An American Girl Abroad Part 4

He's in Switzerland, Mr. Y. is; been abroad a year. I'm a proof-reader, I am. I s'pose you know what a proof-reader is." "Yes," I succeeded in inserting while he took breath, remembering some amateur attempts of my own in that direction. He began anew: "I'm sent out by X. & Y.; expect to find Mr. Y. in Switzerland; fine man--" Will he never stop, I thought, beginning a backward retreat from the pew down the aisle, with all the while ringing in my ears, "I'm a proof-reader, I am," &c. "Don't laugh, pray don't," I said to the friends waiting at the door. "It's dreadful--is it not?" What became of him we never knew, but in all probability the s.e.xton removed him--still vocal--to the sidewalk that night; where, since we do not know for how long a time he was wound up, he may be iterating and reiterating to this day the interesting fact of his occupation, with the eulogy upon Messrs. X. & Y.

CHAPTER VIII.

SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.

The river omnibuses.--Sevres and its porcelain.--St. Cloud as it was.--The crooked little town.--Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare bedroom."--The queen who played she was a farmer's wife.--Seven miles of paintings.--The portraits of the presidents.

THERE are four ways of going to St. Cloud, from Paris, says the guide-book; we chose the fifth, and took one of the little steamboats--the river omnibuses--that follow the course of the Seine, stopping at the piers along the city, which occur almost as often as the street crossings. Very insignificant little steamers they are, made up of puff, and snort, and smoke, a miniature deck, and a man with a big bell. Up the river we steamed through a mist that hid everything but the green banks, the pretty villas whose lawns drabbled their skirts in the river, and after a time the islands that seemed to have dropped cool, wet, and green into the middle of the stream. We plunged beneath the dark arches of the stone bridges--the Pont d'Alma not to be forgotten, with its colossal sentinels on either side of the middle arch, calm, white, and still, leaning upon their muskets, their feet almost dipping into the water, their great, stony eyes gazing away down the river.

What is it they seem to see beyond the bend? What is it they watch and wait for, gun in hand? We pulled our wraps about us, found a sheltered place, and went on far beyond our destination, through the gray vapor that gathered sometimes into great, plashing drops to fall upon the deck, or, hovering in mid-air, wiped out the distance from the landscape as effectually as the sweep of a painter's brush, while it softened and spiritualized everything near, from the sharply outlined eaves, and gables, and narrow windows of the village struggling up from the water, to the shadowy span of the bridges that seemed to rest upon air. Then down with the rain and the current we swept again, to land at the forsaken pier of Sevres, from which we made our way over the pavings, so inviting in these French towns for missile or barricade, to the porcelain factory. No fear of missing it, since it is the one object of interest to strangers in the town; and whatever question we asked, the reply would have been the pointing of the finger in that one direction.

Once there, we clattered and slipped over the tiled floor after a polite attendant, through its many show-rooms, and among its wilderness of pottery, ancient and modern. The manufactory was established by--I'm sure I don't know whom--in seventeen hundred and--something, at Vincennes, quite the other side of Paris; but a few years later, in the reign of Louis XV., was transferred to Sevres, and put under the direction of government. It is almost impossible to gain permission to visit the workshops, but a permit to pa.s.s through the show-rooms can easily be obtained. There were queer old-fashioned attempts at glazed ware here, some of them adorned with pictures like those we used to see in our grandmothers' china closets, of puffy little pink gentlemen and ladies ambling over a pink foreground; a pink mountain, of pyramidal form, rising from the wide-rimmed hat of the roseate gentlemen; a pink lake standing on end at the feet of the lady, and a little pink house, upon which they might both have sat comfortably, with a few clouds of jeweller's cotton completing the picture. A striking contrast were these to the marvels of frailty and grace of later times. The rooms were hung with paintings upon porcelain, the burial of Attila, which we had seen at the Louvre, among them. Every conceivable model of vase, pitcher, and jar was here--quaint, beautiful conceptions of form adorned by the hand of skilful artists, from mammoth vases, whirling upon stationary pedestals, to the most delicate cup that ever touched red lips.

