“The court regrets that the request cannot be granted, inasmuch as the sentence has been already passed on those whom it concerned; — but that if the gentlemen wished it, they might perhaps contrive to get themselves included in the next indictment for treason.”
* * * * *
In the evening we went to the Institute for the encouragement of Industry. The meeting was held in the Salle St. Jean, at the Hôtel de Ville. It was extremely full, and was altogether a display extremely interesting to a stranger. The speeches made by several of the members were in excellently good taste and extremely to the purpose: I heard nothing at all approaching to that popular strain of eloquence which has prevailed of late so much in England upon all similar occasions, — nothing that looked like an attempt to bamboozle the respectable citizens of the metropolis into the belief that they were considered by wise men as belonging to the first class in society.
The speeches were admirably calculated to excite ingenuity, emulation, and industry; and I really believe that there was not a single word of nonsense spoken on the occasion. Several ingenious improvements and inventions were displayed, and the meeting was considerably égayé by two or three pieces exceedingly well played on a piano-forte of an improved construction.
Many prizes were bestowed, and received with that sort of genuine pleasure which it is so agreeable to witness; — but these were all for useful improvements in some branch of practical mechanics, and not, as I saw by the newspapers had recently been the case at a similar meeting in London, for essays! One of the prize compositions was, as I perceived, “The best Essay on Education,” from the pen of a young bell-hanger! Next year, perhaps, the best essay on medicine may be produced by a young tinker, or a gold medal be awarded to Betty the housemaid for a digest of the laws of the land. Our long-boasted common sense seems to have emigrated, and taken up its abode here; for, spite of their recent revolution, you hear of no such stuff on this side the water; — mechanics are mechanics still, and though they some of them make themselves exceeding busy in politics, and discuss their different kings with much energy over a bottle of small wine, I have not yet heard of any of the “operative classes” throwing aside their files and their hammers to write essays.
This queer mixture of occupations reminds me of a conversation I listened to the other day upon the best manner in which a nation could recompense and encourage her literary men. One English gentleman, with no great enthusiasm of manner or expression, quietly observed that he thought a moderate pension, sufficient to prevent the mind from being painfully driven from speculative to practical difficulties, would be the most fitting recompense that the country could offer.
“Is it possible you can really think so, my dear sir?” replied another, who is an amateur, and a connoisseur, and a bel esprit, and an antiquary, and a fiddler, and a critic, and a poet. “I own my ideas on the subject are very different. Good God! ... what a reward for a man of genius!... Why, what would you do for an old nurse?”
“I would give her a pension too,” said the quiet gentleman.
“I thought so!” retorted the man of taste. “And do you really feel no repugnance in placing the immortal efforts of genius on a par with rocking a few babies to sleep? — Fie on such philosophy!”
“And what is the recompense which you would propose, sir?” inquired the advocate for the pension.
“I, sir? — I would give the first offices and the first honours of the state to our men of genius: by so doing, a country ennobles itself in the face of the whole earth.”
“Yes, sir.... But the first offices of the state are attended with a good deal of troublesome business, which might, I think, interfere with the intellectual labour you wish to encourage. I should really be very sorry to see Dr. Southey made secretary-at-war, — and yet he deserves something of his country too.”
“A man of genius, sir, deserves everything of his country.... It is not a paltry pension can pay him. He should be put forward in parliament ... he should be...”
“I think, sir, he should be put at his ease: depend upon it, this would suit him better than being returned knight of the shire for any county in England.”
“Good Heaven, sir!”... resumed the enthusiast; but he looked up and his opponent was gone.
LETTER LXVIII.
Walk to the Marché des Innocens. — Escape of a Canary Bird. — A Street Orator. — Burying-place of the Victims of July.
I must give you to-day an account of the adventures I have encountered in a course à pied to the Marché des Innocens. You must know that there is at one of the corners of this said Marché a shop sacred to the ladies, which débits all those unclassable articles that come under the comprehensive term of haberdashery, — a term, by the way, which was once interpreted to me by a celebrated etymologist of my acquaintance to signify “avoir d’acheter.” My magasin “à la Mère de Famille” in the Marché des Innocens fully deserves this description, for there are few female wants in which it fails to “avoir d’acheter.” It was to this compendium of utilities that I was notably proceeding when I saw before me, exactly on a spot that I was obliged to pass, a throng of people that at the first glance I really thought was a prodigious mob; but at the second, I confess that they shrank and dwindled considerably. Nevertheless, it looked ominous; and as I was alone, I felt a much stronger inclination to turn back than to proceed. I paused to decide which I should do; and observing, as I did so, a very respectable-looking woman at the door of a shop very near the tumult, I ventured to address an inquiry to her respecting the cause of this unwonted assembling of the people in so peaceable a part of the town; but, unfortunately, I used a phrase in the inquiry which brought upon me more evident quizzing than one often gets from the civil Parisians. My words, I think, were,— “Pourriez-vous me dire, madame, ce que signifie tout ce monde?... Est-ce qu’il y a quelque mouvement?”
