The Eve of the French Revolution Part 9

Rousseau, who had seen Turin, was disappointed in the French capital. On arriving he saw at first only small, dirty, and stinking streets, ugly black houses, poverty, beggars, and working people; and the impression thus made was never entirely effaced from his mind, in spite of the magnificence which he recognized at a later time. Young thought that Paris was not to be compared with London; and Thomas Jefferson wrote that the latter, though handsomer than Paris, was not so handsome as Philadelphia. But the Parisian liked his uneven streets well enough.

There were fine things to be seen in them. Although the city was crowded, there were gardens in many places, belonging to convents and even to private persons. And once in your walk you might come out upon a bridge, where, if there were not houses built upon it, you might catch a breath of the fresh breeze, and watch the sun disappearing behind the distant village of Chaillot; for nowhere does he set more gloriously than along the Seine.[Footnote: _Paris a travers les ages._ Babeau, _Paris en 1789_. Cognel, 27, 74. Rousseau, xvii. 274 (_Confessions_, Part i. liv. iv.). Young, i. 60; Randall's _Jefferson_, i. 447.]

The houses were tall and dark, and the streets narrow and muddy. There was little water to use, and none to waste, for the larger part of the city depended upon wells or upon the supply brought in buckets from the Seine. The scarcity was hardly to be regretted, for there were few drains to carry dirty water away, and the gutter was full enough already. It ran down the middle of the street, which sloped gently toward it, and there were no sidewalks. When it rained, this street-gutter would rise and overflow, and enterprising men would come out with little wooden bridges on wheels and slip them in between the carriages, and give the quick-footed walker an opportunity to cross the torrent, if he did not slip in from the wet plank; while a pretty woman would sometimes trust herself to the arms of a burly porter.[Footnote: See the print in Fournel, 539, after Granier.

Conductors were coming into use before the Revolution. _Encyc. meth.

Jurisp._, x. 716.] The houses had gutters along the eaves, but no conductors coming down the walls, so that the water from the roofs was collected and came down once in every few yards in a torrent, bursting umbrellas, and deluging cloaks and hats. The manure spread before sick men's doors to deaden the sound of wheels was washed down the street to add to the destructive qualities which already characterized the mud of Paris. An exceptionally heavy fall of snow would entirely get the better of the authorities, filling the streets from side to side with pools of slush, in which fallen horses had been known to drown.

When the sun shone again all was lively as before; the innumerable vehicles crowded the streets from wall to wall, with their great hubs standing well out beyond the wheels, and threatened to eviscerate the pedestrian, as he flattened himself against the house. The carriages of the n.o.bility dashed through the press, the drivers calling out to make room; they were now seldom preceded by runners in splendid livery, as had been the fashion under the former reign, but sometimes one or two huge dogs careered in front, and the Parisians complained that they were first knocked down by the dogs and then run over by the wheels. At times came street cleaners and swept up some of the mud, and carted it away, having first freely spattered the clothes of all who pa.s.sed near them. In some streets were slaughter-houses, and terrified cattle occasionally made their way into the neighboring shops. The signs swung merrily overhead. They appealed to the most careless eye, being often gigantic boots, or swords, or gloves, marking what was for sale within; or if in words, they might be misspelt, and thus adapted to a rude understanding. Large placards on the walls advertised the theatres. Street musicians performed on their instruments. Ballad-singers howled forth the story of the last great crime. Amid all the hubbub, the nimble citizen who had practiced walking as a fine art, picked his careful way in low shoes and white silk stockings; hoping to avoid the necessity of calling for the services of the men with clothes-brush and blacking who waited at the street corners.[Footnote: Mercier, xii. 71, i. 107, 123, 215, 216.

Young, i. 76. In 1761 the signs in the princ.i.p.al streets were reduced to a projection of three feet. Later, they were ordered to be set flat against the walls. Babeau, _Paris_, 42; but see Mercier. Names were first put on the street corners in 1728. Babeau, _Paris_, 43.

Franklin, _L'Hygiene_.]

