Paris and the Parisians in 1835 Volume II Part 5

"It should seem then," said I, "that the duty of judge, which is attended with such awful responsibilities with us, is here little more than the performance of an official ceremony?"

"It is very nearly such, I a.s.sure you."

"And your jurymen, according to a phrase of contempt common among us, are in fact judge and jury both?"

"Beyond all contradiction they are so," he replied: "and I conceive that criminal justice is at this time more loosely administered in France than in any other civilised country in the world. In fact, our artisans have become, since the revolution of 1830, not only judge and jury, but legislators also. Different crimes have different punishments a.s.signed to them by our penal code; but it rarely, or I might say never, occurs in our days that the punishment inflicted has any reference to that which is a.s.signed by the law. That guilt may vary even when the deed done does not, is certain; and it is just and righteous therefore that a judge, learned in the law of the land, and chosen by high authority from among his fellows as a man of wisdom and integrity,--it is quite just and righteous that such a one should have the power--and a tremendous power it is--of modifying the extent of the penalty according to his view of the individual case. The charge too of an English judge is considered to be of immense importance to the result of every trial. All this is as it should be; but we have departed most widely from the model we have professed to follow. With us the judge has no such power--at least not practically: with us a set of chance-met artisans, ignorant alike of the law of the land and of the philosophy of punishment, have this tremendous power vested in them. It matters not how clearly the crime has been proved, and still less what penalty the law has adjudged to it; the punishment inflicted is whatever it may please the jury to decide, and none other."

"And what is the effect which this strangely a.s.sumed power has produced on your administration of justice?" said I.

"The virtual abolition of capital punishment," was the reply. "When a jury," continued M. V***, "delivers a verdict to the judge of 'Guilty, but with extenuating circ.u.mstances,' the judge dare not condemn the criminal to death, though the law of the land a.s.sign that punishment to his offence, and though his own mind is convinced, by all which has come out upon the trial, that instead of _extenuating circ.u.mstances_, the commission of the crime has been attended with every possible aggravation of atrocity. Such is the practical effect of the revolution of 1830 on the administration of criminal justice."

"Does public opinion sanction this strange abuse of the functions of jurymen?" said I.

"Public opinion cannot sanction it," he replied, "any more than it could sanction the committal of the crime itself. The one act is, in fact, as lawless as the other; but the populace have conceived the idea that capital punishment is an undue exercise of power, and therefore our rulers fear to exercise it."

This is a strange statement, is it not? The gentleman who made it is, I am sure, too much a man of honour and integrity to falsify facts; but it may perhaps be necessary to allow something for the colouring of party feeling. Whatever the present government does, or permits to be done, contrary to the system established during the period of the restoration, is naturally offensive to the feelings of the legitimatists, and repugnant to their judgments; yet, in this case, the relaxation of necessary power must so inevitably lead to evil, that we must, I think, expect to see the reins gathered up, and the command resumed by the proper functionaries, as soon as the new government feels itself seated with sufficient firmness to permit the needful exertion of strength to be put forth with safety.

It is certain that M. V*** supported his statement by reciting so many strong cases in which the most fearful crimes, substantiated by the most unbroken chain of evidence, have been reported by the jury to the judge as having "extenuating circ.u.mstances" attached to them, that it is impossible, while things remain as they are, not to feel that such a mode of administering justice must make the habit of perjury as familiar to their jurymen as that of taking their oaths.

This conversation brought to my recollection some strange stories which I had heard in Belgium apropos of the trial by jury there. If those stories were correct, they are about as far from comprehending, or at least from acting upon, our n.o.ble, equitable, and well-tried inst.i.tution there, as they appear to be here--but from causes apparently exactly the reverse. There, I am told, it often happens that the jury can neither read nor write; and that when they are placed in their box, they are, as might be expected, quite ignorant of the nature of the duty they are to perform, and often so greatly embarra.s.sed by it, that they are ready and willing--nay, thankful--to p.r.o.nounce as their verdict whatever is dictated to them.

I heard an anecdote of one man--and a thorough honest Fleming he was--who having been duly empannelled, entered the jury-box, and having listened attentively to a trial that was before the court, declared, when called upon for his verdict, that he had not understood a single word from the beginning to the end of it. The court endeavoured to explain the leading points of the question; but still the worthy burgher persisted in declaring that the business was not in his line, and that he could not comprehend it sufficiently to give any opinion at all. The attempt at explanation was repeated, but in vain; and at length the conscientious Fleming paid the fine demanded for the non-performance of the duty, and was permitted to retire.

