John Sanderson

“ These splendid cafés are multiplied by mirrors, and being open, or separated only by panels of glass, appear to form but a single tableau with the street, and those outside and in seem parts of the same company. I recommend you the Café de Paris, the Café Hardi, the Café Veron, if you wish to mix with the fashionable and merry world; if with the business world, with the great bankers, the millionaires, the noblesse de la Bourse, who smooth their cares with fat dinners and good wines, where else in the world should you go but to Tortoni’s? There are not two Tortonis upon the earth. ”

“ Innumerable lights, in the meantime, shine out from the palace windows, and the Rue Rivoli, and glimmer through the tufted trees of the garden. The plantation of elms has also, at this hour, its little enchantments. Lovers, using the sweet opportunities of the night, and seated apart from the crowd, breathe their soft whisperings into each other’s ears, in a better music than the king’s; and you can see visions of men and women just flit by you now and then in the doubtful light, and fade away into the thin air. ”

“ But step out through the Rue de Paris, a little to the north, and you will see a compensation for all this ugliness. It is a hill, running boldly up to the water’s edge, whose south side, several hundred feet high, is smothered with houses, which seem to be scrambling up the acclivity to get a look at the town; and the entire summit is covered with beautiful villas, and gardens rich with trees and shrubbery, and hedges, which at this season are a most luxurious ornament. Many American families, having grown rich here by commerce, are perched magnificently upon this hill. ”

“ If a gentleman comes to Paris in the dog days, when his countrymen are spread over Europe, at watering places, and elsewhere, and when every soul of a Frenchman is out of town—if he is used to love his friends at home, and be loved by them, and to see them gather around him in the evenings—let him not set a foot in that unnatural thing, a bachelor’s apartment in a furnished hotel, to live alone, to eat alone, and to sleep alone! ”

“ Billiards, cards, Faro, and other games of hazard, are to be found at every hundred steps, in every street and alley of Paris; haunted by black-legs in waiting for your purse; and there is scarce a private ball or soirée, even to those of the court, in which immense sums are not lost and won by gambling. The shuffling of cards or rattling of dice is a part of the music of every Parisian saloon, and many fathers of families of the first rank get a living by it. To know how much better it is in London, one has only to read the London books. ”

“ When you visit the Luxembourg you will see multitudes every where of bouncing demoiselles, with nymph-looking faces, caps without bonnets, and baskets in their hands, traversing the garden from all quarters, running briskly to their work in the morning, and strolling slowly homewards towards evening—These are the grisettes. They are very pretty, and have the laudable little custom of falling deeply in love with one. They are common enough all over Paris, but in this classical region they are as the leaves in Vallambrosa. ”

“ The coquetry of a French kitchen keeps alive expectation, and enhances enjoyment by surprise. You have here, too, the advantage of a male cook; the kitchen prefers the masculine to the feminine, like the grammars; and, besides, you have the tranquillity of a private house. If you ask a dish at Flicoteau’s, the waiter bawls it down to the kitchen, and as they are continually asking, he is continually bawling. ”

“ Alas, do you expect that one’s affections, so much more delicate, will not pine and wither away where there is not a particle of their native aliment to support them! I looked a long time upon a cedar of Lebanon; it stands like a patriarch in the midst of his family, its broad branches expanded hospitably, inviting the traveller to repose. Along the skirts of the garden one sees lions, and tigers, and jackals, and an elephant—a prisoner from Moscara, lately burnt by the Grand Army. Several elephants fought and bled for their country on that occasion, and this is one of them. ”

“ There are above a thousand of these cafés in Paris, and several of the most sumptuous overlook the gardens of the Palais Royal. Ceres has unlocked her richest treasures here, and has poured them out with a prodigality that is unknown elsewhere. Fish, of fresh and salt water; rare wines, of home and foreign production; and as for the confectionaries, sucreries, fruiteries, and charcuiteries—the senses are bewildered by the infinite variety. And the artists here have a higher niche in the temple of Fame than even those of the Boulevard Italien. ”

“ On the side next the palace, you will see a knife-grinder, whom everybody admires, and statues of ancient heroes and statesmen majestic on their pedestals,—Pericles, Cincinnatus, Scipio, Cæsar, and Spartacus. You may imagine what life these images, set out alone and in groups through the garden, give to the perspective. The whole scene is as beautiful as my description of it is detestable. The French are justly proud of this garden, and are every year increasing the quantity of its statuary: it will become at length one of the splendid galleries of the capital ”

