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THE
PARIS SPECTATOR:
OR,
L'HERMITE DE LA CHAUSSÉE-D'ANTIN.
CONTAINING
OBSERVATIONSRK
Etic mi
UPON
PARISIAN MANNERS & CUSTOMS,
AT THE
Commencement of the Nineteenth Century.
Se Jamy (Victor Jose
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH,
BY W. JERDAN.
{William ]
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
PHILADELPHIA:
PUBLISHED BY M. CAREY,
AND WELLS & LILLY, BOSTON.
1816.
B


ENOX LIBRAR
NEW YORK


ΤΟ
FRANCIS FREELING, Esq.
&c. &c. &c.
MY DEAR SIR,
•
THE HERMIT of the Chaussée-d'Antin
having, since the commencement of, my
Translation, published another Volume of
his Essays, and thus enabled me to add the
following Sheets to my original design, I
consider myself entitled to seize the oppor-
tunity for a second Dedication. I rather
fear that this will be a trespass on you than
on my Readers, and my only apology shall
be brevity, and the irresistible impulse which
I feel to avail myself of, perhaps, the only
chance I may ever enjoy, of so widely de-
claring how sincerely I participate in the
general sentiment which your public and
private worth inspires. But it is not be-
ause your public Life has procured you
"Golden opinions from all sorts of men :"
the regard and esteem of the highest ranks
in this country, and the love and gratitude


iv
of your inferiors-it is because in the social
circle, as in the discharge of your official
Duties, your entire existence is filled with
acts of kindness and beneficence; it is be-
cause you are so exemplary in the exercise
of all the human affections which dignify
man, that I am proud even were it to make
an occasion on which I can join my voice
to the testimony of all who have the plea-
sure of knowing you, and stating how grate-
ful your friendship is to one, who is,
Dear Sir,
With the warmest feelings of esteem,
Your's most truly,
WM. JERDAN.
Little Chelsea, August, 1815.


NOTICE
FOR THE THIRD VOLUME.
THE HERMIT of the Chaussée-d'Antin
was, in the first instance, advertised to con-
sist of two Volumes, but the original Au-
thor, having in the interim concluded his
labours under this signature, and added an-
other Volume to his preceding Publications,
it became necessary to suspend the Trans-
lation for a short period, and then to depart
so much from the first design, as to bring
the Work in a complete form before the
British Public. These circumstances will
account for the delay which has taken place
in producing this publication, and it is hoped
that the Third Volume, thus obtained, will
be found to possess merit enough to plead
its own cause.
A 2
1





CONTENTS.
F
DEDICATION
Notice
Macedoine
Somnambulism, and the Abbé Faria
A Hunting Party
Revolutions of Fashion
An Execution at the Place de Grève
The Races of the Champ de Mars
A Dinner of Artists
An Evening of the Great World
My Projects for the Year 1814
The Twelfth Cake
The Gossips
The Egotists
The Painter's Study
The Newsmongers
The Death of the Hermit
The Hermit's Testament
Page
iii
9
19
28
48
78
88
98
116
126
135
145
155
165
175
185
195


1
T


CONTENTS.
T
DEDICATION
Notice
Macedoine
Somnambulism, and the Abbé Faria
A Hunting Party
Revolutions of Fashion
An Execution at the Place de Grève
The Races of the Champ de Mars
A Dinner of Artists
·
An Evening of the Great World
My Projects for the Year 1814
The Twelfth Cake
The Gossips
The Egotists
The Painter's Study
The Newsmongers
The Death of the Hermit
The Hermit's Testament
Page
111
V
9
19
28
48
78
88
98
116
126
135
145
155
165
175
185
195


10
MACEDOINE.
curious to know the originals of this capital as
its monuments. Paris has lately suffered two
irreparable losses of this order; the first, the
celebrated Chevalier de Jean, so renowned for
his courage and his creditors, his whims and
his debts. True to the beau of the last century,
you might find him every day at the Palais-
Royal, in tight speckled pantaloons, a horse-
shoe wig, and ready to give you the history of
the pretty Dutch Jewess that he once set about
converting. The other character, carried off
still more lately from the curiosity of the ama-
teurs, was the most renowned master of all our
masters in feats of arms, old father Donnadieu.
For twenty-five years he took every day of
his life, between two and three in the after-
noon, four turns on the Boulevart de la Made-
leine. He was distinguishable by the oscillations
of his head, the immensity of his riding-coat,
the enormousness of his cane, and the antiquity
of his wig, that had fewer hairs than even his
own skull. Fifty years ago this man used to
turn the heads of the handsomest actresses of
the Comedie Italienne.
To harangue upon the arts, without knowing
a syllable of the subject, is one of our fashiona-
ble absurdities. Derval and Senneville are
first rate professors in this.
They have composed for themselves and
their disciples a vocabulary of about a hundred
words, by the help of which those "Irrefraga-
ble Doctors," decide without appeal. "Style
without colour, composition without harmony,
い
​


MACEDOINE.
11
incorrect drawing, want of light and shade;"
this goes equally to criticism on a poem, a pic-
All that ever comes
ture, or a piece of music.
in the shape of panegyric, no matter what may
be the chef-d'œuvre, is equally comprised in
the words, "elegance, vigour, grandeur." No
doubt these gentlemen have taken the trouble
of getting by heart the names of the great-
masters whom they cite in season, and some-
times not a little out of it: however I have
some lingering scepticism about their infallibi-
lity, and am not much surprised that a Delille,
a Gérard, or a Cherubini, should now and then
decline their jurisdiction.
It is a great interval from "l'antre de Pro-
cope" such as I remember it in 1754, to the
magnificent rooms on the first floor of the Pa-
lais Royal, where the Café de Chartes occupies
the floor below:
"Ce ne sont que festons, ce ne sont qu'astragales."
"Tis all festoon and ornament superb."
Gold, ebony, bronze, all are combined with ex-
quisite taste. The bar, all mirrors, is perfect
enchantment. The coffee, the dinner services,
silver gilt, the cook an adept in "gastrology;"
with all this one might be assured that this new
establishment would turn out a fortune. But
in Paris, utility, luxury, convenience, even
pleasure, are not always sure pledges of get-
ting into vogue. Like fashion, that depends
on a caprice often beyond all calculation.


12
MACEDOINE.
The elegant public, for whose fickleness one
thinks himself prepared, is often as much led
by habit as the mob. It is often nothing but
patience and repeated temptation that can break
through the force of custom. They are pleased
enough with the café on the ground floor, pro-
bably they cannot be prevailed on to be pleased
on the first floor, probably they will never go
up to try, in spite of the whole magic of pro-
mise and invitation. The cafés are in Paris no
longer what they were; the frequenters are al-
most made up of regular idlers and Provincials,
and except one or two of those houses, where
good company still go by a kind of good luck,
the others are not attended by fashionable peo-
ple. In the days of Louis XIV. those places
were unknown; the rendezvous for even the first
classes was the tavern. The young lords of
the court, &c. then particularly distinguished
the "Cormier" and the "Pomme de Pin."-
They often slept in those places, and it was
even the height of high life, which however
men of common sense have in all ages despis-
ed, to present themselves at Versailles, with
the nose begrimed with snuff, and the drapery
in a disorder which shewed where they had
been. Our fine women of the present day would
probably not have much to dread from this kind
of seduction. It is a long time since tavern-
hunting has been given over by them to justice,
and probably many years will not pass before the
public opinion, under their direction, will pass
the same sentence on the café.
*
*


MACEDOINE.
13
M. Azais is right. Every thing has its ba-
lance; goods and evils. If I had the misfor-
tune to buy, or the folly to read, an enormous
volume, entitled *****, in which the author
wastes 300 pages in 8vo. in comments on the
Fables of a good man, and in proving that there
are (which I doubted before,) charming things
in this work. If my passion for new books
made me fall six months into a heap of typo-
graphic follies so overwhelming, I have to
thank that passion for putting it in my power to
appreciate, among the first, that History of the
Crusades with which M. Michaud has just en-
riched our literature. No work for a long pe-
riod has come forth with such advantage.
The extreme interest of a subject, of which
antiquity offers no model; the thoughts which
it excites, the great names which it consecrates,
and of which the majority belong to our own
annals; the well-conceived plan, not led away
by the spirit of system, not fettered by the spi-
rit of party; the style solid, elegant, accurate;
those are the qualities which strike me as em-
inently distinguishing a work whose composi-
tion must give M. Michaud a leading rank
among French historians.
Baursalt has written a "Petite Comedie,"
merry enough, called " Words in Fashion.".
Of these words, the greater part have disap-
peared from the Dictionary, others by habit
have been promoted to a right to figure there.
We have gone through a Neologic irruption,
that had "left not a wreck behind." To the
VOL. III.
B
-


14
MACEDOINE.
mania of new words has succeeded in certain
books, in certain theatres, in certain coteries,
the abuse of two or three words, perfectly res-
pectable in themselves, but become perfectly
absurd by their employment.
It is almost two or three years since the fa-
shionable word was "Nature." An amateur
of the Vaudeville made a collection of 226 cou-
plets from pieces of that theatre, in which
"Nature," was the point. The word, how-
ever, lost its rank from the time that a ballad-
maker of the Rocher de Cancale parodied the
Mania in a song, of which, I can only remem-
ber the last Stanza:
In all the scribble
That authors dribble,
In all that quacks
Stretch on their backs;
In all that women
In tricks or trimming;
Above, below,
Display to beau;
Who's the great teacher?
Nature! Nature!
'Tis rather strange, they can't engage
Her, now and then upon the stage !*
* Dans tours leurs ecrits, nos auteurs
Tout l'éloge de "la Nature!"
Dans leurs visites, nos Docteurs
Font le procès a "la Nature !"
Nos femmes pour l'habit les mœurs
Le rapprochent de "la Nature!"
Mais en revanche nos acteurs
S'eloignent bien de "la Nature !"


MACEDOINE.
15
For the present day, "Life" is the word of
favouritism: it is almost impossible to conceive
its service to our melancholy ladies, and what
a multitude of fine things they can manage by
the help of this fragment of sentimentality.
"We go up, we go down the stream of
“ Life.”—“ Life" sits lightly on us.- -We re-
ject "Life."-The dream of "Life;" the lin-
gering on the borders of "Life;" the waste of
"Life;" the despair of "Life:"-and all this,
after having in general taken their full share of
"Life," in the gayest sense of the word.
"Ab! how are you, my dear friend; what
do you think of doing this evening?" "How
can you ask: I am going to the Odeon, of
course. "And so am I."-" There is a new
piece for to night, charmingly got up, as I am
told."-"You do not mean to go there yet-
It is only four o'clock-Come take a turn in
the Tuileries." "I have not a moment-I
dine in the Rue de Condé, with a friend of
mine, who has just lost his wife-The house
is quite a solitude since she is gone."--" And
do you dine there?"--"Oh yes, it will be
pleasant to weep for a moment with him; be-
sides I will be there quite wound up for the new
piece." "I shall go to the Orchestra, try to
keep a place for you, and we shall have our
laugh together."
I have not altered a syllable in this little dia-
logue, I call the parties themselves to witness
the fact,


16
MACEDOINE.
Last Sunday, it rained a good deal. At five
the croud were clustering about the theatre des
Varietes, while the unlucky calaches of the
Faubourg St. Denis were returning empty, af-
ter standing all day on the place Louis XV. to
take the curious to St. Cloud. The drivers
looked sad at the crowd; at which the managers
of the theatre looked gay; at the same instant,
a puppet show-man was dividing the public cu-
riosity with a mourning coach, which carried a
poor bibliopolist who had died next door to the
theatre. A wedding party were defiling in a
train of carriages down the middle of the Bou-
levart, and in one of the side alleys a sick wretch,
was carrying in a litter to the hotel Dieu! All
those contrasts were gathered into the space of
a few fathoms, and perhaps I was the only one
who perceived that they had any thing of con-
trast in them.
"I know so well the value of a character,"
(said E-
, some time before his death,
to a woman of wit)" that to buy a good one, I
would, with all my heart, give all that I am
worth in the world." "You would never have
made a worse bargain in your life," was the re-
mark." How?"- "Because if you had to day,
the best reputation on earth, it would be gone
in a fortnight."
"Cut and dry characters, things that nobody spares;
Come, how nobody knows, and gone, how nobody
cares."
"Des réputations, on ne sait pas pourquoi,"
as Gresset says.


MACEDOINE!
17
The world never saw before such a heap of
those reputations. An exquisite review might
be made out of those borrowed celebrities, the
majority of which, have not so much as an ex-
cuse. Caritides wrote a huge volume of com-
mentary on the twenty-fourth Ode of Anacreon,
which had after all but four verses, and this to
prove to people who know nothing about Greek,
that he knew it marvellously. True, if this com-
mentary is a chef d'œuvre, it is at least not that
of an Incog. For every body knows Caritides.
He is a member of twenty-two learned socie-
ties, he has titles, places, in short, he wants
nothing, but,-merit! I have always in my
mind the reputation which St. Aulaire made
out in a single stanza. And if the world will
still hold him up in the niche where Voltaire
fixed him, I must resign in spite of Boileau,
the same favour for Cotin; for after all, the
Abbé's stanza is fairly worth that of the Mar-
quis. Yet without talking of reputations lite-
rary, political, scientific, &c. of which we can
at least suspect the Why, I must, however,
without going beyond the spot, clear up the
matter to myself. Why Mercour has got the
name of a wit, and has lived for the last ten
years on a single bon mot, of which it is not
even now quite established that he is the father.
Why there is a general agreement to attribute
the taciturnity of Morneuil to his depth, when
the innocent cause is simple poverty of ideas.
The fact is, that society must have him a thinker.
Nature has made him only a dreamer-awake.
B2


18
MACEDOINE.
I am more staggered with the propensity to
undervalue the good where it is, than to con-
ceive it where it is not. Females are as much
exposed to this as men. One passes for a
woman of gallantry, of whom we should be
hard put to it, to find a single adventure. Ano-
ther, with twenty lovers, manages to pass off
as a prude. I cannot find out the way of ex-
plaining errors of this number, received in so-
ciety as in controvertible truths, but by saying,
that they are talked of for the first time before
people who have no interest in giving them a
negative; that they are often repeated by others
who are concerned in giving them circulation,
and in one word, that in Paris there are "agen-
cies for characters, just as there are agencies
for marriages."


19
No. II.-28th August, 1815.
SOMNAMBULISM, AND THE ABBE FARIA.
Per amicitiam, divosque rogatus,
Ducere me auditum, perges quocumque, memento,
Nam, quamvis referas memori mihi pectore cuncta,
Non tamen interpres tantumdem juveris: adde
Vultum habitumque hominis.
HOR. Sat. I. lib. 2.
I HAVE often inquired, but never obtained a
satisfactory answer to the question, "Why have
that class of men whom the Greeks denominat-
ed Agyrte, the Romans, Circumforanei, and we,
in rather a vague way, Charlatans, always cho-
sen France for the principal theatre of their
quackery?" These persons do not think
Frenchmen greater fools than other people:
should they be imagined less addicted to anti-
quated rules, more free from the prejudices of
custom? They will answer themselves that
they are always the last, if not to acknowledge,
at least to adopt useful inventions. They will
confess that Christopher Columbus in vain
begged that he might be allowed the favour of
discovering a new world for their advantage;
that the vortices of Descartes were maintained
for half a century among them against the sys-
tem of Newton; that innoculation had during
thirty years saved hundreds of thousands of


20
SOMNAMBULISM, AND THE
European lives long before it was with difficul-
ty introduced into France; that even at this
moment, a large proportion of the inhabitants
of Paris obstinately persist in drinking the im-
pure water of the Seine, in preference to the
clear filtered beverage which they can procure
at the same price; and, in short, that all inno-
vation, bearing a highly-marked character for
grandeur and public utility, has ever been in this
country the object of the most inveterate and
absurd opposition. It is however true that, in
revenge, all futile follies, all extravagant theo-
ries, all ridiculous schemes, (provided they ori-
ginate with foreigners) are sure to meet among
us with favour, protection, and enthusiastic en-
couragement. From Luc Gauric to the Abbé
Faria inclusively, I do not know a single fo-
reign Doctor, whether he has pricked for his
dupes on our quays or in our saloons, whether
he has had his companions in the shops or in
the palaces, who has not found means to realise
a sort of fortune in France. Behold upon the
Place du Louvre this famous Doctor Napolita-
no, rolling about in his open cabriolet, with his
huge perriwig whitened with powder, his full
scarlet coat trimmed with gold lace, his em-
broidered vest, rings upon every finger, and his
ample ruffles of Flanders lace; in what does he
differ from this most illustrious Cagliostro
whom we have seen, at the close of the eight-
eenth century, boast, even in the Oeil de Bœuf*,
The anti-chamber of the grand apartment at Ver-
sailles, so called from the form of its windows. Tr.


ABBE FARIA
21
at Versailles, of being able to make the dead
speak, and enrich himself by means of a Phan-
tasmagoria, which when some years after car-
ried to perfection by Robertson the physician,
proved the ruin of that individual.
The first and the boldest of the Charlatans
who have appeared in France is indisputably,
Cet Ecossais celebre,
Ce Calculateur sans egal,
Qui, par les regles de l'algebre,
Menait la France à l'Hopital.*
This prototype of all Charlatans born or yet to
be born, escaped from England, where he was
condemned to be hanged, in a very few years
changed his country, his religion, his condition,
and his fortune. After having in vain endea-
voured to introduce his System into every state
in Europe, he at last came to establish it in
France: the result is generally known!
Succeeding the adventurer Law, sprung up
another adventurer of the name of Willars, who
made a rapid fortune of many millions (of
francs) by bottling the waters of the Seine, and
selling them as an universal panacea, which
would lengthen human life to the extent of at
least a hundred and fifty years. The Parisian
wine-merchants are the inheritors of his secret,
which they vend however under another name!
* This celebrated Scotsman; this unequalled Cal-
culator, who, by the rules of Algebra, led France to
the Hospital.


22
SOMNAMBULISM, AND THE
Bletton, acquainted with the miracle wrought
by the water of the river, thought he might be
as successful in drawing the element from its
source. He announced the possession of a
physical faculty peculiar to himself, by which
he could discover, or rather perceive the exist-
ence of subterraneous springs, at whatever
depth they might be situated, by means of a
hazel switch and an able colleague. He suc-
ceeded in reviving for a considerable period
this pretended science of Rabdomancy, which
an Ultramontane quack had imposed upon the
credulous in a preceding age.
Mesmer burst forth with greater eclat, and
with more powerful means than his predeces-
sors; and his triumph was less ephemeral. He
had, if you would believe him, discovered a new
agent in nature, which he called Animal Mag-
netism. The properties of this agent, by cre-
ating new affinities and new relations between
men and things, produced miraculous effects.
As magnetism operated chiefly upon the nerves
and the imagination, our ladies were its earliest
converts. The Tub of Mesmer became the
rendezvous of beauties of the court and city :
Magnetism hatched Vapours, Spasms, Nervous
Affections, of a thousand kinds; and these dis-
eases of the imagination, which seized the phy-
sicians themselves, procured proselytes for the
German Doctor in the very bosom of the Fa-
culty. Those who most obstinately denied the
efficacy of magnetism, perceived however that
it was not without its influence on our man-


ABBE FARIA.
23
ners;
that it brought into contact many persons
who would never otherwise have been seen to-
gether; and that the virtue of the Tub produ-
ced a wonderful effect upon the virtue of wo-
men. When the government thought it time
to put an end to this comedy, they procured it
to be represented on the stage, and the Modern
Doctors threw into utter discredit the doctors
of the day.
This quackery of Mesmerism, of which I re-
collect that Doppat, the pupil of Deslon who
had himself been the disciple of Mesmer, in-
genuously said, "Those who are acquainted with
our secret, doubt it more than those who are ig-
norant of it," has given birth to Somnambulism,
for which, at this moment, the Abbé Faria
keeps a school, to the great scandal of good
sense, and of the philosophy which he profess-
es. I was present at the sitting, that is to say,
at the public mystification, which took place on
Wednesday last, in a house in the Rue de Cli-
chy. I shall relate what I saw; it is impossi-
ble to represent the matter in a more ridiculous
light.
The apostle of Somnambulism had chosen the
school room of a house of education, as the
theatre for the exhibition of his juggling tricks,
in the execution of which, he is, as will be
seen, far inferior to Olivier.
Before the professor appeared, I examined
the assembly; it was brilliant, numerous, and
two thirds of it composed of women in the flow-
er of their age. It was easy to see that the


24
SOMNAMBULISM, AND THE
greater proportion of them came to the place
with very favourable prepossessions towards the
new doctrine. I was placed near Madame
Maur, and I could discover in that amiable
person, the different characteristics which cre-
dulity, confidence, and persuasion, impart to the
physiognomy.
The Abbé, accompanied by five or six young
girls, appeared in the space reserved for him
at one end of the apartment:-his complexion
browned by the fires of the Goa Sun, did not de-
tract from the regularity of his features; and I
thought I could perceive that the most beauti-
ful half of his auditory, seemed in this respect,
to have no stronger prejudices than the tender
Desdemona.
The Orator commenced by a discourse in so
grotesque a style, that it was necessary to be a
Frenchman, and to recollect that he who spoke
was a foreigner, not to interrupt him at the end
of every sentence, with bursts of laughter.
The course of his ideas, unfortunately was no
less ludicrous than the language in which they
were expressed: it is almost doubtful, whether
human extravagance could go so far. After an
eulogium, emphatic to absurdity, on magnetism
and its general properties, the professor laid it
down as a principle that this mysterious agent
was the basis of all instruction, the foundation
of all sciences, the key to all human knowledge.
Before hearing this philosopher from the coast
of Malabar, who could have imagined that to
magnetism appertains, not only the power of re-


ABBE FARIA.
2,5
vealing to us the secrets of medicine; and the
cause, the seat, and the cure of all diseases; but
also that of enabling us to ascertain the configu-
ration, the matter, the motion of the stars and the
nature of their inhabitants? We may therefore
make ourselves very easy on the subject of the
future progress of medicine and astronomy;
even morals need no longer trouble us, for
magnetism will be found an ample substitute:
"all the virtues are thence derived as well as all
true knowledge, and political science, is itself
subject to the action of this extraordinary prin-
ciple." After this luminous definition of mag-
netism, M. Faria addressed us on the subject
of Somnambulism, which is its immediate result.
As far as I was enabled to ascertain from his
unintelligible jargon, the state of Somnambu-
lism is for man, and especially for woman, the
most consummately blissful ;-persons in the
condition of Somnambulism develope faculties
and information, of the possession of which, they
are utterly unconscious when awake, such as
the gift of tongues, and the second sight; and
what is still more wonderful, in particular ca-
ses, it even produces new organs. Thus, one
of his pupils had attained the peculiar endow-
ment of reading in her sleep, by that part of
the human body which the first created man
and woman alone did not bring into the world.
Unfortunately the proof of this miracle was of
a nature not fit for public exhibition!
Other experiments were presented. The
four young girls were placed in a row,
and the
C
VOL. III.


26
SOMNAMBULISM, AND THE
preliminary discourse of the master, had so ex-
cellently pre-disposed them to slumber, that
the very moment the magnetic rod touched
them, they were plunged into the most pro-
found sleep. One of them in her nap, said she
was thirsty: "what will you have to drink?"
demanded the cajoler." Sugared Water."
Immediately he presented her with a great
glass of clear water which he contented him-
self with magnetising, instead of sugaring.
The little girl took the glass of water, drank it,
and complained that it was too sweet.
The Abbé might have insisted a little upon
the benefits which might be derived from mag-
netism at a period when sugar is so dear; but
without noticing the objection made to him, he
passed on to a second experiment. "This
young person," said he, pointing to one of the
sleepers, "does not, as you may readily believe,
understand one word of Latin. Well! in the
state of Somnambulism, in which she at present
is, you shall see that she can comprehend what
is spoken in that language. To prove it :-
Ars longa, vita brevis. Answer Miss, what is
the meaning of these words?" "Life is long
and short!!" Loud bursts of laughter broke
out on all sides, and the sitting would hardly
have been suffered to proceed, had not the mo-
tions and the cries of a third Somnambulist fix-
ed anew the attention of the assembly.
"Stop
thief! Murder! Stop thief!" she exclaimed.
The magnetiser questioned her." What is
the matter?"-" A murder in the Rue de Cli-


ABBE FARIA.
27
"Are
chy!" "Who are the perpetrators?" "Two
men whom I can hardly distinguish!"
they arrested?" "Only one of them!" This
trick would have excited a considerable sensa-
tion, had not many of the company been aware
of an event which had taken place three hours
before, of which the Somnambulist and the
Professor, like other people, had learned the
circumstances.
The experiments of members paralysed and
deparalysed at the word of command given by
the magnetiser, finished by exhausting the pa-
tience, and disgusting the honest feelings of
the spectators. At first, murmurs were heard;
these were succeeded by hooting; next, they
hissed the Indian Professor, who very dexter-
ously accounted for the want of success which
attended his efforts, hy declaring, that the pre-
sence of a single sceptic, was sufficient to neu-
tralise the magnetic virtue, and confound the
talent of the magnetiser.
I have been desirous in this essay, to answer
the reproach which has been applied to me, for
not having heretofore, in a work dedicated to
the delineation of living manners, devoted a
page to the exposure of a doctrine so perfectly
absurd and ridiculous. But there can be no
danger of its coming into fashion, and we have
no cause to apprehend that the steps of Abbé
Faria will be followed by any other Professors,


28
No. III.-11th Sept. 1813.
A HUNTING PARTY.
-Tu cede potentis amici
Lenibus imperiis: quotièsque educet in agros
Ætolis onerata plagis jumenta, canesque,
Surge, et inhumanæ senium depone Camanæ
Cones ut pariter pulmenta laboribis emta.
HOR. Ep. 18, lib. 1.
Yield to the solicitations of your friend, and when
he takes out his dogs, his horses, his whippers-in,
quit your serious studies to follo him; and allow
yourself, like others, the pleasure of supping on your
game.
Hunting, it seems, was his delight,
His joy by day, his dream by night.
SOMERVILLE.
AFTER love, the chase is perhaps of all the
pleasures of this lower world, that which has
been most censured and most praised. Plato
calls it a divine exercise; Saint Augustin, a fe-
rocious amusement; Lycurgus recommended
it to the Greeks; Moses forbade it to the Jews;
Pliny assures us that it gave birth to monarchy;
Sallust wishes it to be abandoned to slaves;
Buffon would have it reserved for heroes.


A HUNTING PARTY.
29
These contradictory opinions would not have
been expressed, but that under the same name,
each speaks of a different thing; and this being
the case, may they not all be equally entitled
to credit.
"It is necessary to preserve the flocks from
the jaws of the wolf; to prevent animals from
destroying the harvest; it is natural to nourish
ourselves with the flesh of some, to clothe our-
selves in the skins of others. In these instances
then the chase is an useful occupation.
"Among noxious animals there are some to
whom nature has imparted the highest degree
of strength, cunning, and courage. To destroy
these, it is necessary to combat them; and to
master them, the hunter must often risk his
life. The chase then becomes a noble amuse-
ment, and may in some respects be consider
as a school for the military virtues.
"But hunting now-a-days has scarcely any
-object but to torment in a thousand ways inno-
cent animals, which are carefully multiplied
merely for the pleasure of destroying them.
This exercise, which has always been the inhe-
ritance of certain privileged men, has become
the source of much injustice and vexation. A
love of the chase degenerates almost always in-
to a passion; it becomes too often the sole oc-
cupation of him who gives himself up to it. It
is said to improve the health, but it should be
added, that it almost always leaves the mind
uncultivated. The chase, viewed in this light,
is an injurious and culpable amusement."
C 2


30
A HUNTING PARTY.
Thus it is, an action indifferent in itself, con-
sidered separately in its principle, in its prac-
tice, or in its abuse, may become an eternal
subject of satire or of eulogy.-Locke is right:
-to avoid disputes on things, it will almost al-
ways be sufficient that we understand each other
on words.
Whatever may be the antiquity, the noble-
ness, and the inconveniences of the pleasures
of the chase, it is one of those which I have
always found it most difficult to explain, even
when I have given myself up to it with most
ardour, by false shame, by calculation, or by
suitableness. That which was at first but a sim-
ple repugnance, has resolved itself into a fixed
aversion, from the date of my acquaintance with
the Baron de Roncerolles. We met for our
common misfortune, about thirty years ago, at
the house of one of his relations, in the envi-
rons of Dreux.
The Gothic chateau of M. de Cériane, situ-
ated in the midst of one of the most beautiful
capitaineries of the kingdom, was in autumn
the rendezvous of all the hunters for thirty
leagues round. On entering it, they made a
vow to think of nothing but the chase: and
even in the presence of ladies, their conversa-
tion was limited to that subject. The old Com-
mander, uncle to Madame de Cériane, whose
age and infirmities confined him all day to a
large high-backed chair in the drawing-room,
knew no pleasure but that of maintaining the
superior merit of falconry, (which he had the


A HUNTING PARTY.
31
honour of being the last to renounce in France)
against Roncerolles, who defended hunting
with dogs, with all the force of his habits, and
of his lungs. His erudition on this subject sur-
passed that of all the Dorantes and of all the
Clainvilles* in the world. So long as he spoke,
(and he desisted from speaking as little as pos-
sible) there was nothing to be heard but about
the sole-pleine, the pince rondes, the biche bre-
haine, the dix-cors jeunement, the pied, and the
contre-piedt, and all the other barbarous terms,
which swell the nomenclature of modern hunt-
ing. If he happened to be interrupted for a
moment, the old Commander resumed the his-
tory and the eulogy of falconry; never failing
to assert, in conclusion, that the decline of
French gallantry ought to be dated from the in-
vention of small shot. I one day could not help
laughing at his peroration somewhat louder
than usual. To expiate this offence, he made
me endure a description of the finest bird
hunts, from the reign of Francis I. to the mino-
rity of Louis XV. He maintained with the best
grace in the world, that the education of the
bird of prey, and war, were the only occupa-
tions worthy of a gentleman. He could not
speak, without sighing, of those happy times,
when to charm all the beauties of the court, it
* Characters in the Fácheux and the Gugeure, two
French Dramas.
These phrases, applied to hinds, barren or with
young, to stags, &c.-are not translatable.


