?-«(»-> 4w»> ■**<► # =j(m>» ' '\H .%\ * \ ^^ ^ ^^ Jfi^'S ;».< .t^ . .^-:?» <^' ^*s \ >\^S«i\««>S«^^!&«MNii^^ PLEASE HANDLE WITH CARE University of Connecticut Libraries 3 =1153 Dllb3b^^ 3 GAYLORD RG Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/praiseofparisOOchil MONTAGNE SAINTE GENEVlfeVE AND PANTHEON FROM PONT DE L'ESTACADE [Page 6 THE PRAISE OF PARIS y BY THEODORE CHILD ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1893 Cf3 Copyright, 1892, by Harim'.k & Brothers. All rights reseri'ed. CONTENTS PAGE THE PRAISE OF PARIS • • 3 THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 19 SOCIETY IN PARIS 55 THE LIFE OF PARIS 7' THE PARISIENNE 87 LE GRAND COUTURIER 99 THE BOULEVARD 113 THE DUELLISTS 135 PROLETARIAN PARIS 163 THE COMEDIE-FRANQAISE 205 THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 259 LLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Montague Sainte Genevieve and the Pantheon from Pont de I'Es- tacade Frontispiece Arms of Paris 7 Paris from Pavilion de Flore 3/ The Louvre from Pont Neiif 2j La Sainte Chapelle 24 Notre Dame — Sunset Effect sy Monster of Notre Dame sg Point du Jour and Eiffel Tower 32 Quai de la Rapee 35 Horses Bathing — Pont Marie 43 Marche aitx Pommes 45 Bassin de la Villette 48 Ecliise Saint-Martin : 49 Canal Saint-Martin 51 The Champs-Elysces 59 The Arc de Triomphe '75 The Marquise and Her Coiffeur 93 Rue de la Paix from the Place de r Opera 10 1 Boulevard des Italiens 115 Cafe Scene 119 Place de la Madeleine 125 Opera — Wet Night 129 Fencing-room 137 The Gambetta-Fourtou Duel 141 Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Pistol Practice before the Duel z^j Ititerventioii of Gendarmes i^-j A Siuord Duel /j/ Meetiitg of the Seconds i^j First Lesson in Fencing i^j Bijou and the Pere La Gloirc 16"] Boulez'ard Arago iji " fe veux que les enfants apprennent le code " /y^ Allix iy6 Allix ij8 Wedding in the Bois dc Boulogne iSj A Cafe Concert 1S7 The Salomon Family iqj Exterior of the Theatre 2oy Statue of Corneillc in the Vestibule 2og Gallery of Busts 21 j Vestibttle of the Theatre 21/ The Grand Staircase 221 Public Foyer, with Statue of I ^oltaire 22^ The Greenroom 22g Dressing-room of Mile. Lloyd 2j2 Actors Behind the Scenes {in the Guignol) 2j^ The Cabinet of the Administrator-general 241 Statue of Moliere in the Vestibule 24J Coquelin Cadet in ''Le Sphinx " 24J Mounet-Sully as Hamlet 24J Coquelin Aine in "Les Ranisau" 2^1 A Learned Member of the Academy of Sciences 26J Meeting of the French Academy 26"/ Brown-Sequard Explaining an Experiment at the Academy of Sci- ences 272 Jeton de Presence — M. Chevrcul Signing the Presence Sheet . . . 2yj Voting at the Institute 280 The Hats of the French Academy 2S1 L' Entree des Artistes 287 Public Meetitig of the Five Academies of the Institute, foseph Ber- trand Presiding 2QJ THE PRAISE OF PARIS " Paris est un veritable ocean. Jetez-y la sonde, vous n'en connaitrez jamais la profondeur. Parcourez-le, decrivez-le : quelque soin que vous mettiez a le par- courir, a le decrire ; quelque nombreux et interesses que soient les explorateurs de cette mer, il s'y rencontrera toujours un lieu vierge, un antre inconnu, des fleurs, des peries, des monstres, quelque chose d'inoui, oublie par les plongeurs litteraires." Bai.ZAC, Le Pere Goriot. O Paris !" cries Sainte - Beuve, the great critic, " c'est chez toi qu'il est doux de vivre, c est chez toi que je veux mourir!" To live and to die in Paris has been the aspiration of many other geniuses besides Sainte-Beuve. Ever since Lutetia sprang from the mud of the He de la Cite, natives and foreigners have been singing a continuous chorus of praise in her honor. That worthy British journalist, John Scott, in his "Visit to Paris in 1814," says: "Paris is still far from equal- ling Athens, but it gives an idea of what the glories of the latter were, and this is more than can be said of London." Goethe, in conversation with the receptive Eckermann, begged his confidant on May 3, 1827, to imagine " that universal town where every step one takes recalls a great past, and where every street-corner has been the scene of a fragment of history — the Paris of the nineteenth century where, since three ages of men, beings like Moliere, Voltaire, Diderot, and their fellows, have put into circulation an abundance of ideas, the like of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world." Richardson, Walpole, Sterne, Hume, 4 THE PRAISE OF PARIS and Gibbon breathed with delight the intellectual at- mosphere of Paris. " Ah ! " wrote Gibbon, with a sigh of regret, " if I had been rich and independent I should have fixed my residence in Paris." Montaigne, in a passage that has now become hack- neyed by reason of quotation in season and out of sea- son, tells us that the more he saw of other fine cities, the more the beauty of Paris gained strongly in his affection: " Je I'aime tendrement, jusques a ses vermes et a ses taches," he says (I love it tenderly, even to its warts and its stains). " I am a Frenchman,' con- tinues Montaigne, " only by virtue of that great city: great in population, great in the felicity of its situation, iDut above all things great and incomparable in variety and diversity of conveniences, the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world." How great, too, was the admiration of the puissant emperor, Charles V., who declared that Rouen was the greatest town in France, inasmuch as Paris was a world in itself ! Still more lyric and stupendous was the admiration of the great churchman and diplomatist, Richard de Bury, author of " The Philobiblon," who celebrated the intellectual charms of Paris in the first half of the four- teenth century in words that we beg leave to quote, al- though they are familiar to all true book-lovers : " O, blessed God of gods in Zion ! how great a flood of pleasure delighted our heart as often as we had lei- sure to visit and sojourn at Paris, the Paradise of the world, where the days always seemed to us but few for the greatness of the love we had. There are delightful libraries, fragrant beyond stores of spices ; there are green pleasure-gardens of all kinds of volumes. There are Academic meadows shaking beneath the tread of scholars, lounging-seats of Athens, walks of the Peri- THE PRAISE OF PARIS 5 patetics, jutting peaks of Parnassus, and porches of the Stoics. There, indeed, did we open out our treasures and loosen our purse-strings, and, scattering money with a glad heart, purchased priceless books with dirt and sand." II A thousand years before Richard de Bury wrote his quaint eulogy, " O Beate Deus Deorum in Syon," a greater man than he, the Emperor Julian, had already felt that peculiar charm of Paris, which is independent of its exterior beauty, and, as it were, inherent in the atmosphere and in the soul of the city. In the fourth century, Paris, " my dear town of Lutetia," as the Em- peror calls it, explaining, "for that is the name which the Gauls give to the town of the Parisians," was still young, but already civilized and delightful. In his curious literary composition, entitled " Misopogon," ad- dressed to the inhabitants of proud Antioch, Julian de- scribes Lutetia as being situated on " a small island in the middle of the river, approached by wooden bridges, one on each side. The river," he continues, " rarely swells or diminishes ; as it is in summer, so it remains in winter. The water is very good to drink, being pure and agreeable to look upon. The temperature of the winter is not very rigorous, the reason being, as the people of the country say, the warmth of the ocean, which is distant only nine hundred stades, and sends mild air as far as Lutetia." Julian then goes on to speak favorably of the vines that grow at Paris, and of the fig-trees, which are cultivated with success, being wrapped up with wheat-straw to protect them against the inclemency of the seasons. So we get a glimpse 6 THE PRAISE OF PARIS of those antique methods of careful gardening which are still followed around Paris, and which have pro- duced in modern times such masterpieces of horticul- ture as the peaches of Montreuil, the green pease of Clamart, and the asparagus of Argenteuil. Indeed, the Emperor's account gives us the impression that the old Parisians of the island capital led an amiable and al- most Virgilian existence, in a mild climate, living sim- ply, patriarchally, without luxury, and almost without pleasures; for Julian adds, as if aiming his remarks especially at the dissipated inhabitants of Antioch, that at Paris there are " no lascivious dances and no scan- dalous spectacles," It is gratifying to learn from this imperial testimony that the traditions of the Moulin Rouge, the Jardin de Paris, and the Cafes-chantants of the nineteenth century are less ancient and respectable than those of Parisian market-gardening. To endeavor to reconstitute by an effort of imagina- tion the Paris of the fourth century of our era would be vain ; and yet, as we walk along the Seine in the direction of Bercy, we command from the Pont de I'Es- tacade and the Quai Henri IV., looking south-west- ward, a view of admirable serenity which suggests still the panorama that Julian must have enjoyed from his island palace. At no other point in Paris can we con- template a greater immensity of river and urban ex- panse than here. From the broad, paved wharves, cov- ered with barrels and various merchandise, and lined with barges and canal-boats, the eye passes above the regular line of the quay, and embraces a vast wooded landscape that sweeps up from the river to the Mon- tague Sainte Genevieve — a broad vista of sky and verd- ure crowned by the domes of the Val de Grace, the Pantheon, and the belfry of Saint Etienne du Mont. On the fertile and smiling slope of the Montague ARMS OF PARIS Sainte Genevieve were the palaces and the military establishments of the Gallo- Roman Emperors. The ground now covered by the Luxembourg was occupied by a vast camp. On the summit of the Montague Sainte Genevieve, where the Pantheon now stands, was the imperial palace of Posthumus, with its dependent Thermae, or Thermes, a fragment of which remains to the present day in the garden of the Cluny Museum. This slope and the plain on the opposite side of the river were traversed by roads that were lined with villas, and, when the villas ceased, with tombs after the Roman fashion. There were aqueducts, too, that 8 THE PRAISE OF PARIS brought water from Arcueil, Chaillot, and Les Ternes, or Thermes, as the name was doubtless written until it became incomprehensible when the springs ceased to be used. In this Gallo-Roman Paris, Julian spent three win- ters. He had been sent to Gaul by his uncle, Con- stantius, to repel the barbarians, and particularly the Germans. The moment was near when the invading hordes were to be masters, and the imminence of the danger is shown by the fact of Julian at first choosing his winter quarters in Paris and on the island itself, for the sake of security against attacks to which a camp on the main-land was exposed. In his military opera- tions, however, Julian was so successful that towards the end of his stay he was able to leave the palace and garden on the He de la Cite, and to settle on the Mon- tague Sainte Genevieve in the palace of Posthumus, where there was more room for the luxury of his wife, the Oriental princess, Helen, who was accompanied by a great train of chamberlains, eunuchs, and slaves — a luxury, by-the-way, which was not to the taste of Julian, whose thoughts, even in the midst of his campaigns^ dwelt more willingly upon philosophy than upon war. The winter that Julian spent in the palace on the Montague Sainte Genevieve was exceptionally severe ; but, although accustomed from his youth to the warm climates of Greece and Syria, the Caesar did not com- plain. He even refused to have his rooms heated with those stoves which the Parisians were in the habit of using; he asked only for a brasero, such as the Span- iards and the Orientals employ; and the result was that he was one day very nearly suffocated. In the " Misopogon," Julian relates the mishap with charming simplicity. He describes how great blocks of ice floated down THE PRAISE OF PARIS 9 the river, clashing against each other until they finally joined together and formed a bridge. " More severe towards myself than ever, and determined to endure all kinds of privations," he writes, " I would not allow my bedchamber to be heated with those stoves that are ordinarily used in the country, although they give only a mild heat. In vain the winter became harder and the cold more biting, I would have no fire in my room ; I consented only to allow a few lighted coals to be brought. Although a small quantity of charcoal was used, nevertheless the fire caused so much steam to come out of the walls that my head grew heavy and I thought that I should suffocate. However, I was car- ried out of my room ; the doctor relieved me of the feeling of oppression ; I was able to pass the night in light sleep, and the next day resumed my work." The doctor who so promptly saved Julian from in- cipient asphyxiation was no ordinary court physician, but one of the most celebrated men of science of the day, Oribazius by name, whose acquaintance Julian had made while at Pergamus, and in whose studies he took the deepest interest, to such a degree that he attached him to his person and encouraged him to write a sort of medical encyclopaedia, which has come down to our own times. In the preface to one of his treaties, Ori- bazius mentions the studious winters that he passed in Paris with the C^sar, and intimates that he himself was only one of many learned men whose conversation formed the chief pleasure of the prince. In this im- provised Academy of the Caesar's court we may trace the foreshadowing of the great academies and schools that were destined to glorify the Montagne Sainte Genevieve when it became in later years the Latin Quarter, and when the Gallo-Roman town of Lutetia rose in the eyes of the world to the glory of a modern lO THE PRAISE OF PARIS Athens. We may affirm also that all the talk of these learned Hellenes was not exclusively of science and philosophy, but also of that revival and reform of pagan- ism which was Julian's dream and ambition. In those days the Christian Church at Paris, we may be sure, made but a poor figure in comparison with that noble assembly of educated Greeks who aided Julian in the celebration of sacrifices according to the ancient ritual of magnificent paganism. The altar of Christ re- mained with Bishop Paul to serve it; but at the same time the altar of Isis smoked with victims and flowed with libations that won for the Caesar the affection of the soldiers and of the people, Isis being the favorite goddess of the Parisians, and the traditional object of adoration in the primitive settlement of Lutetia. Thanks to this affection and to the popularity thus acquired, Julian was at the first opportunity proclaimed Emperor in spite of himself. Constantius had sent him to Gaul to fight the Germans, in the hope that the Germans would destroy him. But the delicate Byzan- tine, the consummate pupil of the sophists, the miystic pagan who quotes Plato when he wishes to prove that " man ought to tend to raise himself to heaven whence he comes," the refined literary man who preferred the poems of Homer to the artless prose of the Gospels, showed himself to be an ardent warrior, and the worthy maintainer of the conquests of the great Caesar, who had subjugated Gaul four centuries before. Constan- tius endeavored to weaken Julian by the same methods that Pompey used to diminish the power of Caesar, and with the same result. The legions no sooner compre- hended the manoeuvre than they besieged Julian in his palace ; the people of Paris joined the revolt with an ardor that presaged the many revolutions of later days; and finally the gates of the palace were forced, and THE PRAISE OF PARIS II Julian was obliged to allow himself to be proclaimed Emperor. The soldiers enthroned him on a shield, after the manner of the barbarian kings, and the golden collar of a centurion was placed upon his brow in lieu of the imperial diadem. The proclamation of Julian as Emperor took place in the year a.d. 390. It was the beginning of the denoue- ment of the grand drama of Roman decadence ; but, so far as concerns Gaul, the mission of Julian and its unforeseen conclusion made Paris a true capital, and awakened the city to a consciousness of power, intelli- gence, and material splendor of life. Ill Isis, the mysterious and universal deity of the an- cients, was the goddess of those Senones who in the ancient days descended from the upper Seine and set- tled on the present He de la Cite. With a ritual similar to the rich ceremonial of the East, the great goddess was worshipped; and in souvenir of Isis abandoning herself to the sea in order to seek the body of her lost spouse, the sacred ship, purified by sacrificial fire, was launched from the sloping shore of the island, and left to the mercy of the waters, its white sail swelling be- fore the perfumed breeze. The goddess of the water was the natural divinity of the Lutetians. Like that of the dwellers upon the banks of the Nile, their wor- ship was a form of gratitude ; they adored the goddess and the river which gave them greatness and pros- perity ; they adored the ship of Isis, which had made them masters of the stream and opened to them the gates of the ocean and of the future. Thus the skiff 12 THE PRAISE OF PARIS of Isis became their dearest emblem, at once a symbol of their beliefs and the instrument of their fortune — a symbol which they imposed even upon their conquerors, for when an emperor, whether Posthumus or another, built the great palace on the Montague Sainte Gene- vieve, of which the Thermes formed a part, he did not forget to adorn it with the sculptured prows of the city's device. In the hall of the Thermes, which still remains in the garden of the Cluny Museum, the skiff of Isis may be seen, carved in relief in the corners ; and if we look at the gaslamps or any other municipal be- longings in the adjoining Boulevard Saint Michel, we shall see this same skiff of Isis transformed into the ship with swelling sails and straining oars that figures on the arms of Paris with the motto, " Fluctuat nee mergitur " — on a red field a ship with silver sails float- ing on a silver sea, surmounted by an azure band orna- mented with fleurs-de-lis. Pagan Paris believed in Isis ; Christian Paris continued to believe in her even after her temple had been razed to the ground to make way for the cathedral of Notre Dame; for as late as the reign of Louis XIII. a statue of Isis was worshipped by the old women in the church of Saint Germain des Pres, until one day the Bishop of Meaux, Guillaume Bri9onnet, who was at the same time abbot of Saint Germain, caused the idol to be broken in the public street, and a red cross to be erected, in token of wrath and of purification (La Croix Rouge), which has re- mained in the street nomenclature of modern Paris. However, Paris became Christianized in due course, and had its glorious martyrs, of whom Saint Denis was the greatest. It had also its Christian heroines, of whom the purest and noblest was Genevieve, the patron saint of the city, whose memory is still honored in the beginning of January with the prayers of many pilgrims THE PRAISE OF PARIS 1 3 who come to worship her rehcs in the beautiful church of Saint Etienne du Mont. It was in the middle of the fifth century of our era that Saint Genevieve ex- ercised her great influence in saving Paris. This holy woman, who had been consecrated to the service of God by Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, lived at Paris, de- voting herself wholly to charity and pious works, and fortifying her religion by fasting and prayer. One day news was brought that the most terrible of the barbarians who had yet threatened the empire, Attila, the Scourge of God, had crossed the Rhine and was devastating Gaul with his hordes of Huns. Now in those days there were living in Paris many Jewish and Syrian merchants. They had been at- tracted by the presence of successive imperial courts, whether of Posthumus, Julian, Valentinian, Gratian, or Maximus, and although at the time of which we are speaking Paris was no longer the residence of princes, these merchants were still there, enjoying the great wealth that they had amassed. The approach of the terrible pillager caused general terror, the more so as his route from north to south would inevitably bring him to Paris ; consequently, many thought only of flight, and sought to place their wealth and worldly goods in more secure cities. Genevieve endeavored to prevent this movement; she spoke to the wives of those who wished to abandon the city, or, as the old chronicle says, she called a meeting of them, held up for imitation the example of Judith and Esther, and induced them to fast and pray. She also tried to per- suade the men not to remove their goods from Paris, telling them all that she knew through her corres- pondence with Germain, of Auxerre, who had retired to Italy, about the mighty preparations of Aetius, who was to join the Prankish army of Merovee in Gaul, 14 THE PRAISE OF PARIS and thus stop the advance of Attila. At the risk of her hfe, for the men would have stoned her as a false prophetess, Genevieve held out until the end, and at last succeeded in inspiring the Parisians with a little courage and saving the city from abandonment. Paris was not attacked. The approach of Aetius allowed Attila no time to pillage the city. The Scourge of God passed on directly to Orleans, whence he was re- pulsed, and then fell back upon the plains of Chalons, where he was defeated in a most memorable battle. Later, the Franks wished to take possession of Paris and its famous riches, but the Parisians defended them- selves strenuously, not for months only but for years^ always under the guidance and counsel of Genevieve. At last it made the saint's heart bleed to see the peo- ple dying of hunger, for, as the legend says, Paris was then nothing but a great sepulchre where you saw only pale shadows and horrible skeletons. So Gene- vieve left by night with a boatman and began her journey up the Seine, and the Prankish sentinels al- lowed her to pass unmolested. Thus she reached Champagne, where the great fame of her piety had pre- ceded her, and she was everywhere received with honor and affection, more particularly at Arcis-sur-Aube and at Troyes. Finally, eleven great barges were laden with bread and flour, and left to float down the river under the protection of God and of the prayers of Saint Genevieve, and just at the most dangerous spot, where the Prankish sentinels had to be passed, a violent storm arose and drove them within their tents, so that the flotilla of provisions was able to approach the city without let or hinderance. Thus the indefatigable zeal of the saint saved Paris from starvation, and obliged the Franks to be satisfied with an honorable capitulation. During the entire period of the great invasion, from THE PRAISE OF PARIS 1 5 Attila to Clovis, the history of Paris is personified in Saint Genevieve, and resumed in her legend, much obscured, it is true, by puerile miracle, but nevertheless imposing and edifying. Republican Paris has secular- ized the church of the Pantheon, which was placed under the patronage of Saint Genevieve ; but the grand frescos of Puvis de Chavannes remain the adornment and glory of its walls, and relate with the mute elo- quence of the painter's art the chief episodes of the career of this pious heroine. Modern unbelief has diminished the number of the pilgrims who attend yearly the neuvaine, or nine days' celebration, of the saint ; but the throng is still so great that it occasions a special fair for the sale of articles of piety, held in front of the Pantheon during the first fortnight in January. From the broad silvery Seine we see the slope that bears her name, the Montague Sainte Gene- vieve ; and, as we watch the full stream gliding with its burden of barges and swift steamboats, we remember the touching vision of the saint kneeling on the deck of the boat of a loyal waterman of ancient Lutetia, and guiding with her prayers alone the convoy of provisions that was to save Paris from the pillage of the Franks. THE BANKS OF THE SEINE IN the view depicted in our engraving the artist has sought a high stand-point in order to embrace a wide horizon. From one of the upper windows of the Pavilion de Flore he has looked down upon Paris, as it were, from a hill-side ; and, while a spring cloud was sprinkling the fresh verdure, he has noted the grand panorama of the Seine and its bridges, the towers of the Conciergerie, the dome of the tribunal of Commerce, the spire of the Sainte Chapelle, the towers of Notre Dame, the Palace of the Institute, the Mint and its smoking chimney; in the distance the Montague Sainte Genevieve with the dome of the Pantheon ; and in the foreground the Pont du Carrousel, the river with its trains of barges, and the Port of Saint Nicolas du Louvre nestling beneath the trees, with the London steamer moored to the quay- side. No one who has visited Paris can forget the incomparable group of palaces which the eye embraces from this Pont du Carrousel, with the grand silhouette of Notre Dame in the centre, and, to the left, the roofs and belfry of the Hotel de Ville, the old Gothic tower of Saint Jacques, the monumental regularity of the quays shaded with fine trees, and the great palace of the Louvre, whose interminable fa9ades and admirable galleries resume the history of the glory and genius of France from 20 THE PRAISE OF PARIS the time of Philip Augustus, and the history of French architecture since the days of Fran9ois I. In the year 1529 Pierre Lescot, the architect, and Jean Goujon, the sculptor, began the actual palace, con- ceiving and executing it with an abundance of imagina- tion, a sureness of taste, a delicate perfection of sym- metry, and a richness and harmony of ornament that make it a most complete expression of the style of the French Renaissance. To the Louvre of Pierre Lescot innumerable additions have been made at various epochs in various styles. Henri IV. built the Pavilion de Flore, but it was reserved for Carpeaux in our own days to complete its decoration with a high-relief group that is one of the purest masterpieces of modern art. Cath- erine de Medicis built the wing where the antique sculpture is now placed. Louis XIII. and his architect completed the palace around the great court-yard of the Louvre. Louis XIV. built the Galerie d'Apollon. Marie de Medicis and Anne of Austria in turn con- tributed to the sumptuous decoration of their dwelling. To Louis XIV. and to Claude Perrault, a doctor by profession, but a civil engineer by taste, the Louvre is indebted for its grand colonnade, one of the finest monuments of Paris. Napoleon I. added largely to the splendor of the Louvre; and Napoleon III. finally consummated the work by joining the palace of the Louvre to that of the Tuileries, on the side both of the river and of the Rue de Rivoli, thus completing the symmetrical plan of this incomparable series of monu- ments. The Tuileries, alas ! has disappeared, but the aspect of the Louvre only gains in immensity and grandeur by the clearing of the ground between the two extreme pavilions, which has left an uninterrupted sweep of broad promenade, planted with gardens and avenues of trees, from the Place du Carrousel and the THE LOUVRE FROM PONT NEUF Jardin des Tuileries up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. From the noble lines of the Louvre, and from its magnificent galleries following majestically the shady avenue of the quay, the eye wanders across the river, and lingers for a moment on the cupola and the classic fa9ade of the Institut de France, built in the seven- teenth century in accordance with the testament of Cardinal Mazarin, and occupied by the five Academies that form the Institute only since the year 1806. Then we look up the stream and enjoy that unique view of Notre Dame and the He de la Cite, which at all mo- ments of the day and of the night is one of the marvels of Paris, a vision of vast splendor which the changing hour bathes in the mystery of changing hues, now sil- very gray, now violet, now rose, now blue ; in the day- time brilliant with the gayety of sunshine ; at night a black mass of imposing silhouettes standing out darkly against the starry sky. 24 THE PRAISE OF PARIS The He de la Cite is gradually being transformed into a sort of acropolis, or sacred enclosure, devoted to great public monuments. At one end of the island, towards the Pont Neuf and the statue of Henri IV., there remains a picturesque block of old houses, whose gables and chim- neys play an import- ant role in the famous view from the brid2:e. At the other end of the isl- and, between Notre Dame and the river on the north side, there are four narrow streets, the Rues du Cloitre, des Chantres, Chanoinesse, and des Marmousets, where LA SAINTE CHAPELLE THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 25 the buildings are of ancient date, having formerly been exclusively reserved for the dwellings of the canons of the cathedral. But with these exceptions, there remains nothing of the primitive aspect of the medieval city of Paris with its many churches, hotels, and thickly clus- tered houses. Far from being crowded, the modern He de la Cite tends to look bare and deserted ; its immense and severe monuments, the Palais de Justice, the Tri- bunal of Commerce, the Prefecture of Police, the bar- racks, and the great hospital of the Hotel Dieu, are surrounded by broad and open spaces ; the Sainte Chapelle alone, instead of being disengaged from ob- trusive neighbors, like the other historical monuments of Paris, has been entirely hidden from view, with the exception of the summit of its roof and its gracile spire, by the agglomeration of buildings of all periods which form the Palais de Justice, and resume the develop- ment of French architecture from the time of Saint Louis to that of Napoleon III. Notre Dame, on the other hand, has been disengaged on all sides ; each fagade is freely presented, and the front, with its grand portal and towers, can be viewed as a whole both from near and from afar, thanks to the great open space of the parvis and the extended per- spective of the quays and river. In the same way the apsis may be seen in its complete development from the charming garden that occupies the site of the now demolished archbishop's palace. Admirably restored by MM. Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus in the middle of the present century, Notre Dame is certainly the most perfect of French ogival churches, and a model of the ecclesiastical architecture of the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, one doubts whether it has gained by be- ing isolated, and whether it has not lost something of its imposing and severe character by being cleared of 26 THE PRAISE OF PARIS all the parasitical constructions, the narrow streets, the humble dwellings, and quaint old shops and stalls that sought the shelter of its shadow in former times. Cer- tainly this isolation was not anticipated by the archi- tects who built the Gothic cathedrals with their forests of flying buttresses, their varied silhouettes, and the diversity of their ornamentation, always in the close and crowded neighborhood of houses, as if to invite the intimacy of the population. For, apart from all political considerations, and examined purely from the moral, the sentimental, and the educational points of view, the Gothic cathedral of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was a popular encyclopaedia of religion, knowledge, and general edification. As it was re- corded in the proceedings of the second council of Nicsea, " the Holy Catholic Church brings all our senses into play in order to guide us to penitence and to the observation of the commandments of God ; it endeavors to lead us not only by the hearing but by the sight, in the desire that it has to perfect our morals." Hence the wealth of statues, bass-reliefs, carvings, paintings, and symbolic ornaments that decorate the ancient churches of Europe. Hence the prodigious iconography of the fa9ade of Notre Dame, resuming the whole Christian epopee and the religious ideal of the Middle Ages in all its naivete and terror. On the tympanum of the great door, in the centre, Christ is represented with His feet on the lion and the dragon ; and around the Saviour are figured the twelve apostles, with symbols of their martyrdom or their distinctive qualities ; the twelve virtues and the twelve vices; the wise and the foolish virgins ; and, completing the ensemble, the graphic scene of the last judgment: two angels blow trumpets; the dead rise from their graves; kings, knights, peasants, and noble dames all answer this su- THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 27 preme call; Saint Michael holds the scales wherewith to weigh the souls ; to the right, the elect, clad in long robes and wearing crowns, see the heavens open to them ; to the left, the demons drag away the unright- eous strung along a chain — bishops, kings, knights, clerks, laymen, and women, all pell-mell, with terror and anguish depicted on their faces. In the upper part of the tympanum of the great portal Christ seated, with his feet on the globe, shows His wounded body ; two angels standing, one on each side, hold in their hands the instruments of the passion ; behind the an- gels the Virgin and Saint John kneel and intercede for mankind ; while the six mouldings that form the archi- NOTRE DAME— SUNSET EFFECT 28 THE PRAISE OF PARIS volt and frame the composition are sculptured with chap- lets of angels, prophets, doctors, martyrs, and virgins. The northern and the southern doors are also decorated with admirable statues and high-reliefs. Then between the doors are colossal statues of Saint Denis and Saint Etienne, and of the Church and of the Synagogue, while over the arches are the twenty -four kings of Judah, and in the gallery above isolated statues of Adam and Eve, and in the centre the Virgin accom- panied by two angels. In contrast with the serene spirituality of this ma- jestic fa9ade, at one time gorgeous with color and gild- ing, we have only to look upward to the roof and the towers in order to see a legion of monsters of stone, beasts, chimaeras, and birds, and strange combinations of human and animal forms, prodigies of abnormal crea- tion, such as Saint John saw in the hallucinations of Pat- mos. Such are those grotesque beings that stand with their fore-paws on the parapet of the towers of Notre Dame, and look down with astonishment at the city below, while the stone birds open their beaks as if to "utter stupid cries, and fix their fierce eyes on some prey that they can never seize, for all these monsters are captives in the tower, built into the very stones when they are not carved out of them, like that quaint devil at our corner of the tower, who rests his head lazily on his two hands, and lolls his tongue out at the people in the street. The towers and the whole roof of Notre Dame bristle with innumerable monsters that seem, as it were, imprisoned in these lofty solitudes from which they peep out wistfully here and there. What are they.^ What is their symbolism ? How did they come there ? In the Middle Ages the creation was conceived as a grand concert, in which every being had its function. Man was the centre of all things on earth, and every- MONSTER OF NOTRE DAME thing was held to abut in man, who was himself re- sponsible to God for all things created for him. This idea of the universe explains the encyclopcedic efforts, and the seeking after unity, order, and classification, wdiich particularly characterized the intellectual move- ment of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It ex- plains, too, the quaint figures of the mediceval gargoyles, and of those monsters that lean over the parapets of 30 THE PRAISE OF PARIS the towers of Notre Dame, some of them being origi- nals, and others most faithful and characteristic recon- stitutions made with infinite care by VioUet-le-Duc. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries there was a complete science of monsters ; from the descrip- tions of Pliny and i^lian the monks composed collec- tions of real and fantastic animals, and expounded the symbolic sense of each in books that were called Besti- aries or Bestiaria ; and, as we read in a Picard Bestiary existing in manuscript in the library of the Arsenal, " the reason why they are so called is because they treat of the nature of beasts ; for all the creatures that God created on the earth he created for man's sake, that he might take in them example of faith and belief." So the swarms of animals and monsters carved on the churches and cathedrals were intended to remind us of the Christian virtues that we ought to practise and of the vices that we ought to avoid. On the fa- 9ades and portals were the noble scenes of Christian faith, hope, and example ; on the roof, as if condemned to perpetual exorcism by the sonorous waves that issued from the bell-towers, the demons were impaled in stone effigies, and the vices were pilloried along the eaves and forced to do service as water-spouts. All this imagery, sacred and grotesque, edifying and admonitory, was intended to be the daily guide of citi- zens, the open book that all could read as they passed. Comins: alons: the narrow streets that radiated from the cathedral, the Parisians of old caught sight of a tower, of a sculptured door, of an arched buttress or of a quaint gargoyle, and thus the smallest details were pre- sented as if in a frame, and by their isolation acquired a value and a power of action that they have perhaps lost, now that the vast monument is thrust upon the view in its entirety and with all the profusion of its THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 3 1 symbolism, which remains mere confusion until system- atic and reasoned observation has discovered the key to the labyrinth of storied stone. However, to regret the vanished picturesqueness of the old surroundings of Notre Dame is useless ; the spirit of the past has gone the way of past things ; the cathedral has become an object in the museum of the world's marvels, and a subject of vague wonderment for tourists ; but at the same time it remains a theme for the reveries of mystic dreamers, and a joy for all who appreciate the beauty of splendid architecture, closing the perspectives of river and tree-lined quays. Notre Dame is the purest jewel of the many fair monuments that adorn the banks of the Seine, " the first of our rivers," as Michelet calls it, " the most civilizable and the most perfectible." II The entrance to Venice by the Grand Canal is fa- mous among the great sights of the world. If one entered Paris by the Seine and landed at the Hotel de Ville, the impression received would perhaps be as striking as that produced by the antique palaces of the city of gondolas, and certainly more various. From afar the position of the capital is announced by the Eiffel Tower. At the fortifications the city as- serts itself by the great viaduct of the circular railway that crosses the river at the Point du Jour, the ex- tremity of Paris, a centre of cheap popular pleasures, and the terminus of the city steamboats. Along the bank there are cafes-concerts, shooting-galleries, wooden horses, peep -shows, £'iii7i£-ue^^es, and restaurants, where the populace delights to eat fried gudgeons and to 32 THE PRAISE OF PARIS drink the sour wine of Suresnes, with the accompani- ment of blatant barrel-organs and ambulant musicians. The point of view is vulgar, but the panorama as we ascend the stream is imposing. On the left is the amphitheatre of the Trocadero, with its towers and colonnades, its terraced gardens, its fountains and cas- POINT DU JOUR AND EIFFEL TOWER cades, a souvenir of the Universal Exhibition of 1878. In the middle of the river, on the point of an island, is the familiar silhouette of Bartholdi's " Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World," a symbol of international sym- pathy if not, perhaps, a masterpiece of art. On the right rise the stupendous iron tower and the glistening THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 33 domes of the buildings of the Universal Exhibition of 1889. In the background extends the vague horizon of the immense city : of modern Paris, the outcome of the Revolution of 1 789 ; of democratic Paris, which owes its supremacy to the great 14th of July. Successively Gaulish, Roman, Carlovingian, feudal, monarchical, and revolutionary, Paris has ascended from darkness to light, from unconsciousness to consciousness, from serv- itude to liberty, from despotism to democracy. " Rome has more majesty," wrote Victor Hugo, "'Treves has more antiquity, Venice has more beauty, Naples has more grace, London has more wealth. What, then, has Paris .f^ The Revolution. " Paris is the first town on which, at a given day, the history of the world turned. " Palermo has Etna, Paris has thought. Constantino- pie is nearer to the sun, Paris is nearer to civilization. Athens built the Parthenon, but Paris demolished the Bastille." All along the river the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower, that monstrous plaything of humanity, that gigantic point of exclamation which progress set up at the en trance of the World's Fair in the centennial year of liberty, will pursue us. At each step we turn to it as a standard or a contrast as we advance between rows of palaces and of quays lined with luxuriant trees ; past the modest o-lass o-alleries of the Palais de I'lndustrie which seemed so gorgeous when the World's Fair found sufHcient room in them in 1867; past the Esplanade des Invalides and the dome that carries us back to Louis XIV.; past the embassies and ministries on the Quai d'Orsay; past the classic temple where the depu- ties meet to discuss and to make laws ; past the Place de la Concorde, which used to be called the Place Louis XV., until one day it was called Place de la Re- 34 THE PRAISE OF PARIS volution, and, in 1795, Place de la Concorde, after it had been stained with the blood of Louis XVI., of Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, Anacharsis Clootz, Dan- ton, Camille Desmoulins, and how many others ! Al- most every inch of Paris is historic ground, and it needs but an ordinary memory to people the streets with illustrious phantoms. Beyond the Place de la Concorde we pass between the vast o-arden of the Tuileries and the ruins of the Cour des Comptes. The former reminds us of the Empire, the latter of the Commune. Then we pass the Louvre and the Quai Voltaire, dear to book-lovers, and where the parapets are fringed with boxes of books and pamphlets that invite the passer-by to hunt if haply he may find some rare neglected treasure, some pearl lost in the rubbish-heap. Here we are in the heart of Paris, and the cradle of the city is before our eyes : the He de la Cite, with Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle ; the crowded bridges; the palaces of learning and of pleasure — the Palais de I'Listitut, the Ecole des Beaux Arts ; the Mint, the Church of Saint Germain I'Auxerrois, the theatre, and the Place du Chatelet ; the Conciergerie, with its pointed towers, the ancient Gothic tower of Saint Jacques, and at last the elegant silhou- ette of the Hotel de Ville,with its innumerable statues of eminent citizens on the fa9ade, and its gilded men of arms guarding the belfry and the roof. In the cen- tre of the river fa9ade of the municipal palace stands the bronze statue of Etienne