IT was the last week in May, and by no means the "merry, merry month of May" had we found it. Not only was the sky weighed down with clouds, but they dripped upon the earth continually, the sun showing his ghastly, white, half-drowned face for a moment only to be swept from sight again by the cloud waves. A friend was going to Paris. Would we shake the drops from our garments, close our umbrellas, and go with him? We not only would, we did. We gathered a lunch, packed our trunk, said our adieus, and drove down to the station in the usual pouring rain, the tearful accompaniment to all our movements. But one party besides our own awaited the train upon the platform--a young man with the insignia of bliss in the gloves of startling whiteness upon his hands, and a middle-aged woman of seraphic expression of countenance, clad in robes of spotless white, her feet encased in capacious white slippers. In this airy costume, one hand grasping a huge bouquet devoid of color, the other the arm of her companion, she paced back and forth, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the laughing porters, casting upon us less fortunate ones, who shivered meekly in our wraps, glances of triumphant pity indescribable.
"Weddin" party, zur," explained the guard, touching his cap to our friend. "Jus" come down in fly." They looked to us a good deal more as if they were just going up in a "fly." The train shrieked into the station, and we were soon rushing over the road to New Haven, from which, in an evil moment, we had planned to cross the Channel. There was little new or strange in the picture seen from our window. The cottages were now of a dull, clay color, instead of the dingy red we had observed before, as though they had been erected in sudden need, without waiting for the burning of the bricks. There were brick-yards all along the way, answering a vexed question in my mind as to where all the bricks came from which were used so entirely in town and village here, in the absence of the wood so plentiful with us. The ca.n.a.ls added much to the beauty of the landscape, winding through the meadows as if they were going to no particular place, and were in no haste to reach their destination. They turned aside for a clump of willows or a mound of daisy-crowned earth; they went quite out of their way to peep into the back doors of a village, and, in fact, strolled along in a lazy, serpentine manner that would have crazed the proprietor of a Yankee ca.n.a.l boat.
It was five o"clock when we reached New Haven, having dropped our fellow-pa.s.sengers along the way, the blissful couple among them.
Through some error in calculation we had taken an earlier train than we need have, and found hours of doleful leisure awaiting us in this sleepy little town, lying upon an arm of the sea. Its outer appearance was not inviting. Here were the first and last houses of wood we saw in England,--high, ugly things, that might have been built of old boats or drift wood, with an economy that precluded all thought of grace in architecture. The train, in a gracious spirit of accommodation, instead of plunging into the sea, as it might have done, paused before the door of a hotel upon the wharf. There, in a little parlor, we improvised a home for a time. Our friend went off to explore the town. We took possession of the faded red arm-chairs by the wide windows. Down below, beyond the wet platform, rose the well-colored meerschaum of the little French steamer, whose long-boats hung just above the edge of the wharf.
Through the closed window stole the breath of the salt sea, that, only a hand-breadth here, widened out below into boundlessness, bringing visions of the ocean and a thrill of remembered delight. The rain had ceased. The breeze rolled the clouds into snow-b.a.l.l.s, pure white against the blue of the sky. Over the narrow stream came the twitter of birds, hidden in the hawthorn hedge all abloom. Everything smiled, and beamed, and glistened without, though far out to sea the white caps crowned the dancing waves. When night fell, and the lights glimmered all through the town, we drew the heavy curtains, lighted the candles in the shining candlesticks, whose light cast a delusive glow over the dingy dustiness of the room, bringing out cheerfully the little round tea-table in the centre, with its bright silver and steaming urn, over which we lingered a long hour, measuring and weighing our comfort, telling tales, seeing visions, and dreaming dreams of home.
The clock struck nine as we crossed the plank to the Alexandra, trying in vain to find in its toy appointments some likeness to our ocean steamer of delightful memory. The train whizzed in from London, bringing our fellow-voyagers. The sheep were separated from the goats by the officer at the foot of the plank, who asked each one descending, "First or second cabin?"--sending one to the right, the other to the left. The wind swept in from the sea raw and cold. The foot-square deck was cheerless and wet. Even a diagonal promenade proved short and unsatisfactory, and in despair we descended the slippery, perpendicular stairs between boxes and bales, and down still another flight, to the cabin. A narrow, cushioned seat clung to its four sides, divided into lengths for berths. "Will it be a rough night?" we carelessly asked the young stewardess. "O, no!" was the stereotyped reply, though all the while the wicked waves were dancing beneath the white caps just outside.
We divested ourselves of hats, and wraps, and useless ornaments, reserving only that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, under a nameless fear, grew every moment meeker and more quiet. We undid the interminable b.u.t.tons of our American boots, and prepared for a comfortable rest, with an ignorance that at the time approximated bliss. There was leisure for the working out of elaborate schemes. Something possessed the tide.
