the second won't light. But dear old Madame Busque. She was the worthiest of womankind, the devoutest of Eomanists; but she cheerfully gave credit to the heretics among her customers. She depended not on the support of the outside world, being quite content with the patronage of a private clientele composed mainly of j'oung Ameri- cans and Englishmen domiciled in Paris. The Americans taught her to make sundry Transatlantic dishes ; and speedily Madame Busque hung out her sign as the ' Specialite de Pumpkin Pies ' and the * Delices des Buckwheat Cakes.' I think even that she knew what ' succotash ' was, and could have made ' gumbo soup ' and * clam chowder ' had the proper ingredients for those myste- rious compounds been brought to her. I am very certain that she could mix a * cocktail,' even to the more recondite preparations of the * eye-opener,' ' moustache-twister,' ' morning glory,' and * corpse-reviver ' kind. The nights we used to have at Madame Busque's ! Nearly all the Englishmen who went there in 1854-5 — dramatists, journalists, poets, painters, and so forth — are dead; but often, when reading the American papers, I come across the name of some distinguished Congressman or Physician, General or Judge, in the Great Republic, who, in the old days, came night after night to ply his knife and fork and quaff his cheap Medoc, to smoke his j^ctit Bordeaux, and tell his tale and sing his song, in the little back parlour behind the cremerie. I cannot find the shop ; I cannot find the house ; but the memories of my own countrymen who made part of the merry circle cluster round me till my old feet, like the friar's in Romeo and Juliet, stumble at graves. One of the mournfulest pilgrimages that I ever made in my life was from Madame Busque's breakfast-table, in a bitter January morning, through thickest snow, to the Cemetery of Montmartre. But we must not indulge in such lugubrious re- membrances. Vive la bagatelle ! So I struggle through the disjecta membra of Paris Cut to Pieces, until I settle down at a little marble table in front of one of the most dazzling cafes of that new Avenue de 1' Opera, and blinking like an owl in the radiance of the electric light, I plunge into the wild revelry of a cold * soda-groseille/ V. SUNDAY IX rARIS. Sunday, Aug. 18. Among other persons and things in Paris which, to my thinking, seem to have deteriorated — to have visibly degenerated — since the collapse of Imperialism, and the definite adoption of Republican institutions, is the AVasherwoman. Her prices are as extravagant as of yore, with twenty per cent, added, ' in consequence of the Exposition ; ' but she is no longer punctual in keeping the appoint- ments which she makes to bring home your linen, and she is apt to lose the articles with which you have intrusted her : offermg you in lieu thereof textile fabrics of strange warp and woof and cloudy hue, the property of persons whose pei'sonal acquaintance SUNDAY IN rAElS. 47 j*ou have not tiie honour to enjo}'. Dudley Costello once wrote in a magazine a story called La Camicia llapita, in which he related, with equal grace, humour, and delicac}^, how a mariage de coeur between two persons moving in the select circles in society was brought about through the gentleman finding among his linen the innermost garment of a lady ; the lady on her part being equally a victim of the laundress's blunder, and discovering to her horror a masculine indusium in her basket. That is all very well; but I want my own linen, and not that of other folks. Sometimes the French hlancldsscusc loses, say, a white waistcoat altogether ; still she never omits to charge seventy centimes for it in her bill. ' But where is my waistcoat ?' you ask, in stern reproachfulness. *I know not,' she replies, with touching naivete ; ' all that I know is that I washed it before I lost it.' So, it will be remembered, did Othello kiss Desdemona before he killed her ; still the caress was but a slight compensation to poor Mrs. 0. The modern Parisian laundress, although still an incomparable ironer and ' getter-up,' has sadly fallen off as a hlanchisseuse. She burns holes in your linen with the eau de Javelle, or some other abominable caustic solution which she uses ; and she either starches your linen too much or not at all. She is no longer 48 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. pretty — the demand, perhaps, for svjcts at the theatres of Cluny and i3elleville is, perhaps, too exigent; and the juvenile apprentice to soapsuds is contemptuously spoken of as 'un baquet,' a tub: but it is of her unpunctuality that I chiefly complain. You may well scribble ' a rendre incessamment ' at the foot of your bill. She laughs, to all seeming, derisively at the injunction. The week slips away. Saturday comes and goes. You look from your window, and behold scores of elaborately-frilled skirts borne past you in ironical triumph on poles, and you rage at the thought of your own destitution. All those jr(2)cs are going home to their fan- owners; but 3'our washerwoman she comethnot. Fancy Mari- ana waiting desolate and forlorn in the Moated Grange for her ,things, ()r it may chance that Mariana's young man could not come to her for the reason that he had been disappointed by his washerwoman. Where is that false hlan- cliisseuse ? Did she stay too late last night at the Folies Bergere ? Has she gone off to the Fete Patronale at St. Ger- main-en-Laye, at Choisj^- le-Roi, or at Bourg-la- Eeine ? Or, like the heroine in L'Assomvwir, has she come to fisticuffs with a sister hlanchisseuse at the pubhc washhouse, and is conse(iuently laid up with a black eye ? * Pan, pan, pan ! IMarnot au lavoir, Pan, ])an, pan ! a coups de battoir ; Pan, ])an, pan ! va laver son coeiir, Pan, pan, pan ! tout noir dc douleur.' What have I to do with her affiiirs of the heart ? I wish that she would bring home my washing. SUNDAY IN PARIS. 49 There is thus much, however, to be said of Margot. She does not wholly throw you over on the Seventh Day. No one knows better than she does that Sunday in Paris is a day of merry- making and rejoicing, and that, as Artemus Ward put it, 'it is difficult to be festive without a clean biled rag.' So she lets you have something before noon on the Sabbath. It may be only a tithe of the basketful to which you are entitled ; still it is some- thing which will enable you to make a cleanly Sabbath appearance, and you must be thankful for small mercies. Half a loaf is better than no bread. In her heart of hearts Margot must admit that it would be the height of cruelty, une Idcliete des Iclchetes, to deprive you even to the slightest extent of the means of enjoying that holiday which she herself so dearly prizes. She has very proba- bly been overwhelmed with work during the week, and has sat up aU Saturday night ironing and folding, so as to satisfy at least a portion of the needs of her pratiques early on Sunday, and have the rest of the day to herself. This is not by any means the way in which we understand the Sunday question in England; nor can I more fitly preface the brief observations which I am about to make on Sunday in Paris than by pointing out that it is utterly and entirely hopeless to expect the slightest assimilation or reconciHation of ideas between French and English people touching their respective observance of the Sabbath. A British Sunday is one thing, and a Continental Sunday is another ; and you can no more hope to brmg about a likeness between the two than you can turn vinegar into oil or black into white. I am not speakmg on this matter from brief or from imperfect experience. Forty years ago I used, as a school- boy, to get my exeat, or * day rule ' — unless I was * kept in ' for high crimes and misdemeanours — at ten o'clock on Sunday morn- ing. My sister and I used to go to the English Episcopal church in the Kue d'Aguesseau ; and after service we proceeded, under the guardianship of kind French friends, thoroughly to enjoy our- selves. We took our walks on the Boulevards, in the Palais Royal, or in the Garden of the Tuileries, peeping in at all the gay shops; we were treated to breakfast at a restaurant and to ices at Tortoni's ; in the afternoon we listened to the mihtary band playing in the Place Vendome ; at proper seasons of the year* we went to the Fete of St. Cloud, the fanfare at Vincennes, or to Versailles to see the grandes eaux play ; and in the evening, if we were not taken to the theatre or the opera, we had that which to us children was a gala-dinner at some friend's house. After dinner the ladies and gentlemen sang secular songs and played 'minuets and rigadoons,' 50 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. or at least sometliing for us to dance to ; while in a snug corner of the salon the cure of the parish — yes, that venerahle and benevolent ecclesiastic — enjoyed his game of whist with M. le General des Trois Sabres and the family notaire; and Madame de Vis-Brisee, who was nearly eighty years of age, plied her spinning-wheel, and told us, in the intervals between ourromps, moving stories of the Great Revolu-, tion and the noble and beautiful heads that were cut off during the Reign of Terror. She used to wear a black-silk calash, and her hah- was as white and as silky as the flax she spun. She was a peaceful cheerful old lady ; yet her father, her husband, her brother, avaient tons passes 'par la — the Guillotine. Am I to ascribe the hardened wickedness of my subsequent career to this my systematically dissolute and profligate conduct in the matter of Sunday during my nonage ? Who knows ? I do know that when we have to Hang a man — and the hangman is tolerably busy nowadays — the condemned wretch is generally very soHcitous to inform the chaplain — of course without the slightest suggestion on the part of that reverend functionary — that his first steps in crime were due to his non-observance of the Sabbath. Similarly the convict burglar at Pentonville told Charles Dickens that his — the convict's — manifold deeds of house- breaking were all dii'ectly prompted by his having witnessed the * Hoprer of Frar Diaverkr ' from the sixpenny gallery at the Surrey. There is no rule, however, without an exception ; and I remember that the last murderer whom I saw strangled — it was eleven years since — went to the scaftbld croonmg a Sunday-school hymn. The gaol chai^lain was very scrupulous to explain this to me, pointing out that in this particular prison they used Hymns Ancient and Modern. Thus it is clear that this assassin, for one, had at some time or another been an observer of the Sabbath in its British sense. As regards Sunday in Paris, as it was when my life began, so it is now that I am a man ; and so, in all probability, it will be when I grow old, and after I am dead. With some very slight exceptions, to which I shall presently call attention, I fail to observe any material difterence between the Parisian Sunday as it used to be kept in August 1838, and the Parisian Sunday as it is kept in 1878. Here is the actual Sunday, as I see it from the ground-floor saloon, open to the street, of the Cafe Vdron, at the corner of the Buc Vivienne and the Boulevard. I am breakfast- ing at an hour which, in England, forms rigorously a part of church-time. The Cafe Veron is not a private club. It is a Jiouse of public entertainment ; and the proprietor thereof — his SUNDAY IN PARIS. 51 wife and daughter are officiating as damea de comptoir — is, to all intents and purposes, a licensed victualler. I may be content with a modest flask of St. Galmier, or a cup of tea with my breakfast, but my worthy liost is quite ready to supply me hie et nunc, with anyquantity of burgundy, champagne, or moselle — of brandy, rum, whiskey, or hollands — that I may choose to order. As a matter of fact, I can discern, on dozens of little tables inside and outside the Cafe Veron, the ruddy glow of cognac in the carafons. At all the churches there have been Matins this morning, and, indeed, the youngest daughter of the proprietor, radiant in her Sunday best, has just come back from High Mass at St. Eustache. She places her para- sol and her gilt xmroissien on one of the little tables, and very con- tentedly despatches her breakfast coram publico, after which she re- lieves her mamma at the receipt of custom behind the comptoir. This system of * shifts ' and reliefs, this * turn and turn about ' of watches, as on board ship, seems to go on continually without unduly fatiguing anybody. The present Sunday may not be the youngest daughter's * Sunday afternoon out,' for the dearly beloved j^^'o- menade ; but it may be her ' Sunday evening out,' to go to the play ; while if one dame de comptoir is devout and attends Matins, there is no reason why another shall not attend Vespers. At the same time the Law does not require the cafes to be closed because one section of the community goes to church and another stays away. Be it observed that, although there is no cafe or restaurant in London in which I, as a stranger or pilgrim, can obtain exciseable liquors during church- time, I am entitled to eat and drink as much as ever I like of an exciseable or non-exciseable nature dm-ing church-time on Sunday, at the open window of the coffee- room of a Pail-Mall club, from which I can even merrily note the strictly bolted and barred-up public house on the opposite side of the way. I am perfectly well aware that the closing of the public- houses during church-time on Sundays prevents a great deal of drunkenness ; but I cannot see why, if a man be hungry at half- past eleven, or hungrier at half-past three or four or five, he should not be allowed to enter an eating-house, and have his lunch E 2 52 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. or his dinner, and liis wine or beer at that repast. The dram- drinker and the sot do not want anything to eat beyond an occa- sional halfpennyworth of bread, or a red-herring, to their intoler- able deal of gin and beer ; but for their few sakes the moderate section of the community must needs go hungry and thirsty in church-time, unless they happen to be members of the clubs. Mind, I have not the slightest Avish to surrender my privilege of looking out of the club-window on Sunday, and watching the people who are not allowed, by Act of Parliament, to have any exciseable refreshment during the prohibited hours. I am, I hope, a consistent Liberal ; but my only fear touching the possible return to office some da}' or other of Mr. Gladstone is, that the uncompromisingly vu'tuous statesman in question might, on the old ridiculous ' sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander ' ground, bring in a Bill for closing the Pall-]\Iall clubs during church-time on Sunday. He would do it, sir, I hugely fear. As for the traffic on the Boulevards during this present Sunday in Paris, it is certainly at least four times greater, and naturally so, since I first made acquaintance with this city. The population has more than doubled. I think that Galifinani for 1839 gives 800,000 as the number of souls in the Lutetia of Louis Philippe; but the facilities of locomotion, and the number of holiday-makers who enjoy a portion of their holiday on wheels, have increased during the last generation in a much larger ratio. Dublin has often been qualified as the ' most car-drivingest city in the world;' but the Paris of the existing epoch may certainly be defined as the city 2^(1^' excellence for one-horse chaises or open victorias. The suddenness and the completeness of the cessation of the cab- strike were significant proofs of the imperative necessity for sup- plying a popular demand. The poorer class of Parisians have no need for coupes, and will dispense with fiacres ; but the open chaises or victorias they must and will have. They are patronised on Sunday to an amazing extent. When I was young the popular vehicle was the cabriolet — a yellow concern with a hood, and with huge wheels, the driver sitting on a little bench on one side of his fai'e. 1'his was the same cabriolet which, from its propensity to upset, Louis XVI. declared that, * if he were Lieutenant of Police, he would not permit to circulate in the streets of Paris ; ' still it was a most roomy old vehicle, and under its capacious leathern hood could be packed (by amicable arrangement with the driver) well-nigh as many passengers as clamber into or hang on to those wonderful shandrydans, drawn each by a meagre pony with a streaming mane and tail, that you meet racing at a breakneck pace SUNDAY IN r.vms. 53 along the dusty road between Naples and Torre del Greco. The modern Parisian victoria is, from a police point of view, designed to contain either two or four passengers ; but on Sundays there seems no limit to the number of men, v/omen, children, and dogs that — always by amicable arrangement with the cocker — can be packed between the two rickety wheels. The horse is not con- sulted. He is bound to go till he drops, and he very often does drop. In our metropolis, save Avhen there is a funeral or a political meeting in progress, you very rarely see working people riding about in cabs ; but the tremendous affluence of the manj^-headed into these conveyances is to me one of the most curious features of a Sunday in Paris. There is for this, as for most other sublunary things, a good and sufficing reason. The Parisian petty trades- man very rarely keeps a chaise cart. The costermonger rarely possesses even the humblest of donkey-carts. Gigs are rare ; so the Parisian shopkeeper or working man, when he wishes to give his ' missis and the young uns ' a ride on Sundays, joins with a number of his friends similarly disposed, and makes a bargain with the driver of one or more victorias. Where they all drive to, I really have not the remotest idea. Perhaps it is from the Made- leine to the Bastille, and from the Bastille to the Madeleine, and back again : all day long. Assuredly there could not be found in the whole civilised world a more diverting drive. To these in- cessantly succeeding chariots — the Automedons of which are not, as a rule, by any means so skilful as he who conducted Achilles — must be added a legion of much more powerful and much more heavily-laden omnibuses than I ever remember to have seen in the Paris of the past. The ' Icnifeboard 'has become a recog- nised institution, the ' bureaux do correspondance ' of the 'buses are perpetually thronged; and in the outskirts of the city tramway-cars follow each other so closely that you fancy you arc gazing on so many American railway-trains which have become accidentally disjointed. I do not think that I shall be accused of exaggeration in saying that on the Sabbath the vehicular traffic on the inner boulevards is dou- bled. The huge railway vans and the fourfioiis of mercantile houses — vehicles powerfully horsed, but recklessly driven — are indeed 54 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN, pleasantly conspicuous by their absence on Sunday ; but to the interminable procession of omnibuses and cabs must be added the abnormal Exhibition traffic ; the special vans and cJiars-a-hancs and tajyissieixs, hold- ing from thirty to fifty passengers, each bound to the Champ de Mars, and an almost equall}'^ nu- merous cortege of l)leasure wagons going out of town to the village festivals round about Paris. To remoter hamlets the railwa}'- trains are all gaily liying ; and endless relays of con- vois come and go between Paris and Versailles, St. Germain, Enghien, St. Cloud, Bellevue, Poissy, Auvers-sur-Oise, Rueil, Mantes, and e\en Fontainebleau. I must hasten, albeit the task is not an encouraging one, to disabuse the minds of my countrymen, whose experience of Paris THE PAMLL'JN IIENIU QUATEE AT ST. OEHMAIN, SUNDAY IN TARIS. ' 55 is only short and superficial, of the notion that Sabbath observance is, from an English point of view, increasing in Paris, because less manual labour is done in Paris on the Sabbath, and a great many more shops and warehouses are closed on Sunday, than was formerly the case. These phenomena have nothing, save in the rarest and most isolated cases, to do with any change in the religious senti- ments of the people. I am given to understand that Protestant missionary work is going on in sundry districts of Paris, but tlie results of these well-meant attempts at evangelisation can only be as a drop of water in the vast ocean of Parisian Sabbath desecration : — as we understand it to be desecrated. My coiffeur has in his shaving saloon a neat little placard conveying the information that his establishment will be 'ferme les dimanches et fetes apres une heure de I'aprt^s-midi.' But his polite assistant, when I went to get shaved this morning, was busy over his own ambrosial locks with a pair of curling-tongs ; and his young and buxom consort had her hair in papers. I don't think these symptoms looked like church or chapel, or Sunday school, or a Mothers' JMeeting by and by. They looked much more like the maddening wine-cup — or coffee-cup — and the mazy dance later in the afternoon. There are plenty of jewellers' and linendrapers' and tailors' shops which do not close their doors on Sunday here ; but on the other hand, there are large numbers of commercial establishments which are as hermetically sealed as the banks and the public offices. But I should be a blockhead were I to assume, and a hypocrite were I to maintain, that an increase in religious fervour — as we understand it — is at the bottom of this partial abstinence from Sunday labour. The smaller money-changers' shops are all wide open ; so are the toy-shops, and the confectioners and pastry- cooks ; because foreigners want to change money, and French people are in the habit of buying playthings and sugarplums for their children on Sunday ; but in the majority of instances it is not on that day that the public require to purchase velvets and satins, Aubusson carpets, carved oak furniture, embossed paper hangings, Madapolam calicoes, or the new ' Cestus of Agiae' corsets. For lack of custom many of the great viagasins close their doors, and those which continue open do so more from habit than from the expectation of selling anything. Do 3^ou for one moment think that the male and female employes in these closed establishments utilise their emancipation by going to church, or sitting at home and reading good books, or staring grimly at each other till they begin to yawn and nod, and at last fall asleep from sheer weariness. They will the rather pour on 50 TARIS lIEnSELP AGAVJ. to the boulevards, to fill the cabs and the caf(i3, to chatter and gesticulate, to eat, dnnk, and be merry, to dance and drink, and to go to the play at night. I was not consulted when this City was built and the manners of the inhabitants were formed. "Whether the Parisians' mode of observing Sunday is harmless or mischievous, it would be dangerous dogmatically to assert. I only describe that which I see ; and this is Sunday in Paris as I have seen and known it, man and boy, any time these forty yeai's, come the twenty-ninth day of August next. I have not the slightest expectation of seeing such a Sunday prevalent in London, or in any English town. I have not the slightest wish to see such a Sunday prevailing anywhere in my own country. Our observance of the Sabbath maybe susceptible of modification in a tolerant and liberal sense ; but there are two good reasons Avliy the 'Continental Sunday,' as typically presented in Paris, is a thing to be deprecated in England. In the first l^lace the decent classes among us are quiet people, with comfort- able homes, from which we rarely stir on the Sabbath ; Avhereas the Parisians, in a vast number of cases, have no homes at all that can be called comfortable, and are an excessively noisy, restless, and inconsequential race, who can only find happiness out of doors. In the second and much more important place, we drink the very strongest liquors that can be brewed or distilled ; the classes among us who are not decent are in the habit of getting mad drunk, and of fighting, after the manner of wild beasts, when they have a chance of using their fists, their feet, or their teeth on each other, or on the guardians of the law. Our places of licensed victualling are merely ugly dens, where the largest number of sots can get tipsy in tlie shortest space of time ; and Sunday in London, with all the public-houses, all the theatres, all the music halls, thrown unrestrictedly open from morning till night, Avould exhibit the most horrible terrestrial inferno that eye ever beheld, that the ear ever heard, or the heart ever sickened at. "We are so very strong, and stalwart, and earnest, and 'English,' in a Avord, lliat we need in our diversions a number of restrictive checks and Idcking-straps, which tlic feebler and less pugnacious peoples of the Continent do not require. The better observance of Sunday may not succeed in London in making the mass of the people more religious ; but it keeps them quiet and tolerably well- behaved : — and tolerable good beliaviour is all that can be cx- l)ectcd in a city of four millions of souls. That is about the whdle of my philosophy on the matter; and I have seen a good U)any curious Sundays in a good many curious countries. A PERPLEXED SEASON-TICKET HOLDER (bY CHAm). ' Why fifty centimes ; my ticlvet lias the regulation photograph ? ■ 'Yes, but only a lialf-length ; so you pay for the other lialf.' VI. ASTRAY IN THE EXHIBITION. Aug. 20. I MADE my first excursion to the Exhibition yesterda}^; and, pur- suant to a phxn Avhich I had proposed to myself, I determined that my first visit to the Champ de Mars shoukl be conducted strictly on the system of pursuing absolutely no system at all. Thus I did not provide myself with any of the thousand and one guides and vade-mecums to the Exhibition, and panoramas and plans thereof, which i^ullulate in every bookseller's shop and every kiosk on the Boulevards. 'There will be time enough,' I said, 'for guides and catalogues by and b3\ For the nonce let us go and see all the fun of the fair.' And in the good old times of lairs who wanted a mapped-out route of the whereabouts of Puchard- son's Show, of AVombwell's Menagerie, and of the Crown and Anchor booth ? Who wanted to be told where the Pio--fi\ced Lady, the Polish Dwarf, and the Irish Giant were to be met witli? You came upon these things of beaut}^ — not joys, unhappily, for ever — accidentally, or you discovered them by an intuition. With a good conscience, and a pound of best gingerbread nuts tied up in a blue-cotton pocket-handkerchief, you made your way into the fair ; and the deuce was in it if you were not made aware of some 58 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. of its fun — even if the facetiousness took tlie form of a ' scratclier' being applied to the small of your back — before you were five minutes older. Pray do not think that I am desirous to dis- parage or to speak ■with undue levity of the Exposition Universelle of 1878, because yes- terday I elected to look upon it onl}' as a great aggre- gate of shows. Current coin, I may remark, is rigorously refused at the entrances to the Exhibition Pa- lace, but tickets of admission, price one franc, are pro- curable at the debits de tahac and other places all over Paris, as well as at the kiosks in front of the vari- ous 2^ortes d'eniree. Tlie identity of season-ticket holders is assured by obliging tliem to have their photographs affixed to their cards of admission — a regulation wliicli Cham has amusingl}' satirised in various ways. So soon as ever I entered the enormous labyrinth of glass cases into which the Champ de Mars has been converted, I purposely and deliberately lost my way, confidently delivering myself up to the myriad chances of the imprcvu. Have you never thus wilfully lost your wa)^ in Venice, in Pvome, in Seville — a confident ]\Ir. Micawber, for something is sure to turn up ? Wander, and double, and ' try back ' as you may, you are sure nfter a season to find yourself in view of the cupolas of St. Mark, to stumble on tlie Fountain of Trevi, or to be aware of the Tower of the Giralda. Thus, in the Exliibition Palace yesterday, although I roamed about for five mortal hours in dilferent directions, I came full twenty times upon, or was distinctly aware of, two conspicuous landmarks — Gustave Dore's colossal Bacchanalian vase, and a A SKASOX-TICKET HOLDER IN A DIFFICUI/l'Y (bY CHAm). ' Sir, the pimple on your nose isn't in your photo- graph. Yon must get rid of it before you can pass.' ASTRAY IN THE EXlirBITION. 59 . COLOSSAL I'.AC'cnAXALlAN VASi;, LY Gl:;TAVL W i:r.. towering obelisk covered with gold leaf, an idea borrowed from our Exhibition of 1862, and representing the amount of bullion CO PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. nnnually livrc an commerce by an enterprising Parisian jeweller in the form of settings to his wares. How many millions of francs Oie gilt obelisk represented I duly read, but did not stay to note. I am not disposed to fall in love with mere figures. To me the Tower of Babel is the wonder, and not the number of bricks that may have been used in its construction. I will, in the outset, candidly own that, although I have the proud privilege to be a free-born Briton of the Victorian era, I went about the Exhibition in the spirit of an ancient Athenian, perpetually demanding some new thing ; and quite as frankly must I admit that, so far as my first visit to the Exhibition went, I was disappointed. ' It's the Old Sarpint, your Grace, with a new coat of paint,' said the showman to the Duke of Wellington when he refused to take the Hero's shilling, Avhen proferred for a view of the ' Cobra Corrugata or Coruscated Snake of the Yang- tse-Kiang.' I saw the * Old Sarpint,' with a new coat of paint and a tremendous amount of gilding, innumerable times yesterday in the Champ de Mars. Item : The diver. Do you not remember him, in his Crusader's helmet, with the gig-lamp eyes — his india- rubber armour, his elephantine arms and ieet, and his intolerable tail ? Item : A lighthouse troph}' — a pyramid of lanterns, reflec- tors, and refractors playing in the glare of the summer afternoon the most astonishing prismatic tricks, and aftbrding unbounded opportunities for spectrum analysis. In the gigantic and gener- ally well-arranged and well-lit picture-galleries, a multitude of admirable pictures which you have seen before, or of which you have engravings or photographs at home, mingled with a host of paintings certainly new to you, but further acquaintance with which, owing to their general mediocrity, you may not be am- bitious to make. Some very magnificent works in Italian mosaic ; a few execrabl}'' garish and tasteless French attempts in the same line. The English porcelain and pottery superlatively good ; but English ceramics can be seen to equal advantage in Regent Street, South Audley Street and Bond Street. Glass, on the Avliole, both English and foreign, wonderfully bright and tasteful ; the exhibit of INIessrs. Thomas Webb & Sons of Stourbridge show- ing a brilliant pi-ogrcss in the beautiful and difficult process of engraving on glass. I do not mean etching with acids, but tlio actual incision by means of the copper wheel. Furniture, both English and foreign, very splendid. France still keeps the lead in Kenaissance upholster}'-, especially of that kind to which tapes- try, silk velvet, and otlier textile fabrics are accessory. Ital}' — witness the superb bookcase contributed by the Brothers Sonsogno, ASTEAY IN THE EXHIBITION. 61 the music publishers of Milan — retains a conspicuous place for pro- hciency in the craft of inlaying ebony with ivory — a craft which, the colours employed being reversed, is virtuall}'- niello -working in wood. England continues to assert unapproachable preeminence in the production of Gothic furniture of the purest design and the most thoroughly conscientious workmanship ; while the determi- nation of the English manufacturers to ' keep moving ' in this im- portant branch of art industry is pleasantly shown by the close alliance which is springing up between the eheniste and the potter — a revival, indeed, of a very old association — and leading to the decoration of cabinets and tables with beautifully painted plaques of earthenware. On the whole, the rapidest of surveys of the departments devoted to decorative furniture induces the conviction that the rage for the Japanese style has, in France at least, reached its climax. The carpet manufacturers have largely, and it would seem abidingly, profited by the innumerable hints as to brilliant harmonies of colour and elegant naivete of design which Japan is ever ready to furnish; but the Erencli are, in matters of art, essentially a classically plastic people — a few short-lived aberra- tions to the contrary notwithstanding. The basis of their design is * the round,' because roundness gives the light and shade which are to be found in Nature. The basis of Japanese — and, to a very great extent, of Gothic — decoration is ' the flat ; ' and flatness not only excludes the due apportionment of light and shade, but, as a rule, militates against the due observance of the canons of per- spective ; and, as poor Haydon, the father of all our schools of design, pointed out long ago, the fundamental reason of the superiority of French art- workmen over our own countrymen lies in the fact that the Frenchman learns geometry first, to model the human figure next, and finally to practise ornamental design, even if he be intended for a pattern draughtsman only of Lyons shawls and Mulhouse patterns ; whereas the English student is taught ornamental design first, and to draw the human figure afterwards. It must be admitted that a large number of admirable specimens of sculpture from English chisels are to be found in the Champ de Mars ; but our lamentable backwardness in the plastic arts of the secondary and tertiary grades is exposed by the almost total absence of works in bronze by undoubtedly British artists. Thd firm of Elkington of Birmingham have done as much as it is possible for any English firm to do in bronze and in electro-silver working of an artistically plastic kind ; but their chief modellers and sculptors are not Englishmen, but Frenchmen. The Elking- G2 PARIS IIF.rSELF AGAIN. tons did as grandly with their * Milton Shield ' in repousse in 1867 as they have done in 1878 with their * Pilgrim's Shield ; ' but it is positively deplorable to remark that, in the course of eleven years, no English art manufiicturers of note have followed the example they have set in reproductions from the antique, or in the execu- tion of original designs on a thoroughly classical model in bronze or marble. Let me not be misunderstood. A plenitude of eccle- siastical brasswork from English and Scottish hands adorns the Exhibition, where, moreover, signs are not lacking of our sur- passing preeminence as gasfitters, as lamp manufacturers, as bed- stead makers, and as workers in metals generally; but in the secondary and tertiary stages of bronze or silver industry I f^led to see any clockcases, any statuettes, any vases, an}' bibelots, or * gimcracks ' even, of British design and production, and of marked artistic merit ; while of bronze sculpture of the first class, such sculpture as issues from the ateliers of Barbedienne and of a score more Erench houses as renowned, there is in our section an almost total absence. This is a wretched thing to think of, especially when it is remembered that we are still eager to lavish thousands on the acquisition of blue and white earthenware pots and pans more or less from Nankin, and that the silly and tasteless mania for hanging painted plates — often vile in design and garishly coloured — on our inward Avails is rapidly converting the boudoirs of English ladies into the similitude of sculleries. I never find mj^self alone in one of these crockery-hung rooms without wishing that the Act of Parliament against wilful damage could be suspended, in order that I might make play, for a quarter of an hour, Avith the bright poker. It has always been my ambition to keep my eyes open, and to describe as graphically as lies in my poAver the things Avhich I see ; but at present I refrain from attempting to give even a superficial description of Avhat Minton has to show in the Paris Exhibition. You Avho dwell in London have but to go to Goode's in South Audley Street, Avho by the Avay has acquired the entire Minton display, to Mortlock's, to Sharpus's, to Phillips's, to Gardner's at Charing Cross, and to assume that the most superb specimens of china and eartheuAvare to be seen in the great metropolitan shoAv- rooms have been selected as types of the Minton collection in the Champ de Mars. The rcAvard of the firm is, that their name is noAV habitually coupled by educated Erench critics with that of ScA'res. With regard to the Elkingtons, the case is somewhat different. They have competitors of tremendous poAver and prestige in France. They are goldsmiths, silversmiths, enamellers, bronze-AVorkers, and electro -x^laters. They must stand their ground ASTRAY IN THE EXHIBITION. 63 against a wliole host of art-work firms, of wliom Barbedienne, Christofle, and Fromen-Meurice are only tlie most conspicuous re- presentatives. The Bir- mingham house may be, indeed, Briareus-handed, but its rivals are a hun- dred giants, each Avith a hundred hands. The leading artistic perform- ances exhibited by the Elkingtons are virtually unique ; many of them cannot be reproduced, like works in pottery ; and they can be seen by but a limited portion of the English public at home. This is especially the case with the won- drously beautiful Re- naissance mirror, de- signed by M. A. W. Willms, of which the architectural and deco- rative portions are com- posed of oxidised silver, and of bronze incrusted with gold and silver, the fond being of steel da- mascened with variously tinted gold, forming rinceaux embeUished with figures of bii'ds and insects. It may just be mentioned that, until the silver flower-vase, by froment-meurice. other day, so to speak, damascening was, so far as its practice in Europe was concerned, a wholly obsolete and well-nigh lost art. Take, again, the exqui- site vase of damascened steel, another work of M. Willms, the body of which is covered with intricate patterns of peacocks and lyre birds, woven as it were into the fabric in fine threads of gold, and of which the portions in silver are elaborately chased. A plaque in repousse steel, designed and mainly executed by the 64 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. same artist, presents us with a traDscrijit of Prudhon's picture * Love brought to Reason.' Cupid, captive and weaponless, is fruitlessly striving to burst the bonds by which he is fastened to a terminal bust of the sage Minerva — possibly intended to mark the PLAQUE, ' LOVE EKOUGHT TO REASON,' BY A. VV. WILLM3. boundary line between Love and Keason — whilst a maiden sits by and mocks his struggles. ' llira bien qui ru'a le dernier, Made- moiselle ;' for a pair of cooing doves overhead indicates that the blind god's reign is not yet over. Around the border of the plaque four cupids, with emblems of love in their hands, are sailing through the air. Separating them are trophies of antique arms richly damascened in gold. I have alluded to the ' Pilgrim's Shield,' a noble work of art in repousse, by M. Morel-Ladeuil, and the most important object in ASTRAY IN THE EXHIBITION. 65 the Elkington display. As in the * Milton Shield,' the most striking episodes in Paradise Lost were dramatically rendered, so in the * Pilgrim's Shield ' the central idea in Bunyan's immortal allegory is dwelt upon in a manner equally grandiose and pictur- esque. The inspired tinker of Elstpw only appears in what may lie termed the 'middle distance,' and in a subsidiary position as a * dreamer of dreams.* All around him are evolved the wonderful conceptions of his imagination, but the eye of the spectator goes at once, as it did to our First Parents in their state of innocence in the Milton composition, straight to the pivot on which the * Pilgrim's Shield ' turns. On a principal lunette which fills the middle of the design is represented the combat, between Apollyon and Christian, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This central medallion is executed in such high relief as well nigh to present the appearance of rondehosse, or of being what we term * undercut ' almost entirely away from the ground j and a glance at the back of the shield will show how patiently laborious has been the ojnis mallei in pushing the metal upwards with repeated taps of the hammer. Some of the parts are, on the other hand, in the lowest possible relief, not extending beyond the faintest appearance of embossing; and these exquisite gradations in surface show the perfect mastery which M. Morel-Ladeuil has attained over one of the most beautiful and the most difficult of crafts. The fight a outrance in the Valley of the Shadow is represented with astonish- ing force and I'erve, and the corrugated muscles of the demoniacal warrior contrast very skilfully with the thoroughly human comeli- ness and symmetry of Christian. The execution, again, of the texture of the Pilgrim's armour, in contradistinction to the light and airy drapery pendent from it, is a triumph of manual skill and dexterity. Below the central composition is the figure of Bunyan, a volume of the Scriptures on his knees, and rapt, seemingly, in an ecstatic trance. On either side are bas-reliefs representing the lowermost depths of the Valley of the Shadow — a gruesome pit full of hobgoblins and sprites, such as Callot revelled in portray- ing; but from this dire Tartarus we are led by graceful decorative scroll-work to the two upper bas-reliefs, wherein are depicted all the joys of the Celestial Cit}' — angels and seraphs and cherubs, bright with * harping symphonies.' Interposed between the rilicvi are emblematic cartouches of Faith, Hope, and Charity, respec- tively symbolised by a cross, an anchor, and a heart — the virtues by means of which the Pilgrim has been enabled to overcome Apollyon and reach at last his desired goal ; while at the base of the shield are the trappings of the Pilgrim's calling — the slouched GQ PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. THE pilgrim's .SUIl.Mi, BY MOREL-LADEUIL. hat, tlie wallet, the scallop-shells, and the sandalled shoon. Looked at not only in its powerful ensemble, hut ni the astonishing minuteness and grace of its details, this latest work of M. Morel- Ladeuil may be regarded as at once the most ambitious and the most successful that he has executed for Messrs. Elkmgtou. ASTRAY IN THE EXTirBITION, 67 Tlie salon of Messrs. Elkington contains another sumptuous example in repousse from the hammer of M. Morel-Ladeuil, the 'Pompeian Lady at her Toi- lette,' of which it is sufficient to say that it reminds the spec- tator of a picture hy Alma- Tadema translated into high relief hy the opus mallei. To M. Morel-Ladeuil is also due the Ilenaissance silver ewer with the genii of Day and Night in its side panels and its symholical hirds of dawn and twilight; as well as the pair of rose-water dishes by which the ewer is accompanied, and wherein the months of the year are typified hy graceful female figures, and the seasons by groups of children with fiowers and fruits. Messrs. Ellvington show in cloisonne enamel a number of splendid specimens of trumpet-shaped liower-vases, plateaux, tazze, incense - burners, and stan- dislies ; while among the orfcvrerie are conspicuous des- sert services of the pattern made for the Prince of AVales's PaviUon, 'Old English,' in silver-gilt ; and some remark- ably fascinating tete-a-tete tea- services of modified Japanese design, and in which the plateau takes the shape of an outspread fan. I may hint that I have not purchased the Helicon Vase, or the Eenaissance Mirror, or the Pilgrim's Shield as yet. My treasure-ship — long overdue— is not yet come home. In the way of ships, I apprehend that an ironclad squadron would be required to convey the whole of M. Barbedienne's show of art bronzes to England, should Ro3'alty evince a desire to F 2 RENAISSANCE SILVER EWEH, BY M. MOREL-LADEUIL. 68 PAPJS HERSELF AGAIN, inspect tliat "wonderful collection en masse. I may in perfect candour observe that, owing to my rigorously carried out system of not having a system, I am utterly' ignorant of the whereabouts of M. Barbedienne's particular ' installation ' in the Champ de Mars. It is, without doubt, a truly magnificent one, but I have not yet come across it. Granting, as I do, that I have not 3'et seen tbe Barbedienne bronzes in the Exhibition, what business, it may be asked, have I to talk about these bronzes at all '? I can exi^lain matters in a moment, I happen to live next door to M. Barbe- dienne's warehouse, on the Boulevard Poissonniere. I am happ}' to state that, following the commendable French custom, he takes down his shutters verv early in the morning, and that he does not put them up until past ten at night. Thus I have several inter- views, every day and every evening, with the contents of his huge shop-windows ; and, as he makes a change in his etalage almost every other day, I think that by this time I know the major portion of the contents of his stock-in-trade by heart. I have got, to a certain extent, his bronzes on the brain. They are my delight before breakfast ; they are my consolation after a bad and dear dinner. He has got a noble reproduction of Micliael Angelo's in- comparable sitting figure in Boman costume, from the tomb of the Medici in Florence. He has got a smaller re^dica of that figure surmounting a clock in a chalcedony case, Avith two bronze-gilt candelabra, formant garniture. AVhat punishment, I wonder, does the French Criminal Code assign to the oftence of running away in the broad daylight with a bronze clock and candelabra ? He lias got a Crouching Venus and a Bather that make me half delirious to look upon. He has got a Spanish matador in pale bronze, Avhose embroidered jacket and overalls are well-nigh miracles of chiselled dexterity and refinement. He has got a Bull that makes me dream of the Toro Farnese, and fancy that I am going to a bovine paradise, and that Paul Potter and Old "Ward and Thomas Sidney Cooper, P. A., are of the company. Less need to discourse of his fiiuns and his satyrs, his nymi)hs and his hamadryads, his saints and cherubs, his cowled Trappists and vestal virgins, and his grand Louis Quinze chasseur on horseback, with the hunting-horn wound round his noble body — the Marquis de Carabas in early youth — and chea}^ at 1250 francs, that is if I read correctly the cabalistic characters in- scribed on the little green ticket affixed to the huntsman's wrist. In addition to this varied statuesque display, there are classic vases and tripods of bold and graceful form, Penaissance ewers and candelabra of elaborate ornamentation, and plaques and ASTRAY IN THE EXHIBITION. G9 ct voyage to New York on April T), 1879. ASTRAY IN THE EXHIBITION. 71 well-organised a display, I felt for a moment inclined to cr}', with Socrates, in the Athenian market-place, * How many thin^^s are there here that I do not want ! ' Things in the Agora have altered, and not for the better, since the da3's of the philosopher just quoted. When I was last in the poor little market-place of the metropolis of Hellas, I beheld scarcely anything exposed for sale beyond leeks, water-melons, boxes of wax-matches, sugar-candy, red-kid slippers, and birch-brooms — things all very nice in them- selves, but scarcely adequate to the sustentation of life. The woollen-fabrics department was, however, to me not less a haven of delight, owing to the circumstance that the avenues between the interminable blocks of glass cases were almost entirely deserted, that the floor had been newly sprinkled with water, and that the entire region was as cool as it was tranquil. It was a fear- fully sultry day, and after my tour through the cloth-weaving districts I went to look at a fire-engine, which, for all the blazing scarlet with which it was painted, made me feel quite cool and refreshed. I had not been long in this contented state when, to my misfor- tune, I found myself astraj^ in a district all full of pickles and sauces. It was dreadful — looking at the altitude of the mercury in the thermometer — to be confronted by these serried battalions of bottles full of piccallilly, gherkins, onions, chillis, capsicums, mango chutnee, Nepaul pepper, curry-powder, and sauces of the utmost pungenc3\ The spectacle filled the mind with red-hot visions of mullagatawny soup, anchovj^-toast, bashawed lobster, and devilled bones ; nor did I much better my position when, beating a retreat from this torrid zone of culinary zests, I came on a culinary concentrated land replete with preserved soups and made dishes. These, however, did not look quite so hot as the pickle- bottles ; and moreover they contributed to strengthen a persuasion which had been growing in my mind for the last forty minutes past, that the time was approaching when it would be expedient to see about getting some lunch. This pleasant conviction was further fortified by an accidental detour which opened up delicious vistas of glass cases jailed high with bottles which, on nearer inspection, proved to be ' exhibits ' of all kinds of wines, spirits, and liqueurs so very pleasant to drink in combination with ApoUinaris, Seltzer, potass, or St. Galmier Avater, and the consumption of which tends so much to the en- hancement of her Majesty's revenue and the fees of the medical profession. As a rule, however, I am constrained to deprecate the display of fermented beverages in a public exhibition, especially when the show is held in very hot weather. The sight of all these 72 PARIS HERSELF AGAIX. drinkables weakens the steadfastness of your adhesion to Sir Wil- frid Lawson and the pump, and begets in your heart an unholy hankering for the possession of a corkscrew. Observe this curious fact : In temperate countries fountains are frequent and beautiful in form, so beautiful that you thirst for nothing but water. In the first Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, in 1851, no alcoholic beverages were procurable ; but, en revanche, there was Osier's Crystal Fountain. As a rule, drunken countries are destitute of fountains ; and that is why I should be sorry to see the humble halfpenny ice and sarsaparilla barrows banished from the streets of Loudon. They look cool and inviting and temperate. Even the big decanter of lemonade, with the abnormally-sized lemon on the top, on the shop-counter of a cheap Italian confectioner in Leather Lane, appears to me mutely eloquent. It seems to be whim- pering, * Come and have a penn'orth of Me ! I am much more re- freshing, and I will do you much less harm than beer or gin will.' If we could make Temperance handsome and pictm-esque, as it is made in France, in Spain and Italy, and the East, and if we could only banish from the Temperance teacher's mind the prepos- terous and impertinent desire to mix the Mosaic Scriptures and the Psalms with abstinence from liquors which destroy the coats of our stomachs, we might make temperance popular m a sur- prisingly short space of time. As it is, while we benevolently invite the Avorking man to regale himself witJi * half a pint of coffee and a sUce,' we attempt to choke him with a tract. The working man objects to be choked, and goes next door to tlie gin- shop, which, to his imperfectly instructed mind, is handsome, and liberal, and free. If Tottenham Court Road and Whitechapel High Street were boulevards, and if the working man could sit at a little table outside the tavern and drink his beer and smoke his pipe, and watch the great panorama of Hfe rolling by, his wife and children by his side — which is the condition of his brother in the blouse in this vast citj' — he would not get drunk quite so fre- quently at the gin-shop bar. But the boulevard and the table outside it would be ' un-EngUsh,' I suppose ; and the bare sugges- tion of such an innovation would frighten the Middlesex magis- trates into fits. We are a very extraordinary people. Foreignei's arc continually learning from us ; but we obstinately refuse to learn anything from foreigners except their vices. Those we import, duty free, by the shipload. On foreign virtues we place the prohibitory tax of our social prejudices. THE PARIS opera: CORRIDOR LEADING TO THE BOXES OF THE GRAND TIER. VII. BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE GRAND OPERA. Aug. 22. Surely in the whole modern lyrical repertory there is no more charming opera than M. Gounod's Faust. It is fidl of delicious melodies. The story is infinitely romantic, the denouement inex- pressibly pathetic. The terrific epopcea possesses — as every true tragedy should have — a comic element in the cynical humours of Mephisto, and the Ephesian Matron-hke readiness of the old woman to console herself for the loss of her husband. Gretchen is, next to Amina, the most fascinating of lyrical heroines ; and, although Faust is a fool, and a rascal to boot, you cannot help feeling a sneaking kind of admiration for him when he has a comely presence, a handsome costume, and a sweet tenor voice. Still, these only revolve like satellites round the terrific planet of evil, Mephistophiles. You must needs loathe him and shudder at his infernal wiles ; but what a fine first-rate Devil he is ! ' him, I wish he'd won ! ' cried Lord Thurlow, when he came to the end of Paradise Lost. Mephisto in Faust does win, so far as his dealings with the Doctor are concerned; yet he is checkmated at last. But how is it that, notwithstanding its picturesque libretto, 74 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. its plaintive * There was a King of Thule,' its fascinating Waltz, its quaint Chorus of Old Men, and its resonant March, I have held these many j-ears past the masterj^iece of M. Gounod in tlie live- liest detestation, and that, as a rule, I would much rather listen to the dreariest bore of my acquaintance than witness the perform- ance of Faust. The reason is a very simple one. Fifteen years ago I abode for a season at, say, No. 99 West Fourteenth-street, in the city of New York. On one side of my habitation resided an estimable famil}', the proud possessors of a Steinway's grand pianoforte. On the other side lived an equally estimable family, who were the happy owners of a Chickering grand ; and over the way was another famil}', rejoicing in the possession of an Erard. These households all abounded in young ladies with slim waists and * cataract ' curls, and they were all accomi^lished pianistes. The time was summer ; the weather was tropically hot ; the windows were always kept open ; and from early morn until for into the night I was fain to listen to the Steinway, the Chickering, or the Erard discoursing This — * Liuu tuiu, ti tidiUedy um tiiui ; Lum tuni, ti tiddlety luu tuin, Liuii tuin, ti tiddlety lun tuiu ; La la la la — la la la la — la la La !* Everybody with an 'ear' can tell what I mean. Was it not Iiossini, who, affecting to forget the name of Sir Henry Bishop, always spoke of him as * Monsieur Larrt-ta-tnratnra-tatrtratrttara- ice,' humming the air of * Home, sweet home.' I had to bear this torture for mau}^ weeks. I fled to Philadel- phia, but only to hear the Italian organists grinding forth * Lum tum, te tiddlety um tum.' I went down to the Army of the Potomac to fnul a Massachusetts regiment marching and counter- marching to the same terrible tune. I came back to New York to find that the ' extension parlour' of my residence had been engaged by a middle-aged bachelor of musical tastes, who had brought an upright Broadwood, and in the intervals of speculating in gold in Wall Street was perpetually pounding, not the abhorred ' Lum turn/ but the equally formidable * La rec ta titti, la rce ta titti ; La ree ta titti ta tee ta tittytce.' Woe is me, Alhama ! It was the Waltz. I was possessed. I eloped to Havana, in the island of Cuba. I sought tranquillity iu the Spanish INIain and quietude in Mexico ; but wherever I went, from the cactus-covered plains of Orizaba to the forest glades of BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE GRAND OPERA. 75 Tchapultepec — from the tierra caliente of Jalapa to the Falls of Regla — the Waltz and the ]\Iarch, now hrayed by a French military band, now strmiimed on the cracked guitar of an arricro, pursued me always. And thus it was that I learned to loathe the opera of Faust, and to regard M. Gounod as my bitterest enemy. With the old Chickering and Steinway grievances rankling in my mind, you will not be surprised to hear that, when recently I was offered a seat in a box at the new Grand Opera, and I found that Faust was on the affichc, I preferred all kinds of excuses to ...A THE PARIS GRAND OPERA. avoid the entertainment. The repertory of M. Halanzier, Director of the Academie Nationale de Musique, appears to consist almost exclusively oi Faust, Hamlet, Le ProplCete, and La Juice.* I should have been delighted to pass an evening with the Prince of Denmark, * When this was -wTitten, M. Halanzier had not yet produced M. Gounod's Folyeucte. 76 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. with John of Leyclen and his mother, or with the unfortunate young lady who Avas wont to be boiled in a caldron of oil at the end of the fourth act, but is now, I believe, reprieved at the last moment. However, against the Waltz, the March, and the Chorus of Old Men I stoutly rebelled. I pleaded the excessive heat and a tendency to cerebral congestion. But the box into which I was to be inducted happened, I was informed, to be the very coolest in the whole house. There would be plenty of fresh air, my kind inviters told me ; and the box had even an antechamber attached to it, wLere tea was served. That over-persuaded me. In the ante- room there would probably be a divan ; and on that divan I thought that in a corner, in the dark, and with cotton in ni}^ ears, I might contrive to slumber out the Waltz, the March, and the Chorus of Old Men, while Youth and Beauty enjoyed themselves in the avcuit-schics, Avant-sccncs, indeed \ I little knew what kind of box I was destined to occupy. The friend who was to present me to the lady who was the ahonnee of this remarkable box (she pays at the rate of five-and- twenty thousand francs a year for it) came somewhat late to fetch me ; but when we arrived at M. Garnier's colossal pile he insisted that, before we entered our loge, I should inspect the famous stair- case and tlie more famous foyer. * Avez-vous vu I'escalier ? ' has become as common a question to be addressed to a foreigner newly arrived in Paris as the * A-t-il lu le livre ? ' of the French Cardinal who was so ardent an admirer of Babelais. It chanced that I had never seen the staircase, na}', nor the J'oijer, nor the auditorium, nor, indeed, any i^ortion of the new Grand Opera save the external facade thereof, the last of which is associated in my mind with a somewhat curious circumstance. Just eight years ago I was staying at the Grand Hotel, in a room overlooking the Place de rOpera ; and on the morrow of the Bevolution of the 4th of Sep- tember, 1870. I was lying grievously sick in bed. From the angle of the apartment in which my bed was placed I had a capital view of the fa9acie of the Opera ; and with peculiar curiosity did I watch the proceedings of a journeyman painter in a blouse, who, perclied on a tall scaffolding, was occupied in erasing from tbe inscription 'Academic Imperiale de Musique ' the adjective * Imperiale,' and substituting for it the word * Rationale.' He took such pains over his work that I got an opera-glass to peer at him the nu)re narrowly. The labour to him was manifestly one of love. He licked his lips, so to speak, over the upstrokes and the downstrokes ; and hi.s whole liepublican soul seemed to jiour forth when he came to tlio great round 0. Instinctively as I ascended the iKrron a week BEHIND THE CURTAIN OE THE GHAND OPEHA. 77 since did I glance upwards at the inscription ; and in tlie flaming gaslight ' Nationals ' seemed to me to have a newer coarser sheen than the rest of the legend. There had been a womid, and this was the scar. Ah, if all the other hurts of France could cicatrise so quickly as this has done ! Of the exterior of M. Garnier's monumental playliouse I am not, as I have more than once hinted, an enthusiastic admirer. It is overloaded with ornament, and it is singularly' deficient in tasteful columniation. A theatre is primaril}- and essentially a temple, and a temple should have an abundance of colonnades. The noblest model that could, to my mind, be chosen for a national theatre is the Madeleine, which, as it stands, fails to remind you, either in its exterior or its interior, in the slightest degree, of a church. It was not, to be sure, intended for one. Against the staircase of the Opera, structurally, not one word, however, can be said. It presents the finest arrangement in curvilinear perspective that I have ever seen ; and illuminated a glorno by hundreds of bright yet soft lights offers a spectacle of well-nigh imrivalled magnificence. To the sumptuous paintings by M. Paul Baudry, on the walls and ceilings, a double interest attaches : first, that of their really surpassing excellence in drawing and colour; and next, in the fact that they are examples in a style of art in which not one solitary English painter is proficient. When old Covent Garden Theatre was redecorated for the purpose of being turned into the Eoyal Italian Opera, the management were fain to send to Italy for a plafond which, painted on paper and cut into gores, was after- wards pasted to the opera-house roof. This was in 1847. More than thirty years have elapsed, and we are still — if we wish to essay anything more ambitious than the angularly medieval or some feeble Kenaissance mouldings and scroll-work in carton picrrc, picked out with colours and gilding— at the mercy of the foreign decorator, just as our silversmiths are at the mercy of the foreign modeller. M. Paul Baudry has produced, in the staircase and the foyer of the Academie Nationale de INIusique, a work which is the wonder of the whole art world. In or out of our Royal Academy, we have not a single painter sufficiently acquainted with the geometrical canons of foreshortening and concave perspective to paint a ceiling. Those canons are clearly and explicitly laid down in scores of books published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but those books find no English students. We console ourselves for our impotence by repeating Pope's pert sneer about the sprawling saints of Verrio and Laguerre, and by preparing to scrub out Sir James Thornhill's paintings from the dome of St. 78 PARTS HERSELF AGAIN". Paul's. "We choose, in our complacent ignorance, to forget that the grandest achievement of pictorial art in the whole world is the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. 'imj \ iiiiNii 1 1 M ii 11 iis,iiii|i |||| LA LoUCJA OF THE I'AKIS OPERA. The enormous /o^/er, or crush-room, reminded me very forcibly, in the huge masses of gilt scroll-work forming the frames of the paintings, of the Hall of the Ambassadors in the liojal Palace at BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE GRAND OPERA. 79 Madrid. The ornamentation is so heavily jlamhoyante, and so overladen with gilding, as to aj^proach the rococo, or to suggest to the spectator that the model mainly followed has been the interior THE GRAND STAIRCASE OF THE PARIS OPERA. of one of those chm-ches built by the Jesuit architects of the begin- ning of the seventeenth century, and which are all ablaze with carv- ing and gilding, verde antique and lapis-lazuli. The first act of 80 tahis herself again. Faust was just over when we entered the foyer, and the immense hall was filled by a crowd of whom I hope it is not disrespectful to say that its aspect very closely i-esembled that of a mob. Full dress for gentlemen is not, I am aware, insisted upon at any time even in the fautcidls d'orchestre of the French Opera, and there are many parts of the house in which the ladies may wear bonnets ; still I certainly never remember to have seen in the crush-room of the old house in the Rue Lepelletier a multitude comprising ladies in dresses of aljiaca, nankeen, and printed gingham, with the commonest trimmings, and in felt hats of the cheapest kind. As for the gentlemen, they were dressed ' anyhow : ' in frocks and in cut-away coats, in waistcoats much too long, and in trousers much too short. They wore low-crowned straw hats, * Jim Crows,' wideawakes, * billycocks,' anything you please. Gloves were con- spicuous by their absence. Red and blue cotton pocket-handker- chiefs, white-spotted, were freely sported, and shoes were worn low, thick-soled, with strings. These formed certainly sixty per cent, of the native costumes. I was moreover privileged to gaze upon a numerous contingent of my own beloved fellow- countrymen, who, with the manly independence and sans-gcne which so charmingly distinguish them when travelling abroad, did honour to M. Halanzier's management, M. Garnier's building, and M. Baudry's paintings by appearing in ' tourists' suits ' of lightlj^-hued blanketing, — ' in this style fifty-two shillings and six- pence.' The wideawake was the prevailing head-gear of these bold Britons ; and in several cases artistic finish was given to the general make-up by tlie assumption of the celebrated courier's bag slung b}' a strap over the right shoulder. What is that bag supposed to con- tain ? A * Paris Guide,' a briarwood pipe, a j^ocket-pistol containing some of the celebrated * cocked-hat' Avliisk}^ and a box of blue pills. Pray do not entertain the notion that the audience at the Ojiera was miscellaneous and ill-dressed because France is daily becoming — to all seeming — more and more soundly Republican, because Democrac}^ is in the ascendant, or because the admission to the Opera is cheap. On the contrar}', the last is very costly, and unless you feel inclined to get up at seven in the morning and form part of the queue on the Place de I'Opera, on the chance of securing a place at tlie hurcait do location, you will not obtain a scat in any part of j\I. Halanzier's house for less than five-and- twenty francs. In many cases the marchands de billets will make you pay a great deal more. It is all the fault of the Exhibition. The fashionable world of Paris is still away at tho watering-places, or that portion of it which has returned to the BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE GRAND OPERA. 81 capital is sitting in its lordly mansions, holding, as it does, the Exhibition and all its works in lofty anti-Republican disdain. The Parisian tradespeople are too busily employed in making money, and are too consistently frugal to waste that money in paying extravagant prices for opei'a-tickets ; and the mob in the foyer is mainly made up of foreigners and of i)rovincials, who have never seen the ' Grrrrand Opera ' before, and will probabl}- never see it again. They liave determined to * see the elephant,* and do not mind, for once in a way, how much the sight of the prodigious quadruped costs them. * I know that I'm charging you too much,' once remarked to me a highly intelli- gent courier, whom I had engaged to traverse the Rus- sian Empire from St. Petersburg to Odessa; 'but what does it matter ? you'll never come back again.' That is where it is. The receipts at the Aca- demie Nationale de Musique aver- age just now eight hundred pounds a audience of majority of ENTEANCE TO THE AMPHITHEATRE AND STALLS. night; but every evening there is fresh the a foreigners and provincials. They will, in xxiajv^x^cj v^x cases, never come back again. That is why M. Halanzier's repertoire consists of Faust, Hamlet, Le Prophcte, and La Juive, varied by La Juive, Le PropliHe, Hamlet, and Faust. When the people who are in the habit of * coming back agam ' do arrive, the prudent Dii-ector will give them something new by M. Gounod or M. Ambroise Thomas. On the evening on which I visited the Opera, the part of Faust was sustamed by a gentleman 82 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. whose services in London would certainly have been deemed over- paid at six pounds a week. The lady who played Marguerite was an artiste, and was possibly a laureate of the Conservatoire ; but her age was mature, and her name wholly unknown to Euro- pean fame. Tenor and soprano were quite good enough for an audience of which the bulk would * never come back again.' I had been pro- mised that the box was to be the cool- est in the house. It was. Through corridor after cor- ridor, and up stair- case after staircase, was I conducted, until I began to imagine that our loge must be on a level with the top- most tier. Error. We had not yet at- tained the level of the stage. Suddenly we were confronted by a portly and venerable dame in printed calico, a kind of superior ouvreuae. ' Madame d'E *s box ? ' * Par- faitement. La loge de Madame d'E est sur la scene.' Upon my word, the box in which I was to have a seat was behind the curtain. A door was passed, and I stood cautiously on one side to avoid being crushed by the Town-hall of Leipsic on painted canvas and a Avooden frame, which was bearing rapidly down on me, steered by three burly men with beards and short blouses. Gave ! I had a narrow escape of being overwhelmed by the Cascades of Terni. Trying to avoid contact with one of the walls of Elsinore, I stumbled over the steps of the throne of an Indian emperor ; and bringing myself up suddenlj^, I have the mis- chance to tread on the toes of a pompier with a brass belmet and ARTISTES DEESSING-ROOM, PAEIS OPERA, BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE GRAND OPERA. 83 a red sash. I beg the fireman's pardon ; whereupon he replies, civilly enough, ' II n'y a pas de quoi ; ' and propels me amicably against three young ladies in silk tights and satin shoes, and floral wreaths, and — well, I cannot recall to mind that they had much else on, who all salute me with a saucy but friendly grin. ' Take care ! there yawns an open trap. Take heed of the "floats "and grooves. Don't run 3^0 ur head against that gas batten.' Thus my friend who is con- ducting me through the labyrinth. Well, I have picked my way be- hind the scenes of a good many the- atres in my time, even behind those of the Paris Grand Opera — not here, but in the old house in the Bue Lepelletier. The year was 1855 ; the occasion, the state visit to the Opera of Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort, and the Emperor Napoleon III. By great good fortune I gained admission to the coulisses on that memorable night, and I remember the fun which the juvenile members of the corps de ballet made between the acts of the two towering Cent Guards who, motionless as statues, stood sentr^^ on either side of the proscenium. So soon as the curtain was down, an impudent little minx of a rat cVopera ran across to one of these mailed giants ; examined him from crested helm to spurred jack-boot ; tajjped with one little rosy finger-nail the steel of his cuirass, and cried to one of her companions in the cantonade, * Tiens ! c'est vivant ! ' It's alive ! A corrupt epoch. * Et pourtant,' philosophically remarked General Fleury in St. Petersburg, in September ] 870, Avhen he learned that the corrupt epoch had collapsed, ' il est certain que pendant dix-huit ans nous nous sommes diablement amuses.' a 2 A POMPIER AT THE PARIS OPERA. 84 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. inner frame to the curtain, a deep plain crimson to dis- tinguish The coolest box in the house was, in truth, delightfully airy and spacious, containing as it did fauteuils for ten persons. It was richly furnished with mirrors and velvet hangings ; but its chief peculiarity and its chief charm were in the circumstance that it was the pit or ground-tier box of one of eight, four of which are on either side of the proscenium, and are literally apertures in the structure thereof, forming an These exceptional loges are painted them from the richlj^ carved and gilt fronts of the private boxes in the body of the house. When the curtain is down thej'- are wholly invisible to the audience; and the occupants of the dark crimson niches enjoy the much - coveted privilege of lounging behind the scenes, and even of penetrating into that Bower of Choregraphic Bliss, the Foyer de la Danse, so graphically described in those edifying novels of the Imperial epoch, Un Debut a VOpera and Monsieur de St. Bertrand. What the of these boxes behind the curtain may I have an idea that many years ago a noted operatic prima donna, Madame Dolores Nau, told me that they were called les loges de V Administration ; that one was occupied by the manager, another b}' the Minister of Fine Arts, another by the Prefect of Police, and so forth ; and that in the old da3's, under the Ilestoration, one of the crimson boxes was always set apart for the use of the qentilhommes de la chamhre, charged with tlie control of the lloyal theatres, and one of the last of whom, M. Sosthene de la Bochefoucauld, found the ballet-dancers' skirts all too short. I do not know what M. Sosthene de la Rouchefoucauld would think of the skirts of the present day. I sate through Faust, and endured the March, the Waltz, and the Chorus of Old Men as patiently as I might. The only draw- back to the advantage of being actually on the stage was the well. technical designation be, I do not know. BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE GRAND OPERA. 85 nigh blinding glare from the rcimpe or footlights ; but this was obviated by means of large Japanese fans, tliouglitfully placed by THE FOYER DE LA DANSE. our distinguished hostess at the disposal of her_ guests. _ The Mephistopheles was exceptionally an excellent artist and singer, with a first-rate voice ; and Valentine, the soldier, was lil^ewise in every way satisfactory. The clioms- singers— the ladies * running ' stout and with looks of immaculate virtue, as it is the charac- teristic of lady chorus-smgers to look the whole world over — sang in admirable time and tune ; and, as for the orchestra, all I can say of that multitude of musicians is that they seemed 86 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. to play as with one fiddle, one violoncello, and one trombone. It was the perfection of musical mechanism. The front of the house, seen from our darkened nook, was astonishingly brilliant, the gay toilettes of the ladies in the avaiit-scines looking like one immense bank of rare flowers blooming above the ebony pedestal of the pit, which, contrasted against the glare of the footlights, was simply one dark mass of human heads. Above, the several tiers of boxes were so radiant witli brand-new gilding and so bespangled with lustres that, as a short-sighted si^ectator, I could only liken the vista to that of a huge screen of cloth of gold powdered with diamonds. But it was when the curtain had descended, and we Avere shut out from this glittering expanse, that I could most intensely enjoy myself; first, by watching from the box the ordering of the stage and setting of the scenes ; and next, by diving in and out of the BEHIND TUE CURTAIN OF THE GRAND OPERA. 87 coidisses, and peering into all kinds of curious corners. The much-talked-of Foyer de la Danse did not interest me much. It is a sumptuous apartment, overpowered by painting, carving, and gilding, but intensel}'- garish and meretricious. About a score of remarkably plain-looking coryphees, in attitudes the reverse of restrained, were sprawling about the divans ; and half a score of young gommeux, or dandies, and corpulent old men of wicked mien, in high white cravats, Avere chattering to or glozing over the danseuses. A throng of comparses, rats d'opera, and ' extras,' as we term them, were clustered like so many painted peris outside the portals of the Paradisiacal /o?/cr, into which, I presume, they are not privileged to enter unless their salary exceeds a certain num- ber of francs a month. The shoes of many of these poor girls left much to be desired. The heel of one satin slipper had been darned, I am certain, at least seven times, and the hose of many of the poor things were full of * Jacob's ladders.' Not to be too i^articular, the majority of the * extras ' looked as though they were half- starved. Eed egg, fromage de Brie, threehalfpenny-worth of fried potatoes, and a bit of garlic sausage now and then — such, I appre- hend, would be the ordinary menu of an operatic ' extra ; ' meagre, sickly, ill-favoured, often old, but dancing and posing with won- derfully mechanical skill and aplomb. Thus it is not all gold that glitters, even in M. Garnier's auriferous playhouse. A TIME AT WORK (bY BERTALL). VIII. MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. Aug. 23. The elements of Glory comprised in the festivities of the Bal jNIabille do not j^erhaps amount to much ; still, such as they are, it may not be out of place to enumerate them here for the benefit of the j^ofit-nati. For this is an age of Change. Time, the great iiuctioneer, is indefatigably busy in his rostrum ; and, well nigh without surcease, his ivory hammer, symmetrically turned from a dead man's bone, comes in sharp contact with the ledge of his pulpit, as he cries, ' Going, going, gone ! ' I have seen the dissi- pation of my time, and its most typical emblems seem to me mainly to have disappeared without the world in general being one whit the less wicked. The phenomena of mutability impress me very forcibly in this city just now. Paris, assuredly, is regene- rated ; yet I fail to see that the New Birth is, ethically considered, in any way superior to the old one. All the booths in Vanity Fair — sadly knocked about by vicissitudes of siege and civil war — have been re-plastered and re-painted, gilt, swept, and garnished ; but it would be rash hastily to assume that the spirits that inhabit the restored edifice are in any way cleanlier than those which abode in it of old. RUBILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. 89 THE PION. When I was young we used to sing a schoolboy jingle touching on the delights in which we hoped to participate when we were free from the loathed control of rq^etiteurs and the abhorred super- vision of p?o»s — the English public school knows nothing happily of the 2^ion : the usher who teaches nothing, but who officiates merely as a bully, a spy, and a delator over the boys in the play- gi'ound and the promenade — and when we should emerge, laden with prize books and laurel crowns, from the classes of Ehetoric and Philosophy, to commence our studies for the haccalaurcat, to take a ' logement independant ' in the Rue de I'ficole de Medecine, 00 PARIS HERSELF AGAI^f. or to go to the dogs, as our parents, our temperaments, or the Fates orclaiued. Thus ran the doggrel * Messieurs les etiicliants S'envontila Chaumiere, Pour daiiser le Cancan Et le Robert Macaire.' We 3'earned for the Chaumiere as Mr. Teunj'son's consump- tive patient yearned for * the pahns and temi:)les of the South.' We had not the slight- est idea of what might be tlie choregraphic character of the ' Can- can ' or the 'Robert Macaire;' but we were filled with a hazy notion that these jigs must be of a wildly Eleusinian character, and that the Chaumiere must be a j)lace of delirious revelry. I have been given to understand that the most fondly cherished daydream of those of the young gentlemen of our Universities who do not devote themselves to the study of Greek accents or Patristic Theology is to enjoy the j)rivilege of going beiimd the scenes at the Alhambra ; and I do not re- member a more passionately nurtured aspiration among my French school-fellows than that of being free to screw an eyeglass into the angles of their optic muscles without the risk of being denounced to the authorities by a 2>io7i, and of being entitled to visit the Chaumiere without let or hin- drance. The Chaumiere, I take it, has been abolished many years since. There is no longer sucli a dance as the Robert Macaire — although the robber of 'I'Aubergc des Adrets' and his craven accomplice Bertrand are still, thanks to the dramatic genius ol Frederic Lemaitre and the artistic perception of the caricatui'ist Daumier, breathing and MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. 91 living personages in French literature ; and the * Cancan ' as a charactei'istic jms, more or less of the ' Dusty Bob and Black Sal ' order, flourishes to quite as great an extent on the English as on the French side of the Channel. What has become of the Closerie des Lilas, of the Chateau des Fleurs, the Prado, the Salle Valentino, and other cognate haunts of terpsichorean re- __ velry, 1 snali peinaps ^^j^ «cr^^^jjd jtcARx,' at the closerie des lilas. make it my business on a subsequent occasion to inquire. I lieard, however, recently that the Jardin Mabille was doing a tremendous business, and that the Cancan was flourishing every night in its rankest exube- rance in the Armida's Garden of the Champs Elysees. Armida's Garden ? No ! I beg pardon of the Italian poet's graceful shade. Say, rather, Proserpine's Garden, Avhere nothing healthful grew ; but only foul weeds, scentless flowers of gaudy hue, and poisonous plants. At all events we made up a party to visit Mabille. I put on a pair of square-toed shoes, and the most moral-looking hat I could find, so as to warn off any Fifines or Cascadettes who might seek to tempt me to join in the mazy dance — did not the Heathen Man of old stop his ears against the Wantons of the Sea? — and the lady of our party donned no less than three veils, one over the other : the uppermost a stout awning of blue silk, the effect of which was certainly to prevent any one at Mabille from seeing her countenance ; while, on the other hand, the three veils so effectually excluded the external atmosphere as to impel her eventually to raise the triple barrier, gasping in the throes of semi-suffocation, and impetuously to demand iced lemonade or death. They charge you one franc twent^^-five centimes — say a shilling — for a glass of lemonade at Mabille. The beverage, in London, would certainly be thought dear at sixpence. The Thursday on which I visited Mabille was the Festival of the Assumption, a holiday which, next to the Toussaint, is, I will not say the most strictly, but, at all events, the most generally observed, of the feyv jours firics which have survived the scepticism of repeated Revolution. The male portion of the French people have, as a rule, broken with Catholicism ; but they have not wholly 92 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. lost their sj'iiipatliy with the picturesque ; and one of the prettiest of the customs connected with the Festival of the Assumption remains in the practice of a universal exchange of flowers. Enor. mous bouquets of the costliest treasures of the garden are given and received by the wealthiest; while the poorest workwoman receives a little nosegay from the Gugusse or Dodolphe whom she favours, and in return pins a rose or geranium in his buttonhole. This love for flowers, combined with an unfailing tenderness for the smaller animals — horses they ill-treat abominably — arethepleasant- est characteristics obseiwable among the modern French. Other- Avise they seem to be gi'owing a very matter-of-fact people. Their dreams of military glory have indeed received so complete and so crushing an awakening into humiliation at the hands of the Ger- mans — they have been so unceremoniously made aware that there is a nation more mihtant and more powerful in European councils than the_y are — that they seem to have resolved to live, in the future, substantially for themselves, and to devote their entu-e energies to the acquisition of francs and centimes. M. G ambetta put the mat- ter-of-fact and selfish view of the matter very aptly the other day when he told the commercial travellers that France wanted and was determined to maintain Republican institutions for herself; but that she had no ambition to jiroselytise, and did not care one doit what fonn of government other countries choose to adopt. Republicanism to France means material prosperity ; it means Vargent comptant. The aspiration of the Jack Tar in the story was to have ' all the baccy in the world,' and then — ' more baccy.' The ambition of the existing French bourgeoisie does not appear to go bej'ond the possession of the most attractive shoj^s in the world, and then another shop — the Exposition Universelle. The shopkeeping spirit did not fail to make itself evident even so early as the Eve of the Assumj)tion, when the price of bouquets at tlie florists' on the boulevards rose full twenty per cent, and the smallest pots of flowers commanded famine prices in the Marche de la Madeleine. I do not unreservedly censure this incessant, carking, toilsome determination to make haj^vhile the sun shines ; but what should we say in England to our baker if he charged us sixpence for a penny bun on Good Friday ; or to our dairyman if he insisted onhavingninepcnce aquartforthebestmilk on Shrove Tues- day and Ash "Wednesday ? If Paris were a small town, imperfectly supplied with the necessaries of life, it would be easy to under- stand how an unusual influx of strangers, and tlie presence of so abnormal an attraction as an Exhibition, might lead temporarily to a very considerable aggravation of prices. One does not object MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY 93 to pay a guinea a night for a bed at a watering-place at regatta time, or to disburse ten pounds for a stuffy two-pair back at THE FLOWER-MARKET OF THE MADELEINE. Doncaster during the race-week. One knows that the accommoda- tion is limited, that the duration of regattas and race-meetings is 94 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. short, and that the unprofitable cluhiess of country life is long ; that, in a word, the occasion is fleeting, and that the natives are entitled to make the most of their opportunity ; but I fail to per- ceive the force of a similar excuse for shameless extortion in an enormous metropolis where all the necessaries of life are at first hand as cheap as, and many of them are a great deal cheaper than, ordniarily they are. On this instant day in August I can buy at the shop of afruiticre, in a back street, a big, juicy, well-flavoured peach for a pennj^ ; but in a second-class restaurant I should be charged a shilling for that self-same peach, and at the Maison Lucullus or the Cafe Sardanapale, were I to ask in French, with an English accent, for some dessert, the peach, with perhaps a couple of apricots and a dozen of sour little grapes superadded, would be charged five francs in the bill. The princij^le on which the Parisian tradespeople seem to be acting is this : ' We are doing better business, and we are getting more customers for our wares, than we have done for years ; therefore let us overcharge our cus- tomers, and let large profits and quick returns be our motto.' This may be very remunerative while the occasion lasts ; but I cannot help fancying that it is very bad political economy. More than one of the great boulevard hotels have done themselves irreparable harm by demanding virtually prohibitory prices for rooms from old customers. The old customers have found cheaper lodgings elsewhere ; and when the Exhibition is at an end, and Paris reverts to its normal condition of a struggling Republican city, with a native population of the most frugal and economical habits, the old customers will not return to the grand boulevard hotels from wliich they have been contumeliously repulsed. Every morning, and evening too, I fancy that there leave Paris per Calais and Boulogne, or by the Havre and Dieppe route, scores of "English families who have been so closely skinned, so carefully shorn by the Paris hotel-landlords, restaurateurs, and shopkeepers that their sensations, could they be made comprehensively articu- late, might be summed up in a paraphrase of Mr. Burnand's memorable exclamation when he had concluded his examination of the more recondite pictures at the Grosvenor Gallery: * Joy, joy! Our task is over; a7id never again with you, Robin/' To wave one's hand in token of farewell is one thing ; to shake one's fist is another ; and I am afraid that there has been a good deal of fist- shaking lately among MM. les Anglais ere the last note was satisfied and the ultimate addition settled. These observations will apply Avith redoubled force to the Jardin Mabille. Upon my word, I never knew such a den of hu- MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. 95 pudent extortion in my life, and that life has not been short nor devoid of experience. In the palmiest da3's of old Vauxhall the maximum price of admission was five shillings. In the Exhibi- tion 3'ear, 1851, the entree to the dear old pleasamice — why did they disestablish it, and cover its site with ugly houses ? — was half-a-crown. But what a mass of varied entertainment was pre- sented to you for that sum ! A really excellent vocal and instru- mental concert — I will say nothing of the comic songs and the conundrums of the lamented Mr. Sharpe and the regretted Mr. Sam Cowell — a splendid panorama painted by Danson or by Telbin, a first-rate ballet, acrobatic performances, a capital circus, Mademoiselle Follejambe on the slack rope, Bounding Brothers, India-rubber Youths, the * drawing-room entertainment ' of Pro- fessor Kickhiskids, frequent balloon ascents from the Waterloo Ground^ * fifty thousand additional lamps,' a grand display of fire- works, and the unapproachable and unsurpassable Hermit. All these and many more delights — now, alas, for ever fled ! — you enjoyed for your two-and-sixpence. The plaster statues in the Italian walk alone were Avorth the money. The illuminated trans- parency representing the late Mr. Simpson, M.C., with his peren- nial bow, his cocked hat, his opera tights and pumps, would have been cheap at a crown. The tariff of refreshments was, I will admit, stiff'; j^et it must be remembered that in the crypt behind the orchestra you could obtain a brown mug full of excellent stout for sixpence ; that a dish of cold meat only cost a shilling ; and that the shilling glass of brandy-and-water contained at least half a quartern of fortifying spirit. This tariff, be it borne in mind, pre- vailed in the Great Exhibition year 1851. Now let us turn to the Champs filysees. They have the im- pudence to charge you five francs for the privilege of passing the turnstiles of the Jardin Mabille ; and what do you get in exchange for your cent sous ? Absolutely nothing save the license to walk round and round a pebbled expanse surrounding a dancing plat- form, certainly not so elegant as that of the defunct Cremorne. Or you may vary your promenade by strolling through two or three formal alleys, or peeping into a big ballroom used for dancing purposes in wet weather ; or, being fatigued, you may sit down at one of the little conventional cafl tables, on one of the conventional iron chairs, and there you will be at once pounced upon, first by an unwholesome-looking waiter with a pallid face and scrubby black whiskers, as unlike one of the sleek and civil gargons of the Boulevards as a captain of a penny steamer is unlike a captain in the Eoyal Navy— a waiter who brings you chicory- 96 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. loaded coffee, fieiy brandy, eau-de-Seltz imijregnated with par- ticles of lead from its syphon tap, or beer which seems to have been brewed from Spanish liquorice, quassia, and wormwood, instead of malt and hops. These refreshments are dispensed at rates which would be thought inordinate at Bignon's or at the Cafe Anglais ; and the waiter's ideas as to the pourhoires which he should receive are of the most grandiose order. You grow tired of sitting at the table, and of being re-pounced upon by the rapacious waiter so soon as he perceives your glass is empty. A distant crackling sound invites you to a rifle-range ; but you soon weary of watching people firing at and continually missing a running deer of painted tin. Happy for you if you make one of a party. Under these circumstances you can laugh and talk, and wonder that people can be found night after night silly enough to pay four shillings for the privilege of inspecting this barren sham ; but should you be alone your life will be made bur- densome to you by the incessant importunities of the ten thou- sand Daughters of the Horseleech — all, so far as their plastered faces go, so many whited sepulchres. Poor creatui-es ! They do MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. 97 not even go so fav as to raddle themselves. Eoiige is apparently too dear ; but they lay on the white lead, tlie arsenic, the pulver- ised chalk — whatever the stuff may be — a quarter of an inch thick; and then with voices hoarse as those of night cabmen Avith expo- sure to the night air and continuous ' consommations,' tliey pester you to treat them. I shrink from believing that they drink a tithe of the beverages with which they are continually regaled by fresh relays of * pignoufs ' — the Parisian ' pignouf ' is the Loudon < 'Arry '—but surmise that they receive a commission from the Administration on the refreshments which they are the cause of ordering. It is quite idle to ignore the existence of the French Daughter of the Horseleech, or whatever her newest-fangled name may be ; since her toilette, her antics, and her perpetual endeavours to extort money from strangers — preferentially from foreigners — furnish three-fourths of the graphic and literary contents of such periodicals as the Journal Amusant, the Petit Journal iwur Eire, and the Vie Parisienne, and supply a never-failing stock of highly- spiced but fatiguingly reiterated anecdotes to the Figaro, the Gaulois, the Voltaire, and the Paris-Journal. Those admired artists, MM. Gre'vin, Stop, and Jules Pelcoq, are never tired of depicting the fails et gestes of the ' Fille de PLte.' Theh witticisms all turn on the same pivot : the poor thing's chronic want of money. Treat her to a cerise d teau de vie, and she 98 PARIS HERSELF AGAM. ^^S^, r^ begins to talk of tl- s^n wHch she -es^^^^^^^^ Offer her a 'grog au vm ^^^ ^hypre -(^^Jinusmne gio becomes deeply confidential as to the thiee termes^ m w ^^ ^^^^^ ' proprietah-e.' Go to Mabille and you will see the impe- cunious being in the flesh, but ordi- narily minus those charms which the imaginative artist has lent her, and 2)lus that horribly asthmatic or bron- chitic voice. She is Marguerite Gau- thier if you will — M. Alexandre Dumas's Marguerite, whom he so coolly plagia- rised from Honore de Balzac's Coralie; but what a lack- lustre Dame aux Camelias ! What a woebegone Tra- +1 + +Lp Princesses of the Dubious World are viata! I ^^PP°«^^^ftf he v4e^^^^^^ Switzerland m ha which thronged the gardens ^^^/^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ , The most .vhat a diflerence in the n.n^eai-ance of the cornea y ^^^ ^ sumptuous costumes that 3^\J^_y^lenciennes lace, poult boniiets that Lucy Hocquet ^";^^^_^ f ^.J^^est dandies from the dc sole, cashmeres and '^1^™°^^^ ^T"'" ^JJjeo from California; clubs, millionaires ^"om Brazil ^Xment, Senators, Deputies, Enghsh Peers and Members ot Pail^^^^^^^^^^ '^.^^.^^^ the ^^JiSS^ilS^i^T'lS^the Messalines,if you AT THE BAL DE l'oPI^RA (bY CHAM).. ' Does she talk Avt'111' ,, : Not at all bad-about the rent sbe owes 1 MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. 99 will, of this sparkling profligate cit3\ For liiinclreds of j-ards outside the garden the roadway was choked by splendid private equipages. Grooms and commissionaires ran hither and thither; serpents de ville shouted in strident tones as M. le Marquis de Poule ^Mouille'e IN A CABINET PARTICULIER AT THE MAISON SARDANAI'A LE. drove off in his tilbury to play baccarat at the club ; or as the sly little coupe of his Excellence Eugene Eougeon drew up to convey his Excellency and Sarah la Sournoise— she who extracted half a million from the Eujaxrian Envoy — to supper in a cabinet at the Maison Sardanapale. Inside the Jardin Mabille how many U2 100 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN\ hrindisis, how mucli smoking of cigarettes, and flashing of gems, and changing of bright louis and crisp notes of the Bank of France ! Swish ! goes a bottle of champagne over Faustine's dress oi poult BCLlZit. de sole. So much the better for "Wortli. So much the worse foi' the banker's account of the Eujnxrian Envoy, wlio ultimately turned out to be a swindler from Tenedos, and got into trouble for cheating at Chemin-de-fer. Crac ! The Valenciennes lace shawl MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. 101 of Diaiae la Drolesse is torn all to pieces by the clumsy foot of a Brazilian diamond farmer. Gaily sings Matiio Orsini : ' II segreto per essev felice So, per prova 1' insegiio ogV ainicf.' Everybody applauds, everybody drinks, everybody is happy. Maffio Orsini fills up his cup again, tossing the waiter a napoleon, and continues : ' Scherzo e hevo e deriilo gl' insaiii Che si dan del futuro pensier' — Stop ! it is time to shut up the garden and bid the revellers go home. Else the festivities might come to an un^leasiint Jiiude, either by the appear- ance at the end of a gas-lit alley of Donna Lucrezia Borgia and her cowled monks, or worse — by that of the Fiirst Von Bismarck, smoking a Brobding- nagian cigar, and at- tended by a guard of broad - shouldered, straw-moustached men, with needleguns and lyickelhauhe hel- mets. Where are you, the Princesses, now ? Married and settled ; emigrated ; in the hospital ; at St. Lazare, or dead ? It is only the poor relations, the trade-fallen washerwomen, or the discharged chambermaids of Cora, and Faustine, and Theodora — of Diane la Drolesse and Sara la Sournoise, made up in pitiable imitation of their mistresses, that I seem to see at Mabille this Thursday night. Many of the toilettes are elegantly and tastefully cut and adjusted ; 102 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. but where are the moires, the gros de Ncqyles, tlie poults dc sole, the velvets and satins, the cashmeres and lace shawls, the brocades and the jewels, the feathers and the flowers of price ? A jwor lot of I)ainted women, ranging between sixteen and sixty years of age, paraded the circumference of the dancing platform with wondrously watchful eyes, despite their jaded and wearied mien. The dancing is a mere hollow imposture. Nineteen-twentieths of the poor women who come to INIabille -would as soon think of disporting themselves on the dancing platform as of earning an honest livelihood. But to keep up the delusion that ^Mabille is the favourite home of Terjisichore, the Administration hire a few couples of semi-professional dancers, tenth-rate coryphees from the smaller theatres, habitues of the saloons, or hair- dressers' apprentices of an acrobatic turn of mind. These i)osture fr^'^W^P "**^"- #7-^ masters and mistresses /t//( \ \ '^^S£ ""^^^Z ^^^^S their limbs about to * ^^ .'fe^ .j^^s^-. ^]^g music of a tolerable band at stated intervals during the evening. At no period did I notice more than five sets of posture - makers going tlirough their uninterest- ing gambadoes. They danced in isolated groups, and each group was surrounded by a serried circle of (/ohcuioucJie s])ectators, whose presence thus entirely destroyed the availability of the platform for general dancing purposes. The attitudes indulged in by the hired fan- MABILLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. 103 dango-dancers were grotesque and uncouth enough ; hut the}' in no way sinned agamst decency : — unless studied vulgarity can he considered an indelicate exhibition. On the whole I am inclined to think that the entertainment for which we had paid five francs a head would have been dear at fifty centimes, or fourpence-halfpenny. There was plent}^ of gas, to be sure, but that and the Whited Sepul- chres I can see on the boulevards any night for nothing. The most irritating thing connected with the entire Mocker}', Delusion, and Snare is the moral certainty established in the paying hut helpless spectator's mind that by far the greater portion of the patrons of the Jardin Mabille do not pay five francs — if they pay anything at all — for admission. The Whited Sepulchres are presumably on the free list, and the men-folk (apart from a multitude of middle- class Englishmen and Germans) are mostly composed of poor little pale-faced whipper-snappers in billycock hats, cols casscs, and slop-shop clothes, to any one of whom, to all seeming, it would have been an act of charity to give a coujde of francs to get some supper withal. If they paid five francs a head to enjoy the frantic delights of this Mabille grown mouldy, I am prepared to renounce my nationality, and to become a Dutchman to-morrow. It is 'Nunky,' the foreigner, who pays for all. SHAVER AN'P IVORY CANDELABRA, EXECUTED BY M. FROM EXT- MEURICE TOR THE PUKE P'AUMALE. IX. TO AND FRO IN THE EXHIBITION. Aug. 26. That he liad preserved ' order in disorder,' and, to a certain extent, by disorderly means, was the proudest boast of Citizen Caussidiere, Prefect of Pohce under the Repubhc of 1848. I am endeavouring to be as paradoxical, although I may not hope to be so successful, as the cnerg"(?tic but eccentric functionary just mentioned, by periodically inspecting the contents of the Exjjosi- tion Universelle in strict accordance with the system of having no TO AND FEO IN THE EXHIBITION. 105 system at all. As a means of ingress to the colossal parallelogram of the Champ de Mars, I certainly prefer the Porte Rapp, as entering by it, 3'ou fall at once in vicdias res, and can branch off to the right or left among the products of France, or make straight for the two principal porticoes leading to the Galleries of the Fine Arts, or forge far ahead, crossing the intersecting Hue des Nations, towards the Sections Etrangeres, the Park, Catelain's Eestaurant Francais, the Bridge of Jena, and the Palace of the Trocadero, without incurring the risk of losing yourself too early in the labyrinths of glass cases. I say too early ; since it is a matter of necessity that 3'ou should utterly lose your way before your visit to the Exhibition is over. I am not prepnred to say that the labyrinthine walk is not the best perambulation of the Wandering Wood, and the most agreeable navigation of the Unknown Sea, without a compass and without a chart, the most instructive, after all. Columbus lost his way, and saw Land at last. He thought it was part of the Indies ; but it turned out to be the Antilles. The Spanish poet, the INIarquis de Santillane, lost his way, ' por tierra fragosa,' between Santa Maria and Cala- taveiio, and discovered the most fascinating little covdierd ever described in a poem as fascinating : ' En nil verde prado de rosas y flores, Guardaiido gauado con otros pastorcs, La vi tan fermosa qne a pena creera Que fuese Vaquera de la Finijosa.' Who knows but that, strolling aimlessly through the interminable avenues and cross avenues of this City of Shops, I may come, un- expectedl}', on the Vaquera de la Finijosa ? If I do, I will offer her the peacock dress with the train as long as Guicciardini's His- tory ; or the bonnet made of humming-birds' wings and butterflies (the last artificial, the first only too real, I am sorr^^ to say) ; or the point cVAlengon fan ; or the rock-crystal smelling-bottle studded with gi'ey pearls and pink diamonds ; or some other nice little inexpen- sive trifle from the glass cases devoted to the display of Pomps from the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin or Vanities from the Rue de la Paix. Wandering to and fro in that section of the French Furniture Dei)artment which is devoted to ' Tapisserie et Decoration,' — and I will own growing somewhat dazed, even to the verge of satiety, by the exuberance of carving and gilding, inlajdng, incrustation, and veneering, visible in the compartments full of state bedsteads, consoles, canapes, causcuses, and gueridons, — I came upon a very remarkable decorative performance occupying one of the angles 106 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. of a transverse corridor of the Avenue Rapp, in the shape of the * Installation de Fantaisie ' exhibited by the firm of Henry Penon, of the Rue Abbatucci, Paris. The imaginative upholsterer is a rarity ; and the house of Penon, emboldened, it would seem, by the medals for ' Good Taste' and 'Progress' which they received at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, have, in 1878, literally thrown the reins on the back of their Pegasus. The * Installation de Fantaisie ' is supposed to be that of the bedchamber of a * grande dame de par le monde,* or of a * belle petite :,' whichever you choose. She may be Ninon de I'Enclos or Emma Lady Hamil- ton, the Empress Theodora or Montaigne's * Signora Livia ' — the lady with the calzoni embroidered with pearls, whose iden- tity so sorely puzzled the commentators until the appearance of the Earl of Orford's wonderful book on the * Meretrici ' of Venice — for the amcuhlemcnt of the grande dame belongs to no particular period save one of the most sumptuous luxury and the most expensive taste. The lady's couch has a counterpane of sky- blue brocaded satin, turned up with pale pink. The pillows are of holland lawn, triply edged with richest lace. The bedstead itself is a mass of elaborate carving and gilding. The ruelle of the bed is screened by a magnificent piece of tapestry, designed and woven in the workshops of M. Penon. A tripod-table of oxidised silver stands b}"- the bedside. The carpet is of triple velvet-pile. A portal veiled by hangings of damask leads to the adjoining breakfast-room. A Ilenaissance easel supports the richl^^-framed picture of a lovely child in pastel — such a pastel as Greuze might have executed in his best days. Cabinets, fauteuils, and foot- stools, of superb material and workmanship, and an infinity of costly nicknacks scattered about, fill up this enchanting * instal- lation,' to which, to my mind, there only lack two things — a copy of M. Octave Feuillet's Journal d'une Femnic, bound in crimson morocco and gold, and on the tripod table of oxidised silver, a parcel-gilt jdateaii sustaining a j^;afc de foic gras, a pint bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and a carafon of cura^oa, en cas de nuit — in case the great lady should wake up in the middle of the night hungr^^ or disposed to read herself to sleep again. I should have mentioned that the ceiling is adorned by * una copiosa quantita d'amoretti,' such as the old Italian Cardinal commissioned Albano to paint for him. But the chief cliarm of this Abode of the Graces consists in the Frame, the softly-surging mass of draperies which serve as a surrounding to the entire apartment — draperies composed of a deep sea-green plush velvet, giving very bright high lights, and with heavy bullion fringes and tassels, the last culminating in one TO AND FRO IN THE EXHIBITION. 