32
A HUNTING PARTY.
was sufficient to know how to fly a falcon; to
follow him with all speed; to make him return
to the lure, and dexterously to place him on a
lady's wrist. After Francis I., whom he called
the Father of Hunters, the monarch whom the
Commander honoured with the next place in
his esteem, was the good King John, who was
so passionately fond of the chase, that he knew
no better way of amusing himself during his
captivity at Helfort, than to compose with Gacé
de la Bigue, his chaplain, a poem on the art of
the chase*, ad usum Delphini. The Comman-
der had taken the trouble to charge his memo-
ry with fragments of it, which it afforded him
no small pleasure to recite. This old man,
whose head was well furnished with anecdotes
and recollections, was listened to with some in-
terest, while recounting his stories till the third
or fourth time: but as to the eternal Baron,
(whom they had surnamed the Syndic of Insup-
portables) and who never spoke to you but of
the different species of dogs-clairauds, mi-
rauds, briffauds; of the manners of the kennel,
and of the education of huntsmen; one could
not escape ennui in his society, or the persecu-
tion of his discourse, without quarrelling with
him (a precaution which I never failed to take,
from the morning after my arrival at Cériane,
which however did not prevent our again meet-
"Le Roman des Oiseaux," which the king wrote
for the instruction of his son, Philip, Duke of Bur
gundy.
C
4
#
K


A HUNTING PARTY.
3.3
ing with reciprocal good will). From his ex-
clusive passion for the chase, the Baron derived
this advantage, that he had less cause than
others to mourn our domestic troubles. In the
revolution he only saw an order to go and hunt
somewhere else; and he found nothing to com-
plain of on his return to France but the aboli-
tion of the ancient ordonnances, with respect to
the waters and forests.
After having lost sight of him for so long a
period, I was less surprised than I might have
been, to meet him lately while on a little jour-
ney to Sologne. My old friend, Madame de
L**** is proprietor of a magnificent estate
in that country, a few leagues from Chambord,
where, every year, at the commencement of
the sporting season, her son assembles a nume-
rous and brilliant company of amateurs of both
I arrived there in the night of the 4th
of September, and I left it eight and forty
hours afterwards, satisfied with the scene of
which in that time I had been a witness, and
which I shall now endeavour to describe in a
way as laconic as possible.
sexes.
The first person whom I encountered in the
morning, on leaving my chamber, was the Ba-
ron de Roncerolles. He had been apprised of
my arrival, and waited for me in the passage.
We met like old acquaintances. He found out
that I did not seem a year older than I was
when he saw me last; I assured him that he
looked fifteen years younger-and why not?
Time loses nothing by such assertions, and


34
A HUNTING PARTY.
they always give pleasure. The Baron was in
costume; an embroidered waistcoat, with stag's
head buttons; a grey hunting cap; a little
sporting knife;-in short, nothing was wanting
to make his equipment complete. He had ta-
ken upon himself to make all the preparations
for the next day's sport, and had just been de-
termining on the rendezvous, and the halting-
places. He attached, he said, the more impor
tance to the success of that day's chase, as he
had provided the equipage of young de L*****,
and as General de G **** (the greatest sports-
man in France) was to be of the party.
The poor Baron had to endure a sharp scold-
ing at breakfast, for having taken it into his
head to have a rehearsal of the horns on the
terrace of the castle before noon, regardless of
the ladies, who were still asleep after having
played at cards till two in the morning. The
remainder of the day he was perpetually in mo-
tion. He went from the kennels to the sta-
bles; he entered the names of the sportsmen ;
gave his orders to the huntsmen and whippers-
in; and returned to the saloon to consult the
barometer.
The time for setting out was fixed for seven
o'clock on the following morning. At five the
Baron was up, and had awaked every body in
the chateau. After having been himself to cou-
ple the dogs, to separate the relays, and to place
the old pack, at the entrance of the forest; he
returned to the stables to saddle the horses and
to harness the calashes, and have them brought
4
4
:


A HUNTING PARTY.
35
to the steps of the terrace. He at length re-
turned to the castle, to commence the round of
the corridors. Nothing could be more amusing
than to see him running from door to door;
calling each lady by her name, telling each in
particular, that the party only waited for her;
and not giving himself a moment's repose, till
all were assembled in the vestibule. He then
mounted his horse, and made his troop defile
before him. I accompanied them to the fo-
rest, saw them enter the wood to the sound of
the horn and the yelping of the dogs, and then
retraced my steps, peaceably to await their ar-
rival at the chateau.
Towards three o'clock a great noise of horses
and of carriages, announced the return from the
chase, and I hastened to quit the library, to see
the hunters take off their boots. I could not
yet discover the Baron, but I heard him hollow-
ing and raving like one possessed of a devil, in
the midst of the valets and huntsmen, while
the ladies descending from the calashes, re-
peated with bursts of immoderate laughter-
"At fault*! At fault!" At these words, with
which they saluted the Baron on his entrance;
he flew into the most ludicrous passion imagi-
nable. "At fault!" repeated he, (gnashing
his teeth, and wiping his forehead, without per-
ceiving that he had taken off his wig with his
cap,) Have I come to this place to hear those
words! -Laugh as much as you please; the
* Buisson Creux !


36
A HUNTING PARTY.
affront is not to you ladies, but to me, who
have been forty years a sportsman, and have a
character to preserve. I would rather have re-
ceived twenty stripes from a horsewhip across
my back, than have experienced such humilia-
tion. As for the rest;" (added he, walking
off,)" if these gentlemen understood nothing
of the chase, it is not at all astonishing-
Where the devil should they have learned any
thing about it ?" Each retired to his apartment
to rest himself and to dress.
-
The dinner bell rang, and we all met at ta-
ble; and some of the ladies, more fond of mis-
chief than the rest, revived the conversation on
the "At fault" of the morning, by maintain-
ing that the mistake that had been made, was
the error of the Baron. "My error," exclaim-
ed he, rising, "I will be judged by the gene-
ral. I had fixed on my stag the evening before.
It was a six antlered one. I drew the hounds
on to the scent. The game starts. M. Saint
Alphonso who is present, and had brought his
pack with him, maintained from a view of his
slough, that it was a full aged stag. I saw from
that moment, that I had to do with a man who
was a stranger to the first principles of the art.
This is not surprising, where should he have
learnt it?" (The company laughed.) "The
pack of the Chateau caught the scent-it is
composed of forty dogs with fine noses, well
matched and hunting in full cry; I was quite
sure of it. The stag beat a long time about
the wood. We traced him through his wind-


A HUNTING PARTY.
37
ings; at length we turned him out. We were
then at fault. The pack of M. Saint Alphonso
had got on a wrong scent. I wished to break
the dogs off from it, and force them away-im-
possible! these babblers knew nothing of hunt-
ing."
"Where should they have learnt it?"
asked the mistress of the house, and this was
the signal for a general laugh. The Baron ne-
vertheless went on: "I wished to call them
off; he maintained that we should follow them,
and that his pack was in the right. The dogs
parted, I backed the good and cried hourvari on
the others. Two rascals of huntsmen as knowing
as their master, took upon themselves to sound
their horns. The whole pack went wrong, the
scent was altogether lost-the hunt was sent to
the devil. Now I would ask, who was in
fault?"
After this fine discourse, of which the ladies
could understand nothing, the Baron quite out
of breath, resumed his seat. Saint Alphonso,
who wished to defend his huntsmen and his
dogs, displayed in turn his sporting erudition.
The quarrel became very animated, the ladies
who were amused by it, did all in their power
to heighten it, and the General who had been
made the umpire, disposed of the question, by
proposing two new hunting parties, over one of
which, each of the adversaries should preside.
I took my departure without waiting to know
who proved victor in the end.
I shall now return to my subject, by transcri-
bing one of the letters, which I received after
VOL. III.
D


38
A HUNTING PARTY.
writing my first essay on the chase. The only
change I shall make in it, will be to omit some
of the too flattering compliments which my cor-
respondent has addressed to me.
"Paris, 13th September.
«M. Hermit,
"Your observations on manners, breathe fine
morality, have an agreeable gaiety, and are writ-
ten in an easy natural style. I delight much in
reading them, and am sorry we have so long to
wait for them. I could wish that after the ex-
ample of your predecessor, Addison, you would
give us a paper every day, in which we could
comment upon, and discuss your propositions,
for one pointed essay, invites an answer, as a
witty conversation invites us to take a part in it.
I, for example, have many things to say to you
on the subject of your little philippic against
the chase. Without saying so much about it,
I am little less passionately devoted to it, than
your Baron de Roncerolles. This taste is con-
firmed in me by gratitude, as you shall judge
from my history.
"Educated in the country under the eyes of
my father and mother, by a preceptor of merit,
whose care was rewarded by the rapid progress
of his pupil. On approaching my sixteenth
year, my health became much impaired; I had
palpitations of the heart, and my nights were
sleepless. My mother, alarmed, consulted her
physician on my case. He was a sensible man,
and after a few questions, he called for a pen
#
N
"
3


A HUNTING PARTY.
39
and ink to write his prescription, which was as
follows:
"R. A double barrelled gun, a powder horn,
a game bag, and a pointer, the whole to be taken
every morning for four or five hours.' Ye chil-
dren of the cities, whom less innocent amuse-
ments occupy from the cradle, can form no
idea of the first perfectly pure pleasure, tasted
at an age when enjoyments of a different cha-
racter are open to us. My delight in the chase
partook of madness. Each step of my dog,
made my heart beat with violence, and I think,
(God and the fair sex forgive me!) I have ne-
ver felt, on arriving at the place of rendezvous
with the woman I most loved, so much anxiety
and rapture, as I have experienced when on
seeing the hare or the fox quit the covert, to
pass to the spot where I was squatting on the
watch for him. I again tasted refreshing sleep:
my health and gaiety returned, I finished my
studies, and set off for my regiment.
"We were then at war. I made three cam-
paigns, and passed two winters in a good garri-
son; after which, thanks to the fatigues of the
one, and the pleasures of the other, I returned
to my paternal home, so reduced and so chang-
ed, that my parents hardly knew me. The doc-
tor was called in again, an gave me the same
prescription as before, your health is but
slightly affected,' said he to me, 'it will be re-
stored by moderate exercise, which is equally
good to supply strength, and to consume excess
·


40
A HUNTING PARTY.
of it.' I followed his counsel, and regained my
youth.
"I found myself so well, that I soon became
passionately enamoured of a young lady in the
neighbourhood, and it was not long before I dis-
covered that I had a rival. My folly was such,
that I gave myself up to despair. I became
melancholy, hardly spoke, and could not eat. I
passed the day in writing letters, which were
not received, and the night, in wildly pacing my
chamber, meditating scenes of romance, and
projects of vengeance. As mad as Orlando, I
was lost in my passion as for an Angelica and
Medora, if the dear doctor had not come once
more to my assistance; love and jealousy!
said he, I know of but one remedy for these
fatal maladies.' Death! The chase, zounds
the chase. But I shall find no pleasure in it
now.' It is not pleasure you want, but it is fa
tigue. Do you not see that the repose of your
body nourishes the inquietude of your soul; the
only cause of your present indisposition? Ex-
ercise your limbs, that is the way to set your
mind at rest, to restore your appetite, and to ex-
tinguish your passions. I resumed my gun; I
again declared war against the rabbits, and be-
fore the close of the autumn, I was so well
cured of my love for my fair neighbour, that
I went to law against her for the right to a war-
6
ren.
"Some time after this, my father succeeded
in marrying me to a rich and noble heiress.


A HUNTING PARTY.
41
My wife had great virtues and talents, but as a
set off against these, her face was singularly
plain, and her temper was excessively tiresome.
I soon conceived an aversion for her, and unfor.
tunately she felt for me a sentiment exactly the
reverse. We understood each other on no one
point, yet she undertook to coincide with me
in every thing. If I took up a book, she read.
If I approached the piano, she begged of me to
accompany her; and as she had a habit of not
singing correctly, though she was a great mu
sician, she made my passion for music, a real
punishment. I thought to escape by riding out
on horseback, but she took no respite, and ne-
ver quitted the riding school, till she had qua-
lified herself to follow me. I hardly knew what
saint to invoke, to help me out of this conjugal
hell, when I happened to recollect the doctor
and his panacea. From that time, I gave my-
self up without reserve to the only exercise my
wife could not share with me. She wished to
accompany me, but I led her so far so far,
(as the Fairy Tales say) that she was obliged to
decline such excursions, and thus the chase
saved me once more. When I had thus exer-
cised myself all day, I had a good excuse for si-
lence and sleepiness at night. Obliged to se-
parate from me, she has created new occupa-*
tions for herself, her tenderness has become
more calm, and we have finished by living to-
gether in a very tolerable manner.
"You will agree M. Hermit, that with such
reasons for loving the chase, I may be excused
D 2


42
A HUNTING PARTY.
for taking upon myself its defence, and for en-
deavouring to remove from you those prepos-
sessions, which you appear to entertain against
this exercise.
I have the honour to be, &c.
THE BARON DE LA GIBECIERE."
I have established a little tribunal, in which
I have no functions to peform other than those
of a mere recorder; I interrogate the parties,
I publish the facts, draw my conclusions, and
leave the decision to the public. My correspon-
dent pleads in favour of the chase. He has
ably set forth its advantages; I proceed to ex-
hibit its inconveniences and folly..
Some of my readers may perhaps still re-
member the Abbé Vincent, with whom a taste
for the chase had become a real madness. Af-
ter having for a long period sought the means
of associating the decorum of his profession,
with his ruling passion; he at length discover-
ed them with the assistance of a skilful gun-
smith in the Rue de la Harpe. This person in-
vented expressly for the Abbé, a gun, of which
the breech took off, and could be put in the
pocket. By means of an ivory knob, made to
fit one end of the barrel, and a brass ferrule
which went on the other end of it, the gun co-
vered with a fine japan varnish, was presently
transformed into a cane. The Abbé with his
cane in his hand, and a prayer book under his
arm, a bob wig, and a violet coloured coat, used
to leave Paris every morning in the sporting


A HUNTING PARTY.
43
season, satisfied that in this costume he could
only be supposed to be a curate of some neigh-
bouring parish, returning on foot to his parson-
age. No sooner did he approach a heath, a
wood, or any other place stocked with game,
than he put his gun in order; and drew from
bis pocket a small spaniel of an excellent breed,
which instantly went in quest of prey. Ponto,
with his nose to the ground, and wagging his
tail, gave notice to his master that the game
was at hand. The bird rose, a shot from the
fowling piece brought it to the ground. The
dog who carried it to the sportsman, was im-
mediately put with the prize in his pocket, and
the game-keepers who on hearing the report of
the gun, were attracted to the spot, found only
the Abbé walking with a cane in his hand, and
reading his prayer book. The ecclesiastical
-poacher passed on to another estate, where he
amused himself in the same way, and this he
- continued till he had filled his enormous
pouch, which served him for a game bag.
The rigour of the ancient ordonnances, re-
stricted the rights of enjoying the sports of the
chase, to the class of nobles and to the great
land owners. These laws the peasant and the
citizen could not but at much risk and peril
venture to infringe. More conformable to the
general, as well as to individual interest, the
existing code allows every one after the har-
vest, to make war on the game on his own
lands. From the beginning of the month of
September the castles and country houses are


44
A HUNTING PARTY.
filled with sportsmen. They awake before day-
break; the guns, the game bags, the ammuni-
tion boxes are arranged at the door.
They go
from the village-their dogs open and disperse
about the country, each seeking by sun-rise to
discover the seats of the hares by the little va-
pour which rises from the place where they
have passed the night. The alarm is given to
the inhabitants of the woods-the dogs are in
pursuit of them-the sound of fire arms suc
ceeds, and the game bags are filled
The ren-
dezvous has been agreed upon-the breakfast
hour arrives; all haste to share the bread, the
dried tongue, and the veal pasty which the ser-
vants have been busied in providing. Each
gives and receives his share of eulogium and
criticism. "Such a prize has been missed by
the fault of one person; one would give his best
shot for that of his neighbour, whom he has
seen bring down two partridges by a back-hand-
ed fire. Another has made nothing but blun-
ders; he is in ill-luck," (for sportsmen like
gamblers, have their prejudices and their su-
perstitions). Breakfast being finished the ozier
bottle which contains a little rum, passes from
hand to hand, and is the signal for departure.
They return to the field-the sun shines with
all its force the heat is insupportable, it is a
punishment to course the plain.-No matter,
they have agreed to amuse themselves till four
o'clock. It is yet but noon. The game seeks
cover in the thickest bushes. The sportsman
exhausted with fatigue, can find no more; and


A HUNTING PARTY.
45.
looks in his turn for a commodious sheltering
place. His gun placed against a tree, on which
he hangs his game bag, his dog at his feet, he
lays himself down for a nap, and sleeps; but the
perpendicular rays of the sun, darting full on
his nose, and the swarm of flies which walk
over his face, soon awake him, and with eyes
half open, he returns to the chase, and the car-
nage recommences among the rabbits and par-
tridges. At length the village clock announces
the hour of four, and the sportsmen assemble
to make a triumphal entry on their return. The
ladies seated round a large table in the dining
room, receive the hunters, who proudly display
the trophies of the day-quails, partridges, rab-
bits, and hares, which they present to them. It
is there that the game is shared, and made into
different parcels by the huntsmen-the presents
are forwarded to their destination, and the cook
of the house takes possession of the choice
pieces set apart for the next day's dinner.
Buffon has declared himself the apologist of
the chase. If we may believe him, “it is the
only amusement which makes a diversion from
business, the only relaxation without effeminacy,
and the only one which affords lively pleasure
without languor, without alloy, and without sa-
tiety." Ladies have in France a decided aver-
sion for this species of amusement, which ap-
pears to them destructive of all society, of all
conversation, and of all sentiment, and which
accustoms men to seek, removed from them,
pleasures in which they cannot participate.


46
A HUNTING PARTY.
There is at least as much exaggeration in their
complaints against the chase, as in the praises
bestowed upon it by the philosopher of Mont-
bard. I should however have less difficulty in
pointing out a motive for the one, than in offer-
ing a justification for the other.
There is no defect, no excellence, no custom
in France which is not parodied. The passion
for the chase is travestied at Paris in the most
ridiculous manner, by some little shop-keep-
ers. Can there be any thing more grotesque
than that honest grocer in the Rue de la Ver-
rerie, whose shop is watched by a hunting
dog, and who rising above the vulgar taste of
his family, waits till Sunday to course the fields,
and takes the chance of killing a lark or a wa-
ter-wagtail. How proudly does he walk through
Paris, his gun under his arm, his hunting cap
on his head, his buff gaiters, and his sporting
jacket, made at the expense of an old coat, the
skirts of which have been cut off.
How gra-
ciously does he smile on his neighbours! How
loudly does he call after Diana or Castor,
though the animal has not been a yard from his
heels! At last, he has reached the plain of St.
Denis, pursuing from bush to bush, the wood-
pecker, the linnet, and even the tender nightin-
gale, which he sometimes kills by chance with a
random shot. But more frequently the whole
morning passes away without his having to re-
proach himself with the death of the smallest bird.
Meanwhile the dinner hour approaches, and he
knows that they expect the produce of his chase


A HUNTING PARTY.
47
at home, to make some addition to their hum-
ble bouilli. In this dilemma, the unfortunate
sportsman resolves to repair to the Palais-Roy-
al, and to hunt there, purse in hand, in the shop
of a poulterer, from whom he purchases two
partridges, which he puts into his game bag,
taking good care to pull the feet through the
meshes of the netting. The grocer then goes
home, and with an air of triumph, presents to
his wife, the partridges which he has shot.
Unluckily, however, a lusty country cousin,
who comes every Sunday to keep his wife com-
pany, causes her to remark that one of the
birds has been caught in a net, and that the
other exhales a high scent, which betrays the
remote era of its death.


48
No. IV.-23d Oct. 1813.
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
Toute change-la raison change ausi de méthode,
Ecrits, habillemens systèmes, tout est mode.
RACINE Fils-Epit. à Rousseau.
Forms fluctuate still-resistless fashion's sway,
Arts, habits, wit, and wisdom's self, obey.
Je loue l'industrie d'un peuple qui cherche a faire
payer aux autres ses propres mœurs et ses ajustemens;
mais je le plains de se laisser lui-même si fort piper et
aveugler à l'autorité de l'usage present; qu'il soit ca-
pable de changer d'opinions et d'avis, tous les mois, s'il
plait à la coutume--on dirait que c'est quelqu'espèce
de maniè qui lui tourneboule l'entendement.
MONTAIGNE.
I applaud the industry of a people that tries to make
its own habits and manners pass current with the
world; but I find fault with their suffering themselves
to be entangled and blinded by the authority of the
reigning custom. Those who are capable of changing
their whole system of opinions every month, as the
fashion may be, are only to be spoken of, as labouring
under a disease which perverts the brain.
IT is rather with a feeling of pleasure, than
of vanity, that I find an enterprise prosper in my
hands, in which so many men of merit have


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
49
successively failed, during the last age: the
small share of success obtained in their time
by the Spectateurs, Observateurs, and Epilo-
gueurs of France, led many to imagine that our
national vanity, revolted from this species of
magic lanthern, by which a skilful moralist,
more or less severe, might produce every week,
a faithful picture of some of our vices, our oc-
cupations, and our follies. I imagine, on the
contrary, that it is to a want of fidelity in these
portraits, that we must ascribe the cold recep-
tion which they have hitherto experienced.
L'Abbé Prévost, Marivaux, and their imitators,
have considered, if I may so express myself,
mind and morals in an equal degree with man-
ners, but they have not particularised the ha-
bits of their contemporaries; there is nothing
determined, nothing of locality in their delinea-
tions: their site is every country; their per-
sonages are of every age-I confine myself to
a less extensive circle; and in compensation for
all the advantages which these writers possess
over me, I shall excel them in that of fidelity,
or at least in appositeness.-I design what I
see; I trace characters which I have under
my eye; and to be more certain of the re-
semblance, I cast my figures from living na-
ture.
My task, I confess, becomes every day more
easy; and it frequently happens, that my cor-
respondence supplies me with the germ, the
matter, and sometimes even, as in the following
letter, with the substance of my discourse.
E
VOL. III.


50
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
"My dear Hermit,
"
"I live secluded, unknown: I love to re-
flect, to observe; and as often as remarks oc-
cur to me, I amuse myself with noting them
down; but as Marmontel remarks, It is me-
lancholy to contemplate a fine prospect, without
being able to say to some one, What a fine
prospect! It gives me pleasure on this princi-
ple, to communicate my ideas to you, and I set
about it with less scruple, as, in consequence of
your being totally unknown, you are not oblig-
ed to treat me with the slightest ceremony, but
you may at once do justice on my letter, for any
little fatigue it may occasion you, by throwing
it into the fire. This premised, M. Hermit,
let us have some chat together.
"Tell me, if you know why my dear compa-
triots, whom Voltaire in his moments of hu-
mour, called Welches, but who are not the less
celebrated for the excellence of their taste and
the richness of their imaginations-why, I ask,
are the French of all people, most apt to de-
light themselves with certain retrospects, with
a set of reiterated ideas, so as to make the
most ridiculous application of them to present
customs and manners? Are we children, who
cannot admire any object, without wishing to
lay hold of it? Reason informs us that every
people, every age, and every country, has its
peculiar characters; that whatever we borrow
from either, must be delicately modified, in or-
der to avoid the fabrication of disgusting absur-
dities; and that servile imitation is the uner-


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
51
ring sign of mediocrity. In proportion to the
justice of this reflection we are astonished at
the vicious extravagancies of fashion in France,
during some years past.-After having been
muffled up successively in Egyptian, Greek,
Roman, and Asiatic rags, she now presents her-
self speckled with all the colours of chivalry.
A little while since, we were enamoured of the
Antique, at present, nothing is endured but the
Gothic. I shall not examine whether, in cha-
racter, we are now more essentially, Knight's-
errant, than we were formerly Romans;
I re-
gard only the ridiculous side of our metamor-
phosis. I wish only to take off the habit, and
it is not my fault, if, like the robe of the Cen-
taur Nessus, it should stick to the skin.
"I am intimate with a solicitor, who, in ar-
ranging the business of others, has done his
own so effectually, as to have realised a consi-
derable fortune, which he enjoys with his chil-
dren and his wife. I know of no fault in the
lady, except that of being the slave of fashion,
nor can I accuse my friend of any weakness,
except that of being, in this respect, the slave
of his wife. Nature has given him a thick,
short person, and chubby cheeks; he wears
spectacles, and false hair, flying on each side of
his head like pigeon's wings. I leave you to
imagine the figure he must have made, during
some years in a bed-chamber, furnished entire-
ly a la grecque, and ornamented on each side
with basso relievos, representing the adven-
tures of the gallant Alcibiades. It is still more.


