Paris and the Parisians in 1835 Volume I Part 22

"Ah! mes freres, admirons, nous, dans la sincerite de notre coeur, cet exemple de bienveillance et de _sociabilite pratique_, et benissons la bonte de Jesus."

Then follows an earnest defence, or rather eulogy, of dancing. But though I greatly approve the exercise for young people, and believe it to be as innocent as it is natural, I would not, were I called upon to preach a sermon, address my hearers after this manner:--

"Quant aux bals, je ne chercherai point a les excuser, a les defendre, par _des exemples puises dans l'ecriture sainte_. Je ne vous representerai point David dansant devant l'arche.... Je ne vous le donnerai pas non plus pour modele, a vous, jeunes gens de notre France _si polie_, _si elegante_, car sans doute _il dansait mal_; puisque, suivant la Bible, Michal sa femme, voyant le roi David qui sautait et dansait, se moqua de lui et le meprisa dans son coeur." There is about as much piety as good taste in this.

I have already given you such long extracts, that I must omit all he says,--and it is much in favour of this amus.e.m.e.nt. Such forbearance is the more necessary, as I must give you a pa.s.sage or two more on other subjects. Among the general reasons which he brings forward to prove that fetes and festivals are beneficial to the people, he very justly remarks that the occupation they afford to industry is not the least important, observing that the popish church takes no heed of such things; and then adds, addressing the manufacturers,--

"Et lorsque le besoin se fera sentir et pour vous et vos enfans, allez a l'Archeveche! ... a l'Archeveche! ... un jour la colere du peuple a eclate,--

"Je n'ai fait que pa.s.ser, il n'etait deja plus."...

The date which this sermon bears on its t.i.tle-page is 1834; but the event to which this line from Racine alludes was the destruction of the archiepiscopal palace, which took place, if I mistake not, in 1831. If the "_il n'etait deja plus_" alludes to the palace, it is correct enough, for destruction could not have done its work better: but if it be meant to describe the fate of MONSEIGNEUR L'ARCHEVeQUE DE PARIS, the preacher is not a prophet; for, in truth, the sacrilegious rout "n'a fait que pa.s.ser," and MONSEIGNEUR has only risen higher from the blow. Public orators of all kinds should be very cautious, in these moveable times, how they venture to judge from to-day what may be to-morrow. The only oracular sentence that can be uttered at present with the least chance of success from the developement of the future is, "Who can say what may happen next?" All who have sufficient prudence to restrict their prescience to this acute form of prophecy, may have the pleasure, let come what may, of turning to their neighbours triumphantly with the question--"Did I not tell you that something was going to happen?"--but it is dangerous to be one atom more precise. Even before this letter can reach you, my friend, M.

l'Abbe's interpretation of "il n'etait deja plus" may be more correct than mine. I say this, however, only to save my credit with you in case of the worst; for my private opinion is, that Monseigneur was never in a more prosperous condition in his life, and that, "as no one can say what will happen next," I should not be at all astonished if a cardinal's hat were speedily to reward him for all he has done and suffered.

I certainly intended to have given you a few specimens of the Abbe Auzou's manner of advocating theatrical exhibitions; but I fear they would lead me into too great length of citation. He is sometimes really eloquent upon the subject: nevertheless, his opinions on it, however reasonable, would have been delivered with better effect from the easy-chair of his library than from the pulpit of his church. It is not that what would be good when heard from the one could become evil when listened to from the other: but the preacher's pulpit is intended for other uses; and though the visits to a well-regulated theatre may be as lawful as eating, and as innocent too, we go to the house of G.o.d in the hope of hearing tidings more important than his minister's a.s.surance that they are so.

LETTER x.x.xIII.

Establishment for Insane Patients at Vanves.--Description of the arrangements.--Englishman.--His religious madness.

You will think perhaps that I have chosen oddly the object which has induced me to make an excursion out of town, and obliged me to give up nearly an entire day at Paris, when I tell you that it was to visit an inst.i.tution for the reception of the insane. There are, however, few things which interest me more than an establishment of this nature; especially when, as in the present instance, my manner of introduction to it is such as to give me the hope of hearing the phenomena of these awful maladies discussed by those well acquainted with them. The establishment of MM. Voisin and Fabret, at Vanves, was mentioned to me as one in which many improvements in the mode of treating alienation of mind have been suggested and tried with excellent effect; and having the opportunity of visiting it in company with a lady who was well acquainted with the gentlemen presiding over it, I determined to take advantage of it. My friend, too, knew how to direct my attention to what was most interesting, from having had a relation placed there, whom for many months she had been in the constant habit of visiting.