In France, on the contrary, it appears that human intellect has gone on so fast and so far, that no dozen of men can be found simple-minded enough to say 'yes' or 'no' to a question asked, without insisting that they must legislate upon it.

In this case, at least, England shows a beautiful specimen of the _juste milieu_.

LETTER L.

English Pastry-cook's.--French horror of English Pastry.--Unfortunate experiment upon a m.u.f.fin.--The Citizen King.

We have been on a regular shopping tour this morning; which was finished by our going into an English pastry-cook's to eat buns. While thus engaged, we amused ourselves by watching the proceedings of a French party who entered also for the purpose of making a morning gouter upon cakes.

They had all of them more or less the air of having fallen upon a terra incognita, showing many indications of surprise at sight of the ultra-marine compositions which appeared before them;--but there was a young man of the party who, it was evident, had made up his mind to quiz without measure all the foreign dainties that the shop afforded, evidently considering their introduction as a very unjustifiable interference with the native manufacture.

"Est-il possible!" said he, with an air of grave and almost indignant astonishment, as he watched a lady of his party preparing to eat an English bun,--"Est-il possible that you can prefer these strange-looking comestibles a la patisserie francaise?"

"Mais goutez-en," said the lady, presenting a specimen of the same kind as that she was herself eating: "ils sont excellens."

"No, no! it is enough to look at them!" said her cavalier, almost shuddering. "There is no lightness, no elegance, no grace in any single gateau here."

"Mais goutez quelque chose," reiterated the lady.

"Vous le voulez absolument!" exclaimed the young man; "quelle tyrannie! ... and what a proof of obedience I am about to give you!...

Voyons donc!" he continued, approaching a plate on which were piled some truly English m.u.f.fins--which, as you know, are of a somewhat mysterious manufacture, and about as palatable if eaten untoasted as a slice from a leathern glove. To this _gateau_, as he supposed it to be, the unfortunate connoisseur in patisserie approached, exclaiming with rather a theatrical air, "Voila donc ce que je vais faire pour vos beaux yeux!"

As he spoke, he took up one of the pale, tough things, and, to our extreme amus.e.m.e.nt, attempted to eat it. Any one might be excused for making a few grimaces on such an occasion,--and a Frenchman's privilege in this line is well known: but this hardy experimentalist outdid this privilege;--he was in a perfect agony, and his spittings and reproachings were so vehement, that friends, strangers, boutiquier, and all, even down to a little befloured urchin who entered at the moment with a tray of patties, burst into uncontrollable laughter, which the unfortunate, to do him justice, bore with extreme good humour, only making his fair countrywoman promise that she would never insist upon his eating English confectionary again.

Had this scene continued a minute longer, I should have missed seeing what I should have been sorry not to have seen, for I certainly could not have left the pastry-cook's shop while the young Frenchman's sufferings lasted. Happily, however, we reached the Boulevard des Italiens in time to see King Louis-Philippe, en simple bourgeois, pa.s.sing on foot just before Les Bains Chinois, but on the opposite side of the way.

Excepting a small tri-coloured c.o.c.kade in his hat, he had nothing whatever in his dress to distinguish him from any other gentleman. He is a well-looking, portly, middle-aged man, with something of dignity in his step which, notwithstanding the unpretending citizen-like style of his promenade, would have drawn attention, and betrayed him as somebody out of the common way, even without the plain-speaking _cocarde tricolore_. There were two gentlemen a few paces behind him, as he pa.s.sed us, who, I think, stepped up nearer to him afterwards; but there were no other individuals near who could have been in attendance upon him. I observed that he was recognised by many, and some few hats were taken off, particularly by two or three Englishmen who met him; but his appearance excited little emotion. I was amused, however, at the nonchalant air with which a young man at some distance, in full Robespierrian costume, used his lorgnon to peruse the person of the monarch as long as he remained in sight.

The last king I saw in the streets of Paris was Charles the Tenth returning from a visit to one of his suburban palaces, escorted and accompanied in kingly state and style. The contrast in the men and in the mode was striking, and calculated to awaken lively recollections of all the events which had occurred to both of them since the last time that I turned my head to look after a sovereign of France.

My fancy flew to Prague, and to the three generations of French monarchs stationed there almost as peaceably as if they had taken up their quarters at St. Denis!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu.

LE ROI CITOYEN.

London. Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.]

How like a series of conjurer's tricks is their history! Think of this Charles the Tenth in the flower of his youth and comeliness--the gallant, gay, and dissolute Comte d'Artois; recall the n.o.ble range of windows belonging to his apartments at Versailles, and imagine him there radiant in youth and joy--the thoughtless, thriftless cadet of his royal race--the brother and the guest of the good king who appeared to reign over a willing people, by every human right, as well as right divine! Louis Seize was king of France; but the gay Comte d'Artois reigned sovereign of all the pleasures of Versailles. What joyous fetes! ... what brilliant jubilees!... Meanwhile

"Malignant Fate sat by and smiled."