Whether it was high or low, narrow or wide, I do not know; but there at the wharf we were to await the working of its own will, regardless of time. Accordingly we selected our places with a deliberation that bore no proportion to the time we were to fill them, advising with the stewardess, who had settled herself comfortably to sleep. We tried our heads to England and our feet to the foe, and then reversed the order, finally compromising by taking a position across the Channel. But the loading of the steamer overhead, with the chattering of our fellow-pa.s.sengers below,--two English girls, a pretty brunette and her sister,--banished sleep. At three o"clock our voyage began--the succession of quivering leaps, plunges, and somersaults which miraculously landed us upon the French coast. I can think of no words to describe it. The first night upon the ocean was paradise and the perfection of peace in comparison. To this day the thought of the swashing water, beaten white against the port-hole before my eyes, is sickening. A calm--to me, of utter prostration--fell upon us long after the day dawned, only to be broken by the stewardess, when sleep had brought partial forgetfulness, with, "It"s nine o"clock; we"re at Dieppe, and the officers want to come in here." We tried to raise our heads. Officers! What officers? Had we crossed the Styx? Were they of light or darkness? We sank back. O, what were officers to us!
"But you must get up!"--and she began an awkward attempt at the b.u.t.tons of those horrible boots. That recalled to life. American boots are of this world, and we made a feeble attempt to don some of its vanities.
O, how senseless did the cuffs appear that went on upside down!--the collar which was fastened under one ear!--the ribbons that were consigned to our pockets! Making blind stabs at our ears, "Good heavens!" we e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "who ever invented earrings? Relics of barbarism!" We made hasty thrusts at the hair-pins, standing out from our heads in every direction like enraged porcupine quills; being pulled, and twisted, and scolded by the stewardess all the while; hearing the thump, thump, upon our door as one pair of knuckles after another awoke the echoes, as one strange voice after another shouted, "Why don"t those ladies come out?" O the trembling fingers that refused to hold the pins!--the trembling feet that staggered up the ladder-like stairs as we were thrust out of the cabin--out of the cruel little steamer to take refuge in one of the waiting cabs! O the blessedness of our thick veils and charitable wraps!
I recall, as though it were a dream, the narrow, roughly-paved street of Dieppe; a latticed window filled with flowers, and a dark-eyed maiden peeping through the leaves; the fish-wives in short petticoats and with high white caps, clattering over the stones in their wooden _sabots_, wheeling barrows of fish to the market near the station, where they bartered, and bargained, and gossiped. Evidently it is a woman"s right in Normandy to work--to grow as withered, and hard, and old before the time as she chooses, or as she has need; for to put away year after year, as do these poor women, every grace and charm of womanhood, cannot be of choice.
At the long table in the refreshment-room of the station we drank the tasteless tea, and ate a slice from the roll four feet in length. The English-speaking girl who attended us found a place--rough enough, to be sure--where in the few moments of waiting we could complete our hasty toilets. Beside us at the table, our fellow-voyagers, were two professors from a Connecticut college of familiar name, whom we had met in London. They joined us in the comfortable railway carriage, and added not a little to the pleasant chat that shortened the long day and the weary journey to Paris. Our number--for the compartment held eight--was completed by a young American gentleman, and a Frenchman of evil countenance, who drank wine and made love to his pretty Lizette in an unblushing manner, strange, and by no means pleasing, to us, demonstrating the annoyance, if nothing worse, to which one is often subjected in these compartment cars. It needed but one glance from the window to convince us that we were no longer in England. To be sure, the sky is blue, the gra.s.s green, in all lands; but in place of the level sweep of meadow through which we had pa.s.sed across the Channel, the land swelled here into hills on every side. Long rows of stiff poplars divided the fields, or stretched away in straight avenues as far as the eye could reach. The English remember the beauty of a curved line; the French, with a painful rect.i.tude, describe only right angles. Scarlet poppies blushed among the purple, yellow, and white wild flowers along the way. The plastered cottages with their high, thatched roofs, the tortuous River Seine with its green islands, as we neared Paris, the neat little stations along the way--like gingerbread houses--made for us a new and charming panorama. Hanging over a gate at one of these stations was an old man, white-haired, blind; his guide, an old woman, who waited, with a kind of wondering awe stealing over her withered face, while he played some simple air upon a little pipe--thus asking alms. So simple was the air, the very shadow of a melody, that the scene might have been amusing, had it not been so pitiful.
At noon we lunched in the comfortless waiting-room at Rouen, while the professors made a hasty visit to the cathedral during our stay of half an hour. We still suffered from the tossing of the sea, and cathedrals possessed no charms in our eyes. It was almost night when we reached Paris, and joined the hurrying crowd descending from the train. It was a descent into Pandemonium. There was a confusion of unintelligible sounds in our ears like the roll of a watchman"s rattle, bringing no suggestion of meaning. The calmness of despair fell upon our crushed spirits, with a sense of powerlessness such as we never experienced before or since. A dim recollection of school-days--of Ollendorff--rose above the chaos in our minds. "Has the physician of the shoemaker the canary of the carpenter?" we repeated mechanically; and with that our minds became a blank.