Her introduction obtained for me the most attentive reception, and the fullest explanation of their admirable system, which appears to me to combine, and on a very large and n.o.ble scale, everything likely to a.s.suage the sufferings, soothe the spirits, and contribute to the health of the patients.

Vanves is situated at the distance of one league from Paris, in a beautiful part of the country; and the establishment itself, from almost every part of the high ground on which it is placed, commands views so varied and extensive, as not only to render the princ.i.p.al mansion a charming residence, but really to make the walks and drives within the enclosure of the extensive premises delightful.

The grounds are exceedingly well laid out, with careful attention to the princ.i.p.al object for which they are arranged, but without neglecting any of the beauty of which the spot is so capable. They have shade and flowers, distant views and sheltered seats, with pleasant walks, and even drives and rides, in all directions. The enclosure contains about sixty acres, to every part of which the patients who are well enough to walk about can be admitted with perfect safety.

In this park are situated two or three distinct lodges, which are found occasionally to be of the greatest utility, in cases where the most profound quiet is necessary, and yet where too strict confinement would be injurious. Indeed, it appears to me that the object princ.i.p.ally kept in view throughout all the arrangements, is the power of keeping patients out of sight and hearing of each other till they are sufficiently advanced towards recovery to make it a real pleasure and advantage to a.s.sociate together.

As soon as they reach this favourable stage of their convalescence, they mix with the family in very handsome rooms, where books, music, and a billiard-table a.s.sist them to pa.s.s the hours without _ennui_.

Every patient has a separate sleeping-apartment, in none of which are the precautions necessary for their safety permitted to be visible.

What would wear the appearance of iron bars in every other place of the kind that I have seen, are here made to look like very neat _jalousies_. Not a bolt or a bar is perceptible, nor any object whatever that might shock the spirit, if at any time a gleam of recovered intellect should return to visit it.

This cautious keeping out of sight of the sufferers everything that might awaken them to a sense of their own condition, or that of the other patients, appears to me to be the most peculiar feature of the discipline, and is evidently one of the objects most sedulously kept in view. Next to this I should place the system of inducing the male patients to exercise their limbs, and amuse their spirits, by working in the garden, at any undertaking, however _bizarre_ and profitless, which can induce them to keep mind and body healthily employed. I know not if this has been systematically resorted to elsewhere; but the good sense of it is certainly very obvious, and the effect, as I was told, is found to be very generally beneficial; though it occasionally happens that some among them have fancied their dignity compromised by using a spade or a hoe,--and then some of the family join with them in the labour, to prove that it is merely a matter of amus.e.m.e.nt: in short, everything likely to cheer or soothe the spirits seems brought into use among them.

The ground close adjoining to the house is divided into many small well-enclosed gardens; the women's apartments opening to some, the men's to others of them. In several of these gardens I observed neat little tables, such as are used in the _restaurans_ of Paris, with a clean cloth, and all necessary appointments, placed pleasantly and commodiously in the shade, at each of which was seated one person, who was served with a separate dinner, and with every appearance of comfort. Had I not known their condition, I should in many instances have thought the spectacle a very pleasing one.

M. Voisin walked through all parts of the establishment with us, and there appeared to exist a perfectly good understanding between him and his patients. Among many regulations, which all appeared excellent, he told me that the friends of his inmates were permitted at all times, and under all circ.u.mstances, to visit them without any restraint whatever: an arrangement which can only be productive of confidence and advantage to all parties; as it is perfectly inconceivable that any one who had felt obliged to place an unhappy friend or relative under restraint should wish to interfere with the discipline necessary for his ultimate advantage; whereas a contrary system is likely to give occasion to constant doubts and fears on one hand, and to the possibility of ill treatment or unnecessary restraint on the other. In one of the courts appropriated to the use of such male patients as were sufficiently convalescent to permit their a.s.sociating together, and amusing themselves with the different games in which they are permitted to share, we saw a young Englishman, now rapidly recovering, but who had scrawled over the walls of his own sleeping-apartment, poor fellow! with a pencil, a vast quant.i.ty of writing, almost wholly on religious subjects; proving but too plainly that he was one of the many victims of fanaticism. Every thought seemed pregnant with suffering, and sometimes bursts of agony were scrawled in trembling characters, that spoke the very extremity of terror. "Who is there can endure fire and flame for ever, for ever, and for ever?" "Death is before us--h.e.l.l follows it!" "The bottomless pit--groans--tortures--anguish--for ever!"... Such sentences as these were still legible, though much had been obliterated.

