The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh Part 10

Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the end of a fortnight, and in the midst of a tete-a-tete, he plunged, one morning, suddenly on his knees, and said, "Leonora, do you love me?" the poor thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh in the world; and sinking her blushing head on his shoulder, whispered, "Oh, Dominic, je t'aime! Ah!" said she, "how n.o.ble is it of my Dominic to take me with the little I have, and he so rich a n.o.bleman!" The fact is, the old Baron's t.i.tles and estates had pa.s.sed away to his nephews; his dowager was only left with three hundred thousand livres, in rentes sur l'etat--a handsome sum, but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count Dominic, Count de la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la Bigorne; he had estates and wealth which might authorize him to aspire to the hand of a d.u.c.h.ess, at least.

The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick that was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her affianced husband, sold out her money, and realized it in gold, to be made over to him on the day when the contract was to be signed. The day arrived; and, according to the custom in France, the relations of both parties attended. The widow's relatives, though respectable, were not of the first n.o.bility, being chiefly persons of the finance or the robe: there was the president of the court of Arras, and his lady; a farmer-general; a judge of a court of Paris; and other such grave and respectable people. As for Monsieur le Comte de la Grinche, he was not bound for names; and, having the whole peerage to choose from, brought a host of Montmorencies, Crequis, De la Tours, and Guises at his back. His homme d'affaires brought his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans of his estates, and the t.i.tles of his glorious ancestry. The widow's lawyers had her money in sacks; and between the gold on the one side, and the parchments on the other, lay the contract which was to make the widow's three hundred thousand francs the property of the Count de Grinche. The Count de la Grinche was just about to sign; when the Marshal de Villars, stepping up to him, said, "Captain, do you know who the president of the court of Arras, yonder, is? It is old Mana.s.seh, the fence, of Brussels.

I p.a.w.ned a gold watch to him, which I stole from Cadogan, when I was with Malbrook's army in Flanders."

Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed. "Run me through the body!" said his Grace, "but the comptroller-general's lady, there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton who keeps the ----"

Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon's voice fell.

Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table. He took up one of the widow's fifteen thousand gold pieces;--it was as pretty a bit of copper as you could wish to see. "My dear," said he politely, "there is some mistake here, and this business had better stop."

"Count!" gasped the poor widow.

"Count be hanged!" answered the bridegroom, sternly "my name is CARTOUCHE!"

ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS.

WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL.

There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being pressed for money, and having received a piece of damask, which he was to wear in a state procession, p.a.w.ned the damask, and appeared, at the show, dressed out in some very fine sheets of paper, which he had painted so as exactly to resemble silk. Nay, his coat looked so much richer than the doublets of all the rest, that the Emperor Charles, in whose honor the procession was given, remarked the painter, and so his deceit was found out.

I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all who, from laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their favorite duodecimos are as instructive as the biggest quartos in the world.

If then, ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to the mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let us at once take a high ground, and say,--Go you to your own employments, and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black draughts of metaphysics; go fumble over history books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy; OUR histories are, perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk sparkling champagne drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley and Co.; our walks are over such sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and Shakspeare have laid out for us; and if our dwellings are castles in the air, we find them excessively splendid and commodious;--be not you envious because you have no wings to fly thither. Let the big-wigs despise us; such contempt of their neighbors is the custom of all barbarous tribes;--witness, the learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared that there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sklavonic hordes, it is said, so ent.i.tled themselves from a word in their jargon, which signifies "to speak;" the ruffians imagining that they had a monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other nations were dumb.

Not so: others may be DEAF; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent, instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham histories were much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the reader.

As thus:--

Julius Caesar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.

The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard at Blenheim.

The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.

And what have we here?--so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia; and that Julius Caesar's family name had been John Churchill;--the fact would have stood in history, thus:--

"Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia."

And why not?--we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated that--

"The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and Caesar, writing home to his mamma, said, 'Madame, tout est perdu fors l'honneur.'"