Had he then been told that he should live to be crowned king of France, and live thus many years afterwards, would he not have thought that a most brilliant destiny was predicted to him?

Few men, perhaps, have suffered so much from the ceaseless changes of human events as Charles the Tenth of France. First, in the person of his eldest brother, dethroned and foully murdered; then in his own exile, and that of another royal brother; and again, when Fortune seemed to smile upon his race, and the crown of France was not only placed upon that brother's head, but appeared fixed in a.s.sured succession on his own princely sons, one of those sons was murdered: and lastly, having reached the throne himself, and seen this lost son reviving in his hopeful offspring, comes another stroke of Fate, unexpected, unprepared for, overwhelming, which hurls him from his throne, and drives him and his royal race once more to exile and to civil death.... Has he seen the last of the political earthquakes which have so shaken his existence? or has his restless star to rise again? Those who wish most kindly to him cannot wish for this.

But when I turned my thoughts from the dethroned and banished king to him who stepped on in unguarded but fearless security before me, and thought too on the vagaries of his destiny, I really felt as if this earth and all the people on it were little better than so many children's toys, changing their style and t.i.tle to serve the sport of an hour.

It seemed to me at that moment as if all men were cla.s.sed in their due order only to be thrown into greater confusion--knocked down but to be set up again, and so eternally dashed from side to side, so powerless in themselves, so wholly governed by accidents, that I shrunk, humbled, from the contemplation of human helplessness, and turned from gazing on a monarch to meditate on the insignificance of man. How vain are all the efforts he can make to shape the course of his own existence! There is, in truth, nothing but trusting to surer wisdom, and to surer power, which can enable any of us, from the highest to the lowest, to pa.s.s on with tranquil nerves through a world subject to such terrible convulsions.

LETTER LI.

Parisian Women.--Rousseau's failure in attempting to describe them.--Their great influence in Society.--Their grace in Conversation.--Difficulty of growing old.--Do the ladies of France or those of England manage it best?

There is perhaps no subject connected with Paris which might give occasion to such curious and inexhaustible observation as the character, position, and influence of its women. But the theme, though copious and full of interest, is not without its difficulties; and it is no small proof of this, that Rousseau, who rarely touched on any subject without persuading his reader that he was fully master of it, has nevertheless almost wholly failed on this. In one of the letters of "La Nouvelle Helose," he sketches the characters of a few very commonplace ladies, whom he abuses unmercifully for their bad taste in dress, and concludes his abortive attempt at making us acquainted with the ladies of Paris by acknowledging that they have some goodness of heart.

This is but a meagre description of this powerful portion of the human race, and I can hardly imagine a volume that I should read with greater pleasure than one which should fully supply all its deficiencies. Do not imagine, however, that I mean to undertake the task. I am even less capable of it than the sublime misanthrope himself; for though I am of opinion that it should be an unimpa.s.sioned spectator, and not a lover, who should attempt to paint all the delicate little atoms of exquisite mosaic-work which const.i.tute _une Parisienne_, I think it should not be a woman.

All I can do for you on this subject is to recount the observations I have been myself led to make in the pa.s.sing glances I have now the opportunity of giving them, supported by what I have chanced to hear from better authority than my own: but I am aware that I can do little more than excite your wish to become better acquainted with them than it is in my power to make you.

It is impossible to be admitted into French society without immediately perceiving that the women play a very distinguished part in it. So, a.s.suredly, do the women of England in their own: yet I cannot but think that, setting aside all cases of individual exception, the women of France have more power and more important influence than the women of England.

I am aware that this is a very bold proposition, and that you may feel inclined to call me to account for it. But be I right or wrong in this judgment, it is at least sincere, and herein lies its chief value; for I am by no means sure that I shall be able to explain very satisfactorily the grounds on which it is formed.

France has been called "the paradise of women;" and if consideration and deference be sufficient to const.i.tute a paradise, I think it may be called so justly. I will not, however, allow that Frenchmen make better husbands than Englishmen; but I suspect they make politer husbands--

"Je ne sais pas, pour moi, si chacun me ressemble, Mais j'entends la-dessous un million de mots:"

and, all pleasantry apart, I am of opinion that this more observant tone or style, or whatever it may be termed, is very far from superficial--at least in its effects. I should be greatly surprised to hear from good authority that a French gentleman had ever been heard to speak rudely to his wife.