At noon we strolled over to St. Cloud, a pleasant walk of a mile, beginning with a shaded avenue, rough as a country road; then on, down a street leading to the gates of the park of St. Cloud--a street so vain of its destination that it was actually lifted up above the gardens on either side. From the wide gates we pa.s.sed into a labyrinth of shaded, clean-swept ways, and followed one to the avenue of the fountains, where we sat upon the edge of a stone basin to await the opening of the palace. For do not imagine, dear reader, that you can run in and out of palaces without ceremony and at all hours of the day. There is an appointed time; there is the gathering outside of the curious; there is the coming of a man with rattling, ringing keys; there is the throwing open of wide gates and ma.s.sive doors, and then--and not until then--the entering in. As for the fountains, next to those at Versailles they have been widely celebrated; but as they only played upon Sundays and fete days, we did not see them. Their Sunday gowns of mist and flowing water were laid aside, and naked and bare enough they were this day. The wide basins, the lions and dolphins, were here, with the marble nymphs, and fauns and satyrs, that make a shower-bath spectacle of themselves upon gala days. When the hour refused to strike, and we grew hungry,--as one will among the rarest and most wonderful things,--we left the park, to find the crooked little town that sits in the dust always at the feet of palaces. Its narrow streets ran close up to the gates, and would have run in had they not been shut. Here in the low, smoke-stained room of an inn that was only a wine-shop, we spent the time of waiting,--our elbows upon the round, dark table, which, with the dirt and wooden chairs, made up its only furnishing,--sipping the sour wine, cutting slices from the long, melancholy stick of bread, all dust and ashes, and nibbling the cheese that might have vied with Samson for strength. The diamond-paned window was flung wide open, for the air seemed soiled and stained, like the floor. Just across the narrow, empty street, an old house elbowed our inn. The eaves of its thatched roof were tufted with moss, out from which rose a ma.s.s of delicate pink blossoms--pretty innocents, fairly blushing for shame of their surroundings. Through the long pa.s.sage-way came the sound of high-pitched voices--of a strange jargon from the room opening upon the street, where a heavy-eyed maid, behind a pewter bar, served the blue-bloused workmen gathered about the little tables.

The white palace of St. Cloud, with its Corinthian columns, stood daintily back from its gates and the low-bred town; but its long wings had run down, like curious children, to peep out through the bars; so, you will see, it formed three sides of a square. It had lately been refurnished for the prince imperial. The grand _salons_ need not be described; one is especially noted as having been the place where a baby was once baptized, who is now ex-emperor of France. In the same room the civil contract of marriage between Napoleon I. and Marie Louise was celebrated. A few elegant but less s.p.a.cious rooms were interesting from having been the private apartments of the poor queens and empresses who have shared the throne of France. Gorgeous they were in tapestry and gilding, filled with a gaping crowd of visitors, and echoing to the voice of a voluble guide. Royal fingers may have touched the pretty trinkets lying about; royal forms reclined upon the soft couches; royal aching hearts beat to the tick of the curious gilt clock, that bore as many faces as a woman, some one wickedly said; but it was impossible to realize it, or to believe that high heels, and panniers, and jaunty hats upon sweet-faced, shrill-voiced American girls had not ruled and reigned here always, as they did this day.

Versailles lies out beyond St. Cloud, but we gave to it another day. We were a merry party, led by Dr. R., who left the train at the station, and filled the omnibus for the palace. There was an air of having seen better days about the city, which was at one time the second of importance in France; it fed and fattened upon the court, and when at last the court went away not to return, it came to grief. The most vivid recollection I have of the great court-yard, around which extend three sides of the palace, is of its round paving-stones--that seemed to have risen up preparatory to crying out--and the grove of weather-stained statues upon high pedestals,--generals, cardinals, and statesmen who hated and connived against each other in life, doomed now in stone to stare each other out of countenance. I am sure we detected a wry face here and there, to say nothing of clinched fists. It is a gloomy old court-yard at best. The front of the main building is all that remains of the old hunting-seat of Louis XIII., which his son would not suffer to be destroyed. It is of dingy, mildewed brick, that can never in any possible light appear palatial; and so blackened and purple-stained are the statues before it that they might have been just brought from the Morgue. The whole palace is only a show place now--a museum of painting and statuary. As for the celebrated gardens, we walked for hours, and still they stretched away on every side. We explored paths wide and narrow, crooked and straight, and saw clipped trees by the mile, with grottoes and the skeletons of the fountains that, like naughty children, play o' Sundays, and all the wonderful trees, shrubs, and flowers brought from the ends of the earth, and ate honey gingerbread (flavored with extract of turpentine) before an open booth, and were ready to faint with weariness; and when at last a broad avenue opened before us with the Trianons, which must be seen, at the farther end, we would not have taken the whole place as a gift. It must have been at this point that we fortified ourselves with the gingerbread.