They were a fine sight, these citizens of Paris, before the male half of the world had adopted, even in its hours of play, the black and gray livery of toil. The Parisians of the latter part of King Louis XVI.'s reign affected simplicity of attire, but not gloom. The c.o.c.ked hat was believed to have permanently driven out the less graceful round hat. It was jauntily placed on the wearer's own hair, which was powdered and tied behind with a black ribbon. For the coat, stripes were in fashion, of light blue and pink, or other brilliant colors. The waistcoat and breeches might be pale yellow, with pink bindings and blue b.u.t.tons; the garters and the clocks of the white stockings, blue; the shoes black, with plain steel buckles. This would be an appropriate costume for the street; although many people wore court-mourning from economy, and forgot to take it off when the court did. A handsome snuff-box, often changed, and a ring, were part of the costume of a well-dressed man; and it was usual to wear two watches, probably from an excessive effort after symmetry; while it is intimated by the satirist that clean lace cuffs were sometimes sewn upon a dirty shirt.[Footnote: Babeau, _Paris_, 214. Fashion plates in various books. For evening dress, suits all of black were beginning to come in towards 1789. In the street gentlemen were beginning to dress like grooms, aping the English. The sword was still worn at times, even by upper servants, but the cane was fast superseding it. Women also carried canes, which helped them to walk in their high-heeled shoes. Mercier, xi. 229, i. 293.]

The costume of gentlemen in this reign was as graceful in shape as any that has been worn in modern Europe. The coat and waistcoat were rather long and followed the lines of the person; the tight breeches met the long stockings just below the knee, showing the figure to advantage. The dress of ladies, on the other hand, was stiff, grotesque, and ungainly; waists were worn very long, and hoops were large and stiff. But the most noticeable thing was the huge structure which, almost throughout the reign, was built upon ladies' heads. As it varied between one and three feet in height, and was very elaborate in design, it could not often be taken down. No little skill was required to construct it, and poor girls could sometimes earn a living by letting out their heads by the hour to undergo the practice of clumsy barbers' apprentices. At one time red hair came into fashion and was simulated by the use of red powder. The colors for clothes varied with the invention of the milliners, and the habit of giving grotesque names to new colors had already arisen in Paris. About 1782, "fleas' back and belly," "goose dung," and "Paris mud" were the last new thing. Caps "a la Boston," and "a la Philadelphie," had gone out. Instead of the fashion-plates with which Paris has since supplied the world, but which under Louis XVI. were only just coming into use, dolls were dressed in the latest style by the milliners and sent to London, Berlin, and Vienna.[Footnote: Franklin, _Les soins de toilette_. Mercier, viii. 295, ii. l97, l98, 213]

The dress of the common people was more brilliant and varied than it is in our time, but probably less neat. Cleanliness of person has never been a leading virtue among the French poor. Although there were elaborate bathing establishments in the river, a large proportion of the people hardly knew what it was to take a bath.[Footnote: But Young says, "In point of cleanliness I think the merit of the two nations is divided; the French are cleaner in their persons, and the English in their houses." Young, i. 291. The whole comparison there given of French and English customs is most interesting.] The sentimental milkmaids of Greuze are no more like the tanned and wrinkled women that sold milk in the streets of Paris, than the court-shepherdesses of Watteau and Boucher were like the rude peasants that watched their sheep on the Jura mountains. But the Parisian c.o.c.kney was fond of dress, and would rather starve his stomach than his back. The milliners' shops, where the pretty seamstresses sat sewing all day in sight of the street, reminding the Parisians of seraglios, were never empty of those who had money to spend. For leaner purses, the women who sat under umbrellas in front of the Colonnade of the Louvre had bargains of cast-off clothing; and there were booths along the quays on Sunday, and a fair in the Place de la Greve on Monday.[Footnote: Mercier, viii. 269, ix. 294, v. 281, ii.

267.]

It is sometimes said of our own times that the rich have become richer and the poor poorer than in former days. I believe that this is entirely untrue, and that in the second half of the nineteenth century a smaller proportion of the inhabitants of civilized countries suffers from hunger and cold than ever before. Whatever be the figures by which fortunes are counted, there is no doubt that the visible difference between the rich and the poor was greater in the reign of Louis XVI. than in our own time.[Footnote: Mercier mentions fortunes varying from 100,000 to 900,000 livres income, and speaks of the former as common, i. 172.