52
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
Judicrous when one calls to mind the canopied
bed, shadowed by a cloud of muslin, and sus-
tained by swans and cupids, where I have been
accustomed to see him every morning, in a
wove cotton night-cap, and an Indian dressing
gown.
"I visited him on my return from a very
long voyage. In six years, twenty ages had
passed over his house. I found him in a li-
brary, the windows of which, in arabesque, ad-
mitted but a doubtful and fatiguing light through
their vitriolated colours.
His books (all on legal subjects) were rang-
ed on lacquered shelves, surmounted by es-
cutcheons, on which one was surprised to meet
with such devices as the following:
La science est folle parole;
Ne suivons que d'amour l'ecole!
Leave science to the pedant fool;
Be joy your study; love, your school.
Or:-
Amour abat orgueil des braves!
Valour itself submits to love.
Or :-
Tout pour les dames!
All for the ladies;
and other conceits of a similar kind. I fixed a
day to dine with him, en famille, and the family
was assembled on my arrival, in the saloon, and


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
53
formed one of the most grotesque groups I
ever beheld. My friend's father, in a flower-
ed drugget, and a large curled wig, was seated
in a kind of curule chair; the master of the
house, who had an engagement with his wife,
to a nobleman's route in the evening; was
dressed altogether in the French style; he was
seated, or rather squatted on a very low Otto-
man, which extended all round the saloon.
The lady, in a Medician robe, had an Indian
shawl wrapt round her arm; her daughter was
habited in the Greek, her son in the English
costume, and the younger children in that of
the Mamelukes.
"I had hoped to console myself for the ca-
pricious fluctuations of fashion, in contemplat-
ing the immutable beauties of art. I had left
our school of painting at its most flourishing
epoch, when David, Gerard, and Girodet had
revived these fine forms, and that grand style
of antiquity, of which, I am an idolater. I en-
tered a saloon; I saw nothing but Gothic mon-
uments, obscure arches, women buried in vel-
vet, and men imprisoned in steel. I stopped
with the multitude, before a picture, in which
every face, masked in a visor, left me nothing
to recognise for a human countenance, except
the squinting eyes and flat nose of our gallant
Duguesclin; a personage whose virtues were
better adapted for historic illustration, than his
features for pictorical effect. I had once re-
peated, with a lively author, whom idleness,
unluckily, had led to the Muses: Who will
E 2


54
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
6
deliver me from the Greeks and the Romans!!
I now exclaimed, on recollecting myself: who
will deliver me from the French knights-er-
rant!'
*
•
"I had not indeed, found shelter from their
attacks, when I set out on a country excursion,
proposing to visit a friend who possessed a
small estate at some leagues distant from Paris.
I learned that he had sold this agreeable pro-
perty, in order to purchase an old castle, the
cradle of an illustrious family to which he had
taken it into his head that he was related. Thi
ther he had repaired to celebrate the majority
of his eldest son. I proceeded, not in the
highest spirits, for this noble mansion, situated
at the extremity of lower Britanny. I arrived,
after having been overturned three times in
the neighbourhood of Quimperlé. It took me
a quarter of an hour to wind round a pinnacled
wall, flanked with towers and turrets: I at last
found the draw-bridge, which I passed without
opposition, though somewhat disconcerted at
not having an esquire to sound a horn.
I an-
nounced myself to the governor's only servant,
who was dusting his master's coat in the ar-
moury. After a long circuit through the obe
scure corridors of this yast edifice, I found M.
N*** in an apartment, of which most of the
rafters were naked; it was ornamented, how-
ever, with family portraits, and some black lea-
ther chairs, on which it was necessary to mount
in order to look out of window. Our conver-
sation during two days, turned on the nobility


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
55
and traditions of the place. He gave me an
airing in a calash, drawn by the horses of the
farm, on a plain where jousts and tournaments
were formerly held. In a superb chapel, half
of which had recently tumbled down, I heard
mass from a priest, whose chasuble was made
out of an old piece of Utrecht velvet. We
dined tolerably well with the mayor, a justice
of the peace, and a tax-gatherer, in what was
formerly called the servant's hall; I slept, as
well as may be imagined, to the music of owls
and rats, in an old bed, with flowered hangings,
in which, it seems, the Constable de Clisson
formerly reposed; and I resumed with infinite
satisfaction, my route to Paris, cursing the
coldness of my imagination, which rendered
me more sensible of the absurdity resulting
from an incongruous association of things, than
of any interest attached to the times, the per-
sons, and the recollections which they recal.
A. P."
This letter, the malice and the gaiety of
which I leave my readers to appreciate, will
serve as a preface to a very short dissertation
on Fashions, in which I propose to pass in ra-
pid review, the principal revolutions which they
have undergone in France, and the absurdities
which they have successively introduced in their
train.
Among other contrasts which compose the
French character, the most striking and inex~
plicable, is that taste for variety, and that pas-


56.
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
sion for routine, which our nation only has
found the secret of uniting. It is from this
compound principle that we change the form of
our habits and our furniture, two or three times
in an age; and that half Paris still prefers to
drink at the same price, the brackish water of
the Seine, to water which has been crystallised.
We are discussing, however, the question of
fashion, not of routine, and we will not wander
from the subject. If we wish to form an idea
of the different revolutions of our costume
since the origin of the monarchy, it is in the
museum of the Petits-Augustins, that we ought
to commence our study. We there perceive
that the Roman Chlamyde, the coat of the Si-
cambres, and the amice or hood, formed during
two or three ages, the vestments and the head-
dress of the early French. In these distant
times, the different classes of society were dis-
tinguished by the amplitude, the quality, and
the trimmings of the chlamyde, the form of
which, towards the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury, began to exhibit a visible alteration. Silk
was exclusively reserved for princes and per-
sons of the highest distinction: the inferior or-
ders were restricted to the use of camlet and
woollen. As far as we are enabled to judge
from some shapeless monuments of art, (re-
plunged at this period into barbarism) which
furnish us with the only authorities we can
collect respecting these remote ages, our an-
cestors manifested the same inconsistency of


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
57
|
taste, with which their descendants have since
been so loudly reproached.
That protection demanded by industry, and
the just bounds within which luxury ought to
be restrained in a poor state, had fixed the at-
tention of the sage Louis IX. "It is proper,"
said that prince in his instructions to his son,
"that every one should dress according to his
condition. A man whose only object is to please
his mistress ought to be handsomely attired; and
his general appearance should be such that old
people shall not reproach him with ostentation,
nor young ones with meanness.”
Philip le Bel, in the following age, revived
in full vigour the ancient sumptuary laws, in
order to repress the luxury of the bourgeoise,
who affected at this time an equality with the
court chariots were interdicted to the bour-
geoise women, and they were forbidden, under
the penalty of fines, to be attended with wax
torches when abroad at night: furs of certain
qualities and jewels were reserved for the no-
bility: gilt girdles became the exclusive ap-
pendage of courtezans, and honest women con-
soled themselves by repeating the proverb,
"Bonne renommée vaut mieux que ceiture dorée."
“A good name is better than a gilt girdle.”
This sumptuary law has been exploded, and
we have retained the proverb, but without
making any deductions from it. A man of
letters and of wit (this expression involves no


58
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
pleonasm) started, some years since, the inge-
nious idea of composing a history of France in
ballads, not according to the project of certain
hungry poetasters who propose to reduce into
doggerel rhyme and set to the airs of the Pont-
neuf, the elements of grammer, of physic, and
even the articles of the civil code; but in com-
bining by an historical commentary the various
songs, carrols, and satirical couplets, which
have appeared at different periods of our his-
tory, and which are connected with its princi-
pal events. The Satire Ménippée contains a
great number of satirical couplets, to which
we are indebted for a multitude of anecdotes
respecting the League, which we should in vain
search for any where else. The Mazarinades
are the true memoirs of La Fronde, and have
this advantage over all others, that they render
us, as it were, contemporary with that epoch
of intrigues, by trasporting us into the midst
of those personages who acted the principal
parts in it.
An universal history of fashions, executed
on the same plan, would undoubtedly be one
of the most interesting and original works
which has yet been published. Nor can the
slightest imputation of frivolity be attached to
such a subject, considered in its necessary re-
lationship to manners, to laws, and the general
spirit of ages and nations.
In contemplating the Orientals, under a
burning sky, covered with pelisses, shawls, and
stuffs of all kinds; in observing their feet,


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
59
which play in their ample slippers, may we not
pronounce, without farther investigation, that
these are a lazy and indolent people? Who
cannot perceive in the Dutchman, in his blue
compact habit, in his round unpowdered wig,
the man of economy, laborious, and destitute
of imagination? In the Hungarian, beneath his
rich and martial costume, a character fierce and
independent? Is not the ancient Greek dressed,
or rather ornamented, in habiliments most fa-
vourable to beauty, the proper representative
of a people who held the sceptre of arts? If
the character of nations discovers itself in their
fashions, we may likewise recognise in them
the grand epochs of their history. Among
ourselves, for instance, does not every revolu-
tion in manners reflect itself in our habits?—
During the first ages, Charlemagne, who ap-
pears with his hair cropt square across his neck,
with a woollen tunic embroidered with silk, a
sheep-skin mantle clasped after the manner of
the Roman emperors, and with sandal shoes;
does not this combination suggest to us the
idea of barbarism, mingled with an impression
of high cultivation? Are we not taught to re-
cognise in him the conqueror who assumed
the title of Augustus, and who appropriated for
sale the eggs of his poultry-yard, and his gar-
den-vegetables? In the days of Feudalism,
when war was the only science, and when there
was no rank below nobility, men were clad in
iron, and women in their husband's coats of
One side of a petticoat, of a lady of the
arms.


60
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
house of Dreux, was occupied by a martlet, and
the other by a crescent gules checked with er-
mine. Women, if we may so express it, lived
under the buckler which defended them. Du-
ring the succeeding ages, the progress of arts
and intelligence exhibited itself in the reigning
modes, which were characterised by an elegant
capriciousness, a species of pomp, the offspring
of chivalrous imagination, and of Spanish geni-
us modified by French taste: and this com-
posed, at the time of Francis I., the most pic-
turesque costume which this nation has ever
adopted. Louis XIV., whose personal charac-
ter had so much influence on that of his age,
accomplished at the expense of taste, but to
the great advantage of the nobility and of gra-
vity, a complete revolution in the fashions of
his time, wherein majesty did not always dis-
play itself divested of charlatanery.-After
him, both manners and habits lost their nobili-
ty, and retrograded from simplicity: the spirit
of society made great progress, urbanity be-
gan to generalise, but public manners grew
corrupt, and those licensed freedoms which
good taste condemns became established. The
French costume, short and scanty, preserved
nevertheless something of elegance. In pro-
portion as the different classes confounded
themselves with each other, good sense, good
taste, and the distinction of manners disappear-
ed from society, and an eccentricity in fashion
preceded by some years that more serious ex-
travagance, which the nation was preparing it-


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
61
self to exhibit. While the men, less culpable
in the interim, equalised themselves by the
frock, the women emulated each other in self-
disfigurement, by the immeasurable height of
their head-dresses. The revolution arrived:
superfluous ornament was then so retrenched
that the body was left almost naked; in the
same degree that the moral licentiousnes of the
times discovered the vices of the soul.
In the immense picture of great events, pro-
duced by little causes, fashion necessarily oc-
cupies a considerable place. One of the great-
est misfortunes which France has had to lament,
the divorce of Louis le jeune, from Elinor of
Guyenne, resulted from the fashion, which this
prince wished to introduce, of shaving his chin
and cropping his head. The queen, his wife,
who appears to have possessed, with a mascu-
line beauty, considerable acuteness of intellect,
observed with some humour, that she imagined
herself to have espoused a monarch, not a monk.
The obstinacy of Lewis in shaving himself, and
the horror conceived by Elinor at the sight of
a beardless chin, occasioned France the loss of
those fine provinces which constituted the
dowry of this princess; and which devolving to
England by a second marriage, became the
source of wars which desolated France during
400 years.
Among many other subjects of
hatred which the French nation bore to Charles
the Bald may be counted the singularity which
he affected in his dress. His Greek habits
completed his alienation from the hearts of
VOL. III.
F


62
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
his subjects; and were in part the cause that
no one exerted himself to punish the crime of
the jew Sedecstas, who poisoned him.
It is principally on the hair of the beard that
the caprices of fashion, among us, are exercis-
ed. Short and long locks, the beard thick or
shaven, la royale or le barbichon, mustachios
turning up or down, all these modes, which
have varied the French physiognomy into a
hundred different appearances, are of illustrious
origin; the close-crops of the reign of Francis
I. were occasioned by a wound which this
prince received in the head, and which obliged
him to have his hair cut off. The beautiful
hair of Louis XIV., when a child, introduced
the use of peruques with long floating curls.
The enormous wigs which succeeded to these,
which were adopted by all Europe, but which
have now become a mere appendage of the
magistracy, were invented towards the end of
the seventeenth century, by a celebrated wig-
maker, named Duviller, in order to conceal a
slight inequality in the shoulders of the Dau-
phin.
Hy
Mustachios were elevated into a great im-
portance, in the sixteenth century. The Spa-
niard borrowed on the credit of his mustachios,
and the Frenchman swore by them. "I have
great esteem," (says an author of this period)
" for a young man, who is anxious to equip him-
self with a handsome pair of mustachios, and who
considers that time well employed, which he de-
votes to their cultivation; in proportion as he


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
63
attends to them, his soul will be capable of great
and heroic actions."
Mustachios, on the contrary, seem to have
been considered by the historian, Grainger, as
a sign of declination. The beard," says he,
"degenerated into mustachios under the reign
of the two Charles's of England, and disappear-
ed entirely with James II., as if its destruction
had been allied to that of the house of Stuart."
The strength of the Stuarts, might perhaps
have lain in their beards, as that of Samson did
in his locks; nevertheless, we may be permitted
to believe that the talents and valour of the
Prince of Orange, and the extreme weakness
of his father-in-law, contributed to the ruin of
this family, at least in an equal degree with the
discredit which its chief had attached to mus-
tachios.
A multitude of volumes have been written
on head-dresses and beards; and this part of
our fashions has been followed in all its varia-
tions; these researches, which have been of
considerable utility to artists, have not supplied
any assistance to the historian. The best thing
which was ever said on the subject of beards,
is that of Henry IV. "the wind of adversity
has blown on my beard."
Fashion is the empire of women-it owns no
law but their caprice; but the extravagance of
its fluctuations has not always been reconcilea-
ble to the strictest idea of delicacy. I shall cite,
among many examples of the fantastic taste,
that event which brought into vogue, under


64
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
another name, the colour called the yellow-leaf,
which until then, had been held in excessive
contempt. The Archduke Albert besieged
Ostend in 1601; the Infanta Isabella, his wife,
daughter of Philip II. made a vow, which would
not, probably, have come into the head of as
Frenchwoman; it was, that she would not
change any of the vestments which she then
wore, until the place was taken, the siege last-
ed three years and seventy-eight days. Such
a lapse of time must have occasioned a singular
alteration in the whiteness of the linen worn
immediately next the skin; and the archduchess
never quitted it, conformably to her vow, until
the day that she entered the city. Her cour-
tiers equally officious, and equally ingenious,
perhaps, with those of the grand Lama, adopt-
ed and brought into vogue, under the name of
Isabella, a colour which recalled, as often as it
met their eye, a most agreeable image.
The use of bracelets, of necklaces, and of
ear-rings (the only ornament common to all fe-
males of every age and of every nation) was
universally adopted during the reign of Charles
VII. Agnes Sorel was the first in France, who
employed diamonds for this purpose.
Isabeau of Bavaria, who had extremely hand-
some shoulders, had at the same time, too
much volatility to conform herself to the
guimpe, or nun's handkerchief, which was worn
in the French court, at the time she arrived
there. It is to this beautiful and vicious queen,
that we might ascribe the honor of those robes,


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
65
0
"
open on the back, which the present age has
improved to such an extent, as to justify Isa-
beau from that reproach of indecency which
her contemporaries lavished upon her.
Henry II., from a contrary motive, in order
to conceal a scar which he had received on his
neck, the origin of which, he apprehended,
might expose him to contempt, or rather, in
order to escape contempt altogether, invented
the ruff; and the women, always in extremes,
adopted, but with excessive exaggeration, the
mode which the prince had introduced. Cathe-
rine de Medicis made it her principal orna-
ment, and some years after, a queen of the
same house, Mary de Medicis, without dimi-
nishing the amplitude of the ruff, gave it a di-
rection more favourable to a display of the
neck; she bequeathed her name to this article
of dress, which was revived with extraordinary
eclat, by the French ladies at the commence.
ment of the nineteenth century. This orna-
ment, common to both sexes at the time of the
Medicis, was adopted by all Europe. John
Stowe, an English author and tailor, has left
some invaluable memorials respecting the
fashions of his country, he says, “At this epoch,
the reputation of a young cavalier consisted in
the size of his ruff, and the length of his ra-
pier."
The reign of Henry III. was that of perfu-
mers; this effeminate prince who passed every
day, four hours at his toilette, and who slept in
prepared gloves, in order to give delicacy to
F 2


66
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
his hands, found it easy to disseminate his own
taste for cosmeticks among the women, and
that multitude of young voluptuaries who reign-
ed in his name. The Italian perfumers were at
that time the most celebrated; numbers came
to settle at Paris; and this art, so highly es-
teemed and contributing so much to the enjoy-
ments of the orientalists, was there carried to a
perfection, which, notwithstanding all their ef-
forts, the Teissiers, the Fargeons, and the Ri-
bans, have not been able to attain.
.
One of the most ridiculous adjuncts of the
female toilette in former times, the vertugadin,
originated during the sixteenth century: it
was ridiculously imagined to give elegance to
the shape by rounding the hips, and the women,
in compliment to their modesty, called it vir-
tue garden, corrupted into vertugadin. This
embellishment, abandoned for more than an
age, reappeared in full splendour, under the
name of the Panier; this was the name of a so-
licitor who died at that epoch, and some élégantes
took this method of immortalising his name by
an absurdity. This panier enveloped all the
women in Europe. Addison dilates on the sub-
ject with no less wit than severity: he com-
pares the monstrous superfluity, to those sacred
enclosures of the African nations, in the centre of
which, we discover, enclosed by seven or eight
circumvallations, the god, who, after all, is no-
thing but a diminutive ape.
This pleasantry has so much spirit in the
original text that I will transcribe it.


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
67
"When I survey this new-fashioned rotunda,
(the paniers in question) I cannot but think of
the old philosopher, who, after having entered in-
to an Egyptian temple, and looked about for the
idol of the place, at length discovered a little
black monkey, inshrined in the midst of it, upon
which he could not forbear crying out: what a
magnificent palace is here for such a ridiculous
inhabitant."
I shall now speak of recent and existing
fashions, with some details, in their relationship
to taste, manners, and local affinities.
After having thrown a rapid coup-d'œil over
the principal revolutions of France, since the
foundation of the monarchy to the present
times, I arrest ny course for a moment at the
eighteenth century; of which I have seen the
larger half, and to the follies of which, I recol-
lect with some compunction, I did all in my
power to contribute.
During the latter years of Louis XIVth., the
court subjected to the immutable ordinations of
etiquette, conformed itself to the manners of
the prince, and the gaiety of fashion, was sup-
planted by a disgusting formality. The old no-
blemen felt no inclination to revive a costume
contemporary with their youth and their glory;
the young ones were fearful of hazarding the
slightest change, under the eyes of a suspicious
monarch, who considered every species of in-
novation as an insult to his authority, or at least,
as an indirect satire on those customs which he
himself had originally established. Thus, on


68
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION,
one side, the fear inspired by the king; on the
other, the excessive prudery affected by Ma-
dame Maintenon, subjected for some time,
both the court and the city to a sullen uniformi-
ty, the most intolerable yoke which could pos-
sibly have been imposed on the French nation.
On the death of Lewis XIV. the proteus of fa-
shion burst his fetters, and established himself
at the court of the regent. The Duke of Or
leans retained in his mature age, the propensi-
ties of his youth, and himself gave the signal of
that sudden revolution, which was immediately
effected in costume and in manners. The
young gentry immediately exchanged their
large doublets, and long skirts, for the Polish
cloak and the Turkish vest; they passed from
the church to the tavern, from the sermons to
the operas, and honoured themselves with the
appellation of roues, to which we can ascribe no
other meaning than that of the punishment
which their debaucheries frequently merited.*
The bon ton, at that time, was to pass the day
in a tavern, and to present themselves at the
"CEil-de-Bœuf," flushed with wine, and their
noses covered with snuff. The toilette grew
almost obsolete amidst this systematic derange.
ment; stockings drawn on athwart the leg,
ruffled lace, and a disordered head-dress, form-
ed for a red-heeled petit-maitre, the last degree
of elegance and polished manners.
*The punishment of the Wheel, but Roue, in the
Dictionary of the Academy is explained to be the fa-
miliar appellation for a person devoid of principle.


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
69
This revolution in system, contributed more
than any thing else to that inundation of false
taste, which overwhelmed both fashion and the
arts during the reign of Louis XV. The scan-
dalous fortunes amassed by financiers, gave
birth to the most enormous absurdities: these
upstart gentry, having risen for the most part,
from the dregs of society, imagined themselves
imitating the manners of the court, while they
adopted its vices, and exaggerated its luxuries.
Under a habit, bedizened with gold lace and
embroidery, heaped on, without taste, and with-
out selection, the farmer-general felt himself
an important personage, but he was still only a
Turcaret. In order to conceal, as much as
possible, those traits, of which nobility was not
the distinctive character, they invented the per-
ruque, à la financière; by which the head was,
in some degree enveloped in a triple row of
buckles, knots, and curls.
That practice, the most absurd and unac-
countable of which we have any record, the
practice of wearing powder began at this epoch.
The young Duke of Fronsac, (afterwards Mar-
shal Richelieu) was the first who adopted it.
Dress, at the same time, began to lose some-
thing of its amplitude, cuffs gave way to laced
ruffles, the frill was substituted for the band,
and stockings rolled over the knee, remained in
the world, as on the stage, the exclusive ap-
purtenance of extreme old age.
Suppers formed, at that time, the fashion-
able repast; those of the Regent, at the Palais-


70
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
Royal, were distinguished for spirit and gaiety,
yet were regulated by a species of etiquette,
which excluded that liberty, or in other words,
license, which this prince, sufficiently amiable
in other respects, associated with his pleasures.
In order to disengage himself from the vestige
of restraint, he substituted for the grand sup-
pers of the Palais-Royal, the little suppers of
the Luxembourg, where his daughter, the Du-
chess of Berry did the honours a little too gaily.
This retreat at the Luxembourg, of which we
will not stop to consider all the conveniencies,
gave, I believe, the first idea of Petites Maisons,
of those pretended and mysterious asylums,
where pleasure, it was imagined, had been se-
cured by the expulsion of ceremony; where
domestics had been excluded in prudential pre-
caution; and in fine, where the fugitive sought
concealment, like the Galatea of Virgil, in or-
der to be seen more effectually. Whatever
was the origin and purpose of these Petites
Maisons, they gave birth to an evening demi-
negligè, of which the male head-dress, was ana-
lagously, a hat à la Jaquet, and that of the wo-
men, (in derision, no doubt) the cap of Mi-
nerva.
The painter, Boucher, had too much influ-
ence on the fashions of his day, to allow us to
forget him in a history of their revolutions.
His pictures, the extraordinary popularity of
which, may give some idea of the state of de-
gradation into which the arts had fallen in
France, were, during more than fifteen years


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
71
(from 1724 to 1740) the sole authorities of fa-
shion. This affected painter, who was most ri-
diculously called the painter of the Graces, be-
came the oracle of all the pretty women of this
epoch, each of whom endeavoured to model her
appearance by some figure in his pictures.
They imitated the capricious draperies, of pur-
ple, pink, and grey stuffs, in which Boucher
dressed up those puppets, which he denomi-
nated shepherdesses. This was the time for
pompoons, furbelows and for trinkets of all
kinds, with which female costume is incumber-
ed.
In order to form a just idea of the bad taste
of those times, it is only necessary to give a
glance at the general collection of head-dresses,
and the assemblage of French fashions, formerly
at Desnos'; and even now consulted with avi-
dity by the curious.
The rage for knick-knacks extended itself
through all the empire of luxury: the women
were all enraptured with Chinese monsters,
japan vases, lackered toilets, tapestries in ca-
maieu, cut parterres, and lap-dogs. Boucher,
whom the king had nominated his first painter,
by way of recompensing him, no doubt, for hav-
ing painted his portrait as Hercules, with an
eagle on his head, might boast of having given
the tone to his age, and to have corrupted the
arts in all their departments. His style, unfor
tunately is not the only memorial which he has
left of his influence.


72
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
The use of powder introduced innumerable
alterations in the head-dresses, both of men and
women. Towards the end of the reign of Louis
XV., the men, familiar at court, wore their hair
buckled and tied behind with a simple ribband,
which allowed it to float over their shoulders.
Some elegantès accustomed themselves to tie
it up during the morning, in a purse of black
taffeta, to which they gave the name of the bag,
and this, at last, formed part of a full-dress.
The bag varied its form and colour; sometimes
it exhibited itself at the Tuileries, in a sky-blue
or rose colour: the bourgeois restricted them-
selves to the crapeau, a little round purse,
which confined the hair close to the head.
While the men displayed in their head-dresses,
the various inventions of the horse-shoe, (coif-
fures en fer à cheval) the pigeon's wings, the
hundred curls, and the cavalier's wig; the wo-
men exceeded them in an absurdity, the privi-
lege of which they preserved to themselves.
The famous Leònard has immortalised it—
>
En portant jusque'au ciel l'audace des coiffures.
Raised the audacious head-dress to the sky.
At this time, (in 1775) women were obliged
to remove the cushions from the seats of car-
riages, in order to find room; and they took
especial care to enter head-foremost, lest any
accident should happen to the coiffure; several
pleasant caricatures appeared on the subject, in
one of which, we see a gallant, who knocks out


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
73
the top of a coach gateway, for the purpose of
introducing into his hotel, a lady whom he had
under his arm.
In another, a set of fire-men are playing their
engines in order to extinguish a conflagration,
which has burst out in one of those gigantic
head-dresses.
Here the coiffure mounted on a double lad-
der, had the appearance of a hedge-row of elm
trees.
There, that of a young sportsman, exploring
the summit of the head-dress, in search of the
birds inhabiting it, as in a lofty forest.
Leonard held the title of hair-dresser to the
court: it was established that no lady should be
presented unless he had dressed her hair, and
had received from her a douceour of ten guineas,
mysteriously presented: this was the price
which he expected for the stroke of his comb.
A geometrician calculated, that a lady's face
occupied exactly the centre point, betwixt her
feet, and the summit of that edifice of hair,
which surmounted her head. This curious
scaffolding gave way all at once, and little bon-
nets, whose nomenclature alone would fill a vo-
lume, succeeded with the rapidity of that ca-
price which gave them birth, and which deter-
mined their duration. Every new event explod-
ed the preceding fashion. The romance of
Paul and Virginia, brought into vogue the
Creole head-dress, and the success of la Folle
har Amour, gave birth to the hat, a la Nina.
VOL. III.
G


74
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
The revolution commenced, and fashion en-
joyed a kind of Saturnalia: we met in the same
saloon, the bourgeois in an embroidered habit,
the marquis in a frock, the petit-maitre, en che-
nille (caterpillar), the Anglican in boots; wo-
men en levite, en pierrot, en caraco, and in long-
tailed robes. Terror, in a red bonnet, soon
simplified the costume; and the carmagnole was
admitted as a habit of luxury, among a nation
of sans culottes.
The first moments of tranquillity, re-illumin-
ed the torch of pleasure, and gaiety was the
only impulse. The balls of the hotel de Riche-
lieu, the concerts of Feydeau, the fêtes of Gar-
chi, and of the pavillion d'Hanovre, witnessed
the resuscitation of our élégantes in the Greek
costume, and the young men assumed the head-
dress of the Roman emperors. At length, af-
ter the costumes of all nations, ancient and mo-
dern, had passed before us, during the space
of a few years, our women appear to have se-
lected whatever is most agreeable from each,
for the formation of their own. I except, how-
ever, the Chinese head-dress, the immeasura-
ble height of which, deprives the head of all
proportion and grace; and imposes a penance
on every man who has the misfortune to be
placed at a spectacle, behind one of those demi-
elegantes, who have lately adopted this misera-
ble caricature.
The reigning fashions, although partially
imitated, as I have said, from originals too re-
mote, leave us little to wish, since they have.


