THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES FROM THE LIBRARY OF JIM TULLY GIFT OF MRS. JIM TULLY THE WORKS OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY CORNHILL EDITION •VOLUME XII Gros' Atelier in the Court- ijard of the Institute of France From a print THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH THE AUTHOR'S ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1911 Copyright, 1904, by Charles Scribner's Sons NOTE The Paris Sketch Book was published in 1840, in two volumes, by John Macrone — the publisher, four years before, of Dickens's Sketches by Boz. It was Thack- eray's first real publication of a book; for "Flore et Zephyr: ballet mythologique par Theophile WagstafF," which sometimes so figures in the bibliographies, though issued in book form in 1836 (by Mitchell, Bond Street), was nothing more than a set of drawings reproduced by lithography and without letterpress; while a book issue of the Yellowplush Papers in America in 1838 (they had appeared in Fraser the year before) cannot count as put forth by the author. Made up of papers, sketches, and stories, many of which had already appeared and the rest of which had been written at widely different times, the Paris Sketch Book has of course no individual history or associations like the novels. It was probably put together and pre- pared for publication in London, in the house No. 13 Great Coram Street, where Thackeray lived for about three years before it appeared, and where two of his chil- dren were born. His own name nowhere appeared upon V the book, only his signature, already used in Fraser and elsewhere, of " M. A. Titmarsh." That residence in Paris, of which he speaks in the " advertisement " to the first edition as the origin of most of the sketches, had been at intervals during the thirties, and had been entered upon by him as an art student soon after his law studies at Taprell's in the Temple, and con- tinued later as correspondent of the London newspaper, the Constitutional J, of which his stepfather was a part owner. Some of his work on an earlier journal, the National Standard, his investment in which has been held partly responsible for the money losses which set him to earning his living by pen and pencil, was also done in Paris; but his main interest at that earlier time seems to have been in his art studies. At all events, he wrote to his mother in December, 1833: " I spend all day now, dear mother, at the Atelier, and am very well satisfied with the progress I make ; " and his writing was not a serious business until a year or two later. Altogether Paris was as much his home as London until his marriage there in August, 1836; and even for a while afterward — until about the time the Constitu- tional suspended publication in 1837— he continued to make it his headquarters, living in the rue Neuve St. Augustin. In that year the first period of his resi- dence may be said to have ended; but after the begin- ning of his wife's illness in 1840, the year of the Sketch Book, he returned to Paris, at first with his children, and spent much of his time there for several years more. VI Mr. Eyre Crowe, afterward Thackeray's secretary, and in these early days also an art student in Paris, says that it is not possible to identify certainly the atelier in which Thackeray worked as described in his letter to his mother; but that " the tradition is " that it was Gros', in the court of the Institute. A drawing of this, from the print furnished to Scribner's Magazine by Mr. Crowe in 1897, is made the frontispiece to this edition. vH DEDICATORY LETTER TO M. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC. 27. rue richelieu, paris. Sir, It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the admiration and example of his fellow-men. Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages a small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and when you were met by a statement from your credi- tor, that an immediate settlement of your bill would be extremely inconvenient to him ; your reply was, " Mon Dieu, Sir, let not that annoy you ; if you want money, as a gentleman often does in a strange country, I have a thousand-franc note at my house which is quite at your service." History or experience. Sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions that can be compared to yours, — an offer like this from a stranger and a tailor seems to me so astonishing, — that you must pardon me for thus making your virtue public, and ac- quainting the English nation with your merit and your name. Let me add, Sir, that you live on the first floor ; that your clothes and fit are excellent, and your charges moderate and just; and, as a humble tribute of my admiration, permit me to lay these volumes at your feet. Your obliged, faithful servant, M. A. TiTMARSH. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION About half of the sketches in these volumes have al- ready appeared in print, in various periodical works. A part of the text of one tale, and the plots of two others, have been borrowed from French originals; the other stories, which are, in the main, true, have been written upon facts and characters that came within the Author's observation during a residence in Paris. As the remaining papers relate to public events which occurred during the same period, or to Parisian Art and Literature, he has ventured to give his publication the title which it bears. London, July 1, 1840. CONTENTS PACiB An Invasion of France 1 A Caution to Travellers 18 The Fetes of July 41 On the French School of Painting 53 The Painter's Bargain 79 Cartouche 98 On some French Fashionable Novels 114 A Gambler's Death 143 Napoleon and his System 157 The Story of Mary Ancel 176 Beatrice Merger 202 Caricatures and Lithography in Paris 212 Little Poinsinet 249 The Devil's Wager 268 Madame Sand and the new Apocalypse 282 The Case of Peytel 316 Four Imitations of Beranger 355 French Dramas and Melodramas 367 Meditations at Versailles 394 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Gbos' Atelier in the Court-yard of the In- stitute OF France Frontispiece From a print FACING PAGE Paris Sketches 1 Mr. Pogson's Temptation 22 A Puzzle for the Devil 96 Cartouche 112 How TO Astonish the French 116 Mary Ancel 178 The Cheap Defence of Nations 214 Poinsinet in Disguise 256 The Chaplain Puzzled 276 French Catholicism 284 The Gallery at Deburau's Theatre Sketched from Nature 384 I/JDovicus, AN Historical Study 404 EXPLANATION OF THE ALLEGORY Number I's an ancient Carliet, Number 3 a Paris Artist, Gloomily there stands between them, Number 2 a Bonapartist; In the middle la King Louis-Philip standing at his ease, Guarded by a loyal Grocer, and a Serjeant of Police; 4'3 the people in a passion, 6 a Priest ol' pious mien, 5 A Gentlem.an ol' Fashion, copied from a Magazine. THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK AN INVASION OF FRANCE "Caesar venit in Galliam sumraa diligentia." ABOUT twelve o'clock, just as the bell of the packet L is tolling a farewell to London Bridge, and warn- ing off the blackguard-boys with the newspapers, who have been shoving Times, Herald, Penny Paul-Pry, Penny Satirist, Flare-uj), and other abominations, into your face — just as the bell has tolled, and the Jews, strangers, people -taking -leave -of -their -families, and blackguard boys aforesaid, are making a rush for the narrow plank which conducts from the paddle-box of the " Emerald " steamboat unto the quay — you perceive, staggering down Thames Street, those two hackney- coaches, for the arrival of which you have been praying, trembling, hoping, despairing, swearing — sw — , I beg your pardon, I believe the word is not used in polite company — and transpiring, for the last half -hour. Yes, at last, the two coaches draw near, and from thence an awful number of trunks, children, carpet-bags, nursery- maids, hat - boxes, band - boxes, bonnet - boxes, desks, cloaks, and an affectionate wife, are discharged on the quay. " Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane," screams that worthy woman, who has been for a fortnight employed 2 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK in getting this tremendous body of troops and baggage into marching order. " Hicks! Hicks! for heaven's sake mind the babies! " — " George — Edward, sir, if you go near that porter with the trunk, he will tumble down and kill you, you naughty boy! — My love, do take the cloaks and umbrellas, and give a hand to Fanny and Lucy ; and I wish you would speak to the hackney-coachmen, dear, they want fifteen shillings, and count the packages, love — twenty-seven packages, — and bring little Flo; where's little Flo?— Flo! Flo!"— (Flo comes sneaking in; she has been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed ter- rier, that sneaks off similarly, landward.) As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like man- ner, when such a danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always, I think, find your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill, eager, and ill-hu- moured, before and during a great family move of this nature. Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother leading on her regiment of little ones, and supported by her auxiliary nursemaids, are safe in the cabin; — you have counted twenty-six of the twenty- seven parcels, and have them on board, and that horrid man on the paddle-box, who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW, SIR!— says, now, sir, no more. I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, be- ing always too busy among the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any of the movements of the vessel. When these private arrangements are made, you AN INVASION OF FRANCE 3 find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet, sweet whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul. Your wife smiles for the first time these ten days ; you pass by plantations of ship-masts, and forests of steam-chim- neys; the sailors are singing on board the ships, the bargees salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases face- tious and familiar; the man on the paddle-box roars, " Ease her, stop her! " which mysterious words a shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes out, " Ease her, stop her! " in echo; the deck is crowded with groups of figures, and the sun shines over all. The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, " Lunch, ladies and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink? " About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great red raw Cheshire cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced, and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in individuals of their size and stature. The decks have a strange look; the people on them, that is. Wives, elderly stout husbands, nursemaids, and children predominate, of course, in English steamboats. Such may be considered as the distinctive marks or the English gentleman at three or four and forty: two or three of such groups have pitched their camps on the deck. Then there are a number of young men, of whom three or four have allowed their moustaches to begin to grow since last Friday ; for they are going " on the Continent," and they look, therefore, as if their upper lips were smeared with snuff. A danseuse from the opera is on her way to Paris. Followed by her bonne and her little dog, she paces the deck, stepping out, in the real dancer fashion, and ogHng 4 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK all around. How happy the two young Englishmen are, who can speak French, and make up to her : and how all criticise her points and paces! Yonder is a group of young ladies, who are going to Paris to learn how to be governesses : those two splendidly dressed ladies are mil- liners from the Rue Richelieu, who have just brought over, and disposed of, their cargo of Summer fashions. Here sits the Rev. Mr. Snodgrass with his pupils, whom he is conducting to his establishment, near Boulogne, where, in addition to a classical and mathematical educa- tion (washing included), the young gentlemen have the benefit of learning French among tlie French tlie7ii- selves. Accordingly, the young gentlemen are locked up in a great rickety house, two miles from Boulogne, and never see a soul, except the French usher and the cook. Some few French people are there already, prepar- ing to be ill— (I never shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little dark, dirty, six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four gaunt Frenchmen, but for their pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, sol- emnly anointing themselves with some charm against sea-sickness!) — a few Frenchmen are there, but these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go to the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuiFy, wretched, pale, and wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could fancy the Mounseers formidable at sea. There are, of course, many Jews on board. Who ever travelled by steamboat, coach, diligence, eilwagen, vet- turino, mule-back, or sledge, without meeting some of the wandering race? AN INVASION OF FRANCE 5 By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck again, and dinner is ready : and about two hours after dinner comes tea ; and then there is brandy- and-water, which he eagerly presses as a preventive against what may happen ; and about this time you pass the Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups on deck disappear, and your wife, givmg you an alarmed look, descends, with her little ones, to the ladies' cabin, and you see the steward and his boys issuing from their den under the paddle-box, with each a heap of round tin vases, like those which are called, I believe, in America, eocpectoratoons, only these are larger. *^ ^ ^ 4t ■I* *i* M* *l^ The wind blows, the water looks greener and more beautiful than ever — ridge by ridge of long white rock passes away. " That's Ramsgit," says the man at the helm; and, presently, " That there's Deal — it's dreadful fallen off since the war;" and " That's Dover, round that there pint, only you can't see it." And, in the mean- time, the sun has plumped his hot face into the water, and the moon has shown hers as soon as ever his back is turned, and Mrs. — (the wife in general,) has brought up her children and self from the horrid cabin, in which she says it is impossible to breathe; and the poor little wretches are, by the officious stewardess and smart stew- ard (expectoratoonifer), accommodated with a heap of blankets, pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of which they crawl, as best they may, and from the heaving heap of which are, during the I'est of the voyage, heard occa- sional faint cries, and sounds of puking woe! Dear, dear Maria! Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers and brutal wrath of swindling hackney- coachmen; who repelled the insolence of haggling por- 6 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK ters, with a scorn that brought down their demands at least eighteenpence ? Is this the woman at whose voice servants tremble; at the sound of whose steps the nur- sery, ay, and mayhap the parlour, is in order? Look at her now, prostrate, prostrate — no strength has she to speak, scarce power to push to her youngest one— her suffering, struggling Rosa,— to push to her the— the instrumentoon ! In the midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the passengers, who have their own woes (you your- self—for how can you help them?— yon are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is up with you), are looking on indilFerent- one man there is who has been watching you with the utmost care, and bestowing on your lielpless family the tenderness that a father denies them. He is a foreigner, and you have been con- versing with him, in the course of the morning, in French —which, he says, you speak remarkably well, like a native in fact, and then in English (which, after all, you find is more convenient). What can express your gratitude to this gentleman for all his goodness towards your family and yourself — you talk to him, he has served under the Emperor, and is, for all that, sensible, modest, and well-informed. He speaks, indeed, of his country- men almost with contempt, and readily admits the su- periority of a Briton, on the seas and elsewhere. One loves to meet with such genuine liberality in a foreigner, and respects the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are going?— where you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on board?— and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes you have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare AN INVASION OF FRANCE 7 you the monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to put up. Nine, ten, eleven, the dis- tinguished foreigner is ever at your side; you find him now, perhaps, (with characteristic ingratitude,) some- thing of a bore, but, at least, he has been most tender to the children and their mamma. At last a Boulogne light comes in sight, (you see it over the bows of the vessel, when, having bobbed violently upwards, it sinks swiftly down,) Boulogne harbour is in sight, and the foreigner says,— The distinguished foreigner says, says he—" Sare, eef you af no 'otel, I sail recommend you, milor, to ze 'Otel Betfort, in ze Quay, sare, close to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose. Good bets and fine garten, sare; table-d'hote, sare, a cinq heures; breakfast, sare, in French or English style; — I am the commissionnaire, sare, and vill see to your loggish." * * * Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swin- dling, sneaking French humbug! — Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about his business : but at twelve o'clock at night, when the voyage is over, and the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to go, with a wife and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to stand, and longing for bed, you find yourself, some- how, in the Hotel Bedford (and you can't be better), and smiling chambermaids carry off your children to snug beds ; while smart waiters produce for your honour — a cold fowl, say, and a salad, and a bottle of Bordeaux and Seltzer-water. * * ^ ^ The morning comes — I don't know a pleasanter feel- ing than that of waking with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made the voyage a 8 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red " yer- cale; " the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little mean strips of car- pet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be — the sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris en yoste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls out for " Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois," — (O my countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)— the chambermaid is laughing and says, " Finissez done. Monsieur Pierre! " (what can they be about?)— a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and says, " Dee dong, gar- song, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voc pah? " He has been ringing for half an hour — the last energetic appeal succeeds, and shortly he is enabled to descend to the coffee-room, where, with three hot rolls, grilled ham, cold fowl, and four boiled eggs, he makes what he calls his first French breakfast. It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the little French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little French soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on their caps, and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look for all their little- ness, far more military and more intelligent than the heavy louts one has seen swaggering about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go a crowd of bare-legged fishermen ; there is the town idiot, mocking a woman who AN INVASION OF FRANCE 9 is screaming " Fleuve du Tage," at an inn-window, to a harp, and there are the Httle gamins mocking him. Lo! these seven young ladies, with red hair and green veils, they are from neighbouring Albion, and going to bathe. Here come three Englishmen, habitues evidently of the place,— dandy specimens of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress, another has a shooting dress, a third has a blouse and a pair of guiltless spurs — all have as much hair on the face as nature or art can supply, and all wear their hats very much on one side. Believe me, there is on the face of this world no scamp like an English one, no blackguard like one of these half- gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar, — so ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless and depraved. But why, my dear sir, get into a passion? — Take things coolly. As the poet has observed, " Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich; " with such, then, con- sort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don't give us, cries the patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-country- men (anybody else can do that), but rather continue in that good-humoured, facetious, descriptive style, with which your letter has commenced. — Your remark, sir, is perfectly just, and does honour to your head and ex- cellent heart. There is little need to give a description of the good town of Boulogne; which, haute and basse, with the new light-house and the new harbour, and the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the convents, and the number of English and French residents, and the pillar erected in honour of the grand Armee d'Angleterre, so called because it didnt go to England, have all been excellently described by the facetious Coglan, the learned Dr. ]Mil- 10 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK lingen, and by innumerable guide-books besides. A fine thing it is to hear tlie stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon's time argue how that audacious Corsican would have marched to London, after swallowing Nelson and all his gun-boats, but for cette malheureuse guerre d'Espagne and cette glorieuse campagne d'Autriche, which the gold of Pitt caused to be raised at the Emperor's tail, in order to call him off from the helpless country in his front. Some Frenchmen go farther still, and vow that in Spain they were never beaten at all ; indeed, if you read in the BiograpJiie des Hommes du Jour, article " Soult," you will fancy that, with the exception of the disaster at Vit- toria, the campaigns in Spain and Portugal were a series of triumphs. Only, by looking at a map, it is observable that Vimeiro is a mortal long way from Toulouse, where, at the end of certain years of victories, we somehow find the honest Marshal. And what then?— he went to Tou- louse for the purpose of beating the English there, to be sure; — a known fact, on which comment would be super- fluous. However, we shall never get to Paris at this rate ; let us break off further palaver, and away at once. * * (During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly re- quested to pay his bill at the Hotel at Boulogne, to mount the Diligence of Laffitte, Caillard and Company, and to travel for twenty-five hours, amidst much jingling of harness-bells and screaming of postilions.) **if, ^ ^f, *^ vjv >jv y^ 'I* The French milliner, who occupies one of the corners, begins to remove the greasy pieces of paper which have enveloped her locks during the journey. She withdraws the *' Madras " of dubious hue which has bound her head for the last five-and-twenty hours, and replaces it by the black velvet bonnet, which, bobbing against your nose, AN INVASION OF FRANCE 11 has hung from the Dihgence roof since your departure from Boulogne. The old lady in the opposite corner, who has been sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully of anisette, arranges her little parcels in that immense bas- ket of abominations which all old women carry in their laps. She rubs her mouth and eyes with her dusty cam- bric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap into a little bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head-piece, covered with withered artificial flowers, and cinampled tags of ribbon ; she looks wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her handkerchief before her mouth: — her eyes roll strangely about for an instant, and you hear a faint clattering noise: the old lady has been getting ready her teeth, w^hich had lain in her basket among the bonbons, pins, oranges, pomatum, bits of cake, lozenges, prayer-books, peppermint-water, copper money, and false hair — stowed away there during the voyage. The Jewish gentleman, who has been so atten- tive to the milliner during the journey, and is a traveller and bagman by profession, gathers together his various goods. The sallow-faced English lad, who has been drunk ever since we left Boulogne yesterday, and is com- ing to Paris to pursue the study of medicine, swears that he rejoices to leave the cursed Diligence, is sick of the infernal journey, and d — d glad that the d — d voyage is so nearly over. " Enfin!" says your neighbour, yawn- ing, and inserting an elbow into the mouth of his right and left hand companion, '' nous voila." Nous Voila!