Travellers' Stories Part 2

Look up at the beautiful bas reliefs in bronze, on this n.o.ble column, giving the history of so many fierce battles and so much bloodshed, and at the military hero on the top, and then at these laughing, merry children at the foot, running after the tin carriages that go with the wind. Is it not a strange and moving contrast? Does it not tell a story that all of us hope may be one day true; when war shall belong only to history, and when peace shall possess the earth?

Around the base of this beautiful column many of those who served under Bonaparte, or who remember him with affection, hang wreaths and garlands as expressions of their tender remembrance. This is still done; these memorials are ever there. At one time this was forbidden by the government, but to no purpose. At last, an officer was stationed at the foot of the column with a water engine, and with orders to play it upon any one who should bring any votive offerings to the fallen hero.

A lady, whose love and admiration could not be so intimidated, came the next day in her carriage, which she filled with wreaths of flowers, and stood up in it, and threw wreath after wreath at the foot of the column, crying out, as each one fell, "Will you play your engine upon me?" But not a drop of water was sent at her, and she deposited all her offerings, and went away unharmed. I suppose a Frenchman would sooner have been shot than have done any thing to quench the enthusiasm of this heroic woman.

One thing struck me much in Paris, and most agreeably, and that is the good appearance of the children. This is not confined to the rich; you will see a very poor woman leading her child, really well dressed. You never see boys idling in the streets; you never hear them swearing and quarrelling. If you ask a boy to show you the way, his manner of doing it would grace a drawing room. I am told that the French are never severe with their children; that the French nature will not bear it; that strong excitement makes the children ill; that the law of love is the only one they will bear.

Stop with me now on our walk, at this little low cart, just by the sidewalk; it is as you see larger than a common handcart, and much lower, and on four small wheels; it is full of china, all marked 13 sous. See how pretty these cups and saucers are. After your looking at all the pieces, the owner would say, "Bon jour" very kindly to you, if you took nothing, but we will take this pretty cup and saucer; as a remembrance of his little cart. As we walk along, we shall see many others, containing every thing you can imagine.

I bought many things in the streets,--combs, saucepans, clothes-brushes, &c. Look into this shop window; see these lovely flowers, and, in the midst of them, a small fountain is playing all the time to keep them fresh. Look at those immense bunches in the windows,--of pansies, violets, hyacinths of all colors, ixias, wall flowers, tulips, geraniums, narcissus; and O, this is not half the variety of flowers! look into the shop; there are bushels of them and other flowers, all ranged round the wall; the perfume salutes the most insensible pa.s.ser-by; it tells of the songs of birds, and of the delights of summer time. You cannot resist its influence. Let us go in and look at the flowers. The person who keeps the shop has the manners of a lady; she wishes you good morning; and, if you do not behave just as you would if you entered a lady's parlor, you are set down as an American or Englishman, who does not know how to behave. When you leave the shop also, you must remember to say, "Bon jour," or you commit an offence. How kindly the lady who keeps this flower shop shows us all her flowers! how she seems to love them, as if they were her children!

We must get a bouquet to show our grat.i.tude for her kindness, though she would not demand it. At every street corner is a woman with a basket of violets and evergreens. She offers them in such a pretty way, taking care that you shall take their perfume. You cannot resist them.

Now, suppose we were taking a walk, some other morning. Before us is the "Place de la Concorde," all glistening in the spring sunlight. See, there, in the centre, is the Obelisk--a monument of the time of Sesostris, King of Egypt, erected by him before the great temple of Thebes more than three thousand years ago, or fifteen hundred and fifty years before Christ. This enormous stone, all of one piece, seventy-two feet high, seven feet and a half square at the base, of red granite, and covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, was given to the French government by the Viceroy of Egypt, in consideration of an armed and naval establishment which that government had helped him to form at Alexandria. Eight hundred men struggled for three months in Egypt, in the midst of all manner of hardships, building a road and constructing machinery to drag the obelisk, completely cased in wood, down to the Nile. It cost two millions of francs to place this monument where it now stands. This was done with great pomp and ceremony in October, 1836, the royal family and about a hundred and fifty thousand other people looking on.