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
75
been adopted with reference to our habitual
feelings, our manners, and our climate. Per-
haps one would wish a little more of the ideal.
A refined morality is estimated, in our modern
imaginations, before every thing, and we exact,
from whatever lays claim to the homage of our
adıniration, the charm of delicacy and mystery.
When a female betrays, in every step she takes
in the street, the beauties of her person, does
she not, in part, divest herself of her influence?
A long
civilisation renders us difficult to
please every charm which a woman reveals,
every veil she discards, may be considered as
an attraction sacrificed. I speak here in the
interest of love, which can never be separated
from that of modesty.
The greatest inconvenience in the reigning
fashions, is the expense they occasion. Luxury,
though perhaps essential to the state, ought
not be considered an obligation of custom. It
is injudicious to make the Cachemire shawl an
indispensable appendage for every woman, or
the lace veil for all young wives: I do not like
to see at a spectacle, the wife of a merchant,
glittering in as superb a set of diamonds as the
marchioness in the adjacent box, to whom, she
probably sold a dress during the morning.
Women, it cannot be denied, pay more at-
tention to their intellect, at present, than for-
merly: how is it then that their expenses are
increased in so alarming a proportion? Here,
a woman who, herself, nurses all her children,
ruins them by her luxury: and the bills of Le


76
REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
•
Roi produce, at least as much trouble in affairs
of house-keeping, as love-letters could do. If
women only adorned themselves, as heretofore,
for the purpose of pleasing the men, I would
take on myself to convince them, I, who am in
the secret of these things, that so much ex-
pense is useless; that men take no account but
of such ornaments as are becoming, that they
understand what pleases, and not what it is ne-
cess ry to admire; that a little grace, wit, and
amiability, which cost nothing, charm them in-
finitely beyond jewels and embroidery, which
occasion ruin. But what purpose does all my
discourse answer? Women, at present, dress
for-women; the toilette is nothing more than
the instrument of a cold ambition which they
exercise on each other, and as these ladies are,
in general, sufficiently difficult to convince on
the subject of their respective attractions, they
have resorted to an infallible criterion for es-
tablishing their superiority-the price of a
shawl or a diamond.
The male habit in France, is, what it has
constantly been since the reign of Henry III.
inclusively, (whatever change it may have un-
dergone) scanty, incommodious, and ungrace-
ful it has besides, in my eyes, the inconveni-
ence of confounding all ranks and all profes-
sions; this perhaps may be a prejudice peculiar
to my age, but I cannot see what utility can re-
sult from the pretensions of persons to a dis-
tinction to which they have no right; it ap-
pears to me, too, that an equality of costume


REVOLUTIONS OF FASHION.
77
tends to create an ambition in many to rise
above their condition, since a similarity of ha-
bit contributes to preserve that esprit de corps,
so necessary in all professions. The magis-
trate, in long locks had more gravity; the phy-
sician, in a black robe, and a large wig, would
not have dared to jest at the pillow of a
dying man; the sword worn by the courtier,
enforced on him a law of politeness; and the
venerable habit peculiar to the ecclesiastic ex-
acted from him the greatest circumspection in
his conduct and conversation. If an epoch be
objected to me, in which it was different, it was
at a time when society was tending towards its
destruction, and I find in it the proof, not the
refutation of an opinion, which I maintain after
Duclos and St. Fois.
It would be worthy of the age in which we
live, to create a national costume, which should
re-establish those gradations, and which, more
favourable to the exterior of men, should asso-
ciate for women, the forms most favorable to
beauty, such as would impress respect, and
preserve to them the prepossessions of imagi-
nation.
G 2


78
No. V.-10th Nov. 1813.
10th
AN EXECUTION AT THE PLACE DE GREVE,
D'un spectacle cruel indignement avide,
Turbulent, curieux avec compassion,
Tout un peuple s'agite autour de la prison:
Etrange empressement de voir des misérables!
On hâte, en gemissant, ces momens formidables.
VOLT. TANCREDE, Act. 3. Sec. 3.
With barbarous haste, with tumult fierce and loud,
Round the dire scaffold throng the curious crowd;
They pant for blood, and urge with furious breath
The destin'd hour to feast their eyes with death.
I HAD occasion to remark, in my last essay,
that particular contrast in the French character,
constituted by a love of novelty, and an attach-
ment to custom. This strange contradiction,
though equally strong, is perhaps less offensive,
at the first glance, than that of excessive po-
liteness, and of ferocious curiosity, for which
the people, and principally those of this capi-
tal, have at all times been distinguished. In
fact, what different ideas must suggest them-
selves to two strangers, one of whom had only
seen the Parisians at the opera; the other, only
in traversing the city along the quays, on the


AN EXECUTION AT THE, &c.
79
day of an execution at the Place de Grève?
What must the last imagine, on finding his car-
riage arrested, at every instant, in the midst of
an immense crowd pressing round the Hotel de
Ville and the Palais de Justice; in hearing the
confused and tumultuous shouts of the popu-
lace, which are raised pretty nearly in the same
degree, whatever be the circumstance which
Occasions them?
This stranger, who sees on the road the ar
tisan quit his shop; the bourgeois forget his din-
ner-hour; women stationed at the windows;
others mingled in the crowd, with which the
quays and the bridges are covered; the taverns
and public houses filled with guests; must not
this stranger, I say, imagine himself arrived at
Paris on the day of a grand solemnity? Suppose
also, that he questions his postillion, and is in-
formed that this concourse of people, that all
this eagerness is for the purpose of enjoying
the last agonies of an unhappy wretch, con-
demned to execution; would not the traveller,
in order to reconcile the traces of civilisation
he had observed, with such barbarous habits—
would he not be justified in believing himself
in the midst of a horde of savages, recently
established in the capital of a civilised nation?
Curious to observe a little nearer this multi-
tude of the borders of the Seine, he descends,
mingles among the crowd, and addressing him
self to one of the inhabitants of la Grève, he
inquires what was the use of those piles of
wood-work which are now being pulled down,


80
AN EXECUTION AT THE
and which appear to have belonged to some
grand construction; the person replies, that
these vestiges formed part of a vast wooden
edifice, which had been erected a fortnight
since, for the purpose of public rejoicing.-And
this other building of smaller extent, which
they prepare on the same spot? That is a scaf-
fold, where we shall see, precisely at four
o'clock, a well-known individual, who has been
tried and convicted of assassination. I imagine
that at this response, the stranger must say to
himself, "What! the inhabitants of this good
city erect then, in the same place, ball-rooms
and scaffolds! they mingle, in idea at least, the
sounds of a violin and the cries of a malefac-
tor! they appoint, at the same time, and in the
same place, fêtes and executions! I have de-
ceived myself, these persons are not savages;
they are fools." I have often made this reflec-
tion, which I here ascribe to my traveller; and
I never pass the place de Grève, without trem-
bling at this terrifying contrast, the image of
which is always before my eyes.
This place, the name of which revives the
most odious recollections, was, at the com-
mencement of the 14th age, appropriated to the
execution of criminals. It is painful to learn
that innocent blood was the first which flowed
here. An unhappy female heretic, named Marga-
ret Porette, scarcely thirty years old, was burnt
here in 1310, for having written, that the soul,
absorbed in God, is at the height of every virtue,
and has nothing more to do: and that when a cer-


PLACE DE GREVE.
81
tain degree of virtue is attained, one cannot go
beyond it. Four hundred years afterwards, an-
other female was allowed to utter, with impu-
nity, nearly the same absurdities Four ages
hence, and perhaps we shall run the risk of be-
ing burnt, for denying the evidence of the same
propositions; so unerring is human reason! so
infallible is human justice!-Previously to this
execution, criminals were put to death in the
market-places, which still participated, during
more than an age, with la Grève, the misera-
ble prerogative of scaffolds. In this last place,
were decapitated, in 1898, the two Augustin
monks, who had engaged, for a large remune-
ration, and on the penalty of their lives, to cure
Charles VI. of an incurable malady, with which
he was struck. The two friars lost their heads,
and the king did not recover his own. The last
execution, which took place in a market-place,
in 1477, was that of the unhappy Duke of Ne-
mours, whose children, placed on the scaffold,
by order of the cruel Louis XI., were covered
with the blood of their father. This unfortu-
nate man was conducted from the Bastile to
the place of his execution, on a horse, capari-
soned with black. Since that epoch, every sen-
tence of death, passed at Paris, has been exe-
cuted at the Place de Grève.
In coming, some days since, out of the Hotel
de Ville, I stopt for some moments on the
steps; when I found myself assailed, all at
once, by a multitude of ideas and of painful re-
collections. I imagined that I had under my


82
AN EXECUTION AT THE
eyes, the scaffold where a brave general pe-
rished so miserably, surrounded by the beau-
monde, who came to have the pleasure of seeing
his head fall; that enormous gibbet where the
unfortunate Favras was one of the first to pay
his life for his unalterable fidelity. I contem-
plated, with shuddering, this Hotel de Ville,
the witness of so many crimes and so many ex-
ecutions. I ran over, in idea, the sanguinary
records of la Grève, where I read with horror
the names of Ravailhac, of Brinvilliers, of Da-
mien, of Cartouche, and all the frightful suc-
cession of human atrocities. Every kind of
crime-robbery, assassination, poisoning, par-
ricide, sacrilege, finds there its ignominious il-
lustration; and according to the remark of the
judicious author of "Essays on Paris," all the
monsters who have figured at this place, would
form an assemblage more numerous than any
one of those which have been collected at their
execution.
These melancholy ideas, on which my mind
engaged itself involuntarily during the rest of
the day, continued to occupy me in the even-
ing, when I met Dr. M., one of those men,
who, as Sterne says, "seek the north-east pas-
sage of the intellectual world, to expedite their
arrival at the land of science." This learned
physician, the great enemy of systems, and of
speculative theories, has occupied himself,
during six years, on a work" on the Affinities
of Physiology and Morals," in the execution of
which, he spends great part of his time in pri-


PLACE DE GREVE.
83
sons, in order to collect his facts, to multiply
his authorities, and to extend his experience.
The interest of the science, and the constant
preoccupation of a single idea, protects him
from any painful feeling, and even from the ri-
dicule sometimes excited by the diligence he
uses to be present at the apprehension of great
criminals, to follow them before the tribunals,
into the prisons, and even to the foot of the
scaffold, at the risk of being confounded with
those unfeeling idlers, who seek, indifferently,
a spectacle at la Grève or at Tivoli. Persons
who are accustomed to confound the words and
ideas of sensation and of sentiment, who take
no account of the strength of will and the
force of habit, would find it difficult to believe
the sensibility of a man, who makes it his task
to watch, in the heart of a condemned crimi-
nal, the last sighs of hope, and to observe hu-
man nature at war with the idea of destruction.
The Doctor explains extremely well, and
proves still better by his practice, that the ope-
rations of the mind and the movements of the
soul are not on the same principle, and ought
not to be judged of by the same results. Mr.
M. concluded, while yet arguing, by making
me promise to attend him the next day to the
Conciergerie, to see the assassin Laumond,
previous to the hour of his being brought forth
for his execution.
The Doctor was exact; but at the moment
of setting out, I felt a compunction at heart,
which would have made me renounce my pro-


-94
AN EXECUTION AT THE
ject, if I had not been ashamed of exposing all
my weakness to a man who would not have done
honour to my sensibility. We departed. On
the road, he recounted to me the frightful de-
tails of the murder committed on the fruiterer
of Verneuil Street. The unhappy being
whom we are going to see," said he, in finish-
ing his narration, " is a new proof, in support
of a truth which I shall exemplify by his whole
career it is, that the door of a gaming-house
is one of the gates to the gibbet. During fifteen
years that I have studied, that I have been ma-
king observations on great criminals, I have
scarcely seen any who have not been seized, ei-
ther with the dice or the cards in their hands."
Without giving me time to object to what I
might consider exaggerated in this assertion,
he applied the principle to the whole life of this
Laumond, whom he described, even in his
childhood, abandoned to that love of gaming
which he retained during his whole career, in
public places among children of his own age,
who played the prelude to the same vices, in
yielding to the same inclinations." In turn, a
bad son, a bad husband, a bad father, I should
have concluded," continued the Doctor," from
the details only of his private life, that the head
of such a man must be consigned to the exe-
cutioner before the age of thirty. One thing
only surprises me," added he, "it is, that a
wretch whose crime evinced so much weak-
ness, should have had the courage to dispense
with the privilege of pleading not guilty, to


PLACE DE GREVE.
85
dispute with justice those hours of agony, and
which the law grants the criminal; we scarce-
ly meet with one victim in a thousand who has
the resolution to refuse this cruel benefit."
We arrived at the prison, and we had great
difficulty in traversing the court, where twenty
thousand persons waited, with impatience, the
moment of execution. The entrance of the
Conciergerie has nothing repulsive except in
the idea attached to it. After having passed
under the fatal archwway, guarded by a piquet
of soldiers, appointed as an escort to the crimi-
nal, we presented ourselves at the wicket,
which opened at the voice of the Doctor. The
silence of death reigned, already, within those
vaults, elevated on the site of the ancient pa-
lace of our kings: the frightful dungeons, by
which we were surrounded, formed, hereto-
fore, part of the apartments which Saint Louis
inhabited. This court, which the criminal
paces, revolving his past crimes, or where, per-
haps, some innocent sheds his tears in secret,
is the same inclosure where King Charles V.
assembled his council; where the princes of
the blood, and the nobility of the kingdom, net
to discuss the interests of the people, and the
necessities of the state. We were between the
two wickets, in the parlour of the Wardour's
Office, whither the criminal was about to be
brought. Exactly at half-past three, when the
Serjeant of the Imperial Court arrived, in or-
der to conduct him to the place of execution,
the door of a long obscure corridor opened with
VOL. III.
H


86
AN EXECUTION AT THE
a great noise, and the assassin, Laumond, ap-
peared between the executioners; not having
on the earth, from which he was about to disap-
pear, any other creature who interested himself
in his fate, except the virtuous ecclesiastic,
whose holy office is to administer consolation to
despair, and present hope to repentance. There
are emotions, of which, we cannot give an idea,
even after having felt them: such are those
produced by the sight of a being who breathes,
who thinks, who moves, who is in full posses-
sion of his faculties, physical and moral; and
who in a few minutes will present only the
image of death,-will be nothing more than a
corpse. I wish in vain, for the power of ex-
pressing that which passed within me at the
sight of this unfortunate, whose hair fell be-
neath the fatal scissars, and whom the execu-
tioners stripped, after having tied his hands.
In contemplating him, standing on a stool, his
eyes haggard, his head reclined on his breast,
every muscle of his body in convulsive agita-
tion, the assassin disappeared; I no longer saw
any thing but a man, and sentiments of horror
gave way to those of pity. The bell tolled
four. At this signal of death, the gratings
flew open: he again saw the sky; he found
himself, once more, in the midst of men, from
the number of whom he was already proscrib-
ed. He mounted into the car of infamy, amidst
the noise of imprecations, with which his ap-
pearance inspired the multitude, and which ac-
companied him even to the scaffold, erected in


PLACE DE GREVE.
87
the Place de Grève, which he had more than
once traversed, in meditating, perhaps, the
crime for which he was about to receive pu-
nishment.
After the criminal's departure, the Doctor
conducted me to the keeper's apartments,
where we found, in a saloon agreeably decorat-
ed, a young person who was taking a lesson in
music, and who sung in a sweet voice, accom-
panying it with the piano, the ballad of "The
beautiful Country of Spain." This near ap-
proach of objects so contrasted, of a vile assas-
sin and a young girl, full of grace and inno-
cence; of a gloomy dungeon, and a musical
saloon; of the noise of chains, and a song of
love; furnished me with a source of reflections
which I need only hint, to suggest a similar
train to the imaginations of my readers.


88
No. VI.-25th Sept. 1813.
THE RACES OF THE CHAMP DE MARS.
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.
VIRGIL.
De leurs pas bruyans battant les champs poudreux,
D'un tourbillon de sable obscurcissent les cieux.
DELILLE, Eneide 8.
Beating the ground, their burning feet gives rise
To clouds of dust which darken all the skies.
Fas est ab hoste doceri.
HORACE.
It is sometimes useful to receive lessons from an
enemy.
ONE of the most remarkable chapters of the
immortal work of M. de Buffon, is that on the
horse. This the eloquent writer describes as
the most brilliant conquest which man has made
over nature; and nobody, after reading his ad-
mirable description of the manners of that no-
ble creature, can be astonished at the rank as-
signed to him by his historian. "In all ages


RACES OF THE CHAMP DE MARS.
89
and in every nation of the world," says an Eng-
lish author*, "horses have enjoyed a very high
consideration. Every body knows that Darius
was indebted for the throne of Persia to the
neighing of his horse, which by-the-bye, has
made some of those who rail at the facts and
exploits of antiquity say, that it might have been
as well to suffer the false Smerdis to reign, as
to supersede him in this manner. Bucephalus
shared with Alexander the glory of his con-
quests. It is a well established fact, that a
Roman Emperor wished his horse to be named
Consul; and it has been generally admitted,
that that dignity would have become the animal
quite as well as the diadem did his master."-
But without going back so far, and seeking so
high for the titles of this beautiful quadruped,
let us examine him in that exercise in which
he displays to the greatest advantage the valua-
ble qualities of which he is possessed.
* Adam Fitz-Adam, author of a periodical work
called "The World." Author.-Mr. Jouy seems not
to be aware that Adam-Fitz-Adam was the assumed
name of Mr. Moore, the editor of this periodical pub-
fication, the contributors to which were very nume.
rous; comprehending, in addition to Mr. Moore, H.
Walpole, Mr. W. Whitehead, Mr. Goventrye, Mr. J.
Wharton, Mr. J. Tilson, Mr. Dodsley, Mr. Duncombe,
Sir C. H. Williams, Mr. Parratt, Mr. Roberts, the Earl
of Corke, Mr. Cambridge, the Hon. Mr. Boyle, Mr.
Cole, Mr. R. Berenger, Mr. Loveybond, Mr. Garrick,
Mr. J. G. Cooper, jun. Mr. Marriott, Mr. Herring,
Mr. Soame Jenyns, Mr. Mulso, Sir. D. Dalrymple, Mr.
Ridley, Mr. Moyle, Mr. Gataker, Mr. Burgess, and
several anonymous correspondents.---Translator.
H 2


90.
THE RACES OF THE.
The English are unquestionably, of all ma
dern people, those who have given their atten-
tention to the care of horses with most success.
If it is doubtful whether they have yet brought
this race of animals to perfection, it is certain
that they have singularly improved that breed,
which they designate (principally on account of
its swiftness) the race horse. Two great means
have conducted them to this result; the scru-
pulous attention with which they apply them-
selves to establish in the most authentic man-
ner the origin of the race horse; and the insti-
tution of the annual meetings at Newmarket,
&c. The English have borrowed from the
Arabs the use of genealogies of horses; to es-
tablish which, they require evidence better
supported, and proofs more numerous than they
formerly demanded at the installation of a canon
of Lyons, or a knight of Malta.
The taste or rather the passion for horses,
which was extinguished in France with the use
of tournaments, revived towards the middle of
the last century, and it is from that epoch that
they date the first experiment of races, in imi-
tation of those adopted in England. This at-
tempt was made in consequence of a wager
laid at Fontainbleau (during a journey of the
Court) by an English gentleman whose name
I cannot at this moment recollect. He had
betted a thousand louis, that in two hours he
would perform the journey from Fontainbleau
to the barrière des Gobelins, and he won by some
minutes. In the year following, a great French


CHAMP DE MARS.
94-
lord, on his return from England, (where Louis
XV. represented him to have been to learn to
take care of horses) succeeded in procuring an
exhibition of races in the plain des Sablons.-
He endeavoured to provide for their periodical
return, but this project was not carried into ef-
fect till many years afterwards, when the races
of the wood of Vincennes were established,
which had no object of public utility or national
glory in view, since all the horses which ran
were brought from England.
In instituting annual races, where none are
admitted but native horses, and where a prize
is given to the winners to indemnify them for
their trouble and expenses, the government
hoped to excite a spirit of emulation in the
proprietors, to bring to perfection the excellent
species of French horses. The progress made
in a short time renders it impossible to doubt,
that the end proposed will be soon attained,
and that we shall equal, if not surpass, our
neighbours.
Every civilised nation has a degree of supe-
riority over others, which in some respect dis-
tinguishes it; and among many advantages of
which the English gratuitously boast, they may
establish a just title to one, in the excellence
of their stud. This concession I lately made
to M. de Mairieux, an old Anglomaniac of my
acquaintance, who is never weary of speaking
of the excellence of their grooms, of the clean-
liness, convenience, and even the elegance of
their stables, and especially of all the minute


92
THE RACES OF THE
attention which is bestowed upon the breeding
of the horse in England. I happened to hear
a long account, connected with this subject, of
a three months' journey which my friend made
on the other side of the channel, in the course
of which "he bought an old Devonshire stal-
lion, which he has just succeeded in smuggling
over, and out of which, eight or ten years ago,
he might have got some fine colts. He has
attended the races at New-market, where he
betted ten guineas with the Lord Mayor's But-
ler; he has visited the stud of Mr. Brindley;
rode a horse belonging to the Prince of Wales,
and made an acquaintance with the Duke of
York's stable-keeper." It may easily be con-
ceived, that a person with such connexions,
and such prepossessions, had some difficulty in
persuading himself to accompany me on Sun-
day to the races of the Champ de Mars. “What
can one see here in amusements of this des-
cription," said he, " after being in England?"
The weather was beautifully fine; he thought
he might as well walk there as any where else,
and therefore suffered himself to be prevailed
upon, and we set off from the coffee-house,
where we had breakfasted together, to go to
the Champ de Mars, in the midst of an immense
crowd, journeying the same way. We for the
first time crossed the river over the bridge of
Jena, that chef-d'œuvre of art, which the good
Parisians en oy with indifference,
r
"Et comme accutum s de areils présens.”
"As if accustom'd to such glorious gifts."


CHAMP DE MARS.
93
DS
3.
I think it is impossible for imagination to form
a more magnificent and animated picture than
that furnished by the splendid esplanade of the
Military School, at the moment when the peo-
ple, in immense numbers, crowded towards it
on all sides, to take their places on the terrace,
which bounds the enclosed circle. Some one
near me (he was misinformed I hope) said it
was in contemplation to level the earth, and to
destroy this vast amphitheatre, which was rais-
ed in eight days by the labour of the entire po.
pulation of Paris, for the memorable Federa-
tion of 1790. We have so often had occasion
to appreciate the advantages of a place so ad-
mirably fitted for national fêtes, that it does not
seem to me at all probable that this levelling
project will be adopted.
While the crowd arranged themselves on
the ground, the calashes, curricles, buggies,
and vehicles of all descriptions, were placed in
order along the avenues at the extremity of the
Champ de Mars. The space specially reserved
for the race was marked by posts fastened with
ropes in the form of a gate. The centre was
occupied by spectators on horseback; two tents
were opened to persons who had cards of invi.
tation; a third more elegantly decorated, was
prepared for his Excellency the Minister of the
Interior, the judges of the course, the inspec
tors of the stud, and the jury of admission. My
friend Mairieux, quite astonished at the beauty
of the coup d'œil, confessed to me, shaking his
head, that New-market was far from offering


94.
THE RACES OF THE
to the eye so imposing a spectacle. Forced to
admire the general aspect of the scene, he in-
demnified himself by censuring the details of
it, and he spared at most not more than five or
six of the horsemen among those who travelled
over the circle; and who successively became
the objects of his criticism. "One was mount-
ed on a short-tailed horse, caparisoned like
that of an hussar; another trotted in the Eng-
lish way on a flat saddle, with a fly driver, a
velvet chabraque of a crimson colour, and a
bow upon his horse's tail. This one curvetted
on an English saddle, with ornaments on the
bridle, the crupper, and the martingale; that
galloped a contre pied with impenetrable assur-
ance." All these perversions of costume amus-
ed my companion much, who ridiculed equally
the riders and their horses. "These were not
well formed; those had a bad gait; the others
were of no breed. It was easy to perceive
from the trot of some, that the modest animals
had just quitted the pole of a hackney coach
or the shaft of a demi-fortune (a one-horse car-
riage), to figure on the course as riding-horses,
and it could be seen that others, in attempting
to gallop, vainly endeavoured to bring back the
recollection of their youth."
It was four o'clock-the moment at which
the race was to commence approached; the
horses had been examined by the inspectors,
and admitted to be French. The jockies, with
their saddles under their arms, dressed in their
caps and satin jackets, after having been weigh-


CHAMP DE MARS.
95
ed according to custom, finished saddling their
horses, and inspected every part of the harness.
At length the signal for starting was given, and we
hastened to take our stand on a hill, about a hun-
dred toises from the winning-post, in the midst
of a worthy family which had been assembled
there ever since the morning. The chief
member of the house lost no time in letting
me know that he had been for the last thirty
years a seller of lemonade on the Boulevart
Beaumarchais. The hobby of this good man,
who had probably in the course of his life, seen
few horses but those of the brewer, who brought
him once a week his cask of beer; his hobby I
say, was to speak of racing against time in tech-
nical language, of which he knew not the mean-
ing, with an assurance extremely ludicrous, to
every one but Mairieux, who was only occupied
in furnishing him with the proper words. It
is probable that the lemonade merchant would
have finished like Larissole by sending his
instructor packing, but happily a general cry
announced the commencement of the race.
Two beautiful horses mounted by jockies,
who were dressed the one in blue, the other in
yellow, ran the first heat with a rapidity at which
my companion himself was surprised. The
second was not so soon performed, which cau-
sed him to pronounce that our jockies did not
know their trade, and that those of England
were very careful to husband the strength of
their horses for the last moment, when they ap-
proached the goal. However this may bc, the


96
THE RACES OF THE
yellow jockey finished his career in four minutes
and forty-eight seconds; got in twelves seconds
before his rival, and was proclaimed the winner
of the first race.
In the next contest between two mares, the
blue jockey had the good fortune to get in
twelve seconds before the other.
The third race, in which many horses were
to run, particularly attracted my attention. I
surveyed with extreme pleasure some of the
most beautiful animals of the creation, dis-
playing all the suppleness of their muscles, and
all the vigour of their nerves, to establish their
superiority, of which they seemed to appreciate
the advantage. I observed the address and the
skill of those who mounted them, and who so
largely participated in their success; but what
ever attention I gave to the spectacle before
my eyes, I was very far from taking as much
interest in it as the daughter of the lemonade
seiler, near whom I found myself, and whose
anxiety and pretty face, had before attracted
my notice. This young woman, her eyes fixed
on the arena, could not help exclaiming in a
tremulous voice," there he is, father-there
he is" as she saw a young man in an orange.
coloured jacket, mounted on a mare whose ar
dour promised well, pass by like lightning-
"Ah! yes it is Francis," said the father, with
an air of indifference; "it is friend Francis,"
repeated the mother in a lower tone, taking the
hand of her daughter; and thel ittle shawl over
the bosom of Mademoiselle Louisa was I


CHAMP DE MARS.
97
M
perceived much agitated; a blush covered her
cheeks, and her eyes were suffused with tears.
At the end of the first heat, Francis was left
several toises behind by one of his rivals. My
pretty neighbour respired with difficulty: her
father declared, with a loud laugh, which he
meant to be satirical, that "Francis would not
win the race." Madame Herbert, his wife,
said that they should see," and my friend
with a loud voice offered "to bet two to one
on the jockey in the orange jacket." This
speech was requited with a look of which
Francis might have been jealous. Mairieux
was right; in the middle of the second heat,
the young man had recovered his lost ground,
and collecting for a last effort all the strength
of his mare, which he had skilfully managed,
he darted, if I may be allowed the word, to the
goal, which he reached three seconds before
the rival by whom he was most closely pressed.
I leave the reader to judge with what pleasure
Mademoiselle Louisa heard the name of the
victor proclaimed.
I did not quit the Herbert family till I had
learnt the nature of the interest which they
took in the success of Francis, nor without
complimenting his daughter on a triumph, of
which they confessed she was to be the prize.
On leaving these good folks, we dined at the
house of a Restarateur of Gros Caillou, where
I made some notes, and collected some observa-
tions which may find a place in a future paper.
VOL. III.
I
1


98
No. VII.-3d Oct. 1813.
A DINNER OF ARTIST'S.
Qu'il est grand, qu'il est douz de se dire à soimeme <-
Je n'ai point d'ennemis, j'ai des rivaux que j'aime;
Je prends part à leur gloire, a leurs maux, a leurs
biens:
Les arts nous ont unis, leur beaux jours sont les
miens.
C'est ainsi que la terre avec plaisir rassemble,
Ces chênes, ces sapins, qui s'élèvent ensemble;
Un suc, toujours égal, est préparé pour eux :
Leur pied touche aux enfers, leur ci me est dans les
cieux;
Leur tronc inébranlable et leur pompeuse tête
Résiste, en se touchant, aux coups de la tempête:
Ils vivent l'un par l'autre, ils triomphent du tems,
Tandis que, sous leur ombre, on voit de vils serpens
Se livrer, en sifflant, des guerres intestines
Et de leur sang impur arrosser leurs racines.
VOLT. Disc. en vers.
JEALOUSY in the arts, is the vice of mediocri-
ty. This has been said, I believe, and experi-
ence proves it to be true, with some few excep-
tions, which rather confirm, than militate
against the general rule. The four greatest
poets in the age of Louis XIV., Moliere, Boi-
leau, Racine and La Fontaine, lived long toge-


A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
99
ther in the strictest intimacy, and always met
once a week with Lully, Mignard, and Dufres-
noy. Chapelle, one of the Corypheuses of the
modern sect of Epicureans, the brothers Bros-
sins, so well known for their devotion to good-
living, Counsellor Brilhac and many other dis-
tinguished persons, at the same epoch estab-
lished a weekly dinner party at the Pomme-de-
Pin (Pine Apple) of which we may form some
idea, by reflecting that "les Plaideurs" and
"le Chapelain decoiffée,"* were chiefly compos-
ed at these jovial entertainments.
From this period we may date the Clubs of
Artists and Amateurs, which were so common
during the last age, and which have been con-
tinued under different names, even to our
times. The first of these which enjoyed a great
reputation, is the famous Society of the Temple,
(Societé du Temple) where the Grand Prior
congregated on stated days, all that Paris then
boasted in literature and the arts.
Some years
afterwards, was formed, under a regimen equal-
ly gay, but far less luxurious, the Society of the
Cellar, (Societé du Caveau) among the foun-
ders of which, were Piron, Duclos, Fuselier,
the younger Crébillon, Boucher, Rameau, Ber-
nard, and Collé. Never did humour, spirit,
and taste, erect a more singular tribunal of cri-
ticism. Its decisions were pronounced in
songs, and often too, upon the productions of
its own members. The triumph of the ridicu-
*Two well known works,


100
A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
lous, the absence of all pretensions, the difficult
union of bitter malice with an unalterable se-
curity of intercourse, very speedily advanced
the Caveau to high celebrity. Persons of the
first distinction, even the Count de Maurepas
himself, at that period, prime minister, solicit-
ed the favour of being admitted.
After the dispersion of the associates of the
Caveau, M. Pelletier, the farmer-general, es-
tablished a dinner at his own house, many of the
old visitors of which, still survive, and can re-
member having seen STERNE and GARRICK
during their abode in Paris. At a later period,
the Societies of the Vaudeville, and of the modern
Caveau, by attaching too much importance to
the dishes at their table, and giving too much
publicity to the manifestation of their pleasures,
seem to have had less regard for their enjoy.
ments than for the fame of their cook, and the
notoriety of some of their members. The dis-
agreeable rule which imposes on every mem-
ber the task of writing a poetical tribute, the
rivalry, and its immediate consequence the jea-
lousy, which rarely fails to spring up between
men who cultivate the same branch of litera
ture, and wrestle always on the same ground,
too often put self-love to the rack, and excite
bickerings destructive of harmony, gaiety, and
social happiness. Perhaps it is essentially ne-
cessary to a society of this sort, desirous of pre-
serving all these advantages, that it should be
composed of men, whose talents, wit, and situ-
ations in life are of various kinds, so that supe-


A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
101
riority in different lines may not become the ob-
ject of direct comparison, nor the pretext for
undue usurpation.
There exists in Paris the model of an union
of this description. The estimable body of ar-
tists who have founded it, meet every fortnight
to an unceremonious dinner, in a retired place,
just calculated for a company of twenty-five
persons, among whom are poets, musicians,
painters, performers, sculptors, and even a phy-
sician, who is not sorry to find occasional op-
portunities to join such agreeable society. Far
from inviting the attention of the public, which
might be a feather in their cap, but never is an
addition to pleasure, these amiable companions
have the more wit in consequence of their ma-
king the less parade of it, and the greater en-
joyment of their natural gaiety, from having no
one challenged by their ostentation to keep a
register of their follies. Poetical impromptus
are instantly set to music by the composer, ex-
ecuted by the singer, and sometimes suggest
to the painter the idea of a caricature. But
these productions, the offspring of jocund hila-
rity, vanish with it, and have no object beyond
that of agreeably filling up the hour which
gives them birth.
I met a Neapolitan gentleman, some time
ago in the country, with whom I had formerly
became acquainted at the house of his father,
the Marquis of Caraccioli. He had conceived
a very high opinion of the French artists of that
period, and with many demonstrations of plea-
1 2