— We are at Paris! This must account for the removal of the milliner's curl-papers, and the fixing of the old lady's teeth. — Since the last relais, the Diligence has been travelling with extraordinary speed. The postilion cracks his terrible whip, and screams 12 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK shrilly. The conductor blows incessantly on his horn, the bells of the harness, the bumping and ringing of the wheels and chains, and the clatter of the great hoofs of the heavy snorting Norman stallions, have wondrously increased within this, the last ten minutes ; and the Dili- gence, which has been proceeding hitherto at the rate of a league in an hour, now dashes gallantly forward, as if it would traverse at least six miles in the same space of time. Thus it is, when Sir Robert maketh a speech at Saint Stephen's — he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the end. He gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers; at the close, again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep; he cracketh the whip of his satire ; he shouts the shout of his patriotism ; and, urging his eloquence to its roughest canter, awakens the sleepers, and inspires the weary, until men say. What a wondrous orator ! What a capital coach ! We will ride henceforth in it, and in no other! But, behold us at Paris! The Diligence has reached a rude-looking gate, or grille, flanked by two lodges; the French Kings of old made their entry by this gate ; some of the hottest battles of the late revolution were fought before it. At present, it is blocked by carts and peasants, and a busy crowd of men, in green, examining the pack- ages before they enter, probing the straw with long needles. It is the Barrier of St. Denis, and the green men are the customs'-men of the city of Paris. If vou are a countryman, who would introduce a cow into the metropolis, the city demands twenty-four francs for such a privilege: if you have a hundredweight of tallow- candles, you must, previously, disburse three francs: if a drove of hogs, nine francs per whole hog : but upon these subjects ]Mr. Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, and other writers. AN INVASION OF FRANCE 13 have already enlightened the public. In the present in- stance, after a momentary pause, one of the men in green mounts by the side of the conductor, and the ponderous vehicle pursues its journey. The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents a strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it were painted in India-ink— black houses, black passengers, and black sky. Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and colour. Before you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening line of gutter, — not a very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture invaluable. On each side are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one storey; some as high as the tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers ( and this is their favourite street ) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give a strange air of rude gaiety to the street. Milk-women, with a little crowd of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling the chief material of the Parisian cafe- au-lait. Gay wine shops, painted red, and smartly dec- orated with vines and gilded railings, are filled with workmen taking their morning's draught. That gloomy- looking prison on your right is a prison for women; once it was a convent for Lazarists: a thousand unfor- tunate individuals of the softer sex now occupy that mansion: they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread of all the other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of all the other prisoners ; they make hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes, and they attend chapel every Sunday: — if occupation can help them, sure they have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the legislature to superintend the morals and linen at once, 14 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK and thus keep these poor creatures continually mend- ing?— But we have passed the prison long ago, and are at the Porte St. Denis itself. There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass : it commemorates some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus ^lagnus, and abounds in ponderous allegories — nymphs, and river-gods, and pyramids crowned with fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch Lion revived, and over- came the man some years afterwards; but of this fact, singularly enough, the inscriptions make no mention. Passing, then, round the gate, and not under it (after the general custom, in respect of triumphal arches) , you cross the boulevard, which gives a glimpse of trees and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable, and the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his horn, and the great vehicle clatters into the court-yard, where its journey is destined to conclude. If there was a noise before of screaming postilions and cracked horns, it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us now. We are in a great court, which Haj ji Baba would call the father of Diligences. Half-a- dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute — no light affairs, like your English vehicles, but ponderous ma- chines, containing fifteen passengers inside, more in the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on the roof: others are loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming or departing; — bustling porters and screaming commis- sionnaires. These latter seize you as you descend from your place,— twenty cards are thrust into your hand, and AN INVASION OF FRANCE 15 as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable swiftness, shriek into your ear, " Dis way, sare; are you for ze "Otel of Rhin?' 'Hotel de V Amir ante !'-' Hotel Bristol,' sare I— Monsieur, ' VHoiel de Lille? ' Sacr-rrre 'nom de Dieu, laissez passer ce petit. Monsieur! Ow mosh loggish ave you, sare? " And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of Titmarsh. — If you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love English comfort, clean rooms, break- fasts, and waiters; if you would have plentiful dinners, and are not particular (as how should you be?) concern- ing wine ; if, in this foreign country, you will have your English companions, your porter, your friend, and your brandy-and-water — do not listen to any of these com- missioner fellows, but with your best English accent, shout out boldly, " Meurice! " and straightway a man will step forward to conduct you to the Rue de Rivoli. Here you will find apartments at any price : a very neat room, for instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled eggs, or grilled ham ; a nonde- 16 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK script dinner, profuse but cold ; and a society which will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from the universities; young merchants on a lark; large families of nine daughters, with fat father and mother; officers of dragoons, and lawyers' clerks. The last time we dined at " Meurice's " we hobbed and nobbed with no less a person than Mr. Moses, the celebrated bailiif of Chancery Lane; Lord Brougham was on his right, and a clergyman's lady, with a train of white-haired girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken with the diamond rings of the fascinating stranger ! It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris, especially if you spend your days reading the English papers at Galignani's, as many of our foreign tourists do. But all this is promiscuous, and not to the purpose. If, — to continue on the subject of hotel choosing, — if you love quiet, heavy bills, and the best table-d'hote in the city, go, O stranger! to the " Hotel des Princes; " it is close to the Boulevard, and convenient for Fras- cati's. The " Hotel Mirabeau " possesses scarcely less attraction; but of this you will find, in Mr. Bulwer's " Autobiography of Pelham," a faithful and complete account. " Lawson's Hotel " has likewise its merits, as also the " Hotel de Lille," which may be described as a " second chop " Meurice. If you are a poor student come to study the human- ities, or the pleasant art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed to the " Hotel Corneille," near the Odeon, or others of its species; there are many where you can live royally (until you economize by go- ing into lodgings) on four francs a day; and wliere, if by any strange chance you are desirous for a while to get AN INVASION OF FRANCE 17 rid of your countrymen, you will find that they scarcely ever penetrate. But above all, O my countrymen! shun boarding- houses, especially if you have ladies in your, train; or ponder well, and examine the characters of the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent daughters, and their mamma, into places so dangerous. In the first place, you have bad dinners; and, secondly, bad com- pany. If you play cards, you are very likely playing with a swindler; if you dance, you dance with a — per- son with whom you had better have nothing to do. Note (which ladies are requested not to read). —In one of these establishments, daily advertised as most eligible for English, a friendof the writer lived. A lady, who had passed for some time as the wife of one of the inmates, suddenly changed her husband and name, her original husband remaining in the house, and salut- ing her by her new title. A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS A MILLION dangers and snares await the travel- ler, as soon as he issues out of that vast messagerie which we have just quitted: and as each man cannot do better than relate such events as have happened in the course of his own experience, and may keep the unwary from the path of danger, let us take this, the very earliest opportunity, of imparting to the public a little of the wisdom which we painfully have acquired. And, first, then, with regard to the city of Paris, it is to be remarked, that in that metropolis flourish a greater number of native and exotic swindlers than are to be found in any other European nursery. What young Englishman that visits it, but has not determined, in his heart, to have a little share of the gaieties that go on— just for once, just to see what they are like? How many, when the horrible gambling dens were open, did resist a sight of them?— nay, was not a young fellow rather flattered by a dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went, fondly pretending that he should see " French society," in the persons of certain Dukes and Counts who used to frequent the place? My friend Pogson is a young fellow, not much worse, although perhaps a little weaker and simpler than his neighbours; and coming to Paris with exactly the same notions that bring many others of the British youth to that capital, events befell him there, last winter, which 18 A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 19 are strictly true, and shall here be narrated, by way of warning to all. Pog, it must be premised, is a city man, who travels in drugs for a couple of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album, drives his own gig, and is con- sidered, both on the road and in the metropolis, a re- markably nice, intelligent, thriving young man. Pog- son's only fault is too great an attachment to the fair: — " the sex," as he says often, " will be his ruin: " the fact is, that Pog never travels without a " Don Juan " under his driving-cushion, and is a pretty-looking young fellow enough. Sam Pogson had occasion to visit Paris, last October; and it was in that city that his love of the sex had liked to have cost him dear. He worked his way down to Dover; placing, right and left, at the towns on his route, rhubarb, sodas, and other such delectable wares as his masters dealt in (" the sweetest sample of castor oil, smelt like a nosegay — went off like wildfire — hogs- head and a half at Rochester, eight-and-twenty gallons at Canterbury," and so on), and crossed to Calais, and thence voyaged to Paris in the coupe of the Diligence. He paid for two places, too, although a single man, and the reason shall now be made known. Dining at the tahle-d-hote at " Quillacq's "—it is the best inn on the Continent of Europe — our little traveller had the happiness to be placed next to a lady, who was, he saw at a glance, one of the extreme pink of the nobil- ity. A large lady, in black satin, with eyes and hair as black as sloes, with gold chains, scent-bottles, sable tip- pet, worked pocket-handkerchief, and four twinkling rings on each of her plump white fingers. Her cheeks were as pink as the finest Chinese rouge could make ^0 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK them. Pog knew the article: he travelled in it. Her lips were as red as the ruby lip salve: she used the very- best, that was clear. She was a fine-looking woman, certainly (holding down her eyes, and talking perpetually of " mes trente- deux ans ") ; and Pogson, the wicked young dog, who professed not to care for young misses, saying they smelt so of bread-and-butter, declared, at once, that the lady was one of Jiis beauties; in fact, when he spoke to us about her, he said, " She's a slap-up thing, I tell you; a reg'lar good one ; one of my sort! " And such was Pogson's credit in all commercial rooms, that one of his sort was considered to surpass all other sorts. During dinner-time, Mr. Pogson was profoundly po- lite and attentive to the lady at his side, and kindly communicated to her, as is the way with the best-bred English on their first arrival " on the Continent," all his impressions regarding the sights and persons he had seen. Such remarks having been made during half an hour's ramble about the ramparts and town, and in the course of a walk down to the custom-house, and a con- fidential communication with the commissionnaire , must be, doubtless, very valuable to Frenchmen in their own country ; and the lady listened to Pogson's opinions : not only with benevolent attention, but actually, she said, with pleasure and delight. Mr. Pogson said that there was no such thing as good meat in France, and that's why they cooked their victuals in this queer way ; he had seen many soldiers parading about the place, and ex- pressed a true Englishman's abhorrence of an armed force; not that he feared such fellows as these — little whipper-snappers— our men would eat them. Hereupon the lady admitted that our Guards were angels, but that A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 21 JNIonsieur must not be too hard upon the French; " her father was a general of the Emperor." Pogson felt a tremendous respect for himself at the notion that he was dining with a General's daughter, and instantly ordered a bottle of champagne to keep up his consequence. " ]\Irs. Bironn, ma'am," said he, for he had heard the waiter call her by some such name, " if you will accept a glass of champagne, ma'am, you'll do me, I'm sure, great Aonour; they say it's very good, and a precious sight cheaper than it is on our side of the way, too — not that I care for money. Mrs. Bironn, ma'am, your health, ma'am." The lady smiled very graciously, and drank the wine. " Har you any relation, ma'am, if I may make so bold ; har you anyways connected with the family of our immortal bard? " " Sir, I beg your pardon." " Don't mention it, ma'am: but ^Bironn and Byron are hevidently the same names, only you pronounce in the French way; and I thought you might be related to his lordship: his horigin, ma'am, was of French extraction: " and here Pogson began to repeat, — " Hare thy heyes like thy mother's, my fair child, Hada ! sole daughter of my 'ouse and 'art? " " Oh! " said the lady, laughing, " you speak of Lor Byron?" " Hauthor of ' Don Juan,' ' Child ' Arold,' and ' Cain, a Mystery,'" said Pogson:— "I do; and hearing the waiter calling you Madam la Bironn, took the liberty of basking whether you were connected with his lordship; that's hall: " and my friend here grew dreadfully red, 22 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK « and began twiddling his long ringlets in his fingers, and examining very eagerly the contents of his plate. " Oh, no: Madame la Baronne means Mistress Baron- ess; my husband was Baron, and I am Baroness." " What! 'ave I the honour — I beg your pardon, ma'am —is your ladyship a Baroness, and I not know it? pray excuse me for calling you ma'am." The Baroness smiled most graciously — with such a look as Juno cast upon unfortunate Jupiter when she wished to gain her wicked ends upon him — the Baroness smiled; and, stealing her hand into a black velvet bag, drew from it an ivory card-case, and from the ivory card- case extracted a glazed card, printed in gold; on it was engraved a coronet, and under the coronet the words BARONNE DE FLORVAL-DELVAL, NEE DE MELVAL-NORVAL. Rue Taitbout, The grand Pitt diamond— the Queen's own star of the garter — a sample of otto-of -roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled more curiously, or more respect- fully, than this porcelain card of the Baroness. Trem- bling he put it into his little Russia-leather pocketbook : and when he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of the Baroness de Florval-Delval, nee de Melval-Norval, gaz- ing upon him with friendly and serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled through Pogson's blood : he felt himself to be the very happiest fellow " on the Continent." But Pogson did not, for some time, venture to resume that sprightly and elegant familiarity which generally forms the great charm of his conversation: he w;as too Mr. Pogson's Temptation A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 23 much frightened at the presence he was in, and contented himself by graceful and solemn bows, deep attention, and ejaculations of " Yes, my lady," and " No, your ladyship," for some minutes after the discovery had been made. Pogson piqued himself on his breeding: " I hate the aristocracy," he said, " but that's no reason why I shouldn't behave like a gentleman." A surly, silent little gentleman, who had been the third at the ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in Pogson's champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the room, when the happy bag- man had the delight of a tete-a-tete. The Baroness did not appear inclined to move : it was cold ; a fire was com- fortable, and she had ordered none in her apartment. ]Might Pogson give her one more glass of champagne, or would her ladyship prefer "something hot?" Her ladyship gravely said, she never took anything hot. " Some champagne, then; a leetle drop?" She would! she would! O gods! how Pogson's hand shook as he filled and offered her the glass ! What took place during the rest of the evening had better be described by Mr. Pogson himself, who has given us permission to publish his letter. — " Qu'dlacq^s Hotel {pronounced Kilhjax), Calais. "Dear Tit, — I arrived at Cally, as they call it, this day, or, rather, yesterday; for it is past midnight, as I sit thinking of a wonderful adventure that has just befallen me. A woman, in course; that's always the case with me^ you know: but oh, Tit! if you could but see her! Of the first family in France, the Florval-Dclvals, beautiful as an angel, and no more caring for money than I do for split peas. " I'll tell you how it occurred. Everybody in France, 3'ou know; dines at the ordinary— it^s quite distangy to do so. There was only three of us to-day, however, — the Baroness, me, and 24 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK a gent, who never spoke a word; and we didn't want him to, neither: do you mark that? " You know my way with the women : champagne's the thing ; make 'em drink, make 'em talk; — make 'em talk,^ make 'cm do anything. So I orders a bottle, as if for myself; and, ' Ma'am,' says I, ' will you take a glass of Sham — just one? ' Take it she did — for you know it's quite distangy here: everybody dines at the table de hole, and everybody accepts everybody's wine. Bob Irons, who travels in linen on our circuit, told me that he had made some slap-up acquaintances among the genteelest people at Paris, nothing but by offering them Sham. " Well, my Baroness takes one glass, two glasses, three glasses — the old fellow goes — we have a deal of chat (she took me for a military man, she said : is it not singular that so many people should?), and by ten o'clock we had grown so intimate, that I had from her her whole history, knew where she came from, and where she was going. Leave me alone with 'em: I can find out any woman's history in half an hour. " And where do you think she is going? to Paris to be sure: she has her seat in what they call the coopy (though you're not near so cooped in it as in our coaches. I've been to the office and seen one of 'em). She has her place in the coopy, and the coopy holds three; so what does Sam Pogson do? — he goes and takes the other two. Ain't I up to a thing or two? Oh, no, not the least; but I shall have her to myself the whole of the way. " We shall be in the French metropolis the day after this reaches you: please look out for a handsome lodging for me, and never mind the expense. And I say, if you could, in her hearing, when you came down to the coach, call me Captain Pogson, I wish you would — it sounds well travelling, you know; and when she asked me if I was not an officer, I couldn't say no. Adieu, then, my dear fellow, till Monday, and vivc Ic joy, as they say. The Baroness says I speak French charmingly, she talks English as well as you or I. " Your affectionate friend, " S. Pogson." A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 25 This letter reached us duly, in our garrets, and we engaged such an apartment for ISIr. Pogson, as be- seemed a gentleman of his rank in the world and the army. At the appointed hour, too, we repaired to the Diligence office, and there beheld the arrival of the machine which contained him and his lovely Baroness. Those who have much frequented the society of gen- tlemen of his profession (and what more delightful?) must be aware, that, when all the rest of mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, after a forty hours' coach- journey, a bagman appears as gay and spruce as when he started ; having within himself a thousand little conveniences for the voyage, which common travellers neglect. Pogson had a little portable toilet, of which he had not failed to take advantage, and with his long, curling, flaxen hair, flowing under a seal-skin cap, with a gold tassel, with a blue and gold satin handkerchief, a crimson velvet waistcoat, a light green cut-away coat, a pair of barred brickdust-coloured pantaloons, and a neat mackintosh, presented, altogether, as elegant and distingue an appearance as any one could desire. He had put on a clean collar at breakfast, and a pair of white kids as he entered the barrier, and looked, as he rushed into my arms, more like a man stepping out of a band- box, than one descending from a vehicle that has just performed one of the laziest, dullest, flattest, stalest, dir- tiest journeys in Europe. To my surprise, there were trco ladies in the coach with my friend, and not one, as I had expected. One of these, a stout female, carrying sundry baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman's wraps, was evidently a maid- servant: the other, in black, was Pogson's fair one, evi- dently. I could see a gleam of curl-papers over a sal- 26 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK low face, — of a dusky night-cap flapping over the curl-papers,— but these were hidden by a lace veil and a huge velvet bonnet, of which the crowning birds of para- dise were evidently in a moulting state. She was en- cased in many shawls and wrappers; she put, hesitat- ingly, a pretty little foot out of the carriage— Pogson was by her side in an instant, and, gallantly putting one of his white kids round her waist, aided this interest- ing creature to descend. I saw, by her walk, that she was five-and-forty, and that my little Pogson was a lost man. After some brief parley between them — in which it was charming to hear how my friend Samuel would speak, what he called French, to a lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon — the mutual hackney coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful French curtsey, ^^^^you!" said Samuel, and waved his lily hand. " Adijou-ad- dimang." A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same coach with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the Imperial, here passed us, and greeted me with a " How d'ye do? " He had shouldered his own little valise, and was trudging off, scattering a cloud of cojiimissionnaires, who would fain have spared him the trouble. " Do you know that chap? " says Pogson; " surly fel- low, ain't he ? " " The kindest man in existence," answered I; " all the world knows little Major British." " He's a Major, is he? — why, that's the fellow that dined with us as Killyax's; it's lucky I did not call mv- self Captain before him, he mightn't have liked it, you A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 27 know:" and then Sam fell into a reverie; — what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared. " Did you ever see such a foot and ankle? " said Sam, after sitting for some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene, his hands in his pockets, plunged in the deep- est thought. ''Isn't she a slap-up woman, eh, now? " pursued he; and began enumerating her attractions, as a horse- jockey would the points of a favourite animal. " You seem to have gone a pretty length already," said I, " by promising to visit her to-morrow." "A good length?