This unfortunate word mouvement amused her infinitely; for it is in fact the phrase used in speaking of all the real political hubbubs that have taken place, and was certainly on this occasion as ridiculous as if some one, on seeing forty or fifty people collected together around a pick-pocket or a broken-down carriage in London, were to gravely inquire of his neighbour if the crowd he saw indicated a revolution.
“Mouvement!” she repeated with a very speaking smile: “est-ce que madame est effrayée?... Mouvement ... oui, madame, il y a beaucoup de mouvement; mais cependant c’est sans mouvement.... C’est tout bonnement le petit serin de la marchande de modes là bas qui vient de s’envoler. Je puis vous assurer la chose,” she added, laughing, “car je l’ai vu partir.”
“Is that all?” said I. “Is it possible that the escape of a bird can have brought all these people together?”
“Oui, madame, rien autre chose.... Mais regardez — voilà les agens de police qui s’approchent pour voir ce que c’est — ils en saisissent un, je crois.... Ah! ils ont une manière si étonnante de reconnaître leur monde!”
This last hint quite decided my return, and I thanked the obliging bonnetière for her communications.
“Bonjour, madame,” she replied with a very mystifying sort of smile,— “bonjour; soyez tranquille — il n’y a pas de danger d’un mouvement.”
I am quite sure she was the wife of a doctrinaire; for nothing affronts the whole party, from the highest to the lowest, so much as to breathe a hint that you think it possible any riot should arise to disturb their dear tranquillity. On this occasion, however, I really had no such matter in my thoughts, and sinned only by a blundering phrase.
I returned home to look for an escort; and having enlisted one, set forth again for the Marché des Innocens, which I reached this time without any other adventure than being splashed twice, and nearly run over thrice. Having made my purchases, I was setting my face towards home again, when my companion proposed that we should go across the market to look at the monuments raised over some half-dozen or half-score of revolutionary heroes who fell and were buried on a spot at no great dis
tance from the fountain, on the 29th July 1830.
When we reached the little enclosure, we remarked a man, who looked, I thought, very much like a printer’s devil, leaning against the rail, and haranguing a girl who stood near him with her eyes wide open as if she were watching for, as well as listening to, every word which should drop from his oracular lips. A little boy, almost equally attentive to his eloquence, occupied the space between them, and completed the group.
I felt a strong inclination to hear what he was saying, and stationed myself doucement, doucement at a short distance, looking, I believe, almost as respectfully attentive as the girl for whose particular advantage he was evidently holding forth. He perceived our approach, but appeared nowise annoyed by it; on the contrary, it seemed to me that he was pleased to have an increased audience, for he evidently threw more energy into his manner, waved his right hand with more dignity, and raised his voice higher.
I will not attempt to give you his discourse verbatim, for some of his phrases were so extraordinary, or at least so new to me, that I cannot recall them; but the general purport of it made an impression both on me and my companion, from its containing so completely the very soul and essence of the party to which he evidently belonged. The theme was the cruel treatment of the amiable, patriotic, and noble-minded prisoners at the Luxembourg. “What did we fight for?” ... said he, pointing to the tombs within the enclosure: “was it not to make France and Frenchmen free?... And do they call it freedom to be locked up in a prison ... actually locked up?... What! can a slave be worse than that? Slaves have got chains on ... qu’est-ce que cela fait?... If a man is locked up, he cannot go farther than if he was chained — c’est clair ... it is all one, and Frenchmen are again slaves.... This is what we have got by our revolution....”
The girl, who continued to stand looking at him with undeviating attention, and, as I presume, with proportionate admiration, turned every now and then a glance our way, to see what effect it produced on us. My attention, at least, was quite as much riveted on the speaker as her own; and I would willingly have remained listening to his reasons, which were quite as “plentiful as blackberries,” why no Frenchman in the world, let him do what he would, (except, I suppose, when they obey their king, like the unfortunate victims of popular tyranny at Ham,) should ever be restricted in his freedom — because freedom was what they fought for — and being in prison was not being free — and so on round and round in his logical circle. But as his vehemence increased, so did his audience; and as I did not choose to be present at a second “mouvement” on the same day, or at any rate of running the risk of again seeing the police approaching a throng of which I made one, I walked off. The last words I heard from him, as he pointed piteously to the tombs, were— “V’là les restes de notre révolution de Juillet!” In truth, this fellow talked treason so glibly, that I felt very glad to get quietly away; but I was also glad to have fallen in with such an admirable display of popular eloquence, with so little trouble or inconvenience.
We lingered long enough within reach of the tombs, while listening to this man, for me to read and note the inscription on one of them. The name and description of the “victime de Juillet” who lay beneath it was, “Hapel, du département de la Sarthe, tué le 29 Juillet 1830.”