107 large gland of chenille, which is pendent from the ceiling after the manner of a chandelier. The scheme of colour, it will be seen, is wonderfully subtle. The effect is as though, turning from the frame of dark green drainer}', with its beamy lights and reflections, you were gazing at a warmly lit boudoir. It is a selenegraph combined with an cffet de lampe. Contrast with this surpassingly rich dream of Sybaritic splen- dour a curious quaint little ' installation,' got up far away in the English section by two meritorious English decorators, belong- ing to the gentler sex. The section of a poky little English room is shown, furnished in the angular and uncomfortable style pertaining to the end of the last or the beginning of the present century — a style of which I thought that we were well rid, but for the revival of which there seems to be at present a partial craze. These ricket}', * skimping,' spider-legged chairs, tables, corner cupboards and * whatnots ; ' these sofas, too narrow for purposes of flirtation, and too short to put your feet up, — are all very well in the deUghtful pictures of Mr. George Leslie, R.A., and Mr. G. H. Boughton. In actual oak, wahiut, mahogany, or rosewood, I object very strongly to them ; and if the lady-decorators will study even the rudiments of the History of Decoration, they will find that this kind of furniture belongs to a period when a succession of long and cruel wars had vu-tually shut us out from the Continent, and had left us a people almost entirely ignorant of the art of design, and wholly destitute of taste. The carpet in the lady-decorators' model room is a significant illustration of our deplorable condition at the period which the apartment is supposed to illustrate. It is a carpet substantially without a pattern, and there is a good reason for the absence of pattern. In the age in question we did not know how to draw carpet patterns, and we could import no pattern -draughtsmen from abroad. The two ladies may be complimented on the scru- pulous fidelity with which they have reproduced anvunberof povert}'- stricken and weak-kneed little models; but the value of their work is diminished by the extravagant prices which they have aflixed to the examples of upholstery exhibited. Sedulous rummaging among the brokers' shops round Lincoln's Inn and behind the Waterloo lload would buy for so many shillings what these ladies have charged so many pounds for. On the whole, this little exhibition of a state of domesticity to which it is to be hoped we shall not return is inter- esting — in the sense that the novels of Anne of Swansea, and the fashion-plates of the Belle Asscmhlee for the year 1802, are interesting. There could scarcel}^ I apprehend, be a more pregnant proof of that which I am endeavouring to advance — the inexpediency of 108 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. revertmj:>' to ugly and tasteless forms, and of attempting to revive that which had much hetter be left slumbering in its obscure grave — than tlie actual and triumphant display made in ceramics by the firm of Minton of Stoke-upon-Trent, and in metallurgy by Elkington of Birmingham and London. It is necessar}^, now and again, to be a little ' Podsnappish ' or ' Chauvinesque ' — to assert one's nationality in despite of the disparaging taunts of foreigners. In the way of artistic furniture and carpets we can hold our own ■■■MM^tijMBMMnManBMniBMiMBBHBaaiiPavBM" CllIMNEVriECE IN THE DINING-EOOM OF THE TKINCE OF WALES'S PAVILION without fear of rivalry ; and that which Mr. Gilbert Redgrave, Mr. Henry (of the Koyal Tapestry Manufactory, Windsor), INIr. T. W. Hay, and Messrs. Gillow — the last as general furnishers and TO AND FRO IN THE EXIIIEITION. 109 decorators — have done in tlie Prince of Wales's pavilion may com- pete with any 'installation, 'fantastical or otherwise, which the Four- dinois or the Penons of Paris can design and mannfacture. But what am I to do when the Frenchman throws, not only Sevres, hut a score of French porcelain and pottery manufacturers, in my teeth, and not only Barhedienne, but a score more producers of artistic bronzes? Well, I can, I hope, victoriously point to the ceramic productions of Staffordshire, of Worcestershire, and of Lambeth, and to the artistic metal-working of the great Birmingham house, — not onl}'' as examples of what we can do in those departments of technical industry, but as illustrations of astonishing and con- tinuous progress and improvement in that which, so far as we are nationally concerned, must be considered a new point of departure. Abstractedly, there is nothing new under the siui ; but substan- tially, the designs and the processes of Minton in earthenware and of the Elkingtons in metals, are new and original. Ever}-- year our potters introduce fresh glazes, fresh tints, fresh schemes of design, fresh modes of working. Every year the Elkingtons come forward with some unfamiliar method of production and manipulation — now in repousse, now in cloisonne or champlevc enamelling, now in damascening, now in the chasing and orna- mentation of gold and silver ware, and now in the application of the inexhaustible secrets of the science of electro-metallurgy. There is one object in the French section of the Palace of the Champ de Mars which certainly deserves inspection, since it is undeniabty a rarity, literally unique ; and when it reaches its des- tined home at Rome it will be invisible to the great body of Euro- pean sightseers. This is the * ffiuvre Pie,' or Monumental Library of the Immaculate Conception, manufactured by Messrs. Chris- tofle & Co. of the Pvue de Bondy, and originally designed as an ofiering to the deceased Pope Pius IX. It has been more than three years in preparation, and will now, I suppose, be consigned to the pontifical keeping of Pope Leo XIII. The history of this Bibliotheque Monumentale is an edifying one. So long since as the year 18G0 the Abbe Sue, director of the Seminary of St. Sul- jnce, conceived the idea of forming a collection of translations in all known languages of the Bulla InejfahiUs, in which Pio Nono formulated and jiroclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Concep- tion. By dint of pious zeal and indefatigable perseverance he suc- ceeded in getting together no less than a hundred and ten volumes, enriched with miniatures and illuminations on vellum of the rarest beauty. This phenomenal trophy was presented in 1867 to the late Pope, who, in graciously accepting it, informed the Abbe Sue 110 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN- thfit lie considered the collection as too exceptionally interesting to be absorbed among the innumerable treasures of the Vatican Library, and that he intended to place the hundred and ten manu- script tomes in a magnificent bookcase in the centre of the Salle de rimmaculee Conception in the Pontifical Palace — a grand hall adorned with paintings symbolical of the dogma, and the floor of which was a mosaic pavement of the time of Augustus, discovered at Ostia. But the Abbe Sue respectfully insisted that France should have the honour of supplying the bookcase as well as the books. Messrs. Christofle prepared the necessary designs and undertook to manufacture the work, which had so far advanced towards completion in February 1877, that it was taken to Rome to be exliibited to the late Pontiff, and was then brought back to France for completion. Imagine an imposing structure of sideboard shape, supported on thirty-two carved legs, carrying an arr/nf-ho assumes an Oriental garb and sets up a shop for the sale of Oriental hrlc-a-hrac. The number of sham Turks roving about Paris at the present moment is prodigious. You can tell the real Turk at a glance. His fez is never of a bright hue — the glaring scarlet fezzes used to be made at Strasbourg, and, since the War, have been manufactured at Mulhouse — and there is a semi-clerical look about his angle-breasted, low-collared black surtout. The sham Turk is a much more pretentious individual. One corpulent old personage, with a stubbly gray beard, a white-muslin turban like an exaggerated turnip, a dingy cashmere-shawl sash, baggy blue galligaskins, white stockings, Blucher boots, and a battered umbrella of a dull red hue, I seem to have been aware of for years. I do not know whether he keeps a shop anywhere, or, 120 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. indeed, -wlietlier he sells or does anything ; hut I meet him con- tinually, prowling ahout with a stale and absent air, as though he were looking for somebody or something, but had forgotten what it was. I have made inquiries about him. He was not always a Turk, they tell me. Many j'ears ago he was a distressed Pole. Then he became a Hungarian refugee, in a threadbare Honved uniform. Again a change came o'er the spirit of his costume, and he apjieared as a Moldavo-Wallachian in a sheepskin pelisse and a fur porringer on his head, like the Lord Mayor of London's sword-bearer. Once more this Protean being was metamorphosed into a Suliote, with * a snowy camise and a shaggy capote ; ' and in 1871-2 he underwent another brief incarnation as the counterparij of the ' Ami Fritz ' of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian. In this guise he was supposed to be a native of Alsace-Lorraine, who had * opted ' to become a French subject. From the condition of an ' optician* he reverted to his premieres amours, and turned Turk again. A mysterious old gentleman ; but nobody minds him. It is one of the chief charms of this city that so long as you pay your way and refrain from meddling with politics, nobody does mind you. You may do whatever you please and wear whatever tomfool costume you like to assume. Do you remember the fantastically-attired * Car- nevale ' ? Do you remember INI. le Marquis de Bobino, with his tail-coat of light-pink silk ? Did you ever hear of M. Edm^ Cham- pion, * Ic Petit Manteau Bleu,' the man with the little blue cape ? I would undertake to w\alk from the Bastille to the Madeleine to- morrow with a cocked-hat and a pig-tail or a Roman helmet on my head, in a toga, a Spanish mantle, or the full-dress of an Albanian 'palikar or an Italian brigand ; and, albeit a few people might stare at mc, I should neither be mobbed, molested, nor insulted. It is not so in London. The eccentric gentleman from AVales who occasionally paj^s a visit to our metropolis, and walks about the principal thoroughfares in a tiglitl3^-fitting suit of grass-green cloth, adorned with the tails of foxes and squirrels, has occasion- ally, I am given to understand, a hard time of it with the boys. In Paris a few gamins might cry out, * Qu'il est drole ! ' while the ladies, always ready to recognise the picturesque, might exclaim, ' II est vraimcnt pas mal commc cela.' But nobod}'' would ven- ture to hurt his feelings by ribald comments, much less to jostle or cast mud or stones at him. AVo should be the most cosmopo- litnn, l)ut we arc in reality the most intolerant and narrowly-pre- judiced people in the world. I Avill ask any middle-aged gentle- man whether he has the moral and phj'sical cournge to walk any fine summer's morning from Charing Cross to the Temple in a FOREIGN VISITORS. 121 THE CHINESE COMMISSIONEIiS SO ABEANGE THEMSELVES AS NOT TO LOSE ONE ANOTHER IN THE STREETS OF PARIS. pair of white trou- sers ; and I pity that farmer or grazier ■who Avas bold enough to appear in St. Paul's Churchyard in top-boots and lea- thers and a red waist- coat. The boys would be ' down ' upon him at once. Meanwhile, Paris presents at the pre- sent time the most astounding melange of varied costumes and nationalities that it is possible to con- ceive. John China- man, in the brightest of embroidered caftans and of pigtails, which Parisian A CHINAMAN IN PARIS LEADING HOME HIS DINNER. petticoats, and with the longest caricaturists are always turning PARIS HERSELF AGAIN". /^ ; J M^ Ji^^^ ^ ^ %S3:r5j *M02T DIKU ! THE CHINAMAN HAS LET ONE OF HIS HAIKS FALL INTO HLS SOUP! ' C^. I '1 ''' I I ' I 'WHAT A LOVELY SOUVENIK, IF ONE ONLY HAP A PAIR OF SCISSOES !' rOllKIGN VISITOKS. : \ 123 I BEG Yorr. rAKr.o::, eut what is the price of this little vase?' 'WILL IT RI>"G5 JIAJI.MA, IF 1 PULL?' 124 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. to profitable account, pervades the Exhibition, with his up-tumed black- ciu'rant eyes and his eternal simper. As yon see him on the tea-tray and the Avillow-pattern plate, you see him in the flesh. Men may come and men may go, but he smirks on for ever. In the Exhibition and on the boulevards the foreigners in Paris are mingled in inextricable tumult, and to listen to the confusion of tongues Babel seems to have come again ; still, in the wa}' of resi- dence and habitual resort, each people appears to have its favourite quarter. The Spaniards and Italians — the former in high combs and mantillas, and frequently in the Andalusian pork-pie hat and the Asturian cajm, the latter distinguishable only from their kindred of the Latin races by their dark flashing eyes and their superabundant gesticulation — are especially fond of thronging the caff'S between the Rue Richelieu and the Rue Vivienne. The Belgians haunt the Boulevard IMontmartre. They are a frugal race, and the restaurants stretching towards the Porte St. Denis are comparatively cheap. The Germans take up an immense amount of room, make a most tremendous noise, and seem to be spending a vast amount of money on the boulevards. As for the English, they are tin fCu jiartout. A few mornings since I paid a visit to Mr. Thomas Cook, in his ver}^ ]>leasant quarters in the Rue de la Faisanderie, fitted up for boarding and lodging the shoals of tourists who travel under his wing, and found the accommodation capital. I went over two or three of the FOREIGN VISITORS. 125 UNE FAMILLE ANGLAISE (bY EERTALl). handsome suburban villas temporarily tenanted by the 'Cookists;* and the name of the proprietor of one of these mansions struck me with a pleasant surprise. It was Madame St. Leon, who, as Mademoiselle Cerito, was one of the most fascinating dancers that ever adorned the grand era of the Terpsichorean stage. Nearly forty years ago Thomas Ingoldsby, describing the memorable Tamburini and Coletti emeute at Her Majesty's Theatre, wrote (I am quoting from memory, mind) — ' Mademoiselle Cherrytoes Shook to her very toes : She couldn't hop on, so hopped off on her merry toes.' The delightful 'Cherrytoes * — the only hallerina yvhom the austere consort of the Czar Nicholas of Eussia could tolerate — is still extant, hale, prosperous, and vivacious. Very blithely did she 126 PAKIS IIEKSELF AG-AIX. come to terms ■v\-itli Mr. Cook. * You are au Englishman/ she said, 'and I love England and the English.' It is good to think of these former Reines de la Danse enjoying a green old age. The exquisitely graceful Duvernay, Y\^orld-famous as the dancer of the ' Cachuca,' lives still in England, the land of her adoption, a wealthy and most charitable Lady Bountiful, beloved by all her neighbours ; and only a fevv' days before I left London I met at a garden-party a very sprightly lady, Madame la Comtesse Gilbert (les Voisins, whom more than forty years before I had known as Marie Tagiioni. To the affluent classes among my own countrymen, the Paie de Pdvoli seems almost entirely to belong — say from the Plotel du Ijouvre as far as the Rue Castiglione ; but at the new and iistonishingly magnificent Hotel Continental they have to battle for supremacy with the Americans, who have likewise somewhat the best of the international fray at the Hotel Splendide, and at the surpassingl3'-grandiose Cafe Restaurant de Paris, in the Avenue de rOpera. At the last-named and overwhelmingly-sumj)tuous place of entertainment I candidly confess that I have not .yet had courage to dine. I have i3eeped in once or twice ; but the sheen of the plate glass, the radiance of the gilding, the crimson velvet and the rosewood, the glitter of the plate, and the snowy whiteness of the damask have terrified me ; and I have had, as j^et, but a Pisgah view of that Palestine soup for which the}'- charge, I suppose, five francs a portion. * Faites flamber Finances.' The colossal Continental Hotel occupies pai't of the site of the Ministry of Finances petroleumised by the Commune ; but there are other brand-new edifices rising in tbc immediate vicinity of the burnt-out Government offices, which structures puzzle me more and more as to what has become of the western side of the Rue Castiglione. On the opposite side the offices of Messrs. John i^rthur & Co., English bankers, stand safe and sound enough ; but over the way I miss at least lialf a dozen once favourite hotels and restaurants. The huge Continental Hotel has swallowed them all up. Thus, too, the enormous drj'-'goods store, the Magasins du Louvre, has encroached on the hotel of that name until there is a maximum of mafiasins, and a minimum of inns. The vast dimensions of its principal apartments, the splendour of the decorations and furniture of the enthe establishment, and in particular the covered courtyard, then entirely a novelty in France, made the Hotel du Louvre in its 3'outh a rarity and a phenomenon. But it was never a pleasant hotel. From the rooms in the front one had only a view of the FOREIGN VISITORS. 127 1 i/'r^, _ THE LOUVKE, FROM THE RUE DE EIVOLI. guard and barrack rooms of the Louvre, with some glim and stony effigies of marshals and generals of the First Empire ; and the rooms in the rear were, notwithstanding their handsome fittings, so gloomy as to be so many Caves of Despair. The erection of the hotel marked the dawn of the Imperial epoch, as the Grand Hotel marked its culmination, and the Hotel Splendide the begin- ning of its decline. And now, Ceesarism having definitely and irretrievably collapsed this bewilderingiy vast and gorgeous Hotel Continental has risen, with magical rapidity, from the red-hot ashes of the Commune. Is Paris destined to be the witness of yet more phenomenal revolutions and still more marvellous hotels ? THE SALLE DBS DipiCHES OF THE FIGAEO OFFICE. XI. ' FIGARO HERE, FIGARO THERE I ' Aug. 31. The Rue Drouot, like the Rue Lafitte and the Rue Lepelletier, continues, in despite of the Haussmanisation of the Second Empire and the Duvalisation of the Third Rejjublic, to maintain its character as an essentially French and eminently Parisian street. Strange tricks have been played with most of the thoroughfares in its neighbourhood ; still the Rue Drouot has hitherto triumphantly defied all the attempts of an iconoclastic municipality to cut it to pieces. The unfortunate Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin no longer knows itself, so mercilessly has it been new boulevarded in its northern portion : and there is something — I have not 3'et been able to discover with precision what it is — the matter with the present topography of the Rue Taitbout, as compared with its former lines ; but it is as easy as ever to travel in the Rue Drouot, and to my thinking this thoroughfare is, with the exception of the new 'installation' of the 2^/(7«ro newspaper, delightfully unchanged. May its immutability be perpetual ! After breakfast — I mean the dejeuner d la fourchette, not the British tea, eggs, bacon, and toast hour — say about two in the afternoon, is the time to travel in the Rue Drouot. It is not a very quiet place, being normall}', perhaps, as bustling as Cran- bourn-street, Leicester-square, which in its artistic aspect it very FIGARO HERE, FIGARO THERE ! 129 mucli resembles ; still it is free from the incessant and deafening roar of the main boulevards. One likes to hear the * city's busy hum ; ' and towns as tranquil, sa}', as Cordova or Toledo in Spain, or Ghent or Bruges in Belgium, are apt, after a time, to induce a fit of the meagrims. When people are really alive it is incumbent upon them now and again to exhibit signs of their vitality ; — but the Boulevards which stretch from the Madeleine to the Bastille are more than alive : they seem to be hysterical, delirious, or in a permanent crisis of some great agony which constrains them to make a terrific disturbance. The exceeding fierceness of those who were wont to come out of the Tombs of Old has been accounted for by the supposition that when they emerged from their caverns in the morning they were likewise exceeding hungry ; and uncer- tainty as to where they were to get any breakfast may have had much to do with their habit of shrieking and running amuck. A like fierceness characterises the dogs of Eyoub in the Golden Horn, Constantinople, at early morn. The homeless curs of the other districts of Stamboul and of Pera know very well when the butchers' and bakers' shops will open, and when the time for flinging them stale crusts or scraps of oft'al will arrive ; but at Eyoub there is nothing but a mosque, a quantity of tombstones, and a few mud hovels inhabited by people who halitaally have not enough bread for themselves ; and this gives the dogs of the district an excep- tionally wolfish aspect, and hyena-like temper. I cannot help fancying that garrotters — remember, that the vast majority of those criminals are hulking young fellows, between nineteen and twenty- three, endowed with a powerful physique, rude health, and tre- mendous appetites — are not in the habit of obtaining their break- fasts regularly. Consequently they come out of the slums of Seven Dials and Whitechapel, ' exceeding fierce.' Consider how lamb-like is their demeanour in chapel at Pentonville or Millbank. They have a pleasant prescience that when the worthy chaplain has done his office the panikin full of nice hot gruel and the welcome hunk of bread will be waiting for them. Meanwhile the Boulevards bawl and bellow, not only at early morn — the disturbance, as from sad matutinal experience I know full well, begins at five a.m. — but until high noon, and throughout the afternoon, and deep into the night. ' A cette heure,' writes to me a wise French friend, ' les femelles connnencent a hurler.' Those mad shrieks borne on the night-wind are inexpressibly suggestive to the mind. Fini de rire. The time for hilarity is over, that for ululation has begun. Who can be screaming, what about, and where, are matters that do not concern you. You happen K 130 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. to live in a Haymarket — an old-fasliioned Haymarket, not the pre- sent regenerated thoroughfare — some six miles long. The yell may mean murder. It may be a sudden spasm of remorse, or the despairing cry of the intended suicide ; or it may merely be Lalie and Phrosyne exchanging a piercingly boisterous good-night with Gugusse and Polyte. But you hear the shriek all the same, even as in London the deep stillness of the night-season in the very quietest of neighbourhoods is broken by the piercing treble of the locomotive whistle at the distant terminus. From sunrise to midnight you hear also, on the Boulevards, the well-nigh incessant cracking of whips — a sound extremely dis- tressing to nervous ears, taking your mind back, as it does, to the dark days of negro slavery, and inducing the suspicion that the ferocious Legree, indefinitely multiplied, is operating upon Uncle Tom at the corner of every street. Fortunately the whips are only those of the omnibus- and cab-drivers. I wish that they would not agitate their thongs quite so frequently or so violently. I do not think that the French are designedly cruel to their horses, save in so far as they drive the poor half-starved * screws,' in an incon- ceivably blundering and careless manner ; but they seek to stimu- late the sorry jades by a startling reverberation, which they produce by throwing out the lashes of their whips laterally : somewhat as a Mexican ' greaser ' throws out his lasso. Now when a whip is thus cracked by a Jehu as skilful as the Postilion de Longjumeau the horse is duly incited to action, and no harm is done to anybody; but when a horde of untutored and undisciplined charioteers come lumbering, clattermg, plunging, or craAvling six abreast on the Boulevard Poissonniere, flourishing their whips and flinging out the thongs thereof in all du'ections, and you happen to be riding in a victoria in the midst of the ruck, the chances are about equal as to your own driver hitting some passing passenger over the bridge of the nose, or of a playful cabby, either to the right or the ■. left of you, cutting out your eye as he lurches past. To such perils you are scarcely exposed in the sober Rue Drouot. The traffic is never long congested ; and, indeed, at some periods so trifling is the press of locomotion that the pedestrian can enjoy one of tlie most dearly-prized privileges of a Frenchman — that of walking on a hot afternoon in the centre of the roadway, and with his hat off. The practice dates from the time when side- walks were unknown in the small streets of Paris, and peaceable people walked at large (just keeping clear of the great black gutter) to avoid disputes about the wall. There may be those who regret the ruisscau. There were, forty years ago, bare-legged industrials FIGAE® HERE, FIGARO THERE ! 131 CEOSSING A PARIS KEN^'EL, PROM AN OLD ENGRAVING. who earned a livelihood by carrying ladies safely across the swollen kennel after a shower of rain. For a lady the fee was ten centimes, for a child or a pet poodle five : but the open kennel did not dis- appear without many sighs on the part of conservatism. Were there not those who wept for Nero, and for Old Smithfield ? The existing drainage of the City of Paris is, I am given to understand, a colossal monument of sanitary engineering, and in a scientific sense perfect. I know that MM. Victor Hugo and Max- ime du Camp have written eloquently and exhaustively enougJh K 2 132 TAKIS HERSELF AGAIN. about the sewers ; still I cannot help fancying that the practice of deodorisation continues to leave something to be desired. The odour of the back streets of Paris in warm weather is, even in the most fashionable districts, the reverse of agreeable. No charge, however, of this nature need be adduced against the Eue Drouot, which is, comparatively speaking, a very ancient thoroughfare, and in which, when you are travelling in it, you find so many interesting sights to engage your attention that you are indif- ferent to the odours of the place. Unless I am grievously mis- taken, the Kitai-gorod at Moscow is not a very sweet-smelling locality ; certain quarters of Constantinople are redolent of a decidedly villanous perfume ; the Calle de los Sierpes at Seville has a rather ' loud ' aroma ; and the back streets of Venice would be all the better for a little diluted carbolic acid. But such trifles are scarcely worth noticing. M. Louis Veuillot found nothing but ambrosial gales in the reeking lanes of Papal Pome; and how should we stand as archaeologists, antiquaries, art-critics, and ' curio '-collectors, if we were all so many Mr. Edwin Chad- wicks, C.B. ? The curiosities of the Kue Drouot are, first the Hotel Drouot itself; next the ' Installation,' or offices of the Figaro newspaper; and finally the hric-d-hrac shops. Let us take the Figaro. Pe- specting the politics of this remarkable daily journal— certainly the most conspicuous specimen of the daily press published on the Continent, but, on the whole, about as unlike an English news- paper as a Parisian restaurant is unlike the Freemason's Tavern — I am not called upon to say anything. The Figaro may be, for aught I know. Legitimist, Clerical, Bonapartist, Oiieanist, Conservative, or Ultra-Padical, Republican and Sociahst; its politics may be, as Mr. Bob Sawyer confessed on that memorable wet evening at Birmingham, ' a kind of plaid ;' or, as the Ameri- cans say, 'a little mixed;' or, finall}^ the Figaro may have no politics at all. It did not occur to me to ask the courteous Secre- taire de la Pedaction, who received me under the peristyle of the Hotel du Figaro, what his convictions as to public affairs might be ; nor did he make any inquiries as to my personal opinions on the Eastern Question. We met on common and remarkably IDleasant ground, when an equally courteous gentleman to whom he introduced me conveyed to me an invitation to breakfast and the offer of a box at the Grand Opera. I had, however, a great deal to see at the Figaro before I could devote myself to pleasure. I have seen many curious newspaper-offices before now ; but a more peculiarly characteristic 'installation' than that of tho FIGARO HERE, FIGARO THERE ! 133 Fif/aro I have never beheld. All comparisons with estabhshmeuts of the same kind in my own country I banish, of course, at once from my mind. The secrets of my own prison-house in Peter- borough Court, Fleet Street, I would not dare to reveal — the * Society ' journals, it Avould seem, know more about them than I do ; but I have been permitted to peep behind the scenes of the New York Herald, of the Levant Herald in tlie Grande Kue de Pera, of the Ncue Freie Presse at Vienna, of the Epoca at Madrid, and of the Journal de St. Petcrshourg. Each and every one of these offices presented a distinct and typical cachet, yet all pos- sessed certain features in common ; but the Figaro is confessedly wholly and entirely sid generis as a newspaper-office. It is all very handsome, but it is remarkably business-like. The barber's razor is beautifully polished and sumptuously mounted ; but the tonsor himself is as sharp as that celebrated manufacturer men- tioned in David Copperfield — Mr. Brooks of Sheffield. Everything that can possibly please the eye and tickle the fancy of the ahonne is liberally provided at the bureaux of this essentially * smart ' publication ; but there is another Ej-e, invisible to some, but firmly fixed in the very centre of the facade of the building — an E^'e beneath which might be inscribed our own highly-esteemed Belts Life motto, * Nunquam dormio ' — an Eye which, with the constancy of the needle to the pole, is directed to the Main Chance. Long ago it was said of the Frenchman that ' ne malin il inventa le vaudeville : ' the proprietar}^ body of the Figaro born wide awake has invented the art of holding an unprecedented number of thousands of ahonnes with that glittering Eye. I visited the offices of the Figaro in the first instance as a bold stranger. I had heard that its Salle des Depeches was oj^en to tlie public day and night ; so, as one of the public, I proceeded to the Rue Drouot to participate in a wholly gratuitous entertain- ment. There are so very few places in Paris, apart from the public museums and picture-galleries, which can be seen for nothing ; and with regard to the establishments above the portals of which * entree libre ' is written, I might counsel you to bejir in mind the wise maxim which bids us to beware of the Greeks, and of the gifts which they give. To be admitted ostensibly free, gratis, and for nothing to a Champs Elysees concert, to be gener- ously allowed to listen to bad instrumental music and worse sink- ing, and to be called uj^on to pay three francs fifty centimes for a glass of sour beer, a cup of chicoried cofi"ee, or some brandy which makes you sick, ma}' be humorous from the proprietor's point of view, but is scarcely a comic transaction so far as you are con- 134 PAras iieeself agai>t. cerned. I rejoice, liowever, to remark that ' la consommation ' was not obligatory in tlie Salle des Depeclies in the Hue Drouot. No waiter importuned me to give my orders, nor did anybody ask me to buy anything ; although there were a good many articles on the walls which I might have made an offer for, such as pictures and water-colour drawings senthere for sale. Telegraphic despatches from all parts of the world are here duly displayed ; and you may learn the latest news from Bosnia and Herzegovina, from China and Peru, from Cajjel Court and from Crim Tartary. The fluctua- tions of native and foreign bonds and shares can be studied, and the latest state of the odds on horseraces ascertained ; but the Salle des Depeclies — through which, it is calculated, some twenty- five thousand persons pass in the course of every twenty-four hours — serves other purposes than the foregoing. The room is a kind of bazaar for works of art, and a great advertising-hall, in which highly remunerative prices are obtained for Avall-space. To the Parisian, born a flaneur and a ' mooner,' this eleemo- synary lounging-place must be a source of constantly-renewed delight. So much to stare at, and nothing to pay ! Telegrams and despatches from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Capel Court and Crim Tartary, are mingled with glowing polychromatic advertise- ments of the renowned Chocolat Patapouff, the Eacahout des Kabyles, the Petits Saucissons des Abrutis, the Eau de Vie des Cuistres, the Magazins du Mauvais Marche, the Maison de Blanc de la Grande Croquemitaine, Ninon de I'Enclos Tooth-Powder, Kobert Macaire's Moral Cough-Lozenges, Joan of Arc's Aromatic Sticking-Plaster, and Curius Dentatus's Ehinoceros Horn False Teeth. If there be anything odd or out of the way floating about Paris it is picked up by the Figaro, and exhibited in the Salle des Depeclies. Becently there was shown a specimen of the wretched ration of forage allowed by the Compagnie Gdnerale des Voitures to their overworked cattle. I should not be surprised to see Peter the Great's will ; or the sabre which was ' the liappicst day' in the life of JNI. Joseph Prudhomme ; or Robespierre's skull when he was a young man ; or the skin of the young woman dis- sected by Thomas Diafoirus, all displayed in the Salle des Depeches of the Figaro. The astute proprietary of that journal are no losers by their liberality. The Salle was formerly a wine-shop. The Figaro bought out the marcJiand de tins at a very heavy figure ; but the revenue accruing from the advertisements _ is already beginning to yield a very large profit; the institution itself- — feebly imitated by anotlier journal or two — enhances the incstige and the popularity of the Figaro ; and who shall say but that, in flGARO HEREj FIGARO THERE ! 135 vnany instances, the apparently unprofitable fidneur comes from /;he Salle des Ddpeches metamorphosed into that being so dear to the proprietorial heart, a full-fledged ahonne — a yearly subscriber to the astute journal with the glittering Eye. I had never, so far as I know, seen the ahonne in the fle?h, and under gregarious conditions ; so having posted some letters — a post-office letter-box and a telegraph- office are among the facilities offered to the public in the Salle des Depeches of the Figaro — I entered the offices of the journal itself, and asked to be allowed to have a peep at some ahonnes, if there happened to be any on the premises. There were plenty. A kind of gentle- man-usher of mature age, who looked so grave and reverend that he might have been Gil Bias' father — who, you will remember, became an escndero in his declining years, his wife adopting the vocation of a duena — conducted me up a large and softly-carpeted stair- case, and thence into a spacious ante- chamber, the walls hung with antique tapestry, Venetian mirrors, and trophies of antique weapons, and plentifull}'- furnished with fauteuils and divans. The prevailing style of the decorations Avas Hispano-Moresque ; and this in- deed is the key-note of the scheme in architecture and embellishment of the Figaro offices, the facade of which, looking on the Rue Drouot, is adorned by a bronze statue of the immortal barber himself, looking as elegantly impudent and as amusingly knavish as he does in the finest French comedy and the finest Italian opera that the declining years of the wicked worn- out eighteenth century can boast of. The sculptor of this bronze effigy of the tonsor of the Plaza San Tomas at Seville* gained the prize * There is still a barber's shop on tlie Plaza San Tomas, which you are gravely assured by the Sevillanos is the identical shaving estaUishnient erst fipl^Wiin'T!iinilPTi]T[|||Ti! BEONZE STATUE OF FIGARO. 136 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. in an animated competition among some of the first plastic artists in France ; and terra-cotta models of the Figaros which did not win the prize, albeit some of the figures are of rare merit, are displayed on brackets in the antechamber. The polite gentleman who was my cicerone next led me to a gallery, or loggia, running round a quad- rangular covered courtj'ard, answer- ing precisely to the jjaf?o of a house at Seville : only in the centre, instead of a fountain, there was a monu- mental bust in marble of Beau- marchais, and round three of the sides there were handsomely carved oaken screens, pierced with pigeon- holes, through which money and papers were being continually passed. I could look down on three ranges of spruce clerks sitting behind the usual big ledgers, while on the other side of the screens there was a throng of all soi-ts and conditions of people busily engaged in paying cash and receiving docu- ments. * Ah ! ' I thought, * these are the advertisers. An estimable race. Blessed be the advertisers ! ' Not at all. I was quite in error. The His- pano-Moresque jjrttio was the 'Bureau des Abonnements' of the Figaro; and the multitude on whom I was looking down Avere the abonnes ' in the flesh' whom I had been seeking for — the quarterly, half-yearly, or annual subscribers to the most popular journal in France. The majority of English journals publish the terms on whicli they can be subsciibed for ; and an Englishman resident, say, in Italy or the interior of France, usually patronised by Beaximarcliais, and where the idea of writing his comedies first occurred to him. It is quite the ' thing ' for a tourist to pet shaved in this shop. A young gentleman strums softly on the guitar -while the customer is being lathered and scraped ; and you pay about four times more for the opera- tion than you would do at an ordinary barber's. But ' the Priest lives by the Altar,' and you must need make your oblation when you are a pilgrim at a shrine. BUST OF BEATTMAECHAIS. FIGAEO HERE, FIGARO THERE ! 137 'THE STOUT BOURGEOIS IN THE LIGHT OVERCOAT.' subscribesfor some London paper or another. Of course we have all heard m England of the 'Subscriber from the First —and pretty airs'he gives himself sometimes in hiscorrespondenceon the stren^tn of his seniority in subscription. He is the twin-brother ot^ the * Constant Eeader/ and I am even inclined to think that ne is ai 138 jPAHlS HERSELi' AGAIN. ■'THE KETIRED MAJOR OF DRAGOONS.' least. the cousin-german of 'Paterfamilias,' that he Imows the real name of Vindex^ and that he most probably has a bowing acquaint- ance with the * Oldest Inhabitant.' PIGAKO HERE, FIGARO THERE ! 139 'the ex-prefect under the secOxVD empire.' But there is no mystery about the French ahonne. He is a palpable entit}'-, frequently wearing spectacles and cari\ying an umbrella. Monsieur Joseph Prudhomme, for example, must have been born an ahonne. Journals of different shades of opinion present equally, of course, varied aspects of the ahonne, from the clean-shaven, sleek-faced, sable-clad gentleman who subscribes to the Univers, to the stout hoiirgeois in the light overcoat who has taken in the Constitutionnel ever since the days of Louis Philippe, and the elderly and austere personage, with the ribbon of the Legion and a tortoiseshell snuffbox, who pins his faith to the 140 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Journal des Dchats, and thinks M. John Lemolnne the greatest publicist in France. Then there is the Republican advocate with the closely-trimmed black whiskers, who swears by the JRcpiibliquc Franc^aise ; the retired major of dragoons, with his fierce mous- tache and bushy beard; or the ex-Prefect, under the Second Empire, of the Department of the Haute Gruyere or the Brie Inferieure — rather a shabby and trade-fallen ex- official just now — who would sooner give up his demi-tasse and 2^ctlt verve after dinner than abandon his ahonnemcnt to the Pays. Of a subscriber to the Marseillaise I cannot form any very definite idea ; but I vaguely imagine him to be a mild personage, with dove-coloured hair and whiskers, who wears mittens when it is cold and goloshes when it rains. It is usually your mild and meek people who are most pleased with the ferocious in journalism. I did happen to have an interview with both the chief editor and the manager of this same formidable Marseillaise some nine years ago. It was at the trial before the High Court of Justice at Tours of Prince Pierre Bonaparte for the murder of Victor Noir. The redacteur en chej and the gerant of the Marseillaise had been summoned as wit- nesses for the prosecution ; and as they both happened to be undergoing sentences of imprisonment in Ste. Pelagie for press oftences, they had been brought from Paris in custody, and were conducted into court under escort of a couple of gendarmes apiece. The editor was Henri Piochefort, Vicomte de Lugay — a tall, pale, nervous gentleman in full evening dress, and not looking the least like a fire-eater. The name of the manager I forget ; but a more afi'able and polite personage I never gazed upon. He was con- tinually smiling and bowing all round ; and his eyes quite beamed through his spectacles at the president, the jmy, the procurator- general, the counsel for the defence, the journalists, the public, and especially the august prisoner. He, the affable manager, subsequently got shot when the troops from Versailles entered Paris after the Commune ; and he died, I was told, heroicall}'. It is necessar}^ to remark that, although the French newspaj^er subscriber may differ in particulars from his congener, he is identical with him in generals. He is an ahonne first and a citizen afterwards. He has a fearful temper. There is no end to his complaints. He will not be trifled with : mind that. He knows his rights, and insists on having them. Let there not be the slightest mistake about that. He may be arrogant, exigent, and captious ; but it is worth while, on the proprietor's part, to conciliate and to defer to him, since the ahonne is the very back- bone and mainstay of the circulation of a French newspaper. FIGAKO HERE, FIGARO THERE ! 141 Sometimes, wlien lie takes offence, he is implacable. Then he becomes a dcsahoniie ; and there is wailing for him as for a lamb that has strayed from the fold. The Figaro contains on most days of the week a number of advertisements printed in very small type, and in the most abbreviated form that is practicable. Some of these are trade announcements ; others are of the nature of those classed as * personal ' in the New York Herald. Thus I read in the Figaro of Monday: 'Prince Authentique. — Epous. dem. ou veuve.' This means that a gentleman bearing the title of Prince, and as to the authenticity of whose rank there cannot be the slightest doubt, is willing to enter into a matrimonial alliance with a spinster or a widow-lady who would like to be a Princess. Sometimes to these cvuiously candid offers is appended the reminder ' Serieux,' which reminds me of an addendum I once read in the Herald from a lady who wished to marry * an elderly and affluent widower, slightly afflicted with the gout.' ' Gentlemen who wish to make fun need not apply,' concluded the fair incognita. The advertisements to which I have referred in the Figaro are styled ' petites annonces,' and are received and paid for * over the counter ' in the Rue Drouot ; but the great mass of trade notices come through the Compagnie Generale des Annonces, a body who are farmers-general of adver- tisements in all the great newspapers of Paris. The advertiser consequently rarely makes his presence felt at the Figaro offices : his place is supplied by the loud-voiced and determined-visaged ahonne. Ere I quit the antechamber leading to the loggia overlooking the covered courtyard, I must bestow a glance on the numbers of curious people waiting patiently in hopes (I presume) of seeing the editor or the manager of the journal. There is a Zouave. What on earth can he want ? There is a widow in deep mourn- ing, with three little children. There are a brace of jovial priests in black soutanes and shovel hats, who, as they lounge on one of the divans, whisper to each other so confidentially and exchange such hilarious chuckles that I fancy one priest must be relating to the other such a * Bonne Histoire ' as that suggested in the well- known picture. Or, it may be, these estimable ecclesiastics are conversing about the Orphelinat at Auteuil, in which M. Saint- Genest, the military redacteur of the Figaro, has taken so laud- able an interest, and in aid of the funds of which excellent insti- tution the readers of the Figaro subscribed in the course of a few days a sum of something like 300,000f. The results of this subscription to the Figaro have been a large increase in its 142 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN, circulation, and in its pi'estige among a class who formerly were not accustomed to hold a very light-mannered and loose-tongued newspaper in much esteem. Scarcely a day passes without some anecdote being published in the Figaro, which, Avere it printed in an_English joui'nal, would probably attract the earnest attention A CLERICAL ABONN^. of the Society for the Suppression of Vice ; yet I am given to understand that M. de Villemessant's vivacious print finds at present extensive favour among the provincial clergy. I could very well understand why a chasseur in a plumed cocked hat, and holding a note in pink envelope in one of his buckskin-gloved hands, should have been cooling his heels in the antechamber. Madame la Marquise de Grande-Gomme had some FIGARO HERE, FIGARO THERE ! 143 request, no doubt, to make to the Redaction. There was an old gentleman, agam, in a black skull-cap, very comfortably bestowed in a corner, where he was sleeping the sleep of the just. Sleep on, harmless chucklehead; I have met you before, the whole world over. In theatres, in omnibuses, on board steamboats, at church, there is always the Man who Goes to Sleep. He is the lineal descendant of Eutychus. He is the living and snoring tj^^e of the obese Roman senator who indulged in forty winks while Messrs. Brutus, Cassius, Casca, & Co. were stabbing Ciesar to death at the base of Pompey's statue. While I glanced (not un- sympathisingly) on the slumbering veteran — it is so nice to be asleep and to forget the world and other worries ! — a Turk came in — the regular modern Turk, the 'bottle of Bordeaux' Ottoman — his closely-buttoned black surtout representing the body of the bottle, and his fez the red-sealed cork thereof. His appearance there puzzled me but little. A miscellaneous gathering of hu- manity is scarcely complete without a Turk. There is always a Turk. There was one, Mr. Carlyle tells us, at the stormmg of the Bastille, and I should not be astonished to meet one at a Quakers' meeting. I could not refrain from asking my courteous guide whether the Redaction were troubled by any mad folks who came that way. * Yes,' he remarked, * the average was about half a lunatic in the course of every twenty-four hours.' The Archangel Gabriel gene- rally calls on Mondays ; Wednesday is the day for the gentleman iia a straw hat with a blue ribbon, who has discovered the Per- petual Motion ; and he is usually succeeded on Fridays by a humpbacked individual in an olive-green cloak, who has ascer- tained, to his own complete and triumphant satisfaction, the feasibility of aerial navigation. The great-great-grandson of the Man with the Iron Mask only calls occasionally to ask for the address of the son of the Dauphin, Louis XVII. ; and since the collapse of the Comte de Chambord's candidature nothing has been heard of the lady who declares she is Joan of Arc, and that she was burned, but got over it by means of electro-galvanism and the Eau de Lourdes. My hosts would not suffer me to go away without showing me the * composing-rooms ' of the Figaro, of which I need only remark that they closely resembled some other composing-rooms with which I have been acquainted in the course of the last quarter of a century in the neighbourhood of the Strand and Fleet Street ; and then, with great fear and trembling, I peeped into some apart- ments where a number of gentlemen were sitting at large long 144 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. tables, thickly scattered with newspapers and other documents. The gentlemen were busily employed in writing. They were the Cyclops forging the bolts of Jove. These were the chamhres ardentes cle la Redaction. For aught I could tell, I had been gazing momentarily on the profound * J. Mystere,' the inscrutable 'Ignotus,' the enigmatical ' Deux Aveugles,' the recondite 'Masque de Fer,' the ineffable * Diplomate,' and the unapproachable ' Mon- sieur de rOrchestre/ of this cunnmgiy contrived and extremely clever paper. I was requested, in departing, to look on a portrait of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales ; an excellent likeness, su- perbly framed, in the Hispano-Moresque jpatio. In the tapestry- hung chamber took place the famous nocturnal concert and banquet concerning which so many absurd stories have been told. The Prince simply wished to see the steam-printing machinery of the Figaro, and that machinery was not to be seen in full action until long past midnight. Similarly, in our own metropolis, princes and potentates occasionally turn up, in the small hours of the night, at the great newspaper offices, to watch the * Hoe ' and the * Walter ' presses in * full blast.' The Redaction of the Figaro, like true Frenchmen as they are, thought that they would combine a little festivity with the technical processes which the Prince was to inspect ; so they got up a comj)act concert, in which some of the first artistes of the Parisian theatres were only too glad to cooperate, although they had been hard at work until midnight. The musical entertainment was followed by a supper, and his Royal Highness went away thoroughly delighted with the graceful hospitality which had been offered him. I went away from this very convivial newspaper-office most pleasantly impressed with all that I had seen ; but when I had crossed to the other side of the Rue Drouot to take a final survey of the Hispano-Moresque fagade and the bronze statue of Figaro, there flashed more wakefuUy than ever from above the figure of the Barber that Eye at the existence of which, as an integral part of the Figaro ' installation,' I have more than once hinted. The Eye had a surprising amount of Speculation in it ; and ever and anon its lids seemed to be contracted to the narrowest dimen- sions, and to assume the semblance of a Wink. Its glances were articulate, and seemed to murmur confidentially, * We are perfectly well aware of what we are about in this establishment, and in your next visit to our Salle des Depeches you should ask to see our celebrated weasel. If he happens to be asleep, you may shave his eyebrows avcc plaisiu' PEEPARATIONS FOR LUNCHEON AT AN EXHIBITTOW EESTAUBANT. XII. LUNCHEON IN THE CHAMP DE MARS AND THE TROCADERO. Sept. 5. The plan of the Pans Universal Exhibition of 1867 did not ill resemble that of a system of concentric oval dishes. The plan of the Universal Exhibition of 1878 is, so far as the Champ de Mars is concerned, simply an immense parallelogram, intersected at right angles by innumerable avenues between blocks of glass cases full of the most ingenious and the most highly-finished specimens imaginable of everything that can contribute to the convenience, the comfort, and the luxurious enjoyment of life._ There is obvi- ously no limit to the productive powers of humanity, if there be an adequate supply of raw material, of capital, and of mechanical or of manual labour ; but there does, so it appears to me, occur from time to time a visible halt and surcease in human inventiveness. Such temporary stoppage of the inventive faculty seems to be the most prominent characteristic of the enormous Bazaar at the foot of the Bridge of Jena. The ' roaring looms of Time ' make as thunderous a clatter as ever; but it is the old, old tissue that is being woven. There is a maximum of gregariousness and a mini- mum of isolation among the exhibitors. You look in vain in these 146 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. interminable corridors of shop-windows for sucli naive specimens of individual ingenuity and labour as were delightfully manifest in our World's Fair in Hyde Park seven-and-twenty years ago — models of Tintern Abbey or Rochester Castle in cork ; Pharaoh and all his Host Engulfed in the Ped Sea, burnt with a red-hot poker on a deal board, by a clergyman in the vale of Taunton ; Comical Creatures fromWiirtemberg; Gulliver and the Lilliputians, in wax ; Susanna and the Elders, in Berlin wool, bya Lady Twenty- five Years Bedridden ; or a Model in Ivory of the Old Temeraire, by Two Congenital Idiots. These were unpretending * Exhibits ' enough ; but they spoke of the craft and patience of individual ]\Ian. In more recent Expositions, and notably in the gigantic Bazaar which I am at present painfully exploring, individual man, save in a very few instances, disappears, and is replaced by great Companies and great Firms solicitous of orders, and eager to sell their wares. The principal impression conveyed to my mind by what I have hitherto seen is that there is too much of everything in the Champ de Mars and the Trocadero, and that the illustration of every department of cosmopolitan industry has been distended to weari- some proportions. I may be mistaken, but I fancy that I have descried on some thousands of faces, not only French but foreign, among the visitors to the Exhibition, a listless, fagged and be- wildered expression ; and, so far as I am personally concerned, I know very well that I am not mistaken in the diagnosis of my own sensations after say a three hours' wandering to and fro among the glass cases, namely, that if a little lunch were not speedily administered to repair the exhausted human tissues there would be some danger of somebody going melancholy mad. My brothers and sisters, I entreat you to refrain from cant in this matter. Let us, for once in our lives, abstain from being humbugs. Yes ; we are very fond of picture-galleries and vestibules full of beautiful marble statues. The late M. Fortuny was a truly great painter. So Avas poor Henri Pegnault. So are the still happily extant MM. Gerome and Meissonier. Gustave Dore's Bacchanalian Vase deserves to be reexamined and readmired again and again. The ceramics, the bronzes, tbe crystal chandeliers, the tapestrj'-, the clocks and watches, are all monstrous fine. But three hours' contemplation of such objects, to say nothing of the flying glances which we have cast while hurrying through the cases full of boots and shoes, riding-habits, combs and brushes, and ladies and gen- tlemen's underclothing, are apt to induce a state of mind far exceeding dejection, and trenching indeed on downright exaspera- LUNCHEON IN THE CHAMP DE MARS AND THE TROCADERO. 147 tion. I will put the case plainly. Are you prepared, on a very warm clay, to walk, with a lady on your arm, from the Ox- ford Circus, down Regent Street, Waterloo Place, Charing Cross, the Strand, Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, Cheapside, Cornhill, Fen- church Street, Whitechapel High Street, and so on to ]\Iile End and Bow, looking in at every shop-window on each side of the way as you go ? If you are not equal to such a pilgrimage on foot, you should engage ufautcuil roulant or Bath-chair so soon as ever you have passed the Porte Rapp and find yourself within the pre- cincts of the Paris Exhibition. In London you will find on your way, for luncheon purposes, such restaurants as the Burlington, the Cafe Royal, the St. James's, the Criterion, the Pall Mall, Verrey's, Simpson's, the Gaiety, the London, the Ludgate, Pur- cell's, Birch's, and, taking a slight detour, the Ship and Turtle. Let us see what M. Krantz, the Commissary- General of the Exhi- bition, has done to further the bodily refreshment of his sorely fatigued pilgrims. In the Champ de Mars, V\\\\\ at the left angle of the — ^^^^^ Palace, by the side of the statue of Charlemagne, there is the * Buffet Fran- 9ais,' a very indifferent refreshment place, where cold viands are served at from one to two francs the plate, and a 'bock,' or glass of light and frothy beer, is charged thirty-five centimes, or nearly double the price that a glass of AUsopp or of Burton ale costs with us. The *bock' is certainly unintoxicating, but it is inordinately dear. At the opposite angle is an Anglo-American bar, Avliere the beer is even dearer. For fifly centimes a hunk of bread, with a very little morsel of meat lying perdue in it, can here be procured ; but a slice of tough, badly-cured, and worse-cooked ham costs one franc fifty. At the Hungarian ' Csarda/ in the ' Allee L 2 AT THE AITGLO-AMERTCAN BAR. 118 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. du Pare,' on the right lateral of the Palace, if you come early enough, you may get some ' National Hungarian dishes ' in the shape of * Zutyas/ POrkoll, and smoked beef — all very dear and very bad. Here vln dore, or wine with bits of gold leaf floating about in it, and sold at the rate of a franc the half bottle, and Tokay — the inevitable Tokay, of course, from the cellars of the late Prince Esterhazy — is charged two francs a glass. In the evening the Magyar Pavilion offers the attraction of an orchestral j^er- formance, from some minstrels who call themselves * Tsiganes,' but who look far less like Hungarian gipsies than disguised members of one of our old familiar ' green-baize bands ' from LUNCHEON IN THE CHAMP DE MARS AND THE TROCADEEO. 149 Margate or Brighton. At the neighbouring Eussian Pavilion they sell Muscovite cigarettes, * Koumys/ and a horrible beverage called * Kluttwa,' which pretends to be lemonade, but more nearly resembles Friedrichshalle water flavoured with carbolic acid. Higher up is the * Pavilion Hollandais,' where a number of dumpy young women with faces like kidney-potatoes, and who are dressed in * Frisian costume,' including a liberal display of bright-coloured stockings, dispense the * schubac,^ the curagao, and the bitters, and other Batavian liqueurs of Mynheer Lucas Bols of Amsterdam. This is merely a place for dram-drinking, but there is another Dutch buffet at which the appetite can be appeased in the angle of the Palace near to the Porte Dujoleix. Opposite the £cole Militaire is the Restaurant Gangloflf, which prides itself on selling only Alsatian beer. The bill of fare and the prices of the dishes are about the same as those of the Bouillon Duval ; and ordinary wine, just drinkable, can be had for one franc fifty a bottle. Then comes the monster establishment of the Bouillon Duval itself — always crowded, always stifling hot, always steaming with miscellaneous odours, and where the closely-packed guests lunch and dine amphitheatrically to an infernal tintamarrc of knives and forks, plates and dishes. The attendants are cleanl}'- looking females of all ages, in white caps, bibs, and aprons, and blue serge dresses, putting you in mind of Sisters of Charity who have cut ofl" the volants of their snowy headdresses. You may get a plate of meat at from twenty-five to seventy-five centimes, one of vegetables at from twenty to forty; wine — such 'petit bleu ' ! — is merely one franc ten centimes the bottle, while beer is thirty centimes the * bock.' Everything is very cheap,but not necessarily nast}^ and on the whole it is somewhat rough. The company is mixed, and occasionally villanous ; and although I should advise all young gentlemen anxious to ' see life ' to explore the interior of the Bouillon Duval, I should certainly not counsel them to take ladies with them. Near the Porte de Tourville is another buffet, a so-called * International ' one, but really French, where the ' bock * attains the abnormal rate of forty-five centimes. Opposite this establishment is the * Restaurant Universel,' charging a fixed price — breakfast four francs, dinner six francs. The repast is mediocre, but, when compared with the refection fui'nished at other restaurants, not altogether to be disdained. A more aristocratic restaurant, with ' service a la carte,' dishes at from two to four francs each, ordinary wine at two francs fifty a bottle, and AUsopp at fifty centimes the ' bock' — Allsopp is the pre- vailing beer at all the better-class establishments — will be fouucl, 150 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. under the name of ' Catelain,' in the park, close to the Bridge of Jena ; and to the left of this is the Belgian restaurant, rather an indifferent establishment on the whole. Castel's restaurant a la carte is near the Porte de Grenelle, facing the railway station ; and in an entirely opposite direction, on the Quai d'Orsa}^ and in the heart of the French Agricultural Section, is Fanta's Cafe, where you can lunch or dine, at the regulation fixed price, to the entertaining strains of the Eakocsy march from another band of gypsy musicians. In the Trocadero section of the park, Catelain has a second restaurant, at which boulevard prices are charged ; and facing the grand cascade is a somewhat pretentious Spanish restaurant, which announces its readiness to dispense such Iberian beverages as * Pigna,' * Monti- carlo,' 'Fresa,' 'Cidra- do,' and ' Ponche a la Eomana.* I do not re- member to have quaffed such liquors iir the Pen- insula. Here, too, you may obtain cocido a la Espaflola ' Huevos fritos con jamon ' — an- f/lice, ham and eggs ; 'Bacalao alaVizcaina;* ' Chuleta s a la Barillas ; * * Ensalada de pimien- tas ; ' ' Salpicon de Vich ' — Don Quixote's favourite supper; ' Aceitunas Sevillanas' — which are simply pickled olives ; and ' Arroz a la Yalenciana '—which is rice with grease, and is sold for three francs a plate full. Spain is already remark- able for the very worst cookery to be found in all Em-ope. She possesses only three tolerable dishes — * gallo con arroz,' which is virtually the Moorish fowl and pilaf, the ' puchero,' and the ' olla ;' but these really national jjlats are not to be found at the Restaur- ant Espagnol. Finally, there is a pseudo-Tunisian cafe in the Trocadero, at which, until lately, a poor little girl in a fez cap and baggy trousers sang songs and danced sarabands at night for the IN THE SPANISH RESTAURANT (eY LAFOSSE). ' What disli have you got there ? ' ' I really can't say — castanets with tomato sauce, I fancy ' LUNCHEON IN THE CHAMP DE MARS AND THE TROCADERO. 151 amusement of the guests, until M. Krantz suppressed her per- formances as inimical to morality, and banished the disconsolate Bayadere to her native Belleville. MAJOLICA JARDINIERE IN THE MINTON COURI. XIII. SIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE EXHIBITION. Sept. 8. After all, there is thus much to admn'e, to wonder at, and to philosophise over in a Universal Exhibition, in the fact that each of these shows is, after its kind, unique ; and that the thing in its complete entirety can never be seen again. Its component parts may be, and, in all probability, will be, brought together again, since one half the world is never tired of shopkeeping, the other half of shopping, or, at least, of staring into shop-windows and thinking what it woukl buy if it only had the money. And, in truth, a modern Exposition is abstractedly only a manner of kalei- doscope. You have seen all the bits of coloured glass over and over again ; but you know that, by means of a cylinder with a tin disc with a peephole in its centre at one end, and a lens of ground SIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE EXIIICITION. 153 glass at the other, and an oblong piece of glass that has been smoked, a shake of the hand is sufficient to produce an infinite repetition of geometric and polychromatic patterns. So is it with Exhibitions. The components — steam-hammers, carding-mills, sewing-machines, pictures, marble statues, big guns, dolls, colos- sal looking-glasses, pickle-bottles, carved bedsteads, embroidered petticoats, china vases, iron safes, anchors, and toothpicks — are always at hand. Once in a decade, or oftener if the Exhibition craze be taken the whole world round, the powers that be issue an edict ordering some Imperial, Koyal, or Republican Commission ; and an architect is retained to design some new ornamental cylin- der — usually an extremely hideous one — for the kaleidoscopic dis- play. The manufacturers and the shopkeepers have an enhanced supply of particoloured vitreous fragments forthcoming ; and on a given day Authority gives the cyhnder a shake, to the accompani- ment of a flourish of trumpets and a discharge of artillery, and millions press to the peephole, and, surveying the new geometrical pattsrn, ejaculate — — — Oh ! just as they do at a public garden when tlie final pyrotechnic bouquet begins to unfold its glories. But there will be more Exhibitions and more fireworks in days to come. It is inexpedient, perhaps, to be enthusiastic about anything ; but in no direction is enthusiasm of the gushing kind so much to be deprecated as in the case of International Exhibitions as ' Con- gresses of Industry' and * Festivals of Peace.' The World's Fair in Hyde Park in 1851 was immediately followed by a Revolution in France ; the Paris Exhibition of 1855 was held in the very midst of a devastating war between three of the Great European Powers ; two years and a half after the Exposition Universelle of 1867 — disturbed as it was in its actual course by the Mexican catastrophe and the Luxembourg squabble — came Worth and Sedan ; and, as for 1878, all that we can say as yet is that we should be very thankful that Western Europe has escaped the horrors of war by which the East has been devastated, and that we have not the slightest idea of what is to come next. Since the com- mencement of the era of Peace, twenty-seven years ago, the world has witnessed — International Exhibitions notwithstanding — no less than ten horrible wars in Turkey, the Crimea, India, China, Italy, America, Germany, and France, to say nothing of interne- cine wars in Spain and Mexico, and hostihties with savage tribes all over the earth. So pay your franc at a cl^it de tahac ; sur- render your ticket at the Porte Rapp ; take your fill of the sights aftd scenes of the Trocadero and the Champ de Mars ; but forbeai* 154 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. to 3'ielcl to the pleasing liallucination that International Exhibi- tions have anything to do with politics. If people want to go to war they will set to cutting one another's throats at apparently the most inappropriate seasons — at dinner time, or during the Long Vacation, during church-time, or on Sundaj^, or on the Derby- day. Cain, when his blood is up, will not stay his hand because Abel is just finishing a beautiful model of JMesopotamia in carved cork. In that section of the Exposition Universelle where British pottery makes so opulent and interesting a displa}^, wheresoever one turns there is reason for congratulation. We may not be, it is true, originating anything of so marked a nature as the famous last-century jasper ware of Josiah Wedgwood, for which Flaxman furnished the designs. It is not, perhaps, often in many centuries that such a step in ceramic art is accomplished as that which made the fame of Flaxman and the fortune of the Wedgwoods. Still, it must be remembered that the potter's art in the first four decades of this century exhibited much more of the symptoms of decline than of advance ; that the Worcester manufactory in par- ticular faded into almost nothingness, and that, but for the con- tinued excellence of the Spode ware — the basis of the existing ware of the Copelands, and the white statuary figures of the same house — not only France, but Bavaria, Austria, and Italy, which have never lost the way of making majolica, surpassed us as art- potters. The first step towards the recovery of our old position was the production by Minton of encaustic tiles ; this resuscita- tion of a very ancient art being, without doubt, indirectly due to the influence of the late Sir Charles Barry and of the elder Pugin. Coloured ^csserrt? arranged in a classically geometrical pattern were used by the first-named architect more than forty years ago for the pavement of the atrium of the Reform Club. Then came the building of the new Houses of Parliament, and the erection, all over the country, of a vast number of churches and more or less ecclesiastical structures of media3val design. These necessitated the employment, on the most extensive scale, of painted tiles — ' Dutch' tiles, as from old associations it was customary contemptuously to call them, and which had long been relegated to the meanest uses. Enamelled tiles opened the door for encaustic, and in these the Mintons attained a deserved preeminence as designers and executants. Tiles, both enamelled and encaustic, are so beautiful to look upon, so durable, and so cleanly, that it is not to be wondered at that their use should have been adapted to almost every scheme of domestic decoration. They will harmonise with any style ; BIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE EXHIBITION, 155 they are susceptible of the most varied embellishment by means of relievo ; they form the leading feature in decorative chimney- pieces, and can be combined as dados with mural i:)ainting of the highest order. Painted tiles too can be used for the adornment of ceilings with curved surfaces — witness the remarkable 'plafond of the Bibliotheque Nationale in the Rue Richelieu, executed about a dozen years since by Messrs. Copeland ; and an immense development may be expected in this department of the potter's industry when English house-builders have the common sense to substitute, as the people of Lisbon do, ornamental tile-work for tlie present dingy brick-fronts of their dwellings. From how many- visitations of dust and soot — to say nothing of eye-weariness and mind-weariness — should not we be relieved by the introduction of so beneficent an innovation, which could not fail to make the out- sides of our habitations bright and tasteful, and which every shower of rain would effectually cleanse ! Here, then, to my thinking, do we stand, substantially, in the matter of potter3\ Nothing of any great importance has been actually invented by us during the last hundred years, with the exception of Wedgwood's jasper, and the late Alderman Cope- land's white statuary ; but we have revived many ancient and well-nigh extinct wares, and we have borrowed from our neigh- bours numerous beautiful processes, and adapted them so skil- fully as to make them virtually our own. The incised and applique ware of the Messrs. Doulton rivals the best old girs Flamand; we have completely mastered the most exquisite form of cameo working in china, in the pCite-sur-pdte process ; we are successfully imitating the very finest majolica and Delia Robbia, and we could as successfully imitate Palissy ware, but for the in- grained prejudice which exists among the English public against plates and dishes decorated in high relief with the effigies of toads and lizards, whelks, rock limpets, and snails. When we do get hold of a piece of real Palissy we hang it on a wall, as high up as we can, in order that our fastidious e^^es may not be offended by the sight of a number of creeping and slimy creatures wriggling over the surface of things from which people are supposed to have eaten and drunk. For the rest, so spirited have been our manu- facturers and so skilful our chemists that we possess ever}' kind of paste known in pottery, from ' egg-shell ' to stone ware, and in the way of colour we have acquired nearly all the tints in the world- famed 'Palette de Sevres.' We lack only one or two nuances of the tint known as ' Celadon.' The great State porcelain manu- factory of France has two or three blues which are not in our 15G PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. palette, but we do not want them. Their own 'bleu du Roi' is not perfect ; and we have British blues which they cannot surpass. In monumental porcelain, Sevres, it should be as frankly as cheerfully admitted, beats us hollow. We could produce, it may be, vases fifteen feet high, decorated with elaborately pamted pictures of the Apotheosis of Psyche or the Battle of Arbela ; but who would purchase those elaborate works of art when they were comi^leted ? The fahrique de Sevres is supported by the j'rench Government, and is one of the national glories of France. The prodigious pieces produced at Sevres are designed for the embel- lishment of the national Palaces, or to serve as presents to foreign Sovereigns. Our potteries are private undertakings, of which the proprietors are bound to satisfy the inclinations of individual customers. The manufacturers have been doing their best these five-and-twenty years past to elevate the taste of their customers by providing them with better models and patterns ; still, they cannot be expected to sacrifice themselves unreservedly, on the altar of public spirit, by fabricating grosses 'pieces which the general public would decline to purchase. When an English gentleman furnishes his house, and thinks that a pair or so of very large vases would look well in his drawing-room, his mind's eye instinctively turns towards China or Japan. Settmg aside Satsuma or * Grand Man- darin,' a big Oriental vase of tolerable handsomeness will not cost him a tithe of what he would have to pay for a trophy of similar dimensions from Sevres. If English potters threw themselves into the rash speculation of producing huge vases elaborately embel- lished with paintings the expense would be absolutely ruinous. We have as yet no national school of china-painting, and if a first- rate English artist in oil or water colours — say, Mr. Poynter or Sir John Gilbert — could be persuaded to master the mysteries of painting pictures which have to be ' fired,' he would probably expect a thousand guineas for the Apotheosis of Psyche or the Battle of Arbela. Now at Sevres the outlay on the artistic main- cVoeuvre is by no means the costliest part of the process of produc- ing a vase of gigantic size. There are very few porcelain painters, including even those oila premiere force at Tours, who receive more than ten guineas a week ; and Ps3^che's Apotheosis or Alexander's victory would not occupy a skilful French pi-actitioner more than a month or six weeks. The English customer, meanwhile having satisfied his ambition by the purchase of some very big Oriental vases, does not, as a rule, wish to buy anything larger from the English potter than a trio of Minton's macaws, to hang in his windows, or some Jardinieres for flowers, or the celebrated bull* SIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE EXIirDITION. 157 dog, or the admired Dutch pug, or, at the most, the graceful life- size faun in coloured earthenware. His taste after that sets un- mistakably in the direction of small pottery — * pilgrim-bottles,' bowls, standishes, and similar bibelots, and especially of teacups and saucers. The display of these last-named wares in the Eng- lish Pottery Department is literally amazing, both in abundance and variet}'" and points unmistakably to that which is reall}' our forte in these periodical exhibitions of skill and industr3% Although I have several times alluded to the jNIinton ceramic dis- play in the Palace of the Champ de Mars, the mention I have made of it has only been vaguely incidental. So much praise, however, has been bestowed, not merely by native, but by continental judges, on the ware of the world-famous firm of Stoke-upon-Trent, that a slightly more detailed notice of some of the principal features of this magnificent assemblage of art-pottery may be acceptable. The court devoted to it was designed by the distinguished archi- tect, Mr. E. Norman Shaw, R.A. Between two of tbe porches of entrance stands a large majolica jardiniere, and within another entrance a smaller jardiniere of Henri Deux ware. One side of the interior of the court is devoted to a rich display of Minton's tiles for wall and hearth decoration. The most conspicuous exhi- bits in the interior are mideniably the superbly beautiful specimens of the curious and delicate ceramic process known as imtc-sur-imte, executed by the gifted French artist M. Solon-Miles, who was formerly engaged at the State porcelain manufactory at Sevres, but is now permanently domiciled on English soU. The specialty of M. Solon-Miles' work consists in the decoration being painted, or rather modelled, in relief, v/ith clay in a liquid state, on the object to be embellished, which is also in the unbaked stage. Thus the name given to the process is technically correct. It is really 'paste upon paste.' The very greatest care is necessary in manipulation ; and, the colours being opaque, the hand of a true ai-tist is needed to fix the various gradations of light and shade. Among the principal examples of x>dte-sur-x>dte are an Etruscan vase, modelled from the original in the Museum at Naples — the subject, 'Cupid the Orator' — on an olive-green ground, understood to be the grandest work which INI. Solon-Miles has yet produced ; two vases with has reliefs of amorini on a cela- don ground, the stjde Louis Quatorze ; some vases in the form of pilgi'im's bottles, the groups on which represent Cupid bemg instructed by a nymph, and Venus in the guise of a chiffoniere picking up young loves with her crochet ; also a couple of arabesque vases decorated with graceful bas-reliefs, and exhibiting a 158 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ^^mmm^m PAIR OF PILGRIM-BOTTLE-SHAPED V.\^ES. SIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE EXHIBITION. 159 clever combination of various coloured claj^s, and a bas-relief ornamented pink vase of a hue which the Sevres manufactory has not yet sought to introduce. There are, moreover, apair of vases, of large dimensions, with cupids clustered around tlieir stems, and encircled above by a ring of cupi- dons in pdte-sur'jocUe engaged in demolishing chains of iron, and replacing them by chains of roses, also several delicate dessert plates, and a charming presse -papier, with a young maiden consigning her billets doux to the winds, and having this sage inscription on its reverse : * Grains les curieux, Ne jette rien. Garder est bien ; Brvller est niieux.' Passing to other exhibits in porcelain, much and admiring in- terest has been taken in the * Pro- metheus Vases ' in turquoise ; the handsome vases with cupids by Boullemier, after An- gelica Kauffmann; the des- sert plates of bleu du roi, painted with subjects from Moliere's plays ; a Rose Dubarri vase, and plates of gros bleu, in the old Sevres style, painted with subjects after Boucher. There are, moreover, perforated trays, with paintings after Teniers, some exquisitely enamelled vases in the Japanese cloi' Sonne manner, and several fine reproductions in under- glaze majolica of celebrated VASE WITH RING OF CUPIDS, PRESSE-PAPIER IN PaTE-SUK-PaTE. 160 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. portraits by Sir Joshua Keynolcls. The skilful reproductions of the Piron or Henri Deux ware are well worthy of notice, as are also the faiences in the Indian and Persian style, and a colossal vase, upheld by cupids, graduating apparently for athletes, in turquoise and gold Persian ware, of rare refinement and finish. Messrs. Copeland & Sons of Stoke-upon-Trent, and New Bond Street, London, exhibit a small, but choice and compact, ceramic collection, unpretendingly but adequately chronicHng the develop- ment of the art-potter's skill during more than a century in Eng- land. In the variety, delicacy, and quaintness of teapots, cups, saucers, milk-jugs and sugar-basins, Messrs. Copeland oflfer to the reflective mind a whole history in miniature of tea-drinking in England. We pass from Queen Anne, ' who sometimes counsel took, and sometimes tea ' — pronounce ' tay ' — and Lady Masham, to Hervey the Handsome, and the beautiful Molly Lepell. Mrs. Delany might have filled that cup for Swift. Dr. Johnson might — Johnson-like — have quaffed his souchong from that saucer, part of the most dearly-prized tea-sets possessed by Mrs. Thrale, at Streatham. Surely that teapot must have belonged to Hannah More. No ; it was Madame d'Arblay's, a birthday gift from her genial papa, the Harmonious Doctor, in the happy days when she was Fanny Burne.y, ere she accepted the dignified office of lacing the grim Queen Charlotte's stays and being bullied by Madam Schwellenburg. I am sure that milk-jug was a special pet with Lady Blessington. Or perhaps that sugar-basin found favour in the e3'es of the divine Sarah, Countess of Jersey. Ah me, per- haps ! The original models of those quaint tea and coffee services have been perchance long since shattered and ground into dust, even as the wise and good and beautiful to whom they once belonged. The poor potsherds are hidden under some obscure Monte Testaccio, not to be disentombed, not to be re-integrated, on this side the Gulf; but the magic wand, the swift wheel, the cunning hand, the deft pencil, the quickening furnace of the potter, make all these quaint and jiretty forms live again. Past and Present are also nobly illustrated in the wares of Josiali Wedgwood & Sons of Etruria, Staffordshire. The clanun ct veiiei'ahile nomen of the founder of the great house has lost nothing of its strength ; but the firm wisely moves with the times, and every grade of taste in art-pottery can be gratified by an inspection of the Wedgwood ware. There are great vases and pieces montces of gloAving hues, 2:)lateavx superbly painted with fruit and flowers and figure subjects ; there are sumptuous panels in relief, illustrating the Seven Ages and the Canterbury Pilgrim- SIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE EXHIBITION. 161 age ; there is, at least, one plaque painted by the himented and inimitable Lessore ; but the chief charm of the Wedgwood col- lection still lies in the wondrously graceful and purely classical hassi-relievi on blue, chocolate, and white grounds, on which the influence of the graphic puissance and unerring taste of John Flaxman are still triumphantly manifest. The Worcester Porcelain Works continue in the progressive path on which they entered some years ago, under the able guid- ance of their accomplished director 'Mi\ E. W. Binns. Great taste is especially apparent in the numerous adaptations from the Japanese noticeable in their collection, the moderately quaint and the beautiful being often combined with rare judgment and success, and the distmctive warm ivory tone imparting to many of their productions a refined and charming effect. The enamels which the house display are of the highest order ; and their table ser- vices in the old Worcester st34e prove that while the manufacture has in nowise deteriorated, the forms adopted have become far more artistic and graceful. AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONCERTS IN THE TROCADERO PALACE (BY CHAM). ' The Russian music is about to begin — some icy air no doubt, so you had Ipetter turn up the collar of your overcoat,' .N<:i;uiJK. r. 183. ON SUNDRY OLD -WOMEN. 183 gros lot being one huudred thousand francs. There are two second prizes of fifty thousand francs each, and an abundance of twenty and ten franc prizes. Thus on the morrow any thrifty old concierge, cocotte, chiffonnih'e, or loueuse de chaises, who has scraped up enough to buy a twenty-five franc ohligation de la Ville de Pans, may find herself the winner of four thousand pounds sterling in hard cash, or of four hundred pounds — or, in far greater probability, of just nothing at all. Fortune, to my mind, is not half so blind as she is maliciously capricious and unjustly per- verse. She appears to delight m giving more than they previously possessed to people ^Yho have already got a great deal, and in 184 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. lecaving her poorer votaries poorer, by the price of their gambling stakes, than she found them. I was acquainted many years ago with a Spaniard who was twice within a single figure of winning ^he hundred thousand dollar prize in the Eoyal Havana Lottery. On the first occasion his next-door and fortunate neighbour was a Philadelphian millionnaire. On the next the grand-prize winner was Queen Isabella of Spain. The notorious injustice of Fortune will not hinder at all the thrifty old women in France who hold chances in the Municipal lottery from dreaming that their own particular ticket has come out of the prize-wheel ; and in the long-run perhaps there is as much happiness in dreaming that you are wealthy as in being actually rich. In Paris there is positively a Journal des Tirages — a weekly periodical devoted exclusively to lottery news, to the advertisement of new projects, and to the publication of the prize-lists. That all these ventures are conducted on principles of the strictest integrity there is not the slightest reason to doubt, and indeed the police keep a very sharp look-out for schemes which bear a suspicious resemblance to swindles ; still the frequent recurrence of lotteries keeps alive a constant and uneasy feeling of cupidity and avidity. The wheel of fortune is for ever in the minds of the poor. Avarice is the vice of age, and the Old Woman is incessantly dreaming of lucky numbers. Who knows ? She may he2>ortiere, a cliiffonniere, a sweeper of the streets to-day ; but to-morrow she may win the (jros lot. Her day's earnings may not exceed a franc ; to-morrow she may be the possessor of a hundred thousand. So she hoards and hoards and hoards, always hoping to win the big prize, and sometimes going crazy because she fails to get it. To this add the easiness with which anybody in Paris, Jack or Jill, as well as the millionnaire, may trot up the steps of the Bourse, mingle in the serried crowd which struggles and howls in that Temple of Mammon, and with a few francs' capital gamble in stocks and shares to his or her heart's content. Into the charmed circle protected by iron railings — the arena in which the bankers and the agents cle change throw up their arms, and fling about scraps of paper, and shriek from ten to five like folks dis- tracted — the poorer classes are not privileged to enter ; but, through intermediaries ready to hand, they can gamble with far greater ease on the steps and in the aisles of the Bourse than they can bet on a racecourse. The closing prices of stocks and shares are chalked up, at sunset, outside a hundred monej'^-changers' shops round about the Bourse, on the Boulevards, and in the Palais Royal ; and the Old Woman may often be recognised as the most ON SUNDRY OLD WOMEN. 185 INTERIOR OF THE PARIS BOURSE. attentive student of a schedule wliicli to the vast majority of Enghshwomen would be as so many cabalistic characters scrawled on a blackboard, and as inscrutable as an algebraical equation or a problem from Euclid. The English Old Woman does not 186 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. speculate on the Stock Exchange, and, unless she happens to reside at Doncaster or at Newmarket, she does not bet on horse- races. She is rarely even a subscriber to the Art Union, although the rector of her parish is possibly a patron of that excellent CAEICATURE OF THE BOURSE, BY EOBIDA. institution. The French Old Woman is a confirmed and desperate gamester ; but, on the other hand, she is phenomenally frugal, and she does not drink gin. I have read in my time some scores of pamphlets and speeches written or delivered by noble statesmen and political economists on that virtue of thrift in which the Avorking classes in England are so notoriously and so deplorably deficient. Thrift is indeed one of the very brightest of the flowers which adorn the j^olitico- economicid jMVtcrrc. Were we thrifty as a nation there would be no indigence, no pauperism, no deaths from destitution. The public- houses and the pawnbrokers might both shut up shop. There would be no crime. * Ah ! le grand peut-etre.' Unfortunately, metaphorically although not botanically, there is no rose without a thorn. Cupidity, rapacity, and francs and centimes on thQ ON SUNDEY OLD WOMEN. 187 L\ BOURSE DES DAMES. brain are tlie thorns wliicli cluster most thickly about the stalk of the shining French virtue of thrift, and which make the French Old Woman an extremely unlovely and repulsive pers^onage. Thrift is almost to as gi'eat an extent the leadnig characteristic of the shopkeeping classes; but with them it is not associated with parsimony. The Parisian houtiquier is no mggard no miserly curmudgeon, lilve the cidtivateur of the provinces. Ihe 188 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. shopkeeper and his wife are, on the contrary, genial, free-handed, self-indulgent people, within certain recognised limits. They are fond of cheap amusements. They prefer the feasts which do not cost much : and it is a principle never departed from that the exjienses of their menus ijlaisirs must not in any way interfere with the sum of the profits wliicli they think they ought to derive from their trade. Strict adherence to this principle makes Paris shopkeepers about the most grasping and overreaching tradespeople that I have ever met with in the course of a tolerably extensive perambulation of the civilised world. The principle of reahsing so much benefice, by whatever means the profit is to be effected, has another and very unpleasant result. It leads to very inferior articles being sold for very extortionate prices, and to no department of trade will this remark api^ly more closely than to the article of gloves. You may give five and six francs a pair in Paris, and in the most fashion- able shops in Paris, for gloves with two buttons, and from eight to twelve francs for ladies' gloves with from three to six buttons. In Piccadilly or in Piegent Street about the same prices might be charged ; but the difference is simply this, that in London at a well-laiown shop you always obtain for a first-rate price a first-rate article. In Paris you pay the high price, and you very often get in return nothing but a rubbishing article which splits up the back so soon as you draw it on. As for the three-franc-fifty gloves which are sold in the Passages, which are wretchedly cut, which are of miserably unsound skins, which are made without gussets, and which are often soiled, I should advise j^ou to have nothing to do with them. You may buy better in Tottenham Court Road for eighteenpence. From the last three-franc-fifty gloves I ventured upon — a pair at five francs seventy-five having turned out a lamentable failure — the left thumb came off bodily ere I had got the digits well ' home.' This is rendered all the more exasperat- ing by the remembrance that about the best gloves in Europe are made at Grenoble, and that the very best of the Grenoble gloves are sent to England simply because the English customer will not j)ay a large price for an inferior article. But the foreign visitor to Paris is completely at the mercy of the shopkeeper, and is fain to take upon trust any article which the shopkeeper desires to sell him, and at whatever rate he chooses to ask for it. The houtiquier on his side is so remarkably frugal, so exemplarily thrifty, that he forgets to be honest. XVI. GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION. Sept. 9. Had I deToted every one of the letters written from this city to an examination of the works of art in painting and statuary in the Galerie des Beaux Arts in the Palace of the Champ de Mars, and had I given to each work of real excellence its due meed of criticism and approbation, it is very probable that by this time I should barely have exhausted a survey of the schools of France, Great Britain, Italy, and Germany, and that I should have been constrained to leave the artists of Austria, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Eussia, and the United States without anj^ notice at all. The Meissoniers — of the works of which admirable master there is an astonishingly varied and brilliant disj)lay, from his grandest to his tiniest productions — would have demanded at least a couple of letters ; and since the dead as well as the livmg among French pamters are abundantly represented at the Exhibition, I should have found myself filling page after page with enthusiastic comments on the genius and capacity of Ingres and Eugene Delacroix, of Decamps and Diaz, of Cabanel and Bouguereau, Bonnat and Gerome, De Neuville and Frere. I should have required more and more space for Herr Makart's magnificent picture, in the Austro- Hungarian section, of the * Entry of Charles V. into Antwerp ; ' certainly the finest work in the historico-romantic style ever painted since Tony Kobert-Fleury's ' Siege of Corinth,' and a replica of which should, to my thinking, be forthwith secured by the British Government, in order that copies in monochrome might be made of the painting and distributed among the Schools of Art throughout the United Kingdom, were it only to teach the students the principles of drawing and draping the human figure, and of arranging vast masses in well-balanced and har- 190 PAPJS HERSELF AGAIN. monious composition. Photography could not do justice to this superb painting. The groups woukl be bhivred, and the nicely- graduated tones of light and shade would be killed in the camera; but a monochrome might be advantageously photo- graphed, or still more efficiently lithographed, say on four large sheets, which could be imperceptibly joined together.* The famous Spanish painter Fortuny, prematurely snatched away just as he was beginning to realise the fruits of his bright genius, would also have claimed extended notice. A few years ago, when I was at Seville, I could have purchased a very spirited sketch in oil by Fortuny — it represented some muleteers drinking in a posada, I think— for twenty duros, or four pounds sterling ; but there is a microscopic sketch by the master at the Exhibition, a sketch enshrined in an immense frame of ebony and gold repousse, for which the owner has disdainfully refused 25,000 francs. ' II y aura encore du Meissonier,' remarks the owner not illogically, 'puisqu'il vit encore; mais du Fortuny il n'y en aura_ plus, puisqu'il est mort.' The renowned French master yet lives, a prosperous gentleman, and fresh things of beauty and grace may be expected from his easel ; but the poor young Sevillano was killed by the cruel Bonian fever, and the hand which worked so cunningly moulders in the tomb. Thus holders of Fortunys are firm ; and they can afford to defy even the forgers. The Spanish master's gems are, like Meissonier's paintings, so exquisitely delicate in finish that the copyist who could imitate a Fortuny or a Meissonier so as to deceive the eye of an expert must be as an executant well-nigh the compeer of the master simulated. The * Spanish Marriage ' is generally admitted to be Fortun5^'s masterpiece ; yet I look upon the painting of the ' Academicians of St. Luke ' in the Champ de Mars as little, if at all, inferior to the * Mariage EspagnoL' When I first saw the former work I had no catalogue with me ; and although I could not fail to admire the skilfulness of the workmanship and the brilliance and harmony of the colour, I confess that of the story told I could make but little, if anything at all. The scene depicted is a superb saloon in some continental palace, embellished with the most pompous redundancy of eighteenth-century rococo. In the centre of the smooth f/esso floor stand a group of old gentlemen, wigged, powdered, brocaded-coated, silk-stockinged, who, in admirably imagined attitudes, and with varied expressions of countenance, * Since I wrote tlie above, a splendid etching by Adrien Lalouze has been published of Makart's great work. It may be seen at 134, New Bond-street, close to the Grosvenor Gallery. GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THK EXHIBITION. 