What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by learning Walker's "Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-old edition of the "Court Guide."

Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in question--the novelists.

On the t.i.tle-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked, that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as "copies" and "compositions." Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them) and, for compositions, we intend to favor the public with some studies of French modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of the English public.

Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by the French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical, theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a plea--novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time and study. And pa.s.sing from novels in general to French novels, let us confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a great deal more knowledge of French society than from our own personal observation we ever can hope to gain: for, let a gentleman who has dwelt two, four, or ten years in Paris (and has not gone thither for the purpose of making a book, when three weeks are sufficient)--let an English gentleman say, at the end of any given period, how much he knows of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how many French friends he has made?--He has enjoyed, at the end of the year, say--

At the English Amba.s.sador's, so many soirees.

At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.

At Cafes, so many dinners.

At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.

He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax candles, cups of tea, gla.s.ses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people.

Year by year we live in France, and grow gray, and see no more. We play ecarte with Monsieur de Trefle every night; but what know we of the heart of the man--of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of Trefle?

If we have good legs, and love the amus.e.m.e.nt, we dance with Countess Flicflac, Tuesday's and Thursdays, ever since the Peace; and how far are we advanced in acquaintance with her since we first twirled her round a room? We know her velvet gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of them are sham, by the way); we know her smiles, and her simpers, and her rouge--but no more: she may turn into a kitchen wench at twelve on Thursday night, for aught we know; her voiture, a pumpkin; and her gens, so many rats: but the real, rougeless, intime Flicflac, we know not.

This privilege is granted to no Englishman: we may understand the French language as well as Monsieur de Levizac, but never can penetrate into Flicflac's confidence: our ways are not her ways; our manners of thinking, not hers: when we say a good thing, in the course of the night, we are wondrous lucky and pleased; Flicflac will trill you off fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at the betise of the Briton, who has never a word to say. We are married, and have fourteen children, and would just as soon make love to the Pope of Rome as to any one but our own wife. If you do not make love to Flicflac, from the day after her marriage to the day she reaches sixty, she thinks you a fool. We won't play at ecarte with Trefle on Sunday nights; and are seen walking, about one o'clock (accompanied by fourteen red-haired children, with fourteen gleaming prayer-books), away from the church. "Grand Dieu!" cries Trefle, "is that man mad? He won't play at cards on a Sunday; he goes to church on a Sunday: he has fourteen children!"

Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise? Pa.s.s we on to our argument, which is, that with our English notions and moral and physical const.i.tution, it is quite impossible that we should become intimate with our brisk neighbors; and when such authors as Lady Morgan and Mrs. Trollope, having frequented a certain number of tea-parties in the French capital, begin to prattle about French manners and men,--with all respect for the talents of those ladies, we do believe their information not to be worth a sixpence; they speak to us not of men but of tea-parties. Tea-parties are the same all the world over; with the exception that, with the French, there are more lights and prettier dresses; and with us, a mighty deal more tea in the pot.

There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a man may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of pa.s.sports or post-boys. On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating library, he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume bears us whithersoever we will;--back to Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion, or to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along with Walter Scott; up the heights of fashion with the charming enchanters of the silver-fork school; or, better still, to the snug inn-parlor, or the jovial tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure that a man who, a hundred years hence should sit down to write the history of our time, would do wrong to put that great contemporary history of "Pickwick" aside as a frivolous work. It contains true character under false names; and, like "Roderick Random," an inferior work, and "Tom Jones" (one that is immeasurably superior), gives us a better idea of the state and ways of the people than one could gather from any more pompous or authentic histories.

We have, therefore, introduced into these volumes one or two short reviews of French fiction writers, of particular cla.s.ses, whose Paris sketches may give the reader some notion of manners in that capital. If not original, at least the drawings are accurate; for, as a Frenchman might have lived a thousand years in England, and never could have written "Pickwick," an Englishman cannot hope to give a good description of the inward thoughts and ways of his neighbors.