Now try to place yourself in imagination at the foot of this great Obelisk of Luxor, mounted up as it is upon a single block of gray granite of France, covered all over with gilded engraving of the machinery used in placing the great thing where it is. The Place de la Concorde itself, which surrounds you, is eight sided; and if the excavations around it were filled with water, it would be an island, seven hundred feet or so across, and connected with the main land by four elegant little bridges. But instead of water, these "diggings" are beautifully filled with flower gardens. At the eight corners of the island are eight pavilions, as they are called; or great watch houses, of elegant architecture, occupied by the military or the police, as occasion requires. Each of these forms the base of a gigantic statue, representing one of the princ.i.p.al cities of France. It is as if the whole eight were sitting in friendly council for the good of Paris. How beautiful they are, with their grand expressionless faces, and their graceful att.i.tudes, and their simple antique drapery. They are all sitting in their mural crowns,--the fortified cities on cannons, the commercial ones on bales of goods. Strasburg alone seems full of life.

She has her arm akimbo, as if braving Germany, to which she once belonged. Look, north from the Obelisk, up the Rue de la Concorde, and the splendid church of the Madeleine bounds your sight. On your right are the Gardens of the Tuilleries; on your left are the Champs Elysees; behind you is the Chamber of Deputies. Both before and behind you, in the Place itself, you have a splendid fountain, each being a round basin, fifty feet in diameter, in which stands a smaller basin, with a still smaller above it, supported and surrounded by bronze figures of rivers, seas, genii of fruits, flowers, and fisheries, and all manner of G.o.ds of commerce and navigation, all spouting water like mad.

See the famous marble horses from Marly. How impatient they look to break away from the athletic arm which holds them! what life and spirit they show! how beautiful they are! Take one look now at the Arc de Triomphe; it is nearly two miles off, but looks very near. Now turn; and directly opposite, at some distance, you see what James Lowell calls the "Front door of the Tuilleries."

The gardens are full of beautiful children. Their mothers or nurses are sitting under the trees, while the children run about at will. There are thousands playing at ball, driving hoops, jumping ropes, shouting, laughing, merry as children will be and ought to be.

Let us take a stroll in the Champs Elysees. You have never seen any thing so beautiful, so captivating, as the scene. It seems like enchantment. All the world is here--young and old, poor and rich, fashionable and unfashionable. All for their amus.e.m.e.nt. Let us see what this group are looking at so earnestly. A number of wooden ponies are wheeled round and round, and each has a rosy-cheeked boy upon it. Here is another in which they go in boats; another in chairs. This amus.e.m.e.nt costs only two or three sous apiece to the children. The parents or the nurses stand around enjoying it almost as much as the children. Let us walk on. See that little fountain gleaming through the tender green of the young leaves as you see them in the pretty wood that forms a background to the picture. All along in the road you observe fine equipages of all sorts standing in waiting, while the gay world, or the poor invalids whom they brought to this place of enchantment, are walking about or sitting in chairs, courting health and amus.e.m.e.nt. Here is something still prettier than any thing you have seen--a beautiful little carriage that can hold four children and a driver, drawn by four white goats, with black horns and beards.

The French are peculiarly kind to animals. No law is necessary in France for the protection of animals from the cruelty of their masters.

You meet men and women, very respectably dressed, leading dogs with the greatest care; and in the fashionable drives, every tenth carriage (it seemed to me) had a dog lying on the seat, or standing on his hind legs, looking out of the window. A friend told me that, when present at a grand review where there was a great crowd, she saw a woman, who could not get near enough to see the show, hold up her dog over the heads of the people, that he might at least have the pleasure of seeing what was going on.

I must tell you about the ceremony of making an archbishop, which we had the good fortune to witness. It took place at Notre Dame.

The nave of the church was full. Around the altar, all the priests and dignitaries of the church were seated; the officiating archbishop in a high seat, and an empty chair by his side for the new archbishop when finished and prepared for the honor. All the priests were in full dress. Their garments were stiff with gold and silver. My eyes were dazzled with their splendor.

Perfect silence prevailed, and the ceremony commenced. The priest, who was to be made into a bishop, had all sorts of things done to him. He knelt, he prayed, he was prayed over, he was read to, he had hands laid upon him, he was crossed; incense was thrown up, the organ played, and all the priests and bishops knelt and rose from their knees, and knelt and rose again, and again; high ma.s.s was said, and the show was very remarkable.