191 are criticising — what ? Upon my word, for full two minutes I could not make out what the old gentlemen Avere inspecting so critically. At length, littered about the floor, or hanging over the back of a magnificent fauteiiil, I descried a pair of high-heeled slippers, an embroidered sacqiie, and divers other articles of a lady's wearing-apparel. From these my eyes travelled upwards until they met the lady herself, who, utterly guileless of garments, was posing on the marble slab of a sumptuously carved and gilt table. The lady's attitude closely resembled that of the Venere CalHpygia in the Museum at Naples. Of course I was very much shocked ; but it behoved me to do something else besides being shocked. The old gentlemen were evidently not shocked. Who were they ? I took them at first for a group of impudent lacqueys, and the unrobed lady for some saucy Abigail who was winning a wager of the Godiva kind ; but, just as I was drifting into a con- dition of hopeless perplexity, a friend came up and unravelled the mystery. M. Fortuny's picture, according to his showing, re- presented a group of members of the Academy of St. Luke at Eome ; and they were * posing ' the female model for the benefit of the students of the Life School. I was quite content with this explanation, and never cared to seek for any other. There may be half a dozen more interpretations of Fortuny's meaning, but this was enough for me. In fact, in the case of Fortuny you care very little for the matter of the picture. It is the manner which interests, astonishes, and delights you. This manner, all surprisingly dexterous and pleas- ing as it is, cannot, however, be pronounced perfect. Fortuny, wondrously brilliant as he is as a colourist, is curiously monotonous in his texture. Wood, marble, plants and flowers, siUi, satin, wool, velvet, and tapestry work, and, finally, human flesh, all seem to have the same * grain,' so to speak, the same hard glossy metallic lustre. The audacious facility of his composition and the positivism of his colouring frequently lead also to the production of con- fusion in the spectator's mind. You fail to seize at once on the main features in the drama going on before you. The figures do not detach themselves with sufficient sharpness from the acces- sories. In the * St. Luke ' picture I had some ocular difficulty in isolating the undraped damsel from an amber-satin curtain and a 7'osso antico column. You look upon what you think to be an admirably painted cactus-leaf. It turns out to be the sea-green silk train of a lady's dress. You admire an ostensible claret-bottle. It is in reality a human leg clothed in a black- silk stocking. Surely that must be a bouquet of rare flowers. No ; it is a cardinal's 192 PARIB HERSELF AGAIN. hat, thrown carelessly on a silver salver close to a plate full of fruit. Herein I am speaking of course of Fortuny'swork generally, and not of this particular Academical performance. Surpassingly glowing and harmonious too as is the colour, the scheme of its arrangement is somewhat and too palpably an artificial one ; and in the hands of Fortuny's disciples the artifice becomes a transparent trick. One might almost adapt the diction of the cookery-book to the formula of a recipe for seizing up a plat a la Fortuny. Take a ijlaque of mother-o*-pearl ; scatter about it indiscriminately a few strawber- ries, some black Hambro' grapes, a bit of malachite, a morsel of lapis-lazuli, a few leaves of beaten gold, a sprig of coral, a stick of black sealing-wax, a lobster's claw (well boiled hien entendu), some skems of particoloured floss silk, and a pocket mirror broken up small. A few crystal drops from the drawing-room lustres, and some prismatic glass beads from Murano, will do the mixture no harm. Garnish with ferns and serve hot. Voila voire Fortuny — at the first blush, at least ; but were this all that you could enjoy from the contemplation of his work, the feast would be, at the best, but a Barmecide one. As you study him more and more intently, his marvellous subtlety and delicacy, his well-nigh unapproached deftness as an executant, and his deeply poetic feel- ing come gloriously to the front. I look upon him as a kind of Gerard Douw turned Andaluz — a Wilkie who has set up his easel in the Alhambra. The ' Village Festival ' is, to me, the * Spanish Marriage ' writ sumptuous and picturesque. One could not help being struck, in the French Fine Ai-t De- partment of the Exliibition, by the paucity of any reference, plastic or graphic, to Napoleon I. The entire Napoleonic Legend is, in truth, at a very sad discount just now in France ; and I am afraid that even in the homes of the peasantry there is but little left of the feelings once entertained for the Emperor and King so ex- quisitely touched upon in Beranger's * Souvenirs du Peuple : ' * On parlera de sa gloire. Sous le chaume, bien long-temps ; L'huinble toit, dans cinquante ans, Ne connaitra plus d'autre liistoire. La viendront les villageois. Dire alors a quelque vieille : " Par des rccits d'autrefois, M6re, abregez notre veille." " Bien dit-on qu'il nous ait nui, Le peuple encore le revere, Oui ! le revere. Parlez nous de lui, grand'm^re, Paaiez nous de lui." ' GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION, l93 I am afraid that Beranger, all staunch Republican as he had always been, was about the last of the Bonapartists sentiment- ally considered (of course I am not speaking of the political adventurers, to whom Imperialism is a trade and a speculation) ; and I am equally afraid that, in the minds of the French peasantry of the existing epoch, Bazeilles and Sedan, the requisi- tions of the Prussians, and the scarcely less odious exactions of the Fi-e\ich frcmcs-tireurs, have quite extinguished the touching memo- ries of the man of Marengo and Austerlitz. Beitasitmay, Ciesarism is ' quoted very low ' just now, not only in the political, but in the literary and artistic, market. Politically I am indifferent to the fact. Artistically, or rather archseologically, I selfishly rejoice that mementoes of the great man are to be picked up in the Paris of to-day very cheaply indeed. I nourish a cultus for Napoleon I. I enshrine him in my relic-collecting heart of hearts, not because I am ignorant of the fact of his having been, in many respects, an unconscionable scoundrel — a for- sworn, lying, murderous, selfish, tyrannous man ; but because I cannot help admiring the sub-lieutenant of the artillery regiment of La Fere, who, by his own unaided pluck, daring, decision, mental acuteness, and strength of will, contrived to become Emperor of the French, King of Italy, mediator of Switzerland, and Protector of the Confederation of the Ehine. Perhaps, take him for all in all, he was not a greater villain than Julius Cfesar, than Alexander, or than Oliver Cromwell ; and there are some who maintain Oliver to have been * the greatest prince that ever ruled in England ; ' while others hold with Lord Clarendon that the Protector of the Commonwealth, who, uncrowned as he was, died to all intents and purposes a despotic monarch, was only a ' bold bad man.' Who is good ? Was Napoleon, d la longue, quite so disreputable a character as George IV. ? He was assuredly not so great a scamp as Charles II. He did not sell his country for an annual pension from a foreign state. He did not make dukes of a multifarious progeny of byblows, and saddle his subjects with the permanent cost of the young gentlemen's maintenance. He was as great a captain as Marlborough ; but he was not quite so perjured, so impudent, so rapacious, and so mean as John Churchill. So I bow down — one must have a fetish — before the memory of Napoleon, and assiduously collect all that I can get together of painted and graven, carved and written work connected with him. The French painters and sculptors have, as abody, nothing to say, as things political go, to Marengo and Austerlitz, to Jena and Fried- 194 TARIS nERSELF AGATN. land. They sulkll}' acquiesced in the reedification of the Vendome Column, less because they gloried in the Napoleonic victories than because they disliked Courbet, ' audacious pencil-man ' one might call him, paraphrasing Mr. Carlyle's quahfication of Tom Paine — who for years had been snapping his fingers in the face of French academical art, and who had a prominent finger in flinging down the Vendome Column into the dirt. Eaffet and Bellange, Carl and Horace Vernet, the great Tambour-Majors of the Napoleonic epic, are no more ; and M. de Neuville, who, after Philippoteaux, is the most favourite exponent of modern French militarism, restricts his sympatliies to wounded Zouaves and exhausted Turcos, to c'Avonsing francs-tireurs and fantasslns o^ regiments de marche, bent double beneath their inordinate packs, trudging, rifle on shoulder, and their red trousers tucked up to the knee, along muddy roads or through ensanguined snows. Innumerable episodes of the Franco- German Avar of 1870-1 stream from the studios of contemporary French painters (many of whom, it must be remembered, took, like poor dead Henri Eegnault, an active and heroic part in the struggle). Solferino and Magenta, Balaclava and the Malakoff, are reckoned of as little account as Pharsalia or Marathon ; and if the military artists do, now and again, conde- scend to go a little further back than Le Bourget or Reichshoffen, it is to dwell on the Republican glories of Jemappes or Fleurus, to extol the prowess of Hoche, or to show us the corpse of Marceau, lying on its bed of death and glory, and suiTounded, not only by weeping Frenchmen, but by deeply moved and sorrowfully reveren- tial Austrian officers. As for the 2'>ctit cliapcaii and the redingote grise, the grand reviews which the Petit Caporal used to hold in the Carrousel, the heroic disasters of the retreat from Russia, the crowning glories and disasters of Quatre Bras and Mont St. Jean — all these once-famous fasti are now but so many old wives' tales, despised, neglected, and all but forgotten. I should like to write a book on the successive influence of politics on French art. It might be made very interesting ; but, if justice were done to the subject, the work would be too long. For the rest, it would be diflicult to name one single human thing in France which has not been influenced by politics. I read latel}'' a notice of a book entitled Lc Parfait Chareutier (the Complete Porkbutcher and Tripe-shopkeeper's Companion), in which the author considered the feasibility of adapting the chareuteric of the ancien regime to the principles of 1789 ! Meanwhile, strange to relate, the Italians have, as painters and sculptors, been faithful to the memory of ' Napoleon il AN EXECUTION AT THE ALHAMBRA, THOM THE PICTURE BY HENRI KEGNAULT, 2 196 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Grande.' Tliey were the first, after liis coronation as King of Ital}'- at Milan, to give him the appellation. They have not yet revoked the grandiose diploma. He hetrayed and cozened them, as he did most people. He promised them an United Italy, and gave them instead a curtailed Lomhardo-Venetian kingdom, governed by a puppet viceroy, and a kingdom of Naples ruled by his swashbuckling satellite, Murat, the ex-postilion, who had modesty enough (or it may have been fanfaronade) to keep his post-boy's whip under a glass case in one of his royal palaces. ' Je suis venu de la,' Joachim was wont to say, pointing to the whip. Finally, Napoleon broke, like a thief in the night, into the Quirinal ; kidnapped the Pope ; stole the triple diadem from its shelf, and put it, with the keys of St. Peter, into his pocket. It was the most audacious act of burglary that histoiy had ever recorded. He annexed the States of the Church to France ; the Roman Cam- pagna became the department of the Tiber ; and Perugia was the clief lieu of the department of Thrasymene. He tyrannised over the Italians generally, and squandered their best young blood without stint in his German and Pussian campaigns. Yet he wrought an immensity of material good in the Italian penin- sula : built roads, bridges, hospitals, and aqueducts ; established schools and pawnbroking establishments— thus demolishing petty usury; and notably, he very sternly put a stop to the horrible manufacture of soprani. He had his reward. Nations are onl}^ too placable. The misdeeds of the Fii'st Napoleon were soon for- gotten by the Italians. They remembered the good which he had done, and the glory which his name — that of a simple Corsican gentleman — had brought their country. They mourned his exile and his death with genuine sorrow ; and in the Cinque Maggio, Alessandro INIanzoni has stricken a sublimer chord than has been touched even by Beranger and Victor Hugo. During his lifetime Antonio Canova made the classic lineaments of Napoleon imperish- ably famous in marble. I may ask fairly, without fear of contra- diction, whether, with the exception of Napoleon, there is a single historical personage of modern times whose form could be plas- tically presented undraped? What should we say to a naked Brougham, a naked William Pitt — imagine their noses ! — an un- draped Peel, a disrobed Gladstone, a Beaconsfield * mid nodings on ' ? Napoleon I. in Canova's statue, now one of the most highl^'- prized treasures possessed by the Duke of Wellington at Apsley House, bears, with triumphant success, the crucial test of the nude. You forget that he was a little man — not only little, but actually 'stumpy' — you forget all the spiteful libels of Michelet GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION. 197 about his having had no eyebrows, and his hair being normally of a sandy-brown, but darkened by pomatum. You see only the classic hero, as classic as the Antinous, as classic as the Apollo Belvedere, as classic as the Discobolos, and heroic enough to hold, as Canova's statue holds, the effigy of Victory in his conquering right hand. The fidelity with which the Italians have adhered to that Napo- leonic legend for the time being so scornfully discredited in France is significantly shown in the noble picture by Professor Didioni of Milan, entitled * Per Eagioni di Stato' (For Pteasons of State). The scene is one of the most gorgeous of the saloons in the palace of the Tuileries. Everywhere, on carpets and hangings, on couches and chairbacks, on panels and picture-frames, occurs the cogniz- ance of the Emperor and King — the crowned *N.' wreathed with laurels. The time is in the year '10 ; and Caesar is at the height of his grandeur and prosperity. He has reared his brazen column in the Vendome square. He is building his Arch of Triumph hard by the Barrier of the liltoile. He has held his congress of crowned satellites at Erfurt ; and Talma has travelled thither, at the imperial bidding, to play before * a pit-full of kings.' During this same congress, at a grand state banquet, the blood of a German Vice-Chamberlain runs cold in his veins (so the Vice-Chamber- lain says) when he hears this upstart Ccesar, this Jupiter Scapin, begin a story thus : * When I was a sub-lieutenant in the regi- ment of La Fere.' The insolent ! Professor Didioni gives us a wonderful portrait of Napoleon in the * Eagioni di Stato.' It is only a back view ; but the squarely-moulded head, the somewhat rounded shoulders, the swallow-tailed uniform coat of the Chas- seurs of the Guard, the broad red ribbon of the Legion, the shapely lower limbs clad in kerseymere smalls and white silk hose, —all these are unmistakably Napoleonic. But why is his Majesty the Emperor and King shuffling out of the room with a gait very much resembling that of a convicted pickpocket shambling out of the dock at the Old Bailey, when Mr. Montagu Williams has done his best, and the chief warder of Coldbath Fields his worst (by proving previous convictions), for him, and the judge has given the dread doom of eighteen months' hard labour ? Why is there a guilty, mortified — I cannot without a paradox say shamefaced, but still a thoroughly humiliated expression in the very back of his Majesty ? The reason is miserably obvious. It has just been his painful duty to inform the wife of his bosom — the wife of his struggling and poverty-stricken youth — that, 'per ragioni di stato,' he intends to turn her out of doors, to wrench asunder the bonds 198 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN". which the Church has tied, and to wed another woman. Appro- priatel}^ enough, the man who has just made such an avowal sneaks off, like a caitiff-culprit as he is, in the hackground.^ In the foreground, stretched, agonising, cploree, despairing, in a magnificent fauteuil of velvet and gold, is poor Josephine. _ Well might she swoon ; hut her long-pent-up anguish finds relief in a passion of tears. The lady of honour who tends her imperial mis-^ tress, momentarily turns her head towards the retreating figure of the Emperor, and eyes him with a look of concentrated wrath and scorn. One hand holds a handkerchief, with Avhich she would fain dry Josephine's tears ; hut the other hand is vengefully clenched. I fancy that this high-mettled dame cVhonneiir would ' go for ' the recreant Cj^sar an she dared. I fancy that her own husband, say M. le Marechal Georget, Due de Dandin, would pass rather an uncomfortable quarter of an hour were he to hint to Madame Ja Marechale the expediency of a divorce and a separate maintenance ' per ragioni di stato.' * I'll reasons of State you ! ' I think I hear Madame la Marechale exclaim as she seizes the handle of the silver coffeepot. But poor Josephine was never a woman of any spirit. She lacked muscle of mind. She was a Creole, and had all the Creole mollesse. Her attitude in the picture is one only of dolorous submission. The execution of Professor Didioni's picture is superb. The colour is as glowing and the handling as dexterous as can be found in any example of the Fortuny or Madrazo school ; but he has not been betrayed into any of those chromatic tours de force which so closely trench upon trickery. The costumes of the Empress and her suivante are scrupulously faithful to the fashions of the epoch delineated. The heavy trains of satin and brocade, the Marie de' Medicis ruff, the long gloves with eight buttons, the jewelled stomachers and necklaces, are all unimpeachably ' style Premier Empire.' As regards the furniture and accessories, one might be puzzled to tell whence an Italian, resident in the capital of Lombardy, had acquired so curiously accurate a knowledge of the upholstery and decorations characteristic of the First Empire, were it not remembered that the royal palace at Milan still boasts the furniture and the embellishments which it possessed seventy years ago, when it was the residence of Eugene Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy. I take this picture of Professor Didioni to be an example of the very highest form of historical fienre — such genre aa was so capably illustrated by our own lamented Augustus Egg, and, in the earlier stages of his career, by the more recently to be deplored Edward Matthew Ward, E.A. It will be rememberecl GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION, 199 that the divorce of Napoleon and Josephine furnished Mr. Ward, some sixteen )'ears ago, with the subject for a very effective picture — the effect being one of lampHght ; and I may mention that, in my own drawing-room at home, I have hanging two powerful pen- and-ink sketches, by my lamented friend, of the retreatmg figure of Napoleon — back views as in the Didioni picture — and suggesting the same guilty sneaking gait. These sketches were made for the picture of ' The last Meeting of Napoleon I. and Queen Charlotte of Prussia at Tilsit.' It is certain that poor E. M. Ward never saw the * Ragioni di Stato,' yet by a curious coincidence the atti- tude of his swooning Prussian queen closely resembles that of the despairing Josephine. The place taken by Russia in the Fine Arts Department of the Exhibition was, both graphically and plastically, a very prominent one. Do you remember the colossal composition of M. Sieme- radski, * Les Torches Vivantes de N^ron' (Nero's Living Illumi- nations) ? This astounding work may have been suggested to M. Siemeradski by reading M. Ernest Kenan's Apotres. Nero was assuredly the most sensational theatrical manager of his age. In getting up melodramas with * unprecedented spectacular effects ' he was unrivalled. Blase with his scenes in the circus, in which the wretched Christians were only torn to pieces by wild beasts, the imperial Ducrow conceived the idea of a grand nocturnal /efe — a kind of infernal Vauxhall or diabolical Cremorne, with so many hundred additional Galileans as precursors of the * twenty thou- sand additional lamps ' of the old ' royal property.' So he lighted up the long esplanade of the Golden House with a perfectly new and original series of ' Torches Vivantes.' A detachment of Christians — among whom there may have been some criminals whom it was deemed expedient to execute in a decorative manner : between the lamp-post and the Gemonian Steps there was not much to choose : — were neatly smeared from head to foot with pitch. Bands of tow, equally well tarred, were wound round their limbs, so that they might catch fire all the more quickly ; and they were then, at given intervals, hoisted up to iron standards of highly ornamental design, and connected one with the other by festoons of flowers. What jokes the Roman workmen must have cracked — mercurial children of the sunny South ! — as they coated the luckless Gahleans wit!/ pitch and tar, and dabbed lumps of resin-indued tow over them, and so garrotted and triced them up to the ornamental standards ! Tarring and feathering in the Northern States of America, or tarring and cottoning in the South (the last a freak frequently played with Abolitiomsts prior to the Great Civil War), could have 200 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. been as nothing, looked upon as a frolic, compared with the racy humours of the Golden House. The night of festivity being come, and the Palatine Court assembled, on a signal being given the human torches were all at once kindled. "What horrid yells, what fearful groans, what piteous appeals for mercy, must have come from those poor roasting bodies up there, among the fes- toons of flowers ! It was part of the inscrutable wisdom of Provi- dence not to permit the Devil then and there to make his appear- ance and carry away the Emjjeror Nero to hell; nay, many centuries afterwards, the Living Torches of the Maison Doree were allowed to serve several generations of Grand Inquisitors in Spain, Por- tugal, Rome, Goa, and other places with models and exemplars for that brilliantly orthodox entertainment, truly spectacular in its mise en scene, the auto dafe, M. Siemeradski has done his best with his horribly suggestive subject. Nero's Golden House, imposing in its architecture, occupies two-thirds of the canvas, and staircases and galleries are thronged with the elite of Roman society ; members of consular families, senators, sediles, knights, and Vestal Virgins, mingled with gladiators, mountebanks, dancing girls, meretrices, and slaves— the last only too happy that it was not their turn this time to be tarred and towed, and hung up as aerial bonfires. The Emperor Nero was, I have no doubt, immensely pleased with the performance. I wonder what the great Roman ladies and the Vestal Virgins thought of it. Well, the ladies of the court of Louis Quinze went to see the wretched Damiens suffer, in the Place de Greve, tortures quite as atrocious as those inflicted on the Galileans on the Palatine Hill. The miserable monomaniac who had feebly pushed a penknife against one of the ribs of the Most Christian King had, what with the question ordinaire and the question extraordinaire — what with the boots, the thumbildns, and the picket, been tormented half to death or ever he came to the scaffold. When they got him there, Sanson and his men tore his flesh repeatedly with iron pincers, and poured melted lead, pitch, sulphur, and what not into the gaping wounds. Then he was tied hands and feet to tlie tails of four horses, which were beaten and spurred in contrary directions, with the intent of tearing his body in four quarters. That won- derful machine. Heaven-built, called the human frame — an appa- ratus which so soon as we begin to luiderstand something of its mechanism we proceed to abuse — proved, however, in Damien's case, much tougher than the sentencing judges and the performing executioners had imagined. The wretch would not come to pieces without much sawing at his sinews and jagging at his articulations GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION. 201 by Sanson and his aides. Meanwhile the four horses were fiercely slashed by the whips of the assistants to make them pull the stronger. * 0, les pauv' zevaux ! ' (0, the poor horses !) squealed, in the lisping court-jargon of the time, the great ladies from Ver- sailles. They had been diverting themselves with this hellish butchery, as though it had been an opera or a ballet. Some of them brought pantins or puppets, the limbs of which were set in motion by means of a string, to the show in the Place de Greve. Well, if 'slaughter' be 'God's daughter,' as the mild Words- worth, 'booing his pottery'* at Grasmere, crudely, yet perhaps truty, put the matter, cruelty would certainly appear to be humanity's foster-sister. We are all abominably cruel, in words or in deeds, at some period or another. 'Get age est sans pitie,* the good La Fontaine wrote, of children. Our young ones pore over the pretty pictures of animals in Little Folks or Chatterbox, and then they go and worry the kitten, or make the life of the dog a torment to him. Schoolboys will resort to butchers' slaughter- houses as to a place of entertainment, and club their pence to fee the slaughterer to kill a bullock. I saw one killed five-and-thirty years ago at Slater's, at Knightsb ridge. It was a grand sight ; but I am sure that I could not bear to see any creature deliberately killed now. Yet Spanish ladies will smilingly sit out a bullfight, the sight of which makes many strong Englishmen physically sick ; and English ladies see no harm in assisting at a 'tournament of doves' — in other Avords, the wanton massacre of flocks of harm- less pigeons. If you, of malice aforethought, were to shoot at a pigeon in the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg, the mob would fall upon you or stone you ; and in 1855-6, when Constantinople was full of British officers proceeding to or returning from the Crimea, the Turks were with difficulty restrained from 'going for' the smart young subalterns who amused themselves by roaming about with revolvers at night, and 'potting' the homeless harm- less dogs of Pera and Galata. Yet Eussians and Turks can be, on occasion, as cruel as other folk.f * An old lady wlio was a neighbour of tlie Bard told an inquisitive American tourist that Wordsworth was ' no bad sort of a mon,' except wlien he went 'trottin' aboot the grass, booin' his pottery' — reciting his poetry, I conclude. t ' We all do it.' Here we have Sir Bartle Frere prating about Cetewayo's army as a 'frightfully efficient man-slaying machine,' while every Jingo is ready, in verse or ]3rose, to qualify the Zulus as ' murderous savages ; ' and lo, in an illustrated paper, the other day, I saw an engraving of a knot of gallant officers of a Highland regiment shooting with their revolvers at the seagulls from the deck of a transport at sea. This engaging picture was called ' Prac- 202 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. Eeturning to the Eussian Fine Art Department, I notice an exceptionally * cruel ' work of Muscovite art in a picture represent- ing what at first sight seemed to be a masquerade, or rather a hal pare et tmvesti, since, although the assistants, male and female, were clad in the most extravagant fancy costumes, they Avore no masks. In particular were you struck by the number of dwarfs of both sexes, hideously deformed, and bedizened in dresses the grotesque splendour of which made their deformity only the more repulsive. There was a strong contingent, too, of zebra-striped buffoons and zanies — Triboulets and Pdgolettos of Petropolis. There were dancers too in grand court-dress, blazing with jeweb and gold embroidery ; but they had all an odd, coarse, pinchbeck patrician look, as though they were in reality princes of the stable and princesses of the scullery. The kitchen, indeed, played a conspicuous part in the festival. This rabble rout of jesters and glorified lacqueys and chambermaids advanced mopping and mow- ing, grimacing and posturing, and brandishing aloft pots, pans, gridii'ons, soup-ladles, pokers, shovels, and tongs, with which they simulated one of those derisive symphonies known in Germany as * katzenmusik,' in France as a 'charivari,' and in England as 'rough music' Such ' music ' is being played at the procession of the * Skimmington' in Hogarth's illustrations to Iludihras. Its latest form of expression in London was the 'marrow-bones and cleavers' concerts, now nearly obsolete, of the butchers on the occasion of a wedding between the sons and daughters of their craft. In the last century the blue-jerkined gentry did not confine their caco- phonic attentions to the marriages of members of their own calling. No fashionable wedding in the parishes of St. George's, Hanover Square, and St. James's, Piccadilly, was complete without the marrow-bones and cleavers, which in process of time became engines of intimidation and extortion. Tlie law had at last to interfere to abrogate the butchers' insolent demands for backshish. But why this horrible concourse of discordant sounds in the Russian picture ? Well, there are a bride and bridegroom to be saluted. 'Benedick, the married man,' sitting on a couch of honour under a canopy of state, is a poor miserable dwarf, with a yellow, wrinkled, half baboon-like face, fraught with an expression of unutterable Avoe. His teeth are chattering; his nose and his finger-tips are blue. Beatrix, his spouse, likewise a pigmy, pitiable to look upon, is in no better case than her lord. tising for the Zuhis.' Amiable incident ! So many Zulus must be killed, of course, for every one of our men assegaied at Isandula; but what had the sea- gulls done that they wex'Q to be ruthlessly slaughtered i CRAPIIICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION. 203 She crouches and shivers by his side. Observe that the wretched- looking bride and bridegroom are sumptuously clad, although their apparel is of the thinnest possible materials. Their robes are of almost transparent silk and gauze ; whereas their enter- tainers — the jesters and zanies, the princes of the stable and the princesses of the scullery, have a plenitude of comfortable fur- lined vestments. Presently you begin to ask yourselves why these glowingly coloured groups — their faces seem to have been illumined by copious potations of vodka, hot tea, and punch — should be con- trasted with a background of the palest and most diaphanous tints. The columns and archways, the balustrades and vases, the enriched ceiling, the couch of honour, and the canopy of state, belong un- mistakably to a palace. But it seems, to all physical appearance, ta, be a palace of crystal. Error. Consider that fauit greenish tinge which overspreads the whole background, and the nuptial couch and canopy to boot. It is a Palace of Ice ! That is why the bride and bridegroom are gibbering and shivering on their Jiaut ims. The poor little wretches are half frozen. It has been the whim, the caprice, the good pleasm-e, in fine, of her Imperial Majesty the Czarina of All the Russias — Anne or Elizabeth, I forget which — to marry her favourite homunculus to her female pigmy in ordinary. All the dwarfs and dwarfesses, all the fous and the folles of the great court Boj'ards, have been bidden to the festival ; and, to add excruciating humour to the frolic, her Majesty's architect and her Majesty's upholsterer and decorator, aided by any number of obe- dient slaves, have built, on the frozen bosom of a lake in the grounds of the Imperial residence, a Glacial Palace. We used to read this story in schoolbook collections of anec- dotes ever so many years ago ; and I confess that, even as a boy, I regarded the tale only as a lying wonder. But if the painter — a Professor of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg — of the picture in the Exposition is to be trusted, this barbarous act of cruelty was really committed. I never learned what became of the wantonly tortured man-and-wife dwarfs. Perhaps they died of frost-bite. People did not trouble themselves much about the possibility of such contingencies at the Russian Court, and in the middle of the eighteenth century. Nor, in the last quarter of the nineteenth, does the Academical Professor who has produced this undeniably clever work seem to look upon the palace of ice in any other light than as an intensely comic episode of Russian life and manners. He might try his hand with advantage on the equally characteristic and even more dramatic tableau of the knouting of Madame Lapou- khiu, who, after she had been scourged, was branded on the forehead 204 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. and had her nostrils torn asunder — always in accordance with the good- will and pleasure of her Imperial Majesty the Czarina of All the Eussias. Well ; it was the fault rather of the century than of the Czarina. At the very eve of the great French Revolution did not an English nobleman witness, in the courtyard of a prison in Paris, the whipping and branding with the letter ' V ' — voleuse — of the luckless Countess de la Motte, the heroine of the Diamond Necklace swindle ? I have not yet noticed, in English accounts of the Russian contributions to art at the Exposition, any mention of the curious plastic exhibit of Professor Le Vittoux of Warsaw. It seems to have occurred to this gentleman (presumably of French extraction) that provincial schools of art, especially in Russia, are sometimes very badly off for life-models — female models in particular. In some governments of Russia the * fair ' sex are only fair by cour- tesy ; in many cases they are indeed stunted in stature, and in face and form extremely ugl}'. In other provinces, where the women of the humbler classes are comelier, the priests are averse from allow- ing their catechumens to sit as models. So Professor Le Vittoux picked out the likeliest young Polish damsel he could hght upon, and — for a handsome consideration, doubtless — persuaded her to allow herself to be cast from top to toe in plaster-of- Paris. The operation was performed in a single ' coulage ' or casting ; but liowthe 3'oung lady was cut or sawn or scooped out of her whited sepulchre is not explained. The strangely successful result was apparent, how- ever, in a special cabinet of the Russian section, into Avhich ladies were not invited to enter, but which, as they did enter it, to criticise its contents with much apparent curiosity and interest at all hours of the day, I may be permitted, I hope without offence, briefly to dwell ujDon. Indeed, it would be squeamishness of the most hypo- critical kind to pass by in silence a display of which the definite object was to further the cause of art-education. You saw, then, in a room into which the light had been cau- tiously admitted, two representations, life-size, in plaster of the Pohsh life-model. Both Avere recumbent — one on the face, the other on the back. The naturalness of the plaster redupUcation of the human form was simply wonderful ; but by the process of casting, one perhaps inevitable, albeit unanticipated, effect had been produced. The sudden contact of the wet plaster with the skin had l)roduced in the poor girl what is called ' chair dc poule ' or ' goose- flesh,' and had covered the skin with a corrugation of innumerable follicles. This was unjust to the fair Varsovienne, since it stigma- tised her with a coarseness of skin which probably in reality she did GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION. 205 not possess. The form was veiy symmetrical ; the face quiet and kindly looking, but too ivregular in feature to be considered pretty. I looked at the hands — in which every wrinkle of the epidermis was reproduced with microscopic exactitude — narrowly. On the first finger of the left hand were the innumerable punctures made by the needle in passing through work from right to left ; and on the second finger of the right hand was the unmistakable depression of the phalange made by the rim of the thimble. Not a peasant-girl, evidently, this Venus of Warsaw — the hands were too small for that — but a milliner-girl, or some other kind of sempstress. The feet were horrible. The atrocious hottlnes of modern civilisation had wrought their usual wreckage of Nature's handiwork; and the outcome were two wrinkled and contorted lumps of callosity. If a selection of life-models who had never worn shoes or stockings — and let me whisper that the ligature Avhich is the cognizance of the Most Noble Order which was not founded by Edward III. in honour of the Countess of Salisbury does quite as much harm, artistically speaking, to the female leg as is done to the foot bj'' the boot or the high-heeled shoe — could be obtained, Professor Le Yittoux's well-meant experi- ment might bear good fruit ; and schools of art might be enabled by the aid of these plaster-casts to dispense to a very considerable extent with life-models. Unfortunately the Professor has yet another foe to contend with in the shape of the bust-strangling corset. If the Venus of Medicis had worn stays, she would never, I warrant, have enchanted the world. Although there is an astoundingly abundant display of sculp- ture in the Exposition Universelle, and although a large number of the works exhibited are extremely graceful, there are not many of really surpassing excellence — works that at once become fiimous, and take their place instanter in the cosmopolitan Walhalla, as Canova's ' Graces,' as Thorwaldsen's ' Venus ' and * Night and Morning,' as Danneker's * Ariadne,' as Kiss's * Amazon,' and as Gibson's * Tinted Venus' did. I miss even from the Palace of the Champ de IMars any very striking example of such intense and pathetic reflection as was manifest in the never-to-be-forgotten 'Reading Girl' in our Exhibition of 1862, or as was shown in the * Napoleon at St. Helena' in the Paris Exposition of 1867. You remember that wondrous composition : the Captive Conqueror, enveloped in a loose dressing-gown, leaning back, weakened b}' an agonising disease, in his armchair ; his cheeks hollowed, his fea- tures sharpened, his eyes sunken, his hands worn almost to skin and bone, and outstretched on his knees a map of the World. 206 rARlS HERSELF againt. In the English Fine Art section Mr. Frederick Leighton's noble bronze statue of the ' Athlete struggling with a P^^hon ' has attracted during the Exhibition the most attentive observation. When the * Athlete' was first exhibited at Burlington House I was purposely reticent in the critical remarks which I was called upon to make on it ; purposely so, because a great work in sculpture belongs not to any particular country or school, but to the world at large ; and because I wished to hear what experienced foreign critics would have to say respecting the adventurous plastic eftbrt of the most accomplished and most versatile of English artists. Not one foreign lover of art out of fifty thousand has the oppor- tunity perhaps of seeing a painting by Millais or by Edwin Land- seer, and the vast majority of the foreigners who Jiave seen the pictures of such British masters as those whom I have named, these six months past, in Paris, will, in all probability, never look upon them again ; while engravings, however skilful, from their pictures can give but a very faint idea of the genius and skill dis- played in the original works. A celebrated statue goes, on, the other hand, the round of the whole world. Not only may the marble mason execute an indefinite number of replicas of the original, but it may also be multiplied ad infinitum and. in every variety of form, in terra-cotta, in papier-mache, in earthenware, in plaster — ay, and even in chocolate or in soap. Tainting is vir- tually local. Sculpture is universal ; and a cast of the * Venus de' Medicis,' bought for 3s. 6d. in Leather Lane, is, to all the intents and purposes of corporeal beauty, as enchanting as the * Venus de' Medicis ' in the Tribune at Florence. This is why I waited to hear what the foreign critics had to say about the * Athlete ' of Mr. Frederick Leighton. I am glad to find that the superb woi-k is well-nigh unanimously applauded ; that the anatomical accuracy of the modelling, the harmony of the lines, and the general balance of the comjiosition, are cheerfully recognised by those most quali- fied to judge. The only remark in disparagement of a work c f which, and of its author, England should be proud, is the perhaps h3'25ercritical objection that it is not only substantially but sj^iri- tually of bronze. Neither the Athlete nor the Python was ever of flesh and blood, the hypercritics say. Man and reptile alike lack vitality. That which is bj' far the most fascinating, and has been the most popular, work of sculpture in the Exhibition is ' La Baigneuse,* a full-length figure, in marble, by Professor Tabacchi of Milan. The statue, which is about a third less than life size, is that of a young girl, certainly not more than seventeen years of age, attired GRAPHICS AND PLASTICS IN THE EXHIBITION. 207 in a closely-fitting bathing dress, who, her arms extended diagon- ally above "her head, and the tips of the fingers of each pretty hand lightly touching each other, is preparing to take a * header ' into a supposititious pool of water at her feet. It is to be hoped that the amateur who has been fortunate enough to become the possessor of this charming Bather will place a marble basin, encircling a sheet of plate glass, at the foot of the statue, so as to give a complete re- flection of the figure, which real water, if shallow, could not present. The bathing-dress leaves the arms and lower limbs bare, and dis- plays the exquisite modelling of the muscles — modelling at once perfect from a symmetrical and from a rigidly anatomical point of view. The girl's face, her head bent slightly downwards towards her plunge-bath, is dehciously naive and artless, yet not devoid of a shght expression of girlish sauciness. It is Thomson's Musidora, but Musidora before she has left Madam Soberside's Finishing Academy — Musidora who has not yet lost her appetite for bread- and-butter and almond-rock — Musidora before the swains have begun to sigh after her. And this lends to the work its greatest charm. The girl, for all that every line of her rounded form can be traced, is abstractedly as decorous as a youthful Quakeress in a drab-silk dress, a brown silk shawl, and a coal-scuttle bonnet. She is nearly as scantily clad as the Simple Truth, the Gijmna Aletheia herself; but she is as beautiful and as pure. Still I confess that the statue of a pretty school girl about to take a * header ' is not a work of High Art. That Professor Tabacchi is capable of efforts of a much higher order than are shown in * La Baigneuse,' is sufficiently manifested in his noble statue of * Hypatia,' a full- length nude figure of the unfortunate lady-lectuver at the Uni- versity of Alexandria, chained to a post. The lucldess advocate of the Higher Education of Women was, so the legends say, scraped to death with oyster-shells ; but Professor Tabacchi has wisely represented Hypatia before, and not after the infliction of the scarifying operation in question. But what am I to say of Signer Giovanni Focardi's uncompro- misingly comic statue of the urchin whose face is being lathered, much against his will, by his exasperated grandmother, and to which the legend, ' O, you Dirty Boy ! ' is attached ? ' Est-il sale ! ' as the French call the uncleanly youth, has been surrounded every day by groups of people from all parts of the world, roaring with laughter at Signor Giovanni Focardi's irresistibly droll perform- ance ; for most of us have had grandmothers, and more of us have violently objected to having our faces washed when we were young. But now that long years separate us from those agonies 208 TARIS IIERSELr AGAIN. of soap and water and rough towels, those fearful tortures when the ruthless huckaback was applied behind the ears — Hypatia under the oyster-shells could not have endured a worse martyrdom — we can afford to laugh over the plastic commemoration of our bygone misery. The group of the * Dirty Boy ' which has set so many hundreds of thousand folks, gentle and simple, screaming with merriment in Paris is, however, only a model in plaster of the original work, which is a group in marble, commissioned from the sculptor by the very old firm of English soap-makers — they date from 1789 — Messrs. A. & F. Pears of London. They have been Prize MedalHsts at Exhibitions in all parts of the world, from the year 1851 downwards, and have, I hear, again won a prize medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878. The marble of the ' Dirty Boy ' is not yet complete, but so soon as it leaves Signer Focardi's studio it is to be permanently exhibited at the London establishment of Messrs. Pears. The copyright of the work goes of course with the statue, and the 'Dirty Boy' will probably henceforth be the legally-protected trade-mark for the wares pro- duced by Messrs. A. & F. Pears. The ' Dirty Boy' will supersede, I suppose, the highly humorous dual picture of the little blacka- moor who is being put into a bath preparatory to being thoroughly well washed with ' Pears's transparent soap ' — a toilet article used as extensively on the Continent as in England, and which is the invention of the house in Great Russell Street. The highest of authorities on the skin, Professor Erasmus Wilson, has warmly testified to the virtues of Pears's Transparent Soap, as ' one of the most agreeable and refreshing balms for the skin ' — an opinion which I, in common with every one who has made use of the soap, readily indorse ; but besides this the little blackamoor in the bath must, pictorially considered, be regarded as a very important wit- ness in the case. After a short course of the Transparent Soap he emerges from his tub as white as wool, all but his face, Avhich has not been washed. Now, precisely a different result is visible in Signer Focardi's ' Dirty Boy.' His arms and hands have been satisfactorily cleansed, but it is on his much-begrimed countenance that his indefatigable but enraged grandparent is finally operating. She looks as though she could scrub twenty little blackamoors white in five minutes ; but, 0, what dreadful anguish former gene- rations of ' Dirty Boys ' must have endured before Messrs. Pears discovered the refreshing and balmy virtues of Transparent Soap. m XVII. DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. Sept. 22. The late Mr. Nathaniel Parker Willis, in his PencilUngs hy the Way — a book of travels which, to my thinking, is entitled to hold a place between Mrs. Trollope's book on America and the Biary of an Invalid — wrote a vivacious description of a fair young Vien- nese lady who was his opposite neighbour during his stay in the Kaiserstadt, and with whom he confessed that he would have fallen madly in love had it not been for the insatiable appetite with which she was afflicted. A narrow street and an open window made Mr. Willis an involuntary participant in the secrets of the menage over the way ; and it was impossible for liim to shut his eyes to the fact that the blue-eyed and flaxen-haired /raitZein ate 210 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN, four substantial meals a day, to say notliing of an after-supper hutterhrod or so and a seidel of beer or two before retiring to rest. Now, Mr. Willis's own countrymen, the Americans, are not by any means accounted contemptible trenchermen. At least three, and often four, copious repasts, into which meat, hot or cold, enters largely, form the staj)le of your board at a first-class Ameri- can hotel ; and, as though with a view towards preparing you for the ordeal of overfeeding which you are bound to go through in the States, you are oflfered every day on board the Cunard steamship which conveys you from Queenstown to Boston or New York a tremendous breakfast, a hearty lunch, a prodigious dinner, a sub- stantial tea, and any pretty little tiny kickshaws in the way of grilled bones and Welsh rarebits that William Steward may like to have dished up for you before bedtime. When poor Nathaniel Parker Willis wrote his pleasant book some forty years ago, the table d'hote of the Astor House, New York — is there any Astor House now? — was held to be the most splendidly provided among all the hotels of the American Continent. The ' Penciller by the AVay' was an habitue of the Astor House ; yet he professed to be shocked by the spectacle of a young lady in Vienna who got com- fortably through her four meals a day, and looked all the prettier for her gourmandise. To subdue a tendency towards prejudice, and to avoid taking one-sided views of things, are among my most constant aspirations. It is quite possible that on a variety of topics I am unconsciously the bitterest of partisans ; but at least I try my hardest to be im- partial. Here have I now been, for many weeks, a Stranger and a Pilgrim in Paris, under circumstances almost totally different from any that I can remember to have been formally subjected to in this meti-opoUs. I have seen, designedly, scarcely anything of my own countrymen; I have lived ahnost altogether in the open air — I am writing this letter in a balcony ; I have breakfasted and dined at a restaurant every day, and rarely twice at the same place ; and I am continually asldng myself whether I am right or wrong in the persuasion, which every day has been growing stronger within me, that the modern Parisians devote a great deal too much time every day to eating and drmking, and that, while the people seem to crowd the public eating-houses to a greater extent than ever, the Art of Cookery is slowly but surely deteriorating and degene- rating among them. In the last respect I am glad to find my opinion shared by so high an authority as M. Abraham Dre3'fus, who, in a remarkable article on Cooks and Cookery in the XlXmc Swcle, points out that it is every day becoming more difficult to DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. 211 secure the services of really accomplisliecl cooks, for the reason that first-rate chefs can alwa3's command much larger salaries in ILiondon, in Berlin, in Vienna, in St. Petersburg, in New York, and in San Francisco, than they can obtain in Paris ; and that at the slightest reprimand v/hich they receive from their imtrons they threaten to 'rendre le tablier ' — which is the technical term for resigning. Again, the first-rate chefs plead that when they enter the service of a restaurateur whose customers are many and hungry, the finest efforts of their art are, through the gluttony of the guests, ill understood, if understood at all. A not dissimilar complaint has been heard ere now from the chef of a London club. 'A quoi hon,' he has pleaded, ' is it for me to rack my invention to put eight fresh entrees in every day's menu, when out of an average of a hundred dinners in the coffee-room seventy-five dine oft" a plain fish and the joint? ' For a French cook to be misunderstood is the most unpardonable outrage that can be inflicted on him. * Je lui ai compose,' said the great Careme bitterly of our George IV., ' une longe de veau en surprise. II I'a mangee ; mais il n'a pas su la comprendre.' So the disgusted cook * composed ' a last sauce, which he called *La Derniere Pensee de Careme,' and retired from the Eoyal service. Had he remained at Carlton House a catastrophe as lugubrious as that of Vatel might have happened. It is lamentable to learn, on the authority of M. Abraham Dreyfus, the opinion of a culinary artist, who, next to MM. Jules Gouffe and Urbain Dubois, is universally acknowledged to be the first chef in Europe, that the onl}^ remedy for the evils under which gastronomic France is suft"ering is the establishment of a Conser- vatoire Culinaire, or National School of Cookery. Imagine the Parisians, tlie nation of cooks par excellence, coming down to the complexion of South Kensington ! Meanwhile, it is my intention to 'take stock' — the expression is less metaphorical than technical — of the existing condition of Public Cookery in Paris, premising that I am criticising that cookery quite apart from the menu of the clubs, of diplomacy, or that * haute cuisine bourgeoise ' which you enjoy in French private houses, and of all of which I have seen in my time as much as most peojple. I shall be willing, again, to make due allowances for the exceptional jjressure on all places of public entertainment in Paris caused by the Exhibi- tion — a disturbing element which has enhanced the price and lowered the standai'd o£ excellence in every appliance of civilisation in this vast city. I need scarcely say that my acquaintance with the metropolis of France is not of the day before yesterday. It dateS; indeed, from the midst of the reign of Louis Philippe, when 212 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Beauvillier's and Harc^y's had ceased, it is true, to exist, but when the chief and surpassingly excellent restaurants in Paris were the Trois Freres Provencaux, Very's, Vefour's, D'Ouix (the Cafe THE CHEF. Corazza) — all in the Palais Royal; the Caf(i de Paris, the Rocher de Cancale ; the renowned restaurant in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, where Thackeray ate the hauiUahaissc, and called fo;' * the DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. 213 Cliambertin with yellow seal' — Philippe's in the Rue IMontorgeuil, antl the Cafe Anglais. About the year '36, there was published a remarkable article on French gastronomy in the Quarterly Review, which, if I had it by me, would remind me of at least a dozen more equally good, albeit not quite so famous, Parisian restaurants of the last generation ; but those vdiich I have mentioned enjoyed at the time of which I speak the highest prestige. As for Durand's, the Restaurant de la Madeleine, now one of the most fashionable and most, expensive restaurants in Paris, I remember it in 1839 as an admirably provided eating-house, to which a very near and dear relative of mine used to take her three children to dinner on their * days out' from school, because the Restaurant de la Made- leine was so cheap ! They charged me sixteen francs for a roast jiheasant — it was produced, it must be admitted, for a moment, en evidence as a piece montec — at Durand's this very September. Among the places I have named, the Trois Freres, Very's, the Roclier de Cancale, Philippe's, and the Cafe de Paris exist no longer.* Since I have been sojourning in Paris I have dined or breakfasted at the following old and new places of popular resort : (1) The Cafe Anglais ; (2) the Maison Doree ; (3) Bignon's (tlie Cafe de Foy) ; (4) the Caf^ Riche ; (5) the ' Grand' Cafe ; (6) tlie Restaurant Rougemont ; (7) Vachett's (Brebant's) ; (8) the Cafe Veron, corner of the Boulevard and the Rue Vivienne ; (9) * London House,' a succursal of the same well-known establish- ment at Nice ; (10) the Restaurant Bonnefoy ; (11) Vefour's ; (12) the Restaurant d'Ouix, now the Cafe Corazza ; (13) the Taverne Anglaise, in the Place Boieldieu ; (14) the Restaurant Rousse, by the side of the Opera Comique ; (15) Gaillon's ; (16) Voisin's ; (17) Vian's ; (18) Laurent's, in the Avenue Marigny, Champs Elysees ; (19) Lucas's Taverne Anglais; (20) the Cafe de la Paix; (21) a Restaurant Italien, close to the Passage des Panoramas ; (22) Mngny's, in the Rue Mazet, off the Rue Dauphin, ' over the water,' nearly in a line with the Pont Neuf ; (23) the ' Taverne Britannique,' in the Rue Richelieu ; and (24) a * fixed price ' dinner in the Palais Royal, to whose exact whereabouts and whose precise name I decline to allude. In my memory it will be indelibly fixed as the ' Diner Burnand,' because, when I emerged from the Trophonian caverns in which that dinner was served, I exclaimed, with the celebrated art critic of the Grosvenor Gallery, 'Joy, joy! but never again with you, Robin.' The Cafd Anglais still, to my thinking, maintains its place as * That is to say, so far as the Boulevards are concerned. There is a new and splendid Cafe de Paris in the Avenue de I'Opera. 214 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. the very best for dining purposes in Paris. You will dine well if you order any one of the dishes specified in the bill of fare ; but you will dine much better (if you know enough about French cookery to dismiss the carte dujonr entirely from consideration) by ordering a dinner altogether * out of your own head.' They will cook every- thing for you that is in season. Everything that should be hot will be ' piping ' hot— at very many pretentious places they give you that abominable thing, tepid soup ; the fish is always fresh, and the cleanliness of everything is simply perfect. The prices are confessedly high, but they cannot be called extortionate. A very modest little dinner at the Cafe Anglais^ for two people of long experience, but moderate appetites and limited means, con- sisted of a dozen of Marennes oysters, of goodly size and delicious flavour; «o,/is/i (I hold fish to be a surplusage when you have had more than three oysters) ; a Crecy soup ; a iKrdrix aux choux — a tiny partridge braised Avith cabbage, carrots, and small sausages ; some grmferc cheese, a salade a la romaine, and a bottle of the excellent Bordeaux wine called Pontet Canet. The partridge and cabbage cost ten francs, and the dish Avas dear at the price ; but the Pontet Canet,* which cost eight francs, Avas Avortli the money, and more, for it was so much purple velvet to the palate ; a^id it had a flavour which reminded you at once of the odour of violets and the taste of raspberries. This dinner— stay, it included a demi-tasse of cofl'ee and an undeniably authentic Havana cigar, the last an almost unattainable luxury in Paris t — * I have been told, and iinpeitinentl}^ told, in piint by some person wholly unknown to nie, but avIio addrcs.ses nie as ' George,' that the Cafe Anglais has no specialty for Bordeaiix, but that it has one for Burgundy. I am accustomed to Avrite about the things that I know, and not about things that I do not knoAV ; and I have known nothing of the wines of Burgundy these twenty years past. Still, Ave will see Avhat a competent authority, M. Auguste Luchet, fays upon the subject : 'ThcAvealth of this cellar (the Cafe Anglais) consistsiu Bordeaux Avines. I\r. Delliomme, the proprietor, is a Bordelais, who, not caring for the o-rowths of Burgundy, does not admit that any one else can care ibr them. 'He keeps Burgundy in his cellar, but only for form, and, so to say, against liis will.' — Paris- G u id c : Les Gmndcs Cuisines et ks Grande s Carts, p? IbbO. I may add that M. Delhonnne is still the proprietor of the Cafe Anglais. M. Auguste Luchet, Avho was both a Republican and a (jourmtt, Avas named Governor of the Palace of Fontainebleau after the Revolution of 1848, •when he Avas accused by the anti-Republican neAVS])apors of having fried and eaten the historic carp that Francis 1. fed with breadcnmibs, and to Avhich the Duchess d'Etampes threw golden rings. t The sale of cigars at the Cafe Anglais is a speculation on the part of the Avaiters, Avho import the tobacco themselves from Havana, and share the profits. A (jar^^on who is fortunate enough to lie accepted as a member of the staff of the Cafe Anglais rarely quits it ('bar' death or other casualties), save to go into business on his oavh acc(nint. Dinner-time in paris. 215 cost twenty-eight francs and some centimes : with the waiter's fee, thirty francs ; say twelve shillings a head. Now there is good via ordinaire to be had at the Cafe Anglais for three francs — I am THE CELLARBIAN. not quite sure that it is not two francs fifty — a bottle, and the average price of an entree is three francs and a half; thus you may set down our oysters, our perdrix aux choux, and our Pontet Canet as so much reckless extravagance ; but please to remember 216 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. that a Frencliman, or even an Englishman, who had set his heart on having * a regular tijD-top French dinner,' even if he had sup- pressed the preliminary bivalves, would have thought his repast incomplete without a dish of fish, a rati — say a Chateaubriand or an entrecote a la Bordelaise ; a sweet — say a 'parfait au cafe or a souMe de chocolat ; and some fruit. The Frenchman would assuredly have taken a tiny glass oifine champagne cognac, chartreuse, or some other liqueur, with his demi-tasse ; and the English- man would, in all probability, have wound up with at least half a bottle of Pommery Sec or Heidsieck's Dry Monopole. As for the French, it is with the extremest rarity that, save at Carnival time, or at a repas denoces, they ever touch cham- j^agne, which is often alluded to contemptuously, as ' le vin des cocottes,' and more frequently * le vin des Allemands.' They are content to make it in order to sell it to the foreigner. Thus such a complete dinner as that which I have specified, at the Cafe Anglais, would cost at least twenty-five francs a head. Our own was incomplete, but to us sufficing. For the rest, a gentle- man dining by himself would j)ay almost as much for a * complete ' dinner as when he had a companion ; and, as a rule, a party of six or eight will be called upon to expend less in proportion per head than would be disbursed by a party of three or four. An English exliibitor told me that, with seven friends, he had enjoyed a really sumptuous banquet in a private cabinet at the Cafe Anglais, and that the bill only amounted to twenty-two francs a head. And I fancy that they must have had plenty of champagne. Of course you may ruin yourself at the Anglais if you like, and that with great pi'omptitude and disi^atch. There are Lafittes and Margaux, there are (so I am told) Chambertins and Eomanees, which are thought cheap at from thirty to fifty francs a bottle, and which are in extensive demand among the American clients of the house. I dined, indeed, the other evening with some old friends from New York at the Restaurant Rougemont, and we had Madeii'a of 1824 DINNER-TME IN PARIS. 217 with the oysters. A pheasant was produced with his wings and tail spread, and with a kind of gold and jewelled aureole round his head ; and — I did not ask to look at the bill. Had the dinner been a moderate one I might, for the purpose of comparison, have taken that liberty. I may finally remark, touching the Cafe Anglais, that as a rule the service is irreproachable. The waiters are civil, quiet, and suggestive, and two or three of them speak EngHsh. The knives, forks, and spoons are all silver ; j-et, strange to say, the proj)rietor of this excellent establishment has not yet awakened to a sense of the expediency of providing his guests either with fish knives and forks, or with salt- spoons. The drawbacks to this very admirable house are, normally, in the smallnessof the rooms, the low ceilings of which render them in summer nearly as hot as the iiiomhl of Venice ; and, abnormally, in the tremendous crowds of visitors brought by the Exhibition, and the clatter and tapage made by some of the foreign guests, whose nationality I will not particu- larise, at whose guttural gabble the English simpl}'' stare with stupefied amazement, while the few French gentlemen whom the guttural gabblers have not driven away sit silent in corners glowering with rage at the Invaders. They are as objectionable in Peace as in War. This is especially the case on Sundays, when a Frenchman, having in all likelihood been to the races, is very fond of enjoying a good dinner. Unless he be one of a party, or has secured a cahinct particid'icr in advance, he will have consider- able difficulty in making headway against this alien cohort, who — men, women, and children — come six or eight strong, and virtually monopolise the public rooms. They are all gifted with enormous appetites, and they have an unquenchable thirst for champagne ; so that I imagine tlmt the Parisian restaurateurs console them- selves for the nuisance inflicted upon them by these turbulent (and upon occasion insolent) customers by making out the very biggest 218 PARIS HERSELF AGAI>f. bills imaginable against them— casting up the highest possible ' additions,' and leaving it to the waiter to demonstrate that the A PAEISIAN BIAITRE d'hO)TEL, total is both accurate and moderate. Especially do they ' have ' them in the way of fruit. Dessert, generally consisting at this DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. • 219 timeofthej^ear of grapes, peaches, and pears is very costly indeed at the first-rate restaurants. A PARIS EESTAl'RATEUK. The frugal Frenchman orders what fruit he desires— ' un peche,' ' une poire,' or * du raisin.' The improvident foreigner 220 PARTS HERSELF AGAIN. calls hoarsely for ' tes vruits.' They bring him fi'uit with a venge- ance — a whole iMteaii heaped high with the gifts of Pomona. * Most boys,' sagely remarked Dr. Johnson, in the celebrated case of the alleged cause of Swift's deaf- ness in a youthful surfeit of fruit, ' will eat as much as they can get.' But this foreigner's voracity is the restaurateur's opportunity. He watches the fruit disappear, and rubs his hands in mute J03'. Do you remember the story of the old Duke of Norfolk — the Prince Ke- gent's Duke of Norfolk — and the cucumber ? His Grace, who was wont to dress very shabbil}', and who thought twice before washing himself, strolled late one evening into the coffee-room of the Old Hummums,in Covent Garden, and ordered dinner and a cucumber. It was the middle of winter. The waiter — he was a new one — mis- trusting the looks of the guest, went to confer with the landlord. * There's that sliabby old fellow,' he said, ' has ordered a cow- cumber, and you know, sir, that they're half a guinea a piece in the market.' The landlord peeped round the corner of his little private hatch ; recognised his customer ; rubbed his hands, and said, softly smiling, to his servitor, ' A cucumber, John ? A cucumber ? Yes, John ; give Jiim six.' Cucumber is not a inimcur in Paris at present ; yet I am astonished at the want of energy among the Parisian restaurateurs, which has rendered them blind to the advantages of importiug West India pine-apples. A fine * nubbly ' pine, such as is dispensed on a London coster- monger's barrow for a jienny a slice, would be worth at least twenty francs in Its entirety, or two francs a portion, at a boulevard restaurant. Wenceslas Steinbock, the wayward husband In Balzac's Cousinc Bette, is ' taken by his sentiments ' by one of his wife's relatives, just as he is about entering a forty- sous restaurant in the Palais Royal. He is, without nuich difficulty, persuaded to listen to the voice of reason and tlic pleadings of affection ; and is ultimately led home, in a thorough state of penitence, to enjoy a succulent family dinner at the mansion of his mother-in-law, Madame la Baronne Hulot. In all this behold yet another proof DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. 221 of the profound philosophy of Honore de Balzac. It is precisely at the moment when a man is fumbling in his pocket for the necessary two francs — not without some sorrowful uncertainty as to Avhother he is also in possession of the necessary coppers for the garc^on, for his coftee and his ijetit verrc after dinner — it is just when he is gazing upwards on the illuminated ground-glass panel above the portal of the cheap restaurant kept by Gargottier nine, or Boustifaille jcunc, but is not quite sure as to whether the legend in crimson letters on the glass is * Dejeuners a f. 1 25 ; diners a f . 2/ or ' Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate,' that he is most liable to be successfully assailed by the sentimental side of his mental organisation, and to yield, after a decent simulation of reluctance (we try to humbug ourselves just as frequently as we try to humbug other people), to an invitation to go and dine some- where else. Not undesignedly have I quoted the Inferno with reference to the forty-sous restaurants. Does not the immortal Florentine tell us that there is no greater anguish than the remem- brance, in misery, of the days when we were happy ? One of the direst characteristics of the one-and-eightpenny repast is its being the caricature, the parody, the grotesque but effete phantom of a good dinner. Cardinal Mezzofanti remarked contemptuously (and quite unjustly) of modern Greek that it resembled the language of Plato and Demosthenes about as much as a monkey does a man. Thus in the number of its component parts the banquet provided by Gargottier aine or Boustifaille jeune corresponds to the lordliest dinner that you could order at Bignon's or Durand's. For your forty sous you shall have liors d'ceuvres, a potage, fish, an entree, a roast, a vegetable, a sweet, salad, cheese, and dessert. But there the resemblance to the good dinner comes to an end. You are in a Shadowy Land, where * all things Avear an aspect not their own.' Somehow a fishy flavour gets into the bruised peach or the sleepy pear of the dessert ; and it must have heen frontage de Brie that you tasted just now in the chocolate cream. My own ojoinion is that it is * the gravy that does it ; ' and that the foundation of that gravy is something beyond mortal ken. The fish induces you to think that there are finny denizens of the deep as yet undis- covered by Mr. Frank Buckland ; and as for the meat — well, what was it that the wicked Count Cenci gave his daughters to eat ? — • the fevered flesh of buffaloes,' or some such unholy viands ? I have partaken of many strange meals; but there is a je ne sais quoi about some of the dishes at the cheap Paris restaurants altogether beyond my powers of definition or analysis. I am not quite certain whether, to be strictly accurate, I ought 222 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. not to speak of the forty-sous restaurants in the past tense. I am inclined to suspect that, since the commencement of the Exhibi- tion, Gargottier atne has raised the price of his breakfasts to one franc seventy-five, and of his dinners to two francs fifty centimes ; while afriendtellsme that Boustifaille jewne has taken an even more heroic step. He has pasted slips of paper over his list of prices on the ground-glass panel ; and when he has once got you into his lair he has you altogether at his mercy. On the other hand, the remarkable repast to which I have attached the name of * Le Diner Burnand' is quite candid in its proclamation of tariff. Three francs for breakfast ; five francs for dinner, including an ice and a bottle of Burgundy or Bordeaux ; the wine, * susceptible of being replaced,' at the discretion of the guest, by half a bottle of a superior vintage. I have hinted that I tried the ' Diner Burnand.* It was, not excepting a * Court' night at the hall of one of our civic companies, the most wire-drawn dinner to which I ever sat down ; and yet there were no speeches, no glees, no songs. There was a little money-taker's box on the landing of the staircase leading from the Galerie de Valois to the saloons of the 'Diner Burnand,' and an elegantly-attired lady gave me, in exchange for my five francs, a large octagonal metal ticket with * Un Diner ' stamped upon it. That was enough to make you uncomfortable to begin with. Who likes to be badged and ticketed, and to be sent a-wandering through strange rooms with ' Good for One Dinner ' branded, so to speak, on his back ? The Administration, having got hold of your money, has no farther personal interest in you. You are an incumbrance ; and the Administration may be looking on peevishly while you are consuming your five francs' worth of victuals. * You just gnaw it out,' said an American friend to me. The elegantly-dressed lady who took the money Avas very stift", and scarcely acknowledged tlie lowly salute which I made her. Had she been a dame de comptoir in a restaurant a la carte slie would have been all bows and smiles both at the entrance and the departure of a guest. But, the Administration, having encashed my five francs, could no longer nourish any hopes concerning their customer. On the other hand, while the elegantly-attired lady was icily haughty, her cat, a huge creature, sitting majestically by the side of the till — a fat cat, with a tail as big as a fox's brush, and an Elizabethan ruft' of feathery fur — regarded me from her amber eyes with a look, as it seemed to me, of comic commiseration. That grimalkin was evidently aware of le fond des choses. She had seen so many people coming up, go many going down, those fateful stairs. She was as the Clerk DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. 223 of the Arraigns at a Culinary Court of Oyer and Terminer, and may have been wishing me a good deliverance. The oldest waiters in Paris had seemingly been * laid on ' to attend on the guests at the ' Diner Burnand.' But that these ancient servitors possessed, to all appearance, the proper comple- ment of arms and legs, they might have been so many vieux grognards from the Hotel des Invalides, in civilian garb, with their moustaches shaved off, and their medals stowed away in their trousers- pockets. I was waited upon by a vieux de la vieille, a veteran of the first line, who might — so old did he look — have been at Ma- rengo when the historic jjoulet was first fried in oil, owing to Napoleon's cook being for the moment short of butter. Marengo! He looked old enough to have been the inventor of that Sauce Robert, the oldest of all known sauces for pork-chops, . and Avhich Mr. Dallas has ascertained to be a sauce of English origin, and to have been known to the gourmets of Chaucer's time. I hasten to admit that this patriarch waited upon us with much zeal and assiduity, and was particularly anxious to explain to us the extent of our rights and privileges in the matter of dinner. 'You are entitled to yet another hors d'oeuvre' he gently remarked, when I contented myself with a single sardine ; ' be not afraid ; you may have butter and olives, radishes or sausage.' He was quite scandalised when one of the ladies of our party declined the ice which he proffered her. 'Pas de glace! ' he exclaimed; 'mais vous avez droit a une glace.' Similarly he exhibited signs of the deepest dejection when we refused to have anything to do with the salad, which was as soft and clammy as cold boiled turnip-tops, and was dressed apparently with asa'foetida and verjuice ; and he was affected almost to tears when, unable to endure the lengthiness of the Diner Burnand any longer, we rose to depart without par- taking of any dessert. * Vous partez,' he murmm-ed ; * yet there 224 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. remains a choice of four fruits. You are entitled to a peach or a pear, an apple or a grape. There are even figs.' I say again that he was a most fatherly waiter ; but, alas, he was semi- paralytic, and in spilling soup and sauce over the pantaloons of the public I have rarely seen his equal. He hobbled to and fro as quickl}^ as his poor old feet would permit him ; but apparently the kitchen was a very long way off, or the guests were too numerous, or he was too tired and so was fain to take a brief nap now and then between the courses. In any case, when he went away he did not come back for a painfully prolonged period. AVe sat down at half-past seven, and it was a quarter to nine when we fled from the Diner Burnand, leaving even then the dessert untasted. Had we grappled with the fruits I might have been sitting there now, perchance, * stiff as a broomstick,' like the man in the German student's song. Against the good faith of the Directors of the Diner Burnand I have nothing whatever to say. They adhere literally to the letter of their engagement. Everything that was in the bond — written in white paint on a black board at the entrance to the restam-ant — was conscientiously provided. Hors d'oeuvres, soup, fish, entree, roast, vegetables, sweet, salad, ice, cheese, and dessert were all there ; but they were all (to my taste) extremely nasty. Every- thing was equivocal, stale, and soddened. It was Nobody's fault, of course ; nobody's but the troj) plein of this overwhelm- ing Exhibition. The rooms, already overheated by myriads of gas-burners, were crowded to suffocation ; and the noise made by the guests was almost deafening. They vociferated among them- selves ; they shouted to the waiters, who were always bringing the wrong dishes ; and then the waiters shouted to one another. There were numerous families of provincials — little removed from peasants, so it seemed by their costume — and in each large group there was generally a newly-married couple. Scenes of the live- liest altercation between bride and bridegroom were not unfrequent; and in some cases the elder folks had brought small children with them. Of course these brats overate themselves ; and then, * feeling bad,' they began to yelp, and had to be taken out of the stifling oven of a place. How glad I was when the experience — abating the dessert — was at an end, and I descended the staircase of the Diner Burnand ! Suddenly there recurred to me that weU- known passage in Artemas Ward, Ids Book, in which the two Mormon ladies informed the Immortal Showman that it had been revealed to them that they might enter his booth without paying. * Mebbe,' replied Artemas j * but it has been revealed to me tliat DlNNER-l^iME iN PARIS. 225 you can pay without goin' in.' Would that I had been content to depose my five francs at the money-taker's box of the l)iner Bur- nand without accepting in return the brazen symbol of wearisome ervitudc ! As I passed the elegantly-attired lady, Iticedhat tnos she wholly failed to return my parting bow. I own that I was heavy at heart ; and my salutation may have been a gruesome one. But the cat was aware of me ; and, from those eyes of amber which had already gleamed on me, there seemed to radiate, no longer facetious sympathy, but fiendish exultation. Where had I seen that cat before 2 Somewliere, I fancy, in the county of Cheshire. One word as a moral and an apology. Everybody, it is to be hoped, is not so ill-conditioned, so hard to please, or so dyspeptic, as I may seem to be. I may have dined too often and too well ; and, satiated with the masterpiecos of the finest cuisines in civilisa- tion, I may be yearning for my 2'^^'<^mih'es amours — for the * mutton-chop with a curly tail,' and the 'potato like a ball of flour ' — I cannot help it. I cannot help having * seen the Show ' both before and behind the scenes thereof, since the days when I tasted of the mets of Soyer and Francatelli, of Vidal and Roco-Vido, of Delmonico, and of the incomparable chef of the Brevoort House, New York, Avho always knew wlien his Excellency Lord Lyons was staying in the hotel from the excei)tional tastefulness of the dinners selected from his bill of fiire by the occupant of the suite of apartments on the first floor of the hotel. ' Milor Lyon he arrive,' the chef would remark to his roasting cook. ' Je vols la la main da maitre.' To vast numbers of very worthy people the Diner Burnand may, I have not the slightest doubt, aj^pear a very good dinner indeed ; just as new St. Pancras Church, N.W., may seem a ver^^ sumptuous edifice to those who have not seen the Parthenon. The provincials at the Diner Burnand seemed in particular to relish their entertainment immensel3\ They enjoyed all their rights, and claimed more. They demanded more sauce. They swooped down on all the hors cVoeuvres. They asked for twice salad. They could not be made to understand that they were only entitled to choose two from the four fruits. There was a part^'' of English people close to us, comprising a clergyman in a beard and a wideawake-hat, a bride and bridegroom, a benignantold maid, and two brawny little boys in turn-over collars, whose delighted appreciation of the copious bill of fare was really comfortable and pleasant to view. The reverend gentleman in the wideawake pointed out that there was a choice between Bur- gundy and Bordeaux; and when they exchanged whole bottles of 226 i?ARIS HERSELF AGAIN. 2)etlt hleu for half-bottles of a darker and more astringent liquid, lie sipped the stuff— the like of which may have been giving some- body else fearful qualms— as though it had been Chambertin or Clos Vougeot. The party were thoroughly happy. * Only fancy,' said the benignant old maid, ' ices and peaches, and macaroons with cream, too.' They will go back to their peaceful English homes and talk, many a time and oft, over the cold mutton and the rice-pudding, of the grand dinner they had in the Palais RoyaL 'Eight courses — eight distinct courses,' the benignant spinster was never tired of repeating. What a pickthank, what a trovible-feast, what an ingrate, what a malevolent libeller, that simple party of English people might have thought me had I approached their table and, unintroduced and unmvited, imparted to them my opinion — an opinion to which I still steadfastly hold — that the pretentious, greasy, sloppy, soddened, mawkish meal was only the old two-franc dmner of Gargottier atne or Boustifaille jeune promoted — always in consequence of the Exhibition — into a five-franc one. Let me add, ere I quit the subject of the Palais Eoyal restaurants, that you may dine tolerably well, but very expensively, at Vefour's. If you order your dinner in the morning, and secure a cabinet, a really superior dinner, including wine, should not cost more than twenty francs a head. But beware, if you are dining down- stairs at Vefour's, of ordering such a dish as a demi-selle de mouton pre-saU, if you see it on the carte dujour. It is a delusion and a snare ; and I fell into the snare myself a fortnight ago. I ordered the mutton. The waiter brought us three _ or four little cutlets of more than half-raw meat, weighing certainly less than nine ounces in all, and nine francs were charged for it. My me- mory must be failing me, else I should have remembered that in the spring of 1867 I fell into a similar springe, by ordering at this same Vefour's a dish of flageolets, or young haricot-beans. ^ The flageolets were, it seemed, a immeur, or ' spring novelty,' in the way of vegetables, and I had to pay ten francs for a single portion of them. At the Cafe Corazza,* once a first-rate house, the cookery has fallen off, the waiting is dilatory, but the prices are moderate. At the restaurant of the Galerie d'Orleans you may breakfast ex- cellently well, and — but for the pressure of the Exhibition — com- fortably. These are all restaurants a la carte. * Formerly known and famed as the Restaurant d'Oiiix.^ I knew okl M. d'Ouix nearly thirty years ago in London. He had been qfficicr de honche to Charles X., and in habit d la Frangaisc and his sword by his side had waited on that monarch at table. But poor old D'Ouix fell upon evil days ; sold his restaurant ; came to England^ and was doing very badly when I knew him. DINNER-TIME IN PATITS. 227 With the lower class of * fixed price ' houses — the inferior Gar- gottiers and Boustifailles that absolutely pullulate in the two great galleries — I should seriously advise you to have nothing whatever to do, unless you wish to pay an early visit to the pharmaceutical establishment of Mr. Roberts, English chemist, of the Rue de la Paix. As a rule, too, I would implore you likewise, if you value your health and your peace of mind, to abstain from all salmon, from all sauces known as mmjonnaise, remoidadc, financicrc, Bear- naise, or Borddaise, in any but first-class restaurants. In second- class ones these sauces are not made with good butter, and they all mean indigestion and bilious attacks. Especially should you beware of the preparations of shell-fish known as moides a la marinicre and moides a la 'poidette. Mussels are at all times perilous things to eat ; but you may partake of them with a tolerable certitude that they are fresh at Durand's or at the Maison Doree. At other houses you run the risk of being — to use the common English locution — ' musselled ' to an alarming extent by stale and carelessly cleaned fish. The same remark will apply to the enormous langoustes or crayfish, and to the appetising little ccrevisses or crawfish, of which en huisson, boiled hot with a butter sauce, the French are so immoderately fond. By the way, not being a scientific naturalist, I am not prepared to say that tlie big langouste is not a crawfish, and the little ccrevisse a crayfish. Mr. Frank Buckland or Mr. Henry Lee will perhaps set me right on this point. At the majority of restaurants — always in consequence of the Exhibition, I suppose — I have found the fish to have much more of an * ancient and fishlike flavour ' than is desirable. At the Cafe Anglais and at the Restaurant Gaillon, however, I have invariably found the fish to be as fresh — to use the proverbial expression — • * as paint.' At most of the remaining restaurants, including even the grandest, it is frequently more than equivocal. It is but scant consolation for the habitual staleness of a most wholesome and delicious article of food that papers like the Figaro, the Gaidok, and the Voltaire, revel day after day in extremely funny but, under the circumstances, exasperating stories about stale fish. Here is one : A customer at a boulevard restaurant complains, in distinctly audible tones, that his mackerel is absolutely uneatable. * S-sssli ! ' whispers the waiter, discreetly putting his finger to his lips. * It isn't the mackerel. Pas le moins du monde. It's the salmon oj the gentleman opposite ! ' Another story is of a guest who com- plains on Wednesday that his turbot is not so good as that of which he partook on the preceding Sunday. * That's very odd,' q2 228 PARIS HERSELF AGAIX. remarks the complacent (jarqon. ' Really, I can't make it out; for it happens to be a slice of the very same turbot which was served to Monsieur on Sunday.' This is only a clever paraphrase of the very old French Joe Miller about Jocrisse and the salmon. ' I saw this morning,' said Jocrisse (the French tomfool), ' the finest salmon at Chevet's that I ever beheld in my life. I shall save up my pocket-money till I am able to buy it.' Peace and quiet and a sparseness of guests are to me among the essential components of a good dinner. One need not be such a gastronomic soli- ^ ^^ tary as Handel the composer, who, having ordered din- ner for three at a tavern, and being asked by the waiter when the rest of the company were coming, tranquilly replied, * I am de gompany ; ' still I have an objection to sitting down to dinner with a hun- dred and fifty or two hundred people whom I do not , know, and whom I BURING THE EXHIBITION (bY CHAM). j^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ _ ' What ! Two francs for an egs wliicli l^^n'teveu fresh ? ^^^ desire to know ' Monsieur forgets the chicken is included ! ' i, j * ° which may be done here any day at the crowded tables cVhote of the Grand, the Louvre, or the new Hotel Continental ; and even more strongly do I object to being compelled to eat my meat to the music of the band of the Grenadier Guards discoursing a selection from La Fille dc Madame Angot, or to the clatter of innumerable knives, forks, spoons, and plates, and the vocifera- tions in a dozen languages of a horde of hungry people from all parts of the globe. There are no musical eating-houses in Paris, like our Holborn Restaurant ; but the absence of harmony is com- pensated by the hideous discord which reigns around you while you are dining. The noise is almost as grievous in the cabinets particuliers as in the public rooms, since in the former poky little DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. 229 cupboards the atmosphere towards evening is usually so stifling that 3'ou are fain to open the window, and then j'ou are confronted by the incessant strident roar of the boulevards. Next to the excellent quality of the wines at Voisin's, in the Hue St. Honord, THE TABLE DUOTE OF THE GRAND HOTEL. is the blessing of the comparative quietude of the street in which the house is situated ; but the first-rate houses — the Anglais, the Riche, the Maison Doree, Bignon's, Durand's — are all not on!}' on the boulevard, but at the corner of boulevard streets ; so that the bellowing catches you on all sides, without surcease or respite. The uproar prevailing in the Paris restaurants just now — always in consequence of the Exhibition — has become positively appalling. The vacarme of one house is only equalled by the charivari of the next ; and you have siinplv a choice, so to speak, between marrow- bones and cleavers on the Boulevard des Capucines and frying-pans and tongs on the Boulevard des Italiens. As regards breakfast, 3'ou have, it is true, a chance of relief. Take a victoria and hie straight away to the Champs £lysees, and there you will be able to lunch peacefully and well. Laurent's, for example, in the Avenue Marign}^ is, in the morning, a beauti- fully quiet house. It is close to the Cirque d'Ete ; but at the historic arena once known as Franconi's, no morning performances 230 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. like those which take place at the Hijipoclrome are given. You hear no sounds more disturbing than the plashing of a fountain in the pretty garden surrounding the restaurant, and, now and again, a rippling of silvery laughter from the children on their hobby- horses at some distant merry-go-round, Laurent's itself is a trim little villa, gaily painted in the Pompeian stjde. It has a soup^un of the House of Pansa, or of that of the Tragic Poet ; but I hasten to say that there is one Pompeian house which the Pestaurant Marigny does not resemble — the Hotel Diomed, for instance, dearest and dirtiest of albcvfiJii, maintained for the purpose of fleecing the J'orestieri who visit the disentombed city. Abutting DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. 231 on tlie facade of Laurent's there is quite a Bower of Bliss, open on two sides to the garden, and on a third to the interior of the restau- rant ; and in this arbour you may regale yourself with an absence of noise and confusion eminentl}'- soothing to nerves that have been shattered by that brabbling brawling Paris beyond the Place de la Concorde yonder. We were served in the Bower o^ Bliss by an admirably civil and intelligent waiter, whose only fault was that, knowing a little English, he was slightly too anxious to increase his knowledge of that tongue by propounding questions after the manner of the beneficent but somewhat iiiitatiug Ollendorff. As an atonement for this trifling fault, he caused to be brewed for us a pot of the very best tea that I have tasted since I have been in Paris. How is it that French people cannot make tea ? Their tea warehouses are sumptuous to look upon, magnificently decorated, and crowded with rare porcelain and bronzes from China and Japan. I know one tea-shop in the Rue Vivienne where there are no less than seven slim-waisted young ladies behind the counter; still you cannot swallow bronze griffins or porcelain vases ; and demoiselles de magasin, although delicious to the sight, are possibly difficult of digestion. When it comes to actual tea-drinking, you find yourself presented with a weak and well-nigh colom-less infusion of you know not what mawkish and insipid herb. Assuredly it does not remind you of any Pekoe, Souchong, or Hyson with which 3'ou are acquainted. It must, however, be borne in mind that the French, as a nation, are still quite infants in the art of tea- drinking. I can well remember when it was the custom in good society in Paris to offer you nj^etit verve of ' Phum de la Jamaique ' with your cup of tea — the clown in the pantomime did no more when he ' in his tea took brandy, but took a drop too much ; ' and one of the first dramatic pieces that I ever saw performed at a French theatre — it was just after the production of the inimitable Ma Fcmme ct mon Parapluie — was a satire upon the then newly-introduced fashion of tea-drinking. It was a rollicking vaudeville called Lc The chcz Madame Gibon. The part of Madame Gibou, an old 'portiere — there were no concierges in those days — was played by that admirable comedian Yernet ; and the fun which he made out of the process of brewing some tea for the entertainment of some friends in the porter's lodge might have made the great Joey Grimaldi himself jealous. All kinds of strange ingredients were put into the teapot — some houillon from the pot au feu, pepper, mustard, an onion, a glass of cassis ; and finally the abominable broth was stirred up with a bout de clianddle — a, 232 PARIS HEESELF AGAIN. tallow-candle end ! I am afraid that the French have not im- proved to any marked extent as tea-brewers since the time when this diverting farce set all Paris screaming with laughter. Do they boil their tea ? Do they import the superior qualities of the article, or is it they grudge the necessary quantum of tea to the pot? In the matter of tea they seem to have been stationary. The herb has always been looked upon as an exotic, and it remains one. Not one French working man or working woman in a thousand has ever, I apprehend, so much as tasted tea, which, indeed, is looked upon by the poor as a kind of tisane or diet drink, to be taken only during sickness. We came away from the quiet breakfast at Laurent's en- chanted with the beauty of the garden, the quietude of the Bower of Bliss, the succulence of the fare, and the moderate charge which was made for it. It was quite a model bill in the Avay of cheapness. Only seventy-five centimes for a pear. * You come, evening, dine,' quoth the Ollendorffian waiter as with many smiles he swept up his pourhoire. ' You come, evening, dinner in the garden. In the garden you dine under the trees green. Over the green trees of the garden during the dinner of evening comes the illumination of the gas. Now I give you the hat and the umbrella. Have you his umbrella ? [Lesson XIV.] Francois, where is the umbrella of the English gentleman '? Stay, I have the Cashmere sliawl [it was only a Paisley one] of the English lady. [Lesson XV.] Good-bye ; you come dine.' Good-bye, Ollendorff, We made haste to get away, fearing lest in his ardour for linguistic improvement he should become still more Ollendorffian, and, asking us if we had the green boots of the Spanish captain, inform us that he himself possessed the pink ship of the Armenian muleteer. So we strolled through the pretty garden, and by the mur- muring fountain, and out into the always merry but tranquil Elysian Fields. Pleasant fields, lightly haunted by the apparitions of little children. There were many little manikins and toddle- kins and hches in^the flesh gambolling under the trees that day. The sun shone very brightly. There were goat-chaises, and even goat chars-a-hancs, about. The * Theatre de Guignol' had attracted a large audience of small folks ; the sweetstuff stalls were doing a prosperous trade ; and there were distant symptoms of a hare and tabor and of a dancing dog. But everything Avas quiet and sub- dued. The Champs l5lysecs are bordered by some of the hand- somest private houses in Paris ; and on week-days, by some curious tacit iigrecment among the classes, so it would seem, the DINNER-TIME IN PARIS. 233 place is the playgroimcl of the rich. On Sundays the mob comes, and the Champs filysees roar. This afternoon the children, ^Ylth their bonnes, had things all to themselves, and the showmen were as polite and aflable as Mr. Crenier jmiior's young men, who go out conjuring to juvenile parties. I was quite surprised at the elegant attire and aristocratic mien of the little demoi- selles of from eight, who patronised the wooden steeds of the merry-go-rounds. Silk stockings, embroidered slippers with high heels, gants Joiivin with three buttons, laced skirts, plumed and flowered hats of the newest mode, were common among these small ladies of fashion. There were a few hourgeois children in pinafores and blue-linen trousers ; but they kept them- selves aloof shrinkingly, and refrained from en- gaging hobby - horses when the cavalcade was a patrician one. I noticed one leader of fashion, aged about nine, who had a scent-bottle and a fan. She managed her fiery steed, notwithstanding these trifling encumbrances, with so much skill and dexterity ; she pointed her small lance with so much adroitness when she passed the pendant circles — for a French merry-go-round in- cludes the game of skill of ' running at the ring ; ' she indulged in so many charming minauderies ; she gave herself, in a word — the little minx !— so many airs, that I fimcied she must be cousin- german to the tiny aristocrat of seven, who, when asked to hold 234 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. one handle of a sldi)ping-rope In the Pare Mongeaux, replied, with a toss of her head, ' I only play with children who are dressed in velvet.' The skipping-rope party were dressed in cotton. I was glad, however, to see Avhen this superb young damsel descended from her charger that her stirrup was held by a muffin-faced boy in knickerbockers. They were velvet knickerbockers, mind j^ou ; and the edging to his cuffs and collars was of Brussels lace. I was still more glad to see la Princesse Toto and M. le Marquis de Petit Sale go off amicably to the nearest sweetstuff-stall to partake of barlej'-sugar; but I was pained subsequently to observe both of them engaged in a very fierce up-and-down fight over a penny- worth of gingerbread. Tlie way in which M. le Marquis pummelled the Princess said little for the gallantry of juvenile Frenchmen; and the manner in which her Highness tugged at the hay-coloured rhiglets of the muffin-faced Marquis was, to say the least, unlady- like. Perhaps children are pretty much the same all the world over. QiLcn elites voiis } So I went on strolling, strolling through the beloved place, every pace of which to me was classic, and well-remembered, and some of it quietly sorrowful ground. And, as I wandered, the Elysian Fields became peopled to me with innumerable troops of small infantrj' — but with the little children who are dead. Hand in hand with one who these thirty years past has been in the grave, I recalled m3'self, a small boj', in the days of * skeleton ' suits and frills — not those of knickerbockers — wandering in and wondering at these delightful Elysian Fields, ever full, to me, of fresh enchantments. What frenzied gambling for macaroons used to go on at the bagatelle-boards ! What a conquering hero seemed the boy who propelled the ball into the luckiest hole, or who struck the brazen bell, at the tinkling of which a little plas- ter statuette of Napoleon the Great would rise as by magic from a silent tomb of gingerbread and lollipops ! The bo}'', generall}^ a lanky youth en qiiatrihne, had won the grand x>rix — usually a watch and chain of the purest tin lacquered j'ellow, or a flowery vase, warranted Sevres, and worth about one franc fifty. We followed that proud prize-winner. We made much of him. We liumbled ourselves before him. We extolled him to the skies wben he treated us to coco — a deliriously exciting beverage, com- posed of Spanish liquorice and sassafras — dispensed in tin cups by a man wlio carried the coco reservoir, a sort of Chinese pagoda, adorned with red-cotton velvet and tricoloured flags, strapped to his back. Yes ; these are the Elysian Fields. There, behind the canvas wall of the Thejitre de Guignol, I smoked my first cigar. Till: M AncnAND dk Coco. I*. 234. DIXNER-TIME IN PARIS. 235 It was very long and of a light-brown colour, and it cost a sou — one halfpenny sterling. The excruciating agonies of nausea which I suffered after half- a-dozen whiiFs of that .- "^ never-to - he- forgotten combination of cab- bage-leaf and brown paper should properly have cured me for ever and a day of any desire to indulge in the per- nicious habit of smok- ing. But it failed to have that eftect. There are people, I presume, Avho are fated to con- sume tobacco ; and they must needs com- mence its consumption at some time or an- other. Not far from the scene of my first dealings with nicotine, I found the well-remembered Cirque d'fite, now a very grand building indeed, but in my time a humble barn of circular form.^ The Brothers Franconi were then flourishing — twin emperors of the hippie ring. The famous Auriol, whose daughter married our much-regretted Flexmore, was clown at Franconi's. The grandest of hippodramatic spectacles, generally treating of the martial episodes of the Napoleonic epoch, used to be performed there. The Cirque had a Napoleon of its own, second only to our Gomersal, a Blucher whom Cartlich might have studied with advantage ; a Murat who was nearly as dashing, but not so elegant, as Ducrow. Moscow and the Passage of the Bcresina ; La Corogne (meaning Corunna), ia\([ i\\Q Defeat of General Lord John Moore ; the Camixi'ujn of Egypt and the Battle of the Pyramids; Austerlitz, or the Dog oj the Ecgiment; Marengo, or the Tiro Vivandicres—the^e were the kind of pieces which they gave us at Franconi's in the brave days of old. Had I been dramatic censor under the Government of "King Louis PhiHppe, I scarcely think that I would have licensed these hippodramatic apotheoses "of the deeds of the Consulate and the Empire. They kept alive a very fascinating legend, a veiy dangerous cultus, among the masses. Psha ! Louis Philippe's INIinisters not only authorised, but conceived, organised, and tri- 236 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. umphantly earned out a * hippo dramatic spectacle ' fifty times more perilous to Orleanism than the plays at Franconi's. As I stroll through the Fields, calling up old days, old scenes, old kindred and playmates long since dead, the temperature of the sunny September afternoon seems suddenly to grow bleak and chill and raw. It is November. As for myself, I have shrunk to very small proportions indeed; I have left the solid earth, and am astride on the conveniently strong bough of a leafless tree. The Champs Iillysees, from the Arch of Triumph to the Place de la Concorde, are thronged by an innumerable multitude of people — black, silent, waiting for Something. The roadway is kept clear by serried lines of infantry and cavalry. Presently there is heard the distant thunder of drums ; then come the distant wailing and soughing of a sea of martial music. Then, in the brumous dis- tance, the head of a great procession begins to sway, glittering. It sweeps through the Arc de I'fitoile — his arch. The white road- way is gradually overspread, absorbed by a prodigious and splendid train, and at length the Something for which all have been waiting looms in sight. All eyes are fixed on a huge funereal car, a lofty bier, a towering catafalque, the car drawn by steeds. caparisoned from head to foot in black velvet, silver embroidered. But the pall over the bier is of purple velvet, powdered with golden bees ; and beneath the catafalque, patent to all eyes, is a cofiin, on the lid of which is a Little Cocked Hat and a Sword. It is the sword of Austerlitz. They have brought back the ashes of Napoleon the Great, Emperor and King, from the Atlantic roclc to bury him under the golden dome of the Invalides, on the banks of the Seine, among the French people whom he loved so well. A very danger- ous hippodramatic spectacle, indeed ! On the day of the perform- ance Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephcAv of the Illustrious Dead, was securely locked up in the prison of the Palace of the LuxenitJourg awaiting his trial for his madcap escapade ut Bou- logne. Twelve years afterwards he was Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. DAilES DE LA HALLE. XVIII. IN THE HALLES CENTRALES. Gept 26. Splendid weather overhead and crisp dr3'ness under foot. A sky of cloudless blue, and sunshine of pale gold. The air clear and bracing. It is eight o'clock in the morning, and I am bound for the Halles Centrales. The Parisians of all classes (save the vicious) are extremely early risers, and an astonishing amount of business is transacted before breakfast ; still, the streets at eight A.M. are not destitute of signs that the working day is still in its first youth. M. Barb^dienne, my next door neighbour, has just taken his shutters down ; but his windows are not yet ' dressed ' — that, I believe, is the correct shop-walking term — and his nymphs and bathers in bronze are still enveloped in green-gauze veils, suggestive of the verdant calzoni which the prudish Bomba, King of Naples, forced the ballerine at the San Carlo to assume. As I pass the door of Brebant's restaurant, likewise known as Vachette's, I behold a curious spectacle. At least a hundred forlorn-looking creatures, men and women, young and old, and mere children, are standing en queue two and two against the wall which slarts the kitchens of the great restaurant. Eight o'clock m the morning is the time when M. Brebant gives away 238 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. soup, made from all sorts of yesterday's leavings, to the poor ; and his poverty-stricken guests may either sup their pottage on the spot or take it home with them in the cans or the pipkins ■which they have brought. But very few members of the ragged regiment who form the * tail ' are, I am told, can-and-pipkin- bringers. The majority drink their soup standing from a common porringer. They are outcasts, gens sans aveii, miserables who have no homes at all. The compassion extended to them should perhaps be of a modified kind. There are poor wretches who cannot*work ; these may be lazy rascals who will not work. Still they may be pitied, even as we pity the * casuals ' in Mr. Luke Tildes' jiicture. We must punish idleness and profligacy ; but we may not pass sentence of death on the idle and the profligate. Starvation is equivalent to siis : per coll : Down the Paie Montmartre, always noisj^ always crowded, always business-like and bustling, and thoroughly French. * Ici on ne parle pas Anglais,' they might write up here. I pass with temporary disdain the secondary Marche de St. Joseph : although I descry through its portals some admirable effects of light and shade and colour in the picturesquely grouped masses of fish, flesh, fowl, vegetables, and fruit. But I am bound on a grander expedition, and the Marche St. Joseph must wait. Then I pass a shop which I am told is that of the largest game-dealer m Paris. I may not stop, since I shall behold presently a wondrous assem- blage of gibier, large and small. As I approach the Church of St. Eustache symj)toms of the neighbourhood of a great market make themselves more and more aj)parent. The pavement becomes greasy and slippery with the tattered leaves of cabbages ; porters laden with sacks hurry by you ; you are jostled by menagercs carrying enormous market-baskets ; and all at once j'ou see a cascade of lemons tumbling bodily into the vaults of the old Gothic-Renaissance Church of St. Eustache. Since the abolition of intramural interments, the church-vaults have been utilised as warehouses for fruit; while in the thickness of the walls, so it seems, of the edifice itself there have been constructed a guard- house, a pastrycook's shop, and a cabaret. This mingling of the sacred and the profane gives a quaintly mediajval touch to the scene. Did not a pie-shop and a puppet-show impinge on one ot the very chapels of Old St. Paul's ? Bounding the corner of the fine old fane, I came upon the perfectly modern series of edifices known as the Halles Centrales, and which are constructed, with the exception of a low skirting wall of brown stone from the Vosges, eutii'ely of iron and glass. IN THE HALLES CENTRALES. 239 To be briefly technical, once for all, I may remark tliat the building (which was oi3enecl for business in 1858) covers an immense parallelogram comiirising six pavilions, separated by six spacious covered avenues, one of them extending from the central boulevard to the Eue Pierre Lescot, while the two other avenues, which cross the first one at right angles, run from the Rue de Rambuteau to the Rue Berger. The pavilions — or 'blocks,' as Anglo-Saxon architects would less elegantly call them — are devoted respectively to the sale of meat wholesale and retail, game, poultiy, eggs, fruit, vegetables, butter, cheese, culinary utensils and crockeryware, sea and freshwater fish, and 'jewelry.' Yes, there is a section — a very small one, it must be admitted — afiected to the sale of * bijouterie.' I shall touch on the 'jewel ' depart- 240 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ment in the Ilalles Centrales last. XJjider the enormous structure are ranges of subterraneans, where the operations of manij^ulating butter, counting eggs, plucking and trussing poultry and game, are carried on by gaslight. In 1870, just before the siege, millions of kilogrammes of potatoes were stowed away in these vaults, but their presence there was during many weeks unaccountably over- looked. When drowsy authority, feeling hungry at last, woke up, it was found that the great mass of the potatoes had rotted, and was totally unfit for food. Potatoes are not the only things that have decayed hereabouts. Close by is the site of the old Marche des Innocents, which, until the advent of the Second Empire, fulfilled the purposes at present filled by the Halles Centrales. The Innocents forms now a hand- some 'square,' in the centre of which rises the mngnificent Renais- sance fountain built and decorated by Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon. The edifice is contemporary with the defunct Tuileries, andwithin recent years has been judiciously and tastefully restored. On the occasion of the formal opening of the markets in '58 the fountain ran with red wine for three-quarters of an hour, just as our conduit in Chepe used to do in bygone times. There was, however, a substantial railing round the fountain of the Innocents; and the police took care that only the Forts de la Halle and their lady-friends were permitted to swill the surging Macon. But I spoke of things which have decayed there — some millions of human bones, to wit. During six centuries the vast expanse was the Cemetery of the Innocents, but it was surrounded by covered arcades, beneath the pavement of which the remains of Royal and wealthy persons were interred. These arcades became fashionable walks. In process of time, sellers of toys and sweetmeats came to vend their wares there. The place grew into a bazaar, and the bazaar ultimately into a market. Towards the latter end of tlie eighteenth century the municipality, laudably anxious to enlarge the market, came to an understanding with the ecclesiastical authorities to remove the human bones which, by the million, were crumbling in the Cimeti^re des Innocents. The removal took place at night by torchlight, the relics of mortality being placed in covered wagons, escorted by troops of priests and monks chanting the Office for the Dead. The market-space was thus con- siderably increased, but little was done to improve it structurally. I remember the Marche des Innocents very well indeed in Louis Philippe's time, as a kind of forest of colossal canvas umbrellas outspread, and with the handles firmly fixed in the earth. Beneath these Brobdingnagian parapluies the ladies who dealt in fruit and IN THE HALLES CENTRALES. 