To a person inclined to study these, in that light and amusing fashion in which the novelist treats them, let us recommend the works of a new writer, Monsieur de Bernard, who has painted actual manners, without those monstrous and terrible exaggerations in which late French writers have indulged; and who, if he occasionally wounds the English sense of propriety (as what French man or woman alive will not?) does so more by slighting than by outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of all sorts of imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press have done. M. de Bernard's characters are men and women of genteel society--rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes; and we follow him in his lively, malicious account of their manners, without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas has provided for us.

Let us give an instance:--it is from the amusing novel called "Les Ailes d'Icare," and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a French fashionable rogue. The fashions will change in a few years, and the rogue, of course, with them. Let us catch this delightful fellow ere he flies. It is impossible to sketch the character in a more sparkling, gentlemanlike way than M. de Bernard's; but such light things are very difficult of translation, and the sparkle sadly evaporates during the process of DECANTING.

A FRENCH FASHIONABLE LETTER.

"MY DEAR VICTOR--It is six in the morning: I have just come from the English Amba.s.sador's ball, and as my plans, for the day do not admit of my sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment, saturated as I am with the enchantments of a fairy night, all other pleasures would be too wearisome to keep me awake, except that of conversing with you. Indeed, were I not to write to you now, when should I find the possibility of doing so? Time flies here with such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures and my affairs whirl onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade, that I am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment has its imperious employ. Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and which carries me hither and thither at its will.

"However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I a.s.sure you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous and fashionable company, to whom, towards the discharge of my debts, I propose to consecrate four hours to-day. I give you the preference to all the world, even to the lovely d.u.c.h.ess of San Severino, a delicious Italian, whom, for my special happiness, I met last summer at the Waters of Aix. I have also a most important negotiation to conclude with one of our Princes of Finance: but n'importe, I commence with thee: friendship before love or money--friendship before everything. My despatches concluded, I am engaged to ride with the Marquis de Grigneure, the Comte de Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we may recover, for a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the appet.i.te which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at the Amba.s.sador's gala. On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of a caprice prestigieux and a comfortable mirobolant. Fancy, for a banquet-hall, a royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of the shrubs transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming through the foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women and most brilliant cavaliers of Paris. Orleans and Nemours were there, dancing and eating like simple mortals. In a word, Albion did the thing very handsomely, and I accord it my esteem.

"Here I pause, to call for my valet-de-chambre, and call for tea; for my head is heavy, and I've no time for a headache. In serving me, this rascal of a Frederic has broken a cup, true j.a.pan, upon my honor--the rogue does nothing else. Yesterday, for instance, did he not thump me prodigiously, by letting fall a goblet, after Cellini, of which the carving alone cost me three hundred francs? I must positively put the wretch out of doors, to ensure the safety of my furniture; and in consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious young negro, in whom wisdom hath not waited for years--Eneas, my groom, I say, will probably be elevated to the post of valet-de-chambre. But where was I? I think I was speaking to you of an oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the Park (du Bois), a company of pleasant rakes are invited. After quitting Borel's, we propose to adjourn to the Barriere du Combat, where Lord Cobham proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought over from England--one of these, O'Connell (Lord Cobham is a Tory,) has a face in which I place much confidence; I have a bet of ten louis with Castijars on the strength of it. After the fight, we shall make our accustomed appearance at the 'Cafe de Paris,' (the only place, by the way, where a man who respects himself may be seen,)--and then away with frocks and spurs, and on with our dress-coats for the rest of the evening. In the first place, I shall go doze for a couple of hours at the Opera, where my presence is indispensable; for Coralie, a charming creature, pa.s.ses this evening from the rank of the RATS to that of the TIGERS, in a pas-de-trois, and our box patronizes her. After the Opera, I must show my face to two or three salons in the Faubourg St. Honore; and having thus performed my duties to the world of fashion, I return to the exercise of my rights as a member of the Carnival. At two o'clock all the world meets at the Theatre Ventadour: lions and tigers--the whole of our menagerie will be present. Evoe! off we go! roaring and bounding Baccha.n.a.l and Saturnal; 'tis agreed that we shall be everything that is low. To conclude, we sup with Castijars, the most 'furiously dishevelled' orgy that ever was known."