Marcel, the Prevot des Marchands, who plays so important a role in the grave events of the middle of the fourteenth century, and al- most succeeded in advancing the date of the Revolu- tion of 1789 by four centuries. Etienne Marcel is one of those great figures of Pari- sian history that have helped the city to become the THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 35 capital. It is he who led the movement that trans- ported the parloir aux botirgeois, or city hall, from the Montamie Sainte Genevieve to the Place de Greve, where it still stands. The bourgeois had wished for years to have the right of meeting in a hall near their quarter, near to the streets where they had their looms, their work-shops, and their offices. The kings refused, for if the chiefs of the guilds and the provosts of the merchants were allowed to meet on the Place de Greve it would be as if the populace had its Louvre by the side of and in rivalry with the Louvre of the crown. In 1357, when the King was unsuccessful in battle, al- though the bourgeois had given him plenty of money, the mob became master of Paris, took some practical lessons in the art of revolution, conquered the Hotel de Ville on the Place de Greve, and carried Etienne Mar- cel there in triumph. At the States-General, in 1355, Etienne Marcel, the spokesman of the third estate and of the loyal towns, declared that they were all ready to live and die with the King provided only the King would live better, and allow the bouroreois to have a hand in arrans^ino: his life for him. " Requerons de parler ensemble et de QUAI DE LA RAPEE 36 THE PRAISE OF PARIS nous reunir " (we claim to meet and to speak together), said Marcel, humbly. " And then the chancellor," adds Froissart, " said : ' We grant the claim ' " (lors le chan- celier dit: Nous I'octroyons). This was the beginning of the end of monarchy and the beginning of the reign of Paris ; and when a little later King John was conquered and captured at Poi- tiers, and France was left without army, without King, and with a young prince of nineteen summers, the Dau- phin Charles, for only guide and sovereign, Paris, with its provost of the merchants, took the initiative of gov- ernment. The revolution of Etienne Marcel was the greatest effort that Paris ever made as capital and heart of France, greater even than the effort of 1789, for then Paris had the sympathies of all France, whereas under Etienne Marcel, Paris acted almost alone for the sake of France. The aim of this revolution was noble and just, but when the victory was nearly won it was spoiled by excesses and crimes. The spirit of imprudence and error blinded Etienne Marcel, and brought him to a violent and ignominious end, and all that the people of Paris remembered of the revolutionary days of the fourteenth century was the taste for blood and the ap- petite for pillage. Since Etienne Marcel's time Paris has been a city of intermittent revolutions ; from the rival factions of Armagnac and Bourgogne to the mas^ sacre of the night of Saint Barthelemy, when the Seine was stained with blood as far as Rouen ; from the riots of La Ligue and La Fronde to the great riot which ended in the capture and destruction of the Bastille ; from the Commune of 1793 to the Commune of 187 1 Paris has always been the leader and initiator of the national disorders as well as of the national life, of the noble movements as well as of the most pernicious and THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 37 detestable excesses. And yet, as the calm and perspica- cious Vauban said, Paris is to France what the head is to the human bodv. " It is the true heart of the kins^- dom, the common mother of France, by whom all the people of their great state subsist, and with whom this kingdom could not dispense without declining consid- erably." From Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower the journey of civilization has been great and glorious. From the Bastille Column to the new Hotel de Ville we see what the permanent will of Paris can do. At first, Paris was clustered around Notre Dame on the He de la Cite. Under Philip Augustus the surface of the city covered a thousand acres, and its inhabitants num- bered 100,000 souls. Under Louis XIV. the popula- tion reached 550,000. In the eighteenth century Paris, with 650,000 inhabitants, made the Revolution, de- stroyed the Bastille, and began to pull the great tocsin, to whose sounds the world is still listening. Only nowadays Paris has nearly two and a half millions of inhabitants to pull the bell-rope, and the sound is much mightier than it was since the tocsin has become pure- ly a clangor of peace, industry, and genius. Ill La plaine est imre, la riviere est nourrice. In the to- pographical predestination of Paris to be the capital of France, the elements of river and plain have been ail- important. The plain has been the producer of riches, and the river the carrier that has made them produc- tive. When we approach Paris from the side of the Loire we cross the fertile plains of La Beauce, the 38 THE PRAISE OF PARIS great granary; on the Burgundy side the hills and slopes are covered with vineyards ; in the fat pastures of Normandy may be seen countless herds of cattle ; on the north, the south, the east, and the west the capi- tal is surrounded by zones of forests, the forests of Or- leans, Rambouillet, Versailles, Saint- Germain, Marly, Montmorency, Bondy, Chantilly, Compiegne, Villers- Cotterets, Senart, Fontainebleau, without counting the reserves of La Nievre ; in the centre of the valley of the Seine we find stone at Montrouge, plaster at Mont- martre, bricks at Vaugirard and paving-stones at Fon- tainebleau. Thus nature has provided all that is necessary for building a capital and nourishing its popu- lation, and the long collaboration of nature and man has produced that mighty city, the monster and the masterpiece, Paris, the pivot on which the history of modern humanity has turned. The origin of the wealth and glory of Paris is the Seine. The first trade of the primitive inhabitants of Lutetia was that of watermen. Their future and their whole fortune lay in the river and its navigation. With the progress of the city the navigation has increased until, at the present day, Paris is the fourth in import- ance of all the ports of France, coming after Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Havre, The arms of Paris, souvenir of Isis and of the ancient industry of the Lutetians, thus remain as significant as ever, and there is even a pros- pect that they may acquire greater fulness of meaning in the future, for the dream of Paris is to become a sea- port by means of the canalization of the Seine and the construction- of lateral ship-canals between the capital and Rouen. The average visitor to Paris rarely realizes the im- portance of the Seine as a commercial route, and un- less he has the blessed gift oi flaneric, and the will to THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 39 loaf and to comprehend things by intuition and sympa- thy rather than by the study of his guide-book, he runs the risk of not seeing some of the most picturesque and restful bits of the town. The professional tourist and his mentor pay but small attention to the Seine; they remark the numerous bridges and the steamboats — mouches and hirondelles (flies and swallows), as they are poetically called — that ply between Charenton and Au- teuil, and from the Louvre as far as Saint-Cloud and Suresnes; but, apart from this passenger service, they know very little about the river. The sentimental flaneur, on the other hand, knows that the river is rich in variety of aspect and incident, and that delicious hours may be spent by the dreamer who has the leisure to loiter on the bridges and along the quays, and to feast his eyes on simple phases and combinations of life, nature, and art. From the almost superhuman pa- tience of the fishermen who line the quays and make them bristle with long bamboo poles, the loiterer may take example of hopefulness and perseverance. From the family groups that sit along the shore lost in con- templation of the water, and from the children who play on the sand-heaps while their mothers sew and gossip just as they might do at the sea-side, the thoughtful spectator may conclude that the source of happiness is within each one of us in the prism of illusion that gives to reality the aspect that our fancy pleases. How many pretexts for idling and looking on are afforded by the banks of the Seine. A passing train of boats, a fisherman casting his net, a steamer gliding under the bridge, two men beating a carpet, an ambu- lant specialist carding a mattress on the tow-path, a steam-crane hoisting sand from a barge and depositing it in a pyramid on the quay — anything and everything that takes place on the water or along the embankments 40 THE PRAISE OF PARIS of the Seine suffices to interest a group of citizens and causes them to halt and gaze. How often does one remark the parapet of one of the bridges literally black with people, all leaning over the rail and watching with the most intense interest ? Watching what ? Simply a dog swimming in the river and retrieving the stick that his master throws for him. A still larger and more respectfully attentive crowd will be drawn by the fascinating spectacle of a handsome poodle being clipped and washed by one of those artists whose stock in trade consists of a box, a pair of shears, and an in- scription or sign such as the following : " Pascal, ton- deur. Tond les chiens, coupe les chats et les oreilles.* Va-t-en ville." Pascal and often Madame Pascal also operate along the river at the points where the quays slope gently down into the water; they wash, soap, bathe, brush, and comb house-dogs in general ; and they shear the poodles with an art and an inventive taste- fulness that are without parallel in any country of the world; for while they shave their hind-quarters they yet leave bands and arabesques of wool that relieve the nudity of the body, together with rings of wool around the legs and coquettish tufts which give distinction to the tail. The dog-clipper, like the human hair-dresser, is an artist; he studies each subject that is intrusted to his care, and arranores the coiffure in each case ac- cording to the character of the poodle. To one he gives a modest and unobtrusive head, and cuts the hair about his nose so that the mustache remains as un- worldly as that of an English country curate. To an- other he reserves by a clever turn of the clippers one of those flaring and impertinent mustaches to which silly girls hang their hearts. All these niceties and finesses i\\Q Jianeiir observes and notes, and he remarks, too, the disdainful way in which the poodle with the THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 41 impertinent mustache holds out his paw, after his toilet is finished, when the gentleman who accompanies him, evidently a flunkey of very superior grade, clasps be- tween the frills of the left fore-leg a dainty gold bracelet bearing the name and the coronet of the poodle's aris- tocratic mistress. This last detail of his toilet having been attended to, the poodle departs with the flunkey, followed by the admiring eyes of the deeply-impressed public, and in the afternoon he will be seen in the Bois de Boulogne, accompanying his pretty mistress, Ma- dame la marquise de B , and surveying the fashion- able world from the cushions of her elegant victoria. Another bathing scene that attracts the loungers is that of the horses. All along the quays at intervals on both sides of the river a space is marked out by means of great floating logs attached together and tied to the bank at the ends. Particularly in the late afternoon hours the draymen bring their horses, and ride them into these baths until the water almost covers their backs. The horses from the cavalry barracks are also bathed in the same way, and what with the wonderful background of trees and monuments, the sunset effect, the long shadows, the glowing sky, and the glistening water, the scene is always one that delights the painter as well as the simple-minded idler, who submits uncon- sciously to the charm of the evening hour and to the joy of the moment. The Seine, like Paris itself, is uni- versal ; its variety is such that you can always find a bit that completes the dream towards which your soul is tending, just as in the street scenery of Paris you can find souvenirs or suggestions of all the provinces of France, and of all the countries of Europe. What, for instance, can be more rural, more provincial, more full of the sentiment and poetry of declining day, than the landscape depicted in our illustration ? The three fig- 42 THE PRAISE OF PARIS ures sitting on a log, the tired horses, the glistening, mysterious water, the floating wash - house with its chimney, the moored lighters, the bridge with the trees and buildings — surely all this is the portrait of some lazy country place where the days are long, and where men are calm and patient. No. This is a bit of the Seine at Paris. It is the bathing-place for horses just above Notre Dame, and the bridge is the Pont Marie, which connects the He Saint-Louis with the Quai de 1' Hotel de Ville ; in other words, it is a spot in the very heart of the capital. Not far from this Pont Marie is a delightfully pictu- resque spot, greatly appreciated for other than aesthetic reasons by the small boys of the quarter ; this is the marche aux pommes, or apple - market. The fruit comes chiefly from Normandy, and is brought in great lighters roofed over with boards and tarpaulin. These lighters are moored off the quay almost facing the Hotel de Ville, where they remain in permanence all through the autumn and winter until there is no more fruit. The apple trade is busiest in the winter, of course, when the waters of the Seine frequently swell and overflow the banks, and then the floating market has to be connected with the shore by means of im- provised bridges of broad planks with hand-rails, along which the stevedores run with baskets of fruit balanced on their shoulders. Such is the scene shown in our wintry sketch, where we see the apple-market, the flood- ed quay, a smoking wash-house, and in the background the Palais de Justice, the Conciergerie with its pepper- box towers, and in the far background the majestic sil- houette of the Louvre. Elsewhere along the quays we find here and there two or three boats moored in per- manence like the fruit -lighters, with the inscription " Marche au charbon. Gros et detail." These lio;hters THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 43 come chiefly from the timber country of the Morvan, and with its load below and above the water each one contains many thousands of bushels of charcoal, and becomes in itself, as the inscription says, a wholesale and retail charcoal-market. One of the points along the river that seems to at- tract more than any other the respectful curiosity of HORSES BATHING— PONT MARIE the Parisians is the Port Saint Nicolas du Louvre. This is the true seaport of Paris. At this quay, nest- ling under the Pont du Carrousel and shaded by the fine trees that Qrrow alono- the Ouai des Tuileries, the sea-going ships cast anchor and discharge their cargoes. The reofular direct service of the Burnett line of steamers between London and Paris starts from here, 44 THE PRAISE OF PARIS and also some steamers running between Paris, Brest^ Nantes, and Bayonne. Thus, " Paris Port de mer " is already a reality, though, of course, in a modest way, and for ships of light draught only. Nevertheless, the Parisians, as they cross the bridge, always look to see what strange merchandise the English steamer has brought from beyond the seas, and few of them remem- ber that hundreds of years ago Lutetia was the inter- mediary port through which the products of the East and the wines of Greece and Italy passed on their way from Marseilles to the great island of the Britons. Of this ancient line of traffic, by way of the Seine, the Saone, and the Rhone, we are reminded by the nu- merous tug-boats and barges that we see plying on the river with the names " Havre, Paris, Lyon," printed on the prows and sterns. Besides the ordinary tug-boats we notice strange iron hulks pierced with port- holes and looking not unlike gunboats. In the holds of these hulks there are steam-engines, and on the flush decks six broad, grooved pulleys, or drums, fixed in sets of three on two parallel axles, and moved by big cog-wheels worked directly by the engine. Now along the bed of the Seine from Rouen to Paris, and from Paris to Montereau, and along the bed of the Yonne from Mon- tereau to La Roche, there lies an iron chain with links about three inches long. Each of the tug- boats in question is attached to this chain, which is caught up by a pulley at one end of the deck, wound round each of the six pulleys in the middle, and passed back into the water over a pulley at the other end of the deck. The tug is round at both ends, and winds itself along backward or forvyard, pulling on the chain and drag- ging a string of ten or fifteen huge barges. Of course these tugs cannot quit the chain without unmounting the machinery on their decks. When two trains meet. ™j^ i^ '^\ MARCHE AUX POMMES THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 47 one going up-stream and the other down, the tugs sim- ply exchange trains and retrace their course, the one that was coming up going back with the down-train, and the one that was coming down going up again with the up -train. The speed of these chain -tugs is not great, but their dragging power is enormous. More rapid service is provided by screw tug-boats and by very long barges, with paddle-wheels in the stern. All these varieties of tugs, and many descriptions of river and canal barges may be studied from the picturesque Pont de I'Estacade and along the Ouai de la Rapee, where are the offices of various lines of inland navigation. And what informal offices they are ! Mere wooden toy- houses, with flowers growing on the roofs and nas- turtiums trained round the windows. Nevertheless, this is a busy part of the city. It is true that nobody seems to be in a great hurry. The employees work in a leisurely way and find plenty of time to chat with the customs officers, who lounge about watchfully, clad in tasteful green uniforms. But still business goes on all the same. Carts are going to and fro all day long ; the steam-cranes swing round and rattle their chains, and merchandise is loaded and unloaded. The cargoes are building- iron, plaster, cement, drain -pipes, tiles, crock- ery, fire-wood, barrels of wine, sacks of flour, mineral waters from Vals and Orezza, etc. The return freight for the first-class boats is sugar and Parisian manufact- ured articles, and for the ordinary barges and canal- boats little except empty barrels, which they carry back to Burgundy to be refilled. At the end of the Quai de la Rapee is the entrance to the Canal Saint-Martin, which passes through a tun- nel under the Place de la Bastille and under the Boule- vard Richard Lenoir, and comes to light again in the Faubourg Saint- Martin, following the Ouai de Valmy BASSIN DE L\ VILETTE and the Quai de Jemmapes until it reaches the Bassin de la Villette, where are the great commercial docks of Paris, lined with endless warehouses, and im- mense depots for grain and miscellaneous merchandise. The aspect of the great basin of La Villette is very in- teresting, and a certain strangeness is given to the view of the ensemble by the gigantic iron passerelle or foot- bridge which has been thrown across it, with a height of span that might have been useful had the docks been destined to receive full-rigged ships, but which seems pretentious considering that the river steamers have only short funnels, and the canal-boats boast mere- ly a modest mast to carry their tow-lines. However, we cannot complain; the great passerelle is decidedly pic-, turesque, especially towards mid-day, when it is crossed THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 49 by informal processions of laughing and joyous girls, who come out of the neighboring work-shops to lunch upon fried potatoes, and to give the chance lounger an idea of the types of feminine beauty that prevail in the faubourgs. Along the quays of the Seine, of the Canal Saint- Martin, and of the Bassin de la Villette we find mer- chandise that is brought literally from all parts of the world to Paris by water. By means of the Seine, Paris is in water communication with Rouen and Havre, and consequently with the great ocean lines. On the Ouai de la Rapee we see steamers and trains of barges that go to Nancy, Epinal, and Les Vosges, for by means of the Marne and the Canal of the Marne there is a ECLUSE SAINT-MARTIN 50 THE PRAISE OF PARIS water-way from Paris to Strasbourg and the Rhine, while by the River Oise and its three canals of Saint- Quentin, the Sambre, and the Ardennes we can reach the basin of the Scheldt and the Meuse, and bring slowly but cheaply to Paris the products of the coal- fields of Mons and Charleroi. As for Lyons, the cen- tre of France and Marseilles, the great port of the Mediterranean, it is placed in water communication with Paris by two routes. By one route we go up the Seine as far as Saint-Mammes, and then take the Canal du Loing, the Canal de Briare, the Canal Lateral de la Loire, and the Canal du Centre, which leads us into the Saone, by which we reach Lyons and the Rhone. By another route we go up the Yonne and reach the Saone by the Canal de Bourgogne, while by the Canal de I'Est we can push into Germany and Switzerland. All these routes are followed by barges that bring to Paris various cargoes, but principally building materials, fire-wood, coal, gravel, sand, and wine. Towards Bercy the banks of the Seine are covered with thousands of barrels of wine; between Notre Dame and Auteuil the quays are occupied by enormous piles of fire -wood, mountains of sand and pebbles, heaps of rough mill- stone, or meuliere, used for the foundations of Parisian buildings. Along the Canal Saint -Martin the quays are encumbered with huge blocks of building-stone, and between the barges and the warehouses there is a per- petual going to and fro of laborious men, carrying on their shoulders bags of plaster of Paris and cement, or baskets of coal, the former white as millers, the latter black as negroes. The Canal Saint- Martin is divided by a succession of locks, between which the boats are hauled by human strength and patience. Two or three men hitch themselves on to a rope, and with slow and short steps, pressing and straining doggedly between THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 51 each one, they pull and pull, and the heavy barge fol- lows sluggishly. Often the barge that is being towed along in this painful way is a microcosm in itself. Apart from the cargo and the nautical accessories, you see in the stern the neat little house where the bargee and his wife live. The wife is preparing the soup and peeling carrots and potatoes, while the children play on CANAL SAINT-MARTIN the roof with the dog. Suddenly, from a square box amidships, there issues a dolent and piercing sound ; two long ears and a shaggy head emerge from the door, and we recognize the long-suffering donkey, whose function it is to haul the barge along the narrow canals of Central France. While the barges are in port the donkey gets hauled in his turn, and has nothing to do but to rest in his box and enjoy, as we do, the spectacle 52 THE PRAISE OF PARIS of the busy movement of the quays, the teams of horses that drag huge wagons, the stevedores hurrying to and fro and bending under their loads, and along the edge of the canal the floating wash-houses, where the lavan- dieres of the faubourg beat their linen with petulant bats, and gossip with a vehemency and picturesqueness of language that no grammar and no professor can teach. For the lava7idieres, like all the Parisians, par- ticipate in the essential and permanent advantage of Paris over all the other cities of the universe ; they drink in ideas with the air they breathe, and their con- versation is as sparkling and full of genius as that of the wits who sit at Tortoni's and evolve clever sayings for the boulevard journals. The washer-women of the Seine, and the stevedores of the quays, appreciate Paris, we may be sure, in the same spirit, if not with the same intensity, as Sainte- Beuve, Goethe, and the Emperor Julian. They love Paris in the soul of Paris. SOCIETY IN PARIS THAT admirable prototype of modern cosmopolitan- ism, the emancipated Prussian, Heinrich Heine, likened France to a great garden where the finest flowers have been culled to make a bouquet, and that bouquet is called Paris. All that is great in love or in hatred, in sentiment or in thought, in knowledge or in power, in happiness or in misfortune, tends to become concentrated in Paris, insomuch that when we consider the great assembly of distinguished or cele- brated men who are found there, the city seems like a veritable Pantheon of living glory. It was Heine, too, who explained so daintily why French actors are superior to all others, and the reason is that all French people are born comedians. They have the talent of learning their parts so well in all the situations of life, and of draping themselves so advan- tageously, that it is a pleasure to watch them. Among the French, both in life, in literature, and in the plastic arts, the theatrical element dominates to such an extent that Heine was inclined to look upon the whole his- tory of France as a grand comedy, represented for the benefit of humanity in general. In the " huge magazin of men and rendezvous of forreners," as old James Howell called Paris, nearly three centuries ago, one may always see an amusing 56 THE PRAISE OF PARIS comedy being played in beautiful scenery. The spec- tacle of Parisian life is as excellently organized as the city itself. Everything is neatly and precisely ordered by times and seasons ; the succession of incidents is fixed with a certain suave monotony ; and from year's end to year's end the whole play is so lucid that the visitor may drop in at any moment and immediately catch the thread of the argument. In reality, Paris is a mere village ; you may walk across it in an hour; you may read its leading news- papers from title to colophon in ten minutes ; and you may sum up its Court and Society Guide in a hundred and fifty names and half a dozen categories. Thus in a short time and by dint of a little intelligent observa- tion, you may become familiar with the whole machin- ery of Parisian life, learn the special functions of each eminent puppet, and penetrate the mysteries of the strings that work it. As for fashionable life, " la grande vie," as it is called, it is practically accessible to any as- pirant who has money and time to waste, for it consists chiefly in doing regularly and ostensibly certain things which are generally neither amusing, nor intelligent, nor interesting, but which for unknown reasons have come to be considered as elegant. "Society-in Paris," says a recent observer who, it may be remarked, is a Frenchman and an aristocrat, " is a tiresome and gro- tesque buffoonery; the word Society has no longer any signification ; democracy has put an end to social classes and groups; there is no longer any esprit de corps; nothing but individuals, rich or poor, intelligent or foolish." We will not make bold to contradict this Parisian who speaks so evilly of his contemporaries. Let us rather resume briefly the history of modern Parisian society, and analyze its component elements before we SOCIETY IN 57 proceed to watch, and perhaps 61.^;, , u.e " tiresome and grotesque buffoonery " which its life and occupations are said to constitute. In the later years of his life the eminent novelist, Octave Feuillet, replied as follows to a critic who re- proached him with not having read Balzac enough, and with frequenting the Faubourg Saint-Germain too much : " Does such a thing as the Faubourg Saint- Germain exist at the present day? The finest mansions in that district are inhabited by Israelite financiers and by the Ministers of the republic. The Faubourg Saint- Germain nowadays is scattered all over the town; it is in the Pare Monceau, in the Champs-Elysees, everywhere. The great families thus disseminated over Paris might, nevertheless, have continued to form a separate and rigorously exclusive society. Even this is no longer the case. High Parisian society, if I may judge from the American novels that I have read, resembles very much modern high American society. It is still select, scrupulous in the choice of those admitted into it, but it is no longer closed by any prejudice of caste." Since the great Revolution, the history of high so- ciety in Paris has been a history of decadence, trans- formation, and absorption. The social citadel has been forced successively by the rich bourgeoisie and by the Israelites. The French gentlemen of the old regime, the marquises with their red heels, their lace ruiifles, their haughty tones, and withal their seductive qualities of race — frivolously elegant in times of peace, brave on the field of battle — this nobility, forming a real caste, a society within a society, exists no longer. What does noblesse amount to nowadays 1 Armorial bearings on a carriage door, a coronet in the crown of an opera-hat, generous sentiments in the hearts of a few gentlemen here and there, and that is all. The Revolution was a 58 THE PRAISE OF PARIS terrible leveller, and the nobles who survived during the period of emigration had to begin life over again when they returned to France after the foundation of the empire. It was then that the name of the Faubourg Saint Germain was given to the society formed of the old nobles, in order to distinguish it from the upstart aristocracy of the empire which had settled in the Fau- boura^ Saint-Honore and in the Chaussee d'Antin. The returned exiles lived poor and happy during the empire and the reign of Charles X., making much noise of op- position, deprived of their privileges, and with dimin- ished pride of race. How could they repair their broken fortunes ? The only means were mesalliances and the acceptance of lucrative offices. Then came the revolution of 1830, which split the old noblesse into two camps, the Orleanists and the Legitimists. The bour- geois King, Louis Philippe, was laughed at. The no- ble Faubourg sulked for a time, and when it once more opened its salons, its social prestige was diminished. Deprived of the guidance of the Dauphine and the dowagers, having no censor or grand inquisitor, the young women began to affect a certain disdain of the graces of their ancestors and adopted fast English habits. This was the period of the lionne, a type of society woman who sought to astonish by her mascu- line audacity rather than to charm by refined coquetry. At this time, too, cosmopolitanism began to make its way into Parisian society, and in 1848 the four leading salons of Paris were presided over by the Princess de Lieven, Madame Swetchine, Madame de Circourt, and the Princess Belgiojoso, the first three Russians, the latter an Italian. The second empire made Parisian society still more cosmopolitan, and then the grand monde came to an end for want of grand seigneurs and grand ladies. SOCIETY IN PARIS 6l The conditions of sociability had changed with the change in manners. The life of the clubs, of the race- courses, and of Parliament had afforded men new meet- ing-places. The traditions of ancient French courtesy- were forgotten. The discreet homage paid to women under the title of galanterie vanished ; the habits of smoking and gambling produced a social separation of the sexes, and the salon, in the old sense of the term, became impossible. The great lady, the grande dame, above all, was wanting ; for the bourgeoisie of the reign of Louis Philippe, and the equalitarian democracy which followed, had not the innate gifts which made the French grande dame of former days the queen of European elegance. What those gifts were it is not easy to relate in a few words, but in general one may say that aristocratic manners are the outcome of the sentiment of art car- ried into the smallest details of life. The aristocratic spirit is eminently artistic. It is the sentiment of in- dividuality and of form carried to its highest degree of intensity, which gives to the person, the family, the house, and to the patrician race that ideal or plastic value which also constitutes the beauty of works of art. Aristocratic life is conventional, like the life of art; but its conventions are founded on the knowledge of the noblest conditions of human nature and human life — namely, simplicity in grandeur. Aristocracy has its grimace like art ; as mannerism is to style so is the parvenu to the gentleman. Parisian society under the third republic is com- posed of remnants of the past, intermingled with a vari- ety of new elements. It is a society in a state of dis- solution and of evolution, without chief, censor, or guide of any kind. Society in London has been defined as the social area of which the Prince of Wales is person- 62 THE PRAISE OF PARIS ally cognizant, within the limits of which he visits, and every member of which is, to some extent, in touch with the ideas and wishes of his Royal Highness. In Paris we have no such central authority and rallying point. Parisian society is simply a congeries of sets and social spheres, between which it is not easy to mark the boundary lines, and which all contribute to form an eclectic social corporation called "All Paris "( Zbz^/- Paris). We have remnants of the past in the shape of Orleanist society, Bonapartist society, and the fast so- ciety of the surviving cocodettes of the empire. Then there is the official society of the third republic, the great and small Israelite society, academic society, etc. The chroniclers of Parisian society are fond of using the epithet "select," though in reality nothing is less select than Parisian society at the present day, in spite of Octave Feuillet's half-hearted statement to the con- trary. The three main dissolving elements are com- mercial wealth, the Jews, and the all -invading Tout- Paris. Commercial wealth has tainted the old no- bility through innumerable mesalliances made for the purpose of regilding impoverished escutcheons. The Due de Crussol d'Uzes married a Clicquot of cham- pagne renown. The Princess de la Tour d'Auvergne is the widow of a stock-broker named Leroux, and her daughter has become Duchesse de Bauffremont. Her sister, Caroline Leroux, married successively the Due de Massa and the Baron Roger, and her sons are those two flowers of elegance, the Marquis Philippe de Massa and the Baron Eugene Roger. The Comtesse de la Ferronays, a very grand lady in the Orleanist world, was a botirgeoise nee Guibert. The Princesse de Sasfan is the dauHiter of the banker Seilliere. The Marquise de Gallifet is the daughter of the banker Laffitte. The Due de Montmorency married Carmen SOCIETY IN PARIS 63 Ida, daughter of the banker Aguado. The Due d'Arenberg married a daughter of the banker Gref- fuhle. The Vicomtesse de Tredern, daughter of the sugar-refiner Say, was by her first marriage Duchesse de Brissac, and her sister has become Princesse Ame- dee de Broghe. All these ladies have achieved the glory of being leaders of society. The invasion of Parisian society by the Jews is one of the remarkable phenomena of the day. There are two classes of Jews in Paris, the French Jews and the exotic Jews. The former have become P>ench by long habitation, the latter have settled in Paris, for the most part, during the past fifteen years. The chief families of French Jews are the Rothschilds, the Foulds, the Sterns, the Bischoffsheims, the Cahens d'Anvers, the Koenigswarters, the Goldschmidts. The exotic Jews who have arrived recently from Frankfort, Munich, Constantinople, Odessa, and the Levant are named Saly-Stern, Kahn, Camondo, Erlanger, Gunzbourg, Eph- russi ; their accent is generally German, and their fort- unes are of recent growth, and are constantly risked in vast operations on the Stock-exchange. The wives of these new Israelites are almost all foreigners — Levan- tines, Greeks, Turks, Smyrniotes, Americans, even. The chief aim of these new Jews during the past ten years has been to obtain titles and to conquer the Fau- bourg Saint-Germain, as we shall continue to call the high titled society of Paris. The titles have been ob- tained mostly by purchase. The conquest of the Fau- bourg is now complete; the Jews are in the heart of the citadel ; their wealth and their perseverance have car- ried the day. But the struggle was hard and long. " I remember," writes a lady friend, " the reception days of some of the richest and most prominent Jew- esses a few years ago. There was hardly a single 64 THE PRAISE OF PARIS Catholic lady present, and very few French people. During the past eight years there has been a marked change. The French go to their receptions, and the Jewesses go everywhere. They have the best boxes at the Opera and at the Comedie -Fran9aise; they give the finest fetes in Paris; they drive the finest horses; they have racing - stables ; they hunt the stag in the ex-royal forests of Fontainebleau and Saint - Germain ; they are received by the Orleans princes; they are the friends of the descendants of Napoleon. At the Wednesday receptions of the Princesse Mathilde eight years ago there was not a single Jew, whereas now the Jews form the majority." This statement is rigorously exact. The Jewish ele- ment is becoming rapidly predominant in Parisian so- ciety, and the daughters of Israel seem to have the choice of the coronets of the noble Faubourg. The invasion of society by the Tout-Paris is due to the growing absence of discreetness and delicacy in social relations. It is admitted, for instance, that you may ask for an invitation to a ball or fete given by a hostess whom you do not know, while, on the other hand, a person to whom you may have been once pre- sented in a crowded room thinks himself authorized to invite you to dinner or to a reception. This Tout- Paris is a vast and very elastic conglomeration of men and women of French and exotic origin, from princes down to stock - brokers, and from duchesses down to blue - stockings, whose sole object in life is to know everybody, to go everyw^iere, and to see everything. The Tout-Paris has replaced society in Paris, and sub- stituted for the art of conversation and all the other charms of old French society a routine of relations based upon one or all of three motives — vanity, curiosi- ty, and self-interest. SOCIETY IN PARIS 65 The high life of which one reads in the Paris papers is the life, principally, of this Tozit-Paris. In order to participate in this life one must know a multitude of people. During the season one must pay eight or ten visits every afternoon, otherwise one is mal eleve. In the evening one must appear at three or four recep- tions. Besides this, one must follow the picture exhibi- tions, read the new books, see all the new plays, go to receptions at the Academy, have one's say on every- thing, be well informed, know all the gossip and scan- dal, afHrm, decide, pass judgment. All this demands a great sum of daily work and considerable physical strength and endurance, for it is astonishing how im- mense Tout-Paris is, and how many people there are of the same monde and of the same condition. The fulfilment of all these social duties is equivalent to being " in the movement." Such is la vie chic, a sort of social book-keeping. A lady in the movement starts out after lunch, and her only desire is to have ticked off all the nam.es written on her visitinsf-list before she returns home to dinner. There is a printed code of good manners and savoir vivre, where all the incidents of la vie chic are formulated, and wherein all may read and learn when to rise, when to sit down, how to salute a lady, and how to address the Chinese Ambassador or the Papal Nuncio. And so all the members of the Tout -Paris are equal in good manners. In modern Paris it is suiBcient to be bieji eleve. Formerly it was sufficient to be bien ne (well born), for that fact implied the possession of a superior politeness which comes from something other than printed codes, and serves to guide us when formulas fail. This busy, gossiping, vain Tout -Paris really repre- sents society in modern Paris. The moribund Fau- bourg Saint-Germain, I mean the few families who re- 5 66 THE PRAISE OF PARIS tain the old exclusive traditions and who receive each other rarely, nobly, and meagrely, cannot be spoken of as the society that represents the French nation. The Orleanist society, while remaining the most se- lect, the most polished, and the most correct of all Pari- sian social spheres, is limited in numbers and decidedly not the representative society of the nation. Bonapartist society can hardly be said to exist at all ; it has come to utter grief, like the Bonapartist party itself. As for republican society, one sees its members at the houses of Senators and Deputies, and at the Ministerial receptions. But this is not society; it is merely a crowd. The President of the republic does not exist socially. Who, then, represent official society.