Nothing can be more trumpery than the appearance of this burying-place of “the immortals,” with its flags and its foppery of spears and halberds. There is another similar to it in the most eastern court of the Louvre, and, I believe, in several other places. If it be deemed advisable to leave memorials upon these unconsecrated graves, it would be in better taste to make them of such dignity as might excuse their erection in these conspicuous situations; but at present the effect is decidedly ludicrous. If the bodies of those who fell are really deposited within these fantastical enclosures, it would show much more reverence for them and their cause if they were all to receive Christian burial at Père Lachaise, with all such honours, due or undue, as might suit the feelings of the time; and over them it would be well to record, as a matter of historical interest, the time and manner of their death. This would look like the result of national feeling, and have something respectable in it; which certainly cannot be said of the faded flaunting flags and tassels which now wave over them, so much in the style of decorations in the barn of a strolling company of comedians.
As we left the spot, my attention was directed to the Rue de la Ferronnerie, which is close to the Marché des Innocens, and in which street Henri Quatre lost his life by the assassin hand of Ravaillac. It struck me as we talked of this event, and of the many others to which the streets of this beautiful but turbulent capital have been witness, that a most interesting — and, if accompanied by good architectural engravings, a most beautiful — work might be compiled on the same plan, or at least following the same idea as Mr. Leigh Hunt has taken in his work on the interesting localities of London. A history of the streets of Paris might contain a mixture of tragedy, comedy, and poetry — of history, biography, and romance, that might furnish volumes of “entertaining knowledge,” which being the favourite genre amidst the swelling mass of modern literature, could hardly fail of meeting with success.
How pleasantly might an easy writer go on anecdotizing through century after century, as widely and wildly as he pleased, and yet sufficiently tied together to come legitimately under one common title; and how wide a grasp of history might one little spot sometimes contain! Where some scattered traces of the stones may still be seen that were to have been reared into a palace for the King of Rome, once stood the convent of the “Visitation de Sainte Marie,” founded by Henriette the beautiful and the good, after the death of her martyred husband, our first Charles; within whose church were enshrined her heart, and those of her daughter, and of James the Second of England. Where English nuns took refuge from English protestantism, is now — most truly English still — a manufactory for spinning cotton. Where stood the most holy altar of Le Verbe Incarné, now stands a caserne. In short, it is almost impossible to take a single step in Paris without discovering, if one does but take the trouble of inquiring a little, some tradition attached to it that might contribute information to such a work.
I have often thought that a history of the convents of Paris during that year of barbarous profanation 1790, would make, if the materials were well collected, one of the most interesting books in the world. The number of nuns returned upon the world from the convents of that city alone amounted to many thousands; and when one thinks of all the varieties of feeling which this act must have occasioned, differing probably from the brightest joy for recovered hope and life, to the deepest desolation of wretched helplessness, it seems extraordinary that so little of its history has reached us.
Paris is delightful enough, as every one knows, to all who look at it, even with the superficial glance that seeks no farther than its external aspect at the present moment; but it would, I imagine, be interesting beyond all other cities of the modern world if carefully travelled through with a consummate antiquarian who had given enough learned attention to the subject to enable him to do justice to it. There is something so piquant in the contrasts offered by some localities between their present and their past conditions, — such records furnished at every corner, of the enormous greatness of the human animal, and his most chétif want of all stability — traces of such wit and such weakness, such piety and profanation, such bland and soft politeness, and such ferocious barbarism, — that I do not believe any other page of human nature could furnish the like.
I am sure, at least, that no British records could furnish pictures of native manners and native acts so dissimilar at different times from each other as may be found to have existed here. The most striking contrast that we can show is between the effects of Oliver Cromwell’s rule and that of Charles the Second; but this was unity and concord compared to the changes in character which have repeatedly taken place in France. That this contrast with us was, speaking of the general mass of the population
, little more than the mannerism arising from adopting the style of “the court” for the time being, is proved by the wondrously easy transition from one tone to the other which followed the restoration. This was chiefly the affair of courtiers, or of public men, who as necessarily put on the manners of their master as a domestic servant does a livery; but Englishmen were still in all essentials the same. Not so the French when they threw themselves headlong, from one extremity of the country to the other, into all the desperate religious wildness which marks the history of the Ligue; not so the French when from the worship of their monarchs they suddenly turned as at one accord and flew at their throats like bloodhounds. Were they then the same people? — did they testify any single trait of moral affinity to what the world thought to be their national character one short year before? Then again look at them under Napoleon, and look at them under Louis-Philippe. It is a great, a powerful, a magnificent people, let them put on what outward seeming they will; but I doubt if there be any nation in the world that would so completely throw out a theorist who wished to establish the doctrine of distinct races as the French.
You will think that I have made a very circuitous ramble from the Marché des Innocens; but I have only given you the results of the family speculation we fell into after returning thence, which arose, I believe, from my narrating how I had passed from the tombeaux of the victimes de Juillet to the place where Henri Quatre received his death. This set us to meditate on the different political objects of the slain; and we all agreed that it was a much easier task to define those of the king than those of the subject. There is every reason in the world to believe that the royal Henri wished the happiness and prosperity of France; but the guessing with any appearance of correctness what might be the especial wish and desire of the Sieur Hapel du département de la Sarthe, is a matter infinitely more difficult to decide.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 559