“ The contempt of the rabble, of which we hear so much, is three-fourths of it parade and affectation. She who abroad hangs the common world with so much scorn upon her nose, lives at home, under the same roof, almost at the same table, with the veriest rabble of the whole community, her own servants and slaves. Why should we abandon the Tuileries more than the Boulevards, and why the Washington-square more than Chestnut-street, because the common people walk in it? ”

“ The edge of the river, for half a mile, is embroidered with washerwomen; and baths, and boats of charcoal, cover its whole surface. One cannot drown oneself here, but at the risk of knocking out one’s brains. One of the curiosities of this place, is the fête des Blanchisseuses, celebrated a few days ago. The whole surface of the river was covered with dances; floors being strewed upon the boats, and the boats, adorned with flags and streamers, rowing about, and filled with elegant washerwomen, just from the froth, like so many Venuses—now dissolving in a waltz, now fluttering in a quadrille. ”

“ All Paris was so overwhelmed with grief for the death of General Mortier, and the “narrow escape of the king,” that it blighted entirely the immense enjoyment we had expected for this day—the last and best of the “three glorious days.” Ball-rooms and theatres were erected with extraordinary preparation all over the Champs Elysées, and the fireworks were designed to be the most brilliant ever exhibited in Europe. Multitudes had come from distant countries to see them. ”

“ Recollecting with what jubilee we celebrate this day at New York, he imagined how much greater must be the confusion at Paris. He feared we should have our brains knocked out by the mob. You can’t think what an advantage it is for one having but little of this commodity of brains, to travel into foreign countries; one grows into the reputation of a wit by not being understood. ”

“ This street is different from all that I have seen in Paris; it is perhaps different from anything that is to be seen upon the earth. The houses are so immensely high that not a ray even in the brightest mid-day reaches the pavement, which is covered with a slimy mud. The darkened and grated windows give to the houses, the look of so many prisons. A chilling damp and horrid gloom invest you around; you feel stifled for want of air. ”

“ The peasants are seen amongst the tops and chimneys of the houses, cultivating their fields on the sides, and upon the summits, of the hills, which are arrayed in tufts of woodland, hedges, and pasturage; and all the avenues leading to the town are beautifully overshaded with chestnuts and elms. The Seine, too, has its fairy islands and weeping willows on its banks, and winds along through the middle of the town; and now and then a steamboat comes up the valley, with a puffing and fuss that would have made stare even the iron features of old Rollo. ”

“ All day long, this elegant saloon has its society, and a lady can walk in it, unaccompanied, when and whither she pleases. Every day is fashionable, but some more than others, and from four till six are the fashionable hours. The crowd by degrees thickens, the several groups are formed, and towards four the panorama is complete. This is the time that one stands gaping at the long file of ladies upon each side of the wide walk, or that one strolls up and down eyeing them along the intervening avenue, or airs or fans one’s idle minutes upon the terrace overlooking this scene of enchantment. ”

“ All one can offer you is a little sour Burgundy, which is cheaper than inside the wall. This is the reason why you see all this rabble, five hundred at a view, carousing and dancing in their sabots, drinking and caressing, tour-à-tour, the necks of their bottles and their belles; it is the reason why thousands are crowding here to drink who are not dry, and Paris is losing daily her sober reputation, and learning to get drunk like her neighbours. ”

“ All proclaim the benefits of foreign trade, and all legislate directly to get rid of their foreign customers. In what more direct way could France prevent the sale of her wines to Russia, Sweden, and England, than by refusing their coal, iron, woollen manufactures, and other products, for which they have a natural advantage in return?
But the great struggle of all is to become independent; and yet the very word implies the extinction of all foreign commerce. The greatest of all national blessings is assuredly that very dependence we are so eager to avoid. ”

“ When summer has turned round upon its axis, and the first chills of autumn frighten joy from her court, she retires then to her last hold, the “Galerie d’Orleans.” This delightful promenade extends across the south end of the garden; it is three hundred feet long by thirty wide; its roof is of glass and its pavement of tesselated marble; it is bounded on both sides by stores, and cafés, and reading rooms, eighteen feet square, renting annually at four thousand francs each. It is kept warm enough for its company in winter, and is a fashionable resort during that season. ”