^ The Ministers and their wives. But the Ministers are constantly going out of office. Yes, and therefore offi- cial society in Paris has no consistency and no dura- ble existence. By fits and starts there are receptions at the Ministries, and at those receptions half a dozen prominent republican ladies attract all eyes. There remain only the fractions, the small coteries where the artists and the literary men meet, but, with few exceptions, these salons, too, are subject to the com- mon law. They have been invaded by the advertising craze. Then we have the academic salons, and finally the society of the rich stock-brokers, lawyers, notaries, who receive on the same footing and on the same con- ditions as other so-called society people. Such is a brief resume of the elements of social life in modern Paris — authentic noblesse, spurious noblesse, Jews, Gentiles, foreigners of all kinds, millionaires, ad- venturers, artists, literary men, club men ; five o'clock tea meetings, visits, dinners, receptions, musical even- ings, balls, dramatic evenings ; variety, promiscuity, van- it}^ intriguing, and, above all, curiosity. But are there SOCIETY IN PARIS 67 anywhere in modern Paris select salons, where you find the company sufficiently numerous to be interest- ing, but not numerous enough to form a crowd ; salons where the guests are in the habit of meeting regular- ly for a long time in harmonious good company, and where they all know each other well enough to talk freely without treading on each other's corns ? Salons, in short, where the guests feel a common bond of hab- its, tastes, and superior refinement, and where they meet for the pleasure of each other's society, and not for the satisfaction of vanity, curiosity, or interest ? For such a salon you will, I am afraid, seek in vain. French society, with its excellent reputation of finesse, refinement, politeness, and wit, has vanished, and with it has disappeared the French art of conversation, causerie^ galanterie, and sureness of relations. French society such as we read about in the memoirs of the past no longer exists, and its shadow even is rapidly vanishing. The social relations of modern Paris are superficial, un- stable, and without charm. I do not say that they are not amusing, for amusement depends largely on the point of view, and if they are not amusing they are cer- tainly curious, and, to a certain degree, interesting. THE LIFE OF PARIS IN the spring, when the sunshine seems real once more, and when the air has that tepid quality which the imaginative poet Thomson has celebrated in his " Seasons," there is no city more beautiful than Paris, or more appropriate for the enjoyment of curious and meditative lounging. Gray Paris has the first of all material conditions requisite for pleasant fianerie. It is well paved. Thanks to perfect pavements of flag- stones, wood and bitumen, the feet of the Parisians are joyous, and their boots are clean and shiny. In- deed, the streets of Paris are so nicely washed, swabbed, and swept that the shoe -blacks cannot live by their unaided profession any more than lyric poets, and, therefore, unless they happen to possess independent means, they are obliged to eke out a modest existence by carrying love-letters or shaving poodles. With its great boulevards, its urban parks, squares, and gardens, its avenues lined with stupendous archi- tecture, its vast hotels and gorgeous cafes, its trees and flowers and great promenades, its shops and its restau- rants, Paris, the Paris of Baron Haussmann, has become the headquarters of the luxury of Europe and of the whole civilized "world. For luxury invites luxury, and if Paris had remained the picturesque, miserable, and prodigious city which Victor Hugo has described in 72 THE PRAISE OF PARIS his novel Notre Dame de Paris — the city whose narrow streets and mysterious gables were impressed with the tragedies and struggles of ten centuries of history, and with the souvenirs of twenty revolutions, it would never have attracted those countless visitors from the Old World and the New who are as a rule neither poets nor thinkers nor artists, but who nevertheless contribute to the wealth and splendor which makes Paris what it is : the modern Athens, or the modern Byzantium. More completely than any other city Paris realizes the ideal of the Atheniari republic, full of light and joyous hum, sung by the poets, sculptured by the statu- aries, idealized by the painters, employing for the hap- piness of its children all the resources of the sciences and the arts, offering to all feet alike its staircases of white marble, and presenting against the background of a tranquil blue sky the pediments of its palaces and its temples. The illusion is all the more complete be- cause Paris seems at first sight to be wholly given up to pleasure. The number of people of leisure in Paris is so great that, unless we made a very thorough and minute examination of the facts, we might be tempt- ed to imagine that the emancipation of humanity had reached its apogee, that the proletarian had been for- ever freed, and the iron arms of indefatigable machinery substituted in place of the feeble arms of man. There- fore, in the sunny spring days we see the citizens of this modern Athens exclusively employed in watching the bursting of the buds in the shady avenues of the city, admiring the groups of statuary that adorn the public gardens, or examining curiously the graceful movements of the rarest exotic birds and beasts that are kept for their diversion in the menageries of the republic. We see citizens, accompanied by their wives and children, strolling through the galleries of the THE LIFE OF PARIS 73 Louvre, where the masterpieces of art of all ages and ■of all countries have been collected together for their edification. Those who are of a devout turn of mind find the temples open, and through the fumes of in- cense they see the walls decorated with sumptuous paintings. On the Seine swift steam gondolas shoot through the arches of the bridges, carrying calm citi- zens to and fro. In the garden of the Tuileries the fountains dance in the sunlight, and their basins are not covered with bits of floating orange-peel or sur- rounded by dirty and expectorating boys. In the Champs - Elysees the black branches are tipped with tender green buds that give to the masses of the trees when seen from a distance the delicate, powdery appear-- ance of pastel. Spring has come. Paris has awakened to a new life. The city is full of sunshine and flowers, and the air is redolent with the perfumes of nature and of art, of violets and of opopanax. What an incomparable spectacle is that offered by the Avenue des Champs -Elysees on the first sunny afternoon of spring! From the immense Place de la Concorde, with its majestic fountains, the obelisk and the surrounding lines of well-proportioned architecture and garden terraces, up to the Arc de Triomphe, on the distant height, with its outlines softened and idealized by the blue silvery mist, all is animation, gayety, and splendor. Under the trees the bellicose young Gauls are building sand castles or driving chariots drawn by teams of goats, while the nurse-maids listen to the soft confidences of their attendant soldiers. On the bench- es and chairs sit peaceful citizens reading newspapers or sunning themselves with the indolent calmness of a tortoise in a lettuce-bed. Near the Rond Point the rival Punch and Judy shows represent before mixed audiences of youth and age the irony of life and the 74 THE PRAISE OF PARIS majesty of the law. Then between rows of palaces where the wealthy dwell in bliss we mount gently tow- ards the monument that celebrates the victories of the great Napoleon, the hero of our own century, whose glory seems already as much lost in the far and mys- terious past as that of Achilles and Agamemnon. So here we are in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, at the head of the famous promenade, Jacob's Ladder, as it were, with angels ascending and descending, going to the Bois or returning from the Bois — angels with yellow wigs, angels with raven black switches, angels who wear their hair in flat bandeaux, like the virgins in Perugino's pictures, angels whose heads suggest those of the danc- ing maidens of Tanagra or the " majas," that Goya loved to paint. With huge hats or minute toques, mere oarlands of sweet flowers, with grarments that seem like a foam of lace and frills emerging from beneath long mantles of silk, velvet, and brocade, the angels lean back voluptuously in elegant carriages, and graciously ac- cord to mortals the calm spectacle of their various beauty and of their perfect toilets. From the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne the throng of carriages leads us to the Avenue des Acacias, the drive which fashion has selected in preference to more sunny, open, and pictu- resque avenues. And there between the gnarled and fantastic trunks of the acacia- trees the carriages ad- vance slowly and with difficulty up and down, dazzling the eye with the radiant beauty of blondes and brunettes^ of angels ascending and descending, the joy of men. Mingled with the carriages of the angels are the carriages of mortals, the landaus of the noble faubourg, the victorias of club-men and ambassadors, the carts of sportsmen, the buggies of adventurers, the parade vehi- cles of all those who are afflicted with momentary or stable wealth. On foot, too, may be seen the young THE LIFE OF PARIS ^'j bloods, the pseudo- world ings, the pannes, their eye. glasses fixed, correct and stiff, lounging with weary air, cackling and uttering flute-like squeaks of admira- tion as they watch the horses and the women, and waft salutations that are never returned. The afternoon drive in the Bois brings together, to see and to be seen, all the notabilities of fashionable Paris, the celebrities of society and of the stage, of leisure and of talent, of glory and of scandal. II In the programme of the spring life of Paris the first item is the Concours Hippique, a Horse-show held in the Palais de I'lndustrie in March and April, which, perhaps, renders more social than hippological services. The Concours Hippique is frequented by mondaines, demi-mondaines, and fashionable people in general, who utilize it for various purposes. Every afternoon the tribunes are crowded, but more especially on the days when gentlemen riders and cavalry of^cers compete for the prizes. Then you see thousands of men and women of leisure watching the performances of gentle- men and officers who force unwilling horses to jump over artificial rivers and hedges. Some of the specta- tors hold papers in their hands, on which they write from time to time, murmuring " One fault ... a quarter of a fault." As it is fashionable nowadays to take an interest in sport and in all matters thereunto appertain- ing, we are not surprised to see the old duchesses with saffron wigs and high-grade mondaines surrounded by their marriageable daughters just fresh from the con- vent — blond, lacteous, lilial maidens — all watching the riders, programme in hand, and conscientiously marking 78 THE PRAISE OF PARIS with a pencil the faults and fractions of faults com- mitted at the bar or the water-jump by the aristocratic lieutenants and quartermasters from Saumur and Fon- tainebleau. Other visitors, however, seem to pay no at- tention to horses or riders, but form family groups of papas, mammas, and bony daughters, who are presently joined by young men dressed in their " Sunday best," and extremely voluble in commonplace remarks and formulae of politeness. These, we may conclude, are discreet rendezvouses arranged by the kind parents in order to give the young people an opportunity of in- specting one another in view of possible matrimony. In the central reserved tribune, upholstered with red velvet and gold fringe, may be seen men and women of high degree, dukes and duchesses, pale-faced and fine-feat- ured, some of them reminding one of Clouet's portraits, with their waxen cheeks so delicately tinted with anaemic rose. These are the members of the great Hippie So- ciety and their wives and daughters, the descendants of the Crusaders and of the warriors and nobles of the past — great aristocrats, who bear with diminished splen- dor the illustrious historic names of ancient France. Elsewhere, in the corner familiarly known as the " Pare aux cerfs," you see spectators who, during most of the time, turn their backs to the spectacle of the arena and seem to hang upon the lips of garrulous maidens who look charming in a perverse manner, and are general- ly blond like Milton's Eve, blond like the Angels of Dante's Purgatory, blond like ripe corn that bows be- fore the breeze. The function of these fair maidens is to try the effect of the more audacious inventions of the milliners and dress-makers, and to promote the dis- tribution of wealth by dilapidating inherited fortunes. Finally, amid the fair ladies of all categories, you see the celebrities of Tout -Paris passing to and fro, and THE LIFE OF PARIS 79 giving the newspaper reporters a chance to note their presence in fashionable gazettes of the next morning. Towards half-past five the galloping and jumping is over; the winners have received their prizes of money, or more platonic prizes of bunches of ribbons ; the pro- gramme is exhausted, and the spectators invade the track, making slowly for the sortie. There is a good deal of hand-shaking and saluting. The of^cers salute angularly, and as they replace their kepi they brush forward their hair with a mechanical movement of the hand. The women take a turn in the arena to show off their dresses, which were only visible fragmentarily in the tribunes. The " mashers " move with difficul- ty in the crowd, their arms standing aloof from their bodies like jug-handles, and their legs put forward with elegant hesitation, reminding one of the movements of an automaton. At the doorway the men stand in line to inspect the visitors ; some accompany their women folk to their carriages with marked assiduity ; others chat familiarly with yellows-haired damsels of engaging mien ; while, outside, the touts are heard howling in the distance, hoarsely and lamentably : " Le cocher Jules de la Rue d'Edimbourg !" "Le cocher Armand du Cafe de la Paix !" and in the bright April sunlight the throng of carriages rolls up and down the Champs-Elysees with a dull rumbling that forms, as it were, the bass of this Parisian fantasia of the Concours Hippique. After the Concours Hippique follow in the order of the season's events the picture exhibitions and the "varnishing days " of the salons of the Champs-Elysees and the Champ - de - Mars, which take place when spring is in all the splendor of fresh verdure, and the chestnut-trees are decked with delicate cones of blos- som. During May and June the Paris season reaches the acme of brilliancy. There are fetes, balls, garden- 8o THE PRAISE OF PARIS parties, and social meetings all over the town until the season ends with the great racing fortnight, of which the chief incidents are the Chantilly Derby, the Auteuil Steeple -chase, and the Grand Prix de Paris. The two months that succeed the mitigated austerities of Parisian Lent are the hardest in the year for the world- lings, who are doubtless quite happy in spite of their great exertions, for, according to the Ecclesiast, the se- cret of happiness consists in work accomplished freely as a duty — " Laetare in opere suo," as the Vulgate hath it. This is the whole theory of the worldlings : they make pleasure a task and a duty, and rejoice in its accomplishment. Towards the end of the season their tasks and duties are multiplied beyond concep- tion, and their joy in consequence becomes delirious. Even to read about their doings makes one's head diz- zy — grand marriages, soirees of betrothal, meetings of four-in-hand clubs, four-thousand-guinea balls, given by the Princesse de Sagan and the Princesse de Leon, amateur acrobats and fancy riding at M. Molier's pri- vate circus, play-acting at the " swell " clubs; receptions here, garden-parties there, and so fetes succeed fetes, and the days and the nights are too few for their multitude. At last, however, the Grand Prix is lost and won, and the worldlings cease to labor — at Paris, at least. Aix- les-Bains, Luchon, Trouville, the sea-side resorts and the inland watering-places invite their presence, and they accept the invitation either really or nominally. During the summer months Paris remains the beau- tiful city of marvels, and although the Tout- Paris, or the Upper Ten, are supposed to have migrated to the mountain, the ocean, or the baronial hall, the city con- tinues to be animated in a calm way. Summer is the season of that open-air life in which the Parisians par- ticularly delight, when the popular restaurants in the THE LIFE OF PARIS 8l city lay their little dinner-tables on the sidewalk, and when the restaurants of the Champs- Elysees spread tables for the weightier purses in the vicinity of plash- ing fountains and brilliant flower-beds. Then it is pleasant of a warm and still evening to dine at Lau- rent's or at the Ambassadeurs, and to recognize many of the notabilities of the capital as they sit at the neigh- boring tables, on each of which is a little lamp that casts opaline reflections on the faces of the women. Gradually the glow of sunset fades away ; overhead you hear President Carnot's rooks returning in loquacious bands to their nests in the garden on the Elysee Pal- ace ; little by little the mystery of darkness seems to issue from and envelop the landscape; and then, by the time we have reached the moment of coffee and cigars, we see festoons of gigantic pearls whitening into lumi- nousness beneath the trees and lighting up brilliantly the underside of the delicate green chestnut-leaves. A few minutes later there is heard a clashing of cymbals and a flonflon of commonplace music, dominated at the regular intervals of the couplet by the voices of singers — Paulus, Elise Faure, Yvette Guilbert — summoning the amateurs to the gaudy joys of the Cafes Concerts. The Cafes Concerts, the Cirque d'Ete, the Hippo- drome — such are the amusements of eleo-ant Paris dur- ing the summer when the theatres are closed, with the exception of the opera and the Comedie-Fran9aise. In September the theatres reopen their doors, and the in- tellectual and frivolous life of Paris is resumed with renewed ardor. The summer holidays are over. In October everybody is back, and the dramatic authors imperiously claim attention for their new pieces. It is the season of " first nights." The first performance of a new play is always some- what of an event in Paris ; the French stage has a 6 82 THE PRAISE OF PARIS prestige that no other stage possesses ; the French au- dience dispenses greater glory than any other Euro- pean public ; those who have not danced, sung, acted, preached, and spoken before Paris can scarcely be said to have danced, sung, acted, preached, or spoken at all ; their fame, however great it may be elsewhere, remains incomplete without the ratification of Paris. Paris, as Victor Hugo said, is the starting-point of success, and the anvil on which great renown is forged. Therefore, the privilege of being present at the " first night," par- ticularly if the piece be by an author of supreme celeb- rity, is highly esteemed and persistently solicited. A "premiere" is in a way a social function, and constant attendance at such ceremonies constitutes a patent of Parisianism. Certainly a " first night " is interesting ; it has the charm of novelty and uncertainty, the attrac- tion of a plot yet to be disentangled, of a witticism that bounds across the footlights for the first time, of a scene that will be the talk of the town for the next nine days, of a costume that will be the fashion of to-morrow. But, above all, one is interested by the house itself, by the animation of the lobbies during the entr'actes, the exhibi- tion of well-known faces, the presence of the great glories of literature, art, war, and politics, the avant-scenes that re- veal the latest arrangements made between wealthy sei- gneurs and distinguished Cythereans, the baignoires full of mystery, the balcony radiant with beauty, the whole audience vibrating with lively scepticism and with that passion for movement and life which characterizes the elite of adventurers, fools of fortune, and men and women of genius who compose what is called the Tout-Paris. In November the days are sad in Paris. The sun- shine is pale and intermittent ; the horizon is veiled in yellow mist, and the pavement, all black and moist, is dotted with fallen leaves, which decompose visibly into THE LIFE OF PARIS 83 a bituminous jelly suggestive of the slime of the primi- tive chaos. On All Saints' Day, Paris remembers its dead.j In the proletarian cemetery of Pantin and in the aristocratic necropolis of Pere-la-Chaise, the scene is the same: a thick and sable-clad crowd in a land- scape lighted by the pale November sun; high-born ladies going to pray in the private chapels of their family sepulchres ; plebeian women going to kneel on the viscous earth of the fosse commune, the common grave of poverty, whose soil is turned so often that no grass has time to grow around the meagre wooden crosses. In the cemeteries there are interminable pro- cessions of men, women, and children carrying bouquets and wreaths of immortelles. Outside the cemeteries the wine-shops and restaurants are thronged with mourners who,,having fulfilled their duty to the dead, find nothing better to do than to enjoy life. " Let us eat, drink, and be merry," they say, "for to-morrow we may die;" and, after having eaten and drank, they pass the afternoon at the theatres, where morning performances are always given on the occasion of the great public holiday known as the Day of The Dead {Le Jotir des Morts). In midwinter the Parisians of wealth and leisure con- tinue their normal existence with such distractions as the regular programme offers — namely, the theatres, the opera, receptions, and dinners. January is a great month for soirees. In January M. and Mme. Carnot, both of them tranquil, linear, and unfailing, receive at the Elysee, and lavish official smiles upon guests whom they do not know. In January, in the gray solitudes of the vast capital, the noctambulant bachelor returning from the club or the comed}^ perceives here and there a score of cabs drawn up in front of a house. He looks at the fa9ade, and on the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth story he sees windows flaming with lights, and pictures 84 THE PRAISE OF PARIS to himself the ignoble reality of a soiree with its accom- paniment of dancing, recitations, supper, and marriage- able maidens, of the soiree where the women play the role of the spider and the men that of the fly, where the bait is called a dowry, and where the spider is often the ultimate victim. " It is there," says the recalcitrant bach- elor to himself — " it is there that they are suffering, the weak and ambitious brethren, the voluminous mammas, the portly and gastralgic papas and the flat daughters ; it is there that they are dancing with occidental im- pudency in an atmosphere of fleshly emanations min- gled with the odors of face-powder and Spanish leather, irresistibly continuing the fatal saraband which ironical Nature imposes upon her victims." So, with the aid of some passing furore such as a Russian or a Polish pianist, or two or three phenomenal lyric artists, the worldlings reach the Lenten season, when concerts are considered the most fashionable dis- traction from the austerities of the hour. The period of Lent is respected by the Parisiennes — I mean, of course, by the Parisiennes of the fashionable category — only the practices which this respect involves are rather of etiquette than of devotion. The Parisiennes are exact in the performance of ritual duties, because in these days of republicanism it is agreed that a woman who is a free- thinker, or simply indifferent in matters of religion, can- not be distinguished or well-born. They are assidu- ous in their attendance at the lectures of Father Didon and other eloquent preachers ; they observe fasts and abstinence as much by advice of their doctors as out of piety; but at the same time they combine the most deli- cate and refined menus, where sea-monsters and costly primeicrs are substituted for meat. In the same spirit the Parisiennes hide their shoulders during Lent, but they are none the less exquisitely dressed on that account. THE PARISIENNE PARIS is the city of art and poetry, but of all the artists and poets that Paris fosters the greatest are the Parisiennes. Nature confined her efforts to invent- ing the eglantine, out of which the genius of man has developed that splendid and delightful flower which we call the rose. So, as Banville ingeniously remarked, the hazards of history and social life produced women born in Paris or living in Paris, and with these creat- ures as a basis the Parisienne developed herself by an unparalleled process of remaking, remodelling, and re- shaping after the pattern of some marvellous and un- formulated ideal of grace, beauty, elegance, and youth. All women are born distinguished, according to Miche- let's theory ; whether they become eventually more re- fined, or whether they lapse into vulgarity, depends on the surroundings in which they grow up. The Pari- siennes have, above all other women, an innate gift of synthesis, and a love of order and rhythm which pro- duce all the graces and even the sublime grace of virtue ; they fashion for themselves the kind of beauty that they desire, even out of the poorest materials : wit- ness Rachel, whom Nature made ugly, and art and will made admirably beautiful. Nature has given woman but about five years of true youth and beauty, and yet by means of some prodigious magic the Parisienne S8 THE PRAISE OF PARIS obliges her youth to last thirty years. Furthermore, as she has a knowledge of everything by intuition and without studying, like the grand seigneurs of old, her conversation is in itself a liberal education. The Parisienne knows her own worth and the worth of other women, for in Paris a spontaneous and impec- cable justice reigns over the souls of men and women alike ; each one knows who is the true hero and who the amusing impostor, and to each one is allotted the honor or the contempt which is his or her due. There- fore, it is not the fact of having been born in some his- toric mansion of the Rue de Varennes that makes a Parisian woman a princess or a duchess in the true sense of the term, but rather the splendor of her visage, the sincerity of her look, the grace of her bearing, and the beauty and fine proportions of her form. The prin- cesses of Paris come from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine as often as from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and they owe their beauty as much to their own genius and to the perpetual desire to be beautiful as to the accidental gift of Nature. That magnificent poetry of feminine life, dress, is the creation of the princesses of Paris, whose inventiveness and taste in all that concerns tirins: enable them to give laws to the universe in all matters of fashion. Who invents the new fashions ? Who gives the mys- terious word of order by virtue of which, at the begin- ning of each season, we see similar toilets blossom forth spontaneously and simultaneously in all the places of elegant resort ? How does it happen that these toilets are different in cut and in material from those that were worn in the preceding season ? Formerly it would have been easy to reply that the court was responsible for the creation of fashion, and in reality it was the empress, or one of the ladies of her suite, who took the initiative of wearing some new style THE PARISIENNE 89 of toilet, the result of long consultations between the lady herself and a dress-maker of genius. If the toilet pleased and was susceptible of adaptation to the re- quirements of various types of feminine beauty, it would be accepted by the court, and from the court it would penetrate to the upper middle classes; and, if it were not too dear, it would finally permeate to the ranks of the lower middle classes. Nowadays, however, we have no court, and it is certainly not at the democratic balls and receptions of President Carnot and his ministers that we may look for new manifestations of feminine elegance. Nevertheless, the creation of la mode con- tinues in the same conditions as in the past, only with more liberty, and, perhaps, with more artistic preoccu- pations. The great ladies of the imperial court have not all abdicated; other great ladies have been born with the genius of elegance and the gift of taste ; and these, together with the most elegant women of the rich middle classes, the stage and the demi-monde, co-oper- ating with the great artists like Worth, Felix, Rodrigues, Morin-Blossier, Doucet, Laferriere, etc., and meeting on the neutral ground of the salon cTessayage, discuss, cre- ate, and perfect the new fashions. When once created, much in the same way as in the time of the empire, by the combined efforts of the prin- cesses of elegance and of the dress -makers of genius, the new fashions are no longer propagated as they were of old. The great vulgarizers of fashion at the present day are the large dry-goods stores, like the Louvre and the Bon Marche. The manner of proceeding is as follows : Perdi, the grand couturier, creates a toilet for a lady of reputed elegance, for one of the princesses of Paris. If the toilet is a success Perdi's rivals will copy it for their customers ; the rich foreign ladies who get dressed at 90 THE PRAISE OF PARIS Paris will introduce it into their respective countries ; the fashion journals will describe it and distribute en- gravings of it wherever they have subscribers. Thus far the toilet will have remained the monopoly of the half-dozen grand couturiers and their Parisian rivals. Now the Louvre and the Bon Marche enter the field and take possession of the new model, provided that it can be copied at a reasonable price and with cheap ele- ments ; they order enormous quantities of materials, imitating those used by the artistic dress -makers; and in a few weeks they have for sale at moderate prices thousands of costumes, resembling more or less, and, at any rate in the general lines, the model created by Perdi for his elegant customer, la belle Madame X. Thus the new fashions become vulgarized, the new models fall, so to speak, into the public domain, and the princesses can, of course, no longer deign to wear them. Thus the existence of a princess of fashion is a perpetual beginning over and over again. No sooner has she achieved perfection in a hat, a mantle, or a gown than the vulgarizers set to work to make the hat and the mantle and the gown odious by cheap imita- tion and promiscuous multiplication. Thanks to the colossal enterprises after the manner of the Louvre and the Bon Marche, the research of distinction has become, perhaps, more difficult than it ever was, and the existence of a leader of fashion is one of constant crea- tive effort, and, therefore, comparable to that of a great painter or a great sculptor. In the matter both of her beauty and of its adornment such a woman is, as it were, at once the statuary and the block of marble. The great dress-makers, too, are creative artists of prodigious genius. Draughtsmen and colorists at the same time, as the perfect plastic artist should be, they produce compositions of incomparable variety, ranging THE PARISIENNE gr in style from the harmonious puissance of the figures of the Florentine frescos, the richness of Venetian splen- dor, and the linear simplicity of mediceval costume to the amiable frivolity of Watteau's gowns and the in- finite and amusing voluptuousness of the toilets and underclothing of the present day. There are certainly no men or women more wrapped up and thoroughly absorbed in their art than the Parisian dress -makers- and milliners, unless it be the Parisian hair-dressers. In the art of coiffure there are masters who produce works of genius, and that, too, by the exercise of the same faculties as the plastic artists. A man like Au-^ guste Petit, the Worth of hair-dressers, is an artist to the tips of his finger-nails, a creature of refined sensibility, of acute and rapid perception, and of abundant crea- tiveness. Above all things, the coiffure of a woman is a matter of taste and sentiment rather than of mere fashion. The rank and file, the mere operators, the eternal copyists, may be content to dress a woman 's- hair according to the models decreed by fashion and published in the special journals. The artist, on the other hand, every time he dresses the hair of one of the princesses of fashion, makes an effort of composi- tion and seeks a happy inspiration, the suggestions of which he will control and correct with reference to the character and expression of the subject's face, the natu- ral silhouette of the head, the general lines of the feat- ures, and the style of the toilet worn. In the ensemble of the dressed woman the coiffure is the decorative part, that completes and gives the finishing touch to the rest. The grand coiffeur, we might say, has no shop, but only stables. His days are spent in an elegant coupe, which transports the artist and his genius from dressing-room to dressing-room. In the evening he drops in at the Opera to see how the coiffure of Madame la Marquise 92 THE PRAISE OF PARIS compares with that of la petite Baronne Zabulon. From time to time, on the occasion of some great ball, he makes a journey to London, Madrid, or Vienna, for his reputation is European, and his talent is in request wherever there are manifestations of supreme elegance. The grand coiffeur, like the grand couturier, is a product of the second empire, and of that galaxy of fair or witty women who were the queens of the fetes of the Tuileries, Compiegne, and Fontainebleau : Mme. de Metternich, the Duchesse de Morny, Mme. de Pourtales, Mme.de Gallifet, the Marquise d'Hervey de Saint-Denis — those grandes vtondaines who created traditions of so- cial luxury in harmony with the amusing, heedless, and dashing regime that made modern Paris, the Paris of the Baron Haussmann, the capital of modern hedonism, the paradise of pleasure and elegance which attracts ir- resistibly all who feel a thirst for existence in pleasant places. In republican Paris the conditions of the dis- play of luxury are no longer the same as they were under the empire, but the traditions that animate the artists of luxury and their patrons are unchanged, and the leaders and marshals of fashion are still the ladies of the empire. These women made a study of ele- gance and a profession of beautiful appearance more complete and more intelligent, perhaps, than any of the daughters of Eve who preceded them on the face of the earth, and they achieved a perfection of harmonious bearing, an originality of composition, a stylishness, a chic, to use an accepted term, which has not yet been surpassed. The secret of this chic lies partly in the peculiar genius of the Parisienne, and partly in unfail- ing application, and in the striving after absolute ele- gance and fulness of pleasurable life in conditions of material beauty. This ideal is sufficient to call forth and absorb all the energies of a woman, and only the THE MARQUISE AND HER COIFFEUR THE PARISIENNE 95 women of genius and strong will have the strength to persist and never to fail. Such a woman is the beauti- ful Marquise d'H. de S. D., who in our illustration is depicted in her dressing-room, reflected in a triple mir- ror, while the most poetical and inspired of the grand coiffeurs of Paris arranges her hair for the Opera. In the marquise's dressing-room everything is thoroughly practical ; there is no useless decoration, no excess of furniture. On one side of the room is an alcove con- taining the bath and the apparatus for all varieties of douches ; on the opposite side vast systems of cup- boards and drawers for the linen ; on the third side a window and the toilet -table, and on the opposite side the triple mirror. It is simplicity itself, a mere labora- tory. And what else could it be ? The secret of that beauty which lasts thirty years consists not in painting the cheeks, hiding wrinkles, and replacing lost hair, but in having no need to do these things. The true Pari- sienne, as we have been told by the poet who studied them most deeply, has no dealings with dentists or with those who sell cosmetics and false hair, and she wash- es herself with pure water like a nun. Therefore her dressing-room cannot be other than simple, just as the studio of a great painter is often severe in aspect even to austerity, for the toilet of the Parisienne and the daily composition of her beauty are the result of taste, sentiment, and inspiration, even as a picture or a statue, and their perfection is due to persistent and exacting self-criticism. Thanks to this constant criticism, the aspect of the Parisienne is never romantic or common- place, for she cannot be guilty either of excess or of neglect. Her toilet is perfect, her coiffure is a poem, and however surpassingly beautiful the one or the other may be, she wears them with absolute ease, as if she had never worn anything else. LE GRAND COUTURIER THERE is no outside show; no elegantly-dressed window ; the couturier is not a simple tradesman, but an artist. His studio and the studios of his pupils and assistants occupy two or three floors in one of those plain, flat-fronted houses of the time of the Res- toration which line the Rue de la Paix, the Rue Tait- bout, the Rue Louis-le- Grand, or the Faubourg Saint- Honore. Passing through a 'io^-aiX^ porte-cocJiere 2cs> broad as it is high, you find on the right or left hand a glass door opening on a staircase covered with a thick red carpet. On the landings are divans, and sometimes a palm or a drac^na. Through an open door on the ground-floor you see the packing-room, where marvels of silk and lace are being enveloped in mountains of tissue-paper to be sent to the four quarters of the globe; on the first floor, or entresol, are work-rooms full of girls seated at long tables and sewing under the directing eye of a severe-looking matron ; on the second floor are generally situated the show and reception rooms. The first saloon is sombre: the ceiling appears, in the day- time, blackened by gas; the walls are wainscoted in imitation ebony with gold fillets, and large panels above the chair -rail are filled with tapestries of the most dismal green, chosen expressly to throw into re- lief the freshness and gayety of the dresses ; on the chimney-piece, and reflected in the glass, is a clock sur- lOO THE PRAISE OF PARIS mounted by a monumental statue of Diana in nickelled imitation bronze, flanked by two immense candelabra ; along the walls are two or three large wardrobes with looking-glass doors. In the middle of the room is a table for displaying materials, with a few chairs. To the left, seated at a desk, is a blond and effeminate book-keeper; a couple of salesmen to handle heavy rolls of stuff, M. Cyprien and M. Alexandre ; the head saleswoman, a tall and elegant person dressed in black silk in summer and black satin in winter. Through this soft-spoken person, who bears the title oi premiere vefidetise, or first saleswoman, the customers are put into communication either with the great artist himself or simply with one of \\\q premieres, or heads of depart- ments, if their orders are not of sufficient importance to justify an interruption of the great man in his innumer- able and absorbing occupations. Opening out of this first saloon are a number of smaller saloons, all equally sombre, colorless, and shabby-looking, especially by day- light. There are extra show-rooms and trying -on rooms, besides which there is a special room for trying on riding-habits, and another for the chief of the cor- sage department, to say nothing of little rooms draped with blue, brown, or red for special purposes. Imagine the appearance of these saloons between two and five o'clock in the afternoon during the season, filled as they are with chattering and finely -dressed ladies — Parisiennes, Russians with their lazy accent, English and Americans talking in their own tongue, princesses of the Almanach de Gotha, and princesses of the footlights, all united in adoration of the idol of fashion. A confused murmur of musical voices rises in an atmosphere impregnated with the perfumes of ylang-ylang, heliotrope, peau d'Espagne, jonquil, iris, poudre de riz, and odor di femina. LE GRAND COUTURIER IO3 In the reception saloon madame la premiere vendeuse divides her attention between a dozen ladies, who are looking at the new silks, handling the piles of lace and artificial flowers strewn on the tables, eying curiously half - finished skirts and corsages without sleeves that lie in heaps oa the chairs, and chattering in strange slang : " On est au velours frise cet hiver ;" " On n'est plus a la faille;" "Oui, mais le surah a I'inconvenient de tirebouchonnerr In the adjoining saloons are seen the demoiselles-mannequins — human automatons, whose business it is to show off on their perfect figures dress- es and mantles. With a weary, empty expression, the ■}nanneqtLin walks over the thick carpets, from saloon to saloon, like an animated statue, silent and majestic, wearing now a court mantle, now the dress of an Amer- ican millionaire's wife, now the robe of a queen» Each customer in turn passes into one of the small trying-on rooms. The elegante, partly undressed, and wearing simply her corset and a short silk skirt trimmed with lace, waits in front of the looking-glass. The dress arrives in fragments — a queer mixture of silk, stiff mus- lin, lining, and loose threads. First comes the corsa- gere, who takes a regular mould of the torso in coarse canvas, such as the tailors use to pad coats ; on this mould the corsage is built, and at the second trying on it is brought all sewn and whaleboned, but only basted below the arms and at the shoulder. Crac! crac! The corsagere rips and rips feverishly, and then proceeds to pin and lace and make cabalistic signs with a yellow pencil, cutting and slashing here and there with won- derful surety of eye and hand. " Madame, sent-elle son corsage.?" she finally asks; and if all is right, madame replies, satisfied : " Oui ; j'y suis chez moi." Next comes the jupiere, charged with the releves of the skirt and the details of the train ; and then the I04 THE PRAISE OF PARIS specialist, who is charged with what is called the inoji- tage de la jupe, and who drapes the skirt on a lining of silk, and crawls on her knees round and round the lady for half an hour at a time. Dress-making is one of the few arts in which the subordinate workers still show a certain amour propre and something of the artist's am- bition. In their light-fingered collaboration with the imagination of the masculine couturier they delight to produce masterpieces, and spare no pains, especially when they have to do with a woman of fine natural figure, " toute faite," as they say, and who has not the artificial " taille de couturiere." Meantime the voice of the master is heard as he comes out of one of the trying-on rooms. He is storm- ing at the premiere because a ruche has been substi- tuted for a flounce, and because a " light -colored fur has been put on the mantle of the Comtesse de Z., a delicate blonde ! It is not the creation of models that is difficult ; it is to get the models executed. I am not seconded. The whole mantle will have to be remade. Cest a se donner au diable! Be good enough to tell M. Cyprien to inquire who is responsible for the error." And the great artist passes into another saloon, where several ladies are waiting in their half-finished dresses for a word of approval from the master, or a touch from his magic hand that will perfect a seam, or crumple a mass of tulle into a vision of beauty. The final trying-on of the finished costumes is a grand day in the life of our modern elegantes, who often invite their friends to the fete, for the Parisiennes rec- ognize in some of their masculine friends, and particu- larly in painters, certain talents for appreciating dress. Then you hear in the vestibule, or in the reception saloon, such orders as these: " Faites conduire Madame de X pour I'essayage de Madame de P," or " Faites LE GRAND COUTURIER IO5 conduire M. de G pour I'essayage de la Comtesse Z." The Comtesse Z, aided by one of the young ladies in black, puts on, first her skirts, which have been cut and made with as much care and skill as the costume itself ; for it is an axiom in modern dress-making that the un- derclothing is half the battle — " le dessous est pour la moitie dans la reussite du dessusT Then, having donned her dress, she appears triumphant in the saloon where her friends are waiting, the chorus of admiration breaks out, and the whole staff of the establishment is admitted to contemplate the masterpiece. The pi^emzere, the c/ie/ des jupes^ the chef des corsages, the chef des gai^nis senses, etc., each in turn opens the door, and with a coaxing intonation of voice asks permission to enter: " Veut-on me permettre de voir un peu V And so, day after day during the season, there is a perpetual froufrou of silk and a chattering of musical voices on the staircase and in the saloons of the strand couturier; and day after day the effeminate book- keeper adds to the total of the bills, which will be paid who knows when and who knows how ? There are ladies whose bills amount in a year to as much as twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars. This is enormous, the philosophic observer may remark to the grand artist, who will reply in his most delicate and fiute-like voice : *' Mon Dieu, oui ; mais pensez done, je viens de faire pour Madame de K un manteau brode qui coute 27,000 francs." And hailing a mannequin as she passes, he says, " Mdlle. Ernestine, veuillez, je vous prie, mettre le manteau de Madame de K pour montrer a monsieur .... N'est-ce pas que la ligne est belle } Et la tombee des handles!" And the master falls on his knees in ecstasy before his last " creation." One might fill pages with anecdotes about the eccen- tricities, the fatuity, the aesthetic theories, the vanity, and I06 THE PRAISE OF PARIS the caprices of the great cotUuriers of Paris. The type has been put upon the stage in its grotesque aspect by Gondinet, in his comedy, " Paris," and in the Comtesse de Martel's piece," Autour du Mariage." But the purely artistic and the psychological aspect of the couturier would repay study, and if we had a Balzac living nowa- days the subject would certainly tempt him. Worth, Felix, Pingat, Roger, Laferriere, Pasquier, Doucet, Rouff, Morin, Madame Rodrigues, are each and all uncommon personalities, all great artists skilful beyond expression in draping stuffs, harmonizing colors, and creating those marvels of silk and lace and tulle which constitute the inimitable toilets of the Parisiennes, the model to which the civilized world still looks for its highest inspiration. The particular grand couturier whom I have in my eye is a short man, dressed in light-gray trousers, a blue coat with a broad velvet collar and silk lappels, in which are stuck a few pins for use in sudden inspirations, a flowered waistcoat, and a heavy watch-chain. His head is bald and surrounded by a fringe of dust-colored gray hair, frizzled so finely that it looks like swan's- down. His whiskers and mustache have the same fine and woolly appearance. His blue eyes look worn and faded ; his face has flushed red patches on a pale anaemic ground ; his expression is one of subdued suf- fering, due to the continual neuralgia by which he is tormented, thanks to the strong perfumes which his elegant customers force him to inhale all day long. Epinglard, for so we will call him for convenience' sake, rarely dines during the busy season : he is the martyr of his profession. He has a house exquisitely deco- rated and arranged, but he lives alone, his daily com- merce with women having disinclined him to risk the lottery of marriage. Nevertheless, he is much effemi- nized ; and his employes will assure you that he wears LE GRAND COUTURIER IO7 cambric nightcaps bordered with lace, and a \3.ce. J aboi on his night-shirts. His Hfe is entirely devoted to his art, and he conscientiously goes on Tuesdays to the Comedie-Fran9aise, on Fridays to the Opera, and on Saturdays to the circus, because those are the nights selected by rank and fashion, and therefore excellent occasions for observing the work of his rivals. For the same reason Epinglard will be seen on fashiona- ble days at the races, and at first performances at the fashionable theatres, but always alone. In confidence, Epinglard will tell you that he adores solitude and loves his art with undivided and disinterested passion. " It gives me pleasure," he will say, "to see a woman well dressed, whoever may have dressed her. For my own part, I do not care to get myself talked about. I mind my own business and I make my own creations, but I am perfectly ready to admire the creations of others." Epinglard talks slowly, precisely, and in a sing-song and hypocritical voice, while his fingers, laden with heavy wrings, caress voluptuously some piece of surah or silk. He is in serious consultation with one of the leaders of fashion, the Baronne de P. Suddenly chang- ing his tone, he calls out to a model who is passing, " You there, mademoiselle, put on this skirt to show to madame." And, turning the model round, he shows the skirt in all its aspects, passing his fingers amorous- ly over the batiste, and seeming to give it life and beau- ty by his mere touch. This afternoon Epinglard is in a theorizing mood, and, after having sent for Bamboula, as he calls her familiarly, a dark - skinned model or demoiselle rnamie- qmn, he drapes her in a pale yellow tulle dress, and proceeds to lament that so few Frenchwomen will wear yellow, owing to a silly popular prejudice. " Ah, ma- dame la baronne," he continues, " you cannot conceive I08 THE PRAISE OF PARIS what lovely combinations of rose and 3/-el]ow I have made. Why not? There are roses with yellow pistils. Why should not we do in stuffs what nature does in flowers ? For us couturiers, as for the painter and the sculptor, the great source of inspiration is nature. 