Once the poor mortal, who was to be consecrated, knelt, and a large book was put upon him, like a saddle. Finally they took him and tied napkins upon his arms and his neck, and then led him to a knot of priests a little out of my sight. In a few moments, he reappeared with all his canonicals on, except the mitre. Now he was brilliant indeed, loaded with gold ornaments, stiff with splendor. His face, I noticed, was very red, and he looked weary. I did not quite understand the tumbled towels; whether these were to catch the consecrating oil that they poured on his head, or whether they were emblematic of the filthy rags of this world, which he laid aside for the new and shining garments of perfect holiness, I could not find out. Now the new archbishop knelt again before the old archbishop, and the old one put the mitre upon the head of the new one. Then the old archbishop embraced and kissed the new, and after that all the other bishops, who, as the French say, a.s.sisted at the ceremony, performed the same act on both sides of his face. After this, the new archbishop and his holy brother walked side by side, followed by all the other bishops and priests, down from the altar among the audience; and the new dignitary gave his blessing to all the people.

I wish I could carry you with me to the palace at Versailles. The magnificent equestrian statue of Louis XIV., which you can see afar off as you approach, the n.o.ble statues in the grand court yard, and the ancient regal aspect of the whole scene, with its countless fountains and its seven miles of pictures, are beyond all description. As I stood lost in wonder and admiration, my friend, who introduced me to this world of wonders, pointed to a window in one corner of the building; there, she said, Louis XVI. pa.s.sed much of his time making locks; and there, from that balcony, Marie Antoinette appeared with her children and the king, when she addressed the wild, enraged Parisian mob. We saw the private apartments of the unhappy queen, and the small door through which she escaped from the fury of the soldiers. We went to see the little Trianon which she had built for her amus.e.m.e.nt; a lovely place it is. Here she tried to put aside state and the queen, and be a happy human being.

Here Marie Antoinette had a laiterie, a milk house, where she is said to have made b.u.t.ter and cheese. Here she caused to be built twelve cottages after the Swiss fashion, and filled them with poor families whom she tried to make happy.

We went into her dairy. It was fit for a queen to make b.u.t.ter in. In the centre of the beautifully shaped room was a large oblong, white marble table; on each side were places for admitting the water, and under them beautiful marble reservoirs in the shape of sh.e.l.ls, and, underneath, large slabs of white marble. All is still, all so chaste, so beautiful, all as it once was, and she, the poor sufferer, what a story of blighted hope and bitter sorrow! See her the night before her trial, which she knew would end in death, mending her own old shoes, that she might appear more decently. The solemn realities of life had come to her unsought.

I left Paris and travelled through Belgium to Cologne. The day I arrived was some holiday; so there was grand ma.s.s in the cathedral, and such music!--the immense building was filled with the sound. The full organ was played, and some of the priest singers took part. Never did music so overcome me. The sublime piece,--as I thought of Beethoven's, surely of some great composer,--performed in this glorious old cathedral, was beyond all that I had ever dreamt of. It seems to me that I might think of it again in my dying hour with delight. I felt as if it created a new soul in me. Such gushes of sweet sound, such joyful fulness of melody, such tender breathings of hope, and love, and peace, and then such floods of harmony filling all those sublime arches, ascending to the far distant roof and running along through the dim aisles--O, one must hear, to have an idea of the effect of such music in such a place.

At Bonn we took the steamer; the day was perfect, and our pleasure was full. You must see one of these fine old castles on the top of the beautiful hills--you must yourself see the blue sky through its ruined arches--you must see the vines covering every inch of the mountain that is not solid rock, and witness the lovely effect of the gray rock mingling with the tender green--you must hear the wild legend of the owner of the castle in his day of power, and feel the pa.s.sage of time and civilization that has changed his fastness of strength and rapine to a beautiful adornment of this scene of peace and plenty, its glories all humbled, its terrors all pa.s.sed away, and its great and only value the part it plays in a picture, and the lesson it preaches, in its decay, of the progress of justice and humanity.

From Coblentz to Bingen is the glory of the Rhine scenery; old castles looking down over these lovely hills covered with vines and cornfields; little villages nestled in between them; beautiful spires of the prettiest churches you can imagine, looking as if they gathered the houses of the villages under their protecting wings. Your soul, in short, is full of unutterable delight. It was a sort of relief to laugh at the legend as we pa.s.sed the little island on which is the Mouse Tower, so named from the history of Bishop Hatto, who it is said was eaten up by rats because he refused corn in a time of scarcity to the starving poor, when he had a plenty rotting in his storehouses.

When I was obliged at last to turn away from all these glories, the words of Byron were in my heart:--

Adieu to thee again; a vain adieu; There can be no farewell to scenes like thine.

The mind is colored by thy every hue, And if reluctantly the eyes resign Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine, 'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise.

More mighty spots may rise, more glaring shine, But none unite in one attracting maze The brilliant, fair, and soft, the glories of old days, The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom Of summer ripeness, the white cities' sheen, The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom, The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been, In mockery of man's art."