“ Take off your hat; this is one of the choice and pre-eminent spots of the French capital; the very seat almost of the pleasures and amusements of Europe; it is the Boulevard Italien. It is here that gentlemen and ladies assemble of an evening to discuss the immense importance of a good dinner, when the labours of the day have closed, and not a care intrudes to distract the mind from the great business of deglutition and digestion. Men make splendid reputations here which live after them by the invention of a single soup. ”

“ In a foreign country a man is always a caricature of himself. The French are here in their own element, and swim in it naturally. One is always awkward from the very sense of not knowing foreign customs; and always ridiculous abroad because everything is ridiculous which departs from common and inveterate habit, and nothing is ridiculous which conforms with it. In a nation of apes, it is becoming to be an ape. If you place a man of sense in a company of fools, it is the man of sense who is embarrassed and looks foolish. ”

“ I mean trades that are “tout Parisiennies”; that is to say, unknown in any other country than Paris. You will see an individual moving about, at all hours of the night, silent and active, and seeing the smallest bit of paper in the dark where you can see nothing, and, with a hook in the end of a stick, picking it up, and pitching it with amazing dexterity into a basket tied to his left shoulder; with a cat-like walk, being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, stirring up the rubbish of every nook and gutter of the street, under your very nose—this is the chiffonnier. ”

“ The evils of all these establishments are manifest: the good is, the prevention of infanticide, often of suicide, and of the perjuries innumerable, and impositions practised in some other countries. I doubt whether a city like Paris could safely adopt any other system. The tables of the last year’s births stand thus:—seventeen thousand one hundred and twenty-nine legitimate; nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-one illegitimate. So you see that every second man you meet in Paris wants but a trifle of being no bastard. Expense, above a million and a half of francs. ”

“ The French do not, like the English, plunge from the bustle and animation of their city into a lifeless solitude, or carry a multitude of guests with them to their country seats, to eat them out of house and home, as an antidote to the vapours. ”

“ To know the advantages of these places to the poor, one must visit the close alleys, crowded courts, and over-peopled habitations, of an over-grown city; where vices and diseases are festering in secret in the heart of the community. Why send missionaries to the South Seas, while their infected districts are unreclaimed? or why talk of popular religion, and morals, and education? The people who would employ about half the care and expense in preventing a disposition to vice, that they now employ in correcting it, would be the people the most happy and innocent of the earth. ”

“ I have known many a one to run all over Paris for a beef-steak, and when he has got it, it was a horse’s rump. My advice is, that no one come to Paris to dine in mean houses on cheap dinners, where you will eat cats for hares, and have snails and chalk for your cream, and the jelly of the “consommé,” from the barber’s. You are no more sure of the ingredients of a dish under the disguises of a French cookery, than of men’s sentiments from their faces or professions. ”

“ To leave Paris for London requires your passport to be signed at the police office, at the American and English ambassadors’, and at the French minister’s. At the first office you are set down with a motley crew upon a bench, and there you sit, like one of those virtues in front of the “Palais Bourbon,” often an hour or two, until your name is called; and when it is called you don’t recognise it, and you keep sitting on, unless you take some one along with you to translate it for you. There is not anything in nature so unlike itself as one’s name Frenchified—even a monosyllable. ”

“ What is there beautiful in a ruin? We have plains as desolate as Babylon, and no one looks at them.
The Palais Royal, however magnificent as a bazaar, has still higher and better merits. It is the history of some of the most remarkable personages and events of the last two ages. Some day, when we have a ticket from the “Intendant de sa Majesté,” I will shew you them all; and first, that very celebrated old fop the Cardinal de Richelieu, who used to strut, with his train of a monarch, through this very garden and these very halls. ”

“ In the interior there are groves of trees and grass plots surrounded by flower-beds; and numerous statues, most of which have seen better days; ranges of trees, and an octagonal piece of water inhabited by two swans, which are now swimming about in graceful solemnity, adorn the parterre in front of the palace. All these objects I have in view of my windows. The garden has altogether an air of philosophy very grateful to men of studious dispositions. ”