'There are many of my colleagues who fill their port- folios with the engravings of Eisen, Debucourt, Moreau, and the masters of the eighteenth century. But this is not sufficient: we must go back to nature. I pass my summer in the country, and in the rich combinations of floral color I find the gamut of tones for my toilets. But I am allowing myself to theorize too much. If madame la baronne will be good enough to come to- morrow, I will compose something for her in the mean time. This afternoon I am scarcely in the humor for a creation of such importance." And, with a grave sa- lute, Epinglard passes into a saloon where two ladies are waiting impatiently, particularly the younger of the two, who has come, under the wing of her fashionable relative, to be introduced to the gra7id couturier. " Bonjour, Monsieur Epinglard," begins the elder. " I have come to ask you to create a masterpiece. It will not be the first time, will it ? My niece is going to her first ball next month, and I wish her to have a dress on which your signature will be visible." Epinglard falls into a meditative pose, his elbow in one hand, his chin in the other, and looks long at the young girl, scrutinizing not only the line and modelling of the body, but the expression of the face, the eyes, the shade and nature of the hair, reading her temperament with the lucidity of a phrenologist aided by the divina- tion of a plastic artist who has had great experience of feminine humanity. The examination lasts many min- utes, and finally, as if under the inspiring influence of the god of taste, Epinglard, in broken phrases, composes LE GRAND COUTURIER IO9 the dress: "Toilet entirely of tulle . . .corsage plaited diagonally . . . around the decolletage four ruches . . . the skirt relieved with drapery of white satin falling behind like a peplum ... on the shoulder — the left shoulder — a bouquet of myosotis or violets . . . that is how I see mademoiselle dressed." And Epinglard sa- lutes gravely, while an assistant notes down the pro- phetic utterances of the master for the guidance of the various executive artists. Hitherto, in accordance with the heading of this chapter, I have spoken only of the masculine artist, of the typical grand couturier. But there exists at least one grande couturi'ere in Paris, who is as great an art- ist as any of her masculine rivals, and just as capri- cious and as conscious of her work. This is the fa- mous theatrical dress-maker who begs the journalists never to mention her name, adding : " Say simply the first dress-maker in Paris. Everybody will recognize me." This lady treats Dumas, Sardou, and Pailleron as collaborators and equals. Of Dumas I once heard her say: "We understand each other, and he finds that my genius completes his. Recently I composed a toi- let for Madame Dumas, and in complimenting me upon it. Monsieur Dumas said to me : ' Madame, vous etes le Meissonier de la couture!'" (Madame, you are the Meissonier of the art of dress-making). Nothing can be more amusing than the scene in the vast saloons of this great artist, who is no other than Madame Rodrigues — we name her for the benefit of the country cousins — about four o'clock in the after- noon. The grande couturi^ere — madame, as her em- ployes respectfully call her — issues from her private rooms and finds herself in presence of a score of ladies, not merely actresses, but society ladies, to whom she has given rendezvous for that day. no THE PRAISE OF PARIS " I am exceedingly sorry, mesdames," the great artist will exclaim, " but I cannot attend to you to-day." " But, dear madame, you wrote to me — " " I must have my dress for to-morrow." " My ball takes place to-night — " " Mesdames, I repeat, it is impossible. If one of my assistants likes to take you in hand, well and good. That is all I can do for you." Then, turning round, and perceiving a stout lady who looks imploringly at her, she declares, brusquely: "Ah, madame, I have already told you that I cannot undertake to dress you. You are not my style. I do not understand plump women." " But, Madame Rodrigues — " " If one of vcc^ premieres cares to take you in hand, I have no objection ; but that is all I can do for you." The only thing that calms the great artist is the ar- rival of one of her favorite actresses, " Ah, bonjour, madame ; you will have your toilets on Friday—" " But the first performance is announced for Wednes- day." " They must put it off, then, for I am not ready. We will try your dress for the second act this afternoon." And the grande couturiere settles herself in her arm- chair, calls for her footstool, her fan, her cup of beef- tea, her smelling-salts, and so proceeds to preside over the terrible and imposing ceremony of trying on the dress of a fashionable actress. THE BOULEVARD "Que I'ete brille ou que ce soient les jours tristes Je pense amerement au destin des modistes." SO sings Auguste Vacquerie, doubtless with cryptic allusion to the close workshops where the milliners toil late and early for small pay. And yet the milliners do not generally seem to appeal for pity or sympathy, especially the young ones whom we see promenading along the Boulevard des Italiens at the lunch hour, de- lighting in noonday gossip over sour apples and fried potatoes. In familiar groups, their arms around one another's waists they walk up and down taking the air, and their appearance is one of the first signs of the awakening of elegant Paris. Dressed in sober black, cloakless and hatless, often pale and anaemic, they have, nevertheless, a certain distinction. In the neatness of their coiffure, and the dainty fit of their simple black gowns there is an intimation of luxurious frequenta- tions, as it were a pale reflection of the chic of those hats and mantles and gowns which they help to make for the great ladies of the earth. Their destiny, what is \\.} Modest labor; the possibility of rising to be chiefs of their departments, corsagere, Jzcpiere, chef des garnisseuses, perhaps saleswoman, who knows ? Perhaps grandes couturieres in their turn. As they stroll along the boulevard the little milliners may indulge reason- ably in the wildest dreams, for the ground that they 8 114 THE PRAISE OF PARIS tread upon is propitious to adventure of all kinds, and a veritable nursery of struggling genius and obstinate enterprise. Balzac, on the last page of La Pere Goriot, repre- sents his hero, Rastignac, contemplating Paris from the heights of the cemetery of Pere -la- Chaise, and fling- ing mental defiance at the great city which he means to conquer. Nowadays the challenge would be more ap- propriately made along the boulevard. In Paris there are many boulevards, but there is only one that has the peculiar prestige which enables it to dispense with a name. The boulevard is the stretch that runs between the Rue Drouot and the Madeleine, and even more particularly between the Rue Drouot and the Opera. This thoroughfare has a life of its own, and a movement that is different from that of other parts of the city in ways that can be felt by long experience more easily than they can be described. The aspect of the boulevard varies according to the hour of the day and the point of view. At the level of the Rue Drouot is the junction with vulgarity ; the mo- ment we cross the road, and mount the slope of the Boulevard Montmartre, the change becomes marked; the elegant cafes are replaced by obtrusive beer-saloons ; the quality of the shops and of the passers seems differ- ent ; and the presence of financial and industrial ele- ments becomes marked. On the Boulevard des Italiens, on the other hand, the movement always seems leisured, and the conditions inviting. By day and by night the urban landscape spread out before our eyes is curious and fascinating. In the foreground we have the types of Paris and of the universe, the private carriages, the hackney victorias, the gigantic three-horse omnibuses, the broad sidewalks shaded with trees, lined with shops and cafes, and dotted at intervals with tasteful kiosks BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS THE BOULEVARD II7 for the sale of newspapers and flowers. Between the soft perspective of trees, surmounted by the upper sto- ries of the houses and the irregular silhouettes of the chimneys, the road runs straight ahead to the vanishing point, which is lost in a maze of trees and tall metallic columns that carry the electric lights. Everything and everybody seems calm, neat, and orderly. At the omni- bus station, where the Madeleine-Bastille and the Clichy- Odeon coaches halt, a score or two of people are wait- ing their turn, each with a number according to the order of his coming. Near the omnibus station are two great book-stores, where you may turn over as you pass all the novelties of the day, and marvel at the abun- dance of light literature which the Gaulish imagination evolves. Here is the Cafe Riche, less famous than of old ; the Cafe Anglais, less sumptuous than of old ; the Maison Doree, the resort of gourifiets who are wealthy,, if not critical ; the Cafe Tortoni, where a few famous wits of the boulevard press are on view during the absinthe hour. Next, on the left, we pass the hand- some building of the Credit Lyonnais, with its beautiful wrought-iron gates. Then comes a stretch of ground wholly devoted to concentrated frivolity and intense materialism. In one shop you will see in midwinter strawberries, peaches, and bundles of asparagus, the latter sold at three or four louis each. In another shop there may be bought the most tasteful and useless trifles that Paris and Vienna produce. Elsewhere the eye is attracted by gorgeous gowns, prodigious fans, stupendous gloves with countless buttons, huge bou- quets of orchids, mountains of the rarest flowers, and all the hundred and one accessories of elegant life. Here are more cafes, among which may be noticed the Cafe du Helder, a favorite rendezvous of military and naval officers who, on their brief visits to Paris are sure Il8 THE PRAISE OF PARIS to find some friend there with whom to discuss the latest promotions and the newest reforms invented by their hierarchic chief the Minister of War, while in case of need they can appeal for information to the habitues, who are not all army men, but who have a particular af- fection for all that is military, and who sit at the little marble tables, drink absinthe, and are invariably dec- orated. One may be a retired captain with a rubicund nose, long, shaggy mustaches, a goatee beard, and in his button-hole the rosette of the Legion of Honor, won perhaps by good service in Africa. With his hands in his pockets, he sits heavily on the red velvet divan, propping his gross body against the back, and never re- movino- his rather rakish hat from his denuded skull. Another may be a horse-dealer or an army contractor, whose sympathies and interests make him prefer to drink his green poison in a military cafe. A third, cor- pulent, apoplectic, faded, and sulky, sniokes stolidly, with a cross expression on his countenance, his temper having been irremediably soured by long years of se- dentary ennui in the bureaus of the War Department. On the opposite side of the road is the Cafe Americain, where novelists, poets, chroniqtteurs, literary men, and painters indulge in aperitifs^ cigarettes, and piquant talk. And so we arrive at the Place de I'Opera, from which brilliant centre radiate the great thoroughfares of the Avenue de I'Opera, the Rue du 4 Septembre, and the Rue de la Paix, where the milliners, dress- makers, coiffeurs, and jewellers have their headquarters. Alono- the sidewalks of the Rue de la Paix of an afternoon the coupes and victorias are drawn up in double and triple file, and in front of Worth's, Virot's, Doucet's, and the studios of the other great couturiers there is a continual going to and fro of beautiful ladies, whose presence has caused the dilettanii of fleshly fair- >^ cr. f r. THE BOULEVARD 121 ness to give the spot the dainty name of the passage des cailles. Between four and six o'clock the " quails " par- ticularly abound, passing from their carriages to the sombre saloons where, in an atmosphere heavy with per- fumes, the demoiselles -maimequins, with their faultless figures, promenade, turn and return, wearing on their impersonal shoulders the incomparable creations of world-famous artists in dress. West of the Opera the boulevard assumes a more cosmopolitan air, thanks to the neighborhood of the Cafe de la Paix and the Grand Hotel, those great cara- vansaries of visitors from all quarters of the globe. At the little tables in front of this cafe may be seen speci- mens of all the nationalities of the earth — Chinese, Japanese, Turks with fezes, Arabs enveloped in volumi- nous burnouses, Germans with blond hair, Brazilians with yellow skins and flaming eyes, Englishmen smoking pipes and wearing absurd caps; while at the dinner and supper hours the restaurant of the cafe is crowded with high-livers of both sexes, whose chief occupation is to spend money in places of reputed luxury. At the Cafe de la Paix may be seen the most magnificent and gor- geously arrayed rastacoiCeres on the face of the earth, and by rastacoueres we mean exotic people whose looks, dress, manners, and wealth are ostentatious and exces- sive, and whose every act and gesture is wanting in measure and tact. The characteristic of Parisian ele- gance, on the contrary, is its measure, tact, taste, and self-possession. The beautiful Frenchwomen whom you see in Paris, whether in the streets, the restaurants, in the afternoon drive in the Bois, in the salons, or at the Opera, however striking their appearance may be, and however grand the effort of elegance, never look as if they were " out," to use a familiar phrase, or as if they had "got 'em all on," to use another vulgar but luminous 122 THE PRAISE OF PARIS expression. And the reason of this pleasing phenome- non is, I imagine, that the French are, as Heine tells us, admirable comedians, and each one plays excellently the role that he or she has assumed in the spectacle of "la vie Parisienne," Along the asphalt pavement between the Madeleine and the Rue Drouot that essentially Parisian being, the dotdevardter, flourishes and exercises his power of glit- tering, more especially in the late afternoon between five and seven o'clock, when the cafes fill rapidly, and the waiters hurry to and fro with strange cries : " Uii Turin terrasse',' '' Bourn T "'Absinthe anisette a Vas^' and other cabalistic words, intelligible only to the ini- tiated. And here let it be remarked that this frequent mention which we make of cafes, absinthe, and aperitifs must not be construed as being indicative of intem- perance on the part of the habitues of the boulevard. Paris abounds in cafes of various categories, and yet it is very rare to see a drunken man in the streets. The Frenchman does not get drunk, he becomes lively — or, as he says, emn — under the influence of liquor, and in such circumstances he is expansive, persuasive, and sin- gularly eloquent. Frederick Lemaitre and Gambetta achieved their most brilliant successes, the one as an actor, the other as an orator, when they were exceed- ingly ^;;^?^. In his younger days, I have heard, the Due d'Aumale, passing at the head of his regiment the Clos Vougeot, halted his men, and made them salute the famous vineyard, as being one of the great nursing mothers of French wit. But, strange to say, the Parisian does not drink wine at a cafe; he drinks deleterious dis- tilled liquors, such as vermouth, absinthe, various bitters supposed to have merits as " appetizers," or harmless syrups made from fruits or aromatic plants. On the other hand, he drinks but small quantities of these THE BOULEVARD 123 liquids, and that, too, so slowly that he is capable of sit- ting for two hours in a cafe before a single thimbleful of liqueur brandy, having thus paid for a pretext for lounging, talking, and reading the newspapers. In other words, the Frenchman does not go to a cafe for the sake of drinking, nor does he drink at the cafe for the sake of drinking, much less because he is thirsty ; he drinks simply because he wants to go to the cafe. Why the Frenchman wants to go to a cafe is a com- plex question which can be answered only roughly and incompletely by noting the triple attraction which the cafe exercises. First of all, it satisfies the need of pub- lic life and life in public which the Latin nations in par- ticular have felt since the Revolution of 1789; second- ly, it takes the place of family life, which the condi- tions of modern existence have profoundly undermined ; finally, it flatters a certain taste for degradation and lowness which is peculiar to male humanity, and which the wisest legislator will never be able to suppress. All men, it seems, feel the need of escaping occa- sionally from the gentle influence of their women-folk, and of enjoying masculine society and masculine talk ; hence the cafe and hence the club, which is an out- come and modification of the cafe, and the most ex- clusively masculine of all the institutions of modern civilization. However, to return to the boulevard, we may com- pare it to a great central hunting-ground, where in the late afternoon a curious tribe of men descend from all quarters of the capital. Some come in search of wit ; some in search of news ; some to seek relations and in- fluence ; some to be seen, to prove that they are still living, and to make themselves and others believe that they occupy a place in Paris. Many again come simply to see and enjoy that unique spectacle of varied move- 124 THE PRAISE OF PARIS ment, life, and color, which the streets and boulevards of Paris alone can offer. And this is why it is difficult to define the boulevardier, for among those to whom this appellation is given you find men of all ages, all characters, all professions, and all reputations ; the only bonds of union are certain daily habits, a special lan- guage, a love of gossip and scandal, a peculiar turn of wit, and a tendency to gyrate in the neighborhood of Tortoni's. The pure boulevardier is always indifferent and gen- erally selfish, which is not strange when we reflect that he is an isolated unit struggling for life in the midst of the selfishness and indifference of Paris, where he daily shakes hands with a hundred of his fellows, and cherishes no illusions as to the incontestable insig- nificance of that ungraceful form of salutation. The typical boulevardier is a superior species of Bohemian, but generally a Bohemian with expensive tastes, whose existence is a perpetual problem which occupies himself and sometimes others ; whereas the existence of the or- dinary Bohemian is a matter to which he does not deign to sive thought. The boulevardier is somewhat of a man of letters, somewhat of a lawyer, somewhat of a speculator, more or less an adventurer, and not unfre- quently a gambler; in short, the multiplicity of his ap- titudes and experience fits him for the most diverse posi- tions ; and so, in Paris, we find boulevardiers everywhere — in the clubs, in the newspaper offices, in the directing boards of financial administrations, in the Chamber of Deputies, and in official situations of all kinds. Among the boulevardiers whom one sees every night taking their absinthe or their bitters and gossiping on the sidewalk there are twenty men of rare wit. The others are more or less skilful workmen who paint, sing, write, or talk with a certain technical excellence, but who are THE BOULEVARD I 27 wanting in originality, and who are mere parasites, living on the crumbs of wit, experience, and practical cynicism that the leaders let fall from their table. Some observers pretend that the palmy days were those of the Second Empire, when the boulevardier — sleek, witty, elegant, and gallant — lived in the midst of the ambient luxury, heedless of politics and vulgar cares. After 187 1 politics invaded all Paris, and the habitues -of Tortoni had to choose an opinion. The first tendency of the botikvardiers was in favor of the Comte de Chambord and the white flag ; then, veering with success, they turned towards Gambetta, thanks to whom many of the veterans now hold official positions. As for the young generation, say the critics, it includes few genuine boulevardiers of the old style, and in the bustle and promiscuity of triumphant democracy, the asphalt of the Boulevard des Italiens is losing its stamp of adventurous elegance and intelligent exclu- siveness. However, it is always prudent to mistrust the praisers of the past, especially in France where the pres- tige of the book and the printed picture is so great. The boulevard, such as Balzac has described it, proba- bly never existed any more than the Latin Quarter such as it was depicted by Murger in his Scenes de la Vie de Boheme and by Gavarni in his witty litho- graphs. For those who have eyes to see the boulevard of to-day is quite as curious, as suggestive, and as rich in types as it was when the wits of the First Empire used to assemble at Tortoni's to comment upon the bulletins of the Grand Army, or when, at a later date, young Monsieur Thiers used to ride up on a white horse to the famous little cafe at the corner of the Rue Tait- bout, stay just long enough to eat an ice, and then quick to the saddle again, and en route for fortune. 128 THE PRAISE OF PARIS From the point of view of urban landscape the Boule- vard des Italiens is unique in the world, with its over- hanging trees between endless lines of houses, and its perspective of luminous kiosks, green benches, and tall advertising columns crowned by rings of gas-jets which light up the many -colored patchwork of play- bills announcing the amusements of the evening. Yet another delightful and perhaps grander part of the boulevard is the Place de la Madeleine with its two quiet corners where the fountains play, and the trees give grateful shade to those who sit beneath them and dream of fairer fortunes. At one corner is Durand's and at the other Larue's, both favorite restaurants with the worldlings. From Durand's corner .the view em- braces the classic columns of the Church of the Made- leine, the magnificent avenue of the Boulevard Male- sherbes with the dome of the Church of Saint Augustin closing the perspective, and to the left the broad Rue Royale and the vast Place de la Concorde. By day and by night the spectacle here is always interesting; there is no better coign of vantage for studying character and comparative elegance than one of the little tables out- side Durand's ; and there is no spot along the boule- vard where the combined effects of nature and of art, of moonlight on architecture and verdure, of electric light and gas upon white fa9ades and swiftly- passing carriages, can be better observed than on this broad and open space with its canopy of mysterious blue sky. Apart from the interest of the types of humanity that one sees on the boulevard between sunset and midnight and later, this detail of the curious effects of light always seems to me to be of singular fascination. To attempt to describe their variety would be hopeless : the more completely the eye becomes trained the more manifold the phenomena that it observes. On the OPERA— WET NIGHT THE BOULEVARD 13I pavement, on the trees, on the houses, on the people, there is a constant play of light and of reflections that defy analysis — light from electric globes, from gas- lamps, from the shop -windows, from the kiosks, from the colored lanterns of the passing cabs, from the cor- dons of gas-jets on the fagades of the theatres, from the stars, from the moon. The very air of the boulevard presents phenomena that one does not notice else- where. In the early morning it is pearly gray ; at noon it is brilliant blue; in the late afternoon it be- comes brownish through the floating dust which the sunset gilds and reddens ; and then at night again it becomes blue, violet, or orange, according to the tone of the masses which the eye selects for comparison. In foul weather as in fair the variety persists, and there is no more curious picture for a painter to essay than the Place de I'Opera on a pitilessly rainy night with the Gardes de Paris sitting on their horses, useless sen- tries in front of the Opera-house ; the movement of the cabs depositing the visitors at the foot of the perron, the voyous that run to open the carriage doors ; the hur- rying up the steps amid battling umbrellas, and the pelting rain splashing on the pavement and forming pools that glisten with the sheeny reflections of the electric light. On the boulevard with its newspapers, its book- stores, its theatres, its cafes, its wits, its celebrities, its adventurers, and all the kaleidoscopic movement of men and things that animate it from morning until morning comes again, one appreciates that quality of modernity which characterizes Paris above all other cities. In other capitals where the fortunes of a nomad existence and a moderate gift of tongues have enabled me to live and comprehend the local life, I have never found anything equivalent to the life of the boulevard, 132 THE PRAISE OF PARIS which is the quintessence of the Kfe of Paris. For the peculiarity of Paris is that it is being constantly re- newed ; it is not oppressed by history or hampered by an obtrusive past. There is an old Paris, it is true ; one sees it and loves it, but it is so discreet that one has to seek it out. The present of Paris alone pre- dominates. The vapory regions of souvenir and of presentiment are not willingly frequented by those who speak the French of Paris, and who live in the brilliant sunshine of the present a life of intensity and ardor, here and now, upon the principle that life is the end of life. THE DUELLISTS "Honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on ? how then ? Can honor set to a leg ? No. Or an arm ? No. Or take away the grief of a wound ? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery then ? No. What is honor ? A word. What is that word ? . . . Air. . . . Who hath it ? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it ? No. Doth he hear it ? No. . . . Honor is a mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism." — Falstaff, in Henry IV. T is not to the credit of the French press, but it is a striking sign of the times, that while you seek in vain in the Parisian newspapers for three Hnes of honest criticism on a new book, you will find columns of letter- press devoted to the daily chronicle of the race-courses and the salles d'armes. Never has the art of fencing been taught in France with more science, and learned with greater avidity, than at the present day ; and perhaps never since the times of Richelieu and the Fronde has duelling been more common in France. Doubt- less the light shafts of satire have an easy butt in many a Parisian duel ; still, when we come to think that, in spite of the successive and severe edicts of Henry IV., Cardinal Richelieu, and Louis XIV., in spite of the eloquent condemna- tion of Rousseau and Voltaire, in \ spite of the prohibition of law and 136 THE PRAISE OF PARIS of religion, duelling has remained, since the sixteenth century, not only tolerated but often approved of by public opinion, we may find it interesting to examine the matter seriously, to seek the explanation of this curious survival of the practices of chivalry in this pro- saic nineteenth century, and to define precisely the role which duelling plays in modern French society. France always has been the great country for duels, and although the French are not the only people who fight duels, they are certainly far more ready to draw their swords than the Italians, the Austrians, the Ger- mans, or the Russians, who are likewise under the tyranny of the institution of duelling. The French have always been proverbial for their keen sense of honor, their susceptibility, and their pugnacity; and in seeking the explanation of the survival of duelling these points must not be forgotten. The main-spring and basis of duelling is the " point of honor," the conception of which varies, not only with circumstances, but with the times. Compare, for in- stance, Brantome's recommendations with the modern code of duelling as laid down by Chateauvillard or by Du Verger de Saint-Thomas. Brantome says in a curious passage : " The combatants ought to be care- fully searched and examined in order to find out wheth- er they have any drugs, enchantments, or spells on their person. Relics of Notre Dame de Lorette and other holy things may be worn." In his duel with M. Paul de Cassagnac, who had challenged him on account of an article which he had written insulting the memory of Queen Marie Antoinette, M. Rochefort owed his life to the interposition of a medal which a female friend had attached to his waistband without his knowledge. The duel was fought with pistols, and M. De Cassagnac said to one of his seconds, " You will see I will lodge my FENCING-ROOM bullet in his waist ; his coat floating in the wind gives me a mark." M. De Cassagnac aimed as he said ; Rochefort fell, struck at the point indicated. The doctor rushed up, thinking him dead, and drew out from be- hind the waistband the medal of the Virgin. The ball had gone through the medal, but the resistance had caused it to deviate and merely graze the loins instead of transpiercing the body. M. Rochefort had escaped miraculously. In the Univers of the next day, Louis Veuillot, alluding to a sonnet to the Virgin with which M. Rochefort had won the prize at some jeux fioraitx^ or poetical tournament, in his younger days, wrote these lines : " The Virgin owed you that, Monsieur Roche- fort; but take care in future, for you are now quits." 138 THE PRAISE OF PARIS Nowadays there is no end to the talk about the loy- alty and courtesy of the combat. " There must be no talk of courtesy," says Brantome ; " he who enters the lists ought to be determined to conquer or to die, and above all not to surrender; for the victor disposes of the vanquished as he pleases: for example, he may drag him round the lists, hang him, burn him, hold him prisoner, or dispose of him as a slave." Horrible bar- barity ! Rules of a savage epoch, the moderns will say. What will people two centuries hence say of the mod- ern code of honor .f^ What is the modern Frencli code of honor? What is the point of honor? In practice we find that French- men fight on account of a contradiction, a giving of the lie, a word, a look even, as well as for graver reasons. A duel has come to be the almost obligatory termina- tion of literary and political polemics, and, to tell the truth, honor and the point of honor have had little or nothing to do with many a rencounter of recent years. There has been an abuse of duelling ; the practice has been distorted from its primitive and solemn signifi- cance ; it has become a fashion, almost a sport, a means for tarnished or tarnishing reputations to get white- washed, and above all a manoeuvre for obtaining noto- riety, especially among journalists and politicians. Indeed, duels between journalists and politicians are so entirely special in their nature and meaning that we may as well speak of them separately. First of all, let us thoroughly comprehend that these duels are simply the result of professional necessities or prejudices, and in nine cases out of ten the adversaries fight merely for the gallery — -pour la galerie — and for the sake of public opinion. The journalists and politicians are in a meas- ure the gladiators of Paris, and if they do not prove themselves good gladiators, they are liable to be hissed, THE DUELLISTS 1 39 howled at, harried, and worried until life becomes unen- durable. In the career of a French politician or jour- nalist a duel is obligatory. Even Gambetta had to fight. The reader may remember the duel with pistols which took place at Plessis- Piquet, on the plain of Chatillon, in November, 1878, between Gambetta and the Bonapartist minister, M. De Fourtou. The adver- saries exchanged pistol-shots without effect, and an American humorist wrote a comic account of the lethal meeting for the amusement of his countrymen. How- ever, in spite of Mr. Mark Twain's droll satire, this duel was perfectly serious. The testimony of M. Clemenceau and M. AUain-Targe, who were the seconds of Gambetta, of M. Robert Mitchell and M. Blin de Bourdon, who were the seconds of M. De Fourtou, and the testimony of M. Ranc, of Dr. Lannelongue, and of all the friends of Gambetta, is sufiEicient to establish that fact. The cause of the duel was an exclamation of Gam- betta during the sitting of the Chamber of Deputies on November 18, 1878 — " It is a lie!"(" C'est un mensonge, M. le Ministre !") These words were addressed to M. De Fourtou, who was making a speech to the Chamber. To say that this exclamation was premeditated would perhaps be going too far; it would be truer to say that Gambetta seized the opportunity of uttering it with joy ; he was only waiting for an occasion to pick a quarrel. For some time past the violence of the Bonapartists had been increasing; their insults in the press had been growing more and more virulent; and during one of his speeches Gambetta had been interrupted by M. Paul de Cassagnac nearly a hundred times. It was in order to put a stop to this abuse and interruption that Gambetta determined to fight a duel with a prominent member of the Bonapartist party. It was necessary to secure his political position, as Gambetta himself said, when his 140 THE PRAISE OF PARIS friends reproached him with thus risking his hfe. And in point of fact the duel had the desired effect ; it gained the respect of the Bonapartists. After having given the He to M. De Fourtou, Gam- betta left the sitting, and went to look for M. Clemen- ceau in the lobbies of the Chamber. Gambetta asked M. Clemenceau to act as his second, but the latter re- fused, not caring to accept the responsibility of such an affair, for, naturally, had anything serious happened to Gambetta, the seconds would have had to bear the brunt of public blame. However, Gambetta insisted. " If you refuse," he said to M. Clemenceau, " I shall not be able to find a single man to serve as my second. Thiers fought a duel. I must fight, too." Finally, M. Clemenceau accepted, and it was he who arranged the whole affair, charged the pistols, and gave the word of command — "Feu! un, deux, trois !" The adversaries were placed at a distance of thirty paces in an open space on the plain of Chatillon, where there was neither tree nor house nor any object in sight of importance enough to guide the aim ; the silhouettes of the com- batants stood out against a perfectly clear sky, for the report that the duel was fought in a fog is untrue ; the pistols were charged with the regular quantity of pow- der and with regular bullets by M. Clemenceau himself. M. Clemenceau chose pistols as the arms of his princi- pal, for the simple reason that he did not consider Gam- betta to have sufiicient agility to fight with swords. As for distance, M. Clemenceau had at first proposed thirty- five paces, but the seconds of M. De Fourtou suggested thirty. Gambetta himself would have fought at five or ten paces, had his seconds ordered him to do so ; but there was an excellent reason for separating the adver- saries by as great a distance as possible — namely, the fact that Gambetta was a very large man and M. De THE DUELLISTS . I43 Fourtou a slender man. Now, supposing the adver- saries fired at a distance of five paces, the slender man would have a larger target than the large man; at ten paces the slender man's advantage would be lessened, and so on ; the greater the distance between the com- batants, the more equal their chances became, as far as concerned the target to be aimed at. As it is one of the chief duties of the seconds to equalize the chances of the combatants, and to compensate for each one's ad- vantage or disadvantage, M. Clemenceau was right in demanding thirty-five paces and accepting thirty. It has, I know, been objected that the pistols ordinarily used in duelling would not carry thirty paces. In reply to this objection I may cite a duel fought in 1878 be- tween M. De la Rochette, a Conservative Deputy, and M. Laisant, a Deputy of the Left. The arms were pistols; the distance thirty-five paces. M. De la Ro- chette was struck in the thigh by a ball which had force enough to transpierce him, and he died shortly after- wards of his wounds. M. Laisant was struck in the re- gion of the heart, and his life was only saved by the floating of his overcoat in the wind, which deadened the impetus of the bullet. In duels of this kind the questions of honor and of persons fall entirely into the background. I will men- tion as an instance the duel with swords fought near Paris on October 10, 1884, between M. Henri Roche- fort and Commander Fournier, the author of a treaty between France and Tonquin, which was hotly dis- cussed by the French press. Rochefort wrote a smart and ironical article on the commander in his newspaper L' Intransigeant. The commander demanded explana- tions ; M. Rochefort refused ; a duel was arranged, and both combatants were slightly wounded. Thereupon Commander Fournier and M. Rochefort shook hands, 144 THE PRAISE OF PARIS and the latter said to his adversary: "It was neither the man nor the naval officer that I attacked in your person, but simply the functionary of M. Ferry." This method of combating a ministry whose opinions one does not share is certainly curious ; but it is neverthe- less a fact that nowadays both in French politics and in French journalism lethal weapons have to be recog- nized as the auxiliaries of the tribune and the pen. On this point here is an interesting letter which M. Henri Rochefort wrote to me some years ago, contain- ing in brief his opinion on duelling : " Paris, October i, 1884. " Monsieur et cher confrere: " Duelling, the absurdity of which is evident, is a product of Catholi- cism. The believers of former times imagined naively that the victor was in the right, and that the vanquished was in the wrong, because both had undergone the judgment of God. " The atheists of the present day cannot consider the duel as any- thing but the demonstration of their bravery or of their sincerity. When a man fights, he as good as says that he is ready to risk his life to sup- port his opinions. But it is nevertheless true that in most cases a hos- tile meeting is simply a repetition of M. De Bismarck's maxim, ' La force prime le droit,' inasmuch as it is the best swordsman or the best shot who gets the upperhand. " However, this kind of exercise has now entered so profoundly into our habits that, in order to put an end to it, there would be needed noth- ing less than a new Richelieu to have the two adversaries decapitated, " Receive, etc. " Henri Rochefort." As for the vast majority of duels between journalists in Paris, they are confessedly absurd. Two writers carry on a controversy in their respective journals for a few days ; then suddenly one ceases to discuss the other's assertions, and calls him a " blackguard," or a " coward," or an " impudent scoundrel." A duel en- sues ; more ink than blood is spilled, and honor is de- clared satisfied. Whose honor } What satisfaction ? Such duels tend to bring the press into discredit, and THE DUELLISTS 145 these journalists, while they amuse the public, win nei- ther its respect nor its sympathy. Still, the insult hav- ing been inflicted, public and professional opinion ex- acts the spilling of blood, or at any rate the simulacrum of that phenomenon. In the duels between