University of Virginia Library

19. LETTER XIX.

It is now the middle of April, and sitting at my
window on the Rue Rivoli, I look through one of the
long, clipped avenues of the Tuileries, and see an
arch of green leaves, the sun of eight o'clock in the
morning just breaking through the thin foliage and
dappling the straight, even gravel-walk below, with a
look of summer that makes my heart leap. The
cholera has put an end to dissipation, and one gets up
early from necessity. It is delicious to step out before
breakfast, and cross the street into those lovely gardens,
for an hour or two of fresh air and reflection. It
is warm enough now to sit on the stone benches about
the fountains, by the time the dew is dry; and I know
nothing so contemplative as the occupation of watching
these royal swans in the dreamy, almost imperceptible
motion with which they glide around the edges
of the basins. The gold fish swim up and circle
about the breast of the imperial birds with a motion
almost as idle; and the old wooden-legged soldier,
who has been made warden of the gardens for his
service, sits nodding on one of the chairs, or drawing
fortifications with his stick in the gravel; and so it
happens, that in the midst of a gay and busy city one
may feel always a luxurious solitude; and, be he ever
so poor, loiter all day if he will, among scenes which
only regal munificence could provide for him. With
the Seine bounding them on one side, the splendid
uniform façade of the Rue Rivoli on the other, the
palace stretching across the southern terrace, and the
thick woods of the Champs Elysées at the opposite
gate, where could one go in the world to give his taste
or his eye a more costly or delightful satisfaction?

The Bois de Boulogue, about which the Parisians
talk so much, is less to my taste. It is a level wood
of small trees, covering a mile or two square, and cut
from corner to corner with straight roads for driving.
The soil is sandy, and the grass grows only in tufts,
the walks are rough, and either muddy or dusty always,
and, barring the equipages and the pleasure of
a word in passing an acquaintance, I find a drive to
this famous wood rather a dull business. I want either
one thing or the other — cultivated grounds like
the Tuileries, or the wild wood.

I have just left the Countess Guiccioli, with whom
I have been acquainted for some two or three weeks.
She is very much frightened at the cholera, and thinks
of going to America. The conversation turned principally
upon Shelley, whom of course she knew intimately;
and she gave me one of his letters to herself as
an autograph. She says he was at times a little crazy
— “fou,” as she expressed it — but that there never
was a nobler or a better man. Lord Byron, she says,
loved him like a brother. She is still in correspondence
with Shelley's wife, of whom also she speaks
with the greatest affection. There was several miniatures
of Byron hanging up in the room, and I asked
her if any of them were perfect in the resemblance.
“No,” she said, “this was the most like him,” taking
down an exquisitely finished miniature by an Italian
artist, “mais el etaít beaucoup plus beau — beaucoup! —
beaucoup!” She reiterated the word with a very
touching tenderness, and continued to look at the picture
for some time, either forgetting our presence, or
affecting it. She speaks English sweetly, with a
soft, slow, honeyed accent, breaking into French when
ever she gets too much interested to choose her words.
She went on talking in French of the painters who
had drawn Byron, and said the American, West's, was
the best likeness. I did not like to tell her that West's
picture of herself was excessively flattered. I am
sure no one would know her from the engraving of it
at least. Her cheek bones are high, her forehead is
badly shaped, and altogether, the frame of her features
is decidedly ugly. She dresses in the worst
taste, too, and yet, with all this, and poetry and celebrity
aside, the Countess Guiccioli is both a lovely and
a fascinating woman, and one whom a man of sentiment
would admire even at this age, very sincerely,
but not for beauty. She has white and regular teeth,
however, and her hair is incomparably the most beautiful
I ever saw. It is of the richest and glossiest
gold, silken and luxuriant, and changes, as the light
falls upon it, with a mellow softness, than which nothing
could be lovelier. It is this and her indescribably
winning manner which are lost in a picture, and therefore,
it is perhaps fair that she should be otherwise
flattered. Her drawing-room is one of the most
agreeable in Paris at present, and it is one of the chief
agrèmens which console me for a detention in an atmosphere
so triste as well as dangerous.

My bed-room window opens upon the court in the
interior of the hotel Rivoli, in which I lodge. In
looking out occasionally upon my very near neighbors
opposite, I have frequently observed a gray-headed,
scholar-like, fine-looking old man, writing at a
window in the story below. One does not trouble
himself much about his fellow-lodgers, and I had
seen this gentleman at his work at all hours, for a
month or more, without curiosity enough to inquire
even his name. This morning the servant came in,
with a Mon Dieu! and said M. Sismondi was frighteded
by the cholera, and was leaving his lodgings at
that moment. The name startled me, and making
some inquiries, I found that my gray-headed neighbor
was no other than the celebrated historian of Italian
literature, and that I had been living under the same
roof with him for weeks, and watching him at his
classical labors, without being at all aware of the honor
of his neighborhood. He is a kind, benevolent-looking
man, of about sixty, I should think; and always
had a peculiarly affectionate manner to his wife,
who, I am told by the valet, is an Englishwoman. I
regretted exceedingly the opportunity I had lost of
knowing him, for there are few writers of whom one
retains a more friendly and agreeable remembrance.

In a conversation with Mr. Cooper, the other day,
he was remarking of how little consequence any one
individual found himself in Paris, even the most distinguished.
We were walking in the Tuileries, and
the remark was elicited by my pointing out to him
one or two celebrated persons, whose names are sufficiently
known, but who walk the public promenades,
quite unnoticed and unrecognised. He said he did
not think there were five people in Paris who knew
him at sight, though his works were advertised in all
the bookstores, and he had lived in Paris one or two
years, and walked there constantly. This was putting
a strong case, for the French idolize Cooper; and the
peculiarly translateable character of his works makes
them read even better in a good translation than in
the original. It is so all over the continent, I am told.
The Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, prefer Cooper
to Scott; and it is easily accounted for when one remembers
how much of the beauty of the Waverley
novels depends on their exquisite style, and how peculiarly
Cooper's excellence lies in his accurate, definite,
tangible descriptions. There is not a more admired
author in Europe than Cooper, it is very certain;
and I am daily asked whether he is in America
at present — so little do the people of these crowded
cities interest themselves about that which is immediately
at their elbows.