The Grand Trianon alone were we permitted to enter. It is in the form of an Italian villa, with a ground floor only, and long windows opening upon delightful gardens. Like Versailles, it is now a mere show, although a suit of apartments was fitted up here some time since, in antic.i.p.ation of a neighborly visit from Queen Victoria to Eugenie, making of the little palace a kind of guest chamber, a spare bedroom. As we followed a winding path through the park, we came suddenly upon an open glade, surrounded and shaded by forest trees. Over the tiny lake, in the centre, swans were sailing. Half hidden among the wide-spread, sweeping branches of the trees were the scattered farm-houses of a deserted village--only half a dozen in all, of rude, half Swiss architecture, made to imitate age and decay, quaintly picturesque. Here Marie Antoinette and her court played at poverty. Do you remember how, when she grew weary of solemn state, she came here with a few favored ones to forget her crown, and dream she was a farmer's wife? The dairy was empty, the marble slab bare upon which she made b.u.t.ter for her guests. Just beyond was the mill, but the wheel was still. It was a pleasant dream--a dream of Arcadia. Ah, but there was a fearful awakening! "The poorest peasant in the land," said the queen, "has one little spot which she can call her own; the Queen of France asks no more." So she shut the gates upon the people who had claimed and held the right, from all time, to wander at will through the gardens of their kings. Then they hated her, whom they had greeted with shouts of welcome when she came a bride from over the border. "The Austrian! the Austrian!" they hissed through the closed gates. And one day they dragged her out from a bare cell in the Conciergerie,--no make-believe of rough walls, of coa.r.s.e fare there,--they bound the slender hands behind her, they thrust into a prison cart the form that had been used to rest upon down and silken cushions, and bore her over the rough stones to the scaffold. Ah, it makes one shudder!

To see the two hundred rooms of the palace of Versailles requires a day, at least; but we, fearful that this might be our last opportunity, determined to spend the remaining hour or two and our last atom of strength in the attempt. A wandering cabman pounced upon us as we came down the avenue from the Trianons, and bore us back to the palace, where we toiled up and down the grand stairway, and peeped into the chapel that had echoed to the mockery of worship in the time of the king who built all this--the king who loved everybody's wife but his own--so faithlessly! There was a dizzy hurrying through corridors lined with statuary, through one _salon_ after another hung with Horace Vernet's paintings describing the glories of France--the crowning of its kings, the reception of its amba.s.sadors, the signing of its treaties, the winning of its battles; but was all this bloodshed, and all this agony depicted upon canvas, for the glory of France? There were immense galleries, where, on every side, from cornice to floor, one was conscious of nothing but smoke and cannon, wounds and gore, and rolling eyes. We walked over the prescribed three miles and a half of floors slippery as ice, and gazed upon the seven miles of pictures, with a feeling less of pleasure or gratified curiosity than of satisfaction at having _done_ Versailles. Room after room was devoted to portraits, full lengths and half lengths, side faces and full fronts; faces to be remembered, if one had not been in such mortal haste, and faces that would never have been missed from the ermined robes. In a quiet corner we were startled to find some of our good presidents staring down upon us from the wall. A mutual surprise it seemed to be. But if we Americans must be awkward and clownish to the last degree, half civilized, and but one remove from barbarism, don't let us put the acme of all this upon canvas, and hang it in the palace of kings. Here was President Grant represented in the saloon of a steamboat,--America to the last,--one leg crossed, one heel upon the opposite knee, and his head about to sink into his coat collar in an agony of terror at finding himself among quality. His att.i.tude might have been considered graceful and dignified in a bar-room, or even in the saloon of a Mississippi steamer; but it utterly failed in both particulars in the Palace of Versailles, among courtly men and high-bred women.

CHAPTER IX.

A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.

To Brussels.--The old and new city.--The paradise and purgatory of dogs.--The Hotel de Ville and Grand Place.--St. Gudule.--The picture galleries.--Wiertz and his odd paintings.--Brussels lace and an hour with the lace-makers. How the girls found Charlotte Bronte's school.--The scene of "Villette."

THERE were one or two more excursions from Paris, and then, when we had grasped the fat hand of Monsieur, our landlord, and kissed the dark cheeks of Madame, his wife, and submitted to the same from Mademoiselle, their daughter, with light hearts, serene consciences, and the ---- family we started for Brussels. It is a six hours' ride by rail.

Almost as soon as the line between France and Belgium is pa.s.sed, the low hills drop away, the thatch-roofed cottages give place to those of whitewashed brick, with bright, red-tiled roofs. All along the way were the straight poplars overrun with ivy, and the land was cared for, coaxed, and fairly driven to the highest point of cultivation. Women were at work in the fields, and more than one Maud Muller leaned upon her rake to gaze after us. Soon, when there were only level fields beneath a level sky, the windmills began to appear in the distance, slowly swinging the ghostly arms that became long, narrow sails as we neared them. At two o'clock we reached Brussels, after being nearly resolved into our original element--dust. Nothing but a sand-hill ever equalled the appearance we presented when we stepped from the train; nor did we need anything so much as to be thrown over a line and beaten like a carpet when we finally gained our hotel.

