Paris: With Pen and Pencil Part 11

I did not succeed in getting a good dinner for a fair price, which I always could do at the hotel. It was so poor that a little while after, I tried a cup of coffee and a roll upon the _Champs Elysees_, which were delicious enough to make up for the poor dinner.

In front of me there was an orchestra, and some singers, who discoursed very good music for the benefit of all persons who patronized the restaurant. A mult.i.tude of ladies and gentlemen were ranged under the trees before them, sipping coffee, wine, or brandy. The sight was a very gay one, but not uncommon in Paris.

I went one day outside the walls of Paris, and took dinner in a beautiful spot where the sun was almost entirely excluded by the trees and shrubs, in gardens attached to a restaurant. I had a capital dinner, too, for a small price, better than I could have had for double the money at a London hotel.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PEOPLE--CLIMATE--PUBLIC INSt.i.tUTIONS--HOTEL DES INVALIDES.

THE PEOPLE.

The French people, so far as one may judge from Paris, are very difficult to study and understand. They are easy of access, but it is difficult to account for the many and strange anomalies in their character.

The intense love of gayety and the amount of elegant trifling which shows itself everywhere as a national characteristic, does not prepare one to believe that some of the greatest of mathematicians, philosophers, and scientific men are Frenchmen and Parisians; but such is the fact. The French are fickle, love pleasure, and one would think that these qualities would unfit men for coolness, perseverance, and prolonged research; and I am sometimes inclined to think that the proficiency of the French in philosophy, the arts, and sciences, is not so much the result of patient investigation and laborious and continued study, as a kind of intuition which amounts to genius. The French mind is quick, and does not plod slowly toward eminence; it leaps to it.

Certainly, in brilliancy of talents the French surpa.s.s every other nation. I will not do them the injustice to speak of them as they are at this moment--crushed under the despotism of Louis Napoleon--but as they have been in the last few years, and indeed for centuries. Paris is a city of brilliant men and women. A French orator is one of the most eloquent speakers, one of the most impressive men, any country can furnish. The intelligence of the Paris artisans would surprise many people in America. We have only to examine the journals which before the advent of the empire were almost exclusively taken by the working-cla.s.ses of Paris, to see the proof of this. Their leaders were written in the best essay-style, and were the result of careful thought and application. Such journals could never have gained a fair support from the artisans of New York. They were not mere news journals, nor filled up with love-stories. They contained articles of great worth, which required on the part of the reader a love of abstract truth and the consideration of it. Such journals sold by thousands in Paris before Napoleon III. throttled the newspapers. These very men were fond of pleasure and pursued it, and I have been told by residents, that often persons of a foppish exterior and fashionable conduct, are also celebrated for the extent of their learning. At home we rarely look for talent or learning among the devotees of fashion, or at least, among those who exalt fashion above all moral attributes.

It seems to me that the French are more gifted by nature than the English. The English mind is more sluggish, but in all that is practical, it gains the goal of success, while the French mind often fails of it. In theory, the French have always had the most delightful of republics--in fact, a wretched despotism. So, too, they have had an idea of liberty, such as is seldom understood even in America, but real liberty has existed rarely in France.

The laboring men of Paris perhaps never saw the inside of a school-room, but they are educated. They know how to read, and through the newspapers, the library, the popular lecture and exhibition, they have gained what many who spend most of their earlier years in school never gain. From an experience which justifies it, I believe the soberest part of Paris is its cla.s.s of artisans. They may possess many wrong and foolish opinions, but they are a n.o.ble cla.s.s of men. They are a majority of them republicans, and though they consent to the inevitable necessity--obedience to the monarch and endurance of a monarchy--yet they indulge in hopes of a brilliant future for France. They know very well how their rights are trampled upon, and feel keenly what a disgraceful condition Paris and all France occupies at the present time, but are by no means satisfied with it. They well know that there is no real liberty in Paris to-day; that no journal dares to speak the whole truth for fear of losing its existence; and that the n.o.blest men of the republic are in exile. The trouble is, that the lower cla.s.ses of the provinces are grossly ignorant, and do not desire a republic, nor care for liberty. Thus, those who are intelligent and have aspirations after freedom, are borne down by the ignorant.