Meanwhile clerks got from 800 to 1500 livres and even less. Those with 1200 wore velvet coats, ii. 118.] In spite of the fashion of simplicity which was one of the affectations of those days, the courtier still on occasion glittered in brocade. His liveried servants waited about his door. His lackeys climbed behind his coach, and awoke the dimly lighted streets with the glare of their torches, as the heavy vehicle bore him homeward from the supper and the card-table. The luxuries of great houses were relatively more expensive. A dish of early peas might cost six hundred francs. Six different officials (a word less dignified would hardly suit the importance of the subject), had charge of the preparation of his lordship's food and drink, and bullied the numerous train of serving-men, kitchen-boys, and scullions. There was the _matre d'hotel_, or housekeeper, who attended to purchases and to storing the food; the chief cook, for soups, _hors d'oeuvre_, _entrees_, and _entremets_; the pastry-cook, with general charge of the oven; the roaster, who fattened the poultry and larded the meat before he put the turnspit dog into the wheel; an Italian confectioner for sweet dishes; and a butler to look after the wine.

Bread was usually brought from the bakers, even to great houses, and was charged for by keeping tally with notches on a stick. Baking was an important trade in Paris, and in times of scarcity the bakers were given the first chance to buy wood. For delicacies, there was the great shop at the Hotel d'Aligre in the Rue Saint Honore, a "famous temple of gluttony," where truffles from Perigord, potted partridges from Nerac, and carp from Strasbourg were piled beside dates, figs, and pots of orange jelly; and where the foreigner from beyond the Rhine, or the Alps, could find his own sauerkraut or macaroni.[Footnote: Mercier, x.

208, xi. 229, 346, xii. 243.]

At the tables of the rich it was usual to entertain many guests; not in the modern way, by asking people for a particular day and hour, but by general invitation. The host opened his house two or three times a week for dinner or supper, and anybody who had once been invited was always at liberty to drop in. Thus arose a cla.s.s of respectably dressed people who were in the habit of dining daily at the cost of their acquaintance.

After dinner it was the fashion to slip away; the hostess called out a polite phrase across the table to the retreating guest, who replied with a single word.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 176, ii. 225. _La Robe dine, La finance soupe._ Mercier says that a man who was a whole year without calling at a house where he had once been admitted had to be presented over again, and make some excuse, as that he had traveled, etc. This the hostess pretended to believe.] It was of course but a small part of the inhabitants of Paris that ate at rich men's tables. The fare of the middle cla.s.ses was far less elaborate; but it generally included meat once or twice a day. The markets were dirty, and fish was dear and bad.

The duties which were levied at the entrance of the town raised the price of food, and of the wine which Frenchmen find equally essential.

Provisions were usually bought in very small quant.i.ties, less than a pound of sugar at a time. Enough for one meal only was brought home, in a piece of printed paper, or an old letter. Unsuccessful books thus found their use at the grocer's. Before dinner the supply for dinner was bought; before supper, that for supper. After the meal nothing was left.

The poorer citizens carried their dinners to be baked at the cook-shops, and saved something in the price of wood. The lower cla.s.ses had their meat chopped fine and packed in sausages, as is still done in Germany, an economical measure by which many shortcomings are covered up and no sc.r.a.p is lost.[Footnote: Ibid., i. 219, xii. 128.]

The use of coffee had become universal. It was sold about the streets for two sous a cup, including the milk and a tiny bit of sugar. While the rich drank punch and ate ices, the poor slaked their thirst with liquorice water, drawn from a shining cylinder carried on a man's back.

The cups were fastened to this itinerant fountain by long chains, and were liable to be dashed from thirsty lips in a crowd by any one pa.s.sing between the drinker and the water-seller.[Footnote: Mercier, viii. 270, _n_., iv. 154, xii. 296, v. 310. See plates in Fournel, 509, 516.]

For the very poor there was second-hand food, the rejected sc.r.a.ps of the rich. In Paris they were nasty enough; but at Versailles, where the king and the princes lived, even people that were well to do did not scorn to buy dishes that had been carried untouched from a royal table. Near the poultry market in Paris, a great pot was always hanging on the fire, with capons boiling in it; you bought a boiled fowl with its broth, a savory mess. In general the variety of food was increasing. Within forty years the number of sorts of fruit and vegetables in use had almost doubled.[Footnote: Ibid., v. 85, 249. Genlis, _Dictionnaire des etiquettes_, ii. 40, _n_., citing Buffon. Sc.r.a.ps of food are still sold in the Central Market of Paris.]