Who can wonder that a mind thus occupied should lose that fine balance with which nature has arranged our faculties, making one keep watch and ward over the other?... This poor fellow lost his wits under the process of conversion: Judgment being entirely overthrown, Imagination had vaulted into its seat, pregnant with visions black as night, dark--oh! far darker than the tomb! "palled in the dunnest smoke of h.e.l.l," and armed with every image for the eternity of torture that the ingenuity of man could devise. Who can wonder at his madness? And how many crimes are there recorded in the Newgate Calendar which equal in atrocity that of so distorting a mind, that sought to raise its humble hopes towards heaven!

I felt particularly interested for this poor lunatic, both as my countryman, and the victim of by far the most fearful tyranny that man can exercise on man. Against all other injury it is not difficult to believe that a steadfast spirit can arm itself and say with Hamlet,

"I do not set my life at a pin's fee."

But against this, it were a vain boast to add,

"And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?"

For, alas! it is that very immortality which gives hope, comfort, and strength under every other persecution that paralyses the sufferer under this, and arms with such horrid strength the blasphemous wretch who teaches him to turn in terror from his G.o.d.

M. Voisin told me that this unfortunate young man had been for some time daily becoming more calm and tranquil, and that he entertained not any doubt of his ultimate recovery.

Excepting this my poor countryman, the only patient I saw whose situation it was particularly painful to contemplate was a young girl who had only arrived the preceding day. There was in her eyes a restless, anxious, agitated manner of looking about on all things, and gathering a distinct idea from none--a vague uncertainty as to where she was, not felt with sufficient strength to amount to wonder, but enough to rob her of all the feeling of repose which belongs to home.

Poor girl! perhaps some faltering, unfixable thought brought at intervals the figure of her mother to her; for as I looked at her pale face, its vacant expression received more than once a sad but pa.s.sing gleam of melancholy meaning. She coughed frequently; but the cough seemed affected,--or rather, it appeared to be an effort not so much required by her lungs, as by the need of some change, some relief--she knew not what, nor where nor how to seek it. She appeared very desirous of shaking off the attendance of a woman who was waiting upon her, and her whole manner indicated a sort of fretful unrest that it made one wretched to contemplate. But here again I was comforted by the a.s.surance that there were no symptoms which forbade hope of recovery.

I remember being told, when visiting the lunatic asylum near New York, that the most frequent causes of insanity were ascertained to be religion and drunkenness. Near Paris I find that love, high play, and politics are considered as the princ.i.p.al causes of this calamity; and certainly nothing can be more accordant with what observation would teach one to expect than both these statements. At New York the physician told me that madness arising from excessive drinking admitted, in the great majority of cases, of a perfect cure; but that religious aberration of intellect was much more enduring.

At Paris I have heard the same; for here also it occasionally happens, though not often, that the reason becomes disturbed by repeated and frequent intoxication: but where either politics or love has taken such hold of the mind as to disturb the reasoning power, the recovery is less certain and more slow.

Dr. Voisin told me that he uniformly found the first symptoms of insanity appear in the wavering, indifferent, and altered state of the affections towards relations and friends;--apathy, coldness, and, in some cases, dislike, and even violent antipathy, being sure to appear, wherever previous attachment had been the most remarkable. They sometimes, but not very often, take capricious fits of fondness for strangers; but never with any show of reason, and never for any length of time. The most certain symptom of an approach towards recovery is when the heart appears to be re-awakened to its natural feelings and old attachments.

There was one old lady that I watched eating her dinner of vegetables and fruit at a little table in one of the gardens, who had adorned her bonnet with innumerable sc.r.a.ps of trumpery, and set it on her head with the most studied and coquettish air imaginable: she fed herself with the grace or grimace of a young beauty, eating grapes of a guinea a pound, from a plate of crystal, with a golden fork. I am sure she was enjoying all the happiness of feeling herself beautiful, elegant, and admired: and when I looked at the wrinkled ruin of her once handsome face, I could hardly think her madness a misfortune; for though I did not obtain any pitiful story concerning her, or any history of the cause which brought her there, I felt sure that it must in some way or other be connected with some feeling of deeply-mortified vanity: and if I am right in my conjecture, what has the world left for her equal in consolation to the wild fancies which now shed such simpering complacency over her countenance? And might we not exclaim for her in all kindness--

"Let but the cheat endure!--She asks not aught beside?"

What was pa.s.sing in this poor old head, it was easy enough to guess--wild as it was, and wide from the truth. But there was another, which, though I studied it as long as I could possibly contrive to do so, wholly baffled me; and yet I would have given much to know what thoughts were flitting through that young brain.