One of the characteristics of the people of Paris, for which they are known the world over, is their politeness. I noticed this in all circles and in all places. In England John Bull stares at your dress if it differs from his own, and hunts you to the wall. Or if anything in your speech or manners pleases him, he laughs in your face. But in Paris, the Frenchman never is guilty of so ill-bred an action as to laugh at anybody in his presence, however provoking the occasion. If you are lost and inquire the way, he will run half a mile to show you, and will not even hear of thanks, I remember once in Liverpool asking in a barber's-shop the way to the Waterloo hotel. A person present, who was so well-dressed that I supposed him a gentleman, said that he was going that way and would show me. I replied that I could find the spot, the street having been pointed out by the barber. The "gentleman" persisted in accompanying me. When we reached the hotel I thanked him, but he was not to be shaken off. He raised his hat and said, "I hope I may have the happiness of drinking wine with you!" I was angry at such meanness, and I gave him a decided negative. "But," he persisted, "you will drink ale with me?" I replied, "I never drink ale." "But," said he, "you will give _me_ a gla.s.s?" This persistence was so disgusting that I told the man I would give him in charge of the police as an impostor if he did not leave, which he did at this hint, instantly.

The only time that I ever experienced anything but politeness in Paris, was when in a great hurry I chanced to hit a workman with a basket upon his head. The concussion was so great that the basket was dashed to the pavement. He turned round very slowly, and with a grin upon his countenance said, "Thank you, sir!" This was politeness with a little too much sarcasm. It was spoken so finely that I burst into a laugh, and the Frenchman joined me in it.

The shop-keepers of Paris are a very polite cla.s.s, and are as avaricious as they are polite. The habit which they have of asking a higher price than they expect to get is a bad one. It is a notorious fact that foreigners in Paris can rarely buy an article so cheaply as a native.

There are always quant.i.ties of verdant Englishmen visiting Paris, and the temptation to cheat them is too great to be resisted by the wide-awake shop-keepers. Besides, it satisfies a grudge they all have against Englishmen. I always found it an excellent way not to buy until the shop keeper had lowered his price considerably. Sometimes I state my country, and the saleswoman would roguishly pretend that for that reason she reduced the price. I remember stopping once in the Palais Royal to gaze at some pretty chains in the window. A black-eyed little woman came to the door, and I asked the price of a ring which struck my fancy. She gave it, and I shook my head, telling her that in the country which I came from I could get such a ring for less money. She wanted to know the name of my country, and when I told her it was America, she said in a charming manner, "Oh! you come from the grand republic! you shall have the ring for so many francs," naming a sum far less than she had at first asked. Of course, I did not suppose she sacrificed a _sou_ for the sake of my country, but it showed how apt are the Paris shop-keepers at making excuses. An Englishman or American would have solemnly declared he would not take a penny less--and then very coolly give the lie to his a.s.sertion; at any rate, I have seen English and American tradesman do so.

A majority of the shop-keepers of Paris are women, and many of them young and pretty. I certainly have seen more beauty of face in the shops than on the Boulevards of Paris. Young girls from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five, are usually the clerks in all the shops, which are often presided over by a grown-up woman who is mistress of the establishment, her husband being by no means the first man in the establishment, but rather a silent partner.

The grisettes are often girls of industry and great good-nature, but the morals of the cla.s.s are lamentably low. They are easily seduced from the path of right, and are led to form temporary alliances with men, very often the students of the Latin Quarter. They rarely degrade themselves for money or for such considerations, but it is for love or pleasure that they fall. They are given to adventures and intrigues, until they become the steady paramours of men, and then they are true and constant.

Often they are kept and regarded more like wives than mistresses. I should not do entire justice to this cla.s.s if I were to convey the idea that all of them are thus debauched. Many marry poor young men, but such is not usually the case; a poor young man seeks a wife with a small dowry. They have little hope of wedded life--it will never offer itself to them. Their shop-life is dreary, monotonous, and sometimes exacting.