102
A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
er.
sure, recalled to my recollection, the delightful
spring of 1765, which we had spent with Ma-
dame de Lyonne at Epinay, where Vernet, La-
grenée, Coustou, Souflot, Lekain, Caillau, Se-
daine, and Grétry passed several weeks togeth-
"I have travelled through every country
in Europe," added he, "and have seen nothing
for spirit and amiable qualities united with ta-
lent, which could be compared to that assem-
semblage of celebrated artists. The model is
lost even in France, and it is very doubtful if it
will ever be found again." As a complete an-
swer to this declaration, I invited my Neapoli-
tan friend to dine one day at la G *** when a
meeting was certain. I conducted him to a
Traiteur's of unostentatious appearance, but to
whom his guests remained constant as a re-
compense for services which he had rendered
them in less happy times. The eating-room
was decorated with simplicity, but with taste;
the table served without extravagance, but with
abundance. During the early part of the re-
past, we were occupied with news relating to
the republic of arts:-The sale of a picture, a
new piece, the annunciation of a concert, the
death of a distinguished artist, became in turn,
the subject of a conversation, upon which the
stranger, beside whom I was seated, had often-
er than once occasion to remark with what
grace, ease, and learning devoid of pedantry,
many of the company expressed their senti-
ments. The conversation insensibly ceased to
be general, and I had an opportunity of answer- "


A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
103
ing the questions which he asked, respecting
the different persons in whose society he was
placed without knowing them but by reputa
tion. "What," said he, "is that great young
man who speaks little, but whose remarks are
extremely pertinent, to all the points which are
discussed? He hardly appears to be above
thirty-five years of age, notwithstanding this
enormous club depending from his powdered
grecque of very ancient date !"-"That is one
of our most esteemed painters. Though still
young, he already enjoys a brilliant and merit-
ed celebrity. Finer in colour than in design, he
follows the example of Rubens, whom he ap-
pears to have taken for his model. He has, as
you remarked at the late exhibition, something
of the exuberance of fancy, and of the firmness
of pencilling, which distinguish the chief of the
Flemish school, into some of whose blemishes
he also falls. He is a man of retired habits,
laborious and unassuming, and without further
experience of the world than may be gathered
from the windows of his painting room.
"On the right of this painter, you doubtless
recognise the greatest of our tragedians.
Hearken to his reasoning on the subjects of his
profession, and you will not be surprised at the
superiority he has attained. The study of a
new part absorbs him for three whole months;
for he is not content with simply becoming
master of the poet's verse, he must be able
to identify himself with the character; and the
astonishing illusion which he has produced in


104
A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
many of his representations, is no less to be at-
tributed to the severity of manners and COS-
tume which he has introduced upon the stage,
than to his genius and the vast resources of his
incomparable talents.-Removed from the
cares, the toils, and the thoughts of the theatre,
he presents himself to you in no other light
than as an amiable man, and sometimes even as
a great child, whom the slightest matter dis-
tracts or disquiets."-
"Tell me quickly, I beseech you, whether or
no I am deceived in the opinion I have formed
of that man in the chesnut coloured coat, who
does the honours of one end of the table with
so awkward an air?""You are speaking of
the most able man in France; and you will ac-
knowledge the truth, when apprised that this
stranger, (whom Prussia gave us) has for twen-
ty-five or thirty years been enthroned on his
own proper authority, in full controul over the
fine arts, which he never cultivated, of which
he understands nothing, and which he has ne-
vertheless succeeded in rendering tributary to
his sovereign will. You find him here, because
he is to be met every where, where there is a
good dinner, a good bargain, or a good dupe to
make."
66 Opposite Manlius is one of our modern
Orpheuses. This excellent composer has in
in some of his works combined the beauties of
Gluck and Piccinni by adopting a system in
which their separate styles are reconciled and
blended in a natural manner. He is among the


A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
105 !
small number of those who so agreeably suit
the words of the writer to the notes of the gam-
mut, and who are listened to with equal plea-
sure in a church and in an orchestra. His cha-
racter is worthy of his genius and talent *** I
am interrupted to allow you to hear an anecdote
told with much wit and originality, by one of our
painters, whose production you admired above
all the other pictures." How! is that the
French Vandyke, to whom I know nothing com-
parable in the present day, nor superior in an-
tiquity, for truth, elegance, variety of form,
beauty of flesh, grace of composition, and grand
taste in his accessary parts?"-"It is the same,
and I perceive that I have nothing to teach you
on the subject of his works; I may add how-
ever, that they have bestowed upon him a for-
tune, of which he makes the most noble use:
his house is the rendezvous of talents of every
kind, and he there sets the example of that ho-
nourable brotherhood which it is less rare to
see subsisting among artists, than among men
of letters."
"The person whose sallies and Calembourgs*
provoke such continued bursts of laughter on
the other side of the room, bears a name fa-
mous in painting. His father, whom you for-
merly knew, and from whom he has not at all
degenerated, participated with M. de Bievre
the sceptre of Calembourg, a matter which did
* Equivoques founded generally on the ambiguous
meaning of the words played upon.


106
A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
not prevent him from producing some master-
pieces. His son has turned to advantage his
passion for horses, which he paints to a degree
of perfection unattained by any of his predeces-
sors in the art. The picture of a battle which
he has finished, assures him a distinguished
rank among the best painters of this class.
This artist has discovered the secret of sup-
porting a celebrated name, and of transmitting
it to his son, who promises to pursue a brilliant
career on the course where his father and
grandfather are so illustrious."
"Tell me if this fat fellow in a green coat,
who is always laughing, and laughing by him-
self, be very merry? Is his physiognomy, so
round and open, very indicative of frankness?"
"You have guessed rightly this man, in
spite of his natural mask, is sour, envious, and
deceitful. He is a master-mason who gives
himself out for an architect, and who has been
taken for such at a time when he thought him-
self happy in being permitted to sleep in the
street. He has built some houses for fruiter-
ers in the faubourgs, patched up some barracks
in la cité, and has fully convinced himself that
he is a Mansard. What more would he gain
were he really so? He has realised a fortune,
and would in his retreat enjoy repose, comfort,
health, all the good things of life which so rare-
ly fall to the lot of true merit, if the low jea-
lousy with which he is tormented, did not doom
him to eternal suffering on account of the suc-
cess and happiness of others."


A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
107
"Would you like to contemplate a frank
and easy gaiety, superior endowments in a be-
nevolent nature, a soul elevated without pride,
and ability without presumption? Look at the
little man on my right hand who sets about tell-
ing you a story of no more consequence than no-
thing, in which every word is a pleasant trait,
every gesture a piece of humour. He has been
long united in friendship with the great painter
whom you have surnamed the French Vandyke,
and this connexion, to which the love of the
arts seems to impart a new charm, is the source
of numerous actions performed under circum-
stances equally honourable to the one and to
the other."
"It is long since I partook of so agreeable
an entertainment," (said my Neapolitan, laugh-
ing heartily at the story of a Gascon emigrant,
which one of the party was telling in a most
witty and original manner;)" and that which
strikes me as very honourably distinguishing
this association of men of talents, is a recipro-
cal good-will which appears to exclude every
feeling of self-love."" Don't trust to that,"
answered I; "in point of fact, with regard to
self-love, we possess that here as well as what
may be better
Take a good look at this great
boy who is balancing himself upon his chair,
with an air of so much no-meaning. He has
found out the way, (and that was not very easy,)
to have more vanity than merit. His politeness
is of a kind which warns you to be off your
guard against him; his self-complacency and


108
A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
his notions of his own perfections are so immo-
vably fixed, that he is more surprised than an-
gry that any other person should become the
object of culogy in his presence ;-he has, it is
said, critics in his pay, whose pens he directs,
and with the assistance of whom, he deals
blows upon his rivals, the more dangerous from
his knowing better than any one else, the side
on which they are vulnerable;-but it would
not be difficult to persuade me that self-love
and the love of the arts were so identified in
him, that he only deemed it the discharge of a
duty to both, to say all the good possible of
himself and all the evil possible of others. He
is a man to drive the most experienced flatter-
ers into despair; because, let them praise him
as highly as their powers extend, they never can
go beyond the excellent opinion he entertains
of himself.
"As if it were in contrast to a character so
peculiar, we might fancy that chance alone had
not placed near him, that young man so modest
in demeanour, and so distinguished for ability.
His début has been marked by a triumph, the
more flattering since his own competitors have
proclaimed it. I recal to memory this circum-
stance alike honourable to the young artist
and to his rivals; but with so potent a sti-
mulus to emulation, is he not subject to a hea-
vy accusation for the afflicting indifference, to
which he has abandoned himself, and which
robs France of the chefs d'œuvre which so bril-
liant an essay entitled her to expect? Perhaps


A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
109
he thinks he has done enough for his fame;
perhaps (for even modesty has her self-love)
he fears that new efforts might not carry him
beyond his first attempt; perhaps in fine, (and
this supposition is the most probable, for sensi-
bility the source of great talents, is also the
source of mortification,) perhaps some secret
sorrow destroys all the energy of his soul?
There are moments when the utmost that it is
in our power to do, is to live."—" I observe a
little lower down, a man who seems to me to
acquit himself very gaily of that obligation.
What a full-blown face! What an air of health,
of happiness?""That is a fellow of spirit,
who, in a blessed hour, proposed to himself
this problem, which he has so ably resolved-
to reconcile the taste for literature with the pur
suit of wealth. He cultivates a branch of com-
merce, the products of which are indebted to
the arts for increased value and perfection, and
he renders the luxury of Europe tributary to
French taste and industry.
"His neighbour, by an effort more gene-
rous, has in many cases, sacrificed his interest,
to his fame. Worthy competitor of Etienne
and of Plantin, he does honour to a name alrea-
dy famous in the typographic art, which he has
carried to perfection by the most useful and in-
genious inventions. The monuments which he
has reared to the Latin and French classics,
confer on him as a printer, a reputation, to
which as a learned man and an author, he had
before a good right to aspire;-a reputation
VOL. III.
K


110
A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
that exalts still higher the renown for probity
by which he would be distinguished, even at the
era when that virtue might happily be more
common than it is in our time."
"What is he almost opposite to you, whose
physiognomy possesses, I can't tell what of the
Sardonic, which imparts an expression quite
peculiar to features in other respects altoge-
ther insignificant?"-" That is a man of litera-
ture, well informed, very malignant, and very
amiable; qualities which seem incompatible;
and the combination of which is one of the
mysteries of his character. Endowed with an
original turn of mind, he possesses the avidity
without the relish for celebrity; he renounces
the tranquillity which he loves, and disdains the
glory which he pursues. Without making him-
self master of any thing, he aspires to the pos-
session of every thing, in order to have the
privilege of appreciating the merit and the ex-
ertions of those whom success renders proud.
The interval which separates ignorance from
knowledge, (the folly of fine wit,) does not, if
we may believe him, appear long, but to the
eyes of the vanity which measures it; and the
reputation of a rich man excepted, all the
others, according to him, might purchase them-
selves a name, and are almost always paid more
than they are worth." "This personage is one
of that class which we, like the English, call
characters; intercourse with such a man could
not fail of being amusing; and when one is not


A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
111
his dupe, I imagine one must be charmed to
be his accomplice."
"Observe, I beg of you, that other original
of another kind, who harangues for a quarter
of an hour in a nasal and sententious tone.".
"Who? That thin man, who is every minute
adjusting a very youthful perriwig, upon a
pretty old head?"" The same; he is a la-
chrymose composer whose name is of equal
value to a drama. All his divisions breathe
sentiment and truth, and though his contempo-
raries deny that he is acquainted with the first
rules of his art, he has found means to be ex-
travagantly successful. Never will he lend
himself to any subject which is not most strict-
ly moral, and he very recently refused to set an
opera to music, the heroine of which, presum-
ed to marry without the consent of her pa-
rents.
"He has composed a collection of psalms
for the use of schools, among which is a duet
between Vice and Virtue, which he proposes
should be sung every year at the renewal of the
classes, instead of Veni Creator. As there are
people who permit themselves to laugh at this
moralist in counter-point, it may be proper to
inform them that his works have gained him
more than the chefs-d'œuvre of Gluck and of
Sacchini ever acquired for their immortal au-
thors."
Our conversation was at this moment inter-
rupted by the youngest of the company, who
rose, and said in a loud voice, displaying at the


112
A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
same time a sheet of paper, which I had seen
passing during an hour, through many hands at
the further end of the chamber, "Gentlemen,
I offer you this for a voluntary subscription;
the produce is destined for the widow of an
estimable artist, whom you all knew, and who
has left no inheritance to his children, but the
remembrance of his talents and his virtues."
"Adopted," was the cry from every quarter.
"I will take charge of the engraving," said, as
he emptied his glass, a fat man whom I knew
by his Alsacian accent. "At six francs each
impression," "and I subscribe for four," add-
ed the neighbour of the engraver as he signed
the paper, which was in a moment covered
with twenty-five or thirty signatures. The
sketch was passed round with the list: nothing
could be more ingenious than this humorous
composition, in which some originals, ridicu-
lously notorious, are represented with the heads
of animals, which, without borrowing any thing
of the resemblance of portraits, wittily lead to
a knowledge of the characters. My companion,
who greatly admired this clever design, liberal-
ly subscribed for twenty copies. "I ought to
inform the gentlemen who subscribe," added
a little man, (as round as a ball, wiping his
mouth.)" that they will receive gratis with the
engraving, an explanation in a ballad which I
shall have the honour to sing to them at the
dessert, if God grants me life till then ;-for it
has been foretold me that I shall die before the
end of a dinner."


A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
113
The promise of the little man was received
with acclamations of pleasure: "There," said
my companion, "is a figure which ought to be
painted in every eating-room, to create an appe-
tite."" You will add, when you have heard
him, and to inspire joy. This is from his su-
periority our singer. He sings from instinct,
and bears about songs, as the good man bears
about fables. With a great deal of wit, a per-
fect. natural organ, and an everlasting fund of
good humour, he might already perhaps have
reaped the harvest of his talents, if less inti-
mate with low life, he had more rarely borrow-
ed its disgusting jargon."
"I am not the only Italian here, if I may
judge by a particular accent which strikes my
ear, and reminds me of my Cara Patria."
"The person you point out to me, holds the
foremost rank in his profession. A worthy ri-
val of Servandoni, in that department of paint-
ing which is connected with the stage, he has
often carried the magic of decorations to that
pitch at which illusion appeared to be confound-
ed with reality. Born with genius, with that
vivacity and richness of imagination which at
once embraces all that can be done for a sub-
ject, it is probable that he would enlarge the
limits of an art, the rules of which retard its
progress, if circumstances put it in his power
at the same time to execute his vast concep.
tions, and to develope all the resources of his
rare talent."
--
K 2


114
A DINNER OF ARTISTS.
"I notice near my countryman, a little old
man, whose few grey hairs hardly cover the
nape, but whose eyes still sparkle with intelli-
gence: if this be not a statuary, I am but an in
different observer of mankind." "He is in-
deed one of the modern Phidias, to whom our
school boasts the justest title. To his noble
chisel was reserved the glory of modelling the
features of the patriarch of Ferney, of whom
he never speaks but with that sympathetic ve
neration, and that enthusiasm which a sculptor
like him ought to feel for such a model.
"Without quitting this corner of the table,
give a glance at that big man with white hair,
whose facial angle forms an acute angle of about
sixty degrees, and whose flat nose extends it.
self upon his upper lip."-"So far as I can
judge of this little face, buried between two
enormous shoulders, there is something exotic
in the features of which it is composed.""He
is a native of the shores of the Baltic and a
passionate admirer of the works of art which
the last age produced, and which I greatly fear
will not be bequeathed to posterity. His first
visits to Paris, whither he was led by his mas-
ter passion, were directed to our chief pain-
ters, whose port-folios he ransacked, and pur-
chased at high prices all that they contained,
which seemed worthy of a place in his collec-
tion. A taste of this prominent nature which
does not correct itself within a certain period,
generally becomes a mania. That of our ama-
teur reached such a pitch as to destroy his for-


A DINNER OF ARTISTS,
115
tune, which passed entirely from his strong-
box to his port-folio, in the shape of fifty enor-
mous cartoons, in which all his wealth is com-
prehended. Even now, he encroaches on his
pleasures, and even on his necessaries, in order
to increase this immense collection. Where-
ever you meet him, you are certain of finding
him with a drawing under his arm, going to, or
returning from the purchase of some Crocade
of Carracchi or Paul Veronese, without dream-
ing that he is applying to this acquisition, the
money which was destined to pay his rent, or
his taylor's bill."
The dessert and the Champaigne were serv-
ed; the servants retired; our Momus chaunt-
ed his song, to which the immoderate laughter
of all the company served as chorus. It was
nine o'clock when we rose from table, delight-
ed with the guests, and more convinced than
ever, that the persons who are best acquainted
with the enjoyments of life, are those, who at
the same time cultivate the arts and friendship.


Å
116
No. VIII.-23d Nov. 1813.
AN EVENING OF THE GREAT WORLD.
Combien d'oiseaux de différent plumage,
Divers de goût, d'instinct et de ramage,
En santillant, font entendre, a-la-fois,
Le gazoullis de leurs confuses voix.
VOLT. EPIT. en vers.
La Ville est partagée en diverses Sociétés, qui sont
comme autant de petites républiques, qui ont leurs
dois, leurs mœurs, leurs usages, et leur jargon.
LA BRUYERE, Caract.
THAT which was true in the days of La
Bruyere is still true in our time, though with a
few modifications. At the period when this im-
mortal writer published his Caracteres, every
one of the little republics of which he speaks,
had its own distinct territory, separated from
others by unchangeable boundaries; and so
great was the difficulty of communication be-
tween them, that they scarcely knew each other
but by hearsay. Towards the close of the last
century, political convulsions overthrew all
these barriers, and the new order of things
which replaced them, has left on the interval of
separation, a gentle declivity, by means of which


AN EVENING OF THE GREAT WOrld. 117
an easy intercourse is established.
In my
youth, rich women sometimes mounted step by
step, to the highest rank; but then it was up-
on a bridge of gold. Under the sanction of the
name they had purchased, they appeared at
court; next day they were to be found in the
midst of their families surrounded by vulgar
domestics; they had been out of their proper
sphere the day before, and fancied themselves
out of their proper sphere the day they were
in it.
Vanity, which plays so distinguished a part
in society and in societies, is very obvious even
in the titles it assumes. In every city, a cer-
tain number of a privileged class of men and
women who associate together, call themselves
the World. In Paris the World is divided be-
tween the fashionable World and the great
World*. Bon ton is the arbitress of the one;
etiquette is the queen of the other: with some
slight shades of difference, their usages are the
same.
Company and the spectacles occupy there,
the great part of the life of a man of the world:
the first of these recreations constitute for him
days of guests, and days of custom (de jours
priés et de jours d'habitude.) In both, freedom
and confidence generally give zest to repasts at
which old friends meet together at the same
table. These dinners possess nothing in com-
mon with formal parties, where the master of
* Le beau monde, et le grande monde.


118
AN EVENING OF THE
a house, of which one does not often know who
is the mistress, receives, as at an ordinary, a
crowd of people, who being at a loss how to
pass the evening, begin it with him at the din-
ner hour.
Set dinner, and evening parties, are now, as I
have at all times seen them, a sort of lottery, in
.which lucky chances are not the most common-
ly met with; of which those most frequently
complain, who put nothing in, and those who
have already made a fortune by them. Even I,
I have witnessed and I lament those charming
suppers of other times, rendered, I am ready
to acknowledge, more delicious from my then
enjoying a young spirit, a vivid imagination, and
an excellent appetite. "O! such society as
that of Madame d'Epinai," (said honest Mer-
ville to me!) "Never shall we look upon its
like again! Don't you remember in particu-
lar, one fête which she gave us in '57 ?"—" I
remember that you were at that period about
twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, and that
your connexion with the beautiful Emily de
R*** began that day."-" Eh! my God,"
continued the old President d'Abancourt, "you
recal to my memory those ravishing evenings
of Madame de Forcalquier, where Carmontelle
composed his first proverbs."-" Gentlemen,"
interrupted a third," speak of the suppers of
Madame de la Popelinière; where could you
meet, I do not say at this era, but within the
period of your remembrance, such an assem-
blage of men of high station, of men of litera


GREAT WORLD.
119
ry attainments, and of eminent artists?-And
those of Pelletier whom you have not remember-
ed at all!--And those of Madame de la Reynière
where I saw Touzet for the first time!-Tou-
zet, that prince of Mystificators, whose talent
was displayed in a vein of pleasantry of that
kind, the loss of which we ought not perhaps
to regret."
This little colloquy took place last Saturday,
at the Countess Eliza de Fontbonne's in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, where a party of ac-
quaintances, about my age, had got together a
full hour before dinner was announced. The
Countess was still at her toilette, and the Count
had not returned from St. Cloud. We chatted
as we stood round the fire place, and I had ta-
ken up the defence of modern times which the
President d'Abancourt was lashing without
mercy, when the mistress of the house, in all
the pomp of dress and beauty, appeared to plead
its cause. Madame de Fontbonne took her station
at the chimney corner in a fateuil reserved for
herself alone. I may remark, by the bye, that
this custom of keeping a particular place and
seat for the mistress of the house, is now very
old; the bon ton,-even politeness makes it a
law not to offer it to any other female, whate-
ver may be her rank and quality; a very ad-
vanced age and the title of Maréchale alone,
formerly authorised an exception to this gene-
ral rule.
By degrees the young people and the ladies.
arrived; those being early or late in proportion


120
AN EVENING OF THE
to the importance which they wished to attach
to themselves, or the effect they desired to
produce. The first occupation or the latter,
(after embracing or saluting the Countess ac-
cording to the degree or nature of their intima-
cy with her) appeared to me to be, as in times
past, the examination and criticism, each with
her neighbour, of the dress of all the others. I
had already noticed a lusty Baroness de Sarnet,
whose deep coloured robe, and Chinese head-
dress, contrasted most shockingly with her
years, her figure, and the marked expression of
her countenance; the pretty Madame de L***
of whom I have often spoken in these pages,
was two seats apart from the lusty Baroness, to
whose chair she advanced, and complimented
her in the most obliging tone, upon the ele-
gance and good taste displayed in her dress. I
passed behind the fateuil of Madame de L***,
and whispered in her ear with unaffected pas
sion,
"Quoi! vous avez le front de trouver cela beau."
"What! have you the impudence to think that be-
coming."
"My good man," answered she laughing,
"go back to your cell; read your Bruyere over
again, and you will learn the occasion on which
a woman may praise the toilette of her rival."
This word rival demanded an explanation, for
which I will take another opportunity.


GREAT WORLD.
121
The conversation which precedes a grand
entertainment is usually confined to the com-
mon places of politeness, to observations upon
the weather not remarkable for depth of re-
search, and to remarks upon new plays and
spectacles. About seven o'clock the Count re-
turned from St. Cloud, and with much grace
apologised to the ladies for his detention. A
quarter of an hour after, it was announced that
Madame, the Countess was served. Every body
rose; the President, who is always the last to
renounce old customs, offered his hand to his
cousin Madame de L ***, to lead her to the
dining-room." Willingly," (said she to him
in a low voice, as she accepted his hand), "but
I give you fair notice, my dear friend, without
establishing it as a precedent; for these gallan-
tries are not the fashion any where but at the
Place-Royale." "So much the worse for the
Faubourg Saint-Germain," replied the Presi
dent.
The mistress of the mansion having regulat
ed the seats of honour, next herself and her
husband, by designating by name the persons
who were to fill them, the rest of the company
placed themselves as conveniency directed.
The President sat down by me. I had detected
the glances of a timid and discreet intelligence
between a certain Auditor and a very handsome
little prude, whose motions I was watching for
my own private guidance. At the crisis of sit-
ting down to table, she raised her large blue
eyes towards the young gentleman, who pru-
VOL. III.
L


122
AN EVENING OF THE
dently kept himself disengaged, and then bent
them sweetly upon the empty chair at her side,
and that which being also next to mine, the
President unluckily took possession of. The
Auditor understood every thing to a miracle,
and hurried to seize a place which, doubtless,
no man could occupy without tasting equal
pleasure and advantage. "If you are, by
chance, still one of this world forty years
hence," said I to the President, "consult this
little lady who will then probably be a devotee,
and this Auditor who will then perhaps be a
magistrate; you will see if they do not talk of
the dinners of Madame de Fontbonne, as you
were not long since talking to me about the
suppers of Madame Forcalquièr."
It would be absurd to expect any general
conversation at a ceremonious dinner; which it
is almost as ridiculous to give, as to raise your
yoice at, and endeavour to fix the attention of
forty persons, the majority of whom you hardly
know it is therefore a matter of necessity that
you enter into chat with those, near whom
chance has placed you. After having listened,
during the two first courses, to the grumbler
d'Abancourt on my right, who was even unwill-
ing to acknowledge our progress in the ingeni
ous arts, as demonstrated by an examination of
the exquisite fashion of the plate, the beauty of
the candelabras, the elegance of the centre or-
nament, the brilliancy of the glass, and in a
word, the rich variety of so many objects in
which the luxury of the banquet was compris-


GREAT WORLD.
123
ed, I addressed myself to my neighbour on my
left, and it was not long before I discovered
how much reason I had to lament that I had so
long delayed availing myself of so pleasant an
entertainment. Never was the boldness of folly
displayed to my eyes under a shape more co-
mic, under features more congenial with the
gross soul of which it bore the impressions.
The Sénéchal of the comedy of Originaux, is
but a faint copy of this burlesque personage.
One trait of his conversation will suffice for a
specimen. He was telling me of the mortifi-
cation which the marriage of one of his ne-
phews had occasioned him. "Do you know,"
added he, “that the girl whom this ass has
been persuaded to marry, has nothing, that
which is called nothing, neither physical nor
moral. As for the physical, she is ugly; and as
for the moral, she is not worth a farthing.'
""
Coffee was taken at table. On entering the
drawing rooms where the lighted incense pots
exhaled all the perfumes of the east, we met a
number of persons who had assembled in con-
sequence of invitations to spend the evening.
The crowd soon became so dense, that it was
indispensably necessary to break the circle of
women, by distributing them round the tables
where different games were played. When the
parties were arranged, the Countess passed on
to the gallery where M. de Fontbonne was
walking and discussing matters with some great
personages. She whispered something to him,
and went out accompanied by two or three la-


124
AN EVENING OF THE
dies, without any body, except myself perhaps,
noticing her absence. She returned in about
an hour. "How has Grassini sung," said I to
her, in a way not to be heard by any one but
herself. "Who told you that I had come from
the Bouffons, wicked Argus?""The fashion,
Madame, which would not have failed to ex-
claim loudly against you, had you not shewn
yourself to-night in your box."" Well! you
have guessed rightly. I have been hearing two
scenes of Horaces; the music is charming; this
is my critical opinion: Grassini is admirable;
she is the only Italian singer (at least of all that
I have heard,) who possesses any thing beyond
a throat. I came away after the fine air, Fre-
nar vorrei le lacrime, which she sung in a style
perfectly ravishing."
At the end of the games, which finished be-
fore eleven o'clock, M. Carbonelle sat down at
the piano. The music was fine, and at times
it might have been confessed that parts of Di-
don, Armide, and the Danaides could support a
comparison with Pirrothe the Destruzione di
Gerusalemme, with other masterpieces of the
same kind and country.
About midnight they would play at Pro-
verbes; in an instant a little theatre was con-
structed at one end of the gallery. They be-
gan with the Enragé, an old Proverbe of Car-
montelle's, and concluded with the Songe d'un
Honnête Homme*. This little piece which
*This species of amusement consists in getting up
a sort of play improvisatore, which is founded upon a
1


GREAT WORLD.
125
formed part of a collection published last year
by Madame Victorine M ***, under the title
of Soircés de Société, possesses all the merit
which can belong to a production of the kind,--
truth, nature, and grace.
Supper followed this entertainment. Very
few of the company sat down to table; others
were served with ices and punch; and about
two o'clock when I left the rooms, (as much
gratified as a man of my time of life could be,
with an evening so noisy,) there still remained
some gamesters, female as well as male, who
beheld with pain, the approaching decision of
their last rubber of whist, an enjoyment in
which the whole business, pleasure, and hope
of their lives is involved.
proverb given as the subject for developement. When
ably sustained it produces more amusement than may
at first be anticipated.-T.
L 2


126
No. IX.-6th Jan. 1814.
MY PROJECTS FOR THE YEAR 1814.
The Hermit and his Physician.
Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.
HOR. Ode 4. lib. 1.
La vie est courte, ne portons pas trop loin nos es-
pérances.
Life is short, let us not extend our hopes too far.
THE Hermit, (after a fit of coughing.)-
"Without doubt, my dear Doctor, old age is a
very fine thing, but you must own it has many
inconveniencies."
The Doctor." Cicero, as you must remem-
ber, could find but four trifling ones. First. It
prevents us from acting. Secondly. It brings
infirmities in its train. Thirdly. It estranges
us from nearly all the pleasures of life.
Fourthly. It brings us nearer to death."
The Hermit." As we range under one or
other of these classes nearly all the troubles of
life, you must allow these small inconveniencies
are equivalent to a great number of others.
A


MY PROJECTS FOR THE YEAR 1814. 127
Nevertheless, Cicero might have added by way
of supplement-The temper which age gives
us, the gaiety which it takes from us, and the
continual restlessness in which it holds us."
The Doctor.-"This querulous reflection
which your illness, and not your age suggests
to you, loses all its authority in the mouth of a
man, whose example is a decisive refutation of
bis opinion. I have been acquainted with you
these twenty years, and (setting aside a fit of
the gout or rheumatism,) I never saw you of a
more even temper, and possessed of greater
ease and gaiety, or of a more philosophical
tranquillity of mind."
The Hermit. “An exception does not de-
stroy a rule, even where it is as complete, as
you seem to believe; but the fact is, that if I
wished to convince myself of the weakness of
my moral and physical faculties, I should dis-
cover proof of it in a new frame of mind,
against which I struggle with all the energy of
my character; and which manifests itself in a
sort of repugnance that from time to time
breaks out, even towards the very things which
I love, and am accustomed to. These books
which surround me, to which I owe, not the
most striking, but the sweetest pleasures of my
life-I look at them, at times, with the eye of
the senator, Pococurante.* I say to myself, as
I glance over this pile of paper, (the contents of
some of which are not worth the cost of binding,)
* A person in the Romance of Candide.