241 THE FOUNTAIN OF THK INNOChNT.S. vegetables did business. The old arcades bad bien replaced by modern galleries — somewhat resembling the 'bulk shops' you see in old prints of Fleet Market and Butchers' Row, near I'emple Bar — and which had been erected in 1K13 by Napoleon 1. Tbiit ruler had formed a grandiose scheme for remodelling the Plalle^ ; but the plan was destined to be postponed until the reign of Napoleon III., whose architects possessed the inestimable advan- tage of living in an epoch signalised by the wonderful structural invention of Joseph Paxton. It can scarcely be denied that the distribution — not the material — of Mr. Horace Jones's stately dead- meat and poultry markets in Smithfield may have been to sonie 242 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. extent suggested by the ordonnance of the Halles Centrales ; but ' it is altogether undeniable that the influence of the originator of ' the Crystal Palace is visible in every iron truss and girder and column, and in every pane of glass, in the Halles. So much for technicalities. I have not the slightest intention of making the round of the pavilions seriatim, with you, or of describing in anything like detail the contents and the appearance A PORTION OF THE OLD HALLES. of an emporium of food in comparison with which St. George's Market at Liverpool is a mere baby, and which can only be ap- j)roached — and that at a vast distance — by the market at Philadel- phia. Fully to describe the Halles Centrales would be, indeed, a task impossible of achievement, in this place at least, and in such restricted space as is at my command. The Halles Centrales form an Exposition Universelle of victuals. It is Grandgousier's larder. It is the Tom Tiddler's Ground of things eatable. It is the grandest ' Grub Street ' in Europe. Take and roll into one New Smithfield, Farringdon, Covent Garden, Billingsgate, Leadenhall, and the Borough ; throw in the New Cut, Lambeth Marsh, and High Street, Camden Town, on a Saturday night, and the pro- portions of the Halles Centrales would not yet be reached. You might build au equally magnificent market in the very centre of IN THE HALLES CENTRALES. 243 London, My Lord Duke of Bedford ; 3^011 might earn for j'ourself fume as splendid and as enduring as that of Herodes Atticus, couhl 3'our Grace be only brought to recognise the fact that struc- turally the paltry little collection of hovels called Covent Garden Market is a reproach to our civilisation and a scandal to us as a nation. The picturesque is not altogether absent from the Halles Cen- trales, all modern though they be. Entering the market from the Place St. Eustache, I found myself in the midst of a very wilder- ness of pumpkins, which the small cultivateurs from the villages around Paris are permitted to sell in the open air from break of da}^ to nine a.m. After that hour the ' pumpkincers ' are rigidly moved on b}'' the police. The}' are ridiculously cheap, a very fine pumpkin being obtainable for a franc, and seem to be used ex- clusively for soup-making among the j^ctite bourgeoisie and by the working classes. I have never yet met with potage de ijotiron in the bill of fare of any restaurant : nor do the French cooks appear to have any idea of pumpkin in the form of custard or of a pie. Among the pumpkin dealers and their customers circulated numbers of itinerant soup-sellers — the soup being ' h I'oignon,' a racy, toothsome, and nourishing pottage, but too inelegant to find a place in the menus of the Cafe Anglais or the Maison Doree. Beyond the soupe a Voignon, and a slice of bread now and then, with, perhaps, an occasional visit to a neighbouring marchand de vins, the market people did not seem to require any refreshment. They had all had their morning coffee at six a.m., and about eleven they would breakfast seriously. Every Frenchman breakfasts seriously when he has any money. It is a ceremony which must be gone through ab ovo usque ad malum — from the omelet to the aj)ple or the pear or the grapes of the dessert. The poorest cab- man has his two plats and his dessert. The consumption of fruit is thus much larger than it is with us ; and the same, in degree, may be said of vegetables. A Frenchman does not hold himself as in duty bound to eat at least a pound of potatoes every day. AVc do. But no day passes Avithout the Frenchman partaking at one meal, and generally at two, of pulse or green vegetables in his soup, as aptlat or as salad. When we eat salad we generally eschew the mild and wholesome oil, and drench our green meat with bad vinegar, to the ruin of the flavour of the salad and the injury of the coats of our stomachs. The variety of salad alone sold in the Halles Centrales is simply amazing. Of tomatoes, likewise, there is a splendid display. We are beginning at home slowly to recog- inise the culinary virtue of the * love apple/ with its salutary sub- B 2 244 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. acid properties. Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz has made 'chops and tomato sauce ' immortal ; but within recent years EngUsh people have found out that tomatoes are very good and very wholesome, fried, stewed, baked, stuffed, and au gratin. Tomato soup is one of the finest of inirees ; and raw tomatoes sliced, with oil and vinegar, d VAmericaine, is a most succulent breakfast dish. In France every dish d la Portugaise is garnished with tomatoes, and ' Portuguese ' eggs are as delicious as ' Portuguese ' fowl and * Portuguese ' cutlets ; but the Parisian cooks have a bad habit of minghng shredded onion with tomato salad. Tlie tomato has a distinct and independent flavour of its own, which needs neither enhancement nor diminution. What would you think of asparagus and onions ? I question, even, whether mint with green peas be not a barbarism. Among the vegetables in the Halles Centrales not usually found in England, save, perhaps, in the Central Avenue of Covent Garden, where you can obtain everything that grows if you can afford to pay the price asked for it, I note * aubergines ' — the American name for which is, I believe, ' egg plant,' but the English appellation of which has escaped me ; I saw it the other day in an Anglo-French dictionary, but it was not a familiar name, and it fled from my mind — the black radish, as big as a large carrot, very pungent, and very good eating with bread and cheese ; ' salsifis ' and * cardons.' As for * strange meats,' I observed with admiration in the game department a huge wild-boar, fresh killed, and which the dealer told me had been shot in the Ardennes. The last wild boar I met in a continental market was in that behind the Pantheon at Rome. He came from the Pontine marshes, but he was only a poor little fellow compared with the formidable r/jjer in the Halles. Venison, too, was abundant. It is expensive ; but the French are very fond of it. In London venison, with the exception of the haunch, is cheaper than butcher's meat. I have seen neck of venison offered at sixpence-halfpenny a pound. The common people won't eat it. We are a wonderful people. Frogs by the score, frogs by the hundred, ready skinned and trussed and spitted, were plentiful in the Halle. I ate some once at a dinner in London of the Acclimatisation Society. They were en fricasse with a white sauce ; but so far as flavour went they presented no definite pur- port or signification to my palate. An obliging French friend, a confirmed frog-eater, tells me that the diminutive creature who once a-wooing went, contrary to the advice of his mamma, with his Roley Poley, Gammon, and Spinach, and who was an imme- diate factor in the discovery of galvanism, is truly delicious fried, IN THE IIALLES CENTRALES. 245 with parsley. My friend bought three dozen this morning for the^ family breakfast. He tokl the dealer that he would send his chrf to fetch them by and by, jokingly telling her not to eat them all in the mean time. * Y a pas de danger,' quoth Madame la Grenouil- liere. 'Jamais de la vie je ne mangerais de cette volaille-la. Peuh ! une pourriture, allez ! ' So you see that the prejudice against frog-eating is not confined to England. Snail-soup, how- ever, I have heard of as recommended by English physicians for consumptive patients ; but in France the coUmacon, or rather the escargot, is habitually eaten, stewed, with a stuffing of fines herhes. There used many years ago to be, near the top of the Rue St. Honore, where the'district of the Halles begins, a restaurant by the sign of Les Cent Mille Escargots, Horrid reminiscence ! And yet we eat periwinkles. I am glad to know that we do not eat squirrels ; and I was heartily sorry to see a brace of those beautiful and harmless little nutcrackers exposed for sale this morning in the game department. Well, Ave eat ' the merry brown hare ' and the inoffensive, albeit idiotic, rabbit. As for the thou- sands of quails and larks to be found in this part of the Halles, and which are brought, they tell me, from North Africa, it woidd be better, perhaps, to say nothing of a sentimental nature. Those small fowl are such i-cri/ nice eating. But touching that ' Jewelry ' department in the Halles Centrales of which I spoke anon. My conductor, the most obliging of Frenchmen, amicably insisted that the * Section de la Bijouterie ' should be the very last visited in our survey of the Great Central Market of Paris. ' C'est tres drole a voir,' quoth he. As a rule, I do not care about staring at gems. I do like to ponder over the sovereigns and napoleons, the doubloons and ducats, the dollars and roubles, in the windows of the money- changers' shops in the Palais Eoyal, because I have had a good deal of gold and silver dross in my time ; and it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. But I shall never possess any diamonds ; and I prefer a dozen of oysters — Marennes are the best — to all the pearls at Mellerio's, in the Bue de la Paix. Stick a piece of foil paper at the back of a piece of glass symmetri- cally cut into facets, and you may at once provide 3'ourself with a ruby or an emerald. Let others pine for coral. I can make a very fair imitation of the ruddy polype with gum tragacanth and vermihon. What is coral, after all, but so mucli cartilaginous matter combined with carbonate and phosphate of lime ? On the whole, to most of the gewgaws in which some people take so much delight, there may be applied the scathing remarks on gay wearing- 246 PAniS IIEKSELF AGAIN. apparel in Swift's ' Letter to a Veiy Young Married Lady : ' ' Li your own heart,' writes the Dean, ' I would wish j'ou to be an utter contemner of all distinctions which a finer petticoat can give j'ou ; because it neither makes you richer, handsomer, j'ounger, better- natnred, more virtuous, nor wiser than if it hung upon a peg.' The profound i^hilosophy of Swift might in this instance, perhaps, be supplemented b.y the apologue of the fox that had lost his tail. It was a cousin of his who found the grapes so sour. ' Jewelry in the Halles,' thought I, as we hastened through the interesting but somewhat overpoweringly odorous Cheese De- partment, in which the lordly Camembert, the unpretending but delicious Brie, the milky Bondon, the porous Gruyere, the leather- skinned Port-de-Snlut — the last a fromage 2^''^itiqi(ant, or orthodox cheese, stamped with pious emblems — contend for preeminence with the mighty Boquefort — lefromage qui marclic, as the French significantly call it from its tendency to sjiontaneous locomotion when kept too long. In England Roquefort has nearly killed our own Stilton ; but the victor has a formidable rival in the Italian Gorgonzola, a cheese almost unknown in France. * Jewehy in the Halles,' I repeated. ' Of what kind could those baubles be ? Cheap brooches and earrings for the daughter of Madame Angot, silver crosses for the Dames de la TIaUe ? ' I asked my conductor. He laughed and told me that I should see the brooches and ear- rings presently. So we passed from the cheeses to the corridors allotted to fresh and sea water fish, where all kinds of finny food were being sold, as in our own Billingsgate, by auction. The same means are adopted in disposing of nearly the whole of the produce brought to the Halles ; but in a few instances, eggs and butter for example, the rente a la criee is superseded by the rente a Vamiahlc — an amicable arrangement between vendor and purchaser. The auction sales are very well managed ; a tramway running along the length of the stalls carrying a platform which supports the auctioneer's rostrum, the auctioneer, and the crieur, the man who does the bawling part of the business. The seller holds his tongue ; but brings down his hammer at the final bid, and then enters the sale in the ledger before him. Among the fish I descried two or three noble sturgeon. These are poissons de reprc- sentaiion or ' show-lish,' and are generally purchased by the pro- l^rictors of 'so much a head ' restaurants to decorate their devan- if/nrs, in company with the biggest asparagus, the hnQestlangonstcs — I use the French word because I cannot yet make out whether a langouste is a crayfish and an ecrevisse a crawfish, or vice versa — some piscatorial authorities tell me one thing, and some another IN THE IIALLES CENTRALES. 24? — and the most blushing tomatoes in or out of season. The sight of these dainties, artistically displayed in the glass cases which flank the restaurateurs door, dazzles the eyes of the Parisian in quest of a dinner at ' so much a head,' but who has not quite made up his mind as to the particular establishment which he shall patronise. The royal sturgeon or the colossal asparagus van- quishes him in the end ; and he ascends the fatal stairs, and feeds. Chevet's in the Palais Royal, close to the Gale'rie d'Orleans, used 248 PAmS ilEKSELF AGAIN* to be famous, in days of j'ore, for its * show fisli ; ' but since the restaurateurs a taut imr tete adopted this obviously attractive means of advertising their wares, Chevet — the Fortnum and Mason of Paris, as Potel and Chabor are its Morel— relinquished the dis- play of * sensational ' provisions. It was Bilboquet in the farce who used to say, some forty yesLis since, that he had seen that morning a wonderfully fine salmon at Chevet's, and that he intended to save up his pocket-money until he was able to purchase the splendid fish. Here is the 'jewelry ' at last. We pass between a double line of stalls heaped high with the most astonishing array of cooked food that I have ever set ej'-es upon. Fish, flesh, fowl, veget- ables, fruit, pastry, confectionery, and cheese are all represented here, ready cooked, but cold, and arranged, not on plates or dishes, but on quarter-sheets of old newspapers. Imagine one pile, con- sisting of the leg of a partridge, the remnants of an omelette, the tail of a fried sole, two ribs of a jugged hare, a spoonful of haricot beans, a scrap of Jilct, a cut pear, a handful of salad, a slice of tomato, and a dab of jelly. It is the microcosm of a good dinner, abating the soup. The pile constitvites a portion, and is to be bought for five sous, or twopence-halfpenny. There are 2-)ortions as low as two sous ; indeed the scale of prices is most elastic in ascending and descending. There are piles here to suit all pockets. Are your funds at a very low ebb, indeed ? On that scrap of a back number of the Fif/aro you will find a hard-boiled egg, the gizzard of a fowl, two pickled gherkins, and a macaroon. A breakfast for a Prince, if his Highness be impecunious. Are you somewhat in cash? I3ehold outspread on a trenchant leading article from the Ilepuhlique Fran<;aise , a whole veal chop, a golden store of cold fried potatoes, an artichoke, d la barigoule, a sump- tuous piece of Roquefort, some harbe de cajmcin salad, and the remains of a Charlotte russe. A luncheon for a King, if his jNIajesty's civil list be a restricted one. But tliere are loftier luxuries to be had. Behold an entire fowl. See at least the moiety of a Chdteanhriand aux chamincfnons. Yonder are the magnificent relics of a demie-selle de pre sale, the remains of a sole d la Normande, the ruins of a huisson d'ecrcvisscs, half a dozen smelts, the backbone of a pheasant, and, upon my word, some truffles ; yes, positively, truffles. It is true tliat they are mingled with bits of cheese and beetroot, with a dash of merinrjue d la rhne, and a suspicion of sauce Bohert. All this is gathered together on a front page of the Pays. A dinner for an Em- peror, when Imperialism is at a discount, and Csesar does IN THE IIALLES CENTRALES. 2-19 not find it convenient to dine at the Cafe Riche or the Maison Doree. And 3'et it is precisely from establishments of the kind just named that the heterogeneous portions come. An erroneous idea has long prevailed that the cheap eating-house keepers in the Palais Koyal are dealers in cramhc rccocta, and that their larders are largely supplied from the ' leavings ' of the great Boulevard restavirants, Avhich are hashed up again for the benefit of the one- franc seventy-five and the forty-sous customers. Nothing whatever of the kind is the case. The cheap restaurateurs may purchase meat of the second category, lean instead of plump poultry, game that is a little too far gone to suit aristocratic palates — the French epicure abhors game when it is ' high,' and fish which is not quite in its vernal prime of freshness; and, as regards butter especially, there is certainly a difference between the quality of the article used in the first-rate cuisines and that employed in the second- and third- rate ones ; but for the rest, dear and cheap restaurant proprietors go mainly to the same market. It is the same portion of fried potatoes for which you pay five sous at an etahlissement dc bouillon, and for which one franc seventy-five centimes are extorted from you at the Cafe Lucullus or the Restaurant des Grands Gommeux. The cheap eating-houses have few ' leavings ' to dispose of. Their guests are generally too hungry to leave any- thing on their plates; and, if aught, indeed, remains, it is devoured by the scullions and gdte-sauccs, or is manipulated by the chef, who should be an adept in the ' art d'accommoder les restes.' The fragments which form the 'jewelry ' of the Halles Centrales are brought down in big baskets, between seven and eight every morn- ing, b}' the gar<;ons of the great Boulevard restaurants, or by the larbins from the hotels of the Ministers and the foreign Ambassadors. If there have been overnight a dinner at the Ministry of the Interioi' or at the Baratarian Embassy, the show of 'jewelry' in the morn- ing Avill be superb. Whole turkeys and capons, all but entire hams and hures f/t'srr»r/?fcr scarcely impinged upon, jjjt'ccs montees, the majestic vestiges of a poulct a la Marengo or a saumon d la Chanihord, will decorate the deal boards of the stalls in the Halles. Out of the fashionable season the supply comes principally from the leading restaurants, where the ' leavings ' are the perquisites of the gar<;ons. "Whether the proprietors levy any tolls on the proceeds accruing from the sale of this astonishing omnium gatherum, this macedoine, this pot-pourri, this salmagundi, this galimatias of edible odds and ends, I do not know ; but, so far as my inquiries have extended, I incline to the belief that the fragments become the 250 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. A CONNOISSEUR OF CUTTER AT THE HALLES, property of the (javcon?., in frank-nlmoign, and go to swell the aggregate sum in tlie ironc or mone3^-box vase on the restaurant counter into which all the fees received by the waiters are cast, to he divided at the end of every month in equitably proportionate shares among all the servants of the establishment : — from the lofty 2)remier gcm-on, who will be a ma'ttre cVhdtel soon, and who may become a patron some of these daj's, to the lowliest marmiton in the regions below. The 'jewelry ' is not sold by auction. The sales are always 'a 1 amiable ; ' and there are some dealers who have yearly contracts for the ' leavings ' of a particular restaurant. So soon as the mer- IN THE ITALLES CKXTHALES. 251 cliandise has been received at the Ilalle the dealers — ncarl}^ al\va3-s women — proceed to arrange it for sale ; and this arrangement is, to all intents and pm-poses, an art. The marcliande de bijouterie has a twofold object in view. First, she wishes to make a very little seem like a great deal ; and, next, she is desirous to make the i^or- iions look as attractive to the eye as possible. Some marcJiandcs, fortmiate enough to possess the sentiment of artistic beauty, maki i\p their own j^ortions ; others engage the services of a mctteur en a'livre or a donncur do coup d'ccil — the great jewellers of the Paic de la Paix can only do as much — to give the portions the requisite infusion of the picturesque in the way of composition and colour. These mettcurs en oeuvrc are a kind of professors of culinary peripa- tetics, flitting from stall to stall, and giving here and there a dash of green, in the shape of some spinach or a cJioit de Bruxellcs, or a touch of red in the way of a carrot or a tomato, to a portion the hues of which seem too monotonous in tone. A high light is needed there. Quick ! the fat of a mutton-chop, the white of an egg, or a morsel oi blancmange supplies the deficienc}'. Is not yonder heap somewhat feeble and unsubstantial in appearance ? Swiftly the donncur de coup d'a'il, by the artful introduction of the deep crimson of beetroot, the Vandyck brown of an entre-cote, or the mellow tawniness of the crust of a raised pie, imj^arts strength and richness to the whole ; and the ctalage of 'jewelry' is complete. The purchasers are the Quiet Poor, the people who are ashamed to beg, and who, but for the merciful cheapness of these toothsome scraps, would not taste meat from month's end to month's end. To watch the decent but wretchedly-clad people, men, women, and children, critically examining this 'jewelry' for the indi- gent — jewelry to be worn inside instead of outside the stomach — to watch them slowly passing from stall to stall and turning over the coppers in their hands before they made their fin^l choice ; to Avatch them at last going off with their newspaper-enwrapped parcels, and with just a gleam of tranquil satisfaction in their wan pinched faces, was more than curious, more than interesting. It Avas inexpressibly pathetic. Could I persuade a member of the Charity Organisation Society to accompan}'- me to the jewelry department in the Halles Centrales between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, I Avill wager that in less than Ave minutes I would get twice that number of francs out of him to treat the poor decent thinly-clad folks to portions withal. XIX. THE GIIOGT OF THE GRISETTE. Sept. 29. Albeit I maj' be the most impliilosophic of mortals, I have still so much in common with Samuel Taylor Coleridge as not to be- lieve in Ghosts, — for the reason that I have seen so many of them. The number of dead people, for example, that I meet every time I visit the Exhibition is amazing. I bow and raise my hat to them; and am mortified when they do not return my salutation. I run after them, and am in despair when I lose them in the crowd ever gathered round the Tiffanj'- gold and silver ware, or M. Penon's blue velvet-hung bedroom, or the plaster casts in the TIIK GHOST OF THE GRISETTE. 253 llussian department. I meet them face to face ; accost them cheer- fully; and essay even to clasp the hand of the dear old friend of days gone b}-, and am bewildered by the icy stare, the con- temptuous shrug of the shoulders, or the supercilious ' Monsieur, vous vous trompez ' with which my advances are met. Then, with a numbness at my heart, I remember that I followed the hearse of one dear old friend to Kensal Green ten years ago ; that another went down in the Captain ; that another fell at Inkerman. They are all very dead indeed ; and yet, by scores, their apparitions are walking and talking here in the Champ de Mars. Yet is there a reason less psychological than physiological for the delusion under which I have laboured. There is a limit, I apprehend, to the number of facial types fashioned by the great modeller, Nature. When the series is exhausted, she begins to strike a new set of faces from the old dies. Have you never met Titus Gates in an omnibus, or Gliver Cromwell on board a steamboat ? Have you never had Frederick the Great — in modern evening dress, not in cocked hut and pigtail — for your next neighbour in the stalls of a theatre ? Have you never — on the Boulevard or in the Old Bailey, in a passing hansom, or a railway booking-office, or on the plat- form of a station past which an express-train has whirled you — met with Yourself, and turned away with aversion from the pitiful spectacle '? There are many more spectres in Paris besides the spectres who flit across my path in the Champ de Mars, or glide past me in the lietrospective Museum at the Trocadero. I rarely take a walk abroad without seeing a ghost. In the mild little gardiens de la paix, in tunics and kepis, and with 'dumpy' little swords of the 'snickasnee' order by their sides, who saunter along the kerb- stone, continually taking notes — about goodness knows what — in their pocket-books, I seem to discern the phantoms of the broad- shouldered, fierce-moustached, truculent sergents de ville, with their cocked hats and their long rapiers, who were intensely hated by the dangerous classes, but were, nevertheless, salutarily feared, and did their work in a ver}' efficient, if occasionally uncompromis- ing, manner. Man}' of these bygone policemen were Corsicans, stern 'Decembrists' — that is to say, true as steel to the House of Bonaparte, if to nobody else. The force likewise comprised a large contingent of Alsatians and Lorrainers, men of great physical stamina and great probit}^ but somewhat rude in speech and rough in manner. But they managed to control the vehicular traffic in the street; they contrived to keepGavroche and Tortillard, Gugusse and Polyte, and the great army of voyous and poUssons, 251- PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ill wholesome awe. The ranks of the existing police force — the municipal one, at least — is no longer recruited from Bonapartist Corsica, and the Alsatio-Lorrainers are wearing inchelhaubcs and carrying needle-guns in lieu of Veins and * snickasnees ; ' so the ganiiens de laixdx have become a very miscellaneous body indeed, and to my mind are not improved as regards efficiency and strength. French acquaintances, indeed, tell me that the entire Prefecture de Police is in a state of disorganisation and demoralisation, and demands radical reform. But there is another ghost — an apparition for which I have been seeking as sedulously, but up to the present time as unsuc- cessfully, as I sought for the Nice Old Gentleman. What has become of the Parisian Grisette ? Paris, we all know, is a city of ephemera ; but the grisette should not be considered as an evanes- cent personage— for La Fontaine, in some of the daintiest stanzas that French poet ever penned, sang her praises more than two hundred years ago ; and in my own Parisian adolescence I was habitually and pleasantly aware of the grisette. The good- tempered, saucy, hard-working, harmless little body ! How fond she was of flowers ; how she stinted herself in her own scant rations to feed her much-prized cat ; how she went without sugar to her own coffee in order that the due lump might be thrust through the bars of the cage of her pet canary ! Few sorrows had she of her own, that little grisette, when work was not slack, and she could get enough to eat. Elle se contcntait de iku. Her coffee and plenty of milk — O, she must have plenty of milk ! — in the morning ; a hunk of bread, a bunch of grapes, a morsel of fromar/e de Brie— the Stilton of the poor — for breakfast; and for dinner the pot ait feu — but little more than so much hot water, flavoured with a little fat and some vegetables — and bread, with perhaps an apple or a pear. She was content with little. A pennyworth of fried potatoes from that well-remembered stall on the Pont Neuf — there are no stalls on the Pont Neuf now — or threehalfpenny-worth of ready-boiled spinach, strained and pressed so smooth that it looked in the fniitier's window like so much green paint, were quite a feast to her ; but on high days and holidays she regaled herself with some tiny kickshaws of charciitcric. Butcher's meat she scarcely ever tasted. If she had a little money left after the stricte neccssaire had been provided for, she regaled herself with roasted chestnuts, or with a slice of that incomparably greasy and toothsome galette which they used to sell at an open-fronted shop in the Place de rOdoon — a galette which, without fear of contradiction, I contend to have been more succulent than the flimsier and higher-priced THE GHOST OF THE GRISETTE. 255 Eirticle sold at the 'Eenommee de la Gidette' on the other side of the water. The grisette was as fond of gaieties as London boj's are of the peculiar form of suety pudding with plums in it known as ' Spotted Corey.' Not ' Spotted Dufl',' mind you ; that is quite another eidos of the pudding species. Amateurs consider it aU the more delicious for a soupqon of pork-gravy, and the most ' lumping ' pennyworth of the dainty is to be obtained at a shop in Long Acre. The grisette took a tidy modicum of Avine, largely diluted with water, at her breakfast and her dinner — a teetotal Frenchman or I'renchwomau would be regarded as next door to a lunatic ; but in those days very decent ordinaire, either of Bordeaux or Burgundy, was to be had, costing ten sous the litre — a quantity shghtly under an imperial quai't. At present a litre of the vilest j^ctit hleit cannot be obtained at the marchands de vins for less than sixteen sous. Formerly outside the octroi barriers quite drinkable wine was to be had for four sous the quart; and the halcyon time of cheax)ness is commemorated in a song beginning, 'Pour eviter la rage . De la femine clout je suis I'cpoux, Je trouve dans le A'iu a quat' sou3 L'esperance dii veuvage. Veuez, venez, sages et fous, Veiiez, venez, boire avec nous Le viii a cjuat' sous.' The song is sung no longer, and the gmngcttes where the wine at four sous used to be sold have been pulled down ; and the octroi barriers having been enlarged to give Paris more elbow-room, huge blocks of houses five stories high have been erected in the place of the humble but joyous little taverns where, on Sunda3's and fete-days, the grisettes and their sweethearts came to enjoy themselves, and to dance to such strains as those discoursed by the king of itinerant fiddlers, the Mcnetrier de Mciidon. Plea- sant little guingettes. You fancied that the bonny buxom hostess sitting behind the counter was ' Madame Gregoire ; ' that it was the ' Petit Homme Gris ' who had just ordered another chojnne ; and that it was the * Gros Eoger Bontemps ' who was playing at tonneaux in the garden with Lisette. Aye, it was the Empress-Queen of all grisettes, descended in right line from her whom La Fontaine limned. It was the unsur- passable Lisette of Beranger, who was yet extant some five-and- thii-ty years ago in Paris. It was then that Albert Smith, who had been a medical student in Paris, marked the grisette as pretty and 256 PARIS HEESELr AGAIN. ' Venez, venez, boire avec nous Le vin a quat' sons.' pleasant, and noticed that her highest ambition in the way of dress was to possess half a dozen pair of white thread stockings of English manufacture. Some years were to elapse before Mr. Cobden and the Treaty of Commerce gave facilities to the grisette for gratifjdng her ambition in the direction just hinted at; but by that time there were very few grisettes left to covet stockings of white thread, Nottingham or Glasgow made ; and the grisettes' successors on the other side of the Seine were apter to hanker after hose of pink or pearly-gray silk. The grisette never wore a THE GHOST OF THE GRISETTE. 257 bonnet ; nay, not even on Sunda5^s. She had her own particular, pecuUar, characteristic, picturesque, and becoming cap. Her manner of walking was matchlessly graceful and agile. The narrow streets of old Paris were, in those days, infamously paved. There was no foot pavement. The kennel was often in the centre of the street, and down it rolled a great black torrent of impu- rities fearsome to sight and smell. There was no gas when I first saw Lutetia, save in the Place de la Concorde, in the Palais Eoyal, and on the Boulevard des Italiens. The remainder of the streets were lit by means of r^verheres — oil lamps suspended from ropes slung from house to house across the street. The manner in which the grisette Avould pick her way over the jagged stones, and the dexterity with which she would avoid soiling her neat shoes and stocldngs when venturing on the very brink of that crashing plashing kennel, were wondrous and de- lightful to view. She had an inimitable way, too, of whisking the end of her skirt over her arm as she trotted along, and she wag similarly nimble in ascending and descending the steep, hideously dark, dilapidated, and dirty staircases of the old lodging-houses of the Quartier Latin. Were you ever taken to a certain tall dingy house in the Rue de I'Ecole de Medecine, to see the room in which Marat was stabbed to death in his bath ? I went there once ; but the room was in the occupation of a Polish exile, who had invented a machine for hatching chickens by electricity, and who would not permit us to enter his domicile. Perhaps it was full of eggs ; and possibly he cared no more about his apartment having been the deathplace of Marat than Mr. Toole in the farce cared about his second-floor back having been the bu'thplace of Podgers. But as I came, disappointed, down the dingy staircase, slippery, rickety, evil-smelling, there passed by me in the gloom an Apparition in white. It seemed to float upwards, and disappeared. ^Yith my head full of the terrible tragedy in which the modern Judith slew the Holofernes of the Terror, it was as though the Presentment of Charlotte Corday had just passed by ; but lo! from the regions beneath came the hoarse voice of the concierge crying, ' Mademoi- selle Amanda, vous avez oublie votre clef ; ' and speedily there came tripping down a pretty little lass with blue eyes and brown hair, in a coquettish white cap, and a frock of printed calico. Who wears ' frocks,' or even * gowns,' nowadays ? The modern grisette wears, I suppose, a ' robe ' or a ' costume.' Mademoiselle Amanda was only a little grisette who lived in a garret aic cinquieme in that terrible house of Marat. She was a waistcoat- maker, the communicative concierge — concierges were liortieres in 258 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. those days — told us, and earned no less than one franc seventy- five centimes a day. ' C'est une brave Jille qm se contente de pen,' quoth the concierge. Was she virtuous? Well it may be that, in the important aspect in question, she was, as in other matters, content with a little. Albert Smith, who was on innocently intimate terms with the grisette, who had danced with her and treated her to marrons chaiuls and hiere de Mars, had not a word to say against her morality. In Eugene Sue's Mysteries of Paris, lii^^olette, the THE GHOST OF THE GRISETTE. 259 ces demoiselles,' gi'isette, and Germain, the notary's clerk, whom she eventually marries, are nearly the only virtuous personages among a horde of male and female villains belonging to all ranks in society. But Albert Smith was writing for English magazine readers, and the Mysteries of Paris is a romance. Beranger must ever be held as the supreme autho- rity touching the ethics of the grisette; and the moral character of Lisette, as painted by the illustrious chansonnier, certainly, from time to time, leaves some- tliing to be desired. Still Beranger is careful to draw a tangible distinction be- tween his beloved Lisette and Fretillon, ' la bonne fille,' to say nothing of who, in 1815, uttered the famous complainte, ' Faut que Lor Vilainton ait tout pris ; G'na phis cV argent dans c'gueux de Paris.' I apprehend that the grisette of thirty years ago was as virtu- ous as circumstances would allow her to be. In the majority of cases she was an orphan — or worse than an orphan, a paiivre enfant delaissee — who had never known father or mother, who had no kith or kin whatever, who, as a baby, had been flung into one of the tours of the Foundling Hospital, or had been picked up on the muddy pavement of the quays, destitute, abandoned, helpless, to be grudgingly brought up at the public expense in a prison-like asylum, to be turned out on the great world w^hen she was sixteen years of age, with a few scores of francs and a bare-livelihood- getting skill in needlework. If she could keep body and soul together honestly, she did so. She remained a * brave fille,' a model of * conduite sage et r^glee ' to her proiyrietaire and her concierge. If she went wrong, it was not very far in this direc- tion : not farther than is glanced at in Henri Miii'ger's Scenes de la Vie de Boheme. She made no part of the systematic and heartless profligacy of Boulevard Paris. She knew nothing about the Maison Doree, and was certainly never seen in a pony-phaeton in the Bois de s 2 260 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ^i-^^9ii, '^' Boulogne, or on tlie box-seat of a four-in-liand, or in a barouche d Jiuit 7'e8S07'ts, at the Courses de Longchamps. She was neither a 'Lorette,' a ' Cocotte,' a ' Fille de Marbre,' a * Fille de Platre,' a * Demi-Mondaine,' a ' Ceinture Doree,' a ' Belle Petite,' nor a ' Grosse Dormeuse.' 'Une Grosse Dormeuse,' the latest variety of the hetaircB species, is an actress at one of the minor theatres, the value of whose personal propert}'- in diamonds exceeds, to an incalculable extent, the amount of her monthly salar3^ Diamonds ! Lise, or Amanda, or Rigolette had not seen a diamond bracelet half a dozen times in the course of her life, and then it was in a jeweller's shop- window in the Rue de la Paix. From the begin- ning until the end of the chapter she was a Grisette — nothing more and nothing less — and I want to know what has become of her. Up to the present, in New and Regenerated Paris, I have only met with her tawdry, haggard, and fitful ghost in an extra- vagant toilette, ver}^ high-heeled shoes with brass tips, and visage much be-plastered with white and red paint. Can this be Rigo- lette ? Can this be Amanda, ' la brave fille,' who earned one franc seventy-five a day, and was content witli little ? Can this be Lisette ? Ix A Barouche A uuit Ressorts at Loxin.nAMr. r. 260 -'^^^^Ks^^^' COLIN-MAILLARD XX. THE SEAIMY SIDE OF PAEIS LIFE. Oct. 4. Suppose that in wandering through that wonderful Retrospective Museum at the Trocadero — a treasury so full of triumphs of an- cient, of mediaeval, of Renaissance, and of last-century art-work- manship that the modern craftsman in gold and silver and the baser metals, in ceramics, in glass, in enamel, in damascening, and in wood and ivory carving, may well-nigh despair of being able to approach the antique models — suppose we halt before this superb piece of Beauvais tapestry. The Gobelins never turned out a finer example of the arras-worker's art. The scene depicted is, say, a fete champetre, after Watteau. Observe, if you please, the symmetrical di'awing and harmonious grouping of the slim youths and dainty dames who are indulging in the pastime of colin-maillard on a verdant lawn bordered by parterres of gaj'est flowers, and canopied by the interlacing boughs of tall old trees, through the leafy livery of which the afternoon sun glints in golden sparkles, now lighting up the crisp folds of a satin sacque or the lozenges of a quilted petticoat, now glittering on the jewelled necklace which encircles Madame la Marquise's white throat, now making lustrous the precious shoe-buckles and the embroidered clocks on the hose of Monsieur le Marquis. For depend upon it these gallant follvs, although they may be ' making believe' to be shepherds and shepherdesses, are all Marquises and Marchionesses at the very least — ayant droit an tabouret, or dignes de monter dans les carrosses du Roi — the ladies entitled to sit on lowly foot- stools in the royal presence, the gentlemen deemed worthy to ride in the royal carriages. The real Arcadia, I am apt to fancy, was 262 PARIS HEnSELF AGAIN. not a very agreeable region. For all tlieir crooks and their oaten pipes, Pliillis may have been but a sulky wench, and Strephon but a savage lout. The Arcadian wardrobe did not go far beyond a sheeiDskin, the wooll}'^ side out in summer, and in during winter ; the food was coarse, the shelter was scanty, the manners were brutal, and the wolf, metajphorically as well as corporeally, was always at the door. Not so in this glowing piece of Beauvais. Le Notre must have laid out that trim garden with the leafy alcove, in the recesses of Avhich you discern a terminal figure of the god Pan, leering at the revellers with his wicked eye, and patronising the proceedings generally with a sardonic grin. Mansard must have built that grandiose chateau in the distance, with high-pitched roof and dormer windows. Observe that peacock on the terrace — how proudl}^ he struts, unfolding the rainbow glories of his tail. See, there is an ancient servitor in blue and silver, bearing a silver salver piled high with choice fruit and crisp hriocJies. To him succeeds another lackey with a pannier full of flasks of rare wine. This is how they live in Arcadia, from M. Watteau and the Beau- vais tapestry-worker's point of view. It is all dancing and feasting and games of romp. There is no surcease of fiddling. There are no taxes to pay. Jacques Bonhomme in the field outside the park- gates — Jacques Bonhomme painfully gathering nettles that Nicole his wife may boil the weeds for souj), or picking up fir-cones and beech-mast to pound them and mmgle them with the rye-flour of which his, bread is made — Jacques Bonhomme pays the taxes. It is he who is eaten up alive by the Farmers- General, and is sent to the galleys for smuggling into his hut five sous' worth of salt which has not paid the gahelle. The Arcadian revellers in the park do not trouble themselves about such miseres. To Monsieur Watteau and the tapestry-weaver's thmking, there are no such things as poverty and starvation, as typhus and the smallpox; while, as for death — well, what did the youthful duke who was dressing for a court ballet at Versailles say to the messenger who brought him news of his mother's death ? * Madame ma mere,' returned the duke, calmly applying a rouged hare's foot to each cheek, while the coif em' gave a last touch with his tongs to the curls of the ducal periwig, ' will not expire until after the conclu- sion of the ballet.' It was only given to dukes and marquises of the Watteau type to postpone grief, and to purchase deferred annuities of woe. The visitor to the Retrospective Museum of the Trocadero is watched most vigilantly by the policemen on duty, who begin to THE SEAIMY SIDE OF PARIS LIFE. 263 eye you very suspiciously if you linger above a minute and a half before one of the glass "cases ; and not under any circumstances are you allowed to retrace your footsteps in order to study more attentively some object the beauty of which may have exceptionnlly struck you. You are bound to go in at one door and to come out at another ; and, in point of fact, the public are driven pretty miicli as though they were a pack of sheep through a gallery in which the precious contents of at least four South Kensington Museums seem to have been brought together. But suppose that we are in the receipt of fern-seed, and invisible. Suppose that our impunity from observation renders us indifferent to the regulations which govern the palaces of Monsieur Krantz, and that we nimbly I'ip that superb piece of Beauvais tapestry from its frame, and, turning the fabric round, survey its seamy side. I find that Prince Bis- marck has been reading Lalla Rookh and become duly impressed with the dramatic force of the episode of Mokanna, ' the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.' How many English schoolgirls fifty years since used to sigh and tremble over the awsome couplet !— < He raised his veil ; the maid turned slowly round, Looked at him, shrieked, and sank upon the ground. Mokanna had a death's head. But the German Chancellor might derive, perhaps, as much edification from the inspection of the seamy side of a piece of Beauvais tapestry. What squalid tags and loops and knots ; what ugly ribbed darns and patches ! What a coarse, dingy, sailcloth-looking backing to the gvandfete cham- petre designed by Monsieur Watteau. Sailcloth ! It is just of the same texture with the blouse that Jacques Bonhomme wears when he is prowling about the fields and the woods grubbing up the weeds and the fir-cones and the beech-mast for food. The sale-marks and numbers of a dozen auction-rooms are branded or marked en the seamy side of tlie tapestry. At a glance you perceive that the work has been subject to an extensive process of restoration, and that at least a third of the lovely picture on the other side is a sham. Madame la Marquise's satin sacque and white neck fell into utter rottenness long ago. Her upper half is only one patch. So are the violet small-clothes and the crimson-silk hose, with embroidered clocks, of M. le Marquis ; while the rainbow tints of the peacock's tail present, on the seamy side, a very Primrose Hill of cobbling. Don't talk to me of the reverse side of a medal. The under part of a sovereign is as comfortable to look upon as the obverse. Don't talk to me of the desillusions of * behind the scenes ' at a playhouse. There are often to be found more truth, more honesty, 264 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN, and more naturalness in the coulisses than before tke curtain.* To cause the scales to fall from your ej^es ; to convince j'ou that * La Vie Parisienne' is not merely a valley of Cashmere shawls powdered with diamond dust ; that the foulest tares, as well as roses and violets, grow beneath the wayfarer's feet ; that all the houses are not Maisons Dorees ; that motley is not the only wear ; to fill the mind with solemn thoughts and the heart with a cold ache — go 3^ou and look at the real seamy side of the gay hangings. Inquire and study and reflect a little over the appalling amount of misery and destitution which are coexistent with the luxury and profligacy and riot of life in Paris during the Exposition Universelle. The Seamy Side ! I had a glance of it the other day on the Boulevard — a glance sudden, momentary, but as completely lucid and comprehensive as that afi'orded of a landscape by a flash of summer lightning on a moonless night. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and raining heavily. I was standing on the kerb, just in front of the Cafe Riche, in that state of dolorous dubiety to which people are subject who contmually carry an umbrella, and who never, save under the strongest compulsion, open it. An umbrella may be a companion, a friend, a stafl", a protector, a weapon, an adviser, an indicator, and when it rains the best use 3'ou can put yonr jmrapluia to is to hail the nearest cab or omnibus with it. But there were no cabs to be had that afternoon ; the Paris omnibuses do not THE SEAMY SIDE OF PAEIS LIFE. 265 stay in their wild career to take up stray passengers ; and I had begun to think that there was no alternative between putting up my * Robinson,' as the French, in affectionate memory of Robinson Crusoe, term an umbrella — when there stopped right in front of me the smartest of smart broughams. A Peters, possibly, or a Lamie and Marner, to judge from the lightness of the wheels and easy balance of the springs. A Binder, perchance, to judge from the harmonious lines of the body, and the gentle concavity of the roof. Pair of coal-black steppers, exquisitely matched ; a viscount's coronet on the panels ; similar heraldic device in platinated bronze on the harness. Lamps perfect. Coach- man clean-shaven, curly -brimmed hat, white cravat, black frock, hottes molles with tops for which oxalic acid could do nothing more. Footman identical with coachman, only — mark the art of this — a shade younger and slimmer. In brief, a perfect equipage. Two persons inside. M. le Vicomte ; fawn-coloured ulster, varnished shoes with dove-coloured gaiters,lemon Idd-gloves, spiky moustaches, a rose in his button-hole, and a cigarette. Second person a lady, but whe- ther she was Madame la Vicomtesse or Mademoiselle Amenaide Sanspapa of the Bouffes Parisiens, I am not prepared to say ; sufl&ce it to remark that she was beauteous, that her hair was of the hue of newly-stacked barley, that she was radiantly clad, that she was brave in diamonds, and that from the superb chariot there exhaled an odour of jockey club, frangipane, or opoponax — I am sure I don't know which, not being learned in any perfumes save that of the Viielta de Abajo, an odour very popular in the Island of Cuba, where the names of the principal perfumers are Cabana, Partagas, and Cavargas. Still the occupants of the smart brougham were evidently two very important personages indeed. Stay, there was a third : a snow-white little Maltese dog, with two sparkling black eyes and a crimson-satin bow at his chin. He battled with liis paws, and barked, as though the brougham and the coal-black steppers and the servants and the lady in the diamonds — tout le tremhlement, enjin — belonged to him. AVho knows ? Perhaps they did. Hastily alighting from his carriage, perhaps to keep an appoint- ment with a friend at the Caf^ Riche, M. le Vicomte let fall from a number of documents which he held in one lemon-ldd-gioved hand something that looked like a letter in an envelope. It fell 26Q PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. m y x\ 3 face downwards, in the smooth black mud of the gutter. Instan- taneously — I never saw anything quicker — a lean young man, with a white pock-marked face, a faded ragged blouse reaching scarcely below his waist, deplorable pantaloons, shoes Hke miniature coal- barges past service and rotting in a ship-breaker's wharf, and a cap that looked like one of the late Daniel Lambert's gray woollen stockings with the top cut off, darted forward, went on kis hands and knees, gi'ovelled in the gutter, grappled with the paper, which was fast floating towards a sewer-grating, picked up the document, rose, and with a fawning mien, and a look in which cupidity and hope shone like a flame, Aviped the paper with his ragged elbow, and presented it to the gentleman. ' Ce n'est qu'une enveloppe, mon ami,' quoth M. le Viscomte airily; and without taking any more notice of the poor wretch, he tripped blithely into the Cafe THK SEAMY SIDE OF rAPJ« LIFE. 267 niche. It was only an envelope, absolutely without value now that it was soiled, that had fallen in the mud. I have heard a good deal of bad language in many dialects in my time, but I do hope that I shall never again hear curses so fearful as those which were uttered by the lean young man with the white pock-marked face. He had expected a reward. The envelope might have been full of thousand-franc notes, and here he was left with his treasure trove, hungry and with muddy hands. He shook his fist at the lady in the brougham — shook it so savagely that she pulled up the window in a hurry, to the great discomposure of the Maltese dog — and then the lean j'oung man, changing his tone, began to murmur, * Malheur, malheur ! pas meme une piece de cinquante centimes.* And then, it is wretched and shocking to relate, he began to wliimper, and at last to blubber, as though he had been a child of four years old. A policeman came up and made him move on, with the usual admonition of ' Plus vite que 9a ' — quicker than that — to hasten his gait ; and then I put up my umbrella, and, going on my way, saw him no more. Very possibly he was a loafer, an idle scamp, an incumbrance and a pest to society ; still to me he represented very suggestively indeed one squalid and lamentable scrap of the Seamy Side. The number of professional beggars in Paris is, to outward seeming, astonishingly small. You might think it somewhat of a phenomenal thing in London if, in the course of a walk from Hyde Park Corner to South Kensington in the daytime, or from Charing Cross to St. Paul's Churchyard in the evening, you were not accosted by at least half a dozen mendicants, male, female, or infantine ; but during the eleven weeks that I have spent in Paris I have not been asked half a dozen times for alms in the great thoroughfares. So much, then, must be cheerfully admitted in mitigation of the Seamy Side of Parisian life. It must, nevertheless, be borne in mind that the French laws against mendicity are very strict, and that in Paris they are carried out with unfailing exactitude by the j)olice. Our own Vagrant Law is, in some instances, even harsher than the French : for three months' hard labour in an English gaol is, in reality, tantamount to three months' penal servitude ; whereas the French vagabond who is committed by the Police Cor- rectionnelle to Mazas is put to very light industrial and j^roductive labour — the treadmill, the crank, and that infernal invention * shot drill,' are wholly unknown in French prisons. With a portion of his earnings while in prison he may purchase limited supplies of food and wine of a quality superior to that of the prison rations ; under certain circumstances he is permitted to smoke, nor during the hour of associated exercise is silence inflexibly enforced. 268 PARIS HERSEL17 AGAIN. The practical difference between the French and English sys- tems for the repression of mendicity appears to me to be this — that in Paris any beggar ventm'ous enough to ply his calling in a much-frequented thoroughfare may reckon with tolerable certainty on being arrested before many hours are over and sent to a prison where he will be treated with mildness ; whereas in England the gaol is a place scrupulously clean, excellently well ventilated, but of unremitting physical degradation and torment, to wliich not one beggar or vagrant in twenty gets committed. Beggars are very ingenious scoundrels. As a rule, they can tell the metal of their customers at a glance. The majority of these are ladies, who are either too timid or too kind-hearted to give the ragged man who holds out his hand for alms in charge ; or else they are the Incurable and Incorrigible Infatuates of the male sex who cannot be induced to pin their faith to the creed of the Charity Organisa- tion Society, and who claim the right of exercising their private judgment and powers of discrimination to determine whether the ragged man or the tattered woman with a callow baby in her arms be an object worthy of charity or the reverse. Thus the vast majority of the London beggars do not get 'taken up ; ' and the knowledge of the virtual impunity which they enjoy makes therq in many cases insolent and even rufiianly in their importunit3\ Moreover, even if every lady and gentleman who was worried in the streets for alms was a subscribing member of the Charity Organisation Societ}', and was prepared to hand over every mendi- cant to the custody of the police, the carrymg out of the stern intent is hampered by the fact that in London, and in the most frequented thoroughfares, you meet in the daytime with con- siderably more beggars than policemen. Our * beat ' system assumes that the policeman shall be everywhere ; for practical purposes he is so continuously in perambulation as to be — I except Fleet Street, wliich is admirably patrolled — nowhere. The Chief Commissioner tells us that we are sure to find a policeman at every * fixed point ; ' but the majority of Londoners know no more about the locality of the fixed i:)oints than they do of the Mountains of the Moon. In Paris there is a continuous cordon of gardiens de la i^aix skirting the cabstand side of the way from the Bastille to the ]\Iadeleine ; and the ' beat ' of each of these functionaries does not seem to exceed a dozen j'ards. Police-agents are well- nigh as numerous in the Rue de Piivoli, in the new Boulevards, and in the Champs £lysees. Thus the beggar finds his most fertile field of operations hopelessly preoccupied by his natural enemy the policeman, and he gives up his trade, so far as the great thoroughfares are concerned, in sheer despair. THE SEAMY SIDE OP PARIS LIFE. 269 BLIND BEGGAR OF THE AKCIENT TYPE. Let not, however, the habitual absence of mendicants from the principal places of public resort in the French capital induce in j'our mind the belief that there are no beggars in Paris. There are, I have the best authority for believing, many thousands of such hisoiiosos in the city of Paris ; and the weightiest evidence bearing on such a belief lies in the fact that at the season of the New Year the police tolerate, for the space of three days, the presence of professional beggars on the Boulevards. From sunrise on the 31st of December until sunset on the 2d of 270 PARIS IIEESELF AGAIN. BLIND BEGGAR OF THE MODERN TYPE. ■l' January, in swarms, in hordes, in legions, does Lazarus come forth. The Cour des Mu-acles or the Carrieres d'Ame'rique empty themselves into the fashionable streets. The cripple, the paralytic, and the cnl de jatte, the tattered woman with the baby, the bare- footed girl-child, the patriarch with the long beard, the beggar without arms, the beggar without legs — who, mounted on the back of a brother vagabond, hugs him romid the neck like Sindbad's Old Man of the Sea — the counterparts of all the fantastic creatures that Callot and Hogarth, Croya and Pixanesi, have di-awn, crawl, THE SEAMY SIDE OF PARIS LIFE. 271 I will'' 4,' -7^ . ..Tyr i' or limp, or hobble, or drag themselves, or are wheeled about th3 asphalte pavement, and grunt or wlnmper supplications for charity at the portals of the fashionable shops and the grand hotels. The Glorious Three Days of the Nouvel An are their carnival, their saturnalia, during which they must reap a rich harvest of coppers ; but on the 3d of January all is at an end. ' Adieu paniers ; ven- danges son faites.' A few blind men and women, and a stout tall old lady with two wooden legs — were her lower limbs shot off, or bit off, or what, I wonder ? — are tolerated by the police on the Boule- 272 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. vards des'Capucines and des Italiens ; but beyond these, all the beggars who have been holding high holiday are doomed to imme- diate disappearance. Even the blind men and the old lady with the timber toes are not permitted to beg. They may accept, but must not ask for alms. What becomes of the vast bulk of the tribe of beggars during the remainder of the year is a Mystery of Paris to which I am very far from being able to offer a complete solution. There is, properly speaking, no Poor Law in France. The right of existence is not recognised by legislative enactment as it is with us. In England, theoretically, no man can starve, as everybody has a settlement, if he can only find out where it is, and is entitled to indoor or outdoor relief ; but, through lack of capacity to interpret the Act of Parliament, he does very frequently starve and die. In France the pauper has the Assistance Publique, a semi-voluntary, semi-municipal fund, to look to. Much of the money gathered by the Assistance is derived from the tax called ' Le droit des pauvres,' which is levied on every performance at any one of the theatres, balls, concerts, and public entertainments in Paris ; and I believe that I am not wrong in stating, that one of the three functionaries, whose presence, solemn, white-cravated, sable-clad, beliind a table so much puzzles the foreigner who passes through the entrance- wicket of a French theatre, is an employe of the Assistance PubUque, detailed to check the receipts and ' see fair,' with a view to the poor getting their due and proper rights. Abstractedly it seems in the highest degree just and equitable that Vice and Folly and Luxury should pay a tithe of their takings to indigence and destitution ; but the theatrical managers and cafe-concert keepers declare that, between the Droit des Pauvres on the one hand, and the Droits cVAuteur on the other, they are driven to bankruptcy ; and that the Rights of the Poor tax ought likewise to be levied on the profits of the restaurants and cabarets, the mil- liners and dress-makers, the sellers of photographs and trinkets. It is not, however, the professional mendicants, but the industrious poor, who are the principal recipients of the relief doled out by the Assistance Publique, on whose books, for example, thousands of families whose bread-winning members are at the hagnes, or in New Caledonia for their participation in the madness of the Commune, are permanently inscribed. The majority of French ladies, again, of the upper and middle ranks in society have each and all of them Icurs pauvres, their own special and particular poor, to whose necessities thoy sedulously minister. The clergy arc in these cases frequent iuternjecUiines and almoners, THE SEAMY SIDE OF PARIS LIFE. 273 and during the fashionable season in Paris numerous balls and concerts are given, and bazaars and tombolas held, for the benefit of les jyauvres honteux, as those necessitous persons arc termed who are too shamefaced to own their wants and to make a public parade of their misery. Thus, under the Government of Louis Philippe a grand ball, patronised by the noblest and wealthiest members of the commmiity, nsed annnally to be given in aid of les anciens pcnsionnaires de la Liste Civile. Marquises, Counts, Barons, Baillis, Vidames, and Chevaliers de St. Louis were among these heneficiaires — virtually pauvres honteux. They were noble gentlem^en and ladies, strigken in years, who had been deprived by 274 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN'. emigration or confiscation of their all during the First Revolution. The dynasty of the Restoration had been unable to restore to their lawful owners domains which had been irretrievably alienated ; but certain pensions on the Civil List were conferred upon the poor old pauper aristocrats. With the Revolution of July 1830 these pensions ceased ; hence the annual ball. But to return to the beggars. I apprehend that they may be divided into three categories. The more athletic become rodeurs de harriere — nocturnal scamps in tattered blouses, who haunt the external boulevards and prowl about the hanlieue, furtively stealing provisions, fruit, and vegetables from the market-carts, which from midnight until dawn lumber through the octroi gates, on their way to the Halles Centrales, or knocldng down and robbing belated pedestrians who happen to be helplessly tipsy. Another less dishonest and weaker-kneed class simply creep from morn till night and from night till morn about the bystreets, scrupulously shunning the boulevards, where they know that they would be at once pounced upon by the pohce, but creeping into courtyards, slinking to the foot of dark staircases, shambling to the entrances of porters' lodges, and begging in a subdued tone for a bit of bread. Often when I have been rummaging in an old book store, or among the rusty treasures of an old curiosity shop on the Quays, I have become aware of a Deplorable Presence in rags blocking up the doorway, and of a voice murmuring something about ' un morceau de pain.' I have never heard a French dog bark pt one of these miserables, nor have I known of more than two instances among very many of the shopkeepers harshly bidding the beggar begone. As a rule, the tradesman hardest at driving a bargain will open his till, slip a copper or two into the beggar's hand, and, looking at you apologetically, with a half smile and a half blush, will say, '' Better so than that he should steal.' With all their greed of gain, and their unconscionableness in fleecing foreigners, the French are as charitable to the poor as the Turks. And that is saying a great deal. A Tiu'kish Pasha of the highest rank will get out of his carriage or off his horse in the muddiest street of Stamboul to give a beshlik to a blind man; and while you are having audience of some grandee at one of the Departments of Slate, a beggar will lift the curtain which veils the door, demand alms in the name of Allah, and have his claim allowed. *In the name of Allah,' says the grandee, as he hands the piastre to the beggar. A French shopkeeper is certainly only very imperfectly acquainted with the Koran — if he have iiny acquaintance with that lying Evangel at all— fitill the equani- THE SEAMY SIDE OF PARIS LIFE. 275 moiis promptness with which he resigns himself ahnost as a matter of course to the beggar reminds me forcibl}^ of the Moslem. French mothers, moreover, seem habitually to teach their children to be charitable; and over and over again have I seen, now a hand- somely-dressed lady, now a mob-capped woman of the poorest class, put money into her child's hand and bid it run after a ragged man and reheve him. Yon are obliged to run after the beggars, so swiftly do they flit past through fear of the police. And it is best, perhaps, to run after them, lest, being starving, they should run into the river, to find a goal on the cold dalles of the Morgue and a last bourn in the fosse commune. A lady whom I have known for many years told me the other day a story of a man who did not beg. She was out for a walk, alone, and looking into one of the magnificent shops of the Pas- sage des Princes. Turning to survey the next door repository of treasures — a jeweller's — she became aware of a tall lank man of about fifty years of age, with long gray hair streaming over the collar of a patched and ragged coat fastened up to his chin — now by a button from which the cloth had rotted showing the disc of bone — now by a pin, now by a bit of thread passed through two holes. She was certain that he had no shirt : she looked up the frayed cuffs of his coat, she said, and saw his wrists and his arras, bare, yellow as old parchment, sharp-boned, and with inky veins. He was not shoeless ; but the half-disconnected upper leathers of his boots scraped the pavement. His hat looked as though it had been boiled in grease. Under one arm he had a tattered leathern portfolio, from which some papers peeped. This man, shufflhig his feet on the stones, stood looking at the diamonds and rubies in the jeweller's shop : not with a gaze of fierce and desperate rapa- cit}', but with an abstracted expression, as though his eyes only were there while his thoughts were miles away. Then he would shift the tattered leathern portfolio from one arm to the other, and then resume the survey of the diamonds and rubies. The 1 idy of whom I speak has but a slender stock of colloquial French at her command ; but from her porte-monnaie she took a five-franc piece, touched the ragged man on the arm, placed the piece of money in his hand, and said, ' S'il vous plait. Monsieur.' Pie looked at her for only a moment, with a glance in which a kind of wild astonishment and incapacity even to express gratitude v/ere mingled, and in an in- stant, and as though by magic, he was — gone. Whither ? Perhaps he was an impostor. Possibly he had * made up' for the part of a distressed poet, an indigent man of letters, a ruined speculator, a discharged employe, who for the hundredth time had been cooling his battered heels in the ministerial ante-chamb©r, with a volu- 276 PARIS HEJRSELF AGAIN. minons statement of his grievances in that tattered case of leather. Suspecting something of the sort, I carefully patrolled the Passage des Princes during several successive afternoons, but I never could catch sight of the ragged man vv^ith the gray locks and the hat which seemed to have been boiled in grease. I looked for him subsequently in the Passages des Panoramas and the Passage Jouffroy, in the Passage Choiseul and the Passage du Saumon, in the Palais Royal and in the Place de la Bourse. But I have never met with him. I am beginning to incline now to the belief that he was not an impostor, but only a man desperately poor and hungry. I am beginning to adopt the theory that, directly he got the money, he sped away, holding it in both his hands, so to speak, out of the Passage des Princes, down the Paie de Pdchelieu, across the Place du Palais Royal, and through the great courtyard of the Carrousel, across a bridge, down a narrow street, into a narrower impasse, up, five stories high, a dim staircase, and so into a garret with a shelving roof — a garret with nothing m it but a table with three legs, a broken chair, a sack full of shavings for a bed, and a gaunt woman with some pallid children. And then I fancy him crying, ' Une etrangere m'a donne cent sous — and now, my children, we will have bread, and charcutcrie, and wine.' ' Et quatre sous de tabac, pour ce bon petit papa,' cries the shrillest and weakest voice among the pallid children, who are clapping their hands and pulling at their mother's skirts, and bidding her look upon la helle ethonnc piece de cent sous. Yes, I fancy that he brought the money home before laying out so much as two sous for a loaf. There was something in c'xliibiting it there intact, round, shining. There was more in discussing what food should be bought — in- cluding, I will be bound, some cough-sirup for la imuvrc petite AcVele, who was weak at the chest. There was more in haying some ' change out ' when the garret had become a hall of feasting, and the starving creatures had partaken of food, and the pipe had been lit, and the fumes of the caporal were curling upAvards in a manner soothing to the view, and the monnaic remaining out of the five francs could be counted with a leisurely and lordly air. And, upon my word, if the ragged man was indeed an impostor, I do not grudge him one halfpenny out of his dole. iVi-e you quite certain that the last twenty thousand pounds which you made out of the Baratarian Loan or the Tierra del Fuego Railway were gotten quite honestly ? AT THE EXHIBITION (BY CHAM). ' I wish t-o buy this false hair.' ' Thank you, madam. Oblige me with your card to affix to it.' ' 0, no ! I'll give you the card of one of my friends.' XXI. UP AND DOWN IN THE EXHIBITION. Oct. 7. The official ftnnoimcement that the final closing of the Exposition Universelle is to be deferred until the 20th of November has filled the French exhibitors with a well-nigh delirious joy, and is looked upon with feelings far removed from dissatisfaction by the general body of foreign contributors to the great bazaar. The ostensible motive for granting this enthusiastically-welcome delay is that it is only just and proper that the winners of prizes should be able to gain some pecuniary advantage from the prestige they have won as medallists or as possessors of diplomas ; but it is not the ' laureats ' alone who will benefit by the concession of the twenty days of grace. Alter the distribution of prizes the indiscriminate sale by retail of articles exhibited in the Champ de Mars will, it is understood, be authorised, and purchasers will be permitted to take away their emplettes with them. Thus the culmination of the great show will resemble a fair more closely than ever. The glories of la Foire aux Jamhons and la Foire aux Pains d'Epices 278 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ■will be outdone ; and the practice now only surreptitiously indulged in of carrying away some memento of the Exhibition — be it Avorth only a couple of francs — from the Exhibition itself will be pursued on the most colossal scale. Lookmg at the vast numbers of per- sons whose ambition to acquire a souvenir of the Exposition does not go beyond a pair of garters or a bottle of scent, a photograph of ' The Dirty Boy,' or a necktie with a view of the Trocadero printed upon it, the multitude of Parisian shopkeepers who sell such articles might reasonably protest against the untradesmanlike competition of the Champ de Mars ; but as it happens, the prin- cipal hout'iquiers of the boulevards — the Rue de Pdvoli and the Rue de la Paix — are exhibitors as well ; and it becomes only a question of having two sets of glass cases full oi articles de Paris, two sets of shop-assistants, and two tills, one on the right and the other on the left bank of the Seine, How the English exhibitors v»'ill regard the concession I am at a loss to determme. As a rule, Great Britain is an exhibitor of big and not of little wares — the article de Londres, in its artistic nicknack sense, has j'et to be fabricated amongst us — and it is to wholesale, not retail, results that we are generally accustomed to look when we try our strength with the nations in an industrial competition. We would rather take an order for fifty thousand yards of Huddersfield serges or Saltaire alpacas, for twenty loco- motive or marine engines, or for a hundred and fifty steam ploughs or threshing machines, than keep up a ' fiddling ' trade in cakes of soap, bottles of pickles, blotting cases, and travelling bags. As for the Americans, they have already sold, it is understood, the great bullc of the articles which they sent to Paris, and they may be comparatively indifterent as to when the Exhibition comes to an end ; but the Italians, the Spaniards, and the Russians can scarcely regret the fresh facilities afforded them for selling merchandise which has been prepared especially with a view to its being ex- hibited in Paris, and of which they might experience consider- able difficulty in getting rid in their own country. As for the remoter peoples — the contributors from the far-off ends of the earth — they will possibly rejoice at any transaction which will absolve them from the necessity of taking their wares back again. Meanwhile, those who live in hopes of visiting the normally cheerful and pleasant city of Paris in the year 1879 will be horri- fied to hear that M. Emile de Girardin, who may be considered as the real father of the whole Exliibition project, has gravely formulated a scheme for closing the. buildings in the Champ de Mars durhig the winter mouths, and reopening the entire show, UP AND DO^yX IN THE EXHIBITION. 279 'lock, stock, and barrel,' on the 1st of next May. The idea is to me simply an appalling one. The existing saturnalia have entirely disorganised the social condition of JParis, which, IJopulous as it is, is not large enough to bear the continuous pres- sure of such an incubus as an International Exhibition. We felt '.51 and '62, and Sir Henry Cole's successive Exhibition ' sjiurts ; ' but London is too vast for the encumbrance to have been felt in the remotest of our extremities. Paraphrasing that which Byron wrote about love, it may be said that a Great Exhibition was of London life only a part ; it is Paris' whole existence. You cannot eat your dinner or stroll along the pavement in peace. The Cliamp de Mars and the Trocadero fling you, so to speak, over a Horse- shoe Fall of excitement into a Niagara River of noise, and your nerves, if not j'our limbs, are torn to pieces among the rapids. Life is not long enough to be spent in perpetual wranglings with waiters and altercations with cabcl rivers. You may have plenty of NOT AT A LOSS FOR A REASON (bY CHAM). 'Six francs ! how do you make it six francs ?' * Why, four fraucs the fare and two francs for the oil.' money, but save on the knifeboard of an omnibus, or in one of the cold baths by the Pont Neuf, I know no place in Paris where, at the present moment, you get your money's-worth for the things which you purchase. You are fed on stale fish, tough meat, and 280 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. bruised fruit at extoiiionate prices. Cooking has deteriorated nearly everywhere. The rent of furnished apartments is simply monstrous. I am paying for a gaii'et in an unfashionable boule- vard a price for which I could obtain a whole first lioor in Picca- dilly or St. James's Street at the height of the season, and friends who are staying in the fashionable Paris hotels malce me stand positively aghast when they tell me of the sums in which they are mulcted. The existing carnival has been putting vast sums of money into the pockets of the hotel- keepers, the restaurant and livery- stable keepers, the wine merchants, the theatrical managers, and the pro- vision dealers of Paris and its en- virons. The city itself, although it will be a heavy loser on its outlay on the Exhibition buildings, has benefited to the extent of at least two millions sterhng through the additional octroi duties paid on pro- visions which have entered Paris ; but I doubt whether the working classes have, save in the most '^' indh'ect manner, gained anything from the continuance of this tremendous fair. Not only are exorbitant prices exacted for everything you purchase, but you have inferior articles foisted on 'you while being charged for the best. I will net say that the quality of the cigars has degene- rated, because cigars are always vile in Paris ; but the vin ordi- naire at all save a very few very first-rate restaurants — and this is a country where a duke is not ashamed to drink viji ordinaire at his breakfast — is simply abominable . The police are numerous enough to repress disorder, but they seem wholly incompetent to regulate the traffic in the streets ; and the reckless or ignorant driving of the cabmen has become well-nigh phenomenally scandalous. You pass your life in continual turmoil and brawl — it is Donnybrook Fair V^«s Babel, the Hill on the Derby-day superadded to the Descente de la Conrtille, Tottenham Court Road on Saturday night aggravated by the Corso at Piome on Shrove Tuesday. All this is in consequence of the Exhibition. Are those Parisians who love peace and quiet — and there must be such — to have another year of this Capharnaum ? I am not quite certain whether the Exhibition itself is not — I mean, of course, in the forenoon — one of the most tranquil UP AND DOWN IN THE EXHIBITION. 281 places in Paris. In parts it is noisy, but the Park has its se- questered nooks, its retired corners into which you can quietly creep and wander up and down, far from the madding crowd, far from the roaring looms of the machinery department, the hor- rible jangling of the section de- voted to the Swiss bells, far from the over-crowded restau- rants and the brabbling bras- series. Such a haven of repose I find in the great hangars de- voted to agricultural machinery, which is not, I rejoice to say, in motion. I always feel the more soothed and placid when I wan- der up and down in this particu- lar shed, because I know abso- lutely nothing about agricultural machineiy. I am not an agricul- turist. I am not a mechanic. My mission here does not require me to be technological, or, in- deed, 'ological' from any point of view, else I would have read up 'Agriculture ' and ' Machinery ' in the Encyclopcsdia Britannica, and ' combined the two,' as the gentleman did in the celebrated case of Chinese Metaphj'sics. I was told to gossip, and that is what I have been trying to do since the beginning of August. I could gossip to a considerable extent about the steam-ploughs, the thresliing - machines, the hemp and mangold-wurzel cut- ters, the patent mowers and dib- blers, and so forth; only I should be sure to make some fatal mistake about wheels or cogs or pii-lions, and at once expose myself to the animadversion of those who love to sit in the seat of the scorner. Stay, there is the name of a firm of agricultural implement manufacturers which name occurred to me, oddly enough, in 282 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN, December 1876. I had come down througli Russia to Odessa attended by a remarkable courier, to whom I have more than once alluded, and one of whose idiosyncracies was to earn the more con- scientiously his eight roubles a day by not permitting me to speak or to let it be thought that I understood a single word of Euss. That I should do so was to him a slur and discredit as a courier. I happened to have left the fragments of a small store of Russian acquired more than twenty j-ears ago during a ' Journey Due North ' ; but if I ventured at an hotel to ask in the Slavonic ver- nacular for a cup of coffee or a slice of ham, the remarkable courier would at once interfere with * That ain't it. You don't know nothing about it, sir.' And then he would contmue to the waiter, ' The gentleman w^ants ' so and so, using in his courierish con- scientiousness about fifty words, where I, with my scant vocabu- lary, would have used five. So was it when at a railway station I asked the guard how long the trahi was to stop. At once the re- markable courier was at my elbow. * Not a bit like it. You ain't got it at all.' And he would launch into a voluble amplification to the guard of what I could have said myself. We reached Odessa, and rattling in a sledge through one of the principal streets, my eye caught an inscription repeated three or four times on the walls of a long range of buildings. The inscription was in the Slavonic character. ' I think I have heard of that firm before,' I said. ' Not a bit of it,' cried the Remarkable ; ' you're a babby at it. I'll tell you what it means.' And he was going on when I mildly but firmly stopped him. * It's Ransom, Sims, & Head,' I said ; and then, leaving the remarkable courier quite confuted and crestfallen, I began to speculate as to whatever Messrs. Ran- som, Sims, & Head could be doing in the city of Odessa. A firm with some such appellation seems to be very strong indeed in the British Agricultural department; and if my education in agri- cultural mechanics had not been neglected I would be curiously critical as to the ingenious farming implements — triumphs, so it appeared to me, of j^ower and skill — here displayed. Here, however, stowed away in a corner, wliere its merits have had no very great chance of being recognised as the,y should be, is a machine about which I do know something, and which is, to my thinking, of equal interest to foreigners and to Englishmen. This is the patent tea and coftee filter of Mr. Robert Etzensber- ger, the manager of the Midland Grand Hotel, St. Pancras, Lon- don — an invention which took a medal at the Philadelj)hia Exhi- bition of 1876. The principal feature of Mr. Etzcnsberger's filter is that it produces a rapid infusion in large or small quantities, In Tin; Park ijv nir, KxhibitioNi r. 283. UP AND DOWN IN THE EXHIBITION, 283 without bringing the tea or coffee in direct contact with the sources of heat. The ai)paratus may be made to contain eight}', fifty-two, or thirtj'-three quarts of water in its steam boiler, and twenty- eight, twenty, or twelve quarts of tea or coffee ; but by an inge- nious arrangement of the internal mechanism the receptacle con- taing the tea or coffee, from which the infusion is to be obtained, can be contracted to very small dimensions. In brief, the filter will brew for a regiment of soldiers or for a ' party in a parlour,' at will. It can be heated by means of an oven or by gas, or charged with steam, and, the caloric being once established, tea or coffee, d la minute, can be made, while supplies of clear boiling water can be drawn from the boiler. The whole process of tea- or coffee-making is performed with perfect cleanliness, as it is impos- sible that the slightest atom of dust or speck of grease can get into the machine, the boiler being hermetically closed, while the portion containing the tea or coffee itself is as scrupulously shut, in order that the whole of the aroma may be preserved. The main point, however, is that the jiressure of the water upwards, through the orifices of the box containing the tea or coffee, ex- presses from the substance a great deal more infused liquid than could otherwise be got out of it — that is to say, stronger, clearer, and more aromatic tea and coffee, which is not boiled, but strained out, into the filter — and the result is not only the production of a better article, but a saving of at least forty per cent, in the ordinary method of tea- and coffee-mak- ing. The latest improvement in the in- ventionisits adaptation to a double-action api^aratus, by means of which both tea ^ ^ and coffee can be made and a supply of ^ 4^ hot-water furnished all at the same time. Mr. Etzensberger's patent tea and coffee filter is steadily advancing to- !TEAM wards general recognition in England. The Peninsular and Oriental, the Royal West India Mail Steam-Packet Company, the Star Line of Liverpool, have already introduced it in their ships ; and Mr. Etzensberger has even been so fortunate as to in- duce the First Lord of the Admiralty to give the machine a trial. CONDENSE THE DOUBLE ACTION TEA AND COFFEE FILTER. 284 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Unfortunately, when the apparatus was sent for approval to her Maj-^sty's ship Marlborough at Portsmouth, it was discovered that they had no steam on board wherewith to work it. As for the French, although the apparatus has been for many weeks in full and successful operation in Mr. Cook's boarding-house for Enghsh tourists, in the Rue de la Faisanderie, Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, they look askance on an invention calculated to supersede their traditional and costly process of coffee-making. Still, Mr. Etzens- berger's machine might teach them how to make tea, especially as it is constructed on a smaller scale suited to domestic use. Mr, Etzensberger, whose showrooms are at 13 St. Andrew's Street, Holborn Circus, likewise exhibits a patent cafeiiere, which, acts by the aid of gas or an ordinary spmt-lamp, and is one of the most scientific, simple, and economical of coffee-pots. It conserves all the aroma of the coffee, is safe and cleanly in its operations, and cannot possibly get out of order.* * The annexed engravings of this caf^ti^re will serve to explain its mode of action, a is the boiler, which is filled with water through the centre pipe c by means of the funnel E. B is the receptacle for the made coftee, and D the bo.x in which the ground coffee is placed ; while aa indicates the line up to which the box should be filled with coftee. F is the air-pipe which acts as a safety- valve when the steam-pressure is at its highest. XXII. THROUGH THE PASSAGES. Oct. 12. I CANNOT help suspecting that the chambermaid attached tothe hotel meuhle where I am now residing was, formerly, a heavy dra- goon. Most Frenchmen have served, at one time or another, with the colom-s ; and the attendant — he is rising six feet, and wears a full moustache — who makes the beds and ' fixes up ' the apartments generally, at my hotel has an unmistakably martial air about 4iim. He brings up the cafe au lait and the newspapers every morning with unvarying mihtary punctuality ; and receives with a salute, worthy in its stiff courtesy of Corporal Trim, his modest weekly gratuity. I hear him at the end of the corridor in which my domicile is situated, whistling as he cleans my boots, and uttering a hissing sound as he brushes my coat : both sounds 286 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. being distinctly evident of military habits ; and the manner in which he occasionally anathematises the always tardy washer- woman is yet more strongly suggestive of the ' Long sword, saddle, bridle, O,' of the Bold Dragoon. He is withal a patient, willing, good-humoured fellow, who works cheerfully early and late ; toils unmurmuringly up- and down-stairs beneath a weight of fardels in the way of luggage which would affright a German hausknecld and well-nigh take the wind out of a Turkish liammal ; and leads un- complainingly that which — but for an occasional flitting round the corner to a wineshop in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, and the puffing of his evening cigarette at the hotel-door when things are pretty quiet, when the imtronne is satiated with scolding and the guests are weary of ringing the bell — would be a dog's life. A dog's life, do I say ? This good fellow of a chambermaid (whose name is Baptiste) some- times employs his spare half-hours of leisure sitting in a window- bay of the staircase, and teaching tricks to a little old black-and- tan dog, who is the jiet and tyrant of the establishment, and who, when he is not performing, with whimpering reluctance, on his hind legs, a few tricks that have been taught him by Mademoi- selle, the pretty daughter of the patronne aforesaid, wheezes up and down the stairs, barking from between the banisters at ascend- ing and descending guests to whom he has not been introduced, and who have not the slightest wish to be introduced, to him. This overfed and supercilious ani- mal has a way, too, of creeping along the balcony overlooking the boulevard, and sneaking in at any casement which he may find open, with the view, possibly, of holding up to the light (and the reverse way) pieces of blotting-paper on which letters have been recently dried, or of ascertaining whether the guests have made away with any of the hotel bed-linen. When he finds the roont occu- pied, he shambles awny with a shame-faced Paul Pry expression of hoping that he doesn't intrude ; and the next you see of him is down-stairs in the bureau, where he is in the habit of jumping from the floor on to a stool, thence on to a chair, and thence on to the desk of the caiasier, where he peers cunningly at the open page of THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 287 the ledger, to discover, I suppose, whether the customers have l)aid their hills. The little beast ! A week of the chambermaid- (h'agoon's work, with plenty of cold water and some stick for supper, would do him good, and teach him what a real dog's life is, I fancy. The chambermaid whom I fancy to have been a dragoon has only one feult, and that may not be all his own, perhaps. I go out to breakfast at noon, and between twelve and one p.m. mj' habitation should properly be ' fixed up ' by Baptiste. But, alas ! how can Baptiste fix it lip when, from twenty minutes past twelve to ten mintues past one, he and his colleagues Paul and Louis and Antoiue have been unceasingly occupied in lugging up-stairs the baggage of travellers who have just arrived, and carry- ing down-stairs iheimpedimen- ta of other travellers who are going away? These many weeks past the hotel has been turning away from its portals, for lack of space, nt least fifty foreigners a day. From all quarters of the globe, and from all countri( s and cities on the face of it, do they come, these unfortunates. At the railway station they engage cabs by the hour, and wander about from hotel to hotel seeking for beds in that Paris which is so fond of boasting of her 'hospitality ' to strangers, but which, I am afraid, is even a stonier-hearted stepmother than De Quincey found Oxford Street to be. But, still, there are travellers who, their desires being satisfied or their money exhausted — the latter is probably the case — quit Paris the ' hospitable ' just in time for other travellers, with desires to satisfy and money to spend — it will not last long, my friends ! — to spring, like lions on their prey, on the vacated apart- ments. It is these continuous arrivals and departures that force Baptiste, my chambermaid-dragoon, to be, by times, unpunctual in * fixing up ' my rooms. What am I to do ? I have a letter to write to-day, and I can- not write while Baptiste is pottering about with brooms and water- cans. I cannot spare time to go to the Exliibition. I have just emerged from the Cafe V6ron, where I have breakfasted — a quiet. 288 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. respectable, substantial establisliment is this Cafe Veron, much frequented by Italians, and the proprietor of which has had the good sense and the good taste not to touch, save with timeous soap and water, the superb decorations of the walls and ceilingfe, executed here (in the style of Rafaelle's loggie in the Vatican) more than forty years ago. Faded as are the colours and gilding, the embellishments of the Cafe V^ron are the handsomest (because they are the quietest and tastefulest) that I have seen in Europe, next to those of the Gaffe Florian, at Venice. But, having just left this place of entertainment, with what face can I straightway enter another cafe, and call for something which assuredly I do not want ? Water, according to Sir John Falstaff, swells a man ; and, although mazagrans, havaroises, orgeats, and llmonades gazeuses are all perfectly harmless beverages, from the John B. Gough point of view, I should present a pretty sight were I to be swelled with those refreshments. I do not want to play draughts or dominoes ; and the morning papers have no longer any charms for me. I must give Baptiste another half hour in which to make things straight at home ; but whither shall I go ? The Boulevard shops are still replete with delightful interest to me ; but this is the noisiest hour of the day, and the noise is simply deafening ; while, to tell the honest truth, I am ashamed of staring any longer into the shop-window of M. Barbedienne. One or two of his employes are always standing at the door (on the look-out possibly for the Nevada millionnau'e who wants bronzes d'art, and who is provided with those necessary cheques wliich, in my own case, still continue in the most unaccountable manner not to arrive) ; and I begin un- easily to fancy that M. Barbedienne's young men entertain sus- picions that I have unholy designs upon the Mexican torreador, or the cloisonne enamel vase, or the repousse standish, or the Tri- umphal Augustus. Eureka .' I will employ the half hour which involuntarily I have to spare in roaming through the Passages. I have a choice of two small cities, so to speak, of Passages on either side of the Boulevard, between the Eue Montmartre and the Paie Vivienne. On the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre side smiles on me the Passage Jouffroy. On the other, the Rue Vivienne side, the Passage des Panoramas with equal amenity invites me. Let us defer as long as possible the perils of crossing the road and the chance of being run over, and take first the Passage Jouffro3\ At either corner of its boulevard extremity are two cafes, which at night are the noisiest of their kind, but which by day are dark and cool and quiet. The Passage itself, although habitually thronged and unusually crowded just now (alwaj's in consequence of the THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 289 Exhibition), is fairly well ventilated, and, comparatively speaking, tranquil. The class of wares sold in the handsome shops, and the prices charged for the merchandise, are on a parity with those of om' Burlington Arcade. Otherwise there is not the slightest simi- larity between the Passage Jouffroy and the Piccadilly Bezesteen. It would be as idle, also, to lilcen it to such places of public resort and fancy-article dealing as the Victoria Arcade at Hamburg, the GaUeria Vittorio Emmanuele at Milan, or that formidable and somewhat forbidding passage — I forget its name— on the Linden at Berlin, in which, if I remember aright, there is one of the most comical and one of the ghasthest wax-work shows in Europe. The Passage Joufi'roy has its own origmal, peculiar, and inimitable Parisian character. Not only is an assortment of nearly all the whimwams of Vanity Fair to be found there, but there are procurable appliances for the refection of the inner man. Up a dark entry on the western side of the passage, and up a darker staircase, is the entrance to the Diner Something-or-An- other — say Le Diner Quelquechose — a ' fixed price ' repast. Twice have I falteringly ascended to the sombre first landing of those Cimmerian stall's ; and twice have I crept down again into the light, trembling, ashamed, afraid to encounter the contingencies of the Diner Quelquechose. Yet nothmg could be more inviting than the carte chalked, like the Dim-nal Acts of ancient Borne, on a blackboard at the door : Potage Gribouille, requins aiix con- comhres, filet de baleine aux vieux parapluies, cotelette cle hup a la poivrade, UtQ de gorilla a la Ci'oqiiemitaine, saladc de foin atix 290 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. Ecuries cVArtois, wine, dessert, coffee — all for four francs. No ; I cannot venture upon it. More restaurant ? Plague, plague ! At the eastern end of the Pas- sage, over against a saloon where you may have your boots blacked, with a general ' brush-up and rub-down,' for fifteen centimes, are a pair of wooden gates, which to me possess a more fearsome interest than the wonderful portals of the Baptistry at Florence, orthe glori- ously rococo grilles in the Place Stanislas at Nancy. They are the gates of the Restaurant Autrechose — an eating-house even cheaper than the Diner Quelquechose. Potage Mamamouchi, j^hoque a Vhuile de moriie, dragon rati, queues de lezcird enpcqnllottes, civet de chats de P(^rse,wine,dessert,and coffee — allfor three francs. You do not ascend a staii'case to this repast ; you go down a flight of steps to it ; and, peeping through between the wooden bars of the gate- way, I see the guests in scores being fed at little tables in little pens in a huge cellar. I have grinned tlirough these bars so frequently, half in dolorous, half in droll, inde- cision, that I have begun to contemplate the possibility of the head waiter rushmg up the steps some day; flinging open the gates, and 'going' forme to the extent of seizing me by the coat-collar ; dragging me down the steps, and feeding me hon gre mat gre. I can imagine him saying, * La bourse ou la vie — dine or die, too inquisitive Englishman ! ' There is a toyshop in the Passage Jouffroy which is about the liveliest magasin de joiijoux that I know. The harmony from that toyshop periodically enlivens the entire Passage. The principal performer is an automaton flute-player life-size, in the likeness of a youthful negro in ruffled shh't-sleeves, a gay scarlet vest, velvet knickerbockers, yellow stockings, and high-heeled shoes with pink bows. Whether this sable swam is intended to represent one of King M'tesa's pages, or Othello the Moor of Venice, when he was a 5'oung man, I do not know ; but I can vouch, when he is wound up, for his piping most melodiously. During the hours of break- fast and dinner he is generally, I am given to understand, silent. Why should he waste his sweetness on the desert air of a Passage temporarily tenanted, it is to be presumed, by indigent persons who have nobody to breakfast or lunch with save Duke Humphrey? THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 291 His Grace of Gloucester invites a vast multitude of persons of both sexes and all ages to enjoy his stately hospitality every day. Potage a Veaii dii ruisseau, bouchees de Macadam, entre-cotes de creux d'estomac ait d^sespoir, filets de St. Cloud a la Morgue — that is the Duke's menu, and there is nothmg to pay. But when the people begin to swarm, full fed, out of the restaurants, chewing their toothpicks, or puffing their cigarettes, and altogether in that pleasant frame of mind which leads hu- manity to buy Jouvin gloves, bracelets and earrings, photographs of Made- moiselle Sarah Bernhardt in panta- loons, and painting pictures or carv- ing statues — if it be imperatively necessary that a lady artist should assume the costume of the nobler sex? what, I wonder, does Mademoiselle Rosa Bonheur wear : buckskins and jackboots ? — and to purchase lace- collars and cufi's, and dolls and Poli- chinelles for the little ones ; then the sable minstrel in the scarlet vest and the canary hose begins to tootle most sweetly. When his piping is at an end two little automaton bullfinches in a gilt cage — do you remember that sweet little jewelled bu'd in our '62 Exhibition ? — begin to warble a tutta gola. They being hushed, a mechanical Punch, having a string at the extremity of his caudal vertebrae pulled, jerks his arms and legs ; wags both humps at once, to the intense delight of the children ; and emits a sepulchral ' rooty-tooty-tooing.' After this you may reckon with tolerable certainty on hearing squeaks of ' Papa ! ' ' Mamma ! ' uttered by expensive wax dolls. Then clockwork mice and locomotive engines begin to move ; and the automaton swimmer begins to cleave with pliant arm the glassy wave in a zinc bowl full of water. The dancing sailor leaps ; the magic donkeys agitate their hoofs ; the tight-rope dancer executes surprising gambadoes ; and the monkey in a powdered wig and the full Court costume of the time of Louis XV. proceeds to play the ' Menuet de la Cour ' on a toy hai-psichord, accompanied by a squirrel on the violoncello and a guinea-pig on the harp. Le tour estjoue. The dainty baits have been swallowed, and the toyshops begin to do a capital business. Likewise is it both curious and edifying to mark how eagerly these frivolities are watched by a throng who, to all appearance, 292 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. have not the slightest idea of purchasing so much as a fifty-cent wheelbarrow or a one-franc fifty rag-doll. Look at that grim weather-beaten veteran, the specially selected (janlicn de la paix, who acts as censor of the morals and manners of the Passage Joufi'roy. He is a Brave, for right across his face he is halafre by the scar of some bygone sabre-stroke. He has served in bright fields. The Cross of the Legion, the medal for China and for mili- tary merit, the medal for the Italian campaign of '59, and our own Crimean medal, Avith two clasps, glitter on his valiant old breast. He may have heard the automaton negro pipe, the httle bullfinches sing, the Punches aud the dolls squeak, the monkey play the * Menuet de la Cour ' a thousand times. Yet evidently the sight and the sounds have not yet palled upon him. He listens like a three years' child to the tootling — a smile of expectation mantles on his battered visage while the monkey is being wound up. He lays his hand on the shoulder of an intimate — a little weazened old man, almost as weazened as the puppet Punch yonder, and says, ' Attendez ; vous allez voir comme il va etre drole. II jouera son grand morceau, " Qui qu'a vu Coco ? " ' And when the bedizened ape strikes up * Qui qu'a vu Coco,' the veteran seems almost beside himself with pleasure ; and softly keeps time with his staff of office to the fascinathig air. Do I blame him for being pleased with a rattle and tickled with a straw ? What am I doing here but idling the time away until Baptiste has * fixed up ' my room, and I can sit down at peace to work '? As it is, I feci sorely inclined to ramble up and down the Passage Jouffroy until sun- THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 293 SOME LOUNGERS IN THE PASSAGES. down ; for I have been but playing with a shell on the sandy shore, and a whole ocean of Passages lies yet undiscovered before me. You are not to suppose that the Passage Jouffroy comes to an end with the boot-blacking and brushing-up establishment on one side, and the fixed-price restam-ant, with the wooden-barred gates through which I grinned, on the other. There is a great deal more Passage, supplementary to the original arcade. You go down some steps and thread a corridor, in which there is a large bookstall, abounding with the peculiarly rubbishing, and in many respects ribald, publications on which the mind of contemporary 294 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. France seems mainly to bo fed, mingled with, however, and re- lieved by the admirable books of M. Jules Verne, the unimpeach- able stories of JMM, Erckmann-Chatrian, and some cheap and good translations oi Livingstone's L%st Journals, and Mr. H. M. Stan- ley's How I found Livingstone. The Explorer and the Discoverer are both amazingly popular in France ; and in the Exhibition there is always a curious crowd round a charming little terra-cotta statuette of Stanley in full * Dark Continent ' costume, to the accuracy of which, as a likeness, an autograph letter from the hero of the Lualaba-Congo bears "witness. For the rest, the dis- play made by a Parisian bookstall seems to have been chieiiy brought together by John Bunyan's "jNIan with the Muck-rake." M. de Goncourt's unutterably repulsive La Fille Elisa in its thirty-second, and M. Emile Zola's unutterably hideous UAssom- moir in its fifty-ninth edition ; these two books, with reprints of Le Nahab, La Femme de Feu, and Mademoiselle Giraud ma Femme, you see everywhere, even at the first-class booksellers' of the boulevards and the Rue de la Paix. An illustrated edition of L'Assommoir, brought out in fortnightly parts, is enjoying a tremendous sale ; and the public are absolutely promised, at no distant period, a dramatised version of M. Zola's professedly moral, but ineffiibly-disgusting, romance.* In addition to such novels as these, the bookstalls exhibit a profusion of almanacs, among which the prophetic ones have decidedly the 29«s ; for the Parisians, all free-thinkers as they may be, have not ceased to be grossly superstitious ; and there is annually a tremendous demand for the Triple Liegeois, and the vaticinations of M. Mathieu de la Drome. In England the Stationers' Company have at length grown ashamed of selling the yearly prognostications of * Francis Moore, Physician ; ' and I scarcely know what has become of our old and harmless familiar friend, ' Zadkiel ; ' but in France not only are prophetic almanacs eagerly purchased, but professional fortune- tellers openly advertise their readiness to unfold the mysteries of tlie future through the medium of chiromancy or somnambulism. The police extend a curious kind of toleration to these impostors, whom they find, it is said, very useful in the discovery of robberies : professional thieves being in the habit of having their fortunes told prior to essaying a grand coup. Even among educated French- men the name of the famous tireuse de cartes, Mademoiselle le Normant, is still held in veneration. ■" It is ahnost luuiccessary to rcinavk that since the ahovc was written dramatised versions of tlie hideous Assommoir have been produced with imnicuse success both in London and Paris. TPIROUGH THE PASSAGES. 