French gentlemen there is al- PISTOL PRACTICE BEFORE THE DUEL 146 THE PRAISE OF PARIS ways a question of the point of honor, whether real or false. According to the duelling code now accepted as laid down in the Nouveau Code du Duel of the Comte du Verger de Saint-Thomas, "all acts, words, writings, drawings, gestures, blows, which wound the self-love, delicacy, or honor of a third party constitute an of- fence," and authorize a demand of reparation by arms. Naturally the gravity of offences of each kind is diffi- cult to determine ; the offence is just precisely as grave as one feels it to be, and a man feels an offence in a thousand different manners. That depends upon his temperament, his education, and the rank of society to which he belongs. In France, for instance, although every man is a soldier, and although in the army duel- ling is obligatory, the peasants settle their quarrels with nature's weapons rather than with the sword, while the vast majority of the men of the middle classes would never think of exchanging pistol-shots with the first man who happened to eye them in an offensive man- ner. On the other hand, let us take a famous duel fought in 1S73, of which the following is the history: One night the Baron Georges de Heeckeren was sit- ting in the stalls of the Varietes Theatre, when a cele- brated demi-mondaine, Caroline L , with whom the baron was on cool terms — after having been on the warmest — entered one of the boxes on the arm of a Russian gentleman, accompanied by his friend the Prince Dolgorouki. The demi-mondaine, as she took her seat, recognized her ex-lover, and said, " Ah ! there is Heeckeren." Prince Dolgorouki, who only knew the young gentleman by reputation, levelled his opera- slass and leaned over the edo;e of the box to look at him. Heeckeren, thinking that the company in the box were quizzing him, left his seat, and went and knocked at the door of the box. Prince Dolgorouki INTERVENTION OF GENDARMES THE DUELLISTS 149 opened the door, and excused himself for having yielded to a simple impulse of curiosity; but the irritable baron would listen to no excuses, and slapped the prince on the cheek. A duel was arranged, with the following peculiarly severe conditions : " The combatants shall be placed at twenty paces ; at the word of command each may advance five paces and fire as he pleases ; an unlimited number of balls shall be exchanged, and the combat shall not cease until a serious wound shall have rendered its continuation impossible ; the wound- ed combatants may fire in the position in which they may find themselves when they have fallen ; they may also drag themselves up to the limit of the five paces above mentioned, but ivitkoiLt tke help of their seconds^ Curiously enough, these conditions, imposed by the Prince Dolgorouki, were the same in which the Baron de Heeckeren's father had fought with the Russian poet, Pouchkine, in 1837. The duel took place in the Duchy of Luxembourg'; each combatant at once advanced five paces, and at a distance of ten paces both fired, and Prince Dolgorouki fell, his right shoulder shattered. The Baron de Heeckeren went up to his wounded ad- versary and said to him, " Prince, I am more sorry for my stupidity of the other day than for my address to- day: pardon me for both: you would have received my apology long ago if I had been able to present it." This duel was absurd, but no more absurd than most of the duels between Parisian gentlemen who may be classed under the category of viveurs, or " men about town," as they are called in England. The young bloods of Paris are always ready to draw their swords for a look or a word. The combat in such cases is sel- dom as serious as the one just mentioned, but the ground is nearly always as frivolous. The only excuse for duels of this kind — and a poor enough excuse, too — 150 THE PRAISE OF PARIS is that it is the fashion to fight. An affair of honor gives a young man a certain notoriety ; the boulevard journals publish an official report of the duel, signed by the seconds ; the adversaries are heroes of a certain category for a few days, and their generally harmless escapade excites a degree of curiosity and sympathy among the members of the fair sex. In practice the institution of duelling is undoubtedly greatly abused in France ; nevertheless, there are often duels in earnest, and the theory of duelling is seriously accepted, false as it is. It is a custom which has en- tered so deeply into French manners that it is not easy to foresee even its obsolescence. In the time of Napoleon I. a bill for the suppression of duelling was presented in the Conseil d'Etat, and re- jected after discussion, one of the reasons for not taking any legislative action in the matter being the following: " There is a multitude of offences which legal justice does not punish, and among these offences there are some so indefinable, or concerned with matters so deli- cate, that the injured party would blush to bring them out into broad daylight in order to demand public justice. In these circumstances it is impossible for a man to right himself otherwise than by a duel." Guizot declared, in the tribune of the French Parlia- ment, that " French society must give up the idea of preventing a duel which has a just ground." Berryer, Brillat-Savarin, Jules Janin, Walsh, Lemontey, Chate- lain, Armand Carrel, have defended duelling as an institution which three centuries of legislation and phi- losophy have been powerless to dethrone. It is a preju- dice, a relic of barbarism, or whatever you may please to call it. That they will admit, while at the same time arguing to show that it is necessary for the existence of societies. Jules Janin says, " I would not consent to A SWORD DUEL live twenty-four hours in society, such as it is at present estabhshed and governed, if duelhng did not exist." There is hardly a name illustrious in the political, liter- ary, and social annals of France during the nineteenth century which is not the name of a duellist. Even the magistrates themselves fight duels. In fact, throughout the century duelling has continued in France as a social scourge, varying in intensity according to the greater or less violence of the passions of the moment. Now, as in the times of Louis XIV., justice is powerless to suppress the practice, and legislators seem to have abandoned the attempt to do so, or even to regulate duelling. The French duel is a single combat between two or 152 THE PRAISE OF PARIS several persons, who fight voluntarily, for some private interest, in accordance with a previous agreement, and in consequence of a challenge in the form of a cartel^ the motive of which is some offence. The offence hav- ing been given and taken up, the principals choose their seconds, who arrange the whole affair, discuss the interests of their clients, establish the conditions of the duel in all its details. The rights, duties, and conduct of principals and seconds are stated with great minuteness in the Comte de Chateauvillard's Essai sttr le Diicl, and with still greater minuteness in the recent work, already cited, of the Comte du Verger de Saint- Thomas. It would be outside our purpose to enter more deeply upon the subject of these technicalities, which occupy in the last- mentioned volume some three hundred pages. It will suffice to say that the usual arms are the rapier, the sabre — used almost exclusively in the army — and the pistol ; that before the meeting the conditions of the encounter are minutely detailed in a proces-verbal signed by the seconds ; and that upon the encounter another proces-verbal is drawn up recording the result, and signed by the seconds and by the doctors. Nowa- days duelling has become so thoroughly tolerated that the adversaries rarely take the trouble to go to the frontier to fight. They meet in the environs of Paris in a wood or a country lane; several duels have been fought behind the tribunes of the race-courses of Long- champs and Auteuil, and in the presence of numerous witnesses. The police or the gendarmes have a right to interfere and prevent the fight, but in reality these functionaries are rarely at hand at the critical moment. The adversaries, too, may be prosecuted, but except in cases of fatal results justice generally ignores the inci- dent of a hostile encounter, in spite of the publicity given to it by the newspapers. MEETING OF THE SECONDS THE DUELLISTS 1 55 Considering the frequency of duels m France, one cannot help being a little astonished at the small num- ber of fatal issues. MM. Rochefort, De Cassagnac, Au- relien Scholl, and many other well-known Parisians have to their credit each fourteen or fifteen duels at least, and not one of them is at all maimed by his wounds. There are three reasons why the modern duel is seldom fatal. In the first place, the point of honor demands only a spot of blood, except in alto- gether extreme cases ; the ordinary duel is au premier sang (at first blood), and the duel a 7nort, the mortal combat, is a rare exception. In the second place, the art of fencing as now taught is an art of defence rather than of attack, and a good fencer fighting against an- other good fencer in a conventional duel will simply vie with his adversary in the skill and address he will show in giving a pin scratch with a broadsword. Thirdly, it is the duty of the seconds to see that every combat takes place correctly and according to the rules, and the second to whom is allotted the delicate task of umpire, or J uge de camp, has the right to stop illicit or even too dangerous strokes. Generally speaking, the duel with swords in modern times is a mitigated and gentlemanly combat. As we have already seen, it is looked upon as a necessary evil, and it is considered the duty of all concerned in a duel to do everything in their power to diminish the fatal results by equalizing the chances of each adversary as far as possible. Now in this equalization of chances the umpire, or juge de camp, plays a very important role. The moment the two combatants are face to face and sword in hand, the duties of the jtige de camp begin ; it is he who directs the fight, watches the strokes, suspends an engagement, orders rests, calls time, etc. We may say, with all respect for the Frenchman's 156 THE PRAISE OF PARIS delicate sense of honor, that in most French duels the adversaries are not in terrible earnest, and do not desire to kill each other outright. For this reason the favorite arm is the rapier, and not the pistol. The duel with swords has been refined to such a point that it may be regarded as a sort of gentlemanly act of defence. The ordinary French conventional duel bears the same re- lation to a serious mortal combat as a court sword does to an army sword; it is almost an affair of etiquette, an exercise which has been rendered comparatively free from danger by the art of fencing, just as the art of dancing and deportment has enabled the courtier to walk without tripping up with his velvet scabbard be- tween his legs. Naturally the maitres cTarmes have a profound contempt for pistols, and all who take a hu- manitarian view of duelling dwell upon the fact that with the pistol there is no alternative between atrocity and ridicule. The sword is satisfied with a few drops of blood, but it must have those few drops. The pistol sheds floods of blood or nothing at all. Grisier, in his treatise on duelling, adds to the above arguments the siofnificant remark that all doctors are agreed that it is easier to save the life of a man who has been wounded by a sword than of one who has been wounded by a pistol -ball, and, "in spite of the horror of the phrase ' at first blood,' it must nevertheless be admitted that there is humanity in this convention." In France the pistol is generally regarded as the arm of the insulted party who does not know how to handle a sword, or who is inferior in a too marked degree to his adversary. Fencing is a thoroughly French accomplishment, and at the present time, as I have already intimated, it is the most elegant and fashionable of sports in France, and considered absolutely indispensable to a gentle- man's education. From the social point of view, both FIRST LESSON IN FENCING THE DUELLISTS 1 59 fencing and duelling, within certain limits, are held to be perfectly correct, and in the upper ranks of society the man who fights for his honor, or even for a hot word, does not bring himself into the slightest discredit ; on the contrary, he simply shows that he knows how to conduct himself according to the prejudices and usages of his caste — in short, as a gentleman, en galant homme. The eminent Academician, M. Ernest Legouve says that fencing is as much a French art as conversation. " What is fencing ?" he asks. " It is conversing ; for what is conversing? Is it not attacking, parrying, re- plying, touching above all, if you can } The Germans have their sabres, the Spaniards their knives, the Eng- lish their pistols, the Americans their revolvers, but the sword is the French arm. Porter Vepee, tirer Vepee, are phrases which you will find, with all their somewhat swaggering signification, in our language alone. Of these two phrases one expresses a gentleman's right, the other a gentlemanly movement; both have in them something elegant, chivalrous, and vainglorious which depicts a trait of our character, and is intimately bound up with our social traditions." M. Legouve's desire is to have the French democracy remain aristocratic in manners, and nothing, he thinks, could be of more avail in the realization of this wish than the handlino; of the sword. " Has not the sword the finest of all privileges .?" exclaims the worthy Academician. " It is the only arm which can avenge you without bloodshed." Instead of killing the man who has insulted you, you simply punish him by disarming him, says M. Legouve. So long as intelligent and influential Frenchmen con- tinue to conform their conduct to the deep-rooted prej- udices concerning duelling, and so long as they continue by their acts and writings to defend the existence of this convention, which the most superficial examination l6o THE PRAISE OF PARIS shows to be based upon a whole series of mistaken no- tions of right and justice, so long, too, as duelling is obligatory in the army, it is not likely that either legis- lation or public opinion will succeed in bringing the practice into discredit. It must be remembered, how- ever, that in modern France duelling is only practised by a very small part of the population. Indeed, ever since it was introduced by the Franks, duelling has ex- isted as an institution only among a small portion of humanity, and in this small portion it has always been the appanage of a pretentious minority. As for the French duel of the present day, generally based upon trifling and often silly grounds of offence, it is, as the journalist Aurelien Scholl says, " a mania of the epoch which has hitherto not brought about great disasters." PROLETARIAN PARIS TN the elegant quarters of Paris, where more or less refined materialism reigns triumphant, we have a tendency to forget the serious aspect of Paris. We are struck rather by the superficial and agreeable phases of the life of the capital, which constitutes such an amus- ing show, and which even M. Ernest Renan admits to be a good furnace wherein to consume that surplus of life which is not absorbed by science and philosophy. In this eleo^ant Paris we remark that virtue is never a.Q-. gressive, and although solemnly celebrated once a year at the French Academy, on the occasion of the distribu- tion of the Monthyon prizes, virtue, we feel sure, is not appreciated. Nay more, the prizes which the Academy awards for the encouragement of virtue are so small that they are practical approbations of vice, while the speeches made by the eminent Academicians, who are selected to record the virtuous achievements of the laureates, are generally so full of paradox and delicate persiflage that none can mistake the poor esteem in which the austere practice of virtue is held. Nevertheless, w^e must not pay too much attention to the bilateral and deliquescent utterances of academic wits, even though they may be grave philosophers, and profound thinkers in their more serious moments. With- out virtue no commonwealth can prosper. Without 164 THE PRAISE OF PARIS stability, peace, and order no city can achieve riches and splendor. In reality, Paris has been much calumniated by the Parisians themselves, and there are no more active slanderers of the capital than the journalists — at least, so it would appear, for the newspaper reports about Paris are constantly alarming ; and yet the prosperity of the city goes on increasing. But the readers of news- papers do not perhaps understand the special conditions of the journalistic industry; they do not bear in mind that the journalist esteems a fact, not in virtue of its importance, but of its novelty. From year's end to year's end a million and a half of people work in Paris ten or twelve hours a day. This is an important fact; but it is not new, and so the newspapers do not mention it. A score of politicians meet and draw up a crazy manifesto, and immediately the fact, being new, is tele- graphed to the ends of the earth. The man who reads the newspapers, without comprehending the principles of journalism, gathers erroneous ideas, impairs his di- gestion, and renders himself conversationally tiresome, because when he arrives in Paris and recovers more exact notions of reality, he proceeds to marvel at the calmness of the population, the activity of business of all kinds, and the prosperity of the city in general. Furthermore, the foreign critics of French affairs rarely make allowance for the difference between the dia- pason of their own country and that of Paris, where — in political controversy, for instance — to call an adversary an " assassin " is a comparatively innocent pleasantry, while in literary controversy such terms of abuse as " scoundrel " and " idiot " are the usual accompaniment of the preliminary amenities which lead up to a bloodless duel. Even in society the concert-pitch of conversation is remarkably high, and absent friends are torn to pieces PROLETARIAN PARIS 1 65 with a violence of language that might terrify foreigners accustomed to a lower key. In reality, all these things are manifestations of the democratic spirit. The Pari- sians are so democratic that Hottentot ladies and de- throned kings can circulate freely in the streets without attracting the slightest attention. Even Oscar Wilde, in the palmy days of his vestimentary eccentricity, passed unnoticed in the streets of Paris. In proletarian and in elegant Paris alike there is complete liberty of loco- motion ; the city belongs to the citizens, and its beau- ties and conveniences are for the common joy of rich and poor. We are, therefore, free to wander, and to observe the prodigious contrasts of the monster. We are at the entrance of the bridge over the Seine, close by Notre Dame. In the background are the im- mense buildings of the Hotel Dieu, the great hospital, and the tall roofs of the barracks where soldiers and policemen are lodged by the thousand. In the middle distance, behind a curtain of trees and shrubs, stands the colossal statue of Charlemagne, Carolus Magnus, the great Emperor of the Franks, the man of iron. To the right is the storied fa9ade of Notre Dame. In the foreground are Bijou and the Pere La Gloire, rag-pick- ers — chiffomiiers or biffins, as they call themselves. The wealth of Paris is so boundless that the rubbish and refuse of the city is worth millions. There are some fifty thousand persons who earn a living by pick- ing up what others throw away. More than twenty thousand women and children exist by sifting and sort- ing the gatherings of the pickers, who collect every day in the year about 1 200 tons of merchandise, which they sell to the wholesale rag-dealers for some 70,000 francs. At night you see men with baskets strapped on their backs, a lantern in one hand, and in the other a stick with an iron hook on the end. They walk rapidly along. 1 66 THE PRAISE OF PARIS their eyes fixed on the ground, over which the lantern flings a sheet of Hght, and whatever they find in the way of paper, rags, bones, grease, metal, etc., they stow away in their baskets. In the morning in front of each house you see men, women, and children sifting the dust-bins before they are emptied into the scavengers' carts. At various hours of the day you see isolated rag- pickers, who seem to work with less method than the others, and with a more independent air. The night pickers are generally novices, men who, having been throwm out of work, have been obliged to hunt for their living like the wild beasts. The morning pickers are experienced and regular workers who pay for the priv- ilege of siftinor the dust -bins of a certain number of houses, and of trading with the results. The rest, the majority, are the cottreurs, the runners, who exercise their profession freely, and without control, working when they please and loafing when they please. They are the philosophers and adventurers of the profession, and their chief object is to enjoy life, and meditate upon its problems. Such men are Bijou and the Pere La Gloire. The latter works with considerable regularity and lives in the Ouartier Mouffetard with a vast colony of rag- pickers, who are for the most part the employes as well as the tenants of a master rag-picker. Pere La Gloire 's specialty, when he works, is paper and rags. Bijou, on the other hand, considers these articles too cumbersome, and prefers to collect cigar stumps and meo-ots, or fras^ments of cisfarettes, for which there is a regular market in the poor quarters of the capital. As we see him with his cap pulled down over his eyes he has just come up-stairs from a quiet corner of the quay, where he has been sorting his harvest of inegots, sepa- rating the various qualities and preparing his wares for BIJOU AND THE P£RE LA GLOIRE PROLETARIAN PARIS 1 69 sale to the special dealers. His pockets are full of tobacco, and his clothes emit a smell of stale smoke, mingled with various perfumes of unwashedness and misery. Nevertheless, his manners are those of a free and independent citizen ; he has stopped to talk politics with Pere La Gloire ; his dominant idea is liberty. Bijou esteems his own liberty so dearly that he has never consented to compromise it even so far as to have a domicile of any kind. In summer he sleeps on the benches of the public promenade or under the bridges of the Seine. In winter he makes the round of the night refuges, staying in each one the maximum of time permitted by the rules and then passing to an- other one. Both Bijou and Pere La Gloire drink the most deleterious and scarifying alcohol that was ever distilled; they live in filth, and often in the deepest misery, but they enjoy the priceless privilege of liberty, and, altogether, their existence is not without a certain prestige. They play a role in the life of Paris, and the nature of their occupation reveals to them the disen- chantment of Parisian existence — the crumpled news- paper, the broken bust, the faded bouquet — in contrast with the splendor of wealth, the beauty of youth, and the fascination of fame, which they are able to contem- plate as well as those whom fortune has favored more highly, for Bijou picks up cigar stumps under the tables of the Cafe de la Paix, and Pere La Gloire sifts the dust-bin of the Baron de Rothschild. 170 THE PRAISE OF PARIS II Of misery in Paris there is no lack, but it is not ob- trusive as in certain cities like London, for instance. In the districts of Crenelle, Montparnasse, Le Maine, Montrouge, Plaisance, Gentilly, Maison Blanche, La Glaciere, the struggle for life is hard indeed, and the material conditions in which the working-people live are very wretched. The promiscuity of the tenement- houses is too horrible to be described. In the district of the Gobelins, the Boulevard Arago, the banks of the Bievre and the Rue Mouffetard, side by side with the laborious population employed in the tanneries, we find great colonies of Bohemians, declasses, and people who have missed fortune's coach and are tired of life. In this part of the city live many rag-pickers, swarms of Italians who make plaster casts and serve as models for artists, a certain number of Nihilist refugees and Rus- sian and Wallachian students. The aspect of poor Paris on the left bank of the Seine is strangely dis- heartened, unstrung, full of silence and despair. On the right bank of the Seine the citadel of labor and poverty seems, on the contrary, full of life and energy. Charonne, Menilmontant, Belleville, La Vil- lette. La Chapelle, Clignancourt, Montmartre, Les Epi- nettes, BatignoUes — each district formerly an indepen- dent village with its central street — have become amal- gamated into one vast centre of population traversed by endless streets and broad avenues, like the Rue des Pyrenees, Rue de Crimee, Rue Ordener, Rue Curial, Rue Marcadet, Rue de Belleville, Rue Oberkampf, Chaussee Clignancourt, Avenue de la Republique, Bou- BOULEVARD ARAGO. PROLETARIAN PARIS 1 73 levard de la Chapelle, Boulevard de Belleville, etc. In these quarters are concentrated two- thirds of the pop- ulation of Paris. On these heights, that form as it were a crown above rich Paris, some of the houses contain as many as two hundred inmates, and the streets are so crowded that you cannot see the pave- ment except at night. Here are the reservoirs of poverty and of energy that burst and flood Paris in days of revolution; here are the inexhaustible reserves of cheap labor that make the wealth of manufacturing Paris. What swarms of people ! What a fermentation of various activity ! What a perpetual straining and strug- gling! And yet with all that there is no obvious sad- ness and very little obtrusive discontent. On the con- trary, the people are gay and much given to witticisms and levity ; they enjoy the bustle and animation of their surroundings, and they have only to walk a few yards in any direction to find those broad, shady avenues and those fine urban parks which the traditions of Hauss- mann have extended even to the poorest quarters of the city. Witness the parks of the Buttes Chaumont and Montsouris, the tree- planted squares, the innumerable gardens and lungs that have been reserved in the most thickly populated districts, to say nothing of the green mounds of the fortifications where the proletarian youths and maidens love to rusticate and record in mural inscriptions their exploits and their plighted troth. "" Bebete dit pas de chance de Clichy'''' records his visit to the Porte de Romainville at such and such a date, while at the same time his friend, ''La Vache To- paze donne le bonjour aux camarades,''' and in deeply in- cised letters on the wall of a miserable shed a simple maid inscribes her eternal love for Victor : " Cai^oline aime Totor son homme pour la vicT 174 THE PRAISE OF PARIS / Nowadays the ebullient populations of Montmartre and Belleville, the electors of Gambetta, seem to take less interest in politics than formerly ; the organization of the working-men's par- ty, of the anarchists and of the revolutionary clubs has been broken up by in- ternal divisions. The peo- ple, too, are rather tired of sweeping claims and uni- versally destructive pro- grammes, having learned from experience that there is little to be gained by howling with the dema- gogues. Now and then you hear of some meeting where the young local poli- ticians make wild speech- es, and where some dream- er possessed by a fixed idea stands on his feet, unrolls his scrap of manu- script, and with the vio- lence of hallucination ex- presses his imperious desire that all children should become acquainted with the code of the laws of the land, " Je veux que les enfants apprennent le code." But the great agitators, the survivors of the Commune, the evil geniuses who led the mob during the disasters of 1 87 1, the theorists and vieilles barbes of the Empire — what has become of them? Most of them have dis- appeared or retired from active service. The famous citizen Jules Allix, for instance, who pointed the can- non from Belleville in 187 1, is now a peaceful and -^vs^-. ^^5 PROLETARIAN PARIS 1 75 somewhat crazy old gentleman who teaches little girls to read in the school of Mile. Barberousse, Allix is quite a historical character according to his own account, and an excellent example of the queer semi- intellectual and ill -balanced fanatics who have caused so much harm to France with their vain theories and their sinister doings. This thin, waxen - faced, gray- bearded old man with drooping eyelids and eager gray eyes that acquire a strange visual obliquity when he be- gins to talk about his exploits and his aspirations, is a victim of the pride of science, and an example of how dangerous a thing is a little learning. In 1840, at the age of twenty-two, he came to Paris as a lawyer's clerk, and instead of attending to his business he invented a system of teaching people to read in fifteen hours — a system so marvellous that the Pope wished Allix to go to Rome and explain it, and made all sorts of advances to him. But Allix refused bluntly, being convinced that the Jesuits were behind the Pope. " The Jesuits," he will tell you, "wished to get hold of me. Thanks to my method of teaching reading I was a force. They were afraid of that force, and wished to monopolize it in order to be masters of the world." In 1848 Allix entered the field of militant politics with Victor Considerant and the Phalansterians. After the Coup d'etat of 185 1, seeing many friends in exile, he began to conspire against the Empire. " I was the ori- gin of the affair of the Hippodrome," he goes on to say. " I was the origin of the affair of the Opera Comique, which very nearly succeeded, and caused me to be banished for eight years, which I spent in Brussels and Jersey. Then I came back to Paris and began to or- ganize the Commune. It was I who found the formula. 'What! have they elaborated a formula of government ?' exclaimed Thiers with surprise. Thiers ! I know not wh}"^ I mention him, for he was a scoundrel. Yes, mon- sieur, we had our formula of government, and, if it had not been for the war, we should have succeeded. After 187 1 I was condemned to ten years' imprisonment in a fortified place, ttiie enceinte fortijiee, and as Paris is a fortified place I thought I might as well remain there. PROLETARIAN PARIS 1 77 This plan I carried out and remained in hiding, first of all in the Rue de Turenne and then at Neuilly, where I stayed for six years in the same room, not daring to show myself even at the window, for the janitor, of course, did not know that I was in the house. During these six years I evolved my plan for the canalization of the Seine, about which I will give you my pamphlets, mon sieur." And Citizen Jules Allix opens his voluminous port- folio, and from bundles of papers he extracts " Plan cinquante et unieme A. Canalization de la Seine. Projet brevete du citoyen Jules Allix," and shows us his patented scheme, and the tracing of his canal, which is much shorter than that proposed by others who wish to make Paris a seaport. In Allix's plan, it is true, we have some terribly costly tunnels to pierce. " Yes, monsieur, they will cost fifteen millions," he replies to our objection, " but they will produce fifty millions by the sale of the stone and other materials that we shall extract." And so Citizen Jules Allix, the lucid lunatic, who has just told us how he spurned the offers of the Jesuits and refused the golden offers of fortune not once, but ten times, mounts his last hobby- horse and starts once more the dance of millions. However, it is easy to bring the old man back to no- bler themes. The mention of the working-men's party or of the revolutionary idea is sufficient to evoke new evidences of his pride and folly. " I did this. I did that," he goes on, " I wrote this. Victor Hugo said to me: 'Citizen Jules Allix, I could have wished to have written that myself.' As for myself," continues the vague apostle of mischief, " I have no pride. I have neither pride nor modesty. I am speaking to you as a public man, but that is only one of the phases of my activity. I am at once doctor, philosopher, lawyer, and 178 THE PRAISE OF PARIS Inventor. I am familiar with science, mysticism, asceticism, magnetism. I know life and death ; the past, the present, and the future. I am a revolution- ist and a benefactor of human- ity, and vice-president of the Women's League." Yes, and with all these quali- ties and all these titles to glory, Citizen Jules Allix is an usher at $20 a month in Mile. Barbe- rousse's school for little girls near the Hotel de Ville, and he is much respected in the neigh- borhood by the humble parents whose daughters he teaches to read by the very excellent meth= od which the Jesuits wished to monopolize. So Mile. Barbe- rousse's little school prospers in a modest way, and towards noon the man who has refused millions, and been the cause of many of the horrors and disasters of the Commune, may be seen trotting along the street carrying a milk-can and two plates of meat — his own dinner and that of Mile. Barberousse — which he has bought at a cheap cook-shop at the corner of the street. PROLETARIAN PARIS 179 III In the morning and in the evening the animation in the great faubourgs of Paris and in the streets that de- scend from the heights towards the city is most curi- ous. In the morning the populace — men and women, girls and boys — swarms down to conquer Paris and to earn its bread ; in the evening it turns its back upon Paris and regains the heights. Each movement pro- duces a thronging of human forms that passes all de- scription. In a street like the Rue Oberkampf, for in- stance, one may see this swarm of human bees in all the intensity and fulness of its life and variety. The street is a resume of popular Paris, with its houses like pigeon-cotes, each family narrowly lodged in an exigu- ous box, and its shops where everything is neatly dis- played according to the traditions, the shelled pease on a black cloth which sets off the freshness of their grreen color, the meat with artistic arabesques cut in the fat, the shoes in goodly order, and the cheap newspapers, the songs and ballads, strung up daintily in symmetrical rows. On the fa9ades are innumerable signs, and on the door-posts are plates above plates indicating the whereabouts in the house of this and that modest man- ufacturer who lives, labors, and raises a family in a room no bigger than a horse-box. How nicely everything is ticketed and arranged ! In art, in Hterature, in life and its organization, the French have a remarkable daintiness and completeness. Each man to his trade, and each thing in its place, seems to be their motto, and let it be at once evident what is each man's trade, and what the place of each thing. See l8o THE PRAISE OF PARIS the omnibus as it comes down the street; its model has been carefully studied and approved ne variettir by the Prefecture of Police ; the coachman wears a hat and jacket of one shape, and the conductor a cap and jacket of another shape, while at the stations the controllers wear yet a third variety of kepi and coat; and the re- sult is a certain reposeful neatness and a grateful ab- sence of surprises. The movements of this omnibus and the action of the driver and the conductor in all circumstances have been foreseen and set forth in mi- nute rules and regulations. There is no country in the world where there are more rules and regulations than in France. The French like to be regulated, and in spite of all the vain talk of recent years about liberty and equality the latter is the aim of none. Look at the dress of the French. The ideal seems to be a uni- form of some kind that will distinguish one man from another. The deputies and journalists carry volumi- nous portfolios under their arms ; the poets, who com- mand untamable flocks of unforeseen images and count- less throngs of striking epithets, affect long hair, strange hats, and general singularity of dress ; the employes of the banks and financial establishments wear distinctive liveries ; the working-men all have some peculiarity of costume which indicates at once their occupation. The people are not the slaves of fashion like the upper and middle classes ; they devise their costume according to their own taste and with a view to conveniency. The carpenter wears a loose blouse, brown or blue velvet trousers, tight round the ankles, very large around the thighs, and girt with a splendid scarlet sash. The lock- smith wears a short, light blue jacket, as smartly fitted as that of a Spanish bull-fighter, and across his shoulder is slung by a broad strap the box of tools. The butcher wears a white apron, a violet or pale rose shirt that PROLETARIAN PARIS l8l leaves the arms bare, and a trousseau of knives hanging at his girdle. Then there are the market porters with immense white felt hats, the coal-dealers from Auvergne with their green velvet trousers, the furniture-makers with black aprons, the sewer men, the chimney-sweeps, the coal-heavers, the masons, the metal-workers, the grocers — all wearing a special dress, or some detail of dress that make them immediately recognizable. In vain the Belle Jardiniere and a dozen other vast stores offer ready-made clothes for the million — jackets cut by machinery, suits of aggravating uniformity. The Parisian working - man will only wear such clothes on great occasions, like a funeral or a marriage, or on Sun- days when he tries to ape the middle classes. A marriage is always a great event in popular Paris, and whether it be that of a working-man, or a shop- keeper, or of a well-to-do manufacturer who gives a handsome dowry to his daughter, it attracts the atten- tion of the whole quarter. There is a crowd round the door of the house to see the bride enter the coach, much embarrassed by her rustling robe, her white veil, and her bouquet of symbolic orange blossoms. There is a crowd at the town-hall and the church ; there is a crowd to see the carriages drive up to the door of the restaurant; and, indeed, from the time the bridal party starts until the hour when discreet night veils the young couple from view, the wedding and the wedding guests {la noce et les gens de la noce) are considered a feature of the spectacle of the street, which everybody has a right to look at and comment upon. In order to get duly married in popular Paris, there are three formalities generally considered as absolutely indispensable : going to the town-hall or mairie for the civil marriage ; going to church for the religious mar- riage ; and going to the Bois. In closed carriages or 1'2* l82 THE PRAISE OF PARIS in open landaus, in omnibuses or chars-a-bancs drawn by three or four horses, according as the wedding is more or less distinguished, the party rides out to the Bois de Boulogne, makes the tour of the lakes, and halts at the Cafe de la Cascade, or at the cheaper cafes out- side the gates at Suresnes. The programme is invari- able. While the coachmen take a drink the cortes^e visits the cascade, that little artificial Switzerland which the genius of M. Alphand has concentrated in a space of two hundred square yards. The bride, the bride- groom, the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, the parents, and the guests climb up the steps and pass along the gallery, one side of which is formed by the sheet of water of the cascade, a liquid crystal curtain through which is seen the magnificent panorama of the plain of Longchamps and the soft hills of Suresnes and St. Cloud. Then follows farther driving in the fine avenues of the Bois, the Avenue du Champs -Elysees, and the Boulevards, and so to the various restaurants of differ- ent grades that make a specialty of wedding feasts — - Gillet, Lemardelay, Vefour, or the more modest restau- rants of the environs and of the faubourgs. The table has a joyous aspect in all these establishments ; it is laid with art, and served with apparent abundance, what- ever the price may be ; and the wedding guests are joy- ous and noisy until order is called for the speeches and songs. In a popular Parisian wedding the bride has to sing her little song like the rest. The poet of the family recites some verses. Everybody has something to say, to sing, or to do, insomuch that a wedding dinner is often merely a pretext for eloquence and amateur histrionic talent. Are not the Gauls essentially artists and orators, as Julius Caesar remarked centuries ago } The great day for popular weddings in Paris is Saturday. On that day the student of character, physi- PROLETARIAN PARIS 1 85 ognomy, gesture, and expression, has only to wander about the main thoroughfares of the capital and go and sit at the cafes of Suresnes or at the Cafe de la Cas- cade, in order to see a more varied and amusing collec- tion of human creatures in their best clothes than can be seen anywhere else in the world. In these wedding corteges, by some happy hazard, the most intensely char- acteristic types of Paris seem to have been assembled expressly for the pleasure of the observer and of the artist ; witness the bride and bridegroom, the father and the mother, and the cynically jocose coachman depicted in our illustration. In the popular quarters of Paris the cafe concert is the favorite place of amusement. Indeed, if Montes- quieu's intelligent Persian were to return to modern Paris, he would doubtless observe that the cafe concert has become the chief distraction of the Parisians both of the lower and of the middle classes, to the detriment both of the dramatic and the lyric stage, and in proof of this statement he would cite the multipHcity and prosperity of these establishments. And yet, generally speaking, it would be difTficult to conceive anything more inept and stupid than a French cafe concert or music-hall. Why people go to them I cannot explain, unless it be because some mysterious destiny forces mankind in general to seek distraction perpetually, and prompts the Frenchman in particular to escape from the ennui of his own fireside in a lodging that is rarely adequate. And so the music-halls are always crowded. The shopkeepers of the neighborhood, their wives and their daughters, their cook -maids and their clerks, the working-men, the washer-women, the girls who toil all day in manufactories, all patronize the cafes concerts steadily night after night. In serried ranks they sit, packed literally so closely that they cannot move their l86 , THE PRAISE OF PARIS legs six inches in any direction. In front of the seats is a narrow ledge on which is placed the coiisoinmation of each visitor — cherries preserved in eau-de-vie, coffee, ' beer, peppermint or red-currant syrup. With their hats on or off as they please, the men smoke at their ease and applaud uproariously. As the evening advances the atmosphere of the hall becomes more and more hot and foul, the audience more and more swarming and more and more perspiring; the flaming gas-jets are gradually veiled in a thick blue cloud of tobacco-smoke ; while on the stage the lean and hoarse-voiced cantatrice with awkward, angular gestures, screams, over the bald heads of the musicians in the orchestra, the senseless refrain of some popular absurdity or the commonplace insipidities of a sentimental romance. IV The life of Paris is so inexhaustible a theme that one might write about it from one year's end to another, as the Parisians themselves do in their newspapers and books. The question is what to describe and what to neglect. Everything is interesting ; every scene of the streets suggests a commentary ; everybody one sees in- vites study and analysis, whether humorous or serious. Perhaps, however, popular Paris is least known to the foreigner, and therefore we may do well to pay a visit to one of those modest households of the manufactur- ing quarters to which we have already briefly referred, choosins: one of the most comfortable rather than of the most miserable. In the Rue Vieille du Temple, the centre of the manu- facture of those miscellaneous objects known as articles PROLETARIAN PARIS 189 de Paris, at the corner of the Rue Barbette, is a gray old house built in the seventeenth century. At the end of a dark passage is a small court-yard, where the janitor and his wife dwell in a dismal den, over the door of which is written the traditional inscription " Parlez au Concierge." We mount an old-fashioned staircase and on the fifth flat, on a door framed in a very thick wall, we read these words painted in white on a small black plate : A. Salomon, Fabrique de patins a roulettes et Jouets. Old M. Salomon — he is seventy- three years of age — opens the door, all smiles, and introduces us into his manufactory of roller-skates and toys. We pass through the dining-room, which is comfortably furnished. On the wall is a crayon portrait of M. Salomon's mother, who won a Monthyon prize for virtue in her day and died at the age of 105, a portrait of M. Salomon him- self, and a colored photograph of Mile. Salomon in the costume of a ballet-dancer. The buffet and the table are covered with caskets in the form of Swiss chalets, which open and reveal queer little dolls' drawing-rooms, furnished with toy chairs, and sofas upholstered in blue, rose, and tinsel, with mirrors on the walls and all the accessories of elegance and comfort. Other chalets- caskets are surrounded by gardens. These are speci- mens of the productions of the establishment, which has a specialite de chalets-coffrets. We lift up a curtain and enter the workshop, wdiich is also the bedroom. It is a low garret with a window occupying one entire side. In one corner is a bed ; in another corner a wash-stand ; in the centre a little cast- iron stove that serves both for heatino- and for cooking: 190 THE PRAISE OF PARIS purposes; and the rest of the room is taken up by a pedal lathe and work-tables, while the walls are covered with tools, shelves, and unmounted pieces of toys and cha- lets already sawn into shape. Madame Salomon sits at a table varnishing a chalet-casket ; old Salomon resumes his work of mounting roller-skates; by the side of the bed, which is strewn with costumes, bandboxes, and bright-colored muslin. Mile. Rachel, or Chechel, as she is familiarly called, is busy disentangling a bundle of ribbons and tinsel braid. Chechel is a woman of about thirty, a danseuse by profession. While Paul Renouard makes his drawing of this curious and touching interior, we gossip hour after hour about all sorts of things. We discuss horticult- ure apropos of the nasturtiums and sweet-peas that are planted in pots on the window-sill, together with a box of barley that is grown for the cat's benefit. For more than a year the cat has been sick. " Inflammation of the stomach, monsieur," observes Madame Salomon, kissing the cat's face ecstatically. •' Poor pussy cannot digest," " Is there no remedy, madame ?" " No, monsieur; every morning we give him two eggs and some milk, but he is beyond hope ; we shall lose him soon." " How old is he ?" " Only eight years, Alas ! he will die young, but he will have had a pleasant life as long as it lasted, and been a fine tomcat, a fine, dear, darling tomcat. It will be a cruel blow to us to lose him!" And Madame Sa- lomon once more kisses the poor lean cat, and Chechel joins in the chorus of lamentations, and the poor lean cat receives more ecstatic caresses. In order to interrupt the current of dismal thoughts produced by the incident of the cat's malady, I draw PROLETARIAN PARIS 191 out old Salomon, who in his day was a sort of Hanlon- Lee, a circus tumbler and a dancer, and who like all artistes is gifted with a considerable dose of vanity. He tells us about his debut at Paris at the old Cirque, and how one day that he wore a very pretty Bohemian cos- tume, he noticed in the greenroom during the entractes a gentleman holding a sheet of paper at which every- body was looking. He approached and recognized his own portrait. The gentleman asked him if he would like to have it, and handed it to him after sisfninor it with the initials P. D. " It was Paul Delaroche, mon- sieur," adds old Salomon with pride, as he concludes his story. " But I have the portrait no longer. Some- body took it." " You let some minx carry it off," breaks in Madame Salomon. " Ah ! AnaTs, I was young then." " And good-looking," responds Anais. " As nature made me." " Did you ever know Meyerbeer T' I ask. " No, monsieur, Meyerbeer was before my time. And then, when one is young one does not pay attention. I knew Perrot and Carlotta Grisi. Perrot earned a sfreat deal of money. He had 21,000 francs a year at the Opera. * He asked for an increase, which was refused, and then he made a tour in Germany and came back to Paris with 200,000 florins, monsieur — 200,000 florins ! I knew Perrot very well. He was the last of the great dancers. Nowadays there are no male dancers left. There are acrobats, men with strong legs ; whereas the dancer ought not to make a display of his strength, but rather of his grace ; on the stage he ought not to look like a man, but like something vapory." ''Que vouiez-vous, Monsieur Salomon?" I said, "the old and good traditions are no longer observed." 