Deliverance awaited us; and when, just outside the closed gates, first in the expectant crowd, we espied the face of a friend, peace enveloped us like a garment. Our troubles were over.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PARIS OF 1869.
The devil.--Cathedrals and churches.--The Louvre.--Modern French art.--The Beauvais clock, with its droll little puppets.--Virtue in a red gown.--The Luxembourg Palace.--The yawning statue of Marshal Ney.--Gay life by gas-light.--The Imperial Circus.--The Opera.--How the emperor and empress rode through the streets after the riots.--The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was her fortune.--Napoleon"s tomb.
IT may be the City of Destruction, the very gateway to depths unknown; but with its fair, white dwellings, its fair, white streets, that gleamed almost like gold beneath a summer sun, it seemed much more a City Celestial. It may be, as some affirm, that the devil here walks abroad at midday; but we saw neither the print of his hoofs upon the asphaltum, nor the shadow of his horns upon the cream-like Caen stone.
We walked, and rode, and dwelt a time within its limits; and but for a certain reckless gayety that gave to the Sabbath an air of Vanity Fair, but for the mallet of the workman that disturbed our Sunday worship, we should never have known that we were not in the most Christian of all Christian cities. It is by no means imperative to do in Rome as the Romans do, and one need not in Paris drink absinthe or visit the Jardin Mabille.
Our first expedition was to the banker"s and to the shops, and having replenished our purse and wardrobe, we were prepared to besiege the city. There was a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned with blue satin, of our pretty _salon_, whence we peeped down upon the street below between the yellow satin curtains that draped its wide French window; or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny, impossible birds; or made abortive attempts to penetrate the secrets of the buhl cabinets, and to guess at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered organism; or admired ourselves in the mirrors which gazed at each other from morning till night, for our apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we found most charming.
You will hardly care for a description of the dozen, more or less, churches, old, new, and restored, with which we began and ended our sight-seeing in Paris, where we looked upon sculptured saints without number, and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more than our hearts"
content. There was St. Germain L"Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which tolled the signal for the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew. We stood with the _bonnes_ and babies under the trees of the square before it, gazing up at the belfry with most severe countenances,--and learned, afterwards, that the bell had been long since removed! There was the Madeleine of more recent date, built in the form of a Greek temple, and interesting just now for having been the church of Father Hyacinthe, to which we could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron gate; we inquired in excellent English of a French shopkeeper, and found at last an open gateway, a little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time of search and inquiry in darkness, and among wood, and shavings, and broken chairs, and holy dust-pans, before pa.s.sing around and entering the great bronze doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice, grand and beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds of lotteries. There was St.
Etienne du Mont, and within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the patron saint of Paris--St. Genevieve. Who she was, or what she did to gain this rather unenviable position, I failed to learn. Her name seems to have outlived her deeds. Whether she was beautiful and beloved, and put away earthly vanities for a holy life, or old and ugly, and bore her lot with a patience that won saintship, I do not know. I can only tell that tapers burn always upon her tomb, and if you buy one it will burn a prayer for you. So we were told. There is one old church, St. Germain des Pres, most beautifully colored within. Its pictures seem to have melted upon the walls. But admired above all is the Sainte Chapelle, in the Palais de Justice, a chapel fitted up by the fanatical St. Louis, when this palace of justice, which holds now the courts of law, was a royal residence. Of course all its brightness was dimmed long ago. Its glories became dust, like its founder. But it has recently been restored, and is a marvel of gilt, well-blended colors, and stained gla.s.s. A graceful spire surmounts it, but the old, cone-capped towers, rising from another part of the same building, possessed far greater interest in our eyes; for here was the Conciergerie, where were confined Marie Antoinette and so many more victims of the reign of terror.
On the "isle of the city," in the Seine, where, under the Roman rule, a few mud huts const.i.tuted Paris, stands the church of Notre Dame, which was three hundred years in building. With its spire and two square towers, it may be seen from almost any part of the city. I wish you might look upon the relics and the vestments which the priests wear upon occasions of ceremony, hidden within this church, and displayed upon the payment of an extra fee. I did not wonder that the Sisters of Charity, who went into the little room with us, gazed aghast upon the gold and silver, and precious stones.
Every one visits the galleries of the Louvre, of course. A little, worn shoe, belonging once to Marie Antoinette, and the old gray coat of the first emperor, were to us the most interesting objects among the relics.
From out the sea of pictures rise Murillo"s Madonna, the lovely face with a soul behind it, shining through, and the burial of the heroine of Chateaubriand. Do you know it? The fair form, the sweeping hair of Attila, and the dark lover with despair in his face? As for the Rubens gallery,--his fat, red, undraped women here among the clouds, surrounded by puffy little cherubs, had for us no charms. Rubens in Antwerp was a revelation. We wandered through room after room, lighted from above, crowded with paintings. To live for a time among them would be a delight; to glance at them for a moment was tantalization. All around were the easels of the artists who come here to sketch--sharp-featured, heavy-browed men, with unkempt hair and flowing beards, and in shabby coats, stood before them, pallet and brushes in hand; and women by the score,--some of them young and pleasing, with duennas patiently waiting near by; but more often they were neither young nor beautiful, and with an evident renunciation of pomps and vanities. We glanced at their copies curiously. Sometimes they seemed the original in miniature, and sometimes,--ah well, we all fail.