295 I remember that Sibyl paying a visit to England many years ago. She was a squat, fubsy little old woman, with a gnarled and knotted visage and an imperturbable Eye. She wore her hair cut short and parted on one side, like ^ man's. She dressed in an odd-looldng casaquin, embroidered and frogged like unto the jacket of a hussar, and she snuffed continually. This was the little old woman whom Napoleon I. regularly consulted before setting out on a campaign ; who had foretold to Josephine her divorce ; and who, when Murat, King of Naples, visited her in disguise, simply looked at him; shuffled the cards ; dealt him the knave of clubs ; rose, said, * La seance est terminee ; c'est dix louis pour les Eois ; ' pocketed her fee, and left the room, snuffing terribly. In cartomancy the knave of clubs was called ' Le Grand Pendu.' Whosoever drew that fateful card was destined to die by the hands of the executioner. Besides the unseemly novels and the prophetic almanacs, you may find that the tastes of the students of classic literature have been provided for in the shape of cheap editions of Moliere — in their loyal devotion to whom the French, it must be admitted, and to their honour, have never swerved — of Voltaire's novelettes, such as Candide, Zadig, and Micromegas, and of such 'classic' chronicles as the Dames Galantes of Brantome, and the Histo'ire Amoureuse des Gaulcs of Bussy-Rabutin. Coarsely printed and rudely illustrated editions of the thousand-and-one romances of Alexandre Dumas the Elder are still plentiful ; the late exemplary M. Charles Paul de Kock continues to find favour with the cuisiniere, the concierge, and the calicot ; but it is with grief and amazement that, not only in the Passages, but among the book- stalls and booksellers' shops of Paris generally, I iiotice a marked absence of the works of Beranger. I do hope that a French friend, an accomplished scholar and man of letters, was wrong lately, when he told me * Le peuple ne connait plus Beranger. II est fini.' Can it be that the king of chansonniers, a true and incorruptible Republican as we know him to have been, was too Napoleonic in his sympathies to suit the present mood of the French popular mind, which is yet writhing under the poignant memories of Sedan ? It was the fault, so ultra-democrac}- may think, of the author of Les Infiniment Pelits, and Le Dieit des Bonnes Gens, that he liliewise wrote such purely Bonapartist Ij'rics as Le Cinq Mai, Les Souvenirs dit Peuple, and Le Vieux Sergent. It is the fashion just now among the Radicals to assail with the foulest abuse not only the name of the Thii-d Napoleon, but those of Madame Mere, of the Duke of Reichstadt, of Queen 20(5 TARTS IIERSELP AGAIN. Hortense, nnd Pauline and Caroline, and, in fact, of every member of the wonderful family which once exercised so magical a puissance over the French heart. Even in out-of-the-way corners, and on the dead walls against Avhicli the five-centime ballads are innned, I fail to find the stirring songs of Desaugiers and Debreaux, once so dear to the ouvrier class. I find ' Le pied qui remue,' and * Qui qu'a vu Coco ? ' in noisome abundance ; but I rarely meet with * La Colonne,' or even with "Dis-moi, soldat, dis-moi; t'en souviens-tu ? ' which, in its pathetic patriotism, well-nigh equals the * Yo heave ho ! ' of Charles Dibdin. Has the remembrance of Sedan wholly thrown the prestige of these famous ditties into the shade ? It would seem so. Nor in the way of popular art does my bookstall in the Passage Jonffroy present a very agreeable coup (Vocil to me. Caricature — in which the French once so highly excelled — still holds its own ; but, as regards piquancy and finesse, it seems to me to have wofully degenerated. I question whether the modern Parisian would understand or would appreciate the refined satire, the gentle philosophy of Gararni, or the quaint and fanciful humour of Grand- ville. Lithographic scrawls signed 'H. Daumier ' yet appear from time to time ; but there is little in them to recall the undaunted political caricaturist who was so terrible a thorn in the side of the Monarchy of July ; Bertall appears to enjoy perennial 3'outh, and Cham is as comic as eter ; but repeats himself quite as frequently as he has been in the habit of doing any time these thirty years past. These, however, are not the caricaturists of the hour, not the artists after whom the crowd run, and at whose works they stare with delighted ej'es. The satirical draughtsman most in vogue at present is one M. Andre Gill, whose bold, dashing, tren- chant productions adorn a series of cheap publications called La Lime liousse and La Petite Lune. Great power and extreme bru- tality are the leading characteristics of the style of M. Andre GiU, whose real name, I learn, is De Guines, and who seems, according to one of his recent biographers in a minor newspaper, to have passed through the most moving vicissitudes of fortune ere he achieved artistic fame. As a caricaturist he is as clever as our Mr. Pellegrini ; but he is a great deal more cruel ; and he does not spare the ladies, to whom Mr. Pellegrini would never dream of being artisticall3' ungallant. The latest production of M. Gill, and one which is selling by tens of thousands, is an enormous caricature portrait of Made- moiselle Sarah Bernhardt, the actress, as a baboon in trousers, with a very long tail, a painter's palette in one hand, and a sculp- THROlTCxII THE rASSAGES. 297 -4^ ^ >;*w:^s.w^£^- MADEMOISELLE SARAH BERNHARDT, BY ANDRE GILL. tor's chisel and mallet in the other. Mademoiselle Bernhardt's odd jJOichant for making balloon ascents, and her seeming inability to paint or sculpt save in boy's clothes, have already been made the subject of good-natured hadinar/e ; but surely it is scarcely kind, it is scarcely courteous, to caricature a very clever young lady in the guise of a huge ape. I might almost say that this lampoon was libellous, did I not remember that, by the law of France, the publication of a personal caricature is i^rohibited un- less the individual so caricatured authorises the production. Thus an artist in one of the comic periodicals recently put forth a very 298 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. funny but not very good-natured counterfeit presentment of M. de Villemessant, of the Figaro. M. de Villemessant is somewhat of a stout gentleman ; * but the artist represented him as a kind of Sir John Falstaff j^lus Daniel Lambert, and with at least three double chins. The outraged director of the Figaro threatened legal proceedings, and the obnoxious caricature was withdrawn. Thus it is to be presumed that a proof of Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt's portrait was shown to her prior to its publication ; and, if she has no objection to be likened to a monkey, whj^, there is no more to be said. Did not a charming and witty but scarcely well-favoured Austrian Ambassadress in Paris once say of herself that she was ' Le Singe a la mode ' ? THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBEK, BY ANDKK GILL. l\r. Gill is a furious Kepublican, and anti-Clerical to boot, and he is especially fond of representing the French people personified as a bearded artisan with a blouse, in the act of violently kicking * M. de Villemessant died last Eastertide. THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 299 somebody with an exceptionally heavy shoe. On the 4th of Sep- tember it was the turn of the late Emperor Napoleon III. — for the five-hundredth time since the downfall of the Empire — to be kicked. The bearded artisan was sending the dead potentate literally flying through the air with his clouted shoe ; and the back view of the Man of Sedan v>'as really a triumj)hant caricature of draughtsman- ship. It was next the turn of poor dear Joan of Arc to be kicked. The Maid of Orleans is the heroine, well-nigh the saint, of the Clerical party — done ilfaut lid donner dcs conps depied. Unhorsed, but in full armour, the hapless Pucelle is being violently driven into a cell at the Depot of the Prefecture of Police by the merciless shoe of Anti-clerical Democracy. I confess that I do not see the fun of such a caricature as this ; and I think that the roughest English working man would resent, even to the extent of punching of heads, any attempt to outrage the memory, say, of Lady Godiva. Na}', I am not at all certain that he would tolerate any overt dis- paragement of Nell Gwynnc. But the French populace have broken up every one of their idols — Moliere and Voltaire only excepted — into the smallest of fragments. XXIII. STILL, TIIltoUGH THE PASSAGES. Oct. 16. If you travel long enough through the continuations of the Passage Jouflfroy, if you cross a narrow street, and phnige into the recesses of yet another gallery, you will come out at last in the hustling and business-like Eue du Faubourg Montmartre ; but I prefer to retrace my footsteps even as far as the toyshop — ' Aux Enfants Sages' is its suggestive title — where the black boy tootles on the flute, and the monkey in the powdered wig and Louis Quinze costume plays on the harpsichord, accompanied by the squirrel and the guinea-pig. Then, passing through the two great cafes — which at night are full of very queer company — I emerge on the boulevard, boldly ca-oss it, fortuitously escape being crushed by an omnibus or by one of tlie huge tajnssih'es and cJiars-it -bancs going to the Exhibition, and dive into a labyrinth of Passages just oppo- wte — the renowned Passages des Panoramas, indeed. Where the Panoramas are or used to be, or what particular scenes or events they panoramically represented, I have not the remotest notion. It is enough for me that they display an ever-moving, ever-interest- ing picture of human life, even more diversified than that visible in the Passage Jouffroy. The principal gallery is more aristocra- tic and more tranquil than its opposite neighbour. On one side STILL THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 301 of the Passages des Panoramas near the entrance there is a noted sweetstuff shop, in which I shouhl say that it would be practicable for a young gentleman with plenty of ready money, and of a generous disposition, to ruin himself at New Year and Paschal tides with the utmost promptitude and despatch. This particular confiseur's, which is almost as grand and as handsome as M. Siraudin's noted establishment in the Eue de la Paix, must do a tremendous busi- ness at Christmas and Easter. Then do the jewelled caskets, full of candied violets and preserved daftydowndillies — for the French seem to make lollipops from the flowers of the field as well as the fruits of the garden — then do the models of the Arc de Triomphe, the Column of the Bastille, and the Venus of Milo — then do the dehcious but indigestible-looldng batons of sucre de pomme and the ingots of nougat de Montelimar, the x>ralines and the choco- late creams, the sugared almonds and the equivalents for our hardbakes and toffies — of the French synonyms for which I am entirely ignorant — find, I suppose, purchasers at whatever prices the proprietor of tliis amazing emporium of ' goodies ' chooses to demand. The shop goes right through into the Eue Vivienne ; and behind the counters sit a fascinating cohort of beauteous young ladies with slim waists. The only persons whom I fail to discern there are the customers. Perhaps I peep into the sweet-stuff-shops at the wrong hour. 302 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Perhaps this is not precisely the season when lovers of confectionery- are a*ccustomecl to purchase candied violets and preserved ' daffy- do wndillies;' but, oddly enough, the invisibility to the naked eye of customers in Parisian shops of the superior class strikes me very forcibly, while it puzzles me desperately, not only when I ramble in the Passages, but whensoever I take a turn on the boulevards. The shops in the side streets in which provisions are sold — the charcutiers and the rOtisseurs in particular — are always thronged. The wine-shops and cafes — I counted seventeen of these drinking-places in the space of five minutes' perambulation of the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre — the cremeries, the cheap linendrapers' and haberdashers', the debits de tahac, the toj'shops, and so forth, all abound in clients ; but it is with the extremest rarity that I ever discern a person hav- ing the outward and visible appearance of a customer in the grandest magasins _^ _ _ of the boulevards. On the other hand, VjiJ t\ ■^^ •? while purchasers are conspicuous by their absence, you are generally fa- voured with a full view of what the Italians call ' La Bella Famiglia.' Monsieur le Patron may be away speculating at the Bourse, or quite as possibly playing dominoes over his ab- sinthe or his ' bock' at his favourite cafe ; but Madame la Patronne fait sa caisse (balances her cashbook) — when did she take any money ? — at her high desk of authority. In front of the counter, a venerable dame, appa,rently ^ the patronne' s or her husband's grandmother, sits placidly knitting ; half a dozen demoisdUs de magasin are gossip- STILL THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 303 ing in corners ; while on the floor sjorawl three or four children in pinafores and bibs, superintended by a careful bonne in a high white cap. There is sure, also, to be a dog of the party ' to see fail' ' — gene- rally a villanous-looking bulldog made by constant kindness to be the pla}'- fuUest of pets ; or a woolly poodle that impresses you with the idea either that he is in a state of inexpressible dejection at the thought that he is to be shaved to-moiTO',v, or that he is hilariously joyful at the 304 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. remembrance that he was shaved this morning and that the oper- ation will not be repeated until after the expiry of another fortnight. Stay; with equal certitude you may reckon on the presence of a huge, handsome, quiet cat, either on the counter or on one of the shelves in the windows, l)urring or thinking among the diamonds and the articles de Paris. This is all very nice ___,_ and pretty and patriarchal — but where are the customers ? All the business cannot be whole- sale. From time to time the millionnaire from Nevada must enter the shop, saying, ' Show me your biggest riviere in brilliants that you can let'me have for fifty thousand francs.' My theory is that the apparent paucity of customers is really due to the unconscionably long hours of business adopted by French trades- people of the highest class. They open theii- shops before nine in the morning, and they do not close them until eleven at night. Thus the average quota of customers, instead of being quickly despatched in the course of say seven hours, as in our Piccadilly and Regent Street shops, is spread, in Paris, over a weary space of thirteen hours, and is attenuated even to invisibility, by the over-pro- longation of business. Early closing is cer- tainly not among the social reforms which have found favour in Paris. Not the least among the charms of the Pas- sages des Panoramas is that they are continu- ally offering fresh objects for contemplation. The objects themselves have very possibly been there during a long series of years ; but, ' strange to tell, although you may be a veteran fidneur, you do not remember to have seen the pleasant sights before. The leadmg show- shops of the main gallery are, of course, familiar to you. Take the great display of bookbinding, for example. Everything that can be done in the shape of embossed, indented, and iulaul morocco, russia, roan, vellum, and calf— of emblazoned backs and tooled edges— seems to have been lavished on the embellishment of rare editions of Moliere, Voltaire, Beaumarchais, La Fontaine, STILL THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 305 Eacine, and Covneille ; and similar honours, although of not quite so elaborate a nature, are bestowed on tall copies of the works illustrated by Gustavo Dora', such as the Dante, the Don Quixote, and the Paradise Lost. As for the sump- tuously illustrated tomes put forth during the last few years by the Hachettes, the Firmin-Didots, and the Mames — such as the Moyen Age and Dix-ludtihne Siecle of M. Paul Lacroix, the Jeanne cVArc, and the Saint Cccile — those superb specimens of typography and engraving labour, to risk a slight paradox, under the disadvantage of being so handsomely bound in cloth, and to have been so recently published, that it has not been deemed necessary to promote them to the dignity of whole binding. Let me add that the art of rcliure has attained a grade of con- summate excellence in France, and that French bookbinders may be held as the foremost craftsmen of that kind in Europe. There is a plain reason for the exceptional development among our neighbours of an art which, in its higher stages, certainly languishes in England. We bind excellently well in cloth : so well, indeed, that bookbuyers on a large scale are quite content to allow their recently acquired copies of the costliest works to remain in their original 'jackets ' of highly hot-pressed pasteboard and calico. You may have your old volumes whole or half bound ; but you think twice before sending your complete Froude, your Ruskin — if you are lucky enough to possess such a rarity — your Cun- ningham's Bc^i t7on-so?i, your Percy Fitzgerald's BosweU's Johnson, to the bookbinder's ; first, because you never know when you will get your property back again — our best bookbinders seem to think, to judge from the time they absorb in executing their orders, that a voyage to the Straits of Malacca and back again will do books no harm ; and next, because the money which you will have to pay for binding would enable you to purchase the complete Jeremy Bentham, the entire Hobbes, or the Howell's State Trials, after which you have been hankering for months. It may faii-ly be said that no real lover of books was ever rich enough to purchase a tithe of the books which he really desires to possess ; thus the book- worm, unless he have a craze for GroUiers and Eoger Paynes— in which case he is not to be looked upon with much greater respect than if he were a collector of Stradivariuses or old blue-and-white Nankin — is apt to regard his disbursements as money diverted more or less from a useful to a merely ornamental purpose ; and in a multitude of cases he allows his Macaulay's England or his Grote's Greece to remain in the same neat but inexpensive garb assumed by the last three-volume novel from Mudie's. SC6 £>ARIS HERSELF AGAIN. In France the case is altogether different. "With the exception of a few livres cVart, such as those to which I have recently drawn attention, and of the travelling guide-books, which must needs have a cloth binding in order that they may be comfortably stowed away in the pocket, but which otherwise can scarcely be considered as books at all, every French work, from the costliest to the cheap- est, is published in a paper cover, only. That modest envelope was donned by M. Thiers's Histoire dit Consulat et de V Empire, and by M. Littre's colossal Dictionary. It is donned by M. Taine's Origines de la France Contemporaine, by the last novel of M. Oc- tave Feuillet, the last theological or historical study of M. Ernest Renan, the last play of M. Alexandre Dumas or M. Victorien Sardou ; it is equally the garb of UAssommoir and Le Nahah, of the scurrilities of Paul de Kock and the extravagancies of Xavier de Montepin. The biggest and the smallest of French books is thus substantially only a pamphlet ; and if you have a huge body of pamphlets loosely sewn together, and you do not see about having them bound, the paper-covered mass will speedily fall in pieces. As a natural consequence, the services of the bookbinder in France are in constant requisition to save valuable books from destruction. As for the works which are not of any value, they never get bound at all : a circumstance which conduces to the profit of the bookseller, since the work, albeit rubbishing, may be in popular request. In its unbound state it has disintegrated, and has found, perchance, a home in the dust-bin ; but there are still people who wish to read it, and, the last edition being exhausted, a new one is called for, to the publisher's great joy, I have always fancied that one reason why cookery books are, as a rule, such an excellent property to the publishers thereof is that newly-married couples are in the habit of presenting a copy of the last edition of Francatelli or Mary Hooper to their cooks. The volumes are reasonably well bound, to be sure ; but of all Places of Destruction I know none more ruinous than a kitchen ; and in a very short space of time the cookery book comes to grief. Either the cat steals it — a cat would steal the new chimes of St. Paul's, belfry and aU — or the kitchenmaid lights the fire with it, or it gets into the cook's drawer — that ' chaos come again ' — and is seen no more. So additional copies of Francatelli or Mary Hooper are demanded, and the publishers dance jigs of delight. Prosperous, nevertheless, as the craft of bookbinding appears to be in France, the prices charged by the binders seem to be very high. When anything of the nature of ' extra ' work is required the payment dersianded may be qualified as extravagant. In the STILL THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 307 boolcsliop of the Passages cles Panoramas I find a set of Voltaire — the Kehl edition, in fifty volumes, only half-bound — marked two thousand francs, or eighty pounds. Now, editions of standard authors in England, full-bound, do not average more than fifteen shillings a volume. When, moreover, in Paris to handsome bind- ing there is superadded the rarity of an edition, or interleaving with curious engravings, the price asked approaches the monstrous. There is one work in the Passages des Panoramas, a set of French classics in thirty volumes, copiously interleaved with exotic plates, for which the modest sum of twelve thousand francs is demanded. Why, a first folio of Shakespeare could be procured for something like* that sum. A copy of the Conies de la Fontaine, ' Farmers- General ' edition, Amsterdam, 1762, and with the plates, after Charles Eisen, in perfect ' states ' — amateurs will understand what I mean — could not be obtained in the Passages des Panoramas for less than fifty pounds sterling. One exceptionally perfect copy ^etched at the late sale of the library of M. Firmin-Didot a hundred and twenty pounds. It happened that, just before I came to Paris a friend made me a present of the first volume of this much-prized work. The second he could not find. Lately I asked the great bibliopole of the Passages whether he thought he could possibly procure me a copy of the second volume. 'Has M'siu the real edition ? ' asked the bibliopole ; ' Amsterdam, 1762, Eisen's plates, perfect "states," and so forth?' I satisfied him on all these points. There was an odd twinkle in his eyes. ' It will be a matter of time, difficulty, and expense,' he concluded; 'mais voj'ons ; combien voulez-vous me vendre ce petit livre-la ? ' He w^anted to buy my first volume of the Contes ; and, had I not been determined to dine that day with the strictest economy at the Kistorante del Matto Forestiere, I would — so hard are the times — have struck a bargain with him at once. You may object that, in venturing upon this little disquisition on books and bookbinding in France and England, I have tacitly violated a pledge given long ago — a pledge not to be more technical than I can possibly help. Still, one must indulge from time to time in a little technology. Fellows of the books and of the examples of bookbinding to which I have adverted may be found displayed with all due ostentation in the vitrines of the great French publishers at the Exhibition. There you may dwell at your leisure on the masterpieces of the Hachettes, the Mames, the Plons, and the Firmin-Didots ; but it was with a deliberate pur- pose that I decided to cull my text, not from the glass cases in the Champ de Mars, but from a shop-window in the Passages des X 2 308 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Panoramas. At tlie Exhibition one is compelled, after a manner, to be an observer, and to be serious. It is not my present intent to be serious. I have seen so much misery and wretchedness that I have come to be of Figaro's opinion, that it is best to laugh while we can, lest we should be called upon to weep. In the Passages des Panoramas I am not bound to study anything, or to take any- thing or anybody au grand serieux. November is coming, when there will be no more smirking and giggling. Let us enjoy as best we can what remains to us of October — the finest St. Martin's summer that I have ever seen in the City of Pleasure. You will observe that I have always spoken of the Passages des Panoramas in the plural. In this I am justified by the inscription above the boulevard entrance ; but I am sure I do not know how many covered ways there are in this interesting region. Straying from the main avenue, full as it is of jewellers, confec- tioners, fancy stationers, toyshops, and dealers in old Dresden and new Sevres, you stray up * all manner of streets ' — or passages — as Leigh Hunt's pig did. One gallery takes you into another, and so, you know not how, you struggle into the Rue Vivienne. Another corridor gives me egress into a narrow purblind street, where my barber resides. He is a little round puncheon of a man, Avith a head of bushy black hair, and sparkling black eyes — a Provencal from Marseilles. Most people, even to the stupidest, possess some art or craft in the study of which they take intense delight, but the practice of which is, in a commercial sense, wholly useless to them. It hajipened many years since that I acquired a colloquial knowledge of the Proven9al dialect — it is no mere patois I can assure you ; — and every other day my barber and his family and I talk the langue cVoc together. He is a poet — all the gens du midi are poets — and recites quatrains to me in the intervals of la harhc and the coup de pcigne. He confides his sorrows to me. His eldest daughter, he tells me, is fast degene- rating into a Parisienne. This the young lady stoutl_y denies ; but I observe that she is somewhat reluctant to call unpaysan * oun paean,' to say * riprouchava ' instead of reprocher, and ' giammai * in lieu of jamais. ' Paris,' murmurs my barber, * has no heart. Paris gives itself airs. Lou manca natnra. She is all artificial. "What would Paris think if, when my day's work was over, I sat before my shop-door playing the guitar and singing a little canzon.'' I am in hopes that these friendly folks will ask me to take la bouil- labaisse with them some evening. Already the barber (who takes me, I think, for a commercial traveller, and condoles with me on the hardness of the times) has invited me to partake of ' oun verre STILL THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 309 di cassis,' at an adjoining wine-shop kept by a Provencal — an honest man from the Golfe St. Juan. I might pick np grander acquaintances, you may opine, than a barber who shaves, powders, and combs you, * fixes ' you with hrillaiithie and vinaigre de toilette, all for the sum of twopence-halfi^enny sterling, and offers to treat 3'ou to drink into the bargain. I consider that my barber and his brown-skinned, black-haired family are all reminiscent to me of the Beloved Land — of the lapis-lazuli sky, the ultramarine sea, the tawny shore, the dazzling white cottages with the roofs of loose dusky tiles, the trellised vines, the festooned olives, the gardens bursting forth with oranges and figs and lemons. Ay, and be3'ond all this, the pleasant fiow of the langue cVoc in the purblind little street by the Passages des Panoramas wafts me yet farther away — farther, through the Mesogeian sea — farther, through the bright Levant — farther, to ' the Palms and Temples,' not of the South, but of the East. Kcnnstdii das Land ? At all events, the barber and his family, together with a few beggars whom I have held brief converse with, are the most natural folks that I have met Avith during my sojourn in Paris. In one of the Passages I find a restaurant — a fixed-price one. Breakfast, two francs fifty ; dinners, three francs, I think. Say the Diner des Calicots. Non raglouam di lor, magiiarda e ])assa. I may only just hint that I saw an elderly English gentleman coming down the stairs of the Diner des Calicots, about half-past six one evening, looking very pale and ill. And yet, unless I am very much mistaken, I had met that same elderly Englishman at about half-past five looking in at the window of the fancy meer- schaum pipe-shop. He was then a fresh-coloured gentleman. Per- haps the hors d'oeuvres had not agreed with him. Another and more remarkable place of public refection in the Passages is in a very dark gallery, out of which you are suddenly shot, without any notice, so to speak, into the Rue Montmartre. This is the Pdstorante del Matto Forestiere. It is a genuine Italian house. This is where I dined, with the strictest economy, on the day when I had doubts about selling my odd volume of the Contes de la Fontaine to the proprietor of the sumptuous bookshop. At the Pistorante de Matto Forestiere they will give you all the typical examples of that which was once the very best but Avhicli, I Imow not why, has within recent years degene- rated into, with the exception of Spain, the worst cuisine in Europe. I do not know any city in Italy (Rome and Milan always excepted) where one can dine with tolerable comfort. The table dilute at the Hotel Victoria, Venice, used to be admirable ; but 310 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. that too lias degenerated. The condition of Florence, from a culinary point of view, is deplorahle ; and I have never met •with anybody who has dined well, culinarily speaking, at Bologna or at Genoa. And yet, when Cardinal Campeggio came to England, more than three hundred years ago, on the Catherine of Aragon divorce business, the Italian Peninsula was renowned above all other countries for its refined and succulent school of cookery. His Holiness the Pope took the greatest interest in the national art, and instructed his envoy to draw up a minutely exhaustive report of the state of cookery in England. Cardinal Campeggio's report was remarkably succinct, being comprised in two Avords — Niente affatlo. There was nothing whatever to report about Engiisli cookery. At the Pvistorante del Matto Forestiere you will find Italian cookery of a better kind than you can hope to meet with in Italy itself at the present day. The risotto — boiled rice, ' accommo- dated ' with oil, cheese, and safiron — is as succulent as it is whole- some. The ravioli and the poljjetti, the lasagne and the stuffato, are all good ; and they have at least a dozen ways of dressing macaroni. Finally, they are very great at this restaurant in the art of preparing iicccllin'i — small birds, such as quails, larks, thrushes — hcccajici, and so on, which are roasted with blankets of fat bacon and vine-leaves over their plump little breasts, and served in a hollow circle oi jjolenta boiled to a paste. But that it is wicked to eat little birds, I should say that their uccelUni were delicious : in any case I am afraid that some thousands of f/rives, maiivicttcs, caillcs, and hcccafici arc brought every week to the Halles Centrales, principally from the South of France and from STILL THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 811 the sliores of the Lakes of Como and Garda. The grives are taken in the largest numbers in the vineyards. The little creatures peck at the rijjened grapes until they get tips}^ and then the fowler comes and snares them — a fate that occasionally happens to other creatures besides grives. Perhaps it is not naughtier to eat these small birds than to wear them stuffed, and with their wings out- spread, in a lady's bonnet. Bird hats and feather bonnets are all the rage in Paris at present : and there must be a terribl}' con- tinuous slaughter of feathered folks in Italy, m the West Indies, and in South America, to satisfy the needs of Vanity Fair. The prices at the Eistorante del Matto Forestiere are pheno- menally cheap. The proj^rietor has apparently forgotten the exist- ence of the Exhibition altogether ; or perhaps he has a regular clientele / and his customers being mainly Italians and naturally frugal, informed him in the outset that if he raised his prices they would go and dine somewhere else. Next, however, to one of the Duval Bouillon-Bceuf establishments — I intend, as a matter of bounden duty, to dine there before I depart from Paris, but I have not 3^et succeeded in screwing my courage to the sticking-place — I should say that the Eistorante del Matto Forestiere was about the cheajjest restaurant that a foreigner with cosmopolitan tastes could dine at in Paris. I do not say that it is the best. I do not con- tend that the minestra is superlatively good ; that the came di manzo is incomparable, or the arrosto perfection ; that the wine is unimpeachable, or the coffee unexceptionable. But the place is characteristic and genuine ; and that is something to find in the midst of a wilderness of French eating-houses, where con- vention alit}' has come to the complexion of the most wearisome monotony. XXIV. EASILY PLEASED. Oct. 20. I AM ready to admit that a person of nominally cheerful tempera- ment and of moderate desires may be Easily Pleased in London. The overgrown metropolis of the British Empire does not enjoy the repute of being a very ga}' city ; yet to my mind there is always something on view, or something going on within the postal radius, of a nature to interest and amuse those fortunate indi- viduals who have nothing to do save to stroll about the streets and amuse themselves. Had I any disposable leisure of my own, I should be glad, when in England, to serve as a guide and in- terpreter to hlas^ people of the Sir Charles Coldstream type, and show them all kinds of places and things where and by Avhicli they might be easil}' pleased. Do you know the delightful model of the little gentleman in the tightly-fitting silk-pants and socks, and the exquisite shirt-front and faultless cuffs, at the hosier's shop in Regent's Street ? Have you taken note of his superb little whiskers and moustaches ? And the Imperial Lady in wax, and in the blue-satin corset, perpetually revolving at the staymaker's nearly opposite ? And the young lady in the riding-habit and the gentleman in full hunting-costume at the merchant-tailor's ? And ]Mr. Crcmer junior's dolls ? And the permanent wedding- breakfast at the French confectioner's in Oxford Street? And the EASILY PLEASED. 313 painted indiarubber mutton-cutlets, lizards, turbots, lobsters, and deatli's-beads — all so many tobacco-pouches in disguise — at the German fancy warehouse near the Lyceum Theatre. And the tiny fountains anil jets d'eait at the filter-shop hard by where Temple Bar formerly stood ? And the hundred-ton guns, and the frigate tossed on the waves of a clock-work ocean, at the Model Dockyard in Fleet Street ? And Sir John Bennett's bell-banging giants in Cheapside ? And the newest exhibits of the Stereoscopic Com- pany, east and west ? And the armoury of miniature pots, pans, and kettles — I am delighted to find that the business is still car- ried on — at the corner of Bow Churchyard ? And the peripatetic picture-dealers who hang about Lothbury and Bartholomew Lane with gaudily-framed oil-paintings, for which they sometimes ask twenty pounds from old ladies who have come to the Bank to draw their dividends, and for which they are generally willing to take twenty shillings ? And that wonderful museum of dolls in the Waterloo Eoad ; and the Bluecoat boys at play, 'like troutlets in a pool,' behind the grating in Newgate Street ? And the solemn little Foundlings quietly disporting themselves — boys on one side, girls on another — on their spacious grass-plots in Guilford Street ? When I have been absent a long time from England I return to these scenes and creatures as to old familiar friends. I miss a well-remembered crossing-sweeper now and then ; but still the supply of sweepers who solicit ' A copper, yer honour ! ' seems to be kept up. One generation of blind men and their dogs is suc- ceeded by another ; and it may be the great-grandson of the choice monkey with the cocked hat that diverted me in my youth, who now goes through the manual exercise, sweeps with a long broom the platform of his tripod, fires off a rifle, and, the performance being over, nestles, with an expression of resignation half comic, half rueful, in his Italian master's bosom. There is no solution of continuity in these gratuitous spectacles. Punch never seems to grow older ; and Karl and Hans and Ludwig, of the German ' green-baize band,' look as young as though they had been re- juvenated b}'' some beneficent Mephistophiles. They and the shops and the gratuitous street- sights — even to tlie laying down of the wood-pavement, and the laying bare of the entrails of the streets in the shape of gas and water-pipes and electric telegraph- wires — seem all specially provided for the benefit of those who are willing to be Easily Pleased. This being granted, it must nevertheless be borne in mind that in London long distances have to be traversed before you can B14 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. light on the spots where you can be Easily Pleased ; that our deplorable climate precludes us — notwithstanding the dictum of Charles II. — from strolling about the streets at least a hundred and fifty days m every year ; and that there are scores upon scores of London streets from which absolutely no kind of entertainment can be derived. Do you think that you could be Easily Pleased in Wimpole Street? Is there anything diverting in Portland Place ? What do you think of Bernard Street, Eussell Square, as a theme for philosophic contemplation ? How about Golden Square? Have you ever discovered the humours of Stamford Street, Blackfriars ? Did Burton Crescent ever yield you any pleasure ? Is the Alpha Road a very lively locality ? On the other hand, I contend that there is no street, passage, place, impasse, avenue, quay, cite, or boulevard Avithin Paris where the cheerful observer who is content with little may not be Easily Pleased. The Place Ventadour — where, by the way, to the national shame, the noble Theatre des Italiens is being demolished, to give place to the Credit Something or Another — is generally accounted to be the dullest locality in Paris. A porte-monnaie full of bank- notes lay there once, they say, for four-and-twenty hours without being discovered ; but I will undertake at any hour of the day to be as Easily Pleased in the Place Ventadour as on the Boulevard des Italiens. There is always something going on in the quietest as in the busiest quarters to interest and to amuse the flaneur. And that is why the Parisian — he need not be a Frenchman ; he may be a loyal adopted son of Lutetia, like Gavarni's English- man, wlio had ' lived in Paris since the capture of Paris by the English ' — is the most accomplished /W/iCur in the world. Take the shop-signs in general, for instance, and the charcu- t'lers' signs in particidar. We have remarkably fine pork in England. An English sucking-pig is, in degree, as pretty as an oil-miniature by Meissonier. An English side of bacon is a noble spectacle ; but how wretchedly tame and ineffective is the etalage of an English i^ork-butcher's ! As for a London tripe-shop, it is really rej^ulsive to look upon ; and it is only now and again, in a great ham-and-beef shoj^, say in the Hampstcad P.oad or in Kentish Town, that a feeble attempt is made to produce an artistic ensemble by the piling up of pyramids of pork-pies, or the display of huge blue-and-white basins full of coagulated mock-turtle soup. As for artistic decoration of the counter or the shop-front, that is wholly absent, and the wooden semblance of a ham, rudely gilt, generally docs duty as a sign. Now the Parisian cJiarcutier's is, on the contrary, all sparkling neatness and symmetrical taste. The sign EASILY PLEASED. 315 and the arabesques decorating the door-jambs, painted in oil and scrupulously defended by plate-glass panels, are frequently really excellent work s of art. I have been told recently of the sad- end of a most capable artist, who for many years had devoted himself to the decoration of the exteriors of pork-shops. He had under- gone a thorough academical training in the studio of a distin- guished French painter, and he had once competed, albeit misuc- //if&:8^^^^ 316 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. cessfuUy, for the Grand Prix cle Eome. The subject given out on the occasion when the unfortunate deceased competed for the prize Avas ' Trimalcion's Banquet.' The poor painter made the necessary sketches, and was then securely locked u^) in his loge at the Ecole des Beaux Arts to paint his picture. The commis- sion, b}^ whom it was subsequently examined, acknowledged that all the details of still life in the picture were admirably executed. Nothing could be more microscopically faithful to nature than the crayfish and the red mullet, the boars' heads and the peacocks, the oysters and the wild ducks. Ah ovo usque ad malum, all the eatables were superbly imitated ; only the human personages were villanously drawn and vilely coloured, so the Examining Com- mission did not send the unlucky competitor to the Villa Medicis. The result was that he became a painter of nature morte. He vegetated long and miserably as a picture-dealer's hack, but at length found more remunerative patronage among the pork- butchers. As a painter of charcuterie the unsuccessful competitor for the Grand Prix de Pome obtained a kind of renown. His garlands of sausages, displayed against a sky of pure azure flecked with fleecy clouds, were enthusiastically spoken of in the Rue duBac; he had a prodigious success on the Boulevard de Strasbourg with a liure de sanglier — a boar's head austerely posed on a platter of old Faenza ware ; and the Faubourg St. Denis was in raptures with the exquisite finish of his terrines de foie gras and his andouillettes de Troyes. He was the Teniers of pigs' feet d la Sainte Mene- liould ; the Paul Potter of cowheel a la Birihi, the Pafaelle of snails Avitli veal-stuffing, the Michael Angelo of jamhons de Bay- onne. He excelled in Gorgonzola cheese. Few could touch him in Bologna mortadella. His bacon was magisterial, his truffled turkey truly grand. He earned a handsome livelihood b}'' the exer- cise of porcine art ; but his friends remarked with sorrowful anx- iety that a settled gloom had taken possession of him. He grew more and more morose and desponding. A fortnight since — I tell the story as it was told to me — the poor fellow was found hanging from a cross-beam in his studio. He was quite dead. On his table was found a slip of paper containing these words : * Let no man be accused of my death. I am determined to destroy myself, because these six months past I have failed miserably in savoury jelly. ^ Poor man ! It was hard enough to have missed the Grand Prix de Piome ; but to break down in the simulation of galantine was Fortune's unkindest cut of all. You may be as Easily Pleased in the humblest little Parisian EASILY TLEASED. 317 bye-street, say off the Eue Daupliine, as when you are standing in front of the lordliest charcutiers in the Faubourg Montmartre. I can go farther, and say that, as a spectacle, Potel and Chalot do not take my breath away, and that even the superb Chevet does not astound me over-much. I can see finer whole salmon at Groves's than the traditional fish which is a. ij'iece de 7'^sistance at Chevet's. Indeed a great part of Chevet's show consists in the artistic * make-up.' Take, for example, these festoons of bananas. Bananas are not reckoned of much account in Covent Garden Market. Consider that cunning bordering of oranges and cocoa- nuts to a saddle of not very appetising mutton pre-sale. I daresay that the oranges are a franc apiece, and that the most fanciful prices are charged for the cocoa-nuts, the ' coster's' price of which in London is fourpence each. But in that little bye- street off the Paie Daupliine I am Easily Pleased by more natural, and, to me, more picturesque, bits of life, animated and still. Every little greengrocer's sliop, every tiny cremerie is a picture. What richness of colour, what velvety smoothness of texture, in that neatly-piled cone of ready-boiled spinach on its snowy cloth, and with the clean wooden spatula for serving out the wholesome toothsome vegetable ! Where can I buy cold boiled spinach in London ? And wdiat a dirty hole is a London fried-fish shop ! They are frying away furiously in the little bye-street off the Hue Dauphine. Here is a famous friture of gudgeons ; in another snug corner potatoes leap, crackling, in their scalding bath of oil. Yonder, a mighty old dame, who might be the grandmother of the Gracchi, in a clean white bib and apron, is frying eels with the loftiest of airs. Next door to a cobbler working lustily away in his stall — few and far between are the cobblers' stalls left in Lon- don — is a triangular niche, which proudly announces itself, on a capitally painted sign, to be the ' Petite Kenommee de la Galette.' A pretty girl, in a blue-duffel dress, a white apron, and white-linen sleeves, is continually dispensing slabs of the greasy delicacy. Exiguous as is the niche, it has a background, and there I can dimly discern an oven, and the pretty girl's father baking galette seemingly for ever and ever. He has been baking it to my know- ledge these forty years past. To me it is always the same galette, always hot, always fresh, always young, like the vojal countenance on the coinage and the postage-stamps. I will buy two sous'-worth of that galette, and devour it, sur place, even if I expire forthwith of indigestion. Ah, I have eaten the galette over and over again in the time that is dead and so dear to me. Steeped in poverty to the lips, but Easily Pleased 318 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. and passably content, what did you want when you were young, unracked by disease, unwrung by regrets, beyond the few penny- worths of sustenance that you could procure in the little bye-street ? You scarcel}' ever visited the fashionable side of the Seine. Mon- sieur Dusautoy, the tailor, might go to Hong Kong for you. Where was the Cafe Anglais ? What kind of people dined at the Maison Doree ? You scarcely knew. Assuredly you never cared. Yours the slumbers light, the early wander, the modest breakfast on what the crcmerie, the greengrocer's, the fried-fish shop would yield ; the two sous'-worth of caporal tobacco, or the petit Bor- deaux cigar, which cost but a sou ; and then the serious business of the daj' — the business of doing nothing save sweeping with eager eyes over all the printed treasures of the bookstalls, all the graphic and ceramic marvels of the curiosity-shops from the Quai aux Fleurs to the Quai d'0rsa3\ Was there any harm in having a small parcel containing fried potatoes in your coat-pocket while you were consulting an antique edition of Montaigne ? Was it high treason to mimcli a crust-and-butter and a hard-boiled egg while you scanned a rare Robert Strange, a precious Rapliael Morghen ? Did you derogate from your social position by walking into the nearest cabaret and ordering a chopine ? I think not. I think so still, as I munch the pennyworth of galette — not without a kind of suffocating sensation in the throat. It vuist be immi- nent indigestion ; but what is it Sir John Falstaff says about his old friends who are dead ? The rotisseurs, all over Paris, seem equally capable of easily pleasing people. The Paris ' roaster ' is something more and something less than a London cookshop-keeper. As a rule, he does not have a restaurant attached to his establishment. He deals not in made dishes. He does not serve iiortions. He has nothing to do with vegetables or sweets. But he continues with- out intermission to roast poultry, game, and joints. His spits are never idle. Supposing that you, a modest rentier^ or a pro- fessional man with no very extensive accommodation in j^our own appartement, propose to entertain a few friends at dinner. The soup is always safe. Every Frenchwoman — and, for the matter of that, almost every Frenchman — can make soup. You can get as many oysters as 5'ou like at a franc and a half a dozen, at the dcaillage at the corner. Fish is not necessarily expected. The houilli from the soup, garnished, makes an entree de viande de boucherie. The hors-d'oeuvres you buy at the charcutier's ; the 2)dtissier sends you the sweets. But you still lack your roast. Where are you to obtain your gigot cult a point, your roshif d, EASILY PLEASED. 319 VAnglaise, your dinde aux marrons, your brace of pheasants or partridges, your fat capon, or your spring chickens ? In j-our dilemma the rotisseur stands j'our friend. You order in the morning the joint, or the poultry, or game which you require, and at the appointed time j'our bonne calls for it, or the rdtisseicfs boy brings the viand to yoxxv abode, piping hot. I cannot help fancying that the roaster's functions might be made very easily adaptable to the requirements of civilisation in London. Innumerable families when they wish to give an extra- ordinary entertainment, have the dinner ' sent in from the pastry- cook's,' to the disorganisation of the entire household, and the secret wrath of the cook, who — good woman — could manage a small dinner very well, but is somewhat overweighted with a large one. Possibly she has no gas-stove, and her kitchen-range will not accommodate three roasts at a time. Under such circum- stances what a benefactor would the rotisseur be ! A sirloin of beef, a roast goose, a pair of fowls, a haunch of mutton, a brace of pheasants, a roast hare — the Magician of the Spit would furnish all these viands with promptitude and despatch, and the hostess would be rescued from the many embarrassments which environ the 'pastrycook's dinner ' including the sable-clad waiter with the large feet and the Berlin gloves, whose solemn presence and con- tinuous — albeit secretly indulged— thirst always vaguely remind you of those other sable-clad servitors who are associated with cake and wine, black gloves, scarves, and hat-bands. XXV. HIGH HOLIDAY IN THE CITY. Oct. 24. The journals of Barcelona gave, a few days since, an account of a very remarkable fiesta which had taken place at Villareal, near Castellon, on the borders of Valencia ; a region which, fromthe amiable temper and affable manners of its inhabitants, has acquired the name of un imradiso habitado por demonios — a paradise in- habited by fiends. The Villareal festival was an eminently characteristic one. A bull was let loose in the streets, which were partially barricaded. Throughout the whole day the poor beast was chased, wonied, and tortured by amateur toreros; women IIIGn HOLIDAY IN THE CITY. 321 plunged scissors into its hide, the very chiklren prodded it with forks, and at length, about sunset, the hull was brought into the plaza, where four streets converge; the wretched creature was tied down to beams placed across a great pile of dried esparto, and then the bull, amid the shouts of a sympathetic population, was sloichj roasted to death. This monstrous act of cruelty was perpe- trated on the IGtli of this present month of October. Thus, there would have been plenty of time for any notable inhabitant of Villareal de Castellon, anxious to ascertain from personal observa- tion how public festivities are organised in the capital of France, to have taken the train for Barcelona, and thence, either by the way of Gerona and Perpignan or by that of Marseilles and Lyons, to have come to Paris to participate in the ' Grandes Fetes de la Distribution des Pecompenses,' a series of merrymakings which began on Saturday evening and continued without intermission throughout the whole of Sunday and Monday, and were supple- mented on Tuesday evening by a stupendous ball and illumination at Versailles. Failing the advent of the Alcalde or the Cava of Villareal, there is a multitude of Spaniards just now who are to be found at most hours of the day and night puffing their yapelitos outside the Cafe de Madrid, and who might vouch for the fact that they order these things — that vs,, fetes — much better in France. First let me briefly sum up what has been done in the way of public rejoicmgs. The State has, so far as the million is con- cerned, very wisely done scarcely anything at all, and has left the million to do everything for themselves. ' Hang out your banners on your outward walls ; light up yoiiv girandoles and your Chinese lanterns ; sing whatever songs you please, and joy go with you.' Such has been practically the counsel given by authority to the pubUc at large ; and the advice has been universally and enthu- siastically followed. Only from eighteen to twenty thousand spectators could be privileged to witness the somewhat tedious ceremony of the distribution of prizes in the Palais de ITndustrie. The real pageant was to be seen out of doors, and that pageant was provided by the population at large. Dr. Johnson said that he went to Panelagh Gardens to look at ten thousand people, and to feel that ten thousand people were looking at him. "With an analogous intent did the gentleman with the horns, hoofs, and tail, in Southey's ' Devil's Walk,' ' stand m Tottenham Court Eoad, either by choice or by whim ; And there he saw Brothers the Prophet, And Brothers the Prophet saw him.' Since Saturday night a million and a half of Parisians, and some scores of thou- sands of foreigners; have been flocking up and down the main 322 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. tliorougliffires of Paris staring at one another, and deriving, ap- parently, the most intense enjoyment from the spectacle. ' Ou irons-nous a present ? Nous avons ete un pen partout ' — ' Where shall we go now ? We have been almost everywhere ' — I heard a stout French husband say to his stouter wife, on Monday after- noon. 'Descendons encore le Boulevard des Italiens,' said the lady, seemingly not in the least tired ; and off they went to en- joy a fresh lease of staring and being stared at. The pleasure of promenading never palls on the essentially out-of-door people. When they have stared at each other they stare into the shop- windows and newspaper kiosques; then they stare at the cabs and omnibuses ; and if a shower of rain comes on, they crowd into the passages or under the arcades of the Piue de Pdvoli, and find new faces and things to stare at. Where is the use of paying an extravagant price to witness, in an over-heated and over-crowded theatre, a performance in a language with which you may be imperfectly acquainted, when you may witness one of the live iiest dramas ever performed on the stage of that great theatre the World, in the cool, open, spacious streets, for nothing at all ? Paris broke out in bunting on Saturdny afternoon. From care- ful inquiry I ascertained in the Rue St. Denis that a tricolored flag of a gay but ' sleezy ' fabric could be purchased, pole, tassels, gilt spearhead, and all, for 3f. 50c. ; but there were more modest gonfalons in calico which could be obtained at a much cheaper rate. Tricolored cockades in silk were freely offered at fifty centimes apiece ; in cardboard they were quoted at two sous each. Miniature tricolored adornments for the headstalls of horses were to be had for a franc a dozen ; and a very nice Chinese lantern (iould be bought for ten sous. The humblest houses in the hum- blest streets displayed one or more of those cheerful and graceful decorations ; while in the principal thoroughfares the proprietors of the great shops and cafes had only to bring out their reserve stock of flags and banners which they had laid in for the National Fete of the 30th of June last. With one exception the nations were most impartially and liberally represented from an heraldic point of view on the boulevards. The Italian tricolor and the :nGH HOLIDAY IN THE CITY. 823 Cross of Savoy, tlie Ai\^ivi(\n Scliwarz-r/rlt, the Russian flag witli the double-headed eagle on the vast field of ,yellow, the American stars and stripes, and onr own Union Jack, together with the Spanish tricolor, ' blood to the fingers' ends,' and a number of bizarre cognisances belonging to less known nationalities, flaunted and fluttered from thousands of windov/s. I even saw, at a per- fumer's on the Boulevard Montmartre, a very creditable imitation of tlie stateliest banner in the Avorld — tlie lloyal Standard of England. It is true that the designer had thrown in a leopard or two, and the Prince of Wales's plumes and the Order of the Garter, and had thus caused some confusion among the quarter- ings ; nor, perhaps, was a superimposed escutcheon of Britannia riding on a lion, and looking like Danneker's Ariadne, who had suddenly bethought herself of donning a helmet and some light drapeiy in order not to be thought ' schkocking,' strictly in accord- ance with the proper laws of blazonry ; still the intent was excel- lent and the effect superb. Opinions were divided as to whether the perfumer's ensign was the banner of the Lord Mayor of London or of his Royal Highness himself; but the majority held that it was the device of the Prince whose photograph is in every shop- w^indow, whose efiigy decorates ladies' neckties, boxes of gloves, cakes of soap and chocolate, and corners of pocket-handkerchiefs, and whose name is on every Parisian lip. Among other privileges conceded to the Parisians on occasions of high holiday such as the present is to play in the public thorough- fares on that detestable instrument, the French horn. It is only, during the Carnival, on the evening of the jNIi-Careme, and on fete days, that the sound of this mournfuUest of wind instruments is tolerated ; at other seasons — legal torture having been abolished in 1789 — the horn is rigorously prohibited by the police. But since Saturday the excruciatingly dismal wheezings and croakings of the French horn have been audible all over Paris. Chiefly is it notice- able in the bye-streets ; for in the main thoroughfares the roar of the passing vehicles is so loud and so incessant that the lugubrious strains laboriously pumped out from this execrable shawm attract but little attention. In a bye-street ' le Monsieur qui sonne du cor' has things all his own way, and can gratify to the full his desire, which is obviously to please himself by making as many of his neighbours wretched as he possibl}^ can. He is not a pro- fessional musician. O, dear no ! He is only an amateur of human misery, an unconscious discij)le of the gifted but anony- mous English misanthrope who wrote tliat fascinating book, the Art of Ingenioiislij Tormenting. The ' Monsieur qui sonne du T 2 824 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ^^^i^..-^^ cor ' appears to me to live usually in an entresol. So soon as the police taboo on his abhorrent clarion is provisionally suspended, he throws his window wide open : and, leaning over the sill, pro- ceeds to discourse his terrific minstrelsy. I wonder whether Blondel the troubadour was a proficient on the French horn. If such were indeed the case, the misery of the captivity of the lion- hearted King must have been wofully aggravated b}' hearing ' O Eicliard, luon roi ! Tout runivers t'abandoune ; Dans ce monde il n'y a que nioi Qui s'intcresse en ta personiie,' to the accompaniment of a French horn. I abide by the theory that the French horn-player is Timon of Paris. He lias seen the hollowness, the ingratitude, the perfidy of the world ; and after giving a farewell and dismal banquet to his fair-weather friends in the salon known as the Grand Seize at the Cafe Anglais, and flinging the dishes — which contained nothing but hot water — at their heads, he has retired to an entresol in the Rue Je m'en-fiche- pas-mal, where, from year's end to year's end, he nourishes his hatred of mankind, occasionally solacing himself, when the police regulations permit him, by throwing open his window, and driving his neighbours frantic by his performances on the French horn. He is, o,s a rule, indifferent to the tune which he tortures. I have heard him within the last four days trying ' Madame Laiiglume,' HIGH HOLIDAY IN" THE CITY. 825 llie ' Sire de Framboisy,' tlie wrJtz from La Fllle cle Madame Anqot, ' Quand j'etais roi ' from Orphce aux Enfers, the ' Chorus of bhl Men ' from Faust, the ' Wedding March,' the ' Chant du Depart,' and the ' MarseiHaise ; ' and this afternoon, passing down the Rue St. Anne, I heard Timon of Paris, as usual, at the win- dow of his cnlresol, excoriating the graceful melod/of ' God Bless the Prince of Wales.' Tliis performance was, no doubt, highly complimentary to the Prince ; still I am glad that Mr. Brink}'- Eichards was not passing at the moment in question. There might have been ' a Fite,' as Artemus Ward phrased it, between Timon and Apemantus. It is nevertheless amusing to reflect that, even three years since, one might as soon have expected to hear the air of ' God Bless the Prince of Wales ' as ' Hold the Fort ' or the ' Old Hundredth ' played at a Parisian window. Every day seems to add, to all appearance, to the friendly feeling with which the people of the city of Paris regard the heretofore jperfides Al- hionnais. Scores of English words are being imported, not into Academical, but into Boulevard French. Members of ' le high life ' tell their ' ghrooms ' to put ' le steppeur ' into ' le T -quart.' I heard a French gentleman recently substitute for the French verb atteler, to harness, the to me extraordinary term ' hicher.' * ]\Iais c'est de I'anglais,' he said to me, apparently surprised at my inability to understand v/liat ' hicher ' meant. Suddenly I remembered that the Americans occasionally ' hitch,' instead of harnessing, or ' j^utting the horses to ' a carriage ; and I am not prepared to say that ' hitch ' is not the tersest and most compre- hensive term of the three. Some thousands of horses vrere ' hitched ' to carriages, open nnd closed, for the benefit of sightseers anxious to witness the illuminations. The omnibuses, moreover, were all crammed in- side and outside, the ladies scaling the knifeboard in the most gallant manner imaginable, Efjually overladen with humanity Avere the enormous tapissiercs and chars-a-hancs, drawn by three horses abreast, which perform le service de I' Exposition. These prodigious caravans are of very ancient origin. These indeed were the Rhedcs in use in Roman Gaul ; and you ma}'- see the vehicles accurately figured in Mr. Anthony Rich's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. These ponderous vehicles, owing much of their velocity to their own momentum, usuallj^ go ' pounding ' along at a terrible rate, pulling up for nobody, and occasionally running down and smashing the poor crazy little victorias. But on the night of the illuminations, onniibuses, ta^yissiercs, and cJiars-d-hancs were all bound to move at a snail's pace, if indeed they could move at all. 326 PARIS IIEESEI.F AGAIN. The block from the Madeleme to the Chateau d'Eau was ahnost continuous, and persons who had hired carriages at famine prices were kept for three-quarters of an hour staring at the gas-devices architectonically defining the lines of the huge premises of the Credit Lyonnais, or half blinded by the electric light in the Avenue de I'Op^-a ; whereas, had they been on foot, they might have been borne gently in the midst of the best-tempered crowd in the world along the Avliole length of the Boulevards. It is a capital thing to take a carriage to see the streets of a great city illumi- nated, if you can only persuade your neighbours to stay at home, or to refrain from hiring carriages. So, I should imagine, a vast number of sightseers thought. As far as the pedestrians were concerned, there were a few ugly crushes and rushes, principally AT THE PARIS ffiXE, FROM THE 'JOURNAL AMUSAHT.' HIGH HOLIDAY IN TUE CITY. 327 at sucli always perilous corners as those of tlie Rue liafitte, the Rue de la Cliaussci d'Antin, and especially the Hue du Faubourg JMontmartre ; but, on the whole, all things went ver}^ snioothl}', and I was not more than one hour and three-quarters getting over an amount of pavement space which, under normal conditions, I could have easily perambulated in twenty mmutes. Certain of the crowd, not content with the tricolor rosettes, which the great majority Vv'ore, transformed themselves into itinerant illumi- nations, carrying lighted Chinese lanterns in their hands, sus- pending them to open umbrellas, and even wearing them on their simple heads. With all this, the behaviour of the crowd was, as a rule, simply perfect. Bad language, coarse ribaldiy, and brutal horseplay were altogether absent ; and it was only towards midnight, when the crowd was thinning, that a few troops of gawky lads began to make themselves obnoxious by tramping along, waving coloured lanterns and yelping the ' Marseillaise.' They were only the younger brothers of the gawky lads whom I watched on the Boulevards in Juty,^1870, trooj^ing along, and howling, at the top of their voices, * A Berlin, a Berlin ! ' Poor gawky lads ! A more serious drawback to enjoyment was the in- cessant discharge from houses in the back streets, or by Gavroches on the pavement, oi petards, or squibs and crackers. On the occa- sion of every popular /t'ic in Paris, horses are terrified and thrown down, and human life and limb endangered, by the reckless dis- charge of these explosives, which rival in their noxious abundance the squibs and crackers of a 4tli of July celebration in New York. It is quite time that the Paris police put the petards down. Some of my readers will no doubt remember the ' aristocratic fete ' at poor old Cremorne Gardens. The festival in question, organised by a noble lord of artistic tastes, must have taken place (how the time sli^js by !) nearly twenty years ago. Cremorne was then in its glory ; the gardens were exquisitely pretty ; the enter- tainments were varied, sparkling, and attractive ; and it occurred to the noble lord that it would be a very nice thing to charter Mr. Simpson's premises for a single evening, form a committee of ladies patronesses, and, by the maintenance of a rigid system of vouchers, exclude all but the crime de la crane of society from the bowers, the buffets, the marionette theatre, and the dancing- platform for that night only. The festival, harmless and even ingenious in its inception, duly took place. The Brahminical classes came, if not in their thousands, at least in their hundreds, to the Chelsea Casino. There was music ; there was dancing ; * twenty thousand additional lamps ' shone upon fair women and 328 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. brave men ; and all would have gone meny as a marriage bell, onl3% unfortunately, it poured cats and dogs throughout the evening; and that which should have been an Almack's in the open air was converted into a Festival of Umbrellas and a Car- nival of Goloshes. Fierce downfalls of rain, combined with a furious wind, spoiled a great many things in Paris on the daj^ of the grand reception at Versailles : the flags and Chmese lanterns still left hanging along B r^-U^:r HIGH HOLIDAY IX THi: CIl'Y. 529 the boulevards, to wit; to sa}' nothing of the tempers of iuniimerable j)romenaders who were overtaken by the showers and coukl not get cabs. At Versailles the rain and the Avind worked between them even more mischief; and the foulest of foul weather did its best to si^oil the magnificent /('fe given in the palace and gardens of Ver- sailles by the President of the French Eepublic and Madame la Marechale de MacMalion, Duchesse de Magenta, to the foreign princes and grandees sojourning in Paris and the elite of Parisian society. The gardens became one vast morass of mud ; the water 330 PAllIS HERSELF AGAIN. was ankle-deep in the ill-paved Cour de Marbre ; large numbers of Jadies had to walk a hundred yards from their carriages to the staircase of entrance ; trains were trodden upon ; lace scarves were soaked ; silk stockings were splashed ; back hair came down limp and damp, and gentlemen's white cravats hung pendent with moistiu'e. In the palace the crush was so great that hours were AT THE VERSAILLES PETE, FEOM 'LA VIE PAKISIEKNE.' HIGH HOLIDAY IX THE CITY. 331 consumed in arriving in the presence of the Marechale. Stout determined ladies who engaged in the struggle with confidence at the outset often had to abandon it long before they reached the goal. To crown the drawbacks of the evening, tlie means of exit were so ill-arranged that when the hour of departure arrived ever\'- body experienced the greatest difficulty in getting awa}'. Ladies waited for long hours together on the staircases and in the vesti- bules, unable to reach their carriages ; while gentlemen sought despairingly for their greatcoats in the confusion that prevailed in the vestiaire. The cloak-room arrangements were imperfect; the attendants had 'lost their heads;' Ulsterswere handed to people who ought to have had Inverness capes, and the lawful owners of over- coats with Astracan collars could not obtain their property at all. Apropos of this subject, one of the sallies of M. Paul de Cassagnac, during the debate in the Chamber on the motion for invalidating his election, was as humorous as it was hard-hitting. Some disparaging observations on the wasteful expenditure of money on the fetes given at Compiegne under the Empire having been made by one of his adversaries, M. Paul de Cassagnac at once fired up. ' At least,' he retorted, * when the Emperor gave a ball, he did not confiscate the greatcoats of his guests, as you did the other nvAxt at Versailles.' ' Halloo ! why, you've got your greatcoat on tlie Versailles fvte.^ So vou di'ln't go to DOUBLE PEE=!SURE MACHTXE FOR DISTRIBUTIXG THE AWARDS — THE ONLY WOUAi^ED OX£S ARE THOSE WHO ARE NOT HIT. XXYI. Gi^AND rrazE:\iE:>:. Oct. 26. I HAVE often wondered when passing that veiy fashionable florist's shop close to the Grand Hotel des Capucines, who can he the pur- chasers of the enormous bouquets — ' bowpots,' our grandmothers used to call them — which display their rainbow hues in the midst of envelopes of paper large enough, to all seeming, to serve as tablecloths for a party of four. No lady, I should say, of a stature shorter than that of the Nova-Scotian Giantess could carry one of those big bouquets. There are very few fashionable balls just at present ; as society in the noble faubourg is waiting for the pro- vincials and the ' Expositionards ' to go away before the real Paris season begins. Presidential receptions and ministerial dinners do not take place every night. For what purpose, then, are those tremendous bouquets at the florist's near the Grand Hotel in- tended ? I noticed that they grew bigger and bigger as the day for the Distribution of Prizes drew nearer, and I began to fancy that the prodigious assemblages of flowers would be presented — of course, by young ladies in white musHn (four young ladies to each bo.uquet) — to Madame la Marechale de MacMahon and her princely and illustrious guests on their arrival at the Palais de I'Industrie. No, the big bouquets remained at the florist's on the Boulevard des Capucines throughout the rejoicings of that day. On the day following I went to the Exhibition ; and, entering by the Porte Rapp, one of the first objects that met my eye was the biggest of all the big bouquets that the Paris florists couldigather together glowing on tlie axle of an immense wheel in the French machinery department. I am not interested in machinery, and am quite ignorant of the attributes of the particular jjiecc of '.^lechanism in question. I only know that it is very large, that its GRAND rniZEIMEX. 333 odour is not at fill pleasant, and that when in motion it makes a horrible noise, now reminding you of the lamentations of the late Mr. Van Amburgh's tawny pupils under his corrective crowbar, and now suggestive of their howls of exultation in the supposititious case of Mr. Van Amburgh dropping his crowbar, and the lions and tigers being then in a position to fall upon and dine from off him. At all events, there was the machine, and there, casting sunshine in a shady place, was the big bouquet. There was something else. Beneath the prodigious posy was a broad pZ«(7»c, on which were blazoned the magic words ' Grand Prix ! ' Very few and far between, however, are the machines and the glass cases gay with enormous triumphal bouquets, and flaunting the gleaming ensigns which notify that a Grand Prize has been awarded to the fortunate exhibitor. Multitudinous are the ex- posants deprived of the proud privilege of affixing to the forefront of their stalls the bright tablets, with ' Grand Prix ' o-r even * Medaille d'Or' inscribed thereon, and of celebrating their triumph by a sacrifice to Flora. In general, among the French exhibitors dis- appointment has not been met with cheer- ful or even with rueful resignation. There has been a good deal of clenching of fists, of bending of brows, and of muttering of maledictions both loud and deep over the official prize-list ; and Cham,the caricaturist, Avitli his usual humor- ous exaggeration, has aptly hinted at the frame of mind of a non-recipient of re- wards, who adminis- ters a sounding kick to a peaceable indivi- dual who is looking at his wares. ' Puisque je n'ai pas de medaille, je ne veux plus qu'on regarde dans ma vitrine !' — 'No medal, no more sightseeing! ' cries the enraged exhibitor. It is embarrassing AT THE EXHIBITION (bY CIIAM). ' As I've no medal, I'll not allow any one to look at my case ! ' 334 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. to enter into converse with these disappointed ones. They button- hole you with terrible tenacit}^, and jiour fearful tales of wrong into your ears. * Imagine, my dear sir,' says Monsieur Philocome, of the Passage Postiche, perfumer, ' nothing for my Pommade Pom- padour ; nothing for ni}- Rose Dubarry lips-improver ; nothing for my Paphian eyebrow- archer ; nothing for my INIitylenian hair- oil : while that animal, that hutor, that impostor Coupechou of the Passage Grosradis gets two medals — two, my dear sir, a gold and a silver one — for his miserable Sempiternal Carrot ! It is an infamy ; it is a scandal ; c'est une iiourriture ! ' The Sempiternal Carrot is, I am given to understand, a simulation in india-rubber AT THE EXHIBITION AQCJARIUM— AN ALARMING CONTINGENCY (bY CHAM). ' I know them well. If they don't get medals, they'll all drown themselves.' of the vegetable in question, strongly imi^regnated with the juices of carrots, leeks, onions, and so forth. On the Sempiternal Carrot being steeped in hot water the flavour of julienne soup is, after a few minutes, imparted to the heated fluid ; and the carrot can then be taken out, carefull}' dried, and put aside for future use in scEcula scccidorum. A highly ingenious invention. The British public will rejoice to learn that a goodly number of recompenses of the highest kind have been awarded to our own countrymen. We have every reason to be proud of the show which we have made in the Trocadero and the Champ de Mars. GRAND rRIZEMEN, 335 And once again foreigners have generonsly admitted that we take the lead in calicoes and Avoollen fabrics, metallurgy, machinery, and machine tools, agricultural implements, ceramics, glass, bis- cuits, preserved provisions, whisky, and beer. Sir Joseph Whit- worth Sc Co. take a more splendid rank at Paris in 1878 than Herr Krupp took in 1867. The Whitworth exhibit has gained no less than three Grand Prizes for machinery and metal working, with a gold medal in addition for artillery. Altogether no less than five Grand Prizes and twent3'--two gold medals have been given to British exhibitors in the single section of mining and metallurgy, while in the section of 'fils ct tissus de cotoii' the Lancashire firm of Testal, Broadhurst & Co. secure the Grand Prix, and six other houses receive gold medals for products in the same class. Further, a Grand Prix and four gold medals have been given for thread and linen fabrics, and nine gold medals for woollen cloths. The manufacturers of agricultural implements too, with Messrs, Jolni Fowler & Co. at their head, have carried off a Grand Prix, and fourteen gold medals, besides which a Grand Prix and seven gold medals have fallen to the lot of exhibitors in the horticul- tural section. Equally gratifying is the recognition accorded to the manufac- turers of pottery and of glass. In ceramics Minton of course takes a Grand Prix. Due justice has thus been done to the superb works in ceramics exhibited by the renowned firm of Stoke-on- Trent. Another Grand Prix has been awarded to Messrs. Doulton for their admirable Jjumheth. faience ; while gold medals have been given to the historic houses of Copeland and of Wedgwood, to Brown, Westhead & Co., and to the Worcester Porcelain Works — not because their productions are in any way inferior to those of Minton or of Doulton, but because there were no more Grand Prizes in this particular section to give away. There was one, however, to be bestowed in the section for glass, and this has been awarded to Messrs. Thomas Webb & Sons, of Stourbridge and London, for their varied and magnificent display, and notably for the unique specimens of engraving upon glass which formed so splendid a feature of their exhibit. This distinguished firm of artistic glass manufacturers un- deniably deserve to be placed in the forefront of the ' laureats ' of the Exhibition, since to them has been allotted the only Grand Prix in their peculiar department of production. English gla?s manufacturers have been, as a rule, regarded with extreme jealousy by French manufacturers and experts, who are justifiably desirous to uphold the prestige of their own Cristalleries de Baccarat, which 33G PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. are virtually a State institution, being conducted by M. Michaud on behalf of the French Government. Since, however, a Treaty of Commerce has been concluded between the two great civilising Powers of Europe, and the public mind in France is slowly but steadily becoming imbued with a conviction of the advantages of Free-trade, this jealousy has been gradually disappearing. As regards ceramics it has w^ell-nigh entirely disappeared. French potters are beginning to acknowledge that neither Sevres nor any other private enterprise is endangered by the competition of Minton, of Wedgwood, or of Doulton ; and the honours conferred on Messrs. Thomas Webb & Sons go far in the direction of proving that justice and right feeling will be extended to other branches of British manufacture. In many respects the Webb display must be held superior to that of Baccarat, which, all- beautiful as it is in artistic design, has a certain ' milkiness ' of hue and a deficiency of sharpness of cutting which suggest either want of skill in mixing the ' metal,' or coarseness in the moulds employed for the rough forms from which such glass, which cannot be blovai, must originally be cast. The effect of Baccarat glass is, on the whole, too cold and pale. It lacks what diamond merchants call ' show ; ' and the brilliance of its ' water,' as com- pared with that of first-rate English glass, is as the brilliance of gas as compared with that of the electric light. All styles and periods are illustrated in the ornamental glass of Messrs. Webb. There are specimens in the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Indian, the Greek, the Italian, and the Celtic styles ; there is glass of Byzantine, of Gothic, of Benais- sance, and of Rococo design and decoration. In particular must artistic beauty and technical skill be recognised in the cameo- sculptured vases in the manner of the renowned Portland Vase which Josiali W^edgwood successfully imitated in ceramics, but which Messrs. Webb have been the first to produce in the genuine material of which the Portland Vase is composed — blue and white opaque and semi-translucent glass. These exquisite vases have, however, been purposely excluded by the jury from their con- sideration of this particular display, which has been judged on its true decorative and technical merits, quite apart from the unique characteristics of the cameo-sculptured vases. The most con- spicuous object is the Panathenaic glass vase, superbly engraved in high relief with a design adapted from the frieze of the Parthenon. Then there is a superb Benaissance vase, covered with engraved arabesques with classical subjects in the cartouches. This has been bought for 5000 francs, as one of the prizes in the Exhibition GRAND TRIZEMEN. 337 Lottery. A Perso-Gotliic service, engraved with a quaintljaiiediseval diaper, and a Gothic cup or tankard — what the French term a hanap — with a fontastically grotesque design engraved upon it, next call for attention ; and there is hkewise a vase of Indian form, so exquisitely delicate in its engraved tracery, that, to my mind, it ought to be called the ' Cobweb ' A^ase. Of useful objects of a high artistic character, such as claret and water jugs, the firm make a very interest- ing displa}^, alike in the Classic, Renaissance, Gothic, and Rococo styles, one handsome example of the former being decorated with a delicately-engraved equestrian in'o- cession from the Parthenon frieze. Equally elegant are the magnum claret jugs designed by Mr. D. Pearce, and either overspread with a rich tracery of trellised flowers and foliage interspersed with birds and insects, or ornamented with classical groups enclosed in a floral framework of graceful design. In a far bolder style is a jewel-handled jug deeply engraved with eagles and interlacing oak - branches encom- passing a central shield designed to contain a crest. Add to the fore- going a remarkable and substantially unique specimen of boldly-perfo- rated glass, in the 'Avater service,' and some triumphs of under-cutting in dishes, salt-cellars, sugar-basins, and the like, so lustrous in their sheen that they look like half a dozen Koh-i-noors welded together; gigantic ' hair-twist ' and Queen Anne chandeliers; towering candelabra of cut glass; and a per- fectly unique vase in what, for want of a better definition, must be technically quahfied as ' iridescent-polychromatic-crackle,' but which, I believe, from the pattern of its decoration, will be more ENGRAVED CLAEET JUG IX THE CLASSIC STYLE. 338 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. tersely cliristened the ' Scarab?eus ' Vase ; and some slight idea will be formed of the merits of the display made by Messrs. Thomas Webb & Sons, which in its way must be considered as various, ENGRAVED MAGNUM CLARET JUG. ENGRAVED WATER JUG, ITALIAN STYLE. as beauteous, and as honourable to English skill and enterprise as the productions of the Elkingtons in orfevrcrie, and of Minton and others in pottery. The bronzed glass of Messrs. Webb is also exceedingly fine, and they exhibit likewise a multitude of charming little toys and table ornaments in glass, which an inex- perienced observer might imagine to be articles de Paris, but which are nevertheless, like the more important and superb examples of sculptured cameo, intagho, and engraved glass, exclu- sively due to the talent and ingenuity of British workmen and executants. I hold this to be a most important point, artistically and nationally considered. I admire and respect the French art-workman "in his own atelier ; but in the studio and the work- GRAND rPJZEMEN. 339 shop of the British manufacturer I want to see_ the British designer and craftsman reigning supreme, and hohling their own against all comers. This they do at Stourbridge, where a host of native talent numbers among its more conspicuous representatives such notable artists as Messrs. Pearce,Northwood, Kny, Woodhall, and OTallon, the latter as familiar with the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles as with the Book of Kells and the remotest examples of Attic ornamentation extant. The splendid distinction of a Grand Prix, the only one awarded to exhibitors of furniture in the British section, has also been con- ferred on Messrs. Jackson & Graham, a firm which for years past has taken the lead in England in the production of artistic furniture of the very highest class; such, for instance, as the beautiful objects manufactured by them for Mr. Alfred Morrison from Owen Jones's designs. The whole of Messrs. Jackson & Graham's Paris exhibit is of a nature to sustain the high reputation of the house, which counts among the honours it has secured at former Industrial Exhibitions numerous gold medals and grand diplomas, together with the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Order of Franz- Josef conferred upon its leading representatives. The master- pieces of the firm at the present Exhibition are a couple of cabinets, both of them in ebony, skilfully relieved with other woods, and exquisitely inlaid with ivory. The more ornate of these productions is the so-called Juno Cabinet, which in the symmetry of its design — displaying great originality without being in anywise eccentric — the elaborateness of its ornamentation, and the astonishing deli- cacy and skilfulness of its technical execution, surpasses,_as an ex- ample of artistic cabinet-making, the most brilUant achievements of the Italian and Flemish Ptenaissance and Sixteenth- century eUnistes. The principal panel of this admirable specimen of art- workmanship is occupied by the head of Juno, sedate and queenly- looldng ; and in a shield on the pediment above is the traditional peacock. Heads of Venus and Minerva decorate the panels on the right and left; the intermediate spaces being occupied with repre- sentations of the Earth and the Ocean, flanked by narrow panels inlaid with semblances of peacocks' feathers ; other emblems, such as the golden apple, the olive, rose, and myrtle, filling the lower panels of the cabinet. The whole of these decorations are daintily inlaid with box and other fancy woods, ivory and mother- of-pearl, besides which, exquisitely delicate inlays of ivory enter largely into the ornamentation of all the mouldings. The second cabinet, in the style of the Itahan Renaissance, is a work of equal beauty, marked by the same elaboration of detail z 2 340 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. and marvellous finish of execution. It is of figured ebony, thuya, box, and ivory, with palmwood panels, the whole being skilfully disposed to produce a harmonious blending of contrasting colours ; and the delicate inlays and exquisite engravings relieving, and, as it were, illuminating, this admirable work, of which Mr. Henry Brassey has become the fortunate possessor. Another interesting object in Messrs. Jackson & Graham's display is an escritoire of sandal and other woods, varied by inlays and mouldings of ivory, in the light and graceful style of the French Renaissance, a charming piece of furniture which Mrs. John Ealli has shown her taste by acquiring. The exhibits of this firm further comprise an exquisitely finished inlaid boxwood cabinet, with mantelpiece and chimney ornaments en suite, a Chippendale vitrine of box-wood for displaying objects of vcrtti, and a cabinet and honhcur dujour, inlaid with ivory and various coloured woods, but chiefly remark- able for their panels of rare old Japanese niello and lacquer work. Graceful and elegant as the decorative furniture in the French section unquestionably is, it excels neither as regards perfection of taste, nor delicacy and skilfulness of workmanship, the half- dozen notable objects Avhich form the strength of Messrs. Jackson & Graham's artistic display. The unique Grand Prix, given in the French as in the English furniture department, has not fallen to the lot of M. Penon, the exhibitor of the sumptuously appointed cliamhre d coucher cVune grancle dame, upon which I remarked rather fully in one of my early letters, but to the famous house of Fourdinois, whose more chaste and more severely artistic exhibition has very properly secured the exceptional award. Amongst the principal features of their exhibit are two pairs of elaborately carved doors, one of them of various dark woods, de- signed for a library, being in the Greek style, with medallions of Apollo and Minerva in the centre panels, and a graceful reclining figure personifying Study in the pediment. The other doors, also of the classic type, are far richer as regards colour as well as more monumental in character, being intended indeed for the entrance to a gallery. They are of polished w^alnut, with the heavy framework of the doorway in richly-carved oak, relieved with mouldings of antique red marble, and are decorated with marquetcrie, bronze panels containing groups symbolical of the Arts and enamel medallions on a large scale, superbly executed by M. Hippolyte Piousscllc. M. Fourdinois likewise exhibits a Eenaissance table in pale oak, supported by gracefully designed caryatides ; a gilt Louis Seize console, with the legs linked together with richly- GRAND PRIZEMEN. 341 carved garlands of flowers ; a fine oak bookcase, inlaid with brass and steel and decorated with enamels ; a superb Renaissance and a Louis Seize cabmet; also some magnificent lampadaives and to)-chcn's; and a perfect Uttle gem of artistic furniture in the form of a jewel cabinet and escritoire in satinwood, lavishly JEWEL CABINET AND ESCRITOIRE, EXUIBITED BY M. FOURDINOIS. enriched with carved and inlaid silver-work and delicate enamel miniatures, and with detached columns of bronze and lapis lazuli, supporting daintily-carved ivory statuettes. On several occasions I have cursorily alluded to the excellence of the display made by Messrs. Doulton of the Lambeth Potteries; but hitherto I have lacked the time to examine their exhibits in detail. I find, now, the most conspicuous objects among them are, first the coloured stone ware, generically known as ' Doulton ware,' in which warmth of hue and brilliance of glaze give life and harmony to a normally sombre material. Panels and plaques of terra- cotta, with borders of ' Doulton ware,' intended for the decoration of walls, also columns of the same ware, together with balusters 342 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. for staircases and balconies, likewise attract attention. It is worti while reminding foreign amateurs of pottery that Messrs. Doulton's house, although established at the beginning of the present centur}^ confined themselves, until about twenty years ago, mainly to the production of earthenware of a strictl}'- utilitarian character — pipes and pots for domestic and manufacturing purjjoses. By degrees the fabrication of articles in fine clay was added ; and eventu- ally the energies of the firm were devoted to terra-cotta, and to the making of tlie characteristic metallic blue ware. The skilfuUest of modellers and draughtsmen from the neighbouring Lambeth School of Art — it is onl}^ necessary in this connec- tion to mention the name of Mr, Tinworth — were secured to design and ornament the new w^are ; and, as time progressed, many original processes, both in colouring, glaz- ing, firing, and general manipulation,' enhanced the beauty and singu- larity of the articles. Jewelling, ' ajiplique,' ' cloisonne,' 'champ-leve,' ' enamelling,' ' incision,' were all pressed into the service of decorating earthenware; the choicest classical and mediaeval forms were chosen, the richest decorations of the early and later Re- naissance were adopted : the triumphant result being a w^are thoroughly sui generis, combining the veiy finest qualities of the old Italian facnza and the Teutonic gres Flamand, while preserving a distinctly original British character. The ornamentation of 'Doulton ware' — accomi^lished substantially by hand — takes place immediately after the object leaves the potter's GRAND PRIZEMEN". 343 wheel, and is effected by incrusting the surface with a raised decora- tive pattern ; or else by indenting the required design, or by engrav- ing the surface with incised lines in the ' sgraffito ' manner ; and further, by painting the patterns thus produced in various colours. When the ornamentation is completed, the object is exposed to the fierce white heat of a furnace for several days ; and salt being thrown EXAMPLES OF DOULTON WARE AND LAMBETH FAIKNCE. in, the delicate transparent glazing, for which the ware is noted, results. Ewers and tazze, vases imAiilateavx of ' Doulton ware' are now eagerly prized by French amateurs of ceramics, and are rapidly superseding the modern reproductions of Palissy ware, of which, a few 5'ears ago, the French were so immoderately fond. Almost an equally interesting feature of Messrs. Doultoii's exhibit is the many beautiful examples of their so-called Lambeth faience, a species of revived majolica, among which are some gi-andp/a^ucs, painted with birds, flowers, and landscapes — one of these being no less than five feet in diameter. The i-ecompenses awarded to Messrs. Doulton comprise the Grand Prix for architectural terra- 344 PARIS IIEESELF AGAIN. cottaand for ' Doulton wave '• — that is, the brown and blue-beaded or jewelled i)otter3' ; a gold medal for the Lambeth faience and ^rc'S i* lamaiid ware ; another gold medal for simple stone ware emplo3'ed in chemical manufactories ; and four additional medals for plumbago fire-clay ware and domestic stone ware. Two of these last- named rewards are of silver, one of them going to that talented artist, Mr. George Tinworth, the gifted art-adviser of the Lambeth firm. From ornamental glass, artistic furniture, and ceramic masterpieces to such ostensibly humble things as biscuits may appear to be a \ery un- dignified descent ; but International Exhibition juries are very catholic bodies indeed, and, while distributing Grands Prix and Gold Medals among the Webbs, the Tiffanys, the Elkingtons, the Doul- tons, and the Jackson & Grahams, they hold by the doctrine that those who minister to the comforts as well as those whose products conduce to the elegance of domestic life are en- titled to a fair share in the sj^lendid distinctions which it is in their power to confer. The only Grand l^rix in the Alimentary Department which goes to England has been awarded to Messrs. Huntley & Palmers, biscuit manufacturers, whose indefatigable Continental agent, Mr. Joseph Leete, has spared no pains to make the display of the renowned Pteading firm attractive and complete. Although Huntley & Palmers' manufactory in its origin, some fifV years ago, was of a very modest character, to-day it is a town in itself, like Saltaire in Yorkshire, and Le Creusot in France, and employs about 3000 hands. Every year GRAND rrJZEMEN. 345 the * great biscuit town' on the Kennet sends forth many thousands of tons of biscuits of every form and liavour, and cakes of all descriptions. I lack tlie space to enumerate even a tithe of the astonishingl}^ varied assortment of biscuits exhibited by Huntley & Palmers in their handsome kiosque in the Champ de Mars, and shrink from the peril of losing myself in the wilderness of 'Abernethys,' 'Alberts,' 'Argyles,' ''Bijous,' 'Brightons,' 'Button Nuts,' ' Citrons,' ' Combinations,' ' Cracknels,' ' Diets,' ' Diges- tives,' 'Dovers,' 'Excursions,' ' Festals,' ' Fijls,' 'Gems,' 'Ice Creams and Wafers,' ' Joujous,' 'Knobbles,' 'Lemons,' ' Lornes,' 'Macaroons,' 'Maries,' 'Mediums,' ' Meat Wafers,' 'Orientals,' 'Osbornes,' 'Pearls,' 'Picnics,' 'Princes,' 'Queens,' 'Ptaspberries,' 'Savoys,' 'Sponge Eusks,' 'Stars,' 'Sodas,' 'Travellers,' 'Unions,' ' Vanillas,' ' Walnuts,' ' Wafers,' and ' Yachts; ' but specimens of all these, and a few score more, in tins, square and round, long and short, thick and thin, or arranged in fanciful patterns, present a most appetising appearance in the Beading kiosque, around which a biscuit scramble goes on every afternoon, when, thanks to the gallantry of the young gentleman in charge of these attractive deli- cacies, the youngest and the prettiest of the fair sex invariabl}'' emerge victorious. I am not incHned to think that the jur}^, in awarding the Grand Prix to this remarkable alimentar}^ displa}-, were over-influenced by the appearance under a glass case of a colossal and superb bride-cake. The symmetrical form and the sumptuous decoration of the gateau de noccs ma}' have made a due impression on them ; but the more unprejudiced and experienced among the real experts must have been led to acknowledge the superlative excellence of Huntley & Palmers' biscuits from con- siderations based on the simple fact that the French, eminent and even illustrious as they are as pastrycooks and confectioners, are incompetent to make biscuits that will keep. French bis- cuits are sweet, show}^ and succulent; but, after a day or two, ecu est fini avec eux. They lose their gloss, their flavour, and their crispness, and become limp, sour, dry, and tasteless. The English biscuit, scrupulously prepared and as scrupulously packed, will defy time and climate. That is why scarcely- a ship sails from England without a consignment of Reading biscuits in its hold ; and this is why you will find Huntley & Palmers' biscuits, just as you will find Elkington's spoons and forks, and Allsopp's pale ale — the great firm of Burton-on- Trent are not exhibitors, but their beer is to be found at an}^ buftet in the parks of the Troca- dero and the Champ de Mars — the whole world over, not only in the great centres of civilisation, but in the remotest and most 346 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. barbarous regions. Biscuits and chocolate are about the most portable articles of sustenance that a traveller in strange lands can carry with him ; and man}' a wanderer in distant climes may have been able to stave off starvation by means of a tin of Huntley & Palmers' ' Sponge Pvusks,' ' Diets,' ' Abernethys,' or ' Yachts.' The French have come frankly to acknowledge our preeminence as biscuit manufacturers. It is the machinery, some say, that enables Ics Anglais to excel in this particular branch of production. It is the purity of the flour, the delicacy of the manipulation, the richness of the sugar. It is U Libre Echange, for no doubt Free- trade has really had something to do with the prodigious develop- ment of our biscuit trade. ' No gold medal, me ? ' ■ No ; copper-coloured exliibitors only get copper medals.' XXYII. GOLD MEDALLISTS. Oct. 30. * Ah, je n'ai pas de medaille ! ' yells an exasjierated French exhi- bitor, in Cham's latest cartoon in the Charivari. The exasperated exhibitor is a pianoforte manufacturer ; and, on the principle of a man being privileged to do what he likes with his own, he is executing a concerto of the most violent description on the instru- ment on which a grudging international jury have declined to confer a recompense. ' No medal, eh ? ' screams the exhibitor. Whack ! go three octaves at one blov/ of his infuriate fist. ' Pas de medaille ! ' Bang ! The heel of the exhibitor's boot has de- stroyed another half-score of flats and sharps. The pedals have ah'eady come to grief. May not a man do what he likes with his own ? The famous Bulwerian query, ' "What will he do with it ? * applies, however, to a vast number of articles in the Exhibition in addition to objects which have failed to gain a prize. I notice among the gifts made by spirited exposants to swell the list of 348 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. prizes in the Exhibition lottery an enormous glass jar full of calcined magnesia. AVliat on earth will the fortunate winner of that particular prize in the gigantic raffle do with his treasure ? You may have too much of a good thing — even of calcined mag- nesia. Then there is the very phenomenal bouquet in the French section. This wondrous monster posy purports to be composed of flowers and foliage in an infinite variety of form and colour ; but it is in reality made entirely from feathers. Those who have seen the astonishingly beautiful feather tapestry of the jMexicans, in which perfect pictures are made from the plumes of humming- birds, may not think the French Exhibition bouquet such a phe- nomenal production after all ; and mj own memory recalls two more bouquets which, to my mind, are far more curious and inter- esting than the one at which the flaneurs in the Champ de Mars will be privileged for a few more days to gape. There is, in Messrs. Elkington's show-rooms in Newhall Street, Birmingham, a bouquet presented by Miss Elkington to the Princess of Wales, on the occasion of her Koyal Higlmess's visit to the Midland metro- polis — a bouquet of real flowers, the leaves and petals of which have been indued by means of four distinct processes of electro- metallurgy with a coating of as many different metals — gold, silver, copper, and iron. I am not quite sure that there is not a fifth metal in the shape of aluminium. A smaller but even more inter- esting bunch of flowers is preserved under a glass case in the drawing-room of a very great lady indeed in London. It is more than a quarter of a century old, and is entirely gilt. It is worth a double and a triple coating of gold, for it was presented to the great lady by Arthur "Welle sley, Duke of Wellington and Prmce of Waterloo. To return, however, to the medal question, Avhich is disturbing the mental equilibrium not merely of Cham's typical manufacturer of musical instruments, but of thousands of his fellow-exhibitors in all the various classes of the great international congress of art and industry. Fortunately, however, my business is not with the discontented ones who have failed to gain gold medals, but with their jubilant successful competitors, the merits of whose dis- plays have been conspicuously recognised by the awards of the international jury. In alluding, as I am about to do, to the more interesting of these exhibits in the British section on which the distinction of a Gold Medal has been conferred, it would be unpardonable on my part if I failed to render full justice to the brilliant and tasteful display made by Messrs. Osier & Co. of Birmingham and London, who have gained the GOLD MEDALLISTS. 349 Gold Medal for glass, seeing that the name of Osier is inseparahly connected with the history of International Exhibitions. Osier's great Crystal Fountain stood in the centre of the transept of the Palace of Glass in Hyde Park in 1851 ; and the house has ever since maintained its fame as manufacturers, not only of every variety of table and ornamental glass, but of works of a monu- mental character — what the French call grosses ineces. There may be those among my readers who can remember '51 in Hyde Park. Osier's fountain was a favourite tiysting-place then, just as Gustave Dore's vase is in the Paris Exhibition now. ' Meet me at the Crystal Fountain at a quarter to four,' you used to say to the adored one of your heart. She smiled and blushed consent ; and she was true to her rendezvous, judiciously bringing her youngest sister, aged nine, with her. It was the adored one of your heart who broke it by marrying Captain Prosser, late of the Bombay Fencibles. You met her the other day looking at Barbedienne's bronzes in the Exhibition. She is the mother of eight, and a grandmother — ha, ha ! — a grandmother ! She remarked that you had grown stout. You managed to get that heart which she broke mended ; but now and again you feel the brass rivets which keep the cracked organ together pressing against your ribs. Stout, indeed ! You watclied her breakfasting at the Restaurant Cate- lain, and she ate ' biftek aux pommes ' enough for two — she who could with difficulty be persuaded in '51 to partake of so much as a Bath bun at Farrance's. The Due de St. Simon was wont to ascribe the wars in which the latter years of the reign of Louis XIV. were passed to the jealousy excited among the sovereigns of Europe by the then unsurpassed Galerie des Glaces at Versailles ; but it is to be hoped that no Power, civilised, semi- civilised, or barbarous, will be impelled to defy us to mortal combat because Messrs. Osier, after having challenged all possible rivalry with the Crystal Foun- tain in 1851, have maintained equal supremacy in every succeeding Exhibition, and in 1878 come forward with a colossal sideboard, a splendid crystal throne, and some of the largest and most superb crystal chandeliers ever produced. The sideboard is of Gothic design ; and, with the exceptions of the mouldings of the arches, which are of gold, and the top of the buffet and the base, which are of ebony, is wholly composed of glass — glass in sheets, glass in blocks, in panels, in pilasters, in brackets — huge wedges and quoins and crockets and finials of crystal, thicker than the inex- perienced observer could imagine to have ever been cast and hewn and cut and polished from so ostensibly fragile a material, but 350 TAEIS IIEJISELF AGAKT. •which look, nevertheless, as hard as adamant, and which have the sheen and the prismatic hues of diamonds of the purest water. The cushion of the throne — fittest, perhaps, to serve as the judg- ment-seat of some Eastern potentate — is of crimson velvet. The arms, legs, and back are all of pure and radiant crystal. I defer- entially venture to express the oi^inion that if this crystal throne could be acquired by the Indian Government, and if Lord Lytton were only to send a photograph of this dazzling piece of furniture to Shere Ali, -with an intimation that it should be his if he would only promise to be a good Ameer, and have nothing more to do with those wicked Russians, the morose ruler of Afghanistan would straightway promise to abandon all his intrigues, to forswear his Muscovite alliances, and to welcome a British embassy with a powerful escort three times a week. Deem not the remedy which I have suggested a ridiculous one. A dinner at Very's in the Palais Pioj'al, in July 1815, timeously organised by the Duke of "Welling- ton, was sufficient to dissuade Blucher from blov/ing up the Bridge of Jena. * I must and will blow it up,' grumbled old ' Marshal Vorwarts' over his bisque soup. But when he got to his ;parfait an cafe and his thii'd bottle of Moet and Chandon, and was preparing to light his meerschaum, he seized the Didce's hand, and cried, * Never was there such a dinner ; I will not blow uio the Bridge of Jcna.