4. LETTER IV.
Paris.—It seems to me as if I were going back a
month to recall my departure from Havre, my memory
is so clouded with later incidents. I was awaked
on the morning after I had written to you by a servant,
who brought me at the same time a cup of coffee,
and at about an hour before daylight we were
passing through the huge gates of the town on our
way to Paris. The whole business of diligence-travelling
amused me exceedingly. The construction of
this vehicle has been often described; but its separate
apartments (at four different prices), its enormous size,
its comfort and clumsiness, and, more than all, the
driving of its postillions, struck me as equally novel
and diverting. This last-mentioned performer on the
whip and voice (the only two accomplishments he at
all cultivates), rides one of the three wheel-horses, and
drives the four or seven which are in advance, as a
grazier in our country drives a herd of cattle, and
they travel very much in the same manner. There is
leather enough in two of their clumsy harnesses, to
say nothing of the postillion's boots, to load a common
horse heavily. I never witnessed such a ludicrous
absence of contrivance and tact as in the appoint
ments and driving of horses in a diligence. It is so in
everything in France, indeed. They do not possess
the quality, as a nation. The story of the Gascoigne,
who saw a bridge for the first time, and admired the
ingenious economy that placed it across the river, instead
of lengthwise, is hardly an exaggeration.
At daylight I found myself in the coupé (a single
seat for three in the front of the body of the carriage,
with windows before and at the sides), with two whiskered
and mustached companions, both very polite,
and very unintelligible. I soon suspected, by the
science with which my neighbor on the left hummed
little snatches of popular operas, that he was a professed
singer (a conjecture which proved true), and it
was equally clear, from the complexion of the portfeuille
on the lap of the other, that his vocation was a
liberal one—a conjecture which proved true also, as
he confessed himself a diplomat, when we became
better acquainted. For the first hour or more my attention
was divided between the dim but beautiful outline
of the country by the slowly-approaching light of
the dawn, and my nervousness at the distressing want
of skill in the postillion's driving. The increasing and
singular beauty of the country, even under the disadvantage
of rain and the late season, soon absorbed all
my attention, however, and my involuntary and half-suppressed
exclamations of pleasure, so unusual in an
Englishman (for whom I found I was taken), warmed
the diplomatist into conversation, and I passed the
three ensuing hours very pleasantly. My companion
was on his return from Lithuania, having been sent
out by the French committee with arms and money
for Poland. He was, of course, a most interesting
fellow-traveller; and, allowing for the difficulty with
which I understood the language, in the rapid articulation
of an enthusiastic Frenchman, I rarely have
been better pleased with a chance acquaintance. I
found he had been in Greece during the revolution,
and knew intimately my friend, Dr. H—, the best
claim he could have on my interest, and I soon dicovered
an answering recommendation of myself to
him.
The province of Normandy is celebrated for its picturesque
beauty, but I had no conception before of
the cultivated picturesque of an old country. I have
been a great scenery-hunter in America, and my eye
was new, like its hills and forests. The massive, battlemented
buildings of the small villages we passed
through, the heavy gateways and winding avenues and
antique structure of the distant and half-hidden châteaux,
the perfect cultivation, and, to me, singular appearance
of a whole landscape without a fence or a
stone, the absence of all that we define by comfort and
neatness, and the presence of all that we have seen in
picturs and read of in books, but consider as the representations
and descriptions of ages gone by—all
seemed to me irresistibly like a dream. I could not
rub my hand over my eyes, and realize myself. I
could not believe that, within a month's voyage of my
home, these spirit-stirring places had stood all my life-time
as they do, and have for ages, every stone as it
was laid in times of worm-eaten history, and looking
to my eyes now as they did to the eyes of knights and
dames in the days of French chivalry. I looked at the
constantly-occurring ruins of the old priories, and the
magnificent and still-used churches; and my blood
tingled in my veins, as I saw in the stepping-stones at
their doors cavities that the sandals of monks, and the
iron-shod feet of knights in armor a thousand years
ago, had trodden and helped to wear, and the stone
cross over the threshold, that hundreds of generations
had gazed upon and passed under.
By a fortunate chance the postillion left the usual
route at Balbec, and pursued what appeared to be a
by-road through the grain-fields and vineyards for
twenty or twenty-five miles. I can only describe it as
an uninterrupted green lane, winding almost the whole
distance through the bosom of a valley that must be
one of the very loveliest in the world. Imagine one
of such extent, without a fence to break the broad
swells of verdure, stretching up from the winding and
unenclosed road on either side, to the apparent sky;
the houses occurring at distances of miles, and every
one with its thatched roof covered all over with bright
green moss, and its walls of marl interlaid through all
the crevices with clinging vines, the whole structure
and its appurtenances faultlessly picturesque, and when
you have conceived a valley that might have contented
Rasselas, scatter over it here and there groups of
men, women, and children, the Norman peasantry in
their dresses of all colors, as you see them in the prints
—and if there is anything that can better please the
eye, or make the imagination more willing to fold up
its wings and rest, my travels have not crossed it. I
have recorded a vow to walk through Normandy.