The population was divided into many distinct cla.s.ses, but there was a good deal of intercourse from cla.s.s to cla.s.s, nor was it extremely difficult for the able and ambitious to rise in the world. The financiers had become rich and important, but were regarded with jealousy. In an aristocratic state the n.o.bles think it all wrong that any one else should have as much money as themselves. This is not strange; but it is more remarkable that the common people are generally of the same opinion, and that, while the profusion of the great n.o.ble is looked on as no more than the liberality which belongs to his station, the extravagance of the mere man of money is condemned and derided. This tendency was increased in France by the fact that many of the greatest fortunes were made by the farmers of the revenue, who were hated as publicans even more than they were envied as rich men. Yet one financier, Necker, although of foreign birth, was perhaps the most popular man in France during this reign, and it was not the least of Louis's follies or misfortunes that he could not bring himself to share the admiration of his people for his Director General of the Treasury.

The mercantile cla.s.s in Paris did not hold a high position. The merchant was too much of a shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper was too much of a huckster. The smallest sale involved a long course of bargaining. This was perhaps partly due to the fact, admirable in itself, that the wife was generally united with her husband in the management of the shop. The customary law of Paris was favorable to the rights of property of married women; and the latter were a.s.sociated with their husbands in commerce and consulted in all affairs. This habit is still observed in France. It tends to draw husband and wife together, by uniting their occupations and their interests. Unfortunately it tends also to the neglect of children, especially in infancy, when their claims are exacting. Thus the Frenchwoman of the middle cla.s.s is in some respects more of a wife and less of a mother than the corresponding Anglo-Saxon.

The babies, even of people of very moderate means, were generally sent out from Paris into the country to be nursed. Later in the lives of children, girls were kept continually with their mothers, watched and guarded with a care of which we have little conception. Boys were much more separated from their parents, and left to schoolmasters. Neither boys nor girls were trusted or allowed to gain experience for themselves nearly as much as we consider desirable.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 53, v.

231, ix. 173, vi. 325.]

Marriages were generally left to the discretion of parents, except in the lowest cla.s.ses; and parents were too often governed by pecuniary, rather than by personal considerations in choosing the wives and husbands of their sons and daughters. Such a system of marriage would seem unbearable, did we not know that it is borne and approved by the greater part of mankind. It is possible that the chief objection to it is to be found less in the want of attachment between married people, which might be supposed to be its natural result, than in the diminution of the sense of loyalty. In England and America it is felt to be disgraceful to break a contract which both parties have freely made, with their eyes open; and this feeling greatly reenforces the other motives to fidelity. Yet while the rich and idle cla.s.s in France, if the stories of French writers may be trusted, has always been honeycombed with marital unfaithfulness, there are probably no people in the world more united than the husbands and wives of the French lower and middle cla.s.ses. Working side by side all the week with tireless industry, sharing a frugal but not a sordid life, they seek their innocent pleasures together on Sundays and holidays. The whole neighborhood of Paris is enlivened with their not unseemly gayety, as freely shared as the toil by which it was earned. The rowdyism of the sports in which men are not accompanied by women, the concentrated vulgarity of the summer boarding-house, where women live apart from the men of their families, are almost equally unknown in France. In the latter part of the eighteenth century many of the comfortable burghers of Paris owned little villas in the suburbs, whither the family retired on Sundays, sometimes taking the shop-boy as an especial favor. The common people also were to be found in great numbers in the suburban villages, such as Pa.s.sy, Auteuil, or in the Bois de Boulogne, dancing on the green; although in the reign of Louis XVI. they are said to have been less gay than before.[Footnote: Mercier, in. 143, iv. 162, xii. 101.]

Artists, artisans, and journeymen, in their various degrees, formed cla.s.ses of great importance, for Paris was famous for many sorts of manufactures, and especially for those which required good taste. But it was noticed that on account of the abridgment of the power of the trade-guilds, and the consequent rise of compet.i.tion, French goods were losing in excellence, while they gained in cheapness; so that it was said that workmanship was becoming less thorough in Paris than in London.