^ While the exhibit of Messrs. Osier is distinguished for the vast size and rare quahty of the magisterial lustres, equal excellence is shown in a varied assortment of smaller chandeliers and girandoles of artistic metal work in combination with crystal glass. These last- named articles are especially worth attention. We have already done some surprisingly good things in brazen and bronze-gilt chandeliers : the only drawback to which, as articles of decoration, is that they are somewhat heavy in appearance, and have too much of a strictly ecclesiastical, or at least medieval, look ; but in the new combi- nation introduced by Messrs. Osier the impressive grandeur of artistically-worked brass or gilt bronze is combined with the ele- gance and the lightness of the crystal surroundings. Early English stiU holds its place in the public favour" at home as a style of decoration eminentl}^ suitable to our wants and wishes; and Messrs. Osier have produced an article, the design of which must fully satisfy the aesthetic tastes of the admirers of Pugin, of Gilbert Scott, and of Street ; while at the same time it ministers equally to the enjoyment of those who love the elegant richness of the Italian, and especially of the Venetian, Eenaissancc. Ample illus- trations are also given in the Osier display of table-lamps and GOLD MEDALLISTS. 851 candelabra and flower- vases of great variety and elegance of design; and it is well for the credit of our glass manufacturers that such an historic firm as Messrs. Osier's should have shown their thorough capacity to produce not only the monumental articles — ■ the f/rosses inl'ccs, the contemplation of Vv'hich astonishes and delights the spectator, hut which only Emperors and Kings, or Sultans and Rajahs, could purchase — but likewise smaller and more portable objects in glass, exquisitely pure in material, perfect in artistic design, graceful alike in form and ornamentation, and pecuniaril}'^ within the means of those who wish to decorate their houses handsomely, but without ruining themselves. I am told that Avlien the late Ibrahim Pasha (whom Wright, the low comedian, always persisted in calhng 'Abraham Parker'), visited Birmingham in 1845, he went over Messrs. Osier's works, and expressed a strong desire to purchase a colossal candelabrum. Next day a full-sized drawing of the obj ect required, upwards of twelve feet high, was submitted to his Egyptian Highness. On the follow- ing day an order was given for a pair of candelabra, each sustaining a cluster of lights; and Messrs. Osier were left to devise the means for carrying out an order involving the production of masses of glass far exceeding in size anything before manufactured. The great work, however, was finished ; and when it was completed, tliey "were seen by Prince Albert, by the Duke of Wellington, and by Sir Robert Peel. The Prince Consort, indeed, was so pleased that he ordered a pair of candelabra of somewhat smaller size as a birthday present for her Majesty the Queen. These are now at Balmoral. On the arrival of Ibrahim Pasha's candelabra in Egypt, the magnificence of the pieces created so great an impression that commissions were sent to Messrs. Osier for a second and a third pair ; one pair being destined for the tomb of the Prophet at Medina. In the palaces of the Sultan at Constantinople there are also many superb specimens of Osier's main-iVceavvc. When her Majesty Queen Victoria visited Birmingliam in 185S to open Aston Hall, a magnificent specimen of Tudor architecture, Messrs. Osier produced a service of glass in the Tudor style for the royal luncheon; and her Majesty was so struck with the artistic beauty of the service that she then and there expressed a wish to carry away the glass from which she had been drinking. Her Majesty subsequently ordered more than one set as presents to the royal children on their marriage ; viz. one for the Crown Princess of Prussia (Princess Royal of England), and another for the lamented Princess Alice of Hesse Darmstadt. There are chander liers and lustres of Messrs. Osier's handiwork in the ballroom and 852 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. supper-room at Buckingliam Palace, in tlie Waterloo Gallery at AVindsor Castle, in the lieception-room and the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House, and in the Council Chamber and the new Library at Guildhall ; besides services of table-glass for the Queen's table at Buckingham Palace, and at other royal resi- dences. I have already mentioned that the Poyal Worcester Porcelain Works have received the Gold Medal for their highly-interesting ceramic display. It could scarcely have been otherwise, since the mere enamels exhibited merit this distinction independently of the jewelled porcelain on which the establishment prides itself, the delicatel}'-ornamented ivory ware, the graceful adaptations from tlie Japanese, the attractive table ser- vices in the old Worcester style, and the collection of vases, Venetian bottles, plaques, and plateau in a new highly- vitrified faience, wherein combinations of blue, white, and gold, are intro- duced with a superb effect. Varied PERFORATED AND GILT VASE AND COVER IN IVORY PORCELAIN. PERFORATED AND GILT VASE IN TUH JAPANESE STYLE, as the collection altogether is, many of the more recent produc- tions indicate in a decided manner the art-mfluencc of Japan ; still it is not so much the spirit of slayish imitation that is apparent as the judicious adaptation of the more graceful forms and higher GOLD MEDALLISTS. 353 JARDIXIERE ^^^TH perforated panels in the JAPANESE STYLE. PILGRXII-BOTTLE-SHAPED VASE IN BLUE AND GOLD. JAPANESE VASE IN BLUE AND WHITE. A A. 354 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ^' LARGE EENAISSANC'E VASE — SUBJECT, THE POTTER. styles of ornamentation in vogue among the esthetic and skilful Orientals, from whom Europe and America are alike deriving lessons in decorative art. Mr. E. W. Binns, the director of the Worcester Porcelain Works, wisely indifferent to all crazes and fevers of fashion, has discriminatingly applied the truths ■which the Jaj)anese models teach, with a result that is much to be com- mended. Among the examples exhibited there are services as GOLD MEDALLISTS. 355 well as isolated pieces in which flowers and birds, treated after the Japanese fashion, are intermingled with butterflies and similar objects in gold and bronze relief, securing by this means a rich and solid effect very far sui)erior to that of ordinary gilding. The perforated flower-vases and jardinieres, decorated with gold and bronze of difterent shades, while retaining some of their Oriental quaintness, are certainly not devoid of grace ; and the same may be said of the blue pilgrim-shaped vase with its Japanese figures and gold and bronze ornamentation, and of the flower-vases of novel form painted in brilliant blue and white. One Worcester novelty is the imitation of the Namako glazed ware, which lends itself effectively to decorative purposes from the richness of the tones of its judiciously-blended colours. Unquestionably the most important objects displayed by the famous "Worcester establishment are the pair of large vases in the Ivenaissance style, ornamented with delicately-modelled bas-reliefs in richly-framed compartments on their sides. The subjects on the one vase comprise the mediaeval potter working at his wheel and the modeller ap^^lying the finishing touches to the statuette of some saint, while represented on the other are the painter engaged on the decoration of a vase and the furnace-man intent upon his anxious task. Admirably moulded heads of celebrated artists of the period of the Renaissance, who lent the aid of their great talents towards the production of the ceramic masterpieces of the epoch, form the handles of this fine pair of vases, which certainly sustain the ancient reputation of the Eoyal Worcester Works. A proof of how the prosperity of one branch of manufacture conduces to the advantage of another which is altogether dissimilar is to be found in the way in which the existing craze for the posses- sion and display of ceramic rarities has influenced the production of high-class decorative furniture. People do not pay fabulous sums for rare Sevres and Dresden, ancient majolica and old Chelsea, blue Nankin and veritable Palissy ware, or compete for the chefs-cVocuvrc of our modern potters, in order to hide them away in cupboards and closets; and they are, I trust, beginning to realise the inartistic stupidity of suspending against tlieir walls articles never intended to be displayed in this fashion. Hence the impulse given to that manufacture of cabinets and buffets expressly intended for the exposition of these and similar art-treasures. It is requisite that the shrine should be worthy of the saint, and the cabinet or buffet is therefore planned to rival in symmetry of form and appropriate- ness of decoration the ceramic gems which it is designed to display. On the other hand, the beauties of a masterpiece of this kind can A A 2 35G TAFxIS HERSELF AGAIX. oul,y be properl}' appreciated when it is duly bedecked and garnished. No class indulges more lavishly in objects of this description than the wealthy manufacturers of the North of England, who evidently need not go far to gratify any taste they may have for decorative furniture of the highest class, since the ateliers of Manchester can supply all that they desire. The buffet and the cabinet shown by Mr. James Lamb of John Dalton Street, Manchester, and which have secured for their exhrbitor the award of a Gold Medal, will bear the keenest inspection as to workman- ship and the sharpest criticism as to design. The plan of the butfet has evidently been inspu'ed by a reminiscence of the Middle Ages, when this article consisted mainly of sundry shelves for the reception of the household tankards and platters ; when people dis- played in their dining-halls all the treasures that were not stowed away under lock and ke}^ in huge iron-banded oaken chests with elaborately shaped hinges; and when an accurate idea of the status and wealth of Sir Thomas of Erpingham, or Baron Walter of the Grange, could be gathered from a glance at his sideboard. Status as well as wealth, because the number of superposed shelves was fixed in strict accordance with the rank of their owner, though it is probable that such regulations shared the general fate of all sump- tuary laws, Avhicli, being continually renewed, always began with a ' whereas,' to the effect that the enactment last passed on the same subject had been disregarded b}" his Majesty's lieges. Dame Alicia Fitzwalter, in the fifteenth century, thought no more, it may be, of trimming her kirtle with a prohibited fur, or wearing souUers a la poidaine a span beyond the prescribed length, than did Lady Betty Featherhead in the eighteenth of decking herself with smuggled Mechlin cap and pinners, or sipping out of eggshell china tea that had never paid the State a farthing of duty. While retaining a decided reminiscence of the old English style, the buffet is boldly and avowedly intended to be Victorian, being neither precisely mediaeval nor like any modern version of medievalism, but claiming to be distinctly individual. Embodying firmness and solidit}' without heaviness, its most distinguishing feature is the luxuriance of its mouldings, carved as these are with a variety of patterns, imparting an air of great rich- ness, Avithout impairing the effect of the straight lines and general square style of treatment. The material is old brown English oak from Sherwood Forest, relieved with mouldings and bands of ebony, and panels of carved walnut. The oak — which was growing when * Shawes were sheene and leaves GOLD MEDALLISTS. 357 were large and longe,' and Eobin Hood found ' Itt menye v,alkyng in the fayre forrest To lieare the small birde's song ' — has acquired, with time, a very full-striped brown tint — the ' leopard-skin figure ' so highly prized by connoisseurs— the rich mellow effect of which is enhanced by a background of green velvet, warm enough in tone to help the colour of the wood. The lower portion of the buffet is fitted with the usual quota of drawers, cupboards, cellarettes, &c., all duly framed, panelled, moulded, and carved secundum artem ; whilst above are shelves, spaces, and divisions for the reception and display of various decorative objects — Cellini salvers, mediaeval hanaps, Bohemian beakers, Venetian goblets, Queen Anne flagons, peg-tankards, gold and silver plate, Palissy dishes, Dresden "statuettes. Oriental vases, Satsuma jars, china punchbowls, pilgrim-bottles, Gres de Flandres, old Nankin, Crown Worcester, or whatever else the owner may be the fortunate possessor of. There are, moreover, some ingeniously contrived niches with glass doors, for the preservation of objects of special value or exceptional fragility, from the onslaughts of the feather-broom or the perils of the duster; and in the centre of the buffet is a mirror, with a gilt frame and inlaid border of ebony and boxwood, f.anked on either side by walnut panels skilfully carved with well- rimo tenore may be favoured with the gift of a diamond snuff-box. It is not, however, necessary that the artistes should reverently l)reserve the necklaces and snuff-boxes as souvenirs of the Imperial appreciation of their talents. They are at liberty to take the glittering trinkets to the Treasury at the Hermitage, where they will receive rouble-notes to the estimated value of their presents, with ' five-and-twenty per cent, off.' A similar system, equall}^ graceful and business-like as it is, will be pursued in the forth- coming Exhibition Lottery. Those who, failing to win diamond necklaces, ruby and emerald bracelets, or pearl aigrettes, are yet fortunate enough to be the holders of tickets entitling them to 370 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Barbedienne or Susse bronzes, Cliristofle enamels, Sevres vases, or Gobelins tapestrv, will at once be able to get the worth, or nearly the worth, of their prizes in money ; and in particular the winners of oil paintings, water-colour drawings, and terra-cottas will have little difficulty, I should say, in disposing of the gifts which Fortune may send them ; but very different will be the case, I fear, with those who win some of the extraordinarily heterogeneous objects which have either been purchased by the Commissioners for the Lottery, or have been presented thereto by manufacturers and tradesmen anxious to manifest their munificence and to adver- tise their wares at one and the same time. A LUCKY PRIZE-WINNER (bY CHAm). ' Sir, yoii have gained a prize entitling yoii to liave twelve teeth dra-\vn without any charge.' There will be a surprising number of white elephants won in this raffle, each suggesting the momentous question, * What will they do with it ? ' For example, from Mr. Wills's conservatory the Commissioners have purchased, in addition to a number of tropical l^lants, four palm-trees. If ]Mr. Jamrach or INIr, Frank Bucldand won an elephant in a lottery, either of these gentlemen would at once know what to do with the quadruped ; and only fsmcy Mr. Buckland's delight if he won a live gorilla, or a crocodile from Cayenne, warranted to have eaten four deported Communards ; but THE EXIIIBITIOX LOTTERY. 371 wlio, ' barring ' Sir AVilliani Hooker, would know what to do with a quartette of pahn-trees ? They are not even date-bearing pahns, else the Avinner might purchase a cask of sugar, preserve the stony fruit, and setjip in business as a grocer. If he were indeed ad- dicted to horticultural pursuits, and v.ished to keep his palms, he would have to build a hothouse for their reception. Among the remaining jmzes which are to be exhibited shortly at the Palais de rindustrie there is a multitiide of pianos, organs, harmoniums, furniture, carpets, scent-fountains, sewing-machines, shawls, robes, mantles, bonnets, lace, gloves, cradles, baby-linen, wine, spirits and liqueurs, books, clocks, watches, to_vs, engravings, per- fumer}', and underclothing for ladies and gentlemen. What is a prize-winning bachelor to do Avith a baby -jumper, a child's cot, or complete layette } What would a demure spinster say when she learned thatshehad won acavahy sabre, a cocked hat richlytrimmed with gold lace — both of these articles are in the prize-list — or a complete huiiting costume, scarlet coat, top boots, buckskins, and all ? What Avill be the sensation of a gentleman residing in a garret au cinqiiicme, who hates music, and who discovers to his horror that he has won an organ ? Once more, then, the world is to be favoured with a performance of the admired comedy called Blind Chance, preceded by a brief ' lever de rideau,' mathematically demonstrating that, come what may, so many millions of ticket-holders must lose, and followed by Disappointment, a farce. Wealthy and adventurous speculators, who have bought tickets by the thousand at a time, may find them- selves left out in the cold, while the 125,000 francs' worth of plate may fall to the lot of a schoolbo}' or a concierge. Chance is blind. A gamester once at Hombourg placed a pile of gold on every num- ber save one of the thirty-six numbers on the roulette-board. Nor did he ftiil to insure in ' zero.' The wheel turned ; the ball re- volved, and the winning number was the very one which the player had left uncovered. He repeated the same operation three times, with the same result ; then he covered the fortunate number, leav- ing ' zero ' uncovered. ' Zero ' turned up ; and the gamester, b}' this time totally ruined, Avent out into the highl}' picturesc^ue park oftheKursaal and hanged himself. Chance is blind. On the evening of the 15th of August 1815, Napoleon I., on his Avay on board the Northumberland to St. Helena, sate doAvn to play * vingt- et-un ' with his suite. In the course of three hours he won stakes equiA'alent to 250,000/. sterling. Of course he did not claim his winnings ; and he might as well have played ' for love.' It haj)- pened to be his birthday, and everybody congratulated the ex- B B 2 372 TAKIS HEESELF AGAIN. A STO'JT OLD L-VDY GAIN'S A BICYCLE. Emperor on liis luck. His luck ! Poor broken, bankrupt, ban- ished man ! Fortune the Fickle has, no doubt, surprises quite as startling as an}" of the wildest of her pranks that are on record for A BLIND MAN GAINS AN OFERA-GLASS. A EALD MAN GMNS A TOR- TOISE-SHELL COMB. ' Madame, yoii have been so fortunate as to ij'ain a pair of li.slierman's boots.' THE EXIIIBITIOX LOTTERY. 373 AN OLD SOLDIER Willi WOODEX LEGS GAINS A PAIR OF CAVALRY BOOTS. A GREEK GAINS A DEFERRED ANNUITY IN TURKISH STOCK. A NEGRO GAINS A SPECIFIC PRESERVING THE WHITE OF THE COMPLEXION. •SET — A LOVER OF THE BOTTLE GAINS A CASE OF SODA- WATER, ' Why, my clear, I never knew you had a Labv ! ' ' What, didn't you hear that I gained one at t Lottery I ' the 374 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ' Law may lie a Idttery ; Init Avith an idiot oT an a;1vocatc like yuu, the liouest man hasn't the .shadow of a chance.' those of lier votaries who have specidated in the Universal Paris Exibition Lotter}', which has about as much to do with the Exhibition as the ohl Frankfort Lottery — in which the ' gros lot ' sometimes consisted of a castle and a vineyard on the Rhine, with a title of Count — had to do with the Germanic Confederation. The Act of ^^arliament by which lotteries w-ere very wisely abolished in England was framed by statesmen old enough to remember the widespread misery and demoralisation caused by lotteries in the concluding years of the last century and the first years of the present one. Lotteries were the means of sowing the seeds of fraud and corruption among all classes of the population. Hanging on to the periodical Governmental gambling schemes were a crew of knavish scoundrels called lottery insurers, who for a certain sum proposed to secure every ticket-holder against loss. These sham insurance offices were multiplied to a wonderful extent as the time for drawing the prizes approached. The in- surers had liandsome offices in the heart of the City of London, where clerks sat at the receipt of custom all daylong; while a regular house to house visitation was made in districts inhabited by the middle and working classes b}^ touts or agents of the insurers, whose mission it was to cajole foolish people to become adventurers. From the scarlet-covered memorandum-books in THE EXHIBITION LOTTERY. 375 which they entered the particulars of their swindling transactions, these touts were known as 'morocco men,' a term which has escaped the attention of the compiler of the most recent Slang Dictionary, and v.'hich, without exiilanation, might_ sorely puzzle a modern reader who came across a ' morocco man ' in a newspaper of the Georgian era. Eendered intrepid by success, the insurers started lottery- wheels on their own account; and these, which constructively were about as free from suspicion as the roulette- wheels and 'E. 0.' tables on the racecourses, were nicknamed * Little Goes,' a term which still survives in the innocent form of a college examination. Thus a gambling fever was kept up in some measure all the year round among all ranks of the com- munity, working incalculable mischief. Insurance was applied to every kind of bets. Wagers were laid and ' insured ' to the extent of 130,000Z. on the sex of the Chevalier d'Eon ; card and dice gambling at the clubs ruined hundreds of noblemen and gentle- men in the course of every year ; and ladies of the highest rank did not hesitate to hold faro banks at their own houses, until Lord Chief Justice Kenyon, in indignant despair at these enormities, declared in court that if any of the Duchesses and Countesses who kept faro banks were brought before him he would consign them to the tender mercies of the pillory and the cart's-tail.^ The age, it must be admitted, was a gambling one ; but mankind are in- veterately addicted to gaming, in some form or another ; and the ' enormities ' which so shocked Lord Kenyon might be repeated to-morrow, were the sanction of the State given to public and systematic play. In the year 1800 it was calculated that, of one hundred thou- sand families resident in the metropolis, there were on an average two servants kept in each house, and that one servant with another insured annually to the extent of twenty-five shillings in the Eng- lish, and the same sum in the Irish, lottery ; the aggregate amount thus lost by the wage-earning class alone being half a million sterhng. The amount of the ' insurances ' effected by the masters and mistresses of households was not estimated. In 1795 it Avas calculated that there were in London one thousand lottery agents and clerks, and seven thousand five hundred ' morocco men,' to say nothing of ' bludgeon men,' who were hired by the Association of lottery-ofhce-keepers meeting regularly in committee at a tavern near Oxford Market twice or thrice a week during the drawing of the lottery. The business of the bludgeon men was to hustle and analtreat people who came to see the lottery drawn, and to rob them of their tickets if they had any; and it was found that, not- 376 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. •withstanding repeated warnings, the owners of chances — the men general^, the women ahnost invariably — brought their tickets with them. To such a fearful extent had the lottery mania spread that it was proposed to insert in a Bill relative to friendly societies then before Parliament a clause to expel from any such society or benefit-club any member who could be proved to have effected an insurance in the lotter3% It may be useful to refresh the public memory on these mat- ters, obsolete as they are, since it is only a quarter of a centmy ago that London and the chief provincial towns positively swarmed with betting-offices connected with horseracing and conducted with unblushing publicity. Through the efforts of Sir Alexander Cockbm-n these public pests and nuisances were put down, but not before much mischief had been wrought to the morals of the people. It would be perfectly idle to contend that gambling on horseracing exhibits any symptoms of decline, or that gambling in the stock-market, at some of the clubs, and in biUiard-rooms is not scandalously prevalent. It is in the nature of things, and of an advanced stage of civilisation, that it should be so. The spirit of gambling is a disease, assuming a multiplicity of aspects. Abrogate it in one form, and it starts up in another. AVe cannot hope to extirpate it utterly, any more than we can hope wholly to extirpate disease from the human frame ; but we can limit the area of its ravages. Gambling on horseraces and in stocks and shares are maladies mainly confined to the ruder sex ; but a lottery mania affects everybody — man, woman, and child — alike. It is the Plague ; but it is possible, by the quarantine and the sanitar}' cordons of repressive legislation, to stamp out the lottery pestilence.*' * In the drawing of tlie Paris Exliihitioii Lotteiy, Fortune, favoured the elevontli series, allotting to it no fewer tlian 131 gros lots; while next in order came the first series, which carried off 128 prizes. The most unlucky was the. ninth, with 79 prizes only ; the seventh, with 83, being almost as had. The series nearest to the average, the only one to hear out mathematical calcula- tions, was the fifth series, with 107 prizes. In the daily cb-awings the two extremes were 44 prizes, which fell to the first series on the fourth day, and 14 to the eighth series on the second day. Holders of the ninth series thought something was wrong with the wheel — that it -was not equally weighted, which is not unlikely, as all the lucky series were together ; and it was the same Avith the unlucky ones, as if one part of the -wheel had a tendency to he lowermost. Persons in choosing their tickets avoided those containing two numerals of the same value, whereas the list of the winning numbers showed how mistaken was the idea ; for eight out of ten contained identical numerals, and in four cases out of ten the numerals Avere together, whilst one winning numher in twenty contained the three same niunerals side hy side. In one case five ciphers came out — 000090 ; and in another four, with tM-o ones — 100010. Per- THE EXIIIEITIOX LOTTERY. 377 haps the .strangest freak of Fortune happened Avith prizes 189 and 190, hoth of them hmdaus, both of the vahie of 160^., and which fell .succe.«sively to 517,805 and 597,805 of the same series, a dliference of one numeral only. All kinds of fables were current for a time respecting Auhriol, the workin,;:; currit-r, who won the gros lot. Of course he was passionately besought by all his relatives, near or distant, and by the majority of his friends and ac- qiraintances, to give or to lend them money. The journejTnan cunier was moreover affectionately requested to adopt nephews and nieces by the score, and importuned by legions of inventive geniuses of the ' jiromoter ' class to embark a portion of his capital in enterprises warranted to make him and themselves wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. The lucky currier, how- ever, showed himself to be a very sensible fellow, if there be any trutli in the statement that he had a circular printed in the following terms : ' Hh; — Were I to accede to all the demands made upon my i)urse, I should have to go liack to work on ^Monday. I salute you— Aubriol.' A long time after the drawing was over, the number of prizes that remained nnclainied amounted to many thousands. Some of the ' white elephants ' did not turn out so nnprofitalde as was anticipated. The winner of the condemned ton of carbonate of .soda, for instance, sold it for 40/., and the gentleman from Ken- tucky who won the agricultiu'al steam-engine promptly obtained 801. for it. ■//^A^"-/-- ' Monsieur, I have gained the Grand Prize in th ' Indeed ! Then I sup])Ose we must part ! ' * Just so, unless you like to enter my service.' Lotterv.' A PKOSrECTIVE HAPPY DESPATCH — EMBARRASSMENT OF A JUROE (BY CHAM). ' The Japanese wants to know if he has got a medal ! Quick ! Say " Yes," before it is too kite ! ' XXIX. MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. Nov. 4, I HAVE read a stoiy of a mysterious traveller, a Frenchman, who was continually circumnavigating the glohe in all kinds of craft, from ocean steamers to Arab dhows, from Australian clii:)pers to Chinese junks, and who was always able to produce from his own private stores the materials for a first-rate dinner, sufficient in quantity not only for himself, but for the rest of the cabin-passengers, or, in default of such companions, for the officers of the ship. Nothing delighted this strange circumnavigator so much as a long vo3\age in storn\y weather, when the ship had been driven out of her course, and when the stock of fresh provisions was thoroughly exhausted. Proportionate to the grumbling of the passengers at a daily menu of salt pork and mouldy biscuit was his elation ; and when the last fowl had been killed, and the last egg had been beaten up, in lieu of milk in the tea, he would rub his hands, and retire to the galley to confer with the cook. That same day at dinner the cabin table would groan with ' all the delicacies of the MOKE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 379 season ' — fisli, fowl, butchers' meat, and game, soups and curries, the greenest of vegetables, the sweetest of fruit-pies, and the most savoury of soups. The m3'sterious circumnavigator, who con- sistently declined to receive any remuneration for the dainties which he so boimtifull}^ dispensed, ultimatel}' undertook a voyage to the North Pole. The ship in which he sailed was not heard of for many years. At length an exploring expedition discovered the missing vessel embedded between two icebergs. All hands had perished long since from the cold. The corse of the lucldess French circumnavigator was found in liis cabin, a sheet of paper on the table before him, and a pen full of frozen ink in one stiffened hand. The paper contained the touching statement that the writer bade a calm and cheerful fiirewell to the world ; that he died happy, since he had been enabled, from fifteen 3'ears' continuous personal experience, to prove that the Preserved Provisions of Messrs. Aubergine, Potaufeu, Entrecote & Co., of the Paie du Faubourg St. Denis, Paris — of which firm he had the honour to be the trusted representative in foreign parts — could be warranted to withstand the rigour of any climate and the lapse of any reasonable amount of time. The enthusiastic circumnavigator in question might with propriety have been selected by such a firm as Messrs. Crosse & Blackwell, of Soho Square, London, to proclaim to the re- motest nations the excellence of their own products ; only it happens that the house — thanks to the exertions of the ubi- quitous Mr. Joseph Leete, of whom I have already spoken — is by this time thoroughly well known the whole world over. It is, nevertheless, extremel}' satisfactory to find that Crosse & Blackwell's merits have been duly recognised by the jury in the Alimentary Department of the Exposition Universelle, who have awarded to them no less than three distinctions : a Gold Medal for preserved meats, soups, and fish ; another Gold Medal for theii' vinegar, sauces, pickles, condiments, jellies, and marmalades; and, finally, a bronze medal for preserved fruits. The last conces- sion, even, is a remarkable one, as the French conjiseurs, or ' cara- melistes,' as they used to term themselves, have been accustomed from time immemorial to declare that no nation but the French could preserve ' fruits au jus ' at all. Tours and Nancy in the East and West, and x\.vignon and Montelimar in the South, are the head-quarters of fruit-preserving in France ; but it is something to find even a bronze medal conferred on the English confections. The equity and right feeling of the international jury are visible in the award of a Gold Medal to Messrs. J. S. Fry & 380 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Sons, of Bristol and London, for their cliocolate and cocoas, the jury hasing their award on the perfection of manufacture shown in the products, the skilful selection of the raw material, and the use of highly-improved machinery. That such a recompense should be given to an English firm in France, the countr}^ j;ar excellence of chocolate manufacturers, is pleasantly significant. The house of Fiy & Sons took medals at the Paris Exhibitions of 1855 and 1867; and the fresh and splendid distinction of a Gold Medal now- given proves that the French have had at once the generosit}^ and the common sense to acknowledge the good qualities of the British manufacture, alike of ' Chocolat de sante,' ' Chocolat a la vanille,' and ' Caracas cocoa.' ' Homoeopathic cocoa,' 'Cocoa extract,' and ' jNIilk cocoa ' are forms of the preparation of the cocoa with which our neighbours have onl}'- very recentl}^ become familiarised ; but the wares of Messrs. Fry & Sons will certamly gain increased acceptance among a people who are not only pro- digious chocolate-eaters, but are also very partial to chocolate as a beverage. Cofii"ee, lamentably adulterated during these latter days with chicory, is the staple beverage at every French cafe, and in the majority of French families. The Spaniards, on the other hand, are inveterate swallowers of cliocolate in the liquid, but rarely consume it in the concrete form. I wish that Messrs. Fry's excellent ' Cocoa extract,' which possesses the full flavour and pure aroma of the choicest cocoa with merely the suj^erfluous oil extracted, could find its way in more extensive quantities to the Iberian peninsula. Spanish chocolate is very delicious, when you can get nothing else for breakfast ; but it is decidedly bilious, and the glass of water swallowed after it tends rather to aggravate than to diminish the bilious symptoms. Yet the consumption of the article throughout the dominions of Don Alphonso is simjily enormous. I have seen in the great potter}- works of the Marquis de Pickman — an Englishman long domiciled in Spain, and ennobled by the ex-King Amadeo — at the Cartuja, near Seville, rooms stacked to a height of thirty feet with little white pots for holding the chocolate so dear to the popular palate. These pots are made at the Catuja literally by the million ; but, notwithstanding the universal consumption of chocolate, the article is not good in qTiality. It is unskilfully manufactured, the sugar combined Avith it is ill-refined, and the incorporation of the sugar with the chocolate is imperfect. A course of Fry's ' Cocoa extract,' ' Homoeopathic cocoa,' or ' Chocolat de sante,' would, I am convinced, do the Spaniards a great deal of good, not onl}' from a sanitary, but from a political, point of view. Their too MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 381 oleaginous chocolate is decidedl}^ unwholesome, and biliousness encourages, not only liver-complaints, but ])rominciamie)itos. I see that the firm of Ervan, Lucas Bols, the great Batavian strong liquor-makers, who exliibit a pile of drinkables formidable enough to set the whole United Kingdom Alliance shuddering, and to bring melancholy to the mind of Mr. John B. Gough, have actually had a couple of Gold Medals awarded to them, one for liqueurs and one for sjyiriteiix. The firm have a branch establish- ment in the French capital, where it is understood that they do a considerable trade. A tremendous quantit}'- of liqueurs, to say nothing of absinthe and vermouth, is, to all appearance, consumed by the eminently temperate French people. They must take them, l' should say, medicinally, as cordials for that complaint which Albert Smith's old-lady patient used to call ' spiders at the heart,' and for which Albert's invariable and gratefully received pre- scription was gin coloured pink, with cardamons. If the merits of the Batavian strong drinks have been amply recognised, 'justice to Ireland' has certainly been meted out by those members of the international jury who were charged with adjudicating upon British spirits, for no less than three Gold Medals have been awarded to exliibitors of Irish whiskey, including Kinahan & Co. of Dublin, Dunville & Co. of Belfast, and the Cork Distilleries C ompany. Ireland may be proud of this recogni- tion of one of its staple products; for foreigners are commonly so prejudiced in favour of the spirits they produce themselves, as to be utterly oblivious to the merits of rival alcohols. The experts, I hear, were unanimous, however, in theii' commendations of the purity of the Irish whiskeys, and the triple award was the result. Among the Parisians the historic ' L.L.' or Lord-Lieutenant whiskey of the famous house of Kinahan & Co. has, of recent years, been gradually coming into favour. Hot whiskey- and-water has to a great extent superseded rum-and- water, which the frequenters of the Parisian cafes, so soon as ever the chilliness of October had set in, began to drink with serious assiduity, from eleven in the morning until midnight, without apparently doing themselves the slightest harm. It is true that they put about a teaspoonful and a half of spirits to half a dozen lumps of sugar, a large slice of lemon, and half a pint of hot water; still, I do wish that, _ when they imbibe Kinahan's ' L.L.' hot, they would not call the mixture a ' Grog Americahi.' Surely it should be a * Grog Irlandais.' Our Celtic compatriots evidently have a grievance here. Apropos of the alcoholic question, I am told that when the international jury came to taste the spii-its distilled from rice, and 382 TAKIS HERSELF AGAIX. wlioll}^ imrectified, in the Chinese section of the Exhibition, the flavour of the Celestial ' schnick ' was found by the experts to be so atrocious that, after making various wry faces and under- going fearful qualms, they were about to pass Chinese spirits b}- altogether, when the ' happy thought ' occurred to some congener of Mr. Burnand among the jurors to arrive at an idea of the relative qualities of the Chinese exhibits by corporal experiments on the Chinese cnqAoijes in the section. The pig-tailed connoisseurs in samshu delivered their opinion by pantomimic gestures, and the international experts framed their verdict accordingly. Thus, when MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 383 a sample of spirits was submitted to a Celestial, and lie made, while imbibing it, a hideous grimace, the sample was classed as 'zero.' If, on the other hand, the Chinaman's countenance assumed a dubious expression, the spirit was allowed the benefit of the doubt, and was voted worthy of ' Honourable Mention,' which, I m^ay parenthetically remark, a disappointed French exhibitor lately defined to me as a distinction just a little worse than having ^-^^':^''-i * Be off with you ; don't stand in front of my shop.' ' Yah ! go and hide your head in a bag, old bronze medal.' your ears boxed, and just a little better than being kicked down- stairs. When, however, the eyes of the heathen Chinee glistened, and he licked his lips, the samshu was at once set down for a Bronze Medal; and finally, if he broke out in exclamations of delight, and passed his hand approvingly over the region of the stomach, a Silver Medal was accorded to the fortunate liqueur. Prominent among the prize-winners in the alimentary depart- ment of the British section, the importance of which it would be mischievous to midervalue, are the firm of Messrs. J. & J. Colman, to whom two Gold INIedals have been awarded, one for mustard and another for starch. In the course of my tours through the restaurants of Paris I have more than once had occasion to com- plain of the shortcomings of the French-made mustard, nor are 384 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. the French themselves backward in confessing that the native condiment leaves much to be desired. Thej' strive to conceal its deficiencies by adding to it aromatic substances, or the flavour of olives, ancho^des, and shalot, and in some cases the mustard-seed is x^i'eliminarilj^ steeped in the lees of wine. The chief fault of French mustard is that it is deficient in pungency, falling very far short of Colman's excellent preparation in this respect ; and as the French are growing day by day to be more and more a nation of beef-eaters, lack of strength in their mustard is a draAvback which they can no longer overlook. It is not surprising there- fore to find that of late yeavs. Colman's mustard has been steadily increasing in popidarity in France.* I read the other day an amusing advertisement of a new mustard, with some fantastic name, which was guaranteed ' d'attaquer les narines les plus recalcitrantes ' — to titillate the most obstinate nostrils ; but I have sniffed energetically at that mustard, and it has not made me sneeze. The utility of a reall}^ pure and powerful mustard, again, is not wholly culinarj^ The condiment lias very powerful medi- cinal vii'tues ; and if you are afflicted with rheumatism, with a cold at the chest, or with bronchitis, and stand in need of a mustard- l^laster, you certainly do not want the mustard to be flavoured with anchovy or tarragon vinegar. Ever since the exhibition opened the fabrication of Colman's mustard, which is in full operation in the Machmery Department, has been a source of unflaggmg interest to the French visitors, who have watched with breathless cmiosit}' the accomplishment of the various processes, from the screening and pounding of the seed to the final pacldng of the mustard in tins read}'^ to form a condiment for those ' biftecks bien saignants ' — those half-crude lumps of flesh — to which the French think that we are incurably addicted, but of which they themselves are inordmately fond. I confess that I watched myself the pounding process with some- thing like childish interest. The seed for Colman's mustard is crushed by means of a series of heavy cylinders — of what their technical name may be I have not the remotest idea — which in slow alternation came up and down like unto the legs of some enormous animal performing an eternal goose-step. * Melanchol}^- * Indeed, so far back as tlie Exliibitioii of 1SG7 tlie merits of Colman's mustard received official recognition at the Lands of the Emjjeror Napoleon, who conferred the brevet of manufacturers of English mustard to the Imperial Court upon the well-known Norwich firm, and now at the present Exhibition we have the President of the Republic decorating Mr. J. J. Colman, M.P., the senior member of the firm, with the Cross of the Legion of Honour. MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 365 matl elephants,' Charles Dickens, in Hard Times, called some engine of the kind which he saw in Lancashire. But where had I seen the melancholy-mad elephants before ? Not at Preston nor Blackburn. Not at Huddersfield nor Leeds. Far away did my memory take me, sixteen years back. Far away from Colman's mustard factory, through the Soutliern Atlantic, round the storm- tormented Hatteras, along the sandy coast of Florida, ^and thus, threading the shiny Antilles, across 'the blue Gulf to Vera Cruz, and so through the Tierra CaUente and the deserts of sand and cactus, up the gloomy Cambus, and through the fearsome canons to the great city of Tenostitlan. And then, miles away from the shadow of Popocatapetl and Istclasiwatl, 'the vu-gin in white reclining,' far away through savage mountain-gorges to the silver mines of Real del Monte in Mexico ; and there, at the mouth of each shaft, from Pachuca to the FaUs of Regla, used I, day by day and night by night, to watch the melancholy-mad elephants- colossal cylinders of timber shod with iron, w^hich might have crushed Colman and all his mustard into the Impalpabilities in five minutes — plodding up and down, up and down, poundmg the silver ore under their tremendous toes. It was a rebellious ore ; but the huge pedals crushed out the precious stuff at last — got it out by slow and unwearying persistence, as the pith is picked out of a reed, or as miser}' crushes the heart out of a man. But my mind came very swiftly back from Mexico to con- template a surg- ing crowd of vivacious Gauls who were struggling for some packets of mustard which were being gratuitously distributed in front of Messrs. J. & J. Colman's show-case, they are quite as eager when there 386 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. is a biscuit scramble at Huntley and Palmers' kiosque ; and they nearly suffocate wliile thronging round the obliging gentleman at the perfumery fountain in the French section, who, it is said, scents 20,000 pocket handkerchiefs a day for nothing. One person, abusing this generosit}', tendered four mouchoirs for gratuitous odoriferous treatment. 'Mais il est done un ''pick- pocket," ce maraudeur-la,' murmured the obliging gentleman, out of all i^atience. While mentioning the fact of a Gold Medal having been awarded to the firm of Orlando Jones & Co., starch manufacturers, at Battersea, I wish to point out that Mr. Orlando Jones is himself the inventor of the process of making the Patent Piice Starch, or ' Amidon de Riz,' which bears his name. The invention in question dates from the year 1840, since which period the firm have received no less than nine medals of honour at various Inter- national Exhibitions, the reasons given by the juries for these awards being the invention of the process, the excellence of manufacture, and the extended use of the product. Some of my readers will, no doubt, remember the time — which, thanks to Free-trade and Inter-oceanic Navigation, we are scarcely likely to see again — when bread was at famine prices, and mob orators made a grand point by hotly denouncing the waste of good wheaten flour used for starching the cravats of the aristocracy and powdering the heads of their flunkeys. By employing rice for the manufacture of starch, Mr. Orlando Jones not only wiped out this reproach, but succeeded in producing a material which loses none of its stiffness in damp weather, a thing impossible with starch made from wheat. How grateful Queen Elizabeth's maids of honour and tu-e-women would have been for such a boon when that irascible Sovereign's voluminous ruffs drooped under the influence of our tearful climate ; and how proud Brummell's valet would have felt could he but have adjusted the Beau's indispen- sable white cravat without a daily heap of failures ! All discoveries in relation to starch have not proved equally happy ones. Does not worthy Master Stubbes, in his Anatomie of Abuses, denounce it as a direct invention of the Evil One, and relate a terrible tale of a pretty young Dutchwoman who could not pleat her imperfectly stiftened ruff to her satisfaction, and whose appeal for aid to the Infernal Powers was answered in person by a very dark but comely gallant ? He pleated the ruff to perfection, but he fitted it so tightly round the poor woman's neck that she then and there died. And did not Mrs. IMary Turner, procuress and poisoner, who helped to murder that self-seeking intriguer, MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 387 Sir Thomas Overbury, at the instigation of liis bosom-friend Lord Somerset, make her hist pubhc appearance at T3'burn or Tower Hill, I forget which, in one of those famous yellow starched ruffs, the getting up of which was one of her more reputable sources of income ? Thenceforward and for ever, yellow starch became an abomination ; whereas a continuously increasing popularity seems to attend the pure white material which Mv. Orlando Jones obtains from the Ortj.:a sativa. While M. Jablochkoff and Mr, Edison, and I know not how many more inventors and patentees of the electric light, are con- verting night into day, and causing the eyes of the weaksighted to blink, even like unto those of the melancholy and moping owl while sitting in an ivy-bush, and while jon hear on all sides that gas will speedily become a thing of the past — it will last our time, and longer, I fanc}' — I may just direct one glance at the very handsome and interesting display of Price's Patent Candle Com- pan}', enshrined beneath its crystal dome appropriately supported b}' inter-arching palm-tree columns. I am tolerably well acquainted with the history of candles ; and, so far as France is concerned, I can remember when there Avere only two kinds of candles to be had in Paris — I am speaking of from thirty to forty years ago — ' la bougie,' the wax candle, which was superlatively good, but very dear; and 'la chandelle,' commonly so called, which was only an exaggerated rushlight with very feeble powers of illumination. The French continue to make excellent bougies, and within recent years they have been manufacturing a variety of candles made from other substances than wax ; but I claim for my own country- men that they have taught the French to make successively not only the old ' mould ' candles, but the more modern ' composites,' — which were first introduced in 1840, on the occasion of her Majestjr's marriage, by Messrs. Edward Price & Co., the founders of the iH-esent firm, — and the still more modern 'paraffin.' But the French have not improved on our candles, and our manu- facturers indisputably continue to keep the lead. Price's patent candles have taken Gold JMedals this quarter of a century past at Exhibitions in London, Paris, Moscow, Philadelphia, Dublin, Brussels, Lyons, Amsterdam, and Vienna — at the last-named two of the highest medals that could be awarded — and the Company is once more in the forefront at the Paris Exhibition. The award of the Gold jNIedal is especially merited by the exhibits of the ' Palmitine ' ornamental candles — palmitine is a mixture of paraffin and stearine, the combination producing all the brilliancy without the drawbacks of unmingied paraffin, c c 2 388 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. which has a, tendency to give off smoke in burning and to bend in a warm atmosphere, besides being equally transparent with the finest sperm candles. The raw material, whence the stearine is obtained, is that strange-looking orange-coloured butter known as palm-oil, some 7000 tons of which are annually consumed by the firm. ' (^uashee ma boo, the slave trade is no more ! ' exclaim Messrs. Smith in B ejected Addresses ; and this result is stated by competent authorities to be due quite as much to the impetus given to the stearine manufacture as to the efforts of British cruisers on the Benin coast. King Boriabungalaboo finds it more profitable to employ his sable subjects in planting palm-trees than to sell them right off to Captain Ammadab P. Uowsetter, of the Saucy Sarah schooner, through the intermediary of Don Pacheco Sanchez. It is to the stearine that the Pahnitine candles owe their hardness, their slowness of combustion and brilliancy of illuminating i:)ower being due to the parafiin ; the net result, in commercial phraseology, being a light as soft as, and more lasting than, that of a wax candle, at a price but little over that paid, some years back, for the common tallow mould. Among the thirtj'-two qualities of candles, moulded into twice as many different shapes and sizes, which Price's Patent Candle Company produce, the most notable are the ' Primrose ' and ' National ' wax, the ' Belmontines,' the ' Composites,' the ' Sher- wood' and 'Belmont' sperms, the 'snufflessdips,' and the carriage lamp caiulles of Ceylon wax. Then there are the patent ' night- lights,' Avliich under the name of either 'Price's,' 'Albert's,' or ' Child's,' have been known these many years past all the world over. To these have now to be added a new variety which the Company are producing from stearine obtained from the coker- nut-trec — one of the palm family — a material remarkable for its whiteness of flame and utter freedom from smoke, for Avhicli reason it was selected as fuel for the sledging jiarties in the last Arctic expedition. Of the Company's household and toilette soaps, in- cluding the famous glycerine which tlie}^ introduced some twenty years back, it is unnecessary to speak. When George IV. landed at the hamlet on the Irish coast subse- quently dignified with the name of KiiigstoAvn, it is related that one enthusiastically loyal Paddy thrust himself forward, and un- ceremoniousl}' grasped the hand of the First Gentleman in Europe. Then, gazing respectfully^ at the grimy paw that had thus been honoured bj^ actual contact with Poyalty, the delighted tatterde- malion exclaimed, ' Soap nor water shall niver touch this hand till me dyin' day.' The Bashaw of Brighton, whose devotion to MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 389 tlie duties of the toilette lias been recorded by Mr. Greville, sometime Clerk of the Closet, shuddered at the idea of this pro- spective penance; but those around him, better ac- quainted with the idiosyncrasies of his Majesty's Irish subjects in those days, mere- ly smiled at the notion of the slightest incon- venience being entailed thereby. Foratthatej^och Hhe Great Un- washed ' was by no means a popu- lar misnomer when applied to the bulk of the inhabitants on either side of St. George's Chan- nel. If that soap- renouncing Irishman could only be present in the flesh — it would be useless in the spirit — in the Palace of the Champ de Mars, he w^ould be sorely tempted to recant his hasty abjuration in the pre- sence of the saponaceous display of Messrs. Hodgson & Simpson of the Calder Soap-works, Wakefield, comprising countless cubes of soap in piles, including the familiar 'j^ellow,' the 'white curd,' and the ' brown,' all with their distinct ' grain' — a sign, say the initiated in such matters, of perfect saponification. Sm'mounting these pillars are pyramids of what is styled ' Queen's Mottled Soap,' while around the edge of the case are tablets of toilette soaps such as honey, gl^xerine, and old brown Windsor, which used originally to be curd soap darkened with age, but, in these express days, has its umbrian hue imparted by the aid of caramel. For the benefit of those who follow the sage Napoleonic axiom, and confine the lavation of their soiled linen to the domestic circle, Messrs. Hodgson & Simpson exhibit an array of large crystals of soda of unusual size and form. The Wakefield fii*m, A JUDICIOUS riKCE OF ADVICE (bY CHAm). ' Don't look at tlie cxbiLits of soap as tliougli you saw tlie article for the first time.' 390 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. ill fact, combine all departments, from the production of fancy soaps to the making of black ash or ball soda. Soda manufacture has undergone a great change since kelp and barilla were the sole sources of its sujiply, and Orkney lairds were wont to pay an annual visit to Edinburgh, and ruffle it with the best society of the Modern Athens, on the proceeds of the product of the strip of foreshore bordering their hereditary patches of rock and moor- land. When Nicolas Leblanc of Issoudun responded to the appeal of the French Government, on the cutting off of all the accustomed sources of supply whence soda was derived during the revolutionary epoch, and showed that it could be made from common salt, he laid the foundation of an industry which has since flourished in England to an enormous extent, and of which the Calder Works are amongst the largest exemplars. Soap and soda are here successfully combined — not mechanically, but chemically — in what is st^ded the ' Queen's Condensed Soap,' a powder done up in packets, and replacing soda cr3'Stals in the laundry with the ad- vantage of being less destructive to garments. A gold medal has been awarded to Messrs. Hodgson & Simpson, whose works near Wakefield cover some eight acres of ground. Cheap soap being a specialty of their business, cheap carriage is also an essential requisite ; and their factory borders a canal affording water-carriage to Liverpool on the west, and to Goole, Hull, and London on the east ; so that cargoes of tallow and resin, the essential materials of fine soap — of which the firm is one of the largest consumers in the United Kingdom — can be brought du-ect to the boiling coppers from Russia, Australia, and America, with only a single transhipment. There is a glass case belonging to a Gold Medallist which it would be decidedl}^ unjust to pass without mention ere the Exposi- tion Universelle comes to the end of its wondrous career. I allude to one containing the sporting guns and rifles manufactured by Messrs. James Purdey & Sons, of Oxford Street, London. Most of the fowling-pieces and rifles, complete in workmanship and exquisite in finish, exhibited by JNIessrs. Purdey, who are gun-makers to the Queen and the Prince of Wales, have been jiurchased by Koj'al and noble personages, including the Prince de Cro}', Avho has secured no less than five of these fine weapons, the Prince Imperial of Austria, Prince Mavrocordato, Prince Boris-Czetwertynski, the Duke de Castries, Baron Albert de Bothschild, M. Patrice de MacMahon, and last, though not least. Prince Arthur of Saxe Coburg Gotha. One side of the Purdey glass case is decorated with photographs of sporting trophies of the game shot on various excui'sions in Europe by the Prince of Wales, the Emperor of MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 391 Eussia, and the late King of Italy. There is also the reproduc- tion of a trophy of African antelopes, shot b}" two adventurous English sportsmen, J. L. Garden, Esq., and Captain Garden. The well-known and indeed leading specialty of the Purdey guns is extreme lightness, obtained without any sacrifice of strength. Another is the new system introduced by Messrs. Purdey of boring for ' small charges,' so that longer range and better results may be attained than can be procured by the old S3'stem of heavy guns with large charges. The light guns are altogether free from ' kick' or recoil. The extra Purdey exhibit consists of four guns, elaborately chased in the champ-leve style, two of which have been embellished by the talented artist Aristido Barri, who was arrested at Vienna as a Communist, but was subsequently released, and is now occu- l?ied in executing a champ-leve for the Emperor of Austria. There is likewise a pair of very handsome guns, with stocks of orna- mental maple, having the appearance of tortoiseshell, and the steel portions of which are exquisitely inlaid with gold. A pair of beautiful guns for ladies' use must also claim a word. The stocks of these guns are ebonised, and the weapons themselves are of extreme lightness ; still I am told that a distinguished pigeon- shot at a recent Monaco competition succeeded in killing with one of them fifteen out of eighteen birds at twenty-eight yards' rise. The crack shots of Hurlingham and Shepherd's Bush are in the habit of favouring with their presence the competitions organised by the brothers Dennetier, in the diminished strip of territory belonging to Prince Charles of Monaco, to the sore dis- comfiture of their Continental rivals. On these occasions the death-dealing barrels of Mr. Dudley Ward, Sir R. Musgrave, Earl de Grey, and Captain Yansittart give plenty of employ- ment to Nelly, the famous bitch upon whom devolves the onerous task of retrieving the slaughtered pigeons, which frequently average six hundred per diem. Especially interesting in the Purdey exhibit is an extremely ingenious mechanical gun, which, by means of an arrangement of screws, can be twisted and turned into any shape, and fixed there for measurements to be taken from it, so that the gun to be manufactured can be suited to 'the mount' of any particular sportsman who is in the habit of shooting from the right or left eye, or from the right or the left shoulder, respec- tively. I am informed that no less than 7000L in money-j^rizes alone, exclusive of cups, have been won by noblemen and gentle- men using Purdey guns at Hurlingham and the Gun Club last year. 392 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. A CKACK SHOT. Having dwelt upon the exhibit of Messrs. Purdey & Sons, and chronicled the fiict of those famous gunsmiths Iiaving secured a Gold Medal, fairness induces me to refer to a neighbouring glass case, in which are disj^la^'ed a variety of sporting guns and rifles, manufactured b}'^ Mr. Stephen Grant of St. James's Street, to MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 393 whom a Gold Medal lias likewise been awarded, on the score of the mingled strength, excellence, and beauty of workmanship shown in his fowling- pieces. Among the col- lections of firearms dis- plaj-ed at the Exhibition are many admirable ex- amples of Continental and American skill; still, judges possessed of the requisite technical know- ledge, who have gone carefully through the Avliole of the exhibits, do not hesitate to place the weapons of our English gunsmiths in the fore- most rank, both as regards their strength and their finish. Even the best French and Belgian guns fail, they say, to impress the sportsman with the same idea of strength and perfect beauty of action as a thoroughly well-made English fowling-piece. The former are altogether more toy-hke ; and it is a noticeable fact that the great majority of French, German, and Belgian sportsmen, and more particularly those who are adepts at pigeon-shooting, invari- ably use guns of English origin, manufactured by such experienced gunsmiths as Mr. Stephen Grant and the more notable of his con- freres. I am told, indeed, that the vast majority of the prizes which have recently fallen to competitors at shooting-matches, both in England and on the Continent, have been gained by gentlemen who have used either Grant or Purdey guns. _ Captain Aubrey Patton, who on two consecutive occasions carried off the Grand Prix, worth WOOL, at the Monaco ' tournament of doves,' shot with a Grant breechloader ; and Mr. David Hope-Johnstone, who a few years since secured the magnificent piece of plate presented by Mr. James Gordon Bennett to be shot for at the ground of the Cercle des Patineurs in the Bois de Boulogne, is likewise a client of Mr. Stephen Grant's, who counts, moreover, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh among his aristocratic patrons. Some five years since, making a tour among the manufactures of the Midlands and the North of England, I came to Birmingham, and studied, as narrowly as within my powers of observation lay, the remarkable processes— I think there are nineteen in all — employed in the fabrication of steel pens. It was the Avorks of 394 PARIS HEPwSELF AGAIN. Messrs. Joseph Gillott that, as a total stranger, I visited, first because Gillott steel pens are admitted to be ^tlie best that are made, and next because the name and trade-mark of ' Joseph Gillott ' are known the whole world over. I am glad to see that the celebrated Birmingham firm have had justice done to them in the Champ de Mars, and have received a Gold Medal. The Gillott show-case displays, in its central compartments, a pen- holder and a ' magiium-bonum ' pen of such gigantic dimensions that the implement might be best suited to the use of the Private Secretary to the Sovereign of Brobdingnag. The lateral com- partments display trophies Avitli mouldings and central bosses formed of steel pens and holders of various forms and sizes, and of every shade of metallic tint ; while beneath are glass vases filled with thousands of loose ' nibs ' and ' barrel ' pens. I notice, also, that a portion of the case practically illustrates the various pro- cesses of pen-making, beginning with the first plain strip of metal, and showing it in successive stages of punching, cutting, stamp- ing, piercing, pointing, nibbing, hardening, annealing, polishing, lettering, and so forth, until it is turned out a pure and perfect pen, ready to join its comrades in a cardboard box inscribed with the well-known signature of ' Joseph Gillott,' and to make the ' Tour du Monde.' What, I wonder, will become of all these thousands of ' magnum bonums,' hard and soft nibs, 'commercial' and fine-pointed pens, and lithographic ' crowquills ' ? They will be dispersed, I suppose ; the}^ will be scattered fiir and wide ; they will find their wa}- to all sorts of out-of-the-way regions. Tens of thousands of love-letters, begging-letters, and lawyers' letters, bills and invoices, poems and novels, five-act tragedies and milk-scores, leading articles and schoolboys' exercises, will be written with these pens. And yet, vast as is the part which steel pens have played in the civilisation of the world, they are, com- parativel}^ speaking, things only of the day before yesterda}'. \Vlien I first went to school in Paris, forty years ago, it was one of the highest crimes and misdemeanours that a boy could commit to be found in possession of a ' plume de fer.' The steel pen was inflexibl}' banished as an abominable thing from our scholastic precincts ; and four j-ears afterwards, when I went to school in England, I found that steel pens were only sullenly tolerated by my preceptor, and that the nearest road to his favour was to ask him for a quill pen. If, in addition to writing with a quill, j'ou could mend one, you became at once a Model Boy. Nous avons change tout ceki ; yet the quill continues to a certain extent to hold its own in England. At the great clubs a dozen quill pens MORE GOLD MEDALLISTS. 395 are certainly used for every steel nib asked for. Quills Lave not been entirely banished eitherfrom Government oftices, courts of justice, or from mercantile counting-houses; so that as long as the use of a Gil- lott is not made compulsory, and as long as it is not made a penal offence to sleep on a feather-bed, the geese will continue, at_ other seasons besides Michaelmas and Christmas, to have a bad time of it. The number of quill-pen users is, however, restricted. It is a population which is diminishing, and which will die out ; w^hile the number of steel-pen consumers must increase to a propor- tionate extent with the consumers of letter-paper, envelopes, and postage stamps— that is to say, to the Illimitable. 7A?Fi;Mi:RI£ ' I find all your preparations dreadfully dear.' 'But remember, madam, we gained tUe only medal for perfumery.' THE SQUARE DU TEMPLE. XXX. IN THE TEMPLE. Nov. 7. There was in the annual Exhibition proper of Paintings known as Le Salon, hekl at the Palais de I'lndustrie during the summer months, a picture wdiich to me was full of the deepest interest, hut which failed to attract a tithe of the attention it deserved. The truth is, that the wondrous Galeries des Beaux Arts in the Champ de Mars had, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up all other contemporary displaj's of paintings and statuary ; and in the tremendous panorama of the Exposition Universelle the modest gallery in the Champs Elysees was, comparatively speaking, for- gotten. At the close of the Salon the work of art of which I speak was removed to a picture-dealer's shop on the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle ; and day after day I used to go and cogitate over it by the half hour together. It was a canvas of considerable dimen- sions, containing man}' figures, and it was full of good composition, drawing, and colour. It was offered for sale at a very moderate price — a hundred and twenty pounds, if I remember aright. I did not purchase the work, because there was then, as there is still, an unaccountable delay in the arrival, at my domicile in Paris, of the necessary cheques available for investment in works of art ; but I frankly confess that had I bought it I should not have been IN THE TEINIPLE. 397 influenced by any considerations of an artistic nature. I valued the picture only as an eloquently realistic illustration of one of the most dramatic, the most moving, and most mysterious episodes in the history of modern France. This picture told the story of the arrest of Georges Cadoudal, the famous Cliouan conspirator against the life of the First Napoleon. Georges was accustomed stoutly to disclaim the imputation of being a common assassin ; still he did not conceal his intention to fall upon the First Consul the first time he met him in public ; disarm his escort with the assistance of a band of brother Chouans, and slay him. Bonaparte, he reasoned, had been condemned to death by the verdict of all respectable people ; and somebody must be bold enough to become the executioner of the tyrant. With this idee fixe in his mind, the resolute Chouan came over from England, where he had long lived in exile, and where, to all seeming, he was ver}' well known and very much liked, even in aristocratic English society, and hid himself in Paris, where he soon became the centre of a gang of some sixty or seventy desperate plotters against the government. Both M. Lanfrey and M. Michelet plainly declare that the Consular Government were perfectly well aware of the presence of Georges and his confederates in the capital, and that the police allowed the plot to ripen un- disturbed, in the hope of getting hold of conspirators of more exalted rank than the Vendean farmer, Georges Cadoudal, and his more or less obscure followers. They thought that Monseigneur the Comte d'Artois might be eventually decoyed to Paris, and captured to his destruction. Their benevolent expectations in this respect being frustrated, the Minister of Police deemed it time to cast his drag-nets and make a haul of the Bourbonist agents, who were known by his scouts and his spies to be in Paris. The Chouans were laid hold of by the score ; but Georges, during many weeks, successfully eluded the pursuit of the gendarmes and the mouchards. He was nevertheless so persistently followed, so closely tracked from hiding-place to hiding-place, that he could hear, as it were, the barking of the police-pack at his heels, and almost feel their hot breath stirring his hair. He had no refuge at last but a hackney cabriolet — a two-wheeled vehicle with a huge leathern hood ; and in this cab, driven by a trusty friend, he positively lived for the best part of a week, driving about the streets all day, and hiding at night in some timber-yard or quay- side shed, where food and forage had been brought by friends, so as to give horse and man a little refreshment and rest. But one afternoon, in a frequented thoroughfare, the friendly 398 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. caL)cTrivei' was imprudent enough to alight, and enter a cabaret to obtain a drink of wine. This simple act Avas in itself a breach of the existing cab regulations. Two passing police-agents took notice of it; and one of them, looking into the carriage, in which the driver had resumed his seat, to warn him that he would be summoned, recognised with astonishment and delight in the second occupant of the cabriolet the countenance of the man of whom he had been so long in quest — Georges Cadoudal. ' A moi ! ' he cried to his companion, seizing Georges by the collar, and striving to drag him to the pavement. Georges was not a man of half measures. He at once drew a pistol, fired, and blew the moucliarcV s brains out ; then, seizing the reins and lashing the horse, he made a desperate effort to drive awa}^ ; but the second moucliard had seized the horse's head ; a crowd collected ; the patrol arrived from the nearest guardhouse ; the Cliouan leader was overcome and handcuffed ; twent}' minutes afterwards he was in a cacJiot at the Depot of the Prefecture ; and ere sunset he Avas safe and sound in the Temple, only to leave that gloomy donjon for the prisoner's dock at the Palais de Justice, onl}^ to leave it eventually for the Place de Greve, where, with eleven other real or fancied conspirators against the life of the First Consul, he was guillotined. He left a poor old father to bewail him; and at the Restoration the elder Cadoudal was ennobled in memory of his fion's devotion to the cause of Royalty. It so happened that the poor moucliard, who had his brains blown out by Georges, left, not only a father, but a wife and children also, to be sorry for him. The moment chosen for illustration by the painter is Avhen Georges, leaping up in the cabriolet, discharges his pistol point- blank at the police-agent's head. The street-life of the time, the uncouth costumes of the early years of the century — men with ' curly-brimmed ' hats, buckskin or stocking-net pantaloons, drab coats, voluminous neckcloths, variegated garters of the ' Sixteen- String Jack ' pattern, striped stockings, and top-boots ; women with poke-bonnets, gauze scarves, and closely-fitting gowns, with waists close under the armpits — are dej)icted with strictly historic accuracy. But the interest centres in that struggle in the cab — the herculean frame, the desperate features, of Georges with his death-dealing pistol, the death-shriek of the mouchard. Ever as I gazed upon this powerful work did I see in my mind's eye, in the background, the very donjon of the Temple — the drear}^ fast- ness in which Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette endured the loncf agony which ended in their murder — the Temple where the bestial cobbler, Simon, was permitted by the Commune de Paris to torture IN THE TEMPLE. 399 to death's door tlie poor little captive, Louis XVII. The Princess, who was afterwards Duchess of Angouleme, was the last E,03^al prisoner immured in the Temple ; and in 1811 Napoleon had the donjon razed to the ground. The King of Home had just heen horn ; and the proud and exultant father somewhat too senti- mentally ohserved that in demolishing tlie Temple he wished to throw into ohlivion all memory of a place in which a Eoyal child had suffered so much dire anguish. He might have added that it was convenient to obliterate the reminiscences of a State prison associated not only with the martyrdom of the Eoyal Family of France, not ouly with the captivity of Georges and his fellow Chouans, but also with the possible torture and murder of Pichegru, and the still unexplained death of the gallant Captain Wright. ' I will go and see the site of the abominable prison- house,' I said to myself yesterday. 'Paris is Herself Again; and in all Lutetia there is no spot more Parisian than the Temple.' So I sped on wheels, to the corner of the Ptue des Filles-du- Calvaire ; and, alighting, found myself at the top of the Boulevard du Temple, once popularly known as the Boulevard du Crime, from the abundance throughout its length of fifth-rate theatres where melodramas of a peculiarly sanguinary nature were per- formed. One of the favourite diversions of juvenile Bohemia thirty years ago was to patronise the pit of some theatre on the Boulevard du Crime, and pelt the unscrupulous assassin or the bloodthirsty tyrant of the melodrama in vogue with roasted chest- nuts. All that has been changed. In the neighbourhood of the Boulevard du Crime there are at present half a dozen new and handsome theatres ; the tremendous barracks, capable of housing eight thousand men, on the Place du Chateau d'Fau, are in them- selves a significant reminder that these are days when order must be preserved, and when marrons chaiids may not any longer be flung with impunity at unscrupulous hravi or bloodthirsty tyrants behind the foothghts ; while the tottering blackened old tene- ments of the boulevard itself have been replaced by stately man- sions in the Haussmannesque style of architecture — mansions full of pretensions, but totally devoid of picturesque character. It must be admitted, in candour, that the old picturesque tenements were narrow and dirty, whereas the Haussmannesque edifices are spacious and clean. This consideration consoled me for the dis- appearance of the five-storied hovel numbered 42 on the Boulevard du Temple, from the window of the topmost garret of which hovel, on the 12th July, 1835, the Corsican Fieschi discharged his infernal machine at King Louis-Philippe — missing the king, 400 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. but succeeding in killing and wounding a vast number of persons. Among the slain was the brave Marshal Mortier, who had passed unscathed through twenty camimigns, to be murdered at last by this miscreant. The engineer was, to a certain extent, hoist by his own diabolical petard ; since some of the old musket-barrels forming the machine burst from overcharging, and Fieschi was horribly wounded about the head and face. I remember as a child, in that same year '35, to have gazed with much awe and wonderment at a little wax model of the bloodthirsty Corsican's face, with his villainous jaw bandaged, exhibited in the window of Messrs. Lechertier-Barbe, the artists' colourmen, in the Eegent's Quadrant. The spectacle was such an attractive one that an emulative perfumer over the way forthwith exposed to public view a model in wax, under a glass case, of Madame Yestris's foot. Fieschi and his accomplices, jNIorey and Pepin, Avere duly guillo- tined, not on the Place de Greve, but at the top of the Pue d'Enfer — recently renamed Denfert — the immediate predecessor as a Golgotha of the Place de la Eoquette. As for Number 42 Boulevard du Temple, it is at present as spruce and coquettish a house as you could wish to look upon. As spruce and comely, as new and shining, is the second-hand clothes and furniture mart, known as the ' Marche du Temple.' Napoleon I. contemptuously abandoned the dismantled site of the State prison to the old-clothes men ; and for upwards of half a century a space containing some fourteen thousand square feet was occupied by a labyrinth of wooden haraques or huts, in which the dirtiest, the noisiest, and the most extortionate of Pag Fairs went on from early morning till sunset. AVhen I told a French friend last evening that I had been to the Temple, he replied, deprecatingly, 'A quoi bon? It is finished. It is no longer worth seeing. C'est propre ; et on n'y fait plus des farces.' Yes, I will own that the existing INIarket of the Temple is as clean as a new pin, and that not the slightest attempt to coerce you into buying anything is made by the merchants doing business there ; still, to me, the bustling scene was extremely animated, curious, and amusing. Napoleon III. and M. Haussmann were fain to deprive the Temple of its picturesque attributes, dirt, disorder, and dishonesty included, just as they were fain to metamorphose the dark and brawling old IMarche des Innocents into the present magnificent Halles Centrales. To form an idea of the existing Temple you have only to imagine that you are in the new Smith- field Meat Market, but that the butchers' stalls have been replaced by a multitude of cosy little cabins, some glazed on all sides, dis- IN THE TEMPLE. 401 playing the wares which the dealers have to sell ; while others are open stalls, heaped high or hung all round with garments which can he turned over and hargained for at will. This nudtitude of A J[ARC1IAXDE DE CHIFFONS. cahins is roofed in under one lofty dome of iron and glass. The main avenue, stretching at a right angle from the Rue du Temple, is grandly spacious, and there are several cross corridors of 402 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. convenient breadth ; but between many of the blocks of cabins- there is onl}' just room for two persons to pass at a time, and j^ou have to run the drollest of gaimtlets between the shopkeepers, nine-tenths of whom seem to be women. Only once before in my life have I heard such a shrill chatter- ing of feminine tongues, and that was on the morning of Sunday, the 4tli of September 1870, when, imder suspicion of being a Prussian spy, I was the occupant of a dungeon at the Depot of the Prefecture of Police. I was ' a la disposition de M. le Prefet,' who had just time, at the kind instance of his Excellency Lord Lj^ons, to release me when the Ptevolution broke out, and M. le Prefet had to fly for his life. These are facts which lead me to the inference that there are strange ups and downs in this world, and that man occasionally takes stranger liberties with his fellow- creatures. My cell had a windoAv too high up in the wall for me to i^eep through the bars ; but a good-natured turnke}' told me that the window overlooked an immense stone hall, which was the female side of the prison. More than a hundred of ' pauvres creatures,' as the good-natured tmiikey told me, were in this hall, and all of them, so far as the experience of my ears went, were chattering at the top of their voices. It was as though one lived next door to a colossal aviary full of j)an'ots, macaws, and mag- pies, with a few crows and ravens thrown in to represent the elder branch of the sisterhood. A closel}^ analogous tintamarre was that audible j-esterday, in the Marche du Temple. * Madame desire- t-elle un vetement ? ' * Monsieur cherche-t-il mi pardessus ? ' Did I want a pair of boots, better than new ; pantaloons, of the highest novelt}' ; a corset, six corsets, six dozen corsets, of fashionable elaboration ? Would I look at this pink-satin robe, trimmed with black lace ? It was worn only a fortnight ago — this was said con- fidentiall}', and almost in a whisper — by the Duchesse de Poule- mouille, at .the Versailles fete. Regard this exquisite toilette de visite of mauve silk, trimmed with gold beads and embroidery. It fonned part — again a shortly' confidential communication and a semi-whisper — it formed a part of the dcfroque of Mademoiselle Fichesoncamp of the Bouft'es Parisiens. It chanced that I wanted nothing at all just then ; but I was content to run the gauntlet of the stallkeepers for full three- quarters of an hour, recalling the humours of Cranbourne Allej^ in the old days, when irrepressible shopkeepers entreated you to give a look, only one look, at that * sweet little duck of a blue bonnet,' or ' the beautifullest thing in real Leghorn as ever was seen.' Uonnets, I am glad to record, not secondhand but new, were IN THE TEMPLE. 403 plentiful in the Temple yesterda}', and were quoted at extremely moderate prices. A bonnet brave in ribbons was offered to me for five francs fifty ; another, with a whole bandbox full of arti- ficial flowers upon it, I could have secured for eight twenty-five ; and another chapcau, decorated with a bird, apparently a tomtit, with outstretched wings, could be had for the ridiculously small sum of eleven francs. And all new bonnets, in the most fashion- able style, mind you. Eleven francs for a bonnet ; and Mesdames Pauline Millefleurs and Zulma Chapeauchic, of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Rue de la Paix, won't look at me — in the way of a bonnet — under sixty francs. ' They would have sold you that eight-franc bonnet in the Temple for five,' said my cynical French friend in the evening. It was only a ' decrochez-moi-ca.' Now a ' decrochez-moi-ca ' is a very cheap and ' loud ' bonnet, hung on a peg in the interior of a cabin in the Temple, for the special purpose of dazzling the eyes of some feminine customer of the servant- girl or the ' Jenny I'Ouvriere' class. When the young lady in question sees and is fascinated by this bonnet, she points with her forefinger to it, and the marchande at once construes this movement into a direction to 'decrocher' or remove the desiderated headdress from its peg. Thus a ' decrochez-moi-ca ' has become quite a proverbial locution for a Temple bonnet. To translate it as * Take it off the peg, please,' would be very feeble and colour- less ; and I am of opinion that the closest colloquial English equivalent for ' decrochez-moi-9a ' would be ' Let's have a squint at it.'* Altogether the March^ du Temple, as reconstructed and re- organised under the Second Empire, difters very widely indeed from the dingy Babel so forcibly described by Eugene Sue in the Mysteries of Paris — a romance which, notwithstanding all its ethical faults and its melodramatic monstrosities, presents a won- derfully observant and accurate picture of the condition of the * At the time when this particular passage respecting the ' decrochez-moi- 9a ' appeared in the Daily I'elegraph, I received a querulous, and by no means complimentary, letter — of course, it was an anonymous one ; abusive people are generally cowards — telling me that ' everybody knew ' that such articles as were called in the Temple 'decrochez-moi-9a3' were known in the second- hand-clothes world of London as 'reach-me-downs.' A paragraph to the same effect, but not abusive, siibsequently appeared in the IVorld. I decline to tamper with the integrity of my text, "for the reasons, that I lived in Holy well- street, seven-and-twenty years ago, at the sign of the 'Old Dog,' a famous tavern long since demolished ; that I was on terms of close intimacy with all the old-clothes men of the locality ; that 1 have a tolerably good memory; and that I never heard of a 'reach-me-down.' D D 2 404 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. working classes in Paris thirtj^ years ago. Eugene Sue, as a student of manners and as a word-painter, could be as pene- tratingly powerful as the extant jNI. Emile Zola ; but he did not choose to be chronically and deliberately revolting, as it seems the set purpose and the delight of the author of L'Assommoir to be. It was to the Temple, jon will remember, that, in the IMi/s- teries, Eodolphe, Grand Duke of Gerolstein, disguised as a simple workman in a blouse, went, accompanied by Rigolette the grisette to pm'chase a few chattels wherewith to furnish the attic which he had just hired from Madame Pipelet, that never-to-be-forgotten concierge of the house in the Rue du Temple wherein so many fearful mysteries were enacted, and the landlord of which was the virtuous M. Bras-Rouge. At the period referred to by the novelist, the secondhand furniture department of the Temple bore a close resemblance to the London Road and the streets in the immediate neighbourhood of the Elephant and Castle. In the old days of imprisonment for debt, the secondhand furniture brokers of this district used to boast of their ability to ' furnish out and out' a detenu, to wliom a room in the Queen's Bench Prison had just been assigned, with all the necessary articles of furniture, bed and bed-linen, crockery, knives, forks, and spoons, and hattcrie de cuisine : — all in the brief space of five-and-twenty minutes, and at the moderate rental of ten shillings a week. I have little doubt that, for an additional five shillings, the captive's comforts might have been enhanced and his intellectual wants ministered to by a compact picture-gallery and a select library of instructive and entertaining books. Were the Marche du Temple to find its resources taxed under circumstances akin to the foregoing, it would show itself, I am well assured, fully equal to the occasion. The dealers would put * une jemie personne dans ses meubles' in less than half an hour. As it is, a complete layette may be procured in the Temple in ten minutes. Do you want furs ? The skins of 50,000 cats and rabbits at once leap from their pegs — as the swords of French chivalry should have leaped from their scabbards to defend Marie Antoinette — crying (tlie furs, not the swords), ' We are real sable; we are all beaver, chinchilla, minx, silver fox, whatever you like to believe.' Do you need jackets, mantles, ' visites,' waterproofs, they are aU to be had here by the thousand. There are dozens of alleys full of liats and caps. There are scores more in which only boots and shoes are vended ; and let it be understood that a very large proportion of the merchandise sold in the renovated Marche du Temple is quite new. It is only an enormous slop-shop — the IN THE TEMPLE. 405 Minories, Shoreditch, Tottenham Court Road, and High Holhorn all rolled into one, and gathered under one huge vault of glass and iron. The most interesting portion of this immense bazaar was, I need scarcely say, the old-clothes department. There there was much that might have interested the philosojihic mind of the immortal cogitator of the University of Weissnichtwo ; there lay loose, or hung listlessly, a world of fripperies, suggestive of one of the keenest of Beranger's lyrics, ' Vieux habits, vieux galons !' Room for the Galilean Church ! I come upon a stall heajied high with ecclesiastical old clothes — ' palls and mitres, gold and gew- gaws, fetched from Aaron's wardrobe, or the flamens' vestry ' — as Milton disdainfully qualifies the clerical vestments which Laud was striving to introduce into the Church. There is a once sumptuous cope, stiff with gold embroidery, of which I saw the twin brother only yesterday in one of the great ecclesiological warehouses in the Rue St. Sulpice. But that cope was brand new, and its sheen was dazzling to look u2)on. The gold in the vestment in the Marclie du Temple is tarnished to griminess. Its edges are wofully frayed. The white-silk lining is as dingy as the lining of a pall in the stock of a cheap undertaker. Yet, rubbed up and patched and cobbled a little, it may serve the purpose of some impecunious cure de campagne, whose marcjuilliers are not wealthy enough to do much for the fabric of the church which the good j)riest serves. His reverence may look as fine as fivepence in that chape next Easter-day. Albs and rochets, tunicles and berettas, stoles and dalmatics, soutanes and rahats, shovel-hats and skull-caps — all are mingled here in picturesque confusion. Stay, here is at once the grandest and the most dilapidated suit in the whole array of sacerdotal old clothes. A swallow-tailed-coat, once scarlet in hue, the shoulders adorned with two bouncing epaulettes, and a jilenitude of gold embroidery about the cuffs and collars and pockets ; an equally gorgeous waistcoat ; a positively astounding handouliere of crimson velvet and golden brocade, silk stockings, and small-clothes of the finest kerseymere ; and, finally, a cocked hat of which a Marshal of France or the late Mr. Toole of the India House might have been proud. Stay, there must to these be added a dainty rapier with a gilt hilt and a big gold tassel. Now what can epaulettes and bandoliers, a small-sword- and a cocked hat, have to do with ecclesiastical vestments ? I have heard of the Church Militant ; but I knew not that its members arrayed themselves in such a pugnacious-looldng panoply as this. But, pondering a moment, I see it all. 406 TAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. Here we have evidently the cast-off carapace of a Suisse — the beadle of some fashionable church. How grand he looked on the occasion of an aristocratic marriage ! How imposmgly solemn w^as his mien when an aristocratic funeral took place ! The Imissicr of the Administration dcs Ponipes Funebres looked, for all his sable garb, the silver buckles on his shoes, and the steel chain of office round his neck, the merest of plebeians by the side of the sumptuous Suisse. The Marche de la Madeleine had surrendered its choicest flowers to compose the bouquet which garnished his button-hole. His white - kid gloves — he was a large man, and * took' nines — fitted him like a second skin. How sonorous was the rever- beration of his golden-tipped staff on the marble pavement as he preceded the bridal cortege or the funeral train, from the great west door to the chan- cel ! His whiskers alone, in their blackness and their bushiness, were a sight to see- A few more inches, a little more hirsuteness, and he might have been a drum-major. He was content to remain a beadle. But, ah, the vanity of things mundane ! Gold- laced coats and cocked hats will not last for ever ; and a Suisse out of elbows is clearly a most unseemly personage. So the fahricicns have bought him, it is to be hoped, a new suit; and his abandoned finery has come — whither? Into 'the portion of weeds and outworn faces,' into the Slough of Shabby Despond of a second- hand clothes booth in the Temple. "Why have I never seen a British beadle's cocked hat in Dudley-street, Seven Dials? Parish beadles, it is true, are rapidly becoming an extinct race; still the Banlc of England and many of the City Companies are yet justifiably proud of the beadles they maintain. Close to the church, as sumptuarily represented in the Marche du Temple, the stage raises somewhat saucily its head. Priests IN THE TEMPLE. 407 and plaj^ers are not yet friends in France. The clergy have not yet forgotten or forgiven Lc Tartu fe. The players have neither forgotten nor forgiven the clergy for their refusal, during the First Restoration, to give Christian burial to the remains of a once popular actress.* Happily in the secondhand clothes galleries of the Temple the motley costumes of the greenroom elbow, amicably enough, the b3'gone wardrobes of the sacristie. Did you ever drive down the Toledo at Naples at Carnival time ? All the fan- tastic gear that Callot ever imagined seems to have been brought to light in the masquerade warehouses of the Toledo. The com- plete accoutrements of scarlet fiends, horns, hoofs, tails, and all ; harlequins' dresses, incrrots' dresses, are hung out, like banners on the outward walls, while hideous masks grin and leer at you in the windows and from the door-jambs. Abating the masks — I believe that it is a matter of sheer impossibility to turn a second- hand pantomime mask to any profitable use, save on Guy Fawkes'- day, when it finds its final cause in the bonfire concluding the festivities — the theatrical booths in the Temple remind one closely of the Neapolitan Toledo. There is the * make-up ' of Dr. Dul- camara — portentous Jrt^o^, top-boots, scarlet coat, voluminous wig, and all. But, woe is me, how dishevelled and unpowdered is the peruke ! Behold the embroidered doublet and hauts-de-chaiisscs of Monsieur Jourdain, the 'Bourgeois Gentilhomme.' Admire ■* Mademoiselle Raucoiii- or de Raucom-, wlio had long retired from the stage, died in January, 1815, without receiving the absolution necessary to remove the excommunication normally lying on players. Her remains were conveyed, for the celebration of the usual rites preceding interment, to the Church of St. Roch in the Rue St. Honore. The funeral procession comprised a large number of carriages, and was followed. l;)y an immense concourse of persons. On the arrival of the cortege at St. Roch the gates were fomid to be locked, and the bearers of the l)ier were peremptorily refused admittance. A great tumult arose, and ultimately the doors were forced open ; but no priest made his appearance. The crowd and the riot increasing, a messenger was sent to the Tuileries to implore the king, Louis XVIII., to interfere by ordering the recalcitrant clergy to jierform the required rites ; but his Majesty declined to interfere in a matter which, in the Royal opinion, pertained exclusively to the spiritual jurisdiction. With conunendable promptitude the actors and actresses of the principal theatres of Paris, headed Ijy the company of the Comedie Fxan^^aise, addressed a communication to the Archbishop of Paris, stating that if the corpse of Mademoiselle Raucour did not at once receive Christian interment they would fdithwith renounce the Roman Catholic religion and become Protestants. This ultimatum frightened the priests. Under the advice of Royalty they gave way ; a funeral Mass was sung over the cottin ; and poor Mademoiselle Raucour was buried in consecrated groimd in the presence of some thirty thousand people, who shouted, ' A has les calottes ! a bas les calottes ! ' 408 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. the dressing-gown and nightcap of the Malade Imaginaire ; and yonder straight-cut jusiaucorps and cloak, once black raven, but now rusty in hue — they must have belonged to Thomas Diafoirus. But in vain do you search for the patched coat, the ])attered white hat, the prodigious cravat, the bludgeon, and the snuff-box of llobert Macaire. The performance of UAuhcrcje des Adrets is still, I believe, prohibited in France ; and rightly so, for the simple reason that the execrable villain, once so admirably impersonated by the late Frederic Lemaitre, is so replete with humour, and has ''list If BEBA.RDEURS AT TUE BAL DE l'oPERA (bY CHAM). withal so many heroic qualities, that in the end the audience are brought to the point of admiring him. Precisely the same reason places the play of Jack Shc2^2)((rd virtually in the Index Expur- gatorius. On the other hand, Mephistophiles is rife in the Temple. Go where you will among the theatrical booths, you may reckon with tolerable certainty on meeting with the red doublet and liose, the short cloak, and the cap with the cock's feather in it, of the ' Esprit qui nie toujours.' Faust, as an opera or as a drama, is veiy i:)opular in the provinces in I ranee, and there is a constant demand for Mepliistoi)liiles costumes. As for the inerrot and harlequin dresses in the Temple, their name is simply legion ; and A TaKTIE CaRIIBK at a 15()UI.KVARI> RrsTAlRANT. IN THE TEMPLE. 409 the same may be said of the coloured satin * trmiks ' — generally pink or sky-blue — and the silk fleshings which, as personal adorn- ments of ladies who frequent masquerades and who do not wear dominos, have superseded the pretty and scarcely indecorous costume of the dehanlcur, a costume which may be said to have expired with its tasteful illustrator, the incomparable Gavarni. These audacious garments tell their own story, but I may hint that when a maillot suit of fleshings is padded, it is technically known as a 'confortable.' The Carnival is coming ; the masked balls at the Opera and other Parisian theatres will speedily set in; and ere many weeks are over a vast number of young persons who ought to know better will be capering about in the pink and sky-blue satin ' trunks ' and tights long after the hour when they should be in bed. The restaurateurs of the Boulevards will be doing a roaring trade ; and the jeunessc cloree of the period will squander, in rather dull and monotonous dissipation, large sums of their own, or of other people's money. At present the mas- querading trumpery on the secondhand clothes stalls of the Temple looks grim. Pierrot's white sleeves are smirched with claret stains, or dinted with holes burnt by smouldering cigars fallen from unsteady fingers. The rubbish wants brightening up. It needs tlie flaring gas to make it look passably attractive. In the day- light it looks simply horrible. Fini de lire, Scaramouch. But the Carnival is coming; and Scaramouch, lilie Paris, will soon be him- self again. Who buy all these play-acting paraphernalia, I wonder? Very small and indigent country managers. The wares are evidently intended for fiu-ther dramatic use ; for the costumes are generally perfect, and you can trace the complete ' make-up ' of the ' pere noble,' the ' amoureux,' the 'ingenue,' and the 'premier' and ' second comique.' A youth who wished at once to begin his career as a ' heavy ' or a ' light ' tragedian, a ' walking gentleman ' or a 'low comedian' — a lady anxious to launch into the 'smging cham- bermaid ' or the ' breeches parts ' line of business — could at once procm-e all that he or she required in the Temple. It is the Vinegar Vard, the Marquis Court of Paris; but meanwhile Made- moiselle Mimi Pinson of the Boutfes, or Madame Ehodope Casse- majoue of the ' ThetUre du High Life,' is paying from fifteen hundred to two thousand francs — to say nothing of her diamonds — for each of the dresses which she orders from her costumure. Those radiant robes may have been designed by Marcelin or Grevin, by ' Stop ' or Pelcoq— the Alfred Thompsons of the French theatres— the robes are beautiful, they are ravishing ; they and 410 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. A ' TETIT CREVl:.' their mucli-dizenctl wearers will be pliotograplied by Nadar or by Reutlinger ; the gommcux and the pc^ifs crcves in the stalls will ajiplaud ; the /c'//;;/;('s honiiftcs in the boxes will be envious of the IN THE TEMPLE. 411 dazzling dresses — and their wearers ; but the Laws of the Ephe- meral are inexorable. 'Froufrou' and 'Niniche,' 'Dora' and ' Cora,' to this complexion j'ou must come at last — to the com- 412 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. plexion of the old- clothes pegs ; to the booth of a rcvcndeuse a la toilette in the Marche du Temple. Ere I bid farewell to this remarkable Exhibition of Old Clothes, T may remark that the assortment of comic trousers is quite sur- prising in its abundance and its variety. Never before did I set eyes on such an assemblage of facetious j^antaloons. Of course, you know the type of the comic trouser. The garment should be, in colour and pattern, what the French paradoxically term ' impos- sible ' — that is to say, preposterously and fantastically outre and extravagant. Inconceivably absurd plaids, never-before-heard-of stripes or spots, should preferably form the pattern ; pea-green, rose-i)ink, glaring yellow, deep orange, sky-blue, are the colours most adapted to the comic trouser, which should always be too high in the waist and too short in the leg. It may be rendered additionally and indeed irresistibly comic by the introduction of a patch — a large patch of a darker or a lighter colour than that of the original fabric. The patch, moreover, should not be worn in front. Such a comic trouser is good for three rounds of applause on the first appearance of the comedian on the stage. Experto crede. I have seen the comic trousers of Yernet and Bouflfe, of Grassot and Ravel, of Harley and Keeley, of AVright and Oxberry and Wrench. Veiy indifferent vaudevilles have ere now been * pulled through,' and have at last bloomed into triumphant successes, mainly through the artistic drollery of the comedian's breeches. Those which I mark in the Temple are general^ brand new. A renowned comic actor does not like to part with his trousers. It is not with them as with official uniforms and clerical vestments, which when they grow shabbj^ degrade the wearers. The comic trouser, like vintage wines, acquire character with age. They may be patched and re- patched, and the raggeder they grow the more risible they may become. As for the nether garments in the Temple, which are new, they seem to me to be ' reproductions ' — copies from some models of comic trousers which had gained celebrity at the Varietes or the Palais Royal. Their purchasers, perchance, are the gentle- men who sing comic songs at the cafes chantants and the Alcazars of Paris and the provinces. Thus while I linger in this Bezesteen of wearmg-apparel there comes up before me a vision of the past. I may be standing on the very j^lace of the Chapter House of the Templars of old, who held here their grandest state, till, like their brethren in England, ' they decayed through pride.' Beneath my very feet the blood of Pichegru may have been shed. Where rises that iron staircase leading to the galleries which surround the old-clothes mart may IX THE TEMl'LE. 413 liave risen the donj on' s winding-stair down which Louis, Antoinette, EHzabeth of France, stepped to their death. The phantoms of Georges Cadoudal and Mehee de la Touche, of Simon the bestial cobbler and the poor little captive king, of Captain Wright and Sir Sydney Smith (that gallant sailor lay long a prisoner in the Temple, and escaped from it in a wonderfully clever and audacious manner), are all around me; but it is not these historic dead that m}'^ fancy conjures up. My vision is only of a pair of trousers bought in the Temple five-and-twenty years ago. It was in the early days of the Second Empire. We were a band of young English and American brothers domiciled in Paris ; — very fond of talking about the pic- tures which we intended to paint, and the novels and plays which we intended to write, and much fonder of amusing ourselves— with material enjoyments when we had any money, with strolling and idling and gossiping when we had none. It so fell out that one of our number was favoured, some time during the winter season of 1854, with an invitation to a grand ball to be given by the Prefect of the Seine at the Hotel de Yille. Evening dress was de rigueur. A ' claw-hammer coat ' and dress waistcoat our friend possessed, but the requisite black pantaloons of fashionable society were lacking. What was to be done ? We had all of us the lightest of hearts ; 414 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. but there was not tlie thinnest pair of sable trousers available among us. So we made a friendly little subscription among our- selves, and our brother was enabled to trudge (fraternally escorted by two judicious brethren, lest he should stray into billiard-play- ing cafes or spend his iJecuUum on rare and ragged editions of the classics on the way) to the Marclie du Temple, where, for the sum of twelve francs, he purchased a pair of the blackest and shiniest black trousers that I ever beheld. He went to the ball at the Hotel de Ville. He danced, he supped, a little too copiously perchance ; at all events, a friend who accompanied him on one of his visits to the buffet gently reminded him that he had suffered some warm punch to trickle over one of the knees of his black dress pantaloons. Promptly our friend produced his handkerchief to remove the unseemly spot of punch. He rubbed and rubbed, but the spot did not disaj^pear. It grew larger, and became at last a hrilliant red. In the midst of an ocean of shiny black there was disclosed to his alarmed eyes an island of the pattern and hue of the Royal Stuart tartan. He was wearing a paii' of plaid trousers that had been dyed black. Ah, faithless Temple ! These trousers were un plat de ton metier. But the vision fades away. It leaves me between a smile and a tear, for in the dim distance I seem to see the white headstones of a graveyard. THE LAST DAYS OF THE EXHIBITIOX. XXXI. GOING ! GOING ! Nov. 10. ' Going ! Going ! ' Far more eloquently and impressively than ever the late Mr. George Robins was accustomed to expatiate, ivory hammer in hand, on the suj^erlative merits of some property which he was instructed to sell, is the auctioneer's formula, although the words themselves may not be uttered, in every corridor of the vast Bazaar of the Champ de Mars. 