192 THE PRAISE OF PARIS " No, monsieur, modern dancing has been ruined by the Italian system. The pupils are allowed to dance at liberty too soon. A dancer ought to work at least two years at the bar, making all the movements and gaining perfect elasticity before he dances at liberty. With the Italian system you get excellent sujets who execute all the steps well, but who go no further, and who never become artists. Do you understand me, monsieur? You have doubtless some notions about the art of dancing." I assure M. Salomon that I have some vague ideas about choregraphy, sufficient to enable me to follow his technical explanations, and thereupon we discuss some of the leading artists of the day — Leontine Beaugrand, Sangalli, Zucchi, Carmencita, Mile. Theodore, and all the famous ladies of the Opera, on each of whom old Salo- mon, Anais, and Chechel have their say. Chechel, who has just returned from a tour in the provinces, where she has been dancing at Lille and at the Grand Theatre at Valenciennes, is as ardent as her old father in de- fending the classical dance. Meanwhile she goes on unravelling the pretty confusion that she has on her knees, and winds up each length of ribbon and of tinsel that can be used again. Chechel, who figures on play-bills as " Mile. Rachel Mistral, premiere danseuse," is as interesting a charac- ter as her old father. She is an impressario on a small scale, and provides ballets for the provincial theatres, together with dancers, costumes, music, and all. Lately, she tells us, she mounted ten ballets in one month. "Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "And how do you manage it, mademoiselle 1 To begin at the beginning, how do you start T " I start with a musician, monsieur. I say to him, ' Play me this and play me that,' and when he plays a PROLETARIAN PARIS 1 95 few measures that please me I say, ' Note that, and note that,' and so I combine a Httle score with adagios, pizzicatos, variations, and the rest. Then I go to an agency and engage two second dancers and eight coryphees, and thus form my company with myself as premiere and maitresse de ballet. Then we rehearse, and I teach the women their variations and get their costumes ready, and then we go wherever I have an engagement." " You make your costumes yourself ?" " Yes, monsieur ; for the provinces it would be im- possible otherwise. I could not afford to buy the cos- tumes. I provide everything at so much a week. . . . No. It is not an easy life. Things do not always go on smoothly. And the women I have to take with me ! Gracious heavens ! monsieur, you cannot imagine what trouble I have sometimes ;" and turning to her moth- er, who has finished her chalet-coffret, and is now busy making artificial flowers, Chechel continues : " You re- member, mama, la Bugeaud, that pretty little girl that was so beautifully made and so innocent-looking '^. Al- coholic, mama, morphinomaniac, and full of vices that I cannot name." Thereupon Mile. Rachel entered into minute de- tails about this girl drinking a bottle of gin a day, this one being a thief, and another one scandalizing every- body by her amorous caprices. Then she described her own life in the provinces ; the humble furnished lodg- ings where she cooks her own food on a portable petro- leum stove; the desertion of the dancers whom she has to replace by her own efforts, the cold theatres, the coughs and bronchitis, the managers who fail and do not pay — all the thousand and one woes and disappoint- ments of the lower walks of the theatrical profession, where a prodigious sum of efforts is necessary in order 196 THE PRAISE OF PARIS to earn a ridiculously small profit. All this Rachel re- lates gayly, as she unravels her ribbons. "And with all that," adds Madame Salomon, "it is not like the Opera, where there are as many off nights as working nights." " No," says Rachel, "we have to dance every night, and every night a different ballet. In the provinces the public at the theatre is the same every night, so that we are obliged to vary. To me it is all one, but the others, you know, they get mixed up sometimes, and cannot remember their variations, and then, while I am dancing, I have to prompt them, ' Come on ; it is the coda.' The coda, you know, is the end." " You must be worn out after a month or two of work like that — a fresh ballet every night, rehearsals in the afternoon, performance in the evening, to say noth- ing of looking after your women and their costumes." " Yes, monsieur, it is hard work, but I am accustomed to it. I eat well. Mama has taught me to like good food. I do not drink as much as one bottle of wine in a whole month, and never a spot of liqueur of any kind. My feet, too, are always in good order. My forte is pointes. My great toe nail is double the natural thick- ness, and I never have to cut it. And mama has taught me a dodge for the feet, nest-ce pas mama /" " Oui, ma cocotte',' replies the mother, without looking up from the black daisies that she is making. " An ex- cellent system, monsieur. It is a state secret ; do not reveal it. I rub her feet with horse -fat melted in a bain-marie. I rub her spinal column with horse-fat, too, and then, proot .... prrroot .... she jumps as high as the ceiling." "Ah, monsieur!" exclaims old Salomon, with enthu- siasm, ''ma fille cest du feu, quand elle ne dans e pas elle est malade " (when she does not dance she is sick). PROLETARIAN PARIS 1 97 Meanwhile, Madame Salomon, with her spectacles on, because she is makinsf mournins^ flowers — oh ! other- wise she would need no spectacles, although she is seventy years of age ; but the black is difficult to see — Madame Salomon continues to make black daisies, cut- ting the pompons with scissors, dipping the top into a gallipot of black gum, and then into a box containing glistening scales of black gelatine to make the grain of the heart of the flower. " How busy you seem, Madame Salomon," I say. " I must make haste. I have to finish the gross by to-morrow night. It is the first time I have made mourn- ing flowers." " Did you make those roses, too ?" I asked, pointing to some artificial roses stuck in a potato on a stand beside her, " Yes, but they are very ordinary. I know all the kinds of roses — Marechal Niel, Souvenir de la Mal- maison, Roses The ; any variety you like to name I can make. I have a brevet from the ex-Queen of Spain, but we are none the richer for that. It was during the Em- pire. I had an establishment of my own then, whereas now I have to work for others." " And the daisies .f*" " They are mourning flowers for Italy ; here are some gray half-mourning flowers for Belgium ; the death of Prince Baudouin has made the business very lively this winter. Ah ! if the Queen of England would only die, what a demand there would be for mourning flowers ! I could not make enouQ^h." In the mental excitement produced by this thought the old lady sneezes. " God bless you, meimre''' says Rachel. " Oui, fna cocotte, merci''' replies Madame Salomon, as she continues her little story. 198 THE PRAISE OF PARIS . " I make these daisies for three francs a gross. A regular fleuriste would make a gross in a single day. I take two days, working about six hours each day, be- cause I have to do the cooking for Bibi (her husband) and Chechel — so I earn only five sous an hour. These flowers, monsieur, are worth at the trade price about three sous each. The cost of the material, of course, has to be calculated. I do not furnish the material. All that is bought wholesale. The petals are cut out and stamped by machinery ; the gelatine for the grain is made by one man ; the aniline colors for dyeing, the wire stalks, the fine nansouk, the wire, all the raw ma- terial costs money." A smothered cry from the lean cat suddenly dis- tracted our attention. " Pauvre moumoutte /" murmurs Madame Salomon, " he is sick ; he took some rhubarb this morning." Rachel takes the cat in her arms and kisses him, calling him " my son," " my brother," " my darling," and many other tender names. Gradually the conversation wanders back to dancing, to the travels of old Salomon in Havana, his adventures in a shipwreck, his arrival in Europe penniless, and then by some strange caprice we come to discuss the quality of the beefsteak which the Salomon family had eaten for breakfast, and so talk about the sin of gluttony, against which the old mother protests. " Where," she asks — " where is the sin in enjoying the good things of the earth ? God is Nature. Nat- ure produces good things, and it is natural for us to enjoy them. There is no sin in good eating." " The sin is in excess," says old Salomon. " I see no harm in enjoying life," continues the mother. " I do not believe in Nature, or instinct, or in anything else." PROLETARIAN PARIS I99 " Ah ! I believe, mama," bursts out Mile. Rachel, with enthusiasm, " I believe. I say my little prayer every night before I go to sleep. Je 7te la rate jamais. It would bring me bad luck to miss my prayers." " Oh ! Rachel is full of superstition, monsieur," the mother explains. " I do not know where she gets her ideas from. This morning I happened to put a pair of boots on a table. ' Do not do that,' said Rachel ; ' it means a quarrel.' Yesterday when she came back from Valenciennes she brought me as a present an umbrella. I was going to open it to see. ' Ah ! mama,' she cried, with horror, ' do not open it in the house, and papa sick, too. It means death to open an umbrella in a room.' I do not know where she learns such nonsense." Toys, artificial flowers, roller-skates, how many indus- tries find shelter beneath this humble roof '^. Old Salo- mon manufactures roller-skates, but besides that he is curator of the skates at the Opera, and professor of skating at the Opera. It is he, too, who paints the char- acter heads at the Opera. Unfortunately, there is only one piece in which M. Salomon's services are needed — namely, Le Propliete, where there is a skating scene in the ballet. " Whenever Le Propliete is produced," Madame Salo- mon explains, "papa receives twenty-five francs for re- pairing the skates." " And a franc and a half fixed payment for attend- ance," adds the old man. " The repairs," explains the old lady, " cost always five or six francs, and the rest, fourteen or fifteen francs, is for us. Fifteen francs are fifteen francs. We are not rich." " And the character heads ?" "That, monsieur, is an art," begins old Salomon. " You need sentiment and experience. The epiderm must be 200 THE PRAISE OF PARIS seen through the color. In the opera of Le Mage I have twenty-four heads to paint in seventeen minutes." '' Diable ! you have to look sharp, eh.f' And do you give skating lessons at the Opera all the time V " I give a lesson once a week, monsieur. The ad- ministration does not exact many lessons. All that is required is that whenever Le PropJiete is played I should have sixty-eight good skaters ready, and know- ing the figures of the ballet. Ah ! when they do play Le Prophele I have my hands full. In the sixty-eight pairs of skates that are used I have no less than 4000 screws to look after, monsieur, 4000 screws ! Quelle re- sponsadilite, monsieur^ quelle responsabilite /" " And the toys. Monsieur Salomon .?" " Oh, that is a trade I never learnt. I began en ama- teur; and although I have never given any information to anybody, my name is in the trade directory." " We must remember, too, that the wholesale dealers have helped us a good deal," remarks Madame Salomon. " The busy season is from July to November. Papa puts the toys together; I varnish them. I have al- ways been complimented on my varnishing." And so Abraham and Ana'is and their daughter Rachel live happily and laboriously, earning little, but content with little, the old couple, like Philemon and Baucis, never addressing one another without some term of endearment, the middle-aged daughter gay, laborious, and happy like her parents, earning her living and help- ing her mama and her pep^re ckeri when the times are hard, as they must be sometimes ; for Le Propliete has not been played at the Opera for two years, foreign courts do not go into mourning every winter, and there are seasons when the wholesale dealers do not buy chalets-caskets by the gross. However, as conservateur PROLETARIAN PARIS 20I des patins.professeur de patinage, and painter of charac- ter-heads at the Opera, old Salomon is entitled to draw an annual salary of some $80, and to put on his cards, just like Mile. Mauri or Mme. Krauss : A. Salomon de rOpera In the spectacle of Parisian life this slender and agile old man has his role to play, and he is happy in play- mg it. THE COMEDIE-FRANCAISE THE Comedie-Frangaise is not only a national mon- ument, but a historical monument most intimate- ly connected with the history of French literature. It has been in existence more than two centuries. It was one of the glories of France under Louis XIV.; it re- mains one of the glories of France under the third re- public, and, by the admission of all, the first theatre in the world Time never respects that which has been created without its aid, it has been said, and so, like all that is durable, the Comedie-Fran9aise is the work of time. Its origin dates back to the reign of Henri IV., when some comedians came and established themselves near the Hotel Saint-Paul, and founded the Theatre du Marais. A few years later other comedians built a new theatre, which Corneille and Rotrou soon rendered illus- trious ; this was the theatre of the Hotel de Boursrosfne. Next we find the theatres of the Petit Bourbon and the Palais Royal, where Moliere's pieces were first played, and Racine's maiden piece, La Thebdide. In 1673 Mo- liere died; his company divided; and up to 1680 we find three theatres in Paris — the theatre of the Marais, the company of the Hotel de Bourgogne, and the com- pany of the Theatre Guenegaud. In 1680 Louis XIV. ordered the amalgamation of the two principal com- panies, under the title of Comedie-Frangaise, and created 206 THE PRAISE OF PARIS a monopoly in favor of this new theatre, " in order to render the representations of the comedians more per- fect," The foundation of the Comedie-Fran9aise forms part of the vast scheme of centraHzation which Louis XIV. realized during his long reign. His Majesty " Le Roi Soleil " organized literature and the arts, and made Versailles the capital of all the artistic manifestations whose splendor he sought to legitimate and codify by associating them, with grand institutions, the function of which was to carry everything to its highest degree of perfection. The Academy, the Opera, and the Come- die-Fran9aise were organized by Louis XIV. with very high aims, and not merely with a view to the distraction of himself and of his courtiers. The theatre was largely founded, as the old historian Chapuzeau says of the Academy, to spread the influence of the King in spread- ing the French language, " for a prince nowadays with the French tongue alone, which has spread everywhere, has the same advantages that Mithridates had with twenty-two." In the precious archives of the Comedie-Fran9aise, in the Register of Lagrange, the friend and fellow-actor of Moliere, is preserved the lettre de cachet, dated Oc- tober 2 1, 1680, by which Louis XIV. constituted the association and partnership of the comedians. But, as we have seen, this date cannot be regarded as that of their orimn. In the order of time the Hotel de Bour- gogne is the true ancestor of the Comedie - Fran9aise, and the year 1548 should figure on its letter-paper rath- er than 1680. In the reign of Charles VI. the Con- freres de la Passion obtained the privilege of opening the first theatre known in France, on the express condi- tion of playing only sacred pieces; but November 17, 1548, the Parliament consented to renew their privi- lege, on the equally express condition that they should EXTERIOR OF THE THEATRE • play only profane pieces, '' des pieces prop hanes, honnestes et licitesr Thereupon the " Confreres " withdrew, and the true comedians arrived, and built themselves a thea- tre in an appurtenance of the hotel of the Dukes of Burgundy in the Rue Mauconseil. This theatre during one hundred and thirty-two years was the delight of the Parisians ; it was there that the plays of Jodelle, Garnier, Larivey, Rotrou, Corneille, and Racine were originally performed ; and when it was united by order of the King with the theatre of the successors of Moliere, its repertory became in the main the classical repertory which is still played at the theatre of the Rue Richelieu at the present day. Since 1680 the Comedie - Fran9aise has frequently changed its home. We find it successively in the Palais Royal, then Rue Mazarin, in a tennis-court, the site of 2o8 THE PRAISE OF PARIS which is now marked by the Passage du Pont Neuf ; then, in 1689, in the Rue des Fosses Saint- Germain, now called Rue de I'Ancienne Comedie, opposite the Cafe Procope. In this latter house were played the pieces of Regnard and Dancourt, of Dufresny and Des- touches, of Crebillon, Lesage, Voltaire, Marivaux, Cres- set, Piron, Diderot, and Sedaine. In 1770 the Come'die- Fran9aise migrated to the Tuileries, where it remained until 1782. It was there that Beaumarchais had his Barbier de Seville played, and there that Voltaire's Irene was made the pretext for that unheard-of triumph which Bachaumont has described in the minutest details in his secret memoirs, and which has been immortalized by engraving ; the marble bust of Voltaire was crowned on the stage in presence of the living model, and amid the acclamations of an enthusiastic crowd. In our own days Victor Hugo was the hero of a similar triumph. In 1782 the comedians took possession of a new theatre, now called the Odeon, where they remained un- til they were suppressed by the Revolution in 1793. During these troublous times the actors were impris- oned, and the existence of the Comedie-Fran9aise was interrupted until the First Consul reconstituted the theatre in 1799, and installed it in the house in the Rue Richelieu where it has remained ever since. Here, indeed, is a glorious past and incontestable an- tiquity, but the comedians never seem to have paid much heed to their remoter origin. They prefer to regard Moliere as their ancestor and founder. As has been said by M. Regnier, a former societaire, and the historian of the Comedie, " the great king, in constituting their partnership, in giving them a pension, in reserving for himself the final admission or rejection of new members, and in making them his comedians in ordinary, gave them, it is true, durability and material existence ; but STATUE OF CORNEILLE IN THE VESTIBULE THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 2II the great poet gave them his glory and his name, which in times of danger has proved more efficacious than contracts and regulations in protecting the House of Moliere." It was, indeed, the name of Moliere that raised the theatre from its ruins in the year VIII.; it was the name of Moliere that saved it in 1834, when there was talk of allowing to degenerate into a common commercial enterprise an institution which, founded by Louis XIV., and re-established by Napoleon, had con- tinued to bear the name of the Maison de Moliere. II It is a superb monument, this house of Moliere, a veritable Grand Seigneur's palace, with sumptuous sa- loons, a staircase adorned with statues, galleries full of pictures, busts, and statuary, and the thousand souvenirs that bear eloquent witness to a long and glorious past. The exterior, from the surrounding colonnade to the lantern on the summit of the roof, gives one the im- pression of immutable and grandiose stability. Even the guichets, so primitive and so inconvenient, where the public buys its checks, even the wooden movable pali- sading that contains the queue — the closely packed crowd, like sheep in a fold under the watchful and pa- ternal eyes of a policeman and a soldier of the munici- pal guard — do not offend at the Comedie-Fran9aise, for one reflects that these things have been so for centuries ; to change them would be like removing landmarks of tradition. The narrow entrance doors of indescribable color, and innocent of all ornament, charm you because they remind you of another age. And the grand ves- tibule, which looks like a Florentine crypt, that spacious 212 THE PRAISE OF PARIS vaulted rotunda peopled with statues, the walls covered, with antique mirror-glass in small squares, the stairways that radiate on all sides, guarded by the ushers of the Comedie, correct and courteous, with their heavy silver chains of office hanging round their necks, how different from anything one has ever seen ! The contrble, that sort of counter-bureau, softly lighted by oil-lamps, where sit the three judges who examine gravely your passport, and pronounce the magic words, ''Att pi'-emier a gauche,'' ''Au deuxieme a droite',' the "open sesame" of this tem- ple of the muses ! These three examiners, or contrb- leui's, are there to protect three financial interests — that of the theatre, that of the authors, who are con- stituted into a Societe des Auteurs dramatiques, and that of the poor, represented by the Administration des Hopitaux. But let us neglect !or the moment ques- tions of administration, and rather feast our eyes on the splendors of art that we find on all sides. Facing the contrble stands a marble statue by David d'Angers representing Talma studying a role, in the costume and attitude of a Ceesar thinking of the destinies of his empire. On either side of Talma are allegoric statues of Tragedy and Comedy by Duret, and to the left Cle- singer's statue of Rachel, also representing Tragedy, draped in an antique peplum, and holding a poniard in her hand. In the vestibule of the entrance from the Place du Palais Royal, seated in niches softly lighted by two modest reflectors, are the two tutelary geniuses of the house, Moliere and Corneille, chiselled in marble by the sculptors Audran and Falguiere. Let us pass along the broad lobby between two rows of marble busts and walk up the grand staircase, which is comparatively recent, having been added by the architect M. Chabrol, when the Theatre Frangais was enlarged in 1864, thanks to land gained by street improvements on the side of GALLERY OF BUSTS THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 215 the Place du Palais Royal. The public foyer and the whole south fagade of the theatre date from the same year. This staircase, with its marble caryatides by Car- rier Belleuse, its rich iron balustrade, its fine architect- ural lines, deserves nothing but praise. Unfortunately it leads only to a lobby, and one must turn to the left to enter the public foyer or crush-room. This foyer looks like a rich and artistic salon, with its profusion of delicate gilding, its pilasters, its mirrors, its graceful ornamentation, and fine decorative paintings. Seated comfortably in an arm-chair or on a sofa, one can con- template at one's ease a rare collection of masterpieces of French sculpture of the eighteenth century placed around the room. In the midst of a mass of verdure and flowers Voltaire occupies the place of honor at one end, not as a dramatic author, not as one of the grand ancestors of the house, but because his statue is the finest that Houdon ever made. At the other end of the room, on each side of the monumental chimney-piece, are busts of Moliere and Corneille, and in front of each of the sixteen fluted pilasters that divide the walls into panels stands on its pedestal a marble bust of some celebrated author, by Houdon, Caffieri, Pajou, Boizot, or others — an admirable series, which is continued along the adjoining gallery, at the end of which we admire Clesinger's seated statue of George Sand. The foyer and the gallery of busts constitute for the public the museum of the Comedie - Fran9aise. But these two rooms contain only a very small part of the artistic treasures of the house. In every passage, in every room, on every stairway, on every wall, there are busts, pict- ures, engravings, historical souvenirs, which the public does not see. The artists' greenroom, the committee- room, the cabinet of the administrator -general in par- ticular, are most interesting, but of course unless you 2i6 THE PRAISE OF PARIS have friends at court you cannot enter these rooms. Happily, as far at least as the sculpture is concerned, the greater part of the masterpieces is placed permanently within the pubhc view, in the foyer and the passages. Considering the antiquity of the Comedie, the museum, is of comparatively recent origin ; its creation, in fact, only dates from the last century. In 1743 there was only one portrait in the greenroom — namely, that of Mademoiselle Duclos as Ariane, by Largilliere — a most beautiful work to begin with. Gradually other portraits were added, but the idea of creating a museum or a really historical gallery at the Theatre Frangais was not formulated until the sculptor Jean Jacques Caifieri sug- gested to the artists that they might make their green- room " le depot des portraits de ceiLX qui out illustre la schier It was in 1773 that Cafifieri first entered into re- lations with the comedians by offering to make a bust of Piron, who had just died, on condition of receiving his entries for life. The comedians accepted the offer, and henceforward, in exchange for each bust that he made, Caffieri received a life entry from the Comedie- Fran9aise, with the right of transferring it to a third per- son. Thus the comedians were able to decorate their greenroom without opening their purses, and CafBeri did not lose his pains, since he thus received indirectly full price for work which he might have found it diffi- cult to sell otherwise. From the correspondence pre- served in the archives of the Theatre Fran9ais I find that Caffieri estimated his busts in marble at 3000 francs each, which sum represented precisely the price of a life entry to the Comedie. The comedians possess Caf- fieri's masterpiece, the magnificent bust of Rotrou, and busts by him in marble of Piron, La Chaussee, De Bel- loy, J. B. Rousseau, Thomas Corneille, Pierre Corneille, and two exquisite busts in terra-cotta of Ouinault and THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 219 La Fontaine, which now stand on the staircase leading to the administrative department, where the pubhc does not see them. Other artists, having become acquainted wath the system of indirect payment proposed by Caffieri and accepted by the Comedie, offered their services to the comedians on the same conditions. In 1778 Houdon offered to make the bust of Voltaire in exchange for a life entry. Pajou, Foucou, Boizot, and Moret made busts of eminent authors on the same terms, and year by year the greenroom grew richer and richer in works of sculpture. In 1780 Madame Duvivier, niece and heiress of Voltaire, gave to the Comedie the pearl of its museum, that superb marble figure of Voltaire by Houdon which is now the chief ornament of the public foyer. At the present day the riches of the Comedie are so abundant that for want of room even master- pieces have to be left in dark corners, unseen and al- most forgotten. In the actors' greenroom and in the public foyer, almost all the master- portraitists of the eighteenth century, sculptors and painters alike, may be studied in their best work. The sculpture is particu- larly admirable. The statues and busts of the museum of the Comedie may be compared with the antique treasures of the museums of Italy, and the conclusion will be that the sculptor's art never achieved its end with more truth and more of the ideal than it did by the chisel of Houdon, Caffieri, Pajou, and David d'An- gers. For they are really splendid and radiant with beauty and genius, these busts to which time has con- tributed the master-touches, giving life to the flesh, and accentuating the expression according to the sculptor's indications. 2 20 THE PRAISE OF PARIS III After this digression on the history of the museum of the Comedie, let us resume our visit to the building, and enter at once the private apartments through the doorway on the Place du Palais Royal, over which is written, " Administration." Opening the folding-doors covered with green moleskin, we find ourselves at the foot of a simple and dimly lighted staircase, but at each landing there are marble busts — Corneille, Moliere, Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mademoiselle Mars by David d'Angers, La Fontaine and Quinault by Caffieri ; the walls are covered with portraits of the famous come- dians of old — Mesdafnes Champmesle, Dangeville, Pre- ville, Favart, Bourgoin, Raucourt — charming appari- tions that one sees through the luminous golden glaze of age, smiling and passing gracefully against back- grounds of verdure and gardens, reminding one of the beribboned pastorals of Watteau and Lancret. Here, more severe in aspect, is the portrait of Talma by La- grenee the younger, and the portrait of Rachel by Ge- rome. Turning to the right, we pass the offices of the two secretaries and enter the cabinet of the adminis- trator-general — a charming room, entirely draped in tapestry. The medallions over the doors represent Mo- liere and Corneille ; on the console is a statuette in terra-cotta of Corneille by Caffieri, and terra-cotta busts of Lekain and Mademoiselle Clairon, the latter by Le- moyne. From this cabinet we pass into the committee- room, where Pajou's masterpiece, a terra-cotta bust of Bertinazzi, has the place of honor on the chimney-shelf. This committee-room is the meeting-place of the tribunal THE GRAND STAIRCASE THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 225 of comedians, who hear and judge the plays offered to them by dramatic authors, and it is here that the socie- t aires, assembled in committee, under the presidency of the administrator-general, manage all the affairs and in- terests of the House of Moliere. Ouittino; this com- mittee-room, which, like all the rooms in the building, is a museum in itself, we pass between a mute escort of portraits along the passage leading to the stage, to the greenroom, to the dressing-rooms, and all that part of the theatre which may be spoken of as being behind the curtain, and therefore full of mystery to the public. The greenroom of the Theatre Francais must be a most delightful place, one thinks, and it must be a great priv- ilege to be able to go there of an evening and gossip with the artists. The greenroom is certainly a delight- ful place for all sorts of reasons. It is full of interesting pictures and precious souvenirs of the past. In this double frame hung over a Louis XV. table is an auto- graph signature of Moliere, a rare relic, for the auto- graphs of Moliere hitherto discovered do not amount to a dozen. In the same frame is a venerable parchment, being the decree signed by Louis XIV. and counter- signed by Colbert, granting a pension of 12,000 francs a year to the comedians, his Majesty "■ voulant gratijier et trailer hoiiorablement la Iroupe de ses co7nediens fran- fois en consideraliojt des services quils rendenl a ses di- verlissemejilsT This decree is dated from Versailles, 24th August, 1682. Look at the spinet in the corner to the right of the chimney-piece. It is signed : " Sebas- tien Erard et Frere. Compag. Privilegiee du Roi. Rue du Mail No. 37 a Paris 1790." This is the instrument which has served now for nearly a century in the per- formances of the Barbier de Seville, Beaumarchais's de- licious and youthful imbroglio. On the chimney-piece is a bronze by Houdon, the bust of Preville as Mas- 224 THE PRAISE OF PARIS carille; opposite the chimney-piece are busts of Samson and Provost ; between the windows an old regtilateiir clock, signed by " Robin, Horloger du Roy," marks the hours and the minutes, surmounted by a bust of Mo- Here. Opposite is LargiUiere's portrait of MoHere, and from the chair rail to the ceiling every inch of wall space is covered with pictures and portraits of Clairon, Talma, Rachel, Vestris, Poisson, Preville, and all the great act- ors and actresses of the last two centuries. The green- room, or one might better say the salon of the artists, is at once simple and magnificent in aspect. There is no gilding and tinsel ; the oak floor is waxed and with- out carpet; the furniture is in the Louis XIV. and Louis XV. styles — two sofas, stools, arm-chairs carved in massive oak and upholstered in green Utrecht vel- vet, simple mirrors running up to the ceiling, three or four tables, a piano, a few busts on marble pedestals. Let us now go up-stairs to the mysterious region of the dressing-rooms, each of which betrays more or less the temperament of the occupant. The dressing-room of the elder Coquelin is hung with fine old tapestry, the floor is strewn with Smyrna carpets, pictures and rare engravings adorn the walls, and the whole aspect is that of an elegant and artistic boudoir. The younger Coque- lin, more fantastic and gay than his great brother, amuses himself by hanging caricatures of himself on the walls of his room; on the chimney-piece is a bronze bust by the painter Gerome ; on one wall is a long glass case containing a collection of autograph letters ad- dressed to the comedian by contemporary celebrities. Mounet-Sully lives in the midst of a picturesque con- fusion which is the despair of the sweeper, Dennis. " One must touch nothing, disturb nothing. Those dusty yellow papers must be left there on the chimney-piece just as they are. Faut pas toucher^ And on the walls, PUBLIC FOYER, WITH STATUE OF VOLTAIRE THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 227 in lieu of pictures, are dusty wreaths of paper laurel and oak leaves, radiant with faded ribbons and inscriptions in letters of gold, that record by-gone scenic triumphs. The portieres are old silk stuffs ; the furniture consists of Spanish coffers bristling with wrought-iron clasps and arabesques ; the ornaments are antique arms, bows and arrows, Homeric quivers, y^schylean javelins — a queer mixture of players' trappings and bric-a-brac. The dressing-rooms of the women betray equally the tastes and nature of their proprietors. Mile. Bartet delights in a most refined and tasteful Louis XV. interior, with dainty furniture, and delicate draperies looped up and festooned like the paniers of a Pompadour gown. Mile. Lloyd affects the more severe luxury of carved ebony furniture and mirrored wardrobes that reflect her opu- lent charms. Mile. Reichemberg dresses in a gay and maidenly chamber hung with creamy flowered chintz. From these specimens and indications the reader will have rightly concluded that the dressing-rooms of the Comedie-Fran9aise are in harmony with the general splendor and comfort of the establishment. We will now go down-stairs and visit the stage, taking a glance, as we pass, at the " mtcsee,'' or small property- room near the stasfe-door. The '' imcsee'" looks like a marine store or a toy bazaar. There are all kinds of things in it : flower-pots, feather-dusters, clocks, statu- ettes in carton-bronze, antique tragic and comic masks which serve in apotheoses and commemorative perform- ances, a mummy case in card- board (one of the acces- sories of Sardou's Pattes de Mouc/ies), a stuffed pheas- ant, hunting and fishing utensils, inkstands, and tout ce quil fatit pour ecrire, as Scribe says in his comedies, and a thousand other objects which help in a play to complete the illusion. Close by the " inusee " the property-man has his little office, opposite which is the 228 THE PRAISE OF PARIS larder, where he keeps his card-board chickens, Yiis, pates de foie gras, and his dishes and bottles. Passing through green-baize folding doors, we descend half a dozen steps, and here we are on the stage. In the House of Moliere it is the usage for visitors to take their hats off on the stage, whereas on the stage of the Opera it is the usage to remain covered. The general aspect of the stage is much the same as that of any ordinary theatre ; on the boards you see the back of the scenery, with the num- bers and various indications roughly written ; overhead you see a maze of ropes and hanging canvas and swing- ing lights. But there the resemblance ceases. The stage of the Theatre Fran9ais is almost as much a salon as is the greenroom. The scene-shifters do not shout to each other or do their work noisily; there is no hurry- ing or indecent haste, for long entractes are the usage in Paris, where almost everybody leaves his seat be- tween the acts, and goes for a walk and a talk in the public foyer. At the Comedie-Fran9aise you never hear any ringing of bells in the lobbies ; even the cur- tain cannot be said to be rung up. Continuing an an- tique usage which dates from the time of Moliere, and which was borrowed, doubtless, from the custom of the halberdiers and ushers, who struck the floor with their staffs as they preceded and announced the King or any grand dignitary, the regisseur oi the Comedie-Frangaise announces the beginning of the play, and gives the sig- nal for the curtain to rise, by striking the stage with a staff. In our illustration this important functionary is seen, in hieratic pose, in the act of giving the three tra- ditional knocks — frapper les trois coups. He holds in hjs hand a thick staff painted black, the top of which is bound round with green velvet studded with brass nails. He stands at one side of the stage, and strikes gravely and heavily, pausing about a second between THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 231 each stroke; then he hurries away, and the curtain rises majesti- cally and discloses the scene and the actors. The play begins. We who are behind the scenes can scarcely hear now and then a word ; the applause reaches our ears faint- ly, as if coming from a orreat distance. The piece is played in a salon. It is Moliere's Femmes savantes, for instance. The scenes — that is to say, the walls of the salon — are planted with the aid of uprights, orpor- tants, which slide in the grooves, or C021- lisses, that stripe the floor of the stage; flex- ible gas -pipes issue from trap-doors under our feet, curl and coil along, climb up the framework of the scenery, and blossom forth in long jets of flame. Here is the door of the salon seen from behind; an actress is listening for her cue or pass- word ; two scene-shifters are