We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures at the Palais de l"Industrie one day, and were particularly impressed with the _nudite_ of the modern school of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very beautiful, but there must be something higher! We saw there, too, another day, the clock on exhibition for a time before being consigned to its destined place at Beauvais. It was even more wonderful than the one so famous at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary church organ, and of similar shape; a ma.s.s of gilt and chocolate-colored wood; a ma.s.s of dials, great and small--of time tables, and, indeed, of tables for computing everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to show the time in fifty different places, and everything else that could, by any possible connection with time, be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon the top, Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as judging the world, his feet upon the clouds; on either side kneeling female figures adored him. Just below, a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of fifty windows.
Just below the image of the Saviour, a figure emerged through an open door at the striking of every quarter of an hour,--coming out with a slide and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an opportunity of observing all this in the three quarters of an hour of waiting. We viewed the clock upon every side, being especially interested in a picture at one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and a long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships attached in some way to the works within. They pitched back and forth without making any progress whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had lately suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests seated themselves with us upon the bench before the clock as the hand approached the hour. They wore the long black robes and odd little skull-caps, that fit so like a plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in place by some law of attraction unknown to us. One, of a different order, or higher grade, in a shorter robe and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings that added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up to his place just in time to throw back his head and open his mouth as the clock struck, and the last judgment began. The c.o.c.k upon the front gave a preliminary and weak flap of his wings, and emitted three feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I am sure, have convulsed the very puppets. Certainly they all disappeared from the windows, and something jumped into their places intended to represent flames, but which looked so much like reversed tin petticoats, that we supposed for a moment they were all standing on their heads. All the figures upon the peaks turned their backs upon us. The image of Christ began to wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back and forth, clasping their own. Two angels raised to their lips long, gilt trumpets, as if to blow a blast; then dropped them; then raised them a second time, and even made a third abortive attempt. From one of the open doors Virtue was jerked out to be judged, Virtue in a red gown. The scales began to dance up and down. An angel appeared playing a guitar, and Virtue went triumphantly off to the right, to slow and appropriate music, an invisible organ playing meanwhile. Then Vice appeared. I confess he excited my instant and profound pity. Such a poor, naked, wretched-looking object as he was! with his hands to his face, as though he were heartily ashamed to come out in such a plight. I venture to say, if he had been decked out like Virtue, he might have stolen off to the right, and n.o.body been the wiser. Good clothes do a great deal in Paris.
As it was, the scales danced up and down a moment, and then the devil appeared with a sharp stick, and drove him around the corner to the left, with very distant and feeble thunder for an accompaniment. That ended the show. All the little puppets jumped back into all the little windows, and we came away.
Speaking of picture galleries, we spent a pleasant hour in the gallery of the Luxembourg--a collection of paintings made up from the works of living artists, and of those who have been less than a year deceased. It is sufficiently small to be enjoyable. There is something positively oppressive in the vastness of many of these galleries. You feel utterly unequal to them; as though the finite were about to attempt the comprehension of the infinite. One picture here, by Ary Scheffer, was exhibited in America, a few years since. It is the head and bust of a dead youth in armor--a youth with a girlish face. There are others by Henri Scheffer, Paulin Guerin, and a host more I will not name. One, a scene in the Conciergerie, "Reading the List of the Condemned to the Prisoners," by Muller, haunted me long after the doors had swung together behind us. The palace of the Luxembourg, small, remarkable for the beauty of its architecture and charming garden, built for that graceless regent, Marie de Medici, is now the residence of the president of the Senate; and indeed the Senate itself meets here. We were shown through the rooms open to the public, the private apartments of Marie de Medici among them, in one of which was a bust of the regent. The garden, like all gardens, is filled with trees and shrubs, flowers and fountains, but yet with a certain charm of its own. The festooning of vines from point to point was a novelty to us, as was the design of one of the fountains. Approaching it from the rear, we thought it a tomb,--perhaps the tomb of Marshal Ney, we said, whose statue we were seeking. It proved to be an artificial grotto, and within it, sprinkled with the spray of the fountain, embowered in a ma.s.s of glistening, green ivy, reclined a pair of pretty, marble lovers; peering in upon them from above, scowled a dreadful ogre--a horrible giant. The whole effect, coming upon it unexpectedly, was startling.