— I believe you. Leave ?7ie alone for that." " But I thought you were only to be two in the coupe, you wicked rogue." " Two in the cooyy? Oh! ah! yes, you know — why, that is, I didn't know she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman travelling with- out one!) and couldn't, in course, refuse, when she asked me to let the maid in." " Of course not." " Couldn't, you know, as a man of honour; but I made up for all that," said Pogson, winking slily, and putting his hand to his little bunch of a nose, in a very knowing way. "You did, and how?" " Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and my back's half broke, I can tell you: " and thus, having depicted his happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was to lodge during his stay in Paris. The next day, at five, we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and described her lodgings, in his own ex- 28 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK pressive way, as " slap-up." She had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau sucree, of which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer; and ac- tually asked him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous youth's brow, and I inquired still farther. " Why," said he, with a sigh, " I thought she was a widow ; and, hang it ! who should come in but her husband the Baron: a big fellow, sir, with a blue coat, a red rib- bing, and such a pair of mustachios! " " Well," said I, " he didn't turn you out, I suppose? " " Oh, no ! on the contrary, as kind as possible ; his lord- ship said that he respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,— said he had fought in Spain against us, — and made me welcome." " What could you want more? " Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound observer of human nature had been there to read into this little bagman's heart, it would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the appearance of a whiskered soldier of a husband had counteracted some plans that the young scoundrel was concocting. I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the re- mote quarter of the Luxembourg, and it is not to be ex- pected that such a fashionable fellow as Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money, and a new city to see, should be always wandering to my dull quarters ; so that, although he did not make his appearance for some time, he must not be accused of any lukewarmness of friend- ship on that score. He was out, too, when I called at his hotel ; but once, I had the good fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, looking as pleased as Punch, and being A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 29 driven, in an open cab, in the Champs Elysees. " That's another tip-top chap," said he, when we met, at length. " What do you think of an Earl's son, my boy? Hon- ourable Tom Ringwood, son of the Earl of Cinqbars: what do you think of that, eh? " I thought he was getting into very good society. Sam was a dashing fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr. Ringwood at the Baron's, and they'd been to the play together; and the honourable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about being well to do in a certain quarter; and he had had a game of billiards with the Baron, at the Estaminy, " a very dis- tangy place, where you smoke," said Sam ; " quite select, and frequented by the tip-top nobility ; " and they were as thick as peas in a shell ; and they were to dine that day at Ringwood's, and sup, the next night, with the Bar- oness. " I think the chaps down the road will stare," said Sam, " when they hear how I've been coming it." And stare, no doubt, they would; for it is certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr. Pogson's ad- vantages. The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping together, and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam intended to bestow on his rela- tions when he returned. Seven needle-books, for his sisters ; a gilt buckle, for his mamma ; a handsome French cashmere shawl and bonnet, for his aunt (the old lady keeps an inn in the Borough, and has plenty of money, and no heirs) ; and a tooth-pick case, for his father. Sam is a good fellow to all his relations, and as for his aunt, he adores her. Well, we were to go and make these purchases, and I arrived punctually at my 30 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK time; but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very pale and dismal. I saw how it had been.—" A little too much of Mr. Ringwood's claret, I suppose?" He only gave a sickly stare. " Where does the Honourable Tom live? " says I. " Honourable! " says Sam, with a hollow, horrid laugh ; " I tell you. Tit, he's no more Honourable than you are." " What, an impostor? " " No, no; not that. He is a real Honourable, only — " " Oh, ho! I smell a rat— a little jealous, eh? " "Jealousy be hanged! I tell you he's a thief; and the Baron's a thief; and, hang me, if I think his wife is any better. Eight-and-thirty pounds he won of me be- fore supper; and made me drunk, and sent me home: — is thai honourable? How can I afford to lose forty 'pounds? It's took me two years to save it up: — if my old aunt gets wind of it, she'll cut me off with a shilling : hang me!" — and here Sam, in an agony, tore his fair hair. While bewailing his lot in this lamentable strain, his bell was rung, which signal being answered by a surly " Come in," a tall, very fashionable gentleman, with a fur coat, and a fierce tuft to his chin, entered the room. " Pogson, my buck, how goes it? " said he, familiarly, and gave a stare at me : I was making for my hat. " Don't go," said Sam, rather eagerly; and I sat down again. The Honourable Mr. Ringwood hummed and ha'd: and, at last, said he wished to speak to Mr. Pogson on business, in private, if possible. A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 31 " There's no secrets betwixt me and my friend," cried Sam. ]Mr. Ring wood paused a little: — " An awkward busi- ness that of last night," at length exclaimed he. " I believe it was an awkward business," said Sam, drily. " I really am very soriy for your losses." " Thank you: and so am I, I can tell you," said Sam. " You must mind, my good fellow, and not drink; for, when you drink, you will play high : by Gad, you led us in, and not we you." " I dare say," answered Sam, with something of pee- vishness; " losses is losses: there's no use talking about 'em when they're over and paid." "And paid?" here wonderingly spoke Mr. Ring- wood; " why, my dear f el— what the deuce— has Florval been with you? " " D— Florval! " growled Sam, " I've never set eyes on his face since last night; and never wish to see him again." " Come, come, enough of this talk; how do you intend to settle the bills which you gave him last night ? " " Bills! what do you mean? " " I mean, sir, these bills," said the Honourable Tom, producing two out of his pocket-book, and looking as stern as a lion. " ' I promise to pay, on demand, to the Baron de Florval, the sum of four hundred pounds. October 20, 1838.' ' Ten days after date I promise to pay the Baron de et csetera, et ceetera, one hundred and ninety-eight pounds. Samuel Pogson.' You didn't say what regiment you were in." " AVhat! " shouted poor Sam, as from a dream, start- ing up and looking preternaturally pale and hideous. 32 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK "D— it, sir, you don't affect ignorance: you don't pretend not to remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms: money lent to you, by ^ladame de Florval, at your own request, and lost to her husband ? You don't suppose, sir, that I shall be such an infernal idiot as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up with a mean subterfuge of this sort. Will you, or will you not, pay the money, sir? " " I will not," said Sam, stoutly; " it's a d— d swin— " Here Mr. Ringwood sprung up, clenching his riding- whip, and looking so fierce that Sam and I bounded back to the other end of the room. " Utter that word again, and, by heaven, I'll murder you!" shouted Mr. Ring- wood, and looked as if he would, too: " once more, will you, or will you not, pay this money? " " I can't," said Sam, faintly. " I'll call again, Captain Pogson," said Mr. Ring- wood, " I'll call again in one hour; and, unless you come to some arrangement, you must meet my friend, the Baron de Florval, or I'll post you for a swindler and a coward." With this he went out : the door thundered to after him, and when the clink of his steps departing had subsided, I was enabled to look round at Pog. The poor little man had his elbows on the marble table, his head between his hands, and looked, as one has seen gen- tlemen look over a steam-vessel off Ramsgate, the wind blowing remarkably fresh: at last he fairly burst out crying. " If Mrs. Pogson heard of this," said I, " what would become of the ' Three Tuns?' " (for I wished to give him a lesson). " If your Ma, who took you every Sunday to meeting, sliould know that her boy was paying atten- tion to married women;— if Drench, Glauber and Co., A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 33 your employers, were to know that their confiden- tial agent was a gambler, and unfit to be trusted with their money, how long do you think your connexion would last with them, and who would afterwards employ you?" To this poor Pog had not a word of answer; but sat on his sofa whimpering so bitterly, that the sternest of moralists would have relented towards him, and would have been touched by the little wretch's tears. Every- thing, too, must be pleaded in excuse for this unfor- tunate bagman : who, if he wished to pass for a captain, had only done so because he had an intense respect and longing for rank : if he had made love to the Baroness, had only done so because he was given to understand by Lord Byron's " Don Juan " that making love was a very correct, natty thing : and if he had gambled, had only been induced to do so by the bright eyes and exam- ple of the Baron and the Baroness. O ye Barons and Baronesses of England! if ye knew what a number of small commoners are daily occupied in studying your lives, and imitating your aristocratic ways, how careful would ye be of your morals, manners, and conversation ! My soul was filled, then, with a gentle yearning pity for Pogson, and revolved many plans for his rescue: none of these seeming to be practicable, at last we hit on the very wisest of all, and determined to apply for coun- sel to no less a person than Major British. A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little Major British; and heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my head, when I heard of this awk- ward scrape of poor Pog's. The Major is on half -pay, and occupies a modest apartment au quatrieme, in the very hotel which Pogson had patronized at my sugges- 34 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK tion; indeed, I had chosen it from Major British's own pecuhar recommendation. There is no better guide to follow than such a char- acter as the honest Major, of whom there are many like- nesses now scattered over the continent of Europe : men who love to live well, and are forced to live cheaply, and who find the English abroad a thousand times easier, merrier, and more hospitable than the same persons at home. I, for my part, never landed on Calais pier without feeling that a load of sorrows was left on the other side of the water; and have always fancied that black care stepped on board the steamer, along with the custom-house officers, at Gravesend, and accompa- nied one to yonder black louring towers of London — so busy, so dismal, and so vast. British would have cut any foreigner's throat who ventured to say so much, but entertained, no doubt, private sentiments of this nature; for he passed eight months of the year, regularly, abroad, with head- quarters at Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and only went to England for the month's shooting, on the grounds of his old colonel, now an old lord, of whose acquaintance the Major was passably inclined to boast. He loved and respected, like a good staunch Tory as he is, every one of the English nobility; gave himself cer- tain little airs of a man of fashion, that were by no means disagreeable ; and was, indeed, kindly regarded by such English aristocracy as he met, in his little annual tours among the German courts, in Italy or in Paris, where he never missed an ambassador's night : he retailed to us, who didn't go, but were delighted to know all that had taken place, accurate accounts of the dishes, A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 35 the dresses, and the scandal which had there fallen under his observation. He is, moreover, one of the most useful persons in society that can possibly be ; for besides being incorrigi- bly duelsome on his own account, he is, for others, the most acute and peaceable counsellor in the world, and has carried more friends through scrapes and prevented more deaths than any member of the Humane Society. British never bought a single step in the army, as is well known. In '14 he killed a celebrated French fire-eater, who had slain a young friend of his, and living, as he does, a great deal with young men of pleasure, and good old sober family people, he is loved by them both, and has as welcome a place made for him at a roaring bache- lor's supper at the " Cafe Anglais," as at a staid dow- ager's dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honore. Such pleasant old boys are very profitable acquaintances, let me tell you ; and lucky is the young man who has one or two such friends in his list. Hurrying on Pogson in his dress, I conducted him, panting, up to the JMajor's quatrieme, where we were cheerfully bidden to come in. The little gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in painting, elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he daily promenaded the Boulevards. A couple of pairs of tough buff gloves had been undergoing some pipe- claying operation under his hands ; no man stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely biTished, with a stiff cravat tied so.neatly under a fat little red face, with a blue frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy little person, as Major British, about whom we have written these two pages. He stared rather hardly at my com- panion, but gave me a kind shake of the hand, and we 36 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK proceeded at once to business. " Major British," said I, " we want your advice in regard to an unpleasant affair which has just occurred to my friend Pogson." " Pogson, take a chair." " You must know, sir, that Mr. Pogson, coming from Calais the other day, encountered, in the diligence, a very handsome woman." British winked at Pogson, who, wretched as he was, could not help feeling pleased. " Mr. Pogson was not more pleased with this lovely creature than was she with him ; for, it appears, she gave him her card, invited him to her house, where he has been constantly, and has been received with much kind- ness." " I see," says British. "Her husband the Baron—" " Now it's coming," said the Major, with a grin: " her husband is jealous, I suppose, and there is a talk of the Bois de Boulogne: my dear sir, you can't refuse — can't refuse." " It's not that," said Pogson, wagging his head pas- sionately. " Her husband the Baron seemed quite as much taken with Pogson as his lady was, and has introduced him to some very distingue friends of his own set. Last night one of the Baron's friends gave a party in honour of my friend Pogson, who lost forty-eight pounds at cards before he was made drunk, and heaven knows how much after." " Not a shilling, by sacred heaven!— not a shilling! " yelled out Pogson. " After the supper I 'ad such an 'eadach', I couldn't do anything but fall asleep on the sofa." A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 37 " You 'ad such an 'eadach', sir," saj^s British sternly, who piques himself on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a cockney. " Such a /i-eadache, sir," replied Pogson, with much meekness. " The unfortunate man is brought home at two o'clock, as tipsy as possible, dragged upstairs, senseless, to bed, and, on waking, receives a visit from his entertainer of the night before — a lord's son, JNIajor, a tip-top fellow, who brings a couple of bills that my friend Pogson is said to have signed." " Well, my dear fellow, the thing's quite simple,— he must pay them." " I can't pay them." " He can't pay them," said we both in a breath: " Pog- son is a commercial traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the deuce is he to pay five hundred pounds? " "A bagman, sir! and what right has a bagman to gamble? Gentlemen gamble, sir; tradesmen, sir, have no business with the amusements of the gentry. What business had you with barons and lords' sons, sir? — serve you right, sir." " Sir," says Pogson, with some dignity, " merit, and not birth, is the criterion of a man: I despise an heredi- tary aristocracy, and admire only Nature's gentlemen. For my part, I think that a British merch— " " Hold your tongue, sir," bounced out the INIajor, " and don't lecture me ; don't come to me, sir, with your slang about Nature's gentlemen — Nature's tomfools, sir! Did Nature open a cash account for you at a banker's, sir? Did Nature give you an education, sir? What do you mean by competing with people to whom Nature has given all these things? Stick to your bags. 38 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK Mr. Pogson, and your bagmen, and leave barons and their like to their own ways." " Yes, but, Major," here cried that faithful friend, who has always stood by Pogson; " they won't leave him alone." " The honourable gent says I must fight if I don't pay," whimpered Sam. " What ! fight you? Do you mean that the honourable gent, as you call him, will go out with a bagman? " " He doesn't know I'm a— I'm a commercial man," blushingly said Sam: " he fancies I'm a military gent." The Major's gravity was quite upset at this absurd notion ; and he laughed outrageously. " Why, the fact is, sir," said I, " that my friend Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, boldly, he was in the army. He only assumed the rank in order to dazzle her weak imagination, never fancying that there was a husband, and a circle of friends, with whom he was afterwards to make an acquaintance; and then, you know, it was too late to withdraw." " A pretty pickle you have put yourself in, Mr. Pog- son, by making love to other men's wives, and calling yourself names," said the Major, who was restored to good humour. " And pray, who is the honourable gent.? " " The Earl of Cinqbars' son," says Pogson, " the Honourable Tom Ringwood." " I thought it was some such character: and the Baron is the Baron de Florval-Delval? " " The very same." " And his wife a black -haired woman, with a pretty foot and ankle; calls herself Athenais; and is always A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS 39 talking about her trente-deux ans ? Why, sir, that woman was an actress on the Boulevard, when we were here in '15. She's no more his wife than I am. Delval's name is Chicot. The woman is always travellmg between Lon- don and Paris : I saw she was hooking you at Calais ; she has hooked ten men, in the course of the last two years, in this very way. She lent you money, didn't she?" " Yes." " And she leans on your shoulder and whispers, ' Play half for me,' and somebody wins it, and the poor thing is as sorry as you are, and her husband storms and rages, and insists on double stakes; and she leans over your shoulder again, and tells every card in your hand to your adversary, and that's the way it's done, Mr. Pogson." " I've been 'ad, I see I 'ave," said Pogson, very humbly. " Well, sir," said the Major, " in consideration, not of you, sir— for, give me leave to tell you, Mr. Pogson, that you are a pitiful little scoundrel — in consideration for my Lord Cinqbars, sir, with whom, I am proud to say, I am intimate," (the Major dearly loved a lord, and was, by his own showing, acquainted with half the peer- age,) " I will aid you in this affair. Your cursed vanity, sir, and want of principle, has set you, in the first place, intriguing with other men's wives; and if you had been shot for your pains, a bullet would have only served you right, sir. You must go about as an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay richly for your swindling, sir, by being swindled yourself : but, as I think your punishment has been already pretty severe, I shall do my best, out of regard of my friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the mat- ter going any farther; and I recommend you to leave Paris without delay. Now let me wish you a good morn- 40 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK ing." — Wherewith British made a majestic bow, and be- gan giving the last touch to liis varnished boots. We departed: poor Sam perfectly silent and chap- fallen ; and I meditating on the wisdom of the half -pay philosopher, and wondering what means he would em- ploy to rescue Pogson from liis fate. What these means were I know not; but Mr. Ring- wood did 7iot make his appearance at six; and, at eight, a letter arrived for " Mr. Pogson, commercial traveller," &c. &c. It was blank inside, but contained his two bills. Mr. Ringwood left town, almost immediately, for Vi- enna; nor did the Major explain the circumstances which caused his departure; but he muttered something about " knew some of his old tricks," " threatened