As we approached Rouen the road ascended gradually,
and a sharp turn brought us suddenly to the
brow of a steep hill, opposite another of the same
height, and with the same abrupt descent, at the distance
of a mile across. Between lay Rouen. I hardly
know how to describe, for American eyes, the peculiar
beauty of this view; one of the most exquisite,
I am told, in all France. A town at the foot of a hill
is common enough in our country, but of the hundreds
that answer to this description, I can not name
one that would afford a correct comparison. The
nice and excessive cultivation of the grounds in so old
a country gives the landscape a complexion essentially
different from ours. If there were another Mount
Holyoke, for instance, on the other side of the Connecticut,
the situation of Northampton would be very
similar to that of Rouen; but, instead of the rural village,
with its glimpses of white houses seen through
rich and luxurious masses of foliage, the mountain
sides above broken with rocks, and studded with the
gigantic and untouched relics of the native forest, and
the fields below waving with heavy crops, irregularly
fenced and divided, the whole picture one of an over-lavish
and half-subdued Eden of fertility; instead of
this, I say, the broad meadows, with the winding Seine
in their bosom, are as trim as a girl's flower-garden,
the grass closely cut, and of a uniform surface of green,
the edges of the river set regularly with willows, the
little bright islands circled with trees, and smooth as a
lawn; and instead of green lanes lined with bushes,
single streets running right through the unfenced verdure
from one hill to another, and built up with antique
structures of stone, the whole looking, in the
coup d'æeil of distance, like some fantastic model of a
town, with gothic houses of sand-paper, and meadows
of silk velvet.
You will find the size, population, etc., of Rouen in
the guide-books. As my object is to record impressions,
not statistics, I leave you to consult those laconic
chronicles, or the books of a thousand travellers,
for all such information. The Maid of Orleans was
burnt here, as you know, in the fourteenth century.
There is a statue erected to her memory, which I did
not see, for it rained; and after the usual stop of two
hours, as the barometer promised no change in the
weather, and as I was anxious to be in Paris, I took
my place in the night diligence, and kept on.
I amused myself till dark watching the streams that
poured into the broad mouth of the postillion's boots
from every part of his dress, and musing on the fate
of the poor Maid of Orleans; and then, sinking down
into the comfortable corner of the coupé, I slept almost
without interruption till the next morning—the best
comment in the world on the only comfortable thing I
have yet seen in France, a diligence.
It is a pleasant thing in a foreign land to see the familiar
face of the sun; and as he rose over a distant
hill on the left, I lifted the window of the coupé to let
him in, as I would open the door to a long-missed
friend. He soon reached a heavy cloud, however, and
my hopes of bright weather when we should enter the
metropolis departed. It began to rain again; and the
postillion, after his blue cotton frock was soaked
through, put on his great-coat over it—an economy
which is peculiarly French, and which I observed in
every succeeding postillion on the route. The last
twenty-five miles to Paris are uninteresting to the eye;
and with my own pleasant thoughts, tinct as they were
with the brightness of immediate anticipation, and an
occasional laugh at the grotesque figures and equipages
on the road, I made myself passably contented
till we entered the suburb of St. Denis.
It is something to see the outside of a sepulchre for
kings, and the old abbey of Saint Denis needs no association
to make a sight of it worth many a mile of
weary travel. I could not stop within four miles of
Paris, however, and I contented myself with running
to get a second view of it in the rain while the postillion
breathed his horses. The strongest association
about it, old and magnificent as it is, is the fact, that
Napoleon repaired it after the revolution; and standing
in probably the finest point for its front view, my
heart leaped to my throat as I fancied that Napoleon,
with his mighty thoughts, had stood in that very spot,
possibly, and contemplated the glorious old pile before
me as the place of his future repose.
After four miles more, over a broad straight avenue,
paved in the centre and edged with trees, we arrived
at the Porte St. Denis. I was exceedingly struck
with the grandeur of the gate as we passed under, and
referring to the guide-book I find it was a triumphal
arch erected to Louis XIV., and the one by which
the kings of France invariably enter. This also was
restored by Napoleon, with his infallible taste, without
changing its design; and it is singular how everything
that great man touched became his own, for who remembers
for whom it was raised while he is told who
employed his great intellect in its repairs?