If they will desert it, pleasure presents an enticing picture; a life of idleness, dancing, and a round of amus.e.m.e.nts.

I was very much struck by a remark made to me by one of the purest men in France--that a Frenchman is more apt to be jealous of his mistress than his wife, and that as a general rule, a mistress is more true to her lover than a wife is to her husband. This is horrible, yet to a certain extent I am convinced it is true. And it may be so, and women be no more to blame in the matter than the other s.e.x. To-day, in the fashionable society of our great cities, how much does it injure a wealthy young man's prospects for matrimony, if it is a well-known fact that he is a libertine? And how long can such a state of things continue without dragging down the women who marry such men? If a lady cares not if her lover is a libertine, she cannot possess much of genuine virtue.

The fashionable men of Paris keep mistresses--so do those of all cla.s.ses, the students, perhaps, according to their numbers, being worse in this respect than all others. It is not strange, such being the case, that the women are frail.

One thing is specially noticeable among the ladies of Paris--the care with which they are guarded before marriage, and the freedom of their conduct after. In countries where there is almost universal virtue among women, the faith in them is strong, and a freedom of intercourse between the s.e.xes is allowed previous to marriage, which is never tolerated in such a place as Paris. In New England it is not thought improper for a young gentleman and lady to enjoy a walk together in the country, and alone, but in France it would ruin the reputation of a woman. A friend of mine in London warmly invited a young friend of his in Paris to come over and make his family a visit on some special occasion. The Parisian wrote back that he should like nothing better than such a trip, but that business would not allow of it. "Then," wrote back my friend, "let your sister come." The reply was decided: "Oh, no! it would never do for the young lady to make such a trip alone, for the sake of her reputation."

It would have struck this Frenchman as a very singular fact, if he had known that in America a young lady will travel thousands of miles alone, without the slightest harm to her reputation.

But when the French woman _marries_, the tables are turned. Then she possesses a freedom such as no American lady, thank heaven, wishes to enjoy. She may have half a dozen open lovers, and society holds its tongue. Her husband probably has as many mistresses. It is not considered improper in Paris either for a husband and father to love his mistress, or a wife and mother to love her acknowledged lover, and that man not her husband. The intrigues which are carried on by married people in Paris, would shock sober people in America, or at least, outside our largest and wickedest cities.

The social state of France is exceedingly bad, and when American religious writers profess to be shocked at the theories of the French Socialists, I am inclined to ask them what they think of the _actual condition_ of the French people. Some of the Socialists have been driven to extremes, because Paris has no conception of the home and the family.

The enemies of Socialism in France are, in practice, worse than their enemies in theory. Who is the man now ruling France? Does the world not know him to have long been an open and thoroughly debauched libertine?

The same is true of other distinguished friends of "law and order."

The outward condition of the streets of Paris often deceives the stranger as to the morality of the city. Said one gentleman to me, who had spent several weeks at a fashionable Paris hotel, "Paris is one of the quietest, pleasantest towns in the world, and as for its morals, I can see nothing which justifies its bad reputation abroad." After a week's stay in it, such was my own opinion. Things which are tolerated in London and New York streets, are not permitted in the streets of Paris. A street-walker ventured to accost an Englishman in Paris at night, and was taken in charge by the police. But this outward fairness only indicates that in Paris, even the vices are regulated by the state.

Bad women cannot make a display and accost men in the street, but they abound, and what is far worse, in all the circles and gradations of society. It is society which is corrupt there. One need but to look at the morals of its great men, to see this at once. What is the moral character of the first men in the empire? Bad, as no Frenchman will deny. Some of the very men who have won in America golden opinions for their n.o.ble and eloquent advocacy of liberty, have been in their private lives devoid of all virtue. It only shows the social condition of the country. Some writers deny these allegations against Paris, but no man will who has lived in it, and is honest and candid. Paris abounds with illegitimate children. The statistics tell the story. Ten thousand illegitimate children are born every year in that city! What can be the morality of any town, while such facts exist in reference to its condition?