seated somnolently, one on each side, ready to pull the cords and hold the spring- doors open while the actress enters, for the actors, it may be remarked, never open or shut a door themselves. One of these scene-shifters wears wooden sabots; the STAGE-MANAGER WITH HIS STAFF 2^2 THE PRAISE OF PARIS other wears slippers and trousers tightened round the ankle, so that he can glide cat-like and unembarrassed among the cords and pulleys overhead. Here and there on the stage are macJiinistes, or scene -shifters, wait- ing for the end of the act. A toilet-table is placed against the back of a scene, and two actresses are put- tine the finishino- touches to their attire, while a fireman watches them indiscreetly, though at a respectful dis- tance. Walking on tiptoe along the strip of carpet that is laid across the back of the stage, we come to the guignol — an institution quite pepuhar to the Comedie Frangaise. The gMignol is a box about ten feet square, one side of which is open. The interior is painted white ; the floor is carpeted ; the sitting accommodation DRESSING-ROOM OF MLLE. LLOYD THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 23s consists of a bench and a few chairs covered with red velvet ; in the corners are httle shelves of white marble, always covered with powder-boxes; at the back is a looking-glass, with a lamp on each side. In \S\vs, guignol the actors and actresses wait and rest between their WAITING FOR HER CUE exits and entries. The guignol is nowadays the true greenroom of the Comedie-Fran9aise, for it is here that the real habitues of the house come to gossip and pay homage to the charming servants of the Muses. Our illustration gives the aspect of the guigjiol, with some artistes sitting there in the costumes of Les Feimnes 2 34 . THE PRAISE OF PARIS savantes. Beyond the guignol, through the door over which a lamp is seen burning, is the loge du semainier^ that is to say, of the societaire who during the week undertakes the direction of the stage, superintends the rehearsals, and does the honors of the house to the princes and eminent persons who may happen to come to the theatre while he is on service. Each societaire takes his turn of semainier. The loge, or office, of the semainiei^, was formerly the dressing-room of the great Talma, and it communicated directly with the " Impe- rial," " Royal," or " State " box. Napoleon I. having so arranged it in order to be able at his ease to come and chat between the acts with his favorite actor. The clock is the only relic of Talma that now remains there. IV We will now examine the organization of the Comedie- Fran9aise. Its first charter and rules were signed, as we have seen, by Louis XIV. During the gravest events of the Russian campaign, Napoleon I. found time to date from Moscow a decree which once more fixed the re- spective rights of the comedians and of the State. Fi- nally this decree was modified in 1850 and 1859, and since then other slight changes have been introduced into the administration. The result of all these decrees and modifications is a constitution as difficult to define as the Constitution of England. One may say sum- marily that the Comedie-Fran9aise is a company or socidtd civile subsidized and administered by the State. This curious organization, hybrid as it is, has certainly exercised an excellent influence on the actors' profes- sion. By giving them in a way the character of function- ACTORS BEHIND THE SCENES (IN THE GUIGNOL) THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 237 aries it brought them within the social order, and con- tributed not a little to destroy the absurd prejudices of which they were formerly victims. The greenroom of the Theatre Frangais was one of the most brilliant sa- lons of Paris as long as there were any salons, and now that there are no longer any salons, it is still, as Emile Augier said, ""2111 des plus agreables par loirs de la capi- takr From the stairway to the corridor, from the vestibule to the scene-loft, the Comedie-Frangaise has preserved a certain grand air that one does not find elsewhere. The comedian cannot achieve a higher dis- tinction than that of belonging to it ; theatrical art has no more glorious temple. Remark, too, that with rare exceptions, like Rachel, the Comedie-Fran9aise is sus- tained less by the prestige of a few stars than by the distinction and excellence of the whole company. No- where do we find a more perfect general execution. The socielariat, the key-stone of the Comedie, so favorable to the dignity and the interests of the artists, finds its jus- tification from the point of view of art in the fact that it has preserved intact, amid all the literary, social, and political crises of France, a classical company and a classical repertory. At the head of the Comedie-Frangaise we find an ad- ministrator-general appointed by the State, with a salary of 30,000 francs a year, plus 6000 francs for expenses. It is the office of this functionary, who is usuall}^ chosen from among the distinguished literary men of the day, to represent the State towards the comedians, and at the same time to represent the comedians towards the State, and his duties demand the exercise of great tact and of all the other qualities of the perfect diplomatist. The societe civile^ or copartnership of the Comedie, comprises twenty-four members, or societaires. All the business and interests of the company are managed by an ad- 238 THE PRAISE OF PARIS ministrative committee of six members and two deputy- members, chosen among the societaires by the adminis- trator, who is president of the committee, and whose choice requires the ratification of the Minister of Fine Arts. This administrative committee nominates new societaires, who are chosen, with rare exceptions, from among the pensioiinaires — that is to say, the artists who are engaged by the year at fixed salaries, and without participation in the profits of the company. According to the Moscow decree a societaire is elected for a period of twenty years, but a modification has since been in- troduced, in virtue of which, at the end of ten years' service, the committee may dismiss the societaire, who, however, has not on his side the right to retire if the committee wish him to remain. At the end of twenty years' service the societaire has a right to a pension of 5000 francs a year, and for each supplementary year of service his pension is augmented by 200 francs. The Moscow decree fixed the number of societaires shares at twenty-four, each being worth 12,000 francs, and divis- ible into twelve twelfths of 1000 francs each. Three or four of these shares are reserved for various uses, and the remaining shares are distributed unequally among the twenty-four societaires. At the end of the year the profits of the period are divided among the so- cietai^'es proportionately to their rights of participation ; but only half their share of the profits is paid to them in cash, while the other half is deposited at the Mont de Piete, where it accumulates to form the ''fonds so- ciaf' which the societaire receives when he retires. The interest of these ''fo7ids sociaux'" is reserved by the Comedie-Fran9aise, and used to pay the pensions of the retired members. At present these ''fonds sociaux " de- posited at the Mont de Piete amount to more than two millions of francs. A societaire when first appointed THE COMEDIE-FRANCAISE 239 very rarely receives at once a whole share, and never less than three and a half twelfths. V All the actors and actresses of the Comedie - Fran- 9aise are attached to the establishment in virtue of a decree signed by the Minister of Fine Arts, in which is specified the nature of the roles they are to play — their emploi, as it is called. The roles are still denominated by curious special terms. The old men are divided into three classes, peres nobles, grimes, and ganaches ; old women are called diiegnes and uteres ; young men are C2i\\e.6. J etcnes premiers, premiers amoureux, seconds amoiir- eux, and grands J eunes premiers ; young women are called jeimes nieres, grandes jetmes pi^emieres, amottr- eiises,grandes coquettes, inghii^es, inghtues comiqttes ; then come valets, sottbrettes, roles marqtces, roles a caractere, and grands roles, such as Alceste and Tartuffe ; and finally the list ends with utilites, the servants who bring in letters and the walking gentlemen. The public does not pay much attention to these latter actors, but they nevertheless contribute to the o-eneral excellence of a company. It is one of the superiorities of the Come- die - Fran9aise to have these minor and often mute roles played by actors familiar with the traditions of the house, and not by "supers" recruited from all quarters. Another point to be noticed as contributing to the dignity of the Comedie-Franyaise : it is the only theatre in Paris where the administration pays for the modern toilet worn by the modern actress. In all the other theatres the ladies find their own modern dresses. 240 THE PRAISE OF PARIS VI We will now give a resume of the personnel and ex- penses of the Comedie-Fran9aise as they appear in the accounts of 1885, which may be considered an average year. The administration comprises a general administra- tor, a general financial contrbleur, a cashier, 2 readers, a secretary-accountant, and an archivist secretary. The salaries of these 7 functionaries amount to 70,000 francs a year. The company consists of 24 societaires and ^iZ P^^^- sionnaires, whose fixed salaries amount respectively to 261,000 francs and 185,400 francs a year. The theatre, besides the actors and actresses, has 12 heads of departments, or chefs de service^ and employes : a secretaire-regisseiir ; 2 prompters; 2 call-men; a chef de la figuration ; a head property-man; a head musi- cian and 4 employes. The salaries in this department amount to .30,000 francs a year. The Magasin has a personnel composed of 34 per- sons : stage-carpenters, costumers, dress-makers, tailors, upholsterers, dressers, etc., whose salaries amount to 41,400 francs a year. The auditorium, or la salle, as it is called, in contra- distinction to Ic theatre, which means all that is behind the curtain, is managed b}^ 71 persons, whose salaries make a total of 34,100 francs a year. Next we find 17 scene-shifters, whose salaries amount to 40,000 francs, and 10 comparses or coryphees, male and female, who are paid 10,400 francs a year. The figuration — that is to say, the " supers " — varies in number according to 'the THE CABINET OF THE ADMINISTRATOR-GENERAL requirements of the programme. The employes in- cluded in this summary are only such as are regularly attached to the theatre. Finally we have the non-active personnel, the invalids and pensioners, namely: 13 societaires, male and female, 242 THE PRAISE OF PARIS whose pensions amount to 76,416 francs a year; ^ pen- sionnairesy male and female, 15,800 francs; i ex-general administrator, 4000 francs; 7 employes, 11,925 francs; 25 widows and daughters of artists and former em- ployes, 17,960 francs. In all, 51 pensioners, receiving annually 126,101 francs. The total of the active personnel is 208 persons, re- ceiving in all salaries to the amount of 798,701 francs. The reader will reinark that these figures are exclusive of the division of the profits, according to the system above explained. In 1885 the total receipts of the Comedie were 2,331,- 814 francs, the expenses 1,805,000 francs, and the share ox part de societair^ was worth 28,000 francs. The re- ceipts consisted of 1,850,000 francs taken at the door, and the residue of interest, rentes^ and other funds, in- cluding the Government subvention of 240,000 francs a year. A detail of the expenses omitted in the above resume is \}i\^ feux. Each artist receives 10 ix2iV\Q.?i feux every night that he or she plays, and 1 5 francs for playing in two pieces in the same evening. This item of feux amounts to 25,000 francs a year. No mention, either, is made of the claque, or hired applauders. The reason is that the claque was suppressed in 1878. At present the Comedie-Fran9aise pays a man 300 francs a month permanently, and whenever a piece needs to be sus- tained this man receives ten places, five in the pit and five in the gallery, and it is his business to improvise a very discreet claque. This excellent innovation is due to the late director, M. Perrin. It was M. Perrin also who introduced the fashion of subscription nights. During: the six months of the Paris season the fashion- able people have their boxes and their stalls reserved by subscription at the Comedie on Tuesdays and Thurs- STATUE OF MOLIERE IN THE VESTIBULE days, just as they do on the subscription nights at the Opera and Opera Comique. The subscribers, or abon- nes, of the Comedie have the privilege of going behind the scenes and into the greenroom. Yet other details in the expenses of the theatre are the authors' fees and the tax paid to the hospitals, or 244 ^^^ PRAISE OF PARIS dj^oi^ des paiwres, respectively 15 and 10 per cent of the gross nightly receipts. The 15 per cent, of the authors is distributed proportionately to the acts. For example, if a play by M. Dumas — Le Demi-Monde, iox instance — is performed alone, M. Dumas receives 15 per cent, on the gross receipts. If the programme is composed of a piece in one act, a piece in three acts, and a piece in four acts, the authors receive 3, 5, and 7 per cent, re- spectively, and so forth proportionately, the total of 15 per cent, being divided according to the various com- binations which may occur in a programme, the mini- mum for one act being 3 per cent, of the gross receipts. VII Our visit to the Comedie-Fran9aise is not finished yet. Away up at the top, in a gallery running along the Rue Montpensier, are stored the archives and the library, of which we must say a few words. The regu- lar foundation of these two departments only dates from 1855, when M. Leon Guillard first put the papers of the house in order and began to form the library, which has prospered brilliantly since then under the care of M. Guillard's successors, the poet Fran9ois Copee and the present archivist, M. Monval. In the library we find, besides a very rich collection of books relating to the theatre and to dramatic art, the precious Reg-is Ire de La- grange, which gives — day by day, so to speak — the diary of Moliere's dramatic life. Then we have the journals of La Thorilliere and of Moliere's company before 1680, and then begins the series of the registers and account- books of the Comedie, which have been kept day by day, with one single interruption and one gap — in 1 793, THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 245 when the comedians were dispersed, and the year 1740, the register of which has been lost — down to the present day. These venerable reg- isters are stout fo- lios, bound in green vellum or brown sheepskin, with fine printed title-pages, and blank schedules filled up in manu- script. The early registers bear on the title-page the men- tion : Registre pour les sen Is comediens du Roy. Each day the receipts, expenses, and profits are noted, and brief mention is made of notable events in the life of the theatre. On an- other shelf in the library are more stout folios, labelled, Ordres des Gentilshommes de la Chambre. These or- ders, together with the three hundred thousand letters and other documents preserved in the archives of the Comedie, initiate us fully into the private life of the theatre. Early in the reign of Louis XIV. the gentle- men of the chamber of the King were charged with the supreme direction of the comedians, whom they had a right to imprison if they thought proper. In the seven- 16* COQUELIN CADET IN " LE SPHINX' 246 THE PRAISE OF PARIS teenth century their interference in the affairs of the theatre was dignified and rare, but under Louis XV. their reign began to be despotic and irritating, and lovers of queer details and scandal will find much amus- ing reading in these volumes of their orders. The power of the Gentlemen of the King's Chamber and of the Intendants des Menus Plazsij^s du Roy lasted until the Revolution, During the first Empire and the Res- toration the Comedie was administered by an imperial or a royal commissioner; and finally, in 1834, the Gov- ernment began to be represented by a director or gen- eral administrator, a post which has since been succes- sively filled by MM. Jouslin de la Salle, Vedel, Buloz, Lockroy, Seveste, Arsene Houssaye, Empis, Edouard Thierry, Emile Perrin, and Jules Claretie.* VIII The subvention of 240,000 francs a year paid by the State to the Comedie-Francaise is destined to make up for any loss that the theatre might incur in playing the pieces of the old repertory, and in giving three or four free performances a year, by order of the Government, on the occasion of certain fetes. Evidently a comedy by Moliere or a tragedy by Corneille, unless there be a Rachel or some exceptional artist to play the great roles, * Under the administration of M. Arsene Houssaye the receipts of a normal year exceeded 634,000 francs ; under M. Empis they attained 800,000 francs ; under M. Thierry in 1869 they reached 995,000 francs ; and under M. Perrin in 1872 the milHon was reached and passed, the total being 1,360,000 francs. The prosperity of the Comedie-Francaise has thus gone on gradually increasing since the beginning of the century. MOUNET-SULLY AS HAMLET THE COMEDIE-FRANCAISE 249 exercises a smaller attraction over the public than a new comedy by Dumas or Pailleron, and the receipts show a proportionate difference. But it is only on condition of immortalizing on the stage the masterpieces of Cor- neille, Racine, Moliere, Regnard, Marivaux, and Beau- marchais that the Comedie - Fran9aise enjoys all its privileges. However, nowadays the theatre is becoming more and more the victim of its too great riches ; the old repertory and the new are equally extensive and al- most equally popular, and on the other hand the public is so great that it is impossible to satisfy it. Formerly, before railways brought crowds of foreigners and pro- vincials to the capital, thirty performances exhausted the success of a piece, whereas now the receipts do not begin to decline until after two or three hundred repre- sentations. Hence the variety of the programme at the Fran9ais is not so great as it used to be ; the modern repertory tends to crowd out the ancient repertory, and nevertheless the modern authors complain that they have to wait for years and years to see their pieces played. In vain the actors of the Comedie play every night in the week, including Sunday ; in vain they give matinees and keep their theatre open all the year round; they cannot fully utilize their repertory, which is amply suiBcient to supply two theatres. The best solution of the difficulty would be to double the Co- medie-Franyaise, and thus have a classical theatre and a modern theatre. 250 THE PRAISE OF PARIS IX How does the Comedie-Fran9aise recruit its reper- tory? What is the history of a new play from the time the author has written it to the time when it is produced before the pubHc ? Every play offered to the Comedie- Fran9aise is examined by the two readers, who draw up a summary report, which is submitted to the reading committee, and preserved afterwards in the archives. This reading committee, or comite de lecture, is composed of twelve societaires nominated by the Minister of Fine Arts on the recommendation of the general administra- tor, who is president of this committee, just as he is president of the administrative committee. If the ex- amination of the two readers is favorable, the author is invited to read his manuscript before the assembled committee. An author who has already had a piece played has the right of reading his play to the com- mittee at once at his own request, and without previous examination by the two readers. The reading takes place in the committee-room, the societaires being seat- ed around the table, covered with the traditional green cloth. Generally the author reads his manuscript him- self, which is a real treat for the committee when the author is named Dumas or Sardou, for each of these celebrated men not only reads his manuscript, but acts it as he reads. The reading finished, the author with- draws, and the committee proceeds to vote with white, black, and red balls — the white signifying "accepted," the black " refused," and the red repc a correction — often a polite form of refusal, for the author cannot always discover what the committee wished him to correct in his manuscript. COQUELIN AINE IN " LES RANTZAU' THE COMEDIE-FRANCAISE 253 The piece having been accepted, the committee dis- tributes the roles, and the rehearsals begin in due course. " You should see them rehearse," said M. Dumas, one day, speaking of Delaunay and Cocjuelin. " They do not content themselves with seeking on their own ac- count; the novice, their comrade, wh^ih^r pensio7iiiaire or debutant, who acts with them, is the object of their attention and their zeal. They help him with advice, with their experience, and also with all the peculiar gifts which have given them the position they hold on the first stage in the world." The rehearsals begin in the public foyer, at one end of which are placed screens and simple scenery, forming a framework in which the piece may be developed. Work begins about one o'clock in the afternoon, and during some twenty rehearsals the author, the administrator-general, the stage -manager, the actors, and the actresses toil at the mysterious proc- ess of materializing the manuscript, of giving it soul and body in the attitudes, gestures, intonations, and ex- pression of the artists, of communicating to the written words the shades, the accent, the vibration of life. After these twenty preliminary rehearsals the play is thor- oughly on its feet ; meanwhile the scenery has been pre- pared, the frame elaborated, the living picture is trans- ferred to the stage, and the repetitions sur la scene begin. The spectacle is curious. The auditorium is enveloped in white holland coverings, and plunged in obscurity, relieved only by square patches of light that stream in through the little windows of the boxes, or through some gallery door accidentally left open, and through which darts a ray of afternoon sun laden with dancing particles of dust ; the lustre sparkles with the reflection of these rare specks of light like a mass of stalactites hanging from the vault of some dark cavern. The stage alone is lighted by the fifty oil-lamps -that form the tra- 254 THE PRAISE OF PARIS ditional footlights of the Comedie, and by the gas-jets that illuminate the scenery. Overhead, through the cords and scaffolding, penetrate patches of bluish light, and on the stage men and women in ordinary costume are acting. In the middle of the stage, above the prompt- er's box, sits the author in his guignol — a sort of sentry- box designed to shelter him from draughts. In the winter the stage is dotted with these sentry-boxes, each provided with a foot-warmer, and the artists sit in them and rehearse their roles at their ease. On the left of the stage sits the prompter at a little table, and near him the stage-manager. The administrator watches over the whole, either from a chair on the stage, or more usually from the avant-scene — a box close to the stage. Thus, day by day the comedians, aided and directed by the author and all the experienced officers of the company, continue the slow and laborious process of creating a play. Five or six rehearsals on the stage suffice, and next comes the final dress rehearsal, or re- petition generale, to which the dramatic critics, the friends of the author, and a privileged and special pub- lic are invited. Then follows the great and solemn day of the first performance, la premiere. All the seats have been given away, sold, or bartered ; all Paris is there, the President of the Republic, the President of the Chamber, the social, political, and literary celebrities of the capital; the orchestra stalls are full of journalists and writers ; the directors of the great Parisian news- papers are enthroned in the best boxes w^ith their wives and friends ; almost every man and woman in the house bears a name well known in art, letters, fashion, or finance ; everybody is looking at everybody ; opera- glasses scrutinize the depths of baignoires and loges, there is a hum of busy tongues, an exchange of greet- ings, a feverish expectation that brings the color to every THE COMEDIE-FRANgAISE 255 cheek. At last the traditional three knocks are heard; the buzzing of conversation ceases, or rather it seems to glide down from the top gallery and sink into the pit, like the sails of a ship falling down the masts as she enters port. Then the huge red simile-drapery of the curtain rises, and the first word of the new^ piece is sent vibrating into space. The idea of the play begins to take form like a colored arabesque on a dark back- ground, and becomes gradually plaster, bronze, mar- ble, or gold, according to the will of those four or five hundred experienced spectators, who form the Tout- Paris of the Parisian stage, who are always to be seen at first nights at the theatres, and whom it is useless to name specially and individually, for, as M. Alexandre Dumas has said of this Tout-Paris, we all think we are in it and of it — nous croyons tous en etre. THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE THE Institute, to quote the words of M. Ernest Renan, "is one of the most glorious creations of the Revolution, a thing peculiar to France. Many coun- tries have academies which can vie with ours in the il- lustriousness of their members and in the importance of their works ; France alone has an Institute, where all the efforts of the human mind are, as it were, bound into one whole ; where the poet, the philosopher, the historian, the philologist, the critic, the mathematician, the physicist, the astronomer, the naturalist, the econo- mist, the jurisconsult, the sculptor, the painter, the mu- sician, can call each other colleagues. Two ideas act- uated the great and single-minded men who conceived the plan of this novel foundation : the one idea, admi- rably true, is that all the productions of the human mind are jointly and severally dependent upon one another; the second idea, more open to criticism, but still grand and, in any case, thoroughly and profoundly French, is that science, letters, and art are a State institution, a something which each nation produces in a body, and which the father-land is charged with fostering, encour- aging, and rewarding. The object of the Institute is the progress of knowledge, the general utility and glory of the Republic," This is the ideal. The reality is less wonderful ; and. 26o THE PRAISE OF PARIS as usual, the French themselves are the first to criticise and the most eager to depreciate an institution which is, after all, one of the glories of their country. " Be- tween ourselves," said Sainte-Beuve, in a private letter, " all these Academies are mere child's play; at least the French Academy is. The shortest quarter of an hour of solitary thought, or of serious talk, tete-a-tete, in our youth, was better employed ; but as one grows old one becomes more susceptible to these trifles, only it is well to know that they are trifles." These two extreme expressions of opinion will serve to prepare our minds for the best and for the worst, and help us to approach our subject in an attitude of adequate impartiality. Without going deeply into the history of the matter, we may say that the idea of organizing a sort of intel- lectual mandarinate in France was first conceived by Colbert, as a part of the vast scheme of centralization which Louis XIV. realized during his long reign. The idea of the " Roi Soleil," and of his great minister, was to organize literature and the arts, and to associate them with grand institutions whose function was to carry everything to its highest degree of perfection. Thus were founded the Comedie-Fran9aise, the Opera, the French Academy, and the other Academies of the old regime — namely, the Academies of Sciences, of Inscrip- tions and Medals, of Painting and Sculpture, and of Architecture. This scheme was revived by the Direct- ory, and the Institute was founded on lines which have since been greatly modified, but of which the leading idea was the centralization of all branches of knowledge. The present organization of the Institute, which is in the main that given to it at the time of the Restoration, consists of five Academies taking rank according to the order of their historical foundation — namely, the THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 26 1 Academic- Frangaise founded by Richelieu in 1635; the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, founded by Colbert in 1663; the Academic des Sciences, found- ed by Colbert in 1666; the Academic des Beaux-Arts, founded between 1648 and 1671 by the amalgamation of the three Academies of Painting, Sculpture, and Ar- chitecture ; and the Academic des Sciences Morales et Politiques, reconstituted in 1832. It is to be remarked, however, that the filiation of these Academies is pure- ly fictitious. At the time of the Revolution all the Academies were suppressed and ceased to exist ; the chain remained broken for a period of years ; and the present Institute is as purely a growth of the Revolu- tion, the Empire, and the Restoration as the old Acade- mies were the growth of the monarchical regime which pensioned Corneille and refused Christian burial to the bones of Moliere. Of the five classes or Academies which form the In- stitute two are particularly famous — namely, the Acade- mic Fran9aise, and the Academic des Sciences. Of these we shall speak at some length, but first of all let us devote a few lines to the three others. The Acade- mic des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres is composed of 40 members, 10 unattached members, 10 foreign as- sociates, and 50 corresponding members. It derives its title, not from the study of inscriptions, but from the fact that the origin of this Academy was a commission formed in the Academic Fran9aise, and charged with composing inscriptions for the commemorative medals struck by Louis XIV.; hence its old name was Acade- mic des Inscriptions et Medailles. The domain of this Academy is the learned languages, antiquities, monu- ments. Oriental literature, history both diplomatic and literary; and its chief object is to continue the execu- tion of the vast scheme of erudition and research bcQ-un 262 THE PRAISE OF PARIS by the Benedictines in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is an Academy about which the general pubHc hears very Httle, but which nevertheless does great and durable work by its publications concerning the history of France, and by preparing documentary monuments like the Corpus Inscriptiomtni semiticartim, of which the guiding spirits are MM. Renan and Oppert. The Academic des Beaux -Arts is composed of 40 members, divided into five sections: 14 painters, 8 sculp- tors, 8 architects, 4 engravers, and 6 musicians. Be- sides the titulary members, there are 10 unattached members, 10 foreign associates, and 50 corresponding members. " Do you often attend the sittings of the Academie des Beaux-Arts T I asked one of the most distinguished of its members. " What takes place at the meetings '^ What is the use of the Academy .?" " I attend, perhaps, once or twice a year," was his re- ply. " The sittings offer no interest whatever, and that is why I never go. The Academy is supposed to work at a Dictionary of the Fine Arts, but this is more or less a myth. The Academy, as you know, controls and awards the Prix de Rome and a few other prizes." " But as an Academy," I resumed, interrogatively, " one may say that it has only an honorific existence T " Certainly. At least, so it seems to me, though I have no doubt all my colleagues would not agree with me. Some of them attend the meetings regularly and read papers. Some of the men who have leisure like to go there to gossip." The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences num- bers 40 members, who are divided into five sections, which deal with the subjects headed, respectively. Phi- losophy, Morals, Jurisprudence, Political Economy and THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 263 Statistics, and general and philosophical History. This Academy has 6 unattached members, 6 foreign asso- ciates, and 48 corresponding members. When the Institute was founded the Academy of Physical and Mathematical Sciences was called the First Class, and comprised 60 members, while the class of Moral and Political Sciences comprised 36, and the class of Literature and Fine Arts 48 members. Thus ■ <^ um • ' A LEARNED MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES the scientific men were assured a certain preponderance over the others in the general deliberations of the In- stitute — a fact which testifies strongly to the rationalist ideas of the authors of the renovation of French society. This Academy was divided into ten sections, and now- adays its organization remains very much the same as it was nearly a century ago, although in the mean time the relative importance of the different sciences has greatly changed. The present Academy is composed as fol- 264 THE PRAISE OF PARIS lows : 2 perpetual secretaries ; 1 1 sections under the titles of Geometry, Mechanics, Astronomy, Geography and Navigation, General Physics, Chemistry, Mineral- ogy, Botany, Rural Economy, Anatomy and Zoology, Medicine and Surgery, each section composed of 6 members, makinor in all 66. To this number must be added 8 foreign associates, 10 unattached academicians, and 100 corresponding members. From the point of view of its connection with the history of the progress of science in France we may overlook the few years of interruption occasioned by the events of the Revolution, and thus we shall find that the Academy of Sciences has had a regular existence, and continuous archives for more than two hundred years. Originally a group of scientific men, among whom were Gassendi, Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and his father Etienne Pascal, used to meet privately on stated days at the house of one of their number; their works at- tracted public and royal attention; and in 1666 Col- bert, who was then elaborating his grandiose schemes for the advancement of the arts and sciences, gave these savants an assembly room in the King's library in the Rue Vivienne, and attached thereto certain moneys to be devoted to pensions, and to the payment of the cost of experiments. The first regular meeting of the Royal Academy of Sciences took place on December 22, 1666, and, thanks to the enlightened protection of the King, guided by Colbert, the Academy at once prospered, and began the publication of that series of Memoires de r Acadhnie des Sciences which contributed so remarka- bly to spread the taste and forward the development of scientific research both in France and in all other civil- ized countries. In 1699 His Majesty gave this Acade- m)^ a definitive constitution and new rules, and also more spacious and magnificent rooms for its assemblies THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 265 and its growing collections in his own Palace of the Louvre, where the Academie Fran9aise, the Academy of Inscriptions and Medals, the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and the Academy of Architects already held their meetings. The rooms occupied by the Acad- emy of Sciences were those at present known as the Salle Henri II., the Salon des Sept Cheminees, and another room occupied by the Musee Campana. The visitor, as he passes through these rooms where the pictorial and antiquarian treasures of the Louvre are now displayed, may amuse his mind for a moment with the souvenir that it was between these walls that the old Academy held its most glorious sittings when it counted among its members men whose names were Malebranche, Fontenelle, Condorcet, Buffon, Lavoisier, Laplace, Turgot, the Cassinis, Lamarck, Jussieu ; and among its foreign associates Huygens, Leibnitz, Euler, Priestley, Hunter, and Benjamin Franklin. During the revolutionary period the Academy, be- sides its usual work, was consulted by the Government on all kinds of questions concerning education, finance, war, naval affairs, and agriculture, and its most consid- erable work was the elaboration of a new system of weights and measures, the uniformity of which had been ordained by a law passed in 1790. But finally, in 1793, the Academy of Sciences was suppressed by decree of the Convention. Two years later, October 25, 1795, the Institute was created on bases which resembled in many points the grand project conceived by Colbert more than a century before, and after sitting for a few years in the old rooms in the Louvre the different Academies were finally in- stalled, in 1806, in the Palais des Ouatre Nations, or College Mazarin, where they now^ sit. In the schemes of the centralization of the labors of 266 THE PRAISE OF PARIS the human mind which presided over the foundation of the Institute, the physical and mathematical sciences were allotted to the Academy of Sciences, and its ob- ject and attributions were defined thus : " To perfect the sciences and arts by uninterrupted researches, by the publication of discoveries, by correspondence with learned societies abroad ; to follow up all scientific works that may conduce to general usefulness, and to the glory of the Republic." In every point this is an antiquated and quixotic con- ception of things. Collective researches, according to oflBcial indications, have rarely resulted in great success. The old Academy of Sciences wasted thirty years of collective efforts in the chemical study of plants by dry distillation before it perceived the nullity of its method. Afterwards it devoted itself with more success to en- cyclopedic work — that is to say, to describing known facts and recording acquired truths. The really great services that the old Academy of Sciences rendered were, above all, in its astronomical and geodesic labors, which were really executed by a few specialists of genius like Cassini. The principal business of the present Academy is to meet every Monday in order to hear about the work of its members, to listen to reports on the works of for- eign savants, and to receive communications, whether from corresponding members or from outsiders. These meetings are public, and generally very animated and interesting, if only for the variety of the faces and the distinction of their owners. Vice-admiral Paris, Keeper of the Marine Museum in the Louvre, enters the room smiling and hearty, and immediately a score of hands are extended to shake the one hand which the fortunes of war have left the brave seaman. Then follow the astronomers, Jannsen and Nisaixl Doutet PdiUoron Coppee MEETING OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 269 Faye ; Freycinet, whose aspect and movements have given him the sobriquet of " the white mouse f Pasteur,. of microbe renown ; Berthelot, learned in alchemy ; and a score of others, each one eminent in his specialty. But, strange to say, very little attention seems to be paid to the official business of the seance ; the presi- dent and the secretary read reports, but nobody ap- pears to listen ; this one is busy distributing his latest pamphlet; another one is writing letters with feverish haste ; others are talking in groups ; others are wander- ing round the labyrinthine tables and greeting their colleagues. On great occasions, of course, the aspect of the seance is different, and practical demonstrations, such, for instance, as Dr. Brown- Sequard's explanation of his apparatus for analyzing the air breathed by con- sumptive patients, will rivet the attention of the ma- jority of the members present. But, generally, the sittings of the Academy of Sciences strike the visitor as rather incoherent and useless, and after vainly trying to follow the proceedings, he will finally amuse himself by observing the wonderful diversity of craniological formation which the heads of the distinguished com- pany offer to his view. At the meetings of this Academy there are seats set apart for the journalists, who report the proceedings for the daily papers. Indeed, the newspapermen have been the cause of great transformations in the spirit and ac- tion of the Academy of Sciences ; one may even say that the Press has rendered many of its attributions antiquated and useless. When Arago first obtained the admission of the Press to the sittings of this Acade- O my, fifty years ago, and when the publication of a weekly bulletin was begun about the same time, the Academy at once gained largely in notoriety, and acquired a wide- spread fame as an oracle, but at the same time the 270 THE PRAISE OF PARIS great publicity given to its acts enabled public opinion to criticise those acts with more or less competency, and to break down the barrier of respect which had hitherto surrounded the institution. In the natural, course of things the daily, and particularly the scien- tific. Press has, so to speak, taken the bread out of the mouth of the Academy of Sciences ; on the other hand, the publicity given to the proceedings has caused the results of scientific research to converge towards the Academy ; but the Academy, although its opinions carry great weight, is no longer absolute judge of those re- sults. Competent men disseminated over the surface of the earth are able to form their own opinion with the facts laid before them by the scientific Press, and have no need to wait for the tardy publication of the costly memoirs of the Academy. The correspondence of the Academy wdth native and foreign savants is likewise a superannuated legacy of the past. The Press has ren- dered useless this system of correspondence, which had its raison d'etre when Louis XIV. w^as king, when there were few^ scientists in the world, no periodicals, and no well organized post-office system. Thus it appears that the actual labors of the Academy of Sciences have di- minished greatly in importance in consequence of the natural progress of things, and chiefly on account of the growth of the newspaper and specialist Press. So far as concerns research the Academy of the present day is not nearly so important a body as it was in the last century ; its influence on the movement of science is exercised nowadays by the prizes that it gives, and by its elections, which are also in a way the recompense of scientific merit. The present role of the Academy of Sciences is to encourage talent and to absorb it. Indeed, the authority of the Academy depends not upon any traditional prestige, but upon its actually counting THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 271 among its members all the eminent Frenchmen of the day who are accomplishing great work in science. In the opinion of one of its most distinguished members, M. Berthelot, the Academy of Sciences, " if it no longer has the initiative of discoveries, at any rate presents a dyke against charlatanism, and opens liberally its wide publicity to the works of French and foreign savants. It subsists with the majesty of an old institution, strong in the glory of its members and in the souvenir of the services that science has rendered and still renders every day to human societies."