The rest of the letter is on matters of finance, equally curious and instructive. But pause we for the present, to consider the fashionable part: and caricature as it is, we have an accurate picture of the actual French dandy. Bets, breakfasts, riding, dinners at the "Cafe de Paris,"

and delirious Carnival b.a.l.l.s: the animal goes through all such frantic pleasures at the season that precedes Lent. He has a wondrous respect for English "gentlemen-sportsmen;" he imitates their clubs--their love of horse-flesh: he calls his palefrenier a groom, wears blue birds's-eye neck-cloths, sports his pink out hunting, rides steeple-chases, and has his Jockey Club. The "tigers and lions" alluded to in the report have been borrowed from our own country, and a great compliment is it to Monsieur de Bernard, the writer of the above amusing sketch, that he has such a knowledge of English names and things, as to give a Tory lord the decent t.i.tle of Lord Cobham, and to call his dog O'Connell. Paul de k.o.c.k calls an English n.o.bleman, in one of his last novels, Lord Boulingrog, and appears vastly delighted at the verisimilitude of the t.i.tle.

For the "rugiss.e.m.e.nts et bondiss.e.m.e.nts, baccha.n.a.le et saturnale, galop infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement," these words give a most clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball. A sight more hideous can hardly strike a man's eye. I was present at one where the four thousand guests whirled screaming, reeling, roaring, out of the ball-room in the Rue St. Honore, and tore down to the column in the Place Vendome, round which they went shrieking their own music, twenty miles an hour, and so tore madly back again. Let a man go alone to such a place of amus.e.m.e.nt, and the sight for him is perfectly terrible: the horrid frantic gayety of the place puts him in mind more of the merriment of demons than of men: bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs, pistol-shots, pour out of the orchestra, which seems as mad as the dancers; whiz, a whirlwind of paint and patches, all the costumes under the sun, all the ranks in the empire, all the he and she scoundrels of the capital, writhed and twisted together, rush by you; if a man falls, woe be to him: two thousand screaming menads go trampling over his carca.s.s: they have neither power nor will to stop.

A set of Malays drunk with bhang and running amuck, a company of howling dervishes, may possibly, in our own day, go through similar frantic vagaries; but I doubt if any civilized European people but the French would permit and enjoy such scenes. Yet our neighbors see little shame in them; and it is very true that men of all cla.s.ses, high and low, here congregate and give themselves up to the disgusting worship of the genius of the place.--From the dandy of the Boulevard and the "Cafe Anglais," let us turn to the dandy of "Flicoteau's" and the Pays Latin--the Paris student, whose exploits among the grisettes are so celebrated, and whose fierce republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on the alert. The following is M. de Bernard's description of him:--

"I became acquainted with Dambergeac when we were students at the Ecole de Droit; we lived in the same Hotel on the Place du Pantheon. No doubt, madam, you have occasionally met little children dedicated to the Virgin, and, to this end, clothed in white raiment from head to foot: my friend, Dambergeac, had received a different consecration. His father, a great patriot of the Revolution, had determined that his son should bear into the world a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to the great displeasure of his G.o.dmother and the parish curate, Dambergeac was christened by the pagan name of Harmodius. It was a kind of moral tricolor-c.o.c.kade, which the child was to bear through the vicissitudes of all the revolutions to come. Under such influences, my friend's character began to develop itself, and, fired by the example of his father, and by the warm atmosphere of his native place, Ma.r.s.eilles, he grew up to have an independent spirit, and a grand liberality of politics, which were at their height when first I made his acquaintance.