She was a young girl, extremely pretty, with coal-black hair and eyes, and seated, quite apart from all, upon a pleasant shady bench in one of the gardens. Her face was like a fair landscape, over which pa.s.ses cloud and sunshine in rapid succession: for one moment she smiled, and the next seemed preparing to weep; but before a tear could fall, her fine teeth were again displayed in an unmeaning smile. O, what could be the fleeting visions formed that worked her fancy thus? Could it be memory? Or was the fitful emotion caused by the galloping vagaries of an imagination which outstripped the power of reason to follow it? Or was it none of this, but a mere meaningless movement of the muscles, that worked in idle mockery of the intellect that used to govern them?

I have sometimes thought it very strange that people should feel such deep delight in watching on the stage the representation of the utmost extremity of human woe that the mind of man can contrive to place before them; and I have wondered more, much more, at the gathering together of thousands and tens of thousands, whenever the law has doomed that some wretched soul should be separated by the hand of man from the body in which it has sinned: but I doubt if my own intense interest in watching poor human nature when deprived of reason is not stranger still. I can in no way account for it; but so it is. I can never withdraw myself from the contemplation of a maniac without reluctance; and yet I am always conscious of painful feelings as long as it lasts, and perfectly sure that I shall be followed by more painful feelings still when it is over.

It is certain, however, that the comfort, the tenderness, the care, so evident in every part of the establishment at Vanves, render the contemplation of insanity there less painful than I ever found it elsewhere; and when I saw the air of healthy physical enjoyment (at least) with which a large number of the patients prepared to take their pastime, during their hours of exercise, each according to his taste or whim, amid the ample s.p.a.ce and well-chosen accessories prepared for them, I could not but wish that every retreat fitted up for the reception of this unfortunate portion of the human race could be arranged on the same plan and governed by the same principles.

LETTER x.x.xIV.

Riot at the Porte St. Martin.--Prevented by a shower of Rain.--The Mob in fine weather.--How to stop Emeutes.--Army of Italy.--Theatre Francais.--Mademoiselle Mars in Henriette.--Disappearance of Comedy.

Though Paris is really as quiet at present as any great city can possibly be, still we continue to be told regularly every morning, "qu'il y avait une emeute hier soir a la Porte St. Martin." But I do a.s.sure you that these are very harmless little pastimes; and though it seldom happens that the mysterious hour of revolution-hatching pa.s.ses by without some arrest taking place, the parties are always liberated the next morning; it having appeared clearly at every examination that the juvenile aggressors, who are seldom above twenty years of age, are as harmless as a set of croaking bull-frogs on the banks of the Wabash. The continually repeated mention, however, of these nightly meetings, induced two gentlemen of our party to go to this often-named Porte St. Martin a few nights ago, in hopes of witnessing the humours of one of these small riotings. But on arriving at the spot they found it perfectly tranquil--everything wore the proper stillness of an orderly and well-protected night. A few military were, however, hovering near the spot; and of these they made inquiry as to the cause of a repose so unlike what was usually supposed to be the state of this celebrated quarter of the town.

"Mais ne voyez-vous pas que l'eau tombe, messieurs?" said the national guard stationed there: "c'est bien a.s.sez pour refroidir le feu de nos republicains. S'il fait beau demain soir, messieurs, nous aurons encore notre pet.i.t spectacle."

Determined to know whether there was any truth in these histories or not, and half suspecting that the whole thing, as well as the a.s.surance of the civil _militaire_ to boot, was neither more nor less than a hoax, they last night, the weather being remarkably fine, again attempted the adventure, and with very different success.

On this occasion, there was, by their description, as pretty a little riot as heart could wish. The numbers a.s.sembled were stated to be above four hundred: military, both horse and foot, were among them; pointed hats were as plenty as blackberries in September, and "banners waved without a blast" on the tottering shoulders of little ragam.u.f.fins who had been hired for two sous apiece to carry them.

On this memorable evening, which has really made a figure this morning in some of the republican journals, a considerable number of the most noisy portion of the mob were arrested; but, on the whole, the military appear to have dealt very gently with them; and our friends heard many a crazy burst of artisan eloquence, which might have easily enough been construed into treason, answered with no rougher repartee than a laughing "Vive le Roi!"

At one point, however, there was a vehement struggle before a young hero, equipped cap-a-pie a la Robespierre, could be secured; and while two of the civic guard were employed in taking him, a little fellow of about ten years old, who had a banner as heavy as himself on his shoulder, and who was probably squire of the body to the prisoner, stood on tiptoe before him at the distance of a few feet, roaring "Vive la Republique!" as loud as he could bawl.