'Going! Going!' seem to me to be written on all the objects which during many weeks have been landmarks to me in the World's Fair. The Crown diamonds of France are already gone ; and the stately- pavilion, round which crowds used to gather to feast their eyes upon the glittering glories of the * Regent,' the ' oeuf de pigeon,' and the * escargot,' is completely dismantled. The jewelry, indeed, from the entire French department is rapidly disappearing ; but the diamonds and rubies, the pearls and emeralds, will speedily reappear in the 416 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. m psn?jFJRiri^B^ i^::-K-3SiH!!ll«| "•"^ ff^<^g^:a''ai^^sMS^r*;fe^ssgafjj S:^^S?^']^^ DIAMOND AND PEABL BROOCH AND ENAMELLED BRACELETS, EXHIBITED BY M. FROMENT-MEURICE. _ shop-windows of ^Si the Boulevards, the Eue de la MA Mr I , Paix, the Palais - Koyal, and m particular in that astonishing hijou- ticr's close to the Hotel Scribe, whose glittering- display it is diffi- cult to pass at night without an uneasy impression flitting across your mind that in a pre- vious state of ex- istence — ages ago perchance — j'our profession was tAri 1. TfTi 11- *..iT. , burglary. In vour ' My daugliter, I forbid your looking at the Eegcnt. ,,,.„",,/ honnilv He was a most immoral man.' pi esent _ liappil} law - abidnig and Commandment-keeping condition you would never, of course, THE FRENCH CROWN DIAMONDS (bY CHAM). GOING ! GOING ! 417 tliiiik of breaking into a jeweller's shop and filling your pockets with precious things which do not belong to you; but in the l)revious state of existence — ages ago — you were possibly not unacquainted with the use of the 'jemmy' and the picklock as utensils employed in forming a cheap collection of gems. In the Exhibition itself I hear that on the whole but few robberies have been committed. A very large staff of scnicnts de ville and police-agents in plain clothes have constantly patrolled the build- ino-, while the British department has been efficiently watched over by Inspector Giles. We have had, to be sure, no Koh-i-noor, as we had in Hyde Park in 1851, to tempt the feloniously-minded ; and indeed of gems and precious stones generally we make scarcely any show in the Champ de Mars ; still there is an amazing amount of potential ' loot ' in the way of gold and silver m the pavilion of the Elkmgtons ; while an equally attractive display of precious wares is made by Mr. John Brogden of Henrietta-street, Covent Garden. I recently asked the question, ' What will they do with it ? ' May I be suffered to-day to put a further query, ' What will be done with them ? ' By * them ' I mean the pavilions and the 418 PAEIS HEESELF AGAIN. kiosques and the myriacl of glass cases in whicli are enslmned the treasures of the Exposition Universelle. I am much more inter- ested in the study of the destination than in that of the origin of things ; and I am incurabl}^ inquisitive as to what becomes of the okl scenes, dresses, decorations, and properties when the play i& over, and, with its highly animated puppets, has passed away from the world's stage. I can proudly sa}^ that I know what became of the basket-work elephants constructed at old Covent Garden Theatre for the spectacle of the Cataract of the Ganges ; that I have been enabled to trace the vicissitudes of the coronation robes of George IV., from their sale by auction, in July 1830, to their present resting-place at Madame Tussaud's ; and that I followed with mournful affection the migrations of the stalactite grotto, erected by Alexis Soyerin the grounds of his Symposium in 1851, from Gore House to Vauxhall — where the grotto became the Hermit's Cave — and from Vauxhall to Cremorne. In one notable instance, nevertheless, I have been utterly baffled and desoricnt4. For many years did I follow the fluctuating fortunes of the in- genious automaton known as Vaucanson's duck. In lands north, south, east, and west have I met with that duck, exhibited now for a rouble, now for a dollar, now for a franc, and now for sixpence a head. The mechanical bii-d came out in great force at the Paris Exhibition of 1867. Vaucanson's duck was then nearly a hundred years old, but rumom* ran that it had been furnished with a fresh beak and web feet, and an entirely new gizzard, in honour of the Exposition. It was not shown precisely in the Palace of the Champ de Mars, but was to be seen for the remarkably small charge of twenty-five centimes at a modest little haraque in the Avenue Suffren. It turned up again, in conjunction with a wax- work show and a spotted girl, at Nancy, in Lorraine, in July 1870 ; and after that period I am sorry to say that I lost all trace of Vaucanson's duck. The bird fell, I fear, on evil daj's. "Was it fated, I wonder, to be * looted' by Hans Picklehaube of the Pome- ranian Landwehr ; and did that warrior, after an ineffectual attempt to wring its neck and roast it, discover that it was, after all, a kind of clock in feathers, and so, with his national fondness for Jior- logerie, pop it into his knapsack, and take it home to Pommern, where, perchance, it is yet quacking ? So this is my apology for speculating as to what will eventually be- come of the glass cases, the kiosques, the chalets, and the pavilions, which line the corridors and vestibules, or are scattered over the park of the Exposition, and above all, what will become of that agglomera- tion of bizarre edifices known as the liue des Nations. The cloud- GOING ! GOING 419 capped towers of tlie Palace of the Trocadero, its towering cupola and curvilinear arcades, are not, it would seem, destined to dis- solve, and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack IN THE RUE D£S NATIONS (UY CHAM). As all the nations of tlie world occupy the same street, a great roductioii in the postal rate may be looked for. behind. The Trocadero building is to remain. I am sorry for it, although its Retrospective Museum — the contents of which must be speedily packed up and returned to their owners — is one of the most wonderful collections of antiquities and works of bygone art that I have ever seen. Although the grounds surrounding it are laid out with exquisite taste, although the fountains on the terrace are superb in their cascades, and their jets cVea/f, and although astonishing ingenuity has been shown in utilising the Bridge of Jena as an approach, I can but regard the stracture of the palace as extremely ugly, and its style of architecture — if any style it have — as both paltry and meretricious. Napoleon I. intended to build a palace as magnificent as the Tuileries on the selfsame site, as a habitation for the King of Eome ; but the Alhambra- like edifice — I mean the Alhambrain Leicester Square, not the one at Granada — which is to cover en permanence the crest of the eminence miscalled the Trocadero — which in reality is a narrow £ E 2 420 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. aUE COLOSSAL HEAD OF LIBERTY. channel between the island of San Luis and the Bay of Cadiz^ — will make but a very undignified vis-d-vis to the noble pile of the lilcole Militaire in the Champ de Mars. Among the ornate and characteristic erections which will speedily have ' to clear out,' are the Turkish Mosque, the Alge- rian Palace, the Persian Pavilion, the Chinese Pagoda, the Japanese Farm, with its fountain, so much resorted to by thirsty fair ones ; also the bustling Oriental Bazaar, where provincials perpetually chafter with Tares des Batignolles for gimcrack souvenirs of the departing Exhibition. In the British section there GOING ! GOING ! 421 IiNTEKIOR OF THE COLOSSAL HEAD OF LIBERTY. are many outward and visible signs of things being not only going, but gone. Empty glass cases are numerous ; and packing-cases and sawdust, canvas and straw, and the sound of hammers, are every- where. It will be no child's play to remove all the heavy machinery, the Armstrong guns, the ponderous bells, the huge Hungarian tun, the gigantic Creusot hammer, or the colossal head of the bronze statue of Liberty, which is to be set up as a lighthouse at the entrance of New York Harbour, and the internal organism of which the curious are incessantly inspecting. Workmen have already commenced dismantling the Mouchot apparatus, which collected the rays of the sun in a huge inverted funnel, and heated a boiler with them, reminding one of certain proceedings of the Laputan 422 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. pliilosopher whom Gulliver found engaged in extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, and prudently bottling them up for future use. Now that November has arrived, and there is no longer any sun to speak of, tlie apparatus finds its occupation gone, and is pre- paring to pack up. From this same lack of sunshine the Kabjde shoemakers are eager to strike theii* tent in the Trocadero, and emigrate to warmer climes. A similar feeling possesses all the rest of the Orientals ; and the mild Hindoos will, I am sure, willingly abandon shawl-weaving in the Galerie du Travail of the Palace, and forego all the blessings of our boasted civilisation, to return to theii* much-vaunted valley of Cashmere. Eeturnmg, however, to the kiosques and the glass cases, the pavilions and the chalets, and the myriads of bizarre trophies scattered over the palace and the park, one would like to laiow what is to become of the marvellous stalactite grotto built up of seemingly hundreds of thousands of wine-bottles in the Spanish section. What too is to become of the huge trophies of spirit-casks and liqueur- bottles in the Dutch department, and which I incidentally alluded to as monumentally reminding one of the late Mynheer van Dunk ? I strongly suspect, from what I hear, that all these strong drinks will remain and be consumed in the French capital, and that not a single cask of spirit or a single bottle of liqueur will find its way back to Amsterdam. I can quite understand the patronage bestowed by the French on such liqueurs as their own chartreuse and on the Batavian preparations of anisette, mara- schino, curagoa, eau de vie de Dantzig. But then Avhat French- man drinks ' Furies ' or * Maag Bitter,' and, in particular, who drinks schiedam in France ? We all know that they are rapidly becoming a nation of beer-drinkers, and that the}'' should become so, in a strictly moderate sense, is, to my mmd, a consumma- tion very much to be wished. I do not desire to see them consuming our heavy stouts and porters, as the climate of France is too light and elastic for such ponderous beverages ; but pale ale in moderation can do them no kind of harm. Bavarian beer, for political reasons, they resolutely refuse to drink ; and similar causes render them averse from partaking of the once beloved beverage of Strasbourg. Their own beer, from Nancy and other parts of the East of France, is very bad ; and I hold that Burton- on-Trent has a ver}^ bright future before it, and, so far as supplying the French market is concerned, might eventually beat Vienna — great as has been the name of Dreher — out of the field. ' Cere\'isia de Palyaly,' as the Spaniards call Bass's pale ale, is making great way in all the towns of Andalusia, and all the first-rate cafes iu Thk Cashmere Shawl Wt;Avi:r.s in the Galerie du Travail. P. 42 GOING ! GOING ! 423 Paris sell Allsopp, either bottled or on clrauglit. The first bottle of Allsoi)p that I ever saw iii Paris was in 1855, at the Buffet Americain, a short lived refreshment bar, opened — under the auspices of the versatile M. de Villemessant, I "believe — at the corner of the Passage Jouffroy ; but I remember that fif- teen years before, and in the days of Protection, at Cuvillier's, in the Rue about, all day long, shopping. She has sons and grandsons in the army ; and when she meets any non-commissioned officers or sol- diers belonging to the regiments in which her descendants serve, those Braves are swiftly bidden to enter the nearest cafe, there to regale themselves at her expense. I have said that she is an in- veterate shopper ; but I should also have mentioned that, ere she makes a purchase, she always asks the shopkeeper if he be a Kepublican. Woe be, financially speaking, to the commergant who has the coui'age of his opinions, and avows his democratic procli-- 432 TAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. vities to the Legitimist Lad}^ Bountiful ! She will buy of him five sous' worth of pins, or half a franc's worth of notepaper, and pass on. But fortunate is the tradesman who owns the soft impeach- ment of Bonapartism, of Orleanism, or especially of an attachment for Henri Cinq. At once he secures a most profitable customer. At a quarter to five, in the Exliibition building, the police on duty began to shout ' Sortez, sortez, s'il vous plait.' The police voice is a hoarse, lugubrious, raven-like croak, the dissonant notes of which might be advantageously studied by Sir George Bowyer, since they bear out the worthy baronet's theory as to the influence of climate on the human voice. The Parisian police under the Kepublic are nearly all Northerners. Circumstances — the chilling wind among them — lent additional cacophony to the strident invi- tation to depart on Sunday. Do you remember to have heard in the Cemetery of Pere la Chaise the unsympathetic and nerve- jarring voice of the gardien with the owl-like visage, who, in the same ton nasillard, drew your attention to the monument erected to Abelard and H^loise, to the 'Tombeau de Marchangy, I'Avoeat- General qui a fait condamner les Quatre Sergents de la RocheUe,' and to the grave of 'Le Depute Baudin, tue sur une barricade a la suite des emeutes du Coup d'fitat'? He would have recited — could he have spoken English — Tom Ingoldsby's ' Vulgar Little Boy,' and Tom Hood's ' Bridge of Sighs,' in precisely the same key, and with precisely the same intonation. * Sortez, s'il vous plait.' There was at least a tinge of polite- ness in the admonition ; whereas, when Artemus Ward gave his first entertainment, his programme was found to conclude with the postscript, ' If the audience do not go at the conclusion of the per- formance, they will be turned out.' But hush ! hark ! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell. Far away — I do believe it is in the Chinese section — a body of French workmen have struck up the ' Marseillaise.' Accordmg to Cham, the caricaturist in the Charivari, the Mandarin-looking gentleman in the Chinese sec- tion had his pigtail curled into half a dozen concentric circles in honour of the closing day. What could that dignified personage in the mauve-silk petticoat and fawn-coloured clogs, and with the cafd- a,u-lait-colouved countenance, have thought of Bouget de I'lsle's war-chant. But there is j'et more music in the November air in the Palace of the Champ de Mars. The strains of an anthem gloriously familiar to English ears echo from the British section, where a brass band, specially smuggled in for the occasion, are playing ' God save the Queen.' Our American cousins did not follow suit with ' Hail Columbia ' or ' Yankee Doodle.' They cele- GONE ! 433 Lrated the termination of their own share in the Exhibition a week ago, by sounding * at full blast ' all the steam whistles in their machinery section. The French auditors of this appalling noise fled in affright, stopping their ears ; but the Americans were in ecstasies with the piercing shrillness of each successive whistle. * That's the kmd of shriek, sir,' remarked a gentleman from Hart- ford, Connecticut, to his neighbour and fellow-countrj-^man, ' that the Lawyer gives when the Devil gets hold of him.' The gentleman from Hartford's compatriot observed that a few hotel gongs might have materially aided the demonstration. Our National Anthem, nevertheless, ' fetched ' the French por- tion of the multitude to an enthusiastic extent. An impression became current that ' les Anglais ' were celebrating the close of the Exhibition in some characteristically national manner ; haply by eating ' rosbif ' and drinking ' porter-beer,' possibly by dancing ' ompipes ' and ' gigues.' At all events, the many-headed struggled 434 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. manfully to reach the section whence the sounds of ' God save the Queen ' proceeded; but they were kept back with gentle firmness by the police, one stout hrigadier confidentially informing M. Joseph Prudhomme, who was excitedly anxious to know what ' les Anglais ' were doing, that the Prince of Wales had, just before his Royal Highness quitted Paris, concluded a special treaty with the French Government, authorising the English exhibitors to keep their department open until six o'clock in the afternoon of Novem- ber the Tenth, and that they were not to be interfered with in their revels. ' Car, voyez-vous,' added the confidential hrigadier, ' le Prince de Galles e'est I'ami de la France ; et nous lui devons quelque chose.' M. Joseph Prudhomme went away perfectly satis- fied ; and, for my part, I think that it should be equally satisfac- tory to all and sundry to Imow that ninety-nine Frenchmen out of a hundred are of the same opinion with the worthy hrigadier on Sunday, and that the last embers of enmity between us and a valiant and intelligent people, whom we fought tooth and nail, oft' and on, for eight hundred years, but who are now our fast friends, have been stamped out. Eighty thousand countrymen of M. Joseph Prudhomme, and perhaps twenty thousand foreigners, slowly drifted out of the Champ de Mars and the Trocadero, to engage in a final struggle for cab, omnibus, or tapissih-e ; and by a few minutes after five Universal Darkness had covered all. What next ? Le Roi est mort ! Vive le Roi ! The Monarch who, since May last, has reigned in the World's Fair has expired ; but another sovereign was instantaneously enthroned. Paris is Herself again ; and I, for one, rejoice greatly at the advent of the new d3'nasty. I love Paris very dearly, and have so cherished it during many years ; but the Paris which I have known, and in which I have groaned and grumbled during fourteen feverish weeks, has not been by any means my Lutetia Parisiorum. I am there- fore pleased to find that although it was only yesterday that the Exhibition closed, the streets to-day present a multiplicity of symp- toms of Paris being Herself again. The boulevards are already assuming their wonted aspect ; and many well-known characters who have been identified for years with these animated thorough- fares, are returning to their customary haunts. The Franks, the Huns, the Visigoths, and the Vandals have reigned long enough ; and it is quite time that the Gauls should resume their sway. The Parisian is a Gaidois pur sang ; but during the Exliibi- tion his national characteristics have been hidden well-nigh to the point of obliteration by the move or less barbarous peoples who have flocked to the metropoHs of France to satiate their eyes and GONE 4Si to squander their mone}'. The mad costly carnival is over, and there is beginning the customary and continuous festival of La Vie Parisienne — a life of pleasure and shows, all of which are cheap and many of which are gratuitous. The cabmen, for a wonder, are absolutely askmg to be hired. Hold up your hand or your umbrella opposite a cab-rank, and a dozen whips will be at once held up in response to your signal. The sudden politeness too of the Paris Jehus is positively embar- rassing. I am glad to note that the shandrydan victorias, into which I have seen as many as five persons crammed — the vehicles in question are constructed to hold two passengers — exclusive of a baby and a poodle, are rapidly disappearing, and are being replaced by the smart comfortable little coupes — vastly superior to the ma- jority of English hired broughams — which were introduced in Paris in 1851, and have since been copied and improved upon in Madrid and in Milan. Now these little coupes will hold two people and no more, and theii' inexpansiveness rendered them all but useless during the summer months, when the object of the Paris cabman, like that of a Margate fly- driver, was to get as many people into his carriage with as many separate augmentations of fare as he possibly could. The reign of the enormous tapissicres and chats-d-bancs is likewise at an end ; and few — now that it is no longer a matter of convenience to F F 2 436 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. reach the Exhibition for the moderate fare of seventy-five centimes — will regret the disappearance of the unwield}^ caravans in ques- tion. I was actuall}' enabled at noon this morning to cross the boulevard from the Grand Cafe to the Eue Neuve St. Augustin without feeling in mortal dread of being crushed by a tajns- sierc, run into by a cab, run over b}- the T-cart or the phaeton of a mem- ber of the Jockey Club, brayed be- neath the wheels of an advertising van — we had to put the last-named nuisances down by Act of Parliament more than twenty years ago — smash- ed by one of the fonrgons of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, or utterly annihilated beneath the wheels of one of the monstrous vehicles of the Compagnie Generale des Omnibus. Yes, Paris is Herself again. Even last night I found out that gratifj'ing fact when I dined at the restaurant I had fixed upon in perfect comfort. During the last three months the nightly and dolorous question which I have addressed to myself has been less * Where shall I dine ? ' than ' Shall I be able to dine anywhere at all ? ' I have sat down, metaphorically speaking, before the restaurant of the Maison Doree, even as a military commander in the old days of warfare used to * sit down ' before a besieged city. I have progressively advanced my parallels, and have cajitured ravelin and counterscarp, fosse and bastion, so to speak, to the extent of extracting a promise from the head-waiter to look after my interests ; but over and over again have I failed to storm the citadel of the Maison Doree in the way of obtaining a table whereat to despatch my frugal meal. As for the Cafe Anglais, if Yi-SC Ic /Ja/s.., r-r.c, — ■ A COURTEOUS CABMAN (bY CIIAm) ' Monsieiir, yovi appear to have a cold. to get you something for it at the chemist's. Allow me GONE 437 you asked in August or September ' s'il y avait de la place,' you were met with a deprecatory shrug and an apologetic outstretching of the hands on the waiter's part. At the Cafe Eiche, your inquiries as to whether there were room extracted only a derisive grin on the part of the maitre cVJwtel. You must be toque, ' daft,' stark staring mad, to think for a moment that there could be any room at the Cafe Eiche. In despair, after being turned a^ay imprans us from the doors of half a dozen restaurants, I drove one evening over the water to Magny's clean, comfortable, and well-served res- taurant in the Eue Mazet, off the Eue Dauphine. * Je vous ferai diner,' quoth M, Magny, rubbing his hands. I dined very well indeed ; and the next evening, with a light heart — O, vanity of age untoward ! — I drove over again to the Eue Mazet. Alas ! 438 PARIS HERSELF AGAIX. M. Magny's restaurant was full from the rcz de chaiissee to the garrets, which had heen converted, for the nonce, into so many cabinets 2Jarticuliers. I used to dine very often at another excellent restaurant, in the Place de la Fon- taine Gaillon; and I eulogistically mentioned M. Grossetete, the proprietor thereof, as a single-minded res ta nrat eur, wh o had announced to his numerous cli- entele that it was his intention not to raise his prices during the Exhi- bition. Infatuated I ! I am afraid ' Waiter, what have I to pay 1 ' that the publicity * Whatever you please, sir. You can make out your -vv-hich all inno- own hill.' Ai ' T . A cently, 1 gave to M. Grossetete's intentions must have attracted crowds of English visitors to the Eestaurant Gaillon. In owy case, the place grows more crowded and more British every night. II n'y avait i^lus moyen. At length, after waiting forty minutes for a harhue mix fines herhes, I sorrowfully told M. Grossetete that I must seek a dinner somewhere else. * You abandon us ! You desert us ! ' cried M. Grossetete, affected almost to tears ; * Mais, Monsieur, c'est navrant : c'est ecoeurant.' I told him that I did not intend to abandon him ; but that I would come and see him again — when the Exhibition was over. I will go, now that the Exhibition is over, and that Paris is Herself again. I have recently come across several types of the _/7(?»c«r, that thoroughl}' characteristic Parisian, who has seemingly been com- j)elled during these fearful months of excitement to hide himself in remote holes and corners, say in the Rue St. Louis au Marais, or in the Eue St. Andr4 des Arts, and I am positively' in hopes of meet- ing ere long the Nice Old Gentleman. The petit rentier no longer AT A EESTAURANT AFTER THE EXHIBITION (bY CHA.m). GONE 439 finds his place at Duval's usurped b}' a hungry family from Brivcs- la-Gaillarde or Arcis-sur-x\ube ; and the mysterious tribe of people who frequent the cafes, apparently for the sole purpose of going to sleep over their havaroise an. chocolat, have reappeared, and have THE DESOLATE CAFE AND ITS DEJECTED ATTENDANTS (bY CHAM). 440 PAPJS HERSELF AGAIN'. now an ample opportunity to indulge their somnolent propensities. A week ago, not the Fat Boy in Pickwick, not even the Seven Sleepers, could have snatched forty winks at any time of the day or night in any Parisian cafe. The traffic has been lightened, the crowds lessened, the tumult quelled, the madness calmed down ; and even in matters theatrical Paris is becoming Herself again. It is possible to obtain sifauteuil cVorchestre at a first-class theatre without having to make one of the queue in front of the bureau de location, to find, after two or three hours' waitmg, that all the seats in the house are booked for a fortnight to come, or being compelled to purchase a ticket at an agence dcs theatres, at an advance of five hundred per cent, on the normal price. If this halcyon state of things continues, I shall, before I leave Paris, positively go to the play. THE MARTYRS OF TUE EXHIBITIOIT. XXXIII. IN THE BOIS. Nov. 14. Full nine weeks did I pass in Paris, while the Workl's Fair was ixt its wildest, without even thinking of taking a carriage-drive in the Bois de Boulogne. There were plenty of amply-sufficing reasons for my not indulging in a to me once-familiar pleasure. In the first place, my circle of acquaintances, during the period of which I speak, did not comprise any of those fortunate beings col- loquially known as * carriage-people.' I had, indeed, no acquaint- ances at all worth speaking of, beyond the barber, the hotel-clerk, the chambermaid who had been a dragoon, Eugene, a waiter at the Grand Cafe, and the washerwoman. And she was my bitterest <'nemy. I might have found plenty of friends. Nobody cut me ; but I cut everybody whom I could possibly avoid, in order that I might the better attend to some business I had then in hand. To study the street-life of' a great city and to move in polite society are not compatible pursuits, and, for the nonce, I gave polite society the go-by. In the next place, had I wished to take a quiet drive now and again in the Bois, I should have been disappointed ; for betwaen mid- August and mid-October there were no voitures de grancle remise to be hired at any of the livery stables. I shrank from making an appearance at the Cascade or the Avenue de ITm- peratrice in a one-horse shandrydan from the boulevard cab-ranks ; and the non-arrival of the necessary cheques precluded me from going to Binder's, and saying to that eminent coachmaker, * Let 442 TAEIS HERSELF AGAIX. me have something of your newest and most elegant in the way of a phaeton or a yictoria — quelque chose cle joli dans les trois mille francs comptant.' As it chanced, there came to Paris, dming the last days of the Fair, a friend who was fortmiate enough to secure, by the week, at Meurice's, a very comelj^ barouche and pair. It was the only available turn-out, they said, left in Paris, except one which had been hired by the Minister from Madagascar to convey his Excellency to i\\efHe at Versailles. Nor barouche nor Minis- ter ever came back ; and the hapless diplomatist and his Secretary of Legation are, it is supposed, still wandering up and down in search of their greatcoats, while the coachman from Meurice's is waiting for his fare in the midst of the Plain of Satory. So I had my drive in the Bois after all. A very fine afternoon in the first week of November. It was the close of that exceptional surcease from climatic asperity known as St. Martin's Summer. The Americans have theii' 'Indian Summer,' a respite from winter almost as sunshiny and as mellow as ' I'fite de St. Martin,' who, by the way, fulfils in France the functions attributed to St. Michael, in being the patron saint of geese. In the old livrp.s cVimages of fipinal, St. INIartin is always represented with a nimbus of geese round his head ; and on his fete roast goose makes its appearance at the tables of the French bourgeoisie as regularly as it does with us at Michaelmas. Another knock-down blow to the tradition that Queen Ehzabeth was dining on hot roast goose when the news of the destruction of the Spanish Armada was brought to her. L'Ete de St. Martin^made the Bois look very lovely indeed. Ascending the Champs Elysees, and crossing the Place de I'fitoile, I found the coquettish little houses built d VAnglaise in the Avenue de rimperatrice Avearing their most smiling aspect ; and the eight thousand tre'es and shrubs which the massifs of the Avenue are said to contain showed in the afternoon sunshine but very few signs of the sere, the yellow leaf. Far off in the blue distance loomed the fortress of Mont Yalerien and the hills of St. Cloud, of Bellevue, and of Meudon. Entering the Bois by the Porte Dauphine, we followed the Eoute du Lac to the Lower Lake, with its pine-clad banks and its two pretty little eyots ; and then we drove to the upper lake, with its splendid cascade. Then the Piond de la Source, the Butte Mortemart, and the Mare d'Auteuil, were all visited in due course. The Pre Catelan looked as hand- some as ever ; and at length we reached the Hippodrome of Long- champ, with its racecourse, its windmill, and its gray old tour a jyignon, the last-remaining vestige of the once-famous Abbey of Longchamp, founded in the middle of the thirteenth century by IN THE BOIS. 443 THE CHAMPS :fiLYSEE.S. Isabella of France, sister of St. Louis, and which endured until the great revolutionary cataclysm of 1789. Never was there a more aristocratic, or, if the cJironiquc scan- daleuse is to be believed, a naughtier nunnery than that of Long- champ. It was Eabelais' Abbey of Thelema, with additions and emendations, and ' Fay ce que vouldras ' might have been written over the conventual gates. The excellent St. Vincent de Paul was in a terrible way about the ' goings-on ' among these exceptionally vivacious nuns, and in a letter to Cardinal Mazarin indignantly denounced the irregularities which had become habitual in the establishment. The Ai-chbishop of Paris remonstrated with the naughty nuns ; but they snapped their fingers metaphorically in the archiepiscopal face, and continued their fandangos. But they were eventually punished for their peccadillos. The pious world ceased in disgust to make pilgrimages to the tomb of Ste. Isabelle de Longchamp, and to deposit rich offerings on her shrine. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the convent had grown comparatively poor, when, in 1727, a reno^med oi)era- singer, Made- moiselle le Maure, having taken the veil at Longchamp, the happy thought occurred to the abbess of giving concerts of sacred music on the three last days of Lent. These concerts were a pro- digious success. The Parisian world, fashionable and frivolous as well as devout, flocked, as fast as their coaches-and-six could 444 PARIS HERSELF AGAIX. carry them, to hear the Longchamp oratorios ; and these concerts remained in vogue for nearly Mty years. It came at hist to the ears of another Archbishop of Paris, Monsigneur Christophe de Beaumont — a prelate celebrated for his enmit}' to theatrical enter- tainments, and his quarrel with Jean Jacques Rousseau — that the attractions of the choir at the Abbey of Longchamp were enhanced by the voices of a number of artistes from the opera who had not taken the veil. So the church was closed to the public. There was an end of the cause, but the effect remained. Out of the fashionable pilgrimages grew the world-famous Promenade de Longchamp, which began in the Champs lillysees, and wound its course right athwart the Bois de Boulogne to the gates of the Abbey itself. It was found that the setting-in of the spring fashions might be fitl}^ made to coincide with the eve of Easter ; and every year during three days in Passion- week there was an incessant cavalcade of princes, nobles, bankers, fermiers- gencmux, strangers of distinction, and the ladies then known as ridneuses, to Longchamp. It became not a Ladies' Mile, but a Ladies' League. Tlie equipages of the grandest dames of the Court of Versailles locked wheels with the chariots of La Duthe and La Guimard ; and the legends whisper that the ruineuses made, as a rule, a much more splendid appearance than the grandes dames did. The Duchess of Valentinois was not, however, to be put down by ' ces creatures.' In the spring of 1780 her Grace appeared at the promenade de Longchamp in a carriage of which the panels were composed of superbly-painted Sevres porcelain. This china coach Avas drawn by six mottle-graj^ horses, with harness of crimson silk embroidered with silver. A famous ridneuse, La Morphise, an actress ' protected ' b}^ Louis XV., and whose son, by her Royal protector, Beaufranchet, Comte d'Oyat, was after- wards present as chief of the staff of the Army of Paris at the execution of Louis XVI., and positively gave the command for the drums to beat when his unhajipy grand-nephew by blood attempted to address the spectators — La Morphise, I say, endeavoured to outshine the Duchess of the i)orcelain coach. She was unable to procure any china panels from the Royal manufactor}^ at Sevres, but she had the sides and back of her carriage made of the finest niarqueterie in brass work and tortoiseshell. Her horses were black, with harness of crimson velvet and gold. The equij^age would have been a success, had not the coachman of the Swedish Minister run the pole of his chariot through one of the panels of the tortoiseshell coach. The ^;^rtsco was complete ; the crowd began to jeer, and the discomfited Morphise drove home lamenting. IX THE BOIS. 445 I had plenty of time to recall this, as well as man}' other remi- niscences of the Bois cle Boulogne, since we liad made the slight mistake of going thither at two o'clock in the afternoon, at least an hour and a half too early. The time for the fasliionable promenade was, at the beginning of the month, from half-past three to five P.M. There was scarcely anybody on wheels or on horseback in the Bois when we arrived : thus the aspect of the place, for all tlie mild beauty of St. Martin's summer, was decidedly the reverse of hilarious. A slight halt for refreshment being suggested, I proposed that we should partake of a picturesque and innocent beverage — new milk, to wit, at the well-known farm close to the Pre Catelan. We duly entered the somewhat tame and frigid imitation of a farmhouse, which has a most melancholy little cafe attached to it, and in the yard of which a dejected horse walks round andround in a seem- ingly ceaseless cir- cuit. You have, at first, not the slight- est idea as to why he should be so very peripatetic ; but soon you are taken into an outhouse, and there you perceive that the quadruped in the farmyard is working a Avlieel which works a machine for grmding horse-chestnuts or chopping mangold- wurzel and carrots. After that we were taken to see the cows. Here the conventional etiquette is to quote at least one verse from Pierre Dupont's lyric of ' Les Boeufs : ' ' J'ai deux grands boeufs dans mon etable, Deux grands boeufs blancs taclies de roux ; Le timon est en bois d'erable, L'aiguillon en tranclie de houx.' There were a few big oxen in the enormous cowshed of the a cowshed on which that eminent agri- Ferme du Pre Catelan cultural reformer, Hercules, might have advantageously bestowed a glance after making the stables of King Augeas neat and tidy ; but there were, in addition, about a hundred poverty-stricken little 44G TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. Alderneys. Some of these were being milked by bearded men in blouses and with bare feet. This did not look b}'- any means picturesque, and failed to conjure up memories of the charming old English lyric about the lass ' that carried the milking-pail.' A paved aisle ran between the vaccine ranks, and at intervals in this gangway were little tables, at which sate, on three-legged stools, M. Joseph Prudhomme, rentier, of the Marais ; M. Casson- nade, ofNoisy-le-Sec,epicier; and M.Choufleury, Mayor of Chateau- Pignouf, Department of the Ganache Superieure ; with any number of feminine and juvenile Prudhommes, Choufleurys, and Casson- nades, all drinking new milk with a sorrowful but determined expression of countenance. I always endeavour in my wanderings to * see the Elephant,' and at Rome to do as the Romans do ; so, regardless of consequences, I ordered new milk for four ; but the lady of our party beginning at this conjuncture to * feel bad ' — the odour of the Catelan cowhouse may have had something to do with it — we prudently withdrew to the cafe. The milk was peculiar in flavour, but scarcel}^ nice. That was not the name for it. In the cafe we found some coffee, which tasted worse than the milk, and some cognac, which tasted worse than either. The microscopic nature of the change out of a five-franc piece, tendered in payment for these delicacies, excited, however, our admiration ; and it was something, after all, to be reminded, in the very outskirts of Paris, of that dear old Dutch deception, the 'clean' village of Broek. So farewell, Arcadia, which I have generally found to be a very expensive country. When we got back to the Bois we found it, not certainly in all its glory, but fairly well patronised by the equipages of the fash- ionable world. The French aristocracy seemed rather to shine by its absence than otherwise. The Duchesses and Marchionesses had perhaps not yet returned from Biarritz or Vichy, or from their chateaux ; but there was a very considerable sprinkling indeed in handsome equipages of la haute finance, of foreign diplomacy, and especially of the haut commerce. The wealthy tradesman — the enriched chocolate, cognac, pickles, sago, cooking-stove, corset, pills, perfumery, confectionery manufacturer, or what not — seems to be coming very rapidly to tlie front just now, and to be making as conspicuous an appearance in society under the Republic as his congeners did under the Monarchy of Louis Philippe. The Second Empire was the time of triumph in the Bois, as everywhere else, of splendid adventurers of both sexes, and of every possible descrip- tion ; and I am bound to confess that, ten years ago, the as])ect of the Bois de Boulogne was far more stylish than it is at i)resent. IN THE BOIS. 447 There was a tremen- dous amount of extra- vagance ; still luxury did not often reach the * Benoiton ' point of ostentatious vulgarity. The cattle seen in the Bois in 1867-8 were, as a rule, superb. Very rarely now do you see in it a horse worth so much as a hundred- pound note. There have been no good horses in Paris, they tell you, since the siege. The driving, too, seems to have wofully deteriorated ; a fact which, I consider, is not at all to be wondered at. Poor Napoleon III., whatever may have been his shortcomings, certainly knew the ' points ' of a horse, as Mr. Samuel Sidney or as ' Stonehenge ' knows them. Csesar defunct was an eminently 'horsey' sovereign, and his stud-grooms were Enghsh- men. The wealthiest and ' horsiest ' of foreign grandees flocked to the brilliant Court of the Tuileries, and the ruineuses of ten years 'If f',V FROM ' LA VIE PARISIENNE.' 448 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. since — tliey were called cocottes tlien — vied in the splendour of tlieir equipages with the great ladies of the Empire and the foreign Ambassadresses, just as, a centmy ago, La Morphise vied with the Duchesse of Yalentinois. All that is ' played out.' The Duthes and Gumiards and Morphises of the Second Empire seem all but entirely to have disappeared. They may be keepmg bureaux de tahac, or opening box- doors at the playhouse, or wait- ing in white aprons at the Bouillon- Duval, for aught I know ; and in the Bois de Boulogne I foiled to count more than a dozen calcches or victorias, occupied by unmistakably yellow-haired enchantresses. There was one on horseback in the Avenue de Suresnes ; but she was stout, and forty. O, * stylishness ' of the Bois, what has become of thee ? On the other hand, there was an abundance of exquisitely-neat little private broughams and coupes, with quiet-looking ladies and gentlemen inside ; a number of very badly appointed and worse driven dog-carts IN THE liOIS. 449 Jind T-carts, two or three mail-pliaetons, a solitary tandem, and any number of right-down j^ac res and shandr3^dans, full of honest folk from the i)rovinces, enjoying themselves to all appearance mightily. It w'ere better — much better so. True the quality of the cattle in the Bois de Boulogne improved ; but a little stylishness may be perhaps dispensed with when the owners of the most stylish equipages are reckless adventurers, mushroom millionnaires, or the young ladies with tresses of convertible hues who were wont to be called ruineuses, and who in successive generations, from the time of Lais and Phryne downwards, have ruined a surprising number of silly people. And now farewell, Bois ; and fare^yell, Paris, too, for a time ; for my boat is on the shore and ni}^ bark is on the sea ; that is to say, I liave got a through ticket to London, and I have an appointment to-morrow at noon at Charing Cross. G G XXXIV. PARIS REVISITED rALM SUNDAY ON THE BOULEVARDS. April 7, 1879. * VoiLA, patron ! ' In these words of cheerful deference was I addressed, soon after my arrival in Paris j-esterday morning, by the red-waistcoated and oilskin-covered-liatted driver of hackney- carriage No. Five Thousand and odd, stationed on the Boulevard des Italiens. Cocker Five Thousand and odd absolutely wanted a fare, and condescended to make courteous proclamation of the cir- cumstance. Bear in mind that he hailed me as ' patron ' ! Under normal circumstances the Parisian cabby declines to apply to hi& fare a more dignified designation than that of ' mon bourgeois,' and too frequently during the Exhibition orgy of extortion * mon bourgeois ' became * Ohe ! la-bas ! ' I have been called likewise * chameau,' ' animal,' and ' requin ; ' and one Jehu, with whom I had a slight difficulty arising from his demanding four francs fifty centimes for driving me from the Porte Eapp to the Luxembourg, was good enough to express his opinion that I was * un exposant de peaux d'hippopotame ' — an exhibitor of hippopotamus hides.. There was some mothcr-Avit in the abuse, and I forgave it. But no cabman vilifies the wandering tourist now. The hackney carriages are many, and the fares are few. The times liave PALM SUNDAY ON THE BOULEVARDS. 451 changed, and Paris is herself again. Aha ! The proud Auto- niedon of the asphalte defers to me as his ' patron,' does he ! I mean to be as haught}^ as he was between mid-July and mid- October last year. I shall tolerate no overcharges, and wink at no sin of omission in the delivery of a ticket on his part. In fact, like Mr. Pepys, when he put on his suit with the gold buttons, I intend in the future to ' go like myself,' to patronise only coupes with unbroken windows and untattered cushions, and to ride only behmd cattle that are not spavined, windgalled, and shoulder- shotten. It is slightly difficult to find such irreproachable animals on the Parisian cab-ranks ; still, I have a fortnight before me, and the stud to select from is large. Yesterday was Palm Sunday — ' le Dimanche des Rameaux ' — and I had no sooner emerged from the Northern Terminus into the interminable Rue de Lafayette, the Upper Wigmore Street of Lutetia, ere I became aware that the first day of Holy Week had begun. The streets were all agreen with branches of box-tree — the AVestern substitute for palms. By this time millions of ' fais- ceaux ' of the ' buis benit,' blessed yesterday in the churches, have been hung up over the chimneypieces or thrust behind the frames of pictures and looking-glasses, not to be disturbed until the eve of another Palm Sunday. A pretty custom. We are too much in a huriy, perhaps, in England, when Christmas week is over, to sweep the holly and mistletoe into the dustbin ; but if paterfami- lias pleads for a little extension of time for the crisp green leaves and sparkling berries, the careful housewife sternly pronounces the ominous word ' dust ' ! We are the slaves, in smoky London, of the dust and ' the blacks.' Here there is little dust worth speak- ing of; and there are no 'blacks ' at all. Thus the Parisians will be enabled to indulge to the fullest in their passion for perpetuat- ing the verdant memories of Palm Sunday. Prodigious quantities of leafy box arrived at the Halles Cen- trales by dawn on Sunday, and by seven in the morning had been dispersed through every quarter of Paris. The grisette trotted by, with her long slim loaf — her provision of bread for the day — held, not ungracefully, sceptre-wise in one hand ; her little can of milk pendent from one finger ; in the other hand her morsel oifromage de Brie, wrapped up in paper ; and, secure under her arm, her bunch of * rameaux.' She Avould not much mind going without her breakfast, poor thing ; but those fasces of green stuft' she must have. So do you see crowds of working-men's wives and children trooping onwards, all laden with branches of bids. Bu-nam Wood seems coming to Dunsinane. Impromptu inarchandes de rameaux G a 2 452 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. establish themselves at all the street-corners, Avhile the regular greengroceries seem to be doing almost as good a business in * buis ' as in cauliflowers and cabbages. They tell me that the French workman is, in the majoritj' of cases, a confirmed sceptic, and this statement would appear to be to some extent confirmed by the vast number of freethinking half-^penny and penny news- papers and periodicals which are Voltairian, and something more than Voltairian, in their views ; but, all sceptic as he may be, the Parisian proletarian does not, to all appearance, entertain the slightest objection to his wife and children purchasing box-branches on Palm Sunday, and decorating the family mansarde therewith. One reason for this may be that in matters social the proletarian in question is a very staunch Conservative. He abhors innovation, and likes to do as his fathers did before him. He may sneer at the observances of the Dimanche des Pameaux as ' un tas de betises ; ' yet, I fancy, he would rate Marie Jeanne his wife, and Nanette and Louison his daughters, if the traditional branches of buis, duly blessed by the cure, whom he professes to hate so much, were not to make their accustomed appearance over the chimnej' or behind the portrait of M. Gambetta on Monday in Passion- week. The portrait of M. Leon Gambetta, lithographed, photo- graphed, graved on steel, or cut on wood, is everywhere in Paris just now. He is enjoying, pictorially, an Admiral Keppel, a Mar- quis of Granby-like ajDotheosis. Pepublican France is continually drinking toasts to Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity at the sign of the Gambetta's Head. What was it that the Tory old lady was heard to mutter one day as she pasHd a tavern, the sign of which displa3''ed a flaring efiigy of Jack Wilkes crowned with the Cap of Liberty ? * He swings,' remarked the Tory old lady, * everywhere but where he should.' There may be in Pepublican France not a few politicians who hold the same opinion with regard to the omnipresent portrait of the President of the Chamber of Deputies as was held by the elderly gentlewoman of Church and State proclivities touching the head of Jack Wilkes. What the newest of the brand-new journals, which are well-nigh incessantly sproutmg up, thinks about the First Statesman in France — the statesman whom M. Tliiers dubbed ' un fou furieux ' — is problematical. The new journal of which I speak is called Gallia. It is not a penny paper — O dear, no ! It is sold at the patrician sum of fifty centimes, and comprises only four pages of very widely-displa3'ed tj'pe, mainly devoted to a puft" of a new * Album de I'Fxpo- sition.' But on the front page is gummed a cloudy little photo- PALM SUNDAY OX THE BOULEVARDS. 453 LE NID DE L AIGLE AT CAHOKS. graph representing the exterior of a humble grocer's shop in a provincial town. The door-jambs are embellished with counter- leit presentments of sugarloaves. In the windows appear pickles, haricots, lentils, cakes of chocolate, vermicelli, olives, and other ' denrees coloniales.' Over the shop-front appears a capacious placard inscribed ' Bazar Genois : Gambetta Jeune et Cie. ; ' and beneath the spectator reads, ' Sucre du Havre, Nantes, et Bor- deaux, 1 fr. le k.,' meaning one franc the kilogramme. This curious picture the accompanying letterpress informs the reader represents ' La Maison de Gambetta a Cahors ; ' and the unpre- tending grocery is otherwise pompously styled ' Le Nid de I'Aigle ' — The Eagle's Nest. Is all this good-natured banter, or honest admiration for a man who from such small beginnings has risen so high ; or is it so much black and bitter envy, malice, and uncharitableness ? That would be difficult to determine. I never knew political satire of the pictorial kind to be so savagely spiteful as it is in France just now ; and the Cahors grocery photograph may be deemed a master-stroke by politicians who hate M. Gam- betta. It does not matter much, perhaps, after all. Garibaldi used to make candles, once upon a time, at Staten Island, Ne 454 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. York ; and Hofer, the Tell of the Tyrol, kept a public-house. When a milkonnaire chocolate manufacturer was taunted in full Chamber by a Bonapartist Deputy with having formerly been a country grocer, on the very smallest of scales, he replied that such was certainly the fact ; and that the father of the honourable ,-^v^ gentleman had been a customer of his, and had forgotten to settle his small account for Pieunion coffee and Jamaica rum. Meanwhile, the pleasure-loving Parisians have been spending Palm Sunday in theii* own characteristic fashion. I fancy that the churches of London were all most decorously well attended yesterday, and that the last week in Lent left nothing to be desired in the wa}' of devout observance. Othei-wise, if you in England were afflicted with such remarkably disagreeable weather as we suf- fered yesterday, I fancy, again, that your V^ ' / / Palm Sunday must have been socially an ^ '^ / intensely dull and dreary one. It was other- wise here. The barometer, meteorologic- all}^ went down; but the spirits of this most mercurial population went up. They made a day of it, miserable as it was. V ^s^/ rALM SUNDAY ON THE BOULEVARDS. 455 The devout spent the season in their own way. There were matin and vesper sermons b}^ friars of great oratorical emmence at Notre Dame. The fires of Lacordaire and Hyacinthe yet live, it is asserted, in the ashes of the French pulpit ; and in the religious journals .you read of nascent Mas- sillons and coming Bourdaloues, of Fle- chiers hitherto un- known to fame, and even of a new Bossuet hourly expected from orthodox Provence, and who between this and Easter may be expected to recall the thunders of the Eagle of Meaux. Heligious concerts at the Sainte Chapelle are greatly in vogue ; and the Lenten congrega- tions at St. Germain I'Auxerrois, St. Etienne du Mont, and especially at Notre Dame des Victou'es are crowded. The 'offices' at the Madeleine are frequent and superb, and of some of these ere Easter Eve arrives I shall endeavour to take note. In fact, devotional, orthodox, * practising ' Paris presents just at present a most edifymg spec- tacle. Societ}'^ fait la morte. No balls, no assemblies, no grand dinners. Half mourning is the only wear, and ' maigre ' osten- sibly the only cheer. Foreigners, being barbarians, may of course eat what they like ; but it will not be at all mauvais ton, should you happen to be dining at Bignon's or Durand's on Maundy Thursday or Good Frida}^, to abstain from ordering any plat cle viande. You can, to be sure, get on tolerably well, gastronomically speaking, without partaking of either butcher's meat or poultry. Here is, for example, a Good Friday menu, liigkb' recommended in the most reclusive circles of the Faubourg St. Germain, and composed with- out the aid either of milk, butter, or eggs, all being things pro- hibited in his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop's Lenten Pas- toral. Potage bouillabaisse ; flounders sauce a Vliuile, salmi of wild duck, lobster d VAmcricaine, roast teal, buissou of crawfish, croute of mushrooms, parfait glace au cafe. Yes, I think that it might 456 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. be found possible to support existence on such a Good Friday diet as the one just formulated. But how about the sarccllcs and the canards sauvarjes ? you may ask. Are salmi of Avild duck, are roast teal, 'meagre' fare? Surely they are. The}' are aquatic birds, they feed on fish, they have a slight fishy flavour, and in the Lenten menu they are not accounted flesh. This remarkable dis- covery was made by a celebrated gastronome of the seventeenth century. Monsieur de Tartuft'e. And the Paris which is not devout? AVell, that Paris was singing on Palm Sunday — was singing its accustomed refrain, ' Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow may come Cata- clysm.' * It nmst be admitted. Monsieur,' quoth to me, yesterday, the sententious and courteous maitre d'hOtel at the Grand Cafe — I can't help thinking that he must have been an Anditeur de la Coitr des Comptes under the Second Empire — ' that our coffers are no- longer gorged, as was the case during the Exposition, with the gold of the stranger, and that foreigners no longer dispute with fierceness for the possession of the treasures of art and industr}- in our commercial estabhshments. But, Monsieur, il y a toujoiirs le Paris qui snffit a faire marcher Paris — the Paris which is the adequate patron of its own productions, and which continues to enjoy with never-failing zest the permanent phenomena of its daily life. Paris, at the present moment, is even more inimitably metro- politan than was the case during the fever of the Exposition ; for during those months of clamours (hniyantc) prosperity the true Parisian, temfied {effaroiiche) hj abnormal prices and the scarcity of fish, emigi'ated, or hid his head in silence and obscurity, until more tranquil times should come. Monsieur, they have arrived. The carte dn jour, Monsieur, comprises — ' and then he slid off into the recital of his catalogue of eatables. It Avas not he, but the equally courteous Eugene, the head-waiter, who, when I was bidding him farewell last November, opined that I was going to get some money out of my ' mmes de houille la-bas,' and that I should speedily return to Paris to spend it. It is a firm article of belief among the Parisian shoji and restaurant keeping class that no foreigner ever thinks of leaving Paris until he is brought down to his last hundred-franc note. But who on earth could have told Eugene, or how came that obliging servitor to think, that I was a coal-owner Id-has ? Ld-has may mean Durham or Dalmatia, Pon- typridd or Pennsylvania. It is the ' There ' of the O 'Mulligan. It is the Frenchman s Ewiykeit. There were races yesterday in the Bois de Boulogne. I glanced at the prophesied list of winners — the ' Gagnants de Robert Mil- PALM SUNDAY OX THE BOULEVARDS. 457 ton ' — ill the Figaro, but M. Eobert INIilton's straight tips failed to interest me. A horse-race in France is, as a rule, a depressing- spectacle. I have never returned from one save in a most dejected state ; and even Chantilly — on a wet Sunday — has moved me well- nigh to tears. There was a bitter wind blowing yesterday ; the rain came down from half-hour to half-hour in brief "but uncomfort- 458 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. able ' splurges ; ' and altogether I did not see my way towards be- coming, even for a portion of the afternoon, a patron of the turf. So it occurred to me that I would visit the Louvre. I averted my eyes — with a definite intent and purpose in so doing — as, driving down the Piue de Eivoli, the blackened ruined screen of the Tuileries loomed in view. A rivederla ! But in the great court of the Carrousel, and in the Square du Louvre, with its gilt rail- ings and almost preternaturally verdant turf, all looked spick-and- span new, bright, handsome, and coquettish. A melodious voice seemed to be making some such proclamation as this : ' Ladies and gentlemen, in other portions of Paris disturbances have occa- sionall}^ broken out ; but these smiling facades, these stately gal- leries, are sacred to the Muses, and no Ilevolutions can, under any possible circumstances, be permitted here.' Really ! Why, the vast pile is built on a bed of concrete covering revolt and massacre unutterable. I fell into the ranks of a dense, but most orderly throng, who were scaling the grand staircase of the Museum. I found the due contingent of civil and attentive guardians, in their traditional cocked hats ; but I was pleased to see that under a Piepublican regime the sovereign people were no longer deprived of their sticks and umbrellas at the door. What Frenchman in his .senses would ever dream of poking at a picture with his ixirapluie, or of diggmg holes in a terra-cotta with the ferrule of his walking- cane ? To sack the Tuileries now and again, to burn down the library of the Louvre bodil}^ to faire flamher Finances — Eh! that is quite another matter. But the volcano is not in eruption just now, the lava and the sconce under the concrete are for the moment quiescent ; and on Palm Sunday afternoon the incomparabl}^ magnificent art-galleries of the Louvre were thronged by a vast multitude of Frenchmen who knew how to behave themselves, and did so most scrupulousl3\ It was a ' People's Day,' but the attendance was by no means exclusively democratic. I counted in the courtyard no less than twenty-seven handsome private equipages, and a much larger num- ber of hackney-carriages retained by the hour by pleasure-seekers. Many of these were possibl}^ foreign tourists ; still I noticed a fair sprinkling of grave elderl}' gentlemen, wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, of cadets of St. Cyr, and of students of the Ecole Poly technique. There were scarcely any fashionably-dressed ladies. They probably were at church ; while the mondaines were at the races, or driving in the Bois. Not a ganclin, not a j^ctit cr^v^, not a gommeux, was to be seen. On the other hand, the affluence was tremendous of petites bourgeoises, of good folk of the shop- PALM SUNDAY ON THE BOULEVARDS. 459 Iceeping class, of clerk and assistant-like young men, and of down- right working men and women — the former in shiny blue blouses, the latter in decent white caps. I say that the blouses were shiny, because Palm Sunday is a traditional day among the worknig classes for the assumption of a new blouse, which is normally of blue or white calico, highly glazed, and to my mind is a very becoming garment. When he is at work the artisan wears a white blouse ; and hundreds of Homes blanches, were going up find down ladders, mixing mortar, laying bricks, or plying then- plasterers' brushes in Paris yesterday. My neighbour, M. Barbe- dienne, of art-bronzes fame, never opens his establishment on the Sabbath, but he had a whole army of blouses blanches employed on Palm Sunday in ' doing up ' his extensive frontage. A much larger number, indeed, of the shops on the Boulevards, in the Rue de la Paix, and in the Avenue de I'Opera were closed yesterday than is ordinarily the case ; but I scarcely think that the crowds of young men and women thus temporarily liberated from their toils at the counter and the desk contributed in any material degree to swell the congregations at St. Germain I'Auxerrois or St. Etienne du Mont. I shrewdly suspect that vast numbers of them went to the Louvre, and so, subsequently, to dinner at an * Etablissement de Bouillon Duval,' and afterwards to a brasserie, and ultimately to a cafe concert or to the play. It is no doubt a very dreadful thing, this ' Continental Sunday,' about which we hear in England such doleful jeremiads, but there is no getting over one fact— that the crowd in the galleries of the Louvre was a quiet crowd, a Avell-behaved crowd, and a crowd that seemed 460 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. thoroughly to enjoy itself. AMien in the Salon Carre I saw a whole Avorking-class household, nursegirl — carrying the baby — and all, pass with rapt and eager looks from the ' Nozze di Cana ^ of Paolo Veronese to the Soult Murillo, and thence to the * Belle Jardiniere ' of Rafaelle, before which they stood as it were fasci- nated by a vision of grace and loveliness, I could not help thinking that there were features in the ' Continental Sunday ' which might, on consideration, be condoned. XXXV. EASTER EGGS AND APRIL FISHES. April 9. It might surprise you to hear that this instant Wednesday is, so far as Paris is concerned, the Eve of the Deluge. The forecast in which I am emboldened to indulge should be taken, not in a meteorological, but in a metaphorical, sense. It has done so many things in the way of weather since Sunday morning last, and fog has succeeded brief snatches of sunshine, while piercing east winds have followed drenching downpours of rain — all in the course of each recurring twenty-four hours — that it would be perilous to predict what kind of fresh atmospheric phenomenon to-morrow may bring forth. To-day may be the eve of a snowstorm or of a flood, of a sirocco or of an earthquake. The month is April ; and we should be prepared for all things. But the Deluge on the occurrence of which to-morrow I am able, with tolerable con- fidence, to reckon, has no kind of reference to the voyage of the good ship Noah's Ark. Paris is simply expectant of a Deluge of juvenile humanity, and the Parisian shopkeepers are rubbing their hands at the thought of their estabhshments being inun- dated by streams of little boys and girls, almost frantically eager for toys and sweetmeats to be bestowed upon them. The Easter holidays, scholastically speaking, are very brief in Paris. The 462 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. great colleges only grant tlu-ee days' vacation to their students ; private schools for boys give four days' surcease from lessons ; the pensionnats de demoiselles are a little more lenient to their pupils ; but the authorities of the conventual schools refuse to re- gard Holy Thursday and Good Friday as holidays — they are, on the contrary, days of mortification and seclusion from secular recre- ation. Holy Saturday is a day of preparation for the coming fes- tival, and the real holiday is Easter- day, next Sunday. Then, a]id not until then — to the think- ing of the orthodox, should one commence de faire ses Pdques- to eat, drink, and be merrj^ ; and,, under a strictly orthodox regime,. festivity -would be carried right through Easter-week. The existing generation is, however, heterodox, and in a chronic state of hurry. With a vast mass of the population of Paris the Easter Holidays have already begun, and by Easter Tuesday those hohdays will have ended. The majority of the schools will throw open their portals to-morrow afternoon, and the Deluge of small Parisians of both sexes will be tremendous. The 'movement,' as the commercial journals put it, in the toy and sweetstuff trade has thus been prodigious ; but con- current with the need of providing for the requii'ements of the children who are coming home from school is the large amount of business done in the two characteristic specialties of the season — April Fishes and Easter Eggs. The Poisson d'Avril in the form of a pretty trifle sent as a half-complimentary half- bantering present, is all but wholly unknown in England out of the domains of mediaeval folk-lore. Idiotic or malicious practical jokes are yet perpetrated among the uneducated classes on the 1st of April ; and ' O, you April Fool ! ' is an expression which is not 3'et entirely divested of purport or significance ; but in good society to ' make an April Fool ' of any one would be con- sidered an anachronism as gross as it Avould be to attempt the revival of the Berners Street Hoax. The * Poisson d'Avril ' has long since lost its coarseness in Paris, in the direction of 'fooling* or 'hoaxing' people ; but it has assumed a tangible form: as a half EASTER EGGS AND APRIL FISHES. AGi ' Baptiste, why do yoii not answer the bell ? ' * Because to-day is'tlie first of April, and I thought madam wanted to make a fool of me.' valentine, half ctrenne. It may be sent anonj-mously ; whereas the Easter Egg and the New Year's gift are personal gifts. The ' Poisson d'Avril ' may be in bonbons, in chocolate, in porcelain, in lace, in teire cuite, in diamonds, or in cardboard; but it is imijeratively necessary either that its outward shape should be that of a fish, or that it should be plentifully adorned with piscine emblems. These dolls, in the manufacture of which the Paiisians are so surprisingly proficient, lend themselves at once to the pur- poses of adaptation for the April Fish whmi. A miniature 'mulier formosa ' is so contrived as to terminate with a fish's tail stuffed with comfits, without exciting the ridicule of the recipient ; and troubadovu's playing on guitars, and with cods' head and shoulders, have been especial favourites in the April Fish market this season. The ' Fille de Madame Angot,' carrying a basket full of sprats, has also been much in vogue ; while confiseurs of more classical leanings have brought out radiant presentments of Arion on his dolphin, and Domitian's turbot, splendidly got up in chocolate, mother- o' -pearl, blanched almonds, and marrons glaces. I note 464 PARIS HEE6ELF AGAIN. also a youth, unrobed, witli wings, sitting in tlie bright vermilion jaws of a kind of sea-dragon, equally resembling a diminutive shark and a colossal flying- fish. The youth is playing on a harp, and to all ap- pearance is very happy. Can this group have any reference to the story of Tonah and the whale ? Take him for all in all, the ' Poisson d'Avril ' may be accepted as the light and mercurial precursor of the more serious and sub- stantial 'Q^uf de Paques,' in the dazzling splendours of which the modest fish soon becomes blended, and is ultimately absorbed. An Easter Egg of the very highest class is not, I would have you to understand, by any means a joke. When the Second Empire was at the heyday of its luxurious folly and its sumptuous cor- ruption there were Easter Eggs that cost 50,000, or 25,000, or 10,000 francs apiece. I remember to have heard of one presented by a Viscount and Chamberlain of the Imperial Court to an actress, say at the theatre of * les Depravations Parisiennes,' which ex- teriorl}^ was only a coffer of ovoid form, covered with blue velvet powdered with hearts transfixed by arrows in gold embroidery, but which, opening, disclosed a charming victoria of Binder's building, a pair of perfectly matched piebald ponies, and a Bengal tiger — a groom I mean — in faultless tunic, tops, and buckskins. The ponies and the groom were ahve, the victoria was fit for im- mediate use, and Mademoiselle Pasgrandchose drove her piebald pair that very afternoon at the Promenade de Longchamp. The brilliance of her appearance was heightened by the contents of another egg, the yolk of which was composed of pearls and diamonds, the gift of Baron Roguet de la Poguerie, banker and EASTER EGGS AND ATOIL FISHES. ■165 Mexican loanmonger— lie fell with Mires on tlie field of honour--- while further attractiveness was lent to Mademoiselle Pasgrand- chose's intelHgent countenance by an expression of inward con- tentment due to her having received yet a third egg— a modest egg — an egg no bigger than the normal product of the hen, but which on being cracked was found to enshrine five notes of the Bank of France for a thousand francs each, prettily folded, cocked- hat fashion, and tied up with pink ribbon. All, halcyon time ! And what a carnival the rogues and the roguesses had * sub Julio ; nel tempo dei falsi e bugiardi ! ' ■^ H H ■iG6 TAKIS HEKSELF AGAIN'. Keener eyes than mine espied gem-adorned Easter Eggs in the great jewellers' shops of fashionable Paris this morning; but n\y quest Avas for the picturesque eggs, the toy eggs, the artistic eggs, and in particular the downright and outrageously comical eggs. In every one of these departments my researches were amply re- warded by results. I may just hint once for all that not in any single instance, in the scores of toy and confectionery shops into the windows of which I peered, did I find the slightest emblematic- association of the Easter Egg with the memories of the Paschal Season. The Parisians borrowed these quaint things from the Russians, who attach to them a deeply religious significance ; but the lively Gaul, in naturalising his ' Qilufs de Paques ' on the boulevards, at once eliminated from them the slightest elements of superstition. They were to him only so many bagatelles, on the confection of which much taste and skill might be lavished, and Avhich might be vended at a highly remunerative price. We need not be too shocked with the liveliness of the Gaul in dissociating Easter Eggs from Eastertide thoughts. It needs the erudition of all our Folk-Lore Societies, all our contributors to Notes and Queries, all our Thoms and Baring-Goulds, to keep our own English memories green touching the meaning of many of our own emblems and observances. Hot cross-buns explain themselves to the meanest comprehension. But how about the bean in the Twelfth-cake ? How about goose at Michaelmas (which has no more to do with Queen Elizabeth and the defeat of the Spanish Armada than with Queen Anne and the battle of Blenheim) ? How about Santa Claus, who comes down the chimney on New Year's-eve, and fills the shoes of the good children with toj's and goodies, and the shoes of the naughty ones with bii'ch-broom ? How about Hallowe'en ? Does one Scot in ten thousand know the real meaning of Hallowe'en ? Does any- body know it, save perhaps the lineal descendant of the last Druid, if such a man there be ? The world is growing very old; and the Sphinx, by times, is puzzled to find a solution for her own riddles. It was such a very long time ago that she propounded them. We must take the Easter Eggs for what they are worth, from two francs fifty upwards. Some archneologists maintain that the gift- egg has nothing whatever to do with Easter, and that it is only a survival of the Roman sportida, or little basket full of eggs, poultry, and other proA-isions, which the Roman patricians used to give away to their clients. In process of time the present in kind was commuted for a small money payment, whence the very ancient French proverb — I find it quoted by a Norman judge in one of the EASTER EGGS AND APRIL FISHES. 467 REMAINS OF THE PALAIS DES TIIERMES. Year Books of Edward I.—' Vous voulez et I'oeuf et la maille '— You want the egg and the halfpenny too. Julian the apostate, distributing sportulce full of eggs at the Palais des Thermes, Avould make an interesting and attractive historical picture. 468 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. The Maison Boissier on the Boulevard des Italiens, the Maison Brie, the Maison Giroux on the Boulevard des Capucines, and the Maison Siraudin in the Bue de la Paix, to say nothing of the great toy-shop of ' Les Enfants Sages ' in the Passage Jouffroy, do not trouhle themselves, I warrant you, ahout the conflict between Pagan and Christian symbolism, about the Folk-Lore Society, or about Julian the Apostate. ' Etes-vous drole ? ' asked the proprietor of a cafe concert in theChamps Elysees of a youthful lady candi- date for an engagement. The fair aspirant replied that she was young and good-looking ; that she had a tolerable voice, plenty of long-tailed dresses, and a sufficiency of sham jewelry. ' That has nothing whatever to do with it,' persisted the practical proprietor. 'Etes-vous drole?' The young lady ventured to express the opinion that she had been found ver}^ droll indeed. ' Voila mon affaire,' cried the delighted proprietor, and he engaged the droll chanteiise at once. Excruciating drollery is conspicuous this year among the Easter Eggs. All the humours of the poultry-yard have been requisitioned. The proudly strutting and normally exasperated turkey-cock, the pugnacious bantam, the preter- naturally wise-looking owl, all the pigeon-tribe — ruffs, pouters, and almond tumblers — the grave and inoffensive goose, yea, even those storks and adjutant birds which Mr. Stacy Marks knows so well how to paint, have been pressed into the egg service. The Kev. J. G. Wood has seemingly been specially commissioned to teach the French shopkeepers the art of making birds'-nests. Now who can refrain from laughter at the spectacle of an owl playing on the flageolet, of a Dorking and a Cochin China in his plumed pantaloons and with spectacles on nose laboriously executing a duet for piano and violoncello, or of the lordly turkey-cock propelling a perambulator full of chickens just emerging from their shells ? The Maison Boissier, on its side, is great in peacocks ; but these are less * droll ' than artistically graceful, and, to my thinking, somewhat weird and mysterious. The egg is repre- EASTER EGGS AND APRIL FISHES. 4G9 miSk^a sentetl b}^ the body of Juno's bird, with phi- mage of the most daz- zling bhie, and stufl'ed inside with sweetmeats. The tail — a real tail, mind — is gloriously dis- played ; but the head is that of a young lady of the highest style of Avax-doU beauty, crown- ed with a coif are of the loveliest auburn tresses, arranged with an ai't that Truefitt might envy and that Isidore could not surpass. But why a head as fair as Phryne's on the body of a pea- cock ? Mystery. Why has the Old Serpent in EafaeUe's picture of the Temptation -of Eve got the head of a beautiful woman in an Oriental turban ? I\Iystery again , These peacocks, which should be peahens, at the Maison Boissier began at last to frighten me. I came to look upon them as the 470 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. sisters of the Stymplialides — birds gay of plumage, but ravenous of appetite aiicT false of heart — birds that would fasten their talons in your quivering flesh and drive their sharp beaks right through your porte-monnaie and your clieque-book into your heart, and eat you up, body and bones, as the cassowary on the plains of Tim- buctoo ate up the missionar}', hymn-book and all. They only wanted sixty francs for one of these beauteous but ominous Easter- egg birds ; but their Siren-like heads and iridescent tails filled me with a vague mistrust, and I would have none of them. The terra-cotta eggs, on the other hand, were really most delightfully artistic productions, skilfull}' modelled, and decorated with charming bas-reliefs. There were eggs in faience, or orna- mental potter}', too, painted with all manner of quaint devices ; and Easter Eggs of this land ma}' be said to be not only orna- mental but useful. A piece of tastefully-painted pottery is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Precisely the same remark will apply to the Easter Eggs in brilliantly-coloured and cunningly- worked crystal, shown at Dr. Salviati's depot of ornamental Vene- tian glass, in the Rue de la Paix. Dr. Salviati — who certainly should have been commissioned to make Cinderella's glass slipper, had that chaussure been of ' verre ' instead of ' vair,' as Perrault really meant it to be — has ingeniously availed himself of the occa- sion of Eastertide to show the Parisians that glass eggs may be made of the most symmetrical form, and decorated with the very finest taste. I did not see any eggs in Byzantme mosaic in the Doctor's collection ; but what he has done in moulded and cut glass he could surely accomplish in vitreous tessera?. Passing from the genuinely artistic Easter Eggs, we enter a very large and important domain, in which the egg, although it forms the mainspring of the scheme, is substantially subordinate to anotlier most conspicuous article de Paris, the Doll. Thousands of poupees have suddenly been converted into variations of Mr. Millais' fascinating picture of 'New-laid Eggs.' Numbers of other well-known pictures have likewise been prettily parodied from the egg point of view. Mignon regrets the land of the citron and the myrtle no more. She holds a basket full of eggs, and is as happy as the bees in May. Grcuze's disconsolate damsel has thrown away her 'cruche cassee,' and, drying her tears, is full of smiles over a large egg. Gretchen sings the Spinning-Wheel song, or pulls her Passion-flower to pieces, snugly ensconced in the centre of an egg. Dolls dressed as the 'Hanlon-Lees' — those wondrous contortionists — perform astounding feats of acrobatic agility on the surface of an egg. Tliey reminded me of the late Baron Nathan EASTER EGGS AND APRIL FISHES. 471 executing his inimitable _pa.s scul among the eggs and the cups and saucers at Ilosherville. Dear Eosherville ! Charming abode of shrimps, chalk, and roses. The egg-eluding Baron has long since joined the Immortals ; and I shall spend no more happy days at Kosherville. It is, nevertheless, tolerably pleasant here, among the eggs and the dolls. They are more edifying than the Parlia- mentary Debates. They are more amusing than Society. They do not expect to be amused. They amuse you. Wheaten and oaten straw, artificial flowers and particoloured libbons, play a very prominent part in the adornment of the eggs, which themselves are sometimes dyed in various colours or gilt. Going down to the great toy-shops of the Rue Vivienne, the Rue St. Honore, and especiail^'the 'Enfants Sages' in the Passage Joufli'oy, I found the Easter Egg losing its luxurious, losing its decorative, but retaining a recreative, and asserting a practical, character. What do 3'ou think of an egg containing a complete hatterie de cuisine, pots and pans, fourneau ecouomique, and all ? An egg holdinga complete mohilier for a doll, chairs, tables, sofas, cabinets, looking-glasses, bed and bedding, likewise attracted much attention in ' Aux Enfants Sages,' as did also an egg which served as a receptacle for a complete parlour photographic apparatus ; an egg full of gymnastic appliances ; and an egg which, on being opened, disclosed a baby doll in her cradle. I did not see any eggs that were full of books, or slates, or maps, or pretty little tiny educa- tional kickshaws of that sort ; indeed, I scarcely think that Easter Eggs of that nature would be highly popular among the joyous components of the Deluge of Boys and Girls, who will speedilj- overrun the Boulevards and the passages of Paris, and, till Easter- tide be over, carry all before them. AT THE FOIRE AUX JAMBONS (eY CHAm). 'Yon see, old timljcr-toes, you're not the onlj- one who lias lost his shanks.' XXXVI. THE GREAT HAM FAIE. Good Friday. I HAVE seen the great Eastertide Ham Fair on the Boulevard Hichard Lenoir, hard by the Bastille Column ; still, like Mr. Toole in the burlesque, *I am not happy.' There was a plenitude of brawn, hams, * tub ' pork, sausnges, and continental substitutes for Bath chaps, on the Boulevard Pdchard Lenoir ; but what is a fair without the Bearded Lad}', Mr. Chopps the Dwarf, and the Sj^otted Girl ? and on Thursday where were the}' ? Choj^ps, indeed, I had set eyes on in the flesli so recently as last Monday afternoon. It was on the Boulevard du Temple, and in the rez- dc-cJuaissec of an unfinished house there had been installed, until such time as the plaster should dry, a penny show, of which a dwarf was the leading attraction. The canvas partition, screen- ing off the arcana of the show from the street, was but an exiguous one, and from the victoria in which I was riding I could descry quite plainly Chopi)s's eligible two-storied residence, and the right hand and arm of Chojips himself, vehemently ringing his bell for THE GKEAT HAM FAHt. 478 that liot water for shaving which apparently is never brought him. At least, to my personal knowledge, he has been ringing that bell at fairs all over Europe for the last forty years, without any hot water making its appearance. "When I saw the little, lean, withered hand and arm protruding from the topmost casement of the eligible residence, and thought of the poor little stunted man- ikin crouched inside his box, with his chin between his knees, I said to myself exultingiy, * He is moving up. He is accomplish- ing the journey from the Madeleine to the Bastille by easy stages. He will reach the Chateau d'Eau to-morrow, and on Thursday he will be at the Foire aux Jambons.' Not in the least. Thursday came and went, but there was no Mr. Cliopps the Dwarf. The absence of the Bearded Lady I could better account for. Her x)ro- Ijrietor may be the self-same exemplary gentleman who owns the Alsatian Giantess. Now this gentleman happens to be a * bien pensant,' a ' pratiquant,' a clericalist, and he has resolutely refused to allow his colossal jjcnsionnairc to appear in public during Pas- sion-week. ' Apres Paques, a la bonne heure ; pendant laSemaine Sainte, jamais de la vie ! ' Such has been the decision of this right-tliinking impresario, to whom it is rumoured tlie Univcrs and the Gazette de France are not indisposed to favom' the get- ting-up of a testimonial. INIaybe he owns La Femme a Barbe as well as the Geante Alsacienne, and that both prodigies are sitting secluded, at home, eating salt fish and reading good books until ' Paques ' comes. But where was the Spotted Girl ? In September 1870, when panic was reigning in the south of France, and the irruption of the Germans into the smiling plains of the Midi was hourly expected, the terrified nomads, who are permanently on the tramp in France in the showman interests, were driven by stress of l^olitics to form a kind of camp on the outskirts of Lyons, through which city I was ]3assing on my road to Rome. The encamp- ment of nomads was about the oddest spectacle that I had ever gazed upon out of the etched ' Habits and Beggars ' of Jacques Callot. All the giants and giantesses, the fenimes a harhe, the liommes-poissons, the dwarfs, the wild men of the woods who devour live fowls coram iwpulo, the learned pigs, the dancing bears, the educated wolves, the choregraphic dogs and monkeys — all the acrobats and mountebanks, the saltimbanques and ^;rti7- lasses in the country, seemed gathered together under canvas, or in their vans, in a great field close to La Croix Rousse. It was the strangest of fairs, for there was no concourse of sight-seers to patronise the prodigies. The big drum was silent, no cymbals 474 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. clanged, and no cries of 'Walk up ! ' were audible. Lyons, in truth, was in no mood for merrymaking. The Eepublic, Democratic and Social, had got, for the moment, the upper hand. The Red Flag was waving over the city; the tocsin was ringing lustily; and platforms, covered with scarlet baize, were erected in the principal streets for the enrolment of volunteers. Drunken francs-tire iirs were swaggering about, armed to the teeth, and inclined to arrest everybody who had a decent coat on his back as a Prussian spy ; and Respectability sat apart, looking very nervous as it read that Rentes were down to 41, and Avith the ends of its white cravat pendant and extremely limp. I passed most of }ny time in tlie THE GKEAT HAM FAIR. 475 i'air wlici'C there were no fairings; I strolled from prodigy to pro- digy, the sole patron of the shows ; and I became the unique interlocutor of no less than three Spotted Girls. "Where are those maculated damsels now ? At the Foire aux Jambons not one was to be seen. I had seen it announced in the Voltaire, the Ri- eolation Francaise, the Puippd, and other popular journals, that the Great Ham Fair would begin ' irrevocablement ' on Monday. Hundreds of haraqiLCS or sheds had, according to these veracious prints, been already erected ; the arrivals of porcine delicacies were enormous ; the ' installation ' was superb, and the * affluence ' of spectators immense. So on Monday, after breakfast, I hired a victoria b}' the hour, and bade the cocker drive me to the fair. He was a stout wide man, with a permanent, albeit somewhat lethargic, smile on his pale fat countenance. I was ver}' particular in telling him that it was the ' Foire aux Jambons ' which I wished to visit. •'L-a F-o-i-r-e a-u-x J-a-m-b-o-n-s,' he repeated after me with me- chanical precision, ' Allons, Coco ! ' — Coco was seemingly the name of his horse, — and away we rumbled. The great line of boulevards Avas unusually quiet ; and after we had passed the ever-bustling Boulevard Montmartre, the tranquillity of the main artery of Paris life was to me almost depressing. We did not pass anybody who looked as though he was going to the fair ; but, on the other hand, we met no less than four funerals coming westward. There does not seem to exist in France any kind of public feeling against what we stigmatise in England as * undertaking extravagance,' or in favour of ' economy in Funerals.' The Parisians appear to be perfectly well satisfied with their existing mortuary arrangements. The 'police of death ' is, in particular, admirably managed. * Les vingt-quatre heures ' is the limit inex- orably fixed for delay in consigning our dear brother departed to the tomb ; and within those twentj'-four hours the mortal coil of our brother, be he a Senator or a cliiffonnier, must be put under ground. The administration of thePompesFunebres, or National Undertaking Establishment, gives, to all appearance, equal satisfaction to the public at large. That which is known in English undertaking parlance as the ' party ' may be interred as cheaply or as expensively as his relatives desire. There are 476 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. COACHMAN CF THE POMPES FUNEBRES. funerals as low as 12f. 50c., including a corner in the Fosse Commune. But the executors may spend 10,000f. on an entcrre- ment dc premiere classc if tliey like ; but, the transaction being strictly a cash one, it is rarely that any veiy exceptional outlay in funeral pomps and vanities is indulged in. In England a fashionable undertaker never thinks of sending in his bill until the expiration of a twelvemonth, while we are prone, sometimes THE GREAT HAM FAIR. 477 veiy unjustl}', to grumble at the charges of the ready-money under- takers. Grumblmg among our neighbours in this respect would be gratuitous, since the Pompes Funeb res have a tariff of charges for accessories as exliaustive as the price-lists of the Cooperative Stores. On the whole, a French funeral, however gloomil}^ grand it may be, scarcely merits the sneering qualification given to English burials by Charles Dickens — that of ' a masquerade dipped in ink.' There is not much hypocris}' about the French ceremonial. If the family of the deceased be a secularly-minded one, the bod}- is not taken to church at all, but goes 'right away ' to the cemetery. Moreover, the friends of the departed not specially invited to attend as mourners make it a point of honour to follow the hearse on foot to the cemetery. For example, I passed on Monday one very grand cortege. The bier, drawn by four horses, was heaped high with wreaths of camellias, white geraniums, and the exquisite pale violets of the season. The surname of the departed began, apparently, with a * P,' since scrolls and badges of black velvet, worked in silver with the initial 'P,' appeared on the bier, on the horsecloths, and on the hammerclotlis of the mourning-coaches, fifteen in number. At least a score of private carriages followed. The attendance on foot was small. The next funeral was that, seemingly, of a French Protestant, as an ecclesiastic, in the simple, austere, but dignified habit of a Calvinist pastor, walked, open Bible in hand, immedi- ately after the hearse. A single mourning-coach, full of the tear- ful wistful faces of children, preceded the hearse — condnisait Ic deull, to use the technical term. Friends followed in hired coupes, in victorias, and, in the case of one party, in an omnibus. A third funeral was that apparently of some well-to-do and highly esteemed member of the working classes. ' Foreman in a pianoforte manu- factory,' the stout cocker remarked over his shoulder. How did lie know ? But there is a strange freemasonry among the driving fraternity. A wink or the movement of the finger from the driver of the passing hearse may have sufficed thoroughly to enhghten my coclier as to the social status of the deceased. One mourning- coach led the procession; one private carriage, possibly that of the dead man's ' patron ; ' but behind the corhillard walked six abreast, and in good military order, at least five hundred men, women, and children, all decently dressed, all wearing some sign of mourning, but otherwise with a cheerful ever3'-day, and not by any means hypocritical, guise. Some of the women had little baskets on their arms, containing, probably, flowers for the grave ; possibly lunch. Perhaps both. "SVliy not ? It was, to my mind, a very 478 PARIS HERSELF AGATN. sensible and comfortable way of doing tilings. The men walked slioulder to shoulder ; the women, deftly holding up their skirts, trudged steadily over the muddy stones. They were going to see the last of ' le camarade,' 'le brave homme.' Some comrade with the gift of speech would make a neat oration over the open tomb ; and then there would be a general adjournment to the neighbour- ing cabarets, and the ' litre ;\ seize ' — the quart of wine at eight- pence — together with the 'petit Bordeaux,' or one-sou cigar, would be in general demand. The French workman is in his way as great a stickler for etiquette as the loftiest dowager of the Faubourg St. Germain. At marriages and funerals the pipe is tabooed, and cigars must be smoked. But I did not find any Foire aux Jambons on reaching the Boulevard Richard Lenoir. ' C'est pour jeudi,' the pale fat coachman tranquilly observed. Evidently he had been well aware of that fact all along, but had not thought fit to lose the chance of a few hours' hiring ; but that the grin on his countenance was evi- dently a chronic one, like that of Victor Hugo's ' Homme qui rit,' I should have deemed that he was mocking me. As it was, I sulkily bade him drive me back to habitable Paris again. The Voltaire and the other popular prints had evidently misled me, or had been themselves misled, and there would be no Great Hans Fair until Thursday. So acutely, indeed, did I feel the deception of which I had been the victim that yesterday, when I again undertook a pilgrimage to the Boulevard Bichard Lenoir — Bichard was, by the way, a distinguished cotton-spinner under the' First Empire, and did a great deal for Napoleon after the return from Elba — I was reluctant to believe, until I was actually in the middle of the fair, that any Foire aux Jambons would be held at all. It began, it must be confessed, but poorly. Rag Fair was but a squalid prelude to an exhibition of pig-meat ; yet there com- menced, at the Chateau d'Eau, and continued for at least five hundred 3'ards, one of the most astonishing heterogeneous open- air markets that I have ever beheld. There were a few stalls, and perhaps half a dozen booths ; but in the great majority of cases the objects on sale were laid out on the bare earth of thc^ Boulevard esplanade. Locks, keys, bolts, bars, fireirons, kitchen utensils, chains, dog-collars, nails, screws, hooks, workmen's tools of every conceivable form and in every imaginable stage of rust and dilapidation, shop-counters and fittings, apothecaries' jars and nests of ' dummy ' drawers for drugs, ragged carpets, lace curtains and rolls of matting, pottery and glass, umbrellas and sticks, cheap prints and photogra^phs, candlesticks and chimney orna- THE CtRExIT ham fair. 47^ ments, oil-paintings — yes, paintings in oil ; but such pictures and such frames ! — all these were displayed in groups and heap?}, in single or in serried rows, on either side the esplanade, which was crowded by a multitude of working people, bonnes, children, c/risettes, female cooks and housekeepers to petits rentiers, and 480 PAIUS HERSELF AGAIN. peasants from the outlying villages, in true villageois sahots, striped nightcaps, and bonnets hlancs. There were a few seminarists, and a considerahle numher of private soldiers. Everything on sale seemed to have heen cracked, battered, and broken, re-mended and re-smashed half a dozen times ; and the merchants who sat, or rather squatted, at the receipt of custom, seemed to have been in early life either the rank and file of Falstaff's ragged regiment, or the rivandicrcs and female camp-followers attached to that historical corps. I never saw such a Bezesteen of rusty and mouldy rattletraps. The squalor of the scene was only relieved by a sprinkling of stalls devoted to the sale of bright-coloured lollipops and of ginger- bread — solid wedges oi pain cVeplce, thickly studded with almonds. No gilt gingerbread kings and queens, however, no cock-a-doodle- doos in pantaloons. No Bearded Lady, no Mr. Cliopps the Dwarf, no Spotted Girl. At length, when I was beginning to fear that the line of rags and rusty rubbish would stretch to the crack of doom, the real Foire aux Jambons began. There were really hundreds of haraques or huts — rude constructions of timber covered with tarpaulin — lining each side of the esplanade; but the spectacle was at first sight depressing. The French are doubtless very excellent curers of ham and bacon, but they do not cure their swine's meat a good colour. I missed the golden crimson and white of English Wiltshire, and the rich contrasts of Devonshire ' streaky.' The pickled or * tub ' pork may have been wholesome and palatable, but in texture it was coarse, and in hue an ashen gray. The sausages, too, were very disappointing to an eye accustomed to our plump Cambridges, to our ruddy polonies, and especially to our comely and shining ' chicken-and-liams.' The only stout French sausage is the * petite saucisse a Tail.' The rest of the species are, as a rule, wizened attenuated things, dull in colour, looking very hard and dry, and rendered additionally inelegant by the dis- coloured salty rime which has oozed through their skins. The hams were much more agreeable to look upon. 'Jambons d'Yorck ' were freely offered by dealers coming — so the etiquette above their stalls proclaimed, from the Departments of the Mouse and the Ain, which are certainly not in Yorkshire ; but in one instance some really fine-looking hams Avere announced as a * provenance directe du Yorkshire — produits de MM. Hope et Cie. et Bingley et Cie.' This unimpeachably English exhibit was proudly sur- mounted by an ensign emblazoned wdth the Royal Arms of Eng- land. There was one imposing haraque at the entrance of the fair exclusively devoted to the sale of hams, * sides,' * chaps,' and As Ai.sAriAN BARAtjuf; at thk Grkat Ham Fair. P. 481. THE GREAT HAM FAIR. 481 sausages, made from the flesh of horses, mules, and asses. I was repeatedly invited to 'taste and try' by generous dealers who were continually shaving off slices from their wares to tempt the palates of potential customers ; but I could not screw my courage to the sticking-place of tasting donkey-sausage or horse-ham. And yet Bologna sausage is avowedly made from ass's flesh, and is undeni- ably good eating. It is quite possible that I have eaten, in my time, in the course of many journeys, and under many disguises, ' Your liams are not so good as last year's.' * Excuse me, tliey all come from the same pig.' a whole squadron of troop horses, saddles, bridles, shoes, and all ; yet I could not yesterday persuade myself to accept the invitation of 'goutez done' I will try to accept it next time. That is always the plea of the prejudiced. The Alsatians and the Lorrainers were, it is almost needless to say, in great force. Many of the marchandes wore the pictur- esque costumes of their districts ; and what with the inscription of ' Die aller Beste ' above the haraques, and the guttural hum of Teutonic talk, I should not have been surprised to have met ' I'Ami Fritz ' with Madame Therese on his arm, or to have found myself en jjlein comite of all the characters so graphically 482 PARIS HERSELF AGAIX, incarnated by MM. Erckmann-Cliatrian. There was a large con- tingent of salt pork from Cincinnati, Chicago, and Philadelphia, and the booths set apart for Transatlantic produce were gaily deco- rated with the American flag. There were no sausages — that I could see, at least — under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. The Pyrenean section of the Fair was certainly the most pictur- esque portion of the display. Numbers of the dealers wore the costumes of the factors of the Basque Provinces ; and if he who drives fat oxen should himself be fat, it was, assuredly, appropriate that pig-jobbers and pork-factors from Bayonne and San Juan de Luz, from La Hendaye, and even from Pamplona, should wear, as they did yesterday, hats of the 'porkpie ' fashion. The small Baj'onne hams were in prime condition, and as richly brown in hue as the back of a Stradivarius fiddle. A slice of Bayonne ham with some garhanzos, or, better still, the Mexican frijolcs or black-skinned beans, or even, at a pinch, with some chick-peas, is a dish for an Alcalde Mayor. There were some Venta de Car- denas hams quoted at the Foire aux Jambons yesterday. I looked around in vain for Sancho Panca and his wallet, but the faithful squire was no more present than were the Bearded Lady, Mr. Chopps the Dwarf, and the Spotted Girl. Perhaps there will be some other fairs in or near Paris ere Eastertide is over, where the real shows and the real prodigies will make their appearance. XXXVII. AT THE ' ASSOMMOm.' Easter Sunday. That Deluge of Schoolboys and School- girls of which I recently ventured to anti- cipate the advent has come; but the inundation has not been by any means ot an overwhelming nature. It is a windy Deluge, a half-frozen Deluge. ihe 'small infantry' are marching about with blue noses and chattering teeth; and their papas and mammas, for aU their woollen cache-nez and their fur-lmed mantles, are shivering. A treacherously bright sun is shining, but m the shade it is as cold as an old-fashioned Christ- mas. The Bulletin dc VObservatoire is f^ood enough to inform us that the barome- trical pressure in the Mediterranean re- mains very feeble, and that a fresh faU of eight minutes is telegraphed from / Sicily. Northern winds contmue to pre- dominate in Western Europe; and m Denmark a ' centre ' is in course of de- I I 2 484 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. pression, whence we vaay expect a series of north-west gales in the Channel. Frosts have been frequent in the North and the centre of France. Snow has fallen on three successive clays in Paris. So has hail. On this actual Easter-day a kind of frozen dust seems to he blowing about the boulevards. It sparkles beautifully in the sunshine, but it peppers your face painfully, as though it were dust-shot. The cafes are tolerably full out- side, but the customers are drinking ' grogs americains,' * pouches au ouiski,' and ' vins chauds.' The waiters are offering to place hot- water cans, instead o^ petits bancs, under the feet of the ladies ; and the ancient dame at the corner of the Passage Yerdeau, who, so long ago as last Sunday, seemed to have resolutely adopted the sale of violets, has abandoned her spring novelties, and once more makes a wintiy appearance as a vendor of roasted chestnuts. It is too cold to roam about the boulevards, to com't tooth- ache, faceache, and earache. It is too cold to go to the races. It is far too cold to undertake a pilgrimage to the great Gingerbread Fair, at the Barriere du Trone — although I am informed that the Bearded Lady, Mr. Chopps the Dwarf, and the Spotted Girl have been seen in the flesh in the Avenue de Vincennes, and I shall be thus bound in honour to visit the Foire aux Pain d'fipices before it closes. Meanwhile I cannot do better, perhaps, than kindle a fresh log on the hearth, wrap myself up in an extra rail- way rug or two, and sit down to narrate some curious dramatic experiences which I underwent last night at the Theatre de I'Am- bigu Comique. At the theatre in question they have been playing these three months and more a dramatical version of M. £mile Zola's strictly moral and inexpressibl}'' revolting novel of UAssom- moir, now in its fifty-fourth or iifty-sixth edition — I forget which. The hundredth representation of U Assommoh' took place on Good Friday, when — the better the day the better the deed — the management of the Ambigu generously threw open its doors, and gave a gratuitous performance to the public. The entertainment was, I hear, numerously and brilliantly attended. I own that when I arrived in Paris I had not the remotest wish or intention of going to see MM. Gastineau and Busnach's version of M. fimile Zola's sickening story. I read the Asso77i- moir twice over, and every word^of it, two 3'ears ago, at Nice ; and consigning it, with La Fillc Elisa and other productions of a similar type, to a certain pigeon-hole in my memory, I troubled my head no more about it. Life is not long enough to discuss M. Zola's crudities from the point of view of Art. But it happened that on Thursday, the day of my visit to the Great Ham Fair, the AT THE ' ASSOMMOIR.