The police of Paris was already remarkable for its efficiency. The inhabitants of the capital of France lived secure in their houses, or rode freely into the country, while those of London were in danger of being stopped by highwaymen on suburban roads, or robbed at night by housebreakers in town. From riots, also, the Parisians had long been singularly free, and for more than a century had seen none of importance, while London was terrified, and much property destroyed in 1780 by the Gordon riots. In spite of the forebodings of some few pessimists, people did not expect any great revolution, but rather social and economic reforms. It was believed that the powers of repression were too strong for the powers of insurrection. The crash came, at last, not through the failure of the ordinary police, but from demoralization at the centre of government and in the army. While Louis still reigned in peace at Versailles, the administration of Paris went on efficiently. Correspondence was maintained with the police of other cities. Criminals and suspected persons, when arrested, could be condemned by summary process. The Lieutenant General of Police had it in his discretion to punish without publicity. The more scandalous crimes were systematically hidden from the public; a process more favorable to morality than to civil liberty. For the criminal cla.s.ses in Paris arbitrary imprisonment was the common fate, and disreputable men and women Were brought in by bands.[Footnote: Mercier, vi. 206. Monier, 396.]

The liability to arbitrary arrest affected the lives of but a small proportion of the citizens after all. To most Parisians it was far more important that the streets were safe by day and night; that fire-engines were provided, and Capuchin monks trained to use them, while soldiers hastened to the fire and would press all able-bodied men into the service of pa.s.sing buckets; that small civil cases were promptly and justly disposed of.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 197, 210, ix. 220, xii. 162 (_Jurisdiction consulaire_).]

The increase of humane ideas which marked the age was beginning in the course of this reign to affect the hospitals and poor-houses as well as the prisons, and to diminish their horrors. At the Hotel Dieu, the greatest hospital in Paris, six patients were sometimes wedged into one filthy bed. Yet even, there, some improvement had taken place. And while Howard considered that hospital a disgrace to Paris, he found many other charitable foundations in the city which did it honor. Here as elsewhere there was no uniformity.[Footnote: Mercier, vii. 7, iii. 225. Howard, _State of the Prisons_, 176, 177. Babeau, _La Ville_, 435.

Cognel, 88. A horrible description of the Hotel Dieu, written in 1788 by Tenon, a member of Academy of Sciences, is given in A. Franklin, _L'Hygiene_, 181.]

In the medical profession, the regular physicians held themselves far above the surgeons, many of whom had been barbers' apprentices; but it would appear that the science of surgery was better taught and was really in a more advanced state than that of medicine. More than eight hundred students attended the school of surgery. In medicine, inoculation was slowly making its way, but was resorted to only by the upper cla.s.ses. Excessive bleeding and purgation were going out of fashion, but the poor still employed quacks, or swallowed the coa.r.s.e drugs which the grocers sold cheaper than the regular apothecaries, or relied on the universal remedy of the lower cla.s.ses in Paris, a cordial of black currants.[Footnote: It was called _Ca.s.sis_. Mercier, xii.

126, vii. 126.]

Near the Hotel Dieu was the asylum for foundlings, whither they were brought not only from Paris, but from distant towns, and whence they were sent out to be nursed in the country. They were brought to Paris done up tightly in their swaddling clothes, little crying bundles, packed three at a time into wadded boxes, carried on men's backs. The habit of dressing children loosely, recommended by Rousseau, had not yet reached the poor; as the habit of having babies nursed by their own mothers, which he had also striven to introduce, had been speedily abandoned by the rich. The mortality among the foundlings was great, for two hundred of them were sometimes kept in one ward during their stay at the asylum.[Footnote: Mercier, iii. 239, viii. 188. Cognel found the asylum very clean. Cognel, 87.]

Although some falling off in the ardor of religious practices was noticed as the Revolution drew near, the ceremonies of the church were still visible in all their splendor. On the feast of Corpus Christi a long procession pa.s.sed through the streets, where doors and windows were hung with carpets and tapestry. The worsted pictures, it is true, were adapted rather to a decorative than to a pious purpose, and over-scrupulous persons might be shocked at seeing Europa on her bull, or Psyche admiring the sleeping Cupid, on the route of a religious procession. Such anomalies, however, could well be disregarded. Around the sacred Host were gathered the dignitaries of the state and the city in their robes of office, marshaled by the priests, who for that day seemed to command the town. In some cases, it is said, the great lords contented themselves with sending their liveried servants to represent them. Soldiers formed the escort. The crowd in the street fell on its knees as the procession pa.s.sed. Flowers, incense, music, the faithful with their foreheads in the dust, all contributed to the picturesqueness of the scene. A week later the ceremony was repeated with almost equal pomp. On the Sunday following, there was another procession in the northern suburbs. Naked boys, leading lambs, represented Saint John the Baptist; Magdalens eight years old, walking by their nurses' side, wept over their sins; the pupils of the school of the Sacred Heart marched with downcast eyes. The Host was carried under a dais of which the cords were held by respected citizens, and was escorted by forty Swiss guards. A hundred and fifty censers swung incense on the air. The diplomatic corps watched the procession from the balcony of the Venetian amba.s.sador, even the Protestants bowing or kneeling with the rest. [Footnote: Mercier, iii. 78. Cognel, 101.]