128
MY PROJECTS FOR THE
that these four or five thousand volumes, would,
according to the calculation of the learned Bish-
op of Avranches, be reduced to a small duode-
cimo. if they contained only things true or use-
ful, or such as had never been written be-
fore."
The Doctor." That's your disease."
The Hermit." My business with those
whom I love most, is often a trouble to me.
The slowness, and dotage of my old servant,
become insupportable to me."
The Doctor." That's your disease."
The Hermit." I am as much astonished as
if I had just made the discovery, that there are
so many fools, blockheads, and knaves in the
world."
The Doctor. -"That's your disease."
The Hermit.—“ My disease! My disease!
You treat me like the Géronte of Légataire-
my disease! 'Tis the register of my bap-
tism."
The Doctor." Not at all; old age is a rela-
tive term. One man of seventy-four years of
age is younger than another at fifty. You are
not yet old; you are ill; your nerves are bad."
The Hermit." How I should laugh were it
not for the fear of my cough! To ascribe to
me the disorder of a languid girl! You would
be somewhat embarrassed if I were to ask you
to explain this nervous disorder."
The Doctor."I should explain it to you as
the physician in Molière explains the virtue of
opium, and my definition must not be laughed


YEAR 1814.
129
at, for as Doctor Pangloss assures us, there is
no effect without a cause. It is not given to
physicians or even to philosophers to know all
things."
The Hermit." If you are not acquainted
with the cause of the evil, how can you cure
it?"
The Doctor." As I grow wheat without
knowing how it springs up; as I prescribe a
medicine without knowing how it operates."
The Hermit." I am then nervous: well be
it so. What is to be done in this case?"
The Doctor." Resume during the winter an
exercise which you have omitted for some
months, and as soon as the first birds announce
the approach of Spring, leave Paris and take a
little tour."
The Hermit." Do you know, my dear doc-
tor, that among other complaints which I have
against Hippocrates and his clan, (complaints
which I will one day explain to you with frank-
ness,) one of the greatest, is the custom of pay-
ing no attention to the state and situation of the
sick man, in prescribing the remedy. Noth-
ing, in my opinion, is more absurd than these
general directions in medicine. I shall never
be reconciled to your profession till I see it
practised with reference to individuals, and not
to the species. To order a poor devil of a tin-
smith of the Rue des Prouvaires, who gains a
crown per day by his work, to apply himself to
a regimen of Quinquina wine to cure himself
of a fever;-is it not to bid him make his will?,


130
MY PROJECTS FOR THE
To prescribe to the wife of a churchwarden of
the parish of St. Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, the wa-
ters at Toplitz, for the purpose of putting her
in a situation to become a mother ;-is it not to
condemn, without mercy her husband to die
without heirs? Your directions to me are
much of the same kind. I have become a Her
mit and you bid me run over the world. Ap-
pointed observer of the Parisian manners, can
I fulfil my task on the banks of the Loire, on
the mountains of Dauphiny, or on the plains of
Languedoc?"
The Doctor." This is just the point to
which I wished to bring you. Why do you
think yourself confined in your observations on
our manners to the walls of the capital? Are
all Frenchmen in Paris? Many of your cor-
respondents have already asked you the same
question. Let Paris be the centre of your ope-
rations; let all your ties like those of Arachne
meet in one point; nothing can be better: but
enlarge your web, fasten the threads to our pro-
vinces, and (to continue the comparison to the
end) at the slightest sensation you feel, come
out of your hold and seize your prey, even at
the very extremity of your toils."
The Hermit."I have thought of this more
than once, but our Romance writers, and our
dramatic poets have already said so much on
the follies of the country *****
The Doctor." As of the follies of the Ma-
rais, by hearsay, and without the smallest re-
gard to the changes which time and circum-
"


YEAR 1814.
131
stances have wrought there. Besides, there is
a point of view more useful, and more general,
in which the country has never been examined,
and which you may take up. The shades of
colour which distinguish the manners, cus-
toms, and habits of different parts of France:
these are things which it is important to know
and to compare, sometimes for the amusement,
and yet oftener for the instruction of the capi-
tal."
The Hermit.-"I begin to think, my dear
doctor, that your prescription is not impracti
cable, and I am almost determined to undertake,
at the return of the lovely season, some excur-
sions in the different provinces, when I shall
take care, as you may very well suppose, to tra-
vel incognito. Once agreed on the project, let
us talk of the means of executing it. I am not
sufficiently active to set out like J. J. Rousseau,
with a stick in my hand and carrying my bag-
gage. I am not young enough to ride on
horseback, nor rich enough to travel post."
The Doctor." There remains still, that
which is the best mode for a man who leaves
home to see others. The public stage, a dili-
gence, a packet-boat, a coche d'eau, are excel-
lent cabinets of observation; the models thrust
themselves as it were under the eyes of the
painter, and I need not attempt to inform you
what may be drawn from such situations."
The Hermit." There is another point set-
tled! Now my dear doctor, where I shall go?
This is a day for submission to my physician:


132
MY PROJECTS FOR THE
write me down an itinerary in the form of a
prescription; this will afford you an opportuni-
ty to dilate on climate and temperature; two
words which play a great part in the faculty's
dictionary, when at a loss what to say.
The Doctor." It is fortunate for you I am
more your friend than your physician, or else
*****"
The Hermit."I feel the full force of this
quos ego.
No matter doctor; present the cup,
and like Alexander I will drink without hesita-
tion."
The Doctor."I return to your imputation,
and I ask whether it be possible for a man of
sense to push obstinacy so far as to deny the in-
fluence of climate."
The Hermit." I deny it not doctor, I only
doubt it. I know very well that the author of
The Spirit of the Laws, whose authority is cer-
tainly of great weight with me, has said, that
climate may be distinguished by degrees of
sensibility, as well as by degrees of latitude :--
that he believes he can discover in the geogra-
phical positions of different countries, the ori-
gin of the qualities and defects of their inhabi-
tants but experience, whose authority is su-
perior even to that of Montesquieu, has demon-
strated to me, that the same country in a few
ages, has been successively inhabited by a peo-
ple the most brave, the most enterprising, the
most free, and by a people the most cowardly,
the most lazy, and the greatest slaves on earth.
I have seen, in contradiction to his system, war-
:


YEAR 1814.
133
like Caffres under the equator, and timid Lap-
landers near the pole in a word, doctor, noth-
ing appears to me less established than this
influence of climate about which so much is
said."
The Doctor." As to morals, say as much
as you please, 'tis no affair of mine. I don't
disturb myself with seeking whence come the
vices of men, I look only to the origin of their
diseases; and this same experience, which you
are continually invoking, convinces me that the
examination of the climate is justly, one of the
fundamental laws of Hygeia. This question is,
however, idle here. When you walk in your
room, it matters not how long or how broad it
is, or which side of it is north, east, west, or
south; you will travel as you walk, to change
air, to take an exercise which is useful to your
health; you will never stop more than three or
four days in a place, and it is therefore quite
indifferent whether you direct your steps one
way or another. You may take that road which
is most agreeable to you."
The Hermit."This is what I call talking
like a friend; your brother doctors are not al-
ways in the habit of speaking either so clearly
or so laconically."
The Doctor." There are professions, such
as ours and your own, in which one must some-
times speak so as not to be understood. Re-
duce a lawyer to the simple discussion of a
fact. Take from him his citations, his ampli.
fications, his exordiums, his perorations, and
VOL. III.
M


134 MY PROJECTS FOR THE YEAR 1814.
see what would become of the eloquence of the
bar. Desire a Journalist to insert nothing of
the truth of which he is not convinced, to praise
nothing which is not worthy of estimation, to
censure nothing which he does not understand;
take from him the report of yesterday, the eru-
dition of to-day, and the interest of the morrow,
and see what would become of the daily papers,
even the Gazette de Santé."
The Hermit." Of health ?"
The Doctor." Even the Gazette of Health;
though there you will find more learning, more
truth, and above all, if I dare mention it, more
wit than in this or that journal, calling itself
literary."
The Hermit.-"Take care, take care doctor;
if you throw stones into our garden we will
shower a whole quarry into your's."
The Doctor."Your stones will kill no-
body."
The Hermit." I wish I could say as much
for ****coughs."
The Doctor." There is a good fit of cough-
ing in expiation of your sarcasms against medi-
cine. Do you remember that Molière is
dead?"
""
The Hermit. I will give you this evening
a place to see le Malade Imaginaire.'
The Doctor." Adieu, my good Hermit."
The Hermit." Adieu, malignant doctor."
The Doctor."I recommend you, for your
catarrh, my pectoral syrup and the apozem ac-
cording to my prescription."


THE TWELFTH CAKE
135
The Hermit." I will follow it, and am at
your mercy. Adieu my friend."
The Doctor, (returning.)-"On considera-
tion, neither syrup nor apozem! keep yourself
warm and drink plentifully of barley water."
No. X-15th Jan. 1814.
THE TWELFTH CAKE.
Fabam mimum agunt.
CICERO..
Ils tirent le gateau des rois.
They draw the twelfth-cake.
customs.
I HAVE often wished that the prejudices of a
people should not be confounded with their
The former cannot be avoided with
too much perseverance; but it is seldom that
any thing is gained by the destruction of the
latter. Every prejudice is born of a vice;
every national habit takes its rise from a vir-
tue. The demonstration of this truth would
make this discourse a chapter of morality, but
Trop de morale entraine trop d'ennui,


136
THE TWELFTH CAKE.
Too much morality brings with it too much
ennui; I leave, therefore, the principle to itself,
and pass on to those feasts in the course of the
year, which I count among the number of old
customs, whose venerable authority I see, with
regret, grows weaker every day.
This taste was implanted in me from my
earliest youth, by one of my maternal uncles,
the prior of Armentières, who spent with my
father all the time which he did not pass at his
priory, that is to say, about eleven months and
a half in each year. He had an apartment on
the second floor, of which his library occupied
the greater part. On a sort of table, à la Tron-
thin, on which he wrote, I still see, in a little ca-
binet of ebony, a calendar for his own use,
which he made up himself at the beginning of
every year, and inscribed according to the or-
der of their dates, with the feasts and birth-
days of all his relations, friends, and even ac-
quaintances.
On the arrival of such a day we were sure to
receive a bouquet of flowers, for the most part
accompanied with a piece of poetry, or a coup-
let, in the form of a compliment. That which
he did for others, he exacted for himself in so
absolute a manner, that he disinherited one of
his relations for having neglected to write him
a letter on the opening of a new year. My
uncle, although he exaggerated the importance
of these and similar duties, had ideas on this
point not far removed from sound morality. I re-
member in a little comedy, which he composed


THE TWELFTH CAKE.
137
on this subject, one of the persons of the drama
abused this submission to childish customs.
Tous ces grand mots ne m'en imposent guère;
C'est à l'abus, d'abord, qu'on déclare la guerre;
Mais l'usage y tenait; on le laisse déchoir,
Et l'usage détruit, entraine le devoir;
Voila, Monsieur, comment avec de telles phrases,
De la société l'on sape enfin les bases.
How many examples did he not cite to us
of quarrels made up, and lawsuits between re-
lations terminated by these unions of families
which custom formerly prescribed, and which
now hardly seem to be tolerated.
Twelfth day, Shrove Tuesday, St. Martin's
day were all then domestic feasts, at which
young people found those pleasures and enjoy-
ments for which they are now obliged to look
elsewhere. My uncle, the Prior, was acquaint-
ed with all the minute ceremonies of these
feasts, and applied his whole attention to their
observance. On such days he invested himself
with full authority as master of the house; or-
dered the repasts, took charge of the invitations,
appointed the place of every body at table, and
observed that every thing was done according
to his rules.
Of all our family feasts, that of Twelfth Day
was in his eyes the most important, and there-
fore it was always celebrated with peculiar pomp.
The remembrance which I yet retain of it ne-
ver permits me to read without sentiments of
the most lively emotion, the charming descrip-
M 2


138
THE TWELFTH CAKE.
tion which M. de Chateaubriand has given us
of this ancient festival, at which I have so of
ten assisted. The family was numerous, the
parlour for the company was large: I alone am
left of all those who partook the good cheer!
"Unsophisticated minds," (says the author
of the Genius of Christianity)" can never recol-
lect without sympathy those hours of relaxa-
tion, when the family assembled round the cake,
which suggested to the mind the presents of
the Magi. The grandfather, during the rest
of the year secluded in the retirement of his
apartment, appears on this day like the divinity
of the paternal hearth. His grandchildren
who have for some time past thought of
nothing but this festival, climb his knees, and
awaken again in him all the memory of his
youth. The countenances of all exhibit_gaie- ››
ty; the hearts of all are light; the room for the
entertainment is decorated, and in honour of
the day every one appears drest in his newest
habiliments. Amidst the jingling of glasses
and bursts of joy, the lots of this ephemeral
dignity are drawn, and a sceptre is gained which
weighs not too heavy for the hands of the mo-
narch. Sometimes a little trick is practised
which, redoubling the mirth of the subjects and
exciting the complaints of the young sovereign
alone, elevates to the throne the daughter of
the host and the son of a neighbour lately ar-
rived from the army. The young pair blush,
as if their crown embarrassed them; the mo-
thers laugh, and the grandfather with a full
&


THE TWELFTH CARE.
139
goblet drinks to the new queen. The curate,
who is at the feast, receives for the purpose of
distribution, with other assistance, the first
part, called the Poor's Piece. Old games and
a dance, at which some aged domestic supplies
the place of musician, prolong their pleasure,
and the whole family, nurses, children, tenants,
servants, and masters, mix promiscuously in
the mazy wanderings of the ball."
I could not deny myself the pleasure of
bringing before my readers this lovely picture,
full of gracefulness and truth, though at the
hazard of a comparison of which I feel all the
disadvantage.
I was reading a few days since the passage
which I have just cited to a Mr. Fergus, a
scholar, more estimable than orthodox, with
whom I had formerly studied, and who did not
approve of M. de Chateaubriand's having given
to Christianity the honour of an institution evi-
dently borrowed from the Greeks and Romans.
"What the devil," said he, knitting his large
black eyebrows, "does he talk to us of the
Magi and their presents for, when discoursing
on a custom whose profane origin is so well
known to us? Who is there that is not ac-
quainted with the amusement of the King of
the Bean derived to us from the Romans, when
the children, during the Saturnalia, drew lots
for the part of the king of the festival. This
custom of the bean, to trace it still higher, goes
back to the Greeks, who made use of beans in the
election of their magistrates. We have trans-


140
THE TWELFTH CAKE.
planted to the beginning of January a fesat which
the ancients celebrated towards the end of De-
cember, in the winter solstice, and which the Ro-
mans, if we may believe Lucian, Strabo, and Vos-
sius, had borrowed from the Persians. The elec-
tion of this temporary king was made at table, as
with us, but after having been treated during the
short term of his reign, with all the respect and
regard due to his rank, the ephemeral monarch
was hanged, to terminate the feast. It is pro-
per, however, to add, that he was chosen from
among
the class of slaves, and still oftener from
among the criminals."
"I know very well," (answered I to my
learned friend in us,) "that by dint of learning,
the charm may be taken from every thing; but
I must own that one of the best written dis-
courses on the origin of the King of the Bean
would never amuse me half so much as one of
those domestic meetings which have latterly
become too unfrequent."
"Among the company you keep," interrupt-
ed M. Fergus; "for my own part I have only
to choose among three parties to which I am
invited for this evening, to draw twelfth cake,
at one of which I can answer that you will be
extremely well received, if you like to accom-
pany me."
He mentioned M. Bruno, another old school-
fellow, with whom I was some time a boarder
at M Doppi's, Rue Mazarine. We left the
school together, myself to go to College; M.
Bruno to follow the profession of his father, a


THE TWELFTH CAKE.
141
linen-draper, at the Golden Fleece, in the Rue
des Marmouzets. We had not seen each other
for more than twenty years, but I had always
dealt with him, and I knew he retained some
friendship for me. I did not hesitate, therefore,
to take Fergus at his word.
It was four o'clock when we arrived at this
Dean's of the ancient shrievalty. We found
the good old man in a room over the shop,
which a fashionable merchant of the Rue Vi-
vienne would be in these times ashamed to call
his anti-chamber. He was seated by the fire-
side in a large arm-chair, of Utrecht velvet; a.
little child on his knees, and two others seated
on the ground, who displayed to grand-papa
their Punchinellos, their Chinese monkeys, and
their leaden soldiers, which they had received
as New Year's gifts. A young girl of sixteen
or seventeen, assisted an old servant to lay the
cloth.-M. Charles Bruno, the younger son,
was reading a newspaper, in a loud voice at the
window, while an old aunt cut slips of paper of
various colours. to put round the bottom of the
candles. The Nestor of the city merchants re-
ceived me with open arms, and presented me in
the most friendly manner to his family, by whom
I was greeted in the same affectionate style. It
may very well be believed that in the conver-
sation which followed in the chimney-corner
between the three old schoolfellows, M. Doppi
was not forgotten, and that the phrase, Do you
remember? occurred more than once in our
"


142
THE TWELFTH CAKE.
discourse. The rest of the company came in
order; the first was M. Boutard, son-in-law of
M. Bruno, and one of the most famous lace-
makers in the Rue des Bourdonnais; he brought
with him two of his children. M. Boutard is a
very proper man, and has no other fault than
that of a little too much vanity, on account of
the attention he pays to the church of St. Op-
portune, of which he is the eldest church war-
den. The Abbé Daillot nephew of the patri-
arch, and vicar of St. Magloire, came next; he
was followed by M. Melchior Bruno, Captain
of the Veterans of the Barracks Notre Dame
des Victoires, who gave his arm to Madame
Boutard and her daughter, a little brunette of
the most lively figure.
Dinner was served; we waited only for M.
Daumont, an old clerk of M. Bruno, and a most
intimate friend of the family.-Mademoiselle
Françoise Bruno, the aunt, begged her brother
to sit down to table, according to the old axiom:
That waiting prevents one from eating, but eat-
ing does not prevent one from coming. Her ad-
vice was followed. The grandfather's arm-
chair was placed at the head of the table, the
back to the fire. Every one stood by his chair,
while the father of the family said grace, and
seated themselves as soon as he set them the
example. A small table for the children, of
which aunt Bruno had the direction, had been
prepared in one corner of the room.
Daumont came in just as the soup was re-
moved; he announced himself with a loud
**


THE TWELFTH CANE.
143.
1
Jaugh, with which I observed he always prece-
ded his jokes, "I see you have waited for me
as the Abbé waits for his monks," said he,
shaking the hands of the company round, with-
out omitting myself, though I was a stranger
to him. The Abbé answered him by a tarde
venientibus ossa, which produced some mirth.
The tureen being carried away, a twelfth
cake was brought before Madame Boutard who
did the honours of the table, on which she be-
stowed her benediction, tracing there the sign
of the cross, and then cut it into eighteen parts.
The youngest of the company came forward,
which gave the vicar an opportunity of putting
in a surgat junior, of which, he seemed to take
himself a good part. The cake was covered
with a napkin, and the dish having been turned
round two or three times to prevent all idea of
fraud or favour, the child distributed the por-
tions. The first drawn was that for the poor;
this was immediately given to the vicar, with
the alms which every one hastened to sub-
scribe; the grandfather was served second; in
respect to my age, and being a stranger, I had
the third part, in which was discovered the
bean. My election to the sovereignty of the
feast was announced by a round of applause, to
which succeeded reiterated exclamations of
Vive le Roi. I was respectfully invited by my
new subjects to make choice of a companion
who should share with me the splendour of my
exalted dignity. I cast my eyes on Mademoi-
selle Rose Boutard, who seemed however to be


144
THE TWELFTH CAKE.
less sensible of the honour of enjoying a throne
than displeased at quitting her seat by her
young cousin Bruno. The dinner was gay, even
a little noisy, and the cries of, the queen drinks,
the king drinks, resounded through the whole
repast. The precaution which the wise Fer-
gus had taken to bring half a dozen of excellent
Bourdeaux wine with him (a precaution which
nobody valued more highly than the Captain)
succeeded in putting friend Daumont in high
spirits, and the vicar took care not to lose so
fine an opportunity as when he emptied his
glass to his uncle's health, to tell us. "Bonum
vinum latificat cor hominis." During the des-
sert, according to custom, we proceeded to
choose the great crown officers, and every body
admired my penetration, when I choose M.
Boutard my minister of finances; Daumont
master of the household; Captain Melchior
commander in chief of my armies; Abbé Dail-
lot, my grand almoner, and Madame Bruno
maid of honour to the queen. These appoint-
ments being complete, the grand almoner, the
minister of the finances, and the master of the
household, roared out a bacchanalian song, after
which the queen and her little cousin sung un-
der my royal nose a duet so tender and pas-
sionate, that with a prince less mild than my-
self the singers would have fared but badly.
Coffee was served in the chimney corner;
some neighbours came in to join the family,
and I took advantage of the preparation for
a Loto table, to slip from the company, fully


THE GOSSIPS
145
resolved to return on the following Sunday, to
visit my happy subjects, and close my peacea-
ble reign.
No. XI.-3d February, 1814.
THE GOSSIPS.
Vivendum recte est cum propter plurima tunc his
Præcipue causis, ut linguas mancipiorum
Contemnas : nam lingua mali perpessima servi.
JUVEN. Sat. 9.
Let us live irreproachably if it be only to despise
the prattle of servants, for there is nothing worse
than the tongue of these people.
MADAME Choquet, my house-keeper (whom
I mentioned in describing my cell) is not yet
fifty-four she wears very well for her age, and
with the exception of her sight, which fails her
in a slight degree, she enjoys all her moral and
physical faculties. That which she esteems
as the most important, and makes the greatest
use of, is her speech. A happy formation, se-
conded by long exercise, has enabled her to
find out the way to speak a great deal, very fast,
and very long, without fatiguing herself, and
what is more, without much fatiguing her
hearers.
N
VOL. III.


146
THE GOSSIPS.
She is the daughter of an old coachman to
the Duke de Villeroy, and was born in his ho-
tel in the year 1760. At fifteen she was admit-
ted among the women of the Duchess, who
some few years afterwards, married her to M.
Choquet, the son of her Swiss, then serving in
the regiment of the French guard, in the com-
pany of St. Blaucard, and esteemed the hand-
somest corporal in the company. M. Choquet
at the revolution entered into the line with the
rank of Sub-Adjutant, and had it not been for a
wound, which he received at the battle of Je-
mappe, and which compelled him to relinquish
the service, he would not have been reduced to
the necessity of giving lessons in fencing, at
fifteen sous per lesson. Madame Choquet has
not been more fortunate, and after losing her
mistress, not having resolution to derogate from
her function, by taking the place of lady's maid,
she accepted a situation as portress, which she
retained five years: but as ambition in every
state increases with age, looking at the produce
of her economy, which amounted to not less
than 1200 livres, she determined to establish
herself as a mantua-maker. Heaven has pros-
pered her endeavours, and Madame Choquet is
at this moment mistress and proprietor of one
of the smartest work-rooms to be found be-
tween the Rue St. Lazarre and La Petite-Po-
logne.
This is, in a few words, the history of my
house-keeper. I must have an exceeding bad
memory, if I did not recollect it, after it has


THE GOSSIPS.
147
been so often related to me for these ten years
1
past.
This little history is, however, only a neces-
sary introduction to the prattle with which this
accomplished model of Parisian gossips enter-
tains me every morning; a small specimen of
which I will lay before my readers. They will
not find much connexion, nor perhaps much
sense, or much indulgence for a neighbour; but
the custom of reading our daily papers will
doubtless have familiarised them with this
fashionable babble.
Madame Choquet comes to me every morn-
ing at nine, and begins her business, by prepar-
ing my breakfast; during this meal and while
my room is put in order, she favours me with
these monologues with such a most inconceiv-
able volubility of tongue, as entirely to set all
short-hand writers at defiance.
*
As I listened to her last Monday I took a
few notes to assist my memory-Madame
Choquet began :
"Perhaps, Sir, you don't find your cream so
good as usual; upon my word, 'tis no fault of
mine: Clara did not come to day, and for a very
good reason, she has just lain-in; poor woman,
this is her seventh; 'tis her husband's present
every nine months whether he is at home or
abroad. But good often comes out of evil. Ma-
danie Dumont, the notary's wife, has given her
her child to nurse. You'll ask why so rich a
woman does not nurse her child at home; this
was her intention, but it is not on account of any


148
THE GOSSIPS.
suspicions in the head of her husband, because
Colonel Dorfeuil, Madame Dumont's cousin,
who had his arm broken in Germany last year,
has come to reside with them till it is healed;
so far is that from being the case, that M. Du-
mont has caused the child, whom he is not ve-
ry fond of, to be sent out to nurse. Perhaps
he is not wrong, but you'll say the world is so
wicked!
"That's what I said the other day to the por-
tress who told me the story-My dear Madame
Barbotin," said I, "if you'll attend to me, look
after your gate, and never mind what passes
among the lodgers; but this good woman can't
resist it, she must gossip. Heaven knows
there is no want of subjects in the house she
lives in; it is so large-fifteen families! 900
francs, at a penny in the pound, without reck-
oning Christmas-boxes * * * *. There are ve-
ry few such doors in Paris. Heaven grant
Madame Barbotin may profit more by my ad-
vice, than Madame Badureau, portress at M.
Beaubois !
"That woman was really the Gazette of
the parish. Not a single thing was done in the
house, with which she did not acquaint her
neighbours. But for her, who would ever have
known that M. Beaubois owes his place solely
to the interest of his wife! She was thought
to have come of a good family, and behold ye,
I find she was a dancer in Germany, where she
had been the ruin of, I don't know how many
Barons. She must have ruined a great num-


THE GOSSIPS.
149
ber to make a fortune. She has made her's, and
M. Beaubois, who was in want of a security to
get him the place he solicited, married her
without examining any further than her strong
box. Fine news! Such a thing was never
heard of. The portress learned the history
through a brother of the lady's, a fine boy who
fell in her path one morning, and who was sent
away pretty quickly, as you may very well
guess. They procured a custom-house offi-
cer's place for him at the other end of the
world, and paid all his travelling expenses.
Some people say he really was her brother,
and some say he was no more her brother
than you or I. It is nothing to me, and as the
proverb says, 'Every one for themselves, and
God for us all.'
"There has been so much talk about this fool-
ish portress, who was turned away for spread-
ing scandalous reports, that she has never been
able to get another situation, and is now living
upon her daughter Mariette, who is nursery-
maid to a Senator. She is a pretty girl, I had
her with me two years as an apprentice. She
was to have been married last year to a char-
coal factor at Port St. Nicolas. An excellent
business, where one knows nothing!
The young man made at least a hundred
louis a year.
The match went off; but whose
fault was it? Why her mother's.
She per-
mitted her daughter to go one Sunday to la
Chaumiere alone with her intended. A young
A Tea Garden.
N 2


150
THE GOSSIPS.
mean
girl of eighteen, without experience! She did
not know the difference between the night be-
fore marriage, and the day after; not that I
to say
-Heaven forbid——But
certainly in my time girls were married, and
before they went to Paphos, to Tivoli, or to
Chaumiere. Balls Champêtres have ruined
every thing.
"It is very true, city balls are now not much
better. Witness twenty pretty Misses that I
could mention, who never fail to attend every
one, and are not married a bit the more for
that: I name nobody, but see what has hap-
pened to your neighbour's daughter. She will
one day be rich: she is now pretty. For these
ten years she has been called the best dancer in
Paris; she has danced with all the young men
of the capital: how many offers of marriage has
she had? Not a single one; and why? Because
they avoid girls who dance too well; because it
costs more to take a wife five or six times a
year to a ball, than to keep two children; be-
cause the love of dancing does not agree with
the cares of house-keeping, without mentioning
many other reasons, which you can very easily
divine."
Madame Choquet made a pause here, and as
she perceived I was about to take advantage of
it by edging in a word, "I beg pardon for in-
terrupting you," continued she, "but I must
ask permission to leave you a little earlier to-
day than usual. I have not a moment to lose. I
am going to a wedding, if you must know ***.