I hate all cant, but am satisfied that the chief reason why France does not succeed better in her revolutions is, because she lacks the steadiness which a sincere devotion to religion gives to a nation. The country needs less man-worship and more G.o.d-worship. It needs less adulation of beautiful women, and more real appreciation of true womanhood.

There is a great deal of art-worship in Paris, but it does not seem to really elevate the condition of the people. The pictures and the statues are generally of the most sensuous kind. Do these things improve the morals of a city or nation? If so, why is it that wherever naked pictures and sensual statuary abound, the people are licentious and depraved? In America such things are not tolerated by the ma.s.s of the people, and there prevails a higher style of virtue than in any other land. But in France and in Italy, the beauty of the human form upon canvas or in marble, in however offensive a manner, is adored--and in those countries the people have little morality.

The French _home_ is not the home of England or America. The genuine Parisian lives on the street, or in the theater or ball-room. He never lives at home. Hence, the mothers and daughters of England and America are not there to be found. "Comparisons are odious" but I cannot express my meaning so plainly without making them, and I state but the simple truth. Young men and women are not taught to seek their pleasure at the family fireside, but beyond it, and a man marries not to make a home, but to make money or a position in society. Women, too, often marry simply to attain liberty of action.

Another characteristic of the French, and especially of Parisians, is that they educate their sons to no such independence as is everywhere common in America. The young Parisian is dependent upon his father--he cannot support himself; and men of thirty and forty, who are helpless, are to be seen in all cla.s.ses throughout the great cities of France.

Whether there is just ground for expecting that France will very soon throw off the despotism which now weighs her down, I am incompetent, perhaps, to judge; but I fear not. There is a very n.o.ble cla.s.s of men in Paris--I know this by experience--who hate all despotism and love freedom, but I fear they will for centuries be overcome by ignorance and the love of pleasure, on the part of the people, and knavery and brute force on the part of rulers.

CLIMATE--POPULATION--POLICE, ETC.

The weather of Paris during the summer months is warm and usually delightful, but in winter it is very cold--much colder than it is in London. But Paris escapes the horrible fogs which envelop London in November and December. The weather, too, though cold, is wholesome and often conducive to health. The two months of fog in London are often termed the suicidal months, because of the number of persons who destroy their own lives in those months. The people of Paris with their mercurial temperaments would never endure it for a long time, at least.

Fuel is exceedingly dear in Paris, and the buildings are not made for in-door comfort. If they were as warmly made as the houses of New York, they would be comfortable in winter, but such not being the case, and fuel being costly, comfort in private apartments is rarely to be had by any but the rich. Coal is not used to any great extent, though charcoal is burned in small quant.i.ties, but wood is the fuel princ.i.p.ally used. It is sold in small packages, and is princ.i.p.ally brought up from the distant provinces by the ca.n.a.ls. The amount of wood required to make what a Frenchman would call a glowing fire, would astonish an American.

A half a dozen sticks, not much larger or longer than his fingers, laid crosswise in a little hearth, is sufficient for a man's chamber. A log which one of our western farmers would think nothing of consuming in a winter's evening, would bring quite a handsome sum in Paris on any winter day. The truth is, the economical traveler had better not spend his winter in Paris, for comfort at that time costs money. The houses admit such volumes of cold air, the windows are so loose and the doors such wretched contrivances, and that, too, in the best of French cities, that the stranger sighs for the comforts of home. Nowhere in the world is so much taste displayed as in Paris, in the furnishing of apartments.

This is known as far as Paris is, but it is always the _outside appearance_ which is attended to, and nothing more. It is like the Parisian dandy who wears a fine coat, hat, and false bosom, but has no shirt. The homes of Paris are got up, many of them at least, upon this principle. The rooms are elegantly furnished, and in pleasant weather are indeed very pleasant to abide in, but let a cold day come, and they are as uncomfortable as can be, and the ten thousand conveniences which a New York or London household would think it impossible to be without, are wanting.