From time to time, through the year, these great ceremonies were renewed, either on a regularly returning day, or as occasion might demand. On the 3d of July the Swiss of the rue aux Ours was publicly carried in procession. There was a legend that a Swiss Protestant soldier had once struck the statue of the Holy Virgin on the corner of this street with his sword, and that blood had flowed from the wounded image. Therefore, on the anniversary of the outrage, a wicker figure was carried about the town, bobbing at all the sacred images at the street corners, with a curious mixture of piety and fun. Originally it had been dressed like a Swiss, but the people of Switzerland, who were numerous and useful in Paris, remonstrated at a custom likely to bring them into contempt; and the grotesque giant was thereupon arrayed in a wig and a long coat, with a wooden dagger painted red in his hand. The grammarian Du Marsais once got into trouble on the occasion of this procession. He was walking in the street when one woman elbowed another in trying to get near the statue. "If you want to pray," said the woman who had been pushed, "go on your knees where you are; the Holy Virgin is everywhere."

Du Marsais was so indiscreet as to interfere. Being a grammarian, he was probably of a disputatious turn of mind. "My good woman," said he, "you have spoken heresy. Only G.o.d is everywhere; not the Virgin." The woman turned on him and cried out: "See this old wretch, this Huguenot, this Calvinist, who says that the Holy Virgin is not everywhere!" Thereupon Du Marsais was attacked by the mob and forced to take refuge in a house, whence he was rescued by the guard, which kept him shut up for his own safety until after nightfall.[Footnote: Mercier, iv. 97. Fournel, 176.

This procession was abolished by order of the police, June 27, 1789.

Fournel, 177.]

For an occasional procession, we have one in October, 1785, when three hundred and thirteen prisoners, redeemed from slavery among the Algerines, were led for three days about the streets with great pomp by brothers of the orders of the Redemption. Each captive was conducted by two angels, to whom he was bound with red and blue ribbons, and the angels carried scrolls emblazoned with the arms of the orders. There was the usual display of banners and crosses, guards and policemen; there were bands of music and palm-branches. The long march required frequent refreshment, which was offered by the faithful, and it is said that many of the captives and some of the professionally religious persons indulged too freely. A drunken angel must have been a cheerful sight indeed. The object of this procession was to raise money to redeem more prisoners from slavery, for the Barbary pirates were still suffered by the European powers to plunder the commerce of the Mediterranean and to kidnap Christian sailors.[Footnote: Bachaumont, x.x.x. 24. Compare Lesage, i. 347 (_Le diable boiteux_, ch. xix). For a procession of persons delivered by charity from imprisonment for not paying their wet nurses, see Mercier, xii. 85.]

Nor was it in great festivals alone that the religious spirit of the people was manifested. On Sundays all shops were shut, and the common people heard at least the morning ma.s.s, although they were getting careless about vespers. Every spring for a fortnight about Easter, there was a great revival of religious observance, and churches and confessionals were crowded. But throughout the year, one humble kind of procession might be met in the streets of Paris. A poor priest, in a worn surplice, reverently carries the Host under an old dirty canopy. A beadle plods along in front, with an acolyte to ring the bell, at the sound of which the pa.s.sers-by kneel in the streets and cabs and coaches are stopped. Louis XV. once met the "Good G.o.d," as the eucharistic wafer was piously called, and earned a short-lived popularity by going down on his silken knees in the mud. All persons may follow the viatic.u.m into the chamber of the dying. The watch, if it meets the procession on its return, will escort it back to its church.[Footnote: _Ordonnance de la police du Chatelet concernant l'observation des dimanches et fetes, du 18 Novembre, 1782_. Monin, 403.]