We had a tiresome search for this same statue of Marshal Ney. We chased every marble nymph in the garden, and walked and walked, over burning pebbles and under a scorching sun, until we almost wished he had never been shot. At last, away beyond the garden, out upon a long avenue, longer and hotter if possible than the garden paths, we found it,--erected upon the very spot where he was executed. He stands with arm outstretched, and mouth opened wide, as though he were yawning with the wearisomeness of it all. It is a pity that he should give way to his feelings so soon, since he must stand there for hundreds of years to come. The guide-books say he is represented in the act of encouraging his men. They must have been easily encouraged.
Of the out-door gay life by gas-light, we saw less than we had hoped to see in the French capital. The season was unusually cold and wet, and most of the time it would have required the spirit of a martyr to sip coffee upon the sidewalk. One garden concert we did attend, and found it very bright and fairy-like, and all the other adjectives used in this connection. We sat wrapped in shawls, our feet upon the rounds of the chair before us, and shivered a little, and enjoyed a great deal. We went one night--in most orthodox company--to the Cirque de l"Imperatrice, a royal amphitheatre with handsome horses, pretty equestriennes, and a child balanced and tossed about on horseback, showing a frightened, painful smile, which made of the man who held her a Herod in our eyes. A girl very rich in paint and powder, but somewhat dest.i.tute in other particulars, skipped and danced upon a slack rope in a most joyous and airy manner. When we came out, a haggard woman, with an old, worn face, was crouching in a little weary heap by the door that led into the stables, wrapped in an old cloak; and that was our dancing girl!
We went to the opera, too; it was Les Huguenots. To this day I cannot tell who were the singers. I never knew, or thought, or cared. And the bare shoulders flashing with jewels in the boxes around us, the _claqueurs_ in the centre, hired to applaud, clapping their hands with the regularity of clock-work, the empty imperial box, were nothing to the sight of Paris portrayed within itself. You know the familiar opera; do think how strange it was to see it in Paris; to look upon the stage and behold the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame; the excited populace rising up to slay and to be slain, with all the while this same fickle French people serenely smiling, and chatting, and looking upon it--the people who were even then ready at a word to reenact the same scenes for a different cause. Just outside, only a day or two before, something of the same spirit, portrayed here for our amus.e.m.e.nt, had broken out again in the election riots. And we remembered that, as we drove around the corner to the opera house, mounted soldiers stood upon either side, while every other man upon the street was the eye, and ear, and arm of the emperor, who knew that the very ground beneath his fair, white city tottered and reeled.
We saw the emperor and empress one day, after having looked for them long and in vain upon the Champs Elysees, and in the Bois de Boulogne where gay Paris disports itself. It was the morning after the riot, when they drove unattended, you will remember, through the streets where the rioters had gathered. We were in one of the shops upon the Rue de Rivoli. Just across the way rose the Tuileries from the sidewalk. A crowd began to collect about the open archway through the palace, which affords entrance and egress to the great square around which the palace is built. "What is it?" we asked of the voluble Frenchman who was gradually persuading us that bra.s.s was gold. "L"Empereur," he replied; which sent us to the sidewalk, and put from our minds all thoughts of oxidized silver and copper-colored gold. Just within the arch paced a lackey in livery of scarlet and gold, wearing a powdered wig and general air of importance. On either side, the sentries froze into position. The _gendarmes_ shouted and gesticulated, clearing the streets. A mounted attendant emerged from the archway; there followed four bay horses attached to a plain, dark, open carriage; upon the front seat were two gentlemen, upon the back, a gentleman with a lady by his side. His hair was iron gray, almost silvery. He turned his face from us as he raised his hat gravely to the crowd, displaying a very perceptible bald spot upon the back of his head as he was whizzed around the corner and down the street. And that was Napoleon III. We saw no American lady in Paris dressed so simply as the empress. Something of black lace draped her shoulders; a white straw bonnet, trimmed with black, with a few pink roses resting upon her hair, crowned her head. She bowed low to the right and left, with a peculiar, graceful motion, and a smile upon the face a little worn and pale, a little faded,--but yet the face we all know so well. Beautiful Spanish woman, whose face was your fortune, though you smiled that day upon the people, your cheeks were pale, your eyes were full of tears.
There is nothing more wonderful in Paris than the tomb prepared to receive the remains of the first Napoleon, in the chapel of the Hotel des Invalides; fitting, it would seem to be, that he should rest here among his old soldiers. We left the carriage at the gateway, and crossed the open court, mounted the wide steps, followed the half dozen other parties through the open doors, and this was what we saw. At the farther end of the great chapel or church, an altar, approached by wide, marble steps; gilt and candles embellished it, and a large, gilt cross upon it bore an image of the crucified Lord. All this was not unlike what we had seen many times. But four immense twisted columns rose from its four corners--columns of Egyptian marble, writhing like spotted serpents.
They supported a canopy of gold, and the play of lights upon this, through the stained windows above and on either side, was indescribable.
As we entered the door, darkness enveloped it, save where an invisible sun seemed to touch the roof of gold and rest lightly upon the pillars; an invisible sun, indeed, for, without, the sky was heavy with clouds.