* * At the present day the budget of the Academ}' of Sciences stands as follows : FRANCS 1. The members of the Academy are divided into the eleven sections which compose it, at the rate of six members per section , the Academy is therefore composed of sixty- six members, and two perpetual secretaries; each of these members receives an annual indemnity of 1500 francs 102,000 2. Besides the titulary members, there exists, since 18 16, a class of ten free academicians, who receive no indem- nity except the presence fee, or " jetons de presence." For each member this fee is reckoned at an annual total of 300 francs 3,000 3. The indemnity paid to each of the perpetual secretaries is 6000 francs 1 2,000 4. The Academy receives for the publication of its Me- moires and of its Comptes rendus a sum of 54>ooo 5. The publication of the Memoires des savmits etrangers re- quires 14,000 6. The above publication enjoys at the Imprimerie Na- tionale for gratuitous printing a credit of 4,000 7. The budget provides for a prize 3,000 The total budget of the Academy of Sciences in 1887 was 192,000 As regards clerks' work, the Academy of Sciences, like the other Academies, depends on the Secretariat of the Institute, which is com- posed of a chief, five clerks, two ushers, and two servants, who divide between them about 30,000 francs a year. The above total of the budget of the Academy does not include its prize fund, which will be mentioned further on. BROWN-SEQUARD EXPLAININCt AN EXPERIMENT AT THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Each of the Academies forming the Institute of France holds weekly meetings in the Palais Mazarin^ and once a year, on October 25, the five Academies hold a public meeting in common. The Institute is under the supreme patronage of the Minister of Public In- struction, whose budget makes provision for the salary of members, for the presence fees, for prizes, and for all the current and regular expenses of the five sections. Each of the Academies manages its own special prop- erty and funds through the intermediary of commis- sioners chosen among the members, and acting under the authority of the Minister of Public Instruction. These Academic prizes form quite an important ele- ment in French literary and scientific life, because most of them are destined to encourage and reward re- searches and works of erudition, which no author could undertake if he had to depend on the profits of his book alone. Then the Institute awards every two years a THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 273 prize of 20,000 francs on the proposition of each of the five Academies alternately, so that in turn this prize will be given to a historian, a reader of hieroglyphics, a scientific man like Pasteur, or an artist like the sculptor Mercie. The Academy of Sciences awards every year nearly fifty prizes, representing a money value not far short of 200,000 francs. The Academic Fran9aise has thirty foundations representing annually some 130,000 francs. The three other Academies dispose of prizes to the value of nearly 200,000 francs. Thus the prizes annually distributed by the five sections of the Insti- tute exceed in total value 500,000 francs. To these existing foundations will eventually be added a part of the enormous revenues accruing from the domain of Chantilly, by which the prize fund will be probably doubled. It will be curious then to see what the mem- bers of the Institute will do with their money. The natural thino- will be for them to ameliorate their own lot first of all by increasing their appointments, for evi- dently the management of such considerable funds, and the task of awarding so many prizes will justify them in demanding more than their present salary, which is that of a century ago. This salary of members of the In- stitute, of whatever Academy or section, was fixed by the Conseil des Cinq-Cents in a law dated 19 Messidor an IV (7 July, 1796), and the same body determined the manner of payment — namely, 1 200 francs by right and 300 francs by presence fees. These latter fees are lumped together in each class and divided among those present only. In the different Academies this pres- ence fee amounts nominally to about six and a half francs. At the Academic Fran9aise, for instance, if all the forty members were present each one would receive this sum ; but as all the members rarely attend at one time, the J e ^071 de presence becomes worth more, thanks 18 2 74 THE PRAISE OF PARIS to the lumping together and division ; finally, on wet days, in normal times, so few Academicians come to share the spoil that the fee will be worth as much as two napoleons. I remember the only time I ever dined in company with Labiche — it was a Thursday in mid- winter — that famous comic writer was boasting that he had that afternoon braved snow and sleet to attend the weekly meeting of the Academy. " Tout de meme, j'ai gagne mes quarante francs aujourd'hui," he said, glee- fully. Of all the sections of the Institute the Academic Fran9aise is the best known and the most popular — I had almost said the most fashionable, and the epithet would not be entirely misplaced, for the social role of the Academy is, perhaps, more prominent even than its literary activity. The history of the Academy is too well known to need repeating. For our purpose it suf- fices to say that the old Academy founded by Riche- lieu perished with the throne of Louis XVI.; it was suppressed and destroyed like all the other Academies in 1793 ; but as soon as the National Convention had leisure to think of literature and the arts of peace, after the more imperious cares of the Reign of Terror and the proscriptions, aspiring to leave to posterity a dura- ble and enlightened republican regime, it founded the Institute in 1803 by these words: " There is for the whole republic a National Insti- tute charged with centralizing discoveries and perfect- ing the arts and sciences." Concerning the Academy particularly the decree of the Convention says : " It is especially charged with making a dictionary of the French tongue ; as regards language it shall exam- ine important works of literature, history, and science. The collection of its critical observations shall be pub- JETON DE PRESENCE— M. CHEVREUL SIGNING THE PRESENCE SHEET THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 277 lished at least four times a year." The statutes of the Academy are almost the same now as they were under the old regime : it is composed of forty members, whose officers are a director and a chancellor, elected for three months, and a secretary, elected for life, who bears the title of perpetual secretary. Its meetings take place every Thursday, and in May it holds a public sitting for the distribution of its prizes, on which the perpetual sec- retary reads an extended report. The perpetual sec- retary of the Academy, who is at present M. Camille Doucet, has great influence ; he may, if he wishes, be virtual governor of the institution ; for he never misses a seance, while the ordinary Academicians attend irregu- larly or absent themselves altogether in the summer. The perpetual secretary knows all the questions that will be submitted at a meeting; it is he who prepares them, who proposes them, and who, if he has tact, in- fluences their solution by the way in which he colors them. He has the first and last word in all discus- sions ; he is the guardian of the traditions of the Academy, which he may remember or forget, as he thinks proper; he draws up the minutes of the meet- ings; in the public seances he is the official mouth-piece of the company ; his salon is the salon of the Academy itself; in brief, the perpetual secretary is the personifica- tion of the Academy. So much for the organization and ideal programme of the Academy. Now let us come to the reality. The Academy does not publish critical observations on any- thing ; and as for its historical dictionary of the French language, which was begun in 1852 and is still in prep- aration, M. Renan himself has publicly declared that at the present rate of progression it will be ready for issue in twelve hundred years only, according to the most moderate calculations. 18* 278 THE PRAISE OF PARIS Then what does the Academy do ? It holds meet- ings, distributes prizes, and fulfils its social duties. The Academy, it has been said, is the most select club in Paris, and around its fireplace may be heard some of the best talk of the day. The pity is that this talk can only be heard by members of the Academy. The echoes of it that reach the outer world are vague and distorted, and often calumnious ; at least, so we are told by the Academicians themselves, who are naturally jealous of the reputation and authority of their body. But in what does this authority consist ? Is the Academy the acknowledged guardian of the purity of the French tongue ? Are its judgments in literature beyond appeal ? Does the public pay heed to the sen. tences of the Forty ? During the first quarter of the present century the authority of the Academy was un- contested. Traces of a polemical spirit began to be manifested in its reports only towards 1824, when, hav- ing come to regard itself as an orthodox sanctuary, the Academy, as a body, denounced the new movement which was growing up under the vague and complex title of " Romantisme," or, of the Romanticist school. Members of the Academy in these circumstances made use of the sacramental terms " orthodoxy," " sect," and " schism," and so began that long war between the Classicists and the Romanticists. Ever since that time the Academy has maintained a conservative attitude full of suspicion towards novelty and audacity, accept- ing only after years of resistance reputations which the public has long acclaimed. Politics, too, have played a certain role in the history of the Academy. Since the reorganization of the Institute in 1803 France has ex- perienced six different governments: the Empire, the Restoration, the reign of Louis Philippe, the Republic of 1848, the Second Empire, and the present Republic. THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE . 279 Of these the Academy seems to have preferred the first three ; and, even now that the repubhc is so firmly fixed in France, the Academy still manifests platonic leanings towards Orleanism, and a certain distrust and dislike of democracy. But this phenomenon will not excite astonishment when it is remembered that one of the most active and influential of Academic " whips " is the grandson of Madame de Stael, " His Impertinence '' the Due de Broglie, whose chief joy in life is to en- velop every election in meshes of intrigue so fine and subtle that his Italian ancestors, from their Elysian re- treat, must look down with pride and satisfaction upon their Machiavellian successor. Since the failure of his coMp (Tetat under Marshal MacMahon, the ambassador and conspirator of the early years of the republic has been reduced to a condition of stremia inertia; but, be- ing a man of Italian suppleness and gayety, he consoles himself with society, gossip, and a certain dry taste for letters, and by listening to his own grating, shrill, and spluttering voice in the salon of the Rue Solferino, over which presides the Princess Victor de Broglie, the dauphine of the house, the duke himself being a wid- ower. The French Academy holds two kinds of seances : the first for itself, the second for a privileged section of the public. The ordinary weekly meetings are held every Thursday in a room on the first floor of the In- stitute building communicating with the larger room where the Academy of Sciences sits. As they go in, the forty immortals generally deposit their hats and coats on the benches of the Academy of Sciences, and thus form the subject of one of our illustrations. Their room has an arched roof decorated with white stucco " rosaces " in the style of the empire ; around the walls, on brackets, are busts of deceased members ; and in the 28o THE PRAISE OF PARIS recess over the chimney-piece is a full-length portrait in oil of Cardinal de Richelieu. The seats, simple mahog- any chairs upholstered in black velvet, are arranged around a narrow table in the form of an elongated oval, hollow in the middle, and covered with faded green baize ; and before each seat is a crockery inkstand and a wooden tray containing paper-knives and pen-holders. The room is lighted by a window in the roof and by windows along one wall high up under the ceiling. Two gas lustres hang from the ceiling; but the Acade- micians, being old-fashioned and aristocratic, prefer can. dies, and in an adjoining closet the inquisitive visitor may see a green card-board box with an inscription in a clerkly hand, " Chandeliers," and on opening the box he will find it full of silver candlesticks. This is all that an outsider can say about the ordinary meetings of the Academy, for they are secret and mysterious, and all the information that the best reporter can ob. tain may be summed up in the stereotyped paragraph : " The French Academy held its usual weekly meeting VOTING AT THE INSTITUTE THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 281 yesterday afternoon. Messieurs X, Y, Z were present. Ces messieurs worked at the Diction- ■>■> ary. The public meetings of the Academic Fran- 9aise are held three or four times a year, on the occasion of the re- ception of new mem- bers and of the spring 711 '.r '15 i -Ji I; ; 'icr '■^^ "^fes^ -^^ ;J^^'- \ .*N^ THE HATS OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY distribution of prizes, whether for Hterary merit or for impecunious virtue. On these gala-days the Dictionary is hidden away. Many of the Academicians don their 282 THE PRAISE OF PARIS embroidered uniforms — which they themselves irrever- ently call " wearing parsley " — gird on their little swords with mother-of-pearl handles, have their hair nicely combed and curled, and prepare to withstand the scru- tiny of a fair and fashionable audience. The meeting is held in what was formerly the chapel of the College des Ouatre Nations, a very small amphitheatre with tribunes and galleries — altogether a most primitive, in- commodious, and chilly place, the general aspect of which reminds one strongly of a mausoleum. If you are a simple mortal without influence or pro- tection you will be able, at best, to obtain only an un- numbered ticket for a gallery ; and in order to get a decent place you will have to stand outside for hours awaiting the opening of the doors, and then, when the fatal moment comes, you will make a rush for the front seats at the risk of breaking your neck in the dark staircase. Whenever a reception excites especial curi- osity the queue at the doors of the Institute begins to form at seven and eight o'clock in the morning, although the doors are not opened until one o'clock. Many send their servants, or hire commissioners to keep a place in the line, which they themselves come and occupy in time to join in the rush. It would be easy, of course, to avoid this cruel qiLeiie by numbering all the places in the room, and by giving only just so many tickets as there are places; but the tradition of the Institute is opposed to such a change. If, on the other hand, you are fortunate enough to enjoy the esteem of Pingard, the factotum of the Institute, or if you are acquainted with a member of the Academy, you will receive a ticket for the amphitheatre or hemicycle, in which case you may lunch at leisure, see all the fun, and enter the room at the last moment through what we may call the entree des artistes, with the ambassadors and the blue- THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 283 stockings of the first grade. In the court-yard of the Institute the carriages arrive and deposit Academicians and fine ladies at the foot of the mossy old steps ; there are greetings and bowings and silvery feminine laugh- ter; the vestibule fills with celebrities of both sexes, who crowd the infantry soldiers drawn up in line at the foot of the statues and ready to present arms when the dignitaries of the Academy arrive ; among the privi- leged are some who have come to a reception for the first time, and who linger to admire the fine statues that are hidden away in the dark corners of this long and cobwebby antechamber — La Fontaine, Moliere, Corneille, D'Alembert, Napoleon in his imperial robes, and Montaigne in no robe at all. An usher with a silver chain round his neck dis- creetly opens a door, you descend a few carpet-covered stairs, and, behold ! you are beneath the dome of the In- stitute, and Pingard with insinuating gestures invites you to sit on a very narrow bench. The light striking down from the windows in the drum of the cupola is pale and cold ; the atmosphere is slightly charged with suave perfumes of heliotrope, iris, and Spanish leather ; there is a perpetual froufrou of feminine vesture and a whispering of indistinct con- versations. Everybody seems penetrated with respect. You examine the room. How chilling and severe ! The very statues of Bossuet, Fenelon, Descartes, and Sully seem to be shivering in their niches. And that little curly-headed bust high up on one wall, facing the bureau, with the inscription, " A la Vertu," why is it there ? And those three doors over which are written the words " Sciences, Lettres, Arts," are we to attach any significance to the fact that the central door, the door of " Lettres," is barred by the bureau of the Acad- emy, and therefore inexorably and inevitably closed.? 284 THE PRAISE OF PARIS Half the amphitheatre reserved for the members of the Institute is deserted and silent, for these great men are still gossiping in the court-yard ; the other half is occupied by a worldling and literary public, in which the women predominate. As you look around you see nothing but pretty faces, pretty hats, pretty smiles, waving fans, opera-glasses raised to recognize a friend, and lowered to acknowledge a salute. Everybody knows everybody, at least by sight. Here is the famous blue- stocking and poetess, Madame A, and the celebrated novelist, Madame B, who will never be allowed to enter Paradise, even if they become as mighty geniuses as George Sand, who, by-the-way, held that the Academy is a remnant of literary feudalism, useless both for men and women alike. Here are the society ladies who re- ceive Academicians; Madame Buloz, whose salon is that of the Revtie des Deux-Mondes, and the traditional ves- tibule of the Institute; the Comtesse Potocka, who has an Academic lunch-party on Sundays; and Madame Aubernon, who rules conversation with a silver bell, against which even M. Renan does not venture to rebel. Hence the story that in the course of one of these Academic dinners, while some other celebrity was speak- ing, M. Renan made as if he would utter articulate sounds, but the hostess promptly suppressed him. Then when his turn came round Madame Aubernon tinkled her bell and gave M. Renan leave to speak. " Alas, madame," replied the great sceptic, " it is too late ; I wished to ask for a second helping of spinach." Here and there are novelists, poets, dramatists, who are paying court to the Academy and hoping to get elected one of these days. Here is B, who has just had a feeble novel jobbed into the Revue des Deux-Mondes. B has married a rich and pretty wife with a view to opening an Academic salon, and so achieving immor- THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 285 tality. His pretty wife is beside him in a delicious toilet, specially created for the occasion by that great artist Epinglard. She is particularly gracious to Z, who has written a few witty pieces, and who, being rich and an epicure, is " running for " the Academy on the strength of his Q-Qod dinners. Z is a rival who must be con- ciliated. Next to Z are some American girls, whose piquant beauty and vivacious talk has won them the protection of the belle Madame P, who also receives Academicians at dinner, and talks literature with an awkwardness as charming as the natural ga2icherie with wdiich women play at billiards. Madame P is conspicu- ous with her royal blue velvet robe, but she is not dressed with such good taste as her neighbor, Madem- oiselle R, of the Comedie-Fran9aise, who happens to be sitting near two equally obese and famous men — Blowitz, the correspondent of the Times, and Sarcey, the dramatic critic, who has been present at every Academic reception during the past twenty years. But one o'clock strikes ; a thrill of impatience runs through the audience ; a movement is heard in the lob- by. '' Presentez arrrmes T' The door opens, and the Academicians and various members of the Institute enter, the dignitaries, clad in gala costume, passing first. There is a little tumult, some hand-shakings, a certain haste to find a seat, some salutations waved gracefully to the great dames among the audience, which cranes its neck and seeks to recognize the Immortals ; and there is Dumas, looking handsome and haughty ; there is Sardou, posing for a Holbein ; Renan, whose features call to mind those of the regretted comedian Hyacinthe of the Palais Royal ; Taine, the great impersonal in- tellect delighting in the cold examination and rectifi- cation of the facts of French history ; Gaston Boissier, the mellifluous cicerone of ancient Rome ; Jules Cla- 286 THE PRAISE OF PARIS retie and Edouard Herve, who represent journalism; Le- conte de Lisle, Coppee, and Sully Prudhomme, a trin- ity of poets ; Pailleron and Halevy, who personify the lighter stage; Jules Simon and Camille Doucet, who consider the Academy to be the centre of the universe, and nothing less than Paradise ; Rousse, Duruy, Cher- buliez, Mgr. Perraud, Pierre Loti, d'Haussonville, Me- zieres, and the other Academicians, whose names the public can never remember. But enough of the spectacle in the house, and of the spectacle on the stage. Let us come to the ceremony of the reception itself. And here let it be remarked that the traditional fauteuil is an archaeological snare ; the members of the Academy and of the different sections of the Institute do not sit in arm-chairs, or even in chairs without arms ; the only sitting accommodation they have consists of benches covered with faded green velvet. The Academic fauteuil is a fiction based on a fact. In the old Academy founded by Richelieu, Louis XIV. desired that the most perfect equality should reign between all the members, whatever their social rank or condition might be. For a long time the Academicians used to sit in simple chairs ; but one day the old Car- dinal d'Estrees having asked for an easier seat, the King gave orders for forty arm-chairs exactly alike to be placed in the Academy so that no member should be in any way distinguished from his colleagues. Such was the origin of i\\Q fauieuil, the traditional symbol of the Academic dignity. So, then, we will suppose that the Immortals and the other members of the Institute have settled themselves on the benches. In the centre of the hemicycle is the bureau of the Academy, the director and his assessors, the perpetual secretary, M. Camille Doucet, the recipiendaire, or victim, and his two sponsors, all clad in strange attire, embroidered with Bonnat L'ENTREE DES ARTISTES Massenet Thomas THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 289 brilliant green leaves, and carrying cocked hats and in- nocuous swords, according to the model devised by Napoleon I. The sitting having been opened, the recipiendaire, or newly- elected member, rises and reads a eulogy of his deceased predecessor, which lasts about an hour. Then the Academician charged with receiving the new-comer rises in his turn, and during another hour says disagree- able things to him, always in the politest terms. At about three o'clock the ceremony is over. The court-yard of the Institute and the Quai Conti present a gay and animated appearance. Some of the Acade- micians go away on foot, others in cabs, others in smart coupes, while the heroes and the orators of the seance are surrounded by groups of charming ladies, who con- gratulate them and invite them to dinner ; for a new Academician is always overwhelmed with invitations, a fact which caused Labiche to say after he had been elected and received at the Academy, " Tiens : je ne savais pas qu'on etait nourri " (I did not know that we were boarded into the bargain). And so, after hanging about a little to see and to be seen, to shake hands with X, and to catch the eye of Z, the reporter who will put their names in the papers, the worldlings disperse, happy to be able to say at the five -o'clock of the marquise, or at dinner at the comtesse's, " Charming, the reception at the Academy this afternoon. You were not there, cJiere comtesse ? The house was most elegant, a regular first-night audience. Pailleron's speech was a master- piece of delicate wit and suave malice. Astonishing, those Academicians ; they are like a lot of old cats. They watch their new colleague, and play with him as if he were a mouse, turning him over with a profusion of graceful and mischievous gestures, and finally, having despatched the poor victim with a sharp and insidious 19 290 THE PRAISE OF PARIS epigram, they pur and jubilate, and go home exclaim- ing, ' Quelle belle reception /' Madame P was there in a steel gray costume, a marvel, ch^re comtesse. She and Madame S were in the very centre, in the corbeille, f}ta cliere, right under the new Academician's nose. Ma- dame S seemed to be literally drinking in his words. Une super be reception, ma dure f' Such in its main outlines is the aspect of a reception at the French Academy. So far as concerns the spec- tators and the actors, the annual public meeting of the Academy held in May is much the same; the pro- gramme, however, is more varied. First of all, M. Camille Doucet, most amiable, sociable, and indefatiga- bly polite, reads his report on the various prizes which are to be distributed ; then one of the Academicians who is a good elocutionist reads a fragment from the manuscript which has won the composition prize ; next one of the Academicians reads a report on the acts of heroism or of virtue the Academy has thought worthy of recompensing with the prizes of the Monthyon foun- dation. This report has been looked forward to with expectation since Renan, Dumas, Sardou, and Pailleron ventured to make it amusing as a comedy instead of remaining within the limits of a lay homily. We may safely say, I think, that the Anglo-Saxon re- gards with considerable respect the Institute of France, and its best known section, the French Academy. In their heart of hearts the French themselves respect it, too, but nevertheless they have persisted in scoffing at it ever since its foundation. Saint- Evremond began the game with his comedy, " Les Academiciens," and since then the fire of epigrams has never ceased except during the Revolution, when the target was suppressed. " The Academy," said Voltaire, " is a body whose mem- bers receive titled people, place-holders, prelates, magis- THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 291 trates, doctors, geometers, and even 'inen of letiersT Piron said, " They are forty, and they have no more wit than four. lis sont quarante qui out de V esprit comme quatrer The same Piron, speaking of the pompous re- ception speeches, declared that it would be quite suffi- cient if the new Academician on taking his seat were to say, '' Messieurs, grand merci,'' to which the members of the Academy would reply, " Monsieur, il 11 y a pas de quoir " Bare as an Academician's speech," was the best simile Alfred de Musset could find to convey the idea of consummate baldness; and in truth, with rare -exceptions, these reception speeches are poor enough. And yet with how much care are they prepared ! A year elapses between the election and the reception of an Academician. During that period he has to read up the complete works of his predecessor with a view to pronouncing his eulogy. Having written his eulogy, he submits it to the Academy, and his prose is dis- cussed and commented upon phrase by phrase ; his effects are noted, and his pauses for breath and ap- plause indicated in the margin of the manuscript. Then the Academician who is to reply proceeds to work over this speech, and seeks to be witty and malicious ; and, finally, the Academy discusses and comments his speech, marks his effects, and notes his pauses ; and when the great day arrives all is ready ; there is no sur- prise except for the public, when by chance an Acade- mician makes a brilliant and amusing speech. Sainte-Beuve in his correspondence depicts the true man of letters as pursuing his career " with love and dignity, with happiness in producing, with respect for the masters, welcome for the young, and friendly in- timacy with his equals, and so arriving at the honors of the profession — that is to say, the Institute." But the trouble is that a Frenchman can rarely enter the doors 292 THE PRAISE OF PARIS of the Institute, or at any rate of the French Academy, without sacrificing something of his independence. When the poet Fran9ois Coppee was elected to the Academy, he was obliged to give up his weekly theat- rical article in La Patrie newspaper in order to avoid criticising the works of his colleag^ues of the Academic. Auguste Vacquerie has repeatedly refused to become a candidate at the Academy, although his election was certain ; he will not sacrifice one atom of his independ- ence of thought and of pen. The same is the case with Alphonse Daudet, and half a dozen other dis- tinguished French writers, who will never become mem- bers of the French Academy so lonq- as its ors^anization remains what it is. ' The Academy," said Sainte-Beuve, in a private conversation, " is horribly afraid of Bohe- mians. If the Academicians have not seen a man in their salons, they will not have anything to do with him. They dread him. tie is not a man of their sphere, ce nest pas mi Jiomme de leur mo7ider It was for social and sartorial reasons of this nature that the Academy des Beaux-Arts refused to have anything to do with the sculptor Rude. One of the reasons which the French Academy alleged for refusing Balzac \vas that he had debts ; and Alfred de Musset was for a long time kept waiting at the door because his cravats were not tied as correctly as the Academicians desired. The great Dumas was rejected because he had collaborators, although the same fact had not stood in the way of Monsieur Scribe ; Baudelaire and Flaubert were pro- nounced ineligible because their books had no immediate moral utility; and the only reason found for not en- couraging Gautier was that he was slovenly in his per- son and had long and abundant hair, whereas a perfect Academician ought to be baldish at least. Indeed, there is a good deal of truth in the paradoxical defini- ki'M PUBLIC MEETING OF THE FIVE ACADEMIES OF THE INSTITUTE JOSEPH BERTRAND PRESIDING THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 295 tion of the Academy as the most exclusive club in Paris ; a place where fine manners and a courtly bear- ing enable a man to shine with more brilliancy than tal- ent and originality. This appears to have been the opin- ion of Guizot, who, in the course of a discussion on the merits of a certain candidate for a seat in the Acade- my, thus summed up his views : " I shall vote certainly for X, because I find that he has all the qualities of a veritable Academician. In the first place he has a good presence, and besides that he is very polite, he is deco- rated, and he has no opinions. I am aware that he has written a few good books, but what will you ? No man is perfect." Let us, then, cease to regard the Academicians as vestals whose vigilance keeps alive the sacred fire of French literature. If the Academy were to be sup- pressed to-morrow, as it was in 1793, French literature would find itself in no danger of extinction. The mem- bers of the Academy are rather to be looked upon as amiable, and, generally, polite gentlemen, who meet for an hour or two every week always in the good inten- tion of doing something, although, usually, they succeed only in exchanging a few ideas on the events of the day, on the last reception of the Marquise So-and-so, and on the suavity of feminine society in general. Relations, influence, good bearing, a certain manner of speaking, and another of holding one's peace; the frequentation of a special social set, assiduous attend- ance in certain salons, are the means which most read- ily carry a man in triumph to the French Academy. Hence it happens that very many of the forty immor- tals will never have been anything but Academicians. In their Jourjial the Goncourts record the following words of Sainte-Beuve in reply to their question about the candidature of Theophile Gautier : " It has not the 296 • THE PRAISE OF PARIS slightest chance ; he would need a whole year of visits and solicitations ; none of the Academicians know him. You see the great point is that they must have seen you, they must have made acquaintance with your face. An election, mark you, is an intrigue — an intrigue in the good sense of the word," and this is why women and salons play such a role in the Academic world, and why you see so many ladies at all the receptions of the Academy. But this state of affairs is no novelty. Vol. taire, who became an Academician through the influ- ence of Madame de Pompadour, long ago came to the conclusion that " in order to make the smallest fortune it is better to be in the good graces of a king's mis- tress than to write a hundred volumes." In reality, the Academy has never at any time been absolutely free in its elections. In the early days of its history Richelieu was supreme Protector and Regent of the company, and, because the cardinal could not forget that his tragedy of " Mirame " was a failure and " The Cid " a suc- cess, Corneille was obliged to wait at the doors. In their turn the grand ladies who frequented the Hotel Ram- bouillet reigned over the Academy, and showed them- selves hostile to new talent. In the eighteenth century the salons of Madame De Lambert, Madame De Ten- cin, Madame Geoffrin, Mademoiselle Lespinasse, and Madame Necker held the keys of the learned company ; and it is a significant fact that at the present moment the descendants of Madame Necker, the Due de Brog- lie, and the Comte d'Haussonville, still contrive to con- tinue the traditions of the chatelaine of Coppet, and to render an election to the Academy an intrigue, an af- fair where preferment goes by letter and affection, and where affection must be courted assiduously, and ac- cordinfj to the rules and formulas. And one of the most embarrassino" of these rules is the visit to solicit votes. THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 297 When the old Academy was first founded, it was not necessary for candidates for election to solicit the suf- frages of the body ; but one Armand d'Andilly having been elected, and having declined the honor, it was de- cided that in future, in order to avoid a similar humilia- tion, none should be elected unless he had solicited election. This rule was maintained when the present Academy was founded ;* and now every man who con- siders himself distinguished enough to merit immor- tality, is obliged to put on his hat, coat, and gloves, hire a cab by the hour, and go from house to house to make thirty-nine, thirty-eight, or thirty-seven visits, according to the number of Academicians who have died in the course of the year. What a trial for an independent literary man who has won his position by dint of hard battling in the midst of which literary usages and liter- ary personalities have received many a hit ! Imagine the embarrassment of that marmorean poet, Leconte de Lisle, as he solicited the vote of M. Legouve, the man who is the best reader in the world, one of the best fencers, and one of the poorest writers of couplets. Imagine M. Pailleron soliciting the vote of M. Caro, after having caricatured him in his comedy "Le Monde oi^i Ton s'ennuie " so transparently that it became the talk of the town. And all this is not said with the view to criticisino: the Academy, or questioning the right of the illustrious com- pany to govern itself as it pleases and to do as it likes. Some vainly say the Academy has no right to reject * In modern times Thiers is tlie only exception to this rule. Being in 1833 Minister of the Interior, and in the full glory of his political career, the author of the Histoire de la Revolution abstained from all visits, and simply charged his friends with informing the Academy of the honor that he was disposed to show that body by allowing himself to be elected. 298 THE PRAISE OF PARIS such and such a man of talent. Evidently a company, like an individual, enjo5^s liberty of action ; but, like an individual, it loses more or less of its responsibility according as it uses its liberty in a manner which is not shocking to common-sense or to justice. During its existence of two hundred and fifty years the French Academy, both the old one and the modern one, has numbered many illustrious Frenchmen in its ranks ; but there has always been an imaginary forty-first arm- chair in which public opinion has seated an illustri- ous victim of the neglect or caprice of the occupants of the forty real Academicians. The men to whom public opinion has attributed this imaginary arm-chair have been Descartes, Pascal, Scarron, Moliere, Jean Bap- tiste Rousseau, Bayle, Saint-Simon, Regnard, La Roche- foucauld, Le Sage, the Abbe Prevost, Vauvenargues, Piron, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, Joseph De Maistre, Mirabeau, Beaumarchais, Andre Chenier, Ri- varol, Paul Louis Courier, Lamennais, Stendhal, Louis Veuillot, Michelet, Balzac, Theophile Gautier, Alex- andre Dumas, the elder. Nevertheless, on this ques- tion of the reception of some and the exclusion of others, we must not too hastily condemn the Academy. Already more than a century ago D'Alembert excused the company in these words : " In order to appreciate justly the hazardous or equivocal choices made by the Academy on certain occasions, we must not ask what posterity will think of the Academicians on whom the choice fell ; we must see what the contemporary public thought of them ; we must examine if the votes that they obtained were not for the moment sufficiently jus- tified either by brilliant though ephemeral success, or by the impossibility of finding more eligible subjects." Seriously, the prestige of the French Academy has declined considerably of late years, and the proof of it THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 299 is that whenever a vacancy occurs the candidates are often confessed mediocrities, and rarely eminent men of letters. To belong to the Academy confers no advan- tage ; the mention " de I'Academie Fran9aise " after the author's name on the cover of a book does not insure a big sale, as M. Xavier Marmier and half a dozen other nonentities could tell us. The annual salary of 1200 francs, plus the presence fee of 6 francs 50 centimes, is poor pay if an Academician is conscientious, and feels bound to take a share in the examination of books and the awarding of prizes, which work has increased so greatly that the poor dictionary does not advance one single letter in a quarter of a century. Then where is the advantage of being an Academician ? The glory ? In reality, unless a man has won glory by his own efforts the Academy cannot confer any. "The Acad- emy," I once heard one of the most delicate of con- temporary French novelists say — " the Academy is a pinchbeck Paradise. The elect have some fun at the moment of their reception when they try on their uni- form before their admiring family, and when they wear it in public for the first time. Their speech, the audi- ence, the flattery of the ladies, the momentary social success, the murmur which greets them as they enter Madame X's salon, the articles in the newspapers — all this amuses them. But the day after their reception they are forgotten, and fall back forever into cold si- lence and black oblivion. C'est un faux ParadisT THE END Handsomely Illustrated Books. j8®= Harper & Brothers luill setid any of tJie following -works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part oftlie United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of t/ie price. BEN-HUR. Illustrated. Ben-Hur : A Tale of the Christ. By LEW. WALLACE. Two Volumes. Illustrated with Twenty Full-page Photogravures. Over One Thou- sand Illustrations as Marginal Drawings by WILLIAM MARTIN JOHN- SON. Printed on Fine Super-calendered Plate Paper, Bound in Silk and Gold, and Contained in Specially Designed Gladstone Box, $7 00. "THE QUIET LIFE." II I nstratedhv Abbey and Parsons. "The Quiet Life." 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THOMSON, D.D., Forty-five Years a Missionary in Syria and Palestine. SOUTHERN PALESTINE AND JERUSALEM. — CENTRAL PALESTINE AND PHOE- NICIA.— LEBANON, DAMASCUS, AND BEYOND JORDAN. Three volumes. Square 8vo. Profusely Illustrated. Each volume sold sepa- rately. Price per volume: Cloth, $600; Sheep, $700; Half Morocco, $8 50 ; Full Morocco, Gilt Edges, $10 00.— Popular Edition. In 3 volumes, Square 8vo, Cloth, $9 00 ; Half Leather, $12 00. {Sold only in Sets.) MODERN SHIPS OF WAR. By Sir EDWARD J. REED, M.P., Late Chief Constructor of the British Navy, and EDWARD SIMPSON, Rear-Admiral U.S.N. , Late President U.S. Naval Advisory Board. With Supplementary Chapters and Notes by J. D. JERROLD KELLEY, Lieutenant U.S.N. Illustrated. Square 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $2 50. HORSE, FOOT, AND DRAGOONS. Sketches of Army Life at Home and Abroad. By RUFUS FAIRCHILD ZOGBAUM. With Illustrations by the Author." Square 8vo, Cloth, Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. By THEODORE CHILD. THE TRAISE OF "PARIS. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, Orna- mental, if list Ready.) ^RT AND CRITICISM. Monographs and Studies. Illus- trated. Large 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt- Top, $6 GO. (/// a Box.) It is an especial piece of good-fortune to meet with a writer upon art who is at once a discerning and lucid critic and skilful narrator, with a never-failing sense of what is interesting. — yV. V. Swi. SPANISH-AMERICAN %EPUBLICS. Illustrated. Square 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $3 so. Mr. Child has produced a very opportune book, eminently readable and attractive, and full of information. — London Times. THE TSAR AND HIS "PEOPLE ; or, Social Life in Russia. By Theodore Child, Eugene Melchior de Vogije, and Others. Illustrated. Square 8vo, Cloth, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $3 GO. In the ample literature concerned with the Russia of to-day, there is probably now no more attractive volume, externally or internally, than this collection of papers relating to its social and artistic aspects, — Literary World, Boston. THE TDESIRE OF "BEAUTY. Being Indications for /Esthetic Culture. i6mo, Cloth, Ornamental, 75 cents. An attractive volume, containing a series of thoughtful and very readable chapters on matters pertaining to art, art criticism, and aesthetic culture, with discussions of such subjects as the invention of beauty, the error of realism, the educating of the eye, etc. TDELICATE FEASTING. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 2> It la3's the foundation for a liberal education in the art of cooking. Many a house-keeper will get her first clear idea of the relation of good food to physical, mental, and moral well-being. — Philadelphia Inquirer. SUMMER HOLIDAYS. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. A delightful book of notes of European travel. . . . Mr. Child is an art-critic, and takes us into the picture-galleries, but we never get any large and painful doses of art information from this skilful and discrim- inating guide. There is not a page in his book that approaches to dull reading. — yV. Y. Sun. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. The above works are for sale ty all booksellers, or will he sent hy the publishers, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. University of Connecticut Libraries