Let us follow it in the early morning, and, taking our stand under the porch where the broken statues of the saints are still crowned with the faded flowers of yesterday's festival, or wandering thence about the streets of the city, let us watch the stream of life as it flows now stronger, now more gently hour by hour.

It is seven o'clock. The market gardeners, with their empty baskets, are jogging on their weary horses toward the suburbs. Already they have supplied the markets. They meet only the early clerks, fresh shaven and powdered, hastening to their offices. At nine, the town is decidedly awake. The young barber-surgeons ("whiting" as the Parisians call them), sprinkled from head to foot with hair powder, carry the curling-iron in one hand, the wig in the other, on their way to the houses of their customers. The waiters from the lemonade-shops are bringing coffee and cakes to the occupants of furnished lodgings. On the boulevards, young dandies, struck with Anglomania, contend awkwardly with their saddle-horses.

At ten lawyers in black and clients of all colors flock to the island in the river where are the courts of law. The Palace, as the great court-house is called, is a large and imposing pile of buildings, with fine halls and strong prisons, and the most beautiful of gothic chapels. But the pa.s.sages are blocked with the stalls of hucksters who sell stationery, books, and knicknacks.[Footnote: Mercier, vi. 72, iv. 146, ix. 171. Cognel, 41.]

In the rue Neuve des Pet.i.ts Champs they are drawing the royal lottery.

The Lieutenant-General of Police, accompanied by several officers, appears on a platform. Near him is the wheel of fortune. The wheel is turned, it stops, and a boy with blindfolded eyes puts his hand into an opening in the wheel, and pulls out a ticket, which he hands to the official. The latter opens it, holding it up conspicuously in front of him to avert suspicion of foul play. The ticket is then posted on a board, and the boy pulls out another. The crowd is noisy and excited at first, then sombre and discouraged as all the chances are exhausted.

Noon is the time when the Exchange is most active, and when lazy people hang about the Palais Royal, whose gardens are the centre of news and gossip. The antechambers of bankers and men in place are crowded with anxious clients. At two the streets are full of diners-out, and all the cabs are taken. They are heavy and clumsy vehicles, dirty inside and out, and the coachmen are drunken fellows. Clerks and upper servants dash about in cabriolets, and sober people are scandalized at seeing women in these frivolous vehicles unescorted. "They go alone; they go in pairs!" cries one, "without any men. You would think they wanted to change their s.e.x." Dandies drive the high-built English "whiski." All are blocked among carts and drays, with sacks, and beams, and casks of wine. For people that would go out of town there are comfortable traveling chaises, or the cheap and wretched _carrabas_, in which twenty persons are jolted together, and the rate of travel is but two or three miles an hour; while on the road to Versailles, the active postillions known as _enrages_ will take you to the royal town and back, a distance of twenty miles, and give you time to call on a minister of state, all within three hours.[Footnote: Mercier, vii. 114, 228, ix. 1, 266, xi. 17, xii. 253. Cherest, ii. 166.]

Between half past two and three, people of fashion are sitting down to dinner, following the mysterious law of their nature which makes them do everything an hour or two later in the day than other mortals. At quarter past five the streets are full again. People are on their way to the theatre, or going for a drive in the boulevards, and the coffee-houses are filling. As daylight fails, bands of carpenters and masons plod heavily toward the suburbs, shaking the lime from their heavy shoes. At nine in the evening people are going to supper, and the streets are more disorderly than at any time in the day. The scandalous scenes which have disappeared from modern Paris, but which are still visible in London, were in the last century allowed early in the evening; but long before midnight the police had driven all disorderly characters from the streets. At eleven the coffee-houses are closing; the town is quiet, only to be awakened from time to time by the carriages of the rich going home after late suppers, or by the tramp of the beasts of burden of the six thousand peasants who nightly bring vegetables, fruit, and flowers into the great city.[Footnote: Ibid., iv. 148.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS.