police, and made him disgorge directly." Mr. Ringwood is, as yet, young at his trade; and I have often thought it was very green of him to give up the bills to the JMajor, who, certainly, would never have pressed the matter before the police, out of respect for his friend. Lord Cinqbars. THE FETES OF JULY IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE " BUNGAY BEACON " Paris, July 30th, 1839. WE have arrived here just in time for the fetes of July. — You have read, no doubt, of that glori- ous revolution which took place here nine years ago, and which is now commemorated annually, in a pretty face- tious manner, by gun-firing, student-processions, pole- climbing-for-silver-spoons, gold-watches and legs-of- mutton, monarchical orations, and what not, and sanc- tioned, moreover, by Chamber-of-Deputies, with a grant of a couple of hundred thousand francs to defray the expenses of all the crackers, gun-firings, and legs-of- mutton aforesaid. There is a new fountain in the Place Louis Quinze, otherwise called the Place Louis Seize, or else the Place de la Revolution, or else the Place de la Concorde (who can say why?) — wliich, I am told, is to run bad wine during certain hours to-morrow, and there would have been a review of the National Guards and the Line — only, since the Fieschi business, reviews are no joke, and so this latter part of the festivity has been dis- continued. Do you not laugh, O Pharos of Bungay, at the continuance of a humbug such as this? — at the humbug- ging anniversary of a humbug? The King of the Bar- ricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the most abso- lute Sovereign in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of this fair kingdom of France a single man who cares 41 42 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK sixpence about him, or his dynasty: except, mayhap, a few hangers-on at the Chateau, who eat his dinners, and put their hands in his purse. The feehng of loyalty is as dead as old Charles the Tenth; the Chambers have been laughed at, the country has been laughed at, all the successive ministries have been laughed at (and you know who is the wag that has amused himself with them all) ; and, behold, here come three days at the end of July, and cannons think it necessary to fire off, squibs and crack- ers to blaze and fizz, fountains to run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl up greasy mats- de-cocagne in token of gratitude and rejouissance pub- lique! — My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact humbugs, these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the other nations of this earth. In looking at these men, their manners, dresses, opinions, politics, actions, history, it is impossible to pre- serve a grave countenance ; instead of having Carlyle to write a History of the French Revolution, I often think it should be handed over to Dickens or Theodore Hook: and oh ! where is the Rabelais to be the faithful historian of the last phase of the Revolution — the last glorious nine years of which we are now commemorating the last glorious three days? I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I have seen, with my neighbours, all the ginger- bread stills down the Champs Elysees, and some of the " catafalques " erected to the memor}'" of the heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected per- sonally with the victims, and not having in the least prof- ited by their deaths, come and weep ; but the grief shown on the first day is quite as absurd and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the last. The subject is one which ad- THE FETES OF JULY 48 mits of much wholesome reflection and food for mirth; and, besides, is so richly treated by the French them- selves, that it would be a sin and a shame to pass it over. Allow me to have the honour of translating, for your edification, an account of the first day's proceedings — it is mighty amusing, to my thinking. CELEBRATION OF THE DAYS OF JULY "To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies, in honour of the victims of July, were held in the various edifices consecrated to public worship. " These edifices, with the exception of some churches (especially that of the Petits-Peres), were uniformly hung with black on the outside; the hangings bore only this inscription: 27, 28, 29 July, 1830— surrounded by a wreath of oak-leaves. " In the interior of the Catholic churches, it had only been thought proper to dress little catafalques, as for burials of the third and fourth class. Very few clergy attended; but a considerable number of the National Guard. " The Synagogue of the Israelites was entirely hung with black; and a great concourse of people attended. The service was performed with the greatest pomp. " In the Protestant temples there was likewise a very full attendance: apologetical discourses on the Revolu- tion of July were pronounced by the pastors. " The absence of M. de Quelen (Archbishop of Paris), and of many members of the superior clergy, was remarked at Notre Dame. " The civil authorities attended serv^ice in their several districts. 44 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK " The poles, ornamented with tri-coloured flags, which formerly were placed on Notre Dame, were, it was re- marked, suppressed. The flags on the Pont Neuf were, during the ceremony, only half-mast high, and covered with crape." Et c^etera, et c^etera, et ca^tera. " The tombs of the Louvre were covered with black hangings, and adorned with tri-coloured flags. In front and in the middle was erected an expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape, and surmounted by a funeral vase. " These tombs were guarded by the Municipal Guard, the Troops of the Line, the Sergens de ViLLE {town patrol), and a Brigade of Agents of Police in plain clothes, under the orders of peace- officer Vassal. " Between eleven and twelve o'clock, some young men, to the number of 400 or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them bearing a tri-coloured banner with an inscription, ' To the Manes of July: ' ranging themselves in order, they marched five abreast to the INIarchedes Innocens. On their arrival, the JNIunicipal Guards of the Halle aux Draps, where the post had been doubled, issued out without arms, and the town-ser- geants placed themselves before the market to prevent the entry of the procession. The young men passed in perfect order, and without sajang a word — only lifting their hats as they defiled before the tombs. When they arrived at the Louvre they found the gates shut, and the garden evacuated. The troops were under arms, and formed in battalion. " After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to the public." And the evening and the morning were the first day. THE FETES OF JULY 45 There's nothing serious in mortahty : is there, from the beginning of this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous, undisguised humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of professed wags; — do not the men write their own tale with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and naivete which one could not desire improved? How good is that touch of sly indignation about the little catafalques! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout Jews ! and how touching the '' apologetical discourses on the Revolution," delivered by the Protes- tant pastors! Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police agents in plain clothes, and the troops with fixed bayo- nets, sobbing round the " expiatory monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted by funeral vases," and compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who might wish to indulge in the same woe! O " manes of July! " (the phrase is pretty and grammatical) why did you with sharp bullets break those Louvre windows? Why did you bayonet red-coated Swiss behind that fair white facade, and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, perspective guillotine, burst 3^onder bronze gates, rush through that peaceful picture-gallery, and hurl royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of Kings, head-over-heels out of yonder Tuileries' windows? It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say: — there is, however, one benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of press, or person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who ever thinks of them?) — one benefit they have gained, or nearly — abolition de la peine-de- mort pour delit politique: no more wicked guillotining 46 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK for revolutions. A Frenchman must have his revolution — it is his nature to knock down omnibuses in the street, and across them to fire at troops of the line— it is a sin to baulk it. Did not the King send off Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-f our ? Did not the jury, before the face of God and Justice, proclaim Revolu- tionary Colonel Vaudrey not guilty?— One may hope, soon, that if a man shows decent courage and energy in half-a-dozen emeutes, he will get promotion and a pre- mium. I do not (although, perhaps partial to the subject), want to talk more nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes over the following anecdote that is now going the round of the papers, and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched, fool-hardy Barbes, who, on his trial, seemed to invite the penalty which has just been remitted to him. You recollect the braggart's speech: " When the Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he knows the fate that awaits him, and submits his head to the knife:— J am the Indian!" " Well-" " M. Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sen- tence of the Court of Peers, condemning Barbes to death, was published. The great poet composed the fol- lowing verses: — ' Par votre ange envolee, ainsi qu'une colombe, Par le royal enfant, doux et frele roseau, Grace encore une f ois ! Grace au nom de la tombe ! Grace au nom du ber^eau ! ' ^ ^ Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen: — " By your angel flown away just like a dove. By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed, Pardon yet once more ! Pardon in the name of the tomb ! Pardon in the name of the cradle ! " THE FETES OF JULY 47 " M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, which he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the French by the penny-post. " That truly is a noble voice, which can at all hours thus speak to the throne. Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the Gods— it is better named now— it is the language of the Kings. " But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the Poet. His Majesty had signed the commu- tation of Barbes, while the poet was still writing. " Louis Philippe replied to the author of ' Ruy Bias ' most graciously, that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses had only confirmed his pre- vious disposition to mercy." Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more monstrous, palpable folly? In any country, save this, would a poet who chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to a dove, and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magis- trate, in the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary) , in her tomb, and the little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a " gracious answer " to his nonsense? Would he have ever despatched the non- sense? and would any journalist have been silly enough to talk of " the noble voice that could thus speak to the throne," and the noble throne that could return such a noble answer to the noble voice ? You get nothing done here gravely and decently. Tawdry stage tricks are played, and braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every oc- casion, however sacred or solemn: in the face of death, as by Barbes with his hideous Indian metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his two- penny-post poetry; and of justice, as by the King's ab- 48 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK surd reply to this absurd demand ! Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a reed, and the Princess JNIary a host of angels, is that any reason why the law should not have its course? Justice is the God of our lower world, our great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or should move on, majestic, awful, irresistible, having no passions— like a God: but, in the very midst of the path across which it is to pass, lo! M. Victor Hugo trips forward, smirking, and says, O divine Jus- tice ! I will trouble you to listen to the following trifling efl'usion of mine: — " Par voire ange envolee, ainsi qu'une," Sfc. Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo's verses, and, with true French politeness, says, " Mon cher Monsieur, these verses are charming, ravis- sans, delicieuoD, and, coming from such a celehrite lit- teraire as yourself, shall meet with every possible atten- tion — in fact, had I required anything to confirm my own previous opinions, this charming poem would have done so. Bon jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo, au revoir! " —and they part:— Justice taking ofl* his hat and bowing, and the Author of " Ruy Bias " quite convinced that he has been treating with him cVcgal en egal. I can hardly bring my mind to fancy that anything is serious in France — it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and stage-play. Sham liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham justice, — oil diahle done la verite va-t-elle se nieher? * * ^ * The last rocket of the fete of July has just mounted, exploded, made a portentous bang, and emitted a gor- geous show of blue-lights, and then (like many reputa- THE FETES OF JULY 49 tions) disappeared totally: the hundredth gun on the Invalid terrace has uttered its last roar — and a great comfort it is for eyes and ears that the festival is over. We shall be able to go about our every-day business again, and not be hustled by the gendarmes or the crowd. The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, and beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to the greatest ad- vantage, you should go to a festival like this, where their manners, and innocent gaiety, show a very pleasing con- trast to the coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our own country — at Epsom race- course, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The greatest noise that I heard was that of a company of jolly vil- lagers from a place in the neighbourhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks were over, formed themselves into a line, three or four abreast, and so marched singing home. As for the fireworks, squibs and crackers are very hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of them: to me, the prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the number of children, and the extraor- dinary care and kindness of the parents towards these little creatures. It does one good to see honest, heavy epiciers, fathers of families, playing with them in the Tuileries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their shoulders, through many long hours, in order that the lit- tle ones, too, may have their share of the fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish : he does not take Mrs. Bull to the public-house; but leaves her, for the most part, to take care of the children at home. The fete, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only a skeleton now; all the flags have 50 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK been miraculously whisked away during the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs Elysees for full half a mile, have been consigned to their dens and darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other celebrations of the glorious 29th of July?— I think not; the Government which vowed that there should be no more persecutions of the press, was, on that very 29th, seizing a Legitimist paper, for some real or fancied offence against it : it had seized, and was seizing daily, numbers of persons merely suspected of being disaffected (and you may fancy how liberty is under- stood, when some of these prisoners, the other day, on coming to trial, were found guilty and sentenced to one day's imprisonment, after thirty -sia^ days' detention on susincion) . I think the Government which follows such a system, cannot be very anxious about any farther revo- lutionary fetes, and that the Chamber may reasonably refuse to vote more money for them. Why should men be so mighty proud of having, on a certain day, cut a certain number of their fellow-countrymen's throats? The Guards and the Line employed this time nine years did no more than those who cannonaded the starving Lyonnese, or bayoneted the luckless inhabitants of the Rue Transnounain:— they did not fulfil the soldier's honourable duty: — his superiors bid him kill and he kill- eth:— perhaps, had he gone to his work with a little more heart, the result would have been different, and then— would the conquering party have been justified in annually rejoicing over the conquered? Would we have thought Charles X. justified in causing fireworks to be blazed, and concerts to be sung, and speeches to be spouted, in commemoration of his victory over his' slaughtered countrymen?— I wish, for my part, they THE FETES OF JULY 51 would allow the people to go about their business, as on the other 362 days of the year, and leave the Champs Elysees free for the omnibuses to run, and the Tuileries in quiet, so that the nursemaids might come as usual, and the newspapers be read for a halfpenny apiece. Shall I trouble you with an account of the speculations of these latter, and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver disquisition. The July fetes occupy, as you may imagine, a consid- erable part of their columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them, one by one ; to read Tweedledum's praise, and Tweedledee's indignation— to read, in the Dehats, how the King was received with shouts and loyal vivats —in the Nation, how not a tongue was wagged in his praise, but, on the instant of his departure, how the people called for the " Marseillaise " and applauded that.—^\i\ best say no more about the fete. The Legiti- mists were always indignant at it. The high Philippist party sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke against them. Why continue it?— If there be anything sacred in the name and idea of loyalty, why renew this fete? It only shows how a rightful monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous usurper stole his precious diadem. If there be anything noble in the memory of a day, when citizens, unused to war, rose against practised veterans, and, armed with the strength of their cause, overthrew them, why speak of it now ? or renew the bitter recollections of the bootless struggle and victory? O Lafayette! O hero of two worlds ! O accomplished Cromwell Grandison ! you have to answer for more than any mortal man who has played a part in history: two republics and one monarchy does 52 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK the world owe to you; and especially grateful should your country be to you. Did you not, in '90, make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and, in '30, prepare the way for — 7|r '^ '^' ^ ^rf* [The Editor of the Bungay Beacon would insert no more of this letter, which is, therefore, for ever lost to the public] ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTINC WITH APPROPRIATE ANECDOTES, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL DISQUISITIONS IN A LETTER TO MR. MACGILP, OF LONDON THE three collections of pictures at the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, contain a number of specimens of French art, since its commencement almost, and give the stranger a pretty fair opportunity to study and appreciate the school. The French list of painters contains some very good names— no very great ones, except Poussin (unless the admirers of Claude choose to rank him among great painters) , — and I think the school was never in so flour- ishing a condition as it is at the present day. They say there are three thousand artists in this town alone: of these a handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but well understand their business: draw the figure ac- curately; sketch with cleverness; and paint portraits, churches or restaurateurs' shops, in a decent manner. To account for a superiority over England— which, I think, as regards art, is incontestable— it must be re- membered that the painter's trade, in France, is a very good one; better appreciated, better understood, and, generally, far better paid than with us. There are a dozen excellent schools in which a lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a practised master, learn the ap- ^3 54 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK prenticeship of his art at an expense of about ten pounds a year. In England there is no school except the Academy, unless the student can afford to pay a very large sum, and place himself under the tuition of some particular artist. Here, a young man, for his ten pounds, has all sorts of accessory instruction, models, &c. ; and has further, and for nothing, numberless in- citements to study his profession which are not to be found in England: — the streets are filled with picture- shops, the people themselves are pictures walking about ; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms are covered with pictures: Nature itself is inclined more kindly to him, for the sky is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and the sun shines for the greater part of the year. Add to this, incitements more selfish, but quite as powerful: a French artist is paid very hand- somely; for five hundred a year is much where all are poor; and has a rank in society rather above his merits than below them, being caressed by hosts and hostesses in places where titles are laughed at and a baron is thought of no more account than a banker's clerk. The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merri- est, dirtiest existence possible. He comes to Paris, prob- ably at sixteen, from his province ; his parents settle forty pounds a year on him, and pay his master ; he establishes himself in the Pays Latin, or in the new quarter of Notre Dame de Lorette (which is quite peopled with painters) ; he arrives at his atelier at a tolerably early hour, and labours among a score of companions as merry and poor as himself. Each gentleman has his favourite tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a cloud of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of choruses, of which no one THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 55 can form an idea who has not been present at such an assembly. You see here every variety of coiffure that has ever been known. Some young men of genius have ringlets hanging over their shoulders— you may smell the tobacco with which they are scented across the street; some have straight locks, black, oily, and redundant; some have toupets in the famous Louis-Philippe fashion ; some are cropped close; some have adopted the present mode — which he who would follow must, in order to do so, part his hair in the middle, grease it with grease, and gum it with gum, and iron it flat down over his ears; when arrived at the ears, you take the tongs and make a couple of ranges of curls close round the whole head, — such curls as you may see under a gilt three-cornered hat, and in her Britannic Majesty's coachman's state wig. This is the last fashion. As for the beards, there is no end to them ; all my friends the artists have beards who can raise them ; and Nature, though she has rather stinted 56 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK the bodies and limbs of the French nation, has been very hberal to them of hair, as you may see by the following specimen. Fancy these heads and beards under all sorts of caps — Chinese caps, JMandarin caps, Greek skull- caps, English jockey-caps, Russian or Kuzzilbash caps, Middle-age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps of maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted night- caps. Fancy all the jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen can describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen. In this company and costume the French student of art passes his days and acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what theatres, at what guinguettes, in company with what seducing little milliner, there is no need to say; but I knew one who pawned his coat to go to a carnival ball, and walked abroad very cheerfully in his blouse for six weeks, until he could redeem the absent garment. These young men (together with the students of sci- ences) comport themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German bursch towards the philister, or as the military man, during the empire, did to the pekin:— from the height of their poverty they look down vipon him with the greatest imaginable scorn— a scorn, I think, by which the citizen seems dazzled, for his re- spect for the arts is intense. The case is very different in England, where a grocer's daughter would think she made a mesalliance by marrying a painter, and where a literary man (in spite of all we can say against it) ranks below that class of gentry composed of the apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose positions, in country towns at least, are so equivocal. As for instance, my friend the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an unde- THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 57 niable pedigree, a paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in Warwickshire, in company with several squires and parsons of that enlightened county. Aster- isk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily agreeable at dinner, and delighted all present with his learning and wit. " Who is that monstrous pleasant fellow? " said one of the squires. "Don't you know?" replied an- other. " It's Asterisk, the author of so-and-so, and a famous contributor to such-and-such a magazine." " Good heavens! " said the squire, quite horrified; " a lit- erary man! I thought he had been a gentleman! " Another instance: M. Guizot, w^ien he was Minister here, had the grand hotel of the IMinistry, and gave en- tertainments to all the great de yar le rnonde, as Bran- tome says, and entertained them in a proper ministerial magnificence. The splendid and beautiful Duchess of Dash was at one of his ministerial parties; and went, a fortnight afterwards, as in duty bound, to pay her re- spects to ]\I. Guizot. But it happened, in this fortnight, that M. Guizot was Minister no longer; having given up his portfolio, and his grand hotel, to retire into private life, and to occupy his humble apartments in the house w^hich he possesses, and of which he lets the greater portion. A friend of mine was present at one of the ex- Minister's soirees, where the Duchess of Dash made her appearance. He says the Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite astounded, and examined the premises with a most curious wonder. Two or three shabby little rooms, with ordinary furniture, and a Minister en re- traite, who lives by letting lodgings! In our country was ever such a thing heard of? No, thank heaven! and a Briton ought to be proud of the difference. But to our muttons. This country is surely the para- 58 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK dise of painters and penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet at Rome, exceeding ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and leading such a life as Rubens or Titian did of old ; when one sees M. Thiers's grand villa in the Rue St. George (a dozen years ago he was not even a penny-a-liner: no such luck) ; when one contemplates, in imagination, M. Gudin, the marine painter, too lame to walk through the picture-gallery of the Louvre, accommodated, therefore, with a wheel- chair, a privilege of princes only, and accompanied — nay, for what I know, actually trundled— down the gallery by majesty itself — who does not long to make one of the great nation, exchange his native tongue for the melodious jabber of France; or at least, adopt it for his native country, like Marshal Saxe, Na- poleon, and Anacharsis Clootz? Noble people! they made Tom Paine a deputy; and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a dynasty of him. Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in France; and here, at least, we are back to them. At the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of their performances; all the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being bound to leave their prize sketch or picture. Can anything good come out of the Royal Academy? is a question which has been considerably mooted in England (in the neigh- bourhood of Suffolk Street especially). The hundi'eds of French samples are, I think, not very satisfactory. The subjects are almost all what are called classical: Orestes pursued by every variety of Furies ; numbers of little wolf-sucking Romuluses; Hectors and Androm- aches in a complication of parting embraces, and so forth; for it was the absurd maxim of our forefathers, THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 59 that because these subjects had been the fashion twenty centuries ago, they must remain so in scecula sceculorum; because to these lofty heights giants had scaled, behold the race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at them likewise ! and on the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs (excuse the pleasantry) were instructed to swell out and roar as much as possible like bulls. What was the consequence, my dear friend? In try- ing to make themselves into bulls, the frogs make them- selves into jackasses, as might be expected. For a hun- dred and ten years the classical humbug oppressed the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of the Beaux Arts, seventy years' specimens of the dulness which it engendered. Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too ; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our verj^ best to ape some one or two of our neighbours, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches ! It is the study of nature, surely, that profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman up to ^schylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are : but the silly animal is never content ; is ever trying to fit itself into another shape ; wants to deny its own iden- tity, and has not the courage to utter its own thoughts. Because Lord Byron was wicked, and quarrelled with the world; and found himself growing fat, and quar- relled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill- humoured, did not half Europe grow ill-humoured too? Did not every poet feel his young affections withered, and despair and darkness cast upon his soul? Because certain mighty men of old could make heroical statues and plays, must we not be told that there is no other 60 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK beauty but classical beauty?— must not every little whip- ster of a French poet chalk you out plays, " Henriades," and such-like, and vow that here was the real thing, the undeniable Kalon? The undeniable fiddlestick ! For a hundred years, my dear sir, the world was humbugged by the so-called classi- cal artists, as they now are by what is called the Christian art (of which anon) ; and it is curious to look at the pic- torial traditions as here handed down. The consequence of them is, that scarce one of the classical pictures ex- hibited is worth much more than two-and-sixpence. Bor- rowed from statuary, in the first place, the colour of the paintings seems, as much as possible, to participate in it; they are mostly of a misty, stony green, dismal hue, as if they had been painted in a world where no colour was. In every picture there are, of course, white man- tles, white urns, white columns, white statues — those oblige accomplishments of the sublime. There are the endless straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper lips, just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing- books, as if the latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme authority, from which there was no appeal? Why is the classical reign to endure? Why is yonder simpering Venus de' Medicis to be our stan- dard of beauty, or the Greek tragedies to bound our notions of the sublime? There was no reason why Aga- memnon should set the fashions, and remain dva| avSpcav to eternity : and there is a classical quotation, which you may have occasionally heard, beginning Vixere fortes, &c., which, as it avers that there were a great number of stout fellows before Agamenmon, may not unreasonably induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to succeed him. Shakspeare made a better man when his imagina- THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 61 tion moulded the mighty figure of Macbeth. And if you will measure Satan by Prometheus, the blind old Puri- tan's work by that of the fiery Grecian poet, does not JNIilton's angel surpass ^schylus's— surpass him by " many a rood? " In the same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a number of pale imitations of the antique. Monsieur Thiers (and he ought to be thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-sized copy of " The Last Judgment " of ]\Iichel Angelo, and a number of casts from statues by the same splendid hand. There is the sublime, if you please — a new sublime — an original sub- lime — quite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See yon- der, in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in glory ; and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august and pure, the Virgin by his side. There is the " Moses," the grandest figure that ever was carved in stone. It has about it something frightfully majestic, if one may so speak. In examin- ing this, and the astonishing picture of " The Judg- ment," or even a single figure of it, the spectator's sense amounts almost to pain. I would not like to be left in a room alone with the " Moses." How did the artist live amongst them, and create them ? How did he suffer the painful labour of invention ? One fancies that he would have been scorched up, like Semele, by sights too tre- mendous for his vision to bear. One cannot imagine him, with our small physical endowments and weak- nesses, a man like ourselves. As for the Ecole Roy ale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its students have done, as students, it is stark naught. When the men did anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began thinking for themselves. 62 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK There is only one picture among the many hundreds that has, to my idea, much merit (a charming composi- tion of Homer singing, signed Jourdy) ; and the only good that the academy has done by its pupils was to send them to Rome, where they might learn better things. At home, the intolerable, stupid classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession, the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down, and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imagina- tions; drove them away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and attainable by us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow ; and sent them rambling after artificial grace, without the proper means of judging or attaining it. A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts. It is beautiful, and as well finished and convenient as beautiful. With its light and elegant fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of the Kenaissance, and fragments of sculpture, you can hardly see, on a fine day, a place more riant and pleasing. Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the emeutes which are to take place ; and where, as every- body knows, is the picture-gallery of modern French artists, whom government thinks worthy of patronage. A very great proportion of the pictures, as we see by the catalogue, are by the students whose works we have just been to visit at the Beaux Arts, and who, having performed their pilgrimage to Rome, have taken rank THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 63 among the professors of the art. I don't know a more pleasing exhibition ; for there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the collection, some very good, and the rest showing great skill and smartness of execution. In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man could be a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up among the painters, and we have here a vast number of large canvases, with figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness. The anticlassicists did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in consequence, up to that period, we have here the old classical faith in full vigour. There is Bru- tus, having chopped his son's head off, with all the agony of a father, and then, calling for number two; there is ^neas carrying off old Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two Hottentots, and many more such choice subjects from Lempriere. But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, with which the catalogue swarms. Here are a few extracts from it: — 7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, " The Grand Dauphiness Dying." 18. Blondcl, Chevalier dc la. Sic. " Zenobia found Dead." 36. Debay, Chevalier. " The Death of Lucretia." 38. Dejuinne. '' The Death of Hector." 34. Court, Chevalier de la, &c. " The Death of Cssar." 39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier. "Dante and Virgil in the Infernal Lake," " The Massacre of Scio," and " Medea going to Murder her Children." 43. Delaroche, Chevalier. " Joas taken from among the Dead." 44. " The Death of Queen Elizabeth." 45. " Edward V. and his Brother " (preparing for death). 64 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK 50. " Hecuba going to be Sacrificed." Drolling, Chevalier. 51. Dubois. " Young Clovis found Dead." 56. Henry, Chevalier. " The Massacre of St. Bartholomew." 75. Guerin, Chevalier. " Cain, after the Death of Abel." 83. Jacquand. " Death of Adelaide de Comminges." 88. " The Death of Eudamidas." 93. " The Death of Hjmetto." 103. " The Death of Philip of Austria."-And so on. You see what woeful subjects they take, and how pro- fusely they are decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why the merriest people in the world should please them- selves with such grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone, the mind is pre- pared for it. But these men will have nothing but fifth acts ; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances leading to them. This, however, is part of the scheme —the bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sub- lime, that our teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which your humble servant and other anti- humbuggists should heartily, according to the strength that is in them, endeavour to pull down. What, for in- stance, could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of Eudamidas? What was Hecuba to Chevalier Droll- ing, or Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba? I would lay a wager that neither of them ever conjugated totttw, and that their school learning carried them not as far as the letter, but only to the game of taw. How were they to be inspired by such subjects? From having seen Talma THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF FAINTING 65 and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the " Mythological Dictionary." What a classicism, inspired by rouge, gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lempriere, and copied, half from ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence the hour! Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his " Medea " is a genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs. Brownrigg, and her two female 'prentices, would have done as well as the desperate Col- chian with her xexva cptXraxa. M. Delacroix has pro- duced a number of rude, barbarous pictures ; but there is the stamp of genius on all of them,— the great poetical intention, which is worth all your execution. Delaroche is another man of high merit ; with not such a great heart, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful draughts- man, and an excellent arranger of his subject. " The Death of Elizabeth " is a raw young performance seem- ingly—not, at least, to my taste. The " Enfans d'Edouard " is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in a hundred different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and gloomy, and merits fully its high reputa- tion. This painter rejoices in such subjects — in what Lord Portsmouth used to call " black jobs." He has killed Charles I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise, and I don't know whom besides. He is, at present, occupied with a vast work at the Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honour of seeing him, — a little, keen-looking man, some five feet in height. He wore, on this important occasion, a bandanna round his head, and was in the act of smoking a cigar, Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche 66 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK married, is the king of French battle-painters— an amaz- ingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman, who has Napo- leon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the Grenadier Fran9ais under all sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such subjects are spirited, natural, and ex- cellent ; and he is so clever a man, that all he does is good to a certain degree. His " Judith " is somewhat violent, perhaps. His " Rebecca " most pleasing; and not the less so for a little pretty affectation of attitude and needless singularity of costume. " Raphael and Michael An- gelo " is as clever a picture as can be — clever is just the word — the groups and drawing excellent, the colouring pleasantly bright and gaudy; and the French students study it incessantly; there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix. His little scraps of wood- cuts, in the now publishing " Life of Napoleon," are perfect gems in their way, and the noble price paid for them not a penny more than he merits. The picture, by Court, of " The Death of Csesar," is remarkable for effect and excellent workmanship; and the head of Brutus (who looks like Armand Carrel) is full of energy. There are some beautiful heads of women, and some very good colour in the picture. Jac- quand's " Death of Adelaide de Comminges " is neither more nor less than beautiful. Adelaide had, it appears, a lover, who betook himself to a convent of Trappists. She followed him thither, disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not discovered bv him till on her death- bed. The painter has told this story in a most pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of onction and melancholy grace. The objects, too, are capitally rep- resented ; and the tone and colour very good. Decaisne's " Guardian Angel " is not so good in colour, but is THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 67 equally beautiful in expression and grace. A little child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the infant. You see women look very wistfully at this sweet picture ; and what triumph would a painter have more? We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing sea-pieces of Gudin, and one or two land- scapes by Giroux (the plain of Grasivaudan) , and " The Prometheus " of Aligny. This is an imitation, perhaps; as is a noble picture of " Jesus Christ and the Children," by Flandrin : but the artists are imitating better models, at any rate; and one begins to perceive that the odious classical dynasty is no more. Poussin's magnificent " Polyphemus " (I only know a print of that marvel- lous composition) has, perhaps, suggested the first- named ]3icture ; and the latter has been inspired by a good enthusiastic study of the Roman schools. Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief instruments. He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French Academy at Rome, and is fa- mous as a chief of a school. When he broke up his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of his pupils at- tended him faithfully some way on his journey; and some, with scarcely a penny in their pouches, walked through France, and across the Alps, in a pious pil- grimage to Rome, being determined not to forsake their old master. Such an action was worthy of them, and of the high rank which their profession holds in France, where the honours to be acquired by art are only in- ferior to those which are gained in war. One reads of such peregrinations in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian painter followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara. In regard of Ingres' individual merit as a painter, the writer of this is 68 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him; one being a jjlafond in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire. Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art, and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us back to Cranach and Diirer, and which is making progress here. For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian or Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbours, and will be a favourite with them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do believe this to be a greater humbug than the humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the latter was founded on Nature at least; whereas the former is made up of silly affectations, and improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is Chevalier Ziegler's picture of " St. Luke painting the Virgin." St. Luke has a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves. The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her arms. She looks preternaturally solemn ; as does St. Luke, who is eyeing his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life. First, take your colours, and rub them down clean,— bright carmine, bright yellow, bright si- enna, bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the cos- tumes of your figures as much as possible like the cos- tumes of the early part of the fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above colours ; and if on a gold ground, the more " Catholic " your art is. Dress your apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gim- THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 69 cracks, as you may see in the Catholic chapels, in Sut- ton Street and elsewhere. Deal in Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster's wife by Cranach or Van Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their gowns, and proper angular draperies. Place all their heads on one side, with the eyes shut, and the proper solemn simper. At the back of the head, draw, and gild with gold-leaf, a halo, or glory, of the exact shape of a cart-wheel; and you have the thing done. It is Catholic art tout crache, as Louis Philippe says. We have it still in England, handed down to us for four centuries, in the pictures on the cards, as the redoubtable king and queen of clubs. Look at them: you will see that the costumes and atti- tudes are precisely similar to those which figure in the catholicities of the school of Overbeck and Cornelius. Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley's " Jeune Fille confiant son premier secret a Venus." Charming, charming! It is from the exhibition of this year only; and, I think, the best sculpture in the gallery — pretty, fanciful, naive; admirable in workmanship and imitation of Nature. I have seldom seen flesh better represented in marble. Examine, also, Jaley's " Pudeur," Jacquot's " Nymph," and Rude's " Boy with the Tortoise." These are not very exalted subjects, or what are called exalted, and do not go beyond simple, smiling beauty and nature. But what then? Are we gods, Miltons, Michel Angelos, that can leave earth when we please, and soar to heights immeasurable? No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of academicians would fain make us so. Are vou not, and half the painters in London, panting for an oppor- tunity to show your genius in a great " historical pic- ture ? " O blind race ! Have you wings ? Not a feather : 70 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK and yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the tops of rugged hills ; and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your ragged elbows, and making as if you would fly! Come down, silly Daedalus: come down to the lowly places in which Nature ordered you to walk. The sweet flowers are springing there ; the fat muttons are waiting there ; the pleasant sun shines there ; be content and hum- ble, and take your share of the good cheer. While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has gaily conducted us across the water; and le garde qui veille a la porte du Louvre ne defend pas our entry. What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners who sojourn in the capital! It is hardly necessary to say that the brethren of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any extraordinary wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which Paris, more than any other city, abounds. But here they have a luxury which surpasses all others, and spend their days in a palace which all the money of all the Roths- childs could not buy. They sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine in a cellar ; but no grandee in Europe has such a drawing-room. Kings' houses have, at best, but damask hangings, and gilt cornices. What are these to a wall covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred yards of Rubens? Artists from England, who have a national gallery that resembles a moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except under par- ticular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may revel here to their hearts' content. Here is a room half a mile long, with as many windows as Aladdin's palace, open from sunrise till evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of study : the only puzzle to the student THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 71 is to select the one he shall begin upon, and keep his eyes away from the rest. Fontaine's grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings and shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery ; but it is thought too fine for working days, and is only opened for the public entrance on Sabbath. A little back stair (leading from a court, in which stand numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx, of polished granite,) is the common entry for students and others, who, during the week, enter the gallery. Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French artists, which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death only entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre) ; and let us confine our- selves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this letter. I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or two admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and gaiety. The colour is not good, but all the rest excellent ; and one of these so much-lauded pic- tures is the portrait of a washerwoman. " Pope Pius," at the Louvre, is as bad in colour as remarkable for its vigour and look of life. The man had a genius for paint- ing portraits and common life, but must attempt the heroic; — failed signally; and what is worse, carried a whole nation blundering after him. Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty years ago, he would have thrown the dementi in your teeth; or, at least, laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us that we don't know when we are beaten: they go a step further, and swear their defeats are victories. David was a part of the glory of the empire ; and one might as well have said then that " Romulus " was a bad picture, as that Tou- louse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people, who be- 72 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK lieve in the Emperor, believe in the Theatre Fran^ais, and beheve that Ducis improved upon Shakspeare, have the above opinion. Still, it is curious to remark, in this place, how art and literature become party matters, and political sects have their favourite painters and authors. Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead. He died about a year after his bodily demise in 1825. The roman- ticism killed him. Walter Scott, from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders, who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and harness on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes and demi- gods of Greece and Rome. Notre Dame a la rescousse! Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert has borne Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle. Andromache may weep: but her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See! Robin Hood twangs his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling. Montjoie Saint Denis! down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois ; and yonder are Leonidas and Romulus beg- ging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor. Classicism is dead. Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lempriere by the nose, and reigns sovereign. Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say much. Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt ; and if he has come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to ad- vantage. But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude, which was followed by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how are we to suppose yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the heroic and the sublime? Romulus stretches his legs THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 73 as far as ever nature will allow ; the Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their legs too, and to thrust forward their arms, thus,— Romulus. The HoratiL Romulus's is the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are all in the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of Bond Street, might admire the attitude ; his namesake, IVIichel, I don't think would. The little picture of " Paris and Helen," one of the master's earliest, I believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are exquisitely painted. Helen looks need- lessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and have not the green tone which you see in the later pictures of the master. What is the meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the varnish? Girodet's pictures are green ; Gros's emperors and grenadiers have universally the jaundice. Gerard's " Psyche " has a most decided green-sickness; and I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the enthusiasm which this per- formance inspired on its first appearance before the public. In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly " Del- uge," and Gericault's dismal " Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works 74. THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the " Raft of the Medusa," it is said he hved for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are f amihar, probably, with Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope ; and, far away, black, against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak, — deeper, be- cause more natural, than Girodet's green " Deluge," for instance: or his livid " Orestes," or red-hot " Clytem- nestra." Seen from a distance, the latter 's " Deluge " has a certain awe-inspiring air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold of a tree. On the green man's shoulders is his old father, in a green old age ; to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and dangling at her hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful head) ; and a green sea and at- mosphere envelops all this dismal group. The old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand ; and the tree, which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way. These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two such ghastly epi- grams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure, — the dialogue is so crammed with these lugu- brious good things— melancholy antitheses— sparkling undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly. The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pic- THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 75 tures; they put me in mind of the colour of objects in dreams, — a strange, hazy, lurid hue. How noble are some of his landscapes ! What a depth of solemn shadow is in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts Diogenes. The air is thunder-laden, and breathes heavily. You hear ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom. Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in quite a different mood, but exquisitely poet- ical too. A horseman is riding up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. O matutini rores aurceque saluhres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious airs (" the breath of Nature blowing free," as the corn- law man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapours are rising up from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful brisk- ness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial imita- tion of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent compan- 76 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK ions for a man than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David's sans-culotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face! There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness and gaiety it is. What a delight- ful affectation about yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades! What splen- did dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out their toes, with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches ! Yonder, in the midst of a golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little round Cupids, bubbling up in clus- ters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air. There is, to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined to pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude, — calm, fresh, delicate, yet full of flavour,— should be likened to a bottle of Chateau Mar- gaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but Romance Gelee? — heavy, sluggish, — the luscious odour almost sickens you; a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if you had been drinking hot blood. An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off this mortal stage, in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates. Confess how many times you have read THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING 77 Beranger, and hov/ many JNIilton? If you go to the Star and Garter, don't you grow sick of that vast, lus- cious landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of common? Don- keys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to this sub- ject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton they never grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with exquisite Titania. Let us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I have never heard that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of the earth ; glimpses of the sublime are but rare to us ; leave we them to great geniuses, and to the donkeys ; and if it nothing profit us aerias tentdsse domos along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble. I have now only to mention the charming " Cruche Cassee " of Greuze, which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the colour (a thought too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and colour; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very fine picture by Bon BoUongue, " Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child," deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigour and richness of colour. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of Leopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the French school has pro- duced, — as deep as Poussin, of a better colour, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects. 78 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures are worth ex- amining and admiring; they are full of " unction " and pious mystical grace. "Saint Scholastica " is divine; and the " Taking down from the Cross " as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say Raphael at once) . I hate those simper- ing Madonnas. I declare that the " Jardiniere " is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the " Saint Elizabeth " is a bad picture,— a bad composition, badly drawn, badly coloured, in a bad imitation of Titian,— a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when Raphael painted this picture two years before his death, the spirit of painting had gone from out of him ; he was no longer inspired ; it was time that he should die! ! There,— the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is no time to speak of Lesueur's " Cruci- fixion," which is odiously coloured, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most difficult to translate into words; — one lays down the pen, and thinks and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colours are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which, for the present, adieu. Your faithful M. A. T. To Mr. Robert MacGilp, Newman Street, London, THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN SIMON GAMBOUGE was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the world knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody- bought ; and Simon took a higher line, and painted por- traits to admiration, only nobody came to sit to him. As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his pro- fession, and had arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better himself by taking a wife, — a plan which a number of other wise men adopt, in simi- lar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to quit the meat-shop and follow him. Griskin- issa — such was the fair creature's name — " was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said, " as ever a man would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to the painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady— Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph— Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude — Griskinissa again, with young Master Gam- bouge, who was by this time the offspring of their affec- tions. The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of hundred pounds ; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be more lovely or loving. But 79 80 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK want began speedily to attack their little household; bakers' bills were unpaid ; rent was due, and the reckless landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father, unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the sup- plies of mutton-chops ; and swore that his daughter, and the dauber her husband, should have no more of his wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and crying over their little infant, vowed to heaven that they would do without : but in the course of the evening Gris- kinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon pawned his best coat. When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a kind of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they, in the course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan, his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a wash- hand basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crock- ery, and arm-chairs. Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had found a second father in her uncle,— 3b base pun, which showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no longer the tender, simple Griskinissa of other days. I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the warming-pan in the course of three daj^s, and fuddled herself one whole evening with the crimson plush breeches. Drinking is the devil— the father, that is to say, of all vices. Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly to- gether; her good humour changed to bilious, bitter dis- content; her pretty, fond epithets, to foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and the peach-colour on her cheeks fled from its old hab- itation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 81 number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge. Poor Simon, w^ho had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of his better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck, and cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the neighbours could hear this woman's tongue, and understand her do- ings ; bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the floor, and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots went clattering through the windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and Simon sat pale and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the brandy-bottle, when JNIrs. Gambouge was out of the way. One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbish- ing up a picture of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced a year before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and swore in the most pathetic manner. " O miserable fate of genius! " cried he, " was I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this? to be bullied by a fiend of a wife; to have my master-pieces neglected by the world, or sold only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed be the art which is unworthy of me ! Let me dig or steal, let me sell myself as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more wretched than I am now ! " " Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice. "What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and sur- prised. "Who's there?— where are you?— who are you?" 82 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK " You were just speaking of me," said the voice. Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a bladder of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany. "Where are you?" cried he again. " S-q-u-e-e-z-e! " exclaimed the little voice. Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze ; when, as sure as I am living, a little imp spurted out from the hole upon the palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily manner. When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to be as big as a mouse ; then he arrived at the size of a cat ; and then he jumped off the palette, and, THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 83 turning head over heels, asked the poor painter what he wanted with him. ***** The strange httle animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself at last upon the top of Gambouge's easel, — smearing out, with his heels, all the white and ver- milion which had just been laid on the allegoric portrait of Mrs. Gambouge. " What! " exclaimed Simon, " is it the—" " Exactly so ; talk of me, you know, and I am al- ways at hand: besides, I am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me a little better." " Upon my word," said the painter, " it is a very sin- gular surprise which you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your existence." The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr. Macready's best looks, said, — " There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio, Than are dreamed of in your philosophy." Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but felt somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation of his new friend. Diabolus continued: " You are a man of merit, and want money ; you will starve on your merit ; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend, how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world : old Mordecai, the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of an article which, in itself, is a supposition— a valueless, windy, uncertain property 84 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK of yours, called, by some poet of your own, I think, an animula, vagulaj hlandula — bah! there is no use beating about the bush— I mean a soul. Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it some other way, and not get such good pay for your bargain! " — and, having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as big as a double Times, only there was a different starnp in the corner. It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love to read them ; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be found in the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over the paper, and signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven years, and at the end of that time was to be- come the property of the ; protJiOcD that, during the course of the seven years, every single wish which he might form should be gratified by the other of the con- tracting parties ; otherwise the deed became null and non- avenue, and Gambouge should be left "to go to the his own way." " You will never see me again," said Diabolus, in shak- ing hands with poor Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at this day—" never, at least, unless you want me ; for everything you ask will be per- formed in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me, it is best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids any- thing like scandal. But if you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and out of the course of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of this you are the best judge." So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance, nobody knows. Simon THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 85 Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, heaven for- give me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an opportunity to make a similar bargain. " Heigho! " said Simon. " I wonder whether this be a reality or a dream. I am sober, I know ; for who will give me credit for the means to be drunk? and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that. I wish I could see a capon and a bottle of white wine." "Monsieur Simon!" cried a voice on the landing- place. " C'est ici," quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so ; and lo ! there was a restaurateur's boy at the door, supporting a tray, a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same ; and, by its side, a tall amber-coloured flask of Sauterne. " I am the new boy, sir," exclaimed this youth, on entering; " but I believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things." Simon grinned, and said, " Certainly, I did ash for these things." But such was the effect which his inter- view with the demon had had on his innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew that they were for old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived on the floor beneath. " Go, my boy," he said ; " it is good : call in a couple of hours, and remove the plates and glasses." The little waiter trotted downstairs, and Simon sat greedily down to discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast; — seasoning his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the inevitable bill, which was to follow all. " Ye gods! " said he, as he scraped away at the back- 86 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK bone, " what a dinner! what wine!— and how gaily served up too! " There were silver forks and spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver dish. " Why, the money for this dish and these spoons," cried Simon, " would keep me and Mrs. G. for a month! I wish " — and here Simon whistled, and turned round to see that nobody was peeping — " I wish the plate were mine." Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! "Here they are," thought Simon to himself; "why should not I take them? " And take them he did. " Detection," said he, " is not so bad as starvation; and I would as soon live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge." So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout, and ran downstairs as if the Devil were behind him — as, indeed, he was. He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker — that establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piete. " I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon, " with some fam- ily plate, of which I beseech you to take care." The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. " I can give you nothing upon them," said he. "What!" cried Simon; "not even the worth of the silver? " " No; I could buy them at that price at the ' Cafe Morisot,' Rue de la Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper." And, so saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that coffee- house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he had wished to pawn. The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime— w^e/i crime is found out!— other- THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 87 wise, conscience takes matters much more easily. Gam- bouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be vir- tuous. " But, hark ye, my friend," continued the honest broker, " there is no reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have half the money! — speak, or I peach." Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instan- taneously. " Give me half," he said, " and let me go. — What scoundrels are these pawnbrokers! " ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop, " seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won gain." When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of no less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon it was inscribed the simple number, 152. " A gambling-house," thought Gam- bouge. " I WISH I had half the money that is now on the table, upstairs." Pie mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir. Gambouge's five napoleons looked in- significant by the side of the heaps which were around him ; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his capital stoutly upon the 0. It is a dangerous spot that 0, or double zero ; but to Simon it was more lucky than to the rest of the world. 88 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK The ball went spinning round — in " its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has it, after Goethe— and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and thirty- five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to the delighted painter. " Oh, Diabolus! " cried he, "now it is that I begin to believe in thee! Don't talk about merit," he cried ; " talk about fortune. Tell me not about heroes for the future— tell me of zeroes." And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0. The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and lookers-on began to stare at him. There were twelve thousand pounds on the table. Suffice it to say, that Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick bundle of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a prince for half a year! Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had a stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He repented of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the restaurateur's plate. " O hon- esty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an action like this of a man who has a property like mine ! " So he went back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imagi- nable. " My friend," said he, " I have sinned against all that I hold most sacred : I have forgotten my family and my religion. Here is thy money. In the name of heaven, restore me the plate which I have wrongfully sold thee!" THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 89 But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, " Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell it at all." " Well," cried Gambouge, " thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules; but I will give thee all I am worth." And here he produced a billet of five hundred francs. " Look," said he, " this money is all I own; it is the pay- ment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. heaven! I stole that plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering houseless. But 1 cannot bear this load of ignominy — I cannot suffer the thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did wrong. I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I will do right! " The broker was alarmed. " Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the plate." " Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted; "sign me a paper, and the money is yours." So Troisboules wrote according to Gambouge's dictation: "Received, for thirteen ounces of plate, twenty pounds." " Monster of iniquity! " cried the painter, " fiend of wickedness! thou art caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds' worth of plate for twenty ? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money, or I will bring thee to justice! " The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while ; but he gave up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a Tartar. 90 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK Simon now returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner, and restored the plate. *jte ^£ Jig, jijf, '^V rj% ¥^ V|^ And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a profound picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown rich, grew likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father. He fed the poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And I have no doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar circum- stances, would have acted like the worthy Simon Gam- bouge. There was but one blot upon his character— he hated Mrs. Gam. worse than ever. As he grew more benevo- lent, she grew more vimlent : when he went to plaj^s, she went to Bible societies, and vice versa: in fact, she led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a cat in the same kitchen. With all his fortune — for, as may be supposed, Simon prospered in all worldly things — he was the most miserable dog in the whole city of Paris. Only in the point of drinking did he and Mrs. Simon agree; and for many years, and during a considerable number of hours in each day, he thus dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin. O phi- losophy ! we may talk of thee ; but, except at the bottom of the wine-cup, where thou liest like tinith in a well, where shall we find thee ? He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there was so little sign of devilment in the ac- complishment of his wishes, and the increase of his pros- perity, that Simon, at the end of six years, began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all, as that which we have described at the commencement of this THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 91 history. He had grown, as we said, very pious and moral. He went regularly to mass, and had a confessor into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to consult that reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the whole matter. "I am inclined to think, holy sir," said Gambouge, after he had concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his desires were accomplished, " that, after all, this demon was no other than the crea- tion of my own brain, heated by the effects of that bottle of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity." The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church comfortably together, and entered after- wards a cafe, where they sat down to refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion. A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his button-hole, presently entered the room, and saun- tered up to the marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. " Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them, and began read- ing the papers of the day. " Bah! " said he, at last,—" sont-ils grands ces jour- naux Anglais? Look, sir," he said, handing over an immense sheet of The Times to Mr. Gambouge, " was ever anything so monstrous?" Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the prof- fered page. " It is enormous," he said; " but I do not read English." "Nay," said the man with the orders, "look closer at it, Signor Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the lan- guage is." Wondering, Simon took the sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked at it, and began to curse the 92 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK ices and the waiter. " Come, M. I'Abbe," he said; " the heat and glare of this place are intolerable." ***** The stranger rose with them. " Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher monsieur," said he; " I do not mind speaking before the Abbe here, who will be my very good friend one of these days; but I thought it necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business transaction six years since ; and could not exactly talk of it at church, as you may fancy." Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted Times, the paper signed by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob. ***** There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to live, grew more pious, and more care- ful than ever. He had consultations with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers of the Palais. But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his poverty had been before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted could give him a pennyworth of consolation. Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing. One day, Simon's confessor came bounding into the room, with the greatest glee. " My friend," said he, " I have it! Eureka!— I have found it. Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit college at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter's; and tell his Holiness you will double all, if he will give you absolution ! " THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 93 Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome ventre a terre. His HoHness agreed to the request of the petition, and sent him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in due form. " Now," said he, " foul fiend, I defy you! arise, Di- abolus! your contract is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe on the road to salvation." In a fervour of gratitude he clasped the hand of his con- fessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the cheeks of these good men. They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus sitting opposite to them, holding his sides, and lashing his tail about, as if he would have gone mad with glee. " Why," said he, " what nonsense is this! do you sup- pose I care about that? " and he tossed the Pope's mis- sive into a corner. " M. I'Abbe knows," he said, bowing and grinning, " that though the Pope's paper may pass current here, it is not worth twopence in our country. What do I care about the Pope's abso- lution? You might just as well be absolved by your under butler." " Egad," said the Abbe, " the rogue is right— I quite forgot the fact, which he points out clearly enough." " No, no, Gambouge," continued Diabolus, with hor- rid familiarity, " go thy ways, old fellow, that cock wont fight." And he retired up the chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession. Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, ac- cording to the newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed, or a lord ill of the gout 94 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK — a situation, we say, more easy to imagine than to describe. To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were expired. She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had com- pletely knocked under to her, was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night or day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and cursed his stars that he ever had married the butcher's daughter. It wanted six months of the time. A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends together — he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in the city of Paris — he gaily presided at one end of his table, while Mrs. Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other extremity. After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to appear. The old ladies screamed, and hoped he would not appear naked; the young ones tit- tered, and longed to see the monster : everybody was pale with expectation and affright. A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to the company. " I will not show my credentials'' he said, blushing, and pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and shoe-buckles, "unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the person you want, Mr. Gambouge ; pray tell me what is your will." THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 95 " You know," said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice, " that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months to come." " I am," replied the new comer. *' You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit the bond which I gave you? " " It is true." *' You declare this before the present company? " " Upon my honour, as a gentleman," said Diabolus, bowing, and laying his hand upon his waistcoat. A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the bland manners of the fascinating stranger. " My love," continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, " will you be so polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for one who, in sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest and fondest companion." Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief — all the company did likewise. Diabolus sobbed audi- bly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her husband's side, and took him tenderly by the hand. " Simon! " said she, " is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa? " Simon continued solemnly: " Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to obey me in all things for the six months during which our contract has to run; take, then, Gris- kinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half a year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all her caprices, follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse which falls from her infernal tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you ; I will deliver myself up at the ap- pointed time." 96 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK Not Lord G when flogged by Lord B in the House,— not Mr. Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages, could look more crest- fallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did now. *' Take another year, Gambouge," screamed he; "two more — ten more — a century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in holy water, but don't ask that : don't, don't bid me live with Mrs. Gambouge ! " Simon smiled sternly. " I have said it," he cried; " do this, or our contract is at an end." The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the house turned sour : he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every person in the company well nigh fainted with the colic. He slapped down the great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and lashed it with his hoofs and his tail : at last, spreading out a mighty pair of wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole. ***** Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. " You drunken, lazy scoundrel! " cried a shrill and well-known voice, " you have been asleep these two hours: " and here he received another terrific box on the ear. It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work ; and the beautiful vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa. Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake, and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches. " I wish," said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, " that dreams were true; " and he went to work again at his portrait. ***** A Puzzle for the Devil THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN 97 My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said that her continual deal- ings with soap-suds and hot water have been the only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion. CARTOUCHE I HAVE been much interested with an account of the exploits of Monsieur Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways are so much the fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to look abroad for histories of a similar tendency. It is pleasant to find that virtue is cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest Church-of -Eng- land men. Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says the historian whose work lies before me;— born in the Courtille, and in the year 1693. An- other biographer asserts that he was born two years later, and in the Marais; — of respectable parents, of course. Think of the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough, Villars, Mandrin, Tur- pin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Moliere, Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche — all famous within the same twenty years, and fighting, writing, robbing a Venvi! Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; Swift was but a dull, idle, college lad; but if we read the histories of some other great men mentioned in the above list — I mean the thieves, es- pecially — we shall find that they all commenced very early: they showed a passion for their art, as little Raphael did, or little Mozart; and the history of Car- touche's knaveries begins almost with his breeches. 98 CARTOUCHE 99 Dominic's parents sent him to school at the college of Clermont (now Louis le Grand) ; and although it has never been discovered that the Jesuits, who directed that seminary, advanced him much in classical or theological knowledge. Cartouche, in revenge, showed, by repeated instances, his own natural bent and genius, which no difficulties were strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and twenty nightcaps belonging to his com- panions, and disposed of them to his satisfaction ; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in the college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in, suspicion (which, alas! was confirmed) immediately fell upon him : and by this little piece of youthful naivete j a scheme, prettily conceived and smartly performed, was rendered naught. Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eating, and put all the apple-women and cooks, who came to supply the students, under contribution. Not always, however, desirous of robbing these, he used to deal with them, oc- casionally, on honest principles of barter; that is, when- ever he could get hold of his schoolfellows' knives, books, rulers, or playthings, which he used fairly to exchange for tarts and gingerbread. It seemed as if the presiding genius of evil was de- termined to patronize this young man; for before he had been long at college, and soon after he had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped from the nightcap scrape, an opportunity occurred by which he was enabled to gratify both his propensities at once, and not only to steal, but to steal sweetmeats. It happened that the 100 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK principal of the college received some pots of Narbonne honey, which came under the eyes of Cartouche, and in which that young gentleman, as soon as ever he saw them, determined to put his fingers. The president of the college put aside his honey-pots in an apartment within his own ; to which, except by the one door which led into the room which his reverence usually occupied, there was no outlet. There was no chimney in the room ; and the windows looked into the court, where there was a porter at night and where crowds passed by day. What was Cartouche to do? — have the honey he must. Over this chamber, which contained what his soul longed after, and over the president's rooms, there ran a set of unoccupied garrets, into which the dexterous Car- touche penetrated. These were divided from the rooms below, according to the fashion of those days, by a set of large beams, which reached across the whole building, and across which rude planks were laid, which formed the ceiling of the lower storey and the floor of the upper. Some of these planks did young Cartouche remove ; and having descended by means of a rope, tied a couple of others to the neck of the honey-pots, climbed back again, and drew up his prey in safety. He then cunningly fixed the planks again in their old places, and retired to gorge himself upon his booty. And, now, see the pun- ishment of avarice! Everybody knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by a vow to have no more than a certain small sum of money in their possession. The principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a larger sum, in defiance of this rule : and where do you think the old gentleman had hidden it? In the honey- pots! As Cartouche dug his spoon into one of them, he brought out, besides a quantity of golden honey, a CARTOUCHE 101 couple of golden louis, which, with ninety-eight more of their fellows, were comfortably hidden in the pots. Lit- tle Dominic, who, before, had cut rather a poor figure among his fellow-students, now appeared in as fine clothes as any of them could boast of; and when asked by his parents, on going home, how he came by them, said that a young nobleman of his school-fellows had taken a violent fancy to him, and made him a present of a couple of his suits. Cartouche the elder, good man, went to thank the young nobleman ; but none such could be found, and young Cartouche disdained to give any explanation of his manner of gaining the money. Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inad- vertence of youth. Cartouche lost a hundred louis — for what ? For a pot of honey not worth a couple of shillings. Had he fished out the pieces, and replaced the pots and the honey, he might have been safe, and a respectable citizen all his life after. The principal would not have dared to confess the loss of his money, and did not, openly; but he vowed vengeance against the stealer of his sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made. Cartouche, as usual, was fixed upon ; and in the tick of his bed, lo ! there were found a couple of empty honey-pots ! From this scrape there is no knowing how he would have escaped, had not the president himself been a little anxious to hush the matter up; and accordingly, young Cartouche was made to disgorge the residue of his ill- gotten gold pieces, old Cartouche made up the deficiency, and his son was allowed to remain unpunished— until the next time. This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though history has not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis Dominic next committed. 102 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK it must have been a serious one ; for Cartouche, who had borne philosophically all the whippings and punishments which were administered to him at college, did not dare to face that one which his indignant father had in pickle for him. As he was coming home from school, on the first day after his crime, when he received permission to go abroad, one of his brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met him at a short distance from home, and told him what was in preparation; which so frightened this young thief, that he declined returning home alto- gether, and set out upon the wide world to shift for himself as he could. Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full exercise of it, and his gains were by no means equal to his appetite. In whatever professions he tried, — whether he joined the gipsies, which he did, — whether he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf, which occupa- tion history attributes to him, — poor Cartouche was al- ways hungry. Hungry and ragged, he wandered from one place and profession to another, and regretted the honey-pots at Clermont, and the comfortable soup and houilli at home. Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was a mer- chant, and had dealings at Rouen. One day, walking on the quays of that city, this gentleman saw a very miserable, dirty, starving lad, who had just made a pounce upon some bones and turnip-peelings, that had been flung out on the quay, and was eating them as greedily as if they had been turkeys and truffles. The worthy man examined the lad a little closer. O heavens I it was their runaway prodigal— it was little Louis Dom- inic! The merchant was touched by his case; and for- getting the nightcaps, the honey-pots, and the rags and CARTOUCHE 103 dirt of little Louis, took him to his arms, and kissed and hugged him with the tenderest affection. Louis kissed and hugged too, and blubbered a great deal : he was very repentant, as a man often is when he is hungry; and he went home with his uncle, and his peace was made; and his mother got him new clothes, and filled his belly, and for a while Louis was as good a son as might be. But why attempt to baulk the progress of genius? Louis's was not to be kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time — a smart, lively young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamoured of a lovely washer- woman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have something more than mere flames and sentiment; — a washer, or any other woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps, and a necklace every now and then, and a few handker- chiefs and silk stockings, and a treat into the country or to the play. Now, how are all these things to be had without money? Cartouche saw at once that it was impossible ; and as his father would give him none, he was obliged to look for it elsewhere. He took to his old courses, and lifted a purse here, and a watch there; and found, moreover, an accommodating gentleman, who took the wares off his hands. This gentleman introduced him into a very select and agreeable society, in which Cartouche's merit began speedily to be recognized, and in which he learnt how pleasant it is in life to have friends to assist one, and how much may be done by a proper division of labour. M. Cartouche, in fact, formed part of a regular com- pany or gang of gentlemen, who were associated to- gether for the purpose of making war on the public and the law. 104 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK Cartouche had a lovely young sister, who was to be married to a rich young gentleman from the provinces. As is the fashion in France, the parents had arranged the match among themselves ; and the young people had never met until just before the time appointed for the marriage, when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his title-deeds, and settlements, and money. Now there can hardly be found in history a finer instance of devo- tion than Cartouche now exhibited. He went to his captain, explained the matter to him, and actually, for the good of his country, as it were ( the thieves might be called his country), sacrificed his sister's husband's prop- erty. Informations were taken, the house of the bride- groom was reconnoitred, and, one night, Cartouche, in company with some chosen friends, made his first visit to the house of his brother-in-law. All the people were gone to bed; and, doubtless, for fear of disturbing the porter, Cartouche and his companions spared him the trouble of opening the door, by ascending quietly at the window. They arrived at the room where the bride- groom kept his great chest, and set industriously to work, filing and picking the locks which defended the treasure. The bridegroom slept in the next room; but however tenderly Cartouche and his workmen handled their tools, from fear of disturbing his slumbers, their benevolent design was disappointed, for awaken him they did; and quietly slipping out of bed, he came to a place where he had a complete view of all that was going on. He did not cry out, or frighten himself sillily; but, on the con- trary, contented himself with watching the countenances of the robbers, so that he might recognize them on an- other occasion; and, though an avaricious man, he did CARTOUCHE 105 not feel the slightest anxiety about his money-chest ; for the fact is, he had removed all the cash and papers the day before. As soon, however, as they had broken all the locks, and found the nothing which lay at the bottom of the chest, he shouted with such a loud voice, " Here, Thomas! — John! — officer! — keep the gate, fire at the rascals!" that they, incontinently taking fright, skipped nimbly out of window, and left the house free. Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his brother- in-law, but eschewed all those occasions on which the latter was to be present at his father's house. The evening before the marriage came; and then his father insisted upon his appearance among the other rela- tives of the bride's and bridegroom's families, who were all to assemble and make merry. Cartouche was obliged to yield ; and brought with him one or two of his compan- ions, who had been, by the way, present in the affair of the empty money-boxes; and though he never fancied that there was any danger in meeting his brother-in-law, for he had no idea that he had been seen on the night of the attack, with a natural modesty, which did him really credit, he kept out of the young bridegroom's sight as much as he could, and showed no desire to be presented to him. At supper, however, as he was sneaking mod- estly down to a side-table, his father shouted after him, " PIo, Dominic, come hither, and sit opposite to your brother-in-law: " which Dominic did, his friends follow- ing. The bridegroom pledged him very gracefully in a bumper; and was in the act of making him a pretty speech, on the honour of an alliance with such a family, and on the pleasures of brother-in-lawship in general, when, looking in his face— ye gods! he saw the very man 106 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK who had been filing at his money-chest a few nights ago ! By his side, too, sat a couple more of the gang. The poor fellow turned deadly pale and sick, and, setting bis glass down, ran quickly out of the room, for he thought he was in company of a whole gang of rob- bers. And when he got home, he wrote a letter to the elder Cartouche, humbly declining any connexion with his family. Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked the reason of such an abrupt dissolution of the engagement ; and then, much to his horror, heard of his eldest son's doings. " You would not have me marry into such a family? " said the ex-bridegroom. And old Car- touche, an honest old citizen, confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would not. What was he to do with the lad? He did not like to ask for a lettre de cachet, and shut him up in the Bastile. He determined to give him a year's discipline at the monastery of St. Lazare. But how to catch the young gentleman? Old Car- touche knew that, were he to tell his son of the scheme, the latter would never obey, and, therefore, he deter- mined to be very cunning. He told Dominic that he was about to make a heavy bargain with the fathers, and should require a witness; so they stepped into a carriage together, and drove unsuspectingly to the Rue St. Denis. But, when they arrived near the convent. Cartouche saw several ominous figures gathering round the coach, and felt that his doom was sealed. However, he made as if he knew nothing of the conspiracy ; and the carriage drew up, and his father descended, and, bidding him wait for a minute in the coach, promised to return to him. Cartouche looked out; on the other side of the CARTOUCHE 107 way half-a-dozen men were posted, evidently with the intention of arresting him. Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated stroke of genius, which, if he had not been professionally employed in the morning, he never could have executed. He had in his pocket a piece of linen, which he had laid hold of at the door of some shop, and from which he quickly tore three suitable stripes. One he tied round his head, after the fashion of a nightcap ; a second round his waist, like an apron ; and with the third he covered his hat, a round one, with a large brim. His coat and his periwig he left behind him in the carriage ; and when he stepped out from it (which he did without asking the coachman to let down the steps), he bore exactly the appearance of a cook's boy carrying a dish ; and with this he slipped through the exempts quite unsuspected, and bade adieu to the Lazarists and his honest father, who came out speedily to seek him, and was not a little annoyed to find only his coat and wig. With that coat and wig. Cartouche left home, father, friends, conscience, remorse, society, behind him. He discovered (like a great number of other philosophers and poets, when they have committed rascally actions) that the world was all going wrong, and he quar- relled with it outright. One of the first stories told of the illustrious Cartouche, when he became professionally and openly a robber, redounds highly to his credit, and shows that he knew how to take advantage of the occa- sion, and how much he had improved in the course of a very few years' experience. His courage and inge- nuity were vastly admired by his friend; so much so, that, one day, the captain of the band thought fit to compliment him, and vowed that when he (the captain) 108 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK died, Cartouche should infallibly be called to the com- mander-in-chief. This conversation, so flattering to Car- touche, was carried on between the two gentlemen, as they were walking, one night, on the quays by the side of the Seine. Cartouche, when the captain made the last remark, blushingly protested against it, and pleaded his extreme youth as a reason why his comrades could never put entire trust in him. " Psha, man! " said the captain, " thy youth is in thy favour; thou wilt live only the longer to lead thy troops to victory. As for strength, bravery, and cunning, wert thou as old as Methuselah, thou couldst not be better provided than thou art now, at eighteen." What was the reply of Monsieur Car- touche? He answered, not by words, but by actions. Drawing his knife from his girdle, he instantly dug it into the captain's left side, as near his heart as possible ; and then, seizing that imprudent commander, precipi- tated him violently into the waters of the Seine, to keep company with the gudgeons and river-gods. When he returned to the band, and recounted how the captain had basely attempted to assassinate him, and how he, on the contrary, had, by exertion of superior skill, over- come the captain, not one of the society believed a word of his history; but they elected him captain forthwith. I think his Excellency Don Rafael Maroto, the pacifi- cator of Spain, is an amiable character, for whom history has not been written in vain. Being arrived at this exalted position, there is no end of the feats which Cartouche performed; and his band reached to such a pitch of glory, that if there had been a hundred thousand, instead of a hundred of them, who knows but that a new and popular dynasty might not have been founded, and " Louis Dominic, premier Em- CARTOUCHE 109 pereur des Fran^ais," might have performed innumer- able glorious actions, and fixed himself ill the hearts of his people, just as other monarchs have done, a hundred years after Cartouche's death. A story similar to the above, and equally moral, is that of Cartouche, who, in company with two other gentle- men, robbed the coche, or packet-boat, from Melun, where they took a good quantity of booty, — making the passengers lie down on the decks, and rifling them at leisure. " This money will be but very little among three," whispered Cartouche to his neighbour, as the three conquerors were making merry over their gains; "if you were but to pull the trigger of your pistol in the neighbourhood of your comrade's ear, perhaps it might go oiF, and then there would be but two of us to share." Strangely enough, as Cartouche said, the pistol did go off, and No. 3 perished. " Give him another ball," said Cartouche; and another was fired into him. But no sooner had Cartouche's comrade discharged both his pistols, than Cartouche himself, seized with a furious indignation, drew his: " Learn, monster," cried he, " not to be so greedy of gold, and perish, the victim of thy disloyalty and avarice ! " So Cartouche slew the second robber ; and there is no man in Europe who can say that the latter did not merit well his punishment. I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of paper, with tales of the triumphs of Cartouche and his band; how he robbed the Countess of O , going to Dijon, in her coach, and how the Countess fell in love with him, and was faithful to him ever after; how, when the lieu- tenant of police offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to any man who would bring Cartouche before him, a noble Marquess, in a coach and six, drove up to the hotel no THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK of the police; and the noble Marquess, desiring to see Monsieur de la Reynie, on matters of the highest mo- ment, alone, the latter introduced him into his private cabinet; and how, when there, the Marquess drew from his pocket a long, curiously shaped dagger: " Look at this. Monsieur de la Reynie," said he; " this dagger is poisoned ! " " Is it possible? " said M. de la Reynie. " A prick of it would do for any man," said the Mar- quess. " You don't say so! " said M. de la Reynie. " I do, though ; and, what is more," says the Marquess, in a terrible voice, " if you do not instantly lay yourself flat on the ground, with your face towards it, and your hands crossed over your back, or if you make the slightest noise or cry, I will stick this poisoned dagger between your ribs, as sure as my name is Cartouche ! " At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la Reynie sunk incontinently down on his stomach, and submitted to be carefully gagged and corded; after which Mon- sieur Cartouche laid his hands upon all the money which was kept in the lieutenant's cabinet. Alas! and alas! many a stout bailiff, and many an honest fellow of a spy, went, for that day, without his pay and his victuals. There is a story that Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille, and found in it a certain Abbe Potter, who was full of indignation against this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went back to Paris, which he pro- posed to do in about a fortnight, he should give the lieu- tenant of police some information, which would infal- libly lead to the scoundrel's capture. But poor Potter was disappointed in his designs ; for, before he could ful- fil them, he was made the victim of Cartouche's cruelty. CARTOUCHE 111 A letter came to the lieutenant of police, to state that Cartouche had travelled to Lille, in company with the Abbe de Potter, of that town; that, on the reverend gentleman's return towards Paris, Cartouche had way- laid him, murdered him, taken his papers, and would come to Paris himself, bearing the name and clothes of the unfortunate Abbe, by the Lille coach, on such a day. The Lille coach arrived, was surrounded by police agents; the monster Cartouche was there, sure enough, in the Abbe's guise. He was seized, bound,* flung into prison, brought out to be examined, and, on examination, found to be no other than the Abbe Potter himself! It is pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great men, and find them condescending to joke like the meanest of us. Another diligence adventure is recounted of the fa- mous Cartouche. It happened that he met, in the coach, a young and lovely lady, clad in widow's weeds, and bound to Paris, with a couple of servants. The poor thing was the widow of a rich old gentleman of Mar- seilles, and was going to the capital to arrange with her lawyers, and to settle her husband's will. The Count de Grinche (for so her fellow-passenger was called) was quite as candid as the pretty widow had been, and stated that he was a captain in the regiment of Nivernois ; that he was going to Paris to buy a colonelcy, which his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince de Mont- morency, the Commandeur de la Tremoille, with all their interest at court, could not fail to procure for him. To be short, in the course of the four days' journey, the Count Louis Dominic de Grinche played his cards so well, that the poor little widow half forgot her late husband ; and her eyes glistened with tears as the Count 112 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK kissed her hand at parting— at parting, he hoped, only for a few hours. Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the end of a fortnight, and in the midst of a tete-a-tete, he plunged, one morning, suddenly on his knees, and said, " Leonora, do you love me? " the poor thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh in the world; and, sinking her blushing head on his shoulder, whispered, "Oh, Dominic, je t'aime! All!" said she, " how noble is it of my Dominic to take me with the little I have, and he so rich a nobleman! " The fact is, the old Baron's titles and estates had passed away to his nephews; his dowager was only left with three hundred thousand livres, in rentes sur Fetat^—a handsome sum, but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count Dom- inic, Count de la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la Bigorne; he had estates and wealth which might authorize him to aspire to the hand of a duchess, at least. The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick that was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her affianced husband, sold out her money, and realized it in gold, to be made over to him on the day when the contract was to be signed. The day arrived ; and, according to the custom in France, the re- lations of both parties attended. The widow's relatives, though respectable, were not of the first nobility, being chiefly persons of the finance or the robe: there was the president of the court of Arras, and his lady ; a farmer- general; a judge of a court of Paris; and other such grave and respectable people. As for Monsieur le Comte de la Grinche, he was not bound for names ; and, having the whole peerage to choose from, brought a host Cartouche CARTOUCHE 113 of Montmorencies, Crequis, De la Tours, and Guises at his back. His homme d'affaires brought his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans of his estates, and the titles of his glorious ancestry. The widow's lawyers had her money in sacks; and between the gold on the one side, and the parchments on the other, lay the con- tract which was to make the widow's three hundred thou- sand francs the property of the Count de Grinche. The Count de la Grinche was just about to sign; when the Marshal de Villars, stepping up to him, said, " Captain, do you know who the president of the court of Arras, yonder, is? It is old Manasseh, the fence, of Brussels. I pawned a gold watch to him, which I stole from Cado- gan, when I was with Malbrook's army in Flanders." Here the Due de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed. " Run me through the body! " said his Grace, " but the comptroller-general's lady, there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton who keeps the — " Here the Due de la Roche Guyon's voice fell. Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table. He took up one of the widow's fifteen thousand gold pieces; — it was as pretty a bit of copper as you could wish to see. " My dear," said he, politely, " there is some mistake here, and this business had better stop." *' Count! " gasped the poor widow. "Count be hanged!" answered the bridegroom, sternly; " my name is Cartouche! " ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL THERE is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being pressed for money, and having re- ceived a piece of damask, which he was to wear in a state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared, at the show, dressed out in some very fine sheets of paper, which he had painted so as exactly to resemble silk. Nay, his coat looked so much richer than the doublets of all the rest, that the Emperor Charles, in whose honour the pro- cession was given, remarked the painter, and so his de- ceit was found out. I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all who, from laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their favourite duodecimos are as instructive as the biggest quartos in the world. If then, ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our studies, calling our darling romances fool- ish, trivial, noxious to the mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let us at once take a high ground, and say,— Go you to your own employ- ments, and to such dull studies as you fancy ; go and bob lU FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS 115 for triangles, from the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black draughts of metaphysics; go fumble over history books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy; our histories are, perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk sparkling champagne drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley and Co.; our walks are over such sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and Shakspeare have laid out for us; and if our dwellings are castles in the air, we find them excessively splendid and commodi- ous; — be not you envious because you have no wings to fly thither. Let the big-wigs despise us ; such contempt of their neighbours is the custom of all barbarous tribes ; —witness, the learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared that there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sklavonic hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves from a word in their jargon, which signifies " to speak; " the ruffians imagining that they had a monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other nations were dumb. Not so: others may be deaf; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent, instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on his own ground, and argue with him ; showing that sham histories were much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the reader. As thus: — Julius Caesar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia. The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard, at Blenheim. The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia. And what have we here? — so many names, simply. Sup- pose Pharsalia had been, at that mysterious period when 116 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK names were given, called Pavia ; and that Julius Ceesar's family name had been John Churchill; — the fact would have stood, in history, thus: — " Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia." And why not? — we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated, that — " The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim ; and Cffisar, writing home to his mamma, said, ' Madame, tout est perdu fors Vhonncur.^ " What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the names every- thing ; and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by learning Walker's " Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-old edition of the " Court Guide." Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in question — the novelists. On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked, that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as " copies " and " compositions." Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly stolen from the collections of French authors (and mu- tilated, according to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them) ; and, for compositions, we in- tend to favour the public with some studies of French modern works, that have not as yet, we believe,- attracted the notice of the English public. Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, ■^ 2 x; p >= B