* 485 existence of the Assommoir was recalled in a quite accidental and sufficiently singular manner to my mind. During the early por- tion of the afternoon we had, on the^Boulevard Richard Lenoir, a spell of that treacherous sunshine of which I spoke just now. The dingy sausages, the pallid hacon, the cloudy hams, were all glorified in the flood of golden light. So, in the Riviera di Levante, on a winter's morning, does all nature wear a gloriously bright aj^pearance. The sky is cobalt, the distant hills are ultra- marine ; the feather}" palms wave proudly, or glint in sparkling sheen like the great peacock-fans that were borne pro cession ally before the Pope on St. Peter's-day ; the olive and orange groves are so many centres of glowing splendour. But anon a per- verse twist in the elements brings the mistral upon you. In an instant the sea turns to a muddy indigo, and the sky to a dirty drab. The feathery palms become so many ragged worn-out mops. Can those inky cliffs be the INIaritime Alps ? Can those ashen gi"ay dusty j)atches be groves of olives and oranges ? Anon raindrojis, as big as franc-pieces, come pattering down ; and then the driving rain-storm descends in one great, crashing, blinding, vertical sheet, sparing nothing, and strewing the Riviera with ruthlessly wrenched-off tree-branches and the bodies of dead birds. We had a thoroughly Levantine rain-storm at the Great Ham Fair on Thursday. The torrent struck the ground with such violence as once more to verify the old geometrical axiom of the angle of reflection being equal to the angle of incidence ; and the rain, after soaking through us downwards, splashed up again into our eyes. The sausage and bacon folks made haste to cover up their commodities with tarpaulms, ensconced themselves in pen- dent fragments thereof, and became invisible. The whole fair, as if by magic, disappeared. It w^as a Pompeii ingulfed by water instead of lava and scorise. As for the crowd of spectators, they did as the Pompeians of old did — they ran for it. AVaterproofs were not of much avail, and umbrellas were in vain. I struck out at hazard for the nearest buildings. I was repulsed from several portes-cocheres, already overcrowded with dripping fugitives ; but at length, when I was beginning to contemplate seriously the con- tingency of being carried away bodily by the flood into the Canal St. Martin, I brought up safely in the anchorage of an enormous brasserie. What its sign or title may have been I have not the slightest idea. Suppose I call it the Brasserie Free and Easy. It was certainly as spacious as a second-rate London music-hall ; but, with the exception of a few big mirrors, it was almost entirely 486 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. destitute of decoration, the walls and fittings being stained of a monotonous oak colour. There were scores of plain japanned iron tables, with wooden stools, rush-bottomed, scattered about. The bar, or comptoir, was of inordinate length, and covered with ill- polished pewter. This and the wall behind were garnished with bottles of all sorts and sizes, containing, I "suppose, a variety of liquors ; since, although the establishment called itself a brasserie, and ' bocks ' of a tawnj^-coloured and dully creaming beer were being plentifully consumed, the place was manifestly a dramshop — petits verres of brand}^ rum, cassis, and other preparations of the ' sclmick ' kind being in continuous demand. Nothing to eat that I could see was supplied ; and no wine was being drunk. Behind the comiter sat a stout square old lad}', with no per- ceptible neck. She was in dingy black ; but she wore massive gold bracelets ; and on her pudgy, and not very clean, hands glit- tered a number of rings. I think that she must have been asthmatic. I imagine that she was plethoric. At all events, she toiled not, neither did she spin. She did nothing but sit there, gasping and wheezing, and surveying with two lack-lustre eyes, intimately resembling a brace of bullets, the scene before her. She was flanked on either side by a dame dc comjJtoir — one long, lean, middle-aged, and sour-looking; the other youthful, fleshy, and saucy. The first seemed to have reached the acetous, the other had attained only the vinous, stage of fermentation. It was the acetous lady who kept the books and scolded the waiters ; the vinous damsel onl}^ dispensed the sugar and joked with the cus- tomers. The waiters were of both sexes, and about the strangest types of either that I have beheld for a long time. Rarely, as regards the first, have I gazed upon such an assemblage of raw- boned young men, with red heads and lantern jaws. Each garcon carried in front of his dirty apron a well-worn leathern jjouch for receiving mone}' and giving change. Cash on delivery was appa- rently the rule strictly observed at the Brasserie Free and Easy ; and for the first time in my life, at a French house of public enter- tainment, I was asked to pay for my consommation before I had consumed it. I daresay that the waiter did not like ni}^ looks. I feel certain that the majority of the general company present did not relish them an}' more than those of the half score strangers who, like myself, had been driven by stress of weather to take refuge in the Brasserie Free and Easy. To a much greater extent did our advent appear to be distaste- ful to the female attendants. It is from the mien and behaviour of these young ladies that I have deduced the title which I have AT THE * ASSOMMOIR.' 487 ventui'ed to attach to the hrasscrie. I have called the ladies young. That is iifa(;on dc paiier, and there is no harm in paying a comphment even to Mother Shijiton, were j^ou to meet her hobbling about Kentish Town way ; but, in strict reality, please to imagine at this curious tavern half a score of strapping tawny- haired women, clad in flaring travesties of the costumes of the peasantry in Alsace-Lorraine. They, too, carried money-bags at their waists. They had nothing to do with the dispensation of * bocks.' Serving beer they left disdainfully to the (jargons, and attended themselves only to the dram-drinking department. When, for example, a gentleman called for a petit verre — the swallowing of raw spirits was the rule — a strapping woman, bearing a bottle and two glasses, strode to the customer's table, gave him his dram, and then comfortably drew a rush-bottomed stool to the table, filled herself a glass from the bottle, and entered into friendly con- versation with the habitue. I suppose that she drank at his expense. In the course of half an hour which I passed under the hospitable roof of the Brasserie Free and Easy I watched one tawny-haired lady toss ofl; no less than four jjciifs verves. Of how many, I wondered, could she partake in the course of the eighteen hours during which the Brasserie remains open ? I have nothing to say derogatory to the lady's manners or morals. ' Liquoring up ' with a pratique may be the custom in Alsace-Lorraine, if the lady came from either. I only note the occurrence as an odd one. But as I mused and mused on the scene presented to my eyes, even an odder series of impressions took possession of my mind. I had never seen all these people before, but where had I read about them ? I have forgotten to mention that behind the bar- comiter, in addition to the fat old lady who wheezed and her two assistants, there was a pale dissipated young fellow, in a jiistau- corps of black velveteen, and a flaring silk kerchief carelessly knotted round his neck. He was munching, with a stale and accustomed air, a toothpick ; yet he seemed to be in some kmd of authority in the place. He Avas the fits cle la maison, the landlady's son, perchance ; yet he might have been a billiard- marker out of employ, or a petit calicot trade-fallen. Most as- suredly, so far as appearances went, he might have been a journeyman hatter by the name of Lantier. After this things began to assume the semblance of a dream. That brawny yellow- beai-ded fellow, in his tucked-up shirt-sleeves and his long black leather apron : who could he have been but the virtuous" black- smith Goujet, otherwise ' Gueule d'Or ' ? The little white-headed purple-faced man, in rusty black, with the enormous red and 488 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. white-spotted pocket-liandkercliief ? Without a doubt that must have been the bibulous M. Bazouges, * Consolateur des Dames,' GKRVAISE AND C0UPEA17 AT THE ASSOMMOIR. and employe of the Pompes Funebres. Monsieur and Madame Lorilleux Avere sitting at a remote table apart, glowering over a * bock,' and whispering calumny of their neighbours. * Bee-Sale ' and ' Mes Bottes ' were alread}' three parts intoxicated ; and as for the wretched Coupeau and the more wretched Gervaise, not one AT THE 'aSSOMMOIR.' 489 but fifty types of those victims of alcohol seemed to me to be present. Steady, soddened, almost silent tippling was in the ascendant here. All the old gaiety of the French character seemed flown. ' Bibi la Grillade ' sang no songs ; the Pere Colombe had no jokes to crack; 'la Grande Virginie,' looking with wrathful eyes at her old enemy Gervaise, forgot to be coquettish ; and even the jo vial Madame Boche, albeit stout and thirsty as ever, had lost her gaiety. I looked round in vain for the appearance of the Great Still with its worm that never dies, but which has been the means of the death of so many hundreds of thousands of people. Other- wise, and upon my word, I should have taken the Brasserie Free and Easy for the veritable and original ' Assommoir' itself. I was glad to get out of the place, which smelt sickly, and, besides, gave one the horrors. I had not recognised the type of M. Poisson, the sergent de ville, at any of the tables ; but I found him, in full municipal uniform, on the boulevard, Avith his impassible ' stone-wall ' face, attentively watching all who went in and all who came out. Very possibly Monsieur Poisson and other of his brother municipals are frequently called upon to pay pro- fessional visits to the Brasserie Free and Easy. It was scarcely four in the afternoon when I left its hospitable shelter, and the topers were then quiet enough. By ten or eleven at night the company, I should say, are apt to get somewhat lively. I found the cab which I had engaged long since by the hour, but which Monsieur Poisson and his colleagues would not permit to penetrate into the precincts of the fail', at a wine-shop close to the Chateau d'Eau. While I was getting wet through the driver had managed to lunch comfortabl}^, and had then ensconced himself in the interior of the vehicle, and had gone as comfortabl}^ to sleep. A wise cabman. I bade this sage drive me home ; but halt by the way at the bureau de location of the Ambigu Comique. ' Yes,' I said to myself, 'I would see the Assommoir on the stage.' Everything was let for that evening, and P'riday was ' spectacle gratuit ; ' but I managed to secure two fauteuils de halcon for Saturday, Avhich were sold to me at what I consider to be the unconscionable price of nine francs each. I call it unconscionable, since the dramatic status of the Ambigu is certainly not above that of a third-rate theatre in London. The price of places at all the Paris theatres appears, however, to a stranger to be excessive ; and the managers plead that they are compelled to charge highly for admission to their houses — first, because a manager, like other human beings, has only three skins, and in the case of a Parisian manager one skin is claimed by the dramatist as droits d'auteur, 490 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. while another is mercilessly stripped off by the Administration de Bienfaisance as droits despauvres. Ten per cent, of the gross re- ceipts to the author, and ten per cent, to the poor — how much of the net profits is left, it is piteously asked, for the manager? Concerning the Assommoir, as a drama, it is not necessary that in this place I should say much ; first, because the piece on the occasion of its production was exhaustively criticised in the French papers ; next, because a good deal of that which I witnessed on the stage of the Ambigu I had already seen — or fancied that I had seen — at the^Brasserie Free and Easy ; and, finally, because I find it currently reported in the French press that an English version of the Assommoir is to be forthwith produced at a London theatre.* It would be thus certainly premature, and perhaps unfair, to dis- cuss the chances of this remarkable picture of manners finding any kind of acceptation — much more success — on the English stage. It is a problem which only the event can jjrove. There is another reason, too, wh}^ I am unable to anal^^se the Assommoir conscien- tiously as a i)lay. I sat out seven of the I know not how many tableaux of which the drama is composed : the squalid garret scene, with the abandonment of Gervaise by Lantier, the lavoir or laundry scene, with the abominable figlit between Gervaise and Virginie — an unconscious parody of the Homeric battle-royal of Molly Sea- grim and her foes in the churchyard, in Tom Jones ; the Boulevard de la Chaj^elle scene, with the eloquent apostrophe in favour of temperance delivered to a knot of drunken workmen by the virtuous blacksmith, ' Gueule d'Or ; ' the restaurant garden-scene, with the double-wedding feast of Gervaise and Coupeau and Virginie and Poisson ; the street scene, with the fall of Coupeau from the house- roof; the grand dinner scene on Gervaise's saint's-day, with the humours of ' Mes Bottes ' and Madame Boclie, and the Mephisto- philic reajipearance of Lantier ; and the scene of the Brasserie Free and Eas}" — I mean of the Assommoir itself, mmus the free- aud-eas}'' females with the tawny hair, wlio took nips of raw spirits with the customers. But having seen these seven tableaux, I began to feel weary. I felt a great ' exposition of sleep ' coming on. I felt faint, as though I Avanted oysters, or chops, or something. The sordid characters on the stage had been eating and drinking and smoking and gabbling for three mortal hours and a half. Everj'body had clianged his or her shabby garments three or four times over. It was a masquerade of rags — a carnaval de haillons ; a combination ■* At the Princess's, wliere, witli considerable modifications, it lias made its appearance under the title of Drink. AT THE 'ASSOMMOIR.' 491 of the Descente de la Courtille and Petticoat Lane. I daresay that it was all very realistic ; but so is Seven Dials on a Saturday THE FALL OF C'OUPEAU FROM THE HOUSE-ROOF. night. Seven times had the curtain descended. Did not mad Nat Lee once write a tragedy in twenty-two acts ? * Enough ! ' I 492 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. cried at last. ' Assez comme 9a de s'encanailler.' I was told that there was a beautiful scene coming of a padded room at a hospital, where the alcoholised Coupeau, in the saltator^^ stage of delirium tremens, dances himself to death. I had read all about that ; and I should prefer the ballet of the Tarantula to Coupeau's alcoholic jig. I thought that I would not wait for the discovery of the remains of Gervaise in the hole under the staircase, and ' quite green ; ' so I went to bed, and dreamed that, in the thhtieth tableau or so of MM. Gastineau and Busnach's drama, * Sir Lawson Wilfred, Ba- ronet Anglais,' assisted by ' I'Eveque Colenso de Cantorberi ' and ' the Reverend Jonbigoffe, Pasteur Americain,' had induced Coupeau and Gervaise to take the i:>ledge ; prosecuted the viUanous Lantier to conviction for obtaining hats under false pretences ; assisted * Bibi la Grillade ' and ' Mes Bottes ' to emigrate to Queensland ; enlisted the 3'outhful Nana in the Band of Hojie, and obtained a permanent situation for the sable-clad Bazouges as a Totally- Abstaining Mute in the employ of the Temperance Funerals Com- pany. LE CAPHAKNAHUM OU l'oN KIT. XXXVIII. GINGERBREAD FAIR. April 16. I SHOULD have veiymucli liked Professor Henry Morley to have been present with me at the Foire au Pain d'%ices-the great Gingerbread Fair-which was opened in the presence of an enor- mous concourse of sightseers on Easter Monday, and which will 494 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. enjoy an existence of three whole weeks. The learned author of the Annals of Bartholomew Fair might have discovered many A MAKCHANDE DE GATEAUX, points of contact, in the way of humours and characteristics, between the existing gingerbread festival at the Barriore du Trone and the extinct saturnalia of Old Smithfield. One cannot carry all the scenes and characters in Ben Jonson's wonderful comedy GINGERBREAD FAIE. 405 verbatim et literatim in one's head ; else might I institute a toler- ably close parallel between the phenomena and the personages so powerfully portrayed in Bartholomew Fair and the ijrodigies and people visible among the booths at the rand ijoint of the Barrier and in the Cours de Vincennes. Certain I am, however, that Lanthorn Leatherhead was at the Foire au Pain d'Epices with his puppets; that Dame Ursula, if she were not selling roast pig and bottled ale, was dispensing galctte piping hot ; and that the Pari- sian Fair was as full of gaping rustics, cynical cocloieys, * roving blades,' and downright sharpers and cut-purses, as was the * Bartlemy ' of old. The French friend with whom I took counsel prior to visiting the affair advised me to go thither in a strictly buttoned-up con- dition. Fairs and racecourses he declared ' fourmillaient de pick- X^ockets ; ' but he was good enough to add, by way of rider, that the great majority of ' ces messieurs ' were English thieves. The French have a curious habit of fathering their little w^eaknesses in the way of vice and immorality upon us. In the not-to-be-for- gotten play of UAssommoir at the Ambigu — I have the taste of it in my mouth still — one of the topers at the colossal dram-shop incidentally mentions that in a * gin-palasse ' in the Strand, London, he has seen a ' colivire ' — presuraabl}- a coalheaver — swallow twelve glasses of brandy in succession. Now the traditional custom of the British ' coaley ' is, I apprehend, after consuming as many pints of beer as he can conveniently carry until the delivery of the next wagon-load, to ' top-up with a drop of short.' Twelve suc- cessive ' drops of short ' would be considered as an unpardonable breach of coal-heaving etiquette. Again, there has been for some months in prison, awaiting the result of a protracted criminal 'instruction,' a horrible woman, to whom has been given the nick- name of the ' Ogresse des Lilas.' This woman was in the habit of lying in Avait for young mothers who had infants in their arms. The ogress would enter into conversation with the mothers, and on some cunning pretence or another obtain possession of the infants, with whom she incontinently disaj)peared. What did she do with them ? I see it gravely stated in a Parisian paper of this morning that the Ogresse des Lilas had entered into a formal con- tract to supply an ' Agence Anglaise ' with so many babies a year. The ' English Agency ' was, according to this well-informed autho- rity, engaged in the 'substitution' business, the 'Law of Primo- geniture existing in England rendering it imperatively necessary that patrician families should be provided coiHe que coiite wath a due number of heirs male. When Lucina was unpropitious, sub- 496 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. stitution remedied the sliortcoming.' This is almost as ingenious as Mr. Gilbert's fantastic notion of the pauper's baby, ' substi- tuting ' himself for the millionuaire baby by a judicious change of cradles. There are, however, two persons in Ben Jonson's drama who certainly were not to be found at the Foire au Pain d'lilpices. These were Justice Overdo and Rabbi Zeal-o'-the-Land Busy. It is a strange commentary on the radical difference between French and English manners to find an English dramatist m the reign of James I. denomicing the ' enormities' of a popular metropolitan fau" in almost exactly the same terms that magistrates and clergy- men nowadays employ to denounce not only any attempts to revive our few suburban fairs, but likewise the provincial * mops, roasts, and statties.' Yet Bartlemy, so fiercely anathematised by Justice Overdo and Eabbi Busy more than two hundred and fifty years ago, Imgered until the seventh or eighth year of the reign of Queen Victoria ; and, although Greenwich Fair has been definitively abolished, I find the veteran Earl of Shaftesbury only recently solemnly reproving the people who preferred * roaming up and down Greenwich Hill ' to patronising Industrial Exhibitions. The truth would seem to be that from time imme- morial the English people have been passionately fond of outdoor amusements; while their pastors and masters have been as passion- ately persistent in their endeavours to deprive them — alwaj-s on the highly sustainable plea of decorum and moralit}^ — of any out- door amusements whatsoever. Precisely the contrary rule has, in all times, and under all governments, prevailed in France. Outdoor games, shows, and merrymakings have always been systematically sanctioned and encouraged by authority ; and under the Bestoration, when a feeble efl:brt was made by the Government to suppress the popular suburban balls, the attempt was met by the furious and famous diatribe of Paul-Louis Courier — assuredly no Badical writer — against the law which proposed 'd'empecher les paysans de danser le Dimanche,' and the proliibitory legislation was abandoned. I may just conclude this section of my subject by remarking that among my readers there may be some who may remember the fair in Hyde Park on the occasion of the coronation of her Majesty Queen Victoria, in June 1838. The Fou-e au Pain d'lilpices is quite as big and as crowded a fair as was the Victorian festival ; but what an outburst of indignation might not we exjject from Bespectability were it proposed to celebrate the forty-first anni- versary of her Majesty's coronation by a fair in Hyde Park, or on GINGERBREAD FAIR. 497 Primrose Hill, or even in Epping Forest ! London is the most gigantic school in the world ; but we cannot afford, somehow, to provide a real plaj'ground for ' Our Boj-s.' We want them to be ' something ological,' as Mrs. Gradgrind j^ut it. We do not recognise the expediency' of their i^lajdng the fool sometimes. Yet Societj' would think it very hard if charades and the cotillon were suppressed by Act of Parliament. The Paris Gingerbread Fair has two distinct and rigidly- adhered-to sides — the side of Business and the side of Tomfoolerj'. Prepared for both, I chartered a victoria on Monday and went doAvn to the Barriere du Trone. The fair, with its succursals, must be at least three miles long. The booths and the round- abouts, the swings and the circular railways, begin at the Place du Chateau d'Eau, possibly for the recreation of the soldiers quartered in the enormous barracks erected by the Emperor Napo- leon III. to defend that which his militar}' advisers deemed to be one of the most important strategical points in Paris. Subsequent events, nevertheless, have shown that, when insurrection is on foot, any street in Paris is good enough to fight in. The mob are quite impartial, and they will give battle at Pere la Chaise or at the Jardin des Plantes — on the Buttes Montmartre or on the Place du Pantheon, just as the humour seizes them or as the mot cVordre is given. ' Where are the barricades ? ' I asked a railway porter, on arriving in Paris on the 3d of December 1851. ' Un peu par- tout, monsieur, ' was the candid reply. Ever}^ inch of the ground between the Chateau d'Eau and the rostral column of the Barriere du Trone has been at some time or another a battle-field ; but on Monday everything wore the most pacific and the most smiling of aspects. The prodigiously long and bustling Boulevard Voltaire assmned in particular a gay and holiday look. The houses in this new and thoroughly Haussmannesque thoroughfare are, as a rule, six stories high. A few of the shops were closed ; but nearly all the balconies were filled with well-dressed people enjoying the sight of the animated spectacle below. The kerbs were Kned with haraques, for the sale of nicknacks and sweetstufi"; but the real Business and the real Tomfoolery of the fail' did not commence until the Pond Point was reached. I elected to take the Tomfoolery first. Life, I repeat, is so very serious an aflair, that you should never miss an opportunity for laughing. Such an opportunity presented itself before I had been five minutes within the area of thePond Point, in the remarkable exliibi- tion of ' Le Capharnahum o\\ Ton rit.' The ' Capharnahum,' was a show, externally of the well-known ' Walk-uj) ' kind. A platform, a 198 PARIS HERSELF AGAI.NT. flight of steps, a stout lady, with corkscrew ringlets and ui a flaming 3^ellow dress, sitting at the pay-table, which was covered with crimson baize, and flanked by a huge looking-glass — cracked, of course. To the right and the left of the entrance, pictures — GINGERBREAD FAIR. 499 dimensions colossal, vehicle oil. St^le, Grand Smudge. Name of artist, presumably, Rapin de la Daube. Subjects on one side, the Cuirassiers of Reichshoffen demolishing the Prussians, and the Interior of an Eastern Harem. On the other side, Venus rising from the Sea, and the Destruction of Herculaneum. But what was there inside ? Two j^outhfal gredins were distributing printed circulars among the crowd, and bawling as though their lungs were of brass ; but their utterances were inarticulate to me. The lady with the corkscrew ringlets and the yellow dress was vehemently ringing a huge bell of dustman calibre, as though she were the President of a National Assembly of Lunatics, and ever and anon she would utter a shriek of volubility, of which I could make nothing save that it ended with ' Messieurs et Mesdames.' There were some written placards, however, on the canvas walls of the show, which were more connnunicative as to the attributes of ' Le Capharnahum ou Ton rit.' On one bill the exhibition w^as X^ronouuced to be 'gai, surprenant, triste, affectueux et aftreux' — ' on en mangerait ' (one could eat it), another placard enthusias- tically announced. Elsewhere the bills broke out in Italian, ' Per far ridere tutti.' Again a plunge was made into English, * To bie or not to bie, wliath his the kestion.' Then another, in down- right French vernacular, ' Le public est prie de rester calme, ct swtoiit i)iodore.' The public could not be calm : they were frantic with excitement. Nor were they altogether inodorous ; for the perfumes of garlic and bad tobacco were overpowering. I got hold of one of the printed circulars at last, and learned that the ' Ca- pharnahum on I'on rit' was the ' Theatre du Progres,' and that the performances comprised selections by the first artists from William Tell, Faust, The Marriar/e of Figaro, Orpliee auxEnfcrs, Polycucte, and ' the Avorks of Moliere.' The last announcement was deli- ciously vague. The entrance to the premieres was only two- l^ence-halfpenny; to the secondes only threehalfpence. I have always admired the drama, and resolved to patronise it for the nonce in a princely manner ; so I advanced to the premieres and boldly paid my twenty-five centimes. Why did the youthful grediii of the Lantier type thrust his tongue into his cheek as he raised a tattered baize curtain and gave me ingress to the Capharnahum ? Wh}', when I was inside, did the whole expanse seem to echo and reecho with the word ' Imbecile ' '? Well, some millions of fools had preceded me in all the fiiirs that the world has seen. But what was there mside ? Inana arcana ct vacua scdes / Well, not exactly ; but, uj^on my Avord, there Avas nothing inside the Capharnahum but a broken wax figure of an Indian princess, and IC K 2 500 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. a lot of ramshackle old stereoscopes, on the revolving principle, and the machinery of which declined to work. ' Fool ! ' said the Echoes again. Something of the kind was said by the forest in Mr. Tennyson's Vivien. As I emerged from this twopenny-halfpenny Cave of Trophonius, my eye met that of the stout lady with the corkscrew ringlets and the yellow dress. We interchanged a wink. I was touched. Do you remember the story of the thief who caught the eye of Charles II. just as he (the thief) was picking the pocket of a nobleman at a Drawing-room at Whitehall? What did the pickpocket do under these embarrassing circmnstances ? Why, with infinite impudence and readiness of wit, he laid one finger by the side of his nose. He had taken the Merry Monarch into his confidence, and his Majesty did not ' round ' on him. Nor did I on the lady with the ringlets. The father of a family, in a straw hat and a blouse, his wife and olive-branches clinging round him open- mouthed, accosted me as I descended the steps, and eagerly asked me what I thought of the Capharnahum. ' C'est superbe ! ' I re- plied ; ' c'est emouvant, c'est etonnant, c'est assommant ! On en mangerait.' They were seven in number, that family. I saw them all mount the platform, and the proud and happy father pay seven threehalfpences for admission to the Capharnahum. Poor things ! Butler tells us that ' the pleasure is as great in being cheated as to cheat;' but there is yet another pleasure, that, when you have beenthoroughly well 'done ' yourself, of helping yourneigh- bour on to the gridiron, and watching him assume a rich brown hue. ' Sold again. Now for the next party.' I ought to have re- membered before that very old excerpt from the vocabulary of the fail*. But I remembered it at last, and resolved thenceforth to be content Avitli the outside of the shows. Thus I resisted all temp- tations to enter the Grand Theatre Salon of M. Adrien Delille, adorned as Avas the proscenium with two gigantic and really deverlj'-painted copies of Eafaelle's ' Triumph of Galatea' and David's ' liape of the Sabines.' Who painted these huge machines, I wonder ? A Grand Prix de Eome, perchance, who, on his return from the Eternal City, had failed to satisfy the expectations fomied of his capacity by too partial friends. Balzac's ' Cousin Pons' had been a Grand Prix de Home— musical section — and he ended his days as a chef d'orchestre at a fourth-rate boulevard theatre. Do all the Senior Wranglers become Lord Chancellors? Do all the strokes of the University eights become Field-Marshals? I declined to enter M. Delille's estabhshment, notwithstanding the hugely placarded attractions of ' The Festival of the Thousand GINGERBREAD FAIR. 501 Cascades in tlie Palace of Diamonds.' M. Delille offered, in addi- tion, Magic, Clowns, the Plionograpli, and 'le Comique Auguste, I'heritier de Tabarin.' No, no, Adrien Delille ! I am an elderly person from the county of Middle- sex, but you will not get over me. I must own that De- lille did his best to cajole the public. He had a very good brass band outside, a very fair show of male and female tumblers, and, in particular, a man in the dress of a Pier- rot, who whacked the big drum with the strength of a Hercules and the l^ersistenc.y of a Si- syphus. He must have served an ap- prenticeship to an Egyptian tax-col- lector, this Pail- lasse, for he banged away at the sound- ing skins as though they had been the soles of the feet of a fellah slightly in arrear with his tithes. There was a little old man in a huge cocked hat at a wild -beast show opposite, whose performance gratis on the drum was highly creditable. It was a drum of Prussian form — a huge shallow tambourine — and it emitted, when whacked, a succession of stri- dent, guttural staccato sounds. The little old man continued to belabour it with an imperturbable expression of countenance. I think that he must have been deaf. He thrashed the parch- ment as though his drumstick had been a flail, and he were threshing out wheat. Well, he was really beating for his bread. I remember once being at a fair at Granada, in Spain. There were shows and monsters, wild-beasts and learned pigs, mimes, 502 TAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. moimtebanks, zanies, Gitanos and Gitanas, cockfighters, monte players. There was, in fine, all the fun of a Spanish fair. Plenty of wine, but nobody tipsy. Tobacco-smoke and guitar-twanging ad libitum. The 'Teatro de las Zarzuelas,' the 'Teatro Comico,' all sorts of amusements. ' Y todo,' remarked a c^-nical Si:)anish friend, ' para un poco de pan.' Yes, there it is ; all this hurry- scurry, this banging of drums, this capering and grimacing, this throwing of double somersaults and vaulting on ropes tight and slack, this lying and cogging, this brawling and screeching — what is the final cause of it all? Just a morsel of bread. How hard they work, how they strain and toil and moil, earning their bread liter- ally b}' the sweat of their brows, these nomads ! 'Idle vagabonds I ' Why, they work harder than many paviours do. Take, for instance, the ' homme an pave,' raising a hundredweight of granite with his teeth, and jerking it facilely over his shoulder. Look, too, at the strong woman, in salmon-coloured tights and spangles, lifting prodigiously heavy weights, and even allowing them to be placed on her ample chest. Be not so virtuously indignant with the ' unwomanly exhibition.' She maybe the mother of six. She is straining every muscle, till her labouring sinews almost crack — all for the iioco do iian — for the crust of bread. Consider that cada- verous 3'oung man, who, without any previous warning, suddenl}' plants himself in front of 3'ou, produces a large handful of tow, crams it into his mouth, and sets fire to the tow. How much flame and smoke will he liave to swallow before he has earned the where- withal for a meal of victuals ! I am glad to say that by half-past two — it was one r.M. when I entered the Rond Point — the ' busy hum' had attained the pro- portions of one sustained, thunderous, deafening roar. That is as a fail- should be. A rightdown genuine fair, with no nonsense about it, should outhowl all the Howling Dervishes in Stamboul and Pera put together. And the kaleidoscopic confusion of sights equalled the brangling of the music, the booming of the drums, the maniacal carillons of the bells, and the screeching of the madding crowed. Up and down in the aii* Avent the swings ; the locomotives in the little circular railway puffed and screamed and snorted ; the great roundabouts, worked by steam, made a fearful clatter; and then you could hear the sharp click of the balls on the bagatelle-tables, where dolls and pieces of cheap porcelain were being comjieted for. Competition as eager was carried on at the ' Electric Pdfle Galleries; ' and, to crown all, the Bearded Lad}- had come ; the Spotted Girl had arrived ; the Giantesses were ' all there;' and Mr. Chopps the Dwarf, at length 'moved up' from the GINGERBIIEAD FAIR. 503 A MARCHAh'DE JJJi PLA1.~IRS. Boulevard du Temple, ..s -ging Hs LeU^furu^^; Clj^pps^ miniature brougliam ^vlncli ^as f^^^^^^ifi,^,;^^^^ scuttle, Avas exhibited outside Ins slio v , ^^^^^^^^^^ of with a cartoon representmg Cb^pps m tlie unto m o ^^^^ France, being received mimblic-i^^^^ Emperor of Czar Alexander, tlie Kaiser Inanz Josei, 504 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. China, almost persuaded me to enter the booth, pay my fifty centimes, and see more of Chopps than his equipage, his hand and arm and hell. Had he only squeaked I would have yielded at once ; hut he said nothing, or, at least, if he was loquacious, the clangour of his hell rendered his speech inaudible. So I remembered that I had had enough of Tomfoolery, and that it behoved me to think of Business. Business meant the taking stock of the enormous quantity of gingerbread exposed for sale, either in solid lumps weighing a kilogramme each, or in the forms — such forms ! — of horses, camels, donkeys, and human beings, either plain or garnished with almonds. Gingerbread is gingerbread all the world over, and that at the Paris ' Foire au Pain d'Epices' needs no special description on my part; but I may mention that the gingerbread fairings at the Barriere du Trdne are never gilt. They are business exhibits of gingerbread, and are made to be eaten. Regarding the quality of the article I am tolerably well satisfied, I brought away a kilogramme or two for friends in England, and I likewise purchased a gingerbread horse for the benefit of a juvenile acquaintance of mine in the Passage Jouflfroy. The animal, I regret to say, soon began to exhibit, owing to the warmth of my hand, symptoms of disintegration, and I was constrained to eat his off hind-leg and a portion of his tail before I reached the Boulevard Poissonniere : otherwise they would have fallen off bodily, and would have been wasted. XXXIX. IN THE EUE DE LA PAIX. April 18, Just as the faintest promise of fine weather is beginning to gild our long-darkened horizon — it hailed yesterda}^ and it may snow to-morrow, but to-day the sun shines so brilliantly that you almost forget the cutting east wmd — the sorrowful fact confronts the would- be merry-maker that the Easter holidays are virtually over. Few and far between are the apparitions in the streets of small boys clad in the uniforms of the various Parisian colleges, which I hesitate to call by their old names of Louis le Grand, Charlemagne, Bour- bon, and so forth, lest under the newest Reimblican regime, these once familiar designations have been changed for more democratic titles. The Municipal Council, for instance, are playing a game of confusion worse confounded with the names of some of the best known thoroughfares in the French metropolis. A clean sweep has been made of all appellations recalling directly or indirectly the fasti of the First or of the Second Empire. The Rue St. Ai'naud 506 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. is to be re-cliristened the Piue Lincoln ; the Eue Billault is to become the Eue Charron ; and the Rue de Morny the Eue Pierre Charron. Poor Marshal Magnan is disestablished, and must give way to one Beaurepaire ; the Avenues Josephine, du Eoi de Eome, and de la Peine Hortense are to be respectively re-dubbed the Avenues Marceau, Kleber, and Hoche ; the Quai Napoleon is to be merged in the Quai aux Fleurs ; the Pue ]Marie Louise will hence- forth be known as the Pue Viete — who was Viete ? — the Pue Cam- baceres is to become the Eue de Coulmiers ; and the Rue Bona- parte the Rue Guttenburg. It would have been more ironically appropriate to call this last-named thoroughfare the Pue Palm, in memory of the bookseller whom the First Napoleon caused to be shot for publishing a pamphlet on ' The Profound Degradation of Germany.' Unkindest cut of all, the Boulevard Haussmann — in itself a Avonderfullj^ characteristic tj'pe of Haussmannisation — is to take henceforth the cognisance of the Boulevard fitienne Marcel. It is not quite decided whether the Municipal Council are to have their way in this contemplated orgy of street nomenclature ; but just try to realise the idea of a Radical Majority of the Metro- politan Board of Works metamorj^hosing Regent Street into Odger Street, and Brunswick Square into Feargus O'Connor Gardens, Hyde Park into Reformers' Tree Park, and St. James's Street into Club Row ! I observe that M. Le Roy de St. Arnaud, in a letter to the newspapers, has indignantly protested against the threat- ened outrage to the memory of his distinguished father, whose bravery at the Battle of the Alma, and whose death at the post of honour might at least have saved his name from insult. But ' high falutin ' Democrac}^ is just now in the ascendant, and will not listen to reason. I should not be in the least surprised to hear that there were a College Marat, a College Carrier, and a College Tom Paine, in lieu of the College Louis le Grand, the College Charlemagne, and the College Bourbon of ni}' youth ; that serious thoughts were entertained of converting the Boulevard des Capu- cines into the Boulevard des Bonnets Rouges, and the Rue Royale into the Rue de I'Extreme Gauche. I am not quite certain that it is not already, in strict legality, the Rue Nationale. I know that legally the l\ilais Royal is the Palais National ; but I fancj- that not one Parisian in ten thousand calls it by its legal name. Ere long irreverent Democracy may even essay to tamper with the time-honoured name of the Rue de la Paix, The poor dear old street— to me it is still, in many respects, the handsomest in Paris — has already been knocked about, phy- IN THE RUE DE LA PAIX. 507 sically, in a lamentable manner. Its summit was ruthlessly lopped away in a diagonal direction when this particular district was architecturally cut to pieces for the due alineation of the Avenue de 1' Opera; and for many months its vista was bereaved of the incomparably fine terminus of the column of the Place Yen- dome. The Pillar of Triumph once more raises its brazen head, but not all the Piepublic's architects, nor all its workmen, will be able to restore the shaved-oft' top of the Eue de la Paix. I can only venture to hope that they will leave its name alone. The French, when they set about their favourite task of efifacement and obhteration, are apt to display an uncomfortable keenness of memory. The ' Peace,' from Avhich the Piue de la Paix derives its title, was one not by any means redounding to the honour and glory of France. It was one, indeed, as humiliating to Gallic vanity, and as onerous to Gallic interests, as that peace with Ger- many in 1871, which deprived France of Alsace and Lorraine, and mulcted her in five milliards of francs. The thoroughfare at pre- sent called the Rue de la Paix was constructed under the First Napoleon, in 1807, through a portion of the gardens of the dis- established Convent of the Capucines, to serve as a new and stately approach to the Place Yendome. For seven years the new street went by the name of the Paie Napoleon; but in 1814, at the restoration of the Bourbons, and in memory of the Treaty of Peace, in which the Allied Powers imposed pretty much what terms they liked on conquered France, the Eue Napoleon became the Pue de la Paix. It has retained that name for sixty-five years. But, suppose it suddenly occurred to some violently Radi- cal Municipal Councillor that a street named after the Peace of 1814 must be associated, in a manner ignominious to France, with Nesselrode and Metternich, with Castlereagh and Barclay de Tolly, with Blucher and Platoft", with Schwartzenberg and ' Yilainton ' ; under these circumstances one might tremble for the future of the Rue de la Paix. One might almost be troubled with ominous misgivings that it would ere long be authoritatively designated the Rue Blanqui. It certainly contains a sufficient number of che- mists' and druggists' shops to warrant it being called the Rue Raspail. Wandering there this morning, I could not help accepting its aspect as most convincing evidence of the Easter holidays being at an end. I have always looked on the Rue de la Paix as preemi- nently the most English street in Paris ; and of that fact the humorous French journalist was well aware when he informed his readers that there was at least one shop in the Rue de la Paix in 508 PAEIS HERSELF AGAIN. the window of wliicli ap^jeared the inscription, * Ici on parle Fran- cais.' Elsewhere the English language was predominant. There are great numbers of our countrymen and countrywomen to he found in the Hue St. Honore, hut not further east than the Church of St. Eoch, and in the Paie du Faubourg St. Honore. There is a permanent English colony, wealthy, refined, and aristocratic, in the breezy quarter of the Champs filysees, and in the outskirts of the Boulevard de Courcelles and the Pare INIonceaux. British nationality, too, makes a very conspicuous appearance on the great line of boulevards proper, from the Madeleine to the Rue Vivienne. Gahgnani's reading-room, Meurice's and other Anglo-French hotels, and in particular the Grands Magasins du Louvre, bring plent}^ of English ladies and gentlemen into the Hue de Pdvoli ; while the financial establishment of Mr. John Arthur, politest and most obliging of bankers and house-agents, brings a continuous con- course of English and American visitors to the Ptue Castiglione. Finall}^ you shall scarcely pass through the galleries of the Palais Iloj'al at an}^ hour of the day or evening, or at any season of the year, without lighting upon some unmistakeably English groups intently staring at the cheap jewelry and the nicknacks. But, in the face of all this I maintain the Piue de la Paix to be unsur- passed as a resort for my compatriots in Paris. In the other localities which I have named they only constitute a sprinkling among the pedestrians. They are absorbed in the great throng of iidneurs to the manner born, and have to take their chance with the native loungers ; but in the Pue de la Paix they well-nigh monopolise the trottoir, and fill the first row, so to speak, m the stalls among the starers in at the shop-windows. At night the Bue de la Paix is not b}^ any means a crowded thoroughfare. Although it has numerous and comfoiiable hotels, it does not boast a single restaurant or cafe. By nme o'clock busi- ness is suspended at the great millinery and dressmaking establish- ments which are carried on above the shops. Mesdames ' Theo- doric,' ' Clorinde,' 'Hermione,' 'Naomi,' and so forth, whose lofty ensigns, denoting their commerce in 'robes,' ' fleurs,' ' dentelles,' and ' trousseaux de mariage,' gleam in huge gilded letters from so many balconies, attract during the daytime a brilliant afiiuence of what simple-minded folic in England term * carriage-people.' The great dames of the Noble Faubourg ; the grand ladies of the Rus- sian Colony, the Spanish Colony, the Brazilian Colony, the female ' illustrations ' of ' La Haute Finance ' and ' La Haute Colonic Israelite,' would never dream of purchasing their cmplcttcs at the Magasins du Louvre or at the Bon Marche, unless, indeed, they IX THE RUE DE LA TAIX. 509 found the conduits of credit temporarily obstructed, and were anxious to make a little ready money go a very long way. Simi- larly, in London, when rank and fashion finds that it has gone a little too deep in the books of its credit-giving and long-suffering tradesmen, rank and fashion condescends to patronise for a while the Cooperative Stores. But, as a rule, rank and fashion in Paris has its fouruissenrs and founiisseuses ; and, equally as a rule, these ijm-veyors of the pomps and vanities of feminine attire do not keep open shop. The salons and the ateliers of the * Theodorics,' of the ' Clo- rindes,' the ' Hermiones,' the ' Eudoxies,' and the ' Naomis,' are in the first and second floors of houses in the Eue de la Paix or in the Place de rOjiera — mysterious salons to which formal introduction is imperatively necessary, and where ' tick ' assumes proportions inscrutable to the vulgar. It is in the Rue de la Paix Avhere the ilO rARlS HERSELF AGAIX. veritable Temple of Fashion is situate, the sanctum sanctorum of feminine frivolity, over the more than Eleusinian mysteries of which the great Worth ]n-esides in person. I'he masculine eye has no more chance of penetrating its arcana than those of the wor- ship of the Bona Dea ; yet reports have from time to time reached me that the hierophant combines the suavity of a Granville, the IN THE RUE DE LA I'AIX. 511 diiilomatic address of a Metternicli, the firmness of a Wellington, and the prompt coup cVocil of a Napoleon; and that before him prin- cesses discrown themselves, duchesses tremble, countesses bow their aristocratic heads in mute acquiescence, and citizenesses of the Transatlantic Eepublic humbly abnegate that self-assertiveness which is one of their most prominent characteristics. It is from ten to twelve in the morning — that is to say, between the hours of high mass and breakfast— and between three and five in the afternoon, between breakfast and the drive in the Bois, that 512 TARIS IIEESELF AGAIN. the crowd of * carriage-people ' in the Eue de la Paix is at its great- est. Then may you see the Duchesses and the Marchionesses, the Ambassadresses and the American ' millionnairesses ' — the last not nearly so numerous as of 3'ore — descending from their sparkling equipages at the portals of the mansions where ' Theodoric/ * Clorinde,' and the rest ply their mysteries ; and there may j'ou institute, if you please, any number of comparisons between the British flunkey — calm, superb, impassible of mien, stately of figure, symmetrical of calf, undeniably stately, but slightly supercilious — and the French valet cle xncd ; a stalwart fellow enough of his inches, but clean-shaven, sallow, somewhat cadaverous of coun- tenance, apt to look too rigid, as though he were half-strangled in his high, stiff, white collar, and altogether wearing a half-military half-clerical expression. But, after five o'clock, the gay equipages, with their inmates and the valets de pied, disappear. The demoiselles de ma(jasin, i take it, are dismissed about nine, and hurry away to their beloved IN THE KUE DE LA PAIX. 513 boulevards; and, altogether, the Ta\e de la Paix would be all but deserted but for the English, whose appearance after the dinner- hour — say from eight to close upon ten r.M. — can in general be confidently reckoned upon. Tlie}^ have, to most intents and pur- poses, the Rue de la Paix to themselves. They have dined, say, at the Cafe de la Paix, at the table d'hote of tlie Grand Hotel. Then instead of repairing to a cafe or mingling with the Jidneurs on the Boulevards, as the native Parisians do, they tranquilly walk as far as the Rue Scribe, and have a good long stare at the dia- monds and pearls at Otterbourg's, hard by the porte-cochere of the Jockey Club. This is a kind of ' vorsmack ' or relish for the ban- quet of jewelry which is to follow. Then they cross the enor- mous and, to pedestiians, somewhat perilous Place de I'Opdra, and passing the Bazar du Voj^age, where French ingenuity has con- trived to infuse the picturesque and the tasteful element into such prosaic things as portmanteaus, travelling-bags, indiarubber air- cushions, and waterproof sheets, they turn down the cruelly-trun- cated but still glorious Rue de la Paix. For them, and for them exclusively, so it would seem, are the great jewellers' and gold- smiths' shops kei)t open so very late. For them do the diamonds and the rubies, the emeralds and the pearls, the amethysts and topazes glisten in their cases of crimson and purple and dark-blue velvet. If you peep into the shops you find them generally de- serted, save by the shopkeeper and his assistants. But those gen- tlemen know their own business perfectly well. Make your, mind thoroughly easy on that point. They would not keep their shops 514 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. open SO late and spend so much money upon gas if the protrac- tion of their business-hours did not pay. Depend upon it there is a well-ascertained average of ' Milords Anglais ' who have dined well, of * Fabricants millionnaires du Lancashire,' and ' Proprie- taires de mines de houille lc\-bas,' and especially of British newly- man-ied couples spending their honeymoon in Paris, who saunter up and down the Rue de la Paix between eight and ten at night, In the Rue de la Paix. 1~. 5'; IN THE RUE DE LA PAIX. 515 and who stare at the jewehy until they become fascinated, even as birds are said to be by the basilisks, and so enter the glittering magasins and buy largely. I am afraid that during this actual Easter the presence of English people willing to be nocturnally fascinated in the Rue de la Paix has been considerably under the average, and that the enterprising jewellers have burned a large quantity of gas without any commensurate retm'n in the waj'- of custom. The weather has been so cold, so wet, and so generally miserable. But let the brave hijoutiers of the Rue de la Paix pluck up heart. Whitsuntide is coming. It is only to be hoped that another Christmas, in the way of frost and snow, will not come before Whitsuntide makes its appearance. L L 2 Am XL. THE LITTLE RED MAN. April 21. Eastertide is over ; but I have yet a very few Days in Paris re- maining to me, and there may be no harm in utilising one of them by taking note of a phenomenon of which I was recently the admiring witness. I have seen another Ghost. That circum- stance may not be in itself so very strange after all. This city is as full of spectres as Prospero's isle was full of noises ; and on some of the Apparitions of bygone Paris I have already descanted. But this last Ghost was assuredly the weirdest, most grotesque, and yet most fearsome phantom that the eyes of my mind have beheld for a very long time. The last day of Easter Week was a THE LITTLE RED I\[AX, 517 i.jrV gloriously fine one. It is pouring with rain, dismally, this instant Monday morning ; but Saturday was all blue sky and golden sun- shine — a real lapis-lazuli after- noon. I had spent the day in the pursuit of bric-a-brac. I had wandered about the Chaus- see d'Antin and the Piues Le- jpelletier, Lafitte, Taitbout, and Drouot ; I had ascended and descended the Boulevard Haussmann ; I had crossed the water, and renewed a long- standing acquaintance Vvith the Quai Voltaire ; I saw the dealers of the Eue St. Andre des Arts, and those dealers saw me, even as a certain gentleman in a Avell-known poem, passing through Tot- tenham Court Ptoad, ' either by choice or by whim,' saw Brothers the Prophet, and ' Brothers the Prophet saAv him.' I could make but little of the hihdot dealers on either side of the Seine, nor they of me. There is something the matter with the old-curiosity trade in Paris just now. The article is scarce, and holders are firm. There is absolutely no old Sevres of any im- portance to be had. The dealers hold permanent com- missions from the great col- lectors on either side the - Atlantic and the Channel ; and so soon as a really superb vase or a jardiniere of value makes its appearance it is snapped up regardless of expense. The same may be said of old Dresden. _ The consequence has been that the curiosity shops are flooded with ingenious forgeries of j^orcelaine cle Saxe—' reproductions,' the dealers call them, but since the sham Dresden all bears either the Crossed Swords or the Crown Augustus m.ark, I prefer to call it a forgery. There was a handsome display of these ' reproduc- -j^^m 518 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. tions ' in the Exposition of the Champ de Mars — quite a fair and above-board emporium — and I purchased, at the rate of eight francs apiece, a number of charming little statuettes of the gods of Olympus, all professedly of Dresden and of eighteenth century make. I am very well acquainted with the factory in Paris where they are produced. "While the Exhibition was still open, these little fiij'irincs made their appearance in large nmnbers in the fashionable shops of Paris. For an eight-franc * Hebe ' I was asked 0:1 the Boulevai'd des Italiens twenty-live francs ; in the Rue de la Paix thirty-five. In London you may buy very tolerable little Dresden cups and saucers — of no importance, but quaint and genuine so far as they go — for twelve-and-sixpence aj)iece. In Paris they have the conscience to ask you from forty to fifty francs. Broken Sevres of the First Empire, the Restoration, Louis Phi- lippe, and the Second Empire, you may acquire cheaply enough ; but broken china has little intrinsic value. It may please your eye, but it will find but little fovour in the e3'es of the astute gen- tleman who will bid for your belongings Avlien they pass under the auctioneer's hammer, and all that is left of you is resolving into the clay of which these pretty painted pots are made. So, towards six in the evening, having done what I could — and that was but little — in the way of i)icking up odd bits of china at something less than famine prices, I crossed the Pont des Arts, and, passing through the postern of the Louvre, stood for a while in the great courtyard of the Carrousel. To the square of the new Louvre, begun by Napoleon I., completed by Napoleon III. — I wonder whether they have finished hacking all the crowned and laurel- encircled ' N.s ' out of the carved work 3'et — I purposely turned my back. Those spruce facades, those brand-new statues, those trim iron railings with smartly gilt javelin-heads, had for the moment no attractions for me. I looked ahead — mathemati- cally straight — knowing that a rifle-bullet, fired from the spot on which I stood, should wing its wa}'^ exactly through the centre of the opening of the arch of the Carrousel, through the central Pavilion of the burnt-out Tuileries, through the golden gates of the Tuileries gardens, through the avenue of the Champs Elysees, through the centre of the Pond Point, and through the middle of the Arch of Triumph of the fitoile. The alineation of every inch of these monuments has been measured. Everything has been tire an cordeau ; and the spectator sees before him a magnificently demon- strated geometrical problem, in lieu of a blurred, incolierent, and haphazard ruck of buildings, as one sees in Trafalgar Square. Looking thus right before me, with the £toile in the remote THE LITTLE RED MAX. 519 background, it was pleasant to find that, in tlie middle distance, the gap left in the gutted carcass of the palace built by Philibert Delorme for Catherine de' Medicis was partially atoned for. The Pavilion de I'Horloge was in ruins, but the Communards had at least spared the Arc du Carrousel. You know that stately copy of the Arch of Septimius Severus at Eome well. The Carrousel monument is somewhat too profusely ornamented with mihtary trophies and paraphernalia of the First Empire. Still, the ensemble is undeniably grandiose. All kinds of ghosts hovered about it to my mind, but not the particular spectre that I am wishful to touch upon. For example, I descried the ghosts of four huge brazen horses harnessed to a Car of Victory. Very ancient steeds these — possibly more than twenty hundred years of age. Taken from Rome to JByzantium b}'^ Constantine ; brought from Constantinople to Venice ; stolen by Napoleon from the Venetians, and set up here, in the Carrousel, as a sign and token of the Napoleonic glory for ever. These horses of brass had feet of cla3% They remained on the summit of the Carrousel Ai-ch scarce ten years. What ghost is this I see — a ghost square of form, round-headed, gray- haii'ed, and with a wondrous look of kindly intelligence in the gray eyes and mobile mouth — a ghost leaning on a stick, as though slightly lame — a ghost in a blue frock-coat, plaid waistcoat, gray- kerseymere pantaloons, and Hessian boots ? He stands among a group of tattling and tittering British sight-seers, male and female, and peers curiously at the Arch, which is all surrounded with scaffolding and ladders, and gear of ropes and posts. Workmen iire hurrying up and down the ladders ; they are trying, seemingly, to detach those brazen horses from the Car of Victory, but for many a wear}^ hour they tug and tug in vain. Not only by the blonde children of Albion is the strange spectacle witnessed. Over against the group of English folks is a much larger gathering of Parisians, scowling, clenching theii- fists, muttering curses. Disbanded oftlcers, fiercely whiskered, in long frock-coats and huge cocked hats ; working men, pale Avith anger; women of the people, with difticulty kept from slmeking forth exhortations to the mob to rise in riot. They must needs be quiet; so they weep piteously, and gesticulate, and point derisively to the abhorred foreigners. They must needs be quiet, for out in front of the Arch, towards the Tuileries, is drawn up a battalion of Austrian infantry, white-coated, blue- legged, black-gaitered, bearskin-shakoed, stumpy men, somewhat pudding-faced of mien, but solid. They must needs be quiet, these much-moved Parisians, for in the rear of the Carrousel stand 520 TARIS HERSELF AGAIX. at ease a battalion of British Higlilanders. Tlie street gamins gather about them, eyeing their kilts and sporrans and their great sable-plumed bonnets, curiously. Th(3 women eye them with glances less ferocious than those which they cast on the detested Austrians, on the Cossacks who are hard by in the Place de la Concorde, and on the Prussians who are in the Place Vendome. Donald and Sandy have not been long in France, but the people have already a sneaking liking for them. They behave decently in their billets. They do not break up the best furniture in the poor man's home for fuel. They do not drink up his lamp-oil, nor eat his tallow candles. They do not steal his only clock. They share their abundant rations with the poor pinched folks on whom they are billeted. Donald is not above peeling the onions; and Sandy will rock the baby in the cradle while the housewife is away fetching a litre f]-om the wine-shop, or buying a crust of v^^hite bread for the evening 2}ot an fen. But how they tug and tug at those brazen horses ! An English lady is gallantly escorted by a British officer up the ladder, and stands for an instant simpering in the Car of Victory. It is evidently * the thing to do.' The squarely-built gentleman in the blue coat, Avitli the slight stoop and the short limp, points upwards with his stick. There are canny sergeants and corj^orals among the Highlanders who ' ken ' the gentleman in the blue coat well. They do not know him as ' Paul writing to his kinsfolk,' but a whisper runs through the ranks that Walter Scott is on the ground. Not until two hoars afterwards, in the late twilight of July, does another North British gentleman, John Scott, editor of the Albion, sitting at his dinner at a restaurant near the Louvre, hear a tremendous clatter and rumbling in the street outside. He and the other guests rush to the door, to see the strangest of sights. Four mighty wains, each dragged b}' a string of powerful Percheron horses, drag four masses of some- thing swathed in canvas and bauds of hay. The}' are escorted b}' a squadron of Austrian Uhlans. Ah ! the feet of clay, the feet of clay ! Waterloo has been fought. The Vanquished Exile is on his way to his rock ; the spoils of his glory are being given up to the Allies ; and the horses of St. Mark on their way back to their antique station in the loggia of the great Basilica at Venice. Not to their proper owners, for all that, j'et awhile. The Austrians held those brazen steeds and the whole Dominio Veneto to boot for just forty-one years longer. It was on a gray autumnal morning, in the yeav 1866, that, haj)pening to be standing in St. Mark's Place, Venice, in front of THE LITTLE RED MAN. 521 the tliree great gonfalon-poles -wliicli aforetime bore the banners of Venice, Cyprus, and the Morea, I noticed on the pavement of the Piazza certain spheroid bundles of bunting, connected by cords with the flagstaves. It was not time to hoist them yet. Napoleon III.'s General Le Boeuf was signing a certain document at the Hotel de Ville. Austria had sullenly yielded Venetia to France, and France was politely handing over the rare gift to the Podesta of Venice. The Baron di Alemann, for a long time Austrian Governor of the Queen of the Adriatic, had gone away quietly at early morn in a gunboat to Trieste. So the time wears on. By nine o'clock there are thirty thousand people in St. Mark's Place, agitated, trembhng, panting with excitement. A cannon booms from Fort Ha3'-nau. There, the deed is done, the instrument is signed, the cession is complete. The bales of bunting take unto themselves wings, and, flying right up to the summit of the flag- staves, stream out in the three colours — the Cross of Savoy in the middle banner. While, with one throat, the thirty thousand Venetians are shouting their Evviua ! another, and another, and another cannon boom from the Campo di Marzo. Then do more thousands, gathered in gondolas on each side of the Canalazzo, or crowding every wmdow of every house of its length, watch a procession of huge barges and lighters, slowly towed by tiny steam- tugs, from the railway station towards the Molo. These barges and lighters are all alive with soldiers. They are clad in blue and green, and are sparkling with steel and silver. These barges bear the Carabinieri and the Bersaglieri of Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy; and the Horses of St. Mark have come to their right owners at last. I coidd not help conjuring up this scene as I viewed the Triumphal Arch of the Carrousel. The attic storj^ of the struc- ture is still surmounted by some kind of equestrian and vehicular allegory in bronzes; but I am very short-sighted, and have not the least idea of what the allegory ma}^ mean. But memor}^ has the longest of sights. Memor}-- proceeded to invoke the phantoms of yet two other horses with which their cavaliers were Avont to embellish the precincts of the Carrousel Arch during the Second Empire. These were two stalwart Cent Gardes, who, fully armed and equipped, Avere Avont to mount guard here. They had tall sentry-boxes into Avhicli the}" might back their steeds ; for their uniforms Avere dreadfully expensive, and a few raindrops might have made fearful havoc Avith their silvery casques and floAving plumes, their sky-blue tunics and pink facings, their bright steel cuirasses and golden epaulettes and aiguillettes, their spotless 522 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. gauntlets and buckskins, their lustrous jack-boots and em- broidered liammercloths. What beauteous hoofs — of clay — theii* coal-black steeds had ! The}^ are clean gone — lock, stock, and barrel ; long sword, saddle, bridle, and all. Those old battered brass dummies on St. Mark's Place have shown in the long-run more vitality and ' staying power ' than the real flesh-and-blood horses and men that for eighteen years flanked the posterns of the Carrousel. I was going away, for I cannot bear to gaze long on the blackened skeleton of the Tuileries, when, perched on the top THE ARC DU CARROUSEL. of the ambiguous bronze allegory, I thought that I perceived something that was scarlet. Nearer and nearer did I approach, rubbing my eyes. The eyes of my mind, Lien entcndu. Yes, there was something clad in red, and it was humpbacked ; it had a cloven foot, and only one eye. From its misshapen mouth a l)rodigious tongue lolled forth, and it grinned a most infernal grin. Wlio could this be ? Le Sage's Diable Boiteux ? No ; the elf seemed even more malicious than the Devil on Two Sticks, so THE LITTLE RED MAN. 523 Tvondrously etched by Tony Joliannot. He had a kind of mandolin with him, too, this sanguinolent ghost ; and ever and anon, in a raucous strident voice, he sang the songs of divers epochs. The year was Seventeen Hundred and Ninety-two ; he had divested himself of his scarlet breeches ; he had donned a Phrj'gian Cap of Liberty, with an enormous tricoloured cockade ; and the de- moniacal dwarf was screeching 'La Marseillaise.' 'Saints du Paradis, priez pour Charles Dix ! ' It Avas the yeav Seventeen Hundred and Ninety-three, and the dwarf had powder in his hair, and was clad in a sea-green coat, and wore ribbons at his knees and striped stockings. He was chanting the ' Hymne a I'Etre Supreme,' and swore by the incorruptible Robespierre. * Saints du Paradis, priez pour Charles Dix ! ' Again transformed in the tarnished court suit of the Marquis de Carabas, with a huge three-cornered hat on his head and an inordinate pigtail, the monstrous little portent bellowed that the year was Eighteen Hundred and Fifteen, that Napoleon was overthrown, that the Bourbons had come back, and that the onl}'' songs to sing were * Vive Henri Quatre ' and ' La Belle Gabrielle.' ' Saints du Paradis, priez pour Charles Dix ! ' That pious invocation he was intoning on the Twenty-sixth of July — so he said — Eighteen Hundred and Thirty. Then his wretched little limbs were veiled in a long black cassock, and he wore a gigantic shovel-hat, like that of Don Basilio in the opera. I know him now — the familiar fiend. I hurried out of the courtyard of the Carrousel, and so into the Rue de Rivoli, and into the public way which now crosses the gardens of the Tuileries. There he was, at every dismantled window in the blackened fa9ade of the burnt-out palace. There he was, tearing the Second Abdi- cation of Napoleon with his paws, or rolling up into the same ball the Abdication of Charles X. and that of Louis Philii^pe. ' La Parisienne,' 'Le Chant du Depart,' ' Mourir pour la Patrie,' ' Par- tant pour la Syrie,' the ' Marseillaise,' — all these, in incoherent sequence, streamed from his throat. When he seemed to be quavering one ditty he broke into the strophes of another. Who but he ? But who iras he — this crimson ghost ? Evidently ' Le Petit Homme Rouge ' — the Little Red Man of the Tuileries, the familiar demon of the place, the eidolon of the First Napoleon, to whom it is said he ajjpeared in Egypt, on the eve of the Battle of the P3'ramids, muttering the word ' jNIoscow.' He was seen again, according to the testimony of a grenadier of unimpeachable veracity, coming out of the Emperor's tent on the night before the Battle of Austerlitz. When challenged and bidden to give the counter- 524 PARIS HEKSELF AGAIN. sigii, lie screamed ' St. Helena,' and vanished witli an unme- lodious twang. I wonder if an.ybody saw him on the night before bedan. I am sure that I saw the Little Red Man— in my mind's eye— last Saturday afternoon ; for his last performance, after lightmg his pipe with the Jo».r«aZ Of/icicl de la Commune, was to l^'oduce an enormous carboy of petroleum, and, crooninf^ ' Liberte Egahte, Fraternite ' the wliile, proceed to pour the contents over the site of the Salle des Marechaux, of the cabinet of Napoleon III. and of the boudoir of the Empress Eugenie. Then he disappeared ' and then I remembered having purchased, that very mornincr a neat little two-volume octavo edition of the Sono-s of P J '^'de Beranger, and re-read, for the fiftieth time perhaps,'the fascinating chanson of ' Le Petit Homme Eouge.' The Little Bed Man ma? turn up again some day, and in a very unexpected manner, even after the blackened shell of the Palace of the Tuileries wholly disappears from the face of the earth. THE rXVlLLON VE Fr.OIlE, PAL.VCE OF THE TriLKRTES. THE AVENUE DE l'oPEKA, FKOM THE LOGGIA OF THE OPERA HOUSE. XLI. THE AVENUE DE L OPEKA. April 26. ' It is very true,' said a French friend to me the other day, ' that the vista of the Avenue de I'Opera is terminated, and very finel}^ terminated, hy M. Garnier's superb theatre ; but an avenue is, unUke Mirabeau's celebrated definition of a miracle, a stick with two ends ; and at the other extremit}^ of the Avenue de I'Opera is the Place du Palais Royal. Why should it not be called the Avenue du Palais Royal ? ' ]\Iy friend went on to suggest a mezzo tcrmine, to the effect that the wonderful thoroughfare, on the aspect of which I am about to touch, should be entitled La Rue des Grandes Consolations. ' We have lost much,' he remarked, ' owing to the rigours of the siege and the madness and wickedness of the Commune. The Palace of St. Cloud is gone. So is the Hotel de Yille. So are the Tuileries, the Ministry of Fmance, 526 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. the Hotel of the Legion of Honour; and the barracks of the Quai d'Orsay, of Prince Eugene, and the Rue Mouffetard were Avholly or partially destroyed. The Theatre Lyrique, the Port St. Martin, and the Delassements Comiques were burnt. The Library of the Louvre, with its eight3'-thousand volumes, was incinerated by those emulators of the Caliph Omar. Some half a dozen Mairies, two or three railway termini, and about two hundred j)rivate houses were more or less knocked to pieces by the shells of the Versaillais, or saufees an i^etrole by the Communards. But to atone, to com- pensate for all this, we have the Avenue de rOi)era. Let us call it, then, the Rue des Grandes Consolations. " Paris est mort ; vive Paris ! " The Avenue de 1' Opera is so splendid and so wealthy that I am almost inclined to find yei another name for it — the " Boulevard de la Revanche." Look upon those stately mansions, those piles of rich merchandise and dazzling jewelry, and the visions of the Five Milliards of Indemnity flies away like an ugly nightmare at the aj^proach of morn.' I look, myself, on the Avenue de I'Opera as one of the three most remarkable achievements of essentially modern architectural construction. The other two are the Holborn Viaduct and the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele at INIilan. In one respect the Avenue has some affinit}- to the greatest metropolitan improvement of the early years of this centurj'-. Regent Street. This last-named and noble thoroughfare was, as the Avenue is, a street with a definite and dominant idea. ' I will pierce,' said in effect Nash to the Prince Regent, ' right through one of the most crowded and most squalid districts in London a splendid and spacious street, directly connecting the Royal Park of Mar^debone with j'^our Royal High- ness's palace at Carlton House.' The connection between the Regent's Park and the site of Carlton House at the Duke of York's Column was successfully carried out ; but, unhapj^ily, in England we are in the habit of doing things architectural by halves. Nash was permitted to demolish the ugly and grimy old thoroughfare known as Great Swallow Street, but he was compelled to leave behind the northern side of his magnificent street an unsavoury fringe of still existing and scarcely improvable slums. Had he been allowed, as he wished, to pull down Carnaby Street and Silver Street, and throw open Golden Square into Regent Street, and, especially, had the houses which he built in Regent Street been six instead of fom' stories high, his triumph would have been complete. In the Avenue de I'Opera the constructor's motto has been throughout, Vestigia nulla retrorsum. No slums impinge on the splendour of the new street. It has no coulisses of dirt and THE AVENUE DE l'oPERA. 527 squalor. Eveiy street, to the smallest, which debouches into it has been swept and garnished ; and, with one curious exception, its alignment is perfect. This exception is the antique mansion which stands so oddly ' on a bias,' and Avhich is actually No. 37 in the Avenue de I'Opera. This old house encroaches so defiantly on the foot-pavement, that people have been inquisitive to know why it was not ' expropriated ' at the bidding of the Prefect of the Seine and the Municipality of Paris ; but there have been, it seems, good reasons for temporarily tolerating its existence. The leases of the different ' locations ' in the mansion had yet some years to run when the line of the Avenue was decided upon ; and the sum which would have been demanded to indemnif}' the lease- holders was too enormous to be paid b}' the already overtaxed city. On the expiry of the leases the old house will be pulled down, and replaced by edifices in structural harmony with the rest of the Avenue. And yet this old house is somewhat of an historical monument ; and its proximate disappearance may be mourned by a few anti- quaries. It is part of an old hotel built in the latter years of the seventeenth century. The entrance is in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, and the staii'case of wrought iron, the cornices full of mouldings of nymphs and dolphins in plaster, heightened by tar- nished gilding, and the carved ceiUngs, are very curious to look upon. In one of the apartments of the first floor there are panels of the epoch of Louis XIV., decorated with allegories of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and Music ; and in many of the rooms the chimneypieces and the embrasures of the windows are very quaintly embellished. This doomed old house has j'et another claim to remembrance. In a suite of very modest apartments on the ground floor lived for a long number of years the illustrious French advocate Berryer, the defender of Marshal Ney, the defender of Louis Napoleon, the friend of Macintosh and Brougham. In his little cabinet de travail the great advocate was waited upon one day by a poor woman whose case he had pleaded without a fee. He had won her suit for her — it was but a matter of a few hundred francs — and she came to insist that he should accept payment for his services, but he insisted that he would take naught. She came again, and brought him a little inkstand of white earthenware with a leaden top. That gift he kept, and he used the inkstand con- stantly until his death, thirty years afterwards. His cook lived with him for eight-and-twenty years. He left her a handsome annuity ; and the old lady is still alive, and resides in the house from which she must soon perforce remove. She is, as it happens, 528 PAllIS IIERSELE' AGAIN. a cordon hlcn, aiul after the death of the master whom she had served so faithfully many most enticing offers were made to her to accept fresh situations. But she repelled them all with a disdain- ful toss of the head. ' I have been the cook of Monsieur Berryer,' she said. ' En voila assez.' One thinks of the widowed Sarah Jennings scornfully reminding the suitor for her hand that it had once belonged to John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. There is no use in wailing over Berr3'er's house. It must go. Northumberland House was interesting, historically and socially, from many points of view ; but it had to go, nevertheless. The colossal hotel which is rising on its site belongs, like the ' Splen- dide Hotel' in the Avenue de 1' Opera, to the Newest of the New, to the utterly Modern Time. History is all before it; and I suppose that it is the destiny of all big houses to acquire a history of their own after a certain lapse of time. The famous people may be yet unborn, the might}'- events may be yet scarcely at the beginning of the warp and ^voof on the looms of time, that are to make the Avenue de I'Opera illustrious. Meanwhile it presents to me a great deal of that which is curious, and not a little of that which is really wonderful. It is not m}- business to know anything about political economy ; and this is not the place to raise a discussion concerning Free-trade as against Protection, and especially against what is called ' Eeciprocity ; ' but, as it happens, I am a very old Parisian. My knowledge of Lutetia and of the manners and cus- toms of her people dates from the eighth year of King Louis Philippe. I can remember very well that then and for many years aftervt'ards nearly the only place in Paris where you could procure English groceries, wines, and spirits was at Cuvillier's, in the Rue de la Paix ; that English penknives, scissors, and table-cutlery were almost unattainable things ; that English crockeryware was as scarce in Paris as old Dresden china is scarce there now ; that English hosiery and linendrapery were fearfully costly and rarely to be met with. No doubt that English manufacturers of iron and calicos have some reason on their side in dolefully complaining of their diminishing trade with foreigners — the foreigners to whom International Exhibitions have taught so much these five-and- twenty years past cannot surely be expected to sit idle', twiddling their thumbs, and contemplating photographs of British machinery — but, on the other hand, I look around me, and I see this won- drous Avenue de I'Opera absolutely overflowing with British com- modities. The French are sending us an abundance of exquisitely beau- tiful art bronzes, painted plaques, and the multifarious trifles THE AVENUE DE L'orERA. 529 known as articles de Paris. They inundate us with clarets, cham- pagnes, and brandy ; but, on the other hand, we are commercially ' down on them' with cataracts of plain and fancy biscuits, pickles, sauces, condiments, and even with preserved fruits, jams, and jellies. They are eating our chocolate, and particularly our cocoa. They are burning our candles, our night-lights, and our oils and spirits for lamps; we send them enormous quantities of starch and mustard, farinaceous food, soap, and other accessories of the toilette. They have now come to the complexion of swallowing English pills. As for beverages, ' les boissons anglaises ' have become frankly accepted articles of consumption. The quantity of English beer drunk by the Parisians is simj^ly prodigious. Bottled stout is in steadily-increasing demand ; but the consumption of porter is largely exceeded by that of the pale ales of Burton-on-Trent. Messrs. Allsopp & Sons, who were the first firm to consign pale ales to France, have seen their continental business increase almost tenfold since the Exhibition of 1867. They have now immense depots of pale ale in bottle at Vaugirard ; another warehouse at Batignolles for consignments to the provinces ; and a further^store- house in the Avenue MacMahon, close to the Barriere de I'Etoile. There is scarcely a cafe in the Boulevards that does not hang out AUsopp's ensign ; whereas, I can remember in my youth that a pint bottle of ' Hodgson's East India Ale ' at the Cafe de la Made- leine — the only establishment where the beverage was sold — cost four francs. At present, at many of the fixed-price restaurants, you are allowed to exchange the bottle of wine to which you are entitled for a quart bottle of English bitter beer ; and vast num- bers of Frenchmen prefer what they facetiously term 'le Champagne Anglaise ' to that very dubious vintage, restaurant viii ordinaire. Thus, it is not only in the Avenue de I'OiDera that you are repeatedly struck by signs and tokens of the close intercourse which, within the last few years, has sprung up between two nations who used to hate each other — or to believe that they hated each other — so bitterly and to avoid each other so morosely not so many years ago. When I am dining at the Grand Cafe at the corner of the Bue Scribe, I never fail to derive amusement from the contemplation, through one of the immense plate-glass windows of the cafe, of the brilliantly gas-illumined ensign of a hosiery and drapery establishment on the Boulevard opposite — ' Old England.' Thus runs the brilliant gas device. I scarcely think that my own countrymen and countrywomen resort there in overwhelming numbers. I fancy that the most numerous and the most remune- rative patrons of ' Old England ' are the Parisians who wish to M u 530 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. purchase English productions. I daresay that the enterprising hatter at the corner of the Avenue de F Opera and the Rue de la Paix, who proudly announces himself as ' le chapelier du Derby et du High Life,' has as many French as English clients. I see every evening numbers of French as well as Enghsh gentlemen pressing round the kiosque of the civil and intelligent English- women by the Cafe de la Paix, where you can obtain all kinds of English newspapers and periodicals. Throughout Paris, indeed, a general impression seems to have gained ground that England ■kll'n is not ten thousand miles oft", and that its inhabitants are not a savage and sulky people, who are in the habit of selling their wives 'au Smitfield,' and of committing suicide en masse so soon as the month of November conies round. This impression is, to all appearance, exceptionally strong in the Avenue de 1' Opera. Where could there be a more significant proof of the commercial and social entente cordiale which has been estabhshed between the Briton and the Gaul than the re- cently-opened Cooperative Stores, which are conspicuous among the glories of the Avenue — ' The London and Foreign Coopera- tive Society,' Avhose English ' siege social ' is in the Haymarket- London ? You almost feel inclined to rub your eyes Avith aston- THE AVENUE DE l'oPERA. 531 ishment at reading that announcement. The Cooperative dis- play in the Avenue slightly reminds you of Mr. Whiteley's in- terminable procession of shops in Westbourne Grove, with this important exception, nevertheless, that the 'dry goods' element is absent. For dry goods— articles of feminine costume and adorn- ment on a gigantic scale — you must go either to the 'Bon Marche ' or to the * Grands Magasins du Louvre.' At the last-named emporium the purchaser of linendrapery, silkmercery, or haber- dashery, beyond a certain amount, is presented j9ar-f/(?ss»s le marche with a balloon. You shall hardly pass down a frequented thorougli- fare in Paris — notably during the afternoon — without meeting children of all ages, bonnes, grown-up ladies, elderl}^ gentlemen decores, even, gravely holding the strings which prevent these captive spheres of diaphanous caoutchouc from sailing away in the ambient air. They all bear the word 'Louvre' printed upon them in big letters. To such commercial uses must all things come at last. It is the Advertisement, not Time, which in the end is edav reriim : ' Le pauvre en sa cabane, on le chaxime le couvre, Est sujet a ses lois, Et la garde qui veille aiix barrieres du Louvre N'en defend pas nos rois.' So sang one of the noblest of French poets. In the modern time the ' garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre ' is symbolised by the solemn huissicv who guards the threshold of ' les Grands Magasins.' Eatables and drinkables are the staple and stock in the co- operative shops in the Avenue, the line of which threatens to stretch to the crack of doom. Groceries of all kinds ; wines, spirits, and liqueurs ; hams, sausages, and preserved provisions ; beer and aerated waters ; fish, poiiltr^^, and game ; cheese and bacon ; pickles and preserves ; biscuits and macaroni ; legions of things of British and French inovenance mingle here in amicable competition. Could such a gathering be possible if we went back to the old lines of Protection, and voted treaties of commerce to be mischievous innovations? Yes ; they would be just possible, but with one important reservation. In the city of St. Petersburg, and on the Nevskoi Prospekt, there used to be, three-and-twenty years ago, a wonderful store-house of British commodities called the 'Anglisky Magasin.' I do not know if the place be yet existent, since the last time that I was in Kussia I was too much occupied with politics and the possibilities of getting down to Odessa, through snow-blocked roads, to trouble myself much 632 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. about the inner manners of Petropolis. But the okl * Anglisky Magasin' was a most curious place. You coukl get ahnost every- thing that was British there — except the Edmhurrjli Review, which, for what reason I know not, was under the ban of the censorship. Still, Dent's chronometers, Macintosh's patent knife-cleaners, patent medicines, Worcester sauce, bottled ales and stout, Stilton cheese, anchovy sauce, Reading biscuits, York hams, Wiltshire bacon, Welsh flannel, and, in fact, all the accessories to that which we call ' comfort,' were procurable at a moment's notice at the ' Anglisky Magasin.' All this looked ostensibly like co- operation and free trade. But what was the reservation of which I spoke? Simply this, that everything of non-Russian origin was so abominably overweighted with custom duties as to be virtually unpurchasable by all save the wealthy classes. If you did not mind giving a rouble for a bottle of Guinness's Dublin stout, you might la}'- in as many dozen as you chose ; otherwise you were fain to be content with quas or with Moscow piva. Taking the Avenue de 1' Opera as a whole — palatial shops, enormous restaurants and cafes, electric lamps and all — and comparing it with the adjacent and much-loved Rue de la Paix, I should qualify the last-named thoroughfare as a French street specially designed for the delight of English people, while the Avenue de 1' Opera is to most intents and purposes a street full of British things, meant to attract the admiration and patronage of French people. Cosmopolitan customers, of course, frequent the magnificent Cafe Restaurant Foy — kept by the historic Bignon — and the Cafe Restaurant de Paris, which may be described as a phoenix risen from the ashes of the old Cafe de Paris, hard by Tortoni's in the Boulevard ; but the shops, as shops, seem com- mendably ambitious to persuade Frenchmen to buy English goods. The British ' linoleum ' invites Parisian notice and support. A grand ' British art-gallery ' offers to the inspection of Parisian amateurs a brilliant collection of inctures by the best known painters of the United Kingdom. Nor is America backward in announcing her adhesion to the cosmopolitan principles which seem dominant in the Avenue de I'Opera. The New York Herald lias here its Paris offices ; and the famous New York jeweller and goldsmith, Tiffan}^ has established himself in the Avenue to maintain the high repute which he won in gaining the Grand Prix in the Universal Exhibition. In fine, perhaps the most comprehensive thing to say about a thoroughfare to which I am now bidding farewell, and which these eyes ma}^ never look upon again, is that the Avenue de I'Opera is less a characteristically THE AVENUE DE L OPERA. 533 Parisian street than a permanent universal exposition of art, industry, and alimentary substances. Only one little and suffi- ciently curious circumstance remains to remind the observer that A PICKER-UP OF ClGAR-E>fDS IN THE AVENUE DE L'OPERA. he is in Paris, and that the basis of the whole show is essentially French. Many of the houses are yet unfinished, or, at all events, 534 PARIS IIEDSELF AGAIN. the plaster of the ceilings and walls is not sufficiently dry to allow of the different flats being occupied by eligible tenants. Pending the eomi^letion of the process of desiccation, pending the arrival of more marchancles cle modes, tailors, and curiosity dealers, many of the rez-dc-chaussees are occupied by a rabble rout of marchands forains — pedlars of sham jewelry and glittering rub- bish generally, cheap Jacks, and nostrum vendors — mountebanks and jugglers even. Late at night I have had a vague suspicion of the presence of Mr. Chopps the Dwarf ; and in this peerless Avenue there have been current dark and distant rumours of an incarnation, at twenty-five centimes admission per head, of the Bearded Lady and the Spotted Girl. THE FKE:NCH3IAX in LONDON (bY CHAM). Vot you have for dinuer I — Chops, steaks, and kidneys. Anyting e'.se ? — Kidneys, cho]5s, and steaks. Vot besides ? — Steaks, kidneys, and chops. XLII. CHAM. Sept. 10. There are few qualities of the human mind' concerning which so many definitions have been laboriously attempted or audaciously hazarded as the quahty of wit. That only a small number of these definitions, if any, have proved satisfactory to the inquiring mmd may be due to the circumstance that writers on the subject have rarely been able to agree among themselves as to what combinations of faculties constitute the thing called wit. In- numerable wiseacres have essayed to dogmatise upon the subject ; but they have merely succeeded in proving to demonstration that they themselves were the reverse of witty. Thus, the ponderous Burnet esteemed wit to be 'a talent very fit to be employed in the search for truth, and very capable of assisting to discern and embrace it ; ' whereas, with pedantic affectation, Dr. Young is 536 TARIS HERSELF AGAIN. good enough to tell us that ' what may silence wisdom will but provoke wit, Avliose ambition is to say most where least is to be said.' On the other hand, Southey, who had a considerable Sluice of humour in his composition, but was wholly devoid of wit, loftil}' observes that ' some people seem to be born with a head in which the thin partition which divides great wit from folly is wanting.' This dictum is, in the first place, a sorry plagiarism ; and, in the next place, the ' great wit ' which, long before Southey's time, was said to be nearly allied to madness, was not epigrammatic or sarcastic wit, but natural endowments strengthened by extensive erudition. The ingeniously analytic essays of Barrow and of South to define w^it are well known ; Dryden indulged in a judicious generalisation when he de- clared that wit was the happy result of thought or product of imagination — the ' or ' opens a door for the admission of the ' mother-wit ' of the Irish j^easant ; but old Zimmermann may by some be thought to have hit the blot more closely than any other critic, when he said that ' wit to be well defined must be defined by wit itself: then 'twill be worth listening to.' There is little to add to this quiet rebuke of the dogmatists and the phrase-makers. Those only are capable of defining wit who are actively or passively witty themselves. We are a sufficiently- humorous people, and in the persons of Shakespeare and Swift, we have produced the greatest wits that the world ever saw ; but our literature is otherwise as deficient in wit as that of France is replete with it. From the time of Hogarth downwards we have abounded with caricaturists and graphic delineators of social follies and frivolities : but, apart from a very few of the political sketches of 'H.B.,' either dry humour or downright fun, and not wit, has been the leading characteristic of English comic draughtmanship. Thus, albeit our roll of facetious and grotesque artists is a bright one, it would be difficult to find therein the name of one who could be quoted as a compeer to a remarkable French pictorial satirist who has just passed awa}^ the indefati- gable maker of sly graphic jokes, the embodiment of arrowy, epigi'ammatic raillery — the world-famous ' Cham.' By the death of Garrick the wisest and best of his friends said mournfully that the ' gaiety of nations was eclipsed.' Nations, their gaiety and their sorrows, are not so easily to be eclipsed nowadays, yet it may Avithout exaggeration be said that the periodical press of Paris has suff"ered a sore bereavement through the death of Cham ; and that, looking at the emulators whom he has left behind him, the bereavement seems, for the moment. CHAM. 537 iiTeparable. Seldom has there been an artist whose career Avas so lengthened, who filled such a conspicuous place in the graphic history of his epoch, and whose record is so brief and simple, as that of Cham. He was the son of a gentleman of ancient famil}', the Comte de Noe, who was made a Peer of France b}' Louis Philippe ; and his pseudonym of ' Cham ' had obvious reference to the French equivalent of ' Ham the son of Noah.' He was born in Paris in 1819, and was educated at the Polytechnic School. To the careful geometrical training which he received in that admirable seminary may be ascribed the mathematical surety and decision of outline which lend symmetry to his hastiest sketches. An analogous directness and lucidit}^ mark the work of a much greater artist and even more subtle wit tlian Cham, the famous Paul Chevalier, called ' Gavarni,' Avho began life as a civil engineer. Young M. de Noe seemed to have no taste for engineering either civil or militar3\ Graduating at the P0I3'- technic, he entered the studio of Paul Delaroche ; but, although he was possibly highly popular as a wag and a farceur in the atelier, his mission was clearly not to follow, jiictorially, in the footsteps of his erudite and austere master. His ambition, indeed, never apparently went higher than to watch witli* sharp pen and sharper pencil the ways of men, and ' mock himself of them.' For a period he was a pupil of Charlet, who from time to time indulged in the exuberance of the caricaturist, but whose real vocation was a much more serious one. Charlet, Hippolyte Bellange, and Raffet were the three ' Vieux de la Vieille ' in draughtsmanship who looked upon Horace Vernet as their Field- Marshal, and who joined with him in resuscitating and keeping alive the Napoleonic legend. It was of the raw conscript, the laughing vivandiere, and the chubby enfant de troupe that Charlet most sedulousl}'^ took care. From such a master Cham had little to learn. His political sympathies were not very strongly marked; but he was certainly' never an ultra-Bona- partist. Tn two instances onl}' did his opinions on public affairs seem to be of an}^ pronounced order. He had a comical dislike of England, and always represented Britannia as a selfish and hypocritical personage, usually in spectacles, and with very prominent front teeth ; and he was never tired of jesting at Socialists and Communists. He made his debut about the year 1842 in the columns of the Illustration with a series of extrava- gant drolleries called ' The Adventures of the Baron de Crac ' — a kind of French Munchausen ; he soon became a contributor 538 PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. to the Charivari and the multitudinous comic publications of M. Charles Philipon ; and since the period named his inex- haustible pencil rarely failed to make itself prominent in the j)ages of French satirical journalism. He made a considerable number of watercolour drawings in a bold and dashing style, and at one time it was the fashion in Paris to possess a fan painted by Cham ; but from the beginning to the end of his artistic career, which comprised a period of thirtj^-seven years, he was imr excellence simjd}' and solely the delineator of almost inimitably pungent and brilliant pictorial epigrams. It was his lot to live in and to survive a generation of great draughtsmen and great wits. None of them could be jealous of him, and of none was he jealous. He saw the declining years of the great satirist Grandville, a fervent political partisan, a prac- tical limner of political caricatures, but who was likewise a man profoundly versed in the canons of his art, and Avho drifted finally into dreamy phantasies, among which his reason at length became overcast. Grandville had linear aberrations, as Turner in his declining age had chromatic ones. Again, contemporar}^ with Cham was the admirable Daumier, the stern Republican, the unsparing lampooner of Louis Philippe, and Avho really had no inconsiderable share of the sceva indignatio of Swift. Daumier had the 'courage of his opinions. He was continually being prosecuted by the Government of Jul}'; and some of his finest works were produced in the prison-lodgings of Ste. Pelagic. At no period of his life did M. de Noe seem anxious to enjoy the uncomfortable glor}^ of the martyr. He laughed at all political parties in France as they successively grasped the reins of power ; and he was often ver}^ hard on foreign Powers, England, Ger- many, and Pussia especiall}^ ; but his bantering vignettes were rarely of a nature to attract the angry attention of the Procureur- General. Yet another and a more formidable contemporary had Cham in the person of Gavarni. The two men did not in the slightest degree interfere with one another. The wit of the illustrious author of ' Les Enfants Terribles,' ' Les Fourberies de Femme,' and ' Les Lorettes ' was polished, graceful, and refined ; but it was as keen as a Toledo blade. It was as pene- trating. It was, in short, philosophical. It was the wit of the ' Barber of Seville.' Cham's was the f/ros lire of Gresset and the vaudevillists ; it was the wit of ' Vert-Yert.' To the great honour of the deceased satirist it must be admitted that, although the text which he appended to his sparkling little vignettes occasionally sinned against English ideas of delicacy, CHAM. 539 and smacked rather too full}^ of the sel Ganlois to be palatable to Mrs. Grundy, his works were consistent!}' and exemplaril_y devoid of the studied, the cynical, and the monotonous indecency of Grevin and the many imitators of that talented but perverse artist. And, moreover, whether the witticisms of Cham were ' salt ' or ' sweet,' you were fain to laugh at them, perforce. Artistically speaking, his drawings did not possess any high value. He was the most conventional of draughtsmen ; but his conventionalities were all his own. He borrowed only from himself. He had a certain scheme of light and shade, of touch and manner, and from these he rarel}' departed. His deputies, his epiclers, his dandies, his old women, his schoolboj-s, his gavroches, his grandes dames, his cocottes, his cabdrivers, his very horses and dogs and cats, had each and all their particular facial and sumptuary types; find, as a rule, they did not vary. He had his own especial Monsieur Joseph Prudhomme, who, to tell truth, closely resembled the late M. Adolphe Thiers ; and Henri Monnier, the inventor of the bourgeois des bourgeois, and who was himself an expert artist as well as a prose writer, used humorously to exclaim, 'Ah! if I could only draw M. Prudhomme as Oham draws him ! ' Altogether, the drawings of Cham may be qualified less as graphic productions than as clever dia- grams, of which his witty text is the demonstration. ' We do not look for art in Cham,' said Theophile Gautier; 'we look for the mot.'' Thus, at sixty years of age, has jiassed awaj' a most notable professor of bons mots. Of pathos he was, graphic- ally, quite bereft. Consequently, although he could be on occa- sion irresistibly humorous, he had not all the properties of the genuine humourist, who should be at once humorous, witty, and pathetic — as Sterne and as Gavarni were. Cham leaves a throng of skilled draughtsmen behind him, from the erotic Grevin to the vehement and saturnine Anch-e Gill ; but Time must run back and fetch the age of Carle Vernet and Grandville ere there be found a pictorial epigrammist as keen and as concise as the Comte de Noe. THE END. BRADBIRY, AONF.W, & CO., PRINTERS WHITEFRI ARa. 1)1 2 voh.y square 8vo. Price S'2s., in handsome binding. Uniform with tlie Autlior's "PARIS HERSELF AGAIN." AMERICA REVISITED. From the Bay of New York to the Gulf of Mexico, AND From Lake Michigan to the Pacific. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, AUTHOR OF "TWICE KOUND THE CLOCK," "PARIS HEESELF AGAIN," &o. ILLUSTRATED WITH NEARLY 400 ENGRAVINGS, Many of them from Sketches hij the Author. CONTENTS. I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX, X. XI. XII XIII. XIV. XV, XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. Outward Bound. Thanksgiving Day in New York. Transformation of New York. All the Fun of the Fair. A Morning with Justice. On the Cars. Fashion and Food in New York. The Monumental City. Baltimore come to Life Again. The Great Grant "Boom." A Philadelphian Babel. At the Continental. Christmas and the New Year. On to Richmond. Still on to Richmond. In Richmond. Genial Richmond. In the Tombs — And out of Them. Prosperous Augusta. The City of many Cows. A Pantomime in the South. Arrogant Atlanta. The Crescent City. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIII. XLIV. XLV. On Canal Street. In Jackson Square. A Southern Parliament. Sunday in New Orleans. The Carnival Booming. The Carnival Booms. Going We.st. The "Wonderful Prairie City. The Home of the Setting Sun. At Omaha. The Road to Eldorado. Still on the Road to El- dorado. At L.ist. Aspects of 'Frisco. China Town. The Drama in China Town. Scenes in China Town. China Town by Night. Leaving 'Frisco. Down among the Mor- mons. The Stock Yards of Chi- cago. Going Away. LONDON: VIZETELLY & CO., 10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. THE MOST SUCCESSFUL BOOK OF THE DAY. Ill 2 vols., crov;n 8vo., cloth gilt, 2os. SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY: Sketches from Life, Social and Satirical. By E. C. GRENVILLE MURRAY. Jllustrated iclih iicarly 300 Char ad eristic Engravings from Designs hy well-knoicn, Artists. CONTENTS: I. Flirts— II. On Her Britannic Majesty's Service— III. Semi-de- tached Wives — IV. Noble Lords— V. Young Widows — VI. Our Silvered Youtli, or Noble Old Boys. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. " Mr. Grenville Muiray has bad a large and varied experience of life, and is a keen observer of men and manners ; bis Englisb is clear, vivacious, and expressive; be can bardly write otberwise tban amusingly. " — Athenteurn. " Describes in a piquant and even trencbant style various pbases of Englisb social life, and various personages, some real and some imaginary, but typical, to be met with, according to the author's evidently wide experience or bis no less evidently productive fancy, in different circles of what is called society." — Illustrated London News. " Mr. Grenville Murray's new book is, in its way, a serious contribution to the literature of polite sociology. It is a collection of skilful and vivid character sketches, both general and indi- vidual. I suppose that Mr. Murray, who is probably the most brilliant of living jovirnalists, could hardly be dull if he tried. Be this as it may, be sparkles very steadily throughout the present volumes, and he puts to excellent use indeed his incomparable knowledge of life and manners, of men and cities, of appearances and facts. Of bis several descents upon English types, I shall only remark that they are brilliantly and dashingly written, curious as to their matter, and admirably readable. " — Truth. " No one can question the brilliancy of the sketches, nor affirm that ' Side-Lights ' is aught but n fascinating book This l)ook is destined to make a great noise in the world ; and not a little of the success which it is certain to obtiiin will be due to the numerous Illustrations, which are all of the most himiorous description." — Wliiteliall Review. " This is a startling book. The volumes are expensively and elaborately g(it up ; the writing is bitter, unsparing, and extremely clever; and we are informed by public advertisement that Mr. Mudie will not allow the book to circulate. Our readers should get the work and see whether Mr. Mudie is justified." — Vanity Fair. " There is no denying Mr. Grenville Murray's abilitj^, and it may furthermore be added that he brings abundant knowledge to his ta.sk. He knows most people who figure in society, and nearly everything .about them The author is not only cynical, but bitter — very bitter in some cases — and the gall of bis bitterness is not dinainished Ijy the circumstance that many of the ugliest things he has to say about society at large, and its members in particular, are generally supposed to be unhappily tnie." — Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. " No line writes with greater ease and fluency than Mr. Murray." — Scotsman. " A book of much more solid interest than a superficial glance would lead one to expect. A section is devoted to H. B. M. service — the diplomatic side — which is evidently written from inti- mate knowledge, and deserves the attention of those who care to know bow the country's business is carried on abroad." — Publisher's Circular. VIZETELLY & CO., 10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 0'/ ii^^^^iS^ 1 '/t-, ** -^f^lA^^t^Jdir^^^^t K "•■hi^M^^ ^" 0m§MS& a£3&i*Ti&'SBr;iK?i*^3i£«Sia«?!Et£ai»: :;\-«i»tiHi«<«K!^'^