I entered Paris on Sunday at eleven o'clock. I
never should have recognised the day. The shops
were all open, the artificers all at work, the unintelligible
criers vociferating their wares, and the people in
their working-day dresses. We wound through street
after street, narrow and dark and dirty, and with my
mind full of the splendid views of squares, and columns,
and bridges, as I had seen them in the prints, I
could scarce believe I was in Paris. A turn brought
us into a large court, that of the Messagerie, the place
at which all travellers are set down on arrival. Here
my baggage was once more inspected, and, after a
half-hour's delay, I was permitted to get into a fiacre,
and drive to a hotel. As one is a specimen of all, I
may as well describe the Hotel d'Etrangers, Rue Vivienne,
which, by the way, I take the liberty at the
same time to recommend to my friends. It is the precise
centre for the convenience of sight-seeing, admirably
kept, and, being nearly opposite Galignani's, that
bookstore of Europe, is a very pleasant resort for the
half hour before dinner, or a rainy day. I went there
at the instance of my friend the diplomat.
The fiacre stopped before an arched passage, and a
fellow in livery, who had followed me from the Messagerie
(probably in the double character of porter and
police agent, as my passport was yet to be demanded),
took my trunk into a small office on the left, over
which was written “Concierge.” This person, who is
a kind of respectable doorkeeper, addressed me in
broken English, without waiting for the evidence of
my tongue that I was a foreigner, and, after inquiring
at what price I would have room, introduced me to the
landlady, who took me across a large court (the houses
are built round the yard always in France), to the
corresponding story of the house. The room was
quite pretty, with its looking-glasses and curtains, but
there was no carpet, and the fireplace was ten feet
deep. I asked to see another, and another, and another;
they were all curtains, and looking-glasses, and
stone floors! There is no wearying a Frenchwoman,
and I pushed my modesty till I found a chamber to
my taste—a nutshell, to be sure, but carpeted—and
bowing my polite housekeeper out, I rang for breakfast
and was at home in Paris!
There are few things bought with money that are
more delightful than a French breakfast. If you take it
at your room, it appears in the shape of two small vessels,
one of coffee and one of hot milk, two kinds of
bread, with a thin, printed slice of butter, and one or
two of some thirty dishes from which you choose, the
latter flavored exquisitely enough to make one wish
to be always at breakfast; but cooked and composed I
know not how or of what. The coffee has an aroma
peculiarly exquisite, something quite different from
any I ever tasted before; and the petite-pain, a slender
biscuit between bread and cake, is, when crisp and
warm, a delightful accompaniment. All this costs
about one third as much as the beefsteaks and coffee
in America, at the same time that you are waited upon
with a civility that is worth three times the money.
It still rained at noon, and finding that the usual
dinner hour was five I took my umbrella for a walk.
In a strange city I prefer always to stroll about at hazard,
coming unawares upon what is fine or curious.
The hackneyed descriptions in the guidebooks profane
the spirit of a place, I never look at them till after I
have found the object, and then only for dates. The
Rue Vivienne was crowded with people, as I emerged
from the dark archway of the hotel to pursue my wanderings.
A walk of this kind, by the way, shows one a great
deal of novelty. In France there are no shop-men.
No matter what the article of trade—hats, boots, pictures,
books, jewellery, anything and everything that
gentlemen buy—you are waited upon by girls, always
handsome, and always dressed in the height of the
mode. They sit on damask-covered settees, behind
the counters; and when you enter, bow and rise to
serve you, with a grace and a smile of courtesy that
would become a drawing-room. And this is universal.
I strolled on until I entered a narrow passage, penetrating
a long line of buildings. It was thronged with
people, and passing in with the rest, I found myself
unexpectedly in a scene that equally surprised and
delighted me. It was a spacious square enclosed by
one entire building. The area was laid out as a garden,
planted with long avenues of trees and beds of flowers,
and in the centre a fountain was playing in the shape
of a fleur-de-lis, with a jet about forty feet in height.
A superb colonnade ran round the whole square, making
a covered gallery of the lower story, which was
occupied by shops of the most splendid appearance,
and thronged through its long sheltered pavés by thousands
of gay promenaders. It was the far-famed Palais
Royal. I remembered the description I had heard
of its gambling-houses, and facilities for every vice,
and looked with a new surprise on its Aladdin-like
magnificence. The hundreds of beautiful pillars,
stretching away from the eye in long and distant perspective,
the crowd of citizens, and women, and officers
in full uniform, passing and repassing with French
liveliness and politeness, the long windows of plated
glass glittering with jewellery, and bright with everything
to tempt the fancy, the tall sentinels pacing between
the columns, and the fountain turning over its
clear waters with a fall audible above the tread and
voices of the thousands who walked around it—who
could look upon such a scene and believe it what it is,
the most corrupt spot, probably, on the face of the
civilized world?