THE GOSSIPS.
151
Yes, really to a wedding! Did you never ob-
serve a young girl who sometimes comes with
me, little Henrietta, the daughter of a master
butcher a few doors from us. One of the rich-
est in Paris. He might have done as many
others do, who have not half his fortune, placed
his daughter in a smart boarding school, given
her masters, and in a word, have made a fine
lady of her; but Courtois had some good sense;
he had his daughter taught to read and write,
and placed her with me to learn needlework.
These two years that she has left me, she has
been at the head of her father's house, and
keeps his books as well as the best of clerks
could do. With her twenty years, her pretty
features, and her crowns, Henrietta has not, as
you may very well believe, wanted admirers.
She has refused, that is to say, her father has
refused for her, a notary's clerk, a clerk in the
customs, a lamp contractor, and a grocer in La
Rue de la Verrerie, who counted on her portion
to restore his credit. M. Courtois has cast his
eyes on the son of a cattle dealer of Poissy.
After the nuptials, the good man will leave his
shop to the children, and retire to his farm in
the Pays d'Auge, where, by way of doing
something, he will occupy himself in fattening
oxen.
"To day is the betrothing; I must not fail to
be there. I have made the bride's linen: it is
worth seeing all in dozens, and so good, and
so fine! The father has spared no expense.
The young man is a strapping good looking


152
THE GOSSIPS.
lad. He has made two campaigns, but this has
not prevented him from providing a substi-
tute, for whom he has paid two thousand
crowns.
"I must leave you to go and dress the bride,
-I understand such things a little,-I have not
been a lady's maid for nothing. There will be
some talk about the nuptial feast, I assure you:
a hundred covers at the Feu Eternel on the Bou-
levart du Jardin de Plantes. I know many
folks in this part of the world who will not be
very well pleased at this marriage. It is enough
that things are well done to excite the spleen of
the envious. Already satirical verses are writ-
ten upon it. I have some of them in my pock-
et. One says that good-man Courtois, will
hardly know himself in a merry making; that
it is a long while since he has treated his cus-
tomers; and a thousand other such foolish
pleasantries, which don't prevent his being a
very good fellow, very serviceable, and one
whose only fault is that he bestows his kind-
nesses in the wrong place. I know some-
thing of him; he has just raised my rent, and at
the same time has forbidden the goods of an
old musician to be sold who lives above me in
his house, and who owes him five or six quar-
ters. Whence comes such a preference? Be-
cause I am worth something, and the other has
not a sixpence. But why hasn't he a sixpence ?
Because, instead of attending to his scholars,
since the death of his wife, he passes all his
time at coffee-houses playing at dominos. For


THE GOSSIPS.
153
(
it is well said, that a woman is the treasure of a
house ****”
The tongue of Madame Choquet is like a
coach wheel, which inflames and heats by the
rapidity of its motion. The more she speaks
the more she warms, and the less possible it is
to foresee the termination of, or to stop such a
torrent of words :-but fortunately for me and
for the ceremony which awaited her, my ser-
vant came in as usual, and hastily interrupted
her in the middle of her harangue: he knows
as well as myself the danger to which we are
exposed by permitting her to finish it.
Madame Choquet, after addressing me with
the customary final question, "Is there any
thing more I can do for you, Sir ?" retired,
dropping me a very low curtesy, and leaving
me well convinced that if (as some learned man
says) a woman's tongue is her sword, she was
full as well qualified to give lessons in fencing
as her husband.


154
No. XII.-12th Feb. 1814.
THE EGOTISTS.
Moi!
Moi! dis-je, et c'est assez.
CORN. Médée.
Myself! Myself! I say, and that's enough.
THERE exist in nature two opposite forces,
denominated centripetal and centrifugal, whose
laws, discovered by Huygens, and applied by
Newton, govern the physical world. The first
of these forces carries forward all bodies in mo-
tion, towards one common centre; the second
repels them from it: the harmony of the uni-
verse results from the happy combination of
these two powers. The same theory may be
applied to the organisation of the social system.
Patriotism and Egotism supply the functions of
the central forces: the one seeks to assimilate
itself with the public interest, from which the
other as constantly endeavours to abstract it-
self. The happiest society is that wherein the
equilibrium betwixt these two impulses, is best
established. I advance this proposition without
considering the immediate inference which may


THE EGOTISTS.
be deduced from it, or the manner in which i
may be applied to the time and country in
which we live.
It is unjust, in my opinion, that Egotists, the
breed of whom (not to say the family) increases
to such an alarming extent, should affect to con-
sider Montaigne as their patron. The author
of the Essays did not hesitate to avow, that he
belonged to that sect of amiable idlers who
make happiness consist in that repose of body,
that tranquillity of soul, which their master,
Epicurus, assigns to his indolent deities.
Montaigne himself informs us, that his proper
employment, in this life, was to live in careless
relaxation, idly rather than busily; but how can
we accuse him of egotism who, of all writers,
has spoken best on friendship, because he de-
scribed what he felt? Of all the passions, of
all the sentiments of which the human heart is
susceptible, friendship is perhaps the only one
which precludes egotism. To love, is in some
degree to change one's existence, it is to live
in another, for another; it was not (adds Mon-
taigne, in speaking of his union with la Boëtie,)
any particular impulse which determined me, it
was an undescribable quintessence of all, which
having possessed itself of my will, led it to incor-
porate, and to lose itself in her's.
The reputation of egotism, which has been
conferred on this philosopher, has the same
foundation as his glory. Those Essays have
been condemned, while admired, in which he
talks to his readers about his person, his predi-


THE EGOTISTS.
his diseases, his virtues, and his de-
Montaigne has proposed for his object
study of the human heart, to be more cer-
an in his observations, he made them on him-
self; he speaks of his vices and his merits
with the same freedom; he frequently exhibits
himself as a proof, but never as an example.
It has frequently been attempted, but always
without success, to introduce the egotist on the
stage. Fabre, who has painted him in the most
odious colours in his Philinte (which is not that
of Moliere, whatever may be said), has given
this personage but a secondary rank, and only
employs him to relieve the beautiful character
of Alceste. Barthe, though possessing much
wit, has produced but a mediocre comedy on
the same subject; Cailhava has been equally
unsuccessful, and the Egotist yet remains to be
pourtrayed: it is unfortunate that we should
want painters for such a picture, at an epoch so
prolific in models.
In reading the works of Port-Royal, we know
not which most to admire, the vast acquire-
ments of these pious ecclesiastics, or their af-
fecting modesty. In considering that these im-
mortal productions, emanating from this school
of taste and reason, were presented to the pub-
lic with a respectful deference, it is impossible
to refrain from laughter at the doctorial pompo-
sity so often affected by the journalists of the
day, without any other title to the confidence of
their readers than the impertinent monogram
affixed to their articles? Who can help laugh-


THE EGOTISTS.
157
ing at their eternal repetitions of, I know, I sus-
pect, I contend, and I affirm. Ah! gentlemen,
the Pascals, Arnaults, Nicolles, and Lancelots,
said modestly: "We believe, it is our opinion.”
They thought the custom of speaking to the
public in the first person, proceeded from that
principle of ridiculous vanity, which they had
proscribed under the name of Egotism (an
energetic word with which they enriched our
language). Pascal goes yet farther, he pretends
" that a Christian ought to avoid altogether the
use of the pronoun I; that the slightest obtrusion
of personal importance is alike incompatible with
Christian humility and the laws of politeness."
It must be acknowledged, that in this respect
at least, we have never been less religious or
less polite than at present.
During a long time, the revolution has been
the emissary which we have charged with the
full weight of our iniquity: of all the evils for
which it has been made responsible, that of hav-
ing augmented the number of egotists, has
been, perhaps, the most fully confirmed. Those
who acted in it, as well as those who suffered,
seem to have learned, as a general maxim, that
the most certain resource is that which is found
in one's self; and the devotion best recompens-
ed, that which we cherish towards our own
persons. How many, at this time profess aloud
that they regulate their conduct on this ungene-
rous principle, which many indeed, have acted
on before, but which at least, they did not so
openly avow.
VOL. III.
0


158
THE EGOTISTS.
I was once acquainted with a M. d'Argeville,
an officer of dragoons, who lived very plea-
santly among his comrades, without any other
secret, than that of neither conferring or re-
ceiving a favour from any person whatever.
Nature had not made him an egotist; he had
become so, by system, in consequence of two or
three unlucky adventures, which appeared to
him to have equally originated in the integrity
of his heart: he had lost his best friend, by hav-
ing rendered him an essential service in lend-
ing him an essential sum, which he was una-
ble to reclaim but by quarrelling with the bor-
rower. In attempting to arbitrate one affair of
honour, he made himself two; from one of his
adversaries he received wound which confin-
ed him six months to his bed; he killed the
other, and was, in consequence, obliged to quit
his country for two years. Some other misfor-
tunes of the same kind had sufficed to extin-
guish his natural benevolence: in order to de-
stroy these feelings, he had adopted principles
to which he so firmly adhered, that he would
neither have lent a crown to his brother, nor
have uttered a word to save the lives of two of
his comrades: he frequently repeated that, "in
this world it was necessary to centre oneself
within a circle of not more than two feet diame-
ter."
It is painful to reflect that one of our most
celebrated wits and distinguished philosophers,
-that Fontenelle, whose long life mus!, of all
others, have furnished a train of experience in


THE EGOTISTS.
159
the human heart; it is painful, I say, to think
that this so celebrated man, was tainted, or ra-
ther contaminated with egotism, to such a de-
gree as to have sanctioned, under his name, that
anti-social aphorism, that there is no perfect hap-
piness without a callous heart and a good stomach.
This expression, which might have escaped
the ingenuity of an egotist, or even the caprice
of a philanthropist, could not have acquired a
dangerous authority, except in the mouth of at
man whose brilliant and fortunate career sup-
plies in the opinion of many persons but a long
commentary on it.
Among the famous egotists of the last age,
we cannot forget the Marchioness Deffant, who
during the last month of the life of her old
friend, the President Henault, passed all her
evenings with him.-She made her appearance
at Madame de Forcalquier's; every one con-
cluded that the president was better, but on his
health being inquired after, "Alas!" said she,
"I had the misfortune to lose him this morning,
or you would not have seen me here."
Every one knows the reply made by Colar-
deau, when dying, to his friend Barthe, who re-
quested his opinion on his comedy of the Sel-
fish Man, which he came to read at his pillow,
"You may add an excellent trait to the charac-
ter of your principal personage," replied Colar-
deau, 66 say that he obliged an old friend, on the
eve of his death, to hear him read a five-act ca-
medy."


160
THE EGOTISTS.
I should compose a book, instead of a paper,
did I attempt to trace, even in outline, the dif-
ferent portraits of egotism, for which society,
through all its gradations, supplies me with
models. I shall confine myself to one only,
which I have accurately observed, and which
appears to me to have attained perfection, or
rather to have reached the ideal deformity of a
defect, to which I know few vices which are not
preferable.
Saint-Chaumont has arrived at the age of
forty, without having formed an idea, or felt
one sentiment estranged from his own person.
In order to give full force to that expression,
Que le Moi dans sa bouche a plus d'une syllable.
Myself, with him, exceeds a single word.
He always takes care to couple it with I; I,
myself, begin all his phrases; he knows no evils
but those which he feels, no gratifications but
those which he enjoys: if he is abroad, and it
rains? the shower, he is convinced, falls only
for him; is he on foot in the streets? he cannot
conceive why carriages are tolerated; is he in
a carriage? he complains of the rigour of the
police, which does not allow foot-passengers to
be run over with impunity; all his actions,
thoughts, and opinions, are so many answers to
those questions which he continually addresses
to himself: "What inconvenience will it occa-


THE EGOTISTS.
161
sion me? What advantage shall I derive from
it? In what way can it serve me ?"
Saint-Chaumont has, in the world, the repu
tation of an honest man: what then is the va-
lue of his word? One of his friends came to
advertise him, one evening, that he should have
occasion for him at seven the next morning, on
an affair in which his entire fortune, his happi-
ness, and that of his family, depended. The ap-
pointment is precise, and one half-hour of delay
will annihilate all his hopes. Saint-Chaumont
promises to be exact; but he never gets up un-
til nine o'clock: he runs a risk of discompos-
ing himself for the whole day, by an infringe-
ment of any of his habits. At eight he is still
in bed: his friend arrives, presses, conjures
him; he rises, but he never goes out fasting;
his physician has interdicted him from it, on
penalty of a frightful head-ache: he must for-
tify himself against the cold; puts on wrappers,
double waistcoats, and stuffs his ears with cot-
ton; he sets out, gets into a coach, arrives; the
affair was terminated two hours ago; the ruin
of his friend is completed.
"What!" says
Saint-Chaumont, "it was really a great pity to
make one get up so early!"
Last year we were visiting together in the
country; one evening, the son of the master of
the house, taking a walk in the park, fell into
an empty well, the top of which they had ne-
glected to cover, and dislocated his ancle. The
gardener announced the accident; some ran to
assist the young man, others prepared a mattrass
02


162
THE EGOTISTS.
in the saloon to receive him. On this mattrass
Saint-Chaumont sunk down in a swoon; several
pressed round him, administered hartshorn,
and his spirits began to revive. Some one, who
mistook the cause of this fainting-fit, thought
to tranquillise him by assuring him that the ac-
cident was less serious than had been imagined,
that the youth had not broken his leg.
Very
good," said he, "but I am not the less shocked
at the danger I have run; I was yesterday even-
ing walking in the same place, and the very same
accident might have happened to myself."
These two characteristic traits of a perfect
egotist, render it unnecessary that I should ex-
hibit him in less important particulars; at ta-
ble, either at home or abroad, always helping
himself to the best dishes; at the play, always
occupying the best place in the box, without re-
gard to age, rank, or even sex; in the drawing-
room, standing in front of the chimney, mono-
polising the fire, perfectly regardless of the in-
convenience occasioned by its privation to
others. At whatever time, in whatever attitude,
we observe him, we find him always occupied
with himself when awake, and dreaming of
himself when asleep.
If my readers desire to see a finished pic-
ture of egotism, they will find it in the follow-
ing fable, by M. Arnault, in which a most inge-
nious comparison is expressed with great con-
ciseness, energy, and elegance :


THE EGOTISTS.
163.
LE COLIMACON.
Sans amis, comme sans farnille,
Ici-bas vivre en étranger;
Se retirer dans sa coquille
Au signal du moindre danger;
S'aimer d'une amitié sans bornes,
De soi seul emplir sa maison;
En sortir, suivant la saison,
Pour faire à son prochain les cornes ;
Signaler ses pas destructeurs
Par les traces les plus impures;
Outrager les plus tendres fleurs
Par ses baisers ou ses morsures;
Enfin chez soi, comme en prison,
Vieillir, de jour en jour plus triste :
C'est histoire de l'Egotiste,
Et celle du Colimaçon.
THE SNAIL.
With friends, with family unblest,
Condemn'd alone to dwell;
If danger's least alarm molest,
He shrinks within his cell.
Sole tenant of his narrow walls;
His self-esteem profound;
He issues when the season calls
To join the insects round.
Impure his track, he winds his way
Among the shrubs and flowers;
The fairest his selected prey,
He taints them or devours.


164
THE EGOTISTS.
Grown old, like captive mop'd and wan,
Forlorn at home he lies:
Thus, snail-like, lives the selfish man,
And like a snail he dies.
In this charming fable, every line is a
thought; a thing worth remarking at a time.
when ideas are so unusual and verses so abun-
dant.


165
No. XII.-26th Feb. 1814.
THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
Nec desilies, imitator in artium.
HOR, Ars. Poet.
Do not pique yourself on too scrupulous an imitation
THE Word Artist is of modern creation, at
least in the sense in which it is employed at
present; it is useful and convenient; it applies
extremely well, and generally, to all professors
of any art whatever; but in these latter times
we have strangely perverted it. In the course
of a revolution which tended to equalise, or ra-
ther to annihilate all distinctions, it has been
made a synonyme to the term artisan: it now
serves, by courtesy, to designate the condition
of a multitude of persons, who have not the
slightest pretensions to it. M. Gérard is a
painter, M. Houdon is a sculptor, M. Méhul
is a musician, M. Talma is a tragedian; Messrs.
so and so, the decorators of Chinese recesses,
the third violin in the orchestra of l'Ambigu,
the noble father of the troop of Montargis, are
all artists. It is useless to dispute merely about
words; but when words have a dangerous in-
fluence on things, it becomes necessary to re-


166
THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
strict their application. The facility with which
this title of artist is conceded to all who arro-
gate it, contributes more than we imagine to
augment that crowd of young people of both
sexes, who after having vegetated some years
in the classes and painting-rooms of the Aca-
demy, leave it with a title which they choose
rather to retain without profit and without ho-
nour, than to descend from by applying them-
selves to some useful occupation, better suited
to their abilities. Thence comes that multi-
tude of daubers, whose framed and glazed spe-
cimens diversify the arcades of the Palais-Roy-
al; thence that swarm of unfortunates who are
obliged to skulk in the suburbs, who speculate
on the sale of a romance or a waltz, and who
attend the season for balls, of which they com-
pose the orchestra, as their sole resource to pay
their lodgings, and discharge their tailor's bill.
I met the other day, at the sale of M. de
L's pictures, the young St. Charles, the
son of an eminent watchmaker. He recollect-
ed and accosted me. In reminding me that I
had formerly introduced him to M. Vien, he
brought to my recollection that the restorer of
the French school had often assured me that
this young man could never succeed in paint-
ing and that I had more than once strongly
recommended him to betake himself to that
employment which had rendered his father re-
spectable. Tormented by his ambition for the
vocation of an artist, he paid no regard to my
advice, and took at his own expense a journey


THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
167
to Rome: whence he had returned about four
years. Judging, probably, that the meanness
of his habit could give me no very brilliant idea
of his finances, he took great pains to assure
me that he was the most fortunate man in the
world, and made me promise to come and see
him.
I found him in one of the garrets of the Pa-
lais-Royal; he presented his wife to me, a young
villager, he informed me, from the province de
Caux. I confess, I could not help forming a
different conclusion respecting her origin. Eve-
ry thing, in this miserable retreat, bore the ap-
pearance of disorder and of poverty, which a
varnish of luxury rendered still more insup-
portable. To divert my attention from the
noise and sight of a couple of dirty children,
who were fighting with a dog in this small
chamber, which served at once for a kitchen
and a study, the artist requested me to remark
the magnificent coup-d'œil which he should en-
joy, he said, if some good incendiary (by dis-
encumbering him of an opposite house of seven
stories high) would remove the only obstacle
to the finest prospect imaginable. He at last
shewed me his pictures and designs, neither
of which contradicted the prediction of M.
Vien; all, nevertheless, were chefs-d'œuvre
in the eyes of their author, who only waited
for a peace with England, to transport this
precious collection to London, where he anti-
cipated a certain fortune. "In the mean time,"
he said," he lived as an artist, proudly strug-


168
THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
gling with the inconvieniences which some-
times assailed him, and submitting without
shame to the necessity which even obliged him
to degrade his noble pencil, by painting the
petty figure of a travelling lemonade-merchant,
or the plebeian profile of a toyman of the gal-
lery des Bons Enfans." It was now too late to
attack his resolution. What, therefore, could
I do better than commend his philosophy?
On quitting this artist, I went to visit a pain-
ter, in order to measure at one coup-d'œil the
immense distinction between them. M. N,
after having gained the grand prize, and made
the tour of Rome, where the finest models had
matured his talents, has returned to his own
country, and announced himself by a chef-d'
œuvre. This young man is gifted with one of
those intellects, glowing with genius and preg-
nant with imagination, whence issue those po-
etic creations which take possession of the
heart, without even appealing to the ordeal of
the judgment. His rivals applauded his success,
the government encouraged him by giving
him important commissions, and the prettiest
women of Paris, to whose preference he is not
insensible, contend for the privilege of supply-
ing models for his pencil.
M. N- resides in the faubourg St. Ger-
main, in a small house, which he has himself
decorated with great taste, and of which his
painting-room occupies the principal part: it
is truly a sanctuary of the arts, where disorder
reigns without confusion: canvasses and sketch-


THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
169
·
es are disposed on the easals, beautiful casts af-
ter the antique, among which we recognise the
torso of the Vatican, the heads of the Apollo
and of the Antinous, are ranged in gradation;
armour, and modern arms, with draperies of
different kinds are thrown on a circle of chairs,
in the midst of which stand two long figures,
one representing a knight of the fourteenth
century, armed at all points; the other, an ele-
gant French-woman of the nineteenth, in a
costume which combines the grace of the an-
tique with the charm of modern fashion. A
small library, supported by Egyptian pedestals,
contains two or three hundred select volumes,
among which we remark, in the first range, the
works of Leonardo da Vinci, of the Abbé Du-
bos, of Winkelman, of Montfaucon, the ruins
of Herculaneum, &c. Delille takes his place
in his quality of pictorial poet: and Le Sage,
Fielding, Richardson, and La Bruyere, are not
forgotten, as the painters of manners.
The historic painters of France have disdain-
ed, during a long time, to exercise their talents
on portrait. M. N. does not consider himself
degraded in exercising that branch of the art
which enhanced the reputation of Vandyke, of
Titian, and even of Raphael himself. His stu-
dy was filled with portraits, the greater num-
ber of which remained for a partial re-touching
of the draperies, a part of his employment
which he consigns to his pupils.
The first which attracted my attention repre-
sented a member of the mayorality, whose fi-
VOL. III,
P


170
THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
gure was not decidedly ignoble, nor announced
a man absolutely imbecile; the original of this
portrait had come to town for the purpose of
obtaining the post of a Counsellor of the pre-
fecture, and he was anxious to compensate the
loss of his silver wand, by the addition of an
embroidery of blue silk to his cloak; moreover,
as Monsieur the Counsellor was willing to per-
petuate to his family the remembrance of his
former dignity, he hit on the expedient of hav-
ing his scarf painted on the back of the elbow
chair in which he was sitting.
"This subject," said M. N. -, shewing
me another portrait, "has occasioned me ex-
cessive embarrassment. The original is a fo-
reign petit-maitre, whom two or three simple-
tons have rendered popular in Paris, during
some weeks past. We have had eight grand
consultations to discover some method of ex-
hibiting at once the order of St. Wladimir and
the Chamberlain's key, with which this hyper-
borean Lovelace is decorated. The problem,
you will allow, must have been sufficiently dif
ficult; since one is worn behind, on the left
side the other in front, on the right: I have
decided the difficulty, as you see, by placing
before my model, a glass à la Psyche, which
presents him at the same time in a double as-
pect."
While we were engaged in this amusing re-
view, the clock struck twelve; the hour at
which our Apelles commenced his sittings.


THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
171
I was about to withdraw : " Wait a moment,"
said he, "I expect some originals who are worth
knowing; you may have the pleasure of seeing
and hearing them, by stepping into this cabinet,
from which you may retire whenever you please,
by the door which leads to the little stair-case.
A carriage stops at the door; those are the
models of a family-picture, the head of which
is M. le Baron Coquard de la Grivaudière; I
shall say nothing to you, either of his rank or
his talents: hear, see, and judge for yourself."
From the centre of my observatory, I saw
advance, or rather roll into the room, an im-
mense rotundity, surmounted with a human
head; this was M. the Baron: the Baroness
was one of those personages who would not
disparage a company of grenadiers. Her fi-
gure was regularly insipid; her arms bony, her
feet large, and her bosom flat. Nevertheless, I
should not be surprised if she passed in the
world for a fine woman. Her two children were
of sufficiently amiable appearance, being but
slightly equipped with the masculine graces of
their mother.
-
"Here we are," said the Baron Coquard (as
he gave his witchourat and his lady's tippet to
a servant in a bran-new livery) " but be quick
Sir; when people pay as I do, they have a right
to expect to be served both well and expedi-
tiously."-" Let us set about composing the
groupe," replied M. N" have you any par-
ticular ideas on this subject?"—“Ideas! I have
a thousand; but I give the preference to the


172
THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
most simple of them. You shall paint me in
my park, fishing with a rod and line in my great
basin; and you must take particular care to shew
one of the wings of my house. I shall bring you
a plan of it; but, above all things, let the water
I am fishing in be as clear as crystal; I have a
particular reason for it." "And you, Madam-"
"I wish to be painted at the foot of Mount Ve-
suvius, at the moment of an eruption, explain-
ing that inexplicable phenomenon to my chil
dren-'tis an historical fact."" Very well,
but how am I to paint in the same picture Ma-
dam, the Baroness at the foot of Vesuvius, and
Monsieur the Baron on the border of his basin,
in his estate at Brie? We have, like the dra-
matists, our three unities, and that of place is
what we are least permitted to violate."-" With
good perspective," replied M. Couquard, “you
may do any thing. Make what arrangements
you please, I shall not give up my mansion.".
"And I stick to Vesuvius," said the lady. "I
see but one mode of reconciling these things;
I will paint Madame in a summer-house (on
the brink of the canal in which Monsieur is fish-
ing) and shewing to her children a coloured
print of Vesuvius, in which they shall be all
three represented conformably to historical
fact."
"Very good!" cried the Baron, “folks
will be puzzled to make out the meaning of
it!"
After half an hour's sitting, which enabled
the painter to prepare his sketch, the financial
baron departed, resigning his place to an au-


THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
173
thor, who sat for his portrait, in order to have
it engraved as a frontispiece to an ancient edi-
tion of Plutarch, which he had encumbered with
insignificant annotations. This ridiculous pe-
dant, well known for his fatuity and his outre-
cuidance, felt convinced that his image in cop-
per-plate would have a marvellous effect at the
head of an assemblage of illustrious men.
A young lady now made her appearance,
whom I should have taken for the model of
Gérard's Psyche, if the ravishing expression of
her large blue eyes had not apprised me that
love had already passed through them. I could
not cease admiring the delicacy of her figure,
the blooming freshness of her complexion, a
thousand graces already formed, and others
just expanding. The painter surpassed him-
self; the portrait, now nearly finished, approach-
ed the perfection of the original. After this
beautiful creature had sate some minutes:-
--
"My husband," said she with a timid and em-
barrassed air, "intends coming to-morrow to
fetch my portrait; I request, Sir, that you will
find some pretext to detain it, and make a copy
of it, which I design" (her voice became less
firm)—" "For a friend whom you wish to sur-
prise?" continued the painter rapidly.--" Yes,
Sir, one of my earliest friends.". "We are
accustomed to these little secrets of friendship;
and on your's, you may be perfectly easy.""I
request, Sir," added she, with more confidence,
"that the copy be so like the original portrait
that it may be mistaken for it."" It will be
P 2


174
THE PAINTER'S STUDY.
mistaken for it, Madam; I engage it will be
mistaken for it." M. N uttered these last
words with a peculier smile, and a blush in the
young lady's cheek, explained to me the ma-
lignity of it.
The other personages who succeeded to the
sitting-chair, were without physiognomy: I soon
left them to contemplate the lay-figures.


175
No. XIV. 12th March, 1814.
THE NEWSMONGERS.
Pereant qui nostra ante nos dixerunt.
PROV. Lat.
Perish those who anticipate us in telling the news.
Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.
PERSIUS, Sat. 1.
It is nothing to know a thing, unless others are
sensible that we know it.
ONE of the most general and whimsical pro-
pensities of the human mind, is the avidity we
have for hearing and disseminating news:
Est natura hominum novitatis avida*.
I recollect to have heard it said by one of the
noblest and most enterprising characters of the
last age,
"I must have adventures, no matter
whether bad or good; I can never sleep con.
tentedly unless I am in the Gazette.”
* Human nature is eager for novelties.