As we advanced, this unearthly light touched new points--the gilded candlesticks, the dying Saviour, but above all the writhings of these monster serpents, until the whole seemed a thing of life, a something which grew and expanded every moment, and was almost fearful to look upon. Filling the centre of the chapel was a circular marble wall breast-high. Do you remember, in going to the old Senate chamber at Washington, after pa.s.sing through the rotunda, the great marble well-curb down which you could look into the room below? This was like that, only more vast. Over it leaned a hundred people, at least, gazing down upon what? A circular, roofless room, a crypt to hold a tomb; each pillar around its circ.u.mference was the colossal figure of a woman; between these hung the tattered tri-colors borne in many a fierce conflict, beneath the burning suns of Egypt and over the dreary snows of Russia, with seventy colors captured from the enemies of France. A wreath of laurel in the mosaic floor surrounded the names Austerlitz, Marengo, Friedland, Jena, Wagram, Moscow, and Pyramids, and in the centre rose the sarcophagus of Finland granite, prepared to hold the body of him whose ambition knew no bounds. The letter N upon one polished side was the only inscription it bore. He who wrote his name in blood needed no epitaph. The entrance to this crypt is through bronze doors, behind the altar, and gained by pa.s.sing under it. On either side stood a colossal figure in bronze; kings they seemed to be, giant kings, in long black robes and with crowns of black upon their heads. One held, upon the black cushion in his hands, a crown of gold and a golden sword; the other, a globe crowned with a cross and a golden sceptre. They were so grand, and dark, and still, they gazed upon us so fixedly from out their great, grave eyes, that I felt a chill in all my bones. They guard his tomb. They hold his sword and sceptre while he sleeps. I almost expected the great doors to swing open at the touch of his hand, and to see him come forth. Over these doors were his own words: "I desire that my ashes may repose upon the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people I have loved so well." On either side, as we came out, we read upon the tombs the names of Bertrand and Duroc,--faithful in death!
We wondered idly whose remains were guarded in the simple tomb near the door. It was surrounded by an iron railing, and bore no inscription. Who can it be, we said, that is nameless here among the brave? Little did we imagine at the time that here rested the body of the great Napoleon, as it was brought from St. Helena; but his spirit seemed to pervade the very atmosphere, and we came out into the gloom of the day as though we had, indeed, come from the presence of the dead.
CHAPTER VII.
SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
The Gobelin tapestry.--How and where it is made.--Pere la-Chaise.--Poor Rachel!--The baby establishment.--"Now I lay me."--The little mother.--The old woman who lived in a shoe.--The American chapel.--Beautiful women and children.--The last conference-meeting.--"I"m a proof-reader, I am."
BY no means least among the places of interest in Paris is the manufactory of the Gobelin tapestry which serves to adorn the walls of the palace _salons_. O, these long, tiresome _salons_, which must be visited, though your head is ready to burst with seeing, your feet to drop off with sliding and slipping over the polished floors. The wicked _stand_ upon slippery places, and nothing so convinced us of the demoralizing effect of foreign travel as our growing ability to do the same. When you have seen one or two, you have seen all. There may be degrees in gorgeous splendor, but we were filled with all the appropriate and now-forgotten emotions at sight of the first, and one cannot be more than full. Many of the old palace apartments are dull and dingy beyond belief, by no means the marble halls of our dreams; but of the others let me say something once for all. Under your feet is the treacherous, bare floor of dark wood, laid in diamonds, squares, &c.; over your head, exquisite frescoes of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, and all manner of unearthly and impossible beings enveloped in clouds by the bale,--usually an apotheosis of some king or queen, or both, and, as a rule, of the most wicked known at that time. The Medici were especially glorified and raised above the flesh,--and they had need to be. On every side pictures in Gobelin tapestry, framed into the walls, often so large as to cover the entire s.p.a.ce from corner to corner, from cornice to within a few feet of the floor, and in this latter s.p.a.ce doors, formed of a panel sometimes, for the entrance and egress of servants. Imagine, with all this, the gilt, and stucco, and wood-carving; the flowers, and arabesques, and entwined initials; the ma.s.sive chandeliers, with glittering pendants; the mantels of rare marbles, of porphyry, and malachite; the cabinets, and tables, and escritoires of marqueterie and mosaic; the gilded chairs, stiff and stark, richly covered; the bronzes, vases, and curious clocks: and over all the air of having never been used from all time, and of continuing to be a bare show to all eternity,--and you have a faint conception of the _salons_ of half the palaces.