The provincial towns in France under Louis XVI. were only beginning to a.s.sume a modern appearance. Built originally within walls, their houses had been tall, their streets narrow, crooked, and dirty. But in the eighteenth century most of the walls had been pulled down, and public walks or drives laid out on their sites. The idea that the beauty of cities consists largely in the breadth and straightness of their streets had taken a firm hold on the public mind. This idea, if not more thoroughly carried out than it can be in an old town, has much in its favor. Before the French Revolution the broad, dusty, modern avenues, which allow free pa.s.sage to men and carriages and free entrance to light and air, but where there is little shade from the sun or shelter from the wind, were beginning to supersede the cooler and less windy, but malodorous lanes where the busy life of the Middle Ages had found shelter. Large and imposing public buildings were constructed in many towns, facing on the public squares. With the artistic thoroughness which belongs to the French mind, the fronts of the surrounding private houses were made to conform in style to those of their prouder neighbors. The streets were lighted, although rather dimly; their names were written at their corners, and in some instances the houses were numbered.

But such innovations did not touch every provincial town, nor cover the whole of the places which they entered. More commonly, the old appearance of the streets was little changed. The houses jutted out into the narrow way, with all manner of inexplicable corners and angles. The shop windows were unglazed, and shaded only by a wooden pent-house, or by the upper half of a shutter. The other half might be lowered to form a shelf, from which the wares could overrun well into the roadway. Near the wooden sign which creaked overhead stood a statue of the Virgin or a saint. Glancing into the dimly-lighted shop, you might see the master working at his trade, with a journeyman and an apprentice. The busy housewife bustled to and fro; now chaffering with a customer at the shop-door, now cooking the dinner, or scolding the red-armed maid, in the kitchen.[Footnote: Babeau, _La Ville_, 363. Ibid., _Les Artisans_, 73, 82. Viollet le Duc, _Dict. d'Architecture_ (Boutique.)]

The house was only one room wide, but several stories high. Upstairs were the chambers and perhaps a sitting-room. Even among people of moderate means the modern division of rooms was coming into fashion, and beds were being banished from kitchens and parlors. There were more beds also, and fewer people in each, than in former years. On the walls of the rooms paint and paper were taking the place of tapestry, and light colors, with brightness and cleanliness, were displacing soft dark tones, dirt, and vermin.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Bourgeois_, 9, 19, 37.]

Houses were thinly built and doors and windows rattled in their frames. The rooms in the greater part of France were heated only by open fires, although stoves of brick or glazed pottery were in common use in Switzerland and Germany; and wood was scarce and dear. In countries where the winter is short and sharp, people bear it with what patience they may, instead of providing against it, as is necessary where the cold is more severe and prolonged. Thicker clothes were worn in the house than when moving about in the streets. Wadded slippers protected the feet against the chill of the brick floors, and the old sat in high-backed chairs to cut off the draft, with footstools under their feet. Chilblains were, and are still, a constant annoyance of European winter. The dressing-gown was in fashion in France as in America, where we frequently see it in portraits of the last century. Similar garments had been in use in the Middle Ages. They belong to cold houses.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 123. In 1695 the water and wine froze on the king's table at Versailles, _Les Bourgeois_, 23.]

The dress of the working-cla.s.ses, which had been very brilliant at the time of the Renaissance, had become sombre in the seventeenth century, but was regaining brilliancy in the eighteenth. The townspeople dressed in less bright colors than the peasants of the country, but not cheaply in proportion to their means. Already social distinctions were disappearing from costume, and it was remarked that a master-workman, of a Sunday, in his black coat and powdered hair, might be mistaken for a magistrate; while the wife of a rich burgher was hardly distinguishable from a n.o.blewoman.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 13, 199.

Handiwork was very cheap. Babeau gives the bill for a black gown costing 210 livres 15 sous, of which only 3 livres was for the making; _Les Bourgeois_, 169 n.]

Great thrift was practiced by the poorer townspeople of the middle cla.s.s, but their lives were not without comfort. We read of a family in a small town of Auvergne before the middle of the century, composed of a man and his wife, with a large number of children, the wife's mother, her two grandmothers, her three aunts, and her sister, all sitting about one table, and living on one modest income. The husband and father had a small business and owned a garden and a little farm. In the garden almost enough vegetables were raised for the use of the family. Quinces, apples, and pears were preserved in honey for the winter. The wool of their own sheep was spun by the women, and so was the flax of their field, which the neighbors helped them to strip of an evening. From the walnuts of their trees they pressed oil for the table and for the lamp.

The great chestnuts were boiled for food. The bread also was made of their own grain, and the wine of their own grapes.