176
THE NEWSMONGERS.
How many persons, with some sincerity,
might make the same avowal! This curiosity,
without object, and usually without profit, ex-
alted in some people to almost an habitual ma-
nia, constitutes that race of newsmongers,
which it is necessary, in order to distinguish ac-
curately, to divide into three classes. The Park
Newsmongers, the Tavern Newsmongers, and
the Newsmongers of the drawing-room.
Les nouvellistes de jardin, de Café, et de Salon.
The first of which, the celebrated Metra,
and the Abbé Trente-Mille-Hommes, were for-
merly the prototypes, occupies itself exclusive-
ly with politics.
The second embraces politics, and the litera-
ture and news of its department. The third
forms the most eminent class of newsmongers;
its forte is every thing, and its jurisdiction
without limits.
Among the numerous successors of those
two accomplished Cracovistes, whom I have
just mentioned, one of the most distinguished
is the indefatigable Rigolet. He is up before
seven in the morning; after having interrogat-
ed his milk-woman respecting the force and
march of the enemy, he hastens to the Tuile.
ries to inspect the journals: these he reads
from one end to the other, very frequently with-
out perceiving that he is but repeating the text
of what he read in the Moniteur the preceding
evening. The two following hours he passes


THE NEWSMONGERS.
177
at the Place du Carousel, waiting the arrival of
the Couriers: by the gallop of the horse, by
the very attitude of its rider, he has already di-
vined the nature of the despatches, of which
he speaks forthwith, with as much assurance
as if they had been addressed to himself. His
ear catches a distant report; it must be the
cannon of the Invalides! fortunately the wind
blows another way, scarcely permitting him to
hear it, he therefore still retains the hope of
being able to recount the victory, announced by
this signal, as a special piece of intelligence.
He now proceeds to the Italian boulevart, to
expatiate with two other profound politicians,
who rendezvous there every day at the same
hour. Here they arrange the principal facts
which they are to put in circulation during the
day; and in order to avoid the geographical er-
rors, which such gentlemen frequently com-
mit, they are careful to consult one of those
maps of the theatre of war, which are sold in
the print-shops. The crowd surrounds them,
and Rigolet, a toothpick in his hand, and his
spectacles on his nose, continues, nevertheless,
to point out the points occupied by the armies,
and the position which each of them ought to
take up, in order to avoid an inevitable defeat.
I was a witness some days since, of one of those
military dispositions, and could not help hinting
to General Rigolet, that he had drawn up his
army in order of battle in a river, which he had
mistaken for one of our great roads. Their
materials collected, and their memory well


178
THE NEWSMONGERS.
charged with the names of towns and villages,
of army-corps and generals, whom they defeat
and disperse with the greatest facility, our
three newsmongers in chief separate and take
their stations, one at the Luxembourg, another
at the Palais-Royal, and the third at the Tuile
ries. This last post, the most important of the
three, is confided to the redoubtable Rigolet.
At about two o'clock, no matter what weather,
we are sure of finding him at the Petite-Pro-
vence, in the midst of a circle of old politicians,
uttering his random and ridiculous discourses
on the interests of the belligerents, on the cos-
sacks, the allies, and the levy-en-masse, and
figuring on the table with his umbrella stick,
the dispositions of a battle which must certain-
ly take place in a few days, and of which he is
the man to announce beforehand all the particu-
lars, the number of prisoners, of killed, wound-
ed, and missing. Notwithstanding the respect
in which his decisions are held, doubts are
sometimes suggested as to the authority of his
information. On such occasions, nothing can
be more ridiculous than the tone of superiority
he affects, and the sapient and mysterious air
with which he exhibits a letter from his son, an
army commissary, who ought," (adds he,
with a smile of disdain and irony)" to know
the movements of the army which he provi-
sions." If this irrefragable authority does not
immediately silence his opponent, the president
Rigolet puts up his spectacles; coldly salutes
the company, and marches off, to the great mor


THE NEWSMONGERS.
179
tification of this auditory of fly-catching politi-
cians, who listen to him with their ears prick-
ed up and their mouths open.
Before he returns home to dinner, he never
neglects to call at the Exchange, and in the
state of the stocks, whether high or low, he
always finds fresh confirmation of his intelli-
gence, and a new argument to support his con-
jectures.
I stept by accident, the other night, into a
coffee-house at the foot of Pont-Neuf, which I
had never entered before: (I say it with shame,
I, who from taste still more than habit, pretend
to know Paris, at least as well as the late Hur-
taud, the lexicographer, whose dictionary,
whatever Louis XV. might have said of it, is a
very incomplete inventory of this capital.) The
Café Manoury, (so it is called) retains some-
thing of the Gothic, which could not but have
an agreeable effect to a man of my age; here
is neither bronze, gilding, nor crystal; instead
of granite or mahogany stands, there are large
oaken tables, with slabs of red marble, and the
good banquets of the Arras tapestries, furnish
as heretofore, the interior of the apartment;
the bar is occupied by a corpulent man, who by
his dexterity in breaking sugar, seems to have
passed at least twenty years in that employ-
ment. The excellent coffee, served with great
attention in cups of old china, which, notwith-
standing their thickness, contained a considera-
ble quantity-altogether contributed to trans-
port me back to the days of my youth, and the


180
THE NEWSMONGERS.
people who surrounded me, were calculated to
prolong this pleasing illusion.-I thought at
one moment that all the old politicians of the ar-
bour of Cracovie, of the great alley of the Palais-
Royal, and the cellars of Procope, had risen to
rendezvous at the Café Manoury, where I re-
cognised to my great surprise, the originals of
three little designs which I had bought in the
morning of Martinet.
Being tired of listening to disquisitions on the
war, I quitted the politician's corner, and ap-
proached a table where five persons were lis-
tening to a sixth, with an eagerness of curiosi-
ty which exhibited itself in their figures, in
traits more or less ludicrous. The oratorical
newsmonger was a furrier living in the Rue
Bertin-Poirée; before I had been advertised of
it by one of my neighbours, I had divined his
profession, which indicated itself in his witch-
ourat of cotton velvet, doubled with an old fox-
skin fur, and in his little sable muff, which be-
trayed the marks, of at least, fifteen years ser-
vice. This parochial newsmonger related with-
out once stopping, (and without any other tran-
sition than the words, "you bring to my recol-
lection," addressed to persons who had not open-
ed their mouths,) an accident which had hap-
pened to one of his lodgers, who had nearly
been suffocated by the fumes of charcoal; an
adventure which had occurred the same night
in a house in the Rue de la Monnaie, where the
principal lodger returning home to escort a
party of ladies to the Café Conti, had mistaken


THE NEWSMONGERS.
181
>
for a robber, and given in charge to the watch,
a young man, a shopkeeper in the neighbour-
hood, who had come to present a bill to his
wife.
Our furrier afterwards entertained the little
assembly with the organisation of the national
guard, in which he was about to be promoted
to the rank of a serjeant; with the arrest of a
young person who had furnished an apartment
on credit, on the promise of a lieutenancy of dra-
goons; with the bankruptcy of a dealer in
earthenware, in Poulies Street, who had nearly
three hundred pounds on his books; with a du-
el fought with swords by two water-carriers,
and finally with an account of a sermon to be
preached by a canon of Notre-Dame at St. Ger-
mains-l'Auxerrois during the passion week.
Let us leave these bourgeois newsmongers,
whose insipid absurdities have so long supplied
food for our theatres, and celebrate a more im-
portant personage of this kind; my readers
have already glanced their eyes on Cleon. This
perhaps is the most communicative creature in
the world: the pleasure of hearing and of telling
something new, is in his estimation, the greatest
gratification which it is possible for a human be-
ing to enjoy he scribbles forty notes a day, runs
from anti-chamber to anti-chamber, from toi-
lette to toilette: he goes from the Tuileries to
the Exchange, from the Exchange to the Tor-
toni Coffee-house, and makes more noise in
the evening, in a saloon, with the news he has
collected, than the public crier in announcing
VOL. III.
૨


182
THE NEWSMONGERS.
two victories. Like a certain quadruped, to
whom, in his voice and ears, he likewise bears
some resemblance, he finds an aliment in every
thing,
Et brouté egalement le chardon et la rose.
Brouzing alike the thistle and the rose..
He knows of no evil but those things with
which you are already acquainted, nor of any
good but that of which it is in his power to in-
form you. He acquaints you with the same sa-
tisfaction that a province is exposed to famine,
or that it is enriched by an extraordinary abun-
dance; that Lima has been swallowed by an
earthquake, or that new islands have been disco-
vered in the ocean: he brings you with the
same eagerness, the news, that your only
daughter is safely brought to bed, or that your
son has been wounded in the last battle. He
never fails to be at the first representation of a
new piece, and hurries out before the conclu-
sion, in order to be the first to announce its
success or condemnation. After having ex-
hausted all the topics of public interest, and
displayed all his letters respecting them, Cleon
commences the chapter of anecdotes: "Madame
N is going to take the waters, for a com-
plaint on which her physician himself is afraid
to pronounce decidedly. A court intrigue, (of
which he was undoubtedly the instrument) will
shortly involve a charming woman in insur-


THE NEWSMONGERS.
183
mountable ridicule.-A literary man has com-
municated to him, in confidence, a Satire like
one of Juvenal, of which, Cleon furnished him
with the principal traits. A celebrated dancer
has changed since yesterday, the cypher on her
carriage it is feared that she will finish at last,
by exchanging it for a number.-A woman hás
been delivered of a child with four hands, in a
house where a famous critic lies on his death-
bed, &c. &c."
Next to public events, the kind of intelligence
which Cleon most delights to traffic in, is the
reputation of women; in three evenings, this
drawing-room Cossack will find the means to
sacrifice, without mercy, the reputation of thir-
ty mothers of families.
But in a deficiency of other victims, this
magnanimous newsmonger does not hesitate to
acquaint you with the good turns done him by
his own wife; with the reasons which induce
him to expedite the marriage of his daughter,
and with the indiscretion which has occasioned
him the loss of his best friend; in fine, the idea
of his own death would not be at all afflicting
to him, if he could find some means which
would enable him to disseminate the mournful
tidings of it himself.
This character of the newsmonger, which
has not yet been introduced on our stage, has
been sketched in the excellent comedy of the
School for Scandal, by Sheridan, the English
Orator. In this piece, two newsmongers re-
late to the friends of an injured husband, that


184
THE NEWSMONGERS.
he, instead of compromising his conjugal dis-
honour by a legal process, has fought a duel
with his wife's gallant: the fact is undoubted;
both them attest it; but the one believes that
the affair was determined with swords; the
other, more positive, insists that it was decided
with pistols. He gives by way of proof, the
details of the encounter, which took place in an
apartment.
The husband received his adversa-
ry's bullet in the middle of the thorax, while
his ball, less dexterously aimed, after missing
the lover, struck a little bronze statue of Shak-
speare, passed out at the window, and wounded
a postman who was coming up to the house
with a letter from Northampton. These gen-
tlemen had only made a trifling mistake, no
such combat had taken place; they are set
right, by the husband, who assures them of it
himself, in addressing to the newsmongers of
the l'Ecole de Médisance, this line of our Men-
teur
Les gens que vous tuez se portent assez bien.
The persons you kill are perfectly well.


185
No. XV. 23d April, 1814.
THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
Vixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi.
i have lived; I have finished the task which nature
assigned me.
THE moment is come. I feel that I shall not
survive this day, and I avail myself of an effect
of my fever, which supplies my blood and spi-
rits with a degree of activity, to trace the last
lines which will fall from my trembling hand.
In that hour when we must resign whatever
has been bestowed on us, when no source of sa-
tisfaction remains to us, but that which results
from the good we have done, or which we may
yet be capable of doing, I shall let no thought
escape which my feelings may have carelessly
suggested, and which has not been sanctioned
by reflection.
In drawing, about a year since, the painful
picture of the departure of la Chaine, I spoke
of a young man, of prepossessing appearance,
whose eyes were suffused with tears, and whose
muscles were in convulsive agitation. This
young man, whom I may now be permitted to
Q 2


186
THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
designate more explicitly, was named Rateau,
and was formerly a subaltern in the Parisian
Guard. He was implicated in the conspiracy
of Mallet, an attempt, the avowed object of
which, did not justify its temerity.
Condemned to a worse punishment than
death, he was sentenced for life to the infamy
of the gallies. Let me be allowed to exert a
dying voice in his favour, and to invoke in his
behalf the beneficence, the justice of a prince,
whose benefits preceded his presence, and
whom heaven restored to his country to repair
every injury, and to alleviate every misfortune,
*
"Wednesday, 22d April, 1814.
+
"The Hermit of la Chaussée-d'Antin is no
more at four yesterday evening, he closed his
eyes in the sleep of eternity, having attained
the age of seventy-three. As the Hermit has
become by accident a public character, and as
his Essays have had considerable success in the
world, I considered it my duty, in quality of
kinsman and executor, to give some account to
his friends, (among whom he always felt pleas-
ed to reckon his readers) of the last moments
of a relative, whose memory I have so much
reason to cherish and revere. I imagined like-
wise, that these details, in which his character-
istic discernment may be so clearly recognised,


THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
187
would not be misplaced at the end of his spe-
culations on manners.
"I was less alarmed than I ought to have
been at the progress of a malady, of which my
uncle himself had informed the public, and the
assurances of the physician had contributed,
equally with my own observations, to disarm
any apprehension as to the results. The Her-
mit spoke of his approaching dissolution with
so much freedom, nay, sometimes with so much
gaiety; I remarked so little alteration in his
features, so little diminution of his moral or
physical faculties, that I persisted in believing
that the idea which exclusively occupied him,
was nothing more than the text of one of his
subsequent Essays.
"It was only on Sunday last, on finding at
his bed-side a notary, to whom he was dictating
his will, that I found myself assailed with pre-
sages, the impression of which, I could not con-
troul my feelings sufficiently to conceal-" My
dear Ernest, (said he with a smile full of sweet-
ness) every thing surprises you, because you do
not prepare yourself for any thing: call to
mind the judgment you once passed on Ma-
dame Lineuil,* and do not give way to immode-
rate grief, because you have flattered yourself
with hopes which it was unreasonable to in-
dulge. To die, is one of the clauses in the con-
tract of life, and I have been fortunate that my
* In a preceding number of the Hermit de la Chaus-
sée d'Antin.


188
THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
hour for its fulfilment has been somewhat pro-
crastinated, since it has enabled me, before I
close my eyes for ever, to witness the dawning
of a day, which appeared to be finally extin-
guished, or which, at least, seemed destined
never more to rise for me. If nature had left
to my own choice the moment for paying this
debt, could I have selected a better? I have
seen, contrary to all probability, the accomplish-
ment of that grand restoration which is prepar-
ing new ages of prosperity for my country; I
enjoy in anticipation all the advantages reserv-
ed for my successors, with the certainty of not
becoming a witness of the last struggles of am-
bition, folly, and intrigue; struggles which may
yet be made to retard the re-establishment of
an order of things where probity and merit will
constitute the only claims to the estimation of
the country and the favour of the prince. I ad-
mire as a man, the singular example of mag-
nanimity displayed by an Alexander, who may
truly be denominated the great, and it is only as
a Frenchman that I have some regrets in con-
templating events which militate against the
glory of my country, whose immediate conse-
quences, perhaps will not be unmingled with
mortification, and whose advantages will not be
reaped without more than one sacrifice."
"The physician arrived at the moment when
my uncle, animated by what he called his pro-
phetic spirit, began his course of predictions:
he imposed silence on the sick man, and oblig-
ed him to allow his body some repose, forbid-


THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
189
ding him to exercise his head. The Hermit
entrusted me with some billets to deliver, and
requested me to return early the next morning.
It was in vain that I insisted on passing the
night with him; he would not permit it.
"In the morning, notwithstanding all my di-
ligence, I found myself preceded in my visit by
Madame L*** my uncle's most intimate
friend, of whom he has frequently made men-
tion in his Essays: her presence appeared to
have reanimated him, and my hopes began to
revive.
"The morning was serene: the Hermit re-
ceived several visits, read the journals, and in-
troduced himself a discussion on public affairs,
the consideration of which had exclusively oc-
cupied him since the commencement of his
illness.
"It will readily be believed," said he, "that
my opinions, at this time, are disinterested, and
that my wishes are unmingled with ideas of
personal advantage. There can be no repose,
no possible happiness for France, but in the
bosom of that monarchichal constitution which
Montesquieu has described with so much elo-
quence, and whose advantages are practically
exemplified in a neighbouring nation." The
Chevalier de N contended against this
proposition, and spoke in favour of a pure, that
is to say, an absolute monarchy, in the tone of a
man who repeats a lesson, half learned, and who
imagines himself supporting principles while
he is but defending his prejudices. Ah! M.


190
THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
le Chevalier,' replied the Hermit to him, 'for
heaven's sake, do not be more a royalist than
the King, it is he himself who requests it of you
your actions and your exhortations will be
vain, the age will take its course, and we have
no alternative but to go along with it; you will
never again able to persuade any one, that
despotism, even under a good prince, is not the
worst of all governments. In proportion as the
French cherish the Bourbons, whom the boun-
ty of heaven has restored to them, they will
find a security for their throne, even in the very
principles which reversed it: this security can
only emanate from a state of things which iden-
tifies, in some sort, the nation with the govern-
ment; which confirms the royal authority, and
guarantees public liberty; which places the in-
dependence of the tribunals above all fear or
influence, and which establishes at the same
time the responsibility of ministers and the in-
violability of the monarch. Maintain, above all
the rest,maintain, with certain legal restric-
tions, that liberty of the press, the value of
which was sufficiently demonstrated by the
pains which Buonaparte took to suppress it.
From that day when the right of thinking is
repressed, when perhaps a book has no chance
of appearing without having been degraded or
mutilated by the censor, the debasement of the
nation is completed, and tyranny no longer
knows a limit: thence we may date that deluge
of absurdities, of crimes and illusions with
which France has been inundated during ten


THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
191
years, and which resulted not less from the im-
becile credulity of the people, than from the
unprincipled audacity of the government. We
may apply to its chief, that expression of Luis
de Haro, the Spanish ambassador at the confer-
ences of the Pyrenees, when his opinion was
asked of Cardinal Mazarin: "he was a great
man," replied he, "but he had a great fault,
which was, that he was always endeavouring to
deceive every body.”
"I saw that my uncle had greatly fatigued
himself with speaking. Madame L-
made me a sign to withdraw two or three In-
terlocutors who unmercifully persisted in the
dispute; I was obliged to call the doctor to my
aid. He entered, saluted the company with a
true Hippocratical gravity, approached the sick
man, felt his pulse, considered a moment, took
a pinch of snuff, and then politely adjourned the
assembly, with the exception of Madame
L, myself, the Chevalier, and the doctor
himself, whom my uncle detained to dinner.
"The doctor expressed concern.
not act like children,' said my uncle, but ex-
press ourselves candidly. It is well understood,
doctor, that your theories are defective, and
that in spite of you or me, death must soon
overtake us; let us then endeavour to submit to
this necessity as easily as possible:
'Let us
55#
"Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa."
*The pomp of death is more terrible than death
itself.


192
THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
as you well know. I have yet some days be-
fore me, I wish to enjoy them entirely; I shall
get the start of you: I request therefore, that
you three will not distress yourselves; we will
once more dine together.'
"Without attending to the remonstrances of
the doctor, he gave orders to have the table laid
by his bed-side, and during the repast, appa-
rently in better spirits than we had seen him a
long time, he talked of nothing but the miracu
lous event of the restoration. The good Her-
mit drank a glass of Burgundy to the health of
Louis XVIII, and the peace of the world, and
requested me to sing, during the dessert, some
spirited couplets which had lately been address-
ed to him by an amiable correspondent of the
Caveau moderne.
"Towards six o'clock, my uncle experienced
a crisis, which made him request to have a few
minutes interview with Madame L, alone.
Fifty years since,' said he to her with a
smile, I should not have ventured to demand
this favour, and you would have felt some scru-
ple in granting me a tête-à-tête equally inno-
cent time has singular privileges."
"I was recalled in about a quarter of an
hour. Madame L was seated before an
open seeretary, and held in her hand a little
ebony coffer with steel fastenings; with this she
withdrew, endeavouring to stifle her sobbings,
and requesting me not to quit the patient until
her return.


THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
193
"This lady had scarcely left the room when
my uncle felt another convulsion, less violent,
indeed, than the former, but which terminated
in a long fainting fit. I called the doctor with
a cry of terror; he adopted means to reanimate
his patient, and assured me, by way of restor-
ing my spirits, that there was not yet any dan-
ger.
"The doctor is right' added the Hermit,
who had heard his last words-there is no
danger. That evil cannot be very formidable,
which is the last; and to judge by the trial I am
about to make, it is very easy to die. The soul
of an old man escapes easily; as it was observed
by Seneca, it is already on the brink of his lips.
I continue to study myself in these last mo-
ments, and it is not without satisfaction that I
find myself on the point of ceasing to do what I
have been engaged in doing so long. Of what
should I complain? Is it not as natural to die
as to be born? and do not all the paths of glory
and of fortune terminate at this point? In cal-
culating the general term of life, I have lived
several years at the expense of others, I have
no longer any reasonable wish to form, nor any
other prayer to address to heaven than my
Nunc Dimittis.
(
"Adieu, my friend,' continued he, in a
faultering voice, we shall see each other again
to-morrow, I hope, and you will know my last
intentions.'
VOL. III
R


194
THE DEATH OF THE HERMIT.
"The next day, Tuesday, the Hermit slept,
almost without interruption; during the ensu-
ing night he was agitated, but without pain. On
Wednesday morning he wrote some lines-
those which I have affixed at the top of this
article-I had not closed my eyes during three
days, and I slept on a sofa in an adjoining cham-
ber; at about a quarter past four in the after-
noon I was awaked by Madame L, who
announced to me, her eyes overflowing with
tears, that my uncle was breathing his last; he
opened his eyes, turned them on Madame
Land myself with an expression of in-
effable tenderness, turned his head on the pil-
low, and died.
"ERNEST de LALLE."


195
No. XVI. 30th April, 1814.
THE HERMIT'S TESTAMENT.
Relinquendem est
MART. Ep. 44.
All must be resigned.
THE Custom of making wills must be a very
ancient one, if we may judge by that of Noah,
cited by Eusebius, the principal ordinances of
which have been preserved to us in the chro-
nicle of the Monk Cedrenus. I know that se-
veral authors have contended against this right,
in virtue of which a man disposes of those pos-
sessions which can no longer appertain to him
when he shall have ceased to exist. I am of
another opinion: it appears to me to be a na-
tural and simple provision, that we should be.
stow on others the goods we possess, on the
condition that they shall not take possession of
them until we ourselves have resigned them,
and I should have no difficulty in proving that
custom is, in this respect, perfectly in unison
with reason, justice, and morality. In order,
as far as possible, to put this last act of my will
out of the reach of that chicane which so fre


196
THE HERMIT'S TESTAMENT.
quently introduces itself between two interpre-
tations, I have taken the precaution to make
what is called an olographic testament; and to
ordain as the first clause, that whatever done
shall raise the slightest difficulty on all, or any
part of the said testament, shall forfeit, by that
act, all advantage resulting from benefactions
made in his favour. Let such a regulation as
this be generally adopted; let it be made an in-
dispensable preamble in all acts of this nature,
and we should prevent an infinite number of
disgraceful lawsuits, by stopping up the source
of them. Seeing that I bequeath to my ne-
phew, as the most valuable part of the inheri-
tance I transmit to him, the reputation of an
honest man, which I have laboured to sustain
during sixty years, I demand from him that he
defend it unguibus et rostro, against those as-
sociations of bravoes, newly re-organised, who
attack and maltreat with indiscriminate ferocity
both the dead and the living.
I declare that I quit this world in full expec-
tation that I am entering on a better; a thing
which must appear excessively probable, even
to the most incredulous, at least if he have
passed, like me, seventy-five in this.
Nevertheless, as we ought, as far as we can,
to die in peace, even with those with whom we
have lived at war, I sincerely ask pardon of all
the hypocrites I have unmasked, of all the in-
triguers I have exposed, aud of all the fools I
have had the misfortune to laugh at; on my
own part, I forgive all who have treated me


THE HERMIT'S TESTAMENT.
197
with envy, hatred, or ingratitude, and all the li-
bellers who tormented my life as much as they
were able; I say nothing of some faithless beau-
ties who caused me much uneasiness in my
youth; each has, in turn, forgiven the other.
I require that all my papers, without
exception, shall be transmitted to my old
friend Charles de L, who, after having
extracted from them what he shall judge wor-
thy of the public, or of a friend's port-folio,
shall himself commit the remainder to the
flames. By this arrangement I obtain the right
of previously disavowing all posthumous me-
moirs, all inedited correspondence, and other
publications of the same kind, which the glean-
ers of literature may think proper to publish
under my name. I should do an injustice to
my friend in forbidding, by a special interdict,
the publication of my private letters. We have
too often protested against that violation of the
most sacred of sanctuaries; against that indeli-
cacy which makes the public the confidant of
our most secret affections, of the unreserved
confessions of two souls expatiating in mutual
freedom, to have the slightest apprehension of
exciting that scandal after my death, which is
attached to the letters of Mirabeau, those of
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, and many others.
I do not forbid the compilation of a complete
edition of my works, if the risk be warranted
by iny bookseller and the public; but I insist
that, my portrait shall I not be placed at the head
of it; that is a species of vanity of which cer-
R 2


198
THE HERMIT'S TESTAMENT.
tain persons would have cured me, granting I
had been originally infected with it. I please
myself with the idea of preventing the journal-
ists from diverting themselves with the Socratic
turn of my nose, and the Chinese character of
my eyes. If, notwithstanding, the bookseller
shall insist on the portrait as an indispensable
adjunct, I beg that the artist may be requested
to furnish a costume more conformable to my
character than my profession. I have often
laughed at seeing Bertin sighing forth an elegy
in a dragoon's uniform; at Gilbert, wielding
the lash of satire, in a bag-wig: and at Buffon
explaining the mysteries of Nature, in an em-
broidered coat and laced ruffles.
I expressly forbid my executor to sell my
furniture by auction. I could never contem-
plete without extreme disgust that eager crowd
of persons whom a notice affixed to a piece of
carpet has drawn into a house of mourning, in-
to the midst of a family in tears, in order to
dispute for the spoils of the dead. In conse-
quence, I direct my nephew to divide between
my servant Paul and Mrs. Choquet, my house-
keeper, such of my old moveables, as he may
not reserve for his own use.
I leave to my nephew in succession, as I re-
ceived it from my uncle, the Prior d'Armey-
tières, my large arm-chair, with morocco cush-
ions, which he is not to banish from his dress-
ing-room, on the penalty of insulting the me-
mory of his forefathers in giving himself the
habit of reposing on it an hour or two every


THE HERMIT'S TESTAMENT.
199
day, he will be continually reminded of some
old ideas of probity and morality attached to it,
by which, as occasion serves, he may regulate
his actions.
I recommend equally to the piety of my le-
gatee, the eighteen family portraits which I
bequeath to him. Many of them are from the
the hands of great masters; there are two
by Mignard, three by Rigaud, one by Raoux,
and four by Latour. If my grand nephew should
ever be tempted, in an hour of necessity, to put
up his ancestors to sale, I recommend him to
read over a certain scene in the School for
Scandal, which, perhaps, may induce him to
alter his resolution.
I give to the wife of my friend Charles de
L, my portrait at length, which she has
frequently demanded of me, and which I was
determined to refuse while living; for this rea-
son, that it is a striking likeness, and a mon-
strous caricature. Death will efface the ridi-
cule and enhance the value of the resemblance.
Item. I give to Paul all my wardrobe; the
articles it contains are so plain that he may
wear them without impropriety, and their style
is so antique that they may soon become fash-
.ionable.
My books are chiefly surcharged with notes,
and are neither sufficiently rare nor curious to
tempt the amateurs. If my executor should
determine on selling them, he will be obliged
to treat with the second-hand booksellers; by
which means I shall at least escape that biblio-


200
THE HERMIT'S TESTAMENT.
graphical celebrity, which consists, in having
one's name exposed in a collection of catalogues,
by the side of those Filheuls, La Ceus, Bellan-
gers, and other illustrious and unknown wor-
thies, who have no other reputation than that of
their libraries.
I give to my housekeeper my kitchen furni-
ture; requesting her in return to forgive me
for having spoken a little freely of her in a dis-
course, intituled, the gossipings of my house-
keeper, which has not yet been published, but
which will appear in the last volume of my col-
lection of observations. I give to the said
dame Choquet a portrait of the Virgin after
Raphael, which she has long coveted, and
which, as she has observed a hundred times,
will look extremely well at the foot of her bed,:
between her crucifix and her holy-water pot.
Item. I give her a year's wages.
I wish that no billets should be sent appris-
ing persons of my death; those who are inter-
ested in it, will hear of it soon enough; those
who are not, have no occasion to hear it at all.
I desire that the ceremony of my funeral
may
be conducted with the utmost simplicity;
that I may be borne directly from my own
house to the church, and from the church to
my final abode, without stopping the hearse be-
fore the theatre du Vaudeville, where I recol-
lect to have had a piece brought out twenty
years since; nor even before the office of the
Gazette de France, where I once took up my
literary residence, lest they should command


THE HERMIT'S TESTAMENT.
201
some one of the establishment to pronounce my
funeral oration.
P
Seeing the instability of our modern cemete-
ries, and that another has taken possession of
the only place in the burying-ground of Mont-
martre which I had a wish to occupy, I request
Dr. N-
to employ some method, supplied
by his art, to reduce my body, as promptly as
possible to a skeleton, so that I may be admit-
ted, immediately, and without passing through
the gradations of the sepulchre, to the cata-
combs, where I bespoke a place two years since
in a walk I took with Madame de Sezanne.—
Once there, I am certain I shall not be again
dislodged; I have never been fond of removals.
I desire that Paul may remain in my nephew's
service, unless he should choose to retire to my
farm in Normandy; in either case, I give and
bequeath to him a pension of 300 francs, be-
sides 200 francs for mourning, which he may
wear in colours, should he like that better.
Item. I give to this good and faithful do-
mestic the time-piece fixed up in my alcove,
which he has kept in order during thirty years.
Item. I give to my excellent friend, Charles
de L, in memory of our long friendship,
which commenced in India, an engraved ruby,
which was presented to me by Hyder Ally,
after the invasion of the Carnatic. I have worn
it ever since. This memorial will be found at-
tached to my watch chain.
Item. I give to Madame L- a little black
coffer, with steel fastenings, the key of which


202
THE HERMIT'S TESTAMENT.
has been a long time lost; and I request that
she will not open it until the expiration of one
year after my decease.
Item. I give to the poor inhabitants of the
little town of N- where I was born, the sum
of 1500 francs, which the curate of the place
will take the charge of distributing.
My debts discharged, and the provisions of
this testament fulfilled, I leave the rest of my
estate, real and personal, to my grand nephew
Ernest de Lallé, whom I nominate at the same
time my executor.
Written and signed by my own hand; enjoy-
ing the full exercise of my intellectual facul-
ties, at Paris, in my hermitage of La Chaussée-
d'Antin, this 28th of March, 1814.
E. J.
The Hermit of La Chaussée d'Antin.
THE END.


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