As for the tapestry, pray don"t confound it with the worsted dogs and Rebekahs-at-the-Well with which we sometimes adorn (?) our homes, since one would never in any way suggest the other. In these every delicate line is faithfully reproduced, and the effect exactly that of an oil painting. After long years the colors fade; and we were startled sometimes, in the old palaces, to come upon one of these gray shadows of pictures, out from which, perhaps, a pair of wonderful eyes alone would seem to shine. In old times the rough walls of the grim prison palaces were hung with tapestry wrought by the fair fingers of court ladies, the designs of tournament and battle being rudely sketched by gay gallants. Many a bright dream was worked into the canvas, I doubt not, never found upon the pattern; many a sweet word said over the task that beguiled the dull hours, and kept from mischief idle hands. But in the reign of Louis XIV. the art of weaving tapestry was brought from Flanders, and a manufactory established on the outskirts of Paris which still remains. To visit it a pa.s.s is required. Accordingly we addressed a note of solicitation to some high official, and in due time came a permit for Madame K. and family; and an ill-a.s.sorted family we must have appeared to the official at the gate. There were the rooms, hung with specimens of the tapestry, for which we did not care, and then the six devoted to the weaving; long, low, and narrow they were, with hand-looms ranged down one side. Through the threads of the warp we could see the weavers sitting behind their work, each with his box of worsteds and pattern beside him. The colors were wound upon quills, numbers of which hung, each by its thread, from the half-completed work. Taking one of these in one hand, the workman dexterously separated the threads of the warp with the other, and pa.s.sed the quill through, pressing down the one st.i.tch thus formed with its pointed end. You can imagine how slow this work must be. How tiresome a task it is to delight the eyes of princes!
The making of carpets, which has been recently added, is equally tiresome. This, too, is hand work, they being woven in some way over a round stick, and then cut and trimmed with a pair of shears. To make one requires from five to ten years, and their cost is from six to twenty thousand dollars. About six hundred weavers are said to be here, though we saw but a small proportion of that number. They receive only from three to five hundred dollars a year, with a pension of about half as much if they are disabled.
From the Gobelins we drove across the Seine again, and out to Pere la-Chaise, where stood once the house of the confessor of Louis XIV., from whom the cemetery takes its name, the Jesuit priest through whose influence the edict of Nantes was revoked. A kind of ghastly imitation of life it all seemed--the narrow houses on either side of the paved streets, that were not houses at all, hung with dead flowers and corpse-like wreaths, stained an unnatural hue. We peered through the bars of the locked gate opening into the Jews" quarter, trying to distinguish the tomb where lie the ashes of a life that blazed, and burned itself out. Poor Rachel! Through the solemn streets, among the quiet dwellings of the noiseless city, whence comes no sound of joy or grief, where they need no candle, neither light of the sun, we walked a while, then plucked a leaf or two, and came away.
One day, when the sun lay hot upon the white streets of the beautiful city, we searched among the shops of the crooked Faubourg St. Honore for a number forgotten now, and the Creche, where the working mothers may leave their children during the day. In another and more quiet street we found it. We pulled the bell before a ma.s.sive gateway; the wide doors opened upon a smiling portress, who led the way across the paved court to the house, where she pointed up some stairs, and left us to mount and turn until it was no longer possible, until a confusion of doors barred our way, when we rapped upon one. Another was opened, and we found ourselves among the babies. There were, perhaps, twenty in all, the larger children being in the school-room below; but even twenty toddling, rolling babies, looking so very like the same image done in putty over and over again, appears an alarming and unlimited number when taken in a body. They rolled beneath our feet, they clung to our skirts, they peeped out, finger in mouth, from behind the doors, they kicked pink toes up from the swinging cradles, and in fact, like the clansmen of Rhoderic Dhu, appeared in a most startling manner from the most unexpected places. Plump little things they were, encased in sh.e.l.ls of blue-checked ap.r.o.ns, from the outer one of which they were surrept.i.tiously slipped upon our entrance to disclose a fresher one beneath. How long this process could have continued with a similar happy result, we did not inquire. Every head was tied up in a tight little night-cap, giving them the appearance of so many little bag puddings.
Every face was a marvel of health and contentment, with one kicking, screaming exception upon the floor. "Eengleesh," explained the Sister of Charity who seemed to have them in charge, giving a sweeping wipe to the eyes, nose, and mouth, gradually liquidizing, of this one, and trying in vain to pacify a nature that seemed peaceless. Who was its mother, or how the little stranger chanced to be here, we did not learn. On either side of the long, narrow room hung the white-curtained cradles, each with its pretty, pink quilt. At one end was an altar, most modest in its appointments, consisting of hardly more than a crucifix and a vase of flowers upon the mantel. As we entered the room, the sister stood before it with a circle of white caps and blue checked ap.r.o.ns around her, a circle of little clasped hands, of upturned eyes and lisping lips, repeating what might have been, "Now I lay me," for anything we knew.
Our entrance brought wandering eyes and thoughts.