The old city of Brussels is crooked, and dull, and picturesque; but joined to it--like an old man with a gay young wife--is the beautiful Paris-like upper town, with its houses covered with white stucco, and a little mirror outside of every window, placed at an angle of forty-five degrees, so that Madame, sitting within, can see all that pa.s.ses upon the street, herself unseen. Here in the new town are the palaces, the finest churches, the hotels, and Marie Therese's park, where young and old walk, and chat, and make eyes at each other summer evenings. Scores of strings, with a poodle at one extremity and a woman at the other, may here be seen, with little rugs laid upon the ground for the pink-eyed puff-b.a.l.l.s to rest upon. Truly Brussels is the paradise and purgatory of dogs. Anywhere upon the streets you may see great, hungry-eyed animals dragging little carts pushed by women; and it is difficult to determine which is the most forlorn--the dog, the cart, or the woman. We never understood before what it was to "work like a dog." At one extremity of the park was the white, new Senate-house; opposite, the gray, barrack-like palace of the king; upon the third side, among others, our hotel. Here we were happy in finding another family of friends. With them we strolled down into the old town, after dinner, taking to the middle of the street, in continental fashion, as naturally as ducks to water; crossing back and forth to stare up at a church or into a shop window,--straggling along one after another in a way that would have been marked at home, but was evidently neither new nor strange here, where the native population attended to their own affairs with a zeal worthy of reward, and other parties of sight-seers were plying their vocation with a perseverance that would have won eminence in any other profession. Through crooked by-ways we wandered to the Grand Place of the old city--a paved square shut in by high Spanish-gabled houses ornamented with the designs of the various guilds. From the windows of one hung the red, yellow, and black Belgian flag. There was no rattle of carts, no clatter of hoofs. Down upon the dark paving-stones a crowd of women, old and young, with handkerchiefs crossed over their bosoms, were holding a flower-market. Just behind them rose the grim statues of the two counts, Egmont and Van Horn,--who lost their heads while striving to gain their cause against Spanish tyranny and the Spanish Inquisition,--and the old royal palace, blackened and battered by time and the hand of forgotten sculptors, until it seemed like the mummy of a palace, half eaten away. Just before them was the Hotel de Ville, with its beautiful tower of gray stone, its roof a ma.s.s of dormer windows. It comes to me like a picture now--the gathering shadows of a summer night, the time-worn houses, lovely in decay, the tawdry flag, and the heads of the old women nodding over their flowers.

Brussels has a grand church dedicated to Saints Michael and Gudule. If I could only give to you, who have not seen them, some idea of the vastness and beauty of these cathedrals! But descriptions are tiresome, and dimensions n.o.body reads. If I could only tell you how far extending they are, both upon earth and towards heaven--how they seem not so much to have been built stone upon stone, as to have stood from the foundation of the world, solitary, alone, until, after long ages, some strolling town came to wonder, and worship, and sit at their feet in awe! We crept in through the narrow door that shut behind us with a dull echo. A chill like that of a tomb pervaded the air, though a summer sun beat down upon the stones outside. A forest of cl.u.s.tered columns rose all around us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined arches where little birds flew about. Stained windows gleamed down the vast length, broken by the divisions and subdivisions,--one, far above the grand entrance, like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the walls, over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures of saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that seemed in the dim distance like dots upon the wall. m.u.f.fled voices broke upon the stillness. Far up the nave a little company of worshippers knelt before the altar--workingmen who had thrown down mallet and chisel for a moment, to creep within the shadows of the sanctuary; market-women, a stray water-cress still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a prayer G.o.d grant they feel, with ever and anon, above the murmur of the prayer, above the drone of white-robed priests, the low, full chant from hidden singers, echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust--whose works have followed him.

After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture galleries in the old palaces of the city,--galleries of modern Belgian art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, h.e.l.l, and mid-air. In one, Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of h.e.l.l, folding his arms in the Napoleonic att.i.tude, while his soldiers crowd around him to hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through peep-holes--one of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the walls around the room were painted half-open doors and windows with pretty girls peeping out; close down to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage occupant was ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed window, an old _concierge_ leaned out to ask our business. Even in the pictures hanging upon the walls was something of this trickery. In one the foot and hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so that he seemed to be just stepping out from his place; and I am half inclined to think that many of the people walking about the room were originally framed upon the walls.