The longest day in Paris is sixteen hours, the shortest eight. The cities of Europe are distant from it as follows: Brussels, one hundred and eighty-nine miles; Berlin, five hundred and ninety-three; Frankfort, three hundred and thirty-nine; Lisbon, one thousand one hundred and four; Rome, nine hundred and twenty-five; Madrid, seven hundred and seventy-five; Constantinople, one thousand five hundred and seventy-four; St. Petersburgh, one thousand four hundred and five. These places are all easily reached from Paris in these modern days of railways and steamers.

The situation of Paris is much more favorable to health than that of London. London is a low plain--Paris is upon higher ground; yet London is the healthiest city. The reason is, that the latter is so thoroughly drained, and the tide of the Thames sweeping through it twice a day, carries away all the impurities of the sewers. Paris might surpa.s.s London in its sewerage easily, but as it is, some of its narrow streets in warm weather are fairly insupportable, from the intolerable stench arising in them.

The population of Paris is considerably more than a million. The number of births in a year is a little more than thirty thousand, and of these, ten thousand are illegitimate. This fact speaks volumes in reference to the morals of Paris. The deaths usually fall short of the births by about four thousand. The increase of population in France is great, though it is now a very populous country.

The increase in forty years is more than nine millions. The births in France in one year are about eight hundred and ninety-seven thousand, and the deaths eight hundred and sixty-five thousand. Of the births, more than seventy thousand are illegitimate. This fact shows that the morals of Paris, in one respect, are worse than those of the provinces.

It is calculated that one-half of the inhabitants of Paris are _working_ men; the rest are men who live by some trade or profession, or have property and live upon it. Paris has more than eighty thousand servants, and at least seventy thousand paupers. The latter cla.s.s, as a matter of course, varies with the character of the times; sometimes, a bad season enlarging the number by many thousands. There is an average population of fifteen thousand in the hospitals; five thousand in the jails; and at least, twenty thousand foundlings are constantly supported in the city.

The annual number of suicides in France is nearly six thousand. Yet the French are a very gay people!

The police regulations of Paris are very good, but not so good as those of London, though New York might learn from her many useful lessons.

Rogues thrive better in Paris than in London. The Paris policeman wears no distinctive dress, and there are streets in which if you are attacked by night, your cries will call no officer to the rescue. The police have been proved often to be in league with bad men and bad women, and these cases are occurring from day to day. I should not like to walk alone on a winter's night, after midnight, anywhere for half a mile on the southern side of the Seine. Some of the streets are exceedingly narrow, and are tenanted by strange people. Still, one might have many curious adventures in them, and escape safely--but _La Morgue_ tells a mysterious tale every day of some dark deed--a suicide or a murder, perhaps.

Getting lost after midnight in one of the narrow streets of Paris, is not particularly pleasant, especially if every person you meet looks like a thief. The police system of Paris is in one respect far more strict than that of London--in political matters. Every stranger, or native, suspected in the least of tendencies to republicanism, is continually watched and dogged wherever he moves. While in Paris, my whereabouts was constantly known to the police, and though I made several changes in my abode, I was followed each time, and my address taken; yet I was but an in offensive republican from America. A man must be careful to whom he talks of French despots, or despotism. For speaking against Louis Napoleon in an omnibus, a Frenchman was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and men have been exiled for a less offense.

The police are everywhere to detect conspiracy or radicalism, but are more slack in reference to the safety of people in the streets.

One pleasant feature of Paris is its great number of baths, public and private. The artisan who has little money to spare can go to the Seine any day, and for six cents take a bath under a large net roofing. A gentleman, to be sure, would hardly like to try such a place, but the working people are not particular. It is cheap, and in the hot weather it is a great luxury to bathe, to say nothing of the necessity of the thing. To take a bath in a first-rate French hotel is quite another matter. Every luxury will be afforded, and the price will be quite as high as the bath is luxurious.

Pleasure trips are getting to be quite common in France, in imitation of the English, on a majority of the railways. The fares for these pleasure trips are very much reduced. I noticed the walls one day covered with advertis.e.m.e.nts of a pleasure trip to Havre and back for only seven francs. The second and third cla.s.s carriages on the French railroads are quite comfortable, but the first are very luxurious. Trains run from Paris to all parts of the country, at almost all hours of the day and night.