At the opposite end of the room, a wide, long window swung open, revealing a pleasant garden down below, all green and blossoming, with an image of the Virgin half hid among the vines. Cool, and fresh, and green it seemed after the glare of the hot streets, a pleasant picture for the baby eyes. Out from this window the little feet could trot upon the guarded roof of a piazza. A little chair, a broken doll, and limbless horse here were familiar objects to the eyes of the mothers in our party, and when two children seized upon one block with a determination which threatened a breach of the peace, we were convinced that even baby nature was the same the world over. Supper time came, and the children were gathered together in a small room, before the drollest little table imaginable--a kind of elongated doughnut, raised a foot from the floor, with a circular seat around it. All the little outer sh.e.l.ls of blue check were slipped on, all the little fat bodies lifted over and set into their places, to roll off, or about, at will. A grace was said, to us, I think, since all the little eyes turned towards us, and a plate of oatmeal porridge put before each one. Some ate with a relish, and a painful search over the face with a spoon for the open, waiting mouth; some leaned back to stare at the company; and others persisted in dipping into the dish of their next neighbor. One little thing, hardly more than a year old, drew down the corners of her mouth in a portentous manner, when the motherly one beside her, of the advanced age of three years, perhaps, rapped on the table with her spoon, and patted the doleful little face, smiling all the while, until she actually drew out smiles in return. The dear little mother! An attendant with a homely face, creased into all manner of good-natured lines, resolved herself into the old woman who lived in a shoe, holding two babies and the porridge dish in her lap, balancing one upon the end of the low bench beside her, while two or three more stood at her knee, clinging to her ap.r.o.n. It was like a nest of open-mouthed birdlings.
Blessings on the babies, and those, whether of our faith or not, who teach and care for them, we thought, as we came away. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me," said the Master.
Although I said nothing of our church-going in London, I cannot pa.s.s over our American chapel in Paris, with its carved, umbrella-like canopy, shading the good Dr. R., who did so much socially, as well as spiritually, for Americans there. Here came many whose names are well known; among them our minister to France, an elderly gentleman of unpretending dress and manner, with a kindly, care-worn face. And here gathered also a company of beautiful women and children, proving the truth of all that has been said of our countrywomen. A blending of all types were they, as our people are a blending of all nationalities, each more lovely than the other, and all making up a picture well worth seeing. I wish I might say as much for the opposite s.e.x. One gentleman, who wore a red rose always in his b.u.t.ton-hole, and turned his back upon the minister to stare at the women, had a handsome though _blase_ face, and more than one head above the pews would have been marked anywhere; but the women and children bore away the palm. The delicate, sensitive faces which characterize American women, whether the effect of climate, manner of life, or of the nerves for which we are so celebrated, are found nowhere else, I am sure.
Besides the Sabbath services a weekly prayer-meeting was held here. They were singing some sweet familiar hymn as we entered one evening and took our place among the pilgrims and strangers like ourselves. It was the last gathering for the winter. Some were off for home, some for a summer of travel; only a few, with the pastor, were to remain. One followed another in words of retrospection, and regret at parting, until a pall settled over the little company--until even we, who had never been there before, wiped our eyes because of the general dolefulness. A hush and universal mistiness pervaded the air of the dimly-lighted house; the a.s.sembly seemed about to pa.s.s out of existence, Niobe-like. Then up rose Dr. R., the pastor. I wondered what he could say to add to the gloom; something like this, perhaps: "Dear people, everybody is off; let us shut up the church, lock the door, and throw away the key. Receive the benediction." But no; I wish you might feel the thrill that went through the little company as his words fell from his lips. I wish I dared attempt to repeat them. "And now to you who go," he said, at last, "who take with you something of our hearts, be sure our prayers will follow you. Keep us in memory; but, above all, keep in memory your church vows.
Make yourselves known as Christians among Christians. And when you have reached home--the home to which our thoughts have so often turned together--let this be a lesson. When summer comes and you leave the city for the country, for the mountains, for the sea-side, take your religion with you. Search out some struggling little church with a discouraged pastor,--you"ll not look far or long to find such a one,--and work for that, as you have worked for us. And one thing more; send your friends who are coming abroad to us. Send us the Christians, for we need them, and by all means send us those who are not Christians; they may need us; and the Lord bless you, and keep you in all your goings, and give you peace."
Then the people gathered in knots for last words--for hand-clasps and good-byes. Now a spirit of peace and good will having fallen upon us with the pastor"s benediction, we gazed wistfully upon the strangers in the hope of finding one familiar face; but there was none; so we came sorrowfully down the aisle. The door was almost reached when a sharp, tw.a.n.ging voice behind us began, "I"m sent out by X. & Y., book publishers." "O," said I to the friend at my side, "I believe I will speak to that man. I know Mr. X., and I do so want to speak to somebody." How he accomplished the introduction I cannot tell, but in a moment my hand was grasped by that of a stout little man, with bushy hair and twinkling eyes. "Know Mr. X.? Mr. Q. X.?" he began. To tell the truth I had not that honor, my acquaintance having been with his brother; but there was no time to explain, and retreat was equally impossible; so I replied that my father knew him well; then thinking that something more was necessary to explain the sudden and intense interest manifested in his behalf, added, desperately, "indeed, intimately." To this he paid no manner of attention,--I doubt if he heard it,--but rattled on: "Fine man, Mr. X., Mr. Q. X. Know Mr. Y.?
Fine man, Mr. Y.; been abroad a year; I"m goin" out to meet him, I am.