Brussels is always a.s.sociated in one's mind with its laces. We visited one of the manufactories. A dozen or twenty women were busy in a sunny, cheerful room, working out the pretty leaves and flowers, with needle and thread, for the _point_ lace, or twisting the bobbins among the innumerable pins in the cushion before them to follow the pattern for the _point applique_. When completed, you know, the delicate designs are sewed upon gossamer lace. Upon a long, crimson-covered table in the room above were spread out, in tempting array, the results of this tiresome labor--coiffures that would almost resign one to a bald spot, handkerchiefs insnaring as cobwebs, _barbes_ that fairly pierced our hearts, and shawls for which there are no words. I confess that these soft, delicate things have for women a wonderful charm--that as we turned over and over in our hands the frail, yellow-white cobwebs, some of us more than half forgot the tenth commandment.

_Table-d'hote_ over, one evening, "Where shall we go? What can we do?"

queried one of the four girls in our party, two of whom had but just now escaped from the thraldom of a French _pensionnat_.

"It would be so delightful if we could walk out for once by ourselves.

If there were only something to see--somewhere to go."

"Girls!" exclaimed Axelle, suddenly, "was not the scene of _Villette_ laid in Brussels? Is not Charlotte Bronte's boarding-school here? I am sure it is. Suppose we seek it out--we four girls alone."

"But how, and where?" and "Wouldn't that be fine?" chorused the others.

There was a hasty search through guide-books; but alas! not a clew could we find, not a peg upon which to hang the suspicions that were almost certainties.

"I am sure it was here," persisted Axelle. "I wish we had a _Villette_."

"We could get one at an English library," suggested another.

"If there is any English library here," added a third, doubtfully.

Evidently that must be our first point of departure. We could ask for information there. Accordingly we planned our crusade, as girls do,--the elders smiling unbelief, as elders will,--and sallied out at last into the summer sunshine, very brave in our hopes, very glad in our unwonted liberty. A _commissionaire_ gave us the address of the bookstore we sought as we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles in the path of the determined," we said, stepping out upon the Rue Royale. Across the way was the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by lofty trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding among the shrubbery, and with all the tortuous paths made into mosaic pavement by the shimmering sunlight. But to Axelle _Villette_ was more real than that June day.

"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow reached the city alone and at night?--how a young English stranger conducted her across the park, she following in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing only the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of the rain as it fell from the soaked leaves? This must be the park."

When we had pa.s.sed beyond its limits, we espied a little square, only a kind of alcove in the street, in the centre of which was the statue of some military hero. Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps led down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us, as we looked down, was a white stuccoed house, with a glimpse of a garden at one side.

"See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is the very place.

Don't you remember when they had come out from the park, and Lucy's guide left her to find an inn near by, she ran,--being frightened,--and losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps like these, which she descended, and found, instead of the inn, the _pensionnat_ of Madame Beck?" Only the superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps, and settling the question of ident.i.ty then and there. As it was, we went on to the library, a stuffy little place, with a withered old man for sole attendant, who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring over an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering flutter of wings, and pecked him with a dozen questions at once, oddly inflected: "_Was_ the scene of _Villette_ laid in Brussels?" and "_Is_ the school really here?" and "You _don't_ say so!" though we had insisted upon it from the first, and he had just replied in the affirmative; lastly, "O, _do_ tell us how we may find it."

"You must go so-and-so," he said at length, when we paused.

"Yes," we replied in chorus; "we have just come from there."

"And," he went on, "you will see the statue of General Beliard."

We nudged each other significantly.

"Go down the steps in the rear, and the house facing you--"

"We knew it. We felt it," we cried, triumphantly; and his directions ended there. We neither heeded nor interpreted the expression of expectation that stole over his face. We poured out only a stream of thanks which should have moistened the parched sands of his soul, and then hastened to retrace our steps. We found the statue again. We descended into the narrow, noiseless street, and stood,--an awe-struck group,--before the great square house, upon the door-plate of which we read,--

"PENSIONNAT DE DEMOISELLES.

HeGER--PARENT."

"Now," said Axelle, when we had drawn in with a deep breath, the satisfaction and content which shone out again from our glad eyes, "we will ring the bell."

"You will not think of it," gasped the choir of startled girls.

"To be sure; what have we come for?" was her reply. "We will only ask permission to see the garden, and as the portress will doubtless speak nothing but French, some one of you, fresh from school, must act as mouthpiece." They stared at Axelle, at each other, and at the steps leading into the upper town, as though they meditated flight. "I cannot," and "_I_ cannot," said each one of the shrinking group.

Axelle laid her hand upon the bell, and gave one long, strong pull.

"Now," she said, quietly, "some one of you must speak. You are ladies: you will not run away."

And they accepted the situation.